Tim
Sometimes I lose myself on stage, totally lose track of time and forget where I am. I get swept up in the music, my hands a blur across the guitar frets, my mind a million miles away, and it’s like I can somehow play the songs without thinking about them at all, like they’re so scratched into my memory that I don’t actually have to remember the chords or think about the lyrics, they just come naturally. Tonight I’m playing a cover of Stars’ ‘In Our Bedroom After the War’ and I feel like I’ve disappeared into it, like it’s swallowed me up. It’s weird how this song written by people I’ve never met who live on the other side of the world can feel like it was written specifically for me. I’m hitting every high note, playing the hell out of the song, chords ringing, everything perfect for a moment.
And then I see her.
Dark hair, dark eyes. Intense eyes, looking at me intensely from across the room.
Her eyelashes flash at me and she bites her lip, and it’s such a perfect, sexy rock ’n’ roll moment that I feel myself smile almost involuntarily.
I allow myself to think a ridiculous thought: she’s come back here to find me, to pick me out of the crowd.
And she’s wearing ripped stockings. Ay bay bay.
Mandy
After the last squall of feedback fades out, there’s scattered applause and I see Tim walking towards me, struggling through a group of guys who are coming out of the sports bar. I have the stomach-churning realisation that although I’ve been waiting for this moment, I now have no idea how to handle it. I bite my lip, which I always do when I’m nervous, and try to affect a look of vague interest.
‘Hey, you look familiar,’ he says.
I’m thrown. Maybe he doesn’t remember who I am. It was only a brief meeting, after all.
‘Oh, yes, we met here before, two weeks ago,’ I say. I feel like dying.
He laughs. ‘Yeah, I was kidding. Of course I remember. D’ya like the set?’
‘Yeah, it was really good.’ Another sparkling piece of conversation.
‘How have you been, anyway?’
‘Good.’
‘What have you been up to the last couple of weeks?’
‘Just working.’
‘Oh, yeah. Do you like your job?’
‘No, it’s really … boreful.’
‘Boreful? Wow, it’s so bad you have to invent new words for it?’
Oh god. I do this sometimes: I start saying one word and then halfway through saying it I decide some other word is closer to what I want to say and I try to change what I’m saying mid-word and end up saying some dumb hybrid of two words. My job is boring and awful, boreful. I wonder if I should explain this linguistic weirdness, but he’s moved on.
‘It’s hot in here tonight.’ He tugs at his shirt, which is sweaty and clinging to his chest.
‘Mmm, it’s, yeah … quite hot.’ This just keeps getting better.
‘Let’s get some fresh air,’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
On the street, I offer him a cigarette, but he doesn’t smoke, so we just sit on the steps, him sipping from a bottle of water and me smoking away, suddenly and disconcertingly conscious of everything, not knowing where to put my hands or where to look. I can’t think of a single thing to say. It’s like I’ve looked forward to this moment so much that my mind has just overheated, blown a fuse and shut down completely. He must think I’m so stupid, some brainless fan girl, which is the last thing I want.
‘So you’re free to watch daytime TV — you must be out of school, yeah?’ he finally says.
‘I finished last year.’
He nods thoughtfully, as though it was a profound comment.
The not knowing what to do with my hands thing has got worse — now my whole arms are freaking me out. I stare at them dumbly for a moment, as though I’ve only just noticed they’re attached to my body. This must be what being on a bad trip is like.
Tim picks up my hand, and for a second I think he’s noticed how strange my arms are as well and wants a closer inspection of them and I’m freaking out even more, but then he puts my hand on his thin shirt and I can feel his heart hammering against his ribs.
‘My heart always races a bit after I get offstage,’ he says.
Somehow this thrilling bit of closeness calms me down slightly and I realise something: he doesn’t seem to be bothered by my lameness and is acting like we’re old friends, just hanging out in a moment of comfortable silence.
He lets my hand go, and I manage to explain that I’m meant to be at university this year, but I’m taking some time off to save money and maybe travel or something. I trail off, and he asks me what school I went to and nods in recognition when I tell him. I think of changing the subject, but the first thing I think to talk about is daytime TV, so I don’t.
‘Hey, do you know Sarah Hendry?’ he says. ‘She went to your school, she would have been in the same year.’
I do know Sarah Hendry. She was pretty infamous for giving a koala a pot brownie on a school excursion and throwing massive house parties, none of which I was invited to. I think the only time I ever talked to her was when she told me my haircut made me look like a dyke.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘She’s cool, the Hen.’
‘I guess. I didn’t really get to know her.’
I see Alice through the window and give her a look that says ‘Help!’
Tim
Her friend Alice comes and sits down with us by the side of the road, tucking her long dress under her knees on the footpath. Mandy still seems kind of freaked out, sitting there looking at the ground and hugging her knees, so I’m just trying to take things slow. But part of me feels weirdly vindicated, like, OK, it wasn’t just my imagination, there was something there last time we met, it actually meant something. The fact that it’s harder than I would have imagined doesn’t bother me. Maybe it should be hard when your dreams brush up against reality.
‘You weren’t here last week,’ Mandy says, and I see a look of vulnerability immediately flash across her face, like she wishes she hadn’t just said that. Perhaps she’s hoping I won’t make the connection that they came here last week to see if I was playing.
‘Yeah, we had to go and do some, um, legal stuff,’ I say, and realise that just sounds weird and shifty instead of dark and mysterious like I’d hoped. ‘Me and my uncle Ned, down at the registry,’ I add, as though that explains things.
‘You and your legal stuff,’ Alice says, laughing and playfully slapping me.
I’m grateful for her jokiness, which makes the tension float away. For such a quiet person Alice does seem to have a knack for making people feel comfortable.
‘I think I saw a mayfly out here,’ she says.
‘Is that good?’
‘They only live for one night so it’s not often you get to see them.’
‘Just one night, huh?’ Fascinating. Who knows this kind of stuff?
I do like Alice. She’s cute, and different, this innocent fairytale girl with big eyes and Mary Poppins coloured stockings. But around Mandy, she’s like a moon orbiting some distant planet which is dark and intriguing and seemingly just out of reach.
We head back inside and get some beers, and find a spare corner of the room where we all yell at each other over the din of the sports bar, and I’m not sure that any of us can hear each other but the enigmatic conversation thing seems to be working for me. The confusion is making everything I say seem a bit more profound, like those misheard lyrics that seemed better before you knew the right words.
We head back into the band comp, and the pencil-bearded guy from the last time we were here is just taking the stage. He wears a black sleeveless vest and what looks like part of a bike chain around his neck.
‘This first song is about how the government keeps people from knowing the truth … and that,’ he says, towering over the microphone stand, which is set for someone a foot shorter than him. He goes into a crab-like stance and starts laying
down some slap bass and we start backing out of the room. The dude is legit scary.
I notice a pool table become vacant and jump on it. I call out to Mandy to come and play, but she gestures to Alice and we play instead. Alice plays OK, she’s obviously played a bit, but I’m on fire and start to dominate. I keep looking over at Mandy, just subtly, to make sure she’s catching all this, and she looks like she’s impressed, just a little bit, the faintest smile on her lips.
I win the game and she comes through the crowd to meet us. She raises her glass to mine, to celebrate. The clink of glass on glass has never sounded so sweet.
You can say so much without words. I guess I didn’t mind before when Mandy didn’t talk much because you can tell more about people during the silences. I know so many people who talk a lot and talk such a lot of shit that it’s nice to have someone who doesn’t say that much, but says things that are worth listening to when they do speak.
Some girl comes up to us and it turns out she knows Alice from university. They start talking and leave me and Mandy alone. I put my hand on her hip and guide her to a quiet corner of the room. I look over her shoulder down her shirt and in those couple of seconds I try to commit every inch of the swell of her breasts to memory, every detail from the curve of her collarbone to the edge of the black lace bra under her shirt. I try to take a mental photograph of that tantalising inch between her skirt and her stockings when she walks, those acres of legs in black nylon. I’m forgetting when to breathe.
We make it to a seat that has magically become free on the fringe of the room and sit down. She puts her hands in her lap and looks like she doesn’t know what to say.
‘Don’t worry. It’s OK,’ I say.
She looks at me, curious. ‘What’s OK?’
‘I mean, I like shy girls.’
Her cheeks flush bright red. Cute.
Mandy
We’re alone in a crowded room, hearing the Tom Petty song on the jukebox thump us in the chest and waiting for something to happen. Just when I think I’ve calmed down, I feel freshly and pointlessly nervous again, and through the dread that melodramatically floods into my head I feel a rush of real hate. Not hate for myself, or anyone else, but pure hate for this moment: how something great, someone great, feels just tantalisingly distant, like a perfect dress trapped behind a shop window.
Tim’s sitting next to me on this seat that’s not really big enough for two, his face now hidden under a hoodie and our thighs pressed up against each other, and I just want to pull him into me and kiss him, but I can’t. I’ve only got a few more moments before he’ll realise this is going nowhere and he’ll be gone. I kind of wish I didn’t want him so much, but I do. I want to jump up and down on this moment until it shatters and breaks like the spiky shards of an old record. It’s a powerful emotion, really, hate. All you need is hate.
I decide I’m not going to be able to think of anything to say, so I play him a song on my iPod instead. I think it kind of works. I choose Stars’ ‘My Favourite Book’, this live version I found where Amy tells a story about how a girl in London came up to her and asked her to play the song for her boyfriend in Washington DC when the band toured there. Amy wrote down the details on a piece of paper and kept it in her flute case as the tour continued, but then she finally lost it the day before they got to Washington. But they still played it, and she told the couple they should play the song for their first wedding dance.
We listen to the song and, without thinking about it, I start to mouth along to the words. Tim watches me and smiles, and I wonder if I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve a bit too much, whether I’ll look like some stalker who falls in love with everyone I see, but he just looks straight at me. I guess he has just poured out his soul on stage so this small offering of what I’m feeling isn’t so bad.
Tim
People always associate early mornings with freshness and hope, but, for me, it’s all about the night. The night is where the real possibility lies. This one creeps up on us and before I know it, there’s lovely darkness coming through the windows and I’m lying on a couch in the front room of the pub, drunk and happy, waiting for Mandy and Alice to come back from the bathroom. I think back to a song I was writing last week:
I want to caress you
I want to learn conversational Spanish, just to impress you
I want to possess you
I want to …
I want to undress you
I feel her come up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders, the softest and most fleeting of touches. I want more.
‘Did you paint those jeans on before you came out tonight?’ she asks.
‘They’re girls’ jeans.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah, and I’m not even trying to be fashionable or anything. I just figured this was the easiest way to get into an emo girl’s pants.’
‘Very funny.’
‘You’re smiling.’
‘I’m just amused by your stupidity.’
‘That’s good enough.’
She leans in a little closer and I smell the apple shampoo in her hair, fresh and clean.
‘Tell me something,’ she says.
‘Well, did you know that quite some time ago, in 1979 actually —’
‘You’re not stalling, are you?’
‘Not at all. I’m just building suspense. In 1979, as I was saying, Joe Strummer and Topper Headon, one half of The Clash, the greatest punk band in the history of the world, spent a night in jail. Not for inciting a riot or setting up a pirate radio station or anything that cool, but because they stole pillowcases from a hotel in England and then didn’t turn up in court when they were meant to go and face up to the charges.’
She laughs, surprised. I decide I like making her laugh, and that surprises me.
‘Is that even true?’ she says.
‘Every word.’
Mandy
‘I meant tell me something about us. Or just about me if you like, I don’t mind.’
I’m comfortable now and feeling bold, full of drunken rat-shit courage and late-night bravado, but I become aware of how silly what I’m saying is about halfway through the sentence. I didn’t mean to refer to ‘us’, and I realise how insane this is, like I’ve just jumped several steps ahead, run my fantasy life and reality together. This is, I realise, deeply risky. And it makes me feel so vulnerable I could almost be sick.
‘I like you,’ he says, looking up at me from the couch, upside down, as I hover over him like Spiderman about to kiss his dream girl in the rain. ‘Well, you’re alright,’ he continues, and then he shrugs, a second too late.
I can see he’s trying to play it cool and I snatch back the upper hand. ‘Oh, I’m just alright, am I?’
‘Well, most people totally suck, so being alright is pretty good in my eyes.’
‘In that case, thank you, I guess.’
‘You’re welcome.’
You’re so cute, I think, you’re so goddamn cute.
But everyone else is on a different timeline from us and I notice for the first time that they’ve closed the bar and there’s only a handful of people left now.
I ask for his number, awkwardly, just as he’s asking for mine, which makes it somehow OK because we both end up laughing at how awkward the moment is. It seems like ages ago that I was feeling awful and nervous and like dying. Sometimes a few minutes is a really long time. I can’t believe it’s going so well now.
‘Do you live around here? How are you going to get home?’ Tim asks.
‘Summer Hill. I can walk home from here.’
‘But these are mean inner-city streets.’
‘I can run pretty fast.’
We both laugh again, and then he stops and he just looks at me and I feel a shiver. It’s electric. For the first time tonight I can sense that Alice is feeling like a bit of a third wheel. She pretends to look through her handbag for something.
‘Alright, well, we’d really better go,’ I say.
‘You guys should take a taxi. I’ve only got to get to Glebe.’
He tells me he’d wished he got my number last time, and because his phone is dead he borrows a pen from Alice and writes it down on his hand. He writes down my number for a second time on a beer coaster he has in his pocket with what looks like some guitar chords scrawled on it. He says he’s going to get it tattooed onto his hand first thing tomorrow morning so he can’t possibly lose it. Then he writes down Alice’s number too, so he can ring her and get my number if he manages to lose mine.
I can’t believe this boy. I can’t believe he even exists.
‘Well, I guess I’ve blown my chance to play hard to get now.’ He mock-sighs. ‘But I’m glad you had a pen, Alice. You’re always prepared, like a good boy scout.’
‘I was in the Scouts!’ she says.
‘Oh, so was I! How weird was that?’
‘I know, the whole saluting the Queen thing. God, it’s so creepy.’
‘We didn’t have any girls like you in our group. That might have made it bearable.’
I feel an absurd surge of jealousy as they bond over these bad memories. Back off, I think, I saw him first!
But then he’s giving her pen back and disappearing into the dark, and then … and then I race into the shadows, grab the collar of his hoodie and kiss him on the mouth. I feel like I’m on fire, shot out of reality for a delicious few seconds, lingering on the soft crush of lips on lips.
He looks a bit stunned, but he smiles at me and waves goodbye without saying a word.
I’ve surprised him. I’ve surprised myself.
I feel dizzy.
‘OK, bye,’ I say, anticlimactically.
I almost skip back to Alice, who’s waiting on the footpath, looking at her shoes. I wonder if she knows what just happened. We hail the last cab in town and as we get in I see her smile to herself for a second. OK, she knows.
I feel like I don’t want to sleep, and the spirit of the night lingers all the way home.
You’re the Kind of Girl I Write Songs About Page 6
