Love and Other U-Turns

by Louisa Deasey

  By midnight most people have left, and Jim finally winds up his epic show. Roo wants him to stick around afterwards, have a proper ‘yarn’, and I figure it’s best to leave them to it. Jim whispers that he won’t be long, ‘I’m just going to collect my pay and come straight back for a cuddle …’

  I walk the two minutes back to The Rose and up the three flights of stairs to bed. The empty balcony holds a litter of empty beer bottles in the balmy night air. I’ve just switched on the TV when there’s a knock at the door. Assuming it’s Jim, forgotten his key, I open it, to find a plaster-cast old man limping and muttering.

  ‘Steve … Steve?’

  I shake my head. Not Steve.

  ‘Oh … guy that was in this room … before … ya haven’t got a cigarette have ya love?’

  ‘No, I don’t smoke. Sorry.’

  By 2 am the lights are off, and I’m trying to sleep. Jim’s scattered clothes on the bed comfort me as I lie in this funny space, halfway across the country from my family and friends. I kiss the sleep idea goodbye as soon as I feel Jim and his post-gig hyper energy bound into the room, switching on the lights. He wants to debrief, ask how certain jokes went down. I give him as much feedback as I can think of, but it’s late, I’m tired. I can hear his heart pumping quickly, and ask a question.

  ‘Did Roo pay you?’

  He goes silent for a bit. ‘No, not yet, I have to go in tomorrow and get a cheque.’

  ‘So … you listened to his problems, watched him drink and helped him pack down the bar for two hours and … nothing?’

  ‘I know, Lou.’ He sighs. I understand how hard it is to be your own boss, sometimes the people you work for become friends, and it’s hard to separate their own money troubles from asking for what is rightly owed you. But still …

  I know this kind of stuff doesn’t really matter to Jim, in the scheme of things. He’s more interested in whether or not he treated people well that day than whether or not he got paid for the privilege. I lie there surprised and slightly ashamed at my frustration. His patience floors me with admiration, yet makes me feel a bit queasy with anxiety, too. He does what he does for reasons which have nothing to do with money. But still, I wonder if this lack of self-assertion is a sign of things to come?

  20

  Honeymoon at The Rose

  ‘I’ve never lived with artists before …’

  ‘WANNA GO TO A GIG at the Lazy Susan tonight Lou? I’ve got an emcee spot.’

  ‘Sure!’ It’s our first night out together in ages. I celebrate by straightening my hair in the bathroom to the tunes of the old men snoring, punctuated by the springs in creaking mattresses.

  When we get to the gig, the comedians greet Jim like old friends, waiting for his return. ‘Mate, heard a lot about you! Great to meet you!’

  They shake my hand and smile and invite me to sit at their table in between sets. Kieran, from the previous night, comes over with a smile, and they can’t wait to see each other on stage. It’s how they are – excited about this thing called comedy.

  Doing it for the fun.

  On stage, Jim mines his bounty of West Australia anecdotes, including a song which mentions every small town from Perth to Broome, and the easy, relaxed crowd cheers him on. He slips into an old gag about not having time to call people back, one that worked so well in Sydney and Melbourne, and it falls flat. He chides himself in the car, shaking his head. ‘People have time to return phone calls over here. I should have remembered.’

  After the harsh contrasts of Kalgoorlie, in Fremantle we feel immediately at home. Its slow, gentle vibe, honey-coloured sunsets and kooky characters uninterested in fame or fortune but just to know us give us immediate peace. Jim’s fellow comedians welcome us into the fold, chatting with me during gigs and inviting us sightseeing or to the markets. If I stay back at The Rose to work, while Jim goes to have a ‘look’ at the comedy rooms, they ask after me.

  But I’m getting more work commissioned than ever before, so I start to follow a fairly disciplined schedule from my office in room 6. I wake early, aware that the two-hour time difference means that I could have queries from editors at 7 am Perth time. Outside our room, we hear a brief bustle at five as most of the men head to their factory jobs, but by seven the halls have gone quiet. Jim jokes that their jobs are keeping them alive, ‘It stops them cracking their first tinny until three,’ and I can’t help but agree. It’s a strange life they’ve chosen, our housemates at The Rose, but in a way the deep respect for manual labour means their bodies are still ticking along despite the ingestion of masses of alcohol when they come home each night. And at least they have company.

  When it’s all of them, it’s like a party of lions, roaring over the top of each other, preventing any real conversation from taking place. By five or six most nights, they’ve reached a peak on the balcony. Grant, a fifty-something Kiwi who likes to listen to Elvis and Abba in his room and tries not to drink as much as the rest, is my personal favourite. He always apologises if someone swears when I walk past. He’s also the only one who actually cooks any food in the kitchen. On payday which doubles as skimpy night (Thursday), he dons a clean pair of slacks and combs his hair, to pop down for a ‘light beer’ with Cave Man, who usually gets thrown out for yelling then stumbles up the stairs to pass out in bed, or his doorway, if he doesn’t make it.

  Most nights I hear Grant in the kitchen, cooking a slab of pork he gets from the meatworks factory where he works. ‘I try to give some to Mole but he never eats it,’ he sighs quietly, speaking of one-toothed alcoholic Cave Man. Sometimes Mole taps on our door, to check if we are ‘okay’, on his way to his room.

  ‘Ever get any trouble, come see old uncle Mole,’ he says, stumbling down to his tiny room at the end of the hall. I guess it’s his way of saying he likes us, and we can trust him.

  At around 7 am I take the coffee pot I’ve lugged from Melbourne into the old kitchen which looks out to sea, along with my own spoon and cup because there is barely any crockery in the kitchen. The day starts with a hiss and a spittle, and by the time my cup of adrenaline is ready and steaming beside me, I’m awake enough to marvel, once again, that I get to live my dream and travel with my soul mate, without compromising one or the other.

  I’ve never been able to write beside anyone else, before Jim. If I ever tried, it felt like I was cheating with another lover, or being selfish and indulgent. I always had to scuttle to another room and close the door, or usually, just wait until they left my space (usually the entire building), before I could get into the ‘zone’. But perhaps because he’s a writer too, able to switch off and burrow into his own world when he’s composing gags, in the mornings with my pen dancing across the page, I don’t even stop if I hear him stir. They say creative passions, or running any business of your own, is like having a child to look after, and in this new world we are creating I feel it more than ever. We both act as parents to the other one’s passion. Me, concerned at the lack of boundaries and assertion with the Roos who govern his pay cheque, and Jim, always assuring me to ‘tap away’ on my laptop with the lights on, while he sleeps, oblivious to the light and noise.

  Occasionally Jim wakes and immediately starts making phone calls to hustle gigs or return calls from the many men across the country who like to unload their life’s issues on his ears. It strikes me as funny – him on his mobile phone and me on my laptop, surrounded by papers, in bed. We look a bit like a workaholic couple you’d see on some Hollywood film about lawyers on honeymoon. Except that we are at The Rose, and during our ‘lunch hour’ we walk down to the Fremantle Markets and look for a tofu burger.

  We go to see a naturopath together and embark on a detox diet complete with herbs, supplements and three litres of pH-balanced water every day. I run along the beach at sunrise and Jim goes for three-hour walks while I’m writing in the afternoon. I lose all track of time while he is away, and he jolts me from an obsessive amount of re-reading and research.

  ‘Lou, you’ve gotta c
ome down here, this is amazing!’

  ‘Okay!’ I reluctantly close my laptop and slip down the stairs before the old men can trap me with a conversation. Jim is watching the sun set over the most glorious ocean I’ve ever seen, or walking around the roundhouse in Fremantle, or hitting tennis balls against the wall at the tennis court overlooking the Swan River.

  When we walk together we debrief on each other’s work, or he’ll try a new gag on me, or just stay silent, appreciating all that we have while the sun falls like honey around us. It’s peaceful, almost too peaceful. I’ve never had such companionship in the daily aspects of life before. We still don’t go more than an hour or so alone, without communicating. And we still – get – everything about each other. We could talk in code and still understand the exact meaning we’ve intended.

  Our feet crunch the leaves underfoot as black swans lap below us on a little secluded inlet of the Swan.

  ‘My sister called today. She couldn’t believe I took you to Iron Knob. Said she was amazed you didn’t turn back.’

  I think to myself: not even his family knows how much I love this man. And it’s lucky they can’t see the folks we’re living with at The Rose.

  Being a stranger in town, with no interruptions – no-one to have coffee with, no-one to ‘catch up’ with, able to do all my interviews via telephone and email, so much time wasted in transit, mindless eating of junk to keep the endless social engagements flowing is just – eradicated. There is a beautiful simplicity to not knowing anybody, having no history in this place. I feel my life has been swept clean of the extraneous and now is solely, purely intentional. By making my key decisions based on my two true loves – Jim and writing – anything inauthentic just falls away.

  I realise it wasn’t just the clothes and belongings I cast aside back in Melbourne, I was also letting go of alliances and relationships – not just to people, but to values and ideas of myself – which had long since had their day. Jim asks, interested, what I’m writing about one day.

  ‘A rare cancer gene.’

  ‘Good one,’ he says, curious. He knows it’s a challenge and I never studied medicine, or even journalism. Yet he never ever doubts that I’m up to the task. But it’s easy here. We’ve started anew. Like someone on the witness protection program given a new name and a new identity, except this is one that I chose, with the man I love, and I get to do exactly what pleases me most of all in a town which has felt like our own private island since we got here.

  For a time, we get the balance right. Like the cusp of a grand wave, the equilibrium feels extraordinary.

  I wake with someone to laugh with. I am earning money from my passion and sharing a life with someone similarly devoted to a strange, specific skill.

  I finally understand the meaning of true romance.

  Fremantle is a quiet place, like a city in the eastern states might have been twenty years ago. Sunday trading hasn’t reached it yet, recycling bins aren’t even de rigueur, and I’m still having trouble finding copies of The Australian. I end up reading as much as I can online, even though Jim brings in the West Australian each morning.

  Since I haven’t seen The Age for almost a month, writing my columns has been like writing ‘blind’. I find one of my features reprinted in the Sunday Times, and notice, for the first time, how little care I’d paid to finding suppliers, interviewees and references which would apply to this part of Australia, a massive chunk of the demographic. Ignored editorially, living in Western Australia opens my eyes to just how huge is the eastern state stranglehold on media.

  I find a newsagent in the middle of Fremantle which orders me copies of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and I start to collect them each week, four days after their print date, for double the cost. Just like another country.

  Jim starts doing the shopping and cooking during the day, filling the halls of The Rose with scents of tofu, rice and vegetarian delights prescribed by the naturopath. He has yet to discover spices and seasoning but I don’t want to discourage him, so I gulp down rather bland piles of couscous and rice, grateful for his generosity, if not his seasoning skills. We take sunset dips in the Indian Ocean, watching the sky drop like molasses, performing for us only, feeling like we’ve discovered the secret, and like things can’t get much better.

  When I print my invoices in the Fremantle net café, I discover I’ve earned more this month, living out of a bag, than ever before. Jim is cooking tempeh stir-fry in the kitchen, and rings me, from a room away, to tell me dinner is ready.

  ‘Babe, I just got another feature commissioned!’

  He yells cheerfully through the wall, ‘Get used to it!’

  Like my most positive, encouraging side, having his voice endlessly around me and nobody else has all but deleted the Doubting Susan who once played a much louder track on high rotation.

  So with all this beautiful, significant stuff going on, it’s easy to brush aside ‘superficial’ worries such as what it looks like to the rest of the world that we are living in a decrepit pub with old men. For a while, we even become like the self-contained sprinkler couples we’d railed against, who tried to trap us with their dinner parties all those moons ago, talking of their new cutlery and furnishings. But it’s in an old pub, and we cook for a cast of escaped jailbirds with no teeth. And my prized furnishing is the table from under the TV Jim has moved, and decorated with a balloon tulip, for me to use as a desk. And the crockery we buy is from Saint Vinnies, because the share kitchen has no forks.

  It’s a Tuesday night, half an hour before Jim’s gig, and Jack and Darren, across the room from us, have reached their screaming peak early. Most of the men here have a past, children or wives they’ve lost or left, maintenance payments in other states, charges they’re fleeing with addictions to help soothe the pain, but Jack and Darren, unlike the self-contained Mole or the shy Grant, put all their dirty laundry on the line for everyone else to see. And the other men, still valiantly self-protective despite personal dramas, won’t get involved.

  The two of them break all the rules. In an extremely homophobic working-class culture of miners and blue-collar workers, they share the same room to save on rent. They also break the Aussie code of simply getting on with life and not complaining. Although Jack does have a broken leg, if he was a true blue Aussie we wouldn’t hear about it every few minutes. Grant, in contrast, had surgery a few weeks ago and had to take two days off his job at the meat factory, and wouldn’t even let Jim help him up the stairs the day he came out of hospital. But perhaps the most cardinal sin of all in this institution built solidly on a tight sleep/work/drink cycle is that for the past week, Jack and Darren have both been getting drunk and fighting well into the night, keeping the other housemates awake with the haunting sound of drunken Freudian dramas coming from their room.

  In the last ten minutes, they’ve become noticeably more heated. I’m simultaneously trying to file a column on organic cotton bathing suits, locate my interview with a couple so that I can check a quote, and answer my phone, which I can see is my mum ringing, when the door almost bashes down.

  ‘HE-LP! HELP!’

  Jim is closest to the door, so he opens it, quickly.

  ‘I’ve LOST JACK!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jim is thinking what I’m thinking. How far can a man on crutches go when the only exit is a massive flight of stairs?

  ‘I yelled at him to fuck off and he did! Hey Jimbo can I borrow your phone?’ he squeaks. ‘I don’t have any credit left on mine!’

  I give up on filing my column with this soap opera unfolding, and pack up my laptop. Darren, standing in the doorway, peering in to see where I am, makes me uneasy. Just as Jim is handing over the phone to Darren, Jack reappears, crawling in from outside, on his hands and knees.

  ‘I’m in pain! I’m in pain! You know, it’d be safe to say this is WORSE THAN CHILDBIRTH!’

  He’s in a heap at our doorway now. Both of them are looking at us like we’re their long
lost parents, come to rescue them. Jim starts nervously checking the time on his phone, now that Darren has handed it back. He is due on stage in ten minutes.

  ‘MATE! YA GOTTA GET ME TO A HOSPITAL! THIS IS FUCKING SERIOUS!’

  I have no idea what is wrong with Jack, but Jim flicks into gear and says yes, sure, he can take him to a hospital. But how are we going to get Jack down three flights of steep stairs when he can’t walk?

  Jim and Darren carry him, while he moans the entire way, heaving him into the back seat of the car. We drop them both off at the Fremantle Hospital, Darren in tow to push his wheelchair.

  We pull up at the gig and Jim runs into the bar like a rock star, laughing. But I’m peeved. Sure, it was okay this time. But Jim’s lack of boundaries and limits with people is starting to worry me.

  The next day is cleaning day, when pastel-topped Jenny, in her early fifties, arrives in bright efficiency, sweetness and light. Her presence brings a significant lift in the energy of the smoke-stained walls. She folds us clean white towels in triangles and lays them at the end of our bed, the pillows plumped and the faint hint of her talc-scented perfume lingering in the rooms like air-freshener.

  In the kitchen making tea with some herbs Mole has left her, she lowers her voice and tells me that she won’t be coming to do the cleaning for a few weeks, because she has just found out her breast cancer has returned.

  ‘But I’m feeling positive,’ she says. She talks of the way she’s changed her diet, started meditating, ingesting herbal concoctions and avoiding smoky, loud or stressful environments. It’s just then that I smell someone’s cigarette smoke, looking up to see that Jack, who is no longer in the hospital we took him to, is blowing thick rings of smoke towards Jenny.