#11: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 11

When the phone rang back and Erin’s voice sounded in my ear, I was so relieved and excited.

“Hi, I got your message”.

We chatted. I asked if she’d like to meet for coffee. Erin was happy to meet me where I’d suggested, at Essen – an intimate little café in the city – Tuesday evening. I hung up my chunky landline. I could still hear Erin’s sweet, eager voice ringing in my ear.

Sketchy Al as I called him (he just looked sketchy to me), Essen’s owner, wasn’t there that night. So we sat down and waited for one of the usual university students he hired to eventually fleet on over and take our order. Normally I would engage in a bit of banter with Sketchy Al upon entry, before he’d ask if I wanted my regular coffee.

Erin and I did not get on like a house on fire. No. We got on like a whole row of houses up in flames. The fire burnt for a good two or so hours, relaxed conversation its abundant fuel. I told Erin some boring story about how Russian Caravan tea had traditionally been taken with the addition of strawberry jam mixed in for sweetness. I shouldn’t have bothered but the words had irrevocably sprung forward, and it would have appeared even lamer of me to have stopped myself mid-way. I was drinking Russian Caravan tea at the time and, with the jam, so at least I had the aid of distracting props. Some nights later Erin told me that she had actually found the little story quite endearing. She was putting me at ease so early in our relationship. Either that or I had a remarkable talent for utilizing props.

#10: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 10

My car gently rolled up under a parking lot lamppost at Erin’s university residences. We were nestled in a fog and the lamppost sent out a warm glow. I felt like I was in a dream.

Below the waistline it was rock hard and throbbing, cramped and bursting under blue denim. The car windows were almost completely fogged over from our breathing together, our lips and tongues busy. As difficult as it was for me, no matter where my blood rushed to in concentration, I knew tonight was not that sort of night.

After quite some time in my car and a final goodbye, I and a belly full of butterflies and good feelings floated along the empty road home and into bed. When I awoke my stomach was still a butterfly house.

Should I call her? Is she interested in seeing me again? I’m pretty sure she’d be happy to get a call from me…

Damn answering machines...Don’t hang up! Leave a message…Oh, God, you sounded awkward – typical of you. Hope she calls back. Or I can try again…Yeah.

Sunday, 18 May, 2003. I don’t remember the time of day. I picked up my chunky landline and pressed all the digits of her phone number that I’d made sure to get on the Friday night. I left a message. After leaving a message I busied myself around the apartment, hoping that either Erin would return my call or that I would eventually catch her later during the day. Calling the very next day after we met seemed a little overly eager. Sunday was a safer bet I decided.

#9: Together Seven Years Apart

Memoir - Week 9

I wasn’t sure where we’d find café-quality coffee well past midnight in ‘downtown’ or anywhere-else Canberra. But it really didn’t matter. Although, I did feel a certain amount of pressure to locate something, just to show Erin I had some idea of what was going on around the joint – that she wasn’t in the car holding hands with a loser of some sort.

We left the parking lot and headed for the trendy suburb of Manuka. No coffee located. All shut.

Tsst…bloody Canberra.

Normally such a scenario would’ve bothered me, thinking it was my fault. And I would probably have dredged up some similar memory causing me greater anxiety in the moment. Like when I took a girlfriend, Lara, to dinner for the first time. In fact, it was our first date. There was a mix up with the reservation. Although it was the restaurant’s fault, I took it on as mine and felt insecure about the whole evening.

“No, don’t you understand! What did I just say? You’re stupid. Look. First you multiply seven by…”

His father would be imposing, sitting cross-legged, speaking in explosions and frowning in his big brown armchair at the back of the living room. Julian was kneeling in front of his towering father, feeling useless, scared and sobbing, trying to understand his father’s explanations of the math homework. It all just became a blur in the end. All he could think of was his father’s angry hand gripping the pen. And the frightening voice. That angry hand and the frightening voice.

But, being with Erin I felt so much more at ease. My head was clearer and I confidently decided on an alternative to coffee – to instead swing by a bakery known for staying open late. Thinking of this alternative may seem only logical or even pathetic. Yet, it probably represents the first interaction of its kind between Erin and me – I was displaying more confidence than in years before, whereas, Erin was innocent to such change in me for now. 

#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.