‘Kitten-sacrificers, huh?’ But he quickly stops grinning and looks at me encouragingly.
‘No, it’s … my mother has my father and a boyfriend and they’ve been together for twelve years and my dad knows about it.’ Oh god. It came tumbling out before I could even begin to try to make it sound normal.
‘He knows … and he’s not all bent outta shape and jealous about it? That’s some strong, confident man, Pina.’ Andrew’s speaking slowly and looking at me carefully. Oh no. He can’t think badly of me because of this.
Actually … how can he? It’s not me we’re talking about. ‘Yes, he is strong. He loves her, and she loves him, and I kind of think Don and Wei Lee are right – it’s nobody else’s business.’
‘Whoa, slow down, I agree. It’s no one else’s business – like my grandpa being gay. But thanks for trusting me.’
‘This is so weird, telling someone. Like, there’s no need for any grand announcement and then waiting for the thunder and lightning.’
‘It’s a chill-out feel, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yeah, but then I think, what will guys think of me? I’m so not like my mother.’
‘Yes you are: smart, sexy –’
I give him a shove even while I mush up inside. ‘Well, I don’t think so. But what I meant is all I want is just one guy who really loves me and we could share some life together. That seems far enough away sometimes. Two is totally out of the question.’
‘Well, I’m the same. I think monogamy’s my thing. I know it’s not just about sex with your mum, though. It’s the whole relationship package with both of them – the daily ups and downs that some people can’t even handle with one person! What I mean is, I don’t even do sex. But I think about it lots.’ He comes closer. ‘And I’ll be honest – being with you, I think about us.’
I pull away again. ‘I’ve just been through sex, remember, and I hated what it felt like.’
‘I know. It won’t feel like that next time. Make sure it doesn’t feel like that next time.’ His fingers gently trace the line of my cheek and lower lip.
We look at each other. The wind is chilly and I know his lips will be warm. I know I want to kiss them and that it’s going to be a different kiss. I move forward, and the kiss is tender. Andrew’s lips are gentle and soft, sensual. There isn’t that feeling that even as they’re kissing me, they’re smirking at me. There’s no ramming his mouth against mine so that the inside of my lips are gridded with teethmarks. The tip of Andrew’s tongue appears tenderly, increasingly passionately rather than diving down towards my throat so that I’m struggling not to gag. His hands are firm but gentle on my waist, gliding over my hips in that slinky material which doesn’t let him miss one curve, one bulge. But his touch makes me feel sexy, not fat. His fingers explore my spine, ripple over my bare shoulders, tangle into my hair at the neckline, and I’m melting in a way I didn’t with Scott.
Over the next couple of days Wei Lee and Zi Don do more Christmas shopping for family in Adelaide and take some time for each other before the rellie onslaught that awaits them. I prefer to be out and about with Andrew, and they seem to know that. So Andrew and I do the Puffing Billy in the Dandenongs one day and then row the lake at Daylesford another. Andrew loves driving the old silver Volvo, the easy kind of driving with doof music loud but not blaring.
We kiss often. We lie down in grass along the banks of the lake at Daylesford and our bodies begin to feel wet from wanting to meet without clothes between us.
When we get back from Daylesford, we give Wei Lee and Zi Don the bunch of fresh aromatic lavender we’d bought on a lavender farm, have a quick chat and then go for an evening stroll past Luna Park. We stop in the park where a group of young people are sitting around, playing bongo drums and twirling firesticks. A tall lanky guy with dreadlocked waist-length hair gets up and begins to do twirls and twists with two firesticks. Andrew and I are entranced at the streaks of fire against the dark, and the fire-twirler’s skill in keeping the flames away from his hair.
While we’re watching, a group of guys struts through. They’re all in tight muscle t-shirts showing off their biceps, pecs and abs. Their attitude is so self-conscious and tightly held-together – Plastic Fantastic. They don’t go around the little stage the fire-twirler has created, but pretend to head into him, just managing to dodge the flames. They scoff, they sneer, they throw out remarks like ‘you’re just a marching girl wannabe’, ‘don’t burn whatever baby balls you got’.
Suddenly I feel Andrew’s arm around me tense up as he calls out, ‘Get over it! What’s your problem?’
To which of course they turn, sneer, yell out, ‘How sweet! A fag defending his boyfriend!’
Andrew shakes his head, the fire-twirler continues with zest, and I’m watching the backs of those Scott-clones, those emotionally crushed bodies of steel, the kind of guys I once worked so hard to get in with.
When the fire-twirler finishes, we clap and move forward to put some money into his cap. A young woman with flowing goth robes, Nicole Kidman skin and flying red curly hair, stops playing the bongo and smiles at us. ‘Thanks.’
Andrew nods and then looks at the fire-twirler who’s approached us with a warm grin. ‘Don’t let them get to you, man. They got no idea.’
‘I won’t, man. I hardly notice them any more.’
I look at these two guys: no defences, no offences. Enough muscle to do their thing in the world, twirl a fire-stick, push a lawyer’s pen, but more than enough softness to feel their way through the simple beauty of connection. Yeah, the other guys have no idea why Andrew and the fire-twirler can call themselves ‘man’ and really mean it. I’ll never be able to even fathom the possibility of another Scott-like Neanderthal in my life.
Later, on the midnight beach with the tides providing regular rhythm, the firmness of the sand holding us under the softness of blanket against our bodies, we hold each other and kiss. This feels sensually safe, so I can feel freely passionate. I can pull it together if I need to, but I don’t have to worry about needing to. He’ll stop when I want to stop, so I don’t stress about keeping the brakes on. I enjoy the delicious sensation that what he feels for me and is doing with me comes from his real feelings and not from any other motive. He has no school buddies he needs to make up a Monday-morning story for. He knows what it’s like to be misjudged and gossiped about. Andrew just is.
That night, I fall asleep with the exquisite knowledge that my body, my woman’s body, feels desire and pleasure, and will initiate, respond and release when it feels right for me.
19
Not a goodbye to Narnia
TOMORROW’S CHRISTMAS DAY,’ Zi Don says when I finally get up. ‘Today we make our way back to Adelaide.’ He doesn’t sound particularly jubilant. The only thing that draws a smile is tonight’s stopover in Bordertown, ‘to enjoy Christmas Eve in a tent under the Christmas-lights of stars’.
So it’s Christmas Eve morning with Wei Lee and Zi Don, the rainbow tree, the birth of Jesus, and a kind of birth of me. It’s time to travel back, but I won’t – I can’t go back to the me I was, the sheltered, scared, blind me. Nothing’s the same. Everything’s harder but clearer.
Andrew comes to say goodbye as we prepare to head off by lunchtime. Just seeing him there and knowing how we’ve journeyed over the last few days makes me want to take his hand, lead him to my room, and stick a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door.
Andrew holds out a little box. Inside is a choker, with little amethyst stones in silver scoops, that sits snugly around my throat. ‘Mum’s coming down to be with Grandpa for a week in January. I’ll make my way to Adelaide then.’
‘I’ll make sure Mum and Dad have you over to stay.’
‘Don’t worry if they won’t allow it,’ he says as I lead him to my bedroom.
‘Andrew, they’d better not dare even trying to be old-style parentals now. Not that they ever would’ve. And whatever the nonni think, I don’t care. You’re staying over ’cos that’s h
ow I want it.’
Yes, as I close the front door behind me an hour later, after finally saying goodbye, I think about how I’ll be seeing my parents again tomorrow, but this time really seeing them.
I’ll be seeing Leo again and I don’t ever want to speak to him again from behind closed doors.
There’s Laura to go and hang out with. Yeah, Laura with the Lesbians in the Library and the lesbian mother at home.
There’s stuff I need to say to Rosie and Lisa so I can get our friendship out of the superficial rut it’s been sliding into.
There’s maybe even stuff I might get to figure out with Scott if he’s got any guts to come around and deal with it.
And I’ve got to talk to my parents.
And Nathan?
Then it’ll be a new year and Andrew coming to spend a week with me. Being without Andrew for three weeks is going to be torture but it’ll give us time and space to think, and then see what we’re like when we do get together again.
I’m feeling like an adult now. I’m making decisions the way my mother does, because I’ve been through a lot too. I’ve tried to do things the way they ‘should’ be done, and now I want to do things the way that’s right for me.
I walk back into the house and stop before Zi Don and Wei Lee hear me. They’re sitting on the verandah, silent, looking out to the garden, their fingers woven together in their customary way. I have this weird vision of the two of them: grey-haired, slightly stooped over, a wrinkly, fleshy grey-haired hand over a tiny, gnarled, veined hand. Still sitting like this in years to come, but with smiles of wisdom, having lasted the distance, having disempowered the surveillance system. I think of the joy, peace and love these two apparently freaky folk bring to other apparently freaky folk. How do I say this to them without sounding really nerdy?
Then I remember my Narnia book.
They turn to me as I walk through the glass sliding doors, reading aloud the description of the laws passed by Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and the peace and acceptance they brought to the land.
I look up and they’re both watching me with shiny eyes and soft smiles. Before I get badly mushy, I shut the book sharply. ‘Don’t say anything, Lucy and Mr Tumnus. I don’t need any more emotion before we go back through that friggin’ wardrobe. I’ve got enough of my own.’ I turn and flee back through the glass doors, but their gushes of delight follow me.
As we drive away, I gasp from the ache of saying goodbye to the house, the garden, the flowers, the smell of the sea, the peace and beauty. In such a short time, I’ve learned and been and journeyed so much here. I sit back in the car and close my eyes, seeing myself taking this truthful, open place with me. I can’t, I won’t go back into the wardrobe. I want to understand the wardrobe itself and then create my own Narnia.
After I get through Christmas at Nonna’s.
20
Christmas Eve on the borders
I FEEL SO DIFFERENT TRAVERSING droughty brown land in hazy daylight between Melbourne and Adelaide, land I previously travelled in the dark. That was just under two weeks ago. It’s like my life has entered broad daylight, and there’s a new clarity in the confusing glare of reality.
Wei Lee alternately snoozes and stares into the sky. Zi Don hums to music, his fingers keeping time on the steering wheel. I stretch out on the backseat amid brightly coloured presents and travel munchies and, between watching the valleys, cows and hillsides, I dip into my mother’s book.
Should I do a Show and Tell like Pina and Leo used to do at school?
‘Mettiamo una bella faccia’: Let’s put on a good face. Wogs have this thing about putting on a face, an image, to present to the public. We grow up learning how to do it. We imitate parents who laugh and grin and act to the world as if there’s nothing that could be wrong. Then at home all hell breaks loose.
But it’s not just Italian parents who taught us to do this, to ‘cover up’. School did it. Church did it. I remember going to school one day – I must’ve been about six years old. I was still bruised from a beating my mother had given me for tearing a good dress when I climbed a tree with Don and his friends. From under the tree, Elena warned me not to climb because Mum would punish me.
Sure enough, we heard her before we saw her swing the kitchen door open and swing the wooden spoon above her. In the panic of scrambling down the tree, I tore my dress. A bruising swipe with the wooden spoon: ‘Girls don’t play with boys!’ Another bruising swipe on the other leg: ‘Girls don’t tear their dresses!’ Her bruising fist into my arm: ‘Especially when there’s no money to buy more dresses!’ On and on, my mother’s rage, while my father watched from the door of the shed. Even then, I knew it was about things way beyond me. I was just a handy punching bag that wouldn’t punch back. I knew that my father would never stop her in case her rage was unleashed on him.
The day after this beating, after a night of nightmares and painful tossing, I sat in the classroom, my legs bruised and aching. This wasn’t the first time. I’d caught my teachers staring at my legs, at the pinch marks on my arms. They’d catch my eye and smile pityingly or look uncomfortable and ignore me. This day, my Religious Education teacher asked us to draw our families and write thank-yous to God for the love and care of our parents.
I stared and stared at my blank page. I finally managed to write ‘My Family’ at the top in black crayon.
I stared and stared at it again. I picked up three crayons and I scraped thick heavy lines onto the page, lines striating the page in all directions: death black; blood red; dirty brown.
I had to go to the toilet soon after and I left my exercise book on my desk. When I got back, it was gone. The teacher had picked them up to mark them over the weekend. I panicked. I tried to come up with something in order to get my book back. But nothing came out.
That weekend, I felt so sick. What if she called my parents and showed them? What if I was now punished by God for what I’d done? I can’t describe the frozen fear as I waited to get my exercise book back on Monday, counting the decreasing number of desks between me and the teacher as she made her way down each aisle. Finally she was standing over me, and yes, she was smiling benevolently as she handed me my book. I opened it slowly. Over the page of crayoned pain, she’d glued about eight religious pictures of Mary, Jesus and some saints. You know the ones – the martyrs, the ones who made their victimisation a sanctity, who took whatever punishment was meted out to them for their love of God. I could just make out tiny crayoned flecks of my agony and anger peeping out from the edges.
The teacher never said a thing. I felt even more alone. In the name of God, she’d chosen to cover up what I’m sure she must’ve seen in those crayoned gashes on the page, had been seeing for months bruised on my arms and legs like smudged crayon. I knew then that school had its own form of ‘mettiamo una bella faccia’.
Yes, some of us are forced to do it, like a chameleon, to change colours when the dangers are many and the options few. But these masking roles exact a toll. After years of wearing masks we may become just a series of roles, the fractured invisible self beneath the ‘faccia pulita’, the ‘clean face’ – a self limping along with bruised limbs.
One day when I’m an old woman, when I no longer have to be accountable to parents or children, I’ll peel the masks away. I only hope it won’t be too late for my Pina and Leo to learn and love me anyway. And I hope that I’ll still have Ren and Nat with whom to finally enjoy some peace and freedom.
It’s dusk as we cruise into Bordertown, the landscape now transformed into a soft collage of pinks, purples, oranges, greens and browns in that in-between sunset light.
We find a tranquil spot and set up camp. For two city slickers, Wei Lee and Zi Don are experts at putting up the tent, pumping up air mattresses and getting a campfire going. They cook Vietnamese noodles, mix damper and brew billy tea. I look on, awaiting my camping assistant directions.
The sky embraces us in its velvety cloak. Tree branches whisper as they waltz in the
breeze. Around us birds and animals that can see and thrive in the dark provide an orchestra of echoed chimes, tinkles, horns and flutes. It’s like Narnia here too, a Christmas Eve under a peaceful night sky, surrounded by majestic trees. The fairy lights are provided by stars glinting through the swaying branches and leaves, the sounds of the bush providing the carols.
But it’s still a border zone, the last of Narnia, before we keep going to Nonna’s. And yet it’s already so different to the borders of Bordertown I stopped at on my way to Melbourne. I wonder where So-Not-Miss-Havisham is tonight. Surrounded by family and friends, I’m sure, peacefully enjoying this Christmas Eve. I send her my warm wishes via the moon, hoping it transmits them like a satellite to wherever she is. And to John and Mick, and Dennis, and Ralph. And to Andrew who I wish was snuggling with me around this open fire.
It’s soon midnight and we’ve sipped the last of the tangy billy tea. We light some twigs from the campfire and wave them into the night sky, making firefly flashes around us. We wish each other a wonderful Christmas. Wei Lee and Zi Don exchange presents, pendants of opal which shimmer in the firelight as they gently and sensually drape them around each other’s necks. I’m feeling honoured to be witnessing this ritual exchange of love, wondering if my time to bask daily in that kind of love will ever come, when they hand me a package. Inside is a replica of the plaque outside their place, ‘Narnia’.
‘For your Narnia,’ Zi Don whispers.
‘So it can be wherever you are’, Wei Lee adds. ‘But please come and visit our one often. And thank you for your love, Pina. It’s done us so much good.’
I cry and hug them, curling into their arms, feeling strengthened, feeling so good that I’ve also been part of strengthening them – especially before we head to Nonna’s.
Soon we’re three bodies dreaming in sleeping bags, the moonlight casting swaying silhouettes of branches on our tent around us.
Love You Two Page 21