The Dark Part of Me (21 page)

The devil and the geisha-girl – what a pair of weirdo freaks!

Before we left, I used Dad’s one hundred and twenty smacks to buy two green elephants off Trish. I dropped one and kept the other for later. Trish took her second for the night. She
reckoned fast driving brought them on quicker so we sped into the Valley, running red lights and doing eighty along Coro Drive. We turned the hardcore up so loud the car bolts rattled and my jaw
shook.

When we got to Arena, we had to queue outside. Across the road, in their usual Valley posse, were the local aborigines, propped up against the wall, sucking booze wrapped in brown paper. They
were all wearing flannelette shirts and filthy trousers; not like schizo Danny at all, naked with his spear and his bush kill and his tribal body markings. Dad reckoned aborigines were all
dole-bludgers who couldn’t handle their booze. Mum’d told me how once, when he was maggot from an all-day session at the pub, Dad and one of his mates, Bill Simmons, got to calling them
names down the bar. Egged on by their women, the aborigines led it outside. Bill, reserves rugby player for Queensland, loved a fight but Dad jumped the fence as soon as he got the chance, leaving
his mate surrounded. Looking across at the aborigines now, there was something about them that made me uncomfortable, a bit scared even. Perhaps it was the way they looked right through me with
sad, dead eyes. I had no idea what they were thinking.

Trish had moved along the line so I caught up to her. Everyone was checking each other out as if it was a big competition to wear the most freaked-out shit. I could tell the other bunnies, with
their boring tiny-tees, tartan minis and pig-tails, were wishing they’d come as a sexy devil like Trish. It felt good being with someone so hardcore. No one could tell I’d never been
raving. Scott would be impressed. I was getting that bad, sexy feeling in my stomach, which probably meant the elephant was brewing up. Soon as I spotted Scott, I’d go right up and roast him
for bailing and then, once I’d made him grovel, I’d pash him all hot and sexy with my thigh wedged between his legs. Yeah, he was a prick but I still wanted him.

Trish was dancing on the spot. Her feet were glued to the pavement, her arms taut and pumping at her sides. Her eyes were huge and bulging with no white around the edges. She grinned at me.
‘I’m fucking rank, Rosebud.’

‘Yeah, I think it’s kicking in. My legs feel all tingly.’

‘I’m so fucking rank,’ she repeated, as the queue surged forwards and we crossed the threshold. We paid the twenty smacks cover and got a fluoro wrist-band with
Oblivion
stamped round it. Trish was body-searched but they waved me through. I walked down a dark tunnel and waited for her at the end, feeling the bass
was coming up through my toes, itching to get into it. Trish rocked up, saying that everything was sweet and that they hadn’t got the gear because, as she told me, ‘I shoved it up my
fanny.’ We pushed through a black curtain and I was hit by the hugeness of it. Arena had five or six levels, stretching upwards into the swirling clouds of dry-ice, banded with neon pink and
yellow and orange lasers. DJs were playing different types of techno on each floor – hardcore, trance, trip-hop, ambient and acid-house. Around us, ravers cut through the haze, quick-limbed
and bug-eyed under the strobes, drinking bottled water, their eyes shining white and huge in set-jaw faces. I saw lips blurring, mouths opening, but no sound came out. It was like being in a silent
movie; the hardcore drowned out everything.

I tagged along behind Trish, all the time scanning for Scott through the haze. We skirted around the hardcore dancefloor, where the guys wore baggy pants with their undies poking out the top, no
shirts and fluoro whistles strung around chicken necks. They all had shaved heads and their pale skins glowed sickly green under the lights. The hardcore chicks looked pretty much like Trish, short
and runty with spiked hair and snappable arms. It didn’t look much like Scott’s scene, though. I was busting to go and find him but Trish wanted the loos. She yanked me into a cubicle
and locked the door. Lickety-split, she had the gear out of her undies. She kicked down the loo-lid and shoved the eckys, wrapped in tin-foil, down her bra-top. She tipped a small pyramid of the
speed onto the lid, re-sealed the bag and handed it to me. I stood in the corner watching as she racked up lines and crouched down over the toilet.

‘Fucked a guy in here once,’ she said, sniffing.

‘Really?’ The place stank and there was hardly any room.

‘Yep. He snorted off my arse then did me doggy. There was a massive queue, chicks were yelling at us to get out but we were so fucked we didn’t give a shit. Some stupid bitch tried
to crawl in under the door but I stuck my boot in her face.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy.’

‘Nah. Maybe. He was German or something. We didn’t speak much. He had these big, hard hands and he kept spanking me on the butt, over and over, until he shot his load. It hurt like
fuck.’ She grinned. ‘Want the last line?’

‘Yeah. Alright,’ I said, trying not to think about all the nasty herpes and hepatitis germs wriggling around on top of the loo-lid. I snorted. Pronto my heart beat faster. Trish took
the eckys from her bra-top, swallowed another one and offered me my second.

‘Nah.’ I couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I’ll save it.’

‘After a while, you get immune like me,’ she laughed. ‘I’m coming down already.’

Handing me the speed bag and the eckys, she flicked up the loo-lid with the toe of her boot, pulled down her daks and squatted for a piss.

‘I’m keen to hook up with Scott and the guys,’ I said, looking the other way.

‘Yeah, alright babe,’ she said, ‘but when I start peaking we gotta be raving, OK?’

I nodded, wondering what level Scott might be on. I reckoned he’d be in the chill-out room. Trish dried off, grabbed the gear off me and shoved it back down her undies. From her bra-top,
she pulled a packet of spearmint chewy and handed me a stick. ‘Stop you getting lock-jaw.’ As soon as I put the gum in my mouth, I couldn’t stop chewing. I was a fucking crazy
chewing machine. I grinned some more at Trish and we headed back out.

I wasn’t too into the hardcore crowd, a pack of zealy-eyed, weaselly-faced speed freaks, but Trish pushed her way right into the middle and started psycho-raving. I hung back on the edge,
watching her dance – her jaw clenched, her fists churning like pistons – until she disappeared into the mists of dry-ice. I slipped away, following a group of ravers through a velvet
curtain in the wall, vibing Scott to be on the other side.

The first thing was the moon. It hung bright as a floodlight in the inky sky, illuminating a sea of bobbing faces fixed with rapturous smiles and unblinking eyes. My heart
slowed as if falling under its command, its calming gaze, and I felt normal again. I took a deep breath and looked around. The area, about the size of a basketball court, was covered in fake grass
and enclosed on all sides by a six-foot wire fence over which a few freeloaders were scrambling. At one end, around an open stage, ravers danced in loose and fluid movements, spinning and twirling.
The music was tribal trance, ambient techno mixed with native Afro beats. Centre-stage was a giant black DJ in a sarong. To the side, three smaller African guys played bongo drums of varying size.
There was no artificial smoke or flashing strobes, just the moonlight coating everything in silver.

The beat came to me in waves, washing over me. It was hypnotic. I found myself drifting further and further into the crowd, as if pulled by a magnetic force towards the stage. There was no
resistance, the bodies around me parting to let me through. I danced, a warm glow suffusing my limbs. Unlike the hardcore freaks inside, ravers swayed and chanted, mellow and non-threatening. As
each track slid into the other, the DJ didn’t speak. The moon seemed to smile down on me with love and god-like benevolence. I opened my eyes as wide as possible to take in its every blemish,
it shadowy cracks and crevices. I was filled with a painful longing. And I knew that all around me everyone felt the same as, arms above our heads, we reached for the moon’s embrace,
blissfully ensnared. I felt the ecky in me, lumbering through my veins, thick and viscousy, soaking into my brain. Across every inch of my body, I could feel my pores expanding, widening, getting
wet. I wanted to be fucked by the moon, fucked by the music. Scott flashed through my mind but he was small and distant, a tiny speck compared with my new lunar lover.

Strange how just then, I spotted him. He was dancing right in front of me, Bomber and Muzza on either side. A bolt of excitement ripped through me. He’d probably been there all along. He
was wearing a navy-blue Bonds singlet, tight checked pants and his old Converse. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, revealing the nape of his neck glistening with sweat. He was wearing a
necklace of amber beads. I sidled up behind him and covered his eyes with my hands.

‘Guess who?’ The smell of his sweat got me bad with want.

For a few seconds, he kept dancing with my hands over his eyes. Then he pulled my hands away and spun around. His face was pale as if the moon had soaked right through his skin and his eyes were
huge purple marbles in his head. I could tell from his vacant stare that he didn’t recognize me and for an awful moment I thought that maybe, dressed up as a geisha-girl, I looked like her.
But then he grinned and I knew he was remembering yesterday’s fucking on Mum’s bed.

‘Hi, babe,’ he said. ‘You spooked me.’ The guys turned around. Muzza waved, Bomber blanked me. ‘What’s that white shit all over your face?’

‘I’m a geisha-girl,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘Slave to men’s deepest, darkest desires.’

‘OK.’ He gave me a strange look. ‘Whatever turns you on.’

‘Hey, thanks for bailing on me, yesterday.’ I jabbed him hard in the ribs. ‘That was so fucking shit of you.’

He shrugged, still dancing. A second earlier, I’d been half-kidding, playing sexy-angry, but his arrogance and lack of remorse got me riled.

‘No. Fuck off. I couldn’t believe it. You even went to get the stuff.’

‘OK,’ he softened. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. Not good enough.’ I crossed my arms, enjoying the moment. ‘I’m fucking serious. I couldn’t believe you just took off like that.’

He looked me in the eye. ‘I panicked. Babe, I’m really, really sorry. Honest.’

I shouldn’t have let him off so easy. I should have walked but I was starting to peak and he looked so heavenly in the moonlight. As the music crested and fell lusciously away, he brushed
my arm lightly and the warm pads of his fingers sent shock-waves through my body.

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

We sat cross-legged amongst all the other raver-lovers, who were pashing against the cool, black walls of the chill-out room. It was dim, the odd lava lamp lighting small
patches of darkness with a murky glow, the rest of the room writhing with shady silhouettes; faceless legs, arms, bodies. From the blackest corners, girls whimpered and guys grunted like animals to
syncopated beats set to random, spacey sounds; shooting stars, the crash of a water droplet magnified a million times, alien babble. This was where you went to fuck.

We sat on large, velvet cushions still not touching. From downstairs, hardcore beats vibrated up through the floor and into me, sparking the last of the ecky which sat like silt in my pussy,
driving me wild and crazy for some Scott-sex. I reached out and stroked his silky biceps.

‘How ’bout yesterday, hey?’

He grinned. His teeth glowed neon. ‘Yeah.’ He was digging around inside his Converse for something. He pulled a small square of alfoil from his shoe and hid it in the triangle
between his crossed legs. He focused, his head bowed in concentration, his shoulders broad and glossy in the blue-ish light.

‘Scott?’ I wiggled closer so that our kneecaps were touching. All my resolve had vanished. I felt rank enough to tear off my dress and fuck him right there, in front of everyone. So
what if he was a bastard? It made no drop of difference.