Loaded (8 page)

I don't often fuck with Greeks. It is protection for myself. Someone may know a friend of my parents, or know an uncle. Greeks have big mouths and word can get around. When I was fucking with women it was not such a problem. No one cared about what woman you slept with, it made you more a man, as long as you didn't end up getting someone's sister or someone's daughter pregnant. Fucking with Greek men is half sex, half a fight to see who is going to end up on top. When I get the urge to have sex with a dark man, a Mediterranean man, I end up in Coburg or Preston looking for Turkish or Lebanese cock, someone outside my community, someone no one I know is ever going to meet. Sometimes, however, I see a Greek man, not necessarily someone particularly handsome, and I want to feel their body against me, to use dirty Greek words with them, to have them whisper Greek obscenities.

When Maria and I get out of the women's toilets, the man in the fishing cap is waiting there. He doesn't say a word. I watch him walk out through the screen door into the pub's backyard. I tell Maria I'll catch up with her later and follow him.

Outside, the smells of beer mix with the stench of garbage. A group of four men are huddled together sharing a joint. The man in the fishing cap walks past them, out the open back gate and into the small car park beyond. I follow him in the night air, down a suburban side street. He glances back, then keeps on walking. He turns into an alley and I hesitate. I think of mad fuckers, think of my throat being slit, think of those crazy men who get off on death. The visions of madness entwine with my urge to have sex. Blood
and semen; these days the liquids go together. I turn into the alley, slowly, walking into the dark landscape of a dream.

He is pissing, a thick stream against the boards. I come up next to him, unzip, take out my dick, conscious of it looking small and shrivelled from the speed. I don't pretend to piss, I stand next to him masturbating until I get a hard-on. He finishes pissing, plays with his thick dick, watching me from the corner of his eye. I look down at his cock and reach for it. He groans, a slight murmur. I smell piss, smell alcohol on him. I masturbate him and try to guide his big hairy hand onto my cock. He resists. Instead he pulls down on my shoulders and I squat and take the head of his cock in my mouth. I taste drops of urine. He thrusts against my throat and I keep pulling on my cock, trying to avoid getting on my knees because of the piss on the ground.

I'm off-balance and I try to get up. He pulls down harder on my shoulders. Don't spill any of it, he whispers savagely in Greek. I don't want him to come in my mouth, I fear the disease that might be floating inside his body. But he pushes his cock hard into my throat. I'm caught between two desires, to gorge on his cock, to take him inside me as deep as he can go, or to get up on my feet, push him against the wall and hurt him for debasing me.

Time, time betrays me. Before I can make a decision I feel the hot sting of liquid in my mouth. He pulls away and I spit out his semen, his stench from my mouth. He dries his cock on a handkerchief, zips up and starts to move away. I'm up on my feet, I grab his arm and push him against the alley wall. I stick my hard cock into his hand. Pull me, I bark out in Greek. He groans, but I have one arm against his chest, holding him back and he doesn't turn away. I hate him now and I don't let him leave. My cock feels like iron. He pulls at it and I look into his eyes, two shining glints of light in his dark, unshaved face.

He looks pained now, the strength I saw in him, the strength which attracted me to him, is spent; spilt on the
ground, diluted in the urine. I keep watching his eyes, not allowing him to turn his face away. He hates what he's doing, feels no desire as he mechanically pushes my foreskin across my cock. I rub my free hand inside his shirt, weaving my fingers in the hair of his stomach and chest. I feel that I'm about to come. I lift his shirt above his nipples and my white flashes of sperm land on his stomach and down around his feet. He pushes me away, wipes himself and glaring at me tucks in his singlet. I spit into my hand and wipe my cock. He walks back to the pub and I lean against the wall and light a cigarette.

My breathing seems loud to my ears. I allow the night breeze to tease my body, to cool me down, and I piss against the alley wall. I tuck my T-shirt into my jeans, tread on the cigarette, mixing the tobacco in with the come and piss on the ground and walk back through the car park and into the backyard of the pub.

Spiro is waiting for me. My brother has his arm around a tall, beautiful woman in a black sweater and a short skirt. Her painted face is pale white, her curls tight and black as night. This is Ariadne, Peter introduces me. I shake her hand, I smell expensive perfume. Just a touch; a pleasing scent. I pull the packet of speed from my pocket and offer it to Spiro. He winks and slips sixty dollars in my hand. He hardly looks at the amount of powder in the bag. He trusts me. In the pub the band have begun to play
rembetika
. I sway to the music.

–You enjoy dancing. I nod to Ariadne, though it doesn't sound like a question. She can see I like dancing. This is a beautiful song, she continues.
Bring me a flagon of wine so I can forget the pains that poison my life
. We Greeks embrace our pain, don't we? She looks around at the three men standing before her. Shall we dance? She grabs my brother's hand and leads him inside.

–Who is she? I ask Spiro. He laughs and tells me she is the woman who is breaking Peter's heart. Janet, rough, large.
I think of her. Think of not seeing her again if Peter splits from her. There is nothing painful in my thoughts. Janet is Peter's business, not mine. Part of his life, nothing to do with mine. Spiro hands me a set of keys. Meet me upstairs in the storeroom he tells me, there's someone I want you to meet.

He walks off and I go inside and up the staircase which opens up into a dingy little room piled high with boxes of canned food and alcohol. A small wooden table and three wooden chairs. A full ashtray, tobacco papers, a deck of cards and two empty glasses sit on the table. I take a seat, rest my head on my arms and listen to the music downstairs. I remember a movie I saw on late-night television a long time ago. Gene Hackman locked in a room very much like this one. In the movie he was drinking. I feel like a drink.

I search the room. Behind a pile of boxes I find a half-drunk bottle of whisky. I fill one of the glasses and sit down, pretending I'm not in Brunswick, Melbourne but in some room in Chicago somewhere. There is a knock on the door, the pretence is shattered and Spiro comes in, a blonde girl behind him holding his hand. A thin Greek boy behind them. Spiro locks the door and makes the introductions. Ari, Kristin, Stephen. Kristin smiles at me. Stephen looks nervous. She is wearing a long hippie dress, each ear has three earrings, an Indian scarf is tied around her hair. Stephen is dressed in a dark grey op-shop sixties suit over a white shirt. A navy tie is tied loosely around his neck, his top button undone. Black sneakers on his feet. His face is marked by spots, he is uneasy, nervous. His eyes large and dark. He is beautiful and I avoid looking at him.

–Are you at uni? Kristin takes a chair next to me. No, I tell her. Ari is Peter's brother, Spiro tells her. I like your brother, she tells me. I don't answer. I don't care.

–Are you studying? Stephen sits on a crate. I don't study, I don't work, I tell him. He is about to ask me another
question, then decides against it. Spiro is emptying most of the speed onto the table.

–So what do you do? This woman won't leave me alone. Whatever I like, I tell her. Spiro laughs. How old are you? she continues. Nineteen, I answer, twenty in a few months. I'm a Leo, I add. She whistles, dangerous, and smiles at me. I smile back. Stephen lights a joint and passes it to me.

The smoke is good. The others talk among themselves and I listen in. Spiro arranges the speed into eight identical lines. We each take a turn to snort our share. The three thank me in turn. I take ten dollars out of my wallet and hand it to Spiro. What's that for, man? he cries. For my share, I answer. He refuses it but I'm persistent. I'm enjoying being in the little room, away from the crowd and I'm sorry I short-changed him on the gram. Buy me a drink downstairs, I add, and he pockets the note.

Stephen and Spiro start talking in Greek and Kristin enters in the conversation with them. I'm surprised, she doesn't look Greek. She hesitates over particular phrasing but her spoken Greek is better than mine. More confident. I listen to her voice, it is melodic. Stephen is berating her, his tone pushy and angry as the subject moves to politics. Spiro pours himself a glass of whisky, and like me, watches the faces of the two young people arguing, occasionally winking at me. I'm happy to sit here, intoxicated by the drugs, the drink, and the beauty of the faces around me.

–Marxism is dead, Kristin tells Stephen. He bangs his fist on the table and stands over us.

–Communism, the degenerate state of the Soviet Union may be dead, but not Marxism. He looks around at me and Spiro for support. I avert my eyes. He's talking politics and I'm thinking how hot he looks.

–Marxism, he continues, is not dead, it can't be dead. It's the only theory that makes sense of alienation.

I pour myself another drink. I'm not following the conversation which matters shit to me. I'm on edge. I want
to talk, say something clever but I have nothing clever to say. Kristin raises her voice as she argues against Stephen.

–Marxism led to the gulags. Stephen shakes his head. That's bullshit, he explodes. He has eyes that are frightening. He has eyes that burn. Greek eyes.

–That's your answer to everything isn't it, Kristin yells. Something Stephen said has made her furious. Spiro touches her shoulder and she pulls away. As someone who supported communism don't you feel any responsibility for the failures of communism? she continues.

–No. Stephen's voice is calm. No responsibility at all. He pauses. Spiro is whistling a Greek tune. I'm feeling the speed run down the back of my throat. Stephen turns to Kristin and says, simply and quietly, no anger in his voice, I'm never going to stop resisting capitalism.

–I resist it as well.

–Then give me a fucking solution to it. Stephen's spit falls in a spray over Kristin, over me. Until you give me a solution better than Marxism. I remain a committed Marxist.

I get up, drink the remainder of my glass. I'm going downstairs, I say, and fill the glass again. Kristin and Spiro nod to me but Stephen's face is impassive. I want to say something to him, but I am intimidated by the language he uses and instead turn, unlock the door and walk out into the hall. The sounds from downstairs rush into my ears, the wail of the bouzouki, the sounds of shouting. The whole pub is in a frenzy of motion. I breathe in the excitement echoing off the walls and I am glad to be free of the more intimate intensity of the small room. Stephen's eyes, dark, angry. I am glad to escape.

Walking down the stairs, heading back to the singing, the dancing, the conversations, I start a refrain in my head. Singing along to the thirties hashish song they are playing downstairs, I sing fuck politics, let's dance. I sing it in a Greek accent, give the phrase middle-eastern inflections, draw out the words and my voice reverberates on the vowels. Fuck
politics, let's dance I sing coming down the stairs. I'm angry and I don't know what I'm angry about.

A Serbian guy lied to me the other day. I was sitting on a bench at North Richmond station, waiting for a train to the city. I had the Walkman on and was listening to the radio. They were playing
Love Song
, an old Simple Minds song. A young guy, stocky, unshaven and wearing cheap department store clothes sat next to me. I avoided him, he was avoiding me. When the song finished I turned off the Walkman and rustled through my bag looking for a tape to play. The man turned to me and asked, in broken English, sorry does this train go to Jolimont. Yes, I answered, took off my earphones and asked him where he wanted to get to. He had an interview for a cleaning job in some small hotel in East Melbourne. The sun was shining, I was feeling pleasant. I kept asking questions. Were are you from?

–Greece, he answered. I looked at him, his skin was olive but his hair was dirty blond, his eyes clear blue. Which part? I said, in Greek.

–Sorry, he replied, blushing, I'm Greek but I don't speak Greek. I nodded at this, and put the earphones back. Bullshit was what I was thinking, but bullshit is everywhere. I lie to strangers all the time. I can understand not giving too much away.

I started the tape and I was swaying to the sweet harmonies of the O-Jays. The man beside me tapped me on the shoulder. I stopped my machine and I was back at North Richmond station. Yeah, I demanded, aggressively. I'm not really from Greece, he told me. I didn't answer. I'm from Yugoslavia. I did not respond.

–I'm Serbian.

I scowled at him. I didn't know why he was persisting.

–Sometimes, he continued, if I tell people I'm Serbian they are not very happy. Sometimes they blame me for the war in Yugoslavia. Politicians are to blame for war, I answered. He laughed. The train was approaching, I said good luck with the job interview, put on my earphones and went into a different compartment.

The O-Jays were singing
Backstabbers
. They smile in your face. The Serb hates the Croat who hates the Bosnian who hates the Albanian who hates the Greek who hates the Turk who hates the Armenian who hates the Kurd who hates the Palestinian who hates the Jew who hates everybody. Everyone hates everyone else, a web of hatred connects the planet. A Cambodian woman across the aisle was trying to get her kid to shut up. I smiled at her and she smiled back. And the O-Jays were singing
They smile in your face, all the time they want to get your place
. Pol Pot was right to destroy, he was wrong not to work it out that you go all the way. You don't kill one class, one religion, one party. You kill everyone because we are all diseased, there is no way out of this shithole planet. War, disease, murder, AIDS, genocide, holocaust, famine. I can give ten dollars to an appeal if I want to, I can write a letter to the government. But the world is now too fucked up for small solutions. That's why I like the idea of it all ending in a nuclear holocaust. If I had access to the button, I'd push it.

As we got into Princes Bridge station I was imagining the apocalypse. I was getting so excited it was making my dick hard.