Yellowrock Road.

Rose

This wine glass has seen some nights. I know it’s the one; the pink tinge, a small air bubble trapped inside its base. I reach up to the second shelve to grab it. On my tippy toes my fingers reach for the thin, long stem. I fill it to the top with sauvignon blanc. The wine rushes in an even stream and settles in the bottom while tiny bubbles wriggle to the top. My lips touch the smooth glass, I sip and swallow. The sweet, citrusy taste dances on my taste buds. I sip again to prolong the sensation. My head tingles with glee.

I leave it on the bench as I flick through the vinyls in the cabinet. Cream’s Best Of, Pink Floyd’s Wish you Were Here, Neil Young’s Comes a Time.  I choose a Willie Dixon record, the one with Back Door Man on it. I pull it out of its cardboard cover and place it on the spool, drag the needle over and gently drop it in just the right place. The speakers come alive with a crackly reverberation. Guitar, harmonica. Well, the men don’t know but the little girls they understand. I return to my wine glass.

I love the way it looks under these stark kitchen lights. The bulbous shape, the slight rose tinge of the glass. I suppose its a little bit kitsch perhaps, the colour of it. You wouldn’t find a glass like it in a fancy restaurant. You wouldn’t see Jamie Oliver drink from one like it in his wildest dreams, or Ramsey. Ramsey would probably pick it up and go, “what the fuck is this?” before smashing it on the floor in a hundred tiny pieces. It’s something that belongs in an old grandma’s crammed crockery cabinet. Between her gold trimmed wedding china and floral tea set. But that’s what is so special about it.

I picked it up at a garage sale a few years ago. The glass stood alone on a small wooden table, covered in dust with a 20c sticker stuck to the base of it in shaky handwriting. The little old man ended up giving it to me for free with a couple of ancient paperbacks I had found.

Tonight under these stark kitchen lights with Willie Dixon on the stereo and stalks of asparagus laid out on the chopping board, I find myself wondering about the nights this glass has seen. Not just mine, the nights of the old man who it belonged to before me. I find myself wondering why he had been having that garage sale. Was he off to a nursing home? Was he selling all the belongings he wouldn’t be able to take with him, all the belongings he no longer had any use for?  What romantic nights had the little old man and his sweetheart shared together drinking from it?

This wine glass has seen some nights.

the art of being responsible.

I’ve always followed the notion that any job interview that requires you wear a blazer (straight jacket) is premature death and as such should not be attended. Low and behold, there I was stuffing my damp arms into one in the sweltering heat of the other month.

Earlier that morning I was dropped at my car, though apparently not early enough. The ticket inspector had already visited, yanked at my ’99 model Hyundai Excel’s (Faabio) rusty wiper blades and slid one of his waxy blue and white slips underneath, letting it flap away in the inner city breeze until I arrived. I am not a criminal I just don’t read signs very well. Faabio had a sleepover on the street behind the train line in Milton where all the backpacker hostels sit in a row. There was parking at my friends place but after missing her turnoff and sitting in traffic for half an hour I decided I’d rather get out and walk. (This is the kind of lack-of patience a year in the country gives you.) So walk I did while Faabio waited patiently for me all night in a 1 hour zone two streets from her house.

Responsibility. I have started growing achingly conscious of this word. It’s become a pimple in my nose, hidden from the surface but still somehow perpetually reminding me of itself with a sharp sting every time I laugh or smile or yawn. I have managed to get through most of the first part of my 20’s without possessing much it. And I have been blissfully guilt-free for a lot of this time. But now, suddenly, I feel different.  I imagine this is how a childless, single woman in her mid thirties might feel when the baby shower invites start hogging the magnets on the fridge. The liberation she once felt focusing on herself starts growing sour when she realises she is the only one in her friendship circle that isn’t shopping for a nappy bag. She recalls fondly the memories of her and her friends when they used to take the piss out of the maniac overzealous mothers with spew on their shirts that carted nappy bags around full to the brim of unnecessary just-in case items and she holds onto these memories stubbornly, like holding onto them hard enough will bring them back into the present. But time is relentless. Panic is what one feels when they know they have been left behind. Panic is what one feels when they realise everyone else has been caught in the current of life and you are lodged between a rotting log and an old tyre.

I ended up getting the job I had to wear the straight jacket for. I don’t think they thought I was particularly right for the role, I think they were just desperate to fill it. I had a faultless game plan though. Chloe, I said to myself on the way to work that very first morning as the cars banked up in front of me for kilometres and I was giddy on petrol fumes, you are 25 this year Chloe, it’s about time you were responsible. It all seemed idiotproof on that very first day. All I had to do was stick at this job for more than two minutes, pay off my credit card debt once and for all, and replace my shitbox car with a newish secondhand girly ricebubble on wheels so at Christmas lunch when it was time to dot point my achievements for the year instead of getting drunk and hiding behind the coleslaw I could hold my head up high. How hard could this responsibility caper really be?

I suppose I have always been a freedom-seeker, not a renegade or a revolutionist or anything, just someone that values the good things in life. I admire and am inspired and intrigued and fall in love those who without an inch of apology live for themselves, those who carve their own path through the forest, go off the beaten track and cut up their shins in search for something better, something more beautiful. There are so many rules to living, and so many of us subconsciously abide. Why though, when most of us are educated and intelligent and have been given the tools to make our own decisions that we willingly shackle our ankles to the prisoner in front of us and walk the thick yellow line?

As a pubescent whipper-snapper soaking life up like a sponge I was reading and rereading the biographies of two humans who I found profoundly admirable. There aren’t many links between Kurt Cobain (a man who I’m sure needs no introduction unless you are a garden gnome) and Dan Eldon (an adventurer who travelled across Africa in a rusty Land Rover), though the one thing they share is that their lives together, are almost entirely responsible for my world view. I’m starting to be hinted to the fact that there probably is a point in your early twenties where your teenage heroes are meant to be replaced. I’m guessing their surrogates are rich, successful, career-driven individuals to help shape and inspire the next responsibility-slicked years of your life. I feel completely and utterly unready for this though, even as my twenty-fifth year is upon me. Could the world view you created to serve you well during your crazy, sporadic, spontaneous youth reach its expiry date though? By stubbornly holding on to it are you holding yourself back from completely being a responsible adult?

I am blocked in by sturdy partitions in a neutral beige colour to keep with the sterile, yet professional colour scheme of the office. It takes me a while to get used to using a mouse and a proper keyboard again – its been absolutely yonkies since I last used a PC, my fingers are clumsy on the big lumpy keys. Pretty soon though, I have the full swing, and getting used to it again takes about the same time my superiors and co-workers take to realise I am almost entirely nothing like the softly spoken, shy yet productive Personal Assistant with superb attention to detail I had them temporary fooled to believe, oh no, a “Team Building” weekend on Moreton Island within my first couple of weeks with the company ruined all that. (Thank you, dear Sauvignon Blanc.)

So after building a camp fire out of a wad of butchers paper stolen from the flipchart needed for the following days’ meeting, and kindling I found under the house which I obtained on hand and knees like a mad woman high on crack cocaine, I went on to ask all of my new colleagues that I had known for 2 weeks who they would turn homosexual for. Didnt even blink an eyelid asking my managing director because that is how I roll 2 bottles of Sav Blanc down. Suffice to say the new girl missed out on Sunday morning activities because she was under the weather a little bit. As they attended orienteering I peered deep down into the toilet bowl and prayed to Ghandi (gave up on God in year 9) that he would soon bring on some form of responsibility for me. Make me fucking normal you arsehole!!  I squelched in between chunks of bile.

The thing is, and what I am discovering more and more as my time is deep throated by the corporate world and as I crawl further and further out of the solitary cocoon a year working on a dairy farm has given me, is that we are who we fucking well are. In nappies we already had our nature developed. It was chosen for us. Overtime we accessorised this nature like a cork board, added things here, ripped them off again, added more stuff, covered up parts to make it look prettier.

So this is me drawing to my conclusion. We may as well hatch our eggs and count them. In fact we may as well poach them good and proper; coz fuck knows I’ll be dead before I start reading Richard Branson’s autobiography. That guy is a cockhead.

Gooney the Looney

She sits on a computer chair, tits in her lap, nipples like Smarties facing down poking through her cotton blouse. The loose flyscreen is caught in the river’s breeze, the metal frame rattles, kids cackle coming down the street on skateboards.

An ironing board is extended beside her, papers are sprawled, A4 and in disorder. The kitchen table is much the same; I walk in and lay the goon down.

Her smile is stained and wide, cheeks reach crows feet, her hair still with its pillow crinkles. Under a little porcelain rooster she hides a cheque and it’s enough for the month’s worth. She rolls over to me with the stubs of her heels to pull herself along on wheels and she asks me my name, a water dragon peers in, croutched on a sea of bird seed. Two small wheelie bins sit amounst the seed and she points to them with glee, tells me she gets them filled to the brim every couple of weekends. And she doesn’t mind the mess they leave, the shells and the shit from the lorikeets. It’s just so nice to have the company.

my fourth sin

City lights shine and they hold no promise. The sky is black and full of nothingness. A new winter bites the back of a summer that just won’t let go. April is well into bloom, the traffic jams around the bend.

These are the moment I remember: Waking for the beach just to wander, walking miles up the same old strip. Sand on my ankles and salt on my skin, sun dancing on top of it’s reflection. The waves colliding, etching the country’s shape. The banksia abundant, lining the sides like I was the first of white folk there. I took my time with nowhere to be, home in time for poached eggs and parsley from pots that dangled from the gutters. I would write, but mostly dawdle. I could list my excuses if you had time to listen.

Time is funny, it distributes so unevenly. Offers all the seeds in the world when the ground is dry to the bone though has nothing to give when you need it the most. I leave one in love, in a place I could grow old, just to know my heart is not yet sold.

Straight to the pool room with you.

Pub Prose

There are about 10 real teeth between them. One of them, Tony, puts his falsies in a few times a week and he looks like a washed up TV personality from the sixties when he does. His skin is yellowed and potholed. When he smiles three deep crevices jump from the sides of his mouth and this big perfect set of pearly whites pop out from between leathered lips like he’s just shoved in one of those teeth lollies you used to get in party bags as kids. Another VB love, he says and I pour it with lots of head just like he likes, a good couple of centimetres from the top. Ah you know I love getting good head, he cackles with chompers a’ blazing, like he’s the first one in the world to ever say it.

They are known as the Bottom Feeders. The Centrelink crowd. None have jobs apart from Buck who sets crab traps along the river and sells his catch. They are on the corner table over in the beer garden most days from open and stick around until they walk with a lean. Jussst a nothaa, Swweets, Buck says. Nah. Nup, nupp  Actualllly giveuss oneof them Americin Honeyss.  He does this every day almost, tops up his belly of beer with a shot of American Honey, pushing $6.50 or there abouts with fishy fingers over the bar in shrapnel. Then he goes and fetches his kids from school tracing squiggles on the pavement.

 I think you’ve had quite enough today Buck, I say. Naah, just one. One more then I’llll get outta ya hair. Promisse. I remind him that I can’t serve him when he’s slurring. I’m not slurrinnn. It’s just mee teeeeth, gott em’ in today in’I.  Can’t talkk prop’lyy when I gott em’ in.

He still wears his wedding ring, poor Buck. His wife passed away ten years ago.  She left behind a little boy in a nappy and two young girls for him to bring up on his own; each have her dark skin. Buck is blonde and he’d probably be fair if it wasn’t for setting all those crab traps in the heat every day. He’s got a new lady in his life but I’ve never met her. He’ll often be in first thing in the morning whinging that she’s kicked him out again. What for this time Buck, I ask. Spilled beer on meself in bed again.

It baffles me what this woman could possibly see in Buck, but I suppose that’s not for me to know. I can only imagine the poor darl must have a saving fantasy mapped out for him. Pity he kisses up Bones’ misso every now and then. Bones doesn’t mind sharing Sharon with Buck on occasion.

They each seem to own a pair of those fly-swatter thongs, the Bottom Feeders. The ones that are as straight as a board and make a clap clap along the bitumen when you run. They’ve got more stories in them than filthy black cracks on their heels and you can’t help but love that about them, can’t help but find that soft spot deep within your loins that warms right up when you chat with them. You barely get a boo out of the fluro work shirts and sunglasses tans lined up in the front bar each afternoon, owners of small concreting businesses and bricklaying and tiling companies.  The “Big Shots” of town. So important they don’t even have to order a beer, it should just be waiting, cold, perfect, glistening, like a beer commercial, on the bar for them as they arrive and the thanks you get is a pair of horny little eyes following the triangle gap your top makes as you reach both hands over the bar to give them their change. They are the men that make up the top notch of pub hierarchy.  The ones that “own” the front bar and guard it like bullies on the playground. One of them plays in a band and performs out in the beer garden every few Saturday nights doing covers of Matchbox 20. He holds his guitar low with his legs wide apart one knee bent and spasming, a closed-eye pout as he croons  “If You’re Gone” to the old girls sipping charddys at the poker machines like he is some huge sex symbol and has the cock of Jim Morrison.

Needless to say the few after work drinks I ever have are shared in the company of the Bottom Feeders. On one particular night I was bought a few wines and then given a few too many mistake-pours by the bar staff and somewhere between tipsy and shitfaced I discovered that I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually gotten drunk.  It had seemed forever since I lost control, felt the blissful numb dizziness which made up almost all of my favourite encounters in my past life. The kind of drunk that almost always guarantees a pretty decent ride on the porcelain bus for most of the next day. Suddenly I was determined to get in this state. I wanted to feel like my old self again, reach her and remember her. She was like this fossil in my mind that I wanted to call upon, feel and live again because god knows it had been a while, too many roast dinners and lamps off early so as not to keep the farmer up, cos staying up to watch TV or reading a book in the lounge room even was out of the question— a guy died in this very house, drove his truck straight into the lounge room before it was built up again and I’ve never lived in any place before where someone has died. My independence doesn’t extend to night times in this place. I lay awake sober and restless clutching my farmers snoring body as he dreams of cows, fearing a ghost.

So this night in the beer garden with the Bottom Feeders “Veronica Vodka” is back. Turns out you can take the vodka out of Veronica but you can’t take Veronica out of the vodka. Or something like that. And you sure can’t kill the spirit lying dormant and boiling away beneath the surface of someone; a change of habitat only serves to distract it temporarily. So she was back with a vengeance and thank Mary and Joseph and the three wise men that the pub closes early this night and that the worst of what is to come happens in a tree house far, far away.

I follow the gang back to one of their places over the hill and a few streets back and this time it’s me tracing squiggles on the pavement. It belongs to two guys that paint houses and aren’t exactly your typical Bottom Feeders because they do have real teeth and work for a living but are pissheads nonetheless. It’s a pokey little place that reminds me of my Grandma’s with different kinds of wallpaper on every wall and we congregate on the tiled porch listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival on repeat sipping our bottle-o purchases from brown paper bags. I am in the company of the two house painters- Sam and Kurt, Bones, his 14 year old son Nathan, a couple of ladies in their late 30’s with the bleachest blonde hair I’ve ever seen- Skye and Trace, Naomi who’s a girl just a bit older than me- a wild cat who months later ends up getting a one year ban from the pub for pulling a chick out of her car by her hair and punching her in the face. Naomi rolls up a tight joint and we pass it around the circle singing along to Bad Moon Rising, and it’s been a good 10 months since I’ve had any of the little green hornet but tonight is about reuniting with my old self so I puff away like a steam train. Pretty soon I am wearing a pair of the painter’s Oakley sunglasses and dusting talcum powder all over the heads of everyone humming to myself. Then the talcum powder is snatched off me and suddenly a fight breaks out. I am pushed to the ground, pinned down and it’s in my eyes and my mouth and I am screaming and coughing and choking on talcum powder and then someone else snatches it, and there is shouting and squealing and there is break dancing in the powder on the floor, slipping and sliding, someone yells out it’s snowing! and Naomi’s getting dragged across the floor on her back by her feet by Bones and he’s grinning going: women are only good for two things, moppin and boppin!! Naomi’s cackling and Creedence Clearwater goes to top notch and I’m attempting the splits in Oakleys and there is more shouting and screaming  and Skye’s going do do do lookin out my backdoor. Then there is the flash of red and blue lights in the drive way, the joint butt flies through the air.  Creedence is yanked from the wall. Two pairs of black boots hit the talcum powder and we pull ourselves up off the floor. There have been some complaints about a disturbance, the tall officer says. I catch out of my peripheries the sight of us- all grey haired and dusty faced looking like a bunch of cotton buds in front of them and I have to bite on the sides of my cheeks to stop the induced laughing fit which is about to burst through my seams. We don’t want to have to come back here again tonight do we? Bones says nope. They turn and leave. Naomi lights another joint and says fuck this, let’s go out to the tree house and we all pile in her car and I’m not really sure where we are going but I go along anyway with the open window blowing the talcum powder from my hair into the boot.

Naomi’s speeding, she’s doing about 100 along a windy road which looks to be leading out to the set of Wolf Creek. Kangaroos are drawn on the road in spray paint and are on yellow signs. We turn left over a cattle grid and Naomi flings the car around the sharp corners, illuminating gum trees with the high beams. She pulls into a dirt driveway and the car is skipping on the stones as we pull up to this house in the trees. It’s unpainted and sits on giant stilts and is the colour of raw pine. Welcome to my humble home she says as we climb out.

Its gorgeous this little house, all open and made of wood. Like an old ski loft with stair cases that lead to random little rooms. Indian fabrics are draped from windows, stick candles sit on tables and old chairs and in book shelves and on the kitchen bench with their wax almost completely bled from them in pimply clumps at their base. Books are in piles dotted around the living room and there are at least seven couches all old and worn at the arms and made of different fabrics. A guitar sits in the corner. I pick it up and twang at a string. Everyone finds a couch. A bong is passed around. Play us a tune, someone says. Rightio, I say.

The next two hours are much of a blur but I don’t stop strumming that guitar. Faces are illuminated in the flickering glow of candles and in the bong smog, and they all watch me intently on their couches with little slits for eyes and wide smiles on their faces and roars of laughter and I am singing from the pit of my lungs channelling Aretha, and I sing for everyone. It never occurs to me during any this time that I am actually having an out of body experience.  Or that my hand is covered in blood.

Nathan,

I’ll be Demi if you be Ashton.

I don’t care that you’re jailbait,

I wanna take your V-plates.

I strum with the knuckle of my thumb, that’s how good at guitar I am. And the blood drips into my lap soaking up the talcum powder on my pants. I don’t strum any chords; I’m too good at guitar for that, I twang the same open strings. And no one gets missed. A song is sung for all present, I sing about the rumour that had been going round the pub that Skye is in love with one of the house painters, so I make it known to him in a ditty and because the only word that rhymes with Kurt apart from shirt is hurt, of course I sing about his humongous penis.  

She sits around counting ants

To distract herself from the bulge in your pants.

Baby yeah.

And to the absolute horror of my recollections, I sing about myself too. Pity blowie rhymes with Chloe.

Bones thinks I am better than Rodney Rude. He sits slouched on the couch with the dirty bong in his hands ripping a cone and as the smoke pours out of his mouth he looks to his 14 year old son, Nathan and says, shit, how are we gunna get you to school in the mornin? Nathan doesn’t drink and never wants to try weed. Bones says he is going to be in the Olympics one day.

My farmer picks me up somewhere near 2AM and I climb out of the tree house nursing a Carlton Dry with an arm covered in blood and talcum powder all over my face and his phone number written all over my tits. Why is my phone number written all over your tits? He says. Coz it’s the only place that doesn’t have talcum powder on it, I say.

Silver Fox.

Such a dreamboat.

95 kms to Grafton

95 kms to Grafton and the driver can’t find the gear. Backpackers with pink noses and golden tans squish in the seats mumbling their languages. The orange glow of street lights fall onto the houses on the other side of the bus glass, the houses I have seen 20 times or more. I’ve been back and forth over the border like a drug mule. It’s true what they say about relocating. How it causes displacement.

They all sleep or look at the seats in front - these backpackers, they take no notice of the gorgeous old post office, the old bank building, the guy walking in his slippers with a blue heeler in tow in Woodburn: all the best bits. I find myself angered. All this money they have saved for this big adventure to the great southern continent and all they want is a photo of Sydney Harbour.

As dusk was passing through and the sky was lit like fairy-floss over Coolangatta, one guy had his curtain closed. I imagined what it would be like to have those kind of savings at the moment. How I would give adventure the grace it deserves.

I love…

going through old diaries. 

circa ‘05:

Your life is temporary and a mess,

My life is temporarily a mess

You were the mess in my life

I was temporary in yours.

Then

He was swallowed by the dark until he spoke, until he looked me directly in the eyes and then kept looking. It was inquisitive his stare, like your words weren’t enough to satisfy him, like he was hungry for some sort of deeper understanding of who you were and what you were about and it was as if he was trying to find that buried in the flecks of colour around your pupils. He spoke with a gentleness I wasn’t used to, soothing and articulate, addressing me by my name, putting it on the end of the questions he asked, letting it roll off his tongue so convincingly. He had an untarnished confidence that refused to let his eyes veer to the side for one single self conscious little moment, one millisecond of self doubt or shyness that would have me taking refuge in the knots in the carpet as I murmured my answers. He had this way of making you feel like you were the most fascinating person in the world. And that night I did feel fascinating, like the most fascinating person in the world.

He sits before me on the bed now, his head in his hands, elbows digging into his naked thighs. His eyes are closed underneath the veil of dark hair that’s fallen over his face, I don’t need to see them to know, it’s just what happens these days when he’s heard enough. I should react to his hunched over frame, his hostility towards me with grace, a grown-upness that would take him by surprise and remind him that he should keep on loving me. Something along the lines of, “let’s just go to bed now Honey, we’re not going to solve anything tonight.” After that I should crawl over to my side of the bed and lay on my back in mutual ground, not roll over to the furthest inch of mattress with my spine poking out at him, until my knees are dangling over the sides. In the morning I should kiss him on the forehead and apologise for being silly, tell him that I just get insecure sometimes, sometimes I just get scared. I don’t do any of these things; every inch of my body wants to be unreasonable. I ask him if he wants more wine. He says nothing and curls his feet up beneath him. I ask him again but he remains silent. I fill his glass up, right to the brim, enough so it spills over the sides and forms a deep red puddle around the base. Just enough to infuriate him.

He was forever expressing his annoyance for the way in which I poured wine. He would often beat me to the task deliberately so the red could sit at that perfect level in the glass. Not too shallow, about a quarter full, he would tell me as he demonstrated how it was supposed to be done. At first it was amusing, one of the eccentricities which made him so endearing. But somewhere along the line it had become the same kind of pompous bullshit I resented in people.

He looks up from his hands, his eyes tired, his cheeks red. His jaw is covered in a thick layer of stubble. It was unusual for him. He always took a lot of pride in his appearance, shaving each morning even though it made him look so much younger than what he was. I never told him I thought he suited a few days of growth; I don’t think he had ever worked it out either, I just assumed he had stopped feeling the need to look nice for me.

He glances over at the pool of wine that was now dripping down the legs of the bedside table. He looks up at me for a brief moment, his face bored. Is that what comes after anger and replaces frustration- boredom?

It was often I would lay sleepless in his bed thinking about simplicity. Thoughtlessness, excitement. His old record player belting out crackly blues records on those sticky evenings when we would make love on his balcony. It all seemed so foreign now, like years instead of months had swallowed these moments. Sleep-ins on Sunday mornings with the air-conditioner  humming softly, our legs entangled on his day bed as we read our own novels, his brown-framed spectacles sitting on the top of his nose. We both no longer remembered what any of that felt like. Instead we held onto the ashes of it, like some poor old widow clutching onto the urn of her dead husband, too afraid to let it go.

His lips are tight as he walks out of the room. The door slams behind him shaking the walls all around me. I pour myself a glass of wine, right to the top, just the way I like it. I gulp it down quickly, enjoying the way it makes my head feel cloudy, the way it numbs my mind. It was a state I had grown far too accustomed to in the months that lay beneath our feet. He had told me I had a drinking problem. He told me that I was always pissed, that it was far out of my control now; I wouldn’t be able to stop even if I wanted to. I told him he had a drinking problem and it was far worse than mine; he had an addictive personality and he just couldn’t help himself. But I smacked him in the face once. He had been trying to grab my bags off me after I threatened to drive home after a heated argument and a bottle and half of wine. There was this second or two of realisation after I hit him. Silence and everything was in slow motion for a short moment. Then he held me. He held me and he kissed my hair. He told me everything was going to be alright.

I glance over at all the books that adorn the shelves of his crammed bookcase. I remember how that felt to be curious of him, that busting excitement to know him. I would rhythmically pull books out and read sections as if they held the answer, that the authors who fed his thoughts and inspired his virtues could reveal everything that he was incapable of revealing. I remember the first night he took me back to his house I had felt so adult just being there. It didn’t resemble the houses of ex-boyfriends, all smut and filth and stench. It was spotless, beautifully furnished with old paintings and books and mismatched chairs. Like the house of an artist I had thought. He had given me a tour, taking me through the garage and up the back steps, past his vintage Mercedes Benz. That had been the first and only time he ever took me into the house that way so I realised it had been no accident. I had never thought of this to be an act of arrogance though. Arrogance would have been a Skyliner in the place of the old Merc. Ten inch rims and a sound system. I had thought of him to be humble at first. Old fashioned. Different. The combination of adjectives I conjured on that initial visit ones I had never used to describe anyone before.

Maybe the fact that he was so different was the reason I loved him. The fact that the relationship was so different, that it cut me off from the world I belonged to. It was an escape from everything mundane, everything I had ever known. I resented it for that exact reason, but I had wanted it more. I wanted to fit there, I wanted my place to be there. I was consumed by unhappiness, his indifference, my love for the potential, the calm after the storm, the love that would surely flourish as soon as he had found peace in his head. We would heal each other’s wounds I told myself. But he had grown tired of me. He hated the way I wouldn’t adopt his opinions as easily as other people did. He sold them well, I’ll admit, in the way only a well-read, well-travelled smart bastard who listened to talk-back radio and reads The Australian could. His intelligence and the few years of age he had on me lead him to believe I couldn’t possibly have a valid point, or at least a point more valid than his, and he felt he needed to educate me, to impose the lessons in life I was yet to learn. He always spoke as if he was decades older than me, that the four years between us were actually forty, that he had lived through the Vietnam War and had owned a black and white TV as a child. The eyes that had once been so inquisitive, so curious of me, that had made me feel precious, like a mystery, had started to make me feel inadequate.

I roll a cigarette tightly between my fingers, allowing the smoke fill his room. He hated the way it smelt, hated the way it made me look. It cheapened a woman, he always told me. He smoked cigars of course. He didn’t smoke the thick ones you’d find in poker rooms or mafia films; he smoked the small, thin ones which smelt like burning hair. And if he didn’t have a cigar between his lips he had a small pouch of snus underneath them. He would stuff it between his gums with his fingers and appear like he was perpetually snarling, like a Rottweiler who had been chained to a pole outside a supermarket. Fascination never lasts.

Musk

I acknowledge my mistakes in an orange taxi headed south. An inebriated boy sits on the seat beside me anticipating the hard sweaty fuck. I catch a flash of the smirk across his face as we dart under a dim street light. How had it come to this? A conversation underneath a naked eucalyptus tree, gloriously shallow, and if I remember correctly next to a garbage bin. Three shots of whiskey, a stumble along a dark road, and now this- a musty cab and a voyage to pure meaninglessness and supposed normalcy.

I imagine his body on top of mine, rigid and warm, but not warm in the pleasing connotation of the word, warm in the unpleasant way, like a warm bus seat or warm piss in the pool. I imagine his clumsy movements and the warm breath on the nape of my neck as he climaxes, not warm in the pleasing connotation of the word, but like warm piss in the pool. I imagine the awkward silence during those moments after, the sudden onset of insecurity as we both grow conscious of our nakedness, the embellishments he will add to the story as he tells it to his friends.

Male camels in the Australian desert willingly lose litres of their water supply through sweat and saliva when they fight each other for female affection —completely nonsensical considering how valuable it is to them, and yet here I was in the back of the cab with the guy that had picked me up beside a wheelie bin. The taxi pulls up beside a derelict block of flats. An inebriated boy crawls out anticipating the hard sweaty fuck that is never going to happen. Even camels have higher standards.

Brisbane to New South Wales. The long, rainy train trip back to the farm and the old godger snoring in the seat in front of me.