unfamiliar

I was travelling around America, a passenger in a car, sitting on the left as we do in Australia, not to the right. We were also driving on the left-hand side of the road. I consulted a hand-drawn map which looked nothing like the real thing: the land mass was an entirely different shape and the states were divided and named quite oddly. South America was almost in the middle of the continent. The map was rendered in lead pencil, drawn on an old sheet of white paper. We turned left off the main highway and looped around a narrow street so that we were driving back in the direction we had come from. The street was narrow and wound around a steep cliff. Cars passed us at terrific speeds, overtaking our car and shooting off ahead. Eventually, we stopped and found ourselves in a neighbourhood street. I went into a room that was my bedroom, and changed my clothes. I looked in a full-length mirror, slightly concerned by my appearance: my black pants hung low on my hips exposing white underwear; my black top was too short and my white bra was extremely ill-fitting. I wondered why I was wearing white under black. I left the bedroom which opened directly onto the street, and pulled a curtain across—the only thing separating my space from public space. I thought that I would rather a secure room and worried about who might enter at will.