—Let’s go.
Leading me through the crowd. On Elizabeth Street we wait near a bus stop. We ride the bus to New Farm and get off on the corner of Harcourt and Brunswick streets. We walk by all these artist and hippy types.
—I’d like to live in New Farm one day, I say.
We get to a street that runs right by the Brisbane River. It has rows of old Queenslander-style houses. Billie leads me up the steps of one with Back Packers Hostel on a sign hanging above the gate. Vacancy, it reads underneath. We go into a musty-smelling foyer that looks like someone set up an office in a lounge room. A dreadlocked old bloke huffs up out of an overstuffed couch and says:
—Yeah.
—We have a stopover for a few hours, on our way to Melbourne, Billie says.
—Yeah.
—Can we get a room for a couple of hours? We could use some sleep.
He looks us both up and down.
—No bags?
—Left them in a locker at Roma Street.
—Two hours?
—Max.
—Ten bucks, drawls the dreaded man, and yanks a key off a board on the wall behind him.
He watches us creak up the stairs and huffs back to the arms of his couch. Billie-Jean has done this before; I just know it. We have sex for about an hour, using three of the condoms Billie stole from the chemist in the mall.
We do this the rest of the week. Only we don’t go to the cinema, or the city. We get off the train at Brunswick Street Station in Fortitude Valley, walk down into New Farm, pick a random backpackers’ and fuck like Adam and Eve, like all human life depends on it. We use all twenty condoms in the box.
——
On my last night at Billie-Jean’s, around midnight, she creeps into her brother’s room. She gingerly slides open the glass door onto the balcony and beckons me to follow. I get up off the guest bed and of course the damn thing creaks like a freight train on a collapsing bridge. Her bloody little brother jolts open his eyes. I figure I don’t care if he sees me going out on the balcony, so I pop a cigarette in my mouth and give him a good stare right back. So what if the little shit tells his mum he saw me smoking; my parents already gave up trying to make me quit. No smoking at Billie-Jean’s parents’ house, okay! Mum said as she waved me off on the bus.
We kiss out here on the balcony and I finger her awhile. I love how a girl’s scent lingers for hours, like a fragrant cloying mist. We make plans for our last day together.
—Let’s hang out in the Botanic Gardens, she says.
——
We set out early the next morning and catch the train into Central Station. I have my duffel bag and my old postman’s satchel with my journals and pens and everything in it. I put my bags in a locker in the subway. Tonight I have to meet with my aunty at some train station out in the deep suburbs. She takes religious fervour to a whole new dimension. Her voice has the timbre of a church organ. Repression has taken such a grip on her soul that her insides have twisted up like a pretzel. My uncle, this old coot, reminds me of an Enid Blyton character. He wears one of those tweed hats and a matching jacket with the fucken vinyl elbows. He smells like camphor and lavender and my aunty’s hairspray. All those religious zealots use so much hairspray they caused the hole in the ozone layer.
We slow-walk through the city. The Brisbane mall looms fifty times bigger than in Townsville. The Townsville mall feels abandoned, like a theme park after dark. The first time I walked through Queen Street, I’d just turned thirteen. I’d only had sex with Billie-Jean once. I dreamed of seeing her again after saying goodbye to her at that religious fruit-cake Convention. Now, three years later … this other idea, one I’ve had to work hard at suppressing, bursts out of my chest like an alien. For years I’ve pondered how precocious Billie-Jean acted that night, on a blanket beside her dad’s purple Cadillac. I wanted to believe that all city girls did it like her. But no girl I’ve come across since acted like that, in towns or in huge cities, throwing caution to the wind and initiating actual sex. And that story about her friend getting pregnant from her dad … I kind of knew, back then even … I shake my head, try to dislodge the thought. Billie-Jean gives me this strange look, says:
—What ya thinkin about?
—Nothin.
—You look … I dunno, worried?
—Sad … You know, our last day, and all.
—Oh.
Silence.
—How many letters do you reckon we’ve written each other?
—Couple thousand, she says, laughing.
I try to do the maths in my head. At least one letter a week, fifty-two weeks in a year, three years …
—One hundred and fifty-six, she says, way too fast.
—I suck at maths. They actually put me in this special education class at high school.
—What?
—Yeah. All the other kids had actual mental and physical disabilities … in wheelchairs, and shit.
—I wouldn’t tell too many people that story, she says as we pass a war-veteran-looking dude playing a saxophone.
We watch him tear it up for a while. His moustache has white bits on the droopy ends, like he dipped it in a cappuccino. Billie flips a fifty-cent coin into his hat. As we walk away, the music sounds sadder.
We get to the Botanic Gardens and sit on a grass slope with hundreds of little white flowers. Beyond shines the Brisbane River. A path down to the water. We watch the boats, share a cigarette, neither of us wanting to talk first. Billie sighs:
—I don’t know if I love you anymore … I can’t decide. And she turns her mouth down into a literal sad clown face.
I wait for a couple of seconds, to see if her words will hit my heart like an anti-aircraft shell. Nothing happens.
—I know how you feel, I say.
—What?
—I know how you feel.
—So, you don’t love me anymore?
I look into her huge blue eyes. She seems hurt.
—I dunno. Like you, sometimes I think I do, but … yeah, like you, uncertain, I guess.
—I’ve had other boyfriends … since you.
I feel paranoid for a second that she read my journal, the half-remembered names of all the girls I wrote down on the bus coming to see her. I light another cigarette.
—Same, I say.
—How many girls have you had sex with?
—Er … a few, I lie. Even a few sounds too many, in answer to a question like that.
—I’ve fucked about thirty guys.
—Thirty! I do my best not to inhale my whole cigarette. I want to look like I don’t care. Jealousy dragged me down just then, like a rip in a wild ocean, caught me by surprise. I don’t know whether I feel envious or sick, or what.
—How does that make you feel? Billie asks.
—I don’t trust Love anymore. Everyone wants her … I don’t want her. I push her away so when she leaves I will not miss her. I want to harden my armour against Love … against loss, this stupid human condition which drives me to seek out things which hurt me. Why should I fight? Just look at Cupid: he has a weapon and a benevolent smile. So yeah … I feel ambivalent … Good for you, you’ve fucked thirty dudes … Live fast, die young.
—Ambi … what?
—Ambivalent: I dunno whether to vomit or laugh.
—You talk weird. Why would you laugh?
—I dunno. Shock?
—You calling me a slut?
—No! Well … no.
—Well fuck you, she says, standing, blue eyes ferocious.
I don’t stand. She walks away, towards the path and the river beyond. I sit there, looking at her silhouette against the sky and the buildings across the water. I think for a moment about asking if her dad molested her, to see how she reacts. But this would only hurt her, whether it happened or not. I realise I�
�ve picked one of those little white flowers and I’ve actually started plucking the petals, saying, she loves me … she loves me not.
Totally disgusted with myself I dig around in my pockets for my cigarettes, only I’ve put them in Billie’s bag. The story of my life: always yearning for something slightly beyond my reach. I feel like a young Werther in a capitalist hell, or a frozen Han Solo watching Jabba the Hutt fucking my true love with his hideous tongue. Werther had the guts to shoot himself in the head. I took the journey instead. What would I write in my suicide note? I get up, feeling all wooden and creaky, and walk over to where Billie-Jean stands, pretending to watch the water-birds and the boats.
—Sorry, I say, putting my arm around her.
She doesn’t pull away, but she also doesn’t answer.
——
Before you know it, 3 pm has come around and I have to go and catch a train to meet my aunt. We walk in silence back through the city and we stand around by the ramp into Central Station, sort of scuffing about and taking interest in anything distracting. The whole city teems past us. She breaks first, says:
—I’ll come down to the platform with you.
She gives me this huge hug and we stand there holding each other for a while. The train roars in. We kiss. I get aboard and turn to wave.
—I just realised … I really do love you, she says over the hiss of the automatic doors.
2
No sooner do I get off the bus in Townsville and into my parents’ car than I feel a mixture of defeat and elation that I’ve had sex twenty times in the last week but I might never see Billie-Jean again. Then my old man starts on me. What will you do now? he asks a dozen times before I’ve even rolled down my window. He thinks I should return to Thuringowa High for Year Twelve, which starts in two weeks, despite the stabbing. Thuringowa has a new principal now, he says.
I want to put high school behind me, way behind me, so I busy myself trying to find a job. I get the newspaper off the front lawn at dawn every morning and make sure the old man sees me poring over it when he rises. If, for some reason – like an all-night jaunt – I haven’t woken before Dad, he comes into my room, like the first rays that ache through the curtains, and kicks my bed, throws the newspaper at me and tells me to put a pot of coffee on and get cracking looking for a job. I pretend to look mighty interested in the employment section until he roars off on his motorbike. When he returns, I, having spent the whole day writing or hanging at my friend Maz’s house smoking, do my best to avoid him until dinner.
——
No job offers have come in the mail. The house phone hasn’t rung. School starts next week. Dad takes me down to Thuringowa High and introduces me to the new headmaster.
—You can take him from here, he says to Mr Hargreave.
Mr Hargreave shoots Dad a concerned look. We go into his office and I throw myself into a chair.
—Tell me about yourself, he says, appraising my dishevelled countenance.
—Um.
—What plans do you have? What do you want to do when you finish school?
—I thought I’d finished school.
He shakes his head.
—Do you like girls?
—What? For a second he morphs into a Bruce, semen on his glasses. I feel sick.
—If I let you come back here, you have to make me a promise, he says, tapping a pen on his desk, trying to peer into my soul.
I don’t reply.
—Promise me you’ll concentrate on your studies and that you’ll leave the girls alone.
—Sounds like two promises.
—What?
—Nothing.
He taps his pen harder on the desk, and the lid flies off and hits the window. Beyond the glass the gardener on a ride-on mower makes his way around the school oval. I pashed girls on that oval. I got legless drunk out there on the grass. I sat with my graffiti posse there, waiting for the security guard to leave so we could murder the school.
—Tell me your plans. After school, what do you want to do?
—What I already do: write.
—What … for a newspaper, or novels, or … what?
—Poetry.
—No poet has made a living from poetry since Byron.
—Byron didn’t make a cent from poetry.
—What?
—He refused money for his poetry. Sullied the purity of his verse, he reckoned.
—I didn’t know that.
—Well now you do, I say, too sarcastically.
He humphs out of his desk chair, goes across to the window and kind of grunts over and picks up the blue pen lid from the carpet.
—That flippancy will get you nowhere. You know that, right? he says as he straightens himself up, puffing like he’s run a triathlon, not walked three steps across the room: You have to make a living somehow. This world can get nasty. He plops back down in his desk chair and the vinyl makes a hissing sound.
—Fuck the world.
—What!
—I said: Fuck. The. World.
—I know what you said … Don’t speak to me like that!
—Or what, Mr Hargreave? Or, what?
—What makes you so angry? He takes off his glasses and peers down his nose at them. He gathers up the front of his sweaty-looking shirt and rubs them vigorously. Probably wiping off the semen.
I think about my rage for a while. I have anger boiling inside me. Sometimes I look in the mirror and imagine the boys who used to beat me. Imagine fighting back, a dead disinterested look in my eyes. I smash their skulls and pull out their brains while they still breathe. I fantasise about eviscerating them, their agony as I kill them. Those boys bashing me didn’t make me angry, though wishing I could kill them sure lets off steam. I stare at Mr Hargreave and imagine a couple of expert karate chops and straight knuckle punches to his throat.
What has made me this angry? This whole damn world feels inverse and upside down. People who don’t deserve what they have have everything. Everything that tastes good … bad for you; tastes bad … good for you. Money. Don’t get me started about money. What a whore. It doesn’t care who holds it; it doesn’t care what you do with it. It’ll happily fund a charity for crippled kids or the terrorist organisation that crippled the kids in the first place. I’ve never had money. I don’t have anything. I always end up at the back of class, invisible. I spent years thinking I’d learned some neat magic trick, to make myself invisible. I have to face the truth, though. No one notices me because I don’t matter. Not even my dad notices me. I ask him a serious question and he starts up with some fucken anecdote, or shows me a cartoon in the newspaper. Dad gets angry about money a lot – you hardly see him angry, but money does it every time. In the grand scheme of things I rate pretty damn low. Just a grain of sand between the toes of someone great, a bubble in a king’s champagne, a suckerfish on a shark’s belly, a fawn in a lion’s jaws. I’ve had enough of nothing.
—Brentley?
I snap back. Mr Hargreave has his glasses on crooked. A mutant eyebrow arcs down. The drone of the ride-on mower makes me drowsy. A lone crow gives a lazy hot caw from the cricket pitch.
—What do you think, then? he asks, impatiently now.
—Okay, Mr Hargreave … You know what? Fuck you and fuck this school.
—Hem, he grunts.
I rise and he also rises, the vinyl whistling under him. He leads me out through the school and all the classrooms full of kids. They stare like a carnival has arrived. He stops abruptly at the quadrangle where Reuben stabbed Muddy. It has grass now and they’ve planted hedges to break up the space. He watches me looking around.
—Don’t ever come back here, mate, he says, pointing at the gate.
3
So I return to Kirwan High for 1988 – at least in theory. Dad insists on dropping me at school and I dutifully walk in and rig
ht out the back gate. I go to Fulton’s house. I like Fulton’s parents. We can smoke right along with them. His whole family emigrated from New Zealand a couple of years ago. Fulton only stayed in school for about six months and then dropped out to work at Coles. My dad calls him The Sheep, not only because of his origins but also because he has a portly appearance and a head of hair like wool. It has this greasy look about it too, like the dude’s scalp produces lanolin. Fulton’s mother shares my fascination with tarot cards. I love sitting on their lounge-room floor with her, smoking cigarettes and reading fortunes.
——
Kirwan High called my dad and told him of my zero attendance status. Now Dad keeps me at home, poring over the job ads and cold-calling people for work. Salvation will only come if I get a job. The phone rings in the house. A German dude invites me to his bakery to interview me for the role of apprentice baker. I tell Dad. Dad shrugs and doesn’t even look up from his James Bond novel.
Mum drives me a few suburbs north to Mount Louisa. The boss looks like an anorexic fascist. When he stalks around his giant bakery-kitchen-factory-thing, he has a gait that must’ve resulted from a motorcycle accident or a stint in the Hitler Youth. For some reason, he cuts me off before I can answer his rapid-fire questions. He tells my mum I have the job and to make sure I get here at zero-three-hundred on the dot.
—Zis iz hart verk … Does zeus haz ze gumptionz fir zis hart verk? he shouts at me.
——
I hate people who use the word gumption. My dedicated parents take turns driving me to work at three in the morning, Monday to Friday. We have only one car: a poo-brown Commodore station wagon. Dad says bronze, but no.
My day starts with firing up the ovens. Then I have to follow precise instructions and dump half a tonne of mince and chopped-up mushrooms and onion and filler-grunge stuff into a huge pot that has wheels and a petrol pump kind of thing sticking out the side. As soon as the ovens get hot and the pie-mix starts cooking, the nausea comes on. Every day this happens. Then I spend an hour lining up pie tins in a precise symmetry. If I get it wrong, the Nazi says I have to pay for all the pies I’ve fucked up. All the while the bakers mix dough in machines and stand over in the corner watching me do all the work. They roll out the dough and I press it into the tins. Then I drag the huge cooking pot on wheels up and down, pumping a splurt of mince into each tin.
Scoundrel Days Page 10