Kindred

by Michael Earp

  “New tweet from the front of the line,” Luna says as they push their glasses further up their nose. “They’re starting to let people in to get badges!”

  A wave of cheers and excited squeals rolls over the line. Josie and I jump up and down at the same time, then laugh.

  “It’s happening,” she says, grinning at me.

  “I’m shaking already,” I say.

  “Same.”

  Heavy footsteps rush towards us, and I turn in time to see Sully thundering straight for Vanessa. He wraps his huge arms around her from behind, lifting her up. She looks scared at first, then she must realise it’s him because she lets out a giggle.

  It’s obvious from the widened eyes of the people behind us in line that he startled them. I’d be scared too if I saw a towering, broad-shouldered white guy ambush a girl like that.

  “Babe!” Vanessa says as he puts her down. “I just texted you! I thought you were on the train?”

  He smirks. “I was already coming across the bridge. Gotcha!” He smooths out his striped football jersey and she gives him a playful slap on the chest. I feel myself sinking into my shell, like I always do around him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not evil or anything. But he’s rude and flirty and likes to dance along the line of appropriate conduct, especially when it comes to my sexuality.

  “Hey Audrey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I say, avoiding eye contact. Sweat starts to roll down my back. I really want to take this damn jumper off.

  He moves in-between me and Vanessa, putting his arms around us both.

  “So,” he says. “My two girls are at a nerd convention, huh?”

  I cringe. I’m not his girl. And the way he and Vanessa say “nerd”, it’s not like how Josie said it earlier. She said it with love; they both said it with condescension. Josie and her friends exchange worried glances. I feel my face turning red from embarrassment.

  The line starts moving, and I step out from under Sully’s sweaty armpit. Excitement rushes through the crowd as we start taking steps forwards, but I’ve reined in my joy, worried it will make me the target of Sully and Vanessa’s judgement. It occurs to me, as I shuffle along with the line, that I rein in my joy around them a lot. It’s exhausting.

  “Wow,” Sully says. “Look at all these people wearing costumes. That’s a bit much.” He chuckles, then nudges me with his elbow when I don’t laugh. “I’m surprised you’re not dressed as that chick from that cop show you’re obsessed with.”

  For the first time today, I’m grateful Vanessa made me wear her jumper. I’d hate to hear what he’d have to say about that.

  Vanessa looks at me and laughs. “Show him your shirt.”

  Shit. Why did she say that? I shake my head.

  “Come on,” she says, grinning. “Show him!”

  “Yeah,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “Show me.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say. More sweat rolls down my back.

  The line stops moving, and people behind us groan. Josie lowers her backpack to the ground and pulls out a packet of lollies.

  “I’m hungry,” she says as she tears it open and starts handing them out to her friends. Then she holds the packet out to me. “Want a snake?”

  “Thanks,” I say as I take a red one. I use her invitation as an excuse to step closer to her and put some distance between me and Sully. Josie gives me a look, and I swear she’s trying to help me get away from him, too.

  “The red ones are always the best,” she says as she pulls one out of the bag.

  Sully and Vanessa talk among themselves in hushed tones, and I take the opportunity to chat with Josie more.

  “You should stick with us today,” she says. “We’ve been coming to this con for a few years now. You’ll be safe with us.”

  My heart fills with emotion. “Thank you.” I’m taken aback by how much of a connection I’ve made with Josie, Kirstie, Luna and Kathy already. I hardly know them, but we have so much in common.

  “No worries,” she says as she holds the packet out to Kirstie again. “We’re going out for dinner after too, if you want to come?”

  I swallow the last bite of my snake. “Sure.” I try to sound casual even though my whole body is trembling with happiness.

  After another forty minutes, the line starts moving again, and this time we get close enough to see the entrance before we stop. The air is filled with anticipation.

  “Jeez,” Sully says. “This is boring.”

  “I know, right?” Vanessa says.

  I pretend not to hear them, but then Vanessa taps on my shoulder. “How much longer until we get inside? It’s too hot out here.”

  I shrug. “I dunno. We’re getting close.”

  Vanessa glances at Sully, who rolls his eyes.

  I don’t know if it’s the heat making me impatient with them, or if I’m annoyed, but I decide to say something.

  “You guys don’t have to stay, you know?”

  Vanessa furrows her brow. “What?”

  “I mean,” I say, losing my confidence a little, “you can go if you want. You obviously don’t want to be here.”

  Her jaw drops. “Excuse me? I came here for you. You begged me, remember?” To my horror, she starts mimicking me in a whiny voice. “Oh, please, Vanessa! I don’t have anyone to go with! I’ll owe you forever if you come with me!”

  That makes me even madder. “Yeah, well, I’m fine now. I’m grateful that you came with me, but if you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Vanessa crosses her arms over her chest, glaring at me.

  “It’s all good, babe,” Sully says to her. “It’s not like you wanted to come anyway. And now you can come to the footy with me instead of hanging out with these losers.”

  My shoulders tense. “Can you not call us losers, please?”

  His eyebrows shoot up. I’ve never stood up to him before.

  “Sorry,” he says, sarcasm in his voice. “Is that not PC? I meant to say ‘socially challenged’.”

  That stings more than being called a loser. “That’s not cool either.”

  He scoffs, then looks down at Vanessa. “Like she knows what ‘cool’ is. Look at her.”

  Then, Vanessa – who’s supposed to be my best friend – laughs at me. And that’s the last straw. In that moment, I finally accept something I think I’ve known deep down for a long time: she’s not my friend. She only wants me when she can use me. And I deserve better than that.

  “Can I ask you something?” Josie interrupts, looking up at Sully.

  He shrugs. “I dunno, can you?”

  “What’s the difference between us being in cosplay, and you going to the footy in your team’s jersey?” she asks.

  He scowls at her. “What?”

  “I’m genuinely curious about this,” she continues. “We’re here, as fans; some of us cosplay. And you’re going to the football as a fan, in your own kind of cosplay.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why?” she asks. “Because most of the people here are teenage girls?”

  “Don’t make this a gender thing,” he says dismissively. “Football is different than a TV show.”

  “You watch it on TV though, right?” she says.

  He looks away, like he’s getting flustered and searching for a reason to leave.

  “You can’t deny there are similarities,” Josie says, not backing down. “Football fans go to the game and cheer and scream and support their heroes. Some even paint their faces and pay tons of money for the best tickets and merch. All of us here do the same thing, but for TV shows and movies and books instead. We’re really not that different.”

  Vanessa stares up at Sully expectantly, like she’s waiting for him to return fire. Instead, he mutters something about having better things to do and walks away. Vanessa is about to go after him, then turns to me.

  “Can I talk to you for a sec, please?” she demands, then pulls me out of th
e line.

  “Josie made some good points,” I say. “Don’t you think?”

  “How could you let her talk to Sully like that?” she asks. “She humiliated him in front of everyone!”

  My jaw drops. “How is this my fault? He said some pretty rude things about us first.”

  She rolls her eyes. “He was joking. She obviously wasn’t.”

  “No one laughed at his jokes,” I say. “Except for you.”

  She stares at me for a second, then sighs. “Oh, I see what this is. You’ve got a thing for that Josie girl, don’t you? So, you’re gonna take her side?”

  I drag my hands down my face. “Why does there have to be sides? Can’t we all just be friends?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be friends with weirdos like them. And if you do, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends either.”

  My arms fall by my sides. My fingers shake. I look over my shoulder at Josie. She sticks her tongue out as Kirstie stretches to take a selfie of all of them. Luna and Kathy smile as they all squish together to be in the picture. I want more than anything to be in there with them. But is it smart to choose people I just met over someone I’ve been friends with for over a year?

  “I can’t believe you even need to think about this,” Vanessa snaps. “After everything I’ve done for you. I’m a real friend. Your only friend.”

  “A real friend wouldn’t make me choose like this,” I say. My voice trembles, but I don’t stop. “A real friend wouldn’t constantly throw in my face that they’re my only friend. Real friends don’t make others hide who they are or what they like. And a real friend wouldn’t laugh while her arsehole boyfriend makes fun of me.”

  She gasps. “Did you just call my boyfriend an arsehole?” She raises her voice loud enough for Sully to hear. He starts walking over to us, and I shrink into myself.

  The line starts moving again, and I feel my chest rise in panic.

  “Audrey!” Josie calls. “We’re going in! Come on!”

  I look at Vanessa and Sully, who are both staring me down.

  “Think about your next move carefully, Audrey,” Vanessa says. “You can’t come crawling back to me on Monday when you’re back to having no friends.”

  I take in a deep breath. “I won’t.”

  I reach down to the hem of her itchy, hot jumper and tug it over my head. A cool breeze flows over me, and finally I feel like I can breathe. “Here.” I hand her the jumper and stand tall, showing off my queer, nerdy T-shirt. “I don’t need it any more.”

  She gapes at me, then I turn around and hurry to catch up with the others. “Wait up!”

  “Fine!” Vanessa shouts after me. “See if I care!”

  I ignore her.

  “Audrey!” Josie beams when I reach them. “Are you okay?”

  I smile at her. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

  She smiles back. “Good. I have something for you.” She takes one of her Etsy store buttons off her shirt and hands it to me. It’s a rainbow, with the words “strong as hell” engraved in it. “You earned it.”

  I want to cry. “Thank you.”

  “You are very welcome,” she says as we finally walk through the convention doors, and I can tell she means it.

  I am welcome here.

  Paul asks, “Do you ever think of getting married?”

  I’m doing the cryptic crossword, my feet are dangling over the sofa, my head is resting on his stomach. He’s been listening to music; I know when he’s excited by a track by the almost imperceptible pulse that comes from his foot tapping, his hip shifting. He’s perfectly still, the bulky red headphones are hanging around his neck. Something woozy and ghostly and electronic is audible: the sound is thin yet insistent through the headphones.

  “Why are you asking?”

  He carefully shifts me off his lap. He leans forwards and turns off the music.

  “There’s a loop in this track I’ve just listened to,” he says, “and it was so familiar, I thought I must know it and I realise I do. It’s the beginning of Laura Nyro’s ‘Wedding Bell Blues’.”

  From my splayed position across the sofa, his smile looks upside down.

  “It made me think that if we ever got married I’d want that song at our wedding.”

  I make myself still; I don’t want to appear elated. Or dismayed. Though it isn’t anything like elation or dismay I am feeling. If anything, all I am experiencing is a genuine curiosity. For the first time in my life the thought flits past: is he asking me to marry him? And then, followed quickly by: do straight people expect this moment, fantasise and dream and plan this moment from their youth?

  “Do you want to get married?” I ask. Out of curiosity. Once asked, I realise that his response will mean something has changed between us and I am fearful of the direction of that change.

  “I don’t know if I want to get married,” he begins slowly, as if determining the appropriate fall and heft of each word; then quickly gains confidence, and with that, speed, he blurts out, “what I do know is that you are the only person I want to marry.”

  His tongue darts between his lips; he makes a popping sound. I know that means he is anxious. Or about to break out into laughter.

  I scramble to a seat on the sofa. We are shoulder to shoulder. I gently nudge him.

  “Me too,” I say, “I mean, I know you are the only person I want to be with.”

  And then – and it surprises me in my saying as much as it shocks him in his hearing of it – I add, “If we are going to get married, I want Dad there.”

  When I was just a month or so shy of my twelfth birthday, my father was accused of having sex with a minor. Or that’s the legalese for what he did. The truer thing to claim is that when I was just a month or so shy of my twelfth birthday, my father threw a hand grenade right into the middle of our family home. My father was a teacher of chemistry, physics and mathematics in high school and the young woman – girl, she was a girl – he was having sex with was one of his students. She was sixteen but she might have been fifteen when their sexual relationship began. All the detail, all that was messy and difficult, it was kept from me. I was the youngest of the three children. Benjamin was two years older, and my sister Sara was sixteen. All I knew was that something catastrophic had occurred in our house. What had been up to then a cosily mundane and quietly suburban life was overturned. What I remember is the shouting, the screaming and yelling, the force of it was something new in our house: Mum’s anguished crying, her unquenchable rage, my sister’s violent hatred. My father was a liar, a pervert, a betrayer, a monster. I remember the screaming, and I remember the silence. My brother barricaded himself in his room and my father made no response to the accusations.

  That’s my memory, him looking gutted, as depleted of life as a piece of meat in a butcher’s shop window. And that he stank. In a white shirt with sharp collars, stained yellow at the pits and the neck, his head in his hands, being called a liar and a pervert and a betrayer and a monster. And his saying nothing. I was crying. I hadn’t really cried since Year Four when I had jumped off the apple tree in the backyard and landed on a pile of old timber, an old, long, rusty nail skewering my foot and coming out the other end. For the longest moment I didn’t feel pain. It was the sight of it, the rusty, dirty nail protruding from the top of my foot, which was what made me cry. That day my father had scooped me in his arms, had taken me straight to hospital; his being there with me was the thing that staunched my tears. “You’ll be right, Jack, the nurses and doctors will take good care of you, you’ll be absolutely fine.” And him, being there, meant it was true.

  But that ugly day, when he was being called those ugly names, when all was shouting and silence, he didn’t come close, he didn’t touch me, he didn’t even dare look at me. So I couldn’t stop crying. Someone finally took me to my room. They shut the door and I dived into the bed, shoes on, buried myself under the doona to escape the storm of fury and despair. The next morning when I got up – how did I fall asleep
? When did I fall asleep? Who had taken my shoes and socks off in the night? – my father was gone.

  I was two months shy of being twelve. I was nineteen when I saw my father again.

  Paul is standing up, he’s stretching, his blue singlet is riding up his belly. The tawny-gold hair there is coiled and thick, as are the dark thatches under his armpits. He straightens, smiles down at me.

  “Do you want to marry me?”

  I slowly nod.

  We get breezily drunk on a bottle of cheap and bone-dry Riesling, we watch an old western DVD and I fall immediately asleep when my head nestles against the pillow. Nothing changes with Paul’s proposal and my acceptance. The following morning, I wake with my bladder full and what feels like a slimy sheen of mucus pasted down the length of my throat. I stumble back to our bedroom after my piss and find that Paul has pulled off the sheet, is near-naked except for his blue singlet.

  “Come,” he orders with a wink, “come back to bed, I’m horny.”

  I am alert, awake now, and all I can think of is the promise I had made to Paul last night. That we were going to get married. There are too many questions, too many bloody questions in my head, and I can’t get aroused. Do I want to get married? Do I believe in marriage? Can we afford it? Why do I want my father there? I approach the bed and try to concentrate on Paul’s smell, the stink of sweat and night, the reek of man. I lean over, kissing him hard on the mouth, but my thoughts can’t stop spinning and tumbling. I pull away from him.

  “We don’t have to,” he says softly, his eyes bright, smiling.

  “We don’t have to what?”

  His smile is gone.

  “We don’t have to have sex.”

  And then, rolling onto his back, looking up at the ceiling, he adds, “We don’t have to get married.”

  I don’t dare move.

  He gets up, pulls on his jocks, is heading out the bedroom.

  I call out, “I do want to get married.”

  And I do. I want what we have together, this love. I want it to last till the annihilation of the world and for it to be reborn anew in the ferment of the next Creation.