Pants on Fire

by Maggie Alderson

  I knew the party would be really fun in a frenzied way, with lots of dancing and larking around, but there were three reasons I wasn’t sure about going.

  The first was that through some cunning research (asking Trudy when he was drunk), I had found out that Nick Pollock was going to be there with Phoebe Trill.

  The second was that much as I adored Antony and his boys I knew that, apart from Pants On Fire Pollock, Zoe’s Ben and whichever bonk-of-the-week Debbie had in tow, it would be pretty much a gay affair. I knew that I’d have a hilarious time and then go home to bed alone, pissed, feeling empty inside.

  The third reason involved Jasper. He had called me on Friday afternoon and asked me what I was doing over the weekend. I’d been deliberately vague to keep my options open and he’d said if I wanted to have a really good time, I should come to Caledonia at two p.m. on Saturday with a jumper and a swimsuit. That was all he’d tell me, but he warned me not to be late, or he’d leave without me.

  Now it was twelve noon. I had two hours to decide one way or the other. I wandered down to the water’s edge at Farm Cove and leaned against the sea wall. The sound of the waves slapping against the stone was very restful. I felt quite sleepy and the thought of a big noisy party with Antony and Debbie off their faces didn’t appeal at all.

  I’d assumed Jasper’s secret plan was a beach picnic, but there was something about the way he’d said “he” would leave without me—not “they” would leave without me—that made me wonder if it was an outing for just two. Did I want that?

  Yes and no. I certainly didn’t want to start a serious relationship with anyone—did I? But if not, why had I got so dizzy so quickly about Nick Pollock? And why had I started choosing schools within moments of meeting Billy Ryan? Also, Liinda had been so persistent in her warnings about not getting involved with Jasper. Should I take notice of her?

  What I really wanted was some uncomplicated male companionship of the close kind. I longed to be held in someone’s arms. I wanted to kiss someone. Long, deep, slow kisses. Apart from a quick snog with Billy and a night of wild humping with Bollocky Pollock, it felt like a lifetime since I’d had sustained physical contact with another human. My whole body yearned for it. Skin on skin.

  I stood there gazing at the water with my thoughts going round and round like clothes in a washing machine. Jasper. Flake. Pothead. Skin. Antony. Rory. Liinda. Jasper’s laugh. Flake. Pothead. Skin. Antony. Liinda. Round and round and round.

  And then, almost without realising it, I was walking home. I hadn’t consciously made a decision, but my feet had. I was going to go with Jasper—wherever he was going. But as I walked along, with the washing machine on the spin cycle, I came up with a disqualifier clause. I was going to be ten minutes late deliberately and if Jasper had gone without me, I would go to Trudy’s party.

  When I got home I rang and left a message on Antony’s work number—which I knew he wouldn’t answer on a Saturday—saying I wasn’t feeling too good, but I would see him at the party as long as I was feeling better. That way he wouldn’t feel offended when I didn’t show.

  I walked into the gate of Caledonia at ten past two. Jasper was sitting on the bonnet of his car wearing his gold-rimmed Vegas-period Elvis sunglasses and a large straw stetson—even bigger than the one I was wearing. He had his pink pants on, a brightly striped business shirt and Jesus sandals. His toenails were painted the same colour as his pants. He looked totally nuts—and very very cute.

  “Pinkie!” he cried. “You took the challenge. I wore my pink pants in the hope they would conjure you up and they did.”

  “Jasper—you look very fine. Here I am with my jumper and swimsuit. What’s the secret plan?” I noticed there was no one else around.

  “Jump in and I’ll tell you.”

  Jasper’s car was an old sky-blue Holden with a bench seat across the front. There was no radio, but he’d brought a portable cassette player. A large cooler box and a couple of picnic rugs were stowed on the back seat.

  “So are we going on a picnic?” I asked him.

  “Well, a picnic is part of it . . .” He put a cassette into the player and hit play.

  The B52s came blaring out.

  “Are we going to the Love Shack?” I asked him.

  Jasper slammed the car into gear and set off out of the gates at great speed.

  “Road trip!” he cried as we swung onto Elizabeth Bay Road. “Woohoo!” he yelled. “Yeehaw!” I cried in agreement.

  I didn’t mind being kidnapped in the slightest. There are few things I like more than a road trip, and Jasper really understood the rules of the road. He had a whole glove compartment full of specially made compilation tapes with good driving music on them, including one on which every track mentioned a road, a car, driving, or a destination.

  We happily yodeled “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa” and crooned along to “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” with the mighty Glenn. Jasper was thrilled I knew all the words.

  He had pre-rolled a little tin of his pleasantly mild joints, and the cooler in the back was full of iced tea he’d made himself and poured into empty Coke bottles. Jasper didn’t approve of Coca Cola on moral grounds—but he was quite happy to stop at a petrol station and load up on cheap “lollies” as he called them.

  “But these are sweets,” I said. “Lollies are things on sticks.”

  “That’s a boiled lolly you’ve got in your gob right now, darlin’.”

  “No, this is a boiled sweet. A Chupa Chup is a lolly. A Paddle Pop is an ice lolly.”

  “A Paddle Pop is an icy pole,” he corrected me.

  “A what? That sounds like something an Eskimo would make a tent with.”

  “Or something an Eskimo lady would be happy to warm up . . .”

  We had the windows down, the music up high, and in no time at all we were out of suburbia and bowling along a highway through some kind of national park. The water was on our left, so I figured we were heading south.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as we bypassed somewhere called Wollongong.

  Jasper shrugged his shoulders.

  “I guess we’ll know when we get there. We’re south of the Gong on the open road. We’ve got a full tank of gas . . .”

  “We’re wearing shades . . .”

  “Hit it!” we cried in unison.

  And on we went through twee little towns with cutesy high streets which Jasper dismissed as muffin zones, and then through nowhere much at all, both just happy to look out the window at the pastoral countryside, sing along and smile. I took my watch off and zipped it into a side pocket in my bag. Jasper smiled.

  “I knew you’d get it. No time, no appointments, no plans, no rules.”

  “No deadlines.”

  “No worries.” We grinned at each other.

  After a couple more hours—at a guess, the shadows were lengthening anyway—Jasper suddenly turned left off the highway.

  “Let’s see what’s down here, shall we?” he said.

  The side road wound through stands of gum trees and large shrubs, a sort of scrubby forest. Jasper drove at a dangerous lick through a few funny little towns until eventually we came to a high area from where I could see we were on some kind of peninsula with water on two sides. On the right was the open ocean, on the left there was a huge round bay, edged by white sand beaches.

  We turned off again and wound down a hill until we came to a much more picturesque settlement of weatherboard buildings, right by the shore. Jasper drove past them and then along quite a rough track, ignoring a sign which said No Entry. After a couple of miles through dense trees he parked, and we just sat there and listened. Apart from the waves and the odd bird call there was complete silence.

  “No man-made sounds at all,” I said. “Heaven. Do you know there is practically nowhere in the British Isles where you can find this kind of silence anymore? There always seems to be a motorway in the distance or a plane overhead. This is amazing.”

  We sat there
for a while, just listening. Then Jasper said, “Let me show you to your accommodation, modom,” and he took my hand and led me through the trees to the beach. It was pristine. There were no plastic bottles on the shore, just shells and seaweed. Then I saw something jumping in the water.

  “Look!” said Jasper. “Dolphins.”

  A whole pod of them were swimming and leaping, not far off shore.

  “You’ve done it again,” I said to Jasper. “You’ve stood me still.” And then it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take me in his arms and kiss me. For a long time. Slowly and sweetly, just as I had imagined it.

  We swam. We built a fire and baked potatoes in it. We drank pinot noir out of real glasses—“No need to slum it,” said Jasper—and we ate salad and ham and cold watermelon out of an “esky.”

  “The same one who had the icy pole?” I asked him and he kissed me some more.

  When night fell and the stars came out, we lay on our backs, as we’d done so often in the cupola, and smoked a few joints and talked and talked until we fell asleep. Well, not asleep exactly. Jasper had a double sleeping bag in the boot. He’d also brought two single ones, he told me.

  “I’d hate you to think I was making assumptions,” he said.

  The next morning we woke with the sunrise, running into the sea to wash and wake ourselves up. Jasper disappeared for a while with the car and came back with coffee and bacon and egg rolls. All day we swam and sunbathed and slept and talked and made love. Skin to skin. I felt like sunshine was running in my veins.

  “We’re living like savages,” said Jasper.

  “And aren’t savages on to a good thing?”

  When the sun got up high I wondered sadly if he would soon say it was time to go. Instead, he leaned over and tickled my face with a blade of grass and said, “Want to stay another night?” I just nodded. Bugger work. I’d made enough excuses for Debbie Brent over the last two months—now I was going to chuck a little sickie myself, as I’d heard Liinda call it.

  I had deliberately left my mobile behind, so I drove Jasper’s car (which we had christened “The Whale”) into the little village to find a phone box and left a message on Seraphima’s voicemail at work. I said I’d been struck down with food poisoning on Saturday and still felt really rough on Sunday afternoon, so I wouldn’t be in on Monday. That would cover me for Saturday night too, I thought. Debbie would hear and she could tell Antony and it would all hang together. And I was sleeping a lot, I told Sera’s tape, so if anyone called I might not answer the phone. I didn’t feel remotely guilty. I just felt high on the pure pleasure of being with Jasper.

  That feeling didn’t go away for all of Sunday and it was still there on Monday morning.

  “I feel like we’ve been away for weeks,” I told Jasper. He nodded.

  “We can do this anytime you like,” he said. “It’s only four hours from Sydney. We could come here every Friday night if you wanted to.”

  I smiled at him. He might be a flake, but his dreams were charming. There was nothing dangerous in them. And he was a wonderful lover. Maybe it was the pot, but he took it all so slowly and easily, he wound me up to fever pitch. And even when we weren’t skin to skin, I felt completely relaxed with him. I knew he liked me, because he’d told me so many times before we’d even kissed, so I didn’t feel I had to be on scintillating form every second as I had with Nick Pollock. And I knew I was never going to marry him. With Jasper, I was quite happy to live in the moment.

  But eventually the time came when we had to kiss our Blue Lagoon goodbye. There was no brutal “better be off then,” it just seemed to happen. One minute we were lying in the sun, the next we were carrying things up to the car. When it was all packed away Jasper took my hand and led me along the beach to a sheltered spot where he’d written J & G in the sand with shells. He picked up one of the shells and gave it to me.

  “Every time you look at this shell for the next week, I will be thinking about you,” he said.

  “Only a week?”

  “We can renegotiate that each Monday morning.”

  The journey home was easy and companionable, with a suitably soppy compilation tape playing. Briefly I wondered if he had made another one to fit the mood if I’d opted for the single sleeping bag. I fell asleep on the bench seat with my head on Jasper’s lap and woke up to find him stroking my hair. And then we were back in Elizabeth Bay.

  He left the motor running while we kissed goodbye. I wondered for a moment if he was expecting me to ask him up to spend the night there, but I wanted to keep our precious weekend separate from the reality of the alarm clock going off in the morning. We kissed for a long time and as I started to get out of the car I turned round and asked him what he would have done if I’d been late for the rendezvous.

  “I would have waited all afternoon,” he said and I went inside, humming “Galveston” on the way up in the lift.

  The next morning there was a bunch of purple bougainvillea outside the door to my flat—no note, but I knew it was from the garden at Caledonia. It made me smile and my insides did a quick somersault when I had a sudden image of Jasper walking out of the sea naked, shaking his long dark hair. I was going to have to make a real effort not to have too obvious a case of post-coital glow when I got into the office.

  Sometimes it’s a real pain working with a bunch of women and their collective intuition—you can’t get away with anything—but for once they didn’t seem to notice. To be on the safe side, I told Debbie and Zoe I was still feeling too sick to have lunch, so they wouldn’t have the chance to observe me close up.

  At three p.m. precisely Jasper called me.

  “I left it until three, because I didn’t want to seem too keen,” he said and told me he would have loved to see me that night, but he had something on. That was fine with me—I wanted a bit of time just to enjoy remembering how wonderful it had been, before seeing him in reality again.

  Later on Antony called to see if I was over my food poisoning—the bush telegraph was working perfectly—and to tell me tales of Trudy’s party, which had been the expected wild and crazy night. He wanted me to go over to his place for drinks, but I used the sick excuse again and we made arrangements to go to the various lipstick promotions, gallery openings and product launches that made up the next ten days in Sydney’s social calendar.

  I did want to see Antony and the rest of the gang, but I also wanted to make sure that I’d booked in plenty of nights when I would be unavailable to Jasper. After feeling so helpless and cast adrift by the fiery-panted Pollock it felt really good not to feel desperate about this man.

  When I did see him again, everything was as easy as ever. We had a Mongolian meal, watched a Mongolian movie and then went back to my place for a spot of what Jasper called Mongolian horizontal folk-dancing.

  It wasn’t as romantic as the beach, but Jasper seemed to have a natural flair for creating atmosphere—he’d brought some tea lights with him, so we could create a more conducive mood in my bare little room.

  After that it seemed quite natural to see him again on Friday night, and we spent the whole of Saturday together going round Surry Hills markets and various junk shops to buy things to make my flat less like a nun’s cell. I bought a mad old 1950s lamp in the shape of a gypsy dancer, complete with original pleated shade, a multicoloured bead curtain to put up in the kitchen and a framed school map of the world with Australia right in the middle. Jasper bought me a plastic pineapple ice bucket like his.

  And so we drifted into an easy companionship. We didn’t see each other every night and when we did stay together, he always came to my place. We didn’t declare ourselves a couple, but inhabited our own secret universe whenever we were together and our separate ones when we were apart. It made me think of that country-and-western song—it’s not love, but it’s not bad. And it was exactly what I wanted.

  Not long after our weekend away, Jasper started going on about the Royal Easter Show, which he kept telling me was a
Sydney institution I mustn’t miss. It sounded like just my kind of thing—it involved animals and men in Akubra hats—and I desperately wanted him to take me. But Jasper refused, saying he had boycotted it ever since they’d moved it from the old Showground to new buildings in Homebush. “I’ve heard that new place is just like a multi-storey car park,” he said.

  So I went on my own, Jasper had a point about the buildings; it was all grey concrete and seemed more urban than country. There were a few young fellows in hats, but I couldn’t even get a whiff of cow shit. At first it just made me feel really homesick, it was so very different from the county shows I used to love when I was growing up. I wished that Hamish was there to share it with me—agricultural shows are his idea of bliss—and I wondered if he had done anything yet about coming over to work for Johnny Brent. I’d have to give him a call. Meanwhile, Jasper had given me a list of essential Easter Show experiences and I was determined to have a good time.

  According to Jasper I had to watch the wood chopping, look at the prize-winning scones and cakes, check out the tableaux in the Hall of Industries, go on a terrifying ride, get him a Violet Crumble showbag and eat something called a Dagwood Dog, followed immediately by fairy floss, while watching the Grand Parade.

  So I found myself eating a vile thing which seemed to be a deep-fried battered hot dog on a stick, followed by what I knew as candy floss. I’d already marveled at the amazing rural scenes made entirely out of soya beans, lentils, pumpkins and wool, I’d inspected the cakes, watched the wood chopping, cooed over the piglets, battled through 10,000 screaming children in sugar shock to get Jasper’s showbag and decided which ride I was going to pretend I’d been on. All that remained was the Grand Parade, where the winning beasts in every class were led around the big arena in concentric circles. I loved it all.