You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead (20 page)

Joey Dee never stood a chance. Simply through absorbing his chirpy exchanges with Johnny Young, his sparkly, highenergy performances, and every minute detail of his time on screen, we had pieced together a personality so far from reality it was almost obscene. Without ever speaking a word to him we had created a fictionalised robo-boy who catered emotionally to our every sweeping need. In our minds, Joey Dee was a quiet, polite young man with a penchant for softserve ice creams and holding hands. He disdained buffoonery and horseplay and could think of no greater way to spend an afternoon than curled up on the couch watching
Labyrinth
. After which he would learn all the song and dance routines with us and fall about laughing as we tried together to practice ‘Dance Magic Dance' in front of the bedroom mirror. He would appear shyly on our porch, holding a dewy rose and murmuring the only sort of poetry we'd had access to thus far. Stock, Aitken and Waterman lyrics played a huge part in this. With big doe eyes fixed upon ours, he'd sigh the lyrics to ‘I Should Be So Lucky' and ‘Love in the First Degree'.

During sleepovers, late at night, we would lie awake and take turns making up stories about Joey Dee falling desperately in love with us and wanting to kiss us on our faces. We were at that beautifully innocent sexual precipice where we knew we
wanted
boys but we had no idea what to do with them once we got them. There was a vague idea of gentle hand-holding and butterflies in the stomach, but the thought of anything more erotic just produced confusing feelings like when we watched that Darth Vader ‘let's do it on the moon' scene in
Revenge of the Nerds
and went very quiet.

Our sleepover stories would describe elaborate scenarios, story arcs and occasional meddling from jealous female members of the Team, but they always ended the same: with one of us wrapped firmly in Joey's muscular arms, safe from the trials and tribulations of the world.

‘Joey saw you across the crowd at Luna Park,' I would begin, whispering into the night, ‘and he knew he had to get with you.'

I guess you could call it erotic fan fiction. But we were too young to understand exactly what that was. You should have seen us there, side-by-side in the darkness, clenched tight in separate sleeping bags. Our stories grew more and more fantastical—there were platinum records, weddings, immaculately conceived babies. The fan club was a natural extension of this, though we had of course no idea how to run such an organisation. As an only child I was adept at bossing people around and took it upon myself to bully schoolmates into paying the dollar joining fee.

‘What's a Joey Dee?' they would say. ‘Why am I giving you a dollar? If I give it to you do you promise to go away and leave me alone?'

Susan and I rabidly collected names and money. We took no prisoners. Four-year-old cousins became members of The Official Joey Dee Fan Club. So did parents, uncles and long-suffering older siblings. Mrs Moy, the lollipop lady at our school who was part deaf and occasionally wet her pants whilst helping people cross the road, became a member. Certainly she may have been under the impression she was donating to the Red Cross, but that's neither here nor there. We took her urine-scented dollar coin and we added it to the tissue box that served as our coffers. Joey Dee deserved commitment and two dedicated fan club co-presidents willing to lay down and die for him. We were made for this.

His mother loved us.Why wouldn't she? We validated her adoration for her son, turning up at Channel Ten Nunawading wearing homemade
WE
JOEY
badges and falling apart in fits of frothing hysterics from within the depths of a startled family audience. Eventually we conned our way backstage and stood, breathless and flattened against the wall in case somebody noticed and threw us out. We watched with wide eyes as clothes racks of costumes trundled past, nudged each other when one of the dance instructors gave us a wink, and shared conspiratorial sick faces the moment the much-loathed Tim approached with a friendly grin and asked if we wanted him to sign anything.

Courtney Compagnino was cuter than us, more talented than us, and a star of the show, so we made it a point to hate her guts too. ‘She's so
fat
,' we would say snidely from the comfort of our living-room chairs as Courtney's bright little face hit the screens. ‘She's a
fat slut.
' We would cut the eyes out of her photographs and draw cartoonish oversized boobs in texta on her face in a technique that would these days likely be considered a criminal offence if employed by an older gentleman with perhaps too much time on his hands. This was a ten-year-old child we were tearing apart, although at eleven we could hardly be expected to behave as moral compasses. Courtney Compagnino was a girl who had unrestricted access to Joey Dee and was therefore the enemy. In our colourfully inventive sleepover stories she had so far been variously set alight, run over by a truck, and torn apart by wolves. Yet when we were introduced to her by a kindly stagehand, we were nothing short of fawning.

‘Oh, I love your
hair
,' we cooed. ‘Do you use your own crimper or do they do it in makeup before the show?'

Inch by inch, Saturday by Saturday, we moved closer to Joey Dee. Like the worst kind of suck-ups we giggled at the Assistant Director's bad jokes, made cups of tea for the choreographers, and tolerated tedious drawn-out conversations with Tim. (‘So what did you guys think of my routines tonight? Did you have a fave?') Throughout it all we'd catch glimpses of Joey, gliding from dressing room to green room, sharing private conversations with a friendly crew member, surreptitiously touching up his hair in a corridor mirror. Susan was the first to target Joey's smiling, broad-faced mama, making a beeline and explaining in her gentle, polite way that we were his number one fans and would love to say hello.

Joey's mother eyed us with nothing short of unbridled delight.

‘Fan club?' she exclaimed. ‘You two
must
come over to our place for a visit!'

Well, I don't recall if there was a tussle back at Susan's house. I don't recall if a date was made and she was busy or her strict father wouldn't let her skip Greek school or if I simply just manipulated the whole thing so she couldn't make it and I went alone because I am a selfish cur. It's likely.

There were tears. Mine were probably of the guilty variety. I felt bad for muscling Susan out of the arrangement, but it was obvious to me that
I needed to be alone with Joey Dee
. Susan and I were best friends, yes, but even best friends can be cumbersome when true love is on the cards. She knew me too well, could see clearly when I was embellishing stories to make myself look more impressive. She'd be able to cut me down halfway through an anecdote by cheerily reminding me that's not how it happened
at all
and even utter the mortifying phrase all too common to my ears: ‘Marieke, you're just showing off.' The truth was, as a control freak I felt I knew how to do everything better than anyone else, and that included winning Joey Dee's heart. I loved Susan to bits but I couldn't bring myself to relinquish power. I told myself I would make up for it by inviting her to our wedding. She could be my main bridesmaid. We would name our child after her, even if it were a boy. On it went, this plodding, twisted internal monologue attempting to justify the fact that I'd essentially just shunted my favourite girlfriend out of the way so I could get my sticky paws on a pre-teen fantasy we'd created and craved for together.

Susan, none the wiser—or maybe she was and just forgave me for it, which is even worse—made me promise to tell her
every tiny detail
, from the moment the front door opened and I was welcomed inside the hallowed portal of the Dee household, to the part where Joey and I hugged goodbye on the lawn and promised to be friends forever so long as I introduced him to my amazing friend Susan who sounded like great fun.

‘
Everything
,' she implored with agonised wails. ‘Take
notes.
'

The Dee family lived in Altona South, a suburb that in 1987 was a curious mixture of migrant McMansions, Vietnamese fruit markets and illegal street racing. Their house was big and broad and brown, a sprawling teacake with a beautifully manicured strip of lawn barricading the front. Joey's mother answered the door and wiped her hands on a worn apron.

‘Here she is! Where's your little friend with the glasses?'

My heart was beating so loud it was in my ears. I could feel it throbbing through my lobes. It was like
Innerspace
meets
Tap Dogs
.

‘She . . . couldn't make it.' Hardy, you worm. You liar. You snake.

‘That's a pity. Come in, darling.'

Darling
. I was family already.

She led me in, past the obligatory gilt-edged entrance hall. The house was warm and buttery. I exhaled deeply. I had transferred my love of the exotic European abode neatly from Susan's compact Hawthorn digs to Joey's spacious Altona South residence. I pictured myself spending happy afternoons here eating liquor-soaked cake and swinging my legs at the dining table and sucking up to Joey's parents in a toadying way. Joey's father sat in a La-Z-Boy recliner wearing socks and velour slippers. He grunted at me upon introduction. I was bustled into the kitchen and offered a variety of comestibles, all of which I politely declined. I wanted to stay minty fresh.

‘JOEY! COME DOWNSTAIRS, YOU HAVE A VISITOR!'

Slouching downstairs in stockinged feet—by which of course I mean socks, not that he suddenly appeared in a stay-up fishnet and suspenders combo; it's just that the word ‘socked' looks insufferably stupid—and scowling heavily at the interruption to his afternoon's Gameboy activities, he was shorter than I remembered. The lack of layered on pancake makeup made him seem pale and slightly sickly. A bristle of pre-pubescent moustache scattered across his upper lip like hair confetti. He wore Mambo boardshorts and had a carpet burn on one knee. He regarded me curiously, as though I was a long-forgotten thought he'd once entertained and hadn't bothered to recall since.

‘Hey,' he mumbled.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. The sound of the harness racing on the television provided a comforting cushion of background noise. There was a pause as we studied each other.

‘Go on then, Joe,' his mother said encouragingly. ‘Take Marika up to your room.'

I wasn't going to correct her. People always got my name wrong and if my future mother-in-law wanted to refer to me as ‘Marika' then I was happy to change it by deed poll. I would have changed it to ‘Fuckface'. I would have tattooed a picture of a donkey on my forehead and joined NAMBLA at that point, I would have done anything. I was here, I was in his house. It was happening. Oh, Joey Dee. Oh, Joe.

Joey nodded the invitation and headed back up the stairs. I performed the obligatory ‘it's a lovely house you have here, Mr Dee, Mrs Dee' before meekly following. The corridor smelt of carpet-cleaning powder and ducted heating. Joey slammed from wall to wall as he walked, in that curious way that young boys have, and kicked open a door with a crude gold star stuck to the front.

I sat on his bed (Where else would I sit? The desk? What was I going to do, take a letter? Oh god, this was too much) and watched politely as he shuffled around his bedroom, pointing out his belongings as though I had arrived from the
Guinness Book of Records
office and demanded to jot down an inventory.

‘So . . . this is my guitar. This is my Matchbox car collection. This is my invisible dog leash, I got it at the Royal Melbourne Show. See, it looks like you're walking a dog but there's
no dog
,' he ventured as I nodded and pretended to show an interest.

Wow
, I thought.
Famous people can be so down-to-earth
.

Clearly bored by my presence, he hummed tunelessly under his breath, staring for a long time at a gently fluttering mobile of an aeroplane on his ceiling, before turning suddenly to look at me.

‘Wanna watch me play drums?'

‘Sure,' I said.

‘I'm pretty good.'

‘I bet.'

True to his word, Joey sat down at his drum kit and performed a seventeen minute drum solo. I studied his face as he played. I had pored over that face from every possible angle. I had wept over his photographs and crudely paused him, mid-song, so I could mournfully paw at his frozen, distorted features on the television.

‘Would you watch the fucking video properly?' my mother would say, irritated by my pathetic mewling. ‘You're leaving fingerprints on the screen.'

And here he was, right in front of me, in the flesh. Concentrating as he bashed out some interminable rhythm. He just looked so . . . ordinary.

I should be enjoying this
, I thought with a quiet desperation. All these months of planning and pining and practising what I would say when he turned up on my porch with the rose and now I was sitting here with a trickle of Impulse Body Mist making its way from my hairless armpit to my waist and wondering just how long I could tolerate this nightmare before I called my mother and implored her to come and pick me up. I was intimidated. I was weirded out. Worst of all, I was bored.