She has a photograph of me from that time, standing outside a Victoria Street grocery. I’m in a black T-shirt and my arms are crossed. The sign above me reads, HUNG PHAT! It’s Vietnamese and we don’t know what it means. But she thinks it’s funny. ‘Are you hung?’ she yells at me. We’re at Luna Park, off our heads, riding a roller-coaster. I scream back, ‘You’ll never know!’
We’ve never seen each other nude. I have imagined it.
The photograph of me rides her wallet. It’s the only photograph there.
•
Work changed me. Zazie said that about me and I guess she was right. I was working in the city, selling phones and faxes, the odds and ends of communications. I sleepwalked through it, putting money away each week, cutting down on going out. I was determined to travel and Zazie slipped out of my life. She was studying, meeting people, fucking women. I receded from her world. From time to time we’d ring. I’d leave messages on her machine and she’d leave messages with my mum. She got tattooed and nose-ringed. Work had me in a white shirt and a tie. She came in one day to take me to lunch. The guys I worked with stared hard at her.
She kissed me across the counter. ‘Can I take you away from here?’
‘Please do.’ I was in the middle of a sale, spinning bullshit about mobile phones to a nervous carpenter who was sniffing the air. It was Zazie he could smell. She smelt of sweat and incense, of dope and cigarettes. Herbal cigarettes. She walked through the store, caressing the hardware.
Lunch was three quick pots and a packet of Twisties at the Charles Dickens. She told me about a video she was making, asked me how my savings were going.
She pulled at my tie, poked fun at me. ‘You look so straight.’
‘I have to look straight.’
I promised to send her a postcard from America. She’d always been in love with the myth of New York. I was visiting America for her, she was making me do it. ‘New York, now that’s a real city,’ she said, ‘the only real city.’ She promised to write to me while I was away.
I returned tipsy to work, chewing on some PK, fingers yellow from the Twisties. I could no longer smell Zazie in the shop. Only the dry odour of plastic.
•
I ring her on a Friday night. I leave this message on the machine: ‘Zaz, it’s me. Got a call from Kayla yesterday. She’s getting married. She’d like you to come along. It’s a small do, no big church bullshit. Call me.’
On the following Thursday, Dad tells me Zazie called. She wants to know when the wedding is.
I call back, leave this message: ‘Zaz, the wedding is on March twenty-third. Can you make it? Call me. I want you to be my date.’
Three weeks later I get a call. I’m home alone, watching a porno. I pause the video and grab the phone. The TV screen flickers on a bright yellow image, a close-up of a woman’s face, her eyes closed, her head tilted back, simulating ecstasy.
Zazie rushes into a conversation, stumbling and sliding through words and emotions. She can’t make the wedding. Too much study. She’s in love. Her video is going to be shown in some festival in St Kilda. Anyway, she doesn’t like weddings. Tells me to give her best to Kayla, bitches about her buying into the suburban dream. She sounds as if she’s speeding. Abruptly she tells me she has to go. Someone’s at her door. I say goodbye. There’s a click, then the dial tone.
I continue the video but I’m wanking without a hard-on. When I come, it’s nothing, a zero instead of a feeling; it’s like taking a leak but there’s less sensation.
•
There were between seven hundred thousand and a million scrolls in the ancient library in Alexandria. Writings from Phoenicia and Persia, from across the Mediterranean. Mathematics and astrology, plays and epics.
In Zazie’s video, simply called Hypatia, a woman is seen walking through a library, touching the spines of books. A security guard comes into the library and arrests her. There is a fire and books are thrown on it. Then the video cuts to the woman’s head being shaved; her hands are cuffed and her clothes are stripped away. Cut. A scroll is thrown on the fire. A flash to a computer screen being logged out, then a hammer smashes through the screen. The end.
There is light applause after the screening. I cheer, I whistle, I stamp my feet. Zazie is in the row in front of me and she turns around with a wicked smile. ‘Quiet, you dag,’ she whispers. She’s blushing. I keep cheering. I am — there is only one possible word for it — I am proud.
•
Five postcards and a letter.
Greece, 5 May 1992, a statue of Athena on a suburban roof, crisscrossed by television aerials. I write: Zazie, this place is chaos. The banks are always on strike, the streets are always crowded, day or night, and it stinks. I kind of like it. I met up with a German woman who speaks very good English and what sounds like passable Greek. She and I are going to travel to some of the islands together.
Lesbos, 23 May 1992. Three naked women, all blonde, lying on a beach. Zaz, saw this card and immediately thought of you. I’ve spotted many dykes here but there doesn’t seem to be any Museum of Lesbian History. Did you make that up? It is stunning here, but I miss Australian spaces. You can’t get away from anyone here, too many tourists. All the Greeks seem to have a brother or sister or cousin in Melbourne. Write to me at 17 Rue d’Alsace, Paris. Claudia, who I’m travelling with, has got a friend who’ll put us up there. Write. I underlined this final word twice.
Paris, 8 July 1992. The Eiffel Tower. I love this city. It is beautiful in the morning light, in the bright sun, it’s glorious at night. I feel cheap and nasty, everyone else is dressed so well. Australia seems very far away and Melbourne seems so limp in comparison. The flat we’re staying in is small and cramped, it overlooks the railyards. But I don’t give a damn. It took less than a minute, Zazie, less than a minute to love this place. P.S. Visited Morrison’s grave. Placed flowers on Oscar’s tomb, from both of us.
Dublin, 16 October 1992. An A4-sized advertisement for Sinéad O’Connor’s new CD, I ripped it off a shop window and I write on the back. Gorgeous, isn’t she? I’m so glad to get out of London. Everyone was whingeing and gloomy. Ireland is obviously poorer but people are friendlier. Also, too many Aussies in England. I wanted to escape all that. I’m going to Belfast, to visit some of Dad’s family. I feel at home here in Ireland. Does that sound weird? I don’t think it’s a pretence. I am relaxed here. There’s a Palestinian student I met at the hostel that you’d really like. Her name is Anna and she’s doing a PhD on Gertrude Stein. Do you know her? She was a dyke writer long ago. Of course you probably know her. I’ve got one of her books, QED. I’m sending it to you surface mail along with some other things. Anna is good to talk to. She talks about Israel, Palestine, war. She explained to me the differences between Christians and Muslims. I just listen to her, keep my mouth shut. I’m realising I know nothing.
New York City, 3 January 1993. The Chrysler Building. Happy New Year, Zaz. It’s fucking freezing and the hotel room is sucking up all my cash. I’m going to try and hitch down to the south tomorrow. Is the Chrysler still your favourite building? I keep trying to look inconspicuous on the streets but I can’t help looking up and then standing like a stunned mullet in awe of the architecture. Don’t write now, I’ll be back home soon. Unless some rich yank wants to be my sugar mummy or daddy (at this stage, I’m open to all offers). You’ll have to visit here. You’d love it, it is so exciting. At the bottom of the card, two sentences are scrawled out with heavy ink.