Joel - The Con Man

So things ticked along fine for the next week or so. We noticed that Joel hadn’t got any money though and was quite happy to take anyone else’s stuff. He drank our beer and ate our food and in the beginning we thought nothing of it cos we knew we were gonna be starting work soon and he would have money and he could pay us back. However, that was when we got the bad news. The job that we were starting was delayed by two weeks. Jason had started work so he was ok and as I still had some money I decided I would wait for the job to start but I kept looking in the meantime as did Jimmy. Joel was quite happy to let us do the looking and then jump on whatever jobs we came across.

Joel was quite the character, he always had a story to tell. There was a bunch of girls living next door to us, some Irish and some English. They came into our house a lot of the time, and Joel would tell us stories of how he had been with them and what he had done to them etc.. There was a few days passed before we started to notice all of his stories were crap and none of the stuff he ever said had really happened. Then there was the night we’ll not forget.

We all went out to The Elephant & Wheelbarrow in St. Kilda. The girls from next door came with us too. We were all having a great time and we were all getting pretty drunk. Then later on, Joel was asked to leave by the bouncers. Paul got all annoyed because of this and he left with him. But for some reason Joel kept saying that it was Paul’s fault that they got thrown out. We stayed in the pub and those two headed home, Jay was already at home. Apparently, this argument went on all the way home and Paul was getting really annoyed with Joel.

When they got home, it got even worse. They were screaming at each other and then Joel picked up the iron and told Paul he was gonna smash his face in with it. Of course Paul didn’t take this too well so he head butted Joel. He didn’t hit him too badly but then Joel went into the kitchen and it all went quiet for a while. This was when Jay decided to go to bed thinking it was all over.

Myself and Jimmy then made our way home from the pub. Nobody really knows what happened in between Jay going to bed and us arriving home but when we got there, Joel was holding a knife and they were screaming at each other again. Without thinking, Jimmy grabbed the knife from Joel’s hand and I grabbed Joel by the neck and threw him onto the bed. I held him down while Jimmy forced Paul out to the back garden to calm him down.

Then we had to decide what the hell we were going to do. We decided pretty quickly that we didn’t want Joel living in the house if he was going to be pulling knives on people. We couldn’t leave the two boys together now so we stayed out the back with Paul and told Joel to stay in the bedroom. We agreed we were going to ask Joel to move out in the morning so I went for a few hours kip and then Jimmy stayed up with Paul.

Jimmy woke me in the morning telling me that we were kicking him out now. We all went into the living room and told him that we wanted him to go. Of course, he then said he wasn’t leaving and we couldn’t make him go. So we called the landlord and asked him to come over that there was a major problem to be sorted. When he got there, Joel was insisting that he was going nowhere. It took a while to explain to the landlord what had happened and he was saying that Irish people do stupid things when they get drunk and that it would all blow over. We weren’t happy with this so we told him we were all going to leave if he didn’t kick Joel out. He took ages but eventually he realized we were serious and that he was going to lose money, and he told Joel he would put him in a different house.

Finally he was gone and we could all be a little bit more relaxed. While he was packing his stuff, he hurled abuse at all of us calling us scumbags and all sorts. He was crying as he left which was strange because he was being a prat and slagging us off, and then saying he couldn’t believe he was losing his friends. Frank then took him off in the car and brought him to a house in a different suburb.