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| The
Unforgettable Seductress - St Kilda By Livia Cullen |
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| At pink lacquer dawns We stumbled indoors wafting Perfume and smoke Drifting lazy leisure Bass sliding off palm leaves Into concrete backyards On hot Summer days Blissful Spring nights Autumn Ochre days Lazy Sunday afternoons Pitch nights out prowling around Waking A lone fisherman sits at the end of the pier, his blue eyes pale and sun-bleached as his stiff blonde hair. His skin is leathery and worn; each line a testament to his love of the sun and his age as a result is a mystery. He wears a weathered black windbreaker like a second skin. Two gold rings encircle his fingers, one of them a wedding ring. His wife waits at home in a far away suburb. His heart belongs instead to this sweet seductress; this place he cannot tear himself away from. Every morning at dawn he sits at the pier seduced by the briny scent of her, slapped awake by the crispness of her first thing in the morning. He swears by the sea he will never give her up; his sweet mistress, St Kilda. Basking in the Sun Acland Street’s buttery scent wafts its way from the RSL to Jacqui O. Big Mouth shouts loud on the corner. Sugary pastries and oozing cakes gaze seductively out of shop fronts as ice-cream flavours bounce from Trampoline to Apple. Cafes, bars and restaurants are scattered like shells along the street and dance a tango with the fashion boutiques that sit between them. Outside Safeway, perched precariously on a tiled stump, sits an aboriginal man with his guitar. Stopping every now and again to swig from a brown paper bag, he belts out ‘Blister in the Sun’ in a loud cracked racket of a voice. Behind Fitzroy St in a little flat on Jackson St, Linda Londrigan sips her tea and smokes a joint. She is dressed in a long chocolate-coloured velveteen dress patterned with quilt-like pieces of printed fabric and her hair is a tousled |
arrangement
of auburn curls. In between sentences she takes long tokes
on her joint and holds the smoke in her mouth as she talks.
She is reminiscing about the old St Kilda when her and her
friends would head down
to the Sea Baths to Whiskey-A-Go-Go, a bar that has long since
gone. There they’d watch
Danny Le Roo, a female impersonator, perform, play pool and
roll joints up the back. She remembers so much of what St
Kilda used to be like; the people; the places. She also remembers
watching it become gentrified but she doesn’t mind
so much. These days she likes nothing more than to curl up
on her well-worn green velvet couch with a cup of tea and
a joint, telling stories to her visitors. Linda has a thousand
stories and her visitors often stay for hours, riveted to
her past. Occasionally, when it suits her, she reads their
tarot cards weaving their past into their present. Men have come in and out of Linda’s life over the years but she doesn’t need them. She is happy and alive and well and has St Kilda to keep her company. ‘We’re here for a good time, not a long time’ is her mantra. She still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. Linda has lived in St Kilda almost all her life and she’ll be buried here if she can help it. She doesn’t venture across the river, not unless she has to and she’d never live anywhere else. Linda is as much a part of St Kilda as St Kilda is a part of her. It is a quilt-like piece of her very soul. Her Dark Side On Fitzroy St a busker eyes wired wide tries to make a buck for his next hit of lui. His stereo pumps out rap as he maneuvers his BMX to twist and poise, theatrical as an acrobat. The neon lights of Seven Eleven give his pasty skin an unhealthy sheen, accentuating his black eyes and the dark circles around them. He becomes an eerie ghost-like form haunting the corner every Saturday night. Opposite his regular post is Gatwick House, a safe haven to the local misfits. Sprawled on the pavement outside are a bunch of St Kilda winos. Although some can get the cash together to pay for a cheap room most prefer the concrete outside and a cask of wine. Most nights they crowd around the outside walls as if being in its proximity is safer somehow. On occasion there is shouting and violence but mostly they are harmless. They’re just looking for somewhere safe to spend the night. Friday and Saturday nights the multitude of bars pump music into the street sucking patrons in and later spitting them back into the night where they linger on the streets buying kebabs, fighting and making out. Veludos, The Vineyard and Big Mouth keep Acland Street alive until the early hours while The Saint, The Prince and Metropol turn Fitzroy Street into a crazed sprawl of booze-fuelled patrons eating up the night. In an art deco flat behind porthole windows Che Vogler is sailing his own ship. He is of German-Cyprian descent and has a large round face, ice blue eyes and a wild shock of ash blonde hair. His t-shirt reads, ‘Un Saison en enfin’ and his faded jeans sit low on his hips. He has several tattoos and is thinking about another; some sort of socialist symbolism to go with his name. Though he lived in New York for a while with his ex-girlfriend Gigi, he now lives on the Bay in a small art deco flat with his mate Jono and he doubts he’ll be leaving any time soon. To Che, St Kilda is a playground. He goes out most nights, often all night and always on the weekends; to the Vineyard; to Mink Bar; to Prince, wherever takes his fancy. Che knows a lot of the bar and restaurant owners in St Kilda. Some nights he might spend drinking cocktails at the George. Others he spends playing pool at the Prince downstairs or ‘racking up’ at a mate’s place. He likes nothing better than a pricey bottle of red and a line of coke. He is no stranger to money and likes to live the high life. Recently he changed his credit card to a gold one. He likes the look of a gold card and what it represents. He has a girlfriend, well a sort-of girlfriend. He’s not monogamous and often there’s a different girl in his bed. To Che, St Kilda is the perfect vehicle to live life fast and furiously. The Sum of All Her Parts |
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