How it feels (14 page)

‘Alright, let's go then,' Gordon said, and he picked up my bass case and loped over to the Brothers, who stood smoking by the door.

Mount Panorama was home to the annual race week, namely the Bathurst 1000, when forty-five thousand revheads and rapists descended on the tiny town for six days of car racing, partying and chaos. They'd drink all day on the mountain, then come down at night into the town, lifting cars up at the lights, even if there were passengers in them, stripping parked cars of their wheels, and if they were Ford fans they'd destroy the Holdens, and Holden fans would destroy the Fords. Then they'd go looking for a fuck, and if they couldn't find one, which was highly probable due mainly to the ratio of men to women in race week being around a thousand to one, they'd pick a fight. Basically you didn't leave your house in race week. If you were a woman, and you went up on the mountain, you were your own responsibility. There was so much violence and so much rape, the police simply raised their hands and bid you good luck. It was quite a time on that hill.

But for the other fifty-one weeks Mount Panorama was a beautiful place to be, offering the most exquisite view of what I always believed was a gloriously cute city. Flowers grew on the shoulders, men panned for gold in the dam; there was a vineyard even, and a farmyard with alpacas and goats, offering such contrast to the colosseum of war and engines that the world knew it for.

We travelled up in Julien's car. I can't remember what was on the stereo, either something camp or the Red Hot Chili Peppers – that was the extent of his collection. Gordon stared out the window the whole journey, as if he was about to hurl or something, as if he was being sent somewhere ominous.

The mountain was rolling with theatre students when we arrived. There were dozens of bongo drums, some Tibetan peace flags draped between trees, a few forty-gallon drums raging with fire, fire sticks and fire breathers, twirlers and sword jugglers, guitars and a flautist, saxophones and other shit; already Amy Siegfried had her top off, displaying her limbo skills beneath a fluorescent skipping rope.

Julien brewed up the mushrooms in a pot of coffee and we all had a cup. Gordon opted out, settling for a cold beer and a scoob. He said he didn't trust anything that came out of cow shit. I challenged him on this – he still drank milk, which came out of a cow's penis – but he said there's a big difference between a penis and an anus, and besides, it was an udder, not a dick that milk came from. I told him milk was only meant to be consumed by babies anyway, and he said, all churlish and weird, ‘Maybe I'm just a big baby then,' and walked off over to the car where he sat down with the door open, drinking from a can of Tooheys New.

The mushrooms arrived in force, taking control of the entire operation, propelling me, Julien and the Bang Bang Brothers onto the grass, where we giggled like girls around the fire. We decided to delve into the woods, and so we all began crawling towards the bright light that speared through the column of thin trees. We crawled and crawled, penetrating the forest with mad faces – I could not look around, and I didn't need to, I could feel the Brothers and Julien behind and around me, as we drilled deeper and deeper into the woods. It seemed like we had been crawling for hours, for miles, until Gordon appeared in front of me with a beer and a girl. He told me to turn around, and so I did, only to realise we were but six or seven metres from where we set out. Gordon shook his head at me, and asked when I was intending to go. I could not mouth the words that made up an answer; all I could do was laugh and dribble.

The initial storm of the magic fungus dropped away, and pretty soon we were all jamming. I couldn't find Gordon anywhere and I had stopped caring. The jam got wild, with dozens of students now naked, some fucking on sleeping bags and cardboard boxes, some groups mauling each other, just a mess of flesh and moaning. I was naked too, dancing on the bonnet of a car with a chain of flowers tied around my dick and balls. Soon there was a procession of naked dancing round the car, and I started pissing on people; they didn't seem to mind. Then Gordon was on the bonnet next to me, he looked fierce, he looked really fierce, and he slapped me even, and took my mouth in his thick fingers and shook it.

‘You're a fucken joke,' Gordon said.

‘Get your hands off me,' I said, flailing about in his grip.

‘Put your pants on and stop pissing on people.'

‘Can you please not be grabbing me?' I begged.

‘You think you look cool up here?' Gordon asked, whispering at my eyes. ‘Because you don't, Neil, you look stupid. you look embarrassing, actually.'

Gordon stepped off the car and walked away towards the edge of the mountain. I looked down at my semi-erect penis dripping with urine, tightly wound with lilies and weeds. I looked up again, but he was gone. I thought about following him, but instead I climbed higher onto the roof and screamed. This was my place, this was my mountain, this was my time, and no hobbit from the old world was going to pop a hole in it.

When I got home Gordon was in the kitchen eating Nutri-Grain in his suit and talking to Chandra, who had stayed home with cramping. It was around 10 am, and so fucking cold in the house. I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, but neither he nor she gave me the time of day. So I muttered something to myself and went off for a shower. The water was glorious on my eyelids and neck, but it stung the thorn cuts on my arms and legs.

When I got out Gordon was gone and Chandra too. There was no note, nothing. So I drank a glass of lemon cordial and went to bed. I fell into a deep well of slumber, dreaming of deer and cigarettes conversing with one another. I woke to a dark and quiet house; I had been asleep all day. I wandered about, looking for human contact – well, for Gordon. Now the drugs were out of my system, the guilt had set in. I finally found Chandra in the den, reading
Birthday Letters
. I asked her what she had been doing and she told me she had been crying. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath had had such a powerful love for one another. Were
we
as in love as them? Was love always followed by misery?

I kissed her on the eyelid and she told me that Gordon and she had driven out to Sofala. I asked where he was now, she told me he waited for me to get up and then he left. He had work tomorrow and he didn't like driving in the dark, his eyes were not great. I asked her what they spoke about and she said they didn't speak much at all, but that he looked unhappy.

‘Gordon's boring,' Chandra said, kissing me with full tongue. I hated the way she did this; I always believed that tongue should arrive when it was summonsed, not as the first cab off the rank.

‘He isn't, he's just different to you.'

‘He bought all these weird gifts at the arts and craft shops in Sofala.'

‘What did he buy?'

‘He bought hand towels for his mother, and an elephant.'

An elephant? He bought a fucking elephant? I shot up and began pacing around the room in tight squares.

‘What the fuck are you doing?' Chandra asked, standing up as I moved around her.

‘What else did Gordon say today?'

‘He just kept saying he wanted to see you, but that you were all fucked up and distracted, pissing on people as they danced around your car.'

‘But did he say what he wanted to talk to me about?'

‘I don't know anything else!' she screamed.

I grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall. ‘Don't fucking withhold anything from me, you cunt!'

Chandra shrieked and gurgled, slapping me hard across the skull and leaving the den. She came back with a post-it note, which she stuck to my chin. Then she left the room again, picking up
Birthday Letters
and snarling at me; her neck was all purple and she was crying straight lines of quick water.

The post-it note was from Gordon. It read:

 

You're not the only one. G

 

‘And he took the sword, too!' Chandra yelled from the bathroom.

I ran down the hall and there it was: the empty spot on the wall, the lonely hook, the beating heart of my house, gone. Gordon had given it to me as a way of keeping us all connected, and now – well, now he was giving up on me. I couldn't say I blamed him; we had grown into different men. But still, the sword was gone, and I could've sworn he'd driven it right through my chest, because that's how it felt, in that room, on that day.

‘Why do we always go the route with all the give way signs? If you stay on Rankin Street there are no stoppages at all, just roundabouts, and roundabouts rock!'

Julien was too nervous to drive, so I did it, but that didn't stop the constant commentary and navigation.

‘Is Jamie coming to the show?' I asked, changing the subject.

‘No, he's working all weekend. Seriously, I have never heard of an ad company that works seven days. It's a fucking joke. This is my major work, do you know what I mean? Key word is “major”, and they won't let him go for a single day. It's incredibly traumatic for me.'

Julien was my best friend out here. This made him my outright best friend because I had been here three years and rarely returned to Sydney. I liked being away, and I liked being in a small town where there was nothing to do but live. By nature I was easily distracted, but here, there were no distractions, just utter consumption of my three passions: women, art and drugs. Julien had been my full-time maven in the pursuit of all of the above, until eighteen months earlier, when he met Jamie at a gay march in Blackheath. A kind of ‘Reclaim the Streets' type situation, for which our course had prepared a small, mobile, gay-friendly fire sculpture.

Jamie lived in Surry Hills, and since the march Julien had spent four days a week in Sydney, catching the train down Thursday night and returning Monday night, managing to miss only two lectures and two tutorials. I missed him. I missed him a lot. I missed smoking billies in the night and cooking up flavourless pastas and packet curries. Playing UNO and discussing all the hot people on campus. I missed his excellent, non-threatening banter and the way he looked at me – a cool mix of LOVE and TRUST, with a five percent hook of cock and sleaze. He was a fabulous man, and friend, but his work had suffered badly since he found city-based love, so I offered him the title of co-writer and co-director on my show
ME
, which was clearly not called
US
. Julien's main contribution was to get the flyers printed at the post office.

‘You know there are people driving from Sydney to see this show, Neil? I checked the list and took some calls at the box office – people know about
our
work and they want to check this shit out.'

‘That sounds cool.'

It was a perfect Bathurst day, ten hundred pie shops opening at once and the crisp honest air biting at your eyelids.

‘Neil, it's awesome is what it is! You know, Chandra nearly shat her tits when I told her the names of some of the directors and agencies that have RSVP'd, like it's unheard of out here, she is like totally jealous of our talents and successes.'

‘Well…' I said.

‘Nelly-Belly, come on. Seriously, you have to stop ramming that first year.'

‘Who?'

‘ “Who?”! The curry muncher who's always hanging round the theatre with her cunt hanging out her forehead is “who”!'

‘Swanna's the designer!'

‘Designer of what? Your cock?'

‘Our show, Julien. She designed the entire space.'

Julien flicked his butt out the window and humbly dropped down into the centre of his body. ‘Wow, she is really talented.'

‘Yes, she is,' I said. ‘And since when are you Advocate Fidelity?'

‘Wow, yeah, okay. But regardless, Nelly Boy, you
have
to tone it down with her mate, because if Chandra found like a g-string in your car or something, or lipstick in the sink, then I would have to make up a story and you
know
I just go completely red and cannot lie. I'm not good on my feet like you are.'

‘Thank you, mate. I appreciate your concern.'

‘I just can't handle the stress, and like Chandra is a psycho-fanny man. If she found something out like that, and she was in the middle of her period, I swear she would drive a car through the front of our house and I cannot afford the repairs on the car or the house. Like no way.'

We were close now. The pie shops and the throng of townies getting their Saturdays kick-started were behind us. We were on the edge of town on the edge of our tomorrow. I could see the old steel mill ahead of us, that big old beautiful building the council had rented to us for only three hundred and fifty dollars which we had converted into an amazing theatre premises. I could see the word
ME
in enormous print on the street-facing wall, I could see the actors playing Kanga cricket outside, I could see one of the percussionists smoking, and Swanna and her team painting a chair, or was it the coffin? I could see the end of my university career and the beginning of the rest of my adult life. I could see the grassy patch where the actors and I buried a secret under the ground in a box. I could see Dick Hindmarsh, my friend, my mentor and my lecturer, taking notes and chewing tobacco by his motorbike. And now, out of the blue and the cold, I could see Gordon, Stuart and Courtney – all of them together at the after party, shuffling round in fits of discomfort, looking to reconnect all the broken-off stuff. I could see all the beer chilling in the icebox, and the sheets of acid and the girls in my life. I could feel the agents and the directors on my shoulder saying ‘we should talk', but mostly I could see myself clearing out of here, down that M4 for the last time, one hand on the wheel, Hendrix playing loud on the stereo. But for now, inside Julien's car, all I could think about were my friends, dressed up and driving, somewhere between Cronulla and me.