Black is the New Black

Posted in Sushi Central by admin on Haziran 11th, 2008

This story originally appeared in SOOB :: New Writing, an anthology of stories by young Brisbane writers published in conjunction with the Straight Out Of Brisbane festival 2004, edited by Chad Parkhill.

1.

The first time I see Sara, she is painting the anarchy symbol on the crotch of a naked mannequin with a felt pen. Sara works here�one of those fashion shops in the Valley, the kind that are way too cool for you, the kind that make you anxious about fitting in.

Sara is one of Mark�s friends. Mark is a boy I met at an electroclash party at Ric�s several nights ago. There weren�t very many people on the dance floor. Our eyes met over New Order�s �Bizarre Love Triangle�, and he bought me a beer, which I accidentally spilled all over him but he said it didn�t matter so that was alright. We spent about an hour on the balcony�hugging one another, because it was cold that night and also because it was kind of, you know, nice�and discussing our mutual love of 1980s synth pop, of Prozac Nation, of old videogames and poorly-translated Japanese-into-English. We decide we should form a band together, but we don�t know what to call ourselves yet. There�s plenty of time to think of that, though. We go back to his house in New Farm but nothing really happens, and we fall asleep together on his bed, which is also, you know, nice.

We spend a long time hanging out together�we get drunk on vodka in the middle of the day, play his CDs and jump around the room and talk about the band we�re going to form. He tells me that he�s studying journalism�I tell him I�m doing that as well, but neither of us likes it very much, and all we can do is laugh. Sara is studying fashion design. He says maybe that sounds kind of cool, but he�s not sure. He shows me some of his lyrics�I start playing around on this old keyboard that he has, just making things up, and he starts singing along, not very structured but it still sounds pretty good.

We visit Sara at her work, and we hang out there all day, playing CDs, talking to people, talking about the band, and it�s cool. I skip some of my classes to be there, but I don�t mind, because Mark is more interesting than my classes anyway. I tell him this and he smiles, and we kiss, which is nice. We tell Sara about the band we�re forming and she asks if she can be in our band too and we tell her maybe.

2.

Mark: Mark is cute, and possibly bisexual, although he�s not sure exactly. His influences include the Jesus and Mary Chain, antidepressant medication, new garage and back issues of The Face. He plays guitar in a band called Haruki Raccoon and has an unnerving talent, I�m told, for staring straight ahead and playing the same chord over and over again.

3.

Acute boredom. Retail insanity. Fashionable angst turned up to about fifteen. We�re out in the city today�just wandering around. Mark�s friend Zoe drives us in. She drives an old Volvo, because she says that Volvos are punk rock. I don�t fully understand but I don�t disagree with her either.

Sometimes Mark and I hold hands. Sometimes we don�t. The afternoon passes in a blur�like anime sped up way too fast, to the point of being completely incomprehensible. The Yeah Yeah Yeah�s �Bang� plays over the soundtrack as we move through a variety of clothing outlets in the city, raw nerve cells, picking up whatever random pieces of sensory information come our way. Plastic teddy bears painted to look like robots, ripped shirts with prints of Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux on them that sell for a hundred and eighty dollars, anarchist badges, original Converse sneakers, Miss Kittin CDs, shirts by Ben Sherman, Imitation of Christ. This whole faux-punk-goth-new-wave kind of aesthetic. DIY. Garage bands are in. Black is the new black. I have had a lot of coffee today and have walked around the city without eating and I fear my body may be going into some sort of withdrawal.

We stop in this one particular place. Mark tries on a shirt�pink, with a picture of a sad-eyed bunny rabbit on the front. He asks me if I like it and I�m not entirely sure but I tell him that I do, just to hear myself say something. He seems pleased with this and debates whether or not to buy it, and I tell him he looks good in it and he thanks me but doesn�t buy it. Sara and Zoe fight over a denim jacket with US army patches on the front and Zoe says she saw one just like it in The Face last month, or maybe it wasn�t The Face. She can�t really remember and this seems to freak her out a lot, and Sara says it looks tacky anyway, and they put it back on the rack. The boy behind the counter, who is pierced, pouting and wearing a sleeveless shirt with ASK ME ABOUT MY DEALER written across the front gives us a strange look as we leave and I give him a strange look back.

4.

We spend about an hour browsing in this very large bookstore in the city. Mark considers buying the DVD of Donnie Darko, large chunks of which, he insists, are based on his own life. I have no way of proving or disproving this because I haven�t seen it�I have no frame of reference and I take what he says to be true. I read through all of their music magazines, British and American ones, the imports. This month, Humourless magazine has a feature about a new husband-and-wife group called The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight. They describe themselves as �a post-post punk new wave garage electroclash band from New York City�. Their singer is an expatriate Brit called Lorna X, who confesses her �weakness� for boys in lipstick, especially Duran Duran, and is photographed wearing a dress made of fake one-dollar bills. I call Mark over and show him the photo�he agrees that Lorna X is pretty cute, but says I�m cuter, which is nice, and I tell him I think the same.

5.

We�re sitting around, four of us, having coffee at an open-air place in the city. We�re relaxing, Zoe says, �because shopping is tiring.� Sara orders a long black, but when it comes she decides she doesn�t want a long black and asks for an iced chocolate instead. Mark asks for a coke and, as he sips it, he keeps looking around nervously: looking around at the people who pass by, furtive glances at pigeons fighting over dropped french fries, as though he�s unsure of something. We talk, mindless. The conversation turns:

1. To Zoe�s screenwriting class: Which apparently �sucks�. When we ask her why, she explains that her tutor has a habit of showing up to class �totally wasted�, and once cited Pokemon 2000 as her favourite movie. I find this incredibly depressing for some reason although I don�t say anything.

2. To large corporations: We decide that they are bad, because they exploit the third world, though I�m not entirely sure how we arrive at this conclusion.

I watch Mark, vaguely hypnotised, as he digs his fingernails into the fleshy part of his upper arm. Nervous gesture, I guess. I stare, numbly fascinated at the marks that his nails leave there�four neat, pale crescents that slowly, slowly begin to flush with red. It seems to take too long, like it should have happened more quickly, or maybe I�m just watching it too hard. I look away before anyone notices, but no-one has, because they�re all listening to Sara, who is still talking. Lucky. It�s hard for me not to look at the marks, which are red now. The conversation turns again:

3. To a top that someone saw earlier today: With a picture of Kimba The White Lion on it, which was apparently �really cool… except it was really expensive.�

4. To whether or not The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight have sold out: Sara insists that they have and most of us agree although once again I�m not quite sure how we arrive at this conclusion. Mark says that he�d �sort of like� to buy their album anyway and most of us agree on that as well, although Sara insists that they�re �over� finished.�

I�m still staring at Mark, at that place on his upper arm. I am reminded, strangely enough, of this poem that I had to study at school. Seems like a long time ago, though it hasn�t even been a year. I can almost hear the words�I mean, if I try really hard, I can almost hear myself reciting them, but� no. I can�t quite make it come, but it was something to do with moments turning into crystals� With moments that stay with you in spite of yourself�and nothing, not memory or time�can make them dissolve. I get the feeling that this afternoon�sitting at this caf� discussing mindless crap, staring at those places on Mark�s arm where the nails have been, the places that have mostly lost that redness now and faded back to a kind of white�is a moment that will crystallise. When I think of being young and skipping classes, hanging out and doing things that I�ve never done before, this is the moment that will stick in my memory, provide a point of reference.

6.

I don�t go home much during those weeks. I don�t know whether my presence there is missed or not, but it doesn�t matter, because it seems like with Mark, I have discovered something more. Something� I don�t know. Significant. Lots of the last week has been made up of moments like this. Moments that crystallise. When I look back now and think, this is what it was like to be young, these are the moments that stick in my mind.

7.

�Let�s go out,� Mark says to me, later that afternoon. We are sitting in the living room of the house in New Farm. We have been kissing, but now we�ve stopped. New Order�s �Bizarre Love Triangle� is on the stereo. �Let�s do something mad.�

�Why?� I ask.

�Because I need to. Some days, I have this� acute sense that everything I know, that everything that makes me feel safe, secure, everything I love is just not going to be there anymore. That these things are all going to fall apart, and there�s nothing that I can do about it.�

Mark slides in closer to me on the couch. I don�t know what to say so I keep listening.

�No matter how good I feel, no matter how contented I feel when I�m with you, even when I�m happy�even when I�m perfectly, completely happy, like when I�m dancing in a club or like when we�re kissing, part of me feels� or maybe it knows that all of these things are going to go away.�

�What do you mean?� I ask, although I only ask so I will have something to say.

�Like� this,� he says, motioning in the general direction of the stereo. �That the song that takes me out of myself, that makes me think of you, won�t always be playing. That you won�t always look at me like that.�

�You shouldn�t say that. You shouldn�t think about us being apart. I mean, we�re not, and that�s not going to change� I mean�� I hope I sound sure of myself when I say this.

�So, as happy as I feel, I�m always preparing for some sort of� downtime, I�m trying to push it farther away, distract myself from it, even though I always know it�s coming. The second that I�m left alone, when there�s no music playing, when the afternoon light is falling in a certain way� when it�s just me. I can feel it all ending. I can feel everything I think is true falling down around me. And happiness seems like a kind of joke�it�s like I�ve suddenly had the rug pulled out from under me, and I realise that everything that�s good, everything I think makes me happy, is really just a distraction from� this. Everything I do is an attempt to outrun this blackness. But how can you hide from something when it never goes away?�

This is one of those moments that will crystallise, and in years to come when I think of houses in New Farm, of couches on winter afternoons, of being in love, this is the moment that I will think of.

8.

�It�s this poem that I had to read last semester at uni,� says Zoe. It�s nine-thirty at night, and we�re walking into the Valley to go to some club. I forget where. Mark is holding my hand. Maybe I�m holding his. It feels nice.

Zoe continues. �I forget what it was for, but it went, like� Our friends were not unearthly beautiful / Nor spoke with tongues of gold.�

�Wow. That�s really� profound.� Sara.

�Shut up�it�s a good poem. I�m not saying it right, I don�t think, but��

�I am the terror that flaps in the night.�

�Does anyone want to get a pizza on the way?�

�Yeah. But we shouldn�t get one with meat on it though, because I�m thinking of becoming a vegetarian soon.�

�What do you think, Josh?�

�I don�t know. I don�t really mind,� I tell him.

Mark�s hand in mine feels warm.

9.

It�s late at night. Mark has been acting weird all week. We�ve spent the last few days holed up in his room smoking weed and living like Sid and Nancy or something and I can sense something is coming but I�m not sure what. He tells me he�s never really been in love before and we have sex twice on the floor and try to do it a third time on the bed but don�t. He goes to the bathroom and stays there for a really long time. I pour myself another drink but there�s no ice left and very little tonic water so I just have straight Absolut. I get back in bed, though I�m still not feeling particularly sleepy, so I lean up against the headboard, which is cushioned. I watch the news for a while, and there�s an item I think might be about suicide bombings in Israel�although I�m pretty drunk on the vodka, so I can�t be one hundred percent sure. After a while, the bathroom door opens and Mark comes back to bed. He doesn�t say anything. He slides under the sheets next to me but when I put my hand on his stomach he moves out of the way. I drain my glass and he lies there, staring at the ceiling, refusing to touch me. I offer him another drink and he nods his head. I fish around for the Absolut, which has rather inexplicably rolled under the fucking bed, and when I tell him that we�re out of ice he laughs. When I give Mark his glass, he puts his hand over mine and looks at me for a very long time. This could mean any of a hundred different things but I�m not particularly capable of analysing it right now so, instead of that, I let go of the glass and pour myself another. Then he says that the news is depressing and can we please not watch it because he�s not in the mood to feel depressed, so I find the remote and after flicking around for a while we watch a DVD of some movie which has breakdancers in it.

10.

I know it sounds stupid, but whenever I think of unearthly boys�boys who like old videogames, boys who wear vests and have messy hair, punk-rock boys who break your heart and who speak with tongues of gold�I think of Mark. When we stopped seeing one another, it wasn�t very dramatic�we were, and then one day we weren�t. We never started the band, but it didn�t really matter. When I think of being young, of a time when things really were that easy, he is what I think of.

Copyright Alasdair Duncan 2004