The Girl On The Telstra Poster
I am in love with a girl on a Telstra poster.
She’s the dark-haired, light-blue blouse wearing, leaning over a bed whilst using her ultra-thin laptop computer beauty that I admire whilst walking near work every day. And she’s wearing dark, thick rimmed glasses and not looking at the camera. That’s how you know its love.
She would be perfect except for her association with said corporate imagery. Within my station in polite society, and the other society that mostly involves people such as myself with arts degrees who live in the inner-north of Melbourne who sometimes prefer red to white wine and pepper their conversations with le français exprimes, an association with Telstra and associated subsidiaries is paramount to heresy. The name Telstra is to be uttered in hushed tones and only during a sermon on the evils of multinational corporations and monopolistic business activities, etcetera, etcetera, delivered by a friend of a friend wearing a corduroy blazer complete with mod badge, a scarf wrapped around the neck once and slung carefree over the right shoulder, and slightly mussed up hair from the beret, which he decided to remove and place in his bag before entering the house for fear that he may look a little like a tosser instead of an intellectual and that.
Why couldn’t The Girl On The Telstra Poster have involvement with a more palatable organisation, like the Fred Hollows Foundation or the ABC? But instead her agent no doubt has her lined up for a spot in a Nestle commercial for a new chocolate range featuring the images of Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez and the new host of Wheel of Fortune (I would have named Kyle Sandilands, but for three reasons: I have already “served” him in a diatribe against Australian Idol a few years ago, he is too obvious a target given his girth and stupid face, and I now have successfully used a colon and not a semi-colon like I had originally intended in this sentence).
Compromising my values to be enamoured with The Girl On The Telstra Poster is a dire state of affairs. A friend, who shall rename nameless given that I really am just using him as a way to introduce a new idea and doesn’t actually exist, said it is like wanting to have relations with a girl with a “kickin’ body” but who has a “bent face”. My imaginary friend likes a good euphemism followed by some jive talk and then some vague Essex colloquialism. I prefer to look at it another way - to give myself to The Girl On The Telstra Poster is more like doing a favour for a guy you met a few times whose sister is visiting town and wants someone to show her around; you last saw her when she was an awkward 16 year old and now she is just an awkward and boring 22-year old. You spend a day or two with her, but eventually you realise that you can’t stand her and you make up a brilliant excuse such as “I have to go now” and pray to Zeus that Connex will whisk you away briskly out of the city loop. Perhaps she actually did work for Telstra, since she messaged you every now and then for the next couple of months despite the fact that you stopped replying after the first few. As my father told me recently, I am a prick. And I hadn’t even told him that story.
The only question left to answer is, am I enamoured enough to sell-out my vaguely and compromisable liberal values to stop reading my Economist magazine and seek out The Girl On The Telstra Poster? Quite possibly. I have six weeks off before uni starts again. That’s enough time to get into a relationship, mess it up, cry myself to sleep for a week, develop a new crush, and still have time before class starts again. It’s going to be a great holiday.
She’s the dark-haired, light-blue blouse wearing, leaning over a bed whilst using her ultra-thin laptop computer beauty that I admire whilst walking near work every day. And she’s wearing dark, thick rimmed glasses and not looking at the camera. That’s how you know its love.
She would be perfect except for her association with said corporate imagery. Within my station in polite society, and the other society that mostly involves people such as myself with arts degrees who live in the inner-north of Melbourne who sometimes prefer red to white wine and pepper their conversations with le français exprimes, an association with Telstra and associated subsidiaries is paramount to heresy. The name Telstra is to be uttered in hushed tones and only during a sermon on the evils of multinational corporations and monopolistic business activities, etcetera, etcetera, delivered by a friend of a friend wearing a corduroy blazer complete with mod badge, a scarf wrapped around the neck once and slung carefree over the right shoulder, and slightly mussed up hair from the beret, which he decided to remove and place in his bag before entering the house for fear that he may look a little like a tosser instead of an intellectual and that.
Why couldn’t The Girl On The Telstra Poster have involvement with a more palatable organisation, like the Fred Hollows Foundation or the ABC? But instead her agent no doubt has her lined up for a spot in a Nestle commercial for a new chocolate range featuring the images of Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez and the new host of Wheel of Fortune (I would have named Kyle Sandilands, but for three reasons: I have already “served” him in a diatribe against Australian Idol a few years ago, he is too obvious a target given his girth and stupid face, and I now have successfully used a colon and not a semi-colon like I had originally intended in this sentence).
Compromising my values to be enamoured with The Girl On The Telstra Poster is a dire state of affairs. A friend, who shall rename nameless given that I really am just using him as a way to introduce a new idea and doesn’t actually exist, said it is like wanting to have relations with a girl with a “kickin’ body” but who has a “bent face”. My imaginary friend likes a good euphemism followed by some jive talk and then some vague Essex colloquialism. I prefer to look at it another way - to give myself to The Girl On The Telstra Poster is more like doing a favour for a guy you met a few times whose sister is visiting town and wants someone to show her around; you last saw her when she was an awkward 16 year old and now she is just an awkward and boring 22-year old. You spend a day or two with her, but eventually you realise that you can’t stand her and you make up a brilliant excuse such as “I have to go now” and pray to Zeus that Connex will whisk you away briskly out of the city loop. Perhaps she actually did work for Telstra, since she messaged you every now and then for the next couple of months despite the fact that you stopped replying after the first few. As my father told me recently, I am a prick. And I hadn’t even told him that story.
The only question left to answer is, am I enamoured enough to sell-out my vaguely and compromisable liberal values to stop reading my Economist magazine and seek out The Girl On The Telstra Poster? Quite possibly. I have six weeks off before uni starts again. That’s enough time to get into a relationship, mess it up, cry myself to sleep for a week, develop a new crush, and still have time before class starts again. It’s going to be a great holiday.