I was born on the 14th of September 1976. Abba was at the top of the charts.

Glam was reaching its apogee. I was born In Melbourne, a large suburban
city on the south coast of Australia. I grew up in a nice home, attended
kindergarten, primary school, two high schools and camping with my family
on holidays. I remember the television coverage of the Gulf War. I have
always liked sports including Aussie Rules Football, Soccer, tennis and
Cricket. I have always liked Pop Music, I have always liked films. I
attended Latrobe University for three years, lost my virginity, got drunk, got
married, dropped out, got on the dole, got a job, got divorced, got fired,
spent time living in about 6 different houses. Money is like rain; it comes
and goes. I have a small group of close friends, many acquaintances, an
immediate family with whom I feel close, and a large extended family whom
I do not know well. None of the children of my parents yet have children of
their own. We range in age between mid thirties and early twenties, there
are five of us, four boys and a girl. My closest friends are Sandra, my ex
wife, Tony, an old friend from my second high school, Craig, another high
school friend, and Alex, a child of Lithuanian ancestry, like me, whom I met
through various clubs and cultural excursions. I am writing this short piece
in the hope it will provide me with some picture of my world that I may use
as a kind of guide to my life in the future. I am turning 25 years old in 2
Months.
In the past five years I have had sex with around 30 women slightly more
than half of whom where sex workers. I would guess that on average I have
had sex once every two weeks in that period. I have kissed a few men and
given and received fellatio once without much success.
I have drunk many different kinds of alcohol, I drink coffee, smoke
cigarettes and have occasionally used marijuana and speed. I have never
taken ecstasy but know many people who do so on a regular basis, along
with LSD, Heroin and Cocaine, these seem to be the most popular social
drugs of my generation.
Australia is part of the west This means it has a majority population of
European decent, has elections and a strong economy. The rest of the west is
made up of Western Europe, most importantly Germany, England, France,
Italy and Spain, and North America made up of the United States and
Canada.
Before I was born, men had walked on the moon, bombs had been invented
and used that could if used again kill every person in the world, and
telephones had become so ubiquitus that you can talk to someone in any
country on earth just by pushing some buttons in your home.

The world is now both smaller and larger, more terrible and more mundane
than it was. I have grown up thinking of myself as a human from the planet
earth rather than as the subject of a nation state.
We die of Heart Attacks, Heart Disease, Breast Cancer, Strokes and Old Age
in the west. In the Third World, our name for poor countries, mostly Africa
and Central Asia, they die of Hunger, War, Viruses like Aids and anything
else you can think of.
Here most things are manageable. If you do not wish to die from Lung
Cancer, refrain from cigarettes, if you do not want to die from a broken heart
avoid bad foods and exercise regularly.
I guess that an average Westerner my age, if they followed all the rules and
werent unlucky, could expect to die at 100 years. In the third world people
probably dont even know when theyre supposed to die, we in the west
expect them to die around 35, but that is an average, children starve first.
I have learnt about the fact of my mortality mostly from television. Death
seems to be on the borders of our influence as a civilization. Every year we
invent new ways to cheat it, but it wins out eventually, I am not sure it can
keep winning forever, we are a very determined civilization.
Our major social institutions are the Family, the School and the Workplace.
Melbourne is the second largest city in my country of residence, it covers a
huge geographical area and is mostly what is called suburban. I grew up in
the suburb of Ivanhoe. Suburbs are areas of houses privately owned for the
most part that families live in. Each suburb usually has a central area of
shops. Suburbs are not isolated but rather tend to run one into the other,
there are poor suburbs and rich suburbs, Ivanhoe is and was a reasonably
rich suburb.
About half my friends work. Of the remainder most are unemployed as
opposed to studying. Five years ago almost everyone I knew was studying.
Latrobe University was probably what I and most others would consider the
beginning of my adult life, I rented a place to live with my friends, had sex
and bought my own food and clothing. Prior to this my parents had
provided me with food, shelter and clothing and otherwise ordered most of
my financial and beurocratic affairs. This is fairly normal in my society.
I masturbate regularly, sometimes several times a day. If I am not regularly
having sex with someone I think I would very rarely go for more than a
week without masturbating. I usually masturbate in bed, before I go to
sleep. I collect pornography occasionally in the form of videos, magazines
and most often now in the form of pictures and movies from the internet.
Most of the men I know masturbate regularly, depending on the availability
of sex partners and the strength of their libidos. I also know many women

who masturbate but they discuss it with me less often, so I am less sure of
the facts.
Our Civilizations Great Works have been mostly technological and
inventive. Flight, Space, Medicine, Automation, and communication, all of
these advancements have been given to us through a peculiar way of looking
at the world, the common name for which is scientific.
My Father hit me, yelled and force fed me. My Mother sacrificed herself to
the care of her children, her husband and her own mother. I like them both.
My father took us camping and cooked our food, my mother made us feel
terrible by slowly killing herself for us. They are both nice people, both
frustrated by a world that hasnt fulfilled their dreams. I have not been
traumatized or ruined by my upbringing. I am lucky, my parents taught me
to think, to behave and provided me with all that I could ask for and more. I
resent neither my fathers aggression or my mothers martyrdom. They are
people, just like everyone else.
I have a personal moral philosophy that at its simplest can be expressed like
this; The only things that can be morally judged by an individual are the
actions that individual makes, things like avalanches or other people are
only good or bad in as much as the individual making the judgment could by
his own actions effect the outcome of the situation or the behavior of the
person.
Most of the immoral things I have done I am sure I have forgotten. Snide
remarks, lying to loved ones, being cruel to people. I have done all of these
things. I havent ever murdered someone or raped a person.
In my life I have learnt Judo, Guitar, to draw, to play football, to read, none
of which I do brilliantly but all of which I can do competently.
I have worked a few different Jobs, when I was a child I had paper routes to
earn pocket money, in high school I worked weekends and holidays as a
laborer for a landscape gardener, also whilst at high school I worked at a
shop called Mind Games in the Central Business District of Melbourne.
So looking back I have worked on and off all my life.
Growing up my parents encouraged me to read, and then later to write. This,
as far as I can tell, is unusual.
I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction and later mostly non-fiction. My
writing was mostly short fiction and once a few years ago I wrote 20,000
words worth of a science fiction novel.
The job I have had most recently is that of an internet programmer. At the
present time this is a very lucrative job for a person of my age to have.
As a child I played with Lego and transformers and collected stamps and star
wars figurines.

I rode a BMX and still dont drive a car, this is unusual too.