Raw Blue (11 page)

17

blue people

Coastalwatch

Swell size 0.5 metre – Swell direction SE/NE

There are two swells working today – 1–2ft of S swell leftovers combined with NE wind chop. Onshore dribble is nothing to get excited about …

Sunday afternoon. The Laser is acting funny, sluggish and unresponsive. It could be because I’ve got the air conditioning on. I don’t like to use it when it’s really hot because it labours the motor too much – I’ll have to ask Hannah if there’s a word for that situation. There’s a loud knocking noise coming out of the motor and it’s become really hard to steer, as though the bitumen has melted its tyres. I swear at it the whole way down to the break, revving the engine unmercifully. When I pull into the back car park it’s full. I have to wait for a carload of guys playing doof-doof music to finish wiping sand off their feet and leave.

I tried not to come here. I checked Mona Vale, Cook Terrace and Warriewood and they were all slop. Still, I jog up the dune to do a check. I want to make sure Ryan and Shane aren’t there. They’re not and I’m not surprised. End of the weekend: crowd central.

I notice the guy in the line-up waving, but it takes me a while to realise, judging by his slim build, that it could well be Danny waving at me. I wave back and he seems satisfied because he drops his arm. I’m glad Danny’s out there because I need to tell him he’s got a job if he wants it. Actually, that’s not why. I’m glad Danny’s out there because it means I’ve got a mate in the line-up. I run back over the dune to my car.

I paddle out trying to get used to a strange board. The deck’s slippery; I should have put more wax on it. There’s no grip pad either. Professional surf wankers always go on about how they don’t use grip, they like to be able to
feel
the board – both hands on it, I reckon.

Danny’s paddling towards me and I squint at the black marks on his face, confused. When he draws closer I see it’s scribble from a black felt pen. He stops paddling and lets his board drift for a bit, eyeing me from a distance. Then he sits up, still a good five metres or so away.

‘Hey, Danny. Looking good.’

He doesn’t look at me. ‘Did you find it?’

‘Been doodling?’ I figure he’s embarrassed.

‘I
said
did you find the DVD?’

‘What DVD?’

‘
Blue Horizon
. The surf porn – remember? I put it in your mailbox.’

Trying to talk to him from this distance is ridiculous. I paddle towards him. ‘You put it in my mailbox?’

‘Yeah. I put it there ages ago.’

I sit up on my board. He still won’t look at me. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t always check it. Do you know you’ve got a moustache?’

‘Yes, I do know I’ve got stuff on my face, thanks for pointing out the obvious.’

‘What are you thingy with me for? Is it because I didn’t find the DVD?’

His eyes slide sideways, but he doesn’t turn his head. ‘No.’

‘How do you know where I live anyway?’

‘I saw your car parked on Powderworks Road. I go past it all the time. I checked the names on the letters in the mailbox to make sure.’

‘How do you know my car?’

‘I’ve seen you driving it around. And every time you’re here it’s in the back car park. Sometimes I go that way home.’

‘Oh.’

He looks at me, frowns, and faces the horizon again.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

‘You.’

‘Me? Am I giving off stuff?’

He screws up his nose. ‘Yeah. You’re really bad today.’

His whole attitude toward me has turned distrustful.

‘But I haven’t changed. I’m not bad.’

‘Most people are, with your colour. Like you don’t know what they’ll do sometimes. Do you know Shane?’

‘The guy that surfs here? The one with the tatts?’

‘Yeah. You and him are the same. You’re blue people. And he’s a bad-arse. He punches people and he told me to piss off and tried to run me over once. Sometimes he just goes insane. When I first saw you I thought you’d be all aggro like him, but you’re not. So I don’t get how it works. I had a blue teacher once, too. I hated that class.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault. It’s just how you are.’

He’s steadfastly keeping his gaze straight ahead now. He can’t bear to look at me. I feel like I’m some sort of leper.

‘But why’s blue bad? I love blue. The ocean’s blue. The sky’s blue.’

‘Blue people are different to that. It’s not that sort of blue. It’s dark, sick or dirty or something. And it’s got this bad electric look to it, this sort of static, you know, like a TV when it’s not tuned in properly. It’s sort of prickly, scratchy. ’

‘Oh.’

He’s silent for a second then relents a little. ‘You’re not like that all the time. Sometimes it’s only a little bit. Like the other day when I was talking to you I didn’t really notice it at all. But today it’s really bad.’

‘O-kay.’ Feeling winded, I decide to change the subject. ‘Uh, Emilio – that’s my boss – said you can have a job. You start on Friday. Same shift as me, four-thirty to twelve. That’s if you still want it.’

‘Can you give me a lift?’

‘If you like.’ I’m actually wondering how he’ll go stuck in a car with me and my evil energy.

‘You should be okay by then,’ he tells me, matter-of-factly. ‘You better get that DVD, too. What if it rains?’

‘Okay.’

‘How come you don’t check your mailbox anyway? What’s wrong with you?’

‘Well, I’m not expecting mail, I guess.’ Hannah cleans out my mailbox now and then, bringing down a bunch of junk-mail catalogues and the occasional bill.

He seems to have relaxed a bit, if only because his mind’s on my sloppy mail habits.

‘How’d you get that stuff all over your face?’ I ask.

‘I slept over at my friend’s place last night.’

‘And he did that? I guess you’re lucky he didn’t shave your eyebrows.’ Both of Danny’s eyebrows are intact, but he does have arrows, stars and smiley faces all over his cheeks, and a penis on his forehead.

‘No, his sister did it this morning when I was asleep. I sorta knew she was doing something, but I wanted to finish my dream. It’s waterproof pen.’

‘Do you know what she’s written coming out of your mouth?’

‘ “I’m gay”.’ He doesn’t seem overly bothered. ‘I think she likes me.’

I laugh. ‘Have people been staring at you?’

He frowns. ‘I don’t know. I guess so. I forgot it was there. Can you really notice it?’

‘Well yeah, but … I think it’s great.’ To me, Danny rocking up to surf with graffiti all over his face is magic. I want to tell him that I think he’s precious, that the fact he talks to me is a gift. But of course you can’t say things like that to people.

‘Can you talk to my mum?’

‘About the job? Emilio can call her if you want.’

‘No, I want you to do it. I told her that you’ll give me a lift. It won’t take long, just ring her. I wrote my phone number on the DVD, but you wouldn’t know that because you haven’t picked it up.’

Okay, so the DVD is a major issue. ‘When’s a good time to call?’

‘Just ring tonight. I’m gonna go now. I don’t want to talk to you any more, you’re too blue. They talk about Shane in the surf forums on the net. You should check it out. See ya Friday.’

He paddles across for a wave. When he’s on his feet, I watch him head left. He’s turning really well considering there’s not much push to the wave at all, sending spray flying off the back like a series of retorts. He rides it all the way in.

I focus on catching waves, trying to ignore the paranoia Danny’s started. I feel like I’m the one with the Picasso face, not Danny. I feel like everybody will see there’s something wrong with me. I’m up early on the next right and I start trimming across the top. Time slows when you’re on a wave, everything becomes that moment. This board is harder to turn than mine. Without a grip pad I can’t gauge where my back foot is. I shuffle back and the board responds better. Then I take aim for the lip. It pushes the front of my board, completing the turn for me. The wave ledges and I lean back, dropping down, then race along the reform.

It’s only a timeout. As soon as it ends I’m feeling bad again. Danny’s seen inside me and I’m rotten.

18

the brazilians

Coastalwatch

Swell size 1.5–2 metres – Swell direction E

It’s on people …

Thursday. A power swell has arrived and the break is absolutely jammed. The mid-morning slackers have been joined by a whole heap of workers throwing sickies and kids wagging school. I’m relieved. So many people means it’ll be easy for me to hide if I see Ryan out there. Up until now I’ve avoided him all week by going early or surfing late.

I’m standing down at the Alley in board shorts and a rash vest, all jittered up with adrenaline, watching waves with massive faces pushing through like lines of charging soldiers. There are so many people out there, swarming the water’s surface like insects. I’m torn between stretching properly and giving myself a chance to watch how it breaks, and just getting in there and finding out. Waves are peaking in three places: off the point, the middle of the line-up and over towards the lifesavers’ building. When it gets good like this some incredible surfers come out of the woodwork. I watch this one guy do so many cutbacks he looks like a skier traversing across a mountain face.

A guy and two girls are standing near me getting prepared to paddle out. Brazilians. One of the girls has a short, powerful body and an aquiline nose. The other girl is a looker. Tall with a thick brown plait hanging down her back, her teeth show white against her deeply tanned skin. The three of them chatter to each other in rapid Portuguese, throwing and catching words and laughs within their triangle. The guy’s beautiful brownness is marked by a swirling black tattoo covering the right side of his chest and his right arm, like half a shirt. He stretches his arms over his head lazily.

The good-looking girl is pulling on a spring suit. It’s grey and sleeveless and does up at the top of each shoulder. There’s something about it that suggests overalls; it’s daggy. But her board’s girly – nice and glossy, looks new. Pink.

I hate pink. Almost as much as I hate frangipanis. I look down at my borrowed Hard Cut and wish I had my own board back. Especially now the surf is so big. I don’t know how this board will handle in waves this size.

I put my leg rope on and wash my hands with sand to get rid of any slippery sunscreen. Then I start wading into the rip. The paddle out has three sections: the shore break, then this weird no-man’s-land where there’s no white water and the rip ripples into a series of humps like speed bumps, then the last stretch where waves are breaking. Today, there is no real ‘out the back’, no safe place to sit and get a breather, because every now and then a green monster looms on the horizon and everybody in the line-up paddles furiously to get through it before it crashes down on them.

I decide to stay between the arrowhead and the point. The arrowhead is pretty hardcore today: a mass of restless bodies all trying to dethrone the alpha males at the tip. The two Brazilian girls are the only other females out that I can see.

When I’m there, I sit up on my board and take a look around. The guy paddling past me is a crow and a gentleman, and I see him out almost every day. He’s puffing hard and gives me a nod.

‘Gettin’ a few?’ he asks.

‘Just got here. How are you going?’

‘Buggered already and I’ve only had two.’ He stops paddling and lets his board drift. ‘Watch yourself today, love.’

‘How come?’

‘There’re some serious shenanigans afoot, my word.’

I see what he means. On every wave coming through at least five guys take off. There’s a lot of whistling going on. The locals are taking most of them. They’re making the drop then bottom turning into the nearest man to push them off. It’s physical argy bargy.

I wait ages for a wave. Finally one comes that mounds closer to the point than the arrowhead. It seems to loom up out of nowhere. A big one. I get a roaring in my ears as I get to my feet, blinking because the offshore wind is lacing the crest and spraying it in my face. I’m reminding myself to lean forward because the worst thing you can do on a big drop is lean back. But I didn’t reckon on the speed. I’ve got so much speed by the time I start my top turn that for a second I think I’m going to shoot straight over the shoulder. But I make it and I’m back to the trough again and suddenly it’s all over. The wave flattens into nothing in the no-man’s-land before the shore break. I jump up and down trying to rock my board forward but it’s a lost cause. I sink slowly into the water.

If I want a longer ride, one of the long trundling lefts where the wall seems to defy gravity allowing you to cutback and re-enter over and over, I need to be in the arrowhead fighting for it.

Another freaky big set pops up while I’m paddling back out. The sheer size of the incoming wave face puts a beat in my throat. I’m ripping my shoulder muscles to paddle hard enough to get over that wall before it crashes down on me, and when I duck dive, I use my foot on the back of the board, not my knee, so I can dig deep enough to avoid being sucked backwards by the wave’s momentum.

I watch the short Brazilian girl take off on one. She’s good. The good-looking girl is on the fringes of the arrowhead. She paddles for a lot of the waves, but without much conviction. She’s getting nothing. She starts paddling in and I wonder if she’s jacked off because she can’t get a wave or if she’s scared because it’s big.

A body boarder takes off on one over at the point, his body silhouetted as he drops head first into the pit. He looks like a frog with his flippers and bowlegs. It’s a heavy wave, snarling back from the rocks and sucking up, the lip an unbelievably thick ledge of water. He gets creamed.

I’m in a bad spot now. The guys closer to the point are on anything coming through this side. I decide to try the arrowhead. First wave I go for I look across to find someone on my inside with someone on his inside. On the next one, I’ve made the drop and I’m looking at the wall stretching away to my left, feeling the thrill of it, when someone whistles in a sharp, screeching blast.
Yep, yep, yep!
I turn to see an angry face, legs pumping like springs. I kick-out quick smart like I’ve been branded, paddle back out and just drift for a while.

‘Gettin’ a few?’ The voice, male, comes from behind me.

It’s that Shane guy. He’s bare-chested, wearing a pair of footy shorts. His red and green tattoos look like sleeves, the rest of his body unmarked. When I see him I feel drained, like someone’s pulled the plug on hope.

‘How are we today?’ he asks, his face blank.

‘Good.’ I clear my throat. ‘How are you?’

‘Not bad.’

He drifts belly down on his board alongside me. There’s a cold burn in his eyes, a sort of madness. I think of what Danny said, that Shane and I are the same. He can’t be right. People in shops chitchat to me for no reason, old ladies call me love and ask me for directions – they wouldn’t do that if I had that cold burn in my eyes. Shane’s the sort you don’t want noticing you.

A clean-cut looking man with rosy cheeks and shiny white skin parks his mini-mal next to me. I’ve never seen him before and he doesn’t look like he belongs.

He notices Shane staring across at him and says, ‘I just got here. What’s it like, mate?’

Shane gives him a big friendly smile. ‘It’s like, fuck off, mate.’

The guy blinks as though he’s been slapped, then sets his face as though he never heard that and paddles away. I know how he feels and I feel for him. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth.

With a start I realise how close Shane is, close enough to reach out and hold the nose of my board.

‘Hard Cut, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘New or just a sparey?’

I’m thrown into confusion then. He mustn’t know Ryan got this board for me. And if he doesn’t know, I don’t want to say anything. I’m relieved too, because it means Ryan hasn’t told him about the car park on Saturday, how I acted. He hasn’t given Shane anything of me.

Flustered, I try to steer the conversation away from the board. ‘Did they hurt?’

His eyes flick over me. ‘Did what hurt?’

‘Your tattoos.’

He lets go of my board and stretches both arms out in front of him, considering his tattoos. ‘Nuh. Not as much as some things.’

I stare at his forearms. I can make out a naked woman with a snake going up her vagina. She’s holding a knife, slitting her own throat. There are three playing cards on the back of his right hand: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Hearts and the Joker. Red flames lick his elbow.

There’s a watch tattooed on his left wrist with ‘Fuck Time’ inscribed on its face.
Fuck o’clock
.

He’s not that tall, but his body is carefully cut. The lines of his face, his cheekbones and jaw, are sharp and precise. I can see the tufts of his blond underarm hairs and under them the ladder of his ribs. He’s beautiful, in the way that a knife is beautiful.

He catches me staring at him and grins. My face flames and I look away.

‘Why? You thinking of getting one? A tatt?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Not even a butterfly? Everybody wants a butterfly.’

‘No.’

‘Not much fun, are you?’

‘
No
.’ He says it at the same time that I do.

He’s got a rapid-fire laugh:
Ha-ha-ha-ha
. ‘Well, if you’re not
fun
, dunno what I’m doing talking to you then. See you later, Hard Cut.’

He paddles lazily away, ankles crossed, whistling to himself. I stare at the horizon, the rest of the world blacking out.

A rogue set comes through and I don’t make it through the first wave, but neither does anybody else around me. We’re pushed backwards in a line, caught inside. I duck dive three waves and paddle hard to get back out again. I’m almost there when I notice the girl up ahead of me paddling through the arrowhead. I do a double-take because for a second I think she’s naked.

It’s the good-looking Brazilian girl. She’s wearing this skimpy nude-coloured bikini which, strictly speaking, isn’t more than three bandaids and some string. I’m trying to work this out, sort of shocked: so when she paddled in it was to take off her spring suit and come back out in this. Why? It’s a wonder she made it through the shore break without it being washed off. And I get that it’s the Brazilian way: beautiful beach, beautiful body, let it all hang out. But even so, I think,
Holy shit
. Anyway, she’s causing a ripple that’s for sure.

And then I see how she keeps glancing over at Shane. Maybe because he’s the only guy not paying her any attention. And because of his looks. He goes for the next wave coming through, hassling the guy next to him something shocking.

‘
Oi!
Piss off!’ the guy shouts.

Shane gives him a malevolent clown’s grin that stretches his mouth wide but doesn’t reach his eyes. Everybody’s watching but pretending not to, fascinated sick by it.

They both take off, Shane dropping in. The guy is blowing his top, whistling and swearing and carrying on, and Shane’s trimming across the face like he hasn’t got a care in the world. I swear to God he’s singing to himself. He does a lazy cutback and the two of them collide.

I duck dive the next wave, then turn back to see they’re in the water, jostling and shoving each other like water-polo players. I can only see one board, tomb-stoning in the drag. The guy tries to punch Shane in the face and Shane blocks his punch with his forearms. Then he disappears underwater, giving the guy the slip, surfacing further over. He’s up on his board and paddling away in one smooth motion, his left foot up in the air, keeping the drag of his leg rope to a minimum so the other guy can’t grab it.

The other guy breaks into a thrashing freestyle heading towards shore and I realise he’s lost his board. But how? Shane must have done something to his leg rope. Untied it? Cut it?

As Shane paddles back out, nobody looks at him, even though they were all watching before. There’s a prickle in the air.
It’s on, people
. He paddles straight to the Brazilian girl and sits up on his board next to her. I watch the two of them talking with a funny feeling. She keeps adjusting her top, shifting the weight of her breasts in their tiny triangles of material. I can hear the low buzz of their voices. She seems relaxed. I want to know what Shane’s saying, because he’ll be acting all nice with her, I’m sure of it. Beautiful girls are protected from the worst of men’s shit. They have it easy. Men are afraid of them in the same way that I’m afraid of guys like Shane.

I’ve had enough. I decide to paddle around the top of the arrowhead and head towards the point, try and get one in from there. It takes ages. When I reach the back car park I crouch down under the tap for a long time. The tap’s swivelled around so that water spouts up like a geyser. I let it run over my head, my chest, my legs. I wash Hard Cut off. Two mothers are watching a bunch of kids splashing around in the lagoon. An old couple holding hands walks over the bridge. Things are so quiet on this side of the dune, so very different to the break. It’s another world out there.