‘I, Courtney Gonzales, take you, Gordon Braithwaite, to be my lawful wedded husband. I will do my best to please you, not necessarily honour or obey you –’ the crowd giggled but for the old folk, who detested the noncompliance ‘– but always defend and love you with body, heart and soul. Together let us seek peace and tasty, nutritious meals every day, learning from each other and our friends. Thank you for marrying me.’
Gordon repeated these same vows as the majority of the crowd fell about laughing. They had busted open the very notion of marriage vows, but they had done it in the spirit of love, and so no one could prattle for long.
I imagined myself in front of Courtney, saying these things to her, and meaning them. I wondered if I would laugh or cry, but mostly I wondered if she would believe me when I said those things, and a wave of deep sadness passed over me as I wondered if I would ever be in a position where I could say such things to a woman and actually mean them, and for this I envied my friend Gordon, because even in his rough diction and flushed public face there was no doubting the enormity of his love; this was not acting, this was it. All my life I had thought about what on earth ‘it’ was, and how to get it, and here it was in front of me, the big and beautiful ‘it’, and I knew right then that it was all there is.
It was at this point in proceedings that Rocky stepped up onto the small vine-wrapped podium, hugged and kissed his brother, hugged and kissed Courtney with an officer’s deference, and turned to that beast that was the audience. They were struck quiet, murmurs and quacks all but muted, and I knew it well. This happened a bit in my life, the weird pause that hung dangerous and pregnant the moment before something ‘different’ or ‘unplanned’ was about to take place, something that challenged the beige normal we fed on so greedily in the no-alarms and no-surprises white bread status quo.
I looked around at all the frames and faces, women painted in garish blush and rouge, men all hunkered over their booklets waving away flies that were not there, kids clutching high hands dreaming of a pine-lime Splice, all of their mouths agape with threat and ever-ready contempt. Threatened by what this always curious young sailor called Rocky was about to unleash in the vulnerable forum of this day, a day where nothing should go against the order. My heart chugged with warm empathy, for someone else had taken my place, someone else was the devil outsider.
But the crowd had nothing to worry about when Rocky emitted a single, glorious note – his voice had never broken – letting out the most angelic rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’, which drew tears from every chubby aunty, and hard welling from good and big men with arthritis, jaundice and bowel issues.
The celebrant, a peacock-headed woman with an ice-bitch lilt in her principal’s voice, broke the silence that remained long after Rocky’s final note, taking the microphone and banging applause into its shaft. She patted the angel-star on the shoulder and led him off the stage. I could kiss him, I thought, later I will tell him this, ‘I could kiss you’. The celebrant then ushered Gordon and Courtney towards each other, and spoke gently.
‘Gordon and Courtney, on that beautiful note of that beautiful song, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride…’
Gordon moved forward and took Courtney’s ears in his hands. I waited for her to make her own move, but instead her neck twisted and her eyes drilled right in to mine. There was no crowd in her vision, just me and a message to be sent:
I am getting married now.
I am officially turning away.
I am turning now, and I will never turn back.
You have allowed this.
Gordon stood still and immovable in his place on the podium, smug as Popeye with a mouthful of spinach. He was strong and gloating in it. He had won. Tricked me out and won the only real thing in this town, on this earth, this black-hearted beach. I wanted to scream and say fuck, I wanted to take back all the nights and redraft them with a brighter, braver pen. She was mine and I had let her go. So caught up in the light, so caught up in the fight, so caught up buying tickets for my soul. You fucking fool, Cronk. With your misconstrued dream life and your macheted baby, your stupid, ridiculous house on a leaf. Gordon’s house sat firmly on the ground and massive, looming with head room for his mother and her man, for progress and barbecues, love and Courtney, and a stack of kids and poorly behaved poodles splashing about in the temperature-controlled water of the in-ground Blue Haven pool. These were but images and concepts I could only peer at through a long lens, or conjure and mock through theatre. Family and friends, as a notion, were a warped insinuation of a living death, and believing this had led me here, to face a life without it.
And then she moved towards him and up to his level and I was gone forever and the lights were off inside her for me. She took his hair and ears and soul and complications and shortcomings in her hands and said ok, let us go now. Her lips fell open with epic invitation, and I could swear a million hummingbirds flew out of them in curved formation, lusting for pollen and passion and peace, and for the first time in my life I believed. I truly believed she loved him, she had so much love for Gordon, and I realised then, in that moment before they joined their lips in the name of forever, how things were built and bettered with the dance of the everyday. All the tiny things made this mammoth union up, all the times he had picked her up from Sutherland station, made her chicken salad rolls and brought her a Lipton’s iced tea, called her about Sunday and fixed Nina’s shed door hinge, held her and not fucked her when she was dying with period pain, thought of what she said last night and made something of it the following afternoon, all these unspectacular deposits of love he had made and they were the currency, earning enough to have her see that he was nothing but the right one.
Gordon kissed his bride with unappealing repetitive scoops of the bottom lip and mouth. He kissed like a duck would if powered by Duracell, and I could sense Courtney trying to slow the whole thing down, but to no avail. They stopped kissing as the crowd’s holler and high fell away, but then Gordon grabbed her chin and scooped away at it again, which she allowed, with one foot stepping back inside its train to anchor her against the force of her groom. She would take his thin, monotone kisses for all the years to come, for he was her choice, he was the gallant victor, the good option. He would carry her through the night, he would make her happy and safe, and he would love her more than he loved anyone, and this, in the end, was all she wanted, and all that she had asked of me between her legs on a pile of cushions on the living room floor of her parents’ house, naked and spent with tawny port and conversation, on the night of their engagement party barely a year before.
29
The dreams came thick and fast that London spring, and then the visitations followed, Stuart arriving on the foot of my bed in the same white suit and dancing shoes, bathed in yellow light and wearing a small, cheeky grin which spoke of how he missed it all, the beach and the easy pussy, the weather and the barbecued chook, shooting magpies and smoking bongs, and of course the time with mates he yearned for most, and this was visible in the corner of his mouth, which cracked inwards with lurking responsibility. The ghost was here for a reason it seemed, and as the visits crept on I became convinced that he would not leave me alone until I had resolved the discontent, or simply returned to Cronulla.
‘Neil,’ he would say, loosening his tie and hopping off the end of my fold-out home in the study.
‘Stuart,’ I would say – in my sleep? I had never been one to recall an entire dream; those who could always astounded me and I envied them deeply. All I ever had, when I woke up round eight thirty, was a collection of often despairing images, like me and Agatha eating tinned peaches out of my father’s cheeks, or of stabbing a husky on a tennis court.
‘Wassup, bro?’ Stu said, reclining on the lounge chair wedged between the door and the short IKEA bookshelf.
‘Just dreaming,’ I would say. ‘Is this correct?’
‘You are dreaming,’ he would reply, condescending. ‘When will you start livi
ng?’
‘Why did you stop living?’ I asked.
‘I told you, bro: here for a good time not a long time.’
‘Shut the fuck up with your fucked mantra. It’s a fucking stupid excuse and you know it, you fucking coward. Now fuck off out of my study, I want to sleep.’
In a flash, Stuart was hovering above me, vampire-like, peeling my eyelids open with his thumbs. I was far from scared of him. I was always far from scared of him and perhaps that was why he did it. I held his glare until he retreated to his place beside the bookshelf, shaking his head.
‘Cheeky boy,’ he said. ‘Cheeky little Cronky boy.’
‘How is heaven?’
‘Is that where I am? I thought I was in Bethnal Green, and I can tell you this, from any distance, Bethnal Green is far from fucking heaven!’ He doubled over with sick laughter. I hated him when he came, because he wasn’t the same, he was always prying and running me down, he didn’t let me be like the living Stuart had; he wanted to mould me now.
‘Are there girls in heaven?’ I asked him, I asked my dead friend.
‘Yeah, all these girls are there, but see the chicks are the same, wherever you go in heaven the chicks are just your type. Like, all the chicks in my section are blonde with big tits!’
‘Perfect for you,’ I said.
‘Yes, you would think so, but it gets repetitive, after the same thing a hundred times…’
‘Ohhhh…’ I said, getting it a bit.
‘Yeah, that’s pretty much heaven, mate. It’s this gay place where all the things you ever wanted are right there, right everywhere, but it kind of fucken shits you because that’s all it is, shit that you’re into. Makes me think that is what life is about, having shit you don’t want and shit you do want together. I’d do anything to bang a short chick or even a butch with no tits, but I can’t!’
‘Haha!’ I cried out, heaving with laughter in bed. ‘An artist type even?’
‘Yes, you faggot. Even one of your intelligent-looking chicks, but I never thought about it when I was alive so that’s why all I got is these blonde sluts.’
‘Tough work,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he replied, ‘but hey, there is hope – this guy I met up with there who killed himself too, he reckons you can swap things if you like, and that gives you variety access.’
‘Sounds alright,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it does. But the thing is, it’s dangerous.’
‘Variety is?’
‘Not variety itself, just the way it’s all policed. They get a sense of it. You can be punished. See, they design it for you based on what you wanted in your heart, and if you challenge that too much they take it personally and turn you off. ’
‘Turn you off?’
‘That’s it, gone, darkness. The housing people can deploy you to less optimum houses or simply turn you off to the darkness place. Any time they can decide – some of them just do it for kicks sometimes, to Dead they don’t like.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Just like that.’
‘Does that scare you, Stuey?’
He sat back in his chair and pondered this, did it scare him, and if so would he admit this to me. ‘Yeah, man. That’s why I settle for the big-tit blondes. In truth, I hardly even fuck anymore.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it is all points.’
‘You get awarded points for how good you are?’ I laughed.
‘No, you faggot, it’s not Sale of the Century. If you take one of the things you like, say a beer or a surf or a barbecue chook or a gun or a bong or, say, a twenty-one-year-old biking slut, they take credits off your book, and you can only spend a certain amount of credits a week.’
‘What do you spend yours on then? If you’re not banging sluts anymore?’
Stuart twisted in his chair, awkward now, and in the awkwardness his secret revealed itself.
‘You use them to visit me?’ I asked, glowing now.
‘Visits are expensive, but you need the fucking help so I do it.’
‘What a guy.’
‘Hey, cunt? I haven’t had a root or a surf or a beer in months.’
‘You can really surf up there?’
‘Well you couldn’t because you’re a faggot, but yeah, fuck, man, it’s fucked because I can only surf Bells Beach!’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Well apparently that was my true dream, which is fucken bullshit – I used to dream about Hawaii and heaps of other sick reefs.’
‘Do you know anyone up there? Are any of the other guys that suicided up there?’
‘Nah, I never see anyone. Mustn’t have given a fuck. Are you going to come up?’
‘Me?’ I asked, amazed at how he just slipped that in.
‘Yeah, OD on meth or something and come stay. I’m pretty sure we’d be housed together.’
‘But I like living,’ I said.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why you’re sleeping in the spare room?’
‘We had a bad thing happen, we were pregnant and –’
‘I know all the shit.’
‘You knew?’ I asked him, in a rage all of a sudden.
‘Yeah, mate. I saw the whole thing.’
I stood up beside the bed and held my fist out in the air. ‘Then why didn’t you stop the black cunt from stabbing my pregnant girlfriend? Why didn’t you help her?’
‘Keep your voice down!’
‘You fuck off!’
‘I can only reach you, Cronk. I can’t reach anyone else.’
‘Bullshit, how were you watching then?’
‘I can watch anyone, but I can only reach you.’
‘Fuck off, Patrick Swayze,’ I said, returning to bed and burying myself under a pile of pillows.
‘What’s important to you, Neil?’ I heard him say.
‘I don’t want your help, Stone!’ I said, crying now.
‘It’s ok, Neil. I’m here to listen.’
‘Go fuck some tits!’
‘Nelly…’ he said, his eyes all wet with desperation. ‘It feels good, mate, when you decide you want out; it’s like heroin, and so much more than pussy, when you know you’re going to blow your head off. Nothing matters, you’re fucken fearless.’ He shook his head and smiled at me and for a moment there I could feel the weight fall away and the opiate brilliance of Stuart’s nihilism take over – and I liked it, and I wanted to know it more. ‘Kill yourself, Nelly, you’ll never feel so alive.’
*
I knew things had reached an all-time low when Swanna told me one morning, typically busy as an ant in our kitchen, skidding from one bench to another to stir or clean or scrub or label a container, that she was considering moving to Sri Lanka. I told her she was crazy, and that it was a terrible situation there at present, and suggested that we go to couples therapy in Notting Hill. She said she would be very happy for me to go, but that you have to be a ‘proper couple’ to go to couples therapy, and we certainly were not that. It occurred to me in this moment that I had abandoned Swanna, I had left this poor girl to suffer on her own. Yes, she had chosen reclusion, she had taken her leave of me, but this, in the language of the broken one, never means you should leave them alone, it means you should persist in asking the recluse to come out into the light, and cop the relentless ‘no’ on the chin. One day they will come, one day they will choose a hat and walk outside with you, but only if you keep at the door with a quiet, motiveless whisper and an outstretched hand. I had left my post indefinitely, turned right around and leapt straight back into the tangled web of my past, delving deep into dark correspondence with my dead friend Stuart Stone, and Swanna knew it, she knew I was elsewhere.
‘Maybe we should try working again,’ I suggested. Pour the grief and the pain into our art, stage a wild and honest adaptation of Seneca’s Thyestes.
She slapped me hard across the cheek and told me I was the sickest person she knew, then she lifted up her top and showed me the sc
ar on her stomach where the machete had gone in.
‘Make a fucking play about this!’ she said.
Perhaps art was not the solution, but this was our currency, this was how we related from the start; we worked together, that is how we fell in love and how we stayed there. Without work the tyres blew and there was nothing between us to travel on. Months went on without a script, a concept or a rehearsal room floor, she slept in there and I slept out here, reading books and drinking Jameson’s from the bottle. We had lost our voice and I was desperate to scream out and make some sense of this.
It was around this time I received a sweet, simple email from Courtney. She had heard through Gordon of our misfortune and emailed me to say she was sorry, and that she was there if I needed her. She said Swanna and I had seemed so ‘happy and together’ that New Year’s Eve down by the harbour, with our 2004 glasses on and our smiles, the fireworks dancing in our eyes, all green and red with tomorrow’s hope.
Four minutes after I had read the first sentence of her email I had sent a one-page reply, riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I didn’t even bother with capital letters, I just pushed it out, like I did in my room the first time I found one of Agatha’s Cleo magazines lying around; I simply belted it all out and then it was done.
I pressed the ‘send’ button and a wave of absolute nausea swept over me, I had to get up and go for a walk around Victoria Park, just to deal with the enormous sense of truth and heartache I had released over the Pacific Ocean past Singapore to Cairns, down the coast of Queensland over the army barracks and endless stretch of wasteland to New South Wales, Sydney, Sutherland, then Caringbah, and finally Wanda Beach, up the stairs and into the screen where it would open itself up and out for Courtney’s eyes. Of all the people, why had I chosen her to share this trouble with? It seemed perverse, but it felt so right, and so thrilling at the same time. She knew me, that little lawyer girl with the big green eyes and the pale and perfect skin. She knew me well enough to move through this mess with me, and she did, she did so expertly, and with such delicate compassion I was forced to reflect, constantly in the following weeks of communication, just what a complete and brilliant young creature this old friend of mine was, and in doing so began to contemplate a life with her, and to contemplate how and why it had come about that this might never happen.
How it feels Page 22