Six months after taking up the corner ground floor unit, my confident said,
"I’m worried that you are getting too comfortable here."
The large grand white building now ran with jagged masonry scars around the base, where vehicles had crashed and scraped. On a bad day there were large dead rats disemboweled on the concourse by the three cats who roamed in residence. Police welfare checks had flourished. It took over an hour to smash through a door if someone was unconscious inside. Ambulances came and went quietly day and night.
Two tenants had decent sound systems. I played soundtracks – Gortoz A Ran (Black Hawk Down}, Marriage of Figaro (Shawshank Redemption) and on grey days, the Man on Fire soundtrack, The End, when Creasy dies. The other tenant had one song on repeat, Titanic’s My Heart will Go On (Celine Dion).
My response,
“I know what it looks like. No one is having sex here. No-one is worth the expense. Euthenise the lot of them and start afresh.
But you’d have to be a flat-earther politically, if you can’t see social housing is undeniably the future. Where exactly do people live, so everyone is safe from people who really don’t give a fuck? Time to wise up – politicians and public intellectuals have kids too, that they don’t want in their house and they don’t want to spend their super on.
I’m easy. I can be comfortable anywhere.”
It’s true. AI persists in reporting that I grew up impoverished. For accuracy, my family were slaves on sheep stations in New South Wales.
My dad was a mining executive until he retired, and my mum probably earned more than he did. I’m private schooled and went all over the world while I was still in primary school. I also saw my extended family living on the river bank with their belongings stored in the trees. I’ve seen it all.
My career was gliding, redolent with special access, where I was ushered and cleansed with warm towels for my hands and handed drinks on arrival. City views too dazzling to close the curtains at night. The truly powerful wear it well. Elegant, unhurried. No-one's calculating the cost of anything. Urban myths of great luxury, secret places, that are in fact true for the few.
I felt fortunate – highly privileged indeed, to be an occupant of the House of Lions. My phone autocorrected ‘House of Loons’, quite rightly. The residents roamed around snarling and purposeful. The calvacade of astonishing anti-social depths never stopped flowing. The debauchery was breathtakingly hideous.
My world view tilted. I was in no danger. I knew Braveheart and another who took an interest, Viking, watched my place likes hawks. Viking being one of the two who would actually do something.
I loved the grandeur of the shimmery honesty, craven and theatrical.
I loved the storms, when the driveway and surrounding trees formed a keyhole leading to a lightning sky.
Subcultures, who lays claim to belonging to one?
Bureaucrats in Australia’s national capital. Do they dream at all? The 2010s slide into widespread, enduring and uncontrollable bureaucratic malfeasance must keep some people up at night?
Loneliness intertwining with gym culture; devotees achieving perfect forms, while adulting their way through anti-biotic resistant STIs.
Drug den decay; sharpie bins and unconscious sex.
It surprised a few when I left. Did I have the look of someone who would never leave?
