Portable Curiosities (17 page)

What am I doing?
she thought.

She hurried down the corridor to the consultation room.

‘Kabuki?' she said, knocking on the door. She turned the handle. The door clicked open.

No one seemed to be in the office. There was an odd gap in the corner of the room. One of the walls seemed out of place, as if it had slid to one side. She could hear Kabuki's voice coming from behind it.

‘Yeah, drinks would be great,' Kabuki was saying. ‘Talking to losers all day is such a fucking drain. Just pack up the chairs, bring the dress back to the office. That sudden wind, though – perfect! Unrehearsable! Yeah, let's get wasted, forget work. Just give me some time to freshen up? Gotta get this fugly suit off and find a hotter one. Sure. Twenty minutes?'

Orla stepped through the opening.

She found herself in near darkness. Kabuki was facing away from her.

‘Half an hour, then,' Kabuki said. ‘Meet you out back.'

Kabuki pulled out what looked like an earpiece and dropped it on the carpet. Then, with one hand, she reached back to the nape of her neck, dug her nails into the flesh, and began to pull. Her neck and microchip and hair and scalp started to separate from the rest of her body. She kept pulling the flesh up and forward over her head. Her ears and face peeled off with the rest, in one continuous piece.

Underneath was a shining wet skull – a twisted network of metal balanced on metal vertebrae.

A strange fleshy odour, sweet and foul, filled Orla's nostrils. She gasped.

The android spun around, holding Orla's replica head by the hair. The android's own head had two eyeballs and a set of teeth fixed onto it.

‘Orla?' said the metal face.

‘Hi, I—'

‘Isn't Rhonda out front?'

‘She's—'

‘Oh,' said the face. ‘Recharging. Rhonda's so ancient she still has a bloody model number – Réception 3600.'

Orla watched the android toss the head onto a nearby chair, and then climb out of Orla's replica body.

‘Sorry,' said the android, looking down at her metal skeleton. ‘You got me at an awkward moment. What exactly did you overhear?'

It was then that Orla saw how far back the room extended. Along the three walls, queued up on hooks, were dozens of Kabuki's ‘suits'. Each was suspended in a clear plastic pouch, like a giant IV bag, filled with dark yellow liquid. Orla squinted. One of the nearer ones looked a bit like Rabbit. It was hard to tell, without a skeleton filling it out.

The android seemed to lose interest in Orla, and turned to scan her collection.

‘Who do I feel like putting on today?' she murmured.

She paced up and down the room until she decided on the suit she fancied. She entered a number into an interface next to Orla, and the hook bearing the chosen suit swung down the line towards them.

The android pulled out her eyeballs and teeth and flung them onto the carpet. The eyes bounced at Orla's feet.

She punctured the bag with her claws and ripped it apart. Liquid flowed out, soaking the floor. She felt around in the bag for her new set of eyeballs and teeth, and pushed them onto her face.

She took the selected scalp, stretched it over her skull like a swimming cap, and pulled the new face into position.

Suddenly, the android was blond, with full lips and blue eyes and a cute button nose.

She pulled the rest of the body from the bag, stepped into its toes and pulled it up over her frame. Her bones lengthened to fill the suit.

Her thighs and arms were thin, her stomach was flat. She adjusted her breasts. They bounced in just the right way.

She took a towel and dried off the liquid. She raised one arm and tilted her head upwards. Hot air blasted from somewhere above. As her hair dried, she closed her eyes and moved her head sensually from side to side. She tossed her lustrous locks. They cascaded in perfect waves.

Finally, she pulled a sky blue dress over her head and shoulders, and nearly lost her balance as she slid her feet into a pair of pink suede pumps.

‘How do I look?' she said, in a new, husky voice. ‘Everything in place?'

Orla nodded. The android looked and sounded exactly like the sniffling blond from the lift.

‘You look shocked,' said the android. ‘Come on, let's be real. It's hardly the singularity. What else can I do? Creep around town like a four-legged metallic praying mantis? This is a client who never has fun. I'm just taking her out for a spin in my spare time. Think of me as a voyeur into dysfunction – makes me a better therapist, don't you think?'

Kabuki turned to a mirror hanging on the back of the sliding wall. She pulled out a syringe and injected its contents into her lips. She lined her lips with pencil and shaded them in with hot-pink lipstick. She popped an index finger into her mouth and pulled it out.

‘Don't want lipstick on our teeth, do we?' she said, admiring her inflated pout.

‘No,' said Orla.

‘Well, better be off. Got my cutest face on and no one to show it to. Best if you don't say a word to anyone. Parent Company's trade secrets, more or less. You understand. I'll see you next week.'

‘I don't think so,' said Orla.

The android smoothed her hair in the mirror. Her gaze met Orla's and her new set of teeth glinted in the dark.

‘Then, my darling,' she cooed, ‘time is really up.'

The Fat Girl in History

My mother and I are sitting in front of the TV. We're talking about going on the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet.

I've filled in a preliminary form on the official Diet website. Based on my responses, it tells me that I'm Overweight, and that if I do the Diet, I could lose up to 8.3 kilograms in twelve weeks.

I feel relieved that I am Overweight and not Obese because there's less work to do and I'm lazy like that. This sort of thinking is more or less how I became Overweight in the first place.

‘If you lose weight, Julie,' my mother says, ‘when we walk down the street everyone will turn and say, “What a beautiful girl that lady is walking with!”'

‘I'm already beautiful,' I tell my mother. ‘All mothers should think their daughters are beautiful, all of the time.'

My mother is becoming upset about her sagging chin and arms, and her sagging everything in general. She's in her mid-sixties but looks like she's in her early fifties.

‘You should be grateful,' I say. ‘Other women your age don't look as young as you do. Imagine if you actually looked your age. You would absolutely die.'

I remind her that I've never had skin as nice and clear and white as hers used to be when she was young. Everyone ages, I tell her. She should be glad she even got to be pretty in the first place. Some people go through their lives ugly, from start to finish.

She doesn't look convinced. She touches the slackening skin under her jawline, as if to see if it has miraculously tightened.

The problem everyone has with my body is not really that I am heavy-boned for a woman in general, but that I am heavy-boned for an Asian woman.

My university boyfriend, the one I thought I would marry, used to squeeze my arms and legs and call me Chunky Monkey. I was over 8.3 kilograms lighter in those days. He'd probably call me a Fail Whale now.

I once told him I wanted to buy a backless dress. It'd make me look chic, like I was from Paris or something.

‘Don't you need a nice back to wear a backless dress?' he'd said.

In that moment, I suddenly became aware that not only did I have thunder thighs and a belly and adult acne and a fat head, but I also had a back that didn't look good from the back.

So I didn't buy a backless dress. I bought a hessian sack that covered my body from my neck to my knees, so that no one could tell if there was a woman underneath or a glutinous green blob with an unsightly green behind.

I'm sitting on a train wearing my hessian sack. I look at all the petite yellow women around me in a tableau determined by seating preferences and station order. Each little woman takes up just half of her blue seat. Overweight can look Obese when you're comparing yourself to delicate yellow peonies who blow gracefully in the wind.

I sit there and think about how they're all so tiny that I could squash them.

I also think about all the white guys I've met lately who have yellow fever. Even they reject me now. I'm not petite and Asian enough. I reject them and they reject me, and we are all filled with horrible feelings of rejection.

At a friend's wedding I'll be attending in the near future, I will avoid the dance floor and instead accost a friend's mother and complain to her about my dating woes – in particular, the phenomenon of yellow fever.

‘Maybe,' she will say, ‘the overwhelming attraction of some white men to exclusively Asian women is biologically the unconscious subjugation of one race by another.'

I like this theory. I like the idea that I am fighting a civilisational battle using my vagina.

I think that my heavy bones must be an indication that we have had a robust Russian somewhere in the family line, or maybe a Viking.

I order a DNA ancestry test kit online. When it comes in the mail, all I need to do is spit into a tube and post it back.

The lab sends the results by courier. I sign for the box. Inside the box is a pretty snow globe that fits in the palm of my hand. I stare into it.

In the background of the snow globe is the double helix logo of the DNA testing company. In the foreground is a tiny figurine of a big man in traditional Cossack gear. He's standing in the snow shielding a little Chinese woman from the weather by wrapping her in the folds of the coat he's wearing. Her shoes are at least six sizes too small. In fluent Mandarin, he's telling her that she will bear him gigantic, beautiful semi-Slav babies. She smiles and blinks. Snowflakes cling to her eyelashes.

‘Of course,' I say out loud. ‘My blood's part-Russian, not Viking.'

This should already have been clear to me, given that I've never had any upper body strength. I'm unable to lift a finger, let alone row a boat from Scandinavia to China.

‘Can a lab be this specific about my ethnicity?' I ask myself. I revisit the website of the DNA testing company. I realise that the company specialises not only in DNA Testing but also in DNA Wish Fulfilment, and that I've unwittingly ticked the optional Wish Fulfilment box at the end of my test kit request.

I don't care. Because the lab has confirmed my wish that we've had a Russian in the family, I start to drink vodka. I try all the brands.

I am connecting with my roots.

Despite plying myself with alcohol, I have niggling doubts. If the reason for my fatness cannot squarely be laid at the feet of a giant Russian, then I have to conclude that it's probably my own fault.

One evening when I'm not drunk, I go to Fitness Second for an introductory session with a personal trainer.

I distract him from training me by asking him in-depth questions about his personal life. He's happy to talk. He has a girlfriend who was once a client. His father is Greek, and keeps tarantulas.

Despite my conversational manoeuvres, my personal trainer still manages to prepare worksheets for me that set out the different exercises I need to do every day.

When I come back to the gym the next evening, he takes me through the circuit he has designed for me, so that my technique is correct.

We do a lot of work with exercise balls. We also box. I put gloves on and punch the pads he's holding up. After five minutes, I get tired and bored.

‘I'm puffed,' I say.

We go to Gloria Jean's instead for iced coffees topped with cream.

This is how I gain fat by going to the gym.

While I'm shedding kilos unsuccessfully, everything turns out well for my mother.

The front door is open when I arrive home after my iced coffee. The porch light is off; the house is dark.

‘Is that you, Julie?' my mother calls out.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Come into the lounge room.'

The lounge room is set up like a photography studio, with a cyclorama where our altar for the Goddess of Mercy used to be. In the near darkness, a woman is standing side on, turning her face to smile enigmatically at a clicking camera.

‘Work it, work it, work it,' the photographer is saying.

The woman is slim and beautiful, with fine alabaster skin. She's wearing a black backless gown. A diamond-encrusted pendant on a long silver chain hangs down her back.

‘It happened,' she says to me in my mother's voice. ‘It's a miracle! I'm young again! And I'm the new face of Chanel.'

My friend Jiao comes back from Hollywood to get rid of the last of his Sydney belongings.

We go to Obelisk Beach on New Year's Day. We aren't really beach people, but lately I've given up hope that one day I'll live in a place that snows at the turn of each year. By going to the beach, I feel that I am embracing my Australianness. I've picked Obelisk Beach because I want to avoid the crowds. Obelisk is apparently one of the most secluded beaches in Sydney. It's also a nudist beach for gay men.

On the way there, I ask Jiao what the rules are at a gay nudist beach. Is it okay to be a woman? Is it rude to wear my swimming costume?

Jiao says it's fine for us both to keep our clothes on.

To access the beach from the road, we have to climb down a huge rock staircase. There are a lot of bushes around. I've read on the internet that men ‘cruise' here. As we move down the stairs, I wonder why anyone would want to have sex among rocks and bushes. These are gay men, after all. Don't they want fluffy pillows and thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets? Who will maintain the world's standards for classy living, if not gay men?

The beach is small and quite crowded. Not all the beachgoers are men, but most are. Three-quarters of the people here are nude.

It's definitely rude to look at all the penises, but I sneak glances anyway. They look so small, and this surprises me because so many of their kind have gone to war and conquered cities and engineered financial collapses and been models for very tall buildings.

Jiao and I lay out our towels, sit down and talk.

‘Should we go into the water?' Jiao asks after a while.

‘Sure,' I say, nonchalant. I start undressing, down to my swimming costume.

I'm really worried about my big thighs and belly. I try to keep them covered for as long as possible, then I get up and wobble with them across the few metres of sand between our towels and the water. I wade in as quickly as possible.

Two boats are moored just off the beach. One is full of people: men in shorts and a woman in a black dress. They're flying a rainbow flag and playing old-time jazz.

I'm very comfortable here. No one's ogling me, and no one seems bothered that I'm the wrong gender and sexual orientation. No one here is even really swimming. Like Jiao and me, most people are just standing around in the water or floating on their backs. The sand is smooth, except for some occasional rocks. There aren't any violent waves, so I don't feel like I'm going to be pulled under suddenly and delivered to the Kraken. The water just laps in and out.

I'm still curious about the penises of everyone on the beach. The more I consider them, the more it becomes apparent that the penises only tend to look small because a lot of men here have big bellies, which dwarf their other body parts.

I compare the size of each paunch to its corresponding penis. I decide to call it the Paunch to Penis Ratio.

A man with what I am sure is a very high Paunch to Penis Ratio wades over and begins to talk to me. It's not clear to me if he's gay or not. I get more of a paedophilic vibe from him. I remain calm, reminding myself that although I'm emotionally still a child, I am currently the size of an adult.

The man tells me a bit about the history of the area but I don't retain any of it. Something about there being a golf course here in years gone by.

‘You look a bit out of place here,' he says.

‘Why's that?'

‘You look very white.'

‘I've been sitting indoors writing,' I say. ‘I haven't seen any sun.'

‘I guess you and your boyfriend are here having a cultural experience?' he says.

I look back at the beach, at all the other beachgoers. I realise that, in their eyes, Jiao and I must look like we're tourists from China who got waylaid on our way to Bondi and are unsure what to do about it.

‘It's a
gay
beach,' says the Paunch. He says the
gay
under his breath as if it's a secret.

‘Yeah, I know,' I say. ‘I guess I qualify because I brought my gay friend?'

‘It's nice you're here,' says the Paunch. ‘It's nice to have some eye candy once in a while.'

The water is at chest level for both of us. I realise that, underneath, the Paunch's junk is just floating there, cradled by salt water. I'm not only meeting the Paunch for the first time, I am also meeting his junk.

The Paunch is now standing between Jiao and me, and gradually edging forward. He asks me what country I'm from, and talks about how he spends six months of the year in Thailand.

Jiao keeps looking over, then leaves the water to go lie on the beach.

‘What do you write?' the Paunch asks.

I tell him I write fiction but am having a crisis of confidence. A review of my work has just been published in
The Australian Morning Age.

‘The reviewer said my fiction is bland,' I tell him. ‘I think it's a typo. I think he meant to type “wild”.'

I tell the Paunch that I wonder if my yellow skin and vagina are limiting my chances at being the next big Australian author. I tell him that I stand in the shower sometimes and try to scrub the yellow off but, huh, it turns out it doesn't work like fake tan. I ask him if I can borrow his body and perhaps his mind.

‘Ha ha,' he says nervously, paddling backwards.

Judy Garland appears on the deck of the boat that is flying the rainbow flag. She gazes down at me. She's in her younger years and is holding a small dog and looking wistful, as if she is feeling very stuck and can't leave.

‘I tell you who's funny, Judy,' I say to her from the water, ‘your daughter Liza. Is really very funny.'

Judy begins to sing. She sings about a rainbow somewhere. She sings away all the layers of anxiety I didn't even know I had.

I tell her I'm a writer.

‘What have you written recently?' she says.

I tell her I've just finished a short story about a young woman who has depression. I finished it on New Year's Eve and went to sleep at nine o'clock, like the woman in the story.

‘How much of the story is true?' Judy asks.

‘Well, it's about androids in the future, so …'

‘Uh huh,' says Judy. ‘Okay.'

She feeds her little dog a biscuit treat.

‘Is your work popular?' she asks.

‘I don't think so. I think I'm behind the times. Everyone's writing about celebrities now. Like, inserting famous people into their fiction.'

‘Interesting device,' says Judy. ‘A bit gimmicky.'

Back on the beach, Jiao is burning. The skin on his back is all red.

We agree that it's time to go, and begin to climb back up the rock staircase.