London calling
Posted: February 22, 2006 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: london Comments OffIt feels incredibly natural to be back here.
In one big whomping weekend all the intensity naturally afforded to life in this city returns as my reality. How strange to be able to say, “Oh last weekend I was…” and to be discussing life in that tame dog of a city snoozing in the sun called Sydney, whilst now to be standing in that narrow band between the oppressive European sky and the stinking streets of London, joining those millions of lives sandwiched in between, being rattled around like marbles in a can.
Immediately my skin breathes a sigh of relief and lets my blood run hot and thick down my shirt. I can show myself again (because here no one is looking. But alas! No one is looking!) This city is too big, and devoid of set and personal history to bother with any tidy up, button down attitudes. Instead the soul leaps out of the chest, dribbling all over the path.
But then there is the loneliness. The space between myself (a single soul) and the world is intensified and I become painfully sensitive of my own person. I miss my friends and family who softened this gap with harmless, necessary distractions. And all the survival anxiety grips my shoulders with bony fingers.
I look out the window and see a cardboard landscape. I find the overt Englishness of it charming, but realise that it cannot drag me down along with it because I still carry the lightness of a sunny, privileged, Sydney upbringing with me. But for those who did not come to London out of choice but from desperation? Who ran in fear from their homes rather than skipped nonchalantly? The blurring greyness of it all may seem like a disappointing light at the end of the tunnel.
More soon…
More flickr photos, click image to launch
Posted: February 13, 2006 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: photos Comments Off
Brokeback boy
Posted: February 10, 2006 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: fiction Comments OffFan fiction alert!
“Don’t let go!” I cry, grabbing onto his arm. He grimaces under my grip. I giggle, and loosen the clutch, having forgotten my new shivering strength. This body I am in is thinner, a fairy-boy, like a petulant porcelain doll – but each cell of man body has a hidden strength that my squidgy, warm, fat fat female cells never did. The power of them is intoxicating, and I rub my arms constantly, amazed at their hardness. How extraordinary this definition, the cutting bold shapes thrill me.
His hand whips to my face, his thumb trailing my lips. There is blood on it, cut, my elbow too, a malicious kiss from the broken glass on this sticky floor we’re entangled with. He slips his mouth over mine and pushes me to the floor, unafraid of hurting me, and I delight that I too can give it back, so grasp the back of his neck tightly. The people around us have to make way as we spread downwards, they shift aside in a daze. My head is vomiting over and over again but still that smells cuts through the grey, I can’t get enough of it, our male sweat intermingling. My mouth is talking, I want it to shut up but I can’t, and I feed the words into his ear:
“Don’t let go. I’m such a liar, you mustn’t believe word I say. No, actually, just – just, don’t let go!!!”
