I'll spare you the details of this horrendously ill-planned decision, but suffice to say when I returned to Australia five and a half months later with no savings, a maxed-out credit card, no house, no car, no job and STILL absolutely no idea what I was going to do next, I was pretty lost and dejected. Humbled, I actually listened to my friends' advice for the first time in my life and moved to Sydney to pretty much begin all over again. I was homeless for three months, and spent that time sleeping in friends' spare rooms, working shitty, shitty jobs to try and get some money together and generally regretting the day I'd even heard of Ireland. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was pretty bitter.
But life goes on and I had to claw my way out of this abyss I had created for myself; I knew that the first step to doing this was finding a place to live. I went and looked at a few places I found via the internet, but none of them really worked out (one place in Annandale was owned by a forty-year-old guy who had lived there since he was born. His mother had just passed away and he had inherited the house. The house was a real museum piece, but I was especially told that the front bedroom was off-limits as that was his mother's room and was to stay the way it was on the day she died. That creeped me out, but what finally turned me off was that the house smelt vaguely of burnt cookies and had that weird, dank, faintly greasy kitchen carpet that was popular in the seventies in every room of the house, including the bathroom). I was really getting the shits. Then my good friend Danielle suggested to me one day that I might try a mutual friend of ours who had recently broken up from a long-term relationship and was currently living with his mum. If we were looking for a place together than we could call the shots, plus wouldn't it be nicer to live with someone you know rather than a complete stranger? So with nothing to lose, I called Blair Milan and asked him if he'd be interested in moving in with me.
I had known Blair for about eight years at that point. We met in Bathurst, where we both did the same theatre course at CSU. He was a fresh-faced first year positively brimming with confidence, whereas I was the grizzled, twenty-three-year-old veteran who had finished his degree the year before but had yet to actually leave Bathurst and still lived with students (which does NOT IN ANY WAY MAKE ME A LOSER, FYI). Although our first real introduction was marred by the fact that it was at 4.30 in the morning when my brother Matt convinced Blair it would be hilarious if they both snuck into my room wearing hockey masks and wielding axes whilst I was asleep (it wasn't), I quickly grew to like Blair a lot. He was charming, confident, and so cheesily egotistical that he could do no wrong. Over the course of the following years we hung out only sporadically, but every time we did it was a really fucking good time, and by the time I left Australia at the end of 2008 I considered him to be within my close circle of friends in Sydney.
The day I called Blair to propose we look for houses together he was driving along the Great Ocean Road in a borrowed convertible with a gorgeous German backpacker he had met a few weeks before. I meanwhile was standing out the front of a high school in St George in the rain waiting to teach five thirteen-year-old girls with voices like starving cockatoos how to sing "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. That pretty much says everything you need to know about our different points of view on life at that time: both broke, homeless, and virtually unemployed (Blair was an actor who spent most of his day-to-day employment working for a high-class catering company); one of us was wallowing in misery whilst the other gave life the middle finger and did what he damn well wanted (hint: it wasn't me).
Awesomely, Blair was enthusiastic about moving in to a house together, and four weeks later we moved into flat 2203 of 177 Mitchell Road in Erskineville. The apartment complex was huge and luxurious, with two tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor pool, a gym, underground parking, and a lovely leafy balcony. We were two young, handsome bachelors living in a kickass apartment with no commitments: the world was our oyster. Except I didn't see it that way. Not at first. I was still miserable, stressed and frantically trying to get myself back to the place I was in before I left Australia at the end of 2008. And misery loves company, right? All I wanted was someone to listen to me bitch and moan about how awful everything was and how much I hated my crappy job in a miserable box office in a dilapidated theatre for a company that could not, even with the aid of valium, given less of a shit about me (one time, an electrical fire broke out under the desk at my feet, and I managed to just get away before it turned into a small but serious blaze, and when I called the head office to tell them, the first thing they said was "can you still sell tickets?"). But Blair wouldn't have a bar of it. Not because he was deliberately trying to ignore my misery or because he thought I was exaggerating, but because his in-built positivity and optimism meant that he was actually incapable of dwelling on the shitty things that had happened. As far as he was concerned, they were in the past. For Blair, there was a whole wonderful world out there, and so whenever I bitched about something he would beam like a summer's day and remind me of something positive I had to look forward to.
After a few weeks, I was ready to kill him.
Yet he persisted. We began to spend the evenings on the balcony drinking wine and talking about good times we'd had, either with each other, or with our friends, or with people that the other had never even met. He'd offer his opinion on whatever piece I was writing, and it was invariably positive regardless of how godawful it was. He would practically cartwheel through the front door after getting home from work or the gym or from his voiceover lessons or from the pub or even from the freaking dentist brimming with glee at all the awesome things that had happened to him, no matter how big or small. And most of all, he insisted that the universe had brought us together - that the next twelve months would see us take ourselves to the next level, in career, relationships, and general satisfaction with our lives. For this reason, the apartment was no longer known as 2203/177 Mitchell Road, Esrkineville, it was only allowed to be referred to as "The Apartment Where Only Good Things Happen And Dreams Come True."
Crazily, it began to work. My general situation barely changed for six months. I kept the same shitty jobs (although I began to pick up some excellent work at local youth theatre companies, which kept me sane), I could barely earn enough money to rub two pennies together, I was still hardly writing any music, and I was, as always, chronically single. And yet one day, like a breath of beautiful fresh air, I stopped thinking about the things that I had lost and instead began to notice all of the incredibly awesome things I did have, including a truly remarkable housemate.
One evening, in late November of 2009, Blair and I were sitting on the balcony of our apartment. We had several empty bottles of wine in front of us and we made a pact: we were going to be living in the USA, come hell or high-water, by that time the following year. To confirm our drunken, 3.30-in-the-morning commitment to this endeavor, we wrote on the back of a big piece of paper: "BY SEPTEMBER 16, 2010, TIM AND BLAIR WILL BE LIVING IN THE USA" and stuck it on the back of our front door. We were both deadly serious about it, too. It became a constant topic of conversation, "what we were doing to get to the USA". Blair began to apply to residencies, and was successful in getting a six week stint in L.A. at quite a prestigious acting workshop. I meanwhile started to apply to schools in the USA in earnest, reminded every day of my commitment to do so both by the big sign on the back of the door and by the ceaseless optimism and support of Blair.
Now, I'm not going to get too Hollywood here and say that Blair was single-handedly responsible for pulling me out of my funk and giving me a much-needed kick in the pants, but there is no doubt in my mind that moving in with Blair was possibly the most serendipitously fortuitous off-the-cuff decision I had ever made. When we moved out of that apartment in early August 2010, with me about to move to the USA, one of the last things to go out of the house was the sign on the back of the door. I wish I had kept it.
You know much of the next part of the story: I moved to the USA in September, and began school, and have sporadically chronicled my misadventures on this blog (and I SWEAR there will be a whole bunch more coming soon). Blair meanwhile finally achieved his biggest break to date, scoring a co-hosting gig on a cooking and travel series with his mum, Lyndey, where they traveled around Greece for a few weeks generally having a kickass time of things.
A few weeks ago in early April I returned to Australia for what was meant to be a week-long trip. My dad is a budding artist and was having his first exhibition, and I went back to support him, give an awesome speech, and drink all the free booze on offer. There was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing on my part though, as it would be right in the middle of the semester and would mean I would miss a fair chunk of school. But in the end I decided it was the right thing to do - if anything I had learned over my time living with Blair it was to never, ever take for granted the wonderful things you have in your life, and my family is definitely at the top of an awesome list. I spent three days in Orange and then went to Sydney. I was to fly out on Saturday April 16th, and had sent out feelers for a party in Newtown on the Friday night before, including a message to Blair. I was puzzled when I didn't hear back from him; Blair was always the first person to put his hand up for a party.
That Friday morning, at 11am, I got a phone call from Danielle: on Thursday, Blair had collapsed at home, and was in intensive care. He had leukemia. No one knew. A huge bunch of his friends went to the hospital to keep vigil with his family outside of the ICU where he lay, unconscious, fighting for his life for two days. His wonderful parents let us come to his beside, two by two, to see him, something that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Blair died at 1.30am on Sunday April 17th. He was two months shy of his thirtieth birthday.
* * *
I began writing this entry on the day I flew back to the USA. Strangely enough, it was May 3rd, 2011 - exactly two years after I had returned to Australia and began what I know now was one of the most important phases of my life. The phase where I stopped obsessing about the things I wasn't doing and instead enjoyed the things I had. The phase where I learned that one of the best things you can do is enjoy time with your friends instead of locking yourself away in your study for weeks on end. The phase where I began to enjoy the simple things in life once more, and take pleasure in planning for the future instead of being terrified of it. A phase that is inextricably linked to the life and philosophy of Blair Milan.
I'll miss you, buddy.
To Good Times.
http://vimeo.com/23216938
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| Blair, Danielle and Me |
