Fire woman

Fire... smoke she is a risin'
Fire... smoke on the horizon.
- The Cult, 1989

I’d always reckoned Lismore could do with a cool, laid-back, hole-in-the-wall sort of bar. Sure, Lisvegas was a country town, but the uni had enough heads who weren’t into the bogan beer barn culture that I reckoned you could make a decent go of it. As it happened, so did a couple of mates of ours, Josh Bell and Adam Dawson. Ads used to run security at the Oakes Hotel and Josh (DJB) did DJing and front-of-house. Both were commerce students, Ads came from a hospitality industry family background, so between them they reckoned they knew enough about business and pubs to get it done. So they’d cracked on and did it. They’d bought up the old Metropole Hotel – the site of the Gasket’s first ever paying gig, some ten-and-change years previous – and turned part of it into a cool little hole-in-the-wall bar called Joad (nothing to do with the Grapes of Wrath or Springsteen, it was just the conjunction of their first names) and, less thrillingly but fairly inevitably, the rest of it into a velvet-rope nightclub, so that fauxhawked bogans could subsidise their pet project. The bogans, for their part, thought it should have been called ‘Choad’ and avoided it in case it was a gay bar and they might be called upon to start a nuclear war. Given increasing numbers of the above ponced about the place in Ed Hardy shirts and skinny jeans, the irony wasn’t lost on anyone but themselves.

And so to the aftermatch function: Joad was the venue, DJB was on the decks, Pilsner Urquell was in the icebox and the company… well that was interesting. As in, ‘may you live in interesting times.’

“Rocky girls are moles,” Lauren repeated, with more than a hint of sarcasm. “You’re such a fuckin’ charmer, aren’t you Angus…”

We’d played the shortest set in history. Any shorter and it wouldn’t have needed a setlist, because it doesn’t matter what order you play songs when there’s only one of them. We’d originally planned to go acoustic, just Marty and I, but since we had available to us a trained guitarist who’d come up from Broadwater and a partially cogent drummer from the hills behind Byron, we went four-on-the-floor – cranking through Beef Week Queen (of course), saying a few words of welcome on our part, playing Learn To Swim With Harold Holt (cue inevitable dedication to the Mayor of Casino), then departing stage left so Gerard could say his bit before curtain-up. That was all that was required of us. I liked these sorts of appearances. We were getting paid fuck all, comparatively, but we’d been fed and looked after, and the bar tab at Joad was open-ended, so all was well. And it was the first time I’d actually seen the movie, which was PISS FUNNY. It was also the first time Lauren had seen the film either, and the first time she’d heard our soundtrack offering. She was less impressed with the latter than the former.
Lauren was here because she’d been in the film, basically. Gerard had interviewed her over growing up in Rocky (the rival beef capital to Casino, of course) and her take on the concept of the Beef Week Queen, from the perspective of a writer and commentator on gender issues and sexuality.

“Pretty grand description for writing dirty books, Loz…”

“You’re such a cunt,” she smiled sweetly, and sipped her beer.

She looked great, too. Shoulder-length brown hair, well dressed, good tan, expensive marital bling on her left hand. A long way from the grotty little urchin in the threadbare Manly jumper and camo boardshorts I used to drink, sledge and very infrequently have teh sexy times with. It was good to see her. I’d said as much, in amongst the traditional banter, when I’d introduced her to Beth. Despite her profile as Unky Rupert’s resident bloggerist on sex and relationships, introducing Lauren as ‘the Carrie Bradshaw of Brisbane’ had resulted in profanity of the highest order. She hated Sex and the City. Always had. Venal, self-involved, self-obsessed, anti-feminist, materialistic cunts, she’d once described the characters as as. On national television. Hell, it wasn’t as though Rove had much of a run left in it anyway. Hadn’t stopped the flow of invites for panel-based shows or rent-a-quote opinion soundbites on the box though, which was good, as Lauren would have turned up to the opening of an envelope.

“Where the fuck do you get them from, Angus?” That was Lauren’s way of saying she approved of Beth. Lauren liked Beth because Beth actually wanted to hear our bullshit drunken stories from our bullshit drunken adventures a dozen years or more ago, instead of being bored fucking shitless by them and wanting to go home as per Angus Girlfriend SOP, and because she didn’t seem to care how enthusiastically or creatively Lauren swore. Beth liked Lauren too, but I kinda knew she would, given she’d read most of her, erm, ‘works’.

“Sooo… that was your 19th?” Back to the subject at hand. If we could remember what that was.

Lauren screwed up her face. “Fuck… 18th?”

“Was that the one with the fucking kebab shop on the back deck…”

“No that was fucken… that chick… the one Marko [Dr Cletus to you] was tuning forever and got fucking nowhere with because he’s got no balls… Turkish family… Jesus, I should remember.”

“She was your mate, you should!”

“Yeah she was… Elena? That’ll do. We hosted hers at our joint, cos we had the reputation of being party fucking central and could guarantee a crowd of suitable size for her majesty…” Lauren rolled her eyes. “Nothing to do with her being punishing as fuck of course. Her old man set up his kebab shop on the back deck.”

“Yeah, that was awesome…”

“Rest of the party sucked though.”

“Yeah cos you went stupid on the jelly shots before sundown and passed out in the laundry. Glued your face to the tiles with vodka jelly vom...”

“Hey, I’d just broken up with… whatever that fucker’s name was…” she laughed. “I was on the rebound. Emotionally fragile…”

“And how’d that work out?”

“Erm, not so well. Shagged Elena’s fiance two weeks after.”

“Explains where that friendship stalled…”

“Hey fuck ya, I was desperate.”

“Should have told me… hell, if you’d given me the nod and laid still long enough on the tiles…”

Just missed my timing. Lauren sprayed beer across the table, certainly, but not out her nose. Dammit.

“You,” she began accusingly, “you and that fucking laundry. You fucking in that laundry, actually…” She glanced across at Beth, then back at me. “You OK with me telling this story?”

“What story?” I queried.

“Yes,” Beth said. “He is.”

“The one where you’d skived off lectures to bang that waitress from Castellis who was into doing it at the drop of a hat. She was a Goodie, you said. Would do anything, anywhere, any time.” I’d given Lauren all the details over beers at the time, of course. Research for her writing career, as it seemed... “And you forgot there was a flat inspection at half ten...”

That was me gone, I roared with laughter. “Oh Christ,” I giggled. “Fuckin’ horseface from the realos wandering in with the owners to find…”

“What did she find, Andrew? Share with the group...”

“Nup.” I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Lauren filled in the blanks. “To find this one and his service-industry friend going for gold on top of the washing machine, flat out on spin cycle…”

“Yeah they weren’t best pleased. Washing machine was part of the chattels.”

“They put our fucking rent up,” Lauren reminded me. “And I had to make up some cover story for Marko why they’d done it that didn’t involve them catching you shagging on their whiteware...”

“I’m sorry, Beth,” I admitted. “You must be so disappointed in me.”

“I am,” she replied archly. “Why the hell haven’t we tried that yet, you holding out on me babe?”

“Cos it’s not all you’d hope for,” I grinned. “Not easy to hit a moving target…”

“But that wasn’t the one… what the fuck were we talking about? Two more thanks champ,” Lauren indicated. “And a vodka and lime for the lady.” That narrowed it down.

I spluttered with laughter, at the recollection. “Erm, the party you were originally talking about wasn’t that one. I think. Fuck, they all merge into one.”

“My 18th,” she nodded. “You were fucking the firetwirler.”

“Was not,” I said. “Not beforehand, anyway... They were your mates too weren’t they?”

“Yeah… met ‘em at Woodford. Kinda followed me home. You know how it was, 18th birthday in my first year in the big smoke, I invited everyone I knew in the entire world at that point. Which was probably a bad idea.”

“Yeah possibly. I don’t remember details of that one.”

“Repressed?”

“Yeah, it’ll take thousands of bucks worth of therapy…”

“To keep them repressed?” she giggled.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Stay the fuck back there.” I had a think. Four or five beers meant it took a while. “I remember the firetwirlers in the back yard. Height of fucking bushfire season, garden was tinder dry. I remember fucking Mick trials-riding around the garden by firelight, jumping off shit on his XR with a bottle of cheap vodka in his brake hand…”

“That was why he went into the woodshed, yeah?”

“Yeah. He was trying to top up the blonde one’s firestick as he rode past though. In-flight refuelling. Didn’t go so good. Then drank the rest of the vodka…”

“And MY fucking vodka…”

“Well he needed to anaesthatise his injuries. Then he faceplanted in Dr Cletus’ room in a puddle of his own vom. In full motocross regalia. Muddy boots and all, all over Dr Cletus’ Wallabies doona cover...”

“Yeah, it was trouble in paradise wasn’t it. Marko cracked the shits with him. Pissed in his fuel tank while he was out to it.

“He fucking didn’t…”

“True, I caught him, dodger out. Carpets match the curtains with that one, since you asked.”

“Too much information.”

“You should know, he ended up in your bed…”

“Yeah, just as well I did my recce before things got interesting later in the night. That would have been a great find, opening the door with some hottie under my arm to find that ginger fuck spreadeagled in his boxers snoring and farting like a misfiring Harley.”

“World’s tiniest violin,” she declared. “Who ended up on the couch with the hottest of the firetwirler chicks? While I got fucking nowhere with her Chippendale lookalike brother?”

“Look, it wasn’t all win…”

“She was ridiculously hot. Even by your standards, you slut. I would have done her.”

“Yeah, but… she smelled of kero.”

“So? No smoking, no naked lights…”

“Yeah that would have been a good idea a bit later…”

“That was those rugby fucks who lived next door, got a charity invite.” Wasn’t the only charity Lauren had offered them across the course of the year, as it turned out. “Case of Jimmy and Cokes and they thought they’d give the firetwirling a crack out in the street at fuckin’ sparrows.”

“Whose car went up, in the end?”

“The fat hairy one’s,” Lauren confirmed. Not the one she’d been charitable towards, for the record. “Old shitbox wagon. Falcon? Kingswood? Some shit. Mattress in the back. Burned like it was made of fucking firelighters. It was ashes by the time the fireys turned up. Left them with nothing to do.”

“That’s not what I heard, Lauren.”

“You weren’t even there, you dick. You were stoking Little Miss Firetwirler in the cupboard against the hot water service. Installing a Rheem…”

“It was warm in there,” I said.

“I’ll bet,” Lauren said. “Would have been warm in there even if you weren’t in the cupboard.”

“Class,” I said. “What did you ask the nice firefighters, Lauren?”

Lauren would have blushed, if she was capable of it. Which she wasn’t.

“Whether the hot one had a hose big enough to put out the fire in my pants.”

I burst out laughing.

“Yeah laugh it up, cockface. Worked, didn’t it?”

“Did it?”

“Well, he had to go off duty first. And there was the small distraction of our lad Marko, rising from the dead…”

“Yup. He’d gotten a second wind, apparently,” I explained for the benefit of Beth. And youse lot I guess. “Grabbed whatever was lying around unloved at the end of the night, as usual - unopened bottle of Black Douglas and a bottle of Diet Coke. Wandered out the back where some of this one’s arts mates were pulling cones with some of Mick and my biking mates. He’d never touched the shit before. Reckoned ‘this looks like a novel experience.’ Sat himself down…”

Lauren was nodding. She could take it from here. She could take it from anywhere (boom tish). “And a couple of heavily spun cones later, here’s the fucking Young Queenslander Of The Year bursting out of the front door doing the dance of the flaming arseholes in nothing but a pink cowboy hat and fake zebra-print fur scarf that had been left behind by that fucking psycho bitch flatmate you guys had. Then staggered off down the street declaring he wanted to find Karen and ‘pound her in the dirt chute’…”

“Grim,” I noted.

“You didn’t see it,” Lauren reminded me. “I was scarred for life. Probably him too once the newspaper burned down to his arse hairs. Just as well we had fireys on standby…”

“Once a firecrotch, always a firecrotch,” I giggled.

“Literally!” she laughed. “Totally starkers, I reckon he’d look like a fucking Japanese flag.”

“You’d know though, that wasn’t the first time you’d seen him naked. He popped your cherry back up home didn’t he?”

YEAHHHHH me for the win. I made beer froth out her nose. Therefore, I won the universe.

“Fuck you,” she pronounced, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Ah, that’s my girl. “Don’t make shit like that up. I’m still off his missus’ Chrissy card list from the first time he brought her over here to visit, couple of years back. Pink cashmere cardigan and Hermes handbag in the fucking beer garden of the RE. With Friday Night Footy on in the background…”

“That’s not doing due diligence on her part.”

“That’s what I thought. And yet she had the temerity to get offended when I called Brett Kimmorley a midget cuntpuncher.” She turned to Beth. “Sorry.”

Beth shrugged dismissively. “Doesn’t bother me, I don’t even like…”

“Cronulla,” I offered.

“Dogs, now,” corrected Lauren. High profile career, (very) happy husband, house in Ascot, holiday house on Bribie, Alfa Spider… and she still knows more about league than I do. Bitch.

“I was going to say football,” Beth finished.

“Really?” Lauren mused. “You don’t like football? So what the hell do you two do for pillow talk?”

“We don’t do pillow talk,” Beth said. “We’re generally too busy fucking.” Dammit I liked it when she used the dirty words. It did things to the hairs on the back of my neck. I know that’s wrong and here’s how much I care. Here in this little box. [] See? If you squint, you can almost see how much I care how wrong it is to get off on hearing nice well-brought-up girls swear.

“Awesome,” Lauren grinned wolfishly. “See if you can keep this one, Angus, I think she gets you.”

“Ah, he’ll only fuck it up somehow, you know,” Beth sighed affectionately.

“You’ve got a sister?”

“No, actually.”

“Well that’s one less way he can fuck up,” Lauren cackled. “And hell, if you can put up with my shit about how many slappers this dirty manwhore has fucked without cracking the shits and storming off, you’re pretty fucking awesome girlfriend material in my book.”

“Meh, she’s not here for me,” I chided. “She wanted to meet you. Totes fangirl.”

I got the dirtiest of dirty looks for that. And not even good dirty. No pleasing some people.

“Well,” Beth said evenly, “over the years, you’ve probably made me come even more often than he has...”

Ooooohhhh. The air crackled deliciously. I’d already jumped to the obvious conclusion – well, the one I wanted to reach, anyway. C’mon. Two girls. One boy. You’d have crossed your fingers for the same prospect…

But what Lauren wanted, and what I knew she wanted, was details. Back in the day she did her research in person, but now, with that ring on her finger, not so much opportunity for that.

“How do you find him?” Lauren asked.

“Generally, wherever I left him,” Beth offered with a smile.

“I mean…”

“He’s the dirtiest boy I’ve ever met,” she admitted, squeezing my arm under the table. At least she probably thought it was my arm. “The only times he stops thinking about having sex is when he’s having sex.”

“Yeah, I could have told you that.”

“You did,” Beth replied. “If I’d only known who, say, Mikey and Emily were…”

“What’s he been telling you,” Lauren mused, “that he’s the star of the show?”

“And I’m not?” I interceded smugly.

Lauren exhaled. “Not the point. If you had any class about it, you’d shut the fuck up.”

“Embarrassed, Lauren?”

“Not at all. You self-promoting cunt.” She took a swig of her beer and pulled a face. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s not you.”

As a great philosopher once said, ‘what’s the Norwegian for ‘Oh, cock’?’

But she was already backtracking. “OK, some of the earlier characters… yeah, there were similarities. Particularly the bastards. I had a lot of issues.” Shredding the label from her beer, now? That’s sexual frustration, girl. “Gone now. I met a guy who was a bastard like you. Difference was, he was only pretending to be a bastard.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s me. The reason every woman on Earth is unfulfilled and insecure. Twilight wouldn’t have sold a fucking copy if it wasn’t for me.” I clicked my fingers. It was worryingly close to a patented Chris Kurtin point-‘n’-click, so I had to hold myself back. “Hey, that’s what you should do. Full on erotic lit version of Twilight. Sell fucking millions. Beth’d get it, her two fangirliest things totes evaaarrrr…”

“To be honest, I’m this fucking close to writing a celebrity gay slash scene between a faded Brisbane rock star and a very large American footballer in a prison shower...”

Ewwww. She would, too. She liked that sort of shit. I shrugged, nonchalantly. “Not my problem, I’m not a celebrity. Bernard Fanning might be a bit fucked off though.”

Lauren grinned; I had her back onside, if she’d ever been seriously arcing up. “Actually, I’ve gotten in enough trouble with that sort of shit as it is…”

I knew, vaguely, of what she was on about. Her last book – the one Beth’s mum had taken to her book club, fairly unwisely as it turned out – had been about a chick who… well, here’s the story, or at least the plot synopsis. As usual it was right on the cusp of what you can or should be able to get away with as a writer of smut – more so if you’re a chick of course, for some reason - so if it sounds a bit too lurid, be warned. If it sounds just about lurid enough, go find it in the darkest corner of your local bookstore. You sick fuck. Anyhoo. Meet Claire. Everywoman. Mid-twenties, schoolteacher, pleasant sort of girl with an unpleasant credit card debt, mousy, dull, insecure, unadventurous. Engaged. Comes home to find fiance banging the arse off best friend and intended chief bridesmaid. No longer engaged. No longer friends with intended chief bridesmaid. Bottom drops out of universe. Gets transfer to school in another town, starts again, etc. Weak, lost, vulnerable, starts developing crush on super hot, super confident high school footy captain… shouldn’t, wouldn’t, can’t, can, does, then does again, and again. In all kinds of dirty, depraved ways, as per programme for a Mia Lauren book. Sort of a no-hydraulic-details-omitted version of the Heartbreak Kid. Problem is, Heartbreak Kid works out she’s vulnerable and dependent and willing to do anything to please, so he takes the initiative and films them at it, POV style. Which he then uses as career-threatening blackmail to get her to do increasingly dirtier and nastier stuff. Which he also films. And onward down the spiral… HK’s girlfriend comes to see her, confides in her, seeks solace in her… cue exploratory girl-on-girl scene… but what’s this, she’s got a camera too? Oh noes, she’s in on it too! And then, a knock at the door late one night, there’s three of HK’s mates from the school rugby team, with a camera and a toey, knowing grin on their faces…

“See, I figured it’d be that scene that got you in the most trouble,” I said.

“No, actually. Well, yeah. Comparatively… hell, it was all a bit dicey. But it wasn’t really three on one, it was just… well, let’s face it, boys at that age aren’t good with stamina, are they?”

“Don’t look at me for confirmation,” I remarked.

“Me neither,” Beth added.

Lauren started to colour up a little. “All I’m saying, like Claire learns in the book, is that teenage boys, they’re like lightbulbs, yeah? One blows, always handy to have a few spares so you can just screw in another one…”

“How did you not get locked up doing the research for this?”

“Erm, because it was all done theoretically, you fucktard.”

I coughed ‘Bullshit’ into my fist.

“And some bits less theoretically, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, before I met my beloved husband and life partner,” she added quickly, with a smirk.

So it wasn’t that which got her into trouble. Nor was it the fact that Claire’s domineering ‘boyfriend’ HK sauntered in afterwards to finish her off with a bout of fairly alarmingly rough pounding in certain previously unexplored sensitive regions, the likes of which a monstrously head-spun Dr Cletus had once hankered after. When Claire, in her desperation, remembers the technique you’re meant to use to stop a pit bull terrier from attacking, and resolves to see if it works on cocky high school footy captains… It works, but only in the short term (i.e. to the denouement of the scene in question.) Humiliated by his secret shame being discovered, HK goes off like a frog in a sock. He’s going to destroy her, he tells her. Her career, her reputation, everything. Desperate, she goes back through her old contacts and gets in touch with the one man who can help her… her cool old flatmate Alex, now a lawyer in the CBD…

“It’s not you,” Lauren reminded me.

“Hell, I’m just happy to hear I’m not the arrogant footy fucker,” I admitted.

Alex hears her story, then nods and proposes a solution. Involving one of his clients, a male model who he’d recently managed to get off (hur hur) a charge of soliciting man-love from an undercover cop. You can probably guess where it goes from there. Claire brings the other guy into the bedroom, stuff happens, the footy captain’s latent keeness for manlove is explored by the other dude… and Claire captures the lot on film for blackmail purposes. Win. Everyone loves a happy ending. Which is provided by Claire, deciding she needs to find a new career pretty much stat and morally indebted to (as well as eternally infatuated with) Alex, opts to take up his offer of a new position as his legal secretary. Several positions in fact, usually across his desk with her ankles around her ears. And they all banged happily ever after. Bless.

The problem, of course, wasn’t any of that. It was the action she’d described in what you might call the dramatic, erm, climax of the story. Which, ages of consent being what they were, was actually illegal in many states of the Commonwealth of Australia.

“I was hoping it’d be taken up by the gay and lesbian community as a political statement about sexual preference equality and the rights of gay men to have the same lawful rights as straight ones,” Beth ruminated. “But no, the gay men just went ‘Fuck off, you’ve made us all look like pedos’ and the lesbians went ‘Fuck off, you can’t write a fucking lesbian scene to save yourself.’ Direct quote from Helen Razer’s review, actually…”

“Lesbian scene? I thought it read OK…”

“You would. That was the problem. I got accused of the most heinous crime in post-feminist erotic chick lit. Writing stuff that men would like more than women.”

“Everyone’s a critic.”

“Yeah, well, they’re fucking right, aren’t they?” Lauren laughed? “I can’t write girl-on-girl stuff. I don’t write many and when I do they’re shit. It’s like Patricia Cornwall trying to write a believeable hetero love scene. Don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“Yeah right,” I chided. “How many girls have I seen you get onto over the years?”

“None?”

“Snogged plenty at parties…”

“To get boys’ attention,” she insisted. “We’ve all been there…” Lauren glanced at Beth for moral support.

“No comment,” Beth mused.

Lauren took that on board with a grin. “And when I have, it’s just been disasterous. Either it’s with a couple, and they go apeshit at each other because he wants to screw me and she doesn’t want to let me, or it’s just… laughable. Embarrassing.” Lauren laughed. “You remember Candice, my weird friend from Kmart? Anyway we got really stoned after work, she was really keen and we decided we were going to try. Back seat of my old Toyota. Just couldn’t stop laughing though. Nervous laughter, but she cracked the shits and stormed off. Knickers around her ankles and all, stomping off across the carpark…”

“You can’t force it,” I suggested. “It has to come from within…”

“Yeah thanks for that, Zen Master. How much gay sex have you had?”

“None. And that’s actually the first time anyone’s ever asked me that question, surprisingly enough.”

“Asking that would be enough to get you lynched around here, wouldn’t it?” Beth observed.

“Ah, Lismore’s not too bad. Even got its own gay bar, over on the northside.”

“Bricks through the windows every weekend?”

“Nah, nothing like that. Every second weekend, maybe.”

“A veritable fuckin’ hotbed of tolerance and equality then,” Lauren declared.

“We can drop you round, if you want to get some practice in,” I offered. “Reconnect with your gay sisters…”

“Yeah, great,” Lauren said. “Sit around listening to Ani di Franco and plaiting our armpit hair.”

“See, that’s your problem,” I laughed. “You’re fixated on the whole scary bulldyke thing, because it’s that lot, the activists, who arc up every time you write a lipstick lesbian scene…”

“Fuck you!” she responded. “I do not write lipstick lesbian scenes, for fuck’s sake. Give me some credit. Lipstick lesbians don’t fucking exist.”

Beth contemplated her drink.

“Yeah they do,” she contended. “…I mean, what else is there to do in first year?”

It wasn’t the flashest of hotels – Lismore didn’t really ‘do’ high-end accommodation, certainly nothing of the standards dB usually aspired to – but it did have just about the biggest bed I’d ever seen. It was whatever came after king, anyway. Beth and I were lying very still on the sheets, stretched out so far that just our fingertips could touch. We’d been in closer contact earlier, of course, much closer, but this did for now. It was dark – something like one or two am – but the moonlight through the balcony windows meant there was a luminous blue glow to the room, the bed, and the silhouette of the naked girl which lay next to me on it. She was kind-of upside-down compared to me, but we’d already agreed to disagree over who was the one who was upside down.

“Penny,” Beth said softly.

“For your thoughts?”

She smiled. “That was her name. Penny. My little… thing. With the other side.” And she began to tell the story, her voice not much more than a murmur. Don’t know why, perhaps it fit the mood.

We’d established that her love life was shit, her early sexual experiences were awful, all men were bastards etc. Yes? Well they were, and we were, and probably are. And the douchebags she’d been dating and been dumped by since high school were letting the side down, frankly. Enough to consider changing sides entirely.

“Penny was this spunky little redhead from my course. She was smart and funny and she had a boyfriend who loved her to bits. But she liked girls more than boys, and she reckoned so did I. She said I was a terrible flirt. I don’t know. I was just trying to be friendly, I thought.” Fingertips traced along the inside of my palm. “Of course, I had a massive girlcrush on her, which I thought was just envy… she had everything, you see. Everything.

“I broke up with my boyfriend… you don’t need to know why. Control freak, put me down all the time. I’ve just told you why, haven’t I... Penny and the girls took me out for drinks… the last thing I needed seeing how awful I felt and how close to an episode I was pretty sure I was. But there we were, pouring our hearts out to each other in some awful Gold Coast dive – Melbas or somewhere – smashed on Vodka Cruisers and swearing off men forever. Or at least I was. ‘I’ll never find one like yours, Pen,’ I told her. ‘You can have him,’ she replied. ‘I can’t.’ And suddenly there were tears streaming down her face, and I was holding her, and we were kissing… and we were in a cab… and we were at her place, on her bed, kissing some more… and she touched me, like noone had ever done before, and told me she loved me, like noone had done before. And that was that.

“We had two, maybe three weeks together. Stolen moments, ashamed of ourselves. She wanted to leave her boyfriend for me. Declare to the world we were in love, and fuck the losers and the bigots and haters. But… you know what comes next for me after telling someone I love them, yeah?”

“I think I remember,” I recalled.

“She couldn’t deal with it,” Beth said. “She didn’t know I wasn’t right in the head, not before anyway. Freaked out totally and ran. Broke my fucking heart. Thought I’d never survive.” A gentle, reluctant sigh. “Did, though. Funny how that works. Turns out I’m harder to kill than I always imagined. Maybe I should have been a secret agent.”

“I’m sorry, Beth.”

“For what?” I didn’t actually know what for. It just seemed like the thing that fitted into that gap in the conversation. The upside-down girl guessed as much. “She wasn’t the first, Angus. She won’t be the last, either.”

Well there’s an encouraging thought. Fated to fail. Planned obsolescence.

“What about you?” she asked. “Have you ever…”

“What, changed sides?”

“No. God no. Ewwww. Seriously.”

“Been with a girl who does with another girl?”

“Yeah.” The smile was back, albeit a little more fragile. “You being such the decadent rock star and all.”

I shrugged. “Once or twice. Usually by fluke or accident or some kind of random stellar alignment. I dated a French exchange student once in Sydney, when we were living down there with the band. Her best friend was bi. French also.”

“Ah,” Beth cooed, “menage a trois mademoiselles, sil vous plait?...”

“Actually, it was a fromage a trois.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking, but… what’s a fromage a trois?”

“Ah. That’s where they smeared each other in cheesecake, and got me to lick it off…”

“He’s an inveterate fucking liar, isn’t he?” laughed the other girl’s voice. Lauren wandered out of the shower, rubbing herself down with a white towel that seemed to glow luminous in the moonlight. She was still naked, and her husband clearly liked the au naturale look. Or the 80's Penthouse Pet look, anyway. “God, look at you two, you’re fucking adorable, aren’t you? Curled up together all soft and naked and gorgeous… well you anyway, Beth.”

It had happened like these things always did (in the scant handful of times they’d happened to me, anyway) – unexpected, unplanned, by random alignment of the stars. Just throw in alcohol, a night of dirty talk and a willingness to experiment. And a very large bed. Lauren had an incandescent glow to her that would have rivalled the luminescence of the moon. She tossed the towel aside, crawled over the bed and kissed Beth gently on the lips. “Thank you,” she said. Then smoothed a hand over my chest – we didn’t do kisses, she’d already declared neither of us kissed unless we wanted to fuck - “and thank you, too.”

“Don’t mention it.” I’d done by far the least of anyone, it wasn’t my experiment, I was just there to help out where I could.

“I’ll try not to,” Lauren admitted with a wicked grin. “But it might slip out in print somewhere…”

“Sounds painful,” I suggested.

Of course, it hadn’t actually ‘slipped’ anywhere, not near Lauren anyway. That was the deal – the agreement she had with her hubby. She was a writer and writers had to do their research, and research was what she was allowed to do. The only thing that was off-limits, he’d made her promise, was actually fucking other men. I was happy enough with that. OK, I was disappointed for about two tenths of a second – something about having a naked horny girl in your bed that you’re contractually obliged NOT to bang – but I knew my place, and I’d been compensated for my trouble.

Lauren had scooped her bra and knickers up, and by the time I looked again was most of the way dressed again – dressing quickly in the dark being one of her particular talents. “You keep hold of this one, yeah Angus?” she reminded me. “I mean it.”

Beth’s hand slipped into mine, like it’d been there all along.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I replied. “Now go back to your husband and fuck his brains out.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Lauren smirked. “Hell, if it wasn’t for the free bar, I’d be driving back tonight…” And with that, she was gone.

Which left me alone, in the dark, in the still, with Beth. And Lauren’s commandment from the pulpit in my ears: ‘Keep hold of this one.’

Ha. I’d be lucky to still have hold of her by sunrise, with our track record.

And so it was. Hours later, I was alone, in the morning sunlight, without Beth. Always going to happen. Inevitable as death, taxes and shit jokes on Rove. She had her own car, she could leave when she wanted. Probably already halfway home. Probably waited until I’d fallen asleep again, with our fingertips intertwined, and crept silently away. And for fuck’s sake it’s too early in the morning for housekeeping. I lumbered over and opened the door with my surliest ‘Yes?’

At my uncompromising fuck-off-now expression, Beth stuck out her bottom lip, and said in a mock-hurt little voice, “Coffee?”

Holding two takeaway cups from Caddies.

I swear, that’s the closest I’ve ever come to telling a girl I loved her just for bringing me a large flat white.