by John Dale
“Have you seen him again?”
“No, but I’ve been checking him out on the Internet. His full name is Joshua Atherton, born October 13, 1979. He’s a part-time lecturer at the University of Western Sydney teaching literature and philosophy—“The Ethical Life” and “Philosophies of Love and Death.” Lives in a flat in Ashfield he’s bought with his fiancée, Kelly Marshall, an academic at Sydney Uni.” I turned my phone to show her the picture of Josh and Kelly posted on Facebook a few months earlier, where she was holding out her ring finger to display a vintage rose-gold engagement ring inlaid with, to my mind, a pathetically small diamond. Comments underneath included: About time, guys! and, Nice work Kel—you finally made an honest man out of him!
“Oh, hon,” Kailee said, her mouth turning down and eyes drooping like a sad cow.
“What?”
“I’ve known you for three years and I’ve never seen you go nuts about any guy, even Matt. You’re usually so practical. Probably because you’re a Capricorn. You know what you want, go and get it, and don’t let silly emotions stand in your way. Not like the rest of the girls, always in love, breaking up, getting obsessed, being betrayed. But now you are and it’s sweet to see. You’re just like the rest of us!”
I doubted that. I was nothing like Kailee with her Tree of Life cushion covers, married boyfriends, and Deepak Chopra books.
“But I’m worried,” she continued. “If it doesn’t work out,” she pointed at my phone, “I’m afraid you’re going to take it hard.”
I wasn’t concerned about the fiancée. I knew from her Facebook status that she was about to fly to New Zealand for a Cultural Studies conference. She’d be gone a week.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Kailee said, giving me this pouty I-feel-so-sorry-for-you look that made me want to slap her. Instead, I took a deep breath and quoted some Napoleon Hill.
“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.”
As soon as I said the words it became obvious what I had to do: go back to the book and apply the thirteen principles. I had desire, faith, persistence, and knew how to plan. Specialized knowledge? By the bucketload.
“I’ll be okay,” I told her.
* * *
Four days later I was at WSU’s Parramatta campus—a flat, spread-out place with lots of green fields and jacaranda trees blooming pale purple. Back in the olden days the whole of Parramatta was a gigantic farm which provided food for the penal colony of Sydney, and the university site used to house schools for orphans, a female insane asylum, and a boiler house where the urchins and psychos did laundry, presumably. I knew all this from reading the heritage pamphlet while sitting on a bench outside building EQ, an old-fashioned, two-story job with wraparound verandas where Josh and a couple of other philosophy lecturers had their offices. He hadn’t been hard to find. His room and phone number were listed on the university website and it was only a matter of time before he emerged. At exactly 4:36, he left the building in the company of a tweedy-looking older man and I followed them onto a shuttle bus at the entrance to the university. I was incognito, dressed as a student in a denim mini, a striped, off-the-shoulder T, oversized Gucci sunnies, and ballet flats. I carried a bag from the Co-op bookstore. They alighted the bus at the Parramatta City stop and walked toward the railway station, past old sandstone buildings and new office blocks with windows like mirrored sunglasses. I was worried they were going to catch a train together, until they crossed to the Commercial Hotel.
The pub’s original colonial façade faced the street, but the inside had been scooped out and expanded to accommodate a bunch of different bars. I tailed them to the beer garden, which wasn’t so much a garden as a cavernous two-story atrium with a massive TV screen suspended from one of the glass walls. They bought beers and sat at a wooden table and I nicked into the ladies’ for a couple of lines of coke, before buying a Wild Raspberry Vodka Cruiser and parking myself at the next bench, hidden behind a fake hedge. They sunk a couple of beers and then the older guy said he had to run for his train and dashed off.
I approached Josh, who looked up as he drained the last of his schooner.
“Oh my god, it’s . . . Josh, isn’t it?”
He seemed confused so I leaned forward and whispered, “We met at your cousin’s party.”
Now he recognized me.
“I’m Lila,” I said. It’s actually short for Delilah, which is spelled Darlyla on my birth certificate because my mum thought it was more “unique.” I’d stopped telling people my full name because as well as making me seem like the world’s biggest bogan, there was not a man alive who could resist singing the Tom Jones song as soon as they heard it.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Picking up textbooks!” I brandished the bookshop bag. “Hey—do you mind if I have a drink with you? I was sitting at the bar, but a couple of engineering students started getting sleazy.”
“I was about to leave.” He glanced at his watch.
“Just one? I wanted to pick your brain about philosophy. I’m thinking of doing a double degree.”
Josh had another beer and I drank a pinot grigio (to look sophisticated) while I asked him questions about the course and philosophy in general. I’d spent the past week researching on Wikipedia, and was familiar with the big enchiladas and main theories of the subject. People think I’m a dumb bitch because I work as a stripper and left school early, but I got a great mark in my Tertiary Preparation Certificate at TAFE, and I’m heaps good at retaining information when I put my mind to it.
Josh had a lot to say on the topic, and as I watched his mouth move and his hands wave around, my pussy literally started throbbing and I had to squeeze my thighs together, tight. I hadn’t been mistaken, some irresistible force was attracting me to him, though I never figured out exactly what it was. Kailee, bloody hippie, reckoned we must have met in a past life, but I leaned more toward fate and pheromones. Either way, it was just like the Nick Cave song. He was the one who I’d been waiting for. Everything else fell away—Matt, Josh’s girlfriend, the chattering pub patrons, and the State of Origin replay on the giant TV. I’m in love with you, I thought, and hoped I hadn’t said it out loud.
I touched his leg under the table.
He pulled away like he’d been burned. “You’d better not do that.”
“Why?”
“I’m engaged.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know.”
His face had a sort of scrunched-up, apologetic expression. “Nothing against you. You’re very attractive.”
Trust me to fall for the one man in the Sydney metropolitan area who wouldn’t cheat on his partner. Still, I wasn’t discouraged because I knew he liked me, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. I also had the words of the good book to back me up. Napoleon Hill says that most people are unsuccessful because they can’t come up with a new plan when their original one fails.
I came up with a new plan.
“Oh my god,” I widened my eyes, “I completely misread the situation. This is mortifying. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. The touch of his palm through my T-shirt was so intense I nearly came. I just wanted to push the empty glasses off the table, crawl across, straddle him, and lick his face.
“I am such an idiot.” I buried my face in my hands, then peeked out at him, cringing adorably.
“No you’re not,” he said.
“Yes I am. And the only thing that’s going to make a dent in this embarrassment is a stiff drink. You like Glenfiddich?”
I knew he did, because I’d seen a picture on Instagram of him and his fiancée at the distillery on a trip to Scotland two years earlier. I hated the shit, but jumped up and bought two doubles. The bartender didn’t see me take out the tiny fish-shaped soy sauce container and drip clear liquid into Josh’s drink.
* * *
By the time the whiskey was finished Josh had started to feel woozy. I suggested that maybe one of the engineering students had tried to spike my drink, and offered to help him home. He refused, but I insisted, and held onto his arm as we lurched out of the pub and into a taxi.
It took about half an hour to get to Ashfield, driving down the M4, then Parramatta Road, with the sun setting behind. Before I moved to Sydney I thought the whole city would be glamorous, like the parts you saw on postcards: sparkling-blue harbor, pearly Opera House, the majestic Harbour Bridge, but most of it was dog ugly. Parramatta Road was an endless gray ribbon of used-car yards and service stations punctuated by the occasional McDonald’s. Wasn’t much different from my hometown, just bigger, with less aboriginals and more Indians and Asians.
Josh’s ground-floor flat was in a whitewashed deco building with a cute little burgundy awning out the front. He let himself in, flung his brown leather messenger bag onto the polished wooden floor, and lay down on an Oriental rug. The whole living room was lined with bookcases, all filled with actual books instead of Xbox games and DVDs.
He blinked and half sat up, weight resting on one elbow. “Thanks for getting me home, but you can go now. I think I’m starting to straighten up.”
“Want me to call someone? Your fiancée?”
“No! No. I’ll be okay.”
I looked at him like I wasn’t too sure. “You thirsty?”
“Parched.”
“I’ll get you a drink.”
The kitchen was small, but immaculately renovated: stainless-steel appliances, subtle downlighting, and a splashback of tiny blue-and-white tiles. Clean glasses gleamed on the draining board, and a small courtyard with a Weber barbecue and an outdoor setting was visible between the slats of the wooden venetians. I found fresh-squeezed, pulp-free orange juice in the fridge and a frosted bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer and mixed two strong drinks before digging one long acrylic fingernail into my coke baggie and snorting a hefty bump. Taking the soy sauce container out of my skirt pocket, I sized it up under the light. Half full. The initial dose had probably been a little low, so I emptied the remains into Josh’s drink, took a second little fish from my pocket, and added half of that. He just needed to relax a bit, let go of his inhibitions, and the G would help. I tried it out myself a few days earlier, and it had worked so well I’d ended up in a fairly revolting three-way with Matt and Dave.
He sipped the drink and made a face. “Does this have vodka in it?”
“No way! Booze increases the effects of sedatives, but the acid in the OJ should neutralize whatever those guys slipped in your whiskey.” A druggie wives’ tale with zero scientific basis, but Josh believed it and gulped the whole lot in one.
I told him I’d leave just as soon as I’d used the loo, but took my sweet time to give the G a chance to kick in. I peed, did a couple more lines in their modern, white-tiled bathroom, fixed my makeup in the mirror, spritzed a little of Josh’s L’eau d’Issey Pour Homme on my wrist, then slipped off my pink-lace knickers and shoved them in my handbag. I wanted everything to be smooth and cinematic. We deserved it.
Back in the lounge room Josh was flat on his back on the rug, seemingly fascinated by his hand, which he waved around in the air, like a kid sticking his arm in the slipstream out the car window. I stalked the bookcases and found a Bose stereo system and shelf of alphabetized CDs, put on Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call.
“I love this,” said Josh.
“Me too,” I lied. Sure, I liked our song, but most of Cave’s tunes were too whiny or religious for my taste.
A framed photograph on the mantelpiece pictured Josh receiving his doctorate, wearing a robe and clownish hat. He was flanked by his parents and fiancée, an earnest-looking brunette who could have been quite attractive if she’d gotten a few hair extensions and a decent eyebrow wax. The parents looked fit, self-satisfied, and expensively dressed, and it suddenly dawned on me how Josh and his fiancée had been able to buy this place. Ashfield was close to the city, rapidly becoming gentrified, and the flat wouldn’t have left much change from eight hundred grand. You couldn’t save that sort of deposit as a sessional academic.
Nick Cave was singing some boring churchy dirge so I fast-forwarded to “Are You the One I’ve Been Waiting For?” stuck it on repeat, and sat down next to Josh.
“You seem okay now,” I said, although his pupils had dilated and his forehead was beaded with sweat.
“I feel reeeeaaaally good,” he said.
Bingo, baby. I leaned over and kissed him and, when he didn’t resist, I shifted sideways and laid on top, felt him hard beneath his beige chinos, and squirmed around to make him harder. Trouble with G was it could be difficult to come, and I wanted our first time to be perfect, so I reluctantly unlocked lips and slid down his body, unbuckling his belt and opening his fly. His cock sprung free and I opened my mouth and put my “specialized knowledge” to work. You should have seen him, bucking, moaning, fingers all twined up in my hair. When he got close I disengaged, sat up, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and took off my top so he could cop a look at my magnificent tits, then I slid down on his cock and OMG. It was nearly too much for me. I’m not talking size-wise, because, to be perfectly honest, it could have been a tad bigger, but the feeling inside my pussy was almost too intense to bear. I know this sounds like something Kailee would say, but it was as though his cock was talking to me, communicating with my vagina in some bizarre, otherworldly way. Normally at this point in proceedings I’d be putting on a pretty good show, gasping and thrashing my hair around and massaging my boobs all porno style, but all I could do was sit there, sort of stunned, feeling like I was dissolving into him, surrounded by a halo of golden light. (“Tantra,” Kailee told me later. “You were totally having tantric sex.”) When I stopped sliding up and down on his dick Josh groaned in frustration, flipped me over onto my back, and climbed on top. I hooked my ankles over his shoulders and as he drove into me, belt buckle bouncing off the back of my thigh, I felt like I was having a kind of continuous orgasm, with no beginning and no end, and the feeling was so overwhelming that it was almost a relief when he made one last deep thrust, emitted a guttural cry, and collapsed on top of me, his chambray shirt soaked through with perspiration. When he rolled off, I realized my cheeks were wet and I thought he’d sweated on me, but no—I’d been crying.
I never cry.
When Josh finally got his breath back, he opened his mouth to speak and I turned to him, eager to hear his first words.
“I feel terrible,” he said. “What am I going to tell Kelly?”
This was not what I’d been hoping for.
“Don’t tell her anything.”
“Lies are the greatest murder,” he muttered, staring up at the fringed lampshade. “They kill the truth.”
“Say what?”
“Socrates.”
“But didn’t Camus,” I pronounced the name correctly, “write that a lie was a beautiful twilight that enhances every object?”
“Shit.” He looked stunned that I knew the line. “He did.”
“So stop trying to be the good guy. It’s useless. You know and I know this thing is bigger than both of us.”
He gazed into my eyes, then completely cracked up laughing. I knew he was high, but for fuck’s sake.
“What’s so funny?”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” he said, wheezing like a hyena.
I sat up and crossed my arms. “What about the lap dance? Remember when I asked, Do you feel that? You said yes.”
“I thought you were talking about my erection!” He broke up all over again.
I stood and walked back into the kitchen, naked but for my denim skirt, semen dripping down my leg. I absentmindedly wiped it with my hand, then licked my fingers. It tasted like warm apple pie, unlike Matt’s jizz, which was all asparagus and aluminum. See? Yet another reason Josh and I were meant to be together. If he could just get over a
ll this moral and ethical bullshit. I mixed another screwdriver and my hand was shaking so much the OJ overflowed the glass. Fuck it. I sipped the excess then took the third little fish container from my skirt pocket and emptied the whole thing in. The second was still half full so I added that as well.
He was thirsty after all the exertion, and drank it down quick.
“Are you sure that didn’t have any vod—”
“Sssshhh,” I said. “Relax.”
Our song was still playing on repeat, and Josh closed his eyes and started breathing slow and deep. I laid my head on his chest, slid my phone from my bag, and took a cute selfie of the two of us. Josh fell asleep, but that was okay. I was happy just to lie next to him, pressing my body into that warm skin and inhaling his scent of sweat, washing powder, and Issey Miyake. His breath became shallower, and then it slowed some more. Eventually I crashed out too, and when I woke at two a.m. he was very still, and not so warm anymore. I got dressed, washed the glasses, and wiped down all the surfaces I had touched: the stainless-steel fridge, shaving mirror, and stereo system. Then I let myself out, hailed a cab on Frederick Street, and went home to Lidcombe.
* * *
Needless to say, that was the end of Josh, and you’d think I’d be devastated, but I’m not, because I finally understood the tenth principle, sex transmutation. Napoleon Hill reckons that sex drive is one of our most powerful desires and if you can somehow channel this incredible force away from base physical expression into something higher, you can totally achieve anything you want. Famous artists, politicians, and entrepreneurs have used this very principle to create masterpieces, change the course of history, and—my personal favorite—make a shitload of money.
So how have I used it? Well, I took all that powerful sex energy I couldn’t use and channeled it into my studies. As a result, I fucking blitzed my Bachelor of Business—first class honors—and now I’ve got a graduate position in asset management at Macquarie Bank. Napoleon Hill was right, but when I try to explain the principles to hipsters at parties (I had to move to the inner east because it was easier to get to the head office in Martin Place), they sneer and accuse me of being a “bread head.” I come back by asking if they like Nick Cave (they never say no) and tell them not to put shit on Napoleon because Nick says exactly the same thing in “Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For?” Verse three is about channeling your longing into creating amazing things, and verse four is about identifying what you want and using positive affirmations to go out and get it. He who seeks finds / he who knocks will be let in. I didn’t understand that at first—I didn’t understand a lot of things, until I met Josh.