You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About

by Daniel Herborn

  We watch bad TV.

  We hear people arguing in the next room so we put the TV up louder.

  I drink. A lot. I drink until I can’t feel my feelings any more.

  Alice leans on me like a weeping willow.

  Tim doesn’t drink but is drifting in and out of the conversation, resting his head in my lap.

  Being here in a hotel room with my best friend and him should be perfect and adventurous, but it just feels strange and deflating. We don’t talk about what happened at the pub. We don’t talk about anything important, and every time I look at his face his expression is inscrutable and he looks away when he catches me looking. Just a couple of weeks ago I would have died to be here, but now I’d rather be somewhere else, anywhere else. Sometimes heaven is the closest thing to hell.

  Tim

  I wake up in the half-light with Mandy on one side of me and Alice on the other. It’s all a bit Dawson’s Creek. I decide instantly not to tell Seb about this. He’s always going on about threesomes, and although nothing happened last night he’s not going to believe my platonic bed-sharing story.

  While the girls are still asleep, I sneak out and walk to a general store down the road to get some breakfast. I flick through the paper to see if the Tigers won. I don’t really follow the football, but Ned grew up in Melbourne and is always in a better mood when they get up. I can’t find the result, so I just get some eggs, a carton of milk and some chocolate for the drive home.

  The shopkeeper serves me without speaking and I walk back to the hotel with a throbbing headache and in a slightly paranoid mood, wondering if anyone I pass along the street will recognise me from the pub last night. I’m glad I don’t live here. There seem to be only two places to go out in the whole town: the place where I played and a bowling club which is more for the old people. Not much chance of disappearing here.

  Alice wakes up as I’m attempting to fry the eggs and comes over to look at what I’m doing, all sleepy-eyed and dazed.

  ‘Are you scrambling them?’ she says.

  ‘Ah, yeah, probably.’

  ‘How come you haven’t put the milk in yet?’

  ‘Oh, that’s just for the coffee.’

  ‘Do you mind if I put some milk in?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘OK. And look, there’s some pieces of shell in there.’

  She uses half an eggshell to delicately scoop out the fragments I’ve accidentally broken into the frypan and adds milk slowly, turning down the heat and rescuing our breakfast from oblivion.

  Mandy wakes up as Alice is scooping the eggs onto the cheap plastic plates the hotel has provided. I don’t know how to read her expression, but I know it isn’t good.

  ‘My head hurts,’ she says.

  I’m not feeling that great so Alice has to drive. I sit in the back seat with Mandy and it just feels weird, like we’re spoiled kids being chauffeured somewhere. The embarrassment and sense of failure stings, hangs unspoken in the air like dirty smoke. I’m full of all this anger and I deal with it as I always do, by not dealing with it at all. This can’t last.

  I lean across the front seat and plug my iPod into the car speaker and flick it onto shuffle. Mandy looks annoyed.

  ‘What, don’t you want the music?’ I say.

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘I probably should have asked, hey?’

  ‘Yeah, you should have.’

  ‘I can turn it off if you want.’

  ‘I said it’s fine.’

  ‘Really, I can take it off.’

  ‘It’s on now, don’t worry about it.’

  She sounds tired. Tired of me.

  The songs fly by, music filling in the spaces of the conversation we’re not having.

  Alice wants to stop at this vintage shop on the fringes of the city that she’s read about to look for an old teapot to buy. She’s a cute thing.

  Mandy hangs back in the car for a second and looks like she’s going to say something but she doesn’t know quite what. She stares into space for a moment then decides to get out and have a cigarette.

  Alice comes back with a teapot wrapped in tissue paper. It isn’t until she’s driving again that either of them says anything about last night.

  ‘Don’t worry about those people in the bar,’ Alice says. ‘Even The Beatles had to put up with rowdy crowds and dive bars when they first started.’

  ‘One of my mates went to where they played in Liverpool and reckoned it was really nice,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe that was OK, but the places they played in Hamburg were pretty shoddy apparently.’ Alice says.

  ‘Hmm, maybe,’ I say. ‘I always picture them as these little beer houses with people in lederhosen and holding massive jugs of German beer. Maybe the reality wasn’t so great.’

  The last hour or so of the drive drags. You don’t realise how massive Sydney is until you have to drive from the fringes to the centre in a car with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you.

  When we finally get to Mandy’s house, she surprises me by asking me in for a coffee. I need a caffeine hit, and, more importantly, I need to find some way of avoiding this weekend ending on a depressing note, so I agree.

  Alice decides she’s going to stay at Mandy’s for the night, so I help them get their massive stash of bags out of the boot and walk up the narrow path to her door. As soon as it opens, I get this feeling of dread. I recognise her dad and freeze dead.

  Mandy

  Massive awkwardness at my place. Tim freaks out when he sees Dad and I’ve got no idea why. I just stand there in the hall between them and pretend there’s not some strange look of recognition on both their faces, and wince through what must be a couple of seconds but feels like a lifetime of silence before Dad mumbles a greeting and Tim mumbles back. There’s a wounded look hidden behind his fringe, an expression of some unspoken, distant pain.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I ask him and he nods.

  Dad offers him a drink but he’s shaking his head, saying he’s sorry, looking at his watch, he didn’t realise that was the time, he’s got homework to do, and it’s been really great but suddenly he has to go. We kiss the slightest and most unsatisfying of goodbye kisses and then he’s gone.

  I dump my two massive bags down in the hallway and realise that I ludicrously overpacked for one night away. I actually took a little picnic set and rug, hoping we’d find some idyllic patch to stop at on the drive back. It seems so stupid now.

  I sense that Dad doesn’t want to talk about whatever’s going on with Tim, so he, Alice and I sit around watching the news without really paying attention to it and eating gross reheated takeaway out of plastic containers. I feel confused about how Dad would recognise Tim, but I try to push the thought to the back of my head for the time being.

  Some stupid reality show about the police comes on. Dad pretends not to like these shows but he always watches them and spends the whole time criticising their policing techniques, rolling his eyes when they try for tough-guy dialogue and occasionally giving a grudging acknowledgement like, ‘They handled that one well, I’ll give them that. Straight out of the textbook.’ I know he hates the idea of police work being splashed across everyone’s living room but feels the need to watch over it like some cranky headmaster. It wouldn’t have happened in his day, you see.

  I feel normality returning. I give him a hug.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just good to be home, I guess.’

  ‘Your mum and Scott are here. They’re in the kitchen with June.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood, do you think we can just go upstairs without them hearing?’

  ‘Your mum’s bought some shorts for you, I think she wants to give them to you.’

  ‘Dad! I said I didn’t want them, she didn’t even listen.’

  ‘I didn’t raise you to turn up your nose and be rude when someone buys you a present.’

  ‘Did you raise me to wear shorts with my arse hangin
g out of them?’

  ‘You’ve put me in a tough spot.’ His brow furrows and he tucks his newspaper under his arm. ‘OK, I’ll try to sneak you upstairs. But next time you have to say hello, alright?’

  He’s too late. I hear stirring from the kitchen.

  ‘Who are you talking to out there?’ Sonya calls. ‘Is that my Amanda?’

  Busted.

  Tim

  On my way home, I call in at a friend’s barbecue in a tiny backyard in Camperdown. Lots of people I know are there, but I’m not really into it. I end up sitting against the splintery back fence and watching as kids gather round the clothes line. A girl with long hair and boots, wearing a tank-top with slits down each side, sends the clothes line whirling around and a silver goon sack flies through the night air like a shooting star. I feel detached from the action that’s taking place just a couple of metres away, like it’s a movie or something.

  Ricky walks over to me, his face smudged with cake. ‘Player, what’s up?’

  ‘Just winding down, man. I’ve had a rough weekend.’

  ‘Yeah, where you been? You weren’t at Eleni’s thing.’

  ‘I was out of town playing a show. It didn’t go well.’

  ‘Did you take your girl?’

  ‘Yeah, and I may have just fucked that up completely, so …’

  ‘Ouch. Maybe you shouldn’t take her to your shows until you get really good.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Just don’t get too down, Tim. Let’s not have a repeat of last year when you cracked the sads and nobody saw you for, like, two months.’

  ‘I think we should talk about something else,’ I say.

  ‘Whatever. Hey, that karaoke night was good.’

  ‘It was fun, hey? Did you guys kick on after?’

  ‘Yeah, me and your hot friends ended up dancing at this backpacker bar. Some Irish ginger tried to chat them up, but I scared him off, he was a lightweight. Then I thought something was going to happen with at least one of them, but next thing, they’re getting in a cab and I’m back at my place alone, wanking and crying myself to sleep.’

  ‘Oh, I did not need to hear that.’

  ‘Well anyway, a bunch of us are coming back to school for the band night. You’re playing, I take it?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good. And cheer the hell up by then, man. Nobody gives a shit about your girl troubles unless you’ve written a sick song about it.’

  ‘Cheers for the advice.’

  ‘Anytime. Hey, I was going to ask — Mandy’s sister isn’t bad. Do you reckon I’ve got any shot there?’

  On that note, I decide to grab a sausage sandwich and leave. People aren’t happy about me going so soon, but I’m really not feeling the party. I end up walking up and down King Street listening to Pinkerton on my iPod and generally taking my time getting home. Coming home feels like surrender, like returning to reality. Like giving in.

  Ned has stayed up waiting for me, though he’s pretending he was just up anyway, sitting in his comfortable chair in front of the TV, bleary-eyed, staring at the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, which he never watches unless I already have it on. He doesn’t get any of the references, or that style of humour, at all.

  ‘I don’t know what this bloke’s on about,’ he says, annoyed.

  I convince him it’s time to get some sleep, make sure Spirit is in his shelter and stash my guitar in the front room. It feels weird putting it there tonight and it hits home how much of a failure these past couple of days have been, how it’s going to be that much harder to get up and play next time, knowing the crap I copped last night and how badly I reacted. And how it’s going to be harder to see Mandy now that I know who her dad is, and maybe now she’ll know too much about me.

  I can’t stand to think about it, and the only thing that’s going to get me to sleep tonight is sheer exhaustion. I’ll deal with it all later. Hopefully much, much later.

  Mandy

  It’s pretty late when Alice and I retreat to my room, leaving Sonya, Scott, Dad and June sitting on the couch and laughing at some show hosted by Bert Newton that’s counting down the twenty best Aussie movie scenes or something. I’m not a fan of Bert. Call me shallow, but I can’t take anyone with such a weird-looking head seriously.

  I go down later to get a drink and they’re all still in the lounge room, now watching Mr T enthusing about some weird see-through oven. Is this what the world has come to?

  ‘Mandy, do you take the ecstasy tablets when you go out dancing?’ Sonya calls across the room.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  ‘A lot of the kids take the tablets so they can dance all night,’ she tells everyone, shaking her shoulders in that way middle-aged people do when they dance.

  ‘No, Sonya, I don’t take the ecstasy tablets, as you call them, and I don’t even go out dancing.’

  ‘Nah, she’s out doing lines of coke!’ Scott says and everyone laughs, though Dad just kind of grins and looks a bit uncomfortable.

  You’re a dick, Scott, I think, you’ve been here five minutes. And you gave me a Holden racing team hat for my birthday, so I’d say you don’t quite know me well enough to be making jokes about me just yet.

  ‘You don’t know what those tablets will do to you,’ Dad says, a bit unnecessarily. ‘The long-term effects could be extremely dangerous.’

  ‘Young people have to rebel,’ June says, pretending to know what’s going on.

  ‘God knows we did enough rebelling when we were young,’ Sonya says.

  ‘We do stuff every night that’s pretty rebellious,’ says Scott.

  June tut-tuts. Dad looks slightly ill, which is how I feel.

  Then June starts giggling out of nowhere and I look over and see Dad’s decided he’s had enough of the conversation and has started tickling her. Yuck.

  Then I see Scott lean in and tongue-kiss Sonya. Even worse.

  I grab the jug of iced tea I was after and bolt. I’m all for undying love and everything, but old people giggling and pawing each other like this is gross and should probably be made illegal.

  When I get back to my room Alice is sitting on the floor with her legs stretching out over my zebra rug (fake, of course) and I can see her slip showing underneath her skirt. When she turns to face me I can see the mascara around her eyes is smudged a little. She has a balled-up tissue hidden in one hand. I hear the crackle from my little turntable as the Neil Young record reaches the end of the side.

  ‘It’s just so unfair,’ she says.

  I hold her hand. ‘It is unfair, babe. Life’s unfair.’

  We sit there for a minute, not saying anything. I don’t know which particular unfairness she’s referring to, but I can’t help but agree. There’s nothing that either of us can say to make it better.

  As I get up to turn the record over, Alice tells me that Thora added her as a friend on Facebook last week, then blanked her in the street a couple of days later. I tell her that is rude and promise to confront Thora, but she doesn’t want that. I say that Thora can be a bit offhand sometimes, that’s just how she is. Alice nods and picks up the record cover to read which song is playing. The problem is solved for the time being, but I know that’s not really what she’s upset about.

  I look at my phone for the hundredth time to see if Tim has replied to the messages I’ve sent since he left and I’ve somehow missed it. He hasn’t.

  ‘Liam called me the other night,’ Alice says. ‘He talked to me for an hour and it was … it was great, Mandy. It was like he’d never left. I said goodnight to him but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Then I drove over to his house to surprise him, but I could see there was … I could see someone else in his room. Another girl.’

  She leans back against my bookshelf, which is full of books that looked amazing at the bookshop but which I haven’t yet had the time or inclination to read. Her soft blonde hair falls across her face and I look to see that she isn’t crying. She isn’t, but she’s trying really hard
not to, which is even worse.

  I think about when I first became friends with Alice, how long ago it seems. The first time I saw her I thought she was strange but her hair was pretty. She stood out from the start. She had a pen with googly eyes and a feather for hair, she carried a little old brown school case instead of a backpack, and she answered the teacher’s questions with an earnestness and intelligence that made some people snicker. She was different when all anybody wanted was to be the same as everyone else. I watched her from a distance one day as she got her pieces of fruit out of her case, lined them up neatly next to herself and sat on her own eating lunch on the wooden benches by the swings. I decided that I liked the way she held herself, sitting up straight and proud and not caring that nobody would talk to her. I went over to her and offered her some of my salt and vinegar chips. We were eight years old and pretty much instantly became friends in that moment. Back then, that was about as complicated as friendship ever was.

  Tim

  I get called to the principal’s office at recess when I’m sitting around the canteen listening to my iPod and reading a George Orwell book for class. I drag my feet all the way there, not really worried or angry about whatever it is I’ve done, but just because I’m feeling worn out and frayed. At the tender age of eighteen, I already feel that I’m too old for this shit.

  But when I get to the office, I see Miss Mailey, our principal and the only person I’ve ever seen wearing a suit in our school, sitting on the edge of her desk and smiling softly at me. She pulls a chair out from under the desk for me and offers me a glass of water. She asks me how my classes are going and I say that they seem to be alright at the moment. She has a box of Roses chocolates on her desk and she offers me one. As I eat one of the chocolate peppermints and she makes more chit-chat, it becomes clear that I’m not here to get a bollocking.