Jimmy, Tyson, Leon and I get off at Flinders Street station and make our way through the big city. I didn’t see Trav and Shitty get off, and I don’t care. My skin is buzzing and my eyes are stuck open. I don’t want to blink and miss one image.
Asian restaurants are crammed with people twirling soupy noodles into their mouths, while neon lights hum and sputter in the windows. Young men in tight shirts stride with young women in tight dresses, zigzagging across the pavement to avoid collisions with ambling families.
We line up outside the entrance of Playland. It’s sensory overload but in a good way. Fresh colours, fresh scents, fresh vibe.
On the edge of the pavement, near the road, there’s a serious-looking man with a twisted moustache standing behind a hot plate. He slathers molten Nutella onto bubbling crepes. The scent of chocolate and hazelnuts is quickly eclipsed by the candied cloud smoking up from the roasted cashews stand nearby.
To the side of that, a baby-faced man with a head like a basketball, perfectly round and pimpled, sits cross-legged on a picnic rug, sucking on a microphone. His distorted screeches dribble out of a beaten-up box amplifier the size of a milk carton. A couple strolls past him. The man places a twenty-dollar note in the busker’s empty Vegemite jar. His date beams at him and grabs his forearm tighter.
I love this city. It’s all good people just helping each other to get by and have a better time.
‘James Du Toit?’
A chilli-red dress blazes through the blur of T-shirts and jeans and stops in front of us.
‘Hell fuckin’ yeah!’ Jimmy confirms.
The girl smiles wide. Each of her teeth is perfectly gapped by a millimetre. They’re the kind of teeth that turn pretty girls into supermodels. Her tight black hair is plaited on one side and scooped up into a sweet puff on the other. Her silky dark skin makes a stunning contrast against the red dress.
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ she says and extends her hand.
‘The pleasure is all your boy’s.’ Jimmy clumsily attempts a handshake-to-cheek-kiss transition.
‘Welcome to Burn City. These are my day ones: Tyse, Leon and Bones.’
‘So great to meet you all too!’ She shakes Tyson’s hand, then Leon’s, and then holds out her hand towards me.
My gaze moves slowly from her shiny red nails to her face. Her dark eyes inspect me curiously. I look away before they can trap me.
‘Bonesy is a bit shy,’ Leon says.
My cheeks burn. I’m not shy. Not especially. Not usually. He knows why I can’t touch her. The same reason I can’t touch anyone, the same reason no one should touch anyone. Because we’re all filthy. And the less we share that around, the better off we’ll be.
‘Let’s do this!’ Jimmy calls as the line starts moving. He leads the way and Naya falls in behind him. Her white wedge shoes take confident, languid steps forward. I watch her hips sashay left to right, left to right like a pendulum. My heart hammers at my ribs with each sway.
We walk down the stairs and present our tickets to the blue-haired woman at the door.
‘Hello, ma’am,’ Jimmy says. ‘The four of us blokes here would like a drinking pass, please.’
She reaches out for our IDs and Leon passes his first.
‘Nice try, mate, but this isn’t you,’ she says and chucks the card in a plastic tub with a bunch of other fakes.
‘The rest of us are over-age, though, miss,’ Jimmy says. ‘I swear.’
‘Let me see.’ She takes Tyson’s and Jimmy’s cards. ‘Close, but nup.’ Another clatter in the tub.
‘What?!’ Jimmy squeals. ‘That’s my ID! You can’t just throw out my ID!’
Naya is trying to suppress a grin but it keeps breaking through at the corners. I put my ID in my pocket.
‘Okay, no worries,’ the lady says. ‘I’ll call the cops and your mum and they can come and verify your age for us. Otherwise I’ll be nice and let you go in as an under-ager.’
Jimmy huffs and strides into the club. ‘Fuck dese old hoes,’ he mutters under his breath.
‘What did you say?’ the door lady snaps. Jimmy thunders down the stairs and Tyson follows. Leon and I take it at a slower pace.
‘Wait for me, kids,’ Naya says. I turn back and see the door lady affixing a red wristband on Naya. My jaw unhinges. She struts up to us and holds her passport out.
‘Isn’t my sister beautiful?’ The girl in the picture has a face like Naya’s and a name like her too. ‘Jaya’s passport’s all stamped out, so it’s good to put it to use.’
‘Legendary.’ Leon holds his hand out and Naya slaps it. ‘Blackfellas are clever up in the States too, eh?’
‘But of course.’
She passes me and glides down the blue-and-white-checked stairs, then stops and looks up. A lavish mosaic of tiny tiles runs up the walls and across the ceiling. I see gold stars and a sunset on the navy night sky. I see ocean swells and muscled Ancient Greek bodies curled in pensive positions, their fists stuck to their chins.
‘This place is pretty trippy,’ Leon says.
‘Yeah, it’s wild,’ Naya replies. The light bouncing off the tiles makes her plump lips glimmer. When I catch up to her, she smirks a little, then walks each step with me.
‘I have a question for you, Mr Bones,’ she says. ‘Would you shake BMT’s black hand, or is it just women you’re afraid of?’
She doesn’t hold back.
My heart starts galloping and I almost choke trying to say something.
‘Bones is probably the least racist bloke you’re going to meet in this country,’ Leon says.
‘Ahh.’ Naya thinks she’s clocked it. ‘So it’s the old girl germs you’re running from?’
‘No,’ I finally manage to force out. ‘Not girl germs. All germs.’
Her face screws up and I step ahead to Leon.
Bass rumbles collide with trebly snare rattles as we get deeper into the club. Tyson and Jimmy are waiting at the foot of the stairs. Once we see them, they slide into the disabled bathroom. Jimmy pokes his head out and nods at me. ‘It’s clean. Naya, meet us back here in three minutes.’
‘Okayyyy.’ She makes a little half-laugh and wanders off.
I suck in a deep breath and hold it.
The guys know there’s no chance I’m going to walk into a general public cesspit, so meeting in the disabled toilet is a compromise. It’s still tough for me, but I presume no disabled people would go to a gig here anyway, so this room should be fresh from the daily scrub.
I walk inside. It’s clean. The sink and floors are glistening. I feel a cannonball of compacted air in my stomach diffuse as I breathe out relief. We must be the first people in here tonight.
Then I spot a light puddle on the floor tiles. And some yellowish droplets on the toilet seat. We weren’t the first in. The room suddenly smells like half a cup of bleach was splashed on one side and half a cup of urine splashed on the other. I cover my nose and mouth with my T-shirt.
Filter your airways with clean clothes if you’re forced to breathe contaminated air. That’s a rule.
This is going to be a tough couple of minutes.
Jimmy pulls all of us into a huddle for his pep talk. I angle my face so that only my ear is in the circle. I wouldn’t survive twelve seconds in that dank cauldron of bro breath, even with a filter, but I let him keep his arm around me. He’s only touching clothes, not my skin. It’s going to be okay—it’s not my skin.
‘Damn, boys, you feel that?’ He nods vigorously. ‘We really out here! Okay, so you know I got dibs on the new girl, but it’s all gucci, cos it’s kitty city out there tonight. I surveyed the situation, and it’s a lit-uation—there’s hoes all about, and they’re for everybody. I’ve even peeped some older ones that might be down for a night with a young blood, you feel me?’
‘Oh, shit yeah,’ Tyson shouts and bounces on his toes.
‘Like, cradle snackers?’ I say.
‘What’s that?’ Jimmy asks.
‘They’re like cradle snatchers, but they’re just snacking. Because they don’t want to commit.’
Jimmy grins. ‘Yeah, Bonesy, I dig that. Cradle snacking. They just want to hit it one time for the people!’ He lowers his head and pulls us in tighter. ‘Aight, boys, remember tonight—no pussy on a pedestal. Say it with me…’
Leon and I break out of the lame huddle but Tyson recites the call.
‘No pussy on a pedestal!’
Leon flicks Jimmy’s ear. ‘Dude, where’s the good shit?’
‘Ahh yeah,’ Jimmy says, contemplating the question. ‘Yoink!’ He snatches off my cap again. I lash out and try to grab it back but he pulls it close and extracts a piece of plastic from behind the sweat strip. It’s a tiny ziplock bag imprinted with the face of a smiling old man in a cowboy hat. Inside it, there are four clear plastic capsules half-filled with murky pebbles.
‘Oh Bonesy! I didn’t know you were friends with Molly too!’
‘What?’ My voice squeaks high, like when you push one of those plush toys in the stomach. I try to make my voice go low but I overcompensate and end up sounding like Batman getting angry. ‘You turned me into a drug mule?’ Then my voice squeaks up again at the end: ‘Fuck you, Jimmy!’
‘Fuck you, Jimmy,’ he parrots.
‘Jim,’ Leon says, tucking a brown curl behind his ear, ‘that’s a bit fucked up.’
‘Well, call me Jimmy Houdini. I’m the magic man. Point is, we got the candy in the building, didn’t we?’
‘Your pocket would have worked fine.’
‘Look, I’ve never been to a club before, okay? I thought maybe they had sniffer dogs or something. Whatever. Point is this pill is gonna make Tyse sprout balls so he can talk to girls. Hoes. Love. Confidence. And Leon, my bro, I bet the batty boys love it too.’
Jimmy pinches out the capsules and slaps them into the waiting open palms. ‘One for me the OG, one for Leon and two for Tyse—cos he’s fat. No offence, T-dog.’
‘None taken.’ Tyson shoves both caps into his mouth and whips his head back to swallow.
‘Ty! What the fuck, man? We were gonna do this together!’ Jimmy looks pissed off, then he looks proud. ‘Nice, though! No water or anything. You sure you don’t want some, Bonesy? I can split mine with you.’
My annoyance with Jimmy eases a little. He’s always generous like that. I don’t want it, though: it might interact with my Prozac and kill me.
‘No, that’s fine, thanks. I’ll look out for you guys tonight.’
‘Of course you won’t have one’—he laughs—‘cos you’re a puss-puss. Here, puss puss puss.’ He imitates my mum calling for our cat Elvis to eat, tapping his pill with a finger like it’s a spoon chinking on a tin of cat food. ‘Here, puss puss puss.’
After another tap, the cap slips out of his fingers and drops onto the ground.
‘Fuck!’ Jimmy screams. ‘Fuck fuck fuck!’ He picks it up from the tiles and holds it to the light. There’s fluid on it.
‘Ooh unlucky, that’s definitely piss,’ Leon says.
Jimmy’s face contorts. I edge towards the corner of the room, as far away as possible without touching the walls. ‘Leon,’ he wails. ‘Give me yours, man. Please!’
‘Hell no.’ Leon pops his on his tongue, ducks his head under the tap and slurps from the stream.
‘Shit. Shit!’ Jimmy stamps around, still holding the pill aloft. ‘What do I do? It’s melting! It’s fucking melting.’
Leon comes up from the basin smirking with joy. ‘You’re gonna have to shelve it, cuz.’
‘Stick it up my ass? Oh, fuck no. That’s gay as fuck.’
‘All the drug dealers do it. It’s how they smuggle it in. Those pills have probably already been inside three people before they even got to you. It gets you high quicker, too.’
‘Really?’ Jimmy swivels his head to me for a second opinion.
‘Well…’ I say, ‘doesn’t Big Money Tippah have a song about doing that?’ I hate to set Jimmy up, but he did turn me into a drug smuggler. And it’s the truth: there is a song about it.
Jimmy strides over to the basin and runs the capsule under water.
‘Aight. If it’s good enough for BMT, it’s good enough for me. All y’all look away, please.’ We turn to the wall and focus on the white tiles. His belt clinks open. I glance along the line at Leon and Tyson. They’re the most ecstatic firing squad victims ever. Jimmy mumbles ‘No homo’ to himself and his pants rustle.
‘Okay, we good.’
We all turn to him as he fastens his belt back up.
‘Jimmy the OG,’ Leon announces, ‘you have now officially taken it up the butt.’
‘Yeah, you’re a poofta!’ Tyson howls.
‘Fuck off!’
‘Why didn’t you just take the crystals out of the cap and eat ’em?’ Leon asks.
‘What?! I thought it was sealed! Fuck you guys. I bring you IDs, pills and my presence, and this is how you thank a wigga.’
Jimmy says ‘wigga’ a lot. He believes only he can use it because he is one. He doesn’t seem to know or care that it’s usually an insult.
‘With friends like youse, eh?’ He storms out. Sometimes he unconsciously switches back to speaking like a full-blooded Banarangatan too.
Tyse and Leon follow him out giggling.
I stay back and look in the mirror. What if all my freckles joined together, I wonder. Would I look black? I’d pass for bi-racial at least. Or maybe I’d be the same caramel colour as Leon. We’d be like real brothers.
Trav and I are like strangers with the same parents, living proof that you can’t choose your family. If I could choose, Leon would be my fraternal twin brother, Jimmy would be my cool big brother. And Tyson would be our embarrassing cousin.
I find the guys at the bar. Jimmy has three five-dollar notes out and is pleading with Naya to buy him a Hennessy and Coke. ‘Sorry, you’re under age, sir,’ she says, trying and failing again to suppress a smile.
‘He started off so smooth a minute ago,’ Leon tells me, ‘then he got really desperate. It’s too funny.’
Jimmy’s face scrunches up in pain. He turns his back to her and strides towards the mosh pit.
Naya gets a gin and tonic and we buy cans of Coke, then we move closer to the front before BMT starts. Tyse and Leon flank me like I’m the president and they’re my bodyguards, so I get a clear path through the crowd without scraping anyone. We settle on a spot, and I’ve got a perfect bubble of space surrounding me—six centimetres of separation.
A tense beat rumbles out of the speakers while the people around me talk and drink, drink and talk. I look ahead at the outlines of boxy shapes behind the black velvet curtain that veils the stage.
‘That was quite an entrance,’ Naya says to me. ‘Are you someone special?’
‘Definitely not.’
The lights and speakers cut dead. Necks snap out of conversations and heads face forwards. It’s absolutely silent and nearly pitch-black.
A second later the peace is broken by a clamour of claps, screeches and shouts that clobber my eardrums.
The curtain falls to the stage floor and machine-gun noises blare. A frenzied red laser stabs our eyeballs, and smoke rises to cloak the DJ booth. It’s cool, but I’m distracted by a guy in front of me. I can smell the stale beer and sweat trapped in his matted dreadlocks. He’s charging his hands in the air with the heavy metal sign for the devil. I think he’s at the wrong concert.
A roaring horn sounds off. BMT glides into the middle of the stage on a skateboard encrusted with mirror shards. He’s got a microphone in one hand and a white polystyrene double-cup in the other. He’s wearing shiny black leather high-tops, black leather shorts and a purple-trimmed black leather T-shirt. His eyebrows are dyed purple, and his bleach-tipped baby dreads dangle and shake like dirty strings on a mop. He looks half assassin, half clown.
‘What’s good, Mel-born?’ he shouts into the microphone so loud it distorts. ‘Who finna party wit me toniiiiiight?’
‘I am’ or ‘we are’ would be a good reply, but no one in the crowd answers the question with words—just more screaming and cheering.
‘Let’s do this!’ he yells.
Cold whumps and whams whoosh out of the bass amps below the stage; it feels like air conditioning fanned straight into my face. The crowd in front of me sways as a mass, like choppy waves in the ocean. Kids jump and land and stumble and get pulled into the riptide then spat out again. The only way to survive is to let the crush take you where it wants.
I’m just far enough away to watch all the assaults on personal space being committed without suffering one myself. Boys are pushing each other and girls are getting trampled. It’s two minutes in, and everyone’s T-shirts are already patched dark with drink and sweat. Elbows and arms flail about, cheekbones and foreheads bash together. Bodies hit the floor then bounce back up again for more.
I’m scared and repulsed. I now realise what I actually wanted from tonight was a nice walk around the city and then to go home, not this madness. Why couldn’t BMT have a small seated concert under the stars? That’s civilised.
I can feel a weight under my ribs. It’s not physical, it can’t be, but it still pulls down on the little bones in there. It’s like it’s trying to snap them.
I want to go but I can’t leave—I need to get Mum that haircut.
‘I fucked your bitch/nigga/bitch/I fucked your bitch,’ BMT bellows over the beat. ‘I fucked your bitch/then I/fucked your/nigga’s bitch!’
This is my favourite song. I try to enjoy it, even though it sounds more like the crunch of a bag of ice being battered into concrete then the track I listen to at home. I still love the lyrics, though. It’s clever how he manages to compress several offensive statements into the same five words.
‘Borrrrrrrring,’ Naya groans. ‘This song is so dumb.’ She slurps down the last of her gin and tonic. ‘I’m going to get a refill.’ She turns and is swallowed by the crowd.
Three songs later, Jimmy’s lips are sucked in over his teeth. His pupils are fat and black and sunk in his swimming-pool-blue irises. He’s marching on the spot, his feet pounding the ground heavily, like they’re set in cement blocks.
‘This is fucking amazing!’
‘Yeah, it sounds good,’ I lie, wincing as another bass note pummels me.
‘No, man, the rock candy from your cap. It might be even better than pussy.’ He turns to face the stage and initiates his spasmodic up-and-down arm dance sequence that he swears is how you’re meant to move to rap music. It looks like an aerobics routine done by a robot.
Maybe I should have taken one of those mind-obliteration capsules too. It seems to make this environment bearable. Aren’t they mostly cleaning fluid, anyway? You can’t get much more sterile than that.
‘You feeling anything yet, Tyse?’ Leon asks, pouting his lips and giggling.
‘Yeah. I’m hungry.’
BMT launches into another banger, a song called ‘Bitch, Stop Smoking Rock (Get Up on My Cock)’. It’s the closest he comes to conscious rap. I look around the audience. It’s made up of other dewy faces bopping up and down like Jimmy. I’m the odd one out.
A guy is guzzling a girl’s face near me. She’s clasping at his forearms as he clamps the back of her skull with his hands and works on her lips at obtuse angles, hurdling his nose over hers back and forth. It’s horrific.
I should make sure Naya’s okay, she’s new to the country. Jimmy’s parents wouldn’t be happy if she went missing—he might actually get punished for the first time in his life.
‘Tyse. Let’s get food.’
‘Sweet, is there a canteen?’
‘Ah, yeah. Surely. Leon, we’ll be back soon.’
Tyse barges through the crowd, carving out a clear trail for me and two blonde white girls to follow.
‘Where are the sausage rolls?’ Tyse says as we get to the bar. ‘This isn’t a canteen at all.’
‘Jeez, sorry man. I guess it’s just drinks.’
‘Bugger.’ Tyse shrugs and steamrolls back into the pit.
I don’t feel guilty—it’s good for Tyson to learn that not every public place in the world has a canteen. I put my can on a drink stand near the wall and scan the club for Naya.
I can’t find that flash of red anywhere. She must be in the bathroom. Or she’s genuinely missing. I’ll wait six minutes before I call triple zero. I’ve got a bad record with emergency services this year. I’ve made eighteen calls to report Mum missing and she ended up not (technically) being missing for any of them.
‘Hey!’ shouts one of the blonde girls. She twirls a fingerful of hair into a ringlet and recites a full sentence, which I hear none of because the bass and rap-shouting is ricocheting off the walls.
‘Pardon? I didn’t hear you.’
She giggles and sips on a plastic cup of lurid green liquid. She’s wearing a pink crop top and powdery blue denim shorts. She looks like a girl I saw on the cover of a magazine Jimmy once bought from a servo.
She steps closer and I flinch.
‘I said, have ya got any pills tonight?’ she rasps into my ear. Her accent is nasal, severe and suburban.
‘Oh. No. I don’t. Jimmy doesn’t have any left either, in fact he had to shelve his off the toilet floor.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘Shelved. It means he inserted it into his anus.’
Her mouth bunches up. ‘Fuck, you boys are real freaks, aren’t yas?’
She shakes her head at her friend coming back from the bar. She points at me and taps her temple three times, like I’m crazy. But then she steps closer and flashes a wicked smile. She strokes my chest. ‘Well, I like freaks,’ she whispers.
I reel back. It’s okay. It’s just my T-shirt she’s touching. Not my skin.
She turns around and bends forwards, jutting her backside out towards my crotch. Her pink thighs remind me of the raw chicken Mum pounds with herbs every second Sunday. She starts to wobble her buttocks, and I step back further and crash into a drink stand. I catch it before it topples over, but two half-empty glasses of beer slip onto their sides, sending their contents cascading off the table in a foamy waterfall.
‘What’s wrong with yah?’ she says. ‘Not man enough for a twerking girl?’
I would usually compliment the wordplay on ‘working girl’, but I don’t think it was intentional. Plus my throat has seized up because this is some serious trauma. I’m back as far as possible against the wall—I wish it could swallow me whole. I cough loudly to make myself breathe. If I can cough, I can breathe.
‘Move on, ladies!’ comes a shout. Naya appears and waves them away like flies on food.
‘Ha! You’re one unlucky lady!’ The girl staggers off.
‘Sorry about that, mate,’ the girl’s friend says to me, as she walks away. ‘She makes her own fun after a couple Midoris.’
I turn to Naya. ‘Err. Thanks.’
‘No problem. I’m all for girls expressing their sexuality, but they shouldn’t do it to make fun of people.’
She has the most elegant, smooth New York accent I’ve ever heard. TV shows made me think they all sounded high-pitched and permanently pissed off. But Naya sounds like the voiceovers from expensive skincare ads.
‘So it is girls you’re scared of, then?’ she says.
‘No,’ I drone.
She puts a cup in front of me with golden liquor and ice in it.
‘That’s the overpriced drink Jimmy wanted,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t find him when I went back in, though. You can have it. It’s untouched.’
‘Nah. That’s okay.’
‘Well, waste not want not.’ She picks it up and tips it into her mouth. ‘It’s the only thing that will make me sleep tonight.’
Entry with fake ID, under-age drinking and supplying other under-agers with drinks. This is not the charge sheet I expected to have on the UNICEF do-gooder within an hour of meeting her.
‘So, is Bones your real name?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘A man of few words, hey?
I shake my head. I should say something longer to prove I’m not intimidated.
‘So, why’d you, err, why’d you choose Australia to do an exchange anyway?’
Her white teeth sparkle brighter than Jimmy’s grills. ‘Because I’ve heard Australians hate refugees and black people.’
What a weird thing to smile about.
‘Err, okay. So why would that make you want to come here, then?’
‘Because I want to understand why. I’m interested in the psychology of bigotry.’
Bigotry. One of the millions of multisyllabic words people in Banarang don’t know exist. I feel a twinge under my jeans zipper, like that body spasm you get a second before you fall asleep.
‘And I love helping turn bad situations around,’ she continues. ‘So maybe I can help in some small way. I’d like to try, at least.’
She’s sleep-deprived and drunk and she’s still eager to talk about social justice. A small part of me admires the commitment to the cause.
But she’s completely deluded. She’s a teenage girl who thinks she can bring about social ‘change’ in a country she just arrived in. She reminds me of myself a year ago, before I realised the world doesn’t care about stupid adolescent ambitions.
I don’t say any of that, though, because the truth hurts and I don’t want to hurt a stranger.
‘Comfy,’ I grumble.
‘Comfy? What does that mean?’
‘We say “comfy” instead of “cool” or “sick”,’ I explain. ‘No one says those words here anymore, they say “comfy”.’ I nod my head and feel immense satisfaction. Not only am I a wordsmith, I’m a word creator. ‘Cradle snacking’ is good, ‘crumbs’ (‘I’m crumbs’ means I’m absolutely exhausted) is special too, but ‘comfy’ is my finest work. It’s the one that will take off. People have been looking for an update of ‘cool’ for decades and nothing has come.
Naya’s laughter unsettles my tranquillity. She’s covering her mouth with her crimson nails as she titters.
‘What?’
‘I just don’t believe you. I haven’t heard comfy tonight and it sounds a bit dumb, really.’
‘Whatever.’ I feel the heat in my cheeks. ‘Well, Jimmy says it. Sometimes. So does Leon.’
‘Oh, Bones, your face!’ She touches my shoulder with her hand then removes it. I feel a warm ring where she held my T-shirt. It’s okay, she didn’t touch my skin.
‘Don’t be like that. I’m sorry. It’s a great word, I’m sure it will take off.’
The words in her apology must be fake but they sound so real. I feel warm everywhere.
‘This a slow jam for the hoes out there!’ BMT announces. ‘Show me what you got, queens. Kings, get out your paper and show ’em what they worth.’ The guitarist noodles into the start of ‘Pussy Juice Smoothie’.
‘Ugghk,’ Naya groans. ‘Another dumb song. BMT is one of the worst chauvinists in music. I’ve got to admit I love this beat, though.’ She faces the stage and sways woozily. She starts clicking her fingers as the snare hits. She’s serene. Or severely fatigued. I watch her hips rock left to right, left to right.
BMT ends his aching rap verse and a singer comes on stage to swoon through the syrupy chorus.
Your pussy is a fruit that I wanna juice
Your pussy is a fruit that I wanna juice, yeah
Stick the molly in your booty, girl we turning up tonight
Cos that pussy is a smoothie, it know how to do me right
Naya turns around. ‘Can you Aussies dance or what?’ She keeps swaying, then cracks up laughing. ‘I’m trying damn hard not to sing this deplorable chorus.’
Deplorable. Four syllables. Another twinge in my pants. I cover my groin by crossing two hands over, pretending it’s some sort of gang stance. I gaze around Playland—I don’t think anyone is looking at me. So I mechanically lower my head and raise it again, in time with the beat, I think.
‘Yeah, okay, that’s a start.’ Naya steps in closer. My heart is hammering at my ribs faster than the beat now. My head keeps bopping, but it quickly speeds up to match my heartbeat.
‘Whoah, whoah, whoah.’ Naya giggles. ‘It’s not techno. You’ve got rhythm, though, I can see that. And you’ve got an energy, I can feel that.’
An energy? Jesus. That’s some hippie shit.
‘Any other statements you want to make after knowing me for three minutes?’ I say.
‘Not really. Only one I realised after three seconds.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re pretty cute.’
Being called cute is bad, I know that much. Jimmy says it’s an insult. ‘Pretty cute’ sounds even worse.
I ease off on the dance intensity. I start alternating between head bops on the bass hit and finger clicks on the snare. I keep a steely expression that’s not cute at all.
‘Yeah, there you go now. See, you’ve got it in you.’
Her gappy teeth are out on full smile display. I guess I’m doing well. There’s nothing wrong with learning new skills, that’s all this is.
My head bops get closer and closer to her face and I don’t know why. It’s like she’s got magnetic pull. Then her eyelids come down.
Her red, pillowy lips part. They’re like the ripest apple I’ve ever seen.
I feel her toes tread lightly on mine.
I feel her hot breath on my cheeks.
And I feel the multitudinous bacilli inside that breath penetrate my face. I step back, and Naya continues to loll forwards into empty space until she realises there’s nothing there. Her eyes pop open and her neck jolts back. She blinks a bunch of times.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble.
‘Um, no, what? I’m sorry.’ She shakes her head out of a daze. ‘I read that all wrong. I apologise, I’m so jetlagged.’
‘It’s okay.’
I can’t look at her, so I analyse the streaks of spilled beer on the floor.
‘I think you may have taken a different drug to your buddies, though,’ Naya says, and points at the bulging mound in my crotch. ‘You’re a bit too young for the blue pill.’
She mimes a glass tipping into her mouth and heads for the bar. I stride off in the other direction with my head down.
I slink back into the disabled bathroom. I’ve now been in a public toilet twice in one night. Is this what progress looks like?
My dick is still coming down so I stand four steps away from the toilet, pull my foreskin back and aim for the bowl. It’s a technique that gives you superb power and accuracy, like when you put a spray nozzle on a garden hose. I kick the flush button with the heel of my blue-and-white Air Jordan 4s. They’re still spotless, even after an hour in this sticky youth swamp.
Jimmy gave the Jordans to me when his foot went up to size twelve. I know you’re thinking it’s strange that I’d take hand-me-down shoes full of foot microbes, but he barely wore them. Anyway, I never claimed to be logical, just sensible.
I pass the mirror and catch my reflection once more. I get that eerie feeling—the one I’ve been getting in the mornings at home. It comes when I have to stand away from the showerhead because Trav is blasting hot water in the kitchen to spite me. I’ll get out of the shower, grab a towel and wipe the vapour off the mirror so I can see myself clearly. Jimmy told me once he feels like his life’s a movie he’s acting out, but there’s no high-definition vision as real as this.
I’m seeing it now in this bathroom. It feels like my eyes are staring at me. I see myself. Me. Bones Carter. Human. Breathing animal thing. Is this some sort of out-of-body experience? No, I feel very in-body. More in my body than any other time. Do I own this body? Am I renting it?
I prod my pink cheeks and poke at my jaw. I try to find something inside my eyes beyond the currents of blue plasma that course around those black holes.
This is some stupid shit. I bet everyone has these lame thoughts at this age and gets over them.
I blink three times, pull some paper towel out and cover the door handle with it as I pull it open. If you have to touch something, fashion a solid buffer between your skin and the object. That’s a rule.
The music assaults my ears the second I’m out the bathroom door.
I take in the scene from the back of the club. BMT clomps across the stage as the bass and snare drums clatter. The shadows in the pit pogo up and down, still in ecstasy. There are groups at the bar near me chatting: girls talking at guys, guys talking at girls. I see Jimmy. He’s blabbering to three ladies with straight black weaves that stretch down to their hips. They’re tapping their phones and giving each other sidewards glances.
I assume they’re typing his number in, but then they wander off without saying goodbye. When Jimmy realises they’ve left for good, he chews on his lip for a second then spots me.
‘See you ladies at the afterparty,’ he shouts out to their backs. ‘Yep, top floor.’
Jimmy flashes a smile at me and strolls over.
‘Yeah, my wigga, it’s going down tonight at the Sofitel. No doubt. Some hoes been hitting me up on Tinder, too.’
‘Well done. What about Naya? How’s that going for you?’
‘Nah, I trashed that. She’s a basic, bruh. Now let’s get back in this pit!’ Jimmy ploughs through to the front of the mosh. I don’t move an inch.
Once BMT finishes and his DJ takes over, we all find each other on the surface, in front of Playland. It’s 11.54 p.m.
It’s cold out on the street and it stinks. We’re near a bin, and it smells like someone blowing a burp in your face. There’s garbage all over the street too. Crushed chicken boxes bear black footprints, a discarded kebab has left a trail of shredded lettuce and garlic sauce for a whole block, and a complete cheeseburger meal of vomit is splattered across the pavement near 7-Eleven.
The apocalypse occurred sometime between us entering the bowels of Playland and coming up for air. This is all that’s left. The zombies walking the streets are the survivors, content to live in the wasteland they created.
The picnic-blanket busker is still there. But his warbling is now drowned out by a circle of sloshed men in Collingwood jumpers. They hop around him, mocking his vocal style and discharging cruel shards of laughter.
I’ve always thought it pathetic that people drink themselves stupid then think themselves smart, but I didn’t expect to find that so much in Melbourne. People here go to university, they’re meant to be sophisticated.
The weight under my ribs is back. It slows my walk. Like sandbags of black coal in my chest. Reality crushing my naivety and hope. I see shit as it really is. It’s all the fucking same no matter where you are. There’s no escape. Banarang is everywhere.
My Melbourne dream is dead.
