The Border of Love

My friend popped by with a black candle after getting my message that
Bukowski had died and we sat and watched it melt onto the balcony. This
time my friend finished the wine that I couldn't.

My friend knew everyone in St. Kilda and then drip-fed them to me as the
months sank around us.

One day we walked out of the bottleshop and broke off into the future
and across the sea.

"It appears that we have the same taste in women", said my friend.
"So we are bound," I said, "to fall for the same girl one day"
"And have a threesome?"
"But could that last forever? No, I wouldn't risk love that way"
"Then you can have her, and I'll experiment elsewhere" said my
friend and we locked long eyes deeply.

The hostel had a young stray cat called Jack and my friend hated him. He
was just balls and aggression and extended claws. My friend hates
testosterone.

My friend is French. We woke up the Israeli girl and walked to
Balaclava. The plan was to score some food vouchers. But they required
Health Care Cards and only I had one. With the $15 we bought crisps,
pasta sauce, mackerel, herbal soap, mince, onion, an apple and organic
brown bread. They gave us change so we put it on a horse called Tipsy
Gypsy. My friend dresses like a German, with layers and a big scarf, and
unkempt hair.

It was my friend's belief that every fifteen thousand years a black hole
drifts close to our planet and causes time to slow so that a minute
lasts all day. People have so much time to analyse every trivial thing,
that we all get amazing revelations and transform in wondrous ways. My
friend believes we will get to experience this very soon.

The old Holden was full and the backseat had my friend and I crushed
together, amongst others. The day was miserable but it felt great to
leave the less cool folk languishing in our dust. It was a long way to
Bell's Beach but three roadsigns had us in stoned hysterics. Water
Sanctuary. No Shooting for 16 Kms. Lollipop Stream. Our dreadlocked
driver went through the occasional red light. My friend took uppers to
stay awake today. This was my In Crowd initiation.

My friend had been raving to me about this beautiful woman and when we
finally met I was in love instantly. Four years on and the feelings are
just as strong. Oh, my friend had started to fall for her as well.

Ran out of gas four blocks short. We walked to the servo and back, but
it still wouldn't start. We had two beers and then the class where we
meditated beside each other. Nothing unexpected happened except for a
shortage of babes. Then more gas and my friend got the car started after
threatening it with the RACV. Maybe we will hitch to Buchan next week.

My friend is working five nights a week at a hamburger bar in St. Kilda.
The previous kitchenhand had died from stab wounds. I visited my friend
and she fed me a bolognaise baked potato, which was too rich for me, and
I finished it. She said it was free but her bosses aren't nice people,
so it couldn’t be. She must have paid for it.

When she first arrived at the Backpackers it took me a week to pluck up
the courage to talk to her. So full of bold exuberance, she bounced
around, big-breasted, braless and wild. She belonged to a different
clique, the Confesters.

I bought a bottle of the cheapest port, probably not enough quantity to
satisfy us. But fortunately, outside again, she found a bottle of
expensive red wine, French of course, in her coat.

"English has more words to describe negative values", I proposed.
"But French is still the language of love", she said.

We did some surveys for VicRoads, the pay was excellent. One night was
at a fast busy intersection. We wore orange vests and it was very cold.
I was drunk and scared, so my friend side-stepped cars and interviewed
those that let her, and I observed from the footpath and took down how
many doors the car had and so on. She refused any of my port because she
was driving, but it was I that drove us home, she was falling asleep.

My friend would search secondhand bookshops for Jeanette Winterson. I
always read them when she had finished and sometimes before she started.

Many of her friends had been made at the Salvo's next door. We lined up
at 5 o'clock and ate chicken patties and peas and drank weak orange
cordial. My friend gave her platter to the man with no teeth who hadn't
queued. She pulled out photos from the Confest and the unfortunates
gathered around like Amazonian Indians would. The shot I secretly liked
the most was where she was basking naked in caked on mud, unabashedly.

My friend shifted to a flat across the road and we could wave from
balcony to balcony. They only had one entrance and it opened into the
kitchen and that's where the shower was too. It was raining and I could
see her showering through the window. The blur beckoned me in, but I
waited until she was decent and we could dry hair together. She told me
about her caravan in France and her horses. She suggested that I come
live with her for a while. She drew a map in the back of my journal.

My friend and the beautiful woman flew off to Europe together and never
returned.

My friend can't be described without the presence of others. Usually if
I find her on her own, she's asleep.

We took a tram to Hawthorn for the Celtic Festival. We couldn't afford
the spit roast but I bought a fridge magnet for when I get my own place.
She was in a baggy jacket and baggy pants and her hair was free. We sat
on cushions and absorbed some Irish music and the colours of folk
floating by. On the way home she scabbed too many cigarettes from
strangers, it irritated me. She is a Scorpio too.

In my friend's old brown stationwagon we cruised The Esplanade and
beach, and easy pickings of palm fronds, flowers and vines were obtained
from the public gardens. My friend bought some face paint from the two
dollar shop that didn't work, and some green food coloring that did. We
were the first guests and we stood guard at the door, saying that we
were elves. Our hair was green with living crowns and we draped
ourselves with vines and attached some branches. The socialite birthday
girls were twinned as little winged fairies, one all in gold and the
other all silver. A young forthright beatnik marched up and said that I
made a beautiful Puck and I pretended I knew what a Puck was. I asked my
friend and she said he had asked if I was available, and then she
giggled and smiled like a proud parent. Poetry stabbed over slow jazz
as my friend made circuits of new friendships and I watched. The whole
night I was surprised at how sober I was until we walked home in the
rain singing with our faces running green holding hands.

My friend is an English teacher. She knows bigger words than me.

I bought some new undies, the elastic had gone in my cheap ones from
Edinburgh. Onto my second bottle of port and my friend joins me on the
balcony and she rolls my grass into joints, something I've put off
learning. She has been seeing a short, deliberately bald woman who was
willing to be her immigration sponsor, but now the midget was dating a
guy and it was all off. My friend will have to leave in two weeks. We
both get sad.

I hold her for a long time as she sniffs and sobs. Then we go and
spraypaint love messages along roadside walls where the girl walks to
work every night. In silver, in French.

Of time, Jeanette Winterson once said: Thinking about time is like
turning the globe round and round, recognizing that all journeys exist
simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of
another, even though that other place cannot be felt or seen, our usual
criteria for belief.

The last time I heard from my friend was when she sent me two
photocopies of breasts. They were big and distorted, grey and cracked. I
couldn't tell which pair were hers.

I awoke at eleven thirty to my friend being very loud and over the top,
chasing folk around the hostel. I overheard from bed that they were all
tripping. I went to the TV lounge and watched pop videos. I wanted to
join them upstairs but my friend was intolerable with such manic motions
flowing through her. Maybe a cuddle when she needs it later.

My friend has a single hair growing between her breasts.

Sun is up, clouds gone, hot pissed tired horny and my friend pops over
and gets me to do her tarot, her future with an anonymous woman. Then
she tells me that she wanted to sleep with me last week some time, and I
replied that on Saturday I'd had similar feelings. Maybe, one day, we
mused. How peculiar.

On my pillow was a serviette. In pen it said "I'm sorry, I still love
you", accompanied by a shakily drawn smiley face.

On the way back my friend almost killed us turning right into oncoming
traffic, screech of tires etc. We talked about her and the beautiful
woman and how last night they had both been too tired and too scared of
sex. I told her of going home with an old gay sculptor because he
promised a great liquor cabinet. He tried to have sex with me but
my body wasn't interested and rebelled. My friend thought it was a
shame, and encouraged me to explore such things further.

My friend had no hate in her.

She was to come between 10 and 11, so at 12:30 I went and found my
friend asleep in her flat. We drove to the city, taking a backpacker to
the Immigration Department. We waited an hour for her in the car,
singing along to radio pop songs, especially "Laid" by James. It felt
like summer, we forgot everything. The girl failed to get her extension
and was in such a shitty mood we just left her there. We visited Vali
at a gallery. I reacquainted myself with her art. The intensity, power
and apprehension in the air was brilliant spiky and my friend was scared
of this tattooed lady, but she managed to lose herself in the paintings
for a while, and I got another autograph. Afterwards was the only time
she's ever commented on the human form. She was almost curious.

Her clan of friends kidnapped me, temporarily halting my soulless blood-
letting of claret. I had a great time and talked frank sex as usual with
the prostitute. My friend offered to give me a blow-job. She was drunk.
I should've said yes because the syndicate of my previous affections had
all refused to. Makes one paranoid.

I was in my friend's flat listening to a new CD and they returned home
in an anxious state. Rumours of general public awareness of our deals.
The cops wouldn't be far off. My friend gave me her share and went to
live with the beautiful woman. She didn't want to be deported. I went on
a binge.

My earlier happy banter, guessing French translations, disappeared as
the tab began. I looked over to my friend a lot. She stood out in 3D
vibrance. Then she slept on the couch and merged with it. A plastic bag
in the bin would become George Clinton's head - if I let it. A flattened
white terrier with sausage roll oozing limbs was just newspapers on the
floor. I endured it all until she awoke in the morning. My friend
notices me being quiet and maybe ill at ease - she takes me for a walk
along the cold beach. My legs are numb and I feel dizzy, so we sit
awhile and watch the seagulls.

I have so little hope of ever attaining that sex/love/girl combination,
I tell her. She doesn't believe me, but I always find some way of
failing, somehow. It's in my genes.

It was my friend's farewell night and dozens were invited. I turned up
to the nightclub just as two friends were leaving. I was very drunkenly
late and they admonished me. She was sitting on the dancefloor and I sat
down beside her. They had been filling her with green chartreuse and
before we could think we joined at the lips for a huge long beautiful
French kissing session, until the beautiful woman interrupted us and
took her home.

For a long time we had planned to get married. Just for convenience.
Nothing romantic. Just friends.