The Highway North, part IV

The latest installment of Your Correspondent's NaNoWriMo effort from 2010, continued from Parts One, Two and Three


Wednesday night. Port Macquarie.

We rolled into Port Mac just on dusk, crossing the double bridges over the small Hastings River tributary on Gordon St on our way to our cheapie Wotif hotel near the beach. After a day like today I could do with a swim, but the narrow waters of Wright’s Creek below us - brown, murky and lined with swampy scrub and stormwater drain outlets - didn’t appeal so much.

“Wright’s Creek,” I noted sharply, out the bus window. “Low, dirty, shallow, bent and full of shit...”

For his part, Julian Brendan Wright didn’t respond. Jules didn’t need to. He was too busy fanning himself with my fifty bucks. Which he’d made us get off the bus in Laurieton, find an ATM and withdraw on the spot, due to some long-standing issue he had with me allegedly welching on a bet over the 1988 NSWRL Grand Final. When we were both eight. For the record, my comment had been “Nah Balmain will totally smash Canterbury, bet you a million bucks.” Showing all the signs of the sharp financial operator he turned into, he was still trying to hold me to it to this day. Bastard.

Anyway Jules got his goldfish and we got to Port Macquarie about half an hour after our bags and everyone else did. Frigmobile had gone on a flatbed truck straight to the NRMA depot; Jules had called the result of the bet on the roadside bloke’s immediate diagnosis of ‘Yep, she’s fucked.’ Though I was more relieved by his ignorance of the out-of-datedness of the rego sticker, which might have complicated things re whether Chris’ NRMA membership would hold for the recovery mish.

As far as I was concerned, this evening Jules could be as smug as he liked. He was buying. Especially if we ran into the dazzling Dutchies this evening in town. As the only other available, single, heterosexual male in the party - depending on how seriously he was regarding his self-declared ‘prior commitments’ back in London - any Dutchie-related success he might accrue from this evening would have been down to my groundwork earlier in the day up on North Brother, and he knew it. Refused to acknowledge it, but he knew it.

The irony was given an extra layer of varnish when we got to the hotel - an old-school '70s place overlooking Town Beach which had been given a bit of a refresh as a ‘boutique’ hotel, meaning ‘not fuck-off massive and full of identikit shoeboxes like Rydges or the Ibis or wherever’ - to find that JC and Chris had claimed the one-bedroom unit with the spare bed in the lounge, leaving the twin-share studio to Jules and myself. The stakes had been raised.

“Whoever gets back first gets the room,” I decreed.

Which just got rollies from Jules. He clearly wasn’t taking the threat seriously.

We repaired to the hotel bar, which was small but well-stocked and had a great view. The girl behind the bar was small but well-stacked and was a great view in herself. Her nametag read ‘Tabitha’ which just had to be made up. She looked young for her age (presumably over 18 and RSA compliant, since she was running a hotel bar and all), round welcoming features, unruly short brown hair (probably styled with extreme care to produce that effect), mischievous dark brown eyes, a diamond stud through her nose and some very sharp bar-honed banter. As well as some mad drink-making skillz. Jules tried her out on some frou-frou cocktail which took military precision and half a kitchen to put together - partly because he was flirting outrageously, partly because that was how he rolled now he was living in London and earning in pounds - drinking expensive cocktails that even JC considered questionable.

Anyway, I liked Tabitha. She was fun. She embodied all that was awesome about country girls. Cool, uncomplicated, adventurous. She reminded me of all the cool chicks I’d grown up with who I was too clueless, timid or stupid to try and get anywhere with back in the day. If only I’d read that article from Grunt about picking up any woman you wanted. NEVER failed, apparently.

Around seven we bade Tabitha a fond farewell and kicked on into town in search of food, beverage and hopefully a contingent of dazzling Dutchies. None of whom were actually Dutch of course - Krystyna was Polish, Sela was Norwegian and Karolina was from Prague in the Czech Republic - but it’d become our standing joke and we’d decided to run with it, if that’s not enough mangling of metaphors. We wandered down the hill along Clarence St, arguing about the relative merits of potential dinner options, each others’ choice in clothing and which of the non-Dutchies was the hottest. I was steadfast in my belief that Karolina and Hog’s Breath were the winning options, but was told that little more could be expected from a man in a freebie James Squire T-shirt. Dammit, that was one of my favourites. I’d dressed up and all. Chris backed me in with the Hog, Jules wanted to go Japanese (in fucking Port Macquarie??) and JC put in a surprise vote for Tabitha - I hadn’t thought he’d been into those sort of dietary options - and for the seafood place on the corner, which in conjunction with the previous led to the obvious jokes you’d expect from a man in a freebie James Squire T-shirt who wrote photo captions for Grunt Weekly.

Anyway by force of numbers, character and the sign out the front promoting buckets of Coronas for twenty dollars, Hog’s Breath carried the day. Or the evening. Our waitress for the evening was Lina, an angular, raven-haired witch with piercing green eyes and a dismissive haughtiness bordering on arrogance, as she took our drink orders, related the specials and ignored our jokes. She was disinterested, smug, rude and perfunctory. She had me at ‘Hello’.

What was it JC had said about me and bossy, dismissive stuck-up bitches? Yeah. That. It’s probably the corollary of the ‘bad boy’ thing some girls have. They want to correct them. I just want to break them. Not in any disturbing psychological way, I mean - I just have this urge to crack through their icy façade (in the hope that it is a façade) and make them smile, and laugh, and show their real personality, and want to have the fun sexy times, preferably with me. And anything that follows on from that afterwards, though traditionally that’s not my strong suit. That’s basically how it’d gone with Caroline. Including the as-per-programme ending, though the manner of how it went down (literally, I presume) was a new one on me.

So, yeah. Hog’s Breath Café Port Macquarie. Feed: Pretty decent. Went the steak, as you should. Jules even went surf and turf again, not having learned from depositing his last attempt at same at the foot of a roadsign near Laurieton. Beers: Frosty. Kudos for lime rather than lemon, as Coronas are grievous crap with anything less. Service: Frosty. If debilitatingly hot at the same time. And let’s face it, it’s only through the fine work of creeps like us staring at her arse in those astonishing vacuum-sealed black pants that Lina was able to develop and maintain such an impressively snotty attitude about service provision in the hospitality industry. Still, it let JC out of his box - nothing he enjoys more than a bit of snark, and he got plenty of open looks. Plenty of dirty ones, but by the little smirk on her face every time she left our table, you could tell he was her fave.

“You’re on here,” I nodded with ironic respect.

“Yeah, in like Flynn,” concurred Jules.

“Fuck off,” JC declared. Then smirked. “Dark day for you when the token queer has to show you how it’s done…”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “All that said, bags you as my wingman for the eve…”

“Totes!” JC declared, thrilled to be putting his powers for good rather than evil. “Team Sparkle engage!”

“Shit,” said Jules. Then added, “I mean… awesome. I’m sure Chris will be an excellent choice as a wingman. Not that I fucken had one…”

“Erm… let’s do a quick headcount…” Chris was a bit more bolshie with an ale or two under his belt. “Show of hands. People here who actually have a girlfriend. No. People here who’ve actually slept with a girl in the past couple of months…”

“Yeah yeah,” Jules waved him off. “Cheap foreign imports don’t count.”

Chris’ Corona almost resurfaced through his nose. “And what exactly have you been doing in London then? Flying Aussie girls in?”

“Yeah they have a special refugee holding facility for them, Villawood style. It’s called Earls Court.”

“Alright… and I hesitate to go here, but I must…” Chris was going to make his point one way or another. “Potential wingmen who’ve slept with a girl at all.”

“Hey, back off curly. I slept with a girl,” JC retorted. “How else do you think I found out it was shit?”

“Crap, I remember hearing about that,” I muttered. “Minette, wasn’t it? Nice Christian girl from first year. Think that traumatized her as much as you…”

“Yeah, well given I turned out to be the third boyfriend in a row she’d managed to turn gay…” He laughed. “That’s why I call her Mintos... The Gaymaker. Still see her around. She’s totes changed. Crazy hippie chick, runs the vegan café on King Street…”

“The vegan café on King Street? Which of the forty-seven vegan cafés on King Street are you referring to?”

“More to the point,” Jules interjected, “what the fuck are you doing in a vegan café on King Street anyway?”

“Harassing the staff, what else?” JC declared. “Besides, it’s the only place some of the boys will eat. You know… meat is murder, yoghurt is burglary…”

“Tofu’s fucking piracy then.”

JC nodded. “True. Funny, they’re not as philosophically icky about certain uses of butter…”

This time, Chris’ Corona did resurface out his nose. JC’s timing had been exquisite. Played for, and got.

“You bastard,” Chris blubbered, nostrils searing.

JC chalked the score in the air with a finger. One-nil. Points are on the board, read about it in the paper tomorrow.

Anyway, we settled the bill - Jules picked up the drinks tab, since (as he’d already pointed out to Lina, twice) he earned in pounds, on the odd occasion he didn’t earn in $AUD by striking up dubious bets re the reliability of dodgy 80s shitboxes - and headed out on the town. The town being Port Macquarie. In winter. On a Wednesday. This was going to go off like a frog in a sock.

We agreed pretty quickly on a loose interpretation of a pub crawl back up Clarence St, ostensibly to get a feel for the town, but really just to check out the maximum number of establishments we could in hope of tracking down (a) one with a pulse and/or (b) those non-Dutch backpacker chicks. They weren’t in the Port Macquarie Hotel, but cold beer was, and that did for a while. They weren’t next door in the Town Green Inn, but there were a couple of cute bar staff who humoured Jules long enough to extract the price of a round of drinks out of him as well as a generous tip, since he earned in pounds.

We were settling into the night nicely - the vibe was good, the headcount out-and-about wasn’t too bad for the time of year and week, and the laughs were being had. Largely because JC had by deed reminded us of our long-standing tradition - going back to lunchtime on the quad at high school - of the awardance of points for compelling others to project their drinks out of their noses via a well-timed quip. Of course, now everyone was on their guard - particularly Chris, who was usually the easiest mark - which made it all the more of a challenge. With all this excitement, who needed Euro backpacker chicks to make the night entertaining?

Erm, me, for one. So when my phone buzzed a message, I was sure to scurry out and check it, given the lack of light in the pub. Forgetting for the moment that it’d been non-threatening JC who’d managed to swap numbers with the girls and not me.

Need to talk :'-(

Not now. Not fucking now. Don’t do this to me. I wasn’t fluent in emoticon - even after a year dating a fervent aficionado thereof - but I was going to go out on a limb and interpret that particular one as sadface with potential teary drizzle.

This is the problem when you don’t have enough hobbies. Caroline played indoor netball on Monday nights, did Pilates on Tuesday, Body Combat at Les Mills (some sort of high-energy aerobics kickboxing thing, I dunno) on Thursday and was chief social committee organiser person (self-appointed) for work which meant work drinks on Friday, if there wasn’t a gig on to go to. Which just left Wednesday. Which, as far as I could gather, these days meant takeaway for one, Grey’s Anatomy, a bottle of forgettable white, and somewhere between half-nine and ten, more often than not, a teary, smashed phonecall to her ex-boyfriend. Sometimes, even to me.

OK, always to me. In the past few weeks-to-months, anyway. Time wasn’t healing any or all wounds there. And if there was some grim satisfaction to be had out of her secretly struggling as badly as I was, I hadn’t found it yet. Particularly as this Caroline - this vulnerable, melancholic Caroline - only existed for half an hour every Wednesday night, before she put herself to bed, woke up next morning and went back to refuting any notion that I’d ever fucking existed, let alone meant anything to her. I’d made that mistake once, calling her back on Thursday. Once. Wasn’t making it again.

Still, she meant something to me. Like Mitch had said, if she hadn’t, why the fuck was I so angry? It wasn’t just the humiliation of getting cuckolded. Well, OK, it was mostly the humiliation of getting cuckolded, because I’d always done the right thing by her and I felt like I’d been blindsided. In the past, let’s face it, I’d been fairly shit boyfriend material. I might not have cheated on you with your sister, but I probably wanted to at some stage. Or your hot friend. Or even your slightly-less-hot friend who’s funnier than you. Or that chick who just jogged past in the tank-top and lycra gym shorts looking all kinds of in-need-of-a-shower. With Caroline, with it getting serious - met her folks, shared her hobbies, stirred my coffee with the same spoon, knew her favourite tune - I made a deliberate attempt to cut that shit out. I was true to her not only in body but in mind and spirit. As much of that stuff is under conscious control, at least.

And in return I’d got the smackdown of all time. Karma police, arrest this girl. So yeah. You need to talk. Again. Good for you. My therapy rates are two hundred an hour and I charge in half-hourly blocks. (Have to make up for badly-placed bets on shitboxes somehow.)

All that said, when she rang, I took the call. You know I was always going to, too. I’d already wandered down the street towards the river’s edge where it’d be quieter. I knew JC would be pulling a face and busting out the snark by way of explanation as to what I was up to - he’d been around the place for enough of these little Wednesday night tete-a-tetes that he could guess what was up - but yeah, I was always going to. Because one of these weeks I might finally get it through to her that you don’t get a comeback or a get-out-of-jail-free card for shagging someone else in a serious relationship. You. Just. Don’t.

“Grey’s over already?” I quipped. Seemed a little early.

She exhaled into a deep sigh. So this was going to be one of them heavy breathing phonecalls I’d heard so much about. “It’s on, but it’s… not what it used to be.”

“Jumped the shark?”

“Jumped the what?”

My turn to sigh. “Google it. Not my gig anymore to have to translate all your pop culture references. Now if you were on Twitter, instead of deriding it like the rest of the old-media dinosaurs, you’d be up-to-date with your pop culture references…”

“Isn’t that, like, from Happy Days or something?”

“Yeah. The point at which the show went downhill.”

“Always with the up-to-date pop culture references, that’s my Ben.”

Always with the weapons-grade snark, that’s my Caroline. Never quite figured out why she and JC had never hit it off. Too similar, perhaps. Now there was a scary fucking thought best drop-punted out of a hovering Navy Iroquois into shark-infested waters. Though despite the fact he couldn’t stand her, JC had actually been supportive of the relationship as it got more serious - largely because he was hoping to pack me off out of the flat and live on his own at last, which he’d been long determined to do by age thirty (failing by many months.)

I could see her there, curled up on the couch, knees tucked under her for warmth. Her apartment, the top half of a terrace over in Annandale, was old and cold, unless you had someone to chop firewood for the little logburner, which transformed the place entirely. The last volunteer for that task had been let go some months previous, of course. She’d be in tracksuit pants and that Adidas sweatshirt I never got back from her, a polar fleece throw over her legs, a well-thumbed glass of wine by her side, her fingerprints smeared over the glass. Long, wavy copper-red hair - originally mousy-brown curls in childhood photos, but not in the time I’d known her - and green eyes that could flare with anger, pierce with intensity or occasionally dazzle with happiness. There was Irish blood in her, but it’d be a cheap cliché to bring out all that Celtic fire and passion crap. That wasn’t there, unless you dug deep, knew where to look. And unless she wanted you to find it. I’d been lucky enough to get security clearance, for a little while anyway.

Enough of that shit. This was why I couldn’t kill it. Because she’d got me into a headspace where it was my fault we weren’t together any more, because I’d been somehow unreasonable about Footy Dude. Like she deserved a pass because of their previous history. I’d tried asking ‘So I get one of them too? Awesome!’ - which had been a very effective way of ending the phone call at the time, which had been good, as I’d needed a slash and it’d been my turn to deal at poker. Now we didn’t even talk about that stuff, which led me to wonder exactly why we talked at all.

“What’s up?”

“Just needed to talk.”

“About?”

“Look, Ben… if now’s not good…”

I laughed. More bitterly than I’d intended. “It’s alright, I have this timeslot cleared in my weekly schedule...”

“You’re so cynical sometimes…”

“Yeah, you say that like it’s a bad thing. What’s up?”

“Just wanted to see how things were. At work, I mean.”

Now THAT was a bitter laugh. Executed as intended. “Fabulous. Couldn’t be happier. Big new project. Cleaning the toilets. Next month I get a promotion, they’re going to give me a brush.”

For someone as well versed in snark as Caroline, she sure couldn’t identify it out of a police lineup. Probably another reason why she and JC hadn’t clicked. “Don’t make me laugh, I’m trying to drink.”

“Did wine come out your nose?”

“No… and why?”

“Trying to win a bet,” I said. “Can we say it did?”

“No…”

“Bugger. JC’s clubhouse leader then.”

“I remember when you were a nice boy,” she reminisced. “When you didn’t boast about betting on making alcoholic drinks come out of people’s noses.”

“Erm, we’ve always been doing that,” I pointed out. “That competition’s been running since the early ‘90s.” And fucking JC was still leading. Bastard.

“That place has changed you, Ben,” she said, and I could feel my lifeforce ebbing away. This old chestnut. Just because it was true, didn’t mean I wanted to hear it. Not from her, anyway.

“No, see that’s where you’re a bit off the mark, Caro. I’ve always been this guy. Just pretended to be reputable for a while because I thought you were worth the effort.” Left the rest - the ‘clearly you weren’t’ bit - unsaid. It was an open look, but it’d be a cheap shot.

“That’s not true.” Then realising what she’d said, clarified the bit about which bit wasn’t true - the me-always-being-a-bogan part, not the she-not-being-worth-the-effort part. And in the process completely mangled whatever point she was trying to make, gave up and started crying out of frustration. Or maybe out of the realisation that she hadn’t been worth the effort. I don’t know. I’d just realised I’d been pacing out of tension throughout the whole conversation and had managed to walk halfway along the stretch of river beach in front of the caravan park, placing me now a bloody long way eastwards from the half-finished beer with my name on it in the bar of the Town Green Inn. Presuming the lads hadn’t moved on and hooked up with the non-Dutchies already.

“Caro… come on.”

“That was cruel, Ben,” she insisted. “Unnecessarily cruel.”

As cruel as fucking someone else then expecting forgiveness? How lacking in self awareness are you, for fuck’s sake?

“Well look, much as I’d love to stand around here all night discussing who was more of a bastard to whom, it looks as though the lads are keen to move on to round two, the farting competition. Just quietly I reckon I’m a special for this.”

“Ben,” she said, “are you happy at work?”

“Absolutely.”

“Really?”

“What the fuck do you care?”

“Because it’s my fault, isn’t it?” she said. “And because I want you back. We. The company wants you back.”

“Don’t, Caro. Just don’t.”

“We’ve got a job advertised at the moment. You’ve probably seen it. The applicants are, frankly, shit. Clueless brats straight out of uni with writing styles inversely proportional to their sense of self-worth and entitlement. Typical Generation Y.”

This ignored, rather conveniently, the fact that Caroline was in fact born in 1982 and thus, by most measures, Gen Y herself. As a 1980 kid with a deeply veined cynicism of anyone born after me, I claimed Gen X cusp status. Besides, all the cool music came out in 1980 - Back In Black, Ace Of Spades, British Steel, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables - and the rest of the ‘80s was a total fucking writeoff as regards albums, apart from a couple of releases by the Gurus, the Gunners, the Cult and Van Halen, so I was keen to keep as much distance between myself and the rest of the Gen Y spawn as possible.

“Can’t get good help nowadays,” I said. Flippant was good. Flippant showed disinterest. Important in job negotiations, if that was what this was.

“You’d kill these kids, Ben. You’re far too good a writer to be wasting your time doing fill-in work on misogynistic crap like Grunt.”

“Agreed,” I conceded.

“And it’s sport,” she said. She told me the magazine. Doesn’t matter which one. “You’ve told me how many times you want to get back to writing sport? That all your heroes were sports writers?”

“Actually, all my heroes were motoring writers, mainly, but hey, details.”

“We can talk pay and level at a better time,” she said, “but what are your thoughts?” Jesus Christ, she’d gone all HR on me. Deliberate ploy, probably. If you sound professional, you are professional.

“Would I be working under you?”

“Indirectly,” she said, “yes.”

“Office space?”

“It’s the same one we all work in,” she exhaled, voicing the obvious. Open-plan cube farm.

“Then the answer is no,” I replied, as evenly as I could. “I can’t work for you.”

“OK,” she said, a little stiltedly. “Can I ask why? Professionally, I mean.”

“No,” I replied. “It’s not really a professional reason.”

“Can I ask why it isn’t it a professional reason?”

“Sure,” I said, figuring Here goes fuck all of nothing. “It’s because every time I’d sit across a cube farm from you it’d remind me of the time when you weren’t my boss, you were a girl who I used to be in love with. And it’d remind me why that wasn’t the case any more. It’s not a professional reason. You don’t have to like it. I certainly fucking don’t.” And then, because I was on such a roll, I decided to add the fairly unnecessary addendum, “Can’t say I really like being phoned up every Wednesday just because you’re drunk and feel guilty about fucking my career and some footballer all at the same time…”

Long, unpleasant pause. Caroline sighed.

“We’re never going to get away from that, are we?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not. Can you find a hobby for Wednesdays please? More Pilates maybe? Yoga? Salsa dancing? Cos this is just no fucking fun at all.”

That had her sulking. “I just figured you enjoyed saving up all your bile and hatred for the week to use on me.”

“Yeah, not so much,” I said. “Not so much.”

“I can’t give you anything back to make up for it, can I.”

She was in tears, again, properly. This felt like endgame. It felt just as fucking awful as the night she’d told me about Footy Dude. Exorcisms aren’t meant to be fun. Push on, push on, said the Hermit cheerily.

“You’ve finally worked that out.”

“Not even your career?”

“Not if it’s a straight swap for what’s left of my dignity, no.”

“You’re stubborn,” she railed. “And miserable. And bitter. And I wish I hated you as much as you hate me.”

Yup, that’s the lashing-out bit. She’ll be up to the 360 degree pea-soup vomiting pretty shortly. The power of Christ compels you! To fuck the fuck off and leave me the fuck alone!

“Work on that,” I said, “see how you get on.”

“Why do you have to be such a fucking martyr?”

“Why did you have to be such a fucking whore?”

Yeah, not cool. I know. Honest, it just slipped out. Just seemed to fit the metre of the conversation. Too late to regret what you can’t forget. Or something.

And that still didn’t get me peace. Of course not. I clearly had an eternity of penance to serve for some sort of lifetime of cunt-act bastardry that I wasn’t entirely aware I’d inflicted on anyone. By now I’d paced most of the way around the riverbank to Town Beach Reserve and could almost see the lights of the hotel on the hillside above. I wondered if the bar was still open.

“There’s been noone since you,” she maintained. “If I’m a whore, I’m pretty shit at it.”

“Speed dating,” I suggested. “Could be your new Wednesday hobby.”

“Just so I know, you’re going to be fucking obnoxious right up to the point I hang up on you?”

“You’ve played this game before I see. Weekly, even.”

“Fuck this,” she burst forth. A sudden, violent explosion of filth. That still worked on me. I’d never told her how thrilling it was to hear a nice girl from a Catholic school swear as vehemently as she did. I’d have loved to have taken credit for it, but I think secretly she was always corrupt. “Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I want to come over. I want to end this properly.”

“Riiiight…” This had gotten very bunny-boiler all of a sudden. “Should I be changing the locks?”

“Not your locks,” she said, and I sensed a change in her tone. She was a moving target when she was this drunk, and she was very, very drunk. “Maybe your sheets…”

“My sheets.”

“It’s not a proper break-up without break-up sex.”

“So that’s where we went wrong?”

“Yeah, I read it somewhere. ‘Masterminding the perfect breakup.’ In some trashy lad’s magazine…”

“Yeah, cos I’m fucking world expert on that.”

“Ben,” she said, “I’m very drunk, I’m not wearing any knickers, and a taxi can have me outside your front door in eight minutes. Your move. Can I come over?”

OK, so for the record, none of the Wednesday catch-up teleconferences to date had ever ended up here. Not even looked like it. And look, part of me wanted to tell her yeah, sure, then MUHAHAHAHA with true evil genius panache as she stood on an empty doorstep outside a darkened terrace in Erskineville-Newtown-wherever-the-fuck-we-technically-lived and cursed my name to the blackened skies. And part of me - more than I wanted to admit - wanted even more to jump a plane or steal a car or teleport back to Sydney to be ON that doorstep to meet her. But the same strange moral sense of decency that had me answering these phone calls every week instead of call-screening, had me answering her question with something best used very sparingly when dealing with ex-girlfriends. The truth.

“One problem,” I offered. “I’m in Port Macquarie.”

“Why are you in Port Macquarie?”

“Because it’s here,” I said, trying to remain oblivious to the fact that such logic had seen me attempt to scale the sheer face of North Brother in a clapped-out 1989 Camira and lose a $50 bet in the process. “Munter’s… Mark’s wedding is on the weekend, up in Brisbane. A bunch of us are headed up there. Myself, JC, Chris and Jules.” She probably didn’t know Jules, except by reputation, which preceded him much the same way his post-thirty blubber eel was beginning to. “See, if you were on Twitter, you’d know...”

“You’d have blocked me by now anyway…”

Probably true.

“So it’s a boys’ trip,” she remarked. Not entirely approvingly, which was in character. Particularly since she’d just been cock-blocked by it… if that was the appropriate term. “They gave you time off work?”

“Sorta,” I said. “Hoping to sell the story back to them to pay for petrol money.”

She laughed, just a little. “And if not?”

“Ah, we’re right. We’ve got Jules. He earns in pounds. Just ask him.”

“So… no breakup sex, then.”

“Not unless you can get to Port Macquarie,” I said. “In less time than it takes Jules to bring home a friendly backpacker. Twin share room. First in, first… erm… served, I guess.”

“You’re so crass.”

“Yup,” I said. “And yet you wanted to sleep with me just now. If I didn’t know you better, Caro, I’d have thought you liked a bit of rough trade.”

“No breakup sex,” she reiterated wearily. The alcohol was telling. “Not tonight… and not ever.”

“No, Caro… it’s not going to help really, is it.”

Did I seriously just fucking say that aloud? Did I? I needed my fucking head read. Jesus handstanding Christ in a bucket of Castrol GTX.

“Hey look, I’ve got to go,” she said suddenly. “The offer’s there, if you want it… but I’m guessing you don’t want it.”

“The job?” I queried. “Or the other?”

“Erm, the job. I’m afraid my battered sense of self-esteem compels me to withdraw the other, I hope you understand…”

“You’ve got to go,” I reminded her. “This is the bit where we say goodbye. And mean it.”

“Gosh, really?” she said. “I’ll need something to do on Wednesday nights…” She did OK jokes, Caro. When the mood took her, which wasn’t often.

“Goodbye, Caroline,” I said. “Have a good life. Be awesome at everything.”

“This is starting to sound like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” she sniffed. “Be excellent to each other…”

“Yeah, that’d work too. I’ve got to go. It’s cold, and there are wolves after me.” Bloody Jules. He even had me quoting Simpsons now.

“I love you,” she said.

Hell of a thing just to throw out there. Or maybe it was loved. I loved you. I couldn’t really tell. I decided to interpret it as past tense.

“I loved you too,” I replied. “See ya, Caro.”

And before she could string the goodbye out any further, my trembling thumb found the red button to kill the call. Like I say, it was cold. Hence trembling. What are you trying to say?

That sound you could hear - over the gentle crash of the surf, over the sporadic traffic on the roads above - was six months of tension and anger and anguish (which is not the same thing as anger) whistling out of me like a torpedoed weather balloon. With it went my stamina for continuing the evening. It was well after ten, I’d probably walked a kay and a half from where my last beer had been positively identified, and my reply to the text from JC asking my whereabouts and whatfors, which had been mentally first-drafted as ‘Where are you headed? Will meet you there’ had somehow become transcribed by my fingers as ‘Stick a fucken fork in me. I’m done.’ Send.

Oh well. That kinda settled it. Home to bed. Long day tomorrow. Not that we had any idea where we were going or how we were getting there, but judging by today, it’d be a long day doing whatever it was we’d be doing. And hell, at least it’d fuck with Jules’ plans if he came bursting through the door with Miss Scandinavia to discover me snoring my arse off in the room already. I don’t actually snore, but I’d be happy to learn just for the purposes of the evening.

Of course, by the time I’d scaled the seemingly enormous grass hillside that separated Town Beach from the part of town that overlooked it, I was thinking other thoughts. Mostly about how much I’d like to quench my hard-earned thirst with a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is… anything I could find at this time of night. To the point where I’d even consider busting into the minibar in our room and wearing the financial arse-violation which would ensue (remember, you’re talking to a man who will die in a ditch before he’ll pay over the odds for VBs out of a bar fridge under the sink of his hotel bathroom).

So not for the first time tonight, I walked through the front door of the hotel and fell instantly in love with Tabitha. Largely because she was still behind the bar. I’m shallow like that. The place was empty, which at least guaranteed a short queue for beers.

“I’m closing up,” she protested. “So this never happened, yeah?” And in the same breath, cracked two stubbies of Heineken - the proper imported stuff, not the bilge brewed in the Tooheys plant in Lidcombe, we’d already checked on that - and slithered one across the bar to me. I caught it with my right, sliding a stool under myself with my left and sitting down opposite her. Tabitha’s thirst was clearly more hard-earned than mine. It can happen at any time. You can get it running a bar. Matter of fact I’ve got it… erm, naaarrrr.

“Cheers,” I said. We clinked bottles - a bit late for her, she’d already monstered a quarter of hers - but ceremony must be respected.

“You’re back early…”

“Pretty dead in town,” I lied. “Besides, I’m fucking trashed. Got to download my thoughts for the day before they vanish into the ether.”

“So Ben… you’re a writer, yeah?” she queried. My name and job title had come up in conversation earlier in the evening, it wasn’t just a fucking impressive series of guesses. Like I said, the one good thing about the gig was that it occasionally worked as an interesting job title to impress girls with. “Who do you write for?”

“Crappy lads magazine.” Whose advice I was ignoring by telling the truth. “May have seen it around. Grunt.”

She laughed. “Grunt? Oh that’s fucking awesome, I love Grunt!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s hilarious!” Tabitha beamed. “You guys are, like, taking the piss, yeah?”

“Well I am,” I admitted. “Not entirely sure everyone else is. But that’s the nature of the best satire. If not even the editorial staff are in on the joke…”

“Oh that’s fucking rad,” she said. Rad. I hadn’t heard that since 1987. Tops. “You’re not Ben… North then?”

“Someone reads the fuck-off tiny bylines, I’m impressed.”

“Hey, I love your stuff. You get it. It’s like they’ve hired one of the dudes from Things Bogans Like and they don’t even fucking realise…”

Tonight had improved. A Lot. The mood I was in, the state my ego was as well, I could really do with some gorgeous curvy bar chick sharing her beers with me and telling me she loved my work. And right on cue… Port Macquarie, I love youse. You seeing anyone at the moment?

Tabitha closed up the bar and dropped the keys with the night receptionist, then ducked back into the bar, pinched a six of Heinies from cold storage and locked up with her spare key. I like a woman who comes prepared. We wandered down to the beach - second time tonight for me, but I wasn’t complaining. It was also a little chilly, but I wasn’t complaining about that either. Tabi hadn’t really dressed for the conditions. Clingy black T-shirt as per international bar-wench uniform, pants ditto, but maybe a bra might have helped re the general sense of nippliness. Were they pierced? Dammit, I think they are. And dammit, I’ve so totally been caught out staring. Somehow, it didn’t matter. With the chill in the seabreeze and all, it seemed natural that we’d stay close together, sharing warmth. And drinks.

“What’s this tattoo on your wrist?” Chinese characters. Three units thereof.

She pointed a black-painted fingernail. “Strength. Beauty. Truth.”

I smiled. “Like it.”

“Of course, for all I know it could say ‘This end up’ or ‘Bob was here’… or even ‘This chick fucks’…could explain the strange looks I get from Chinese tourists.”

“Happens a lot?”

“Yeah… nah… one did try to lick me once. Elderly Chinese man. Tried to stuff twenty dollars down my top and take me away with him. Tried to explain that it totally wasn’t on. I’d want at least a fifty…”

“Dammit,” I laughed. “I gave my last fifty to that bastard Jules.”

Her tongue stud flickered as the tip wetted the edges of her lips. The intent in her eyes was unmistakable. Even for a muppet like me.

“That’s cool,” she said. “I’ll settle for an IOU. Or a favourable review in the magazine…”

OMG. Go go go. Hands, and mouths, and tongues all over the place. Never kissed a girl with a tongue stud before. It was interesting. Not quite as interesting as the sensation of having her slither into my lap, grasp my wrists and smear the palms of my hands under her shirt… yup, pierced. Which led to wondering what else of Tabitha might be pierced.

“Patience,” she replied wolfishly, “and you might just find out…”

Patience I’m not good with. For one thing, it’s one of the crappier tracks of the Gunners’ back catalogue. But if patience was what was required… nup, still couldn’t do it. Wanted her now. Was going to have her now.

“Daaaammn,” she exhaled, “you’re very keen, aren’t you?” Given what she’d slipped her hand around, it was hard to argue otherwise. Hard. Heh heh. See what I did there. I write for Grunt, you know. “And I really wanted to christen that room with you, babe… tell you what. How about a little entrée here, then the rest a little later… if you’re up for it?”

As higher-level cognitive reasoning wasn’t my strong suit at the moment, I nodded. Quickly. Before she could take her hand away and change her mind. Or stop doing that thing with her tongue where she rolled the stud across her lips and made me think profoundly lurid thoughts about better uses to put it to….

Holy crap. I’m psychic. I have telekinetic powers… Either that, or she’s got just as dirty a mind as I do.

“One condition,” she breathed. “Back in the room, I get all this back with interest.”

Hell, I’d have agreed to anything. Working for Caroline, even. I agreed.

And then…

Yeah you can probably guess what happened then, without detailed explanation or informative diagrams. And yeah, the whole tongue stud thing. Interesting. Real interesting. I’d clearly, definitively, been dating the wrong kind of women for oh, about the last dozen years or so. OMFG. That’s going to melt my fucking brain.

And you know, I kinda wish it had. Because then I wouldn’t have started thinking. Yeah, I know. Thinking can help. Thinking about certain things, like the names of the colours on the Dulux colour chart, or all the Formula 1 world champions in chronological order, or anything else that prolongs the sweet, sweet agony. But not thinking things like: That streetlight’s quite bright. I wonder if you could see from up there. (You couldn’t. Probably.) Or the followup question without notice: That streetlight’s so bright I can almost read the inscription on the back of this necklace of hers. (Sort of a Druidish crucifix thing, hung from a chain-mail necklace with a little locket behind the neck.) What’s that say? Lean forward… hang on, back again… now forward… Tabicat. 26.11.95.

There’s only a handful of things that three two-digit numbers so arranged can realistically add up to. The most obvious of which was the one I was currently contemplating.

“Something wrong?” Tabitha queried, a little out of breath. Sixth sense, that girl. And I do mean, erm, girl.

“Awkward question, I know,” I muttered, “but how old are you, Tabitha?”

“Eighteen,” she replied.

“How old?”

A mischievous grin parted her lips.

“Sixteen?” she offered. “Erm, in November?”

Cue the Family Feud sound effects department: Baapp-baaoow.

“Riiiighht,” I said. “Hmmm.”

“But, like, it’s not as though that changes anything, yeah Ben?” she continued. “I mean, you’re hardly going to turn me down on a little technicality like that…”



“You turned her down on a little technicality like that?” Jules demanded to know.

“You mean, a little technicality like Fifteen’ll Get You Twenty?”

“Meh, you spent too long listening to Flange Gasket songs in your twenties.”

“Erm, Jules,” I pointed out, “it’s actually illegal to have sex with girls who are under sixteen. Like, properly fuck-off-illegal. Get-sent-to-Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison illegal.”

“Meh,” he argued. To his credit, he had a point, and he made it well.

“Dude,” I said, “we’re talking about someone who I’m technically old enough to be the father of.”

He mused on that. “Yes, but only if you banged someone her age in the first place.” He clearly thought this was the trump-card of all debate-winning points, so I let him continue to think that. “Besides,” he added triumphantly, “what would Munter do?”

“Best not explore that line of questioning,” I suggested. From what I’d gathered - largely because it was talk of the school the first school day after the party in question - Munter had lost his cherry aged fifteen to a particularly feisty 14 year old called Kerri (well, not actually called Kerri, because she’d sue, but we’ll call her that for the purposes of this.) He wasn’t her first, and he didn’t get rave reviews, largely on account of being paralytically trolleyed at the time. It was in the most part those less-than-glowing reviews that had circulated around the school. “But yeah, thanks for the sentiment.”

“The wanting-to-get-you-laid sentiment?”

“Only if it’s by some large black man in a jail cell, apparently…”

“Oh piss off. You need to have sex with something, and that’s an order.”

Red Dwarf quotes. He was broadening his reference base. Or he was hanging out with Chris too much.

“Lemme guess, JC’s been giving you chapter and verse on the Caroline saga?”

“Yeah, like I wanted to hear it.”

“It’s over. Properly over.” Felt good to say, actually. “And that’s what I was doing, just celebrating that over a few beers with a pretty girl, until her being born in 1995 got in the way. Officer.”

“How the hell does she…”

“Do that thing with her tongue?”

“I meant, run a hotel bar…”

“I think her folks own the joint or something,” I said. “My guess. Bohemian hippie weirdos I gather. Whole joint is a weird setup. Probably cameras in the smoke detectors. Be afraid.”

“More afraid of you,” Jules replied. “In your current over-tensioned state.”

“You can talk,” I derided. “Where the fuck are my dazzling Dutchies who aren’t remotely Dutch, by the fucking way?”

“Ah,” he grinned. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

He’d actually beaten me back to the hotel room. The Dutchies were a no-show, seemingly already skipped town. I’d come in, having extricated myself from the reluctant-but-kinda-understanding grasp of Tabitha (though it didn’t sound like I’d be receiving as much of a positive welcome as I’d hoped if I came back in, say, December), to find Jules perched on the bed entertaining himself. With the contents of the minibar, I mean. I immediately threatened to sue him for infringing my intellectual property from earlier in the night, i.e. going back to the hotel and raiding the minibar. I’d just been too cheap. And yeah, there was those free beers that nice girl from the bar had spotted me.

“Fuck it,” Jules pronounced, signalling vaguely in the direction of the fridge. He was sloppier than I thought. “I’ll get this round of drinks.” Meaning the contents of the minibar. In their entirety.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, fuck it. I earn in pounds. Apparently.”

I cracked my first minibar beer. Ever, in fact. Not counting the ones where you drink the beers out of the minibar then make a demon first-thing run to the earliest opening bottle shop and buy replacements of the same kind for marginally less money and probably far more effort. I mean my first proper minibar beer that I had no intention of hiding from the bill at the end. I’m a rebel, me. And of course it tasted just as shit as every other Extra Dry I’ve had since the turn of the millennium, when either Tooheys changed the recipe or my taste buds woke the fuck up, or both.

“Apparently?” I queried.

“Well I’m not earning at the moment, am I?” he remarked. “Fucking visa bullshit.”

I’d heard about this shit before. Known a bunch of people who’d been doing their stint in the UK recently - what the Kiwis called their ‘big OE’ - since the visa laws had changed. To renew your visa you now had to fuck off out of the country, back to the home consulate in the country you came from, to wait for the fucking thing to be processed - usually six weeks and change - before you could fly back. A massive bureaucratic wank and an exercise in barking up all the wrong trees at once. These were not the droids British immigration were looking for, or should have been anyway.

“They’ll have you back though I guess?” I had no idea. I never asked much about Jules’ job. Just seemed so fucking venal, the whole financial market deal. Seemed an exercise in who can be the biggest cunt with other people’s money. “After the six weeks or whatever…”

“Yeah,” he snorted. “Something like that.”

“And the girlfriend…”

“Girlfriend?”

“The prior arrangements,” I reminded him. “She’s happy to wait the six weeks… even if you mightn’t be?”

“Yeah… look…” Jules looked immensely frustrated. Probably as you’d expect someone to be if they were on the other side of the world from their job, their flat and their girl. “Fuck it. You can keep this to yourself, right?”

“You know me, mate.”

“Yeah, I do, you’re a journalist,” he said. “But you’re also a good mate. Always have been. So here’s the story. There is no girlfriend. There is no job. There is no flat. And the reason for that,” he said flatly, “is that there is no visa. Not now, not ever again.”

“Fuck,” I said. “How come? Don’t they just get you to reapply from your home…”

“Yeah, normally,” he said, taking a bitter swig of Extra Dry. “But normally they don’t find out you’ve been working there three years on a tourist visa that’s been dodgied up to look like a working visa. And then deport you permanently from the fucking country.”

“Can’t go back?”

“Can’t go back,” he said. “All bridges burnt. Even if they’d let me in the country, work don’t want to know me, even though it was my old boss there - he was ex-KPMG from here - who put me in touch with the lot who sorted the visa paperwork so I could stay. Great fucking job they did. Un-de-fucken-tectable. Of course, my flat’s gone, along with the bond, which was thousands. And my girl…” He pulled a face. “Such as she was. She wants to know me even less.”

“What, just because you’d been there on the wrong visa?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That, and she found out I was banging her best mate a bit.”

“A bit?”

“OK, a lot. Whenever she went out of town for work. Which was a lot…”

At that, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, laugh it up. It’s not like your life’s been fucked over by banging someone you work with. Oh wait on…”

“Like the man says,” I reminded him, “never dip your pen in company ink.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, and we clinked bottles. Well, he was actually trying to hit the neck of mine with the base of his so mine would foam over, but he fucked up, missed and spilt his own beer all over his pants. Instant karma. Much faster acting than regular karma. Ask for it by name.

“So, fairer to say you earned in pounds…”

“I’ll be right,” he said. “Built up a decent nest-egg, saving my pay and doing a bit of day-trading on the side. And the old-boys network will hopefully come through for a gig back here. Guy I used to know from uni, he’s now up the chain at Mac Bank, reckons there might be a vacancy coming up. Problem is…”

“It’s Macquarie Bank?”

“Ex-fucken-xactly,” he said. “Dodgiest lot of cunts in the entire fucking local industry.”

I knew, I’d seen the Four Corners ep. Ogling topless shots of Miranda Kerr on live-to-air news crosses was a long way from the dodgiest business practice they got up to. “Still, if it’s your best option…”

“Best paid option,” he mused. “If that’s the driver. Girl I used to know at KPMG… well sort-of had a fling with… she’s with Treasury. Canberra.”

“Canberra,” I said. “Hmmm.”

“Yes, hmmm.”

“Chris likes it.”

“Exactly,” Jules said. “That’s what I’m afraid of. And it pays fuck all, of course, because it’s APS.”

“Job for life though,” I pointed out. “Or as near as anyone gets nowadays. And you could always try it out for a while. Hell, Chris won’t have a flatmate for another six months or so…”

“Yeah, that’ll work. Dunno which of us was first to officially state ‘Decent bloke alright but never fucking living with him again…’”

“Erm, he was. Was calling it six months before you actually finished the lease.”

“The two faced little bastard. Besides, I called it eight months out.”

“Didn’t that chick you were dating try to ‘persuade’ him to move out?”

“Yeah. She was very persuasive, Laurel. She then persuaded me to leave her about a month after that, because she was more annoying than having your pubic hairs ripped out one by one.”

“Went alright in the sack though. So I heard.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“Same way everyone else in your apartment block did,” I mused. “Fucking thin walls in that place.”

Jules spluttered into laughter. I continued the story:

“You remember, we came up for Livid that time, JC and me were camped out on the living room floor. Fucking deafening she was. Performance art. After a while JC and I started taking spot bets on which she’d use more of, profanity or blasphemy…” Jules was doubled over trying not to spill his beer, as I finished the tale. “From memory the ‘Oh fucks’ beat the ‘Oh Gods’ by about 40 to 36 in extra time. Got no sleep, but got a dozen Coopers Spark out of it…”

“You were backing the ‘Oh fucks’ then?”

“Always. Swearing’s always big and clever.”

And so it went. We drained the beers in the minibar, got properly incoherent, talked a lot more lies and nonsense which neither of us could remember the next day, and crashed out sometime around half-two. With still no fucking idea about what the plan for tomorrow was, but that didn’t really matter much.


Continued in Part Five

The Highway North, part III

Continuing with the latest installment of Your Correspondent's 2010 NaNoWriMo effort... preceding episodes here and here


Wednesday. The carpark outside the OAK factory in Hexham.

I’d been rumbled. Probably not surprisingly, it’d been JC who’d joined the dots. He smirked at me like Smuggy McSmuggo, Mayor of Smugtown, as I fumbled for a comeback.

“It’s not like that,” I muttered, disingenously. “They lent me the camera, but that’s it… It’s not like it was the driver for the roadtrip.”

Heh, the driver for the roadtrip. See what I did there. I write for Grunt Weekly, fucken.

Look, the idea for the mission came first, I’d swear that to my dying day. What Would Munter Do, and all that. The thought that that a good-old-fashioned blokes-on-a-roadtrip tale could make a story, pitched correctly, which my new employers might want to run as a feature article, and maybe even upgrade me from caption-writing lackey to actual-article-writing-type-staffer, came later. I’d run the idea past the feature editors at the mag and they’d given it their full backing. By which they meant absolutely no support in terms of expenses or any commitment to publish it, but they’d conceded to have a look at it when I was finished, and they’d give me the week off. As leave without pay. Oh, and they’d lent me a camera - my continued employment at the magazine being contingent on its return intact and unscratched. I wasn’t much of a photographer - wasn’t much of a writer either, depending on who you asked - but I didn’t think it’d be a problem given that we were only talking here about shots of cars, pubs, roadside attractions, and men behaving badly. Or Ben behaving madly, as someone very, very funny had suggested for the project’s working title. OK, it was me, and I realise it was shit.

“It’s fine,” JC laughed, “I don’t care. Always wanted to be a clichéd wisecracking gay sidekick... Besides, I want to see how your editors manage the idea of a positive portrayal of an actual gay male person in their magazine without their fucking heads exploding at the cognitive dissonance…”

“Yeah… I considered that. Figured I’d just write you in as a lesbian. Win-win for all sides.”

JC’s face darkened. “You fucker,” he swore. “You would, too…”

“I’m joking,” I said. “Besides, what’s wrong with being a wisecracking lesbian sidekick? You got something against lesbians, you homophobe?”

The dirty look I was getting indicated JC wasn’t really appreciating the humour. I knew why. He would have viewed me changing his identity to suit the profile of Grunt’s readership base much like Google censoring the internet for the Chinese government or education departments conceding defeat to Cletuses with imaginary friends and allowing intelligent design to be taught as science. Do that, and you’re just as complicit in their bigoted, backward bullshit as the fuckwits pushing the propaganda in the first place. I knew that. Agreed with it. Didn’t mean I’d completely figured out how to avoid the article getting flicked courtesy the wisecracking gay dude in the passenger seat terrifying the target demographic. That demographic being 18-30 single white males who were definitely not in any way insecure about their sexual orientation, and bought lads’ mags dripping with bikini-clad tits and articles on blokey blokeyness to prove it.

And look, let’s be clear on this - I held nothing against bikini-clad tits. After six months’ drought you might say I wished I could hold quite a few things against them. Then again, after that same six months of staring at silicon-enhanced, Photoshop-airbrushed ‘perfection’ (under the guise of trying to come up with snappy captions and breakout text for ‘interviews’ with such intellectual giants as these) I’d found the single most attractive thing about a girl was still her humanity. The little things that made her unique, made her real. Made her something that wasn’t the default set of pneumatic curves, pearlescent teeth and perfect hair, template-as-established by our editorial forebears in the British lads’ mag industry, who’d developed the international prototype for what we were doing at Grunt in the previous decade, and in doing, ensured that Page 3 girls all over the UK had gainful photo-work all year round. Ditto for the hacks who made up their answers to interview questions about their favourite place to shag and what they thought of other Page 3 models’ boobs.

A bit north of Hexham I guided the heavily-laden Camira onto the on-ramp for the big Shell servo just south of Heatherbrae, opposite the botanic gardens

“Broken already?” quipped Jules. “Hahaha.”

“Nah, just my cheap-arsed brother never puts any fuel in it,” I replied. “It’s on empty.”

Slight technicality, the needle had been on empty since we’d left. Actually, it’d been on empty since about 2006, according to Mitch. Gauge was borked. He just chucked ten bucks’ worth in every second or third time he drove it, so he didn’t have to get out and push that often. Once every couple of months perhaps.

“Just thought it was that CHECK ENGINE light you were worried about…”

“Nah,” I said, pulling up next to the pump and hearing the handbrake cable SPROING like a dropped banjo as I reefed it on. Hmmm, best leave it gear. “That’s an advanced feature on these models, called a Warning Light Warning Light. It’s a warning light that’s designed to come on to tell you that the warning lights don’t work properly.”

“The TEMP light works on the same principle then?”

“You know how fucken rude it is to read over someone else’s shoulder?”

JC wanted to play another game. He’d gotten over his sulk re the probability of being turned into a lesbian and had white line fever again - no, not a debilitating condition brought on by overindulgence in powdered goods, more the cabin-fever silliness that comes about on roadtrips. For normal people it generally takes longer than twenty minutes of actual travel to kick in, but our JC was a bit special. In all respects.

“Shell Shop Secret Santa,” he declared. “Ten dollar limit. Buy for the person sitting clockwise from you. Go.”

“It’s not Secret Santa if you know who’s buying for you,” Chris pointed out.

“And it’s July,” Jules moaned.

“I said GO,” JC commanded. “Do I have to say it? ‘I have never held done Secret Santa in a Shell Shop in July.’ Happy?”

We reconvened at the Camira in ten minutes, after refuelling, buying a bunch of quality roadside crap, and JC had featured in his latest episode of Great Moments In Incontinence. The Camira itself was doing a fair impression of JC himself in that respect - I’d forgotten you shouldn’t quite fill it up to the brim as it tended to dribble fuel back out the neck of the fuel tank and puddle under the rear axle. Ah well. So long as JC didn’t take up smoking again.

Shell Shop Secret Santa prizegiving time:

- Chris had bought JC a Living End singles compilation from the bargain bin, because he was a cruel and hurtful man and knew JC hated the Living End with a passion that inflamed his very soul. Largely because we’d used it heavily as return fire in our first year sharehousing sonic warfare every time JC had played Tori Amos of a morning, because we didn’t need noone to tell us what to do, let alone a batshit insane ginger whose folks spent too much on piano lessons when she was a brat.

- JC had bought me the last issue of Grunt and a box of Kleenex. (See what he did there? It’s very subtle I realise.)

- Jules had bought me four litres of pre-mixed radiator coolant, because he couldn’t remember which way was clockwise (was it different in the northern hemisphere or something?) and who he should be buying for.

- Finally, I’d bought Jules a fluoro-yellow high-vis jacket so he could get out and push in safety and comfort when the Camira eventually packed it in. That’d be worth the price of admission… which was fifty bucks, as the bet currently stood. He looked genuinely touched. He put it on immediately, declared himself Plant Operations Manager For Life, and started barking random instructions.

With that, we hit the road. Despite JC’s bitter protestations we put the Living End CD on to cheer Chris up, since noone had bought him a present and the Newy police were still to phone up and tell him they’d recovered the burnt-out shell of his beloved Magna from the bottom of the Hunter. Or similar, as we were discussing, at length.

“It’s probably being used to pick up hitchhikers out west and murder them in horrible ways,” Jules suggested.

“Nah,” I said, “need something with more boot space for that. Got to take the spare tyre out to get more than two hookers in there, it’s just a writeoff.”

“It’s got a tow bar,” JC pointed out. “Like, hello, caravan of death… You’re just not thinking things through at a high enough level.”

“True. I’d just figured it was being used as the ‘Before’ car in a Pimp My Ride Down Under Special…”

“You quite finished?” Chris grumbled.

“I’ve never seen a 1996 Mitsubishi Magna on Pimp My Ride.”

“Is this part of the game… if none of us have seen it, we have to Make It So?”

“Uh, no,” said Jules. “I think it technically has to be in our power to achieve.”

“You mean like taking home young whatsherface from the water polo team last night, Jules?” queried JC wolfishly.

“Ah, no. Don’t know what you’re on about there…”

“Fail whale?” I queried.

“Nothing of the sort. I’m a man true to his prior commitments,” he said. I’d heard there was a girl back in London - there usually had been, just not necessarily the same one - so that joined a few dots. “Besides, she was more interested in your little brother, as near as I could tell.”

“Hmmm… that wasn’t who JC and I had the pleasure of having to listen to through the walls at the Ghetto, I think. Unless she’s a ventriloquist…”

“You can talk,” JC piped up. “Sneezy.”

“What?”

“Ahh… ahhh… aahhhh…” Jesus. He’d recapitulated Caroline’s most urgent, intimate moments with disturbing accuracy. Walls were thinner than I thought at ours. “I kept waiting for the right moment to yell out ‘GESUNTHEIT!’…”

“Mate, I was just glad she even got there,” I replied. “She was harder to get off than a melted wetsuit…”

“Yes, well,” remarked Jules. “No, I think young Kelly ended up disappointed. Her captain pulled rank.”

“Well she ended up with Mitch, I’ll say she did. Can’t pull much ranker than him.”

“What’s at Tea Gardens?”

“Tea,” I said. “In a garden… Dunno. Never been there.”

“Neither have I.”

Neither had anyone. Tea Gardens it was. It was a bit off the highway north of Karuah, another of the hundreds of little coastal towns that were sprinkled along the NSW coast. A pretty little town with a pretty silly name, it sat across the harbour from Port Stephens and Nelson Bay. Across the bridge lay the beachside town of Hawks Nest. You could tell we were still within Sydney weekender territory here, with the smatterings of B&Bs, holiday rentals and shinified cafés. An old-fashioned burger-with-the-lot from a greasy beachfront burger joint looked like a tall order. (Ahem.) Still, it had a bottle shop. And it had a golf course.

“Quick round of stick?” I suggested. It was a gorgeous winter’s morning, the course was empty, we had time, it looked like a quiet country course that wouldn’t mind the lads taking a few roadies with on course, we could hire some dodgy old clubs that’d take the edge off certain peoples’ competitive advantage, and for fuck’s sake, it might actually cheer Chris up. The Living End hadn’t helped. I was going to suggest he sampled a spoonful of concrete and harden the fuck up, but he didn’t need noone to tell him what to do. Oh yes, he was on his own, and there was nothing we could do.

Chris nodded, looked a bit surprised that the offer had come, he was usually the poor sucker agitating for someone to play against out on the links. Jules, who always liked a chance to rekindle old sporting rivalries with the likes of Chris and myself, was in. JC… wasn’t.

“Don’t make me say it,” I said. “I have never played a round at Hawks Nest Golf Club…”

“And I’ve never stabbed someone to death for making me play a round of golf at Hawks Nest Golf Club,” JC retorted. “Drive, bitch. I can feel myself getting more yokel by the minute. Any more so and I’ll end up skolling eighteen bourbon-and-Cokes and bashing myself behind the bowlo.”

Unfortunately for JC, I’d noticed something on Google Maps while sledging a few peeps on Twunter on the Jesus Phone. There was another road north. A road north that wasn’t the highway north, but that linked back up with the highway at Bulahdelah. It went along the coast between the beach and the Myall River estuary, across the lake by ferry, then wound around the edge of the broadwater through the Myall Lakes National Park. It looked a bit fiddlier, but it was exactly the same distance - it was 42 kays to Bulahdelah regardless which way you went. Bulahdelah was your archetypal ugly highway town in amongst a bunch of gorgeous scenery which every bastard traipsing up and down the dual carriageway usually got to see two fifths of fuck-all of - which was kinda the point of this trip, at least as I’d envisaged it. Get off the main roads and out amongst the stuff and the things. Here was a road that went straight through the middle of aforesaid stuff and/or things. And, more to the point, I’d never, ever been on it. I’m a sucker for roads I’d never, ever been on. Mungo Brush Road had me at ‘Hello’.

It was pretty, too. Hemmed in by the banksias and acacias of the heathland, Mungo Brush road was narrow but empty of traffic. Sunlight played through the overhanging foliage on both sides of the road as we pressed on through the green tunnel, serenaded by Chris Cheney requesting politely that we provide him with some form of second solution. For the second time today, which would presumably make it a third solution. It was the only CD we had, and the only AUX cable we had was somewhere in the centre console of Chris’ Magna, currently sitting burnt-out on blocks out in Newcastle’s glorious bogan west. Possibly.

“Don’t pay the ferryman,” JC advised me. “Don’t even fix a price.”

But, as it happened, the price was fixed already - nix, nada, diddly fuckin’ squat - so we pushed on, rolling the overladen Camira onto the ferry and bottoming out woefully on the on-ramp, to the point where we had to jettison some of the ballast, i.e. get Jules and Chris out of the back seats. The sunlight glistened off the lake (and off Jules’ hi-vis jacket, which he’d still refused to take off) as the big diesels roared and the water churned behind us. We were the only punters on the ferry, and the ferry was the only noise for miles around.

“How’s the serenity?” I quipped.

Noone answered, because they couldn’t hear me over the diesels.

What Google Maps didn’t show, however, was that large swathes of Lakes Road - the twisty, fiddly road which led through forest and farm from the ferry off-ramp back to the highway at Bulahdelah - was gravel. Wasn’t too bad, although it was a bit corrugated from traffic, and washed out by recent rain. Which, if you were sitting in the back of an aging Camira wagon with self-ejecting door trims, dodgy door seals and heavily laden, non-compliant suspension, would be a bit crap.

“We’re breaking up,” tailgunner Jules reported grimly. “We’re going down… I ain’t fucking pushing from here, just so you know.”

If you were driving, of course, it wasn’t such a drama. You knew when the big bumps were coming. You could even *cough* aim for them, if you were so inclined, but obviously only a complete prick would do that.

“MY EYES,” Jules wailed. “THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!”

Yeah, yeah, so apparently the window winder wasn’t dealing with the vibrations too well and his window was rattling open. Not just a bit. Completely to the stops. Then again, if he’d brought something better than those dodgy fucking ‘80s-throwback Wayfarers for eye protection… just saying.

“Can you hear something?” JC mused tartly. “Some sort of high-pitched whine…”

“I’ll be worried when I can’t hear it,” I replied, “means he’s finally choked to death on dust. Bags not telling his mum.”

A glance into my furiously-shaking rear vision mirror indicated I was getting flipped off by Jules’ free hand - the one which wasn’t white-knuckling the overhead grabhandle. Shortly followed by an ‘ARRGH FUCK’ as the grabhandle came free from the rooflining over one particularly nasty thump, resulting in Jules somehow contriving to punch himself in the head, with hilarious results.

“The bet doesn’t count if you dismantle the car yourself, Jules,” I said.

He wasn’t the happiest of campers when we dismounted at one of the big service centres in Bulahdelah to inspect the damage and glue the missing bits back on. While we were there we gave the Camira the once-over too. It was hanging in there alright, actually - nothing a tube of superglue, a roll of gaffa tape, a litre or so of Castrol GTX and a damn good vacuuming out couldn’t solve. Meanwhile we let Jules pick the next CD, i.e. we sent him into the shop to buy one, since he earned in pounds and all. He returned with Club Anthems 2009. Like his hairdo and the beef jerky from the bargain bin, it was at least 18 months out of date. Still, we welcomed all three into Frigmobile, and it gave him something to bond with Jules over - how desperately behind the times Australia’s club scene was, and how by 2009 Armand van Helsing or Transit Van Gogh or Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink or whoever this particular overrated fucking wedding DJ was had already become passé and was very much last week’s fishwrappers in Ibiza or Marbella or Aberdeen or wherever the hard-core clubbists of the UK gathered in their chemically-altered numbers.

“Pub in Forster for lunch,” I suggested. “I know a good one.”

Which was a lie. I hadn’t been through Forster in 20 years. I was just looking for an excuse to avoid the highway. The brief flirtations we’d had with 110km/h on open dual carriageway out of Newcastle had highlighted some fairly grim vibrational characteristics with Frigmobile that I doubted a bloody good shake over Lakes Rd would have improved. The wheel alignment was all over the place like a mad woman’s breakfast and the fronts had clearly taken a few knocks from kerbs and the like around the streets and carparks of Newy - Mitch clearly endorsed the theory and practice of Parking By Braille. Tooling along on gently-twisting backroads - like the Lakes Way which ran from Bulahdelah to near-as-dammit Taree via Forster and Tuncurry - seemed to suit the old girl better, it cornered pretty flat even with all the accumulated mass in it and had always been a nice-handling thing to drive. The kids in the back had cold(ish) Coopers 62s ex-Bulahdelah Cellars to keep them happy and so long as I didn’t press on too enthusiastically through the twisty bits over the range, they wouldn’t end up wearing too much of them. Brakes weren’t enjoying the work, though. Still, that’s what the gearbox is for. Or so I’d always been taught.

We cruised through comedically named localities like Boolambayte and Bungwahl, then wound around the shoreline of Smiths Lake and Wallis Lake. Given the local area’s major culinary export, the topic of oysters was suddenly popping up in pre-lunch conversation. For us it was Kilpatrick all the way, as per the golden rule of manhood (bacon improves everything) - unless you were JC, who liked them raw because he was weird and clearly enjoyed the sensation of slimy things down his throat. For the record, he went there, we didn’t.

By then we were rolling into the southern fringes of Forster. And where else could we have gone for a feed but the mighty Forster-Tuncurry Bowling Club? Well as it turned out, just about anywhere, because the Bowlo was more desperately average than a Nickelback best-of album. But they had Old on tap, and a sly middy of same (to stay well under 0.05) was a cold refreshing reward after chauffeuring this lot of whinging bastards about the lower mid-north coast.

And better still, there was still placename comedy gold to be had, snapped and uploaded to Teh Interwebz (as 3G signal permitted) on the northern half of the Lakes Way - Failford, Darawank and Krappinghat. Technically the last one was Khappinghat but JC misread the sign and we figured it was close enough for a pic. Could always Photoshop it later, it’ll be sweet.

We hit the highway again after that, settling into the cruise. The death-rattle vibes that kicked in at 110 seemed to ease off at 115, like we’d hit the natural resonant frequency of the beast. Jules’ high-NRG dance choonz just became background ambient noise after a while, like the wind rush around the Camira’s roofracks or the occasional groan from Jules as we hammered over an expansion joint a bit too sharply for his kidneys’ liking. The bridge approaches over the Manning River on the Taree bypass were particularly bastard-riffic, because the road had subsided a little over the years from trucks pounding over them. They’d been a prick even in my old low-slung Skyline; in the Camira we almost went into orbit. A ferocious crunch on re-entry indicated there may be a structural issue in our future. That and the fact we now sounded like a squadron of Harleys being broadcast through a mainstage rock-fest PA, as the back half of the muffler skated down the road, ricocheted off the bumper of the B-double behind on the half-volley, and disappeared over the side of the bridge into the Manning.

“Hmmm… is this thing on? I can hardly tell?” chirped Jules.

“IT’S WHISPER QUIET!”

“You got all that juice from that whole bag of oranges?”

And so on. Didn’t wake Chris up though. He’d settled into for the afternoon, a big feed and a few too many beers in the sunshine having done their work. Actually everyone was feeling the effects a bit and had flicked the switch to siesta mode - me excluded, for obvious reasons. Jules was chilling to something or other through the earbuds on his iPhone and JC also had his umbilical link to civilization resolutely plugged into his conscious, though London to a brick what he was doing was work-related, firing through his emails or something. Bloody workaholics. He needed to get a job that didn’t fulfil or enrich him in any way, so he’d be as happy as me to skive off for a week’s pointless roadtripping up the coast.

So we cruised in relative silence, marked only by the occasional bleep-bleep-blurb of whatever it was that Jules had going through his earbuds. The 2009 Annual had long since had its day, the stereo had fallen silent - in no way because the car hadn’t wanted to start back in Forster and I was pretty sure the CD player had been sucking current that the dodgy old alternator wasn’t too flash at recouping. An old car is an organic thing, though. On a drive like this, you get to know its limits, its idiosyncracies. You learn its foibles and figure out work-arounds for its problems. You work together. The electrical system - solved. So long as we didn’t crank shitty dance music on the stereo, we had a sufficiency of volts. The rear shocks were shot, which meant you went porpoising down the highway over serious bumps, but lifting off just before hitting them gave you a touch more travel as the rear end lifted a tad, the same way you lift off the brakes just as you’re approaching a suburban speed bump to make the nose lighten. The right front CV joint had a finite lifespan, judging by the snap crackle and pop in the bowlo carpark, but at highway speeds it wasn’t a problem, just a bit of background noise. The air-con was rooted, but it was July so who cared. And with no muffler from the midpoint back it might have been a wheezy old two-litre four but it sounded like a NASCAR. Awesome.

And best of all, the way we were rolling, I was in line to take fifty bucks off of Jules. Didn’t matter to him - he earned in pounds, as we were being reminded on a relentless basis - but it was handy discretionary pocket money for me.

We must have settled into that sort-of Zen serenity for a while, because when someone spoke it suddenly shook me out of my reverie. We were maybe thirty or forty kays north of Taree, I’d been doing my car-ESP thing trying to work out if the vibration I was picking up on smooth resurfaced bits of highway was the dodgy alignment, the dodgy CV joint, dodgy wheel weights or dodgy tyres, when JC startled me with an exclamation.

“Dunbogan,” he declared. “I want to go to there.”

I was guessing he had Google Maps open on his iPhone. “Where the fuck is Dunbogan? What the fuck is Dunbogan?”

“Near Laurieton, I think.”

I knew Laurieton. By name, not really by experience. Another of those anonymous beachside hamlets which the highway always streeted past, and me with it. I was vaguely aware of a coast road which departed from the highway at Kew or somewhere and followed the coastline to Port Macquarie, twenty kays or so north, tonight’s destination. I was pretty sure that road went through Laurieton. If we were that close to Port, we were actually a lot closer to our intended stop for the night than I’d figured.

“Dunbogan,” I mused. “What the hell do you do in Dunbogan?”

“No idea. I think it’s where the readers of Grunt go to die,” JC suggested.

“A must-visit then,” I said. “Since I’m on assignment and all.”

The kids in the back stirred as we peeled off the highway at Kew.

“What are we doing?” Chris wanted to know.

“Going to Dunbogan,” I said. “Ay.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there,” JC declared.

“How very Edmund Hillary of you,” Jules observed. “Shouldn’t we be climbing mountains or something?”

“Can do that too,” I said. “There’s only that one though,” I pointed out. We’d made the turn right onto Ocean Drive and were headed east, a steep conical projection looming out of the flat farmland ahead of us. “Not much of a mountain. Middle Brother, I think.”

“North Brother,” corrected JC, consulting the oracle.

“Even better. North Brother. I dub thee ‘Mitch’.”

“Not quite tall enough,” Chris surmised.

“Yeah, didn’t recognise him without the Bowie T-shirt…”

“Bowie's in space…” I mused. “Whatcha doin' out there, man?”

“That's pretty freaky Bowie…”

“Is it cold out in space Bowie? You can borrow my jumper if you like…”

“Does the cold of deep space make your nipples go pointy Bowie?”

“You guys quite finished?” remarked Jules.

“Yeah, sorry Jules. How derivative of us. If it’d been Simpsons quotes rather than Conchords, obviously you’d have had nothing to do with it…”

You may have noticed Jules loved his Simpsons quotes. Years back he used to come over and watch VCR tapes of the Simpsons which Mitch - who went through a big phase as a young lad of (a) obsessing over the Simpsons and (b) wanting to be Jules, because his big bro wasn’t cool enough - had recorded off the local Channel 10 affiliate.

“Whatever,” he said. “Still not seeing the point of climbing all over your brother.”

“Unlike your intended from last night…”

“And yours?”

“Touché,” I conceded. “Tou-fucken-ché.”

“I’d figured you’d have done better. Maybe you should read this article about ‘The six steps to seducing any woman you want’…” He had the copy of Grunt in his hand and a smug grin on his dial, indicating he’d seen my teeny tiny byline on the piece, wedged in nano-point font against the spine of the magazine.

“Step one is not reading fucking Grunt magazine,” I said. “Not sure if it says that there…”

“Doesn’t appear to be.”

“Yeah, funny that.”

We were tooling through the tree-lined housing developments of Lakewood and West Haven, hemmed in by the southern shores of the estuarine Queens Lake to the north, and the northern slopes of North Brother to the south. Yeah, that just broke my mental compass too. My moral compass had been on the fritz for years anyway.

“Got to get a photo of that,” JC declared. The brown tourist-attraction roadsign indicated ‘North Brother Lookout’ under larger signage that read ‘Dooragan National Park’.

“Just nick the sign, nail it to his door at the Ghetto,” I suggested. “North Brother At Work, Lookout, Achtung, Schnell, Nailing Tool In Use. Actually,” I added, “fuck it. Let’s climb it.”

“What, on foot?” Jules was incredulous. He didn’t do nature walks.

“Nah,” I said, indicating right. “In this.”

The two-lane bitumen of Captain Cook Bicentenary Drive narrowed to one between the thickening forest of arrow-straight eucalypts, as we began winding up the hillside, the road steepening as it narrowed. Would make a hell of a tarmac rally stage, this, I thought to myself, and the temptation was there to really have at it and see what the old girl was capable of. Traffic was non-existent, conditions were perfect… but then I remembered that grumbling CV joint, the dodgy brakes, the doughy throttle, the temp gauge skyrocketing in synchrony with the tacho needle, and Jules’ oversensitive arse over anything that looked like a bump. Nah. Best take it easy. Besides, the only roadside furniture keeping us from a long plunge down the hillside should one depart from the narrow strip of bitumen were tree trunks, bracken ferns and leaf litter.

“You sure we’re going to make it?”

“You’re starting to worry about your fifty bucks are you…”

“More my chances of surviving,” Jules replied grimly.

“Don’t worry your ugly little head about it,” I replied, trying to disguise the effort required in hauling the overladen Camira through a tightening uphill left-hander. Power steering wasn’t the best. Probably leaking. Probably explained the acrid smell of very hot hydraulic fluid from somewhere under the bonnet. Unless that was brake fluid, of course. “You’ll live to use the return leg of that ticket from Heathrow, don’t worry about that.”

“I’m more thinking about how we’re supposed to come back down…”

“Piece of piss,” I remarked. “It’s all downhill, yeah?”

Soon enough - or not nearly soon enough, if you were Jules, who was starting to look a little pale and peaky in my rear view mirror - we emerged from the trees and crested the final rise up to the reserve at the lookout - picnic area, carpark, viewing platform. And what a view. There were a few clouds about but for the most part it was clear and sunny out to the north, where you could see for miles up the coast, almost to Port Macquarie, disappearing into the saltspray haze. In the foreground was the broadwater of Queens Lake, feeding via a sinuous tree-lined creek into the broadening mouth of the Camden Haven River, Laurieton on the near side, Dunbogan on the far.

“That’s fuckin’ pretty,” I declared.

“Yeah, a lot prettier than the other North Brother,” Chris said.

“Oh, I don’t know…” mused JC.

“Dude. Eeeuwww.”

JC had been winding me up about Mitch’s prettiness ever since he’d come out, pretty much. At least I hoped he was saying it to wind me up. “Nothing personal, mate,” I’d usually say, “but I don’t really see you as brother-in-law material…”

To be honest, I had no idea how you were meant to react if and when one of your mates decided they were keen on your brother. Were you supposed to go the overprotective route like guys with sisters who were objects of attraction? I’d only heard of that sort of thing anecdotally anyway - none of us had sisters (well, Chris had an older sister but she’d always kept to herself, and JC’s sister alternated between being rational and being part of the Family Brethren and as such was best avoided like the rest of them) so your guess was as good as mine as to what was an appropriate response. However given Mitch’s cheerful philosophy of banging as many girls as were interested in his bony arse, I didn’t feel it’d ever become much of an issue.

And in truth, JC would have made a better brother-in-law than most. Like the one our man Munter was about to end up with at the end of this coming weekend...

Chris and I knew the story, because we’d been there; we’d recounted it enough times in the interim, including on this trip, that JC and Jules knew it too. Basically it involved Munter’s bucks do up in Brisbane a month or two back - myself, Chris, a couple of Munter’s mates from UNE and work, the future BIL, and the future BIL’s bestie, the fucking retard. I say he was a fucking retard - he didn’t look the sharpest tool in the farmshed (he was the farmhand on the parents’ farm back home), been dropped on his head a few too many times at birth, but he was mainly known as ‘the fucking retard’ because that’s what BIL called him. Constantly. Like it was funny. If anyone was a fucking retard it was him, a braying Quoinslaaaaand cunt in a checked shirt tucked into his jeans, looking more belligerently out-of-place than a freshly-laid turd in a pair of Julius Marlows, drinking XXXX Gold and actually liking it. If he was a marker of what the rest of the family were like - and he was, then as now, the only member of said family any of us had met, even with me as intended best man and Chris as BIL’s fellow groomsman - you could understand my doubts re the likely potential for long-term win for the Munter.

Anyway. BIL made it very clear that he was your typical bigoted, homophobic, racist fuck from the arse end of nowhere. And that was well before we’d actually started drinking properly. We kicked off at the Doomben races, kicked on into the Valley - where BIL and his dozy offsider were kind enough to bellow their way through a very loud game of ‘Spotto’ awarding each other points for identifying fags, lezzos, dirty chinks and boat people who needed sending the fuck home - then on a train to Suncorp for the evening’s Main Event, the Reds vs Waratahs Super 15 rugger game. Where BIL decided it was time to start regaling us with stories of his sister’s younger days, in particular those she’d spent being anyone’s and everyone’s after two Stolis. “Fucken hell, even this fucken retarded cunt’s had a crack at her. Three fucken times!”

Anyway, the inevitable happened and security tossed us for language - probably shouldn’t have got us the expensive seats up with the shiny people there Munter - which was just as well as I’d had a fucking gutful.

“We’re off into town,” Munter reported, as we filed out through the concrete canyon of the concourse. “Strip club o’clock.”

I shook my head. “Nah mate. Sorry. We’re done.”

“Too much piss?”

“Nah, too much cunt. That cunt.”

Munter nodded solemnly. He was disappointed, you could see, but he’d figured as much. Probably predicted it in advance.

“Where you off to?”

Chris shrugged. “We’re staying on Coro, so maybe the Regatta, or the RE… yeah probably the RE,” he said, on second thoughts. The ‘Gatta wasn’t what it’d once been. Shiny, superficial and obnoxious. And that was just the clientele.

“You fucken faggots joining us or what?” bellowed BIL, draping an arm around Munter. “Get a faceful of some dripping cunt…”

“Been staring at one of them all fucking day,” I observed.

“Sorry pal?” he said, close-talking all of a sudden. “I didn’t quite hear that.”

“I said, you’re a cunt,” I replied, with the sort of steel only a lot of piss can provide. “And you’ve singlehandedly manage to fuck up my oldest mate’s buck’s night. Fucken kudos to you champ. Now fuck off to your wank palace, we’re off to the pub.”

Needs to be said here and now that I can’t fight. I don’t fight. I talk a much better fight than I ever engage in. Munter knew that, Chris knew that. BIL didn’t. Yet.

“You are a fucking faggot,” he declared.

“I’m a fucking faggot?” I queried. “From the cunt who’s done nothing but spout scared homophobic bullshit all night. You are what you hate, bitch. Transparent as fuck. Your husband know what you think of your secret life together?”

There was a hand in my chest, but it was Munter’s, and his other was pressing against BIL’s. He was trying to keep us apart. Probably saw what was coming next. Me getting my arse kicked.

“What the fuck are you trying to say?”

“Jesus fuck... I’m saying you’re gay. And you’re doing a shit job of covering it up. Go deal with it. Fuck off down the Wickham, get yer fucken shirt off and make some friends. And get the fuck out of my face.”

“Or what?” he sneered. “I’ll have you, faggot. You’ll be laid out with one hit.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “You might. But then the thirty-five security guards within a twenty yard radius will be dragging you off to lockup to get arse-fucked by some six-eight Tongan bouncer. You’ll like that. Or they’ll just save you the trouble and cave your pretty face in out the back. Your Thai rentboy won’t hardly fucking recognise you any more…”

At which point security finally intervened, again, and we were sent on our separate ways. Munter grim-facedly dragged the two yokels, still slurring insults and abuse after us, towards the Caxton St cab rank in search of a Maxi-Taxi, glumly followed by most of the walking wounded from the Tour de Munter. Chris and I, plus a few other rebels from the Armidale contingent of Munter’s mates, headed for the Milton train station. The RE it was. After which point the night improved dramatically. For one thing, we caught the end of the Super 15. BIL’s Reds got fucking annihilated.

So yeah, we were most surprised when not only was it confirmed by Munter that Chris and I were still invited to the wedding, but we were starting front-row selections as best man and groomsman respectively, along with Luke, one of his other UNE mates who’d fucked off to the pub with us, and the inevitable BIL. Got the impression that there’d been fearsome diplomatic (and possibly undiplomatic) pressure, sanctions and threats from Bridezilla trying to have our candidacies rescinded and her brother installed as puppet best-man for life, but Munter had held firm. God bless the stubborn bastard. For his part, BIL had sheepishly claimed to anyone who’d listen he’d remembered nothing of any of anything, up to the point of ending up in the watchhouse at the Valley cop shop for groping a transvestite at a club then assaulting them for not being what it said on the tin, as far as he could read - which at 3.40am wasn’t very far.

Yeah, good times. And interesting times to come on the weekend, when we were to be reunited with BIL - and introduced to Munter’s betrothed - at the wedding. On the day. The former would come first, probably - we of the groom’s party had a suit fitting on Saturday morning, then a practice run through the ceremony in the afternoon on site (though not in the actual location intended, much to Bridezilla’s chagrin, due to the whole club championships thing that they’d so rudely scheduled for the same Saturday she’d wanted for her big day, hence having to move it to Sunday). The potential amusement would be in meeting Bridezilla when she was likely to be at her shabbiest - not only deep in pre-wedding logistical fury, but nursing a big fuck-off hen’s night hangover. Two nights out from the wedding. Despite Munter being obliged to have his bucks’ do almost two months out.

Doubts, I had a few.

Anyway, back to North Brother, a good 600 kays from the coming unpleasantnesses of the Indro Golf Club on the weekend. The view from the lookout around the south side - accessible via a short forest loop track, ingeniously called Forest Loop Track, though which earned enemies-for-life out of Jules and his $265 Onisuka Tiger shoes courtesy being a bit too mud-slathered than we’d promised him - was if anything even MOAR awesome. You emerged through the temperate rainforest to views out over the larger Watson Taylor Lake, the southern coast and the jagged volcanic ridgeline of Middle Brother to the south-west.

“How’s the serenity?”

I was saying that a lot. It amused me to. Not sure it was amusing everyone else for me to, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise as I saw it. Before anyone could correct me on my world view, out of the bush and into the sunlight stepped three of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. OK, so I’d been single for six months, so every second woman I saw was one of the most beautiful women I’d seen. But these girls brought the hotness, thermonuclear style. Euro backpackers, I was guessing. Backpackers, because of their tight T-shirts, khaki shorts and (erm) backpacks, and because someone had to be associated with the brightly-muralled Escape campervan in the carpark; Euro, because they had to be from another country because otherwise they’d have had to come from another planet. The tall one with the wavy brown hair - I was going to guess Dutch or Scandie based on her height and the way she carried herself, but that was just supposition - approached with a sweet dimpled smile and gestured towards my camera, a little silver digital one in her hand.

“Please, could you take our photo of me and my girls?”

I’d be delighted. Then she was kind enough to return the favour, getting one on my work camera of myself and the lads overlooking the scene to the south. She asked me about the camera - she was into photography, evidently - and I lied and said it was mine, and we were getting snapshots along the coast for an article I was writing. Because I was a writer. (A job description that to its credit always sounds more impressive than it is. Even stacked up against a postdoctoral research scientist, a financial analyst and a public health advocate, as I introduced the lads to Karolina, Krystyna and Sela, respectively.) Karolina - she with the camera, and yes, she just HAD to be a Karolina didn’t she? - very impressed and asked who I was writing the article for. And I lied and said Men’s Style. Because it sounded better than Grunt, and because lying your arse off was apparently one of the six key steps to seducing any women you wanted. I’d read that in a magazine somewhere. In one of our UK parent mags, in fact, when I was tasked with transcribing the article from Pommy new-lad into bogan Strayan a while back. I got all the glamorous gigs.

JC, who was to his eternal credit an excellent wingman when the mood struck him, engaged full charm mode and asked them about their trip, how long they’d been out here, what they’d seen. Chris was mute and awkward, (a) because he usually was around stratospheric hotness, but also (b) because he didn’t have to bother with stuff like this any more and his relief was absolutely palpable. Jules still looked a bit off-colour from the Rallye de Frére Nord, so he wasn’t much help either. And me, I was giddy and getting headspins, and I doubted it was down to the heady altitude of maybe a few hundred metres above sea level. These girls were dazzling. And when they said they were still making up their minds but they were probably going to stay another night in Port Macquarie… well, I said we’d love to catch up again if we crossed paths in town. Didn’t actually need to lie about that, surprisingly enough.

“Alright who are you and what have you done with Norco?” Jules asked afterwards, as we were filing back into Frigmobile, and I was pretending not to notice the puddle of whatever-it-was spreading underneath the car. If it was coolant from that slightly leaking radiator hose, I wasn’t too concerned. We were carrying spare capacity, after all, thanks to my Secret Santa present. And, after all, it was all downhill from here.

“Taking my own advice,” I shrugged with a grin.

Ah yes, all downhill. Not too bad for the engine. Not too good for the brakes, though. Or the gearbox, as it started being attacked like stirring coal with a javelin to help out the fading brakes. Or the clutch, as the gears began to be hammered. Or the front tyres, as we tried to scrub off speed with teeth-gritted plough-ahead understeer. Or the handbrake, which finally gave way when I went for it just to tighten our cornering line plunging into a sharpening downhill left. Ah well. Hill starts were to be avoided herein.

We were diving into corners that hadn’t looked this steep on the way up, without railings on the outside, with JC giggle-swearing, Chris staring out the window with grim determination and Jules releasing a quickfire fuck-fuck-FUCK on every exhalation now that he’d run out of grabhandles to white-knuckle - the door trim had come free when he’d pulled the door shut getting back into the car - and Simpsons quotes to recant (once he’d gone through ‘SAVE ME JEBUS!’ and its corollary ‘I don’t even believe in Jebus!’) Me, I just had the teeth gritted and the eyes on, shuffling my feet like Ari Vatanen in that famous film from the Pikes Peak hillclimp, tap-dancing over the pedals of his late-80s Peugeot 405 rally car as it tip-toed along the precipice of a thousand foot sheer drop. Except, of course, we were headed down. Boy, were we ever headed down. Revs screaming - hmmm, maybe a little harder on the engine than I’d imagined - brakes squealing, the whole car stinking of hydraulic fluid and mechanical stress. But everything was in control.

At least until we finally hurdled within sight of the T-intersection at the bottom, and it became quite clear that one now had no brakes whatsoever to work with.

I invented a series of new swear words - actually I just conjugated all the really offensive ones together in a new order, as was my usual practice - crammed the gearbox into reverse with a sound that evoked the end of the world, and aimed for the softest looking bit of roadside scenery I could, which was the grass verge on the inside of the intersection to our left. Important bits of metal ground to a catastrophic and deafening halt inside the engine and gearbox, matched only by the shrill squealing of some of the less iron-willed members of the touring troupe. We vaulted the kerb and slewed across the grass verge, broadside between a stand of thin casuarinas and the North Brother Lookout sign (narrowly avoiding going through with our plan to souvenir it for Mitch, as it almost ended up directly in the boot of the Camira.) The recent rain had turned the grass verge to bog, and that saved us - we carved four deep muddy scars into the verge, but Frigmobile didn’t tip over, nor did the old girl punch through onto the westbound lane of Ocean Drive into the path of someone best avoided like THAT BIG FUCK OFF TRUCK RIGHT THERE. Instead, we came to rest with a buckled wheel teetering over the kerb, the rest in the field we’d just ploughed for the RTA (at no expense to them, I’d add.)

And suddenly, there was silence. The only sound you could hear was the ticking of cooling metal, the hissing of fluid-under-pressure - brake, gearbox, radiator, all of the above - and the quite difficult-to-reproduce sound made by four grimly clenched bot-bots unpuckering themselves from the upholstery of a 1989 Holden Camira wagon.

“Bro! How’s it goin’?”

“Yeah good,” I said down the phoneline. “Erm, about the car…”

“What about it?” Mitch was stifling a giggle. I think he knew what was coming.

“About the brakes,” I said. “There don’t appear to be any.”

He laughed. “Nah they’re pretty shot, they were on the to-do list.”

“What, you have a to-do list?” The idea that Mitch had any idea of what parts of his car needed maintaining, let alone a list…

“Nah. The blokes who do the pink slip on it. They’re usually pretty good to me, but yeah, fail whale… I did tell you it’s out of rego, yeah?”

OK, that did for me. I just started giggling hysterically. JC, for his part, hadn’t stopped giggling since the stunt had started to go horribly wrong about four and a half kays back up the hill. Jules was being volubly ill behind the casuarinas, while the only sensible grownup among us was putting his NRMA membership to use and was calling for roadside assistance, which would probably involve intensive care.

“Why, what’s happened?”

“Bit of an emergency stop. Bottom of a big hill. Busy intersection. Bit of excitement for a Wednesday afternoon…”

“Endo’d?”

“Nah, not a scratch on it,” I declared triumphantly. “Credit to the skills behind the wheel. Mind you, the gearbox is fucked. And the brakes. And the handbrake. And the suspension, we hit that kerb fuckin’ hard looking at the hangtime before the skidmarks started… and probably the engine, looking at the shit pouring out of it. But nah, outwardly, not a scratch on it…”

“Jesus. Sorry, bro.”

“Mate, I’ve just fucked your car and you’re saying sorry?”

“Nah it was a heap anyway,” he laughed. “Olds’ll be shitted off, but I don’t give a fuck… been trying to sell it for six months.”

“Bit hard without rego.” I’d just seen the sticker in the window. Expiry Feb 10, not Feb 11 as I’d read it as.

“Yeah you reckon?” he laughed. “Gotta go bro. Customers. Boss is getting shitty.”

“Sell sell sell. Talk to you later mate.”

JC had the camera in one hand and what was left of the back bumper in the other - OK when I say there wasn’t a scratch on it, there wasn’t a scratch on any of the bits which had come off when we’d belted over that kerb at still-unpleasant speed. “Road trophy,” he declared. “Pose with your kill.”

“You alright?” He’d been limping a bit.

“Yeah, cracked my knees together. Might not be much use to you on the dancefloor this evening with the dazzling Dutchies. And I think I’m getting an asthma attack from laughing too much,” he giggled. “That was fucking awesome. I want to do that again.”

Chris didn’t. He looked pretty grim. “NRMA should be here in fifteen to twenty.”

“Cool,” I said. “Do they have a flatbed truck?”

“For this?”

“Nah, for him,” I said, indicating Jules slumped on the grass beside the Dooragan National Park sign and what had become of his lunch. Knew he shouldn’t have gone the surf and turf. Priciest thing on the menu. What a waste. Even if you were earning in pounds. “He’ll need carrying out of here on a hoist.”

“I heard that,” he groaned.

I grinned. “You alright old son?”

“I will be,” he said, “once I get that fifty dollars off you.”

We stared at the bedraggled, cock-wheeled, sagging remains of the Camira.

“I dunno,” I said. “Looks OK to me. Should buff right out…”


Continued in Part Three