Surgical focus

With surgical focus
She stared at me and said
I'm willing to reach out
Get in to your head
And I will keep you
And cleanse you
She glared at me and wept
A change is not going to hurt you
Not this time
- Guided By Voices, 1999

“Okay,” Beth admitted, “so it’s not exactly the most rock ‘n’ roll exit in your career…”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I once left a show in Newy being doubled by McCarthy on a nicked postie bike.”

“Why?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I explained. “Probably becase we were very, very drunk.”

While a lemon-yellow New Beetle wasn’t the least rock ‘n’ roll mode of transport I’d ever left a gig in, it wasn’t too far from it. Then again, we didn’t end up in a drainage culvert as Sam and I had on the postie bike, despite Beth’s equally, erm, ‘enthusiastic’ approach to driving. And then again, it wasn’t Beth and I who were pulled over by the fuzzy muff on the outskirts of town – that dubious honour went to the boys and girls in Marty’s cop-magnet BMW M5. Both ourselves and the two T’s in the Transit van made it through the RBT checkpoint unmolested, and beat Marty and his 500 Teutonic horsepower home by a fair distance.

The planned post-match quiets went by the wayside. Phil was keen-as to go into town and catch up with some of his local muso mates who’d shown for the gig, and the girls were happy to go along with it, gamely trying to badger the boss (well, dB’s onsite foreman) into coming along. No such luck; Marty had one beer back at the house, and flaked out completely. Beth didn’t seem that keen, so we went along with the ‘they’ve got catching up to do’ wink-wink nudge-nudge banter, and waved them goodbye as they climbed into a cab and headed into town. I kinda wanted to go with, not because I particularly wanted to go out in Byron again, but because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be left alone with Beth. Sounds batshit insane I realise, but there wasn’t that crazy-awesome, could-explode-into-sex-at-any-moment vibe about tonight. It was more about ‘let’s see how many feet Angus can cram in his mouth and still manage to say more dumb shit’. Like I said, she knew her role a whole lot better than I did, and whatever game she was playing now, she had the advantage over me of actually knowing the rules.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For?...”

“You think I’m here checking up on you, or something,” she exhaled. “I’m not. I just wanted to see you play. Much as that seems impossible for you to believe… it’s true. I wanted to find out who you are,” she said. “And I figured I mightn’t get another chance. I mean I’m not really your target Big Day Out demographic, am I? And Gold Coast’s sold out anyway…”

“We can sort you something. Friend of the band, I’m sure we can rort some VIP passes…”

“It’s two weeks away,” she said.

“Nine days, actually,” I grinned. “It can be done.”

“A lot can happen in nine days,” she maintained, and I realised she meant two weeks as a long time. “You mightn’t want me as a friend in nine days, of the band or otherwise…”

“Planning something I should know about?”

She shook her head. “No, but let’s face it… you’re already getting sick of me, aren’t you? I mean, I understand, it’s cool. It’s not the first time it’s happened. I’m a bit intense…” What got me was the matter-of-fact, dispassionate way she said it, as though she’d had the date marked on a calendar that I’d start growing tired of her. Pre-determined. “It’s not normal behaviour to drive 200 kays for a gig, stay up all night on four Red Bulls and a handful of No-Doze, then drive back before daylight…”

“You’re staying here, surely?”

“What, on this sand dune?” she laughed. “It’s a little breezy…”

We were lying on the downslope of the beach-facing sand dunes, amongst the grass, watching the phosphorescent whitewash of the breaking waves in the moonlight. It would have been romantic, had either of us not been pretty much fucked up beyond repair in that respect. Sex, we could do. We could understand that. Anything beyond that, we weren’t really equipped for. Too many bits missing or broken.

“At the house.”

“Like I told Beck,” she reminded me, “I have work in the morning.”

I pulled a face. A disapproving, protective-boyfriend face. Which she hated.

“Don’t worry, rock star,” she muttered sarcastically. “It’s been done before. I’m a trained professional… No way I’m sleeping after that lot anyway. I’m not sleeping at the moment as it is, so I thought, screw it. I can sleepwalk through tomorrow, it’s not much more than childminding.”

A cool seabreeze rippled off the surf, but Beth had salvaged her pastel-pink cardy from the Beetle – I did mention she was in full Christian soldier uniform, yeah? – so it wasn’t the cold that was making her shiver. Probably that cocktail of artificial stimulants she’d swallowed. I couldn’t let her drive back tomorrow. Today. Whatever. I’d drive her back myself, even if it meant fucking off some of Maddy’s promotional appointments for the day, many of which seemed decidedly Michael Mouse anyway.

“I’m sorry I fucked up your night,” she said softly.

“You didn’t,” I replied. Her attempts at apologising for absolutely nothing annoyed me even more the second time. Fishing for reassurance wasn’t a look I’d associated with her.

“No?” She looked at me with surgical focus. We used to cover Surgical Focus years ago. Blame Marty, king of all the Buffy fanbois. “If I wasn’t here, where would you be?”

“Probably crashed out in bed.”

“Hitting on hot barmaids,” she corrected. “Look, I didn’t come here to check up on you, or to stop you… doing what you do. But it’s kinda worked out that way, and it’s not what I meant to do.”

“Why wasn’t it?” I wanted to know. “Any self-respecting girlfriend would have done the same.”

“Self-respecting,” she mused. “Interesting choice of words, Angus.”

I thought ‘girlfriend’ was the contentious choice myself, but anyway.

“I mean,” I said, “I’d expect you to care. I’d expect you be pissed off. I’d want you to be. I’d be.”

“You don’t belong to me,” she pointed out, “any more than I do to you. And it’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I know I can’t do anything about it.”

“Apart from leaving little passive-aggressive notes in my wallet…”

“Any more or less passive-aggressive than texting me to tell me you’re planning to sleep with a bargirl?”

Judging by the lights, it was a busy night for traffic off the coast, a veritable convoy of big container ships trolling by.

“Why didn’t you sleep with her, Angus?”

“Who?” It was blatantly obvious who, I was just stalling, poorly. “Because I didn’t want to, and I hadn’t even asked yet whether she wanted to, for that matter. This is all so close to totally fucking irrelevant it’s not funny.”

“I just wanted to know why you’ve been so weird with me tonight. I know me turning up is random as hell, but I wasn’t expecting to be as unpopular as I am.”

“You what?”

“If you were any less happy that I was here,” she contended, “I’d already have turned around and gone home.” Then laughed ironically and added. “Probably will. Have to anyway… I’d just like to find out what I fucked up. Did I cramp your style? Was there someone else you were hoping for? An old flame?”

“No.” Not entirely true, but close enough for government work. One day, I reasoned, if I’m lucky, I’ll find a girl who isn't able to read me fucking shitloads better than I can read her.

“Then what?”

Well, here we go.

“Beth, you live in your own reality, yeah? And you make up stories and change facts and play roles in order to keep that reality intact. And I know why that is and I understand why you need to do that. But I care a lot about those guys, my family, Beck and Jeff.”

“And you don’t want me lying to them.”

“I don’t want you playing games with them,” I softened.

“Let’s call it what it is, shall we? I’m a liar. A drama queen, a fraud and a liar. Yeah?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Pretty much,” she replied sharply.

“Well, if you want to call it that, let’s call it that. I’m not saying you don’t have justification. I’m not even saying that it’s your problem. It’s mine. If I didn’t understand as much as I do about you… which is fuck all, I realise… then ignorance would be bliss, I wouldn’t care what you told them. But let’s face it, Beth – this reality of yours that you’ve created, you’ve sold that to everyone, even your own family. If that’s all a lie, is there really anyone you don’t lie to?”

“You,” she said.

I really didn’t like how much I wanted to believe her.

Then she added, “Of course, I’m probably lying about that as well.”

And smiled that ironic little smile of hers. And in that moment I gave up trying to figure her out, because I was shit at it, and decided to concentrate on stuff I understood. Like sex. Luckily, she seemed to have reached the same conclusion, probably had weeks ago. I pulled her over to me and we kissed searchingly on the sand, hands roaming towards all the usual places, her tongue searching inside my mouth. And I do mean searching.

“Just seeing if you’re a liar as well,” she explained.

“Am I?”

“Not on this evidence,” she admitted, and kissed me again. “But then again, it’s not enough to exonerate you.” And began going about the process of gathering more forensic evidence, as to whether she could taste another woman on my breath, or on my skin, or, um, anywhere else…

Yeah I figured you’d guess where that was going. Or at least which direction.

We lay on the cool of the sand, Beth and I, staring up at the stars, and tried to figure out which of us could mis-identify the most constellations. I’d forgotten a lot more than I’d remembered, while Beth at least had the excuse of psychological illness and long-term use of antidepressants to fall back on ref. loss of memory.

“Is that Orion?”

“That’s the saucepan thingy.”

“Orion is the saucepan thingy, isn’t it?”

“Oh fuck, I don’t know. Yes?” No. About the only one I’d been able to unequivocally claim all night was the Pleiades (Seven Sisters), mainly because it was the Subaru logo. And that had disappeared off the horizon already, it had gone down faster tonight than… anyway I’ll move on.

“Thought you were a scientist?”

“Yeah, but fuckin’ biology, girl, not astrophysics.”

“Though you did spend a lot of time studying heavenly bodies, yeah?”

“Did you have to?”

“You would have if I hadn’t,” she pointed out. Correctly, and disappointingly. “I’m surprised you didn’t learn all the constellations as a means of picking up girls at beach parties.”

“I did,” I admitted. “I just forgot.” Then added, “I guess my sheer personal magnetism made cheap gimmicks like that unnecessary.”

“If you say so.”

“Hey,” I reminded her, “this from the girl who drove for three hours in order to not have sex with me.”

Beth looked suitably nonplussed.

“You know,” she suggested, “you could take it as a compliment.”

As it had turned out, Beth had been sidelined for the next few days in terms of actual, conventional sex. Girl stuff. But, as she’d said, there were always other things we could do. She didn’t mean stamp-collecting or Sudoku, for which I was appreciative. Even if I’d racked up a couple of significant IOU’s that’d need compensating for just as soon as she was available.

“I’m flattered,” I said, as sincerely as I could. “Really I am.”

“The smirk’s giving you away,” she muttered.

“It’s my most sincere smirk, honest.”

“Sure.”

Whether she believed me or not, she wasn’t showing. Anyway, she’d moved on.

“Angus,” she asked, “what did you want to be when you grew up?”

“When I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

“Seriously...”

“Seriously?” I tried to remember back. “Surf journalist,” I came up with. “I think. It changed a bit along the way, obviously, but a surfing journalist would have been cool, writing for Tracks or someone. Nick Carroll style. I just figured it’d be an awesome job. Had to be better than cane farming, which was what I figured I’d be doing… the folks were probably only going to be able to send the smartest of the three of us boys to uni, which wasn’t going to be me. Not sure I’d have even made the podium for that. And besides, Sam had already claimed journalism as his own deal, he was always going into that, so to follow him into it would have been a bit try-hard. Though he wanted to be a serious journalist. A serious motorsport journalist, reporting on Formula One...”

“Think I’d have preferred surfing,” she said.

“Yeah me too, if just for the lifestyle. And I could string two words together, pretty much - it wasn’t as if Sam was that much better than me at English. In fact he was exactly two marks better than me out of twenty, because our teacher – basically Margaret Pomeranz with stupider hair – liked him more. Seriously, we once deliberately answered a practice HSC essay wrongly as an academic exercise – something about themes surrounding the minor characters in Hamlet, we decided Ophelia and Claudius were minor characters and tried to argue they were, just to wind her up – and even then the two mark difference was maintained. He got two and I got zero.” Beth giggled. “You’d reckon I’d have gotten something for spelling my name right,” I protested. “But yeah, I could spell, I could turn a phrase, I knew my shit, and I could certainly write better stuff than the crap they print in Waves, then as now, so there was no reason I couldn’t have made a go of it.”

“So what happened?”

“You know what happened,” I said gently. “Matt wiped himself out and I fucked my HSC. Particularly on the humanities stuff, since that was more subjective, needed more context, more analysis. That was me bollocksed. By comparison science and maths held up better – it went to shit, yeah, but not as badly – because somehow all that rote-learned shite stayed in there long enough to get vomited out onto the page at exam time. Anything needing higher-order brain functions, forget about it, but regurgitation I could just about manage. So my science marks were just about good enough to get me into that, whereas my English marks were custard.”

“Other way round for me,” Beth admitted. “I couldn’t rely on my short-term memory to store anything on a useful basis. Learn-and-regurgitate subjects were just not happening, which was pretty much how all of science was taught where I went to school.”

“Pretty much how all science is taught full stop.”

“True enough. It’s a pity,” she continued brightly. “I wanted to be a marine biologist.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know, it’s pathetic. Dad was a Navy diver, used to take us snorkelling on the reef when we were up in north Queensland, yada yada yada. Could I be any more obvious… But it’s what I always wanted to do. And I can’t blame him for everything, not for being rubbish in exams anyway. I’ve always had a pretty terrible memory, never done well at those sorts of subjects. I’m not quite as dumb as I look. Or my academic transcript looks, anyway.”

“Hey, it was good enough to get you into teaching…”

“Angus, we both know how low the bar is set these days for that, yeah? Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.” A variation on Jeff’s old homily about those that can’t, whinging about it. “If I gave you a choice tomorrow about going back to teaching, or doing just about anything else…”

“To be fair, my ‘anything else’ option is pretty appealing, just at the moment. And,” I laughed, “I’m not sure teaching will have me back, pending certain legal issues…”

“When do you hear more about that?”

“No idea. I imagine not before school returns for the year. Wouldn’t want to have my livelihood depending on it, now would I?”

“Hey,” she said, “if you need a character reference, you know where to find me.”

I broke up. “That’s so unbelievably ironic right there,” I spluttered.

“I’m serious,” she said, turning to face me. “You want me to tell them I thought your dealings with Anna were all above board, I can do that. I’ll even stand up as the loyal fiancee and burst into tears and declare the whole thing was a figment of someone’s imagination, trying to destroy the good character of my man... Sure, I’ll be lying like hell, but hey, it’s what I do, apparently. Might as well use my powers for good. You might have to find me a ring to wear as a prop… ”

“Thanks… I think… but I think I’ll just pull stumps and walk away, yeah? Quietly resign and see if that keeps them happy. It’s not really a legal issue, just an employment one, as near as I can tell.”

“It’s an admission of guilt.”

“I’m guilty,” I pointed out.

“So?” she contended. “Do they know that? And how?”

“Beth,” I reiterated, “I need to get out. I shouldn’t be a teacher if I’m going to get myself into situations like that. I need to find something else to do with my life.”

“Well, I don’t know… rock star?”

“Bit of a finite lifespan on that one. Up to about the second week in February…”

“Surfing journalist?”

“Probably should have done something about that before now.”

“Marine biologist?” she laughed.

“Get sick on dive boats,” I admitted.

“You’ve done a bit of diving?”

I nodded, a little reluctantly. “I used to know a Japanese girl who worked for a tour company in Port Douglas, taking people out on the reef. She took me out a couple of times. Under the water was fine, just getting out there was a bit dicey.”

“What were you doing in Port Douglas?”

“My post-Gasket escape mission. It was as far as I got. Ran out of road. And cash. And talent.” I decided to leave out the bit about falling for Midori on the rebound, her leaving to go back to her Japanese boyfriend, me returning home with my tail between my legs. Goddamn you half Japanese girls, you do it to me every time. “But I totally saw the point. It’s amazing down there. Another world. All the clichés. You name it.”

She smiled. At least I thought she did, we were both staring straight up into the sky. “Friend of mine… well, a Facebook friend, if you can call them friends. A girl I went to school with on the Gold Coast, haven’t actually spoken in years… she’s at the Australian Institute of Marine Science up in Townsville, doing a Masters or PhD or something through James Cook Uni. Basically living my dream life for me. Nice of her to save me the trouble.”

“You’d rather do that than this?”

“Angus, if it wasn’t for the hours and the holidays, I’d be long gone. And the fact that I crashed out of sports science at uni because I’m crap at exams.”

“That was plan B?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Exercise science and physio. I figured I’d spent enough time in gyms over the years, two years at the AIS, knew enough from personal experience about training, sports nutrition, injury rehab… maybe go work at the AIS, help some of those kids through... actually, it was the AIS stuff on my CV which got me in, given my patchy academic record. You know you’re a model student when you need special consideration to get into a course at Griffith Gold Coast. Which I went on to totally crash out of, barely enough credit points to transfer into teaching.”

“Rather do that than this too, I guess?”

“Do Gasket need an on-site fitness coach, Angus?” was her reply.

“That’s not an idea I’d want to encourage,” I remarked. “Sounds like the sort of idea Maddy would love. Get us all into shape, bit of organization and discipline, being shouted at a lot…”

“Wouldn’t she want the job herself?”

“Nah, I think she’d be happy to live vicariously through someone else in that instance. Too much like hard work otherwise.”

“Probably for the best. You’re not that good with taking orders, in my experience,” she mused impishly. “Prefer giving them…”

“You saying I have a problem with women in authority positions?”

“Well, you wouldn’t let me tie you up,” she reminded me. “You tell me.”

“Hey, it’s not that I don’t trust you,” I said, “it’s just that I don’t trust you.”

Which brings us to a girl I know. We were engaged in a previous life, but we’ve had a good laugh about that little misunderstanding and moved on. How best to describe her? You remember that Fiona Apple song from a bunch of years back, that filmclip with the dirty lighting and her big sultry raccoon eyes and she’s rolling around in a bathtub with smudged makeup and wet clingy strands of fuck-all on, looking all kinds of spankworthy and making you forget she shits you almost as much as Tori Amos does… and she purrs that opening line like liquid sex oozing across the bathroom floor, ‘I’ve been a baaaad girl…’ and you think ‘I bet you have, love’, and your whole being is utterly electrified, like the air around you is ionized, like the ground around you is about to be obliterated in a massive lightning strike, and you don’t much care because the thrill will be worth it?

(No? Just me then?)

That moment is our relationship. That moment, captured, spooled, and cycled on repeat. There, gentlemen (ordinary or otherwise), is a Groundhog Day to aspire to.

That was a bit I wrote but didn’t use in the last blog about the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Thought about using it though. Thought pretty hard about using it, then figured it didn’t fit the flow of the piece. Which is to say I completely bottled it because I’m a fucking coward. I decided it’d only make things more confused between us, and anyway the world at large had learned enough about my personal life to date thanks very fucking much. Didn’t mean I didn’t mean it. Just meant I didn’t want her to know about it. I decided to play my cards close to my chest for as long as I could get away with. At least until someone actually explained the rules of the game to me and whether I had a winning hand or a bucket of slop.

Afterwards, though, I wondered if it would have made a difference. Whether she might have stayed. You tend to dwell on stupid shit like that when you’re on the front verandah of a silent, dark and gently snoring house at five in the morning, listening to the roar of the surf across of the dunes, the occasional rumble of a car in a distant street the only indication you’re not the only human left alive in the universe. I’d tried everything. Reasoning, arguing, cajoling, teasing, promises, veiled threats, even outright pleading. Finally I’d just wrestled the car keys out of her grasp and refused to give them back, because there was no fucking way she should be driving back up to the Straddie ferry terminal tonight in time for the dawn ferry. If driving down here was madness – much appreciated, yeah, but still madness – driving back at three in the morning was insanity. A pretty obvious point I’d have thought, but not one Beth and her stimulant-induced God complex was ever going to agree with. As I got to know her, or whatever version of her she was letting me get to know, Beth was developing into the most independent, headstrong and stubborn girl I knew – and I knew a lot of infuriatingly stubborn women. Nothing I said made a lick of difference. Maybe if I’d licked her… hmmm probably not the time of the month for those sorts of tactics, even if she’d earned reciprocal rights from earlier.

In the end she wasn’t coming around to my way of thinking and I wasn’t giving up the keys, so she resorted to violence. With a smile on her face – a feline, teeth-bared smile – but the fingernail marks on my wrist and the back of my hands were still intense purple shades of hurt. In the end, I had a livelihood to maintain with those fingers, so I let go. She was quicker to find her feet and outsprinted me through the soft sand to the path between the dunes; by the time I reached the spot where she’d parked the Beetle, she was already aboard, lights on, ignition flicked, winning smirk on her dial.

She powered the driver’s side window down. “Loser,” she informed me, with helpful gestures. Before reading my mind and quickly slapping a protective hand over the keys in the ignition.

“Classless,” I remarked. “Typical fucking Queenslander.”

She let the slanderous insult slide, because she’d won.

“See, it’s not that I don’t trust you…” She blipped the throttle. “It’s that I don’t trust you.”

With a wink, the window was up, the stick was in D, and the Beetle’s front Continentals were spitting gravel at me. I offered an ironic wave as her taillights disappeared down Alcorn St.
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone falls asleep on the M1 at five in the morning and wipes herself out, ain’t it girl. But she wouldn’t be told. Not by me anyway.

Sunrise wasn’t far away, so there was no real point sleeping. Maybe I could grab some zeds in the car back up to Brisvegas – wasn’t as though Marty was going to ask me to take a turn at the wheel. A couple of interviews, mostly by phone – my cheap-arsed disposable Nokia was later today being replaced by a dB-loaner iPhone on the same number, which sounded like a cross between World of Awesome and a bizarre form of torture given there’d now be nowhere to run and/or hide from 24/7 accessibility. Particularly since Maddy now wanted me to Twitter for the band as well as write content for our various interweb presences. As near as I could tell Twitter was a means for cretins to communicate in ridiculously short fragments of conversation. What the hell I was meant to Twitter about (Twit about? Tweet? Twunt?) or what was appropriate in terms of content, I had no idea.

angusfromflangegasket: Good show tonite. BDO set optimal. Marty still not letting me drive his car cos of doing 360s in his 180B that time.

Not really a lot of nuance available in 140 characters yeah?

It was still the cheapo prepaid I was on at the mo – I’d pinched Marty’s own company iPhone to punch the latter into cyberspace a few hours ago. The cheapo prepaid bucket of slop didn’t capture streaming video, browse internet or any of the other whizz-bang stuffs the Jesus Phone could do. Basically the limit of its abilities were that it sent texts, took shit photos and went Ring Ring when someone called. Which, to my surprise – and I’ll admit serious annoyance – it did just after 5am, out on the deck, shattering my zen. I dug the phone out of my pocket and wandered a little way down the path from the verandah to the street to answer it, not that there was anyone around to keep awake with my conversation. The midnight-blue sky was just beginning to lighten on the eastern horizon, in preparation for a half-five sunrise.

Which was some sort of irony. It was the Bear. He was a lot further east than me, the sun was already up, and yet things were pretty fucking dark where he was.

“It’s the Tractor, mate,” he told me with gravel in his voice. “We’ve lost him.”