‘Gross!’ Laura cried. ‘He was a greaseball.’
‘Total greaseball,’ I agreed.
We crossed the road towards the city, skipping in and out of the Saturday-night traffic that waited at the intersection lights.
‘But, Jez, you can’t go round king-hitting every guy who cracks onto you!’ Casey squeezed between me and Laura, and slipped her arm through mine. ‘You’ll end up in jail or something! Sometimes it’s just easier to give ’em what they want.’
‘Sure!’ I laughed. ‘Like I’m gunna give some ugly wog guy a gobby in a toilet at a party.’
Casey shot me a quick look. ‘It was a good party.’
I stopped walking and stared at her in disbelief. ‘So what are you saying? You would have done it just to stay at the dumb party?’
‘It was a really lame party,’ Laura said.
Casey tossed her hair. ‘Maybe if I was drunk enough. Not that big a deal.’
‘Serious?’ My mouth fell open.
‘That’s so wrong, Casey.’ Laura shook her head.
‘Look.’ Casey put her hands on her hips authoritatively. ‘I’m not saying you should have done it. I’m just saying that if you did, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. It’s just a blowie.’
‘Fucking hell, Casey.’ I shook my head. ‘That is so trashbag. That is full sluz.’
‘Oh, Jez.’ Casey sighed impatiently. ‘You don’t know anything. It’s not slutty, it’s just what happens.’
‘She shouldn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do.’ Laura stepped between Casey and I. ‘Especially not just to stay at a really bullshit lame party full of freshies.’
‘Who the fuck asked you?’ Casey got all up in Laura’s grill. ‘Why are you still here? Don’t you have some cake to eat or something?’
Laura just blinked and turned to me. She swallowed hard and then let her mouth hang open, like she’d been slapped. I felt sick to my stomach and my head swam with drunkenness.
‘I’m leaving, Jez. You coming?’
I looked from Laura to Casey. ‘I dunno,’ I hesitated.
‘Stay out with me, Jez.’ Casey slung her arm around my waist and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘We’ve hardly had a chance to hang.’
‘Are you sure, Jez? Dana will pay for the taxi.’
‘She’s sure! Some of us actually would like to have some fun tonight, and since we’re not going to any dyke clubs . . .’
‘I’m not a dyke.’
Casey ran her eyes up and down Laura’s sundress and ballet flats. ‘Whatever you reckon.’
‘See you later, then.’ Laura gave a half-hearted wave, her eyes lingering on mine for a moment as though trying to convince me to change my mind. I stayed silent as she turned and walked away.
‘Bye!’ I called after her.
‘So anyways, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted.’ Casey jerked her thumb in Laura’s direction.
‘That was so harsh, Case,’ I began, my eyes still following Laura.
‘As I was saying,’ Casey interrupted me. ‘You shouldn’t be so frigid! Sex is not gunna kill you, and it might actually get you places. Proper women know how to use their sexiness to their advantage.’
Laura disappeared from sight. I turned back to Casey.
‘Case, I don’t think I wanna use my sexiness. I don’t even know if I am sexy.’
Casey scrunched her face as she looked me up and down. ‘Yeah, you’re not really. But you could be if you tried, and that’s my point.’
‘Yeah, I dunno . . .’
‘Jez.’ Casey shot me a pitying look. ‘Didn’t your mum ever teach you anything about sex for fuck’s sake?’
‘My mum doesn’t have sex. She hasn’t had a boyfriend for like . . . forever. Except she does now,’ I remembered. ‘Jeremy from the club.’
‘Jeremy?!’ Casey hooted. ‘You’re kidding?! That is too funny . . . and kind of gross.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘He’s friends with Cash, y’know.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I searched my bag for a piece of gum. ‘So when you said forget about Cash . . .’
‘Forget Cash!’
‘I was just wondering . . .’
‘What is Jeremy, like, ten years younger than her?’
‘Eight, maybe.’ I gave up searching for the gum and folded my arms across my chest.
‘So gross.’
‘I know, right?’
‘But that proves my point! Everybody is having sex, Jezza. Everyone except you. You’re like an old woman. Don’t you have the internet?’
‘What’s the internet got to do with it?’ I asked dumbly.
Casey let out a loud lungful of air. ‘Porn, you twat. If you’d been looking at internet porn you’d know that these days, as far as sex is concerned, anything goes.’ She raised her eyebrows with authority. ‘And I do mean anything. Think bondage, domination, S&M, DP, midget porn . . . beastiality might be going a bit far . . . squid porn, for fuck’s sake.’
‘You’re making this up.’
‘I’m not! You’re so naïve, Jez. People are doing all sorts of shit, all the time, for fun. Haven’t you ever heard of the sexual revolution? It happened, like, fifty years ago before our parents were even born. And you,’ she waved her hand airily at me, ‘break a dude’s nose for asking for a gobby. Bit extreme, don’t you think?’
Casey spun on one heel and stalked across the road. My face burned.
‘Excuse me?!’ I cried after her. ‘A guy asks for a head job and I’m supposed to just go, Ooooh, okay then.’ I put on an airhead type voice for effect. ‘What if I didn’t want to, Casey? The dude was groping me and it was really gross and sleazy, okay?’
Casey pirouetted on her heels to face me. ‘Look, Jez. It’s not gunna kill you,’ she spoke slowly and mildly as though she were already bored of the topic. ‘It’s a penis. And you can’t even get STIs from oral anyways.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘That is fucked up, Case,’ I muttered.
Casey snorted and stamped her foot impatiently, signalling an end to the conversation. ‘Well cool, then. You didn’t want to. So now look where we are.’ Casey threw her hands up in the air. ‘In the city with no money, no way home, no alcohol, no bud . . . So what do you suggest we do?’
‘Maybe we should call it, hey? We could probably catch up with Laura, share a taxi home?’
‘No freakin’ way.’ Casey shook her head. ‘Laura bailed because she is a zero. If we bail that’s a bullshit end to a perfectly good night.’
I studied Casey, taking in the way she distractedly tugged at her hair extensions, simultaneously giving every female that paraded past us a critical assessment that I could read on her face: Fat thighs . . . ugly dress . . . oooh nice hair. Strangely, I felt grateful for Casey’s company, when I probably should have been mad at her. I had been so sure that I was doing the right thing, smacking that guy in the face. I didn’t want to be desperate like my mum, no sex for years and years. I wanted in to Casey’s world. Casey was sexy. She was powerful and confident and always seemed so full of life and plans and fun; she was like an ocean—waves of enthusiasm crashing onto the shore, then drawing back and crashing in all over again. Whereas I felt like a stagnant little pool. I wanted to ride a wave.
‘Okay, I’m in. What are we doing?’
Casey paused at the street corner, her face calculating as she scanned our surroundings. Clubbers and pubbers ambled up and down the bars and nightclubs of the interchange, along the footpaths under the white arched awnings of the 1920s buildings, arms linked, with skips in their step and the off-balance lean of tipsiness. The city looked pretty: strings of fairy lights were hung from the deciduous trees and Christmas decorations lit up many of the shopfronts and cafes. Couples and groups in their thirties and forties spilled out of restaurants and into the balmy summer night, faces lit up, intoxicated with silly-season cheer. Suddenly I felt infected by their optimism.
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ Case
y said
I followed her eyes to a nightclub where a cluster of people were slowly shuffling through the double doors. ‘We’re gunna go into that nightclub over there and get our flirt on and get some free drinks from some guy’s wallet,’ Casey said. ‘Stick your tits out and follow me. Don’t stop or they might ask for ID. Just walk in like you own the joint.’
TWENTY-ONE
When I woke up my eyes were glued together with crusted mascara and liquid eyeliner, and I had to pry them apart with my fingers and then give my throbbing temples a quick massage. I sort of peeked hesitantly out from under the smelly old sleeping bag, remembering that I’d crashed at some random guy’s house that Casey had picked up the night before at the club.
As soon as we got into the nightclub she’d had her full flirt on, getting guys to buy us round after round of alcohol. She would kind of tease them with a kiss or a hand on the leg when the drinks started to slow down, or do that thing where she let her hand slide from her hair down to her boob, real casual like. The weird thing was, the more drinks I got into me, the more comfortable I felt getting my own flirt on. I got sick of Casey getting all the attention (and getting more drinks than me) so I hitched up my hemline a few inches and squeezed my cleavage together and tossed my hair around a little and the drinks started rolling in and then before I knew it I was outside the club with this guy (whose name I couldn’t even remember), a Rugby player, his heavy arm draped over my shoulders, stumbling down the street after Casey and her own football player. So mental.
So anyway, we all got in a cab together and went back to one of their apartments, and we all sat around drinking Bacardi for a while and Football Player #1 was trying it on with me on the couch while Casey and Football Player #2 went into the bedroom and had really loud, grunting sex. Suddenly I was really panicked because I realised, whether I really wanted to or not, there was no backing out of the situation I’d got myself into. The flirting, the hair tossing, all fun and games at the nightclub, had all led to this moment and this guy was seriously, seriously expecting to get his end in. Not just expecting but demanding, with his hands on my breasts and fingers poking into my panties trying to rub my clit.
‘You’re hairy,’ he grunted, pulling his hands out of my undies. ‘You some sort of hippy?’
‘I’m not hairy!’ I snapped, defensive. ‘It’s called a “landing strip”.’
‘Most girls shave it all off.’
‘I’m not most girls. And I don’t want to look like a little girl.’
‘Whatever. I don’t go down anyway.’ He grabbed me again and started kissing my neck and sliding his hands roughly down my body.
‘Hey, hey,’ I protested, trying to pry his fingers from my underwear again. ‘Slow down.’
He kept kissing me, his five-o’clock shadow grating against my jaw bone, his weight on top of me. I could feel him move to pull down his jeans and then grind his hard-on against my pubic bone, which is when, I feel ashamed to say, I felt a little bit turned on, and sickened all at the same time.
As he thrust his alcohol-laced tongue in my mouth again I gave him a sharp shove and forcibly pushed him off me with all my strength and ran into the fluorescent lit kitchen and threw my guts up into the sink, heaving and choking and fighting back tears, while the prick stood behind me and went, ‘Fuckin’ hell. Gross.’
And when I finally raised my head from the sink, stomach emptied, face wet with tears, I turned around and he was gone and the apartment was still. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I filled a mug with water and curled into a ball on the couch and slept.
When I caught the bus home it was already mid-Saturday afternoon and I was still in my heels and tiny black strapless dress, all panda-eyed and sticky and stinking with sweat. The walk of shame. I had to beg my way onto the bus because I spent my last few silver coins trying to ring Casey from a payphone in the city, my mobile out of credit. I just kept getting her voicemail. ‘Hey bitches, I’m not answering because I’m having a better time than you. Leave me a message and I might ring you back.’
The bus driver, a youngish guy with tattoos and a buzzcut, found it really amusing to heckle me.
‘Big night?’ He grinned. ‘Invite me next time.’
‘Sure.’ I played along, leaning over so my cleavage showed a little. ‘Let me on for free?’
‘Nothing’s free.’ He blinked at me, keeping a straight face for several seconds before grinning again. ‘Kidding. Get on.’
I pulled off my heels as soon as I got off at my stop. I sucked in a sharp breath as the concrete burned my sore feet, and hobbled over to the prickly dry grass and sat down in the shade of a grey gum to inspect my blisters.
FML.
My mobile rang. Casey.
‘Hey,’ I croaked into the phone.
‘Where’re you?’ Casey demanded.
‘Where’re you? I had to catch the fucking bus home.’
‘I was out with Danny getting food!’
‘Fair enough. I’m nearly home now.’
‘Danny spoke to Mick this morning and reckons you were being a total prick tease last night.’
‘Who the fuck is Mick?’
I could hear Casey exhale impatiently. ‘The guys we went home with! Danny and Mick!’
‘He was being a creep. Like, trying to force me to have sex with him on the couch.’
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
‘Hello? Casey?’
‘I just dunno what your problem is, Jez. Mick is totally hot. He plays under-nineteens for the Raiders, you know.’
I’d had enough of the conversation.
‘Look, Case, I gotta go. I’ll catch ya, okay?’
I hung up the phone and let my head droop between my knees. The summer smells of cut grass and flowers burned in my throat and sinuses, and I was so dehydrated I could hardly swallow. I closed my eyes and imagined the skies filling with black clouds, rolls of thunder and then sheets of rain pouring down on my face. I pictured myself wandering out into the street, splashing in puddles and opening my mouth to catch the raindrops on my tongue. My eyes snapped open as I felt an insect biting at my ankle. A red ant. I squished it hard between my thumb and forefinger . . . You little fucker! My ankle was already swelling and the pain was searing.
‘Jez?!’ I heard a young girl’s voice giggle. ‘OMG. Lukey, it’s Jez!’
Lukey and his little sister, Ashleigh. Lukey slid down next to me, his back against the tree, his arm touching mine. Ashleigh knelt in front of us, her mobile glued to her hand, as usual.
‘Oh, my God, Jez.’ Ashleigh hung her mouth open as she stared intently at her mobile screen. ‘We almost didn’t recognise you.’ She slid her phone in her pocket and grinned at me.
‘Why’re you all sluzzered up?’
‘You look . . .’ Lukey began.
I held up my hand to his face. ‘Don’t even.’
‘You look nice.’ Lukey pinched my leg gently.
‘Argh! No pinching! An ant just bit me!’ I stuck my ankle out to show him.
‘Ouch. Saliva is meant to help, want me to spit on it?’ He puckered his mouth as if he was going to spit.
‘You do it, you die!’
‘Ha ha, okay then. So what’d you get up to last night? That looks like a Casey type of outfit.’
I sighed. ‘Yeah, went out with Casey. Such a full-on night.’
‘You look better in Jez clothes. I don’t get why you’d want to look like Casey.’
‘Something different. Casey was all like, “Dress up! Wear something sexy!”, so . . .’
‘Meh.’ Lukey shrugged. ‘I don’t really dig on that whole look. I mean, you do look nice. But you don’t look like you.’
‘Hey, I totally decked this guy at a party.’ I laughed, changing the subject. ‘It was off tap.’
‘Serious? What the fuck?’
‘Yeah, he was coming on to me or whatever and I just,’ I demonstrated with my fist, ‘SMACK!’
‘You go, gi
rl,’ Ashleigh muttered, her phone back in her hand. ‘Hey, Lukey, I’m gunna go over to Chantelle’s house, okay?’
‘You spending the night there?’
‘Probs. Dunno.’ Ashleigh got to her feet. ‘Laters.’ She fluttered her fingers over her shoulder as she strutted off.
‘Teenage girls.’ Lukey shook his head. ‘What were you like at thirteen?’
‘You knew me at thirteen.’
‘I dunno what Ashleigh’s up to these days. She doesn’t tell me shit anymore. She’s never at home, always at her friends’ houses.’
‘Sounds pretty normal.’
‘Not that I blame her. Mark and Dad got into a fuck-off fight last night. It was mental.’
‘Shiiit. What happened? Who won?’
Lukey shrugged. ‘They were just drinking and then, bam, argument. Me and Ash just stayed in my room all night. Did you know she’s started smoking ciggies?’
‘We were smoking at thirteen.’
‘Yeah . . .’ Lukey stared off into the distance. ‘But she’s my little sister.’
‘So?’
‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re an only child.’
‘Doesn’t mean I don’t understand.’
‘I want to leave, I feel bad for leaving her there, though. She’s, like, already starting to fuck up. I’m the only kinda normal person in her life.’
‘So are you gunna leave?’ I swallowed, my mouth dry.
‘I kinda have to.’ Lukey put his arm around me. ‘It’s Mark. He’s the world’s biggest derro.’
‘He’s gotten worse.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it. I remember even when I was about ten or eleven, just before Mum got sick, he wasn’t so bad. One time at the skate park this big group of guys were trying to pick on me, trying to roll me for my shoes or something, and Mark just walked over, real calm, and picked up a deck and just started swinging. It was fuckin’ awesome. Then he even bought me Maccas after . . . back when I still ate meat ’n that.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I dunno. Mum died and then he was just always fucked up. Ha, not like I can talk, huh? I’m always maggot on something.’
‘You’re not a jerk, though.’
Snake Bite Page 14
