Over fifteen years, brick by determined brick, we built a life out of thin air and intentions. When I first met you, my mother could not tell her friends her eldest daughter was a lesbian. Talking to her friends, she would shorten my girlfriends’ names to androgynous mysteries. Jo. Nic. Lou.
Sometimes it’s only when you see a girl for the second or third time that you realise how beautiful she is. A song is a bit like that.
All I could think of , as she stood just a metre or two away, unflustered by betting deadlines, was her voice, her laugh, her brown eyes, her cascading hair, her full figure. And the inexperience of my heart (plus anoher vital organ).
I had better things to do than to listen to another song identified by my music-obsessed brother as worthy of listening to. Yet, I was polite, I was always polite. You see, I’d been through this process before.
Vin Maskell Melbourne, Midnight, November 29, 1982On a piece of foolscap paper, at my desk in my single-bed bedroom or maybe at the small table in the little kitchen at the end of the long hallway, I wrote a little poem. Nothing special.
What is a 14 year old boy to make of Just Like A Woman? What does he know of fog, amphetamines and pearls? What does he know of standing inside the rain, of dying there of thirst, of a long-time curse?
Phil was divesting himself of all material possessions, man. Fortunately, I was on hand to help him cleanse himself of the most evil of these things, his LP records.
Brian Nankervis Driving To North Balwyn, July 2002I'm staring at strangers, wondering if their dads are alive. How often do they see them? Do they find their dads wise, embarrassing, or supportive? Reverie and envy turn to alarm when I realise the horn from the white ute behind is directed at me.
I am sitting in a blue Laser sedan under a streetlight in a back-street in Brunswick. A Yorkshire rapper is in the passenger seat fiddling with a cassette and the car’s tape player.
Tony Kelly Rostrevor College, Adelaide, 1973At the school eisteddfod Phil Donato sang Ave Maria. I sang Blowin’ In The Wind. I thought my song was an inspired choice.