Seedy.
That is all you need to know about that old pub in the Melbourne neighborhood of St Kilda.
I could describe for you the square room of the Front-Bar with its sticky, black and green carpet, plastic bartop and the sweet and stale stench of yeast that only comes from decades of spilled beer. I could tell you about the assorted collection of skinny bikies, fat amphetamine dealers, tall pimps and dwarf TV-ad actors who milled around from 11am till close. How they all dressed in black, long-sleeved T-shirts with white, bold lettering down the arms and silently stared at any new stranger for the first three minutes. How the street prostitutes who worked the corners outside would use the toilets as their change rooms, the safe as their bank and the bartenders as their biographers.
I could tell you I never felt truly safe in there, despite growing to be liked and getting to be on a first name basis with mostly all of the locals and staff. I could tell you that when night closed in and the red lights above the liquor shelf glowed out over the room and the bands started their sets, I'd often step outside for fresh air to re-collect my courage. Then there was the time I had to make a morning-after appointment to proffer an in-person apology to a out-on-parole speed-freak, after I sort of knocked a few drops of beer onto his jacket.
All of this is real stuff. This is how it really was back then. And so much more.
But...
You should be able to work with just the word 'seedy'. That's all you need to know. The details are best not spoken about.
D played mandolin in a bluegrass band made up with members of The Greyhound regular cast and crew - including the fellow who used to book the bands. This meant that they scored many a gig there.
The Greyhound had a second room. The Band Room. It was only used by the bigger bands. The sort of bands that could charge an entry fee and pull a large crowd. The Band Room had a stage at one end, set up with a lighting rig, PA and mixing desk. The Front-Bar had a spot on the carpet between the toilets and the pool tables. That's where the bands who played there had to set up. D's bluegrass band often added new members and watching them squeeze too many, pot-marked and yellow-eyed fellows into that small space was certainly a huge part of their charm.
*****
After The Blonde and I got back from a few years in Europe, we moved into an apartment in a recently converted pram factory two blocks down from The Greyhound. I never like to tell too many people I'm back. I move around and change cities so I can live my new changes with new people. People who don't know that I've changed - just that I'm new. So when I come back to a place I was different in before - and I always come back - I don't like to let too many of the old people know.
I would walk past the pub and see the posters in the window advertising D's band. By this stage they had a residency. They played there every Sunday afternoon. I never went in. For the first four or five months I avoided that place.
One day I came home and The Blonde and her brother-in-law were packing most of the furniture into his van outside. Our relationships had stalled pretty much the moment we changed hemispheres. I live for the changes in me, whilst she wanted everything - her job, friends, tastes and plans - to remain the same. She wanted to pick up from where her life had been before we left. This wasn't and isn't possible. So instead we grew apart, emotionally punished each other, found hope in different places and broke up.
Both of us had messed up. I knew this then and I know this now. The difference is that now I know we would have never made it anyways - back then, I thought different.
With both her and the furniture gone, the pine and white apartment felt bigger than it should and I was wretched and alone with my doubts and second-guessing. I wasn't sleeping more than a few hours in the afternoon. Every morning, at the first sign of growing light, I'd leave the house and walk down to the beach. I'd stand high above the sand on the Upper Esplanade with a quiet and defeated desperation as I began to realise that not even the dawn rescued me any more.
The days and the weeks - even the months - of that period are all hazy to me. I can't even really remember how long they went on for. What I do clearly remember though is the Sunday I decided to go down to The Greyhound.
Most of the same people were still there. Some had died. Some were back in jail. Some were out on tour with their bands. The rest were still there. D was on that cleared patch of carpet, picking his mandolin, surrounded by the rest of the band. They were up to about a dozen members and they all spilled out to such a wide mess that they were now blocking the doors to the toilet. I bought a beer, nodded hello to a few of the folks and crossed the room to lean against the jukebox and catch the show.
There are no drums in bluegrass music. This is by design. This is how Bill Monroe wanted it. He wanted the percussion and the beat to come from the strings of the instruments as they are raked across. This way, the musicians would always have to slightly mute their tones. This would leave gaps and spaces for the harmonies and the lyrics to always be front and center.
Look - you either like that sorta music or not. I get it. Most people ain't into that sorta thing. I am. Totally. To me, if you can combine your truth into bitter and sweet, I'm your huckleberry forever.
They finished their set and D came over to say hi. We did the usual "Where you been/When did you get back" thing. I asked about his girlfriend. She used to share an apartment with me when they first started dating.
He told me the story of how they had broken up a year ago and she moved back to New Zealand. Six months ago he had gone over to visit her. They were still talking some and were trying to do the 'friends-thing'. They got drunk every night - as they always did. But because they were no longer together, the fights that used to follow all that Jameson and beer never came. They had nothing to fight about. So, instead, they fucked.
Three months after he got back to Melbourne, he got a call from her one early morning. She told him that she had always wanted to have a baby with him and that she had lied all those nights in Auckland when she told him she was still on The Pill. Her plan all along was to get pregnant and this she had done. She told him she was gonna have that baby and that it was up to him to decide if and how involved as a father he wished to be.
That's how she said it. Just like that. As quickly and directly as I've written it for you. That's how she was. Not headstrong - just stubborn. Not carefree - just reckless. Not independent - just selfish.
I asked him what his plan was and he shrugged and grimaced.
"What can I do? She got me good and proper. It is gonna be my child - I have to be the father. I can't move to NZ , but I'll work something out. She knew all along that I'd be there for the kid. She saw how I am with my daughter - you know? You've met C before, yeah? She's eleven years old now. Her mother and I haven't been together for years and we make it work. It'll just be the same way with this new baby."
And then he picked up his mandolin and wandered back on with the rest of the band. The first song they played was the Steve Earle song 'Carrie Brown'.
It's easy to say everything is about perspective. There's always someone doing tougher. Someone with a worse breakup than yours. But when you're in it - in the middle of all that fear and loathing - and the ache rises up from your diaphragm and gets stuck in your throat, perspective plays no role.
The Blues is a feeling . A lonely feeling. An alone feeling.
After it has passed and you are clear, then you have room for perspective. That comes later. No matter how many stories you hear or park benches you sit on or planes you catch, the perspective comes later.
So whilst you're in it, there's only one thing you can do - feel seedy.
