The Naked Drinking Club

by Rhona Cameron

  ‘My name is Kerry,’ I said before my inhale.

  ‘Yes, welcome.’ They liked to use the word welcome.

  ‘I come from Scotland,’ I said on my exhale.

  ‘Yes, welcome to our home,’ said the one who answered the door, again.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Jordan.’

  ‘OK, right, yeah.’ I had no idea where it was.

  ‘Please, try this.’ One of the men handed me the small fancy glass. So far none of the women had spoken, although initially they seemed friendlier. They just smiled and nodded and chatted among themselves. I toasted them all and said cheers, they said something back. I drank the fiery drink down in one because the glass was so small and I thought it might be the correct way to do it. This caused them all to laugh quietly. The drink was foul, and what I had imagined meths to taste like. I made a noise after I swallowed it and clutched my throat.

  The children started to open the folder and got out some of the pictures.

  ‘Careful now,’ I spluttered, taking a painting back quickly. I stretched my hands out and rubbed my fingers together in an effort to explain that the kids’ hands might be dirty. One of the mothers pulled two children towards her.

  It didn’t take long for the fiery drink to relax me and make me not care about anything again. I also hadn’t eaten much and had just sampled a do-it-yourself daiquiri, which no doubt was stronger than one made in a bar would be. I was enjoying the language barrier, and the room full of Jordanians who felt little need to try to talk with me.

  I sat looking around the room at everyone; there seemed no sense of urgency. I decided to enjoy myself for a while before getting to work. Usually I would have begun directing the conversation, but the strange drink had an overpowering effect on me. Some children lingered by the folder, still in anticipation of its contents.

  ‘You want to look in here?’ I spoke like a zombie. The kids giggled and looked back at their mothers. A woman stepped forward with a dish of olives.

  ‘Please.’ She offered them to me. I wanted some of the food on the table rather than the olives, but I politely accepted.

  ‘You can eat if you want,’ said the chubbiest of all the men.

  ‘Mmm, thank you.’ I was offered a plate and led to the table.

  ‘What is this?’ I picked up a green thing.

  ‘This is vine leaf,’ she said.

  I filled my plate, sampling almost a bit of everything. Some of the others did the same. I sat back down and ate in silence.

  ‘I want to see!’ shouted a little boy with big ears and glasses.

  ‘OK, little man, I’ll show you.’ I felt momentarily happy and playful.

  The men started lighting up. I was offered another cigarette but declined in favour of one of my own. I bent forward to take a light off a man two seats to my right. He looked at me and then looked down my vest top. I gave him a quick look back, taking a little longer than necessary with the lighter.

  I brought out the paintings, displaying them wherever I could find a space between the furniture and where people were sitting. Once I’d finished, the chatter increased, everybody helping themselves to a closer look, some picking them up and passing them around. There was absolutely no point in me saying much, they would either want to buy or not. Meanwhile I was happy accepting an offer of another shot from the man who looked down my top. I sipped it a little, learning from the last time.

  ‘Yes, you must take slow,’ he said, looking at me in a much dirtier way than before. I felt differently towards this one than the Greek one from a few weeks earlier. He wasn’t so pathetic – desperate all the same, but not so nervous. I wondered how many men there were wishing that a bit of spontaneous action would appear on their doorstep and break up the monotony of their married lives. It didn’t bother me. The way I saw it, was I was offered drinks and things happened; it had always been that way. For me the language barrier was a plus, the less said the better.

  A man, who’d been out of the room since I’d arrived, came into the lounge and said something to the others, pointing back outside to the garden. I wondered when the eye-contact man would make his move, as the situation was very restricting. The man from the garden sat down, given a seat by a woman who went outside. The eye-contact man got up.

  ‘Come with me, I show you.’

  I downed the shot, feigned a questioning look to the rest of the room and followed them both out.

  At the end of the garden behind a hut was a wooden fence with a corrugated roof, which contained some kind of enormous grill-cum-barbecue facility. The woman was using tongs to turn over a huge piece of flat bread. I couldn’t have given a shit about the bread or whether they were frying a kangaroo out there, I knew what this was all about.

  ‘Wow, you make your own stuff here?’ I asked, playing along.

  ‘Yes, we cook Arabian food. This is our bread, you try some,’ said the woman. She took the piece off the heat and put it on a plate. The man said something to her. She took the bread and went inside. I leant up against the fence with my leg folded behind me, waiting until he said something.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘Anaya.’

  ‘My name is Faleed,’ he said, glancing over to the house. I had gone into a trance in anticipation of him touching my tits. I had no concerns over the people in the house coming out at any time, it wasn’t my problem, and neither did I care about the paintings for a while. He smoked and looked me up and down; I hated myself for starting to ache, but had no control over it.

  The woman came back out from the house carrying something. I stood up from the fence and looked alert and interested in the grill. So did the man, who had grabbed some tongs as soon as she appeared.

  She handed him a plate with some red meat on it. He laid the meat on the grill, which sizzled and spat. I took the tongs from him for the benefit of the woman. Then she left, seemingly without any idea. I put the tongs down, and moved back against the fence out of view from the house. I looked at his crotch intentionally so that he would see me doing so. Without looking at me, but with his eyes on the house and one hand on the tongs, he pulled my nipple with his free hand. His hard-on was massive and brushed against the edge of the grill. I unzipped him and brought out his cock. All the time he looked inside the house, then back to the grill. I moved my hands up and down, he made no sound. He grabbed my breast more firmly then rubbed his hand on my crotch outside my jeans.

  ‘Open this,’ he whispered.

  ‘No,’ I said. I leant back against the fence and unbuttoned my jeans just enough for me to slip my hand in, intentionally keeping just too far for him to reach me without losing a full view of the house. The meat sizzled away near his cock.

  ‘It’s burning,’ I said, moving my hand around.

  ‘Very sexy,’ he said, not noticing the smoke.

  ‘The meat, look.’ I gestured to the grill with my head. ‘It’s burning, you must turn it over.’

  His eyes had glazed over; I felt my face flushed with the drink and the excitement. He took the tongs and turned the meat over, to reveal a burnt topside. I moved over to him and put his hand down my jeans. He moaned.

  ‘Yeees.’

  I moved his cock up and down some more, before moving back against the fence. A female voice shouted out from the back door. He shouted back, turning his body round towards me more to fully conceal his exposed erection behind the grill. When he turned back towards me, I was touching myself quickly, aware that there was little time.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said.

  I opened my jeans more, unzipping them right down to give him a full view. I was surprised that I was able to come given the effect of the drink, but I did. I made no sound, just shut my eyes and pressed my head into the fence. He came about ten seconds after me, shooting his load onto the ground and spilling some onto the cooler box. He tugged at his penis making sure he’d emptied everything before zipping it away. I had already lost interest. He mumbled
something, smiling at me. He attempted to touch my face. I pulled away, feeling that we were both pathetic. He put the meat, which I’d now decided was lamb, onto the plate. I took it from him, saying nothing and headed for the lounge, wanting one more of the shot drinks before I hit the road.

  Inside, three people stood round one painting.

  ‘You have others of this one?’ said the chubby man, holding up my favourite painting of the unicorn drinking from a lake in a background of hanging willow trees and a distant waterfall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  GREG PLACED THE biggest prawns I’d ever seen on the barbecue, while Anaya smoked and prodded the coal with some tongs. We all sat round the patio out the back of the house, every so often going back inside to help ourselves to the contents of the enormous fridge designated entirely for cooling beer.

  Scotty sat on the step, skinning up as usual, holding centre court.

  ‘Hey, so this guy’s getting on with this girl, yeah?’

  We all reluctantly say yes or nod.

  ‘And he starts proper fucking her, yeah?’

  Some of us nod.

  ‘So he starts getting into it, yeah, and her toes curl up.’

  The Danish giggle, Jim and I roll our eyes.

  ‘So, he’s well into it by now, trying to ignore what’s happening, when her feet start to curl up.’ Scotty dragged it out, being the type of person that can’t complete a joke for laughing at it. ‘So he’s beyond the point of no return when suddenly the entire fucking lower half of her body starts curling.’

  Andrea Danish had to cover her mouth up in case she spat out her drink.

  ‘And finally he says, “What the fuck’s happening?”’ He finished his JD and kept some ice in his mouth, which meant he mumbled during the next bit. ‘And she says, “Ye flamin’ idiot, I’ve still got my bloody tights on.”’ He spat out his ice and slapped his leg, collapsing about the place.

  Then Karin asked, ‘What are tights?’

  Jim and I started laughing harder than Scotty.

  ‘Scotty, mate,’ said Jim, ‘I’m afraid you lost the girls on the tights reference.’

  ‘Say again, mate?’ I could see Scotty was growing tense.

  ‘Well, you don’t get tights here, do you? And it’s obviously another word in Denmark.’

  Scotty tried to laugh it off but he hated being teased by Jim. Jim didn’t let up.

  ‘Sorry, mate, I shouldn’t laugh but your whole joke was resting on tights.’ Jim spluttered into his schooner.

  ‘Yeah, well, it was a bloody pommy that told me that joke.’

  This only made Jim laugh even more.

  ‘Poor Scotty,’ said Anaya, stroking his head.

  ‘Poor Scotty nothing, there’s nothing wrong with me, it’s you lot, you’re too bloody serious.’ Scotty’s face was always red and sunburned but now it was the reddest I’d seen it.

  ‘Jesus, it’s going to be an interesting trip for you lot,’ said Greg, all slow and half cut as usual.

  ‘Yes, when would we be back in Sydney?’ asked Andrea, no doubt hoping that everything fitted in with their student plans.

  ‘The trips last around two weeks, and they are unforgettable, aren’t they, Scotty?’ Anaya brought Scotty back to us, which cheered him up.

  ‘Oh, mate, I tell you, they are awesome.’

  ‘Why are they awesome?’ asked Jim, much to Scotty’s annoyance.

  ‘Just a real laugh and you get to see some nice parts of the coast.’

  ‘What about that Italian girl, Scotty – will you being seeing her again?’ Anaya leant on Greg and winked at Scotty.

  ‘Who, Daniela? No way, she was a fucking nightmare.’ Scotty pushed his baseball-hat peak further up his head as though he was overheating.

  I felt sorry for Scotty because although he seemed a happy guy who enjoyed life to the full, I could see behind his act. Here was a man who could not stop joking and boasting about his conquests with women, which I doubted in reality had been more than about two. I wondered if I’d find out more about him and what he was hiding. The same with Jim, and with Frau Anaya. As for the Danish and Greg, there was nothing more than what you saw on the surface. I agreed with Greg, the trip was going to be very interesting.

  ‘Hey, Greg, I was thinking that you might want to give Bali a call and order some more unicorns before the trip. Might be lots of non-Aussies along the coast,’ said Jim.

  ‘Yeah, mate, I just might.’ Greg didn’t turn round. Then he began laughing and spluttering in my direction. ‘Mate, I’ve gotta fucking hand it to you. Once again, you’ve outdone yourself! Four fucking unicorns.’

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘I know, I know, it’s mental, I couldn’t believe it. How does it happen?’ I played along with the shock factor for entertainment purposes. I mean, it was a triumph, but I understood how it happened.

  Jim shook his head as he peeled the label off his Victoria Bitter. ‘What’s the most of one painting you’ve ever sold, Greg?’

  Greg turned round, sweat pouring from his face, eyes like piss holes as usual. ‘I remember when I first started out, I sold to a company who had just bought some massive office block and I convinced them that they should buy a ton of abstracts for their corridors, and I think I might have sold around twenty, but I’ve never had more than one unicorn sold at a time. That is pretty amazing.’

  ‘And very strange,’ added Jim.

  Fucking Greg and his office story topping my triumph. I looked over at Anaya, who was watching me the whole time Greg was talking. What the fuck was her problem with me?

  ‘I told you this business is fascinating, really bloody fascinating; you learn so much about people.’ Greg turned back to putting the prawns on a plate.

  ‘Is that why you’re in it, Anaya?’ I asked, really pushing it.

  ‘Maybe, yeah, why not?’ Anaya was floundering and began helping Greg distribute the food to take the heat away from her.

  ‘Do you ever wonder about the people that paint the shit we sell? Do you think that they might be having a beer somewhere, laughing like we are about it?’ Jim was still picking at his label, searching for the deeper meaning as usual.

  ‘Oh mate, nah, nothing much goin’ on there. Just normal people, trying to make a buck without doing too much, just like you and me.’ Scotty picked more stray tobacco out of his mouth and offered his joint around. Greg accepted.

  ‘You reckon?’ asked Jim, unconvinced.

  ‘Fuck, yeah.’

  ‘Maybe some of them are really brilliant painters, maybe they hate having to do this shit. I mean, they can really paint, can’t they?’ The truth was I had often wondered about the people who supplied us with all our artwork or, more to the point, who supplied us with the names signed at the bottom. I’d asked Greg and Anaya, and they insisted that the names were genuine. Although the only clear one was Peter Stuger.

  ‘It’s a simple operation, they do what they do best and we do what we do best.’ Greg drew in the joint then passed it to Anaya.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said, inhaling and then blowing it out.

  ‘Why don’t we toast the painters?’ I said, standing up and lifting my bottle.

  ‘And the unicorn,’ said Andrea.

  Jim, Scotty and I stood up; we all moved over to Greg and Anaya beside the barbie. I cleared my throat.

  ‘OK, raise your drinks, folks, to Peter Stuger and the other signatures we’re unable to read.’

  ‘And the unicorn!’ shouted Karin.

  We all clinked bottles to various mumbles of ‘Peter Stuger’. Anaya and I clinked each other’s last and with some considerable force.

  The evening turned into drunken dancing. Jim was the only one reluctant to join in. I tried to drag him up a couple of times but he just wasn’t having it.

  ‘No, fuck off! I’m really not a dancer, OK?’ He stood against the wall watching me and Scotty throw each other round in an attempt to do some kind of jive to ‘My Baby Just Cares For
Me’.

  ‘No one really is. Come on!’ I tried grabbing both his hands.

  ‘It’s not going to happen.’

  Karin came over and grabbed his other hand, helping me to try to drag him up. Eventually he gave in.

  ‘OK, OK, but it won’t be pretty.’ He reluctantly got to his feet and swayed around making a figure of eight with Karin and me dancing beside him. Scotty danced with Andrea, and Greg and Anaya were pressed up to one another even though the music was fast.

  I took off my vest and danced in my bra and denim shorts. Scotty clapped and whistled using his two fingers. Andrea did the same, then Karin. Anaya looked over at us, took off her T-shirt and threw it behind her, causing it to land on a branch in the tree that hung over from the adjoining wall. A fairly poor portable stereo that mostly stayed on the kitchen worktop supplied the music. I ran inside and turned it up as far as it would go so that the sound distorted badly, but I needed all it could give. When I got back outside, Scotty had taken his T-shirt off, and Andrea was attempting to remove his long baggy surfer shorts. Jim was avoiding the entire thing by sitting back down on the step, picking at a new label and drinking fast. The Danish and Anaya began dancing round Greg, who looked gross thrusting into Anaya. I removed my bra and threw it towards Anaya’s suspended T-shirt. Anaya removed hers next and she switched partners to dance with me. Some chart-topping shit belted out, and then changed into Rainbow’s ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, which caused an upsurge in madness. The Danish were topless too and began a double pelvic grind with Greg, who was far too out of it to notice anything.

  Anaya and I danced round one another shouting out the chorus and playing air guitar. Then she pushed into me, rubbing her tits against mine. Scotty cheered and poured beer over himself. I put my hand round on to Anaya’s arse and pulled her into me. We stayed like that for the duration of Rainbow, checking out Greg every so often just to make sure things were OK. We looked right into each other. She had the most piercing blue-green eyes, and her blue eyeliner was slightly smudged, making her look damaged and fucked up and even sexier.