——
I swear I don’t know how it happened. I come to, I mean, sort of fade back, right in the middle of having sex! I don’t remember getting back to my room or getting undressed and making out. Now, Cali, moaning. I decide not to think about it, at least for now, because the hot blonde notices me getting all thoughtful. One moment, thrusting like a possessed animal, now the human’s come back in and ruined everything. We lie there, spent, and I get up and flick my zippo so I don’t stumble over anything, and – damn it to hell – my roommates start clapping. I assumed Cali and I had the room, so I stand there, naked, condom still on. Three dudes cheering.
——
The weeks pass like the tides that lift the hotel. No sooner do I get my land legs back than I find myself boarding the catamaran back out to work. Cali scares me sometimes. She has it in her mind that we’ll end up getting married. I don’t know how this happened. Perhaps when, at a party recently, she told me all her friends think of me as a keeper, I shouldn’t have raised my glass and said to the future then. I should have said until someone sexier comes along. I have feelings for her, and all, but every time I go out with Reuben, we pick up chicks and I don’t feel guilty.
As everything does, everything changes. This new manager has come to live on board the hotel. They call him a manager but I know what administrators do. He calls a staff meeting. The whole hotel sits there as the new manager tells us the place has gone bust. The tourists stopped coming when the novelty wore off. He says to expect a massive last few weeks on the hotel, because as soon as they announce to the press they’ve sold the hotel to a Japanese company, all the tourists will come rushing to get a look before it leaves. The thing that sucks: my shift finishes three days before the hotel closes. I will miss the closing party.
——
The night of the closing party, in the city with Reuben, figuring I’ll have a good time anyway, despite my paranoia that Cali, who has the right shift and therefore can attend the party, has said some other dude’s name a bit too frequently lately. Jacques – this French bastard whom all the girls love – has a reputation for sleeping with the female guests, and I heard a rumour he gets paid for that.
I see this chick, and wow. Sitting there at The Terrace nightclub, down on the water, watching the volary of women – they all dress so similar, dance the same. Shuffle shuffle shuffle, lift left heel, little backward kick. Clop clop clop. I can hear their high heels on the tiled dance floor over the music. Then, this crazy little chick dancing like a pop star. She sure doesn’t look over eighteen. She has black teased-up hair, sixties eye make-up and a tiny black dress with circles cut out of the sides – paired with Doc Martens boots! Girls in this town have never heard of Sinéad O’Connor. They definitely wouldn’t dress like her if they did. I wonder where she comes from? Melbourne, Sydney. I haven’t seen chicks this cool in Brisbane. I bet she comes from Europe, Paris even. I figure I have nothing to lose so I slaunt right up and say hi.
I find her incredibly engaging. I can’t remember what I say, but I learn she has recently arrived in this backwash from Perth. I can’t remember her name because, damn it, too much whisky.
——
So the hotel has closed. I spend the weekend hanging out at this resort where Cali works now. We’ve started going out and getting drunk a lot. She works at the Lakes Holiday Park all day and I don’t have a job, so I hang out with Reuben in the city, playing chess mainly. Now and again Gigolo comes along. I think he’s fallen down on his game. He doesn’t come across so suave and stylish anymore. Running with this posse of real pretenders, who all think they come out of the Bronx, Gigolo has started taking bigger risks. He tags right where he sits, air smelling of spray-paint, like he wants to attract the cops. I haven’t tagged anything since high school finished.
Anyway, I go to the bank in the city mall and I have only a couple hundred bucks left in my account. All those months’ work, getting a good wage, and I don’t have a thing to show for it. I may as well spend the two hundred bucks and show Cali a good time. So I rent a room at the Sheraton casino on the breakwater and book a table for two in the restaurant. We get drunk, have sex countless times, gamble in the casino and get room service. Our suite has these king-looking fluffy bathrobes with the casino logo. We steal them. Cali says I’ll put these in my glory box, for when we get married, as she spirits them away. She scares me.
——
I found out from this punk at the chess set in the city you can make okay money picking vegetables. About a hundred and twenty ks south of Townsville you’ll find hundreds of farms, run by Italians mainly. You can take your pick. They put you up and pay twenty bucks a day. I tell my old man at dinner and he reckons he’ll join me. Dad’s left the police force now; done his twenty years, he said. Typical baby boomer: he waited until I’d finished school to hand in his badge. As luck would have it, on 1 October he has to drive to Brisbane for a bunch of job interviews! I reckon we’ll travel down with the old man, chip in for a caravan park with him, go and explore the city for a day or two and buy U2 tickets for the concert on the 4th. Perfect. I inform Fulton of the brilliant plan.
Not much happens on the farm in Gumlu. This grizzled old Italian farmer with skin like droopy tanned leather darts around us like a prize-fighter when my dad, Fulton and I arrive and ask for work. He says we can weed his eggplant plantations in the afternoon and pick rock melons in the early dawn. A hard day’s work for a good day’s pay, I always say, he drawls with the air of a backyard Aristotle. Broods of peasant-looking women sit under the eaves of a huge tractor shed, sipping from flasks, digging around in sandwich bags, eyeballing us. We have to stay in a beat-to-shit caravan at the back of the tractor shed. The only good news, the punk at the chess set in Townsville got it wrong. The farmer says he’ll pay Fulton and me eight bucks an hour and my old man twelve bucks an hour. We go to get our bags and stuff from the car, but the bastard says, No, no, do that later, after a hard day’s work.
The whole experience goes from terrible to catastrophic. My ingrown toenail that I developed the first time I went hitchhiking with Reuben becomes infected from standing in mud. Every ten minutes I end up with a gnarly-looking spider or some damn stingy thing in my clothes. The seriously dehydrated beef-jerky bastard of a farmer comes out into the eggplants at least a thousand times a day and shouts his proletariat mantra at us from the back of his truck.
About a dozen Italian women work in the field next to us, picking zucchinis. Most of the time they stand about laughing and nattering and smoking cigarettes. Then, when they see the dust trail of the farmer coming, they work harder than anyone on earth. The farmer climbs up on his truck, wearing football shorts without underwear, and his balls – like an old leather wallet – hang down damn near his knees.
We do this for two months, five days a week. We drive the hour back to Townsville on Friday afternoon, and back down here on Sunday afternoon. At this rate of pay I figure we could easily get the worst seats in the house at the U2 concert.
We have to rush in from the fields when thunderstorms roll in from the ocean. The fucken fauna-infested caravan leaks when it rains and everything inside floats in an inch of water. I lose a journal, two years’ worth of poems and fragments and scribbles and crap. The only thing in there I will miss: an impressive sketch of Billie-Jean, naked on an overstuffed lumpy bed in a backpackers’ hostel in Brisbane. I captured the curve of her thigh and the cigarette smoke curling up in the late-afternoon New Farm light perfectly. I used a stubby carpenter’s pencil I found in the Fortitude Valley subway. My waterlogged journal swells up like a dead possum in the sun. The good thing about this, I guess: my old man seems pretty relaxed the whole time. He doesn’t give me grief about smoking, or anything.
——
Today we unceremoniously quit our jobs. Fulton and I feel pretty excited about going to Brisbane to see U2. We spent the months in the fields picking weeds and trying to out-si
ng each other, mostly U2 songs. I like ‘Angel of Harlem’. If you want to know the truth of it, though, I have an awful singing voice. When God asked Awesome voice?, I thought he said I have no choice, and I told him to go fuck himself.
I suspect Dad has some new tactic in his arsenal against me. He seems way too tolerant lately. He stayed cool the whole time on the farm and now he even says Fulton and I can smoke in the car as we drive to Brisbane. Out of respect, we hang our arms so far out into the hundred and twenty kilometre per hour wind that the glow goes out. He tells us to not do that in case we spark a bush fire. It hasn’t rained here in a decade, and he says this like only an ex-cop can. So we end up only smoking when we stop for lunch or to piss or whatever, even though he seemed the coolest father around by saying we could smoke in the goddamn car. We don’t want to bear the responsibility of burning down hundreds of farms and maybe even killing people. Clever.
The ever-evolving factories and freeway billboards on the outskirts of Brisbane flicker in. The trees get sparse. We pull in to a caravan park, close as Dad can find to the Boondall entertainment centre, where U2 will blow us away in a few days’ time. Fulton and I feel pretty cashed up. I have five hundred bucks and Fulton has six hundred and fifty, because his parents don’t make him pay rent. We want to explore the city right away, but the old man’s cool sheen wears off at that point and he makes us stay, because the sun has already started setting. I think Dad fears for Fulton’s safety, not mine. Fulton and I bum around the park all night, walk by the caravans scoping for cute chicks. We play some ping-pong in the recreation room, until the manager of the park, who lives right there in a room in the next building, comes and shoos us out.
We get out of the caravan park early as Dad has his job interviews. He drops Fulton and me at the train and we get tickets for Central Station, only we get on the wrong train. I don’t realise for a few stops until I notice out the window the city disappearing behind us. We get off, Fulton losing his confidence in me with every moment that passes. We wait for a train that goes in the right direction. We make it to Central Station, passing through Fortitude Valley. I want to get off there but I figure it makes more sense to get off there on the way back, to save cash on train tickets. Fulton wants to go to McDonald’s. We sit eating cheeseburgers, watching the pretty girls going by, smoke a couple dozen cigarettes and drink about forty Cokes each. Then, as we get up to go to the ticket place, I can’t believe who comes along, hands dug down in his pockets, all dressed in denim, some gang-looking patches on his jacket, hair in a greased quiff.
—Harley! I shout across the concourse, scaring Fulton and a group of shoppers walking by.
Harley lowers his Ray-Bans, and crinkles that infamous scar he has right between his eyes. We go to shake hands. It ends up in one of those bro-hugs that result in you slapping each other’s back. I introduce Fulton, and Harley flops down and lights a cigarette with a cool-looking zippo. Harley looks at Fulton with those frozen eyes, like an arctic wolf sizing up prey. He has a vicious beauty. His fighting prowess saved my balls the first day I met him. Many, many times he saved me getting beaten to death at school. He studied Rhee Tae Kwon Do back then. He had a black belt with three dans. I might have said that wrong. A three-dan black belt? Something like that anyway. Harley dedicated himself to martial arts – and wow, can he fight.
Harley’s decided to come with us to see U2, so we go and buy tickets. The ticket chick tells us the 4th has sold out and so has the 3rd. So we can only get tickets for tonight. She offers us three seats in a row, which amazes us, but when she shows us the seating map, they obviously suck. They look down at the back left of the stage. I say to the chick, Can you do better? And she laughs at me. Harley laughs at me too, saying at all the concerts he goes to in this place you get a good view from wherever you sit.
We buy them, not exactly spoiled for choice. I know, though, that U2 has a wall of Marshall speakers twelve feet high, and from the angle of our seats we won’t see the band. I complain like this for a bit until Harley gets bored and starts giving Fulton shit about his Kiwi accent. We amuse ourselves giving Fulton shit for a while. We head back to McDonald’s and grab a table on the concourse.
Harley has a wad of cash, rolled up gangster style with a big red rubber band around it.
—Where’d ya steal that from? I stub out my cigarette.
Fulton looks concerned again. Poor Fulton, fresh from Sheep Island. The whole of New Zealand has fewer people than Sydney.
—Me job, sneers Harley.
—Yeah?
—Dealin.
—Yeah? What?
—Weed.
—You have weed!
Harley gestures for me to drop the volume.
—Sorry, man.
—Yeah, I always have weed.
And then, in total contradiction to looking paranoid about talking too loud, he pulls out a tobacco tin full of weed and rolls up three huge joints, right there. Not with any subtlety either. He spends some time toasting the cigarette with his zippo to make the tobacco fall out easier, crumbling up the buds on the table, rolling slowly.
—Fuck, I haven’t had a smoke since I last saw my friend Reuben. I don’t think you met him; you left before he showed up.
Harley carries on crumbling weed on the laminated table at McDonald’s in the middle of the busy concourse.
—Nah, didn’t meet him.
—Lives on weed … Actually lives on it.
We walk around the Queen Street Mall all day, try to sneak into a few pubs but get refused service every time. As the clock in King George Square chimes six, Harley says he’ll pay for us to get a cab from the city out to the concert.
——
In the taxi Harley starts on about how his father hates U2 because he served twenty years in the British Army.
—Besides, Harley says, ashing his cigarette out the window: I prefer the support, BB King, anyway.
Harley has the cab driver drop us outside the gates of the entertainment centre. We stand out here blatantly smoking the joints Harley rolled for us, in front of all the traffic pulling in to the car park. Fulton takes a bum-puff and gets all ashen-looking. Harley and I share Fulton’s joint, and then we walk down the road to see U2.
We get through the gates and into the building. Fulton and I look as stoned as garden gnomes. Harley has an extra lilt in his swagger. The ticket dude snatches our stubs and completely ignores me when I ask if I can keep mine for a souvenir. How else will I remember 1989? As suspected, our seats have a crap view. We sit down just as the crowd leaps up, cheering, and BB King ambles onstage.
The audience fidget and look around, but BB King blows my mind. The dude has the bluesiest voice possible. Even though I only see a glimpse of him when he turns to acknowledge us plebs, simply the way he holds his guitar has me mesmerised. Then an interval, and loads of people get up to head out to the bar. Harley reckons we should kick back and have a cigarette right here. He pulls out a hipflask of Jack Daniel’s. By the time the crowd starts milling back in, I feel pretty toasted. Stoned and drunk.
Then Bono hurtles out of the wings on the haunting organ riff of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. The crowd goes fucken wild. My ears crackle from the screams and the whoops. The guitar picks up. Then, as the drums roll, the lights burst on and we see the band has snuck onto the stage. Bono starts singing, and fuck me if the whole place doesn’t explode into absolute rapture. Where the streets have no fucken names … fuck yeah. As Bono croons the lyric about love turning to rust, I realise I haven’t thought about Billie-Jean at all since I got to Brisbane. Wow. She loves U2. It wouldn’t surprise me to see her here; it really wouldn’t. I haven’t thought about Cali, either. I do find myself thinking about that crazy little chick I saw at The Terrace. Weird. I wish I could remember her name.
Feeling pretty fucked up, I sit down. But then the riff to ‘I Will Follow’ starts and it picks me r
ight back up. I leap to my feet – fuck greening out and missing U2! That signature riff. You can only appreciate it at a trillion decibels. It cuts right through me. And Bono standing there crooning in his whisky-smooth voice, dressed in his tasselled leather jacket and huge boots. What a fucken rock star.
They play a bunch of medley-type stuff and unfortunately one of the medleys has ‘With or Without You’ in it. I’ve cried myself to sleep listening to that song. And then, when you think it couldn’t get any better, BB King comes ambling out again and he and Bono sing ‘Angel of Harlem’. Total fanatical behaviour ensues. Then they sing ‘When Love Comes to Town’ and the place gets screamed down. Fuck I feel wasted. I hold myself up against the chair in front. Then the King and Bono sing ‘Love Rescue Me’. Everyone pulls out their cigarette lighters and waves flames above their heads. I can’t help but attempt to sing along.
U2 leave the stage and come back on a few times, the crowd stomping, screaming more, more, more, louder and louder. They play ‘All I Want Is You’. I don’t know if I like it. It seems a poor attempt to imitate the awesomeness of ‘With or Without You’.
Harley suggests we get the hell out of there before the crowd bedlams. I’ve kind of had enough anyway, three encores and all. So Fulton and Harley and I get up and hightail it into the cool Brisbane night. My ears clang like a school bell. We stand around shouting our reviews, smoking cigarettes. Fulton, thoroughly rooted, now looks wispy, for a fat kid.
—I wanna go back to the caravan park, Fulton says, yawning.
—Come out to my house in Ormeau Town to smoke more weed and drink tequila.
—I dunno, Harley. Ormeau Town sounds kind of far away, I reply.
—Yeah, about halfway to the Gold Coast, Harley says, with a shrug: We’ll jump on a train, get a cab up into the hills and get fucked up.
—What about your parents?
His dad doesn’t fuck around. He clipped me on the ear on more than one occasion.
Scoundrel Days Page 13