The City of Angels (and Demons)

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Tiny Tino

After taking a break from my overland travels to fly from Las Vegas to San Francisco, I decided I would take my final opportunity to get that authentic backpacker feeling of travelling along the ground and catch the train down from Oakland to Los Angeles. To further this rationale, I had been told that the coastal drive down that portion of the west coast was particularly beautiful, and that view was obviously something that I couldn’t see from a plane. After all the nightmare bus rides that I’d had coming over the Southwest, I thought I would enjoy the ease of a train journey, being able to set up your own personal space in your seat while still being able to get up and walk around, and watching the different local stations pass by and observing all the different people that hopped on and off along the way. You’d think I’d have had enough of trains, what with my tour around Europe plus the Trans-Siberian Railway, but after everything I’d done, I would still have to say that it remains my favourite form of travel. Not that I’d be game enough to do the Trans-Siberian again any time soon, but perhaps in future travels I’d look into other rail adventures and see where they could take me.

The train to Los Angeles was not a short journey, with a complete journey time of roughly 10 hours. Most people told me I was crazy for doing it, considering the flight between the two cities was approximately one hour, but I had maintained that I wanted to see the beautiful west coast scenery as the train neared Los Angeles. You can imagine my disappointment, then, when I realise that I hadn’t factored time of day or hours of daylight into my plans when booking my train trip. So of course, but the time I reached the final stages of the journey, where all the beautiful scenery supposedly existed, the sun had already set and I couldn’t see a thing. There’s nothing you can do but laugh, really. Oh well, at least I’d had plenty of down time to read my book.

The not so beautiful countryside between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

***

After a long and relatively uneventful day, my train finally arrived at the station in Downtown LA. I met up with Nathan*, Gary’s friend who I had met at Brandon’s birthday in San Francisco, who informed me that his dodgeball team was currently having post-match drinks at a gay sports bar call Gym Bar. I had to ask again to make sure I’d heard correctly – dodgeball? It turns out that the West Hollywood (or WeHo for short) Dodgeball League was a popular form of adult recreation that perfectly combined sport and athleticism with sociality and everybody’s other favourite form of adult recreation: drinking. I had no idea what to expect, but I hardly knew anybody in LA so I was down for pretty much anything. Nathan drove me back to his place where I quickly showered and we had a couple of drinks – I was assured we probably had some catching up to do, since the rest of the teams would have gone straight from dodgeball to the bar. Nathan lived in WeHo, which I would soon find out was the big gay district of this part of LA – the city itself was so immense that I couldn’t confidently say it was the only gay district in the entirety of Los Angeles, but from what I can gather it is definitely the most popular and well known.

After a couple of drinks, we left Nathan’s and headed down Santa Monica Boulevard until we reached Gym Bar. It wasn’t a huge bar, but it was packed out this evening. There was plenty of room in the outdoor seating and patio areas, a long bar along the edge of the room, and a few dart boards mounted along some of the walls. Throwing darts would have been a bit dangerous this evening though – Gym Bar was a dedicated sponsor of the WeHo Dodgeball League, and in turn the dodgeballers were dedicated patrons to Gym Bar, so they were all there tonight.
“Those are my team mates over there,” Nathan pointed to a corner of the bar. “Oh, and here, let me introduce you to Jake. He runs the dodgeball league.” We weaved our way through the crowd of people, Nathan saying hello to someone every so often. Eventually we got to the bar where a man about my heights with dark hair and a scruffy face was sitting on a bar stool, having what appeared to be five simultaneous conversations with all the people around him. Clearly he was the man of the moment.

“Jake, this is my friend Robert. He’s from Australia.” Jake turned towards us, slightly torn given that he was already talking to a bunch of other people, but he must have been told about the arrival of an Australian traveller earlier in the evening, because his face lit up with a big smile when he registered who I was.
“Hi! Welcome!” he said enthusiastically as I shook his hand.
“Jake is best friends with Ke$ha. He want to Miley Cyrus’ birthday party a few weeks ago.” Nathan dropped the facts seemingly out of no where, and instantly Jake became clearly uncomfortable at having been introduced in such a way. I certainly hadn’t been expecting it, either.
“Oh… really?” I mean, I knew celebrities were everywhere in LA Hollywood so I tried to play it cool, but Ke$ha was actually a favourite of mine.
“Um… well, yeah,” Jake said, almost sheepishly, as though he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, or speak quite as blatantly as Nathan had. He probably didn’t want to seem like he was showing off, but I was actually interested.
“That’s really cool! What was it like?” Jake seemed visibly more relaxed at my reaction. Nathan had moved off for a moment to talk to someone else, so he offered to show me a couple of pictures of the party.
“I mean, I don’t wanna seem like I was too cool for it or anything, but… it was her 21st birthday”, he said as he scrolled through some photos on his iPhone. “So it was pretty trashy. And then Miley sang, and she sang Timber… Ke$ha was a little embarrassed.”
“Oh, man! How awkward!” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, just a little. But it was still fun.”

Jake and I chatted a little bit more, and we were getting on really well. He asked me more about Australia and my travels, I asked him more about LA. He even offered to show me around sometime, and I was conscious of the fact Nathan had only offered me a place to stay for a couple of days, when I had at least ten days to spend in LA, so it was probably time to start making friends. We exchanged phone numbers, and I guess that’s when things started to get a bit flirty. He was cute, and very friendly, so I was definitely interested in hanging out with him again. I kept moving around the bar though, with Nathan introducing me to a bunch of other people as the “Australian friend I met in San Francisco.” The dodgeball league itself wasn’t strictly gay, but given that Gym Bar was a gay sports bar, most of the crowd consisted of gay men and their female friends. There were quite a few outrageous and eccentric characters, singing and dancing and screaming their way around the place, but everyone was super friendly. Everyone also seemed to know each other, so even though I actually didn’t know anyone, it reminded me of the kind of local bars back home where I could rock up on virtually any night of the week and run into a friend. And even though I’d just met most of these people, they were so incredibly welcoming right off the bat that I almost felt at home within minutes of being there. Even if it was a sports bar.

***

I chatted to Jake quite a bit more throughout the evening, and he introduced me to some of his closest friends who were there that night. We were there pretty late for a Tuesday, but after many drinks, dances, laughs and conversations, eventually the bar was closing. Jake and I had been quite brazenly flirting throughout the end of the night, so as we all spilled out of the bar and prepared to go our separate ways, we agreed that we would meet again soon. Nathan had caught up to me by then, and the three of us started walking in the same general direction up Santa Monica Boulevard to get to our respective homes. And that’s where things started to get a little pear-shaped…

There are a few detailed that I omitted from my earlier posts about San Francisco because they would be better explained in the context of what happened in LA. I first met Nathan through Gary in San Francisco, when we were celebrating Brandon’s birthday. After dinner we had all gone out to a bar to have a few drinks, although Gary and I were pretty spent after having been out so late the night before at Truck. When we decided to call it a night, Nathan asked Gary if he could also crash at his place, and Gary agreed. Now, there had obviously been something going on between Gary and myself – he was a sweetheart and I had loved every minute of the short time we’d spent together – but when we got back to Gary’s, Nathan just kind of took it upon himself to… well, invite himself into whatever was going on between Gary and I. It was slightly awkward, and I wasn’t completely down for it, but Gary didn’t really make any discernible protest – or was too drunk to really realise what was going on – so rather than standing up for myself and hitting the streets to find my way to Noe Valley in the middle of the night, I just put up with it and stuck closer to Gary for the rest of the night, waiting it out until the morning. At the time it had just seemed like some poorly managed awkwardness on my part, which is what led me to foolishly accept Nathan’s offer to stay with him when I finally got to LA, thinking I would be better equipped to manage should anything similar occur when I was there.

Fast forward to Jake, Nathan and myself walking home from Gym Bar, with Jake and I preparing to say goodnight. Out of nowhere, Nathan suddenly says, “So I guess that means we’re having a threesome, then?”
I was shocked. Jake was even more shocked.
“Um… excuse me?”
In a matter of seconds, he went from being shocked to being furious. Suddenly the two of them were raising their voices, and then they were yelling at each other and shouting in the middle of the street. I don’t even remember what they were saying, but it quickly moved from the topic of a threesome to some much more personal comments. I’d later learn that despite all the friendly and welcoming vibes I’d experienced, there was some unresolved tensions between some of the members of the dodgeball league, with Nathan apparently being right in the middle of a lot of it. There was shouting, finger pointing, name calling, and it was all getting a bit too much for me, so I did want any sensible, alcohol-filled adult would do when presented with a situation in which they’d rather not be a part of – I ran away.

The situation had gone from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds, and while I would have liked nothing more than to run far away from it, I was conscious of the fact that all my stuff was still in Nathan’s apartment, and I didn’t have a key, so I didn’t make it very far. Eventually my phone rang, and it was Nathan. I was around the corner from his place, so I met him out the front of his building. Jake was no where to be seen, so I silently followed Nathan up to his apartment, my brain whirling at a million miles an hour.
“What are you going to do?” Nathan asked me bluntly once we were inside. It was pretty sure that the only way I could safely spend the night there was if I had sex with him. I didn’t want to have sex with him, and even if I did, safety still wasn’t guaranteed. I’d been in some pretty dubious situations during my travels, but this was one of the few times that I’d genuinely felt unsafe. I had no idea where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay there.
“I’m going to go,” I said, in as calm and collected a voice as I could muster.

What followed was an onslaught of some of the most disgusting and vile verbal abuse that I have ever had the misfortune of receiving. I don’t need to repeat the slut-shaming and traumatic insults in order to paint the picture of sheer humiliation I was feeling, but all I can say is that I was glad that I hadn’t really had a chance to unpack most of my things. I threw all my belongings into my backpack as quickly as I could, while Nathan stood over me spitting his venomous words. I was terrified the abuse might switch from verbal to physical, but luckily I had pulled everything together before he even had the chance, and I fled out the front door and never looked back, all while he hurled his final words down the hallway. I kept it together for as long as I could, but as soon as I reached street level, I let go and begin sobbing to myself. Streetlights lit up the sidewalk, and in their glow I pulled out my phone and dialled the only other number I had of anyone that lived in LA.

“Hello? Jake?” I took a few deep breaths so he would be able to understand me through the tears and the accent.
“Hello?” He was a little slow at first, and I wondered if he’d already been asleep, but he must have quickly realised who was calling. “Oh, yes! Robert! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m on the street. I’m okay, but… but I had to get out of Nathan’s, I just-” I was overcome by the situation, breaking into tears again, and Jake attempted to soothe me through the phone.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry! Do you know where you are? Where are you going?”
“I… I don’t know. Jake… Jake can I please crash at yours? Just for tonight? I don’t… I don’t feel safe here.”
“Of course! I will text you my address, just get in a cab. I’ll meet you out the front.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath, calmed by a feeling that everything was going to be okay now. “Thank you, Jake.”
“Don’t even mention it. See you soon.”

I dragged myself down to Santa Monica Boulevard, and easily hailed a cab. Jake’s place was less than a five minute drive, and he was already outside waiting when we pulled up. The first thing he did was give me a big hug when I stepped out of the car, then leaned in to pay the driver. I tried to do it myself, but Jake insisted, and I was too emotionally exhausted to resist. So I gathered up my bags, with Jake’s help, and I followed him up the stairs of his building to his apartment. He briefed me on the way up.
“So, look, I’m not trying to pull anything on you like Nathan, but.. my friend Val is sleeping on my couch tonight, so I don’t know…”
“It’s okay, Jake,” I said, smiling for the first time as I wiped my wet cheeks. “You’re not a creep like Nathan, so it’s okay.”
He just chuckled as we crept through the front door of his apartment and into his bedroom. There, I had the completely unexpected delight of meeting Peter Parker.

No matter what is happening, there is always time for a picture with a dog.

Kisses with Peter Parker.

While playing with a puppy is certain to cure the worst of any bad moods, I was exhausted from all the drama, so eventually climbed into bed, where Jake and I had a few quiet, whispered words.
“I knew that I wanted to see you again,” he said, and through the darkness I could still feel his smile. “It really sucks that it had to happen under these circumstances, but I have to say that very I’m happy to have you here.”
“Silver linings,” I whispered back contently. “Sometimes crappy situations have the best endings.”
Jake was respectful of my space, as promised, but given that I actually liked him, I asked him to hold me, and eventually I passed out in his arms.

*Name has been changed.

California Dreaming: The Sights of San Francisco

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Tiny Tino

Out of all the American cities that I was excited to visit during my travels, San Francisco was easily one of the top contenders. After the hundreds of times I’d seen the sweeping aerial views of the Golden Gate Bridge after the opening credits of almost every episode of Charmed, I was excited to see the city that I’d viewed so often through a TV screen. Or at least, I thought I was… however, a quick Google search upon my arrival revealed that the Charmed manor was actually located in LA, and that pretty much the entirety of the show, save those sweeping panoramas, was filmed in LA, despite being set in San Francisco. Yet San Francisco was the chosen setting because of the supposedly weird and quirky nature of the city, which allowed a sisterhood of urban witches to exist unnoticed, so in my mind the city was still a mysterious gem waiting to be discovered.

***

When I wasn’t getting drunk and passing out in the Castro or celebrating some wholesome American holidays, there was plenty of time to explore the many corners of San Francisco. Of course, after getting a bike from Rob on my first day in the city, I leapt at the first chance I had to cycle over to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Make sure you pick a day when there’s not too much fog,” Rob had reminded me when he’d taken me to pick the bike up. “Otherwise you might not actually see that much of the bridge.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I was supposed to tell whether or not there was fog on the bay, given that I couldn’t see it at all from my place in Noe Valley, but a bright and sunny day was the only cue that I needed to jump out of bed and set out on my way.

What I loved about San Francisco was how bike friendly it was, despite being a huge city with lots of traffic. When I punched in my destination into Google Maps, it showed me a route that I could travel that took me all the way to the northern edge of the city via bike lanes. And most of the cars seemed pretty accommodating to the cyclists too, unlike some of the aggressive behaviour from traffic that I’d witnessed in various places, particularly my home city of Sydney. However, the hills were my biggest downfall. I could power on up the longer, gradual inclines, but I have to admit there were a few monstrosities that were far too steep for me to pedal all the way up, and I had to dismount and walk the bike up those.

Once I hit the northern edge of the city, it was a long and mostly flat stretch of green ovals and parks until I finally reached the Golden Gate Bridge. It hadn’t seemed that far on the map, but it took me the better part of an hour to even get close.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Once I finally approached the bridge, it took a little while to actually navigate the roads and pathways to make it up to the bridge itself. And then it was only when I got onto the bridge did it really strike me just how long it actually was. But there was no way that I was going to come this far and not ride across the bridge.

Before crossing the bridge.

The bridge and Rob’s old Burning Man bike.

Bridge selfie.

It wasn’t until I reached the other side of the bridge that I realised that there wasn’t actually much on the other side. I mean, I knew that it wasn’t in the centre of the city, so I wasn’t expecting anything too exciting. But it was, for all intents and purposes, a bridge that led to nowhere. I went to keep following the road that led off the bridge, but saw that it started off into what felt like the countryside, and while I’m sure there is something if you keep following the road, I was conscious of how far I had come, which was exactly how far I still had to go in order to get home. So instead I turned off and headed on a trail down the hill to the waters edge. There I discovered a few fisherman and a small information centre, with not much to offer except a shop where I purchased a bottle of water – I had underestimated the distance and therefore how much water I would actually need.

There wasn’t much else to see though, so I powered back up the hill and once again cross the Golden Gate Bridge back into San Francisco. Once I reached the other side, I decided to take a new route through some of the roads and pathways around the bridges edge, in an attempt to see some more sights. And that is how I found myself passing through the San Francisco National Cemetery. I slowed down a little as I passed the pristine, green grass with the rows of small white tombstones, and paused for a moment and spared a thought for the dead, before cycling on out back into the city and onwards towards home. Rob hadn’t been kidding when he said that a ride out to the bridge would take most of the day, and I promptly collapsed when I got home, and eventually ran myself another long, hot bath.

San Francisco National Cemetery

***

For my next sightseeing outing, I decided to give my body a break from the cycling and test out the public transport system in San Francisco. On a few occasions when I hadn’t had the energy to walk to the hills to and from the Castro, it had been easy enough to jump on a bus, but this time once I arrived at the Castro, I kept going and hopped on the metro system known as the BART, which stands for Bay Area Rapid Transport. There are a number of BART stops in San Francisco itself, and the network crosses the bay to connect it with Oakland, Berkley, and a bunch of other cities on the east side of the bay. I jumped off just before the train crossed the bay, which placed me in the Financial District. I then walked up along the edge of the water until I reached Pier 39, which is without a doubt a huge tourist trap, but nonetheless I entered and walked along the wooden boardwalks, passing all the shops and restaurants and food stalls and screaming children. I paid no attention to any of that, but the only thing that really caught my attention was the sea lion colony that lived on a collection of wooden flotsams by the pier.

View of the sea lions from the opposite pier.

I hadn’t even known about these sea lions, so at first I was rather shocked when I rounded the corner of the pier to see so many of them sprawled out across the wooden planks. Then I thought that I must have been extremely lucky to be here on a day when a huge group of them had seemingly randomly come so close to the shore and decided to hang out, and it wasn’t until later that I learned that the sea lions were as much locals as any of the humans living in San Francisco.

A strange sculpture that I encountered along my walk.

I spent a little while longer looking out over the bay. I had contemplated doing a tour out to Alcatraz, but they cost a little more than I was willing to spend on a day out, and none of them were leaving at any convenient times. So I just wandered around the area some more, and took my time watching the thick fog roll in across the water.

After that I headed back inland, back down to the Financial District and then into Chinatown, where I wandered around a bit more and bought some street food for lunch as I went along. The only other really identifiable attraction that I came across was the Transamerica Pyramid, which had also appeared in many scenic segues during episodes of Charmed, so I was very glad to discover that it too was also actually located in San Francisco. Although much more appealing to gaze upon was what was next to the Transamerica Pyramid – the Transamerica Redwood Park. I knew that there were forests of redwood trees further up the coast of California, not too far away from San Francisco but most likely too far away from me to get there, short of hiring a car, which was practically impossible (or insanely expensive) for me given that I was under the age of 25. The trees in the Transamerica park weren’t nearly as tall as the wild redwoods, I suspect, but it looked like a nice little sanctuary in the heart of the Financial District.

Transamerica Redwood Park

The Transamerica Pyramid

***

There was one attraction in San Francisco that I hadn’t actually heard of before my arrival, but as soon as I studied a map and spotted it, I knew that it would be the site of one of my full day outings. Golden Gate Park, located just south of the Golden Gate Bridge, was San Fransisco’s version of Central Park, and while it wasn’t as big as some of the other huge parks that I’d visited in New York City and São Paulo, it was still of a significant size, rather narrow but extremely long, and with numerous different section inside, my visiting turned into a full day of adventure and exploration.

Some of the features of Golden Gate Park include, but are not limited to, a golf course, an angling pool, a polo field, the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, several playgrounds, a stadium, De Young Museum, numerous gardens and meadows, an archery range, and a bison paddock.

One of the numerous water habitats throughout the park.

The Rose Garden

The Conservatory of Flowers (which had unfortunately closed for the day by the time I reached it)

Sun dial that I found amongst one of the many open meadows.

I also made sure that I took my bike off some of the main roads, and rode through some of the more off-road terrain the park had to offer. I’m not sure if that was really allowed, but it was such a nice experience to turn off into the forest and delve into the depths where it felt like you could disappear and no one would ever find you.

Although I have to admit, I probably got the biggest kick out of seeing the bison roaming around in the paddock, which really took me back to my Year 8 History classes and flashbacks to Dances With Wolves.

The bison paddock.

After making it through the entire length of Golden Gate Park, I emerged on the beach, and I rode down along the edge of the sand a little bit, and watched the flocks of seagulls flutter aimless along the mostly empty beach. I stared out over the Pacific Ocean for a little bit, and while I’d worked up a bit of a sweat with all the bike riding through the park, there was a cool wind whipping off the ocean that made the idea of swimming rather unpleasant. It was also blowing a lot of sand everywhere, which was also quite unpleasant, so eventually I found a beach house to take shelter in and have some lunch, after which I headed back to the park.

Birds at the beach.

Dutch windmill located in the western end of Golden Gate Park.

***

My final bout of sightseeing took me into the city centre again, on a rather aimless afternoon stroll, if I’m perfectly honest. From the Castro I wandered further into the city and stumbled across the beautiful San Francisco City Hall, an elegant building that almost looked like a brilliant royal palace. Across from the City Hall lay the Civic Center Plaza, which had rows of trees that had all shed their leaves at the approach of winter, but the way they were planted in perfectly straight rows created a strange visual effect when you stood in the middle of them that reminded me a lot of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

San Francisco City Hall

Civic Center Plaza, complete with a Christmas tree.

The narrow tunnels created by the trees in the plaza.

I wandered through the centre in the dying afternoon light, before heading back through the Castro and over the hills to get home.

The gay streets of the Castro.

***

I had been in San Francisco for almost two weeks, and I had loved every minute of it. While not as warm as I had expected California to be, I’d learnt a little about the phenomenon of the local climate, and the vibrant and colourful culture of the city had more than made up for it. I’d also met a bunch of awesome people, many of whom I’m still in touch with and will likely ensure that my first visit to San Francisco will not be my last. But alas, the countdown to the end of my seemingly endless worldwide journey had begun, and I still had the huge city of Los Angeles to explore before I jetted off from the mainland USA.

The morning of my departure, Todd and I both got up early: him getting ready for work, and me gathering up all my belongings and throwing them into my bag. He offered to give me a lift to the nearest BART station, which would take me across the bay and over into Oakland. It was from there that my Amtrak train would depart, and carry me down the Californian coast to LA. I said a heartfelt goodbye to Todd, who had done so much for me and without whom my stay in San Francisco would not have been the same, before jumping on the metro and heading across the bay to embark on one of the final legs of my worldwide tour.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22”

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Tiny Tino

As my Amtrak train chugged through upstate New York, I watched the scenery pass me by. Back where I grew up, changes between the seasons were relatively mild compared to some other parts of the world. The eastern coast of Australia is populated by a lot of evergreen trees that generally don’t lose their leaves during the winter, but the eastern coast of North America was a different story entirely. The autumn equinox had occurred while I’d been in Canada, and summer was officially over. As my New York City bound train travelled through the woods, I could see that the trees surrounding us had already taken on hues of red, yellow and orange, and the normally green scenery was combined with a wash of natural fiery tones. It was something that I had only seen happen very sparsely in my own country, so I soaked in the sight and enjoyed the novelty of it all. It certainly made for a pleasant visual accompaniment on my trek back to the smog of the Big Apple.

Upstate New York at the turn of autumn.

The timing of my trip was so perfect that I observed foliage of both green and red, as the former gave way to the latter.

Returning to Manhattan almost felt like coming home. After casually jumping on the S Train across town to Grand Central Station, receiving a friendly welcome from Brandon the doorman as I arrived at the apartment, and letting myself in to wait for Melissa to get home so I could tell her all about my trip, I realised just how much time I had spent here in the the last month. “Home is where the heart is”, as the old adage goes, and there in that moment I don’t think anything could have rang more true in my mind. After being on the road for so long you start to believe that you’ve lost all concept of home, but the reality is that if you have the right attitude, and surround yourself with the right people, anywhere can feel like home – no matter how brief or temporary a home it may be.

***

While I’d been keen to get back and see my New Yorker friends like Melissa and Stefon, there was also another reason why returning to the city this time had been such an incredibly exciting prospect. Georgia, one of my best and dearest friends from back home, had been doing her own tour across the USA for the past couple of months, and now she and her friend Eva had arrived in NYC, just days before my birthday. She’d kept warning me that she had a surprise for me, but that she couldn’t wait until my birthday and would have to give it to me as soon as she saw me. It was well into the evening when I arrived back in NYC, and Georgia had some final plans with the girls who she had been on the tour with, so we made plans to meet the next day at Grand Central Station.

I could barely contain my excitement as I almost ran the few blocks up Lexington Avenue, and it was almost surreal to see her big golden curls of hair and big smile waiting for me by one of the subway exits.
“Oh my God! How are you, baby?” Georgia said as I threw my arms around her and hugged her tight for at least a solid minute. “It’s been so long!”
“I know! I’ve missed you!”
“Let’s never be apart for that long again, okay?”
“Deal.” And just like that, within moments, our casual banter had returned, almost as though we hadn’t been separated for the last six months. I guess that’s the sign of a true friendship.
“So, tell me everything. What’s been going on? How was Canada? How was Stuart?” We set off walking down the street as Georgia bombarding me with questions.
“Canada was great! It was really nice to-”
I was cut off mid-sentence, startled as someone bumped into me from behind. New Yorkers can be very pushy when it comes to their pavement etiquette, and for a moment I thought I might have been in the wrong somehow. “Ah, I’m sorry I-”
“Hey, watch where you’re going next time, fool!” I might have been more offended if the words hadn’t come from a very familiar face.
“Oh… Oh my God. Oh my God!” The person who had bumped into me was my other best friend, Jesse, who was – to the best of my knowledge – still in Australia. “What are you doing here?!”
“Surprise!” Georgia said with a sheepish grin, and suddenly it all made sense.
“We’ve been planning this the moment Georgia booked her tickets,” Jesse said. “I called her up and told her, ‘If you think I’m gonna let you and Robert be in New York City without me, then you’ve got another thing coming!’ The three of us are in the greatest city in the world, your birthday is coming up, and this place isn’t gonna know what hit it!”

***

Apparently everyone had been in on the surprise – from Ellie in London to Stuart in Montreal, and even all of our mutual friends on Facebook – everyone had known about the surprise, and nobody had let the secret slip. Jesse had blocked me on Facebook under the guise that he was “taking a break” from social media, so I’d had no idea of his whereabouts.
The three of us had lunch together and caught up about everything we’d been doing in the past few months, sharing travel horror stories and laughing both at and with each other. Afterwards we decided to visit the Museum of Sex, and as we browsed the halls of artworks and exhibitions we made crass jokes and probably nearly got ourselves thrown out on a handful of separate occasions. But I’d been reunited with some of my most favourite people in the whole world, so right now where I was at was definitely starting to feel like home.

Reunited with my best friends.

Perhaps the most definitive piece of art in the Museum of Sex.

And the reason why we can’t have nice things.

Over the next few days, it was the little things that made the time around my birthday so special. Whether it was stumbling across a little street market with Jesse and Georgia, where we bought a variety of fresh mini donuts and sat and ate them in the sunshine at Madison Square Park; or when Jesse and I bought $15 tickets to an Iggy Azalea gig at a gay bar on a Friday night; or when we trudged around Midtown for over an hour looking for a place that would cut our hair for $20 instead of $100; or when all three of us visited a phoney psychic just off Times Square, who told us we were all troubled people with shady pasts and dark futures, so we retreated back to Georgia and Eva’s Air BnB apartment with margarita mix to watch The Little Mermaid and feel sorry for ourselves – there are a whole heap of fun and slightly bizarre memories that made it a special week for me.

New York City with my best friends.

Georgia and I were a little excited to see each other again…

Strange warm-up entertainment in the gay bar before the main event…

Iggy Azalea in all her glory.

***

When it came to the actual weekend of my birthday, I had a few more intercity and international surprises. Mischa was making a second trip down from Baltimore to join the birthday celebrations, and I even received a little surprise from Ireland. Well, in the end I knew to expect something, since Matthew had asked for my address in New York several times over the past two weeks, obviously anxious as to whether whatever he had ordered would arrive. In the end a package arrived that was addressed to both Melissa and myself, so I know that had to be it. True to his national pride, he’d had a bottle of Coole Swan delivered to me.
“It’s like Baileys, but better,” he’d told when I finally wrote to him saying I’d received it. “Gotta have a little bit of something Irish on your birthday, no?” I could almost hear his accent in my head as I read the words, and imagined that cheeky, playful grin of his.

A bottle of Coole Swan, courtesy of my favourite Irish gentleman.

The actual day of my 22nd birthday fell on a Sunday, so we decided that we’d go out on the Saturday night for the big celebration. Melissa had offered to have all our friends from far and wide over at her apartment, so that evening Georgia, Eva, Jesse, Mischa, Stefon, Nirali and Melanie, another friend of Melissa’s, all came over to join in the festivities. Melissa and Nirali cooked an amazing dinner, and we all caught up over food and drinks. I was surrounded by so many beautiful people, friends both old and new, and it really was a fantastic evening.

The best friends at the birthday dinner.

Mischa reunited with more of his Australian friends.

The meal was delicious, and in true Australian fashion the drinks were flowing freely. Unfortunately Stefon wasn’t over 21, so he wasn’t able to join us when we eventually headed out, and a few other people didn’t end up making it to the clubs. We had vague plans, but I’d be lying if I said there was an overall aim to the night. I was in bar called Therapy with Melissa and Nirali, dropping my phone all over the floor and dancing like a hot mess for over half an hour before they managed to tell me that the rest of our friends still weren’t here yet. Jesse, Georgia and Eva had someone gotten lost, and we ended up meeting them in another place just across the road called Industry. From that point on, my memory of where I was, who I was with and what I was drinking became a pretty intense blur. All I know is that I was definitely having fun.

The one vivid memory I have is stumbling out of somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen with Jesse, jumping into a cab and screaming at the driver to drive. I don’t know where we told him to go, and I don’t even remember where he ended up taking us. But as we sped down a road through the West Village, we hung our heads out of the taxi windows and howled to the moon like wolves, shouting at the top of our lungs. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the taxi driver had stopped and told us to get out, and I know it’s a hideous cliché, but in that moment I felt absolutely, 100% alive. Young, dumb, drunk and free of cares, at least I was never going to look back on my life and regret that I had wasted my youth.

The morning after – birthday brunch.

I woke up at noon, curled up on the couch with Jesse at Georgia’s apartment. We’d gotten home just after dawn, apparently. Everyone was feeling a little tender as we attempted to sing happy birthday over a very hungover afternoon brunch, but I didn’t mind – the night had been worth it. For a night that I will probably never 100% clearly recollect, it was certainly a special and memorable birthday that I will never, ever forget.

Tiny Tino's Travels

Just a boy trying to find his place in the world

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