Ten things I ate in Melbourne (Winter)
Or, what happened when I spent five days alone.
Chicken schnitzel with Italian slaw, City Wine Shop. I arrive in Melbourne the day before the solstice. I stick my luggage in a locker, put on my warmest jacket, and go in search of lunch. I am here, in the city I studied writing in fourteen years ago, because I am burned out. I admitted this to myself only recently, after months of learning about the warning signs of burnout from my friend Brianna. It’s funny (or is it stupid?) how you can be face-to-face with the truth but still look right through it. I’ve been struggling to cope with day-to-day living, on and off, for close to three years. And yet I have denied it, to myself mostly. I am still reeling and rattling from the events that took place in my body between December 2020 and July 2022. In this span of time I got married, became pregnant with identical twins, birthed two dead baby girls, got pregnant again, and gave birth to my now-almost-two-year-old daughter. These five days in the city I lived in as a twenty-year old have been planned for months. I know I need this but I am haunted, like I should feel guilty or something. I don’t feel guilty, though. This is the first time I’ve been alone, truly alone, since becoming a mother, and I want to relish it. I hang my jacket under the bar I’m sitting at and tuck into the second best schnitty of my life (the first-best was the moon in scorpio chicken from Brooklyn’s Carthage is Destroyed in 2018). As I eat I notice my body. Just a week earlier it was being hollowed out by a nasty case of food poisoning (slimy spinach in a smoothie I made, tragically). Food tastes better than it ever has after illness has lifted. This meal is a small step in a larger recovery. I pretend City Wine Room was built just for me, a fragile creature in need of reminding this is what simple pleasure tastes like. The waiter asks if I want anything to drink and I surprise myself by ordering a $20 glass of pinot noir without blinking, as though it’s a totally normal thing for me to do on a Thursday at 2pm. Today, I could be anybody.
The girl, so confusing remix with lorde. Might as well have been a meal. I ate it up like spaghetti. This song becomes the soundtrack to my walks in Melbourne, taking me from one sitting location to the next. The line and it’s just self defense until you’re building a weapon punctuates each departure and arrival, fueling me with its gutting, exciting relatability. Girl, girl, giiiiiirl rings in my ears as I drift off to sleep each night. My goal on this ‘mom-retreat’ is to meet my basic needs in the easiest way possible; to simply take my time and do what I want. Ofcourse I cannot shake the sick urge to be as productive as humanly possible, to finally crack the code on the book I’m trying to write, to make the time here count, you little bitch! The bully in me is tired and she knows it, her attempts to whip me into perfect motion are becoming desperate. While she shouts at me for taking it easy, my true desire sidles up to the mic unnoticed. This part of me speaks in a low, relaxed voice. It’s preferences are straightforward and soothing: give me long lunches, read a book, and for the love of god turn your phone off when the food arrives. It would be rude not to oblige, so I do.
Chocolate Cinnamon Scroll, Market Lane Coffee. On my walk to the cafe I rehearse my arrival. I will order a batch brew and sit in one of the grey armchairs facing the long coffee station. I prefer the chair on the right because it has perfect reading light from two little lamps sticking out of the wall. When I walk in, both chairs are taken and the cafe is full of movement. Evidence of children everywhere. A doting mother tucks an oil-stained paper bag into the folds of a pram bonnet as she chats brightly to a woman nursing a newborn. Two toddlers zig zag their way across the tiled floors, specks of babycino foam clinging to wisps of blonde hair. I quickly notice they are twins. Their cheeks look sticky from croissant flakes and one of them wears those shoes that light up. They remind me of the twin boys I nannied ten years ago, shortly after my Melbourne Uni degree ended and I moved back to Sydney; they’d be in year 6 now. My body switches to on-guard mode whenever I see twins out in the wild, and the sight of these toddlers signals a familiar frozenness throughout my insides. A silent alarm rings and I feel trapped, imprisoned in my own trauma response. I am a statue, chock-full of fear and fury but with no room to breathe it in or out. My stomach collapses in on itself like a whirlpool made of clay. I join the line to order my coffee and decide I need a pastry. I try not to stare at the mother of the twins even though I am staring at her. She is too busy to notice anyone but her children, who she patiently wrangles into a double pram, the same black Bugaboo Donkey Dom’s grandparents gave us for our twins. We still have it, only it’s shrunk down to be a single pram now. The second seat insert is folded neatly in our built-in wardrobe in a state of perpetual waiting. The mum pushes her pram through the doors as her twins (I can’t tell if they are sons or daughters) wail. I go and sit at the table they left behind and the waitress wipes the crumbs and milk spots away.
Takeaway margherita pizza, Figlia. I misjudge the time it takes to walk to the pizza place (28 mins) and end up eating half of it on the way back. The pizza is good. As I walk in the dark, my thoughts visit familiar places. What am I going to do for money? When will it be time to have another baby? What will become of me? I have spent the past eight months aggressively applying for part-time work, cold-emailing potential connections like my life depends on it. And in a way it does. My life feels on hold until I secure the consistent income we need to even think about a sibling for Gia, something I badly want. I find this whole process humiliating. No matter how many recruiters tell me that it’s ‘slim pickings’ for anything not full-time at the moment, that two days a week is not alot to work with so it’s gonna take time, I read my lack of success in securing regular work as entirely my fault. Evidence that when push comes to shove, I am a loser. And while I gratefully accept the freelance gigs that do fall into my lap here and there, I can’t help but thirst for more, more, more. How do people do this? I feel rejected by the world but compelled to pretend I’m chill and trust the process (I don’t). It’s actually not even rejection I feel, it’s isolation. It reminds me of grief, that wall of glass separating you from the rest of the world. I desperately want to get rid of it. My mind is a maze trying to invent pathways to financial stability. At times I’ve had flashes of inspiration, hope, and my usual Sagittarian faith. But it wanes quickly, dwindling to a tired flicker. I am beginning to wonder if I am too good at getting up after falling down. Maybe it’s time to admit it. I am a spent little lamb lying on the carpet mouthing fuck, what if it doesn't all work out? I am back at the apartment now. I take off my jacket and hang it on the hook behind the door. I wipe some crumbs from the corners of my mouth, put the pizza box on the table and open my laptop. I turn off my Seek job alerts and type should I become a school teacher into google.
Root vegetable and cheddar pie with dressed leaves, Florian. It’s heaven here. The vegetables are sliced thinly with perfect layers of cheddar and pastry, served with a chutney that reminds me of the banana one my nana used to make. Florian glows with the warmth of good hospitality. It’s an ease that hides its effort. The waitstaff don't check in on me too often but don’t neglect me either; they know when to meet my eye and when to let me read my book in peace. Their soft attention emboldens me to take my time and savour each bite. I am halfway through Ghosts by Dolly Alderton and I am exhilarated to be genuinely getting lost in the world of a novel (fiction!), something I haven’t experienced since the pandemic. I don’t want to show my excitement for fear of scaring it away. This secret pleasure moves and stretches in me like a bear in winter. A waitress with Sabrina Carpenter bangs and big teeth notices the book in my hands and tells me how much she loved reading it. “OMG I’m so happy for you!!!”
Lasagne Di Carne, 1800LASAGNE. I am excited for dinner with Dior, a friend who I first met at a uni lecture when we were baby writers. We each order a negroni sbagliato and a cos wedge to go with our lasagnes. Each wedge is filled with anchovy cream and covered in a cloud-like bed of grana padano. I get a garlic bread all to myself, the spicy fresh garlic taste warming my throat, and it pleases me. Time with Dior is time well spent. We talk about how we aren’t where we thought we would be when we were younger. We talk about creative shame and success and frustration. Dior is one of those people who really listens. I say I am haunted by my own hunger, hunger for publication and readership and creative work that pays well. I say that I don’t want to wait any longer, that I know I have no control over it, that I feel stupid for wanting things to happen now. Desire is no longer thrilling; it terrifies and embarrasses me. Dior blinks with knowing and says gently, But I think you’re allowed to want it to happen soon. It’s allowed. My eyes brim with tears, relieved at the permission. We finish our drinks and talk about Annie Dillard’s instruction to her writing students: Go up to the place in the bookstore where your books will go. Walk right up and find your place on the shelf. Put your finger there, and then go every time.
Dirty martini, Captains of Industry. The next evening we sit at the window overlooking the rooftop. It’s covered in leaves that look like they are made of brown paper. The martinis are good here, the olives plump and green, and it’s comforting to see the same guy with kind eyes running the place. Dior and I used to drink coffee here as uni students and talk about our dreams and whatever else consumed us then (Girls? Gaga? 212?). I drank long blacks with honey in those days, unaware that long blacks have two shots of coffee in them and might be contributing to my crippling anxiety. I didn’t get my period for the duration of my three years in Melbourne (it returned as soon as I moved home to Sydney). The bar is closing for the day; Dior and I hug goodbye and make plans to see Inside Out 2 the next evening. On the tram I begin to feel heavy and slightly worried. I open reddit and search ‘Azaelia Banks’ and find what I am looking for: a laugh.
Pain au chocolat, Market Lane Coffee. I return here and sit in the comfy chair reading for hours. I am an expert at this. I first order a filter coffee, then an hour later a pastry, then another coffee with oat milk an hour after that. I am relieved the music is ambient today, no sad-man vocals like last time, and there are no children to be seen. This combo puts me in a melancholy but peaceful trance. I don’t know why I chose a chocolate pastry again, I usually go for a plain croissant. I find it satisfying to judge a place on its simplest creation, the same way coffee snobs order long blacks (no sweetener, no splash of milk) to really taste the beans. This chocolate croissant is a bit dry, but it satisfies me. I miss Gia, I notice the little ache. This ache is different from the one I feel for my dead children, my ghost babies. I experience their absence as a permanent, unfillable void, one that still shocks me at times. The two lights above the monstera plant next to me make me think of Caroline and Frida. Always twos, always pairs. I open my camera roll and look at the picture of Gia Dom sent me the day before. She already looks changed, I notice a new expression on her face.
Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, Walrus. On my last morning I go for a run along the park street trail. After showering, I find a new cafe and decide to work on the book. I order something sweet to trick myself into opening the doc. In attempting to write this thing (a memoir-in-essays) I am forced to return to my body and the many bodies inside it. There’s wedding dress body, having sex body, pregnant body, stillbirth body, grieving body, postpartum body, labouring body, breastfeeding body, mastitis body, bleeding body, weaning body. Every time I open the doc, including now, I think I hate this I hate this I hate this. I don’t want to write about what’s happened but I need to write about what’s happened. That need wins over the want, again and again.
Medium cheeseburger with fries and Coke Zero, Airport Maccas. I wasn’t allowed McDonald’s as a child. A story my mum told a lot when I was a kid that became part of family lore was that my Dad once pointed to a McDonald’s sign we were driving past and said, “Soph, that is the only place on earth I give you permission to walk into and VOMIT.” I throw half the cheeseburger in the bin and walk to the airport bookshop sipping the coke. I find the section where my books will go and put my finger there.
One of my favourite pieces of writing of yours ❤️
Wow. I loved this piece. Many points caught my breath & even though the ending is perfect - I wanted to keep travelling with you!