My flat, Cresta

Friday, August 02, 2002

Just beat Jellyfish 50% of the time over about eight matches up to 11 points. I'm a happy chappy. My life is complete.

As is Guto Bussab's. That's because, in addition to being an up-and-coming superstar director, he's also the dad of a two-week-old baby. I popped in at his place earlier to say hi and see how daddyhood's treating him.

He's got black rings under his eyes.

"Kid keeping you awake?" I say.

He laughs at me. "It's all the partying," he says. He's the director and fellow co-producer of ARIA, my short movie.

I laugh with him.

"No," he says, "seriously. I've been partying a lot. Lianne and I kinda had a fight." They live in separate houses within walking distance in Melville. "But it's cool. We're on speaking terms, and I stay at her place every now and again."

He asks if I want to see the baby. Of course I do. When he SMSed all his friends to announce the arrival, he mentioned that it has his nose. This is significant news. Cos it means that he doesn't have to be paranoid about paternity with DNA tests and hair follicle analysis or anything. See, Guto Bussab has a vast nose. An uber specimen of Brazil mixed with Lebanon.

We hop in my car and arrive at Lianne's spot about thirty seconds later. She's happy to see us. And she's holding a funny little putty sculpture wrapped in a white blanket. "Are you sure it's human?" I say.

Lianne smiles. "Guto wants to do a DNA test to make sure Aliks is his." I look at the little thing in her arms. Nothing paternal stirs in me, and I'm relieved. I'm also disappointed that it's not scathingly ugly. It's actually quite a neat baby, with hair and eyes and hands and things like that. And it's nose looks kinda normal to me.

"Looks like MY nose," I say, covering my own nose in alarm. Guto slits his eyes at me.

"When will our movie be ready?" he asks.

I pretend I haven't heard, since our movie is in the very final stages of audio post-production. But we're still waiting for our composer, Dan, to give us the very last bits of music. And then we're going to submit papers to the National Film and Video Foundation so we can collect our massive grant.

"So," I say, trying to change the topic, "I hear Guto's been a bit of a bad dad?"

"Nah," says Lianne, snuggling up to the film director with a nose for paternity suites. "He's a great dad. Just a shit boyfriend."