The World According To Me

The trip to Melbourne was, for the most part, crap. Come Saturday afternoon I really couldn't be bothered leaving my house, but I hate pikers and I hate being a piker so I pressed on. I was late for the party because the last 45 minutes of my journey was spent driving around the streets of Southbank trying to find a park. There was seriously NO parking ANYWHERE in that entire bloody suburb. I finally made it to my friend's apartment, to be greeted by a room of people who were for the most part a. not drinking and b. not talking. After my epic drive and associated parking dramas all I wanted to do was to have a vodka so I found someone I knew from years ago, plonked myself down next to him and started yabbering away like a moron. We used to live together during my first stint at uni, he has finally come out (many years after everyone else knew) and hasn't changed an ounce. The conversation was joined by a couple of other people who were lovely and interesting but I still do not know anyone's name. I wanted to have a cigarette very badly so I confirmed it was okay with my host to venture out onto the tiny balcony and light up. I 'excused me' my way around the table in the designated dining area to outside and people stared at me like I was a germy leper. No-one smoked. No-one. Feeling like a complete pariah I resolved that for the next cigarette I would traverse the three flights of stairs down and out the security entrance and make someone let me in via the intercom on my return. I need not have worried as most of the guests left by 10.30pm. 10.30pm! There were just the inhabitants of the apartment remaining as well as myself and two other strays who were planning on taking up couch space not because they were too drunk to drive, rather that they had also travelled to the city from the country to 'do the right thing' . In fact, they weren't drinking at all. We sat around looking at eachother whilst I continued to imbibe by myself. Bed was not long after.

In the morning I awoke and ventured to the toilet. It was so tiny you sort of had to stand right at the side of the bowl before you could close the door behind you. The bathroom is also the laundry. The hallway is so narrow you can't possibly have two people pass eachother at the same time. The kitchen has so little bench-space it made me feel guilty for ever having bad thoughts about the lack of bench space of my own. You have to suck your tummy in to shuffle past the dining room table and out onto the balcony. Once out on the balcony you can see everyone else in the 300 odd neighbouring apartments in the complex. People tending their pot-plants, draping washing over clothes-horses, taking in their morning coffee perched on tiny chairs with tiny tables to match. Someone was conversing through the door to inside their apartment seven balconies away from me and I could hear their every word. I felt unbelievably claustrophobic and desperately needed to get home. I thanked my hosts for their hospitality and walked a million miles to find my car. Once outside the city limits I wound down my window and breathed deep breaths, trying to use as much of my lungs as possible, attempting to fill myself with air which hadn't just been expelled by someone else.

When I finally got home I hugged my dog and chased down my cats to force my affection upon them as they squirmed out of my arms. I walked the perimeter of my lovely big rooms, opened up all of the windows which are never locked and appreciated the worn and fading carpets with new eyes. I did a little skip through my kitchen and then sat outside on my grass and looked all around and was unbelievably relieved to not be facing someone else but pretending they weren't there. I looked up into the trees and wasn't annoyed at the birds that usually shit on my washing. I am thankful that I can hang my washing out in the first place and that there are birds to provide noise that isn't of the industrial variety. I am thankful it doesn't take the best part of my day to shop for groceries. I am thankful that this morning when walking the twelve minutes from home to work that when I stopped to get a coffee my order was placed before I'd even reached the counter.

I have been thinking lately that I would perhaps like to move back to Melbourne, but after my experience on the weekend I am not so sure. I know there are absolutely advantages to living in the city, and certainly if I want to go out and get wasted on a Tuesday night, it can't be done in the town I live in. Hell, if I want to have proper Chinese food that is cooked by people who possibly aren't white then it can't be done in the town that I live in. But if I was going to live in the city I could not live in an apartment, or a flat, or a unit, or anything other than a house which I could probably not afford. I don't live in a fashionable place and I really don't care. I have been spoiled by space and solitariness and not knowing the sexual habits of my neighbours. The only thing I know about my neighbours' lifestyle is that last Thursday they cooked a barbie and the aroma of their dinner meandered over their fence into my yard and it smelt delicious.

And that's all I need to know.