This is an old window, but it’s still new to me. I’ve only cleaned this window twice – once when I moved into the apartment, on Christmas Eve – and again for this piece. The view is of a solid, off-white brick wall, part of the John Swan engraving company that has been there since 1878. Some sky, sometimes pigeons. Dunedin isn’t so much an apartment city, but after I separated from my long-term partner Josh last year, we sold the suburban house we shared and moved into this place in the centre of the city. I like how it would’ve been flash in the 1990s, and now feels just the right amount of worn-in.
Together, Josh and I run a bar called Woof!, and this apartment is in the same building. Living so close to work makes it easy to roll down the hall and fall into bed at 2am.
I’m still getting to understand this new life, moving forward on my own, and living with Josh as a close friend. Occasionally people are surprised that we’re living together. If we’d broken up with animosity or betrayal, or something ugly, I guess this wouldn’t be possible. But as queer people, there are always paths available to us that aren’t considered from a heteronormative perspective.
To me, the view from this window is powerful in its unshakability. The John Swan brick wall ain’t going anywhere, and I like that. I need heavy, immovable things in my life at the moment. Josh’s collection of carnivorous plants that frame it are slightly more threatening – beautiful, ball-shaped, ribboned with veins, and they do catch flies. There’s always the buzz of death playing as a soundtrack to the wall. But it’s these simple contrasts that I find reassuring – the white brick and the neon tissue, the enormous and the tiny, the stubborn refusal of grief and the urge to grow through it somehow.
Dudley Benson
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