Earlier this year, Michaela McGuire and Benjamin Law attended the Wooroolin Peanut Pullers and Backfatters Ball. Ben has written about the experience in the current edition of The Monthly. Michaela tells her side in the August Brow, which is available now for preorder. They joined me on Skype for a discussion.

Michaela McGuire: Good evening, Mr Scott!

Benjamin Law: Okay, I’m back!
Welcome Ronnie!

Ronnie Scott: That’s what you think! I’m getting a beer!
hang on

BL: Awesome idea. I’m getting a beer too.

MM: I already have wine next to me, so I’ll just amuse myself in the meantime.
And also, I’ll check Facebook.
What sort of beer did you grab?

BL: COOPERS GREEN.
EVERYONE NAME THEIR ALCOHOL.

RS: Carlsberg, All Malt Premium

MM: Last bit of a cask of red goon.
Blew it up and everything!

BL: You’re a classy Queenslander, deep down, MM.

RS: Do you ever blow your wine back into it?

MM: Only by accident.

BL: I wish writers festival panels were done on Skype.

MM: Naked and drunk, the way writers are meant to be.

BL: OKAY WHERE DO WE FUCKEN BEGIN.

RS: At the B&S ball, why did you guys drink so much but not get drunk? How does that work?

MM: We drank for courage, but we didn’t drink enough.
It’s very hard to get drunk when you are in fear of your safety.

BL: The next morning, I figured I actually had drunk a lot of alcohol: a lot of Coopers, scotch, and the three beers we had at Wooloowin Pub.
But I didn’t feel drunk at all, considering I’m Asian.
Like MM says, I think the fear kept me sober.

MM: I stopped drinking earlier than you because I realised that it would mean an earlier escape in the morning.

BL: Did you notice people inspecting what you were drinking, MM?
They scrutinised my Coopers Green. “Poof’s beer,” I think they were thinking.

MM: You seemed a bit drunk right after you got covered in food dye and screamed ‘THEY FUCKEN GOT ME!’
I drank raspberry UDLs, so I think I went undetected.

BL: Is Cooper’s Green a poof’s beer? Discuss.
I probably was drunk by that stage, yes. I was actually thinking Parko was attractive by then, so I must have been quite, quite drunk.

MM: I think so. It’s certainly very ‘Melbourne,’ which, in the country, seems to be synonymous with either ‘gay’ or ‘wanker.’

RS: Who is Parko?

MM: Parko and Ben shared a bit of Bundy. It was a sweet moment.
Parko was the 18-year-old who was an apprentice boilermaker.
I do not know what a boilermaker is.
I asked him, but I already forget.
He also won a beer cooler that was attached to his wrist with a strap, so when you drop it, no beer spills!

BL: I think they make boils.
Parko loved demonstrating that beer cooler for us. It was actually wonderful.

MM: We high-fived each other to demonstrate the ingenuity of this device.

BL: I love that every time Michaela said she came from Melbourne, people looked at her, agog.
She may as well have come from the centre of the earth.

RS: Did you tell people you were writers?

BL: Which may also be true, I don’t know.

MM: And then they’d ask “What’re you doing here for?” and I would have no idea what to say.
Yes. Although I think Ben told some people I was “looking for love.”

BL: Yeah, I told them I was writing an article. I’m terrible at remembering dialogue, so I was taking notes and using a dictaphone.

RS: That would be a terrible disguise.

BL: It wouldn’t have been very discreet, no.

MM: It worked in your favour though.

BL: I am very upset and surprised Michaela did not find one single person she would have considered sleeping with.

MM: Lots of people were very keen to talk into/spit at that dictaphone.

BL: They were keen to spit into a lot of things.

MM: They referred to “town” by mentioning Kingaroy. Which has an Aldi and a McDonalds.

BL: Kingaroy was actually a little more impressive than I remembered.

MM: From previous excursions?
Had you been to a B&S right before going to Kingaroy the last time?

BL: Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’d been there in childhood, because I grew up on the Sunshine Coast.
I am a massive fan of B&S balls.
No, just kidding. I’m just a massive fan of balls.

MM: So when you yelled like a bogan after being covered in dye, you were just channelling your history?

BL: And by that, I mean testicles.
Totally.
Seriously, I was a bit of a boge in high school. At least, a lot of my male friends were.
I have a weird affection for the boge, even though I felt they were going to kill us within the first 10 minutes at the B&S.

MM: We decided that in the country, it’s not gay.
it’s just “mates helping out mates.”

BL: Yeah, and if it’s YOU fucking the guy in the arse, it’s not gay.

MM: Nah, that’s just being a real bloke.

BL: Scott says I pick my nose and fart in my sleep.

RS: It’s all very prison, isn’t it

BL: So maybe I am a bogan after all.

MM: It totally is.
And the B&S area proper was fenced in with security guards posted outside, much like a prison.
And a man – was it Parko? – showed us how he had snuck his (water) pistol in, much like prison.

BL: Speaking of prison, there were no facilities for the men to defecate.

MM: I am certain at least one of them took a dump right behind the ute we were sleeping in.
CERTAIN OF IT.

BL: Anyway: the men’s toilets were really confusing. When I needed to take a leak, I walked into the bathroom and saw …
… well, it looked like an empty room.
Then I realised the emptied out pipe was the trough.

RS: What do you mean? With pee on the walls?
LIke a half-pipe?

BL: No, it was just a half-pipe with sawdust underneath,
to collect the moisture …

MM: Ben and I went to the bathrooms together in the middle of the night.
The ladies bathroom.
It was the most sexual thing that happened to either of us that night.

BL: I hate doing poos at night. They’re the worst.
Michaela, I was pretty turned on in that moment.

RS: Were there any other women in there?

BL: We could have made a baby.

MM: No. Just us. As Ben said, we could have made a baby.

BL: Not that I remember. But it wouldn’t have bothered me by that stage. Everyone was pretty … relaxed.

MM: No, what did that guy tell us?
“Socially excited.”

BL: You know what’s funny though? For a night of debauch, I expected more people to be having loud moany sex in the back of their utes.
SOCIALLY EXCITED! Yes, I have that phrase in my notes.

MM: And then we asked what happened when he kept drinking. “I just get more, socially excited.”

BL: Who said that again?

MM: Stoney

BL: You see, it was wonderful having Michaela there, because she has a photographic memory. She may even be an autistic savant.
I have a terrible memory.
I should not write non-fiction.

MM: Stoney was the man that had Ben and I fearing for our lives, because as soon as he spotted Ben, he was very keen to have Ben and “do me a favour.”
Ben, tell our audience what the favour was.

BL: “COME OVER HERE,” Stoney said.
I felt like I was in an episode of Oz.
But with utes.
And navy Bonds singlets.
Which is sort of hot, when I think about it.

MM: And Akubras. With police tape tied around them.
Again, with the prison theme.

BL: Anyway: Stoney wanted me to come join his friends, who were cracking whips.
Actually, he first led us to this woman (at least, I *think* it was a woman) who was covered — head to toe — in food dye.
She looked like … you know those Pro Hart carpet cleaning ads?
She looked like the carpet.
After the mess.
And then Michaela and I got scared.

MM: Very scared.

BL: And Parko told us the “favour” had nothing to do with her — instead, his friends were going to whip something out of my mouth.

MM: STONEY
NOT PARKO

BL: STONEY.
I am mixing up the names.
STONEY.
I am distracted by Parko.
Sexually.
ANYWAY.

RS: They are both names, it’s fine

BL: This is true, Ronnie.
There was Gravo, who was actually sober and whipping away. I was tempted to say yes, but my face is munted enough without whipping scars.

MM: STONEY wanted Ben to hold a cigarette in his mouth

BL: There was Gravo … who was the drunk guy who was scary?

MM: Gravo was NOT sober.

BL: Gravo was RELATIVELY sober.
Gravo with the black akubra?

MM: Yes. The drunk guy, covered in green dye, with his shirt undone, and the police tape tied around his hat.
Yes.
He was about 6 foot five and terrifying.

BL: It was their friend who was way more drunk. On a Wooroolin scale of things, Gravo was practically a priest.

MM: Gravo WAS the drunk friend.
What are you even talking about.
Anyway, they all have names, as Ronnie wisely pointed out.

BL: No, no: wasn’t Gravo in the black singlet? There was the OTHER dude who was WAY more drunk.
And scary.
And made me want my mother.

MM: Gravo was the one with the shirt undone. No singlet.
BUT LET’S NOT QUIBBLE.

BL: Fuck, maybe I was drunk by this stage.
WITCH.

MM: Oh hush up and finish the story.

BL: Oh, and as mentioned in my Monthly story, we backed out of there. Then we backed into another bunch of people sitting in the back of their ute.
And one guy had his ball hanging out of his shorts, using it to taunt Stoney.
“Don’t trust that guy!” he told us.
Weirdly, with his scrotum all exposed like that, he felt quite authoritative.

MM: Because a guy holding one ball out to us was infintely more trustworthy.

BL: Totally.

MM: Yeah, you knew he was in charge of the situation.

BL: Wow, this really *is* like prison.
Were you wet by this stage Michaela?
I mean, vaginally.

MM: I think I was too scared to be wet.
Vaginally.
Perhaps like when men get cold. Nothing works properly.

BL: Was there NO ONE you would have considered sleeping with? It was a BACHELORS and SPINSTERS ball after all.

MM: NO ONE.

BL: You could have produced a litter of peanut-pullers.

RS: It seems like you guys talked to a lot of men. What were the bitches like?

MM: Because, as everyone I asked mentioned, “Oh nah, you don’t come to these things to hook up. It’s just like, mates hanging out with mates.”
Hogs, not bitches.
SOWS

BL: If I were heterosexual, I thought the girl with the Year 11 formal gown was quite pretty.

MM: Stoney’s woman?

BL: It was her first time, and everyone said you could tell.

BL: Nah, she had dark skin and wasn’t covered in food dye.

MM: OH
That bitch!

BL: Was Stoney’s woman actually there?

MM: Yes

BL: Who the fuck was she?

MM: She wore the pink dress, and did the slip n slide of death to get to the Bundy
You have a photo of her!

BL: SERIOUSLY: THAT WAS HER?

RS: You have to explain the Slip n Slide of death to get to the Bundy.

BL: I never made the connection. Unless I just wasn’t paying attention.
Which is probable.

MM: The slip n slide, Ronnie, was a long stretch of plastic tarp stretched out in front of a lightpost
The contender was tethered with a harness and bungy cord to the pole

BL: Michaela: did you even see what the prize was?

MM: And the plastic was slicked down with semen and/or detergent, so that when they tried to run towards the bottle of Bundy they would be yanked back in a comical fashion

BL: I didn’t see a bottle of Bundy. All I saw was human flesh. Moist human flesh.

MM: It was while I was watching this that I got attacked from behind with blue food colouring
That’s when I got wet

BL: You got wet like Smurfette.

MM: Vaginally.

RS: Michaela, your piece cuts out when you guys go to sleep. What was the atmosphere like when you woke up?

MM: Mercifully quiet, for the first twenty minutes

BL: You’re talking about “waking up” like it only happened once, Ronnie.

MM: Oh god, yes.
Worst nights sleep ever.

BL: Awful.

MM: We both kept waking up at intervals and opening our eyes, praying to see light.

BL: I felt like it was a cross between “Romper Stomper” and “The Boys”. Either way, one of those hideous Australian movies that has an element of assault.
Michaela: did you want to describe our little midnight “friend”?

MM: Yes.
I think we must have just managed to drift off to sleep when I was shaken awake.

BL: SHAKEN.

MM: I opened my eyes to see a large bogan peering over me who said “What’ve we got here?”
“A couple of SOFTIES!”

BL: (P.S. I am going to repeat everything like a feisty black woman in a Baptist church from here on.)
SOFTIES!

MM: I cannot tell how terrified Ben and I were.

BL: TERRIFIED! TESTIFY!

MM: The man asked whose ute it was, and I mumbled that it was my Dad’s/

BL: (Okay, maybe I should stop the racism now.)

MM: Probably.

BL: Well it definitely wasn’t mine.

MM: “A Ford Falcon. LOVE the Falcon. GO the Falcon.”
Ben and I had no idea what to say, but he offered encouragement.
“Say it with me. “Go the Falcon.”"
So I mumbled in response.

BL: I like a man who leads

MM: Then he said, “Nah, both of youse.”
So Ben mumbled “Go the Falcon.”

BL: I wanted to do everything he said, like in a hostage situation.

MM: “Nah, both of youse together.”
So we mumbled it together.
Then he said something else, but I figured this could go on all night, so I rolled away from him and waited to be raped from behind.

BL: And then she was raped.
THE END.
*applause*

MM: Yes. It’s like you were there.
Those little peanut pullers should be coming into the world in 8 months time.

BL: That was a fun story.

MM: Ben shall be their godfather.

BL: By which stage, you’ll be a backfatter,
“a sow so large … ”

MM: Yes, of course. I’ll have too much backfat to walk!

BL: Did you know some women can pull their backfat forwards and add front cleavage?

RS: Do you mean like four breasts, or like substantively adding to the breasts they have

MM: Depends how good your harness device is.

BL: I reckon human udders are underrated.

MM: So practical!

BL: So, are we ending this story with Michaela’s rape?

RS: Yes! let’s do that.

BL: I guess it’s a pretty fun note to leave it on.

RS: Thank you guys.

MM: You are so welcome.

RS: ENJOY!

MM: GOOD NIGHT WOOROOLIN!

BL: Ronnie: before you entered this chat, Michaela and I were talking about the fact she is only wearing glasses and a tampon.
You can include that if you like.
GOOD NIGHT SOUTH BURNETT SHIRE!

MM: Also, that the name of this chat appears to be “Are you naked?”

BL: I noticed that too.

RS: I came in too late! Mine is just “Good evening, Mr Scott!” which I thought was a fun feature of Skype

BL: Nah, Skype is asking me if I’m naked.

MM: That’s a nice feature too.

Coral on top of subsiding coral rock, volcanic rock; coral rock carries dead coral down. Another volcanic movement: the Royal Society of London pushes the coral back up. British drill bits show shallow water organisms fossilised in coral fathoms deep. David’s drill bit, 1911, drills deep but is unable to reach the volcanic base. From the bore hole: hear how old our language is.

There is a pier underwater. When it’s only just submerged, watch barnacles bugle their mouths out. Stand with your feet flat on the pier. Water swirls around your calves as if you’ve stepped into a shallow pool. On either side of you and at the end of the pier is the ocean and it is deep. Some decades, the ocean rises, and it’s as if there is no pier. This is the pier the boys lead their make-ships along.

Ships that are baby bathtubs, that are buckets, that are Styrofoam coolers. Make ships with scraps of wood, of doorless refrigerators, from bicycle tires. Every year restless boys take their make-ships to the end of the sunken pier. To go. To “New Zealand.” To “America.” They have no sense of the size of the world. They float away in coffins.

From “the large house” swims a “big whale.” A “black whale.” A whale with wings flat against its size. A whale as much as a blackbird. A whale stuck with harpoons, wrought iron reminders, lines fly behind. Its memory is a noise of moments, its insides “the light of day.” One hundred years ago the whale tricked the people of our country and swallowed all our men. This was recorded by Christian missionaries. What powers its swim is slavery. We do not speak of this event, but our children all play a game with rope.

My daughter woke up again at seven, not with a cry but a bright call to open the “drapes”. I struggled, sleepy—the stories that she whispered to me—the stories my daughter whispers in my sleep. She stood at the head of the bed and shook the curtains, threads bright with sun. I knelt beside her, reached over the headboard and pushed apart the curtains. Outside, there was no lawn, or street—no land. My wife, asleep, her glasses on the nightstand, the nightstand no longer at arm’s reach, but bobbing away on the floorboards. And oh I’m anything but sad.

He sipped at the bitter black dribble. He swore in Slovene.

“I don’t think this was the place he was talking about. I think it must have been that place down the road.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m glad we’re here.” Bec put out her hand and found it resting on his arm and squeezed it out of habit. The coffee grinder started up. Loud. She took great gulps of her grainy coffee. Perhaps it would rattle something loose in her.

“Don’t drink that.”

He pulled the cup away from her mouth in a way that was almost impolite.

“We’ll go to that other place.”

“OK.”

“Cause I think that is where he meant. I don’t think he would have told me to come here.” This, loud enough, and the waiter passing.

She left a few dollars under the saucer when he was pushing his own chair back. She thought maybe he hadn’t seen.

It was chilly outside. She spotted the river when they walked between buildings, big brick monoliths that had once been factories. A man raced past on a kayak. She saw him for a second, muscled arms digging into the muddy water as if it were icing. Head turning towards her. Then he was gone. She wondered if he had seen her there, walking with her hands thrust into her coat pockets.

The other cafe was better; she could tell before they even sat down. It was to do with the way the place was stripped back. There were cracks in the sandstone walls and a pillar with ornate carvings where it touched the high ceiling. The lights hung low on long white cords. There was a painting on the wall that one of the staff had probably made. The staff were exceptionally casual, the kind of messed up hair that would have taken hours to perfect.

“In Slovenia I worked at a café run by lesbians.”

Bec looked up at the waitress who casually slouched within earshot. Bec wondered if this waitress was a lesbian. She wondered if she would be cooler if she became a lesbian. She had slept with a girlfriend in high school. She wondered how she could casually drop this into the conversation.

She ordered a short black. Short black and a cupcake, and she only realised that the cupcake was a mistake as she opened her mouth to order it. He shifted subtly in his seat, turning his body a little away from her.

She had a thing in her satchel for him. A welcome home gift. Just a CD she had made of the music she had been listening to since he left. Bec kicked the satchel further under her chair and slouched. This seemed to be the kind of café where you were supposed to slouch.

“We would finish up at night and go out dancing somewhere.”

“With the lesbians?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

He stretched, and she noticed his hand shaking. She remembered how much it bothered her. She used to worry that this was the beginning of something, a disease.

When the coffee was delivered she didn’t want black coffee anymore. She wanted a flat white. She swallowed the short black and the hot acid of it burned all the way to her stomach. She wanted a glass of water. She looked around for a jug.

“I’m tired,” Bec said.

“Yeah. I’m a bit jetlagged myself. Up all night watching bad infomercials. They don’t have those in Slovenia, you know?”

Bec didn’t know but it made sense when he said it.

“I don’t have jetlag,” Bec said, “I’m just a bit tired.”

They parted company at the end of the street. She grinned and waved when he climbed into his parents’ car. He had offered to drive her home but she’d declined. She wanted to sit by the river for a while. She thought she might see ducks, though probably not.

It was public land, this boardwalk, but she felt as if she was sneaking into someone’s back garden. The townhouses jostled for position along the river’s edge. Their concrete steps leaped steeply down from tiny verandas. She was close enough to reach out and touch everybody’s portable barbeques.

She sat on the edge of the boardwalk and pulled grass up by the stems, clumps of it, that she hurled overarm into the water. A woman passed in a rowboat. It was unseasonably chilly. She pulled her coat closer around her shoulders and hauled herself up to standing. Then she saw him, the same kayak, and although she had only caught a glimpse of him she felt a sudden short wave of recognition.

“Hey!” Bec waved at him and he looked towards her, smiling, perhaps a little confused.

“Here!” She reached into her satchel and found the jewel-coloured CD case and flung it out into the water. It fell short of the kayak, but she saw the man stop and swing the craft around towards the CD, which floated briefly before sinking under the surface.

The man grinned and shrugged. Bec shrugged. The man lifted his chin in a nod and she watched him spin the kayak and power off against the tide.

So I wrote Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, the personnel officer at the Ritz-Carlton, and asked if they would hire me, citing my extensive knowledge of hiphop, hardcore, bhangra, and eighties pop, as well as my ability to make an entire room of dissolute twenty year olds get up and dance. Less than a day later, Mr Abdullah wrote me back. “Dear Mr McKenzie, Thank you for your inquiry. In fact, we are in need of a DJ at our nightclub, the Funk ‘n’ Punk, immediately. Please come at your earliest convenience, and we will provide you with housing and a driver.” The salary in Bahraini dinars doubled what I was making in Mucktown.

“Actually, it’s Ms McKenzie, which I hope is all right, and please call me Tanya,” I wrote back.

“How perfect! Bahrain’s first female DJ,at the Ritz, of course. By the way, my street name is Triple A or Trippy. Let me know your flight details, and I’ll meet you myself.”

I wasn’t sure what it meant to work at the Ritz and have a street name, but I’d soon find out. So I left that sodden West Coast city and its fairtrade organic righteousness, for someplace ancient, dry, and petroleum based. On my Emirates Airlines flight via Frankfurt, I reflected that the choice now felt a little random, but I had been determined not to head off to someplace where any semi-adventurous American girl would go, her laconic and beard-sporting boyfriend in tow, to become enlightened, unfettered, or simply high. I wanted the other end of the spectrum, to visit someplace more in love with the shopping mall than America is herself (Fendi, Chanel, and Versace would all be there, apparently). I also liked the idea of living in a country where Our Kind aren’t particularly liked, but aren’t especially hated either.

When I’d learned that the second son of the Bahraini king reached out to Michael Jackson during his abuse trial and gave him a palace to recuperate in for a year afterward, I took it as a sign. After all, it was Thriller that let me know my future was tied to music, and if the country was good enough for the King of Pop, it was good enough for me. I also wanted to go someplace small enough that I stood a chance of knowing it. Knowing it—it sounds sexual doesn’t it? But I wasn’t looking for love. There’s Italy, France, and all of Eastern Europe, even Bali, for that. I was really going because nobody else I knew would even consider it.

Trippy met me outside customs. He was handsome in a mama’s boy sort of way—a little stout, in ironed jeans and a white button-down. His face was shiny from the heat, surrounded by unruly black curls, and he grinned. “T-Girl!” He clasped my hand,pumping it.

“Trippy,” I said. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“Man, I feel like I know you. I’ve been reading all about you on the blogs.” Whew. I’d been traveling for sixteen hours, and I wondered how I was going to keep up as he announced we were going to central Manama for some strong coffee and the best lamb kebabs, bar none. “And don’t tell the Ritz chefs I said that. But you really have to see the old part of town first, or you’ll just get sucked into the new.” Trippy drove, pulling a lot of fancy maneuvers in and out of traffic, but with good humour, as if this were a hobby he just didn’t quite get enough time practicing. There was the Bahrain World Trade Center with its own twin towers looking like two spiky leaves piercing the sky, and attached to each other by a three-rungs, a wind turbine on each one.

“See, we’re innovative here,” commented Trippy as he parked his Mercedes in a monstrous indoor parking lot and led me out to the labyrinth of alleyways that could have led to an earlier century, if it hadn’t been for “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough…” playing from a tailor’s shop.

“The whole nation was devastated by his death. We really considered him one of our own,” Trippy said, and I suppressed the urge to hold his hand as we wove in and out of the crowds just so I wouldn’t lose him. While we ate, as he’d promised, the most delicious kebabs and flatbread, Billie Jean reminded me “be careful what you do”.

Trippy did not make his move then or later, and I didn’t either. He was an old-fashioned boy, it turned out, and I liked having a platonic escort, both attentive and hesitant. I worked my four nights a week spinning, plus the occasional wedding, and my gang out there on the checkerboard floor of black marble and white lights was not only Bahraini and Saudi, but pink-faced Brits and sauntering Italians, bodacious Indians and silky-haired Filipinas. This place was, it’s true, Middle East Lite. Yes, you had the Sunni-majority–Shi’ite-minority standoffs and Iran making noise about how the island really belonged to them, despite the seventeen miles of King Fahd Causeway attaching it to Saudi Arabia. But really it was pretty relaxed. Even the local girls in headscarves wore tight t-shirts saying things like “Rules? What rules?” And Americans, thankfully, were in short supply.

Six weeks into it all, I looked down one night and saw Trippy, off-duty, but still in work clothes minus the jacket and tie, sitting at the bar, his expression cheerful with a tinge of dejection, and I left my nest during my break.

“T-girl!” he said and gave me a high five. He had in fact christened me; or I guess that’s not the right verb, but the name stuck, and everyone calls me that now. I ordered a vodka tonic, and he said, “I love that you’re, like, totally modern, but you don’t rub it in people’s faces.” I felt a surge of affection for this person, this friend, and leaned in to ask him something.

Now we’re in back in my high-end dorm room, and out my window I’m watching a date palm sway while Trippy sleeps, the 400-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets twisted around his soft middle, the black hairs curling on his chest. We are bathed in pink from the lights outside as the air system hums. Almost every molecule of air that comes into this place is filtered though a giant machine before it reaches the vents in the walls, stripped of trace minerals from the land and salt air from the ocean—though I guess the dust really is a problem when the winds blow from Iraq—and I have the feeling of being the princess and the pea, except the pea isn’t a pea. It’s the millions of souls—Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Portuguese, Greek, English—who have passed through this place before me in the last five-thousand (or even ten-, if you count pre-history), distilled into a test-tube of incandescence floating behind my sternum, close to but not touching my heart.