Days go but this one came and I remembered it. I found a bird, injured, so took it under my wing. Nurse and saviour to three birds previously, I felt up to the challenge. Dad said to keep it in a cage till its wounds healed. It was a criminally small cage, the only one we had. The bird squawked and flapped about so much, I shifted it to the shade house. I reckoned it would be nice and cool there, and could stretch and yawn. I’ve always hated cramped spaces myself.
The next day I found it gone. I searched for days and Dad told me how stupid I was.
Since then, I see birds’ bodies splashed on roads all the time. It amazes me, this, ’cause all the years I’ve driven I’ve never hit one. Or any animal, for that matter. I’ve always slowed, beeped and swerved. I reckon some people run the birds down on purpose.
One day Dad showed me the bird. It was unmistakably the same one, with frayed feather and twisted claw. Its eyes were missing and ants filled their place.
‘See what you’ve done? You never listen to me.’
Dad needn’t have said that. I went back to my room and tried to cry.
It was Saturday and the second last match of the year. Probably already under way. It was a home game, on the other side of town. Public transport on a Sunday …? I rang Maddy and asked for a favour.
Maddy drove me to the match in his hire-car. His next destination was the airport and Darwin. Balwyn was in the complete opposite direction but he was cool about it. The drive was all too short. Most of our conversation involved me giving directions and then giving further directions on how to get to the airport after I’d been unloaded.
I kept looking at him out of the corner of my eye, thinking, wondering, is skin on skin as close as you can get to someone, no closer? There’s the getting to know someone, then there’s the getting to know over time. I’d had the former, but I would never have the latter with Maddy. You can keep dividing the present down to the smallest moment, but even that moment will have smaller moments still.
A kind of song ran through my head.
What do I know about you? Who do I know you through? What do I know that’s true?
How do I live while I’m alive? Where do I go when I die? The future won’t last forever. Today is all we have.
It got me upset but then I thought, no, I’d had a good time with Maddy. With him, there’d been no pain.
Maddy pulled up slowly at the oval but there’s only so slow a speed you can go before stalling. He gave me a big kiss. I could see a few cricketers and their folks staring at us but I didn’t care.
I opened the door, just about to leave, but had one more thing to say.
‘Thanks, Maddy. Being with you has shown me I can have a fun time with a stranger.’
Maddy laughed, boomingly.
‘Right, get out of here before I do fall in love with you.’
I had to watch his car all the way down the road. You know that way you get it into your head that you’ve got to watch a boat to the horizon? Or when you wake up in the middle of the night and the clock radio says 1:59 and you’ve just got to wait that extra minute ’cause those two noughts look so perfect together? Well, I watched Maddy’s car till it got so I thought I was watching a different car altogether, then none at all but a big blur. I wiped my eyes and made my way to the lockers.
Tears make you lighter.
Passing the assorted spectators, I tried to think about my batting approach – that is, if I was to ever get another chance. But how could I feel free to make a big score, smash the ball, when I was worried I might hit one of my opponents again?
The lockers smelt clean for once. The guys had washed their whites, even ironed them (or got their mums or partners to). Tubby was reading something as he stood at his locker, with the locker door held open like the dust jacket to a hard cover. When he saw me coming, he quickly threw whatever it was inside, shut the door and met me halfway across the floor.
‘Sam, the coach sees you here, he’ll cane you,’ said Tubby.
‘I’m finally ready to play my game,’ I told him.
Tubby snorted before walking over to the drink fountain.
Dizzy opened his own locker two doors down. He looked a few times my way, itching to say something. Finally, he got it out.
‘We don’t need you any more, Sam. Roger’s got your position for now. And when Arny comes back, which will be next week, he’ll take over.’
Arny? My body eloped for an instant. I turned round to face Tubby, who was quaffing his paper cup of ice-cold water. Maybe I would have the fairytale ending. Don’t want it, Sam, don’t hope.
‘Hey, Tubby,’ I said. Quietly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Arny had given you a date for his return?’
It sounded pathetic even to me.
‘Shit, Sam, you hardly return my calls.’
He was right. I’d been treating Tubby the way Filter had treated me. Snubbed. The coach walked in, his hotdog face over-stuffed with extras.
‘Get out.’
It was pretty unequivocal. I made to move.
‘Wait,’ said Tubby quietly, but with force.
The coach turned on him sharply. Tubby went to his locker, removed the ‘literature’ he’d been reading – a postcard – and handed it to the coach.
‘We’re gonna need Sam after all,’ said Tubby.
The coach read the postcard carefully then, after a long pause, handed it to me.
‘You may be right,’ he said.
On the front of the postcard was a beautiful picture of No. 10 Downing Street in the fog. I turned it over to read the back.
Hey, Tubby, good and bad news, I’m afraid. The good news is that I’ve got a place in County cricket in England! The bad news is that it means I won’t be coming back! Come and visit some time. You’ll love the pints, and you’d be able to meet my man, Trevor!
Hope Sam’s all right. One day I might be playing against him – against both of you.
Funny how things work out.
Arny.
Somewhere, slow, a creek.
Don’t cry, Sam, don’t cry.
A creek, and water running.
Don’t cry, Sam.
And a magpie.
Don’t cry.
With ants for eyes.
Don’t.
Streaming black tears.
Its eyes missing and ants in their place.
The coach told Tubby and Dizzy to leave and not let anyone back into the clubhouse. He took the postcard from me and pinned it to the ‘fun board’. He sat down on the bench and gestured to me to sit opposite.
‘You’ve got a lot of talent, Sam. You could be brilliant.’
I was still wiping my eyes. ‘But it doesn’t – it doesn’t make me happy,’ I said.
‘Okay, that’s a point, but I’d love to have your ability. Every player on this team would love to have your ability. Take Dizzy. A case in point.’
For the first time, it amazed me how clued in the coach was, not just to our strengths on-field, but off.
‘Maybe he’s happier than me,’ I lobbed.
The coach slapped his thigh.
‘You’ve got a fucking gift, Sam. The rest of us are just fucking about. Maybe Tubby, a bit, but you!’
‘It doesn’t make me happy, though,’ I countered, this time almost yelling. The coach breathed in, serving his next sentence many decibels below mine, which was quite a feat because his voice wasn’t open-cut but shaft-deep.
‘It’s not going to make you happy, Sam. ’Cause you want to be the best at it. But what else are you going to do?’
I started to mention the nine-to-five, but he saw it coming and cut me off.
‘You couldn’t live that life, Sam. You wouldn’t be happy with that.’
His sausage-dog limbs sizzled on the bench before flipping into action.
‘Sam, you’ve got an opportunity most never get. How many people do you reckon want to play cricket for their state? And maybe one day for their country? ’Cause that’s where you’re headed, Big Feller.’
Where you’re headed?
‘Does that mean I’m to be given one last chance?’
The coached eyed me carefully.
‘I don’t ask that you enjoy the game, Sam; I expect that you love it.’
I thought about Filter and his music. How many people get to do what they really love?
‘I do love it,’ I told the coach.
‘Well, you can’t play today, obviously. But you know next week’s the last match of the year, and it’s absolutely your last chance to knuckle down and prove yourself.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me yet.’
The day of the match. A lot of families had come to watch. The stands were filled, the lawns covered. The other team had made an almost unbeatable three-hundred plus score before finally being bowled out in the last over before lunch. The coach gave me another rousing one-on-one pep talk. I told him I was confident I could do okay, but ‘okay’ wouldn’t prove anything, he said, and I knew he was right. I thought how I’d underestimated the coach – hadn’t even figured him – as counting. Everyone can surprise you.
What had I told that shrink in the hospital? How I wanted to compose perfect strings of moments, how I wanted to be the best at life, to live the life of books, every moment momentous, packed with meaning. But I couldn’t. In the end, I’d have to settle for something less than that life, and maybe that could be cricket. If I could get anything perfect, perhaps it would be my game.
Lunch ended. It was our side’s turn to bat. Everyone was low, Tubby the lowest. His bowlers had let him down, especially his strike-bowler and vice-captain, Dizzy. It was almost never heard of, the follow-up side chasing down over three-hundred runs.
Tubby and I made our way out of the clubhouse and down the stairs. He shuffled up beside me. Always the gossip, he wanted to know what the coach had said. We passed through the gate. The green oval opened up beneath us.
‘Why do all these people have such faith in me, Tubby? I haven’t really done anything to warrant it.’
‘What is this shit? Sure you have, Sam. Anyway, it’s not what you’ve done so much, but how you’ve done it, and what that says about what you will do.’
We were almost at the pitch. I was still getting used to the weight of the pads again, the feel of the bat through gloves. The other side already had their players spread out across the green.
Three hundred runs? Impossible. But I’d do my best. If I ever wanted to ditch that part-time video store job, I’d have to lift my game, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could. For once, I’d actually remembered to put some talc in my gloves so they wouldn’t slip. It was a small thing, but it made me feel strong just knowing I’d thought to do it.
‘Want me to open?’ asked Tubby, looking at my fidgeting.
I shook my head, taking my place at the crease, marking my spot. Finally, I lowered my bat.
The leggy gaited in. It was unusual to open with a spinner but the pitch was pretty scuffed up. The ball spun back. It hit me on the pad. There was a murmur of ‘Ooh’ among the fielders. Dangerous not to offer a shot.
I tried to watch the next one from the bowler’s fingers. He unexpectedly sped it up. The wrong ’un. It beat the inside edge of my bat, narrowly passing over middle stump. Tubby was practically de-clawing his talons at the other end. The next ball I met with a sweep shot. Luckily I hadn’t got much bat on it, because they had a man placed forty-five degrees on the angle for just that shot. The ball fell a few yards in front of him.
Concentrate, Sam. Come on, concentrate! I had to play my natural game, be aggressive, but controlled aggression. By playing defensively, I was sure to get out.
The leggy dropped another in short. Somehow I swept it square of the wicket for one. I was glad to get off strike, and while Tubby faced the next few shots, I tried to get the field placements in my head.
A maiden over. A swapping of ends. Me facing again.
To win, we’d need better than six an over.
The second bowler was Charles Acton-Heath, the guy I’d smashed in the head with a beautiful cover-drive and team captain. The quickie some were saying was clocking speeds of up to one-forty. Not bad for District Cricket.
The first was a very nasty bouncer I only just ducked under.
‘Ooh, nice one, Charlie,’ crooned the keeper through dank teeth.
Charles grinned nastily at me before turning to find the beginning of his run-up, his battleship hairdo tipped with breakers at the bow.
Right, I was going to take the challenge to the ball – not him, the ball. The ball is the enemy, Sam. But Charles saw me coming, bowled it quicker, and kept it short. I almost got it too high on the bat. I took my right hand off fast as I could to kill it, but the ball popped up the other end of the pitch. Tubby stepped sideways, Charles’s caught-and-bowl hopes ending in a two-man sprawl. Hisses and spitting from his team. A bit of chesting between Charles and Tubby, like they were pigeons – just one arm lifted and it would degenerate into an all-out punch-up.
I couldn’t have Tubby cheating for me. Come on, Sam, concentrate.
The next ball I hooked but it wasn’t really there for the hook. More out of a fieldsman fumbling, than any real skill, we got two runs.
Three balls to go in the over. My shoulder was hurting. I’d gone against the ball instead of with it – tried to force the moment.
Come on, Sam, come on. Concentrate.
Tubby found a need to tie up his shoelaces in the path of the bowler. Charles killed his run short. Time. Tubby was giving me time.
I thought back to the previous night, with Maddy, how we’d wrestled each other onto the bed, upsetting the ever-so-perfect folds of hotel linen. He was pinning my arms to the side, sitting astride me, but I was resisting, deliciously.
Maddy chuckled.
‘I’ll have to show you this move in Aikido, Sam,’ he said, sliding off the bed and pulling me to my feet. ‘It’s where you use your opponent’s force against them. You can just lift up your arm and let them smash into it or you can step aside slightly and direct them on.’
He showed me how to do it.
‘So you can block like this or go with the blow?’ I asked.
‘That’s it,’ he boomed, and I used the force of his punch to flip him onto the bed.
‘What’s that?’ Maddy asked, when he saw he’d pulled one of my bracelets free.
‘Morse Code for Cats.’
‘Sam!’
Tubby was shouting at me. I lowered my bat. The crowd was a planter of particoloured coral, the air an ocean of vents and currents. The field spread out. Charles ran in. He mustered all the speed he had. The ball was loosed. I thought to smash it but that would be force against force. I simply deflected it into the pitch. It gave a dry dock whistle and asphyxiated at my feet. There was a pause before Tubby yelled ‘run’. We ran and we’d made the distance before the closest fielder managed to run in. Tubby scored a single next ball. Then Charles bowled a high one, tempting me in to the pull shot, but I merely stepped back and gave it a top edge over the wicketkeeper for four. All that one hundred and forty kilometres an hour of effort from Charles, I’d turned to my advantage.
Tubby and I were working ourselves into the game.
I was seeing the oval from above. Seeing every point, every fielder in space and time. Guiding the ball through the easiest path, the least pain, getting it to the fence every time. Seeing the ball off their pitch, out of their hands, and into mine. Working through every permutation. Re-routing bad connections. Feeling muscles I’d never felt before. Involuntary becoming voluntary and vice versa. A million choices, all real till decided.
Another ball. Another. Another. Knowing the ones worth going for; letting the others through. A Jussy – leaving, letting it go. A coy ball, like Luke, spinning wide of the bat – knowing it wasn’t for me; leaving, letting it go. A Joe, opposite spin; gently slapping it on its path for three. A full-toss – Maddy – giving it my all; a sweet cover-drive over the bowler for six.
Maybe I finally was good at life.
The field reset. Bowlers came and went. There was nothing they could do.
I was vaguely aware of Tubby making jokes to the crowd. Should he just leave his bat at the crease? He wasn’t getting much of a hit, anyway.
I stayed in the whole innings, making over eighty per cent of the runs. Tubby stayed in with me. We wandered back to the stands, Tubby with the stumps under his arms. The applause signalled amazement.
Walking back out for the end-of-game ceremonies, I saw two people bumbling through the crowd.
‘Mum, Dad!’
They shook hands with me. Pretty strange shaking hands with your parents. Dad’s suit was shiny with age, Mum’s dress yet to catch up with her weight. But they’d put in an effort, Sunday-best.
‘Sam, um, your mum and I, well … look, I’m just saying … we should’ve been more supportive – about your cricket, I mean. You’re obviously talented. We should’ve been more supportive, that’s all.’
Dad drove me to sport every Saturday …
‘I mean … it’s your gift. Your mother and I … we could’ve helped out more.’
… and picked me up after practice Wednesday nights …
‘I mean, recognised your … er … talent.’
… every Christmas, a new bat, one size up.
I shook hands with him again to shut him up. Mum looped an arm under my elbow. In the gravity of the moment, we were a three-pronged spiral galaxy. The crowd knew to make its path elliptical to ours. But then the stars flew out of orbit once more and found their own trajectories.
Hadn’t I seen a similar image on one of my trips? Me, Zane and Filter passing as comets through our own and other people’s wakes, sometimes connecting at the head, sometimes only at the very tail.
Tubby yelled at me to get moving. They were announcing Man of the Match.
‘The house where you’re living’s very nice,’ said Mum.
That dingy place.
‘Hey, Mum, I’d better go.’ I could see the team gathering on the green.
‘You’re flatmate’s very nice – Jen,’ said Mum, still holding my elbow.
‘She is.’
‘And her friend. She’s nice too.’
Her friend? Ah – Tash.
‘Oh, you mean her girlfriend?’
‘We’re trying, Sam.’
Man of the Match was announced. I had to collect my trophy.
‘Thanks for coming, Mum, Dad,’ I said, turning, but then turned back again. ‘Thank you.’
Mum let go of my arm.
There was a fair bit of revelry in the clubhouse afterwards. The beer was at full tide. Finally, someone thought to ask: ‘Did anyone get a relly to videotape the game?’
No one had. There was this long silence. All the faces took an hour to turn to me. But I was smiling. Just then, I knew I loved cricket. Not only because I’d got my form back – that would come and go – but because I was home, where I wanted to be. Happiness is knowing it at the time.
‘Cricket’s in-the-moment stuff,’ I said, ‘best enjoyed at the time.’
The coach looked in.
‘Hey, Big Feller, guess who I spoke to in the stands?’
‘Who?’
‘The selectors for the Victorian Bushrangers.’
There was a hush over all my teammates.
‘So, I guess we better call this your farewell drinks.’
Every one of those players clinked stubbies with me. Even Dizzy. Poor old Tubby had a tear in his eye, not that he’d admit to it.
The next day, I went over to Zane’s. Knowing I was on a health kick, he poured me Evian water. Never mind that H2O ran from the taps. He had a new look, too: socks with their tops bitten off so you could barely see them above the cushion of his sneakers.
‘Neat?’ he asked. He was standing on a stool, pulling down his posters. I was on the couch, looking up at him. I was about to ask what he was doing when he let slip that he’d been to the game. I asked why he didn’t come to the clubhouse afterwards and he just gave me a look.
‘Fair enough,’ I said, and then, without meaning to, added, ‘Hey, I wish Joe had been there.’
Zane stopped tearing at a poster, and turned to me.
‘The thing is, Sammy, these freaks can’t stand themselves. So why should we stand them?’
I stood up from the couch, joining him at the whitening wall.
‘Zane,’ I said very seriously, ‘there was a time when we couldn’t stand ourselves. When I met you, you’d talk about yourself in third person as “the bitch”.’
‘That’s because I am a tubby queen, Sammy darling.’
Another thick, crackling poster took its magic carpet ride to the floor. Zane noted my gaze. ‘Very messy,’ he agreed and, ‘not at all like moi.’ He asked me to fetch his rubber bands – a tiny wooden box of them next to his computer.
I handed it to him. Maddy had left, I said, but I was okay with it. Maddy had it sorted. Whoever came along – beats, saunas …
‘Another slut in a rut,’ mused Zane.
That shut me up.
Zane chuckled as he noosed a wound-up poster with a rubber band.
‘That’s what I like about you, Sammy Sausage: you keep thinking you’ve found the answer.’
I bowed my head. He knighted me with the poster.
‘Sir Stupid.’
‘I’m trying too hard still, aren’t I?’ I asked.
Zane smiled. ‘Tres vous[1].’
The bell rang. It was Tash, pageboy hairdo for once instead of vertical with gel. Button-nose normally in the air – also dropped. Was everyone changing? She stood looking at the empty white walls, then down at the posters of semi-naked men. The only poster left was one I’d given Zane of a cricketer in a very un-gentlemanly pose. Joe and I had found it on one of our forays. Zane got back on his stool and started tearing it down.
‘Zane’s going undercover,’ Tash said to me.
I looked a question mark at this.
Tash squealed. ‘Hasn’t he told you? His parents are visiting!’
Zane? His parents? Zane who said, ‘I have no parents’? Finally it made sense. He wasn’t out to them.
‘They don’t know you’re gay?’ I asked.
Zane looked away, for the first time uncomfortable.
‘My parents know nothing about me, Sam, nothing. They don’t know a thing about my life.’
Did Joe’s parents know a thing about his life? Had he ever given them the chance to reject him? Did my parents know mine?
‘Well, of course they don’t know a thing about you,’ I said bitterly to Zane. ‘How could they?’
‘Telling them won’t make any difference, Sammy,’ he said, quickly gathering up the posters of muscly men. ‘They don’t know the real me.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I warn you, we’re going to fall out over this.’
‘Then I’ll just say one thing more. Maybe we shouldn’t decide things for others. It’s prejudging them.’
We said nothing more on the topic but I noticed Zane didn’t take down his last poster. And for the first time, Tash was almost cordial with me.
Zane and I went to The Pit that night, greeting the door staff on the way in.
‘Yea, Yorgos, nos easai?[2]’ said Zane. One of the guys was apparently of Greek descent.
‘Yeah, thanks, I’m good, mate,’ the guy replied.
The two laughed.
Half a night later and Zane wanted to keep dancing. Before, at The Pit, I had rarely wanted to leave his side. Now I was happy to wander on my own.
That’s probably why I met Oscar.
‘Koori? Nah, I’m Murri – Murri mob, up north.’
I asked Oscar if he was on his own. It was a new policy I was trying.
‘Some Tassie just asked if I was on my own. Felt like saying, you’re not really alone if you’ve got a brain. Nah, only gammin’.’
Gammin’?
‘He wanted to know if I was visiting Melbourne. ’Cause, yeah, all real Aborigines live in the bush, fuckyas. Aw, don’t, poor thing. He was just trying to be friendly.’
‘I’ve got off to a bad start already, haven’t I?’ I asked.
‘Nah, you’re all right. So what’s your game?’
I told him I played for the State Cricket Team.
‘Aw, true?’
I couldn’t quite nod: yes. It wasn’t strictly true, not yet. I told him it was looking hopeful that I’d be selected. He laughed, half of it to the ceiling, as he bent his head back.
‘You been gammin’ you play for State Team and that? Gammin’ confident, that’s what you bin’ doin’. That’s okay, mate. Big-noting. We know all about that.’
He was right. There I was, skiting already! People don’t really change.
‘Nah, I believe ya,’ laughed Oscar. ‘You’re deadly, know that?’
He smiled. His hair was longer than most gay guys wore theirs: dark curls to the collar. His shirt was patchwork black and tan, tight across the chest. Somehow we got onto oldies. There were a few veteran attendees in the place and that made me think of Filter making fun of the frizzled and friendless.
‘You white fellers can’t wait to get rid of your elders. We blackfellers listen to our mob. Our ancestors’ voices. Walking about like you own the place. Some places you shouldn’t walk in.’
‘How do you know where not to?’ I asked.
‘You’ll know.’
I told him a story about the farm. An anthropologist visited once and showed us some Aboriginal paintings in a cave we’d never looked in before. We never looked in that cave again.
‘See, weren’t meant to. Listen to your ancestors.’
‘Yeah, but look at what my ancestors did: crash your party.’
‘But nah, Sam, there still be some good mob among them. You don’t listen to spirit ways and that? Songlines?’
I shook my head.
‘Some day I tell you ’bout them, maybe, when you ready to listen, not before.’
This was hopeful. Talking like a minute’s acquaintance was a prolonged friendship. If he was a cricket delivery, what type would he be? Something told me a yorker, going straight for my feet. His next bowl confirmed it.
‘You’re a big spunk, know that?’
‘Um … thanks.’ I went red, which got another good laugh from Oscar. What with him and Maddy, seemed I was meeting happier people lately. That was a good sign.
‘Tell us ’bout your hobbies. Cricket’s okay,’ he said, ‘for a colonial sport.’
Hadn’t thought of it that way before. There’s a million angles on everything, but you can’t look at them all at once. I’d had that on mushrooms and it nearly sent me mad. So I told Oscar about my love affair – okay, obsession – with books, and how I’d tried to write my life as one.
‘You write spirit things down, they don’t change so easy after that.’
I thought of Joe’s literal bible.
‘They don’t live no more. We got the dreaming. You dream, too, brother, I see that. You spiritual person, you’re just gammin’ like you’re not and that.’
I had to get to the bottom of this word.
‘Gammin’?’ I asked.
‘Fakin’.’
Zane’s skin-tight aqua top announced itself through the mostly dark colours of the punters. He was holding up the queue to the bar by chatting up the bar staff. He really was taking this friendliness resolution to its extreme! Seeing the guy he was, I couldn’t help but compare him to the one I’d imagined. All that time back (not even a year – ten months), walking to my first date with Zane, my very first meeting with him, I was thinking over the night before it had actually happened. But of course the script wasn’t going to turn out how I’d written it. And that’s the best thing about actual people anyway; you could never invent a character more complex than a person in real life.
I turned and looked full eyes at the reality before me.
Oscar and I swapped numbers. He left. Zane walked over, handing me a beer. He had a Stollie in his.
‘Guten Rutsch[3], you old queen! You’ve found a replacement buddy for poor old Zane already.’
‘No one could replace you, Zane. You’re unique.’
He clinked my glass in agreement.
‘Do you know, Sammy, that gentleman has given you the eye when you’ve come in here before?’
I thought back. He had. Round the time of Luke. Guess I wasn’t ready then to smile back.
A week later, Oscar and I had seen each other every day and night except for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Being such a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I found it a bit hard to come at some of what he said.
‘People telling me rocks and things, they inanimate, they don’t know. Everything’s got life, even pollies. That’s what I am, Sam: local member for the Greens.’
‘What do you think about the present incumbents?’ I asked, sitting up straight in bed. We were at his place, the light burning through the Venetian blinds like toaster bands on a slice of bread.
‘In Canberra, you mean?’ he asked. ‘That’s blowfly country.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘They’re the only bit of Australia that lives off the rest of us, aren’t they? Nah, but serious. If you don’t allow you might be wrong, you’re never gonna be right, fuckyas.’
I pulled the pillow from behind my back and mock-hit him before lying down again. It wasn’t quite time to get up. Oscar emerged over my shoulder like the sun. I stared up into his glare.
We went shopping later – not for clothes, but food. Ho-hum domestic. We found a trolley, but it needed a one-dollar coin to free it from the rest of the chain gang. Oscar searched his pockets for coins. I quickly reached in mine. Oscar withdrew empty hands.
‘Oi, can I have a few bob?’ he asked.
I filtered my empty pockets.
‘Aw, don’t, I so shame. We only going out one week; already I’m hitting you for cash. You better watch that, bub, that’s blackfeller ways. What’s yours is mine. Nah, only gammin’; I got the shrapnel on me.’
And he dug from his bag the bond for the itinerant trolley. His mobile rang the generic dial tone as he slotted the gold in place.
‘What am I doin’? he said into his phone. ‘I’m here with Mullaga.’
‘What’s Mullaga?’ I asked when he’d rung off.
‘Boyfriend.’
The roots were showing in Jen’s hair; she was a blonde. I’d never known that. She was growing out the black and, with it, the Goth. Gone, also, were the spider web glasses; back were the sensible specs. Her ears had lost some rings but not their tally of holes. Her lips were their real red. She was beautiful.
Growing up or growing old? Funny that this new look reminded me of Jen as I saw her first, at the ice-skating rink.
Tash had moved in with Jen and me ‘officially’, and that meant a lot of her furniture as well. Already, practically every wall of our rental was covered with a cupboard, dresser or bookcase of Jen’s. Since I owned nothing in the house apart from what was in my room, I really was in the position of ‘boarder’. I’d have to move out soon; leave Jen and Tash to themselves.
Wanting a rest from all the shifting of Tash’s stuff, we somehow managed to find room in the kitchen, sitting at the fifties laminate table, warm coffee mugs imparting their warmth to our hands, the smell of things cooking adding spice to our conversation.
Suddenly Jen laughed.
‘Remember the scared little things we used to be, Sam, going to our first gay clubs, sitting in the corner, looking like the hetero-couple that had walked into the wrong bar?’
I laughed because I remembered.
‘Did you think we could ever be so strong?’
I was spending a lot of time at Oscar’s and gradually getting used to his way of sleeping. He didn’t like the top sheet tucked in round his legs. Kept the blinds open so the morning sun could let itself in in the morning. Guess I’d over-romanticised the idea of a relationship. Much of it was mere forbearance. He was perfectly quiet in his sleep. I hadn’t been the night before. I’d dreamt a dingo had walked past the open blinds and stared in.
When the dingo was satisfied, it moved on because, for the first time, everything was fine just as it was. No red-pen markings, no rewrites, just first-draft wonders, stream-of-consciousness. Oscar and I were stepping through every shape and circumstance we could bring, let loose in loveliness.
On waking, I put the dingo down to nothing more than the influence of some of the photos and pictures on Oscar’s bedroom wall. Oscar saw more in it. But what the heck? I hadn’t had a dream in a long time. Was Oscar my dream?
‘No you haven’t given up your dreams, Sammy,’ said Zane that afternoon. I’d gone over to his place for ‘mid-morning post-breakfast pre-lunch’. Filter, Jen and Tash were there also, retiring on those monstrous black leather couches.
‘Your standards have actually risen since you met me,’ continued Zane. ‘You won’t take shit from anyone any more. You want someone as good as you finally. I’m … I’m glad I met you! Ugh, ugh, no hugging. You know how I hate man-sweat.’
I hugged him all the same.
‘I’ve only just got it together, Zane,’ I said. ‘Some people out there, well, they’ve had a girlfriend since they were eighteen, they’ve got jobs now, careers … I’m hopeless. It’s taken me so – ’
Tash cut me off by whispering loudly in Jen’s ear.
‘Don’t you hate it when people come out of their shells?’
Zane and Filter laughed.
‘You lot!’ sighed Jen.
‘Sam has corrupted Zane,’ said Tash.
‘No,’ said Jen, pushing Tash back in her place. ‘Sam’s softened Zane. You’ve softened, too, since you met me.’
The fact that Tash couldn’t answer showed she knew it. Jen turned to me.
‘Well, off you go, Sam,’ she said. ‘Your date’s waiting.’
‘I don’t know,’ I faltered. ‘It’s all been so painless with Oscar.’
‘Well, what you want, mate?’ chipped in Filter, hoola-hooping his belly with mirth. ‘Another Jussy? Fuck that. This new guy’s a champ. And he’s paying you the highest compliment those other tosspots never did. He’s taking a chance on you, Sammy. Not a half-arsed pisstake but a real one hundred per cent bet. That’s a show of confidence. You’ve got a shit load more to offer than you did, Sammy mate. ’Cause you can take care of yourself, now. Hell, I’d have you if I batted for your team.’
‘Yeah, I’d fuck you,’ said Jen.
‘Yeah, all right, I’d fuck you,’ said Tash, once Jen nudged her.
‘Hear, hear,’ said Zane, a little red. ‘Again!’
‘See, we all wanna fuck you, Sam. You’ve come a long way, mate.’
‘I have, haven’t I?’
‘Now don’t go fucking milking it.’ And Filter gave me a clip on the ear.
New Year’s Eve. This was it, the millennium party 2000. All year I’d been gunning for the biggest party ever, and now that night was here. Jen and Tash were trying to get me to come to their party. The lads – Zane and Filter – were spending New Year’s on the beach. But, true to form, not the popular one: down by Williamstown.
Oscar and I each wanted the other to come to his New Year’s Eve get-together. But no one likes spending New Year’s Eve with a whole bunch of people they don’t know. Here was my first real taste of having to take someone else into account when making decisions. Guess this was where compromise came into it. Luckily, Oscar was as forthright as me. We’d go separate ways.
‘That doesn’t seem like compromise, does it? More like disagreement,’ I said.
Oscar worked out a solution. Share a countdown ahead of time, then separate for the actual countdown.
Seemed a good relationship.
‘5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1. Happy New Year!’
Oscar and I were sitting in a restaurant in Williamstown and the rest of the clientele thought we were daft – it was only six o’ clock. The waiters cleared our table the second we were finished, hoping to sell our seats to the queuing punters outside. I wondered what they were getting paid to work on this night. Finishing up, Oscar and I walked outside, pausing on the pavement. Oscar gave the concept of the shared New Year’s Eve one more try. He had a party with his mob and I was welcome. But did I want to go? Zane would be overseas soon, Filter interstate (his success in telemarketing had got him a promotion). Little time with both. I turned to Oscar.
‘Mind if I spend the night with them?’
‘Cheers, that’s how you feel!’
I nearly backed down but he jumped in.
‘Nah, only gammin’. You do what you have to, bub. You dreamed about a dingo. That’s the luckiest thing you can dream about. That dingo’s taking you home, bub. You follow him. You’re deadly, know that?’
‘You’re deadly too.’
Zane was in his tight Mooks top, Filter in his ‘fat people clothing’, a tent-like Adidas sweater. Filter had brought his guitar, which was unexpected. He and Zane were sitting either side of a park bench, their respective six-packs between them, already out of their plastic placentas and the bottles empty.
Our posse was soon to be disbanded. The road forked ahead where I’d come to see it as undivided. Soon, Zane and Filter would be hanging out with different people in different places. In his own way, Filter already was with his telemarketing.
‘State Cricket will mean more travel,’ I said out loud, ‘at least interstate. And with First Class Cricket, I’ll see the world.’
‘Keep your dreams to yourself,’ hissed Filter.
Zane and I looked at each other. Perhaps you shouldn’t broadcast your happiness. But then should you hide it? Filter doused the awkwardness with a splash of guitar. It was the happiest combo you ever ate with your ears. I thought maybe a gentle dig might ease the tension between us, since Filter wouldn’t appreciate a soppy angle.
‘Thought all your music was multi-layered electronica?’ I asked.
Filter smiled at his guitar.
‘Sam, some of the best songs are written with three chords.’
He was a genius all right, living with obscurity every day of his life. I told him so, and I reckon he was glad to hear it coming from someone other than himself.
‘What kind of a world is it,’ crooned Filter, ‘where greatness can actually hold you back?’
When Filter wound down his song, I asked Zane how it had gone with his olds. Zane waved me away. Not so well then.
‘At least they now know,’ he said. ‘If they were honest with themselves, they would accept they always knew. I was a glamour queen at three!’
Zane then asked about Oscar. I told him how well it was going.
‘Does this now mean the two of you have stopped parallel-processing?’
Filter lifted his head from his guitar and stared at Zane.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked Zane.
‘Seeing other people. I know you, Sammy; you want monogamy. Have you raised that question?’
‘He … he believes in emotional monogamy,’ I faltered.
‘I see.’
I looked at the bench beneath my hands. Something settled on me, a bird, caged, heavy. What if there was such a thing as ‘the one’ and it had never been Arny? What if, all that time, ‘the one’ was Joe? Had I ever really grabbed life, or totally missed it instead? When had I felt best, really embraced the moment? I remembered the times me, Zane and Filter took magic mushrooms together, and how fun that was. And the highest I’d ever felt, that one hit of heroin. I brought this up with Filter.
‘Maybe we could pop an E each for old time’s sake? An E is a fraction of the high you feel on heroin but …’
Filter stopped strumming.
‘Drugs don’t change your reality, Sam; just your perception of it. You’ve still got to go back to the real thing, mate.’
‘I’ll never feel as high again,’ I said.
‘No, mate,’ agreed Filter. ‘You’ve landed. Make sure you keep those wings regularly clipped.’
I shook myself to get some sense into me. I was onto a good thing with Oscar.
‘Sammy,’ said Zane, ‘I hate to deflower your rosy view of life, but those times – we were just three bums in a park. There is no satisfying conclusion to life unless you call death a great ending. Life is just a series of readjustments to disappointment.’
That irritated me. I arced up.
‘Zane,’ I said, about to repeat words he’d used on me once before, ‘you should never assume someone feels as you do. I’m optimistic about Oscar, but it isn’t blind optimism. I’ll see where things go.’
Zane looked like he was deciding between being offended or amused.
‘Sammy, darling, you are not alone in your loneliness,’ he said at last, with a smile.
Zane and Filter got themselves some fish and chips – from the cheapest joint they could find. Filter was still a miser, even though he was going into a higher wage bracket. I saw what that meant: with more responsibility comes more hours. I put a question to him.
‘Won’t this promotion take you further from your dream?’
‘What’s that, Samster? Drugs I’ve quit. But guess what? Now I’m addicted to the number one pedestrian drug,’ and he shouted his next slogan to the background city: ‘Oi, society, ask yourself this: Capitalism – can you afford it?’
‘Toujours[4],’ laughed Zane. ‘In mourning for the lives we can’t have; being led by the ones we lead. I will write to my buddies. Filter responding is doubtful,’ he said, looking over his bottle at Filter; Filter looked up from his guitar, ‘though he’ll try; Sammy more likely, because he’ll want to join me some time. Here, Sammy darling, throw the last of these chips to the rats of the sea.’
The seagulls were already gathered for the foreign food source. Adaptation.
I stood on the jetty. The sun washed her hair in the sea. A strand of it completed my bridge to the horizon. As the sun subsided beneath the waves altogether, I wanted then to become the many sucking noises the crabs made, or the slaps the waters gave themselves. The sun gave of itself in its reflection on the waves, serrated waves which peeled it like an orange.
Filter called, stubbie in hand, and I joined him and Zane on the ocean’s edge. They’d sourced some hard rubbish from the beachfront verge. Two beds and a cupboard were our bonfire.
I fell in the sand between them. Zane tapped his Stollie against Filter’s Coopers. I clinked my VB against each.
We talked till midnight and beyond. Filter tapped his watch five minutes past the hour. We were already into the next century. No street lamps fizzled out, or planes fell out of the sky. Perhaps Y2K wasn’t such a worry after all, like most things.
‘This is what it’s fookin’ all about,’ said Filter, half sloshed and launching a beer into the air. ‘Nights like this, sitting round, good food, good company.’
We turned to the fire. As it grew, its warmth drew us in. I felt sorry for those people who were missing out on pleasures like this. People sitting at home, night after night, and even on this night, watching their videos. The people Filter and I would talk about, who’d get their weekly videos week in, week out, hoping for warmth. The customers who spent so long in the video store we should’ve been charging them for rent.
‘That’s profound, Filter,’ I said. ‘Times like this …’ and I repeated his words. “This is what it’s fookin’ about … sitting round, good food, good company”.’
‘Uh oh,’ sighed Zane, ‘dope revelations and we’re not even doped up.’
‘You know, Sam, Zane,’ said Filter, raising his beer again, ‘I’m not where I thought I’d fookin’ be – no fame, no assets, no girl – but, funny thing to say, I’m happy where I’ve gotten to. It’s been a fookin’ journey!’
There was another round of toasting. The beer helped to sift the lump in my throat. I saw I’d fallen in with a good crowd, good people. I was so glad I’d taken that key, let myself out of my prison and gone this far. I wondered where I’d be if I’d stayed with Arny at the top of that hill. I wouldn’t be who I was now. I’d still be that same old Sam who didn’t understand things but was lucky enough to make the right choice by chance. You’ve got to do the right thing thinking it’s right.
And further up the sand I saw Joe lying on a park bench. He lay still as a pond, picked out in stars.
‘If you put your message in a story, Sam,’ said Joe, ‘people will remember it better.’
And you know, I reckon that’s about right.
TheEnd
[1] French: very you.
[2] Greek: Hi, George, how are you?
[3] German: Good year.
[4] French: always.
Toco Productions 