Sharehouse Archaeology – by Ale Prunotto

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1 Structural integrity

At the house inspection, I squeezed past two people in the hall pushing fearfully on plasterboard that acted more like marshmallow than a wall. One whispered to the other: ‘this place is not fit for human habitation …’

True, it is maybe not ideal, what with the gaping hole in the hallway ceiling, and
the mould spidering across the bathroom walls, and
the broken ratty blinds, and
the eternally leaking trapdoor in the kitchen, and
that time the toilet got blocked and Linds got covered in filth trying to plunge it, and
that time the carpet in the hallway became squelchy and we realised that water was trickling from the roof to the porch and through the 10 centimetre gap under the front door, and we called George, the owner, who in his cowboy style not only injected silicone into the crack in the roof but also drilled a hole in the floorboards so that any persevering water would filter directly into the billion-year-old foundations.
Nevertheless, there is nothing to fear, because that time Geoscience Australia registered a 3.8 magnitude earthquake near Sunbury, the house merely shook out its rickety bones and settled back into its hunkering repose.

2 Human habitation 

a roughly folded picnic rug         a pile of

nine unopened envelopes      

 a box of disposable gloves

a string of shells and driftwood              five toothbrushes         a bottle of Djima: instant hand sanitiser

ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE in lavender paint

twenty-two cushions                 a stormtrooper figurine with ACAB emblazoned on its chest        a clothes rack

draped with climbing rope         six vases of dried flowers a languishing kombucha scoby   Five bunches of sage

a stapler that recalls both a hot dog

and a sausage dog

smudged marker on the tiles: Very drippy tap, please turn off tightly <3   

Five bread trays of

beer          a

tangle of fairy lights                soiled cat litter

oyster mushrooms protruding                from a    plastic bag

three apple and cinnamon candles

twenty-four house plants, all alive

3 House chat artefacts

7 June at 13.36

Anna: Big storm on the horizon my dudes. Anyone with washing outside be warned.

Lorien: Make sure Bonnie ok too pretty please! She terrified of storms poor Bub!

Ynys: Could someone nab my yellow jumper from outside

10 June at 14.13

Fletch: Hey strange question too but somehow I have replaced the double doona in my doona cover with a single – don’t suppose anyone has seen a double doona without a cover anywhere?

27 June at 21:37

Ynys: Welllll

Ynys: Nikita got the mouse

Lorien: Oh shit

Lorien: I did hear that but thought it was something else

Lorien: So she is a killer after all

Ynys: Yeah

Lorien: I mean makes sense

Cameron Paul: Haha in unrelated news, in don’t know where the pooping toilet is in this house

 

12 July at 15:56

Fletch: hey anyone wanna watch a movie tonight?

 

12 July at 17:05

Ynys: [cute eyes emoji] ja

  

4 Between the walls

One night, I wake with a start to shrieks and yowls and scrabbling claws. This is the first sign of cats leading their own parallel lives in our roof, complete with family dramas and other politics. A short

while later, we hear tiny yelps emanating from the kitchen wall. This particular kitten cannot be rescued. The smell hangs in the air for days. But when another mewl is detected in the passage, the

marshmallow plasterboard becomes useful and a fluffy creature is birthed through the wall. I wonder what else might be living in the house’s unknowable spaces. ‘This is the kind of house,’ Lorien says

from her sunny armchair, ‘where I wouldn’t be surprised to find someone living in the roof.’ When I discover that a well-meaning soul has, yet again, stacked metal pots inside my non-stick pan, I wonder

if it’s our mystery seventh housemate who’s unpacked the dish rack this time, and who, without access to our house chat, can’t possibly know that I have requested it be hung on a nail at least five times.

5 Ghosts

I do not want to think about

what has happened in my bedroom

but the place where I hang my keys

is the bolt of a lock that

can only be locked from the outside.

The bolt has left a long and deep groove

in the door

that I trace with the tip of my forefinger.

On the shelf where I keep my hats

someone has written Basil Sibosado, 1c

in careful, rounded letters

and then covered it with whitewash.  

‘Have you thought about how many people have died in here?’

said someone I once dated, when I told them that

this used to be a retreat for widows.  

According to Lorien’s friend, mob also lived here once

and one girl would not go pee alone out the back

in the night with all the spirits around.   

6 Location, location, location

An alarming crunch and I rush to the front porch as the weatherboard buckles beneath the bucket of an excavator at seven in the morning. From my desk, with a clear view of the carnage, I take note of how what is whole can become splinters. I witness a chaotic deconstruction, a grinding into dust. The speed at which a home can be scraped off a block is both shocking and shockingly satisfying, in the way that clearing a bench of an almost architectural pile of pots and plates and Tupperware can be shockingly satisfying. The dirt is raked flat to each corner, leaving no trace of what came before. It’s not long before the conifers to our west have also been razed, along with their own grim and empty weatherboard, and from our kitchen window we watch mauve and gold and orange melting in the sky. We can see the High St tram from here too, as it clangs its way past, a fact that threatens the existential status of a rundown house in the sight line of apartments. One evening, walking with my back to the sunset, I glimpse a premonition through the floor-length window of a boxy unit on our street, in which a man wearing an immaculate shirt and black pants transfers a tray from an island bench to an oven. The bench is unblemished, the couch sleek, and the white pebbles in the front yard neatly raked.

7 My case to Heritage Victoria

To whom it may concern,

I would like to nominate the house at 42 Forsyth St, Thornbury, VIC 3071 for State Heritage Listing.

One time, when my housemates and I pulled a shit-tonne of ivy off a tree stump in our backyard, we found a dusty Gatorade bong. These improvised receptacles are part of the fabric of Northside communal living.

Due to the high density of queer people round here, there is a good chance that someone with a deviant sexual orientation and/or gender identity puffed on that bong. Therefore, this nomination aligns with your priority area: The history of the LGBTIQ+ community in Victoria.

You may say a bong is not of state significance, but remember: Victoria is a colonial fiction.

I hereby conclude my case that the house we live in and love should continue to be lived in and loved. And also get some major repairs.

We threw away the bong, so you’ll just have to take our word for it.

Yours sincerely,

Ale ▼

Image supplied by the author


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Ale Prunotto

Ale Prunotto is a white, trans non-binary writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. They have previously written for Voiceworks, Farrago, SAPIENS and The Victorian Writer. They were awarded the Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (Local category) in 2020 and are the 2023 Nillumbik Literary Artist in Residence. Ale is working on a book about the experiences of women and gender minorities who do parkour.

https://alessandraprunotto.com/
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