–You want to be like them? The old woman turns and looks at us. Shut up, my sister says in Greek. You want to be like them? I insist in English. You don’t ever want to get out of this city, do something different with your life? She stops in front of another house and inspects the garden. I keep walking and she runs to catch up to me. We get to Joe’s place.
The grass in the front yard is immaculately mowed and Dina, Joe and his sister, Betty, are smoking cigarettes on the porch. A faint trace of tobacco, marijuana and olive oil lingers among the plants in the garden. Alex sits down on a step and I kiss the girls hello, slap Joe on the back and go into the house. A bong sits on the lounge-room table, the television is on and the sound is down. A shit CD is playing on the stereo, some ugly white noise like Phil Collins or Michael Bolton. I stop the music, whisk through the CDs on the shelf and find an old Rolling Stones record. Let it Bleed. I program Gimme Shelter first, then You Can’t Always Get What You Want, then Love in Vain and finish with Midnight Rambler. They are the only four songs I want to hear. I turn the volume up, have a bong and then join the others on the steps.
–Why’d you take the other one off? Dina is glaring at me. Joe has his arm around her and she’s running a middle finger up and down his naked arm.
–Because it’s shit. Betty laughs and claps her hands.
–Well, I think this is shit. I say nothing, just croon along to the chorus of Gimme Shelter. Give a fuck, I’m thinking, it’s all just a shot away. Dina gets up, unsteadily, maybe she’s had too much dope and goes in the house. Joe looks concerned.
–Be friendly, Ari. For my friend’s sake I get up and follow Dina into the house. She’s standing in the kitchen, by the sink, rinsing greasy remainders of food off the plates. What do you want? she says when she sees me come in.
–To say I’m sorry. I’m only playing four songs, when it’s over we’ll put your CD on.
–No, it’s alright, I know my music is daggy. Like, right, you think I’m a dag, don’t you? She turns off the water and turns to face me. You do, don’t you? I don’t know, is what I’m thinking. Dag? Is that the word? She’s commonplace, in her too-tight red dress, her teased hair, the heavy black mascara, the little gold cross around her neck. Her problem is that there are thousands of women like her sprinkled around this city. There’s probably three or four girls like her in this street. I can’t say that to her, and I don’t want to say that to her. So I just give her a weak smile.
–I don’t think you’re a dag. She smiles back but I don’t let her off the hook completely. I do think you’re a wog.
–So what, I’m proud of it. And what are you? I don’t answer. I’m not a wog, I’m not sure what I am but I’m not a wog. Not the way she means. Mick Jagger’s voice comes on rough and soulful, the opening verse to You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Dina starts to sway to the song: she’s enjoying being stoned to it.
–I like this song. Dina comes and stands next to me. It’s the speed, pushing me out of myself, it’s the drug high, the smoke from the bong helping me connect with this young girl beside me. I keep talking, enjoying the sensation of her shoulder pressed against my side.
–My brother gave me this record for my fourteenth, maybe it was my thirteenth birthday. I didn’t really like the Stones before. All I knew was Satisfaction, Tattoo You, the more recent stuff. But when I first heard Gimme Shelter it blew me away, I used to play that song over and over and over till even Peter got sick of it and told me he’d break it over my fucking head if I played it again. The cunt, and he gave it to me. I laugh to myself, remembering.
Dina moves away. I prefer Greek music, she says, and moves into the lounge room for a bong. I keep talking, following her, going on a speed rave.
–A few months ago I was in this pub, it was early afternoon, more a bar than a pub, and this guy behind the counter is looking through a stack of CDs. I asked him if I could choose one and they had this greatest hits collection by the Stones. And I asked him to put that on, and when You Can’t Always Get What You Want came on I started singing and this guy behind the bar starts singing. I can’t sing, ask Joe, I never sing. This guy couldn’t sing either but we must have both loved the song. When it finished, I look around, and there’s only a few other people in the bar, a couple of young people, some middle-aged men. Empty really, afternoon on a weekday, but every single one of us has been singing along. I figured we must all have memories of that song. That’s a great song. Dina, one that makes you connect with strangers.
She’s not listening, crouched over the bong and taking in the smoke in one gulp. I stop talking and wait my turn. I look around at the walls, full of tapestries. The biggest one is of a small village by a river and three women are dancing on the river bank while two goat herders are watching them. Another tapestry is of the Madonna and child. Another of two reindeer in a forest. The glass the tapestries are framed behind is dull from dust. Where have your folks gone? I yell out to Joe on the porch. Dina, coughing a little from the smoke, hands me the bong. This place stinks, she says, it smells like a bordello.
–Sure does. Alex is standing in the doorway looking at me smoke. You must be right off your face, Ari. I let the smoke stay down in my lungs for as long as I can stand it, then release it slowly. Want one? I ask her and hand her the bong. Joe comes into the lounge room and sniffs the air. He tells me that his parents are visiting family. Does it really stink, Ari? I nod again. Just bomb the place with air freshener before we go, my sister tells him, and she comes over to me. She leans over and whispers Betty wants some speed. I go to see Betty on the porch. Joe follows me.
–You both want some speed? I ask. Betty jumps up but Joe shakes his head. We’ll go into my room, Betty says, and Joe calls out softly to not say anything to Dina. I don’t reply.
I detest the East. The whole fucking mass of it: the highways, the suburbs, the hills, the rich cunts, the smacked-out bored cunts. The whitest part of my city, where you’ll see the authentic white Australian, is in the eastern suburbs. A backdrop of Seven Elevens, shopping malls, gigantic parking lots. I was picked up by a guy once, he lived in this shithole suburb somewhere, Burwood or Balwyn or Bentleigh or Boronia, and I woke up in this strange man’s bed, got up and made myself a coffee, went into the front yard, looked down the street and thought oh-my-fucking-god-is-this-America? I didn’t feel sane again until I reached the corrosive stenches of the city. Lead and carbon dioxide in my lungs to make me forget the Disneyland I had woken up to.
East are the brick-veneer fortresses of the wogs with money. On the edge, however, bordering the true Anglo affluence, never part of it. The rich wog fortresses are the border towns between the stinking rich pricks and the vast expanses of bored housewives and their drugged-out children who populate the outer Eastern suburbs. The men, the greying men in their ugly business shirts, shuffle paper around all day, have guilty sex in toilets or at the brothels on the way to the station, and return home every night to drop dead in front of the television. Television rules. School, work, shopping, sex, are distractions to the central activity of the Eastern suburbs: flicking the channels on the remote control.
I have managed to snatch some pleasure in the East. Long family drives when I was still a very young kid, driving up to the hills and we’d play amongst deep green trees, a rainforest so beautiful that it looked like it came out of some lush dream. Later, there were long drives out of the city where we would cleave through the Eastern suburbs, drive down the long stretches of road. I would lie back on the passenger seat, music throbbing around me in whatever car we were, the continuous loop of brick-veneer houses forming a visual mantra. In a car where you can move through the suburbs but never walk out and be part of them, never to lose yourself in them, I feel safe. In a car is how I best appreciate the East. And I hate cars.
But these are only snatches of pleasure. In the Eastern suburbs Aunt Nikki lives, my mother’s second cousin. She made it big, married a fat wog in real estate, and comes to visit once a year, on Mum’s
name-day, dressed in fur and covered with gold chains, rings and bracelets. In her house all the furniture is covered in clear plastic so no dust, no dirt will stain the evidence of her material success. Her husband stinks of alcohol, and her children look like Americans.
My cousin, Aleko, also lives in the Eastern suburbs. Not on the rich hills near the river, but out in the flatlands of suburban hell. I’m not sure how we are related; maybe his old man and my old man grew up in the same village. Aleko calls himself Alan and all his friends are skips. He grows his hair long, smokes bongs with his Australian mates, gets drunk every night. He has a sister and she’s trying to be a skip as well. She dyes her hair blonde, sneaks out at night to fuck with the Australezo and refuses to speak the wog language, to retain the wog name. Their mother cleans the toilets at the local primary school and returns home to a small concrete shit-box, trapped between neighbours who she has to yell at to be understood – every fucking utterance a humiliation. Her husband lifts crates every day, and is bored out of his skull every night. He comes to visit my father every weekend to enter the old world of coffee shops and intimate dialogue. In the East, in the new world of suburbia there is no dialogue, no conversation, no places to go out: for there is no need, there is television.
For my Aunt Nikki, Alan and his family don’t exist. And it is true, they don’t exist. They are invisible to the rich wogs by the river. The wog community is a backstabbing, money-hungry, snobbish, self-righteous community. It has no time for losers or deviants. The peasant Greeks who have made their money working the milk bars, delis, markets and fish shops of Melbourne look down on the long-haired loutish Greek boy and the bleached-blonde sluttish Greek girl with disdain and denial. The denial is total. You are not me. We are not you. Fuck off. You don’t exist.
Ethnicity is a scam, a bullshit, a piece of crock. The fortresses of the rich wogs on the hill are there not to keep the Australezo out, but to refuse entry to the uneducated-long-haired-bleached-blonde-no-money wog. No matter what the roots of the rich wogs, Greek, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Arab, whatever, I’d like to get a gun and shoot them all. Bang bang. The East is hell. Designed by Americans.
Betty is a wog who wants to be black; a Greek nigger. Her small bedroom is full of posters and prints. A tour poster for Public Enemy. Spike Lee. Lots of Rasta prints. The Koorie flag. The only white woman on her wall is Madonna. The only white man is a faded psychedelic print of Che Guevara. Every time I see her room I think this woman is going to drop out, that she’s going to have to leave the suburbs as soon as she’s legal. Her parents will scream and rant, tear out their hair, bash her around a little but they won’t be able to stop her. And good luck to her. I sit on her bed, she lights up some incense and hands me a small mirror for me to line up the speed.
She watches me cut the powder.
–It’s good stuff, I say, and prepare two large lines for her and one for me. She asks me how much I want for it. I think about it for a moment. Twenty dollars. She searches through her desk, finds two plastic ten-dollar bills and hands them to me. I roll one up tightly and hand it over to her. She snorts the powder quickly, makes a face and hands the rolled-up ten back. I snort my line and give her the mirror to lick off. Want some alcohol? she asks, and I agree. While she’s off getting me something to drink I search through her bookcase for something to flick through. I settle for a book on film, a general introduction to cinema, with lots of photographs. Betty comes back with two glasses of whisky. I take it and slowly turn the pages of the book in my hand while we talk.
–Got a cigarette? I hand her one of mine and light one up for myself. You coming along tonight? I ask her. She shakes her head.
–I’m meeting friends in the city. We’re going out to see a band.
–Who’s playing? She mentions some Sydney band. All keyboards and samples. I’m looking at a picture of a man in a limousine staring straight ahead of him while an anguished woman is banging on the car window. The Conformist I’ve seen the film years ago, as a kid, when it played on TV. I remember the elegant sets, a long hall in which beautifully attired men and women waltzed together. The lead actor had a beautiful face, strong and handsome, a masculine face. It was hard to tell how old he was in the movie. He could have been in his twenties, he could have been in his forties. I hadn’t really understood the film. Something to do with Italian fascists in the thirties. But the images have stayed in my head; the women dancing together, a black car dwarfed by a blizzard, a woman stroking another woman’s leg. Some images of the film have permanently entered my dreams. You should see this film, I say to Betty, and hand her the book.
–What’s it about?
–It’s a thriller.
–It’s old, isn’t it? I check the date in the book.
–It’s seventies. But set during a war.
She gives me back the book. Ari, why are you hanging out with dumbfuck wogs?
I think about the question. Most people you meet are dumb fucks. Wog, skip, black, Asian. Who should I hang out with? I ask her. She doesn’t answer me, instead she comes and sits down next to me and starts kissing me softly on my cheek. I don’t respond much but I let her carry on. She rubs my crotch for a little while but I still don’t respond and she stops. She gets up and asks for another cigarette. I’m not turning you on, right? I blush and say nothing. Would it turn you on if it was Joe doing it to you? she continues. I look at her. Her fleshy body, her long black hair, the sheen of her soft skin. We fucked a couple of times, when I was still at school. Drunk at a party. Her breath smelling of alcohol, her cunt pink and wet was bitter to taste; kissing her neck while I pushed my cock into her, my eyes closed thinking of boys. I came quickly and I licked her clit to make her come, wrapping my tongue around her, rubbing my face on her vaginal lips. The smell of my semen mingled with the smell of her juices. I’m getting a hard-on thinking about it.
I reach up to her and pull her skirt above her thighs and massage her crotch, rub my thumb along her panties. She strokes the back of my head, pulling lightly at my hair. I close my eyes and I’m entangled in George’s body, as I rub my face in Betty’s crotch. I pretend her soft tufts of pubic hair are his hard, short bristles. I stop, let her skirt fall back against her legs and smile at her. You’re right, I say, I’d prefer you were Joe.
Betty raises her hand, stops for a moment, then slaps me hard across the face. I grab her hand and am about to twist it back, wanting to hurt her, to bruise her. Instead I stop, then start laughing. A deep speed laugh from the bottom of my stomach which is loud and infectious. Chill out dumbfuck wog, I manage to gasp through my laughter. Betty starts laughing as well and hugs me, we have tears in our eyes. Poofter, poofter, she giggles, choking on the words. She takes a drag from the cigarette, stops laughing at me, then looks serious. I’m glad you don’t act like a faggot, Ari. The words ring in my ears. I flex my muscles. I’m a man, I say, in a deep drawl. And I take it up the arse. Of course you do, she answers, you’re Greek. We all take it up the arse.
She finishes her whisky and then starts banging her hand against the bed. Like a metronome. One constant beat, singing softly to herself: I hate this fucking life, I hate this fucking life, I hate this life. Someone knocks on the door.
–Fuck off, she screams. A loud, piercing scream. Fuck off and leave us alone. Joe comes into the room, ignoring his sister. He talks directly to me. You shouldn’t give her drugs, she gets out of control. She’s just like Mum, he adds bitterly. Betty gets up and pushes against him. Get out, get out you prick. He slaps her around a bit and I stay sitting, holding the glass of whisky, waiting for the drama to finish. She calms down and takes hold of my hand. Come dance, she asks me.
–The others are here, Joe says, just get ready. We have to go. She ignores him. I follow her into the lounge. Dina, Alex and two men and a woman I don’t know are in a circle around the bong. I nod to them. Betty says nothing to them, doesn’t acknowledge them. She goes over to the CDs and records and grabs a piece of vinyl and puts i
t on the turntable. A tsiftiteli comes on and she begins a slow belly dance. She motions to me to come and join her. I get up, but my steps are half-hearted, I’m a little embarrassed in front of the crowd of strangers. One of the men I don’t know comes up and offers Betty the bong. She smokes it in the middle of the dance, and hands it to me to finish the smoke. I do.
The song ends, Joe takes the record off and introduces me to the others. A tall, stocky Italian boy called Arno, the woman, a Dina clone in a tight short skirt with teased hair, called Mary, and her boyfriend Stav, overweight, stinking of cheap aftershave. The introductions done Joe starts shutting up the house, emptying the ashtrays, putting the bong and the dope away, locking them in a box under his bed. He takes a can of air freshener from the toilet and begins to spray around the lounge, the kitchen, the hall, the couches. A nuclear blast of chemical perfume. Betty, Alex and I go out onto the porch, waiting for the others to join us. You’re in for a real wog night, Betty says to me. I nod in agreement. She’s right.
Alex skips down the stairs to the front yard and sways in the moonlight. She sings a Greek song and Betty joins her, they link arms on the lawn and dance around each other. Wogs, I yell at them. From across the road a neighbour yells out for us to shut up. Shut up yourself you cunt, Betty screams out into the night. Dogs start barking. Alex and Betty keep dancing, singing loudly, the moonlight shining on their exposed arms and legs, on their faces. The rest of their bodies shrouded in their dark clothes.
–We’ll meet you in Brunswick, Joe calls to Stav. I’ve got to drop off my sister and Ari’s sister. Stav nods and he and his friends set off in a big blue Commodore. Dina goes with them. The rest of us pile in Joe’s car and I take the front seat and start playing with the radio. A station is playing T-Rex. Louder yells Betty in my ear. Yeah, louder, screams Alex. Louder? Okay. How’s this, and I turn up the volume till it tears at our eardrums. Joe turns it down a little and shakes his head but he joins in with us at the chorus.
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