How it feels (23 page)

In the bathroom papered with photocopied portraits of Frida Kahlo and John Howard the dartboard, I inhaled a lump of speed which split my brain in two. In four. In eight. In sixteen. In thirty-two. In sixty-four.

When I returned to the backyard there was little or no room to move, both in my thoughts and in the yard. The university had arrived en masse. Regurgitator's master-blasting ‘Kung Foo Sing!' jumped out of the speakers and into my brain, kick-starting the kick inside me. I
yearned
to let loose! Let loose with some karate dancing. I advanced my frame and person out the screen door and towards the hopping throb of dancing students but I never quite made it, for by the door was Swanna, talking with Gordon and Courtney. I made an immediate tack to the left but my shirt was in her clutch and I was in the square – just like that.

‘Hey, Neil!' Courtney said, her eyes big and pupils dilated with E. I thought this girl was ‘drug free' since Results Party. Whatever.

‘Hey, Courtney,' I replied, kissing the rosy patch of her cheek. She had left it out for me, as the royals do, offering no path to lip.

‘Nelly,' Gordon said. He had a beer in his left hand and another tucked under his arm to allow his right arm to do some shaking. ‘Cool show.'

‘Yeah,' Courtney agreed. ‘Amazing.'

‘We really fucking dug it,' Gordon continued.

‘Yeah, it was such a feast!' Courtney's eyes did a lap of her sockets. ‘Everywhere I looked! I really liked it.'

‘What did you like about it?' I asked Courtney, her eyes easier to grapple with than the grey windows beside her.

Courtney took a moment to formulate exactly what it was the show did to her. ‘It reminded me of like…
Peer Gynt
or something… But like a lot more surreal and David-Lynch-fucked-up show. Do you know what I mean? I need some time to sit with it, actually.'

‘Yeah man, it was pretty good,' Gordon affirmed, casting a spell of sudden silence over the pleasant review.

‘How was the drive up?' I asked, taking the opportunity to finally take in Gordon. He looked beefier than I remembered, standing there beneath the porch light in his puffy North Face jacket.

‘The drive?' Gordon mocked.

‘Yes, I'm asking you how the drive was.' I straightened my posture in all seriousness. What the fuck was wrong with that for a question?

‘The drive?' Gordon asked again, spitting out beer and launching wildly into a fit of hysterics. Swanna and Courtney followed close behind, crying in large, uncontrollable spasms of laughter, holding onto each other for balance. ‘We drove in the car!'

‘The car went forward!' Courtney added.

These people were clearly demented. I appealed to Swanna but she was way gone too, infected.

‘You didn't pogo here?' Swanna asked, like she was the old friend and I was the new friend locked outside the connection room.

‘No!' Gordon ran with it. ‘We drove!' And they fell about laughing again, guiltily, but then freely once more.

Courtney took my forearm. ‘Sorry, Neil, we're just a bit fucked up.'

‘I would agree with that,' I said, face like stone.

Their laughter dried up in a flash as I stared down the barrel of G's cruelty. His beady little eyes in gridlock with mine. There was violence in the air between us but no flesh as yet.

‘You having a good time?' I asked Gordon, both passive and aggressive.

‘Yeah, man. I am having a good time. You?' Gordon replied, coolly.

I stepped towards him thinking yes, I will palm his nose up into his face like Dick Hindmarsh taught me in stage combat, but real this time.

‘Neil, don't…' Courtney said, only to be moved aside by her big man.

‘Don't, babe – I've got this,' Gordon told her, all puffed up.

‘Ha!' I did the laughing now. ‘Nice to see some good old-fashioned Cronulla gender balance still alive and well. “Step aside, little lady.” '

‘Don't be a cunt,' Gordon warned me.

‘Me? A cunt?'

‘Yep,' Gordon said. ‘There is one cunt here, and it's not us three.'

‘Neil, we're just a bit high is all.' Courtney stood between us, smiling up with overt politeness. ‘The drive was really nice. This is such a beautiful town; you guys must feel so blessed to have been able to spend three years here. So pretty and quiet and creative too.' Courtney stopped as the first progression of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit' arrived in four beautiful bars, changing everyone's living thing inside out.

‘The town's been good to me,' I said, pushing off G's chest and into the cliché nihilism of the mosh-pit. I thrashed and I burned! ‘YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!' Then I was picked up and lifted onto the stage where I ran laps for a verse and laps for a chorus, high-fiving Julien and his Luke, then
launching
myself into the air that lived and breathed above the forest of human heads below. I crashed onto the grass, taking skirts and beards and drinks along with me.

Courtney appeared above like the angel she was, I clasped her arms and she pulled me back up from the ground and we danced together ecstatically, blazing joy and power – she was happy and I was happy to be near it.

‘I love Swanna, she is so great!' Courtney said, and she meant it.

‘I miss him already,' I said.

‘I miss him too,' she said, and the scaffolding that time had built fell away. I kissed her on the mouth but then Gordon arrived with a soft warning palm to the throat.

‘So so so!' Julien minced across the stage, mic in hand. ‘I know Luke and I are like the hottest DJ team this side of Cowra, but it is now my pleasure to welcome the
greatest
-ever karaoke band known to man… Ladies and gentleman, please welcome KKK – Karaoke Kool Kats!'

The dense curtain of purple material bought from Lithgow Spotlight that morning was whipped away by the second-year dancers as the KKK band launched into their usual debut-punch of instrumental jive-bunny.

Gordon was shaking his head at me but his hips and feet were grooving along inside it.

‘If you need to kiss someone, kiss
me
,' Swanna whispered in my ear. And so I did, with roughness and teeth. Even in this kissing I wanted to make violence on Gordon's head. That small man, that thieving cunt.

‘Where will we go?' I asked her, ‘when this is all over?'

‘You want to go somewhere with me?' she asked, her brown eyes even more dazzling in the moonlight.

‘I want to go everywhere with you,' I declared and we kissed again.

‘I've never been anywhere, just Canberra and here,' she said.

‘Those agents said something about England didn't they?' I asked her.

‘Yes, the woman did. And you know what the thing about England is?'

‘It's not Bathurst?' I said and she laughed out her perfect mouth.

‘It's not Canberra either, yes, but also, you can get this train called the Eurostar, and it goes all through Europe, like down through the rivers and lakes of Sweden to Rome and France. You can get a train from London to Paris, and it takes about two hours…'

‘Let's go there,' I said.

‘It goes through the Chunnel.'

‘What's the Chunnel?' I asked her.

‘The Chunnel, it's a tunnel to Paris.'

‘Let's chunnel to Paris,' I said, ‘I love you Swanna.'

‘Really?' she asked me, tears in her eyes.

‘I loved you from the moment you hit the water.'

‘Neil Cronk!' Julien called into the hissing microphone.

From this hard passion – smashed back to reality by the public announcement that I was next on stage.

‘What're you going to sing?' Swanna asked, buoyed.

‘Fuck, I don't know,' I said, and I didn't.

The crowd parted like the Red Sea for me, as I caught a glimpse of Gordon's confusion. Then I was on stage again and yes it felt good, taking the microphone from Gemma, who had just sung a stirring rendition of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U ', kissing Julien on the lips and high-fiving Luke. I feigned jumping off the edge of the stage and into the sea below. The crowd laughed and cheered. KKK waited patiently for me to address them. Without a song of choice there was no music here.

Moments went long now. If I moved my eyes too quick in one direction things took a while to render. So I peered tortoise-like through the crowd until I found my man. Gordon was moving out of the mosh-pit, towing Courtney, running away from my attention, running away from things, running away.

‘Ladies and gentleman, I have a special treat for you tonight, a song so special I simply cannot sing it alone!'

My voice entered his ears, pulling his neck back in fear and spinning him round in awkward pirouette. We caught eyes, Gordon and me, and so I spoke to him, over the gathering and down into the pores of his face.

‘Please welcome to the stage a man who is arguably my best friend, the Eddie to my Charles, the one and the only… Gordon Braithwaite!'

Ninety-eight percent of the party had no idea who Gordon Braithwaite was, or Charles and Eddie, but they went nuts anyway, and with the help of Julien's furious pointing from the DJ booth, they kindly attempted to escort my nugget-mate Gordon onto the stage.

But he wouldn't have a bar of it, karaoke-jam terrified him, I could see it so clearly now, all flooding back, he
hated
performing, public speaking – at school he only ever spoke up in modern history because he knew about Hitler's bunker and he knew about propaganda. But this, this was his idea of hell, so I went for the jugular and challenged his manhood, I was in too deep now and this was the only way to spur him on, and I wanted him up here; despite his wholehearted reluctance I wanted him up here so bad.

‘Come on, Gordon!' I said into the microphone. ‘Don't be a pussy!'

The crowd were intent now, all working together to drag Gordon up onto the stage, which only made him more furious. He would not join me tonight; a million horses could not drag him up for a song. Finally, with a dozen or so sets of hands around his waist and neck, he cracked, and it was revealed to me the extent of his karate training in the past three years. He swung his legs round in a circle, tripping up the second-year dancers, then punched at the arms of the men who held him, one swift jab after another, kicked backwards at those behind him, then rammed a few of the remaining assailants into one another with an incredible twist of his hips – hula violence. The whole crowd was staring at him, and his face was red with rage and embarrassment. Courtney went over to him but he pushed her too and she fell backwards into the screen door.

‘Gordon, it's ok,' I said, from the stage, the microphone feeding back.

Gordon wiped his chin and stared at me. The entire party in rapture. ‘I don't want to go on the fucking stage!' he yelled, picking up a half-drunk can of beer and hurling it at my head.

I didn't duck; I just stood there and watched it sail past.

Then Gordon was gone, punching and stomping out of there. I dropped the microphone, leapt off the stage and went after him.

The wind was behind me and so were the drugs, sending me right down the middle of Rankin Street in the middle of this broken night. I could see Gordon up ahead, chubby forearms pumping up and down like pistons as he crossed Piper Street in front of a storming Woolworths truck. I gasped, it so narrowly missed him, and in the drama lost sight of him, until he appeared in the distance once more, careering off the Rankin Street shoulder, round the Kepple Street corner, seemingly hovering now, like a sturdy vampire out of hell. I leapt up onto the gutter, ducked the branches and pursued him with all my stealth. The huskies and the Rottweilers barked like mad, thrashing at their borders as I turned onto Kepple and discovered him heaving by the ‘give way' sign up ahead.

‘Oi!' I yelled from the corner, and he arched his neck to see me, standing beneath the lamplight with my arms open. ‘It's ok, G!' I said.

Gordon took a deep breath, his North Face jacket sucking up into his neck, and then he took off again, this time on a diagonal, right into the pitch black labyrinth of Machattie Park.

The park was quiet tonight. I could hear the crunch of sticks under my shoes, and the new relationships that formed between the breeze and the trees. I was walking now, no longer chasing, for I knew he was in here, I could feel him. I knew him. I circled the rotunda and pushed out in to the open fernery, where a bikie couple slept in the flaps of each other's leather jackets, whisky bottles tipped over like dead soldiers. The gurgle of the fountain grew louder and I wanted it so, moving beneath the natives where a Circus Oz juggler had hanged herself the year before while out walking her dog. Apparently the dog was crying when they found her, swinging above. Always an audience.

I walked towards the fountain and found him sitting there on the edge of it, hands on his mouth. He was hunched over himself, embarrassed. He looked up at me as I stood before him and I couldn't help but smile – he was my best friend after all, or my brother more like – no matter what went on and where, it would always move between us; this pain, this love, this shambolic swordfight of too much feeling at once.

‘Hey,' I said, and so did he as if by mimic.

‘Mate, I'm sorry,' he said to me.

‘What for?'

‘You can't just think…' I had never seen Gordon like this, his face bright white and his eyes wide and full. ‘We're not all you, you know? We're not all theatre and talking!' ‘I'm not asking you to be.'

‘There are things we have to do, in our lives.'

‘What things?'

He stood up and walked around the place, his hands made their way to his hips, and his shoulders hunkered in, swallowing up his neck. This was the time to say it all.

‘You know the things,' he said.

‘Why didn't you tell me he was dead?' I asked him. ‘Why did you leave it for my mother to say? How could you not let me know?
Me?
It's still me, no matter what has happened.'