Jeff literally begged me to come with him to Princes Pier in St. Kilda to check out this skating event where, he swore, I would surely meet some interesting people who are more my tribe. By that, he meant there would be a lot of LGBT folks out there, as majority of the skating group belong in that category anyway. He knows I secretly dream of having a drag queen bestie. And besides, they’re the kind of group who are creative as. I’m a wannabe who wants to join the gang but can’t be bothered to get out of my oodie to actually go out and socialise and acquaint myself with all those lovely people.

Perhaps it wasn’t in the cards. Perhaps there were too many clouds hovering in the sky and Melbourne was once again chucking a tantrum with her cold stares and lukewarm embrace. My tribe was not in sight. His wasn’t there either.

Instead, there were only people fishing and Chinese tourists sight-seeing.

I decided to take out my notebook and put into practice my goal of learning how to urban sketch. For a total noob, it was very ambitious of me to start with the scenery of a defunct pier with its graveyard of wooden trusses standing strong against the rushing of the waves. At some point, my mind was like, fuck this. But in my defense, I soldiered on through the shit that I was creating, even going so far as to paint it with watercolors even though I could not color match the view in front of me to save my life.

Raven came up behind me after scootering around and decided to give it a crack, as well. She wanted to turn it into a contest. See which one of us comes up with the best sketch. Only to end up being the judge and declaring me the loser.

Going right in for the kill.

*Raven at 6 years old