You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About

by Daniel Herborn

  I get more pieces of the puzzle, and I can’t help but wonder if I still I fit in.

  Tim

  I do a few coats of bright red paint to cover the canvas, then paint over the colour with glossy black. Then more black. More and more until you can’t see anything of the colour underneath. Then I scratch the surface with a broken bottle until the red comes through, and I scratch spirals and patterns into it and it bleeds into life. My art teacher looks at it without saying anything. I think she might be seriously scared of me now.

  I call Mandy out of habit and realise that I don’t have anything to say, but I keep her talking to hear her voice, that soft purr, and just to speak to someone familiar and comforting.

  I’ve been a bit under the radar lately, just sleeping and walking Spirit and sleepwalking through school. I realise it’s not fair to her at all and she must be sick of me. I just dumped all my problems on her and then clammed up. I wonder how I can make it right.

  In a fit of inspiration, I invite her to the school music night. She says she’ll come and that gives me something to aim for and dream about, which is about as much as you can ever want.

  Some kids in Year Eleven have drafted me into their band to play drums on Lorde’s song ‘Royals’, which was huge in school when it came out. Every second person had it as a ringtone and I’m still into it, despite hearing it every minute. But these kids haven’t played together for too long and we aren’t quite pulling it all together as a unit.

  Our bit in the music night might be average, but I’m going to play one of my own songs as well and I feel like if I can do that really well, when Mandy sees me up on stage it’ll be like the first time she saw me, and it can be exciting and untroubled and perfect again, the beginning of an adventure.

  I think I’m going to go practise right now.

  Mandy

  On a quiet Wednesday night we have a family dinner at the Carlisle Castle, an old-man pub in one of the backstreets of Newtown that feels like your mate’s place but with pub meals and a liquor licence. We don’t really eat out much as a family, but June has suggested it, possibly because she thinks Heather will behave herself a bit more in public. And it works, for about ten minutes, before someone says something about the house stinking of smoke and Heather takes it personally and arcs up about it.

  ‘I haven’t even smoked inside that much!’

  ‘You spilled bong water on the lounge room floor, like, last week,’ I say.

  ‘You little snitch! You’re pathetic! Well, if we’re going to be dobbing on each other, Mandy stained the tiles in the bathroom dying her hair.’

  ‘What? That was, like, three years ago.’

  ‘Well, you never do anything wrong. You’re so boring.’

  ‘Girls!’ June says.

  We stop to hear what she’s going to say, but it turns out that was it.

  ‘Can’t we just have one night of not fighting?’ Dad says. ‘I’m just trying to enjoy a bloody good bit of steak with my favourite girls.’

  ‘That sounds creepy,’ Heather says. ‘My favourite girls. Gross.’

  ‘Heather, stop it,’ Dad says.

  ‘You know, it’s much more laid-back over at Mum and Scott’s place,’ Heather says.

  Dad pretends not to be annoyed by this. June pretends not to care.

  ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ she goes on. ‘They let me smoke over there, they’re much more cool about it.’

  Dad just looks worn out.

  Heather, maybe feeling sorry for him, decides to change tack. ‘But I’ll tell you what is not cool over there. One of Scott’s friends has basically moved in with them, and Mum hates it. His girlfriend kicked him out of their flat and now he just lives on their couch and plays video games all day. Mum has to pretend she’s cool with it and she obviously isn’t.’

  June looks tickled by this news, but clearly doesn’t want to get all smug about it. She takes a sip of her sherry and lemonade and tries really hard not to smile.

  Tim

  ‘Have you played the school music night before?’ Mandy asks.

  ‘Yeah, I always play it. I wanted to play “Fuck Forever” last year, but I wasn’t allowed to. Well, the teachers said I could play it but I had to change some lyrics. It seemed kind of pointless.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to swear?’

  ‘You are not, which made playing that song a bit problematic. But the worst was the year I wanted to play “New Slang” for this girl, but … nah that’s a pretty embarrassing story actually.’

  ‘Well, now I have to hear it.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Well, it was like some bad sitcom storyline. I thought I liked this girl called Louise McDonald, and she was in the year above me and in a totally different group from me. I don’t know, I suppose she was a bit of a snob. She wouldn’t really talk to me or anything. So me and Seb and some other mates found out all this stuff about her, like we knew people that were on her Facebook so we found out that was her favourite song, and I was going to play it and the plan was she would be, like, “Oh my god, that’s my favourite song too! I’ve misjudged you, Tim, maybe we’re soulmates.” And then I would pretend to like Gossip Girl and all this ridiculous stuff she was into.’

  ‘Wow, that is hilarious. And don’t diss Gossip Girl!’

  ‘I know, hey, I was kind of clueless back then.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Well, I got all dressed up and I played the song and people were into it. I mean, it was great, it’s a really beautiful song and sounds really great on a Maton. And then anyway she found me afterwards and yelled out to me, “Hey, I want to talk to you!” So I went up to her and she says, “Do you know that is my favourite song ever?”’

  As I’m telling the story I realise how stupid it makes me sound, but I’m too far in now. ‘So, I say calmly, “Really, your favourite song? It’s my favourite too.” And she just stares at me and says, “Well, you just murdered it, you douchebag.”’

  ‘Oh no! I feel so bad for you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all good. I felt pretty cut at the time, but Jenny Andrews saw the whole thing and knew what had happened and felt bad for me. She came up and put her arm around me —’

  ‘Well, I think I’ve heard enough of this story.’

  ‘Yeah, but anyway, it’s a pretty fun and random night. There’s always a few laughs, not always intended, you know, and some of the teachers even play sometimes, which is classic.’

  ‘Are you going to play a song that I’ll like?’

  ‘It’s an original, you haven’t heard it yet. But you’ll like it. I think.’

  Mandy

  Most of the time my dad comes across as pretty calm and in control, but when he gets into emotional territory he might be the most awkward man in the world.

  I’m sitting at the breakfast table one morning, half-reading the paper, when he sits down across from me and makes some small talk. I’m midway through my cornflakes so I haven’t really got an excuse to leave.

  He clears his throat. ‘You haven’t been yourself lately, Mandy.’

  I think about what that means, about who I actually am and what I would need to do to get away from that. I always kind of thought this was some transition period for me, when I’d work out who I want to be and what I want to do with my life, or at least with this year. But maybe this is as good as it gets. Maybe moping around the house, barely employed, is my natural state of being.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Heather tells me you’ve been seeing a lot of that boy you brought back here the other day.’

  I look up at him and he’s looking away, his eyes clouded, his hands joined together on the table like he’s praying.

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t even know if that’s going on any more, so …’

  ‘You never gave me any trouble, Mandy, not like your sister.’

  Suddenly his voice is cracking slightly and I’m caught off guard. We never have emotional talks,
Dad and I. I’m fine with that. Having one extroverted freak for a parent is enough.

  ‘Well, Heather’s everything I aspire to,’ I say, hiding behind sarcasm, trying to change the tone of the conversation.

  ‘Mandy, I think you’ve always been a good judge of character.’

  I chew my cornflakes slowly. Tears form at the edge of my eyes.

  ‘You probably know that I recognised Tim,’ he says.

  I nod.

  ‘It’s good that he’s doing OK. I’d like to have a chat with him actually, just to see how he’s going.’

  I imagine watching the two of us slumped over the breakfast table from outside, like I’m someone else, and how it must look relatively normal. But to me, sitting here, it feels surreal. You need to be up close to see the tears making Dad’s eyes shiny. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him cry. I feel like something is breaking inside me and it’s all I can do to sit here and nod.

  ‘I don’t know much about this young fella,’ he says, ‘but his dad was one angry bastard. I mean, Tim must have had a bit of a battle getting in there to try to stop him. I just remember how distraught the kid was when I got there. He looked like his whole world had just collapsed. I don’t know, it’s just an awful situation.’

  ‘Dad, it’s alright, you don’t have to try and fix things for me.’

  ‘I’ve always tried to shelter you from things,’ he says, ‘but I have to tell you this. With your mum, I never bloody talked to her. I didn’t know what was going on with her.’

  ‘Oh, Dad —’

  ‘Let me finish, Mandy. I just let her slip away. You can’t just let things slide — I learned that the hard way. When I was a policeman, the other blokes thought I had no fear, that I was never fazed by anything I saw. But sitting down with your mother and really talking to her terrified me. I thought I could just ignore our problems and they would go away … Some things are just so hard to say.’ He is really crying now, his great wrinkled hands covering his face. ‘I let her slip away from us. I’ll always regret that, Mandy. Always.’

  Tim

  Sometimes when I watch a band, I try to work out how exactly they get their sound: what guitars and equipment they use, what chord progressions are in their songs. Or I focus on the lyrics and think about how they tell a story or set a mood through the choices they make.

  Then there’s other times I like watching a band that has nothing to do with what I do and I can just watch as a fan and not try to think about what’s behind the curtain. Watching sleepmakeswaves at the Annandale tonight is like that. They describe their music as love songs about delay pedals and that’s as good a description as any. It’s punishing and loud and obviously influenced by metal and drone stuff, but it’s also super pretty.

  As I walk back to Glebe through the backstreets, I message Mandy and then leave a fairly rambling voicemail. I ring a couple of times more, and then Seb calls and wants to pick me up on his way to a party. I make some lame protest about it being a school night, but Seb says he’s not letting me get away with that and what I need is to go out tonight. The idea of him knowing what’s good for me is laughable, but I’m not in the mood for an argument.

  A couple of hours later, I’m standing around in some random person’s bedroom listening to some absolute wanker with a comedy moustache talk about ‘what is wrong with music these days’ and how bands were so much better in the glory days of 2013. I bet he’s never written a note of music in his life.

  I check my phone and there’s a message from Mandy. She said she would have liked to see the band as well, and I feel what a waste it was not to have her there. She says she hopes to see me soon. There’s a kiss at the end.

  I realise I’ve been getting more and more frustrated since I left the Annandale, but now it just feels like it’s melting away. This, I decide, is the end of messing around. Who am I kidding? She’s all I want, and I want her now and forever.

  I go out to the living room and it’s absolutely crowded with people. I decide I can’t even be bothered pushing through the crowd, so I just climb out a window and walk out into the street. It is past midnight, but I’ve got work to do. I need to get this song perfect before the band night. But before that, I’ve got to get hold of Mandy.

  She’s still up, playing records in her room.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you this late,’ I tell her, ‘but I needed to say this. I know I’ve been flaky and I apologise. I’ve been distracted.’

  ‘Yeah … It’s been weird. I didn’t know if you really wanted to see me.’

  ‘No, I did … I just thought maybe I wasn’t good for you.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she says.

  ‘OK. That’s fair. Just come to the school music night. Please, it’ll be worth it.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘Maybe. You’ll have to wait and see.’

  Mandy

  On the day of Tim’s school music night, I’m still in two minds about whether to go. My initial enthusiasm on hearing about the night has faded. I think of all the times over the past weeks when I’ve tried to talk to him and have got nothing in return. I wonder whether I should just draw a line under Tim and me, whether I should concede it was good while it lasted but that we weren’t meant to be, and it won’t ever be how I want it to be.

  An hour later, I’m determined to go.

  Mid-evening, I waver again and wonder if there’s enough of that initial hope left to go on. This uncertainty is ridiculous, but I can’t cut through it.

  I wait for my phone to ring, for someone to provide answers. But I come to realise I’m going to have to decide for myself.

  I’ve heard that some people try to find guidance by opening up the Bible at a random place and reading the first passage they see. I try to think what message my musical heroes would have for me, what I could actually get out of these songs I revere. I put on my iPod, close my eyes, hit shuffle and play.

  I hear the familiar grinding introduction to Ted Leo’s ‘Me and Mia’ and I listen to the lyrics in a way I never really have before, and it becomes clear for the first time what the song is about: how you can’t just sit in your bedroom listening to records and waiting for something good to happen. You can’t wait for someone to hand things to you. You have to be brave and maybe risk getting hurt and snatch the thing you want out of the air.

  That’s it. My mind is made up. I’m already running late, but I’m going to go. And it’s going to be great. Dad and June are out and have taken the car so I go to the bus stop and wait. And wait, and wait …

  Tim

  Our cover of ‘Royals’ is a triumph. Somehow we pull it off perfectly. It’s the first time we’ve ever played it from start to finish and we manage to do it in front of hundreds of people, including pretty much the entire school.

  A few minutes after we finish, and we’re done backslapping and talking ourselves up, Brandon, our bass player, says he’s going to quit school and go to TAFE to do a certificate in fixing refrigerators. Our band is over. But we’ve gone out on a high.

  But there’s one thing missing.

  One person missing.

  She hasn’t come.

  Time speeds up and it feels like I’m halfway through my own song before it’s barely started. I race to the last verse, chased by memories. I realise I don’t want the song to end and I rage against it. I break one of the guitar strings, but that only makes it better somehow. People actually get up out of their seats and cheer.

  I look down at them, bewildered. I let the feedback ring out, ugly and defiant. Again, I scan the crowd for Mandy. She still isn’t there. This is a victory, but one that feels pointless without her.

  I don’t want to leave the stage but I have to. I feel adrenaline coursing through me, but at the same time this huge, almost physical sense of anticlimax as I put my guitar back in its case, its five remaining strings shiny in the dark. I realise there’s blood on the frets and look to see one of my fingert
ips is cut open. It must have happened when I was playing, but I didn’t feel a thing.

  I can feel someone watching me.

  I turn around and see Kiera. She’s standing over me with a knowing look and seems so different than ever before, so much more confident than when she spoke to me on the street or tried to tease me in class. She looks at me with a sense of inevitability, as though we’ve always been heading for this moment and now there is nothing I can do to fight it.

  ‘Put your guitar down,’ she says.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask her.

  ‘I want to show you something.’

  I dumbly obey, and she grabs me around the collar and pushes me out the door, backwards down the auditorium steps and onto the grass.

  ‘What do you want to show me?’ I say.

  ‘This.’

  She kisses me on the mouth. Her lips are wet and soft. For a second I am someone else completely, that rock star having a girl approach him after a show at the Annandale.

  I sense someone watching us from a distance, like I watched the scene that night. I spin out of the kiss and back to reality.

  Back to Mandy standing there, her crushed face in the moonlight.

  Mandy

  I thought that Tim coming into my life was so unexpected and momentous that it had to mean something; it had to be lasting and real. I thought that we shared something, recognised something in each other, but maybe it was all just hormones and tired drunken emotion and illusion. Maybe it wasn’t fate but coincidence. Maybe we weren’t musical soulmates but just a couple of kids who like the same bands. Maybe it ends like this.

  I think all of this in the space of a ratatat drum fill between verses as I run away from Tim and whoever he’s with, and curse myself for coming tonight, for getting my hopes up, for having the courage to give this a shot, for fooling myself into thinking second chances can come off and believing all those love songs for underdogs.