The Naked Drinking Club

by Rhona Cameron

  That only made me laugh even more. A slack approach, I thought in hindsight, after my first week of work.

  Greg also told me not to waste time on the chatty partner, for it was always the silent one that held the purse strings. It all sounded bollocks at first, but when put to the test, Greg’s tips paid off every time. Even the stuff he’d said on day one that sounded ludicrous, all fell into place in various houses. I would never have believed the notion that because people are Chinese, they would buy the abstract paintings, until I encountered my first Chinese household, when they did exactly that.

  ‘Could I please show you in there?’ I had said, pointing to the clean white empty hallway behind the two men, which smelled of fresh paint and was just screaming out to be filled with my paintings. They looked at me, and then said something in their own language to one another. Neither of us could understand what the other one was saying, but within five minutes they had picked out two abstracts at one hundred bucks a piece. I was lucky, their house was new and empty and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Greg told me later that there was a certain amount of luck involved, but ninety-nine per cent of it was confidence. He felt I had more confidence than the others. I suppose in some ways I did.

  We all got given our dollars on the same night we earned them, if we made cash transactions, but most of it slipped away on endless rounds of drinks in the bar afterwards. If customers bought more than one painting, they would always pay by cheque or bank slip – most people liked to have the safety net of a cheque, to allow them to back out. It didn’t happen often, but once in the first week Andrea had a sale fall through. It was frustrating and worrying to wait for these transactions to clear, but I guess I saw them as savings to put towards my journey. I kept a notebook of money owing to me, and the paintings I’d sold. So far, I was in the lead with ten paintings in my first week. I had earned myself four hundred dollars, around two hundred pounds. With rent money knocked off, that left me with a total of three hundred and twenty dollars, or one hundred and sixty pounds.

  Karin was in second place with eight sales, and then Andrea with six. Scotty made the odd sale to keep things ticking over for him, but mostly he drove and sorted out the painting stock. Jim supervised everything, and liaised with Greg over areas and routes. When it got busier Scotty would take another team out, but for now he stayed with us.

  I’d made more of an effort to settle in at the flat. I bought some groceries, although most days I ate breakfast out at a café on the corner. I’d also done some laundry and tidied up my tiny room, putting up a Bruce Springsteen poster that came with Sydney’s City Limits magazine, and a photo of my granddad in an effort to make it more homely. I bought a pack of airmail letters, and had already written two and sent them off. One to my grandfather and the other to Maggie, a friend of mine back home who was looking after my records while I was away.

  The mornings and afternoons were quiet. We often ate burgers together in a greasy type café a few blocks away, before we left for work just ahead of the rush hour, heading out to the suburbs. Sometimes I would lie sunbathing in the yard out the back from lunchtime onwards, reading a paper, scribbling thoughts in my notebook, or making little sketches of the others as we lay around. The rest of the time I would lie in my room, looking up and wondering when I would do something concrete about my search, and not understanding why I didn’t. The late mornings were spent watching terrible yet addictive American soaps on TV. There was a whole new world out there, but I just didn’t seem to care.

  Apart from the non-selling-night blip, I was being good, and had drunk very little more than the others each night. But by the following weekend I was growing restless again, as usual, and the all-too-familiar empty feeling was beginning to set in. On the Friday night, I started to drink a bit more, and made efforts to look for Mac whom I’d seen very little of since our night out together, as he’d been in Perth working. I was disappointed with his absence, as I had hoped we could hit King’s Cross together again, or something similar.

  Plus Anaya had been on holiday down the coast visiting people since the weekend before, and I found the company of the others limited, especially while trying to adhere to moderate drinking.

  On the Friday night I was looking forward to Anaya being back, and getting paid what was owing to me. I showered after we got back from selling and put on some make-up, and a top I thought I looked good in. But neither Anaya nor Greg showed their faces in the bar, preferring instead to have dinner together somewhere in town, according to Scotty, and then have an early night. I wondered how much Greg loved Anaya, and how Anaya could possibly love Greg, before sinking too many Jack Daniel’s to care.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  I WAS GROWING tired of my introduction already and would have to find another one soon. I was having difficulty switching on my usual patter, and had forgotten to smile, due to my head vagueness and drowsiness from the JD the night before.

  I was in – what I was told – a mostly Greek area, late Saturday afternoon. The houses were older than most of the ones I had visited so far, and surrounded in white fencing. A woman answered a door.

  ‘Hi there, my name’s Kerry and I’m from Scotland. I’m travelling around showing some people my artwork.’

  ‘Yes, my husband will talk. Please.’ The woman shouted a name I could not understand and a small hairy man with a newspaper appeared at the door.

  ‘Yes, how can I help, please?’

  I couldn’t bear to go through it again.

  ‘I’m showing my paintings.’ They both looked blank. ‘I have some artwork, can I show you?’

  ‘Yes, please come in.’ The woman said something, which I assumed was in Greek, to the husband and left the scene. While most people would consider being allowed into a home that quickly a positive sign and an almost certain sale, I was rapidly learning that that wasn’t the case. For the easier it was to gain entry into a house, the harder it was to sell once there. Bizarrely, the harder it was to get in, the more likely a sale would take place. My way of reading it was that the people who kept you outside didn’t trust themselves with buying stuff, while the ones who were happy to have you waste your time entertaining them for half an hour or so, were confident that they wouldn’t do anything reckless once you were in there.

  I arranged the paintings throughout their lounge, while the husband watched me. Ornaments in cabinets rattled from the washing machine vibrating in the kitchen. It was a hot afternoon. I asked him for a glass of water. He shouted after his wife who brought me one, smiled and left again. The man was dirty, I could tell straight away; I had a feeling about people like that, a sense. He had shorts and a vest on and bare feet, and constantly looked at my crotch. Every so often he yawned, unaware that he was expelling a gust of halitosis as he did so. He looked at my tits as I bent down to take out the last painting. He was revolting but somehow, with the hangover, I liked him looking at me. He asked me to sit down whilst he spent some time examining them. I took a chair and deliberately sat with my legs open. I was wearing cut-down Levis and a green striped T-shirt that I’d cut off at the arms.

  ‘You like them?’ I asked, with my legs still open.

  ‘Yes, very much,’ he said, glancing at the kitchen to check his wife couldn’t see him.

  ‘What do you like?’ The situation was starting to turn me on, so I decided to up the play a little.

  ‘Yes, I like, they are very beautiful.’

  I rested one hand on my thigh, fanning myself with my other. ‘It’s hot today, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, hot.’

  I blew my cheeks out. He sat back in his chair, his crotch growing bigger. He had a thirsty, dry mouth with nerves and kept swallowing and looking over at the kitchen. I got up, picked up a painting and stood over him, my crotch at his face level.

  ‘Now, this one I think would look nice here.’

  ‘Yes.’ He swallowed.

  ‘The colours would look nice in this
room with the green. You see.’ I moved my fingers over the hills, and bent down to give him a good look down my top.

  ‘It’s OK to touch it. It’s oils, you know, but it’s dry. Would you like to touch it?’ I leant in, looking towards the kitchen myself, hearing the washing machine on spin. I could see the wife out the back hanging out washing. I leant further in, allowing his arm to brush against my breast. He had a full-scale hard-on by now and tried to lean forward to hide it.

  ‘Yes, very nice,’ he said over and over like a fucking robot. He was annoying me now because he was so easy. I went back over to my chair, which gave him a chance to pull his T-shirt down over his shorts and look more closely at the kitchen.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said, bringing the whole thing out in the open now.

  ‘What do you want me to do with painting?’

  I nearly snapped ‘Buy it, for fuck’s sake and we’ll sort something out’ but I just said, ‘Buy one, if you like it.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘One hundred and fifteen bucks.’ Bucks was a little rude, and after I said it I regretted it, but in the circumstances I guessed it wouldn’t make any difference; the standards had been dropped, after all. I sat back down. His chest was moving up and down as he looked at my legs and crotch, then down at his hard-on. I put my hand inside my shorts and moved it around a little. The wife came back in from the kitchen and went upstairs, and I quickly pulled my hand out while he covered his erection with the painting of the two ladies in the field. I went back over to him.

  ‘Do you want it, then?’

  ‘Yes, I want it, very nice.’

  ‘Do you want that one you’re holding?’

  ‘Yes.’ I took his hand, put it in my shorts and let him feel around, while touching his cock over the fabric of his shorts. He moaned and swallowed, bits of white saliva gathering in the corner of his mouth. The wife came downstairs again; we separated and went back to robotic polite chat.

  ‘Please go to the bathroom, I will look from window,’ he whispered, his eyes darting back and forward at the kitchen. He got up and showed me through to the bathroom, then spoke in a deliberately loud voice for the wife’s benefit.

  ‘Yes, you can use the bathroom. This way, please.’

  I didn’t know why he wanted me to go there but I did. I went inside and locked the door. I could hear him speaking with his wife. In the bathroom was a window covered half in opaque glass, in the corner was a chair. I dragged the chair over and stood on it in order to look out. I could see him hiding behind his garage wall in the garden, with a door open, which I presumed was obscuring the wife’s view of him from the kitchen. He was already unzipped with his cock out, moving his hand up and down it. I lifted up my T-shirt and bra to fully display my tits to him; I leant in and pressed them against the cool glass. With my other hand, I masturbated. Nothing lasted for more than about thirty seconds for either of us. He put it back in his trousers and closed the garage door. I got down off the chair, splashed some water on my face, browsed in their wall cabinet, flushed and went back into the lounge.

  He was standing there, counting his money.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, taking the money and packing away the rest of the paintings.

  The wife came through and put some folded linen into a drawer. They spoke in Greek to one another.

  ‘It’s pretty, yes?’ I asked her while packing up.

  ‘That is nice. Yes,’ she said, before going out again.

  I felt detached and cold already, forgetting what had taken place, with my mind on a cold beer and a cigarette.

  ‘Well, I better be going then, thank you and I hope you enjoy it.’

  ‘Yes, enjoy very much,’ he said, smiling for the first time. He walked me to the door. Just before I walked out onto his step, he gently grabbed my elbow.

  ‘Please, I want your telephone number, to meet with you.’

  ‘No, I don’t have a number and that’s just mad. Thank you and enjoy your painting.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  ‘TRUTH OR DARE!’ shouted Scotty at Anaya.

  We sat drinking beer in a circle on the lounge floor back at the house, which on nights like this felt more like a youth club.

  ‘Truth,’ said Anaya, smoking like a French actress.

  ‘I’m trying to think of a really good one, hang on.’ Scotty was so excited.

  ‘Is Greg the one for you?’ said a Danish.

  ‘Oh please, that’s really fuckin’ girly and boring,’ said Scotty, just beating me to it. Jim and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  ‘Have you ever got it on with a girl?’ Scotty asked eagerly.

  ‘Scotty, you’re so predictable,’ said Anaya.

  I just shut up and watched and listened. I was enjoying it too much.

  ‘Of course.’ She looked over at me first, then inhaled. ‘I’m from Germany, we’re much more open-minded than you guys.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Scotty, trying not to look too pleased. Jim and I laughed out loud. We were all excitable and half cut.

  ‘What about you guys?’ He turned to the Danish, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Andrea.

  ‘Oh, you’ll have to come and visit to find out, won’t you?’ Karin said.

  ‘Is that an offer, is it?’ Scotty leant in closer to Karin. The girls both laughed.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Scotty, you’re obsessed. Leave them alone, it’s not even their turn.’ I grabbed the bottle and span it. It stopped at Jim. He looked embarrassed.

  ‘I’m too old for this shit,’ he said, taking the obligatory swig from the communal vodka bottle that went with the game.

  ‘Never too old, Jim,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly!’ Anaya winked at me, which was unusually playful for her. I winked back.

  ‘Fucking dare,’ he said reluctantly. Jim could tell that we were all pleased that it landed at him, which only added to his embarrassment. He was the one we knew least about, the one that was hardest to know and the one I suspected with something to hide.

  ‘Dare you to get your dick out and put it in the vodka, mate.’ Scotty was cracking up at everything he said.

  ‘There is no way I’m doing that, Scotty boy, no way. Sorry.’

  ‘Yeah and there’s no way I’m drinking it afterwards,’ added Anaya.

  ‘It’s the game, mate, if you can’t stand the heat and all that.’

  ‘I have to, on this rare occasion, say that Scotty has a point, Jim. You agreed to be in on this so you can’t back down, it’s morally wrong.’ I spread my arms out.

  ‘I don’t have a problem with that. We wouldn’t be here if any of us had morals.’

  We all laughed.

  ‘Come on, Jim, don’t be such a square,’ said a Danish, much to my surprise.

  ‘Go and …’ He turned to the Danish. ‘Excuse my language. Go and fuck yourselves.’

  ‘Is that a dare?’ I said. The others laughed.

  ‘I don’t do dick stuff for your own little sordid amusement, Scotty. Sorry, mate, pick on someone else.’ Jim grew serious again.

  ‘Mate, the bottle picked on you, not me. It’s the rules of the game.’

  ‘I tell you what, I’ll swap it for a truth. Can I do that?’ Jim looked round for group consent.

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, taking control. ‘We’ll have to all agree, and it also depends if you are prepared to really answer truthfully, Jim. I mean, are you?’

  ‘Kerry’s right, you gotta give us something.’

  I liked Anaya saying my name. She was looking very sexy: her hair was tied back and she had on a bit of lipstick. The evening felt good in the company of the group; I felt content and happy at the start of the fun ahead.

  ‘Yes, we will accept your swap of a truth in place of a dare.’ I spoke in a wise-old-judge kind of voice. ‘And it has been decided that I shall provide you with the question.’

  ‘Yes. Otherwi
se it will just be about sex if Scotty does it,’ said Anaya. The Danish pissed themselves laughing.

  Scotty pulled his baseball cap down over his face and held his hands up. ‘Can I help it if I’m a sexy guy?’

  ‘You’re so fucking embarrassing, it’s beyond belief,’ said Jim, taking another drink from the vodka.

  ‘OK, Jim, here’s the question,’ I announced.

  ‘OK, give it to me.’

  ‘If you had to sleep with someone here, who would it be?’

  ‘Hey, how come she can ask about sex?’ Scotty screamed, all red-faced as usual. Jim was cross-legged on the floor; he dropped his head and held the base of his skull with both hands.

  ‘Karin,’ he said.

  The Danish looked pleased with herself. Jim spun the bottle; at last it landed at me. I was delighted; I would show them a thing or two. I was unafraid of any direction the game might go in.

  ‘I love all truth and dares, go ahead.’

  ‘I’ll do this one,’ Anaya said straight away. ‘Mmm, truth or dare, Kerry?’ She definitely fancied me. Using my name this many times was a sure sign.

  ‘Dare, thanks, and don’t waste it.’ I drank my beer and lit up one of Scotty’s cigarettes, looking forward to whatever lay ahead.

  ‘OK. I dare you to kiss someone in the group, anyone you want.’

  ‘What kind of kiss?’ I was delighted with her choice.

  ‘A proper kiss.’ She sat back, leaning on her hands. Scotty clapped.

  ‘Oh, here we bloody go,’ said Jim, rolling his eyes and taking a drink. ‘Like a slow train coming down the bloody track.’

  I thought about kissing him but I knew he would be too embarrassed and refuse, and that would make me feel stupid. I knew that Anaya was such an obvious choice, but felt I would be foolish to overlook the opportunity. I put down my beer and licked my lips, warming up my mouth to entertain the others. I leant in, pulled Anaya’s head towards me and kissed her.