Vale Sam, The Nude Gardener

One night in January 2003, might have been February, it was early in the year - humid - a boy stripped naked and jumped from a wharf near a famous bridge into the black harbour as the opening night crowd watched, their elbows resting on the balcony railing above. One of them was me, wondering how to live carelessly like that.

Years afterwards he became the Nude Gardener, glimpsed from the Georgina Street kitchen window. Naked again. Tending plants in the rain. A share house next door. Cups of tea sitting on the wicker-sided sofa under fig trees out the front. Seedy, sunny mornings.

Later we told him, I think, standing around the bar at Sydney Theatre, late on another opening night. Told him that he was and would always be the Nude Gardener. Or maybe we didn't tell him. But it was a story we spread around.

Later again we ran into him outside The Hub. He was with her. His girlfriend. The mother of his children. He told the story of giving Noonie a lift home. Of slowing down in his van as she waited at a bus stop on Cleveland Street. Of how she got in to the passenger seat and he knew that it was only after getting in she could see that it was him. How we laughed at Noonie's near-sighted expense.

It's New Year's Eve and we're sitting in a kitchen with a green lino floor pretending to be rock stars. He's there too, wearing a vest over a singlet and pants with braces. He pulls a handful of safety pins (?) out of his pocket. I can see his outstretched hand in some kind of orange party light, can hear myself saying something party clever and useless.

The next thing I see is bright light above white shiny stairs. Sydney Theatre again. Robyn feted, and the Christmas Party. He's sitting on those stairs and he says that they've broken up, him and the mother of the children. Maybe he says he's not at the Georgina Street house any more but I'm drunk and I can't really remember.