Where I Live

Where I Live

Where I live is concrete apartments stacked like boxes that glow window
by window in the night. Lives are separated by solid walls covered with
patterns from the Seventies. Bright coloured kitchen. Plain coloured
carpet. There's always a hip hop drum beat coming from across the hall.
That's where the guys come from who knock on my door late at night and
ask to 'borrow some scissors, man?'. But I don't ask what for.

Where I live I sit with my feet in the road side gutter on Saturday
nights and listen to cars and sirens whispering in the distance. This
is where I meet the guy fom upstairs. He lives by himself but he has
his daughter, laughing and running around, on weekends. The guy from
upstairs, when I see him, he sits down with me and we both pat the
stray ginger cat who wraps around our legs, purring for food.

Where I live the guy from upstairs who looks like Edward Norton but
with a longer face, he talks to me about construction works he's been
watching on a house across the way. He says someone famous lives in our
street but he can't remember who. He says his daughter may not be
coming by anymore. Her mother is trying to stop her coming by anymore.
He tells me that his daughter has hair the same colour as summer and
that nothing else matters as much as her, one day I'll know what he
means. When he says this, all my problems seem much smaller. He unfolds
a drawing from his wallet that his daughter's unsteady hands have
created. Of him holding her hand. His hair scribbled in yellow. His
body drawn in green. Big, red, one line smile. He tells me how he was
only with her mother for one night. That her mother was the only girl
he'd ever been with. How they did paternity tests to prove he was the
father. How he never did get a say in his daughter's name. He sort of
laughs to himself, looks up the street. And her mother is trying to
stop her coming by anymore.

Where I live, he shows me a small picture of his daughter. She has his
eyes.

Where I live I read about break-ins and make sure I lock my windows. I
watch people mark their bodies for life at the tattoo store up the
road. I listen to Saturday night drunken voices, hear bottles shatter
across the pavement. I watch the guy from downstairs feed the stray
ginger cat with leftovers and he pats the stray on her head. She purs.
I watch the guy from upstairs on his phone under the streetlight.
Arguing. Echoeing through the empty streets. Crying onto the footpath.
Saying 'please'. Over and over.

Where I live, the guy from upstairs stays under the street light all
night. But his daughter doesn't come by this week.

Where I live there is graffiti that takes on a life of its own. There
are beach tanned women in winter, walking to no-where. Old Italian men
in vests waiting to cross the street. Bleached men in jeans and thongs.
Young Asian guys in sports cars with figurines stuck to their
dashboards and spoilers that look like they are made from Meccano. A
man in the street who I stop to talk to and he says, in some
accent:
'Women are like Voltron, the more you can hook up the better it
gets.'

And sometimes, while the world is happening around me, I like to close
my eyes, get lost in the sounds of the city at night.

Where I live up, on the second floor, in apartments stacked like
boxes, the cricket is on TV. But I'm watching the trees waving in
anticipation of a storm. The small triangle flags on strings at the car
dealers up the road flickering above the windows which reflect the
clouds around fluorescent price stickers. The man from downstairs opens
his door to the ginger stray, its eyes closed in the building wind. The
guy from upstairs is wating in the street, looking up to the main road,
walking back and forth. Today is Saturday.

Where I live, I take an umbrella out to him in the street, see a car
pull up and his daughter, tiny feet tapping across the road, hair in
tiny pigtails. Tiny carry case in her arms. She runs to him. Her hair
like summer. Even in the rain. I hold an umbrella over them and notice
that he is crying. But I don't mention it.