by Linda Jaivin
‘It would help if you didn’t have the oven on, you know,’ remarked Saturna, who’d just popped back home from the shop to fetch her knitting needles and wool—a regular customer at Phantasma was having a baby and wanted a black bonnet and booties.
‘You can’t bake hash brownies without turning the oven on,’ Torq argued reasonably. ‘No pain, no gain.’ They watched the wall above the stove blacken with cockroaches. Turning on the oven always got the roaches going.
‘Arthropodic as,’ remarked Lati, impressed.
Tristram and Torquil gazed besottedly at Lati. Sometimes she made no sense whatsoever.
Saturna shook her head in dismay and exited, fanning herself with a black lace fan. She and Skye adored Doll, of course, but they really couldn’t understand why the other aliens, who were girls too after all, encouraged the boys in their worst habits and strange humour.
‘You know, it’d really make a difference if we had demos to send around,’ Jake said. She wouldn’t really, you know, be doing the thing with Ebola Van Axel, would she? Getting the two bands on the road as soon as possible, it had occurred to him, was an excellent way of taking her away from that troll.
‘So? Let’s make demos then.’ Baby was agreeable. Was it her imagination or was Jake avoiding her eyes?
‘Not that easy,’ Jake said. He glanced at the twins. They’d agreed to present their plan to the babes together. But when Jake looked at him, Tristram contemplated the ceiling and paradiddled the table with his hands. Rightleftrightrightleftrightleftleft. Torquil scrutinised the table and paradiddlediddled his chair. Rightleftrightrightleftleft. Percussive types could always find something to do when things got awkward. ‘Why not?’ Baby asked. ‘Is there some sort of insurmountable popsicle or something?’
‘That’s “obstacle”. Sort of.’
The girls had already read the boys’ minds. They knew they were about to be hit up for dough. They didn’t care. They were perfectly happy to shell out. Abducting money was easy. They were just enjoying watching the boys squirm.
They creased their pretty brows and tilted their heads in a perfect imitation of Earthling befuddlement. ‘Well?’ questioned Lati. ‘What is it?’
‘Money,’ Jake blurted out with uncharacteristic nervousness. ‘You know,’ he blundered on, ‘for the studio and stuff.’ Jake paused. He felt like such a con artist. Yet it was a perfectly legitimate proposition. He was doing this for them, too, after all.
‘Yes, we know,’ chuckled Baby. ‘And we appreciate it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Never mind.’ Doll emptied her pockets and dumped several fat wads onto the table. ‘How much do we need?’
‘That’s a good start,’ whewed Torquil. ‘That’s a very good start.’
Jake mailed the two CDs to venues along the east coast and then followed up with phone calls. When he wasn’t on the blower, he was under Kate hammering her into shape for the tour. Ow! Ow! Easy on the exhaust pipe.
The girls had a word to the abductees. They’d look after the saucer with the groupies. There’d been an emotional scene with Ebola, who’d pleaded to be allowed to come along as a roadie. A mixer. Anything. They’d already asked Henry to come with them. Anyway, there was no way that Jake was going to put up with Ebola on tour.
The twins, on the other hand, thought that it would be hysterical. ‘Now what do you know about being a roadie, Ebola?’ they teased him.
‘Everything,’ he answered earnestly. ‘I know the roadie’s credo off by heart.’
‘What’s that, Eb?’
Ebola puffed himself up and recited, ‘If it’s wet, drink it, if it’s dry, smoke it, if it moves, fuck it, if it doesn’t, throw it in the truck.’
The twins looked at each other. The guy was serious.
In the end, Baby managed to appease Eb with one of her magic smiles and the promise that, upon return, she’d let him kiss her feet for a whole ten minutes—without boots.
The bookers for the various venues, upon receiving the demos, put the Babes’ CD on continual replay, and made love with whoever or whatever was available—boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbours, pets, television sets—for hours on end. It took days for them to remember to get back to work. Then the first thing they did was call and say they were megamega-keen to have the Babes. And they didn’t really mind who supported them. Bosnia, whatever.
‘We’ll have heaps of time to talk when we get back, George. Promise.’ Baby waved goodbye to George. He’d wanted to have a talk with the babes about the end of the world before they left, but they kept putting him off. Young people. Always in a hurry. Young aliens, it seemed, were no different. What could you do? George waddled back over to his place.
Baby folded her large frame into the front seat of the Kombi next to Jake, who was at the wheel, revving up. The others were all in the back with the gear. ‘Let’s vehiculate!’ she whooped, pulling the door shut after her. The door promptly fell off its hinges. Ouch, whimpered Kate. That hurt.
‘Shit,’ said Jake, stepping out to have a look. ‘I was expecting a bit of strife, but I was fairly confident she’d at least make it out of the drive.’ He kicked the bumper in frustration.
Now was that any way to treat a lady? Kate had been stressing out badly ever since the trip had been mooted that night at the Annandale.
Doll rummaged in her bag and came up with a roll of Bind-a-Bean. She hopped out and taped up the door. That seemed to work.
‘Yeeha!’ yelled Torquil as they finally pulled onto the road.
‘Hayee!’ yodelled Tristram.
‘Yabadabadoo!’ hollered Baby.
‘ !’ whooped Lati.
‘ —what?’ exclaimed Torquil and Tristram in unison. The girl was fucken awesome.
‘Sorry,’ giggled Lati. ‘Just a bit of Nufonian that slipped out.’
About an hour down the coast road, Kate, who’d been feeling increasingly and ever more dramatically sorry for herself, gagged, coughed, spluttered, hawked, expectorated, sneezed, sniffled, went all stiff in the joints and developed a high fever. Curling up on the side of the road, she refused to budge, only issuing the occasional pathetic moan or groan when Jake prodded her ignition.
Tristram was the first to speak. ‘Uh-oh, spaghetti-os,’ was what he said. Not much help, really, under the circs.
‘Let me have a look,’ offered Henry, following Jake round to the back of the van. Doll hopped out, shouldered Henry aside and waved Jake away as well. She opened the little hatch at the back and stroked the engine gently while speaking in low tones.
About five minutes later, Doll told everyone to get back in and announced that she would drive. She and Kate had come to a mutually satisfactory agreement. Kate would hold herself together and try to develop a more positive attitude. In return, Doll would juice her up with alien energy. Sliding the key into the ignition, Doll smiled smugly as Kate purred. To general cheering, she brought her up to the speed limit and then well beyond. This was a girl used to steering a flying saucer. She was a hell driver, taking to the median strips one minute, the shoulder the next and just lifting off and flying over the rest of the traffic when that seemed like the more amusing thing to do. Kate was happy as Larry, who was still extremely happy. All the girls had their antennae tuned for radar, and Doll managed to get Kate under the limit, on the road and in the right lane, more or less, each time they approached a speed check.
Jaded old rock musicians are always complaining about how boring it is to be on the road. Don’t know which road they were on, but the babes and the boys must have been on a much better one, because they were having a blast.
Not long after they set out, Tristram and Torquil pulled out a range of pharmaceuticals and offered them around. The details of the trip get a little hazy after that. Sometimes, however, they get a lot sharper. Other times they become a trifle stretched around the edges, or plump and squishy, with great big swirls of colour and eyeballs stuck on everything. Occasionally, they become sort of vibratory and bewitching,
or inexpressibly sad, or manic and pepperminty. Then there are the details that just sort of slipped away and got lost, never to be found again.
Here are some of the recoverable details: they played board games in parallel yoons. They conducted a scientific cross-cultural Earthling/Nufonian survey of what is considered unspeakably gross on each planet, with the goal of creating a cosmic Sliding Scale of Spewsomeness. They painted pictures and messages on Kate’s doors, with her permission. They sang along with the radio, loudly and badly, while performing drum solos on the sides of the van and each other’s craniums. And that was only the first six hours. They hadn’t even reached Melbourne yet.
Acid. Speed. Booze. Speed. Dope. Speed. Hash. Speed. Ecstasy. Agony. Out there. In there. Here and there. Wheeeeee. Aliens. Wheeeeeeee.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip! Melbourne! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzip! Canberra! Zzzzzzzzzzip! Is this a flying blue wombat zone or was that just me? Zzzzzzzzap! Where the hell are we? Who’s got the map? Kalbarri? Where the fuck is Kalbarri? Oh, shit! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip! Zzzzzzzzzzzzip! Brisbane! Phew. You have to let us in, we’re the band.
Back in Newtown, George watched the five o’clock news with Iggy and Revor. He was seated in his favourite armchair, a worried expression on his face, a tinny in his hand. The two pets were lying side by side on the floor, heads on front paws, eyes lifted to the tube. The government was announcing a major deforestation program focussing on national parks. It was imposing a luxury tax on organic fruit and veg and setting up a hotline for people to dob in naturopaths and yoga teachers. It was targeting marijuana smoking as the biggest threat to national security and family values. George noticed they played music behind the news on the ABC now. Polkas for a Gloomy World.
George shook his head and took a swig of beer. Mad pig disease rampant among politicians. Aporkalypse now.
Also in the news: A Chinese satellite, the Red Star, had blown up on impact with a tiny piece of space debris. The debris was believed to be one of the missing pieces of Cosmos 1275, a Soviet satellite that fifteen years earlier had collided with other space junk. More and more pieces of debris were launched into unpredictable orbits by such accidents, the reporter was saying. There was the possibility they could trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction of explosions that would leave the planet blanketed in an impenetrable layer of flotsam and jetsam.
The news ended. George watched morosely as a tall dark moron in breeches pursued a rosy-cheeked young woman in a baby’s bonnet across a meadow. Jane bloody Austen. The world’s coming to an end and we’re all watching Jane bloody Austen, thought George.
‘You know, Rev,’ Iggy mused, ‘it’s interesting that the Chinese satellite was blown up by a fragment from a Soviet one. I think it sheds some light on the problem my master and your mistress have in getting together.’
‘How so?’
‘Simple,’ Iggy explicated. ‘Our past relationships come back to haunt us. No, it’s worse than haunting. The fragments of exploded intimacies can come back and blow us up. Jake’s been hurt a few times. He pretends he hasn’t, that everything’s cool. Yet there are some lethal scraps of psychic debris floating around his headspace, I’m sure of it.’
‘You’re so wise,’ Revor cooed. ‘You blow me away.’
‘Maybe something will happen between them on tour,’ Iggy said. ‘It’s got to, don’t you think? All that lethal proximity? I think that’s what Jake was hoping for anyway.’
‘Baby too,’ agreed Revor. ‘But somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen. The master race is very complicated about this stuff.’ He lifted his head and licked Iggy’s tongue, which was hanging out in the heat. Slurp. ‘When there’s no need for complication.’ Slurp slurp. ‘I mean, we’re not complicated about this, are we? I mean, I can actually just look at you and say, I lurv you, Iggie-wiggie-poo.’
Iggy’s ears pricked, a smile widened his face and, with a sudden intake of breath, he sucked Revor straight down his throat. Revor’s back paws and tail stuck out from between Iggy’s teeth. His tail was wagging. ‘Letti troll bayb ee,’ he purred from somewhere inside Iggy’s stomach.
By the time the babes and the boys rocked into Byron Bay for the last show of the tour, they were feeling totally triumphant, hideously burnt out, fully into touring, thoroughly over touring, absolutely delirious, dangerously manic, unbelievably depressive, one hundred percent drugfucked and in desperate need of both less and more of whatever it was they’d sworn off the night before. They’d come to the right place.
Byron Bay, south of Brisbane, north of Sydney, east of everywhere else except LA, was a small town which nestled between magnificent surf beaches and awesome rainforest. It enjoyed a reputation for being a healing kind of place. Byron Bay will read your Tarot, teach you to bellydance, cure you with crystals, lead you in yoga, workshop your ‘stuff’, float you in tanks, monitor your aura, deep massage your tissues, touch you for health, show you whales, introduce you to dolphins, play you music in its pubs, invite you to raves, and allow you to lie naked on its beaches. Byron Bay will provide you with naturopathic dentists and holistic chiropractors. Byron Bay will put dandelions in your latte, guarana in your smoothie and any drug you can name in your hands. All you have to do is ask.
‘Any mushies?’ is what Jake was asking.
It was about 10 a.m. The gang had left the Gold Coast after their gig at the Playroom and had arrived in Byron in the middle of the night. Balmy as. They headed straight for the beach, jumped in the ocean and then slept on the sand. Come the morning, they wandered down the main street, and had breakfast at Ringo’s cafe.
Jake and Baby were strolling back up the main street towards the beach when Jake decided it was time to put some money into the local economy.
Jake and Baby fitted right into Byron Bay. Byron was not unlike Newtown in some ways, except even fewer people wore shoes in Byron and there were lots of surfies. Every other person in Byron had dreadlocks and coloured hair and some even had tinted skin. Byron was a perennial cosmic convention, a feral paradise. There was a greater volume of matted hair in Byron than in a warehouseful of Victorian sofas, more nose-rings than you’d see on a dozen cattle farms. While few ferals would stoop so low as to take gainful employment, some were running completely mobile and not unprofitable business concerns. Jake was negotiating with one such dealer now, a young man with tangled blonde hair and a narcotic smile.
While they talked weights and measures, Baby looked around her and met the bright and shiny eyes of a small teenage feral girl with enormous pink dreadlocks, green sparkles on her cheeks and an ensemble that seemed to consist mainly of one tiny piece of purple cloth and a lot of ribbons and bells. She carried a small basket over one arm which held a failing bunch of grapes, a dole form, a small bottle, and an enormous collection of sequins and beads.
‘What d’ya use, mate?’ gushed the little feral, jingling in her enthusiasm. With all her bells, she sounded almost Nufonian.
‘Use?’ Baby didn’t have a clue as to what she was talking about.
‘On yer skin, mate. On yer skin. To get it that green.’
‘It’s natural,’ Baby laughed, putting a hand up to her cheek.
‘We’re all natural,’ replied the little feral, happy with the answer. She was always happy. ‘We’re all nature’s children. I love your antennae too. Coming to the full moon party tonight at the beach across from the Epicentre?’ The Epicentre was an old beachside abattoir that was now the karmically disturbed but otherwise apparently happy home of yogis, artists, ferals, hippy couturiers, earth goddesses and other dwellers of the fringe. It had a cafe, a gallery and some of the best dance parties in town.
‘Full moon party?’
‘Yeah. Come be part of the universal family. And here, have some floral essence to prepare for the occasion. Stick out your tongue.’
Baby stuck out her tongue. It was turquoise.
‘Oh, man. You are so cool.’ Feralette pulled out the small bottle from her basket and administered a few drops of liquid.
Immediately, Baby saw a pattern of brightly coloured poppies unfold across the sky. When the poppies faded, the feral had gone and Jake was staring at Baby with amusement.
They continued up towards the beach. A van with ocean waves painted on its doors and a stack of surfboards on the roof rack chugged by, stereo blasting. ‘There goes Lati,’ said Baby, noticing two pert antennae amongst the dreads and mohawks. The twins and Henry had driven out to Nimbin to score whatever was on tap in that ripped little mountain community cum drugs bazaar. For her part Doll had abducted a board and had taken it down to the Pass, where the surf co-operatively swelled into perfect tubes for her to ride.
Byron did funny things to people. At this moment, it was doing something so funny to Jake that he actually reached out and took Baby’s hand. For one perfect second, they rose together and floated, hand in hand, high above the street. They gazed out over the ocean, where pods of dolphins frolicked in celebration. Then, ever so gently, they glided back to earth. Jake resolved to tell Baby he loved her. He would drop to his knees right there, in front of Earth & Sea Pizza, and do it. I love you, Baby.
He looked at her and opened his mouth. Come on. You can do it, Jake. He cleared his throat. ‘Baby.’
‘Yes, Earth boy?’
Damn! It just wouldn’t come out. ‘Try one of these,’ he said instead. ‘Space cookies.’ He’d tried. He really had.
‘Do you think you can ever take too many drugs, Jake?’
‘Nah. Yeah. Depends on the timing, really.’
They’d reached the Main Beach and were climbing down the rocks to the sand. ‘What do you mean by timing?’ she asked. ‘Is it, like, take this, wait an hour, take that?’
‘I meant the timing of when you think about it, really. The morning after, when your head is full of lumberjacks cutting down trees with chainsaws, and there are little men with hammers trying to nail things into the back of your eyes, and your stomach feels like you’ve just swallowed someone else’s farts, then, yes, I think, I’ve just taken a few too many drugs. But that same amount of drugs, the night before, when they’re doing the cancan in your brain, and you’re starting to see the colours of music and you feel like a combination of Jesus Christ, Stephen Hawking and Jim Morrison, that’s just the right amount. That’s what I mean by timing.’