Thrill Seekers (5 page)

‘So what’s your story anyway? Why aren’t you downstairs with your mates?’

‘I’m tired of all their bullshit. I just wanted to be alone.’

‘Till you caught me spewing my guts out.’

‘Yeah. But it’s sort of like being alone.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Hey don’t get all huffy. I just meant you’re alright. You know, easy to talk to.’

I take back the butt and burn my finger. ‘Ouch!’ I put it in my mouth.

He takes it out and kisses it better.

I wrench my hand away. ‘What is it with you? What do you want?’

‘Nothing. I … Just …’

‘What’s the matter?’

He shakes his head, with his mouth turned down.

‘Is it your mum?’ More than once his mother’s turned up on Angie’s doorstep in the middle of the night, bashed and bleeding from fights with his father. She always goes back though.

‘What the fuck do you know about my mother?’

I’ve said the wrong thing.

‘Nothing, nothing. Angie’s mum knows her that’s all. You know, about the fighting and stuff.’

‘She doesn’t know anything about my family, all right? It’s none of her fucking business.’

‘Is it bad?’

He doesn’t say anything but he nods; a small nod like someone invisible is holding his head and forcing him.

He’s standing so close to me I can feel the heat from his jeans and jacket oozing across to my body, and with it the weight of his heart. I stretch out my little finger and touch his hand next to mine on the railing.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

I put my small white hand on his big brown one and hold it there.

And suddenly he pulls me to him and plants his lips on mine and I taste the salt of his sweat and the whisky he’s drunk and the Winfields he’s smoked and the deep, tough wildness of him. And he keeps kissing me and kissing me as if he’s trying to swallow me whole, taking breath from me, till I feel like I’m drowning in his pain.

‘Hey,’ I say pulling away. ‘Stop. I can’t breathe.’

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Come on, Beck. I really want to.’

The bass line of the main band’s first song starts moaning out from below.

‘You don’t know me.’

‘Come on.’

Pete’s head appears at the doorway, his eyebrows raised, ready to come to my
rescue. But I wave him away with hands still wrapped around Jacko; watch as he makes an ‘Ooh Ah’ face and skips down the stairs dying to tell someone.

Jacko looks around. ‘Who was that?’

‘No one,’ I say. ‘Come here.’

And I pull him closer, standing on tiptoe to press my lips to his.

Softly.

I suppose everything started to really turn to shit last summer when Jacko turned eighteen and bought his bomb of a car. Not that I’m blaming him. It was all that stupid wine company’s fault. If they hadn’t put a ‘Scratch and Win’ ticket with a ten thousand dollar prize in every four-litre cask, none of it would have ever happened. Or maybe it would have, just not so fast and all at once. To us Oxley Creek Boys, it was like a message from God, giving us a job to do, a purpose. Sort of like that bloke in France they told us about in school. He got a letter from Jesus telling him to get a bunch of kids together to go fight a crusade.
We didn’t have a war to go to like they did. But we got our message just the same.

Ever since I can remember we’ve been the Oxley Creek Boys, since even before we made our raft – Jacko, Douggie, Russ, Steve, and me. We used to fly up planks of wood on our BMX bikes, leap over buckets and burst through walls of hose-spray. We rattled down the hill on brakeless
go-carts
and crashed into the gully, coming up bloody but laughing. Sometimes we got hurt, a broken arm or bad gravel rash, but never anything that couldn’t be fixed and never anything that stopped us doing it all over again.

‘I dare ya,’ was our motto.

Once we hit high school, we found out there were more things to try. Everyone was smoking dope – well all the cool kids anyway, the ones that mattered. We made our first bongs out of juice bottles and bits of hose, and cones from tinfoil. We pooled our money from part-time jobs and paper runs and bought huge bags of grass, smoking it
in endless weekend sessions, pulling cone after cone, laughing and coughing and gorging on junk food, till we ended up in a sweaty heap on the cubby floor, empty wrappers stuck to our backs, staring into space unable to speak.

We tried magic mushrooms, acid, nitrous oxide, pills – whatever we could get our hands on. We laughed all the time, especially at Douggie’s jokes. Mostly we laughed about other people who weren’t as cool as us. Life was a party and we partied harder than anyone.

One drunken night we decided that those ‘Scratch and Win’ tickets in the casks were the best way for us to get rich, as well as getting us a place in the world record books as unbeatable drinking thrill seekers. Our crusade. We wanted to be the coolest, and that meant being able to drink everyone else under the table. So we made a pact to drink a four-litre cask of wine a day, each, until we won. Moselle. Goon.

Money wasn’t a problem. Jacko and me both had jobs at the local servo by then, and Steve and Douggie did papers. The rest of our cash came from selling dope at school to kids who didn’t know any better.

We drank the goon straight in tumblers, in mugs with ice, blended into smoothies with apple and even banana. Though I only tried banana once. It made me chuck. We drank it lukewarm and heated up over campfires on cold winter nights. We weren’t just any old drinkers – we were the ‘Goon Babies’. At night, huddled around the heater in the cubby, we sang hymns about goon like those French kids probably sang about Jesus. My favourite was sung to the tune of Gloria and went like this, ‘Goo-oo-oo-
oo-ooniie
, we shall drink forever,’ over and over again. We had a great time, arms around each other, swaying together, warm inside and out. Friends forever. Champion thrill seekers. Just like when we were kids.

Sometimes we won another cask of goon with our lucky tickets, but never the money.

So we kept trying. And trying. We couldn’t believe it when yet another scratchie came up with ‘Better luck next time’. It became the goon marathon, dragging on over months, straggling into the new year. Those French kids kept on marching to prove themselves, to serve their God. We served ours too. No giving up. Not ever. Anyway, we were having too much fun.

On the weekends when other part-time goon babies joined us, we had crazy boat adventures. In Dad’s old tin dinghy we puttered down the polluted creek into the river, dodging barges, the occasional cruiser, and the dredges that made the river such a murky brown. There was a cement pontoon under the Indooroopilly Bridge where we left the boat while we scrambled up the bank through mangroves and lantana to the road. Half-swaggering, half-stumbling, we made our way to the orange brick pub and stocked up on supplies.

One Friday night, as we were tying up at the pontoon, I spotted a Russian wolfhound
that was stuck in the mud. The dog’s long hair was black and stinking, hanging from its loose skin. Even in the dark, his eyes gave me the spooks. They looked empty, like he’d given up hope. Like we were too late. He didn’t even have the strength to move his legs and help us as we heaved, pulling him free of the black gunge that had sucked him in so deep only his front legs and head were still out.

We got him into the boat and went straight home, where we dragged him into the back seat of Jacko’s car on a beach towel and drove to the free vet clinic at the Uni, his head bouncing on my lap. For a big dog he was really light. At the clinic they took him from my arms, put him on a trolley and wheeled him away. I swear he turned and looked at me.

The next afternoon I went to visit but he’d died in the morning. The vet said he’d been stuck in the mud a long time, a week or more. All they’d found in his stomach were a few yabbies. I felt real bad then. He shouldn’t have died. I should’ve found him
sooner. I’ll never forget that look he gave me. I should’ve known then it was a sign. A warning.

The weekend after we found the dog, we snuck into the Sea Scouts’ shed and borrowed a bigger boat so we could fit everyone in. We had four extras that night. Everyone wanted to be in on our fun. First stop was the Indooroopilly golf course just up from where the creek joined the river. We pulled the boat onto mud at the bottom of a cliff and climbed up the bank to one side of the cliff face. We collected flags from holes as souvenirs and wandered around, so wasted that we were never all standing at the same time. It was a beautiful night. We laughed and sang our goon songs to the moon.

Across the river the powerhouse was sparkling with lights like a space-age city, its chimneys reaching high and smoky. It looked like magic, the Promised Land, so we headed in that direction. But first we had to
find the boat, down on the mud far below. As usual Jacko led the way. He reckoned we wouldn’t even know how to scratch our own arses if he didn’t show us how.

‘This way,’ he called, leading us down a path, then disappearing.

I followed straight after him.

The track ended with a step into darkness, a couple of seconds’ wingless flight, and a hard thumping body-slam flat into the mud.

‘Don’t come this way,’ I yelled up to the fellas. But no one heard, and even if they had, they probably would still have followed. That’s what mates did. Soldiers follow their leader.

One by one they fell the ten-metre drop off the cliff to the riverbank.

Because we were so out of it we landed soft and floppy in the mud and no one got hurt. The glass bong in Steve’s hand got
smashed but he didn’t even cut himself. A miracle. It was a hell of a drop. We wiped off a bit of the mud, laughed, and had another drink to celebrate. Back in the boat, I started the motor and we crossed the
night-dark
river to the lights of the powerhouse.

It seemed empty so we went inside, whispering at first, getting louder when no alarm bells rang and no guards appeared. We opened the workmen’s lockers and helped ourselves to their dinner-box sandwiches and biscuits; made a bonfire of their magazines and books to keep warm. Jacko figured out how to get inside a crane, so we mucked around with that for a while. Douggie fell asleep in the boat. Russ went to explore further into the enormous building and got lost, returning hours later with a sketched map and the autograph of a worker who’d given him directions back out.

The sky was starting to brighten by then, so we headed back to the scout hut to return the boat. We were polishing off the last of the bottles and dancing with muddy boots on the narrow bunks when
the scoutmaster arrived. He went ballistic and yelled at us till his face went red. But we weren’t afraid. We knew he was the one who practised his knot tying around little boys’ willies. Old perve. We got out of there quick-smart anyway, leaving him wiping mud off the vinyl mattress covers.

Back home we squashed into Jacko’s car, chucking the young ones in the boot, and hit the pub for some beer. We drove to the local park of steep green hills and fig trees by the curve of the river, and found ourselves a comfortable spot for our beer breakfast picnic. The first beers were delicious, cold and refreshing, but no one finished their second, all of us finally falling asleep in the hard white glare of the morning sun.

When I woke up happy families were spreading picnic blankets around us, unpacking hampers, keeping their kids close by. I felt dirty, covered in mud and soaked to the core in goon. Douggie was crying.

The next weekend he had his fight with Steve.

But that didn’t stop us drinking. The goon marathon has stretched on and on, I don’t think it’ll ever end. Jacko’s moved out and got a place of his own where I hang out most of the time, away from Mum’s tears and Douggie’s crazy talk. We party every night, and every weekend the house overflows with kids who want to be us. But I can’t get a handle on it anymore. Nothing’s easy like it was before. Nothing’s fun. All the promises we made of undying friendship have turned to shit and everyone’s changed. Not just Douggie either. Feels like that bloody mud’s got us all neck deep, grasping for the mangroves to pull ourselves out.

It’s every man for himself.

And for all our drinking we’ve never won a cent. I wonder if there even is a prize. I’ve been thinking about those French kids on their crusade a lot lately, too. Tramping over snowy mountains singing their stupid songs, till they froze and starved, heading towards something that didn’t really exist. You know what happened to them in the end? The ones that didn’t die getting to the
port were sold into slavery. Not one of them made it to the Promised Land. Not one.

I like girls. I like everything about them – how their hair smells clean, how their legs feel after they’ve shaved them, the way they’re round in parts I’m flat. Their lips. The way they press hard against me as they’re about to come. They can’t get enough of me and my banana dick either. The Sex God of Brisbane, here to serve.

I’ve been home a couple of months taking the bloody pills the doctor at the hospital gave me like a good little boy. Mum watches me in the mornings over our cereal, making sure I swallow them down. Maybe they’re helping, maybe not. There was nothing
wrong with me in the first place, except for a couple of paranoid nights on the smoke. I keep telling Brian that, over and over, but he and the other fellas still act as if I’ve got something worse than leprosy. Jealous as hell. I’m not worried, lots of other famous guys have the same trouble. I suppose they’re scared that if I turn up at parties they won’t get a look in with the girls.

They’re not going to stop me going out though. I’ve got as much right to fun as anyone. More. Tonight I’m off to a Joint Effort, a gig at the Uni, lots of bands, heaps of chicks, sweaty and hot, just begging for it.

I lie down on the floor to zip up my daks, the tightest black jeans you’ve ever seen. They make my arse irresistible. Slip on my new purple shirt, do my eyeliner and I’m ready. I have to take the bus. Brian and the others took off in the tinny before, snuck down to the cubby and didn’t think I’d notice. But I saw them – I heard the
motor roaring out into the creek – and I know exactly where they’re going. Too bad for them if I root all the girls before they even get there.

I listen to some Mental as Anything songs on the bus on the way to the Uni. Old fart stuff I know, but still cool. My favourite is ‘The Nips are Getting Bigger’. I reckon it’s about girls’ tits growing. That’s what I sing anyway ‘Uh hoh, the tits are getting bigger’. I like tits – round ones, small ones, perky, droopy, pointy, all of them. Everyone on the bus is checking me out; reckon they must recognise me from the telly. I give them a free concert all the way in. Guess I’m feeling generous.

Life’s pretty good when you don’t think about all the shit, like not having a dad, and Mum losing the plot. Brian not being around much anymore. When I’ve got my music, some pot and the promise of girls, it feels like anything is possible. Maybe this is
how Jesus felt when he was about to raise that guy from the dead. Like a miracle is just around the corner. God energy is filling me up as I belt out the last song and get off the bus to a round of applause. Tonight I’m invincible.

As I walk across the sandstone court towards the lights and music I straighten myself up, make sure I’m looking good. I drag a comb through my hair and wipe my shoes clean, smooth my shirt across my chest and practise my pout.

At the gate they question my ID but I joke with them about how people do that all the time and how really I’m twenty, and they let me in. You’d think they’d let someone as famous as me in for free. They’ll probably want me to get up and do a song or two later.

My heart starts beating faster as I head into the crowd, moving closer to the music. Guitar riffs are blaring from huge speakers and chicks are already screaming. Concerts
are great; the girls are always revved up and excited. All that dancing and making eyes at the band gets them in the mood.

Heaps of roughnecks are bouncing around like pogo sticks, pretty mean looking, with safety pin earrings and rips in their clothes, and lots of shaved heads. Most of them are totally wasted. The band looks wild too, and real angry. They sound okay. Loud enough that’s for sure.

I thread my way through sweating bodies, following a guy with a Mohican to near the right hand speaker, where the gang always hangs at gigs. A whole pile of kids from school are there, thrashing around, having a good time. That’s the good thing about living in a hole like Brisbane – there are so few things to do that at least when there is something worth going to, everyone you know turns up too.

Jacko’s already here, doing deals, yelling into people’s ears, handing over joints and shoving money in his pocket. Russ’s sister Beck is hanging off his arm like she’ll never
let him go. How she ended up with him I’ll never know. She’s all right. Used to be too daggy for me but now it looks like she’s loosened up a bit. I flash her a look and she smiles back. She remembers. We were in the same class in grade seven; I used to pay out on her something terrible. Kissed her once too. Wasn’t bad.

I push my way past Russ, to where Brian is trying to pogo, looking like a beanbag being dropped from a height every time he lands and splattering everyone around him with a mixture of sweat and mud. Steve’s playing air guitar next to him.

‘Hey Brian!’ I yell into his hair as I come up behind him.

‘What the? Fuck. What’re you doing here?’

‘Free country isn’t it?’

‘Shit. Just don’t do anything stupid all right? Nothing freaky. Did you take your pills today?’

‘For fuck’s sake, one mother’s enough. I’m going to have a good time tonight that’s all. If you don’t like it well, sucko.’

‘Okay, okay. Just don’t…’

‘What?’

‘You know.’

I play it cool for a while, sort of rocking a bit, moving my hips but not much else as I grin around at the girls from school. A few of them nod back but most of them grab their girlfriend’s hands and turn away, shouting into each other’s ears.

‘I’m going up the front to check out the groupies,’ I tell Brian. ‘Want to come?’

‘No way. I’m staying here with Jacko and Beck. You go if you want. But remember what I said, no freaky stuff,’ he yells back.

I don’t bother asking Steve. He moved away as soon as he saw me coming.

So I elbow through the thrashing moshpit to where the front line of punters are squashed up against the stage and press myself between a couple of cute chicks. One turns, angry that I’ve muscled in at first, but when I wink and mouth ‘hi’, she smiles. I use the force of the crowd to lean against her and she doesn’t even try to move away. I’m on.

By the time the set finishes I’ve got my arm around the girl and we’re heading to the dunnies for a joint. A joint’s always good bait. Rooting and fishing have a lot in common really and I reckon this one’s dying to get caught. Her tits, big and bouncy and shining with sweat, are almost falling out of her skull t-shirt, it’s cut so low. She sure is up for it – already sliding her hand under my shirt and feeling my skin. And she’s totally out of it. Don’t know what she’s on but I wouldn’t mind some.

As we pass Brian on our way out the side of the crowd, I give him a quick nod. He
looks like he could spew he’s so jealous. I reckon he’s probably never even had a root, too fat and spotty. I could teach him a trick or two if he’d just shut up and listen for a change.

I take the girl to the dunnies out the back. It’s quieter there. As I lead her past the dudes at the trough, someone I don’t even know calls out, ‘Go for it mate!’

‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ I say as I open a cubicle door and usher her inside. I turn the lock to ‘engaged’ and light up, pretending that we both don’t know we’re here for other things than the smoke. ‘So, what’s your name?’

‘Amanda, but call me Mandy, everyone does.’

‘You’re real pretty, Mandy.’

She grins, showing a gold tooth at the front. Her pupils are huge, and in the bright light of the cubicle I realise that her
eyelashes aren’t real and that she’s a lot older than I thought – maybe even
twenty-five
.

‘Come here then,’ I say and put the lit end of the joint in my mouth, giving her the filter to suck on as I blow, a classic shotty. By the time we’ve smoked the joint down to a roach our lips will be touching. I’ve used the old shotty line a million times. It never fails. Her lipstick-red lips close around the joint but I must blow too hard because she coughs and pulls away spluttering.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’ll be alright in a minute.’ She chucks the rest of the joint into the toilet even though there’s heaps left, grabs my jeans by the belt loops and pulls me to her till her hipbones are grinding into my thighs. She plants a wet one on me, sticking her tongue so far down my throat I gag. She’s no virgin this one. I’m in like Flynn, she’s clawed open my daks, and is scratching at my balls. We do it wild and furious against the wall.

Afterwards, as we walk back up the stairs to the band, she wants to hold my hand but I need both of them to do up my zip. As soon as we’re into the crowd I head back to the others and give her the slip. Once was enough with her. Fierce.

I’m dancing away next to Brian minding my own business when she appears like a witch out of nowhere. She’s clutching the hand of a pudgy looking skinhead.

‘That’s him,’ she screeches pointing at me. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ I don’t even have a chance to say anything in my defence before the skin’s whacked into me.

‘What’s your problem mate?’ I yell as I reel backwards into the safety cushion that is Brian. ‘She was all over me.’

But he’s not listening. ‘As if she’d be into you, ya scrawny little dickhead.’ He kicks out with his steel capped boot and brings me to my knees.

Then another skin appears, towering over his mate.

It’s on. So I roar like I really am crazy and hurl myself at the short one, pummelling sharp punches to the guts.

Brian grabs at the other guy to try to keep him off, but it’s too late. The big rocker starts in on me too and then three more skins join in. Steve, Russ and Jacko come running. Thank God for big mates.

‘Fucking hell Douggie, haven’t I told you never to pick skins?’ grunts Brian between punches. He’s tackling one fella around the waist as he kicks at the short one who’s got me on the floor. I don’t have the breath to explain as I try to roll out from under, spitting into the guy’s face.

Jacko grabs the small skin’s braces and drags him off me, hurling him into the crowd. Then Steve tackles the big one and gives him a quick punch to the guts that has him gasping for air.

Jacko yells ‘FIGHT!’ and starts kung fu kicking like a mad man. Beck screams and runs out of the line of fire. Everyone else mucks in. Massive, pig-dog ugly bald guys come at us from all directions. It’s a free for all. Fun – except when that big guy lands a fist in my ear. The music is loud and frantic. I punch in time with the beat. Smack. Bang. Wallop. I feel like Batman doing Kapow hits till a bouncer throws a heavy elbow into my face and chucks me against the wall. Bloody Beck must’ve got the bouncers.

Shit. My nose is bleeding. Better not be broken.

Jacko slams one last punch into a skin’s head then yells, ‘Go! Everyone out of here. GO! Down to the boat!’ He runs for the balcony without even a look to see if anyone is following, and hurdles over the railing, disappearing with a metallic thud onto a van below. Brian grabs my shirt and hauls me off the fella I was wrestling, lugging me out the side door. Steve overtakes. I laugh, pumped full of adrenaline. But the skins are just as wired. And they’re after us. The fellas
hurl themselves over the railing, crashing and rolling onto the van’s roof. Just before I jump I look behind and see Beck calling out for Jacko. But he’s long gone.