Hello, favourite

I am *very* fond of a Windsor Terrace resident.

You and Only You

Brooklynites waiting for the B63 bus reminisce on love found, and lost.

From a series of interviews spanning three days.



Louise P.

SA: Louise, who was your first love?

Louise: (Laughs) My first love? Well...when I was a girl, 16 or 17, I loved a boy named George. He was my first love! Oh my, that was a long time ago. It was 1941. . George was a gentleman for a boy of his age. They moved up here from Georgia, I believe, and he had manners like that. Southern. He called me Miss Louise. Aw, that made me laugh! We don't talk like that in Brooklyn. My family is Italian. He would bring me little trinkets, flowers. We'd go up on the roof of the building I lived in, my family lived in. Oh my parents liked him fine, but they would send my younger brother up there with us, to keep an eye on me! (Laughs)

SA: Have you ever thought about trying to find him?

Louise: Oh no...no. Never. He's married with a family, I'm sure. The memories I have of George...I wouldn't think of touching that. I want it just the way it is. They say you never forget your first love. I guess I never will. If I haven't by now,then I never will.




Arthur R.


SA: Arthur, how did we meet?

Arthur: Cathy (a mutual neighbor from my 5th Avenue days) introduced us. She said, "Arthur, this young woman is a whiz at
making ice cream. I though to myself, "Shoot! I thought you were bringing her by to be my new girlfriend!"

SA: Arthur!

Arthur: (chuckles) And later, you brought me some ice cream. It was peach.

Sarah: I made peach ice cream for most of the neighborhood last summer. I was buying peaches by the dozens.

Arthur: (pointing to a car going by) There goes Mike Mancuso. They live on Carroll Street. He has a beautiful wife, just beautiful.

Sarah: Arthur, what has life taught you about love?

Arthur: Oh my...Well...the big thing is, you have to look for real love. Not some flavor of the week. I married my wife because she we laughed together and she could dance. (Laughs) I knew it was real. And we were married 54 years before she passed on. And we had such a life. We saw California, Canada, Mexico, Arizona, Florida. We raised four good kids. She was such a woman. Beautiful and with a head on her shoulders. We laughed all along the way, through our life together. Danced too. Can you dance?

Sarah: I know how to merengue.

Arthur: Let's see what you're made of.

(Arthur and SA dance together next to the bus stop as incredulous teenagers look on)

Sarah: Arthur, where are you taking the bus today?

Arthur: Doctor.




Man with a cane, about 75, name unknown

SA: What can you tell me about love?

Man: Love is a very deep thing. It's very personal, and it's private.

(Several minutes of silence. The bus pulls up. Man gets up to get on the bus, but at the last second turns and grips my hand, hard.)

Man: If you find love, you hold on to it. Hold on to it.



*This update typed while listening to the Beach Boys.

There is only air

Australia, Part II.

Cameron dashes around the house with one shoe on, hair rumpled, phone ringing, mumbling and cursing under his breath. There are only three trains out of Yarraville every hour. From the kitchen table, still on my first cup of tea, I sit watching him. The house is suddenly quiet and I think he's left. But here he is in the kitchen again. I look up from the trashy Australian tabloid magazine I'm reading. "I've missed the train again," he says sheepishly. He fills the electric kettle, flicks it on. That's when we start laughing. On the days that he works at home, I never leave him alone. I bring him bowls of cherries, fresh loaves of sourdough from the bakery in town, chunks of Toblerone. I wave to him from outside the kitchen windows, startling him, to come out to the backyard and hear a woman two houses down singing "New York, New York" loudly in her living room. I pop into the office room, where he's busy on his laptop, just to show him something silly in a magazine, or tell him what the Italian lady down the block said, or to ask him to walk into Yarraville with me. I adore him. "Tell me everything" I say to him once, on the train. But he just laughs; Birdy is secretive. "Guess what, Birdy?" I say over and over during those two weeks, before I blurt out my latest inane little bit of news. Like a little kid. Sweet Birdy: if he minds these constant interruptions, he's too kind to show it.

I walk all over Melbourne, miles every day, all kinds of neighborhoods. I start a new vacation hobby: talking to people who work at hair salons. From the fanciest salons to the loveliest old barbershops, I go in to chat and to ask questions about Australian hair trends and the secrets people reveal when they're getting their hair cut. Sometimes someone offers me tea. One place gives me a beautiful comb, which I accidentally leave at a park.

The house in Yarraville is haunted. We are sure it is. There are odd sounds when it's dark, and Jess and her friend saw an old man. Or maybe it was an old man and old woman. Ghosts? In any case, I'm terrified to walk around at night. One evening at home, we are about to sit down to dinner and I tell Jess and Birdy that I had a dream there was something bad about the little ceramic head that's in the backyard. (The head must be from a little lawn statue owned by previous tennants, but there's no sign of his body anywhere). Jess puts her hands on my shoulders and begins jumping up and down frantically. "When we found that head," she says, out of breath, "I had the feeling, this is where it's all coming from." She says, "We have to get rid of it." Silently, we all stand up together. It's a ceremony now, a mission. We're laughing, but I believe it too. The head must go. It's sitting innocently on the ground there in the backyard. We scoop it up and walk purposefully to the front yard, where the bin is. The path to the front yard is dark. I reach for Jess's hand. The head is tossed in the bin, the three of us all peering in to watch it drop. It makes a deep clanging sound when it hits the bottom. Back in the house, we rummage around for candles. It seems like the right thing to do, a kind of farewell for the ghosts. And protection from them. The beer is poured and dinner begins. We're giddy by now. Loud and ridiculous. The feeling of relief is palpable.

At the end of a long alley in Chinatown, there is bar with samosas and a bartender with a lisp. Inside it's one of those bars that's so dark it makes you forget what time it is outside. It's hot and I'm there for a beer. I strike up a conversation with a man at the bar. He works in an office, thinks New York is overrated. And he has a car, he says, it's just outside. We could roll down the windows and drive out of town. We could go to the beach. And it's not the thought of driving off with a complete stranger that is the immediate reason I say thanks so much, I'm sorry, I have to be going. The real reason is ridiculous; this man is wearing a Richmond Tigers shirt, I am a brand new but already avowed St. Kilda fan.

Everyone else who stayed over at his house last night has gone home, and I am watching Connal Parsley make us breakfast. Eggs and bacon, tomatoes fried in just a bit of pomegranate oil. And maybe it was that last scotch as the sun was starting to come up, or the records we listened to last night, or that it's summer outside, but by the time Connal turns around something has changed. And he can see it in my face. He stops talking suddenly, plate in his hand. "Are you alright?" he asks. I tell him yes. Yes, I'm fine. See, I'm smiling. We sit down to eat. Later, when he drives away in that battered old car, I watch from the sidewalk in front of his house until it's gone. Then I turn and sprint down the sidewalk in the other direction to catch my tram.

On my last Saturday in Melbourne, Cameron and Jess and I drive up into the Dandenong Mountains outside the city. And it becomes, without meaning to, one of those perfect days you remember for years, the details getting blurrier and blurrier but that feeling of everything being exactly right still intact. It's so easy to forget what fresh air is like, what it tastes like. But it's all I can think of while Jess and I are chasing Cameron down a steep path, all of us laughing, on our way to a waterfall. We climb up on a big rock to eat the cake we've saved from lunch, an amazing lunch. The water is freezing. Cameron dips the top of his hair in it and then shakes his head all over like a golden retriever, laughing. There are kookaburras here, and some kind of green and red bird that looks amazing to me, just flying around wild, in such vivid color, but they don't impress anyone else; they're common here. The afternoon's ending and we need to get back. And there's something about driving on a day like this that seems to makes music sound better than it ever has before. Song after song. From the back seat, Cameron says suddenly, "It's the penultimate day of summer." Sunlight is streaming through the trees, dappling the road in front of us. Valleys and hills and the bay glistening in the distance. It's so beautiful I'm speechless. When I look over at Jess and Cameron I can tell that the same thing has happened to them. The car is quiet until we're almost back to Melbourne.

Jess drops me off at the airport. I make her go to all the stupid gift shops, just to keep her with me a few more minutes. But it's time to go. It's time. I step through the silver sliding doors that lead to customs. She's still standing there, my friend Jess, just a few feet away. And she's lovely. I pause for a second to wave goodbye one more time, and I'm thinking about the backyard at Hodgkinson Street, Connal's basil plants, the bike rides in the middle of the night when no one else in the world was awake. All the little things that brought me to Melbourne, the little twists of fate. The things we know and don't know about our friends. The things we'd do for them. I smile at Jess, blow her a kiss.

Only when the doors close do I bury my face in my hands.



*Typed while listening to The Zebras (Thanks, Marky).

The Fog of Trujillo

Australia. Part I.

The electronic doors in customs slide open and we step through, exhausted and blinking in the sudden sunlight; it's early in the morning here in Melbourne. And suddenly Jess and Cameron are there, right in front of me, and everything's all blurry with joy. I throw my arms around them. Outside, only 20 feet away, it's summer. Jess is holding the list of things she and Cameron have planned for us to do. The possiblities are endless. Jess puts her arm around my shoulder. "Time for breakfast," she says.

I ride to the end of every train line, just to see what's there. I write my favorite station names on the back of my hand with a pen I stole from Cameron. Diggers Rest. Batman. Sunshine. Craigieburn. Crowds of teenagers fill the platforms in the afternoon. Uniforms and ipods and glitter nail polish. I love the old ladies with tanned faces and flowered sundresses, sitting primly at the Yarraville station. I ask them questions, anything, to talk to them. "What's that?" I ask a tiny, ancient woman with a cane, pointing out the train window at an ugly and non-descript building. "That's a meat pie factory, Dearie" she says sweetly.

Marky and Marty meet me on the train platform. They have been in the studio for days, finishing their new album, and they are tired. We have lunch at the only cafe near the studio, the amusingly named New York Tomato, on the corner of New and York streets. The waiter will tell us several times in the next few days that his boss is thinking of changing it.
There are months and months of gossip to catch up on: babies on the way and sloppy seconds and mutual friends who get in hilarious scrapes. I sit across from them, laughing, at this sunny table here in the middle of North Richmond. In the middle of nowhere. I love them. These boys I so rarely get to see.

We spend the afternoon in the alley behind the studio, drinking bottle after bottle of beer and silkscreening t-shirts for the upcoming Candle Records showcase. Sunlight filters down between the buildings. When the shirts are done and drying on the line, Marky and I look around for random things to attack with the screen. There is now a very weathered old armchair in that alley that says, in bright white letters, The Lucksmiths. Inside the studio, we sit with Pilko and listen to the same songs over and over and over. And it's funny how different their hearing is than mine; so close to music, they hear blips and sounds and glitches that I would never notice. To me, these new songs sound perfect.

Cameron's band, Architecture in Helsinki, is playing a free show in the park. Marky and I walk there together, singing little made-up songs. It's dusk, the end of a day at the end of the summer. The most beautiful night in the world. Jess's grandmother is there, an octogenarian birthday girl sitting calmly in a lawnchair in the middle of a noisy crowd. She squeezes my hands and smiles up at me. Jess's family has spread a picnic out on blankets. They order me to eat. Later, a chocolate cake will be pulled out, secretly, and candles lit. "Turn around!" everyone will call out. And I tell myself fiercely that I am never allowed to forget her face, how beautiful it is, when she sees that cake. When we leave, she pulls me in close for a kiss. She smells like lavender. "Happy birthday," I whisper in her ear.

The Lucksmiths play a show later that same night. I haven't seen them play for more than a year, and I'm happy, really happy, to see them play again. So it's a mystery why there are tears streaming down my face in the middle of the set, tears I'm trying hard to hide with the help of a crumpled cocktail napkin. But it's not really a mystery at all; these songs are old memories. I am standing in Melbourne, Australia and I'm acutely aware that things can be thrown off by a split second, a missed glance, the wrong season, lack of experience, bad friends, heartbreak and happiness. The way things turn out is so tenuous. So gorgeously precarious that I have to cross my arms across my chest to keep from shaking. If things hadn't happened the way they did, I wouldn't be here, in the summer, laughing like crazy with Marky and Marty, with a sunburn and fingernails caked with paint from the the t-shirts we screened earlier that afternoon. There wouldn't be Jess and Birdy, muddy-kneed, planting succulents in the front yard on Sunday afternoons, Tropicalia on the record player and the jar of Tasmanian honey and loaf of fresh bread on the counter. There wouldn't be Julia, and how she makes me laugh, and the way we joke about my ridiculous crushes, and how I always feel like dancing when I see her. And I wouldn't be standing here with you in the back in the dark with these bottles of Coopers green and those loud girls in front of us laughing with Darren Hanlon. This first night of not knowing you. I was thinking about all of these things and how they worked out so beautifully when I turned to you and said "This is perfect."

And you nodded. Perfect.

Marky is late for dinner. But this is the final night to finish the new album; Marky leaves for Tasmania tomorrow, and everything needs to be done before then. Here on Hodgkinson Street, Erin is making pumpkin risotto, Connal makes fresh corn and guacamole. I make cocktails. Marky and Kellie get home, and the kitchen gets loud with laughter. I have brought vodka and blood orange juice over, and I make them drinks. "What's this called?" Marky asks. "A paper moon," I tell him, making the name up on the spot. "Really? he asks, and I say yes. Really. But he's giving me such a funny smile. He can tell I'm lying, but it's warm outside, and it doesn't matter. We decide to eat in the backyard. Kellie fiddles with some plugs. "Look!" she says, and suddenly there are stars everywhere; the giant palm tree in the backyard is glowing with little fairy lights. "It's amazing," I tell her. "I know," she says. She and I slip out the back door and under the palm tree where there are old railroad ties that serve as benches. Squinny the cat is furiously hunting mice in the vines and plants at the edge of the yard, but when I pull him onto my lap he decides to stay for a while. Marky appears in the doorway, balancing two plates and a glass. Grinning. "Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends" he says.

The house has been shared by this extended group of friends for seven years, but now it's being packed up and dismantled room by room and everyone is moving. Marky is in love; a few months from now, he'll be living in London. Things are looking so good for you, I tell him in the note I leave in his bag the next morning. But tonight is a little wistful; it's his last night in this house, the last night in his old room. Late that night, before we all go to bed, Marky puts a copy of the just-finished Lucksmiths songs on the battered old stereo and he and I stand there, silently, arms crossed, listening to them. When the last song ends, he walks quietly to his room to finish packing.

*This update typed while listening to Country Got Soul.

Frenchy, I'm faking

It's summer here in Melbourne. Valentine's Day.

Jess has gone off to work, wearing the new clothes we picked out for her yesterday. Cameron and I are sleeping in.

There's lavender growing in the front yard. Succulents growing in the back. We bought some native Australian grasses yesterday to plant along the side of the house. And everywhere, it's sunny. Summer. "I can't even tell you how happy I am to see you," I tell Jess after dinner last night. So I don't. I just put my arms around her shoulders and squeeze as hard as I can.

*Listening to The Salteens.

Second Hand News

The late afternoon light is fading in Brooklyn. Cold air slips in from the spaces around the air conditioner; the cat's fur crackles with static electricity. The neighbors are kissing on the fire escape. In the area where our backyards all meet, there is a gray cloud; someone has burned their rice. My friend Ben and I are lying on my bed, looking up at the tin ceiling. He has made us cinnamon toast and we are balancing mugs of tea in the crooks of our elbows. On the way over, Ben passed a stack of Seventeen magazines out for recycling, and we are reading them now, flipping through pages which are still ice cold from being outside. I like the embarrassing stories, the tragic "it happened to me" narratives, the candy colors of everything. Ben is frowning his way through fall fashion spreads and skin care guides. It is a teenage sleepover scene, magazines and plates spread all over, Rumours playing softly in the background on repeat, my socks not matching. "The only thing missing is nail polish," I tell him.

As I'm starting to fall asleep, he begins the sad story of his friend E., whose boyfriend left the apartment they shared in October. All of the boyfriend's things remained there until December. Haunted relics gathering dust. Right before Christmas, he showed up suddenly, hand in hand with a friend of hers. The three of them stared at each other. In October, the friend had been the first to say, E. recalled, that the break-up was a good thing. Quietly, the boyfriend and friend packed up his stuff, while E. wept in the bathroom. "Then what happened?" I ask Ben. "That's it," he says. "That's the end."

It's an awful story. I should be cringing, frowning, shaking my head. But I start laughing. Ben stares. I am laughing and laughing, my tea sloshing dangerously in its cup. He starts to laugh too, hesitantly, then louder. He knows why he's laughing, and he doesn't. And then we are laughing hysterically, we can't stop, laughter crashes around the room. Magazines flutter to the floor. Ben looks up at the ceiling again. To no one in particular he says, "This is the most beautiful time of day in the winter. And the most tragic." He turns back to his magazine. I smile into my mug of tea. The last bit of sunset has caught the curtains, and for a moment, they are glowing. The room is flooded with these last little shreds of light. I reach over to turn the volume up. And then, suddenly, it's dark.


*Typed while listening to Jens Lekman.

Everyone needs an editor

The sun sets around 3:30 in Wisconsin.

My parents have met many people I know in Brooklyn. But today, we are sitting around the kitchen table, playing a game I made up called "What do you think of my friends that you will probably never meet?". The table is covered with photos. We are drinking gin and tonics.


Jess

Mom: She's pretty.
Dad: Cute girl.
Mom: The girl from Australia, right?
Me: Yeah. She's lovely in every possible way. And she makes the most amazing porridge.
Mom: I like porridge.
Dad: Do people still eat porridge?
Everyone else: Yes.
Brother: What's up with the strange expression?
Me: These pictures were taken all together (brings out polaroid of Fred and one of me) at a show. The opening band was horrible and played for an hour and a half. So these are pictures capturing our misery.

Fred

Dad: He's anguished.
Mom: He's tormented!
Me: It was a *really* bad band.
Brother: What band?
Me: Don't remember. We were there to see the Handsome Family.
Dad: Jon, you should ask Fred how to grow a good beard.
Me: Yeah, patchy. Your beard makes it look like you have malaria.
Brother: Shut up! What does that even mean?
Me: You know, like you're stranded in the jungle, sick, with a bad beard. "Oh my God, it's that explorer we all thought was dead! But he's alive and he's all gaunt with malaria and he has a horrible beard!"
Brother: You're insane.
Mom: Pass the salsa please.
Dad: So what does Fred do?
Me: Advertising. And he's a heart throb in Asia.
Dad: Who isn't?


Alex

Brother: What's he doing?
Me: Cooking. That's ravioli. He makes them.
Mom: Good cook?
Me: Yeah. But his wife is better.
Dad: I used to dream of having a bunch of friends who are all good cooks. And all I'd have to do is bring the wine.
Me: That's your life. Your dream has come true.
Mom: So Alex lives in Brooklyn?
Me: Yeah. But he's from Georgia.
Dad: (singing) Nobody knoooooows, the trouble I've seen...Nobody but Jeeeeeeesus.


Mario

Mom: He looks nice. Why is his shirt over his mouth like that?
Me: Dunno. Just for fun.
Dad: Maybe he's hiding a horrible scar.
Mom: Mario is Japanese, right?
Me: Japanese and Mexican.
Dad: Why 'Mario' then?
Me: He was named after the doctor who delivered him.
Dad: No one ever names their kids after me.
Brother: 'Cause your name is Herb.
Everyone: hahahahahaha
Mom: Do you think Mario likes canoeing?
(pause)
Me: Um, I really have no idea? Probably? Everyone likes canoes, don't they?
Dad: What's Mario like?
Me: Wonderful.

Gary

Mom: He looks 18!
Me: Really? He's much older! But maybe he'll be flattered you said that.
Dad: He has a nice profile. So he's a soccer player? (He's holding a soccer ball in the photo --ed.)
Me: He has a bad back. But when he does kick a soccer ball around, it's great, because he's like 50 miles of limbs all jogging and kicking and passing.
Mom: Yes, he's tall.
Dad: He's looking off to the side. (In deep thoughtful voice) What are you looking at, Gary? What are you thinking about?
Me: One of Gary's songs is being used in a Kleenex commercial.
(Note: Kleenex is made in my hometown. It is sacred.)
Mom: Oh! Wow!
Dad: He is a friend to paper products everywhere.

Peggy

Mom: And who's this?
Brother: Give me her phone number.
Me: This is Peggy Wang.
Dad: Peggy Wang. What is Peggy's secret?
Me: I don't know. But one thing about her is that she is the Peggy Wang of the East. I know another Peggy Wang in San Francisco, Peggy Wang West. And they know each other! We thought when they met, the world would blow up, but it didn't, and now they're good friends.
Dad: Why is she drinking PBR?
Me: Peggy's young. She doesn't know better.





Dad: So why are we probably never going to meet any of these gorgeous children?
Me: Who knows? Maybe you will. In Brooklyn someday.
Mom: If they're ever passing through Neenah, tell them to stop by and say hello.
Brother: No one "passes through" Neenah, Wisconsin.
Me: (laughing) That's very sweet though, Moms.
Brother: Who wants another drink?
(Everyone raises their glasses)


*This update typed while listening to Dressy Bessy.