Rattus Aucklandicus.

This is the text of a monologue I wrote. It was performed by Dan Veint last September, at the 'Masculine Monologues' directed by Tom Sainsbury.

I finished high-school in the Year of the Rat. Call that prophetic. Me and all the other rats, we’re left to nibble at the flotsam and jetsam of life. My early teenage years were soundtracked by emo and hip-hop. And you wonder why I’m so confused. How the hell were we supposed to dress?
The principal of my school was a stubborn bastard with a rapist moustache. His favourite line was ‘your high-school education is preparation for the real-world. Most of you will be always wearing a uniform: whether a suit and tie or overalls. Learning to wear one correctly is part-and-parcel of your time at school.’ They’re trying to make me dress like a man; their conception of what a man looks like after he’s attended a private-school. I think all my nervousness about authority stems from enforced uniform policies – of course if I never looked right I’ll never relax around people that make me do something I don’t want to. When cops drive past me, my shoulders tense and my hands become fists in my pockets. It’s my armour, my turtle-shell.
Preparing me for real life… Jesus Christ. That’s how it is, always bowing to someone. Like Bob Dylan’s Fixin’ to Die. Fixing someone else’s problems till I cark it. They didn’t tell me that part. That bastard principal, he told us that real-life was a great place where the individual was able to flourish, find your own place in the world marked out by a house and a picket fence, leave a legacy in achieving a family and a job. You could do whatever you wanted to do; the world was your oyster. All you needed to do was spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week in a prison, rote-learning a curriculum for the betterment of your teacher’s ego. Maybe it was good preparation, not much has changed. Here I am spending 7 hours a day, 5 days a week on the phone. But they might’ve had the decency to let me know I’d never escape it, rather than dangle the keys in front of me. Let the rat smell the cheese before the execution.
Did your tuck-shop sell mousetraps? Mousetraps are fucking rank, especially the ones with tinned spaghetti in them. It reminds me of school camps, someone’s sweaty dad cooking a massive saucepan of it. And ‘camp Milo’, you’d get really excited, and then you’d get a cup of bitter, lukewarm, drainwater. Half the time the milk formed that skin on top, and as you drank it’d get stuck to your teeth. I can feel that skin now, between my teeth, trying to suck it out but it just gets wedged further in. it’s a goddamn horrorshow. That’s the kind of milk that makes someone write A Clockwork Orange.
In hard-tech, I tried to make my own eyeball cuffs, like Alex has in the film. Tech was probably my favourite subject. I worked on the eyeball-cuffs between assessments - making alarm systems and CD racks and shit. Tech was great because you could work by yourself on your own design, in your own time. I liked that kind of achievement. You can hold it in your hands; it’s like the physical manifestation of your psyche. And you could get a little dirty; your uniform could get a bit ratty. After sanding MDF for a couple of hours your shorts would be covered in this fine dust, we all had big white streaks down our fronts and caking woolly jumpers. No one could tell you off, ‘cause you can’t break the rules if you’ve just been following them. So these cuffs, I never finished them. I’d gotten as far as a vacuum-mold for the actual eyeball part, which I’d carved myself. Someone suggested I could’ve made them out of ping-pong balls, but I didn’t like that idea – it didn’t seem to have the same realness, you know? My molds are probably still sitting there in the cupboard of the tech room. I imagine it a bit like Gollum’s Cave, my molds protected by the tech teacher. He was actually called Mr. Schollum, so the connection isn’t that crazy. He stooped and limped about the classroom, ‘hello boys, working hard?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Schollum.’ ‘Good good, back to it then.’ And then he’d limp off to his backroom, to do… something. I never knew what teachers did in their mysterious backrooms. It’d be nice to imagine they were all secret alcoholics. Maybe they just washed their teeth with milky instant coffee to ensure their breath always had the appropriate smell.
Mr. Schollum that suggested I try Engineering at university. The University of Auckland, ‘Where I went my son. get to know what you’re all about. Join the Engineering Society. I was there for that incident in ‘79; you know the one, where we were attacked by those Maoris. John Harawira, he was there. Pita Sharples too. I probably gave John a bloody nose, come to think of it. Don’t take yourself too seriously, that’s another piece of advice I can give you. See we were having a fine time, practicing the old haka. Couple of the boys had penis-mokos, ha-ha! We’d changed the lyrics a bit, we were just lads being lads yknow. And it was damned funny too. Then we were attacked by those Maoris! Bloody attacked! Let your hair grow long. Join some clubs. Participate a bit, you know, get to know yourself.’
So I tried the University of Auckland. I didn’t last very long; I left before the end of the first semester. Straight after finishing high-school, I had my summer of madness. The first one being 18. I drank and smoked for a good two months – going to parties, doing burnouts in Albany, trying to get laid but getting a handjob instead, trying not to care too much. It was like we’d all been released, we’d finally escaped. Just living with my mum, spending days away from home on a bender. I drove drunk for the first time that summer. Weird feeling, it’s like the car itself is drunk. The car moves in a drunken, lazy way. Leaning around every corner, like how some people play Gran Turismo. I think that’s the most memorable part of the summer, the newborn rat driving dangerously. If you put long ropey tails on all the cars in Auckland, they’d look like giant rats. Imagine sitting up in the SkyTower, looking down at the cars. It’d be like looking at one of those mazes scientists put rats in, everyone racing around trying to find the cheese. I didn’t find any cheese at university. I couldn’t concentrate for the whole hour… I’d start thinking about some other shit, my mind was fucking Spiderman up the walls. Thinking about girls, or rats. Examining the person in front of me, some dickhead rugby player with a rat’s tail and a Mohawk. Using a MacBook. For Facebook. Fuckarse. Then I’d try and tune back in, but I’d be ten minutes behind the lecture. That’s the problem; because once you’re gone you can’t come back, yknow? You’re forever ten minutes behind
I worked up the balls to quit after about a month of that. But I don’t really like, own my uni-failure; it just feels like we’re parallel. Me and the failure. It’s like… a certain set of things happened on one side that moved me in one direction, but then me, like, the actual me, was moving the same direction but at a distance. But honestly, I feel like all the fucking time.
Obviously I had to start working, ‘cause my mum wasn’t gonna put up with me doing nothing. She said that, pretty explicitly. ‘Get yourself a bloody job, Andrew. I won’t have you being a layabout like your useless father. Your Aunt Cathy’ll take you on at the fruit shop. Better get some CVs printed, you better be organized. Won’t be having a layabout for a son. It’s time to do something. The world keeps moving, whether your like it or not.’ like it or leave it? So I should kill myself? ‘Don’t you say that!’ I’m being melodramatic. ‘You start being productive; you’ll see that it’s good for you. People are meant to keep busy… this mood of yours is part of your downward spiral, it’s self-defeating. Your horoscope today says: A loved one’s advice is best heeded. As Mercury crosses Neptune you’d be wise to pay attention to your finances. Emotional judgements prove costly, instead, clear-thinking and objectivity benefit you most.’ you just made that up. ‘I did not, look it’s right here.’
Ridiculous, right? It actually did say that. Another prophetic moment in my ordinary life. I should’ve just killed myself right there. Anyway, a couple of days later after I’d gotten over this haunting twist to my life, I found myself applying for a job at a call-centre. Which I call a call-centre, but it really wasn’t at all. A call-centre makes me think of a beautiful woman in an Air New Zealand uniform and a headset. Here they made calls under the guise of Colmar-Brunton, which is that name you hear on the news when they do political polls and shit. Sometimes you’ll talk to some fucking genius who’ll think that your name actually is Mr. Colmar Brunton, then you gotta fend off his retarded questions about your fucking identity. Colmar-Brunton is engaged in market research. They call you up during dinner-time, which is perfect because they know you’ll be home. Then they ask you to do a survey, which has been prepared in accompaniment with the company wishing to gather ‘market research’. The line they feed is: ‘answering these surveys allows you, the consumer, to have an input into how services and products can be made even better.’ Which, I think, is bullshit. Have you heard that there is a list of names and numbers, which you can ask to be removed from so you aren’t asked to do another survey? It’s true; there is a list of consumers. It can be bought and sold, however. There are companies out there compiling lists of names and numbers and selling them to other companies for them to get ‘market research’ out of. Did you know your name is a commodity?
Obviously I got the job, ‘cause that’s how I can tell you that shit. I’ve been here for about two months, and everyday it gets harder and harder to not go postal on these motherfuckers. Every one in charge is a fucking Christian, actual fucking Mormons. Everyone smells like instant coffee, just like my fucking teachers. And they’re all so fucking nice. But shit-nice, like I’m reverse-bullied into being the most number-one fucking employee here. And that about brings me up to right now, and who I am, and why my name is not fucking Mr. Brunton.