Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  As usual Dr Featherstone has to wait at the windswept aerodrome. Having finished her multi-list planner, written a program which will interpret jargonistic data into reader-friendly lay language, she tests the digital modem, a sort of inbuilt mobile phone. The world is at her fingertips. All so incredibly puerile. The one thing Meghan cannot comprehend is stupid people. Stupidity makes her angry. Meghan has been known to lose it. Big time.

  A fox in the chook-house makes Chandra glad not only that she came home, but came home at the hour she did. Ordering Nikki around in the dark and minimising damage to her prized hens excites and gratifies her so that before she goes to bed she checks out her site. New hypertextual links guide her to an essay entitled The Trials of Annihilation, dealing with, under sub-titles, Chemicals; Madness; Motherhood; Male Violence; Nonsense; Transsexuality. Beneath Chemicals is the word, addictions, and included under Male Violence is money. She doesn't read it fully, but wonders whether the writer is also the one the Solanasites have been trying to boot from their chat-room. So far she has not been answering Chandra's emails. Before she goes to sleep, she writes and sends another. >> Annihilation tragic! Been reading your work. Like your ideas. Are you into action? Contact ASAP. Wheels@Wimmin.com.au.

  No literature, fact or fiction, history or fantasy, no escapist reading, helps her sleep. She visualises the raver, shitting out her disgust at the female predicament in a verbal analogue of a tricky bowel. But why is she using Chandra's personal website? Or so carefully disguising her identity and whereabouts? The unedited essays are done in quick time with rapid fingers and contain unrelated gripes and bug-bears such as the voice-overs in nature documentaries which, in her view are masculinist, anthropomorphic projection onto animal, especially ornithological, behaviour. Obfuscation of truth being her general worry, Chandra decides to trust this person as having the courage to go against the law if need be. And the subtlety, a virtue Solanas herself lacked, to use the tools of the techonological age for revolutionary ends. She is not, Chandra discerns, the frivolous imp who posted the recipes.

  Busy in preparation for the meeting about Maria's wake, and terribly tired, Chandra resists the temptation to ring Margot Gorman because it would be indulgent and her purpose requires some measure of sacrifice. Chandra, who believes all women are capable of loving another woman, knows the anger that flares in individuals like Margot, honest, autonomous, lonely fighters for justice, when a lesbian dares to express and live a separatist lifestyle. It's ferocious. Let alone what she herself is up to. The cyber-network is, thus, necessarily surreptitious, a cobweb. But when ideological differences pierce the blood and wine of day-to-day, of face-to-face interaction, well, feathers fly.

  27

  …down the dirt road…

  Sean Dark also drives a Suzuki, a 1.3-litre Mighty Boy, with glistening duco of British Racing Green. He is heading for the hills, even though he should be at work.

  Sean is losing money, trying not to feel guilty. He is thinking about Alison who read his palm and said, 'Beware of secrets and tall dark men. Or a contact from the past.' On the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras float-building day, the float began to resemble its title: Bananas in Pyjamas at the Sea Shore. Her own hands are long with knobbly knuckles and the softest skin. Psychic. 'Your skin,' Sean, had responded, 'has calluses on prominent mounds at the base of the fingers.'

  Beyond the Hippi Sitti plateau immediately before the Gymea National Park is the Firagyra State Forest, at the edge of which is a picnic area for travellers from east or west. Several barbecue spaces have chopped wood provided, bench tables and toilets. There is a short bush walk beside a creek, which spills over a wall of rock. A longer trail winds its way through rainforest species to the bottom of the waterfall. Near a deep pool, is a smaller and almost wholly shaded picnic area and toilets. This is a beat for bush poofters and gay network trippers, reps and truckers. From an earlier turn off the highway, it is possible to drive to this area along a gravel road.

  Sean had told Alison, 'The cops picked me up. After twenty bloody years. I was in the '78 Gay Mardi Gras, and arrested. With tons of others. You know what they would do then? They would arrest you for disturbance or some such, then go and search out all your unpaid parking fines and lump them into your rap sheet. Well, darl, I had a mile high of the pink slips. Well, then you could pay them off behind bars. Me with all those brutes! As it happened there was this cute butch by the name of Paul. I was only in clink for a fortnight, but you know, it was enough.' His own words come back to him. 'I was heavily into the sauna scene, the Turkish bath scenario, haunting the streets at midnight and such, you know, it was such a buzz. Before the epidemic put a real bitch on the whole business. Well, Paul took me under his muscled wing, used me and protected me from the nasties.'

  'Then,' he'd said to Alison, 'this Commander Crankshaw interviews me, out of the blue. I am as pure as the driven snow now. Chaste cookie. I had the devil of a job understanding what he was getting at until he brings up my record and this fellow, Paul. Suddenly I am a spattered lily with the guilts. For a start I would be too scared to rat on Paul, he is heavy metal. This police bruiser is clever. He knows he's got me shitting myself and suddenly even in my own eyes I don't look so clean.' The parties in his gym were so covert, such a delicious, camp romp, clandestine delight, he kept knowledge of them even from Al the Pal to whom he was opening his heart. Well, how could any woman understand? 'He knows I'm a sprat and he's stringing me along. So he has a proposition which is upside down if you ask me. He'll lay off Paul if I dob in my playmates. This is too weird, I'm thinking.'

  Alison had taken Sean through the details of his fears and suggested that he find Paul, make a date and get a reality check. Paul was in the area. The date is today at the beat at Firagyra State Forest. As he revs the little motor and ascends the ranges, Sean wonders exactly what he wants to say to Paul. He does not dwell on how easily he found him. The tiny utility takes the bends easily and the hills weakly; fortunately it has light petrol consumption and everything in working order. As for his games, all they do is get together and dress each other up. The young lads look so beautiful as girls. The way they preen in front of the mirrors, in tutus, in petticoats, in feathers, in glam and in doud. There is nothing sexual. Gorgeous youth. Pretending has its own allure, the fascination of the fiction, the delicious filth of being women. The worst thing they do is language, speaking of legalities, but no one was being hurt by that. Men, telling the boys about the wigs of the old days, the stockings and powders in Baroque society, the opera and bitching about divas, educating them about Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire: 'I've always been amazed that women are allowed in churches. What sort of conversations can they have with god?', give them witty quotes like adolescent toys to play with. And the Orlando dance was pure class.

  When he goes down the dirt road to the waterfall pool, he sees a farm vehicle facing the forest. A man sitting behind the steering wheel by himself is waiting. Sean parks, gets out, stretches, then goes for a run along the track. As soon as he moves, the bloke in the ute opens his door. Sean passes at a pacey jog. Twenty minutes later he emerges neither sweating nor puffing. Now there are three vehicles parked. A tow-truck has joined the Mighty Boy and the ute. Paul is lying on his back on a picnic table smoking a cigarette.

  'Well, Nancy, how are we?' he mumbles as Sean joins him. All macho South Sea Islander.

  'Good. Thanks. And you?' In those days all the bitches had girls' names.

  Paul swings his legs off the table top and faces Sean. 'Take a seat. Fag?'

  Sean smiles, 'I don't.'

  'Well, I'm here. Shoot.' Paul is all broad grinning charm.

  Why would the police call him in and bring up their relationship with each other? Paul responds with reasonable theoretical guesses. Sean begs. 'What is going down? Paul?'

  'Heaps, you name it.' Paul exudes confidence and Sean notes the shirt on his back is expensive.

  'Why me?' Sean hears the old whine in his voice. 'Is it because of you? L
ike next time, he's going to get what he wants out of me, even though I don't know what he's after. Can I say something like I'll get you to ring him?' Sean pleads.

  'Why not? I'm cool. Got all bases covered, mate,' Paul smiles in an encouraging way. 'She'll be right.' He used to do that when Sean was threatened, or Paul told him he was threatened in goal. 'Anything else?'

  'They're investigating a murder,' Sean betrays a justified fear. 'I don't know anything.'

  'God's on our side, Nance,' Paul thrusts out his chest with infinite confidence.

  'Can you get him off my back? Ring him.'

  'Sure.' Paul moves towards Sean. 'Hey, let's do it, for old times' sake? Let me fuck your arse, I'm getting a hard-on. Making wood, getting big, man. Come on. Lemme bone you. You're looking good. What do they call you, Sweetness and Light?'

  'How do you know that?' Sean screeches. 'Paul, I don't any more. I just don't do it. I'm into health.' Sean backs away.

  'I don't care.' Paul moves in, at least a foot taller and wider than Sean. 'I don't mind a bit of rape.' Sean resists the temptation to take another step back. Resists the desire to scream.

  'Hey, mate,' he shoulders away, 'we've always respected that we're different. In stir we had an arrangement. I've changed. The world's changed. AIDS is everywhere.'

  'Don't I know it? My black brothers are rife with it. Pity. White man's sexually transmitted diseases have been decimating the people for centuries,' Paul no longer grins. 'Do you think I care that you want to stay clear? Now, dear, I can feel a rage coming on.'

  'Please,' Sean reaches out his hand to touch Paul's arm. Paul sweeps it off him with contempt.

  'Don't touch me, slut.' Paul's eyes turn cold, gleam hatred. He pushes Sean so suddenly he falls backwards. He lies on the ground, still. Paul is now intent upon raping him. Sean neatly eases himself into a crouch. His celibacy had never been so seriously challenged before. He prepares to fight. As Paul comes towards him, he shouts, 'No, definitely no.' The shrieky sound comes into his voice.

  'Don't turn me on, girl,' Paul is sarcastic. He lifts him, shoving him towards the toilet. Sean spins around and begins punching. He visualises he is in the gym, the bag rolling and swinging to meet his fists. It is a shock to get a sharp jab right on the side of his face. But reflex anger helps him now and he extends through a feint with a fast uppercut. It is on. The other man watches. Although Paul makes more of a mess of his opponent, Sean is not tiring as much. He is still dancing on the balls of his feet when the man in the stubbies gets out of his car, uttering racist slang. Paul ignores it, but Sean responds with a surprised turn of the head which means he receives a savage blow which hurts his neck, bones crunch. Two men pummel Paul for a while before he throws them off in disgust.

  'Get fucked. I got better things to do than hang around with white trash.'

  Sean says, 'Paul I'm not racist. You wanted to rape me.'

  'Look at the colour of your skin. You're shit.'

  'No, I'm not. You're a brute.' Sean leaps back into the fray trying to land a decent strike, but fighting carelessly now, for crying and anger. He knows he is pathetic.

  Paul turns to the other man slowly and inquires, 'What did you call me? Say again?'

  'Boong, fucking boong.' He raises his hands ready to protect his face, but Paul doesn't punch him.

  'Repeat please?' Paul towers over him.

  'Boong,' the man repeats, grinning idiotically.

  'I'm not a boong, man. I've got Polynesian blood, proud Pacific blood.' Paul's frown is savage.

  The man takes off. But Paul catches him by the band of his shorts. 'I think you probably meant to insult me, was that it? I don't know whether to knock you out or rape you instead of him,' he says it arrogantly.

  Sean sees that they both begin to enjoy themselves, sharing insults and threats of violence. He sneaks slowly to his car and softly opens the door. The ignition catches straight away. He skids in a semi-circle of dust and gravel as he beats a retreat up the corrugated road. Sweating and swearing and keeping his eye on his rear-vision mirrors. Tow trucks have V8 motors and their drivers are faster than ambulance men with sirens. Sean prays to god that Paul is not really interested in him. He is afraid all the way home.

  When there, he locks all his doors and windows.

  Tiger Cat was at the gym, not Sean. She is there five hours a day. Lois was pushing a mean two hundred kilos with the leg-press. I slapped her chummily with the end of my towel. 'Gidday.'

  'You too,' she puffed.

  We three were the only females using the seriously weighty equipment. Down the other end, on walking-mats and push-bike frames, several women in leotards and tights obediently pursued gentler regimes, telling each other Sean Dark's orders with constant reference to a personal sheet on a clipboard. Thrust sat on a bench talking to local footballers in singlets who grasped hand-weights and flexed their biceps while idly gazing at themselves in the mirror.

  When the bench beside Tiger Cat became vacant, I chose a hand-weight and sat next to her.

  'Sean should be here,' I worried. I stretched hearsay to fact as a tactical move. 'The gurls think you are a spook.'

  'What I tell the cops I tell the women,' she replied mischievously. 'After all we both can be suspected of undercover work.'

  'Yeah, who do you talk to, Cat?' I pushed up, waited, and added, viciously, 'Rather, who would talk to you?'

  'That's for me to know and you to find out.' She got up and compared the numbers on our rounds of steel and sneeringly remarked on the contrast, easily to her advantage, proving she was stronger in the shoulder.

  'Sweetness must know you are not to be trusted. Never were. Never will be.'

  'Your loyalty is lovely, Margot,' she grinned, as I lifted.

  She wandered off towards the office where the drugs are kept. An argument erupted. One of the white males working out said something insensitive when Lois claimed her man in her customary high-handed manner. She swore at him.

  'Just because you're black, it doesn't mean you have a patent on all suffering,' he said in a disconcertingly educated voice. 'You don't have to be white and male to be a bad bastard.'

  Superior command of language notwithstanding, I hoped he could look after himself because Lois would deck him if he went too far. I faked an attack of deafness and worked gently lying on my back, strengthening knees and ankles. Keeping a keen eye on the clock, I noticed the footy lads shaped up on Lois and Thrust's behalf and the bloke minced off, miffed, to the end with the ladies to warm down on an exercise bike down there. Lois, when I left, was angrily beating the life out of the punching bag being held by her husband for better resistance. Tiger Cat had disappeared.

  This sort of thing simply did not happen when Sean was around. How could he be so stupid as to leave Tiger Cat in charge? But I couldn't bother about it then. I had to get to Chandra's for the meeting, which was relatively uncomfortable as Chandra does not have enough chairs. Surprisingly, Cybil took over the funeral arrangements and the cremation was arranged for Tuesday at Port Water, the wake out at Pearceville. Jill took Sofia home before it all finished. I spoke once, reassuring the crowd that the police would not be involved any further, a full post mortem would take a couple of months but the prelim indicated accidental death by poisoning.

  'Log-book. Can't put 13. Hours straight. Me and him. Doing North Coast to Melbourne. Passing each other. CB. Keeping in touch. Keeping awake. He is watching me. Matching trucks. Matching loads. Keeping me pumped. Noon sightings. No, too many pills. Super lorry, flies by itself, bristling with equipment like a 747. That's black,' Ian mutters to himself.