The Origin of Me

by Bernard Gallate

  ‘Grant Marsh is seeing other women. Last night Maxine caught him playing tennis with Sue Perch.’

  ‘You can’t catch people playing tennis unless they’re doing it in the nude. Were they nude?’

  ‘That’s so puerile. Have a little bit of sympathy.’

  ‘Why? That guy’s less authentic than seafood extender. He got my name wrong three times.’

  ‘It’s not all about you.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s about Mum, and I’m glad she found out for herself what a total arse-hat Grant Marsh is before it progressed any further. The possibility of being in a blended family didn’t thrill me, and I bet you weren’t too keen on three insta-siblings?’

  Venn grimaced.

  Mum called us for dinner. The prawns were chewy – overcooked. As if further evidence of Mum’s dark mood was required.

  ‘Perfectly done!’ I said, before moving in for the kill. ‘Do you think you could spot me eighty bucks for the school dance?’

  ‘Eighty dollars for a social? That’s a bit steep.’

  ‘It’s a fundraiser for a guy called Fergus who lost both legs and now has a dream of competing in the Paralympics. Eighty bucks is for two. Tickets, not legs. I already ordered them, although I don’t have anybody to take.’

  ‘I’m sure Venn would be more than happy to step in.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ she said. ‘That’s wrong on so many levels. Why don’t you ask Penny from Mum’s work?’

  ‘She’s a bit old,’ I objected.

  ‘She’s only eighteen,’ Venn said.

  ‘Cougar to a sixteen-year-old.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mum said, offering me more prawns, which I declined. ‘You’d have a ball with Penny. She’s always been fond of you and she’s been mooning about ever since breaking up with Curtis. It might do her some good.’

  Age discrepancy was obviously not a big deal for Mum – understandable considering she’d chosen a fifteen-year-old model to flog the magic youth elixir to older women.

  ‘Do you think she’d consider coming with me if I approached it from the charity angle?’

  ‘Who’s the charity?’ Venn said. ‘Her or you?’

  ‘Fergus, the guy who needs the legs.’

  ‘I can’t see why not,’ Mum said. ‘Why don’t I give her a call?’

  ‘It’s probably best if I do that.’ With her stunning looks, cracking banter and height advantage, Penny Button was well out of my league, which made her the perfect candidate to make Isa jealous. ‘Give me her number and I’ll think about it.’

  On Easter Sunday, Mum gave me a packet of Cadbury Creme Eggs®. I told Venn that Jesus would be okay with Creme Eggs® because they have a yolk fondant inside, like a real egg, to symbolise new life. Then I testified to the transforming power of forgiveness, citing the recent lightness I’d experienced after forgiving Dad, and encouraged her to do the same. ‘Sister, can you find it in your withering heart to extend the mercy of forgiveness to your own father?’

  ‘How can you forgive somebody when they’re not even sorry?’ she said. ‘Besides, if you do a little research you’ll discover that Easter was adapted from some pagan fertility festival.’

  ‘Who cares?’ I said. ‘The power of love and forgiveness transcends religion.’

  ‘Preach it, brother.’

  Back at T H E E Y R I E tonight, I was pacing the balcony, phone in pocket like a slab of kryptonite, afraid that if I asked Penny to the dance she might say no; almost equally afraid of her saying yes. Dad came out and gave me a pep talk. ‘Take a few deep breaths and calm yourself down. Act casual, almost nonchalant. Women don’t like desperados.’

  I went to my room and called Penny’s number. She answered the phone before it rang, which caught me off guard, so I quit the call. Dad poked his nose in and asked if I’d done the deed.

  ‘I hung up when she answered.’

  ‘That was too nonchalant. Get straight back on the horse. She’ll think you’re a stalker if you don’t call back and actually speak.’ My phone rang before he left the room. It was Penny.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Oh, hi Penny. It’s me, Lincoln Locke.’

  ‘Lincoln? Did you just call me a moment ago?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I dropped my phone.’ I waved Dad out. ‘Sorry for bothering you on a Sunday night – Happy Easter! . . . No, there is something else. It’s really short notice, but I was wondering if you’d like to come to an event next Saturday night to raise money for a guy called Fergus who needs bionic legs. I’ve already bought an extra ticket and the drinks are on me . . . No, just mocktails, but you won’t have to spend a cent.’

  ‘Is it a dance?’

  ‘It’s a retro thing. “Double O Dance for Fergus – Hits from the Noughties”. But we don’t have to dance if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I love dancing. But don’t you think I’m a bit old?’

  ‘You’re the same age as some of the Year 12 kids. My friend Tibor is taking his cousin Ziska and she’s twenty-one. Now that could be awkward.’

  ‘Gee, you sure know how to make a girl feel like a princess.’

  ‘If Your Highness would be pleased to accept my humble invitation, there is a dress code – black and gold.’

  ‘I love playing dress-ups. You’re on.’

  Even though the dance was six days away and Penny was only coming as an act of kindness, I felt a sudden surge of self-confidence when she said yes. Not ten minutes later it was replaced by a trickle of doom scenarios from Homunculus. At first I diverted them with reasoning and logic, but then they came faster, building into a steady stream of imagined gaffes and social blunders. Fearing I’d be swept away in a flood of panic, I picked up the dark-blue leather-bound book, My One Redeeming Affliction. The simple act of holding it calmed me down enough to read.

  Public reaction in Sydney to the news of Nellie Bly’s solo journey around the globe in seventy-two days paled in comparison to the excitement generated by George Pemberton’s announcement that the ‘missing link’ he’d challenged the world to find on his advertising bills had been discovered and would soon be exhibited. Newspaper articles speculated on whether it would be closer to man or beast. Church ministers warned parishioners against attending. Arguments broke out among both friends and strangers. But nowhere was it more eagerly discussed than at our kitchen table. Pemberton had given me work as a stagehand, so my siblings were constantly badgering me to reveal what the creature looked like, unaware he was living among them.

  One morning over porridge, Loula said, ‘I bet he’s an ugly, hairy monster with a squashed-up nose and sharp, sharp teeth.’

  ‘I promise he’s not that awful. Dressed in a suit, he could walk about town without raising an eyebrow.’

  ‘Do they let him out on the streets?’ Thomas said.

  ‘Only every second night, to prowl for food.’

  ‘Eeeeek!’ Loula squealed.

  ‘Enough about Pemberton’s latest ruse,’ my mother said. ‘You’re still employed at the mill and Mr Sampson will be waiting.’

  ‘Who cares about Sampson? I’ve got half a mind to tell the old fart he can get stuffed with his own sawdust.’ Thomas’s and Loula’s jaws dropped at my rare display of audacity. ‘Pemberton pays me three times more.’

  ‘Even so, I dread to imagine what sort of behaviour you’re being exposed to by those theatrical types if your language is any indication.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Mr Pemberton sent you an invitation to the opening night so you can make up your own mind.’

  ‘You seem to forget I was employed by him to manufacture those hideous oddities.’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m trying to help us all by following your example. Only now I promise everything on show will be alive, and authentic.’

  The Theatre of Scientific Wonders was breathtaking in its illusory splendour. Pink-and-cream walls held a lofty cobalt ceiling sparkling with several thousand gold stars. Glowing shrines a
long the walls housed Greek deities purchased from Dimitrios for a song when the Ionian had closed. And flanked by enormous columns, the half-moon stage jutted into the audience. I spied my mother occupying the best seat in the house. Perhaps most qualified for detecting stage trickery, she’d come hoping to claim the prize money for proving Taloo the Missing Link to be a fake.

  The show opened with Whitby the chimpanzee, dressed as a caretaker and sweeping the stage, before the orchestra played a rousing overture and the curtains lifted. The ape-and-monkey act was followed by Otto Zeep, the armless violin virtuoso. Using one foot for fingering and the other for drawing the bow, he played ‘Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor’ and received a standing ovation. Conjoined twins Evelyn and Josephine Hart, speaking synchronously, regaled the audience with humorous tales of their European tour. Then Evelyn sung a touching version of ‘Where Corals Lie’, accompanied by Josephine on the recorder.

  Watching the acts from the wings, I became increasingly self-conscious of my lack of performance skills as my grand finale approached. Thankfully Pemberton had employed an actor playing a fictitious explorer, ‘Professor Whittleworth’, to plump out what was little more than my act of indecent exposure.

  Dressed in safari suit and pith helmet, the ‘Professor’ delivered a ‘scientific lecture’ on his recent trip to Tambullubuku, a tiny island northwest of New Guinea, where he had supposedly discovered the most primitive version of mankind in existence. He returned to England with a young member of the tribe called Taloo. Subsequently examined by scientists and doctors at the Royal College of Physicians in London, the man/beast was declared the missing link. The orchestra swelled and the curtain rose to reveal me, Edwin Stroud, standing centre stage: arms akimbo, body painted nut-brown, wearing a lap-lap, bone necklace, feathered eyemask and curly black wig. I remained frozen as he resumed his patter.

  ‘Though happily ignorant of our civilised, industrialised world, the Tambullubukan has adapted perfectly for surviving in his native environment, possessing a sense of smell a hundredfold more acute than yours or mine.’

  Ten audience volunteers were given numbered paddles then instructed to approach me so that I could sniff them. I was blindfolded and the volunteers were reordered in a line fifteen yards away. In turn they took two steps closer and I identified each correctly by personal odour alone. The fevered whispering of the crowd indicated to me their astonishment. Then Professor Whittleworth returned for the big reveal.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness something so confounding it may challenge your assumptions on the very origin of mankind. If you fear being offended by the exposure of an intimate part of Taloo’s anatomy, I invite you to leave the theatre immediately and a refund will be afforded you in the foyer.’ Three or four delicate souls took advantage of the offer. Once they’d left, the houselights dimmed and I walked, hunched over, to the edge of the extended stage. Illuminated only by footlights, I moved through a series of dramatic simian poses. Then Whittleworth said, ‘Without screen, smoke or any form of obfuscation, Taloo will now reveal the unique vestige of evolution that proves him the missing link!’

  Returning to centre stage, I climbed onto a plinth beneath the limelight. I turned my back and partially rolled down the lap-lap. Even from the stage, I heard a few more patrons leaving the theatre. But I rolled it down further, fully exposing the hairy tail between my bared buttocks. There was absolute silence as the audience held its collective breath. And then Whittleworth, wielding a wooden pointer, explained that the appendage not only contained blood vessels and nerves, but also the extra vertebrae that normally dissolve in the womb before birth.

  ‘Initially I was unable to ascertain its function,’ he said. ‘But later, during some sort of fertility ritual, I saw their tails adorned with feathers, leaves and flowers, and concluded they were celebrated as indicators of virility.’

  ‘Make it move, then!’ a sceptic yelled.

  ‘The tail isn’t prehensile. Rather, more like the domesticated cat or dog, its movement is determined by the mood of its owner.’

  ‘Codswallop!’

  Whittleworth promised to eradicate any doubt of authenticity, and on cue a stagehand delivered a platter bearing a glistening roast leg of lamb, its sweet rosemary-infused aroma causing my tail to wag furiously. Speaking in my contrived native language, Whittleworth invited me to come down and feast. I seized the lamb, turned to the audience and tore flesh from bone like a starving wolf.

  Caught up in the performance, I failed to notice a fellow approaching the stage until he hoisted himself onto it. The ginger moustache instantly identified its owner: Dr Melvin Fletcher.

  ‘Godless charlatans!’ he cried, charging at Whittleworth and knocking him down. I wielded the leg of lamb like a club but he seized it from me and flung it into the orchestra pit, where it crashed into a cymbal. Before I could escape, Fletcher tore off both my mask and wig and announced to the audience, ‘This scoundrel is one of my patients, Edwin Stroud of Pyrmont. And these shysters are agents of the devil, making filthy lucre and attempting to destroy your faith with this abominable act!’

  Everything suddenly irritated me intensely – my scratchy sheets and pillow, my itchy arms and legs, and most of all the prickly tail. I got up and went out onto the balcony wearing only boxers. I ran three circles in the cold night and returned to my bed, where I lay twitching sporadically until I fell into a troubled sleep.

  Saturday evening I showered, sprayed my pits and chest with Lynx Gold Temptation®, brushed my teeth twice, gargled Listerine® and put on my newest underpants, a black t-shirt with gold lightning bolt, black jeans and bowler hat from an op shop on Crown Street.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Dad said.

  ‘The Dance for Fergus.’

  ‘The guy with no legs?’

  ‘That guy. What do you think of my outfit?’ I spun around on the spot. ‘The theme’s black and gold. I don’t want to look like I tried too hard.’

  ‘You’ve certainly achieved that.’

  ‘Could I use some aftershave?’

  ‘On my dressing table, champ. Don’t go overboard – less is more with fragrance.’

  The cabbie said ‘Woof!’ when I got in and he lowered every window – a bit dramatic, considering the interior was already ripe with tobacco and arse sweat. Mercifully for both of us, the ride to Penny’s place in Surry Hills was short. She came out looking a million bucks in a dress made of tiny sparkling gold disks.

  ‘Wow! I’m unworthy.’

  ‘Tan’s not too dark?’

  ‘Not at all.’ The fake nutty brown set off the gold perfectly.

  On the trip to Crestfield, I gave Penny the lowdown on my friends and suggested we invent a code word in case either of us needed to get away from an awkward sitch.

  ‘What about “ukulele”?’ she said.

  ‘Random but perfect.’

  ‘I miss my high school days.’

  As I was paying the driver, a black stretch Hummer pulled up in front. A door opened and the chorus of ‘Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls spilt out, along with Phoenix in a slinky black catsuit, gold belt and super-long fake ponytail. ‘Over here!’ a photographer called from the pavement. Phoenix obliged with a series of feline poses, swishing her hair extension to max effect. Her date, Kirk Shepard, stepped out, shielding his face. ‘Don’t be like that,’ the photographer said. Phoenix pulled Kirk close and the photographer snapped away.

  ‘That’s enough now, Dad,’ Kirk said.

  Next out was Tibor in a gold jacket with padded shoulders and his cousin Ziska in an eighties gold puffball dress. The photographer took a perfunctory single shot of them.

  The song ended and Isa emerged in a long black sheath dress with a gold halter neck. Hair pulled back. Gold hoop earrings. She had a corsage of black flowers tied around her left wrist, which Pericles must’ve bought. He was wearing a sharp black suit, thin black tie and suede winklepickers. Hair sculpted into a high fifties Elvis pomp.


  ‘Ohmygod,’ Penny said. ‘They look like movie stars. Are you going to introduce me?’

  ‘Maybe later. The ukulele player’s about to perform his set.’

  Penny scrunched her nose. ‘I’m not mad about the ukulele.’

  ‘Remember the code word?’ I said. ‘Let’s go in.’

  Heather’s team had transformed the auditorium into a glittering party palace, with all the decorations donated for the night by local businesses. Black foam stalactites hung from the ceiling between gold polyhedrons reflecting lasers in a thousand directions. Behind the DJ booth was a massive revolving cog, shafts of gold light strobing between its spokes. And on either side of the stage were video screens. Across the dance floor I spotted the pop-up mocktail bar that Manos had agreed to let Helena and Christina run – all proceeds going to the cause.

  ‘Wow! Interesting look,’ Christina said as we approached. ‘Dressed by San Vincenzo de’ Paoli?’

  ‘Close,’ I said. ‘Christina, this is my friend Penny.’

  ‘Hi, Penny. Love the dress. You look so expensive standing next to him. What would you like?’

  Penny examined the specials board. ‘The Pash-and-Dash sounds exciting.’

  ‘Make that two,’ I said.

  Penny excused herself to go and freshen up her make-up. Christina leant forward and said, ‘Ohmygod, Lincoln. She is drop-dead gorgeous. Pericles told me you were going stag.’

  ‘Seems he was mistaken.’

  ‘Have you seen his hair? Took me an hour and a half. He’s so fussy. But don’t they make the perfect couple?’ she said, looking over at him and Isa. The word ‘couple’ hit me like a stone in the eye.

  Helena returned with drinks garnished with pineapple spikes. ‘Specially for you,’ she said.

  Wearing a surprisingly daring and constrictive dress that appeared to be made of gold latex, and with her hair in a gold-sprayed beehive, Heather Treadwell waddled onto the stage and delivered the official welcome, making a very dubious connection between Fergus Martin’s bravery in learning to walk again and being unafraid to make a fool of yourself on the dance floor. ‘I suppose that I should lead by example,’ she said. ‘SO LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!’