Читать книгу Falling Backwards - James Quinn - Страница 4

It was about a year ago, when I wasn’t worth much of anything at all. I was wearing a cheap black suit, which was something that they used to make me do back then. Anything else would have invited mean-spirited remarks at the lamington drives and on bingo nights. The suit was cheap and I had no say in the matter. Too flashy and it would have undone all the lying and cups of milky tea. From where I was sitting I could hear the fridge burring in the kitchen and a magpie warbling in the frangipani outside. It was late in the evening and I could smell the garden cooling with the dew. I sat quietly in my lounge room in a fat old armchair, sharing the space uncomfortably with Donald and Mary. Together the three of us inhaled and exhaled away an awkward moment. Donald and Mary were regulars at my marriage counselling sessions and the topic for the evening was a difficult one.

Donald, Mary and I formed a lopsided triangle around a scuffed timber coffee table in the lounge room of my house. There was a writing desk behind me and behind that a wall of books. A big red Bible was wedged between a number of texts on the human condition. I glanced across at Mary. She sat very erect, her knees pressed together femininely, and she occasionally brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes with her right hand and over her ear. I registered the tension in her posture and in her elegant spine curving out to her bottom. Donald leant forward in his chair anxiously, his hands clasped between his knees and head bowed. The sessions were very hard on Donald. He found it difficult to express his feelings and I used to draw every revelation and admission out of him slowly and painfully. Poor Donald. I feel sorry for him even now. I really do.

The topic for the evening was intimacy. It was really the same subject every week with those two. Specifically, the subject was the lack of intimacy between Donald and Mary. No sex for months and when it happened, he was premature. I still wonder why they even bothered. I didn’t need qualifications to know that Donald and Mary’s marriage was going down the toilet. Mary sat opposite me quietly as I tentatively drew a series of humiliations out of the man that she once loved more than words can express (her words, not mine). Donald spoke softly. Poor bastard. I recall going easy on him because he really didn’t deserve all this. And Mary? She didn’t look especially uncomfortable. If anything, I’d say she may even have been enjoying it. I looked in her direction and saw smugness, which didn’t suit her.

To tell the truth, I was tired. It had been a long day coming at the end of a long week. I had been woken at 4.30 that morning by another person who had needed to talk. And so we had talked. I guess that was my job back then. Talking. Actually, not talking, listening. I never used to say much at all and when I did, no-one really listened. But that’s okay. I got used to it. I made a living keeping a lid on it. It wearied me some days, and it was wearying me that day and so only distantly I heard Donald telling us that Mary’s body didn’t do it for him any more. He couldn’t say when it started and he couldn’t say why. Mary shifted angrily in her chair, clearly hurt, so Donald stopped talking and winced. He knew he had stung her, someone he still loved, and anticipated a sharp-tongued rebuke, but Mary stayed silent. Fearing that she might cry I stepped in, distracted her with a question, and then started wrapping things up. Poor Donald. Poor Mary. I was so tired and it was all so sad.

I recall Donald and me getting to our feet and the two of us shuffling towards the door. He relaxed a little as his escape approached. It was always a relief for him when he left my company, like most of the men I knew back then, which was another thing that I had learned to grow used to. Mary stayed seated in the other room. We had scheduled some follow-up one-on-one therapy, so Donald and I left the office and entered what we called ‘the lobby’. It was really just the sun room of the house that they gave me. We shook hands at the front door and then shared some more foot-shuffling. Donald looked incredibly grateful. I think he probably wanted to hug me. I told him that I knew how hard it was for him. I remember him agreeing and him telling me how difficult it can be to forget that I was also his pastor, the preacher at his church. I reminded him that I was a qualified marriage counsellor too and he nodded, and assured me that he understood. He shrugged then paused and smiled weakly. As he left I closed the door gently behind him and sighed. Such a long day. So tired. So weary.

I returned to the office. Mary had her back to me. She was bending over my desk with her skirt hitched up over her hips and I could see that she was wearing no underpants. Post-session sex was always the sexiest. Her gorgeous round bottom beckoned. She looked back over her shoulder and said softly, ‘Can you do it from behind tonight?’ I walked across the room to her. Mary remained bent forward with her bum sticking out and I stood behind her and closed my eyes as she pressed backwards into my groin. She was soft and womanly. Her hair, her neck, her shoulders were fragrant, a potent and female smell. I knelt down and pressed my cheek against her smooth round bottom. She rested her hands on her knees, shifting her feet a little further apart for me. She was so lovely and I was so tired. I closed my eyes and kissed her soft inner thighs thinking, why should I resist this and why should I feel shame? She had a warm kind heart. She loved me in her way. ‘Yes,’ I said, rising to my feet again and unbuckling my belt, ‘That sounds like a wonderful idea.’

* * *

Back then I would have said, ‘And who could blame me?’ And who could? That week had started with the phone ringing at 2am and me rolling groggily out of sleep to answer it in the darkness. An early morning phone call was always bad news and sure enough thirty minutes later I was on the front steps of a dingy terrace house in Paddington. As I walked in the door a policeman came out of the bedroom and moved down the hall, hunching his shoulders against the narrow space. It was Jamie, a Kings Cross veteran. ‘Simon!’ he said, looking a little relieved. ‘Thanks for coming, mate. We have a bit of a situation.’ He led me back into the bedroom where a woman lay on the floor beside the bed. She was curled onto her side and blood had dribbled from her nose, leaving a small dark puddle on the floorboards beside her nostril. Her eye was swollen and her forehead grazed. She was barely conscious, beaten senseless and high on drugs. Another copper stood by the window looking out onto the empty night-time street. He’d have been bored if he hadn’t been so disgusted. Jamie and I moved towards the girl and together we tried to turn her over. The other copper made no move to help so the two of us struggled with her ragdoll body and together we lifted her up and onto the bed. The woman resented us all the way, mumbling incoherently, squirming weakly to break our hold. She was dressed in tight jeans and a grubby t-shirt. Her feet were dirty and bare, the toenails painted blue, the nail polish peeling. Jamie told the other policeman to go into the kitchen and make some tea and when he had slouched out of the room Jamie filled me in.

The woman was a hooker, and a punter had done the dirty on her. Bashed her, raped her, stolen the little money she had in her purse and walked out leaving her half-conscious on the floor. A neighbour had heard the fuss and had called the police. The victim, in a lucid moment, had refused to go to the hospital. She had insisted on no ambulances. Jamie had had a hard time just keeping her in the bed. Stoned out of her mind, she kept rolling onto the floor and curling into the foetal position. I suggested he take her to the lock-up but Jamie shook his head in the negative. ‘We have a new bloke down there who wouldn’t see it our way. He’d insist on charging her.’ I looked at her bloodied face. ‘What with, for Christ’s sake?’ I asked angrily. Jamie raised his eyebrows and gestured towards the dresser beside the bed. A couple of little plastic bags sat on the top, a residue of clear crystal meth still visible inside. A little laugh. ‘Take your pick,’ he said. ‘Drugs, prostitution, you name it. Look, mate. I can’t stick around here all night and I’m worried she’ll overdo the drugs if we leave her alone.’ He didn’t finish the sentence. I knew what he was asking. I told him I’d stay with her till she started coming out of it and he thanked me. ‘I don’t want a stiff on my watch,’ he half-joked. Jamie was a good guy. He could have just left her and plenty of blokes would have.

Jamie and the other copper walked out and I was left with a cup of hot sweet tea and a half-conscious prostitute. She was sleeping on her side on the bed, her back to me. I tried to rouse her, offer her a cuppa. Her instinctual response was anger. She roared at me to get fucked so I just left it alone. She rolled her back to me again and drifted off to sleep, snoring gently. I looked around the room. Bare. Hardly a piece of furniture in it save the old bed and a faded chest of drawers and dresser. No photographs. No art. I stepped into her bathroom. It was filthy. I checked the cabinet. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Panadol. A small bottle of prescription drugs. A condom packet. I walked down the hall to the tiny kitchen and found myself a chair. I took it back into the bedroom and made myself comfortable beside the window. I took my wallet and mobile phone out of my pockets and put them on the window sill and after a time I drifted off to sleep.

I woke an hour or so later to hear the woman sobbing. The room reeked. She had defecated herself. Gagging, I tried to take her jeans off but she was still half asleep and half drug-fucked, her arms and legs flopping, head lolling, as I dragged first her trousers down her wasted thighs, then her underpants. I left her sprawled on the bed, naked except for her t-shirt, about as sexless as nudity can get, and threw the jeans and knickers into the bathtub, closing the door on the smell. I couldn’t bring myself to clean her any more so I drew the sheet up over her naked arse and returned to my seat. Dawn soon. The sky was turning to pale grey. What a life. Hers and mine.

I waited until about 8am and then shook the woman awake. The drugs were wearing off but her face was still a mess. The blood had dried. Her eye was bruised. She looked at me bleary-eyed but, accustomed to finding strange men in her bedroom, she exhibited every emotion except scared. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she demanded angrily. I told her. She seemed unimpressed. ‘Get me a wet towel,’ she ordered so I went to the stinking bathroom and found a towel, ran it under the tap and returned to the bedroom. She was standing by the bed still naked from the waist down. ‘What the fuck?’ she said, palms up. ‘You shat yourself,’ I told her. She took the wet towel and wiped her bloodied face, glancing at me as she did so, then she cleaned between her legs as if I were not in the room. She looked alright in spite of the beating so I took up my wallet and phone and told her she should see a doctor. I told her she should take better care of herself, trying not to sound patronising but maybe getting the intonation wrong. ‘Get fucked,’ she said. There was no point sticking around now so I said a simple good-bye and made my way back down the hallway leaving the woman to her soiled pants, her drugs, and her cheap painted toenails. As I closed the front door behind me I paused to roll the aches out of my shoulders then made my way through a dim morning to the taxi rank. It looked like rain. It was only when the taxi pulled up outside my home and I tried to pay that I found that the hooker had stolen every note in my wallet. It had been one of those nights I guess. Just one of those nights.

* * *

The night after my session with Donald and Mary and we were talking about giving it up to God. This time it was prayer group. Tuesdays. 7.30pm kick-off, usually over by 10. We always started with twenty minutes of song – up-tempo religious numbers with a funky rhythm, all played out in my lounge room to the accompaniment of a tambourine (Caroline with the bucked teeth) and an acoustic guitar (Caroline with the armpit hair). I was an understated preacher by all reports. I ran the Tuesday prayer group but I used to try to take a backseat. During the singing, I’d sing along. In spite of everything, I must admit that I quite liked the songs, but when the singing stopped and the time came for me to speak, I found myself doing so less and less enthusiastically. Actually, I did it totally without enthusiasm. They used to misinterpret my reticence as a sober shyness. They were all plain gullible come to think of it but they were nice people I suppose, for the most part. I suppose.

That night, I hadn’t prepared. That had been going to happen the previous night but Mary’s bottom had put paid to that, so I just sat in front of the room of assembled faithful, groin throbbing gently with the memory of Mary, and spoke to them of generic God-things. He’s kind. He’s all-seeing. He’s just and forgiving. My words were punctuated with ardent muttered amens from the congregation. Not African-American gospel amens. We were all white-bread Australians of the essentially Protestant ilk, with a smattering of recovering abused Catholics in our midst, so we didn’t go in for the really big amens. Not on a Tuesday. That was for the youngsters in the Sunday services.

For a preacher I didn’t really like talking about God that much but that was all part of the role that I played, and for a few hours every week it wasn’t so hard. It was much easier when we were in New Testament territory. I could talk about that stuff all night. I enjoyed encouraging people to do unto others as they would have others do unto them, but they always wanted to steer it back to the Old Testament eventually. They loved it. Gods that smite. They especially liked Gods that smite single mothers and gays. A lot of stones used to get cast in Bible Group, and when I’d say ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ they’d seem non-plussed. I loved the New Testament but they’d look at me as if I was a spoilsport, as if to say, there has to be some judging, surely!

That night Donna was keen to speak. Donna was one of the women who never missed prayer group. She was middle-aged and plain. She baked scones that were middle-aged and plain. She’d bring the scones to prayer group every week wrapped in grubby tea towels. They were hard little things, like her heart. I ignored her for a few minutes until I knew it was almost killing her, and then I asked her if she had any thoughts she’d like to share. That was what prayer group was really all about for her: a captive audience forced before God to endure her gobshite. She told me that she had the perfect psalm for that night’s theme, one that was all about God’s immeasurable beauty and strength. She opened her Bible and nominated some psalm. She could have referred us to any of them really. They’re all about God’s power and how he can really fuck you over if you don’t watch out. I suggested that Donna read it aloud for us which she acceded to graciously, a slight nod of her head, looking me in the eye as if to say ‘what a good man you are’. She should have seen me going down on Mary the night before. ‘Good’ was barely scratching the surface.

At about that time I was starting to get introspective about it all. As Donna read the scripture I allowed my mind to wander. ‘How the hell did I get here?’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. Non-descript, I suppose you’d say. A university degree. No car. I’m unmarried. And I live my life surrounded by the delusional!’ That was my cross to bear: a congregation of numpties.

Donna read on. The psalm was all about how we must love God or suffer the consequences. ‘Praise God,’ said a woman’s voice from the left. It was Jenny. I knew Jenny well. The year before, her husband had fractured her cheek bone after a night on the turps by hitting her with the bread board. Another 4am telephone call and me driving to her place to break up the fight. What a scene. Her dreadful abused face swollen from the beating and Jenny weeping, her husband slumped on the lounge in his shorts, too drunk to speak but human enough for seething rage. He could have killed me that night. The church had given her a room for three weeks after that and we had given her the bond on a new flat, with money for food, but she had gone back to him. In fact, they’re still together now, love-hating each other in a marriage of fear. It was one of our church’s proudest achievements. Jenny was listening to Donna’s words with her eyes closed and head bowed, concentrating on every syllable. I remember thinking, ‘What can she possibly be getting out of all this talk of the God that loves and smites?’ But, of course, she got it better than any of us. It was an abusive relationship and we had to suffer through it.

After Tuesday prayer group I was pretty much obliged to speak to them. That was the price I paid for the exquisite nibblies. That, and Donna’s scones. Prayer group had as much to do with the competitive baking as it did with God. More when Nancy made shortbread. Basically, we’d talk about God for a while then stick our noses in the trough. In cold graves across the Mediterranean, the bodies of ascetic monks would turn in horror. Portly women would demurely squeeze cream buns into pinched little mouths, mouths that 15 minutes earlier had been giving it to Moslems and divorcees and the other children of Satan. And there was the sex of course. Not penis-in-vagina real sex. It was pseudo-sex. Outrageous flirtation. I’d spend the after-prayer-group get-together being stroked and patted and pinched. Arms were put around me. My hand would get held and squeezed. I’d leave the meetings feeling molested. More women engaged in body contact with me on a Tuesday evening than at any other time in my life. And so cleaning up after Tuesday prayer group was like cleaning up after bad sex – sex with a charmless woman, a woman you didn’t respect. The crumpled coagulated tissues, the condom and the ooze of semen in it, cooling to the temperature of the floor boards by the bed. It was the same with the cream-smeared saucers and the plastic cups with soggy crumbs in the bottom. You had to pick them up, touch them, dispose of them.

Sister Patti and Sister Pru were helping me with the cleaning up that night, as they always did. They were the two old ladies who looked after the crèche during the week. They were former nuns, drummed out of the profession for unspecified sins, who had found a place for themselves in the Ministry of Christ where the ‘Sister’ moniker had stuck, although as a rule we didn’t go in for that nonsense in our church. Both ladies were bending under their years, thin women with stooped shoulders and narrow hips. They shared a house together and seemed unconcerned about which cardigan they pulled out of the cupboard. Sometimes Pru would wear Patti’s favourite, sometimes Patti would wear Pru’s. They seemed interchangeable. They had dark veins on the backs of their bony hands and looked like they would snap if you hugged too hard, but when a child fell from the swings at the crèche, Patti’s and Pru’s arms were always open and enfolding and their cooing kind voices would soothe the sobs away. That night they stayed back late and collected the plastic cups frugally. They would wash them and re-use them to save money. Cold water, they would tell me, because hot water splits the plastic. I think that I must have still been very tired and it must have been showing. I cleaned one side of the room while they worked the other, leaving me in peace. I loved them. Of the entire congregation only they knew when not to speak to me.

We finished the cleaning up in silence then Patti came over to me and rested a hand on my forearm. ‘You look like you need a good home-cooked dinner,’ she said with a cocked right eyebrow. I accepted her offer and arranged to come round for dinner a couple of nights later. As they left, Pru paused and said, ‘Simon, you must rest’. ‘Tell that to Mary’s bum,’ I was tempted to say, but didn’t.

* * *

I was usually late in rising on Wednesday mornings. I found that Tuesday praying could really take it out of you, but I always used to be in The Mission by 11am. The Mission was a ground-floor room in a terrace house on Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross. From the front room I used to have a perfect view of the XXX porn store across the road and the kebab shop next door to it, run by Minh, the Vietnamese drug seller. Walk into the store for a kebab and he would greet you with a cheery ‘Salaam’.

The Mission was furnished with a simple second-hand desk and a variety of cheap plastic chairs, none of them matching. There was a bar fridge in one corner containing non-alcoholic drinks and, in an ice-cream container in the vegetable cooler, about fifty clean hypodermic needles. At the front of the room, by the window, there was a rack containing a variety of brochures. They were all about God and Jesus. Gregory, the head of our church, used to make me put them there. Lots of American-produced cartoonish pictures of Jesus. There was Jesus looking very smug, having just turned the water into wine, his self-satisfied expression saying ‘get a load of this!’ And Jesus going for a stroll on the Sea of Galilee, hitching his skirt a little to avoid getting the hem wet. My favourite was Jesus bricking it in the Garden of Gethsemane in the hours before his arrest. Who paints these pictures? They were, I’m afraid, wasted on my clientele whose first instinct would more likely have been to offer poor Jesus a head job than pray to him. My clientele, you see, were generally working girls who viewed the world with clinical cynicism. They had seen it all. They had done it all. They had abused their bodies with alcohol and drugs. They had given their bodies to men who had abused them still more. They had little regard for men with kind eyes. They could be very hard ladies, which is not to say bad.

That Wednesday passed quietly. A couple of girls dropped by, asking for clean needles. A couple of coppers doing their rounds dropped in for a chat. They seemed so young. As we chatted, they rearranged the accoutrements of their profession on their giant black belts: handcuffs, revolver, night stick, mace holsters. A reminder that when it all goes horribly wrong they are the ones that clean it up. We compared news, rumours and gossip and they strolled back into the street, waving to a couple of girls working the opposite corner as they went. The girls smiled, waved back, grinned at each other, and returned to toeing the footpath agitatedly as they waited for a punter. Mostly, the world passed them by, ignoring, not caring.

Late in the day Evie dropped by, tossing me a chocolate bar as she walked through the door. Evie had a great smile and a sassy attitude. She’d swing her hips when she walked, not as an affectation but because she was just plain sexy, prostitute or not. She was only in her early twenties and not yet hard. One day I figured she would tell me why she was there doing those things but I didn’t need to push it. ‘Hey preacher,’ she called cheekily. ‘Hi Evie,’ I replied. ‘What brings you down here?’ ‘Thought I might get a kiss,’ she said and we both smiled. I opened the chocolate bar and took a bite, offering Evie a bit, but she turned her nose up at it and watched me chew while we chatted. ‘So what’s up?’ I asked. Evie half thought about it and said, ‘Nothing,’ as if that disappointed her. ‘I’m just off to work and thought I’d stop by and chat to a man who doesn’t want to do me for once.’ She looked about the room absently then settled a sneaky grin on me like she suddenly remembered it was a challenge. ‘You can say that again!’ ‘Naughty preacher,’ Evie said with a wave of her finger. ‘If that’s the best you can do, I’m off.’ She stood up to leave, taking mock offence, but paused to look at me, hands on hips. ‘Oh come on,’ she complained. ‘Just one widdle kiss.’ She puckered for me in mock readiness but I waved her away. ‘Fine, I had things to do anyway.’ She turned haughtily and walked out laughing, swinging her hips extravagantly for my benefit. ‘Stop looking, ya perv,’ she called over her shoulder as she disappeared out the door, leaving me suddenly very much alone. Just me and a grubby world outside the window. I’d had six years of it by then and after six years I could claim to be something of an expert on the subject of street prostitution. Let me tell you, it’s no picnic.

At the end of the day I closed the front door on The Mission, pulled down the metal security screen and locked it tight. I headed home to my empty house, buying some Thai takeaway on the way. Inside my house it was silent and cold. Mainly, it was empty. It would have saddened some people, I suppose. I slopped the noodles into a bowl and flicked on the telly, then slumped on the lounge in front of it. It was late evening. Crickets were chirping away any lingering memories of summer in the little courtyard out the back door. After a day of XXX and policemen and needles and prostitutes I found myself watching one of those earnest British fly-on-the-wall documentaries set in a sleety north England town. That was all I needed after a day in the Cross. A documentary about prostitution! But I couldn’t stop myself watching. They were following some poor girl from street corner to back seat of cheap car with just a touch too much eagerness, charting every blow job with monotone voiceovers and slightly blurred rhythmic close-ups, on zoom from across bleak streets. They were telling a very worthy story and the message was clear: it is not a victimless crime. But I remember being confounded by something else. It was the interview with the prostitute. She was sitting in some dismal housing scheme building, sucking on a cigarette that had been paid for with some, believe me, hard-earned cash, recounting her experiences of men. She told us that she likes men generally. Then lazily, dazedly, with an air of boredom that reflected the dullness of the walls behind her, she told us what they liked. She sucked on that cigarette again, not looking at the camera, breathing the smoke out as she spoke. Not showy. Not at all showy.

‘Some of them like anal,’ she ventured with a disinterested half-shrug, but her lips pursed and her eyes squinted as she considered her own words. A thoughtful silence then, ‘Some like oral.’ More thinking. ‘Sixty-nine … doggy … plain missionary …’ She was getting into the swing of it now. ‘Some like kinky … dress ups … dildos ... Some like to be spanked.’ She catalogued the depravities and paused at the end with something of a sigh, a bored sigh not an indignant one. Then she said a remarkable thing. With her eyes cast down and to the side, and evidently having exhausted the list of sexual acts she had been asked to perform, she concluded with the striking observation, almost an afterthought really. ‘Um … they all leave their socks on.’

She seemed genuinely offended by that one. Really put out about it. Anal had barely rated a shrug! But, you see, this is at the heart of the transaction. Fat men with humid armpits, kicking off their shoes, and not bothering with the socks.

* * *

The following evening Sister Patti and Sister Pru gave me an enormous brandy as the final stage in the consumption of a mammoth baked dinner with all the trimmings. We stood in their lounge room giving their framed photos a once-over while Patti and Pru started on the sherry. A photograph of the two women on the bookcase caught my eye. It must have been decades old. The women were dressed in dated swimsuits and stood arm in arm on a beach somewhere, beaming at the camera. I picked it up and turned with an inquiring raising of the eyebrow. They both looked stunning. Patti fondly took the picture from my hands, Pru moved closer, and we all stood there in our little group gazing at the image. ‘We joined the penguins at the same time,’ said Patti. ‘The same age to the month,’ added Pru. ‘Yes, two girls from the bush, lonely in the Big Smoke,’ said Patti with a nostalgic sigh, and shook her head as if she couldn’t really believe it was her. Pru angled the photo so I could get a better view and told me, ‘This was taken a week after we packed it in. It was never really for us you see. We really weren’t cut out for the Catholic Church.’ Patti nodded and finished Pru’s train of thought. ‘They sneered when we left. I can still see their faces. But we look happy there, don’t we.’

I looked at the photo again. They did. They looked delighted. I nodded. ‘You look like you’re in love,’ I murmured. The old ladies giggled. The sherry had made their cheeks pink. Pru put the photo back and Patti said musingly, ‘You know, we’ve had fifty years of pastors, preachers and priests in this house, all experts on love they’ll tell you, but you are the first to have noticed that.’ The two ladies walked to the lounge together holding each other’s arms for support. I glanced back at the photo again and took one last peek at Pru’s boobs. Nice.

* * *

It was about that time that I really started to find the sermons hard work. It got even harder after it dawned on me that I was an atheist. Sundays used to involve an early start for me. I had to be ready for when the show began at 9, which meant 7.30am at the church hall. That gave us over an hour to put out the chairs and fill over three hundred thimble-sized glasses with red wine for the communion extravaganza after the initial sing-song and sermon. The band would set up while we did this. The preparatory church devotions were carried out to the thumping of drums and Peter, the main singer, saying ‘one two – two – two’ into a microphone. Peter had been something of a B-grade rock celebrity, making it onto the front cover of the magazines twice. Once when his band went to Number 1 on the charts and once when he overdosed on an exotic cocktail of party drugs and was photographed face down in the urinals at a city nightclub. Security cameras had recorded him entering the toilets at 1am and the bar staff were alerted to his condition at 1.45am. That’s 45 minutes of men urinating on him in preference to disturbing their party long enough to go for help. A frank and emphatic commentary on the quality of his music. It’s hardly surprising that he had turned to God.

We were a hand clappy, hallelujah kind of church. People would say ‘praise God’ a lot and when they shook hands they’d say ‘bless you’. The more hip ones would say ‘bless you brother’. We were a close-your-eyes-and-raise-a-hand-to-God-when-you-pray kind of church. The Sunday sessions involved lots of standing, swaying people with beatific smiles on their faces, the one hand raised, lips murmuring in prayer, being moved by the spirit of God or something. I suspect that this rarely happened without an audience. There was a lot of theatre on Sundays. And we were a church of healers and miracle-workers, a touched-by-the-hand-of-God-falling-backwards-into-the-arms-of-another kind of church. And we were a speaking-in-tongues-when-the-spirit-moves-us kind of church so a lot of babbling went on at the moment of falling backwards.

Sunday morning used to mean a congregation of otherwise normal people working themselves into a frenzy. An hour of singing. Music building up to a crescendo. Voices raised in prayer. And the devil used to get banished a lot on Sunday mornings. He was rebuked and chastised and ordered from the church ‘in Jesus’s name’ but he kept coming back. He would be driven from Jonathon with the gout in his knee, in Jesus’s name. He’d be rebuked for his part in Yvonne’s cancer, in Jesus’s name. He’d be ordered out of Barry’s bad back, in Jesus’s name. And each time, Jonathon and Yvonne and Barry would fall backwards at the touch of the preacher’s hand, to be expertly caught and laid out flat, where they’d lie in convulsive prayer for a while, then rise and limp and hobble back to their seats looking well-pleased with themselves. But the devil would keep coming back for more, which is what kept us all in business. It would happen every Sunday. A sucker for punishment, Satan just wouldn’t take no for an answer. So week after week he had to be rebuked afresh, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

We used to tag-team the sermons, the preachifying going for a little over an hour all up, with music between each sermon. There were five of us pastors. You couldn’t really say that we had radically different styles but different styles would probably have been frowned upon anyway, so we pretty much said the same things in the same ways. Have faith. Love God and each other. Don’t commit adultery. Steer clear of wanking and gambling. Jesus was very kind and we should try to be the same. He died for our sins so we should be grateful for that. It was all pro forma stuff and I have to admit that sometimes when I was preaching to those people and I saw their radiant up-turned faces, I used to feel a bit of a hypocrite. But I always reminded myself that it was a means to an end and I wasn’t really hurting anyone. After all, as I told myself at the time, I was only giving them what they wanted. Hope and entertainment.

After the Sunday morning session and before the Sunday afternoon session we would gather in Gregory’s office and count the money. No-one seemed to think that this was a little odd but it was the quietest time of a Sunday. Heads bowed, and the susurrus of whispered voices as we counted softly under our breaths. Like prayer. Gregory had founded the church in 1987 and he was therefore the acknowledged primus inter pares of the five pastors. He’d sit behind his desk while we ranged our chairs against him in a semi-circle on the other side. Gregory had a big girl’s bum. It was contained within a pair of over-tight trousers where it expanded to fill the available space. He was an expert on sin, constantly on the alert for the seven deadly ones, yet cheap Kmart shoes seem to have been acceptable in the eyes of God. We parted company on that one, I’m afraid. Our counting always ended the same way: Gregory leaning back in his chair, hands crossed on his lap, saying, ‘Not good enough.’ The Sunday afternoon sessions used to involve a lot of brow-beating as a result. Sunday afternoons always brought in the better yield. It was all a little distasteful I have to say.

But it was the point of all the hypocrisy. It was why this atheist played the part in prayer group, youth group and church. Because at the end of every Sunday, Gregory would call me into his office and hand me an envelope. My cut. A few thousand dollars in cold hard cash. I’d take it, go home and count it again, shamelessly. This was the pay-off. You see, it paid the rent on The Mission in Kings Cross. It paid for the clean needles. It paid for the abortions and divorces. It paid for rehab and hospitals. And it bought groceries for all those single mothers. If Gregory and my congregation had known where their money was going it would have been all over for me in an instant. They would have rebuked the devil in me and driven him from their midst. They would have thrown me out on my arse, and women would have died from dirty needles, children would have gone hungry, and unwanted babies would have been born unloved. It was a small price to pay. The fake prayer. The bogus faith. I wasn’t doing it for me. It was my own exhausting gift. But if Gregory had known he’d have pulled out that Old Testament of his and found a curse in it that would have sent me to the deepest darkest hell.

* * *

While all this was going on, Mr Hallum was shooting blanks and Mrs Hallum was none too pleased about it. In one of our regular counselling sessions Mr Hallum related to me in a tone of horror and through the employment of euphemisms how he had entered a small white room in a fertility clinic and tossed off into a clear plastic cup. From his chair across the room from me, Mrs Hallum sitting meekly by his side, Mr Hallum explained to me in lowered sober tones that on that shameful day he had called ahead, being the good Christian that he was, to demand that all pornography should be removed from the masturbatorium prior to his entering it – a request unprecedented in the history of the clinic. The final prognosis: no baby without IVF. But Mr Hallum would have none of that. He was a good Christian, or so he told me, and apparently somewhere in the Bible IVF gets a panning. No more spilling his seed on the ground he had declared. The sin of Onan! Mrs Hallum was also comfortable with that, he told me on Mrs Hallum’s behalf. He looked confident on that score but I knew he was wrong. I knew for a fact that Mrs Hallum was a fucking long way from being comfortable with it.

Mr Hallum, unique among my clients, used to insist on maintaining the formalities. He preferred to be addressed as ‘Mister’ and so his wife, by default, and in his presence, was always ‘Missus’. He would baulk at calling me Simon. He was never good with familiarity, was Mr Hallum. My one-on-one sessions with Mrs Hallum, on the other hand (or Faith, as I called her when Mr Hallum had left the room), tended to be far more relaxed. Very informal. And therefore far more productive in terms of her anger management therapy. First, she’d suck my penis and then we’d root like rabbits. It was an altogether more satisfying relationship.

* * *

Around this time Evie dropped by The Mission late one afternoon. As she walked in the door she tossed me a chocolate bar and flashed me a smile, as she always did. She asked for a kiss good-humouredly, as usual, but didn’t get one, as usual, so she slumped into the chair opposite me and raised her eyebrows by way of a conversation starter. Evie was wearing a short skirt and low-cut shirt and her boobs looked about ready to jump out of her bra. It was a device that would win her several hundred dollars over the next few hours but I suspect that even if she hadn’t worked in the sex industry she’d have worn clothes like that. It was always nice to see Evie. She didn’t take herself too seriously and she was witty and incredibly sharp. God alone knows why she had taken up prostitution but back then I believed that she would tell me one day and we’d nut the whole thing out, but I realise now that I worried about those things much more than the girls who stopped at The Mission ever did. They seemed to live far more in the present than I did. They were never sentimental about the past. The past was the past. It didn’t haunt them. Perhaps that was a defence mechanism. After all, if your power of recall extends only so far as breakfast then you expunge all recollections of sex from dinner time the night before. No recollection. No burden. But without a past, the girls seemed to have had no yard sticks, no anchors. The girls I saw seemed to drift. With nothing to measure their progress by they became complacent and so when I asked Evie that day where she came from she just shrugged. Bathurst, she told me, off-handedly as if it meant nothing and was never a part of her. I asked what it was like growing up in Bathurst and she had no memories to share but bad ones. She told me it was fucking cold in winter, fucking hot in summer, all the blokes there smelt of sheep or engine oil and all the girls lost their virginity in the back seat of a V8 at the age of fifteen. I couldn’t help it. I asked if she had lost her virginity in the back seat of a V8. She shook her head and I laughed. ‘Fifteen?’ I asked, only half-seriously. She was losing interest, or feigning so. ‘No,’ she told me curtly. I rose and walked to the fridge for a coke. ‘Well, I’m glad you made the age of consent at least!’ Evie replied coolly, ‘I didn’t say that, Mister.’

* * *

A room full of silent six-year-olds is never really silent. There is always a lot of squirming and at least one kid full of snot breathing gaspily through an open mouth. That was the noise that I could hear at Sunday School later that week in the moments before Gregory told the children that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. I can still see those poor little buggers gathered cross-legged and exuberant in the minutes before he dropped the bombshell, their cheerful faces crumpling, the bottom-lip-quivering spreading like the Spanish flu, the quivers turning into sobs. When Gregory went on to clarify for them, stating with micro-pauses between each word, that ‘Santa. Is. The. Devil’, little Davy Mortimer’s response was the most emphatic. He spontaneously voided his bladder. And so I was left to console the rest of them while Gregory marched Davy out the door and to the toilet. A Minister of Religion left alone with a six-year-old boy naked from the waist down! There was nothing to worry about with Gregory though. Mind games. That was more his gig.

After Sunday School was over Gregory returned to the classroom where I was quietly sitting by myself and feeling like a total prick. He moved heavily around the room, his big arse following him like a serious consequence, bending with creaking knees and little ughs to pick up the copies of Bible Stories for Children lying scattered about the floor. I watched him as he worked to build up a pile of books on the desk near my elbow. I didn’t offer to help. He’d almost finished when I saw him bend, pick up a book, straighten his back and pause to reflect. After a time he shook his head and murmured, ‘Regrettable,’ for my benefit. I didn’t say anything. He turned, looked at me briefly, dried his palms on his trouser legs, and lowered his head again as he thought something over. He looked very serious. He made his mind up. ‘Next week … dinosaurs!’ he concluded emphatically and departed like he was really going to enjoy it. His arse left a second or so later.

* * *

I realise now that it was all building up to something. Everything around that time seemed to be taking on a new and deeper meaning. On the bus on my way home from The Mission one evening I found myself watching the sun dipping behind the city, my mind in public transport neutral. It promised to be one of those soft Sydney nights. I was still tired. I remember the bus slowed and stopped and the doors breathed open on a young woman who made her way up the stairs, paid the driver and walked to a seat just up the aisle from me. Anorexia. She was skin and bone. Her forearms were narrow and mean. The bones in her wrists were hard round marbles under the yellow stretched skin. Her hair was thinning and I could see the smooth dome of her skull. A death’s head. A Jolly Roger. She was Auschwitz. Belsen. Everything about her, exaggerated. Big bangles rattled down those long arms and fat beaded necklaces weighed around her thin neck. She wore a short skirt and I could see the skin wrinkling around the caps of her knees. I averted my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look. I was almost angry at her for her affliction. I gazed out the window again and my mind wandered. I thought back to when I wasn’t always such a mopey bastard. I thought back to the night in Noosa when Susan, Allison and I rode our bikes down to the beach. I can still see them ahead of me on their rented bicycles, riding side by side, laughing at some stupid joke, leaning forward over the handle bars and pushing enthusiasm into the pedals. I looked back to the anorexic girl. I should have rested my hands on her head. I should have traced every bump and suture with my fingertips and purged her of the horrible demon, like some schmaltzy LA faith-healer. I should have told her about those other girls on the bicycles. I should have described Allison to her just as she was that night. I should have told that poor skeleton how beautiful a woman can be with so little effort.

* * *

Days later, the anorexic girl was still playing on my mind. A world of self-absorption and of self-destruction. A world of appalling need and a world of greed. A perfect world for unequal exchange. It was Monday morning, 10am, and warm for autumn. Bright Sydney sunshine wearied the drooping gum trees behind King Street. In my little workers cottage I showered, dressed and gathered up my gear, not feeling so great about my fellow humans. As I closed my front door and hit the street en route to the bus stop, squinting my eyes against the glare, I noticed a woman walking towards me on the footpath. I was not in the mood. I could tell that she had clocked me, so I averted my eyes. She was maybe 48 years old, wearing a pair of denim jeans and a pink checked cowboy shirt. She was also wearing a white cowboy hat. I looked down. She was wearing white leather cowboy boots. They were a little over ankle length. But of course they were.

As we were about to pass each other the woman stopped, flashed me a big smile and said cheerily, ‘What say you and me go up there and have some fun, eh?’ She gestured towards the Tropical Sun Hotel, a breezy establishment on the corner known to obligingly rent its rooms out by the half-hour. I said, ‘No thank you,’ but she received my answer with ironic patience, cocking her head a little and saying, ‘Are you sure?’ in the tone that a mother uses when she asks a four-year-old if they’ve taken a wee before they get in the car. It carried with it the implied ‘you know what happened last time’. ‘Yes thanks,’ I said and started to walk away from her again but she was persistent. ‘Are … you … sure … ?’ she called out again after me with an exaggerated rising inflection and I raised my hand over my shoulder to let her know I had heard but was not interested. I guess she knew what she was doing. Perhaps there are men out there who really aren’t sure whether or not they want to have sex with a 48-year-old prostitute in a cowboy outfit and it’s only when they have been given time to reflect that they can make an informed decision. I knew I didn’t feel like it but I guess you never know. Then I heard her one last time, calling out like a child with a lolly teasing her little brother, a siren’s song above the swish of the traffic on King Street. ‘I … go … doooooowwn,’ she sang after me teasingly. I kept walking. I bet she did and I can’t deny that the frankness of the offer didn’t warrant some sort of respect.

* * *

I picked up the phone and called Mary. Donald answered. I told him that I had to rearrange my schedule and asked if we could change the time of our next session. I suggested the following day when I knew he would be in Canberra. He told me that he couldn’t make it but thought Mary should be fine with it. He said, ‘Just a moment,’ and I heard him calling for his wife. A few seconds then Mary’s voice. Very professional. Not a hint of desire. Yes, tomorrow would suit her. Yes, 4pm would be fine. What a pity Donald can’t be there. Yes, oh well.

* * *

Mary was all languor. She would laze into and out of sex. Short high gasps after red wine, caresses, seduction. The climax was like an accidental outcome of another pursuit. Languid, big-breasted Mary. A body that had nurtured and nourished a child. A few pale stretch marks gave her tummy a certain authority, the same pale lines on her hips and the top of her swaying breasts. When she bent forward they’d form cones of soft flesh and the barely visible lines would radiate from the heavy nipples. Mary’s body was full, firm, womanly. She wore it comfortably. After sex she’d often walk the room tidying up. She’d squat to reach under the chest of drawers. She’d bend to straighten the rug. I’d see her anus and vagina, her quivery wobbly boobs, the shaggy beard between her thighs. She didn’t care. It didn’t even occur to her to care because, she told me, a body that has carried a child cannot be embarrassed and because, as she also told me, it was my body by then too. She had made a gift of it. Its gurgles and aches were my gurgles and aches. So, dozing off the sex, I would see our wonderful bottom moving palely around the bed as Mary picked her clothing off the floor. Lovely. And when she pulled her clothes on, her bra and her undies, masking her hips and belly and nipples and hair, it seemed that this was the sinful gesture, the unnatural act. And you have to believe me when I tell you that at times like that it never once occurred to me that in sleeping with her I may have been doing something wrong.

* * *

The bedroom looked like a poorly designed movie set. A double bed with pink frills, pillows in the shape of love hearts, two policemen standing next to the bed chatting about last night’s footy, and the dead girl lying on the bed in her knickers, face up, eyes closed like she was sleeping. I had been asked to identify a body. It was a young prostitute, maybe twenty-two years old, with long dark hair, a freckled complexion, over-red lipstick and a tattoo of a bunny rabbit on her upper thigh. To judge from the drugs paraphernalia by the bed it was an accidental overdose.

It was all a bit embarrassing for the proprietors of The Love Shack, a brothel with a reputation for being low rent and shady. The manager, a hard woman with deep vertical smoker’s wrinkles over her top lip, said she didn’t know the girl. Never seen her before in her life. She was lying of course. The dead girl was clearly working without papers, avoiding the tax man, and it could have cost the brothel its licence so they weren’t being at all co-operative. As a result, the dead girl on the bed would be entered in the police books as a Jane Doe if I couldn’t identify her.

As I walked in, the two police officers glanced at me but continued their conversation as if it was the most normal thing in the world to chat about the football with a dead woman on the bed in the corner. The poor girl. I dare say that she had suffered a few indignities on that bed but few could compare to this. I felt an urge to cover her nakedness. She was a prostitute but she wouldn’t have wanted these people seeing her like this. She would have considered it an intrusion.

The detective who had called me walked beside me to the bed where I looked into the dead girl’s face. I remember hoping anxiously that it was not one of my girls. As it turned out, I didn’t know her although she looked vaguely familiar to me. I’d seen her around the Cross perhaps but I had no name to give them. The police seemed faintly irritated. No name made it harder to wrap the job up. It was a loose end that they’d have to work late to tie off. We stepped away from the bed and the detective excused himself while he asked some questions of the uniformed coppers. While they talked in soft murmurs I looked back to the bed. The woman lay there like a stone. Utter stillness. There was no rise and fall of the rib cage. No twitch of the eyelids. She was categorically dead. She had made the grand transition from life to death alone in the bedroom of a brothel, head resting on a pink heart-shaped cushion. There’s no romance in that death. You can’t get sentimental about it. It was just a horrible waste, the absurdity emphasised by the bunny rabbit tattoo.

The detective came back to me and thanked me for my time. He paused, ran his fingers through his hair and tilting his forehead at the bed asked if I’d like to say a few words. It took me a moment to realise what he meant. He was asking if I’d like to say a little prayer for her, for the poor dead prostitute. I looked her over one last time. What would I be praying for? A soul? ‘I think it’s too late for that,’ I said and noted for the first time in that room a look of surprise on somebody’s face.

* * *

I went home in need of the comfort of a woman. The dead prostitute had left me feeling uneasy and vulnerable. After times like that I would always think first of Mary and her comforting warm breasts and easy calm manner but Mary couldn’t make it so I gave Faith a call. An hour later and she was in my bedroom naked. Seeking comfort from Faith could be a double-edged sword. Her small body was a vessel for anger. Her pert pointy breasts appeared cross with me, her purse-lipped vagina seemed at first to disapprove. Her manner was mostly nervous energy, a slight tremble to her hands and cheeks, little tremours like a nervy Chihuahua. The sex act was a matter of dedication. Faith would dedicate herself to the attainment of the orgasm. Hers then mine, in equal measure. She’d devour my penis and testicles. She’d mount me, dismount me, push her fanny in my face. She’d grind her hips. She’d close her eyes like a child concentrating on a difficult mathematical equation. But after the sex her hunger would become more lovely by far. She’d curl against my body and nuzzle at my throat. She’d sniff my skin, inhaling me. She’d hold my hand. She’d hold my cock affectionately, dozily. She’d press herself against me. She craved. Not sex, but caring. Receiving it and giving it. If Faith had a sharp tongue or an angry heart it was not by birth or instinct. She used those things to defend herself against a world that had abused her. But I am fortunate to have seen the kinder Faith and to have fallen asleep with her warm racing heart beating against our rib cages. Kind Faith would emerge as my erection subsided.

Trying to erase the previous day from my thoughts, I lay on my back with Faith lying beside me and on me, one leg thrown over my thigh so that I could feel the tickle of her mons pubis and her smooth soft tummy. My penis was squished between our bodies. Faith hardly seemed to notice. She raised herself on one elbow and leaned over my face, warming it with soft kisses and a smile. I needed her. I needed female touch, a woman’s lips and skin. Hallum was a fool. She could have made him very happy. Instead he broke her heart. Daily.

* * *

Another week or so passed and I found myself listening to Donna getting very worked up about homosexuals. It was Tuesday prayer group again. Donna had arrived early with another batch of scones and had taken a seat second from the front. That was always a worry. It meant that she had a bee in her bonnet. Tuesday prayer group was a great place for vexation. Being vexatious, I mean. Sixty seconds after the two Carolines had finished the first session of sing-songs Donna had quoted the Bible on homosexuality, choosing to skip the parts that touch on love and forgiveness so as not to be distracted.

I watched Donna, over-rouged and thin-lipped. Face like a smacked arse. Her head was bowed over her Bible, a monster of a thing, as big as a telephone book and leather bound. She was flicking the pages with speed, pausing brief moments to bring her index finger and thumb up to her mouth where a reptile tongue darted out and moistened the tips. She was looking for more damning Biblical evidence. Poor Donna. I was tired and I tried telling myself that I was being hard on her, that she was not so bad. I’d seen her with her teenaged children. She loved them. The perfect mother and a devoted wife. You could always count on her to bake more scones than there was call for. She didn’t have to do that, she was only trying to help, but she’d have died if she knew that every Wednesday the leftovers made their way down to The Cross, where they were consumed by fallen women who only charged an extra $60 for Greek.

That evening though, Donna was very unattractive. She called on the lexicon of hate. She used her most toxic words. Perverts. Aberrations. Deviants. Sodomites. They tumbled from her mouth like jagged little pieces of glass. I looked across at Sister Patti and Sister Pru who knew more about homosexuality than any of us. They listened to Donna with a look that is difficult to define. It may be that they had reached an age where the opinions of a Donna had ceased to have value to them. Or it may have been forgiveness. Later over nibblies I saw Patti and Pru standing with Donna, arm in arm for support, chatting cheerfully about scone mix.

* * *

Mister Theory dropped by The Mission a few days later for a chin wag. Mister Theory owned a bar-cum-brothel up the way named ‘Cherry Pop’. He was very proud of the name and so he ought to have been. It’s hard to come up with a new double entendre in the sex industry. That day, like every day, Mister Theory was dressed all in black which must have gotten hot in summer but I think he believed it set off his gold nicely. He probably wore a touch too much gold come to think of it. Bracelet, necklace, another necklace, ring. It was a case of conspicuous consumption, a bling fixation picked up after a year working as a bouncer in Las Vegas. He was with his off-sider Ed, a small man who used to hang on, and agree unreservedly with, Mister Theory’s every word. That day Mister Theory told us how it is with people because, he assured us confidently, he had them all worked out. I had told him about the girl on the bus with anorexia. Nodding sagely he instructed us both (me and Ed, who was nodding his agreement even before the theory had been uttered) to take a look around us next time we were on the bus. Thirty people riding home from work. Thirty people all looking normal. Some go home to wives and children, others to friends and fun. But, he counselled us, on every single bus in every city in this country there are people who look as normal as you and me but when they get off the bus, put that key in the door and walk into their homes, they kick off their shoes and crawl into bed where they curl into the foetal position and await the coming night with clammy dread.

He could have been right but that seems like a lot of people and, as Ed pointed out, surely some of them just have a wank. Mister Theory wasn’t convinced by Ed’s helpful suggestion. Wanking would be treating the symptom not the disease he told us. But who am I to disagree with the theory? I think back on Mister Theory. He drove an expensive car. His clothes, though a little monotone, were of the expensive variety. He’d never finished school. He’d never read a book. But the money that paid for those expensive things demonstrated that he did know people or, at least, the weaknesses of a certain brand of them.

* * *

Another two Sundays of sermons passed after that which saw me treading water at the pulpit and going home to restless sleep. I’d been struggling for days when Patti and Pru diagnosed my problem: I needed crumbed lamb cutlets. They may not have been far from the truth. I arrived at their place in the early evening and could smell the lamb before I even got to the front door. I wafted in on old-fashioned aromas. Frying meat. Stuffy armchairs. Linoleum. Pot pourri. The two old ladies fussed around me all evening and I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, it was lovely. Every pause in the conversation was interpreted as a cry for food. Slabs of meat were thrust onto my plate to fill the silences, all my no-thank-yous dismissed out of hand with impatient tsks. At the end of the main meal we launched into a bowl of homemade trifle, then a brandy big enough to kill a horse. And another one. Patti and Pru sedated me with booze, matching each of my brandies with a sweet sherry of their own. We were all tipsy when the conversation turned to my work at the Cross. Alone amongst my parishioners, they knew how I was spending the church’s money there, and they approved.

In fact, Patti surprised me. She told us that she thought it would be quite exciting to be a prostitute. For a while, that is. She wished that she was young enough to experiment the way the young kids do today. I was sitting on a big round armchair sipping my brandy. The ladies sat opposite me, sharing a lounge. The arms of the chair were frayed and the stuffing was peeking out. It looked like they had bought it new about fifty years ago and they probably had. I must have seemed shocked by Patti’s admission. ‘Oh don’t look so surprised,’ Patti scolded me. ‘I’m not dead yet’. Pru chuckled. ‘We did our share of experimenting, Patti-babe.’ They both laughed out loud, Pru leaning forward to slap the thigh of the only man in the world to have ever shared their secret.

Patti reminisced about her life with Pru. She said, ‘Simon, I remember the first time that I made love to Pru. We had been taught that it was disgusting but when it actually happened it was lovely. Lovely! The next morning I remember feeling anger. I was genuinely angry with the world of finger-wagging, tut-tutting, God-bothering liars. That’s how I saw them: as liars, as people hiding a glorious truth from me. But I’ve mellowed a lot with time. I actually feel sorry for the Gregorys and Donnas now. They are tormented. They want the world exactly as they want it and anything else is an affront. Christianity has become a blunt instrument to them. They have deluded themselves into believing that shame and embarrassment can be bludgeoned into people, and love bludgeoned out. Christ has become an excuse for blaming. Blaming gay men. Blaming lesbians. Blaming, blaming, blaming. They think that they can use their mean and nasty version of Christ to impose their will. They’re really little children screaming “do it my way”. Throwing their tantrums. But I can tell you this much. They can preach of God from now till the cows come home, they’ll never stop the fucking in Kings Cross.’

Pru slapped Patti on her arm. ‘That’s enough of that language,’ she muttered tersely. Patti apologised. ‘I just get so upset sometimes,’ she told us. Pru rested a comforting hand on Patti’s leg and finished her thinking for her. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘the Gregorys and Donnas have never really understood sex. I think they see it as a kind of violence. In the Cross I am sure it often is. But not in our bedroom. Not in a loving bedroom. No matter what we do.’

Patti nodded her head in agreement. She concluded, ‘Gregory and Donna over-simplify sex. They think that it can be tamed with prayer, controlled with strength of will and faith. But all this self-denial is so misguided. God gave you a prick, Simon, so why not use it! Just don’t hurt anyone. That’s where the sin is. The sin lies in hurting the ones who have shared themselves with you, not in hurting some God who surely has bigger things on his mind than which hole you choose to put your pecker into.’ Pru gave Patti another cross look but didn’t pull her up on the swearing. They offered me another glass of brandy but I’d had my share. I asked why, if they felt that way, they had stayed with the church. Pru shrugged as if it was obvious. ‘Because we love God,’ she told me.

We chatted quietly for a little longer and then I made my excuses and strolled home. As I left, Patti passed me a handful of crumbed cutlets wrapped in aluminium foil ‘in case you get hungry’. Strolling home I reflected that my life at that time was dominated by women. I was with the Kings Cross working girls most days and most nights. I counselled dozens of frustrated, depressed, unfulfilled wives in my role as preacher-cum-marriage guidance counsellor. There were my two lovers. And Patti and Pru. Women of all ages and backgrounds. Those with lax moral standards and the prudes. Straight and gay. There is something about all of them. An elusive, defining characteristic. It’s hard to pin down but it occurs to me now, without any sense of crudity, that it is their cunts. It is their boobs. It’s their big hips and bottoms. It’s their soft bellies, their nipples and their thighs. And it is a keen awareness of these things. My body, my man’s body, is a pale uncomplicated thing. My cock is an after-thought. It hangs between my legs or it stiffens. Urine and semen. Simple. But Mary and Faith and Eve and all the others seem to have a much more complicated relationship with their bodies. Their vaginas grow moist for lovers. Nipples stiffen at the touch. And they can cramp and bleed and betray as well. And the parts of their bodies that do these things can flick from sex toys to baby factories in the space of an ejaculation! And so my impression now is that, for the most part, the women that I knew were more comfortable with the primitiveness of the human body. And so it is rare, I think, to find a woman describing sex, as Gregory commonly did, as disgusting. And so I wondered at Donna, who used to find in these things such cause for horror.

* * *

Evie had her views on sex too, which is hardly surprising. One late afternoon, traffic growling past outside, she sat opposite me in The Mission focussing on the chocolate bar placed on the table between us. It had been there for ten minutes while she chatted away agitatedly. I could tell that something was up. She wanted to talk that evening, seemed worn out when she was normally so full of energy. Finally, she confessed that she just didn’t want to do it that evening. She shrugged and sighed, ‘Sometimes I feel I just can’t fuck another man.’ I knew better than to say what I was thinking. I knew better than to tell her then don’t, just stop. She would have just given me that look and shaken her head in wonder. Instead I asked her, ‘So how do you do it?’ Evie answered me readily enough. She explained matter-of-factly that she did it in all of the positions. I smiled at the confusion. ‘No,’ I said patiently, ‘I mean how do you do it, night after night, with men you don’t know.’ Evie laughed. I thought that she had twigged to the misunderstanding but I was wrong. She explained, with the hint of a blush and a lowered voice, ‘Well, actually, I think I find it easier than some girls because, just between you and me, I have a pretty big fanny.’ She wasn’t joking: there was a total misconnection. My question went to her spirit and her soul, the complex relations between her thoughts and actions. But Evie seemed only capable of interpreting my question in terms of her body. How do you do sex? She should have just said, ‘With my body.’ And everything else? ‘With me.’

* * *

A passionate love gone stale, a painful break-up, neediness then despair. Yes, God got me on the rebound.

My relationship with Allison was a long garbled conversation at cross purposes, full of misunderstandings and unintended offence. It was five years of saying sorry and stumbling on in a state of confusion, not sure why she was angry, why I was upset, where it would all end up. There’s no joy in looking back on a formative five-year period of your life and seeing that you can really fuck another person up just by being yourself. In fact, being the best that you can ever be! And yet interleaved with the pain and sorrow I guess we found room to be in love with each other.

What on earth convinced us to go to India for a holiday to patch up our troubled relationship? It’s beyond me. Three and a half weeks beating away carpet sellers and tourist touts with my empty wallet. Tears and more tears and desperate, harrowing, love-making under slowly spinning ceiling fans. And me looking into her face, lying there below me, and seeing it set, and her jaw tensed, and her eyes screwed shut tight, trying to find something in me and in herself that was worth the pain and the heartache. The emotion in our relationship was never more potent and visceral than in those hours of sex and after-sex holding. We knew it was dying. We were merely waiting for the cancer to run its course.

We ended up in Pushkar, a Hindu holy city in Rajasthan. A romantic location, ghats stepping down to a picturesque lake and two tall jagged mountains looming over it all. Pilgrims would come to the lake and bathe in its cleansing waters. Westerners would unsuspectingly drink the same water in their tea later over dinner in restaurants, too cheap to buy the bottled variety. A serene, magical, dysenteric place. The full stop on that clumsy five-year conversation. We had slept together in the afternoon. I don’t know why. Afterwards she rolled on her side and willed herself to nap. I rose and dressed and told her I was going for a walk. She made a little sound in her throat to say that she had heard me but she didn’t open her eyes. I looked back at her from the door. Her shapely bottom, her boobs cradled in the crook of her bent arms and her eyes closed to make me disappear all the faster.

With a heavy heart I strolled down to the lake’s edge, past the cow with the genetic deformity (a floppy ill-formed fifth leg growing out of the back of its head, hoof and all, and his owner touting photos for a dollar), and found a quiet spot to sit and think. I had the ghat I had chosen all to myself except for an old Indian man in rags sitting about 15 metres away. As I walked to the water’s edge and took a seat on the steps he called out to me in slow, drawled but perfect Indian-English, ‘Will you give me some thing?’ His beggar’s cry had the tone of suffering and anguish. He gave voice to my own feelings of loss and need. But I ignored him. Over three weeks in India you become hardened to this stuff. In the mood I was in he’d need another leg growing out of his head before I gave him any money. A reflective minute gazing across the rippling lake’s surface. ‘Pleeeeease, sir. Will you give me something?’ My friend again. I ignored him again. Then every thirty seconds for the next couple of minutes he’d try again. ‘Please, sir. Something’. Then silence for ten long and peaceful minutes. A young pilgrim walked down the steps of the next ghat and stripped to his cotton underpants. He walked into the glassy cool water up to his navel and, letting his knees give beneath him, he slipped vertically down into the water, his head disappearing and reappearing again as he stood upright. He did this four times in quick succession, held out his cupped palms, muttered a prayer and turned solemnly before walking back up the steps and out of the water. I watched the whole performance as if it were for my benefit and I looked across at the old beggar who had done the same thing. The pilgrim dried himself and dressed and left us alone. Another five minutes silence then suddenly the old beggar’s plaintive voice again. ‘For God’s sake,’ he cried, ‘Do something!’ I did. I left the lake’s edge and walked back to the hotel, to Allison, where we agreed to end it. Allison cried and hugged me but there was relief in her tears, mingled with the sadness. Three months later I was in a church praying. Nobody was more surprised than I.

* * *

Mary in the shower after sex: her soft hands move delicately across her body and I recall my own hands fifteen minutes before crimping her nipples, pinching, clumsy and graceless, greedy in the face of bounty. She turns her face into the falling water, eyes closed, head tilted back and turning again she washes between her thighs, lathering the soap in gentle motions over her groin and through her dark pubic hair. She reaches behind and washes her bottom unselfconsciously. More circles under her arms. With her hands she raises and lowers her heavy breasts, soaping the lovely skin underneath as I watch her from the bathroom sink, toothbrush in my mouth like a gormless twit. From time to time she looks up and watches me watching her, pauses, and resumes. I remember thinking, ‘What in God’s name does she see in me?’

* * *

The telephone woke me at 5am on a mid-week morning and I rolled onto my back and lay there for a few seconds in that unreal sunless light of dawn toying with the idea of closing my eyes on it. In the end I answered on the seventh ring and instantly recognised Jenny’s panicked voice. Jenny from prayer group. Jenny, worshipper of the spiteful God. Jenny, abused wife, beaten with the bread board by a drunken husband the previous year. Her voice was a breathy whisper, a mix of fear and embarrassment, and I could hear her shushing one of her children gabbling beside her but the hush was a hissed rebuke, not soothing mummy-talk. She begged me to come over, pleading before I had even begun to respond and through the rush of sobs she whispered that Patrick, her husband, had come home drunk, and had collapsed in a stupor on the lounge. ‘I’m frightened for the children if he wakes up’, she told me. ‘Please come. Please come. Please come.’

I dressed quickly and ran to the car. Twenty minutes later, the sun still low in the sky, I pulled up in the street outside Jenny’s house in time to see her burst through the front door shrieking in fear. She held her youngest against her body, a small boy of three, snatched up from the floor and held like a sack against her hip, her left arm across his chest and his feet dangling. Jenny was running. The child flopped limply but his face was rigid with horror, his eyes wide and wild. Too young to understand, he had fallen back on the deepest instincts. No crying, just silence. As Jenny charged down the front steps she saw me at my car and, altering her course slightly, ran toward the side of the car furthest from the house. She was a mess, clothes and hair dishevelled, her eyes were red and swollen from lack of sleep and weeping, and she was barely coherent. I recall a moment frozen in time when her mind formed words and she gave voice to her fears. All she could say was, ‘My Danny. He’s got my Danny.’ She pointed me towards the house.

Danny was Jenny’s other son, a thin child of about seven, a quiet boy with patient suffering eyes and pale skin and blue veins. I turned away from Jenny and took in the little front yard. It was a picture of suburban bliss with a tricycle at the foot of the stairs and next to that a cricket bat. I opened the low front gate and walked slowly towards the door but halfway there I turned and told Jenny in a hissed whisper to call the police. She showed me her empty palms in despair as if to say, ‘With what?’ Before I could reply the security screen squeaked open and Patrick filled the doorway. Patrick was a big man, a builder with callused hands and a body hardened by aggression. He was wearing nothing but a pair of underpants all saggy in the crotch. He looked absurd but he still managed to scare the shit out of me. He looked me over with a sneer of disgust and levelled his hairy belly button at me.

‘Hello Patrick,’ I said softly. ‘Get fucked, cunt,’ he growled. I could hear Jenny sobbing from behind the car. I could think of nothing to say. I stood there for long seconds as the atmosphere clotted, then there was movement behind Patrick’s hip and I saw Danny ease out from behind his father. He walked carefully through the door, down the steps, and trotted across the front lawn to Jenny who grabbed him by the upper arms and held him to her body aggressively. With incredible relief I watched Danny’s progress then turned back to Patrick who hadn’t taken his eyes off me. Drunk, angry eyes. I held his gaze for a moment too long, making his mind up for him. ‘I’m gunna fuckin’ do you,’ he stated flatly and advanced down the steps.

The first punch caught me on the forehead, bumping my head so far back that I remember seeing the sky. I landed on my arse with my ears ringing. As I got to my feet the second punch caught me on the left eye. I saw stars and fell onto my hands and knees with the world whirring. I looked up to see Patrick ranging like an animal about the yard, searching for a weapon, something hard and heavy to hit me with, something to finish me off. A brick. A fence paling. But he had missed the cricket bat. I got to my feet and snatched it up. It felt beautiful. A big solid weighty thing. I looked at Patrick whose undignified saggy-underpanted drunken back was to me and it suddenly occurred to me that the fucker wanted to kill me. I felt the most pure of emotions. I swung the bat with all my strength, aiming for the side of his head, aiming for the soft part of his temple, surging with hate and anger and not caring if I killed him. As the bat swooshed through the air Patrick turned slightly and it smashed his nose across his face. He howled and held up both his hands. Blood seeped between the fingers but I was riding the swell. I knew what I would do. I’d kill the bastard. I’d make him pay for all the shit that he’d ever made Jenny and her children eat. Her fractured bones. Her bruised eyes and crushing humiliations. He would pay for this with searing pain and broken bones.

I swung the bat a second time, bringing it down on his shoulder, wanting to hurt and snap and tear. I heard the hot breath knocked out of him and another howl as he crumpled to the ground. He raised both hands over his head, cowering on the footpath and I saw the soft bone of his bald patch and thought about it for a moment, the coup de grâce, but I knew I could never do such a thing. I let the bat fall to the ground and was about to turn to Jenny, was about to ask if she was alright, and whether the children were safe, when I felt a hot slash of pain across my face: the streaky sting of Jenny’s fingernails as she attacked my eyes like a cat in a spit-fight. I reeled back in agony and as she launched herself at me a second time I caught her by the wrists. She writhed against my grip, lashing out at me with her feet, saliva flecking her lips but I caught her off balance and I threw her to the ground. She crawled towards her husband. I could barely see. My right eye burned where her nails had cut me. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My face was on fire where she’d taken the skin off in four deep slash lines, one for each of the fingers on her right hand.

Through the whole thing, Jenny had watched me from the car, she had seen Patrick go for me on the front step and punch me in the head, had seen me take him down with the cricket bat, and like a lioness in defence of her cub she had tried to wound me dreadfully. She had raked her claws across my face, gouged at my soft vulnerable eyes, sought to maim and blind me with a hatred that neither Patrick nor I could ever have dreamed of mustering.

* * *

On the following Sunday, Mary saw me at church. My face was red and sore and swollen. After five years of artful deception we came close to blowing our cover that day. Without thinking, Mary hustled across the church hall to me and in front of a room full of God-botherers she reached out her hand in a motherly gesture to touch and to heal my scabbed and puffy cheek with the tips of her fingers. You see, if there is one thing that cannot be dissembled it is the look of a person who wants to hold, and the look of one who needs holding.

* * *

Three days later Mary came to my place when her daughter was at school and Donald was at work. With hardly a word she held me and kissed me and took me to bed. We made love, Mary on her back, her left hand resting on my right shoulder, her right hand on my hip. She lay quietly under me as I enjoyed the warmth and sex of her body, her vagina as slippery as a peeled lychee. She encouraged me gently with touch and look as I thrust against her pelvis. As I came she accepted the shift to sudden forcefulness, bearing the weight of my body as the climax subsided by enfolding me in her arms. She stroked the small of my back. On reflection I remember that throughout our love-making she never once looked like coming, she never looked like wanting to, her orgasm not being the point of the exercise. Afterwards, she just held me and said, ‘There there, Simon.’