–No, the Croat left. The night was a disaster. Johnny adjusts his dress. He was angry I was on drugs, he thought I was a nice Greek girl.
–Someone to take home to mother? I ask. Johnny laughs and touches my cheek affectionately.
–Let’s go, I’m tired of hanging out in this place. Let’s go to the faggots. I finish my drink and take his arm. One of the Ethiopians leans over and whispers something into Johnny’s ear. Johnny giggles then whispers something back to the man. The man laughs and waves us goodbye. What was all that about? I ask.
Johnny ignores me and stops to chat with the bouncer. I wait outside, where the man is still dancing on top of the van, the crowds still ignoring him. The anarchists have moved on and are busking further down the street. Disco music from the van mingles with the feedback from the pub, drowning out the acoustic guitars and tambourines of the anarchists. Johnny joins me and looks around for a taxi. What was all that about? I repeat. He wanted to know if you were my boyfriend. Johnny smiles flirtatiously at me, puts on a wog accent. He big cock, he was asking me, boyfriend have big cock?
–What did you tell him? Johnny puts his head back and laughs. He laughs and laughs, drowning out the disco, the grunge band in the pub, the hippies playing guitars.
–I told him that it was big enough but that mine was bigger. He throws me a sly grin. Much bigger. I laugh. It’s true. Johnny’s hung. A group of drunk skip boys are giving him dirty looks and I put my arm around him, protectively, indicating that I am ready to defend him. The street is too crowded, too well lit for a clash to take place and the drunk boys don’t stop us. We cross over to the old post office and wait for a taxi to arrive. Johnny lights a cigarette and immediately a white cab slides across Johnston Street and stops in front of us. I hail it and open the door to the back seat for Johnny. No smoking, the driver warns him. Johnny stands with the door open and slowly smokes his cigarette. I get into the front seat and wait for Johnny to finish his cigarette. What’s wrong with your friend? the driver asks me. I look over. He has dark skin, long black hair across his shoulders, wears a blue denim jacket. A young guy, some kind of wog. He has the radio on and the Beach Boys are singing wouldn’t it be nice if we were lovers.
–Nothing’s wrong with my friend. He’s enjoying his cigarette. The driver looks back at Johnny. Get in, he yells, have your fucking smoke but if the cops catch you smoking you pay the fine. Johnny glides in the back. Thanks, sugar, he calls out, settles in the back and the driver asks where we are going. I tell him Collingwood and he hits the steering wheel with his fist. Couldn’t you fucking walk? he asks me. I don’t answer, the drugs Johnny has given me must be starting their effects because I’m sinking into a trance, the night air is turning to liquid and the sounds in the taxi, the sounds off the street, are becoming very sharp, very clear. I can hear a woman’s stiletto heels on the pavement, Brian Wilson’s voice isn’t coming from the taxi’s shit-box radio but seems to be emerging from inside my head. Johnny leans forward, flashes the driver a large smile and tells him to just drive.
–Just drive, he says, we’re large tippers. The driver relaxes and starts the engine. To Collingwood, he says. To Collingwood, I echo.
Hit the North. The North is where they put most of the wogs. Not in the beginning. In the beginning we clogged the inner city and the industrial suburbs of the west. But as wogs earned some money and decided to move further afield, into the bush-land-torn-down-to-become-housing-estates, more and more concrete and brick-veneer palaces began to be sprinkled across the Northern suburbs. Wogs were not welcome to move South of the river, the brown murky Yarra which divides the city, so instead the Greeks and Italians, the Chinese and the Arabs, began to build their homes on the flatlands on the wrong side of the river.
The North, if you’re a wog, will entrap you. Push, push, push against it. Little Arabic communities, little Greek communities, little Turkish and Italian communities. The Northern suburbs are full of the smells of goats cheese and olive oil, hashish and bitter coffee. The Northern suburbs are unrelentingly flat with ugly little brick boxes where the labouring and unemployed classes roam circular streets; the roads to nowhere.
The North isn’t Melbourne, it isn’t Australia. It is a little village in the mountains of the Mediterranean transported to the bottom of the southern hemisphere; markets of little old ladies in black screeching in a Babel of languages. Harridans, fishwives, scum. The North is a growing, pulsating sore on the map of my city, the part of the city in which I, my family, my friends are meant to buy a house, grow a garden, shop, watch TV and be buried in. The North is where the wog is supposed to end up. And therefore I hate the North, I view it with as much contempt as possible.
I resist the North, the spaces in which Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, and the rest of the one hundred and ninety other races of scum, refos and thieves hold on to old ways, old cultures, old rituals which no longer can or should mean anything. I hit the North, get off the bus and walk along the steaming asphalt streets and I want to scream to the fucking peasants on the sidewalk, Hey you, you aren’t in Europe, aren’t in Asia, aren’t in Africa any more. Face it, motherfuckers (and motherfucker is appropriate, the greatest obscenity: the matriarch reigns supreme in these wog houses. She may be kicked and beaten, exploited and hated, but it is she who maintains a rigid grip on the traditions that blighted her life and will blight the lives of her children). Face it motherfuckers, I want to scream, there isn’t a home any more. This is the big city, the bright lights of the west, this is a wannabe-America and all the prayers to God or Allah or the Buddha can’t save your children now. I put on a scowl and roam the North in my dirtiest clothes, looking and feeling unwashed. I am the wog boy as nightmare.
The reception centres are all in the North, scattered along the suburban shopping strips on High Street and Sydney Road, the centres where weddings, engagements, twenty-firsts are celebrated. We dress up in glittering suits and sparkling dresses to celebrate the timeless rituals of our cultures, dining on second-rate food, listening to second-rate musicians mangle the folk music our parents learned to dance to. Cousins I have not seen in years, aunts who I do not remember, we all sit together and drink toasts to the blushing bride and the handsome groom on the dais and I always feel like choking on my drink, smashing my fist into the wedding cake, sucking off the best man in the toilets, getting drunk, getting ripped, getting out of it, abusing my uncles, doing anything to stop the charade.
In the red glow of the plastic reception centre, the wog is revealed as a conman, a trickster or a self-deluded fool. Thousands of dollars spent recreating the motions of old rituals that have no place or meaning in this city at the bottom of the world. My brother, my sister, myself, my cousins all leave the dinner table, and on the garbage-littered back steps of the reception centre we get stoned, smoke joint after joint, so that we can go back inside, sit at the table, raise a toast without the bile exploding from our mouths. And we sit, red-eyed, almost comatose, looking at the display of wealth before us: a long table piled with boxes of gifts, the table overflowing; money pinned to the bride’s dress; balding, fat men throwing notes onto the bandstand; large women, sweating and laughing, jingling their gold bands and bracelets as they move around the circle of the dance. I never dance at weddings.
I hate it, but the North is temptation. I take the bus from the city and roam the ovals and parks and river banks, searching out fat Arab men and chain-smoking Greek men who stand with their dicks out at urinals, cigarette in their mouths, waiting for you. A defiant dance, for I am a wog myself, and I have to force myself to my knees before another wog. I have to force my desire to take precedence over my honour. It is in the North where I search for the body, the smile, the skin that will ease the strain on my groin, that will take away the burning compulsion and terror of my desire. In the North I find myself, find shadows that recall my shadow. I roam the North so I can come face to face with the future that is being prepared for me. On my knees, with hate written on my face, I spit ou
t bile, semen, saliva, phlegm, I spit it all out. I spit on the future that has been prepared for me.
The taxi is hovering above the concrete. As if we are flying. We pass the commission flats and I see giant shadows form mutant shapes. Two Cambodian boys are sitting on the lawn eating pizza. I can smell the food. Vegetarian pizza. Mushrooms, capsicum, I roll my tongue along my bottom lip. On the radio the Beach Boys are replaced by Cher. In the back Johnny squeals in excitement and yells at the driver. Turn it up, turn it up. He belts out the song, a deep baritone. The driver turns up the radio and joins in on the chorus. They are singing about turning back time, finding a way to get back with a lover, and I’m laughing. I hate the song but tonight I don’t mind the vapid lyrics, the contemptible conventionality of the music.
We are approaching the club but Johnny asks the driver to drive around the block until the song has finished. The driver parks in a side street, turns off the lights and from somewhere underneath his seat he pulls out a joint. More squeals from the back seat. The song ends and the driver turns the radio off. He lights the joint, takes a drag and passes it to Johnny.
–I thought there was no smoking in this cab. The driver doesn’t answer the question. You Greek? he asks instead. Sure are. Johnny arches his head forward, obstructing my view of the driver. Just two Greek girls looking for a good night out. I grimace. I don’t like Johnny calling me a girl.
–What are you? I ask the driver.
–Turkish. Johnny passes me the joint. Johnny glares at the driver. Your great-grandfather raped my great-grandmother, he threatens him. For a second there is a silence, then the driver, myself, Johnny begin a ringing of laughter. I pass the joint back to the man and ask if the customers complain about the smell. Air freshener in the glovebox, he tells me, and as he leans across, his face brushes against Johnny’s hair, his hand touches my knee. I shift my leg away, he opens the glovebox. A clutter of cassettes, cigarettes, I notice a photo of a fat-faced baby. You like Greek music? he asks. I have plenty of Greek music.
–Who’ve you got? I rummage through the cassettes and pull out a tape of Deep Purple, a Black Sabbath, a Lionel Ritchie.
–You like Manos Loizos? He picks up an old, battered tape without a cover. He turns off the radio, puts the cassette in the deck and hissing fills the taxi. The song The Road comes on. Johnny looks bored. I hate this song, he whinges, it’s so fucking twee. He ignores Johnny and asks me. Do you like this song?
I like the song. The night outside glistens, the glow from the street lamps is liquid silk. I mouth the words to the song. The road has its own story, the story is written by the youth. I have this song on my favourite tape. I have a specific memory attached to this song. My father drunk, waving his hands in the air and dancing. My mother drunk, clapping along, and Alex, Peter and I watching them, laughing at their drunkenness, enjoying their joy. My father picks me up and drags me to the centre of the lounge, pulls me towards him. In adolescent rebellion I pull away, needing to pull away, not wanting to. He shrugs, and picks up my mother instead and dances with her. He does not struggle for my affection.
I ate up the words of the song that night, feasted on their richness and their promise. His shrug hurt and I consumed the words to the song and made them mine. I looked at his body going to fat, inertia chipping away at his dreams, and the words to the song he was dancing to seemed to be a challenge, a challenge which he had betrayed, maybe he had always betrayed, likely he would betray forever. Johnny is right about this song, the music lacks guts, soul even, but the words carry fire and passion. The road has its own story, the story is written by the youth. I listen to the song on the Walkman and think that it is better to leave, move away, exit, end the story. Better to leave than stay and become fat and inert.
–I like the song, I reply to the driver. You should like this song, he turns and tells Johnny. This song is about the students gunned down by fascist tanks. You know about the Polytechnic, don’t you? His face, in shadow, seems much too large, his teeth much too bright, his eyes are dark and black and I’m panicked for a moment because I can’t see any white in his eyes. A demon’s eyes. I relax back in the seat. I’m tripping.
–You Turks are like the Greeks, always on about politics. Johnny turns to me. It’s true, Ari, he asks me in Greek, one life and it’s all politics, isn’t it? One life and it’s all politics, the Turk replies in Greek. He sighs and turns the engine on, sprays the cab with air freshener and rolls down his window. Johnny searches through his bag and gives him ten dollars. The driver takes it and doesn’t look at him. Johnny taps his shoulder.
–I do know about the Polytechnic, he tells him.
–You should care more about it, those people struggled. The driver is insistent, he bangs the wheel with his fist. I open the cab door and say thanks for the joint, thanks for playing the song. You should care, he says one last time. I fumble in my head, trying to think of something nice to say to the man. He’s a good guy, shared his joint, we had a laugh. I’m glad they struggled, I tell him. Johnny opens the door and gets out of the cab. He leans through the driver’s window and kisses him lightly on the cheek. Thank you, he says, and then adds softly, the Polytechnic is history, you know, happened a long time ago.
–It was not so long ago, he answers and begins to drive off. The sound of Greek music accompanies him. Johnny pulls up his dress and asks me how he looks. Fine, I reply, then noticing his hurt expression, I add, beautiful. He smiles, takes my arm and we walk towards the nightclub, the heavy rhythms of the music inside the disco are shaking the earth; I feel the music vibrate underneath my feet. When was the Polytechnic? Johnny asks me. Sometime in the seventies, I answer, during the junta. Same time as the Vietnam War. Johnny fingers his hair, preparing for his entrance. I was right, he says, it is history.
The Polytechnic is history. Vietnam is history. Auschwitz is history. Hippies are history. Punks are history. God is history. Hollywood is history. The Soviet Union is history. My parents are history. My friend Joe is becoming history. I will become history. This fucking shithole planet will become history. Take more drugs.
The crowd at the door is impatient, much lighting of cigarettes, much shuffling of feet. Johnny and I go to the front of the queue. The bouncer, his black T-shirt pulled tight across his chest, waves us inside. On our way in he pats Johnny on the arse. Once inside my eyes, ears, my skin is assaulted by sensation. The drugs are making me fly. A thick crowd of men surrounds the bar and each of them looks up, surveys me, Johnny, then each one returns to his drink or to his solitary search for a fuck. The music belts me across the face and I cannot decipher a tune, a melody, a rhythm. Bass dominates the club. Johnny lets go of my hand and wanders to the bar. I follow him and plant myself beside him, lean on the bar, look at the world around me.
Two blond boys in white T-shirts and jeans repeat the same motions behind the bar. They ask for the order, take the money, prepare the drink, hit the till, serve the drink to the customer, hand over the change. Johnny waits to be served. At one end of the bar, close to the cigarette machine, a man keeps shyly looking towards me. I pull my gaze away from his but I find my eyes returning to search for him. I’m seeking an assurance that he finds me sufficiently attractive, so attractive that he will risk my dismissal of him, that he is prepared for my turning away from him. I cannot define his appearance, his age, his style; he is blending into the vibrant mutating mass of the club. He lifts a glass towards me. I nod then turn away and begin talking to Johnny.
–What will you have to drink? he asks me. I ask for a whisky and Johnny yells the order to the barman. The barman smiles at me and I notice, beneath the glare of the bar lights, that his blond hair is thin, that he is balding. We get the drinks and sit at the bar. Johnny wraps an arm around me and whispers in my ear. You tripping yet, sugar? Sure, I reply, I’m tripping man. A group of women in black leather enter the club and the men look at them suspiciously. One of the women, a young girl in a leather bra and tight black shorts, her hair cropped close to the
skull, gelled, comes up and gives Johnny a hug. She kisses me and I smell coconut oil in her hair, sweet perfume on her neck. Sasha adjusts her leather bra and asks how we are. Out of our fucking skulls sugar, Johnny replies, and gives her a sip of his drink.
–You still with Georgie? I ask. Sasha ignores the question and talks to Johnny.
–Toula, you got any speed, know anywhere to get some? I want to party and the fucking dykes I’m with aren’t in the mood. She winks and points to one of the women. A tall, pale, beautiful woman, the leather wrapped tight around her large, muscled frame. Except for her, Sasha winks again. I think I can party with her.
–I guess you’re not still with Georgie. Sasha doesn’t hear.
–I don’t do speed, sugar, you know that Only bliss drugs and I’m all out. The beautiful Ari took my last tab. Johnny touches me softly under my chin. His touch makes my skin pulsate. I look around the crowd, turn back to see the man at the end of the bar, still looking at me. What do you say, Ari, Johnny asks me, can you help this sweet young girl in distress?
–Sweet my arse, Sasha says, and she turns to me. Have you got something, Ari? I shake my head but tell her I’ll scout and see if I can find anything. She blows me a kiss, takes my hand and slips me a fifty-dollar note. I get up from the bar and ask them to wait for me. I begin to wander around the labyrinth of the club.
At the edge of the dance floor a line of men watch the gymnastics of the dancers. The fast furious dance music propels me closer to the first circle of dancers and I watch mesmerised as a young short dancer weaves his elastic hips to the music. Drugs mould the club, drugs initiate the dancing, the search for sex. The smell of amyl, the boys with clenched jaws on speed, the girl in the middle of the dance floor waving her long arms towards the disco ball, lost in an acid dream, the alcohol that lubricates our movements around each other, the joints rolled in dark corners. Without the drugs the music would be numbing, monotonous. Without the drugs the faces would be less attractive; wrinkles, bad teeth, double chins. I sniff the smell of marijuana and I’m happy.