by Linda Jaivin
Lati panted like a dog who’d been offered a t-bone.
Doll scuffled the pavement. ‘I’m bored,’ she announced. For emphasis, she whipped round and applied what is known in kickboxing as a spinning back fist to the brick wall behind Marty and Bret’s table. With a small crunch, the wall reshaped itself. Two men at the next table felt close to fainting. Another found himself with an instant erection. Doll inspected her hand, blowing off its dusting of plaster and brick fragments. She threw her head back and laughed. Her devil’s horns of hair waggled in tune with her hilarity. Cappuccinos frothed and bubbled in their cups, anchovies swam through Caesar salads and Turkish bread sandwiches stood up to bellydance.
Marty and Bret were speechless. Everyone at the cafe had grown quiet. Their collective vision was saturated with silvery light and their ears rang as though with a symphony of triangles. They all felt like, somehow, they had fallen in love. They were gripped with a kind of yearning that was so physical it ached, and they looked at each other with fresh looks of confusion and desire. They were all a little hard, a little wet.
Lati picked up the spoon from Marty’s saucer, turned it around in the light and popped it into her mouth. She burped, a small, metallic sound that rang softly and distantly, like bells underwater.
‘Shall we?’ she said to the others.
‘About time,’ Doll replied.
Badabadabadabadabadabum. Badabadabadabadabadabum. Badadabum. Badadabum. Tatatatata. Boomtaba. Boomtaba.
Wunnekadankadank.
Wawawawawa.
Tristram looked up from his bass, a dubious expression on his face. ‘Think we should go easy on the wawa?’
‘Nah,’ Jake shook his head. ‘You can never have too much wawa.’
‘It’s your song.’
‘Take it from the top?’
‘Can’t take it from the bottom.’ Torquil lifted his drumsticks high over his head.
‘Yeah yeah yeah. Everyone’s a comedian.’
Bosnia had a gig at the Sandringham Hotel in three weeks time and Jake had written a new song, ‘Big Toe Beanie’, that they needed to run through. Some might say it sounded a lot like every other song Jake had ever written, though Some, in Jake’s opinion, would then certainly reveal himself or herself to be a philistine of rock, a guitar-illiterate, the sort of person who didn’t know their Blind Melons from their Smashing Pumpkins, their Celibate Rifles from their Single Gun Theory. Anyway, it wouldn’t really matter, because Some never went to gigs at the Sando anyway.
Badabadabadabadabadabum went the drums. Tssssssss went the cymbals. Whookookookookikookikoo dldldlanwawa went the guitar. Downstairs to the basement went Iggy, in search of some peace and quiet and the company of girls. Iggy liked rock n roll, but he had his limits and, terrible as it is to say in context for what it implies about the pet-master relationship, he had standards and taste.
He also had, it must be noted, a peculiar way of going down stairs. At the top step, he flattened his thick bullie body on the floor, splayed his legs flat out to either side, and raised high his chin. Then, pedalling with his back paws, he propelled himself over the top and went stiffly bumping down the narrow stairs like a canine skateboard, moaning gruffly as he went. Whereas this apparently awkward and potentially painful habit mystified Saturna and Skye, the boys of the household understood immediately and intuitively. It was an extremely efficient if slightly dangerous method for scratching one’s balls. Enviable, really, though not particularly advisable for humans.
Badabadabadabadabadabadabadabum.
Unheard over the bang and twang of the Bosnia experience, a breathless shriek emanated from the basement. ‘Iggy! Stop it! Stop it!’
More squealing and giggles.
‘Saturna! You’re just encouraging him…oh…ohhhhh…nnnnnnn!’
Onward the babes strolled. They reached an intersection. Lati elbowed Baby and stuck out her chin in the direction of a car parked just around the corner. In a big old Buick cozied against the curb sat two fat men with bad suits and worse language. One was handing a thick wad of bills to the other, a man with a good position in the Kings Cross police force and a wicked cocaine habit.
Later, officers of the Independent Commission Against Corruption would sweat and swear and shake their heads as they replayed the tape of the transaction, filmed by a secret camera in the glovebox. Intended to be the clinching piece of evidence in a major sting, the tape contained the following mysterious sequence: Fat Man One pulls piles of cash out of a beat-up black briefcase. The cash, all old $50 notes, is bundled into packets of ten. Fat Man Two smirks with satisfaction, and holds out his hand. Fat Man One is about to put the grease on the palm when the money—and you could only see this in super-slow motion with lots of freeze framing—breaks apart into pixels, each of which further disintegrates into tiny fractals of gold and green and white, which then dissolve into sparkles of coloured light, cascading outward and dispersing into nothingness.
Both men paled under their ill-shaven jowls. By the time Fat Man Two composed himself enough to demand, ‘Where the fuck did that go?’ all he really wanted to do—inexplicably, because he was no woolly woofter, no siree, he was a real man—was dive into One’s daks and worship thoroughly what he found there. So he did exactly that. ‘Anyway,’ he muttered about half an hour later, picking a hair out of his teeth, ‘all property is theft, eh?’
‘Don’t stop,’ murmured One in reply.
Alien contact can be a beautiful thing.
The girls, meanwhile, put away the Abduct-o-matic and studied with great interest a picture printed on the rectangles of paper they now clutched in their hands. It was this picture which had drawn their attention to the bills in the first place. ‘Not bad,’ Baby conceded. ‘It’s kinda cute actually.’
‘Pretty groovy,’ concurred Lati, ‘in a retro sort of way.’
On the note they were looking at was a drawing of the CSIRO telescope at Parkes, in outback New South Wales. It was, as they spoke, systematically channel-surfing the yoon for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilisations. What the scientists at Parkes didn’t realise, of course, was that extraterrestrial civilisations had long ago abandoned radio for TV.
Silly scientists.
Even if they did detect such signals, it was likely they’d be at least 150 years old, which is much older than even, say, Gilligan’s Island or Number 96 or Countdown or leisure suits or Gary Glitter and would therefore be potentially very embarrassing for the extraterrestrial civilisation which had put them out in the first place. It’s conceivable that there are whole civilisations out there who are sitting on their planets with their head-equivalents in their hand-equivalents, blushing whatever colour represents mortification to them, dreading the day some other intelligent life form happens upon whatever it was that they ill-advisedly broadcast all those light years ago.
The girls stuffed the decorated notes into their pockets and bags and continued on their way.
Their way took them up past a small park, a large hospital and onto Oxford Street, where Earth boys stood in the doorways of pubs pashing off other Earth boys, and Earth girls knit their fingers together in lust. This was nothing unusual for this particular street. What was slightly out of the ordinary was that the Earth boys in question hadn’t even noticed each other until our aliens passed and the girls previously considered themselves straight.
Every other doorway displayed a sign showing a pink triangle and the words ‘safe area’. ‘Do you think that means the same thing as it does on Nufon?’ Baby asked nervously.
‘What else could it mean?’ Lati frowned. ‘Maybe “safe area” means they’ve set up some kind of protective force field. But I never imagined that the cyborgs of 49 Serpentis had made it to Earth.’
‘Is no place in the yoon safe anymore?’ Baby shook her head.
‘Fucken hell,’ said Doll. The notorious three-sided cyborgs of the double star 49 Serpentis could make even Doll quake. ‘Hate borgs.’
‘They’re not
as bad as bots,’ Baby replied, her teeth chattering. ‘At least they’ve got a heart.’
‘Yeah,’ Doll retorted, ‘a black one. I’ll never forget what they did to Michelle.’
As if any of them could. Qwerk hadn’t been telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when he told CRAFTE that they’d bred only three hybrids. There was also Michelle Mabelle, the first hybrid, and the wildest of them all. When Captain Qwerk and the other leaders of the Qohort had had enough of her riot grrrrl antics and decided to ‘cap’ her they’d called in the borgs. Baby, Lati and Doll had been forced to watch. It had been horrible. By the time they’d finished with her, Michelle was a quivering wreck, a shadow of her former self who would now wear only navy blue and beige twin sets, didn’t see why it was necessary to swear, washed the dishes after every meal, and went to bed at what was stupidly known as a ‘reasonable hour’. The girls knew that if they were ever caught, the same—or worse—would happen to them. After all, Michelle had never stolen a spaceship.
They hadn’t much time to ponder the matter of the pink triangles when they were distracted by an insistent ringing sound. It was coming from a clunky silver and orange device decorated with numbers and perforated with holes and slots. It hung from the wall of a rectangular glass box. Lati was the first to recognise it. ‘It’s Dr Who’s time machine!’ she exclaimed.
A well-groomed older woman stopped and stared at the device as well. ‘Waiting for a call?’ she asked. The aliens shook their heads. The woman picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ Seconds later her smile evaporated, and she slammed the receiver back down again. ‘Fucken arsehole,’ she muttered angrily in what was now clearly a man’s voice. ‘Ahem,’ she cleared her throat. Her voice rose a few octaves. ‘I mean, darling, that’s no way to treat a lady.’ Turning to Baby, she cooed, ‘By the way, I love the outfit. You didn’t get it at Drag Bag by any chance? I’ve been looking for a little something just like it. No? Oh well. Cute dog too. Ciao for now.’ Blowing a kiss, she high-heeled off in the direction of the Albury Hotel.
Rrrrring. Rrrrring. They looked at each other. Doll picked up the receiver, holding it to her head as she’d seen the other woman do. ‘Hello?’
‘Wanna suck my cock?’ came the voice at the other end before it collapsed into an aria of exhalations. ‘Ohh, ohhh. Huhhuhhuhhuh. Ngngngg. Sssssss.’
‘Maybe,’ Doll replied into the sibilance. ‘How would I do that?’
‘Sssss. Huhhuh…How?’
‘Yeah. How? How should I suck your cock?’
There was a brief silence at the other end.
‘I mean, I’m open to suggestion. For instance, I could suck it real hard and then bite it off if you like.’
The nasal whine of a dial tone sounded in Doll’s ear. She shrugged and hung up.
‘What was that?’ asked Lati.
‘Some kind of Earthling sex, I think,’ Doll replied. ‘This guy asked me to suck his cock.’
‘Cool,’ said Lati. ‘What’s a cock?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
A young Queenslander just off the bus from Brisbane approached the phone booth. ‘You finished with the phone?’ he asked politely.
‘Wanna suck my cock?’ replied Doll experimentally.
He flushed bright red. The first thing that had popped into his mind was: yes, I do.
Onwards and westwards they went. At the corner of Hyde Park, they bumped into a pair of conservatively attired, short-haired Mormon missionaries. ‘How are you today, ma’am?’ one said.
‘Wanna suck my cock?’ said Doll, obviously pleased with her new expression.
‘P-p-pardon?’ he stammered, paling, his own cock stirring sinfully within his official, masturbation-proof garment. The girls waved a pleasant goodbye, turned left, then left again, then right, then left, then left again. They’d be in Newtown before you could say ‘Babes in Toyland’.
The asteroid Eros had been to one good party his whole life. It was an absolute blast. It was, in fact, the planetary explosion which had given birth to him in the first place. But that was a long time ago, and not much of interest had happened to Eros since. In the great dodgem car arcade of the asteroid belt, Eros hadn’t even managed a near miss with another celestial body. And now he was trapped in this dead-end orbit around fucken Mars, of all planets. Spewin’.
Eros was big, bored and very restless.
‘Oi! Little star! Star light, star bright—yeah, you!—first star I see tonight. ‘Course it’s true. You were the first. The very first. Swear to God. Just let me finish, okay? I wish I may, I wish I might, I wish—what do you mean only Earthlings get to say that? That’s fucken off. What’s so special about Earthlings anyway? Tell me that, huh? Huh? Fucken Earthlings, they get to do everything. What d’ya mean, like what? They get to live on Earth. Isn’t that enough? It’s so unfair. Why aren’t I an Earthling? Did I ask to be born an asteroid? Hey, little star! Little star! Won’t you just stay for awhile? You know, have a chat, get to know each other? Oh, piss off then. I didn’t want to talk to you anyway.’
No one ever pays any attention to me. What am I? A creep? A weirdo?
Those babes in the rocketship, they were pretty nice, though, hey? That was so cool. Total deep space quiet and then, suddenly, that boomboomboomboom bass beat and I look up and there’s this mothership bearing down on me, stereo blasting and those babes inside. I’m sure one of them mouthed, ‘See you on Earth!’ I’d see her on earth. I’d see her anywhere. Name the galaxy. Damn! Why didn’t I get their phone number? Damn. Damn. Damn.
Earth, hey? God, how cool. Maybe I should just try and follow them there.
Don’t even think it, big boy.
God? That you?
No, it’s Sun Ra. Who’d you think it was? You, my aspirational little asteroid, are going to orbit Mars until I say you’re free to do otherwise. It could be a hundred and fifty thousand Earth years, it could be 1.4 million. Depends on my mood. So don’t go getting any ideas. No unannounced slamming into Earthie-poo. I’m in charge of this yooniverz and don’t you forget it.
Yes, God, sighed Eros. Anything you say, God. God? God? You there?
Once he was pretty sure that God had taken off, Eros defiantly wriggled and wiggled and waggled and wobbled. God shmod. He’d achieve escape velocity if it was the last thing he did.
Knock knock.
‘Is that the door?’ Torquil nudged Tristram. The twins were nestled in the large brown beanbag chair on the beige-carpeted floor of the lounge. The original owners must have been proud of the carpet, for they extended it about a foot up the walls, from which point cheap wood panelling took over. Jake was lying on another genuine seventies artifact, a blobby mud-coloured sofa so shapeless and malleable that at the end of the evening it was not uncommon for people to discover that they had somehow slid, together with most of the seat cushions, all the way onto the floor. The decoration and furnishings of the lounge, a tribute to the excruciatingly bad taste of a previous generation, had always been a key attraction of the place to them all. Tristram exhaled a long stream of smoke. He leaned forward, replacing the makeshift bong, a small plastic juice bottle filled with murky brown water, back onto the coffee table. The movement caused beans to shift and rustle beneath him. That’s a nice sound, he thought.
Door? Door. Doooor. The word floated through the air like an autumn leaf and drifted, ever so languidly, into Tristram’s air space. Doooor. Doooor. His radar was picking something up. Blip blip blip. Control tower, however, was in a bit of confusion. It ordered the word to go into a holding pattern till someone could deal with it. Doooor. Doooor.
Rehearsal over, the three boys had stacked their instruments against the wall and were using the room for its intended purpose: lounging. The telly was on. The sound was off. They watched Fred Astaire sing and dance silently across the screen. For sound, they were listening to a new CD by Three, a band with exactly two members. They were pulling cones. Jake was also leafing through the latest copy of On the Drum, and
Tristram and Torquil were practising strange faces, using each other as a mirror. There’d been no sign of the girls or Iggy for hours.
It seemed like hours anyway. You kinda lose track sometimes. You know. When you’re stoned. It’s not a bad. Feeling. But you do. Lose the plot. Uh, the track. Track. Yeah. Sometimes.
Knock knock.
DOOR. The traffic controller inside Tristram’s head finally put down his coffee and joint and looked at the screen. The door! Of course. Tristram looked over at Jake. ‘Is that the door?’ he asked. No response from the supine figure on the brown sofa. ‘Jake?’
‘Dunno,’ drawled Jake, moving only his lips. ‘Depends what you mean by the door. There are many doors. There’s door to door. There’s doors in. There’s doors out. There’s indoors and outdoors. Then there’s the Doors.’
‘I reckon there are more windows than doors,’ declaimed Torquil, pointing for some reason at the ceiling. ‘There are windows of opportunity. There are windows to the soul. There are windows on the world. There’s Microsoft Windows.’
‘Yeah,’ objected Tristram. ‘But didn’t they copy all that from, you know…?’
‘Who?’ asked Torquil.
Tristram looked at his brother blankly. Who what? What was he talking about?
Knock knock.
Jake took a deep breath. ‘IGGY!’ he yelled. He paused a moment to gather more energy. ‘THE DOOR.’
‘That’s fucken ridiculous,’ objected Tristram, after thinking about it for a minute. ‘Iggy’s downstairs. He’ll never hear you.’
