How it feels (10 page)

Saturday came and Ron Stone arrived at our front door. His big car looked even more imposing with a boat attached to it. Stuart launched out of the front seat in just a pair of shorts, pink zinc cream smeared across his nose. He walked towards me with open arms and I never felt so cool, my first ever friend. Dad thanked Ron with a six-pack of Swan Lager, but Ron wouldn't accept it this way, instead he suggested Dad come on the trip with us, and they drink the tinnies there, ‘On deck.' Dad went inside, grabbed a hat, a camera and the wire cage with the adventurous possum in it, and off we went on our nautical mission.

The trip was a big hit, and even though the possum
still
made its way back to our roof a month later, despite having to cross lengths of water and land, it inspired a succession of weekend father–son journeys. We even camped out at Bundeena a few nights, and Dad and Ron got on just as well as me and Stuart did. They found a common interest in motor sports, water sports, all sports really, as me and Stuart fished and built stuff, investigated trails and stabbed yabbies' eyes out.

One Easter Dad and Ron bought us our own rowboat to journey off in, and we would, rowing around the reefs while they remained in the big hull, sipping on beers and nibbling on blue cheese, the NRL commentary pushing out the crackling speakers of Dad's battery-powered transistor radio. Often Dad and Ron would tie our dinghy to the big boat and cruise slowly up the harbour, dragging us behind.

The last time we did it Dad and Ron had been up all night playing cards and drinking cognac. They both had ‘sore heads' in the morning and weren't speaking much; Dad didn't even finish his scrambled eggs. We were cruising behind the boat, with about forty feet of rope separating us, when Stuart noticed that our dinghy was filling up with water. Stuart thought it was hilarious, so he began whomping and tipping the little rowboat until there was water everywhere, and the thing started to dip.

‘We're sinking!' I said.

‘Shit.' Stuart looked around. ‘Sharks!'

We started screaming, but Dad and Ron couldn't hear us. They had the footy on the radio and were sipping beers in silence, cruising up the harbour, enjoying their hangovers and the absence of their noisy boys.

The dinghy disappeared beneath us into the blue abyss. I began to paddle madly, but my mouth was already full of water, and I couldn't see well. Stuart swam over to me and hoicked me onto his shoulder, ordering me to hold on.

We stayed like this for a while, suspended in the harbour, two twelve-year-old boys dislocated from their fathers, their land, their lives. Stuart's legs kicked furiously beneath us, as he worked his big heart out to keep us both above the water line. He knew I was not a strong swimmer, he knew he had to do this if I was to survive. We screamed a little, but not for long, the boat was too far away, and it seemed a waste of energy.

Dad and Ron were but a speck in the distance by the time they realised we were gone. We heard the horn go and the noise of the roaring engine as it whipped around and stormed towards us. Dad looked pale when they found us, but I didn't know if that was the hangover or the fear of his son drowning. Ron was pissed off, blaming Stuart for sinking the dinghy.

Stuart protested, he said, ‘There's a hole in it', but Ron wouldn't take it, he slapped Stuart hard across the face and ordered him to go down into the bowels of the boat and not come out until we were home. I so wanted to slap Ron back; Stuart had saved my life, and if
they
weren't so obsessed with their stupid rugby league game and their drinks they may have remembered they had children tied to the boat and that it was worth checking on them every now and again. But I didn't say anything; I was shivering, incapable of words. I just sat there with a blanket round me, watching my dad spew over the side, and then we were home, and that was the end of our father–son weekends; Dad and Ron never organised much after that, and for this reason neither did me and Stu. We didn't ‘fall out', we just drifted into other sections of school/life. It wasn't until later that Stuart came back in to my life as a constant, which was always going to happen, we just needed some time to shrug off the shame.

Now Stuart and I sat together on the beach looking out at the ocean that had nearly taken us both some six years ago. We were bigger now, but still scared.

‘Don't stay here, mate,' Stuart said.

‘Huh?'

‘Go fly, mate. You're the special one. Seriously, just go fly. Fuck Cronulla, it's a fucking hole, mate.'

The black waves crashed hard up the shore, making the fisherman's arduous task more arduous. The drugs and the big friendship bulged in and out of my heart as I sat there next to Stuart in the heavy music of the beach.

‘I can't go back to the party,' I said.

‘Cool,' Stu said, ‘let's go to a
real
party then.'

The braver seagulls ducked and dived in the heavy winds as me and Stuart walked back down the beach past the fisherman and the poor bloody bream, flapping about in the bucket Kyla Druid style.

‘Stone Family Mechanics' was a household name in the Sutherland Shire. Stuart's great-great-grandfather had passed it down to Ron's grandfather who had passed it down to Ron's dad who had passed it down to Ron. Malaki and Stuart had shown little interest in extending the life of the family business. Ron never felt like much of a mechanic either, but in those days you did what your father told you. Ron ran five workshops in the Shire, and was very popular and respected among the staff and clientele. He had also been known to recruit troubled or retarded kids, offering them a trade and a hard day's work.

The morale and sense of mateship were high across all workshops, and on the last Wednesday of every month all the mechanics would gather at one of the workshops and bond, ordering a dozen pizzas and a few kegs of beer (with a couple of possible ‘surprises' thrown in later in the night).

Stuart and Malaki were regulars at these bonding nights, whereas Ron had stopped going years back, declaring himself ‘too old to enjoy such nonsense'.

In the office of the Kareela workshop I dragged some glassy speed off the
Yellow Pages
and into my nose, face and brain. The powder cut at my nostrils and eyes but I liked it. I didn't care. I didn't care what happened to me. I would do anything tonight. The dirtier the glassier the weirder the better the further away.

I couldn't quite follow what went next. One minute Stuart was playing cricket with the boys, the next he was drinking out of a hubcap, then he was getting forklifted up into the roof, then he was lining up more glassy brown speed for me to do. Then he had his shirt off and was dancing on top of a Nissan Patrol, pointing at his muscles and kissing them as the boys threw winches and spanners and cans at him and roared with delight. Then it all went fuzzier, and I was standing in a circle with forty-three mechanics aged between fifteen and fifty, all fuck-eyed on booze and gack and pot. Ioannis, the bald-headed Greek chief mechanic, stepped forward.

‘G'day, boys,' he said, his gut popping out under his Tahiti singlet.

The entire workshop cheered and hollered, raising their beers and bongs at the undisputed King of the Car-Fixers.

‘Special night tonight, as it is the very first Workshop Bonanza of 1995!'

And again the boys hollered, grabbing their cocks or banging spanners onto busted-off door panels. My brain still zapping and my eyesight in sections of there and not there, I looked around for Stuart but there wasn't him.

‘So,' Ioannis continued, ‘I thought I'd provide something special for my boys to kick off another fine year of car maintenance. Gentleman, please say hello to Larissa the Kisser!'

Loud tacky saxophone filled the workshop as I spun around to see a large, blonde, middle-aged woman appear in the roller-door entrance to Stone Family Mechanics wearing a lacy black g-string and bright red corset, lumps of fat spewing over her g-banger as she wobbled into the circle.

Larissa the Kisser danced around a forty-gallon drum as the boys cheered and leered, grabbing their cocks and hurling beer cans at each other. Ioannis unfurled a rubber mat on the hard concrete floor and before the saxophone song had ended two of the junior mechanics had dumped their load in Larissa and the next guy in the circle was up. My thought system zapped and buzzed, my eyes opened and closed with every beat of the drum, but still I could not make out the direction of the queue nor decipher if there were six, possibly five guys to go until it was my turn.

I had to make a run for it, but every time I did, someone slung me back into the ring. I gave in and stood watching the action in the middle of the circle. A rickety little sixteen-year-old mechanic from the Hurstville workshop hammered away, his tiny white arse shaking and shuddering for less than eight seconds before he came off and was ushered impolitely back to the circle. I thought AC/DC were playing now and people were yelling ‘Thunder' but I was not sure. Four or three to go? I tried to get away again but another set of arms made me stay – I was stuck and two to go, one.

I closed my eyes and THUNDER then… a single word echoed up my life: ‘Go!' Someone or something pushed me in the back, and there I was in the centre of the room. Larissa was on the mat drinking from a bottle of orange juice – she looked really exhausted but she smiled at me nonetheless; a professional. Her forehead was drenched with sweat and there were thumb marks on her neck (well, they were more like bruises).

Larissa curled her fingers and licked her lips and I wondered if she had ever played hockey or if she had goldfish or a family. Did she watch
Sale of the Century
?

‘How do you want me?' Larissa asked politely.

I spun away and attempted to run to America but Stuart stood behind me and so did Ioannis and this other prick; they would make me dick this chick before the night was out.

‘Give her the stick, Nelly. Get it done, mate,' Stuart said, winking at Larissa like they were wrestling partners arranging a set move.

I turned back to Larissa who was bleeding from her underpants as a cheer emerged and built throughout the workshop. The whole place was calling my name, hands pounding together.

‘Come on, special. Come to Larissa.'

I loped over to her. She undid my jeans. I wished the boys would stop chanting so I could focus. My dick was floppy and lifeless and the workshop threw cans at me. I noticed how ugly and pasty they all looked, how like dogs their eyes popped out of their sockets and their gums dripped, and how useless they were at keeping time with a simple clap and chant.

‘Here we go! Here we go, little fella!'

Larissa had been wanking me and sucking me for some time now. My eyes were closed; I couldn't watch to know if there was stiffness. She pulled me on top of her and she smelt like white musk, the perfume my sister wore when she went to Northies or even to the dole office. She eased my dick inside her gash which I slid left then right in. I grabbed one of her fifteen breasts and pumped away like a jackhammer. I thought about Courtney and how nice it was when she came over, how I'd answer the door and she would be there in a summer dress. I thought about how well Dad and Courtney got on when we went skiing at Thredbo and how scared she was of the chairlift and how cute she looked in a bib and brace and how much she loved the snow. Courtney said sex should be like falling rain but it was hailing here, sharp black ice. And then it was over and Stuart reefed me out of Larissa and handed me a VB and said, ‘Done.'

Ioannis dropped me and Stuart at the Red Rooster on Cronulla Street and wished us well. It turned out he was a big reader of books and plays, quizzing me on Shakespeare and Beckett and Henry Miller as we drove south to the beach.

‘Nice work tonight, Nelly. I think you went longer than all of the Kirrawee boys put together! Hahahahahaha!'

Ioannis launched into a coughing fit as he drove off, a
Cops R Tops
sticker on the rear fender of his ute next to a pair of Playboy bunny ears.

The wind smelt of salt and vinegar chips. There were a hundred or so kids out the front of the squash courts smoking and pushing energy out and around. Stuart and I watched it all from across the road.

‘Bombers,' Stu alerted me.

The squash courts party was organised by Endeavour High kids but all schools inevitably attended. I felt sick as we approached, knowing full well that if there was a pack of Bombers there Stu would end up lashing out at something they said or did. The Bombers were mostly wogs in puffy jackets who spray-painted their ‘tags' on walls and listened to rap. They thought they were black and proper gangsters from ‘da hood' when really they were just teenagers living in Kirrawee or Menai.

‘You have a good time back there, Nelly?' Stu asked me, practically striding towards the venue. Fuck. No way out now.

It worked like chequers in Cronulla. The Bombers would do something one week, like pop one of our footballs with a compass, or call a white chick a slut for wearing a black bra under her sheer white school top, then the white guys would retaliate and the whole thing would build then splinter and fights would break out at train stations and shopping villages all over town. Now school was done, there had been all sorts of promises and threats made about how the two factions were going to end things, and Stuart was always a featured player in the ongoing narrative. Stuart didn't belong to a ‘gang'. He wasn't a Waxhead, a Dork, a Raver or a Bomber; he was an independent. But Stuart loathed the fucking Bombers most, because they travelled in groups and picked on the weak. To Stuart, fighting was a personal affair, a beautiful exchange of strength and skill between two opposing forces. Bombers were cowards; they bashed people with bottles, with sticks that had nails coming out the ends, always outnumbering their opponent, often ten to one, and for that reason Cronulla was not their home – at least in Stuart Stone's mind it wasn't.