Baby Jesus

We will all be at the Palais. It is very exciting and we are all very excited, as this is her return from the States and this is the event we have all been waiting for. What with her awards, lots and lots of awards and her personality and her rich engineer husband and her baby. Did we mention the baby, and how excited we are to be alive?

We hope to get there just in time or just to be invited at all. If we are invited we will definitely be there and if we aren’t we will turn up anyway for old times sake.

The Palais is on the right side of the triangle, close to Luna Park and its howling grin, the beach and its white sand, not the other side on the north towards Grey Street with the prostitutes and their white heroin which glows like the white sand that the Council dumps on the beach each night to make it right for the photographs and to attract the Irish backpackers. Where you recently starred in that short film that won all those minor awards on heroin addiction and prostitutes and the general greyness of their lives except for the heroin.

You remember that movie, surely? When we were filming and up walks Steven Walkly’s sister Tamsin, looking grey and knocked up like she has been slumming it at an awards ceremony and you said, “What are you doing here”—not to be judgmental at all but in that way that people in the arts industry do before they offer you a cigarette.

“You know,” she said and turned away and with a shrug; “Say hi to your brother.”

We are all very excited about seeing Baby Jesus despite the circumstances. Baby Jesus is called Baby Jesus because that American actor that comes here a lot with his mistresses once had a Mexican Chihuahua called Jesu.

But did you see her on television last week? Talking about her spiritual beliefs and her good friend Gwyneth and how we should watch out for her at the soup kitchen next week. How if her other good friend Sean was in town he would probably be there too except he is too busy in Haiti being photographed.

The Palais queue moves forward. I like queues as you can learn a lot about people while standing in queues. And all the talk is of Baby Jesus. Apparently they had wanted to keep him out of the spotlight—to avoid the risk of recognition but given everything that has happened they have decided to do a story about him in Ramp instead just to get it all out in the open.

You must know it? Ramp magazine is the magazine to be in, if you are anyone or even if you are someone else. The line moves forward one métier at a time—that was clever. This is so exciting. I remember the piece they did once on her husband and that black marble refrigerator he designed that spits out ice cubes.

Speaking of movies, do you remember Matthew Z and that short film that qualified for the festival?

About the family leaving their home for the last time? And the slow dialogue and the dull colours and they just shut the door on their memories and pull away from the house in their car? Well, that guy who played the Dad in the film does television and is a stand-up comedian. I met him during the filming as I was holding the boom mic that day when I was trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life—before this, I mean. He seemed nice. He is standing only three people away from us in the line.

Well Matthew Z died last year and it was very mysterious and we all cried and cried. It was sad as he was very young—only forty—but it wasn’t a movie so we couldn’t do a second take or even go on television to explain it all away. He’s buried with his film reels in that East St Kilda cemetery where they bury all those other dead actors who never quite made it except on television. We should visit it one day.

I haven’t been right since that all happened—it’s a kind of betrayal when people die. Like they have left you midway through a sentence or without the spare key. I don’t think I could ever go through that again.

Funerals are strange events—especially this one. You know how they do this whole celebration of life thing while ignoring the elephant—sorry, the dead body in the room? See how everyone is looking so happy at the moment but that could be the plastic surgery—they could be a bunch of fakes or just really well-paid professionals hoping to be signed for an infomercial.

Only the stars are allowed to do tears and let the mascara run.

The strange thing about Baby Jesus is that he doesn’t look dead. I mean he doesn’t move or even make a slow baby crawl towards a wallet. But that’s what happens when you are dead, there really isn’t much left to say.

See how his eyes are frozen. He already has celebrity status and he doesn’t move in case it blurs the shot. It’s a calculated gesture no doubt. He’s a true professional. As the queue shuffles by it is hard not to get excited for him. Famous so young—but he did come from a creative family.

The expensive coffin he’s placed in is a deep oak with silver handles on each side. His mummified body lies flat in the plush red velvet and they have tilted the box slightly for viewing. It’s an open coffin so you can look at Baby Jesus’s specially made tiny black Armani suit that they bought for him in New York before the flight back here. He looks like a radio announcer in a booth or Eichmann in Jerusalem. Thank goodness that rattle I sent them is in there with him.

Everyone is quiet as they move past the body. Even the actors.

There is barely a sound to be heard except the aluminium humidifier humming as it struggles to keep his body cold. It’s getting pretty warm in this queue waiting though, what with there being so many of us excitable creative-types here.