Drenched in Fear

We all make mistakes, he said kindly, in the already steamy morning heat. It had been a long time since the city had splintered beneath his feet. Now steamy undertow was all he ever got, the buildings anchored into place. That morning, when he had been an entirely different person, which had been entirely about survival and blanketing out the fear, he had moved with an easy lope through the back streets of Elizabeth Bay. There was more than water glimpses. He used to sit up on the roof of the apartment block then known as Withering Heights and later as Gotham City, those flats where all the prima donnas of the era acted out their lives, and wonder why no one else was sitting up their watching the sun come up, those spectacular trails of pink cloud down the harbour, the birds so entirely graceful above the television towers.

He always thought things would move full circle. But that is not what happened. Those days when the mandy stagger was a fashion accessory and everyone slept with everyone, before AIDS came along. Before everyone died. Before a whole swathe of Sydney life just got swept away. I hope you learnt from that. He looked up startled at the boss. The dog show gone so terribly wrong. It had been one of those Sundays when there truly was absolutely nothing going on. There was an admittedly huge dog show out west, and thus it was that I came to do my first, last, only dog story. There were all sorts of dogs; pink blotched things and French carriage fluff balls that calmed you down when they sat in your lap. See, they really do calm you down, the owner declared triumphantly, dumping one on me. Pointing at a Bichon Frise I asked what it was while the photographer clicked away. A cross between a maltese and a poodle, the bloke who was supposed to know these things said. So I reliably reported that the Bichon Frise was a cross between a maltese and a poodle and for weeks the letters pages ran hot with outrage. Just when you thought the scandal would subisde another wave of letters would arrive, some signed with indigant doggy paws and declarations that would have me know that they were pure breds dating back to the royal courts of Spain in the 1500s. To rectify this I initiated the idea of putting an item in what was then known as Column Eight on the front page of the paper. The item duly ran. And the editor loomed above me, declaring "I hope you learnt from that".

We learn more from our mistakes than our successes, he said on the roof, trying to instil calm, the rain that was to drench the state and fill the dams already in the air. If only he could remain so certain.