Picture this: you and me, in a maroon Honda sedan, driving down the stretch of Mt Alexander Road into the advancing twilight.
We might've been heading anywhere, but probability says we were heading into the city, on our way to one of those vegetarian hipster restaurants that you had researched that I loved so much. I would've been coming straight from the pharmacy, in my work attire - a caramel skirt and a blouse dotted with delicate, earthy-coloured florals. (I was going through a phase. I possibly still am.) You would've been wearing my favourite jacket, the one that was so old and worn, stuffing was pushing its way out of the sleeves, framing your wrists on the steering wheel.
We drove directly on the tram tracks, under the canopy of bruised-purple clouds gridded by the power lines overhead. The Church of Scientology was on our right. I thought about religion as a concept, the feeling of belonging, the opposite of loneliness. It wasn't our anniversary that night, but you brought it up.
'Imagine we - or anyone - lived on an island, Robinson Crusoe-style,' you started. 'There's no way of marking passing time. We'd forget our anniversary. We can't keep track of the dates, we forget that dates even exist. Wouldn't it be amazing, if people just celebrated on a day they felt particularly in love instead?'
'So is this going to be your excuse for forgetting our next anniversary, then?' I smiled wryly. I loved the sound of your profound shit-talk. (No offence meant! I shit-talk all the time.)
'No, I'm just saying!' But your eyes were - cheekily - lit.
You might've continued with what I would've playfully referred to as your bullshit - a similar bullshit to what you fed me the night we first met after a mutual friend's birthday celebration at the casino, that night we walked along the river, that night you pulled out your favourite songs and we listened to them on a park bench next to an overly amorous couple, that night that I walked two hours in my baby-heels to your high school before riding the train home. What I would've been hearing in the car was of a similar strain but now the tone had changed, with my influence. Immersed in the environment of my constant fantasising and my far-fetched hypotheticals, it was now your brand of bullshit, plus me.
I absent-mindedly let your strong Australian accent wash the brilliant bullshit over me. I mused over the aspects of your 'brand' that I could never change, or want to. The way you referred to police stations as 'cop shops' that made me laugh. The wide-legged strut you acquired from the wogs (excuse my use of the derogatory term) at your local primary school. The self-defensive concrete wall that you erected around yourself, and - sometimes - the spitefulness that accompanied your anger when we fought. I would wrap these around myself like a blanket, and curl up inside them to sleep at night.
I can map the rest of Mt Alexander Road in my mind. The Korean restaurant we went to for your best friend's birthday would come up on the left, and then after that on the right, the bridal wear shop at the intersection. On the return trip, if we stopped at the lights, we'd point out our favourite wedding gowns. 'The two in the middle.' 'The third from the right.'
'It's an average day, you're doing whatever it is you do, nothing special - and then it suddenly hits you. You know that you'll remember this moment for the rest of your life,' he said. This friend and I were having a conversation on our way to a pub for some hot dogs ('the most expensive hot dogs I've ever paid for') after studying.
I know the moments he's talking about. 'It suddenly hits you' like an epiphany, but not. It is a moment of objective clarity - as if someone's switched on a vacuum cleaner, or a dryer, and evaporated all of your emotional, subjective prejudices and analyses of the situation. It's a pressed flower, trapped in a state of perfect preservation, after the juices have dried up. It's you, purposely forgetting you, in order to remember every minuscule detail, the exact angle the sunlight slanted that morning as it streamed through the kitchen window and hit the white tiles.
There are other moments, formed in early childhood or during summer breaks, but: the nicks in your steering wheel, the imposing gates of the Church of Scientology, the criss-crossing beams of amber-and-white streetlights and the soothing sound of your voice in the background - this is us, perfectly preserved. I'm sorry it's taken so long, but this pressed flower is for you. Thanks for everything.
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