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Jackie speaks: It doesn't matter what I want or don't want. I'm anything you want me to be. The world laid me on a bed and fucked me until the innocence left my eyes as tears. The way he fucked me, was like slapping a slab of dead meat onto a barbecue, his poor long little dick and a soft sweat breaking out all over his brow. I didn't even bother looking into his face for something. That would be the same as looking at the wheel of a giant truck as it rolled backwards and forwards across your child or your dog. Their income may be higher than the average woman, but all men are dopes. For example: a man walked into the Pub Bar where all us girls were chatting in a group. He was nothing special, average height and weight, balding with a neat beard and contact lenses. I'd say he was in his mid-forties. He was wearing an Australian military uniform. All the women stopped talking. Goldie looked over and said, 'Hiya, Paul. How ya doin'?' 'Okay, I'm fine.' Did I detect a brilliant mascara-lipstick-piled-smile on two of the women's faces? What were they smiling at, or more to the point, who the fuck was he? Surely, not Paulie.
Goldie was thinking about her life; how she had just graduated for her honours year in textiles, how her five-year-old son's birthday was coming up, that her house had been broken into just this morning, and that she was soon to go overseas as part of a smart career move. When she stopped to ask what Paulie had been doing, he replied in a very drawn-out Australian accent, 'Oh, nothin' much really. I just spent half the mornin' changin' a car tyre.' 'Mmmmmm,' she said. Her 'mmmm' was meant to be taken as a sign of mutual interest and appreciation. This happened long before she realised what the guy in question had actually said. The other women's smiles slackened momentarily, but they caught themselves in the bar mirror and soon perked up again, having been down the lust-to-love road too many times. Goldie's eyes were still friendly but more distant than they had been. As in faked orgasm, they remained focused just over the top of his left shoulder, as if now intent upon searching out a vague future or some lost dream. 'Really?' she said. 'That sounds interesting.' He shrugged it off, even a little embarrassed himself. He couldn't help what he was and he didn't know how to apologise for it. And even if he did, would that be enough? After all, it wasn't his fault that all these women had suddenly stopped talking to each other, the minute he had entered the Pub Bar, in order to focus their attention on him. But they were pretty spunky ladies, so he wasn't complaining. It didn't take long before Goldie sighed and started looking for cracks in her acrylic nails. Personally, he thought that he was on a good wicket here with these girls and he began to talk more comprehensively about how he had mowed the lawn that morning as well. He was a domesticated dope, which is the probably the most boring variety of dope from Dopesville. He was reasonably good looking and all the girls were hormonal with a full moon coming up. However, it didn't take too long before the women's disappointed and burnt-out looks were resumed.
Roxanne speaks: Have I mentioned my photography to you before? Often due to financial constraints, I haven't been able to develop this interest into an artform. I've also realised that I may have only one shot at recording something. As well as the obvious need for bar work, I had originally gone to the Top End with the specific intention of recording chain lightning, after being inspired by a book of photography by Peter Jarver, a local photographer. Further research revealed that Darwin has the highest incidence of lightning strikes in the world, that is, between ten thousand and forty thousand lightning strikes each year in December. Driving the length of a country as big as Australia is no mean feat. It is a very long way to go in order to view storms. When I finally arrived in Darwin, the build-up had occurred and the monsoons had already set in, which meant rainy weather rather than 'stir up my emotions' or 'troppo' weather. Locals had also told me that some years there were lightning storms and other years there weren't. This year had virtually no storms. Naturally I felt disappointed, but so many other things had taken my interest, that the chain lightning took a back seat for a while. Nevertheless, I decided to remain 'on call' for any signs in the sky. I had already spent just on a month in Darwin, which is far more expensive than Perth to live in, before I saw my first real chain lightning. I was at a local backyard party in Anula with a few of the working girls I had met. It was literally stinking hot with no sign of rain when the sky suddenly began to flash. While the hosts were spending time yelling out and organising the main event of the evening, (it took a lot of preparation to get twenty people to a night club in only eight cars!!), I sat quietly in the driveway for an hour watching the horizon. There were about eleven good strikes that made me shout out, before I could stop myself. The lightning was pink, white and blue and travelled in chains horizontally across the sky, slipping through the thick warm wet season clouds like fingers, rivulets and then finally a snake. Even though I knew that I would never be paid for this information or my subsequent photographic creation, it was a very significant event in my life. Around the same time as this was happening, a huge monsoonal storm was building up over Nightcliff Beach. |
