Charlie's Home

Charlie arrived home at 5am, having been in Bali, Jakarta and Hong Kong, on holidays, some of the time with his mum and her new partner.

5.15am. We leave for the airport, with Bruno in the car. Charlie doesn't exactly like Bruno so I did wonder if we were doing the right thing, but it worked out okay.

A fine mist of rain was falling as we left. The streets were deserted pretty much as we headed out of town to the airport.

I take the wrong turn off, the one before the one I was meant to take, I have never done that before, but Sam and I were chatting, and it was raining, oh I don’t know, that’s my excuse. Sam said he thought the signs had been changed. Then we were on the back roads of the airport which is quite a wasteland, where everything looked different and we kind of got a little misplaced until we found the road back to the arrival’s terminal.

5.40am. We get to the arrivals parking area. Sam heads into find Charlie straight up.

The airport is busy. There doesn’t seem to be any of those Nazi traffic officers who are always moving you on after only so many minutes waiting, so I just sat.

5.46am. Sam calls to say the plane has landed.

5.48am. Sam calls to say he has found Charlie.

5.51am. Then it is only minutes later they open the back hatch of the car to put the luggage in.

Charlie is even quieter than he has ever been before, if you can believe it. He answered questions in a whisper. I ask him questions but I can barely hear his answers.

We miss the Bell Street turn off and have to pay a toll getting off at Brunswick Road. So, we weren’t doing so well in that department. I am not sure why, I have never missed one turn in the past let along two. Ah, fuck it, who cares. That Bell Street turn off is so absurd anyway, it just smacks of the toll company paying off the govt to make the last turn off before you pay as confusing and easy to miss as possible. (You know, it is why we aren’t going to make it as a species, too many self interest capitalist players who will work against any sort of easy solution to the climate crisis)

As we are heading back into the city and home, the streets get busier noticeably, 6am and people are heading to work, a lot of them probably to beat the traffic carnage that is to come in an hour, or so. Poor bastards, what a miserable life. Of course, if you had to sit in the bumper to bumper traffic every morning, you’d just top yourself right there in the car one morning when it all got too much. 

I think I would.

Actually, no I wouldn’t, as I wouldn’t be, have never been, a part of that peak hour carpark.

6.18am. We’re home. 

Time to make coffee and sign into work myself.

Fuck the cunts who are trying to get us all back to the office. Come on workers stand up to the stand up to the corporate overlord tyrants and simply refuse to comply.

I’m refusing. Fuck them, we have been shown a better life and they want to take it away from us.

I reckon Charlie has been living up with his mum, because I reckon he has a bigger arse than he had before he went away. Not that I am into sizing up 20 year old boys bums… oh, really, who am I kidding. 😬 He’s got this pair of black thermal pants he wears around the house, that fit him so fine, well, he can’t wear those around a gay household and not expect us, er, me to look. I don’t look obviously, and he would never know, but I still see how he looks.