How it feels

by Brendan Cowell

  ‘Come in! Welcome to Club Med!’ she said, kissing me. ‘My, what a fabulous outfit. Gordon, Neil is here! Yoo-hoo!’

  ‘Yeah, I’m going for a Miami Vice-type thing, with the linen,’ I said, moving through the tiled foyer and out towards the pool. I could see Gordon flipping snags on the barbecue by the ferns. He was wearing short black football shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, a blue terry-towelling hat and shiny silver Ray-Bans. He waved at me with his tongs, sipping on a Crown Lager perched inside a Cronulla Sharks cooler which was shaped like a player and fitted a stubby in it perfectly.

  ‘Haven’t you heard of summer?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘I thought I’d dress up,’ I said. ‘It’s not every day you get asked to a place like this!’ I gestured to the house.

  There was no sign of Courtney and I should never have come. All I wanted to do was get back to my mattress in Ioannis’s garage and smoke up some meth for lunch, but instead here I was at the family pool party in a suit feeling like something out of the Dada movement: a figure in an incorrect landscape. I hadn’t eaten for a long time, I was not sure I could take a sausage or a steak in my mouth, the blood and tissues. Everyone would see this, my inability to do the simple human things, everyone would know, everyone would laugh, by the beach they would mock me, by the beach I would come undone.

  Albert was in the pool with a beer. He looked browner than he should be, like someone had smeared shit on him then fixed it with varnish.

  ‘Can I get you a drink, Nelly?’ Carmen asked.

  ‘I didn’t bring anything,’ I said, embarrassed.

  ‘I didn’t ask that!’ She laughed, tapping her sunglasses back up her nose.

  ‘Beer would be great, thanks, Carmen.’

  Carmen had more than embraced her new life, bouncing back up the deck and into the open-plan kitchen with an invisible stack of new dynamite lodged between her wobbling buttocks.

  ‘Come over here, mate,’ Gordon said, and I did.

  ‘So, wow, man,’ I said as a burning, hot oil sensation passed behind my eyes and down into my throat, locking up my larynx and airway.

  ‘The house?’ Gordon asked, mock surprised. ‘Yeah, it’s not bad, eh?’

  ‘It’s fucking massive,’ I whispered, unable to talk very loud.

  ‘ Ya bring yer togs?’ Albert called to me from the deep end.

  I shook my head because I was not sure I could reach the deep end with my voice, and also, if they saw me in swimming trunks my body would say too much about it all.

  ‘The view is off chop,’ I whispered to Gordon, and it was, Wanda Surf Club directly across the road.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fucken heaven, mate. We bought the whole block, knocked down both houses – then Al and Gra built all this from scratch.’

  Albert winked at me from the steps. ‘We’ll make a tidy coin if we ever sell it, I fucken tell ya!’ Albert raised his beer at us like the secret was out.

  ‘You want the tour?’ Gordon asked me, but he was already off inside, flinging the tongs at Albert.

  On my way in Carmen handed me an icy cold bottle of Crown Lager and, even though I didn’t favour the Foster’s line of drinks, I thought if I could slam down six or seven of these quite quickly, I might be able to stabilise just enough to pull this function off and get back to Ioannis’s garage for a pipe before my soul inverted itself.

  Norah Jones’s ‘Come Away with Me’ floated through the kitchen, Carmen on backing vocals pumping Paul Newman French Dressing into the IKEA bowl stacked with cos lettuce, spring onions, half an avocado and one punnet of cherry tomatoes. Under instruction, I took my shoes off.

  ‘Kitchen, for the ladies,’ Gordon said, leading me down the hall.

  I glimpsed the garage, laundry, TV and media room, study, ‘possible nursery’ and the door to the underground wine cellar and then we were away to level two.

  The stairs were soft beneath my feet, thick, almost shagpile carpet stretching up between my toes. Gordon seemed in a rush to have the tour over, weaving in and out of rooms before I got the chance to really see them, although his pride burst when we reached the upstairs bathroom. He paused, resting against the door.

  ‘Look at that shitter! The seat has a foot pedal. And that bath has jets in it, and look, the trimming is all vintage. Courtney had a lot to say about this room, she loves a good bathroom – chicks, y’know?’ Gordon raised his eyebrows at me and before I could say ‘yeah’ he was out of there and across the hall. I lingered in the big green bathroom, staring into the metallic bathtub, wondering what would take place in there. Love making? Dual bubble baths? The washing of little ones? I wished I could lie in it now, in my suit, with no water running.

  ‘Come check the master!’ Gordon blasted and I went.

  The master bedroom was wide and long with ocean views and a large walk-in wardrobe. Gordon patted the king-size bed with his hand. ‘Workbench,’ he said, winking at me.

  ‘Yeah, right, workbench, nice one,’ I said, imagining.

  ‘Yeah, she likes it. Gets nice light in the morning but doesn’t get too hot you can’t sleep, if you know what I mean. And wardrobe for all her shoes and shit.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s really sweet.’

  Gordon knocked on the walls a while, distracted by something, then turned back to me.

  ‘Y’know, Cronk, if you’re ever stuck, there’s plenty of room.’

  ‘In your bedroom?’

  ‘No, dickrash – in the house.’

  ‘Ahh!’ I said, nodding then puffing my lip in gratitude.

  ‘Just say the word, doss at ours.’

  ‘That’s nice of you guys. I’m staying at Ioannis’s place right now, but it’s nice to know you’re here if I get stuck.’

  ‘Yeah, man. Mekasa musaka, or whatever.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Mine is yours.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What is ours is yours, more like.’

  I jumped on this. ‘Speaking of “ours”, where is Courtney?’

  Gordon fiddled with the curtain cords, pulling them apart then closing them again with swift, exaggerated movements.

  ‘Oh, she’s at work, her fucken boss makes her come in on Saturdays to tidy up the mess he makes. He doesn’t even pay her!’

  ‘Woah,’ I said, getting the tone just right.

  ‘She reckons it’s all part of being new but I reckon it’s all part of being exploited because you’re a fucken nice girl and your boss is a lazy prick who offloads his shit on you – don’t get me started.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Fuck you look skinny, where did your chest go, man?’

  I didn’t answer. My brain was burning so I was not even sure what I’d heard.

  ‘Downstairs, mate, let’s get some food into ya!’

  Gordon placed his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. It was intense because I was blinking like a maniac and I could not stop.

  ‘Neil, you’re my brother, you know that. We got to get some flesh on those bones. I don’t know what you’ve been doing with yourself but eating certainly ain’t it!’

  ‘I’m just controlling my portions,’ I lied.

  ‘And I’m just sucking my own dick!’ he said, then slapped me on the neck and walked out of the master bedroom with the ‘workbench’ in it.

  ‘Lunch is served!’ Carmen announced, distributing trays of cold meats and antipasti to the too-long table by the sliding doors.

  ‘Get some proper tunes on!’ Gordon said, flicking Norah Jones off and replacing it with Powderfinger’s Internationalist. ‘The Finger!’

  I moved towards the table as Albert handed me a glass of Jacob’s Creek grenache shiraz I did not want. His friend Graham was sipping on a UDL can of bourbon and Coke, smoking and laughing, telling us of his ‘massive night’ at Coyotes which ended with pizza on the beach and ‘one prick nearly drowned trying to swim over to the tits in the dark’.

  The table had a white tablecloth on it with small green flowers imprinted eve
ry four inches on a diagonal. There were three salads, one of them Paul Newman French, the other a Caesar with chicken, and the third involved beans, pine nuts and feta cheese with balsamic vinaigrette. There was a tray of lamb chops, a tray of enormous steaks cooked medium rare, and a tray of sausages varying in colour, style and fatness. The sausages were accompanied by a stack of cooked onions and garlic. There was a square plate of marinated red capsicum, some pitted olives and zucchini fritters, a bowl of mixed nuts, and an enormous wooden bowl full to the brim with roasted, buttery potatoes and kumara wedges (the new alternative). There were three bottles of wine on the table, two bottles of sauce (HP and Fountain tomato) and a loaf of crusty French bread from the Baker’s Delight on Cronulla Street.

  There were six chairs at the table. I was seated at the end closest to the pool. The chair across from me must have been for Courtney, because it was empty and there was a glass of sparkling water in front of it, with a slice of lime clipped to the rim. I was the first to be passed every single bowl, plate and tray, and somehow I managed to pick a few things that I might just be able to eat without seeming too ungrateful or peculiar, and without my body protesting.

  ‘If you have pasta, then antipasta, are you still hungry?’ asked Albert, unleashing a joke he had surely used before.

  Carmen burst out laughing and so did Graham, but Gordon just shook his head and looked over at me, appalled.

  So, Neil, are you working on any projects right now?’ Carmen asked me, chewing on a length of marinated capsicum (off the carbs).

  And no I was not. I was simply doing drugs in a garage with a Greek man named Ioannis. I should have gone back to London and started work again but the whole town was tainted for me now, for that’s where Swanna was, bleeding to death in Bethnal Green, her teeth cracked and yellow and her lips falling off. I was working on not going back at all; I was working on hiding away, and slowly dissolving into the local mist.

  ‘Oh, look, Mrs Braithwaite, I, um… I just had a pretty intense few years in London with my company, so I’m just taking it easy right now, kind of chilling, gathering my thoughts in the sun, know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Carmen interrupted. ‘Gordon told me you were having incredible success in London, he said your work was lauded over there!’

  ‘Neil smashed London,’ Gordon said. ‘Fucking smashed it.’

  ‘Was it movies?’ Albert asked, mauling a long, floppy steak with his hands and teeth.

  ‘Ah, we integrated multimedia sure, but no, the um, the work was essentially theatre, Albert, so live performance,’ I went on. ‘Kind of performance art but not horrible like a chick chained to a wall screaming for ten hours, more physical theatre and mostly devised, but with some multimedia elements, but then kind of flipping that very notion on its head in a postmodern, kind of anti-theatre context.’

  The room fell silent, everyone eating and nodding, proffering nothing, and I wished I was dead in the pool outside, floating upwards.

  ‘How’s your mother and Agatha?’ Carmen segued.

  I hadn’t seen Mum since I moved out to Ioannis’s. I had disappointed her on so many levels she inevitably offered me an ultimatum, saying I could stay in the house and let a man from the Black Dog Institute come visit me, or move out right away and continue to ruin my own life like a fool. ‘So many people need you to get better, Neil, do it for them.’

  My mother and father had proved to me that banishment was parenting. Father had banished me under orders from the new woman. Mum had banished me because she could not have an unfixable problem in her house, or at least a problem disinterested in repair, which was I.

  ‘Mum’s alright,’ I said. ‘Busy and things.’

  ‘She found a new guy?’ asked Carmen.

  ‘No. She just works and looks after everyone else.’

  ‘Graham’s single!’ Albert said, pointing at his mate who was lighting another Peter Jackson, his meal not yet half eaten.

  ‘And Agatha?’ Carmen asked.

  ‘She’s dating a DJ, though I think he’s only a mobile DJ.’

  ‘Like Moby Disc?’ Gordon asked, giggling.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said. ‘She likes saying she is “dating a DJ” but I saw his van and it said Moby Disc on it.’

  ‘What does she do now?’ asked Carmen, and I wished the questions would stop.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She was doing a small business course at TAFE, but I don’t know if she saw it through. She starts a lot of things.’

  ‘You should get her involved with your work,’ Albert said. ‘Set up a company here, we got a lovely theatre off Cronulla Street – it’s on Beach Street isn’t it, Carmen? What’s it bloody called again?’

  ‘Cronulla Arts Theatre,’ Carmen said, proud of her knowledge.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Albert. ‘You do the arty stuff and she could do the admin.’

  ‘Albert has such great business ideas, you should listen to him,’ Carmen nodded.

  ‘Ok then,’ I answered, setting down my glass.

  ‘You been to the Cronulla Arts Theatre? I could show you through.’

  Gordon shook his head and laughed mockingly at Albert. ‘What the fuck, Al? You’ve never been to Cronulla Arts Theatre in your life!’

  ‘I know one of the blokes that renovated the foyer!’ Albert blared.

  ‘You’re a fucken goose, Albert,’ Gordon said, winking at me. ‘Neil’s one of the most well-respected theatre guys in the UK and Europe; why would he want to work in that little shitbox?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t want to work in Cronulla?’ Albert said, shifting his chair to face me.

  I pulled out some potato I had been hiding under my tongue. ‘What’s that, Albert?’ I asked, trying to recall the thread of his suggestions over the past four minutes.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you want to work in Cronulla? By the look of you, a bit of time here would do you good!’ Albert laughed at me, menace building over the bowls and pepper shakers between us.

  I knew this feeling, I knew it well. He thought I was belittling him and his town of choice.

  ‘Albert…’ Carmen warned.

  ‘What’ve you got against making your entertainment in Cronulla?’

  ‘I didn’t say I did…’

  ‘Leave him alone, Al,’ Gordon chimed in.

  ‘Just answer the question: why wouldn’t you want to work here?’

  I could hear the waves from across the street and I turned to the window in hope of finding their foaming crests.

  ‘That’s where we’re having the reception,’ Gordon said. ‘Wanda Surf Club. Just there, can you believe it?’

  I flicked my head back to Albert and held his eyes. What I wanted and what I felt about what I wanted was taking over, and I was exhausted by being here, and holding up this mask to fit the crowd. So I let it fall to the ground and the monster in me rose up and spoke. Fuck you, you dumb, art-less cunt, you don’t know me, you don’t know me one bit.

  ‘I think my work would be lost on you all, Albert,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure the audience would connect with it or understand any of the themes or nuances; that’s why I don’t want to work here.’

  ‘There’s the answer, now let’s talk about something else,’ Carmen said.

  ‘No!’ Albert fired up. ‘This is just getting interesting. You reckon I wouldn’t understand it? Is that what you think?’

  ‘I just don’t think Cronulla’s my audience.’

  ‘But you’re from here?’ Albert said.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like home to me though. It never has.’

  ‘That’s not Cronulla’s fault, Cronulla’s heaven.’

  ‘I don’t want to make art for people who think like that, Albert.’

  ‘What’s that fucken mean?’

  ‘Cronulla looks like heaven, but it’s not,’ I said.

  Albert leant over the table and leered at me. ‘I’ve seen a lot more in my time than you know about ok, you little arty poofter.’

  ‘Ok!’ Graham stood u
p. ‘Let’s go have a smoke outside, Albert.’

  ‘Good idea!’ said Carmen, starting to clear the plates and bowls.

  ‘But have you?’ I asked Albert, my eyes never leaving his. ‘Or have you just seen what you want to see? Because that’s what I see when I come home to Cronulla, a bunch of white people who believe what they want to believe and see only what they want to see – which is more white people who believe what they want to believe and see what they want to see.’

  ‘What about a musical?’ Carmen suggested. ‘Everyone loves a musical.’

  ‘Mum, fuck,’ Gordon said.

  ‘You too smart for us, are you, mate, too worldly?’ Albert said.

  ‘I’m just not sure I’m the man for the job,’ I said.

  ‘Then get a real job,’ Albert whispered.

  I stood up and wiped my mouth. Albert simply gazed right through me, half-drunk smugness dripping down his hang-dog, beer-fucked face.

  ‘I’m going to use the toilet now,’ I said.

  I walked up the stairs and opened the door to Gordon’s celebrated bathroom. I sat in the metallic bathtub and retrieved my mobile pipe from the inside pocket of my jacket. Smoking meth requires a temperature that causes the compound to vaporise, so I insert the amphetamine into the cup of my pipe and light it for this. Eventually the meth ghosts and I hit it. Fuck those liberal-voting philistines.

  The meth ripped through my skull and neck and everything was erased, all the highs and all the lows, there was just a long and ever-dry plain and I was on it, skating and sliding cleanly through the nothing-land. I lay my head back and gripped the round edges of the tub and it brought me back to her, and that last bath we had together in London. I could think about it safely and easily here, because I could not feel a thing. This here was the only way I could manage retrospect. In the rink I can look back and it doesn’t kill me, it doesn’t kill me at all.