On the way home I need to use the toilet.

I’m outside McDonald’s, but it looks crowded and bright.

Whenever I see a McDonald’s, I think about this Australian guy I met in Argentina who didn’t really drink much.

Didn’t get on the piss.

That was a phrase he used: ‘Nah, mate, don’t get on the piss.’

He worked out a lot and said that drinking fucked with his metabolism.

Or maybe it was his muscle memory.

It’s funny to think about little brains existing within our muscles and being like, Oi, where’s the fuckin’ bench press, dickhead?

I imagine a world within our bodies, where each of our muscles are born and they age, and eventually they are in high school, driving their cars fast back from Altona Beach to Melbourne, hopped up on coffee, singing Green Day anthems and telling three chicks in the backseat that they love them ‘heaps’, and time passes and they get old and eventually they die in a home somewhere, surrounded by people, telling their sons with their last breaths, ‘Hold down the fort, mate, you bloody beauty.’

One night the guy punched me in the arm and said, ‘We’re getting smashed tonight.’

In a serious way.

It might have been Australia Day.

Or Anzac Day.

I can’t remember.

But he said, ‘We’re smashing it.’

And it seemed like he was serious about getting smashed.

He said, ‘Mate, I tell ya, me granddad fought in Gallipoli.’

Pointing a finger at my chest.

He said, ‘Fucking fought for our beautiful country, kent.’

And I thought about what he meant by ‘our country’.

I thought about Australia.

Indigenous people.

White people coming in and being like, ‘I’m taking this land,’ and then taking the land.

White people being like, ‘We can improve you, we can make you more like us … Don’t worry,’ and then stealing Aboriginal children and committing genocide.

I thought about white people.

Myself.

My family.

How we returned from America and lived in Canberra for several months.

How all I did was play basketball with my friends.

Before school.

During school.

After school.

How we walked around Woden or Tuggeranong through crowds of people, laughing and dribbling the ball, pretending the strangers under bright lights were opponents — were against us somehow.

And sometimes we’d film one another playing one-on-one under the dry Canberra sky, working on our crossovers, trying to make one another fall over, trying to put the ball through one another’s legs, copying the moves we’d seen on the AND 1 mixtapes, copying the moves we’d done to each other while playing AND 1 StreetBall on PlayStation 2.

And I remembered taking a trip to Gosford with my family to see our relatives that summer. And how some friend of the family was on the computer and I asked him if he wanted to see me and my friends playing basketball and he said something about it not being football and I loaded this CD into the computer and he watched us playing on indoor courts and outdoor courts, nailing threes, lowering the goals and dunking, diving through people’s legs, dancing — and all of it done to Nelly’s album Country Grammar — and all of us at the end smiling, with our arms around one another, sort of play-fighting, with the sun and blue sky coming down around us, sunlight covering our faces.

When the movie finished, the guy looked at me.

He cleared his throat.

He said, ‘Whatcha hanging out wif all them blackfellas for?’

And I didn’t know what to say.

He shook his head.

Laughing.

Not really waiting for a response.

Grabbing a beer from the fridge and walking outside.

Back in Argentina, the guy had put his arm around me and said, ‘Australia. Best fucking country in the world, mate.’

And I nodded.

Staring at my white skin on his white skin.

Afraid of saying something.

Included by default once more.

Always wanting to fit in and being weak because of it.

And he put a jug of beer in front of us and said, ‘Smash it.’

And I thought about war and about genocide and race relations and land and assimilation and death and victory and school, and how people are taught to assume they’re better than other people, to have power, and how good it is to have power because then you can fuck other people who don’t have power and that is how you win.

We drank our beer.

I stayed silent while he spoke about visiting Thailand, and how great Thailand was because ‘for, like, no money you can get these Thai bitches to bring you food and also fuck you in your twenty-dollar-a-night hotel room.’

He said, ‘Twenty bucks, kent.’

And I did nothing.

Just sat there.

Thinking: people smashing people and then getting smashed because of it.

His girlfriend was normally with him, but she wasn’t there that night.

I said, ‘Where’s Katy?’

And he said, ‘The Bank’s out with the girls.’

And then he laughed like this: ‘HAHAHAHA.’

His girlfriend’s last name was Bank.

We drank more beer.

He said, ‘Nah, don’t wear condoms meself — not now that I’ve got The Bank.’

And I nodded.

He said, ‘Not that I did before, either.’

He laughed, shaking his head.

And I joined in, grinning.

Because grinning is something you do when you have no idea what’s going on.

And the following scene played out in my head.

Like a thirty-second YouTube clip.

In the shallows of some Australian ocean, I watched octopi morph into the shapes of forgotten spear guns, and above them people in speedboats tied ropes to other speedboats and anchored together. They drank Bundy rum in cans and played loud music and threw their empty Bundy cans into the ocean, and all you could hear was the revving of engines, and all you could see were the octopi morphing into the shapes of forgotten Bundy rum cans.

The guy said, ‘Hot tip: all you gotta do is dip your dick in Listerine after you fuck ’em.’

And I kept grinning.

Thinking something like: I don’t think it works like that, or that might cause severe long-term damage to the nerve endings in your penis.

But still grinning.

Yeah.

Agreeing and morphing.

Part of the team.

We drank beer.

He said, ‘You should come to the gym tomorrow.’

And I said, ‘Okay.’

And we drank more beer and left.

And around midday the next day I called him, because I was at the gym and he wasn’t.

The Bank picked up.

I said, ‘Where’s —’

And she said, ‘In jail. He pissed on a McDonald’s counter last night. He ruined one of the tills.’

I don’t go into McDonald’s.

My bladder is pushing against my jeans.

The sky opens up and rain smashes my face.

I realise I’m close to RMIT, so I go there.

I walk up the stairs and towards the library.

In the library, everyone looks really wholesome.

It seems like RMIT is shooting a commercial sponsored by Colgate, Sportsgirl, and David Jones.

And as I walk to the toilet, I hear this girl talking on her iPhone.

She says, ‘I have a test tomorrow and I’m really stressed. Daddy, I can’t take the tram … Umm, what? … Umm, can you please just drive me? Please, daddy. Daddy. SHUT UP, MUM. YOU’RE A BITCH. Daddy?’

I enter a cubicle and sit on the toilet.

I’m only there for a minute when the door opens and some people walk in.

One of them says, ‘You going out tonight, Wazza?’

And Wazza says, ‘Dunno, mate, dunno.’

And another guy says, ‘Why you even thinking about going out if Jackie said she’d help you with your assignment?’

And Wazza says, ‘Which Jackie?’

And a third guy says, ‘Come on, mate — Jackie with the tits.’

And Wazza says, ‘Fair point,’ and pauses and says, ‘Might have a go; she’d love it. Probably bring some wine over. What do ya reckon, red or white?’

And the first says, ‘Gotta be red, mate.’

And the third says, ‘Red makes the girls gag for it.’

And the first says, ‘Makes their pussies cry, mate.’

And Wazza laughs and says, ‘Fair point.’

And the first says, ‘So, you gonna come out after then?’

And Wazza says, ‘After what?’

And the first says, ‘After ya fucking slam her, ya dickhead!’

And Wazza says, ‘What do you reckon?’

And everyone laughs.

I stay on the toilet even though I’ve already pissed.

I think: boys being boys.

Mateship.

The Australian dream.