Shot Roast.

I recently had the pleasure of watching a celebrity roast.  In the old days, these events 'honoured' the creme de la creme of the entertainment world, putting show business royalty in the oven for an hour or so to baste in their own sweat and giggle nervously as friends and colleagues rattled off a litany of their mistakes and indiscretions with impeccable comic timing.  Given the state the world economy is in, it's no wonder that the choice of meat for these feasts has gone from prime rib to hamburger.  The celebrity on the menu the night I watched was none other than the tabloid crowd's drive-thru dish of choice, David Hassellhoff and you know what?  It was the best roast I've ever seen!  His life and 'career' being what it has been, the celebrity chefs turned the heat up to three hundred degrees without raising a sweat, and The Hoff didn't even burn, (although he couldn't get any browner, let's face it), spitting Crisco back at them with retorts that must have had aspiring stand-ups taking notes.  My romantic 'career' being what it has been, I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if I was the one in the baking dish, and my friends and exes were the ones serving me up?  This is how I thought it would go...

Introduction - my best friend, Corrina.  I've known Mel since we were eleven and twelve years old, and I'm pleased to say her taste in men has improved since those early days; she doesn't fall in love with thirteen year-olds anymore...well, not thirteen in the chronological sense.  The list of her roasters this evening reads like the contents page on Don't Date Him.com.  Her first boyfriend, Perry, is here.  They dated for a whole two weeks until she got out in the world and realised that Eu de Marlborough wasn't a brand of men's cologne.  Then of course there's her first real boyfriend, Aaron, who managed to squeeze us into his busy schedule between riding past Mel's house and pretending to be in love with his wife.  I'm pleased to see Ryan here.  He's the one who managed to stick with Mel the longest.  Five whole years!  I'd throw in the old standard 'you do less time for murder,' but in that scenario, it'd be kind of hard to pick the perp.  Anyway, I volunteered to be the M.C. tonight because, of all the people in this room, I can safely say I know Mel best of all.  I've seen her in just about any state you can imagine - happy, sad, angry, loving, bitter, regretful, exhilarated; and that was just on her thirtieth birthday.  Mel has a little condition I like to call I.M.P.D - Inebriated Multiple Personality Disorder.  When she's sober, she's a shy, virginal Sunday school teacher.  When she's tipsy, she's a hyperactive leprechaun on uppers.  When she's drunk, she's anybody's.  Oh, while we're on the subject, could we get someone to come over here and keep Mel away from the open bar?  Great.  Mel, everyone in this room loves you, well, most of them...okay, just the ones who haven't actually had to live with you for longer than twenty four hours, and we hope you will appreciate this roast in the spirit with which it was intended; good humour...especially seeing as we're recording it for screening at your intervention. 

First speaker - Perry Feldon.  I first met Mel at a venue she was to frequent on and off throughout the course of her early twenties; the unemployment office.  We bonded over mutual interests; we were both unemployed and desperate.  When she first got a job I was overjoyed; finally, we could eat dinner in a place where they actually gave you cutlery, and not the plastic kind.  But it wasn't long before she started to meet new people and when she asked to talk to me over lunch one day, I knew it was over before she said a word.  But it wasn't as though she severed ties with me completely; we would bump into each other every now and then at the train station when she was on her way to work and she was always friendly...she never failed to give me a smile before dashing into the ladies to hide.  I still held out hope though; she was a nice person, she'd soon realise that those guys in suits were phonies and come back to me...sure, she wasn't making eye contact with me these days, but that was just because of the sun glare in her eyes...in mid winter.  Smitten as I was, I did bow out in the end.  It took me a while, but I finally got the message that she'd moved on.  That, and her mother threatened to castrate me if I came within a metre of her.

Second speaker - Aaron Smith.  I once read that the definition of insanity was to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.  There, in a nutshell, you have my relationship with Mel.  We first met at a club one Thursday night and I'll never forget what a vision she was; capering around on the dance floor, holding her fourth drink of the night and singing along to Peter Andre.  I drove her home that night and we quickly became inseparable.  Quite literally.  She clung to me like we were bonded together with invisible handcuffs.  Being a red-blooded twenty-five year old guy, I was taken aback by this so I ended things but, as Mel herself has documented in her blog, that was not the end of our association.  We got together quite a bit over the next few years until she had her little epiphany and broke up with me.  As the old saying goes, with progression comes change.  I thought that with the progression of her age and her waistline her standards might change but alas, things didn't pan out that way.  When you think about it, a moral compass is just like a Swiss army knife; it's easily adaptable and can be tucked away when you have no use for it.

Final speaker - Ryan Bunton.  Mel and I were actually set up on a blind date.  Of course, I mean a blind date in the traditional sense, not the colloquial, which from what I've been able to piece together from members of the audience describes her dating pattern prior to meeting me.  We lived together for a few years and I must admit, I had doubts about where our relationship was headed, but we managed to work things out and stick together for a while...sudden parenthood is a great adhesive.  Mel will tell you that I was difficult to live with and it's true, I was somewhat distant, but I wasn't like that all the time...Mel was a dab hand with the old bunji cord.  But you need individual interests to stay happy as a couple and we certainly had those.  I had dungeons and dragons, sport, and surfing for porn to psych myself up.  Mel had the baby, reading, and playing with the voodoo doll she made that time I said hi to a girl I went to school with.  The good thing about Mel is that she doesn't fit the stereotypical description of a woman in a long-term, co-habitual relationship.  She never lost interest in sex.  Never.  Not once.  Not even when I pretended to be asleep.  It's a good thing really; now I'm prepared should I ever be doused in honey and cornered by a bear.  All good things must come to an end and I did meet someone else one fateful weekend away with my football team, but Mel took it gracefully.  There wasn't any begging or crying or clinging to my leg as I walked out the front door.  She even took my announcement of our nuptials with amazing grace, despite my initial misgivings about telling her, and not once has she sought revenge...anyone can develop a spontaneous hernia on their wedding night.

Corrina's closing.  Mel, despite any ill feelings that may be circulating around this room tonight, I think I speak for everyone here when I say that you are a uniquely talented and courageous woman.  It takes balls to go out in public with your head held high, knowing where it's been.  And I'm positive that the social anxiety you're currently experiencing will pass and you'll be back to your effervescent old self.  Alcohol manufacturers have built an industry around it.

                                         

Carelessly Selfless.

The contents of today's post have been brewing for a couple of months, when the issue I'm going to tell you about first reared its ugly head.  The reason I haven't said anything until today is that the person at the centre of it all is a friend, a very new friend who I've grown close to in a short amount of time and I did not want to jeopardise that by publicly airing my opinion on someone else's choices...until I remembered what a pseudonym was. 

Michelle and I first bonded over our similar experiences, with particular emphasis on bad relationships, so it was only natural that most of our conversations steered in that direction.  We are two very different people; I'm a thinker, she's a doer.  While I'm busy pondering the pros and con's of a decision, see: procrastinating, she has decided, acted and moved on.  It's a very admirable quality, and one she utilises to her friends advantage more than her own.  A word was all it took for her to deliver a weeks worth of groceries to an elderly neighbour who had run short, or babysit at a moments notice for a friend who didn't want her kids finding out about her new boyfriend just yet.  She also took my son out a few times to give me a sorely needed break when even his own father didn't offer.  In short, she is a wonderful, selfless person.  But being so altruistic as to ignore your own needs can be dangerous.

A couple of months ago, Michelle broke up with her boyfriend.  This guy was a moody, manipulative piece of work who isolated her from her friends and damn near put her into bankruptcy.  Making the break with him was just about the only thing she ever did for herself, and I was happy to see her finally living the carefree life to which she was more than entitled.  Then the phone calls started.  Hour after hour of messages ranging from eerily cheery to hostile were beginning to take their toll, although she was careful to put on a brave face.  She began to indulge him by talking to him for over two hours a day, reasoning that she didn't want to alienate him until he paid back all of the money he owed her, but that was an all too convenient fib that I don't think even she truly believed.  She was letting him down gently, attending to his precious mental health while her own psyche was becoming more and more fragile by the day.  He even intimated moving back into the house, and no amount of pleading from her friends could convince her to do what any other red-blooded wronged woman would have: change her phone number, change the locks and drop him like a piece of hot fat.  In the end, the catalyst for change sprang from a most unusual source: her phone company.

A three thousand dollar phone bill would be an effective enough laxative for a person whose finances were in good shape, but for someone whose debt could register on the Richter scale, it was the last straw.  Michelle was on the phone that very afternoon, making arrangements for an international student to come and stay with her, and is working out a debt repayment arrangement as we speak.  Whether or not she gets any money back from her ex syphon/boyfriend now is immaterial; she has her life back, and is taking care of the person who needed her most.