Blackheath mating rituals

About the author

James Gering

James Gering has received various awards for his stories and poems. His writing has appeared in many journals, including Meanjin, Cordite, Rattle and San...

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Follow the road to the yellow house

Non-fictionI first visited Varuna in 1994. I had just left my job as the Aboriginal Curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum, where I was involved in establishing the first gallery dedicated to addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander maritime history. I remember that visit well – even then I felt at home. I grew up in the Blue Mountains. My parents bought our family home there in the early 1970s. It was built in the 1940s, which means that it has a similar interior to Varuna, with ornate cornices, creamy white bathroom tiles, a green basin and bath, Bakelite door handles and even an old black phone.

Steering upriver

Non-fictionAt dawn I cross the bridge, Missouri to Iowa, and turn down the gravel drive. Though I’m different now, this place is the same as it always is this time of year: the sun glowing red over the paddock next door, the grass not yet green, the maple stark. I go away, come back again, and home is like a photograph where time winds back, slows into stasis; where the carpet has changed, but the dishes have not, the cookbooks have not, the piano and artwork and bath towels have not. Here, I can be a child again, my best self, briefly. I hold on to this moment for as long as I can, because too soon I’ll remember how disobedient I am, how bossy and domineering, how I slammed my door until Dad took it off its hinges, how soap tastes in my mouth, how I pushed on these walls until they subsided.

Load

FictionWhen I wake up from being a dishwasher, curled on the floor of my apartment, it’s like I have woken from the perfect slumber. I don’t think I have felt like this since the womb. Imagine being able to temporarily kill yourself. The world, the body, weighs heavy. Being a dishwasher is the closest I have ever felt to bliss. Before this, the closest I got to bliss, true bliss, was getting high with my dad and eating a cream corn and cheddar toastie at the Murchison Tea Rooms.