REFLECTIONS OF A RECOVERING AUTHOR - PART III
or LIFE DOWN UNDER
Today, October 27, 2003, is the one year anniversary of the day I boarded a train in Normal, Illinois, bound for the west coast. By coincidence, it’s my best friend Paul’s birthday. Paul, the friend who spent an awful lot of money to get me out of New York City. The friend who hustled me to my new life. The friend who had as much to lose from my departure as anyone, but had never hesitated to help. I feel grateful I have a friend like Paul and would like to dedicate this essay to him (particularly because I was too cheap to send him a birthday present).
I have been in Tasmania for well over nine months and things are better than I imagined they would be. I’ve come a very long way in the last nine months, so far in fact, it’s hard to remember how uncertain and tentative my first days here had been. It wasn’t all that long ago, yet it seems as if it has happened to someone else and perhaps that’s true, for if new experiences change you, I am surely a different person.
When we last left our hero (that would be me), he had only recently landed in Tasmania and had just met dana, who he’d been speaking to online for nine months. dana had picked him up at the airport and driven him to what would hopefully become his new home. It was suddenly summer when it had been winter. And it was Sunday, the first day of the week and the first day of a new a life. The kids were away, which was one less thing to deal with, and the dog didn’t quite know what to make of him.
The tour of the house was fairly brief. The front hall, the living room (which dana called the lounge room), the kitchen, the back yard, (we’d passed through the front yard to get into the house, of course), the bathroom, the kids’ bedrooms and of course, the master bedroom, where dana and I would be sleeping... together.
I mean, I had just met the woman. We said we weren’t going to have sex right away. We were going to wait. Get to know each other. We didn’t need the additional pressure of sex right away, considering how many other changes we were both going to have to deal with. And wait we did. We waited for about fifteen minutes. Then clothes were shed and the deed was done. Hey, what the hell, later on the kids would be home and I’d have felt more constrained. I guess it was something we both needed to know. And then we knew and could get back to the business of introducing ourselves.
Hi, my name’s Steve and I write speculative fiction. Hi, my name’s dana and I’m Tasmanian. The funny thing is, it wasn’t uncomfortable. From the very first moments, it felt right and has remained so since.
No time to sleep though, we had to get the kids soon. So up and dressed we were and back out of the house. dana wanted to show me some of the island and so we ended up in Salamanca Place, an area I’ve come to think of as Greenwich Village lite.
I used to spend a lot of time in Greenwich Village and have many fond memories of the place. The Village is where I saw Uncle Bonsai perform live. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve eaten at Jekyll and Hyde’s (a horror theme restaurant). The midtown Jekyll and Hyde’s is larger, but the one in the Village remains my favorite.
Salamanca Place really did remind me of the Village, which I suppose is why dana took me there. Outdoor cafes, tourist shops, people walking, interesting stores, yes, it felt like home. Well, except for the fact that everyone had Australian accents and the tomato sauce came in packets (which Australians called sachets) not unlike the way ketchup is served at fast food places in the U.S.
My first eating experience in Australia was at Sals, an outdoor cafe much like you’d find on the upper West Side, with the same unlikely combinations of ingredients and strange yuppie sauces. I had a pasta dish that was okay, but wasn’t anything to write home about, so it was a good thing I wasn’t planning on writing home. dana had eggs and bacon, with the aforementioned tomato sauce. Then, I almost died. Literally.
I figured since I still had a couple of minutes on my phone card, I’d give Samandi a call and let her know I had arrived safely. Little did I know how dangerous that call was to be. I was only walking a short distance away, across the street, across the grass of a park, to a payphone I’d spied from our outdoor table. dana had sent me the phone card so I could call her from the airport en route, which I did. Now I was going to make another call and almost didn’t make it.
I mean, I’ve been crossing streets all my life and know how to do so--at least in America. But here, you have to look right first then left. I was so used to looking left first, I stepped off the curb, right in front of a moving car. I jumped back just in time to clearly see the angry look on the driver’s face. I didn’t have to read lips to know he was cursing me. Just like back home. More carefully, I crossed the street.
After I made that call, on the way back, I noticed a double-parked car. I knew it wasn’t going to move, because there was no one in the driver’s seat, only a passenger. So I stepped off the curb in front of it. Of course, in Australia, the passenger’s seat is the driver’s seat and I almost got hit again. By the time I’d returned to our table at Sal’s, I was more than a bit bemused. Seemed like living in Australia was going to take a bit of getting used to.
I wasn’t really surprised. I’d once visited England and had to get used to that very same set of circumstances. I did really well too, though of course, I’d only traveled for five hours to get to England instead of twenty. The funniest thing about that was, as soon as I got back to the States, I was almost hit by cars three times because I was looking the wrong way. In Brooklyn, anything that steps off the curb is fair game, which is why we have crosshairs on the front of our cars.
Anyway, we finished our meal and dana learned something about me she’d not suspected. I’d have been happier at a McDonalds or Burger King (which is called Hungry Jacks in Tasmania) than in a place like that. I’m a very simple man when it comes to food. Give me a burger or some meat and I’m set. Fancy sauces tend to put me off. She had wanted to make an impression on me, not aware yuppie food is not the way to do it. She felt bad, but I reassured her. We still had much to learn about each other.
Our next stop was some of the shops at Salamanca. We browsed around a bit, before she took me to Socrates. This is the kind of store I really love. Science stuff, gag stuff, mind stuff. Sort of a cross between Spencer Gifts and The Science Shop. They sold mounted insects, gag gifts, all kinds of books and videos, games, a plethora of entertainment for a man like me.
It was in Socrates that I made my first purchase in Tasmania, a Lucite key chain with a beetle inside of it. It cost ten dollars including GST, which Americans would call sales tax. However, the sales tax here is always included in the price, which I think is nice. I gave them a twenty (the twenty dana had sent me with the phone card, in case I wanted something to eat during my pitifully short stop in Melbourne) and they gave me back a ten. Play money. Beautiful pastel colors.
And since the ten dollar bill has a picture of a young Ed Harris on it, one of my favorite actors, I was very happy. Well, he’s not really Ed Harris, but he sure looks like him to me. The guy on the five though is DEFINITELY Donald Sutherland. But that’s all beside the point. I had a key chain, which is useful, because dana was going to give me a set a keys.
I hadn’t actually had keys of my own since I left NYC. I had no car and, in fact, no driver’s license. I had given up my apartment in NYC and didn’t need keys at Al’s house, since I hardly ever went anywhere without him. There were keys there I could use, but I didn’t keep them on me and they weren’t my set. In Fresno, I didn’t have keys either, because I didn’t need them. I seldom went out alone while I was there and when I did, I just left the back door open.
There is a certain freedom in not having keys. I’d had keys ever since I was a teenager and suddenly had none. It was odd when I first realized how strange it felt. We have to lock everything up, all the time, even in Tasmania. It’s sort of sad. And not having keys, or indeed any ‘responsibilities’ felt exhilarating. Of course, I still had responsibilities. Deadlines. Friends who needed me. Writing that had to get done. But for once, my responsibilities were those I had chosen, rather than those forced on me by circumstance. It was a nice change from the drudgery of life as a computer store manager.
So I had my new key chain and my new keys, including keys to the car. This was a first for me, particularly since I still don’t have a driver’s license. However, since dana has the tendency to misplace her keys fairly often, it seems like a really good idea in retrospect.
Anyway, play time was over and it was time to meet the kids. I must admit I was nervous. I felt the opinion of the kids, and their subsequent reactions, could make or break us. I had little to worry about on that count. Lachlan and Callum, fourteen and thirteen respectively, seemed to take to me from the very start. Probably had something to do with the juggling balls, the magic tricks, the origami books, the fold out cardboard models, the War Hammer figurines, the DVD movies and the Playstation 2 I’d brought with me. Hey, my mother didn’t raise any stupid children.
At any rate, the kids took to me immediately. It was almost as if I was the missing piece in the household. All of a sudden, I had come home.
Even now, nine months later, I am amazed at how much of a family we’ve become. I couldn’t ask for better stepsons, and while they might ask for a better stepfather, they’re stuck with me.
In the interim, we’ve visited quite a few places in Tasmania. Here are just a few...
Tasmazia, a park filled with various hedge mazes, on the north side of the island. Mount Field National Park, where I saw my first pademelon (an animal like a small, round, dark wallaby). Something Wild, where I saw duckbilled platypi and my first echidna, along with Tasmania Devils in captivity. I even got to hold a wombat there. dana took me to the observatory on the top of Mount Wellington. We had a perfect day. Windless, sunny, and the greater Hobart area looked amazing from the mountain.
dana took me on a trip to visit her much bewildered mother. dana hadn’t told her I was coming until I got here. dana’s mom didn’t take to me at first, no doubt wondering what her fool daughter had gotten into. She likes me now, I think, since she sees dana is happier than she’s ever been and even the kids are okay with me. But it was touch and go for a while.
On the way to visit her mom, we stopped in the midlands at a small town called Ross, a rather rural town which just happens to be on the way between the populous north and south sides of Tasmania. It is there I found my favorite restaurant so far, called That Place In Ross. It’s the perfect name for it, cause I can never remember restaurant names. So when we do go that way, I can say, let’s eat in that place in Ross and everyone knows exactly which place I’m talking about.
In the last nine months, I’ve come to think of Tasmania as home. I’ve been to art exhibitions (even helped set one up), I did a professional tarot reading in a place called Babylon, and I’ve written a heck of a lot, including the last two installments of Reflections of a Recovering Author. I’ve found a couple of friends, seen a couple of movies and tried an Aussie burger (a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, cheese, bacon, a fried egg and red beet. Some places also add pineapple). I’ve called someone a bloke and have been called a bloke myself. I’ve watched Australian television shows, to the point where I almost don’t notice the accent anymore. I’ve hiked in the bush, took part in a bush barbecue and even braved meeting the mother-in-law... twice. I’ve helped the kids with homework, I’ve watched cricket and footie on the telly and in the kitchen, I saw a spider big enough to make a statement. I was no longer in New York City.
I married dana on March 26, 2003. I had been here for less than three months, but we both knew it would happen. Still, if it weren’t for immigration laws, it might not have happened quite that soon, but we both felt good about it and still do. Neither one of us could believe we were getting married, but we did and we’re happy. What else can you ask for?
What have I learned in the end? Sometimes you have to give up the comfortable and take a real risk to find your happiness. Everyone is entitled to be happy, but no one said you wouldn’t have to work or sacrifice for it. I’ve sacrificed most of my possessions, my entire old life and easy access to my friends and family. But I’ve gained so much more than I ever dreamed. A new family, a loving wife, an insane dog and a couple of giant spiny stick insects. There are those who said I was crazy. They’re probably correct, but it doesn’t matter.
I had to travel more than ten thousand miles and give up a lifetime’s worth of possessions to find a new and better life. To find a measure of peace I’d never known before. To find my place in a different world.
It took me months to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the one thing that made it all worthwhile. After all the questions and all the risk, I can say now it was so much more than worth it. For I finally found the one thing that was missing from my life.
As strange as it might seem, Steve Lazarowitz had finally come home.
REFLECTIONS OF A RECOVERING AUTHOR - PART III
or LIFE DOWN UNDER
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