She drums her hands on the steering wheel and looks down at her lap.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Goodnight, Mandy.’
I say goodnight and run up the steps to our place, where I find Heather and a couple of randoms sprawled across the lounge room. There are pizza boxes and PlayStation games scattered across the floor and everyone is very, very high. It’s no surprise. Heather always has a lot of people over when our parents are away and they’ve been away for a while. She also smokes a lot of weed. She says it helps her not to hate herself so much.
‘Dad called,’ she says. She doesn’t move from her position on the couch, lying face down.
‘And?’
‘He said he wants you to get up on the roof and clean out the gutters.’
‘Alright, fine,’ I say.
‘And do you know where my navy thongs are?’
‘No idea.’
‘Hi, Heather’s sister,’ says some guy with no shirt on. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’ He’s looking at me with creepy intensity.
‘Oh, the pleasure’s all mine,’ I say, and go to my room.
‘Come play with us, Heather’s sister,’ he calls after me. ‘Does she have a name?’
I close the door on them all.
Someone knocks on it.
‘Do you want to come and have a smoke, Heather’s sister? Um, Heather’s sister? We have PlayStation. We even have cookie shots. You’re being rude, Heather’s sister.’
I can hear them giggling at me but I don’t care.
I set my alarm for tomorrow morning without even thinking, just an autopilot action. I wash my face in the basin, take off my clothes and get into bed. I’m tired. This is my favourite part of the day, when I’m wrapped in my sheets and drifting into sleep and I’m not sure what’s real and what’s a dream. Sometimes I try to control my dreams, to guide what I dream about, but I think tonight I’m just going to close my eyes and let my imagination run and see where it ends up.
I think of our eyes meeting, our hands touching, his choirboy voice, his lost eyes. Totally dreamy.
Tim
There are some days when I wonder if this whole thing is all worthwhile, but this isn’t one of them. Repeating Year Twelve was a big decision, sure, but one I don’t regret. I think. I mean, it’ll be worth it in the end. Hopefully.
I used to have this fantasy that one day I’d wake up and I’d be back in Year Seven again. I’d know everything I know now and be able to do everything I can do now. So I could do things like enter a running race and be able to run as fast as an eighteen-year-old and leave all the Year Seven kids flailing hopelessly in my wake. And I’d know the answer to every question in class. I’d make everything look so easy. I told my mate Sebastian about this idea and he said it would be cool for a bit but you’d get sick of it pretty quick. But I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d ever get sick of things being easy.
I guess I like to go into a fantasy world sometimes. Like in maths, the first class this morning, the teacher is talking about abstract numbers and I space out. I can barely be bothered about real numbers, let alone abstract ones, and I somehow get into these ridiculous fantasies about Mandy, the girl I saw at my show last night.
In one delicious daydream I’m taking her to the ARIA awards and we’re chatting to Richard Wilkins on the red carpet, seeing his wrinkly skin and shiny teeth up close, and we’re shaking hands and making in-jokes and he’s asking me off-camera which after-party I’ll be at, and I’m being vague and not quite telling him.
In another fantasy, I’m teaching her to play guitar in a secluded cabin by the beach, then I’m pointing out her name in the liner notes of my first record.
But in my favourite daydream of all, I’m playing a gig at the Metro and I’m singing a ballad and the fans are really quiet and holding their breath and looking up at me, and I glance to the side of the stage and there she is, mouthing the words.
She is really cute. Really, really cute.
Cute more than hot.
Girl next door instead of FHM cover model.
I think of her hips, her eyes, her mouth, her hair.
I think she reminds me of one of The Veronicas.
Maybe Lisa with her cheekbones and her pout and her skinny arms.
Maybe Jess with her air of sex and wildness.
I can’t decide which one of The Veronicas she most looks like. They are identical twins after all.
The bell rings for the end of the lesson and I snap back to reality. I wander towards the science block for my next class and Mr Taylor stops me. He’s a middle-aged man who always wears checked shirts and shorts pulled up an inch too high. Sometimes he also wears a dark green button-up cardigan, apparently the only jumper of any kind that he owns. He has long hair down to his shoulders, although he’s balding on top. It’s like he’s showing that he can still grow hair successfully, if not quite where he wants it. He likes to chat with the kids, but conversation isn’t his strong suit.
‘I heard you played some of your songs last night, Tim,’ he says, beaming.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, how did it go?’
‘It wasn’t bad, sir. A few covers, a few originals. I think it went OK. I didn’t get booed offstage or anything.’
‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’
He’s a nice bloke, Mr Taylor, but I can’t think of anything more to say so I just kind of smile vaguely and walk off. Plus, I think he kind of feels sorry for me and the last thing I want is anybody feeling sorry for me. It might be completely justified but I don’t want it. Not one bit.
I get to chemistry class and mumble a greeting to the girl I’m sitting next to. I’m not in the mood for chit-chat so I just get out my books and look like I’m paying attention to the teacher, which I’m quite good at faking.
If I had talked more to Mr Taylor about last night, I don’t know what I would have said. I can’t explain that the most precious thing about last night, the girl I met, is still all I can think of.
It’s not until halfway through class, when I get out my phone to message her, that it dawns on me that I’ve made a rookie mistake. I didn’t get her number.
Oh no …
Mandy
Parramatta Road gridlock. Again. My neighbour Thora is driving me to work. She’s slept with twenty-two guys. I know this because she keeps a tally on the Daffy Duck air freshener that hangs from the roof of her car. The whole thing just raises so many questions for me. Doesn’t anyone ever ask why her air freshener has a tally written on it? Does she update the tally when the latest member of this exclusive little club is still in the car?
Still, you have to admire Thora’s well-defined view of the often-confusing world of teenage sexuality. Anyone who sleeps around more than her is a slut. Anyone who doesn’t, like me for example, is frigid, no fun and probably a bit stuck-up.
‘You go out last night?’ she asks.
‘Yeah, we went to see a few bands playing at the Old Canterbury Hotel.’
‘The OC?’
‘I thought we agreed not to call it that.’
‘Didn’t you go out to see some bands a while ago?’
‘Yeah, but, you know, we liked it so much we thought we’d do it again.’
‘Hey, don’t be a sarcastic bitch, I’m just making conversation.’
‘Sorry, Thora, I’m just distracted or something … I don’t know.’
‘Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.’
I find this somewhat hard to believe, but anyway …
‘Who did you go with, Alison?’
‘It’s Alice.’
‘Why do you even hang out with her?’
‘Because she’s the best person ever.’
‘She’s a mopey little thing. So emo. But anyway, you guys should come see this band called Death On A Sunday with me. They’re playing somewhere soon — I forget where. But the singer’s shit hot, and apparently a
t the last gig he was all, like, pointing me out and telling people I was really hot and saying he was going to add me on Facebook and everything. So I think it’s on.’
‘Yeah, I’ll think about coming along.’
We arrive at the shopping centre where we both work and get a parking spot right near the door. That sounds insignificant, but trust me, there have been occasions when a convenient parking spot is the highlight of both our days in this suburban purgatory.
I go to get some cigarettes before my shift starts. Thora walks the other way to the bottle shop, where, with her two years of working retail and nineteen years of life experience, she’s recently been made store manager. She was pretty happy with the promotion because she was just about to quit to go to TAFE to become a plumber. This way, she says, she doesn’t have to stick her hands in other people’s shit to earn good money.
‘See you, bitch,’ she shouts. I wave as I walk away. She uses ‘bitch’ as a term of affection. At least I think she does.
I’m trying to imagine how bad Death On A Sunday must be. The combination of their laughable name and the fact Thora likes them doesn’t fill me with optimism. A couple of times she’s given me CDs of bands she likes and they seem to be members of a tribe I haven’t been initiated into, all black leather and screaming and make-up, and lyrics that may as well be in another language.
But mostly I’m thinking of Tim. Trying not to think of Tim. Trying to remind myself not to think of Tim. Forgetting my own advice and then thinking of Tim anyway. Trying not to get my hopes up, telling myself I’ll probably never see him again, that he’ll just be one more face in a crowd. A ridiculously hot face, yes, but just another stranger in a big city. I have neighbours I’ve lived next to for years and have never met, so what are the chances I’m going to run into him again? And besides, he’s probably already forgotten all about me. In the cold light of day, last night seems a silly, distant dream.
I concentrate on the stop-start procession of menial tasks like wiping up the kitchen counter, cleaning up tables after customers have left them strewn with mess and half-eaten food, and — wait for this, because it’s about as exciting as it gets — making sandwiches for strangers. My official title here is ‘Sandwich Creator’, though I feel that’s maybe just slightly pretentious.
Work grinds past, too busy to call it quiet, but not busy enough for time to pass quickly.
I ask Neesha, the only other person working with me today, whether she has anything planned for the weekend.
She shrugs her shoulders and says, ‘Nah, it’ll probably be boring.’
Most things in Neesha’s life are boring apparently.
I try again. ‘Another day living the dream.’
She looks at me suspiciously.
‘This job sucks, right? What would your dream job be?’
‘I don’t know.’ She seems to resent the question. Then, after a pause of a full minute: ‘Something where I get a lot of money.’
That’s it for our social interaction for the day.
I think my favourite customer is this guy who’s a bit dirty and antisocial, and not in a good way. He always decides on the size of sandwich he wants, chooses his bread, mulls over his fillings in great detail, watches me cook the sandwich, directs me on which salad ingredients he wants, then says, ‘Nah, I don’t want it any more,’ and runs out of the store. I’ve told Melinda, my manager, about it but she just shrugs. She probably sees the humorous side of what he’s doing. It just gets funnier every time. I mean, at first it was amusing. Now it’s hilarious.
When I finished school and people told me I had the whole wide world in front of me, this wasn’t what I had in mind. I feel this burning up inside me, and sometimes it’s all I can think about — this restlessness and energy that feels so strong it seems strange people can’t see it written all over my face.
I need something to do, somewhere to be. Things have got to change somehow.
Tim
When the Lana Del Rey record came out, I remember having conversations with people who were outraged that she had reinvented herself from this clean-cut pop star to the gangster Nancy Sinatra. I was on Lana’s side. Music is the best place to reinvent yourself and it doesn’t make you any less real.
Think about it. Bob Dylan was a boring middle-class kid who changed his name and reinvented himself as this lonesome travelling hillbilly poet. Same with Tom Waits. His parents were teachers, but he likes to give the impression he grew up in a tin shed with only a shotgun, a bottle of cheap liquor and a murder of crows for company. Joe Strummer was a diplomat’s son (and, for a little while, a hippie living in a London squat), not a global rock revolutionary or part of the last gang in town.
All of this might be true, but none of it is real.
The music is what makes you real.
You are, as someone once wrote, who you pretend you are.
When I play, I’m who I want to be: Tim Carter, suburban dreamer.
I could never tell this stuff to Sebastian, or Bree and Jane, the twins I’ve been mates with since kindergarten. I can’t even talk about this stuff to Ned. I mean, the guy’s been super supportive of me and comes to all my gigs and I love him heaps. But although he’s got, like, a hundred back issues of music magazines and a ton of records, he’s not the artistic type and I don’t really talk about my musical ambitions to him.
I can only think of one person right now I’d like to tell all this stuff to. I just don’t know how to find her.
Mandy
When Alice dropped me off last night, she said she wanted to talk to me about something. I knew what it would be and I said we could talk tomorrow. That was pretty selfish of me really because I didn’t want her to puncture my perfect mood. I wanted to sail into bed with thoughts of Tim swirling around my head. Forgive me. I don’t get to swoon very often so I wanted to extend the moment as long as possible.
I get to her house about five and realise she’s not going to be back for almost an hour. I still haven’t got used to her university schedule and how long it takes her to get home from there. It’s only a few suburbs away, but the traffic’s hell in the afternoons.
I could go in and talk to her parents, I suppose, but it’s always really awkward with them, even though they’re both super nice. I can just never think of anything to talk about. Her mum’s this intimidatingly smart economist and I always manage to somehow save my dumbest comments for her. One time I said I liked a Shakespeare play we were studying because he was ‘good at English, like all the phrases and words and everything he uses’. Another time I said maths wasn’t my favourite subject because I found it involved ‘like, too many numbers’. Besides, she always asks me how the sandwich place is and what is there to say about that?
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I sit outside the house in my dad’s car, listening to the radio as the sun goes down. There’s not a single good song on any station in all that time, but as soon as Alice pulls up in her mum’s car, Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’ comes on, and, though it’s cheesy as all hell and far from the great man’s best work, I can’t resist it. Yes, Bruce, I need a love reaction.
Alice knows that I can’t interrupt listening to a Springsteen song for anything so she gets in and sits shotgun. She’s wearing a black tunic with a white Peter Pan collar, and a neatly tied red ribbon in her hair. When the song ends, she tells me a few things about her English tutorial, about the film they watched in class and how it was apparently all about ‘the male gaze’.
We laugh about it. I know that she’s just waiting to get to what she really wants to talk about. She stares out the window, watching young kids race bikes on the footpath.
‘I keep going over to Liam’s house,’ she says.
I knew it was going to be something about Liam, the ex who suddenly dumped her one day, but this detail trips me up.
‘What do you mean, going over there?’
‘Just driving over to his place and sitting outside. I never go in.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Oh, just a couple of days. Since last week really, so a few days, I guess. I’m sorry, I meant to tell you … it just wasn’t the right time. I know it’s weird, but … I don’t know, it’s like I can’t help it.’
She turns to face me, and suddenly there are fat tears rolling down her milky skin and her pretty face is all crumpled up. I put my arms around her and feel her wet cheek rest on my shoulder.
‘A couple of nights ago I saw this other car out the front of his place, and it looked like a girly kind of car, so I thought …’
‘You can’t do this, Alice, it’s not fair.’
‘Not fair to him?’
‘I don’t care about what’s fair for him,’ I say. ‘He was the one who broke your heart. I just mean you’re not being fair on yourself. You’re not giving yourself a chance to move on.’
‘You’re right,’ she says, but she looks unconvinced.
‘I wish I could be wiser, or more helpful.’
‘You listen, at least. That’s about as helpful as anyone can be.’
I feel a bit guilty at this, given how I put her off last night because of my self-absorption.
‘You have to forget him, never even think of him,’ I say.
She nods, and seems about to say something but decides against it. She sighs and touches up her make-up so you can’t see that she’s been crying.
‘I’ve been in class or studying all day,’ she says. ‘I need to do something else for a bit. Do you want to sleep over tonight? I’ve got this new tea that’s supposed to give you nice dreams.’
‘Yeah, that sounds good. What do you want to do now? Have you got time to watch Aladdin and sing along to all the songs?’
She smiles. ‘Aren’t we too old for that?’
‘You’re never too old to be a kid.’
We get out of the car and I pat her on the back as we walk towards her house.
She’s smiling, the black clouds having blown away — for now at least.
You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About Page 2