`Eat Me'
by Linda Jaivin
Angelika Fremd
Darlinghurst is the setting for Linda Jaivin's spicy novel `Eat Me' in which four stylish 'nineties' women with happy careers, disposable incomes and an excellent wardrobe, air their individual and collective erotic fantasies and discuss the gender mores of their time.
Jaivin's description of the inhabitants of Darlinghurst and its cafés frequented by Camilla, Jody, Ellen and Philippa is delightful,
"The four were having breakfast at Café Da Vida on Victoria Street, their favourite hangout. It was a gorgeous Sydney spring morning, all the more perfect for being a late Saturday morning at that. The native fauna of Darlinghurst, dressed to thrill, were sloping through the urban jungle towards their favourite coffee holes. Actors, artists, sex workers, junkies, nurses, actors who were also junkies, artists who were also sex workers, sex workers who pretended to be nurses, gays, straights, bis, straight-acting gays, gay-acting straights, immigrants with Hungarian accents, young English and German and French backpackers. In pairs and packs they came. There were loners, too. Though some carried just the big black bags underneath their eyes, others toted much-thumbed journals, the weekend papers, or slim books by fashionable authors."
Jaivin's description of Glebe on the other hand is markedly different and differentiates between Darlinghurst and Glebe through the use of an amusing colour coding.
"Though late in the day, it was still warm. But the new autumn light was crisp, and the Sydney sky a deep blue. Walking up Glebe Point Road, Marc and Carolyn had passed fellow students shlepping knapsacks full of books, and adorned with tribal regalia: arts students in their beaded fezzes or long Indian skirts, carried net shopping bags full of wholemeal loaves and organic peanut butter; law students sported short haircuts and proto-professional wear; and music-heads announced their individual tastes on screen-printed t-shirts. Also on the beat were middle-aged crystal healers and aura therapists in vibrant batik turbans, gauntly handsome artists from Latin America with paint splashes on their cotton trousers, and the occasional clot of thick-bodied yobs in red plaid who'd leaked into the neighbourhood from some place deep west. It was as if all the colour that was suppressed in Darlinghurst, where black ruled and white accessoried, had crossed the centre of town to capture Glebe and its more seriously eccentric sister suburb of Newtown. Glebe and Newtown were hundreds and thousands to Darlinghurst's licorice and cream."
Jaivin's colourful descriptions highlight what could be called Sydney tribalism. Each of the inner city suburbs appear to be distinctive, appear to be inhabited by a different breed of people living their own version of the famous Sydney lifestyle.
Although Darlinghurst is considered to be part of Kings Cross, once one passes the junction of Darlinghurst Road and Victoria Street after which the Cross is named, one has the feeling of having stepped into yet another tribal territory.