Provenance...

 When Boldilocks arrived I took him for a walk around Braddon and Civic; he'd been on the road for four-hours-and-change, getting the city you're visiting under your feet is a great way to unclench after a long drive, and as comfortable as the 6th-floor office I call 'Home' might be there'd be plenty of time to drink in the view. Hitting Northbourne Ave we started catching up on what we've been up to since last he graced my presence in April because whilst we're in semi-regular contact and we've heard it all before, it's important not to underestimate how much better it is to hear someone's stories transmitted directly from voice-box to tympanic membrane through the vibration of Nitrogen/Oxygen/Argon than when there's an electronic intermediary, and how much easier it is to read the mind of the man who's been your friend for longer than you care to calculate, even if you still think of him as the Padawan who could never get his timesheets submitted reliably, from the twitch of the muscles in his face than the pattern of white-and-black pixels preceding a blinking cursor on the LED screen of this year's laptop. 

Turning left onto Elouera St, I started pointing out The Sights: 

"There's Bent Spoke; there are two main micro-breweries in Canberra, the other's Capital, but Bent Spoke's my 'local'. This is where Ian and I were sinking pints when I realised I'd decided I was going to move back." 

"Check out the Rainbow round-a-bout ahead - they made it even-more-inclusive a year or so ago by cutting a quarter off the Pride Flag-ring and replacing it with the Trans/Ace/fucked-if-I-know colours."
"..."
"Yeah I lose track, but it's not for us, is it? Nice that everyone gets to feel 'seen' tho, yeah?"

The story I heard was that the rainbow had been painted on the road of the Lonsdale/Elouera roundabout for Pride one year, and when a bunch of wowsers complained the Road Transport Authority at ACT Government went and made it permanent to spite them. It may be apocryphal, but my theory is that if I click my heels together and tell it enough it will become 'true'. 

"Look left? Up there is the bottlo from the 'Deadman' post where I trip because a pretty girl smiled at me."
"Blackhearts & Sparrows?"
"That's the one. We'll cruise past there later. Hang a right..." 

"Hey, remember in 'Going nowhere fast' and I talk about walking past a gym full of people running on the spot, and what both of us are doing is pointless but at least they're honest about it? 
"That's it, right there." 
"Huh. Yeah?" 
"And in the 'chaotic magnitude' post and I talk about a 'pool table in a dingy pub on a Friday night'?" 
I point over at The Civic Hotel, "that's the pub." 

I haven't been back there in years, but I've heard that they refurbished recently and replaced the pool tables in the back-room with a dining area; I could go and confirm, but I have so many fond memories of those days I'd rather keep them intact than replace them with whatever's now 'true'. 

"Oh hey, and in the 'Resurrection Deluge' when I land back here and talk about making three trips to Coles in two days, and 'keeping my feet between my face and the pavement'?" 
"Yeah?" 
"Well," I point my face south-and-east across Cooyong St, "there's the Coles," then down at my feet, "and there's the pavement." 

We cruised through Garema Place to see the Dodgy Sheep and the weird Whispering Wall thing, although the Doug Anthony All Stars plaque turned out to be covered by the astroturf at the pro-Palestine Protest. Back at my place later, the Show & Tell continued: 

"Oh! There on the wall? That's my half of the Art Project!"
"Shit, I spotted that earlier! What happened to the other half?"
"Wound up on the wall in Penpal's daughter's room, she said."
"..."
"Yeah, kinda weird, but apparently she took a shine to it and there was a vacant hook." 

"Oh! Check this out!" I say, handing him a mug with stylised technicolour double-helixes on each side. 
"What's this?"
I pull the business card out of it and show it to him, "that's Occam's Canadan Amy - she gave it to me when I saw her last in Perth." 
"Oh..."
"Yeah, she's real - that's her biz."

"Check this out," I drag him around to the desk-side of the display cabinet in the middle of the room, "see the little plushie octopus in the top-left corner?" 
"Holding a little hand-drawn card?"
"That's the one. After she read the 'It's not you... it's me' post, Bridget asked me if the 'tiny octopus' bit at the beginning was a secret reference to 'giant pacific octopus' by Enter Shikari. 
"It wasn't, but it's become a bit of a thing. 
"She's taken to keeping the side-pockets of her backpack stocked with little plushies from Ikea, gives them out to random strangers at the lights when she's riding her bike, asked if I wanted one. She had a turtle, an orca, or... so I picked that one; thought it was adorb's."
"She really is."
"Shush, you. 
"It's one of two things in this cabinet which faces towards my desk. Can you spot the other one?"
"Behold," he reads, "My field of fucks; and see that it is barren." 
"That's the one.
"Sandra cross-stitched it, mailed it to me years ago, so I found a frame and it used to hang from a vacant hook in my old office." 
"THAT Sandra?"
"The one and only." 

"But hey, speaking of ocean-critters, check this out," I duck to the fridge and grab a stainless-steel flask. 
"The water bottle from 'The thing I do for a living'? That's it."
"Damn..." he said, weighing it in his hand as moisture began condensing on the surface. 
"Yeah, funny thing; turns out I also snagged a tshirt on that trip," I say, waving it at him, "so it WASN'T the only memento I took away. 
"Ain't ret-con'ing the post tho, just sayin'."
"Nah, why ruin it?"
"Exactly. I like that bit - it was punchy." 

We pour a couple of glasses from the bottle of Chivas Regal he'd picked up from the First Choice across the road on Mort St on our way back, and I chuckle to myself as I remember the flight back from my last trip to Perth as we head out to the balcony: 

"That's The Seat I sit in when I'm writing, and over in the corner is the one I bought from a thrift store for 5$. Don't sit in it; it really is falling apart. 
"But seriously, check out the view. 
"There's Black Mountain and Minas Telstra, which is right up there as far as 'iconic Canberra' goes. 
"Over there's ANU, and the CSIRO Lab's."
"From 'Drowning in silence'."
"Yeah. Same dive trip." 
"Shit," he muttered, looking at the flask he was still holding. 
Looking to the right as he leaned against the balustrade, "oh... those traffic lights... but in the fog?"
"Yeah, from 'It's not you... it's me'. Really did happen just as I was writing that bit and it was too perfect not to include."
"Shit, man. 
"It's...
"It's a lot more 'real', standing here, y'know?"
I nod, staring into space. 
"It is real. 
"All of it. 
"The narrative might be selective at times, but not one word of it's a lie. 
"But hey," I look over and proffer my glass, "thank you for the part you've played in making it happen. 
"Throwing me music to listen to, the sanity-checks, the peer-reviews." 
Our glasses meet in the middle with a <clink>, "and hey, thanks for coming to visit." 

Does this sound OK to you?

 Musical accompaniment: Enter Shikari - Bull (feat. Cody Frost) 

I hit Publish on the last post, changed to a different song mostly at random, got half-way through it, switched tabs back and clicked on New Post. Before I switched tracks my private music streaming server told me me I'd listened to Drive by Incubus 27 times. 
Ride by Twenty One Pilots said 81. 
Bull currently says 2, which will shortly increment to 3. 

I can't help but feel that writing about writing is taking my literary onanism to the next level, like I'm reaching into the 5th dimension to give myself a reach-around which can only result in a stickily-slippery slope leading to a poly-dimensional circle-jerk, and once I start I'm going down. 

If you google "write what you know quote" you'll discover that it's attributed to Mark Twain, and that the next two pages of links will be to people raining written hate about it, which just goes to show how right Clint Mansell et al were when they re-named their band Pop Will Eat Itself. 

I think I'll listen to Ich Bin Ein Auslander next. 

I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but I'm on a roll now so I might as well get a grip. This hobby, which has arguably become my most important emotional/creative outlet, has been all about writing as a means for working things out. It never ceases to amaze me how often I start out writing down something which popped into my head not knowing what I'm going to say next, but by the time I'm done I know something I didn't when started; I wrote it and now I know, but I wrote it so how could I not have known from the start? No one knows how the snake came to suck down its own teil, but it's rolling down the road so I might as well grab it with both hands and hold tight, climb onboard, and see where it takes me. 

When I finished the journey of insploration which became It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... my private music streaming server told me I'd listened to Midwest Indigo by Twenty One Pilots 204 times. 
Jailbreak by Enter Shikari said 139. 
Bull currently says 22, and counting. 

Music has always been an important part of my writing; I can't tell you what other people's processes look like, but I can count the number of times something happened and I thought "y'know, I should write about that," then did, on one hand. On any given day my brain is a bubbling stew of troubled thoughts boiling in a cauldron over a gas-burning fire fed with a frenetic stream of thoughts which are being thrown over the shoulder of a sous-chef coming down off a week-long cocaine binge toiling away with a look of desperation who gave up on trying to supervise the manic-depressive prep-cooks dual-wielding at the chopping boards after that time he scored a bad batch of acid with a delivery of fish-heads and now can't quite tell whether they're actually the dangerously underqualified ex-convicts he hired or a pack of meth-addicted squirrels packed into questionably-stained chef's whites so now he's just winging it and praying that when he counts his fingers at the end of his shift he'll still have the same seven he used to roll up the fortnight-old specials menu through which he snorted the coffee-vendor's nose-candy lined up on the maitre-d's notepad. 

Calling it a "chaotic hot mess" would be a polite understatement. 

I can stare into the turmoil for hours without a coherent thought, but when I filter it through the lens of Devin Townsend Project, or Metric, or Pink Floyd, or Stone Temple Pilots, or Reel Big Fish, or Fear Factory, or Blink-182, or The Cure, or Scroobius Pip, or TISM, a pattern will emerge in the china shop of my mind's eye that's clearer than a carefully polished mirror, and brighter than a teacher's pet on the first day of class. 

On knees that won't bend... would have been stillborn without Oliver Tree's Me, Myself & I putting the idea of duality into my head. 
Drowning in silence... would have been a whiny lament about feeling overwhelmed without Drown by BMTH reminding me of an event from my last dive-trip. 
Hostage negotiations only happened because WARGASM's God of War (not to mention Mick Gordon's genius work on the Doom Eternal soundtrack) gave me a way to take the terror of an unhinged narcissist threatening my livelihood and turning it into self-righteous rage. 

A lot of my ideas emerge from the texture of what I hear, and I use it to add subtext what what I say. What that looks like and how it feels depends a lot on what I'm listening to, or what word-or-sentiment-association makes me think of at the time; the soundtrack of my zeitgeist is nothing if not mercurial. 

Without Midway Indigo and Jailbreak, It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... would have just been goth poetry. 

When I realised that I was planning out a piece I was desperate to ensure people understood, I looked for people I know enjoy reading my shit, and would be good "every-man" reference-points. Boldilocks and Occam's Canadian Amy were kind enough to volunteer, and over a couple of multi-hour phone calls we went over Stop; Continue... twice, in line-by-line detail. The first time I had them tell me what they heard, then the second I told them what I was saying, and over rest of each conversation we talked about how I could make sure the two lined up as close as possible. The most surprising thing I found out wasn't how often they don't listen to the links I include, which are so pivotal to my process, but how little that actually mattered. 

See, when I'm putting these things together, a lot of the tone comes from the music I was listening to when the idea popped into my head. To keep it consistent I wind up listening to the same one on repeat for as long as it takes me to push that idea out of my head through my fingers. When your mind is huge, but the conduit you have for it to flow though is small, it means listening to the same thing A Lot. Key words and phrases from the songs will get fed through my brain and out of my fingers to connect what I'm hearing with what I'm saying, and wrap the two experiences around each other. Sometimes the songs will be the a voice you hear the words in, sometimes it's far more subtle than that: 

We all read different things in a story, just like everyone hears different things from a song, which is why I made a point of not using my usual "Musical accompaniment" trope in "It's not you (...) it's me...". Instead, I threw together the "Trailer" posts from my conversations with Boldilocks, an idea inspired by my reference to the Fight Club trailer way back in Sandra... I was pulling a lot of references from that, with her steering me away from the ledge at the start, then returning to that ledge alone at the end; having a "Trailer" which had no immediate bearing to what was going to happen in the Main Feature was just too cute to not use. Using music in the Trailers which didn't show up in film was an idea that was hanging my head from the 300 reference I made in Stop; Continue... because it had always stuck with me how perfect Just Like You Imagined was in the trailer for that film, but wasn't on the soundtrack. I was a way of providing the intended soundscape, but at a remove so that the text would stand on its own, and have confidence that it would work because my sample-group had been doing that anyway. 

More directly, I used the Trailers to send two messages: 

#1: I was going to take you on a journey, and hit you right where you live by kicking you repeatedly in the amygdala; and 
#2: I was absolutely not going to leave you with a positive spin at the end. There was going to be no affirmation, no silver lining, and certainly no hope; the "good guy" gets shot in the face and dies meaninglessly in a car park. 

Yeah, I know it's contrived, but it's my arty and I'll wank if I want to. 

Midwest Indigo is a sad song with a bouncy tune, which I used in the first half to give it a whimsical tone whilst I bounced the narrative around. Key lines like "reaching out on my way home, you can be so cold, I'll try again" and "you make me sad and second-guess myself" speak to how inaccessible I've been over the last few years (but keep trying), and forebode the crisis-of-confidence which comes later. In the second half the repeated line "now I'm lying wide awake" provided an allusion to my long-running insomnia, the long nights I've spend sitting on my balcony writing, and just how aware I've been of the state of my mental health. When I pivot to running down that hill I used its frantic pace (163 BPM to Midwest Indigo's 116) to accentuate the elation of "inhuman success", then make 9 months of downfall feel like free-fall. When it all draws to an end your heart-rate is elevated, in direct contrast with the quiet stillness of my fog-draped balcony, and the only way you can see is down. The photo is absolutely real, taken as I was writing that section, as if the weather had decided it wanted a walk-in role; who was I to deny it? 

But underneath all of that, when you're reading how I let myself get beaten down, in the background you can hear (if you're listening) Rou from Enter Shikari saying 

So, yeah, question everything
Including your own beliefs
And especially your own beliefs about yourself
Inside of you, there's a revolution
Waiting to happen if you pick the lock of your cell block
And just breathe, breathe

and the repeated chant

I hope I leave hope intact
I hope I leave hope intact

Because, you see, whilst every word I wrote was true, I was lying to you, and I was wide awake when I did it, but you'd only know that if you were listening. No word I wrote broke the promise I made when I told you it was going to be miserable, full of gallows-humour, and I wouldn't be leaving you with a glimmer of hope, but underneath I had other things in mind. I didn't know I was going to finish it with a Pandora's Box reference until I'd written the final word, and my finger was hovering over the bottom right-hand corner of my keyboard. In that pause, a number of ideas connected, I saw what I was about to do, and in an action which was more Muninn than Huginn, I hit backspace four times, rewrote that word with a capital-S, and my ring-finger moved up a row to end it with a semi-colon. 

I looked at the bottom of the page and breathed out "Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..."

Tab-switching back to my private music streaming server, it tells me I've listened to Midwest Indigo by Twenty One Pilots 212 times. 
Jailbreak by Enter Shikari says 166. 
Bull us up to 39, although by the time I'm done editing this all of those numbers will be larger. 

But that's a story I'll Continue another day; there's no point being a prisoner to the past, or letting The Room in your mind be a prison cell. 

Jailbreak just ticked over to 167; don't repeat these words after me, let's sing it Together...  

JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! 

It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me...

"You need to remember that this isn't a failure," Sandra said a couple of Fridays ago. 

This was obviously important - that was at least the third time she'd said it. 

"It's not that things went badly, or anyone did anything wrong, just sometimes things don't work out, and that's OK. It's not like it was bad; I think it's been really good for you, it just ran its course which is sad. 
"But it's definitely not a failure." 

That made four. 

It wasn't until three days later that I noticed just how much she'd stressed that particular point; it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to say and I was in complete agreement, so like a tiny octopus pretending to be seaweed, in the flow of conversation it slipped past me until some time later when I took my mask off and realised it was clinging on to my brainstem just a little too tenaciously. Floating in the current, I inspected my little stowaway whilst it regarded me with nonchalant insouciance in return, and thought: 

"Wait-a-minnit..." 

Subtlety isn't what you'd call Sandra's "strong suit"; she usually plays clubs, hearts, and spades, exclusively in that order, but like a diamond in the rough and empty places you must walk she occasionally trips you up, because whilst what you've been putting down had all the appearance of having passed over and through her, when you turn your inner eye to see its path you find she's standing right behind you staring back with the hint of a smirk in her bright blue eyes, having picked it up, got a firm grip, and wound it up like a cosh to whack you upside the head before stabbing you with it right between the fourth and fifth ribs, leaving you to suffocate in your own bullshit in the shallow ditch she dug right in front of your feet when you were too busy studying your own navel from the inside out. 

It took me longer than it should have to register how hard she was steering me away from the ledge I've desperately needed a win to pull me back from; if I'd realised just how much the stench of failure had been carried on my breath with every word that's come out of my mouth this year I'd have brushed my teeth more, or at least switched brands of mouthwash. Sandra could see the sand my house was built on crumbling away beneath my toes, God-bless her cotton socks, which is handy because I was distracted at the time being broken up with by Bridget, my fascinating Redheaded Distraction. 

"If I did have a tumor, I would name it Marla. Marla, the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you would stop tonguing it, but you can't.” 
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

A couple of months ago Bridget and I were out running errands, and I was being a bit vague:

"You've been pretty 'absent' lately."
"Yeah. Everything's been a bit... grey. I'm sorry, it's kinda hard to describe better than that."
"Hmm," she considered, "maybe you should try writing about it?" 

I'd barely written anything more substantial than a fart in a wetsuit since last year, and when I had managed to James more than a few hundred reJoyce-ful words together it had been like pulling my own teeth. Nonetheless, I gummed on it, and put some thought into how to describe Depression without it turning into "goth poetry". In the peaceful time I spent packing away the suddenly-surplus second place-setting at my breakfast table for the move back to 1 Pacifica Via, Solitudo, I came up with a metaphor I've come to call The Room. 

Imagine finding yourself trapped outside a Room with no walls, which is so completely full of Nothing that there's no room in it for you. The Room is so full of Nothing that it's become condensed, compacted, and concrete; a diamond-perfect lattice of pure atomic Nothing. It's a Void so Perfect you can't even call it a vacuum; it's the Antithesis of Anything, its surface so smooth it has no friction, so clear that at first glance it seems you can see completely through it, completely without mass, but so dense it bends light. The Perfect Void draws you in until you're smeared across the boundary of the Room, so completely you're not so much outside as you are a thin smear around it. For all that you're indelibly adhered to The Room, you find you're still able to move freely, in fact you can go anywhere you want, but no matter where you go or how fast you run, it's right there. You try to tell people about the Void in the Room you've found somehow embedded within your Self, which you've no choice but carry around if you're to do anything at all, but no matter how heavy it is no one can see, touch, or feel its weight, so most of them don't even believe it exists. Even if they do, no one can help you carry it because the Perfect Void in the wall-less Room that you can't enter, but can never leave, exists entirely within the boundary of your own skull, and every time you stare into it you find you're staring back at yourself. 

I remember the moment, if not the day, when I discovered that the background-state in the back of my head had a name, and was neither epidemic, or pandemic, but endemic to me. The High School I went to published a Creative Writing Anthology each year, and I used to write little stories, ideas that popped into my head, so I submitted a couple of pieces because "why not?", before promptly forgetting all about it. I was pretty chuffed when they were included and had a bit of a proud moment taking an early-print copy home to show my folks my name right there in black-and-white on Page 13. Over the following days teachers who's classes I'd never been in, or with whom I'd never really got along, started coming up to me in the school-yard reading from a script so consistent it was like I was hearing it in gestalt: 

"Hi Peter, how are you doing? Are you OK?" 
"Yes, sir. Why wouldn't I be?" 
"That's good. It's just... we'd hate for you to... go anywhere... without telling us."
"Erm... k?" 
"You know you can always come and talk to us if you want... if you need to." 
"O...K, sir. Thank you, sir. I'll be sure to do that, sir?" 

"What was that about," Eugene asked in hushed tones as soon as they were out of earshot, "did you get in trouble for something?"
"No, didn't even tell me to pull my socks up or tighten my tie like he usually does. "
"But you ripped the elastic and cut off your top button so they wouldn't stay up..."
"Exactly! He seemed worried I was going on a trip or something."
"Weird. Oh well, Magic at lunch? I've rebuilt my Green Weenie Deck with extra Saprolings." 
"Fuck yeah, but me and that Black Deck James loaned me are still going to pwn you!" 

Years later I flicked through that cheap, spiral-bound collection of photo-copied stories and teenage-poetry and re-read the piece I'd dreamed up one night, written from the perspective of the voice in someone's head whispering a song of worthlessness and failure in the quiet stillness of the night until the protagonist put a gun to their head and painted the wall with their brain, and as the 90's-era environmentally-unfriendly light-source warmed up to incandescence, I had my light-bulb moment, realising: 

"Oooooh, THAT's what that was all about!" 

I was 15 when I wrote that, 16 when I was being buttonholed in the schoolyard by a conga-line of button-down, oxford-cloth, private-boy's-school teachers doing their best to balance their nascent SNAG-training with the ingrained toxic-machismo of their own "boys don't cry" upbringing, confused as anyone else who didn't get the memo because it had never occurred to me that there might just be some other way to be, and the way I was wasn't normal. 

But "normal" was an undiscovered country that I'd read about in a book once, but never met anyone from; what perspective could I possibly have had at that point? Just look at my friends: 

Matt was zany and Singaporean, and always wrote the scenarios for our D&D games. 
Adam was a Christian-pacifist marshmallow, who never said boo to anyone. 
Mott was Singaporean and weird, but amazing at maths. 
James could build a Magic: The Gathering deck out of spare parts that could win tournaments, but was so dyslexic he could barely write a coherent sentence. 
Smeghead was an obnoxious little shit, but so loyal you felt like a country he'd fight wars for. 
Stubbsie could have run Pheidippides into the ground, and done a victory-lap besides, so long as someone was there to tie his shoe laces for him and tell him when to stop. 
Eugene was a an overweight Burmese guy who badly wished he was black. 
And then there was me, with a face the bullies broke their fists punching, great grades, a rage Smeghead and Adam could barely drag me back from, a brain full of knowledge, and a black sense of humour. 

"Why can't you be normal?" Gary, and Arno, and Michael would yell at me, fists flying. 
"What the fuck even is 'normal'?" I'd ask myself while returning their punches in kind, threefold. It was a name I knew, but didn't feel like I had a use for. 

The way I felt, how I'd lived for as long as I'd known, that clinging little stowaway I'd always carried around, the country who's citizenship I held, had a name I was only just beginning to discover, and that was Depression. 

I got bullied a lot in the first half of High School. The teachers coming up to me wearing masks of concern were the same ones who'd been unconcerned when I was having my ankles kicked whilst marching between classes, getting shoved around playing sport, and taunted in the same schoolyard we were now standing in. Some of them had even reprimanded me for "taking matters into my own hands" when kick came to shove and I felt like all I could do to make it stop was punch on. Appealing to authority only achieved additional aggravated aggression, but breaking my hand beating some bozo's bonce was a small price to pay if it meant they left me the fuck alone. 

By that point, Authority had become the name for people who protected my oppressors; no wonder I've always had a problem with it. 
By that point my hand had healed with a bend in the metacarpus connecting my left-pinky to my wrist to serve as a permanent reminder for the cost of standing up for myself. 
By that point I'd taken the fight back to all of them, one at a time at first, eventually moving up to groups of as many as four at a time, and I hadn't always won the battles but they left me and the boys around me alone, which was what mattered. 

I wasn't to know it at the time, but by then the war was over; I never had to fight again all the way through to graduation. 

But I was always ready to. 

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj 

Bridget and I had a good run, all told. We met at just the right time, when I was starting to look outside myself for a whole I could be part of, and she was ending it with a partner who didn't made her feel whole. We had a lovely time, and there was love there for a time, but for all the fizz and zing we've enjoyed over the last half a year there's a hole in her mind that no one else can fill, and a hole in mine which I haven't been able to stop tonguing enough to let heal. We've been good for each other; we're both better than we were when we met. We've both been valued; we've proven to each other that we both have value. We're both desirable; there's been no shortage of reciprocal desire. We're neither of us whole tho; there are gaping holes in each of us that no other person can possibly close. Neither of us is so much insufficient as we are incomplete, and whilst I've found contentment in adequate sufficiency she wanted more; how could I blame her? She's suffered from her own depression, and it shows in all the gleaming seams where she's kintsugi'd herself back together. I started out broken, it seems, filling the empty spaces with Nothing so neatly there's no seam to denote where one ends and the other begins, leaving nowhere to find purchase. When Bridget broke she stuck the pieces back together with gold, becoming more beautiful, and she'll do so again; when I fell apart I wrapped myself in another layer of nacre, becoming colder, but even less accessible, and even harder to hold on to. 

When she put the idea into my head a couple of months ago that I really should write about my Depression she was right, although I suspect not quite in the way she was thinking at the time. I've not been writing much this year partly because putting time into her meant I've not had so much time for that, but hugely because when I've reached out for a thread to pull on, unravel, and weave into something my hand came back with Nothing worth saying. More importantly tho, you need to understand that under and behind and inside everything I've said here over the last couple of years, something horrible has been growing; something that seems to always have been there, which I keep fed and watered and carry with me everywhere I go. 

All I've ever really written about has been my Depression; how my world looks through it, the texture and smell of it, how events feed and shape it, and every once in a while the moments of respite I get from it, I just don't make it the topic. I gloss over it with a pop song, a Shakespeare reference, and a self-deprecating joke. 

I am Pagliacci The Clown. 

I hide it behind a smile, wrap it in a metaphor, or blend it in with anger; but it's been getting harder, and colder, and heavier, and I'm running out of strength to keep carrying it around the way I have been, so I decided to try something different, bite down, eschew misdirection, and see if I can spit it out directly. 

"The person who is breathing is me." 
― Rita Farr in Doom Patrol 

Sandra was right to worry that I might see this as yet another failure; my confidence has been shaken so hard this year it's shattered, my self-worth sifting right to the bottom of the rubble like sand under the coarser stones of doubt, defeat, and dread, so who can blame her? She knew we were on the rocks, so it didn't come as a surprise when one of us stopped and shook other out of their shoe. She was there, at the other end of the phone, for the three years I was single before I managed to work up the courage to try "being with someone" again, and how determined I was after Jenna, and Kat, to not make the the same mistakes again. She must have been terrified to think what failing again would do to me after the year-and-change since I moved back to Canberra. 

One of the things I've been comfortably sure of is that I'm fucking good at the thing I do for a living, so when I fenced off the shelves in my mental library labelled "306.7: Relations between the sexes, sexualities, love" behind barbed wire and warning signs saying "DANGER! MINE FIELD! DO NOT ENTER", that was what I poured my energy into. Picking up The Job That Brought Me Back To Canberra in early 2022 was the culmination of years of practice, and by that time in the year where we all go and wake up Billy from Greenday I'd not just done a good job, I'd done one everyone had believed was Impossible until I did it. The sensation of knowing, not just believing, but knowing with absolute proof to back it up, that you're as good as you'd always thought you could be isn't just incredible, it's louder than words. 
My self-image lined up perfectly with my self-in-the-world. 
Me-cursive; Me-sync; I was Me all the way down. 
The last of the marble had fallen away, and looking back at me in the mirror was David; I was taller than Goliath, and carved from stone, and for the first time I could remember I felt Absolutely Real. 

Sounds like a pretty happy place to be, right? 

See, about that... 

Nearly a decade ago I was looking over a pile of brightly-coloured glossy images of my brain with my neurologist, talking about my relationship issues, and he made a contemplative noise as his pen traced circles around a darker-than-normal patch somewhere between my ears. 

"So... when you're cuddling up on the couch, or post-coitus... how do you feel?"
I thought about it for a moment, and replied, "Uncomfortable? My back will be hurting, or I'll need to move to get circulation back in my leg, or I can't reach my phone to check something.
"Why?" 
"Not warm and fuzzy? Relaxed?"
"No. I mean... it's nice, and she likes it, but I get fidgety pretty fast.
"Why?" 
"Well there's reduced blood flow in your hypothalamus, and what you've been describing suggests you may not be producing normal levels of Oxytocin. I'm thinking we could try a supplement and see what effect that has."
"You want to experiment on my brain?" 
"Oh! It's a naturally occurring neurotransmitter, there's no risk...!"
"Nah, you misunderstand. I'm all about the scientific method and better living thru chemistry. You got a hypothesis about my hypothalamus?
"Let's do science." 

A week later I and I'm sitting in same chair again. 

"So how did you feel?" 
"No different, really. I felt nothing. What was I supposed to feel?" 
"Warm fuzzies? Better sense of connection? Some people say they feel 'euphoric'. Did you feel good at all?"
"No, I didn't get any of that. I kinda just got the dumb." 
"..."
"I could pay attention to the conversation, but I couldn't keep track of any background thoughts. Someone would mention something that would remind me of something else, but I couldn't think of what that was, and a moment later I'd have lost what it was they said in the first place. I was fine with a sequential train-of-thought, but only one, not the three conversation forks and three unrelated background processes I'd usually be tracking, certainly nothing abstract or inductive.
"I just felt... dumb, stupid." 
"Did you feel relaxed at all?"
"I guess, kinda? 
"I mean... 
"I was calm... 
"But I knew part of me was missing. 
"And I knew it was there but I couldn't find it. 
"And I was kinda freaking out about it to be honest. 
"But I couldn't listen to the part of me that was screaming and the conversation at the same time. 
"So I couldn't quite get to panicking about it." 
By the time I stopped talking John's eyes were wide, his hands planted firmly flat on his desk. He slowly leaned back in his seat, breathed in, then out again, and said, "That sounds... unpleasant. Did you try it again?" 
"Yeah, little bit.
"And no.
"Whatever that place was, I'd rather not go there again if that's OK?"
"No. 
"No, I don't think I'd ask you to do that, no." 

So apparently the "love hormone" that gives people feelings of trust, emotional attachment, safety, all those things we think of as "happy", doesn't work on me. I don't know what I'm missing, if that helps. I don't get to feel happy, but it looks good on other people so I can still get a vicarious Dopamine hit by doing it to them. Other people can't simultaneously keep track of multiply-nested loops in two conversations, rehearse the agenda for tomorrow's meetings, and compose an email to their mother, all whilst playing DJ for Headcheese Radio's Silent Disco, so it's a bit like "swings & roundabouts", right? 

Just like Popeye The Sailor Man, I am what I am. I don't need to be happy, I just need a win every once in a while. 

When I closed that project off I was at the top of my game, and on top of the world, in a remarkably unique way; usually reaching the peak means climbing over a bunch of other people to get there because being the best means there are a pile of people you're better than. I took nothing away from anyone when I took "no one can do that" and added "except me" to the end, except for the haters who just wanted "that" to fail and... well, fuck those guys. Fuck them right in the ear. I've no interest in competing for a place in the hierarchy; stack-ranking is a demonstrably false economy because almost everyone in a team has something to offer, and if they won't join the team they can get the fuck out of my way. All I ask is a tall problem, and a Purchase Order to Invoice against, and that was exactly the reward offered me, so I kicked my wheels into gear, and with a song in my ears I wound my old life up, spread wings like sails, left Perth in the dust of my wake, and shook my arse back to Canberra. 

It's important to remember something tho: I didn't succeed just because I had a unicorn skillset, although that was a critical factor. I didn't do it alone either, because whilst the haters were legion, I joined a team who were working towards the same goal. I made it happen because I marshalled the forces, set up the field, muttered "Victory or death", and went to war. 
It was a war I fought with everything and nothing to prove, and everything and nothing to lose.
It was a war I fought because that was the only way to get it done. 
But it was a war I never got to stop fighting. 

I was a wreck when I stepped off that flight, held together by duct-tape, determination, and the dearest of friends. Less than a month later I was battling locative dissonance, and it was becoming obvious that my war wasn't over. At the time, I said: 

"I'm exhausted, on edge, I can be calm, or focused, but not both at the same time, my manoeuvring thrusters are shot, and I'm a whisker off bingo-fuel, but my nose is pointed down the throat of the beast, I have ammunition and fumes enough for one last world-shattering salvo as I make my final burn, and my fist is hovering over the glass-covered button labelled

'Bop in case of Blitzkrieg'."
― Thursday, April 20, 2023 - Full Circle...

I'm neurochemically disinclined when it comes to trusting people, so when the Big Bad Bossman turned out to be a hypocritical narcissist arsehole, and the estimable Bosslady quit the field in a final, desperate act of self-preservation, it ripped a hole in me that only Nothing could fill, not because my hard-earned trust was betrayed, but because I ignored the warning signs and walked brazenly into the minefield like an over-confident fool. Even at the top of my game I zigged when I should have zagged, fell for the neon-signposted Samaritan Snare, and got trapped in my very own Kobayashi Maru. The man I thought was a visionary turned out to be a manipulative, gas-lighting bully. I still remember the evening he "fired" me, then threatened to fire my whole team, because I disagreed with him. I was leaning against a desk so I'd only be an inch or two taller than him instead of six, when he declared: 

"You know, I used to have Big Four consultants doing the job your team's supposed to do and they got results," omitting, conveniently, that these were the same people who couldn't do what I'd done for him the year before. 
"Fine," he announced, slapping the desk he was standing next to for emphasis, "on your own head be it," and as he turned to walk away declared, "I'll make some calls tomorrow." 

He got two steps whilst I sat there, silent and still, before he turned and circled back. The argument carried on for another three-quarters of an hour. 

Finding out I couldn't trust the Bossman was one thing, but then I don't really trust anyone. I build a model for who and what they are based on the patterns in their behaviour, and use that model to calculate whether they're a risk or an asset. It didn't matter that he was the most dangerous type of gaslighter; one who absolutely believes, and has always believed, what he's saying even when it contradicts what he said last week, all whilst holding a Master's Degree in Cognitive Dissonance. I was David, and the only person who could actually deliver what he was trying to achieve, and I have a long history of standing up to bullies, and I thought I could handle it. I was wrong, and realising I couldn't trust my own judgement cracked the bedrock. After that it was all downhill. 

By July I'd burned through all of the confidence which had made me believe that I could do the Impossible, and had earned the opportunity to keep doing it forevermore, and was burning through my belief in myself. I was alone at home, and alone in the office, undermined by spies and derision. I have the most amazing friends, so loyal they make you feel like a country they'd go to war for, but I felt so incredibly, indescribably alone, just me and Nothing else; alone-liness and war without end. 

Colleagues who'd worked with me as allies stopped responding to my requests. 
Meetings would be organised about the projects I was working on, and I'd not be invited. 
Projects I'd been told I'd be in charge of were quietly assigned to other Managers.
Approvals I requested so I could proceed with the work I'd been assigned would be ignored, whilst the Approver's complaints about my lack of progress escalated. 
I was systematically side-lined, and isolated, and had my support cut out from under me.
I was set up to fail. 
Throughout, I continued making what small progress I could manage because what else could I do?  There was a job to do which I knew I could, even if I was losing belief that I'd be allowed to do so. 
In the midst of all of this my contract actually got extended, and for why? All I've ever been able to think of is that he was happy to spend over a hundred thousand dollars of someone else's money just so he could keep beating me until I broke. 

To my shame, I took it; I'd taken on a lot of debt to take that plunge back to this side of the country, so I couldn't afford not to. I retain some small pride from how long it took, and how much it cost him. 

I remember, sitting here in a chair that will never fit as well as the one I built out of rubbish from the kerbside then left behind when I left Perth, feeling the pressure crushing my chest like I was drowning all over again, and how badly I just wanted it to end. 

I re-read my own words in the quiet stillness of the night, with a glass of wine, or whisky, or worse, and my noise-cancelling headphones sealing away my ears, and every time the memory it evokes leaves me drowning in tears whilst I sit here and try to just breathe. 

Breathe. 

The post I put out recently called Stop; Continue... started months ago, early in the autumn-before-the-winter-which-is-now-almost-over when you could still sit outside a Canberra pub with an old friend in your shirtsleeves without freezing. Most of these are written the same night as the idea which inspires them pops into my head, but when I was finishing the Perthistential Crisis series in November it was getting harder and harder to draw another bucket from that well. By April all that came up was dust, but I'd still try dipping my quill in it every once in a while nonetheless. I was scratching at it one night, making more mess than sense, when Bridget came round and let herself in with the keycard I'd given her and asked what I was working on, so I let her read the draft. When she got to the part about hands reaching out to help she stopped, looked up from my laptop, and declared: 

"That's bullshit." 
"What is?"
"No one's helped you. No one's done a fucking thing," and I burst into tears. 
She held me whilst I wept for somewhere between an hour and 10 minutes and made sure my laptop didn't skitter and dance on the tiles of my balcony, until eventually I looked up and replied:

 "I need that to not be true." 

So when I finally came back to it, I rewrote it again and again until what I said was. 

"It's always darkest just before the dawn."
― Now That's Bullshit

By the time Bridget turned to me and said "I think we need to talk," a few weeks later, half a year had gone by since I'd finally fucked up and given him the excuse he'd been waiting for to terminate me with prejudice, ending 2023 with a bang that sounded more like a whimper, leaving me a man who felt Nothing but hollow. I left the stage gracefully, in disgrace, and ever since have been trying, and failing, to find a way to capitalise on a stale memory of success that's long-since faded to grey. The achievement I thought I'd build an empire from was gone, eroded to dust, leaving me behind with a cart I built out of Nothing to carry all my failure in because there was so much of it I couldn't hold it any more, and that was all I had left to offer her. That confidence which felt indomitable back then is so far gone I almost can't remember what having it felt like, but I remember a time when I did. Years ago Sandra would talk me down off the ledge again and again, saying "Remember who you are!" 

But I'm not sure if I can; I don't recognise myself in the mirror any more. 
It's just me in a staring contest with the ledge, each daring the other to jump first. 
I don't think I can win. 

Back when I had a Penpal, in the series of letters which slowly segued sideways from sharing with an ersatz-sibling into screaming into the abyss, she wrote to me: 

"I don’t know how to do much in my own best interests. It’s too heavy and I haven’t the strength to drag it around. But it only gets heavier. It seems so petulant to sit in front of the answer and believe that there is a forcefield preventing me from simply reaching out and even acknowledging it is there. I’d seemingly rather sit in the shadow and stare at the key that opens the door, and grieve for the loss of motivation to grab it. What madness. I acknowledge this feeling you are having, of knowing just what you should do and feeling powerless to actually do it. To endure the continuing pain, and for what? The fleeting glory of inhuman success? The complexity of unjustified fear. Is it the deepness of feeling that if discarded leaves a void of any meaningful (painful) biofeedback?" 
― Monday 5 Dec 2022, 9:38AM - RE: Struggling

That verisimilitude, that connection of minds-which-are-alike, that tipped-hat acknowledgement that "I see what you did there" resonated with me at the time, and has echoed ever since, such that I've made a point of re-using, re-hashing, and re-mixing those words and that sentiment, in homage and thanks, at every opportunity. Sometimes it's the smallest thing people put down that you pick up and run with. Even something so small and fragile as inch can be the the only thing in the world worth having; an inch can take you for miles. An inch can be all it takes to trip you tho, and my feet are no longer between my face and the pavement. 

Now I'm sitting here on my ledge in a chair I bought at a thrift store for $5 that's falling apart beneath me staring into space, the battery light on my laptop is flashing with a rapid cadence, and the fog that's fallen, like the ashes of the bridges I burned on the trip I took to get here, has turned everything a bit grey. My own fall has come and gone, but still beckons nonetheless, and even with Sandra's voice echoing in my ears I'm wondering who I am not to accept it. 

Somehow it feels like everything has now come full circle, because my mouth is so full of dust I can't scream any more, but that's OK even if I'm not, because I've Nothing left to say. 

I just want it to Stop; 

"Flying Dutchman"-level ghosting...

 I hadn't decided whether this was going on the blog or not - I figured I'd work that out when I finished it. I wanted it out of my head tho, so sent it to my Penpal('s email address which has been my "grief toilet" for some time, and whilst she's not replied in a while I was also asked not to stop so I intend to continue dumping this shit into it until that changes or the address gives me splash-backs). 

I was listening to this when I sent the following message to Ian, and the combination made me realise that more words needed to be generated: 

Twenty One Pilots - Trees (Vessel Album version)

"For those who are keeping score, it's now been 2 weeks since I sent Jenna that 'fuck you and the rest of the money you owe me' email. 
"I can't say I really expected one, but at this point I reckon that ship has sailed and it's a 'Flying Dutchman'-level ghosting.
"Or, as Jeff Murdock in Coupling would have said:
"'Result!''" 
 - 11/09/2023, 20:33

Edit: Fri, 15 Sept 20:38
I wrote (most of) this on Monday night, and was in such a mess I'm pretty sure the last 500ish words are garbage and need to be rewritten. I say this here, because I'm about to read it through and attempt to do that now, and that means cranking the same tunes on repeat whilst I do to get myself back in the same headspace that had me quietly weeping through the early hours of Tuesday morning. Depending on what I find, further annotations may be included. Or not. I'll work that out when I get there. 

I also cc'd Ian when my finger stabbed the blue button marked "Send", because Ian'ing is a virtue. 

 And on that note (the first of which I believe is a D5#), here I go....  

---

Three months ago I was checking my bank accounts and updating my spreadsheets and made a decision - I have one I keep for my rental property (created a decade ago when I first started renting my spare rooms to keep track of income and expenses, making tax time easier), and others for my "loan shark" activities. I have a history of bailing people out of debt, starting with Kat (long before our getting together was even vaguely a consideration, mind you), followed by Jenna a year after she moved in with me, and then Sandra. I had a quarter of a million dollars of inheritance, I knew people who were paying ruinous amounts of interest on barely-serviceable debt, and buying debt is a time-honoured wog tradition. A lot of people I've known over the years rate high on executive dysfunction, and banks and credit-providers are geared specifically to take advantage of people who blank out when the numbers which describe their problems are too big to face. If I could offer half the rate whilst still making a profit it wasn't just ethically positive, it was mutually beneficial. 

I solve problems for a living, and have demonstrated that I can consistently polish a turd. An easy win-win is, for me, a no-brainer, and as Scott once (or twice, has) said to me: 

"If you lend someone $50 and you never see them again, it was money well spent." 

That probably wasn't meant to extend three orders of magnitude, but "in for a penny, in for a pound", right? Whether "Sterling" or "of flesh" is just a question of currency. 

Kat I floated $10k not long after I started getting to know her, when Jenna and I were still "fresh", so she could clear credit card debt accrued from a trip to the Worldcon Sci Fi Convention in London with her immediate ex. For a couple of years she made her payments, and I kept my spreadsheet updated. When we'd go hang out by the river we'd invariably stop at the servo for Iced Coffee, or grab a bite to eat at the nearby Hungry Jack's, or she'd be short on cigarettes, and I'd usually play the "I know how much debt you're in" card, and cover it. Much later when we were together, and she received her own inheritance from her mother's estate, she cleared the slate, and I told her that I'd been consciously using the interest she was paying to cover dinner. 

She was SO PISSED OFF at me she wouldn't speak to me for quite some time afterwards, but that was fine because she was kissing me so hard my lips bled. 

I floated Sandra $50k when she started up The Blind Dove Cafe, which was just off the intersection of Flemington Rd and Nullarbor Ave in Franklin, ACT. The best offer she had from a bank was 50% of the equity at 13.5% interest (which she couldn't get near because they had no equity worth mentioning), so I offered her the lot at 10%. She sent me her Business Case, I sent her contract documents; she sent them back signed and witnessed, I sent her a bunch of cash. I might have loved her to bits (and still do), but it was "business", and we treated it as such. I still paid my coffee and lunch tab when I came to visit and set up shop in the corner to work remotely on a couple of my trips over, just like anyone else. 

They extended it another $20k to invest in a grease trap (which never got installed, but the timing coincided with the end of the apartment construction boom, and the ensuing drop-off in trade, so they needed it to keep afloat). When they were on the verge of going under in 2019 I offered (and they accepted) a "repayment holiday" (including interest) for 3 months over summer, which kept them going for another year. Later when they wound the Dove down during covid and still owed me a sizeable chunk of cash, I dropped the interest rate to match what I was paying on my mortgage (~4ish%), then extended it another $24k so they could replace their dying Suzuki Vitara with a Subaru VX - I called it "protecting my investment", with a side of "I'm no worse off, but you're much better, plus fuck the banks in the ear with a tuning fork". After picking up the work which ultimately brought me back to Canberra and was able to slam enough cash into my offset account that it zero'd the remaining mortgage, I gave her a call: 

"So hey, about your loan, I need to do a review on your rate."
"Oh? Yeah, you said that might need to happen. Couldn't expect it to stay so low forever I guess. Can you do up the doc's and send me the updated amortisation schedule please?"
"Of course - it's already in your inbox. Can you give it a glance and make sure you're OK with it?"
"Yeah, I guess? Might take me a minute...?"
"No stress. I'll wait."

Sandra's laptop was 6 years old at that point, and so shit even I couldn't get it running well, but I was in no rush. 

"OK. Got your email. Schedule looks reasonable, we can manage the fortnightly OK, might even be able to get ahead on it."
"All good with me - long as you're comfortable with it. Interest rate OK tho?" 
"Oh, I hadn't spotted that, let me loo...
"WHAT TH...?
"1%?
"THE FUCK?
"Did you forget to add a zero?"
"Nah, <I explained my own debt position> and you always insisted I had to be making some money off it, so went with that.
"You alright with it tho?
"I can drop it down to like... a half or something?"
"<insert swearing, recriminations, what sounded like tears, suggestions of my having been born outside of wedlock, and other vitriol>... You're amazing. Thank you. Are you sure...? Oh my god thank you."
"Don't stress. Just... don't go missing a payment or I'll send Scotty 'round for Timo's kneecaps. I know where you live 'n' shit..." 

Just before I moved over in March and they were buying their place in Captain's Flat they had $4ish-k left, and were close to the line on their loan approval. They were running thru my broker/mate/client FinBro, and we had a chat about it - he wanted me to draft a letter saying what the initial value was, what repayments had been, how much they'd paid, and (most importantly) that they'd finished paying it all off.

"Of course, no worries," I told him, and gave him shit for being surprised when I had it to him in under 20min. 

I mean... this is why you keep a tracking spreadsheet, right? 

So I gave Sandra another call to let her know: 

"Oh, thanks, yeah, you said that might need to happen. Once we've settled and the loan's all secure we'll get back on the repayments and sort the rest out. Might be a bit less than before, but we'll do the best we can."
"Yeah, about that. I kinda did sign a document saying you were already square, and looking at my spreadsheets I've made a bunch more out of you than what's outstanding, so... yeah, I reckon I've made enough at this point, so 'happy birthday' or fuckever." 
"..."
"You ain't getting a fucking housewarming present tho. Just sayin'..."
"<further vitriol, empty promises of repercussions next time she saw me, suggestions of my possessing far more warmth and greater depth than can be empirically proven>," but did you know money CAN, in fact, buy you love? 
"Eh. I never sent you a wedding present either, unless you want to count Rickrolling you in the speech I con'd Scott into reading, so don't mention it. 
No, seriously, don't mention it, You'll ruin my reputation.*"
"Reputation as a big softie, you mean?" 
"Sure, whatever, it's your fucking birthday, now fuck off and go deal with buying a house.
"Congratulations. 
"And when you bend Timo over the lounge later, make sure he calls you 'Pete'."

* 

Musical accompaniment: Lauren Marie - Trees (Twenty One Pilots Cover) 

In the month-or-so gap between when she cheated** on me, and our first anniversary. Jenna finally told me about her debt. There was a Car Loan, plus a Personal Loan, and then there were the two credit cards she'd maxed out; one of her mechanisms for coping with depression after escaping her abusive ex was to shout rounds at overly fancy bars for her broke friends, and fly others over from Melbourne to visit her. Her debt was structured so poorly that most of her income was spent servicing the interest without actually touching the principal. 

** It's complicated - there'd been an "in principle" discussion about such things a while before, and I made it clear that as far as I was concerned she'd not done anything wrong. I guess you could say I was something of a crimeless-victim, but none of that made the feeling of being stabbed in the gut any less real, and it took some time to process afterwards. 

I wasn't upset about the existence of debt, but I was apoplectic-near-speechless that she'd taken a year to tell me about it, for a number of reasons: 

 - For a start, Jenna and I actually "dated", as in "went out on dates" both in our early courtship and throughout, and with both of us having decently-paying jobs we'd go to Nice Although Not Necessarily Extravagant Places with the agreement that we'd alternate; I got the first, she the second, and so on. I wouldn't have flinched at covering the tab if I knew she was in the hole, or at very least dropped the "fancy" a couple of notches. I can enjoy an evening with a beautiful, fascinating girl over fish & chips and a lukewarm bag of goon sitting on a rug in the park, after all. I was pissed off that she let me unwittingly help dig her deeper into that hole; I felt unconsentingly complicit in a circumstance I could have circumvented.
- I was pissed off that this brilliant, talented girl who was so passionate about what she did, who I'd spent a year falling for, after which I was Absolutely Not Bored, who after all these years of so-near-but-so-far, I could actually see myself building A Life with, could "lie-of-omission" to me for so long.
- I was pissed off that she'd hidden it so well that I hadn't caught on. 

and... 

- After all those years of subsistence-living, dating PYT's who Never Quite Fit or Just Couldn't Keep Up (not to mention Emma's Gaslight Sonata), after I'd Wandered The World Having Adventures, then scrimped and saved my way to Home Ownership, I'd embarked on this amazing new Adventure called Settling Down. I was prepared to do it on my own, but I wanted to do it with Someone, An Equal, who had dreams as bold and vivid as mine, who was a partner-not-a-dependent, where neither of us needed the other to achieve what we wanted, but could work together to Build Something Better.
- But more than anything else, I wanted to Do It With Her. 

Suddenly our "partnership of equals" wasn't, and our equal footing was separated by a divide measuring forty-seven thousand dollars. She may not have been dependent, but she certainly wasn't going to be able to contribute equally. This dream I'd allowed myself to have of having Someone To Build With had turned into Someone I'd Need To Carry, or for whom everything we did would mean delaying her own financial equilibrium, let alone actualisation. 

For the second time in a couple of months I left her place feeling gutted, needing time to process. 

I nearly walked; I'd been in a facsimile of "here" before and I'd sworn on my pinkie "Never Again"; Emma had strung me along for a year before revealing that we had life-goals which were Poles Apart: 

"Don't you want to create a new person who's half you and half me, and loves us unconditionally?"
"THE FUCK NO! HOLY FUCK! WHAT FUCKING DRUGS ARE YOU ON? HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT WAS HALF ME COULD POSSIBLY BE LIKE THAT? HOW THE FUCK NAIVE ARE YOU, HAVE YOU FUCKING MET ME??? I'M A FUCKING SOCIOPATH!!!"
"...But... It's what I want more than anything."
"And it's the thing I want so little that maybe, just maybe, if I had three lives, I'd almost consider doing it in one***." 

*** Reference to a line from Melbourne by The Whitlams: 

She found some guy on OKCupid or EHarmony or something and had a kid not long afterwards. From what I saw when I went stalking on Facebook he seemed a nice enough bloke, the kid was pretty adorable, and she looked happy. Maybe she even is, and good for her if so. I hope she's having a nice life. 

Now Jenna had done the same thing in her own way; we'd Made Plans, Created Dreams, Ideated A Life Together, and there I was calculating how little of that was now actually possible in the cold blue-shifted light when "the world is our oyster" contracts because "shit's expensive, yo". 

We'd planned the home we'd build together; her bookshelf-walled Library with the comfy chairs where we could read together just inside of arms-reach, with conveniently-placed side-tables for our cups of tea; my tech-dungeon with the gaming rigs we'd use to go on endless Borderlands runs together; the dinners we'd cook together in the open-plan kitchen, and the spaces around the dining table we'd set aside for her cats so they could be near the people who'd come round to share it with us... 

... until suddenly I found myself staring at the compromises we'd need to make if I wanted to get close to achieving a low-budget version of that using my income alone, but as much as I care more for the home than the house, it wasn't something we could do 'together' any more. 

We'd talked for days about the travel I'd done, and she wanted to do, and where the two of us were going to go; she wanted to go to Iceland for her 30th - we'd talked about it at length. Her Geologist-Lady-Boner for the place was immense, throbbing, and so wonderous to behold you couldn't help but want to touch it. It was the perfect blend of her professional passion, and my passion for travel, a place she wanted to go, and a place I'd never been; it was a few years away so it was absolutely doable... 

... until suddenly it wasn't... at least not in a way that would be 'ours'. 

After taking a week to clear my head and recalculate the vectors, in the end, for better or worse, I stayed, but I issued an ultimatum: she had a month to Get Her Shit In One Sock, and get her debt restructured. I promised to help if she asked, but unless she did I'd not push, prod, poke, or pester, in fact I'd posit not one unprompted word. A fortnight later, give-or-take, she asked me to come to Westpac and hold her hand whilst she signed the papers on her Debt Consolidation Loan, which of course I ditched work to attend. Leaving the bank with a debt she could actually service, we agreed to some new ground-rules for our dates, and hit what I guess you'd call a "Restart" button; of course, I took her out to dinner to celebrate. 

A year later my paternal grandmother had passed away, a quarter of a million dollars had landed in my bank account, and suddenly I was sneezing-distance from being able to pay off my modest little duplex. I had no intention of doing that tho, because it was far too small for the two of us and her three cats, so we'd been house hunting (I started off looking at places two streets over on Mars St on a whim because of her love-affair with that planet; she'd done her Geology Honours Project on mineral surveys of NASA's proposed landing sites for the Curiosity Rover, using their satellite data. She loves Mars like I love the idea of sitting in a pub until the end of my days with people paying my bar tab in return for solving their problems, or being able to instantly teleport so I can be in Paris for breakfast on a whim). 

A year after we'd moved into the place I moved out of in March to come back to Canberra, I finally asked how her loan was going. She made mumbling noises about how little progress is made in the first year or so because compound interest and blah-blah-what-the-fuckever; I made the <yeah-yeah, blah-blah, skip to the end> hand gesture, "I fucking know how loans work. Second mortgage and shit? What's the damage look like?"
She looked it up, told me the number.
"Hmm...k, what was your interest rate again? Like... 12%?"
She gave another number, slightly less than that.
"Aight, well I've got some cash left after paying the deposit on this place. Can you hit Westpac up for a payout figure? I want to buy your loan - I can halve your interest rate and still be ahead on what I'd pull leaving it in the offset, and we'd have you clear like 2 years sooner." 

Skipping past the protest, my accepting when she declined, then a day or three later confirming that the offer was still, in fact, on the table when she asked, confirming that I was actually sure, in fact I had a boilerplate Contract drawn up ready to go, and that it was in my own best interest across at least three different metrics, I bought her debt. 

The girls at Westpac, she told me later, were so enviously approving they waived the Break Fee for her. 

A couple of years later we went to Iceland. We couldn't time things to be there on her birthday, sadly, because she wasn't going to have quite enough leave accrued in time, plus the 30th of June is Ruinously Expensive since it's the height of Peak Season; we were there for mine tho, so I shared it with her. Standing on the frigid Reykjavik foreshore after dinner on the night of the day I turned 36, arms wrapped around her in the heavy coats we'd picked up in Berlin, she leaned her head back against my chest whilst we watched the Aurora Borealis flutter and dance in the solar wind across a silent sky, and that awe-struck moment was neither hers, no mine; it was ours. 

She absolutely couldn't afford that trip, but she paid for her Her Stuff, and I paid for mine. She was still deep in debt at the time, so her half of the Shared Expenses (flights, accommodation, so on) I paid for and added to her tab. That way it was, at least nominally, over a relevant time-frame, still "our" trip. 

This, from earlier that year, was on me: 

She left out of her description that the band was an alloy comprised of 95% Platinum and 5% Iridium, included in the design in part because neither of us are into gold, but more importantly because Iridium isn't a naturally occurring element on Earth; the only Iridium on Earth comes from meteorites which have fallen from space. Because (a lot of things, but this is pithy): 

"We are all stardust."
- Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Six-and-a-quarter years ago, after she handballed me to Kat, there was a period of discord - despite their instigating the exchange of these Damaged Goods, they each decided that they'd been somehow slighted by the other, and I went from having a girlfriend-and-a-friend to having a girlfriend-and-an-ex-I'd-have-liked-to-have-been-friends-with-if-shit-hadn't-got-weird. Jenna and I kept in touch sporadically, and I watched her burn through a couple of boyfriends as she went; her most recent (to my count) ex and I get along pretty well, amusingly. Somehow, despite her having instigated and encouraged it, as recently as the last time we exchanged screams she still holds that against me. 

Two-and-a-half years ago we reconnected in the aftermath of Kat's departure. It took some effort to drag her out of the rabbit-hole she'd crawled down after ending things with J------ (the younger, chubbier, lawyerier version of me), but she got me in a way no one had done before and regardless of anything else, I Missed My Friend. She was on the rocks with S---- (the younger, less-refined, redheaded, dreadlocked version of me), and wound up ditching him after setting us up to become mates. The friendship got worked on... or at least fed with wedges and watered by an impressive number of pints which I snuck into my corporate "Client/Partner Meeting Expenses" Account because we'd mentioned "computers" in the conversation at some point Mr Taxman, I swear. 

A year ago we had a falling out, which is a polite way of saying "I came one slow-breath from kicking her out of my car on the side of Roe Hwy without slowing down from the 100kph speed limit whilst driving her drunk-arse home". I'd bought her ticket to come to the Monolith gig and see a bunch of bands I'd got her into, and a couple we'd come to love together. I wasn't in much of a mood to drink, so I offered to drive her, Ricky, and Priya, and was taking her to her boyfriend-after-the-boyfriend-after-the-boyfriend-after-me's place so he wouldn't have to drag his exhausted arse out of bed and come collect her from mine. I was in a REALLY bad headspace, skirting burnout having not long returned from my month in Canberra after delivering The Impossible Project, still missing Kat to bits after not-quite-two years, and coming up on four years working non-stop, finishing my MBA, and recovering from a-bike-accident-and-two-surgeries without a break. I was so on-edge that I recoiled whenever we made contact. Eventually she tried resting her head on my shoulder and I teleported six inches, pulling myself into the smallest ball I could and had to reject her when she reached out, invading my personal space with her hand this time (in a way which I know was meant to be comforting but was anything but), asking if I was OK. 

But we all know the answer to that question, because I'm not now, and certainly wasn't then; my equilibrium has been delicate to say the least, and that sort of "companionable contact" has become the opposite of comforting, so I spoke honestly, and told her: 

"No. Please don't touch me." 

It was a lovely day tho - Ricky has loved Karnivool to death since long before we crossed paths, Priya's all over Perth Prog like a Malaysian girl on a Laksa, and Jenna... let's just say that there was nothing played on stage that day that either of us wasn't absolutely into, and very little we hadn't listened to in one of the other's car at some point. It had been a really, uncynically, lovely day: 

The gig over, having dragged Jenna's drunk arse off some hapless bloke who was less interested in the mineral assets her mining-magnate boss controls than the ones she presents far more tangibly, then carrying Ricky's joyously sozzled one across the car park, and pouring them both into the FrogRocket whilst P performed a supportive shepherding role, and my own arse ensconced in the heated driver's seat, Jenna took One Of [Her] Turns. It was all of those nights when she had one too many and flipped from "the one person so empathic she guided my drunken arse, who hadn't realised he was grieving, out our front door early on a Saturday morning after watching my favourite Trek film (The Undiscovered Country) and sat me down in the driveway of the house (which, for all that it was legally 'mine', was emotionally 'ours') so I could look up at the stars whilst tears rolled down my face, weeping on her shoulder, because Leonard Nimoy had died, and my template for existing in a world of raging emotions I had no idea how to deal with and fought constantly to control along with him" to full-on just-like-the-bad-old-days dissociative. 

I won't relate her tirade - explaining the multiple layers of context would take more words than I have energy to spend, it's getting late, I'm tired, and my cheeks keep getting wet from that last anecdote. I've been gaslit by professionals, but Jenna's a far more dangerous flavour of crazy; when she flips, she believes in her pocket-universe one-hundred-and-crazy percent. When you've been told your perceptions are wrong for so long, by so many people, you find you're never quite sure; when one day you find that singular point in the heavens which stays still when the whole world around you is spinning, that one Star which always points North, the Legrange Point where your fingers touch becomes an axis around which you can calculate every vector, and any moment. When your reference point inverts gravity and polarity without warning, utterly convinced that what you thought was black is actually white, and that this up was never down, where else can you possibly find yourself but in freefall? It took a long time for me to learn to trust my senses when my source-of-truth started screaming otherwise and my inner-ear couldn't tell the difference. 

That night I took control of my breathing, and Set The FrogRocket's cruise-Control to the Heart of the Speed Limit, let the white stitching on the steering wheel serve as my reference to "up", and the red line in front of the X-Wing on my GPS point the way forward. 

I kept my tongue clamped between my teeth as she escalated, pausing when I dropped Priya off, and Ricky passed out peacefully in the back seat.
I chewed my lip whilst she berated me for abandoning her for the year she wouldn't respond to my increasingly urgent pings asking "R U OK???"
I finally broke composure when she started attacking Ian; because by that point my tongue was swollen, my lips were bleeding, and enough was enough (and no one insults my Ian but me). 

The rest of the trip played out to the soundtrack of a dissociative's lament, a whining turbocharger, a sociopath's repudiation, a squealing of tyres pushed beyond their grip-rating, a rev-limiter protesting its artificial limitation, ending with a handbrake-turn and a 

"Get the fuck out."

A furious foot introducing pedal to metal, a couple of high-speed turns, and a full-throttle thrash down the ramp back onto Roe Hwy later, Ricky opened her eyes in my rear-view mirror: 

"Your ex be cray-cray."
"Ricky, you know I love you'n'shit, right, but Shut The Fuck Up."
"You know I'm right."
"Ain't sayin' you're wrong, but you can still Shut The Fuck Up. Now go the fuck to sleep. Also, I love you."
"I love you tzzzzzzzz...." 

(Finally getting to the first thing I wrote when I started relating this story) A month and a half ago I (realised how much context this statement was going to need to make sense, and have spent the last 6+ hours listening to versions of the same song whilst I fill it in, followed by 2 x 4 hour editing sessions making sure it all made sense) was in the fourth hour of a Teams call with Ian, helping him with his second MBA unit because he and Jenny broke up recently and "helping a fellow traveller on their own MBA Journey" is a Fantastic Way For Us Both To Not Deal With That, and the topic of The Last Time I Saw Or Exchanged Words With Jenna (or Priya, for that matter) came up. A high-speed debrief on "Leadership through motivation", psychoanalysing his South African colleague, and a bottle-and-a-half of wine" are my excuses for not remembering what he told me Jenna had said-or-done immediately following our breakup six-and-change years earlier, motivating me to declare: 

"Seriously? You know what... seriously, fuck that bitch. Fuck that lying fucking dissociative fucking pity-whore..."
"<Ian'ing ensues>"
"Nah, fuck you Mr Empathy Man; empathise with this, motherfucker: you know that bitch still owes me money? You know how I wiped Sanda's slate a while back? I was going to do the same thing for Jenna at the same point, but... nah man, fuck that, and fuck her. She can wait another month. Shit just cost her a thousand dollars."
"<Ian'ing intensifies>"
"Nah, this shit ain't your fault. Thank you for telling me. You're a better friend than either of us deserve, but <waving both middle fingers at the webcam> now I'm fucking pissed." 

Two weeks ago I sent the following email to Jenna, BCC'ing Ian so there'd be a witness: 

Subject: "Loan cancellation"

"Jenna, 

Looking at my spreadsheet there's ~$3k left on your tab, but I just bumped up my rate to [my main client] and I'm sick of people owing me money so I'm calling it. Happy Birthday (or whatever occasion you prefer). 

Have a nice life. 

Regards, 

Peter." 

Six and a half hours ago I pinged Ian again: 

Thing is... I still love her, and I miss her to death, I desperately hope she gets better, and I sincerely wish her the nicest possible life. 

I won't pretend she didn't hurt me, but for all that I try to be the Ian'er man, I'm still bleeding where she pricked me, and I know I'll never be Ian enough to not twist the knife when, from hell's heart, I stabbingly take my revenge; cold as the stars which shone down uncaring whilst I sat with her in our driveway, or the tears which fell in the quiet stillness of that night just as they do now; for all that I'm relieved to have received silence as a reply, there remains a smouldering ember in my cold and otherwise-empty heart that still remembers the warmth of the arms wrapped around me whilst I grieved, and mine around her as we stared in awe, and desperately wants to see a reply in my inbox, even if all it said was: 

"Hello." 

Chase the sunset...

Musical accompaniment: Mr.Kitty - After Dark 

The sky over Black Mountain was a lithium fire with the Telstra Tower at its core as I crested the last rise on Kings Hwy before its descent into Queanbeyan, and for a moment I thought what a shame it was I hadn't got around to reconnecting the cameras so that moment might have been recorded. Remembering that I'd left Captain's Flat maybe 18 minutes beforehand, and another word for "record" in these circumstances can be "evidence", I decided it was for the best. I could have pulled over and pulled my phone out of my pocket, but why spoil the moment by actually dropping below the speed limit? 

I took a mental snapshot instead, and shared it with my Penpal (with whom I trade such photos on occasion out of thematic amusement) in spirit if not in deed, before indicating around a slow-moving SUV, clicked back up to 6th gear, and tucked back in behind the screen to coast the downhill descent. 

I've been meaning to go for a decent fang since I got back; there've been plenty of "not here to fuck spiders, let alone waste time" runs, but no decent excuses to work through the rev range and get my knee out terrorising a few apexes whilst spraying an atomised mist of ablated rubber. There are roads around Perth where you can get in a bit of a fang, but the ones that aren't a mission to get to are few, far between, depressingly short, and too well-known by Mr Plod. Canberra's diminutive size, situation amongst all these hills and valleys, and its connections to a plethora of country towns, means it's blessed with access to hundreds of kilometres of tarmac seemingly built for technical riding. Bringing the 'busa with me was a no-brainer, and sitting on my balcony enjoying my (barely) morning coffee I realised I had absolutely nothing better to do so it was time to adjust my suspension, throw some lube on the chain, switch the pillion seat for the aerodynamic hump, and get amongst it. 

Plus, I hadn't managed to make the trip to check out Sandra and Timo's new place in Captain's Flat, so I pinged her. 

"Pondering going for a fang this afternoon. Should I burn some rubber in your direction?"
"Sure."

I wouldn't usually spend an hour travelling each way for a cup of tea and a scone, which goes to show how far my priorities have skewed in the wrong direction; the last time I lived here Rick and I would think nothing of riding an hour out to Bungendore via Queanbeyan for a pie and an iced coffee, then looping back up the northern route along Macs Reef Road. These days I need an excuse, but as with so many things I've needed over the years that's something I know I can rely on Sandra to provide. Of course I delayed my homeward departure half an hour or so beyond what would be considered sensible, which is how I found myself chasing the sunset along Captain's Flat Road through the deepening twilight at speeds well above where the average Cessna would even consider stalling. 

It's times like that I feel ashamed of myself for keeping my beloved Hayabusa caged like a songbird in cities with all the straight lines, 90degree turns, and lumbering four-wheeled bovinity. Exiting the roundabout for the 43km run down Captain's Flat Rd earlier this afternoon I'd dropped into a racing crouch with the visor of my helmet a hands' span from the tip of the screen, relaxed my right wrist, told it "OK, you set the pace," and as we slipped into jinba ittai-sync we opened our throat, unleashed legs of cast-aluminium, sunk claws into the horizon and with an internal-combustion roar dragged it towards us. 

Heading back a few hours later I said "It's getting dark and there'll be roo's out so let's take it easy," and dragging my wrist downwards in response it whispered: 
"No." 
"You sure?" 
The answer came in a wave of need that was part hunger, part lust, and as the needles climbed on the dials in my lower peripheral our intake screamed "GO!!!!!!!" 

So we went, devouring the road in pursuit of the setting sun. 

Musical improvement: Mr.Kitty - After Dark (Iam Ian Remix) 

Sandra...

Once upon a time I was sitting in the passenger seat of Sandra's Supercharged Holden Calais and whilst cruising up Flemmington Rd past EPIC I turned to her and asked, "So hey, you and me. How 'bout it?" 

She looked at me with less surprise than someone who didn't know us might expect, laughed and replied, "Nah, wouldn't want to spoil the friendship!" 

"Yeah, fair enough," I shrugged, "figured it was worth asking. You ever change your mind, let me know. So what do you want to do this afternoon? Catch a film or something?"

She never did, which everyone agrees was for the best, and we've been the closest of friends ever after. 

The End. 

Except the story doesn't end there any more than that being where it started. If you want to define nearly two decades of friendship based on as many seconds that probably does the job well enough, so by all means fuck back off to "20 Second Movie Reviews" and feed your short attention span. The real story is like an iceberg - whilst everyone's distracted by the polar bear clinging on for dear life, underneath the surface it's all sea lion-on-penguin carnage whilst the iceberg desperately tries to keep that wayward polar bear from drowning. 

Trying to understand a friendship like Sandra and mine from the highlight-reel is like thinking you've got a good grasp on Fight Club after watching the Trailer; Jack doesn't get Marla at the end, but they do start what comes next together, and just like Marla Singer, Sandra aka Sandra J--- N----- met me at a very strange time of my life. 

I vividly remember the moment she walked into my life, and the back-room of The Civic Hotel, dressed- and dolled-up in a way which nailed the inflection-point of "out to impress" and "but not trying too hard" so perfectly that the only thing more frictionless than her smile was the chocolate wheel spinning to the rattling sound of heads swivelling on creaking necks to see if it landed on "You're A Winner!" or "Better Luck Next Life". I distinctly remember hearing the thud of her Blind Date for the evening Garrick's jaw hitting the floor, which conveniently ensured my inner monologue muttering "Goddamn..." went unheard. 

An hour or so later, after she and Skye (who had helped me broker the event) trounced us at pool at least twice, I turned to him and murmured "If you don't make a move by the end of the next game, I'm going to," which he did, shortly after which the chocolate wheel stopped on the Glittery Gold "Grand Prize" segment. It rested there for the next year or so until eventually she reached up and tipped it over into Monkey-Poo Brown "REJECTED!", but that's not my story to tell. 

By the time that ended, Skye and I had bounced off each other's atmospheres which put me on a collision-course with Amanda, but with interconnected friendship networks, Garrick moving into my share-house, and the general Brownian-motion of social networks when you're in your 20's, there was plenty of opportunity for us to become friends independently of anything else, and that we did. 

It was years later, after Garrick and my friendship dissolved over an altercation at a party where I shirtfronted him for his bullshit behaviour (and in doing prevented his being mauled by two defensive Staffies and a back-yard full of people who were about to beat him down far less gently than I was offering to), and my relationship with Amanda evaporated like dew in the light of dawn in spring, that I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of her Calais, wondering. 

We'd never both been single at the same time, and the usual trigger points for such things had come and gone. We were deep in what you might call "The Friend Zone" for reasons more defined by "the way these things happen" than anything else, but we were tighter than a wog's wallet, and thicker than thieves, and I'd never forgotten that moment I'd first laid eyes on her, or that no threat I ever offered Garrick had been anything less than sincere. 

Sandra could hoist the engine out of a Barina, strip it, replace the gaskets, and have it back on the road in a weekend; she could strip the pride off a bloke half-again her size and bury him in shame in a heartbeat. She'd had more different jobs than I could count, could apply herself seemingly to anything and master it; for all that she'd refer to herself as a dumb under-educated country girl, she could catch up to all the undergrad degrees in the room, and keep up, all whilst pulling out tree stumps, quoting the CWA Cookbook, volunteering for NSW RFS, and pulling a mean burn-out. Here I was sitting across from a girl who could emasculate a backyard full of blokey-blokes by simply being herself and the only reason she didn't run the grill was because she knew how much I enjoyed searing meat, so she let me. 

All of that aside, "She's pretty, and I'm pretty funny," I thought, "and she's awesome, and I tell awesome stories, and she seems to like me, and I'd really like to know." We got along so effortlessly, smoother than cruising in a long-wheelbase tourer riding on well-balanced suspension. "That's what love's all about, isn't it?" 

I was right, but not in the way I was thinking at the time. 

So I asked, the wheel landed on a Warm Amber segment marked "Yeah, nah, but" and we carried on our merry way rejoicing. 

OK, I'll admit I was disappointed, but I refused to let that get in the way, let alone show, and the rejoicing followed in due course so for the purpose of selective-narrative let's just accept it as so. 

A year or so later I was in London having what would best be described as "a pretty hard time", and Sandra was the one who'd Skype me in the depths of my night whilst halo'd in afternoon sunshine from her front verandah and talk me down off the ledge again and again, saying "Remember who you are!". She was the one who told me: 

"remember this, one of the most endearing qualities that you have it that you want to be better and stronger than you were and you are always striving to be happy...... you are better than you believe yourself to be, you just have to look at yourself in the mirror and see what the rest of us see"
the zen art of looking for answers that you know don't exist... 

When I gave up and came home, she had a room set up for me with my own bed made and ready for me to fall into, and a set of keys waiting in the letterbox to let myself in after Scott picked me up from the airport. Sitting across from him at the table I recognised from the background of all those Skype calls I watched her come running up the path in her Independent Property Group pant-suit, sandy-blonde curls bouncing cherubic in the afternoon sun so her feet seemed to barely touch the ground, and the moment she threw herself into my arms I knew I was Home. 

Then she went inside and put the kettle on. 

Interlude:
Ricky: "How's your Sandra post going?"
"I wasn't going to do this in chronological order - with Smeghead I bounced around a lot.
Still, tears aside, I'm liking how this is flowing.
LOL..
'tears'
'flowing'
Sometimes I'm so sharp I cut myself."

A couple of months later her share-house in Garran dissolved and I followed her to Allison's place in Amaroo. In 2009 it seemed the edge of the world; Forde was a Display Village and Bonner the glint in an urban-planner's eye, but Buckingham Palace was home on the other side of Horse Park Drive from the dream of First Home Owner's Grants clad in bucolic pasture. The Mums ruled by fiat, with a Hoover-branded Sceptre held in bright-yellow cleaning glove-clad fists, but whilst I was woken every Saturday morning by the beating of a vacuum-head against my bedroom door my world was was filled with the cooing of a Laughing Turtledove, a kettle never far from boiling, and (when I felt motivated) the smell of fresh-baked scones. 
We had a freeloader who's name became FUCK YA! in my memory after Sandra tore strips off her one night (Allison and I hid in the corridor throughout prevaricating whether to intercede or break out the Corpse Disposal Kit). 
FUCK YA! departed shortly thereafter in Absolutely Not Suspicious Circumstances, to be replaced by Skye. 
The Porkening and The Porkening II: I Porked Them Good will forever go down in legend; not just because I cook a mean pork-roast, but because they resulted in 15 Minutes Of Silence. 
It was a good life, but as with all good things... 

I met Emma on a trip to Perth, and after an intense long-distance romance wrought of loneliness and a desperation for connection I found myself driving across the Nullarbor with Scott in the passenger seat of my tetris-packed Audi and Sandra waving tearfully from the doorstep of Buckingham Palace in my rear-view mirror. 

Musical interlude: Gotye - Save Me

Years later Emma was a traumatic memory, Jenna was my here-and-now, and my phone rang with Sandra's name on the Caller ID. 

"What are you doing on September 9th?" 
I think for a moment before answering, "Drinking Hefeweizen Dunkel in Berlin."
"What?"
"Hey, you asked, and on that day I'll be in Berlin so statistically... Why? You didn't go and do something silly like booking your wedding without checking with me first or something did you?"
"... HOW THE FUCK AM I GOING TO GET MARRIED WITHOUT YOU GIVING A SPEECH AND INSULTING EVERYONE?
"And, yes.
"Bastard!" 
What can I say? I have something of a reputation. 
"OK, let me think... actually, I have an idea."
"Oh?" 
"Leave it with me."

I hang up, and call Scott. 

"Dude!" 
"Dude, so I got a call from Sandra..."
"Yeah? So you going to get back for the wedding?" 
"Yeah about that," I explain the scheduling conflict, "but I got an idea. I was thinking: how about I write something and get you to read it?"
"Yeah I can do that. We've got time. Get it over to me, we'll workshop it, make it happen."
"Yeah, about that. I was thinking, y'know, for comedic value, maximum impact, what if I put something together and send it over to a 3rd party and they hand it to you in a sealed envelope and you open it 'The Winner Is...'-style on stage and you read it sight-unseen." 
"You... but... what... dammit! How do I let you talk me into this shit?"
"Because you know it'll be awesome, man. It always is."
"... fucking..."
"Leave it with me." 

8 months later, after hours of writing all of that and more into the script, editing, rehearsing on passing strangers who knew none of these people, pouring more than a decade of adoration onto the page, agonising, culling, adding, removing, then editing some more, performing it again and again until I wasn't just sure it sounded right, but that it would sound like it was me saying it when read by Scott, Allison handed Scott a sealed envelope in front of nearly 100 people. He opened it, and proceeded to read, whilst in Germany I drank Hefeweizen Dunkel and waited for scantily-clad himbo-assassins from the Firefighters Calendar to descend and turn me into a greasy red smear on the Fredrichschain pavement because from the far side of the globe I had managed to Rickroll a wedding (for the second time) by proxy so adeptly that even the proxy didn't see it coming (although Skye, I'm told, caught it 5 or 10 seconds out). 

"Has it happened? How did it go?" I messaged, anxious to know how much longer I had to kiss my girlfriend goodbye. 
"Yes, and Sandra says 'You're an unbelievable bastard', and 'she loves you'."
"I love her too."

To this day, the feeling remains mutual ever after.