by Cath Crowley
While it’s happening I’m trying to capture it. I’m trying to think of the words I’ll use to talk about it. In movies sex goes for ages but here on the couch on the roof I’d put it at four minutes, tops. Afterwards Stu passes me his shirt to wipe myself with. He lights a cigarette and asks me if I’m sore. ‘It gets better,’ he says. And all I can do is laugh and cover my face.
We return to the party. Once we get downstairs we separate – this feels okay, like the mature thing to do. I find Ady outside by the fire, with a cool-looking girl who must be Max.
Ady checks me out. ‘Uh-oh.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Special skill.’
The party’s gone over the edge. There is a drunk girl dancing to no music. A guy in a ‘Motherfucker’ t-shirt tries to dance with her and she flings him off with crazed drunk-strength and he falls into the fire. He runs out screaming, his long hair ablaze. He rolls on the ground in the fallen leaves. We watch, frozen. Ady grabs my arm and there’s no time to find Stu to say goodbye.
On the tram back, it all seems like a fevered dream: first-time sex, a man on fire. but the proof comes with a tantalising ping.
That was fun, Stu texts. Are we still on for next weekend?
When I get back to school the grounds seem spookily quiet. I edge around the back and shove the portal door. I’m shuffling through the dark basement when I hear footsteps above. I tuck myself into a cavity, the shower stall. The light goes on. I hold my breath. It’s Old Joy and I’m done for. This is it. But after a minute the light goes off again. She retreats.
I wait in the damp until I’m sure it’s safe then I creep up the stairs back to my room.
People say you don’t feel any different. Lainie said she didn’t feel any different – but that’s not true for me. My pulse throbs. I am tender everywhere.
I am not who I was yesterday or last week or last year.
Saturday 20 August
I walk behind Ady towards the party, with the brilliant day I’ve had moving through my head – Ady lounging in the sun and Clem dancing around the pool in slow, swim-like moves to the strange beat of Zoë Keating’s ‘Escape Artist’.
‘Play some music that’s me,’ Clem had said, and I immediately thought of the song with the throaty cello lines, the unexpected beat. When I put it on she arced her hands around her to the sound of those sliding notes, slicing them through air, telling us dangerous secrets about her and Stu.
I’m hoping he loves her. I’m worried that he won’t.
Ady’s worried, too.
But I’m tired of worrying. I want to do.
It was strange spending time with Ady and Clem at the pool, at my pool. It felt right, though. It felt good to clear out the rubbish that people had thrown into my space, clear out the leaves. I didn’t even mind that. Time for some new sound.
As Clem spoke about Stu, I thought about Oliver. Not platonic thoughts, either. I let myself give into the thought that I want to kiss him. I don’t think he wants to kiss me. He’s so serious, about music and winning. We are crossing a line, but it’s a line that’s to do with music, I think. I don’t know.
Today was the first time I’ve let myself actually have the daydream. Rules felt suspended today. What would it be like to kiss him? Would he kiss as seriously as he plays? With the same attention to technique? The thought found the sweet spot in my body and I shut it down before I melted in the cleaning suit that Ady called a giant condom.
‘I thought about Oliver quite a bit today,’ I call to Ady, who’s ahead of me. Clem’s far head of her, so far I can’t see.
‘I never would have guessed,’ she calls back. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘I have not touched a drop. I’m drunk on having friends. I called Max and invited her tonight. I gave her your number so she can find you in there if she can’t find me.’
‘Did you invite her hoping she’d invite Oliver?’
‘Not entirely.’ I want her here. But I want Oliver, too.
‘Just call him, Kate. He’ll come. Don’t say anything but your name.’
‘If I were you, that might happen.’
She stops walking, turns and looks at me. The smell of garden – dark and green – is all around. ‘Do it now.’ There’s a flower hanging above her, a white burst on a tall bush. It makes her look otherworldly, like she’s wearing a crown or her aura is showing.
I take out my phone, and key in his number, and when he answers, I look at Ady and say my name.
Wait, Ady mouths, and I do as she says. I wait for what feels like a long time.
Eventually he asks, ‘Where are you?’
I give him the address and hang up. ‘That was amazing. I mean, that was a-mazing. I said my name, and he said he’d be here. Are you a witch? That worked like a spell.’
She grabs both my shoulders. ‘You’re gorgeous, you’re smart, you’re talented. Any guy would be lucky to have you, but you’re a geeky guy’s dream.’
‘I’m going to wait for Oliver,’ I say, excited by these revelations.
She keeps moving forward towards the party. Her steps certain, calm. ‘Ady,’ I call, and she turns.
‘Come to the farm with me on the long weekend. Sit by the river. Eat spectacular food.’
‘Apple pie?’ she asks, only slightly making fun.
‘If you order it,’ I say. ‘But I suggest the plum cake.’
‘Plum cake it is,’ she says.
I text Max to look for Ady when she arrives: She’s alone. You need to find her. Then I wait.
I’m wearing a dress of Ady’s, the silk one I’d seen on her before. I asked, and she said yes without a second thought. ‘Don’t wear tights,’ she said. ‘It feels great on your skin.’ When I said I might be cold she offered to lend me the coat she was wearing that day we had coffee.
It takes Oliver a while to get here. I search for his face in the groups that walk past. I think about how strange it is that I like him now, and wonder when it was that I started to, and then think about how I probably started before I knew I’d started, and how strange it is that changes can start in us long before we know they’re starting. It’s a long thought, a string of beats that I follow from one to the other, so I’ve forgotten to watch for Oliver and then, without me noticing how he arrived, he’s standing in front of me.
‘Proof of my theory,’ I say.
‘And what theory is that?’ He laughs nervously.
I fight the urge to tell him to relax.
‘Do you come to these kinds of parties a lot?’ he asks, staring behind me in the direction of the noise, at the people walking past, people already drunk and smelling of what even I pinpoint as dope.
‘It’s a friend of Clem’s,’ I say, as screaming laughter starts up behind us.
‘Interesting friend.’
We’re back to being awkward again because I’ve made the strange phone call and I’m dressed up and I’ve asked him to a party that I’m not exactly invited to, so I decide that we need loud music and crowds to drown out the fact that we’re not talking.
Before we get to the door, there’s a huge crash on the lawn, and then the sound of splintering. ‘Oh my god!’ Oliver yells. ‘Oh my god! Kate, I think someone just pushed a baby grand out the window.’
He’s running, and when I don’t follow he comes back, grabs my hand and pulls me in the direction of the drunk, stumbling crowd that’s gathering. People above are laughing, staring out the window, and people below are starting to contemplate how ‘close we were to fucking dying’. Oliver has pushed his way through them and cleared a circle so he can kneel next to the piano as if it’s a living thing.
‘It’s not a baby grand,’ he says to me. ‘It’s an old Yamaha.’ He presses a key and it lets out a sad plink. ‘They pushed a piano out of the window. A piano.’ He looks up at me. ‘I would like to leave here, Kate. And I would like you to come with me.’
We decide to walk for a while, and to hail a taxi from the street.
It�
��s now that I see Oliver. I don’t think I really saw him before, at least not properly. He looks as if he’s much more comfortable with a cello in his arms. He doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands, so he shoves them in his pockets. Brown hair. Tall. Tall enough to play the double bass, actually.
‘Why don’t you play the double bass?’ I ask.
‘I heard the cello,’ he says.
I think maybe Oliver is looking at me for the first time. At least looking openly, his whole stare on me, on the dress, and my eyes and my skin.
‘Borrowed,’ I say.
He touches his shirt. ‘Borrowed also. Dad and I have been lazy with the washing.’
Seeing a piano fall from a window and smash at our feet seems to have had a relaxing effect on Oliver. He scoops up three pebbles and juggles for a while. I’m impressed and I tell him so. He shows me the trick, and for ten minutes or so, we stand on the side of the road, juggling and dropping pebbles.
‘So, how did a girl like you end up at a party like that?’ he asks, once we’ve started walking again.
‘A girl like me?’
‘Serious.’
‘I’m not entirely serious.’
‘I like serious.’
‘I’m a little bit serious,’ I admit. ‘Clem told me about the party. We were in detention today.’
‘On a Saturday? You get more and more interesting.’
‘Are you flirting with me?’
‘No. Maybe. I don’t know what I’m doing. This is new terrain. I’ve been trying to flirt with you for a while.’
‘That’s worrying.’ And exciting.
‘Why were you in detention?’ he asks.
‘I ate a piece of cheese.’
He laughs.
‘No, really. I ate a piece of cheese. A big piece of cheese. And a strawberry. In the Oak Parlour at the Winter Fair with Ady and Clem.’
‘How long can you stay out tonight?’ he asks.
‘As long as I want. I’ve served my detention. My punishment is over. I have a genuine pass that says I’m staying at Ady’s.’
‘Don’t they know most cheese eaters are recidivists?’
‘Apparently not.’
A taxi approaches. We hail it and run to where it’s waiting.
Lights, trees, the broken night rhythm moves past the window and Oliver takes my hand. It’s comfortable and exciting at the same time. I’m not drunk, but I feel as though I’m floating. I stare out the window and think about happiness.
We get out of the cab and a light goes on in a room of Oliver’s house. An older version of Oliver opens the window. ‘Good party?’
‘They threw a piano out of the window,’ Oliver says.
‘Good god.’
‘Indeed,’ Oliver replies. ‘Dad, this is Kate. Kate, this is William, my dad.’
‘So this is the beautiful cellist,’ William says, and gives me a wave.
I wave back. I am the beautiful cellist?
‘You are,’ Oliver says, which I assume is mind-reading until later when he tells me I spoke out loud.
We walk down the side of Oliver’s house to the shed, but it feels different this time. I feel trees brush my arm and smell jasmine. There’s a wall of mint that I didn’t see before, and Oliver breaks off a leaf as though it’s his habit, and hands it to me.
I think of kissing.
We set up, an unspoken understanding that since I’m here, we’ll practise.
Practicing is our way of talking, I realise, and tonight something has shifted and the conversation isn’t awkward, or slightly awkward. Maybe it’s because the secret is out, and we’re not playing around it anymore. I like Oliver and he likes me, and we’re both obsessed with music and we both want to win.
We play without worrying about the mistakes. If I make one he waves his hand for me to go on, and when he makes one I do the same. Once I stop him because the mistake sounds good, and he agrees and we decide to keep it.
We sample Lou Reed.
We listen to the song over and over to choose the part we want.
We loop and mix and play it back.
‘It’s good,’ Oliver says, but I disagree, so we loop it again until we’re both happy.
I lose sense of time while we’re playing. After a while, I take over the computer and looping while Oliver makes tea because computers are what I do best. He puts a cup in front of me on the table.
He takes a sip.
I take a sip.
‘Listen,’ I say, and play back what we’ve recorded. He takes over the computer, changes some things. Then I take over and change some more.
My concentration starts to drift. ‘Long day at detention.’
‘What’s the punishment for eating cheese and strawberries?’
‘Cleaning out the pool wearing giant condoms.’
‘At a later stage we might get into that when I know you better.’
He’s lying on his bed now, hands behind his head. He pushes himself up and puts on a record. It’s Bowie. I like it. There’s nowhere else to lie but his bed, and it’s comfortable, and it’s next to Oliver, so that’s where I rest myself.
‘Will your dad mind if I stay here?’
He says no.
The track changes.
‘One of your eyelashes has escaped,’ he says, taking it off my shoulder, hands shaking as he flicks it into air. ‘I find myself thinking about you,’ he says.
‘I find myself thinking about you, too,’ I say.
‘You make me nervous.’
‘I would like, very much, to kiss you,’ I say, imitating Oliver’s formal tone.
Oliver is, as always, really good at what he sets his mind to. Later, I will remember this as my first real kiss, with someone I respect, like, need. I will remember Bowie playing in the background as Oliver’s hands find their way. I will remember falling asleep, records spinning.
Saturday 20 August
Through the cypress hedge to an overgrown, weed-thick front garden with 1960s-style planting: pittosporums, oleanders, lilly pilly, japonica, I pick my way through the rubbish tip, along the broken concrete path to the front door. People are piling up pieces of furniture in a clear patch of lawn near the hedge. Kate is staying outside, waiting for Oliver. I turn back as she calls my name. She invites me to her place in the country for the long weekend. She is as impulsively kind as Tash is impulsively harsh.
Clem has floated on ahead, drawn by Stu’s pheromones, no doubt. Her hair looks so pretty all pinned up like a spiky little tiara. This party is already boiling over and it’s only eight pm – it’s a potential riot or cop call-out for sure. Stu’s band is so loud I don’t even penetrate the front room where they’re playing. Wouldn’t mind a couple more allies here. I told Kate I was glad she’d asked Max. Glad doesn’t quite cover it: I feel helium-fuelled over-the-moon excited and nervous.
I text Tash: At that party, yawnies. See you tomorrow? I told her that tonight was strictly Malik homework, a second date with the thumb-group. Keeping Tash happy suddenly calls for determined insincerity. She replies: Poor bb with the dorks . Brunch at Figgy’s 11ish, loves . That will put another hole in my gram birthday cash with nothing on the horizon to replace it.
The place reeks of weed, and ticks my number one bad sign of a party: too many dudes. I smile and think of Flight of the Conchords, ‘Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)’. Flight of the Conchords is one of those parent–kid crossovers in my family. Stomach lurch as I remember, it was my father who brought them home, and now we are fatherless, for a stretch.
A guy is smiling at me. I avoid eye contact, vague-smiling as I walk past him. ‘Bitch,’ he says. God, the tiresome small dealings with random dudes. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been a frigid bitch or a stuck-up slut just for not talking to or smiling back at guys who are complete and utter strangers to me – since Year 8, since the first hint of breast. I send up a prayer to the party fairy for a night of no arse grabs; I get so tired of having my guard up the whole ti
me. Based on the amount of beer swilling around here, I’m not going to be hanging around for too long. A moment of missing my footballer-physique Rupert companion, walking further in, comfort touching the edge of my phone in my jacket pocket. That thought makes me angry, too: feeling safer with a big guy next to me.
Clare told me about an article that floated the idea of a curfew for guys, so women could feel safe roaming the world at night. Uproar against the idea, of course; how ridiculous, hysterical – why should all guys be penalised for the actions of a few? But why not? All women are penalised because of the actions of a few (guys). We’re all forced to modify our behaviour, or risk our safety, all the time. So why shouldn’t all guys have a turn at the world not being guy-friendly, for a change? I imagine the girl-friendly world – streets at night full of girls and women. God, it would be so lovely. Walking anywhere we want, wearing anything we want, staying out late shouting, singing, drinking. Never worrying about attracting unwanted attention from dickheads. All the taxis and Ubers driven by women, so you don’t have to sit there holding your phone, ready to instant dial for help if they take a wrong turn on the way home. Women in the trains and trams, laneways, highways, parks, beaches, pubs, parties, clubs – all safe, all night. Things would be . . . unrecognisable. Imagine slipping out for a full-moon midnight walk just because you could. We’d start to swagger. We’d own the streets, own the night.
There would have to be a device ready to pick up any men who broke curfew – maybe a drone with a claw-like attachment. Men’s neck implants would start beeping if they were out after dark, so the drones could locate them straightaway. And women would finally feel – be – safe in the dark hours. After centuries, millennia, of not.
I wander deeper into the house, wondering if I’ll get to the heart of this party. Parties have such unpredictable anatomy, so you don’t always find it. Looking for the heart is why you end up staying too long at some parties. It can be dancing when the perfect track comes on and getting that mainline hit of collective euphoria, or eating a souvlaki on the way home when you’re stoned and starving, or talking your head off to friends you’ve spent all day with, or kissing someone new.
