Iron horse

Wasted forever
On speed, bikes and booze
Yeah, us and the brothers
We're all born to lose.
- Motorhead, 1976

It couldn’t last, figured everyone. Rebecca was Rebecca, and Jeff was Jeff, and Gatton is a bloody long way from Pymble, by any measurement you care to use, geographical or socio-economic. And so it proved - they didn’t get to see much of each other at first. Sure, they heard from each other a lot - I wouldn’t want to think about let alone shell out for the long-distance phone bill between Beck’s parents’ and Jeff’s share house for the month following their meeting. But did absence make the heart grow fonder, or was this all going to go horribly pearshaped at some stage in the near future? Given the long-distance-relationship track record of (a) Jeff’s brother and (b) Jeff’s brother’s mate on the previous winter’s Tour de Pants, it didn’t look promising.

As for McCarthy, he carried on as per program; his ‘truce’ with Lena didn’t seem to change his outlook. Maybe he was a little more relaxed and content now that the war (in his head at least) was over; in contrast maybe he was a little more wistful and rueful now that he realised that the ‘might have beens’ which he’d carried around with him, largely for self-torturing purposes, weren’t exclusively his own but hers as well, and that he and Lena really might have amounted to something had they not fucked up the timing. They’d just fucked up the timing, that’s all. Can you kick my ass? I'm not askin' ya, I'm tellin' ya, kick this ass for a man!

In point of fact I think I was the most content out of everyone because I got Lena back as a buddy, and then some. In truth, though we got on well before, we hadn’t really been that close when McCarthy was in Sydney, mainly because (a) we didn’t see that much of each other, usually only when I was in town to get on the turps with McCarthy and (b) I was a highly dodgy individual with a very relaxed attitude to trouser action, so she was never sure whether I could be trusted as far as I could be kicked. But somehow, once the lines of communication were re-established in the weeks after our Sydney trip, we found ourselves in regular contact, usually involving scurrilous emails full of lunacy and black humour. I presumed McCarthy was also on the receiving end of her witty exchanges. I presumed wrongly.

It was around six on an average weekday evening when I answered the phone, to a familiar voice. “Hey,” she said by way of greeting. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad,” I replied. “Yourself?”

“Getting there, getting there. Is your flatmate about?”

“Which one? Phil or Marty… or the Dark Knight of Strayan rawwck?”

She laughed. “You’re just never going to let me live that article down, are you?”

“Nuh,” I grinned. “As it happens Sam’s up at the uni doing some recording with the lads, he shouldn’t be too far away.”

“Has he killed himself yet?” she wanted to know.

“No such luck,” I replied. “In fact, I’ve joined him. I’ve had to come out of retirement, for everyone’s sake. Someone’s gotta haul him out of the ditch and call the ambulance when he chucks it down the road…”

“How selfless of you,” she replied. Despite her darker moments, there was always joy in Lena’s voice, an infectious buoyancy which made even her slyest remarks seem somewhat affectionate. “Anyway I’d rather talk to the man of the house, as it happens…”

“Speaking…”

“…But if Marty’s not in either I guess I’m stuck with you, yeah?”

What was all that about? Well, we finally found out what McCarthy had been saving up for - his ‘decent 23rd birthday present’. A good six grand’s worth of ‘decent 23rd birthday present’, to be truthful. It was an early-‘80s Ducati 900SS, resprayed red and green like one of the rare Mike Hailwood Replica versions - not the real deal, but not in too bad a shape for something older than half the girls in Angie’s dance class. Like our man Mick Martin, Uncle Sam had always had a thing for Italian bikes, but I’d never thought he’d actually follow through with it. I didn’t even know he still had his bike licence, though he still had the old XR we’d rebuilt for his 21st - unregistered and unregisterable, we kept it in storage down at the farm for him along with our old TS185 which still tore up the cane paddocks as well as one could expect - and was a decent rider, if more than a little stylistically reminiscent of the madman Mick Martin, i.e. a triumph of enthusiasm over physics. The 900SS was a lovely old thing, in its day a serious fuck-off race-oriented roadbike and still impressive many years later - shiny, glistening in the sun, looking like it was going a hundred miles an hour just parked on the driveway. Not exactly the ideal first proper roadbike for someone who drove like a complete arsehole at the best of times…

I looked at it with long-dormant lust. As to what I was thinking, I can tell you precisely what thoughts entered my head, almost in sequence:

- Fucking oath, that thing’s a weapon. It’s been looked after.

- Those high-mileage desmo V-twins are pretty high-maintenance though… a bit like the women he’s attracted to. (I kept that thought to myself for the time being.)

- You know, he could have spent the money on something useful, like a replacement for the Camira… (I did mention this. “Yeah, but given that we’re about to inherit Marty’s old man’s Landcruiser, it’s not as if we need another vehicle,” he replied. A decent point - Marty’s dad was about to get a new ‘Cruiser for the farm, and after much deliberation, we’d decided to dip into Flange Gasket Consolidated Revenue to buy the thing off him at a bargain basement price. It was a good buy by any standards, particularly because Gino threw the Escort panelvan trailer in as well. He was mainly trying to de-uglify the front paddock.)

- Those are my fucking leathers he’s wearing. And my helmet. (“Yeah, I figured since you sold the RG250 you probably wouldn’t be needing them…”)

Oh yeah, and one other:

- He will probably fucking kill himself on that thing.

So it was purely out of interest in my good friend and fellow band member’s welfare that I made the trip up to Mount Road Motorcycles, spoke to the good people there (Mick was in hospital; you can probably guess why, which didn’t do my resolve much good - so I dealt with Uncle Doug, my old boss) and against my better judgement went home with a sharp-looking twin-headlight Yamaha FZR600, almost ten years old but still looking great, locally serviced, decent reputation for longevity, cost a packet less than McCarthy spent on his Ducati, and not dropped or thrashed anything like as much as you’d expect for a device of the sort. The benefit of the twin headlight setup, as Glynn Nicholas once observed on the Big Gig, was that after dark it gave the impression to Volvo drivers that you were actually a car. A very small car, but you need that psychological advantage. So why a FZ Aaarrrghh? Because they looked awesome, went like stink and I’d been keen on one ever since seeing Mick Doohan carving up the local superbike scene on the race version of the FZR750 before he got the call-up to the Grand Prix scene from the Rothmans Honda outfit in the late 80s - I couldn’t afford the 750 (let alone the 1000 version) and besides, I’d always rated smaller, more agile machinery, from my time chasing Mad Mick’s Guzzi up the Mount Road on my old RG250. The FZR Six was nimble, powerful and seriously quick - faster than McCarthy’s new Ducati, which meant that I was in a position to ‘pace’ myself and ride within my limits even when trying to keep pace with him. Meaning I was a chance of making it home, even if he wasn’t. Obviously it was a serious bit of kit, a hell of a lot more bike than I ever needed, next to useless for anything more than a few hours in the saddle, and less than useless for pulling skirt with - since once you'd pulled them there was nowhere to actually put them - so it was really just a big boys' toy. How could I afford it? The same way McCarthy could, of course - by pilfering the savings I’d set aside for buying new axes and amps, of course. The Atomic Mandarin II was doing a fine job and could soldier forth on its lonesome for a bit longer.

Lena knew enough about bikes to be both (a) very impressed and (b) rather horrified by our sudden readoption of two-wheeled transport when I’d told her, which was why she asked whether either or both of us had been killed yet whenever we were in touch. I presumed she asked the same of McCarthy. I presumed wrongly.

“So yeah, you know how Jeff and Rebecca are meeting up at your place next weekend…”

“Say what?”

“Oh, so they haven’t actually gotten around to asking you if they can meet up at your place next weekend. Why doesn’t this surprise me?” she giggled. “Anyway, just so you know, Jeff is coming down from Gatton and Beck is heading up from here, and they’re meeting up at your place. Seemed a reasonable midpoint. He wants to show her around, take her to the beach, head down to the farm, meet the parents, that sort of thing…”

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “What’s she done to deserve that?” He’d not mentioned a thing to me about it yet, presumably a bit embarrassed about the whole deal and hoping I wouldn’t bugger everything up for him. “Well, thanks for telling me, at least someone has. We’ll figure out a way to accommodate everyone. I presume the standard terms for rent are acceptable?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she tells Jeff to bring a carton of XXXX down for you,” she quipped. “XXXX Light, if he can find it...”

“You do and I’ll hunt you down like a dog,” I declared. “Jeff knows the rules, and he knows the exchange rate. It’s Uncle Teds or he’s sleeping in the garage. In the oil puddle under Sam’s Ducati, if we can arrange it.” Given the amount of oil which aforesaid bike managed to exude, he’d probably need a snorkel.

“And what about Beck and I?” she wanted to know.

“What about you and Beck?” I replied. “Don’t tell me you’re gracing us with your presence as well? Aren’t you like Vodafone signal coverage, undetectable outside major metropolitan areas?”

“Well, look… Beck was nervous about driving all that way up the highway on her own, so what was I supposed to do?”

“Is this your way of inviting yourself to stay, Lena?”

“I’m awful, aren’t I. Would it be OK? I mean… what I really wanted to ask was…” It was perversely amusing seeing (or hearing) the usually uber-confident Lena squirming with discomfort. “…Look, will Sam be OK with it, do you think?”

“Well,” I mused, “you could try asking him…”

“You see, that’s the thing,” Lena exhaled. “We haven’t really… talked. I mean, the occasional couple of lines on an email, but we haven’t actually talked. Not since…” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “Not since I got drunk and completely fucking humiliated myself in front of him last month... I’m so embarrassed about that. I’m so glad you guys turned up before I went and did something really pathetic.”

“Like sleeping with him?” I ventured boldly.

“I was thinking more in terms of bursting into tears,” she corrected mildly. “Not all of us are quite as sex-obsessed as yourself, Andrew...”

“I doubt that,” I replied. “Look, I’m sure he’ll be fine with it. But listen,” I added, with visions of McCarthy re-establishing his revenge agenda by getting onto Angie the dancer and/or Sarah the spunky blonde from uni enrolments in front of her, “are you going to be OK if he happens to be, um, ‘with someone’ at the time?”

“Oh come on, Angus, don’t be silly,” she laughed. “We’re grown-ups, we’ve both moved on. I hope he is ‘with someone’, he deserves whatever he can get.” It sounded a little hollow, but we’ll say it rang true. “There is one thing though,” she mentioned.

“What’s that?”

“Are you guys playing any gigs this weekend? Reason I ask is if you are, I can probably turn this into an article somehow, and actually get paid for it. Come to think of it, I can probably claim travel expenses as well…”

As it happened, we didn’t actually have a gig on the Saturday, though we played Friday night at Lennox and Sunday afternoon at the Bangalow Hotel. On the Saturday, Marty’s cousin Tony was getting married up in Stanthorpe where Tony’s branch of the di Biagini family lived (another Italian enclave, like the hills around Lismore) and he’d selected our keyboardist as his best man - quite possibly because out of all of Tony’s mates, Marty was least likely to massively offend his fiancee and/or her family. As such Marty had pleaded with Kretin to leave a window in our scheduling so he could attend; Kretin’s response was to try and pressure Marty into having us booked as the paid entertainment for the wedding (playing musical instruments, presumably). We knew very well that at a traditional, old-school, 200-guest Italian wedding, packed to the rafters with conservative Italian familials, our act would have gone down like a lead balloon under surface-to-air missile attack, so the rest of us got together and talked Kretin down from his high-horse, saying we were more than happy to trade an evening’s income for one Saturday night to ourselves out of the last dozen weekends.

Lena and Beck missed the Lennox gig on the Friday as they were still en route; they left Sin City after work that afternoon and fought through the northbound traffic, reaching Beck’s family beach house in Forster and staying there Friday night. Lena’s enthusiastically-driven Alfa rolled into the driveway of Chateau Dodgy (finding the place in the labyrinthine hillside back-streets of Goonellabah was an achievement in itself) around mid-afternoon on Saturday, beating The Jeff who was still making his way down the Lions Road from Gatton in his late-80s Subaru wagon, and ourselves, who were still trying to get out of bed (aside from Marty who’d headed straight to his parents’ place after the Lennox gig last night). To say McCarthy was surprised to see Lena and/or Rebecca would have been an understatement. Particularly as I, um, hadn’t actually gotten around to telling him they were coming. A small omission on my part, I’ll admit.

He’d ducked out that morning for a bit of a scratch on the 900SS to, as he said, ‘check the surf at Broken Head’. Which was complete bollocks; he’d gone out to Desmo Headquarters in Byron Bay to have them look over something in the ignition system which was playing up and causing a misfire - he just didn’t want to have to admit it because he was massively proud of his new bike and liked to pretend it was marginally more reliable than a Latvian pacemaker. When you’ve bought something with massive potential to behave badly or break down of a fifteen-year-old race-bred bevel-twin Ducati, it’s useful to have a garage full of factory-trained Ducati mechanics half an hour down the road (actually closer to twenty minutes down the road, the way he used to cane the thing - probably why it broke down all the time) and he would turn into one of their better customers over the following years.

Anyway, Jeff had just turned up moments earlier and he and I were chatting out the front leaning against the slab-sided Subaru - the Young family wagon in a previous life, the last of the ones before they released the Liberty - when we heard McCarthy and ‘Il Duke’ rolling down Mountain View Drive - like McCarthy himself, you could hear Il Duke long before you could see it. The previous owner had fitted a set of trick Termignoni pipes to the thing that really freed up the vocals, and as a result you could hear it for miles around - a gorgeous, throaty V-twin sound that reverberated off the hillsides. He rolled up the little rise at the end of the cul de sac that led to our driveway, and pulled up next to us, smelling of hot, slightly burnt oil and brake pad dust. Killing the ignition and popping the visor on his matt-black AGV stackhat (his leathers and boots were also matt black, which seemed to be the new black for McCarthy in terms of what colour to be seen in this motorcycling season - at least I’d managed to get my leathers and Gardner-replica helmet back off him) he gave us a surprised grin and began to say something about the old firm being back together (i.e. us lot of dodgy bastards.) Then he recognised the metallic gunmetal-grey Alfa GTV6 (just like the one Roger Moore commandeers in Octopussy) which on his line of sight had been hidden behind Jeff’s Subie. You could see the cogs moving in his head. What the fu…

Beck scrambled out of the house to greet The Jeff - in hindsight it was amazing she’d taken as long as a couple of minutes to get down the front steps after hearing him turn up (I suspect she was making herself pretty in the bathroom). She vaulted onto the bonnet of the Subaru, and slid across it Dukes Of Hazzard style into Jeff’s arms. He grinned, swept her up and planted a big kiss on her lips.

“Been at the red cordial again, Beck?” quipped McCarthy, pulling off his helmet.

“Occupational health and safety issue!” she declared after surfacing for breath, and giving McCarthy a welcoming hug (which while warm, was not nearly as enthusiastically manic as the embrace which The Jeff had enjoyed). “That bonnet is seriously hot!”

“So did you borrow Lena’s car or something?” McCarthy inquired, to be greeted by a round of knowing smiles.

“Yeah, kind of,” Beck replied. “But as part of the deal, I kinda had to borrow Lena as well…”
Now, finally, he noted Lena watching from the top of the stairs, arms folded. He waved a gloved hand; she waved back. So far, so… impassive. While the rest of us scrambled upstairs, he wheeled the bike into the garage, exchanged his gloves and helmet for a cold beer in a NSW Origin stubbie cooler, and clunked up the stairs in his bike boots. Usually he just dumped his leathers and boots downstairs as well and wandered about the place in his boxers and a T-shirt, at least until he could get upstairs and find some pants, but it seemed he was going to preserve decorum today with ladies present.

“You’re right, it’s not the coldest of days,” he muttered to noone in particular, starting to unzip his leathers.

“Hey - you know the house rule, no unforced nudity in mixed company.” It was known as the Super Dave precedent, as it’d been one of his visits last year which had resulted in its invocation. It also involved the total and complete banning of any playing of Eagle Rock on or near the premises, just in case. McCarthy was at least wearing a T-shirt under his leathers - a grubby old once-white Castrol Racing one, but it sufficed.

“Nothing we haven’t seen before,” remarked Lena, potentially the least likely of us to be revulsed.

“Speak for yourself, girlfriend,” Beck replied wryly.

Meanwhile, Kirsten was leaving me. Hang on, I’ll rephrase that in less melodramatic terms. Kirsten was leaving me, and Lismore, to head up to Brisbane to do a Masters - later converted to a PhD - in early childhood education at QUT. It’d been an area of study she’d started to get involved in during her honours year at SCU, and as there was more expertise in the field up there, in particular a star academic she really wanted to work with, she’d decided to move on. Kirsten did a lot of moving on, she wasn’t the sort of girl who liked to let things stagnate. Tonight was her last night in town, and plans were afoot among her eclectic circle of friends to see her off in appropriate fashion. Kirsten had a lot of friends; she was very easy to like. I certainly liked her a lot. I was going to miss her worldly, laid-back approach to life, her intelligent, thoughtful conversation, her dry sense of humour, her captivating tales of her travel adventures, and of course her relaxed, experienced, uninhibited attitude to sex, in particular sex with me. Was it a kick to have dated an ‘older woman’ (even if it was only by three years)? Hell yeah. Was I likely to admit any of these things to her? Was I bollocks. But I would miss her. To that point of my life, Kirsten was probably the single most interesting girl I’d met, let alone dated.

My plans for the evening were therefore already set; the others were still figuring theirs out as we sat on the rickety old balcony, taking our lives in our hands again, and enjoyed a few drinks over the sunset lightshow. Of course it’d be OK for you guys to tag along, I said, Kirsten would be disappointed otherwise. So after a few more drinks… then a few more… the five of us piled into a cab and headed over to the house Kirsten and a few other Education students shared on the ridge overlooking campus, where Kirsten’s farewell drinks were kicking off. From there, perhaps into town, and after that… who knew what the night could bring. Well, I had a few ideas, but they exclusively involved Kirsten and myself and possibly her preferred brand of hazelnut-flavoured icecream so I didn’t think it necessary to share them with the others.

The night was a blur, as the good ones are. Drinks at Kirsten’s were rowdy, massively so - it seemed everyone we knew in town was there, and between us we knew a lot of people - from uni, from the music scene, from God knows where really. Almost like one of those amazing theatre parties in Sydney, I suggested to Beck, and she had the good grace to agree (as I still had the authority to make her sleep on the couch instead of sharing Marty’s bedroom with Lena. Not the way you’re thinking either - Marty’s bed had a sleepable base so they each got a mattress-or-equivalent to themselves. Jeff got the couch.) We did end up in town… eventually… and no, I can’t remember where we went in any sort of precise chronological sequence but bloody hell it was FUN. A night for the ages.

Which, as we all know, usually results in a hangover for the ages as well.

I blinked awake, dry-mouthed, head foggy and just starting to protest as the alcoholic haze began to recede and cold consciousness returned; the clock radio said four-ish. The beginnings of a nasty hangover, I recognised, but only that - the beginnings. I knew the drill - what I did between now and sunrise could have a massive bearing on the size of the hangover I’d be taking on (and trying to play guitar with) later that day. The amount of fluids, pain relievers and shuteye that I could muster could make the difference between the Sunday afternoon show being bearable or bastard-arsed hideous. I tried to focus on my first task: hauling arse out of bed to take on fluids - and to release them as well.

But my mind wandered, as I gazed into the darkness, thinking of the night’s successes and failures. By the bluntest, most superficial assessment, there seemed to have been more of the latter than the former; having headed out of bomber command with a clear primary target for the night’s mission, I’d been shot down in flames. Pretty early in the night, as well - something like midnight or thereabouts, walking together from one establishment to the next. I must have whispered something vaguely suggestive into Kirsten’s ear, because she tightened her arm around my shoulder into a brief, affectionate squeeze, then took my arm and explained why it was that we’d both be sleeping alone tonight - should we actually make it to bed. No matter how good the idea seemed - and she admitted it had its appeal - us sleeping together again wasn’t going to help her one little bit in terms of tying up loose ends, farewelling Lismore and her mates here, and venturing northwards to begin her next adventure.

“This is the end of ‘us’, Andy,” she said (she never went for ‘Angus’). “You know it, I know it. No sense trying to spark something again this late, now is it?”

Reflecting on her words a few short hours later, I hated that she was right. I knew I wanted her, but equally I knew it would do neither of us any good in the long run - she was heading off in her direction, me in mine, and they didn’t coincide. She was leaving later today - not even staying for our Bangalow gig, though she’d seen us play several times before - and there our story would end.

Ruefully, painfully, I eased myself out of bed and padded towards the door. I had previous form when it came to navigating the house when (a) drunk and (b) in the dark - largely relying on Braille - so it was no great challenge negotiating my way to the slashers, and then on to the kitchen to locate some Panadol and a fuck-off-massive vessel full of water before returning to the safe haven of sleep. I half-expected to see Jeff Beck still up talking rubbish into the dawn, so the two silhouettes I could see if not hear through the glass sliding doors, nestled close together out on the balcony, pretty much explained themselves. They didn’t even notice the figure behind them in the darkness of the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards to find the non-prescription drugs and the pint glass. I cracked two paracetamols from the plastic bubble-seal packaging into my hand, and gulped them down with a Rous Water chaser.

Like a vision out of the murkiness, she emerged. Long, glossy black hair, pendulous breasts unrestrained and bounteous within her loose-fitting white T-shirt, and nothing else but a pair of white cotton panties to protect her from the night. Hang on, I realised, that’s Lena. Shit, if that’s getting a response from downstairs, I must still be drunk.

Lena looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her… and not a little embarrassed.

“Hey,” I said. “Come here often?”

She laughed softly, a guilty laugh. The only source of light in the room seemed to be Lena’s blushing face. Now that I could read the logo on her T-shirt, I could see why she was feeling a bit guilty.

“Castrol Racing,” I mused. “Now where have I seen that today already?”

“Don’t…” She looked endearingly ashamed of herself. “It’s not what you think, okay?”

“No?” I queried with a grin.

“Okay,” she conceded finally, “it is what you think.” And her smile lit the room.

“You dirty, dirty little girl,” I remarked. “I am SO proud of you.” And insisted on a high-five. “You wore him down then?”

“Kinda,” she admitted. “He didn’t need a lot of convincing.”

A moment from earlier in the evening flitted back to me - a momentary conversation circle of Kirsten, McCarthy, Angie and myself, out on the balcony at Kirsten’s place. The topic of conversation: McCarthy’s tortured love life (he was drunk enough to want to talk about it.) McCarthy was reiterating his position that there wasn’t anything between him and Lena, they’d figured out a way to be friends again, and bitterly lamenting and lambasting all those ‘other bastards’ like Andrea (and even myself) who’d accused him of still being in love with her.

Angie mused on this for a moment, sipped her RTD, and replied: “One small problem, Sam. You ARE still in love with her.”

McCarthy’s eyebrows arched so far they almost inverted themselves. “You what?”

But Angie simply repeated herself. With no malice, just a sweet smile, as though it was the most fundamental truth in the natural universe; fire is hot, water is wet, dogs chase cats, and Sam still loves Lena. It didn’t keep her up at night; she and he had never been so serious as for this realisation to cause her pain. However, it was pretty patently obvious as to why he’d never seemed interested in taking it too far.

Horrified, he turned to Kirsten, hoping for a second opinion. Kirsten merely offered a whimsical grin, and remarked that she wasn’t really sure how he could have been any more obvious about it, either.

I looked over at McCarthy, who was staring intently out over the lights of SCU and East Lismore. The unpleasant realisation hit him that he’d spent a lot of time, and effort, and anguish, trying to maintain the façade that all was well, that Lena was a ‘non-issue’… when noone with half a clue (or at least half a spoonful of female intuition) bought this at all. Angie didn’t, Kirsten didn’t, Andrea hadn’t. And Lena herself probably didn’t - why else would she she come all this way to see him?

That, it seemed, was McCarthy’s Eureka moment - that one moment of absolute clarity, when everything just makes sense. Lena’s, she admitted to me in the kitchen, had been a little earlier in the day.

“I was feeling like a total fool,” she confessed, “coming all this way, psyching myself up to see him as we drove here today… and then he wasn’t here, and I felt so let down and stupid, wondering what the fuck I was doing here.” Even in the darkness, she was blushing. “And then… I know this is stupid, I know it’s shallow… he rode into sight, all in black, on that bike… and I just knew, you know? I just felt so… I can’t explain. Just like the first time I saw him on stage at the Roundhouse…”

“Girl, whatever trips your trigger,” I suggested.

“More than that,” she countered. “It wasn’t just sexual. I felt a sense of…. propriety. Like he belonged to me and I needed to have him back. Like there was part of me missing… look, this is getting into the realms of appalling love song lyrics so I’ll just shut up, okay?”

But I understood, or as much as someone who never got into that sort of stuff himself could anyway, and knew McCarthy must have been feeling it too. The last time I’d seen McCarthy that night - OK, so it was only a couple of hours ago - was when we were preparing to head from Kirsten’s into town. First he’d offered to walk Lena back home to our place given how tired she was from driving - he’d said he’d meet us later in town but I had my doubts he’d make it back. I grabbed him as he went out the door.

“How’s things my son?” A turn of phrase I’d picked up from our old mate Fungus. It reinforced itself when on the piss.

“Chipper,” he replied. “Yourself?”

Lena, I noted, was safely out of earshot. “Pop quiz. True or false. You’re still in love with her.”

He blinked, exhaled gloomily, glanced past me to Lena waiting outside with hopeful eyes. “We’re beyond that,” he admitted reluctantly. “Now it’s more a question of how suicidally fucking stupid I’m prepared to be in terms of doing anything about it...”

“Hey,” I said. “You were stupid enough to take up riding bikes again - what’s another potentially harmful habit going to do to you?”

“You know, neither of the fucking things come with government health warnings either,” he mused. “I’m gonna write a letter to the Health Minister.” With that, he was out the door.

Needless to say, he didn’t make it back. Pity, he missed a most entertaining evening.

“So, this is going to be even harder to explain to your boss than it already is,” I offered.

“Maybe not so much,” she replied, sipping on a glass of water. “Last I heard he was about a week away from becoming your boss as well, presuming Kretin doesn’t fuck up the last of the contract negotiations. Not that you heard it from me, of course…”

And with that, she shot me a winning smile and disappeared into the darkness.

I shook my head. At four in the morning, with the stormclouds of a monumental hangover gathering on the horizon, the twin potential of the Gasket perhaps signing with Exocet, AND Lena and Sam officially Getting Back Together (not that they’d ever officially Been Together in the first place) was a bit fucking much to comprehend. After a few moments’ reflection, trying to put everything in its proper context (and failing), I topped up my pint glass and plodded back down the corridor to my room. All I knew was that there were a lot of happy endings in this house tonight… um… this morning. Sam had Lena, Jeff had Rebecca, Gasket had Exocet (apparently)… so what, I asked myself, did I have? My looks, charm and debonair wit, I supposed. At that moment, compared to that special someone, that one-and-only who made it all make sense, I kinda felt as though I had bugger-all.

I had one other thing in my favour, if only for the night and the morning after, i.e. now; curled up in my bed, there was a cool, intelligent, world-wise girl with long sandy brown hair called Kirsten, who I was going to miss a hell of a lot. She was right, of course; long-term, falling into bed together one last time was not a wise move. But long-term be damned - I was here for a good time not a long time.

Kirsten stirred as I made my return, opening one eye and regarding me with a rueful half-smile. She was completely, utterly, gorgeously naked, and wasn’t terribly bothered with concealing it.
“I did make my intentions clear enough before you got me hideously drunk and seduced me, didn’t I?” she reminded me, as though it was all my fault. “No loose ends…”

“I can’t help it if I’m irresistable,” I offered wryly.

“I’ll go with persuasive,” she was prepared to concede. “Well, since you’re here, you may as well make yourself useful…”

In hindsight, I remember that night for more than just Kirsten’s farewell, or any of the other insights of the evening. Not that we knew it but it was our farewell too, in terms of being a ‘Lismore’ band or even a ‘North Coast’ band on a permanent basis. Chateau Dodgy was still our home (or at least our postal address) for the rest of '99 - three-quarters of our lineup still had SCU degrees to finish, which we somehow managed to do (I’m not even sure how we fitted it all in but it was pretty half-arsed in the end - Marty, Phil and I all had to switch over to part-time study loads for our final year and just managed to scrape passes in our last remaining subjects in order to receive our respective important bits of paper) and of course Lismore and the North Coast was always the spiritual home of the Gasket, our family and friends, and our strongest fanbase.

But with our band about to sign with a big-city record label (even if Exocet actually operated out of a tiny spare room in Richie Richardson’s Surry Hills terrace, aside from the work he did on the side out of his editorial office at the Drum Media), and with our nominal lead monkey toppling headlong in love with a girl whose work, home and lifestyle resoundingly anchored her to Sydney, we couldn’t base ourselves out in the sticks for much longer. It made sense to be in Sydney, from a career perspective if for no other reason. Which, to me, there was.

Then again, things were rolling to a standstill in Lismore, and I was getting itchy feet again. It was all pointing towards an inevitable conclusion: it might be time to move on again. Or it might just be time to dump a bucket of Domestos down the shower recess.