The Road Home

New York


Been back in Australia about a month now. That’s after a three week stint in the US of A. That place melted my head a bit, so I’ll start there.

Began the trip in the Big Apple. And what a fucking apple it is. If I stick with fruit analogies just a bit longer, the place is sorta like a big beautiful pink lady, all shined up and ready for popping in yer gob. Then as you bite down, a surge of bitterness fills your mouth and you realise it’s all rotten at the core. Not that I got to the core of NY. Not that I even took a big bite out of the place for that matter. But from what little I saw from the outside, the city of cities is a bit messed up. But messed up in the best kind of way.

The first day I got confused and instead of taking the subway uptown to 114th Street, where the Hotel was, I went all the way up to 144th Street. That’s Harlem, and that’s bad for a floppy haired white-boy foreigner, swathed in a giddy aroma of gin and stupidity. I was a lamb to the slaughter. At first I didn’t realise my mistake, and as the winter sun set and the winter wind blew I blindly wandered further into the nest of inequity, oblivious to my impending fate.

In truth nothing much happened to me, save for a couple of angry looking black guys informing me of my geographical mistake with the most colourful linguistic flourishes. Scary motherfuckers. With my odour now peppered with the faintest hint of human shit, I briskly made my way back to the subway and the relative safety of downtown New York City.

The rest of the stay in New York was fun, but from a reader’s perspective probably about as interesting as the contents of Rupert Murdoch’s underwear, so I won’t bore you with the sordid details ad nauseum. But for the sadomasochists out there, here’s a brief itinerary of what I got up to:

played this really big piano with my feet, which is apparently out of some famous movie starring an actor who has an abnormally huge forehead and tiny little crab’s eyes;
wandered a large, stupidly located park and the myriad of downtown streets at a pace that’d leave Stanley sweating;
ate hot dawgs;
drank cawfee;
took a trip to the famously decrepit Coney Island (Warriors, come out and pla-yay);
went outdoor ice skating, just like in the movies;

Also, Sian found twenty bucks some moron forgot to take out of an ATM in the East Village. And when we left for LA, the airline offered us $450 each in exchange for us waiting for the next flight, two hours later. Fortuitous.


More Soon…



djb