by Nick Earls
‘Phil,’ someone says behind me. And, surprisingly, it’s not Nicole Kidman. ‘Laura, from Jacqui’s office,’ she says, just as I’m working out she’s Laura from Jacqui’s office. ‘We should introduce you to a few people.’
‘No, it’s fine, really. I’m a bit tired.’
‘No, come on,’ she says, probably figuring she’s outnumbered me by referring to herself in the plural. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of people here who’d like to meet you.’
‘I don’t know that I’m really up to sensible conversation. I just got back in.’
And, of course, I don’t mention it, but these people swing. I’m way better off out of it.
‘I was only thinking, like, soap star, you know? We’re not talking brain surgeon.’
‘Brain surgeon would be fine.’
‘Here, come and meet Chloe.’
Chloe is at the bar getting herself a mineral water. I know who she is, and Laura doesn’t need to point. Chloe in her burgundy dress, the kind of girl I used to stand near at Med Balls, just in case she’d decide to talk to me. The kind of girl I practised conversation for, but never got to meet. But several degrees worse, of course, since Chloe’s also on TV.
And why is it that people think brain surgeons make problematic partners in conversation? I’ve met several who are pretty personable, and happy to talk about anything. It’s the Chloes I’m not so sure about.
But it’s not that I’d lack material. I’ve never seen her show, but I know her well from TV Week covers and endless promos and my reading of crappy waiting-room mags (which is, to say the least, extensive). I know she loves horses and everyone she’s worked with says she’s really nice. I know she’s got the traditional soap-star soft spot for Ethiopian kiddies. I know the battles she used to have doing her homework on set. But, shit, I also know Gwyneth Paltrow better than Blythe Danner does by now, and it doesn’t make me ready to talk to her.
Laura calls out to Chloe to pin her down before she escapes, hands me a glass, does the intro and leaves, casting a kind of blind-date aura behind her in a well-meaning way that makes us both uncomfortable.
So I tell Chloe I like her work, in case that helps. Fifty things I could have said, and what I actually tell her is, ‘I like what you do,’ with a bit of a nod, and I downplay it just enough that I think she believes me.
And I always thought she looked attractive in the ads, Chloe with her famous big eyes and her wide mouth, and she still does in person, but much younger. Well, not much. I seem to be drawing some line between nineteen and seventeen, as though it’s reasonable to find her attractive if she’s slightly more than half my age, rather than slightly less. Chloe, I realise now as she sucks at her mineral water, is a child. And that, I tell myself, is the reason I lied to her about liking what she does.
‘So what do you do?’ she says, in a way that seems like trained politeness. (Now I’ve decided she’s a child it’s as though she can’t have a thought of her own.)
‘I’m a director. I’m going to be working with Jacqui on a project. So far I’ve made a few shorts. A couple of them were on SBS.’
‘SBS,’ she repeats, and somewhere behind her eyes a portcullis slides quietly down, a drawbridge lifts. ‘I like what they do,’ she says, in a way that doesn’t begin to hide the fact that she never watches SBS, but that does suggest she knows I lied about watching her soap.
Then we both adopt a fairly adolescent kind of silence which I, as the non-adolescent, decide it’s up to me to end, but as soon as I’m saying, ‘Me too,’ and then going on to say, ‘That’s why I’ve done a couple of things with them,’ I realise that SBS is a dead issue and Chloe is already rationalising this whole conversation as just part of the price of fame, and willing it to stop.
‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit jet-lagged,’ I decide to tell her, hating the thought that I’m boring a teenager. ‘I just got in from Toronto.’
And she says, ‘Right,’ as though I’m a liar or a wanker or even more boring than she’d thought, and it doesn’t particularly matter which.
‘You’ve got horses, haven’t you?’ I sicken myself by saying, suspecting I’m about to begin some horse-owning lie of my own just to keep the talk happening. And where has all that well-rehearsed Med Ball patter gone? I’m sure it was fool-proof.
‘Chloe,’ someone’s voice says next to us, saving us, probably, from the Ethiopian kiddies or her next-door neighbour’s fight with MS. (Who knows where I was going to take it, but it wasn’t going to be good). ‘Dan, from Who Weekly. Let’s get a shot of you,’ he says, lifting up his big camera in case she wouldn’t otherwise know what he meant, ‘you and, um . . . Sorry, I . . .’
‘Phil Harris.’
‘You and, um, Phil Harris,’ he says, as though someone just stuck a pin in his great idea and let all the air out. ‘Actually, how about we get you over to these guys? You don’t mind if I grab Chloe for a sec, do you Phil?’
‘No, go ahead.’
And Chloe smiles as she’s led away by the elbow, and I think she wishes me luck with SBS, but since she doesn’t continue the sentence all the way to the end I’ll never be sure. And she looks so seventeen as she goes, and I notice the pale rectangle of a Band-Aid detaching itself from her right heel, just above the top of her not-quite-fitting shoe.
I wander. I explore an introverted side I thought I’d put behind me in the mid-eighties. I try to side-step the feeling that Chloe gave me the boring-grown-up treatment. I resolve to learn that no conversation can be saved by a horse question, and few by mentioning SBS. I try to forget that the last thing anyone at work said to me before I left for LA was ‘see you in Who Weekly’. I make a specific effort to avoid Laura, just in case she’d think my night might be saved by another intro.
I adopt a great air of pseudo-purpose. I’m supposed to be scouting anyway, so it’s not so bad. Even if there’s no chance to negotiate finer contractual points with Nicole.
And just as I’m laughing at my mother for going with my stupid Nicole Kidman remark, Keanu Reeves makes an appearance. Keanu Reeves, with a minder on either side, a grey beanie, his left elbow poking through the sleeve of an old black jumper. Perhaps I should phone my mother back and see if she’d like to say hello.
He picks up a glass of wine at the bar and stands between his minders drinking it, aware, I’m sure, of being very watched. For a while I think we’re the only two people in the room No one’s talking to. Probably for different reasons. Then one of us is approached by Dan from Who Weekly.
I hang around near my shrub, grazing from the passing trays of nibblies, and using each one as a chance for transient conversation in case it makes me look slightly busy.
I seem to be totally invisible here, and I should be doing better. I’m next to a circle of people, close to Ben Mendelsohn’s back, and they all seem to know each other. The room is working, but I’m not working it. I’m beginning to wish that that guy would come up to see if I’m Eric again. I’d do my best to be Eric, rather than being a total loser with a row of nibblies lined up along his forearm. And even if I couldn’t pass for Eric, I certainly wouldn’t let the guy go in a hurry.
I notice that Ron ‘Thommo’ Thomson, the host of ‘Stoked About Boats’, is here, and I even come close to saying hello to him, just because he autographed Frank’s Evinrude catalogue. And the only thing that stops me is I know I’ll tell him I like what he does, then end up excusing myself and boring him about Toronto. Because I hate what he does, and any praise would be completely unsustainable.
He stands close by with a bunch of other guys in their forties, and he’s belly laughing loudly, tossing down beers and dribbling Thousand Island dressing onto his Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. Ron ‘Thommo’ Thomson obviously dresses himself after hours, and the deck shoes and pressed shorts of ‘Stoked About Boats’ are nowhere to be seen. White canvas shoes, peach jeans. And plenty of people talking to him as he stands there affecting a life-of-the-party ambience.
The tray people ke
ep circling, now with little plastic cups of green jelly.
‘I suppose you could call them a palate cleanser,’ one of them says to me as he urges me to take one.
Which I do, as a fitting-in thing, assuming that palate-cleansing little plastic cups of green jelly are all very after- party. I take it as though I really know what I’m doing, and to back it up I take another.
The problem is, No one else in the room has taken one and it’s not a fitting-in decision at all. The other problem is, I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to do with them. Each one has a toothpick in the middle of it, which I start by removing, since I know I’ll only get hurt otherwise. Did they have olives? Did the olives fall off? I don’t get these drinks. I’m faking it here, and not well.
I try to sip, but nothing moves. I smell mint, but that’s as far as I get. I hate these after-party people for knowing that you don’t take these things. For nibbling only occasionally, for avoiding behaving like complete tray pirates, and for knowing that the little green cups just do a few laps of the room and meet with disdain.
I slide my tongue down into the cup and I can just touch the jelly, lift it at one edge. I tip my head back, tap the bottom, flick the jelly with my tongue. No luck. I put my mouth around the top of the cup, shake my head. Nothing moves. I try suction. I try suction until the cup cracks, and then some of the jelly slurps into my mouth and I feel like a minor-league winner.
And that’s when I realise I’m not invisible here after all. And the entire group of people next to me, previously noisy, has stopped talking, and they’re all now watching me, seeing how far I can take this.
‘There’s usually a toothpick in it,’ one of them says. ‘So you can break it up a bit, make it easier to shift.’
‘I kind of like it this way,’ I tell him. ‘Bit of a challenge.’
And he says, ‘Good for you,’ and they stand there waiting to see where I can take it. I crack the second cup open in one move, eat the jelly like a schucked oyster, walk away. Fuck them all.
That’s it for me, I reckon. Time for a lie down.
‘Christ, mate, that first one put up a fight,’ Ron ‘Thommo’ Thomson says, a fistful of tiny cups of green in his left hand and one in his right. He slurps it in one go and says, ‘Not your fault. Tongue like a camel, see.’ And he slides it out to give me a better look. ‘Biological advantage, hey? Goes down a treat with the ladies. Here, have another.’
‘No, I’ve . . .’
‘Come on. It’s a party.’
So he talks me into another one or two and tongues his own way through another six.
‘Mint,’ he says. ‘Don’t mind this.’ And he draws a big noisy breath in through his nose. ‘Hey, don’t think I’ve breathed in through that side since I broke it playing footy.’ And he looks into the cup and says, ‘Where have you been all my life?’
He commandeers a passing tray loaded with more green jelly cups (easy, since No one else in the room wants one), and he says, ‘Go you halves.’
And again my protest is weak and pointless, so we’re soon over next to the shrub, slurping away. Thommo with his huge, advantageous tongue, me piling up my cracked empties like pistachio shells. And once or twice I talk about leaving and he says, ‘Come on, the fun’s just starting when they bring out these babies. And it doesn’t really get going till I start to sing.’
And I hope he’s kidding, but of course he isn’t.
‘You know, I thought these’d be Midori when they came out,’ he says, as though it matters. ‘I think it’s much better that they’re cream de menth.’
And we set there in our sludgy minty smell, and the jet lag creeps over me again, pulls up onto me like a doona this time, and I know I won’t last.
And I find myself starting to tell Thommo about Frank, behaving like the bloke equivalent of a clingy new friend, saying something like, ‘I reckon I know your biggest fan,’ in a voice that sounds as though I’m trying to copy him. Except my version sounds like it’s had more to drink.
‘Robyn?’ he says. ‘You know Robyn? Oh, she’d root anything, don’t listen to her. I’m not sure it makes her my biggest fan.’
‘Yeah, and I know Frank Green too. You signed an Evinrude catalogue for him a while back.’
‘Oh, righto.’
‘He actually wanted me to go out with him on his boat tonight. Catch a few bream.’
‘Bream. Mate I could show you fucking bream,’ he says, even though, as far as I can recall, it’s beside the point.
‘Yeah, I bet you could,’ I tell him, since I bet he could. ‘Hey, you know what? I’ve got a phone and he’s got a phone. He’d get a big buzz out of it if you gave him a call. Just to say hi. Pretty big fan, you know.’
Frank’s somewhere out on the bay when we call. I ease myself down into the plant pot once I handed the phone over, and, take this as an opportunity to regroup. And Thommo says the hi we talked about and then plenty more. They talk bream, and boats, and they try to work out which Evinrude catalogue it was that Thommo signed, but they’ve both had too much to drink by now. And Thommo’s saying, ‘Yeah, but was it one with norks?’ and Frank can’t quite remember.
And I’m sitting there realising that they watered the shrub today and feeling the cool water seep up into my pants, but not exactly able to move and I’m thinking, with an unnecessary and ungenerous discontent, how the fuck did this get to be about boats? When do I get my turn to talk about something? Wasn’t this just bloody hi, just hi to a fan, not all this yacking about tackle and lies about big fish? Mate, mate, you should’ve seen . . .
I’ve had hardly anything to do with Frank’s boat, quite deliberately. I’d be happy never to talk about it again. I’ve actually been totally off boats for ages. Years. I was just thinking hi. Totally off boats since it was always my job to hose ours down every time we went out in it when we were younger. And, no, technically it wasn’t too much to ask, but I was thirteen, so it certainly seemed like it was. And I liked fishing less.
Thommo presses the stop button, hands me the phone, says, ‘Sounds like a good bloke. Reckons he’s pulled in a couple of small whiting already. Now, how about another tray?’
‘Never caught a fish big enough to eat,’ I hear myself saying, before I realise it’s probably quite an admission of failure to Thommo. ‘Never, but that’s okay.’
And he gives me a look that could only be pity. ‘Sure it is,’ he says. ‘Sure it’s okay.’
‘No. Really. It’s okay.’
And he puts his arm around my shoulder and says something quiet about having a problem with premature ejaculation, probably to make me feel better, probably in a nobody’s-perfect kind of way. And then he quickly follows it up with a few jokes focused on the brevity of Australian male foreplay, so that we can both relax again.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘and there’s this thing. This thing with a boat. And Monica Lewinsky . . .’
But that’s where it ends.
He nods and says, ‘Yeah. Don’t know about that. Reckon we could get you a fish, though.’
‘Yeah? Could we?’ I say, since anything else would seem ungrateful.
Sometimes fish matter so much to people that you just have to go with it.
He helps me to my feet before I work out that I need it, before I work out that he might have meant right now with the fish, rather than saying it just as a gesture of affirmation. And I think it’s the jet lag that’s closing in as we weave through the crowd. Well, mainly the jet lag.
And Thommo’s murmuring and then singing something about plenty more fish in the sea, and I want to pull him up now and remind him that it’s only a metaphor in its common usage, generally something about relationship possibilities (offered to someone who, at the time, doesn’t have any). And, besides, No one just makes up songs and sings them to someone the first proper time they meet. It looks foolishly disinhibited.
And that’s what’s in my mind, none of it getting out, as we stagger down the stairs like a creature that’s slightl
y too wide for the architecture and has an odd number of legs (probably seven). Only one of mine’s touching the ground most of the time though, and I can’t for the life of me see where the other one’s gone.
And then we’re outside just as I’m thinking of screaming, ‘Where’s my fucking leg?’ and I can’t make much sense of the dark. Thommo yanks open the door of a limo and everyone talks at once, as though there’s a problem, but it’s soon fixed.
‘It’s cool, it’s cool,’ an American voice is saying and Thommo’s saying, ‘Mate, I’ve got a proposition to put to you.’
And he climbs in and lowers me in after him, does my seat belt up carefully, says, ‘Comfy?’
I nod, feel my knees with both hands. Then both knees with one hand at the same time, just to check that I’m not fooling myself. All is well. I’m a biped still. Jet lag, though, is murder.
And Thommo’s talking on to the guy with the American voice, telling him we’re out for bream, and once the American realises what he’s on about he’s saying ‘bream’ in quite a reflective way, and deciding he’s part of it. And he tells his driver, ‘This guy’ll show you where to go,’ and his driver says, ‘Righto, Mister Reeves,’ and I think I say, ‘Fuck, Superman,’ before I can stop myself, but so much into my left shoulder that I taste bottle-green shirt and none of the sound gets to the outside.
I resolve not to talk. I find the switch for the window and buzz it down a little so that the cold air comes in and hits my face. The lights of Sydney, the late uncluttered streets of the CBD, pass by. Thommo, who by now has introduced himself as Thommo, is explaining that I’ve never caught a fish before, as though this is some kind of virginity.
‘Never? Like never?’ Keanu is saying, and I nearly tell him at least I don’t ejaculate prematurely, but Thommo means well so I keep it to myself.
The car sways around corners the untroubled way limos do, and my head feels cold and my stomach starts to sway like a hammock with a fat green man in it, and I smell far too much mint seeping from my skin.
I wake when we stop at a pier. Someone opens the door and Thommo lifts me out.