Both Sides of the Moon

by Duff, Alan

  But then some say that Maori warrior men, happy men, laugh lots, have fun. Listen, warrior men are happy men because they’re simple. Of mind, of not seeing into future only to this day. Of what this day might bring. Warrior men stand around making good humour, mild tease of each other, easy to laugh, easy to giggle. From easy of mind. Unthinking, unseeing, unfutured mind.

  Fuckin’ warriors, too fuck-stupid to know they’re cursed. Too fuck-dumb to know their children are cursed with them. Sullen, sexually abused girls in the dark. Wild, sexually frustrated boys sharing the dark with them. Everyone so absolutely certain of her and himself. In each his pain. Yet truth is confused. Cursed children of warrior culture. Talk laconic. Talk in short meaningless bursts. Easier to snarl: feel better that way. But can’t talk of your true self hammering inside it wants to get out. A locked-up person turns ugly. Turns mean. Wants to get out. Can’t get out. Something has to break. Someone has to be broken.

  I had her to start with and then him before my vision, loomed up out of the dark how he does; it’s his medium, it’s where filth and perverts and dangerous bastards best operate, along with us as their fare and with our own torments and troubles, and our share of the guilt load. It can’t be entirely his fault his culpability.

  And I’m with a girl, in a bus shelter that the night’s last bus has gone past, so we’re all alone and yet have chosen mutually this publicly owned little shelter because it feels more of a statement, of what we hope to find in each other — till this Dan cunt came and spoiled it. We could have done better and wiser by getting our voyage going under a school hedge, out in the vastness of black playing field, grass beneath us and black sky above and our own firmaments waiting to shoot with stars and my spunk and her giving wet, and maybe she’d’ve spasmed a little something of a higher plane too.

  Her name is Althea, I’ve never heard such an exotic name, and she’s lost like I am; her father treats her bad (Oh, so bad, Jimmy, she was about to tell me, as if I hadn’t heard her story before, the nights are full of us, nocturnal creatures come out to play, to be seriously lost, to vent our despair). Hey, people like Althea and me, we know these fuckin’ things. Use the cover of the dark and unharsh spillover house and street lights to move about in, watch the gangs, or join them, breaking other people’s property, destroying their gardens, stoning their dogs, scratching their cars. They’re the real people, the true people, we’re the outcasts. Me, the half-caste: Althea, deformed inside. Outcasts except we want, in our rotten little hearts, to belong. But can’t. So fuck them all.

  Fuck them all, I said to Althea to break the ice from too many shy hellos in the same night, our ships always pause, throw a few hopeful blinks before moving on; and our ships return over the same plied waters since we’re always in hope, and this time, it must have been a dozen we saw each other, I had to say something. Fuck them all.

  And she bent over double laughing. And I wasn’t sure if to be pleased or shamed. Till she said, Fuck them all, eh, Jimmy? And I heard my name like Mary Mother of all lost kids had said it.

  But then I was with wanting for her not for a mother but female; I wanted someone who was going to do it, who’d give it to me, her sweet wet, her cunt cave, her good entry, her place where nothing matters anymore, not for the duration and not for long lovely, finger-savouring hours afterward.

  Well, till the day creeps back in and so does who you are, which is the person not daring to look down in case he sees he stands on nothing but air above a dark dark hole.

  Well, this night we’ve really found each other, it’s as close to love as I’ve been and I’m sure she was feeling something akin, as long as I take it easy, not rush it like the slut I am, not be the slut of my mother’s inheritance. Oh shit, but I kept getting a hard on, so bad it didn’t tingle, it hurt. Bad.

  And she kept giving away little escapes of moan that seemed to be asking me the question, shall I? Oh, shall I?

  And I was trying to tell her yes you should, you must, but without giving away my desperation, for I know how the desperates turn people off, and next instant Mr Desperate Dan himself is standing on the open doorfront of our world. Damn him to hell, he’s had his share of me, he’s carved his initials in my heart with a single g for guilt, what does he want — blood?

  I’m anticipating the shame about to come when this ugly brute will reveal himself and confess us. Althea’s shown her upbringing by not letting out a cry, she didn’t even startle, just tapped me on the cheek she was about to breath sweet words into and maybe a secret or two and said, There’s a man there.

  I’m in dread of how he’ll state what he and I have done and didn’t she know this, didn’t she know she’d just been kissing with a homo? The true homo says: Kid, kid, I been looking all over for you, couldn’t find you nowhere, not in the usual places, I went all over the park — and Althea whispers, What park? Why? like a punch in my face — Kid, then I remembered you telling me you’d sit for hours in bus shelters (did I tell him that?) ’cause at least it was warm and you had a place to sit and not risk getting piles sitting on damp ground. (When I had never spoken the word piles in my remembering life.) So I started looking. Do you know how many this town has? But I figured your route from home to the places you told me you go to. So, here I am. (Whoopee. And here I am, about to be exposed for being a homo, which I’m not. Before God I’d say the first few times were exciting and yes, God, I did enjoy it. And yes, for being bad, illegal, illicit, and yes all right, to re-enact my mother. But a homo, absolutely not.)

  And this’d be your girl, right? (Yeah, right. I should tell him to piss off.) Hello, I’m Jimmy’s friend, a special friend, he’d tell you that himself. Wouldn’t you, James?

  It’s Jimmy. Not Jimmy for James, I got named Jimmy. Tell her what?

  That I’m a special friend. You would tell her that, wouldn’t you, Jimmy?

  (Cleverest wording I’ve known of him, the cunt.) Yeah, a friend. This here is Dan. This is Althea. We, uh, we were talking, Dan.

  Talking? No you weren’t, you were smooching. I saw you.

  I should have seen the danger in his eyes even with his back to the spillover light. I should have figured his hurt and jealousy and whatever it is about the opposite sex that homos can’t stand, let alone their boy lover preferring one.

  You were smooching, I stood across the street there and watched you. You were lost in each other (when I had thought found). Ya dirty little pair of lovers, out here like this, I should be so lucky. Boy and girl not yet in their prime, eh? Just starting out on life’s long sexual journey. Two young people getting sexually excited and would soon have taken it further — Am I right or am I right?

  I should have picked up then that he was dangerously jealous. Come on now, cut the fuckin’ crap, you are fuckin’ human beings aren’t you, not fuckin’ insects, not fuckin’ worms no need of another to do it to. Come on now.

  And he sits himself down between us. A hand for each of our legs. Well now, what shall we talk about on this lovely night of stars up there? Did Jimmy tell you they’re always up there it’s only a thin layer of cloud that makes the difference. Did Jimmy exclaim to you, Oh, can you imagine all that heavenly weight, all those countless heavenly bodies, lost to us by a thin vapour of H2O molecules? Does he talk like that to you, Althea? Or haven’t you got to know him that far yet?

  It was then I decided I was going to kill him, I had to. Or else he was going to kill me, I could hear it now in that tone, that hurt voice of one who has lost his love to another and so we’re all going to die.

  So I take in a deep breath, and I put a hand on his hand on my knee and I squeeze it, in a gesture of trust (and betrayal) and I feel his twitch back, and he turns and looks at me, his breath has drinking on it, his eyes are quickly clearing of the danger, which is only love waiting for reassurance, in this case. His features, his every particle of simple, selfish, male-lustful existence are quite clear in the spillover streetlight, it’s the most of what I have known about light: spillovers.<
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  His breath is whisky, his breath is some hours of out walking, searching for me in this night, I nod to him and make him promise to leave us now, without so much as a word, he knows I’ll keep mine, I’ll see him right, his needs will be met, I know how to please him, just please leave us alone.

  He stands up. Good to meet you, Althea. He tell you what a nice name that is? Yes, he did. Be seeing you, kid. Yeah, I’ll see you. And we watch him walk off down the street, a hulking movement of the ape in man. Just as long as this night, this moment, gives him what he demands, he’s a becalmed beast. Althea naturally asks, Who was he, and before I can answer says he’s a creep and has he got something over me?

  Like what? I don’t know. But has he? Like what? She shrugs, I told you, I don’t know. The same as what my old man has got over me, I guess. Has he?

  So ultimately, with her pressing, I’m crying in our little shelter place, making private statement in public place and being held in this girl’s arms. And I’m sobbing that I’m going to kill him, and she says don’t be saying that. If you’re going to do it then do it. But don’t tell no one. Not even me. I think we’d better go home now. No!

  No. Please, not yet. Althea? And Althea becomes more the adult to the child, shaking her head sadly. I was going to give it to you, what you wanted, what every boy wants. Though not here. Where then? Why can’t we still do it? But she shakes her head, a different shake. No. You and me could have done better than that. (Oh?) What’s better than it?

  Talking, she said. We could have talked, talked till late, till it got so late we’d get punished for it, or I would. And then what we did would have been … I don’t know, I’ve only ever imagined it, but I think it would have been different. Better, you know?

  No, I didn’t know. I don’t know, Althea. Why don’t we try it then? Don’t go home yet. I’m following her up the street now. She stops. Where else but under a streetlight? Half of our lives are spent being defined by streetlights. Saying something in emphasis or summary about us. The nights, our grateful darks, what would they be if no streetlight?

  Otherwise it’s what people do to each other and not for, she said. You understand me? Sure, if I was honest, I understood this fifteen year old. I said yeah. But grudgingly.

  Well, she took deep breath, she looked suddenly old, by a good ten years. A woman, therefore. And she said: My father’s done it me —

  Your father?!

  So it’s nothing new, I don’t get excited you know. Not with him. I was getting a little feeling sitting back there with you. But — But what, Althea? — We all get claimed, don’t we? Someone’s always got a hand on some of us.

  Then she turned and walked. Left me with claim right on the tip of my pathetic tongue. And the other waiting in the spillover streetlight dark.

  Stepped out of the dark, how they do, how he does, walking in step alongside me, asking, demanding out the side of his mouth did I kiss her again?

  No, (no, no, no, I didn’t kiss her again) we’re striding through the night, his grateful dark, my murderous intention clear now. I’ll fix him for good. I have to move away from his urgent touchings, his gropings, his feelings; sexual desire is a tentacled creature, it can’t help itself, it has to be satisfied, which is why women are raped and sometimes they’re murdered: because sexual desire becomes murderous desire. Though that’s not where mine comes from. I’ve just had enough, I want to be free.

  Like Tangiwai Kotuku to her sexual conqueror, I’m on my knees in the park, gagging on the full force of this monster. But I’m not strong like Tangiwai Kotuku of the past, I’m in this present with this raging beast, I have thought that this is where I belong, deserve to belong, nowhere other and better than here.

  But then I hear a voice inside me say it can’t go on, or you may as well die. So hurting him forms again in my mind. I could just bite him off. But I know I can’t murder him, even if I had a gun, a knife, or could lure him to falling into one of those boiling pools. But not ready to die myself.

  Oh kid, oh kid, oh fucking Jesus God sweet kid! he’s groaning down on me from above. And then I’m running. Jimmy Burgess is running.

  26

  He braced himself for the stench of her, the foul smell she was certain to carry. And if not for his warrior training he’d have closed his eyes so at least to be rid the sight of her, that half fallen-away face. That loose skin beneath the eye socket that looked worse than might an old woman’s vagina.

  He was also a little surprised, hurt if he was honest, which he was closer to being in his whole life, but not quite close enough, they were little interested in him not one of the gathering of about fifteen times his fingers of both hands. Curious, but politely so. When he had thought they might come closer to make admiring inspection of his tattoos, his warrior presence, now that he was sat upon a waist-height rock ready for the hideous woman to trim his hair. He’d have liked that.

  The sun felt for the first in a long while its energy-giving same. A bee somewhere close made pleasant sound. He thought these people conversed in a most untypical, strangely subdued way. Wild Hair was holding court with a group of young misfits, they could be brothers or first cousins of this creature now stepping up with sharpened stone to cut his hair. So ugly he decided better to ignore the warrior training, of never to close one’s eyes to a truth lest it leap up and kill you, and he shut out her image, let the sun do its work; let Wild Hair’s words work in and a man consider their worth, or lacking.

  Her knee put weight against side of his thigh. Gave him involuntary tingle at that. But it was just touch of another human he had not known, it seemed then, for an eternity.

  He opened his eyes to get the reality in perspective. Surprised that it was kind of smiling at him. If that half-monster’s mouth be called smile. He made polite noise back and closed eyes again and waited for her stench to hit him, hoping that he would not show sign of registering.

  But he forgot about her stench, or maybe she didn’t have one. His own body he had kept clean in river and stream this past lost period of his life. Even in that state he had known he must keep himself clean, or all would be totally lost; instincts and only instincts told him this. But he could not smell her, he could only hear that the bee was several and they were like a lullaby to sleep this early afternoon.

  The sun’s heat was concentrated and he started to feel sweat ooze from him, and so flies landed and fed on his salt and invisible bodily sheddings. But warriors did not allow flies to bother them. Perhaps if they were a swarm he might swat them away. But they were not. And anyway he had hard skin and minded little the tiny tickling of tiny things moving over him.

  He could hear Wild Hair being asked in questioning tone by younger voices female and male, his hearing close to an outrage, for he had heard no man of authority addressed so except in direct challenge for leadership. Such dissenting even in this tone should be enough to invite instant death. But then it was tone not so threatening. And clearly how they conducted themselves in discourse. So he did not try to pick out the words, or hear the strain of argument, lest he break this spell.

  The spell of hand weights resting lightly on his scalp, or the raised grown top of it that it was, and the flicking cut of the stone hair blade; a woman’s different, lighter, calmer breathing. If she were not so damned ugly! For even in his mind, behind closed eyes, her image was strongly repugnant.

  He wondered if she would talk to him or even if she could talk. And what language would be her tongue? He asked her did she admire his facial tattoos. Heard the rustle of her shoulder cloak garment make indifferent shrug — it must be indifferent for her laugh was apologetic.

  And she said: My eyes are long unfamiliar with such tattoo adornments. Adornments? Which she had said in the classical way, saying it thus: man’s true face. Which was unexpected phrasing for a deformed person of no rank, no status in all this land, even worse than now his own. For he at least had residue of former status, he had lingering taste of what he had been — he even had ho
pe, if distant, of knowing another kind of status, considerably less than the former, but anything would be better than the present.

  These markings were endured without cry, he remembered with more pride than he intended. Not one sound of pain, not in the days and days of tohunga tattooist hammering and chiselling them. You can see at least, from your language, that they are of beauty.

  Ae, I can that. But with respect, stranger, what said they about you that remains to this day?

  His eyes flew open then. At truth pulling the lids apart. At truth of her ugliest side to him. He said: If you did not know the classical language, you would not have made that remark.

  She said: No. But since I do know our tongue at its higher elevated reach, then I would make it. Though it is not I who have less, or more, respect for what tattoo markings say of a man. With respect again, it would seem to me to say only one thing, that there be no other meaning.

  He said to this hideously featured woman of eloquence: No other meaning?

  She said: You are given no choice. So how much store be put in even that admirable classical term of a man’s true face? Only the man knows what is true of him. And for men of these, your entirely different surroundings in this brief abode without buildings or bedded foundations, what is true does not stay true for so very long. What is true is change. Which, if you have the will or the way, can grow. And who among even the most ferocious warriors does not have a time of appreciating a growing thing?

  He closed his eyes again, letting her words take process in him before opening his eyes and speaking to her hair-trimming presence (aee, uglier than I thought!). But nothing unsightly about her words. Woman, he began, but she tapped the cutting instrument lightly on his head.