In the middle of the yard the surfies hung on their girls, drinking warm beer and flicking their peroxide-blond curls and banging skulls to the grungier riffs. Some of the fitter surfer boys had their shirts off, displaying their olive skin, tattoos and pierced nipples. Their girlfriends threw back Subzero spritzers, leathery sunstruck breasts popping out of their Hot Tuna bikini tops. The geeks, dorks and Asians gathered in one corner, drunk for the second time in their lives. On the driveway by the shed the gothics sat in a circle comparing leaves, their minds willingly kidnapped by LSD. Under the eucalyptus tree by the water feature the ravers bounced from side to side in their striped shirts and floppy pants, sucking on Chupa Chups, practising their moves and staying positive. In the lounge room the Samoans passed the footy around, skimming the expensive lamps and chandeliers, fiddling with their cocks as they released the ball. In the kitchen the Italians compared watches, finding coffee in the cupboards and talking about going for a drive. In the front room the fat kids played Commodore 64 and ate nachos, engulfed in puffy beanbags.
By the shed, Matthew Updike appeared to be eating Renee Gulliano’s face with every gulp of his fat lips. His elbow yanked her face to his, restricting any movement on her part, and with his right arm he was seemingly digging into her groin, elbow going up then down as if pumping for water. Renee was being manhandled by a novice, mauled by a piped-up young animal. Eight percent of her face and body seemed to be enjoying it, while the other ninety-two percent was hanging on for dear life. It was impossible to tell whether her gasps were cries for help or signs of delight. Updike ploughed on regardless; this was the best night of his life.
‘It’s like he’s trying to pull a small calf out of her,’ Stuart commented.
‘How could she go there with that fat shit?’
‘Walk away, Braithwaite, walk away.’
And they were about to, when a half-cut Sarah Kirkwood and the ever-coquettish Kyla Druid appeared before us wielding two fully loaded Vodka Super Duper Water Squirters.
‘Do you guys know Kyla? She’s my second cousin!’
‘Yeah yeah yeah, we knew that!’ Gordon and Stu lied in chorus.
‘Aaaaaanyway, we think you guys are pussies and were wondering if you pussies would challenge us to a vodka battle! We may look cute…’
Stuart couldn’t help but groan in delight, and soon they were all heading over to the south-eastern corner of the lush, over-manicured backyard for a two-on-two vodka duel. I watched them moving away from me – my best mate, my oldest mate, and two girls with bright purple guns – and it felt strangely appropriate.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Courtney said.
In less than seventeen minutes the (Mitsubishi) ecstasy tablet had entered my bloodstream and filled it with serotonin (joy and passion), driving me to piggyback my girlfriend up two flights of white-carpeted stairs, down the hallway, round the corner past the study and onto the floor of Sarah Kirkwood’s younger brother Murray’s room (he was away at a rugby union camp in the Illawarra). I was in perfect condition to do the deed I was so utterly terrified of. Would I be too quick? Would I hurt her? Was my dick too thin? Would I be bad at it? These thoughts usually crippled my surge but right now all I could think of was flesh. Yes, in my mind Nina was pouring fruit whip on her breasts in the kitchen.
I lay back on the fluffy boyish carpet as Courtney kissed up my torso, lifting my t-shirt over my neck and moaning with the music of the drug.
‘You’re so beautiful, Nelly. I want you.’
‘You’re beautiful too.’ Nina in her leggings, bending over the cutlery drawer.
‘I love your face. And your nose. You have such a cute nose, Nelly.’
‘Do you think your mum would approve of what we’re about to do?’ I asked.
‘Why are you asking me that?’ Courtney said, handing me an Ansell.
‘Just wondering…’
Like a man I rolled the condom onto my now sizeable penis. Courtney sat naked and pale before me on Murray Kirkwood’s floor; her whole body was waiting for me, open and white. I felt so much for her, but most of all, I just felt sorry for her.
‘Do you want me to start on top?’ I asked, lifting the teardrop nib of the condom up above my knob to make room for inevitable ejaculation (just as Kim Reynoldson had demonstrated on a Lebanese cucumber eighteen months earlier in the sex education caravan parked on the primary school green patch).
‘I want you on top of me, yes. Do that. Neil Cronk, I want you.’ Courtney continued to release her elephant-sized feelings. ‘I want to be with you forever. And have your babies. And make a home with you.’
‘Yeah, me too, C. That’s all I want too!’ I could say anything on this drug, anything in this moment, fucking anything.
‘Fuck me. Make love to me and fuck me,’ she pleaded with forced whorishness.
I climbed on top of Courtney, opening her vagina up with my middle three fingers.
‘I want you to love me. And live with me. We’ll live together,’ Courtney moaned as my penis peered over the edges and into the abyss.
‘Yes, I want all this too!’ I said.
I stuck my dick into Courtney with a swift shove and it fit well; all the warmth engulfed me. Her big green eyes opened up, they were like kiwi fruits, kiwi fruits in Nina’s hands in the kitchen. Nina was making me a fruit drink with no pants on. I am fucking Nina from behind as she makes me a drink but then I hear a grunt and a door slam, I turn to see Eric in the doorway, carrying his dead son into the house and me not knowing what to do with my dick in his wife’s arse and the fruits whipping green in the glass cylinder are Courtney’s eyes.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, pulling my dick out of her vagina.
Courtney looked at me, gasping, despairing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘So pathetic.’
‘What the fuck, Neil?’ Courtney said, and she looked just so vulnerable, her pale white legs all opened up and just there.
‘I can’t fucken do it. I’m too wasted.’
‘You were doing fine,’ she said, tears welling in her eyes.
And then I said it.
‘You look desperate,’ I said, and I don’t know why.
‘What?’
‘You know.’ I gestured to her naked cunt all splayed out on the carpet.
Courtney slapped me hard across the eye cavity, then again across the jaw, and then she grabbed a Darth Vader doll off Murray Kirkwood’s desk and began smashing me over the head with it, attempting to crack my skull. I tried to stop the bashing by holding her arms.
‘I’m sorry, C! I’m so fucking maggot!’
But this just made it worse, and soon she was on her feet, hurling the contents of the room at me.
Hauling my left boot on, I burst out of Murray Kirkwood’s bedroom and staggered down the hall. One of my eyes bled red, the other tears. My ears raged with the vile and hurtful death wishes of Courtney’s abuse as I pushed along the banister, past the third bathroom, around the bend to Mr Kirkwood’s study and down the three flights of stairs. I was nearly outside, where I would run for my life.
‘Nelly!’
Just as I cleared the final steps Sarah Kirkwood and Gordon came bouncing up, hand in hand.
‘Are you alright, man?’
‘Yep,’ I managed, attempting to push past.
‘What happened to your eye?’ Gordon asked, holding my armpit.
‘Do you need some Dettol?’ Sarah added, eyes rolling back in her drunken cranium.
‘Did you and Courtney…? I saw you going upstairs!’ Gordon winked.
‘Just let me past, man.’
‘Dude, it’s me!’
‘Please, G .’
‘Did she hit you?’
‘Can you let go of me, please?’ I wanted to scream.
‘How good are the Es? Have you had another half?’
‘I gotta go, Gordon.’ I may scream. Let go of my armpit.
‘Me and Sarah are going up to Sarah’s room.’
‘I’m goi
ng to show him my awards.’
‘Ok – have fun.’ I will scream this fucking house down.
‘I love you, Nelly.’
Like when Sunday church is finally over and the choir stops singing and the congregation scatters and we’re back out on the street away from the Lord… I FELT SUCH RELIEF! Ripping myself out of Gordon’s grip and pushing past, through the Samoans and over the fat guys in the front room. Through the front door and off the welcome mat, down the front steps and onto the driveway I ran. Down the driveway and over the goths (who were now collecting ants and placing them on their tongues) past a line of couples mauling on the fence. Everything was a blur and a wipe as I made real speed, exiting forever towards the sea. But just as I reached the front lawn I felt an overwhelming need to stop. And look back.
Three flights up, her hair wild and hard and black, was Courtney, my girlfriend of a year and a bit, peering out the window and down the driveway at me. She looked so hurt and so appalled, with just a towel wrapped around her. I stood there, idiotically still, just staring at her. I know I could have changed the shape of that night, and perhaps my life, in that exact moment. With a smile or change in my face. A wave or a shrug of apology. With gesture, with intent, with action. But I didn’t. And then she was gone and there was no one in the window, just the haunting dance of the curtain in the faraway sea breeze. The sea breeze…
‘Oi!’
Across the lawn on the trampoline Kyla and Stuart were entwined like snakes. They looked so relaxed, laughing and kissing beneath the stars. I could not believe the outcomes, Courtney tried to kill me with an iconic children’s toy, and here he was tuning an epileptic. Everything, always so easy for him. Perhaps that’s it.
‘Stu,’ I breathed, walking over to the trampoline. ‘Stuey.’
Stuart coolly whipped his hands out of Kyla’s Sportsgirl t-shirt and rolled over to greet his dishevelled friend.
‘Nelly, what’s up with your eye?’
‘I gotta go, man.’
‘Where’s Courtney? How’s your E?’
I just stood there under the pine tree, gormless.
‘Oh your poor baby,’ Kyla said, fixing her top and sitting up.
‘You guys… look… I just came over to say I’m off home.’
‘No you’re fucken not.’ Stuart launched off the tramp and onto the grass in a single bound. ‘Nelly and Daddy Chops are going for a grownups’ chat.’
‘Stu, seriously. You stay here with Kyla.’
‘Hey! What did I say?’
‘Can I come too?’ Kyla asked, dismounting the trampoline.
Stuart spun back and took Kyla in his arms. This was my opening, and I took it, launching myself through the hedge and onto the street. Sidestepping a beige Corolla, I bolted for the sea.
8
The waves lifted up, took a breath, a simple intake of air, paused, and then crashed into themselves, coming to nothing, bleeding useless into the pebbly sand.
I stood in and before the ocean, before the great black tarmac of water, and contemplated suicide. I imagined my father arriving at the funeral, seeing my mother crippled with tears and failure, but him not crying. I then imagined not doing it and continuing life, as this sick animal that couldn’t even do the simple things like sex a girl. A girl so smart, so funny, so caring, so unique and interesting – now so stung by the cruel words of the young man in her life. I stepped further into the sea, cold water circling round my boots.
‘Cronk, you faggot!’ The words boomed through the salted air and into my eardrums. I turned around and there he was, Stuart Stone – out of breath but here for me, always there for me.
Stuart and I had been sitting on the shore of North Cronulla Beach for somewhere between five minutes and an hour, I had no idea how long. Stuart hadn’t asked me about what happened with Courtney, he hadn’t really asked me anything. We had a bit of a laugh about Gordon getting it on with Kirkwood, and we acknowledged how full-on the Es were, but we did not mention what he had just seen, his oldest friend walking into the sea.
‘Kyla seems into it,’ I said, watching a lone fisherman drag a bream into shore.
‘Yeah, she’s fresh.’
‘You do her on that trampoline?’
‘She’ll only let me if I go out with her.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So…’
‘I could vibe with that and say “Yes, I’ll go out with you”, give her the stick then dump her, but she’s only young and I don’t want to bring on her epilepsy.’
‘Thoughtful.’
The fisherman seemed to be having trouble salvaging the hook from inside the bream’s mouth, ripping open its gob with his hands.
‘I’m still a virgin,’ I confessed.
‘I know.’
‘How?’
‘Well if you weren’t one you wouldn’t be sitting on North Cronulla Beach in the freezing fucking cold with me.’
‘True.’
The fisherman shone his torch right down into the fish, its guts lit up like a paper lantern. Another five minutes or an hour passed by, I don’t know, all I knew was I felt good when I was with Stuart. He was massive and mental and, really, we were so wildly different, but I’d never felt so safe and calm with a bloke. I don’t even remember when we met, all I knew was I’d known him forever. We’d sat next to each other in Kindergarten, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and beyond. When I was nine, in Year 4, I told the class a story about this really loud possum that lived in our roof, and how Dad was always dumping it way out in the nature reserve that backed on to our house, but it always returned. After class Stuart came up to me and said he had a boat, and that his dad would take us and the possum over to South West Arm on the weekend, dump the possum, and me and Dad would never be bothered again.
Saturday came and Ron Stone arrived at our front door. His big car looked even more imposing with a boat attached to it. Stuart launched out of the front seat in just a pair of shorts, pink zinc cream smeared across his nose. He walked towards me with open arms and I never felt so cool, my first ever friend. Dad thanked Ron with a six-pack of Swan Lager, but Ron wouldn’t accept it this way, instead he suggested Dad come on the trip with us, and they drink the tinnies there, ‘On deck.’ Dad went inside, grabbed a hat, a camera and the wire cage with the adventurous possum in it, and off we went on our nautical mission.
The trip was a big hit, and even though the possum still made its way back to our roof a month later, despite having to cross lengths of water and land, it inspired a succession of weekend father–son journeys. We even camped out at Bundeena a few nights, and Dad and Ron got on just as well as me and Stuart did. They found a common interest in motor sports, water sports, all sports really, as me and Stuart fished and built stuff, investigated trails and stabbed yabbies’ eyes out.
One Easter Dad and Ron bought us our own rowboat to journey off in, and we would, rowing around the reefs while they remained in the big hull, sipping on beers and nibbling on blue cheese, the NRL commentary pushing out the crackling speakers of Dad’s battery-powered transistor radio. Often Dad and Ron would tie our dinghy to the big boat and cruise slowly up the harbour, dragging us behind.
The last time we did it Dad and Ron had been up all night playing cards and drinking cognac. They both had ‘sore heads’ in the morning and weren’t speaking much; Dad didn’t even finish his scrambled eggs. We were cruising behind the boat, with about forty feet of rope separating us, when Stuart noticed that our dinghy was filling up with water. Stuart thought it was hilarious, so he began whomping and tipping the little rowboat until there was water everywhere, and the thing started to dip.
‘We’re sinking!’ I said.
‘Shit.’ Stuart looked around. ‘Sharks!’
We started screaming, but Dad and Ron couldn’t hear us. They had the footy on the radio and were sipping beers in silence, cruising up the harbour, enjoying their hangovers and the absence of their noisy boys.
The dinghy disappea
red beneath us into the blue abyss. I began to paddle madly, but my mouth was already full of water, and I couldn’t see well. Stuart swam over to me and hoicked me onto his shoulder, ordering me to hold on.
We stayed like this for a while, suspended in the harbour, two twelve-year-old boys dislocated from their fathers, their land, their lives. Stuart’s legs kicked furiously beneath us, as he worked his big heart out to keep us both above the water line. He knew I was not a strong swimmer, he knew he had to do this if I was to survive. We screamed a little, but not for long, the boat was too far away, and it seemed a waste of energy.
Dad and Ron were but a speck in the distance by the time they realised we were gone. We heard the horn go and the noise of the roaring engine as it whipped around and stormed towards us. Dad looked pale when they found us, but I didn’t know if that was the hangover or the fear of his son drowning. Ron was pissed off, blaming Stuart for sinking the dinghy.
Stuart protested, he said, ‘There’s a hole in it’, but Ron wouldn’t take it, he slapped Stuart hard across the face and ordered him to go down into the bowels of the boat and not come out until we were home. I so wanted to slap Ron back; Stuart had saved my life, and if they weren’t so obsessed with their stupid rugby league game and their drinks they may have remembered they had children tied to the boat and that it was worth checking on them every now and again. But I didn’t say anything; I was shivering, incapable of words. I just sat there with a blanket round me, watching my dad spew over the side, and then we were home, and that was the end of our father–son weekends; Dad and Ron never organised much after that, and for this reason neither did me and Stu. We didn’t ‘fall out’, we just drifted into other sections of school/life. It wasn’t until later that Stuart came back in to my life as a constant, which was always going to happen, we just needed some time to shrug off the shame.
Now Stuart and I sat together on the beach looking out at the ocean that had nearly taken us both some six years ago. We were bigger now, but still scared.
How it feels Page 7