How it feels (24 page)

‘Me,' he said. ‘Isn't that a piece of theatre?' He spat onto the grass. ‘Isn't that a bunch of people in an old warehouse prancing around?'

I moved in towards him, I did not care if he hit me, I was numb all over, the drugs and the fresh grief and the night the night the night.

‘You know I was the last person he spoke to? You know it was me he called just minutes before he pulled the trigger? Did you know that, Gordon?'

Gordon put a flat hand on each of his temples and pushed and pushed in. It was like he was trying to squash his own brain. I moved up to break it, but just as I did he stopped, his hands flinging out to the sides in mad despair. Then he walked right up to me and pointed at my head, issuing the following orders with the most severe whisper.

‘Forget him Cronk, forget all about him, he's gone now, don't let him hold you down. Forget about tonight, forget about me, and forget about the dead guy. Just move the fuck on and leave it all behind'.

‘Is that what you did?' I asked him, and again he made a fist to punish with. ‘It's that easy is it G? Just delete them and go on?'

I thought he would smash me again, finish me once and for all, join me with Stu and the others, but instead he turned and walked out of Machattie Park, stepping up to a jog as he met with the shiny black road.

I wiped away the wet grass and sat down. I thought of following him but he had told me not to, to forget any type of following or remembering, any type of hanging or yearning. So I remained on

the bench, rolled a cigarette and thought about Swanna, and all that cool stuff she was saying about London, about Europe, and the train that moved down through it all.

 

I wake up and I cannot breathe. My nostrils and my throat are jammed up with nicotine, there's no room for the air to get through. There is a glass of red wine half empty on the table beside me, and three cigarettes lying dead in a Japanese sauce bowl. I have raped my mind with booze again, with even the slightest tilt of the head it's like a bowling ball slides down a table and knocks over all the glassware that is my brain. This is common for me these days; waking up with a chronic, crippling, almost comically hellish hangover. I still can't work out why they call them hangovers, when the sensation I feel is so much more like being
under
something, like a truck, or a dozen Samoans. I will get up soon, take a 500 mg Xanax, drink an Earl Grey and wank. Then I shall have a shower and whack my suit on and do this fucking day. This fucking day.

The rain is loud on my roof though this is not a clear indication of its force. My roof is made of corrugated iron that Gordon and Albert donated to me from a fence they pulled down in Greys Point. Even the lightest sprinkle sounds like an army of Russian drummers are pounding away up there. I lie in bed and I stroke my cock – thinking of Courtney; it is her wedding day today, and I wonder what she is feeling, after all that was said on that beach not hours ago. She is not the marrying type, I know this much, she told me so on our many walks, calls and coffees over the past year. The dress, the day, the dance, the cake, the honeymoon, none of it appealed that much to Courtney. Courtney never had ‘the gown fantasy' – she wanted kids, yes, plenty of them, but not marriage. It was embarrassing, she said to me, to stand up in a silly frock in front of all those people and make such silly promises. But Gordon was adamant. ‘Marriage,' he said, ‘is like screwing a lid to a jar; it fits two things together and makes them one.' The metaphor, like the day, scared her. But she said yes because she knew it was something he needed – he needed to know she was his, and so she gave it over, the great big ‘forever'. I knew what she wanted: she wanted to see the world, that's why we saw so much of each other lately, she looked for it in my eyes and my stories. I had seen it, swallowed it and brought it back to her and she reached for it with long and invisible arms.

The rain kept falling on my sensitive roof as I wanked into the doona cover thinking of Courtney's neck and shoulders, a wad of semen dripping down onto my leg, remarkably cold. I had spent so much time alone in this bed the past six months; masturbation had become my best friend. I usually imagined circumstances, of women or girls I had spied down at the pontoon or at the store, but now, with so much practice behind me, I could masturbate thinking of the colour black.

Would she be in the bath now? Or would she shower? I wished I
was
the bath, with its claw feet and porcelain shell. I would be a bath and I would be holding her up. Her flesh would be against mine again, and this time I would not let it go.

My cock flopped about dumbly, stiffening again; fool's gold. I thought about having a bath myself. I hardly ever bathed in the bath at all now, even though I had quite a nice one in the shower recess.

Perhaps it reminded me too much of London, and of Swanna, and of all that hell and loss. No bath could wash the last seven years off, and in a way, well, as ugly as it felt, I liked it on my skin.

No one showered in England, which is not to say they were unhygienic, it was simply a bath culture. Even the gymnasiums had baths. It really threw me when I first got there, I missed standing up and having the hot rays strike my neck from above. And London was even colder than Bathurst; I didn't understand why I had to stand naked on the tiles, freezing, while the bath filled up with lukewarm water. So much puzzled me about the town: why all the men were bald, and why everyone said ‘innit?', and why bulldogs were allowed on buses, and how many fried chicken shops there were, and how low the clouds hung, and how big and beautiful the parks were, and how much the people loved their soccer teams but could not wait to blame particular players for everything. But mostly I loved how London-like London was. When Swanna and I took our first black cab into town from the airport she turned to me and said, ‘It's so London,' and it was the only thing to say. The cobblestone streets, the red buses, the warm ales in the charming little pubs, it was London, like nowhere else, magical, old, wonderful London, and it was ours to discover.

To move with, Dad gave me three grand and Mum two grand and a lot of underwear. Even then, it was only weeks before we were broke, what with the rental bond and furnishing the place, plus my wisdom tooth became infected the moment we arrived and I didn't have travel insurance. We ate soup most nights and only bought Tesco homebrand products. Swanna took work at the Independent Video Store on Broadway Market and I took a job as dishwasher at an Indian Restaurant on Brick Lane.

It was horrible stuff, and I soon left, landing a job at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, where I ushered, worked the bar, the box office, and generally ran proceedings when the lights were up. The theatre itself was quaint, housing a blend of new and old works, some bland some bold, and it was there I saw my first Sarah Kane play, and after that, well, the possibilities of theatre were wide open.

Swanna and I spent a lot of time at the Arcola, and because of this moved to a better, cheaper flat just off the Dalston high street. One of the actors, Clive, from the
Faust
that was currently showing, lived in the flat below. We made friends quickly, as the building we now inhabited was basically a commune for actors, musicians and artists. The doors were never locked, we roamed freely, strolling downstairs and upstairs for a beer, or to borrow a CD, smoke a joint or, as it progressed, to engage in orgies. Clive introduced us to a friend of his who owned a series of vacant lots in Stoke Newington, and pretty soon Swanna and I were staging our first production on foreign soil. The piece was not dissimilar to
ME
in style; we took a group of actors and performers and devised a show around the issues in their own lives and the idea of a ‘New London' from an outsider's perspective (ie us), then invited an audience to follow them round the space through the experience. What I didn't see coming was the way we would be received. Somehow we ducked the infamous critical slamming of the British press and, perhaps due to our unpretentious theatre-out-of-nothing approach, were elevated to a cultish status we did not entirely deserve.

Swanna and I quickly founded The Scream People, and within six months had private sponsorship and a space of our own. We went about making new work; Swanna took care of all things visual, and her detailed, always tasteful design mesmerised those so accustomed to daggy old British sets and naturalistic designs. Swanna was a taste-maker in her own right and I adored everything that fell out of her heart, her mind, her hands. Those first two years in London dripped with love, we were on top of this new city and we fed off each other, living the work both in and out of the space. Swanna glowed, and I glistened in her light, I cannot remember a moment where she was more than a foot away from me at this time, and if she was, our eyes knew of each other, and our minds conversed regardless.

In our third show as The Scream People I stepped away from performing altogether, much preferring to put the dream together than be at its centre on stage. I liked directing, devising, asking the questions, and there was so much more to see when you stopped concentrating on your own performance. It was a different baring of thought, to face the stage but with my back turned, and strangely I came to love the audience and the art even more this way.

We played the Burdekin with a highly contentious teenage version of Büchner's unfinished play
Woyzeck
, and were then asked to stage a multimedia piece at the National Theatre for their New Vision Festival. And, along with nine other Australians living and working in London at the top of their fields, an invitation to tea with the Queen herself.

We grew together, Swanna and me, and anything was possible when we were looking at each other, when we were engaged, joined. She never feared me or shut down a single notion or speck of thought, and I did nothing but stretch out the vivid plains of her dreamscape, which were so rich with taste, I never met a human with more taste. Even the way she brought out the tea and scones, or how she put her outfits together with her bags, or the way she made the bed; everything was classy, unusual, and when you cast your eyes upon it you felt at home but at the same time you knew you were staring at something you had never seen before. Love with her was a familiar unknown, and we trusted each other in it, we were invincible. The last bath I ever had with Swanna was cold though, and bits of her blood floated about me as red buses passed by our window.

And I am not proud of certain things. Tell me a man who is proud of all his movements and I will eat a chair. But what surprised me most, and warmed me deep, was the level of forgiveness and, inevitably, the care that comes with people from the southern suburbs. I was a monster, and I nearly tore them down, addicted to ice and feverish with it, volatile and cruel and wielding trouble, and my friend Gordon, and his stepdad Albert, and numerous mates and blokes from the area chipped in and helped me build my little house on a leaf, overlooking the sea on Bundeena Reserve. They gave me another chance, and I am eternally grateful. It is easy to jump out of the village, move to the cities, and spend your time poking fun at the little places we hail from and their routine ways, but deep down inside you know that's where the real people are, the truly decent souls, and you fight and fight to deny it, until you need them so bad it hurts.

The ferries were too spread out on Sundays and I simply couldn't face the locals anyway. I loved Bundeena and its delicate beaches, the fact that it translates to ‘noise like thunder', and the magical sunsets and symphony of wildlife that sends you softly to sleep. The sweetest breeze blows across it, and it's only a hop, step and a jump back to the mainland, but going into town was an effort. Within weeks of living here I knew everyone, and bless their souls I've never met a more twisted, gregarious, and glorious set of people in my life, but at the same time I have never met a chattier bunch. A walk to the shops involved at least four or five lengthy conversations, usually concerning who had just had babies, what famous painters were moving in, and the ins and outs of council planning. Today I could not take the onslaught, so I called my dad and asked him to come pick me up. Let's face it, he was a driving instructor, surely he could manage it.

Dad wasn't really involved in the building of the house on a leaf, which hurt a bit. I thought it would be good for us to spend time together, make something together, and we wouldn't have had to talk that much at all, just hand each other wood, grunt a little, and suck a beer at the end of the day. But his girlfriend had issues with me, especially when she heard of my behaviour while on ice, and how I left a girl in London so soon after a miscarriage. She threatened to take Dad to court and obtain sole custody of their child if he ever saw me again, but lately things had changed, and I'm not so sure why, but lately he's been visiting me, and I've got to know my little half-brother Oscar, and it's nothing short of beautiful. I don't ask Dad how he came to be here, I figure she's loosened her grip, or maybe Dad is lying to her when he sees me, maybe my relationship with my father is covert – ha, ain't that something, to sneak out and see your son as if he's a secret lover!

I placed the kettle on the hob and whipped on the gas. I wiped my eyes and looked out my kitchen window, through the gum leaves to the bay. The local kids were running riot on the shore, which made me smile, if I didn't have this furious cuntfuck of a hangover I would wander down there and continue the adventure with them. Bundeena had brought me so much since I'd come here. It might seem to my mother and father that I had withdrawn from life and work, ‘given up' even, but there was so much happening inside, so much joy in my life, it was just quieter, and slower. I was rebuilding myself out here, a ferry ride from Cronulla, my old school in the distance, and this was the place to do it, with a bottle of Irish, in the mud and trees, with those mad-eyed little black and white bastards who lived this side of the bay.