Where Hawka is concerned, I feel I know the inner man. I've known him, in fact, since he was a laughing youth, since before he travelled the world and returned with the sort of stories that gather like fluff around someone with a sense of fun whose view of the world has been honed by working as a barman in London pubs and getting a job as an extra in a film.
A couple of times over the years, we've had top afternoons together. Once, sitting by the scarred tree at the MCG, he showed me the best mark he ever took. He played footy for the local club. I don't know how talented he was but I'm sure he was eager. He also got dropped for the grand final. Took it with a grin. That's the sort of clubman he is. He comes from a family of Hawks from Berwick.
The best mark he ever took happened when a ball bounced off his chest when he was on the lead. The ball ballooned up into the air. He had to run several steps and dive but he caught it before it landed. He re-enacted the whole sequence for me as avidly as the original.
He had an old red car that seemed held together by bits of wire and plastic tape. It always had music. He had an ear for the latest. You could see the music moving through him as he flicked from track to track.
One day he rang me and asked me for clothes to wear to the races. I lent him a coat bought by my wife not long before. I am still explaining its absence.
Once, when he was dropping me off, he said, "Do you want to see my Michael Johnson impersonation?" By Michael Johnson, he meant the black American Olympic champion and world record-holder for the 400 metres. Of course, I said yes. It was a street-stopper.
Leaning back until he was almost horizontal, he produced a high-kicking step that would have done a Russian dancer proud and proceeded at good pace down the street with a look in his face that said a world record was what he wanted and any other result would register as failure. I watched and thought, "He's a clown."
It was after he got back to Australia after a couple of years overseas that he started to get work writing about popular music. Earlier this year, he also somehow got the job as Hawka, the Hawthorn mascot. Then, last Saturday morning, I got a text from him suggesting we meet before the grannie (as he calls it). I declined.
I have certain rituals on grand final day that are not to be lightly broken. It is, after all, the one day of the year if you follow the season as a giant story with a dozen or more sub-plots that reaches its climax in this last game.
A grand final is the ultimate test. Some will pass, some will fail. Some will pass with honours but no one can say for sure before the event how it will play out. That's where the element of fate comes in. You go to a grand final with so many possibilities playing around in your head. There is anticipation, there is dread. A lot of dreams go up in smoke on grand final day.
So I listened with particular interest to the conversations on the train, got out at Richmond station, made my way slowly to the ground, visiting the scarred tree, walking slowly round the stadium, checking the statues of those who have formerly won glory on the day.
The people you run into on the way to a particular grand final is always of interest. I ran into a bloke I'd never met before who seemed to understand my way of thinking. "It's like Christmas," he said. Yes, something like that if you accept that Christmas is a celebration with healthy pagan roots.
Inside the stadium, I met two blokes from work, had a beer, swapped prognostications. Then I found I had a seat on the fence. Couldn't believe my good fortune. Having found my seat, I discovered I had one friendly neighbour and one who was unfriendly.
I was pondering this dark cloud on an otherwise sunny day when, out of nowhere, Hawka appeared, big yellow head, enormous orange beak, Hawthorn guernsey, yellow legs.
There he was, bouncing and bobbing in front of me. I yelled his name. He couldn't hear me. Everyone was yelling. He couldn't see me either. Being inside one of those mascot suits is like trying to drive a tank — you have a bit of vision to your left, a bit to your right, blindness up ahead.
So we did meet on grand final day; there was just no normal intercourse between us. Instead I watched him do his thing — engaging people, exciting a certain sort of animation.
He pranced, he danced, he strutted. He jumped up and, having parked himself on the fence, fell backwards into the crowd like a rock star into a mosh pit. Then, leaning back, Hawka did his Michael Johnson impersonation, burning up the track, 100,000 people in attendance for the performance, and I thought what an amazing day is this. In real life, if that can be said to exist at such times, Hawka's name is Mikey Cahill.
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