Cherry Bomb

by Jenny Valentish

  Ian Essence stopped filming and came on with a couple of stools, doing a left–right when he got to me, trying to anticipate which way I’d go. I took one from him and sat on it for my verse, but then Rose went and knelt on the edge of the stage for hers, pointing at some boy in the audience. Always single someone out—that’s what Alannah had told us. I’d do that next time.

  Less than ten minutes later we left the stage on a high.

  ‘If that’s what we could do in a shopping centre,’ Rose was gabbling before Ian Essence had even helped us off the bottom step, ‘imagine what we could do in an arena. Seriously, we would kill it.’

  I took a swig from the bottle of water Ian Essence handed me and looked around for John Villiers. He’d gone. So had Hank. The night before, we’d had one of our massive rows that were becoming commonplace, this time over me mentioning the forthcoming Dummies tour when he’d been talking about his new show, Hank Black’s Big Break, for an hour. It all flared up again later over nothing—or maybe it was because I was talking about Gareth, who Hank said trying to have a conversation with was like trying to nail down a fart—and then Hank just got up and went to bed.

  I should have been the one who was upset, anyway, because of his behaviour lately. Like the time when I came back from the bar with a round and found a girl hanging off him in the beer garden. The thing was, Hank must have been deliberately winding me up, because he knew what I was like about other girls. I stood talking to Rose by the fence with all the layers of peeling band posters on it, and flicked my lit cigarette butts at the girl’s bare back, until she put down her drink and walked inside. That was always the point I’d suddenly feel bad and wonder what was wrong with me.

  As we packed the last of our gear into Ian Essence’s car, to drive away from Parramatta forever, Rose glanced at me and said: ‘Never trust a guy who has to start every statement with, “And this is no word of a lie.”’

  Bear in mind, though, this was the girl who gave Jimmy, a guy she’d been dating for four months, a tortoise as a joint pet. If you don’t have any idea how long a tortoise lives for, it’s about a hundred years.

  5

  DUMMY

  In truth, there is so much of my story I just can’t remember. I may be an unreliable witness.

  POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)

  Packing for tour would become second nature. Even further down the track, I’d get someone else to do it for me. For our maiden voyage with The Dummies, though, neither Rose nor I had the slightest clue. I watched as she sat on top of her case and grimly yanked the zipper beneath her. We’d wound up with two wheely cases each of outfits, electrolyte powders, iPads, UNO, curling irons, cameras, tarot cards, incense, tequila, condoms, swimmers, magazines, Jo Malone candles, flight pillows, eye masks and cartons of cigarettes. We were only away for one weekend. We’d piggybacked on to the east-coast leg of The Dummies’ national jaunt, borrowing their equipment and sleeping on friends’ floors.

  From the front door, Rose took one last scan of Helen’s lounge room to make sure I’d picked up everything. On the coffee table sat flowers from Hank with a note: ‘I forgive you.’

  Had you ever wanted to psychologically profile a tortured artist, three days on tour with The Dummies would do it. Music blogs hosted debates over the mental health of Gareth—our dumb friend with the sleepy eyes—and whether or not he was faking his strange fits and freak-outs, but we were privy to it up close. I never saw him eat anything to sustain himself, but the moment he walked on stage it was as though he’d been plugged into the mains. He scissored his legs and jackknifed at the waist as though he had no control over himself.

  That first night in Sydney, he cut himself on stage with a razorblade. Who has a razorblade? In the Tarago afterwards, we told him to lick his arms to keep the wounds sterile, and at the next petrol station Rose bought Barbie bandaids to patch him up.

  It didn’t put the girls off; it just encouraged them. The girls, the girls. You couldn’t call them groupies, because if Gareth ever felt compelled to try anything I’m sure they’d have just started crying. They cried at anything. They camped out at the airports, waiting for us to pass through, texting each other updates like they were on a SWAT-team mission. I used to do that myself, when I was young, but on my own. I’d hop the train out to Domestic to haunt the walkways. It was some funny limbo. I’d tune into people’s emotions like I was fiddling with a radio dial, then I’d watch them go through security, leaving me stuck behind to drift.

  Rose grabbed the plait of one of them when we were waiting at our gate and started interviewing her with it like it was a mic.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  Silence.

  ‘Who taught you to use eyeliner anyway?’

  Zip.

  Every night we watched The Dummies’ set from the side of the stage, taking notes. They didn’t plan anything. Sometimes Gareth would muck up the set-list order, or break his guitar, or storm off stage . . . but like the bloggers we could never tell if it was by accident or design. We did know that it was the element of surprise that was so powerful, so we vowed to replicate it in our shows. Rose wrote the surprises out in a notebook during our next flight.

  Nina: Drop to your knees during the solo of ‘Boy Crazy’.

  Nina: Stage dive in ‘Bad Influence’.

  Rose: Stop dead and stare at somebody in the third row while raking fingers through hair.

  Rose: Ad lib the last line of ‘Not Your Role Model’—‘not your problem any more’—to ‘not your fucking problem any more’.

  Dee repeatedly rang Ian Essence over the weekend to check on us and remind him he was our chaperone. Each time she did—when we were in the car park; when we were going through security; when we were at the baggage carousel—we heard him correct her, using the same words every time: ‘In essence I’m their manager.’

  ‘Careful,’ I’d warn, whenever he took a corner too sharply in the hire car. ‘You have precious cargo on board.’

  In reality, Ian Essence was doing a very bad job of managing us. For instance, by day two I had rooted The Dummies’ tour manager and our chaperone had no clue.

  It was easy to separate Damien from the pack as we watched The Dummies side of stage. Divide and conquer. It was child’s play to brush up against him, as I made observations in his ear about the sound levels and lightly touched his back. By the time it came to loading the van it was like there was a bungee cord between us that only we could see. When Rose went to the toilet I asked him if he had anything to drink back at the hotel and he said he did.

  We made the ride back in silence as Rose held court with the band: ‘Our aunt had affairs with all your favourite musicians. Name one . . . yes.’ She and I were supposed to sleep on the floor of Bruce’s room that night, but I never showed up. Damien’s room, when he opened the door with some kind of look on his face, was corporate chic like Bruce’s would have been. I scanned it as I slung my purse on the bed.

  Damien wasted no time. ‘Let’s get you over there too,’ he said in his sex voice, manoeuvring me awkwardly away from the TV. He moved in, his lips hot and rubbery on mine. I’m a good kisser. I go in softly, then press more urgently. Then I lightly touch my tongue against theirs, two or three times. Then there’s more of a tonguing that might go on for a minute or so, then back to a chaste one again. Then repeat.

  But I only kiss men I like.

  ‘Get us a whisky,’ I said sharply, leaning away. I sat down on the edge of the bed, on its crazy coral-and-mauve cover. Alannah wore coral lipstick in the ‘So Sue Me’ video back in 1987 and that was its last legitimate sighting.

  I was wearing my new Ksubi jeans and they took so long to take off I thought I might have to just yank them back up and walk out to save further embarrassment. Damien laughed like it was cute, and flicked aside his fringe as he reclined next to me, holding a tumbler with a trickle in it.

 
Up top I wore a black silk Japanese shirt with no bra underneath, because I had what the fashion magazines called ‘bee stings’. The shirt did up at the front with poppers under red embroidered swirls. Once in a cafe I’d started to pull my coat off and caught my fingers at the edge of it. It gave Rose’s dad more than he bargained for, and had since been reborn as my good-for-sex shirt. Like stockings, it guaranteed easy access, and I had this hardwired idea that everything should run smoothly for a man during sex, even if I wasn’t into him.

  As Damien loomed over me, I looked down at his jeans and cursed inwardly. I knew I was going to fumble over this fly, which looked to be buttons. Fucking 501s; who even wore them any more? And a belt, too. I once yanked off a guy’s belt in one smooth move, but I couldn’t bank on it happening again.

  Damien’s fingers dragged on my sternum. To get him to move them, I ripped open the poppers of my shirt and shrugged it off my shoulders. I arched my back and ran my hand down my body as he looked between his legs and prodded his cock at me. My skin felt nice and soft. Not like his, which was already pink and sweaty like a Christmas ham. Once in place, he creaked back and forth like he was testing the stability of an IKEA table. I could see the uncertainty in his face.

  What a chump he was. My eye-flashing suggestion that we go back to his room and drink his whisky wasn’t desire. As tour manager of the headline act, he simply held the most collateral. Several times, I stopped his creaking to hoist us both nearer to the bedside table so that I could fling my arm out for the tumbler and take another swig. He laughed, but less so. Eventually he gave up.

  I managed four more tumblers and three hours’ sleep before our lobby call. I’d slept twisted like a pretzel, unable to bear the slightest imprint of his skin, then got up as soon as dawn sent a shard of dust through the curtains. I always left first. I didn’t want to hear someone hawk up their morning phlegm behind the bathroom door, or frown into the coffee plunger, absorbed by the day ahead. I didn’t want to see their ordinary body disappearing into yesterday’s clothes.

  Watching Damien avoid my eyes at the front desk where the others were waiting, I wondered how he or Ian Essence managed to manage anything.

  •

  To avoid complications, I spent the next night of the tour in Rose’s room, wondering at how easy it all was to just snuggle down under starched sheets with someone who kept their hands to themselves, turning up the TV every time the kettle boiled, and then back down again. Uncomplicated.

  Sex was complicated. Sex was a battle of nerves. Sex dogged me like a shadow, yet by the time I’d turned ten, Tony—who was not my uncle—had nearly lost interest.

  Stupid. That was my crystalline thought the morning after Tony first pulled back the covers of my bunk bed in the dark and, to my surprise, got in. It was a week after my seventh birthday, so soon that I was still mourning its passing, and two days after he’d first played incy-wincy spider up my corduroy skirt and under the elastic of my underwear.

  Three years and nearly caught so many times, but he always got away with it. When I got older he’d occasionally just offer me a tenner to sit on his lap. That was all I had to do, sit and evade eye contact; so I might as well get paid for it. Could we be more obvious? Apparently we could, because nothing was ever said.

  Later there came the shame you’ll have read about in women’s magazines—under the photo of the woman sitting on a park bench, her back to the camera—but there was also scorn, at being made someone’s co-conspirator without consultation. It was simply not playing by the rules. People don’t do this, I thought, and if I know that at my age, why don’t you? You’re stupid and weak, and you have dragged me into it.

  Yet whenever Tony came over for evening beers with Dad, bored with the company at the Granville Tavern, he volleyed my stony glance as I stewed in front of the TV with his cheerful stares that would not quit. He’d lean against the wall of our new open-plan kitchen he’d helped build, as Dad held court, smiling and not listening to one word. ‘What’s that, Jeff?’ he’d say mildly every now and then, still looking at me. Occasionally he’d jerk the hand with his stubby in it to try to attract my attention from the TV, but I was always, always aware of where everybody was looking. I mapped out his line of sight, and mine, and Dad’s, like an electric grid between us, all lit up. Eyes in the back of my head. It’s a skill I’ve never lost.

  And now, ten years later, I was still marching to the beat of his drum. I only ever went for saviours or scumbags. The saviours, like John Villiers, kept me at arm’s length until I wore them down, or until they let me down. The scumbags, like Damien, were opportunists and didn’t deserve my enthusiasm.

  Tony was an opportunist. And Hank reckoned he was a paedophile too. Hank had threatened to kill him, before passing out with a cigarette still burning in the ashtray. I never brought it up again and neither did he.

  When Tony moved to Perth I was free from sex, but I’d only thought about it more and more, like it was hammering me into the ground. He’d visited once, for Dad’s fortieth at a surf club. I managed to avoid him the whole evening, except once at the buffet table, when he glided up behind me with a beer in his hand as I was trying to give Dad some quality time. ‘Hello, Nina,’ he said, right by my ear. I stiffened with my eyes glued to Dad. ‘She doesn’t look very pleased to see me, does she, Jeff?’

  No one noticed when I disappeared for the rest of the evening, to smash bottles from the overflowing bin in the car park against the sea wall, but they never fucking did, did they? The broken glass was there for weeks.

  Beyond that, there were fewer and fewer references to Tony, but if I let him into my mind I would be overwhelmed with confusion, trying to forensically establish culpability and who did what to whom, because I was sure he’d got it all twisted that I started this.

  Thinking about it rooted me to the spot, so I’d blot him out by dancing; at a volume so loud it overrode my thoughts. I’d pull the curtains closed and bounce off the walls in the darkness, until I was slick with sweat, my checkered blue school uniform plastered to my skin. Sometimes Rose would come over and join me, thinking it all a great hoot. She wasn’t to know.

  I didn’t resent Rose for not having experienced the lightning flashes of my childhood, but I resented having to pretend we were still the twins we always fantasised we were. All through primary school we’d measure every part of ourselves with our hands—‘The same!’—and superimpose our likes and dislikes on each other. But we were not the same.

  TOP 5 WAYS WE WERE NOT THE SAME

  1. Rose didn’t have a family friend always loitering around her bedroom with a Rolodex of reasonable excuses.

  2. Rose didn’t listen out for the creak of the stair at night, sleeping fitfully, face down, with her hands clamped between her legs.

  3. Rose didn’t viciously beat every soft furnishing in her room and then sorrowfully apologise to each.

  4. Rose didn’t deliberately wet herself from time to time.

  5. Rose didn’t scream at herself in the mirror until it was flecked with spittle, or rake her skin and scribble on her face with lipstick.

  People like me walk among people like you like ghosts. You have no idea.

  6

  AWARD FOR BEST PASH

  Alcohol had become my identity, and losing my identity was a real fear. Who would I be if I sobered up? Perhaps I would be thirteen years old again, stuck in Parramatta, praying for a miracle. But with it, I was constantly kneecapping myself. Sex in a radio-station broom cupboard might make a great headline, but you had to walk out of that radio station afterwards, with security either side of you.

  POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)

  I’d watched my body change through puberty with a kind of dread. I knew that men dug the lithe Lolita look, and I was losing whatever it was I had. Still, with adolescence came other, more intriguing changes. I’d started to sense a new world opening up in front of me, as outrageously tantalising as a bindi of burning vodka on my bottom lip.
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  The first time I got drunk, alone after school, it was as though I’d come home. Dad’s whisky seeped like hot molasses through my belly and into my veins. It was like a private romance, but at the same time I wanted to wear it on my sleeve. The ache in my throat disappeared. I had discovered my personality. I was Type A for alcohol.

  Helen gave up trying to dictate to me when I underwent that profound change. Alcohol allowed me to seize back control over my body, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. If I wanted to pass out immovably, halfway up the stairs, I had the power to do so. Now just the whisper of a Smirnoff lid coaxed from its moorings gave me goosebumps and made my pupils dilate. I could get off on fumes alone. My sleight of hand grew so proficient, I could top myself up during a photo shoot without anybody being any the wiser.

  To look at our first promo shoot, the photos from which Ian Essence sent everywhere from the local paper to FHM and Dolly, you’d think we were naïve young waifs.

  FYI, there are three postures key to pulling off the waif look.

  1. Seated: Thighs together with lower legs splayed out for a knock-kneed childish effect. Let arms fall straight, collecting at the knees. This makes shoulders and upper torso appear slimmer, and accentuates breasts. Face: listless.

  2. Draped: Subjects must be draped limply over each other, whether standing, sitting or lying down. It’s equal parts playful puppies (‘Sex puppies,’ said Hank, casting his eye over the proofs) and mild lesbionics. Face: sleepy.

  3. Back to back: This is a seated pose. One subject to direct eyes to camera. NB: The ABBA look—with one subject direct on at camera and one side on—is considered to be a howler these days. Face: wistful.

  Rose and I practically had Masters degrees in photo manipulation. We took our study as seriously as any academic, because anyone who wanted to excel in their field needed to study. We’d spent hundreds of hours taking turns posing, then scouring the photographs for unsightly creases under our armpits or around our necks, figuring out precisely how to contort our bodies, and how to cascade our hair like a waterfall down our backs so that the light of a studio soft box caught it. Clothes didn’t just hang perfectly in sleek lines—they had to be angled. Faces didn’t just sit pertly—they were winched into place with just the right engagement of muscles.