#8: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 8

“Can I be frank with you? I find you really attractive”

Erin greeted what I’d said with a smirking shyness and she thanked me, almost with disbelief at what had slipped from my mouth. We kept chatting.

After another hour or so King ‘O’s crowd began thinning out. At my suggestion, Erin, Carol and another uni friend of Erin’s, Noni – I’ll call her – and I made our way across Northbourne Avenue to where some other clubs were located. I’d decided that King’O’s had run its course for the night, that another club would keep the magic going. At least the magic between Erin and me. As long as the night didn’t end I was still spending time with Erin, then the spell remained unbroken.

Shortly after 1.30am, we were all on the dance floor of Insomnia. I couldn’t keep my mind off Erin and embarrassingly it gave me two left feet.

When it came time to leave Insomnia, I’d told Erin I wanted to take her for a coffee and get something to eat before dropping her back at the uni residences. She was happy to, and I sensed Erin was feeling the same as me. I felt I’d always known this person. I felt their genuineness, that spending time with this person was so natural.

As much as I enjoyed meeting everyone, I’d been hanging out to be alone with Erin. I stopped feeling the almost winter’s cold nipping my flesh. The heat of a hot summer’s night would have gone just as unnoticed – senses, feelings, perceptions, thought, the very flow of blood – everything was about Erin now. We’d been enjoying warm delicate kisses inside Insomnia and were now connected by pressing palms and cradling fingers as we walked the short distance to my car.

#7: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 7

Although Harry and I had become separated, we kept meeting up before separating again like little blobs of oil gradually adjusting to the water’s surface. When we did meet up we’d consolidate, updating each other with anecdotes about the night’s proceedings.

After a couple of hours, Erin announced she and some of the girls were heading over to a club across the road. Erin did ask me and Harry if we’d like to join them, but I said no – weirdly – normally it would have been the logical thing to do, no question. But this night reality was a little unusual and I remember thinking if this was meant to be, it will be, leave it alone. So, like hacking their way through dense scrub, Erin and two or three other girls inched their way through the King ‘O’s crowd, and into the hands of fate I fell. Yet somehow I felt reassured I would see Erin before the night packed its bags.

My instincts proved to be correct and I sighed a silent relief. Erin returned with a couple of the girls an hour or so later – her face displaying happiness that I had not left the pub. We started chatting again. Before long, Harry and I were once more standing shoulder to shoulder, almost at the exact same spot when Erin and Carol had first entered. Only this time, a jumbled group consisting of Erin and most of the university girls, with a couple of drunken strangers thrown in, had formed in front of us. By now my lips had been intermittently pulling on a lit cigar, and my mouth gulping down a frothy beer.

Then it happened in a brief moment. The words suddenly danced their way off my tongue into Erin’s ears. I turned to Erin. 

#6: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 6 

By now King O’s had swelled to a throng. Nothing like a healthy throng to whip up some buzz in the atmosphere. It also meant Erin and I had to stand increasingly closer to each other, as if the excitement was fusing us together under the spell of inevitability.

“So, are all of you girls studying the same thing?”

“No, it’s a mix. I’m doing a semester here for my Bachelor of Arts in Integrative Studies” answered Erin with a smile.

“Oh, yeah - what’s integrative studies?”

Her big blue eyes moved sideways in a cute way, her head obliquely tilted with the quick rising of her shoulders, and a little grin formed on her juicy lips. She had answered this question many times before, and it took some explaining I could see.

“Well, basically, it’s taking…integrating…different ideas and perspectives and using that in what you’re studying. My focus is on health education and I’m really interested in HIV AIDS prevention. So, you’re looking at that with the biological, economic or social aspects – things like that, you know, it’s not one thing  -

“Oh yeah. I see”

“ - yeah. Not just one aspect – dya you see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, that’s interesting”

“Did you study?” she asked.

“Yeah, I finished in 1999 – I did languages and applied linguistics. In Brisbane.”

“Oh, wow. So, you’re a cunning linguist!” She shot this back. Her eyes delivered it.

‘Yes. I am” My eyes also did the talking. We were in the bedroom now.
 

#5: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 5

  

Introductions out of the way, it turned out I had stumbled across a bunch of girls – mostly study-abroad students doing a stint at the University of Canberra. There were around eight of them who had entered the infamous King O’s, including two Canadians, a Norwegian and…Erin Ogilvie from Roanoke. Virginia. The United States of America.  There was also Carol, an Australian student Erin had become friends with through the university’s orientation day.

“No, but I’ll buy you a beer” Erin said.

This was the first time for me any girl had replied with this cheeky response, and I admired Erin for her independence and confidence. It struck me as a good start and only bolstered my feeling that this was something, that she was someone quite different. She hadn’t said no to me. She wasn’t being negative. She had gently taken control of opening the gate and allowed me to prospect on her land, you might say.

Contrary to the predictable convention, I followed the ‘girl’ as we side-stepped, bumped and brushed our way past the seemingly invisible others to the bar.  On-tap Carlton draught we drank, the conversation did flow. Erin’s large blue eyes were pretty and mesmerising, and I remember beholding them on a woman as I never have before. 

 

#4: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 4

Casual glances and shy smiles at each other gave me confidence to push through the universal boy-meets-girl awkwardness.

I have to talk to her. I’m going to talk to her. 

“Hi, how’s your night been?”

“It’s been good, thanks”, she said with an American accent.

An American accent! – even better; a different species in this little pond here tonight.

“I’m Julian”

“I’m Air ren and this is my friend, Carol”

Air ren? I honestly couldn’t make out her reply. The combination of my residual nervousness and her accent had scrunched up what she had said. 

“Sorry, how do you spell that?”

“E, r, i, n”, she said.

“Oh, Erin, sorry! Hi, nice to meet you”

You idiot, you just made her spell out her name to you. Okay, salvage mode now. Keep this ball rolling – acknowledge Carol and keep chatting.
 

#3: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 3

A sort of fuzzy greyness filled the pub space and overhead the blonde a perfectly centred spotlight lit her presence. Sounds cut back to a muffled hum as she headed my way.

Before I knew it, the blonde had walked past me and was standing, slightly away, to my right with the other girl on her far side. The blonde’s good looks aside, I sensed something deeper as a wave of familiarity washed over my off-guard self. My brain didn’t realise it at the time, but my heart knew something special had arrived when I hadn’t been seeking it.

Seconds later, I returned a little grin to Harry as I shifted to my left – his eyebrows were raised indicating approval of the girl who had just gained my interest.

Brains and hearts aside, there was another aspect that I couldn’t ignore even if I’d tried really, really hard - she so obviously descended from a fantastic line of buxom predecessors.

#2: Together Seven Years Apart

This week is the first time I've posted on my writing blog ahead of my cartoon blog. Only because I haven't got a damn cartoon ready!

Memoir - Week 2

This night, though, I was not actively spotting. Rather than chatting with Harry and enjoying myself, my mood had somewhat a morose hue to it. I couldn’t weight down rising thoughts that my life in the Bush Capital was turning stale. Plus, I was seeing the same old people and I was standing in the same old pub and it was the same old end of the week night. Same-shit stuff. My life explained almost in a mathematical equation, conveying all the predictability and dullness that math is renowned for and feared.

Julian had always feared predictability and a kind of dullness in his life. He feared being left out and in an empty room with only a keyhole to look through – a single eye with which to observe others interacting and enjoying life. 
 

He remembered thinking as a young boy how the late afternoon calls of Australian birdlife in the garden signified the end of the day – particularly the wistful voicing of the spotted turtle doves. Had he spent enough time outside playing with friends, and making the most of a sunny day? Too late – the birds had sung their song and the keyhole was coming into focus. Another day had become irretrievable, lost with the ominous clouds in his mind he was yet to fathom. 

Still, he took solace that the birds’ regular calling also heralded chance anew in the fresh day to come. Just one more day – he would think – and the sun would rise never again to set.

All of a sudden an interruption snapped my contemplative mood. Two girls – one blonde the other a brunette – had walked in through the front door and were making their way up towards the bar area in slow motion, where Harry and I were staked out on the fly paper floor. Hello, hello! Predictability and dullness might become casualties to the night after all.

#1: Together Seven Years Apart

I do tend to focus more on my cartoon blog. But, finally, here's a posting for this writing blog after neglecting it for a while. I'm starting to post snippets of a memoir I'm working on - Together Seven Years Apart - a story about my wife and me. Hopefully, posting the snippets will force me to find more time to write and so keep posting - and to actually finish the story. That's the plan...You know how it is.

Memoir - Week 1 

Exactly two days after we happily celebrated our first wedding anniversary, I left my wife. June 28, 2010.

Leaving wasn’t easy - but leaving seemed to be the only way forward.

Right after I first ever met her on that cold Canberra night, I had also fallen in love with her. Friday May 16, 2003. Somewhere around 10.30pm.

Me and a friend, let’s call him Harry, were shoulder to shoulder, standing semi-glued to the always made-sticky-by-spilt-drinks floor, warm inside King O’Malley’s – a popular Irish pub downtown Canberra.

For anyone unfamiliar with the capital of Australia, Canberra doesn’t really have a downtown as such. Although locally referred to as the centre or city, it’s actually like another suburb of Canberra – too small to qualify as any downtown proper. Too quiet and leafy to be “downtown”. 

Okay, too boring. I said it.

We hadn’t been there long and I was not in the mood for being out or around people. At approximately 10.30pm, King O’s – as everyone called it – was still filling up. Purposely positioned where we were, Harry could readily admire any entering guys that took his fancy, and I could easily spot approaching, attractive girls.

How I write

Messy writing? I think so. Actually, it's quite neat writing for me. I like to write by hand before typing any stories. It's such a good feeling hand writing, and allows my thoughts to flow freely. Plus, I like to know I'm not under the complete control of modern technology. There's a certain romance in putting pen to paper.

This particular sample is of my memoir about my wife and I.

What do you normally do?

#10 Dee Why to Downtown Bus Trips – A Diary of Stuff that Popped into My Head One Week.

The final Bus Trips piece...now I have to get serious and post real stuff.

Returning - Wednesday, 4.28p.m., 14 December 2011 

Somehow we’ve gone back in time. We’ve gone back in time to when I suggested we start the week clean and fresh with a swept and mopped bus floor. I say this because this E84 has the cleanest floor so far. They took my suggestion after all.

As I look around this afternoon’s bus, I see such precision. You can see a lot of thought and planning has gone into the design of the interior of the bus. Everything has its perfect place from the two luggage racks at the front, to the layout of the large windows, the placing of the green ticket machine and the six spring-loaded seats that greet you as you step past the isolated bus driver posted on his instrument-surrounded seat. Nuts and bolts are bold-looking and tight throughout.

Despite this, I’m hearing a lot of squeaks and rattles. All of these newer buses squeak and rattle. I think they’re made in Sweden. Do the Swedes purposely build in squeaks and rattles for character? If so, I don’t mind. I feel quite safe.

We’ve been cruising past patches of agapanthus for the last four minutes or so. And although my eyes have been on the journal pages, I can see them waving at me. And they’ve been aware I smiled back at them. Agapanthus make good friends. They offer a reliable, telepathic and comforting friendship.

This bus has quite some energy. It’s strong and hauling us home like she’s already emptied all her passengers out.

There’s a well-dressed lady with short, blonde hair holding a book open in her seat: Hell West and Crooked it’s called. The letters on the back of this book are big and red, so I easily read the title. But every time I’ve done the meerkat – popped up to look around – she’s not reading it. Is she tired? Bored? Thinking about other things? Can she actually read? I perceive her to be a nice lady, friendly with a good heart. I wonder what her story is. Why the book is open, but the reading process is frozen. Should…?

It’s going to feel strange not writing about my daily bus trips. The buses and I got to know each other a little, we became closer. Did the buses enjoy having me as a passenger? Did the buses notice me? I hope so, I noticed them.