Zigzag Street

by Nick Earls

  So what do you do?

  I’m a lawyer. I work for a financial institution. Which is why I’m sitting here reading a novel I guess.

  I’m a student, she says. And before I can pick up the baton and ask the obvious question, What are you studying? she says, Do you like movies?

  Sure.

  Good. Cause I want to go and see Pulp Fiction, but I’ve got no-one to go with.

  I can’t believe this. This girl, this twentyish student babe, appears to be asking me out. And of course I’m going to lie and tell her I haven’t seen Pulp Fiction.

  Do you want to go? she asks.

  Sure. Yeah.

  I think about possible appropriate timing. I can’t look too eager or too blase.

  Maybe the weekend, I say, or some night next week.

  The weekend might be better. My parents don’t like me going out on week nights. Once school’s started. She senses concern. It’s okay. I’m nearly seventeen.

  This, of course, is killing me. She is aware of my struggle, and trying to smile me some reassurance. Now the smile, the smile that had such appeal, merely makes her look younger.

  I’m not sure it’s really such a good idea. I’m not sure how your parents would feel. I’m, well, I’m well into my twenties.

  That’s fine.

  I’m not sure that it’s fine.

  She’s sixteen, and already some bastard’s trashing her. And it’s me.

  Look, don’t get me wrong. Don’t think that, in a lot of ways, it isn’t a great idea. Don’t think this is easy. But, I really don’t think we should do this.

  You think I’m too young.

  There’s nothing wrong with being young.

  You’re not taking me seriously because I’m young.

  No, that’s not it. It’s not that I’m not taking you seriously, okay? It’s just that, well, my life has been a little confusing lately, and I’ve decided I should think things through more. Okay? And when I think this through, you, me, Pulp Fiction, a lot of it looks great. But then I think, you, me, Pulp Fiction, your parents, our very different levels of life experience …

  Now you’re talking down to me. You’re treating me like a kid.

  No I’m not. I’m not. Throughout this discussion it has not occurred to me to think of you as a kid. Trust me. Look, I think I’d better go. I think it would be better if I went.

  You’ll regret it.

  Yeah, I expect I will. But I think I’ve got to go. Please, don’t take this personally. Don’t think it’s any reflection on your desirability, okay. But I don’t think it would be a good idea for either of us. I’m not in great state of mind at the moment.

  She smiles, and continues to smile when I get up. As though she’s won some moral victory over me, as though it’s not her preferred outcome, but she’s ahead on points. And even though I am surely the moral victor in all this, all I feel as I walk out of the coffee shop is some heavy kind of defeat. How can she smile? How can she end such a mutually unsatisfactory exchange by smiling? Perhaps she is still a survivor, an optimist, having not yet endured her twenties. And a significant part of her teenage years. I’m not finding this easy.

  I cross the street and keep walking. I am appalled that this involves a struggle against the urge to go back. I tell myself that this must only be because someone was nice to me, made me feel, for a moment, desirable. I tell myself any compulsion to return has nothing to do with the fact that she was a babe, with flagrant disregard for the sixteen problem. I tell myself, you don’t do this, you just don’t do this, you don’t keep thinking of these things, these pert cleavage things, as though they might happen, as though you might go back. And while I’m busy telling myself all of this and reinforcing my weak moral position, I realise that in my haste to leave the coffee shop, my keys must have dropped out of my pocket.

  So now I have to go back.

  Just for the keys. Just the keys.

  This will present its own problems. She will see me approaching, she will think I’ve changed my mind. And I’ll have to be even clearer than before, and this is quite unfair to her. It would be cruel, and I am, after all, endeavouring to diminish my capacity for cruelty. It occurs to me that I should think about the possibility of arranging to see her, maybe once or twice more, just so I get the chance to be clear on all this. Just so she knows it’s not her, so it doesn’t have any impact on her self-esteem. And then I think, what about her parents? How would they feel about that line of logic? I’m sorry, I had to have sex with your daughter. After I dropped my keys it would have been unfair not to.

  I go back to the coffee shop, saying to myself, just the keys, just the keys.

  And she’s gone. Now I have no dilemma. I look and I see just the keys, but somehow this is not the same concept as a moment ago. It’s gone from, Be strong, choose just the keys, to, You have no choice, just the keys. This is morally easy but nowhere near as good. I look out the window to see if she is nearby, and it doesn’t matter that I’m telling myself I shouldn’t be looking. She isn’t there.

  I pick up the keys.

  I notice a pair of sunglasses on her seat.

  The dilemma resumes.

  My decision is that I don’t actually have to go back to work yet. That, providing there are no interruptions, I can quite reasonably expect to finish the chapter before I go back. I sit down. I look at the page. I read not a word.

  Hey, excellent, my sunnies, someone says.

  I look up as an incredibly unattractive woman leans her way into the booth. She notices me looking at her.

  I left them here an hour ago. I was sure they’d’ve gone.

  I smile through the pain.

  Hey, is that a good book?

  Yeah, it’s fine.

  And there’s no way she’s going to get to see the personal remark. Before she can ask about Pulp Fiction, I look at my watch, feign concern (and I care not that this ploy is offensively obvious), say something about being lost in the book and late back to work and I run out.

  I run about a block and a half, and I’m not certain why.

  Back in the office, after the last snuffing out of this glimmer of unkind hope, I phone Veny Armanno. I tell him what just happened, trying to focus on the babe part, and he says, It happens to me all the time, sixteen year olds coming up to me while I’m reading and asking me out.

  Really?

  Yeah, sure, all the time.

  21

  The next day I play it safe. I’m too fragile for this.

  I only leave the office for lunch when I’ve arranged to meet Jeff and we can sit back in the usual place at the big window, with most nearby young females safely on the other side of the glass.

  I made a decision to adopt a low profile, I tell him, but it didn’t go well. A sixteen-year-old babe won onto me.

  That’s a tough one.

  I tell him the story and he says it’s very fine and that it probably could only happen to me.

  I tell him this bothers me. This notion that crap is my domain. That this is the sort of story that seems to be mine alone. That crap seems to follow me and I can’t shake it. That I don’t know what to do with my life, in any of its aspects. I don’t know if I should be in a relationship or not, and if I should be I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know about my job. I don’t think I’m very good at it. I used to put a lot of thought into things and now I’m just a straight shooter.

  And my hand goes the finger pistol without me meaning it to.

  I think I need a new job, I tell him. A good job, a job where I do some good. I want to travel the world and have an important job where good things happen.

  There are jobs like that? You want to be the next Boutros Boutros-Ghali or something?

  Yeah. Richard Richard-Derrington. Yeah. I want to fly in the big plane. I want to talk to the big people. I want a big job. And not with some joke outfit like the UN.

  I don’t know that there are a lot of those jobs.

  I only want one. Just on
e. And I’d be very good at it. Just watch me. Instead of now, when I’m just good at crap.

  Don’t be so hard on yourself. There’s nothing wrong with being good at crap. And you are very good at crap.

  Thank you.

  Crap is your best thing.

  I have known crap and I am its master.

  The master of crap. The Krapmeister.

  It’s a special gift.

  A very attractive gift, and you shouldn’t sell it short. People find you very interesting, solely on account of it. Before you discovered crap, you were practically a nobody. You would have had what, a couple of friends, outside your family?

  Just a couple.

  And now?

  Hundreds of friends. Seven hundred at last estimate. I’m very interesting. Very interesting. I’m a very interesting man.

  And people talk about you. People take an incredible interest in your glorious failures.

  Krapmeister fame.

  And you want the big job, the big plane.

  That merely shows my insecurity about my shortcomings, I realise that now. All I think I should have now is a small job, a small soft plane that hangs limply and points to the centre of the earth.

  Actually, I think there’s a way of combining this. Of taking all of your complex ambitions and diverse talents and rolling them into one great high-profile Krapmeister job.

  Yeah?

  Celebrity partner. It’s right up there. World fame, pure fame, fame only for its own sake. A kind of fame as devoid of any association with merit as possible. You could be the next Liz Hurley.

  Yeah. Yeah. So I call myself an actor, and I become famous, quite impressively famous, for dating someone famous.

  Then people forget why you’re famous, and suddenly you’re famous in your own right.

  Yeah. Yeah. All I’ve got to do is find the right star. I could be that kind of actor, if I found the right star.

  Yeah. So we should make a list, make a plan.

  Kylie’s available at the moment.

  Yeah, and I think she’s a lot smarter than they give her credit for.

  Really?

  Who knows, but if you’re going to be dating her soon I’m not going to say anything bad about her, am I? You know me. Even when she trashes you I’m not going to run her into the ground.

  You know what would be great?

  What?

  If I could date Liz Hurley. Now that would be great. If I became famous for dating someone who had become famous for dating someone famous. That would be the ultimate Krapmeister triumph.

  Or alternatively, you could make a move on someone who’s famous on account of a celebrity relationship that’s just ended.

  Yeah.

  So who have we got?

  Helena Christensen? She and Michael are off on account of the Paula Yates thing.

  But she’s got her own thing going, hasn’t she, the supermodel thing? She’s not just a celebrity partner.

  Yeah, I guess. But being a supermodel is very close to being famous for nothing. I mean, single supermodels are basically just celebrity partners having some down time.

  Okay, so don’t strike her off the list or anything, but it does lack purity. She’s no Liz Hurley.

  Shoshanna Lonstein and Seinfeld are off.

  Yeah, yeah. And he’s obviously thinking about this one very seriously. The fabulously-breasted Shoshanna Lonstein trashes the King of Comedy for the King of Crap.

  Hey, she had no choice. It was fame at first sight.

  This is good. This could be the one.

  I could get my own show. Maybe a talk show. But with credibility. Long ponderous interviews with only personal friends, and always about nothing.

  It’s good. It’s good. But it’d probably be on cable, at least at the start. Until it became recognised as the Seinfeld of talk shows and blew away Oprah and Phil and the rest of them. It’s great. They’re all talking about transvestites and you’ve got a panel discussing the importance, or otherwise, of ironing the whole shirt.

  This is what I’d been lacking, some sense of career path. I was beginning to stagnate, I think. I realise that now. Suddenly, a future opens up before me. With crap there is hope.

  22

  But later, when I’m away from the hype, this position starts to look risky. It’s possible that the assessment was a little too optimistic, and that crap should not be seen as being quite so versatile.

  I determine that I should follow a policy of being more practically oriented. I should take Jeff’s other advice of setting small goals and achieving them, and appreciating the validity of limited fulfilment.

  I will turn the unwelcoming shapelessness of work into a list of small and accomplishable tasks, and I shall deal with them one at a time. I shall then do the same with my personal life, my diet, the renovations and my living arrangements.

  My living arrangements. I am not suited to living alone. I don’t need a list to work that out. I think I’ve already worked it out. I should think seriously about clearing out at least one of the other rooms and renting it to someone. Or I should just live somewhere else, with people. With due consideration a plan emerges. Quite a good plan.

  On Thursday I meet Jeff again for coffee.

  I know what I need to do, I tell him. I shouldn’t live alone.

  Good. Probably true.

  I should share a house with nineteen-year-old students. Probably quite a large house and probably three of them.

  Nineteen-year-old students?

  Yeah.

  I’m not sure that nineteen’s wise.

  It was fine when it was the fabulously-breasted Shoshanna Lonstein.

  Yeah, but that’s a celebrity thing. It’s a specific exemption. Besides, that’s more a career move than a relationship.

  And this is just a residential arrangement.

  Nineteen-year-old students. Three of them.

  Yeah.

  Yeah, and all of them babes? Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that the plan?

  You’ve got a problem with babes?

  Three of them? What are you after? Biodiversity? Three babes and your only dilemma being which one of them to jump at any given time? Maybe the four of you sleeping in one big bed?

  Maybe. Maybe, yeah.

  This doesn’t worry you?

  What?

  This doesn’t suggest any kind of judgement problem to you? You think this is fine?

  I think it’s very fine.

  Okay, three nineteen-year-old students, Friday night, you’re in your room, their rugger-bugger boyfriends are all round, the house is filled with the moans of passion and none of them yours? Three bed-heads are rhythmically thumping against walls while yours is marked by the gnashing of lonely teeth? Still fine?

  I think about this for a while, and it is a danger. I’m still a bit too fragile for that kind of risk.

  Well, twenty-two year-old students then, I suggest to him.

  I’m not totally sure that that’s the solution. I could be wrong, but I think you might be missing the point. I think you’re trying to revisit something here. A moment that has probably passed. I think you’re romanticising the notion of shared student houses.

  But they’re great.

  But people can still find themselves being miserable in them. I think you could be one of those people.

  No.

  I think the moment has passed. I also think you don’t need to pretend that it hasn’t. You don’t have to explain your life by trying to convince yourself that you’re really nineteen, or twenty, or twenty-two, or whatever, so it’s okay that you’re not in a relationship. I think at the heart of this notion is some fantasy about recapturing lost youth, as though this time you could be really good at it.

  I could be much better at being twenty now. Think about it.

  No, I don’t have to. You can’t be twenty. And you don’t even really want to be. You’re just saying to yourself, It’s all right that I just got trashed cause I’m only twenty and I can move o
n. I’m only twenty and relationships come and go when you’re twenty. You’re trying to tell yourself you haven’t lost much and you’ve got some kind of freedom back in return. And if I believed all that I’d be happy for you. But I don’t think you believe it. I don’t think it would make you happy.

  Yeah, but it wouldn’t be bad. Think of it. Students. Students like we see when we’re out playing tennis at uni.

  Yeah, but you reach a point when you come to terms with the fact that you won’t be bouncing on every babe you see. That it’s just not a game you’re in any more. And it’s not a bad thing. The real problem, the way you’re looking at it, is that the students will keep coming through. Each year a new batch of seventeen year olds, and each year you’re a year older. Okay? Remember that time, when you were twenty-two, and you had that thing happening with that school captain?

  Yeah.

  Okay. Since you were twenty-two it was fairly controversial. Right? Even now, there are people who do not regard you highly because of it.

  They envy me. Some people never score a school captain.

  Whatever. If you managed it again, with the present captain of the same school …

  Is she a babe?

  Get the babe thing out of your head. If you managed it now, with the present captain of the same school, you being twenty-eight, it would be looked on quite badly. People would not have much respect for you at all. If you did it in ten years time, which, it occurs to me, is something you might quite like to do, people would be completely appalled.

  Yeah, just imagine it.

  Appalled. They would be appalled.

  But if you were single now …

  If I was single now I’d be looking for the same things you are. When I was ready again. And those things, when you really think about it, might not involve cutting a swathe through the office holders of GPS schools.

  She was very mature. She was the captain after all. She was much more mature than me.

  Yeah. And she made the first move, Your Honour.

  She did.

  So he’s not keen on my plan. I can sense that. And he did work out some aspects of it that I might not have fully considered. Even though he focussed on seventeen year olds rather than nineteen year olds, and that’s not an error to dismiss lightly.