Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space

by Linda Jaivin

  Galgal is the subject of investigation by an entire secret division of the US military. Full-on, eh?

  We learned all that from the log book. Show it to you later, if you like. Typical of Nufonians to keep such detailed records. They’re as regular as a test pattern, and half as interesting. Zzzzzzt. New day, same picture. Zzzzzzt. New day, same picture. Zzzzzzt. Know what I mean? I really should stop dissing Nufonians. I’m kinda Nufonian myself. What do I mean, kinda? I’m a hybrid. Yeah, that’s right. We all are, all three of us.

  Let’s talk about sex.

  You’ve seen those tabloid headlines—‘I WAS ABDUCTED BY A UFO!’ ‘I WAS SEXUALLY EXPERIMENTED ON BY CREATURES FROM OUTER SPACE!’ ‘I WAS IMPREGNATED BY ALIENS!’ ‘EXTRATERRESTRIALS TOOK MY FOETUS!’? Well, it’s true. Shit happens. Believe it. The three of us, we’re Earth’s little alien love children. Yeah. Alien plus Earthling equals the sum of us. As a matter of fact, we were conceived right here, on Galgal.

  Lati’s mum was an American from the midwest. The principal of a school that only teaches kids what’s in the Bible and won’t let them listen to rock n roll—the devil’s music. Ha. Anyway, the dumb-arse Nufonians thought she’d be a safe bet, and scooped her up one night after a PTA meeting. She hasn’t been the same since. She has these blackouts and wakes up to find herself at Metallica concerts—in the mosh.

  Doll had an Earth father and a Nufonian mother. He was another predictable Nufonian choice—an English accountant with three identical grey suits, a pantry full of Savoy biscuits, and a pathological fear of nose rings. He doesn’t remember very much about the experience. But he gets erections whenever he sees a rerun of the original Star Trek.

  My mother, funnily enough, is Australian. She’s married to one of your leaders. Can’t remember which one. Earthling names all sound alike to me. Anyway, she’s middle class-o-rama, all nylon pantyhose, family values and received opinions on marijuana use. Boy, would she get a mega-shock if she ever met me. She’s never mentioned anything to her husband about the experience. Didn’t want to hurt his feelings. It was the best fuck she’d ever had.

  Don’t get the wrong idea. Nufonians aren’t just sex maniacs who spend their free time cruising the yoon for talent. If they were, we might never have left. Nah, the Nufonian libido leaves a lot to be desired. Plus, the somatic form we usually get around in is what I think Earthling Ufologists call ‘small grey’. You don’t know what that means? Never mind. I’ll show you in a minute. I was actually in small grey mode when we first got back to Galgal, but you looked a bit out of it, so I’m not surprised you can’t remember. But the crucial thing—as far as sex is concerned anyway—is that small greys have no fucken genitals. That’s right. Even we can’t tell if we’re Arthur or Martha. Can you believe that?

  How do we what? Reproduce? Like Earthlings, Nufonians only come in two genders. Boring, eh? Anyway, when it’s that time in his cycle, the male Nufonian starts hacking away like someone who’s just snorted a line of Mars dust. Very attractive, I can assure you. Keck-o-rama. Eventually, he hawks up a batch of phlegmy sperm into his cakehole. He then finds a receptive female, and spits out all this gnarly cum into her ear. If it hits the bullseye, the fertilised egg then tumbles down a tube to a cavity in her throat. A few months down the track, she starts coughing as well, and eventually, just as you think she’s going to gag to death, out pops a yunggin. The very thought makes me want to spew. When I’m on Nufon I keep my ears to myself.

  Not that I have anything against aural sex. I’ve got nothing against sex of any kind. If you ask me, true love waits for no man or woman, ayle or bean. Lust doesn’t linger for long and good times tend to slip away if you don’t grab ‘em by the short & curlies when they’re passing through town.

  Good times come in all sorts of shapes and sizes in the outer. Some aliens have funny, limited ideas about who they’ll get involved with. Pleiadians tend to avoid Sirians, and Andromedans won’t even look at an Alpha Centaurian. Me, I like all physical types. Senocular, simous, scombroid. Whatever. Don’t care if you’ve got scales or fur or eyes in the middle of your head, or polka dots or stripes or twelve fat fingers on each of your twenty-two hands. It all boils down to chemistry, really. Know what I mean? I think you do, Earth boy. I think you do.

  Chemistry, hey?

  What was I saying? Oh yeah, sex. Age doesn’t matter to me, either. The wrizzled voice of experience has always been the sweetest music to my ears, particularly since, as a Nufonian, my ears are all I’ve ever had to play with. I’m attracted to nearly all of the seventeen known genders in the yooniverz, though I must admit I’ve always preferred vuggier types. When it comes to sex, holes are a good thing. Holes are useful. Holes are fun. That’s what’s wrong with us Nufonians, you know. Not enough holes. As small greys, we’re literally closed to new experiences.

  Speaking of new experiences, I’m an Earthling virgin. Never done it in Earth girl form or with one of your types before. Despite being part Earthling, we could never really manage the Earth girl shtick outside of this atmosphere—just as you think you’ve got a fix on it, skikk, it all kinda slips away and you’re back in small grey mode. Unbelievable. You see, our Earthling genes have given us heaps and heaps of sexual drive but our Nufonian circumstances meant that we’ve never been able to get it out of first gear.

  Sex-wise, you folks are a legend. I don’t want to make you feel bad or anything, and this may be a bit of a generalisation, but we up in the outer have never exactly been interested in you for your minds. In yoonal terms, you barely qualify as an intelligent life form. Your crufty little computers are a joke, you can’t remove the caps from childproof bottles, and you prefer dumb Hollywood remakes to the original French films. And look what you’re doing to your planet. Not to mention each other. We occasionally tune into LAPD and A Current Affair and I’ll tell you, we’re fucken shocked by what we see. I mean, Ray Martin’s hair is one thing, but murder and mayhem and advertisements for slimming salons—they’re not exactly signs of higher intelligence. Don’t take it personally. It’s not like you don’t have potential. And anyway, it’s clear you’ve got something going for you, or no one could be stuffed making the trip here in the first place. As I was saying earlier, it’s no beatnik. Sorry? Picnic? Damn chip.

  Where was I? That’s right. And you did invent rock n roll. I love rock music. Did I say that already?

  Live wild on the edge or die bored in the middle, that’s what I say. The surf’s never up in the great mainstream. They try and tell you otherwise on Nufon. They’re so clueless they wouldn’t know if a shuttle was up them till the astronaut emerged for a spacewalk. They’re as captive to innate Nufonian blandness as they are trapped for life in those wretched bodies. We’re lucky. We’re AC/DC. No, not like the band. Like this. I’m really getting the hang of shapeshifting now. See? Now I’m an alien. Now I’m an Earth girl. Now I’m an alien. Now I’m an Earth girl. We call shapeshifting into Earth girl form ‘slipping into something more comfortable’. Fun, isn’t it? What’s the matter? Something wrong? Why are you on the floor?

  Speaking of shapeshifters, here are the others. This grrrl here is Doll. Doll Parts. And that’s Lati. Lati Dohdidohdoh. Where were you two?

  Sorry. Looks like we’re scaring you. Why don’t you just sit down over there, next to Doll. It’s okay. She won’t bite. Not till she gets to know you better, anyway. Ha ha. Just kidding. Sort of. Hope you’re all right. You’re looking a bit pale, you know. Never mind. Sit next to me, then.

  What’s your name, Earth boy? Jake? You’re very cute, you know. Very sexy. I bet you know it too. What’s that on your head? It looks like the wrong end of a sheep. So that’s what you call dreadlocks? Hmmm. Very sweet. No, I do like them. Really, I do.

  Jake. Nice name.

  All that stuff about the abductions, the sexual experimentation on Earthlings that produced us and so on is supposed to be fully hush-hush. Oh, I know you’re not going to tell anyone. As if I really cared. Thing is, the experiments weren�
�t exactly considered a raging success. From the Nufonian standpoint, we’re too Earthish. As we see it, we’re not Earthish enough. Anyway, officially, we don’t even exist. When we’re on Nufon we’re expected to act like everyone else, and we’re not supposed to attempt to shapeshift into Earth girl form or talk about our origins. They get really fucked off with us when we disobey, which is, like, every chance we get. The authorities up there would be shitting bricks if they knew we were sitting here yakking on about all this to you down here. Actually they’d be shitting bricks if they knew we were here full stop. No, I stand corrected. They wouldn’t be shitting bricks because THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE ARSEHOLES. Fucken anal retentives, the lot of them.

  But no, you don’t want to hear my theories on Nufonians.

  Maybe you’d like to tell us a bit about yourself.

  No? Oioi got your tongue? Ha. Maybe later. But if you’re not gonna talk, then we’ll go about our business. First, however, I’d like to say, on behalf of all of us, how delighted we are to have you here with us on Galgal, rarara. We went to the gig not really knowing what to expect. It was the first time we’d ever heard rock n roll live. Oh, man. I love saying that here—‘oh, man’. It just doesn’t have the same ring when you’re talking to an ayle. Know what I mean? It was so totally grouse. That steaming mash of Earthling bodies, smelling of animal passion and sex. The pounding of the music. The screaming. The excellent t-shirts. The mad energy billowing off the stage and through the mosh. Then I saw you. Climbing up on stage and diving off it into the crowd, and doing it again and again. I looked at you and knew in an instant that you were everything I’ve always wanted. Sex, drugs and rock n roll. In one convenient package. I hope you understand. I just had to have you. And so I took you. With the Abduct-o-matic, of course. Such a handy tool.

  There wasn’t much more to it than that, really.

  You’re a quiet boy, Jake. Didn’t really expect an Earth boy like you to be so quiet. Never mind.

  You look a bit scared. Don’t be. Try to stay calm. Whatever you do, don’t struggle. There’s no point. That’s it, just relax. And welcome to the sexual experimentation chamber.

  Spun out. Uh-huh. Whacked. Yeah. Confused. Sure. Freaked. Maybe. At this particular moment in the history of the yoon, Jake was feeling lots of things. Cool was not one.

  This was not a minor point. Jake was a boy who liked to think he was so cool that he came with the instructions: defrost before use. So cool that cucumbers used him as a standard. So cool that, when he sauntered into Newtown’s Sandringham Hotel, all the little grungelettes and punkoids and baby deros and other critters of the rock n roll night drew a collective, beery breath and exhaled, kyoool. Kyoool being, of course, even kyoooler than cool.

  Kyoool/Cool. You have to keep up with these things. And Jake kept up. Not in any obvious way. In Jake’s world, it was important not to seem to be making an effort. Unless it was towards some truly heroic goal like getting so trashed on Saturday night that you managed to wipe out all of Sunday and most of Monday in one go.

  Getting laid on a regular basis was another laudable ambition, but the effort rule applied with double force here. The idea was to work it so that the girl thought she was chasing you. This not only made it hard for her to lay a guilt trip on you when you decided to bolt, but it had the advantage of her being keen to shout you for meals while she was still courting you. And the girls did court Jake. He was the lead singer in a minor but reputable band called Bosnia. He was seductively lazy, amusing and not very together, a combination which many women found irresistible. He had the big brown eyes of an innocent and the slow white smile of a seducer. Women tended to lose themselves somewhere in the middle—in the vicinity of his modest little nose—captivated by his tall, grungy, dreadheaded, rock n roll boy charms.

  Dreadlocks—now that was another perfect illustration of the effort rule. Dreads were the ultimate slacker hairstyle. No cut, no comb, no worries, right? Wrong. Good dreads demanded hard work, TLC and regular rolling between the palms with wax. There were also crucial aesthetic decisions to be made. How big was big enough? To wrap or not to wrap? Crazy Colour or natural? Then there was the problem of what to do when a loop of hair escaped halfway down a dread, stuck out like a teacup handle and looked quite ridiculous. You also needed to decide whether to wash the hair at all and, if so, whether to use shampoo—opinion was divided on the shampoo issue, but universally against conditioner. Jake shampooed once a fortnight. He rolled daily. He was not a natural blonde.

  People didn’t understand how difficult it was being a slacker. That’s why even younger kids were abandoning the pose altogether. Didn’t have the stamina.

  How Jake had developed his extraordinary kyoool, his raw sexuality, his sophisticated approach to hair styling, even his rock n roll talent was a bit of a mystery, for he had grown up in the weirdly sanitised environment of Canberra, the nation’s capital. Canberra was as thrilling as a Nufonian honeymoon. It was a planned city where seasons actually began on the day they were supposed to, where inspired criminal activity was pretty well confined to Parliament House, where sex was a regulated industry, and where, not long before Jake was born, the bakers sold rye bread under the counter to immigrants on prearranged days so as not to frighten the Anglos with the sight of a non-white loaf.

  Nor had Jake travelled much outside Canberra in his twenty-three years on the planet. He’d only ever made a few short trips to Sydney before moving there two years earlier with his best mates, the twins Torquil and Tristram. He’d gone to Melbourne to try to get a band together with some friends. He’d been here and there on the coast for some surfing, though Jake’s surfboard was always more accessory than lifestyle.

  Whenever Jake had travelled, it had been by car, train or bus. He’d never flown. Like the song went, music was his aeroplane. He sang, he strummed, he went as far as it—and a variety of chemical cocktails—could take him. But rock had never rolled him so madly, dope never lifted him so high, speed never sped him so fast, nor acid taken him to stranger places than Galgal, where he now inexplicably found himself, spun out, degravitated, giddy.

  His vision was blurred and shaky and his chest felt as tight as Gene Simmons’ shorts. Taking a few deep breaths, Jake attempted to make out his surroundings.

  The room he was in was shaped like a wedge of pie. It appeared to be windowless, though he could make out the outline of portholes and a door on each of the side walls. It glowed with a weird, lime-green ambient light which would have made focussing a challenge even if his eyeballs hadn’t been doing the lambada.

  With a start, Jake detected a small silvery figure gliding towards him on delicate hooves. Its slim shoulders supported a disproportionately large head dominated by wrap-around, almond-shaped eyes. They were all pupil, a daunting, fathomless black, and oddly reminiscent of the sort of sunnies that boys like Jake all sported. They gave nothing away. Similarly, the creature’s mouth was an expressionless slit. The ears were recessed and all he could see of the nose was a slight indentation where the nostrils might have been. In contrast to the inert blankness of its face, the figure’s spindly, multiply jointed hands were almost insanely kinetic. Four long knobby fingers twitched on the end of each hand. Each tic and flutter produced a mysterious, bell-like sound. His heart sounding a drum roll of fear within his chest, Jake tried hard to focus on the creature, but its skin was bright with a metallic sheen that repelled his gaze.

  Maybe he was dead. He’d gone to heaven, and this was what angels looked like. Dead. That was it. He’d made his final stage dive into that great mosh pit in the sky. Happened to people all the time, if you believed the papers: Jesus. After that incident with the cracked collarbone, Jake had promised his mother he’d never stage-dive again. If she found out he’d done it anyway and now he was dead, she’d kill him.

  Hold on. He didn’t feel dead.

  Nup. Whatever he was feeling, it was definitely not deadness. Jake tingled in his fingers. He tingled in his toes. Each fluttering conta
ct of his Kyuss t-shirt on the winterpale skin of his chest caused a tremor to run down his spine. Closing his eyes, he listened to his breath rushing his nostrils and the blood pulsing through his veins. Jake had never been a particularly attentive student, but he did remember this from biology: breath and a pulse were a pretty fair indication that you weren’t dead.

  Tonight’s my first night on Earth…

  His eyes flew open again. It would have been tempting to liken Jake’s expression to that of a stunned mullet. No fish, however, could register in its simple piscine orbs quite the degree or combination of shock, confusion and sudden desire that were roiling Jake’s big browns at this very moment.

  For, right before those now almost distressingly clearsighted eyes, the strange silvery creature was metamorphosing into the kind of girl that represented all that girldom could to boys like Jake. She was a rock n roll dream. Her hair was a mass of plaits in every colour under the sun—and every other star in the yoon as well. Under a violet fringe, large uptilted green eyes sparkled out from thick lashes with a mischievous intelligence. Parenthesised by killer cheekbones, her longish nose arrowed down to the bow of her full lips. A filthy plastic minidress the colour of burning rocket fuel, meanwhile, encased a body that could only be described as awesome: anti-gravity tits, a waist tiny enough to orbit with a pair of hands, two full moons for an arse and strong legs as long as jet streams.

  So, her skin was a touch on the green side. Green was cool. If Jake ever got around to registering to vote, he was sure he’d vote Green. Especially now.

  But antennae?

  Hold on a tic, he thought. This is tipping the weirdometer. Of course. Doh! It was the acid. Had to be. Jake had popped a microdot before heading out to the Agent Mulder gig. Still, this was one full-on, wacky trip. Acid had never kicked in for him like this before, not even the time the Vegemite jar grew legs and tapdanced around the room to Regurgitator. Maybe he shouldn’t have had those four bourbon-and-cokes as well. Bourbon wasn’t the worry. No one knew what was in Coca-Cola.