Beautiful Mess

by Claire Christian

  ‘No.’ I shake my head and get out of the car. I faintly hear a frustrated groan as I march up the porch and into the house.

  ‘You’re home early,’ Dad mutters from the couch.

  ‘Yeah, I feel a bit sick.’ I smile at him so he knows I’m okay and go straight to my room.

  A bit sick is an understatement: I feel like a fucking idiot. Lincoln is right, I am a psycho. I don’t understand how I can go from hating him with such rage that I’d be happy to never see him again to like, one second later, be making out with him in the car directly outside my house. About fifty metres away from my dad who, if he felt so inclined, could have looked out the front window and seen his daughter starring in her very own porno.

  I didn’t even want to go out. Now Lincoln is going to be super pissed and I’m going to have to deal with that. And what are we even doing? I know he doesn’t like me like that. I’m positive about that, at least I think I am. The last time we hooked up I kind of made a pact that I wouldn’t let it happen again, that we needed to just hang out like normal friends, but I can’t help it when he looks at me with his black-coffee eyes and perfect lips, I just turn into some sex fiend incapable of making rational decisions.

  My thoughts feel like they’re floating outside of my head and I’m trying desperately to catch one of them but there’s too many and they’re flying too fast, and I don’t know how I feel about anything. I lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Dad asks, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Yeah.’ But it’s a lie. I am not okay.

  ‘You are an amazing specimen of a man and I am glad that you are here.’ Andy greets me at the door wearing a tiara and bright green blazer.

  ‘I didn’t realise we were getting dressed up.’

  ‘What? This old thing?’ He laughs, his eyes wild. He wraps his arm around my shoulder and ushers me into the kitchen, where he thrusts a white plastic cup into my hands.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Wine. Drink. Don’t whine.’ He grabs my hand and leads me downstairs to the lounge room, where there is a large picnic blanket on the floor and a heap of people from class. Andy in his tipsy state decides to announce my arrival as we reach the bottom stairs.

  ‘GIIIIDDDDDDEEEOOONNN,’ he slurs loudly and Norma cheers. The others, about eight people in total, smile and wave and I perch myself on the edge of the couch and make a promise to myself to try to have a good time.

  Everyone is drinking out of their own white plastic cups and they all seem to have quite cheery dispositions so I figure I may as well join in too. I take a big swig. It tastes like vinegar.

  The rest of the night moves as expected. I even have fun—we sit on a blanket on the floor and talk about movies and politics and music and Ria. We keep drinking the cheap wine, giggling, repeating ourselves far too many times. I’m still oddly aware of drinking too much but also have this kind of fuzzy filter over everything where it moves a bit slower and everything is a bit more confusing and I am exponentially funnier, or at least I think I am. In fact everyone thinks I am because they laugh and occasionally yell things like ‘Yeeeessss!’ which I quite enjoy.

  At one o’clock in the morning we decide to make pancakes, which just results in a pancake batter fight. Issy scones me right in the forehead with a handful of flour and so I grab her and lift her up around her waist and put her over my shoulder. I feel like Tarzan, helped of course by the fact that Issy is like the tiniest of all tiny teenage girls. She squeals and giggles and pats my butt as I ask the others in the fight, ‘Has anyone seen Issy?’

  Eventually we run out of flour and Andy has a moment of lucidity and looks around the mess in the kitchen and we all stare at him in silence as he takes it in and then starts laughing. His parents don’t get back for a week so we’ve got time to clean up.

  And then we’re all out in the backyard attempting to get the flour out of our eyes and hair. Everyone strips down to their underwear and runs under the hose. I do not and quickly head for the bathroom. The giggly buzz I was feeling drops like one of those cartoon two-ton weights and hits my stomach like a thud. I lock the bathroom door and wash my face. I do not need them to ask me why I’m not getting undressed like the rest of them. When I go back out everyone is saturated, shivering, near naked and tired. I smile and find towels for them, trying to be as polite with my eyes as possible and not lose my mind about the sight of girls in wet undergarments. I’ve been to the beach—I’ve seen real-life girls in bikinis before, but this feels different. I don’t know why because it’s the exact same amount of fabric covering the exact same amount of flesh on their bodies but this feels intimate, like I shouldn’t be looking even though every cell in my entire body wants to.

  Later, when we’re back downstairs and everyone is a little less exposed, I sit on the couch observing. Norma sitting on Andy’s lap, Tess and Suvi on the floor, resting their heads on the same cushion, which sits delicately perched in Che’s lap, Neil sound asleep in the recliner. Issy plops onto the couch next to me and hovers her legs over my lap so she can put them down. I lift my hands and she rests her legs on my thighs. BUT WHAT DO I DO WITH MY HANDS NOW? I’m going to look like an idiot if I don’t put them down soon. I try to appear nonchalant about resting my forearms across her shins.

  ‘Gids? Who?’ someone says.

  ‘Who what?’

  ‘In this room. Marry, fuck, kill?’ Che announces, his eyes squinting because he lost his glasses in the great food fight of 1 a.m. and now can’t really see anything, plus he’s the only one still drinking the wine.

  ‘I’m not answering,’ I bumble.

  ‘We’re all answering, you have to,’ Suvi gruffly says from the floor. ‘I’ve already gone.’

  ‘Who were yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Fuck Issy, marry Tess and kill Neil.’

  ‘You’re killing Neil because he’s asleep?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s a liability. What if we were in the jungle and he was on lookout?’ Everyone nods. ‘I can’t have that kind of negativity in my life.’ We all laugh and then quickly quieten down so as not to wake the now hypothetically murdered Neil.

  ‘You raise a good point, Suv, so I’ll kill Neil.’ My butt clenches as I quickly try to come up with a joke to get through the next two. ‘I’d marry you, Suvi, because you have this whole jungle scenario worked out and I feel like you could protect me.’

  ‘And who are you going to humpty hump?’ Andy murmurs from the couch.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You do, just say it.’

  ‘No, I’m a gentleman and—’ They cut me off, yelling at me to answer, until finally I mutter, ‘Issy.’

  ‘Why does everyone want to fuck me?’ she laughs, and I blush.

  About two hours later Issy and I are the last awake, which for anyone else would probably seem like an excellent opportunity to hook up. I mean she didn’t run away screaming when I announced that, if pressed, out of the girls in the room I would choose to be intimate with her. She then in turn chose to marry me.

  ‘I think Gideon would be a great husband,’ she announced to the group and then my hand disconnected with my brain and just decided to do its own thing and respond by awkwardly patting her leg. The un-sexiest thank-you gesture in the whole history of thank-you gestures.

  Neil is still asleep on the recliner, unaware he’s been chosen seven times to be killed. Tess, Suvi and Che share one doona on the floor, and Andy and Norma have gone up to Andy’s room. Not before making Issy and me stand up so they could pull out the sofa bed.

  This is why I now find myself in a bit of a predicament. A predicament that is shaped like a sofa bed with a very pretty girl lying next to a very awkward boy. He has no freaking idea what to do, so for the last hour or so he has done nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact he has focused so much of his attention on the exact location of his limbs in relation to the girl lying next to him that he has barely paid attention to any of the things she’s tried to talk about. Instead
the boy has been uttering caveman-like one-word answers or grunts.

  ‘Are you tired?’ she asks.

  ‘Mmm hmm.’

  ‘I’m not. Or I am, but I’m not, you know?’

  Do it, Gideon, make a move, seal this deal, you don’t know if the opportunity will ever come again. Roll over, touch her, say something. Quick, do it now before the chance is gone and you have to wait another seventeen years. I go to make a move and then immediately back off and try to make it look like I just rolled over. At least I’m now facing her. Issy is lying on her back and I’m so close to her that I can feel the heat of her skin.

  ‘Do you think people realise how ridiculous the saying “have your cake and eat it too” is? Because obviously if there is cake I’m going to eat it.’ She laughs nervously.

  ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ I say as my brain and my body line up in perfect synchronicity and we go for it. We make our move.

  Our move, as it turns out, is to rest our arm over Issy’s mid-section with a kind of heavy thump, leave it there for about, oh, six seconds, say the word ‘Night’, and then scuttle off to the other side of the bed. Leaving Issy to probably question what on earth just happened and surely be convinced that I do not know how to hug properly and cutting all potential opportunities for any other engagement this evening.

  SUCH. AN. IDIOT.

  I do not sleep at all. Instead I lie there pondering all of the possible and much better ways that tonight could’ve gone, and repeatedly and with great energy berate myself for even thinking I could be cool enough to pull that off.

  I also mull over the grandest question of them all. Is it always going to be this hard?

  Robbie and I are laughing, the loud, raspy kind of laughter where you can’t breathe and the tears come out. I told him all about my failed moves at Andy’s place on the weekend and at first we talked about insecurity, about my propensity to overthink things, about my general belief that I’m a failure as a man.

  We processed all of that, and then Robbie said this: ‘It’s never not nerve-racking. But then there’s also an element of it that’s meant to be easy, and that’s when you know it’s right. When you can sit in that sweet spot between freaking out and being at ease.’ He smiles. ‘This does not sound like that.’

  I nod. It wasn’t easy. At all. In fact if I’m honest I don’t actually think I want to make out with Issy at all. Yes, she’s pretty and I find her attractive. Yes, there was an opportunity and yes, I think if I hadn’t done the good old split-second arm hug then there’s a high probability that she would’ve kissed me back. But I didn’t want to. I feel an enormous amount of relief and my body feels lighter. I smile at Robbie and that’s when we start to crack jokes back and forth about my shithouse moves.

  ‘It’s like a bad wrestling move,’ Robbie grins.

  ‘If I’d done it any harder I probably would’ve winded her.’ I shake my head and laugh, watching Robbie as he struggles to catch his breath.

  ‘Okay, okay, stop. We have to stop,’ he eventually mumbles, exhaling loudly. ‘You’re gonna be okay, mate, like actually, like expert opinion, I believe it.’ He smiles at me.

  ‘Thanks.’ I nod and I don’t really believe him but it’s nice to know that Robbie thinks it. I probably care about his opinion more than anyone’s, especially more than my own.

  ‘And now, there’s something that I’ve got to tell you, and it’s a bit hard for me,’ Robbie says. His eyes are scanning my face.

  ‘Okay.’ I try to read his body language, get a sense of what he’s going to say, but he’s his usual calm self. I immediately go to worst-case scenario and in the second-long pause convince myself that he’s got cancer and is going to die.

  ‘I’m moving,’ he says.

  I feel relieved that it’s not anything worse, and that his life isn’t in danger, but then the pendulum in my brain flips back and I think about myself, and if without him I’ll in fact be the one in danger. Robbie is telling me about a fellowship that he’s won at some fancy American university where he’s going to go and do some research project. He tells me that he’s not leaving for a few months. He tells me that we can still Skype and that he’s happy to make recommendations about other people for me to see, and that we’ve got time to process this and what it means for me. Robbie, as always, makes me laugh and feel at ease and does his best to convince me that everything is going to be okay. He does such a good job that I almost believe it’s all going to be okay.

  I feel weird when I get home. Like I should be sad about Robbie’s news, but I don’t feel sad. I go up to my room and there’s a letter from Ava and a postcard from Annie sitting on the corner of my bed. I feel relieved that she’s replied. It’s been a few days and I was convinced that she wasn’t going to.

  Gideon,

  I am now timing myself too and agree to the thirty-minute, no-reading-back limits that you’ve placed on yourself. But before I started writing I had to look up what the word foible meant. I looked it up on my phone. You know, like a normal person who has a phone? I don’t know what your fascination with being normal is. I don’t think any of us are normal. We’ve all got shit going on, but we’re all trying to convince each other that we’re normal. I think it’s fucked. I think it would be so much better if we were all just more honest and said when things were bad, or that we weren’t okay or we were sick or we were happy or whatever. I used to be one of those people you talked about. One of those people who would wake up in a good mood. I think it’s just in you, you know? You’re either a positive person or you’re a negative person. I was a positive person. I’d see the good in everything and believed in bullshit sentiments like everything happening for a reason. But then, some shit went down, and I don’t know if I feel that way anymore. I feel like I’ve kind of learnt that the world can be completely awful and once you learn that I don’t know how you unlearn it. I don’t know how everything becomes okay again.

  I don’t know if you know this but I’m not at school anymore. I got expelled for punching Trevor Lane in Maths. I’ve started at TAPs and I’ve only been there a few days but I think I like it. I think it’s gonna be way better than having to listen to Mrs Bryan lie about her concern for me. I don’t know if I want to go to uni. I don’t know what I want to do when school is done. You must be so excited being so close to being finished. If your letters are anything to go by then I think you’re already an amazing writer. I don’t know any other poets.

  Past Ava, the girl who was kind of happy all the time, she had a plan to go travelling and see the world and go on adventures and stuff but I don’t know if I want to do that anymore. In fact it feels kind of exhausting. All I know is I don’t want to be at Magic Kebab forever. Don’t get me wrong, I think Ricky is so fucking awesome, but he’s crazy. Then again he does love it. I don’t think I feel that way about anything yet. I don’t love anything the way that Ricky loves meat on a stick. I used to love swimming. In like Year 7 and 8 I was mad into it and would get up early every morning and do squad training. I even had personal best times and shit. I don’t even think I own a pair of swimmers now. I don’t know how I feel about that. I got told the story about the inky wee spot in the pool, but rather than sit on the edge I tested the theory and so instantly knew that it wasn’t true. I don’t know what that says about me and you.

  I think it’s awesome that you want to be happier, Gideon. I really do. I’ve kind of realised how miserable I am. Maybe I’ll tell you all about it one day. You can tell me the phone story and I’ll tell you about this year. Deal? One thing that I do know that makes me happy, even for a moment, is your letters. Thank you for the stamps. And for the record, you weren’t weird at work. Okay, maybe a little, but I like it. You make me laugh. I’m sorry I’m such a miserable bitch all the time.

  See you at work on Friday.

  Be happy, Gideon.

  Love Ava

  P.S. I wrote well and truly over the timer. I’m a rebel like that.

  I’ve never really th
ought about how shit things must actually be for Ava right now. She does a relatively good job of hiding it. Apart from that time at assembly, and I didn’t know that she’d punched Trevor. I’m not exactly in any kind of circle at school where I’d hear that. But I do know who Trevor is and he’s a wanker so I feel pretty safe in assuming he deserved it. I’ve never been in a fight. I wouldn’t know what to do. Annie would get into fights for me if I ever needed her to. I remember her postcard, it’s a photo of the queen.

  You’d love London like I love you, which is lots and lots.

  I hope you’re being brave, little brother.

  Love Annie

  Brave? I think, smiling about the possible reply I’ll create later for her.

  Oh, Annie, I’m practically a superhero for all of the bravery I’ve been swinging around these parts of late.

  I slept with a girl.

  Or at least she slept while I lay wide awake pondering the bold failure of my arm-toss-count-to-six failed sex move which, shockingly, didn’t work. But never mind because I have been writing letters to another real-life girl where I divulge information about myself and don’t vomit. In fact, I think I’d go as far as to say that she is my friend. I’ve made a new friend, Annie, is that brave enough for ya? Oh, and Robbie is leaving and I didn’t have a mental breakdown about the news. So, brave? Yes.

  Your brother,

  Gideon

  I sit on the edge of Lincoln’s bed. I promised myself I wouldn’t have sex with him. That we’d just hang out and sort out the mess from the other night, but he didn’t bring it up, and so I didn’t bring it up and then he kissed me and I didn’t stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. I pull my singlet over my head and am met with a barrage of yuck feelings. It’s like someone has turned on a tap and they fill me up and make me dizzy: guilt, regret, sadness all sloshing about making me numb and sick, like the moment just before you spew. I can feel the blood leave my body, I get cold and clammy and my mouth just starts pumping out way too much saliva as my stomach starts churning. That’s pretty much what I feel like whenever Lincoln and I hook up. After, I mean. When it’s actually happening it’s great.