2001-02-24 :: 18:09:01

my tryst begins

Soundtrack: Gomez, Liquid Skin Sampler; Owsley, Owsley

Here I am, updating from Melbourne, updating on a goddamn iMac, updating on a crap midget keyboard. Hi, hello, how are you flipside of the world? How are you, people round these parts? Sick of looking at the previous entry, no doubt. Me too, especially since it's now a draft behind. Keep that in mind if you're reading "This Boy" now, I'm not updating it here in Diaryland's little text window -- though I did write it there.

So three flights later, newness. That's what we all want, anyway, more, bigger, better, faster, cheaper, newer. I finished rereading The Beach on the way over here, marking it up this time, and reconfimed it as my favorite book. It was kind of funny to read about people traveling to escape twenty-something ennui and angst while doing the exact same thing myself. I love that book; I envy Alex Garland's effortless text.

Better still on the irony-o-meter, I read Survivor as well, which I just finished today. Nothing like reading a book about a guy in a plane talking into the blackbox while preparing to crash over the Australian outback when you're flying over the Pacific to the same continent. Survivor was kind of like Requiem for a Dream, which I just saw a few days ago: punishing and unrelenting, but when you're done, you're grateful for the beating. Oddly, Survivor was mentioned to me by a redheaded girl named Gwen, and there's a redhead named Gwen in the book. On top of that, I had some strange prophetic assumption that it would end midsentence, and sure enough --

The people next to me were kind of disturbed by my reading choice, but the flights were quite uneventful, just long and muscle-cramping. Enough hours in the same place, the same chair, feeling as if you aren't moving, walking to and from the trash compactor bathroom, and you're across the globe before you know what happened.

Now, staking my claim here, I wait to open my mouth, wary of the only thing that'll blow my cover: my mortifyingly dull accent. I enjoy a nearly two to one conversation rate, and being legal to drink in a pub drinking scene. It's funny how people outside of the U.S. think of Americans. Aussies give you shit because your money converts so well, but no one seems too poor or needy. We're all louder than the natives here, it's almost embarrassing. I have to keep asking people to repeat themselves, half due to the accent, half due to the lightness of their speaking. I met this Belgian girl, Melissa, yesterday in line to get our outdoors trips booked. She told me that she thought of America as a place where you could say whatever you want. People are open there, she said. Haha, I thought. I told her that was not really the case, that just like anywhere else, there are little social games, moving pawns back and forth until someone takes a stab at something really important and meaningful -- a knight, a bishop, a rook. A queen, a king. All it takes is one heartbreak, one backstab, and up comes that wall of petty defenses you spend forever trying to tear back down just so someone will connect with you again. When I told her what I pay for a year of college, she nearly fell over. It was two orders of magnitude greater than her tuition, a few hundred versus tens of thousands. She is the eldest of eleven children. Who, besides tabloid fodder, moronic, selfish, fertility treatment couples has eleven kids in the States?

I ate lunch at the Comfortably Numb Cafe today, alone on my first walkabout. It was really pleasant, open windows, breeze coming in over my chicken skewers, my chocolate butterscotch cake, my beer. I strolled around trying to find a Thomas Cook to get some laundry cash, relying on hotel concierges around the city to guide me, but they were all closed when I finally got near one. My little mission was a failure (my best so far was picking up my photos, three rolls, all good), but it was useful for getting some bearings, and it was fun to watch the unbelievably young skaters in the YMCA skate park. Oh, there's Lonsdale, there's Elgin, there's Exhibition, there's Swanston. There's the tram back home. The city of Melbourne has been nothing but appealing so far, clean, well-organized, full of interesting things. But I wonder if I will eventually tire of it, if once the the infatuation period runs out, I'll be wondering where the next big thing is. I don't think I'll be there long enough, so I'm not terribly worried.

When people asked me why I went abroad, I said it was like I was in a relationship with college. At first we had wild attraction, crazy nights that turned into crazy mornings, blind joy. But it gives way to stability, which is paired with a certain boredom (a certainty boredom?), an unavoidable effect of the relationship's maturation. Now, a few years into it, we've decided to see other people. She's checking out the freshmen; I've moved to another school for a bit of a fling. I'm sure that in the end, we'll get back together, happily ever after, sure of our marriage, but glad we tested the waters.

For now, here's to the beginning of something different.

[ a few things fixed 21/03/01 3:00AM Victorian Time ]