I’m on a run, dodging men who spread themselves across the length and width of the footpath like a stubborn and foul-smelling butter. I pant and pivot behind them, landing as heavily as possible to announce my will to pass but of course, they stay stuck like a rogue piece of fat stuck in the throat of my morning. Like always.
MOVE OUT OF THE WAY OF RUNNING WOMEN!
I want to yell in their impossibly large ears, so unpruned that they look like they’ve swallowed the butt of a koala each. On my good days, when I’m not on a run or in a rush, I’ll play patriarchy chicken instead. It’s a game my girlfriend loves where we just don’t move for men on footpaths, yell PATRIARCHY CHICKEN! and brace for impact. 9/10 times, they won’t budge to avoid you. They’re not used to having to and it’s simply not muscle memory. Patriarchy chicken comes highly recommended if you ever need a reminder of how valid your objections to, and experiences of, low-level patriarchal aggression are. I’ve had seven satisfying face-first collisions to date.
MOVE OUT OF THE WAY OF RUNNING WOM -
Another wide-crotched wanderer blocking my track.
MOVE OUT OF THE –
Actually, fuck this. I’m out of breath – figuratively and literally. My crisp runner’s lungs feel heavy and sodden with the Sydney humidity so I give up outside a bustling café whose molasses banana bread has caught my eye. The cafe wasn’t here when I lived in the area but I can’t for the life of me remember what was.
Is there a word for the feeling of going back to the neighbourhood you used to live in and realising it belongs to somebody else? There’s bound to be a perfect name for it in German. They have so many little words that capture feelings that English fails to. My girlfriend grew up near Hamburg and there are words she has at her disposal that translate to full phrases in English.
— WHAT’S THE WORD FOR BEING JEALOUS OF HAVING WORDS?
I text my girlfriend, wiping the boob sweat of my credit card as I tap for a banana bread and a small oat latte. The cashier looks at me suspiciously. So does the café. I’m peering at it, trying to remember what used to be on the corner. I walked by here every day for two years, I know this place. It looks back at me out of the corner of its eye like the ex-odd kid at a school reunion who’s hoping nobody remembers their bowl cut and can focus on their successful tech career.
- I’M LOST BUT NOT IN A BAD WAY. I THINK.
I text my girlfriend, 800km away in Melbourne. I’m trying to find my old house in Camperdown to take a photo for her. I don’t know if it’s really for her but I don’t have time to really consider that before a tattooed girl at an outside table smiles at me. She’s sat opposite a tanned friend in matching sweats who’s talking so animatedly about reformer pilates that she might as well have invented it that morning.
SERIOUSLY, I’VE NEVER HAD DEFINITION!! HAVE I??!
The girl who smiled at me nods.
HAVE I?!!
She nods again, more vigorously this time. Part of me wants to rescue her but I’m on a mission here. I smile in a way that I hope says BABE, JUST TAKE A FAKE PHONE CALL AND LEAVE FOREVER before I slip around the corner.
Clutching my coffee, I veer into a cul-de-sac I recognise. It used to belong to a fat orange cat on it with a face like a slapped arse that I’d stop to pat or take photos of to send to my depressed friends. Suddenly, I catch sight of me walking up the bitumen with a chalky blue plastic washing basket. It’s stuffed to the brim with vintage Harley Davidson t-shirts bought at designer prices and destined for the Wash ‘N Fold up the street. Overalls. Adidas shorts, singlets, my lover’s coffee-stained socks from her early morning hospo job in Redfern. She was blissfully happy behind the machine. That was before I encouraged her to pursue filmmaking and she would. And to move to Melbourne to pursue it, and we would. And to work on the show where she’d meet her mistress, and she did. Life’s different now. The neighbourhood’s changed. But there’s always washing to be done.
- DO YOU HAVE THE “FIND MY” THING TURNED ON? WE MIGHT NEED IT.
My girlfriend and I recently discovered that we can share our locations from our phones while we do long distance. Toxic for some but we get a kick out of watching each other’s blue dots move around the map. She’s my whole word so a blue dot seems apt. I told her that and she said I was corny and it’s true. All of it.
- FUCK. TOOK A WRONG TURN. NOT SURE I’LL GET THE PHOTO TODAY.
I’m back on the Main Street, somehow. Opposite me is the shitty café I’d go to every night before my gig in the summer of 2017 because it was the only place you could get a long black at 8pm. The independent chemist is still next door. I’d go in every three days to get my wound dressing changed by a pharmacist with dark eyes who had a crush on me that I took advantage of. I was nervous I wouldn’t peel the dressing off properly and my recent appendix surgery wound would leak all through my costume on stage. They burst while I was water-skiing and I was still fresh from surgery but I wasn’t about to let a few weeping stitches stop me from doing my independent physical theatre show. Obviously. So I flirted with the pharmacist.
The house I’m trying to find is where I lived with my ex in a room so small it couldn’t fit the two of us and the door at any one time. This meant we had to enter the room one at a time and the first person would have to squeeze all the way into the corner of the bed so the second could get in and lift the corner of mattress up so the door could close. The gig I was doing was a late one, starting at 10:30pm in room above a pub in Woolloomooloo. My cast mate would drop me back to Camperdown every night in his shuddering red 1993 Corolla. I never knew whether or not we were going to make it. In every way.
My ex opened her café early each morning, so we were ships in the night most days. After the show, I’d pluck a beer from the fridge and sit on the footpath, drinking to wind down so my energy didn’t wake her when I climbed into bed. But she slept so deeply, I never stood a chance of rousing her. She would continue to sleep that way for, on and during our entire marriage. The fact that my girlfriend now has insomnia is a massive green flag.
- CAN YOU SEE ME? AM I MOVING?
- YES!
I kiss the little dot on my screen that is my girlfriend in Melbourne.
- ARE YOU IN THE LIVING ROOM? GO INTO THE TOILET AND I’LL SEE IF IT MOVES.
- DOES IT? CAN YOU SEE ME?
- IT DOES!!!
I think Jesus Christ, I’m so in love with that little Richmond planet. In the same moment, I realise I haven’t aged. I’ve suburbed. I don’t think of time in terms of being 18, 25 or 31. I think of when I was Paddington, Terranora or Brunswick East. I look back on the mistakes I made when I was Fitzroy. The break-up and the eating disorder in East Melbourne. All the dancing in Collingwood. Those years I’ve spent trying and I’m already on the map. I am one.
- WHERE AM I NOW? ON THE MAP.
She messages.
- RIGHT IN THE HEART OF IT.
I reply.
There’s a pause while I tuck my phone in my armpit to protect it from a rainstorm that has just announced itself over the one part of my walk without any awnings or significant trees. When it subsides, I have questions.
HEY, WHAT’S THE WORD FOR KNOWING YOU’RE TECHNICALLY LOST BUT NOT FEELING LIKE YOU ARE AND NOT MAKING ANY REAL ATTEMPTS TO GET YOUR BEARINGS BECAUSE YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH THE IDEA THAT MAYBE TODAY THE DAY YOU DISAPPEAR?
It takes her a moment and when my phone chimes back again, I’ve found my front door in the forest of street-facing apartments.
KUMMERSPECK
She replies.
TRANSLATION?
I enquire, as academically as possible.
GRIEF BACON.
TN
bit late replying to this wonderful piece .. I'm back working after almost a year off and still getting used to the whole shebang ! what a lark! thank-you for keeping me amused .. I love it .. love kummerspeck! take care xxx s