‘Don’t stay here, mate,’ Stuart said.
‘Huh?’
‘Go fly, mate. You’re the special one. Seriously, just go fly. Fuck Cronulla, it’s a fucking hole, mate.’
The black waves crashed hard up the shore, making the fisherman’s arduous task more arduous. The drugs and the big friendship bulged in and out of my heart as I sat there next to Stuart in the heavy music of the beach.
‘I can’t go back to the party,’ I said.
‘Cool,’ Stu said, ‘let’s go to a real party then.’
The braver seagulls ducked and dived in the heavy winds as me and Stuart walked back down the beach past the fisherman and the poor bloody bream, flapping about in the bucket Kyla Druid style.
9
‘Stone Family Mechanics’ was a household name in the Sutherland Shire. Stuart’s great-great-grandfather had passed it down to Ron’s grandfather who had passed it down to Ron’s dad who had passed it down to Ron. Malaki and Stuart had shown little interest in extending the life of the family business. Ron never felt like much of a mechanic either, but in those days you did what your father told you. Ron ran five workshops in the Shire, and was very popular and respected among the staff and clientele. He had also been known to recruit troubled or retarded kids, offering them a trade and a hard day’s work.
The morale and sense of mateship were high across all workshops, and on the last Wednesday of every month all the mechanics would gather at one of the workshops and bond, ordering a dozen pizzas and a few kegs of beer (with a couple of possible ‘surprises’ thrown in later in the night).
Stuart and Malaki were regulars at these bonding nights, whereas Ron had stopped going years back, declaring himself ‘too old to enjoy such nonsense’.
In the office of the Kareela workshop I dragged some glassy speed off the Yellow Pages and into my nose, face and brain. The powder cut at my nostrils and eyes but I liked it. I didn’t care. I didn’t care what happened to me. I would do anything tonight. The dirtier the glassier the weirder the better the further away.
I couldn’t quite follow what went next. One minute Stuart was playing cricket with the boys, the next he was drinking out of a hubcap, then he was getting forklifted up into the roof, then he was lining up more glassy brown speed for me to do. Then he had his shirt off and was dancing on top of a Nissan Patrol, pointing at his muscles and kissing them as the boys threw winches and spanners and cans at him and roared with delight. Then it all went fuzzier, and I was standing in a circle with forty-three mechanics aged between fifteen and fifty, all fuck-eyed on booze and gack and pot. Ioannis, the bald-headed Greek chief mechanic, stepped forward.
‘G’day, boys,’ he said, his gut popping out under his Tahiti singlet.
The entire workshop cheered and hollered, raising their beers and bongs at the undisputed King of the Car-Fixers.
‘Special night tonight, as it is the very first Workshop Bonanza of 1995!’
And again the boys hollered, grabbing their cocks or banging spanners onto busted-off door panels. My brain still zapping and my eyesight in sections of there and not there, I looked around for Stuart but there wasn’t him.
‘So,’ Ioannis continued, ‘I thought I’d provide something special for my boys to kick off another fine year of car maintenance. Gentleman, please say hello to Larissa the Kisser!’
Loud tacky saxophone filled the workshop as I spun around to see a large, blonde, middle-aged woman appear in the roller-door entrance to Stone Family Mechanics wearing a lacy black g-string and bright red corset, lumps of fat spewing over her g-banger as she wobbled into the circle.
Larissa the Kisser danced around a forty-gallon drum as the boys cheered and leered, grabbing their cocks and hurling beer cans at each other. Ioannis unfurled a rubber mat on the hard concrete floor and before the saxophone song had ended two of the junior mechanics had dumped their load in Larissa and the next guy in the circle was up. My thought system zapped and buzzed, my eyes opened and closed with every beat of the drum, but still I could not make out the direction of the queue nor decipher if there were six, possibly five guys to go until it was my turn.
I had to make a run for it, but every time I did, someone slung me back into the ring. I gave in and stood watching the action in the middle of the circle. A rickety little sixteen-year-old mechanic from the Hurstville workshop hammered away, his tiny white arse shaking and shuddering for less than eight seconds before he came off and was ushered impolitely back to the circle. I thought AC/DC were playing now and people were yelling ‘Thunder’ but I was not sure. Four or three to go? I tried to get away again but another set of arms made me stay – I was stuck and two to go, one.
I closed my eyes and THUNDER then… a single word echoed up my life: ‘Go!’ Someone or something pushed me in the back, and there I was in the centre of the room. Larissa was on the mat drinking from a bottle of orange juice – she looked really exhausted but she smiled at me nonetheless; a professional. Her forehead was drenched with sweat and there were thumb marks on her neck (well, they were more like bruises).
Larissa curled her fingers and licked her lips and I wondered if she had ever played hockey or if she had goldfish or a family. Did she watch Sale of the Century?
‘How do you want me?’ Larissa asked politely.
I spun away and attempted to run to America but Stuart stood behind me and so did Ioannis and this other prick; they would make me dick this chick before the night was out.
‘Give her the stick, Nelly. Get it done, mate,’ Stuart said, winking at Larissa like they were wrestling partners arranging a set move.
I turned back to Larissa who was bleeding from her underpants as a cheer emerged and built throughout the workshop. The whole place was calling my name, hands pounding together.
‘Come on, special. Come to Larissa.’
I loped over to her. She undid my jeans. I wished the boys would stop chanting so I could focus. My dick was floppy and lifeless and the workshop threw cans at me. I noticed how ugly and pasty they all looked, how like dogs their eyes popped out of their sockets and their gums dripped, and how useless they were at keeping time with a simple clap and chant.
‘Here we go! Here we go, little fella!’
Larissa had been wanking me and sucking me for some time now. My eyes were closed; I couldn’t watch to know if there was stiffness. She pulled me on top of her and she smelt like white musk, the perfume my sister wore when she went to Northies or even to the dole office. She eased my dick inside her gash which I slid left then right in. I grabbed one of her fifteen breasts and pumped away like a jackhammer. I thought about Courtney and how nice it was when she came over, how I’d answer the door and she would be there in a summer dress. I thought about how well Dad and Courtney got on when we went skiing at Thredbo and how scared she was of the chairlift and how cute she looked in a bib and brace and how much she loved the snow. Courtney said sex should be like falling rain but it was hailing here, sharp black ice. And then it was over and Stuart reefed me out of Larissa and handed me a VB and said, ‘Done.’
10
Ioannis dropped me and Stuart at the Red Rooster on Cronulla Street and wished us well. It turned out he was a big reader of books and plays, quizzing me on Shakespeare and Beckett and Henry Miller as we drove south to the beach.
‘Nice work tonight, Nelly. I think you went longer than all of the Kirrawee boys put together! Hahahahahaha!’
Ioannis launched into a coughing fit as he drove off, a Cops R Tops sticker on the rear fender of his ute next to a pair of Playboy bunny ears.
The wind smelt of salt and vinegar chips. There were a hundred or so kids out the front of the squash courts smoking and pushing energy out and around. Stuart and I watched it all from across the road.
‘Bombers,’ Stu alerted me.
The squash courts party was organised by Endeavour High kids but all schools inevitably attended. I felt sick as we approached, knowing full well that if there was a pack of Bombers
there Stu would end up lashing out at something they said or did. The Bombers were mostly wogs in puffy jackets who spray-painted their ‘tags’ on walls and listened to rap. They thought they were black and proper gangsters from ‘da hood’ when really they were just teenagers living in Kirrawee or Menai.
‘You have a good time back there, Nelly?’ Stu asked me, practically striding towards the venue. Fuck. No way out now.
It worked like chequers in Cronulla. The Bombers would do something one week, like pop one of our footballs with a compass, or call a white chick a slut for wearing a black bra under her sheer white school top, then the white guys would retaliate and the whole thing would build then splinter and fights would break out at train stations and shopping villages all over town. Now school was done, there had been all sorts of promises and threats made about how the two factions were going to end things, and Stuart was always a featured player in the ongoing narrative. Stuart didn’t belong to a ‘gang’. He wasn’t a Waxhead, a Dork, a Raver or a Bomber; he was an independent. But Stuart loathed the fucking Bombers most, because they travelled in groups and picked on the weak. To Stuart, fighting was a personal affair, a beautiful exchange of strength and skill between two opposing forces. Bombers were cowards; they bashed people with bottles, with sticks that had nails coming out the ends, always outnumbering their opponent, often ten to one, and for that reason Cronulla was not their home – at least in Stuart Stone’s mind it wasn’t.
‘S’alright,’ I answered.
Stuart slammed me into the traffic light pole, his eyes beaming with speed and steroids and all the things that made him seventeen and Stuart.
‘I WANT TO DO SOME DAMAGE TO THESE DAGO CUNTS, OK, MY FRIEND? IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO GET HOME SAFE I SUGGEST YOU WALK AWAY NOW AS I AM ABOUT TO MAKE A MESS – DO YOU HEAR ME?’
‘Ok… but there’s a few of them.’
‘There’s a few of me,’ he replied.
Approaching the kerb Stu was spotted by one of the smaller Bombers, who then called out, ‘Here he comes! King of the Convicts!’
Stuart did not even bother with his usual flurry of retorts, such as ‘dago cunt’ or ‘grease ball’ or ‘immigrant’; he simply launched into the mess of it and somehow, by association, so did I. My face was rammed up against a phone booth. Through the glass I could see Stuart pounding into Daniel De Costa’s face with his elbow and kicking Stavros Tsiokas in the gut. I was on the ground when a baseball bat with some spikes in it just swept by my face, but then a long neck of Fosters smashed over my shoulder. I rolled into the gutter, where my jaw was kicked into the kerb – which hurt. Again, like with Larissa, there was noise and there was quiet. There was flesh and blood and there was rain and there was me, and this numb excellent feeling, as another part of my soul was lifted up and taken away. I was crying but I didn’t make tears. I just knew I wanted to go. And go and go and go and go. I hated this place. I fucking hated it. No one here had anything to do but harm what they didn’t understand.
‘Holy fuck! I can see Neil!’ I heard Courtney’s voice scream.
By now there were about fifty people in the riot.
I was trying to help lovely Seamus Fraser from general studies out of a group-kicking when De Costa’s brother Leo busted a knife into my ribs.
Gordon must have seen this, as he arrived within a second or two, launching an array of well-constructed jump-kicks and snap-kicks and force-quick solar-plexus punches to the Bomber’s available areas. He broke Leo’s jaw with an elbow – I saw it change shape before my eyes.
Gordon then picked me up off the pavement, where my blood was pooling, and dragged my limp body over to a blue Toyota T18.
‘Whose car is this?’ I asked him as we went.
‘Kirkwood’s brother’s,’ he said.
‘Fuck! Where’s Courtney?’ I said, peering out into the muddle of bodies; police sirens growing louder and louder.
‘We gotta jet brother,’ Gordon said. ‘Cops!’
‘Where is she?’ I said, falling in to the back seat.
‘Stu got her. Stu took her in a car. She’s safe.’
Like most of the night, everything was bright and then it was gone. I could hear Phil Collins singing the bit before the drum solo in ‘Something in the Air Tonight’. I knew which of Gordon’s mix tapes this was from, and how it cut out before the end of side A, then flipped over to side B, then finished in less than ten seconds. I could see a Hot Chicken Hero wrapper on the floor and an empty carton of chocolate Moove. I put my hand in my hair and there was glass. I put my hand near my ribs and felt this wet hot feeling like soup – and all I wanted to do was go and go away.
I could not believe all the blood and I could not believe the car was moving, but mostly I could not believe Gordon still had enough space in his brain to perfectly execute the infamous drum solo on the steering wheel as he cranked a U-turn out of there.
No idea. Gordon had no real idea where he was going but he drove on anyway to Bell Biv Devoe’s ‘Poison’. Up President Avenue, through the five-ways roundabout, past Flower Power, around Sylvania Waters, past Paul’s Hamburgers and over Tom Ugly’s Bridge towards Rockdale. I spewed some blood and white stuff into the empty Moove carton then rolled a brick-thick cigarette, grinning gratitude through cracked teeth at Gordon in the rear-vision mirror.
‘Where’s Stu and Courtney, do you reckon?’ I asked.
Gordon pulled in to Sans Souci McDonald’s for six cheeseburgers, two thickshakes and a stack of napkins. Then we took off back towards Cronulla. It was nearly 5 am. Gordon was driving really fast as ‘Why’ by Annie Lennox played. She sounded good with the blood and the E – the wavering-ness, the softness, the female cuddle inside this lilting song; warm like breasts on your eyelids. The car went even faster up the incline but then it stopped dead, and Gordon craned around to look at me, patched with bloody napkins, sipping on a thick shake in the back seat.
‘Get out, Cronk.’
‘What?’
‘There’s no one on the bridge.’ Gordon grinned madly.
The engine was off so we rolled the car to the exact peak on the bridge where the sign exclaimed: WELCOME TO THE SUTHERLAND SHIRE.
Gordon cranked the handbrake and climbed up onto the roof of the T18, hooting and shrieking like a freaked hyena.
‘Get up here, Cronk!’
‘I’ve been stabbed!’
‘Get up here, the bridge is ours! Captain Cook Bridge!’
I climbed up the tyre and onto the roof, Gordon helping me with the last bit. Soon we were sitting together on top of the car, staring out into Botany Bay where the mariners of this newfound land first sailed in to kill the natives and set up the jails. We were only up there a minute or so before the sun flopped over the edge of the horizon.
‘You know what I miss about being a kid?’ Gordon said.
‘What?’ I asked, rolling another fag as best I could with all the pain and wind.
‘Being afraid of monsters.’
I nodded, laughing through the smoke that drifted out my nose in perfect plumes.
‘When I was eight, I used to be so scared of monsters, man. I’d think they were coming to get me every time it got dark. And they fucken did sometimes, they came in to my room and they got me. But now. Now I know they’re not coming. And it really shits me, man.’
The dreams of children never go too far away. Gordon was clearly talking about his dad, I could feel it, see it, he had that face on, the scrunched and punished face reserved for his father the monster. And Peter was a monster; he visited in the night, he surprised and fascinated, he terrified in assaulting bursts, shaking the very foundations of the boy. He killed the house of calm and put a scar on top. But still, Gordon missed him. We all missed our dads, in that time, even when they were actually there.
‘I know,’ I said.
We put our arms around each other as the sun shot swiftly up over Snake Island.
‘She really loves you, man,’ said Gordon. ‘Courtney, I mean.’
&
nbsp; ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I don’t know about that anymore.’
‘I didn’t tell her,’ Gordon said, squeezing my neck. ‘But I think she’ll be cool, we kinda bonded tonight, she’s an awesome girl, it’s going to be awesome. Living in the ci-taayyyy!’ Gordon beamed, high-fiving.
The Sutherland Shire was dead before me, but there was life beyond the horizon, and I wanted it so badly now. I was so in love with my life before tonight and the dreams it had gathered in its wake, but slowly and swiftly, in this collection of hours and moments I lost faith. I was already gone, I was already there, I was already someone else, and I had never felt so anxious. I rubbed Gordon’s neck with my thumbs but I could not look at him. I just sucked in a whole pile of smoke, spat sideways and told the truth.
‘I fucking hate it here,’ I said.
‘Huh?’ Gordon replied, bewildered.
‘Cronulla, the Shire, I fucking hate it so much!’ I punched the roof of Gordon’s car with my fist and the sound rang out. My best friend just stared at my face, then down at my ribs, then back up at my face.
‘That’s why we’re getting out, right?’ Gordon asked.
‘I gotta go, man,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I can’t fucking breathe here man! I gotta get out.’
‘What are you saying?’ Gordon asked, and with such weight.
‘The white cars, the beach, the fear, the Christian fucking conservatives, it’s hell on earth here, it’s small hell, so small . . .’
I started crying, and the words, too, fell out in floods, words I would come to regret for the rest of my life, but for some reason could not hold back on this roof, before this bay, beside this man.
‘You want somewhere with more street life?’
‘It’s not just that – it’s you, man!’ I said. ‘I gotta get the fuck away from all of you people! Courtney, Stuart, Mum, Agatha, the shops, the charcoal chicken, the fucking acceptance that life is just this. It’s the fucking smallness of mind!’
How it feels Page 8