The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  ‘That’s quite enough!’ Beale said. He dropped the pearl on the napkin and thrust the plate at William. ‘Have it cleaned and placed in a suitable box.’

  Evidently, the barrister was unaware that the pink pearl grows only in the conch. Esther knew of its natural provenance, however, and correctly assumed that William had artificially transplanted it into the oyster shell. Feigning ignorance to avoid the embarrassment of two stags locking horns, she resolved to accept the pearl and return it to William as soon as Beale boarded his train back to Melbourne.

  The rest of the meal was a chore as Esther struggled to conceal her annoyance at my father’s audacity and her diminishing appetite for Newland Beale’s company. Refusing to accept defeat, he ordered pigeon pie, beef à la jardinière and eggs à la neige. When William returned to deliver the boxed pearl, Beale leapt to his feet to intercept him, but his excessive consumption of champagne had compromised his balance and, stumbling backwards into the Chimera, he snapped off her tail.

  I became sleepy, with my thoughts travelling from the pink pearl to Mum’s Venus shell launch to the day I’d made an oyster shell from clay and Isa had made the pearl. Which reminded me: we hadn’t discussed our collaboration project since then, and Ms Tarasek was expecting our proposals tomorrow. I drifted off, dreaming of Isa being annoyed as our art teacher took her clay pearl and placed it inside my shell. I heard Isa say, ‘A pearl is nothing more than a self-protective response to an invading irritant.’ Then she transformed into Esther Hunnicutt, who, instead of ‘feigning ignorance’ as she had in the book, called out the hoax, igniting a punch-up between Newland Beale and William Stroud. Every sculpture in the restaurant was smashed to smithereens, leaving no identifiable piece except for the Chimera’s tail, which William seized and held high like a sceptre.

  After French on Thursday, I followed Isa along the catwalk, down the stairs and across the quadrangle to Old Block, where she suddenly spun around and accused me of stalking. I explained the need to discuss our proposal before class and she gave me two minutes.

  I told her about an episode of Extreme Medical Intervention that had featured a teenager suffering a severe headache whose mum rushed him to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed a disease that affected his brain and spine, and spread through his bloodstream.

  ‘Sounds like meningitis,’ Isa said.

  ‘That’s the one. He suffered organ damage and fell into a coma for a week. They gave him a five per cent chance of survival. Miraculously he pulled through, but had both legs amputated below the knee. They actually showed the procedure.’

  ‘Gruesome hospital stories don’t thrill me. My mother’s a nurse.’ She checked her watch. ‘What does this have to do with our project?’

  ‘Extreme Medical Intervention is the modern equivalent of a nineteenth-century freak show. Last week some surgeons separated conjoined twins. A hundred and fifty years ago an entrepreneur would’ve stuck them in a tent and charged people to see them. Same thing – people put on display for profit.’

  ‘I’m still not seeing the connection?’

  ‘Our work is supposed to relate to our local environment, and there are stacks of weird people in my hood.’ I reminded Isa of the Blue Lady and told her about the toothless car-kicker with the stuffed bird, the Pink Lady, and Loose Pants Lenny punching out the sign last night. ‘I thought we could create images of them, like bill posters for sideshow acts, and hang them in a row. The last one would be a gold-framed mirror with a sign above that says YOU.’

  ‘That’s incredibly offensive,’ Isa said, and turned to leave.

  ‘Wait, I didn’t mean you. I mean whoever’s looking in the mirror. It would be social commentary on how we perceive those sorts of people.’

  ‘That’s not just condescending, it’s cruel. How do you think “those sorts of people” would feel about being depicted like that? Perhaps you could find out by inviting them to the opening.’

  ‘You don’t get it. It’s about challenging people’s notion of what constitutes a freak. Maybe in our own way we’re all a bit freaky?’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘That’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘Good, because you’ve used up all our time. So you’ll have to trust that Ms Tarasek will like my idea.’

  In the studio, Isa explained her vision to the class: we would ‘yarn-bomb’ the school grounds by hanging pieces of knitting in seemingly random locations. It was irritating to hear her use the word ‘we’, as if I’d contributed to the proposal in any way. Even more annoying was Ms Tarasek’s enthusiastic response. ‘A reinterpretation of the school’s structures,’ she said. ‘This I like very much.’

  I left the studio with a cracking headache, stars fizzling in my peripheral vision. On my way to the bike racks, I kicked a recycling bin.

  ‘Hey, dog!’ Starkey had materialised from nowhere, like the Cheshire cat with bad teeth. ‘Has the bug up your arse got a name?’

  ‘Isa Mountwinter.’

  ‘What’d we tell you?’ With yellow-tipped fingers he pinched a pellet of gum from a shrivelled packet and dropped it into the palm of my hand.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll save that special treat for later.’

  This afternoon I threw down a couple of the capsules Nads gave me with some water and met Dad at BigTown Gym™ for our introductory training session. The gym was large, but what made it look enormous were the mirrored walls that multiplied the arsenal of high-and low-tech torture devices. Dad pointed out Sergio, our personal trainer, whose upper back was three times the width of his waist. He was saying goodbye to his earlier appointment, the ex-reality-show contestant Kimberly Romaine, who’d extended her fifteen seconds after she’d had an extreme allergic reaction to breast enhancement surgery by ending up on Extreme Medical Intervention.

  Sergio walked over to us. ‘This body, one hundred per cent natural,’ he said by way of introduction, performing an independent pectoral flex.

  ‘Well done,’ Dad said. ‘I’d be happy with half that.’

  ‘There is only one Sergio. You cannot be Sergio. But Sergio will give you the tools to make the most of what you have. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad and I said in unison.

  ‘Today we work on chest and triceps. We start easy and build slowly. Sergio is all about technique and discipline.’

  We began with the bench press and progressed through a series of free weights and machines. Dad’s well built for an old fart, but next to Sergio he looked like your average office worker. He insisted on adding a few extra plates for his sets, as if he could possibly impress our herculean trainer or any of the other cavemen in the gym whose lats prevented them from walking with their arms by their sides. Tempering Dad’s enthusiasm, I came up with excuses to avoid any machine or exercise that might put the nub in a compromising position – which was quite a few. Sergio was very touchy-feely when pointing out which muscles were being worked so I stepped back each time, allowing Dad to be the happy recipient of his attention.

  At the end of the session we went to the change rooms to grab our bags, and Dad started untying the laces on his trainers.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Can’t you shower when we get home?’

  ‘Buddy, I’m soaking with sweat.’ He peeled off his singlet. ‘You should jump in too. You’re a bit whiffy.’

  ‘The showers are communal.’

  ‘So what? You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before.’

  Instead of contradicting him, I turned and opened my locker. ‘I’m so not hanging out with a bunch of other nude men,’ I said and pulled out my gym bag. ‘It’s fully weird.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? It’s completely natural.’

  ‘About as natural as Sergio’s ripped physique.’ I closed my locker. ‘See you in reception.’

  On Friday in Biology we carried out part two of the olfaction and memory experiment. Miss Keenan and Raymond set out the thirty cups aga
in, this time without their corresponding pictures. Our challenge was to sniff and identify each odour, and recall its associated image. Basil, shoe polish, aniseed – easy. Number twenty-nine unmistakably the cat-piss concentrate and I instantly remembered a boat on the card next to it, so I wrote that down. We swapped papers and Miss Keenan read out the correct answers.

  When we got to the end, Liliana Petersen, who was marking mine, called out, ‘Ohmygod!’

  Her twin Ingrid snatched the paper, and they said in unison, ‘Lincoln Locke got all thirty correct!’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Miss Keenan said. ‘I’ve never had a student score over twenty-five.’

  ‘Maybe Lincoln has an unusually high number of receptor cells in his olfactory bulb?’ Tibor said.

  ‘His honker’s big enough to fit them in,’ Starkey said, then leant in close to me and whispered, ‘Maybe you’re part bloodhound?’ Then he shouted ‘WOOF!’ so loudly I fell off my stool.

  Waiting on platform three at Town Hall Station for the train to North Sydney, I conducted further experimentation to validate my lab results. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and concentrated on identifying the random odours of the transit environment. Buttery croissant, dry-cleaning, bubblegum, coffee and tunnel grime borne on the column of air being pushed forward by an arriving train. Then I smelt my mother’s perfume and opened my eyes, fully expecting to see her. She wasn’t there but somebody was wearing her scent, Prescience. I walked along the platform, sniffing like a rabbit. Right down the end, as I pointed my nose towards a young woman in a high-waisted skirt who was talking on her phone, the strength increased exponentially. I moved closer and inhaled deeply. She turned and glared at me, then said to the person on the phone, ‘You won’t believe this. A creepy schoolkid just came up and sniffed me!’

  Telling her that I was conducting an experiment, or that she smelt exactly like my mother, wouldn’t have rectified the situation, so I returned to the other end of the platform.

  ‘Howdy!’ Morgan Brierly said as I walked in to NOW BE TIGERS! ‘Congrats on your blue ribbon for breaststroke. Wear it with pride.’

  ‘Butterfly.’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘Does Mum tell you everything?’

  ‘Ever since our university days.’

  ‘What was she like back then? Was she a massive swot or did she party?’

  ‘She was studious with an experimental edge. In second and third year we shared a warehouse in Surry Hills with an artist.’

  ‘Dad’s mentioned Luis the crazy Spaniard once or twice.’

  ‘He chain-smoked Ducados and drank red wine on the roof while listening to Jacques Brel. Having both grown up in Conformia, we thought he was so very bohemian.’

  ‘Was Mum his girlfriend?’

  ‘One of his muses. She modelled for him.’

  ‘Please don’t say nude?’

  ‘Always tastefully. She had long hair back then.’

  ‘Did you have parties at the warehouse?’

  ‘Monthly happenings where people did their thing. Music, spoken word, burlesque, the occasional drag performance by yours truly. Live piercings and suspensions. Later, when people were trying to outdo each other, there was a contortionist called Mona who stretched the limits of decency further than she stretched herself. It all turned into a bit of a freak show.’

  ‘That’s hectic.’

  ‘A guy called Pebbles, who wore a bone in his hair, collected dried-up dog turds for a year and painted them in day-glo colours. One night he arranged them into a huge mandala that he illuminated with black light. It was strangely beautiful.’

  ‘Is it still there?’

  ‘The dog turd mandala?’

  ‘The warehouse.’

  ‘It was converted into a trendy apartment complex a year after we left. Sad.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘One night Charis and I returned from a party and found Luis on a bender, singing along to his favourite Brel song, “Amsterdam”. He was totally fried, and painting the walls with drunken sailors and prostitutes. The landlord turned up for an impromptu inspection a week later and didn’t appreciate the artistic merit of his mural.’

  ‘Were you evicted?’

  ‘Not for that. But shortly after, we found out Luis hadn’t paid the rent for three months. He confessed to spending it on feeding his drug habit. The next morning he was gone – vanished. After graduating, your mother travelled alone across Europe. She’d never admit it, but she was searching for Luis. Never found him. Nobody did.’

  We heard Mum’s heels clacking on the polished concrete floor.

  Morgan whispered, ‘I think that’s why she chose your father – the complete opposite. Solid and dependable. Turns out nobody’s perfect, eh?’

  Well, that half-explained her freak-out last year when she thought I’d taken drugs. Funny how people change.

  After Mum had smashed her car into the wall last year, she’d bought a Volvo XC70 – safest car on the road. It had a heartbeat sensor to warn you if there was a serial killer hiding in the back before you got in. There was no homicidal psychopath in the car as she drove down Military Road this arvo, though – just two bottles of Moët, a roll of purple satin and three handbags.

  ‘You came first in the breaststroke,’ Mum said.

  ‘Dad told you?’

  ‘He’s proud of you, and at least he’s showing an interest in your progress.’

  ‘It was butterfly, not breaststroke,’ I said with a degree of irritation.

  ‘Same difference. I made a mistake.’

  A driver cut in front without indicating, which triggered the Volvo’s collision avoidance warning. Mum palmed the horn. ‘How much more of the road do you want, you FUCKING ARSEHOLE!’ She attacked the S-bends of Spit Road with unprecedented aggression, making the tyres squeal – an impressive feat in a Volvo.

  I flicked Starkey’s gum into my mouth. The pellet was imbued with the stale pungency of his tobacco-stained fingers, so I spat it into my hand.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Mum said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  She handed me a tissue from the dash. ‘In here, please.’

  On arrival at Signal Bay, she poured herself a gin and tonic, and called me out to the Buddha garden to apologise for being snippy. ‘I’ve had the week from hell, darling. But I want to assure you I’m interested in everything happening in your life. Fine if you don’t want to talk about school, as long as we keep the channels of communication open.’

  ‘Tell me about your week, then?’

  ‘Wednesday we launched Neroni’s new accessory collection. Emma and Jules did a superb job and the client was delighted. But Lucy Seymour, the social media influencer, gave the event two thumbs down. She said the first was for running out of champagne, which was a lie. The second because she missed out on a freebie handbag – true.’

  ‘I saw three on the back seat.’

  ‘Emma and Jules deserve their perks. The third is a present for Maxine, who I haven’t seen much of lately.’

  Early Saturday morning, woken by tender swelling. The nub seemed to have grown. I measured its diameter at an even two centimetres. An increase of three millimetres, possibly triggered by the pills Nads gave me. I was afraid to stop taking them, though, because he’d said it could have adverse effects. Nads wasn’t a real friend – nor were Mullows or Starkey. Not like Tom and Coops. Despite Nicole driving a wedge between us last year, and despite the fallout from the party at the Nugents’, and despite Mum barring me from hanging out with Tom – which basically ruled out Coops as well – I still believed they were the friends who most got me. And I missed them badly.

  I recovered my old esky lid and fins from under the house, scraped off the mouldy fuzz and went for an early. The surf was less than average but Coops was arsing around on his dad’s mal, so I paddled over in an attempt to patch things up.

  ‘You’ve turned into a sponge kook,’ he said.

  ‘Looks that way.’r />
  ‘I’ve forgiven you for ratting us out last year,’ he said, which was mighty gracious considering that I hadn’t. ‘But Tom’s still dark at you. Blake’s been charged with supply, so I’d maintain a low profile if I were you.’ And he took off on the next wave. Just like that another aspect of my future had been decided without my involvement, and it felt completely shitful. The very small part of me that considered going after him was strangled by Homunculus.

  ‘Don’t bother trying to explain yourself to that dumbarse,’ he said. ‘He has no respect for you and doesn’t deserve it.’

  I got out of the water and dragged my board along the sand ridge, collapsing sections with each step until it looked like a bombed coastline. At the end of the crescent was a dead, mottled brown-and-grey Port Jackson shark. Its tail was buried in the sand, and its big blunt head was pointing out to sea as if still hoping to escape. No eyes – just empty sockets. Maybe pecked out by a bird? Poor bastard.

  ‘Would you like to try my Bircher muesli?’ Venn said when I got home.

  ‘I’ll stick to Coco Pops.’

  ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘I’ve eliminated all high-sugar and high-sodium products.’

  ‘Well, I’m stoked that your college has turned you into a health crusader, but I want you to know that I still need comfort food occasionally. In the meantime, lay some of the birdshit on me.’

  Venn obliged. It was surprisingly tasty.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Hey, have you heard of yarn-bombing?’

  ‘I saw some recently on Macquarie Street in the city. Multicoloured stripes stitched onto a light pole, and exactly the same pattern on the other side of the road.’

  ‘What’s the point of it?’

  ‘The point is there is no point. Maybe the creator’s just taking the piss and sharing the joke with us. Or it could be a way of feminising a sterile space. I don’t know. Possibly it’s about subverting the traditionally masculine street-art scene.’

  ‘You sound like Maxine.’

  ‘She used to be really into it.’