Muz moved in with us for the first few
weeks after the spilt and spent the rest
of the summer in a haze of regression and recklessness while he got over
things. He was of the view that he had grown up, invested
and married too soon. His work gave him a bonus and told him to take some time
off. Ryan thought this was great. He had quit his job 6 months earlier and
hadn’t bothered to find another, was waiting around on a handshake deal to come
through. I had no idea what they did during the day, didn’t really want to
know. I was in the untidy space of loving him and disliking him at the same time.
The three of us spent a summer hanging out, getting into
all sorts of bizarre trouble, embarking on miscreant adventures, making
parties, crashing parties, climbing fences, swinging on ropes, staying out all
night, disappearing.
On the weekends we went on road trips to
coastal towns or one of Ryan’s family’s holiday houses. Sometimes the other
boarding school boys would come and play, but usually it was the three of us. The
boys would get shambolically drunk and allow me to drive – some manual BMW 5
series, whatever the hell that meant, that either lurched or sped when I was
behind the wheel. They thought it was hilarious. I thought I should probably
get a licence. Miraculously, I was never pulled over and only crashed once,
into a drive through bottle shop in Noosa of all things. No one seemed to care what I
was doing to the guts of this poor car.
The road trips and weekends became the
symbol of that summer. We stopped at odd little country pubs along the way and
played darts with the locals under fake names, as though travelling incognito.
As we slowed down and rolled into beach towns the boys would fling open the car
doors at the first sight of sand and run to the ocean, throwing beer bottles
aside and ripping shirts off as they made their way to the water. I would pull
over, slip my thongs off and fish around in the eski for an orange loaded soda.
It was my habit to sit for a minute, usually half dressed in a bikini top,
skirt and sunglasses, legs bent up to my chest, pink painted toes on corner of
the dashboard. I remember shaking out sticky hair stuck to the back of my neck,
the faint smell of my own perfume mixed with the scent of baby wipes, the light
beads of sweat forming on my bare chest, the Australian summer sun blaring and
a suggestive breeze floating through the open door.
After the first swim we would get a bit
more organized, dump our stuff,
explore, visit a bar, eat oysters and finally slash
through scrub land to wide frolicking beaches. I remember us laughing so hard
we cried, folding in and out of the foaming and crashing blue sea or floating
in clear azure waters. As late afternoons turned into warm coastal nights we had earnest talks about life, gazing at the stars through
huge dilated pupils, as big and black as the cascading night waves which felt so good as they washed over and under us. The obsidian water seemed always to be deliciously warm, the eski was always full of melted ice. Four hands would hold back the breeze, curl around the plate on which the bag had been tapped or the pill crushed,
two hands if someone was holding my hair back.
Sometimes we hung out with other people,
sometimes we didn’t. Ryan and I would disappear for a while and I would wind up
with sand and leaves in my hair or bark scratches up and down my back. Muz
slept with anything that moved. He developed a penchant for curious lesbians
and women with braces.
Towards the end of the summer we spent
another long night on the beach just outside of Byron Bay like little ruffians, clean clothes and showers waiting at one of the houses. Some other revelers
had joined us. I was rejoining the group, plucking my way through a careless
mosaic of Australian fauna, scattered enthusiastically at the fringe of the
white sand. I walked clumsily towards the glow of the bonfire The French Guy
had built. Scared of bindis and prickles, I was wearing The French Guy’s boots, my feet lost in the giant clown shoes, laces untied. I felt something hard under my heel; it moved and
cracked.
The blue hour arrived whispering of the sun's desire to resurface, warning of reality to come crashing down. The fire waned and I poured water on the last of
the embers as the two Israelis stumbled off. The French Guy and Ryan had passed
out on the sand. Muz was in space, the early stages of a come-down, sitting
with legs bent, looking out as Persephone and Poseidon touched each other in a macabre ballet. I could tell
he was thinking dark thoughts well suited to the blue hour but unbefitting of a
sunrise. I sat beside him in silence for a minute.
How
are you feeling? He looked at me for a minute with
his moonface and blue eyes, looked back out to sea and shook his head sadly.
“A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.”
How about: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
How about: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
Alright misery guts. I put my arm around him and laugh, despite
myself and feel better when he laughs to. Come
on, lets go for one last swim, wash it away. He
declines.
I emerge from the wet and salty garden of
seashells, stinging and dripping and feeling refreshed. I head back across the sand, the night well and truly
extinguished.
Morning
boys. Ryan, wake up. Um, You, wake up also. Bonjour! Salut! Wake up!
I kissed them both on the forehead gently.
The French Guy stirred first, I handed him some water. Ryan came to life, sort
of. We offered The French Guy a lift to where he was staying, packed up and
headed back for the car. As we made our
way through the scrub I saw a brown snake with its skull crushed and bathed in
phlegmy liquid, still sticky and fresh. I realized what I had stepped on an
hour earlier. In that moment I'd had enough and the summer was over for me.
