How it feels Read online

  Stuart couldn’t believe it; no matter how many times we watched it he’d just sit there with insane eyes, pointing at the screen like it was happening now.

  The film went on like this. A family from Hyderabad in India cut ting off their tongues with a hacksaw one by one for the equivalent of eight dollars each. Oh, and the young African virgin being chased through the jungle until she couldn’t run any further. Exhausted, she collapsed, and was then raped by a pack of twelve-year-old boys as a way of introducing them to sex and confirming them as men. We did our confirmation at Caringbah church, and as weird as that was, being given a sash with some dude’s name on it like ‘Francis of Assisi’, I was way more keen on that shit than the jungle system.

  At first Courtney would throw biscuits at the screen and scream at Stuart, slapping him with a hybrid onslaught of Marxist, feminist, Courtney-ist doctrine, but Stuart would just turn to her, chewing on the biscuits she threw, and say: ‘This violent world.’ And Gordon would nod and grunt into his empty bottle of beer.

  The last and most disturbing tale of this VHS was about a Colombian man who, after being caught stealing food for his wife and five children, was sentenced to eat mercury and die in front of his family in a ditch in the town square. A large crowd gathered, including his young wife and these gorgeous kids – like, I don’t know if kids become more cute when their dad is about to be slaughtered publicly, but these kids, man, I just wanted to grab them and take them home and tell Mum I’d look after them. The mercury made the guy giggle, which was insane, and Gordon giggled too, which made Courtney scoff, which made Stuart laugh, which made me nervous. The laughter grew as the dude guffawed, barked and screamed his way to death, his face exploding with green foam. His wife did not cry. Seriously, she was way tough. She just watched his body shake and quiver and stop. Then she walked away with the cute children. We had just got up to the bit where the green foam fizzed out of his ears when Ron appeared in the hallway with a sponge and a frown. And then he was gone again.

  Courtney could never truly and fully comprehend why it took Stuart Stone so long to get ready. One thing was for certain: it was a lot longer than she ever took. Even tonight she had completed the gothic-chic fashion, hair and make-up package within forty-five minutes. Stuart, meanwhile, had been upstairs for God knows how long, showering, drying and crafting his hair with three different products: mousse, gel and Hold Factor 4 shaping licorice. In his absence and with all the TV and stereo options outlawed by Ron’s mute act of political activism in the doorway, none of us had spoken a word for half an hour or so, sinking deep into the mesmerising cinema of the fireplace. Gordon couldn’t look at me, and Courtney was too stoned to proffer anything either. So I just sat there, squashed between the two loves of my life, wondering how I could keep this dream alive. Wondering how not to hurt everyone with my future.

  5

  At 6 pm on Grandview Parade the rain fell light-heartedly on the conifer trees, licking the soft wood and shining up the tilted little road with the help of last light. A man parked his car in the double garage and walked up the stairs to greet his wife, who stood waiting for him with their baby son. A young boy across the road hit a cricket ball which hung from a tree by a thin rope, no doubt dreaming of a big innings tomorrow for the Cronulla–Caringbah Under-12 B team. A girl of no more than thirteen swanned about beneath a sprinkler in her shorts and bikini top, distracting two flabby men allegedly fixing an alternator. A busy housewife darted across the lawn of her brick-veneer home carrying a basket of washing. And two Year 12 graduates climbed the hill, dazed and confused, picking conifer nuts off the pines and flinging them at each other’s heads. A rainbow appeared over the top of the trees, capturing the heart of the man, the wife, their baby, the cricketer, the girl, the men, the housewife and the wobbling graduates.

  ‘You got any money?’ I asked.

  ‘Not for you,’ Gordon replied, flicking a nut at me.

  ‘Mum gave me twenty bucks for the whole night.’

  ‘Your mum’s a tight bitch then.’

  ‘Just give us like fifty on tick.’

  ‘Only got fifty on me, dude.’

  ‘Bullshit “only got fifty on me”. C’mon!’

  ‘S’all that’s on me!’

  ‘What about your cheque account?’

  ‘What about your cheque account, bitch?’

  ‘I got $6.28 in my cheque account, bitch, that’s why I’m trying to get into yours.’

  ‘What do you want to buy?’

  I shrugged, reaching for my Tally-Ho papers.

  ‘You going to pop a pill or you going to pussy out?’

  We walked for a bit then stopped walking, waiting at the crest of the hill for Courtney and Stuart. We were all together a while ago, halfway up the hill when the sun shower opened up and Courtney realised she had forgotten her coat and then Stuart, patting at his pockets, realised he had left the Es in his undies drawer.

  ‘You gunna tell me your results?’ I asked him.

  Gordon kicked at the grass and scrunched his piggish nose, spitting high and flicking his attention to some noise somewhere else in the Shire.

  ‘Just tell me, Gord – what do I care what you got?’

  ‘Why are you asking then, if you don’t care?’ Gordon snapped back.

  ‘Because you’re a dumb cunt,’ I joked, reaching for my pouch of tobacco even though I was already puffing on one.

  Gordon mock snap-kicked me in the face, stopping his foot just inches away from where the Tally-Ho paper now hung on my big bottom lip – if it was anyone else I would have flinched but this happened so often I could paint the soles of G’s shoes from memory.

  ‘Did you talk to Carmen again?’

  Gordon shook his head. Carmen would have had him out of school and working three years ago, when he was in Year 9, but Gordon and I had just found each other and there was no way he was doing that. But Carmen needed the money as Peter’s disappearance had left her with more debt than compensation, and for a while there Gordon was all set to pull out and go work full-time for someone at something, somewhere in Sutherland.

  Gordon’s last resort had been to visit the local priest, Father Todd McNealy. Father Todd loved being on the ‘students’ level’, and right away took control of the situation, explaining to Carmen that Gordon was at a crucial and impressionable age, and therefore needed to stay in school for his own personal development, for his future prosperity in the workplace, his social skills and confidence levels, and also to strengthen his relationship with the one and only Jesus Christ the Lord.

  I loved that bit! Gordon thought Jesus was a faggot. ‘Why else would a guy wear a dress and spend all this time with twelve men in the woods?’ he would say, snorting to himself. But Carmen was not buying a dollar of it. She’d had a bad time with priests and nuns at her boarding school in Melbourne in 1963 and wasn’t about to take advice from a man of the cloth.

  All that was left was for Gordon to beg, and so he did, and eventually the emotional pleading won out and Gordon could stay on with me and finish his HSC – on one condition: he would somehow bring in four hundred dollars a week. So Gordon got up at quarter past four every morning and started his job as a cleaner, scrubbing phone booths and bus stops until eight thirty, when he would go to school. Then, as soon as the bell rang, he would go to the Franklins’ for a few hours, offloading the truck, stacking shelves, cleaning out the fridges and returning the trolleys to their bays. This was the deal and he was cool with it.

  ‘You and Courtney sound like you’ve got it all worked out – in the city, eh?’ Gordon asked, without looking up from his trainers. My skin went hot.

  ‘She was just saying…’

  ‘It’s cool, man. You gotta get in there and rock out.’

  I pushed shag around in the palm of my hand, sculpting a new cigarette.

  ‘Why don’t you come in too? Work in the city and live with us or whatever?’

  ‘I’m not part of Courtney’s plan, dude.’


  ‘Fuck Courtney’s plan.’ I flipped the shag into the paper and rolled. ‘And fuck just doing what Carmen tells you, G. You’ve worked like six thousand hours a day for years and she just…’

  ‘She just what Nelly?’

  I took a Zippo out of my pocket but decided not to light up yet. Talking about another guy’s mum was dangerous ground, and even though Gordon often shot off about how much of a nightmare she was, how selfish she was sometimes and how he wished she would lose weight and choose better guys, there was still no licence for anyone else to chime in, and I knew this, but still, I cared more about my mate than my own balls, and knew if Gordon stayed here now he would surely be stuck here forever, slowly dying in the suburbs of the Sutherland Shire.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t all work it out,’ I said, flicking my eyes up at him, my chest vibrating, hands shaking like paper.

  Gordon kicked the gutter a few times then spat on the lawn. ‘I’m not like you, Cronk, I’ve got responsibilities ’n’ shit.’

  ‘You can’t get stuck here, dude. This place, it’s like –’

  ‘What am I going to do in the city? Eh? I’m not like you and C, I didn’t get marks to go anywhere, I’ll just be hangin’ round like that tall guy from Ferris Bueller.’

  ‘Who knows, mate?’ I said. ‘But how exciting is it? We’ll be free! Stop thinking of life as some duty you have to other people. What do you want, Gordon? Have you ever asked yourself that? What the fuck do you want?’

  Gordon just stared at me. ‘Do you mean this, Cronk?’

  ‘Of course, man. What the fuck. You’re my brother. You fucken… you’re fucken… you gotta come with me, mate. We gotta keep the dream alive.’

  ‘What’s Courtney going to say?’

  I shrugged. Gordon laughed awkwardly, then pulled a fifty-dollar note out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Fifty bucks – but only if you spend it on drugs.’

  ‘Oh, mate, I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Pay me when we get to the city.’

  ‘Are you in? Gordon! Are you in?!’

  ‘If you are.’

  We leapt into a hug from quite a distance, meeting with a slap and bang of chests. We held each other hard in that moment, gripping each other’s necks and backs with love, meaning and intent. We were a lock of hard promises and there was no turning back.

  ‘Let’s go nail this bottle of Southo!’ Stuart called out from the base of the street, an umbrella in one hand covering my girlfriend, and in the other a full bottle of Southern Comfort Bourbon. His hair looked fantastically set; even the rain couldn’t shift it.

  6

  There’s an awful sense of duty involved with being a parent I reckon. I want to be a parent, I really do, and I can fully see myself with daughters, playing in the park, being really attentive, tying up their laces and saving them from out-of-control dogs.

  The main thing, in my opinion, that freaks parents out is thinking of things to do all the time. My dad struggled (big time) with this. Saturday would come around and every week without fail he would have to think up something for us to do all day. I had no interest in team sports so he literally had to fill the whole day with things, and I never got the feeling it excited him too much. My dad’s a decent bloke, but ideas? I’m not sure he has ever had any. So it always ended up with him asking me what I wanted to do. And if I told him the truth, it was to maybe not hang out with him, as it always felt like such a hassle for Dad on Saturdays, he was always distracted, reading the paper or stuffing the radio plug in his ear, and making weird and questionable excuses not to get involved in whatever I was doing. Often he wouldn’t even turn up, citing some heavy chore Mum needed him to do around the house, but I knew this was crap; Mum was the one who’d suggested we spend some time alone together on Saturdays.

  So I suggested we get into fishing. I have no idea why; I’d never fished in my life. The idea came to me when I was cruising round the local area one afternoon and stumbled upon a trail that led down to a little spot called Dolans Bay. The bay was tiny and enclosed and there was this awesome cave that you could sit in and take in the estuary, a place to go and really feel like you were alone. I figured if Dad and I were going to hang out together and he was going to be relatively absent even when he was there, I would find a place I liked and at least get something out of it.

  Dad and I spent a lot of time at Dolans Bay, me fishing, him pacing about wishing he was anywhere else. Then one day I told him I was happy to fish on my own on Saturdays if he had other, more pressing things to do, and he looked at me, so grateful, then took off up the trail and back to his car where I heard Radio National come on, followed by the engine.

  I’m not that into looking at idyllic views, they kind of shit me, like a perfect view makes me feel so broken. Like postcards just make me want to die. I preferred looking at the cracked sides of rocks or some smashed bit of coast or a dead crab in the gloomy water, and Dolans Bay was like that – it really wasn’t that spectacular, kind of underwhelming really, which suited me fine, and it reminded me of my dad and me.

  One by one I introduced Gordon, then Stuart, then finally Courtney to my secret, excellent spot, and now it was a group meeting place, a sacred place for all of us, which I liked but it kind of shat me too because they always knew where I was. I could always get a new spot, but nowhere else felt like this. Like the perfect pair of jeans, Dolans Bay just sat well. And my cave was our headquarters.

  Despite the light rain, I felt like dipping my feet in the water. Courtney was all embarrassed and cute carrying her heels down to where I sat with my jeans rolled up and my shoes off. I had a cigarette going already, the water swirling about my feet, little fish darting psychotically about in the shallows. This would be the last time we all gathered here and it hurt to think this, I couldn’t go to the cave just yet.

  ‘Are you ok?’ Courtney asked me.

  ‘Yeah, I’m cool, babe – just dipping my feet.’

  ‘Let’s get smaaaashed!’ Stuart called out, climbing back up the steps to the cave. Gordon followed, waving.

  Courtney sat down on the rock beside me, but she didn’t dip her feet in, I guess because she was wearing stockings. Instead she sat in a very yoga-ish position, legs folded over one another; she held my face in her hands. ‘I love you, Neil,’ she said. Clearly the marijuana had won out; she was paranoid I had taken offence to her announcing the Glebe plan, plus she had also spotted Gordon and me in an embrace at the top of Grandview Parade. No doubt her already active little head was buzzing with conspiracy and doubt, and telling me she loved me was a way of restoring order and evacuating all the mess inside. What a drug pot was.

  ‘Awww,’ I said, inhaling sweet chemicals into my skull and throat.

  ‘Do you love me too, Neil?’ Courtney asked, kissing my nose.

  I dumped my dart in a puddle.

  ‘Babe. It’s all going to be cool. But are you ok?’

  She placed her hand on my zipper and squeezed a bit of my cock through the denim.

  ‘Let’s go round the bend,’ she said, biting my bottom lip.

  My heart started beating fast, but I did what I was told. We had to clear a few gaps between rocks but we made it. It wasn’t too mossy at this time of year and soon we were on a private jetty just out of sight of the cave. I could hear the boys setting up camp, pouring lids of Southern Comfort and discussing whether there were any dorky, ugly, annoying chicks at school that may just be the most surprising, untold ‘fucks of the century’, and they had passed them up because they were a bit ugly or annoying but maybe tonight they should give them the stick because they may surprise the fuck out of them with their cock-mastery and technique. This was their main topic of conversation – seriously, they didn’t talk about much else – and as I moved around the shoulder of the bay this is what I heard:

  Gordon came boldly forward, admitting he had always fancied Sarah Kirkwood. In a ‘filthy, doggy style behind the tuckshop kind of way’.

 
‘Kirkwood is a stuck-up land mullet, mate!’

  ‘I dig her,’ Gordon claimed.

  ‘Kirkwood? You are a unit, Braithwaite.’

  ‘What about you? What second-rate gear would you stuff?’

  ‘I’d ram that epileptic from Year 11 – what’s her name?”

  ‘Kyla Druid? Get fucked!’

  ‘That chick, aside from all the epileptic carry-on, is gagging for pole!’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Gordon said.

  ‘Remember that fit she had at the swimming carnival?’

  ‘What fit? Which fit? She has a fit every hour!’

  ‘She’ll be having a fit on my cock when I take her into the bushes tonight!’

  Since I saw Ethan Hawke and Winona Rider at the end of Reality Bites I had started kissing really slow and with not that much tongue. It was working well and I could sense Courtney enjoying it more; she never wanted to stop and she moaned louder and from a lower, more woman place. There was no rush in the kiss now, and no need to repeat that scooping motion, our lips were speaking with each other and it hurt, it ached, how true and beautiful it was. She put my hand in between her legs and I feared she was pushing the deed once more.