Friday night I went out with my boyfriend, Doug, and our mate, Lenny. Doug and I had been looking for sharehouses all day and visited a couple of awful ones. Lenny came over to our place and we planned our evening. Doug decided to take us to the Prince of Wales, on Fitzroy St in St Kilda. When we arrived, there was a band playing some pub rock. They were all big guys, maybe in their 40’s, wearing hawaiian shirts and fedoras. The lighting was very yellow/orange and the furniture was a mossy green. The three of us stood in the corner, near the cigarette dispensary, and watched the band play a song. We were standing in height order; Doug, Lenny, me. Doug put hearing protection into his ears. I felt like I was tripping really hard, but I was so very sober. All the faces looked like they were moving in slow motion, extra animated, full of marks, kind of melting. The music sounded very slow too. I watched a man at a pool table sink 5 balls in a row, without making a fuss. No one was making a fuss. I silently pointed him out to Lenny, and Lenny’s eyes were incredibly bright, like he was experiencing the same thing. Doug looked kind of glazed over, like the music was drowning him. After the song ended, we walked out in a straight line. Doug said he never wanted to grow old and be in a band where everyone wears hats. I felt sober again.
We walked up Fitzroy St, with all the bouncers and door girls trying to get us into their clubs. The street was dead. The 7/11 had put a crate of expired food outside, and Doug picked up a cheese and crackers snack pack. We walked into another pub with a metal band playing. This band was amazing. They were all 30ish, with 80’s metal haircuts, and they were really loud. There was a light guy controlling the lights in a swirl of pink and white, and the crowd was pretty sparse, but half of the crowd was wearing the band’s merch. The guitarist and the bassist did that move where they solo facing each other with their guitars nearly touching, headbanging and getting all their hair tangled together. It was incredibly homoerotic and wankery. Doug pulled us out to leave because it was too loud even with hearing protection. After 30 minutes walking around, we decided to go back to a quiet bar closer to home with mulled wine. Trying to get back to the car was hard, as the street had filled up with punters and junkies. It made me not want to go back there ever again.
Once we got back closer to home, we sat in the bar and I let my mulled wine cool. A very drunk man comes up to us and asks if we want to buy a bike because he was going to Europe in the morning. We said maybe, because I had just had a bike stolen. He said it was an Avanti, and my bike that was stolen was an Avanti, so Doug went outside to check it out. It turned out to be a really nice bike with new gears and brakes, and a very small frame, which suits me. He sold it to us for $80 because he felt bad about my stolen bike, but Doug told me it is definitely worth more than $300. I was pretty chuffed and giddy. We sat out the front of the bar with the bike while i finished my drink, because we didn’t have a bike lock, and a man comes to sit next to us. He starts talking to us, but he breaks out of conversation to mumble a bit. He apologises, saying that it happens because he is high. Doug asks, in his sweet way, ‘are you high on life!?’, and the man replies, deadpan, ‘no – Ice’. I wanted to laugh and laugh, because it was such a silly exchange. The man was really nice though, and he had a big block of chocolate that he shared with us, and he showed us all these cables that he got in hard rubbish. He complimented me on the bike, and told us about how he was imprisoned for 3 months because he stole a pie and sauce. He was really interesting and engaging and generous, and I hope I meet him again.
That’s the story of my recent adventures down south. Hopefully moving north for springtime.