Don't Kiss Girls and Other Silly Stories

by Pat Flynn

  ‘Aww, that’s sick!’ I say, wiping my eye with a napkin.

  ‘Code 306!’ she yells.

  Within seconds, uniformed teenagers run out of the kitchen. Reinforcements. There are at least four of them – carrying burgers with the top bun missing, shakes with no lids, handfuls of pickles.

  ‘Retreat!’ I scream.

  Kane, Megan and I make a run for it. Our backs are being pelted with food that’s probably better for throwing than it is for eating. As I open the door an apple pie bonks me on the back of the head.

  ‘And good riddance!’ yells Sherie.

  We dart into an alley and collapse beside some industrial bins.

  Megan wipes her face and discovers a large dob of red on her finger. ‘I’m bleeding!’ she cries.

  Kane holds her finger in his hand, studies it, and then puts it in his mouth. Megan shrieks and we laugh. ‘It’s just tomato sauce,’ Kane says.

  Megan doesn’t see the funny side of it at all. ‘I want to go home!’ she whines.

  Kane helps her up. ‘You still owe us a free meal,’ he says to me.

  ‘What are you talking about? I got you heaps of free food. I can’t help it if you can’t catch.’

  We laugh again.

  ‘Kane!’ howls Megan. ‘I want to go home now!’

  ‘See you, Rossy.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  ‘And remember,’ he says, giving me a wink. ‘Compete.’

  I will, I think. I just have to figure out how.

  Counciling and My Brush with the Emotional Side

  ‘Tony, this job can be tough. Real tough. Let me show you the tools you’ll need to survive.’

  It’s work experience week and luckily I found somewhere to go instead of Mr Garrahy’s office. My dad works for the local council as team leader of transport operations and safety management. This means he tells people to paint the faded lines and arrows on the roads, and sometimes he has to paint them himself when he can’t con anyone else into doing it. Anyway, he pulled some strings and got me a gig in the council’s transport division, and now Joe, deputy team leader of transport operations and safety management, is playing show and tell.

  ‘First, you got your shovel. If you have one of these things in your hand, people don’t ask you ’cause they think you’re doing something. I carry mine pretty much everywhere, even to meetings.’

  Right.

  ‘Next, you got your Vaseline. Now, except when we’re on smoko or on strike, we’re out there in the sun and wind. Standing around, mostly. It’s tough as hell on your lips, but if you spread a nice fat layer of this on, you won’t have to worry about dryness or cracking. Come Friday night, you’re ready to kiss like a movie star.’

  It’s hard to believe anyone would want to kiss Joe. His shorts are pulled up high around his fat belly and his beard makes him look like Ned Kelly.

  ‘And lastly – but certainly not leastly – you got your most important tool of all. The esky.’ He holds it up. It’s big and blue, just like his regulation council uniform, only the esky doesn’t have a fluoro yellow vest around it.

  ‘This is where you keep all your food and drinks,’ Joe continues, ‘and there’s nothing more important than cold liquid when you’re in the hot sun half the day. And the best thing is, once you got the lid on tight, it doubles as an office chair.’

  Joe takes out a bottle of Solo, pops it open and sits on his esky. ‘Well, smoko time, son. Give us about twenty minutes and we’ll hit the road and do some serious work.’

  Yeah, I don’t mind this job so far. Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off. They’re the sort of work hours I can handle. Only trouble is, I don’t have an esky so I have to sit on the floor. I’ve got esky envy.

  We hop in the council ute and it’s not long before we make our first stop. The petrol station. We don’t need petrol but we do need drinks. Joe says it’s going to be a stinker out there.

  After throwing the bottles in the esky, Joe sets the radio to the country music station, and we cruise down the road, listening to a song about some pub that’s run out of beer.

  ‘So, what are we doing?’ I ask.

  ‘Driving ’round.’

  ‘Yeah, I know but … what’s our job?’

  ‘Well, we look for potholes.’

  ‘There’s one over there,’ I say, pointing.

  ‘Easy does it, eagle eyes. We don’t look on the other side of the road. It’s against occupational health and safety rules.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I might get distracted and run over some old lady, and we can’t have that, can we? Believe me, kid, this job is a lot more complicated than it looks.’

  We drive past a group of workmen. Their uniforms are green, not blue, but Joe must know them because he slows down to a crawl and winds open the window. He doesn’t wave to them, though. He raises one finger.

  ‘Go home, you scabs!’ he yells.

  They shake their tools at us. I’m glad we don’t stop.

  ‘Bloody private contractors,’ he says to me. ‘Making our life hell.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, they work too hard, for one thing. Makes us look bad.’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘And they’ve signed away conditions that our union fought long and hard for. Now we’re under pressure to do the same.’

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘Well, the right to take heat stress leave, for one.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Anytime it gets above 29 degrees we can officially request air-conditioning. If the bosses can’t provide it we can go home.’

  ‘But how can you get air-conditioning? You fix roads. Outside.’

  ‘That’s the council’s problem. Anyway, during the last round of enterprise bargaining we pushed for the ten/ten clause – ten per cent more money for ten per cent less hours. But the bloody CEO said no way and signed up these private jokers to do resurfacing and the like. These clowns have no idea – half the time we’re called in to clean up their mess.’

  ‘So they can’t fix roads properly?’

  ‘Yeah. They can fix ’em, all right. They just leave a bloody big mess. Rocks and gravel, mostly. We have to take it to the dump. It’s hard work.’

  I see another pothole. This time it’s on our side of the road. ‘There’s one.’

  ‘Where?’ says Joe, squinting.

  ‘Right there.’ I point at a hole the size of the Grand Canyon.

  ‘Yeah, I see it,’ he mumbles. We ease to a stop. ‘I just have to make a business call first.’

  I listen to the radio while Joe rings someone up on his work mobile.

  ‘Yeah, g’day, Mick. I’ll have ten each way on No Promises, and twenty a place on She’ll Be Right. Yeah, I know. Look, I’m sure to get a winner this time, then I’ll pay you back pronto. Aw, don’t be like that! No, don’t add it up now, I don’t have time. I’m flat-chat at work. Yeah, yeah. See ya, Mick.’

  He puts the phone in his pocket, and we hop out of the car to take a look.

  ‘Yep,’ says Joe. ‘That’s a hole all right.’

  He goes to the back of the ute and grabs an aerosol paint can. After giving it a shake, Joe sprays a white ring around the pothole.

  Then he wipes his brow. ‘Phew. That’s good work. Time for a brew, I reckon.’

  ‘And then we’ll fix it?’ I say.

  ‘Nah, don’t be silly. I’ll bring the boys back in a week or three. Today we just have to mark it.’

  After our drink we head off again, and at the next hole Joe gives me a go at spraying.

  ‘Careful,’ he says. ‘You need correct thickness and top visibility. It’s not a job to be taken lightly.’

  It takes me about ten seconds to paint a circle around the hole.

  Joe nods slo
wly. ‘Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all.’ He gives me a friendly pat on the back that almost knocks me over. ‘You know, I think if you work really hard, you may just have a future in this business, Tony.’

  I look at my hole and feel a surge of pride. Then I crack open a drink.

  *

  The next day I’m assigned to the traffic management unit. We have to tell the cars what to do while some other blokes fix the road. It’s a two-person team. Joe and me.

  ‘Now, what you’ve got here is your standard two-sided sign,’ says Joe, showing me. ‘On this side you’ve got STOP, and on the other you’ve got SLOW. I’ve actually invented a three-sided sign that I’m going to show the bosses soon. Might make me a fortune.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s the third side say?’ I ask.

  ‘It says, “That’s not slow!”’

  Joe gives me a walkie-talkie and a sign and tells me to cross the road and walk down a 100 metres. While work is being done on the road there’s only one lane available and we have to take turns to let the cars through. When Joe tells me to, I turn the sign around and make people stop.

  At first I don’t expect them to obey me, but they actually do. It’s fun having so much power. I might take one of these signs home and flash it at Simon and Belinda when they start annoying me.

  Although it’s not a bad job, holding a sign up all the time is a bit tough on your arm muscles. Luckily after twenty minutes there’s a whistle, which either means a pretty girl is walking past or it’s time for a break. I see the blokes congregate behind the bulldozer. Smoko.

  I’ve brought my own esky today so I have something to sit on while I listen to the guys complain about the two Ws.

  Women and wives.

  ‘The current missus tells me I only think about one thing,’ says a bloke known as Wacko. ‘She’s right. I put a hell of a lot of thought into how to hide the credit card.’

  The blokes chuckle.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ says Wacko. ‘You got yourself a girlfriend yet?’

  All the men look at me.

  ‘I had one,’ I say, ‘but I dumped her. And now I want her back.’

  Wacko nods. ‘I hear ya, kid. Walked out on my second wife – stupidest thing I ever done.’

  ‘Especially when she cleaned out your bank account,’ says the bloke sitting next to him.

  Everyone laughs.

  We go back to work but all the talk about girls means I can’t stop thinking about Ashleigh. Her long brown hair, big eyes and soft lips. I imagine her coming towards me in her mum’s car …

  Hang on, my imagination ain’t that good. She is coming towards me in her mum’s car.

  I quickly turn the sign from SLOW to STOP, and they pull up right in front of me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Joe through the walkie-talkie.

  ‘Umm. My ex-girlfriend’s driven up. I just want to talk to her for a minute.’

  ‘Well, that’s totally against council regulations and … we do it all the time. You’re a fast learner, son. I’ll let my cars through for a while. Good luck, mate.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. I’ll need it.

  I give Ash a wave and her mum rolls down the window.

  ‘Hey,’ says Ash.

  ‘How are you, Tony?’ says her mum.

  ‘Good,’ I reply.

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’

  ‘We’re fixing the road.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s broken.’ I look at Ashleigh. ‘How’s work going?’

  ‘Good. Today I got my eyelashes tinted and foils put in my hair. For free.’

  ‘Looks great,’ I say, even though I didn’t notice.

  ‘The lady said I’m ready to do my first haircut tomorrow. But only on a mannequin.’

  I spot an opportunity. ‘Hey, why do it on a dummy when you can have the real thing? Me.’

  Her mouth opens. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  My walkie-talkie starts crackling. It’s Joe.

  ‘Mate, we’ve all had a look at her through the binoculars. She’s a good sort, all right. But you better let ’em through. There’s about twenty cars lined up behind you.’

  I take a look and he’s right. I hadn’t noticed. I turn the sign around. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

  ‘I start at seven,’ she yells as they drive past. ‘You can come by before work.’

  ‘No worries.’

  I smile. I’m going to get a free haircut and get back in Ashleigh’s good books, maybe even get her back as my girlfriend.

  It’s the smartest thing I’ve done in ages.

  *

  I tilt my head and feel Ashleigh’s fingers massaging my scalp. I’m in heaven. Because this is such a posh hairdressing salon I get to have my hair washed before it’s cut. I can’t remember the last time someone washed my hair. Actually, I can’t remember the last time I washed my hair.

  After drying my head with a towel and bringing the chair upright, Ash gives me a smile. ‘So, what sort of cut do you want?’

  I smile back. ‘Whatever you want.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yeah, I totally trust you. Just make me look sexy.’

  She laughs, then gives me a kiss on the forehead. ‘This is going to be so good, Tone. You won’t regret it.’

  I sure won’t. Especially if I get more kisses.

  She starts off in an unusual way, shaving all the hair off the back with a pair of clippers. Then she does the same on the sides. Looks like I’m in for a buzz cut, which is fine with me. Cool Rossy.

  Because I haven’t had my hair cut in ages, my fringe is really long, and she wets it and pulls it down until it reaches my chin. Then she picks up a pair of scissors and starts randomly chopping off bits at the front and top. She snips away for ages, but I can’t see that much because I’ve got hair covering my eyes.

  I’m not sure what she’s doing, probably getting some cutting practice before she buzzes the rest of my hair off with the clippers. She squirts some goop into her hand and starts moulding my hair like playdough. It sticks up at funny angles, which I can now see out of one eye. The other eye still has hair over it.

  Her touch feels nice, although I don’t know what the heck’s going on. Probably more practice.

  She stops shaping my hair for a second and checks the mirror. I look at myself and am about to laugh. Imagine if the blokes saw me now!

  ‘Okay, I’m finished,’ says Ashleigh.

  ‘What?’

  She must be joking. There’s hair everywhere you don’t expect it to be, like over my ears and left eye, and it’s not even close to being straight. It’s more like an uneven triangle over my face, as if Simon took a pair of scissors and chopped off a bunch of my hair while I was asleep. Like I did to him that time.

  ‘It’s the latest style,’ she says. ‘Emo.’

  Emo? You’ve got to be kidding me. Don’t they wear black and listen to sad music all the time?

  ‘It’s about creativity and being an individual,’ she adds.

  I feel like telling her that I don’t want to be an individual. I just want to look like everyone else.

  ‘I think it’s really cool,’ she says. ‘And definitely sexy.’

  She lightly touches my spiked-up hair, which I think looks about as sexy as a rooster. ‘Well, you better get to work, Tone. See you around, huh?’

  ‘So you’re really finished?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah!’ She slaps me on the shoulder. ‘You’re still the same, aren’t you? Always joking around.’

  ‘Yep. That’s me. A real joker.’ I stumble out of the chair knowing only one thing. The joke’s on me.

  As I’m walking out a lady calls me over. I saw her cutting hair earlier and she looked like she knew what she was doing. Maybe she’s going
to fix up my haircut?

  ‘That’ll be eighteen dollars,’ she says.

  I’m too stunned to say anything. Eighteen bucks to have my hair mangled into a thousand different pieces? I look over and Ashleigh mouths ‘thank you’ at me.

  I take out my wallet and pay.

  *

  As I ride my bike to work I try to make a plan. I can’t let people see me like this. My reputation will be ruined.

  A horn honks behind me, nearly making me fall off my bike. As I turn my head to yell an insult, I recognise the four-wheel drive.

  A boy is leaning out the passenger window. I recognise him, too.

  ‘Nice do, Rossy! You get a job at the funeral parlour?’

  ‘Shut up, Kane.’

  He’s wearing a polo shirt because he’s doing work experience as a golf pro. He rang me up after the first day and said that all he has to do is drive one of those carts around, which was great until he did doughnuts in the sand trap and got bogged.

  I couldn’t stop laughing when he told me. Now he’s laughing at me.

  His sister, Lacey, is looking through the back window. She and I were mates until I started going out with Ashleigh Simpkin. Then she started chucking stuff at me.

  But maybe she’s finally getting over it because she rolls down the window and waves at me. She also says something. ‘Smile.’

  Why does she want me to smile? Then I see what’s in her hand. A mobile phone! The little stinker is filming me.

  I give them one of Joe’s special waves and they speed off, Kane’s laughter echoing in my head.

  As soon as I arrive at council chambers, I go looking for Dad.

  ‘Holy guacamole,’ he says when I walk into his office. ‘The lawnmower definitely won.’

  ‘I need a hat,’ I say.

  ‘You need more than that. If the blokes see you like this, there’s going to be hell to pay. For you and me.’

  I nod. For once in his life, Dad’s right. Even if I get away with it for one day, I can’t wear a hat forever. Imagine what my mates will say when I get back to school. Imagine what Simon and Belinda will say when I get home. Imagine what I’ll say when I walk past a mirror.

  ‘Can you help, Dad?’