First night out after lock down

June 13, 2020

Went out to a pub in Brunswick last night. We had a group of 6 and registered our contact details with the concierge upon entry. It was Liam’s 37^th birthday. Annie played a gig in Footscray 3 months ago today. I suspect that was our last outing before lock down. Last night we booked an outside table from 7:15 – 9pm. You have to order food to be allowed to drink. Liam and George and I indulged ourselves with a few pints of beer each, while the others were a little more conservative. It was a fun time, but also quite strange. I know for sure that at least 50% of our group suffer from social anxiety at the best of times. The conversation didn’t flow as easily as it would have before the coronavirus pandemic. George talked for a good while about the trials and tribulations of applying for JobKeeper allowance. He’d been told (after days or weeks of attempting to engage a Centrelink officer) that he ought to be eligible for the allowance, provided his tax returns were in order. Given this information, he paid a tax accountant a couple of thousand dollars to lodge his returns for the last 8 years. The accountant also offered to take care of the JobKeeper application. After a further period of wait and see, George was notified that he was ineligible for the allowance. The process took 2 months for which he had no income and now he’s behind on rent and maxed out of credit. Throughout the detailed telling of that story, Annie & I couldn’t help but keep an eye each on the TV behind him that showed Hawthorn v Geelong. Maria told us how her family in Mexico is struggling and unable to work, where there are still a high number of active cases. She’s been sending money to them. Liam’s other friend, whose name I’m unsure of despite having spent 2 hours sitting next to him just yesterday, told us about how his drug dealer is using tongs to receive money and to hand him bags of weed. Apparently, he’s sanitising his cash in the sink and then drying it out. We each spoke briefly about what we’d been up to lately, despite having nothing very interesting to relate. A haircut here, a walking track there, maybe some impulse online shopping. When that fizzled out, the conversation became sporadic and unpredictable. George told me that John Landis said it wasn’t really so hard to get all the stars involved in the Blue Brothers because none of them were selling a lot at the time, with the exception of Ray Charles. Liam told us about how he actually didn’t mind watching Formula 1. George admitted he’d been to a drag racing event in Adelaide. I told them I have a client who watches demolition derbies on YouTube and how they crash into each other like dodgem cars. That conversation ran its course, ending abruptly when Liam related a childhood memory of being taken to the speedway and seeing a person die in front of him. George talked for a long while then about an experience he’d once had at Oktoberfest in Munich. When Liam ordered his last drink, it came as a pint when he’d expected a pot. He took a mouthful before pouring half of it into my glass. I also took a mouthful, thinking nothing of it, since he and I have likely shared a thousand drinks over time. The penny dropped when we looked up and noticed Maria and Annie, wide eyed, horrified at our faux pas. I guess, after a few drinks, you forget all the care and caution you’ve been employing these last months. As a social experiment it was enjoyable and comforting at times, but certainly not without an awkward sense of ineptitude or lack of social graces. I gave Liam a vinyl copy of the new (recorded in 1974, yet previously unreleased) Neil Young album, Homegrown. I’d been excited all week to give it to him, thinking how it was surely the best possible birthday present. As I handed it to him though it occurred to me, that I don’t really know how much he likes Neil Young. And he doesn’t have a record player.