Dear Miffy (4 page)

Dear Miff,

I was saying about being intense and everything in that last letter, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's the way I am, no risk about that, but geez Miff, I don't know, it's no good. The trouble is, it means everything matters so bloody much. You can't take a joke when you're like me. Or you. You pretend you can, but you can't really. That first Monday after we started going together, I lost it badly when Cam made that joke about you fucking him for a Mars Bar. I knew it wasn't true; you've got too much class to even spit on him, but he's always giving me the shits, and that day I went for him. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Cam. He's the first bloke I've ever knocked out, like unconscious, with my bare fists, and I tell you what, it was a bit scary, I thought I'd killed him for a minute.

He didn't dob on me though, that was one good thing about him, the only good thing about him, cos if he'd dobbed, I was gone, no risk. I was already on so many last warnings I'd lost count.

I guess everyone was so bloody amazed that I was with you. That's not surprising, the way we'd been on Friday, and every day before that. But they didn't know anything. They sure as hell didn't know all that stuff you'd told me on Saturday.

One of the things that meant a helluva lot to me, Miff, was the way you trusted me, telling me all that. Trust. Christ, that's a bloody joke. No-one ever trusted me before. I swear, I wasn't trusted to wipe my own bum. My father lying about Queensland, that was typical. When I was little, every time I went to the shops for him, he used to reckon I'd stolen some of his change. He'd belt me for it if I wasn't quick enough to get out of his way.

The real joke was that I actually did steal his change quite often.

But you. You trusted me, Miff. I don't know why. It could be that you're incredibly stupid, but I don't think that's it. You fail all the tests for stupidity that I ever heard of. Like, I mean you fail them by not being stupid, not the other way round . . . anyway, you know what I mean.

No, I never thought you were stupid, but I've never figured out why you'd pick the biggest delinquent in the whole school, your worst enemy, the kid from such a different bloody world to yours, why you'd tell him stuff you never told anyone else before.

It was a weird experience, believe me. Maybe that's what gave me the feeling I was on something—and for once I wasn't.

So, suddenly I knew so much about you. I felt like I'd walked right inside that big rich house and was sitting in the middle of the big lounge room with the grand piano and the fireplace the size of a garage. Without having met any of the people in the house except you, I knew why your father was so moody and silent, why your grandmother wouldn't speak to him from one week to the next, why your brother and sister only came in to shower and change before they went off for another wild night of sex and drugs and forget about the rock'n'roll.

I always thought doctors were kind of different, you know what I mean? I always thought doctors, with their clean hands and quiet voices and their old-fashioned classy-looking clothes, were like special people who'd been chosen by God or something to be doctors: they didn't have no bad thoughts and they didn't do no bad things. I can't remember who told me your father was a doctor, but I knew from somewhere, and I was a bit nervous about you after I heard it. I thought you must be from another world, like you were an angel, maybe. Is that too weird? Sorry if it is.

Then you told me the whole shithouse story and I was like in shock and excited at the same time. Before that I'd thought there were two worlds, one where people like me lived, a scungy world full of shit where you fought in the gutter just to stay alive, just to score another dollar. Like my mum getting paid about a dollar an hour or some shit to clean rooms in this el cheapo motel with cigarette butts on the carpet and torn flyscreens on the windows. There was good stuff in our world too, like sticking by your mates, but just not enough of that good stuff.

Then—this is what I thought—there was this other world for the rich pigs, where they drove around in their posh BMWs and talked posh to each other and they were all beautiful looking. If they did anything bad it'd be like on TV, where it wouldn't seem really bad, it'd be like glamorous bad, not scungy or shabby or disgusting. I never thought that maybe they could be really rotten underneath.

But your father and that little girl, that was rotten bad, as bad as anything that ever happened in our street, in our suburb. And it was worse in a way, with him paying them off. I'm not saying no-one around here wouldn't pay someone off if they could; the thing is, no-one'd have the money, so it's hypo—whatever that word is—hypothetical, or something.

I don't know what it would do to you, having a pervert for a father. You tried to explain it, a little bit, that day in the det, but we never really talked about it after that. I remember you saying you couldn't stand for him to touch you any more. Geez, I can understand it'd give you the creeps. I don't know how you could even look at him again.

My father had a lot of shit wrong with him but I don't think he'd do anything like that.

I tell you what it did for me: it made me angry as goddamn hell, that's what it did. I seriously thought about ringing the cops and dobbing on him, you know that? Like, anonymously. The only reason I didn't was because I knew how pissed off you'd be.

I had some strange feeling that I was going to be your protector, for God's sake; like, I wanted to take care of you suddenly. You'd have killed me if you'd known that! I don't know anyone who wanted protecting less than you did . . .

Wait a minute though . . .

It's about ten minutes since I wrote the last sentence. I've been thinking about you all that time. And you know, I've just worked out what anyone with an IQ in double figures would have figured out months ago. And it's this: you did want me to look after you! You know what I mean. All that toughness, all that aggro, it was real all right, but geez, you were a kitten when I touched you. A panther with anyone else, but a kitten with me. I never could quite figure that out. I know for sure that no-one else ever saw that side of you. They wouldn't have believed some of the stuff you said when we were just lying together, the way you sometimes went soft and mushy around me. You were like a little kid then. Remember? We used to laugh about it and I'd stir you about needing your dummy and your teddy and stuff, but I kind of liked it when you went that way.

I guess maybe I liked being all protective and shit around you. I don't know, I don't want to think about that.

I'll change the subject.

Well, sort of. The subject's always you, Miff, as far as I'm concerned. I know you wouldn't want it that way any more but it's still that way for me and I've got a feeling it's always going to be.

So . . . I'll go to that Monday again.

I half thought it all might be a dream, or not a dream exactly, but that you'd have changed your mind over the weekend, or that it had just been one of those funny things that happen, sometimes when two people come together for a moment and the air crackles, then they move away and go cold again.

Like, that movie I was talking about before. At the end they say something like, ‘Well, we're all going to be really good friends now,' and one of them says, ‘No, we're not, it's just a fluke that this happened, and on Monday we won't want to know each other, we'll be embarrassed to be seen together, we'll pretend this never happened.' And as soon as he says it, or she, I can't remember, you think, Yeah, that's exactly right.

So I really thought there was a big chance it'd be that way for us.

Monday when I saw you coming along the walkway I was shaking like a leaf. And me mates, they didn't know nothing, of course; they thought we was still worst enemies, and Artie was saying, ‘Hey Tony, here's your girlfriend,' real sarcastic, and I'll never forget the look on his face when you took my hands and kissed me right on the mouth.

Mmm, your warm firm lips, and your little tongue flicking into mine like a lizard, I forgot about Artie pretty quickly.

Oh fuck it, that's enough for this letter. Bye bye bye bye bye, Miff.

Lots of love,

Tony

Dearest Miff,

There's hardly been any time to write to you the last few days. Sorry about that. Sometimes I wonder if they do it deliberately, make me work my bum off just so I can't sit in the corner of the TV room thinking of you. Do you reckon they'd do that?

Too fucking right they would.

I want to live in a dream world with you, Miff, that's all. I want us to be on a boat, one of those big white bastards, drifting through the beautiful calm blue seas, not going anywhere in particular, just watching all them tropical coloured fish. And we wouldn't wear no clothes, we'd lie around on the deck and make love whenever we felt like it. Your beautiful brown body walking naked towards me. Oh God, Miff, I'm going to do myself damage here just imagining it. Better change the subject, change it real quick. A couple of times thinking about you early on, when we first started going together, I came without even touching myself, never done that before or since. It was out of sight, man. Unreal. That's how much I loved you.

Sometimes you can't hardly believe what your body will do.

OK, change the subject. What to? I don't know, I was just thinking about school and how different it was once we started being together. I lived for the sight of you, Miff. I'd come to school in the morning, get off the scummy old bus with its ripped seats and shitty smelly old Wally the driver, and I'd walk through the staff carpark where we weren't meant to go, round the Lasers and Hyundais and Nissans, all those shitty little clean shiny cars that teachers buy . . . past them and past the main entrance with the sign saying students can't use it—in case we contaminate it or something—along the covered walkway and the lockers with doors hanging off and graffiti all over them, past the rubbish tins that the cleaners never empty, through the plastic bags blowing across the bitumen, past the sexual harassment poster that says if you look at a girl's legs you're a pervert, past the try-hard library and the noticeboards with last year's netball results going yellow and faded, and there you'd be, Miff, in your tight black jeans and that plain grey T-shirt, playing with your long black hair, looking so clean like you'd just stepped out of the ocean, like a model in a magazine, just
shining
, shining like the sun was for you alone, shining like you were the sun, shining like this special light came from inside you, a fucking miracle, and you were a miracle, Miff, you were the greatest fucking miracle in my life.

After I started going with you I never wagged school no more, Miff—not unless you were wagging it with me. I mean, shit, I didn't do any more work than I had before, even though you kept giving me a hard time about it, trying to make me do a bit, but hey, at least I turned up. Be grateful for small mercies, OK?

I loved just talking to you, Miff, even though I never said anything much about myself. I know you didn't like that, you kept hassling me about it, asking all them questions, wanting to know every fucking thing about me. Now I wish I had said more. I'm trying to make up for it by writing these letters, but it's not the same, and anyway it's a bit late. Talking: that's what I should have done more of. It's just that I'm such a dickhead that I couldn't figure it out before. Christ, we fuck ourselves up, don't we Miff? Don't we just fuck ourselves up?

Trouble is, I've never been a talker. You gotta learn how to talk, I reckon. I don't mean just jabber on about footy and shit; I mean talk the way
you
did, about yourself and stuff that happens and whether you should do this or that or something else. I found that pretty fucking hard, still do. I know you did too, don't get me wrong, but you did it better than I ever could.

You know those movies where something bad, something real bad, is about to happen, and the sky gets darker and darker and this music starts, and it's always the same kind of music, real threatening, real scary, it's not exactly music even, just these sounds that are ugly and they don't go together all smooth and nice and sweet like some music do? It's like you can feel the wings of the dark angel beating over your head and you know something terrible's coming and there's nothing, not one fucking thing, you can do to stop it? That's what it was like with us Miff; I heard that music, I heard it getting louder and louder, and there wasn't nothing anyone could do about it. It scared the shit out of me but there wasn't nothing I could do about it.

Ah, fuck it, I don't want to think any more about that stuff, and besides my back's hurting like shit tonight, if you really want to know. I'm gonna go get some of the magic pills, Miff.

Bye,

Tony

Dear Miff,

They keep coming at me with all this denial shit, Miff; I mean, what the fuck would they know? I don't deny nothing, I know everything that's happened to me and I know it was my own fucking fault and I know what it means. I just don't need them to remind me of it every fucking day and night. Maybe they want me to be fucking grateful I'm in this fucking place, but I tell you what, I got news for them: gratitude ain't in my fucking vocabulary, not me baby, so fuck you all.

So what if I just want to dream about the past? So fucking what? It's none of their fucking business.

They reckoned that my uncle and aunt were going to visit yesterday but they never turned up, not that I want them to, anyway.

So you know what I'm going to do, Miff? I'm going to live in the past just a little bit longer—in fact, for as long as I want.

And you're the past I want to live in, Miff.

That's not so bad, is it—to live in the past? Not when the past was like we had. So many good times, so many laughs. Geez, it's a long time since I had a laugh. But that first Monday that we were together: that was the best day of my life, I reckon. The way everyone looked at us! Like they couldn't believe it. They couldn't either. Even with the teachers, man; they were spinning out, like, ‘This can't be for real! Tell me it isn't true!'

Cos, of course, everyone knew how much we hated each other's guts before that.

You know what that hate time was like, Miff? It was a zone we had to pass through. And once we'd passed through it we were in a new area, one I hadn't visited before. It was full-on, one-on-one, after that. Amazing. The world stopped existing outside us two. My uncle and aunt, my father, even my mum if she'd been there, they could be wherever they wanted, they could do whatever they wanted, they could have said any shit to me and I wouldn't have noticed. You and I, we lived on an island that floated through the school, down the streets, through the shopping centre, an island like a little spaceship, and no-one else could get on it.

No-one else had the passport or the visa or the tickets.

First time I went to your place with you was, what? After we'd had about two weeks together? Second time was about ten days later. I didn't really want to go again. You'd been hassling me trying to get an invite to my uncle and aunt's. But I didn't want that, either. I didn't want us to be together at my place or yours. Just in the streets with you, that was enough for me, in the parks, in the wild places.

But because I wanted to do everything right with you I gave in when you said to come the second time. ‘No-one'll be there,' you said. Well, I'm not going to give you a hard time about that again. Just because half your fucking family was there. At least your father was away, saving lives or feeling up little girls, or both. I don't know what I would have done if he'd crashed the place.

So, off we went, me talking more and more the closer we got because that's what I do when I'm nervous, that's the only time I talk, but just talking shit, and you talking less and less, because that's what you do. It was pretty weird when I saw the cars there, shit. There was your mother's Alfa and your brother's BM and your sister's Jeep. Like, that was a quiet day for you guys. Awesome. I don't know why I didn't piss off straightaway. Should have. I knew when I saw the cars that there were people home, and you knew it too, of course. I felt you getting more nervous—but you told me it'd be cool, so in we went.

It wasn't too cool, though. For one thing, I couldn't believe the way you talked to each other, Miff! I mean, I know these were your family and I don't want to put shit on them, but you were all so fucking polite, it really got to me! It was like a conversation on TV or at the doctor's; you know, when that lady—I forget what they call them—she sits behind the desk and takes all your particulars, she talks like, ‘Good morning, Mrs Marchesi. I'm sorry, Doctor's running a little late today. How long since you were last here? How would you like to pay for this?'

That's what it was like! I couldn't believe that. It was the last thing I expected.

We came into that big room where you've got the big TV and all them lounges and magazines and shit, and the mirrors that you nearly walk right through because you think it's the other half of the room, and there was your mother and your sister and your brother. I was bloody red as a beetroot, didn't know which way to look, and they're acting cool as if you bring home some loser like me every day, and your mother says, ‘Oh, there you are, darling. We were starting to wonder what happened to you,' when I know and you know and everyone else down the east coast must know that you did what you bloody liked and no-one in your family would have a clue from one week to the next where you were or what you were doing or who you were with.

‘And this must be Tony.' That was her second line. Cracked me right up, only I was too scared to laugh. I shook her hand but it felt like a bit of lettuce that's been out of the fridge a week or so. I couldn't look at her. Too embarrassing. Then I had to meet your brother and sister. They didn't seem too interested.

‘Where do you live, Tony?' Already your mother was into the questions. There was no way I was going to give the right answers; I mean the answers she wanted. She wanted you hanging round with private school boys who talked like your brother. The street I was living in then, I don't think she'd heard of it. I don't think she'd even heard of the suburb.

Miff, sometimes—I don't like to say this but I've gotta be honest—sometimes I wondered if you just went with me because I was the opposite of the kind of guy your parents'd want.

Like, you were using me to say ‘fuck you' to your parents. Not, like, deliberately—but sometimes I did wonder if that was what was going down.

Anyway, I'm not getting into that, I was just trying to remember how it all went that day. Seems to me it was nothing but a whole lot of questions. All hidden under your mother's super-cool super-polite voice. ‘What are your favourite subjects?' ‘And what do you want to do when you leave school, Tony?' ‘Is that what your father does?' ‘You don't think that some kind of tertiary course would be a good idea?'

And so on. By the time we escaped and you took me upstairs I was bloody shaking. We got into your room and I couldn't relax at all. You grabbed me and kissed me but I couldn't get into it. I said to you, ‘Is that the way they always talk?' And you didn't even know what I was on about!

‘What do you mean?' you asked.

What did I fucking mean? I thought it'd be obvious to anyone who wasn't a sandwich short of a lunchbox.

‘The way they fucking talk to you, like you're a fucking stranger, is that what it's always like? They're so fucking polite! Don't you guys ever, you know,
talk
?'

‘Well, what's it like at your place?'

You sounded so puzzled. I couldn't believe it.

‘Well fuck it, my uncle and aunt, we don't talk either, but we're not bloody polite. If someone gives you the shits you just scream at them! My uncle doesn't bloody sit around saying, “Oh dear, do you think Tony's playing that music a little bit loud?” He sticks his head out of the TV room and he yells, “Turn the fucking music down before I come down there and put a fucking baseball bat through your fucking CD!” If they're pissed off because they don't know where I've been they're yelling at me, like: “Where the fuck have you been?” not “Oh, we were starting to wonder what had happened to you.”'

Of course, I forgot that in your house everyone's rooms are about a hundred metres away from each other so you wouldn't hear their CDs. And anyway, they'd be playing opera or something. And, even if it was too loud, you'd just say, ‘Oh, excuse me, Miffany, we were wondering if you would mind making a tiny little adjustment to your volume switch.'

I don't know which is better, but; I mean my uncle and aunt gave me the shits with all the arguments, and so did my mum and dad before that, but at least you knew what everyone thought. With your family you wouldn't have a clue what they thought about anything. The only message that came through loud and clear was that I wasn't the kind of guy they would have signed up for their daughter to go with. But I figured that was their problem. It only made me more determined. That's the way I am, Miff, you know that. I'm a stubborn son-of-a-bitch. And I don't give up easy.

Trouble is, what I just wrote, I don't know if it's true any more. Since I fucked up so bad. I wish you were here to tell me, Miff. I can't work these things out for myself now. Am I tough, am I weak, am I pathetic? I don't know. And maybe it's the not knowing that's the worst thing of all.

Tony