Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  Elvis jogs off to check the door and I hear him being called by name, Ash’s voice.

  Hi, she says, when I get there. I got bored. I’ve been in the library the whole afternoon and I couldn’t stay there any longer. I needed some kind of human interaction. Then she notices the baby bag near the door. And you’re going out, aren’t you?

  Yeah, but . . .

  Sorry. I must have forgotten that you had a life. Maybe I should have called first.

  You don’t have to call. And I wouldn’t exactly say that I had a life. In fact, the more I’ve been thinking about it lately, the more sure I’ve been that I don’t have one. So drop in any time. And come along tonight.

  What are you doing?

  Just going over to someone’s house. A couple of the people from work. It’s a habit we’ve got into on Wednesdays.

  I’d be in the way.

  How? Come along. You might get bored, but you won’t be in the way.

  Will the cat woman be there?

  No. It’s her sister that I work with, and she won’t be there either. And stop scaring me by saying ‘cat woman’.

  You know it’ll get stuck in my head and I’ll come out and say it at the worst time. And Flag’s not out of the woods yet.

  Well, if you’re sure . . .

  I’m sure.

  I’m sure until we’re about halfway there. I’m amazed it takes me that long to work out what I’m doing. I am introducing George to my running buddy. As recently as yesterday I was full of denials, clear on the boundaries. And though this technically breaches none of them it does take us outside the running-buddy definition, and there will be assumptions. She doesn’t even look like a running buddy tonight. She’s come straight from the library, which means it’s the cargo pants part of her wardrobe that’s in use this evening. She even has pens in one of the pockets, round about mid-thigh. She looks . . . I was thinking that she looks about nineteen but, since she isn’t a lot older than that anyway, it’s not much of a stretch.

  You’re sure I won’t be in the way?

  I think they’ll be pretty happy with the idea of you being there. You certainly won’t be in the way.

  When we get there, Ash takes the baby bag and I carry the sleeping Bean up the steps in her capsule, her little hands bunched into fists and resting by her sides.

  Now, they could get a bit excited, I tell Ash on the way in. These two get out even less than we do. They don’t meet a lot of new people. So if I use the term ‘running buddy’ to put you in context, don’t be surprised.

  Running buddy? She laughs. Well, why not?

  Sorry, it’s a long story. Or maybe just a stupid one.

  We get to the door and George sees us. Or, in fact, sees me and gives a regular, uninspired, Hi, and then sees there’s someone behind me. I didn’t realise the Bean needed to come with her own personal minder, he says, as Ash walks in with the bag. And our expressions must tell him something, since he then says, Faux pas, and looks at me, with a grin building on one side of his mouth. This must be your . . .

  Running buddy, Ash says, and moves forward to shake his hand. I’m the running buddy.

  George immediately thinks of more glib, testosterone-driven remarks about running buddies than even a bad email joke could handle, and uses none of them. George, he says instead, and reaches his hand out. I’m the George.

  Ash.

  Girls at book club, Jon, he says. It’s new, but it could work.

  Ash turns to me, looking puzzled, misinformed. You told me this was casual. You didn’t say I should have read a book.

  You’ve been reading books all afternoon.

  Over-qualified, George says.

  What book are you doing? Ash asks him, still not unreasonably expecting that there’s a book club going on.

  Most recently? Some Hegel. I’m doing a philosophy degree. Oscar, who’s in the kitchen – yes, Jon, a meal is actually being prepared tonight – he’s doing poetry. Mainly his own. It’s new. As yet unpublished. But it’s performance-based anyway. Oscar believes there’s too much emphasis placed on publication. Jon? You?

  Seuss, Doctor, Green Eggs and Ham. It’s a bit performance-based, too, if you’re prepared to commit to it. But at least it’s quick. Did it a couple of times this afternoon.

  Does she get it yet? George says. The Bean. Do you think she gets it?

  Green Eggs and Ham? No. She still gets mush for food, so even the basics elude her. She doesn’t understand ham, so what chance has the story got? I think it’s up to me to broaden her diet before she can work out what it’s really about.

  Which is?

  Well, this is just my reading of it, but I see it as being about the diminishing willingness to take risks with age. To take the plunge. To leap into the unknown on the off-chance that there’s something there to bring back. The old grumpy guy with the silly hat, he keeps insisting he doesn’t like green eggs and ham, regardless of circumstances, and you know what? He’s never even tried them. Then he does, and . . .

  He loves them, George says. Yeah, I remember now. I’m sure the Bean gets it. She’s just pre-verbal, so it’ll be a while before she tells you.

  I didn’t think book clubs were like this, Ash says.

  George nods, thoughtfully. I don’t know. That’d be the first time we’ve got heavily into a book. Just then. Or the second, at most. We don’t like to force things. But you should meet Oscar. Come and meet Oscar while Jon’s dropping the Bean off in the spare room.

  He takes her into the kitchen, and from the spare room I can catch some of the introductions. The term ‘running buddy’ is used at least once or twice. By the time I get back to them, Oscar is completely ignoring his simmering risotto and they’re standing talking, holding glasses of wine.

  The others are asking Ash how she’s finding Brisbane, questions like that (that sound obvious, but that I’ve never directly asked).

  Well, it’s bigger, she says. Bigger than any place I’ve been before. So I’m trying to get used to this part of it before branching out and getting to know the rest. And trying to get used to uni here too. It’s pretty big as well. I still need a map to get anywhere on the campus, and I really hope I get over that soon.

  Something makes me want to jump in and shout loudly, But she’s not first year. She is a postgraduate. But I hold back. I give Oscar’s risotto a stir, since I think it’s getting stuck, and he says, Thanks, mate. George agrees with Ash about the campus, and talks about when we were there. And could he possibly make our uni days seem more ancient? We sound as though we must have hung out in pantaloons and drunk mead, the way he talks about it.

  The campus is not that baffling, I tell him. It’s not that different. It wasn’t that long ago. There are one or two new buildings since we were there, but you’d still be able to find your way around.

  The whole city’s changed since then, he says, defensively. When we were at uni the only takeaway choice was whether you went for the sweet-and-sour pork at the Sunny Garden or the chow mein.

  And now you could write a book on the takeaway options in this neighbourhood alone, Ash says, giving me a sly half-smile. Couldn’t you, Jon?

  She’s seen it, hasn’t she? She’s seen the fantastic plastic cuisine guide to the inner-west.

  Anyone want to talk about a book now?

  Aren’t we?

  And so it goes. A bunch of guys in their mid-thirties showing off in front of a girl. That, when you look at it, is really all it is. Ash leans against the counter, drinks her wine, and doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. George treats her Bagelos job as fascinating, calls her Tickle-Me-Elmo thesis topic outstanding.

  Oscar declares himself to have a certain interest in that kind of thing. The sociology of contemporary iconic constructs. So we’ll have to talk more.

  But for now, luckily, he leaves it at that, and he finally gives his risotto some attention. George clears the table, quietly elevating this evening to special-occasion status, and Oscar says, The good bowls, P
orge. The good bowls.

  I was getting the good bowls, Oz.

  And the level of fuss going on is at least two hundred per cent above normal, even before Oscar says, I would have liked a little sprig of something. Just as garnish.

  It looks very exotic as it is, Ash says, taking her bowl and looking down at the pine nuts and slivers of sundried tomato.

  Oscar, George declares, lives in an exotic world. For me this whole town is not half as exotic as the guys Oscar brings home.

  Oh, come on, Oscar says, but quite proudly.

  Ramone. Ramone and his lap-lap.

  Well, okay. Ramone was exotic. A little bit exotic.

  Ramone was the kind of guy who could make concepts like Ramone and the Solid Gold Dancers seem perfectly reasonable.

  Yeah, but underneath it all he was lacking in substance. We both know that.

  Charles.

  Charles was not exotic.

  He was fifty times more exotic than me, fella.

  Don’t be down on yourself, Porge. You’ve got your own thing going.

  And what about Justin? Don’t tell me you weren’t practising this risotto with Justin in mind. Justin’s exotic, in a gentle sort of way.

  Maybe he is, but that’s a different thing. And the risotto was not to do with Justin, just a good idea I had. Its time is yet to come. Next time there’d be chives. And Justin’s not a bringing-home guy. With him it’s more like just a mutual interest in poetry.

  Suspicious enough in itself.

  Hey, I’ve got my thing on this Friday, remember? You’ve got to be nice about poetry this week.

  His event at that West End bookstore, George clarifies. Where we get to see exactly what Arts Queensland gets for its grant money.

  I think you’d like it, Ashley, Oscar says. It’s very sociological. Very influenced by the icons of our contemporary consumerist digital society.

  Sounds good, Ash says, and convincingly too, though we all know that Oscar delved a little too deep into the adjective bucket to make complete sense.

  I want to relax this evening, but I can’t. I want this kind of thing to feel normal. But all the time I’m watching Ash, watching this incursion of hers into my regular world, and I’m suddenly conscious of how George and Oscar must look to a marginally postgrad outsider.

  She asks how long we’ve known each other, and George says, We were friends at uni. I suppose that’s where it started. Jon and I used to spend a lot of time together then. After that we ended up at different hospitals when we graduated. And you sort of get caught up in that – in your hospital – particularly if it’s a big one. It can be a big part of your social life too, when you can fit one in. Then when Jon’s . . . um . . . time in England happened, I was finishing off my dermatology training here, and heading in the same sort of direction as he was. And the next year there were four of us looking to set up a practice. It took a couple of years to get that happening though. But I guess we would have known each other since 1982.

  Which, Oscar adds, might have been the year you both gave exotic your best shot.

  I don’t think we’re going there tonight, Oscar. No 1982 stories.

  We talked about me and exotic. In the nineties. It’s only fair that you get acknowledged. You guys had a thing happening in the eighties. The shirts. Remember the shirts?

  That’s exactly where we’re not going.

  These guys had these shirts, he says, identifying clearly where we’re going. I didn’t even know them at the time, but we all knew the shirts. No, Jon, I think Ashley needs to know you’ve got some exotic cred, even if it was a while ago.

  And even if you copied, George adds.

  That’s where I stop them, and claim the right to at least fall on my own sword.

  The year 1982 was a special one for fashion, I explain, as if going for doco-style might stop them interrupting. That’s how I remember it. It was the year that shirts around here took on a fancy look, and stopped buttoning up the middle. Of course, we couldn’t afford the ones in the shops. George bought some curtain material off-cuts – to create contrast between the panels – and designed one that buttoned up diagonally. And I’m sadder than that, for two reasons. First, I thought his was great, and I copied the idea. Second, I gave it my own spin. George’s shirt, for example, wasn’t bottle-green, with a row of big way-off-centre gold buttons and gold piping. And epaulettes. I explained it to my mother, and got her to make it for me. I thought it was superb.

  But you both look so regular now, Ash says. And that’s all so . . .

  Duran Duran? George suggests. Flock of Seagulls?

  Well, except for the hair, yeah. Very Flock of Seagulls.

  And who, exactly, said we paid no attention to the hair?

  Porge, the hour of your death approaches.

  Jon, you owned the Flock of Seagulls album. I only had a pirate tape from it. Don’t go into denial on me now. Chock-full of hits, I think you called it.

  No I did not. You are lying now, making it up. No-one called that album chock-full of hits.

  Don’t come over all nasty and anti-eighties again. Did you know Jon has a problem with eighties music?

  It’s not eighties music that’s the issue.

  It’s the people with the hair to go with it?

  It’s the people who think there’s only eighties music that I worry about. Eighties music is fine, in its place.

  Which is?

  The eighties, for god’s sake. No, some of it’s okay. But forgive me for not loving the eighties. It’s a decade I managed to begin and end as an adolescent, so it was never likely to be my favourite. From the entire eighties I’d be happy to keep about ten songs and my pointy, side-lacing shoes. The rest can go. Maybe I should keep the shirt as well, in case anyone ever does a musical about the Napoleonic Wars.

  There should be a museum of the eighties where those things can go, George says, sounding disconcertingly genuine. Shirts like that shouldn’t be forgotten.

  No. No museum. Shirts like that should have been forgotten right after Waterloo, George.

  No. You could begin with them and go all the way through to ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts, via leg warmers. You could even have a section on eighties hair. There are people we know who’d go for that.

  Me for a start, Ash says. Eighties hair can be hilarious. I think a museum of the eighties’d be cool. Anyway, Jon, you could have the Knack there. You’d like that.

  What?

  Jon and the Knack. He’s a big fan, remember? You know how they inspired him to learn guitar? How he thought he could be in a band like the Knack?

  No, Ash, actually they didn’t know that. And the Knack might be late seventies, so . . .

  I think we’d let them in, George says. Jon, you’ve been holding out on us all these years. Did you learn all three chords?

  All three.

  Oh, it’s tragic, isn’t it? The desperate attempts we made to turn ourselves into objects of desire.

  All the way to those skinny ties, Ash adds. Like that green swirly shiny one that Jon’s got.

  Remember when you wondered if you’d be in the way this evening?

  You don’t still have that, do you? George says, jumping in with something approaching glee. You got that at uni.

  At the very end of uni.

  But you’ve still got it?

  You said you were keeping it in case it came back in, Ash says, completely merciless tonight.

  The swirly tie, Oscar says. I remember you in the swirly tie at Mount Stephens General. You were a bad man in those days, you and your dirty-dog phase.

  George can’t resist jumping right back in, treating the whole conversation with the enthusiasm of a young first-timer in an inflatable castle. What about that time we bumped into that nurse in Coles, ages later? What was her name?

  Kelly.

  And you just ignored her and ignored her, and she actually came up and took you on about it. And the best excuse you could manage was that you can’t recognise people from s
ide on.

  It had been years.

  And now it’s been a few more, but I can remember it vividly. I can remember her saying something like, You haven’t learned a thing, have you? But I’m sure I’d learned a lot by then, which was exactly why I had to be so embarrassed about seeing her.

  Those were the days, George says. Those swirly-tie, dirty-dog days. Why didn’t I have them?

  Trust me, Porge. They weren’t the days. Even when I was at my dirtiest, and the closest you got to the action was drooling on my housemate, the way I recall it there’s not much to be nostalgic about.

  You’re not telling me these are the days, and I’m not even aware that I’m missing out? I can’t remember anything I’ve done that I’d call close to halcyon, ever. The drooling was the best of it. She was a hell of a housemate. And you know that thing, that moment, where you suddenly realise your body’s on the slide? Where you start getting the odd inexplicable ache or pain, and you realise they’ll now come and go forever?

  No.

  Yes you do. I think I had it one day in the middle of last year. It was like my whole body just fell. With a clunk. And there I was, older. I’m getting older, Jon Boy, and far too gracefully.

  That’s crap. It doesn’t work that way, or at least it doesn’t have to. I run. I get twinges because of running but, other than that, I’m fine. Don’t scare me, George. Be graceful, but don’t get older on me just yet. I’m assuming these are the days. And those weren’t. I’m assuming the days are starting any day now.

  So am I, Ash says. That’s what I came down here for. I’m here for my days. If it turns out I missed them by ten years, I won’t be happy.

  Oh, youth, George says, with the sternness of an old and weary magistrate. You can afford to be so glib.

  I haven’t noticed the slide, the clunk of my body falling. And I’m sure that’s not through inattention. My body’s changed these past six months, but for the better. This running is getting me somewhere. Not in a competitive way, but that wasn’t the plan. I can go further now, and my times might be better than they once were, but I’ll never be good. Actually, if I can maintain my present best five-K time for about forty-one years, I could be looking at a world over-seventy-five age-group record, or close to it, so it’s lucky I’m not doing it for the glory. I’ve never had that kind of patience.