Paying for my breakfast at the counter I noticed another customer, reading the paper intently, with his finger (forgive me) driven up his own nostril. It was gone to the first knuckle, earnestly swiveling. He drew it out and inspected it. Roll & flick. Turned a page slowly, thoughtfully, and stuck the same finger back up his nose.
Over breakfast I’d been reading how creative writing students in Australia are beginning to outnumber students of literature. At the next-door table a woman with a piercing whine kept up such a torrent of words that her companion was reduced to what Dale Spender brilliantly called housekeeping — quite often performed by women, for men — “Uh-huh, oh. Really? Gosh, that sounds quite, um…” Self-absorption as a performance art. Picking up a small stack of paper napkins I went over to the forensic investigator and set them down on top of his paper. “Excuse me. Can I offer you a… tissue?” The look he gave me lacked shame, regret, or consciousness: it was of pure surprise.
Tag: breakfast
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skulldiggery
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vegemite kid
One’s German companion begins to assimilate. He is working his way through a jar of Vegemite, observing that it contains the exact same colouring as Coca-Cola: 150c. “The trouble with Vegemite,” he says, scraping the traces of its oily residue into his gullet to clean the butter knife, “is it kind of contaminates the knife. You really wouldn’t want it to end up in the strawberry jam.”
“Ugh,” I say, “no,” thinking of my brother with his webbed feet who used to eat one big bite of his toast with Vegemite and then four tiny bites of his other toast with honey. But Vegemite and honey, like honey with soy sauce, is in a special class of its own. We are on our verandah where the morning sun slants across the houses and I am gazing dreamily at the near corner of our block, a shady spot under the camphor laurel, where the rusted star picket has trapped a flapping shard of paper. “In Germany of course,” he says, “some people eat liverwurst with marmalade.” I put my cup of tea down and stare at it. The milk has turned it to the exact colour, pinkish and intimate, of liverwurst. Life is disgusting and here we are in its midst, chewing and swallowing, digesting and turning everything to shit. Sitting so pretty and containing all the world in minute, pulsing, cellular form, thinking our slow morning thoughts and and gazing at the sun.
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allure
Went out early, the sun through my window a lure. My favourite chic but drowsy wine bar cafe was playing Billie Holiday. Unusually it was filled up today with dishevelled, sleep-drowned people. A shovel-load. I was one of them. We sat in a row sipping & pecking at our breakfasts like a mess of half-fledged birds.
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cafe dating
First date in a cafe. “They always play such excellent jazz here,” he is saying. “Try the cakes, they’re always good.”
“Right,” the girl says lightly. He has over-ordered, wanting to induct her into his routines. “I think heaven must be an eternal breakfast,” he says. The girl is drinking coffee as though it were ice cream, with a spoon. Elbow on the table she slumps onto her hand. “May I?” She tears the best bit off his croissant, the fresh, unbroken, creamy end of the horn. I watch him watching it all the way into her mouth, his resentment almost audible.
Now the waitress brings his fruit salad, poignant with yoghurt. The yoghurt shimmers fat and glossy and unbroken. “Go ahead,” he says, “try.” She shakes her head. The third dish arrives, two soft-boiled eggs in a glass, with pretty salad arranged all around it in a tide. “I’ll just try a bit of your egg,” says the girl to her date, having presumably told him she is not hungry, that she never eats breakfast. “Or maybe I can just take half, some salad, a little of your bread?” She draws the saucer from underneath her coffee cup and holds it out.
“I usually don’t ruin it,” he says. “They always arrange it so nicely here. But – yes! Please! Of course you can! Please: help yourself.” They are neither of them native speakers but both speak in English. I think she is Spanish and I think he is German. His voice is soft and seducing but I think the relationship is off to a stony start. Now they are talking about her work. “It’s an animal. No, it’s a fung, a fungus, right?” “Ja,” she says, “a fungus.” “Have you ever given a name to a bacteria?” he asks her. “There must be some good bacteria out there.” Maybe tonight this girl will call one of her closest friends. “There must be some good men out there,” they will say. Maybe the man will ask himself how come a woman can be so resistant to being induced into the world he has already arranged so perfectly for her. It just has this one hole to be filled, a her-shaped vacancy. Why won’t she fill it? Don’t women want love?