The Jesus Man

by Christos Tsiolkas

  We watch for half an hour until we become bored; the women have descended to giggling. Nadia yawns, rises, wants to know if I want to spend the night, on the couch. I shake my head. I kiss Soo-Ling on the lips and she stays with me. She wets my top lip. It is cold, terribly cold, when I enter the night.

  —You sure you don’t want to stay? Soo-Ling asks me at the door. I can drop you off on my way back home tomorrow.

  —I’m sure.

  The anonymity of the dark, the suburb asleep, is intoxicating.

  On Maroondah Highway I get a lift towards the city. I’m not ready to go home yet. The driver, a loudly polite Christian, drops me off in Richmond and I walk to a household I know in Abbotsford. Merryl and Slash are home, sucking on bongs. Merryl I used to share with. A boy, a stranger, is sitting with them. Our conversation is university, drugs, the new Palace Music CD. I’m thankful for the dope which takes me far away from where I am. I lie on the floor and concentrate on the music.

  —We should have gone, says Merryl. They are talking about the demonstration.

  Slash splutters into the bong.

  —It was in fucking Dandenong. Long way, mate.

  The boy takes the bong from her.

  —It got exciting. Did you see the news?

  —It’s good they hospitalised that guy, answers Slash. I hate those fucking racists.

  I keep numb, following the paths of the CD. I don’t want to tell them where I have been tonight. I will close my eyes and think of the video I have just seen. The long cocks, the falling come.

  I’ve never tasted come. Only Tommy’s, so long ago.

  —I went.

  I speak to forget Tommy. Maybe I speak to forget the video.

  —How was it?

  —Stupid.

  I should have kept my mouth shut.

  —Why?

  —It was, it just was. All of it was stupid. The rednecks, the protesters, me, everyone.

  Slash doesn’t like this.

  —So what do you reckon they should have done instead?

  It is a good question and the only answer I have is that there is nothing to be done; that it is not only the night, but the weeks and the months, the years and the century, that need to be undone. I know the embarrassment of being racist, the consciousness of another’s skin, the oddity of manners to which I am unaccustomed. But I don’t get the hatred; the hatred, its intensity, that’s a sickness. It’s psychotic.

  In my final year at high school, at a party, I got it on with Melanie Jackson. She was hot, all the boys wanted to lay her. We were in some bedroom, drunk, and she was jerking me off, slowly. We were talking about school. I was hardly hard. We were talking about stuff, including racism. We were doing it in English.

  —I’m not racist. But I can’t stand the Asians.

  And it was so weird, how cold my body became. I stopped touching her, zipped up my pants. She couldn’t understand why I moved away. How could I explain it? Stupidity is unattractive. I can’t explain it, how I got this way, how she got this way. But it separated us as firmly as any fortress, any barrier could. We stared at each other in mutual disbelief.

  —I don’t get the hatred, I tell the stoned group in the lounge room.

  On this, we find agreement.

  Merryl is in the kitchen, pouring tea. I try to explain to her what it was like, watching the porno with Soo-Ling, try to explain the tension which soured my pleasure in the erotic.

  —I like porn, she answers defiantly.

  This is not the point I am trying to make. I missed the solitaire of masturbation. There is a relief in masturbating to pornography, which comes right after orgasm. It is locking the video away, out of sight, washing the hands, a relief in knowing that for a while lust has been driven away.

  —I felt a bit exposed.

  Merryl tells me, nicely, with a pat on my shoulder, that she thinks I’m hung up about sex. The moon is only a sliver tonight and the light is distant, made brittle by the cold. I put my hands in the bomber’s pockets and I keep walking, head erect, to the river. The water is loud, a rush, and the city disappears. I walk the boundaries of the children’s farm and there are the sounds of goats and dogs. The world smells of rain. As I walk I begin to notice the graffiti, first the colourful tags, then the black calls for repeal of drug laws. I keep walking. On the path, graffiti in shaky red: Every cop deserves a stiff cock up their arse every day. I laugh into myself, I keep walking. In red, enormous letters, on a pillar to the bridge: LSD. On the path, thick black splashes: Kill All Commies, Anarchists, Democrats and Nazis. This time I laugh out loud.

  I stop laughing. A flash, a memory of graffiti on a toilet door.

  Old White Australia Wants War

  Young White Australia wants Peace

  Old Black Australia Wants Peace

  Young Black Australia Wants War

  I had told Soo-Ling of the scrawl. She had screwed up her face, gone thoughtful. I want war, she finally said. Does that make me old? No, I answered, it’s just a slogan—it isn’t necessarily so. But it is true for me. I don’t want war.

  Below the graffiti someone had written in black texta: Into black meat—Negro, Indian, Koori—will suck any big black cock. Then they had scrawled a mobile phone number.

  I laugh again. At the end of the river I follow the path that leads underneath the freeway. The rushing of the water is drowned by the speeding noise of the traffic. I walk the steep climb and I am in the city. I make my way towards Hoddle Street and I realise I’m walking down the street into which I was born. I find the old house, one hundred and sixty-two. Lights are on and in the front yard there is a new fence being built. I don’t know this street, I’ve only heard my family talk of it. I can’t see the factories and the poverty of which they spoke. The houses are old but the street is new. The poverty has moved elsewhere.

  Sean lives around here. I stop, try to recollect the address, cross Queens Parade and cross Edinburgh Gardens. I knock on the door and a woman who seems really out of it answers.

  —Sean in?

  —Yeah. That’s all she says. I follow her down the empty hallway.

  There are six of them in the room, Sean’s sitting cross-legged, looking at the television. He smiles when he sees me, but he doesn’t get up. Doesn’t move.

  He introduces me around. I immediately forget the names.

  Their talk is slow, about nightclubs, about who is fucking who, about drugs and parties. Sean turns to me, looks away. I look at everyone’s face and it hits me. Pinned, they’re all pinned.

  Got a hit?

  The words are there, on the tip of my tongue, I’m close to asking for the heroin. And I don’t. This isn’t the connection I want to make. I get up quickly, tell them I have to go.

  —I’ll ring you, says Sean.

  I want to smash his fucking face in.

  There is no transport, it’s too late. I walk into the city, even in the cold I begin to sweat and I buy a ticket to a porn show. I’m hungry for it, for sex, for bodies, for losing myself in it. A handful of men. On the screen a black woman fingers a blonde. I choose to stand, against the back wall. Three rows in front of me a young Vietnamese man has his hand in his crotch. He turns and glances at me. I walk and take the seat next to him. He turns away from me, takes his hand from between his thighs, crosses his legs. I’m not disappointed, I don’t care.

  I wank, not at the movie, but to the memories from the video I saw earlier in the night. I think of the back of Sean’s neck. I come into my handkerchief and a little over the seat. As I get up to go to the bathroom, to wash my hands, I know that the young man is watching me. I return, sit in the back and promptly fall asleep.

  When I awake it is five o’clock. In Flinders Street, as I hang outside the station, a frail old man offers me a pamphlet. I accept.

  —God loves you.

  —Thanks.

  —You look like a good lad.

  —I’m all right, I guess.

  —You’re a good lad, I can tell. Do
you believe in God?

  —Yes, I lie.

  —Read it.

  I promise that I will.

  The pamphlet is titled, An Exalted Saviour. I begin to flick through it; I wake up, startled, as the train is leaving Box Hill Station. I get off at Laburnum and, too late, realise I’ve left the pamphlet behind, dropped, useless, under the seat. The train is moving away and I peer through the window to the empty carriage.

  For some strange stupid reason I am angry at myself. The promise to the old man, of all promises I have made, it is one that I wish I could have kept.

  SECTION FOUR

  Epilogues

  Too often the courage about dying is cowardice about living.

  PULIKA

  1

  From the journal of

  Sean Sanders 1968-1997

  1.

  I went out with Monica and her new boyfriend Stuart. He’s a strange guy, not sure that he’s the kind of guy I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with. Monica was all talk, high on speed. I was pretty cruisy too, enjoying the high. We took it at his place, in Brunswick. Late in the morning, I ended up at the dance party with Marsh and Ben. I roamed the crowd, didn’t pick up anyone. Didn’t really want to, not anyone I wanted to pick up in front of Ben anyway. He’s a bitch. There was an older guy in his forties, pretty beefy, who was tossing off in the urinal. It weirded me out even as it made me horny. The whole night weirded me out. It started at Stuart’s.

  He said he thought it was funny that I was a fag. He’s a patronising bastard, said I’d make a bad drag queen. He kept calling me mate, but it was like he was sneering.

  The speed was good and he shared it round. Got to give him that.

  I think I’m being really stupid with drugs. But I’m scared I’ll destroy myself faster without them. Even the thought of slowing down, let alone stopping, kills me. That’s how I feel.

  Stuart is on the Net. He showed us. Monica has been on, done the whole sex chat line bullshit. She came, she told me, having sex with another woman. Through the computer.

  I laughed with her when she told me, teased her, but somehow the stories disturb my peace. No, it isn’t that. I haven’t got a peace to disturb. The stories make me feel embarrassed. I’m nearly thirty and I’m too old to be feeling all this. When am I going to work all this out?

  Stuart collects all these images, on disk, porn stuff that he gets off the Net. He’s quite methodical, the disks are all marked. Tits. Come Shots. Stars. Black. Asian. Gay. S/M. Pissing. He’s got hundreds of them. He had a collection of disks marked TWS #1, #2, #3 and so on, in black texta. He told me they were for Totally Weird Shit. He and Mon were fooling around on the bed. He told me I should put one on.

  I spent the whole time pretending that nothing was going through my mind as I flicked through his files. Stuart set me up, showed me how to surf it all, I guess. Monica squealed and got disgusted by some of the stuff on the screen, Stuart made crass jokes. There was a picture of this young Asian girl, some cheap motel, with a snake coming out of her cunt. I couldn’t even look at it.

  He had a series of photographs, bad black and white shots, they were of this boy, really thin, who these two dudes in leather had strung up and crucified. Real nails, one shot, a close-up, you could see that they had bunged the nails into his palm, heaps of blood. But not in his feet, they just had them tied up with rope onto the cross; and not through his torso—not an actual killing. It takes a while for each image to appear, you have to wait for the photo to download, section by section. At first I was just curious really, not shocked like I was with the pictures of bestiality or pictures with shit, but after a while something about the boy being so thin really got to me. And there was one shot where you could see his face and I know the look: he’s drugged out to heaven, he’s beyond pain. Getting so high, so numbed, anyone can do anything to you. It looks like they must have been popping amyl under his nose every second minute.

  One shot—Stuart’s got it marked as The Final Coming (ha ha)—there’s a close-up of the boy’s face, covered in come, thick globules of it. He’s wet, sweat and come. And there’s all the blood. Close up, black and white, eyes rolled back, looking out away from the world. In that shot he does look like a Jesus.

  Not that I know fuck about Jesus. Not that I know shit about religion. But I felt cold, scared, like something bad was in the room with us.

  It hit Mon as well. She got upset about the pictures and Stuart got defensive. I pretended to remain cool about it all. Monica told Stuart she thought it was child pornography and he leapt off the bed, angry, told her that the guy wasn’t a child, told us that he thought child pornography was evil, that people who traded in that filth should be shot. He shut down the system.

  We went back to the lounge, snorted another line, drank some stubbies. We headed off to a party in Preston, a girl from Stuart’s work. It was fine, the woman was a dyke and the crowd was friendly. But I couldn’t stop thinking of those images. On the fridge at the party there was this postcard with the Virgin Mary on it. I really looked hard at this card, looked at her for the first time. She was almost African on this postcard, dark, very angular features. She looked a little stern.

  I’m not as much freaked out by the boy in the photos as I am by wondering what the two men were doing there, why were they getting off this way. Or maybe they were just all models. Except that the young guy was so drug-fucked, except that the nails in the palms looked real. But it could have been make-up, like in the movies. What makes someone get off on this stuff? How much do they hate God? I’m glad I’m an atheist.

  I’m getting tired, needing sleep. We’ve spent the night hopping from party to club, meeting up with Ben and Marsh, going off to a dance party.

  I’m glad I wasn’t tempted to have sex. It would have only disgusted me. The boy in the pictures, that girl with the snake. I wish I hadn’t seen that shit.

  I’ve just looked in the mirror. I’m not skin, I’m all lines.

  Nineteen ninety fucking seven. Hooray! I don’t want this, I don’t think I want this. Even the Valium I’ve taken can’t get me to sleep. It slows me down without cutting me off. I really need to sleep, I just need sleep.

  2.

  At the nursing home old Jossie is getting all excited about Pauline Hanson. That bitch, that’s what she calls her, that racist ugly cunt. It cracks me up, though it’s offending some of the more conservative ones. There are no Asians at the home, a few wogs. Old Jossie is in love with one of them, Mr Pericles. He’s a funny old bugger, always so neat, so tidy. He agrees with Jossie about most things but he’s more considered in what he says. I think he used to be a commie. He always asks me what I think about stuff and he’s a pretty good listener. Jossie is fun but she’s no listener. Mr Pericles remembers things, he’s not lost any of his memory. He just stretches time. He doesn’t talk about years or dates, but about long ago or when he was a child or when he was married. I don’t know why he’s here, I know he has children but they don’t visit much. I was surprised about this when I started, I thought Greeks were into family, but that may just be another stereotype. He’s not like Sandra, who is always crying, sniffling in Italian, moaning. She hates it here, feels abandoned, and there is nothing I can do that seems to make her happy. It’s fucking horrible. This morning she refused to eat, just shook her head and repeated: I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, and I thought, Then just fucking die, will you?

  Jossie believes in God. I asked her what that’s like.

  —Oh, He’s definitely there. I know it now, for the first time I really know it. I can feel Him.

  —What do you feel?

  She said that now she can hear Him, and she laughed. I pray, she said, and in all the dreams He sends me I am dancing. I’m not always young again in these dreams but I am never tired. I just dance and dance.

  Jossie is really in a prison here in the nursing home. Sometimes I feel like a warden. There’s not much they can do, it’s a major effort getting permission to go outs
ide the grounds.

  I’ve wanted to tell Jossie for a long time that I’m a fag. She must know, she knows I don’t have a girlfriend. She must know. I should just fucking tell her. But I don’t know what to say. It sounds weak, so silly and finally so insignificant.

  Marsh is tripping out, he’s called again. He left a rambling message on the machine. He was fucked the other night, some taxi driver at Club 80, and the condom broke. He’s freaking out but I can’t be bothered. He can wait and get the test in a few weeks and work it out from there. I’ll go over, I don’t really want to but everyone else is out or away. It’s all answering machines.

  Jack’s back but she’s in a foul mood. She just had another fight with this new woman she’s seeing. I heard her scream, Fuck off, as she played the machine and heard Marsh’s hysterical voice.

  I’ve still got a small deal from the cap of heroin Teddie got me. I’m going to take it, to handle Marsh being a drama queen.

  3.

  I wondered what it would be like to shoot myself. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Ben and I were at the footy and I couldn’t face the thought of having to go to work. I just wanted a gun. I reckon it would be so easy, I’m not freaked out by it at all. One second, one split second, and it’s all over. There would be a flash of pain, and then nothing. It would be over. Just nothing.

  Ben thought I was hung over and he just concentrated on the game. We were pretty quiet.

  St Kilda won.

  4.

  I got fucked up the arse last night. It hurt. I didn’t let him do it for long. He seemed upset but I was scared about him coming, even with the condom. And I didn’t like it, him over me like that. I haven’t done it since being with Trent and I didn’t like it then either. The guy last night wanted me to fuck him as well but I couldn’t get hard.

  He lived some place in the eastern suburbs. He was a snarly little prick when I got up to leave, came on all bitchy. I wouldn’t give him my number. I can’t figure out why I went home with him. He looked poonsy in bed. Last night I thought he was kind of hot, kind of tough.