“It is in capturing the quotidian nature of a city that one finds its soul,” Christos Tsiolkas once wrote, and perhaps but for Helen Garner, no other author has captured life in Melbourne as truthfully. It feels oddly thrilling to meet the 58-year-old on his turf – in the suburbs where a man might hit a child who isn’t his own (The Slap); that might produce a troubled swimming prodigy (Barracuda); that might produce a young gay Greek-Australian who spends 24 hours chasing handjobs and cocaine across the city (Loaded).
We meet where all interviews should begin: Vinnies. When I arrive, Tsiolkas has already found treasure: a Jill Scott CD and Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance on DVD, complete with an ancient Video Ezy sticker. The former was nicked from his house during a party, he says, and the Haneke is just brilliant.
Tsiolkas has lived in Preston for 23 years with his partner, Wayne. His newest novel, The In-Between, opens there, as Perry, fresh from breaking up with his married lover of 10 years, dresses for his first date with Ivan, a burly gardener from Bonbeach. Both men are in their 50s; both have been scarred by love. It is Tsiolkas’ most tender novel by far, and I loved it for that – which I tell him, and discover he has a habit of coming to a complete halt, even in the middle of a road, when he really wants to make a point.
“I mean this very genuinely – that means a lot,” he says, hovering at a pedestrian crossing. “I’ve been a bit nervous, because sex is such a peculiar thing in the culture at the moment. But I wanted it to be honest and sensual, to talk about that aspect of love … I’m worried that people will read only that.”
Only the sex? “Yeah.”
Many critics have highlighted Tsiolkas’ particularly explicit, pungent depiction of sex – perhaps not unfairly – but The In-Between is also about love. My urgent need for Perry and Ivan to be happy makes Tsiolkas wheeze with laughter – he has been with Wayne for 38 years and admits he took vicarious pleasure in imagining what it would be like to date now.
“It is a different world,” he says. “I don’t have Grindr, so I had a friend show me how it works. I asked, ‘What are all these dots around us?’ They were people looking for sex. It was 11am! I find it all a bit frightening.
“The first two things I remember noticing about Wayne were his voice and his scent. So what do people use now? Pictures of their supersize muscles and supersize dicks – it is all so unrealistic.”
Tsiolkas feels pornography has influenced body image among gay men in a way that “would have shattered me as a young kid”. Would he have put pressure on himself to look a certain way? “I probably would have. What saved my life was reading, cinema and art, so you hope that this alternative young kid would find other ways to be. But the pressure would have been immense.”
As we drift into back streets we are surrounded by symbols of Australian suburbia: hot bitumen, chain wire fences, peeling milk bar shopfronts, power lines that crisscross the enormous sky. Tsiolkas feels something has shifted in Australia’s perception of suburbia. “I think authors have been a bit guilty of turning away from the suburbs. There are so many fascinating stories here. Decades ago I think there was a bit of a cultural cringe – we did not write about Australia, and if we did it was the outback because our cities don’t compare.”
It is stinking hot. Because I’m relatively new to Melbourne, Tsiolkas decides to show me the greatest hits. We squint at the Thornbury Picture House, then seek refuge outside his favourite bookshop, Fully Booked. “We could be lost for hours in there, they’ve got really good taste,” he says. He walks us over to the area’s newest landmark: the skyrail overpass, replacing a series of level crossings that infuriated Melbourne drivers for decades. “I really like it,” he says, staring up at the vast slabs of concrete. “Being an old codger, I remember being a little boy sitting in a taxi in the 1970s and hearing the driver complain about the train tracks. It only took them 50 years!”
We return again and again to age. Tsiolkas likes getting older: at 58, he feels he is becoming more patient, more understanding of nuance. “I don’t understand wanting to live a youthful life for ever. I want to know what it’s like to turn 60 and 70, if I’m lucky enough. When I was younger there was a gracefulness to the experience of getting old that I wonder if we’re losing.”
He first realised his age during the marriage equality postal survey. “Gay marriage blindsided me because it was never on the cards for my generation, so it was never an issue,” he says. “It was what made me realise – apart from my body telling me – that I am an older man. I remember saying to one of my nieces, who was quite passionate about it, ‘I have to listen to you on this because I don’t know.’”
We arrive at St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox church, a curious blend of opulent decoration and stark red brick. Tsiolkas, a self-described “classic doubter”, goes there some Sundays (only if he has long pants on). These streets have changed a lot over his lifetime: he’s watched Northcote become the new Fitzroy, Preston and Coburg the new Northcote. “Cities change all the time,” he says. “But I think there is a destructive side to gentrification when it makes places homogenous. I grew up in Richmond, I saw how all the blackfellas were priced out of Fitzroy. I don’t want to sound romantic but it means the soul of a place is gone.”
We are speaking a week after the voice to parliament referendum. Yes signs still hang on fences. “It wasn’t the result I wanted,” Tsiolkas says. “It means a lot of work again. It’s always been hard for blackfellas. It is just gonna be hard now for some of us whitefellas who want to see change. But I’m not condemning anyone. Maybe that’s my age.”
We end up outside the mural-covered headquarters of the Aboriginal Advancement League, Australia’s oldest Aboriginal rights organisation still in operation. “This is where I had one of the most significant moments in my life,” Tsiolkas says. “I was here the day Rudd said sorry. I stood at the back of the room with all these people who were stolen. It was one of the most moving days of my life. You have to think about that. We just have to keep going.”
We arrive back where we started and make our sweaty goodbyes. Tsiolkas heads up the street, then turns around suddenly. “You haven’t seen it, right?” he calls, holding out the Haneke DVD. He hands it to me, waving off my thanks, then disappears into the shimmering heat.
The In-Between by Christos Tsiolkas is published by Allen & Unwin in Australia, $32.99
