Whole Wild World (27 page)

Like the sudden, falling exhilaration after a wild ride at Luna Park, the night decelerates into slow numbers; hungry hands cradle bottoms and slender arms surround necks. The house lights inflict an injury; doors fly open, filling raw lungs with night air. Disco fever breaks. What seems like a commotion of tempos and tastes hides a natural, democratic order. This raging sonic virus infects us all.

So it goes for nineteen-year-old Mohammed, a moustachioed, wiry tough. He'd been in fights and warned off, but he just can't stay away from this Friday-night scene for fifteen and sixteen-year-old school kids. Mohammed, with his rudimentary English and jingle-jangle strut, is tenacious. Must be the music. Among the first Muslims we notice in the area, he's a preening mantis around Lakemba, an all-weather irritant clad in a black nylon jacket, skinny pants and zip-up boots. Whatever he's jigging – prayers, language classes, a job – he's not missed. Lebanese Christians are wary, but tolerate him. He's forever a party of one.

Mohammed talks to himself in a mangle of sweary Arabic and newly acquired street talk. I once sold him a Coke at St Therese. Instead of pushing down the pop-top – there was a
small and big hole – he pulled out a knife and jammed it into the can in a showy way. I found the ploy hilarious rather than threatening.

‘Why did you open it like that?'

‘Anybody fuck with Mohammed, Mohammed kill,' he said, stabbing the side of his can with the 10-centimetre blade. The deep wound in the offending aluminium oozed liquid sticky.

Coke was on notice: do not fuck with Mo. I once saw this man-boy at Lakemba station running down the stairs for the train, jumping the rail with a dozen steps to go, landing like a cat, spray jacket puffing out like a saggy hot-air balloon. The story goes, a P-plated ute, full of punchy apprentices, once chased him down a street in Lakemba. Rattled, his back arched, slinky Mohammed outran the mob, leaping the fence behind a block of flats to get away.

During English I am summoned to the principal's office in the front room of the Brothers' house, a routine request that year as I am often required for duty at short notice.

‘I think this is meant for you,' Brother Paul says, handing over a bulging blue, letter-sized envelope and catching me off guard with a grimmer look than seems necessary.

‘Okay, thanks Brother.'

It's addressed to ‘Tom D (the cute one from
It's Academic
)'.

I blush, but puff out my chest. Fan mail, from J.W. Russell, who lived in Emerald in Victoria. Although we'd finished the show months earlier, the episodes are now being shown on TV. I'm not going to open it in front of Brother Paul so I excuse myself and leave.

The cute one. Me. Wow! Wait till I show Wally. There's no private space to read it so I stuff the envelope under my jumper
and go back to class, where the MoD is flogging 10 Gold with
Lord of the Flies
. I'm unable to think of anything except the fat letter sitting in my bag. Why so thick?

At the end of the day, alone in the classroom, I open it. There are a dozen glossy-paper cut outs from magazines; flesh, pubic hair, pink bits. Whoa! I can't be caught with this stuff at school. I zip it into my bag.

‘So, who's the letter from, Wombles?' Supercoach asks when I pass him at the gate. Word has spread, Mick forever at the crossroads of executive power and teen gossip.

‘I haven't opened it yet,' I reply, feigning an urgent need to get to an appointment. ‘Too busy. I'm saving it for later. At home, Sir.'

As soon as I'm a decent distance from Lakemba shopping centre, I sit and sort through the letter's contents. There are pages from pornographic magazines, folded into a wad, nude women cut in the shape of Saturn rockets, or maybe penises, with due respect for scale. I'm not a prude about classified material, but this is too ribald. Over six or seven blue sheets, the writing is not easy to read. I'm shaking, confused, but also excited to see what J.W. Russell has to say:

That afternoon I show Frank and Wally the letter and the accompanying porno-phernalia. They help me decipher Jane's handwriting. I had raced through it to get to the last line. The request for naked pictures is weird, too forward, a step too far; I'd need a lot more scruff before showtime.

‘Jane Russell must have friends who will be into all this stuff as well,' I tell Frank, wondering where to safely stash the letter. ‘As soon as we're old enough to drive or catch the train, we should all go to meet her. Emerald is either a suburb of Melbourne or a country town.'

I'd look it up in the
Britannica Atlas
.

I was in private turmoil for weeks. My life was frenetic but I could not stop thinking about lusty Jane and the wild times in Emerald 3782. Turned on and repulsed, empowered in some way, yet even more aware of my lack of firepower. I was unsettled by the attention. I didn't know anyone who thought about sex in this way or who would go to such elaborate means to put it down on paper. What had she seen on TV to identify me as a degenerate? Was it obvious that I, too, had lewd thoughts? Although not in the manner of Jane's Fellini-style orgy on Planet Emerald, more like a free-form music video of MacKillop girls in tight jeans and bikini tops doing the go-go scene from
Lost in Space
.

If I ever met Jane, I wanted it to be strictly on my terms. If all else failed, there was an extreme therapy for terminal virginity.

I didn't have the erotic wordplay or feverish crudity to match her, so I never replied. But I did not forget. For a time, I wondered if she was good-looking or if that mattered. Doubts crept in. Most of the girls I knew had really neat, light handwriting. How come hers was ragged and hard-pressed, like an old person's?

The long letter was soon discarded, too creepy. But curiosity persisted. If it wasn't a schoolgirl, who was the letter writer? God, no. I tucked away the address slip in my cigarette box from Croatia. There it sat, still does, a sinister talisman of what lurks in the wilder world.

I'd heard through back channels – a girl who told a girl who overhead another girl tell a boy at the bus stop – that Sharlene thought I was ‘cute' or ‘interesting' or ‘nice', precision customarily sacrificed for speed on the teen telegraph. Girls talk. She'd made the first move. Or someone had, and I was glad. This was a vital fire-starter because I was too lame to get a flame going. Clearly, the barn dancing and a slight change in body shape were paying dividends for me.

How to proceed? Supercoach knew all the Year Ten girls from gate duty and he engineered a date of sorts. A door-knock appeal was scheduled for Sunday – most likely the Salvos or Red Cross – and MacKillop and St John's were making an assault on Lakemba homes.

‘Why don't you pair up with her for the collection?' he said.

‘Is that even allowed?'

‘We make the rules here, Wombles.'

Brilliant move, and on turf I knew well. Sharlene and I were allocated a few streets and off we went. She was shy at first, eyes doe-like above freckled cheeks. For a few hours we knocked on doors, a budding couple with official collectors' badges. My nervousness passed because of her smile and we talked easily.

Her father was the coach of the Under-14s, the most successful footy team in the history of the school, four years into a run of five premierships. I thought one of the Firsts would be her type, but I was wrong. We talked about music, TV shows, kids at school, and swimming; her parents managed Greenacre Pool over the summer and she was a squad swimmer. Sharlene had somewhere to be that afternoon and I walked her to a corner to say goodbye. She put her hand on my shoulder and reached up quickly to kiss me on the cheek, catching me by surprise.

‘That was fun,' she said, soft eyes confirming it was heartfelt. ‘See you at school. Don't keep all the money.'

I stayed at the corner of Wangee Road and Lakemba Street
watching her walk away, the midday sun on smooth, strong shoulders. My heart was rejoicing. I could still smell a fruity hint of lipgloss and I thirsted for another kiss. I could almost taste the next stage, a kiss on the lips, then more, of dating or ‘going round' with her, although I'd have to keep my parents in the dark. They'd never approve, nor understand that I had these genuine, fresh feelings. I didn't have the words in Croatian to describe my emotions to them. I wanted to know this lovely girl as a close friend – to hold hands, chat to on the phone about whatever came into our heads.

But, right now, more than anything, I wanted to kiss her again.

A few weeks later there was a party at my mate Sam's house. His parents were away and almost everyone we knew found their way there. I'd slipped some long-neck beer bottles from the fridge into a bag and shared it among the first boys at the party. The girls were drinking white wine, still and sparkling. Having run out of beer, I went with another boy to the Lakemba Hotel to buy as many more as our wallets would allow. Not many.

Over the winter I'd been to several sixteenth birthday parties. Some of the guys would camp near the backyard fire, straddling a half-carton of cans or stubbies, chugging beers until the gullet wall burst and it came out the way it went in.

Greg was school vice-captain and we ended up having a heart-to-heart over beers in the school grounds, not wanting to be seen drinking on the streets of Lakemba. He'd come to St John's from the country the previous year and our grade had never seen his like; he spoke in a bush drawl at the time his voice was breaking.

‘Hey Sir, what's re-connn-sill-eee-ayyy-shun?' he'd asked the MoD, in front of the whole year at school camp, about the new-wave term for confession that we'd been using for awhile in liberated Lakemba.

Sitting on a bench at MacKillop, a splendid, secret beer garden near a holy statue, we'd almost finished our cans when someone –
most likely one of the Brothers – came upon us in the darkness.

‘Hey, who's over there?' he said, a voice we did not recognise. ‘You're not allowed to be here. Come out so I can see you.'

Greg and I bolted, sliding away on wobbly feet, disco-booting it into the night and back to Sam's party.

Busted. Or were we?

There would be explaining on Monday morning, we figured in our semi-pissed haze of regret. I was sure we'd been identified. Better to get ahead of the story on this one, I urged Greg. Let's fess up to Brother Paul, face the consequences. It's not as if they would impeach us like Nixon or sack us like Gough so close to the end of the year.