The initial storm of the magic fungus dropped away, and pretty soon we were all jamming. I couldn’t find Gordon anywhere and I had stopped caring. The jam got wild, with dozens of students now naked, some fucking on sleeping bags and cardboard boxes, some groups mauling each other, just a mess of flesh and moaning. I was naked too, dancing on the bonnet of a car with a chain of flowers tied around my dick and balls. Soon there was a procession of naked dancing round the car, and I started pissing on people; they didn’t seem to mind. Then Gordon was on the bonnet next to me, he looked fierce, he looked really fierce, and he slapped me even, and took my mouth in his thick fingers and shook it.
‘You’re a fucken joke,’ Gordon said.
‘Get your hands off me,’ I said, flailing about in his grip.
‘Put your pants on and stop pissing on people.’
‘Can you please not be grabbing me?’ I begged.
‘You think you look cool up here?’ Gordon asked, whispering at my eyes. ‘Because you don’t, Neil, you look stupid. you look embarrassing, actually.’
Gordon stepped off the car and walked away towards the edge of the mountain. I looked down at my semi-erect penis dripping with urine, tightly wound with lilies and weeds. I looked up again, but he was gone. I thought about following him, but instead I climbed higher onto the roof and screamed. This was my place, this was my mountain, this was my time, and no hobbit from the old world was going to pop a hole in it.
When I got home Gordon was in the kitchen eating Nutri-Grain in his suit and talking to Chandra, who had stayed home with cramping. It was around 10 am, and so fucking cold in the house. I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, but neither he nor she gave me the time of day. So I muttered something to myself and went off for a shower. The water was glorious on my eyelids and neck, but it stung the thorn cuts on my arms and legs.
When I got out Gordon was gone and Chandra too. There was no note, nothing. So I drank a glass of lemon cordial and went to bed. I fell into a deep well of slumber, dreaming of deer and cigarettes conversing with one another. I woke to a dark and quiet house; I had been asleep all day. I wandered about, looking for human contact – well, for Gordon. Now the drugs were out of my system, the guilt had set in. I finally found Chandra in the den, reading Birthday Letters. I asked her what she had been doing and she told me she had been crying. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath had had such a powerful love for one another. Were we as in love as them? Was love always followed by misery?
I kissed her on the eyelid and she told me that Gordon and she had driven out to Sofala. I asked where he was now, she told me he waited for me to get up and then he left. He had work tomorrow and he didn’t like driving in the dark, his eyes were not great. I asked her what they spoke about and she said they didn’t speak much at all, but that he looked unhappy.
‘Gordon’s boring,’ Chandra said, kissing me with full tongue. I hated the way she did this; I always believed that tongue should arrive when it was summonsed, not as the first cab off the rank.
‘He isn’t, he’s just different to you.’
‘He bought all these weird gifts at the arts and craft shops in Sofala.’
‘What did he buy?’
‘He bought hand towels for his mother, and an elephant.’
An elephant? He bought a fucking elephant? I shot up and began pacing around the room in tight squares.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Chandra asked, standing up as I moved around her.
‘What else did Gordon say today?’
‘He just kept saying he wanted to see you, but that you were all fucked up and distracted, pissing on people as they danced around your car.’
‘But did he say what he wanted to talk to me about?’
‘I don’t know anything else!’ she screamed.
I grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall. ‘Don’t fucking withhold anything from me, you cunt!’
Chandra shrieked and gurgled, slapping me hard across the skull and leaving the den. She came back with a post-it note, which she stuck to my chin. Then she left the room again, picking up Birthday Letters and snarling at me; her neck was all purple and she was crying straight lines of quick water.
The post-it note was from Gordon. It read:
You’re not the only one. G
‘And he took the sword, too!’ Chandra yelled from the bathroom.
I ran down the hall and there it was: the empty spot on the wall, the lonely hook, the beating heart of my house, gone. Gordon had given it to me as a way of keeping us all connected, and now – well, now he was giving up on me. I couldn’t say I blamed him; we had grown into different men. But still, the sword was gone, and I could’ve sworn he’d driven it right through my chest, because that’s how it felt, in that room, on that day.
15
‘Why do we always go the route with all the give way signs? If you stay on Rankin Street there are no stoppages at all, just roundabouts, and roundabouts rock!’
Julien was too nervous to drive, so I did it, but that didn’t stop the constant commentary and navigation.
‘Is Jamie coming to the show?’ I asked, changing the subject.
‘No, he’s working all weekend. Seriously, I have never heard of an ad company that works seven days. It’s a fucking joke. This is my major work, do you know what I mean? Key word is “major”, and they won’t let him go for a single day. It’s incredibly traumatic for me.’
Julien was my best friend out here. This made him my outright best friend because I had been here three years and rarely returned to Sydney. I liked being away, and I liked being in a small town where there was nothing to do but live. By nature I was easily distracted, but here, there were no distractions, just utter consumption of my three passions: women, art and drugs. Julien had been my full-time maven in the pursuit of all of the above, until eighteen months earlier, when he met Jamie at a gay march in Blackheath. A kind of ‘Reclaim the Streets’ type situation, for which our course had prepared a small, mobile, gay-friendly fire sculpture.
Jamie lived in Surry Hills, and since the march Julien had spent four days a week in Sydney, catching the train down Thursday night and returning Monday night, managing to miss only two lectures and two tutorials. I missed him. I missed him a lot. I missed smoking billies in the night and cooking up flavourless pastas and packet curries. Playing UNO and discussing all the hot people on campus. I missed his excellent, non-threatening banter and the way he looked at me – a cool mix of LOVE and TRUST, with a five percent hook of cock and sleaze. He was a fabulous man, and friend, but his work had suffered badly since he found city-based love, so I offered him the title of co-writer and co-director on my show ME, which was clearly not called US. Julien’s main contribution was to get the flyers printed at the post office.
‘You know there are people driving from Sydney to see this show, Neil? I checked the list and took some calls at the box office – people know about our work and they want to check this shit out.’
‘That sounds cool.’
It was a perfect Bathurst day, ten hundred pie shops opening at once and the crisp honest air biting at your eyelids.
‘Neil, it’s awesome is what it is! You know, Chandra nearly shat her tits when I told her the names of some of the directors and agencies that have RSVP’d, like it’s unheard of out here, she is like totally jealous of our talents and successes.’
‘Well…’ I said.
‘Nelly-Belly, come on. Seriously, you have to stop ramming that first year.’
‘Who?’
‘ “Who?”! The curry muncher who’s always hanging round the theatre with her cunt hanging out her forehead is “who”!’
‘Swanna’s the designer!’
‘Designer of what? Your cock?’
‘Our show, Julien. She designed the entire space.’
Julien flicked his butt out the window and humbly dropped down into the centre of his body. ‘Wow, she is really talented.’
‘Yes, she is,’ I
said. ‘And since when are you Advocate Fidelity?’
‘Wow, yeah, okay. But regardless, Nelly Boy, you have to tone it down with her mate, because if Chandra found like a g-string in your car or something, or lipstick in the sink, then I would have to make up a story and you know I just go completely red and cannot lie. I’m not good on my feet like you are.’
‘Thank you, mate. I appreciate your concern.’
‘I just can’t handle the stress, and like Chandra is a psycho-fanny man. If she found something out like that, and she was in the middle of her period, I swear she would drive a car through the front of our house and I cannot afford the repairs on the car or the house. Like no way.’
We were close now. The pie shops and the throng of townies getting their Saturdays kick-started were behind us. We were on the edge of town on the edge of our tomorrow. I could see the old steel mill ahead of us, that big old beautiful building the council had rented to us for only three hundred and fifty dollars which we had converted into an amazing theatre premises. I could see the word ME in enormous print on the street-facing wall, I could see the actors playing Kanga cricket outside, I could see one of the percussionists smoking, and Swanna and her team painting a chair, or was it the coffin? I could see the end of my university career and the beginning of the rest of my adult life. I could see the grassy patch where the actors and I buried a secret under the ground in a box. I could see Dick Hindmarsh, my friend, my mentor and my lecturer, taking notes and chewing tobacco by his motorbike. And now, out of the blue and the cold, I could see Gordon, Stuart and Courtney – all of them together at the after party, shuffling round in fits of discomfort, looking to reconnect all the broken-off stuff. I could see all the beer chilling in the icebox, and the sheets of acid and the girls in my life. I could feel the agents and the directors on my shoulder saying ‘we should talk’, but mostly I could see myself clearing out of here, down that M4 for the last time, one hand on the wheel, Hendrix playing loud on the stereo. But for now, inside Julien’s car, all I could think about were my friends, dressed up and driving, somewhere between Cronulla and me.
16
The last time I’d seen them all was six months ago. It was Gordon’s twenty-first birthday and I had been asked to make a speech. I was surprised at the request, considering the amount of time we had spent apart. It was Courtney’s doing. She was the one who’d called me and said, ‘Will you make a speech, Neil? Please!’
As much as I am a creative person and a left-brain thinker, I hate being late. But with Chandra as my girlfriend we were always late. It took us five hours to drive from Bathurst to Sydney that night, because we had to drop in on her mother in Castlecrag, her (bestie!) friend in Castle Cove, and pick up a dress she simply ‘had to have’ from a friend who owned a boutique in Woollahra. Then we had to drive to Potts Point and wait forty-five minutes for drugs, and then she was hungry, so we had to stop off at Oporto’s in Darlinghurst for a Bondi Meal with no chicken (seriously, what is the point of a chicken burger without chicken?). When we arrived at Gordon’s party in Wynyard, the speeches were over. Chandra was pretty baked by this point, so she didn’t see how much it hurt; I’d prepared something very conservative, funny and sincere, and I never got to say it.
Gordon greeted us but then kept his distance. And as he drank more he drifted further into other patches of people, sharing their snide mockery of me and Chandra, I saw it all. At one point he even commented on my pink leather jacket and I was faced with a wall of guys I went to school with saying ‘Pink Jacket! Pink Jacket! Pink Jacket!’ over and over again. Yes, my jacket was pink, but why did they have to remind me in the form of a mantra? Chandra wore a smile and a ‘hello’ around all night, making a big effort with my old friends and first love, but Courtney was sullen and closed, following Gordon round like a maid, or a mouse.
On the dance floor Gordon and I had our best moments. I twirled Carmen to ‘New York, New York’ and Gordon and I did some shots at the bar, inspiring some old-school rap routines we knew. Busting it to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, throwing caterpillar-rolls and revisiting the always potent ‘running man’ manoeuvre. Two refugee ships desperate to find a common sandbank – something.
‘We’ve not seen you mate,’ Gordon said, by the bar, both of us sweating into our beers. ‘And then fucken all this time goes past!’
I smiled at him as if to say ‘ok’, but he just glared at me like I owed him an apology. The whole night I felt like I should apologise but I didn’t know what I had done. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. You know how that works?
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s insane – life, everything.’
‘How’s uni, mate?’ Gordon asked, waving to a set of slouching guys.
‘It’s amazing, yeah. I’m totally into my work, man, making some really interesting stuff. ’
‘What’re you going to do with it?’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘At the end of the year, what’re you going to do after that?’
‘Just… continue to make art.’
‘Who for?’
I felt Gordon snigger. He was waving at someone again, maybe Courtney.
‘Yeah, who for? How are you going to make a living out of it?’ he asked, beer foam on his pursed lip.
‘I will survive, man, don’t you worry about me,’ I said, winking at my friend, desperately trying to find some of that old ease.
‘It’s not really a career though, is it? Making fucken… art videos and saying poems and shit.’
‘It makes me happy.’
‘That’s what matters.’ He barked something under his breath.
‘What?’ I barked back over my breath.
‘I’m just saying, it will be good when you finish the course. Get a look at some perspective on things.’
‘Sure, sure, I will see that I do that Gordo.’
‘I hope so.’ He still had not looked at me.
‘How’s your work going, Gordon?’ I switched, nailing the warm end of my beer.
‘Yes, very good. Saving money. I’m senior manager of sales now.’
‘Wow! You must really love blinds.’
Gordon was looking at me hard. I had to insult him to get him to look at me, and I had insulted him deep. He looked like he might kill me.
‘Where’s your dad?’ I asked. ‘Did he call you on your birthday?’
Gordon just glared at me now, his eyes filling with water and rage, and it was at this moment that I knew I had missed something big in his life, and he would never forgive me.
‘Are you still living with Carmen?’ I asked, handing him fresh ale and a fresher topic.
‘Nah, man, I moved out a year ago now.’
‘No shit?’
‘We’ve, um… I’ve got my own place. I bought a joint on the beach.’
‘No way! You bought your own place?’
‘Yeah, on Wanda Beach. Last Christmas. I told you.’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I just didn’t realise you actually bought it.’ I punched him lightly on the chest, but it didn’t work. It just looked like a shit punch.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty spesh.’ Gordon sucked on his bottom lip.
‘Who do you live with? Is it a one bedder?’
Gordon went redder and weirder than he was already.
‘You got a girlfriend in there with you, big guy?’ I beamed, trying desperately to crack it all open and make it jovial, like it was, like it should be.
‘Thanks for coming down, man. Shame we missed ya big speech.’
‘Why can’t you tell me who you’re living with?’ I pushed.
‘Why does it matter?’ Gordon asked, smiling menacingly at me.
‘Who is it? Sarah Kirkwood?’ That did it.
‘It’s Courtney, actually, mate. Courtney lives with me.’
Gordon was gulping and grinning now. At me. His face was replenished and not flushed at all. He was like a standing-up reptile in the golden sun.
‘We’re renovating now, so we’re living at
Courtney’s mum’s for a bit, but yeah, should be ready in a month or so, fingers crossed.’
Fuck you, I thought. You fucking thief cunt.
‘There she is.’ Gordon swung his reptile eyes south-west.
Courtney was out of the bathroom and sailing toward us, stuffing make-up back into her large green bag. Why such big bags? Do horses eat out of these bags?
‘You remember Courtney,’ Gordon said out loud, his big chest puffing.
It was true. The gloating red stocky Pom had stolen my ex-girlfriend. My first love and still in there. When he came to see me was this what he was holding? Were they all the way back there? Of course they must have been. That explains. They were in each other’s realm now and she was an inch taller than him and I could feel Saturdays in bed. Video night and football on television. She knew his chicken nugget dick and he knew her many moods. He knew more than I did. He knew ‘pick me up from here and I’ll drop you off there’. He knew the kink in her arm and the hair on her birthmark. She knew he lashed out when he was tired, and more when his pride was threatened. She dropped him at kickboxing and she… she lived with him too! She cooked in her pyjamas in his kitchen and he made her feel safe like no one else ever had. Gordon Braithwaite was the MAN IN HER LIFE. I was the fool here, I was the silly solipsist, resting on his big fat laurels while the crowd guffawed and their heads rolled off.
‘Hi!’ Courtney said this to me, but then she turned and kissed Gordon, who squeezed her wrist and let out a small noise of too-big triumph. Then they turned to face me as a couple. I could feel my nose ring getting infected. Gordon’s grin had a life of its own now. She looked glorious, even in his arms, though she had lost her fashion sense completely. Gone were the PJ Harvey goth-frocks of seventeen, the edgy torn skirts and customised boy t-shirts. Found was the forlorn garb of conservatism. Just as Gordon would like her. Draped in comfortable, ‘feminine’ dresses that talked of summer. Gentle pastels and sweet, tactile fabrics. Ribbons in hair and Sportsgirl floral. The unimposing façade. The ‘yes, it’s ok’ look of the Southern Districts.
How it feels Page 11