by Nick Earls
I’m hating this.
At the Royal Exchange I’ll park in the back car park, she says, going on in that damn accent. There appears to be a lane leading south-west from there, between two shops. You will walk down that lane. You will then turn right and walk along Toowong High Street until you arrive at the hotel, as though from the bus stop. I shall wait ten minutes, during which time I shall be reading this book. She holds up a Robert Ludlum novel she has borrowed from the library. If you are not back in ten minutes, I shall assume you have been successful. I shall drive down the lane, turn left and be gone.
My mother, when she takes the piss, really takes the piss. I am hating this evening even more. Hating this evening, hating Uncle Vanya and his whole family, hating Chekov, hating my parents whose abiding strangeness means I don’t have a chance out there. You’ve damaged me, I want to tell her. You’ve given me no idea of normal, damn you. If I die like a philby in there it’s all because of you.
She parks in the most secluded spot in the car park. I do the lane thing as she has directed. The Royal Exchange, it seems, has several different parts to it. I hadn’t expected that. (What had I expected? A barn? How could I not expect rooms?) It’s amazing how relaxed the people are in here, all of them, how conversant with ritual in a way that seems innate. How none of them has white canvas shoes, but maybe Frank won’t notice. I’m running round working up a sweat, running down my ten minutes, finding new bits of the Royal Exchange Hotel, not finding Frank Green.
I run back to the car park, to the secluded spot where my mother has opened her Robert Ludlum novel but is only pretending to read.
He’s not there, he’s not there, I tell her, and I don’t like the slightly desperate tone I use.
Calm now, Philby, she says. The mission has just begun. All will be well.
She guns the car out onto the High Street, loops back and parks in front of a panel beater’s shop round the corner from the Regatta.
Usual drill, she says, and reaches for Robert Ludlum.
I run to the Regatta, telling myself not to run. Telling myself Frank Green wouldn’t run. I’m sweating quite a lot now. I’m smelling like a wet dog, I’m sure of it. And I don’t see Frank Green, despite copious amounts of stupid looking. Everyone here is so relaxed. No one’s wearing a shirt like mine. No one’s wearing white canvas shoes. I feel sick, some bug, maybe.
Hey Phil, Frank says from behind, tapping me on the shoulder and catching me quite unprepared. We’re outside, on the verandah.
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt, peach jeans tonight. White canvas shoes. Frank Green is wearing white canvas shoes.
I just came in to buy a round, he says, and we walk to the bar. So what do you want?
I’m not prepared for this moment. Damn it, I didn’t think this through. I’m an anthropological idiot. What do I want? My palms sweat, my tongue rattles round in my mouth like a cricket bail. What do I want? I’m thinking all those beer words, but I have to pick the right one. I’ve never done this before. Do I want a pot? A schooner? A middy? Do I have to say which beer? What are the names of beers? I’m dying here. How many Xs was it? Or something involving spirits, spirits mixed with something. Frank’s waiting. Frank’s becoming confused. But Frank isn’t dizzy. Frank’s heart rate is well short of 200. Frank isn’t about to throw up and get frog-marched out of the tribe on his first day. I’m visualising my parents’ drinks cabinet. Damn them. Damn them and their stupid English people’s drink cabinet. You amateur theatre-loving bloody G and T drinking British colonial bloody bastards, I’m thinking when Frank says, What do you want? again.
I tell him beer, Fourex, a pot. In my head this is what I tell him, but my mouthparts are against me and say, Creme de Menthe.
Frank looks as though I’ve slapped him. Cream de menth, he says. You want cream de menth?
Yeah. I say yeah, because what else can I say now?
Righto, he says and shrugs his shoulders. You want ice?
Yeah.
So he orders three pots and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
He carries two pots out to the verandah. I carry one pot and the Creme de Menthe. And I visualise my parents’ drink cabinet and I curse the bright green bottle at the front. I see my father pouring it, offering me a glass with a con man’s smile and a white linen napkin over his arm, saying, And do we want it frappé, sir?
The others, Vince and Greg, friends of Frank’s from our year, stare at my drink from some distance away. I am about to begin a long journey into the wilderness. The urge to apologise for my drink choice is almost irresistible. I want to start again. I want a pot. I want to go outside and pay a cabbie ten bucks to drive over my head.
What’s that? Vince says, pointing to my drink (as if there’s any need to point).
I tell him and he nods, nods like he knew but he hoped he’d been wrong. He wants to ask why. He wants to ask why, but he doesn’t.
And I want to tell him. I want to say Look, it’s not my fault. My parents are so northern hemisphere, so insufferably strange. They drink this. They’ve made me drink it three times in company, but you shouldn’t think I’m one of them. I meant to get a pot.
We drink quickly.
My shout, Greg says, and goes inside. He’s back in a few minutes with three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
And I can’t change now. I know I can’t change now. To say No, I’ll have a pot would be to admit a gross error of judgement, so I sit in my lonely, soft cloud of mint, sipping away. I take the next shout. Three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
Frank is looking comfortable, leaning back in the white plastic seat and crapping on about uni, specifically about the chem prac and the coffee in my pocket, pinging a fingernail repeatedly against the rim of his beer glass and grinning at me while singing ‘The Long and Winding Road’ with the aid of no actual notes at all.
Shit, 96 per cent yield, Vince says, shaking his head. We got 88 and we thought that was okay.
I’m smiling, laughing with Frank about Vince who doesn’t quite get it and thinks we’re champion titrators, laughing with him about the coffee in my pocket, about how we wouldn’t have got 50 per cent without the coffee in my pocket. I’m sweating peppermint. I’m stinking of sweet mint and many parts of me are starting to relax, starting to become loose and less interested in direction. I’m laughing at almost anything now, just thinking about turning up at the chem prac with coffee in my pocket and laughing heaps.
This is very refreshing, I’m saying. Very refreshing with a little ice, you know. But I think I’m only saying this in my head, doing a secret ad for Creme de Menthe, turning to the camera with a James Bond smile and saying, Damn’ refreshing, and giving a little tilt of the head.
Vince says, Hey, what’s that like, that cream de menth? And he takes a sip from my glass. He scrunches up his eyes and thinks hard. He passes it to Greg and says, What do you reckon?
It’s not great with the beer, Greg says. It’s not great after ten beers, but maybe it’s not the best time, you know? Jeez, it’s strong though. I reckon if you wanted to get pissed, you’d get pissed pretty quick on this. What do you reckon, Phil? Get pissed pretty quick on this, do you?
I want to say, Shit yeah. I really want to say, Shit, yeah, but I can’t work out with any confidence which order the words go in, and while I’m thinking about it, while I’m trying really hard not to say, Yeah, shit, he says, I reckon Phil’s pissed on this, you know?
Well he would be, wouldn’t he? Frank says.
I can’t get up when it’s my shout any more, so I just hand Vince the money and he automatically comes back with three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
My sinuses feel very clear, I say to Frank. Very, very clear.
And Frank says, Good on you.
I tell him it must be the mint. The mint clears the sinuses, I say quite loudly. I can recommend it. And Frank thinks I am recommending it, in an immediate and personal way and, aware that he has a problem with his sinuses, ord
ers himself two Creme de Menthes with his next beer, taking them both quickly and earnestly, like medicine.
I am now feeling hot all over, and there is a ringing in my head coming from a long way off. I want to warn Frank about this, to say there might be side effects, but I can’t possibly be heard over his singing, particularly while Vince is shouting, Yeah I think they’re a bit clearer, your sinuses. Yeah. That’s sounding bloody good, mate.
So he joins in.
Hey, how about some Five Hundred, Greg says, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket. Just for small stuff, for ones, twos and fives, hey?
First I think he means dollars and I wonder what I’ve let myself in for, and then he scoops a handful of small change onto the table and organises it into three wobbly piles. So I say, Sure, and then realise I’ve never played Five Hundred before.
And just when I think I’m about to be thwarted by the tribal problem, I remember the Solo my father taught me to play. The Solo he had played when in the British Armed Forces in India. No one in the Punjab could touch me lad, when I had a bit of form going, he told me once. And he’s always said that Five Hundred was an inferior version of the great game, and that anyone who mastered Solo could make the best Five Hundred player in the world look like a fool.
So, after a brief clarification of house rules, we play. We play, and I hear myself shouting, but, I hope, not ungenerously as I take hand after hand. Boldly, flamboyantly, elegantly, like an impresario, like a hussar, feeling nothing below the waist, watching the table sway in front of me and rise on one occasion only to strike me softly in the face. And I feel nothing, nothing at all but mint and victory. And there are times when I’m sure my brain is resting and my arms play on without me, flourishing strategies that haven’t been seen outside the British Armed Forces in India since the late nineteenth century, passing Creme de Menthe to my shouting mouth, raking money across the table.
From this point, my recollections are non-linear.
I lie on my bed with my room full of well-established daylight and stinking of old mint. Crusty green debris around my nostrils, hidden Creme de Menthe oozing from my sinuses whenever I roll over. There is a bucket on the floor near the bed. A blue bucket with a slick of bubbly green swill on the bottom.
We sang ‘Across the Universe’, I recall. Sang it, or at least shouted it at the cars on Coro Drive, and they honked their horns, and I think I saluted. I recall myself shouting at all stages of the card game, loudly and in a ridiculous English accent, and saying very pukka things that today mean little. I remember giving the anthropology lecturer the bagging of a lifetime in his absence. At least, I assume it was in his absence. I can see him rearing up through my rickety dreams saying, You just got lucky kid, but I don’t think he did.
And some of my large pile of small-change winnings went on a bottle of Creme de Menthe and we toasted many things, including the way the game is, or was, played in the Punjab, back when it was played by experts and the sun had yet to set on the long twilight of the empire.
And I took the pack and started ripping out card tricks at high speed, just the way my father showed me, shouting at the others in a private parody of his voice, Come on then Charlie, pick a card, any card. And I fooled them every time, baffled them, and I can hear Vince’s voice saying, The man’s a genius, a genius.
And I’m still in the middle of this slow, green, glorious death, heaving up some more unnecessary gastric juices into the blue bucket when my mother comes in.
Your friend Frank’s called a couple of times, she says. He said to tell you that there’s a barbecue at his place tonight, and that three of the four girls you mentioned last night will be turning up. He said to tell you that it’s BYO—but don’t worry, he’ll have plenty of ice.
She watches me nod and lose a little more gastric juice.
You’re doin’ well, Philby, she says, perhaps in the accent she used to try out (unsuccessfully) for the part of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Doin’ fine.
SAUSAGE SIZZLE—1982
Second year starts as it was always likely to. Frank Green is pissed on Creme de Menthe again.
Which would be fine, if we hadn’t volunteered for barbecue duty at the faculty orientation sausage sizzle. Fine, if his naughty-French-maid apron didn’t keep flapping so close to the heat beads.
‘It’s how to meet ’em,’ he said, when he volunteered us for it weeks ago. ‘Be the man with the tongs. Save the biggest snags for the spunks and offer them up with some witticism.’
And he was about to move right into the witticism, I could tell, so I held up my hand and said, ‘Save a little magic for the day, Frank. It’s got to sound fresh.’
‘Sure,’ he said, the magic already on his mind. ‘Mate. First years.’ Said like a carnivore talking about gazelle flank. ‘First years.’ Said as though he was telling me right then he’d be rooting himself stupid by sundown.
First years. I was far too scared when I started first year to think that sex might actually happen. But deciding to be a lot less scared lately hasn’t made it any more likely, and that doesn’t seem fair. Hanging around with Frank was, I thought, a bit of a plus. Now I’m not so sure.
‘So how long’s it been since you’ve been close to a root?’ Frank says, eyeing off the herd of grazing first years, as though he’s doing it on my behalf. While reading my mind, but maybe it’s easily read.
‘Dunno,’ I tell him, which is a lie, since it’s no problem to add nine months to my age and come up with something just over nineteen years.
Already, I’m thinking today will not be the day that changes my luck. Already I’m thinking that maybe my best possible outcome would be that we both miss out. Then at least I won’t have to get the phone call from Frank in the morning. The lurid, sweaty detail. I just hate imagining Frank naked. I wish he didn’t feel the need to call.
He takes a sip of his tall green drink and the ice cubes clink against the sides. He’s famous for it now, his Creme de Menthe. And its strategic implications. ‘Much quicker than beer,’ he’s said regularly. ‘You’d be a fool to try to get pissed on beer once you know the green drink.’
So we’ve swapped, in a way. I’m okay with beer now, a few beers. And with the barbecue fired up and a few dozen sausages to turn, I’m on my second light for the afternoon, alternating with water. Which reminds me. Today I was gone before I started, really.
My mother drove me here, never a good beginning to an event.
‘But I’m heading that way, Philby,’ she said.
And I said, ‘No you aren’t.’
And she half-pursed her lips and said, ‘Get in the car.’
And I sat there in the traffic in the foul sun, every second talking myself closer to ruin. Sweating and wanting to stay home and wallow in the pool. Hating barbecues and preferring watermelon and feeling the mad fluttering of trouble let loose once again in my stomach as I thought about the next few hours.
She talked on and on, in vague and offensively encouraging tones, but didn’t quite say anything encouraging enough that I could go off at her about it. She’s getting better at me being a loser, and the only thing worse than that is, so am I.
‘It’s stinking hot today,’ she said as I peeled myself from the passenger seat upholstery and climbed out of the car, trying not to hear her say things like ‘tenner for a cab home’ (though I took it, of course) and ‘I’ll make a bed up for Frank, shall I?’
I just wanted her to go away, go away, let me sneak away from her privately, and I’d made it as far as the refec steps when I heard her shout, ‘Be careful, Philby. Watch your fluids.’
And I ignored her utterly, but the world knew just whose mother she was, and I got several pieces of good advice about fluids over the next half-hour or so.
It’s my confidence problem, and it just isn’t going. And putting a name to it’s only made it seem like some disease I’ve got, and helped me to anticipate everything it puts me through.
Any time I’m in the vicinity
of a heterosexual female of approachable age, I get a bit edgy. I think I’ve been saving myself for a little too long without ever meaning to. I am comprehensively inexperienced. I am stuck at the stage just before the conversation stage, and I know enough to know that that’s very stuck, and far removed from the main game.
It’s all down to attitude, I know that, and I’ve worked on it. I rehearse in my room, saying plenty of clever things quietly into my pillow, factoring in a range of possible girl responses and working out where I might take the conversation from there. And my mother thinks my sensitive side’s a plus and my pillow thinks I’m a right charmer, but in the real world I’m like a pencil-drawn outline of my better self.
I go to the faculty functions. Frank makes me. I’m the man with the plan (he makes me say that, over and over), and soon enough, I’m as dynamic as paint in there. Silent and desperately two-D up against the wall and wanting to try again some other night. Or never. Looking around at the casual talk and the coupling and realising I’m so seriously behind in this faculty that I have to have some form about me first time up, and practice (verbal or otherwise) just isn’t going to get me there.
I thought this’d get better. It’s got so bad my mother even told me that she’d thought it’d get better. It’s so bad she offered to buy me a book on it, and in that instant it got much worse.
I think the eighteenth century was good, plenty of other centuries were probably good. I think you could write poems for girls then (or sometimes even just quote someone else’s), and make them love you before you even met. At least, in some cases. I’d be up for that. I write the odd poem.
Frank doesn’t. Well, occasional limericks, but only when he can find two rhymes for ‘hornbag’, and that’s not the same thing. But it works for him. He keeps the limericks for the guys and gets the girl action he wants, better than 30 per cent of the time, and he never gets stuck in a relationship.
We work the barbecue and heat wells up from the beads and the sun flogs us from behind, through the spindly trees that grow out of the rockery. And there’s not much enthusiasm today for meat.