The Fish Changes Everything

It’s summer now, it really is. The tourists have come, the sculpture show on the cliff path is on, the sea is warm, the sky is a pale blue and we all smell of sun screen and hot skin.
In the morning I pack a bag and walk barefoot down the gulley steps to the beach. Day ten, no cigarettes. Meg and I got drunk last night, two chilled bottles of white and two glasses, wandering among the sculptures, playing art critics, giggling and staggering, critiquing rubbish bins and dog turds, me in straw hat and bare feet, Meg in ripped jeans and a skirt. Into the second bottle we were as much an attraction to the tourists and art lovers as the welded bits of scrap and Henry Moore rip-offs were, living the dream, brown and young and reckless, golden glow in love.
We argued before I left the house this morning, maybe just so we could spend some time alone, maybe just so I could spend some time alone.
I cross the road, hopping from one foot to the other on the hot tarmac, and walk quickly through the park to the beach. I find a spot without too many people and dig in. I saw a Japanese guy do it once: he dumped his bag, fell to his knees and quickly and efficiently dug a bum shaped hole, piling the sand to make a back rest. Then he laid his towel over hole and mound and sat down like a sandy armchair ninja. Ever since that day I have done the same. Now I distain those who lie flat, it’s just so one dimensional.
Twenty minutes of sun is all I need, so after my swim I pack up, flatten my mound and wander over to the cliffs. The tide’s high and the big rock pool where dogs and kids swim and piss together has temporarily become part of the sea. I paddle, ankle deep around its edge, wincing as barnacles spike my heels. Then I see a fish, as long as my forearm, swimming lopsidedly in the deepest part of the pool. I wade in for a closer look. I don’t know what kind of fish it is, but it looks quite normal, compared to some of the weirdoes we get out here. I walk slowly towards it, until I’m nearly on top of it, then I reach down into the thigh-deep water and make a grab for it. It bolts away from me and tries to ride a small wave back out to sea. I leap after it like a bear leaping after a salmon and pounce! It slips away again, but again I pounce. This time I manage to get a finger in one of its gills and pull it flapping out of the pool. I wade back onto dry rock and examine my prize. It looks healthy and tasty enough, apart from two puncture marks on its back which are seeping blood. I stand looking at it. Has it been poisoned? Will I die if I eat it? Two young local blokes have walked up. They’re standing in the pool, looking at me, looking at the fish.
“What you going to do with that?” One of them asks.
“Eat it?” I answer. It’s quite normal to answer a question with a question here.
“Good man”, the other bloke says.
Now that I’ve got their approval I feel better. I show them the two seeping puncture marks. One of them pokes the fish. The fish wriggles. Neither of them says anything about deadly poisons. I nod decisively, thank the blokes and stalk off, holding my pray before me like a prize marrow. I’m not sure what to do with myself now though. My plan was to set up camp on my favourite cliff ledge and read some more. The fish changes everything. As I pass an older, blonde, crazy-looking surf bum, he accosts me loudly:
“What you going to do with that?”
“Eat it”, I tell him confidently.
“Good”, he says. Maybe he’s a bit deaf. I’m about to move on when I have an idea.
“What is it?” I ask him.
“Taylor”, he says.
“Good eating?” I ask.
“Good enough. Bloody fish though. Have to bleed him first.”
“Hmm”, I say, “got a knife?”
“No”.
I shrug and start to walk away again.
“Wait!” He bellows after me.
I walk back to him. He’s rummaging frantically in his bag. Triumphantly he produces a red plastic surfboard fin. “Use this”.
His eyes widen as I take it from him. I lay my fish on the rock and examine the fin, find the sharpest edge and make a test cut in the air above the fish’s head.
“Not that way!” He yells at me, “Underneath!”
“You think so?” I ask meekly. I turn the fish over and do another little test cut in the air.
“Not near me clothes!” The surf bum roars, sun-bleached eyes protruding.
I turn my back on him and jam the fin into the fish’s throat. It thrashes and squirms, but I cut it good. Blood runs through my fingers. The surf bum is standing really close to me, breathing in my ear. As I sever the spine he whispers: “bloody good”. His voice is full of awe and admiration. We stand, very close together, watching the fish die.
“Now you’ve got to clean him!” He shouts. I jump at the inappropriate volume of his voice. He motions towards the sea and mouths the word: ‘go’.
Still wincing I dutifully take fish and fin down to the sea to wash them off. The man watches me from his rock, his blonde hair buffeting and twitching in the wind. Other people watch me too, tourists, dog-walkers, the parents of toddlers. Proudly I clean my kill and my weapon, then I limp back across the barnacles to the surf bum. He starts to ask me how I caught it but then his phone rings.
“Hello!” He screams. I stand for a minute, still holding my dripping fish, listening as he bellows into his phone. I’m not sure why I’m still here. Maybe I want to discuss my victory against the sea, my prowess with leap and blade. I start feeling a bit silly though, so I gather my possessions and walk off. He yells after me: “Bloody good one mate!”
I wave without turning and hop from rock to rock back to the cliff path. On the path there are so many people gawking at sculptures I can hardly move. I hold my fish like a battering ram and charge through them to one of the plastic bag dispensers meant for picking up dog shit. I pull out four bags and wrap the fish. A Chinese couple stop and gawk at me, as if I too was art work. I smile at them.
“Fish”, I explain, nodding encouragingly.
“Yes. Fish”, they agree, smiling and nodding also.
I spend the rest of the morning on my ledge above the bay, reading, puffing on a little pure one and watching the surf. Occasionally I lean over, open my bag and touch my fish, just to check that it’s still there. It is cold and firm, sometimes it twitches slightly or its muscles ripple; just a little life left in its nerves.
At lunch time I take my fish home, steam some veggies, boil some rice, make friends with Meg and cook it, with an orange, ginger and coriander sauce. Then I wait a while, and when I’m convinced I haven’t been poisoned, I rub my belly and thank the universe I don’t always have to write about the darkness.

Fire

There was a fire in the abandoned building across the street last night. It was about 1 am but I was up anyway, working late. "Hey, there's a fire!" my housemate yelled. It was big, a real one, flames and all. As we ran out to our fire escape to watch, the first fire trucks were already arriving. They broke through the windows and brick on the ground floor with their pressurized hoses, and a big plane of orange flame rushed out.

More and more trucks arrived, ten or more parked down the street and around the corner. The fire fighters seemed in competition to break shit down. Dozens of them swarmed the front, like a mob pillaging a store. They piled into the building and up the building and onto the roof and down into the building. They broke through the brick, sawed through the metal shutters, even broke into the building next door and then broke through the wall. They got up on ladders and shattered all the windows on the front of the building. They got up on the roof and broke through all of the skylights and trapdoors and vents.

All the while great clouds of sooty smoke billowed out the gashes in the brick, an upside down goth crinoline. Through the thick gray veil, the orange of the fire and red of the sirens and yellow of the streetlights mixed took on an alien look, or an ancient look. Something out of movie anyway.

The scene was dramatic and visceral. Stuff got damaged, a mark was made, it felt like something was happening. Our view was perfect.

The next day the whole area smelled of smoke. "Did you see the fire last night?" I asked the morning guy at the cafe downstairs.

"No," he said. He handed me my coffee.

I felt like it should have been more important. But it wasn't. I took my coffee, mixed in plenty of half and half, and got back to work.

Spanish Moss

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
instead of this workhorse, workman, working stiff.
Working nights now, asleep through the day, waddling off to work when everyone else is waddling home, or drinking beer, when everyone else is asleep.
My steel toe caps pad the floors of labyrinthine department stores, behind the scenes, back where no customer can see, under and above, creeping like a rat, with the rats. Hours of dust and guardless grinders, face powdered ghost-white, sitting on the midnight pavement, eating lunch from a greasy pot with Chinese painters squatting all around and Scottish carpenters discussing the price of Iron Bru. And me no longer smoking so, tense and intense, I keep my eyes flashing bloody murder in my goggles, my ears in muffs against the whine and mimi-mimi nonsense of the radio, my nose and mouth porotected, filtered, bearded in sweat.
Cavelike and cavernous the building. 6th floor: Toys. Rows and rows of gender specific colour coordination, pink unicorns and pastel Barbies, grey, black, red warriors Action! Robot! Doom! Collision! Smash!
I left dusty footprints on the 6th, and opened the secret door and scratched a teddy bear under his chin. 5th floor lingerie: I would have stopped to perv the models and scratch a couple of chins, but the cameras are everywhere. 3rd floor 4th floor building site.
“Keep this door closed. The customers don’t need to see our mess!”
The customers don’t need to see that behind the scenes glamour is shamefully held together with masking tape, and all along the walls and secret passageways there are mocking signs, partial paw prints in the mud, bones in paper bags, magpies crying: ‘The customer is always wrong! The customer must never see the mess they’re in, the dirt and rats and dusty working stiffs!’
…
I have no time to write pretty things dressed in friendly structures. I’ve slept through most of my weekend, and have no stories to tell which can’t be compressed, flattened and discarded. Most of what I have can fit in two dimensions on a city wall, over a corporate sponsored piece of graffiti, McDonalds packets, cups and wrappers whirling in the wind: THE CUSTOMERS DO NEED TO SEE THIS MESS! IT IS OUR MESS! IT IS THEIRS!
The beach on Saturdays and Sundays is enough to make me want to cry; McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut packaging sown roughly in the sand, bodies brought up by the tide, the water boiling red, immigrant wars, water shortages, uprisings, downturns, revolutions, starvation, corporate sponsored fucking graffiti, Nike shoes a meter high, ‘In Yo Hood’. The death of the planet, rib cages like bleached roots in the sand, flesh like Spanish moss:
The customers don’t need to see our mess.
…
What words of hope and solace to finish this one off?
None. Let it hang until it is limp, then gently let it fall, face first into a hole, and sleep.
…
No. That’s not right:
Be kind. Be gentle.
Be fierce and tough and as angry as you like.
Don’t take no shit, but give none either.
And clean up after yourself
In such a way that
Others will see you and say:
“Wow that person looks like they’ve got their shit together,
Maybe I’d like to be like that some day.”
Smile, enjoy life and keep your eyes open
And don’t ignore the mess!

But Always In The Light

I’m working on a renovation up in Longueville, smashing up old floors and laying new ones. It’s hot, dusty and bright. Cockatoos and kookaburras screeching and cackling in the gum trees, spiders and lizards in the overgrown garden, these leafy suburbs are straight out of the Australian soap operas.
It’s Friday, the boss and a couple of the other lads have gone up the coast for a long weekend, there are only three of us left on site. Me, Ashley, a half-Malay carpenter, and Digger, a dodgy hammer-hand with red hair and a tattoo of a fish hook on his right bicep.
We’ve been working together for a couple of days now and our system runs like clockwork. I cut the boards with the drop saw and glue the joists, Digger lays the boards and calls out measurements to me, and Ashley works the secret nailer, a big air powered staple gun attached to a compressor. It’s hot, splintery work but we’re making it fun, laughing and telling stories.
“-Finished school in tenth grade,” Digger tells us, lighting another Styverson, “Me teacher said to me: ‘Trouble is, mate, you never bloody turn up. Either you re-do the tenth grade or,’” He leans towards us, winking conspiratorially, “‘I could get you a job on the boats if you’re keen. Me cousin owns the biggest fishing company on the East Coast.’ That was on a Monday, by Friday I shipped out of Melbourne and never looked back.”
I grin. Ashley rolls his eyes. He’s been telling stories like this all morning; how he catches goats with his bare hands and spears sharks in the nature reserve. We both like him well enough, but he’s one of those mildly dangerous characters you have to laugh at, if only to keep him at arm’s length.
We break for lunch and sit on the section of floor we’ve just finished, chewing in silence, smoking or pulling splinters from our hands.
“Let’s get this done and bugger off down the pub,” Ashley says.
“Uh-huh,” Digger nods.
“Good,” Says me.
We finish our ciggies and get back into it, bust arse for another hour, then clean up, lock up and pile into Ashley’s battered Ute.

The William Wallace is an old, two-storey building on the corner of two narrow lanes with a wraparound terrace and an aging dog tied to a lamppost. It’s as dilapidated as the rest of the suburb, but homely too.
People smile as we walk in. Ashley and Digger seem to know everyone. I buy the first round and drain a good quarter of my beer before walking over to where the others are sitting, the condensation-frosted glasses cold in my hands. I sit back and look around: pool table, open fire, dirty carpet, old men at the bar, a peeling mural on the wall depicting the pub almost as it is now, but with a leopard skin carpet and a tiger skin by the pool table.
“When did they get rid of the leopard skin?” I ask.
“-Never had one.” Ashley tells me.
“It’s a tiger skin.” Digger says.
I start to protest that the carpet is actually leopard skin but a group of Northern Irish guys join us and I shut my gob. They’ve been rendering on the Longueville house, five Irish guys: beer bellies, football shirts and the kind of eyes that smile because they know you but look granite at anyone else, big lads with heavy paws and even heavier pasts, brown and happy here. Their leader nods and winks at me and I grin, the others smile too. As soon as they’re settled Digger turns to one of them, a smaller, shyer man of about forty, with dark, curly hair.
“Hey there John,” he says, then turns to me. “You know John don’t you, Wil?”
I nod, keeping it cagey though, Digger’s up to something.
“John’s what I call a Sex Liar. He told us about this Welsh girl he shagged- snorted coke off her tits and rooted her in the arse and stuff.”
John grins sheepishly, the others go quiet and watch, smiling too. Digger goes on:
“Well, it turns out she never bloody existed- Turns out it was just the same old tart he’s been rooting for years.”
We laugh and John laughs too.
“There’s nothing I hate more than a Sex Liar.”
He’s enjoying himself now, there’s a nastiness coming into his eyes.
“-Almost worse than a rapist. Imagine if that poor girl walked in here and we were all looking at her, thinking that he’d done all those things he said. It’d be almost like she’d been abused without having the fun actually being abuse.”
Our laughter’s a bit halfhearted now, and John’s beginning to look uncomfortable.
“That’ll do now.” The big Irish leader says, the twinkle still in his eyes.
Ashley gets up to go to the bar and I walk outside for a ciggie. The pub’s fuller, mostly tradies now, all with that same smiling granite look. Even in my six feet of bone and muscle I feel a bit small, but I keep my eyes smiling and my shoulders back, any fear I have tucked well out of sight.
I stand on the pavement next to the tethered dog and watch the landlady watering her flowers. Digger and a few of the Irish lads join me, a couple of Aussies I haven’t met yet. We’re introduced and we talk about work and the weather. Then Digger starts again, this time on me. His attitude is softer though, as if he hasn’t quite worked me out yet.
“Imagine, Wil,” he says, “If you woke up in the middle of nowhere with a condom full of spunk hanging out of your arse. Would you tell anyone?”
I smile at him and keep quiet, looking from one eye to the other. The others giggle. He shrugs and says:
“You’re supposed to say ‘no’, then I say: ‘Do you want to come camping with me this weekend?’ or, if you say ‘yes’ I say: ‘I’m not taking you camping then.’”
“Very good,” I say, laughing along with the others, feeling like I’ve passed my stupid test.
We troop back inside after that and the beer flows steadily, the laughter grows in volume and Digger’s nastiness does likewise. Eventually, when someone turns up with a bag of coke and John the Irishman’s nearly crying, I swill the last of my beer, smile, nod to the men and leave.
As soon as I’m back in the sunshine and out of sight of the pub I feel better. I love a few beers after work and I love the company of dodgy characters, but that kind of nastiness, that bullying banter makes my skin crawl.
I ride the bus back to Town Hall, then catch a train to Bondi Junction, feeling tipsy and still a little dark inside. Meg calls when I’m still on the train.
“Where are you?”
The sound of her voice makes me feel even darker, almost as if I’d been cheating on her lightness, her clearness of spirit. I try to keep my tone upbeat:
“Nearly in Bondage. Where’s you?”
“I’m in Woolworth.”
“Hang on five minutes. I’ll come and find you.”
I hang up and crowd off the train with the rest of the rush hour traffic. I have to almost force myself not to barge through them all. I feel aggressive and disdainful of these sheep, these homogeneous clones. On the escalator I have a word with myself.
‘Be nice, Willy, don’t be a prick. Be kind and gentle.’
I’m drunk though and I can feel the battle slipping out of control.
In the massive, five storey mall I walk fast and swagger a little, in my steel toecaps and work clothes. Then I manage a full five minutes of upbeat, hyper chit-chat with Meg before the cracks start to show.
We’re walking past the pet shop on the third floor, surrounded by shiny things and heavily made-up salespeople, tinny mall-music and nauseating perfume, and puppies in glass boxes in the window.
“I can’t stand this fucking pet shop,” Meg says, frowning with righteous anger, “They leave them in there at night. I heard them crying once when they were closing the mall.”
“They do it on purpose,” I say grimly, “So you feel sorry for them and get your wallet out.”
“It makes me want to cry.”
Instead of empathy, blackness comes out of my mouth:
“You can’t let it upset you Meg. What about all the poor buggers who made all this worthless crap for us to spend our money on? What about the millions of dying kids and AIDS victims and war zones? If you start feeling sorry for one thing you have to feel sorry for everything. You might as well just shut up and consume like the rest of ‘em.”
I bite my tongue and force the other 99 per cent of my rant back down, scowling at a dollybird in hot pants who tries to hand me a flyer. Then I catch Meg’s sad look and I sigh.
“Sorry Meggie” I say, softening, “I don’t mean to be a nutter. These places…”
She’s pissed off, angry at me for yelling. I shut my gob and follow dutifully, occupying myself with an imaginary assault rifle and a bag of dynamite, blowing up coffee shops and banks, picking off business men and senseless shoppers. I know I’m being a twat, but I can’t stop myself. The calm voice has been crowded out by advertising and special offers, only the militant remains. At least he has the good sense to keep quiet and push the trolley, instead of taking it all out on Meg.
On the way to the bus stop I try another apology. This time Meg forgives me. Then, on the bus, I try to explain:
“I just hate all this braindead consumption, these zombies shuffling from one array of worthless crap to the next. It’s all just so…”
“Are you going to be like this all night?”
That shuts me up. For the sake of both our sanities I go into sulk mode and press my face against the bus window. The calm voice is battling its way back in:
‘What the fuck are you doing, Wil? You know she hates that crap almost as much as we do. It’s not her fault. Stop being such a prick.’
The bus stops and we get off. Meg ignores me. I hang back and let her stalk off. Then I call her phone and tell her I’ve got to get some Tally-Hos from the bottlo. On the way home I breathe and relax, and the darkness seeps away.
Then we sit on our bedroom floor and argue for a minute.
Then we cling to each other and cry.
“It’s not your fault Meggie,” I tell her, “I’m just tired and nasty and full of stored-up work crap. I know you don’t need this shit from me, you work so bloody hard s well.”
“Oh Willy,” She whispers and strokes my head. “It’s not your fault either. I know you’re a weirdo. That’s why I love you.”
“I may be a weirdo,” I tell her, laughing now, “but when the shit hits the fan, this weirdo is going to take care of you no matter what.”
“What if it never does?” She’s laughing now too.
I think for a second.
“Well I’ll just have to take care of you anyway.”