The Life

by Malcolm Knox

  You go off with them and kiss them a bit and sometimes when you got real close and eye to eye with them and they broke through into some hidden soft space, you saw them changed from the fun laughing long-haired girl into a gentle baby who cuddled you like they cuddled their teddy bear and you were right inside their space and their heads and their dreams . . .

  . . . totally freaked you out so

  so you steered clear of that. Keep them at arms length. Keep the aviators on.

  Cos if you saw that deep into them, they were seeing that deep into you.

  Freaked you out. Till Lisa Exmire.

  Always liked walking. It slows your thoughts. I walk every day from this retirement village to the shops. I go to Bob’s milk bar for a pine-lime Splice and an orange Tarax. I walk over Greenmount Hill where me and Rod used to camp in a two-man hootchie and sit round the fire. Once we burnt the headland down. You’d never know it now. Now it’s all landscaped and beautiful eh, every square inch accounted for, paving and edging, edging and paving. Not careful, you get run over by old people power-walking. DK always been freaked by old people. Still is, even when the old people are younger than him.

  The surfboard-shaped benches are out of control here, rampant like lantana. Place been turned into some theme park of surf. Surfworld/Jerkwild/Porkwheel/Far out stop it man eh.

  Now the BFO likes to do the walk with me.

  I don’t mind. I just want to keep her away from Mo. If the price I have to pay is her and her questions on my walks, then okay.

  She’s all right.

  We sit on Greenmount and watch waves.

  Only when she’s crook at me she ask me if I miss it. Otherwise she knows better.

  Mostly we walk and sit in silence. Always liked silence. Me element. That’s the price she has to pay.

  She nods down to The Pit, the big spraypainted boulder at Snapper.

  ‘It’s always said that?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Used to say something else.’

  She doesn’t know what it used to say.

  But she been doing her research. She says:

  ‘It used to say, DK RULES, or DK WAS HERE, or DK FOREVER. Every time council had it cleaned up, it got repainted. Always for you.’

  ‘Not always for me.’

  She doesn’t know what it used to say.

  She says: ‘Ironic though, isn’t it?’

  I sneak a look down at the sign. It says what it says.

  Be Prepared To Fight/Be Prepared For Night/Beware of the Bite/Maximum Height/Last One Out Turn Off The Light.

  Open and close me lips like I’m crossing a driveway.

  She’s asked me a few times about the girls, the dope. She’s shy about it. She drops it in conversation, like, if we’re talking about the ’69 nationals at Bells she’ll say, So was that the period when you were with Lisa Exmire? and I’ll say nothing and just keep on about the rogue right-hander I jagged in the quarter-finals. Or we’ll be talking about the ’68 state titles at D-Bah and she’ll say, So was that the period when you were first into the grass and stuff? and I’ll say nothing and just keep on about the best back-handed barrel I ever got when I was in a heat with Tink and FJ and they just sat back and clapped and paddled in, they knew how much it meant to me, how much practice I put in up and down the coast working on left-handers cos they were the ones I drug along with me in Rod’s borrowed cars, and they knew they couldn’t beat me . . .

  I feel the BFO probing, how hungry she wants it, do anything for it, but I push my aviators up the bridge of my nose (they’re still there) and keep on.

  She gets her best surfing material out of me when she’s asking me to talk about the birds or the dope. Maybe if she asks me about surfing I’ll tell her about the birds.

  Material. That’s what she calls it. Even though she’s not always carrying her notepad or her tape recorder. I’ve noticed that.

  Another ruse. She pretends she’s not interviewing me. Pretends she’s my Psy Fricken Chologist or something. My PFC not my BFO.

  That type of thing.

  But I’m not giving her what she wants, her soap opera, she can go to Mark Occhilupo or Mick Fanning if that’s what she wants. She wants to write a serious story about surfing, she can come to The Great One.

  Yeah.

  Serious material, that’s what I’m giving her.

  •

  Then we come home to Mo and I wash my hands and we have a big pie or a salad or sandwiches the BFO has bought. Sometimes she hands over ‘the change’ to Mo. Another hundred, two hundred.

  Quite the little cash cow, our BFO is turning out to be.

  Longer I can string her out the better.

  She wants it so bad she’s aching.

  But she knows better than to raise the subjects, the birds and the dope, with Mo. These were never subjects to raise with Mrs Keith.

  BFO’s smart enough to know that.

  Our little cash cow.

  I take her out for a walk. Or she takes me, she’s probably thinking. I dump her at her motel. Before dawn next morning me and Mo drive to The Other Side. But it’s summer now, tourist season, school holidays. No hope of finding anywhere. A five-thousand-mile coast and not one secret spot left: what the world’s come to.

  I’m getting jack of trying to find somewhere no-one can see.

  Can feel Mo getting jack too. Or jill. Whatever it is, she’s getting it.

  But she doesn’t say nothing. She just goes, You take your green and your white and your blue today?

  That type of thing.

  Lisa Exmire wasn’t sad, the least sad person he knew, but in them first days he called her ‘Sad Lisa’ cos she played that Cat Stevens song on her guitar for him at night with a grand smile on her face and tongue pushing through her cheek and he loved that song, loved it, hummed it to himself in the waves.

  He didn’t mind Cat Stevens but he dig heavier stuff more: the new sounds: Santana, Floyd, Hendrix, songs without so many words. You couldn’t avoid music in them days and he didn’t want to. Once he got into the green he saw new dimensions of music. Music gained depth and life, like waves. He could listen to whole tracks but only hear one instrument: the drum, or the bass. He preferred the long instrumentals. Words got in the way. Didn’t have time for words.

  Rod was into his music too and always going out to bands with his mates and birds. Dennis tag along but couldn’t cop the crowds. He wore a snazzy suede suit with lapels big as longboards and Florsheim shoes, he loved them clothes and Mo always told him he had to look nice when he went out ‘socially’.

  You couldn’t work yourself out. Sometimes you wanted to be seen. You show up at The Pit in a big open-necked aloha shirt. Sometimes a cricket sweater. Had a collection of trench coats and bathrobes. Capes, Panama hats. Stand there at The Pit till everyone seen you. Then turn round and run off back home to the shaping cellar.

  You dug clothes. Problem was, people noticed them. You couldn’t work out how to enjoy clothes and not be seen in them.

  This night Dennis Keith stuck to the dark corners. Already kids coming up wanting an autograph. Already whispering behind their hands: There—that’s him. He didn’t want to be him. He wanted to be me. Or at least you. But he couldn’t. The moment he stepped out he was him, DK, The Man, the state junior champion, the freakazoid, the blitzer, the mysto mad genius. That kind of thing.

  Only go to The Patch if people promised to pretend he wasn’t there. This night it got ridiculous, three hundred locals all talking about Dennis Keith but having to make like he wasn’t that bloke sucking lemonade in the shadows, like he wasn’t even there, like if they even looked at him for a second, pouf, he’d disappear.

  So Dennis, him, you, skulks in the corner with a glass of lemonade he pretended was vodka. He didn’t much lik
e lemonade neither so he made it last all night.

  Birds come up. He said nothing. Birds hung round.

  Lemonade birds: he could pretend they were the real thing.

  Birds were like waves but not like waves.

  Like waves: there was always another one.

  Not like waves: it didn’t matter if you wasted one.

  Like waves: they give you a sweet feeling on the edge between dreaming and awake, like all your happiness was in those moments alone with them, and then when it was over you couldn’t remember it.

  Not like waves: you didn’t have to go back and back and back again to imprint the memory till you could hold it in your head while you were lying awake at night. You were happy with what come your way but you didn’t go out looking for them.

  Like waves: they loved you, you were a natural for them, you were part of their element and they were part of yours.

  Not like waves: you didn’t feel a natural for them.

  So stoned now, at this club, he was feeling normal. He was there for the music.

  He looked at the bistro menu blackboard: Steaks $3.33. Lobsters $9.99. Beers $0.99.

  Got a good feeling and—

  And so this bird comes on with her band. Sang like Janis, more on the heavy ‘Take a Little Piece of My Heart’ side than the folk or romantic. Her songs went fast. She wore denim all the way up and down. She was kind of country but kind of surfer. She had skin like a morning glass-off.

  Dennis closed his eyes and listened to her wild singing. He was invisible in her music.

  Then she played this instrumental.

  After she finished her set she seemed to know who you were. She was at this table with her band and a couple of Rod’s mates. That give Rod the opening. He drug you in. The table all got along real well except you.

  Freakazoid.

  You behind your aviators and stared at her all night. In your midnight-blue velour suit.

  Never a word.

  You get Rod to leave early with you.

  Rod said as you walked home: She’ll either root you or have you arrested.

  You didn’t say nothing. You couldn’t.

  You got home and still before midnight. You washed your hands. You worked in the shaping bay. You buggered up a good blank.

  You washed your hands. You went and picked up a stick and got on your chopper and rode back down to Coolie.

  Only five hours till dawn. Still flat. And dark.

  You smoked a doob pinched from Rod’s stash.

  You straddled your poor old chopper with your stick under your arm and stood outside the club where she sung.

  Closing time, she come out. Her arms round two of her band members. You didn’t clock the bloke.

  You clock her scoping you out the corner of her eye.

  You just stood there.

  It’s one o’clock in the morning. She come up grinning. Surfer boy.

  Laughing at you.

  You DK Surfer Boy was wearing your aviators. With your free hand you pushed them up your nose. They were still there.

  But without any hands and your legs too far apart, your chopper slid out from under you and knobbed her leg.

  Nice move, she grinned.

  You lift your chin at her band mates.

  They ya boyfriends?

  She clapped her hand to her mouth. My God, it speaks!

  You didn’t say no more till she said:

  So what if they are?

  You shrugged. You pushed up your aviators (still there).

  She looked round at her band, made some kind of signal you didn’t see, they started drifting off towards Danceland.

  The buzzing ball in your stomach catch fire again. You were hurting. You needed a joint. Or a surf.

  You needed a joint then a surf.

  But it was still Flat.

  The night is young, she said, like she was quoting someone else, some song maybe.

  Then she fixed you with a real, real serious face and said:

  Got any weed?

  Yeah why?

  Cos you probably won’t have the hair to kiss me till you’re more stoned.

  Who says I’m gunna kiss you? I haven’t yet.

  That’s cos if you start you’re gunna need a crowbar to get off me.

  I couldn’t say nothing to that.

  Doesn’t seem any reason not to try, she went all grins.

  Lisa Exmire pashed you on Greenmount Hill. February 8, 1969. She got on top of you and went after every piece of you, indirect, like she was taking the full scenic tour before she got down to the thing that was busting open. You were in agony as she wandered round parts of your body you didn’t even know existed and for sure didn’t want them to exist now. She kept finding new places. Took hours. Made little gasps and comments to herself, like she was marking your exam paper or whatnot. You just dying there while she took her sweet time. Then you couldn’t wait no longer, and it turned out this was what she’d been waiting for, she was ready the whole time, she just been waiting for you to fricken do something. So you done it and she took you. You never done that before. You been with tens of birds, every last one of them forward enough to make the first move and ask you to go off with them, but not a single one of them forward enough to make the last.

  You had no initiative. You just did what you were asked.

  So you never done it. And now Lisa Exmire was getting you to do it. So you done it.

  The moon a fingernail.

  She took your aviators off and got inside you.

  You inside her, she inside you. Too close but comfortable.

  In the open air, under the open sky, your chopper and your board lying beside yous.

  You and Lisa side by side on your backs, smoke another doob looking at the stars.

  You said nothing.

  She sang quiet tunes, not the ones she did for the crowd, more like little nursery tunes.

  Baby Face.

  You couldn’t speak.

  She didn’t mind.

  Mo’s song.

  You both drifted off to sleep a while.

  You heard the waves first and sat up.

  Nor’-east swell come up, out of nowhere. You couldn’t see it but could smell it. First rosy glow on the horizon.

  Lisa sat up beside you, stretched her arms.

  You smoked Roddy’s last doob with her and got up and picked up your stick.

  You’re not going surfing, are you?

  She rubbed her eyes. You saw how rumpled-up her face was with sleeping creases and you wanted to die right there and then.

  You shrugged one shoulder and pushed your aviators up your nose (still there. there again.).

  My God, you’re just like me, she said.

  You threw a leg over your chopper.

  She said: Anyone else I know, a doob like that would wipe them out. It picks you up, doesn’t it?

  You were having the most feelings of your life. You were coming apart with feelings.

  And now, she said, yer gunna surf. In the dark.

  First waves, you said. Light soon, it’ll be like Cavill Mall.

  It speaks! she cried again, delighted.

  You were both delighted. You cycled down the hill to Rainbow. You kept looking up to Greenmount see if she was watching.

  When you got there, the granite’s lit up with huge smashing sucking six-footers. You dropped to your knees.

  It was all-time.

  She ended the Big Flat.

  You cried to yourself as you paddled out.

  Rod was out there. He believed in God.

  Mr Paterson was out there. He believed in his bureau faxes.

  The plumbers, the butchers, th
e chippies, the newsagents. Everyone was out there.

  FJ and Tink were out there.

  They’d all got up before first light.

  They’d beaten you.

  You: filthy.

  You looked up to the hill to see was she watching.

  With the big swell, the sweep was dragging hard and everyone had to paddle non-stop to stay in position, just to stay on the point.

  As the sun rose the bay lit up with cries:

  Woohoo!

  Yeeuuu!

  Wooooooo!

  The drought broke by prayer.

  And you were filthy, cos there was so many out there, Cavill Fricken Mall.

  You’d lost condition. Your arms weak after the Big Flat. All the paddling to stay in position.

  By the time the sun was well up and the water was blue, it was turning into the worst surf of your life. You were missing waves from behind, you were getting outpaddled, you were going too deep and wiping out, you were having to drop in on people but they were shouting you off, you just weren’t getting no waves.

  Filthy.

  You didn’t look up to the hill to see was she watching.

  You let the sweep take you off, then when it dumped you you paddled round the back of the black granite lava rock:

  In behind Snapper.

  Where it was jacking up vertical and nobody ever took off.

  In a nor’-east swell.

  You didn’t even sit on your board, you just kept paddling, didn’t look behind you, just kept paddling—

  And without meaning it, without thinking about what you were doing, you were being lifted high high on the brow of a set wave, up above the black lava rock so you could see the agave trees, you could see the Rainbow Bay surf club, you could see the Point Danger nav station, you could see up the Tweedmouth to The Other Side.

  You didn’t look up Greenmount.

  You were on your feet.

  You hooked it right and tucked in.

  All you remember coming out from behind the black granite is their faces as they were scratching to get over this set wave, paddling in the opposite direction to you, panic on their faces, monster wave, not wanting to get cleaned up, they were paddling and paddling and you remember the faces as they turned from panic to wonder: