How it feels (32 page)

‘Just fuck me,' she said. ‘Please fuck me.'

She fell upon me and I ripped off her underwear, a very thin g-string that would have weighed less than the lid of a pen. She was naked now as I spun her round and placed her on the cushions. She was beneath me as I lined my face up with her face, kicking off my socks; the last of the garments to go. She looked young again, her face all squashed and chubby, riddled with the same fear it spoke of when I got so close those ten, eleven, years ago.

‘Do you love me?' she asked, with a catch in her voice.

‘Yes,' I said, massaging her clitoris with the tip of my index finger.

‘Do you love Swanna more than me?' she asked, and I turned away. ‘Do you?'

‘Courtney…' I said.

‘You love her more than me, don't you?' she said, and she held my face in front of hers, begging for this ultimate truth.

‘I'm in love with her, yes,' I said to Courtney's big green eyes.

‘Are you in love with me?' she asked, through broken breaths, and I knew I could change our lives right then, I could place them together in brilliant controversy, I knew this was the moment, and again, again like every other time before, I faltered at the turn.

‘You're getting married,' I said, and that did it. She pushed me off and crawled to her feet. Then she simply walked out of the living room, through the white wooden doors and into the marble foyer with the high ceilings. Sweat glistened on her spine – she was as naked as the night, and the curves of her hips and shoulders danced in the bouncing light of the antique mirror which adorned the wall across from the entrance doorway. She climbed the stairs to Gordon, her eyes set dead ahead. Either not tempted, or too strong, she never looked back.

*

Nina's voice was high in the morning and the sound of the vacuum low. Together they formed a perfect harmonic, which grew louder and louder, infiltrating my dream and then officially waking me from my sleep to reality:
I am naked and Nina is but a few feet away, pushing the vacuum into the living room from the kitchen
. The transition from linoleum to carpet was a relief in audio terms but terrifying in terms of my predicament. I pushed Courtney's chiffon dress under the couch and reached for my jeans, sliding them on just as she appeared above me.

‘Oh, hello, Neil!' Nina shouted over the vacuum, peeking down at my semi-nakedness. I spotted the g-string and bra at my feet and quickly plonked a cushion over the top of them as Gordon arrived in the room wielding two tall glasses of effulgent red liquid.

‘Berocca, my friend? Gives you back that b-b-bounce!'

Outside the sweetest sea breeze lifted up off the coastal shelf and into my nostrils and soul, cleansing it all, softening it all, placating. Gordon had a coffee now, I was still halfway through my Berocca, smoking a cigarette on the welcome mat in just my jeans. The only other thing I wore was the stink of her perfume on my face and neck and the recent memory of her skin and tongue and mouth and tongue and cunt and tongue and skin on my mouth and hands and hair and face and neck and breasts and skin.

Gordon seemed gallant as the light rain kicked off again, sentimental even, as if nothing could bump him from his spot at the top of the line, and it certainly would not be me, I would hide in the smoke until the car came with my mother in it and a ‘yoo-hoo' and a ‘let's go' saved me from the bells of hell; please Lord keep Courtney up there in her bed, surrounded by elephants, and please may Nina not find her intimate apparel beneath the couch and cushions. Not while I am here at least, I cannot take one more of Gordon's punches and kicks.

‘Courtney and I ,' Gordon said to me, like an old bloke looking over his kingdom of wealth and plenty, ‘we're so happy you came back for our engagement.'

‘Me too.'

‘You heard her speech, she just loves having you back from London. She got so worried about you and all, with what happened with Swanna and shit…'

‘Yeah, she has a big heart, Courtney does.' I waited for him to comment but instead there was silence.

Then, out of the blue, he swung to me, with exultant eyes. ‘You know she really loves Elvis?'

‘Who does?'

‘Courtney!'

‘Does she?'

‘Yeah! Lately she's been listening to him on her mini-disc player. She loves him, all the old stuff, “Jailhouse Rock” and “All Shook Up”, she sings it round the house and at the gym. She even bought me the
Christmas Album
last Christmas which is hilarious…
a-ho-ho-ho-whiiiiite… Christmaaaassss
.'

‘Right, that is funny!' I said, unsure of where this was going.

And then he whispered conspiratorially, ‘At the wedding, I'm thinking, you know how there's the wedding dance where the couple just do a really slow one-on-one thing? Well I'm going to mix it up! It's boring and I hate dancing slow, so I'm thinking of coming out in an Elvis suit.'

I waited for him to continue but clearly he was expecting me to jump by this point. ‘Ohhhh, right, nice idea,' I said.

‘I know, right?' he said, pounding his hands together. ‘We do a dance to one of Elvis's pop songs, everyone will lose it!' He slapped me on the bare chest and shook his head at the genius idea.

Then Mum arrived and I drifted back inside to gather my t-shirt and jacket, leaving Gordon to catch up with Mum through the passenger window from his position on the trimmed gutter. When I entered the living room Nina was standing beside the couch holding Courtney's blue dress and tiny underwear. I shrugged pathetically. Nina came over to me, holding the garments in her left hand. Then she kissed me softly on the forehead, ran the back of her right hand down the length of my nose, stopping on the summit of my upper lip, and left the living room, closing the doors to the kitchen behind her.

My best friend Gordon has a beer in his hand and he is welcoming arrivals. I am standing beside him taking old ladies' coats and helping prams fit through the doors which usually means a forty-five degree angle is required causing shit to spill out onto the floor which keeps on happening, but I cannot stop it, the hipflask of bourbon I drank at the photo session mixed with the six beers that were on offer in Shoes's esky have gone to my head and balance is absent. The DJ is playing ‘Fly Me to the Moon' and the place is glowing, each round table dressed with name cards and daffodils and rows of shining cutlery. Having seen Wanda Surf Club in the daytime I am amazed at the transformation from seedy wooden hall to enchanting dreamland. But when Courtney is in charge, these types of things are entirely possible. The sea is out the big windows and it shimmers appropriately, the moon a three-quarter biscuit from which cool mauve light is made.

‘Helloooo,' Sarah says, kissing me on both cheeks. The baby asleep in a pram – I help her wheel it inside to a quiet corner. I had first spotted Sarah at the photo session, stunning in her black ruffled bridesmaid's dress with giant red rose on the left chest area.

Chatting with her as the photographer manipulated all sorts of false and terribly clichéd scenarios, I felt good, and happy she was there to catch my rolling eyes. It was the same brand of goodness I felt now, throwing the fly net over baby Dylan and asking Sarah if she'd ‘care for a cham-poo?'

‘Does a bear shit in the woods?' she replied, applying lipstick.

I kept checking on Dylan because I wanted to but also because Sarah liked it. Mostly I guzzled champagne and listened to the woman talk, and man could she talk, with a mouth full of tyres she would manage any of Hamlet's soliloquies. We were well into our third glass of Yellowglen and this impressed me further, a girl that could drink properly and quickly. On the dance floor Courtney and Gordon were laughing too hard. Some ugly fuck from my Year 9 PE class was grinding some demented chick who worked at the Woolooware Mobil. ‘Moondance' was playing, or some other Van Morrison, I can't be sure, for I am smashed and elsewhere.

‘Sorry to hear about Stuart,' Sarah says, a hand on my neck.

‘Ah, that was a while back.'

‘Still. I'm sorry.'

‘Let me fucking kiss you,' I say. Then, with new politeness, ‘May I?'

‘Tell me what happened, first,' she orders, putting down her flute and focusing.

‘ To Stuart?' I ask her.

‘ To you. Tell me all of it.'

‘And then I get a kiss?'

‘Depends on the story,' and she kissed me on the eyelid.

Bathurst Hospital was a mess. The place was under heavy construction and I couldn't work out where the hell I was meant to be.

It was a post-apocalyptic scene: massacred people in wheelchairs, rubble and bright lights and balloons and staff running for closing lifts.

Gordon didn't come in, he didn't like hospitals, and said he would get some coffee and a paper and meet me back in the car park in an hour. It was kind of him to drive me, I didn't have a licence and the idea of me getting the train offended him, as if trains were jails or places you shouldn't be seen in, transport for the lesser. He had picked me up from the airport, taken me to the beach, and then driven me the three and a half hours to Bathurst. He didn't comment on the state of me, either; my smell, my weight loss, my skin. I was a scaly, jittering, chattering shell of a man and I could feel the concern in his silence. He didn't know the half of it. I planned on being home for a few days only, enough time to see Mum and say my goodbyes to Dick – then I would fly straight back to London and resume taking ice.

When a man is dying he is like a wounded lion, he curls up and whimpers in his fur and no longer resembles the Beast of the Wilderness that he once was. He is still a lion, but there is no fight left in him, and the children of the Beast see him and they know they have to be the Beast now.

‘Boy genius!' Dick called from his bed. The room was small with a window looking out over the cranes and trucks. An old Greek man shared the space, but Dick's side held all the cards and flowers.

‘Who's this bloke?' I said, approaching. Dick had a ‘Comics Out West (COW!) Tour 1991' beanie on, his face was three times its usual size, and his hands were bruised and swollen.

‘Ohhhh, my boy,' said Dick, and I hugged him, careful not to tug on any of the many cords stretching out of his bloated, failing form.

‘Mate, I didn't bring you anything,' I said. ‘I meant to get you some stuff duty free but I clean forgot.'

‘Get out, ya cheap bastard!'

I could see how much energy it required of him to make conversation. He was not long to go and it hurt me. I don't think I would have come home for many other people in my life, maybe just my parents and Agatha, maybe Gordon (though Gordon will never die) – but Dick, I had to see him before he departed this sordid stage. I did not receive warning, I simply started to cry, uncontrollably, and the more I tried to hide it the more it flowed out. But it wasn't just Dick, it was the twenty-four hours without meth that had penetrated the numbness and let the feelings through again.

‘Sorry, Dick… Things have been intense in London.'

‘Mate, don't feel bad. All I do is cry,' he said. ‘Cry all night and day.'

‘He does too,' the Greek man chimed in from across the room.

Dick wanted so much to live. He was fifty-eight going on twenty-one. He had never seen theatre in Japan, or Germany, or even the Blue Man Group in New York, and he and his wife were set on it, and so too were their savings.

‘Tell me about London,' Dick said, patting the bed for me to sit.

I sat on the edge of the skinny bed and told him a little about it. Of course he had read the reviews of all my shows and printed out the articles about our work. He was so proud to think his teachings had ‘made waves' overseas. I told him about Swanna and the machete, and I told him that I was by no means an angel when it came to love and responsibility.

‘I am a wreck,' I told him, and he chortled lovingly. There was nothing but love and acceptance in his soul.

I touched his grizzly beard and he laughed. I didn't tell him that for months now I had been living in an empty house with Swanna, smoking from a crack pipe and not sleeping for weeks at a time. I did not tell him what I do to get this drug, or any of it, how could I? He thought so well of me, he was the only one left.

After the engagement party I flew back to London with purpose. I would give Swanna and me one last chance, for it was painfully clear, on the living room floor with Courtney, that my feelings for Swanna were still abundantly alive and life without her was another mistake for my collection. When I arrived at the Bethnal Green house, wielding Australian flags and a chocolate wombat, Swanna was sitting in the middle of the kitchen with Clive, naked and freebasing, Serge Gainsbourg drifting out from the CD player.

Initially, I resisted, doing my best to get her to a hospital, to a rehab clinic, or somewhere out of here. But she brought me in with soft hands, and built me up a perfect snow cone to ease me into the understanding, and I soon understood, more than I would know, how it felt to feel nothing, and this was exactly where I wanted to be, numb and skating in England with my girl – high above what we had made, and way above what we had lost.

‘Son…' Dick coughed violently, and I knew I should go and let him rest. His eyes were closing and his lips didn't quite open when he spoke. He sounded drunk. ‘Get yourself a martial art. I've been doing tai chi for the cancer, and even though the bastard still won out, tai chi gave me balance and peace of mind for my final moments. This is what we all need… the thinking men… the artists… we need to find a way out of the restlessness and panic into the calm.'

‘I'll look into it,' I lied, dreaming of a pipe stacked with meth.

‘How is Swanna?' he asked, and I shrugged the subject dead. He nodded, and even though he knew fuck-all, he understood everything. Dick fell asleep at a clumsy angle; his big and beautiful smile collapsing now.