Praise (3 page)

‘It didn't occur to me. No offence.'

‘Do you like sex?'

‘It hasn't worked out too well so far.'

‘What's been wrong?'

‘Who knows. It can all be very cold, sometimes.'

‘You don't seem cold. You have a very warm laugh.'

We got up. Cynthia grilled us some ham and tomato for breakfast. I considered the cans of beer that were left in the fridge. They looked good, better than I felt.

‘I don't know if I'm up to these,' I said.

‘Have you ever tried Catovits?'

I hadn't.

‘They're pills,' she said. ‘They give them to old people in hospitals to keep them alert. They're like speed. I get them on prescription for depression, but they're great hangover cures.'

She brought out a foil sheet containing round red pills. We took one each. We ate our breakfast. The hangover evaporated like magic. We opened some beer, moved out onto the verandah. The day was overcast and damp.

‘You doing anything today?' she asked.

‘Uh-uh. How about you?'

‘No.'

We watched the sky for a while.

‘And you've plenty of these Catovits?'

‘Enough,' she said.

I stayed with her for the next six days.

We slept together all that time, but we made no bodily contact other than rolling against each other in our sleep. It was something new for Cynthia. She'd fucked a lot of men. Sex was taken very much for granted. But she didn't seem to mind. And I was content. I liked her conversation, but sex was something else all together. I masturbated occasionally when I was alone in the bed. From time to time she requested that I leave the bedroom so that she could do the same. It was a workable system.

On the sixth day I called one of my sisters, Louise. There were four girls in my family, and six boys. Louise was only a couple of years older than me. She was a doctor. She was about to move to Sydney to specialise in pathology. She wanted to cut up the bodies.

‘Gordon? I heard you quit.'

‘It's true. Work was killing me.'

‘So what now?'

‘I don't know. I've been taking it easy the last week.'

‘Are you still coming to my party?'

She was throwing a party at her house, to say goodbye to her friends.

‘I'll be there. Is it okay if I bring someone?'

‘Of course. Who?'

‘A friend from the pub. One of the barmaids.'

‘Oh? Anyone special?'

‘Just a friend, Louise.'

‘Okay ...'

Cynthia took some time getting ready. She covered her face with powders and creams. When she was finished you couldn't tell about her face, not unless you looked very closely. She went through this every time she left the house. She hated her skin. Another thing she hated was her tattoo. She had a tattoo of a butterfly on her left breast. If she was wearing a light coloured shirt she wore a bandaid over the tattoo to hide it. Tonight though she was wearing a black top and a black skirt. They were work clothes. She'd been in pubs for so long that all the clothes she owned were either black or white.

‘I like it,' I said, about the tattoo.

‘I don't. I don't know what the fuck I had in mind when I got it done ...'

‘How old were you then?'

‘Fifteen. I did everything when I was fifteen.'

We drove over to the party and walked in with a carton of Toohey's Old and a four-litre cask of Lambrusco. There were thirty or forty people there. I knew most of them. Louise's friends. University graduates. Doctors. The gainfully employed. I wasn't sure what I thought of them. I'd almost gone that way myself. I'd believed in things. Dedication. Diligence. Direction. I'd even finished school in the top one percent of the state. It was a cruel and meaningless system, still, there I was at the top of it. But things had changed since then. I was ashamed of it all now.

I introduced Cynthia to my sister and a few others. We put our drinks in the laundry sink, where the ice was, and sucked down the beer. The party developed. Cynthia took to it well. She was short and oddly shaped, but she had style. She moved around, talking, laughing, concentrating on the men.

I ended up on the couch, drinking and watching. The stereo was on, a few people were dancing. The rest were getting themselves wherever it was they needed to go. It was Friday night. Party night. It was beyond my conception, the importance of Friday night to those who worked a five-day week. It was always something to watch though, curious and a little appalling. All that desperate relief. Right across the country, in nightclubs and bars and restaurants, millions of them were at it. If I thought about it too long it became horrifying.

Cynthia came back to me some time after midnight. She was drunk.

‘So when are you going to fuck me?' she said.

‘I didn't know you wanted me to.'

‘Of course I do. You're the one who's got all the hang-ups about it ...'

I looked up at her. It was not a thing I understood. I had no sense of timing, of when things should or shouldn't be happening in a relationship. Of when a relationship had even started.

‘Seriously?' I said. ‘You think we should sleep together?'

‘We've
been
sleeping together. I think we should fuck.'

‘Okay then.'

‘You mean I've been waiting all this time and all I had to do was ask?'

‘I guess so.'

‘Jesus. What is wrong with you?'

‘I'm sorry. I just haven't thought about it.'

She looked at me, hard. ‘How can you not think about it?'

I shrugged. The truth was I thought about it all the time, but not about it actually happening, not with anyone I knew.

She said, ‘Tonight then?'

I said, ‘Okay.'

But we didn't leave the party until our beer had run out and people were starting on the Lambrusco.

We caught a cab home, to my place. The house was lively. The old men were still awake, most of the doors were open and the radios were turned up high. Vass stuck his head out of his room and said good evening.

I introduced Cynthia. Vass bowed, all charm. He was tall and thin and black. Emphysema made him whisper when he talked. ‘Hello little lady,' he said. Cynthia leaned against me.

‘Hello,' she said.

Vass looked at me. ‘You kids feel like a drink?'

‘I don't think so, Vass.'

‘Where you been all week anyway?'

‘Away. Cynthia's place.'

‘Ah. Well. You know you've got some new neighbours.'

‘No. I didn't know that.'

‘Right in the room next to yours.'

‘I see.'

‘They put out a welcome mat, for chrissake.'

‘Have you met them?'

‘Not yet.'

Then he was gone. Cynthia was curled up against me. She looked tired. I led her into my flat. Maybe we'd just crawl into bed and go to sleep. I wouldn't have minded. I was nervous. The only thing that was going to get me through fucking her was the alcohol, and I hadn't had that much to drink. I wasn't sure what to do. Cynthia had fucked dozens of people. She'd been in love, she'd said, she'd fucked for love — what did I know about it? I'd had, at that stage, a total of five casual and unsuccessful sexual affairs. One of them was a brief encounter with a man, two of the others — with women — had only lasted one ugly night ... I had no rhythm, no grace. I couldn't even dance. How could you fuck if you couldn't dance?

But as soon as my door was closed, Cynthia came alive. She reached up, pushed me back against the wall.

We kissed.

There was no emotion in it. My eyes were open and staring at her face. Our mouths were stretched, our tongues jamming in and out. It was grotesque. I was not fond of kissing. Either it was like this, grotesque, or it was something terribly tender. Something far more than sex, something that demanded sincerity. And I had real problems with sincerity.

Why wasn't I a man? Why was I worrying about sincerity? Why couldn't I throw her down on the bed and be brutal?

My body was the problem. My prick had no guts. It couldn't take over my brain like pricks were supposed to. It couldn't subject everything to the whim of the Lord Penis.

It was too small, that was the problem. I had a theory. Desire was directly proportional to size! You needed something big to wave around, to inspire nausea and confidence. I had no chance.

And her body was the problem. Women's bodies were the problem. They did nothing for me, they were just flesh. It wasn't bodies I got off on, it was personalities, indulgent personalities, fucked-up personalities, ugliness, fear ... the
situation
of fear. But even then, when it came down to the sex, something seemed to be missing.

It didn't matter. Cynthia displayed no great interest in kissing either. She pushed me over to the bed and threw me down. She might have been short but she weighed as much as me and was just as strong. We kissed some more and she wrestled me out of my jeans. I was erect, for what it was worth. I was operating, I was functioning, but the mind was still there, it wouldn't shut up: What do I do now?

But Cynthia was away. She didn't bother undressing. She reached under her skirt, pulled off her panties and jumped straight on me. She jammed herself down. ‘Fuck,' she said. She thrust away. Her eyes were closed. All I could feel was friction and pain. She wasn't even wet. I grabbed her hips and held on. She threw her head back. ‘Oh
fuck
.' Then she rolled off and lay there, curled up.

I touched her back. ‘Are you okay?'

‘I'm okay. I just came, that's all.'

It'd been no more than twenty or thirty seconds. My penis had barely even registered it.

After a while she uncurled. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘that was almost rape. It's just that I haven't done if for so long with a boy. I've been thinking about it for days. I've been so horny.'

‘I'm sorry, I didn't know.'

‘I thought you must hate sex.'

‘It's not that. I just haven't managed to enjoy it much yet.'

‘I can't understand that.'

‘It doesn't matter.'

She found her cigarettes and lit one. I took one of hers rather than roll one of my own. It was the first Winfield Blue I'd had for months and it tasted very good.

‘One thing you should know,' she said, ‘when I come, I have to do it alone. Don't try to talk to me when I'm coming, don't try to touch me or do anything to me. Just leave me alone. Okay?'

‘Okay,' I said.

We smoked our cigarettes.

‘Can we do it again?' she asked, after we were finished.

‘If you want.'

We woke late next day. There was an argument in the flat next door. The new tenants. A man and a woman. The voices were loud and angry but indistinct. I sat up and began coughing. Cynthia watched me as I went through the routine of sucking in the Ventolin and rolling the first cigarette.

Her skin was bad again. It was my fault. I'd been exploring it during the night, testing the limits. The disease was all over her face, neck, shoulders and back. It made her skin tender and wrinkled, covered it with hundreds of small scabs that broke away with my fingertips. Now, in the morning, her face was oozing blood. The bleeding woman. If I'd rubbed my unshaven cheeks up against hers I could probably have killed her.

She rooted through her bag to find some cream. She said it didn't help much, but it was better than nothing.

The argument next door rose to screaming, cut off abruptly.

‘There,' I said, ‘he's killed her.'

‘She's probably in love. She won't mind.'

‘I suppose that's why he did it.'

‘Love is a dangerous thing,' she agreed. She curled up against me. She reached down, rolled my balls between her fingers. She did it gently. ‘Your name
would
have to be Gordon.'

‘What's wrong with Gordon?'

‘All the great loves of my life seem to have been named Gordon. There were two of them. And they both left. Each time it fucked me up for years.'

‘Oh.'

She rolled over on top of me, stared at my face. ‘Never mind, you're beautiful. Your
eyelashes
are beautiful. And your skin. It's like a baby's. I'd kill for skin like that. It's a woman's skin.'

‘I stay out of the sun.'

‘So who were your great loves?'

‘There was only one. And we were at school at the time. I wanted to run away with her, I wanted to marry her. It went on for years. I think it affected me permanently. It's a very significant time, adolescence. Significant and tortured. We never even kissed. We only saw each other at school. She lived out of town. We held hands a lot.'

‘Poor baby. Are you still in love with her?'

‘I haven't seen her for a couple of years. I probably am.'

‘And no one else?'

‘Not really. There's one other woman, perhaps. An
older
woman. But that's a little complicated. And otherwise things have been pretty slow.'

‘But why? I couldn't believe it when the other girls at the pub said you were single. I said I
want
that boy, and they said they thought you must be gay ... are you?'

‘I don't think so. I've only slept with a man once.'

‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘Yes. I did. Still, I don't know. It was only the once, and I was very drunk ... it's not much to go on.'

‘Do you fantasise about men?'

‘Sometimes. Not as often as I do about women. And there's always a certain amount of violence about it.'

‘So why didn't you do it again?'

‘The chance never came up. He moved to Adelaide. And there's never been anyone else that appealed ...'

‘What was his penis like?'

We talked penises for a while. Sizes and shapes and the uses of such. She pulled back the sheet and slid down my stomach and examined mine. ‘They're such amazing things,' she said, moving it around, ‘I wish I had one of my own, just to play with.'