blue light limbo

i brush past her at the dessert table as she mentions the womyn's collective. must be one of R's friends from uni - post feral, shaved head. cute. trying to stay positive about this whole man-wife wedding caper.

later, in the line for limbo, she leans back to me. i can do this. i've been to enough blue light discos, yeah? she says. it hardly matters cos lolli will kick all our arses – i've seen her limbo under a coffee table before – but i like that she's taken her shoes off.

growing up lesbian in the goddamn suburbs. bummer, but she got there. here.

my spine hurts.

litchfield in the wet

Wangi Falls is really hammering over that rockface, the rockpool full to overflowing. there's a big sign, says WANGI CLOSED. shitballs, thwarted mission. but it's still an awesome sight. the creek is flooded and the salties have moved in.

we picnic on the grass in 90% humidity, smashing a couple of gluten-free wraps and promising to write to Freedom Foods to ask why they call them wraps if they won't. watch backpackers pile off a tourist truck after their guide. he's a tough nut who wants a durry and a chance with one of the European girls in short shorts, but they're all bothered by the heat, busy with their SLRs and water bladders.

we get going before the salties catch wind of toddler flesh. motivated also by the idea of a frosty fruit or calypo or even – if it's all they've got – a plain lemon icypole.

Monsoon cafe and caravan park (no cats)

Something calls from the tall trees, lush green itself maybe. on the verandah, a backpacker with his back to me, eating. he puts his elbow on the table and turns to study me. judges me to be of no interest. returns to his baked beans.

sliding door. i find the frosty fruits, try to pay the concierge, get ushered to another counter, next to the bain marie, in front of the door through to the deep fryers. everything festooned with christmas decorations.

"Have you come from Wangi?" asks the cashier, hot and German.

"Yep."

"Was it busy there?"

"Ah, it's closed, so ..."

"Ya, we know, but was it busy?"

"Kind of. There were a few of those ... tourist things ..." I say, trailing off, counting out coins.

"Cars?" he asks.

"Ah, yep." embarassed that Mr Dictionary has abandoned me again. "Ok, see ya."

"Ya."

We take the dirt road back to darwin past Berri Springs, 4WDing thru a rushing river listening to The Wiggles.

eldorado

my toenails are full of festival mud, my head holds the peace that comes from waking up in the bush and brushing my teeth while staring up at trees and sky. a weekend of finding my forest feet, floating down the river, heckling hippies from the chai tent.

i pull into the carpark to find a ute in my spot, but i can't find my post-it notes anywhere in the family wagon. probably best. i take a deep breath and summon an affirmation:

i'm not the crazy lady with many cats, bathing in a wheelbarrow out the back and striking young whippersnappers with her umbrella. not yet. i can handle this without infringing anyone's human rights. surely.

the ute has a mobile number on the back. i dial it, only a bit surly.

me: mr anglesea landscaping design co, i just got home from camping to find your ute in my spot etc.

father: oh that's my son. I'll call him now and get him out.

son: action. car moved.

being nice kinda helped. sometimes it's easier to go with the rapids instead of fighting the flow.

darebin council ute

la nina

this summer will be an advertisement for some kind of coffee liqueur. sultry women barely wearing their singlets, beads of sweat, the fondling of melting ice cubes. and then the warm rain. the laughing and the dancing.

his father's son

the four-year-old hammers a nail into a piece of wood. his grandfather comes over.

what are you doing, mate?

fucked things for fucked people, replies the four-year-old. keeps hammering.

after eltham

my leftovers

"The leftover sausages in the fridge are mine," she says out the driver's side window, and repeats herself as he comes around from behind the car. He nods, now hungry, and waits in his office-crushed suit for the traffic to pass.

She says it without malice, but studies him with narrowed eyes under that shiny black bob as he crosses the top end of Brunswick Street. Might as well add: "so keep your hands off, fat boy".

It's a Volvo he just got out of, with the numberplate WTF. She's off somewhere and he's going home to eat around the leftover sausages.

alexander technique

How your body holds itself is its own aching history.
- Andy Jackson, The Dead, in Going Down Swinging Issue 30.

plutonia on cromwell

i am nude and about to get dressed. she is dressed and about to be nude, but it's her strong voice i recognise first. it echoes round the change room and wrinkles the decades: she clarifies the steps for taking a japanese bath; calls to order the rattiest girls in her classroom (me among them); summons her kids and their friends (me included) to the backyard for tea.

i catch glimpses of her as i dress and dry my hair. she looks the same. my hair is long again as though the intervening years never happened – neither the dreads nor the shorn advertisement to lesbians. in the ladyhawke moment before she gets into the bath and i go upstairs, we hug and say hello. get told off for talking too loud. 

all the way through my massage i think about her son … how we ran riot in playgrounds at dusk. how cool i thought he was as Fagin in year eight. how he kept me sane in doncaster, knocked on my window til i answered. stood beside me when i most wanted to vanish. how we fell apart. about platonic male friends and how close I still hold them. how far away.

i come downstairs and there he is, waiting for his mum, sitting cross-legged with his own son (older now than when his father and i first met). i kneel awkwardly until his son offers me a headrest. i could do with a headrest - my head is too full of information and fuzzy from this cold - but I don’t know what to do with it. they both look beautiful and kind.

i take flight.

coming back from the island

figuring out old-new friendships over seven kinds of cheese, wine and seafood, sandstone and sea views.

we walk to pyramid rock, over pigface and fox bait. down the cliff to rock pools where we find lady-garden anemones and starfish mid-feast. dead baby seals on the rocks and gulls beak down in the sand. dad jokes wash up at high-tide alongside half a surfboard and a computer: somebody crashed surfing the internets. 

i haven't been a passenger since May. not in a driving way, at least. maybe on weekends away. 

driving home alone tonight, slightly wired by sleeping platonic, late lunch lasagne, RRR and iced tea, i come home you, tradie vehicle, in my spot. my voice cracking while i leave a message on the landline signwritten on your truck. hi mate. you've parked in my spot. stop it. it's fkn annoying.

old punk

On growing up in Canberra:

"Sure, I had some great experiences, but I'd trade them in for some good parenting and support any day."

world map tetris

the cartographer hears a confession over crepes: i make tetris games of world maps. brazil fits into africa, see. madagascar belongs with mozambique. papua tucks into the gulf, new zealand hugs the eastern seaboard.

so how do we fit together? what does that mean for us?

the cartographer mops up chocolate and strawberries and cream, and follows my eye to the map on the wall. "I know something of how that all works," he says, wistful, and disappears into his own world.

Polite cyclist

To that guy I see around over the years, mostly with your dark hair under a helmet, framing that square jaw and well-adjusted smile.

We cross paths on the bike highway and find ourselves in the queue together at the bottle shop while it pelts down outside, or on the back deck at a party. I am glad of your sensible conversation at two am. I passed you yesterday on the footpath on St Georges Road, and at CERES a while back I set eyes on your partner and the small children you summon in every conversation.

You seem like a kind man. But please don't brandish my name like a weapon, showing me how sharp your memory is. I like you. Put your memory away, or prompt mine. Talk about yourself in the third person or something.