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Love and Other U-Turns

Page 28

by Louisa Deasey


  25

  The Fremantle doctor

  ‘Welcome back to Fremantle, baby!’

  THE WEST AUSTRALIAN ROADS HAVE become a constant companion, like a silent friend. We drive through the thick of night, from Denmark to Perth, stopping once for a nap in the car along a dirt road flanked by eucalypts. Jim happily puts his feet on the dashboard like a yogi and passes out. I gratefully drag my road-worn pillow from the back seat and place it over the gears. Kangaroos dance around us in the night, bounding forms of energy blinking their shining eyes under the full moon.

  A few hours later, I wake to see the sun rising over surf in Fremantle, and quickly forget my dreams. Jim has been driving in silence for hours.

  ‘Welcome back to Fremantle, baby!’ He announces a new vista like others would announce a garden they’ve cultivated.

  Jim lands another gig at The Brass Monkey that night, emceeing at the comedy room which peppers more seasoned headliners with amateurs up for their first five-minute set. A nervous, well-dressed guy sits next to me up the back until the first break, when Jim comes over to check on me. Well-dressed man is clearing his throat. Sidling up to Jim, who was on stage a moment ago, like he’s a superstar.

  ‘I – uh – I’d love to do a set – uh – if possible?’

  Jim quickly gets his name and a few details, introducing him after the break. The guy is fantastic – it’s his first ever time on stage, and he’s doing it because he just got the sack from his accounting job and wondered what it would be like to perform. ‘Also – my self-esteem is in tatters so I figured if you guys don’t laugh I’m pretty much right to go the razor option. Just needed to check first, but.’

  The crowd laughs. He did it.

  It’s interesting watching live comedy endlessly, week after week with Jim. Since public speaking is feared more than death, I feel as though I’m watching people jump off cliffs with every punt on stage. It’s exhilarating when they get the laughs, but my breath catches in my throat when I see the ones whose timing is off. There’s a reason comics use the terminology ‘I died on stage’. It’s like watching their parachute not open.

  After the gig, the comics chat and drink and laugh together, moving on to grab hamburgers and chips to wind down at a little place which operates around an open fire. We don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight and I’d been assuming it was going to be another night parked at the beach, resting my head on the pillowed gears.

  At the campfire, Alex, one of the nicest comedians out of an awfully nice bunch, invites us to sleep in his spare room in Northbridge. ‘There’s no proper mattress, but I’ve got blankets if you get cold.’ After the night before, a floor in a house is positively luxurious.

  When we get there he puts the espresso pot on and turns on the TV to watch Media Watch and Four Corners, which he taped earlier in the night. We talk about journalism, writing and media, and it’s the most intellectual discussion I’ve had this side of the Nullarbor. It’s also incredibly stimulating to talk to someone who has different input to Jim. Since we’ve been sharing everything for so long now, from books, gigs and dream recounts, it’s hard to know if it’s just the coffee which has fired-up my brain synapses again.

  ‘I never read the West Australian,’ says Alex. I’m surprised. Hasn’t he lived here all his life?

  ‘It’s just terrible writing. The print media over east is so much better. It’s great that you get to write for them instead.’

  It’s not just a relief to talk about my work, rather than the comedy industry for a change, but I feel like Alex is one of my lost tribe.

  The next day, after showers at Alex’s, I submerge myself in the necessary details of sourcing my columns. Jim drops me at the library in Subiaco while he goes to post some goat t-shirts and return about eight phone calls to the wayward men of Australia who love him.

  I compile some pitches based on press releases I’ve been sent on email. Since swift rejection by any of the major glossies on ideas pertaining to the West, I’ve restricted myself to pitching on ideas pertaining to the thirty-something woman who has never left Sydney or Melbourne. These get snapped up.

  I work swiftly, emailing questions in relation to the fashion columns and making phone calls from outside the library. There’s no time for doubt, I can’t even remember that girl who was once afraid to say, ‘I’m a freelance journalist.’ The words fall quickly off my tongue. This is who I am. This is how I earn my money. I’ve passed the tipping point, through sheer volume. Since the shucking of my flat months ago I’ve written approximately two hundred and thirty-seven articles. But who’s counting?

  There’s another reason for my quickened pace. The stakes are higher than before, because not only do I now have an unforeseen car bill to be taken care of, but also I’m not sure where we’ll be sleeping at any given day of the week. So when I have a desk, a door, or a place to put the laptop, I sprint.

  I tap away in the library, constantly checking my watch to see when Jim will be back, how long I have before I have to get into that car again. Like a poker-prod in the heart of all I’m missing, I interview dancers, actors, artists and coordinators of festivals and galleries for the events listings. Complimentary invitations to exhibitions and performances lie unused in the inbox of my email, and it takes all the willpower I can muster to eschew self-pity in favour of gratitude for the regular work. I fight resentful feelings towards Jim’s peaceful acceptance of living conditions I am growing to hate. Why can’t he have the same standards as me? Wishes? Opinions? Oh yeah, because he’s a different person. The idea comes as a shock, and my head almost flicks back, with the realisation. All the reasons of adventure and discovery, which led me here, are still there. I love him just as much as ever, but the lifestyle factors which don’t bother him have begun to grate on me, and well, frankly, I’ve changed. A lot.

  I email Mystic, who had sent a request a few days ago for some information on a publication and how to pitch to it.

  Hi Mystic

  Try Selena, not Jessica. They only pay 60 cents a word though. And she doesn’t like eccentric vernacular, so keep it formal.

  PS: Sorry it took until today to get back to you. Was on a spare floor last night and slept in car the night before. Haven’t had proper home since the pub in Fremantle. Domestic situation is as secure as boat in choppy waters. Is this the eclipse?

  She replies, immediately.

  Louisa, HOW are you staying so productive?

  Sure the road is romantic but don’t underestimate the stress of what you’re doing. And there are many many whacky men in those towns. I personally don’t go bush because of them. I’m sure Jimbo would understand if you needed some sense of stability?

  The freedom of not having anywhere to hang my hat has become a shackle. Little things, like needing a library card to borrow necessary books for the article I have due for a medical journal, are nigh impossible when you don’t have an address.

  Jim appears at three, at the library.

  ‘Let’s look for a place to live,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, righto,’ he answers, a little frightened, like I’ve just suggested we go sky-diving together.

  Mystic’s email reminds me of how much I’m missing female company. It’s exhausting always being the only girl in a place, carrying the weight of archaic projections of archetypes. But still, two loose canons like us, with no furniture and no idea where we’ll be in a month let alone a year – who will take us? Our options are limited. For the first time since I left Melbourne, I ask Hermes for an answer.

  He delivers us a sign, hand written on the walls of The Juicy Beetroot café.

  Fremantle calls us with familiarity, and we find the Mazda cruising along the Stirling Highway before we even make a decision about where to house-hunt. We stop at our favourite café for a bowl of salad, choosing our colourful concoction from the bowls of freshness on display, with an oracle deck by the till.

  I pull: The answer is close by.

  Searching out the bathroom, I
pass a back wall with notices for share-houses, lifts up the coast and workers needed on vegie farms. Another piece of paper, with purple ink, flaps past my arm:

  ‘Cute furnished room to suit travellers/couples. Short-term or long-term. East Fremantle, $120 a week, includes internet.’

  Jim, whose laptop has stopped working since he dropped it in a pre-gig frenzy from our worktable at The Rose, is particularly excited about the internet option.

  ‘Cool,’ he drawls. I call the number. A relaxed woman answers the phone.

  ‘I’ve got a four-year-old girl, is that okay with you guys?’

  Is she kidding? Sharing a house with a little girl reading fairytales is just what I need to get rid of the cobwebs of the last few days.

  We drive to the house, at the top of Hubble Street, which leads down to the river. Children’s toys are scattered on the balcony, alongside a white couch covered in pink silk, flanked by two empty champagne flutes and some fashion magazines.

  I am so happy to see female objects that I nearly cry there and then.

  ‘Hi, I’m Jane.’

  A tall, tanned blonde woman in her mid-thirties greets us in a rainbow-print dress. She’s relaxed, easy-going. The house is clean, she doesn’t smoke, and there’s even a box of organic groceries by the door.

  We do the slightly awkward dance of meet-and-greet, explaining our weird jobs and travel arrangements and why we don’t really want to live somewhere long-term, but an address, at least for the next month or so, would be nice. And because our own life situation is so strange and weird to explain, discovering that Jane is a stripper doesn’t sway the good vibe we are both getting. Her four-year-old daughter runs out, to tell us she counted seven fairies in the garden before we arrived.

  She shows us the room, a tiny spot down the back of the house, overlooking the back garden, next to the kitchen, furnished with a double bed, a wobbly clothes rack and a chest of drawers. Hanging over the bed is a huge green painting of two semi-naked women playing pool in a dark bar.

  ‘That’s one of mine. It’s part of my strip-club collection.’

  At sixty dollars a week each, this funny little room, strip art and all, suits us fine. We hop back in the car even though we have nowhere to go, and she calls a few minutes later.

  ‘Did you want to move in – tonight?’

  Having a safe, female-friendly home has a physical effect on me, immediately. I start pitching stories again, after a good night’s rest, a walk along the Swan, and a food shop. So quickly, we recover. In the mornings, Jane’s little daughter chases spiders and talks to the fairies in her bowl of cereal, before she goes to school. I don’t feel guilty or indulgent for liking showers, make-up, cups of tea and sandwiches with alfalfa in them. And Jim and I are getting healthy again, now that we have a base with a kitchen, in which to store fresh food.

  The universe rewards me, with a magazine commission: ‘I need three hundred words on tourist attractions in and around Perth.’

  It’s the first time I’ve actually had any green-light on writing about where I am on the map of Australia. But because it’s a tourist piece, I realise that I’ve done nothing since I got to Western Australia that you’d put in a typical holiday magazine. I set about rectifying the situation, and for forty-eight hours Jim and I tick every Perth tourist experience off the map.

  We do a historic tour of the harbour, the jail, the port, the museum, the galleries, eat fish and chips on Cottesloe Beach, and visit the fortune-tellers and trinket-sellers at the old markets.

  The history of Fremantle fascinates me, and touring the jail is the strangest of all. It’s quirky and captivating because we learn that the chapel staff took it upon themselves to change one of the Ten Commandments from Do Not Kill to Do Not Murder – as the jail was still practising the death penalty.

  And intensely creepy, because even in the middle of the day, in the solitary confinement death-row cells, the heavy feeling of spirit and sadness is audible, and even the brisk tour guide admits that objects move from one day to the next in the now unused jail.

  It’s a bright, sunshiny Perth day, but the sadness as we move closer to the death-row section becomes palpable. In one cell, I burst into tears.

  ‘That’s where they went the night before they’re hanged,’ says Jim, later.

  As I’m walking home from the swimming pool the next day, I take a diversion to an open field, behind a school. Physically exhausted as I’ve been swimming, running and walking to get back my body again, I flop on the grass, lying back, stretching and looking up at the sky. A few minutes later I feel as though I’ve been washed with a barrel of holy water. My entire being is invigorated, and I jog back to the house. Jane is home, cooking rice on the stove.

  ‘I just had this amazing experience. I was wrecked and I went and lay down in this field and not long after, I felt like someone had performed a healing on me.’

  ‘Oh, was that behind the school?’ she says, not turning from the rice.

  ‘Yes! How did you know!’

  ‘That’s one of the most sacred Aboriginal healing sites in Fremantle. The medicine men worked there or something …’

  I try to find out more, googling madly, to put it in my story, but I can’t find any experts to back up Jane’s claim.

  The editor removes it. ‘Just stick to tourist attractions. Can you replace this with a really great street for shopping?’

  I have to remember not to ask Jim for anything on Tuesdays. He starts preparing for his gigs as soon as he wakes up. I let him do our weekly shop on gig day one week and he loses the keys to the car, buys ten of one thing and none of anything else, then puts the milk in the cupboard and the cans in the fridge when he gets home. I remind myself to treat him like someone who’s sleepwalking. But just on Tuesdays. I kiss his clown face and we spend the day apart, with text-message reminders of vital things like where he’s left his keys.

  It’s balmy, as always, and Rhyll is behind the bar smiling.

  ‘Justin dedicated a song to you two last night,’ she says, fixing me a ‘girl’ drink of vodka and fresh lime. Our friend from the vegie shop has been coming along each week and the locals treat us like we’ve lived here forever. Jonathan, an English man who sits up the front and brings clients from his business as a trader, introduces me to his wife as ‘Lou’ and we talk about travelling and relocation. Yep, I could definitely become a Sprinkler in this town. Everyone is so darned laid-back and sweet.

  As Jim moves the couch to the front of the stage, a skittish guy walks in, and heads to the back room where there’s a space invaders-type computer game with a fake gun attached. The room is filling rapidly, a far cry from that first night six weeks ago. Suddenly, a scream breaks the happy hubbub, with ‘I’m going to shoot you all!’

  Skittish guy is pointing the fake gun at the room and making sounds like gunfire.

  Jim, quick as a flash, calls him over to the stage. ‘Mate, what have you been taking? Come up here …’ He is soothing. Gentle. His body language doesn’t change from how he approaches anyone.

  Like a mesmerised child, skittish guy immediately follows Jim to the stage, sitting close to him on the couch and smiling at him despite an obvious speech impediment. His energy is off, and he swears intermittently like he has tourettes or has taken speed. Then flops, looking discouraged. Then starts again, suddenly.

  This, this is why I love this man, I think to myself. Give him the lost, the broken, the scary to everyone in the room and Jim will just see a child who needs some attention, a joke which needs telling, an atmosphere which needs lightening.

  The crowd is quiet, nervous, like the group breath is held in. It’s okay, I think. It’s okay as long as he’s up there with Jim. He can tame lions. Leave him with Jim, he’ll be okay.

  Skittish guy is patting Jim on the knee now, smiling. He’s possibly drunk, or on drugs, or has something mentally wrong. Who knows? But like a horse whisperer Jim has lulled him into a calm state. Suddenly Roo appears, aggressively confront
ing him, at the foot of the stage. ‘Mate, time to go!’ he lurches forward, grabs his hand.

  ‘NOOOO!’ He’s scared and angry again, and jumps into the crowd, thrashing and throwing chairs at the wall. People duck, weave and bolt into the beer garden. Jim, still calm, stays on the couch watching thoughtfully as the man’s removed.

  The police arrive, twenty minutes later.

  ‘Yeah paranoid schizo mate, escaped from Graylands mental hospital ten k’s away. Hadn’t taken his medication.’

  He’d ridden here on a stolen bicycle, which is now lying abandoned outside. I can’t stop thinking of how happy he seemed for a few moments, sitting next to Jim on the couch.

  Jane, like everyone I’ve ever met, is a fascinating paradox of habits and philosophies. The small weatherboard house doubles as a gallery for her erotic paintings of the strip club, yet when it comes to food, she eats only vegan organic produce, feeding her four-year-old perfectly presented servings of mung bean sprouts mixed with lentils on rye crackers, giving her mini-lectures on looking after the organs in her body. Worried that everything she ingests be pure. Then, her phone rings, and it’s her boss from the agency, booking her for everything from stripping to escort work.

  ‘Tell him I won’t do sex. That costs extra and frankly I don’t need the money at the moment, y’know? I’ll wear my see-through nightie though, if he likes.’

  Tallaya stands in the doorway, watching Jane, soaking it all up like a sponge.

  When Jane applies fake tan to her legs in her underwear in the kitchen, Jim politely looks away, and takes Tallaya to play games on the verandah. At night she arrives home from the Video Ezy with an armful of horror films, ready to watch after she’s read Tallaya her story. She makes us leave the lights on all night, because she’s scared of the dark. But she never locks the door. The flywire flaps open in the wind, night after night.

  She only works one or two nights a week, and spends the rest of the time reading gossip magazines, babysitting for the rest of the community of strippers, going to the beach and watching DVDs. I watch and observe, happy to have a safe place to work, for now, glad that I trust Jim so inherently that Jane wandering through the living room in her underwear doesn’t worry me. But it does make me miss my sister and my girlfriends back in Melbourne, who would never do something like that. Still, it’s the price you pay for living in a place with a clean kitchen again.

 

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