You, Me & Ripponlea

The Lucky Coq, is a garishly colored colonial building sitting on the corner of chapel and high street. Large vats of fruit flavored vodka are suspended above the barman, beyond which are diecut levers for their house brews 'blonde coq' and 'black coq'. Somwhere inside Dawesy and Danish are nursing two large pizzas, a vodka & soda and a scooner of draught.

They're discussing a Christmas present they'd gotten from one of their clients - a giant sunshade - like the ones you normally use for your car, only for humans - one human.
'ya got to chuck it against a wall, and then boom! there's your tent!', 'that's awesome!' I reply (sincerely) - Unknown to me at the time was that I'd be carrying around this anti glare hut for the rest of the night.

Pizzas there are 3 dollars and as australian pizzas go they overwhelmed me with the sheer amount of meat and leaves stuck to the dough. The girl across from me is having the same toruble I'm having with keeping the topping off her lap. I crack a joke about how I'm astro-turfing the bar floor which gets a few laughs, but the rain outside is keeping me anxious.

A third scooner, helps calm me - there's something about the weather that's keeping me jittery. I tell this to the petite asian girl next to me, she looks at me funny, before replying that it's perfect weather to stay in and just curl up. I decided to maybe just stop thinking about the weather, and end up talking to Dawsey about boobs.

Later that evening Dawes and I are in a 'fucking huuuge' maxi taxi (quote unquote the taxi driver) and on our way to the Gertrude Nightclub - a speck life in an overgrown industrial landscape, lit by tiny serialized flashing bulbs. It's here we read the birthday book with Kim and Jess - a pretty energetic social worker who I'd get to know better by the end of this post - and according to the birthday book has psychic mind controlling abilities and may one day be in need of psychological help ( but apparently so will Dawsey.) She's telling me about horse riding before learning to walk, apparently riding a thorough-bred down a beach isn't all that, I should warn Serene about this as it could make or break her ultimate daydream fantasy which currently would be :

'riding a stallion down a beach on a Tuesday morning.'

At 9 I'm sititng onthe steps of Melbourne central station with Jess, trying to use the compacted anti-glare hut as a windshield. she's trying to explain the practice of 'zoning' to me:

Jess: 'Hmm, lets see, where could we imagine we'd be?'

'In the future! of the universe! where cars have taken over the people as citizens of the world!' I yell triumphantly. Jess pauses for a second and umms 'I was thinking Zurich.' 'Zurich?' I ask. 'Yeah Zurich', Jess confirms. 'I've never been to Zurich' I reply, 'Niether have I, but thats the idea', I stare at the multistory carpark above 'Digiworld' and 'CrazyJohn's mobile world' - all lit in fluro lights - Zurich!

Later that night I'm back at the Coq, and wedged under her arm and next to Emma. 'You're my fourth Asian friend!' says Jess, 'you're my only Kiwi friend!' I reply. My brain is swelling and swirling and it's all a bright warm blobbing lava lamp. I'm using words like 'visceral' and phrases like 'the cultural drip of melborune', while smoke and ale pass in and out of my lips. For a moment I'm talking to Bradley, an up and coming radio producer who eventually wants to make documentaries, and his sister Emma, a pretty brown haired nurse who is also form Newzeland and lives with Jess. With Mervin, who I'm explaining the cultural drip to. My head is a surf and I'm capsizing neck first. 'dots!' says Jess. She's grinning, kim's grinning and I hadn't a clue what she meant but Kim is waving at us from a moving taxi. Dawsey's down with the plan too, which somehow comforts me - I mean there's only a handful of things in this world that dawsey wouldn't kill - and thats a comforting sort of person to spoon in bed.

I'm passed a broken corona bottle and breathing through its yellow-stained neck. 'Wow you got it all', 'yeah' cough, 'Feel. Awesome'. I'm, I doing eyebrow-semaphore with dawsey from the between the legs of a coffee table while Jess sits firmly upon the dining table while Bradly dances around the stove with glowing knives and something is burning. There's another person

7am, we're huddling out the door, and walking up-draft to the marker green map jess had drawn on her fridge the night before. My head feels like a hardening marshmallow, and my mouth is parched and slicked over with 20 flavors of bad. We're at Ripponlea, and the automated MET operator is telling us we've got another 12 minutes of cold to sit through.

Dawsey says 'It's gonna be like in that film',

'We catch the train, wake up, and this place will never have existed'.

So I take a picture, just to be sure.