After the Blues

by Kathy Lette

  When the chillum died, he took it from my hand and peered into my upturned palm. ‘Okay, babe …’ With his lungs full of smoke, his speech was strained, as if talking over a burp. ‘You … Sarah …’ he exhaled, ‘are ruled by your head and not by your heart. What you gotta do is stop being hung up on middle-class, puritanical bullshit. You gotta relax, liberate, free yourself up.’ Sundram placed my diagnosed hand firmly on his penis. ‘Sex is a form of meditation. Our sex energies could meet and really merge, you know? Have you ever heard of the Cosmic Orgasm?’

  Sundram explained to me that he has to have sex, otherwise his chances of getting cancer of the prostate are increased. Poor, poor Sundram! Oh well, Cosmic Orgasm here I come!

  26 January

  Sundram’s double mattress is on the floor, a mandala and mozzie net suspended above it. A huge pile of marijuana is stacked in one corner. He’s going to sell it in Sydney. Not that he’s into money. But he just needs to buy some essentials (compact disc, new car, and float-to-relax-tank). Sundram says that consumer goods are cleansed of any superficial materialism when used for the purpose of psychic enrichment. So pleased. This means I can now save up for a video player.

  Sundram wears these really cool seventies batiks. Seeing me gasp for breath once he’d disrobed, he explained that the pressurised fluorocarbons of deodorants destroy the ozone layer. I really admire his stance but must take care to keep my nose out of his armpit. Naked, his body is encrusted in tight black curls. He reminds me of one of Mum’s Steelo soap pads. I stretched out on the grey flannel sheets so we could get down to scouring.

  ‘Send a message to your uterus not to, you know, conceive,’ he said afterwards. ‘It’s your body. Concentrate. Will the sperm to leave your system.’

  ‘We didn’t kiss …’

  He looked at me incredulously. ‘There are more germs in the mouth than in any other part of the body.’ So, while he’s curled his back towards me and sunk into a stoned sleep, I’m here issuing orders to my ovaries.

  2 February

  I think Sundram is, like, incredible. He agrees. I now know without a doubt that I am in DEEP spiritual love – I let him take the money I made waitressing in Byron.

  3 February

  A week’s gone by and still no Cosmic Orgasm. This could be because I am busy emitting positive vibes to the carpet snake coiled around the roof rafters of Sundram’s room not to eat me alive while simultaneously trying to tune in to the frequency of my ovaries.

  Unlike me, Camille is really in tune with her body! Every day she drinks a glass of goat’s milk with a pill made from cow placenta. She spun out tonight about the burden of being beautiful, how it obscured her personality and aura. Poor Camille! Sundram got her head back together with some passive joint manipulation. He says with help she can change. Sundram reckons anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles is just not a realist.

  4 February

  Declined Sky’s kind offer of a massage. Don’t feel remotely tense.

  5 February

  Sky keeps heavying me about the dangers of tension build-up from the repression of bad karma.

  6 February

  Have begun to feel tense about not feeling tense.

  7 February

  ‘It’s Camille.’ Sky was straddling my back and her kneading intensified. ‘She’s, like, really, you know, fake. She just won’t get her sexuality act together. She uses her body in this really sexist type way.’ My wad of shoulder muscle was being wrung like wettex.

  I told Sky that Camille was just generous. ‘Yeah,’ Sky agreed. ‘That woman just gives and gives … She’s given most of the men on the commune a dose of one disease or another.’

  I raved on about how hard it must have been growing up with mega-rich oldies. Her parents gave Camille this farm, just to make her feel guilty about it. As if all that’s not a heavy enough number, she also suffers from premenstrual tension. Poor Camille! She’s been premenstrual for months! But she really is trying to channel her psychic energies. Camille has asked Sundram to help her exorcise her bad childhood experiences using a rebirthing technique. This is where you lie in the bathtub naked and go back to the actual moment of your birth. You can see the doctor’s face and everything!

  14 February

  Wish I could meditate. Apparently the urge to sink into a deep transcendental trance can strike you at any given moment … Though I’ve noticed it’s usually when there’s washing-up to be done. You know, if I weren’t into being an Aquarian, it would really give me the shits that Tarzana and Zultana and the others are always talking about the workers uniting, but they never wash up. Not once.

  Sundram, on the other hand, is really disappointed that he can never help me make dinner. ‘From my years of communal living, I’ve developed an acute awareness of the exploitation of women. But unfortunately I don’t have time for domestic duties. I’m preparing for next month’s men’s consciousness-raising seminar. Sorry,’ he corrected, ‘ovular.’ (The word ‘seminar’, Sundram feels, does not encourage a cycle of ideas.)

  27 February

  Camille is making real progress with rebirthing. She has realised that her headaches are the result of having been a forceps delivery. What’s more, the reason she gets stuck in relationships is because she was in the birth canal for ten hours. (Boy, am I glad I was a Caesarean.)

  28 February

  It’s amazing, isn’t it, that you have to get a licence to own a dog in the suburbs, but that any yob can have a baby. Wish more mothers were like Sky. She believes her children are on a higher plane of awareness. She got Lennon from a truckie who gave her a lift to Noosa. And Zero (she doesn’t want him to have an ego) is from a really real relationship she had with an astrologer yoga teacher. Camille reckons she got Moon Unit from an Intuitive Perceptor Heart Master, Dr Love Ananda. She selected all the fathers by their looks. At first I thought it sounded a bit weird. But, well, you’ve heard of Calvin Kleins … what’s wrong with slipping into some Designer Genes?

  29 February

  Am a bit worried about whether or not my ovaries are coming-in-over-and-out. Asked Camille about contraception. She said she uses the rhythm method.

  28 March

  You know what you call a woman who uses the rhythm method? Mother. Camille is pregnant. She has obviously lost radio contact with her fallopian tubes.

  29 March

  Camille threw the I Ching to see whether she should abort. (Sky’s abortion method is to insert seaweed and drink malley root juice.) I think the father’s an unenlightened yob for not being supportive. Sundram, thoughtful as ever, is helping her make the decision by contacting her inner self through rebirthing.

  30 March

  Camille’s mother must have had a very traumatic labour. Sundram and Camille have been locked in the bathroom reliving it for hours. Her poor mum could’ve had triplets by now. Strange groans and guttural whimpers are filtering out underneath the door.

  I figure it’s about time I learned not to be so selfish. Will start by getting my healing act together and helping Sundram with Camille’s rebirthing in the bathroom.

  1 April

  Sundram is interested in Camille’s inner self, alright. All the way in.

  2 April

  Had my first flash of a past life! I was an Egyptian princess. The gods demanded a human sacrifice and I had to choose between my slaves, Camille and Sundram. I chose Camille.

  3 April

  Sundram says that sex is just a bodily function. I suggested that in that case, they could just have a bowel movement together.

  Sky said that I behaved in a possessive, jealous and unenlightened manner (all I did was dump a bag of fructose mash and bean curd over Camille’s head), and that I should simply sleep with someone else. Now I knew how Debbie felt when I accidentally slept with Garry. It’s clearly some kind of cosmic carnal revenge.

  4 April

  Today I had my second flash: Sky’s children are going to grow up to be vacuum cleaner salespeople.

&
nbsp; Too late I realise the spiritual depth and devotion of my union with Sundram! The only reason his dope pile has dwindled is because he’s so generous to the spiritually poverty-stricken. I mean, he couldn’t have smoked it all on his own. Anyone who could consume that amount of cannabis would be a total social reject, a bong-brain addict … wouldn’t he? He’s asked for the rest of my waitressing savings and I’ll gladly give them to him … I know I can never, ever be attracted to any other man’s sexual yang.

  5 April

  Today I intercepted a letter for Sundram from the dole office and found out that his real name is Simon Crudd. And hold onto your asteroids – he used to be a merchant banker. That explains why he uncaps the mineral water to let it breathe for at least two hours before drinking. Now I know why I never had a Cosmic Orgasm, because his yang is totally yuk.

  10 April

  Camille said that Sundram read her palm and told her she was ruled by her head and not by her heart and that sex is a form of meditation and that their sex energies could meet and really merge, you know, and they’d have a Cosmic Orgasm and that saying no was increasing his chance of getting cancer of the prostate … ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘right now I’m just trying to get my relationships clear on who I really want, Sundram or … you.’

  Well I’m not sure I want to get involved with someone who consumes dehydrated cow placenta every day. You’d never be certain you wouldn’t find her outside grazing on the kikuyu.

  2 May

  Am now sleeping with Ulysses. It’s okay. He kisses.

  10 May

  Got caught eating a bit of chocolate. ‘You’re not supposed to eat chocolate, Sarah, because of the chemicals,’ Sundram reprimanded. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Why don’t I just eat the chocolate and spit out the chemicals.’

  Sundram got really angry then and shouted at me that we should only eat vegetables, because vegetables keep us passive and good-natured. He has vegies on the brain – not grey but green matter. He also said that if I was going to eat chocolate I should’ve shared it. That’s what a commune is all about – sharing. (Yeah, boyfriends included.) Camille just gushed that it was a ‘high-fibre infusion scenario’ and started to chop food for the wok. Sundram confiscated the miso he’d bought in town with his own money. Sky had a fit because someone drank past the mark she’d pencilled on her bottle of goat’s milk.

  The fridge is full of paper bags marked with people’s names and fruit juice containers branded ‘poison’ to deter thirsty strangers. Sky is snapping at Camille to stop dicing the bean curd. ‘That bean curd’s mine, shitface.’

  All this sharing and caring is going to kill me.

  16 May

  Nobody is speaking to anybody else. Sky says we’re going to have an encounter group and ‘unblock the shit in our emotions’. It’s the first time I knew I had an S-bend for a psyche.

  18 May

  Having decided our parents are to blame for everything, we all feel much better. Ulysses was actually kicked out of home. Not just ’cause of his dope bust and tropical ulcers, but his unenlightened parents just couldn’t handle his body detoxification program.

  20 May

  Looked up ‘body detoxification’ in the Your Body, Yourself book. It involves drinking a glass of your urine first thing every morning. Reliving all our early morning kisses, I finally felt a primal scream coming on and chundered all over the breakfast table.

  23 May

  Vegie patch needs weeding, sheets need washing, roof needs mending, sink needs unclogging, carpet snake needs catching and the cops need placating about the commune’s overdue parking fines. Nobody around to help. All gone astral-travelling.

  25 May

  Don’t know why everyone’s so keen to find intelligent life on other planets, when it hasn’t been found here on Earth yet.

  30 May

  Been thinking it over, and, well, maybe this isn’t the decade for vegetable magnetism. It’s the 80s, right? The environment’s full of chemicals and shit, right? Yin and yang is about balance and harmony, right? As much as we might dislike it, we’ve really got no choice but to pig out on hamburgers, slob out in front of the telly and get drunk on girls’ nights out and all that … that way we’ll balance with all the crap in the environment. Right?

  31 May – Day 151 on the path to enlightenment, inner peace and harmony

  Derailed. Lost. No psychological sat nav. Going round and round in circles. Missing Debbie. How do I find my way back to her?

  Hating hippiedom. Think I’ll head back to the city and try being a punk. This is one missing person who has finally found herself.

  NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE MISSING PERSON REPORT

  Missing person serial no.: 8621/32

  Police bulletin: Positive sighting of missing person Sarah Day. Seen hitchhiking towards Sydney.

  Illegal alien: Simon Crudd, operating under the alias Sundram. Believed to be an illegal astral-travelling alien. Wanted on charges of growing and dealing marijuana.

  Misplaced person: Sky. Lost – one identity. Believed to have left her brains at the Queensland border.

  Deceased: Ulysses. Blood poisoning.

  Mistaken identity: Camille last seen in the company of a reincarnation guru. She now operates under the alias of Empress.

  Wanted: Sarah Day. Wanted on driving offences, for running over dogmas with her karma.

  CASE CLOSED

  You’ve got mail

  Dear Deb,

  The surf’s unreal up here. Seal Rocks was best. Got a 6’ tube. Crescent the next day was also unreal. But all we’ve done since the good tubes went is heckle the shit out of Bazz, and now he’s got the shits.

  Bloody Pete ran over a bloody fence pole in my car – I bought an old banger – and rooted the front guard. I was really stoked, as you can imagine. I didn’t exactly kiss him on the butt that night for doing that. Talking of bums I think I had better put a cork up mine tonight ’cause Pete’s getting as randy as a mad dog. (So am I, for that matter.)

  My sex life is at a standstill. I’m not interested in other chicks. All I’ve got to look at most nights is Pete’s big hairy arse and balls that hang down to his knees.

  The car is chewing up petrol like it’s bloody well free. I have been eating food that tastes like regular cess, and I mean cess – it’s the most shithouse food I have tasted for many a year. (That’s ’cause it’s Bazza’s turn to do the cooking this week.) The only good thing about this trip are the tubes. I’ve won a couple of comps up here. But nothing will make me happy until I’m looking in your beautiful blue eyes and kissing your sweet body.

  We called in at a mate’s farm on the way up to try to bludge a bit of free food but didn’t get a bloody crumb – stingy bastards.

  We are all starting to stink like the local shithouse. We haven’t had a wash for days, the car is a regular garbage dump, everywhere but the driver’s side, of course!

  There should be some good vibes flowing through tomorrow because there’s a southerly blowing.

  I’m missing you heaps. And I’m still so sorry about what happened. We were off our heads is all. Don’t stay mad at me – you know you don’t want to. You can write to me at Chook’s place in Noosa. Please write to me.

  Lots of love, Garry.

  Dear Deb,

  I didn’t have a letter waiting at Noosa so I know you’re still mad as hell.

  I’m starting to lose the will to live without you. The surf is shithouse and Chook is starting to give me the shits, plus I also have a bugger of a cold, thanks to surfing all day and night.

  We stayed up in Queensland with Steve in his flat for a couple of days but the hassle started to shit me so we moved on to the farm at Lennox Head, which is absolutely shithouse. All bloody Benj wants to do is hang around and play the pinnies.

  I am going to make some more cess for tea. I hope the bloody swell picks up, it should start to tomorrow. I’ve had an offer from Rip Curl. They want to sponsor me. But I don’t want to go pro without chewing it ove
r with you first. I don’t want to do anything without you.

  Love Garry.

  Garry,

  I’m only writing to tell you to stop writing. You’re as useful to me as a solar-powered vibrator on a rainy day.

  Debbie.

  BROADENING THE HETEROSEXUAL HORIZONS

  Good vibrations

  I wrote that to Garry as a mean joke, but actually vibrators were often all that kept us girls smiling in the early 1980s, because Sydney was suffering from a severe man shortage. All the men were either married or gay. Or married and gay. The rest thought monogamy was something you make dining-room tables out of.

  There was also a tendency for girls like Mouche and Sarah and me to confuse promiscuity with feminism. Blokes were taking full advantage of that confusion. Of course they were for ‘free love’… as they didn’t have to pay for it. Yep, they were laughing all the way to the sperm bank.

  An occupational hazard of being a girl around town in the 80s was ending up with a married man. Of course, you wouldn’t know he was married until you found the teething ring in his pocket. And by then it was too late, because you’d fallen in love. Well, we thought love was in the air, but in reality it was just the exhaust from his sports car as he zoomed back to his wife.