Goodbyes: Mark and Rebecca (and Aaron)

        I once knew this guy called Aaron who told me a ridiculous story about jumping onto a slow-moving freight train as it passed a station, and then climbing over the train and into the driver's cabin. The police were waiting for him at the next station, and when they angrily asked why he'd jumped onto the train, he replied: “I just love trains!”
        There's no way that can be true, but who cares I love it anyway.

        Aaron used to sit and drink vodka in the kitchen of the Melbourne Connection Backpackers Hostel most afternoons, until one day he announced that he was leaving for Darwin.
        “Are you coming back?!”, I asked, young and scared of losing my new friend in a city I was still coming to grips with.
        “NEVER!!” was his exaggerated reply, and he never did. And sometimes that's what happens – most of the time actually – friends come and friends go, but it's just like that song says: “Don't touch me baby, I'm extra spicy!”

        Hahahahahaha... yeah I don't know what that bit means either, but boy did it make me laugh. Okay.

This is my new favourite picture with my four-wheeled friend, The Rocker.

        Mark is another hostel guy, I met him at The Dictionary hostel in Shoreditch during my first few weeks in London and I immediately admired the abandon with which he seemed to live his life. He was 32 (or something? SORRY MARK!) and had spent the last decade or so travelling the world, with his base being the ski fields of Canada. He was also from Adelaide, and so we bonded over that rare coincidence – two hometown boys who both made it out into a glorious life of wandering poverty.

        The Dictionary was almost two years ago now though, and I hadn't seen much of Mark in London since I quit that 16-bed dorm for damper pastures. The Dictionary used to stage random 3am fire drills, evacuating a few hundred sleepy travellers onto the streets of Shoreditch to dodge buses until someone turned the toaster off, also one time a guy pissed on my bed while I was sleeping in it. It's hilarious, now.
        Mark and I always stayed in touch though, chatting here and there online. I remember seeing a picture he posted of a car flipped on its roof next to a quiet dirt road, with the caption, “Oops! Crashed the rental.”
        Turns out he just found the car like that somewhere in Croatia. Seeing things like that – little windows into distant friends' lives – is sometimes enough to make you feel connected again.

I am slowly learning to love watching what people do when I give them The Rocker and tell them to pose for a picture, it's such an unnatural moment. Mark chose to pretend it was some sort of Thumb/Burrito.

        He hit me up a few weeks ago and told me he was coming back to London, and we caught up a few times and reminisced on old stories. I love that about catching up with friends you haven't seen in a while: those memories are all in there, but the only way they ever get let out and dusted off are when you have someone else who was there to remember them with. That's why it's so important to keep in touch with those people who have been a part of different periods of your life, because without someone else who cares to share those memories with, they lose meaning, and disappear into the bottomless fog.

        Another one of those people is Rebecca. A British girl. We met in Bolivia in 2011 when she was 31 and had recently divorced from the man she spent her 20s with. I was 20, and in retrospect I'm sure my immature cockiness must have grated her – fuck, it's grating me right now... but we bonded over the place that Bolivia was. That summer was a hugely pivotal time in my life, and evidently in hers too, because she hit me up a few weeks ago upon seeing that I was leaving the UK soon and suggested we catch up to relive those moments over a beer.

I didn't even get The Rocker out for this picture with Rebecca, I fucked up.

        After a lot of half-assed fucking around we finally caught up last night; she's in London for a quick internship as she enters the last year of a law degree, and came to grab a drink at what I would loosely term a 'comedy night', that I was performing at. I reassured her that I often do better gigs than the carpeted attic we and the ten others sat in, but then quickly checked myself and re-reassured that I often do much worse ones as well.

        Every time you see someone, there is every possibility, no matter who it is, that this time may be the last time. But we never say goodbye like that, that would be insane – all tears and snot and shouting. Sometimes people say hello like that and it's disgusting – “OOOH MY GOOODDDDDDD! AAAAAGHHHH!!!”
        Everybody hates you.

        But in the last week I've said goodbye to two people who, in all probability, I will never see again. When you say goodbye to someone, it's kind of beautiful. It's like you're both admitting that to each other, at the same time, and you're both okay with it, because you had your thing and there doesn't need to be any more.
        It's rarely sad in those moments. If anything, it feels like a victory, because for every knowing goodbye, there are hundreds of relationships that have soured, or faded away without word, as the image of what two people first see in each other changes into something different.
        People change, but goodbyes are forever.
        “We did it!”, sighs that final hug.
        Perfect.

        I'll always remember Aaron for teaching me that lesson, as well as that train story which is fantastic. And I'll always remember Mark for reminding me of it by being the humble, unassuming image of a life well lived, and lived for people.
        Before last night I remembered Rebecca as the lady who once dismissed my Spanish Speaking Abilities at a group dinner, and who I secretly competed with for the rest of the time I was in Bolivia. That's right. LIKE A CHILD!!! Hahahaha I can't believe I did that to myself.
        Last night she brought her brother to the show, and while she and I were drinking and chatting, he sat mostly silent. Every now and then I'd turn my attention to him and comment on how quiet he was being, and a few times I directed stories at him because his comfortable silence was making me nervous. I'm so pitifully insecure it's hilarious.

        But at least I never felt the need to speak Spanish in front of them.
        YES! Baby steps.

        "Extra Spicy! Extra Spicy! OH! OH! He's EXTRA SPICY!!"

Peace, Taco.

PS Remember when this blog was about the Toy Van that I found? HAH! Don't worry, it's coming back soon.

Click here to read the next part - The Final Push