The Full Catastrophe

by Rebecca Huntley

  Beauty.

  I turned up in the morning and he seemed a bit surprised to see me as he’d had more than a couple of drinks the night before, but he was a man of his slurred words. It did occur to me at this stage that I was only eighteen and I’ve never met this guy before and we were going off to the desert together for two days. But I knew that Elizabeth loved me as much as I loved her, and she was really going to appreciate the fact that I was doing this for her. So off we went. And it was actually a really beautiful couple of days. The guy was a builder from Melbourne and he was pretty generous. We had to stay at a little homestead halfway along the track. He paid for that, he bought me dinner, he bought me a drink, and he was very honourable. He said to me over dinner, ‘We’ll be in Mount Isa tomorrow. Are you going to be all right?’

  I said, ‘Yeah, no worries, I’ve got this all worked out. It’s Monday and I know there’s a mail van that goes from Julia Creek up the road past Canobie Station. It leaves at four o’clock every Wednesday morning. So I’ve got plenty of time to get to Mount Isa, hitch to Julia Creek, find the mail man and then convince him to give me a lift.’ My friend lifted his eyebrows but did not sway me from my quest.

  The next day, my honourable mate dropped me off on the outskirts of Mount Isa. As I stood beside the road, my thumb outstretched, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I thought, This is what real men do. I am becoming a real man and I am doing what real men do. I’m going off to see my real woman and together we are going to be perfect. We are going to be people. We may even make people.

  I must say I felt a little less manly after a few hours as cars drove past and no one picked me up. Finally, a white panel van stopped. In the world of hitching, panel vans are always a bit dodgy. But there was only one guy in it so I thought it should be okay. I got in and met Colin, who asked, ‘Where you heading?’ Turns out he was heading to Julia Creek too. He told me it was about 250 k and we’d be there in a couple of hours.

  Off we drove into the desert. It was hot and we saw the occasional mirage that looked like water, but there was not much else to see and we didn’t have much to say. Let’s face it, we were a tough-looking bloke in a panel van and an eighteen-year-old, long-haired art student. The nexus was not that deep. Then, out of this vast mirage and milky haze, we saw an apparition up ahead – a little red dot. We kept driving and Colin said, ‘There’s something up there.’ Then he floored it so fast that we soon realised we were catching up with the back of another panel van. Colin said, ‘Shit, that looks like Jacko’s van.’ And I thought, one panel van okay, two not great.

  We came alongside the other van and a face turned and looked at me, and this face had lots of jail tattoos and big straggly hair and there was another face equally menacing right next to him. And I thought, really not great, but kind of exciting. The boys were certainly very excited to see us. ‘Pull over, pull over,’ they yelled. We pulled over. Now at this stage of my quest I was still holding that vision of Elizabeth at the front of the homestead, and as we pulled over in a cloud of red dust I began to think what a great tale this will be to tell her. I imagined her realising just how much of a quest I had come on to see her, and how much dedication I had to the relationship. I hadn’t actually rung Elizabeth prior to this because these were the days before mobile phones, we didn’t even have email; we actually sent letters to each other. I was lost in a momentary reverie of how much she would be surprised and thrilled.

  But as we pulled over to the side of the road I realised that we were about 80 kilometres from Julia Creek, and I was mindful that I had to be there that night as the mail van would be leaving before dawn. The timing was critical. We leaned out of the car to chat, and the tattooed blokes in the front seat said, ‘Colin, mate, haven’t seen you in ages. How you going and where you going?’

  Col answered, ‘We’re going to Julia Creek.’

  And I said, ‘Yes, yes we are and it’s going to be great.’

  Then they said, ‘No, mate, we’re going to camp up here on the creek bed. You should camp with us.’

  My heart sank and I said pathetically to Colin, ‘Please no.’

  But Colin looked at me and looked at his mates, and he said, ‘Yeah, bloody good idea. Let’s do it.’

  We pulled off the road onto a dry creek bed and drove a couple of kilometres to a little spot in the middle of the desert, and my quest seemed thwarted. But real men do not give up in the face of failure, so I told my new mates I was going to try to get a lift, and I walked back down to the road.

  By now it was getting towards dusk. Big trucks came past but hardly any cars. No one stopped for me. Two hours later I realised it was nearly dark and I was done. I went back to the campsite, noting that they’d pulled out the Jim Beam and were getting a bit rowdy. Now it’s fair to say they were less than enthused to see the return of the long-haired art college student. I tried to ingratiate myself with these young men but what I hadn’t realised when we first pulled off was that there were another three in the back of the panel van, and they were all having a lovely conversation about the revolver they’d buried so the police couldn’t find it, and about their sawn-off shotgun.

  I was not excited about this. I was even less excited when they pulled the sawn-off shotgun out of the back of the van. They were wondering if I’d like to have a go of it, but I said, no, I didn’t think so, but thank you very much. But they insisted.

  I can now say I’ve fired a sawn-off shotgun. And as fun as that was, I soon decided it would be better if I were to retreat and go to sleep. I said, ‘Guys, thanks for such a fun night. I won’t forget this in a hurry. I’m going to roll out my sleeping bag and have a kip.’ I knew I’d missed the mail van, but I had bigger things to worry about because they were still drinking.

  I walked about 30 metres and found a spot to lie down, and I pretended to go to sleep. I obviously couldn’t sleep because I was completely freaking out. This was when things got a little dark.

  While I was lying there on edge, wide awake, listening to them, one of them asked Colin, ‘So ah, who’s the little fucker?’ and Colin answered, ‘I don’t know, mate. I picked him up in Mount Isa. It was a mistake.’

  For a moment I was hurt. I thought, that’s a bit cruel, I thought we were getting on all right. And then one of them said, ‘You know what we should do? We should smear a bit of Vegemite on his face, that would give him a shock, wouldn’t it.’

  Then the other one said, ‘No, no, we should give him a bit of a kicking. See what that does for him.’

  Then there was a lull in the conversation before the particularly nasty one said, ‘We should string the little cunt up in the fucking tree.’

  It was at this point I thought, gee, I’m really in trouble.

  But I was no art student wuss. I was tough. This is how tough I was – I had a Swiss Army knife. So, heart pounding and skin sweating, I very quietly reached into my bag and pulled out my Swiss Army knife and opened the blade. I thought, well, there’s five of them, they’ve got a sawn-off shotgun and I’ve got my Swiss Army knife. And just at that moment, for the first time, I thought maybe it wasn’t worth seeing Elizabeth.

  I truly believe there was a critical moment when it could have gone either way. People have asked me since if the men were playing with me and just trying to intimidate me. But no, I knew it was real. I knew that if the mood had not switched, they could have gone, ‘Let’s do this.’ And they would have and they could have. Luckily the tension cracked just for a moment and they went off in a different direction in their conversation. Then, one by one, thanks to Jim Beam, they passed out around the fire; it was like watching flowers close. When the last one fell, I started to breathe again. Then, knife still ready, I waited half an hour. After that I got up, packed my stuff, and tiptoed out of the campsite and walked down to the highway.

  I waited there for hours as trucks came past. No one picked me up. But just before dawn, when I was growing desperate and terrified the blokes would wake up and come and find me, I saw
a vision. Out of the dawn light a four-wheel drive snaked across the horizon. It was so beautiful – the outback red, the blue light of the sky and this green LandCruiser. I stood in the middle of the road and put my hand out. I thought, you can run over me, mate, but I’m not getting out of your way.

  The bushy pulled up and he said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Let me in and I’ll tell you everything,’ I said. ‘Please just drive.’

  As we took off in a plume of dust, I told him what happened. He said sweetly, ‘You, my son, are an idiot. You would not believe what goes down on this road. But calm down, I’ve got double tanks, I can outrun anyone.’

  Thanks to my blessed saviour, I got to Julia Creek. I was alive. I was not strung up. But I’d missed the mail van.

  Now my quest was even more desperate. I had to make this hell worth it by wrapping Elizabeth in my battle-scarred arms. I harassed the customers at the local service station, asking each and every one with wheels if they were going past Canobie Station. Five hours later a bloke offered me a lift. And despite all my stuff-ups I’d still not learned anything about planning. Again, I jumped in a car without forethought or many provisions. My reasoning was that I deserved my date with my girl, and the horror was over. I figured that the homestead couldn’t be far from the road as it was built in 1856 when they used horses, so I should be able to walk from the road to my gal.

  I got dropped at the front gate of Canobie Station with a light heart, 2 litres of water and a can of fruit. Off I trekked along the road to my sweet woman.

  It was 35 degrees and I walked for three or four hours. Nothing. Eventually I found a turned-over semi-trailer and I climbed up, thinking I’d see the homestead or the windmill. I couldn’t see a thing. Nothing. I walked all the way back to the front gate and I sat down, feeling hot, thirsty and terrified. I’d finished my water and I had just opened fruit salad when a four-wheel drive came along. The guy wound down his window and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I’m here to go to the homestead. Can you give me a lift?’

  He said, ‘Look, mate, I come here once a month, and maybe once a week someone comes out of the homestead onto this road. You would be dead in a day in this heat without water.’

  I have to admit I was chastened by this near-death experience. But as we drove to the homestead, which was about 20 kilometres down unmarked tracks, I was thinking, Well, it’s been hell. I’ve nearly died. Twice. But it’ll be worth it. Because sometimes you’ve got to sacrifice things for love.

  After all the horror, the image of Elizabeth in the homestead came back into my head, and I felt a sense of delight that I’d made it. Homer was returning. The Odyssey was over.

  But Elizabeth did not run out of the homestead, wind in her hair and arms outstretched. I found her out the back of one of the sheds, and she did not look surprised and thrilled. She looked shocked and grumpy. She immediately informed me she was seeing Gary, the chief jackaroo.

  And that was my catastrophic quest for love …

  How to Lose Your Mind in Ten Dates

  Estelle Tang

  IT IS ALMOST too unbearably Carrie Bradshaw to explain how I ended up holding a human-sized, tiger-print leather collar in a stranger’s apartment, deciding whether I should do what he had asked and put it around his neck. It sounds cribbed from Sex and the City, like I purposely moved to New York to gin up juicy material for my memoirs, of the kind that will definitely upset my parents.

  But trust me: I did not move halfway around the world to generate self-deprecating jokes about my romantic idiocy or to rack up inheritance-voiding antics. Unlike that perfect noughties love sprite Carrie, I have never spent $1000 on a pair of shoes. I have never, thank goodness, been dumped on a Post-It. Neither have I met a Mr Big, or even a Mr Kind of on the Bigger Side. But there’s a reason SATC is set in this magnificent nightmare of a town. Dating in New York City is like competitive eating: not for beginners, and it can make you sick.

  When I broke up with my boyfriend of fourteen years a couple of years ago, I was thinking, shit, I’ll have to move. I was thinking, I don’t know how to be alone. I was thinking, I won’t be able to split Ubers anymore. I was not, however, on top of the fact that I’d spent the whole of my adult life in a relationship and had, therefore, never learned how to date. So, eighteen months later, when the dust had settled and I was feeling ready to meet people, I was at a loss. Like ice skating or speaking Russian or making pierogi from scratch, it was an activity I had zero experience with. But even more than those pursuits, romance was uniquely befuddling. It was a realm of no correct answers, endless permutations, and the persistent threat of embarrassment. Help, I thought.

  The few relationships I’d been in had begun in more traditional ways: not running away when someone who was throwing up after a few too many cans (an extremely romantic gesture when you’re eighteen and have known each other for about thirty-seven minutes), or going over to someone’s house to ‘watch Finding Nemo’ (a terrific movie). In these scenarios, all I’d had to do was basically be there. Easy! In Australia, when you’re young, you pash under the plausible deniability aegis of alcohol; when you wake up the next morning, if you’re both still into it, you’re basically hitched.

  In contrast, New York, the conveyor belt of underwhelming pop culture liaisons, a city continually replenished with coltish twenty-three-year-olds who are richer than you, and anecdotally known as the worst place in the world to seek l’amour, felt a little more intimidating. Anxieties about how to approach dating – Who did I want to date? How would I find these people? How many axe murderers are still around in this day and age, do you think? – came at me like a fusillade from one of those tennis-ball machines. It was all too much. Still, I knew I had to get there somehow. The only thing to do was tackle it like any other problem: systematically. Courtship was alien to me, so I’d have to work it out bit by bit.

  I pondered my approach. First of all, I’d have to actually, well, date. I complained to my friends. ‘I don’t know how to do this. I’m a grown woman and I feel like a baby. Will I have to use an app? I’m so stressed.’ I must have annoyed people enough to inspire them to help me, because one evening, on the way to meet a friend, she texted: I’m with a guy I know. He’s cute and single. Do you want me to bring him?

  My eyes widened like a manga character’s. As with my early love experiences, all I would have to do was be there. Was forcing other people to do the work the secret to romantic success? The lazy oaf in me rejoiced. Sure whatever LOL, I typed, poetically. And after we all had a couple of wines together, I did actually exchange numbers with him. Weeks later, we hung out, and while it wasn’t earth-shattering, it was totally, completely, 100 per cent okay.

  I was thrilled. Could it really be that straightforward? Quickly, though, I came to my senses. The universe wasn’t going to just throw eligible people in my lap like that forever. I didn’t like the idea that I wasn’t in charge of my fate; I needed to be at the steering wheel at least somewhat. What if I asked all my friends to set me up? A genius solution. I was going to conquer this weird little dilemma.

  Nevertheless, I was about to learn that plenty of elements could still defy my control – and that there’s no way to be good at dating without making approximately one billion mistakes first.

  You might think that dating is one skill, but in actual fact, it comprises many, many smaller skills. Not only do you have to find someone you want to spend one to three hours with in the near future, but you also have to know how to find a bar that’s not so busy you can’t find a seat, though not so quiet you’ll feel like everyone’s listening to you. You have to know how to talk about yourself without making someone fall asleep; you have to know how to tell the same stories over and over again without falling asleep yourself. You have to be able to end a fizzling conversation politely and exit a dead-end situation gracefully. And I was about to find out that I didn’t know how to do any of this.

  My friend
s did their jobs beautifully, and hand-selected five very nice people for me. But even with that advantage, it was still a rather Sisyphean endeavour. I hate the idea that finding someone to be with is a numbers game. But dipping my toe into the man pool proved that the human lottery’s odds are just as bad as a scratchie’s.

  Date #1 … well, we’ll come back to him. Date #2 was a lovely guy who informed me cheerily that our visit to the cinema was the first time in his adult life he’d seen a movie not stoned, which I wasn’t morally opposed to at all, but I personally had never been high, and we called it quits after a couple of hangs. Having been divorced over a year ago, Date #3 treated me to two extremely nice dinners before deciding to reconcile with his ex-wife. (I’m always happy to be a stepping stone towards destiny.) Date #4 lived upstate and was rarely in the city, so seeing him was logistically trying, and date #5 was a delightful big WASPy man who was also already seeing about seven other people. I don’t like group activities, so that was the end of that.

  But back to #1. I arranged to meet him – let’s call him Henry – at a bar near his apartment. He seemed perfectly nice, a little on the quieter side. Having told Henry that I was new to dating, I allowed myself some nosy questions about his romantic past. ‘I haven’t been in a relationship for a while,’ he told me, ‘but I’ve been dating around. Actually, a friend of mine told me she couldn’t invite me to parties anymore, because I’ve basically hooked up with all her friends.’

  I knew I was going to marry him right then. Just kidding! Still, as soon as he said that, I relaxed; he was honest, I couldn’t really feel a spark between us, and I had the licence to talk to him about whatever I wanted. Perfect: a real live someone I could shamelessly siphon romantic wisdom from.