Banana Girl

by Michele Lee

  ‘Okay.’

  Girl, you bloody idiot.

  This destiny of inevitable marriage, me to my Melbourne maker, a man who’d drawn me irreversibly into a world that was arty and musical and critical and wry, this destiny was a delusion, a theory he’d espoused but didn’t practise. All he could do and had done was to carry my furniture, to open a door, one that had led me out of Duggan Circuit and lured me from Canberra. I’d walked over the threshold, but now I slipped.

  Splat splat splat I went.

  I slipped. And then there was the Backpacker and Husband and sex sex sex and plays and Dali and share-houses and Laos and sex sex sex. A Cub and a cowboy in Auckland with a stubbornly silent email account.

  Oh for the days of handwriting. For letters. And where the fuck is that letter I wrote?

  Is that what brings me here, twenty-nine?

  Hi Michele,

  I haven’t heard from you lately. You busy?

  Me too. This afternoon I packed up my room. I’m flying to Bangkok on Sunday, and then to Laos on Tuesday. So in less than a week, I’ll be in another country.

  Four Track didn’t help me move out today. I detected some smug glee when I asked him last week and he said he would be working. I managed to find someone else to help me, and by accident: Tiger. I ran into him this morning outside Sugardough on Lygon Street, around the corner from where I live. Well, where I live until Sunday.

  Tiger was checking out the meditation schedule at the Buddhist centre nearby and because he’d quit his job yesterday, he had time to help me move my things. He didn’t go into much detail about quitting his job or about his trip to Burning Man except to say it was indescribable. He’s thinking of moving out of his one-man flat in East Melbourne and coming northside. Good pick!

  I found a shirt in the corridor cupboards. It was crumpled and faded, but covered in jolly parrots. It probably belonged to one of Albert Street’s many previous housemates. I asked Tiger if he wanted it as I’d be throwing it out otherwise. He accepted it but made a joke that he was only good enough for things being thrown out. He wasn’t self-flagellating. He’s not that sort of guy, being an emotional android and all.

  Later he found it hard to explain what he meant about how affected he is when someone leaves. Partly it’s an envy he feels, that the person is going off on an adventure, but it also makes him doubt the relationship he had with them. It’s as if the memories can only thrive while that person is close by.

  When someone leaves I get sad too. I miss them and I want to be doing what they’re doing. I’m also sad to leave. Today, when I viewed my bare room and all my things packed up, I began crying. I could see my room the naked way it had been five years ago when I moved into it. In a glance, there was the beginning and the ending of an era in Melbourne.

  Tiger’s not sure if he’ll be in Melbourne next year. He doesn’t know what sort of work he’ll get or in what city. He used to run personal development seminars in Sydney but that put him in debt and a lot of advice he once gave out he doesn’t use himself.

  Tiger left after we moved all the heavy things into storage in the garage. He said it was unlikely he’d attend my going-away drinks on Saturday and he walked out of the backyard, in the parrot shirt.

  Love,

  Michele

  I’m in bed, naked. Again. I’m in Northcote and I’m heading off to Laos in about forty-eight hours. Big Chef’s about to fuck me and then I’m going to stay over at his place because I don’t have a bed anymore. My bed frame is in the garage at Albert Street and my mattress in the living room, flat against the wall and atop a row of archive boxes, the ones that contain my degree and forgotten pieces of paper. I put a sheet over everything so it wouldn’t be an eyesore in the house. The girls are letting me keep my things in the living room and in the garage.

  I haven’t seen the Cub in a couple of weeks because he’s cancelled on me twice; he’s been depressed. He said I could stay at his house this weekend but I was already in Northcote tonight, at Goose’s house for dinner, so I took up Big Chef’s offer for a drink and then a shag. Goose won’t be here for my going-away drinks on Saturday so she wanted to see me before I go.

  I met Big Chef online the week before. You know what they say about big shoes – that was his headline.

  ‘So is this Guy-normous?’ Husband had asked. We were in front of my laptop and my RedHotPie account was open. The screen was full of thumbnails of torsos, faces, penises.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is Guy-normous.’

  I clicked through my inbox, but when I clicked on his profile it went through to a blank page. Guy-normous had taken his profile down.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He couldn’t fit it all on a website?’

  ‘Or maybe he’s found someone to muv.’

  ‘All ten inches of him.’

  The first night I met Big Chef, we had a drink at the Alderman, of course, my usual bar, and then he drove me back to Albert Street. We chatted in the car and over the gearstick we kissed. That was all. He was tired and he felt grimy. He’d met me out wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing in the kitchen that day. I went inside and he drove off to shower.

  I was at Markov the next night with Smoker Boots. I’d seen a play across the road at the Carlton Courthouse that he was in. The whole cast were having drinks, I joined them but left shortly to get a lift home with Big Chef, who’d texted me. Once Smoker Boots had said I was reckless. Now he said he found it boring to hear my stories where the punch line was ‘I had sex’.

  I skipped out of Markov and I got into Big Chef’s car.

  I grinned. Big Chef did too.

  He drove me home and parked outside my house once again. We debriefed about our days. There was a wedding banquet tomorrow that he’d been prepping for.

  ‘I made fondant potatoes, slow-cooked in port, rosemary and garlic. It takes a day to prep but it’s worth it. When you eat them, they melt in your mouth. They just … they disintegrate.’

  ‘Holy shit.’

  He agreed: ‘It’s fucking amazing.’

  I asked him about his training as a chef, about his menus. I’d never dated a chef before. Not that I was dating Big Chef, but if I was he’d be the first chef I’d dated. He was freshly single, having broken up with his girlfriend only a few weeks ago. He hadn’t wanted to break up because he loved her.

  We kissed in the car. He fingered me. I sucked him off, thinking of potatoes, the kinds that melted in one’s mouth without you even chewing.

  I found it funny to be making out like horny teenagers in his car when my room was only metres away.

  ‘You know there is a family who live next door,’ Husband said the next day. We were standing in the coffee queue. ‘Little Leith. Little Melissa.’

  I pointed out, ‘It was past midnight. And Leith is eleven and Melissa is going to high school next year.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just get your latte and give me your car keys.’

  I was borrowing his car that week, my final week in Melbourne. He gave me the keys.

  I’ve had sex with about forty guys in total and over ten years, so four a year. Some people get on planes more often than I have sex.

  Here I go again. Encounter number three with Big Chef, now naked with him in Northcote, and he’s about to fuck me. The lamp is on, the curtains shut and his sex soundtrack of choice is You Am I. I haven’t heard You Am I in a long time, not since I was with Four Track. It puts me in a slightly weird headspace to be listening to Tim Rogers sing about his heavy heart. Big Chef and I kneel and press our chests together. Grinning and washed in lamplight and moonlight, we kiss. I’m wet, he’s hard, I murmur, I moan. On my back, I buck up as he fucks me.

  I have sex – that’s the punch line.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ I say to Big Chef. ‘I snore.’

  ‘So do I. Here you go.’

  He passes me nasal strips to put over my nose. How handy. Apparently over time these strips reduce your snoring. We go to bed,
strips on the bridges of our noses, like Bandaids for matching wounds.

  In the morning I smile and say hello to Big Chef, writhing over him like an octopus. He welcomes my playfulness but he feels nervous about his housemates hearing us have morning sex. Their rooms aren’t very far away, the walls are thin and both housemates are up, getting ready for work. The shower is whistling in the bathroom.

  ‘Oh fine,’ I say. I’m on my hands and knees. I turn around to face him. ‘Come here, Cheffie.’

  I suck him off.

  Big Chef comes with a grateful exhalation.

  ‘Did anyone hear that?’ I ask him.

  ‘Shh. I don’t care. Come here.’

  We hug.

  In his car, driving back to Albert Street, he tells me his email address – we’d been emailing through RedHotPie and the only personal details he has of mine are my phone number and my home address. I only have his number.

  ‘What’s this for, Cheffie?’ I ask about the email address.

  ‘For emailing me when you’re away. What do you think?’

  ‘Little ol’ me emailing little ol’ you?’

  ‘When you’re over in Laos, I’d like to know how you’re going, Michele.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wonder if I misjudged, if he’s after more than just comfort in the wake of breaking up with his girlfriend. He drives on to work.

  ‘Oh, Michele,’ Parker says. She smiles. ‘Did you go for a run?’

  I’m not wearing jogging clothes but my housemate must be wondering how it is that I’ve appeared in the kitchen. I hadn’t been here this morning and now here I am. I seem busy and purposeful too, rushing my meal preparations, from fridge door to stovetop.

  ‘No, no. A boy. I stayed over at his house. I needed a bed to stay in.’

  She frowns. Not about my promiscuity – she doesn’t care about how many guys I have sex with, whether it’s forty or four hundred.

  ‘Oh, you should have said something,’ she says. ‘You should have stayed here.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I tell her. ‘I liked the adventure.’

  And I’m not sure exactly where I would have slept given I don’t have a bed anymore.

  I serve up my eggs and brown rice with a tablespoon of chilli. It’s thick and rusty, like old blood. Mr Chan, Sleek Surf’s father, has a Chinese restaurant in Perth and Sleek Surf has just been back there to visit her family. He usually gives her a few tubs of his famous chilli to take back to Melbourne. We love Mr Chan’s chilli, even if it’s painful to eat because it regularly gives you the runs.

  I eat quickly, thinking about my next task – showering and dressing for the day. Most of my clothes are packed away in storage, and half of the remaining clothes I’m travelling with are rolled up into thin tubes of coloured cotton, and they’ll accommodate the warm weather in Laos; the other half, too heavy for rolling, are items for the freezing weather in London and America. I don’t have too much to choose from for the next two days while I’m still in Melbourne. I do have a lot of toiletries so if I wanted to wear a dress made out of tampons and sheets of diarrhoea tablets I’d be fine. Parker insists that I should only need one bag for my trip – it’s how she fared in her recent trip and plenty of the ones she’s taken before – but I remind her I’m packing for two seasons and for four months. She seems satisfied with that.

  ‘Hey, I didn’t pick up your table yesterday,’ I say to Parker. ‘Don Bosco’s was shut at ten past four. But we can go now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’ve got Husband’s car today. Just let me eat and shower, and then we can go to his house and get it.’

  Parker bought an Art Deco coffee table from Don Bosco’s and it was too heavy for her to carry home. She starts talking about where she might position it once we get it back home. She’s moving into my old room, and a new girl is moving into Parker’s room. She pauses, conscious that she’s speaking of the room as hers now and no longer mine. I’m aware of it too. As Parker speaks a part of me is erased. Maybe that’s what Tiger meant. When someone goes, you bury them by continuing on without them.

  It’s an interesting game of three-dimensional Tetris to get the table into Husband’s Barina. I can lower the back seat and double the volume of the boot but the buttons in the seat seem to be jammed and the seat won’t budge. That we’re parked outside Don Bosco’s in a clearway zone makes Parker nervous. She doesn’t want for me to get a fine. Eventually she negotiates the table into the car in two pieces – the slanted legs going in the boot and the glass-top disc in behind the passenger’s seat.

  Carefully.

  She doesn’t want to break it.

  It’s a lovely piece, a very good find. Parker has a knack for singling out things like this. She can walk into a monolithic op shop like Savers – just a few doors past the musty Don Bosco’s – and zero in on the treasures among the trash and tack.

  When Parker came back to Australia a few years ago, after a year in Berlin, she moved in temporarily to Albert Street and went back temporarily to her old job at the fashion boutique she’d been working in. Just as she swore she was only going to live with us at Albert Street for a brief time, and not the three years she has stayed, she swore she was going to leave the job: it was just a fill-in while she finished her degree. The owner of the shop, who was friendly without being a friend, let Parker do production design and go on regular buying trips to Hong Kong. Parker stayed on in the job, and this is why she has expertise in packing suitcases for overseas jaunts.

  Parker’s only just done her last buying trip and then capped it off with a celebratory holiday to Turkey and a visit to Berlin. She got back to Melbourne last Friday. She confirms that she has left her job now, finally, but she’s annoyed that the boss didn’t give her a bigger payout. The boss isn’t legally obliged to – Parker was a casual employee so she got the loading on her hourly wage – but Parker thought she and her boss had a tacit understanding about how much Parker would get, given the calibre of underpaid work that Parker did as a designer and buyer.

  ‘Will you talk with her about getting a bigger payout?’

  ‘Michele, it doesn’t work like that in small business. Maybe in government, at your job. But not in small business.’

  She’s younger than me but she often sounds exasperated by my queries. She has plenty of adulation for contemporary visual artists but no patience for writers with their curious temperaments.

  Here I thought all bosses wanted to make sure you got as little money as is legally allowable whether or not you work in a clothes shop or in a government agency in the city. I don’t mention my opinions. I keep my socialist propaganda to myself as we drive back to Albert Street, circular table in the car.

  I was in a socialist party for three months.

  The Backpacker had left, for the first time, and I hadn’t yet met Husband. I missed the Backpacker a lot, I thought about him travelling through Asia, traversing the globe on his way back to a life in London without me, and I decided I needed to have my own local adventures to help me forget what I no longer had. I put up my profile on RSVP and I waited for someone pleasantly distracting to come along.

  I met one guy.

  But he wasn’t from RSVP.

  He was at a demonstration at the Melbourne Uni. A group of us wanted to make the point that we didn’t like Minister Brendan Nelson’s plans for Voluntary Student Unionism. Nelson was having a meeting at the uni; we waited for him to come out. I was taking in what people were saying, their arguments, their enthusiasm. And then I got distracted, pleasantly, very much so. A new boy was here, older than me. German, too. Intelligent. He understood my weaknesses and my strengths more than I did and he didn’t blame me as an individual for my flaws. He saw it as a much bigger problem in modern social relations.

  His name was Karl.

  Karl telling me that capitalism created its own gravediggers. Holding me in his arms, whispering into my tingling ears that human nature wasn’t dri
ven by greed. Human beings were intrinsically cooperative. Yes, I whispered back, and I felt enlightened by the example he gave of how the chair we were sitting on was the product of all sorts of human input. My Chinese and Bangladeshi brothers – we were connected. I bought Karl’s extended pamphlet about human nature and I went to the Socialist Alternative conference to listen to people talk about Karl for two whole days.

  I was on Swanston Street, socialist magazines in my hands for sale. The crowds swarmed past me on the congested street, mostly indifferent to the petition-laden, badge-laden stall.

  ‘Bush and Howard are the real terrorists!’ I shouted.

  ‘We’re changing tactics,’ a Socialist Alternative elder said, interrupting. ‘We need you guys to go around to Bourke Street Mall. If the women in the shop give you any problems about being in front of their store, it’s public space you’re standing in.’

  I moved onto Bourke Street, in front of Cue, to impose magazines and catchphrases on the Saturday morning throngs. The Cue shop assistants didn’t ask me to move but they did stare out through their fashionable fishbowl. Just for a blink. Then they returned to what they had been doing: standing lean and lanky, cash-registering, putting away shirts, tucking up collars. They were uni students playing dress-ups in wellcut suiting, selling the same items to businesswomen. One day the circle of life would be complete and the young girls would finish their degrees, abandon their retail jobs, and splinter off into different corporate warrens and then swipe their credit cards in a place like Cue.

  My biggest political action up until then was refusing to buy into this cycle. I didn’t own a suit. That’d been my fuckyou to capitalism.

  ‘John Howard and George Bush are the real terrorists,’ I yelled at no one in particular.

  I slept with two socialists.

  The first I knew from Canberra, all the way back from Calwell Primary School. We stood reunited at the Queen Victoria Market, tumbling for different reasons into close geographical and political proximity.

  ‘What’s your badge say?’ he asked, peering. We dodged other customers in the deli section as they bustled by us, elbows straining with the biting handles of green bags. His siblings, attractive twins, one blonde and the other blonder, waited for our conversation to end.