Obvious Places of Encounter
‘It is by the nature of itself that fiction is all bound up in the local. The internal reason for that is surely that feelings are bound up in place. The human mind is a mass of associations–associations more poetic even than actual.’ Eudora Welty
I’m standing in the streets of St Kilda, freezing at 8:30 pm on a Wednesday night.
All my friends live here. Allegedly. Seems that way, anyhow, the way they’re all lingering, gripping tighter to the cups of their mulled wine, saying, are you heading off, Dayna? Stick around, we’re gonna pack up and maybe go out for proper drinks after.
I don’t know how to say that I’ve gotta get back home - I live in Pakenham, and traffic this time of night isn’t exactly a nightmare, but - well, hey, it’s Melbourne, and it’s the M1, so you never know, right? Said with a bit of a haughty inflection, an I’m just like you I grew up here charm, even though I’m met with blank stares.
You really live all the way out there? Asks one girl. She’s lived in Fitzroy most of her life. Recently she’s moved to St Kilda, to be closer to Luna Park, I reckon, though she insists it’s because of the drag scene, and because housing is better, though it all looks the same to me.
Why don’t you just crash at mine? Asks another.
It’s because I have work the next morning. Everyone else just works local. Waitressing, barista, bartending jobs at one of the close-by, bougie cafes or dives, the kind of place that’s populated by Melbourne hipsters and elaborate dairy-free coffee order-ers. (I’m both.)
I grew up in Berwick, but inexplicably, I’ve spent a lot of time around Melbourne, too; a lot of time around St Kilda in particular. It was just where you went in the summer, soon as you were old enough for mum and dad not to give a shit about you catching the Pakenham line up and down into the city anymore as long as you were with a couple of ‘strong boys’. (I was with a couple of strong dykes and gender-fuckers, though we hardly knew it then.) It’s where all the decent Halloween events are. One year, we went to Spooktober for a drag show, and they’d lit up the library all in rainbow lights, and it was like: oh shit, mostly everyone else in this city is gay as hell, too. (My girlfriend and I left early to watch children’s Halloween movies in our pajamas. Not sure how cut out for the scene I am, after all.)
I said, I actually work closer to home. I’ve had the same job since straight out of high school. Shit pay, but steady. It’s just until I do my PhD, which could take fuck knows who much time.
One of my friends said, why don’t you just do uni out there, too?
Out there. It’s a one-hour car trip, give or take. I chose this school because I thought it had the best creative writing course, and back in high school (back when it feels like I gave more of a shit) I had a good enough ATAR to permit me the choice. Plus, I thought the city was romantic. St Kilda has always seemed the most romantic of those places: just a short tram ride from campus, a good place to hang out in the summer, just like when we were teens. Only we’re not teens anymore, and I start to miss my dog at home. And all of my friends (real, good friends who come over when one of our rats dies, who come for dinner parties, who come to drop off leftovers and makeup they bought on sale and doormats they think would look nice) just hang out at the local pub, kind of making fun of the locals, can’t be assed to catch a train into Melbourne central even though that’s where ABC is and ABC is the best place to get absolutely munted on a dime if you know what I mean, but it’s all good.
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