by Jessie Tu
‘Don’t come back too late,’ she calls out to him as we leave.
Val staggers along the footpath, one arm slung over my shoulders.
‘Do you want me to carry you?’ Mark offers.
‘I get motion sickness when I’m being piggy-backed,’ she says.
‘I’ll carry you in front of me.’
‘Like a lover?’
He bends down to lift her, her body falls back into his arms like a sack of cement.
‘Get the door.’
I run ahead as instructed.
When he lays her down in the back seat, her hair gets tangled in his cufflinks.
‘Who wears cufflinks to a party?’
‘Dresden gave them to me.’
We get lost on the way to the hospital because neither of us know how to use the sat nav in the car and neither of us knows the area. I take out my phone only to find it dead.
‘Where’s your phone?’ I ask. He pats his pants.
‘I must’ve left it at Noah’s.’
In the back seat, Val is half weeping, half moaning, head lolling against the seatbelt. We take turns looking back like concerned parents. We drive through McDonald’s to ask for directions. We get fifty-cent cones and French fries to share because suddenly I am starving.
‘Don’t tell my girlfriend I’m doing this with you,’ he says.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever see your girlfriend again.’
By the time we reach Royal North Shore Hospital, Val is asleep. Mark carries her into emergency, where the triage nurse panics at the sight of them because it looks as though he is carrying a dead body.
‘She’s only sleeping,’ Mark tells her.
The nurse leads us to a bed where Mark deposits Val, and then we’re asked to stay in the waiting area.
I arch my back against the chair.
‘This might be the nicest thing I’ve ever done for anyone.’
‘Glad I could help.’
There are a few people in the waiting area. A television suspended from the ceiling in one corner. Jack Black being an idiot with school kids.
‘You don’t drink much, do you?’
He takes his time to answer my question.
‘I’m a bit older than you. A hangover is a nasty thing at my age.’
‘How old?’
‘Forty.’
An hour later, the three of us leave the hospital. Val is given tablets and told to drink lots of water. We never find out what had been put in her drink. We are the typical youthful weekend crowd being reckless with our bodies.
Mark drops us off in Newtown.
‘I better take my girlfriend to the airport,’ he says as we get out. The sky is brightening into a faint, meandering blue. A glow on the edges of the trees.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I call out, not turning to meet his eyes.
‘Nice to meet you too.’
‘See you never.’
‘See you never.’
14
Before New Jersey, before the breakdown, I wrote long passages of sex scenes. When I wasn’t playing the violin, I filled pages of graphic details, getting thrashed, fucked, whipped, slurped, nipped, slapped, hit. I’d describe the way a man would take my body; pummel it. I imagined my body as the most desirable thing, a machine to please men. I knew that they had more power and I saw my body as the only way to get closer to them. In my stories, the sex was always rough and expedient. I’d write long sentences and then feel the meat between my legs loosen and pulse. I’d write my stories and then staple the pages closed. When I felt the urge to touch myself, the staples would come undone. Much later, I drew inspiration from the boys I was taking to bed, but they were never as rough as I hoped. I never knew how to make them do what I wanted.
There were days when the boys were not around. Days when I was convinced I was the ugliest girl in the world. I’d read the lines I’d written and make myself come. Afterwards, my repulsion would compel me to staple the pages together again. I’d promise myself that I’d never do it again. But I’d do it again. And again. And again. And again.
Once, I saw Rebecca at the computer looking at photos that appeared as though people had acted out my stories. Solid white flesh colliding. Bodies entangled like weed to coral. I watched as she scrolled through pages and pages of images. Then she cleared the browser history. Later, I went to the computer and typed ‘sex scenes’ in the internet browser.
At first, I watched people kissing. Then I watched people do things to their bodies I’d never seen before. When I heard someone coming inside the house, I closed the browser and grabbed the metronome, which was always next to me. Nobody would suspect me of anything as long as it was ticking.
I spent weekends watching men fuck women in the mouth on the internet. Whole days whiling away the loneliness that felt like a fist inside my throat, always threatening to choke me to death.
I guess living with my father and being a normal teenager was a strange time for me. I had to go to school every day. I’d seen movies set in American high schools, but I had no idea how to act around teenagers. How did one conduct a conversation? And about what? The only thing I knew was how to play the violin and how to perform.
The boys saved me. They taught me I was good. Their hands and mouths taught me to overcome my self-doubt. And I was an open fruit, ready and willing to be consumed.
My father was hardly around. I suppose he was trying to build his dental practice—and start a new life with a woman who was not my mother. I didn’t like her. I’d never spent so much time with a woman who was not my mother. But I thought about my mother so little during those two years in Wayne. Before then, I think our lives had become a single existence. Now I was building an identity of my own, and I wanted someone to tell me I belonged. I didn’t know how to do it without my mother—but I did it. And I have the boys to thank for it.
The morning after Noah’s party, I wake to find a note from Val next to my pillow.
Damien has come to pick me up. Thanks for saving me last night. PS. Don’t fuck the old man.
I take a train and two buses to get to my car, which is still parked in Cremorne.
In the afternoon, I get back to the violin.
At certain moments during the day, I shift my position so my body doesn’t shadow the music on the stand. After a run-through of the concerto, excerpts, sight-reading, scales, I put my violin back into its case and go into my room. I leave the door open because I live alone now and nobody will hear me scream.
I pull out a dildo from the top shelf of my wardrobe, click open the green lube, turn the bottle upside down and let it ooze over the tip of the glass phallus like maple syrup over ice cream. I lie in bed and watch some ordinary, gonzo porn on my phone. Man eats woman. Man straps woman. Man hurts woman. Woman screams in pleasure or pain, I don’t know. I hold the dildo between my legs and slide it in and out. It doesn’t feel deep enough. The position is wrong. I get on my knees and stand the dildo upright, riding it like a cowgirl, reach down and part the lips of my vagina with dry fingers. I rock back and forth, watching myself in the mirror. My body is perfect and museum-portioned.
After a while, orgasm-less, I collapse onto the bed.
I close the porn tab on my phone and scroll through my contacts list. I want someone to make me scream operatically. When was the last time I came like that? Two weeks ago? Who had I been with?
Bass player? Bassoon? Geordie? Maybe I was alone.
At the end of the week, I visit Mike and Jacob’s studio in Marrickville. I decide I am confident about the audition, four days out. I need something to distract me.
From a distance the warehouse looks like an abandoned factory. A mechanic’s shed. A textile mill. A place where basic parts come together, loud machinery churns for hours. Inside, golden lights flicker like small detonating bombs.
Mike and Jacob are preparing for another exhibition, this time in Shanghai. The collection is based on the theme ‘White’, and the curator is from Iceland. Ai We
iwei will be at the opening. I ask if they are excited about meeting him.
‘He’s just another sensationalist artist,’ Jacob says. ‘And he’s Chinese, so everybody has to love him. You can’t not love him. At least, not publicly.’
Val chips away at her hair, which is piled on top of her head in a loose bun. ‘Can you stop China-bashing?’
I ask her how she’s feeling after the other night. She shrugs, tells me she’s fine, and that Damien has found himself an actress to date and hasn’t called her since he drove her home.
She’s wearing khaki overalls, a white undershirt, black canvas shoes. Her wrists are stained with black spots. She never looks entirely clean.
‘Tea?’
She goes into the kitchen area.
I wander through the artists’ individual spaces, partitioned off by white walls. Entering an artist’s studio is like stepping into their mind. Loose sheets of paper strewn across tables. Coloured crayons, tubs of paint, bottles of poison. Turpentine. Rabbit-skin glue to prep canvases, illuminate the subject. Toxic paint remover. Tubes, heavy with reflective aluminium, exotic colours. Naphthol red, Windsor emerald, cobalt violet, burnt umber, blue hue, yellow orchid, magenta. Magenta. It even sounds spectacular.
An assortment of cigarette packets, some crushed, some unopened. Marlboro Blend No. 27 and American Spirits. ‘These are American,’ I say aloud.
Val emerges from behind me and hands me a warm mug.
‘Peter’s a new artist here from Chicago.’
‘Cool.’
More snooping around. In another space, on a trestle table, a diary opened for any passer-by to read. In messy childish handwriting:
Grow up and start using oil paint.
Be fucking quirky or quirky as fuck.
Try to have sex outside.
Try to have sex in your parents’ bed.
Try to sleep with the cheater.
Next to the diary, charcoal sticks lie scattered like bodies on a beach. Jugs of water, plastic cups, paper plates. Tissues. Heap upon heap of tissues. A spectrum of waste. All white. Dyed. Paper towels spotted with shadow-coloured smudges. Colours on white. Paper. Life, the world outside, inside tubes, eager, waiting to be squeezed out.
Tubes of toothpaste in silver. Foil. Yellow gloves. The sink. There is always a sink nearby. Staple gun. Pins. Rolls of canvas propped against walls. If only musicians were able to accumulate this detritus of cum, blood, sweat, tissues. Human excrement. Snot. Saliva. The preparation for the real thing. The white, the beginning with nothing and then the putting in love. The crumpled tissues. If only I could wipe away my mistakes. A note here. A bad bow there. Intonation miscalculated. Rhythms maligned.
If only I could wipe it all away.
Val is designing a logo for the upcoming Pro-Choice March. The feminist group WE CUNT WELL has commissioned her for the event. It needs to be red, loud and include the word CUNT.
We talk while she sketches on the fabric.
There’s a knock at the door. ‘Val!’
Mike sticks his head into the room. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’
‘Tell them I’m working,’ Val says, without looking up.
‘It’s Damien.’
Val’s mouth collapses. She puts down her pen and stands up. She tells me she’ll be back in a few minutes.
I wait for her; ten minutes, then twenty, then I go out to ask Mike where she is.
‘She and Damien left.’
Back home, alone, I get a text from Val, apologising for skipping off. She and Damien are back together.
15
There is always a place for me to land; a place for me to deposit my urgency. I text Olivia and ask her what she’s doing. She’s at Bondi Beach with Noah and his friends. I remind her that it’s only two days until the audition. She tells me to join them.
I take a train, and then a bus. It is well into the afternoon by the time I arrive. It is warm for late April. As if summer is reluctant to leave. The beach is a strip of white speckled with bodies. I find the group between the flags. They are playing Frank Ocean on their Sonos. Bottles of kombucha stand on top of a large esky. I recognise a few faces from Noah’s party, including Mark, who is lying on his stomach reading a book.
I spread my towel next to him. He is reading Helen Garner’s This House of Grief.
‘That’s pretty intense for the beach,’ I say, slipping off my dress.
‘No such thing as a beach read for me.’ His expression both invites and resists interpretation.
I ask after his girlfriend and he laughs. He tells me she’s too good for him.
I stand up. ‘I’m going in.’
A heavy relief plummets through my stomach when he puts his book down. ‘I’ll join you.’
I approach the water like I approach everything else. No hestitation. Head first. Eyes wide. When I resurface, I turn around to see his body only halfway in. Shoulders lifted, fingers skimming the surface of the water.
‘You’re making it painful for yourself.’
In the bright light, I dive under again. The blue-green underwater, a blurry abstract art.
We swim for a while then head back onto the sand and lie on our towels. I lie close to him, positioning my body for his full viewing pleasure.
We have dinner at a Thai restaurant in Surry Hills. The crowd has thinned by now, only five of us left; me, Mark, Olivia, Noah and Noah’s friend Tom. Mark sits next to me and orders wine for the two of us. At one point, as we’re talking about Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, he puts his hand on my leg and squeezes it. I pretend it is the most normal thing.
Afterwards, Olivia, Noah and Tom head home, leaving Mark to sink his hands deep into his pants pocket, waiting for me to say something. I twist the straps of my calico bag, waiting for him to say something.
‘I have an early morning,’ he says.
‘What do you do again?’
‘I trade funds.’
I nod slowly.
‘Want to go for a short walk?’
My legs follow his. We walk until the streets are empty, and then he stops.
‘This is me.’
In the elevator, we hold our bodies erect as though principled, disciplined. We know what we are about to do. We are patient. We are still. My restraint is impeccable. I follow him like a prostitute in a French film. His apartment is at the end of a long corridor.
As he pulls his keys from his pocket, I hold out my hand. ‘Is your girlfriend here?’
He stops abruptly. ‘No, she’s in Melbourne.’
We enter a large, open space. Black marble floors. A huge window. The city skyline flickering in spots of red, white and yellow. The bridge, a symmetrical ornament.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll get you some water.’
I sit on the sofa, which is leather and blue.
He emerges from the kitchen with a glass in his hand.
He sits close. Hand on my knee.
I take a sip of water. Place the glass on the coffee table.
‘We’re good people,’ I say.
‘Yes, we are.’
‘We don’t cheat.’
‘No.’
He looks at me with measured eagerness.
I lean forward to meet his mouth. How quickly these things escalate. Our bodies collide, rough and hurried. Our hunger is mutual. The violence of his mouth and hands. We kiss like we are trying to bruise each other’s mouths.
That night, we have sex three or four times. I lose track. I want to go home and write about it in my diary.
In the morning, I lie in bed and watch him put on a shirt. The crinkled skin on the back of his neck—three rolls disappearing into his collar. He strolls across to his walk-in wardrobe and returns with a briefcase. It is large. Something for an overseas trip. He places it at the end of the bed.
‘What’s that?’
He smiles and opens it.
A three-tiered jewellery box. Cufflinks, set in
neat rows, silver and gold and diamond and copper. There are numbers and letters and hearts and dogs and crosses and bows-and-arrows and cars. Lots of cars. A Beetle. A Ferrari. A Jeep. A Cadillac. A teapot. Wheels and bikes, and smiley faces and sad faces and trees.
‘A little obsessed?’
He shrugs. This is all I get. This is all he offers. He picks up a pair of dogs. Terriers. Locks them on his sleeves.
We part at the door, a brief swipe of his lips on mine leaving me with an anxious sort of pleasure. I smile as I walk towards the station in my weekend dress, hips slanted, mouth bruised, chin red, as though I’d rubbed a piece of sandpaper there for hours and hours.
When I get home, I peer into the mirror. The skin under my lips is chafed, forming a yellow layer of pus. It dries out, then cracks; and re-cracks every time I smile.
It gets worse over the next few hours.
16
On the day of the audition I wake early to take a long shower, scrubbing off the residual sweat of sleep, washing my hair, shaving my underarms and legs. In the bathroom mirror, I squint at my own reflection. I rub anti-rash cream into my hands, place dots of white cream strategically around my face. Cheeks and forehead, avoid the chin which is still red like a sunburn patch. Rub. Smooth. Rub. Repeat.
I curl my eyelashes, coating them in mascara, dab my cheeks with powder and blush, apply a thin coat of lipstick. I pull my hair back in a tight ponytail and slip on a black dress and ballet flats.
In the kitchen, I pour cereal into a bowl and eat it dry.
It’s a ten-minute walk to the station. The air is damp, a hundred sponges pressed against my skin. The weekend’s autumn warmth has been replaced by a sharp wind, a harbinger for winter. My headphones are strapped around my skull covering both ears, no music. I use it to silence the sound of cars and pedestrians on the street. I am still sore between my legs from the evening with Mark. Extinguish it. At this moment, all I should have in my mind is Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven. Sound. Tone. Smooth.
On the train to the Opera House, I spot another girl with a violin case strapped to her back. She’s wearing black too, the standard uniform for an audition. Her eyes are closed, Beats on, probably listening to the excerpts. My stomach constricts into a ball. Heavy and hot. She is prettier than me. She is white. She is petite. I wonder if this will play against me.