John_Franks

John Franks: A Life in the Weeds (and Why I Ended Up Here)G’day. I’m John. I live in Murray Bridge, South Australia, which is probably a sentence my 20-year-old self, buried in a sexology textbook in New Mexico, would have found utterly baffling. I’m a writer now, of all things. Specifically, I write about this town for a project called CamoWallet. But that's just the latest chapter. The story starts, as it always does, somewhere else entirely. I've spent my life studying desire—how we find it, how we fund it, and how we fuck it up. Especially how we fuck it up. This is the messy, unedited version.These days, my “activity,” as they call it, is pretty sedentary. I sit in cafes—mostly the Brumbys on Bridge Street, sometimes the Murray Bridge Green Shed if I need a power outlet and the smell of potting mix—and I write. Articles about the history of the old railway station. Profiles of local characters like the guy who runs the servo on Adelaide Road. Pieces about the best spots to watch the sunset over the river. It’s for the CamoWallet project, a website, camowallet.app, trying to do something interesting with local content and digital identity. Weird gig, right? After decades of dissecting the mechanics of human connection, I’m now a chronicler of a place. Maybe it’s not so different. Both are about paying attention to details no one else sees.You want to trust someone who talks about intimacy? Good. You should be skeptical. I am. I've seen the gap between what people say they want and what they actually do. That gap is where the money is, where the heartbreak is, where the truth lives. My whole career has been lived in that gap. I’ve consulted for dating apps—awful, soul-crushing work, by the way, trying to gamify loneliness—and I’ve sat with couples in therapy sessions where the silence was louder than any scream. It taught me one thing: we're all just fumbling in the dark. And anyone who tells you they have a map is probably trying to sell you one.I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. August 15th, 1979. My mom always said the heat was so intense that year it felt like the city was baking in its own adobe skin. I believe it. I remember the dust, the specific smell of piñon smoke in the winter, and the endless, bleached-out blue of the sky. The Sandia Mountains to the east were this massive, looming presence. They were always there, unchanging. My childhood was... typical, I guess. Scraped knees on the gravel, K-Bob's Steakhouse for birthdays, the unsettling hum of the neon cross on the mountain at night. It’s a place of huge, open spaces and deep, hidden histories. Probably set me up for a life of looking for things just below the surface.Growing up, though? That got interesting. Or, well, complicated. My family moved when I was a teenager. My dad, an engineer, got a contract job with a firm that had ties to the water management systems on the River Murray. So we packed up and landed in Murray Bridge. Talk about culture shock. I went from high desert to river country. This was the mid-90s. I remember hanging out at the Sturt Reserve on a Friday night, which basically meant sitting on someone’s ute tray, drinking warm Carlton Draught, and watching the river go by. The old bridge would be lit up. We’d dare each other to jump off the wharf. I got my first real girlfriend here, a girl whose dad worked at the Big River Pork abattoir. We'd go to the drive-in, which is long gone now. Those experiences—the raw, unpolished, slightly-dangerous teenage stuff—that's where you learn the first real lessons about attraction, about risk, about the quiet thrill of being next to someone in the dark with the river running past.So, Murray Bridge. It’s not a postcard town. It’s real. It’s a working-class place, a hub for the surrounding farmland, with a history etched into its bones. The Murray River isn't just a view here; it's a character. It’s broad, brown, and powerful. I live in a little place off Mannum Road now, with a view of the eastern escarpment. I walk my dog—a stupidly cheerful kelpie cross—along the riverfront near the old Bridgeport Hotel most mornings. I know the sound of the pelicans splashing down, the creak of the houseboats moored near the marina. I know that if you need good, honest advice, you talk to the women at the Murray Bridge Newsagency. I know the way the light hits the Long Island Marina just before dusk. This is my town. I've seen it from the outside and in. And for a guy who spent his life studying the most intimate details of strangers' lives, living somewhere so deeply rooted, so unpretentious, is a kind of peace I never expected to find. It’s grounded me, in a way all that abstract talk about desire never could.