November

13^th November 2005 – Possum is munching on a stolen chocolate on a tree & watching the boys play footy. And I. I’m about to be fucked.

I don’t know my heart is breaking. But it’s breaking alright. And tonight - it will fall apart.

In about 13 hours, I will disappear from this place. Like death it will end suddenly. No returns, no coming back. Game over, bitch. Goodbye university.

And I’m expected to live on. How & why - I haven’t a damn clue.

I’m sitting at my window. It’s the first floor – a broken ankle at best if I fall. Nothing notable. Boys playing footy won’t even pause to take a look. Girls will smile, laugh & walk away like I was fucking around. Possum will climb into my room through the window & steal my Nutella. He’s a bitch with a sweet tooth.

Suddenly, I’m thinking of the things I have lived, screwed up, touched, melted, broken, bumped, fallen into, flown, blessed, escaped, fallen under, smashed into, the magic I’ve seen - All that shit.

There will never be another morning in this place. Heaven. My heaven.

22^nd February 2000 – that’s when it all started.

From meeting Michelle at the Delhi airport to speaking to the French girl & seeing the Aussie chic look at me in fascination. My broken French, boarding school English & third world diversity made the five-outta-ten Aussie chic consider, doing me once. Or perhaps that’s what I wanted her to consider. You can’t blame me, I was a bloody virgin.

We had an overnight halt at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I arrogantly ignored my wake-up call & then found myself running like a lunatic on the sprawling floor of Kuala Lumpur airport. I made the flight. Miracle.

Reality check. I wasn’t cool; I was still the same 18-year-old idiot who hadn’t kissed a girl. Then I lost my darn luggage. I had been fed hogwash that white people were supersmart like Pentium II computers. Nope. Some dumbfuck read the label wrong: Adelaide as Auckland. Awkward, right. My bag landed in New Zealand. Then the white species showed its true colors & courier-delivered my precious masi-gifted faux-leather bag at my residence within 2 days. Apologies attached. Sweet.

To leaving quiet as death Adelaide for bustling as fire sale Melbourne. To living in a shady backpacker to moving to a shadier Footscray. To end up living with Sachin, notorious on the streets of Melbourne for being promiscuously gay. To seeing his uncountable boyfriends popping in & out through the windows.

To meeting those two lads “We’re also virgins” they claimed shamelessly. Next day I met them again “Bro, we aren’t anymore.” Assassin was the same - Lisa. To moving in with them. To breaking our door locks & bolting them with scotch tape. True story. To coming in & out through the window like Sachin’s nefarious boyfriends. To playing cricket in the living room & making holes in all nooks & crannies of the room. To breaking all the incandescent bulbs. To punching & flooring the much bigger Abhishek & he getting even by ambushing me in the busy city street a year later.

Going to nightclubs after midnight as Naveen bhaiya preached “That’s the time chics are drunk & easy,” euphemism for “God, hopefully they’ll be wasted & stupid enough to sleep with us losers.” Of course I, with other dolts, wasn’t fucking any of them hot-drunks. We were too busy at 2am, when the chics were wasted & horny, in getting to the magic score of 2080 in the legendary game Snake on our Nokia 3210s. It was year 2000 & Nokia was god & I was still young like perky boobs.

To leaving slutty Footscray to move to too-posh-for-my-blood Hawthorn. To missing Footscray like a mother misses her dead baby. To almost hitting Mehul & then totally breaking down. She pleaded. But I couldn’t be stopped. I had almost raised a hand on the lad I truly loved. How the hell did it come to this? I had to go away to save our precious friendship. But, inside I felt it was over. And I like hell I wanted to be wrong.

I was. 

Leaving him & our life behind to move into Monash campus & continue to never lock doors. I didn’t study there so it was illegal-&-impossible to live there. But, I hailed from the land of jugaad garnished with jhooth. I moved into Deakin Hall. Boring as fuck. Lived there for two years. In 2004, I decided to be the man I always wanted to be & told the authorities – “I want to move to Farrer. The place where everyone gets laid” They let me because it wasn’t a big fucking deal, dumbfuck. It was already 2005. I was 23. And life started like never before.

April 1^st, I’m scheduled to go to work. I get an offer I can’t refuse - Sun, beach & bitches. I call Anna & say “I don’t know why, but I really wanna be at the beach, today.” She said “No worries, Gooahruv, I will get someone to cover for ya.” Love that chic.

Like I had any fucking idea what this meant. That this will change my life. I meet this chic – We hold hands & share ice-cream. I kissed her two days later on her 3^rd floor window. And made love days later when Jack politely said “Get a fucking room” when he saw us sitting cosily on the stairs. Then she fell in love & I fell in love. Better than the fucking greatest romantic movies. I notice I’ve been firing the F word like a Tarantino character. I tell ya if you had lived my life you’d be spraying it all over the canvas. That’s how good it was.

Was. Now that’s a despicable word. Ain’t it.

June 29^th I asked her to marry me. And she surprised me like Zayn did by quitting 1D. “Yes, I will,” I died.

5 days later, on American Independence Day, she flew away to North America. When I looked at her at the airport departure double doors & kissed her, I don’t know why I felt we’ll never meet again. And I really wished I was wrong.

I wasn’t.

I know for certain I loved her. Dead certain. But more than that I know she loved me in a way like no one deserves & least of all me.

I climb off the window sill & stare into the fat taxation book. After eyeballing the shit outta the bestseller for eternity, I grab a metal ruler & go under my study desk. With the sharp edge I carve – ‘Someone fell in love here. And that someone hopes you do too.’ I lie under the desk till it is almost time to miss the flight.