Diary. September 2024.
Observations.
The Valley train station has had a facelift since I visited last. Starbucks. Sushi. Subway. The enormous building across the road has vanished; there’s just a void. Sound of construction everywhere. This place isn’t what it used to be. An overwhelmed, thin security guard is asking a meth addict to leave on the steps of the newsagent. I pass a huddle of fluro-clad construction workers. They have the swagger of Vikings. One shouts at the top of his lungs: ‘Let’s blow the Valley up and start again, boys!’
I am a casual Brisbane Lions fan, and by fluke, my gym is adjacent to their training headquarters. When I pop into the downstairs cafe one morning I notice the atmosphere first: unusually taut and humming. Then I spot them - half a dozen of the men’s team, tan and lean and towering, politely drinking coffees. Joe Daniher nods humbly when someone congratulates him on the past weekend - they won the preliminary final.
They are a marvel. Athletic bodies are different. They possess none of the vanity of the bodybuilders I regularly share barbells with upstairs. They have the musculature of danseurs, but the height of Gods. They remind me a little of the gangly uncertainty of teenage boys, a little bewildered by the body that’s been given to them. Some part of them wished they could be smaller. This makes them all the more attractive, of course.
I tried to avoid slipping on the floor, slick with communal arousal.
Overheard:
Your hair’s looking thick mate.
Aw thanks, yeah.
Are you using -
Nah, I’m not using anything.
You should you know, it works.
I like sex and normal-sized balls too much.
Aw yeah, right. Fair enough. I use this cream -
Hormonal?
Nah. Just gives it volume.
Yeah right.
Fuck this is such a bro-y conversation, isn’t it?
Everyday our phones remind us of the past. Photos from two, three, four years ago. We always look at the kids. As we scroll, they become the magical shrinking children.
The glimmer in the eye. The laugh. God, they were always themselves. They appeared on the Earth themselves.
A conversation between two sisters in the back of the car, having just visited a playground:
That was a girl, not a boy. She was wearing purple.
Oh. Purple is a girl’s colour.
I interrupt: I like purple.
Silence.
My wife becomes so vibrant with the energy of the garden. We will be walking somewhere and I will lose her to a plant on a pathway. She’s stopped to take a photo and identify it. It has consumed her imagination. Several times a day she will begin a conversation with me, mid-stream, and I will have to catch up to the landscaping she’s begun in her head.
This week, the flow was interrupted by the un-glamorous work of fixing a drainage pipe. Her spirit dimmed. She’s come to dinner, hands freshly washed from digging outside, thanks me for cooking and then sighs into her chair.
‘This fucking pipe.’
I have surprised myself by longing for a dog again—something small and short-haired. The eldest wants a chihuahua because she’s read about them in books. I’m scared of the yapping. I’m afraid of a lot: the cost of the food, properly fencing the yard, and vet bills.
Then I think of a small warm lump curled into my legs.
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