–Should I take you home, Ari? he asks me. I laugh. No mate, I tell him, butting out the cigarette, putting my clothes back on. I smile at him, but keep clear of him. If we were to touch, if I was to be close to him again I could kill him. Are you sure you don’t want me to take you home, it’s on the way? I refuse again. He stands, a nervous smile, looking like a little kid. He hesitates, wondering whether to shake my hand goodbye, kiss my mouth, my cheek. I sit still and watch him, finally, walk away. Yo, George, I want to call out, I’m wrong, you’re wrong, the whole fucking world is wrong. I love you. I want to say the words, but they are an obscenity I can’t bring myself to mouth. I’ve never said those words. I’m never going to say those words. I watch him walk out the door. He doesn’t look back.
Lyrics run in my head. You can’t look back, you can never look back. I stare at my reflection on the blank screen, I pick up the remote from the floor and turn onto a music video. A long-haired, scarred-skin young boy is screaming into a microphone. No sound. Kylie Minogue is singing in the lounge room. I leave the volume off, sink back into the pillow and do my own screaming. Not one sound comes out of my mouth.
The smell of the sea tickles my nose. Through the half-open window of the room I am in I can hear echoes of the waves hitting the shoreline of St Kilda Beach. The beach which for decades has been the home of junkies and whores, refugees and migrants, now being redone, remodelled, restructured into a playground for the sophisticated professional. Under the piers, in toilets, in the back of discos, St Kilda offered me in my youth a smorgasbord of illicit pleasures. Cheap drugs, free sex. Getting drunk, getting stoned, getting high.
The sea breeze tickles my nose. Along the coastline of the city, the beaches open up to the chasm which is the end of the world. Below us there is ice. Nothing else. No human life, no villages, no towns, no cities. Many nights I would take the tram and head down the beach, walk along the sand and sit on the end of the pier looking out to the darkness of the bay and dream of what I could find if I dived into the waves and swam away. Looking out to the horizon, I would dream of new places, new faces, new lives possible to live at the other side of the world. Never thoughts of ice, instead I thought of the North, the places my mother and father talked to me about. The arid soil and hot weather of the Mediterranean.
The Greeks, sons of sailors, daughters of fishwives. Rarely rich enough to live next to the sea, the Greeks live one suburb away. Never close enough to the bay to receive the strong sea gales straight into the lungs; just close enough to allow the breeze to tickle the nose.
To the South are the wogs who have been shunted out of their communities. Artists and junkies and faggots and whores, the sons and daughters no longer talked about, no longer admitted into the arms of family. In the South, in the flats and apartments smelling of mildew and mice, are all the wog rejects from the North, the East, the West. Flushed out towards the sea. When you look straight across the ocean you look into the face of your dreams.
The whore dominates the imagination of the Greek, of the Turk, of the Arab. The insults my father threw at me when I first challenged his authority were words meant for a woman. Poutana, skula. Whore, dog. His one English obscenity. Cunt. Those insults have formed me, they have nourished me. In latrines and underneath piers I have enjoyed pleasures that are made sweeter by the contempt I know they bestow on me in the eyes of the respectable world I abhor. And the danger I face in pursuing my pleasures is the guarantee I have that I am not forsaking my masculinity. The constraints placed on me by my family can only be destroyed by a debasement that allows me to run along dark paths and silent alleyways forbidden to most of my clan and my peers. To be free, for me as a Greek, is to be a whore. To resist the path of marriage and convention, of tradition and obedience, I must make myself an object of derision and contempt. Only then am I able to move outside the suffocating obligations of family and loyalty.
That I am a whore, a dog, a cunt, is no one’s business. To confess my life, or even to proclaim it proudly, entraps me in an interaction with the wogs which would draw me back within the suffocating circle. My silence and my secrets allow me to move freely around the landscape of my city. A public life is a privilege only available to the rich, to the famous.
The sea breeze of the southern ocean, the breeze that comes up from the end of the world, makes me strong, draws me to the whores and faggots and junkies. I am a sailor and a whore. I will be till the end of the world.
I’m coming down. I can’t lift my head off the pillow and I try to light a cigarette. A lifetime passes in reaching for the cigarette. A lifetime passes in bringing it to my mouth. A lifetime passes in lighting it. I inhale the smoke to stop my teeth from grinding on each other. On the television monitor I watch flickering images: a woman in a miniskirt, a man in leather, a beachscape, the bombing of Baghdad, a burial in Sarajevo, mushroom clouds, desert, a couple kissing, guns, the Virgin Mary, the red crescent, the hammer and sickle, silence = death, the US flag, tits, bums, crotch shots, guns, another mushroom cloud. Young black guys pointing fat fingers towards me, white guys spitting at my face; women licking their lips shoving their arses towards me. I forget the cigarette in my hand and it burns my finger. I let it fall on the bed, watch the sheet begin to burn and struggle to lift my head, exercise my dry mouth to produce some saliva and spit a gob onto the burning hole. I lift myself off the bed and stumble across the room, falling onto a chair.
Slowly, step by fucking step, concentrating on my feet, I walk out and into a dim hallway. Dawn light is visible. Janet Jackson is on the stereo in the lounge room. I search for the bathroom and find it, a small room lit by fluorescent light. In the mirror I look at my skin, at the dark blotches forming around my still too-wide eyes. My hair is standing on end. I close the door and wash myself thoroughly, take off my T-shirt and wash away the thin, white residue of George’s sperm on my body; wash away my sweat, his sweat, my come, his come. Wash away all traces of smell on my body.
I wash myself so hard till my body is red raw. I take out my cock and scrub it, wash out the dried come forming under the foreskin, wash away the traces of his saliva on my cockhead. When I am done, I wipe my body with a dirty towel hanging over the shower rail and comb my hair back into shape. I walk out the bathroom and walk into the lounge room. Three people are sitting in a circle smoking bongs. I take a couple of pipes but I am silent. They in turn do not ask me questions. They offer their smoke out of drug etiquette. After all, I have partied till dawn.
After my third pipe I get up on unsteady legs and wave goodbye. They don’t lift their heads. I search my pockets for my cigarettes and I can’t find them. I go back into the bedroom and search there, find them on the bedside table and I decide to open the drawer to have a look. Some condoms, a pocketbook, some tapes and a Walkman. A Sony Walkman in good condition. I take it out and cradle it under my arm. I take a hurried look through the tapes. Nothing I like except an old Beastie Boys cassette. I pocket it. I light a cigarette and walk through the house and out the door. No one looks at me while I’m leaving; no one notices the Walkman under my arm. The sun has risen and the street is glowing in warm summer colours. I sniff hard and I can almost taste the sea, somewhere behind all the flats, all the concrete.
I stand outside till my cigarette is finished and then put one foot ahead of the other. I hook the earphones on and press the play button on the Walkman. A beautiful clear sound. An expensive piece of machinery, but the tape inside is shit-awful, polished contemporary soul lacking any heart and any spirit. Some white man trying to pretend to be black or some black guy completely castrated by the dictates of the music business and the pop charts. I take off the tape and throw it in a bush. I take out the Beastie Boys cassette from my back pocket and put it in. A deafening crash of drums and guitar enters my eardrums and I’m no longer coming down. I turn up the volume and walk towards home.
Mum and Dad are going to kill me. I’m not thinking about George, I’m not thinking about the party, I’m not thinking abou
t the weather, I’m not thinking about sleep. The Walkman is screaming at me that I have to fight for my right to party and all I can think of is that Mum and Dad are going to kill me. I increase the pace of my walking and walk down Chapel Street towards home. I pass Italian boys in white shirts setting up seats outside their cafes and cross High Street and watch old Greek couples head off to church or maybe to the market. People get out of my way.
The Beastie Boys are singing about hard cocks and girls with ever-ready pussy. Slowly, slowly, thoughts of Mum and Dad recede. Glimpses of George in my mind. His cock, half-erect, the hair covering his chest, the roll of flesh around his stomach. The speed and the acid and the eckie and the grog and the dope are still running around my system. I cross Commercial Road, cross Toorak Road and take the path down to the river. A group of private school boys in singlets and shorts are going rowing. All golden hair, muscles and tanned skin. I ignore them and head for the nearest toilet, under the bridge. I piss, a long piss, into the metal urinal and when I’m finished I wait there, standing with my cock hanging out. I still have the Walkman on, but I’ve turned down the volume.
A tall guy with shaved hair, wearing a black T-shirt and leather pants, enters the toilet and stands at the urinal next to me. He doesn’t take a piss. I would prefer to get off with a wog but I’m horny and I want some sex to forget George (to forget his pale skin) and this guy will have to do. He takes out his cock and starts masturbating. I start pulling myself. He puts his hand on my cock and tugs hard. I can hear him mouth something but I keep the Walkman on. He removes the left earphone and whispers if I want to come home with him. I refuse and put the earphone back. Metal rap comes out of the headphones. He keeps tugging at himself and at me. It is taking ages for me to come. A sound behind us makes us stop and we stand apart.
Some old Yugoslav guy with a big gut and grey hair is stroking his crotch. I turn around to him and show him my cock. He takes his out and I go over and we start wanking. The man in the leather pants comes over as well but I ignore him now. The old man has a huge thick cock that he has trouble getting up. The foreskin is pulled tight around the cockhead. He starts kissing me and I resist, draw away from him, but I let him touch me all over, let his fingers go up my arsehole. He smells of cheap aftershave. Metal rap is pounding in my ears. I want him to come all over me, in my mouth, to wipe away all traces of George. But he doesn’t try to get me to suck him off. Instead, the shaved-head guy gets on his knees and is sucking us both, taking turns.
I put my hands inside the old man’s shirt and rub his chest; thick and heavy tits, fat hairy gut. He tries to kiss me again and I move away and wank myself, close to coming. I ejaculate all over the faggot on his knees, come falling on his cheeks, his lips, on his torso. The Yugoslav guy reaches for me, trying to get me to jerk him. I’m no longer interested. I push away his hand and walk out of the toilet into the green park. I’m dripping come into my underwear. I can no longer smell George on me. I smell of cheap aftershave.
Mum and Dad are going to kill me. Mum and Dad are going to kill me. Mum and Dad are going to kill me.
I pass a greasy coffee shop and someone yells my name. I look into a window and Serena, her blonde hair falling across her tired eyes, is waving at me. She brings a coffee to her lips and beckons me inside. At the counter a heavy Lebanese man is reading a newspaper, looks up for a moment, then averts his eyes. The smell of burning fat and the mild odour of tobacco coats the air in the shop. I order a coffee, and pull a soft-drink from the fridge; my lips are dry, cracking. I run my tongue over them.
–Where’s Maria? I ask. Serena says she doesn’t give a fuck and offers me a cigarette. I take it and sit on a chair opposite. My body sags into the plastic, and I stare across at her. The drugs are still a poison in my system. I notice her eyes are red. I light the cigarette and try to think of something to say. But she begins the conversation.
–We had a fight. I don’t answer and she continues.
–We had a fight and I asked to be dropped off here, told her I was going to wait for the first train and then go home. She cradles her coffee cup. Except the first train has gone and I’m still here.
–What did you argue about? I’m too strung out to talk to her. Too much has already happened tonight, I’m too tired. I don’t want conversation, I want a joint, or a Valium. The Lebanese guy brings me my coffee and I hungrily gulp up the sour stinging fluid. Serena doesn’t answer my question. Instead she asks me a question.
–What happened to the guy you picked up? I shrug my shoulders and look out the window. People are going to church, the Easybeats are on the radio. He left without me, I answer and I feel a tear is stinging in my pupil, bursting to come loose. I don’t let it. Serena doesn’t pursue it. She begins to answer my question.
–I was drunk, I guess. I asked her to sleep with me. She begins to laugh. And of course she said no and of course I got embarrassed and of course I got fucked off. She begins a quiet sob. I’m a dickhead, I’m a dickhead, she mutters and I look away again, out to the world beyond the coffee-shop window. Her story continues, and she begins to tell me about her love for the other woman, tells me that she has been seeking a wog to love, someone who will understand her, for a long, long time. Tells me she’s tired of Aussie dykes, dykes who can’t converse, can’t express emotion, can’t be affectionate. At twenty-one, she already sounds so exhausted. Nearly twenty, I sound exhausted. I am exhausted. The story she weaves comes in and out of my ears and I listen to the sound of her voice, listen to bad songs from the sixties on the radio.
–Do your parents know? She’s asking me a question.
–Know what?
–That you are gay? Am I? I want to say. I want to tell her that words such as faggot, wog, poofter, gay, Greek, Australian, Croat are just excuses. Just stories, they mean shit. Words don’t stop the boredom. Instead I shake my head. No, I tell her, they don’t know. She laughs and takes my hand. Her fingernails are long, thin, painted scarlet.
–We have to protect them, Ari, she tells me.
–What do you mean, protect. I don’t understand her.
–Protect them, she is insistent. So that the neighbours don’t talk, so the relatives don’t talk. She is loud now. You are protecting them, Ari, you don’t tell them about your life because you know what that will do to them.
–Like I care. Her face freezes over, she draws back into her seat. She wanted a connection between us and there isn’t one. She cares. I don’t. I’m protecting myself. Mum and Dad are adults. They can protect themselves.
–You don’t give much away, do you, Ari? She takes her hand away from mine. I move mine under the table and clasp at my knees. The woman before me is drunk, angry. I’m afraid she’s going to make a scene. Instead she starts sobbing again. I scratch my face, try to say something, nothing comes out. She’s drunk, I’m drug-fucked. None of this connection between us is real, it is all hallucinations. I find some words. You’re beautiful, I tell her, and she is. Her pale soft skin and her dark eyes. She smiles at me and thanks me.
–I have to go, and she rises from her seat. Tell your friend Maria I’m finished with Greek girls. I’m going to stick to my own kind.
–Where do you live? I ask her. Sunshine, she answers, I’m a dyke from the West. It’s a long way away, isn’t it? I ask. For me it’s just another suburb in this city of suburbs.
–Sure is. She asks me where I live. I point to the view outside. Here, I live here.
–I hate the suburbs. Serena hands me a five-dollar bill and I decline. She pushes it firmly in my hand. I pocket it and wipe her hair from her eyes. Get out of Sunshine, I tell her.
–Got to. And you, Ari. She kisses me on the cheek. Where the fuck do you go? Somewhere, I answer, somewhere with no wogs, no faggots, no skips. She laughs and the tears coating her pupils vanish.
–I’ll see you there, she tells me. I shrug. Maybe. Life’s a trip, isn’t it, Ari. They are her final words to me. She walks out the door and doesn’t look back, walks up
Swan Street towards the station. Back to the suburbs.
There is this urban myth I once heard. It may be true. That the places where the wealthy reside in my city were built in the East because it meant when driving home the rich would not get the sun in their eyes. The squinting and the sunstroke fall to the poor scum in the western suburbs.
There is another urban myth. It is about solidarity. The myth goes something like this; we may be poor, may be treated like scum, but we stick together, we are a community. The arrival of the ethnics put paid to that myth in Australia. In the working-class suburbs of the West where communal solidarity is meant to flourish, the skip sticks with the skip, the wog with the wog, the gook with the gook and the abo with the abo. Solidarity, like love, is a crock of shit. The rich don’t fear the unionised worker, they don’t fear the militant. They fear the crim, the murderer, the basher. Crime doesn’t pay but it is the only form of rebellion open to us. And to survive the thief must eschew solidarity.
Us, them. I am neither. I don’t belong to the West. The West of chemical-vomit skies. This is an industrial city, a metropolis of manufacturing plants and workshops for blue-collar labour. The noise of the factory was the soundtrack to our childhood. All vanishing. The factories are being pulled down, the skies are emptying of smoke, and the flat, dry ground of this city is now home to thousands and thousands of petite boxes where people who used to be workers live.
Community. Don’t comprehend that word. The mania of our culture is the desire to accumulate and accumulate, to become richer, to become classier, to become more secure, wealthier. It is impossible to feel camaraderie if the dominant wish is to get enough money, enough possessions to rise above the community you are in. To become richer and wealthier than the people around you is to spit in their faces. And the wogs, being peasants, do it best. Possession of land, of more and more land, is the means by which an uneducated, diasporic community enables itself to rise in the New World and kick their brothers and sisters in the face, in the gut, in the balls, in the cunt. Beyond all else the peasant requires land to feel secure. But unlike the accumulation of consumer products or of money, there is a limit to the availability of land. This is why wogs turn on each other. They have migrated to escape the chaos of history and they know, they know fundamentally, property is war.
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