Went Looking for God and Ended Up at Hector’s Deli - How a sandwich shop made me realise I'd hit rock-bottom.
I've decided to go to Melbourne for the weekend; thought it was about time I cashed in my birthright trip — 'unemployed, queer, middle-child finds herself in God’s country.’
In the lead-up to my trip to Melbourne, I made two catastrophic mistakes:
I see a return flight for $160. I speed through buying it like I’m on The Amazing Race of Jetstar transactions. Flight confirmed: Sydney to Avalon. Shit.
I get a micro-fringe. FUCK.
Thankfully, bad things only come in twos.
Now I’m here in Fitzroy, looking for God. I wander around for hours, waiting for a sign. Nothing. God must be busy. I embarrass myself by waiting for the walking light to turn green and watch every Shaggy from Scooby Doo wearing Salomon’s cross the road at leisure. Socially, I am an ugly duckling.
I head towards a line of people standing outside a graffiti-smeared brick box. They stand in a bored but curated fashion, and like a perfectly orchestrated domino opera, each performs the ‘waiting-in-line nod’ one after the other; look up at the door—down to the phone—up at the door —down to the phone. It’s beautiful. A poem of the body. If art imitates life, then this is life imitating Instagram.
Still, I have no idea what I am looking at or why there’s such a big line. My first thought was community service? Maybe jury duty?
Maps tells me it’s a sandwich shop called ‘Hector’s Deli’. Could’ve fooled me. I guess it’s true what they say, ‘it’s what’s on the inside that counts.’ I’d struggle being a sandwich shop. I give too much away about what I am. When I feel something, I have no appetite to be quiet about it. I think the best people are revealing (for now, this narrative suits me).
I don’t know why I’m still standing here. I don’t even want a sandwich. Right now, I could be anywhere in the world, writing beautiful things about life happening in front of me. And yet here I am, on the outside of my own life, waiting for some kind of answer—for someone familiar to tell me where to go.
I think I have daydreamed myself here: to Hector’s house, to Melbourne, to April, March, to an unreachable Peyton. In daydreams, I am satisfied and always moving, but daydreaming gets in the way of seeing life exactly as it is.
If reality surprised me more, I think I’d run from it a lot less.
I distract myself by thinking about what I’d put on my perfect sandwich. I think about this question in a very biblical way. Love expert and author, Alain De Botton, says, before you fall in love with someone, you should ask: Will you love me enough that I may be weak with you?
I say, if you think you’re falling in love with someone, ask them to build you their perfect sandwich.
I get a grip and Google ‘library near me’. I walk in, do a lap, then walk out. Too dark. And no one was there to watch me write about the kind of person I want to be. I check my phone again and laugh aloud. Too loud for someone who’s been walking around in circles for hours. I’ve passed the blue cheese gelato shop three times now. I’m about to make it a fourth.
Poet, John Donne, died in 1631 (just shy of Hector’s Fitzory opening in 2017). Yet in his poem — ‘Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person’d God’ — Donne, just like I am now, is pleading for God to slam into his heart, and restore his faith.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
In the throes of my religious doubt, I am not as eloquent; my holy sonnet is more like a wide-eyed dog with a dead thing in its mouth—desperation—it hollows me. If I were born 300 years ago, I think I’d be much happier. Maybe dead for being a woman. But much happier.
300 years ago, I would’ve said — if love not enough, take out my heart.
One day, I’ll buy a label maker and print my name over and over again, and I’ll stick it on everything. When I have a label maker, there’ll be proof that I’ve figured it out. I’ll enjoy savoury breakfasts, and comfortable shoes, I’ll give up biting my nails, and finally get on board with things like ‘negative gearing’ and ‘love-making’.
When I have a label maker, I’ll know who I am, and all my life will belong to me.
As much as I wish I could, I cannot tell everyone everything that I am. I know we are (mostly) all the same strange strangers. We take ourselves to cool-looking places, date cool-looking people, share our cool-looking lives online, and pretend that we don’t care about any of it.
I understand why people need a Hector’s Deli. Sometimes, we need people and places to choose for us until we learn how to choose ourselves. When you’re desperate for a you that you don’t know how to get to, all you can do is hope that someone else knows the way.
My Dad knows the way. He wouldn’t need Hector’s Deli to tell him what medication we’re now taking or God we believe in. If I took Dad to a sandwich shop that didn’t look like a sandwich shop, he’d keep walking. Dad believes that good places have nothing to hide. And because I’m going his way, I agree.
I told my friend with strawberry hair who wears her heart upon her strawberry cheeks, why I believe I am the way I am. She says many people don’t know their why until much later.
To some—people I may never have met—I am an oversharer, a slippery poet, too much, too honest. To others—the people I have met—I am Peyton. I pardon nothing in my writing. Especially myself.
I never write to change anyone’s mind. I write to change mine.
I like Melbourne. I feel ginormous and invisible all at once. You suck on the stone of a nectarine down Brunswick Street, fashioned like a ladybug, and no one cares. And nothing changes.
And with each passing hour here, God enchants me less and less.
I’ve decided to miss my flight tonight. Instead, I get drunk at a 50th in Frankston. I tell myself you can’t get headaches from champagne. And with the same, sage wisdom, I resist the temptation of being the ‘hip hip’ in the Happy Birthday song.
I’ve had a shoes-off amount to drink.
I yell to a distant relative over ‘It’s Raining Men’ that I’m a playwright. I don’t tell her that I’ve never written a play. Or that I start things before I’m ready. Or that I never seem to finish something I love.
I want to be unfinished to the people who don’t know me. I want to follow my heart and write too much about nothing, like:
3rd of March, 2026
It’s a Tuesday night; I flirt with the city and the city flirts back. I take my purple dress to the gayest place on Earth and hope that I wake up to the sound of someone else’s alarm. Give me a world too wide and not wide enough.
In a few hours, I’ll be back in Sydney. I’ve avoided using Maps all day. I don’t Google the ‘best cafés to write in’, ‘op shops near me’, or ‘orange wine Carlton’. I know why I’m in Melbourne, and unlike the good places, my why hides in plain sight.
There are hundreds of good places I could take myself, but what would I do when I got there? What does anyone do when they’ve found themselves somewhere that isn’t where they want to be—lonesome, and looking like a ladybug?
I love Melbourne so much—too much. You take on a new place with your two legs, and you come to really understand it. I take myself back to Fitzroy Library and think about everything I could possibly want to know. I finish the letter I started writing the day I got here. I tuck all six pages into my bag. It feels sacrilegious to take a letter on a plane, but I’ve forgotten God’s address. Probably a sign. Maybe even a punishment. At least God’s got a sense of humour.
I make my way towards Southern Cross Station and think about missing my flight again. I duck and weave through the sticky home-time thoroughfare, and between Spencer and Spring Street, I send secretive smiles to droopy, distorted faces. I play the lines of my letter over in my head... And for a moment I think… I am fucking Elizabeth Bennet.
I cross the road and cross back again (I do that at my leisure now). I call a friend on my way to the airport, and we take turns laughing and talking over one another. I’m distracting myself from my why. God had better things to do today than answer my prayers.
If there were ever a time to make a non-believer believe in the elusive forces of the universe, it would be right now. What I’ve learnt about God’s country is that there’s always enough doubt to make you put one foot in front of the other.
All faith really needs is just enough doubt to keep you coming back.
I take my seat in 19D. I draw a sleeve of green Mentos out of my pocket. I put two in my mouth—one for me and one for Melbourne—and I write:
“Today, I had blue cheese ice cream for breakfast and a terrible coffee. Dad was right. He’s always right. I’m not sure I did Melbourne right. But I know if I’d done it any other way, it would’ve been wrong.
I’m glad I visited Frankston. Frankston is beautiful and full of Hutchins blood. What I have learnt about our far-and-wide family is that love isn’t strengthened by the closeness of an address, but by the readiness of a laugh.
Before boarding my plane to Sydney, Mum called and asked if I wanted to come back home for a while. A Mum’s superpower is knowing when it’s time for her kids to come home. Going back home would be tragic. But surely no more tragic than spending five days in Melbourne hoping I might bump into someone heavenly and familiar, and ask them where the best cafes are to write in. At least I can laugh about it. And write about it. And because I can write about it, I am closer to myself than I was yesterday.
If love, in some magical way, always feels familiar, then to God, I must as be recognisable as the last living dinosaur.
I’m not religious, but—God—whatever that means, is everywhere.
God is in the beaming face of a young girl in Frankston, who, from the seat of her pram, stretches out her hand in hope that the rest of the world knows what happens when one palm meets another.
I feel silly in what I’m wearing. Even at 25, it seems I still can’t dress myself without the hope of affecting. Last night I took a walk through Chinatown. An old, drunk man, splayed out on the footpath said he liked my skirt. I was going to throw it out—but now I think I’ll keep it.
P.S. I did send the letter. Took a complete gamble on the address. I thought if it ended up in the wrong mailbox, someone would see the name and know exactly where to take it.
A letter in purgatory pleases me. Maybe it’s lost. Maybe it’s been read by the wrong person, or perhaps an even better person—a publisher. Hello! Selfishly, I think the letter was for my sake anyway—a way to say, I’ve touched the bottom and licked the floor, now the only way I can go is up.
Misguided as it was, I thought being brave was doing everything I could to prove that I was untethered and afraid of nothing. Writing terrifies me because I am tethered to my words. You send your red-raw heart out into the world, hoping it touches someone, accepting that it might not.
Writing is one big, brave maybe.
I can’t charm a spider out of a shoe, or bring God down from heaven; and I certainly can’t win a marathon without putting a few Band-Aids on my nipples. But what I can do is go back home for a while. Set the dining table each night for dinner. Think about love quietly. Stay away from sandwich shops. Walk across the road and say hi to Nan and Pop. Sit between my sisters on the drive to brunch. Paint my toes sparkly pink. Cut up big pieces of watermelon. And upon hearing “Goodnight girls, love you,” say in almost perfect unison, “Night, love you,” right back.
…
I still don’t know if the letter ever made its way there, but I like to think that if God did receive it, not sending me a sign was his final act of kindness.
