You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About

by Daniel Herborn

  Tim

  I can’t sleep again, but this time for different reasons. I’m feeling all jangly and wired, full of possibility. A good kind of nervous.

  Different snapshots from the night run through my head. Mandy laughing, her head tilted back. Her hands bunched up on her thighs, or her skirt tightening around her hips as she bent down to look at the cigarette-vending machine, her legs in sexy ripped black stockings stretching out forever as she lay down on the leather couch.

  Sometimes I think that the difference between the happiest people and the most miserable bastards is only one thing: the ability they have to control their memories. I’d love to be able to control the random memories that float through my mind, to cut out everything bad that’s happened and that I can’t forget. I’d love to rewrite my history so it’s like a mixtape of moments from tonight. I’m drunk and happy and already thinking about this time like it’s some long-lost cherished memory and not something that happened just now.

  I think of Mandy starting to smile in slow motion. She’s kind of a down person, with those sad eyes and her quiet voice, but when her face lights up, it’s the best thing ever. I’m getting lost in thoughts of her, losing myself to her. I don’t want to think about it too much. I want to just let myself go.

  Soon I’m not sure what I’m remembering and what’s a dream. It’s all one delirious blur.

  Mandy

  I don’t know if I’m meant to message him the next morning, so I don’t. Then I think, rules be damned, so I write a message, but then I second-guess myself and save it instead. Then I look at it and think of sending it, but delete it instead.

  A bit later I get a text and am excited, but it’s just Dad asking if I know where the TV remote is. He still signs his name at the end of every text, as if there’s no other way to know who a text is from.

  I get to work and literally nobody comes in during the first hour, so I wipe the benches over and over. They never quite sparkle, just get this dull clear sheen, like somebody’s spat on and wiped them a thousand times.

  At lunch, I pinch a salad roll and give it to the homeless man who today is begging for coins out the back of the shopping centre. My manager’s told me I’m not supposed to do this, so I have to sneak out there and make sure nobody’s watching. He looks a bit unsure when I leave it there for him, but as I move away I turn back and see him pick it up and wolf it down. It’s undoubtedly the highlight of my morning.

  Tim

  I feel like calling Mandy so I do, at recess. She doesn’t answer, so I send her a text. She texts back an hour later when I’m in maths and, with absolutely zero subtlety, I start trying to organise a time to meet her again.

  She says she might be free Monday daytime. I have to explain to her via SMS that I’m repeating Year Twelve so am still at school. It’s not ideal, but then texting isn’t ideal for anything other than smart-arse comments and telling people that you’re running late.

  I send her another message suggesting she comes to see me play again sometime. She texts back and says that she’s met me on my home turf, so maybe I should meet her on hers.

  I reply with Your bedroom?

  She doesn’t write back for a bit and I wonder whether I’ve pushed it too far. But then she tells me to look in a copy of some book called The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe that’s in Gleebooks. I reply that I don’t get it. She texts back that I have to go and find the book.

  Interesting. I think I’m hooked.

  ‘Who are you messaging? Your girlfriend?’ Kiera asks, suddenly appearing out of my blind spot.

  ‘Maybe. You jealous?’

  She sticks her tongue out at me and goes back to her desk and starts drawing on it.

  This year’s supposed to be low-key, the time when I get things back on track after all the craziness, but then this unexpected, gorgeous, brown-eyed distraction has come along. A walking complication with black-painted nails and a Replacements T-shirt. Right now I’m happy just to go along to wherever this takes me — or, more like, wherever she takes me. It’s a golden time. But can I make it last?

  Mandy

  After another particularly shitful couple of hours at work, including an unhappy ten-minute stretch where, in the absence of any customers or any cleaning to do, I try to pass time by seeing how long I can balance on one foot (not very long it turns out), I wait in the car park for Thora to finish up. After a while it occurs to me that her car isn’t in the car park any more and I text her and find out she’s gone home early without bothering to let me know.

  When I finally get home, I decide to make a list of things I can buy with the money I save up, to motivate me to keep doing my job. I get out my Moleskine notebook.

  Alexander McQueen dresses.

  Round-the-world ticket, stopping at New York, Iceland, London, Paris. First-class of course. Don’t want to sound like a princess, but my legs are too long for economy.

  Get all my favourite records on vinyl.

  This inspires a sub-list of the records I’d buy first on vinyl:

  Vampire Weekend

  The ’59 Sound, The Gaslight Anthem

  16 Lovers Lane, The Go-Betweens

  High Violet, The National

  For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver.

  And dozens more.

  I’ve only recently discovered vinyl, but it feels so much more special than owning an album on CD, let alone just having a digital version of it on your laptop or phone or whatever. I even like that you have to actually get up and walk across to the record player to turn the side over when it’s finished — I feel like you should do at least a tiny bit of work in return for musical genius.

  The other cool thing about vinyl is that not everyone has it. It’s too expensive and impractical for everyone but the real fans. You don’t need to go to someone’s house or camp out by the radio to hear a cool song any more, not when everything ever recorded is right there on YouTube or Spotify. When I was at school, sometimes older girls would come over to my house to look at my music collection. I remember once this girl called April, who was a cool girl a full two years above me, came over to listen to music and flick through back issues of MOJO in my room and it felt like the coolest thing in the world. I was so impressed that she had her own car, even though it was a death trap. I think she still has my CD copy of Up The Bracket.

  But as inviting as the list looks, I wonder if I’m saving for the wrong things, like I’m making a really cool little hideout where I can cut myself off from everything while I avoid bigger decisions, the bigger world.

  Tim

  I’m leaning over the counter at the newsagency reading the latest issue of MOJO when Bree and Jane surprise me by appearing in front of me. It shouldn’t be a surprise because they’re always dropping in, but I try not to look so lazy when I’m working. Ned always scolds me if he catches me just reading and not watching the shop, which is fair enough. He’s so soft that he tends to rouse on me in this really apologetic, half-arsed way, but I still feel a bit slack about it.

  ‘Whatcha reading?’ Jane asks, putting down a Slurpee on the page.

  I look at the thin, wet circle it’s left on the face of Bruce Springsteen. ‘Thanks, now I have to buy this.’

  ‘You probably get a staff discount,’ Bree says.

  ‘It’s an airmail issue,’ I say, pulling back the cover to show the sticker on the front.

  ‘Oh, boo fricking hoo,’ Jane says. ‘Anyway, sorry we didn’t see you play last night. I decided I’d better actually do something for my photography assignment, so I went down to Blackwattle Bay and took photographs of people training in dragon boats.’

  ‘What’s your excuse?’ I say to Bree.

  ‘Well, I had to go with her, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, for god’s sake.’

  ‘How was your gig anyway?’

  ‘Yeah, it was good. Better than good actually. I met this girl, Mandy.’

  Jane takes a long, deliberate sip of her Slurpee and looks at me scepticall
y. ‘You really like her, don’t you?’

  ‘What? Maybe. I don’t know. Probably. You got that from “I met this girl”?’

  ‘You never say when you meet someone,’ Bree says. ‘The first we know of it is when you rock up to a party with some random girl trailing behind you and say “Everyone, this is Candy” or whatever.’

  ‘I don’t …’ I trail off, knowing that this is exactly what I do. ‘Give me a sip of your drink,’ I say to Jane.

  I take a long, deep gulp of the electric-blue Slurpee and am simultaneously hit with a sugar rush and a teeth-clenching brain freeze.

  ‘Do you two not know what germs are?’ Bree says, eyeing the shared cup with disdain.

  ‘Apparently ninety-nine per cent of germs aren’t harmful,’ I say. Sebastian told me that once. Don’t know if it’s true, but I’m going with it.

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re missing the point,’ Bree says.

  ‘Where did you get this thing about germs?’ I ask her. ‘It sounds dodgy. Is this something you got from Candy? She was as dumb as a box of hair.’

  ‘She was nice.’

  ‘She thought mandarins were baby oranges.’

  ‘Who cares about Candy? I want to hear more about Mandy,’ Jane says.

  ‘She’s lovely and funny.’

  ‘We’re both lovely and funny,’ says Jane.

  ‘It’s different though.’

  ‘How come?’ Jane asks.

  ‘What, are you saying I should be attracted to you now?’

  ‘No!’ Bree says.

  ‘Gross!’ Jane says.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘She loves Jens Lekman.’

  ‘Never heard of him. Is he one of those weirdo songwriters you’re into?’

  ‘I’ve played you his stuff tons of times! You just don’t remember. Anyway, I like her voice, it’s all cough-syrupy and sexy.’

  ‘What, like she has a cold?’

  ‘No, that’s just how she talks.’

  ‘She had a cold and you found it hot? Weirdo.’

  ‘I think you’ve really missed the point. But do you know what I like best? She doesn’t know how great she is, not at all.’

  ‘Wow, you are crushing out hard.’

  ‘I think we’ll have to meet her.’

  I think so as well. None of my descriptions do her justice.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Bree says.

  She pulls a bunch of papers out of a black tote bag. I look at the papers, handwritten in loopy cursive with extravagant flourishes at the end of every sentence. It takes me a couple of moments to realise what I’m looking at.

  ‘They’re the English notes that got me top marks in the finals. Every book, every class, it’s all there. These notes are a work of art and now they’re yours.’

  ‘This is seriously awesome,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, that’s some absolute grade-A stuff right there. I made rough notes in class, then refined them into master notes before the exams.’

  ‘And these are the master notes?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Thanks so much. I seriously don’t know how I can repay you.’

  Bree picks up a Mars bar and a handful of cinnamon chewing gum, and Jane gets two bottles of Coke out of the fridge.

  ‘Have you got all the trashy gossip mags?’ Bree asks.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve got everything.’

  ‘And you throw out the ones you can’t sell, right?’

  ‘Yeah, some of them we have to take the covers off and recycle.’

  ‘So you can give them to me?’

  ‘You seriously want old trashy magazines for your notes?’

  ‘Yep, and all this other stuff. Chuck us some Winnie Blues, then we’re even.’

  Mandy

  Kimmy, a friend from school who I haven’t seen much lately, sends me a message asking if I’ve got time for coffee. After a suitable lapse of time I send back a message that manages to give the impression that I can just squeeze her into my exciting and enviably busy social schedule. I agree to meet her this afternoon in the only who-cares food-court café near her work that’s still open at four o’clock. I’ve never understood why cafés in Sydney shut mid-afternoon. This is why I should live in Paris.

  She hugs me briskly when I arrive and apologises about how she hasn’t had much time lately to hang out because she’s busy studying pre-medicine and working. I smile and nod in the right places, and ask questions at the right times, and generally do a good job of being the supportive friend.

  People think Kimmy’s a bit high-strung, and they’re probably right. She’s still complaining about something unfair that one of her teachers wrote on her report card at the end of last year. I feel like saying get over it, it was months ago and you probably got glowing reports anyway, but I bite my tongue. Teachers always wrote in my report that I was a quiet achiever, which meant they weren’t quite sure who I was, or that I was a pleasure to teach, which meant I never really said anything in class.

  I feel like I have less to tell her. Work is sporadic and dull, and I haven’t been travelling yet, unlike Kimmy, who went to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos for a few weeks during summer. Judging by her Facebook photos, she seemed to visit every single temple, beach and tourist bar in each of those countries in little over a fortnight. She’s already over the trip when I ask her about it. And what have I done in this time? I’ve gotten into a whole lot of new bands, and started to work through that list of classic movies I have to see, but stuff like that never translates well into conversation. Exciting as it is to me to have played the first New York Dolls album a hundred times and totally fallen in love with it, to most people that just sounds like me messing about at home.

  Kimmy talks quickly and constantly plays with her chunky wooden necklace. She rattles through the hundred or so people she’s caught up with since we last met.

  ‘It’s really good to see you, Mandy,’ she says, and she means it.

  I instantly forgive her for a stack of cancelled meet-ups and all those messages I sent her which she never replied to. She’s really nice, Kimmy. It’s an underrated quality.

  She tells me that she’s just started seeing a new boy from her study group and it’s clear this is what she really wants to tell me about. I feel happy for her.

  I don’t say anything about Tim and it feels like a cop-out, or, worse, a betrayal. I guess I don’t want to jinx it or risk looking like a failure. Imagine if I see her again in a month and she asks about Tim and I have to confess that he’s drifted away and must not have really been interested in me.

  I know being timid like this is no way to live, and it makes me realise I’m not as rock ’n’ roll as I think. Would Bruce Springsteen not tell his friends if there was a girl he really liked? Hardly. He’d write a song about her, and it would be passionate and honest and amazing, and he’d scream out the words to her underneath her window, and if her daddy didn’t like it, the Boss would tell him he didn’t care because he was going to be a big rock ’n’ roll star.

  ‘Are you alright, Mandy? You’re looking a bit distant.’

  ‘Mm, yes. Never been better,’ I say.

  ‘Something on your mind?’

  ‘Bruce Springsteen.’

  She looks at me like I’m the weirdest thing ever.

  She has to go, but we promise to meet up again soon. I’m sure she has the best of intentions, but I won’t hold my breath for our next date.

  I decide to walk the few suburbs home, because I haven’t done any exercise for ages and I’m pretty sure you don’t stay skinny forever by eating junk food and sitting on the couch a lot.

  When I finally get home it’s getting dark and cooling down. I decide to look up my old school reports, Kimmy having reminded me of them. I find them neatly ordered in a shoebox in the dresser just inside the door, which is classic Dad. Everything in our house is either stored in a shoebox with elastic bands or in a jam jar. I come across Heather’s reports as well and can’t help snooping
through them. The word that comes up constantly is ‘promising’. Look at her now. I promise myself I will never settle for being promising. I slide the box back into the dresser.

  Later that evening, Alice unexpectedly shows up on my doorstep and we somehow decide to invent cocktails which we name after old film stars. The Bette Davis is an instant favourite, but we soon realise it has about seven ingredients in it and we have no idea what they are so it’s impossible ever to make it again.

  She tells me that she found an old photo album she’d made of pictures of her and Liam on holiday in Melbourne and she wonders if she should make copies of the photos and send them to him. I suggest that this is perhaps not the best idea.

  We move on to drinking Humphrey Bogarts, which we make with Amaretto, rye whisky and Pepsi Max. The Humphrey Bogart is not destined to become a classic cocktail like, say, the Martini or the Manhattan. The Judy Garlands go down pretty smooth, though the Jimmy Dean is a bit of a hot mess, and the Montgomery Clift is somewhat less sexy than its namesake. My newfound ambition of opening an old Hollywood-themed cocktail bar may have to be put on hold.

  Sitting on the balcony and trying not to get ash in my third (or fourth?) Judy Garland, I tell Alice about my rare sighting of Kimmy, and she’s excited to hear what our elusive friend is up to.

  She asks me when I’m going to see Tim again, and I explain that today I put a note in a Jonathan Coe book in Gleebooks for him to find, and the note asks him to meet me in the old milk bar on Parramatta Road on Sunday. As I’m telling her this, I realise how many things could go wrong with this plan. Someone else might buy the book before he gets there. Somebody might take the note out of the book. He might not be able to find the book. He might decide that it’s not worth bothering about, that I’m not worth bothering about. I try not to think about that.

  Alice looks surprised and impressed, her already cartoonishly large eyes growing even wider. ‘That’s a really cool idea.’