You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead

by Hardy, Marieke

  Most of all, though, I was scared of being alone. In my brain, I married and divorced people within seconds of meeting them. I could barely concentrate on the conversation we were having without already replaying it in more intimate surrounds, picking it apart and laughing at our selfconscious selves from the safety of bed.

  ‘You were so nervous!’ I pictured myself saying to this stranger, now naked and familiar and full of relief.

  It was decided that Dan should move in.

  He arrived one afternoon in an apologetic bedlam of boxes and guitars, and proceeded to set himself up. The blue room—my favourite in the house, my old study—suddenly had a futon mattress on the floor and highbrow-looking paintings leaning against the wall. There were already records splayed on the floor, a clock radio. It looked like a boy’s room. When Dan left to get another load of his things from storage I stood in the doorway of what was now his space and looked at it for a long time.

  I had no idea if he was harbouring the same concerns as me. It seemed unlikely—he felt overall more centred, less raw from heartbreak. He didn’t appear at all bothered. Yet they still hung there. We had talked, often, about wishing we were married and settled with a child and a partner. Now we were living together.

  In the beginning it was like a sexless marriage with awkward chuckles. I felt uncomfortable seeing Dan with wet hair, listening to him eat. It seemed intensely intimate for two people who didn’t really know each other that well and when he emerged from the shower I would retreat, with blushes and stammers, to my bedroom. Unused to another presence in the house I would sometimes be startled when I walked in the front door and found him in the kitchen.

  He seemed to fret about being in somebody else’s space and edged around uncomfortably like a lodger. The ghost of Tim lingered. We tried to look out for each other, good Samaritans in the company of the lonely.

  ‘I worry about you getting enough Vitamin D,’ he would say, opening the door to my new study and letting the sun stream in from the backyard.When he left the house I would close it again and simmer in the murk.

  And yet we found, over time, a gentle way forward.

  I liked the sing-songy way he spoke to my dog. He really was an excellent cook and would lean over the stove with sweaty frowns like a proper chef. We stopped laughing nervously at each other’s jokes and avoiding eye contact when we passed each other in the hallway. One day I walked into Video Ezy and paid my fines, leaving the boy with the piercing surprised. There was an almost imperceptible exhalation. I suddenly knew Dan and I would not sleep with each other. We had negotiated through the dark erotic terrain and found ourselves, on the other side of it, grinning dumbly into the sunlight.

  A very nice boy with a soft beard and eyes the colour of being lost at sea asked me out on a date. For want of anything better to say I said yes. It was either that or stay at home constantly logging into Commonwealth Bank online banking and I was beginning to suspect that the latter wasn’t the healthiest of nocturnal hobbies.

  When I emerged from my room, wearing heels and lipstick for the first time in weeks, Dan looked up from his guitar.

  ‘Where are you off to? You look spectacular.’

  ‘I’m going on a date.’

  He smiled, briefly, and wished me luck. I thanked him, closed the door behind me, and walked into the future.

  Turfed out of my Footscray abode in early November, i embarked on a sort of managed homelessness for the summer.

  I slept in all manner of posh and tawdry hotel rooms while touring my comedy apocalypse themed group across the country.

  I dozed under a piano in Fitzroy during a Sri Lankan metal party, slumbered painfully upright in a chair in Warrnambool after accidentally going home with a handicapped girl and napped occasionally in my uncle’s tiny studio (shed) that was so loud it seemed built on St Kilda Road rather than next to it.

  I sampled couches from Coburg to Northbridge, jammed myself in the back of a Tarago (!) and snoozed in a shack on Bruny Island.

  A relative’s mansion in Clovelly gave me a whole week of the good life and a little indie house in Northcote gave me another.

  I crashed in a rattly old student house during a cyclone in Darwin, shared a shed loft in northern New South Wales with a large huntsman (spider) during a major flood event and begged my way occasionally into my long suffering ex-girlfriend’s bed.

  It sure saved me some money, and it’s true initially i felt like Neal Cassady but by early March i was going mental. I didn’t have the cash for my own place but kept baulking at little rooms in share houses with people i didn’t know or 20-year-old fans who’d responded to my ill-conceived Facebook post.

  So when Hardy sent me a message about her front room i was not entirely desperate but pretty close.

  I did some checking with friends and discovered that she’d just broken up with her man Tim who i liked a lot. Although i’m single and have a fairly vivid imagination and she is smart and funny and great-looking it was really my lust for real estate that drew me to her. I wanted a room with my stuff in it with a door that closed on the world. And the only time i had slept with a flatmate before turned horribly bad as she managed to eject me from my own Elwood share mansion place and send my Kingswood to the wreckers in one cunning move (Our ecstatic semicrazed hippie/rocker couplings were almost worth the pain but only almost).

  Armed with these bittersweet memories as a kind of psychic shield i trooped off to have a vegan meet-and-greet dinner at Marieke’s place.

  I had a quick check of Facebook before i headed off though and there she was on my news feed reenacting a famous ’70s photograph of Derryn Hinch and playmate Allyson Best.

  She was topless on a bed reading the paper.

  Her breasts were truly magnificent.

  Oh dear, i thought, this could be interesting . . .

  I cleverly reframed the situation on the cab ride over. Now i had seen her near naked then at least the curiosity factor was gone (this evil curiosity factor has been undoing hapless flatmates since the first share house in the Garden of Eden). And at least i wasn’t moving in with Derryn Hinch.

  Marieke met me at the door like i was a returning soldier and showed me around. I noticed the house had a taxidermy theme and the largest living space was devoted to her dog Bob Ellis who slept on a hair-sprinkled couch under a giant painting of herself. The decor was kind of vegan semi-gothic/indie and all the blinds were pulled down.

  I tend toward a kind of faux-Balinese guitar shop vibe myself but i’m nothing if not flexible.

  And i didn’t want to go back to that chair in Warrnambool.

  The two little rooms looked just right for me and the vegan meal was radical. She cooked a big and bold style and didn’t nibble nervously at her meals or cover her mouth with her hand when she ate. I liked this a lot. There were also thousands of books everywhere and not all by Bob Ellis.

  I even had my own bathroom.

  And as a kind of coup de grace the neighbour Bob Lakis the bouzouki-playing web designer (who could explain the meaning of life to you using only the terms ‘wow’ ‘fark’ and ‘good grief’) popped his head through the back fence and said (strangely enough) ‘fark!’

  I was sold.

  I texted Tim the ex to let him know i wasn’t moving in on him, so to speak, just moving in. We had both been cuckolded by the same drummer in the past and i wanted him to know i wasn’t pulling the same trick on him.

  He was pretty relaxed and gracious about it.

  A few friends raised eyebrows but ultimately they were glad i wasn’t asking for their couches anymore.

  So here i am.

  Resident of Brunswick and cohabitant with a blogger/writer/tv star/spin-class fanatic.

  So far so good.

  She is only slowly realising that when i say i’m getting up early i might not actually be out of bed till eleven (she stopped buying me morning coffees after the fourth one in a row went cold).

  And so far Bob Ellis the dog hasn’t b
een allowed to sleep in my bed.

  And she busted me on the net in my room singing along to that Rebecca Black song.

  But things are pretty sweet.

  Last night there were ten lady writers over for dinner and hardly any room to move at all.

  Awful.

  Swing, swang, swung

  There is a very fine episode of documentary maker Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends where he ‘immerses’ himself in the culture of swingers. Aligning himself with a couple named Gary and Margaret, he follows their preparations for a home sex party and interviews them along the way about their hopes and dreams for the evening. One particularly memorable scene involves Louis and Margaret steering an oversized shopping trolley through their local supermarket and filling it with party goods—paper plates, napkins, corn chips, watermelons, something alarmingly known as ‘Vita Bone’—as they discuss who might stick what up who first once everybody had ‘relaxed’. There’s something inestimably sweet about discussing frottage whilst holding plastic disposable cups with cartoon balloons on them.

  ‘I’ve been swinging since the ’70s!’ claims Margaret proudly, while in the background blissfully obese American shoppers trundle past with bulk purchases of toilet paper and Ruffles potato chips.

  In another scene, Gary walks Louis through their neat, suburban house, describing which rooms will be turned into dens of iniquity on the night of the party and which will be left as ‘purely domestic’. They move through the special fetish enclosure, the purpose-built multi-roomed stable Gary has built in the backyard (‘This is kind of what we’re known for . . . our backyard and our pool area,’ he says with no small amount of pleasure) before moving inside, where Louis stumbles across a sunroom that has been filled wall to wall with stained mattresses and floral cushions. It is like a padded cell with bad manchester. There are a couple of worn throw rugs and pillows that have seen better days.

  ‘Oh, this . . . this is our indoor group room, for group activities and multiple couples and that kinda stuff,’ Gary announces to Louis’s enquiry. ‘We put out towels, ’cause if there’s any kind of fluid, it’s polite not to get the mattress wet.’

  He surveys the room with a mayorly pride, adding helpfully: ‘We have a lot of my relatives over at other times, and they sleep in here too.’

  Swingers get an undeservedly bad reputation. They’re always being portrayed on television and in the movies as oily, gap-toothed men offering up their blousy, overweight wives to anyone drunk enough to take them on, or people like Gary who counter very reasonable queries about unhygienic sex in his swimming pool with the inane defence, ‘I have a very good filter!’

  There is a swingers club on the way to Melbourne Airport that I enjoy pointing out to people as we pass, as though a guide on one of those ‘see Melbourne’s seamy underbelly in its basest form!!’ personal tours. It’s an old chemists’ building with the windows badly painted over, and a tattered New Zealand rugby flag covering the glass of one of the upstairs rooms; an afterthought to block hangover-piercing light in a dodgy share house. There’s nothing remotely startling about the place at first glance—although it is painted a lurid burgundy, not really a colour that says ‘nothing to see here folks, just keep walking’—yet the discovery that behind its black front door a weekly free-for-all takes place is nothing less than thrilling. Swingers! In the neighbourhood! Somebody call the Moreland Gazette!

  Years ago my then boyfriend and I went to Sexpo, an annual event advertised as ‘Australia’s Premier Sexuality and Adult Lifestyle Exhibition’. Sexpo—ironically, like most of the products it is hawking—is a far sexier idea in conversation than in reality. You imagine a kind of sexual nirvana, where healthy, attractive, open-minded couples stroll hand-in-hand around the booths, picking up diamanté vibrators and letting them glisten in the soft light as they consider purchase. In reality it is a giant industrial shed filled to the brim with a combination of curious, gawping bogans trying to talk their girlfriends into anal sex and taxi drivers searching for herbal date-rape drugs.The nervous chatter and shrill laughter ricochets off the tin ceiling and fills the room with an unbearable cacophony of mindless noise, which intermingles with the unmistakable tang of sweat and fear. Every year you talk yourself into going, imagining that this year will be a little bit sexy, this year you’ll come home with an array of gingham scanties and riding whips, and every year you end up sitting silently on a tram holding a showbag full of safe sex brochures and caramel flavoured condoms and wondering just how long you can put off ever having to see another person naked again.

  The year we went was no different, and after three desultory circulations around the room and one particularly unsavoury encounter with an obese man dressed as an X-rated Garfield, we were on our way out the door requiring a stiff drink and a hose down when we found something that caught our eye.

  A couple in their late thirties were standing next to a booth labelled MELBOURNE’S MOST EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE SWINGERS NIGHT. The man had dyed blond hair and stiff, high-waisted jeans. He eyed us with interest as we stood in front of the booth, glancing through their advertising material and business cards. His wife was a tight little package with a broad, engaging smile and warm eyes, like a sexy primary school art teacher.

  ‘Soooo . . .’ She started over in our direction. ‘How are you two enjoying Sexpo?’

  We lied that we were enjoying it just fine. And she?

  ‘Oh, I love this time of year. Meeting new people. It’s like a big party!’

  Her enthusiasm was hard to fault. She really did seem to be having a good time. Her eyes darted around excitedly, and we had the distinct sense she may have been waiting for someone better looking than us to come along. When her social flitting swept her off in another direction, shrieking hellos at a pair of familiar faces, the man who through polite mumbles identified himself as her husband pressed a pamphlet into our hands and disappeared after her like a crowd controller at a Britney Spears concert.

  The pamphlet itself was basic, made clearly from a home office computer printer and featuring ornate purple borders, the type you might see on a year nine project about the origins of Valentine’s Day. Inside were further, more detailed introductions to ‘your hosts’ Alan and Cara, as well as a mild description of what a night at Melbourne’s most exclusive private swingers night might entail. (‘Discretion assured—a safe, secure, relaxed party, where couples can explore each other in a supportive, sophisticated environment.’) There was an email address and a mobile telephone number with a request not to call ‘during business hours’.

  We decided to contact them. Obviously we made this decision when we were drunk, two days later, when the stain of Sexpo had begun to recede. It can’t have been that bad, we told ourselves. And they seemed like nice people. Open-minded. It couldn’t hurt to find out a little more.

  ‘We’re not committing to anything,’ I said to my boyfriend, topping up my enormous glass of wine. ‘It’s just a phone call. We’re just curious bystanders.’

  Given that we’d already exchanged face-to-face pleasantries at Sexpo it was presumed we’d be swept into Alan and Cara’s sacred circle and welcomed with open arms and legs, possibly given a hero’s welcome and ticker tape parade. It was not so. Getting information about their swingers party was going to be more difficult than translating the rantings of a crack-addicted Welshman. Alan and Cara demanded photographs (‘Full face headshots please, no hats, masks or wigs’), money up front (‘Fifty dollars per person, to be transferred into account name PLAYFUL FRIENDS PTY LTD’), and to converse with us at length on the phone before they’d even begin to impart important details. What difference our telephone personalities made at this point was anybody’s guess, but we dutifully called (outside of business hours) and took turns talking to Alan, like teenage girls passing the phone between them when pranking the school heartthrob. Alan had a list of questions, mostly for me.

  ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’ he said. ‘What aspects of swinging inter
est you the most? Are you a sub or a dom?’

  It was like a quiz in Cosmo’s sealed section. I felt deeply embarrassed about being put on the spot, and concerned that any wrong answer might result in a mocking bark and abrupt hang up.

  ‘We haven’t decided to commit to anything yet,’ I wanted to tell Alan after every probing question. ‘We’re just curious bystanders.’

  I guess they were just trying to ascertain that my boyfriend wouldn’t turn up on his own, leeringly holding a bottle of wine and shrugging ‘She got an urgent job in Tokyo and couldn’t make it. Now, where’s all that free pussy I’ve heard so much about?’ which apparently was an all-too-common sin in the swinging world. Men would place photographs of themselves with a beautiful looking woman on adult websites, promising to bring their better halves along for long and involved games of Pin the Penis on the Vagina, only to duck in on the night with a shifty expression and some lame excuse about how sorry Leanne was she couldn’t make it. These women never existed, they were simply a front to get erect men into couples-only parties, and Alan and Cara were doing everything in their power to prevent such a thing occurring at their private event.

  ‘They don’t want a cock forest, you see,’ my boyfriend later informed me with a solemn expression.

  I pictured a roomful of sad-looking men standing around with their erections undulating lightly in the breeze, wisha wisha wisha, like Enid Blyton’s magic trees.

  When Alan and Cara finally believed that I was a real human being and not simply an animatronic device tricked up with a lady’s voice, they proffered us an invitation to their next party. It was to be held in three weeks’ time, and we were emailed a list of the rules we simply must adhere to if we were to be allowed entry.

  These rules, we saw, were strict and numerous.

  Unaccompanied men will NOT be allowed entry.

  Small amounts of alcohol are permitted (no red wine please13)but we are a DRUG-FREE event and anyone found breaching the rules will be asked to leave IMMEDIATELY.