Truck Stop

by Lachlan Philpott

  AISHA: Then. Saturday night, just getting dark.

  Mum and I walk down our street, Mum asks who Kelly is and why a girl I hardly know would invite me to a slumber party, there’s this dog. From nowhere this dog. Teeth and barking and it jumps at us, Mum reaches for my hand, grips it, stands between me and the dog. Mum protects me even though she is scared. She stares at the dog like it’s some demon. Then this old man appears, grabs it by the collar.

  We get to Kelly’s door. Me with a bottle of creaming soda.

  Mum behind me. Music inside and shrieking.

  KELLY: Oh my fucking god!

  AISHA: The door flies open /

  KELLY: We found a picture of Justin Beiber nude online

  SAM: He hasn’t got pubes.

  AISHA: Then them both looking at me and my mum.

  KELLY: Hello.

  AISHA: This is my mum. Mum, this is Sam and Kelly.

  SAM/KELLY: The skanks.

  AISHA: Mum shuffles her feet, pokes me in the back as a prompt. My mum wants to meet yours. She says she needs to meet her or I can’t…

  KELLY: MUM!

  MUM!

  She’s with Bruce.

  AISHA: Hear the TV get turned down, then footsteps. Kelly’s mum comes to the door, wears a porn star t-shirt, I hope Mum doesn’t read it, what it says.

  CHARMAINE: I’m Charmaine.

  AISHA: She’s younger than my mum but looks tired. Dark rings under her eyes.

  She doesn’t invite mum in.

  Leads her out the front.

  They’re next to one of the cars that sits like a big fish in the long grass.

  Whose cars are those?

  KELLY: They were Dad’s.

  SAM: Look at your mum, what’s she saying?

  SAM and KELLY laugh, AISHA cringes.

  AISHA: She’s shaking her head a little and looking down at her feet.

  CHARMAINE: Go on girls, inside.

  AISHA: Mum calls me over and kisses me, whispers to call her if…doesn’t matter what time. Then Kelly and Sam pull me inside, slam the door.

  Why’d you say the skanks thing?

  KELLY: Joke.

  SAM: Irony.

  KELLY: Yeah.

  SAM: Like when wogs call themselves wogs.

  KELLY: Or fags.

  SAM: Jocks.

  KELLY: Geeks.

  AISHA: Mum doesn’t get irony.

  We watch youtube. Some prank film with school boys and snakes.

  SAM/KELLY/AISHA: Look at the snake!

  KELLY: Bruce at the door tells us /

  BRUCE: Keep it down.

  KELLY: [under her breath] Fuck off.

  BRUCE: What did you just say?

  KELLY: Nothing.

  SAM: He live here now?

  KELLY: He’s such a loser.

  SAM: And ugly as.

  KELLY: Mum doesn’t even like him he’s just a rebound fuck. She still calls Love Song Dedications about Dad.

  AISHA: On youtube, some girl who didn’t know she was pregnant gives birth to twins in a mall in America.

  SAM: I’m gonna be a film star.

  KELLY: Like her?

  SAM: As if!

  KELLY: You don’t even do Drama.

  SAM: So? We should have done a skank film. With Nat. In that abandoned motel. Uploaded it. Could have been a slasher film, all the ugly girls die first then the hot killer dude comes after me.

  KELLY: Why are you last?

  SAM: I wonder.

  AISHA: Why is it always about being hot for a guy?

  SAM: You serious?

  AISHA: Yeah.

  SAM and KELLY pass a look.

  KELLY: Want a Cruiser Aisha?

  SAM: Have one it’s okay.

  AISHA: No. I’m alright.

  KELLY: Mum got them for us. Go on.

  AISHA takes one.

  AISHA: And we’re back online hunting Justin Beiber’s penis but it isn’t him at all, hair all wrong.

  SAM: What’s your favourite movie Aisha?

  KELLY: Ours is Pretty Woman. It’s totally retro but /

  SAM: Let’s watch it.

  KELLY: Let’s get pizza.

  AISHA: In the slow bits of the film we talk about / prostitutes.

  SAM/KELLY: Prostitutes.

  KELLY: You tell the story of your brother’s mate, Dario. The ugly one. How he was still a virgin and everyone knew ’cause he was fat and ugly and how on his eighteenth they took him up to the industrial and told him they’d all put in. Pay for him to lose it that night, so he could be happy.

  SAM: They cruise along, all of them in a car and let him pick whatever one he wants.

  And he picks one that looks okay outside the car but once they get her inside she stinks and when she speaks she sounds rough as and she makes a joke that isn’t even funny and smiles and she’s missing a tooth right in the front but it’s too late then ’cause Dario’s picked and he’s agreed—that was the deal. Once he’s chosen no piking. He has to go through with it.

  So they drive him to the park. All his mates get out of the car and leave him in the back with / the hooker.

  KELLY/AISHA: The hooker.

  SAM: His mates sit at a picnic table drinking beer but they can see he’s just sitting in the car next to the hooker not doing nothing but talking.

  And so they go back and tell him they didn’t pay for him to talk to her, to get a move on and fuck her. They make him start while they watch. They tell her go down on him. They get him to grab her head and push it down on his cock, fuck her face they yell and they film it, his hands pushing down her head, him pushing her legs up, her high heels tapping the back of the window near the bulldogs sticker. Then they open the back door and film him doing it to her.

  KELLY: Poor chick.

  SAM: You reckon?

  KELLY: Yeah.

  SAM: She got paid. So what?

  KELLY: But…

  Pause.

  What would it feel like to make money from sex?

  SAM: It’d be ok.

  KELLY/AISHA: No.

  SAM: It would. You could be in control of it.

  KELLY: How? Like Dario with that chick?

  SAM: Not like that. If I did it I’d be classy.

  AISHA: Like Julia Roberts?

  SAM: Guys are just gagging for it and you can hold back or you can make them cum in three minutes flat for what…

  KELLY: The money. We could afford to buy whatever shit we wanted, clothes, sunglasses

  SAM: Cocktails, concert tickets…

  KELLY: Go into the city on weekends.

  SAM: How much would you charge?

  KELLY: Twenty bucks?

  SAM/AISHA: Twenty bucks?

  KELLY: I don’t know… forty?

  SAM: Better than selling donuts.

  KELLY: I guess.

  SAM: Easier.

  KELLY: What would you call yourself?

  SAM: I’d be Princess.

  KELLY: Princess who?

  SAM: Just Princess… what about you?

  KELLY: Chilli. Hot Chilli.

  SAM: Sick! What about you Aish?

  AISHA: I don’t know.

  SAM: Oh come on.

  AISHA: I don’t know.

  SAM: Jai hoe.

  Knock at the door.

  ALL: Pizza!

  SAM: Hope the pizza dude’s hot.

  KELLY: He’s not. He’s all pimpled. Looks worried.

  SAM: I play a trick on him.

  Sorry but we didn’t order pizza.

  AISHA: He looks at the docket over and over again until Sam bursts out laughing.

  SAM: Got ya!

  KELLY: Pay him./

  SAM: Slam the door in his face.

  AISHA: That was mean.

  SAM: He’s a pizza guy. So what?

  AISHA: And later, watching Channel V, Katy Perry licking ice creams and popsicles Sam says:

  SAM: Aisha.

  AISHA: What?

  SAM: Your last name is / Nadu right?

  AISHA: Na
du right.

  SAM: You have the same initials as Nat did. Nat Archer. Aisha Nadu. Just reverse.

  AISHA: Kelly rolls off the couch and jumps up on the coffee table says:

  KELLY: Oh my fucking god!

  AISHA: And we all look at each other, cold pizza sweats, music blares, heater full blast and Sam says it.

  SAM: S-K-A-N-K-S. We can be the skanks again.

  We see a movie made that night made by AISHA. KELLY and SAM scull Cruisers. They dance and scream on top of a rusty car.

  AISHA alone.

  AISHA: Then.

  Dad in a taxi. His other job.

  I say to him that’s not why we came here, Mum puts a box of tissues out for the passengers says /

  INDHU: It’s just for a little while. Until…

  AISHA: Dad’s tying Ganesh to the mirror.

  INDHU: For protection.

  AISHA: Protection for who? And Mum says /

  INDHU: Everyone needs protection.

  AISHA: Dad waves to us as he drives off, wet stains in the armpits of his blue uniform.

  How will Ganesh protect Dad, Mum? If some guy gets in the car and threatens Dad with a knife what’s Ganesh going to do? Wave a rat at him?

  INDHU shakes her head.

  INDHU: You are not to say those things.

  AISHA: You mean things that are / true?

  SAM: Truth.

  INDHU: Things that show no respect.

  KELLY: Dare.

  INDHU: Things that make you sound like…

  SAM/KELLY: Double dog dick dare.

  INDHU: Go inside and study.

  AISHA goes.

  We hear flies.

  SAM: Then.

  KELLY: Us.

  SAM/KELLY: Tuesday. Recess.

  KELLY: People saying Trent got with Brittany.

  SAM: Which Brittany?

  KELLY: The slutty faced one who works at Boost.

  SAM: That dog. Who’d touch her?

  KELLY: Um, Trent. And I heard Trent emailed Darren pictures of your tits.

  SAM: Darren?

  KELLY: Yeah.

  SAM: Hot Darren or rat-tail Darren.

  KELLY: Rat-tail.

  SAM: Yuck.

  KELLY: Stop sending Trent shit.

  You can trace it you know. Phone companies keep records.

  SAM: They do not.

  KELLY: They do.

  SAM: So what? Like have you seen how many tits are online? Who’s gonna be trawling through all of them to find mine Kelly? Some old pedo at Vodafone?

  KELLY: Dump him.

  SAM: I will. But… I like him. He’s in Year Ten and…

  KELLY: He treats you like a whore.

  SAM: He’s alright.

  KELLY: It’s my job. Like as your best friend and all to watch out for you.

  SAM: Yeah yeah.

  KELLY: We made that deal like what they said in class. Look out for your mates. Protect them. Talk. And if something’s going wrong /

  SAM: Don’t tell me what to do. I can make my own decisions.

  KELLY: Then…

  SAM: Don’t want to be single.

  KELLY: There’s other guys.

  SAM: I love him.

  KELLY: Does he love you?

  Does he?

  SAM: He says he does.

  KELLY: When?

  SAM: Kel…

  KELLY: What? When you and Trent /

  SAM: What?

  KELLY: Fuck.

  SAM: We do not fuck.

  KELLY: What do you do then? Make love?

  They laugh.

  Do you use rubbers?

  SAM: Yes.

  KELLY: Do you?

  SAM: Gonna go on the pill.

  Don’t look at me like that. Hey how’s this? Trent reckons we should have a threesome.

  KELLY: That’s bullshit.

  SAM: You jealous?

  KELLY: A threesome? What you want to do that for?

  SAM: What you want to do that for?

  KELLY: Don’t be a bitch.

  SAM: Guys love it, spice shit up. You know, like meet someone at a party, show each other your junk…

  KELLY: A girl?

  SAM: As if Trent’d do it with a guy.

  KELLY: So you’d…

  SAM: Yeah.

  KELLY: Do you even like /

  SAM: It’s not about that Kelly.

  Feel left out? Get a boyfriend.

  KELLY: Yeah, easy.

  SAM: You’re not that bad.

  Don’t know why you’d bother. Teenage boys are hopeless, not like in the movies. When Trent and I first started, he kissed like a salmon.

  He’s more sensual now.

  KELLY: What? Like a shark?

  SAM: Funny. Someone older might have their own place.

  KELLY: What do you mean?

  SAM: With school boys there’s nowhere to do it. Like I can hardly just come home and say oh hey Mum and Dad Trent’s here and he’s really horny and I’ll be out for dinner in a minute, I just got to give him head.

  Trent wants to do it everywhere.

  KELLY: Like where?

  SAM: You know.

  KELLY: No.

  SAM: Like he took me into the disabled toilets at Westfield once said get down on your knees and suck my cock.

  KELLY: At Westfield?

  SAM: Imagine it. Some cripple needs a shit and… you know… I didn’t want to. Not there. It always leads to the same thing with Trent. And I don’t want to…

  Down on your knees bitch and suck. Like we are in some porno. Says stuff, swears and shit. He spat on me.

  Jessica Tovey as Kelly in the 2012 Q Theatre production at the Seymour Centre. (Photo © Amanda James)

  KELLY looks shocked.

  SAM: And I spat back. In his eye and I told him not to say shit like that again and if he did /

  KELLY: I don’t know why you stay with him.

  We hear truck drivers on a CB, everyday banter with static and interference. KELLY returns to the picnic table. Waits with a plastic cup of water.

  KELLY: Now.

  In the clinic waiting room.

  Fluorescent lights off, me alone.

  Flick through a magazine pictures of the Kardashians, tennis players, soapie stars and their ugly looking kids, nurse passes, smiles, flicks the light on says: /

  NURSE: You’ll go blind if you read in the dark love.

  KELLY: Smell perfume, then these two women walk in.

  Look real glamorous at first, but then under the light…

  One of them is in pink but it’s spattered with blood, tattoo of a leopard on her calf, long bleached hair, split ends.

  Other one’s skinny and isn’t in much at all. Her body shakes and she’s crying. Her eyes red and her head shakes, back and forth she’s saying / I can’t believe he did that to me,

  SEX WORKER: I can’t believe he did that to me—

  KELLY: Her friend reaches out to hold her hand and I see bruises up her skinny arms.

  She looks at me and opens her mouth, is about to say something, I can see her rotten teeth.

  Josie comes to the door, looks at them, then at me,

  JOSIE: Kelly.

  KELLY: I look back at those two women under the flicking light.

  JOSIE: What did she say to you?

  KELLY: Is she okay?

  Her friend… Are they prostitutes?

  JOSIE: We don’t use that term here Kelly. Sex workers.

  How are you today?

  KELLY: It’s cleared up.

  JOSIE: Good. Most of the tests are back. There was an infection. It should be fine now but I’d like to check. Take off your pants and lie back on the bed.

  KELLY: I hate this. Pants down, I lie on that bed and stare up at the ceiling.

  The sex worker’s shouting something down the hall like she’s gone crazy.

  JOSIE: Okay. Looks fine Kelly. But you know that / there is still the window period.

  KELLY: There is still the window period. Yes.

  JOSIE:
I’d like you to talk to the councellor.

  KELLY: Don’t want to.

  JOSIE: Why is that?

  KELLY: Just don’t.

  JOSIE: You are under the age of consent Kelly. You could /

  KELLY: What? Report them?

  JOSIE: Yes. It’s illegal. You could talk to the police or /

  KELLY: I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t drunk or out of control. I just did it. They had money and I took it. I just let them do it. And I don’t want to talk to anyone else about it.

  Can I go?

  KELLY now sits in front of the television staring. We hear some mindless American talk show which morphs into loud white noise.

  SAM: Then

  AISHA: In the middle of Maths

  KELLY: Miss going on about surds and indices then / BANG.

  SAM/AISHA: BANG.

  KELLY: An explosion outside. / Something’s happened.

  SAM/AISHA: Something’s happened.

  AISHA: Like what happened on the trains.

  KELLY: Like the World Trade Towers.

  SAM: Like an action movie, extras catch alight and burn alive.

  SAM/KELLY: Something’s happened.

  AISHA: No bell ringing, no announcement, nothing at all.

  SAM: And you can see on Miss’ face she wants to find out what just blew up /

  KELLY: We just walk, calm from the classroom towards the hill that overlooks the road.

  SAM/KELLY/AISHA: Truck on its side.

  SAM: Driver stands in the dirt by the side of the road, shakes his head.

  AISHA: Skid marks, wheels spin.

  KELLY: Dead dog in a pool of blood.

  SAM: One less mutt to scare you Aish.

  AISHA: Back doors of the truck open and boxes everywhere.

  KELLY: It’s a Cadbury truck!

  SAM/KELLY/AISHA: Chocolate.

  SAM: OMG. Can we…

  KELLY: Miss mouth wide open, thinks the same thing as us you can see but /

  SAM: Then Miss Rowse is behind us yelling /

  ROWSE: Go back to class right now, on the double or you can have detention for a term.

  SAM: What about Miss, Miss?

  KELLY: And then after school.

  SAM: Word of the crash spread like Ebola.

  Let’s go out and watch Kel. Just us two.

  KELLY: Dog gone and the truck as well just skid marks on the road.

  SAM: Some moron boys from Year Seven fossick on the edge of the highway for chocolate find a couple of smarties, hold them up like nuggets of gold.

  KELLY: Wonder if the family know the dog’s dead yet?

  SAM: Wonder if he’ll get sacked.

  KELLY: The truckie?

  SAM: Yeah.