Praise

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘You heard that? I’m sorry. I don’t know how it happened.’

  ‘I don’t care. I believe you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘But it sounded so good.’

  I didn’t have the heart to argue. Maybe it was true. We got home and discovered that Vass had found his way into the flat and was watching the TV.

  ‘Christ,’ said Cynthia. ‘We come home for a fuck and there’s always someone here. Don’t you have a home?’

  ‘Hey,’ said Vass, ‘you can wait, can’t you?’

  ‘No!’

  We sat down. Vass explained that there’d been a movie he wanted to watch, and he hadn’t thought that we’d mind. I said it was okay. Cynthia curled up, her head on my lap. I took off my shoes.

  ‘I made a rash comment about love tonight,’ I told Vass, ‘Cynthia thinks she’s got me now.’

  ‘I have got you. No one else is getting a chance.’

  ‘I can’t live up to it. You’ll kill me.’

  ‘Oh bullshit.’

  Vass watched us. He had his own theories about women. I tried watching TV. I could barely focus. I rolled a joint and we smoked it. It made things worse.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ said Cynthia. She got up and went.

  I shrugged at Vass. He seemed to understand.

  ‘She’s a nice girl,’ he told me again. ‘You look after her.’

  I nodded and we stared at the TV for ten minutes or so. Then I said, ‘I’ve gotta go to bed.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll go. I shouldn’t have been here anyway.’

  ‘It’s okay, really.’

  ‘No. This is your place.’

  He left. Cynthia came out. She was still dressed. ‘Look out,’ she said. She got down on her knees in front of me. ‘I’ve been wanking myself in there.’

  ‘No kidding ...’

  She undid my zip and took my penis in her mouth. I was too stoned to move. I watched her, I watched my penis grow. Once it was erect she climbed up and lifted her skirt. She was naked underneath, and already wet.

  She thrust away. The angle was strange. The sensations were coming from miles away. She started crying. ‘God I love you, God I love you.’ Then she came. She lay on my chest.

  Yes, I thought, this woman could be dangerous.

  She looked up. ‘I want you to come in my mouth.’

  It wasn’t an offer she often made. Erections were rare and valuable things, they were for fucking. I nodded.

  She slid down. She tugged my pants away and her mouth moved in, started working. She took my balls and pulled and stroked them. She had a strong grip. Then her mouth left the tip of my penis, worked its way down and engulfed one testicle, then the other.

  ‘Are balls like breasts?’ I said.

  She pulled back. ‘How do you mean?’

  I wasn’t sure what I meant. The joint seemed to be piling up on me. ‘Forget it.’

  She started again. There was an orgasm waiting in there somewhere. She moved back up to my penis, sucking and curling her tongue around the tip of it. The sensations became stronger. My erection felt long and thin and cold. Her teeth grated down the shaft. I reached my hands down, stroked her hair, pulled my hands back. She grunted, her mouth full, and rammed it deep into her throat, once, twice. It was a strangely delicate thing. I slid sideways down onto the couch. Things happened. I groaned, long and loud. I came. My hips thrust up into her mouth. She coughed, gurgled, took it in, then kept on sucking.

  ‘Stop, Cynthia. It hurts.’

  She let go. She came crawling up over my chest and kissed me. I opened my mouth and her tongue moved in. Her mouth felt loose. Slack. Stretched. But there was none of the salty taste I might’ve expected. There never was. One of the mysteries of sex.

  ‘I could just eat you,’ she said.

  And women always said that, too, about men.

  Another mystery.

  SIXTEEN

  Friday night Leo and Molly came over for drinks. Around ten o’clock Cynthia and Molly decided they felt like hitting a nightclub in the city. Maybe the Orient Hotel. Cynthia was up. She was on a two-week cortisone course. It made a difference. The itching was gone. Her skin was glowing.

  Leo said he wasn’t in the mood for a nightclub. I was drinking cask red. It was making me ill. Plus the asthma was bad. We both said no. The girls called a cab and went alone.

  It was one of the few times Cynthia had ventured out without me, excepting work. I was glad she’d gone. I was glad she liked Molly. Cynthia had no one in Brisbane but me.

  Leo and I drank and watched TV. I didn’t feel any better. Leo became more animated with the wine. He started talking about going to the nightclub after all. I said that’d be fine. I’d just go to bed.

  The phone rang. It was Cynthia. She sounded drunk. ‘Come down,’ she said, ‘it’s great.’

  ‘Leo was about to go anyway. I don’t know about me though ...’

  ‘C’mon, I’m bored.’

  ‘Okay, then. We’ll be there in a while.’

  Leo and I decided we’d walk. The city was only about twenty minutes away by foot, but it was a mistake. Leo walked fast, and between the asthma and the alcohol, I was labouring.

  ‘I might try and pick someone up tonight,’ Leo said. We were about halfway there.

  ‘What about Molly?’

  ‘Oh, she’d cope. We’ve been going out for a long time, after all.’

  ‘What, four months?’

  ‘Well, you know how it is.’

  I didn’t. Four months didn’t sound very long, but it was longer than I’d ever lasted with anyone. Anyone since Rachel, at least. And that didn’t seem to count. As for Cynthia, there was no point wondering about the future. It’d come on its own.

  We walked on. I was in serious trouble by the time we arrived. Breathless and sick. I needed to sit down. We paid four dollars at the door, and went upstairs. I didn’t go to nightclubs often. I didn’t like dancing, the drinks were expensive and the noise was constant. But I had been to this particular place before. It was a small, wedge-shaped room. There were cages on the walls behind which go-go girls sometimes danced. The music was sixties and seventies. It was the theme.

  It was crowded when we walked in. Young people mostly, eighteen or nineteen, pale-faced and dressed in black. I felt depressed. I looked around for Cynthia. I couldn’t see her. Leo went off to make a sweep of the corners. I reeled over to the bar. There were no seats. The music was very loud. I thought a drink might help. I dug into my pocket. All I had left were a few two-dollar coins. I pulled them out. They spilled from my hand, onto the floor.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. I couldn’t even hear myself.

  I dropped to my knees. There was no light. Legs and feet everywhere. The floor looked black. I began feeling around with my hands. Nothing. I felt like throwing up. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Cynthia.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ she yelled over the music. She looked as drunk as she’d sounded. Her face had the blank and brutal expression it sometimes got when she drank heavily. She could be frightening then. Singleminded.

  ‘I dropped my money!’

  ‘Forget it! I’ve got money!’

  I stood up.

  ‘Come to the toilets,’ she yelled, ‘and fuck me!’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘C’mon, let’s go fuck!’

  I remembered what the toilets were like. Small and shitstained and jammed with people.

  ‘No, Cynthia! Not now! I can’t! I feel sick!’

  Her eyes were unfocused. She wasn’t even considering the possibility that I might refuse. ‘But all you’ve gotta do is sit there!’

  ‘I wouldn’t even be able to get it up! No, really, no!’

  She got angry. ‘You won’t ever do anything different! You’re so fucking boring!’

  We stood there.

  This is great, I thought. This is fun.

  She said, ‘Do you wanna dance then?’

  ‘No. You
know I hate it.’

  ‘Well, fuck you, I’m not gonna just stand here.’ She went off through the crowd. I went after and caught her arm.

  ‘Can I have some money?’

  She looked at me. This is it, I thought, she’s gonna hit me and it’s gonna hurt. But then she went through her bag and handed me five dollars. It was enough for two cans of beer. I went back to the bar, bought myself one, then threaded my way over to the wall and found a vacant window sill. I sat down and looked out and gulped in fresh air. After a while I began to feel a little better. Unwell, but tolerable.

  I tasted the beer. It went down okay, which it often didn’t, after wine. I shifted around and checked out the club. Everyone looked as bad as I felt. I spotted Cynthia. She was dancing with a long-haired boy in tight black jeans. They shouted words in each other’s ear from time to time. I’d never seen Cynthia dance before. It was violent and impressive. The boy was watching. He was more or less just standing there, watching.

  I started thinking about her life before she’d met me. I hadn’t considered it as a real thing until this point, seeing her with someone else. And there’d been — at a guess — over twenty men before me, two of them serious. What was it she saw in them? What was it she saw in me? Was I any different? Was I that different?

  Leo came wandering by. I caught his eye and waved him over. I wanted to talk to someone.

  ‘Where’s Molly?’ I yelled.

  ‘She’s around. Where’s Cynthia?’

  ‘Dancing!’ I pointed her out.

  He shrugged. ‘I gotta go. I’m looking for someone.’ He headed off. I sat and watched and drank. Cynthia had disappeared. I finished the first beer, went and bought the second, then went back to the window sill. I was looking at the women. Most of them seemed unattached. Young. Some of them looked at me. I wondered what sort of image I made, sitting there. I felt old and badly dressed. At twenty-three. It was going to be a long life.

  A woman was leaning on the wall beside me. She was older than me, long black hair, thin white face. She was watching the dance floor, her eyes half closed.

  I nursed my beer and thought about talking to her. There didn’t seem much reason. I had nothing to say.

  She leaned over to me and said something. I didn’t catch it. I tilted my ear to her mouth. She said, ‘Things can’t be that bad.’

  That was how I looked, then.

  ‘They might be,’ I said.

  ‘You wanna dance?’

  ‘I don’t dance.’

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She leaned back against the wall.

  Where could you go from there? After a while she walked away. I finished the second beer and waited. I thought I might try vomiting.

  Cynthia appeared. She was sweating. ‘Having fun?’

  ‘Who was that you were dancing with?’

  ‘Just some guy. C’mon, let’s go home. If you won’t do it here, maybe you’ll fuck me in bed.’

  I thought of the long walk home. I knew I wouldn’t make it. ‘Let’s get a taxi.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  We went downstairs into the street. We were out of the noise. My ears were ringing. There weren’t any cabs. And there were a lot of other people around, waiting. We started walking, watching the street just in case.

  Cynthia was still going on about sex. ‘We’ll go home. I’ll lie down and spread my legs. You’ll start pumping away. It’ll be so fucking dull.’

  Fine, I thought. Really fucking fine.

  I spotted a cab coming towards us with its light on. I yelled and ran to the kerb, waving my arm. The driver saw me. He swerved over to pick us up. I opened the front door. Then from nowhere someone darted under my arm and into the front seat. It was a kid of seventeen or eighteen. His head was shaven. ‘Thanks, man!’ He pulled the door closed.

  I stared at him for a second, amazed. Then I lost it. ‘You prick,’ I said. I grabbed his arm. ‘You fucking prick.’

  ‘Hey ...’ He tugged at my hand. ‘Fuck off, man. I got the cab.’

  The taxi started moving. I held onto his arm. ‘Get the fuck out, get the fuck out.’ I pulled the handle and the door fell open. I yanked him out onto the footpath. He went down. I kicked, caught him on the leg. He back-pedalled away. I went after him. I was screaming. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’

  He got up. ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? Jesus, take the fucking the cab ...’

  I nodded. He was right. This was pathetic. ‘C’mon,’ I said to Cynthia. I sat in the front seat. Cynthia got in the back. The cab pulled out and moved.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said to the driver, after a while.

  ‘No worries. The little shit had it coming. You’re the one I was stopping for.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Not that it had stopped him driving off with the wrong passenger.

  Still, I felt better. Not quite so ill, not quite so pissed off with the world. There was only so much, after all, that you could take in one night. And in my case, maybe it wasn’t so much at all.

  We drove home in silence. Cynthia paid the bill and we got out. The taxi drove away. We stood there for a moment.

  Cynthia was looking at me. ‘I’ve never seen you get angry before.’

  ‘I know. It just happened.’

  She stepped in close, put her arms around me. ‘It’s got me all excited. I thought you were going to kill him.’

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe her.

  ‘You would’ve liked that?’

  ‘You bet.’

  So that was all it took.

  We went up to the flat and we fucked and it was good.

  ‘It was weird, you know,’ she said, ‘seeing you like that.’

  ‘I don’t often do it. I’m no good with anger. I get embarrassed.’

  ‘I think sometimes it’s like crying. Women cry to relieve tension, and sometimes they get angry, but men never cry, men just get violent. It’s socialisation.’

  ‘That doesn’t justify anything, even if it’s true.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry about before, about going to the toilets.’

  ‘I only said no because I was sick.’

  ‘I know.’

  We lay there.

  Then she said, ‘Don’t ever get angry like that with me. I don’t wanna see it. You’re ugly when you’re mad.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I swear.’

  I kissed her.

  I was making a lot of promises.

  SEVENTEEN

  The weekend passed. On Wednesday night we went back to the Story Bridge Hotel. It was poetry night. There was a stage set up in the bar and anyone who felt so inclined could get up and read or recite their works. There were always plenty of takers. I’d been to the poetry night maybe seven or eight times by then, and had heard maybe two or three decent poems in all the time. Generally it was terrible.

  It didn’t matter. The crowd liked a victim. And for my part, it was good to know I wasn’t any worse at it than anyone else. I’d never got up there myself of course. I wasn’t a good speaker. I stuttered, spoke way too fast, lost track of my sentences. And then there were the poems themselves. I didn’t read them aloud. I told myself they were written for the page.

  But the crowd this particular Wednesday night was small and indifferent to the poets. Everyone was talking, drinking, wishing there was some music playing instead. Cynthia and I, and Leo and Molly and Rachel, were camped down one end of a table, ignoring the poets along with everyone else.

  It was a bad time for Rachel. She was in the middle of exams at uni. She was getting ready to fail. I was the one who’d invited her. I’d called her up. She’d said ‘Gordon! I didn’t expect to hear from you.’

  But I’d been thinking about her.

  I was fifteen when I left Dalby, left her. I was being sent to a boarding school in Brisbane. I’d already been in love with Rachel for two years by then. A terrible, confus
ed, adolescent love. I dreamed of eloping, of taking her away. She held my hand, she said that she cared for me more than anyone else in the world ... but she wouldn’t call it love, and she wouldn’t come away with me. When we said goodbye I said, ‘Do you think we’ll still be together after all this? In ten years time?’

  And she said, ‘Of course. We’ll always be friends.’

  ‘I love you, Rachel.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Gordon, please.’

  And she was right. Eight years later here we were.

  We were talking, at the table, about love.

  ‘Love ...’ Molly was saying, ‘y’know, my mother once told me that I’d never know what love was. She said I was too cold. What a thing to say to your daughter.’

  I knew very little about love. The word itself seemed vague to the point of meaninglessness. From what I could tell it covered sex and infatuation and obsession. In the early stages of a relationship. Then there was affection, and practicality, convenience, security, tolerance, ownership, responsibility, trust, friendship, hatred, danger, humiliation, pain, addiction ...

  All of us there at the table had our memories and interpretations. And we called them all the same thing. What could we be left with but confusion?

  ‘It’s about communication,’ said Rachel. That’s what’s important. You have to understand the other person’s perspective. What you mean to them. And what they mean to you.’

  And I could see that it was true. It was a typical thing for Rachel to say. And she had her reasons. But I couldn’t agree with it. I couldn’t feel it. Sometimes it sounded too much like work. A contortion. Where was the grace, where was the natural flow?

  Cynthia and I had it. At least for the moment. We’d slid together and it’d fitted. It’d happened in a matter of hours. There’d been no decisions and no questions and no effort. It was barely even up to us. It was just there. A divine treat. A question of fate, not love.

  The whole thing with Rachel had been different. There’d been no fate involved there, we’d never fitted together the way Cynthia and I did, but I’d still been in love with Rachel all those years. And I’d worked at it, tried to break through, but I’d never known why. I had no idea what that love meant, or where it came from. And it hadn’t mattered to me that I didn’t know.