9
It’s said never make promises when you’re happy, and never make decisions when you’re sad. I’m guilty of violating both those bits of common sense. Right now I was recalling the former and my promise to attend Cam’s farewell party – well, I hadn’t exactly promised; my acceptance of the invitation had been implied. Does that give me a legitimate excuse not to go? I’d spent the day trying not to think about the party, which meant I’d spent most of it sleeping thus ensuring my ignorance. Yet my body had begun to protest against my invalid state and just after lunch I’d reluctantly pulled myself out of the sludge of sheets and blankets. Peter seemed to sense I didn’t want to go tonight. He’d told me at least four times I’d have fun once I was there and I knew he was right; not just because he was my older brother but because I’d experienced the very phenomenon itself. So why was I trying so hard to fight against Miranda who was telling me to go? Ultimately it had taken a promise of spending all day tomorrow in the Blackhole as recompense to ensure my attendance tonight. That had been enough to elate Miranda so much she didn’t even see the implications of my promise, and I wasn’t about to point them out.
I had been sitting on one of the porch’s wicker chairs for the past fifteen minutes. In my haste for time to pass as quickly as possible I’d got ready far too early and was now creasing the dress which my mother had told me to wear. I don’t remember ever buying this dress, but I must have recently because it fit me. The dress was covered in tiny little red flowers with blue-green leaves and gave the illusion of nipping at the waist with a painted black belt. It had short, floaty sleeves and the hem rested just above my knees, allowing me to show the only places on my body I wasn’t self-conscious of. My legs and arms weren’t exactly nice; they were perfectly adequate in every conceivable way. The only reason I didn’t mind showing them off is because they’d retained some of my former slimness, even if they’d lost all muscle definition. I’d not gone to any effort with my face, painting on nothing more than the usual smear of foundation to hide my sleep-bruised eyes and flick of mascara, while my lank hair had received even less attention. I’d scraped it up into a high, greasy bun and tried to negate the oiliness by teasing it up for volume. All that had done was made my hair look like a worn wire sponge but luckily that look was in right now. The quick beep of a horn broke me out of my self-criticisms and for a moment I was startled; being beeped at was not something that happened to me, especially recently, before I realised it was Abby who was giving me a lift. Trying to make Abby’s idle at the kerb as fleeting as possible I dashed down the elastic wooden stairs and jogged across the driveway. Opening the door to her old black Mercedes I bent down to say “hello” and considered where to place my feet in the mess of her car. In the end I delicately arranged my legs around a netball, beach towel and stack of psychology books. Abby smiled as I shut the door behind me.
‘Hey, you look nice,’ she appraised and I considered getting right back out of the car. Lies this early? Well tonight was going to be a long one.
We got lost twice on our way to the party. Cam had decided to hold it at his best mate’s place, no doubt to avoid damage to his parents’ house but to also avoid their hysterical reactions to the recreational drug use which would no doubt be in abundance tonight. I’d met Cam’s best mate, Lachy, before and found him completely agreeable. He was shy, dark, slightly overweight and a little too fond of AFL to be taken seriously. Lachy lived with his cousin and another roommate in Palmyra. Their house was completely average, neither nice nor unattractive and blended in seamlessly with the neighbourhood’s seventies aesthetic. We’d become lost in the similarity between streets and after being directed down a number of one-way lanes ended up exactly where we’d entered the suburban labyrinth. Luckily it only took another ten minutes for us to become completely lost again and find ourselves inadvertently on the very street we needed, after Abby had run a stop sign. We parked at the end, on a piece of grass we assumed was common ground and decided to walk up to beat traffic congestion. Abby didn’t want to walk. She was wearing a dress like mine, only prettier and hers didn’t make her look dowdy yet she regretted not bringing a jacket; the night was refreshingly cold. I didn’t mind the goose-bumps that speckled my arms and always delighted in the novelty of my breath fogging up.
‘Jesus,’ Abby’s chattering teeth made her find extra syllables in the word.
‘It’s okay,’ I said rubbing my own arms. ‘I think this is the place.’
It was the place. If the pile of cars unceremoniously mounting the sidewalk around the house wasn’t enough to confirm my suspicion, I was assured by the sound of clinking bottles and deep laughter. A side gate lead round to a concealed patio which was assuredly where most people were congregated yet Abby and I adhered to proper etiquette and opted to make our entrance by the front door. Abby pulled open the fly screen and I allowed her call out before adding my own voice.
‘Hey!’ a voice from within the internal organs of the house called in reply. A few seconds later Glen rounded the far corner of the hallway and we relaxed, Abby left me to catch the door and I closed it with a quiet hiss behind me. It took us less than a few seconds to realise that Glen was drunk. The uncharacteristic hug he greeted us with was our first clue further aided by his sloppy smile and confused walk.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Glen mumbled before looking directly at me. ‘Doug’s out the back, he couldn’t get away from Kira.’
I’d forgotten Kira would be here. It had been my suggestion to invite her. Doug, Glen and I been discussing the party during class and I couldn’t help but notice Kira’s frantic clinging to the topic; it was her passive-aggressive attempt at receiving an invite she knew she wasn’t meant to receive.
‘You want to invite her?’ Doug had looked at me incredulously, like his best friend had suddenly become a stranger.
‘You should, Doug,’ I encouraged. ‘It would be rude not too.’
In truth my motivations for inviting Kira were directed out of sympathy; I knew exactly how it felt to be the only person not invited to a party and to endure the torturous build up before the climatic event. My experience had been when I was eight and stuck in a group of friends who I had absolutely nothing in common with. In childhood we are far more authentic and discriminate in our search for friends. We tended to choose friends because they were either kindred spirits or people we could bully. For the record, the popular kids always chose from latter category. So I ended up being the bullied friend in a group of popular girls. Yet I was far too enraptured to realise how horribly shallow they were. The girl who had shattered my illusion was Rhiannon Jones and she’d not invited me to her ninth birthday party for no other reason than she was mean. Not just mean but cruel. For an eight-year-old child to realise the world as it was, where cruelty is a conscious choice, was simply incomprehensible. I’d always naively believed that cruelty was born in situations of extreme, when a justifiable reason necessitated the obliteration of the glass ideals of another person. So when I’d realised that Rhiannon Jones hadn’t invited me to her party I really searched for the reason behind it. I couldn’t pin it on an ongoing divorce, or the early arrival of puberty, so I was left in the desolation of self-contemplation; was I a bad person? Was that why people didn’t want to be my friend? Please don’t think I’m still bitter about this completely insignificant blip in my life. It happened before I’d found Laura, Mel or Josie and I had still relied on strangers to provide me with my self-worth. What I must tell you though is in that moment eleven years ago, I’d had my little glass world shattered for the first time and I don’t know if it was because I was so young or because I hadn’t been aware of its existence, but it hadn’t seemed so devastating then. Now much more depended on those fragile little structures in my little glass world. I suppose the one good thing about Rhiannon Jones’ ninth birthday party was that it had showed me what it would take to reduce my glass world to powder: a shocking horrible moment
of realisation that I didn’t understand a friend in the way I thought I did. That’s why I limited the number of people I allowed myself to call a friend; it was a security measure. The fewer people in my little glass world, the fewer people could smash it. Doug, Mel, Josie, Abby, Glen… they were all the sacred few who had the privilege of being able to reduce my fragile being into nothing more than pile of glittering dust. I digress, to be completely honest the reason I asked Doug to invite Kira was that I was so pathetically addicted to happiness I hated to see anyone without it. If I could get a vicarious high off Kira receiving an invitation to Cam’s party then there was nothing I wouldn’t do to ensure she got one. I wanted to bring happiness to other people because I had no idea how to bring happiness to myself.
***
Lachy’s house was laid out like most houses constructed in the seventies. You walked down a long hallway with bedrooms and bathrooms coming off until you reached the end and entered the living space which led onto the back patio. It was on this patio that we found the party and more importantly, that I found Doug. He was talking to a guy I didn’t know and had Kira hanging off his elbow, eager to interrupt at every available moment to prove how intelligent she was. I attempted a small wave in his direction but Cam bellowing my name made me look in the opposite direction and as Doug looked up, he saw Cam wrap me in a hug. “Hug” was a rather generous term for Cam’s embrace, really it involved him spreading his arms and me trying to prop his body up against mine. Cam was completely pissed.
‘Abby.’ My mouth was muffled against Cam’s shoulder yet Abby realised my distress and wrapped her arm around Cam’s stomach. We rocked him slightly backwards so he was standing again and a lazy smile appeared on his face.
‘I’msh sow glard us’e came!’ he slobbered out and I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied, ‘wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’
Lie.
Our encounter with Cam was brief; his inebriation gave him the attention span of a squirrel and the arrival of other guests duly called it. Not that I minded. Doug was standing patiently behind his older brother, waiting to give me a hug and I tried not to overthink that.
‘Hey,’ Doug said softly and I smiled up at him after our brief embrace.
‘Hey! Looks like Cam’s having fun,’ I observed and his smile widened.
‘Believe it or not he’s only been drinking for two hours,’ Doug laughed.
That wasn’t hard to believe, I had a terrible tolerance for alcohol and, considering I hadn’t eaten all day, it was possible I’d be drunk merely off the smell of it. As if sensing my vulnerability Glen reappeared with Abby by his side, they were holding shots.
‘You’re not driving so shoot it,’ Abby commanded, and though excuses did appear fleetingly in my brain, the pressure of having my friends watching made me shoot the clear liquid back. It was vodka. Gross.
‘Woo-hoo, look at you.’ Abby laughed and I tried to grin as the liquid burned through to my stomach. Glen appeared to bopping slightly to some indistinct music.
‘I fink we’sh shuld awl get drunk,’ Glen announced.
‘That sounds like a plan,’ Doug seconded and I looked briefly up to the night sky.
‘Well count me in then,’ I breathed. My completely irrelevant permission made my friends yell in delight and I winced as it drew all eyes to us, one pair belonged to Kira and, in fear of missing out, she suddenly appeared by my side.
‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.
‘We’re getting drunk,’ I explained and she grinned condescendingly.
‘Oh, well for you that’s a big thing I suppose.’
Yes, Kira, we all know you’re such a worldly, exciting person. It must take extraordinary effort to be that bitchy all the time. Abby heard Kira’s reply and she didn’t even bother to conceal her rolling eyes before dragging Doug and I into the kitchen to choose what we were going to purposefully poison ourselves with.
I’d like to be able to tell you in accurate detail everything that happened that night; it may be important at a later point but because I’m not in the habit of lying to you, you’re going to have to forgive my alcohol-holed memory. What I do remember from that night was choosing cheap white wine in the kitchen and being pulled into a line of tequila shots with Glen. I remember having a conversation about Freud with some bearded stranger and falling into the sliding door when Doug had playfully shoved me not realising how drunk I was. Doug had been horrified and spent the next five minutes apologising profusely before we’d dissolved into a fit of hysterical laughter because I’d started slurring my words. We were sitting on the couch in the living room. I had my head resting on Doug’s shoulder and was in that stage of drunkenness when my neck felt like a string of spaghetti and my head, a bowling bowl. I was too disembodied to realise Doug was holding my hand.
‘You’re my best mate,’ Doug suddenly confessed. He said my name at the end of the sentence and made it sound much more affectionate then I wanted it to. I looked at him; a gelatinous smile smeared across my face and I allowed my eyes to soften.
‘Aw, fanks, Doug. You’re not baard youshulf.’ Doug grinned at my reply. Through my glassy eyes I thought I detected the same look in his. I comfortably accepted that Doug was just as drunk as I was and like me, would struggle to remember tonight’s events in the morning.
‘I mean it; you’re my very best mate.’ Doug’s insistence on carrying on this conversation, combined with his perfect eloquence revealed that I was very wrong in my comfortable assumption. If I’d known that Doug’s confession was genuine, and not brought about by alcohol-soaked affection I wouldn’t have done what I did next. The only reason I can give you to explain my actions is that I needed to escape from this uncomfortable intimacy. I got up. I stood straight up and pulled my hand from Doug’s, snapping us both out of the moment and back into a reality where we weren’t the only people alive. Feeling the dizziness threaten to pull me back down I steadied myself by holding my arms out and managed to stay upright.
‘Want another drink?’ I enthused, pretending to act like my actions were completely innocuous.
Doug knew how drunk I was and how that made anything I did disingenuous, but his face still crumpled momentarily. I’d devastated him; I wasn’t so drunk as not to notice that. He turned his face down from mine for a second before he looked back up and allowed a deflated smile to creep back into his crushed features. My heart constricted in my chest painfully. I wanted to kneel down and take his face in my hands. I wanted to kiss him and tell him everything about me and the Blackhole, but I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was pretend that I didn’t notice how much I’d just hurt the person I… well, how much I’d hurt Doug.
‘Sure,’ he slowly replied and I twirled around. Stumbling my way to the kitchen I told myself that Doug wasn’t really hurting. That unspoken words and inconsiderate actions were incapable of destroying a person. Looking back at the couch where he was sitting, I saw Doug looking down at his hands and I couldn’t hide from it. I’d hurt him in exactly the same way I hurt myself every day. A small crack echoed in my chest. Doug please understand that I did this for you; I can’t bear to see anything hurt you, most of all me.
***
I didn’t drink anything more that night. My enduring morality had quite a sobering effect and the amount of alcohol I would need to escape the fact I’d hurt Doug would require me to have my stomach pumped. Abby had been sobering up too, she had netball in the morning so we sat with Doug and Glen as they continued to drink, and Doug and I continued to pretend that everything was exactly the same. It was past midnight when Abby decided she was sufficiently sober to drive herself home. I hated to leave Doug as he was but I still clung to the naïve belief that everything was all right between us. Yet I don’t think Doug would even notice my absence; I’d never seen him so drunk before. Abby offered to drive me to the nearest bus-stop
and I accepted, it was far better than calling Peter to come pick me up. We said goodbye to Cam and Glen, Kira offered us a disgustingly comfortable hug and I’d kissed Doug on the cheek. He held onto me tightly and for once I allowed myself to be hugged by him. It was perhaps the last chance I’d ever get and he was far too drunk to realise what he was doing. I didn’t want to be melodramatic but I was far too cynical to believe that Doug and I could continue to be as close as we were after tonight. Perhaps it was fitting this was a farewell party.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said. Doug nodded, stifled a hiccup and grabbed my hand.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he repeated. Perhaps his brain was incapable of forming his own sentences and had taken to copying mine, yet I couldn’t help but feel comforted by his reply. Maybe that meant my actions hadn’t been as catastrophic as I’d thought. Maybe Doug and I could continue to be best friends and nothing more until the day that the Blackhole disappeared. Then I could tell him everything, not just about how I felt but everything. Then he would really know me for me and any relationship we could have would be his choice. All I could do was hope he’d make the right one. Walking out of the house I felt strangely calm; the alcohol had sealed me away from my senses. That is the only excuse I can offer for why I allowed Abby to drive home when she was still clearly drunk, but I didn’t think it was possible that anything bad could happen tonight. The night felt like a dream; like time had stopped and we were unharnessed from the universe. Abby’s state made her overly cautious and we barely made it past a lazy roll down the deserted streets. I wasn’t paying attention, so it was a surprise when Abby rolled up alongside a bus stop and stopped the car. I felt myself looking out the window but not seeing anything; there was something there but my brain was too lazy to think about what it was.
‘Will you be okay here?’ Abby’s voice sounded like she was miles away and not just beside me. The silence had formed a wall between us; anything we said was slowed down and muffled as it passed through it. I nodded my head as I lazily unbuckled my seatbelt and let it recoil back to its position.
My Bed is a Blackhole Page 11