The Jesus Man

by Christos Tsiolkas

  —Is that rape? Nicole asks me.

  —I don’t know. I think, screw up my face, try to find the right words. But then there’s his story. Hers is different. I can’t make a judgement. I just can’t.

  I want to take Nicole’s hand.

  —I don’t know how the women, those who put up the graffiti, how did they come to their judgement?

  I don’t know if I’ve pissed her off. She’s not looking at me, stirring her coffee. Her next question surprises me.

  —Did you like Greece, have you been?

  —Yes.

  —Did you like it?

  —No.

  —I loved it. She’s chain-smoking. I loved the women and the men, I loved it that they were free with their talk and their bodies. I loved it that they weren’t ashamed of loving.

  These final words really strike me because I think they are true. I think we, here, maybe elsewhere but definitely here, somehow we’ve fucked up, we’ve lost the way. If we’re not scared of loving, we’re certainly ashamed of it.

  —No, I answer finally, I don’t think it’s rape. I look at her. Do you?

  She actually laughs. It’s a very big word, isn’t it, she says, such a very big word for two such foolish kids.

  Donna and Barry? Her and me? All of us?

  —What are you doing?

  Soo-Ling hates my thesis. Thinks it’s a waste of time.

  —Trying to make sense of something.

  I can hear, over the phone, that she’s annoyed with me.

  —Can’t you write about something more relevant?

  —Like what?

  She explodes.

  —Luigi, you dickhead, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. With all the problems in the world, with all the things wrong in society, you are writing about some spoilt dickhead uni students. If you’re going to write about uni life, can’t you write about the cuts to education funding?

  I have to laugh.

  —That would bore me.

  —Well, it shouldn’t.

  I try to explain.

  —I care, Soo-Ling, you know I care, but I want to enjoy what I’m working on. If I’m going to spend a year of my life on this, I want it to be fun.

  There is silence.

  —So do you think he did it, did he rape her?

  —I think if she thought he did, she should have given him a chance for a defence. I think she should have taken it to court.

  Soo-Ling’s laughter is harsh and sarcastic. It burns through me.

  —You’re a great believer in the system then, aren’t you, little boy.

  I am humiliated but I try to persist.

  —Not the system, mate, but yes, a system. I think there’s got to be a system.

  There are three conclusions to my thesis. I consider them alternatives, a choice to be made. In the first, suburbia comes back into New York City. The brother of the pimp in Taxi Driver, the pimp played by Harvey Keitel, the guy Bickle murders, the guy the audience, the filmmakers have no sympathy for; the brother, comes to identify the body. The brother has been making a life for himself out in Wisconsin, away from the urban and the suburban. He is alone in my rewrite, in a room in a morgue, looking at the shattered bloody body of the brother who could not escape. He arranges the funeral, the headstone, the priest. He is alone in his grief. The rest of the world is with Travis. The pimp is evil.

  In the second conclusion, a woman cleans her house. In The Sum Of Us Jeff dates a suburban boy, Greg, whose father chucks him out of home for being gay. Greg’s mother is played by Sally Cahill. She is fantastic in the part; no more than five minutes of screen time, only whispers of dialogue, but she portrays a woman browbeaten by a husband and a life, a woman too scared to make a commitment to her son. Greg’s mother is cleaning the house, locked into her misery. She receives a call from Greg, he tells her that he is travelling soon, off to America, LA, NY, San Francisco. He’s split up with Jeff. Jeff is too concerned with Harry, his father, who has suffered a stroke. Greg can’t put up with the work and Harry’s dependence. He’s not sure if he ever loved Jeff.

  The woman puts down the phone. Goes back to cleaning the house.

  Her son is also a man, and she can’t answer back, can’t say what she wants to say to him: I like Jeff, maybe you should stay with Jeff.

  The last conclusion is an interview with my mother. Here are three fragments.

  Q: Do you think what Travis Bickle did was right?

  A: Yes. He wanted to save that poor young girl.

  Q: So you think that killing is sometimes justified?

  A: Yes. In war. When someone attacks you. When someone is evil.

  Q: What is evil?

  A: Being very bad. Hurting another.

  Q: Wasn’t the girl responsible, a little, for choosing to leave, to become a prostitute?

  The interviewee’s eyes flash. Her voice is angry.

  A: She was just a little girl.

  Q: She knew she wanted to get out. All Travis did was return her to a place she hated.

  A: She’s happier there.

  Q: Why?

  A: She’s with her family.

  Q: Maybe the pimp loved her more.

  The interviewee laughs.

  A: At her age, son, love isn’t enough.

  Q: Why do you like Jeff so much, in The Sum Of Us?

  A: Because he is responsible, because he loves his father, because he is courageous, he is a pousti and happy about it, but he doesn’t stop being a man.

  Q: Would you have liked him if he was more feminine?

  A: What do you mean?

  Q: (In Greek) If he acted more like a woman.

  A: I would have still liked him.

  A pause.

  A: I wouldn’t have found him as attractive, but I would still have liked him. Don’t you understand, I like him because he respects his father, his family. That’s what’s most important.

  A pause.

  A: (In Greek) The family in that film is like us, you and me, your dad, ordinary working people. They know what is real.

  Q: What is real?

  A pause. The interviewee taps the table.

  A: This is real.

  Second fragment.

  Q: Why do you think The Sum Of Us is a good film?

  A: Because I do.

  Q: Why?

  A: I like the actors, they’re good people.

  Q: But what makes it a good film?

  The interviewee smiles.

  A: Who am I to answer that?

  Q: What do you mean?

  A: What do I know about film?

  Q: You watch them.

  A: But who am I?

  Q: Who are you?

  A: My opinion doesn’t matter.

  Q: Yes it does.

  The inteviewee is sad.

  A: No it doesn’t. No-one cares about my opinion.

  —Are you Christian? asked Nicole.

  —Why?

  —There’s something Christian about your letter. Very goody-goody.

  —It’s gone dusk.

  —I’m not a Christian, I answer.

  In the shadows of the trees, a crow is circling.

  After I met Nicole I went home and tried to masturbate to her face. It wasn’t easy, other people, mostly men, kept intruding. This masturbation I do, it’s foolish. I’m trying to learn how to be straight, how to make my body respond to women. It’s women who reach inside me, they don’t reject my heart. Not all of them; some, like the guys, some laugh at me. But women don’t make me feel small.

  The house I’m working in is warm, Dominic and Eva have installed central heating. I stay in the kitchen, watching Eva cook, laughing with the children. I have given the number to no-one, except for Sean and Soo-Ling. I’ve been here three weeks, I’m nearly finished. Soo-Ling rings twice a week, short conversations in which I avoid asking about her life. Betty and I talk, about school, about ‘The X Files’, about the possibility of fairies. I have been here three weeks.

  Sean hasn’
t rung.

  It hurts but I haven’t got the guts to ring him again. I’m coping with the ramifications of rejection; it gets easier every day, I promise myself. I know that when I see him I will die a little death, but it will just be a passing collapse. Then I’ll grin and pretend to be strong. It’s a good thing people can’t see straight into your heart. The world, as we know it, this world would have to fall apart.

  I’m trying to make my body love women. If I persist in falling into men, continue feeling small, I’m scared that I will completely disappear.

  —They weren’t listening to Aretha Franklin in the seventies, not in this country.

  That’s a quote from my mother, it’s the opening quote from my thesis. It’s a tangent but for me it says everything. I was asking her about music, the conversation was freefalling and I was asking her how authentic she thought The Sum Of Us was about working class life. ’Cause that’s the criticism, that a working class father and a working class fag son could never find reconciliation. And Mum said that working class lives were too disparate, it depended on what kind of family you came from.

  —They never listened to music, that’s very Australian.

  Her favourite music is Greek, by far, but her favourite song is ‘You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman’.

  Q: How did you get into Aretha Franklin? From the radio? The interviewee laughs.

  A: The radio (in Greek). No. They weren’t listening to Aretha Franklin in the seventies, not in this country. She’s a nigger. You know what they thought of niggers (in Greek). From my sons, I heard Aretha Franklin through my sons.

  There is a question posed about The Sum Of Us which is not posed about Taxi Driver. Are Jeff and his father authentically working class, is Jeff authentically gay? But how about Travis? The psychotic murderer, how authentic is he? That’s the paradox, isn’t it? All of this is fiction, we know it’s fiction, but it has to speak as truth. Then it gets fucked up, because the truth is in the fiction.

  4

  The last goodbye

  The New Year stumbles to a close. The party is emptying, people around me are urging me on. Clubs, raves, the world awaits. This party is full of ghosts, all recognisable, faces from the borders of my world. Don’t I know you from somewhere? I pretend to be friends.

  In a corner of the room, next to a speaker blaring versions of ‘Voodoo People’, someone has connected the computer. Drunk, stoned, high, people take turns sending New Year’s greetings across the world. I haven’t had a shot yet, but my eyes keep getting attracted to the shimmering blue light of the screen.

  A scream. Victory. A message from New York.

  The music has been abandoned, it is so late in the evening. Hannah comes and sits next to me, takes my hand.

  —You okay?

  —Yep.

  —What are you on?

  —Some acid.

  —Any good?

  —It’s okay. Not strong. Just buzzy.

  We sit and watch the room, she smokes a cigarette. Her girlfriend is dancing with a woman I don’t know. I follow Hannah’s eyes. They are angry, jealous, she watches the women twirl around themselves. She lets go of my hand.

  —You angry at Tina?

  —Of course not. She’s allowed to do what she likes, I’m not her wife.

  I wish I could say what I thought should be said. Which is something like, No, you’re not married and you don’t want to be married. But you do love this girl and she’s here, at a party, with a woman she’s fucking and it’s burning you up.

  When Hannah left home, told her dad that she was a dyke, he beat her, pulped her, kicked her. I visited her in hospital, her face wrapped in bandages. Tina was there, holding her hand. Her mum, terrified, was in a corner, looking down on her daughter, fussing over her, endearments in Arabic which none of us understood. Her father eventually came to visit and all of us there, the urban us, the young us, the foreign us, we were asked to leave.

  —Tina stays. In Arabic.

  —If she must, replied the father. In English.

  Hannah gets up, clasps my hand again.

  —I’m going.

  We hug.

  —You want a lift?

  —Nah, I’ll find my way home.

  —You still at home? With the folks?

  —Sort of. I’m looking.

  —You working?

  —At the video shop.

  —Happy 1997.

  Hannah walks over to Tina, who kisses her, says something, turns back to the dancing girl. Voodoo People Magic People. On the Internet a message of cheer from a young guy, or he says he is a young guy, from Lyons in France.

  Sean isn’t here. He said he would be. In my pocket there’s a tape, a collection I put together from Dom’s old vinyl. Funk and disco from the golden era. I touch the pocket of my jeans, feel the hard surface of the cassette. It is four o’clock in the morning, I’m tired and it is time to go home.

  —How was last night?

  —All right. Just a party.

  Soo-Ling pours me a coffee and Betty plays with her cereal.

  —Eat up!

  Betty and I exchange winks.

  —How was your night?

  —Good. You should have come along. Nadia and I just got drunk together, talked. Soo-Ling laughed. On second thoughts, you would have hated it. We’re too old to keep pace with you.

  —You’re not old.

  —I didn’t say I was old. But I am older than you. By a few years, and don’t I know it. She hesitates. Did he turn up?

  I say nothing.

  Soo-Ling explodes.

  —Why the fuck do you persist with this stupid jerk?

  —I’m not persisting with anything.

  Betty looks scared at our shouting. I take her hand.

  —I don’t care. I reach inside my pocket, hand the tape to Soo-Ling. You can have this.

  —What is it?

  —Music. Music to dance to.

  —Put it on, urges Betty.

  I spend the first day of 1997 having breakfast with two people I adore, playing old James Brown and Betty Davis funk, feeling the summer’s heat. The thick, inert sadness from last night vanishes.

  The bus ride across the continent is stupendously long. The Nullarbor seduces the visitor with the unrelenting tease of its horizon. The plain is ferocious, the scale of the human world is reduced to a minuscule moment. The world does literally disappear within this landscape. When we stop at the border of two states, I don’t go into the cafeteria, instead I walk as far as time will let me. This is not desert of sand and dune, it is all horizon and there is flowering everywhere. Stubby short grass, a carpet of dull yellow. But there are no trees, there is no height. This is the flat world, the edge of the universe. On the bitumen a silver truck is parked. Inside, the driver is sleeping. I simply turn and turn and turn, get dizzy in the vastness. The sky and the earth are one, announcing my insignificance. I am joyous and wish to remain here, in this circle, forever. Instead I hear an impatient honking. I walk back to the bus.

  When we finally reach Perth and I emerge back into a city, I smell of sand and sweat. I am the stench of the prehistoric.

  I am here to ask a question. That’s all.

  Perth is a small city, but from the first moment I am aware of its difference from the place I come from. The sand from the desert weaves itself in the wind, sticks to the modern plastic and metal. The city is all heat. Aboriginal people are obvious, refusing my white gaze.

  My Aunt Sophia lives in Leederville, a ten minute train ride from the city. She is home when I knock on the door and at first she doesn’t recognise me.

  —Yes?

  —Tia, it’s me, Luigi.

  She is shocked, then the politeness and, to be fair, also the warmth, kicks in. I enter the house and she hugs me.

  The first three days are spent eating and drinking, catching up with a family I do not know. There are no questions about Tommy. The topic is carefully avoided, by them, by me. My cousins are now adults and we a
re shy of each other. They have their Italian skins but their slouches, their long surfer hair, their casual clothes: distinctly Australian. In my black T-shirt and jeans, my coiled snake around my arm, I am distinctly from over east. From the other side of the desert, a vastness as intense as an ocean.

  In Greece I could not be Greek. In Perth I cannot feel Australian. The racism slaps me immediately.

  —What is happening to this country?

  The boongs, the Asians, the homos, the trendies in the city. Everyone is to blame, except, of course, themselves. I cannot not remain in polite silence.

  —I believe in Mabo, I say. I believe in Native Title. There’s got to be compensation for what the Europeans did to the black man.

  My Uncle Joseph, tough, a strong man, the elder brother, leans over. I smell the whisky, I want to fuck him.

  —You don’t even know any blackfellas, do ya?

  I lie.

  —A few.

  —Nah, not real blackfellas. You probably know a few of those city types, bloody lawyers and that rot?

  —They’re real as well.

  —Go ask the real black bastard, ask him what he thinks about Mabo. He’ll tell you, he’ll tell you it’s just another white man’s law.

  My uncle reaches for his beer. The veins on his arm are thick with tension. The skin is noble in its weathered beauty.

  —Put them in the bush, close it off, leave them there. That’s all they want, they don’t give a fuck about Mabo. My uncle points a finger towards me. I’ll introduce you to my mate Johnny, he’s a boong. He’ll put you straight. Johnny doesn’t give a fuck about land rights.

  Again I don’t say what I am thinking. That Johnny, then, is also wrong.

  I wait till everyone has gone home. I pour a glass of wine for my Tia Sophia.

  —I want to ask you some questions, Tia.

  She has cleared the table of all the plates, the mountains of food. Soft candles perfume the room, dispel the lingering traces of meat and oil.