Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘I’m certain any scientist involved in the study of abnormal behaviour would be very grateful to have the opportunity to study your brain, Orazio,’ Ignatius said.

  ‘Perhaps you could let us in on your revelation, Orazio?’

  ‘Sure, Scobes. What we do is this,’ Razz said, pausing for dramatic effect. ‘We match Billy Boy and his “preferred partner” up with those two Lourdes chicks I was telling you about. You know what Formals are like – heaps of people sitting around tables and dancing in groups together. Half the time it’s hard to tell who’s sitting or dancing with who. See what I’m saying? So as long as no one gets too carried away on the night, who will know? Billy and his partner will be happy. The girls will be happy. It’s another classic win, win, win, win situation.’

  That worried me a bit, but I think this time Razz might have finally got it right. He obviously thought so too. He was now bobbing his head around at all us.

  ‘What do you reckon, dudes? Am I a genius or what?’

  Scobie answered for everyone. ‘Orazio, I may have to download you an application form for MENSA.’

  ‘Cool!’ Razz said, ‘I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut! So, Billy Boy, what do you say, dude? Are you and your mystery man up for it?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Bill said, looking the happiest I’d seen him for a while. ‘Yeah, if we could be at a table with all you guys and those girls are happy too, that’d be good. That’d be great.’

  ‘Awesome. I’ll get on to Sally and see what those two chicks say. And even if there’s some problem, we can still get Miss to find other partners for you. So don’t worry, whatever happens, you and Mr X will be at our table.’

  Then Razz slid the sheet across to Bill and laid his pen on top of it.

  ‘So … you want to write the name of your partner down on the sixth spot?’

  Bill hesitated a moment, then printed a name carefully on the sheet and pushed it back to the middle of the table.

  We all leant in.

  ‘REALLY?’ we all said together.

  26.

  KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The Hoops of Steel had their first rehearsal the following Saturday afternoon at my place. Razz got dropped over early by his mum so we could work with Dad on putting his poem to music before the others arrived. Uncle Ray was there too because he and Dad were organising some Dugongs gigs.

  Razz and I were down in the rumpus room setting up the drum kit and waiting for Uncle Ray to arrive when Prue came in. She was carrying her violin and saxophone.

  ‘Prudles! Looking good,’ Razz said. ‘You all ready to audition?’

  Prue looked from Razz to me and back again.

  ‘Audition? I only agreed to join the band to do you all a favour. Why should I have to audition? No one else has.’

  ‘Well,’ Razz said, ‘you are the only non-Charlton member of the group, and being Ishmael’s little sister and a friend of the Scobster, some people might get the idea that there was some sort of bias involved in the selection process or that maybe you just got into the band because you’re so hot.’

  Prue managed to look angry and blush at the same time.

  ‘That’s stupid. You’re just being stupid. No one would think that. I’m not auditioning if no one else is.’

  ‘Fine,’ Razz said with a pleasant smile. ‘No problems. If you’re worried that maybe you’re not good enough, then we’ll just forget all about it.’

  Prue glared at Razz from under her dark fringe. I was half-expecting to see smoke come from her eyes. She snapped open her violin case, pulled it out and shoved it under her chin. Then she snatched up her bow.

  ‘Hold on a tick,’ Razz said, grabbing a pen and notebook and dragging a beanbag to a spot right in front of her. ‘OK, whenever you’re ready.’

  Prue proceeded to give blazing performances on both the violin and then the saxophone. When she finished she put both instruments to one side and waited while Razz continued to scribble down some final thoughts. Eventually he slapped his notepad shut.

  ‘Right, thank you, Prudles. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.’

  Prue’s eyes flared.

  ‘What? Stop being stupid, Razz. Tell me now.’

  ‘Now?’ Razz said. ‘But I really should discuss your audition in detail with Ishmael here and my other colleagues. We wouldn’t want to make any hasty decisions that we might regret later.’

  ‘What do mean, regret later?’

  ‘Well it’s just that playing in the Hoops of Steel might be too much of a step up for you.’

  I closed my eyes. It was like watching someone tapping on a nuclear warhead with a hammer, just to test how much it could take. When I opened my eyes Prue was smouldering.

  ‘Stop being stupid and tell me the truth – now!’

  ‘Look, we can’t all perform at our best on every occasion. Perhaps you were nervous.’

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  ‘Razz, I mean it. Stop mucking around and just tell me truly how I went.’

  ‘Well, there were obviously a few questionable notes, but I took into account your very tender age.’

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  ‘It was note-perfect and you know it! Tell me the truth!’

  ‘Well, let me just say this. I thought you tried very hard. Couldn’t fault your effort!’

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  ‘Look, do you want me in the band or not?’

  ‘Prudles,’ Razz said, looking hurt and horrified, ‘of course I do. But perhaps at this stage in your career the best way you could contribute to the band would be to wear something short and sexy and just dance around up the back pretending to play.’

  TAP.

  KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  Prue moved so fast that I didn’t know what was happening until she was hitting Razz with the best crash tackle I’d seen since Tommy ‘Flat-liner’ Manu creamed James Scobie in Year Ten. In a split second Razz was barrelled off his beanbag on to the carpet and Prue was perched on his chest with her knees pinning his arms to the floor.

  ‘Really, Prudles,’ Razz wheezed, ‘do you think this is acceptable behaviour for a young lady?’

  ‘Tell me the truth about my audition,’ Prue growled.

  ‘Well, I thought you showed real … potential and AAAAARRRRRRGH!’

  Prue now had Razz firmly by both sideburns and she looked like she was determined to pull them off.

  ‘All right! All right! All right! I’ll tell you! Let go! Let go! Let go! I’ll tell you!’

  Prue released her grip. Razz lay sucking in a few breaths. Then he continued.

  ‘OK, Prudles. I’ll be honest now. No joking around. I thought you had absolutely perfect … posture … and AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH! OK! OK! OK! OK! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!’

  But Prue didn’t stop it. Near-geniuses learn fast. She had Razz’s sideburns and she wasn’t letting go till she got what she wanted.

  ‘ALL RIGHT! YOU WERE AWESOME! YOU WERE UNBELIEVABLE! YOU’VE GOT MORE MUSICAL TALENT IN YOUR LITTLE FINGER THAN THE REST OF THE BAND COMBINED! WE’RE NOT FIT TO BE ON THE SAME PLANET AS YOU, LET ALONE THE SAME STAGE! AND NOT ONLY THAT BUT YOU PLAYING SAX IS THE COOLEST AND THE HOTTEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!’

  Prue opened her hands. Razz slumped back panting and groaning. He had beads of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Awwwww, that is so sweeeeeeeeeet!’ Prue squealed with a big smile. ‘And you’re not just saying that?’

  ‘Prue! What on earth are you doing?’

  It was Mum. She was standing at the rumpus room door. Dad and Uncle Ray were peering in behind her.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Prue said as she sat straddled on Razz’s chest. ‘I’m auditioning.’

  Uncle Ray raised his eyebrows. ‘This looks like my kind of band,’ he drawled.

  27.

  THE DUGONGS OF STEEL

  ‘You wrote this?’

  Uncle Ray was holding Razz’s poem. Razz was nodding.

  ‘And you weren’t
being tortured or force-fed any sort of mind-altering drug at the time? Amazing.’

  ‘Thanks! I reckon it’s pretty rigid too. Now we just need some killer music – but like, nothing that’s going to overpower the lyrics.’

  ‘Just a stick beating on a rock, then.’

  Razz looked doubtful. I don’t think he quite ‘got’ Uncle Ray.

  Writing the music for ‘Hot or what!’ ended up being a lot of fun. Dad and Uncle Ray did most of the work, of course, but Razz, Prue and I threw in a few ideas. Dad said we wanted it simple, fast, loud and targeted at the inner Neanderthal. An hour or so later when he played through the final version we were pretty sure we had a caveman hit.

  After lunch, Ignatius and Melvin arrived. Our backing singers – Scobie, Bill and Theodore – were going to rehearse with us back at school. The first task was to teach Yippy the song. After his initial run-through with Dad on acoustic guitar, Uncle Ray described Mel as ‘the love child of Johnny Rotten and Bruce Lee’. The big problem was that Yippy’s musical timing was about as good as his volleyball timing. Dad said he was ‘more your intuitive artiste’. That basically meant he just sang when and how he felt like it.

  On our first couple of run-throughs as a band, I doubt it would have been obvious to a casual listener that we were all in fact playing the same song. And I’m sure that most people would have just assumed that Melvin Yip was suffering from some rare musical form of Tourette’s Syndrome. As for Ignatius, he seemed totally overwhelmed by the whole thing. Dad kept telling him to relax and forget everything he’d ever learnt about music, while Uncle Ray just growled, ‘It’s rock and roll, for god’s sake, not Rachmaninoff!’

  But then, on our third and fourth attempts, something happened. A few times, totally by accident, everything kind of clicked together, and for a few bars we found ourselves somehow all playing and singing the same thing at the same time. And it felt good. Really good. It was like we’d caught the same wave and it was driving us all along. Of course it didn’t last long and we ended up being dumped head first into the musical sand, but the thrill of the ride stuck with us and we were keen for more.

  After Dad did some extra work with Yippy on his timing and Uncle Ray got on guitar and ran through the music a few times with the rest of us, things really started to come together. I’m not saying we turned into the world’s greatest band, but at least you could tell we were a band, not just a group of people standing around making noise at each other. By the end of the afternoon we’d managed to get through the song a few times with everyone in pretty good shape. We even played an extended version with Uncle Ray joining in on lead guitar, Dad sharing the vocals with Melvin, and Prue doing ad lib solos on both violin and sax. We really knew we were getting somewhere when even Ignatius threw in a couple of unscripted notes. Razz claimed we were the next super-group and hailed us the Dugongs of Steel.

  I went to bed that night tired but excited. For the first time I think I understood maybe just a little bit of what being in the Dugongs must have meant for my dad all those years ago and what it still meant for him now. I also started to think that maybe we could actually do it. That maybe the Hoops of Steel could play well enough to win the Battle of the Bands. And if we could do that, then maybe we could do something that at the beginning of the year seemed totally impossible. Maybe we could win the College Cup for Miss Tarango.

  But there were still a lot of maybes to get through.

  28.

  REVERSE COOL

  We had two more Hoops of Steel rehearsals in the music room after school with our three backing singers. Then after a busy and successful Arts Week, Open Day arrived.

  The feature event was always the Battle of the Bands. It was held on a special stage in front of the main oval grandstand. I don’t know about everybody else, but for me, a slight case of total and absolute terror had started to set in over the previous couple of days.

  Now there was a little over an hour to go. We’d just finished a couple of unplugged run-throughs of the song, and Razz, Prue and I were waiting in one of the spare classrooms for the others to return with some food.

  I checked on Razz. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or not. He was drumming away like a maniac on his knees while his legs jumped about like pistons. But that was Razz’s ‘normal’. Prue, on the other hand, didn’t look quite her regular confident near-genius self. She was chewing on a nail and staring at the carpet. She seemed a little on edge.

  ‘RAZZ, FOR GOD’S SAKE! CAN YOU SIT STILL AND STOP THAT THUMPING FOR JUST A SECOND!’

  OK, she sounded a little on edge as well.

  ‘What?’ Razz said, yanking out an earplug. ‘What’s up, Prudles? Not packing it, are you?’

  ‘No! Well … yeah, maybe. Just a little.’ Prue screwed up her mouth. ‘Maybe just a lot.’

  ‘Awwwwwww. Come here. What little Prudie-Wudie needs is a great big cuddle and a kiss from Uncle Wazzie.’

  Prue’s face looked like it had been carved from stone – and by a not-very-happy chiseller.

  ‘Then again, maybe not. Whatcha worried about, anyway?’

  ‘Well, you know, just the usual things – playing in front of all those people after only a couple of rehearsals, being a total disaster, coming last, getting laughed off stage. I mean, we’re not exactly your regular rock band, are we? We’re a bit … weird.’

  ‘Weird? No way, Prudles. We’ve got Reverse Cool.’

  ‘Reverse Cool? What’s that supposed to be?’

  ‘Ah,’ Razz said, shaking his head and smiling warmly at Prue, ‘young kids today. You know nothing – but you’re gorgeous!’

  ‘Razz, if you want to keep your sideburns attached to your head, just get on with it.’

  ‘Well, listen and learn. It’s like this. You’ve got two types of cool – your traditional Classic Cool and your Reverse Cool. Most people know Classic Cool when they see it. That’s your common everyday movie star, rock god, fashion model … me … kind of cool.’

  Prue stuck her finger in her throat and pretended to throw up. Razz smiled and mumbled ‘Gorgeous!’ but carried on regardless.

  ‘But the old Reverse Cool is a bit trickier to recognise. To have Reverse Cool, something or someone has to be so uniquely uncool that they actually turn cool again.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Prue said.

  Razz thought for a moment and then tried to explain.

  ‘Look, imagine there’s this island, right, and it’s surrounded by water.’

  Prue’s mouth fell open. ‘Wow, what an unusual island.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Razz said, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘Because all the cool people in the world live on this big beach on one side of the island. Now, as it turns out, the closer you can get to that beach the cooler you are. The further off the beach you go, the less cool you are. Get it?’

  Prue nodded at Razz like he was a dangerous mental patient.

  ‘Good. So just recapping: if you’re on the beach you’re way cool. If you’re wading in the water you’re a bit cool. If you’re a couple of kilometres out to sea you’re pretty daggy. And if you’re just barely visible on the horizon … you belong to Creswell House.’

  Razz stopped briefly to receive a round of applause from me and Prue.

  ‘But here’s the thing. You know how the Earth is round?’

  ‘Well, I read something about that on Wikipedia,’ Prue said, ‘but I wasn’t sure how accurate it was.’

  ‘Yes, good one, Prudles. Anyway, what I’m saying is, the further you go away from Cool Island beach the more uncool you become, BUT eventually you reach the other side of the world and then you start getting closer to Cool Island, but from the reverse side.’

  ‘And you’ve worked all this out by yourself?’ Prue said.

  ‘It’s 100 per cent Razz. I am the Guru of Cool!’

  ‘So, Mr Guru, you reckon the Hoops of Steel have Reverse Cool?’

  ‘Absolutely. Check it out. First we got Bill and young Ishmael here. They got your very s
ubtle Corny Nice Guy Reverse Cool.’

  I wasn’t exactly sure if I’d been complimented or insulted.

  ‘Then you’ve got Bunga. He’s got Reverse Cool ’cause he doesn’t even know there is a Cool Island beach and if he did, he wouldn’t care.’

  I agreed with that one. Theodore was a Cool Island entirely unto himself.

  ‘And then of course we got our big guns. First up, Prindabel. Now the Prindabuster is your absolute cutting-edge Reverse Cool. He really pushes the envelope. Then we got Melvin, of course. He’s a clear case of Extreme Reverse Cool. Either that or he’s clinically insane.’

  Razz spread his arms wide.

  ‘And finally there’s the Scobemeister – the reigning and undisputed champeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen of Reverse Cool. Scobes has Reverse Cool coming out of his uncool backside. He has so much Reverse Cool everyone can see it. That’s why he’s School Captain. Scobie has brought Reverse Cool to the masses.’

  Prue watched Razz closely and waited for him to continue, but he just pushed in an earplug and started to get comfortable in his chair.

  ‘Yep, no doubt about it. The Hoops of Steel have got Reverse Cool to burn,’ he said as he closed his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, well, great theory, Razz. I look forward to reading about it in more detail in all the scientific journals.’

  Razz grinned but remained silent as his head began bobbing to a beat. Prue watched him for a few seconds with a crooked smile fading on her face. Then she picked up a magazine and started flicking through its pages. She didn’t look as if she was enjoying it much. The further into the magazine she went, the faster, louder and harder her flicks became until I was sure the pages were going to start ripping off and flying across the room. They didn’t. The whole magazine did. Right into Razz’s chest.

  ‘Help! I’m under fire! Incoming!’ Razz said, holding his hands in front of his face as the magazine tumbled to the floor. ‘Hey, what did I do?’

  Prue’s eyes were little pinpricks of anger.

  ‘Well, what about me, then?’ she snapped. ‘You talked about everyone else except me with your stupid theory. So what about me?’