I sit with all the unemployed actors

It's the Sydney writers festival wrap
party. Jared Diamond had the last word
and the last word was "an orgy of
cannibalism". He had me until the word
orgy. There's a milk crate of champagne
and beer and I'm asking everyone where
I should go with my two weeks of following
my nose. Then I see the unemployed actors
in their black and orange festival shirts
and saunter over to check them out. They
are the wait staff and the program deliverers
and the cafe latte makers. A man with crooked
teeth hauls me to his thigh and puts his arm
around me. If I leaned that way I would want
a man with crooked teeth. There is something
menacingly beautiful in a face that's handsome
with a wild mouth. Who are you, he says. And
while I tell him a woman in a turquoise jacket
stands on a chair and delivers a song. Behind
us, over the Old Coat Hanger bridge, the silver
dots of bats swoop and arc, happy stars.