Common people

She said, 'I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you...'
Well, what else could I do?
I said, 'I'll see what I can do.'
- Pulp, 1995

It’s always brighter in the morning, particularly when it’s Friday morning, it’s Sydney, it’s January 23, and it’s heading for a top of forty fucking degrees. Not Fahrenheit. Not Kelvin. Celsiarse. It was already stinking hot for half nine, so if it was going to miss 40 degs it wasn't going to be by much.

The car that was being sent round to pick us up to take us to the Showgrounds for BDO turned out to be two cars, Caitlin’s Mazda3 (no sign of Joey from dB, presumably being a reformed Goth she was still allergic to intense sunlight) and Lena’s weatherbeaten Peugeot. Lena looked brighter this morning too, she must have slept better than me. Jeff piled into the back of the 306, iPod earbuds in, grimly texting his movements back to Operations HQ in Broadwater. I sagged into the front seat, swearing at the high-twenties morning heat, feeling like I’d already been up for hours and had lived today before.

“You OK?” Lena asked.

“We had this conversation yesterday,” I said. No word from Beth. Of course. Why would there be?

“I had a thought,” she began. “Don’t say anything. Why are we believing Kate… Chastity, whatever… why are we taking what she says at face value?”

“Because it’s entirely fucking believable?” I observed dolefully.

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean it happened.”

“Then what… why is she being paid off?”

“Well, that’s the thing. What else does she know about that the Fyfes don’t want getting out about them? Or about McCarthy?”

“Fuck, I dunno.”

“How about Priddle?” Lena proposed. “What if Sam was the one who had him killed? What if he was just as involved in that shit as Priddle was…”

“So now you’re saying he’s not a rapist, he’s a drug dealer. Much fucking better.”

“Someone put the cops in the picture regarding Priddle’s stash,” she maintained. “Knowing that meant Priddle’s minders would inevitably figure he’d become too much of a liability to their ops. Basically signing his death warrant. Hell of a thing killing a man, but you get that on the big jobs.”

Those weren’t words that belonged to Lena, I recognised. Those words belonged to a hairy Viking marauder of our mutual acquaintance.

“Sorry, you had a thought?” I queried. “Not Brer Bear?”

“Yeah, OK… I might have been in touch with him last night. Late last night. Time difference and all, we tend to chat late…” She was starting to get amusingly defensive over it, probably because I was busting out as much ironic disbelief as I could. “Look, we just talk, is that some kind of criminal act for fuck’s sake?”

“Just talk?”

“Just talk.”

“And that tube of scented KY I found on the floor near your computer desk, that’s just there for, what… stopping the laptop hinge from squeaking?”

Got her. If she’d been drinking, it would have come out her nose. She turned incandescent red. Took her several sets of traffic lights to compose herself.

“Look… it is just talk, honest… Just that some pictures tell a thousand words.”

“Or some webcam footage…”

“You can get fucked any time you like, Angus.”

“See, I can’t, really. That gets me into trouble.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You’ve heard I'm a can’t, or...” Best move on from that particular rhetorical question. “Did Bear have any thoughts on that, while he was solving all the world’s fucking problems?”

“Nah, not really,” she chided. “He just said it sounds like you give up pretty easily these days…”

It was ridiculously hot at the Showgrounds. Hawaii Ironman hot. Hot that sucked the essence from your soul and left you looking and feeling like a human prune. As it was, I was well into day 2 of my hangover, operating on negative sleep and was very bloody thankful for the backstage esky full of Powerades one of the prima-donna Seppo acts had demanded, then been too off-chops to remember about. Sure, by the time our set came around I was pissing Mountain Blast Blue, but I wasn’t going to be found wanting on the electrolytes front. Fuelled by that and two pies and sauce – Rockpool schmockpool, THAT’S Strayan cuisine peoples - I was as ready to rock as any other munter in the precinct.

Speaking of munters in the precinct, cue your friend and mine Super Dave in the hizz-ouse, bad shirt, bad pants and bad head, loudly questioning my sexuality ref. my refusal of beers prior to the show. None of the other Sydney crew had managed to get tickets, Sydney BDO selling out long long LONG before any sniff of us playing the thing, but he’d paid well over the odds (since he was paid well over the odds himself) for scalpage and we’d rewarded his efforts with a backstage upgrade. Which lasted until about sunset when he got his hairy drunken Ruggers-clad arse thrown out of the VIP area for propositioning the chick from the Ting Tings. Ah, bless. Eventually he shut up and they let him go. (See what I did there? No?)

I was already on my way to the airport by then. Jeff and I had negotiated early releases, and early flights – no minor effort considering Maddy wanted us (particularly me) in Melbourne for the weekend for promo stuff leading up to the show on Australia Day Monday. It took a shitload of grumpy chuntering to point out what a fucking waste of time it was promoting a sold-out gig (that had sold out long before we’d been announced as playing it) into a comatose weekend media market – and besides, I needed (NEEDED, I tells ya) to be up in Brisbane for Saturday’s open home at my place, the whole thing was going pear-shaped, tits-up and to hell in a handbasket, in no particular order apart from ALL AT FUCKING ONCE. No fault of Don’s, every fault of cunt-arsed US merchant bankers who’d kicked off the Globule Financial Clusterfuck and annihilated the market for expensive yuppy beach houses like mine.

Jeff, for his part, skipped the argument and simply bought his own ticket – straight to Ballina on a Regional Express turboprop pencil plane, 6.45pm departure. Even though his truck was still in, erm, Brisbane. He had shit to sort, it seemed, and it couldn’t wait. We split a cab, but that was about all we shared; he was lost in his thoughts and me in mine. You think afterwards – you think at the time, even – should I say something? Should I ask how things are with Beck? When I know pretty much they’re shithouse, and have been for a good while now? And you realise that as much as you love the pair of them you can’t make them work it out, they’ve got to do it themselves. And you’ve got plenty of your own shit to deal with. And you need to stop using sentences starting with 'And' because it's shit grammar and you were taught better than that, even if you spent most of high school English ogling seven bells out of the copious assembled hotness in the room.

So I waved the Jeff off onto his pencil plane flight – with some pretty fuck-off nasty looking thunderclouds looming overhead, probably a metaphor for what he was flying into at home, rather him than me on just about every level you could name – and settled in for the wait for my half-eight Qantas flight back to Brisneyland. At least flying the Red Rat under the aegis of dB meant one thing on the plus side of the ledger – Qantas Club. Comfy seats, cold beverage, bit of a feed, and most important of all, a bit of quiet. Surprising as it may seem, the Big Day Out isn’t really the best place to find peace and solitude to salve a troubled mind.

It’d been a good show, I guessed. I really didn’t know. The effort of just performing – of digging deep and cranking hard to give the punters a good show despite how fucking dismal I was feeling – was too much for any real external awareness of how we were travelling, but the crowd was large enough and noisy enough. Can’t remember what the setlist was, I think it was as per programme – brought Gaydar back, this being Sydney – and I remember feeling absolutely shattered by the end, it’d taken all I had to make it this far and for a moment I was worried my body was going to start turning to custard, like a wobbly-legged marathonist in the final straight. Another Powerade fixed that. Wouldn’t have wanted to see the state of my kidneys, though. At the very least, a fairly Harpic shade of blue.

So there you would have found me, had you wanted to, come half-seven; alone in a corner of the Qantas Club, near the big windows, nursing a vodka and orange without the vodka, watching the heavy evening sky cracking open under its own weight and pouring its contents over the city. Just like back in the day, out on the deck in St Lucia – me and Dr Cletus, Loz and Mad Mick and whoever else was around – those combustive afternoon thunderstorms, the smell of phosphorus in the air, the humidity thick enough to taste, the shock-and-awe lightshow igniting the night sky. This was a big ‘un, up there with any of the ones we’d watched and cheered from the deck at our place on the ridge at St Lucia. Fat raindrops hammered against the glass with North Queensland fury; it’d only opened up a few short minutes before and already the standing water on the concrete would have red-flagged a F1 race.

I have a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim.

If only my problems were as easily washed down a stormwater drain and out to sea. Actually, what I felt like was what I’d felt like another time I’d been in here, a few years previous: jetlagged to fuck. Just off our return flight from London on our one and only UK trip, waiting for my connection up to Brisbane, bodyclock shot to bits, too fatigued to sleep, just wanting it to be over. I’d be back in a recognisable bed tonight – not my own, but not a hotel room, either. So far sharehousing with Mick had amounted to next-to-no actual evenings sharing house, but fuck this, I needed some downtime, and that was to be spent on the deck at Mick’s, over a few quiet beers, talking shit about bikes, or music, or whatever. Just not about girls. I was expecting a large serve of ‘Told you so’ as soon as I showed up, and ‘fessed up re the Beth situation.

Ah, yeah. The Beth situation.

That hurt, because I’d fucked it up. I’d taken too many reluctant nods as encouraging green lights – not just yesterday morning, but right through. Hadn’t been the first time I’d pushed her into stuff she wasn’t necessarily that comfortable. And, in some kind of stupid irony, if she couldn’t deal, it meant she cared, yeah? Maybe? Possibly? Fuck, I didn’t know. Depended whether it was me-and-Anna she’d been most cut up about, or just the whole sex-and-drugs-and-rock-‘n’-roll debauchery of the night in question.

Maybe she was worried she’d be suspended by her boss for sleeping with a student. Ha. I made a funny.

That nagging doubt in the back of my mind – well, one of the many – surfaced soon after the tarmac surface began to submerge. Can we actually fly in this shit? Judging by the delay-of-boarding calls that were starting to filter through into Qantas Club, possibly not. And then, at 7.45 – about 15 minutes before the boarding time for my flight was advised on my ticket, so 25 minutes before any boarding call would actually be made – came the first delay announcements that didn’t have revised advisory times on them. By ten to eight they were coming thick and fast. By eight, they’d shut down the airport and suspended all flights. Fuckbollocks. I went back to the Qantas Club bar for something stronger than fruit juice. It was going to be a long night.

“Andrew Young,” said a voice, tinged with reminiscence. “They’ll let anyone in here, won’t they?”

The voice was rich, creamy and feminine, all clipped vowels and received pronounciation. The kind you’d expect for a newsreader. Say, one who used to work for a major Australian network before being headhunted to BBC or CNN in London or Asia or somewhere. My lawyers say that’s vague enough so I’ll continue. I turned. A familiar face beamed back at me. Familiar to millions, of course, but unlike those millions, I’d actually seen her from the waist down. In a variety of contexts. Ahem.

Selena airkissed me lightly on both cheeks, Maddy-style, except her lips actually touched down ever-so-gently onto tingling skin. She looked a million dollars, as she should given that was her annual retainer and change. And she looked genuinely thrilled to see me. Which made her the first woman to have that reaction in about 150 years. How’ve you been? What are you doing here? Where do you live now? Come and have a drink with us?

To which the answers were (a) Yeah a’ight (b) Flying home from playing Big Day Out, yeah we are still playing; (c) North Stradbroke Island, you’re not looking for a holiday home? and (d) Sure why not, who’s ‘us’?

‘Us’ were the crew Selena’s employers had dispatched with her to cover the APEC meetings in Kuala Lumpur. They were a Melbourne crew – camera, sound and production – who’d flown up to meet Selena, who’d come down from Hong Kong. Or Shanghai. Or wherever it was she was based now. Selena introduced me to the boys as an old friend, and when that raised the usual sort of questionable questions, she laughed lightly and explained I was an ex of an old school friend – Sarah McLeod, you know the girl from the Superjesus? Which was an utter, utter lie on soooo many levels. True, Selena and Sarah had gone to the same school (Adelaide’s super-flash, super-posh St Peters Collegiate Girls), but a year or two apart, certainly not together and I didn’t think they were particularly close. More to the point Sarah, who I did know a little bit - toured together, played festies and so on - had nevaaarrr been interested in this little black duck in any way shape or form... other, oddly enough, than to talk bikes with. I’d actually run into Sarah at the Brisbane Motorcycle Expo a year or two back when I was giving Mick moral support on the Mount Road stand – the past couple of years she’d been a ‘brand ambassador’ for Triumph, the same way I’d been for Yamaha in the Gasket days, free bikes, promo appearances, that sort of thing – and we’d had a reasonably awkward catchup chat. But as regards anything else, she’d never been remotely interested – hell, she’d never even been single in the time I’d known her.

Still, it was an easy enough fib to perpetuate, because Selena was a tremendous, copiously talented liar. More politic than admitting the truth, which was that Selena and I had been fucking like demonically possessed rabbits while she was married to the news director of the station she worked at. And was, apparently, still married to.

Interesting times: I live in them.

By fuck she was a babe. Fabulous hair, deep dark eyes, flawless makeup. If Beth was somewhat feline, Selena was equine, with the long chestnut mane, smooth taut skin and imperious arrogance of a dressage horse. Or a former teen fashion model. I’d seen the part of Selena she never showed anyone, that which she kept as her darkest secret: the VHS of the Sunsilk commercial she’d been in as a fifteen year old, long before becoming the Sandra Sultry of the generation after Sandra Sultry. That sort of thing didn’t bring cred to one’s newsgathering chops as a baby journo, or as much of one as Selena had ever been, so it got promptly written out of history (as was the Sunsilk ad – don’t bother looking for it on YouTube.) Earlier on in Selena’s career, a catty gossip columnist from the ‘Tiser who continually referred to the station’s new starlet as a ‘former clotheshorse’ had subsequently found her own career aspirations blunted somewhat.

Selena’s crew were headed back southwards tonight, flights permitting. Which they would not be. The word came through after a round of drinks had been completed that their delayed flight to Melbourne had been shitcanned entirely – biblical storms were also ringing Tullamarine – and alternative accommodation nearby had been lined up by Team Red Rat.

“That’s us,” the boys noted, draining their drinks and packing up.

“I’m probably not terribly far behind you,” Selena nodded.

“You’ll get the better suite though,” the cameraman called back, as they disappeared through the doors. “Night.”

“Dicks,” Selena smiled through gritted teeth, which made me giggle. There was the two-faced bitch I’d known and loved. From the waist down, anyway. “So, how have you been, Andrew?”

“Didn’t we just do this?”

“The edited version, yes. I’m interested in the unexpurgated version.”

“Still the same. Lapsed rock star, recently returned to the calling.”

“Exciting,” she said. “Don’t ask me whether I’ve heard your new album, I honestly would have no clue.”

“Erm, we don’t really have one. Got a greatest hits album out, and an EP off the soundtrack to a movie.” Sounded better than it was. Which was the plan, of course.

“Very exciting.” She sipped her drink. It looked expensive. She looked expensive. She was. More than I could afford, anyway. Selena was comfortably the richest, poshest girl I’d ever been allowed to see without her clothes on. That’d been seven or so years ago. She’d been the up-and-coming darling of the network and the nation, I’d been her other man, her bit of rough. In dating terms it was the height of my having-ideas-above-my-station period, along with Olivia the model and Brooke the Olympic volleyballist. It’d been a fun gig. Particularly the keeping-it-out-of-the-papers part of the gig. And particularly with Selena’s, erm, adventurous spirit. Urgent trysts in makeup rooms minutes before going on, stolen moments of intimacy in the station carpark (in the BMW convertible hubby bought for her), strings of ben-wa beads ‘worn’ through news broadcasts… put it this way. I’d never read a TV newsreader’s enigmatic on-screen smile quite the same way since.

“So you’re not back to Melbourne with them?”

“No, back to Adelaide tonight,” she nodded, setting her drink down. “Back to Richard.” A practiced smile. “We haven’t seen each other since Christmas.”

Richard Doublebarrelled-Surname was head of news for one of the networks, couldn’t remember which. Might have been the same one he and Selena Differentdoublebarrelled-Surname had originally worked for, but he’d moved a couple times in the interim, as the industry usually demands. (Don’t actually need to explain Richard and Selena aren’t their real names, do I? Didn’t think so. Is this cover holding, lawyer dudes?) Apparently he was still in Adelaide (unless it was Perth.) Apparently he was still married to Selena. I wondered how many ‘bits of rough’ had featured in the interim, and whether he knew, or even cared.

“So,” she continued, “are you seeing anyone at the moment, Andrew?”

“Erm, no,” I said. “Not as it happens.” Then, with a mischievous grin, “You?”

“Andrew,” she said, “like I said... I’m heading home to Richard.”

“I know what you said, Sel,” I grinned. “Doesn’t actually answer the question…”

“You’re so gauche,” she pronounced, but couldn’t suppress a smile. Yeahhhh. Cane farmers’ son FTW. Finally, she conceded, “It would take me several more of these to get close to an honest answer…”

“We’ve got time,” I pointed out. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The PA interceded to reiterate that the airport and surrounding airspace remained closed until further notice. They apologised for the inconvenience.

“Neither am I,” she observed, eyes sparkling. “How inconvenient.”

So, after two days spent despairing and swearing off women and alcohol, I spent Friday night getting drunk and flirting outrageously with the hottest Australian newsreader of her generation. Who, she admitted, still owned a pair of faux fur-lined handcuffs. And a penchant to use same.

I can’t be told, can I?

“I don’t drink like this, normally,” Selena insisted, again. “You’re just a fucking bad influence, rock star.” I loved hearing her swear. There was a real thrill to hearing her swear, just like hearing her talk dirty. Didn’t happen often, but when it did, OMG it was good. Posh chicks are awesome. The ‘rock star’ thing I was less comfortable with, but just because that was Beth’s pet name for me. Her condescending, ironic pet name for me.

“I thought St Pete’s girls weren’t meant to use profanity, Selena…”

She laughed. “St Peters Collegiate girls aren’t meant to perform blowjobs in deserted edit suites either.”

“Jesus, I remember that…”

“I should bloody well hope you do,” she declared. “An expensive private school education has to be good for something.”

I’d become fixated on her lip gloss, for some reason. Some probably easily explained reason.

“How did we never get found out?”

She traced an expensively manicured index finger around the rim of her glass.

“Richard knew,” she offered, eventually. “Not about you. But about… some of the others.”

“There were others? I’m heartbroken, Sel, I thought I was your one and only…”

Selena regarded me with a warm smile, humouring my attempt at comedy. “If it’s any consolation… I liked you more than most of them. I remember why now. I always thought you were cute when you were trying to be funny…”

“Awww. See, this is the real use of an expensive private school education. Coming up with better put-downs than us state school kids.” Dammit, I’d used the Queenslandism for government school. I was slipping.

“We have an open marriage,” she finally admitted. “I mean, it’s not as though we have a lot of choice. I’m away nine months of the year.” Her eyes narrowed. “And he’ll fuck anything with a pulse, and I do mean anything. Equal opportunity employer.”

“How is this not…”

“Public?” She chose her words carefully. “We work in the news media. We’re quite well-accustomed to means of controlling the release of information. And who to keep on-side.” And, then, glanced out the window, to the rain still battering against the glass. “I do love him. Always have, always will. But it’s just not there… in that way. The way it was with us. I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear me go on about this.”

I’d forgotten Selena was a melancholy drunk, or was capable of it. Probably why she didn’t drink that often.

“You’ve got someone,” I offered. “And you’ve done what you needed to, to make it work between you.”

“Is that what it is?” she replied archly.

Silence descended, backgrounded by the thrum of rain on the window. The thunder had died down, but it was still pretty foul out there. It was getting towards the time when airport curfews were going to call an end to proceedings for the night. And if on cue, there it was: confirmation that Selena’s flight to Adelaide (or Perth) had been cancelled. Not delayed, but canned. Goneski. Alternative accommodation arrangements blah blah blah…

“That’s you,” I said, stating the fucking obvious being my special subject on Mastermind.

“So it is,” she observed.

“Going to take up their offer of the finest airport shoebox a Qantas voucher can buy?”

“Somehow, I think not,” she frowned. “Not with an apartment in Point Piper sitting all alone, neglected and in need of a woman’s touch... a little human warmth.” A quick rustle through her handbag, ending in triumph. “Which I did remember to bring keys for.”

“Always prepared,” I noted with a smile.

“What about you, Andrew?” she asked. “Are you all alone, neglected and in need of a woman’s touch?”

This was Selena. If she wanted something, she asked for it. And more often than not, she got it.

“A little human warmth?” I queried. “They haven’t cancelled my flight yet, Sel.”

“But they will,” she nodded. She was right of course. No bastard was flying in this.

“That’s the best offer I’m likely to get tonight,” I remarked.

“Damn right it is,” she smirked.

“Which makes it incredibly dumb to answer no, I’ll wait and see.” I frowned. “But... no, I’ll wait and see.”

I knew those words just came out of my mouth, and yet I couldn’t actually explain why. Sure, she was alone, and desperate, and it would have meant nothing to either of us… but Jesus, man, what the fuck?

Selena didn’t like that answer. She stood, staring at me for sometime.

“You lied to me, Andrew,” she said simply. She knew it when she saw it, she did enough of it herself. “There is someone.”

“There might be,” I admitted. “I don’t know yet. I’ll find out when I get home.”

She exhaled, containing her hurt pride with professional aplomb. “She must be one hell of a girl, that’s all I can say.”

I shrugged. I had no idea what to say. I had no idea why I’d said what I’d already said, come to think of it. I’d just turned down a night of epic to sit in a darkened airport bar and wait for my flight to be shitcanned. Because I was An Arsehat. Gold star you.

Selena didn’t linger, kissing me brusquely on the cheek and leaving with a few superficial words of farewell. I didn’t blame her. I felt just as humiliated as she did. She’d had no reason to suspect she was going to get shot down. I had no reason to suspect she was going to get shot down. It wasn’t anything she’d said, wasn’t anything I’d said. In fact, it was something Bear had said, by way of Lena: ‘You seem to give up pretty easily these days...’

Fucking easy to say from the other side of the country, as the Bear was at the time. But frustratingly, damnably right. Fuck the fucking bastard, but he was bang on the fucking money. Anything that was worth anything in this life had to be fought for. In thirty-two years, what the fuck had I ever fought for? My band? My career? My girl? Any girl?

Of course, I had no idea HOW I was going to fight for Beth, but it looked as though I’d have several hours sitting around a departures terminal and/or a cheap ‘n’ nasty airport hotel to develop some form of Plan.