by Anita Heiss
'You didn't tell me he was Japanese. That's interesting, I mean him being in the force. I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese cop in Australia. Or should I say someone with Japanese heritage, in case they identify as Australian? Gees, all this political correctness stuff gets a bit boring, doesn't it.'
'STOP! You're raving. He's not Japanese. He was just in my dream, and I was in Japan. It freaked me out a little. We were in one of those famous hotels you rent by the hour, specifically for sex.'
'What? Were you a prostitute in this dream?'
'God, you make it hard sometimes, Josie. Never mind. So, back to James. It will be nice to see him. I do miss him, at times.'
'Not constantly?'
'No, not constantly, I'd never get any work done if I was missing him constantly. Does anyone miss anyone constantly? I mean, except when you're a teenager?'
'I've missed girlfriends pretty desperately in the past – mind you, we usually moved in together on the second date.'
'Yes, but desperately and constantly are two different things.'
'You're right, I guess. You can miss someone to the point of almost stalking them but still get your work done . . . in the other two hours of the day.' Josie laughed.
'Back to me, all right? As I was saying, I haven't missed James constantly because I've been flat out since I got here. I haven't had the time to miss him. And I'm still learning the ropes at work. The twelve months will be up before I know it, and I won't even have started the job properly – I'll have to stay longer. But there's no way he'll cope with that.
'Maybe I'll just become a lesbian, it seems like it's easier than being with men.' Then I looked around the bar. 'Actually you know what, I don't think I like this place. I've just realised we've been here two hours and no-one's made a pass at me. I must say I'm a little disappointed that no-one here finds me attractive.'
'They all think you're with me, that's why.' Josie winked.
'What? So now you're cramping my lesbian style.'
'Sorry to burst your bubble, love, but you are soooo hetero, there's no dyke style going on with you at all.'
'Orright then, I think we've exhausted that conversation, let's take my hetero style and get some food. What do you want to eat?'
twenty
The first serious argument
On Saturday morning I took Shelley's car out to Tullamarine to meet James. He was already tired when he arrived because of the four-thirty start he'd had to get an early flight. He could only stay for one night.
James put his hand on my thigh as we pulled out of the airport car park and a rush of hormones flooded my body, blurring my vision. 'There's no more jewellery, is there?' I said to him. 'Cos Shelley's away for the weekend and she can't rescue us.' He cringed and laughed at the same time and I pushed down on the accelerator, aiming to get us back to St Kilda as soon as possible.
We spent the morning in bed – it was the natural way for us to catch up. It was how we always caught up. When things were tense between us, everything was always better after a good night's sleep or a good shag, or both.
We went to Circa at the Prince for lunch. The decor was crisp white, with kangaroo paw in pink glass vases, silver-grey chiffon curtains and wicker lights throughout.
'So, babe, I've been wondering if . . .' and he paused. Oh God, he was going to propose.
'Wondering what?' I didn't feel ready to deal with this.
'Wondering if you wanted to see other people while we're apart?'
'What? No. Why? Do you?' I was confused: this certainly wasn't the proposal I was expecting. I was relieved, but also, I realised, disappointed.
'No I don't, but someone suggested to me that I should give you some freedom.'
'I don't need freedom; I need support for my career. Why don't you listen to me and not to someone – whoever someone is.' I was really taken aback. Had James actually met someone else back in Sydney? Was it guilt that led to his last-minute trip to Melbourne?
If James was anything, he was an honest, straight-up kind of guy, and would tell me the truth if there was someone else – but I wasn't sure if I wanted to ask.
'There's no-one else, in case that's what you're thinking,' he said, as if he was reading my mind. He reached out and held my hand.
After a moment's silence, he grinned at me. 'You won't believe this. I've started surfing,' he announced.
'Really?' I was surprised. While James loved going to the beach with me, I'd never even known him to bodysurf.
'Yes. I thought it'd be good to surf when I finally move in with you beachside. Had a bad experience already though – I nearly drowned.'
'What? Why didn't you tell me? When?'
'Two weeks ago. I had a lesson on Saturday down Maroubra beach, and I surprised myself. I managed to stand up within the first half an hour. I think doing gymnastics as a kid gave me a good sense of balance.' I'd seen photos of James in his gym gear as a child and he was so cute on the balance beam – I remember falling in love with him even more at that moment.
'I was so chuffed with myself, knowing that surfing is a really hard sport to master and that I seemed to have a bit of a gift, so straight after the class I went and bought myself a board and went for a surf the next morning.' Oh God, I could just see my little 'chuffed' gymnast out there with the Bra Boys and I started to panic.
'And?' I was impatient, wanting to know about the 'nearly drowning' business.
'Well, I paddled out, feeling really confident, and rode a couple of waves in – shaky, but I did it. I was good at it, really.' As if he were trying to convince me. 'But then I attempted a really big wave, and I ended up getting wiped out and thought I'd broken my neck. I got swished around beneath the sea for what seemed like ages. I truly thought I was going to drown and all I could think was that I'd never see you again.'
'Oh baby, how did you get out?' I gripped his hand tightly, feeling guilty about not being there for him on the day.
'Lifesaver by the name of Mark came out on the jet ski and towed me back. I was so embarrassed. I was out of breath, out of pride and out $500 for the board.'
'No, the board's not a waste – you should keep trying, it sounds like you have a gift, and it was only your second day.'
'I don't know, it was really a terrifying experience.' James looked at our joined hands intently, as if he was somewhere else, as if back under the sea.
'I'm so sorry, I wish I'd been there for you.' I put my hand on his.
'So do I. I really missed you that night, I needed some of Peta's TLC.'
'Let's go back to Eildon Road and I'll give you all the TLC you can handle.'
♥
We went for dinner at a new place on Fitzroy Street, so uneventful I couldn't even remember the name of it the next day. I ordered basic pasta.
'This food is fucken awful,' I said, spitting into my serviette.
'You know, I've never said anything to you before, but boy you swear a lot – I mean, for a princess.'
'Well, as Alice would say, the colonisers gave us a whole new vocab, which I might point out also contained profanities. So as far as I'm concerned, along with small pox, bad language is just another colonial intrusion.' I pushed the plate of tasteless pasta aside and just stared at him.
'I know colonisation has a lot to do with where your people are today, Peta, but you swearing is your own doing.'
'Oh, this is a first, you talking to me about where my people are at thanks to colonisation! If you know so much, what are you doing to make some social change for us, then? I mean, aside from dating a Blackfella?'
'What would you like me to do, Peta? What can I do? To make change?'
'James, why don't you ask yourself that question?'
'Because I'm asking you.'
'I'm tired of being asked questions like that. I'm not at work now, and you're not one of my clients. Do you know how many times a day I'm interrogated by whitefellas wanting me to have all the answers for them? Why do Aboriginal people have to have all th
e answers and do all the work? I don't want to have a cultural awareness session over dinner with the man who is supposed to be my partner! I don't want you asking me what you should be doing to help.'
'But you always tell me you know what's best for you.'
'Exactly! I know what's best for me, Peta. I don't have all the answers all the time for the 400,000 other Blackfellas living right across the continent.'
'But you have a sense of responsibility to your people. I see it in your work. That's why you moved to Melbourne, isn't it?'
'This isn't about me, it's about you. You need to take some responsibility for you and your people. Expecting us to know everything about our people isn't perhaps the best way to go. I don't ask you about whitefellas, do I?'
'Well no, of course not.' He looked browbeaten.
'Look, I love you, James, but I'm not your personal tutor. You need to do more to educate yourself about these issues. I would've thought that a man who wanted to marry me would take more than a superficial interest in what I do, but you hardly ever come to events with me in Sydney. You've never even been to a rally!'
'You never ask me to go.'
'I shouldn't have to. I come along to lectures and things with you all the time, and it's not because I'm really into architecture! I do it because you love it, and it's your career, and because it's important to you – but it's not who you are. The issues I'm talking about are important to me, and not just because of my work. This is who I am. Do you understand that?'
'But I'm just an architect. I don't really have anything to contribute.'
'Let's say you were a businessman, then I'd say you could give some Blackfellas jobs and encourage other businesspeople to do the same. If you were a journo I'd say write a feel-good story, a positive story about Indigenous Australia, and try to do it as often as you can. Maybe there's nothing you can do with your skills as an architect but you can still write letters to MPs and the newspaper and so on. I bet you've never done that, have you?'
He just looked at his food and pushed it around on his plate.
'Look, I'm not having a dig at you,' I said, a bit more gently. 'I'm just trying to make the point that whitefellas have to start looking at themselves and thinking about how they fit into the world and can make change.' I sipped my wine.
'You know, our office did hire a Blackfella but it didn't quite work out. He kept going walkabout and the partners couldn't bring themselves to hire another.'
'What the fuck! What are we doing here, Aboriginal Studies 101?'
'Don't swear at me, Peta.'
'Don't make me swear. See what I mean? In all the time we've been together you haven't learned even the basics. Don't you hear me when I talk to other people about this stuff? Blackfellas go walkabout for a purpose. Ceremony, trading, food, water, sorry business. Blackfellas in the city don't go walkabout. Whitefellas just say we do. We drive cars, catch buses and trains when we've got business to do.'
'Why are you getting so angry with me?'
'Because white Australians like you point out my responsibilities but don't recognise your own, or the fact that you benefit every day from the dispossession of Aboriginal people. You mightn't be responsible for the past, but you benefit from dispossession every day. And you sit here asking me, What can I do?'
James just sat there stunned. We had never had a confrontation about political issues before. In the eight months we had been together back in Sydney he had always been so lovely and kind and nice that we'd never had a fullblown argument. We hadn't talked politics at all, really. It wasn't his fault. We'd both been working hard, and at the end of long days and weeks we went to movies and chilled out and I tried to recharge my batteries. What we did together was fun, but not deep or intense. I did talk about issues that had come up at work sometimes, but he didn't challenge or correct me and I just assumed he agreed. The argument just proved Alice's point: it was best to get the important stuff out of the way on the first date, not eight or nine or ten months down the track. But it wasn't even an argument: James didn't disagree with me. He just hadn't thought about the issues before.
After a long silence, both of us just staring at our dinner, James said, 'You're going to think I'm an idiot, but I still don't know what you want from me.'
'Sometimes I just want you to listen, James, that's all. Right now, though, I want to get the bill.'
Reconciliation Week kicked off that night with a reconciliation football match between the Swans and Essendon, but even though I'd been looking forward to going to my first live AFL game, it seemed more important to spend some time alone with James. I didn't even mention the game to him, as football was nothing that either of us had been keen on when I was back in Sydney, and the last thing I wanted him thinking was that I was only interested in looking at the long lean bodies in tight shorts – and knowing James, it was something he would think, even if he never said anything. So I decided that we'd spend the night at home and I made a kangaroo curry with a recipe Alice emailed me as a joke. It wasn't as good as hers, but it was okay.
I got up early the next morning and called her. 'You should have heard me at dinner with James yesterday. I behaved like a bloody lunatic. If I were him I'd give up on me for sure. I was a crazy woman. If he still wants to marry me I should just do it, because no-one else will ever have me. I don't even know why he puts up with me. I must be his reconciliation project and he doesn't even know it.'
'You're not crazy or mad. You're a passionate, feisty, gorgeous, intelligent Black woman,' she affirmed. 'Who cares about her community and doesn't suffer fools easily.'
'But James isn't a fool – he's a nice guy who's trying hard just to keep me right now, I think.'
'Then crawl back into bed and apologise for your tone, or your manner, but not what you said, okay, because you're not sorry for what you said, are you?'
'No, not at all. I meant every word of it. But it wasn't really intended for him. He just wore the brunt of what I want to say to some of the bureaucrats I work with, and probably a few members of the police force.'
'Right,' Alice responded. 'So it wasn't about James at all, then?'
'Well, some of it was, he needed to hear it. We need to be able to have discussions like that. But mostly it was about other people.'
'So tell him that, tell him it was a dress rehearsal for the people who really need to hear it. He's the forgiving type. He'll be cool for sure.'
'You're right, it'll be fine.'
'But if that fails, just give him a blow job!'
'God, now you're sounding like me. I'll call you later in the week.'
So I crawled into bed and all was forgiven.
We had a late lunch down at the Stokehouse, which felt a bit weird as I hadn't been there since the episode with Mike. We got a table at the window and just sat staring at the sea. It was an overcast day and cold.
'You're beautiful.' James moved closer and put his arm around my shoulder. It felt safe and good and normal, like it did back in Sydney when there was no pressure on us.
'I know I don't know everything about you and your politics and everything you want out of life, but I do know that I want to be with you. To be around you. To love you.'
'I love you too,' I said easily.
'And I know with all your passion you'd make a great wife and mother, and you'd make sure our kids were the most socially aware students in their classes.'
