This is what I crossed out, what I couldn’t send to Zazie: Mate, I hate this place, I hate NY, I am lonely and I’m cold and no one speaks to me. I hate their fast chicken, fast ribs, fast burgers, fast fries, fast lives.
And from San Francisco, 10 January 1993. A crumpled paper napkin. Across it, scrawled in blue pen, were the words: Zazie, Australian girls are cool. It was signed Jennifer Jason Leigh.
I add a note. Zaz, she was sitting, reading a paper, in a booth across from me. I felt like a deep dag but I had to get her autograph for you. You’re absolutely right. She’s fucking beautiful! The USA, mate. What a trip!
•
She picked me up from the airport. She had her hair shaved. I hugged her tight. Driving into Melbourne, the city looked fragile, deserted and flat. We had a coffee in Smith Street and all I could think of was how big the streets were, and how white everyone’s face was. Zazie was very white. Not just pale, but skin that came close to the perfection of white.
‘Sorry I didn’t write. I was so busy, I’m making another film, a real film this time.’
‘The other one was a real film.’
‘No, that was video.’
She kept talking, I sat there watching Australia go by. Home. I was missing Europe.
•
Her film is called Trace. It’s eight minutes long and shot in black and white. It opens on an old woman’s face; in voiceover we hear her talk about an old pub in Richmond where dykes used to hang out. It was called the Kingston. Then we see the old woman climb some stairs and enter a dance club. The music is loud, something not quite techno, not quite house. The old woman takes a seat by herself and watches young women in leather and vinyl on the dance floor. Another close-up on her face, lashed by the strobe. The music fades. She starts talking to the camera, telling us about the Kingston. There’s a cut to a group of women sitting around a pub table. The camera pans across their faces. Some are middle-aged, the others are much older. They are drinking and laughing. Two of the women kiss, a long, passionate, wet kiss. Then up come the credits.
Zazie’s film did have an effect on me. It was the kiss. There was something unique in that screen kiss. It wasn’t that they were women; it was that they were old.
‘That’s the best bit,’ I told her afterwards.
‘Yeah,’ she answered, ‘I know.’
•
My wedding was small, a ceremony in a garden and lunch at a pub. I invited Zazie but she couldn’t make it. She sent us a card, addressed to me and Tania. Good luck, kids. That’s what it said.
•
Tania comes into the bathroom. I’m taking a shower. She’s got the TV Guide in her hand. She says something but I don’t catch it. She pops her head in and I kiss her on the lips. The Guide gets wet. ‘Look,’ she points to the page, ‘next Friday they’re playing Zazie in the Metro on SBS.’
I jump on the phone as soon as I get out of the shower. I ring, there’s a long wait, and some guy answers.
‘Is Zazie there?’
‘She doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t have a number.’
I watch the movie with Tania, tape it. It’s about a young French girl who always misbehaves. She even looks like Zazie — I mean, the real Zazie. It is shot all around Paris and I turn to Tania. ‘We should go. I’d like to take you there one day.’
Tania says, simply, ‘We will.’ I rub my face all over her, smell her, touch her, kiss her, and I forget about watching the movie.
•
I come home from work and the house is empty. Tania’s still at college, evening classes. The answering machine is flashing three messages. After a call from Mum and a message from the plumber, Zazie’s voice crackles and laughs.
‘Anyone there? Anyone there! Jesus, this is costing a fortune. I’m in Alexandria — it’s ugly. They’ve ruined it. They must have burned down everything, it’s all fucking concrete boxes. Except for the Mediterranean. Now, that’s beautiful. I got my tarot done by this Egyptian woman. She spotted I was a Virgo straight away. Probably all crap but it was fun. She let me videotape her. Jesus, I wish you were home. We haven’t talked for ages. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Maybe never. I’ll write, I promise I’ll write. Or maybe I’ll phone from New York. Sorry, this is costing a fortune. Love to Tania. Goodbye.’
The machine spurts out a few weak beeps, the tape wheezes back on rewind and then clicks to a stop. I make myself a sandwich, munch on Vegemite and bread. I go outside. There’s still a few hours of light. I start digging and planting.
Saturn Return
I WISH WILLIAM BURROUGHS HAD NEVER done the Nike ad. As Barney says, he lasted into his eighties without compromising his credibility and then he blows it all to sell sports shoes on television. Trying to be generous, I argue that the approach of the millennium is screwing with lots of people’s heads.
‘Sure, sure,’ mutters Barney, ‘but how’s he going to stand up now and recite poetry that tells multinationals to fuck off and go to hell?’ He bangs his fist on the steering wheel.
‘Why does everyone end up disappointing you?’
I’ve come to expect to be disappointed by people. The faces that stare down on me from my bedroom wall are all dead. I mean the famous faces: Monroe, Clift, Rainer Werner. Janis, River and Jean Seberg. They are all dead and they all died young. I’m much harder on the living: not so much with family and friends; you learn to tolerate the vulnerabilities of the people around you. It is harder to do that with those beautiful faces caught timelessly on film, photograph or screen, who one moment are expressing their love of art, or talking passionately about their dreams, about changing the world; then flick, another image and they have reneged, become fake. There’s a photograph of Jane Fonda, black and white, limp hair over her face, her fist raised in support of the Vietcong; and then there’s that video of her, with her airbrushed body outstretched, doing aerobics to bad disco. Once you lose someone’s respect it is the hardest thing to win back.
•
We are travelling to Sydney. The sun is beating down on us and the inside of the Valiant feels like an oven: our skin sticks to the vinyl seats. Barney is driving, his hands steady on the wheel as the sun tans his naked torso.
‘Whoo hoo, baby,’ he sings out to me, ‘ain’t it fucking great to be out of the city?’
It takes around eleven hours to get from Melbourne to Sydney, nine if you put the foot down on the accelerator and evade the cops. We take three days. The first night we stop at Bonegilla, just before the New South Wales border. Barney wants to see the skeleton of the migrant camp. It is an obsession for him. Many nights at dinner at my folks’ he would spend the evening asking my father about his life in the camp, his voyage to Australia. I would let the two of them talk, occasionally butting in with an observation they would both ignore. Often I’d leave them talking in the lounge and I’d go in and help Mum wash up. Their intimacy never disturbed me. I never had a close relationship with my old man but through Barney’s persistent questioning I discovered my father’s history.
The sun is retreating when we arrive in Bonegilla. Barney wants to go straight to the camp but we can’t see any signs showing where it might be. When we book into a caravan park on the edge of the lake, I ask the owner if she knows where the old camp is located.
‘Love, it was over there,’ and she points across the lake to a small stretch of land jutting out into the water. ‘But there’s nothing left, you know. It all belongs to the army now. Were your parents at the camp?’