There was nothing that we couldn’t do. There was nothing that we didn’t do.

He was studying Fine Arts Photography at the country’s most exclusive arts school and I was a high school dropout looking for direction.

He would bring his camera and I would bring my willingness to please. We did everything together.

He photographed me everywhere and doing all manner of things because I was the only one to go through with his ridiculous ideas.

He snapped me posing naked in the construction site that would become Federation Square. Or catching a train while I wore an old wooden TV set on my head so he could photograph people’s reactions (no one cared). Candid shots, styled shots, long exposure, slow aperture. I felt like his Dora Maar.

We strapped an old mattress we found on the street to her ancient Mazda 929 and took it home to make what was to be a painfully poignant artwork documenting the tragedy of the human experience (no art was made).

Meredith Music Festival being a million times better than Falls Festival (for reasons that only he knows. Hint: Craig and the inflatable couch).

That Ani Di Franco gig in 1999.

That time we tried to photograph ourselves looking up at stars on the beach. (It didn’t work- we were too drunk to stay still enough for the long exposure.)

We were going to be artists together and write poetry and have deep thoughts together.  When we coupled this with our deep pained youth it would enable us to make beautiful things, art, photography, painting and sculpture. It wasn’t pretentious it was destiny.

Until it wasn’t. He started dating a monster. His bruises started migrating from places where they could be hidden by clothing to being out in plain sight. He resented my warnings of his partner, I resented his inability to see the truth. We grew apart and then estranged. Last I heard he moved to country New South Wales decades ago.

There hasn’t been a clear, bright day that I haven’t thought of him.

One night, after a James Brown concert, we lay on the grass in King’s Domain while staring at the sky. We were way too high to be in public and certainly too high to go home. We held hands, pupils fixed and dilated, and he whispered so quietly I thought I imagined it: “When I was a little boy, I thought God made the sky blue because it was my favourite colour.”

***

“Have you ever been pasting before?”

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s easy. I made some posters to stick up all over town, we just need to make some poster glue first!” He unfurled a poster of three Pentecostal Christians in full rapture. Hands over their heads in praise, eyes closed and speaking in tongues. He had printed a quote from Matthew 6:5-7 over their delirious faces.

“Isn’t putting up posters illegal?”

“Not if we don’t get caught.” He smiled and gave gave me six capsules. “I got us some magic mushrooms too!” His smile widened even further. We both loved altering our reality as much as we hated religious hypocrites.

That night was one of the best nights of my life.

We giggled at nothing in particular while we plastered Melbourne’s inner north with posters. We put them on churches and doorways, houses and schools, parks and car parks, on trains and train tracks. The more we put up the more brazen we became.

Ours was a tiny act of hallucinogen fuelled rebellion against religion, against the establishment, against art itself. It didn’t feel pretentious, it felt like destiny.

Afterwards, exhausted, delirious, covered in glue and tripping we went to the local park to kill time on the swings. As he passed me a joint he said:

“You know what, I want to photograph you sitting on a balcony just watching a whole crowd of people.”

“What the fuck for?”

“Well, that’s your natural habitat isn’t it?”

“A balcony?”

“No, faggot. Watching people. It’s all you ever fucking do. It’s your happy place, you love just watching people. You fucking love it. You’d be a good anthropologist.”

“What’s an anthropologist?”

***

“Hi love. I ran into your old friend Alyssa at Waverley Gardens. Do you remember her? She told me that Quan died almost two years ago. He had a heart attack apparently. How sad 😢. She says hi 👋🏾. I gave her your number. Mum loves you”

I had to read my mum’s text message over and over again. What do you mean Quan is dead? What do you mean he has been dead for years? How am I finding out about this? Why am I finding out about this from you?

I hadn’t seen him for close to 25 years, I have no idea what kind of man he became, it’s possible we would have hated each other. Who knows? I should have searched for him sooner.  I was sure I saw him in a parking lot at Northcote Plaza once, I wanted to double check but I was too proud to. I should have.

More than anyone I have ever met, Quan felt like the only person that could withstand me. He shaped how I viewed the world and my space in it. Out of anyone I have ever known, he is the only person that I think truly understood me. Not that I was particularly complex when I was nineteen, but I haven’t had a friendship or a love like his since. A foolish love, a thick love, a heavy love. An all encompassing, enveloping love that felt even better than being understood

Whenever I stand under a crisp cyan sky, I think of him.

***

Poster Glue Recipe

Ingredients:

• One part plain flour

• Four parts water

Instructions:

1. Add all ingredients to a medium sauce pan.

2. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring continuously with a whisk until mixture begins to thicken.

3. Remove from heat and stir for roughly 3-5 minutes.

4. Cool completely to room temperature before using.

5. Store any leftover paste in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 7 days.