Almost a Mirror

by Kirsten Krauth

  Along the wall someone has spray-painted.

  Nick Cave, Oh! God! Please let me die beneath your fists.

  Where do you live? she asks.

  Pascoe Vale.

  You can crash at my place. I’m just around the corner.

  He thinks about his mum waiting up for the sounds of him.

  I’ll hitch a lift.

  He says it like it’s not the first time.

  I’ll wait while you get a ride. If you stand on the corner looking like that they’ll think you’re for rent.

  Benny puts his shirt back on and buttons up his jacket. He loves the way she talks. Fast and funny.

  It’s too cold to stand still and they end up starting to walk and then they just keep walking until their feet hurt and their arms ache.

  Connie lights her last cigarette and throws the packet away. There are so many questions he wants to ask her.

  Where is her family?

  Why did she leave Tasmania?

  How did she meet Guy?

  But he doesn’t feel like he has the right.

  His first girlfriend told him he was up himself because he never asked her any questions. But it isn’t like that.

  He doesn’t know how to impose on people.

  Connie sits on the ground and pulls him down.

  We’ve still got ages to go, Benny says.

  What about if we try a shortcut?

  The fence has razor wire along the top.

  She gives him a boost, kind of.

  As he tries to balance, the inside leg of his pants gets caught and he feels it tear. Not just through the suit but into the hard flesh of his inner thigh.

  I’m coming back down. We’ll never get over.

  You’re bleeding.

  She touches the rip, grazed skin, and reaches into a pocket of her canvas bag. She places the pad over his wound and presses.

  If you keep it there, it should stop the flow.

  He holds it down without looking. He’s seen them in the bathroom cabinet. He feels like he’s stealing some secret part of her.

  She tilts her head to the side and tries not to laugh.

  Have you got any sisters?

  Just Guy.

  Why don’t we keep walking until we find an overpass? she says.

  He puts his head between his legs. It’ll be hours until they get home.

  Is it the blood? Are you hurting?

  He wants to cry and shakes his head.

  It’s his father’s suit.

  The only one.

  She takes his hand and pulls him along as they take turns singing, yelling the lyrics into the night, making dogs bark along the streets.

  He lies down on the footpath and she drags him up again.

  Whose dumb idea was this? she asks.

  The sweat has dried cold on his back. The wind hits it and stings.

  They dangle their legs between the overpass bars and hang their boots over. The traffic is starting to build to peak hour, lights on in the morning fog. They’ve been walking all night.

  He moves so his hand is resting on the outer side of his thigh and waits to see if she’ll do the same.

  She doesn’t.

  She pulls him around so he is sitting with his back against the bars, the cold in his bones.

  She puts her finger in the tear in his pants.

  I can’t believe it’s still there! she says.

  It’s stuck to my leg.

  She takes the pad off, a smear of bright red blood, and laughs as she chucks it over the railing and onto the cars below.

  She sits down with one leg either side of him, wrapping him in the hug of her mohair coat.

  He thinks about which way his mum drives to work.

  It’s new, the warmth of Connie, the chemical smell. Dog hair, tobacco, wet wool. Most of all, the way her legs control his movement, position him so she gets what she wants.

  You know, it takes the same amount of energy to orgasm as it takes to climb a flight of stairs, she says.

  He struggles to keep up with her.

  She lies him down on the concrete and then rolls so he’s on top. She shows him how to press down and move and the cars below honk but he doesn’t hear them.

  Only the sound of clothes rubbing against skin.

  She goes quiet and moves quicker and her forehead is all frown. At the end she looks up and sighs but her heart goes hard.

  He leans his ear on her heart as he looks out into the oncoming traffic.

  SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS)

  Melbourne, 1983

  After ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ Benny buys dark sunglasses and dreams of leather jackets. He reads old copies of Rock Scene with his brother’s fingerprints and pictures of the bands from the New York underground. The Ramones and Television and Richard Hell most of all, who has the best hair and hangs out at CBGB. He falls in love with New York bands before he even hears their music. He catches the train to the city and hangs out at Missing Link or Hound Dog’s Bop Shop to see what the covers look like. On the blackboard there’s a list of what’s coming soon. At the record store most of all he likes to flick through, looking at the other people flicking through, people dressed like him.

  After ‘Ashes to Ashes’ he dyes his hair blond and hangs a poster of a Pierrot clown above his bed. He shapes new frontiers to explore and learns on his brother’s guitar. He puts numbers on the frets. He doesn’t know what the song’s about and that’s what he likes about it. His brother lines up for Bowie. Lines up for weeks and in the line-up starts a band and after the concert never comes back home.

  After ‘Das Model’ he buttons shirts at the collar. He chooses German at school and watches Countdown to get a glimpse of the future. When Guy needs money he comes for dinner and shouts the show down for all the bands they don’t play. But all Benny can see are the possibilities. Where the pop and glamour might take him.

  After ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ he dyes his hair black and raids his mother’s make-up when he thinks she’s not looking. It’s just a smudge at first that he quickly wipes off. But he learns pretty soon that the girls love it and so he carries a kohl pencil deep in his pocket. When Connie comes to visit, she lies on his bed and puts an arm around him and rests her head on his chest. She chews gum and cracks jokes like a girl from a black-and-white movie.

  Benny keeps his stash of records hidden at his mum’s. Even from Guy. Especially from Guy. His brother always rips off anything he likes. Guy rifles collections, breaks down doors. Benny plays tapes at parties because he doesn’t want his records stolen. The records are about more than the music. He’s obsessed with seveninch singles. The picture covers and design. The records define you. That’s what Guy says. If you don’t have The Stooges, you’re a fuckwit. But that’s another reason he hides his records. Pop is not on the official playlist.

  Most of all, Benny wants to know how you become more. How you become more than the thousands in their bedrooms. Pressing pause until the tape runs out. Playing the same riff. Hunched over their guitars like stunted creatures. How you capture girls in the audience with a net and pin them to a board. It’s the hair and the clothes and the voice and the energy. But it’s more than that. He wants to make them feel exalted because they’ve conjured him up. Out of nothing. Out of their fantasies. He wants them dependent on him, the nonchalance. Making it appear that they’re of no consequence. He doesn’t want them screaming out his name. He wants them inhaling him into their throats like a slow curl of incense and holding him in their chests. A smoke ring going the wrong way. Dispersing into the gut, the brain, the senses, as they dance. It’s not so much about what people remember as what people forget. He wants to not be forgotten.

  There are dividers everywhere. When he’s on the in, he can cross over and no one will stop him. He can step onto the stage, inside the Sebel Townhouse, through the black curtain, join the conversation, look out in mirrorshades through the windows onto the street. When he’s on the out, he tries to look in and cries because h
e wants to be with them. He tries to look in but all he can see is his own reflection in the glass.

  But still he waits, waits, waits to replace them. To step over the line. And no one believes he will do it until he does. And no one believes that one day things might shift back and he’ll be asked to step to the other side.

  For the fans, the bands, it’s really the same. Wanting to be known. Their names remembered. Mutual recognition.

  They all want the same thing.

  To have the light reflected back at them.

  PLANET EARTH

  Melbourne, 1987

  You make a paste out of the dirt and water.

  Rub it into your body.

  I take the dressing gown off and the mud feels rough on my skin, coffee grounds like specks of freckles.

  I paint it on my thighs, between my legs.

  Jimmy’s swirling around the floor, making up moves as he goes. He dances from wall to wall like he’s doing a waltz.

  He grabs my arm and when I laugh and refuse he keeps going. The floorboards spring back under his feet.

  I can’t find the dressing gown cord.

  My eyes are black. My lips are black.

  Jimmy’s bones poke out, his collarbone. His beautiful mouth. The most luscious thing. He bites his nails, small, ragged pain at the edges.

  I can see you and the camera through my legs. The floor stabs my knees when I crawl away from you.

  I’ve dyed my hair black like you asked me to. I have a different frame to look through with the way it comes forward, wraps my face. My hands keep reaching out to push it aside.

  The dark hair makes my skin look sick.

  Wind the cord around your arm, Jimmy.

  Jimmy does a few push-ups and then comes back pumping. He picks at the flesh like he’s looking for a point to it all.

  He takes the dressing gown cord in his mouth, in his teeth.

  He wants me to do it with him, to inject it for him, but I can’t look and you won’t stop looking.

  Jimmy does it anyway.

  When I close my eyes I can still see him, like when I stare at a light for a long time and then shut my eyes quickly. I see the ghost of an outline in the dark.

  I like his muscles when he does that. The way they shape around the black cord. The rest of his body is thin but his arms are still strong.

  Jimmy and I never get to stand up. We crawl and tug at each other’s bodies. But it’s not like when we’re in the bungalow. When we’re alone.

  I know you want us to let you in.

  You hand me a mug and the two-minute noodles are the best thing about the day. They float, hot and salty, hard to eat with a spoon.

  I try to force them into Jimmy’s mouth but they keep dropping to the floor.

  Lie on the ground and don’t look at the camera.

  Jimmy has moved on. He sinks to the floor and drags me with him. His skin is sticky like he’s been covered in black tar.

  This room is long and the roof is high and there’s a stage at the end. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling but the floor is cold.

  Jimmy keeps saying this is the last time. He promises in whispers because you don’t like it when you can’t hear what we’re saying.

  When you can’t hear us, your photos can’t find us.

  If this paste was red it would look like blood pouring out of me. It makes smudges on the floor that I circle around with my toes.

  Lie down and curl away to the wall, Jimmy. Turn the bottoms of your feet to face me.

  You put my hands on him and then take them off.

  Our mouths open and shut and the only words that come out are yours.

  It’s okay if you fall asleep.

  Jimmy’s arms and legs are heavy. You want to make lifeless seem lifelike.

  He’s lying on scrunched-up newspaper that you’ve flattened around him.

  I turn to face you.

  I stick my belly out and let my arms hang like an orangutan’s.

  Stop looking at the camera, you say.

  Tilt your head up further.

  It hurts my neck. I tilt it back down.

  Stop looking at the camera.

  You rub dirt into Jimmy’s soft feet.

  Stop looking.

  You lift Jimmy so he’s sitting slumped against a wall and his breathing is slow and soft.

  Stop.

  But you have that look you get and you smooth your hair back from your face

  Rub the dirt into your cheeks, Mona.

  Jimmy starts to scratch his chest, strips of skin under ragged nails.

  I come closer and sit next to Jimmy and I put his head in my lap and I look at you.

  Stop.

  My eyes are sore. Giant tears slide down, melting the mud into my mouth and onto Jimmy’s cheeks.

  My teeth turn brown.

  Stop looking.

  You don’t drift around me anymore. You are sharp like a knife and everything hurts. The lights and the moon and your mean shadow.

  Stop looking at the camera.

  I lie Jimmy back down and he squirms underneath my hands. His body is covered in oil, slippery like a newborn calf. He twitches.

  Stop looking at the camera, you say.

  I smile.

  You come in closer.

  I smile at all the things you will never capture.

  I smile because I know you won’t use this photo.

  You won’t use this photo if I’m smiling in it.

  But when I look into your camera I can tell.

  You’re zooming in.

  I’ve fallen out of frame.

  You’re not even looking at me.

  TDK D180 – SIDE B

  CHEQUERED LOVE

  Castlemaine, 2010

  Soula the doula asks Mona whether she’d like the placenta baked.

  I put it in the oven. You don’t have to eat it raw straight after it comes out, like an animal. My husband often walks in and says, that smells good, what’s for dinner?

  But I’d still eat it? Mona asks.

  I break it down and make it into little capsules, like tablets. You just have a couple a day. It’s for when your body’s healing or in the future if you need special nurturing like when you go through menopause.

  Do you have kids? Mona asks.

  I have five!

  Soula looks like she’s about twenty years old.

  The last one, I started getting contractions and I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea and she came out so fast I just had time to squat down on the floor. When my husband got home to take me to the hospital, she was already there. God knows how quick the next one will be.

  Soula the doula asks whether she has a birth plan.

  Mona hands her a dossier.

  Well, you’ve certainly thought of everything!

  I just cut and pasted examples from a friend. She thinks about things a lot more than me. She has Excel spreadsheets. I can’t really get my head around it.

  So this isn’t what you want?

  I just want the baby out.

  Let’s shelve it then.

  Soula puts it aside.

  There’s no way I’m going home!

  Mona looks to Soula for backup.

  When the midwife puts her finger up to check how far along, it’s like a cattle prod inserted. More painful than the contractions.

  Seven and a half centimetres, the midwife says, as if she doesn’t quite believe it. You’re what we call a silent dilator.

  Sade comes into Mona’s head. She starts to sing.

  Smooth operator …

  Beñat gives her a look.

  Also, did you know the baby is posterior? the midwife asks.

  Mona groans.

  It’s okay. I can try to turn the baby around, Soula says.

  Soula and Kaz help Mona down onto her hands and knees, her belly nearly touching the floor.

  Soula twists a towel and wraps it around Mona’s stomach.

  She keeps an end in each hand, rubs and bounces from
side to side, a circus performer juggling a diabolo.

  It’s a gentle feeling on Mona’s belly, relaxed.

  When Mona gets in the shower and holds onto the rail and starts to rock from foot to foot, she feels a jolt like the baby has stalled.

  Soula holds her waist, then puts a firm pressure on her back. She calls out.

  Beñat, I think Mona needs you now.

  Just hold this hot washcloth on her back. In a minute she’s going to say that she’s had enough and she can’t do it anymore. Just reassure her that it’s nearly over and that the baby will come out in a minute, Soula says.

  As Mona lies facedown on the beanbag, her back starts to feel like it’s being crushed.

  She sucks on the gas. Nothing.

  The midwife takes it away and puts a washcloth to her face. The midwife squeezes cold water on her forehead and the ice drips shock her.

  Mona hates the midwife and wants to tell her to stop it, to just let her work it out on her own.

  But she doesn’t have time to talk or even to hold on to thoughts.

  The midwife raises one of Mona’s legs at an angle so her knee points to the sky.

  Beñat holds her hand and squeezes.

  Mona doesn’t think she can do another one of these.

  Kaz squats down in front and holds Mona’s face in her hands.

  Mona, look down! You’re so close. One more big push.

  The baby’s head is out and Mona raises her body up so she can see it between her legs.

  As Mona lies back down and gears up, the room goes quiet.

  She wonders why Kaz is holding her breath.

  The midwife reaches in and with a careful finger does a deft flick and pulls the cord from around the baby’s neck.

  And suddenly there’s not enough room in the room for everyone.

  Mona wants to be alone.

  With the baby.

  Just her and him.

  The stitches are stinging and she’s putting off going to the toilet. The Metamucil sits on a tray beside the bed, taunting her.

  No one told her she’d be giving birth to twins, first the baby, then the brick.

  Her body feels like it has been dismembered slowly, each part – nipple, breast, thigh, abdomen – hanging by a bit of sinew, enough to gnaw on.