Not so much.

On the tram coming home tonight, things were relatively quiet. Students disembarked along Lygon St, little old men met their wives, office workers gossiped tipsily after staff drinks. People listened to their iPods or read books.

At the corner of Lygon and Blyth, a middle-aged man got on and sat in the aisle opposite me. Overweight with a beer belly, unkempt, and wearing a grubby maroon tracksuit, he'd spilled out of some pub or other, or killed his night sitting in the park. He stared at me vacantly, and I looked out the window, which bounced his reflection off the hard glass as he fidgeted with the folds in his tracksuit pants. For a few stops he continued, nudging at his inner thighs, adjusting fabric and jiggling his pockets. At Albion St he seemed to relax. Obviously realising that I wasn't game to confront him, and he fixed his eyes on the two girls sitting a little way back and just... went for it.

And... continued to go for it, until I reached my stop. Christ, what was I supposed to do? Gaze out the window and he was there, in wavering reflection, his glassy shadow stroking the thin and dirgey fleece of its pants. I obviously couldn't look at him. In the end I stared straight through the girls, willing them to turn around and pay attention, to realise the part they were playing in some lonely pervert's masturbatory fantasy. They didn't. I sat as still as I could, and rushed off the tram at my stop, turning on some stupid impulse to see if the girls were okay. He caught my eye, and the tram pulled out into the night, rumbling towards the depot.

Ugh. And - ugh. And the part about me being in love with this neighbourhood?

Yeah. Not so much.