the first time i went to sydney it was with alps of new south wales and shiver like timber, we were standing in line buying groceries for the second time and chris said "fuck buses, why don't you drive up with us." so i went three weeks early and lived on what i could. it was my job to stay up and keep chris and betony awake while they took their turns driving, in the process of this i made up hundreds of stories for betony, crazy things, one of them was about how my mom had gottaen drunk and passed out and it was christmas time so i took cookies and milk down near a river bed where i had been building a model north pole out of mud and twigs and i flooded it with milk then jumped up and down on it and tried to feed cookies to birds, everytime i finished a story i would say "that was a lie also, betony." and when chris was driving i just tried to listen and all, he had so much behind him it seemed just dumb not to listen.

chris and betony had been at my house for two days and i had a crush on betony and i felt like chris' baby brother. chris told me about his sick bones and how he didn't feel in love anymore, he didn't think love existed and he showed me all kinds of good music through the day and the night. there are images and sequences of them i remember like chris with ice cream down his beard and betony standing with me in the supermarket going "i really like supermarkets." and i think that's when i had a crush on her and naked little bushes on the side of the road in our high beams and chris driving past these dying old trees telling me " i sold everything i had and booked shows in europe and all over australia and did it completely myself and all these jerks around me could do was say "that's not punk, your using a keyboard." they still sit around preaching about DIY music bullshit and going to work at pizza hut." and getting drunk in adelaide and telling the drummer from japanther that i don't believe in revolutions and then dancing until i fell over coughing and the whole time it seemed like it was happening in a good light. like a light you see in a beautiful old film or something.

after our show at the afterdark we went searching through the dumpster's for food, we found all these potatoes and turkish bread and capsicum and when we got home we cut the rotten bits out of the capsicum and we cooked all of it up and had it for dinner for a while. we played a house show the next day at aaron wallace's house i stole some of aaron's books and sat on his porch and read them and he had ma barker playing on the stereo real loud, the light there in the garden was damp and heavy and i liked it alot. during chris' set the p.a. fucked up really bad so after song number two he flipped his little keyboard on top of his bigger one to create an enormous beating clang of all chords and he took the microphone and started beating this tom drum and screaming at the top of his lungs. half way through this he reached over to his amp that he takes everywhere and started creating different tones of feedback, then swtiching the tv on and pushing the volume to full he jams the mic into the speaker and all you hear is thick static wash. in one move chris un plugs everything and were all left with the tiny tv speakers and the tiny static. by the time everyone is clapping chris is packing up. he spent the rest of the night in aaron's room booking tours, doing an interview and avoiding everyone.

i remember really well, like i just walked out of it, chris leaving the house we had stayed at together. he packed all his stuff and i was playing a super hero video game and listening to the dead kennedys and we traded cds and hugged and i left chris standing on the porch, i don't think he was gone before i put his record on to listen, i listen to it nine times in a row and felt so damn sad that he was just standing around waiting to leave. i haven't seen him since, but i write him alot. if i wasn't so sick i feel like i'd probably be exactly where he is. i layed down on the couch and looked up at ricahard's wall, it had a quality about it, it made me feel real young again and completely confused, stuck in fuck off nowhere like it was my small town again and i was homeless, and all that confusion and sadness set a tone for my first time in sydney. sleeping on other peoples couches, eating their food, trying to be as nice as i could though i felt like hell. it was like i was a kid again, but when i was a kid i never noticed that sometimes i wasn't welcome.