It’s Sunday night. I want to enforce ‘citizen’s justice’. And I want to see Naya again. I don’t know which more.
Jimmy wanted to work on a song, so that’s a good reason to visit his house. I text him and he says I can sleep over because ‘we’ll be putting that work in well into the a.m.’
I ride across the Banarang Basin bridge. It’s a total blackout above—the stars are hiding again. My wheels crunch over the pebbles of the Boulevard. I pull up to Jimmy’s wrought-iron gate and he buzzes me in. I walk down the marble pathway, under the hedge feature and past the fountain.
Only Jimmy’s dad’s red Tesla Roadster is backed up beside the house. That means two cars are missing, so Jimmy’s parents are both away.
‘Welcome back to OG’s Manor, fam.’ He’s in his dressing gown with the gold ‘JtOG’ monogram and matching loafer slippers. ‘We finna make a hit tonight or what?’
‘Sure.’ I walk in and poke my head into the lounge, but there’s no Naya. And the lights are off in her room. Damn. She’ll be at Shitty’s. Citizen’s justice will have to wait, if it happens at all. I regret coming over.
I trudge up the shaggy carpet stairs into Jimmy’s bedroom. I catch my face in the reflection of his massive wall mirror but look away immediately. I slump down in the chair beside his computer.
‘You okay, lil homie?’
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘Comfy. Feel like some purp?’ He shakes his Painstop NightTime for Children bottle. It’s got promethazine and codeine in it, and it’s the closest thing in Australia to the ‘purple drank’ cough syrup that BMT drinks. Jimmy smokes weed and takes pills now and then, but this is a new level for him. Drinking a couple of cups of this is like taking about ten Panadeine Fortes.
‘No thanks. Are you sure you should be drinking that?’
‘Course, bruh. It helps me sleep.’
Jimmy pours the syrup. It crackles on the ice and popping candy inside his tall styrofoam cup. He picks up a new gold phone and snaps a photo of the potion.
‘Bones, for real though, ever since the BMT show you been acting even weirder than your weird-ass self. You gotta have a clear mind for us to make history with this track tonight. I need that from you, I need you on ten. I get sad-boy feels sometimes too, so let’s get it outta the way now—what’s eating you?’
I can’t think of a time Jimmy has ever asked anything like this. His expression says he understands me. He must be referring to my freak-outs as ‘sad-boy feels’.
‘So, sometimes you look in the mirror and feel weird too?’ I ask. ‘And pull at your skin a bit, and kind of see inside yourself or something? Like, feel like, is this you, what are you…or something?’
‘Yeah, totally bruh,’ he says earnestly.
I breathe out in relief. It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one.
‘You’re talking about beating off in the mirror, right?’ Jimmy says. ‘Like, looking at yourself while you stroke it? Of course I do, man!’
‘Oh. Yeah, okay.’
‘Sweet. Now check out my new celly. It’s proper crazy. Got a fifty-fucking-megapixel camera. Your body is made of less pixels than that, my G.’
The massive screen is open on Snapchat. The pic he’s taken shows his cup full of Painstop and his computer desktop with the Ableton soundwaves in the background. He’s captioned it ‘Texas tea party in the Lab’ and scrawled ‘#GRINDIN’ across it in paint text.
I act impressed with the phone. ‘I’ve never seen one like that, where’d you get it?’
‘Dad picked it up in Japan last week.’
‘Ah, over there. It’s the burner now. Or maybe I’ll give it to Tyse. Though he’s still got my last one and that ain’t old, either.’
The phone on his bedside table is still in perfect condition. It’s still the most current Australian model. It has proper internet. A great camera. Apps. All the stuff I never thought was worth bothering with.
‘Can I have it?’ I ask.
‘Huh? I thought you didn’t fuck with iPhones.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t. But, it would be good to…it’d be good to follow this track when it blows up, you know? See it firsthand.’
He snaps his fingers. ‘Damn right! Okay my man, it’s yours.’
‘Thanks, Jimmy. I appreciate it.’
‘Don’t mention it. Take it as an advance for what we about to do. I want something I can really go in on. Something raw. Something iconic.’
I hit the MPC pads to lay down the drum track.
‘All for da pussy, all for da pussy. Everything I do, is all for da pussy.’ Jimmy keeps whispering the line over and over. I match up the drum tempo with his vocal track because he can’t keep up with the rhythm it should be at. I sprinkle some synth notes over the top and it starts coming together.
Jimmy does a bunch of takes of the chorus. I’ve gotta give it to him, he sounds good. It’s like something BMT would make.
We stop and play it back.
‘Louder!’ he shouts. ‘More bass!’
I keep pulling everything up till he says, ‘Fuck man, this is it. This is lit!’
He jumps onto his bed and bounces on his knees to the beat, whooping and hooting with every snare hit. ‘Woooooo,’ he shouts. ‘Get ’em! Tell ’em! Goddayyyyym!’ He flips onto his back and bounces on his spine, like the bed’s a trampoline.
He lies back on his pillow. ‘This is the sequel to “Chocolate”, Bonesy, this is the one! Now I just need to write the verses.’
He grabs his phone and starts filming the waves of the music undulating on screen as the track plays. His message tone dings.
‘Ahh, fuck,’ he moans. ‘Man, fuck that ho.’
‘What?’ I shout over the music.
‘The goddamn Yank. It’s not even nine yet and she’s telling me to turn it down cos she wants to sleep. Turn down for what? We only turn up! So turn it up, my wigga!’
She is here.
I pull down all the levels.
‘Bruh. What the fuck?’
‘I’m super hungry. Can I go down and grab some food?’
‘Yeah, course bruh. There’s heaps of shit down there. Mum restocked your Dunkaroos too. But when we’re hot, we’re hot, so let’s lay down some guitar real quick.’ He slaps his white Stratocaster onto my lap and hands me a guitar pick. I hit play on the track and start fumbling over the strings.
Jimmy bops his head up and down, but I know it sounds shit. I can’t concentrate. I get frustrated and hit a note too hard and lose my grip on the pick. It flies off into the bin near my feet. The plastic bag in it is freshly laid and empty so I dip my hand in and pluck the pick out. I feel some goop on my fingers. There’s a limpid substance coating the pick and my fingertips, and some short, sharp stubbly hairs, too. I’m baffled.
‘Ah, yeah, bruh, that’s some, err, excess mayonnaise from a sandwich I hit before,’ Jimmy explains, scratching his hairline. ‘Yeah. Some proper artisanal aioli. Don’t sweat it, I’ll go grab you some paper towel.’
Then everything clicks into place. I gasp and almost swallow my tongue.
I dash out the door and thunder down the stairs. I slip across the kitchen tiles and flip the tap onto maximum heat and hold my hand under. It begins to burn. It needs to burn. I’d be happy if it burnt off the top layers of my skin. How many skin layers do humans have? I want all the ones that can absorb anything to be grated off right now.
I pull out a fresh pan scourer from the cupboard underneath and commence intense exfoliation of the contaminated area. The water keeps steaming hotter and hotter. Did I inhale something too? Did it come close enough to my mouth? I spit in the sink six times in a row, just in case.
‘What the heck are you doing?’
My neck whips around and there’s Naya.
An orange towel is wrapped around her hips like a sarong and a small blue towel is swathed around her hair in a spiral reaching for the roof. I only catch those features peripherally, though, because my eyes are locked directly on her bare breasts.
Supple humps of lady flesh project from her chest. I don’t know how to describe this stuff well, but her nipples are, like, sharp. And a silver bolt shines off her right one. It must be a piercing. Whoah. Her whole rosewood torso is pristine. It’s shimmering and freshly lacquered with moisturiser. I spin around and stare at the pictures of the Du Toit family’s tribe of sponsor children on the fridge.
‘B, what are you doing? Are you going to turn the faucet off?’
I slap it off and wipe my hands on my jeans. I will be throwing these jeans out. I keep my eyes to the side, away from her.
‘I’m just…getting some food and heading back up.’
I’m not going to look at her breasts. I’m not.
‘Hey, my face is over here, you know?’
What is this? Some feminist game? If I look, I’m a pervert; if I don’t, I’m a chauvinist.
I wave blindly in the general direction of her chest. ‘You’re, err, you’re not wearing a shirt.’
‘I know that.’
‘Can you, uh, put one on so I can talk to you?’
‘Goodbye, Bones,’ she groans. I turn my head in time to see her naked back as she rounds the corner.
I walk into the pantry and close the door. What did I just do? What did she just do? What just fucking happened? I sit in the darkness for a minute then turn the light on and try to gather myself.
The shrink taught me about mindfulness the other day for relaxation. I should practise it. I focus on where I am. A food closet. It’s a good place to be. I could handle getting locked in here and never coming out. It’s stocked with untouched boxes of every flavour of Shapes, Costco super packs of chips, choc-topped muesli bars (the expensive ones with the fancy nuts), the best cereals, packets of chocolate croissants and a whole lot more.
I grab some Dunkaroos and Doritos off a shelf. I fold my erection up under the waistline of my jeans, drag my T-shirt over it then come out of the closet.
I don’t think I’m asexual. I think I may like girls.
I head back up to Jimmy’s room. I’m shivering. Are my hands even clean? Did I blow some sort of opportunity?
I sit back in front of the PC. Jimmy’s changed the bag in the bin. I stare at my lap and try to come to terms with everything. A flurry of emotions, nouns and verbs muddle in my mind. An alphabet soup of half-thoughts.
‘Blud,’ Jimmy says softly, ‘I’m real sorry about that.’ He points at his virtual reality headset on the table. ‘I don’t know where I’m spraying since I got this thing, man, it blinds you. But we all gotta bleed the weed, feel me? Milk the moose. It’s natural. It helps with the creative juices. And the hairs, well, course I gotta tame the garden when hoes out here playing cricket on it.’
‘Naya…’ I stutter. ‘Naya came into the kitchen. I saw her…I saw Naya’s—’
‘Titties?’ Jimmy says.
‘Yeah…you’ve seen them too?’
‘Yep, every other fucking day, man.’ He blows out. ‘It was cool at first but now it’s just fucking distracting. Jimmy ain’t about that look-don’t-touch bullshit.’
‘Why does she do that?’
‘It’s some “free the nipple” feminist shit, man, what else? She never wanna free that pussy, though. Now that’s a double standard.’
I finally lay down a guitar track that Jimmy is happy with and head for his plush foldout bed in the lounge. It’s a latex mattress with fresh Egyptian cotton sheets and it’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in.
I can’t sleep, though. For hours I alternate between tossing and turning in bed and tossing off in the toilet.
My new phone says it’s 3.12 a.m. I put every notable event I have for the rest of the year into my calendar and copy over numbers from my old phone.
I’ve run out of things to do that don’t involve Naya.
So I start an Instagram account and follow her. It’s the friendly thing to do. I look at every photo of her. I’ve always hated selfies but I like hers. Hers don’t seem as narcissistic somehow—they aren’t buried in filters and fake smiles.
I watch all her videos. There’s one clip of her filming the TV as it shows Problematique, a six-foot African-American ‘diva’ who was born a male, writhe about in a red spandex suit surrounded by four muscular men with fake tans and shiny pecs. The boys crawl forwards on all fours, intermittently thudding their fists on the ground. Naya has scrawled ‘My Jam’ over the top of the video.
Next I scour her Twitter. She retweets a lot of UNICEF announcements and keeps writing about ‘pet projects’. Tweets like:
I sense more #Nayaspetprojects here in Oz.
Resistance is fertile here, but soon it will be futile. I don’t quit. #Nayaspetprojects
I’m seeing real changes! Tiny at first, but they can only grow bigger. #Nayaspetprojects
My dick rises but my heart sinks. She’s so lame. She’s the kind of lame that would organise flash-mob videos. But in person she doesn’t seem this bad. I don’t get it.
‘Watcha doing, boy?’ Her voice startles me. The phone slips out of my hands, slaps onto my face and sticks there. She giggles. I peel the screen off my cheek and find her whole face bathed in phone light. She’s looking down at me, like God. She’s wearing a T-shirt this time, but no bra. Definitely no bra.
‘I was asleep,’ I say.
‘Sure, sure. I get notifications, you know?’
Breathing may be a struggle soon. Please no more talking. This is humiliating.
She sits on the corner of the bed and crosses her legs.
‘You know that guy who robbed you?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I found out who it was.’
‘What? How?’
‘From your description, I asked around. He’s a computer tech who contracts for a bunch of businesses in Banarang. He seems an unlikely candidate for ice addiction, but I suppose it’s often the ones you least expect.’
‘Oh, yeah, makes sense.’
‘I’ve got his address.’
‘Whoah. Um, okay.’
I didn’t know this would come together so quickly. I thought we’d just talk about it a lot, maybe do a bit of detective work together. But I like it. I was tired, but now I’m recharged. Good as new.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘do you want to inflict some citizen’s justice or what?’
‘Yeah, I guess. What do you have in mind?’
She raises her eyebrows, smirks and pulls out a carving knife from behind her back.
‘What about making sure he can’t rob anyone else using that car?’
I like girls.
I definitely like girls.