CLUB OF POISON IVY

Due to popular demand and following on from my concurrently expanding page titled More Wanky Things to Avoid, I am embarking on a weekly embargo of documentation concerning whatever I find to be seriously wanky. It is called Wank Off & Die, Weekly, or if you prefer “W&D Weekly.” You can tune in weekly on Mondays for a good dose of cynicism dealt out by me and my usually saccharine pen of exuberance. What soul doesn’t need a whack of reality every now and then? Which person prefers to live in a world of unchecked wankaholism without qualm? Here are my qualms with the modern world, passionately elevated due to the odd land also known as Fashion Week, and the strange spheres of energy that follow it.

I begin. Following #10 which to my recollection involved questionable male hairstyles mirroring latent primitive yearnings,

#11. THE IVY POOL-CLUB

The Ivy Stamp of Evil (Don't Look Too Long)

Those who have spoken to me in the recent week for longer than two minutes know that I dislike a particular Sydney establishment known collectively as The Ivy. It is not necessarily each individual person that dwells here for caprioskas, for I don’t actually believe such a phenomenon exists. There are no individual minds at work here. At The Ivy, I found myself post-work (appearing for moral support with a designer at our new never-before-visited drinking hole) at the “pool-bar” effectively barricaded in by the unnerving way the building has been constructed. I’m not sure if the designer of the building was too far gone already down the gungy depths of his own Narcissus pond when he drew the plans, but the whole area has to my eyes been – alarmingly – built for posing, such that one can at all times see all, and more importantly be seen.

There is a long podium mid-pool, cabanas that all seem to face one another either by direct convergence or via the subtly evil placement of mirrors. There are shelves at waters edge – obviously for bikini-clad women to perch within, half submerged in the pithy water, and therefore available to be clasped at all times by suited men who buy their Cosmopolitans. The restaurant seemed to spill like a gross tumour over a balcony edge that surveyed this pool. I’ve been told the food is actually quite good, but I’m not sure I would have the stomach to digest it whilst being bombarded by a) the arrestment of flesh in the evenings’ lanternous glow or b) the sound of conversations shallower than the puddles that pool at the feet of Australia’s Next Top Model.

I digress. Brought together in droves, and supported by the ridiculous layout of the building that is The Ivy, there isn’t much to talk about, not anything that can be heard for what it is over the wail of music that is too new to be outdated, but too outdated to be cool. I scratch about for things to do or say that don’t involve raising the decibel of my voice a few notches, that don’t involve feigning a pretense of peacock-confidence – which in all honesty, only masks a severe and terrible sensation in the gut that there will never be any winner, and everything everyone is saying about you will only be transmogrified into demented back-handed insults when you leave. We all know this. I think I’d prefer to be the uneaten steak on the plate of the restauranters or the detoxers wolfed salad, because at least then I could watch from a sheen of warm porcelain, knowing that I’d soon be annihilated in the carnal unification of food, flesh and fury.

Meanwhile, I spent Saturday on my own detox from this rancid dwelling, on a quilt my mother made, in an old paperbark forest with a thermos of hot chocolat, reading Francoise Sagan on a solitary sunny picnic. From her book With Fondest Regards, I continued reading today something which echoes my (harmlesss!) sentiments. She writes, “All I knew about Cannes and the Film Festival was the image most people had of the place at that time – that is to say, a blend of chilled champagne, warm sea, an admiring crowd and American demigods – and I confess that the mix did not greatly appeal to me.” Such is the sheen of some of the atmospheres I move through, however – not unappreciatively. My friends and I tend to visit these places for the moral support of others (thoroughly required) or for a hearty laugh, and do enjoy the savannah, seeing the wildebeest and deer flock meekly towards the thickets where the lions wait. I thrill for the pounce.

But too much and one grows ill.

Perhaps, I should have business cards printed which simply read ‘Politely Wank Off & Die’ and as such, require little action from me, but elicit maximum reaction from each recipient. We truly fashionable few who come to waterholes for sport tend to have a disdain for the ungainly (usually male, suited) herd animals who have paid through the nostrils to visit this watering hole. Lions and lionesses like designers, their friends, starlets, publishers, gallery owners and myself – just an innocent bystander – have the freedom and power to roam all the land without loyalty cards. We are the loyalty cards. Hunting wildebeest is a titillating sport and yes it is always pleasant to have the company of other big cats to prey with. The porcelain plate remains warm. Noble participants may apply via email, and once we have our hunting party at the ready and have chosen our watering hole wisely, we will cc. the rest of the food-chain just for fun, and allez! We begin the kill of the despotic Louboutin imitations.

Alas, it was only after walking around the lake  (beside which I was picnicking) in my exhausted stupor of supreme contentment and happiness –  having spoken to my lover from afar on the telephone for countless hours, watching the tree boughs above me – that I had time to detox from this assault in purgatory. It was here that I understood everything was in order, and the natural flow of the universe was carrying on. It took babies, chocolate dipped soft-serve wolfed by bicyclist fathers, four plucky fat ducks hand-fed by an obviously oft-visiting Chinese couple, as well as picnic blankets covered in caterpillars, for me to understand this.

I saw the animals and I saw the babies and the sky and the sun and the lake and the trees and the icecream and hamburgers and tarmac of road that spewed under my comfortable feet – and I saw that the world was perfect and life was moving on. Balance was restored and furthermore, my contentment heightened when that night I stayed awake way past bedtime wide-eyed to watch a French film which goes by the name of ‘And They Lived Happily Ever After‘ on obscure free-to-air television, which starred, among others, Emmanuelle Beart and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a young mother in France. It included a country house just south of Paris, dealt out a sharp-tongued look at marriage. It took all of these things – effectively a denouement from falsity (which I’m sure all my friends feel the need for after finding blood on their hands) – and I was home in my skin, in my life, out of the ivy and into the brambles of paperbark, the lakes of swans.