How it feels (17 page)

‘I love your fucking smile!' I screamed into her ear.

‘You're fucking cute too!'

‘I fucking… yeah!' I said, grabbing the bit between her eyebrows.

Lathered in sweat and rising too quick to peak, Nancy led me to the chill-out room, a downstairs sanctuary of children's toys and beanbags. We smoked a five-paper joint and she told me about growing up in Cork and I made a joke about ‘penetrating' the Ring of Kerry. Then we kissed a bit and I recited the first half of Andrew Marvell's ‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn'. I would have done the whole thing but Nancy really wanted to go back. She didn't care much for poetry.

‘Come on!' she said. ‘You have to see this!'

In our absence the museum of cages had been raised off the ground and was now hanging above our heads. The room was full of people, and most of them were one-quarter clothes and three-quarters flesh, all waiting impatiently for the bongo drummer and the percussionist to let go with the DJ. Was it Nik Fish? Six chubby girls with curly pink wigs danced on speakers holding unlit fire twirlers. This stirred me. I wanted one of those fire twirlers.

‘Fire!' I screamed at Nancy. Nancy beamed, chewing her lips.

Then everything in the market went BLACK. And with the blackness came absolute silence. Nancy pinched me, and then six puffy volumes of fire kicked and screamed through the centre of the auditorium. Green light ripped our eyes wider as phat, nasty beats swelled up and landed with another blow of fire from the six chubby demon cherubs.

‘Look!' Nancy said, pointing. Was this
Alice in Wonderland
?

The auditorium was jumping now. Everyone facing the front and raving, meeting the furious, mean, fast-footed drum and bass with equal voltages of human yearning. I looked up, choked with pure awe.

In the middle cage, spotlit and godlike, was my friend Stuart, naked but for a string of vine. He was dancing wild and free, tribal black paint across his torso. Like a tiger he launched at the walls of the cage, and then, feline, crept along the perimeter of the space. I caught his eye and he hissed at me, his tongue painted black and red.

‘He loves you,' Nancy said. Holding my palm with her thumb.

‘He's my oldest friend,' I told her. ‘And he is
so
high up!'

‘He can almost touch the sky,' she said, in this lilting, haunting tone.

‘What do you mean?' I asked her.

She smiled at me, and then kissed my ear with dispassionate nurse comfort. ‘We're all on our way, right? Stuart's just the closest to the sky. All the boys who dance the cages, they're all gone now. Corey, James, Benoit, Sebastian, Arrow and Greg. All Stu and Malaki's friends. They all went over.'

‘Over where?' I asked.

‘Over the edge, Neil.'

‘Like the lemmings?' I asked, scared of what her face would do.

My heart sped up as layers of flame danced through the room. I spotted a fire stick leaning up against the speaker and beside it a bottle of kerosene. I needed to do something, to let my friend know that this was not the only way. I needed to tell him the lemmings didn't know what would happen next. I had to show him, make him see my heart.

I poured the kerosene into my mouth, leaving it in a puddle above my throat. I then poured some on the wick and lit it off a small thatch-fire burning behind chubby cherub number three. I pulled the liquid up from the basement of my mouth, massaged it into one shape with my tongue, and shot it up towards Stuart's cage, which was banking now, above me and to the left. The ball nearly reached Stuart's feet, causing him to stare down at me with fresh amazement. Nancy had her hand over her face. I made another. Blew another. Leant back and rocked another ball. I was the Fire Starter, and I had a message for my friend and he was listening. This was not the end, Stuart Stone. This was just the beginning. Don't be afraid. And look what beauty we can make! Then the punk boys from the showers came from behind and tipped kerosene all over me and lit my jeans.

The sky was a purple-orange when I woke up between Nancy and Stuart in the four-wheel drive. They were talking about which bridge was built first, Tom Ugly's or Captain Cook. My chest was charred, I could feel it. When I looked down there was an ice pack on my stomach and some Elastoplasts on my arms. I felt good still, but for a chattering-teeth issue and a migraine on the left side. Nancy looked older in the daylight. But I could tell she would make a really good nurse, if she made it. Stuart had his shirt off and when I looked up from his lap I could see the stitches where they had sucked the oestrogen out of his ‘bitch tits'. He stroked my hair and I rested back into him. Good.

The four-wheel drive had excellent shock absorbers, hover-crafting us up over Captain Cook Bridge into the new day. I peeked up and out over Nancy's arms, spotting the
Welcome to the Sutherland Shire
sign.

Sister Nancy asked me if I had a place to stay. Stuart the Hulk intercepted, saying, ‘He stays with me.' She said I should stay with her, then Stuart said, ‘I give better head.' I laughed and asked to be dropped off at the Woolooware Road roundabout on Burraneer Bay Road. Stuart knew exactly where I was going from there.

When they dropped me on the corner it was 5.30 am and darling Nancy was going on (from her experience) about how I really needed to get to a burns clinic. I said I had been burnt lots of times at university in the fire shows and told her that I'd just score some ointment or pawpaw lotion from the chemist, kissed her hand and walked off towards the Ampol.

The car revved up, holding all of last night's feelings and my friend Stuart. Stuart the life-saver. Stuart the cage-dancer. Stuart the incomparable. I think I saw him French-kissing Nancy as the vehicle went away, but look, that's fine.

I bought an orange Gatorade from the Ampol which sold racist t-shirts like ‘Australia = Full', and set off on my journey down Woolooware Road.

‘Woolooware' is derived from the Aboriginal word
wooloowa
, meaning
a muddy track
. But that makes little sense, because in Shire terms it is the summit – the holy, and always freshly
cemented
, strip of Mercedes and massive houses. Leading all the way from Port Hacking to Woolooware station, it is a gorgeous, wide, tree-lined cruise of perfect serenity and success. Not many kids from my school lived there, and if they did it was because their parents had inherited or they were lawyers. But lawyers' kids usually got sent away by Year 10 or 11 to boarding schools in the city, like Joeys or Scots; it was rare that a lawyer's kid remained here, for it was widely perceived that if you wanted to get ahead and one day own a place on Woolooware Road, you had to not go to school on Woolooware Road. I went to school on Woolooware Road. Woolooware Road was where all my roads led to over the past forever years and it filled me with a heady mix of joy and terror as I loped down its leaf-laden footpaths.

I had been walking for close to an hour and I was parched, having drained the contents of my Gatorade even before I reached the tennis courts. But I could smell the glorious salt of Port Hacking Bay. I could smell the smoke from backyard incinerators ‘burning off ', and despite Nancy, despite kerosene, despite my parents' divorce, and despite my burnt face, despite Gatorade, and despite my swirling drug-bogged mind, I climbed the vines that strangled the drainpipe of Courtney's massive family home off Woolooware Road.

I opened the bathroom window and climbed in, using the sink to lever my frame onto the tiles. I was so quiet, not mouse-quiet, but definitely intermediate criminal quiet. I found this charred, weird, rickety pulp in the mirror and straight away recognised it as myself. I couldn't believe it but my wallet was still in my pocket. God bless the wallet. Loyal as a cattle dog. I love my wallet now.

I really needed to take a shit. I rolled down my smoke-mauled jeans and sat on the bliss. The bliss that comes in the form of a Caroma Dalton chair.

‘Plonk!' went my long, curling heavy shit and I swear someone heard – someone stirred. How could they not? It was
so
loud. In the first few months of our courtship I always took a shit before I went to Courtney's house, for fear of this exact thing. Fear of the plonk! Wake the neighbours – wake the girl – wake the parents and their marriage – wake the floorboards – wake the ghost of Tommy. I let the concert of my ablution simmer, flushed with the seat down, and used the water I had gathered from washing my hands to stir my hair up into something a little stylish and clean-looking.

I then left the bathroom and tiptoed down the hallway to Courtney's room. It was so quiet in this haunted house, but for the creak of the floorboards beneath my shoes, and the low hum of Gordon's snoring. He only snored when he was drunk. I knew him like an ex-wife. I knew everything about him. About both of them. I was an expert on
them
but at the same time I had no idea how and who they were together, and still could not cope with the notion. Fuck him fucking her. He would sleep deep tonight and she would sleep in sections, twisting and breaking in and out of dream flashes.

I didn't hesitate at the door, I just opened it and yes, he was sleeping smug as a cunt. His pink chest with its ginger hair clustered and rug-like. He was dead asleep, dreaming of Bruce Lee movies, or blinds, or nothing. He looked like a British version of Christ, his arms out wide. Next to Jesus was Courtney. Courtney was awake and she was staring right into my eyes as if she knew I would be standing there. Like she had the train timetable and I was the 6.07 am commuter. She knew I would come for her. She knew how I felt. She knew in her heart nothing had broken us. And that's what I kept on loop in my head as I stood there – the morning after her boyfriend's twenty-firstthat I had royally fucked.

Clearly I could not stand in her room forever. So we shifted into the hall with her up in a gown waving me to ‘go go out go'. I couldn't be upstairs either so we crept downstairs.

Courtney disappeared into the laundry as I rested against the kitchen cupboards. In my first long breath for at least forty-eight hours everything started to drain out of me, including the thrill which had been buoying me so well. I was thinking about myself in a dark fashion and there was evidence abundant. I concluded that stealing into Courtney's house was the worst idea in the world – and that really I should just let people be. Why was I here? And what the hell was I going to do next? I was about to leave the house and run for my life when Courtney appeared in the archway wearing a one-piece fifties swimsuit. She hurled a pair of board shorts at me, and hustled out the door with two red-striped towels. She was not smiling
at all
, but I could tell she was at least looking forward to the feeling of water against her body.

In perfect, loaded silence we ducked and weaved around the wet branches and hanging scrub that decorated the forty-five mossy-stepped bay trail. Courtney led us out on to the rocky clearing. The bright blue sky was beaming, but the sun was holding back.

Courtney leapt off the rocky half-cliff and into the sea. Her body scooped then disappeared in the deep blue beast. She looked good in the water, natural, whereas I was not so mad about big-ocean swimming. I liked the initial burst, the explosive headfuck one received on impact, but after that it was all concern: sharks, boats, drowning, stingrays, seaweed, embarrassment, jelly blubbers, sharks, sharks, sharks.

‘What's wrong with your face and body?' Courtney asked, dogpaddling about.

I looked down. My torso was burnt, I had red marks on my arms and I think the front of my scalp was singed. It definitely smelt that way.

‘I went out with Stuart,' I said. The first words since I had broken into her house.

‘And he branded you with an iron?'

‘No,' I laughed, and then thought how to put this. ‘Things just got out of hand.'

She bobbed her head and asked no more about it. ‘Are you going to come in?' Her hair was stuck to her forehead, making her face the thing that it was. Beautiful and Australian and pure.

‘Should I?' I asked.

‘If you want to. You look like you need a freshen-up.'

‘What's the water like?'

‘Wet,' Courtney responded.

Ok then. I took off my jeans as Courtney floated on her back. I saw her peek up at me just as I was slipping off my underpants on one foot. I put Tommy's shorts on and approached the edge of the deep blue sea. I stood there for ages, wishing I was already in the mass of water. I kept saying ‘now' in my mind but still I could not seem to take that plunge.

‘Tommy's favourite shorts,' Courtney said.

I looked down at the shorts. They were too big for me but I liked the design. Hawaiian flowers and a big lightning bolt. Like Tommy.

‘They're good ones,' I agreed, but the memory of her brother and his love for the ocean had flattened her spirit.

‘I'm getting out now.' She began backstroking over to the rocks.

So I acted. ‘Bellybuster!' I launched myself into the air, threw my arms out wide and landed with an agonising slap on the concrete surface of the water.

Courtney was only a few feet away from me when I came up for air and her sadness had turned to rage in those brief moments I had spent under.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?' she asked. ‘You ruin Gordon's twenty-first, then you
break into
my house and fucking stand there like a crazy person in the doorway. What're you trying to fucking achieve?'

I had never heard or seen this much fury before – well not since that night in Murray Kirkwood's bedroom.

‘Seriously, Neil. You're a fucking child and I think it would be best if you fucked off out of everyone's life. If you fucked off back to your little arts precinct where you're so cool and fucking interesting to yourself. '

‘I love you, Courtney,' I said.

There was silence, apart from the distant hum of the Bundeena hydrofoil.