the best sandwiches of their life

July, 2024

they had peanut butter and honey from kindergarten till year 12. they dropped out of advanced english in the afternoons after school because they could never eat enough of them and their stomach burped and bubbled, but you.did.not, you.did.NOT go to the toilet in high school. 

the best ones were the 16 year old growth spurt / hormone injection / damien rice’s first album peanut butter and honeys when they smoked billies in a cave in their free period and ate them at recess. they had a noodle cup and pie at lunch because they were so hungry and they were flush with money from refereeing touch footy. 

safe independence – child-adult days that felt like the world was opening up beyond their bedroom and was showing them a million new things but almost maybe probably was going to swallow them, too. 

there was one – sitting around playing handball at lunch, that red sky they got coming out of summer when they can feel the days getting shorter, but the air is still speaking about waterholes and singlets at house parties and it doesn’t matter that the teachers think they’re a dope.

they can remember that dry, disobedient warmth right now. that was one of the best of their lives.. 

 

they had their first bacon and egg – actually – living above a pizza shop on king st when they knew exactly how much money they had at that very time, how many stamps they had on their bus ticket and how many more classes they could miss to write songs without failing journalism school. 

they made their own sandwiches at a greek cafe where they washed dishes and sliced whole boxes of mushrooms. 

they tasted like only just making it – just making it awake, into clothes, past the tangle of guitar leads and lyrics taped to the walls, out of the slanted house, through their own drunk chaos – and they would just make it to the end of the day and they’d never felt more alive, because every moment was basically the only moment.

one of the best of their lives was when they got their first job and bought an onkyo stereo and set it up and nothing could ever had sounded better than led zeppelin that day and they took themselves for the big breakfast for the first time across the road because YES they are doing this, they’re OK, they’re a person!

 

there was a basil pesto on their first trip away that made them stop in the street and wonder what they’d been eating before. they ate baguettes with mayonnaise sachets, crouched in alleys next to their plastic bags. they came home with more money than they started with, and wished they’d had more bests of their lives. 

they thought maybe they’d truly learnt and changed something, but at times also wondered if they’d just been a slotcar going around the track like everyone else?

it didn’t matter, they’d made it out – at least 4 modes of transport away from where they’d started, where you rode a pushie to get anywhere, so it was still one of the best of their lives. 

 

there was a period of them that didn’t do much good for them, at all, no matter what went into them. 

they were the worst sandwiches of their lives.

they were had at silent cafe mornings with rocky chairs or in a dank courtyard where nothing grew and even the sun found an excuse to avoid every day – and it felt about right because everything around them died and what could they do but keep looking at that and holding it and turning it over? 

nothing sounded good or screamed or even said anything of any importance to them, everything just sounded like the car needed servicing or when you wake from a nap at dusk and it could be 6pm or 6am and everything is humming in your head like your neighbour’s playing bad metal.

they couldn’t barely remember the feeling of the best sandwiches of their lives, then. 

every peanut butter and honey they made took them back to the worst memory of those, not the best – their brother spraying deodorant down their throat in front of the school bus and everyone watching from the windows with a straight face and their sandwich in their mouths like they (you) are in an enclosure, but this zoo sucks.

they wanted to touch the best ones – the caramelised onion and ham they made themselves in their lunch break at the cafe that time and they’re so fucking great with a knife and they look sick in an apron – but they’re not allowed in there now, no no no no – take the soggy one at school when their juice popper leaked all over it, because that’s what they deserve. 

 

then one day that darkness lifts, just a little bit, for no real reason but time, maybe, and their friend that comes to stay over and won’t leave, and the lightness that brings. 

 

and then, finally, they have another of the best sandwiches of their life, because they can taste it. 

 

there’s one they make for their parent after a divorce, the parent that made peanut and butters for 13 years with THEY imprinted on the white bread from the texta running through the grease proof paper. 

3,510 or more peanut butter and honeys and they show them what they’ve learnt since then – in sandwiches, and more – and how they’ve appreciated them.

they make them walk on the beach every day and stop them drinking on mondays and they both have some of the best of their lives. 

calm. 

 

then they have the actual best of their life when they aren’t looking for one at all.

it’s roast chicken and vegetables and chippies and they barely touch it because they sit down and someone just starts telling them about the best sandwiches of their life for no reason at all.

they are staring into them and they see them;  really see them like they’ve opened something in them and they can’t look away because they are seeing back into them, too, and they talk about the best of their lives and their first and lasts and why. 

they talk together for the first time in a language both of them have been speaking for years but only they’ve understood, all along. 

they fall over themselves, speak over each other, to tell stories and hear each other in that language – but it’s the why in all of it that gets them and they both recognise it in each other – escaping the suburbs for more and nostalgia for what they learnt in shitty jobs and the joy in scrapping to make it their way – always scrapping and always only just making it.

the best of this person’s life is new socks for new adventures, a song that kicks you like lightning, running with aeroplane arms on the beach. it’s a baked beans toastie and staring at the moody sky.

 

from that lunch, they are in those together – the best of their lives is while samesiding cafe tables looking out for good faces that cry out to be drawn, and running through vineyards in the rain. 

they have three points of contact at all times. they are having the best of their lives making ape noises to each other and eyes staring because there’s so much to say in there that can’t be said any other way, and a feeling like you’re taking your first breath or the only sip of water anyone’s ever had, anywhere.

your whole body and every moment it’s ever existed has been sandwich-pressed into that very moment because everything that has ever happened has happened so that you can feel that person’s head on your chest in that moment; the only moment. 

and that makes everything else – every misunderstanding and darkness and misstep – make perfect sense now because someone else sees you in all of it,  because they both are right there as they are meant to be. 

that is the best of their lives.

by Sparrokei