I dip my arm into its mouth and curl a wedge of flesh out and crush it to my beak and it is sweet is nutty is spongy is bliss and my body is brimming is pulsing is purring.

SPUN AIR

SPUN AIR

Lucy is out and about in Hobart with Kat and her mate Shani. They’re in a pub Lucy has never visited, maybe because she never really goes drinking in Hobart, but probably more because she feels, deep down, that she’s a bit too prissy to visit a place like this without the right kind of company. The people here are real, and scruffy in that urban fuck-the-man way that Lucy can never quite pull off. Despite the fact they’re worn and filthy, her Blundstone boots feel contrived. Her newly finished tattoo stings when her merino brushes against it. There’s a part of her that’s tempted to lift her top and flash her octopuses about; to show people that she’s badass too.

The open fire spits sparks at the people huddled by it, the floor is sticky, the June wind, gusting up fresh from Antarctica, hammers fat rain against the windows. The music is grungy as fuck in a way that might actually be shit in its tuneless-ness, but here, in this context, feels edgy in a good way. Lucy’s a bit pissed already and knows that she’s gone slightly cross-eyed. There are four consecutive happy hours at this place, during which cheap-as beer is served in plastic jugs, and the kitchen is still a half hour off opening. Even then, it will only open for forty-five minutes, Kat has warned her, and it will only serve chowder. This place is known for its chowder.

‘Are you fucking kidding me you’ve never had their chowder? It’s the best chowder in the world. Even if you don’t like chowder you’ll love it. I swear, they put fucking crack in it,’ Kat had exclaimed last time Lucy was up in town—their second to last session—when she had revealed she’d never been to this place. ‘Well that settles it. Next time you’re up, let’s get chowder and then blind drunk to celebrate your octopuses.’

It seems Lucy’s doing it the other way around, but that’s okay.