Perth isn’t much to look at when divided into suburbs: a piecemeal composition, the sum of which is a city with a negligible population who are biddable in a manner that won’t prevent them stabbing you in the throat should you deny them a cigarette. I moved here from Canberra aged six months and have lived a life skint of rugby union and unrated pornography but replete with takeaway chicken and melanomas.
My snobbery aside, it’s not a bad place to grow up and my own experiences have been fairly tame. I’ve lived the entirety of my time here within the Town of Vincent, which encompasses several inner-city suburbs. Originally occupied by labourers and prostitutes, post-war European migrants settled in these suburbs in the fifties and are only now beginning to expire. Their unfamiliarity with the property market lets ornery hipsters rent their homes for a pittance, and it is becoming increasingly common to see powderblue shirts drying on the plaster lions that overlook concrete yards.
Culture here lags decades behind the eastern states, but these suburbs – formerly smattered with delis and laundromats – now feature nascent cafe strips and elongating vowels is becoming de rigueur, cunt. Having grown up here, I miss the unpretentiousness and want to spit when I observe ruddy millionaires’ wonderment at tapas and drinking tea from pots.
“They could stand to learn some decorum.” I lamented from beneath a conifer.
It was January 27 and I’d spent the evening toasting nationalism with a silver bag. I don’t know how early it was, but a woman with a transistor radio headset walked by as her border collie sniffed my throat. Supine, I give her the bedroom eyes as she scoffed and kept walking and I recalled how being an Aussie means “never leaving a mate behind.” Sitting up, I searched my pockets and found the HIV awareness pamphlet we’d taken from a gay club the week before. A friend’s brother filled in the questionnaire at the end.
7. If infected you should contact…
A: some heavy pipe hitin (sic) niggas
Which I’d found a lot funnier whilst shirtless. I felt a piercing discomfort that was mostly spiritual but definitely involved the pinecone under the small of my back and staggered up. I was in a park with a war monument, a gazebo and several territorial magpies. One eyed me off from atop a shopping trolley before taking flight, deterred by the flashbang phosphorescence of my limbs. I was suddenly nauseous.
The public toilet in this park had – according to the local paper – been a ‘gay sex hotspot.’ I never saw anything, but the council’s solution was to replace it with an automated, self-regulating cubicle so trysts may take place accompanied by tinny lounge jazz. Perhaps to represent the fleeting nature of lust, the doors open themselves after ten minutes, which was ample for my purposes.
After I was done, I wiped my mouth with the two sheets of paper the Tardis provided me, then pushed the button to open the door. A supercilious Midwesterner thanked me for using ExeLoo and I cursed the God damned gentrification of my surrounds and my ignoble savagery.
I walked the rest of the way home pondering nature and nurture and anticipating Gatorade, aware that I’d have tomorrow to try to get the fuck out but doubting I would. Sunstroke is a very nasty business.
Alasdair Beer is a three-time university dropout, a comedian, a welcher, a jaded boys' school toff, prematurely balding, adequate as a lover, inadequate as a man and afraid of his own blood. He's also a brilliant son-of-a-gun who uses the written word like a surgical saw, chopping themes off at the knees.
He also says you can have his couch. 
