Australian Love Stories

by Cate Kennedy

  I wanted to puke. I was ready to turn on my heel and sprint straight back home, when a voice behind grabbed my attention.

  ‘Hi Chris. Never seen you at one of these before.’

  Mirabella De Luca was staring back at me, eyes rimmed with glitter tonight in honour of the occasion. She wasn’t even wearing her glasses. I could smell her sticky vanilla lip-gloss, shining on a mouth I nervously realised it would be nice, but terrifying, to kiss. Could people with braces even kiss?

  I nervously straightened my stupid, stiff collared shirt.

  When it became obvious I was incapable of making any kind of intelligible reply, she said, ‘okay…well…have fun!’ and skipped off to find her friends.

  I stood numbly trying to recover my shattered nerves. Someone poked me hard in the back.

  ‘Surprise, loser!’

  It was Ryan, of course.

  Ten minutes later we hovered uncomfortably on the edge of the dance floor, bopping about like morons. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a soppy song came on. The disco lights dimmed to blues and purples. The smoke machine sent clouds over the swaying sea of bodies.

  Ryan caught Stacey within two seconds. I watched as they danced awkwardly, Stacey keeping as much space as humanly possible between them. Ryan was working very hard to close the gap, but her arms were as rigid as Frankenstein’s monster and her face looked grim.

  I got a whiff of vanilla and a funny fluttery feeling in my stomach. Mirabella appeared on my left.

  ‘Don’t you want to ask someone to dance?’ she asked shyly.

  ‘Um…well…’ I stuttered.

  ‘Who’s your friend with? Oh…’ she spotted Stacey’s blonde hair and sickened expression. She giggled. ‘Wow. Didn’t expect that.’

  ‘Neither did Stacey, by the looks of it.’

  She laughed.

  I made her laugh!

  My heart was pounding so hard I thought she must be able to see something poking out of my shirt. Like one of those cartoon characters. Like Johnny Bravo, ‘YoulookreallyprettyMirabella!’ I burst.

  She looked at me, puzzled.

  ‘You look pretty,’ I tried again. Breathe, I instructed myself, just breathe.

  ‘Thanks Chris,’ she looked surprised. She tucked a stray curl behind her sparkly headband. ‘I think you’re the only one who thinks so, though. No one ever asks me to dance at these discos.’

  ‘They must be blind,’ I replied without thinking.

  Then I clamped my hand over my mouth in mortification. But Mirabella was only laughing again. I realised I hadn’t heard her laugh up close before. It was loud and squeaky.

  ‘You’re a bit strange, Chris, aren’t you? But you’re nice.’

  I wanted to ask her to dance then. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to ask her to dance!

  I didn’t.

  Vanilla Coke vs Pepsi Blue

  2003 was the year Mum freaked out because the anchor man on Channel 9 kept up a constant stream of paranoia about the SARS virus. On a positive note however, on March 27, Mars made its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years. That was pretty cool to watch through Dad’s telescope.

  And Mirabella De Luca officially became my friend.

  As we left primary school behind, the labels of ‘cool’ and ‘uncool’ became blurred for a precious time, while people adjusted to the chaos of secondary education. When the dust finally settled, Ryan and I found ourselves somewhere in the middle. Not popular. Not geeks. Flexible.

  Mirabella would come over sometimes after school on the nights when Ryan was at rugby practice. We took my old dog, Milo, for walks in the park, and listened to music together. And then came home to drink big cups of actual Milo, with more chocolate powder than milk.

  Unlike Ryan, Mirabella was into bands you couldn’t hear on 92.9 or Nova 93.7. She listened to Triple J. She played the drums.

  ‘Pretty cool for a girl,’ Ryan admitted grudgingly when I told him. ‘But she’s still ugly.’

  She started to want to be called Miri.

  When my parents went on our annual family trip to Rottnest for the March long weekend in year ten, I opted out to stay home.

  ‘But Chris!’ Mum begged, ‘you always love staying on the island! We’ll rent bikes and go snorkelling and see the quokkas.’

  ‘I know Mum,’ I grumbled. ‘I’ve done it all before. I’m fifteen, for Gods sake. I’m old enough to take care of myself for one weekend! Just take Jamie.’

  And so my parents left, reluctantly, with my little brother.

  Secretly, Ryan and I had a very good reason for missing the trip. Our ticket to go from semi popular to mega popular, he winked, posting my address and the words ‘house party’ online. He began to type Saturday but I protested immediately.

  ‘No way! Friday is better. More time to clean up.’

  ‘And that is why you’re still single,’ he rolled his eyes. ‘You sound like my mum.’

  Throwing a house party didn’t make us more popular, as it turned out.

  Cops turned up and evicted everyone. My family came home early from Rottnest. I got grounded for the rest of my high school life.

  But there was still one moment that, in my mind, made it worth it. Made it worth sitting in my room, staring out my window at teenagers free to enjoy their weekends smoking joints and falling off skateboards on the street in front of me.

  Ryan reluctantly consented to give Miri an invite. But his jaw dropped when she arrived.

  ‘She doesn’t look half so goofy now she’s lost the braces and the specs,’ he grunted. ‘Nice tits too.’

  ‘Shut up about her tits!’ I snapped.

  ‘Oooh touchy, touchy. I wouldn’t mind a touchy, touchy actually…’

  I hovered around the perimeter of the dance floor and hoped that no one was being sick on my mum’s carpet, or having sex on her bed. I saw Miri with three friends. She had rimmed her eyes with dark liner. It made her look older.

  ‘Cool party Chris!’ she called.

  I watched her dance, her hips swaying loosely to the music, her body curving and twirling. She caught me staring and I hurried away. I was in the kitchen making myself a drink when she slipped out to talk to me.

  ‘Water?’ she queried, raising a dark eyebrow in amusement.

  ‘I’m hot,’ I said dumbly.

  ‘Yeh, you are!’’ she winked. ‘Hey, come on. Let’s go up to your room for a bit. Get away from this craziness. And bring something more exciting than H2O!’

  I grabbed a nasty goon bag; the cheapest and most disgusting wine known to man. Miri led the way up the stairs, and I watched her miniskirt twisting. I couldn’t help it.

  She opened my bedroom door and jumped onto my bed, springing around like a little kid on a trampoline, giggling hysterically. I didn’t know what to do, whether to join her. So I set about pouring us some goon.

  ‘Put that CD on, Chris. The one I made you last weekend,’ she instructed.

  I did as I was told.

  ‘Well…come sit down and have your drink,’ she patted a spot next to her.

  I did as I was told again.

  ‘This stuff tastes horrible,’ I choked.

  ‘I know. But I need liquid courage tonight.’

  ‘Why Miri?’

  ‘You know why,’ she said, reaching out and taking my hand. Hers felt small and delicate and soft. I froze.

  ‘Oh sorry!’ she turned scarlet. ‘I thought…don’t you want me to?’

  Slowly, I nodded.

  She smiled that beautiful, disarming, one of a kind Mirabella De Luca smile. And I did what I’d been wanting to do all along, and swooped in and kissed her. Gently at first, the softest butterfly of a kiss. My whole body was tingling as she slipped her tongue into my mouth. I ran a hand through her hair. Kissing Mirabella De Luca…turned out to be heaven.

  There came a sound of a disturbance downstairs and muffled footsteps on the landing…then…

  ‘Christine Murray!’ someone screamed hysterically.
‘What on Earth?…stop that. This party is over!’

  My aunty looked angrier than I’d ever seen her.

  ‘You girl, go home!’ she yelled at a petrified looking Miri. ‘Get out of this house!’

  She paused for a moment to regain her breath. Meanwhile, I desperately tried to figure out how she had even got there. She lived a whole two houses down. Was the party really that loud?

  Aunty Janet let loose at Miri again, this time with twice as much gusto.

  ‘And don’t you dare come back! Dyke! Queer!’

  ‘So what happened?’ Ryan asked me at the back of the oval next Monday. I was now only allowed out of the house for school.

  ‘Aunty Janet walked in on us.’

  Ryan tried to maintain a sympathetic face, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘Ba ha ha…’ He rolled around getting covered in grass and prickles for a good ten minutes.

  ‘You know when we were little—I thought you were joking about wanting to date Mirabella De Luca. Because she was a four eyed, train-track wearing nerd. But you weren’t, were you? Who else have you had you eye on? Better not have been of my ex-girlfriends!’

  ‘As if!’ I scoffed. ‘You’ve got terrible taste!’

  Playing ‘Snake’ on Your Mobile is Actually a Valid Hobby

  In 2005 YouTube was launched. Sadly, it was also the year of the London Tube bombings, killing fifty-two and injuring seven hundred. And launching a whole new wave of ‘terrorism’ lectures at our school.

  My favourite song was ‘Hollaback Girl’ by Gwen Stefani.

  I never went to my year twelve ball. For one, I was still grounded. For another, Ryan and I both decided that if it was anywhere as lame as the year eleven river cruise, we could live without it. Besides, we didn’t have dates.

  Miri did.

  With her boyfriend of nine months, Samuel. Their photo made it into the newspaper. Of course it did.

  The best thing about sixteen-year-old Mirabelle De Luca was maybe her perfect orthodontic smile.

  I tried to remain positive.

  ‘I ain’t no hollaback girl, Miri!’ I shouted at the clipping.

  But who was I kidding? There weren’t nobody hollering at me.

  L-Plates, Logbooks and 100 hrs

  I already told you that 2006 was the hottest New Years Day on record in Sydney. But I forgot to mention that my favourite song was ‘Sexy Back’ by Justin Timberlake.

  It was blasting from the Student Guild as I got that tingling feeling of excitement, thinking about what it was going to be like attending university here…

  I finally quit my nervous nail biting and followed Ryan.

  ‘Dude! You’re not still staring a Miri are you?’ he shook his head in disbelief as we made our way out of the hall, having completed enrolment.

  The sun was setting, sending a brilliant blanket of pink and orange across the tops of the various tents of university clubs. There was one I still hadn’t had the courage to go up to yet. The brightest tent of all.

  ‘No. I’m bringing sexy back,’ I shrugged, turning to leave.

  ‘Oh for fuck sake, I’ll walk over and sign up with you. What are you so embarrassed about?’ he snapped.

  ‘No!’

  He started jogging towards the bright tent.

  I sprinted after him, yanked desperately at his shirt.

  ‘Let me do it Ryan. Please!’ I pleaded.

  He gave me an impatient shove forward. I made my way hesitantly toward the rainbow flag. Keeping my head down, frantically avoiding eye contact. Not that there’d likely be anyone I knew in this booth.

  ‘Hi,’ smiled a guy in a Billabong t-shirt. ‘I’m Matt. Are you new?’

  ‘Yes,’ I gulped.

  ‘Add your name to the email list. We send out a weekly schedule of events in the Queer Department,’ grinned a girl wearing Aviator sunnies.

  ‘Thanks,’ I flustered, so nervous my sweaty hands immediately dropped the pen.

  Someone picked it up.

  ‘Ryan… I told you not to come with me…’

  ‘Hi Chris. I’ve never seen you at one of these before.’

  I caught a whiff of vanilla.

  Miri was standing inside the rainbow tent. Sunglasses holding back her curls. Contacts violet today.

  ‘Wha…what are you doing in here?’ I stammered.

  She signed my name first. Then hers. Then she smiled at the image of them, there in the dying sun: together on the page.

  Mother Love

  CATHERINE COLE

  His best friend, Amy, told him he represented her mother.

  He said, ‘But I’m a man.’

  Amy replied, ‘It doesn’t matter, Jason. Its symbolic.’ She paused to look at some handbags in the window of Scally and Trombone. ‘A mother can be any gender.’

  They went into the new café on the corner of Johnston and Brunswick Streets and sat by the window. A waiter came over. Cute. He had a nice, tight little arse. Normally Jason would have said something about him to Amy but after the mother stuff he thought, fuck you, I’m keeping my erotic fantasies to myself.

  Amy stirred her coffee and raised it to her mouth. She sighed and said. ‘I’m sorry, Jason, I can’t be friends with you any more. I have to break free from all the mother figures in my life.’

  Outside a tram clattered along Brunswick Street. The shock of Amy’s announcement had caused Jason’s mouth to open. I must look like a goldfish, he thought, my mouth a perfect O. Then he decided she had to be joking. That was it, she was mucking around.

  ‘OK’, he said. ‘As long as I’m a glamorous Mommie Dearest like Joan Collins, or was it Joan Crawford?’

  Amy’s face was stern as she put her coffee down. ‘I’m not joking, Jason. I have to get away from friends who represent the negative aspects of my life, namely my mother.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Amy answered slowly, enunciating each word as though he was some low intelligence kid. ‘My psychiatrist…says…I have… to reject…those people in my life…who represent…my mother. I’m sorry, Jason, but she says you’re one of them.’

  ‘How does she know? She’s never met me.’

  Amy had the grace to look guilty. ‘I tell her about you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I talk about everyone.’

  ‘Your real mother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But what have you said to the doctor about me? How can she know what I’m like if she’s never met me?’

  Amy shrugged and signalled to the waiter to bring over two more coffees. ‘I tell her about all my friends.’ She spread her arms wide to take in their table, the café, Fitzroy, the Saturday crowds of shoppers outside. ‘About all this.’

  ‘Your sex life?’

  ‘Yes. And yours.’ She gave one of her grim little smiles.

  Jason sighed. Amy’s sex life was hell. It always had been, but his, well, his was pretty good. Only last week he’d finally summoned the courage to go out into the alley with Peter, a man he always danced with at the club. They’d gone to the wall where the Banksy was supposed to have been painted—a mouse running up a drainpipe—not that he and Peter were thinking about that at the time. Pete had long eyelashes and a mouth that tasted of wine and a hard, flat, six-pack stomach, and a cock just as hard. The remembered pleasure slid down Jason’s spine like something molten, something rich and gooey.

  Amy was looking around the café as though she was hoping to pick up someone too. She’d been online dating for the past few years. She got upset when the dates never went past the first night. Jason had given her his views on that. It was a mistake to always sleep with the guy on the first night. He said, ‘There’s no seduction in that, no tease. String them along a bit. Do the romantic thing with dinners and flowers and getting to know all about them before you fuck them.’

  Amy was not convinced. ‘I thought gay men were supposed to just jump into bed with anyone. I thought you liked to just go for it.’

  Go for i
t? he’d thought at the time. If only you knew.

  As the coffee machine huffed and puffed he remembered the alley again. His spine tingled. He was getting hard. He and Pete had sashayed around one another at the bar for weeks before getting hot on the dance floor, weaving and flirting and brushing their bodies against one another. They were like a matador and a bull, fencers keen on penetration, steeplejacks climbing a bloody tall steeple. Metaphors failed him. Peter liked dry white wine. He sometimes ate the complimentary peanuts as he waited at the bar. He smelled of aftershave—Jason had never been able to work out which one—a musky smell, pampered and confident. Then came the more intimate touching, the words of seduction shouted over the music, the drinks taken back to the club’s leather armchairs, the alley outside and Peter’s urgent kisses.

  Jason looked around the cafe too. He knew most of the people. Heidi from the bookshop had popped in for a takeaway coffee. A young family he recognised from his block of flats was ordering babyccinos for their kids. The two gay men from the homewares shop were over by the door. He’d been clocking their relationship for the past six weeks. How long had they been a couple? He’d fancied the muscular one since he’d first seen him dressing the shop window.

  Amy made a funny little noise in her throat. She could have been choking or perhaps he just wished she was. ‘Jason, I don’t mean to be cruel. I just can’t see you any more.’

  He heard the panic in his voice as he spoke. ‘But we’ve been friends since I arrived in Melbourne.’

  She was already rifling round her bag for her purse. ‘I’ll pay for these.’

  So determined was her tone he let her be. He let her pull her coat off the back of her chair without helping her put it on. Let her walk out the door and turn toward Collingwood. What else can you do when someone says you represent their mother? He stared into the café’s mirrored wall and deep into his eyes. No mother looked back though he could see the family resemblance, his own mother’s dark hair, her olive skin, her propensity for laughter lines around the eyes. He thought about all the vile mothers he could muster. Joan Crawford, certainly. She at least had glamour. Judy Garland. Too tragic. Margaret Thatcher’s nasty politics seemed to de-sex her. He certainly couldn’t imagine her enjoying moments of maternal tenderness. The mother in Psycho? He shivered. If he rang Amy later would she tell him when this metamorphosis happened? Was it after they went up to Sydney for the Mardi Gras and he put on red lipstick and a red wig? She’d told him her mother was a redhead when she was young. Was it when they were on South Melbourne beach and he’d lectured her about freckles and the dangers of melanoma? Drinking cocktails together at the Double Happiness Bar in Chinatown? Was it when he said he was falling in love with Peter? He’d told her everything about his sex life until then. The long, slow penetrating sex with a former boyfriend, Dave, the soapy showers afterwards, one when Dave pushed him against the tiles and knelt down in front of him and let his lips graze Jason’s inner thighs as the water played gently on them and Dave worked his way slowly, determinedly, up and up. He hadn’t told her about Pete though. Their love was different. There was something fragile and melting in it. The wrong move and it might all disappear.