A Tiny Little Wake.

Here is something that I wrote:

It is 5 o’clock on a Tuesday morning in Sydney. I have been drinking with two of some of my dearest friends. One is Jason Chatfield, a gentleman of infinite jest, the type of man that can do anything, a man born of great character and talent. Jason and I were friends from high school and had both realized that school was not for us. We both knew what we wanted to do, we had that luxury.  The other was Miss Libby Klysz, a lady of class and kind beyond the likes of which I was capable of truly appreciating.  

We three sit at a small metal table in one of Sydney airports many food courts. This one was located before the gates of the international terminal; large imposing doors separating traveller from friend. It was 5 o’clock in the morning and I had spent the previous evening with friends eating and drinking at The Shakespeare Hotel, a ruddy bar in Surrey Hills. The upstairs section of the hotel had different rooms you could sit in, all with the same, oddly sensual felted wallpaper. This made the the drag queens feel beautiful and often throughout the night would you be greeted by large women with strong jaw lines and fabulous legs. I had not had any sleep, but sleep wasn’t important, to suck the marrow from his last night in town. That was much more important than sleep, plus sleeping on a plane is a point of pride for me, a conciliatory prize for being 5’5.  We three cackle hysterically, followed by silence, punctuated by brief yet nostalgic sips of airport coffee as the pale sun rose. I savour this moment, when you realize that you won’t be seeing someone for a very long time. It’s like a big quiet party where everyone is sad but everyone still wants to be there; a  tiny little wake, without the dead.

I spent a week in Sydney, a week of performing and walking about the beautiful city before I left for Chicago. One afternoon, I was exploring Glebe with my friends Nadia and Michael Burke. An inner city suburb in western Sydney; it’s many old terraced houses and middle eastern restaurants lining the hilly Glebe Point Road which ran through it. We stopped into one of the Persian houses to make way for an incoming late summer thunderstorm. We sat on the balcony, sipping Turkish coffee and smoking apple tobacco; the thick taste of coffee and cardamom, the scent of cinnamon and rain. Lightning over the clouds, as the afternoon sun set the sky a dull red and slow thunder veining out underneath it all. 

6 days ago  /  1 note

The Girl made of Glass.

She lived in the basement of a basement apartment with an estranged housemate.

 Earlier in the week, during a drunken adventure, he had confessed his love.

I couldn’t fault him, it was easy to do.

The woman had a inescapeable poise, a gravity well.

A classless class, a flapper and a bohemian sophisticate and the night sea and a girl made of glass. 

2 months ago  /  0 notes

Highlander 2: The Quickening

I first called this poor excuse for a tumblr Ben’s Chicago Rollercoaster. But the camera of my silver flip phone was unsurprisingly shit; translating the most straight forward of images into nothing but indecipherable floating bits of poo. So I changed it to a gayballs online journal, please pardon the use of gay but it really was pretty gay. Then called it what it is and began posting as irregularly as me after eating an icing sack of bleu cheese four days ago. That is to say that I am now pretty irregularly.

SONIC BOOM!

A large portion of my evening tonight has been spent going through old photos. I’m having a quiet night in. Simply getting drunk on the fumes of my own nostalgia. My nostalgia is so potent right now after looking through pictures of bygone times, it has started to emit noxious gases. It’s like being in a nail boutique, except for instead of acetate filling the air, its piping hot nostalgia right to your front door. 

NO THANK YOU!

I know I am getting older when I look at picture of me 11 eleven years ago and yell “You are a too young and stupid to be in existence” at the computer. But here we are, still in existence, maybe even a little bit wiser. Maybe. It’s good to know through all this mess, Jake Busey still looks like the devil. 

ALL HAIL JAKE BUSEY!

4 months ago  /  0 notes

Still Here - A short.

I have been forcing myself to sit and write anything everyday. I am going to start posting some. Here is something:

The sand blows like sea wash across the bow of whaler’s ships. The wind is hot and chokes the already sun choked desert. Nothing lives here during the days, nothing can. Only till the sun has set and the moon illuminates the dark sands do things come out to feed and fuck. 

I had never seen the desert surrounding our town till I was 16. We had heard stories, of an ancient seabed with long forgotten secrets and animals that lived there. I remember the city, shimmering white in the heat; golds and silvers and skyscrapers reaching their hands; as if to worship a god they no longer believed in.

Dunes move like slow waves. The sand like old water. Inevitable and wise, it’s journey had taken it from the ocean, inland, where it would continue, in hope that one day it would see it’s home again. Time is all it needed. I would return here someday, but not for long. My grandfather told me you can never return home, because like the dunes and desert, nothing is left unchanged. Time is all that is needed. 

4 months ago  /  2 notes

It is easier to blame than to fully comprehend the grotesque tragedy.

5 months ago  /  0 notes

At the end you think of the beginning.

I leave this place as I first came to it. 

I came to Chicago in March 2010, I had just had my long term relationship implode and was wondering what to do with myself. So I ran to Chicago to study and perform improv; much like boys of my age are want to do these days it seems. I was a jobless, couch surfing 26 year old who wanted to be funny. Writing it down makes me wonder how such a self described cynic not see just how desperately cliche he was. I guess I’ve learned something, or become more cynical. 

I have decided to leave Chicago. I threatened it often in fits of frustration or loneliness. But it is time to go home. And I leave this wonderful city a lot like how I found it. But I learned some great things. And have definitely become more cynical. 

EDIT: I am looking for anything to keep me here. I really don’t want to go back to Perth. 

5 months ago  /  2 notes