by Linda Jaivin
Yes, I had finally met the beautiful, refined, artistic and sensitive woman of my dreams. Senior Constable Grevillea Bennett. Put ‘Bent’ down to my poor hearing. We’ve embarked on what I fully expect will be a lifelong, passionate yet intellectual affair that will be the stuff of legend. Just like I foreshadowed to Thurston that day in the pub.
We named our first child Gaea (for she was truly born out of chaos) after the stool which prevented my flight from Trimalkyo’s house that day. Gaea was followed by Calliope, Clio and Thalia. The muses of poetry, history and humour. They’re a bit too energetic for Bacon’s liking; he’s a fat and lazy old thing, but he doesn’t complain much.
Grev quit the force and started doing what she’d always wanted to do—write. She won a prize for her first novel, an erotic thriller about a sexually deviant cop. In the course of a raid, the cop comes across a quantity of cocaine and distributes it through criminal contacts, making a bundle and thereafter supporting herself and her previously poor bisexual artist boyfriend in a style to which neither ever imagined they would become accustomed.
ZakDot, who still lives in that warehouse in Chippendale, stays with us in our home in Woollahra from time to time. It’s all of our fantasies come true.
And of course there was that show at Gallery Trimalkyo. In addition to exhibiting the best of ‘Paranoia: Killing Miles Walker’, I did a rainforest series featuring the No Names as warrior nymphs. The launch was huge. Everyone turned up, including the No Names, which was pretty special, even for Paddington. They were the only ones there not wearing black. They weren’t wearing anything.
My mum came to the launch as well. She and I both got a shock when I went to introduce her to Trimalkyo.
‘Trimalkyo.’ She’d gone pale. ‘So that’s what you’re calling yourself these days.’
I was astounded to see Trimalkyo blush. ‘Jenna.’ I was sure I hadn’t told him her name yet.
‘Well? Have you told him?’ She asked this in a strange, high pitch.
‘I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure.’ Trimalkyo’s accent had disappeared again. He was looking flustered. Oscar looked to me for enlightenment, but I shrugged, as clueless as he was.
‘You know,’ Trimalkyo said to me, ‘your mother could have been a great painter.’
I stared at him, and then my mother, in confusion. Those paintings in the attic. They must have been hers. But how did he know about them?
‘Well, at least you’re looking after your son.’ She sniffed.
I nearly fainted. Grevillea, who was eight months pregnant at the time, held me up.
‘I’m sorry, Miles.’ Trimalkyo opened his arms and gave me a hug. And so I had my first exhibition, met my dad, and proposed to my wife all on the same evening.
The exhibition launched my brilliant career. Jean-Paul d’Esdaigne raved about the show in the Herald. It sold out and more favourable critiques, interviews and features on my work appeared in Trash Art and Whirl Art and Art + Connections.
It proved a great year for me in general. My portrait of Destiny won the Archibald Prize. The judges loved the unfinished corner. I received invitations to exhibit in New York and London and Beijing, and to represent our country at the Venice Biennale. The Historic Memorials committee commissioned me to paint Penelope Tolerance’s portrait when she retired. That’s how it’s supposed to be done, by the way.
I was successful and I was alive. I even became a minor celebrity. Kylie Minogue, who’d become Queen of England following a series of accidents to the royal family, asked me to appear in a music video. I referred her to ZakDot.
As my work went on winning prizes and honours, the story of how I won over Destiny leaked out, along with the videotapes. I was mortified, Grevillea amused, and I learned once and for all that there really is no such thing as success without compromise.
Speaking of which, Trimalkyo and I decided that it would be better for my career and his reputation if we let the father-son thing be our little secret. Especially as he is my dealer and all. I suppose I’ve forgiven him. Grevillea and I go round there fairly often. The kids love Grandad’s furniture. Oscar and I have become good friends. I visited him in hospital every day after he had his buttocks implant. He’s gone from fairy godfather to fairy stepmother, something we often laugh about, though he gets terribly upset if any of the kids call him ‘grandma’. He and Trimalkyo run the trendiest, most happening gallery in Paddington, which is to say Sydney, which is to say, so far as Sydney is concerned, the world.
Oh, that’s right. Verbero. A few hours after the bomb went off, the harbour police found him still handcuffed to the sink. He was hanging for a line, and had pissed himself, but was otherwise fine. As it turned out, the bomb Maddie had planted on the Dinkum was a simple device consisting of dry ice and water in a sealed two-litre plastic bottle. The fuse was a joke. My watch wasn’t involved at all—she’d used it for something else. The thing about dry ice bombs is that you can’t tell exactly when they’ll blow. As it turned out, when it did go, as we all know, it blew up the dessert table neatly enough, and you wouldn’t want to have been standing within range when it went off, but the Dinkum was a solid ship. It’s now in permanent drydock at the Maritime Museum receiving hundreds of visitors each day, many of them school-children learning about the history of our little country.
Verbero went on to become a movie producer. After a series of commercial successes, he produced a film that he told the breathless press was ‘his most sincere’, a ‘searing examination’ of the Clean Slate experiment. Destiny Days was much acclaimed by critics and went on to win the jury prize at Cannes. Tyrone Australis, the extremely handsome young actor who played the character based on Verbero himself, was courted by Hollywood. He drifted off, never to return. Some things never change.
Also by Linda Jaivin
EAT ME
Julia is a photographer. Chantal edits a fashion magazine. Helen is a feminist academic. And Philippa is writing a novel. The best of friends, they haunt the designer cafes of Darlinghurst, eyeing the passing talent and swapping stories. Sexy, intelligent and predatory, these four women are creatures of the nineties, as are the men in their lives, Jake the ‘slacker gigolo’, Marc the wannabe feminist and Mengzhong the Beijing sword-swallower. But can we believe the wild and wicked tales these women love to tell each other about their erotic exploits?
With her brilliant wit and silky prose, Linda Jaivin has created a funny and seductive world in which she plays havoc with ideas about truth, sex and power. After Eat Me, lust, laughter, kiwifruit and the Big Merino will never seem the same again.
‘Erotic escapism at its best, with a touch of humour and a touch of class; a blend of fetishism, fun and kiwifruit!’ New Woman
ROCK N ROLL BABES FROM OUTER SPACE
Baby, Doll and Lati, three spunky alien babes, are trapped on Nufon, the most boring planet in the entire yoon. They steal a spaceship and arrive in Sydney, Planet Earth, in search of sex, drugs and rock n roll. When the babes abduct Jake, a minor rock star and dred-headed charmer, and toss him in their saucer’s sexual experimentation chamber, the global warming begins.
The babes form a band, and rocket to rock n roll stardom. Trouble is, Jake and Baby are falling in love, a posse of Nufonians is headed for Earth, the US military is on the case and Eros the talking asteroid wants to dive into the mosh as well. The babes are planning their biggest gig, but can they save the world too?
‘Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space is written with the unexpected sweetness of a writer who’s on the outer looking in at something with the sort of fascination and attention that we envy in a child.’ Rolling Stone
CONFESSIONS OF AN S&M VIRGIN
Linda Jaivin gets a spanking as she interviews the manager of an S&M club. She steps into a kickboxing ring, and wears a penis for a week to find out how it feels to be a man. ‘When I’m writing non-fiction,’ she says, ‘I tend to get into character.’ Jaivin describes the effects of PMT and tells the terrifying story of her frie
nd the axe-murderer. She reveals why she loves younger men and why sex makes her laugh.
She takes us backstage at a Beijing rock concert, explores the secretive world of Chinese gays and lesbians, and gives an astonishing account of what happened the night the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square.
‘This collection of essays and journalism offers a number of amusing diversions into comic-erotica. But diversions they are. Despite some very droll and occasionally hilarious forays into the subjects of genital swapping (literally), orgasm and PMT, Confessions’ centre of gravity is fixed squarely within Jaivin’s original area of expertise, China…Jaivin’s writings on the ‘89 massacre rank amongst the finest pieces of reconstructive journalism published by an Australian.’
John Birmingham