About the book

Launch date 1/4/25

Audiologist Wow!
Kevin Sanders Kettletown

Extract

I’m pissed. And I’m in a pub.

I try to be in pubs a lot more these days since the break-up. The reason is pubs have alcohol and girls. Specifically, any girl that isn’t Her. As usual, when the image of Her invades my brain, my hand feels for the round crater in the middle of my forehead. With a hard enough impact, skin doesn’t just cut, it explodes—like a divot in golf. Now you know.

We call the pub I’m at tonight “The Irish.” It has a real name like Seamus O’Pug Maladdos or something like that, but even after coming here over thirty times, I still can’t remember what it is. That probably tells you something about the place.

Its faux old-world charm exists next door to the failing suburban Knox Cinema. The timber bar smells like vomit, the sign for Responsible Service of Alcohol has F U scrawled on it, and the bands and DJs are always too loud, drunk or high (or both). It’s the sort of place that attracts girls with just the right kind of standards, e.g., those nearly as low as mine.

I’m on the dance floor with one of these girls now. She is blonde and tall and does not lack the most desirable asset of a woman: she is breathing and in the same room. This girl could be a model, maybe more Kmart catalogue than FHM, but through my current prescription of beer goggles, she’s a perfect cover girl—when she drifts into focus, that is.

It’s around midnight. Of my mates, Heathcliff piked early, and Steven has probably been ejected. I soldier on. When the lights come on at 3 am, The Irish will descend into an orgy of sexual desperation, Olympic feats of self-justification and the occasional glassing. It might not come down to that tonight because Miss Kmart is pressing herself against me on the dance floor. Our conversation thus far has consisted chiefly of gyrations, but it’s a foundation: a jiggly one, but a foundation nonetheless.

The cover band is playing Guns N’ Roses. I didn’t get into Guns N’ Roses in the 80s, but now they’re retro in a good way. It’s incredible, given enough time, how things become cool again. Maybe, given another century or so, my profession of audiology will get cool.

Miss Kmart yells out over poorly played chords being peak-clipped by the under-gained amplifier and the low dynamic-range speaker setup. She asks me what I do.

I say I dance.

I pull some of my best moves: I’m a white guy doing a hip-hop version of the robot. Lucky for me, she’s nearly as pissed as I am. She smiles and laughs.

And I think to myself, this is going great!

“No,” she yells. “What do you do for a job?”

“I’m an audiologist,” I say.

“Huh?”

“An audiologist!”

She closes her eyes and twirls on the spot. While she’s no Bolshoi ballerina, I’m impressed, considering the booze-soaked floor has the colour and tackiness of treacle (but unfortunately not the odour). Miss Kmart rotates back towards me, smiles blankly and says, “Ology-what?”

“Audiologist!”

“Wow!” she says.

We dance together a little more.

And then: “Um, what’s an audiologist?”

I say it’s like being an optometrist. But for the ears.

“Oh, cool.”

Yeah, I’m in a pub, trying to get laid, defining my profession through the profession of others. If I were a plastic surgeon, I wouldn’t be saying, “I’m like a butcher for tits.” No optometrists are out on the pull in Melbourne tonight, saying, “Hey babe, I’m like an audiologist, but for the eyes…” Hell, I bet there’s an optometrist out there right now who’s already pulled and is on his way back to his apartment with a, perhaps not FHM, but at least a high-end Miss Target (let’s be honest, optometrists aren’t plastic surgeons either).

Miss Kmart is still looking at me as comprehending as a sparkly painted rock. Of course, like everyone else in the world, she’s never heard of audiology. This is her first exposure to the wondrous, most illustrious of allied health professions.

She says, “So, like, what do you do?”

I say I do hearing tests/fit hearing aids.

“What?” she says, not hearing me.

“Hearing tests and hearing aids!”

“What?!”

“I DO HEARING TESTS AND…”

My dancing slows to a halt. Miss Kmart is grinning. She’s faked it.

​Without a doubt, this is the oldest joke in the Bait an Audiologist Handbook, and I’ve fallen for it—again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me once a week, I’m a bloody audiologist.

Well, this is one time too many. Mark this moment in history, my compatriots in ear health. I’m taking a stand for audiologists everywhere.

“Well, you can just fuck off!”

And… wow.

Did I say that?

Worse yet, I’m marching away, smashing dancing bodies aside. There’s a chance to salvage this if I turn around and—but no, I run out in the cold night air. Those traitorous legs carry me towards the queue at the taxi rank to wait behind the pairs of lucky sods, inventing new knots with tongues. I slump onto the curb’s edge.

I’ve been crawling along on an emotional razor’s edge for so long that something like tonight was inevitable. Of course, as my government-mandated counsellor once said, it all started years ago. The shocks of life build up, one on top of the other, and eventually, everyone reaches their breaking point.

Audiologist Wow!
Kevin Sanders Kettletown
A farcical, tragic, and daring insight into love, responsibility, and the practice of healthcare.

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