You can fall in love with a city like you can a person.

There,

you just did it.

The guy rapping into his amp with a Singstar microphone.

The breeze on the balcony from the first floor at Cookie.

The Thai food on plastic plates with fake pink roses in full bloom.

The gins.

The tonics.

The gins and the tonics.

The way it is the best and worst parts of a movie.

It is a movie.

It’s a series you got obsessed with and now you don’t know how many seasons its been signed on for or if your favourite character has agreed to come back.

It’s the relentlessness of September’s weather and the shortness of the shit first date you went on to a rooftop bar with a guy you met dressed as a unicorn at a party who told you he was lazy.

It’s the job you never got but wished you had. It’s the job you got and wished you didn’t.

It’s the meeting friends at parties and falling in friend love with them and texting them clingy messages at 2 in the morning after they’ve caught their uber home like

I know you said let’s hang out but seriously let’s hang out.

It’s Victoria street, its cheap colours, its cheap pho.

It’s the way it can stop you for a second and make you double take as to whether or not you are actually in Asia.

It’s the junkie by the tram stop who shoved his erect, pink penis into your hip and asked you for a dollar.

It’s the time the tram driver had to call the police because a woman on ice accosted you on the carriage and said she was going to murder you.

It’s trying to get out of Geelong after a surf trip and looping back on big motorwayed circles.

It’s standing room only at The Tote it’s having cheeky dips at The Gaso and the lights someone brought to catch the smoke machine on the dance floor.

It’s all those random people you met at Eddy gardens after work on a Friday.

That person’s porch you ended up sipping cheap ciders on while Patti Smith played from the lounge.

It’s the scar on your leg from when you first picked up your second hand bike.

It’s everything you own that is second hand.

It is everything. It is all of it.

It is the way it let you in.