El Scorcho

Goddamn you half-Japanese girls.
You do it to me every time.
- Weezer, 1998

I woke with a start. Not a particularly nice start, either. I’d been dreaming about my wedding day, except that my bride left me at the altar for a granite-jawed guy in a Reds jersey. So I woke with both a start, whatever that is, and a horrible, empty, sinking feeling in my chest. My fiancee had left me, or was in the process of leaving me, if we wanted to start facing reality squarely in the teeth, and yet I was suddenly fixated on a girl I’d dated for a handful of months, ten years before, and hadn’t seen since. Who I’d cheated on with a flighty lead songstress who called herself Artemisia. Artemisia, for Christ’s sake. Who turned into a receptionist at a dental practice.

My dreams usually mean nothing and are more incoherent than Mel Gibson at a RBT. They’re nonsense. Meaningless, illogical gibberish. So when something recognisably recognisable happens, it tends to stay with me.

“You OK?” asked a soft voice one bed across from mine.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Sorry, was I snoring?”

“No, but you seemed pretty agitated,” she admitted. “Want to share?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Something about a wedding day?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “I was dreaming about Bethany.” I rolled over to face her. “As you can probably tell, it’s not going that well.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s probably my fault.”

“No it’s not,” I lied again. I was getting good at it, really.

She let the stillness hang in the air. Seemed as good a place as any to leave it. “How did you guys meet?”

“I’ve already told you…”

“No you haven’t.”

I was too tired to argue. Too tired full stop. There was a confessional quality to those dark, quizzical eyes of Lena’s, which almost compelled you to tell your innermost stories. Not a good thing when you were talking about a girl who wrote news articles for a living. Not good if you don’t wish to end up in the news, that is.

“No, I haven’t, have I,” I agreed finally.

When Flange Gasket finished, I told Lena, my overriding emotion was anger. Anger that it’d all been taken away from us (or rather, me), then bitterness and regret that it’d been taken away in such a lousy way. And a bit of heartbreak as well, which we don’t need to go into here. I had no interest whatsoever in side projects or solo albums, or music in general. The Jeff was right: by the end, I hated music altogether. So while everyone else wanked on with whatever they chose to wank on with, I did what I always did when I felt down. I went to Uncle Doug’s bike shop and underwent some retail therapy. I bought a ‘91 BMW R 80 G/S with a long-range tank, luggage rack and panniers for touring, packed up my swag and headed off to circumnavigate the country. First, up the Queensland coast, then across the Top End into the Territory, all the way around the WA coast, back through South Australian wine country… that was the plan, anyway. I was in no hurry. I’d give myself a year to see how far I made it around, then to review my progress after that.

So up the Queensland coast I headed, taking my time, cruising maybe a couple of hundred kays each week or two, staying in Noosa for a couple of weeks, Bundy a week, Rocky a week, Airlie Beach for three weeks… staying in backpackers, more for the lifestyle than the cost-effectiveness… seeing the sights, getting monstrously pissed, banging morally flexible visitors to our fair land… I think you can probably see where this is going. The phrase ‘Tour de Pants: The Reunion Special’ wasn’t mentioned in dispatches back to Jeff and the folks, but in hindsight, I think it’s pretty obvious I was trying to reach back to happier times.

There were a couple of other groups of backpackers also travelling up the coast at around the same time - you could recognise them by the vividly-muralled campervans on the highway (the Wicked campers thing was just starting to kick off) which became very familiar as time went on; the Dutch girls in the General Lee (bright orange with ‘01’ on the side and the Confederate Flag on the roof), the Celts (assorted Scots, Irish and one random Welsh firebrand) in the Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ Hiace, and the Kiwis, fittingly, in the van emblazoned with green and silver Maori symbols. We hit it off straight away. We went on island trips and rainforest walks together, we hit the bars and pubs together, and ended up in bed together. Just with the girls, I’d underline. The best thing about moving in foreign backpacker circles was that they pretty much didn’t know who I was, or had been; I was just the crazy Aussie on the bike. Sure, many of the locals we came across had a vague-to-decent idea who I was, or at least wanted to know why I looked familiar. “I just have one of those faces,” I replied. Or denied all knowledge. Or cranked some random accent. Then again, other times when it suited, or when I’d been officially ID’d and there was no escaping it, I just revelled in my B-list celebrity status and the free drinks and female company it attracted. I’d spent the last five or six years living off it, why stop now?

Things changed by the time I reached Cairns, in March. In Cairns, or rather in Port Douglas, I met Midori. She was a Japanese girl who worked as a tour guide and translator for one of the big reef tour companies, and spoke English with an endearing Aussie accent. Most Japanese get taught English by Seppos and as such end up with American accents; not Midori. I liked that about her. She was also absolutely gorgeous, her skin tanned brown by the sun, her figure toned by days spent diving and snorkelling. In the ultimate tourist town, where everything is transient - the visitors, the experiences - Midori seemed uniquely grounded, centred, real in a world of fakeness. She was also a SCUBA instructor, and we took advantage of quieter days in midweek to get out on the reef where she taught me how to dive. On the odd occasion, when noone was around, we explored a few other techniques underwater as well... but Midori preferred dry land under her feet, or at least smooth satin bedsheets against her skin, when it came to those sorts of adventures. Another field in which she had enough talent to be able to serve as an instructor.
Maybe it was because I was a bit lost and a bit vulnerable, a long way from home sustained by months of shallow physical relationships… but within weeks, I fell for her. A reflex, rebound thing, maybe, but I felt it nonetheless. I was still trying to figure out how to tell her about it when she broke the news that she was heading back to Japan in a week. To her boyfriend. Of seven years. Ouch.

So that put a bit of a dampener on proceedings. As did the realisation that my cash burn situation on this trip was becoming pretty critical. I’d been used to having, if not a huge excess of money, then an elegant sufficiency so as to not need to worry about it. However, no longer; I’d been chewing through up to a grand a week, and I’d been on the road four and a half months. And furthermore, I was done. I was tired, I was wrung out and I’d lost interest in riding on into the sunset any further. Time to go home and get on with it, Angus.

So I rode home, sold most of my music gear, traded my Monaro in for a Magna to pay off my Visa bill, and set about figuring out what to do next. It was a no-brainer, really. Despite spending seven or eight years at uni I was really only qualified for one occupation. In fact, in the state I lived I wasn’t even qualified for that - I had to enrol at Griffith Uni for a bridging course to make my NSW-awarded teaching ticket acceptable for employment in Queensland primary and secondary schools.

But there was an unexpected surprise. Well, maybe not a surprise, because I knew what I was getting myself into, given it was why I'd picked Griffith in the first place: my lecturer was Dr Kirsten Dallow, an elegant, unfussed thirty-something honey-blonde with looks, brains, and a long memory. Long enough to remember the loyal support I’d offered her when she was a SCU Honours student called Kirsten Leonard, before her Masters (which turned into a PhD midway through), her academic career, and her marriage to a tax agent named Rob. With Kirsten’s help, I breezed through what amounted to a refresher course, then was parachuted into a relatively painless debut placement at Holland Park State School, for which I was very grateful; many of the first-time teachers I’d known from SCU who were still in the NSW system had been dumped into nightmare placements with psychotic classes, oppressive teaching loads and unsupportive fellow staff, both at primary and secondary level, and they’d fucked off to do something else with their lives very promptly. This time around I’d been clever enough to specialise, where I could, in primary teaching; I knew there was a relative deficiency of male teachers at primary level, which meant I’d be more sought-after than perhaps otherwise.

So for a year I leased a one-bedroom flat in the student area near Griffith Uni, and rented out the place on Straddie to offset the mortgage payments on the ‘beach house’. It was a solitary life, but a stable, balanced one. Out of bed, off to school, back home in the afternoon, meal for one, TV and bed. No drinking, no partying, no casual banging. Call it quiet reflection, call it psychological rebuilding, call it detox. Call it boring as all Christ, because it was. But it was necessary. Probably not entirely necessary, however, was having a three-month affair with Kirsten behind her husband’s back, towards the end of that year. Her marriage was stagnating, and Kirsten, as I’ve discussed previously, wasn’t the sort of girl to let things stagnate. We shouldn’t have, but we did. I’m not proud. But then again, I’m not repentant.

Anyway, that soured things for me at Holland Park - it was one of Kirsten’s friends who was the head teacher who’d offered me the position - so when our affair was uncovered, I felt it most appropriate to move on. Or at least move back home to Straddie, where I was reasonably confident of getting some work. At first it was just casual work in the bayside schools - being positioned out on the island meant I couldn’t get over there fast enough in the mornings to easily cover for illnesses, but I did manage a four-month placement at Redland Bay State High covering for their Science head who was recovering from injuries reportedly incurred from falling off a horse. Scuttlebutt suggested his health problems were actually caused by falling off the wagon, but that was no concern of mine - it gave me valuable experience teaching science in the secondary system, which I figured was useful given my science degree. And then Bill Howard at Dunwich State School took a punt on the new guy, which I’ll always be grateful for, and I was away - no more ridiculously early starts in order to get the first ferry across the bay, or at least not so many of them. Soon I was getting calls from the high school on the island as well - a few days here and there, then a block of two weeks, then finally a full month covering for their phys-ed teacher who was about to jump ship to the new Christian school that was opening just out of town. Not that I knew two fifths of bugger all how to teach phys-ed, but was that likely to hold me back? To quote Andrew Symonds, nah mate naaaaahh.

The Friday before that block of work was to start, I was subbing for one of the music teachers who’d been taken down by a stress related illness brought on by screaming at year 8C to stop playing all at once so they could start playing all at once - trying to stop them from what our old music teacher called ‘wanking’, i.e. playing for noone’s enjoyment other than your own. My strategy, honed over numerous similar battles to this, was to loudly declare a five minute ‘wanking’ free-for-all on entering the room (I did come up with a more salubrious title for it, something like ‘expression session’). The deal was, play anything you like, as loud as you like. But if I hear so much as a peep out of those instruments afterwards, other than when we’re playing together, bad stuff will happen. Usually I warned the teachers of any adjoining classes about the likelihood of some sort of din in the opening minutes of the period, but that morning, I’d been a bit behind schedule. No matter. Off we go, people. Your five minutes of random noise starts…. nnnnow.

And… time’s up. I clapped my hands together, called for a halt, and when that didn’t work, picked up a pair of cymbals and crashed them together to hideously loud effect.

“OK folks,” I said, “that’s all you get. Now we’ll move on to the piece Mrs Trott wants you to work on, which is Chariots of Fire… oh sod that. Who’d rather do some Powderfinger?”

The class looked dumbfounded, staring back at me.

“What, no Burnt Fanning fans in this morning?”

Some giggling, but still the staring. And a female voice over my shoulder, with a pointed, “Ah, excuse me…”

I turned. Blonde girl in her mid-twenties, white T-shirt, black bike pants, joggers, seemingly one of the PE staff, what the gents of Hayabusa would have described as 'thermally conductive', not looking entirely pleased with me.

“Well hello there,” I said, faking bravado to cover for my embarrassment in putting another professional (possibly a permanent member of staff) offside through my slightly unconventional approach. “You must be Ms…”

“Toogood,” she replied flatly, unimpressed. “And you are…”

“Mr Young,” I said. “What can 8C do for you, Ms Toogood?”

She looked me squarely in the eye; hers were a piercing, unwavering blue.

“If it’s not too much to ask,” she responded evenly, “10A would appreciate some peace and quiet for their half-yearly Health and Wellbeing written exam...”

I could feel the collective intake of breath of the class. Ooohhh.

“…I think we can probably arrange something, Ms Toogood,” I offered.

“Thanks so much, Mr Young,” she replied. With that, she turned on her heel and left. Suitably chastened, I closed the door behind her. Gently.

“Well,” I remarked, in a bid to save face in front of my audience, “that wasn’t too good now was it?”

I didn’t think that joke deserved the merciless round of groans it received.

At lunch I was asked into the office of the Head of Leftovers. The department wasn’t really called Leftovers but that was basically what it was made up of - all the subjects which didn’t neatly fit under headings like Maths, Science, English/History, Social Sciences etc. Music and Physical Education (incorporating PE, Personal Development and Health and Wellbeing) fitted under this umbrella, and shared a faculty room. I wasn’t sure why Music didn’t go with Visual Arts, given that they were both arts (visual or performing), but judging by the way the Arts Master got on with the head teacher for Music (or conspicuously failed to get on with him), I could hazard a guess at a probable reason. His task, other than surviving until 3pm Friday so he could go to the pub, was not in fact to bawl me out for disrupting Ms Toogood’s 10A class that morning, but to introduce me to the phys-ed teacher I’d be covering for, such that we could compare notes prior to her buggering off to pastures new. Andrew Young, I’d like you to meet… Bethany Toogood.

I offered my most charmingly ironic smile as we shook hands as though we’d never met. “Is it Beth or Bethany?”

“It’s Bethany,” she replied distantly.

“Sure thing,” I noted. “Andy or Angus is fine with me.”

She nodded, with a polite, non-committal smile which said little, but it was enough to tell me she pretty much thought I was a total idiot. I’d have to see about changing her world view quick-smart on that, I resolved. Our discussion was brief; she’d been teaching straight from a textbook, something I always tried to avoid if I could, as it tended to make for uninspiring lessons.

“They’re only as uninspiring as the teacher who gives them, Andrew,” she remarked, peeling her lunchtime banana. Touché. “So how long have you been teaching for?” she asked, feigning the minimum interest in me that she thought was polite, seeing as though we were both stuck here until lunchtime finished.

“A couple of years,” I said.

“You seem a little older than that,” she said. “Than most new graduates, I mean.”

“Yeah…” I’d rehearsed the story beforehand. It was pretty polished by now, to be fair. “Took a couple of years off after my undergrad degree to travel around, played in a band for a while… then got my ticket,” I shrugged casually. Sure, the timing was the inverse of reality given I'd gotten my ticket before the band had taken off, and the phrase ‘getting my ticket’ would be better described as ‘dipping out with a DipEd’, but I wasn’t here to tell the truth. I was here to tell a selective version of the truth which played better with key demographics. Pity this particular key demographic just wasn’t interested. Maybe she knew more about my history than she was telling, maybe she didn’t. But Bethany seemed as politely unimpressed with me as she was disinterested in the whole concept of being here at work. Unsurprisingly, given it was her last day here, and she’d had to spend her lunchtime babysitting a mature-entry newbie with very antisocial habits when it came to classroom noise pollution.

The afternoon brought two more classes of Mrs Trott’s that I was required to cover; a year 9 elective music class, where we were doing a unit on reggae (cue half an hour of Bob Marley... hey, at least it wasn’t the Cat Empire) and then her year 11 history and theory of music class who just wanted to talk about the history and theory of being on tour with Powderfinger, The Living End, You Am I et al. And through most of it I was thinking, like some stupid lovesick teenager: how do I get her to notice me? Not because I was lovesick in any way, shape or form, but because my battle-scarred ego didn’t take kindly to a pretty girl completely blowing me off like that. Not that I was accustomed to having girls flinging themselves at me from across the room - not any more anyway - but being treated with cool disdain, even verging on contempt… even my rather bruised and battered ego, washed up and well out of practice, couldn’t have THAT, now could it?

I ran into Bethany again in the Leftovers staff room at close of business. She’d showered after her last PE class, and had changed into a clingy pair of grey-black skinny jeans and a tightly waisted blouse in what Tong Greig would delight in calling ‘nupple punk’. She carried it off well; feminine without being overly ‘girlie’ girl. And very compelling. She even smiled at me - a vaguely condescending smile, as though she was humouring me, but it still played well with this demographic, key or otherwise.

“Don’t forget,” she said, handing me a dog-eared copy of the textbook she’d been running the class with. “Homework for the weekend. Unless you’ve got other plans, of course.”

“Well, I was planning a surfing trip with some mates down in Byron…” A complete lie. I could barely be arsed to travel a few hundred metres to Cylinder Beach for a surf, let alone spending half a day by road and ferry to get to Broken Head. It was just a desperate attempt to sound youthful and interesting, rather than admit that I was probably going to spend much of the weekend camped on the couch watching Fox Sports.

“You’re a surfer?”

“I surf,” I offered self-deprecatingly. “Maybe not quite a surfer... but yeah, I surf.”

That demure little smile shone on, mostly from her eyes.

“I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf,” she offered.

Was that just small talk or was she throwing a little bait my way to see if I’d bite? And how did I manage to get so woefully fucking out of practice at this stuff?

“…I could probably offer some tutelage there,” I suggested. She had me - hook, line, sinker, lure, rod, reel, outboard and fourteen foot tinnie. “If you’re interested, of course.”

“I might be.” She glanced around the staff room, by now near-deserted - it was five past three, you realise. “Any plans for tonight, Andrew?” she inquired.

“Depends,” I said evasively. “Why?”

“Some of us are heading out for drinks in Point Lookout,” she replied. “Farewell drinks for those of us who are finishing up today.” I had the impression the new school was poaching Dunwich State High staff on a wholesale basis. Which meant, promisingly, that there could be quite a bit of work in the offing here at the state high; maybe even a permanent position, if I played my cards right. “You’re welcome to join us, if you like. I could do with some interesting company.”

How could I say no to that? It was the first indication I’d had all day that she found me interesting.

Her comment was put into its proper context when I realised who the other staffers were who were leaving - mostly older, more established, more conservative teachers, not exactly the lives of this or any other party. What intrigued was the relative lack of their fellow staffers to help see them off - obviously taking Gerald Toogood’s thirty pieces of silver, inflation-adjusted for 2006, didn’t make them particularly popular with their former professional colleagues at DSHS. Short of international modelling, teaching is probably the bitchiest profession known to humanity. At least some of the younger rentacrowd teachers turned up for some drinks - the kind who’d turn up for drinks even if drinks weren’t organised - so it wasn’t all boring old farts. Even so, Bethany seemed more interested in me than her future workmates, judging by the way she stayed close to me. Either that…. or she was just being polite, since she’d been the one who’d invited me along.

I was starting to decide that I liked her. I could read her about as well as I could Mandarin, but I liked her. Other than the obvious, what I liked about her was that she told it like it was - not in a blatant, abrasive way like a Lauren, but in a cool, thoughtful manner. I wouldn’t ever claim she was without pretentions, but she was pragmatic about the advantages her background had brought her. She accepted that it was nepotism that had secured her a position at Stradbroke Christian College (to give the new school its official title, run by Moreton Island Ministries Inc), but wasn’t apologetic about it; she knew she was no worse a teacher than many others who’d been granted permanent positions here or elsewhere, so if that was what it took to further her career, so be it. She had clear ideas of why she’d gone into teaching, and what she aimed to get out of it.

So why did I become a teacher? I mused over her question, long enough for the next round of drinks to make it over, and gave the answer that made sense when I’d first decided to dip out with a DipEd at the end of undergrad in '97: “Because I didn’t want to become a scientist.” I didn’t add the minor disclaimer that with a lower second class grade in my year-long honours research project, science didn’t really want me to become a scientist either.

“You were a scientist?”

“Trained as one. Honours in molecular genetics at UQ.” I swigged another mouthful of Heineken, hoping I’d managed to tread the fine line between self-confidence and self-promotion. “But it wasn’t me… I mean the amount of self-sacrifice those people put themselves through, proportional to the return on their investment… it’s just not something you go into unless you’re pathologically obsessed with science and the idea of being a researcher.” Exhibit A for the prosecution, Mark ‘Dr Cletus’ Cleaver.

Bethany nodded wryly, as if to say So it wasn’t just that you were rubbish at it, and becoming a teacher was your only viable option... I knew it, too. She had my measure; I hadn’t been in hand-to-hand combat for a very long time, and it showed.

She regarded me with a flirtaceous smile, as if to take pity on me. Then again, maybe I wasn’t being entirely fair on myself; she’d been quaffing champagne like it was Powerade after a vigourous gym session, and was progressively finding me more and more interesting company.

“If you’re still looking for work, and if you’re any good, SCC would probably be interested in you. Your versatility would be a definite plus. Of course, you’d have to learn not to make more noise than your class… and you might want to stop dressing like you’re trying to pick up in a Gold Coast nightclub.”

“So will you have to stop dressing like you’re trying to be picked up in a Gold Coast nightclub then?”

Those piercing blue eyes narrowed. Ah, I’d managed to tease out a response, at last. She was somewhere between wanting very strongly to slap me, and starting to dwell over some alternative skin contact options, all of a sudden. The alcohol was doing lovely things to her; I was most envious of it. I was starting to like her a lot, despite - or probably because - I couldn’t read her. Maybe because she was an enigma, maybe because I was woefully out of practice, as previously observed. Who was this girl? The dismissive ice-queen I’d encountered earlier in the day was melting into a flirtaceous, quick-witted party girl, but which (if either) was really her? Further research would be required. At least THAT shit I was better than lower second-class at.

We kicked on with a few other fellow drunks to the surf club, where we imbibed a little more, flirted a lot more, and danced to a particularly indifferent top 40 dance mix from house DJ Scotty (moonlighting behind the wheels of steel - his real job was running the bar). Well, Bethany and the girls danced while the males sat around drinking. Someone very witty, presumably Scotty, slotted The Meaning Of Life In 25 Words Or Less into the set; when it comes to your past, you can run but you can’t hide. As Marty’s soaring pop harmonies struggled to fill the room through the indifferent house PA system, I could feel without needing to look the odd glance being flicked my way. But not from Bethany. As the song played I caught her eye and with her complete absence of recognition, the thought struck me - actually it ran me over and left me lying in its wake, secretly thrilled to bits by the idea - she doesn’t know about Gasket. She doesn’t know I’m anything other than a guy who teaches science because he’s not dedicated/mad/good enough to be a scientist.

All of a sudden, I liked her a hell of a lot more.

The music just kept plummetting downhill right until closing, but I was pretty much oblivious to that, because I was totally focused on Bethany; and despite her cold, dispassionate defences, she on me. The night, and the alcohol, and our strong physical attraction were getting the better of us. Cold, dispassionate logic said this wasn’t clever. We barely knew each other - she wasn’t exactly letting her guard down, despite the invitation in her eyes and the intoxicating thrill of what they might promise - and what she knew about me lacked some major elements of the whole story, let’s say. And let’s face it, could you possibly name a less appropriate sort of person to have a one-night stand with than a co-worker? A flatmate, maybe? Ah, yeah. Courtesy Lauren, my record wasn’t that reputable on that count either. Granted, that had been ten years and at least three lifetimes ago, but like I say, when it comes to your past…

It was still a humid, sticky night when we left (or rather when the venue finished trading for the night), though a cool south-easterly breeze took a bit of the sting out of the air. I selflessly offered to walk her home, cool, relaxed and charming and making her laugh with my laconic wit. Inside I was a thirty-year old teenager again, giddy, drunk and clueless - like with Nerissa all those years ago - and hoping desperately that she felt the same way about me as I was starting to feel about her. As we walked, the seabreeze rapidly stiffened, and suddenly the heavens opened with a torrential downpour. Did we care? No. We sprinted giggling up the hill until we (meaning me) lost our breath, whereupon we sheltered under a tree and she kissed me like I hadn’t been kissed in a long, long time. It did nothing to help me get my breath back. My head was swimming as I reciprocated her kiss, her body surrendering against the trunk of the tree. The warm, liberating rain torrented down, the world was going crazy, and I was loving it. I felt alive, for the first time in a frighteningly long time. Maybe since my affair with Kirsten - and that was more the thrill of trying not to get caught. This… I didn’t know what this was. But I liked it. A lot.
All over one another like infatuated teenagers, we finally reached her parents’ place, an imposing two-storey house set into the hillside not too far from my place. There was never any doubt she was going to invite me in, I knew it. Until we actually got there, and she didn’t. That was when she explained, between searching kisses, the bit about it being her parents’ place. And suddenly she wasn’t that dismissive, perpetually unimpressed ice-queen. She was a sweet little girl caught up in a situation spiralling rapidly out of her control, and lost somewhere between her good nature and her dizzying passion.

“My place is just a little further up the hill,” I whispered into her ear, nuzzling under her chin.

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” she murmured back, before her tongue delved back into my mouth, her arms around my shoulders.

“You sure you don’t want me to just sneak upstairs with you right now?” I offered. “Mummy and Daddy don’t need to know…”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you. You dirty, dirty boy.” She cast a glance over her shoulder, then up to the upper storey kitchen window: no lights were on, so noone was home. Or awake, at least. She glanced back over her shoulder, and this time I followed her gaze. To the shadecloth-shrouded greenhouse, hidden in the trees at the bottom of their garden, where her father grew his prize-winning orchids.

A wicked, guilty little smile, which I fell in love with immediately.

“I’ve always wanted to make love in a tropical rainforest,” she confessed.

“You dirty, dirty girl,” I marvelled.

“That’ll probably do,” Lena declared. “Enough about Bethany’s prize-winning orchid… Can we move on?”

I laughed softly. “Okay, okay. We’ll leave out the grubby details. The sweaty, sticky, pulsating details…”

“You need to get out more,” she noted.

“And you,” I said.

“So what then?” she wanted to know. “Love at first sight, happily ever after?”

“Not so much. I promised to call, which I did, and when I did she said we needed to talk, and we did, and… well basically she told me she wasn’t ready for anything like what had happened between us. She was a little distraught - not crying her eyes out or anything, but she was definitely distressed about what had happened. She wasn’t that sort of girl, she’d never done anything like that before, it was far too sudden, she didn’t know what she really felt for me but she’d only just come out of a long relationship with someone which had ended messily…”

“Isn’t that the sort of schtick you come up with?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not that sort of boy, I’ve never done anything like that before…”

“So how did you react to that?”

“Gently,” I replied. “I believed her, for one thing, whereas you clearly don’t…”

“I’m making no judgement here.”

“Anyway, she was telling the truth. She was hurt and ashamed and wasn’t comfortable at all about the whole thing.” Not to mention her difficulty in walking straight, heh heh. Ahem. “So I backed right off, and began courting her all over again, very gently. We went out for coffee together the following week, just trying to get to know each other - to feel each other out, basically...”

“Wasn’t that what had got you in this situation in the first place?”

I chose not to dignify that with a response. “Anyway I took her out for dinner on the Friday night, and that went swimmingly, and I kissed her goodnight on her doorstep like a gentleman…”

“Instead of dragging her off into the bushes for a quick knee-trembler?”

Forging on regardless, with a withering look: “My invitation to take her surfing stood, so the next weekend we went down to Cylinder Beach with a couple of old boards, and class was in session, basically. Of course, my hand placements were always completely professional at all times…” I grinned. “Look, you know how it is. You try to have a normal, progressing, developing relationship with someone you like, and you care about, but once you’ve slept with them… it’s just not happening. The line’s been crossed. Once you’ve seen them naked, once you’ve known them in that intimate detail, it’s not like you can ever go back to being just good friends, as we were trying to pretend we could.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she quipped. “I actually have morals.”

“Ask your little sister then,” I responded. “You know, come to think of it, Agnes and I have always struggled to be friends ever since, too…”

“Oh good,” she said. “So we’re going to revisit the tale of how you seduced my little sister at my 25th birthday party, are we? Glorious.”

Which wasn’t fair. Agnes seduced me. Though given that she was wearing, preposterously, a ridiculously clingy PVC nun’s habit, and (as it turned out) precious little whatsoever underneath, I hadn’t needed a lot of encouragement. Lena’s 25th, at her parents’ massive place in Toorak, had been fancy dress; I don’t think the birthday girl hadn’t expected it to become fancy undress, nor for the fancy undressing to take place in her bedroom. Though that was largely on her filthy little sister’s insistence, mainly because she wanted to watch herself in the full-length mirror. Crazy and narcissistic; that’s our little Agnieszka, bless her little cotton panties. When she bothers wearing any. Of course, I’d expected to get one hell of an almighty bollocking from Lena afterwards, not only for getting nasty with her little sister, but doing so in her childhood bedroom. However, when she found out next morning, Lena had just shaken her head sadly, like it was as inevitable as a moth self-immolating against a flame. She put a hand on my shoulder, looked me squarely in the eye, and said: “Be careful, boy. She’s a handful. She will hurt you.”

And she was right. Agnes subsequently dropped me like last week’s fishwrappers, regardless of the fact I was in a band with a number one hit record and everything. Seemingly she’d done it almost entirely to wind her sister up, who’d simply refused to take the bait. Except when I brought the topic up.

“Yeah, well don’t worry. I was thinking of you the whole time…”

“I’m going to sleep,” she declared, and rolled over.

And so was I. To dream, again, of losing Jessica at the altar. Or was it Bethany? This time, the blonde’s hair obscured her face. And one or two other changes. This time, intriguingly, Agnes was one of the bridesmaids. And the dream itself would have gained an altogether different censor’s rating to the earlier one.