All At Sea

by Pepper Ellison

  I need honouring bad.

  Friday 4th April 11.02am

  —Island Golf and Country Club—

  I want to know what you really think. You were so quiet. I don’t know the source of your quietness. I hope it wasn’t a backing-away quietness.

  Small. That’s the only thing I can remember you saying. Yes, it’s a small place. It’s only a studio apartment. The whole place probably would fit into your walk-in robe on the Delilah Rose. It would be a broom closet in your actual house, I would imagine. The bathroom is literally a cupboard and the kitchen is a wreck.

  But it’s right on the beach. I can walk from my backdoor onto the sand! It has a view up to the mountain from the deck. It’s stumbling distance to a pub. It’s simple, and neat. I don’t have to share a bathroom with a hundred different backpackers. Or a wall with Lachlan.

  It’s what I can afford.

  This is how I can live. It’s also how I want to live. At least for now.

  That little studio is a step up for me. It’s kind of seriously grown up.

  Friday 4th April 11.16am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  Yes, it was a backing-away quietness. But not for why you think. It’s just when you talked before about Sasha being in L.A. and all the work she’ll have for you over the next year, I thought that meant you might be coming to California to be with me. I’m starting school at the end of August so I thought that meant you might follow me. I know it sounds stupid now. I look back over the conversation, at the actual lines you wrote, and you never ever said that at all. It was my own wishful thinking filling in the spaces. I was so convinced of it that I searched online for apartments all around my dormitory. I mapquested how far Hollywood is from UCLA, all the best deals and all the best beaches and neighborhoods you might like to live that seem like they are in a fitting price range.

  I’ve been worrying the logistics of it for months, since the beginning, how it might work long-term between you and me.

  But when you showed me the apartment in Hauula it became clear that you’re setting up a permanent grass hut here. That’s why I said I wasn’t feeling well and asked you to take me home. You’re not thinking about us beyond the next few weeks. You’re not trying to find a way for it to work. I’m unapologetically crushed about it.

  We’re never going to see each other again after I leave, are we? We’ll say we will, but I’ll go back and you’ll stay here and that will be it.

  You haven’t signed a lease yet. Maybe you can change your mind and come with me? Can you just come with me and see how it goes? It could be on a trial basis. You can come back if you don’t like it. No big deal.

  I want you, Kody. Come with me.

  Friday 4th April 11.23am

  —Island Golf and Country Club—

  We have argued from the beginning about the difference between your world and my world.

  You have always made out that I am ridiculing or mocking the way that you live. I’ve already said I don’t know why you think that.

  The way you live is unimaginable for me. It’s like trying to imagine living in zero gravity. You live by completely different customs and rules. I could never imagine getting used to that. Not finding it disorienting.

  Maybe now you can see what the reality is, it’s you who cares about the money. Because I’m never going to be able to provide a life like the one you live now. Never, ever.

  Friday 4th April 11.41am

  —Fitness Center at Waikiki Yacht Club—

  I don’t expect you to provide for me. I’m a feminist, too, you know. I may not be able to completely provide for myself yet but I’m working on it. I don’t want to be a trust fund brat. I want to make my own way in the world, too. I’m going to school to better myself and build a career doing something I’m passionate about. I’m planning on getting a shitty job until my big break comes. My mother was a server at a nightclub for years before she met Paul. She said it was hard work but she generally liked it and made great money. I might try that. She also worked at an organic, range-free dairy farm. She’d get up at four a.m. to go milk cows for a few hours while I slept in the car seat. She’d set me around the barn while she worked. I don’t think range-free cow milking is something I’d like but I’m not opposed to getting my hands dirty in other ways. Until I came to Hawaii, I babysat every single Friday and Saturday night since the age of twelve. I had a whole big list of clients around Mission Hills, some of them with four kids! I know how to earn a buck the hard way. Why do you think we’re so different, you and I? How have I ever given you the impression that I’m overly spoiled or materialistic and needing “things” to be happy?

  My world, your world. Different customs and rules. Zero gravity. What does that even mean? I’m from Kansas City. It’s not Club Med on Jupiter.

  Friday 4th April 11.53am

  —Island Golf and Country Club—

  Don’t dredge out your mother’s hardships as if they’re your own. You’ve never suffered a hardship. Let’s take an example just from this week. You never have had to stop a holiday because it might rain and the electrics in the car would bug out. You have never had to take something like that into consideration. You’d just order a different car to be delivered.

  You would. I’ve seen you do it.

  You got tired biking the other day? It’s fine. You don’t have to drag your own arse home. Lachie will do it.

  So what? You’ve sat in somebody else’s huge mansion for a few hours watching TV while their kids slept? It’s not fcken coal mining, is it?

  Don’t tell me you know about work. The day I met you, you were so soft, like you’d never even picked up your own dirty plate.

  It’s not just about the actual cash, it’s a whole ‘tude.

  Friday 4th April 11.10pm

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  You want to know what makes you different? I took you for hot chips on the beach (remember the ‘crikey’ day?) and you humoured me, but then you talked about pomme frites in Paris.

  You make me feel as if I’m not enough. Even expending the greatest amount of energy or enthusiasm, you kind of smile and muss my hair. You’re enjoying me like I’m a performance.

  You’re too classy for me.

  I’m afraid that in the end you would want to dress me up in an expensive suit so I’d look like the kind of guy who matches you, but you’d see that I’m still just a beer-swilling, knuckle head surfer dude.

  Friday 4th April 11.32am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  Muss your hair? Pomme frites in Paris? Really? So, I mentioned the word Paris one time and you plucked it out and filed it away in your Millsy’s-a-rich-snot file? I was trying to explain the hotly contested origin of French fries, about how fries, chips and pomme frites are all essentially a knock-off of a Belgian dish but you cut me off before I could finish my thought. I was trying to make conversation because at that point, I wasn’t allowed any, remember? Seriously, you’re pissing me off. I know I should be used to it by now, but fuck!

  You talk out both sides of your face. You tell me these mind-blowingly touching things about myself, you bring me to tears with telling me about myself, and then in the same breath tell me you see me a totally different way. Tempering all the things you love about me with things you could hate makes you feel sure of yourself. It keeps you tightly moored in Kodyland instead of truly venturing into unfamiliar water. You can’t read the waves out there and it scares the shit out of you.

  You don’t see me as a hair-mussing condescending snot. If you did, you wouldn’t have spent the last few months searching me out. At the last lesson you would’ve Kody uncut me. You would’ve given me one red-hot go and then sent me packing with all the rest.

  You pretend to write me off as something I’m not because it makes you the big victim in it all. You know deep down I’m not like that, that those things don’t mean anything to me that I buy shoes simply because I love them.

  It’s true. It’s so Sex and th
e City and I’m sorry if that offends you. I would hate to perpetuate a stereotype, but come between a girly-girl and her stilettos at your peril.

  Some of them are expensive. I’m not going to lie. Embarrassingly expensive. But I have plenty of shoes that I picked up for twenty bucks, too. Because they were cute and I had to have them or I would literally wither and die on the floor of the store if I didn’t get to take them home and click around in them. But I would throw every last pair into the sea if it would prove to you that I don’t care about “things” more than I care about being with you. I would walk barefoot for the rest of my life to prove that.

  We’ve spent way too much time together for you to think that I think you’re not worthy of me. It is you who don’t think you are worthy of me so quit putting that guilt on me.

  You said you were in love with me. If we don’t work out, you and me, I want this to be your big takeaway: Don’t ever drop the L word for the first time in text!

  I could have said it back but I wasn’t about to cheat myself out of hearing and speaking those words for the first time. Saying it in text doesn’t count, not by a mile. I bet you’ve had yourself a big, long sooky la la about it ever since. I bet you tell yourself that you really went out on a limb there. Poor Kody got shut down by Amelia.

  Next time you say the L word to me, if you say it to me, you’re going to have all of your clothes off, got it? You’re going to be pinned underneath me and you’re going to say it directly into my eyes, all three words and then my nickname out loud. And then I’m going to say it back and then maybe I’ll shed a few tears about it. And then you’ll flip me over and kiss my face and tell me it again and again. We’ll say the words over and over in real life until we’re dizzy with them.

  That’s how it’s going to go.

  Saturday 5th April 12.04am

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  I do love you, Millsy. And you hurt me lots of times in little ways and I don’t say anything because I don’t want to be a whiney bitch about it.

  You start something and then say, ‘never mind, you wouldn’t be interested’. Remember ‘oh, you wouldn’t be able to balldance – you must only like reggae.’ You talk down to me, as if I have never read a book, or seen a play, or travelled, or know about anything except surfing and fucking.

  Saturday 5th April 12.08am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  WHAT!?!? You are the one! YOU are the one who told ME you don’t like to talk, talk, talk. You are the one who makes ME feel like what I say doesn’t matter! If you were here right now I’d punch your fucking lights out! I’m calling you. I want you to hear my voice when I tell you to go fuck yourself this time.

  Saturday 5th April 2.18am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  Pick up right now!

  Saturday 5th April 2.27am

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  You assumed I would follow you, because your life and your aspirations are bigger and more important than mine are.

  Because everyone is staff to you, whether you’re aware of it or not, and now I’m staff.

  If you want it to work with us, then you would have to learn to be a normal person who drags her own arse around, picks up her own plate, walks when the car breaks down, works for actual food, and not just shoes (even nasty cheap ones).

  Saturday 5th April 2.29am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  You see that? Take a good look.

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  That is me breaking up with you in text speak. Goodbye, Kody.

  Saturday 5th April 2.31am

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  I knew it. Someone suggests you might have to wash a dish and you throw a tanty.

  Nice.

  Saturday 5th April 2.43am

  —Waikiki Yacht Club—

  Pardon my wanton use of the term “break up.” That would imply we were a couple. I was always still with Lachie.

  Wednesday 9th April 4.52pm

  —Koa Boxing Club & Gym—

  I haven’t been surfing properly all week. As soon as I get out there, I rush back to check my texts. In case you threw me a little bone while I was out there. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m done.

  I’m just going to surf, because that’s always been where it’s at for me.

  Can I just say, it really has been amazing, Millsy. I have loved it. You’re still beautiful and sexy. You’re a cracker.

  Keep the Bunyip.

  Kx

  Wednesday 9th April 6.52pm

  —Mockingbird Bookshop & Coffeehaus—

  We had a few amazing moments, yes. But mostly it was all just words on a screen. Letters punched into a machine. For every amazing word, there were two ugly ones to either side of it. Scroll back, you’ll see how ugly it was. I was wrong, it wasn’t real.

  Lachie is real. Once you get the grunts and gestures part down and learn to speak in small words, he’s a regular chatterbox. I am learning to appreciate the grunts and gestures. There’s a sort of substance to it.

  Wednesday 9th April 6.57pm

  —Mockingbird Bookshop & Coffeehaus—

  Wait, STILL beautiful and sexy? Despite what? Fuck you.

  You can have the Bunyip. I will never use it again.

  I’m on my way to see Lachie so I’ll leave it by your door.

  Also, buy some earplugs. The walls are thin and it’s about to get crazy loud up in the backpacker’s!

  Wednesday 9th April 7.02pm

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  I don’t live there anymore.

  Wednesday 9th April 7.13pm

  —Pinkie’s Pedi Express, Ward Village—

  Really? That was quick. And I was so looking forward to tapping out some post-coital Morse Code with you. “Beep-ba-deep-beep-beep! Lachie is so good at this maybe he SHOULD get paid!”

  Wednesday 9th April 7.48pm

  —Pinkie’s Pedi Express, Ward Village—

  Knock-knock!

  Who’s there?

  Millsy!

  Millsy-who?

  Millsy-Loves-Some-Lingo-That’s-Who!

  No seriously. I Googled “Soul Surfer” today.

  Definition: One who surfs for the sheer pleasure of it; who scorns the commercialization of surfing.

  Alternative Definition: What Lachie says you could have been before you became Sasha’s whore.

  Wednesday 9th April 7.49pm

  —Blue Volcano Tavern—

  Lachie’s pissed because I stopped paying his rent. Maybe your step daddy can give him a job? He could give Lilah some deep Lomi Lomi.

  Wednesday 9th April 8.01pm

  —Ben & Jerry’s, Ward Village—

  You are obsessed with my mother. It’s very bizarre. Maybe you should talk to someone about it. I could give you some names of shrinks if you want.

  Friday 11th April 10.13am

  —near North Shore, Oahu—

  I don’t mind the stalking so much, but Kyla thinks it’s creepy. She’s a swimsuit model! You can tell. But she must not wear them all the time, because that’s an all over-tan.

  So would you mind doing your moping elsewhere? This is my place of business.

  (Oh and they’re real! I wondered too. Freak. Of. Nature.)

  Friday 11th April 10.16am

  —near North Shore, Oahu�
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  You WISH I was stalking you. I’m waiting for Lachie to finish up with that group of parasitic corporates. Bankers on a boondoggle. Doing some kind of trust-building shit, I bet. (Do you know this word boondoggle? Google it, you’ll find so much use for it!) Tell Lachie I’ll wait for him at the café.

  Friday 11th April 10.16am

  —near North Shore, Oahu—

  Wait...did you say Kyla’s a swimsuit model?

  Hold up...

  Friday 11th April 10.18am

  —near North Shore, Oahu—

  BAHAHAHAHA!

  My apologies. I was choking on my overpriced latte.

  She’s what, like late twenties, early thirties? Washed up, like whoa! Unless it’s just the beating her skin has taken over the years. Who’s hiring her? The American Skin Cancer Society? Does she make public service announcement commercials? “DO NOT DO THIS TO YOUR SKIN OR YOU WILL LOOK LIKE THIS.” And the boobs? Enjoy. They are at their pinnacle of ripeness with nowhere to go but south.

  (Seriously, you have a Cougar FETISH, man. Seek. Help.)

  Perhaps, that friend of hers, though? The younger one with the belly ring? Now, she’s a keeper! Byeeee!

  Friday 11th April 11.25am

  —near North Shore, Oahu—

  OK stop.

  This is what happened.

  You asked me to break up with Fi. I broke up with Fi.

  You asked me to say I want all of you. I said I want all of you.