by Nick Earls
‘There’s a lot of good things to Libra. Librans are balanced, nice. Aren’t they? Or are they looking for balance? I’m never sure.’
‘I don’t know about balance, but I’m sick of being the nice guy of the zodiac. That’s exactly my problem. It’s the eighties now—nice is baggage. Not that I want to be mean—not at all—but it’s a fine distinction. I’ve got to get edgier. I want to have the potential to break hearts, but to choose not to. I want to be known to hang out with bands, even if I don’t. I want to have at least one friend named after a day of the week, preferably Wednesday. I want to be trouble of the “Phil, he’s trouble” kind, but I’m beginning to think that trouble isn’t in me.’
‘Trouble?’ she says. ‘Trouble is trouble. It can look good from a distance, but close up it sucks.’
‘But it looks good from a distance. It’s that long-range stuff that gets you the chance. Look at Frank.’
‘Not a Libran.’
‘Definitely not a Libran. Taurus, or some shit like that. Frank’s a funny kind of trouble from a long way off, but it gets noticed and he’ll be going out with someone in minutes. That’s his style. And he’ll only do them harm. Can’t they see that?’
‘It’s not like he hides it.’ She shrugs. ‘But anyway, you’re with Phoebe. What’s the problem? Nice must have got you somewhere.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I had completely forgotten the Phoebe lie. I’d forgotten it’s Sophie I’m talking to. ‘I was talking theoretically. About Libra. And I do get some pretty long stretches of in-between time, so maybe that’s where I think Libra is. I must have got a lucky break with Phoebe. I’m talking generally. Like, supposing Frank and I were both available at the same time, I’d be backing him to change his luck first.’
‘Can’t see why.’
‘Plenty of reasons. Confidence, bravado, how it all looks from a distance. You should see him dance. Most of us, we’re not good dancers. A lot of guys look bad out there. A lot of guys know they look bad out there and they stiffen up, and things get worse. Not Frank. Frank says he chooses not to carry the white man’s burden, which he defines as the burden of trying to dance and trying not to dance at the same time.’
‘Does he think girls find lines like that clever?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s part of what he tells them or just part of what he tells me. But, I have to say, I know what he means.’
Suddenly, the lack of time pressure isn’t enough reason for me to stay on the steps. I don’t want to talk about Frank and me and girls and dancing. Sophie keeps it up a while longer, mainly the Frank part, while I take the costume off and then while she puts it on.
‘Done,’ she says, and she kicks the toilet door wide open with her big orange foot and bounces out. She turns her back to me. ‘Pray, sirrah, there’s many a slip with an undone zip.’
‘Verily, we wouldn’t want our chicken skinned before its time.’
Frank, when we get to the serving area, is eating coleslaw out of the tub with a spoon.
‘Hey,’ he says, ‘how good is this coleslaw? I hadn’t tried it before. Why are we not selling heaps of this stuff? We should give it a big push in the next half hour, while Sophie’s out at the road. And we should have a slogan, like, “how good is slaw?”’
‘I hope you’re going to eat the whole thing, now that you’re dunking a spoon in there.’
‘For sure.’ And that’s when I see that he’s not only eating the coleslaw, he’s also wearing the lid around his neck on a piece of string. ‘Hey, if we’re the A Team,’ he says, ‘I figured I’m probably Mister T. Yeah?’
*
On the next chicken changeover, Sophie says she doesn’t want to spoil it for Frank, but the A Team stuff’s a management strategy, really. Not that we aren’t the A Team, but she’s pretty sure Ron got that from a course he did. He does a lot of courses. Sometimes management, sometimes copper enamelling. He’s right and left brain, she tells me, and he didn’t used to be. He’s a big self-improver and he reckons you’ll never know what’s going to improve you until you try, so you’ve got to think laterally. But it’s a complicated state of affairs. Books have also identified him as a people person and a hands-on manager, both of which can be good but they also have an association with a tendency to take things to heart, and boundary problems.
‘There was a while when some of the Mowers crowd came round for darts in our downstairs bar every Friday,’ she says, ‘and that was a boundary problem as far as I was concerned. But it kind of died out. Anyway, I think tonight was from a course he did that said you should look enthusiastic when you turn up, and tell every shift they’re the A Team. I filled in for Barb last night, and we were the A Team then, too. Even though they’re not much fun and, to be honest, their approach to chickening leaves a lot to be desired. They just stand out there and point.’
‘And where’s the magic in that?’ There’s an instinctive shrug of my wings when I say it, and I’m sure the other team doesn’t inhabit the big bird the way we do. ‘Where’s the chicken in it, even?’
I’m on my way out to the road when Frank calls me over, shows me slaw.
‘See the carrot?’ he says, pointing to the bottom of the now almost-empty tub. ‘The bits of carrot? Do you think they look like Jesus?’
‘What?’
‘Just a passing resemblance. Not exactly, or anything. It was just a question. Hey, I’m not the one who looks like a fucking chicken, all right?’
*
I’ve always been the kind of person people tell things to and tonight, courtesy of something that might be a minor boundary problem, I got to learn that all is not well at World of Chickens or in Ron Todd’s mouth. But as long as Ron’s got a good dentist and the boundary problem doesn’t push me to darts in the downstairs bar with the Mowers crowd, we should be okay.
Frank should have been part of the conversation with Ron. Maybe that way he wouldn’t have been mouthing off about him being a ‘smug bastard’ in the car on the way back to my place. But perhaps that was more to do with the lopping business, and the fact that its trajectory seems so earth-bound. That got talked about too. I don’t understand how the Greens can work the way they do—how there’s still pressure on Frank to take the business on, at the same time as there’s genuine family pride in him being at uni studying medicine. Don’t they get it?
I’ve got none of that pressure and not much of the pride. Uni was always part of my plan, and it didn’t break new family ground to get there. My mother even works there, tutoring while she does her PhD. Frank’s the one who broke the mould. And he’s serious about surgery. I can tell. I’d wondered why he’d been so annoyed about the long-case assessment, and that’s it.
Perhaps surgery, for him, is like film-making for me—an ambition that came to him years ago and seemed implausibly out of reach. The difference is, he’s reaching for it. If I’d started in Frank’s position it’s likely I’d be up trees by now, a beaut young climber and learning the ropes of the business as well.
But film-making’s not the same. There was no course in it that I could see, nothing that would actually get you anywhere. I’m working on it, working towards it at least, saving for a video camera. It’s a long-term plan, and I’m doing what I can.
7
Frank’s late getting to the Mater the next morning. He’s been at Royal Brisbane, talking to Charlie O’Hare about his long-case assessment.
‘The arsehole. He could have passed me. He said he’d never liked my attitude, so he looked more closely at the write-up when I handed it in. The patient had only just been discharged, so it was easy for him to get the file. And he sat there eating bloody Tim Tams the whole time. The way he used to in tutes. He couldn’t even stop eating to talk to me. Him and his “mindless copying”. Mindless bloody biscuit eating . . . ’
‘So what happens now?’
‘Do it in the holidays. Like you said. He’s actually taking holidays then too, so someone else’ll probably mark it.’
‘Well, that’s good. Hard to believe anyone’d want to take a holiday with him.’
‘He’s got kids, you know. And that’s even harder to believe. How would it be, your dad getting stuck into you at the beach because you’d built a shit sandcastle?’
‘Or, worse, copied someone else’s sandcastle.’
‘And he sat there, the whole time I was explaining what I’d done and that I thought the no-abbreviations rule was for tutes and that the write-up actually had to show that we knew what a hospital file looked like, and he just smiled. Smiled like “you ignorant, dumb bastard”, tapping biscuit crumbs onto my case write-up.’
‘Well, you’re out of there now. You’ll do the case, someone else’ll pass it and O’Hare’ll be some other tute group’s arsehole next term.’
‘Yeah.’ It sounds like he’s agreeing, but he’s still thinking about O’Hare, not wanting to let all the anger go just yet. ‘Did I miss much with the eight-thirty lecture?’
‘No. Bleeding in early pregnancy. There was no handout but I took a lot of notes. There’s a chapter on it in the book, too.’
‘Well, I should see about getting myself a copy then, shouldn’t I? I might go through your notes at lunchtime.’ He takes a look at the first couple of pages. ‘Jesus, could you please learn to write legibly? People other than you can end up depending on these, you know.’
‘I can translate at lunchtime. I’ll tell myself it’s revision.’
‘That’d be good.’ He puts the notes in his bag. ‘Hey, I’ve lined up a job for us, this Saturday night. It’s cash, and it’s a better rate than Ron Todd pays. We’d be working the bar on the Paradise.’
‘The Paradise? As in, the barge with the plastic palms that goes up and down the river while people sink as much beer as they can manage?’
‘That’s the one. Except I thought the palms were real. And it’s a theme night—Viva Espa–a. I don’t know exactly what that’ll mean, but I guess there’ll be sangria and cocktails. And a lot of regular dull girls pretending to be hot-blooded Spaniards for the night. That should be okay.’
‘I thought you were looking for maturity, not regular dull girls.’
‘I was thinking of you, mate. You’re always up for a crack at a regular dull girl, aren’t you? Anyway, I’ve accepted. It’s a white-shirt black-pants job, so you’ve got the gear for it. There might be funny hats, or something, but they’d give us those.’
‘Hey, I don’t do hats. You know I don’t do hats. You should never have . . . ’
‘I was kidding. There’s no hats. Funny hats’d be Mexico, not Spain. Get real. Anyway, it’s organised. AJ heard they needed a couple of guys and he thought we’d fit the bill. And I thought it could be good for some more camera money for you.’
‘Well, that’s true.’
‘And it’ll get you talking to girls other than Sophie Todd, and that’s not a bad idea.’
‘What’s wrong with talking to Sophie Todd?’ No, not indignation, stupid choice. He just gives me a look. ‘You expect us to get changed in silence? Is she silent when she’s working at the counter with you?’
‘Close to it.’
‘She’s got a boyfriend.’
‘You know that’s the kind that’s trouble for you. You know that’s the kind you fall for. No performance anxiety because she’s got a boyfriend, and then your little heart gets all knotted up and you have to hate the boyfriend and you don’t even know him.’
‘We’re friends, dickhead. And it’s actually because she’s in a relationship that it’s easy for us to be friends. So don’t make out . . . ’
‘Would you turn her down if she made a move?’
‘It’s not happening.’
‘So that’d be a No then.’
‘It’s an N/A. Not applicable.’
‘You’re going the spoil aren’t you? You’re out the back being Mister Sensitive Chicken and quietly white-anting Clinton. Next you’ll be telling her stories about your childhood and you’ll be all vulnerable and engaging.’ He says it as though vulnerable and engaging are two of the least desirable things to be, a bad act that’s close to making him throw up and laugh at the same time. ‘You’ll be listening to whatever guff she comes out with about star signs and bad dates she’s been on, and you’ll be doing funny voices and poetry and shit. I’ve seen your routine, fancy man. I’ve never seen it work, but I’ve seen your routine.’
*
Okay, I don’t have to cop that. Vulnerable and engaging aren’t bad at all, and they’re not necessarily a tactic. Frank says they’re a tactic, but he calls them a ‘just good friends’ tactic, which means they’re inherently flawed. You put in the hard work, you put yourself on the line, and how does it end up? If it misfires you’ve got nothing. If it succeeds, you’ve got yourself another just good friend.
‘If you want to be the guy with the shoulder to cry on—the guy they go to for guy advice—go for vulnerable and engaging. Really, they’re pretty much like being gay.’ That’s what he said. ‘You’ve got to get a bit of mongrel about you to get noticed.’
And he’s got it all wrong when it comes to Sophie. She’s with Clinton. We share a chicken costume, some conversation and the occasional hint of green-apple shampoo, and anything else is not applicable. Completely N/A.
It’s well into the evening. My mother’s at her first Pirates of Penzance rehearsal, my father’s working in his study and I’m on my bed listening to one of my many artfully compiled compilation tapes and trying to read Beischer and Mackay, chapter eighteen, ‘Bleeding in Early Pregnancy’.
And vulnerable and engaging is not a tactic. As it is, I’m not particularly vulnerable, I’m not trying to look that way and what’s wrong with engaging? That’s a part of interacting with people. I like getting on with people, and that’s something Frank could actually be better at.
It’s only now, looking up at the old model planes hanging from my ceiling—at the 1:72 scale Battle of Britain being fought up there—that I realise I’ve never even thought it possible that there might be a girl in this room some day. I can imagine myself being vulnerable and engaging and how well it’d go, how much I’d impress her with the way I’d downplay my clever hot-skewer work to the fuselage of several of the German planes where my Hurricanes and early model Spitfires have been savaging them.
It’s a winning combination, an irresistible package, this room and the guy in it—the planes, the bullworker, the porn clock above the door and me. At least there’s a TV. And the what’s-not-to-love ‘Steam Engines of Great Britain’ bedsheets which, to their credit, have lasted a lot of years now. So long that most of the time they’re just sheets to me, but then I suddenly glimpse the unmistakable elegant cylindrical flank of the Flying Scotsman and it’s ‘oh my god there are steam engines of Great Britain on my bed’.
Naturally, my mother’s involved. I’m sure she could give me other sheets, but she says the steam engine ones are so colourful it’d be a shame to waste them in the spare room. I think she’s trying to wear me down. It’s a tactic. She keeps giving me kiddie sheets, so that if I want grown-up sheets I have to behave like a grown-up and get them myself—make my own bed. She has no idea how small a risk I face, having these sheets in my room.
‘Vulnerable’ and ‘engaging’ are longer words for nice, and that’s their problem. There’s a group of girls I get cards from at Christmas. Four girls who don’t know each other, so it’s not as though they’ve conferred. I met them one at a time, wanted them, pursued them in the previously described futile manner, slept with none of them and now it’s cards every Christmas. So I have to send cards back every Christmas, because it’s rude if you don’t. Which means I’m in this big fat Christmas-card rut, and I probably will be all my life.
What amazes me is how many awful Christmas cards there are out there that thank a person for friendship, often with the aid of a cheesy rhyming couplet or two. That’s what they send me, and it’s not like I give them much friendship. Two of t
hem I don’t even see during the year.
For the sake of those girls—to free them from the rhyming couplets, if nothing else—they should print cards that say:
Thank you for last year’s card
And for putting up such a poor effort to get me into bed
That I feel compelled to do this every year
And they should also print one for me that says:
Thank you for last year’s card
Allow me to correct a misunderstanding
I have never wanted to be your friend
A while back I wanted to sleep with you
And then you turned out to be the kind of person who sends
Friendship Christmas cards with cheesy rhyming couplets
Are you unable to understand the meanings of the following words
platitude
vomit
But supposing you want to have sex with me
You have my number
Enough Beischer and Mackay for now. It’s time to change my luck. Will it be The Cars’ ‘Let’s Go’ or Heart’s ‘Magic Man’? They’d have to be the two best choices on the tape. If only Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Second Hand News’ wasn’t called ‘Second Hand News’. It’d be just right otherwise, with that line that keeps coming up about doing my stuff in the tall grass. ‘Magic Man’—that’s the one to go with. It has the edge when it comes to passion, in a slinky sort of way, it’s got that storyline about sheer irresistibility and, most subtle of all, it’s a chick song. Like Dusty Springfield in AJ’s car, I’m swerving the cliché of guy rock, I’m looking sensitive, and surely geniune desirability is only one small step away. It’s decided. ‘Magic Man’ is to be my new (and first) fuck song, and that’s all there is to it. It won’t give me mongrel quality, but it’s a start.
I can record tape-to-tape in the lounge room, so I find a blank ninety-minute cassette and set out to make forty-five minutes of fuck song. This is where I’ll outdo Frank. I’ll not only be ready when my chance comes, I won’t have to try to cram it into three minutes.