After the Blues

by Kathy Lette

  ‘Fuck benefits.’ The Chihuahua wrapped his fingers round Mouche’s upper arm. His hand was encrusted in diamonds and he wore handmade velvet slippers, his initials embroidered on each pointed toe. ‘I only believe in one minority group. Millionaires.’

  ‘Ha ha, millionaires!’ Aussie guffawed dutifully. ‘Oh yeah, and I can pay ya, Mou.’ He glowered at me. ‘That’s one up on you, Deb.’

  ‘One-upping, hmmm. That’s a very visual concept,’ the Chihuahua oozed, running his other hand up Mouche’s leg. He was one of those guys who thought he was just irresistible. Success had obviously gone straight to his cock. The urge to emasculate him overwhelmed me. I thought of the one thing that would offend such a misogynistic, macho meathead.

  ‘Why don’tcha piss off, ya little Pommy pillow biter,’ I snapped, and pulled his hand off Mouche. ‘I hope your ears turn to arseholes and shit on your shoulders,’ I shouted.

  Admittedly this was not one of my most subtle and endearing moments. An ominous silence fell over the room, thick as a snowdrift. I mean, everyone shut up – even Mouche who was making kicking-under-the-table faces at me. The publicity people became absorbed in their ashtrays. Hotel staff were immediately called away on urgent assignments. The Chihuahua suddenly lunged, picked me up by my shirt and dragged me across the suite, saying erudite and witty things like ‘Fuck off, cuntface’ as he hurled me out into the hallway. I would have fought back but I had just decoded GBH. I had a sneaking suspicion it stood for Grievous Bodily Harm.

  As the lift doors were sucking shut, Mouche elbowed her way in beside me, laughing.

  ‘Jeez, Deb. I had no idea you’d turned into such a Serious Young Insect.’

  I replied that I had no idea she had turned into a lover of feral Chihuahuas. ‘I mean, how could you let that misogynistic, macho meathead maul you like that?’

  Mouche explained that the reason the music manager had gone ballistic at being called a pillow biter was because of his repressed homosexuality. ‘Pillows are on his menu. But the guy’s so far back in the closet you can smell the mothballs,’ she guffawed.

  I suddenly understood why she hadn’t cared about him groping her. ‘Oh, shit … So it was just a sham?’

  When the lift regurgitated us into the foyer, Aussie’s elevator had beaten us there. He was leaning upon the hotel sign, welcoming the incoming wave of international guests, Dolly Parton, Annie Lennox, Kenny Rogers and Lionel Ritchie.

  For the next ten minutes we fought over Mouche, during which I told Aussie he was dumb as an ox and that when he died they’d probably make him into a stock cube, and he called me a suck-back. ‘Your mother should have sucked you back at birth!’

  ‘Stop squabbling,’ Mouche pleaded, as a crowd gathered.

  Aussie and I glowered at each other.

  ‘We’re not squabbling. We’re in perfect agreement,’ I said. ‘We hate each other’s guts.’ Aussie grunted in confirmation.

  ‘I’m not gonna do the benefit or the Roach gig,’ Mouche said emphatically. ‘I don’t want to be famous. Who wants to be known by a bunch of yobbos who don’t know you?’

  I followed her through the streets of Kings Cross to the taxi rank. The Cross was chocker with suburban bozos hanging out for some debauchery. They gawped at the derros and drooled over the prostitutes, cajoling them to ‘Do something off. Go on.’

  ‘Where’d you get the new clobber?’ I asked suspiciously. She was wearing some sort of posh designer ensemble. Whoever made my clothes was too embarrassed to sign them. I hauled a wheel of cheese from my bag and read the label before offering it over. ‘Camembert?’ I sounded the t.

  ‘Camembear,’ she automatically corrected me.

  ‘Oh, pardon me! Camembert, camembear … the question is, why are you hanging with these placenta-heads?’

  ‘Dunno. Get sick of slumming it sometimes I guess. In that grotty squat … Ugh. I like to perve on the “in crowd” now and again.’

  ‘In where?’ I demanded. ‘In what? I’m promoting the “out crowd”. From now on, it’s in to be out, and out to be in. So now that it’s out to be in, let’s get out of here.’

  Mouche laughed and whistled at a passing taxi. Our trick was to pick a fat cabbie who couldn’t run. Then when we neared home, one of us would cry ‘Stop! Stop! I’m gonna spew,’ and we’d bolt as soon as the door was opened.

  ‘Why don’t you sing with The Cockroaches, Deb? I’m not stopping you. Then get Aussie to do your charity gig.’

  ‘Singing solo? Me? I’d be hopeless without you …’

  Mouche broke a spoke off my wheel of cheese and sniffed it critically. ‘Hmm,’ she adjudicated, ‘reminds me of a foreskin I once knew.’ Laughing long and loud we slid into the seat of the next cab. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

  Having Mouche home meant playing host to Aussie and his entourage. The squat now overflowed with bad, two-chord New Zealand guitarists, screen printers of political posters, Front Row Forward Feminists and poets on L-plates who wrote about subtle, life-enhancing things such as sperm in the gutter and menstrual blood in the mouth. Artistes Ordinaires.

  A few nights after our showdown at the Sebel, Aussie was holding court in our kitchen.

  ‘Chicks, mate, have got out of hand.’ Having eaten everything else, he was now hoeing into the cooking almonds and Ryvitas smeared in margarine. ‘I mean, take contraception. Mou uses one of them cervical cap dooverlackies, right. God!’ I waited for him to wedge his cigarette butt in the plate of half-cold baked beans on the counter in front of him. ‘That cream’s sooo cold. Like dippin’ your wick into Dairy Whip. And it’s so slippery.’ He smoked the last life out of it, right down to the filter. ‘You just get it all coated and whoosh … it shoots across the room like a bloody missile …’ He squashed the butt into the cold baked beans, as predicted.

  That was when I told him about the new song we were writing, about dud drummers with small dicks who brownnose Pommy music managers.

  ‘You know your trouble?’ Aussie grabbed my arm and gave me a Chinese burn. ‘No sense of humour. I’d hate to be the bloke who took you to bed. I bet after a rotten night in the sack, you don’t even have the courtesy to pretend.’

  The boys guffawed and I felt myself blush.

  ‘Girls,’ I stood up straight, ‘I mean women, don’t have to gauge their worth anymore through how many, you know …’ Once I knew I was blushing, I blushed more, ‘men they can score. Not me, boy, no way.’ Once I knew I was blushing because I was blushing, I blushed even redder.

  ‘Maybe you’re a clit licker,’ Aussie sniggered. ‘It’s not healthy. The two of youse in the one bed.’ He wrung my arm as though it was a dishrag. ‘She’s the A-side. Face it. You’re the B flipside. She’d be better off without you, ya fag hag.’

  ‘Let me tell you,’ I began, but felt really lonely and sooky all of a sudden. Tears stung my eyeballs. I missed Garry. I missed my annoying little brother. I even, for a brief, self-indulgent moment, missed my dear parents. ‘If your plane crashed in the jungle, everyone would eat you. Even your own mother. Even if there was plenty of other food available.’

  Next night I went to the local dive for deviants. It was downstairs with dags for two bucks, and upstairs with phonies for four. I queued in the cold, waiting for inspection by the doorman. Suburbanites shivered in their lycra hot pants, Calvin Klein designer socks, sequined caps and high-heeled jackboots – only to be rejected at the door for being too uninteresting. The dress criterion was clearly charisma, so there went my night out, I realised.

  Most of the people the doorman let in were what we called ‘Punques’ – pseudo or ‘weekend’ punks, who, come Saturday nights, exchanged their St. George Building Society or airline steward tags for ‘Victim’ or ‘Misunderstood’ badges. Upholstered in vinyl and leather, they also blew their noses a lot to indicate that they had Kings Cross Colds (a snivelling condition contracted by sticking your salary up your nostril in the form of granules of white powder). They considered themselves to be Ultr
a Now. They were more then than now, if you ask me. As my turn for doorman approval approached, I groomed my aura and tried to ooze mystery and intrigue but had clearly undergone a charisma-ectomy. He was about to toss me onto the unhip compost heap, when I was rescued by an excited trendoid with tailored teeth.

  ‘Hey, aren’t you one of the Sushi Sisters? Are youse chicks on together?’

  This feeble hint of fame meant that the doorman relented. I paid my two bucks in twenty-cent busking pieces and went inside to lurk with the dags in the murky depths of the disco. Pretty soon I was pinioned by a conversational fork prong.

  ‘Let’s play carnival …’ The stranger groped at my back for a buttock. ‘Sit on my face, and I’ll tell you how much you weigh … How ’bout it babe?’

  It was thrills with no frills – romance 1980s style.

  I knew that Aussie was down the coast with the ‘Cockies’ on a pub crawl, so this was my chance to show Mouche that I was just as desirable and deviant as she was. Checking that there was only one lump in the bed, I led him in. He fumbled round with my jeans button.

  ‘We’ll go Dutch, okay?’ I whispered, undressing myself and handing him a condom.

  My sex life sucked, it really did. Well, what did I expect? Hardly any women were transported to the colonies early on. Sheep were the only female companionship for the first Aussie blokes. That’s where they learned their sexual techniques, let me tell you. Of late, I’d been tempted to wear my woollens to bed, whack my feet into a pair of gumboots and lie back and ‘baaa’. I reckon that’s the real definition of Australian foreplay – shearing. It was always alright until I opened my eyes … Then I’d see his chin go all wobbly and his eyes sort of roll upwards and I’d suddenly know that he didn’t know who or what was on the end of his penis. You could be a carton of curdled custard, right? I decided this time to keep my eyes jammed tight … That was why I didn’t notice what was going on until Mouche started making Academy Award–winning noises.

  There are quite a few overrated events in this world. Waterbeds, weddings, oysters, tattoos and … group gropes. I mean, how can you have a good time when you’re desperately jealous that everyone else is having a better time than you? All feelings of mutual sharing and caring evaporate when you find yourself sleeping in the wet patch, and then realising that it’s not your own.

  I tried. Truly I did. First, I stretched over and squeezed odd bits of anatomy. Hands squeezed bits of my anatomy back. Then I tried to fake satisfaction. I thought a blank stare into space would work quite well, coupled with a bit of groaning … But they were too busy by then defying gravity to even notice me. Next time I was in a group grope, I vowed to take along my novel for the boring bits. Or a crossword. Maybe a nail manicure set? Feeling like the ham in a most unwholesome sandwich, I fell asleep.

  I awoke to find my arm wedged under his hairy torso. I was caught, like a dingo in a trap. He was what was known in Australian female folklore as a Dingo Man – the sort of guy who makes you feel you’d rather gnaw your arm off than have to wake him up and talk to him. Not only that, but having rolled towards me in the night, his mouth was now hanging open in my face and he had bottom-of-the-budgie-cage breath.

  ‘Psst … Psst. Help!’

  Mouche prised me out from under him and we escaped onto the balcony.

  ‘Eight … and a half,’ she volunteered. ‘Not bad at the old clitoral orgasms.’

  My orgasms hadn’t been clitoral or vaginal but futile. ‘I fuck up absolutely everything.’ I sobbed. ‘I can’t even manage a one-night stand.’

  ‘Shit, Deb. I didn’t know he meant anything to you.’

  ‘Get real. He doesn’t.’ I shrugged into a T-shirt that had been draped over the balcony to dry.

  ‘Well, what’s the John Dory? Come on,’ she persuaded. ‘Life’s too short to be subtle.’

  ‘Oh well, nothing much. Aussie says I’m a bulldyke. We’ve got no money. I’m flat-chested with freckles. My side of the bed’s an erogenous-free zone. My parents hate me. I can’t even sing. The love of my life slept with my best pal since kindy … Which is why I ran away here to the Big Smoke in the first frigging place, only to become a total failure. Apart from that, everything’s tops, terrific, just fantabulous.’

  ‘God, you and Aussie are so alike.’ She dangled her bare legs over the balcony.

  ‘Thanks a mill! You really know how to cheer a girl up.’

  ‘You’re both famished for fame. Neither of you will be happy till they’re selling plastic replicas of your toenail clippings at greasy milk bars up and down the coast. Ugh!’

  ‘Well, you’ve got no worries about that ever happening. You’re not talking to a Has Been. You’re talking to a Never Was. I lied to you about all the cool things I’ve done. I’ve never been in a jacuzzi. Or shoplifted. Or tried cocaine. Truth is, I’ve never even been to Bali. Or …’ I blubbered, ‘up on stage.’

  ‘Deb.’ She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. ‘I’m not doing your charity gig, if that’s what you’re angling for with this pathetic sob story …’

  ‘Why not?’ I sulked, tears falling. ‘You owe me one. And you know it.’

  ‘That’s right, persecute someone who has no parents … I could end up an emotional cripple! Besides … we don’t have any costumes.’

  ‘Shit. Maybe I should just go get a job in a chemist like my mum wants.’ We shivered in silence for a while. Below us the peak-hour traffic ricocheted up Bourke Street.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ I shrugged. ‘Still, I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve had to greet a man by his pyjama label. Good morning, Pierre Cardin.’

  She snorted with suppressed laughter and biffed me good-naturedly. ‘God, I suppose we could scrounge up some costume ensemble or other and do the benefit gig.’

  I snivelled. ‘Promise?’

  Mouche gave me the sleeve of her T-shirt to wipe my nose on. ‘And by the way, you have beautiful boobs, you big dag.’

  We drooled over the pastels and lace and fluorescent lamé. A withered man shuffled over to serve us. His face, up close, was mottled. He looked like a slice of dry continental sausage that’d been hanging in the corner deli for decades. When we told him why we wanted the material scraps, he craned over the measuring counter, ogled us up and down for a few moments, then told us he was a patron of ze artz, and that the shop shut at twelve-serty, and zat, if we came back zen, he vould show us, down below in ze storerooms, ze beautiful sings … yes? Mouche and I glanced at each other, our crap antennae vibrating.

  Now was the perfect opportunity to show Mouche that I really was as tough as toenails. ‘Life’s too short to be subtle,’ I said to her brazenly.

  And so, at ‘twelve-serty’, we returned. The shop door was locked and on a chain. His hand slithered across to unhook the latch and we sidled into the doorway. Sequins winked in the dark. Mouche pointed silently to two coloured silks. He wedged the rolls under his arms like truncheons. The tape measure uncoiling in his hand, he told Mouche to take off her top. I leaped down from my perch on the ‘Throw out, ten per cent off’ table.

  ‘Go and pick ze materials you like,’ he ordered me. I could hear the blood pounding through his varicose veins.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mouche, lifting up her top. Reluctantly, I hovered over by the polyesters. I didn’t like the look of it. They were standing close enough to brush each other’s teeth. Not that he had any. Where his gums should be there was just this vermilion slush. I heard him say something about little poached eggs.

  ‘All ze boyz must keys you like zis …’ he mumbled into Mouche’s indifferent nipple. She must have felt she was being devoured by a beanbag – a sweaty beanbag. Mouche baulked at his slobbering progress down her belly. ‘Just a leetle look.’ His sausage fingers slid adroitly under her pants elastic. ‘… An old man can’t hurt you.’

  I watched, immobilised by disgust, as he plated her. Honestly, the old bugger didn’t come up for air once. Meanwhile, Mou
che cleaned the dirt out from under her nails. I could handle it. I was a Girl-of-the-World. I knew about G spots and how to pronounce camembert and which fork to use for the fish, and the difference between Uruguay and Paraguay and the address of a bar in New York where you checked in not just your coat but all your clothes …

  I catapulted across the room and whacked him in the guts. ‘Perv! Bloody old perv!’

  He quickly slid back into his professional manner. ‘Ze materials.’ Mouche looked at me with amused incredulity as we waited. He ushered us out through the tradesmen’s entrance. ‘Vait.’ He tucked twenty dollars into my hand as we exited out into the wintery city sun.

  Mouche eyed me coolly. ‘You can take the girl out of the brick veneer,’ she said, ‘but you can’t take the brick veneer out of the girl.’

  Clearly, I had brick venereal disease.

  The redevelopment of our street was underway. One or two National Trust houses would be rescued, but the rest would be bulldozed or updated into designer rentals. We couldn’t pay a fifty per cent increase in rent. We couldn’t pay a fifty per cent decrease. We couldn’t pay, period. We had wallpapered the loo with eviction notices. Some days, as we trudged down the bleak backstreets of Woolloomooloo, I’d suddenly feel saturated by the doom and gloom and the grey asphalt. Up until now, my feelings for Mouche had made me sort of resistant to the reality of being unemployed, broke, BA-less, betrayed by my best friend and my boyfriend, and in the shit with my oldies.

  Max said not to worry, that we’d all be dead soon anyway. If the diminishing ozone layer or AIDS didn’t get us, then President Reagan would. What Max suffered from was postnatal depression – but the birth that had depressed him was his own. He always bragged about carking it before he hit twenty. When he turned twenty, he escalated the date of his demise to twenty-five. Max was a kind of dying legend. So when he did OD, none of us was prepared for it.

  ‘Max OD’d.’ Mouche’s face was drained of all expression. She had been sitting in the dark waiting for me to come home from Paddy’s Markets with the stallholders’ damaged fruit. ‘He’s at St Vinnie’s.’ She slumped further into the lounge chair. ‘Aussie called an ambulance. He went blue.’