Love and Other U-Turns

by Louisa Deasey

  Except for a random dog, not a soul seems to have woken yet. My skin sizzles in the heat and I am panting, dazedly, drugged with the sweat and effort of keeping one foot in front of the other, swatting flies, wiping the moisture from my brow before it drips into my eyes. The roar of a car coming up behind me breaks my reverie, and my stomach lurches when I hear it slow down. I look up to see a white man in a blue singlet peering out of the front window of a ute, eyeing me up and down.

  ‘Out for a run?’

  Something is off, I can feel it.

  ‘Yep.’ I meet his gaze, briefly, lightly.

  Keep it light, Lou.

  ‘I can think of a better way to get some exercise …’ The look in his eyes, the realisation that I’m on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, means the next nanosecond could decide my fate. Just be light. Non-flirtatious. Don’t show fear. Appeal to his good side.

  ‘Ha ha, yeah!’ I wave him off with a smile and speed off in the other direction, like I know where I’m going. I don’t look back until the sound of my heartbeat has stopped thumping through the side of my chest.

  I must have been running for ten minutes straight, and I find the main road to Boulder again. Now, I understand. I understand why the women who aren’t skimpies or prostitutes, and even many of the ones that are, are all overweight. Hiding their female form under layers of protection. Trying not to get eaten alive.

  Relieved to be back at the Golden Eagle, I trot the steps two by two up to the back door to the upstairs rooms. It’s usually ajar. Except it’s not. It’s locked. I pull out my phone and call Jim’s mobile.

  ‘The mobile you have tried calling is switched off, or not in a mobile service area. Please try again later.’ His message bank isn’t working either. Is this some kind of joke?

  I walk around the front, looking forlornly at the upstairs window at the back of the balcony, behind which I know he’s fast asleep.

  ‘JIM! JIM!’ I try throwing a stone at the window, but it flicks Paris’s window instead. She doesn’t stir, and neither does he.

  I know Jim. One of the things he does best of all is sleep. It’s one of his deep loves and something he has as much talent for as comedy. Without a wake-up call he will easily be in the abyss until midday – or even longer. I could be stuck in these sweaty shorts, parched, for a very long and boring time. I fish out the car keys from my pocket and decide to muse in there, instead. I scrounge $4.80 in loose change from the console, and decide to drive to a café and read the papers.

  But after I take a drive up the road, doing a complete lap of Hannan Street, it dawns on me that cafés haven’t yet hit the goldfields. Not even one lousy café – hey, I’d settle for a franchise! – has opened, yet. McDonald’s will never go out of business. There’s just something about the reliable, bright and (bless!) air-conditioned fast-food giant that soothes a dark ache in the desperate soul seeking cool, predictable respite from a desert.

  I send Jim a text message from the parking lot: ‘At McDonald’s, PLEASE call me as soon you get this!’

  Inside, I order a coffee and some toast, sit by the window, witnessing the parade of utes and overweight families going through the drive-through. I stretch it out for as long as humanly possible, as I have no idea when Jim will wake up. I am amazed by how annoyed I am at my lack of productivity, even though really, I have no choice. I satisfy myself with an in-depth analysis of the West Australian, with its strange buried leads halfway through the stories, odd editorial angle, and politics and players I’ve never heard of, followed by three copies of New Idea, a Woman’s Day and complete the big crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times before my phone, finally, rings. It’s 10.30. I’ve been here for three hours.

  ‘Lou? Did you feel like a hash brown? Do you want me to come and pick you up?’

  It’s hard to be annoyed with someone who offers to pick you up from what they think is a fast-food binge when they’ve just woken up.

  Jim drives to Norseman for a clown show at the primary school he lined up two days ago over the phone. I’m reluctant to get back in the car, so soon after our stiflingly long Nullarbor run, so I spend the day shacked up in our room at the Golden Eagle.

  With nothing but utes for visual inspiration, I’m going to need to get into a trance-like state to write about fashion with any sort of authenticity. I close the door and log on to the internet, press play on my Rachmaninov music to drown out the Willie Nelson on the jukebox downstairs, a steaming hot cup of Nescafe Blend 43 beside me.

  I haven’t written anything since we crossed the border, and after waiting for my computer to start up, I immerse myself in a few fashion websites, pumping myself up and quite curious to know if really, it makes any difference where I am when I write this column.

  Twin-sets have recently been seen slipping through the elevator doorways of Melbourne, now a smooth part of the office-wear lexicon, not seen in such prim simplicity since Doris Day’s pink numbers in Pillow Talk …

  Sure, I do this all the time. In fact, I’m wearing a twin-set now! Ha ha ha …

  A publicist had emailed me a picture of a designer’s latest ‘Look Book’, and it’s with photos of the kind of attire never seen to grace the streets of Kalgoorlie pasted across my computer screen that I channel back into that other land. Immediately afterwards, I commence one on the Hamburg hat, as seen in Karen Walker’s Autumn/Winter 2006 collection. Conjuring words to illustrate the point, I forget where I am and it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s amazing that I am the same person, with the same ability to write, whether I do it from a stylish office in Melbourne or a bed that sinks in the middle and rumbles with a superpit blast from one of the most sexist redneck cities in Australia.

  It’s a revelation. Almost frightening.

  After double-checking some facts and the spelling, attaching the catwalk shots and emailing my editor, I swing my legs off the bed and decide to celebrate by sampling the Golden Eagle’s lunch fare. I eat among miners drinking beer and nodding at the footy, the only female in the front bar who is wearing clothes. I’m getting used to feeling like the different one.

  When Jim gets back he walks through the bar all alive-looking, like he always does after a gig. He orders a lemonade and drinks it quickly, grinning, knocking out the end of leftover jokes he’s just told.

  Upstairs, I kiss his cheek and see it’s covered in a light layer of red dust like cinnamon, just tangible in the soft glow of our bedroom. We calculate that he’s earned $200 today minus petrol and me $180, from the column. We head into town and splash out on Thai in a restaurant where we feel like the happiest couple in the room. We drive home in the balmy night, pleased, full, born anew.

  Jim, in the driver’s seat, looks over at me, happy with his belly full of lemongrass and chilli, the tastiest dinner he’s eaten in a week. ‘How good is life! I mean, SERIOUSLY Lou! HOW BLOODY GOOD IS LIFE!’

  Jim lies beside me in the bed concocting outrageous quotes as I compile a press release on the upcoming wet t-shirt competition he is booked to compere. ‘You’ve always got some boiler down the front wanting to punch anyone who says her jugs aren’t big enough,’ he says, asking me to add an end line about it being the perfect family day out.

  At sunset, we’d walked up to the main road and I snapped some pictures of him to send to the local papers for some editorial. After editing it I press send, like I’ve just done a made-up article about the most ridiculous man who treads this earth. In what town would a story about a wet t-shirt competition make the papers?

  To both our amazement, after I send the release it is reprinted almost word-for-word, along with the picture I took of him standing on the main road. Jim’s a bit concerned, though, which strikes me as odd, and immediately gets on the phone, asking the t-shirt supplier in Sydney how long it will take for a shipment to make it to the Golden Eagle Hotel.

  ‘But, you’ve got three bags’ worth in the car, haven’t you?’

  Why isn’t he happier about the publicity I’ve just got him for
the gig?

  ‘Lou, I’ve only got about five left in extra large. Have you seen the size of the guys around here?’

  Jim is getting the deranged look he always gets before a gig which he knows is going to be big. He loses his car keys whilst holding them, leaves his wallet on the top of the car before driving it up the street and looks right through me when I ask him what time it starts, answering me with a completely unrelated punchline.

  The band is warming up the crowd, playing covers in stubbies while the barbecue sizzles sausages and hulk-sized sunburnt men drink beer like it’s water. He gives me the key to our room, where I can hide if the pub gets too much.

  ‘Just ignore everything that comes out of my mouth for the next couple of hours, Lou.’

  I smile. An hour ago, despite my protestations, he’d followed me in the car while I went for a run because he worried about my having another ute experience. Now, he’s about to channel Rodney Rude. Looking out the top window to the crowd below, souls clad in beefy bodies weave in and out, shaved and mulletted heads bobbing up and down gripping steadfastly to their drinks, a crowd of hungry tigers waiting to be fed.

  Whenever we are given the keys to a new room at a different pub I brace myself and try not to expect anything, anything at all. From sleeping on a filthy floor in Gympie to ghosts in Grafton and showering next to a urinal at the Golden Eagle, I now try not to even expect a door that can lock. Which is lucky, because this one doesn’t. In fact, there are no locks on any of the doors at The Rock Inn. The exit at the end of the hallway goes down a flight of stairs to the car park behind the pub, and anyone could come in at any time of the day or night. But there’s so much trust in these places. Even Crystal – this week’s skimpy – parks her battered Ford Laser downstairs and comes out of her room in her nightie in the morning to see if anyone has any DVDs to watch.

  The bed in our room is covered in a rumpled doona and the sheets hold the imprint of a previous body. Oh boy. It’s like entering the lives of others, you have to have a little chat to the space and introduce yourself.

  There’s an abandoned couch, a kettle on a bookshelf, a jar of Saxa salt and a full ashtray. Skimpies leave their holiday reading on the bookshelf: five issues of NW magazine, a selection of airport thrillers, and some Sex and the City DVDs. Not for the first time, I consider the life of a skimpy, how I wish I could just drop in from the sky, work in pubs drinking UDLs when I finish and worry about nothing but what’s in this week’s gossip rag about the stars. I want to know what it’s like to live without missions for a while. Without the anxiety of deadlines and words and worrying about how everything I say and write is perceived by other people. To be blissfully ignorant of anything, moving through the heat. I want to be able to read John Grisham novels before a shift in a bar for easy money and not feel guilty about wasting my life.

  I catch myself, and stand up straight. Whoa, Lou! I overheard a man at the bar at the Golden Eagle saying to another, ‘Kal numbs the senses.’ Am I really jealous of the skimpies?

  I head back down the stairs to the car to lug up another bag after realising I forgot my towel. The heat is so stifling it’s like walking through fire. The tiny bathroom is filled with half-used shampoo and conditioner bottles of tenants past, and a smattering of broken make-up. The washing machine seems to be in the hall, plugged into a trough, which holds two dirty beer glasses. Going to the toilet, down the end of the hall and filled with a century worth of cobwebs, involves passing numerous rooms with doors half open. When I lie on the bed for a sleep I shut my eyes and pretend I’m staying at the Sheraton. But outside, all I hear are men yelling metaphors for breasts.

  Early in the gig, Jim playfully warms up, toying with the crowd of tattooed men, lining up the willing applicants for the wet t-shirt competition and commiserating with one woman on her back problems.

  ‘You must really need to do your shoulder stretches, hey?’ The noise of the crowd rises through the air.

  It’s supposed to be forty-plus degrees today, just perfect for a function which relies on spraying women with water and selling lots of beer. I watch Jim from the window, marvelling at his magic. In a literal sense, what he’s doing isn’t so special – compering a wet t-shirt competition. It values women on their anatomy, but they are all willing participants, encouraged by their five minutes on stage. None of them look like models, on the contrary, they are anything but, which is kind of where the magic is.

  Jim is using his skills to keep the crowd light and amused in the same way he does a children’s party gig. Giving each woman a chance to be the star, picking something unique to ask her, like a beauty pageant, but always pulling out a punchline to remind them that he’s the clown and they can do whatever they want around him and the joke will always, ultimately, be on life, with all its paradoxes. When he’s deep into the votes on whose chest merits the coveted $500 prize, I wander downstairs, hoping the crowd is distracted, to get a drink.

  A strange sense of honour pervades in these tribal situations. My body language, clothes and demeanour clearly show I’m not part of the competition, and nobody tries to touch me, although it’s standing-room only at the bar. I squeeze past a barrage of men twice my size, and order a gin and tonic to take back to our room.

  ‘SHAY’S TITS ARE THE FUCKING BEST!’ A man screams so hard his voice cracks. The bar is packed, and there are two skimpies working alongside the two managers. They are all laughing.

  A man nudges me from behind, in the throng of the main bar. ‘Oi!’ A man pokes nudging man over me as I collect my drink, closely followed by a ‘You okay love?’ My knight in shining singlet.

  I smile, ‘Yeah, thanks,’ not wanting an awkward conversation, but not wanting to appear rude either.

  He looks at me, shakes his head and has a grand swig of his beer. ‘We don’t often get ladies here,’ he says, as the crowd roars at someone else’s chest.

  The competition is fierce, and Jim crowns the winner based on the level of yelling in the crowd. The winner is the local medical receptionist, Simone, who says she’s going to put the money towards a holiday on a cruise ship with her boyfriend. Sadly, Shay’s chest didn’t make the grade despite her screamingly passionate fan.

  ‘She’s with the comedian,’ says a mulleted-man as I pass, and I marvel at the speed at which relationship dynamics spread in outback pubs.

  Jim doesn’t notice me slip back upstairs as I weave between sweaty bodies. He’s too busy defending his choice of footwear to a bunch of men. Mindlessly pulling on some Crocs that his sister had given him as a Christmas present apparently caused huge doubt that he was ‘fair dinkum deserving’ of compering a competition based on the attraction of women’s breasts. Crocs are too ‘poofta-like’ for Kal. He should have worn his sneakers.

  After the show winds up, Jim texts me from his spot on the stage, looking up at our window. ‘Gunna stay here a bit longer. T-shirt sales are going off!’

  I lie on the bed drinking in the dry heat and working my way through the selection of gossip magazines. Jim eventually reappears, wild-eyed and happy, emptying his pockets of dozens of scrunched-up twenty-dollar bills from his t-shirt sales. ‘It’s my shout for calamari hoops tonight, Lou. There’s gunna be a few of those goat t-shirts making the rounds of Australia’s goldfields. Aww yeah!’

  18

  The Aussie work ethic

  ‘You’ll be right, Lady.’

  OUR ROOM AT THE ROCK Inn has swiftly become Bloke Comedy Central. Padding up the hall from the shower, I hear the sound of male voices in our bedroom, lonely guys who’ve rolled in from the Nullarbor, looking for a job on the mines, happy to find a comedian to distract them from the interminable hard work ahead of them.

  ‘Guys, this is Lou,’ Jim says. They nod shyly, shuffle a bit, relieved to rest their gaze back on Jim, who breaks the tension with yet another gag, sitting on our bed, like a preacher to the masses. Kids, playing with the clown.

  The lack of privacy is messing with my head, though. The door tha
t won’t shut. The blur between who Jim is, and what he does. The merged lines, all crossed now, between what had been our regenerative space together and not knowing when we will have it to ourselves. I remember telling a girlfriend back in Melbourne that this was my fear. That the blokey energy would get too much, that I’d crave some quiet time on my own.

  ‘Well you’ll just go and find a room of your own. Or go for a walk. Regather.’

  Here, it is impossible. The temperature hasn’t dropped below forty degrees for the past ten days, and I’ve nowhere to go in Boulder except the car. There are no cafés here. Libraries? You’ve got to be kidding.

  I can’t focus. Jim’s ‘other’ persona is taking over our bedroom. I’ve always loved the way he tries jokes out every day but I can’t handle these rough, crass gags on constant rotation with sweaty, grunting energy, 24–7. I feel like an alien trying to write in a foreign language as I attempt to focus on what women want to read about in glossy magazines. I shut my eyes, and all I smell is beer and sweat.

  It’s a funny thing, the way this baffling land of maleness and lack of security and the feminine touch affects my attitude to work. Once upon a time, I had all the personal space and amenities in the world, and no excuse, really, for missing the mark when it came to pitching to women’s magazines or newspapers based, and read by educated people, in the capital cities. The only way I can come to explain my lack of productivity when I had every comfort at my fingertip, compared to the present, when I need to hunt everything down from newspapers to phone coverage to internet connection, is that now, I’m constantly aware of what I value. Like a starving person who can think of nothing but food, my obsession with the spread of knowledge and the power of the media is invigorated anew by the complete lack of these ‘luxuries’ in the places we’ve been staying. Book shops. Good radio. Conversation about things other than mining shifts and sports. Even – internet connection, because my mobile internet device hasn’t worked since we left the Golden Eagle.