Alex Jackson: Closing Out

by University of Queensland Press

  “But I’m here, ultimately, to give you a message of hope. After that day I made a lot of changes to my life. I started going back to church and listening to Jesus’ message, which is to love and respect yourself. Every human life is a gift from God and I realised that I got into trouble because I didn’t love myself and I didn’t think anyone else could love me. Not unless I did something for them, like had sex with them, did I think I deserved to be loved. So I’m here to ask you to love yourself and realise there is a God who loves you, not because you’re smart or pretty, but because you’re you. You’re special.”

  Jimmy patted Alex’s arm. “You’re special, Jackson.”

  Vanessa held up a poster. “I belong to a group called Real Love Waits or RLW I’ll invite you to sign a pledge card as a symbol that you love yourself and understand that God loves you. And if that’s the case, you’ll wait until you’re one before God, a married couple, before you have sex.”

  Hands were up. “Are you married now?” asked Emma Barney.

  “Yes. I’ve found a beautiful Christian man and we love each other very much.”

  “Because you have an STD can you still have sex?” asked Zane Beard.

  “Zane!” said Miss Phillips.

  “That’s okay,” said Vanessa. “I make love to my husband all the time, and sometimes it is so wonderful I cry afterwards. But because I have an STD there’s times when we can’t do it and I also have to take medication.”

  “Cool,” said Zane.

  At first no one moved.

  “You signing it, Jackson?” said Jimmy. “Or is it too late after last night?”

  Claire had her hand up. Alex noticed that her eyes were red. “What if you’re not a virgin. Can you still sign it?”

  “Yes, you can. God will always hold out a hand of forgiveness, just like He’s done for me. It does mean you promise you won’t have sex again until you are married.”

  “A born-again virgin,” said Jimmy.

  No one could believe it when Claire actually got up. After she signed the paper she burst out crying and Vanessa and a bunch of girls hurried over to comfort her. Alex wished a hole would appear so he could jump into it.

  After that a few kids shuffled up to sign RLW, not all of them fair dinkum. Billy Johnstone signed it with a silly grin on his face, and Adrian Dorry signed it just to see what Billy had written. He whispered it to Alex and Jimmy on his way back. “Phil McCraken.”

  Alex didn’t sign it. He respected where Vanessa was coming from, but he didn’t want to make a promise he couldn’t keep. He might not get married till he was 30, and that was a long time without sex. Most of all, he didn’t want to lie to himself anymore.

  CHAPTER 21

  No Picnic at the Park

  There was no time to feel sorry for himself. The skate comp at Alexandra Headlands was on the weekend, and Alex had to be at Beeton skatepark on Friday afternoon to catch a lift with Casey and Steve.

  “I see your dirty clothes more than you these days,” complained Sharon, as Alex dumped a load from retreat into the washing basket.

  He threw his skating gear in the Corona.

  “Do you believe in God?” Alex asked his mum on the way to the skatepark.

  She gave a surprised look. “Yes,” she said, “although I don’t think God is like Santa Claus, giving out miracles to everyone who asks nicely.”

  “Then what does He do?”

  “Hopefully, He is everywhere. Like a force that leads us in the right direction. If we find God we can find our reason for living.”

  Alex couldn’t figure out what she meant but they were already there.

  “How was the retreat?” she asked as he got out. “Relaxing?”

  “Not exactly,” said Alex.

  After dumping his bag in Casey’s car, Alex jumped on his deck. He hadn’t skated for days and it took time to get back the feel. Casey was as smooth as ever but Steve wasn’t landing squat. His body hit the concrete ollieing over the funbox and he screamed into his hands.

  “What’s the story?” Alex asked Casey.

  Casey shrugged. “Ever since that girl came, he’s given up.”

  A police car screeched around the corner and Constable Massingham jumped out. He called out to Steve, who immediately skated off in the opposite direction. Casey hesitated then jumped on his board and chased him. Steve was quick but Casey’s right leg was a tree trunk, pushing him along like a speed skater. Casey grabbed Steve’s shirt and his board went careering over a gutter. Steve tried to run away but Casey held on. For a second it looked like Steve was going to fight. There was rage in his eyes and he cocked back his arm.

  “You want to hit me?” said Casey. “Go ahead.”

  Steve took a big swing and Casey didn’t blink, let alone move. Steve’s fist started straight then arced in a semi-circle. He connected hard on the left cheek. His own left cheek.

  “What’s this about?” Casey asked Constable Massingham as they walked back to the car.

  “I got a call from the skateshop,” said the policeman. “Steve stole a heap of gear while he was working. We found it at his place.”

  “Why’d you do it?” Casey asked Steve.

  Steve was looking down. An egg was forming under his left eye.

  “I asked you a question, Steve. I reckon I deserve an answer,” said Casey.

  Still nothing.

  “Your brother would’ve answered me. At least he had some guts.”

  “Whadda you care?” Steve yelled. “You’re nothing like my brother. You’re just ... one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  But he didn’t say anymore.

  On the way up the coast Casey didn’t talk much. The music was cranked up, and when the Gemini got over 100 the rattles were almost as loud. But when he changed CDs, from Pennywise to Green Day, he looked over at Alex.

  “You know it’s harder to land a 900 than it is for someone to change. And I don’t mean go from one brand of shoe to another. I mean really change.”

  “You did it,” said Alex. He was talking about Casey changing from a rebellious teen to a philosophy-reading pro boarder, not about landing a 900. Only one or two blokes in the world could do that.

  Casey shook his head. “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was already like I am now, I just had to realise it.”

  The music started and the talking stopped.

  CHAPTER 22

  Practice Makes Imperfect

  Alex was happy to catch up with the Zen team that night. They greeted him like a little brother, punching his arm so it went dead. Possum was the only one not around.

  “He’ll be here,” said Mike, “when the pubs close.”

  Saturday was practice day. Alex was entered in the under-16s, and looking at the competition he should’ve been confident of doing well. He should’ve been, but he wasn’t, because he couldn’t land jack.

  His mind was a blur of skinny-dipping and orange juice and Becky saying, “Just leave”. He would’ve liked to talk to Casey but Casey had problems of his own.

  To make things worse, halfway through the practice session Alex recognised a face in the crowd, watching him. He didn’t look again but every time he missed a trick he imagined her laughing at him.

  When practice was over he went looking for her. She found him first.

  “Alex!” Jade called out from behind a throng of people.

  The pros were up next and the place was packed.

  “Can we talk?” she said.

  They went and sat at a picnic table overlooking the beach.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Good,” he said. Could be better, he thought.

  She played with her hair. A long, hot summer saw it blonder than when he was last here, and her skin was brown and clear from the surf.

  “I just wanted to say sorry for the way I acted last time,” she said softly. “I should have given you a chance to explain. We had a nice day and I suppose ... I was mad when you didn’t call.”

&
nbsp; She waited for him to say something. He looked out to sea. The waves were crashing hard into the sand.

  “Why do they do that?” Alex asked Jade. She was a surfer after all.

  “What?”

  “The waves, why are they breaking so suddenly?”

  She had a look. “It’s going from deep to shallow water real quick. It’s called closing out. Bad for surfers. You get caught under a wave like that and it pins you down.”

  That was how he felt this year. One minute he was a kid, happy to play in the shallow water, the next everyone’s telling him to go to where it’s deep. But he can’t make it, he’s stuck in between and keeps getting pulled under. “How do you get out?” he said. “When you’re under a wave like that?”

  “You take a deep breath and wait. At first you think it’ll never let you up. It keeps rolling you around and around like a washing machine. But it always does. You just have to wait.”

  The waves were huge. A surfer tried to stand up but fell headfirst down the face and disappeared.

  “I didn’t call because I had a girlfriend,” said Alex. “I was going to but I didn’t want to have to lie to her if something happened between us. I know it sounds cocky but ...”

  “You never know,” she said. “I can live with that.” She smiled at him, her teeth bright against her brown face. “Now I really wish you’d called, if you were single, I mean. You sound like one of the few nice guys around.”

  “Nah, I’m not. Things have stuffed up a fair bit since then.”

  “Do you still have a girlfriend?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  He thought about it. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “What, love? You serious?”

  “Yeah. I want to know. I hear people talk about it but I don’t know if I feel it or not.”

  “You don’t feel it, you sort of ... find it.”

  “Then I guess I’m still looking.”

  They went back to watch the end of the pros practice session. There was some scary boarding going on. Davo and Casey were on the vert outdoing each other every run. Meat was carving out noseblunts on the half-pipe, and a local, Adam Shuttlewood, was trying to break the law of gravity with melon grabs over the hip.

  The only boarder who wasn’t putting on a good show was Possum. He looked wasted and was jeered by a local when he missed his signature 360 flip. Possum turned to the crowd for a good 30 seconds, his middle finger extended. More people started jeering.

  Alex saw Jonesy go to him but Possum waved him away. He was trash-talking a local, who jumped over the barrier ready for some action. Suddenly they started throwing haymakers at each other. Jonesy and Meat jumped in and pulled Possum away.

  Alex went to find out what was going on.

  “Possum’s bloody drunk again,” said Mike. “He’s not going to be in the team much longer at this rate.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” said Alex.

  “His missus left him. Won’t let him see her or the kid.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently some girl from Rockhampton read an article about Possum in a magazine. She saw he had a girlfriend and a kid and she sent his missus a picture, and some intimate details about Possum’s scar.”

  Bloody Zoe, thought Alex.

  “Since then all he’s done is get drunk. We thought he’d snap out of it but ... he’s screwed,” said Mike.

  Alex looked over at Possum. He had pushed Meat and Jonesy away and was skating away down a bike path. He was going in the direction of the Point, which had a spectacular view of the ocean. But before he got there he’d have to travel up a long, steep hill. If you were a betting man, you wouldn’t back him to make it. Not in the state he was in.

  CHAPTER 23

  Comp

  Alex woke up early, his stomach spinning. He had been in competitions before and they weren’t the ‘be all and end all’ in the skate scene. Usually the best skating was over by the time the competition started. Without the pressure and the time restrictions, the practice day was often the place to be. But it was always nice to pull off a win.

  Last night he’d talked to Casey, their first in a while. Alex told him about the picture he took of Zoe and Possum that was sent to Possum’s girlfriend.

  “It was bound to happen. If it wasn’t her, it would have been another one of the many.”

  “Possum’s taking it pretty hard.”

  “For the first time in his life he’s paying a price. But like most blokes, he probably won’t learn, just feel sorry for himself.”

  “Did you ever talk to him about cheating?”

  “I warned him, but we all did. He’s a good bloke but I don’t think he knows the first thing about women.”

  “He’s had sex with a lot of them.”

  “There’s a big difference between sex and love. Possum knows a lot about sex, not much about love.”

  “What do you reckon love is?” asked Alex for the second time that day.

  Casey thought for a bit. “When you really know yourself and another person so well that part of you blends together, that’s love. You know what she wants without her even telling you.”

  “I never know what a girl wants,” said Alex. “No wonder I’ve never been in love.”

  “You’ll get there,” said Casey.

  Alex mentioned his problems with Becky.

  “She called me the other night,” Casey said, “to find out how you were.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She’s sad. I think she was hoping you’d ring or email by now. You know it’s not easy for her — a dad just out of prison. She’s not sure about a lot of things in her life at the moment.”

  She seemed pretty sure when she asked me to leave. “Did she say why we broke up?”

  Casey looked surprised. “She didn’t say you’d broken up. Just that you were taking a break.”

  “A break, break up, what’s the difference?” said Alex.

  “That’s up to you. To me there’s all the difference in the world.”

  The competition consisted of two 60-second runs. The judges looked for things like creativity and technical skill, and the higher scoring run would count.

  Lots of the under-16s were more concerned with pulling off the best trick rather than putting together a solid score, so for many it was a crash and burn affair. Casey told Alex to be conservative in his first run, and he took his advice, not landing anything big but pulling off a number of solid moves that impressed the judges.

  A local talent, Liam Corkill, hit a few sweet hardflips down the drop, and was tied with Alex for the lead after the first round.

  The second round was the time to let it all hang out. Alex saw Jade give him a smile as he waited his turn, and it felt good that he had made things right with at least one girl.

  Liam was up first. A huge cheer by the local crowd meant that it was hard for the judges not to like him. A pop-shoveit over the funbox that was nothing less than huge made it even harder. He followed that up with a noseslide to 270 shove-it out off a traffic barrier. Alex would have to do something special to pull out the V.

  A boardslide down the rail got him off to a good start. The crowd clapped politely, even if they were hoping for a local win. Alex kickflipped to nose manual on one of the banks, and held it till he nollied back in down the slope. Towards the end of his run, though, he knew he needed something big. He decided to 360 flip the pyramid. He’d never landed one before, but now was as good a time as any. He tried to imagine he was Possum. Well, a sober Possum.

  Getting his feet set, he waited till he was at the top of the pyramid then let it rip. He flicked his back foot to get the board turning 360 while his front foot did a casual kicky. He splayed his legs as high as possible and felt the board slap against his feet. It was truth and beauty and love all rolled into one and he hit the ground rolling. He heard a gasp from the crowd and then truth and beauty and love slipped away. He didn’t adjust f
or landing on a down slope, and his body hit the ground, rolling.

  “No shame in second,” said Casey, who also lost to Davo by a whisker in the vert competition.

  “Can’t win ’em all, mate,” said Meat, who’d won nearly all the money on offer when he came first in the pro street section. Only Adam Shuttlewood had snaked him for best trick.

  “It’d be nice to win some,” said Alex.

  He collected his $50 shoe voucher for runner-up (which wouldn’t even buy one skate shoe but was better than nothing) and said goodbye to the Zen team. Possum was nowhere to be seen.

  He also said goodbye to Jade. “You can tell your friends you know the first loser,” said Alex.

  “I don’t see a loser around here,” she said. “I see a guy who went for it and almost pulled it off. And knowing him, it won’t be long before he does.”

  She gave him a hug. “Next time you come up we’ll go surfing. Hopefully, the waves won’t be closing out then.”

  Hopefully.

  CHAPTER 24

  Paying the Price

  Back at school Alex found out that he was as popular with the boys as he was unpopular with the girls. Everybody thought he had ‘‘done it’’.

  “Welcome to the club, grommet,” said Billy Johnstone. “Don’t worry about Carney, she gets a bit psycho. If you ever wanna get back with her you can. I should know, we’ve been out thirteen times.”

  “What was it like?” asked Peter Callaghan. “Was it hard to find the hole or did it slip right in?”

  “I’m sure it’s a lot harder than finding the hole in your brain, Callaghan,” said Jimmy.

  A group of girls marched up to Alex like he was Hitler. “How could you use Claire like that?” said Emma Barney. “We all thought you were nice.”

  “Yeah!” said the twins, Kirsten and Kerra Med-hurst. Nicole Casella and Megan Bell nodded in agreement.

  Sarah Sceney was with them but didn’t say anything. It looked like she was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Give him a break,” said Jimmy. “You girls don’t know anything.”

  “We have our suspicions,” said Sarah. “And if we’re right, it’s something you won’t be doing for a long time, Jimmy.”