No Neat Endings

by Dominic Carew

  NO NEAT ENDINGS

  STORIES BY DOMINIC CAREW

  First published 2020 by MidnightSun Publishing Pty Ltd

  PO Box 3647, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, Australia.

  www.midnightsunpublishing.com

  Copyright © Dominic Carew 2020

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers (including, but not restricted to, Google and Amazon), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of MidnightSun Publishing.

  Cover design by Kim Lock

  Internal design by Zena Shapter

  Typeset in American Palatino and Garamond.

  Printed and bound in Australia by Ovato. The papers used by MidnightSun in the manufacture of this book are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  Contents

  Nineteen

  Epiphany

  Out to Lunch

  Defect

  Exit Ghost

  Interlude

  The Heights

  She Must Be Spanish

  Giant Shadows

  Cactus

  The New Guy

  The Episode

  Farewelling Time

  The Problem

  Resignation

  Literalists at Love

  Will You Please Not Be a Wanker, Please?

  Numbers Men

  I’m Funny Too, Okay?

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For our mother, Gail, who has loved us so much.

  Nineteen

  The key went: click.

  ‘That’s strange. It normally takes a bit of wrist work.’

  He nodded. Not at Wendy’s easy lock. Nor at the prospect of cupping her face in his hands and kissing it. He nodded because he couldn’t not nod. He nodded, not knowing it.

  ‘Glass of wine?’

  ‘Have you got any whisky?’

  They sat on a couch in her living room, a brown two-seater that smelled like her. They’d met in a club three hours ago. Sugary vodkas sucked at quickly. A dance floor stinking, strobe lights and thudding and every twenty seconds clear views of each other’s face. Wide-eyed. A little crazed. Now, in keeping with that theme, and because his skin itched with nerves, he considered asking if she’d mind turning the lights off. But then he thought, No, that wouldn’t be cool at all.

  ‘Is this whisky?’

  He focused on the things he liked about her. And the terrible taste of whisky, which he hated.

  ‘You have good eyes,’ he said. ‘Heaps big and that, eh.’

  He’d been told to breathe. He went to a doctor last week and the main thing, the doctor had said, was to breathe.

  ‘So… you’re a barman?’

  ‘Well, actually, a storeman.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Storing kegs beneath the Beach Road? It’s a tough job. Lotsa liftin’.’

  ‘You like that whisky, huh?’

  He wanted to tell her his secret. I’ve gone all weird ‘cos I don’t know what comes next. I’m not sure how to use my fingers. I have this thing between my legs and I can’t work out what angle I should be at for it to worry itself into you. But if he told her, she’d not have sex with him. And if she did, out of charity or a sickness of her own, it wouldn’t work because you can’t have sex under floodlights!

  ‘I don’t mind it,’ he said and she refilled his glass. It shook inside his hand.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  He was though. Sorry he was wasting her time. Sorry they’d sit in the living room and drink their nerves senseless until he found the courage to touch her. Sorry that when he did so, she’d feel ice inside his hand.

  ‘I think I should go.’

  ‘Only usin’ me for my whisky then?’ She grinned. She was so much more relaxed than he was and that just made his heart hammer more. He wished he could slow it down. With his thoughts or something. There was Xanax. There was Valium, but he’d already taken two Viagras in the toilets with a vodka at Gas Light and didn’t think another drug in the mix smart. Or safe!

  Besides, the doctor had told him not to worry too much, that lots of young blokes had the same issue, typically caused by a single event, often in childhood when, for example, someone dacked you in public. He’d frowned at this, and gone red. The doctor had made a note. Then smiled, told him again not to worry. Women could make jelly of all kinds of men. The thing was to forget the penis. They don’t even care about that. Focus on how you touch them, and what you say. In the meantime, if you must, take these. Use them wisely. You’ll be fine.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

  She took him by the hand like a mother with a boy and led him across the living room. He managed to get his fingers around the Glenfiddich. For an instant he saw himself there, arms outstretched between stranger and bottle, the liquid nearly spilling from the neck as he clasped it, alarmed.

  The stairs of her Surry Hills terrace creaked in their worn carpet. He felt the whole house shift beneath them in that sloping corridor of night time en route to surmount his gravest fear. He’d turned nineteen in April, two weeks ago, and was (as yet) unrooted. He’d had one almost-blow job, two floppy wristies and three failed attempts at sex, each more embarrassing, not to mention psychically damaging, than the last. Word had gotten around, he was sure. He’d walk into a mate’s of a Sunday arvo, five or six or a whole dozen blokes sitting around a footy game, with a sense they’d been talking about him. And when they started up on sex, their many separate conquests, positions, condom brands, he’d go white, then purple. Later, someone’d say ‘faggot’, in any number of contexts, and while they hadn’t named him he’d lie in bed at home that night and wonder: am I? He knew, in truth, he wasn’t. He liked girls. He didn’t know how to be intimate, hadn’t learnt the ropes of sex, but he suspected, very strongly in fact, that girls were the most important creatures on earth.

  ‘Come on,’ she said; they’d reached the top stair, ‘one more step.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Just be naughty as hell.’

  They kissed clumsily in the middle of what must have been her room. When he opened his eyes hers were open as well, staring at him without expression. The feeling of her tongue inside his mouth did nothing to arouse him, his nerves strangling the cock medicine, holding it down around his knees where it would never be of use. The doctor had said, in rare cases, this could happen. He shouldn’t worry if it did, he should try again some other time but whatever happened, he should not take more Viagra. He pulled away from her. Their lips made a sound like a suction cup releasing as they parted.

  She put her hands on his shoulders. She was his age, though her confidence gave her years. In that moment, he completely forgot her name.

  She said: ‘Wait here.’

  He waited alright. Waited for the snap of the bathroom door, then he reached into his pocket and produced another pill. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, a sky-blue diamond the size of an M&M which didn’t have a hope in hell of working. He was too far down the tunnels of anxiety, too firmly gripped by the choke-hold. But fuck! If he didn’t succeed tonight, when would he succeed? Would he live out his life a virgin, forever? The door was closing, he felt. He felt, all too aware of the risks of inaction.
<
br />   With a long, searing swig of scotch, he dumped number three.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, emerged from the en suite. ‘Was that a pinger?’

  ‘Um,’ he said.

  ‘Have you got any more?’ She was wearing only her underwear. Black and lacy and tight to her flesh.

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Come here,’ she said, gesturing with her finger. He loped towards her. They kissed again. He could smell her skin now that she was almost naked. There was peach in it. And honey. And something human too, like salt, like the sea, somehow, and he thought: I should be hard as a shower rod, but I’m not. She edged him over to the bed, kissing still. Breathing. She seemed to have figured that she’d have to steer them. The shame sent a shiver through his guts.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ she said.

  His teeth had started to chatter.

  ‘You’re hot in the face.’

  ‘Um…’

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken that pinger.’

  He waited for the sound of the bathroom tap – she’d gone to get him some water – but this time didn’t stay in her room. He legged it down the stairs and out the door. He ran along Crown Street, its cool night air, past the rows of terraces, their street-facing windows like mouths open, laughing. He could hear their mocking calls: he has to be gay. Look at the way he runs. Just like a guy who can’t get it up. A gay guy who’s flunked his fourth root!

  ‘Fuck,’ he said out loud. ‘Fuckin’ kook.’

  He bolted to Oxford Street, exploding with shame – another failure! – then stopped for a moment. Gay men strutted by, biceps bulging. They were happy, it seemed, and he hated them for it. He ran again, to William Street, his heart thrashing in its chains and the Coke sign, cruelly red and neon, lit up like something you could reach out and touch, but not. He slowed to a walk at Rushcutters, breathless and sweaty, then traipsed on, Bondi-bound.

  In a servo somewhere he bought a Mount Franklin. His face: burning hot. He stumbled back out through the sliding doors, guzzling the bottle like a teat. Beneath the fierce glare of the servo lights, a car waited for its fuel like a dog. Sad. Stray. He looked down, back up at the car, down again. His cock was finally hard. Perfect, he thought. A shower rod for New South Head Road. I’ll follow it home. It will lead me. He pointed it East-South-East and took pursuit.

  He walked the footpaths, hands in pockets, his cock a freakish molten mound burning in his pants. He didn’t know what to say to the myriad voices coiling through his mind like ropes, uncoiling. Then going taut. Here he was, in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, alone on a late-night footpath. At the doorway to his manhood, poised on the threshold of everything, and the knob kept slipping from his mitt. The germ kept worming through his mind, freezing his lust mid-sequence, strangling nascent mojo. He would get there.

  Or would he?

  An image came to mind of an old bloke he’d seen at Bondi RSL, always alone, pokies lighting up a hapless frown, smoke billowing about his head like his very soul had turned to gas, slowly disappearing. Who had he been? What shortcomings had he been unable to redress?

  ‘Fuck,’ he said again, though quieter now, graver.

  He saw himself getting strange. A young man become a wooden doll who stood about at parties in the corner, his limbs straight and rigid, his eyes on his feet. And girls? Those aliens he’d not yet figured out, even nearly? They howled with laughter.

  The night heard these plangent thoughts and shrugged him off. The Sydney city night, with its countless white streetlights, couldn’t give a shit.

  By the time he made it back to his room, a converted shed in his parents’ yard, full of surfboards and posters of surfing, his cock was vibrating like a tuning fork. He could hear it, he thought. A constant note. Should he call the doctor? It was Sunday morning. Triple zero? A nineteen-year-old man from Bondi overdosed last night, was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital, the newsreaders (all female) would say. Viagra was the drug. Can you believe that? While it saved his life, his treatment left his member distended, grotesque, unusable.

  Status quo.

  Unchanged.

  He decided the only route through was to wank it out, tire himself down, but found himself unarmed to manage even that. He put on a wetsuit, his dick flush against his lower abs, grabbed a board and headed to the beach. It wasn’t yet dawn, but you could hear the day coming. A faint grey finger of cloud absorbed distant light. Horizon. The edge of everything.

  He ducked the first wave and felt cool water fill the suit. Not much swell around; didn’t take long to make it through the breakers. The smell of salt, the sea, the taste of brine. His dick a hot metal shaft beneath him. He paddled way out past the bank, to the place where the shark nets swayed. And farther still, beyond the point, into the open sea, his arms no longer his arms, just sticks designed to move water. He didn’t look back at the land receding, at the beach become a thin moustache, fading. He paddled. The gulls circled, fell, reared up again. He paddled into the ocean. And he thought: she’d had lovely hands. Yeah. Small, gentle hands she’d used to cover her mouth when she laughed, embarrassed, maybe, by her crooked teeth. But they’d been lovely too! She’d kissed him like she’d really wanted to kiss him. He thought about the way she’d felt against him. It was almost as if she’d loved him. But that...

  But that just couldn’t be.

  The dawn had smashed open. Its light like brass on the green water, glinting and shifting in the air. He’d drifted around to MacKenzie’s Bay, half-asleep on his board, when the life savers spotted him. He waited for them, in their red rubber ducky, too tired to move, while in his head a vision squirmed. Of him trapped on a mattress somewhere, in a bedroom he didn’t know, and above him, near the ceiling: gold-winged angels giggling. He was about to tip himself into the water when he felt it, a lifeguard’s hand clasped around his ankle. They hauled him in, board and all. Thank you, he should’ve said, but instead he recalled the doctor’s words the week before. About nudity. In public. And was taken across the morning waves to a time when he was eight, Year Three, Miss Kelly’s class. That pretty girl named Annabel. She had that dorky smile. She wore those crinkled plaits. The boys teased her and they teased her. Called her Rumpelstiltskin, made him join in, and he did, with their venom, their pent-up force, while in his chest he boomed for her. But the boys kept telling him he had to. Rumple Gumple! Pull her plaits at recess in the hallway by the bubbler in the spring, or don’t play cricket again, and don’t get slapped on the back. Sit alone like Phillip Porter or Daniel Flynn, those losers with their glasses. He thought about all this, and how much he wished he hadn’t followed blindly, and how he’d liked her so, that smile she wore, even amidst the teasing, and how, three weeks later, she pulled his pants down at assembly, in front of every breathing soul in school.

  Snap.

  The engine sputtered. A lifeguard coughed. And now? More shame.

  Three men in yellow long sleeves and dickies nursed him as they chopped through surf to the beach. No one said a word. Each man did his best not to look for too long before averting his eyes. As soon as one turned away, though, the next would stare. It was as if they were keeping watch. As though at any moment it might take wing. Soar up through the atmosphere and into space where, surely, it belonged. Annabel. Wendy. The mishaps in between.

  His head pounded at the thought of them – oh heart, oh unstill mind! – and blood gushed. Eventually, it would ebb. And then (he knew he had no choice in this) he’d have to try all over again.

  Epiphany

  The venture capitalist lay on a lilo in his brand new pool overlooking the harbour where his yacht was moored, and his speedboat too, and where the sun danced on the crests of the emerald water and thought: what do I have?

  He had four houses. Three apartments. Shares in banks and start-ups, a soft-top Porsche, motorbikes he never rode. He had guitars smashed by rock stars in glass cases on his wall, a wine cellar, antique rugs, lots of French champagne. But really. He’d spent twenty years ven
turing, capitalising, creating money from good ideas. He hadn’t married. The work had nearly killed him. The hours had been long and hard and demanding. And what did he have to show for it?

  Oh sure, he had art by dead painters, ten million frequent flyer points, a black Amex, fifty suits and, well okay, he had a sauna and jacuzzi and a secret stash of cash in a vault in Zurich. And yet, he kept on thinking, what do I have?

  He had things. At the end of the day, that was what he had. Stuff. And what was stuff? Not much when you broke it down. Plastic and metal and fabric constructed in ways that pleased the eye, the touch, the ear, and that would, one way or another, fall apart. You could not escape it. Sun. Water. Wind. You could not escape the forces of the world. Erosion was a force. Oxidation. But thought was a force also. The lights going on inside your mind. And your spirit, if you had one.

  He emerged from the pool that day, frowning. The wind blew sweet and warm across the water. He felt, he didn’t know what he felt, but he seemed on the verge of a vast knowledge. There was more to life than this. Important matters awaited his attention. Birds speared down from the sky, as if responding to his enquiries; graceful and swift, they glided out of view. The air beneath them was silken with their passing and he felt at once exhilarated by his life, the world, the gift of breath. He knew what he had to do.

  He turned on his heels.

  And walked through his sparkling house to his garage. He drove to the Lamborghini dealer on William Street and bought a Veneno Roadster, the most expensive Lamborghini ever made. It was white with tan leather seats and black trim and big black wheels that did something to the light when they were spinning. Curved the light, or something. The way they looked when the car moved made his chest ache. He didn’t recognise the feeling, but he liked it very much, as he did the sound of the car in third gear, the way it felt pulling out of a corner, the power with which it forced him into the seat. He liked it all very much, greatly. He was so happy, and the happiness kept on building, giving purpose to his life.