Chapter 3
I’d forgotten they were there.
I’d forgotten they were there until the next day when I was lying in bed with an incredible pain in my back from the trenches I’d dug the day before. I don’t know why I remembered. I just did. The pictures. The pictures.
They were hiding under my bed.
“The pictures,” I said to myself, and without even thinking, I got out of bed in the dark but slowly lightening room and got out the pictures. They were pictures of all these women I’d found in a swimwear magazine catalog thing that came through the mail last Christmas. I’d kept it.
Back in bed I looked at the pictures of all the women with their arched backs and their smiles and their hair and lips and hips and legs and everything.
I saw the dental nurse in it — not really, of course. I just imagined her there. She would have fitted.
“God almighty,” I said when I sone of the women. I stared, and I felt really ashamed in my bed because … I don’t know. It just seemed like a low thing to be doing — gawking at women first thing in the morning while everyone else in the house was still asleep. In a Christmas catalog no less. Christmas was just under six months ago. Still, though, I stared and thumbed through the issue. Rube was still snoring his head off on the other side of the room.
The funny thing is that looking at those women is supposed to make a kid like me feel pretty good, but all it did was make me angry. I was angry that I could be so weak and stare like some sick degenerate at women who could eat me for breakfast. I thought too, but only for a second, about how a girl my age would feel looking at this stuff. It would probably make her angrier than me, because while all I wanted was to touch these women, the girl was supposed to be the women. This was what she was meant to aspire to. That had to be a lot of pressure.
I fell back, hopeless, to bed.
Hopeless.
“Dirty boy,” I heard Rube saying from the other day at the dentist.
“Yeah, dirty,” I agreed out loud again, and I knew that when I got older I didn’t want to be one of those sicko animal guys who had naked women from Playboy magazines hanging on the garage wall. I didn’t want it. Right then, I didn’t, so I pulled the catalog from under my pillow and tore it in half, then quarters, and so on, knowing I would regret it. I would regret it the next time I wanted a look.
Hopeless.
When I got up I threw the pieces of women in amongst the recycling pile. I guessed they’d be back again next Christmas in a new catalog. Glued back together. It was inevitable.
Another thing that was inevitable was that since today was Sunday I’d be going down to Lumsden Oval to watch Rube and Steve play football. Steve’s side was one of the best sides around, while Rube’s was one of the worst sides you would ever see in your life. Rube and his mates got flogged every week and it was always pretty brutal to watch. Rube himself wasn’t too bad — him and a few others. The rest were completely useless.
Eating breakfast later on in front of Sportsworld, he asked me, “So what’s the bet on today’s scoreline? Seventy-nil? Eighty-nil?”
“I d’know.”
“Maybe we’ll finally crack the triple figures.”
“Maybe.”
We munched.
We munched as Steve came up from the basement and laid out five bananas for himself to eat. He did it every Sunday, and he ate them while grunting at Rube and me.
At the ground, Rube ended up being not too far wrong. He lost, 76–2. The other side was massive. Bigger, stronger, hairier. Rube’s side only got their two points at the end of the game when the ref gave them a mercy penalty. They took the shot at goal just to get on the board. here was no sand boy or anything so the goalkicker took his boot off, put the ball in it, and kicked the goal in just his socks. By comparison, Steve’s side won a pretty good game, 24–10, and Steve, as usual, had a blinder.
All up, there were really only two halfway-interesting things about the whole day.
The first was that I saw Greg Fienni, a guy who had been my best friend until not too long ago. The thing was that we just stopped being best friends. There was no incident, no fight, no anything. We just slowly stopped being best mates. It was probably because Greg became interested in skating and he joined another gang of friends. In all honesty, he even tried to get me into the group with him, but I wasn’t interested. I liked Greg a lot, but I wasn’t going to follow him. He was into the skateboard culture now and I was into, well, I’m not sure what I was into. I was into roaming around on my own, and I enjoyed it.
At the ground, when I arrived, Rube’s game had already started, and there was a pack of boys sitting up in the top corner, watching. When I walked past it, a voice called out to me. I knew it was Greg.
“Cam!” he called. “Cameron Wolfe!”
“Hey.” I turned. “How’s it goin’, Greg.” (I should have put a question mark there, but what I said wasn’t really a question. It was a greeting.)
Next thing, Greg came out from his mates and walked over to me.
It was brief.
He asked, “You wanna know the score?”
“Yeah, I’m a bit late, ay.” I looked strangely at his bleached, knotted hair. “What is it?” “Twenty-nil.”
The other side went in to score. We laughed.
“Twenny-four.”
“Ay, sit ‘own,” someone from in the group yelled out. “Or get out of the way!”
“Okay.” I shrugged, and I raised my head to Greg. I looked at his mates for a moment, then said, “I’ll see y’ later, ay.” Some girls had just showed up at the group now as well. I think there were about five of them, and pretty. A couple of them were school beauty queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A realer kind of pretty. Real girls, I thought, who might, if I’m lucky, talk to me someday.
“Okay.” Greg returned to his mates. “Catch y’ later.” About a month later, as it turned out.
Funny, I thought as I walked on, around the rope that made the field an enclosure. Best friends once, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other. It was interesting, how he had joined those guys and I just stayed on my own. I didn’t like it or dislike it. It was just funny that things had turned out that way.
The second interesting thing was that back home, toward evenin I was sitting on our front porch watching traffic go by when Sarah and her boyfriend came walking up our street. His car was outside our house but they’d decided just to go out for a walk. The car was his pride and joy. It was a red Ford that had plenty of guts under the hood. Some people are heavily into cars, but to me they seemed pretty stupid. When you looked out my window you could see the whole city crouched under a blanket of car smog. Also, there are guys who tear up and down our street till all hours of the night and think they’re absolutely brilliant.
Frankly, I think they’re tossers.
Yet, who am I to say?
The first thing I do when I get up on a Sunday morning is look at pictures of half-naked women.
So.
From way down the street, I watched them: Sarah and the boyfriend. I could tell it was them because I could see Sarah’s pale jeans that she wore quite often. Maybe she had a couple of pairs.
What I remember best is the way she and the boyfriend, whose name, by the way, was Bruce, were holding hands as they walked. It was nice to look at.
Even a dirty boy like me could see that.
I could.
I admitted to myself on our tiny front porch that beauty was my sister and Bruce Patterson walking up the street like that, and I honestly don’t care what you call me for saying so.
In reality, that was what I wanted — what my sister and Bruce had.
Sure, I wanted those women I’d seen in that catalog, but they were just … not real. They were temporary.
They would be like that every time — just something to pull out and then pack away.
“How’s it goin’?”
“Okay.”
Sarah and Bruce came onto the front porch and went inside.
Right now I still remember them walking up the road like that. I still see it.
The worst thing about it was that it didn’t take a whole lot longer for Bruce to ditch Sarah for someone else. I do meet the replacement girl, later in these pages, but I only get a short look at her. Short words. Short words at a front door …
She seemed okay but I don’t know.
I don’t know anything, not really.
I —
Maybe all I know is that on that day on our front porch, when I watched Sarah and Bruce, I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would keep the vow.
“I’d treat her,” I said.
“I would.”
“I would.”
“— I would.”
I’m at the one-day cricket with a large group of guys behind me. It’s raining lightly and the players are off the field, so everyone is miserable. The guys behind me have been screaming all day, abusing the opposition, each other, and anyone else they can find.
Earlier on, they yelled out to this guy named Harris.
“Oi, Harris! Show us y’ bald spot!”
“Harris, y’ dirty boy!”
I’m down at the fence, quiet.
When our mob was fielding, they gave our own players a good mouthful as well, yelling, “Hey, Lehmann — you’re lucky to be in the side — give us a wave!” He didn’t, but they didn’t stop. “Hey, Lehmann, y’ ignorant bloody — give us a wave or you’ll get my beer on your head!”
After a while the guy waved and everyone cheered, but now in the rain delay, it’s all getting a bit much.
The Mexican wave is going around the ground.
People go up, throwing anything they possibly can into the air and booing when it gets to the Members, and they don’t go up like everyone else.
When the wave stops, the fellas discover a young security guard maybe twenty meters to our right. He’s one of many security guards wearing black pants, black boots, and yellow shirts.
He’s kind of big and stupid-looking and he has black greasy hair and huge lamb chop sideburns that go right down to his jawline.
He gets started in on: “Hey, you! Security man! Give us a wave!”
He sees us but there’s no response.
“Hey, Elvis, give us a wave!”
“Hey, Bobby Burns, give us a wave!” He smiles and nods, very cool, and cops a barrage for it. Oohs and aahs and you’re an idiot this and that. Still they keep going. “Hey, Travolta!”
“Hey, Travolta, give us a wave! A proper one!” Toward the end of the dream, I suddenly feel weird and I realize that I’m actually naked. Yes, naked.
“Geez, y’ right, mate?” someone asks from behind. Then the streaking dares start coming. “C’mon mate, I’ll pay your fine if you make it to the other side.”
I refuse, and each time I do, another piece of clothing reappears over my sk
The sick dream ends with me sitting there in my normal clothes again, glad and smiling that I didn’t streak or do the pitch invasion I was urged to do.
As the dream suggests, I may be perverted and sick, but I’m not completely stupid.
“You won’t catch me without my trousers. Not for long anyway.”
No one hears.
The players come back out.
The security guard still cops a good mouthful.