Perfect Skin (29 page)

There should be a museum of the eighties where those things can go,
George says, sounding disconcertingly genuine.
Shirts like that shouldn't be forgotten.

No. No museum. Shirts like that should have been forgotten right after Waterloo, George.

No. You could begin with them and
 
go
all the way through to ‘Choose Life' T-shirts, via leg warmers. You could even have a section on eighties hair. There are people we know who'd
go
for that.

Me for a start,
Ash says.
Eighties hair can be hilarious. I think a museum of the eighties'd be cool. Anyway, Jon, you could have the Knack there. You'd like that.

What?

Jon and the Knack. He's a big fan, remember? You know how they inspired him to learn guitar? How he thought he could be in a band like the Knack?

No, Ash, actually they didn't know that. And the Knack might be late seventies, so . . .

I think we'd let them in,
George says.
Jon, you've been holding out on us all these years. Did you learn all three chords?

All three.

Oh, it's tragic, isn't it? The desperate attempts we made to turn ourselves into objects of desire.

All the way to those skinny ties,
Ash adds.
Like that green swirly shiny one that Jon's got.

Remember when you wondered if you'd be in the way this evening?

You don't still have that, do you?
George says,
jumping in with something approaching glee.
You got that at uni.

At the very end of uni.

But you've still got it?

You said you were keeping it in case it came back in,
Ash says, completely merciless tonight.

The swirly tie,
Oscar says.
I remember you in the swirly tie at Mount Stephens General. You were a bad man in those days, you and your dirty-dog phase.

George can't resist jumping right back in, treating the whole conversation with the enthusiasm of a young first-timer in an inflatable castle.
What about that time we bumped into that nurse in Coles, ages later? What was her name?

Kelly.

And you just ignored her and ignored her, and she actually came up and took you on about it. And the best excuse you could manage was that you can't recognise people from side on.

It had been years.

And now it's been a few more, but I can remember it vividly. I can remember her saying something like,
You haven't learned a thing, have you?
But I'm sure I'd learned a lot by then, which was exactly why I had to be so embarrassed about seeing her.

Those were the days,
George says.
Those swirly-tie, dirty-dog days. Why didn't I have them?

Trust me, Porge. They weren't the days. Even when I was at my dirtiest, and the closest you got to the action was drooling on my housemate, the way I recall it there's not much to be nostalgic about.

You're not telling me these are the days, and I'm not
even aware that I'm missing out? I can't remember anything I've done that I'd call close to halcyon, ever. The drooling was the best of it. She was a hell of a housemate. And you know that thing, that moment, where you suddenly realise your body's on the slide? Where you start getting the odd inexplicable ache or pain, and you realise they'll now come and
go
forever?

No.

Yes you do. I think I had it one day in the middle of last year. It was like my whole body just fell. With a clunk. And there I was, older. I'm getting older, Jon Boy, and far too gracefully.

That's crap. It doesn't work that way, or at least it doesn't have to. I run. I get twinges because of running but, other than that, I'm fine. Don't scare me, George. Be graceful, but don't get older on me just yet. I'm assuming these are the days. And those weren't. I'm assuming the days are starting any day now.

So am I,
Ash says.
That's what I came down here for. I'm here for my days. If it turns out I missed them by ten years, I won't be happy.

Oh, youth,
George says, with the sternness of an old and weary magistrate.
You can afford to be so glib.

I haven't noticed the slide, the clunk of my body falling. And I'm sure that's not through inattention. My body's changed these past six months, but for the better. This running is getting me somewhere. Not in a competitive way, but that wasn't the plan. I can go further now, and my times might be better than they once were, but I'll never be good. Actually, if I can maintain my present best five-K time for about forty-one years, I could be
looking at a world over-seventy-five age-group record, or close to it, so it's lucky I'm not doing it for the glory. I've never had that kind of patience.

But it is about the long term, I guess. Delaying my body's fall, and its clunk. Piloting it to a soft landing. Staying well. What surprises me is the changes I can feel. I can feel my body working, and I used to take it for granted. Before, where I had the smoothed-out contours of skin, I'm now marked with the shapes of muscles. Muscles, working just under the surface, dense bundles of muscle, like the pictures in
Grant's Atlas of Anatomy.

In our surface-anatomy tutes in first-year uni, I was all bony prominences and tendons. Now I've filled in the rest, given substance to it, at least in my legs. I could stand in one of those tutes demonstrating the different parts of the quadriceps femoris, or two clear heads of gastrocnemius, instead of being a fine example of the nobbliness of knees.

When I started running, I felt like crap every time. Every wheezy, mucousy second. Now I can get a rhythm going, a sense of my own mechanics. Working parts, working like a machine, carrying me along, clearing my head. It's as though I've never operated inside my body before, never understood it or known its signals, until now. Just got through the day in it, and paid it no regard.

But I can't tell George that. It'd be like an alien language, so I have to keep it to myself. George, it feels good. It's endorphins, it's physiology. I don't know what it is, but it feels good. It's like feeling more alive. And one day I'll go further.

So my belt's in two notches, my thighs are half like runners' thighs. I'm the same weight, but it's better
weight. I'll make myself into some lean old runníng man forty-one years from now. I'll shake that over-seventy-five record yet, if my knees last. I can see myself out there, a snowy-haired, ropey old codger, trotting along.

Mel hated grey hair. Hated the thought of it, hated each one she found as grey hairs broke out all over her head.

I don't mind grey, and I told her I was fine about the grey bits at my temples, happy to leave them alone. It's a better hair colour than people give it credit for, I said to her, but she wouldn't hear of it.

I want it to look natural,
she said,
but not old.
I told her it didn't matter – not to me, anyway. It simply didn't matter. And, if she wanted to know, I actually thought it looked pretty good. She experimented with dyes, tentatively with semi-permanents, then committed to permanents, every six weeks calling herself a skunk as grey appeared round her centre part. And then she'd dye again.
I don't want to look old.

Anyway, I remember George's clunk in the middle of last year. The only clunk he had then was nothing to do with age and, at the time, he even tried to call it sports medicine.

One day there'll be Nintendo at the Olympics,
he said defiantly, as he went off to a physio appointment.
And who'll be laughing then?

He had four treatments before the frozen shoulder got much better, and he was instructed never to stay up playing video games till 3 a.m. again.

But I was in the groove,
he told the physio.
In the zone. You don't think I meant to stay up till 3 a.m., do you?

At lunchtime on Thursday, Flag's still hanging on, still racking up excellent cat ICU bills of hundreds of dollars a night. With Katie maintaining a vigil, reading him stories, playing him his favourite music. And, yes, Wendy used the word ‘vigil'. And said,
I don't have to tell you which decade it is that's pulsing through the Walkman and into that little feline brain.

George tells me
Oscar's got a lunch thing,
when the two of us sit down to eat.
So
he won't be joining us
today. Probably just one of those lunch-friend events, not a date. It's Justin,
so
not a date. Oz still wants to pretend there's nothing going on there but poetry.
So
maybe it's a poetry-friend thing. Is that a category?

I don't know. I'm not the category expert. Poetry and cake-making, maybe? All I know is that there's no category where you should turn up in darkness to dump flowers. Where's Nigel?

Swimming.

By himself?

I'm having a day off.

So how many times have you been now?

In total?

Yeah.

Two. Or thereabouts. But I don't think it helps to count. I'm sure I read that in a book about exercise. Hey, I liked your running buddy.

I figured we'd get round to that.

Well, why not? You will
go
bringing her along
. . .

She just turned up. She was bored. She doesn't know a lot of people. Bringing her along doesn't mean anything.

Then don't
go
crazy and make it look like it does. I was just saying I liked her. Smart kind of girl. Knew how to put shit on you about that swirly-tie phase. Even if it finished when she was about ten.

Started when she was about ten, I correct him, and he laughs. Look, she's in her twenties. Or around that. And you're getting it wrong, anyway. This is not some
Lolita
thing.

Well, no. Not that you've read
Lolita,
since it'd be slightly too big.

Good point.

You could at least have seen the film.

I was busy.

If you'd seen it you'd know there's a critical difference, as far as the age issue goes. Yours is technically an adult. People might still think you're a dirty old scumbag, but they'd be way out of line if they mentioned Nabokov.

Thanks for the support. But it's not like that anyway.

Why not? You can't say she's not your type.

I don't have a type.

Sure you do.

The whole business of ‘type' sucks. It's discriminatory.

So, what, you just pick anyone at random? Is that how it's supposed to work? Raffle yourself? Give them all a turn?

Yeah, right, and that'd take ages. You're flattering me with the concept of ‘all'. And look at the women I've been involved with. There's no type.

There's a type. It's just bimodal in distribution. You've got the petite, dark-haired type, then you've got the taller, willowier, blonde type.

Doesn't that mean I don't have a type?

No, you're just confusing people by having two. You look like someone without a type, but you've always had them both.

Yeah, but it's not as simple as type at the moment, anyway, is it? And you've got it wrong. It's not happening. That's actually the best thing about it. It's not happening. There's no pressure to make it happen.

Don't have to squish any of her pets
. . .

Hey, they've got to learn. If they keep emailing.

Such a waste of a good fantasy if it's not happening. Some young pony takes an interest and you let her down.

This isn't about an interest. You don't get it, and don't waste your time trying to. And her demographic isn't even part of my fantasy landscape.

Okay,
so
who's there in the fantasy landscape?

God, I don't know. Helen Hunt, I suppose, if I've got to name someone. Yeah. She projects that kind of appealing vulnerability, she's smart, very high babe coefficient, and she's even my age. How respectable is that?

It's pretty respectable. And a type-two fantasy for you.

Jodie Foster.

Also type-two.

Helen Hunt or Jodie Foster early on a bad-hair day in men's flannel pyjamas . . . Or is that a bit more specific than you'd like?

No. No, it's good. It was slightly more specific than I was expecting, but it's not bad at all. Of course, I'm assuming you wouldn't actually enforce the dress code. I mean, I'd take either of them if they turned up dressed like a one-day cricket umpire.

What about you, then? Fantasy-landscape-wise?

We're not sure where we stand at the moment at our place. Since Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow broke up, and that's ages ago. The Oz Man and I had a double-date fantasy thing happening.

I check my emails after lunch, for the first time today. The weasel stamps his foot, but all I can see of his complaints before I click LATER is,
I've tried everything with you
. . .

Go away till later, I'm thinking, but more calmly this time. Let me work you out later, when I can work out exactly what it is I get from a Window Weasel, and decide whether or not I want it. I'm too busy now to fit it into my head. To work out if I want the shloopy noise.

I have three emails, one from George, one from my father, one about a web-site update. Am I on the website mailing lists because of George too? I don't ever recall being interested enough to put myself on them.

I open his email first because it has
You'll really have to do this
in the subject column. Which I'm sure I won't, but the others looked even less compelling.