Day 39 - September 26th

Day 39 - September 26th
Missing Rachel... wondering about this. Maybe this time things will work out?
Drinks w/ Sammie and Leon et al.
Second terrible hangover in a row
FUCK

        After we'd been seeing each other for a couple months, Rachel went away on a trip to Europe. We were at The Workers when she told me, it was the same night one of her friends brashly referred to me as “Rachel's New Boyfriend” while on the phone to someone, telling them where we were. We laughed and made eyes at each other, pretending to be mad but secretly loving the shit out of it.
        She insisted she'd told me before that she was going away, but I didn't remember ever hearing about it, and I was devastated. That night I held her tight on the dancefloor next to the bar in the band room. I thought about Mélanie, and what had happened to us when our growing romance had been interrupted by distance. I still didn't really understand that the actual reason it didn't work out was a little more complicated than time difference, I just saw a pattern that seemed to fit. I was scared. I felt like I could already see the inevitable end.
        One night – and maybe it was this one I'm not sure – we went back to her parents' place and sat in her bed screaming with laughter at everything either of us said while my phone sat next to us recording. I sent her the file and would listen to it every now and then while she was away, as well as the folder of music homework she gave me. This 19 year old girl from Melbourne was the first person to make me actually listen to The Rolling Stones – until then they were just a band I knew the name of.

        Leon was this guy I used to hang out with because he sold me mushrooms – the one from the hostel I mentioned before – we got chatting over beers one night and he seemed confident. He was a couple years older than me and spent his time reading self-improvement books and listening to the Joe Rogan Podcast. As I threw myself further into comedy we started seeing a lot less of each other, but for a while there we were fairly close. I sometimes think of him as similar to the guys I used to hang out with in Adelaide, but he wasn't. The Lost Boys were all sad, but only temporarily, and we all had good hearts. Those boys and the ones I took drugs with when I moved to Melbourne were of a similar breed, but Leon was different. He was an arrogant, friendless douche, and when I ran into him in a bar in 2017 after not having seen him in four years, he hadn't changed a bit.

Click here to read the next part - Day 40 - October 8th