Puberty Blues (3 page)

I was thirteen.

I'd been out of primary school a year.

It was in the back of a panel van.

I hadn't even got my periods yet.

I didn't even know where my hole was.

Actually, I thought there was only one hole, for pissing and having sex.

I tried to find out about it at school that day. I couldn't ask Sue 'cause she knew as much as me. I asked Tracey and Cheryl and the gang. I hadn't learnt that girls don't talk about doing it.

‘What am I s'posed to do?'

‘Just lay back. He'll know what he's doin'.'

He'd kissed me the first night. Titted-me-off the second night. And fingered me the next night. I bluffed it for a few days … ‘Oh, I'm on m' rags.' But it
was my duty on Friday night at the drive-in, to go all the way. I counted the hours to my initiation.

‘Six … seven … eight hours to go … I'm packin' shit.'

‘Look, you've used a Med, haven't you?' Tracey reassured me.

‘No.'

A flicker of concern crossed her face. ‘Oh. You'll be all right.'

There were six of us in the panel van. I sat in the front, calmly smoking a cigarette, listening to the suppressed screams of agony as Sue lost her virginity to Danny in the back.

That's the way it goes for girls. Every car in the parking lot was doing it … rocking up and down to the panel-van bop. Then it was my turn. I couldn't say no. Bruce had picked me out of all the other girls. Bruce was the top guy of the gang. Even better than Darren Peters. He was the eldest. He had a car, a job, money and the biggest prick.

He parted the purple curtains his mother had made for him, and pulled me over the seat. We undressed in silence, hauling off our jumpers and straight-legged Levis. I stretched out on the pink mattress. The windows began to fog.

He had a little tin in the back of the panel van, that everyone called the ‘Tool Kit'—full of frenchies. He used one with me.

After much fumbling …‘Ah …' A groan of satisfaction. ‘Now I'm gettin' somewhere.'

‘That's my bum hole,' I whispered, embarrassed.

I produced the jar of vaseline he'd asked me to bring. Things got mighty slippery … but it still hurt. I thought I was going to pass out.

He grunted and pushed harder. I clutched on to his hips.

‘Stop squeezin' m' hips.' I pressed my feet up against the back of the seat. He groped around for my breast. It was so small he couldn't find it.

After a while he gave up. I didn't know whether it'd worked or not. I didn't know what it was supposed to feel like.

I don't remember what happened next. We were just putting on our clothes … strapping myself into a bra that was holding up air.

‘I can't find my underpants.' I fumbled around and put everything on inside out. We climbed into the front as Kim and Dave got in the back. ‘K'niver cigarette?' I asked.

And that was the initiation in the Greenhills gang. That's the way every girl in the gang lost her virginity. The boys had to be good surfers and the girls had to be good screws.

Well, at least I was doing something on Saturday nights.

BEING with the boys made me feel important. They had a ‘thing' in life. Sort of like a religion. And they were devout. They went anywhere, in any kind of weather to any kind of surf. And we trotted along to entertain them when the sun went down. We went to any lengths to be with them. We'd sneak out of bedroom windows. Truant. Lie. Run away from home. Walk down to the beach in the pouring rain or sit on the sandhills in the blazing sun from dawn to dusk to watch their flick-outs and drop-ins. We'd go to the drive-in and come home three hours late when we knew our mothers would have rung up all the neighbours and the police and would be sitting up, waiting, with the feather duster.

It didn't matter what the consequences were 'cause if you were with the surfers you felt as though you
were
doing
something. The surf really mattered. Surfing was immortal and everything else was secondary. During the day they were just a bunch of black specks paddling out to sea. The only time we had any chance of getting any affection or attention was at night when it was too dark to check out the tubes. Then he'd rip into you. He'd be sun-soaked, salty, strong, soft and warm. Sometimes you'd think it was all worth it. But next day you may as well have been a baked dinner that he'd gorged, enjoyed and forgotten.

The next day he'd be back down the Point, checking out the southerly swells and right-handers.

The beach was the most sacred place of all. Boys' boards came before everything. It was waves, then babes. They were faithful to the sea and we were faithful to them.

Sue and I had learnt the rules and at last made it to Greenhills. It was about an hour's walk up the endless beach.

We spotted our gang. Sue and I mosied along, really cool.

‘Hi, Danny.'

‘Hi, Bruce.'

We dropped our towels and collapsed. There was Strack, the Brown-Eye chucker. Gull, short for Seagull. He could stay in the water longest. Wayne Wright, Cheryl's boyfriend. Tall, spunky, top-sufer, Dave Deakin. Glen Jackson, the doll, Johnno, Hen, a few others and Danny and Bruce, our boyfriends.

Soon the other girls arrived, galloping up the beach on their frothing horses. There was Kim on Cochise, Tracey on Rebel, Vicki on Prince, Cheryl on Randy and Kerrie on Candy.

Kerrie got conned into holding the horses while we had a cigarette break. Pulling out our Marlboros, we had smoke-ring competitions and flirted. The girls mounted up and galloped off along the beach. The boys mounted up and dived in. Sue and I were left behind. My horse, Misty, had gone lame. Sue didn't have one but we always doubled. Now we couldn't ride for a month.

It sure was boring sitting alone on the beach.

‘Oh, Bruce, lend us ya board,' I begged, squeezing my little boobies together with folded arms. They pouted out my black stocking-lined, crocheted-by-Auntie-Janet, bikini top.

‘Go ask Johnno.'

‘Oh, Johnno, lend us ya—'

‘Bite ya bum.'

Susan began to pester Danny.

‘Go on Danny. It's not fair.'

‘Go ask those other guys up the beach,' he said, pointing to a bunch of black specks. We made the trek to another tribe.

‘Can two of you lend us your boards?'

They looked at us dumbfounded. Then the tallest, brownest, blonde-hairedest spoke up.

‘Watja want me board for?'

‘For a ride.'

‘Oh hand roun'—you'll ding it.'

‘Where yas come from?'

‘How old are yas?'

‘What do ya want a board for?'

It was no use.

After two weekends of hassling we finally got the boards for half an hour as the surf was flat. The other gang guys had gone to catch the afternoon swell at Sandshoes.

Vicki, Greg Hennesey's chick, came with us. We hauled on the boys' boardshorts, giggling and squealing.

‘Oh, they're too big.'

‘How do you do up this fly, Danny?'

‘Bruce, will you do up mine?'

‘Oh, they keep falling down. Hee, hee, hee …'

‘Hope we don't get a board rash.'

‘At least we won't get jungle rash
^*
,' whispered Vicki.

With our boards under our arms, and our boardshorts flapping, we trotted down to the shore-breakers.

We paddled three feet out into the seething two-inch swell. Vicki nose-dived. I slid off. Sue made it to shore. Out we paddled again. Vicki nose-dived. I slid off, and Sue kneeled for a fraction of a second. After catching two waves we were exhausted. We lay on our boards and let the surf take us to shore. There we
stretched out on our waxy mattresses, panting.

‘
Oh no!
' I gasped, clutching my board. ‘Don't look now.'

We all looked. No. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible. But there he was. He was supposed to be round at Sandshoes.

‘Darren Peters!' Vicki and Susan shrieked in unison.

‘What'll we do?'

‘And Glen Jackson too.'

‘Just lay here.'

‘Don't look.'

‘Smile.'

‘He saw us.'

Darren was the King of Cronulla Beach. Tough. Cool. Sexy. Brown. Strong. Where Darren Peters walked, Dickheads feared to tread.

We were to talk about this for weeks.

‘… and then Darren Peters walked up the beach.'

‘What?
Darren Peters?
'

‘Yeah. He saw us surfin'. Oh God, it was just so embarrassing.'

We got out straight away, pulled up our boardshorts and staggered back to our boyfriends. They laughed at us zig-zagging towards them, too weak to carry the boards against the wind. They checked their boards for dings and stood over us as we waxed them. I'd watched them often enough to know what to do. We pulled on our tight Levis over sandy, dripping crocheted costume pants.

The gang boys had hauled tyres from the local Sandhills tip. The girls arrived on their horses. Black smoke belched into the sky as we huddled around to keep warm. The fire raged and Cronulla knew the Greenhills Gang were going. Then the storm clouds came and it was a mad race up the beach that we never won.

By horse, train or car, we made our way home, all sandy, soaked and exhausted. Sue and I picked off the last grains of sand from our jeans pockets, hair and toenails.

‘Oh yeah, Mum, the pictures were great …'

 

Each different surfing gang up and down the south coast has its own rules which you must respect when surfing in their territory. Each group resents the intrusion of any other tribe on to their beach. Cronulla surfies wage an endless war against the kids who come from the Western Suburbs. They're called Bankies, Towners or Billies. Cronulla being at the end of the train line, all sorts of tattooed, greasy, bad-surfing undesirables slide off. Boys from Cronulla are just as unwelcome on other beaches. For instance when you're surfing inside a tube, you call out ‘Ooh!' so the other boys know not to ‘drop in' on you. When Bruce did this at Wattamolla
^*
Beach, three touch locals approached him later. ‘You don't say, “Ooh”, 'ere mate,
you say, “Ay!” Why doncha go back to where ya come from? We don't want any Cronullaites round 'ere.'

When the surf's been especially bad for a few weeks, one surfie gang I know reckons they can get the waves pumping again. They get a dinged-up old board that's going mouldy out the back and strip it. A stake is plunged into its centre as a mast. A pair of scungies, which last about as long as a board, are strung up as a sail. Now it's time for the sacrifice. Girls are forbidden to attend. The board is set alight and cast out to sea. This pleases the God of the Seas, King Huey, named after a great ex-surfer. The next day, so the boys tell me, it's perfect tubes and nine-foot swells.

Another ritual is the surfie funeral service. Once when a local top-surfer was drowned in freakish big seas, for three days after no one was allowed into the water. The locals guarded the beach. They were paying their respects to the dead. Sanden Point went unsurfed as the perfect tubes rolled in.

The customs differ slightly from beach to beach. Dave Deakin, one of our top guys in the gang, moved from Cronulla up to Coolangatta a few years ago. He died there soon after from a heroin overdose. Nearly every surfie in Cronulla paddled out, past the point, to sit in half an hour's silence, mourning the death of their best surfer. One guy hurtled his board off the top of Cronulla Point where it smashed on the rugged rocks below.

Susan and I had our own little ritual. When sitting on the beach every weekend in the rain, hail or blistering, burning, thousand-degree heatwave got too boring, we tried staying home. We filled out
Dolly
quizzes, watched TV and waited and waited for the boys to show up. When that boredom became unbearable, Sue and I did rain dances on the verandah. We ‘whooped' and ‘stomped' and made genuine Daniel Boone Indian war cries round and round a beach towel. If the boys had seen us we would have been dropped. It never worked anyway. The sun still shone and the boys still surfed. We only ever saw them when the waves and the sun went down. Somehow, we had to get their attention. The gang girls stopped going to the beach on Saturday. We took up our own sport.

Saturday morning, after a breakfast of Cornflakes and sugar, all of us girls made our way to jazz ballet. On the way we called at the cake shop for a quick cream bun or a custard tart.

There was Tracey, the doll, Kim, Danny's sister, giggly Vicki Russell and Cheryl with the bow legs. Everyone knew she was a moll; you could tell by the way she walked. She wasn't a gang-bang moll though. The boys liked her and she didn't root for nothing. She always got a friendship ring. Then there was Kerrie who was on the fringe of the gang. She was going round with Gull but he was only using her. And Sue and me.

We lined up in our tight leotards and little terry-
towelling shorts, not quite covering our coloured underpants. Black undies were only for school. Every time we bent over, there'd be flashes of red, yellow, pink, lace, spots, leopard-skin … but never cottontails. Only nurds wore them. We practised a dance over and over to T-Rex. We were all desperately jealous of Kim who had the star role. She had a disjointed hip which she could flick out impishly. Sue and I stood at the very back waving our arms like fleshy windscreen wipers. Bronwyn was the teacher. She went on Bandstand
and
she was engaged!

‘Debbie and Susan stop talking or I'll send you out!'

For fifty cents each, it was one and a half hours of torture. The room was a mass of half-shaven legs, pointed toes, bottom cheeks peeping out, thighs, long swinging hair, giggles and groans.

After class we ran up Waratah Street, past Glen Jackson's house, all screaming and giggling, hoping Glen wouldn't see us in our shorts. Most of us wished he would though. First it was a banana and sugar sandwich at Kim's. That killed about an hour. Then it was a GI cordial drink at my place and maybe a biscuit. We talked about the boys.

‘Deadset Kim, Dave's stoked in you.'

‘Yeah, he told Bruce down the pub that he just wouldn't look at another chick.'

‘Oh, you'll be goin' roun' together for heaps. Danny reckons Dave's getting' ya a ring for ya birthday.'

Finally we tropped up to Sue's place to play ping-pong. Not to feel idle, we practised jazz ballet and worked up few of our own routines. We pretended we were going to show them off to the boys. Kim flicked her hip, Vicki giggled, Cheryl shouted and flashed her friendship rings. Tracey looked pretty, Sue and I cracked jokes and Kerrie didn't do anything.

One afternoon our rain dance worked. The surf dropped off. Mrs Knight let the boys in and disappeared to the kitchen. A series of jeans filed down the spiral staircase into the rumpus room. Denim Levis. Cord Levis. Green Levis. Black Levis. Patched Levis.
Never
Amco and
never
flared. And there was blonde hair—long, blonde, sun-bleached, stiff, straw-like, damp, salty, straight-from-the-sea hair. The girls were so brushed and the boys were so rugged.

We giggled and pranced about, pretending to be embarrassed in our shorts. All afternoon we showed off and bent over. They still didn't notice us.

‘Dropped in on Towner today.'

‘Oh good onya mate.'

‘Yeah, he was a roole egg.'

‘Didja see the tubes this morning? … Perf!'

‘Wanda was pumpin!'

‘Bummer it dropped off.'

‘Shouda seen me in this unroole tube, eh Deak?'

The boys pulled out their Marlboro cigarettes. Us girls hovered around them, listening attentively.

‘Oh didja Danny?'

‘Gee you're brave Bruce.'

‘K'niver fag Glen?'

For the rest of the afternoon, the boys took turns at the ping-pong table, shouted at each other and smoked cigarettes. The girls smiled, bludged smokes and looked attractively bored.

It was fantastic to have the boys for a whole afternoon.