BEN and NIYA.
6.30 am.
The room faced east. The just risen sun streamed around the edge of the blinds, made floating stars of dust motes. Ben lay quiet, feeling the morning. Focussed and energised he rose, wrapped a sarong around his waist and slid back the big glass door to the balcony. A low swell rolled on to Bondi Beach, gifting a crowd of grommets with an easy wave.
7.00 am.
Ben swapped his sarong for board shorts, bounced down the stairwell steps and emerged on the Bondi/Tamarama path. The swell didn’t favour Tamarama, it would be quiet there, so he jogged around the headland for an early plunge.
The sea was cool. Ben filled his lungs with salted air, his big heart pumping as he dove under the beach break and struck out for deep water. He lay on his back under an empty blue sky.
Ben swam back to the narrow beach, bounded up the stairs like a gazelle and slow strolled home. He was a god.
9.00 am.
Breakfast. Ben backed the van out the units lock up and headed to a favourite café. He’d pay $20 for a coffee and a bagel but so what? He was single, a self employed builder in a healthy economy.
The café deck overlooked Sydney harbour. To the right, the rising cliffs of the headland opened to the Pacific. To the left, the curves of the opera house and the harbour bridge.
10.00 am.
Ben drove to the nearby house of a client who wanted a deck built on the back of his house. They talked about design, specs and timber. Ben took down notes. They chatted about the weather and the surf, shook hands and Ben was done for the weekend.
12.00 pm.
Ben was home. He dropped the notes on his desk and pumped up the volume on some good old Bowie. He tidied, vacuumed, pottered.
1.00 pm.
Ben broke in a new bong, clean glass. Your average grommet was happy with a chopped off bit of garden hose poked in the side of a plastic juice bottle, but not Ben. He enjoyed a bit of quality and ritual with his smoke. He mulled up, a touch of tobacco to aid the burn, pulled a couple of cones and lay back on the couch.
Rebel Rebel
You’ve torn your dress
Rebel Rebel
Your face is a mess
_________________________
Ziggy Stardust fell into Niya’s world when she was barely out of toddling. Her earliest memories were of music. Loud. Niya’s dad played in a down under band. They pulled well touring and sold enough that he never needed a real job. Niya loved her dad, loved how the power in him blasted through his guitars. At age 6 he gave Niya her first guitar. She was going to have her own band, just like him. Sometimes she went to gigs with her mum and her spine shivered with the volume, the excitement. Her dad was a god and thousands came to love him.
Niya wasn’t Niya then. She was Jennifer, Jenny, mostly Jen. At first she was like other kids, just a kid, but she soon knew she wasn’t that. Her world revolved around adults. Her mum was her friend. Her mum’s friends were her friends, like her dad’s and the folk at gigs. They treated her with respect. Unlike her teachers who were idiots. Her grown up friends listened when Jen played. They complimented her, showed her things. They talked to her like they talked to each other. She was very grown up.
And because Niya was grown up she never questioned how men would sometimes stay with her mum when her dad was away. That was their secret. A secret she hated.
When she was Jennifer Jenny Jen they lived on the North Coast, near Byron Bay. She loved the beaches, the sand, shells, rocks, little things in little pools. When she was 12 they moved inland to Nimbin, hippie country. A house with her mum. Dad helped them move. There was tension.
Niya had trouble sleeping. Her mum and dad fought, loud and public as they always were. Then dad went on tour again. He never came back, and Niya never forgave her mum.
_____________________________
2.00 pm.
Ben was out the door, off to do the rounds, visiting his friends. There were many. He drove through Bondi, packed with board shorts and bikinis, and climbed the hill that took him up along the cliffs. He turned into the back streets, to a big old share house where there were always friends, always a session.
“Ben” someone called out the open door. “How are ya mate. Come in, come in.”
“Hey, Dougie. Good to see ya. Joe. Carly.”
“Ben, you know Frank?”
“Nah. Howyagoin’ mate.”
Ben shook Frank’s hand.
The crew were lounging on a lounge and an assortment of decrepit op shop furniture, deep house beats on the stereo. There was a low table in the middle with a bong and a mull bowl.
“Beer mate?”
“Nah. Thanks mate.”
Dougie passed the bong across the table to Ben.
“Help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Ben sat forward, the others lounged back. Before he did help himself though, Ben pulled out his own little bag and dropped it on the table. Dougie picked it up, stuck his nose in.
“Noice. Hydro?”
“Nah, god’s own bush bud that. Mate grows it up north.”
Dougie grinned, held up the bag. It was a question.
“Yeah, help yourself mate.”
Ben spent an hour or so, then off to another house, another session.
5.30 pm.
Ben got a call. It was Bo, asking what he was up too.
“On the way home mate. Want to drop around?”
6.30 pm.
Ben and Bo are on the balcony, a beer each, the bong on the table between them. They’d known each other since high school. They both went into trades; Ben carpentry, Bo a brickie. Like most young fellas in the trades they partied with an assortment of drugs but unlike most, they shared a taste for heroin. Heroin was different, frowned upon by the surf crew. A dabble was okay, part of youth, but more than that and you quickly got a name. Thieves, liars, can’t trust ‘em.
Young Ben and Bo began a double life, using on weekends, together, privately. They got to know a circle outside the surf crew. Junkies. By the end of their apprenticeships they were both pulling good money, so they invested in some minor dealing. Inevitably, it got out of hand. Bo took off for Bali, made his way up to Bangkok and on to Chiang Mai. Ben stayed back and they organised a mail deal. Way risky, but they pulled it off. With a good supply of clean number 4 powder they could cut for the street, they were soon making serious money. They also gained serious habits. Crunch came when their mail scam ran out. Bo went into a hospital detox and short term rehab. Ben went bush where he had a place he could be alone. The withdrawal damn near killed him. He certainly wished it would.
That was years ago. They got clean and went their different ways. Bo roamed and worked up north. Ben built himself a tidy little business around the Eastern Suburbs, living the good life. They reconnected a year ago, by accident or fortune, on a building site. Bo was back in Sydney. Since then they’d shared the odd hit, a special treat, but neither had any wish to slip back into the old ways. You had to watch it with heroin.
You had to set boundaries.
7.45 pm.
The sun was sinking now, the western sky glowing pinks and yellows over the suburbs. The last CD had played out. Ben and Bo, well stoned and quiet. Bo began to hum a familiar refrain from an ad that was currently saturating the airwaves. He added the words.
“Chicken tonight. Chicken tonight.”
Ben smiled, knew damn well where this was going. Bo added an evil grin and flipped the lyric.
“Jack it tonight. Jack it tonight.”
That was it. There was nothing to discuss. Except where to score.
____________________________________
The house Niya shared with her mum was part of a communal property. It joined other properties in the extended hippie network that is the Nimbin Hills. Her mother was drinking a bit now and men were sniffing around, so Niya roamed the hills. She found her place among the local feral kids. They had a clubhouse, the castle. It was an old abandoned shack with a broken down wall at one end, solid and dry at the other. At the dry end there was a verandah that overlooked the valley. The kids collected some old mattresses and bits of furniture. They hung bits of tie die and tatty Indian shawls over doorways, pictures of tigers and trees and old psychedelic posters on the walls. Seashells on the sills and candle stubs on bare wall noggins. It was a home. For Niya, a better one than her own. The older kids smoked a bit of dope and in summer they ate the gold top mushrooms as a rite of passage. Niya smoked a bit too, but it wasn’t her thing. Too much like home. As puberty dawned the kids had their fumbles and so too did Niya. She had a boyfriend she could kiss and touch. She thought she might love him, but probably not.
One day Bilbo turned up. Niya took an immediate dislike to him. He was big, fat, a roadie with Niya’s dad’s band. The band were taking a break and Bilbo came a calling. First night there he was in Niya’s mum’s bed. He never left.
Bilbo and Niya’s mum were drinking every day now. The lowlifes of the hill communities made the house theirs. The smell of marijuana smoke, grown locally in abundance, was a constant. At night there were parties, pills, drunks. Niya spent sleepless school nights there and weekends at the castle. She screamed at her mum now and then but mostly, she just felt sad for her. There was nothing she could do.
One night there were just Bilbo and Niya’s mum at home. They were drinking and Niya’s mum was drooping on downers. Soon she was sleeping on the couch. For Niya it was a relief, the house finally quiet, so she went to bed early. In the middle of the night she snapped awake. Something wasn’t right. Her door had opened and silhouetted by the light in the lounge was Bilbo’s big fat body.
_____________________________
7.50 pm.
Bo was on the phone.
8.00 pm.
Ben and Bo were out the door.
8.45 pm.
Ben and Bo were back and mixing up.
9 pm.
They were on the nod.
____________________________________
Bilbo’s bulk filled the doorway. Niya doubted he could see her eyes, but she squinted anyway, feigning sleep. If she just stayed still, he would go away. But he didn’t.
____________________________________
11.30 pm.
Bo took his half of the buy and headed home. Ben wasn’t sleepy, so he had a light top up and headed up to Kings Cross for a lurk and a coffee.
_____________________________________
Niya was 13 the night Bilbo came into her room. In the morning, while Bilbo snored in her mum’s bed, she slipped out. There’d be no school for Niya today. She made her way painfully up the hill to the castle and there she stayed for a week. Any kid that tried to enter she screeched at them. They left her alone.
Niya skipped school for the week, then came home. Her mum had hardly noticed. The community knew the situation at home so they kept an eye on Niya. She often slept away. She could take care of herself.
When she came home everything was different. She refused to even look at Bilbo, ignored him if he tried to speak to her. Bilbo knew what he’d done.
Niya never told her mum what had happened that night but her mum felt it, felt the tension. A week later she kicked Bilbo out. It was the beginning of a change.
Niya’s mum stopped drinking. With Bilbo gone and Niya’s mum sober, the lowlife locals stopped coming around. The house grew tidy, the preferred music changed. Her mum was listening to female performers and Niya to early Bowie. This was the time of the passing of Jennifer Jenny Jen and the birth of Niya. She dropped her old boyfriend and found a new one, a young gay guy. Together they took the gold top mushroom rite of passage.
Two years passed peacefully. Niya’s dad was visiting again. The family made up, became friends once more. Niya did well at school but was impatient to move on. Gay John moved down to Sydney and she planned to join him. They’d planted a crop together and Niya harvested a couple of pounds. She gave one to her mum and her mum helped her pack the other one, in layers of plastic and cloth to conceal the smell. This was Niya’s nest egg, to get her started in Sydney. Her mother fretted at the risk of Niya taking it on the train and at the last minute said she’d come too, just down and back, and she’d carry the pound.
John had established himself in an old wreck of a Darlinghurst terrace with a revolving mob of Sydney street kids. Niya shared a mattress with him. She donated a couple of ounces of her stash to the house and sold the rest. That, and the dole, meant she didn’t need to worry about work for a while. Plus she could busk. She’d grown into an excellent guitar player, with a true voice and a huge repertoire. Her dad’s songs were her favourites, plus she reworked old punk and everything Bowie had ever done. She became a regular outside Kings Cross Station. Her talent and her striking appearance gave her a nice little earner. She cut her hair short and kept it mainly blue. She wore long hippie dresses, boots and a hoody.
_________________________________
12 pm.
Ben parked down Elizabeth Bay and walked up the hill to Kings Cross. He strolled down the main drag, ignoring the Pink Pussy spruikers, the annoying drunks trawling the clubs. Across the street he could hear a strange rendition of what was clearly Bowie’s Suffragette City. He crossed over, to the girl with the blue hair, with an electrified acoustic guitar and a little pig amp.
____________________________________
Niya switched, smoothly, from the power cords of Suffragette City, to a gentle version of Rock n Roll Suicide.
Time takes a cigarette
Puts it in your mouth
You pull on a finger, then another finger,
Then your cigarette.
The wall to wall is calling
It lingers
Then you forget
Oh ho ho ho
You’re a rock’n’roll suicide.
Ben was mesmerised. He sat on the floor of the station foyer, back against the wall, a little up from Niya.
I’m a space invader
I’ll be a rock n rollin’ bitch for you.
Ben stayed for half an hour. Before he left he took a note from his pocket and folded it into a tight square. As he left, he dropped it in Niya’s guitar case. She could tell from the colour it was a $20.
Next weekend Ben and Bo scored together again. Again Ben ended up at the Cross. Again he took a seat against the wall, a little up from Niya. Neither assumed to make eye contact, but she recognised him as the guy who dropped the $20. She was looking away when he left but when she checked her guitar case, there was another folded up $20.
Ben’s Saturday night hit of smack was becoming a regular thing now, but never during the week. That was the line.
The boundary.
More often than not now, Ben’s Saturday nights were ending up at the Cross. At the Cross he was anonymous, a world away from his Bondi friends who scorned the place. He was stoned and so only half conscious that he was there on the chance he might see Niya. When he did, he told himself the pleasant rush was due to her music. He liked to sit, a little away, and just listen.
It was weeks before Ben and Niya finally acknowledged each other with a nod of the head, and next time a smile. Ben continued to drop $20s. It was nothing to him, a lot to Niya. Plenty of guys would try to ingratiate themselves with a few coins. They assumed it was a licence to chat. It wasn’t and if they couldn’t get that, Niya would turn her back and unleash some Sex Pistols. She got called “cunt”. Ben though, never presumed. He’d nod his hello, offer a brief smile, and sit a comfy distance away. He felt strong to her.
Niya turned 18. She was ready to work, to see how that life felt. How hard could it be? She had her computer skills. She was good with people, when they weren’t trying to buy some old chat with a few coins that is. She could answer a phone as well as anyone.
The dole office insisted on sending kids out to jobs, 10 maybe 30 at a time, annoying the hell out of employers in order to maintain the façade that full employment was there if these kids would just try harder. It wasn’t, the kids knew that, so they wouldn’t bother cleaning up or arriving on time. Some keen clean fool would get the job anyway. Niya got a notification to attend an interview in the city, a secretarial position at some company or other. You had to go or they cut you off the dole. But this time she decided to give it a proper shot. She had a nice dress and nice shoes her mum had bought her. She scrubbed up and caught the train into the city.
At the office, in the foyer, sat a herd of girls. A few were obviously there under the dole office obligation, dead bored. The rest though, were serious. Hair done, made up, nice clothes. A flock of dollies. Niya registered with the polished creature at the desk and found a seat, acutely aware of the stares at her blue hair. A cluster of three young things, clearly the power in the room, stared at Niya. They whispered to each other, covered their mouths not to hide but to emphasise their sniggers. Niya glared at them. One, the boss dolly, thrust her face forward at Niya, a ridiculous grimacing attempt at mockery. After that Niya just ignored them.
One by one, the herd was separated out and interviewed. Niya waited. After the tenth girls went in, she’d had enough. The three princesses had continued their feeble intimidation and she was sick of it. She rose, walked over to them, leaned in. She sniffed at them like a fox, taking in their cheap scents.
“God you stink. Good luck with that.”
She never stopped to see their reaction, just walked out the door.
There was no triumph in abandoning the interview, in trashing the dollies. Niya just felt small, her stomach sour, her steps heavy. She wished she was back at the castle, in the Nimbin bush, where people were real. Instead she was going nowhere in a pile of concrete, back to a wrecked terrace where the music was crap and always too loud. No peace. She took the steps to the underground station and slumped down in the concourse, back to the wall, too heavy to proceed.
_________________________________
It so happened that Ben had business in the city that day. He parked the van at The Cross, never get a park in the city, and caught the train. He did what he had to do and headed back down the steps to the station. And there was Niya.
She saw him first. She slid back up the wall. There was no thought to it, she just walked straight to him, into him, breast to chest. Their arms wrapped and held.
Like the leaf clings to the tree
Oh, my darling, cling to me
For we’re like creatures of the wind
And wild is the wind.
They rode the train back to the Cross together. Niya told him about the non interview, the stupidity of her even trying. Ben listened. Back at the Cross she was still talking as they walked to his van. There was no plan. They just went home together.
Oh, the sea. The smell of it. The sound of it. Niya sat on the balcony while Ben fussed about inside. For the first time in months she felt empty, but good empty. Ben brought her tea, went back inside. He didn’t say much. It was all so natural, so normal, to hold this man’s hand, to sit on his balcony. Ben put on some music, some Dandy Warhols, and returned with bong and bowl. For the first time since she’d landed in the city, Niya was at peace.
That night in his bed they held each other. There was no sex. They talked for hours and spooned to sleep.
In the morning Ben had to leave early, for work. He never said goodbye, stay, or go. Just kissed her lightly on the forehead and left. Niya slept for another 2 hours. When she rose, she wrapped one of Ben’s sarongs around her and went out to the balcony to sit in the sun. Later she wandered down to Bondi and caught the bus back to Darlinghurst.
Ben had a good day, his mind often returning to the girl with the blue hair. He never expected her to be there when he got home, but he still felt a sharp pang of disappointment when she wasn’t. They hadn’t swapped numbers, there was no arrangement. He knew where she’d be.
A week later Ben was back at The Cross. She wasn’t there. Again Ben felt that pang, the let down. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he couldn’t help wondering if she also thought of him. Oh come on. She was from another world, an alien visitor who had appeared and by her very nature, would disappear.
But then, the following Friday night, as he was cruising Oxford St., he saw her walking. He pulled over and she piled in. They drove for hours, across to Coogee, followed the beaches south. They talked, played CD’s. She stayed the night again.
A pattern developed. Ben found himself thinking about her a lot, casually bumping into her up the Cross, or wandering around Darlinghurst. He wondered if she knew how many times he’d driven around and gone home disappointed, before he’d casually bump into her. Each time they did bump, they’d end up at home.
Ben didn’t know it, but Niya too was wandering, hoping they might casually bump into each other. She knew there was no real place in his world for her, she didn’t want his world, but she longed for the peace she felt with him on the balcony over the sea, and in his bed. She had no wish to be his lover, it wasn’t that, yet she’d melt against him warm and aroused by his health and strength.
There alliance continued this way for months. It was theirs, no one else’s, and neither shared what was happening. They were a force against the world. She was deeply grateful that he never offered her the money he clearly had, and she clearly needed. That he’d listen to her without advising. That he never pushed for her to stay when she needed to go. She had seen the heroin in him sometimes, when his eyes would droop, but he had none of the desperation of the junkies she knew. He never used in front of her, and she never mentioned it.
Ben did indeed have a great reserve of strength, but the heroin was chipping away at it. It was changing him. He was beginning to obsess, Niya constantly on his mind. The nights she wasn’t there felt less than they should. She was an absence, and too many nights now he filled that absence with heroin. Never during the day though. Never let it affect your work.
Boundaries.
Niya began to hate the city. She missed the Nimbin hills, the sea, the longed for trees and sand. She missed the honest messiness of her family. Now that she knew the world she could appreciate the truth they carried in their failings. Everything here, in the city, was false. Everything except Ben, and the balcony over the sea.
_________________________________
A light warm breeze drifted over them. The sky was clear with a bright full moon hanging over the sea. Niya and Ben went for a walk along the cliff path. At Tamarama they descended the steps to walk in the water. Ben was in his board shorts, Niya stripped to her underwear, and holding hands they walked into the sea. The first wave separated them as Ben dived under and Niya jumped up, loosing an involuntary squeal. They played in the shore break, riding the frothy little white tumbles into the beach and running out to do it again. They came together laughing, breast to chest and their lips met. They tasted the salt, felt the warm cavities of their mouths.
Ben and Niya walked home slowly, his arm draping her shoulders, hers loose around his waist. At home they shared the shower, washing away the salt. They didn’t fall into passion and bed though. It wasn’t like that. They sat on the verandah and shared a smoke, drank of the moon, quiet but for Bowie drifting out the open door.
So I turned myself to face me
But I never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast, to take that test.
Later, when they went to bed, their bodies clung in a way they never had before. They kissed, they explored. Ben was slow, strong, lovely. Niya rose to his touch until there was an urgency. Only then did he enter her.
Something changed in the flow.
Niya lay beneath him, dead still.
Ben had known women and girls since he was 14. Like every boy he was clumsy but he was never a pig. He loved. He learned to read the language of bodies. He knew enthusiastic women, knew when it was real and when it wasn’t. He knew quiet and tender women. He’d felt abused women tighten beneath him. He knew when to back off. But with Niya he was lost. She didn’t draw him in, but neither did she push him back. She was still as stone.
Minutes ticked by. Ben held his weight from her, unsure. Finally, feeling no actual resistance he took Niya to be a woman who enjoyed the dynamic of passivity and power. Encouraged by his conclusion he grew strong. He held her arms above her head and came.
Ben got it wrong.
_________________________________
Ben had to work in the morning. He left Niya sleeping and slipped out but was home by lunch time. She was gone. He felt a madness now. He needed her. He wanted to call but they had never swapped numbers. It was an undeclared part of what they were doing, that fate would decide their meetings. Ben chose to push fate and drove up to Darlinghurst. He’d dropped her home once and so he knew where she lived. He drove down her street. He drove through the Cross. He drove down William Street and back up Oxford.
Ben drove for two hours, then he went home to mix up a taste.
It was the middle of the afternoon.
___________________________________
Next night Ben was up the Cross. No Niya. He was there again Friday night, Saturday night. No Niya. He was losing it. Out every night, then home to shoot up.
After two weeks he broke the rules. He went to Niya’s terrace, knocked on the door. It was opened by a skinny kid in tracky dacs and a ripped t-shirt.
“Yeah?” the kid said.
“Is Niya here?”
“Hang on.”
The kid closed the door and disappeared. After a minute, the door half opened. Niya held it there.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said.
Niya hesitated, made up her mind, and opened the door.
“Come in”.
Ben followed her down the hall to the lounge. Somewhere further back someone was belting a set of drums. The lounge was a wreck. A low table covered in trash. Chip packets, empty wine bottles, plastic bottle bong. The skinny fella in the ripped t shirt sat with another kid on the couch. A girl, maybe 14, glared at him from an armchair. No one invited him to sit. He stood there, too big in his board shorts and rip curl t-shirt. The skinny kid stared at him.
“Surf do ya?”
The girl sniggered.
To his left a shirtless guy lay on his belly on an old mattress, face in a lap top. A girl in a singlet and underwear sat astride his back. She stared at Ben and ground her crotch against the boy. Niya slumped into an armchair.
“Get you anything?” she said.
“Nah, I’m good.”
There was one vinyl covered straight up kitchen chair opposite the couch. Ben sat on it, like a job applicant. The skinny guy leaned forward to pack a bong.
“Just thought I’d say hello,” said Ben.
The skinny kid pulled his bong, blew a cloud of smoke across the table, sat back. He never offered one to Ben.
Niya stared at the table.
There was nothing to say.
Ben stood up and walked out the door.
__________________________________
Ben drove straight to the bank, making calls on the way. He withdrew $5000 and headed home with two ounces of clean smack.
Boundaries, like borders drawn and redrawn, are fiction.
___________________________________
I had so many dreams,
I had so many breakthroughs
You, my love, were kind,
But love has left us dreamless.
Perhaps you’re smiling now,
Smiling through this darkness
But all I have to give
Is guilt for dreaming.