I was eating in a restaurant in Darlinghurst. A cafe really. Actually, I was about to eat, having ordered a chicken salad with arugula lettuce, pine nuts and feta. Although 'about to eat' might have been an optimistic assessment of the situation because the kitchen staff seemed to have fallen into a malaise brought on by the end of the lunch rush. The kind of malaise that results in overlooking small details. Like the docket for my chicken salad which was still hanging on the metal rack in the pass. Not that it mattered. Not really. I had all afternoon. For me, it was more a case of switching out of a particular way of thinking. I am, what you might call, a professional schadenfreude. I write an opinion column for a newspaper here in Sydney (if you're a young person, they used to print the news on big bits of paper, fold them up and distribute them on a daily basis. Yep, one of those things. They still exist. Just). I've been doing it for fifteen years and at this point in my career I write about whatever I feel like. A running commentary on how our city has changed over time. Continues to change. Topical issues. Local issues. Observation pieces. I have an audience.
You have to understand that it takes a particular kind of pithy cynicism to pump out 500 hundred print worthy words five times a week. A cynicism that doesn't just switch off or go away when you submit your copy. It stays with you and it tends to eat into your enjoyment of life. It can corrode your sunny disposition. So the trick is to find a way to switch gears. To stop seeing the world through jaded eyes. To this end, I have discovered yoga. Yes, yoga, my new dirty little secret. My new drug. Shameful because in the past I have largely ridiculed yoga as being a time filler for self-indulgent hipsters and eastern suburb housewives. Vacuous types. But now, I too have seen the light. I have converted and becomes one of....them. No more alcohol and no more drugs. It was difficult. I had to get through the rehab and the therapy. But now I have found my inner smile through bodily contortions and deep breathing.
Yoga. God help me. You should hear me dribble on about it. Yoga-I have found-is the only way to stop my mind tearing everything apart in slow motion. I write all morning, my heart a distressed little dog in my chest, trapped and overstimulated by coffee. And then afterwards, I leave my apartment and attend my daily yoga session in the Cross. Five days a week. In other words, I have finally found 'balance'. Pithy, caustic me in the morning hammering away on my laptop. Followed by blissed out, enlightened me in the afternoon. No more afternoons of self-destruction in the pubs. No more gleeful sabotage of my marriages and other relationships. No more substance abuse and lies. God help me I've achieved balance.
Anyway, I was sitting there, my patience beginning to get thin, as I tried not to fixate on the order docket hanging unnoticed, swaying in the light breeze, ignored for the better part of 10 minutes when these two fellows sat down at the next table. They were urban types. Corporate. Healthy of body and white of teeth. They were some new evolutionary stage of metrosexuality, heavy reliance on social media, alternative economies and services, superfoods, hot room yoga, pedicures, Byron Bay weekend retreats, flexible sexual attitudes and all the rest of it. Both of them deeply, deeply cocooned in their own special existences.
One of these 'fellows' started talking. My immediate and lasting impression? The speaker was a dower 'fellow'. A bummer. A killjoy. In describing him, I certainly couldn't use the word 'guy'. No way jose. He wasn't relaxed enough to be a 'guy' or a 'dude'. Calling him a 'man' or a 'gentleman' was a stretch. He wasn't fully grown. These words denote a level of maturity he didn't possess. 'A bloke'? Nope. 'A boy'? 'A chap?' No and no. The 'C' word? Certainly as Australian as Vegemite and beach cricket. And multi-functional (Your worst enemy or your best friend could be described using this part of the female anatomy. Love and hate in one handy word....ah hell, I'll nip this in the bud right now. I was plagiarising the past again. Something I was exposed to long, long ago by an angry girlfriend who was perpetually fired up and enraged by university feminism. Even though she herself came from a stable background. Part of the price I paid for securing her favours was listening to her rant on about these inequalities.....the things we do for our feminist girlfriends eh?).
Anyway, this 'Fellow' had a completely ridiculous posture, like a dancer. Even when sitting down it was like someone had fused all his vertebra together. In all other regards, he was taunt and drawn. Comically constipated. He had a withered, exasperated expression on his face. As soon as they sat down, he began talking. He talked for 45 minutes straight, only taking a short break to order coffee and a kale salad. He talked exclusively about himself.
While this was happening, the friend, who was more predominately in my line of sight, listened with varying degrees of attentiveness. At first, I tried to blocked it out. The speaker's voice. The listeners perky reactions. The problem was this fellow just kept on going. On and on he talked. Me, me, me, me. Eventually, my food arrived and I ate it while this fellow droned on about his mother, his lover, his therapist, the lady who he worked for, his proctologist, his personal trainer....etc. etc. All these people who were merely the bit players in his central drama. As I said, the sympathetic friend listened dutifully, tilting his head to one side, nodding, lacing his fingers together, raising an eyebrow in a concerned way, as I forked springy lettuce and chicken into my face. I began looking for a crack in his demeanour. An indication that he was on empathetic autopilot. Then, after fifteen minutes, I began to think, what is your deal? Your problem? Are you into sadomasochism? Is this how you get off? Absorbing this guys woes?
Anyway, I ate my meal and listened. You really couldn't really avoid it. Their table was directly next to mine. The speaker reminded me of a guy I knew once. Justin. A good friend of mine who, at the time, was incapable of casting himself as the villain or the asshole in any of the stories he'd tell. He was always the tragic hero. Everyone else? They were out to get him. Everyone else was wrong. Don't misunderstand me, Julian was very entertaining. He would tell me about all the usual run-ins a person that age has with drinking, drugs, sex, carousing and crazy jobs. All that. And the whole time he was talking, telling me all about his misadventures, I'd be seeing things from the other person's point of view. So for example, maybe Justin would have an argument with someone on a bus and things would get out of hand. He'd tell me about it and I'd reflexively side with the antagonist of the bus tale because I knew exactly what Justin was like. I couldn't help it. It was interesting at the time because Justin managed to get himself into a lot of fucked up situations. But like I say, I knew what he was like. Justin just naturally got under other people's skin. He did it without even trying. And it wasn't just that he identified with the incorrect characters in his stories. He incorrectly identified the genre as well. In Justin's mind, everything was always cranked up to high melodrama. As such, he would tell me everything with Rasputin's eyes. Eyes like two burning coals. And he would tell me these stories with exasperated hand gestures like he was playing an invisible piano. It was operatic. It was rock and roll. But the problem was....it always seemed like comedy to me. Unintentional comedy. In this way, he was a serious thespian unaware he was actually stuck in a farce.
I finished my chicken salad and I paid the bill. I got up, made my way through the clutter of tables and chairs to the front entrance. The waitress thanked me and I said, no problems. There was a little tip jar by the register but I felt no compulsion to leave any money. The service had been friendly but basically incompetent. I left those fellows-the talker and the listener-as they continued to sludge through the problems of the speaker's life. What has happened to us? That we all need all this attention? Why do we feel our voice need to be heard above all the other voices? Does it really matter? Why do we think our experiences, every single one of them, are worthy of an audience?
I went down the stairs of the subway station. People were knotted around the barriers, swiping their cards, consulting the timetables and checking their phones. A few minutes later I was sitting on a train, watching the sunny eastern suburbs slide past as I headed back towards the beach. And sitting there, I thought about you. I mean, I really got swamped by memories. I thought about the way things ended between us and some of the unfortunate things that were said. I imagined myself telling a stranger about our relationship....only this time I would try to explain things from your perspective.
I took some notes on my phone. Later on that afternoon, I fleshed these notes out into a short first person narrative. All explained from your perspective. It was an....interesting exercise. And now I want to use a word I don't think I have actually spoken aloud or written down in perhaps 30 years.
That word is sorry.
I'm sorry. That is basically what I want to say to you. Take it or leave it but just know this is a sincere apology.
I am truely sorry.
For everything.
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