After the Blues

by Kathy Lette

  We’d been together through thick and thin … and times had been Ryvita-thin of late. Drug overdoses, unwanted pregnancies, school suspensions, abortions, catfights, beach territorial warfare … Welcome to life in the top Cronulla surfie gang.

  I had hung around the periphery of this golden, sun-kissed elite, totally overawed. Barbie and Ken dolls clearly have sex – because these surfie gods and goddesses were obviously the progeny. What else could explain their perfection?

  By ingratiating myself with the alpha surfie females, I had finally graduated into the Greenhills Gang at Cronulla Beach. But it was a boy’s world. The boys reckoned girls shouldn’t surf as it was so hard to get the smell out of the fish. I got ‘dropped’ by my boyfriend once, for daring to take out a board. My ex, Bruce, threatened to punch my lights out.

  But that was before I met Garry.

  As a bonsai brunette whose bra-cups do not runneth over, I was not a natural fit with this bronzed, blue-eyed, tousle-haired surf Adonis. He’d already been talent-spotted by a surf sponsor and was destined for aquatic greatness. But there was so much more to him than beauty and brawn. Sensitivity ran deep through him, buried, like a seam of gold. Yet I was the only one who could see it.

  Garry was my one true love – but it turned out he loved the surf more, and drugs even better.

  Which is why my bestie and I were running away – from exams, from parental lectures, from peer-group pressures, from the macho meatheads in the Greenhills Gang, from girls so catty they needed to go to the vet to get their claws clipped, from life in the Sydney beachside suburbs and, mainly, from my unromantic boyfriend.

  Yes, I pined and ached for his warm mouth and salty tang. Oh, I had a pang every time I thought of that tang … But we’d made a pact to ‘never let a penis come between us’.

  ‘I like Garry, sure,’ Sarah had said as we boarded the overnight train bound for Byron Bay, ‘but with him, surf comes first. You can’t trust the big dag. He’s let you down so often. I, on the other hand, am like your human hammock.’

  ‘I will always hold you up too,’ I promised.

  And so it was just us against the world. As the train chugged north and the day died in the window, we made plans to be singers or poets or novelists … Whatever came first. From now on, we would only surf our brainwaves. We would sit up all night and plan our brilliant, technicolour future …

  I awoke with a jolt and lurched leftwards.

  ‘Quick! Casino station. Move it!’ I shouted.

  We grabbed our sleeping bags and swags and tumbled out onto the platform, into the searing northern New South Wales sunshine, blinking like newborn field mice. The sun sliced into my bleary eyes, which is why it took me a moment to realise what I was looking at. He was resting nonchalantly up against the railings, his surfboard propped beside him.

  ‘What took youse so long?’ He grinned, all wry and dry, his blue eyes ablaze.

  ‘Garry! How the hell did you know we’d be … And how the hell did you get up here so fast?’

  ‘Hitched.’

  ‘Relying on the kindness of passing psychopaths … Sooo smart,’ Sarah said facetiously. She was clearly not as pleased as I was to see my boyfriend, leaning on the wall, leg cocked up behind him like a flamingo.

  Garry shrugged and biffed her good-naturedly. They were friends too. Mostly.

  ‘There’s a bus to Byron in ten,’ he said.

  After we’d kissed on the bus until our lips went numb, I prised myself free, left him stretched out along the back seat to sleep and went to sit with Sarah. We jounced along three rows in front of him.

  ‘I can’t believe he came after me,’ I whispered to her, amazed, thrilled, tingling.

  She raised a caustic brow.

  ‘I mean, just when I’d given up on him.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Are you pissed off?’

  ‘No,’ she said, sarcastically. ‘Not at all. Obviously, the three of us make a really good pair.’

  Human beings may have spent billions of years evolving out of the ocean, but all Aussie blokes want to do is get back in. The boys surf all day then hold forth in the pub all night, boasting about their few waves the way mountaineers talk about scaling K2.

  But Garry was different. He never bragged. All afternoon I watched as he carved up the big, trundling breakers off the silica sands of Byron Bay, then, when he finally surged to shore, just shrugged off his feats to admiring locals.

  His salty insouciance only made me love him more.

  Byron Bay beach is an enchanted place. Humpback whales breach in the deep and pods of dolphins cavort in the creamy waves as you bodysurf beside them. But the fact that Garry had followed me here was even more magical.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ I gushed as we darted ashore on a wave, shimmering with pleasure.

  ‘S’okay,’ my BFF mumbled, tumbling onto the sand beside me in a spritz of spray.

  ‘But the dolphins … I’m on an endorphin, or rather, endolphin, high.’

  Normally Sarah would have taken that bit of silliness and spun it into a raucous riff. We’d have played with the wordplay, lobbing banter back and forth for a least an hour. I looked at her, grinning …

  She gave another monosyllabic shrug.

  When Garry cruised into shore for a break, we made camp on the forested edge of the beach and munched and crunched through the vegie wraps we’d bought in town en route. When a sulky Sarah skulked off to buy more supplies, Garry and I lay on our towels, entwined. He kissed me deeply and I felt my blood quickening.

  ‘I missed you from the minute I told you I didn’t miss you anymore,’ I confessed.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why j’think I hitched north?’

  ‘For the surf.’ I nibbled his lip.

  ‘Yeah, well, that too.’ He bit me playfully back. ‘But I’d rather ride you.’

  He rolled on top of me and my body arched up instinctively to greet him. He was emitting lust rays visible to the naked eye.

  But it was broad daylight and so, showing the restraint of Pavarotti’s girdle, I somehow summoned the willpower to push him away. ‘Later,’ I promised, nuzzling his neck.

  ‘Come out the back with me, then,’ Garry said. ‘I need to work off my frustration.’

  I made an ashen-faced contemplation of the churning sea. ‘Don’t you think this swell’s a little too big for me?’

  ‘Sure, there have been some injuries and deaths in Byron surf …’ My Neptunian love god winked. ‘But none of them serious.’

  Moments later, I was wading through the water in his wake. A massive wave that could only be described as a ‘vomit comet’ broke over me, tumbling and rumbling me this way and that like a sock in a giant washing machine.

  As I gasped for air, Garry yanked me to the surface. As another huge wall of water rose up, he simply submerged the base of his board so that the nose rose easily over the top of the big white wave, while pulling me under to perform an effortless duck-dive below the crest. He then hauled me up onto his board and, without waiting for a written invitation, climbed on behind and lay down – his face pressed into the crack between my thighs, totally oblivious to the fact that he was cavalierly arousing my reproductive organs – then paddled me out beyond the breakers.

  ‘Go for it, Deb. This wave has your name on it.’ He hopped off the back of the board, then spun it into the take-off position.

  I had just inquired if he’d like me to attempt something less difficult, like, say, discovering an Ebola cure or even finding a brain cell in the cranium of any of the top surfie chicks we’d left at Cronulla, when he abruptly pushed the board like a waxy javelin towards the beach. As I mentally prepared for an emergency air evacuation to intensive care, I suddenly realised I was aloft, hurtling on the crest of the giant wave. The surfing lessons he’d given me back in Greenhills kicked in and I pushed myself up into a kneeling position, jackknifed to standing, then crouched down low, tilted forward and
, holy hell, I was flying! I darted to shore, quicksilvered with delight.

  Garry bodysurfed into the shallows beside me.

  ‘Not bad.’ He grinned.

  Surfie blokes are not good with praise. ‘Not bad’ is the equivalent of euphoric rapture in normal men. ‘Not bad at all ’ – well, you’ve basically won the lottery and an Oscar all in one.

  Triumphant, I sprang out of the water … then was retracted violently, having forgotten to untie my leg-rope. Landing on my bum at his feet was when I also realised that my bikini bottoms, which had untied at the sides, had caught a different wave altogether. I lay there in the froth and foam, shielding my nether regions with a wig of seaweed.

  ‘Not bad at all.’ Garry winked mischievously before fetching the other half of my cossies from the sandbank.

  I caught a few more thrilling rides, my confidence growing each time until I was skittering down the face of every wave, whooping.

  Sarah was by now lying amongst the eucalyptus trees, moping in the mottled shadows. I waved. She didn’t wave back.

  Our first night in Byron Garry made a fire. We noshed on bananas and fish he roasted in foil in the glowing embers. I tried to make it up to my bestie, teasing her with little jokes and telling stories I knew she liked. But the tension was so thick you’d need a chainsaw to cut it.

  Garry and I zipped our sleeping bags together. Sarah took her bag to the other side of the fire and turned her back on us. We made love as quietly as we could, then lay gazing up at the canopy of stars and watched the sea turn milky in the moonlight.

  ‘I love you,’ I told him.

  ‘Ditto.’

  It was the surfie equivalent of the romantic Byronic love poems I’d been studying at school.

  The next day, despite the spectacular, pearly pink dawn which had me oohing and aahing at top volume, Sarah was even more withdrawn. I felt guilty about Garry being there, but simultaneously euphoric. Who could I tell how I felt? Who would understand? Only Sarah – only Sarah wasn’t talking to me.

  I walked to town and used some of my precious babysitting savings to hire snorkelling gear – only two sets.

  ‘Come on beautiful bestie. Let’s pretend to be Jacques Cousteau. Mademoiselle is used to diving in le deep end, non?’

  Relenting, she finally followed me into the cove and we snorkelled together through the shallows. As we splashed and splished each other and joined the colourful choreography of iridescent fish darting through the rocky reefs, without a care in their weightless world, a warm sense of calm washed over me.

  Walking back up the beach, I took her arm in mine and we were happy again, optimistic, chock-full of joy, as though we’d drunk a joie de vivre juice.

  ‘Did you see that giant groper with its big pouty Mick Jagger lips?’ Sarah enthused.

  ‘And that stingray with its Batman cape and Joker grin?’

  But back at camp, her mood soon darkened once more.

  ‘How was the snorkelling?’ Garry asked, stoking up the campfire.

  ‘There’s too many sharks around here for my liking,’ Sarah told him pointedly.

  Garry shrugged. ‘They’re only reef sharks.’

  ‘I’m talking about the ones on land. A shark, any shark, can put a nasty hole in your social life, not to mention your lower limbs,’ she said tersely. ‘And other parts of your anatomy.’

  The fire’s flames danced and flickered and the wood crackled, but a chill spread through our little group.

  ‘So,’ I tried to fill the awkward silence. ‘What’s your top shark-survival tip then?’ I asked my boyfriend.

  ‘Just make sure you’re swimming like hell away from the teeth end.’

  ‘Yeah, I think I’ll do just that,’ Sarah said, moving her sleeping bag to the other side of the fire.

  ‘J’know what, Sarah? No shark would wanna eat you. You’re too bitter and sour. It’d just swim on by, uttering a “No thanks, I already ate”.’

  I kicked Garry to shut him up.

  ‘Goodnight, BFF,’ I ventured.

  There was a long horrible pause and then a disgruntled reply – ‘’Night. Though there’s nothing good about it.’

  The next day was even worse. Garry bought some dope and magic mushrooms from a surfie dude he’d met out the back of the breakers.

  ‘Really?’ I screwed up my nose when he showed me the stash.

  ‘Your “bestie” needs to take a chill pill. That chick’s gonna implode if we don’t relax her.’

  After we’d eaten our baked fish, Garry handed Sarah the bottle of vodka he’d stolen from his dad’s drinks cabinet and stashed deep down in his rucksack. ‘Here you go, chirpy. As my dad says, why not drown your sorrows?’

  ‘The only way I could do that is if I held your head under a wave for long enough,’ she replied.

  We drank the bottle dry and smoked all the weed, and ate the magic mushrooms fried in butter. At first I didn’t notice how stoned I was. Then the world tilted and the moon started sliding into the sea. I remember laughing and laughing, the three of us howling like werewolves, leaping around in the firelight, swooping and swooning. I remember curling up together to keep warm as the fire died – and then I remember nothing more until it was nearly morning.

  It was the moaning that woke me from my drug-addled stupor. When I pried open my eyes, I had to tilt my head backwards so that my eyeballs wouldn’t fall out in horrified amazement. It was still dark, with just a weak ray of light on the horizon. But reality was starkly clear, even in the gloom.

  Garry and Sarah, kissing. Him naked, lying on her. Her legs wrapped around his beautiful, bronzed body. Her sighs of pleasure. His sweat glistening.

  And me, lying alone on the cold, damp sand. I felt the waves of panic slapping my face repeatedly. I felt as though I was in a riptide being pulled under. I gasped for air. I couldn’t breathe. Beyond them, the grey waves curled and arched menacingly. When you’re going to die, a lot of thoughts cross your mind. Firstly, that you never saw it coming.

  And then I was scrambling to my feet and running down the beach; running as far and as fast as I could away from the churning sea.

  I rode the dawn bus to the station and caught the train back to Sydney. But the further I got from the Byron beach, the more I felt I was plummeting towards the seabed. I could not stop sobbing. The two people I loved most had betrayed me, and I was taking on water.

  A swimmer who panics will be rewarded with the sight of herself regurgitating up the seaweed swallowed while flailing around screaming. I was storm-tossed, scuttled, shipwrecked …

  I tried to ignore the lurching horizon. But I could not save myself from sinking under.

  You’ve got mail

  Up the coast. Saturday, I reckon, though not sure.

  Dear Deb,

  I am writing this letter when I should be ringing you up, but I can’t afford to ring because it costs 2 bucks, and I’m really running short of money. I will probably be broke by next weekend anyway.

  After you split, I left Byron for Qld. I’m gonna stay up here surfing until I hear from you as you are the only reason I would come back. Write to me via the Bundaberg pub.

  I’m gutted about what happened. We were off our heads. Please forgive me, Deb. I love you.

  Love Garry.

  Dear Garry,

  Let me just put that on my list of things I don’t give a shit about.

  Debbie.

  P.S. My only query is this, how could Sarah screw your brains out, when you obviously don’t have any?

  There were letters from Sarah as well. I ripped them all up. Then finally I sent a note, via her parents.

  Sarah, why don’t you travel light and leave your hypocrisy at home? You are dead to me. Don’t contact me ever again.

  D.

  THE PUNK PHASE …

  The Sushi Sisters

  All the men were ugly. They soon became a blur of underarm odour, bites, blisters, ingrained grime and soiled ‘Life. Be in it’ underpants. And they all leer
ed up at me from the massage table. ‘Any extras?’

  Besides babysitting, this parlour was my first proper job ever, after my life had mayday-ed because my best friend slept with my boyfriend. Sleeping with your best friend’s boyfriend is the behaviour of a classic, two-faced bitch. And if I ever saw her again I would say it to her face, both of them.

  As for Garry, what I’d learned is that girls spend more time thinking about what boys are thinking about than boys spend thinking. The only upside is that you can make cracks in front of them about how inadequate they are, ’cause they’re not listening anyway.

  After that terrible morning on the Byron Bay beach, I’d fled back home despite the humiliation of the parental ‘I told you so’s. But trying to cope with Year Ten without a best friend finally pushed me into packing my swag again. I think it was the day I asked my maths teacher to explain why it would benefit me in later life to know how to calculate the gradient of a railway line as it rounded a bend. ‘Silence, when speaking to a teacher,’ he’d said. In kindergarten they spend all their time teaching you to talk. In high school they spend all their time teaching you to shut up.

  The next morning I ran away again, my poor mother’s pursuit down the driveway as hot as the rollers in her hair. Getting off the train at Central railway station, I’d lassoed the newspaper ad for ‘Chiropractor’s Assistant’ in black felt pen and walked to Newtown.

  You know how you feel when you’re crook in the guts? Well, the guy who interviewed me looked like nausea feels. The badge on his white coat, which he immediately shed, read ‘Ron Smart, Chiropractor’. He sprawled starkers on the slab and instructed me in kneading techniques. When he flipped sunny side up, his erection practically sprang into my eye. Wondering whether to go under, over or circumnavigate it, I administered a vocal cold flannel by delivering an enthusiastic lecture on the gradients of railway lines. He told me how much to charge per massage and what my percentage would be. I’d scored the job.