A girlfriend emailed me this as an Easter greeting.
Two chocolate bunnies, one with its arse bitten off, one with its ears bitten off.
One says, my arse hurts.
The other says what?
It made me laugh, a lot. That out loud spontaneous laugh. I love that kind of laugh, I think it does us all good. It was the best laugh I’ve had for easter.
The end of daylight savings is apparent, already, as though the curtains have suddenly been drawn. It makes a Tuesday night seem even less bearable than normal with the darkness so early in the week, constantly, ominous for the days that follow. No respite for 3 days. No hope until the weekend. Or am I just being dramatic and just having one of those weeks? I have working arms and legs. I have a roof over my head. Isn’t that what they say? If you have food to eat and a roof above, you are doing much better that a lot of the world. And here I am complaining about a few extra hours of dark.
Oh, the dark.
The autumn is beautiful. I've only just noticed. The yellow, the orange and the red leaves. All that colour does the heart good. Have I been that busy not to notice? The leaves are yellow and brown falling from the trees, already. Yellow, orange and red surround me, but is quickly falling away.
Soon the trees will be bare, and the nights as long as they are going to get, the sun in short supply.
It’s kind of a shame that the days have to get so short and everything has to fall away, that we have to be stripped of so much, holding our breath, slowing to a crawl, before we can breathe, and stretch, and drink in the light once again, like it is never going to end, like it always will be. How quickly we forget. Collars up, coats drawn in tight, layers thrown on, it’s going to be dark, and cold, and probably wet, no complaining thanks, it’s not like you didn’t know.
The abundant colour of life. The cold, bare sticks of death. The delicate buds of birth.
“But, of course, we like to complain.”
“It’s our middle name, homo complaining sapiens.”
“It’s a hobby, a pastime, a way of life.”
“Of course it is, if people didn’t complain, some people would never speak at all.”
“Not a word.”
“Not a word.”
“As my grandma used to say, If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
“There are a lot of people who never got that memo.”
“Half the human race.”
“Oh, I think you are being a little unkind.”
“I believe I am being generous.”
“Is that irony, if you think about your grandmother.”
“It’s not irony, if it is true.”
“By the very definition.”
“By the very definition.”
“But is it true?”
“Oh, so true.”
“People love to complain?”
“Love to complain.”
“Why do you think that is the case?”
“As I said, with some people they, actually, wouldn’t have anything to say.”
“Harsh.”
“But true.”
“So true.”
“It is easier to be negative than positive.”
“How so?”
“Being negative you just have to go to the painful bits, and revert to being a toddler. To be positive takes a certain amount of creativity, you know, seeing how things could be.”
“Like visualising the days in summer?”
“Instead of staring out the window into the dark.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Nary a sun shinny day in sight.”
“No matter how far they look.”
“No matter how far…”
“Sad…”
“But true.”
“Must be an awful way to live.”
“Well, just look at the world.”
“Indeed.”
“Point taken.”
“And, you know, despite what all say, we find the problem, the conflict, the drama, more interesting.”
“Oh, not me, give me harmony any day.”
“You’d be in the minority.”
“Do you think?”
“Oh yes.”
“Really?”
“It’s the whole bad boy thing. It’s mean girls. It’s what’s going wrong in the world.”
“I must be the weirdo in all of this?”
“How so?”
“Give me the quiet life, the sunshine, the bird song, give me that any day.”
“Weirdo.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“It’s not meant to be. It is supposed to be the cold, hard truth.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Gotcha.”
“Oh, okay, I see what you did there.”
Matt and I go out for drinks. I tell Matt about Carlo, he's impressed.
“There is this 18 year old…”
“There is this eighteen year old?” Matt kind of tilts his head sideways just a bit and waits.
“He’s been chatting me up.”
“An eighteen year old is chatting you up?”
“Yes.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“And where did you meet this… 18 year old who… is chatting you up?”
“In the park.”
“In the park?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing in the park?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you?”
“I was reading a book.”
“And what was the eighteen year old doing?”
“He was playing soccer.”
“You were reading, and he was playing soccer?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he playing soccer with?”
“Just himself.”
“So, he was kicking the soccer ball rather than playing soccer.”
“Yes.”
“Not, um, two pursuits I can see with a lot of cross over.”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“So how, exactly did you…”
“He asked me to play soccer.”
“He asked you to play soccer.”
“Yes, he asked me to play soccer with him.”
“Is the a euphonism?”
“No.”
“And did you, um, er, play… soccer with him?”
“No. Soccer?”
“I did wonder.”
“I turned him down.”
“For soccer?”
“Yes. Soccer. He went back to playing with his ball and I kept reading my book, on the grass, in the sun.”
“So, why are you telling me this?”
“Because, um, I couldn’t help smiling, I could feel it, you know when you are trying not to, spread across my face…”
“You wanna play ball with him?” said Matt.
“Of course, it’s ‘we’ might wanna play ball with him.”
“Okay.”
“Because I think he wants to play ball.”
“With us?”
I slid my hand across the table and took hold of Matt’s hand. “Yeah. We could have fun with him, I reckon.”
Matt shrugged. “Sure.”
“See, there should be more love in the world,” I cheers Matt, as we drink our first beer.
The bar is slow. We practically drink alone.
Matt smiles and touches me on the nose, just as I am thinking I'd got away with being naughty. (you never get away with anything, not really) Matt always knows what I'm thinking.
I have steak with mustard.
He has steamed fish with ginger.
We both drink beer, in schooners. The only time really that we drink it. I like the colour of it as much as the taste.
The last unrenovated pub in Fitzroy, opposite the commission flats. You see, there are something's for which to be grateful for the commission flats. The less fashionable end of Fitzroy. It doesn’t bother the residence of the suburb, just the tourists. I guess it will get its turn.
I love Fitzroy's graffiti. It is a part of Fitzroy's character. Equality. Egalitarianism. When Feminism started with my mother.
“What?” said Matt.
“We were taught that people are treated equally in relationships because of feminism demanding it of relationships.”
“That was the model we got?”
“Yes, because our mothers were liberated.”
“With feminist ideology?”
“Yes, even if they weren’t militant feminists, it still filtered down to them.”
“They were modern women.”
“Yes. And that’s how ‘we’ learned the concept of freewill.”
“From our mothers?”
“Self determining a course of action and then putting it into action, because they were allowed to do so, now that men were no longer allowed to be cunts.”
“What?” said Matt. He shoved a huge fork full of fish into his mouth.
“Shaking off the patriarchy concept and making my own decisions.”
“Because feminism started with your mother?”
“Yes, she expected to be treated equally and therefore she was.”
“By your father?”
“Yes, bud, by my father,” I said. “She wasn’t exactly facilitating threesomes for the two of them.”
“Like you are?”
“Well, it takes a certain self will and belief in yourself to pull such a thing off. Pun intended.”
“My very own live in comedian.”
“I thought you were going to say pimp,” I said. “But I will take comedian.”
“Funny boy.”
“I aim to please.”
“And I love you for it.”
We stumbled home drunk saying we were going to roleplay suffragettes. Matt wanted to be Emily Spankhurst, saying that he’d been a very bad girl. Not a place Matt would normally go, but he was pretty keen on getting his arse slapped.
“Very bad girl.” His face was starting to screw up, and his eyes were twitching, like all drunks faces screw up and eyes twitch.
Saturday, time to play. Time to make my boyfriend smile, oh, I've already done that, earlier. And he liked it. Smiling as he wiped the sweat away, and the lube from his arse.
Then it's time to pull on my jogging shoes and run for a mile, so my boyfriend continues to smile, when I pull my clothes off.
I love that feeling of pulling the cotton material up and over my arse. Ffffppp. I love the way they fit me. I love the way my thighs feel so exposed, just in those little black shorts. I love the way I can feel the air blow around me down there. Does my, er, ah… look big in these.
Up on that cushiony cloud, step, step, step. Mind clear. Push myself along. Nobody can touch me. I'm a machine. My legs are like springs of steal. I slide through the air. I am oiled, I am greased, I am fluid. I am the hot knife, the day is the butter. I am in my cocoon of silence, all that exists is what is in front of me. That is where my focus is, the footpath disappearing under my feet. The rhythm of my heart, the rhythm of the bitumen, the rhythm of life, the rhythm of existence beating in my chest. Into the zone, the world blurs like it’s on time lapse. I am strong. I am powerful. I am invincible.
Watch me go, if you can. What me explode into being a man. What me sizzle under the sun. Thup, thup, thup sound my feet on the ground. I barely touch down. I am poetry in motion, if only in my own mind.
I smile, as I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand.
Gertrude Street > Queensberry Street > Swanston Street > Elgin Street > Johnson Street > Home.
I stagger in the door. I’m exhausted. It is good exhaustion. I feel great exhaustion. I grab a glass of water. I can hardly stop my hand from shaking as I raise it to my mouth. I drink it down. My legs are sweating and stinging at the same time. The sweat drips into my eyes.
I pull off a shoe. I push the other shoe off with my big toe. It is a family trait, gene, really powerful big toes. I can pinch people with them that brings them to their knees with tears to their eyes. I can barely pull the wherewithal together to remove my socks.
I head to the shower. My wet t-shirt sticks to my skin, so much that I have trouble pulling it over my head. I roll my wet shorts and jocks down in one motion and they lay curled together at my feet.
I can barely turn the shower taps on, my hands are weak. But, I feel great. I feel shakingly fantastic as the water cascades down onto my red skin glistening with sweat.
Afterwards, I make tea.
I was jogging back down Gertrude Street. I nearly hadn't gone jogging at all, as I was so comfy at home before I left.
Nyr, is how I felt.
So, I had to, eventually, push myself out the door with the promise of a joint as soon as I got back. (Why I just didn’t just smoke the joint first, I don’t know)
So, it was later than I had intended. I was nearly home and there was Carlo heading towards me. American football guernsey, blue and silver and American loud. Trackie pants. Dark blue.
We smiled at each other as we approached. I was going to jog right by, Santana's guitar was soaring on my I-pod in my ears, and I was on the beat, I was a fully integrated machine.
Isn't that him? Yep. It is him, I thought. Parachute out, pull the strings from my ears.
“Hey. Hi.”
My heart is pounding in my head. I rested my hands on my knees. I look up. He has stopped. He is smiling. I can't talk. What the hell am I doing? Speechless in front of this kid.
“Hi,” he says.
“How are you?”
“Yeah. Good. Heading home.” He looks down. He shuffles his feet. Looks up. “Bored. You?”
Big breaths. “Yeah. Good. Not bored.” A gasp for breath A car horn sounds. We both look around, as if we'd been caught. Well, I can’t speak for him, of course. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
“Me either.” Breath, just breath. He's smiling. Look at you. How gorgeous. It's just admiration. Nothing else. Broad shoulders. How does he fill out those track suit pants like that> Leaning on my knees I'm looking right at it... them.
“You going…?
I straighten, stand up and my eyes go straight from his track pants to his eyes. He's looking right at me. He realises, just like that. He blushes and moves his hand with a jerk, twitches his fingers. I blush too... what am I doing?
“I'm going home because... I've, got nothing else to do.” He smiles.
“Me either.” I smile too, I can't help smiling at the ridiculousness of the situation.
“So where do you live?”
“Just around the corner.”
There is silence. We both smile, nervously. My breathing is returning to normal.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Nice to see you.” I look down again at his tracky pants. It's an automatic response. Nice legs. This would be so easy. No.
“Okay.”
“I got to go,” I say. I can feel my heart beating in my chest. The butterflies in my stomach are saying, hang on, wait a minute. I start to walk towards home. My head is spinning. I can't help but smile. I think my line is school boys from the area. I've got a bit of a chub, though, thinking about him, despite the line. I'm not dead inside.
I only glance back, as I turn the corner into my street. He's walking behind me. I get to my front door. I walk inside and close the door. I lean my back against the inside of my front door. I breathe out. I breathe in. It is dark in my front hall, except for the slash of street light, from window above door.
I'm suddenly cold, my legs are shaking. I should change. I step into the hallway.
There is a knock on the door.
I turn back.
The door creaks as I open it. He’s standing there.
“You followed me?” I ask.
“Clearly.”
Was this good? I couldn’t decide.
“This is where you live?” he states, more than asks.”
“Clearly.”
“Not bad.”
“If you like this sort of thing?” I say. I couldn’t help myself.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
We held each other’s gaze.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asks.
What happens when we close the door, I think? “Sure, come in.” I stand to the side of the hallway and usher him in with a hand gesture. I look out into the street, just to amuse myself, to see if any of the neighbours are watching.
He walks ahead of me.
“Keep walking until you get to the end…”
“Like walking the plank,” he says.
“All the way to the end, my friend,” I say. I immediately regret it.
“Nice house,” he says.
“Well, thank you.”
I pull on track pants and a hoodie I left in the lounge room.
“Do you jog often?” he asks.
“I try to,” I say.
“It’s what I see you doing most.”
“You still playing soccer?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “When I have someone to play with. Not always the case.”
“It must be better.”
“Who do you, um, play with?”
“What?”
“Do you have a partner?”
I wonder if he asked that question that way deliberately. “Yes.” I was going to say Matt, but I say, “His name is Matt,” instead.
“Matt?”
“Yes.”
“Does he live here too?”
“No,” I say. “He lives in Brunswick.”
“Brunswick?”
“Yes.”
“Why doesn’t he live here?”
“We like our own space.”
“Oh.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Do you live with your folks?”
“Yes.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes… both.”
“They are still married?”
“Yes.”
“To each other?”
“Yes.”
“Well, congratulations on that.”
“Congratulations?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “And what do you want to do?”
“When I grow up?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, ah, I don’t know.”
“Don’t you have to know right about now?”
“Um, yes. Um, no. Um, Lawyer,” he says feebly. “Doctor.” Sounding just as feeble
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed with my answer.”
“No, it’s your life. Doctor. Lawyer. Both good vocations. What draws you to each of them?”
He shrugged. “Being told they were both good things to do.”
“And they are good things to do, for doctors and lawyers,” I say. “But you?”
“I don’t know, but you are right, I do have to make up my mind pretty soon.”
“You should do something you love. It makes it more bearable.”
“Bearable?”
“Going to work every day, you’ve got to do something you love,” I say. "To do it every day."
“Well, um…”
“What do you love?”
“I don’t know.”
“Or, who do you love?”
“What makes you think I love…”
“Oh, come on, a good looking boy like you, the girls… guys must be throwing themselves at you.”
“Nobody is throwing themselves at me.”
“Oh come on, with your looks, I’m sure you are being humble.” I am beginning to regret this line of conversation, but weirdly I don’t seem to be able to stop myself.
“No, nobody,” says Carlo. He looks at his watch. “I guess I should be going.”
“I haven’t even offered you a drink, we just got chatting. How rude.”
“That’s okay, I should get going anyway.”
“Okay,” I say. I wondered if I scared him off, not that there was anything from which to be scared off.
He heads up the hallway, and leaves the house.
I go and have a shower, my track pants and hoodie are sticking to me from the sweat of running.
I was just thinking about Italy; the air, the sea, the country side, the beautiful villages.
What fun I've had in Italy. How many times have I stood opened mouthed at the beauty? How much have I eaten there?
The sun is different around the Mediterranean, I can lay in it all day, the Greek Islands, in particular – fake tan for a few days on my sun deprived skin, followed by SPF30, of course. The air is lighter, the sun kinder, the air is fresher, the light softer. I go a golden brown, tanned like a, um, er, I’m struggling with a PC way to finish that analogy.
People have said that when I am tanned and dressed all in black, well, I have been much flattered and just a little embarrassed.
Any wonder why the Italians, as a whole race, are beautiful; sun, sky, food, beauty all around them. They live in paradise for anyone who hasn’t been to see for themselves.
I remember the first time I visited Venice, as an impressionable 18 year old boy, I was convinced they were a genetically superior race. I lived a bit of a solo life travelling around by train with a back pack staying in youth hostels. Just picking up suggestions of destinations every day from other people I met and then just setting off to those places. I didn’t really know my arse from my elbow. I travelled alone. I spent most of my time on my own. And even with all those men around me, I didn’t hook up with anyone. I was a baby. Scared of nearly everything. Truly another life time ago.
I few years later, I bought a second hand 2CV with a girlfriend and we drove all around The Continent, extensively in Italy. That night we stayed in separate sex dorms in Venice. I was in a gigantic dorm room, where there were four of us right in the middle of an otherwise shut down bunk room, late in the season, the 3 other guys speaking French to each other, to which I drifted off to sleep with a view of the main canal from my top bunk bed. It is one of my very favourite memories ever. The purity of the beauty was just breath taking.
Then Matt and I spent 6 months there, driving a midnight blue Fiat Barchetta with a chrome luggage rack on the boot, tasting the local produce like I never thought I would. For six months, not long ago, Matt and I were tearing the place up. The Italian guys were drawn to us like I never expected them to be. One guy said it was the two of us in black swim trunks on the beach that caught his eye. “Aussie boys,” he repeated.
Lionel, the blond American boy with muscles on a GAP year we met in Rome, who fell in love with both of us and never wanted us to leave him. We spent weeks with him. Squeezing him into our little Fiat as well as us was a trip in itself. Somehow, he knew how to acquire pot, he had a knack for it, sniffing it out, seemingly, with little effort. The three of us got shitfaced in the Italian countryside, lying in the grass together under the Italian sun. When we left him, he got really drunk and cried. We got tearful letters form him saying his life had lost all meaning, and he didn’t know how he was going to go on. I told him to get an English Bulldog, to cheer himself up, and he got a puppy he called Enzo that he said always reminded him of us. I loved that.
Bolzano. Lake Como. Milan. Verona. Venice. Bologna. Florence. Possibly my favourite city in the world. Tuscany. Piza. And that tower. Incredible. Rome. Magnifique. Naples. That teenage stall holder, presumably bored, jerking off at his stall on the side of the road. Pompei. Sorento. Positano. Reggio Calabria. And it’s dark, swarthy men.
On the beautiful beach at Capo Spartivento that 20 something fisherman, Antonio, who spoke no English but somehow knew, and knew what he wanted. He was particularly taken with Matt, like who wouldn’t be. I am. If I have this right, Matt was the first guy he'd kissed. The thee of us would sit on the beach late into the night. We taught him some English. Matt knew a little Italian.
What was that nearby town that had a thriving tourist industry until the locals decided they didn’t like the tourists and they shot a few and the tourist stopped coming? What was the name of that town?
I have had a thing for Calabrian men ever since. I can spot one at a distance.
I saw Carlo around at the shops, he must live locally, now there's a thing. He was on a scooter, one of those shiny silver ones. He had on tracky pants and a singlet and dark, sun glasses, which he lifted when he saw me. Cute. Smiling. Nervous. I couldn't help but look him up and down. He blushed and kind of looked away. Cute. He smiled broadly. I smiled and acknowledged him. Kept walking. I didn't turn around. Why would I? I hardly know him.
Wow. A school boy. No, I thought, as I walked on by. He's only seven years younger than me, at eighteen – legal school boy fantasies, who'd have thought.
I watched mums with their kids walking towards me. I wondered what they'd think about if they knew why I was smiling, what I was thinking about Carlo. One mother smiled so sweetly at me, I was already smiling, so I couldn't help but smile back. We held each other’s gaze momentarily.
I was kind of surprised at myself, because young guys weren’t really my thing. I liked guys my own age. Young guys were, um, how can I put it, kind of dumb. I like my partners to surprise me with the things they know, and the things they say, you know, make me think about things I wouldn’t normally think about, and that only really comes with a certain amount of maturity.
I couldn't get the smile off my face, though.
Matt and I smoked pot after he’d finished work. I waited until we were nice and stoned before I broached the subject, well, thought of it, truthfully.
“An eighteen year old school boy,” I said. “Tried to pick me up in the park.”
“What?” he said. “When?”
“A week ago.”
“Where were you?”
“I was reading my book on the grass. It was a lovely day. And this eighteen year old kid appeared.”
“Seriously?”
“He was playing soccer on his own and he wanted me to play with him.”
“You must have misunderstood what he meant.”
“No, he asked if I’d play with him.”
“He meant soccer.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure.”
“Oh, he must have.” Matt handed me back the joint. Matt screwed up his face in that adorable way that Matt screws up his face. “No.”
I puffed on the joint and handed it back to him. “I just saw him around the shops today. He must live around here.”
Matt puffed on the joint. “Are you serious about this guy?” He handed the joint back to me.
“No,” I said. “It’s just a thing.” I shrugged. I handed the joint back to Matt.
