Perfect Skin

by Nick Earls

  Much like yourself.

  Obviously. Thank you. I can’t escape that tie job, can I? But you would have liked it here back then. The main question in any campus eatery was ‘How would you like your nachos?’ You would have been right at home. As opposed to now when it’s a hundred and one things to do with pannini, and they can’t make a pizza without tossing on a handful of capers and some semi-dried, sundried, oven-roasted something.

  Wood-smoked. You left out wood-smoked. Or at least a reference to a wood-fired oven.

  And the cheese of an entirely unanticipated mammal. I always like that. We live in very cowist times. I really don’t think that, as a society, we should be so bored with ourselves that we go to the trouble we do, trying to find new mammals to milk in case their cheese might be more interesting. I’ve even been to a place that offered yoghurt from four different mammalian species, but specifically not a cow. They had yak’s yoghurt on there. And as far as I’m concerned, ‘What colour is yak’s milk?’ should have remained a Trivial Pursuit oddity. There’s no reason for it to be making its way into suburban life.

  What colour is yak’s milk?

  Pink. Presumably to make the yoghurt more attractive when matched with rhubarb and a compote of summer fruits.

  And I bet they chopped their own coriander as well, and took ages to pick the right bunch in Coles.

  That’s different. I don’t know how, but it’s different. I think there was a while there when I ended up eating at yak’s-milk joints more than I would’ve expected.

  That was after you left here, though.

  Yeah. As far as I know, yak’s milk still hasn’t penetrated here. But it’s not the nachos joint that it was. It was a good time to be here, despite the fact that it was somewhat cuisine-impaired. It was sort of in between seventies radicalism and the nineties pressure to treat the study part seriously. If that’s actually how it is. It’s how the papers think it is. But maybe it doesn’t feel particularly different here to me because I’ve kept coming to the place. I’ve always lived nearby, so I come here to see movies. And to run, obviously. Things like that. I think it was more interesting before I was here. I think it probably did have a phase where there was a no-shoes, tie-dye dress code. For all the people being radical and individual, anyway. And the union was pretty active. Someone once told me that, since the union owns the cinema and that whole retail area, they got to give all the buildings their names. And the Schonell Cinema – the big one upstairs – is apparently officially called the Ho Chi Minh Theatre. And there was an extraordinary union meeting in the eighties when they’d just sacked an official and he was fighting them about it and they voted to rename the whole union complex the Whatever-his-name-was Persecution Complex. I think that’s all fairly indicative of how things had changed from the seventies to the eighties.

  We walk up the hill and through the Persecution Complex, and more has changed since then than I’d thought. It might be my preferred movie venue, but I now realise I haven’t been to a movie in a long time.

  You’ve never played Trivial Pursuit, have you? I ask Ash, thinking back to her ignorance about yak’s milk.

  No.

  I think it probably had a few years of being a hot Christmas selection. In between the historic longevity of Monopoly and the fleeting attention we pay things now.

  She’s never played Trivial Pursuit. Even though they still sell boxes of new cards, maybe they’re only selling to the converted. The mid-eighties TP fans, sitting back waiting for more, wanting to be quizzed harder, getting a bit older, a bit larger. Not realising that their game is history. That the newer kids played Pictionary, and the even newer kids didn’t. Not realising that the whole world hadn’t learned from their era’s favourite game that yak’s milk was pink. Maybe Ash is right and cycle times are shorter, but I wish that didn’t seem to put quite so many cycles between us. I want us to know the same things, or at least a lot of the same things.

  We keep walking, into the Great Court where, since it’s a Saturday, there are wedding parties having photos taken.

  I hadn’t expected this, she says.

  You haven’t been here before on a weekend then, have you?

  No.

  This is about average. Three different wedding parties. People meet here, or have pasts here. So if this is where it all started they often come back here for photos, if they’re getting married nearby. And the sandstone looks good too, I suppose.

  Actually, I have a whole album of photos at home that look just like these will, if you’re interested. But that’s the part I don’t say.

  It’s only when the moment’s properly gone that I realise it was an opportunity, some kind of opportunity. An opening to begin a conversation about Mel, in some way other than starting with an awkward pause, then moving on to throat-clearing and the tough part.

  Two rainbow lorikeets fly into a nearby tree and start fighting about berries. The Bean’s head whips around in the pouch to follow the action, but they’re out of the tree and gone before she’s got them into focus. She looks back at me.

  Too quick for you, hey? Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty more of them. And they’re just like the ones at home anyway.

  Maybe they even are the ones at home. It’s not like you live far away.

  Yeah. I wonder how much territory they cover? No I don’t. That sounds far too much like a Trivial Pursuit question.

  Except, if it was a Trivial Pursuit question, I bet you’d know the answer.

  Thanks. Do you want to sit down for a while? I think Elvis could do with a break and the kicking going on in the pouch right now suggests some ground time could be popular.

  We sit under the tree. Elvis flops to the ground and pants. A lorikeet lands on a branch, and I manage not to wonder anything about it. I take the Bean from the pouch and she wriggles. Soon she’ll crawl. For now she flaps, rolls, stares at the nearest blades of grass, as though they need a lot of working out. Ash offers her a hand and she takes it, grabs hold of a finger and starts wrestling with its ring.

  Go on, Ash says. Bet you can’t get it off. And with her other hand she gives Lily’s fine sweaty hair a stroke. It’s weird sitting in the middle of all this, as though it’s not really happening. She looks around, her free hand still stroking. The big dresses and the old cars and guys in tails.

  Not like your last campus?

  I don’t think so. But I was doing tea tours on weekends, remember? It’s a bit surreal, watching it in triplicate. And how does it feel for them? You turn up, having your special day, and it turns out it’s special in the same way as everybody else’s.

  They’re probably not even noticing each other.

  And look at the drivers, having a smoke over there. One of them’s even eating a banana.

  It’s not supposed to be special for them. I don’t think he’s wrecking anyone’s day by eating a banana.

  No. Okay, I’ll let the banana go. It’s just the rest of it that’s strange then. Wearing clothes you’ll never wear again, spending all that money, standing up in front of people and declaring things. It’s like you’re giving a guarantee that you’ll never change your mind. Life’s already complicated enough without that. But it’s a nice idea, I suppose, in some ways. And maybe sometimes . . . sorry, I’m rambling. As if I’d know.

  No, I know what you mean. Sometimes I think people complicate things more than they should. It’s like, one of the people at work, Nigel, the nurse we’ve got, he’s got this life that seems to be exactly the way he wants it, and there’s no apparent relationship involved. He’s got his motor bike and his diving, and he goes to Asia pretty often. And it seems to work for him. I guess it’s an individual thing, though. Wendy, one of the other medical staff at work, seems really happy being married and having two children and barbecues and all that.

  I think there’s too much pressure to be in relationships sometimes. If you’re not going out with someone, people assume you want to be and that you’re probably depressed that you aren�
�t. And I don’t think that’s what life has to be about. It’s fine if it happens but, you know, I don’t think you should kill yourself trying to make it happen. The idea of having friends I completely understand – I hate it when I have to go a whole day without a conversation – but, like you said, people complicate things. They can’t help themselves.

  Yeah. I think my parents look at my friends and can’t believe how many of them are single. As though part of what we definitely should have been doing at uni was pairing off. No, that’s probably a bit harsh. I think they thought women should have been taking more interest in me, but that’s a different issue. And they probably figured that some time at uni, or not long after, we’d all be getting our shit together and embarking on the next phase. Little did they know. I think the next phase is career, marriage and children, but I don’t know a lot of people who have the set. But my parents are even pre-baby boomer, so they’ve got no chance of getting it, really. There have been far too many shifts of expectations since they met in the fifties.

  The sixties, for a start. The decade of baby-boomer glory.

  When the post-war kids invented the world but didn’t inhale? Yeah.

  I’m really not convinced that the sixties meant all they say it did.

  Absolutely. Highly overrated. Always thought that.

  So what were the sixties like?

  What were the sixties like? How would I know? I was born in the middle. For me the sixties were about teething and sphincter control. I don’t know what they were like. All I remember is the lunar landing. And one Beatles song. Other than that, I’ve probably seen the same footage as you have. So I’m not really personally any more familiar with most of the decade than I am with the Battle of Agincourt.

  So what was the Battle of Agincourt like?

  Well, a defining moment in archery if you were British, I suppose. And a really bad day at the office if you were French cavalry. But I was young then. There’s really not much of the thirteenth century I can remember.

  Obviously. Or the fifteenth.

  Yeah? It’s all a blur. You mean I lost a couple of hundred years, just like that? Anyway, I don’t think the sixties were properly invented till the eighties, when all those people started turning forty and needed to think they’d had some glory days. Changed the world. I plan to do the same about the eighties, of course. All I have to come up with is an event where a million people voluntarily wallowed in mud and a war that we stopped.

  How about the Cold War?

  Excellent. The job’s half done. And we were all there. That’s the thing. We were all there when the Berlin Wall came down. I know I was, and my grandchildren will, too.

  And where were you, really?

  At work, I suppose. No, probably in bed in a house in Toowong. And I saw it on the Today show when I was having breakfast. Then I went to work. And changed the world. That’s the order it happened in.

  Well, well done. I’m proud of you. I think I helped bring it down, too. Even though I was only about ten. I was very aware of the big issues at the time.

  You always struck me as socially responsible.

  So back then were you doing any of what you’re doing now?

  No. I didn’t even see a laser until a few years ago, in England. I think I’d just graduated around Berlin Wall time, so I was in a hospital.

  Does it feel strange to study so much for so long and then end up working in one small area that you didn’t even study in the first place?

  No. Not if you like what you’re doing, I suppose. And it’s not like you forget all the rest of it. You’d be surprised when it comes up. It’s a very useful degree.

  Yeah?

  Yeah.

  Okay. Tell me two useful things.

  Two useful things from my degree?

  Yeah.

  Okay. Let me show you something. This is number one.

  I move in front of her, and sit cross-legged the way she’s doing, with the Bean in my lap. I take Ash’s hand and make her index finger point and I guide it to just above my right eye, to the edge of the eye socket, where it starts to curve down to my nose.

  Feel here.

  Then I move it over to the other side.

  Then feel here.

  Hey.

  They’re different. There’s a notch on one side, but not on the other. I noticed that when I was young. Maybe even as early as the sixties. And I didn’t say anything about it to anyone. Because they hadn’t said anything to me. So I thought something was wrong, and they were keeping it from me. I thought something had happened and they weren’t telling me about it. And then I started reading the kind of story where the child – the main character – has a mark that means something. They’re a witch or an alien or there’s been some terrible incident that they’re repressing. You know the kind of thing?

  Yeah. Scary stuff.

  Exactly. And part of the problem was that I read a lot, so I was reading books for people who were much older. Anyway, the sign means that something’s going to happen. One night, someone’s going to come for you. Which didn’t make it easy for me to sleep. And a notch seemed definitely abnormal, plus it was only on one side. And if I pressed on it too hard, I’d get a flash of pain. Definite alien. I came to terms with it eventually, but I still kept it to myself. Then I did anatomy at uni. It’s normal variation. Totally normal. It’s where the supraorbital nerve goes through, and that’s why you get the pain with pressure. And it goes through either a notch or a foramen – a hole. And if you’ve got the foramen there’s no discontinuity at the orbital margin, the edge that you’re feeling. I’ve got a foramen on the right side, and a notch on the left. So there it was. When I was about eight it had been a big, secret part of my identity and ten years later, there I was, finding out it was just normal asymmetry. So my degree was useful.

  You poor thing, being so scared about it, she says. And I bet your friends at uni weren’t at all supportive.

  You think I told them? I’ve never told anyone about it in my life.

  Let me have another feel.

  I lean forward, and Ash does too. She puts her left hand on my shoulder.

  Don’t want to jab you in the eye, she says, and she puts her right index finger on my right eyebrow and moves it gently down. Then she does the same on the left. Concentrating, looking at me but looking deep to the skin, looking at the anatomy. Feeling the contours of the bone, smiling, thinking she might laugh with the strangeness of us doing this, concentrating again. Well, she says when she’s done both sides. There you go. I wonder what I’m like?

  She sits part of the way back, but only part of the way and, with her elbow on her shin, she puts her index finger up to her own right eye.

  And?

  Wait. I’ve got two sides to do. She checks the other side and says, Hey. She takes my right hand, makes its index finger point and says, Tell me what you think.

  She guides my finger up to her eye. I move in closer, put my left hand on the side of her head.

  Okay. On the right I think you’ve got . . . a notch. And on the left . . . a foramen.

  That’s what I thought. A mirror image of you.

  Yeah. I think our parents could still tell us apart, though.

  Very funny, she says. So what does it mean?

  Oh, lots of things. Both of us can expect a visit from aliens, probably.

  Oh no, she whispers. Not the anal probe.

  And my left hand has moved down to her shoulder, and we’re still close, closer than a social distance apart. And as I’m looking at her, strangely, as I’m watching her mouth say ‘anal probe’ so conspiratorially – as I’m watching her blue eyes watch me – I could kiss her. I could travel the last short distance between us and kiss her. It’s an urge that comes upon me, not from any place of reason, not a thing I can anticipate. But then all the reason comes in, comes back, battens the rush down and I’m in control.

  Anything but the anal probe, I say to her, and take my face back a little, and move my hand.


  I’m looking at her differently, and I shouldn’t. I still want to kiss her. I want to tell her about Mel, I want to pretend several years of my life never happened, I want to put it all in its place, but I don’t know what its place is. I want to shake all this out of my head. I want her to stop looking at me, or kiss me, or something.

  And Lily? she says. Where does she fit in with this?

  So I test the Bean’s eyes, and she treats it like a new game. Takes the approaching finger with both hands, as though she’s steering it down and it’s some lever, making her more and more cross-eyed as it approaches.

  Okay, I think foramen and on the other side . . . also foramen. Hard to tell, but that’s what I think. So that means we don’t have to have the talk that my parents – had they been half-reasonable – would have had with me, immediately before that age when you think asymmetry means you’ve either been abused or the anal probe is just a matter of time.

  It’s amazing. Really. It feels so obvious, when you feel it. It’s surprising what you don’t know, just because of skin.

  Most of the time it’s probably a good thing. Our bodies would look pretty bizarre without it. Without an opaque outer layer there’d be a lot of distraction. We’d be showing each other all kinds of things that are better left unseen. Facial muscles, laid bare, would look very mechanical. It’d take all the real, subtle purpose out of expression. There’d be no mystery.

  She laughs. And there’s just not enough mystery in the world, is there?

  No way. I think we spend far too much time trying to make things obvious, and not enough appreciating the chance to discover them slowly. Skin is good for that. It’s expressive, but it doesn’t give it all away. And it has many properties people take for granted. It can heal itself, and that’s not easy. Have you noticed how, most of the time when you injure skin and it has to grow to fill a defect, it not only knows that it has to grow, but it knows when to stop? So that’s why lasering it isn’t like stripping paint from a door. The skin is waiting. Waiting for an attack and ready to fix up the damage. So you use that when you’re working on it. You know how far you can go and keep the skin on your side. And if you don’t know that, you’ll damage it so that it’ll scar when it doesn’t need to, or scar more than it needs to. So there’s a second useful thing from all that time at uni. Now, how about you?