Leon and I were talking in my car in the grimy inflated alley way where I've taken to parking in Civic. By 'in my car' I mean I was in my car and he was leaning on the open door. Quite frankly, it's what we do. We bounce off some walls, break some hearts (mostly our own), and have long, long conversations in my car. We also fling ourselves upon one another, play with each other's hair and exclaim at the hotness of our respectives asses. This is why we are pseudo-life partners.

We were talking, Leon was leaning, I was staving off sleep and recurring visions of the Miss University competition I had just attended when a wirey blonde man came up to us. 'Sorry, I don't know if you're having a fight or you're boyfriend or girlfriend or...'

We made noises to indicate that we were not. The guy was clearly drunk but amiable. He looked me up and down. 'You have something to say?'

'Uhm... not really. I'm mostly trying to stay awake.'

'No, I mean, you're the type of girl who always has something to say. Like... you're a Narrabundah* girl but, you know... not.'

'I went to 'Bundah.'

'See? I'm right. You've got the glasses and the pants and the stockings and, man, you've totally got something to say.'

'You saw all that in my pants?'

'I can, like, tell stuff about people just by looking at them.'

Leon was convinced. 'You're like a roadside psychoanalyst. Do me! Do me!'

'You,' the blonde guy squinted and paused. He looked Leon up and down. 'You are really into this girl but, like, you're intimidated.'

'I think you're projecting a bit...'

'No, no. You're into her and you're, like, on the same wavelength and everything but you're not together and you really want to be.'

'Uh...'

'No, serious, I can just tell these things.'

He talked about maths and his journalist girlfriend before going elsewhere to break into his friend's car. 'Turns out we were wrong,' Leon said. 'We're not pseudo-life partners. We're pseudo-star crossed lovers.'

'Yeah. One day we'll be walking along just hanging, chilling, when we'll hear The Cardigans and look into each other's eyes and it'll all be over.'

'Or I'll hear a Cure song and start dancing, and I'll see this other figure dancing in the distance, and as we move closer and closer I'll see you and think, aw, crap, it's Rachael.'

'Smooth, dude.'

I really wish the drunk guy had said something more profound, something about vast acts of God or the fate of the spring harvest. As Leon pointed out, drunk guys like him who start conversations with strangers really are modern oracles. Either that or they've seen too many damned movies.


*For those not in Canberra - and I can't imagine there'll be many of you - kids get shuffled off from high school to college for year 11 and 12. 'Bundah is notorious for being the art/stoner college. If you were in the jazz school or spoke German or painted by rolling around naked on a goopy canvas then you were set; it was the rugby playing jock types who had much to fear. I went there but I was one of those sycophantic IB kids.