Praise (28 page)

I received a phone call. It was from Sophie. She'd heard it was all over between me and Cynthia. She was having a party.

I went. It was a Friday night. Sophie lived in a block of small brick flats. There were about twenty people crammed into her living room. Office workers, factory workers. A good crowd. Sophie took me in and introduced me round. I ended up talking to a woman called Susan. She lived in the flat next to Sophie's.

She said, ‘Sophie tells me you're a writer. Is that true?'

‘No. Not really.'

‘Good.'

I liked her. She was short and wide, with bobbed blonde hair. Huge eyes. We talked and the party went on around us. Sophie joined us from time to time. In the end it was just the three of us, sitting around the table, drinking. It got later and later. Susan grew quiet. Sophie talked and talked. I could see what was going to happen. Finally Susan said she was going to bed. We all said goodnight. Susan left. Sophie went off to the toilet. I ran into the hall and knocked on Susan's door. She opened it.

I said, ‘Can I call you tomorrow?'

‘Sure.'

I ran back to Sophie's flat, sat down again. Sophie came out. We talked for a while longer. Then she took me into her bedroom.

We lay down, started kissing. It felt good, there was plenty to like about Sophie, but my heart wasn't there. I was thinking about the warts. About other things. We stopped.

Sophie said, ‘You certainly spent a lot of time with Sue tonight. I thought something was going on.'

‘It was. I should warn you, I like her. I'm going to call her tomorrow.'

‘
What?
Christ, why do you always say things like that?'

‘Sorry. I didn't want to lie about it ...'

‘Well, why don't you go next door now?'

‘Because I'm with you.'

‘Well,
why
are you with me? Why are you telling me this?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Forget it, just forget it.'

The mood was broken. There was no getting back to it. I didn't know why I
was
there. But Susan didn't seem any better as a solution. The question itself was too vast. In the end I slept. Alone, on my side of the bed.

When I woke up it was late and Sophie was gone. I dressed and then knocked on Susan's door. There was no answer. I walked back to my car and drove home.

I called Susan that night.

I said, ‘How about drinks?'

‘I don't think so, Gordon. I've been talking to Sophie. She's really pissed off. You hurt her last night. She's not as tough as you think.'

‘Yes ... I know that.'

‘Anyway, she's a good friend of mine, and I don't think it'd be worth all the hassle.'

‘I see.'

‘Maybe later.'

‘Sure.'

‘I'll see you round, Gordon.'

We hung up.

I fell ill.

It was the weather maybe. It'd been cold and wet for about a week, and I'd been walking in the rain, sitting around in soaked clothes.

It was a mixture of things — asthma, the flu, a chest infection. My respiratory system was a mess. The only things that helped were nicotine and alcohol. I spent several days in the flat, drinking the occasional glass of wine and smoking and coughing up mucus. I seemed to have it under control. At least it didn't get any worse.

Another invitation came through. This time it was for a party with all the old staff members from the Capital hotel. It was Morris who rang me. He was still bumming around, living on the dole. He'd broken up with his sixteen-year-old. I told him that for me, too, the good life was long gone.

The party was at Carla's place. Thursday night. Carla wasn't a barmaid any more. She was running deliveries around town for a courier company.

I went along. I wasn't feeling well. I needed it.

It was a cocktail party. The idea was for everyone to bring along a different bottle of spirits. I dropped into a liqour barn along the way and picked up the cheapest bottle of gin I could find. Eleven dollars ninety-nine. Off-loaded subsidised surplus from Hungary.

Carla had a nice house. She shared it with her brother and her fourteen-year-old daughter. There were maybe thirty people there. Thirty bottles of assorted spirits. My gin was bottom of the range. There were a few good bourbons, a few good liqueurs. Carla's brother had plenty of dope to smoke. And in the living room there were four people crouched around something I'd only ever dreamed about seeing. An industrial-sized cylinder of nitrous oxide. It was all going to be okay. I liked the company. They'd been good people to work with and they were very good people to drink with. No one was going anywhere. They had no money, no plans, no ambitions.

I drank down a few cocktails. The decent stuff was going first — Benedictine, Cointreau, Tia Maria, Wild Turkey, Midori, in assorted combinations. I started feeling better. My breathing lightened up. I had a few puffs on one of the joints going round. I sat down at the nitrous cylinder and waited my turn.

Carla tracked me down.

‘Morris wants to fuck my
daughter!
'

‘He's like that with kids ...'

‘I'm worried. She's in love with him.'

‘Have you told him that?'

‘No. Should I? Would that stop him?'

‘No. That would be the worst thing you could do. That would make him really go for it.'

‘She's only fourteen.'

‘He's done it with fourteen-year-olds before. Fourteen-year-olds have
asked
him to do it with them.'

‘I'll tear his balls off.'

‘No. Morris is a good person. If someone's going to do it to her it might as well be him.'

‘Gordon!'

‘Don't worry. He won't do anything. He just likes to talk about it.'

‘What have you been doing with yourself?'

‘Nothing.'

‘I hear you and Cynthia were living together.'

‘Yes. We were. She's in Darwin now.'

‘Who left who?'

‘It was a mutual decision.'

‘Anyone else?'

‘Not really. I was in love, but there's no point thinking about that ...'

‘You sound very sad.'

‘I am.'

It was my turn at the nitrous. It was hard to suck much in. My lungs felt fine, they just couldn't handle any volume. Then it was Carla's turn. We lost it for a few minutes.

Carla was thirty-five or thirty-six. Long black hair. Strong. I liked her. She had always been good to me, all those years at the hotel. I could never quite tell if she wanted anything to happen between us. I could never quite tell if
I
wanted anything to happen between us. Either way it never had.

I asked, ‘Anyone special for you?'

‘Oh, I've got a boy, he keeps me going, but he's in Sydney right now.'

‘The young ones are what you need.'

‘An old one is what
you
need.'

‘I think you're right.'

‘Cheer up, for Christ's sake.'

‘You're right. I will.'

I did, for a while. I left the nitrous and went back to drinking. It was going down seriously, round for round, on the back verandah. I joined in. Morris was there. I told him about Carla's daughter. He said he was aware of the situation.

‘Are you going to try anything?'

‘Carla would kill me.'

I descended into drunkenness. I smoked my way to the end of my pouch of tobacco. I started bumming cigarettes off the others. I could barely taste them. I hated ready-made cigarettes. Unless they were Winfield Blues. Cynthia's brand. No one had any Winfield Blues. I smoked whatever I could get, one after the other.

The cocktails went on. We got down to the bad stuff. They were mixing vodka and gin and creme de menthe. It was horrible. We forced it down. A rumour went round that someone was putting dishwashing liquid in the drinks. It could've been true.

About one or two in the morning I wandered back into the living room. Things were getting blurred, bodies were staggering around. I had another go at a joint, sucked on the nitrous. It didn't seem to have any effect. There was a stack of videos in the corner. I started going through them. Carla joined me.

‘We need some porn,' I said. ‘Is there any here?'

‘I dunno if that's what we really need, Gordon ...'

But there it was, on the bottom of the pile. Every house has one somewhere.

‘I'm not gonna watch that,' Carla told me.

‘Fair enough.' I slid it in, turned it on.

Carla left.

The crowd in the living room didn't take to it. They thought I was trying to get an orgy started. They picked it to pieces.

This is gross.'

‘Look, it's not even erect!'

It's fake, it's fake!'

‘He's not gonna make it, he'll never come like
that
.'

This is
sick
!'

They demanded I turn it off. I didn't. I was enjoying it. They were missing the point. This was good.

I tried to explain. There was a right way and a wrong way to watch movies like this. The wrong way was to sit back and make comments about the inanity of it all. Any fool could do that. The purpose of porn was to accept it all and learn. To go beyond the terrible acting, the film quality, the editing, the plot, and get into the bodies themselves. The bodies were the important things. They were real. The people were real. They thrust and bounced and the raw flesh gurgled. You could see what humanity was all about.

‘Porn videos,' I told them, ‘are a chronicle. They're a testimony. Watching them, you get to the very essence of mankind's age-long struggle with credibility.'

And it was a struggle mankind was likely to lose. The reaction of the living room crowd made that clear to me. The fucking distracted them, enthralled them, disgusted them. Someone shouldered by me and turned it off.

It was time to go.

I found Carla and said goodbye. She asked me to call her one day. I said I would.

I passed Morris in the doorway. He was leaning over Carla's daughter. The daughter was beautiful. Her eyes were wide. She was what Carla had been, twenty years ago.

Outside it was raining again.

I walked out into the street, down to the main road, looking for a taxi. There weren't any. I started walking home. I got there before I saw any cabs, two hours later, and fell into bed.

I woke early next afternoon.

I was dying.

This was it, I'd gone too far, my lungs had had enough. I couldn't breathe. The asthma had me. There was no air. Every time I tried to inhale all that came was pain. I sucked at the Ventolin. I coughed and shuddered. Nothing went in. I was over the edge, I was going.

I sat on the bed for a long time, hoping it would pass. It didn't. I needed a cigarette. There was no tobacco in the flat. I was thankful for that, otherwise I would've tried and it would've been the end.

Instead I got up. My vision went red, faded. I swayed. There was no oxygen in my brain. I waited until it passed. I went and showered. I didn't feel any better. I sat in the flat for another hour. Nothing improved. I became deeply annoyed. My body was letting me down. I wasn't going to make it on my own. I was going to have to seek
medical help
.

I dressed and drove up to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. There was nowhere to leave the car except a multi-level car park. Two dollars fifty an hour. I couldn't afford this.
Damn
the lungs.

I walked very slowly across to casualty, then up through the long waiting room to the nurse's desk. She looked up.

I said, ‘I'm having an asthma attack.' It was barely a whisper. There was death in my throat.

‘Right,' she said. She took me straight through to the consulting rooms. She left me in one and went off for the doctor. I felt gratified. I was a serious case, they were rushing me through.

The doctor came in, a young woman, a resident. She looked at me. ‘How long have you been like this?'

‘A few hours.'

She shook her head, started some tests. She listened to my lungs, took my blood pressure, got me to blow into a machine that registered my lung capacity. It hurt to blow into anything. The needle went up, went down.

‘How's it look?'

‘Forty per cent,' she said.

‘That's bad?'

‘That's terrible.'

It felt about right.

‘I'm going to have to admit you,' she went on. ‘I don't think you can treat this at home.'

‘I'd prefer to, if I could ...' I was thinking of the car. Two fifty an hour.

‘No.' She took me into another room and asked me to undress. I did so and she gave me a robe. I put it on and lay down on the table. She put a mask over my face, pumped oxygen and Ventolin through it. Then she inserted a drip into my arm, injected several drugs through it, attached a saline bag. Then she took a blood sample and left me there.

I still couldn't breathe, but I wasn't worried about that now. It was out of my hands. The system was taking over and for once I was glad.

Another nurse came in and started taking my details down.

‘Do you smoke?'

‘Yes.'

‘With asthma like this?'

‘I know. I suppose I should stop.'

‘The doctors are gonna scream at you.'

I was beginning to feel like a fool. Tobacco was necessary, but this would not be a noble way to die.

She went away. The doctor came back.

‘You smoke.'

‘Yes.'

‘Christ ...'

She checked some things, left again. A man came in, a wardsman. He put me on a trolley, and wheeled me off to another room where I had my chest X-rayed. Then I was wheeled into the hall. He said I'd have to wait there until I was assigned to a ward.

I was there for an hour or two. I was near the entry bay for the ambulance patients. I sat up and watched the casualties roll by. There were some sick people. Broken legs, blood, screaming, broken backs. What was I doing there? I didn't even feel sick. I just couldn't breath.