Diary – Love at Cumbersome corner – meetings Pt 2

By Bruce Williams

Lovers don’t meet in Cumbersome, it’s just where they inexorably arrive. Cumbersome is like this three-dimensional mid-life crisis. A post-traumatic stress disorder with a postcode. I’m not sure whether I live in Cumbersome, or Cumbersome lives in me ‘ but I suppose you’ve guessed this by now.

Most mornings on my way to the train I pass a group of two men and three women – in the summer trying to keep out of the sun, in the winter trying to keep out of the wind – at the entrance of Fiona’s Egyptian Palace. They’re employees of the National Bank the next block up, but they’re not allowed to wait at the bank’s entrance for the doors to open for fear of attracting robbers.

Further along, past the tattoo and piercing emporium, and next door to the Asian Angels brothel, is the methadone clinic. There are no signs here of course – no ‘Methadone available now’ banners, but you can tell because there’s a sink and tap set into the bench on the customer side of the counter.

And because ‘Charlie’ Don Pride is waiting for his daughter Julie to show.

Julie Pride lives with her boyfriend in Erskineville and, each morning, carries her love and her secret to Cumbersome, and each morning her father makes sure that she does so. It’s been two years since her last jab, and a tad over 10 minutes since her last kiss. A kiss soon obliterated by the contents of a plastic cup.

Betty and I met about 10 years ago up the road in Newtown, back before it became Little Paddington.

It was two days before Christmas. What posed as a night club was about to close at 2AM. So we peeled off, a bunch of us, to a friend’s apartment in East Sydney.

In the kitchen, sloppy people prepared sloppy cocktails which the soon-to-be-sloppier consumed. Between the refrigerator and the sink stood this black-haired, brown-eyed, high-cheeked woman.

When her eyes looked into mine, I thought to myself ‘ she wants me to kiss her’ Then I wound my way between the ghost whisperers to where she stood, and placed my lips against hers. Her hand touched my shoulder. And held me there.

Three years, two months, four breakups, and about a thousand margaritas later, we married.

And then we came to Cumbersome, where now, at the methadone clinic, Julie Pride steps back from the counter, having washed out her mouth with tap water. And she starts to feel the first fingers of that old feeling again. Or at least something very like it. Of her first true love.

Walking out the door, she finds her father still waiting. He says ‘Good girl’.

This is the thing she can’t get her head around: He thinks she’s in therapy. But for Julie, it feels more like an affair. ‘Good girl,’ Charlie repeats, and gives her a gentle pat above her right hip.

And they kiss, say goodbye and part ways, on a weekday morning in Cumbersome.