Next week I will be attending my brother’s wedding. When I first received the invitation I was excited. I started brainstorming what I’d wear, how much weight I’d lose before the big reveal at the family occasion (I put on 5 kilos!) and what gift I might buy him and his new wife.

It was important to get something that not only commemorated their special day but also was useful, beautiful and amazing. I had just finished ordering a his-and-hers snuggie set complete with built-in reading light when I read the small print on the invitation. My snuggie surprise was cut short by an account with the Flight Centre requesting monies be deposited for a holiday.

Geez, that’s bloody specific. It’s less of a gift and more of a direct order. How do you open up a gift that you have demanded from someone and managed to look surprised? ‘Oh thank you!’ Money. Hmm, $50. It’s embarrassing. A good gift is mysterious, you can’t really work out how much money was dropped in its purchase. A cash deposit, however, with your name against it makes it pretty clear.

Anything under $100 and you are a tightarse. Pardon me for being rude but I always thought that people gave you money when they couldn’t be fucked making an effort to go shopping and actually think about what you might like. Whatever happened to going to a wedding and buying a gift inspired by the couple? I don’t think I’ve been to one like that, including my own, in the last 10 years.

Used to be you wouldn’t know what you were getting: a painting, a pottery urn, a black leather jacuzzi. Present time was the guest’s time to shine. It was your chance to give your friends or family a little piece of you. Something they were expected to keep no matter how ugly it is and how much they hate it. You see, sometimes things aren’t necessarily attractive, or even useful. Their value is purely sentimental. The personality of the gift giver lives on long after the friendship is diminished.

My partner still has six ugly cocktail glasses from his 21st. He refuses to let me garage sale them. So every now and then I must accidentally drop them when I’m washing up. Now people just want cash or white towels. Egyptian cotton sheets. A new flat-screen TV. I don’t know about you but fronting up to David Jones to see what’s left on the gift register is about as spontaneous as planning to have sex on the third Sunday of every month. It’s so calculated it’s no longer interesting. Or meaningful.

The definition of a gift is something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation. Being told what to buy and where to get it is insulting. It’s like your nearest and dearest are telling you that your taste is in your arse and there is no way they would want to accept any unsolicited item from a cheap arse like you. I mean so what if your wedding booty delivers three toasters, a lime green Italian kettle and Robert Welsh Bakeware and none of it matches! Oh my god, what if the contents of your home are new but mismatched and not exactly what you would have chosen yourself!

We’re not living in catalogues. You can’t just tell people what you want from them. This whole gift register is a metaphor for what self-centred spoilt little pricks we are all becoming. Giving like receiving should be unconditional. Isn’t that the purpose of a gift? Isn’t it supposed to be something that you wouldn’t have bought yourself because surely if you would have bought it yourself you would have already had it. And as for three toasters, the more the merrier. I reckon the average home burns through one toaster every two to three years, so if you want to still be browning your crusts a decade from now you better hope for five.

There’s something immensely creative about buying a gift. You have to spend time thinking about it. You have to drive to the shops. You have to find a parking space. You have to get out the car and walk around and around looking at objects for a few hours until a certain object speaks to you. And I guess that’s why I ended up buying the 1950s concrete kangaroo lawn ornament. Life should be a surprise. Otherwise there’s just no point.

Subvert the dominant gift registries.