So. I wrote a play, and here we are, me between two talented theatre people who apparently liked the script enough to want to help out, and in front of a few friends who were curious enough to come along to the cafe to hear the thing. I was only reading because the guy organised to read couldn't make it and I had no time to find someone else. Was I nervous? I've never read a damned thing of mine in public, so yes, I was a little bit nervous, especially as I've seen and reviewed the stage performances of the two people either side of me, and as performers, they are a little bit awesome. Pretty fucking awesome, actually.
It was quite a strange experience. The two words I kept repeating as my mantra when writing were Personal, Universal.
Meaning that I want it to feel so very personal, which it is. But I want it to have universal appeal, which I think it does. There is much truth and honesty in the subject matter, but also some fiction. It's three dialogues between three people, none of which ever happened. The essence though, the essence of the dialogues, is so very real.
It was strange that I ended up doing the reading. I know I wasn't of the calibre of Dayna and Steph, but I think I did okay. There was a funny moment for me... my character reads a very short story to another character, and I was so focused on the lines I was reading at the moment that I forgot about this part. This short story, Love You, See You Soon, it always fucks with me emotionally. Oh no, I thought, this story is coming up...
My character got to the story, and he let go. I let go. I read one of my most emotional short stories to a small audience with enough feeling to bring tears to the eyes of some of those listening, but without tearing up myself. I don't know what happened there, but I was relieved. A little bit of magic happened.
What happens next with the play? I don't know. I've entered it into a thing and it would be nice if it won that thing, but I have to be realistic and think about what to do if it doesn't do well in the thing.
Yesterday morning I woke up anxious and depressed and thought fuck it, we did the reading and that was fun, I'm done with this play. Then I watched the recording a friend had made of it, and I was back. In the recording, there was more laughter than I remembered, because I was focused on the reading. I think the drama works too. Watching Steph when she was not reading, her face and her giggles were like a barometer of what was going on in the play.
I don't know what happens next. Other than I know I have to start writing the next play.
12 months after starting it, I have finished my play, titled Finnish.
It shouldn't have taken me this long. It's only 85 or so pages of writing. But in parts, it is intense, and this has been an intense year. Such extremes of love and the questioning of love, self doubt that brought me to the edge of some very dark places because the person I love most... I had hurt her and she wanted to hurt me. She achieved that goal. I realised that I am, this late in life, still as lacking in self-confidence as I was as young boy. When I was a young boy, my self-confidence was destroyed. Unlike a lizard's tail, it seems your self-confidence never grows back. You cover up this lack of self-confidence late in life... you learn some tricks. But when it gets kicked out of you again, you realise that you are still that lonely little boy.
Writing this play was a coping mechanism. Writing this play was a way of trying to understand things. I really didn't do anything wrong. I loved outside of the accepted parameters of love maybe... meaning just that I love my friends. I have few friends, I am solitary man, but sometimes these random strangers break through and I find myself seeing these individuals fully, understanding them fully, accepting them fully, and loving them fully.
And that is what my play is about. It's about the nature of love and friendship. It's about can society accept alternative forms of love and friendship.
Can a 50 year old man have a beautiful friendship with a 25 or 30 year old woman without it being about sex or lust. This a valid question. It's also about the nature of love. What, exactly, is love, and how do we judge love. Maybe love can be pure, even though you are judging it from your world view. Just because you think love is about lust, it isn't necessarily so. Sometimes love is just about acceptance. You just accept them, and you embrace them, because you love them. Love is a mystery.
So I've finished a play about love. It's maybe the rawest thing I've ever written, and I tend to go for raw. I write to make myself cry or to laugh, and I have done both in writing this thing.
Just like in the closing of the third act of the play, I have no idea what happens next.
I want to go
He said
I really don't want
You to go
She said
But I need to go
I said
Please don't go
She said
I don't want to go,
I said
Even though
For the longest time
I've wanted to go.
And now I have gone
So you have
She said
You have gone forever
I miss you and love you
And somehow
He whispered back
From the forever
I miss you too
And I'll miss you forever
And ever,
My forever love.
It's sunny down there, down on Eddy Street,
Tenderloin. Saddest place I've ever been. Hotel's good, with my view
and my privilege and my escape plan, and my temporary status as a
tourist.
They shout at each other, down on Eddy Street.
There's drama, always fucking drama. I watch the sadness and drama
unfold beneath that giant mural of the guy and his microscope,
looking microscopically at his own heart, ripped it seems by his own
hands, from his own chest. He's really checking this heart thing out,
and I wonder what he makes of it all.
I see two people, down
on Eddy street. Fucked. Fucking fucked. Their lives are fucked. They
are fucked. Right now they are chemically fucked and the hedonist
that I am thinks good on you, you've found a way of being fucked on
the streets of Tenderloin, San Francisco. Good on you. It's not the
Summer Of Love, but good on you.
I watch, fascinated, from my
privileged place, as he does this basically, fundamentally beautiful
thing: he takes his filthy rag from his filthy bag, and she screams
what the fuck are you doing? He says kind words and goes about his
task. But what is he fucking doing? One corner of his filthy rag goes
up on ledge, stabilised by a heavy can. A luggage bag stabilises the
next corner on the same ledge. On the ground, stumble and stagger, a
sun couch folded forms the third corner, and I see it now.
He
tucks the fourth corner through the pop-up handle of the luggage case
(lost or theirs – who knows?), and there is shelter of sorts
against the sun.
And it strikes me that I am actually seeing
beauty. This broken man is doing the decent thing, that thing we all
aspire to: he is providing shelter for someone he loves, down on Eddy
Street.
They pull their things inside the shade he has made.
Sanctuary, in a harsh part of town in this wealthy city. They
scramble inside, and others stumble by, some glancing inside, most
stumbling carelessly by, focused on the own pointlessness of their
own pointless day.
The guy's legs pop out from the beneath the
shelter he has so carefully constructed on this shitty pavement down
on Eddy Street. Why go perpendicular, I think from my Ivory Tower,
when you can stretch out horizontally?
Then a cop, a young
guy with a take-away coffee, he stops and peers properly inside.
There are words, a shake of his head. No way, his body language says,
no fucking way. You can't do this, you have to move on.
Eventually
the guy who built the shelter, he kind of stumbles from his shelter,
down on Eddy Street, and he pulls up his trousers and buckles up his
belt. Cop leans on the street sign as he waits for these losers to
pack up their stuff. The girl finally emerges, shade cloth is pulled
down, things thrown into bags as thoughts are shouted, and they get
on with their day. Not here, not today.
At Gold Beach, Oregon Somewhere nearby, Fires burn. Heavy smoke darkens the light, And in the hazy smoke, Shapes of things loom. The summer looks like winter Smoke like mist Above us A blood red sun Scatters fire on the ocean Later A blood red moon Stares accusingly down.
In the dark In the forever black dark I listen to the waves Crunch insistently against the sand And I think about the light. I want the light She wants the dark So I lie there in her dark And think about my light, I dream about going Into the light Into the light, Into the forever light.
Today in the cafe... I was in a reasonably good mood in the morning. This is actually a small miracle. I soaked it up. I back-swam leisurely through those usually grumpy A.M hours, kind of wondering what the hell was going on. What a luxury to be in good spirits first thing in the morning.
Then sometime during lunch service my mood took a hit and went into a tailspin. Oh Christ, I thought, here we go. This is more like it. This is what I'm used to. But fuck - such a horrible contrast to how I felt just such a short while ago. Just earlier I felt content and happy and lucky, whereas now is all gloom. Now I am acutely aware of The End Of All Things. Happiness ENDS. Friendship ENDS. Love ENDS. Life ENDS. Everything fucking ENDS.
If I sound jokey about it here, I did not feel jokey about it then. This bleakness is real and suffocating and I hate feeling it so much that I just want to curl up and go to sleep and never wake up, because never waking up means never feeling this way again, and that is a good thing. I just want to stop thinking. I just want to not be.
Thing is, I have felt this way frequently throughout my life. My default setting is not happiness. I write funny things and I write happy things, and I am actually an optimist, I'm just not a happy soul.
The funny thing about all of this is that people around me never know that these shifts in mood occur. Or rather, I think they see when I am happy; I just don't think appreciate the dark depths my mood frequently plummets to. I think they like my occasional smiles and my oh-so-rare LOLs, but they are used to my thoughtful quietness without realising just how quietly crazy I actually am on the inside. They would probably be shocked that I have often wanted to die.
But what the fuck do I know? Maybe all of us feel the exact same way.
I used to have a humour column in a cool music mag. That column saved me so often. I'd be in these moods, these desperately dark moods where death felt like a snuggly dooner, and I'd have these deadlines. Blackest mood be fucked, I have a deadline to write something funny, and I'd look around at the world filled with all you funny humans taking things too seriously, taking life too seriously, and I'd squint a little and see the funny. And I would write some funny.
I really can write funny. I love writing funny, because writing funny makes the pendulum swing. Suddenly, I'm laughing, as I write about some random shit I saw. If I'm laughing as I write, I know (and this is the real pay-off) that my friends and total strangers are going to be laughing as they read. My column had been going for 10 years, and over time I trusted this feeling. If I can just make myself laugh while writing, they will also be laughing when reading. So I've made myself feel better, and I've made other people feel better. That's a pretty cool thing.
So today I thought about all of this in that black fug I was going through, and I realised that even though I don't have the column any more, I can still set myself a deadline and just write something funny. This will be awesome. Squint a little to see the funny shit and write it.
I squinted like Clint Eastwood, and yeah, I came up with a story.
I'll say here that I also write some pretty dark stories. There's an e-book of mine on Amazon called 17 Stories Of Love & Crime, and there's some really dark stuff about love in there. When I come up with a story, I know if it's got the right stuff because I get waves of goosebumps. I well up with emotion. The story starts feeling real. Time kind of stops and I hear the narration and the dialogue and see the plot unfolding. It's a strange and unique feeling.
So looking for humour to climb out of this dark, dark hole I was in today, this is what I came up with:
There is a couple, happy in their coupledom. They have been together for quite a while. They reminisce about how they met. How did they meet? He saved her life. She initially fell in love with him because he saved her life, but they got to know each other and she loved him because of him, because of the kind of person he was. He got to know her, and he fell in love with her too. He has always been puzzled about the beginnings of her love for him. The act of his saving her life... it has always been a curious thing for him. She admits that yes, that's where it started.
You were a stranger. You were the only stranger who cared enough to stop me going through with it.
But another stranger might have come along.
No, it was you. It was you, it was meant to be... all these years might never have been... I love you and I thank you.
I love you and I thank you too.
(What makes the story work is this little thing he has never told her. Maybe he tells her now, after all these years).
I'm glad I was there to save you. I'm so very happy I talked you out of it. Who knows - maybe, you're right, maybe there wouldn't have been another stranger who cared enough... maybe you would have gone through with it and you would not be here now.
Oh God... too sad to think.
Yes, too sad to think.
There's a thing I never told you. This small detail.
Really? Tell me this small detail.
Okay. The night before we met... the morning before we met, actually. The morning before we met I woke up hungover with a plastic shopping bag in my bed. I was puzzled by this. I mean, of all the odd things to wake up with in bed, a plastic shopping bag?
Yes?
I was drinking a lot at the time. I was alone. You know, I'm a solitary kind of man.
Yes. I know. But the plastic bag?
I remembered, eventually. I'd had enough. I'd had enough booze and I'd had enough of everything, and I decided to go to sleep forever. I went to bed with the plastic shopping bag with the intention of putting it over my head and never waking up.
Oh.
Yes.
And...
And after lying there in the dark and thinking about everything for just that little bit too long, I missed my opportunity. I fell asleep. I passed out.
Ah. Wow. And if you hadn't passed out...
Yes.
They looked at each other for a long time, really fell into each others eyes, and they hugged a long hug that might never have been.
In the cafe today... lady comes in with a head-damaged friend she is
taking to the hospital for an MRI scan. He goes into the bathroom and is
there for quite a long time. (Later, both The Dreaded One and I notice
that someone has unwrapped several toilet paper rolls and put them on
the handle of the toilet brush, probably because they think this is the
way things should be. We think we know who it was).
But back outside in the cafe, this customer starts reading my writing in the
back of the menu while she drinks her coffee. I am satisfied with the
smile my words bring to her solitude. Eventually she looks up and asks
me whose writing entries these are. I tell her they are mine. She tells
me how much she is enjoying reading them. Tells me she is here with her
brain damaged friend and that they just needed a walk and she needed a
coffee, and that she likes the way I structure the writing. She comes
across as a former English teacher or something, or maybe just a
lifelong reader, someone who appreciates the rhythm and flow of a story.
And she thanks me for making this chance encounter such a delightful experience.
Small and unexpected gift to a stranger with troubles I can't comprehend... highlight of the day.
The
thing was that he didn't want to send out the wrong signals. There
was no denying the facts: he was much older than her and she was, no
question, beautiful. This random encounter – so far quite a lovely
thing - could quite easily turn into the clumsiest of cliches.
Maybe
it was best left alone. Left to fade to the faintest of sweet
memories.
But what if he was – yet again – missing an
opportunity? Hadn't he already missed his opportunity with her? Only
for her to return, for the memory of her to return, for him to be
given the chance to thank her and talk to her and get to know her a
little.
She had been sitting in his cafe. Her beauty and
serenity had caught his eye. He didn't feel love or lust, but he was
entranced. That she was reading one of his stories intrigued him
further. Which one was she reading? What was she thinking as she
read? He kept glancing over, entranced and intrigued as she
read.
Later, while he had been busy making coffee that he knew
they would enjoy, he heard an accent ask his helper a question:
Excuse me, can you tell me who is the author of the stories?
His
helper had looked at him. He had looked at the customer and smiled: I
am the author of the stories, he had said.
She had smiled like
she knew, a smile of peace and knowing.
I loved your story -
she had said in a way that made him forget what he was doing - It was
so sad and so beautiful.
He had felt such gratitude hearing
these words. Thank you, he had told her, for telling me this. It
means so much to me that my stories reach people but I never know.
It moved
me so much, I had tears as I read it.
Ah, he had replied, I
had tears as I wrote it. A sad smile of gratitude, then he had
remembered the mundane thing of work and had shifted his
attention.
She lingered, seemed to want to say something,
could see that he was busy and wished him a good day.
And was
gone.
He watched her go.
I think, his helper had said,
that she wanted to talk to you.
This was true. As true as the
fact that she was gone. He said something about next time, knowing as
he said it that she was a traveller, perhaps passing through, perhaps
never coming back. Losing focus, he had heated the milk too much,
tipped it out and started again.
But she came back. She was
looking for work, would like to work in his cafe. She wanted to leave
her contact details in case there was work for her. He didn't
recognise her immediately. He wondered why there was such friendly
warmth in this traveller's smile. Then the memory fell into place and
this time there was no room for the mundane things. He was not going
to miss this opportunity again. Fortunately it was the quiet time of
the day. Perhaps she had planned it that way.
You were here a
few weeks ago, weren't you.
Yes.
And you told me you
enjoyed my story.
Yes.
Thank you so much for sharing
your thoughts. It means a lot to me. And thank you so much for coming
back. It felt like you had wanted to talk.
I did. Your story
has stayed so much on my mind. It's so strong, the way life moves
on... it is such beautiful writing.
Thank you. It's just a
thing I do. Stories are all around us, happening all the time. Some
of us have to write them down. Are you a writer?
Yes.
And
they talked and talked the way only very old old or very new friends
talk. She told him about her play that she had written and produced,
and about the other things she had written but not yet shared. They
both asked questions and gave answers. They told each other about the
tricks needed to get the words flowing, about the pleasure found in
writing the perfect piece. He made her a coffee that she said was
perfect, and she stayed and they talked and when finally he had to
get back to the mundane things of cleaning up and closing down, she
sang a peaceful song to herself in his empty cafe, perhaps for
herself, perhaps for him. Her voice was exquisite.
Eventually,
it was time for her to go. They thanked each other for whatever it
was they had given each other, and once again he watched her go.
And
now, weeks later, he was worried about sending out the wrong signals.
He thought that maybe he should just let it go because it could so
easily become the clumsiest of cliches. And yet... what if it could
be the perfect friendship? What if, like him, she was a solitary soul
who rarely opens, but opens fully in the right company?
He had
no work for her, but he had her contact details. He could write to
her. He could tell her about a new story he had written. She could
come back into the cafe to read the story and they could talk
and...
And what? Could they really become friends? Could true
friendship really come out of this random chance encounter with a
stranger? Why not? Stranger things had happened.
And yet.
Maybe it was best left to fade to the most perfect of memories. She
had come into his cafe. She had read his story. They had talked. End
of story.
The cafe is crowded with regulars and walk-ins. One catches my eye because she is attractive, but also because she has a kind of peacefulness about her. She looks like a serene spirit. I look at her from time to time as I go about my cafe stuff. I'm not trying to catch her attention or anything, she is just pleasant to look at.
Soon I realise that she has finished her meal and is reading some of my writing at the back of the menu. She reads for quite a while but there is no sign of amusement, which is a shame because I bet she has a killer smile. I think I know what she must be reading.
At one point I'm busy on coffee. I hear a voice rich with accent - possibly Eastern European - ask my helper, Beverley, a question: "Excuse me - can I ask a question? Do you know who is Lee Bemrose?"
Beverley turns to me. I stop making coffee. "I'm Lee Bemrose," I tell her. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh you are Lee... I was just reading your story, Remembering Argos."
"Ah. I hope you liked it."
"I loved it. It is so sad I was reading with tears in my eyes." She puts her hand over her heart. "It is so beautiful." She shakes her head slowly, as if in amazement.
My Grumpy heart has just officially melted all over the damn place. I thank her and tell her that I had tears in my eyes when I wrote the story. I have to finish these coffees. The girl lingers a few moments before walking away, wishing me an excellent day over her shoulder. Lingering eye contact, killer smile.
Beverley tells me quietly, "I think she wanted to talk to you."
"I couldn't stop. Maybe next time she comes in I'll be able to talk to her."
I realise, of course, that there may not be a next time. I've never seen her before, I may never see her again. Maybe I should have made the time to talk to her then.
It's often
fun to go into a play with the bare minimum knowledge about it. Don't
read every review ever written of every production ever performed.
Don't read interviews with the playwright or various actors or
performers to get their take on the play, just go in blind and make
your own mind up. Don't be swayed by the opinions of those bloody
reviewers (seriously, what do those knuckle-heads know anyway?), get
what YOU get out of the play. Definitely don't read publicity for
the thing because the publicity machine only has one thing in mind,
and that's bums on seats. Don't even read the program before going
into the theatre. Just wing it. Dive into the abyss. Let the story
pull you in and weave its magic. Let the themes appear to you of
their own accord. Let the plot thicken and the characters
develop...
All I can say with regard to Love And Information
is thank God I didn't do all of this on this occasion because without
sneaking a look at the program in the foyer before going in, I
wouldn't have had lonely clue what the hell was going on before me.
Even armed with the knowledge my program provided, I'm still not game
enough to say I completely understood what was going
on.
Effectively, from what this knuckle-head can gather,
British playwright Caryl Churchill has written something of a game or
a puzzle of a play. The play is written in seven sections, each with
seven scenes which can be played in whatever order suits the
director. There are additional sections to the seven acted out which
contain scenes that may or may not be inserted throughout the play.
Ultimately there are 76 scenes on offer, involving around 100
characters, played in this case by eight actors. With me? Good,
because I'm not sure I am.
So there is no linear narrative. No
story, as such, but perhaps many micro stories, all involving
questions of love and information, more of the latter than the
former, I think. Character development? Yeah kind of, occasionally,
in teeny weeny ways. The whole thing really is a big, jangly, often
frenetic, sometimes moody, frequently funny collection of vignettes.
As such, there isn't the exquisite satisfaction of being told a
story. There is no sitting back and letting The Story pull you into
its world. This creature is too chopped up, too fragmented like a
smashed kaleidoscope for any of that tell-me-a-story stuff.
The
play seems to be prodding us to think about the nature of
information. We live in the information age, so it's not a bad
question to ask. Information is all around us. We devour it, we send
it, we are it. Literally, we are information, it's there in our DNA.
Information can change the way we see a situation or think of a
person. Sometimes we don't want to know certain information, or
wonder if we would have been better off not knowing it. Some
information we keep to ourselves as secrets; and is this better or
worse for them (or us). Certainly, friendship and love can be turned
on its head with the appropriate information.
In spite of the
absence of the snuggly blanket of a big old story, this certainly was
an engaging performance. The stage was stark and white with movable
white blocks for props and back-lit doorways around the stage through
which the actors entered and exited again to make their hasty costume
changes. Sometimes all the cast were on stage together, sometimes
just an intimate two engaging in no more than an intimate two or three
words. Settings were varied – domestic home; the office; a
roadworks site; the gym; a psyche consultation room; a garden; a
cemetery; a moving train carriage; a museum... sometimes it was
non-specific, just friends in their bubble, swapping information. All
scene changes were suggested by the choreographed rearrangement of
these blocks by the energetic cast of actors.
The cast was
brilliant. They had to chop and change myriad times and instantly
change the tone from comical to tragic to mundane and back
again.
The musical score by The Sweats was a large part of the
performance and was all synthy energy early on, softening to some
wonderfully haunting ambiance in the late scenes. The last couple of
scenes were actually quite wonderful. The reading of the... the
symbolism of the... the argument about the... You really don't need
to hear this information right now from me. Best go see it for
yourself. It's well worth it.
There is always a younger woman.
You become her friend,
Her confidante,
No really, her very special friend.
I like that you have these occasional encounters,
And I like that Solitary-You finds happiness
In the company of other people
When you claim to not like people.
I like that there is love,
Platonic yet deep and friendly love.
I like seeing the happiness they give you
And the happiness you give to them.
But do you ever wonder,
Ever
How you would feel
If there was a younger man?
If
I ever write again, I think I'll write a savage black comedy about the
life of the average (and they are very average humans) council health
inspector. They swan into your place of work dressed like they're going
to the opening night of the opera, even though in reality they should be
wearing overalls or other similar mundane attire, and find their
special area of annoyance and begin to tell you - as you try to keep up
with the busy, service-time influx of customers - that you must make
this change or that change. They look so smugly chuffed that they get to
tell you this as they consult their snappy electronic device as if to
say "See? See? There it is. There's the rule in the regulations that
stipulates why you have to change this thing, and aren't you impressed
with my vast knowledge of the myriad rules and regulations that rule and
regulate my world?"
They never know the actual, practical
arguments for these rules and regulations (it's never anything major in a
reasonably run place; just niggly changes that must be made because
surely you want them to smile and pat you on the back on their next
irritating visit). They don't consult the previous inspection report
(common sense? Fuck common sense!) to realise they are directly
contradicting previous sage recommendations. They clip-clop about on
their teetering heels and mneh mneh mneh as if they are doing something
meaningful like... anything remotely meaningful. Which they are not.
Ever worked in a commercial kitchen, Miss Poindexter? Ever run a
business? What, exactly, qualifies you to even think you have a fucking
clue?
This is what you think as you nod and say sure, we'll move
the thing over there that the last council numpty made us move to where
it is now, as we try to focus on the job of serving our customers.
This is probably what I will write about if I ever write again.
Last Saturday I slept in like a boss. I really look forward to sleeping in after doing a full week of early starts. I got up just after 9.30, trudged upstairs and checked my phone; one voice message. I phone in to listen to the message, and unexpectedly there's the Northern hemisphere twang of a guy who does a show on CBC Radio in Vancouver. He wants me to phone him back so that we can have a bit of a chat. He wants to interview me but doesn't say what about. I think maybe he's got the wrong person but he leaves me with his studio number, his cell number and then says he'll also email me at leebemrose666@gmail.com
This is all very odd, he definitely seems to have all the correct contact details.
Still feeling sleepy, with a bit of confusion thrown in, I check my email, and there's a message from the same guy. He wants to interview me about Creepypasta. It's Halloween and I'm guessing he's read this story I wrote for Soot Mag.
He really wants to do this but it has to happen before 7am Melbourne time. He called me originally at 5am. I have waaaay missed this boat, baby. Bummer. Could have been fun, but I'm not sure how coherent I would have been at 5am or 7am. I didn't feel like I was going to be coherent for another couple of hours yet.
And
just as suddenly as she had come into his life, she was gone. For a
while Ewan was in a mild state of shock. He felt the way you do when
you walk out of a movie into the real world but your mind is
reluctant to leave the movie behind. He was stunned that the whole
thing had happened at all. Things like that simply didn’t happen to
him. He was Ewan. Loner. Loser. He was not without some off-kilter
charm, and he was not entirely unattractive, and at least he had
a job, but he was still just Ewan.
They
met in a bar. Only unlike in the movies, Ewan was drunk and alone,
his mind some place he would never go to, playing out some scene that
would never happen. Reality had dissolved. Ben had left but Ewan had
decided to stay for one more drink. There were loud people all
around, normal people with lots of friends and good jobs and
interesting things to say. A B-grade comedy was playing silently on
the wall-mounted television, and Ewan could pretend he was watching
it, if he needed to. But he was thinking about this place, Paris,
thinking about being an artist in Paris. He wondered what the air
smelled like in Paris, wondered what the sky looked like, wondered
what it felt like to stroll down the Champs Elysee at night, wondered
how the sun felt on your skin sitting on the grass by the Eiffel
Tower. He imagined a whole life where it was okay to be alone, where
he didn’t have to speak, where his art justified his existence. He
spent a little time wondering what kind of artist he might be. He
thought about Lucy Jordan. He liked that old song, “...
at the age of thirty seven, she knew she’d never...”
That’s
when she sat down at his table. She spoke to him like they were old
and comfortable friends.
“What
are you thinking?” she asked him.
It
was only then that Ewan realised he had been smiling. How long had he
been smiling like that? Jesus Christ, he must have looked mad. Alone
and smiling at a sad song. And drunk. How did he get so drunk?
“Sorry?”
he said over the noise, desperately stalling for time, wondering what
was wrong with her. She looked normal enough, even a little on the
attractive side. She was thin, serious looking, was wearing a scarf
because scarves were fashionable this season, and a soft leather
jacket that he would later learn she had bought in Portobello Road.
She pushed her thick-rimmed glasses back up on her nose and sipped
her red wine, then asked him again.
“What
are you thinking?”
Ewan
shrugged and sipped his beer and wished he had been drinking wine.
What was going on here?
“Nothing.”
Ewan replied. “Nothing really. Why do you ask?”
“You
looked, I don’t know, far away, like you were dreaming of another
life, in another place.”
Ewan
looked at her properly then. He wondered how he looked as he smiled
at her. He hoped he looked friendly and not just creepy. She was
sitting at the table, her elbows resting on the table top, arms
folded. She was looking right at him. They could be good friends,
Ewan thought. Mates. Maybe more. To anyone who looked. Ewan wished
that Ben would come back now. God that would be perfect. He wanted
someone to see this. He looked around the pub as though there might
be someone he knew.
“I
was thinking about... I’ve been thinking about going to Paris,”
Ewan said. “For a holiday.” And thought what? He’d been
thinking no such thing. But he sounded so convincing he almost
believed himself.
She
folded her arms tighter, scrunched that cherry red leather. “Ah,
Paris. I like Paris.”
It
was then that Ewan noticed she had a slight accent. She sounded
Australian, but British too. He liked that. It made her exotic. This
was too good. Where the hell was Ben? Ewan thought about texting him
and asking him to come back. But no, that would be stupid. She would
end up leaving with Ben. Ben could fuck off and find his own exotic
girl.
“You’ve
been? To Paris?”
“I
go all the time. I used to live there.”
Ewan
swooned a little. He’d never had anyone this cool talk to him like
this. She had lived in Paris and she was talking to Ewan. Ben’s not
going to believe this...fuck Ben, stop thinking about Ben. Think
about her.
Don’t lose her. Don’t scare her off. Act cool. Play the role. Be
cool. Can you be cool? Yeah, yeah, I just need to relax. Offer to buy
her a drink... holy shit, why did you get so drunk? She finds out
you’re pissed she’ll be out of here. Fucking hell, how do I keep
this going? What do I say? She’s lived in Paris and I’ve been
nowhere...say something and say it now or she’ll get up and go to
another table...
“Wow.
That must have been good. Living in Paris.” Ewan was a little
impressed with how calm he sounded, and soon they were talking. Just
talking. They told each other their names and she told him about
Paris and he listened and nodded as though he were taking notes for
his planned holiday. They had more drinks, and lost themselves in
talk, and Ewan was funny and she laughed and she made him laugh, and
somewhere in the back of Ewan’s mind was the realisation that this
was possibly the happiest he had been in his entire, uneventful
little life.
But
it got better. In the following weeks there was more laughter and
more drinking and more talking and more sex than Ewan had ever
imagined. Well perhaps not more than he had imagined; he had a lot of
imaginary sex. But it was more sex than he had ever really expected
to have with the same person. They even fucked in the park a couple
of times, in broad daylight. But mainly they did it at his place or
hers, on the couch or in the shower, sometimes in the middle of
cooking a meal when their mouths tasted of wine. It was delicious,
raw, dirty sex and Ewan couldn’t shake that feeling that he was
living in a movie. It was all just too good. It made Ewan feel like a
different person. It made him feel like the person he always should
have been. It made him feel like the lifetime of bumbling fuck-ups
and mistakes had never happened.
And
then she was gone. She went back to London, back to her life. And
Ewan went back to his life, back to being Ewan. They both agreed that
it had all been fun, but that was all. It was just one of those
things. Ewan hoped that the manner he adopted indicated that this
kind of thing happened to him all the time. Like, hey, I’m cool,
whatever, it’s been a blast, have a happy life.
But
that feeling lingered long after she had gone. Did that really
happen? Had a woman really walked up to him in a bar? Had they really
had what would have been referred to in a review, if it had been a
movie, a torrid affair? How had it happened? Why Ewan? Was it ever
going to happen again?
For
a while Ewan tried to make it happen again, but it just didn’t
work. He took to smiling at strangers in bars and pubs, but they
didn’t see him. Or they ignored him. Just as they always had. In
time he stopped trying to catch their attention and just accepted
that it was never going to happen again. The world was simply too
preoccupied with itself to bother with Ewan, just as it had always
been. And in any case, the truth of it was, when he dug down deep
enough and forced himself to look, the truth was that he didn’t
want it to happen again. Not with someone new. Cora, it seemed, had
taken something of Ewan away with her.
Ewan
went back to his mundane job and his small group of misfit friends
and getting quietly drunk with Ben, and dreaming of another life, in
another place.
Ewan
laughed when the first postcard arrived. It was so kitsch. A red
double decker bus, a London Bobby, Big Ben and London Bridge, some
stupid line about London. He flipped it over and read and smiled to
himself. It was just a short note saying that she had been thinking
of him and hoped he was well. He smiled until there were tears in his
eyes. He had not really expected to hear from her, but he was glad he
had. He went to the newsagent and bought the worst postcard he could
find. It was so tacky it was brilliant.
Over
the months he built up quite a collection of awful postcards from
London and Paris (she had to catch the train to Paris from time to
time for her job. Imagine!) and he visited all the tawdry souvenir
shops in town to hunt down the ugliest of them from Sydney. It made
more sense, of course, to email or instant message, but somehow they
knew that this was better, that they both enjoyed this little game,
the suspense of checking the letterbox each day and the small thrill
of receiving the postcard. Ewan even enjoyed, in a strange way, the
disappointment of the empty letterbox. It meant there would probably
be something there the following day. Or the day after that. They had
such a similar sense of humour that he knew she would be doing the
same. That was the thing; they had clicked. And it got Ewan thinking.
Ewan
looked at the ticket. He couldn’t believe it. Who would have
thought? And his passport. His own passport. He shook his head in
wonder. He looked at the photo again. He should have held his chin up
a little more. Slight double chin. Never mind. He smelled the
passport. He looked down at the blank pages. He smiled. “Thank you
Lucy Jordan,” he said quietly.
Ewan
had everything planned. Mrs Thompson, his neighbour, would call in
and water the plants and feed the cat. He had considered asking Ben
or his mother but they would snoop; Mrs T, he felt sure, would not.
But he hid his stash of porn in a locked suitcase just to be sure. He
said goodbye to Owen, trying, he knew, to load the moment with more
drama than was reasonable. He just about conjured tears, but it was
no good; the cat quite clearly did not give a shit. One last look
around his neat unit, and it was time to go.
Ewan
knew he shouldn’t feel as excited as he did as he swung his
suitcase into the boot of the cab. But he couldn’t help it. He
closed the boot and walked to the side and hesitated before taking
the back seat.
“Domestic
or international, the driver asked in a thick Mediterranean accent
and with little interest.
Ewan
paused a beat before intimating “International,” as though it was
the kind of thing he said all the time. The taxi driver grunted as he
pulled out into the traffic. Ewan looked at the security camera
mounted above the rearview mirror. He did something subtle with his
mouth before turning to gaze out the window. Three quarter profile.
Perfect.
This
is no good at all, Ewan thought as he took his new woolen coat off
and wiped the sweat from his brow; he was trying to get into the
spirit of things, but the London weather was not co-operating. 26
degrees and sunny? He wanted fog and frost and bitter cold, not
summer heat. Didn’t fly half way around the world for something I
could have at home. He considered saying this out loud so that a
passerby might realise that we was an international traveler, but he
realised he was being foolish; he was not here for the weather. He
would save this line for another, more appropriate time. An uttered
complaint about the food perhaps. Or the wine. Yes, he would peruse a
wine list and mutter “Koonunga Hill?” And deliver his line and
the waiter would be suitably impressed.
Ewan
walked and walked that first day, eventually taking in too many
tourist attractions. He had not intended to walk so far, nor see so
many tourist attractions. He had actually intended to go for a bit of
a stroll, wait for the tiredness to set in and go back to his hotel
room for a sleep. But he got lost. Each time he thought he knew where
he was it proved to be a trick, and there was another tourist
attraction which he decided to see in case he never found it again.
Eventually, hot and tired and unable to take in another single piece
of historical information, he placed his fate in the hands of a
London cabbie, a nice enough bloke who didn’t have the decency to
ask where Ewan was from. Back in his hotel room Ewan lay down on his
bed, his body aching, and closed his eyes on the blur of centuries of
history.
And
woke confused. Such dreams. But what is this? This place? These
dreams. This room. What time? But day or night? And why don’t I
know? Oh god, they were beheaded on this very spot? What? What?
Beheaded?
Who beheads? Who got beheaded?
When
his world came back into focus, Ewan giggled a little; he was already
looking forward to being home and telling anyone who cared to listen
about all the things he had seen.
On
the second day Ewan decided to deliver the postcard. He hadn’t
wanted to visit on the first day; that would have seemed odd, he knew
that. He had hoped he might bump into her in the streets of London.
But no such luck. So it was back to the original plan. And here he
was, standing on her doorstep thinking yellow, her door is yellow. As
yellows went it was not bad, but yellow was not his favourite colour.
In fact it was probably his least favourite colour. Sometimes purple
really bugged him, but purple was usually in some sort of context,
like hippies or something, and it could well have been the context
and not the actual colour that bugged him; what use had hippies ever
been? But yellow... yellow needed no context, and in fact it was
doubtful yellow even had a context. Certainly there was no
connotation or implication that sprung to mind... canaries perhaps,
although it’s not like you always look at yellow and immediately
think ah, canaries... why do you do
this? Just knock on the yellow door and get this started. She will
laugh so hard when she sees you... but what if she doesn’t laugh?
Or worse, what if she laughs too hard? It should be okay. Waited two
days. Wait on – flew half way around the planet and waited two days
and that makes it all right? My God - is this not a case of stalking?
Am I a stalker? She will let you know soon enough if she thinks you
are stalking her, now will you just knock on the yellow door please?
Ewan
raised his hand to the yellow door and paused. He thought about the
thing, the part of him that Cora had taken. It was a small thing. He
imagined it sitting in the palm of a hand, so bright you couldn’t
see it properly. But it was the most important thing. The single most
important thing. Whether she laughed too hard or didn’t laugh at
all, he was going to tell her. He was going to say the words just
like they do in the movies. And if it was wrong it would hurt, but he
would turn and walk nobly away –
The
door swung open.
“Jesus!”
An
expletive apology tumbled from Ewan’s mouth.
“What
are you doing? Almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I’m...
er, I’m Looking for Cora,” Ewan said. He realised he was speaking
in a slight British accent, similar to this woman’s accent. And he
realised that he was blinking rather a lot. He resisted the urge to
run his hand through his hair; a little bit of Hugh Grant went an
awfully long way.
“Oh?”
“Yes,
I was, erm, I... I was in the area and thought I’d pop in and...
is... is she in?” Ewan asked as he squinted a little. He wasn’t
sure where this Hugh Grant business had come from, but he was
committed now. The accent stays, he told himself, so does the
stammering and the blinking, but do not
touch your fucking hair.
“No.
No I’m afraid she’s not. She’s staying with her boyfriend for a
while. Can I giver her a message?”
Ewan
felt everything stop. He wanted someone to say cut! He wanted someone
to say no no no that’s not the line! First positions everyone, get
ready for another take and let’s get it right this time people.
Aaaand...action.
“Boyfriend,”
Ewan said flatly as he felt the postcard being screwed into the palm
of his hand. “Ah.”
The
woman stepped fully outside and locked the door.
“Yes,
bless her. Think she’s in love with this one. Who shall I say
called?”
He
almost said Owen, but it was too close to his own name. Under no
circumstances must she ever know that he had been here. Cora had not
known the clumsy part of him, the stupid version the rest of the
world knew. So instead he said that his name was Grant, told her
twice so there could be no mistake, and said they had gone to
university together and that he had been in the area, and that it had
been several years since they had seen each other, and that he would
call again soon.
Ewan
had never been so embarrassed and depressed as he was for the rest of
his stay in London. He stayed in his hotel room. He ate little. He
drank a lot. He sent postcards back home. He berated himself and
fabricated fictitious versions so that no one would ever know what a
fool he was. For Ben and his friends, he had spent a wonderful month
with her but it had not worked out. They would expect photos - he had
lost his camera, and in any case did not want reminders of this
beautiful thing gone wrong. His mother would be saddened to hear that
the position he had applied for at the BBC had given to someone else
- never mind, the company had paid for the flight and it had been an
invaluable experience. Mrs Thompson... oh God, why had he told her he
was going to Paris to get married to a woman named Lucy? Why had he
done that? He would tell her that poor sad Lucy never made it, fell
ill and didn’t make it. He had attended her funeral, not her
wedding. Yes, that’s what happened.
As
Ewan stood in the line amid the chaos of Heathrow Airport, shuffling
closer to the check-in, he knew he had everything covered. He knew
that no one would ever know the details of this mistake. He knew they
would never guess the stratospheric level of his stupidity. His shame
would be forever his own. And he knew their correspondence would
cease.
What
Ewan might never know was the turn his life might take. He might
never know that if the story had been in the hands of another
director, Ewan would have been told look up, look up now. Look at the
passengers streaming through the arrivals gates. See the tired ones
and the happy ones, all these lives streaming through and branching
off into their own worlds. Look up now Ewan, look at the faces, find
that one face in the crowd, that one in a million. There. Yes. That’s
her. She’s the one. Read her face. She looks tired, yes, it has
been a long flight, but there is more, so much more. Your reaction?
You piece it together, you realise the misunderstanding. You are
relieved and amazed, and somehow frightened by how infinitesimally
close you came to missing each other. Go to her now, this director
would have said, that’s what you must do, Ewan, before it’s too
late, before you lose each other forever. As she turns and heads to
the baggage collection area, that is your cue to go to her. You will
not have to say anything. You will simply know, both of you will know
and you will move into each others arms hold each other like you
never want to let go, and it will be exactly like it is in the
movies, the happiest of endings. But you must look up now, Ewan. Stop
looking at the blank pages of your passport and look up...
Interesting experiment. Soot magazine asked me to talk about five real life people who were the inspiration for five characters in my short story collection 17 Stories Of Love & Crime. Go here for the result.
I can't believe it. I appear to have lost another passport. I wasn't even looking for it, I was actually looking for my food handler's certificate, which I haven't needed in the 18 months or so since I got it. Suddely I'm going to a hospitality agency tomorrow and they need to see it and I cannot find it anywhere. And along the way I realised that my passport was not in the passport place. I found the one that I thought was missing three years ago when The Dreaded One and I went on the big trip (TDO had removed it from my passport place and put with her stuff because she thought it was safer there... and not knowing this, three days before we left I had to get an emergency passport replacement. I found that the original had been in with her stuff a year after we got back from that trip).
But now... I have no idea where the food handler's certificate is or the passport. It's not in The Dreaded One's stuff... it's doing my head in.
But I did find this advertisement. That's me at the end of the table, lots more hair than I have now and much more cheeks. I was a bit chunky back then.
And if you know me, you'll appreciate how funny it is that I am some kind of poster boy for alcohol restraint. It is deeply funny. I have been uber booze monster at times.
I have a story brewing called Dark Thirst. Companion story to the one about the time I overdosed on drugs. Booze, when it gets its claws in, it ain't funny. Hangovers? I laugh at them. Hangovers are nothing compared to proper addiction. Hangovers are a walk through a field of daisies. Booze addiction... it's a monster in a cage. It rattles that cage and jangles your nerves and fucking owns you, and the struggle to get through that is a kind of hell. You don't sleep it off. It's just not that easy. It really is fucking awful.
But if you are lucky, you get through it. You find a kind of peace. You appreciate being in control. You say goodbye to the anxiety attacks and the fear and the constant nausea and feel happy that you can just pick up a fucking glass of water without shaking so much you spill it everywhere.
Mostly, people haven't suspected a thing. I am nothing if not a trouper. Some days, some weeks, when I think about them, I really don't know how I made it through.
So yeah, the poster above, it's funny because when booze is fun it's the best. But the poster is also uber ironic given what I have been through.
Life. Funny old thing.
I'm hopng to write Dark Thirst soon. It won't be light-hearted (though there might be funniness in there), but I feel the need to write about it. There's no point going through this shit if you can't use it.
Well this has been an interesting process, but 17 Stories Of Love & Crime is finally up on Amazon. It's about three weeks since I got all buzzy about doing this, and it has been frustrating, challenging and rewarding. There are websites out there offering to do it for you for a fee, and I can see why. But it's so much more satisfying to do it yourself.
I'm happy that it's out there. But what do I want out of it? Hmm. It was reading the success stories that motivated me, but it was as much about the fact that you can do it yourself as it was about the hope of becoming one of those success stories. Naturally I would like it to take off, but ultimately I'm happy enough to finally have a collection of stories together and available to share with others. I've enjoyed putting these stories together, even if they have been written over many years. Each is individual and written without the others in mind, yet when I compiled them I recognised something in each of them in the others. And in compiling them I have kept the others in mind and there are fleeting references to each other throughout, characters or situations in one story referred to in other stories.
And for me, it's strangely autobiographical. Usually a single thing happens that sparks a story, and re-reading these stories I remember so much about that single thing and the time in my life that it happened. The passing of The Dreaded One's father was largely responsible for Remembering Argos, though of course there are many moments within that story. The passing of my grandmother made me think about the home I usually dream about when I dream about home, even if my own fleeting passing and subsequent rescuing is at the core of Blue Angeline. A troubled conversation with a beautiful former friend on a sunny day in the park was the spark for Ruben Jane, even if Ruben Jane's troubles are more personal. That one also came from my urge to write the darkest love story that I could.
In a way, all these stories are very real, or have some foundation in reality. They didn't happen, but in a way, they did. At a wedding when the wind was blowing and I couldn't hear the ceremony, my mind wandered and I thought up The Best Man. The woman who twists her ankle getting out of the car in Finding Davey, that was a real moment, as was the final scene in One Moment. The crane in The Funniest Man In The World Tells A Funny Story really did fall and crush that hotel, narrowly missing a group of us drinking out the back. The funniest man himself came about because of how sad I felt watching Spike Milligan doing something naff before a group of reporters and seeing them falling about in sucking-up laughter. Being Groover Terminator all happened, and none of it happened. I wrote that one as a series, painting the character (me) into a corner each week... a guy really did think I was DJ Groove Terminator, my hairdresser Jasmine did ask me to put her in the story and she really does like tequila. We really did get stoned and go on about the biiiirrrdeeees, and Jez and Ann are in there. And GT's manager did phone up and ask if they could post the story on GT's website, and weirdly I met GT and we bumped into each other a few times in the following years.
The bouncer in Stabulous The Clown? Real. The clown? Fucked if I know where I get some stuff from. As real as so many details and moments are in these stories, others are pure fiction, their origin baffling. Quick? His name is short for Quixotic, which is how I view the so-called war on drugs. Some of the characters in there are real. The setting was Home nighclub, the menacing bouncer there was also real. So many small moments make up these stories. The artist in Losing All Of You was a sideways glimpse of a guy on Swanston Street when I was there a couple of years ago with my friend Kat, alongside the essence of conversations real and imagined.
Turtle Bay all kind of happened... thinking about it, sometimes it's hard to remember what actually happened and what was made up. Maybe all of it happened. Maybe none of it happened. Why ask me? What do I know? I just wrote it.
And The Dreaded One, she is there throughout. If you squint, you can even see her there on the cover, which is a photo I took in Prague in 2010. I can't imagine a better cover for this book. I like its moodiness.
If people read it I hope they enjoy it. As far as hoping for any success, like I said it would be nice but mainly it was just a thing to do, a process to go through. I'm aiming to go through the same process (only more smoothly) in compiling The Book Of Grumpy, which as you'll know if you've been to this blog before, is all about the larfs.
Grumpy
is hard-hitting journo and freelance writer Lee Bemrose
(leebemrose666@gmail.com).
He takes his craft very, very seriously.
When
I was asked if I was interested in doing an interview with The Dandy
Warhols, I jumped at it because... well because I happen to like the
Dandy Warhols' music quite a lot. I know Courtney Taylor-Taylor has a
bit of a reputation for not exactly snuggling up and canoodling with
the media. It's not like you see Courtney Taylor-Taylor and The Media
wandering through sun-dappled parks, holding hands and whispering in
hot breath into each others ears about how much they need each other.
You don't see them sitting on beaches at sunset with Courtney's head
nestled comfortably on The Media's shoulder as he murmurs lovingly,
“Media – I just don't know what I'd do without you.” These are
absurd images that only the mind of an absurd person would conjure.
In
fact, as you are probably aware, Mr Taylor-Taylor has said that he
fucking hates doing interviews and would prefer not to do any at all.
Apparently when he finishes a project, such as the new dandy's album
This
Machine,
he spends as much as half a day each day doing interviews. I don't
think this would be a bad way to spend half a day if you enjoyed
talking about your latest creative endeavour, and if you spent all
that time facing genuinely interesting and original questions. Sadly,
I don't think interesting and original is how the Dandy's frontman
would describe most of the questions he has to face.
Thing
is, before any interview like this, I read up big time. I like to
find out as much as possible about the interviewee and what makes
them tick, which topics get one-line answers and the kinds of things
they really like to open up to. I want to know which questions keep
coming up so that I can avoid those very questions.
I
had to interview a local playwright recently and read an interview he
had done the previous week. The piece sucked the proverbial dog's
dangly bits because the interviewer based her whole line of
questioning on the playwright's Wikipedia profile and (apparently in
awe of being in contact with him) she barely mentioned the play he
was pimping and just asked about his life and thoughts generally. You
could almost hear the yawns in his printed answers. I put in some
effort and was rewarded with answers sometimes longer than her whole
piece. It was like we'd interviewed two different people.
Sometimes
you can get away with a couple of uncreative questions. Sometimes you
have to completely come at the thing from left field. I interviewed
comedian Sam Simmons once and after seeing the Youtube clip of him
having a staring competition with actor Seth Green, I challenged him
to a staring competition. Over the phone? Yeah. He loved it. I loved
it. My suggestion that the mag run an intro, the staring competition
challenge, then a blank page... the magazine, they didn't love it so
much.
With
Courtney Taylor-Taylor, my in-depth profiling came to the conclusion
that it was pretty well impossible to come up with the kinds of
questions that were going to genuinely engage the man. And hell, he's
busy and would rather cut down time spent interviewing so that he can
make music.
So
I came up with a multiple choice interview. I've written all the
answers so he just has to spend a few minutes ticking the appropriate
box. It could be a fun read, or it could fall flat on its arse.
Personally
I think there is real potential for the multiple choice interview.
Your thoughts?
A.
That is an awesome idea, Grumpy. You should should take it to the big
league like Letterman and Craig Ferguson. Interviewing Hollywood
A-listers by multiple choice rocks! Wooh!
B.
As a revolutionary concept it's as dumb as planking.
C.
Stupid idea but if anyone can pull it if it would be you. When it
comes to stupid ideas, you're the go-see guy.
Random writings, stories, magazine theatre reviews and interviews, fiction, and occasionally my bi-weekly column Grumpy, which used to appear in the pages of Tsunami mag. Oh and be sure to check out my ebook, 17 Stories Of Love & Crime.
