21. Aha Shake, Heartbreak - Kings of Leon
In the middle ring of Melbourne’s suburbs is a house that has no insulation, mismatched carpet, handmade curtains, a bad interior paint job and no heating or cooling.
I know this, because I used to live there.
* * *
From 2005 to 2007, I lived in a two-bedroom flat formed when some enterprising landlord split the two levels of their house, back before building code compliance could be taken for granted.
It was so cold in the winter that you’d have to wear pairs of socks – plural – to maintain circulation.
And so hot in summer that you could cook your breakfast by throwing an egg at the double brick wall.
The front half was clad in floor-to-ceiling windows, with a door that led out on to a balcony of questionable stability.
I know we must have cooked in the kitchen, but I can’t imagine now how we did. We didn’t open half the cupboards, not because of the rodents in there, but because of the odour that would creep out as you muscled the rusty hinges.
It’s hard to describe the smell properly. It wasn’t mildew as much as it was regret and elderly chipboard waiting to rot away.
There was a cavity on one side of the kitchen; just a void between the small cupboards up the top and the weirdly large cupboards at the bottom.
I have no idea what used to be in this void – there was no power point inside, no shelf, no brackets and no separating panel between it and the next cupboard. It was just a hole.
Anyway, I found some pieces of timber somewhere in the flat when we moved in, used them as a makeshift shelf and shoved a bar fridge into this gap.
But, luckily, it left enough of a gap to let all that cold air from outside into our living space.
It’s an interesting experience, seeing your breath as you cook your dinner, or washing the dishes in scalding hot water simply to get some sensation back into your fingers.
The electrics were, of course, unreliable. I think the entire property shared one circuit, without that annoying burden of a safety switch.
So it would drop out occasionally, conveniently.
This happened a lot one winter, the winter we decided to invest in some heaters.
There we were, my housemate and I, sitting in our chairs with three different electric heaters arrayed in front of us.
One, an infrared one that swivelled, making the room like the inside of a glass of flat Fanta.
Another was an old-fashioned oil heater, which was quite useful once it had decided to actually warm up.
And number three was a small unit that pumped air from the small element up through the vents in top.
All three pumping made a bit of a difference – frostbite was no longer a real danger – but the cost/benefit didn’t really stack up.
The carpet was probably the most memorable feature of the house. In the lounge, it was a threadbare smear of floral material. It was so thin, and it seemed to have been laid directly over bare concrete.
It was like walking on a mossy footpath.
One saving grace of that carpet, however, was that you could spill any liquid and it just soaked it up without showing any stains.
A friend of ours didn’t believe us, until he poured half his drink on to the floor to ‘test it’. Only to find out that the floor was immediately bone dry and there was no evidence of the spill.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen the carpet – yes, the carpet in the kitchen – was a once-vivid blue, worn so thin you could see the white threads holding it together.
This carpet was irritatingly scratchy on bare feet, and it looked awful.
The two bedrooms each had different carpet – naturally – but the carpet in my room was clearly decades older than me.
It was a faded orange which laughed at any attempt to vacuum it. But, oddly, it was the softest carpet I’ve ever walked on. It was extraordinary.
The bathroom actually had this terrazzo finish all the way through – the floor, the walls, everywhere. Which was beautiful.
Well.
It would have been, were it not for the rust stains that had somehow leaked out of the walls, or the build-up of grime in the corners that no amount of scrubbing, scraping or hoping could remove.
So out of necessity, we laid linoleum over the top of this impossible-to-clean floor, managing to obscure what could have been the nicest feature.
* * *
I had absolutely no intention of living here.
My TGNW and I had inspected a few places. We’d seen this one advertised for $160 per week and thought we’d check it out.
So we got the keys and trundled over to this two-story, 1960s, cream brick edifice. There was no real indication of the disaster that lay within.
The door wouldn’t open without a shove, but that was only because of the mail and garbage blocking the way.
As you walked into the short hallway, there was a grimy mirror facing the door and you were hit in the face with a smell that I’ll always remember, but never be able to describe.
There was another bag of garbage in the corner and a pile of mail under the door.
A small door to the crawlspace under the stairs was ajar. The scratching and other weird noises coming from there made me kick the door shut, never to be opened again.
We headed up the stairs, which had this quite nice wrought iron framework holding up the timber balustrade. I assume it was timber, anyway, the decades of grime and filth made it hard to be sure.
The sure-to-be-lead paint peeling off was also a nice added extra.
From the first landing, up the next flight and then you’re in the kitchen.
The main bedroom was immediately on the left, then the bathroom was the next door on the left. The kitchen was right in front, made of ancient chipboard and peeling laminate, looking through the window over another small balcony – which we never went out on, mainly for fear of bodily injury.
There were boxes strewn all over the floor, tipped on their sides, filled with stuff. Carpet offcuts, old, unwashed, saucepans, bubble wrap and piles and piles of clothes.
The sink still had dirty dishes in it.
What was left of the curtains hung, torn and limp on bent curtain rods.
The floor hadn’t been vacuumed since the Berlin Wall fell, and the walls were glossy with grime and filth.
The lounge room was the worst – more bags of garbage on the floor, an upturned couch and yet more boxes thrown around.
It was too dingy in there to see the walls, thanks to the ancient blinds covering the windows – you know the type, those metallic ones bad offices from the 60s use to cover their tacky windows.
Then there was the bathroom, with the huge bath with the pool of rusty water at the bottom, the dripping shower and unspeakably filthy toilet.
And everything stank, of mould and mildew and rotting food.
It wasn’t the worst place we ever saw – which tells you something about the Melbourne rental market – but it was simply awful.
As we drove back to the agent’s office, I was adamant that there as no goddamn way I was going to live there.
It was awful.
My TGNW then paused, looked out the window and said, “But…”.
“It’s huge (and she was right, it was three times the size of any other flat we’d seen) and it’s cheap ($160 per week was nearly half the price of any other two bedroom place we’d seen) and once it’s cleaned out, it’d be pretty cool.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “No, there is no way I am living there. The front door isn’t even secure for starters! And that kitchen needs to be incinerated, not cleaned! It’s full of garbage! And that smell!”
“I know, I know.” She looked back out the window. “But…”
I moved in three weeks later.
* * *
The place was professionally cleaned from top to bottom (I’d love to have seen the cleaners faces when they walked in though) in the time between application, the real estate agent picking themselves off the floor and my moving in.
We actually – ah, the foolishness of youth – managed to cajole a group of our friends to come over and help us paint the joint as well.
My mother-in-law made curtains for the windows.
We bought a roll of linoleum for the bathroom, and I installed a deadlock to the front door – learning just how much a bloody deadlock costs.
A friend of mine was finishing his carpentry apprenticeship and helped with some of the more involved maintenance issues – for a rental property!
It boggles my mind now how much time, effort and money we put into making it habitable.
Not the kitchen though, that was beyond saving.
It took a week of coordinated ‘renovations’ before I could move in, dragging in friends and family to power the brushes and sandpaper and various other equipment.
It wasn’t fun – nostalgia goggles aren’t that powerful – but I’ll never forget it.
Partly because for some reason, while I remembered to bring my stereo to the house while we worked on it, I’d only remembered one CD: Aha Shake Heartbreak by Kings of Leon.
Every day I’d knock off work, drive the 8 minutes to the flat (another advantage), get changed and swear, loudly, as I realised I’d forgotten to bring any other CDs.
So on the album went – Slow Night, So Long to start, then on to Taper Jean Girl, Milk, The Bucket and so on.
I made sure to put it on repeat, and on it played, the same 12 songs, over and over for 3-4 hours while I plastered, sanded, painted, repaired and worked.
You go through a cycle when you listen to the same music over and over again. From enjoyment to irritation to hatred to acceptance to enjoyment to hatred to cursing.
But it beat silence, so the album stayed on as we worked on making this place acceptable as a home.
Which was absolutely bananas to do, just madness when I think of it now.
To have to repair and almost renovate a rental property just so you can live there…you wouldn’t think of doing it now.
* * *
But the thing is, we had the greatest fun living there.
I mentioned my roommate – my mate moved in after I lived on my own for a few months. This brought my rent back to $80 per week – in Melbourne! – and halved all my other bills.
That change alone helped cover the money we’d invested in making this place liveable.
The best parties we’ve ever had, or attended were there.
New Year’s one year, where the mercury hit 40 degrees during the day and stayed like that inside for days, was a cracker.
General catch-ups with people glad to have a place none of us had to worry about messing up – it couldn’t get any worse, after all – became much bigger do’s; much bigger for a work night at least.
Stumbling the few blocks to McDonalds, only to have my roommate disappear on the walk, to emerge half an hour later with wild hair, a torn shirt, a scraped knee and a dog bite was another memory.
Discovering that we were an ambitious walking distance from one of the better pubs in the south-eastern suburbs was a late revelation, but a handy one nonetheless.
Setting up a table tennis table in the front yard in summer was another good idea. Especially when one of the neighbour kids came over, confidently introduced himself and pulled his own bat out of his bag, before asking if he could play.
Sure, we said, excited to see this 11-year old wunderkind dismantle our best player. He brought his own bat, for crying out loud! He must be great!
He wasn’t - he was a child, after all - leaving us disappointed and our best player’s ego enhanced.
We had an election party one year, 2007 I think – the one Rudd won – and grand final parties and birthdays and cocktail nights and get togethers.
Beyond that, it was actually a nice space to live in. Not the amenities or features of course, but the ‘space’.
The sun setting over the back fence, filling the lounge room with golden light while we sat there, talking and watching television, laughing and laughing, was special.
The morning light coming in my bedroom window on the weekend, while I lay in bed reading was fantastic.
There wasn’t any flyscreen, though, but for a few months of the year you could throw open the windows and let the air in without worrying.
The barbeques on the wonky balcony, again sitting back, legs on the railing while the meat burned, was amazing.
Complaining about our days, shooting the breeze, all in the fading light and cooling air of a summer’s evening was lovely.
* * *
I lived in that kip for two years.
It feels so much longer, because it looms as such a big memory I suppose.
And a kip it was, old, creaky, ugly, cold, un-insulated, grimy and wonky. But it was also spacious, light, airy and cheap.
The reason we moved?
The landlord, realising that the place was much more livable and therefore more valuable now, decided to double the rent.
Even though it was still cheaper than where we ended up moving to, the principle of having our rent hiked on the back of our hard work irritated us so much that we sent our notice in within days of the increase.
But I ended up having the best time living there – in spite of all the other nonsense that came with it.
So now, every time I hear those swampy guitars kick in, or the singer’s voice, I’m taken back to that flat; that big, ugly, uncomfortable, lovely, fun flat.
To working while we had the light, to sitting on that awful, scratchy blue carpet while we ate dinner waiting for the first coat of paint to finish drying.
To sanding and realising how hard it is to paint a high ceiling.
To bringing a dump of a flat along to the point where an optimistic fool could live there, happily and comfortably.
For a while, anyway.
