A Madcap Month

An overdue attempt to catch up

Greetings from the fall of 2026!

No, I’m not in a time machine. I’m in Melbourne, Australia, where the summer of ’26 is greying into fall, it’s cool and breezy, and my body doesn’t quite know what to make of any of this.

No human was built for this much travel.

When last I wrote, a stupefyingly-long four weeks ago – my sincere apologies – I had just arrived in Mexico City. I settled for a week in the leafy village/district known as Coyoacán – erstwhile home of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky – and had a wonderful week with a married couple who shared their amazing, labyrinthine complex of rambling home, rooftop garden, menagerie, veterinarian hospital and rooftop playroom.

But enough about that. Let’s just say I got lots of what I like in Mexico City, including enough fresh ceviche to start my own aquarium. All in a week.

After that, it was back to the USA (well, California), yet another rental car, and more friends and freeways: Solvang, Palm Springs, Silver Lake near downtown LA and then back to LAX, where I had a fortuitous airport lounge encounter with a man who I plan to see again. I love being single.

My month in North America saw me lodging with no less than nine couples, from relatives to old friends to new ones, long-ago exes, straight, lesbian and gay, and yeah, it was a lot.

I may write in more depth about what I saw during that time, which ranged from the delightful to the dire, as relationships tend to be. The month came at a time when I was contemplating my own solo state, which I have found myself doing more frequently lately, as I approach a significant birthday. That’s something else I may write about.

Things are going to change on this Substack. More about that soon.

It was great being back in the Southland, with its pools and palm trees. The architecture of Palm Springs in particular was captivating. I have been there a number of times, but this time the ubiquitous mid-century modern details really got me. The freeways, not so much, but you gotta get around.

By the end, my driving skills had returned, which would prove fortunate, considering what was coming.

All told, it was a month of wonderful visits with some lovely friends and family, and I am grateful to all for their various forms of hospitality.

After an 18-hour flight, I arrived back in Saigon, and back to my familiar place on the sweet little hem in Binh Thanh. I got back to Pilates, to my manicurist and barber and dentist, to seeing some friends’ new band and a farewell party for another friend, and to the closing night of one of my favorite music venues, the funky rooftop bar Cipherz, with my friend Liam spinning.

Saigon had warmed up considerably in the month I was away, as befits the dry season – though the rainy season seemed to be already starting, at least a month ahead of schedule. I also received the surprising news that one of my favorite couples in Saigon is pregnant – less than a year after they met. These two seem to be perfect for each other, and now they’re going to put that to the ultimate test. I look forward to watching this couple develop along with the others.

Then it was back to the airport and another flight – “only” eight hours this time – to Melbourne, to visit a friend from Berlin. David Lee Pereira is a singular painter and muralist of some renown, and he is spending much of the week finishing the last painting for a big show next week. Watching him work, and talking about art – and gender and sex and relationships and trauma and Australian wildlife – has been provocative, and enlightening.

Melbourne is distinctive, though in some ways not so different from Los Angeles in terms of the freeways and vintage of some buildings – not to mention its proximity to enormous Hobsons Bay – and I took a nice little walk around the wetlands and marshes that abut the Bay, with all their birds – and other, less-appealing critters.

But what really has caught me, as is so often the case in my travels, is the architecture. Much of it is Victorian, or turn-of-the-(last)-century commercial architecture. There seems to have been a decision to let them become covered in graffiti and tagging, or just let the environment slowly degrade them, which works with the profusion of hipster cafes and clubs and tattoo parlors.

There are also thousands of older homes, many of which are former miner’s cottages, built for workers during the area’s gold rush. But an effort to remake these has grown, to match the city’s need for housing. They’re cute, and although I’m told they are quite small and even dark inside, many have been remodeled.

Into…

David Lee also took time out from work to take me to the Warrandyte River area, where we walked trails through the grasslands to the sounds of kookaburras and cockatoos and magpies, the last which David Lee said have been known to attack humans, gripping their heads with their powerful talons and pecking holes in heads.

I don’t know if he was just making this up to impress, but it worked. I’ll never look at a magpie quite the same way again.

I also learned more about wombats than I knew before, including to watch out for them on the road:

Apparently, nearly everything in Australia – even wombats, when cornered – is looking to kill you, or at least mess you up. The “highlight” of our little hike was when, after a couple of kilometers of tiny lizards scurrying away from us, David Lee stopped with a start as a large snake slithered away into the grass from us. It was, he reckoned, an Australian brown snake, which he had just been talking about as the second-most venomous snake in the world, and one that, like the magpies, has been known to attack humans.

He’d never seen one in the wild before, and shuddered; I hope never to again. At least it minded its own business. But, you know, I came for excitement. Perhaps the most exciting (in a good way) element of my week in Melbourne has been putting my recently-honed driving skills to the ultimate test: Driving on the “wrong” side of the road.

I suspected that I was in trouble in the rental car lot at the airport, when I got the keys, went to the car and opened the door and climbed in…only to find that the wheel was on the other side! Yikes. This was going to be interesting!

It has been a bit of a challenge, but I’m surprised at how quickly my brain has acclimated. It’s just…everything is backwards! Easy! The hardest thing has been that, since the turn signal is on the right side of the steering wheel instead of the left, every turn finds me starting the windshield wipers. But at least the brake and gas pedals are in the right places; if I had to reverse those two, I think I’d probably be dead by now.

Anyway…I also had a Vegemite sandwich, a rite of passage here, as well as a meat pie, and took my first ride in a Tesla, to a parking lot, where the real action ensued. I’ll spare you the details, but honestly: the things I’ll do to feel young again!

While I’m not sure I’ll repeat the Vegemite – or the backseat romancing – I can see returning to Melbourne, and to more of Australia. Turns out, a week is not enough for an entire continent, though I’ve already decided to steer well clear of the beaches with stinging jellyfish and saltwater crocodiles.

Oh, and it’s bloody expensive down under! Two orders of six Chinese dumplings, some baked cauliflower and one bottle of water for…$76 (Aus)?? That’s $54 US!

Good fun, though, and we finished the week with a Friday night out at a couple of opeings for David Lee’s fellow artists, who were charming – I’m a fan of Aussies – and then a gay burlesque show that tookk me back to days in Brooklyn and Burning Man.

Tonight I’m back to Saigon for a bit. And then…

Onward!!