Cosmopolitan

There's no doubt that the previously underground hipster phenonemon is now taking over popular culture. After a particularly hard break-up, author Matt Granfield set out to redefine his goals, his priorities and his image and embarked on a quest to become the ultimate hipster. Hipstermattic is a self-deprecating journey of discovery and must-read guidebook for anyone who's ever wanted to be cool.

Luckily I didn’t own a bath. If I’d had a bath I would have been crying in it, and there were so many tears and so much snot the thing would have started overflowing and I would have floated out and broken a rib on the floor.
The shower had no plug, so I couldn’t float out or do any wallowing of consequence, but it was still very snotty.
At least the constant running water made it moderately hygienic. I didn’t break a rib, but I did manage to pull a rib muscle while attempting to assume the foetal position in between two particularly violent moans.
There’s a beautiful reprise in any major sobbing session when you take a deep sniff, run your index finger under your nose, pause for a second, frown emphatically and assure yourself the worst is over. It’s a brief and snotty moment of solitude that arrives in the darkness like a lantern of hope and then exits swiftly and without favour, leaving you alone to whimper wildly in the shadows once more. I’d just reached that moment when her words echoed around me again.
‘We’re just two different people,’ she’d said. This was over the phone—it had been a relatively short but tumultuous long distance relationship. ‘Actually, it’s not that we’re different people, it’s more that I’m a person and you’re a child. You’re fine when it’s just us, but then you go out and end up skinny-dipping in some random water feature at four o’clock in the morning. I never know where you are. More to the point, you don’t seem to know who you are. You don’t know where you’re going. You have no sense of commitment. I’m sorry. It’s over.’
And that was that.

I thought we were going to live happily ever after and end up doing the sorts of things proper adult relationship people do, like choosing dinner sets, shades of Dulux and preparatory schools for our as-yet-unconceived children. She thought I belonged in preparatory school.
I went back to sobbing in the shower for a while. This helped somewhat. I could sob with way more gusto than any five-year-old. This gave me some comfort.
She did have one point. I didn’t have a clue who I was. Nor any idea how to go about finding out. Nor any drive or purpose for doing so. Maybe I needed to go spend a year in an ashram or something. That worked for the Beatles. I didn’t really like Indian food though. Lamb korma was OK, but lentils just weren’t my thing. I could never be a vegetarian. I also didn’t really enjoy sitting still for too long. I liked swivel chairs because if you got bored you could push away from your desk and spin around for a while. Ashram yoga probably wasn’t the way for me to find enlightenment. A tub of chocolate YoGo yes; yoga, no.

I weighed up the other rational options before me. Running away to join the circus was out. I had no co-ordination, I wasn’t good with small cats, let alone big cats, and I couldn’t put up a tent. Joining the French Foreign Legion was also a no-go for the same reason: camping wasn’t my thing. I didn’t much like shouting either. Moving to Cambodia to set up an orphanage was something I’d considered, but my friend Holly had looked into it and said all the good orphans had already been taken by Hollywood movie stars. There were other types of international volunteering of course—there’d been a few earthquakes and floods happening about the place—but they were mostly in organised countries and things seemed to be pretty much under control already. I wasn’t sure what skills I could offer anyway. I’d managed to put together a set of IKEA shelves once, but that was the upper limit to my re-construction and engineering experience. I was fairly certain no one at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was sitting around going, ‘F*ck, if only we had someone with an arts degree to come up with a social media strategy for this.’

Everyone else I knew seemed to have their shit sorted by now. My other 30-year-old friends all had careers and partners and puppies and paint rollers. I had a couch and a bookshelf and a guitar collection. I’d had dinner with my high-school girlfriend and her husband a few nights previously and they’d been making plans to buy their second investment property. My idea of investing for the future was keeping a tin of tuna in the cupboard in case I got sick one day and couldn’t make it to the shops.
My ex-girlfriend was right. I was a child.

The only friend who had as little to show for his thirty years of existence as me was my best friend, Dave. He lived in Sydney so I didn’t get to see him as much as I would have liked, but he was always good for a phone chat whenever I needed him.
‘Dude,’ he’d said when we’d been hanging out the weekend before. This was after quite a few pilseners. ‘You know I’ll always be there for you. I don’t care if it’s three o’clock in the morning and you’re on the other side of the world, if you need me, just call. OK?’ He’d just been through a break-up himself, so I’d been consoling him and we were talking about how we’d always be there for each other. I didn’t have a watch on in the shower, but my guess was about two-thirty in the morning. It was time to test the friendship.

I got out of the shower and dried myself off. All the bits that would dry, anyway. (My eyes and nose were in a semi-permanent state of damp.)
Dave’s phone rang for a while and then went to message bank. I left him a message consisting mostly of sniffing and then called again. It went to message bank so I left another message apologising for calling so late and called again. He didn’t answer so I left a message apologising for leaving so many messages. I waited thirty seconds and dialled again.
‘What?’ He finally picked up. He didn’t sound very happy to hear from me.
‘Hey mate, did you get my message?’
‘What message?’
‘Oh, I just left you a message.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Oh, I was just apologising for calling so late and leaving so many messages.’ I said.
‘Awesome. That was very considerate of you. I appreciate that. Thank you.’
He hung up.
I called back.
‘What?’
‘Hey, I just got dumped.’
‘Oh dude, I’m so sorry to hear that. Can we talk about this in the morning?’
‘It is the morning.’ I had a point.
‘I was thinking more morning morning.’
‘Man, I’m really upset.’ I made my voice crack a little so he’d be more sympathetic. ‘I’ve been thinking about killing myself, hey.’
‘Oh, what? No, don’t do that. Really?’ He sounded concerned now.
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘No, not really. I was considering opening my emergency tin of tuna though.’
He groaned. ‘You’re a dick. Did this just happen?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She called me this afternoon.’
‘I see,’ Dave said. ‘Why did you wait until two-thirty am to call me then?’
‘Is it exactly two-thirty?’ I asked.
‘Well, it’s . . .’ I could hear him shuffling around in bed to look at a clock. ‘Two thirty-seven,’ he said.

This is an extract from Hipstermattic by Matt Granfield, ($24.99, Allen & Unwin). To buy Hipstermattic, click here. For the e-book version, click here.