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Alan Wearne

Making the World Revolve (ii)

The Lovemakers Book One was published by Penguin Australia in 2001 and was awarded the 2002 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year, The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and the 2002 Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Australian Poetry.
The Lovemakers Book Two was published by ABC Books in February 2004.

This thirteen-sestina excerpt is from The Lovemakers Book Two, Part Fourteen, and is about 18 printed pages long.

Characters: Amanda: businesswoman Shannon, Carrie: two of her employees Wal, Bennie: Carrie’s friends Shannon’s fella The man Wal meets Liz, Chrissie, Louise: from Amanda’s past Gary: cop, Amanda’s friend, Carrie’s fiancé Kostas: moving through

Hannah, Leo, Carlo: Benny’s friends Cobber: New Zealander, shearer The Kid etc: taxi driver Shelton Lea: passenger Jack, Bernie: barmen Shane, Adrian, Iceman, The Moose: ex-footballers The Doc.: Sports psychologist Susan: Shane’s wife Stubbs: Shane’s ex-employer Barb, Claire: Shane’s sisters Roger: Barb’s husband Gibbo: sillybugger

Shannon, Amanda, Carrie

          Shannon knew that Queen Amanda’s reign

had limits. ‘Please,’ she warned in her clipped NZ

mutter/ accent (little in the world

exactly like it) ‘she’s playing favourites:

setting up the remainder and lying to their clientele;

watch it Carrie, you might be next.’

          But try to attempt an Operation Save Our Necks

and Amanda would commence to rain-

down the rhetoric: Carrie meant more than mere clientele,

didn’t she know that? That and the A-to-Z

of human nature (worthy-madam style): how favourites

are necessary: since half the world’s a man’s world

some ladies kept this fifty per cent of the world

revolving that much better. Fair as the next

boss? Amanda was much more! Weren’t they ‘favourites’

just by working for her?

                                                 Then charm reined

in all misunderstandings (from the ABC of revolt to the XYZ

of surrender . . . And as for clientele:

they just want ‘class’, that’s why they’re our clientele)

as this is a tough world, a negotiator’s world

where ‘Kerrys’ had to interchance for ‘Shannons’ (like

                                                                                                               Aotearoa doubling for NZ).

           ‘After me,’ Amanda negotiated,’ there’s only down. And what’s next?

You work The Cross, smacked-out in the driving rain!’

           (Of all her fantasy-advice hardly one of their favourites.

Still, they had far more believable favourites:

e.g. Amanda s golden rule with all potential clientele:

don’t expect some James Reyne,

he’s certain to be a Russ Hinze: all over the world

beer guts and red bull necks

were queuing: from NYC via NSW to NZ.)

          Oh yes, and Amanda loving Carrie this needed to be said:

Sorry Shannon, being one I’ve learnt far more on ‘favourites’

than all your guesswork, which amounts as next

to nothing.

                      Lining up like clientele

such thoughts flew into Carrie’s mind,

whirled themselves, then fluttered off.

                                                                             She looked out: rain

had started, clientele would be arriving in this rain.

          Ho hum.

                             Not perhaps on World Y, Galaxy Z,

but here on Earth favourites were pains in everyone else’s necks.

Wal

          That Christmas Eve all he wanted to hear

was Oh Wal a tea service!/ a dildo!/ one more Village People LP!

you shouldn’t have!

                                           But Benny was back with his folks

in Adelaide, and Tony the heart-throb ditto, Dubbo;

whilst Carrie, who’d scored herself some shiftwork

had slotted him in for lunch, tomorrow Chez the boss.

          A few months back Wal had cruised Big Boss,

the very latest in club-bars: great atmosphere: you could hear

the lot and understand zero. So, with plain chatting hard work,

let alone chatting up, Wal went to pee.

When he returned they were Pre-sent-ing Mister Dub-bo

Nineteen Eightywhatsit! Tell me, folks,

isn’t this one yummy?’

                                            ‘You’re dating a door prize? Folks

who cared for Wal (Benny, Carrie, even Kenny the boss

at work) were concerned. (Benny feigning the need to dub eau

de Cologne upon one’s temples, fearing that here

began yet another how-de-doo.

                                                                 Except, Wall finding in a pea

brain and melon pecs Mrs Wal, it seemed to work . . .

A man, Wal

except. . .

                   His name isn’t his name and doubtless his work

(if he thinks it that) is something not to tell the folks.

His kind of cash is as easy as shelling a pea:

‘So it’s your place is it Wal? You’re the boss!’

Then in the car, this Wal seems excessive: saying, almost to hear

himself how they’ll run off to Surfers, Cairns (yeah why not Dubbo?).

Pity this Wal is a bit like Dubbo:

something pleasant you just drive through . . . hardly work

at all, even if it had to be explained I’m not exactly here

for sex. Coming from decent folks

I gotta show you poofs a timeless lesson: who’s boss

from A to Z via KLMNOP

and return. As Wal gets hit again he starts pee-

and-shitting himself Why did Tony have to be in Dubbo?

And the man’s lips swell into boss

lips Yes they mouth Christmas gets lonely. His work

continues: lights off, curtains drawn, the folks

next door out; no-one to see, no-one to hear . . .

Amanda, Carrie, Shannon’s fella

           ‘Forget Your Ps and Qs,’ Amanda demanded ‘this isn’t work!

Your friend must’ve gone via Dubbo, Carrie. No-one, folks,

is a better boss than a madam. Do I detect Here here?

          With her head easing its stretch marks

of the past few nights there was plenty of rest

for the wicked on Amanda’s patio.

                                                                       ‘Still no news

of your friend?’

                                 ‘Off west, searching for his lounge

lizard . . . here today gone to Dubbo. That’s Wal.

Even with loved ones at Christmas shit happens.’

          Which was mean. Friendship, she knew, never happens

through ticks and crosses, a totting up of marks.

Yet if the doorbell rang she wished to think That’s Wal.

It never was and, prepared for an early night to rest

up for tomorrow’s shift, evening found Carrie in the lounge,

waiting this year’s variant of every Christmas news.

           (Wal chasing anyone but Tony would be news

to her, so why wasn’t he here, or at his phone? Little happens

at things like this without him.)

                                                                 Spread across the lounge

Shannon s fella watched sport: the year’s top tries, marks,

aces, sixes, holes-in-one. An interruption gave it a rest:

more on last night’s slaying.

                                                            Carrie shrivelled. ‘That’s Wal,’

she tried telling the fella.

                                                    ‘That’s what?’

                                                                                 That’s Wal!’

she finally howled (Amanda arriving to his explanation ‘. . . a news

flash . . . some dead guy ...’).

                                                           After she’d phoned Benny and the rest

Carrie had to stop. Sure, years after such a thing happens,

you might find yourself sighing What a way to go, top marks

but there’d never be, she sobbed on Amanda’s lounge,

any more additions to the Wal-tack (that vinyl lounge,

those 3-D nativities) and no more hair that’s Wal

(by Leo Sayer out of Harpo Marx).

          With the Pope poncing around, Amanda turned off the news.

Best love being efficient love she shrugged It happens.

He’d given Carrie much, she might spend years waiting the rest.

          So ‘Don’t move’ was suggested. ‘You better rest.’

          Carrie agreed: ‘But come over to the lounge

and hug me. I’ve a confession: it so happens

that when you met him you were to think So that’s Wal!’

          Kicked-on by the simplest, tears began again. Within hours news-

papers, leading with his face, would spray the town like blotch marks;

his friends waiting forever the rest of him.

                                                                                        ‘So that’s Wal,’

Amanda murmured. ‘Lounge back and soak in the news

as it happens. Full marks Sydney full marks.’

Benny

           ‘His wake,’ and Benny sighed, ‘wasn’t meant to be like this!’

           (As if Wal had a message for all these rooms of pick-ups,

neighbours, workmates, friends and everyone he’d ever loved

Sorry Benny, Carrie, Hannah, Kenny don’t want to be gratuitous

Tony, Carlo, Leo, M, but you’ll never get me

back again. I’ve gone a long way past mere dying.)

‘Sure,’ Benny was saying, ‘my friends have started dying.

But I’d have never thought like this!’

Though Wal, I always warned, you must be careful. Get me?’

           (But a killer, playing at pick-ups,

thought he’d audition for God, God and so gratuitous

with it. And, if all creation loved

its Wal, the only way this maniac loved

was staring into his victim — anonymous, dying —

knowing life as so gratuitous.)

          Then Benny shot out his hand flat like this!

and swiped the air: ‘Playing for rough trade pick-ups

he played himself for a mug. Please doesn’t anyone get me?’

(Yet all they were hearing was Wal Oh darls they’ll never get me.)

‘That man merely had to glance at certain men and he just loved!

I know I know not all of them were pick-ups,

and he was only after a touch of Elizabethan “dying”.

But how’d that final night occur: like this? Like this?’

(And Benny’s hand kept swiping. Gratuitous?

No, little was less gratuitous.)

‘Please Hannah,’ he motioned to their neighbour,’ get me

one more g and t? Where were we? Wal abroad? It goes like this!

If America was some guy aching to be loved

Wal would be the lover: He was dying

for it: their quaaludes, discos, movie stars. And pick-ups.

‘No no no! Wal admonished that’s a ute. Pick-ups

are something else: magic, trouble, totally gratuitous.

Sure were. Each time you cruised weren’t you, in some sense, dying?

And yet only weeks ago you get me

out of bed because you’ve lost your key. How I loved the way you loved

annoying me. Why do you think I carry on like this?

Because you really get me! Because, Wal, you were loved

right to that second someone smiled like this! When even “normal” dying

wasn’t gratuitous enough, and you’d to meet your ultimate in pick-ups.’

Carrie

          But weeks of continual tears weren’t practical

for Carrie: time lost, quite simply, was a life wasted.

          Though there was Amanda (her secular reverend mother)

dispensing what might have been a somewhat higher

kind of love: knowing how remarkable this was: to see

her friend still glowing over Wal, his life and passions.

          In that smorgasbord of passions

where, if you were ruthless — obliging/ meat-market practical,

there’d always be an inevitable Da! Ja! Yes! Oui! Si!

Wal couldn’t say his time was ever wasted:

with a cock stretching higher and higher,

and all these guys to do the stretching, this was one mother-

load of outrage!

                              Carrie, of course, promised not to tell his mother

how Wal was back being a serial cruiser with rough trade passions.

           ‘But I should talk,’ she sighed. ‘Tits and a fanny for hire!’

          And though caution was always counselled, being practical

never entered the Wal proceedings (until too late that night he was truly wanted).

          Amanda heard just once of his old lady;

she was more ludicrous than the Holy See;

if love were nourishment, hers was a packet of CC’s.

There was no further mention of the mother.

          Or, telling of Adrian, Carrie would bitch how he’d wasted

months of her energy. Twice. And how she’d thought Passions?

If only I could forget them! Grow up and be practical!

          And how, one day with all his ‘Hi ya everybody hi ya!’

Wal had arrived: an orderly who’d never climb much higher

(though, two hundred years ago, he might’ve run away to sea).

          Yet let’s be practical:

Wal in his simplicity had never thought This is one mean mother!

I must have him! Or did he? Who really knew his passions?

Not Carrie, not even Wal.

                                                        Oh you wasted

days figuring that one!

                                               And you avoided mirrors: telling how wasted

you’d become.

                              From today Carrie could only rise higher:

just to get up, there seemed no greater prize to seize.

Confusion, restraint, grief: there may’ve been other passions

but, like a baby screeching for its mother,

to sob your face off seemed utterly practical.

          Though passions weren’t meant to be so practical,

and knowing she’d never again hit a higher C,

‘Mother of God!’ was howled. ‘Am I wasted!’

Carrie, Amanda

          Carrie stayed at Amanda’s. In the spare bed

for nights she dreamt of Adrian and Wal. They curled

around her like cables.

                                               ‘How about some music?’ Amanda said.

‘How about Petula Clark’s “Colour My World”?’

(She was kidding of course.) ‘How about “ . . . ground control

to Major Tom”? How about some soul?’

          No, they’d pass on soul;

for Carrie was explaining how once she’d been to bed

with Wal: and it wasn’t a matter of self-control:

they’d talked and hugged till, curled

into his arms, she finally slept. This friendship was the truest world-

apart she’d ever known: whatever one of them said

nobody heard it quite like the other. Better left unsaid

never existed; until his death when Carrie, soul-

searching for questions, knew all answers were nothing but the world.

          Now: will Amanda and Carrie finally make it to bed?

Admit it readers: since they met hasn’t the prospect curled

about the psyche? Sorry, it’s out of your control.

Though, with pen and paper, at my control

panel (that’s a brain!) I’m working at it. That said

I haven’t the remotest need to think Wow! This’ll get their hair curled!

No, here’s what you’re getting . . .

                                                                        ‘Aren’t we near enough to soul-

sisters?’ Carrie asked Amanda. ‘Let’s go to bed.

I feel like you’re the greatest woman in the world!’

           ‘In the world?’

(Her friend had never felt like having that control.)

‘Please, just make me the greatest in my bed!’

          So they made love, great love. Enough said.

Real goosebumps stuff, from crown to sole.

          Later Amanda rolled a joint: stoking the filter she curled

the other end. Soon this leaf of smoke curled

off the number. Slowly it whirled

its way towards the ceiling. She stared, sold

on its pattern. Tonight, if I’m in control

of something rather nice, there’s plenty which needn’t be said

she thought, looking across the bed

at Carrie lying curled (sleep starting its control).

And yet a bedtime tale is always good for the soul.

           ‘Here’s how I started my way in the world . . .’Amanda said.

Monica, Liz, Louise, Chrissie, Monica’s parents

          In those days my name was Monica,

when the bad times were too good, the good times not too bad,

Liz was my best friend at Mary Immaculate.

(God I must’ve loved her!)

          Now here’s what four of us would do most Saturdays: tart

ourselves up like Dusty Springfield or Abigail, for all the fellas to behold.

          And here’s what they would behold:

Liz, Louise, Chrissie and Monica

being near-enough women.

                                                         (Later Louise, no-one was less of a tart,

went off and got herself a baby. Too bad

the father was this prick, Kim, who dumped her.)

          Then Mondays we’d return to the Academy of Mary Immaculate,

once more getting the lowdown on Our Lady: her centre-piece, the Immaculate

Conception, was something I couldn’t seriously behold.

Mary? Who in their right mind wanted to be like her?

           ‘Okay,’ a nun ordered, ‘look up Monica

in this dictionary of saints.’

                                                        Who was? Too bad,

I’ve forgotten.

                              Then I discovered St Mary of Egypt. What a tart!

She’d do me! Well not so much a tart

but this semi-reformed pro who’d one immaculate

way of working her pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. Too bad

the book fell open at that one! Rushing to Liz ‘Behold,’

I cried, ‘our patron saint!’

                                                      ‘My god, Monica,’

she gasped, ‘how’d they let you read about her?’

          Liz, what would I’ve done without her?

I’d a mother who thought me the total tart

and this sleaze of a dad.

                                                 ‘You’re Monica,’

he’d tease, ‘because the name sounds so grown-up.’

                                                                                                           With me feeling immaculate

as shit getting told how behold-

en I was to both the church and him.

                                                                               He wasn’t too bad;

at times; asleep. Too bad

he thought he was Hugh Hefner and all my friends especially her,

Liz, potential centrefolds.

                                                     Worse but, he didn’t know how to behold

a dressed-up daughter: his eyes might explode but a certain tart-

ness honed his words: ‘My but you look umm err immaculate?

Well I suppose that’s easy when Monica’s

y’ moniker. Say mother, take a perve at her

and behold! What? She’s no longer ours? Too bad,

for that is one immaculate tart!’

Amanda, Gary, Carrie

          Amanda told her friend Gary, Gary the cop,

‘You’ll love her, Carrie’s tough but sweet.’

          And the sex, if you’d to measure such things,

was pretty good, his best in ages.

          Later, when her head lay on his chest, he asked:

‘You really want to continue this kind of work?’

           Well, since he’d put it this way: ‘Work, work

enough as yours!’

                                   He flinched but, being a smart cop,

still guessed she liked him. Sorry he asked!

It’s just he was addicted to all that’s bittersweet.

          And, with a certain chivalry straight from the Middle Ages,

he kept in mind those things

Amanda mentioned: those certain things

she’d felt a necessity to say: ‘Make it work,

that girl’s never had a break in ages.’

           ‘You think I’m okay, Carrie? ‘As a cop

who knew you’d to take the sour with the sweet

he was edgy, fearing he’d drive back fuming Well I asked

for that one!

                          But ‘Gary,’ she laughed, ‘you needn’t’ve asked

I would’ve told you!’

                                               In the rush of things

he knew there was precious little ‘sweet’

(though who needed that) in being direct: ‘Okay, after work

one night care to go out with a cop?’

          Go out? She hadn’t been ‘out’ with anyone in ages.

          The next evening they just sat and talked for ages,

each answering what the other asked.

          He was divorced: ‘My ex is a lady cop.

I’m thirty-six, into fairly simple things:

a house, kids, holidays, work

and you!’

                     She paused: ‘Please don’t move us into the Honeymoon Suite

not yet. This’ll succeed toute suite

enough I guess. It won’t take ages.’

          Yet if his certainty that such an affair was set to work

chilled Carrie, slightly (that and how without being asked

love looked to be driving up) some things

Not just a client I’m falling for a cop!

some things were happening which hadn’t happened in ages.

           ‘Is this etiquette for the part-time working girl?’ she asked.

And ‘Cop it Carrie,’ she replied, ‘cop this one super sweet!’

Kostas, Amanda

          Someone had gone and got his cafés fired.

So Kostas was quitting Melbourne. Moving up the coast

he phoned Amanda, got invited over.

                                                                            Salads and mineral water

seemed the order of her Australia Day

with a small business theme propelling the chat (their variations:

cathouse and gambling joint making them almost soul mates,

well that’s how Kostas saw it).

                                                              Some mutual mates

down south (acquaintances she’d say) describing her had fired

the man’s imagination and, balancing brunch variations,

looking out on the inlet, Kostas conjured this part of the coast

for something like a future base. Could he return (well before Anzac Day,

he laughed) if she wasn’t busy? Back here to Pittwater?

          Now, who possibly was turning Amanda to water?

A lean, balding, presumptuous Cypriot with dodgy mates,

that’s who. Sure it still seemed early enough to nod g’day

and leave him be, but The moment’s arriving she thought when I’m to be fired

from my proverbial cannon again. How can I coast

through a life like mine surrounded by affairs, well their variations,

and stay immune? Oh, there’d be inevitable mood variations

but what could be done? Take one Regulove daily with water?

She knew you had to be an island most times, that giving any part of your coast

to a man ran risks: since under his command the mates

were sure to land. Which didn’t mean Amanda wasn’t fired-

up enough to try. Mmmmm that’d be the day.

But nothing, she warned herself, ever exceeds Day

One and its joy of starting. Consider these variations:

sherries being served, an opener taking block, the kiln fired;

and lovemaking as the sun dazzled back at them, from the water.

          By evening, more than merely mates,

her head lay in his lap; TV on, night descended the coast.

           ‘Just our luck!’ she wailed, ‘“Gibbo’s Coast-to-Coast,

Summer Edition”: name a daggier end to any day.’

          (‘Me with stupid,’ Gibbo pointed to himself, ‘he ‘n’ me is mates!’)

When such gag attempts were more like bad cocktail variations

(rotgut, syrups, heaps of cream) who wouldn’t prefer a decent book, a glass of water?

          Or Kostas? She aimed the remote control: ‘Television, you are fired!’

          Next morning letters got fired to all Amanda’s gang: ‘Dear Mates,

it’s me. Ever thought how sex, how love, hardly had variations? Well, since yesterday,

I’ve gone utterly to water; i.e. the entire Pacific hurtling into the East Coast. . .’

Carrie, Gary

for John Hawke

          And this was where Carrie’s momentum led: what she wanted to say being finally spoken.

          She was telling Gary of Adrian, her prick

of a former boyfriend: a one-time king of Melbourne football.

          Oh yes the name was known, Gary even remembered the nickname,

but knew it very much her business,

like many things. Were Carrie and Adrian still ‘friends’,

he wondered, still the ludicrous just good friends’?

No-one brought out Gary-as-decent-cop like her though: he’d never spoken,

never would, about Carrie and her love-business

(he wasn’t that much of a prick).

But even if Adrian had merely given her a nickname

he didn’t want to know it.

                                                     Gary too had tried football.

his kind of football.

For six seasons The Tigers gave him reasonable friends

and the unimaginative Plod for a nickname.

If a serviceable career his wasn’t spoken

in the same breath as Coote, Tutty, Gasnier. But now, when any line-of-credit prick

can’t wait to run a club, the game was just another business.

          Would Gary go into business?

Given how cops stayed the state’s leading political football,

and each third workmate had to be an Internal Investigation prick

why not?

                      ‘Who are my friends?’

such a climate got him asking. Somebody must’ve spoken

something, for Gary acquired a dog of a nickname:

which was to stick, the nickname.

          Adrian, Carrie told him, had gone into business.

Even now his was a name to be reverently spoken:

whole boardrooms were waiting to hug him, just like a football.

And who were these latest friends?

First off Big Oz Osbourne, the nation’s leading corporate prick.

(How she’d love to prick

any tycoon’s ever-expanding bubble!)

                                                                                And Adrian (whose nickname

wasn’t Mr Magic for nothing) Adrian was often in Asia, making further friends:

these days it was called the merchant banking business.

          And no matter his code of football,

Gary couldn’t stand him.

                                                      Sometimes it seemed hours since the cop had spoken

(you could hardly think of him broadcasting the football). She thought of giving him Rowdy as a nickname.

          Not quite! ‘We’ll be more than friends!’ he cried, ‘not merely because of your pussy, my prick.

I love you Carrie!’ And yes his heart had spoken. ‘So. Let’s get down to business!’

Carrie, Gary, Kostas

          When was Carrie’s last time life had been so truly you-and-me?

For a while lovers had clambered aboard in files.

And though such an order lessened any menace,

now she commanded her ship of love; and the compass going with it

pointed true north.

No need then to hide love in cathouse or motel

(unless your preference went for a motel).

          Though she’d hear things: just-between-you-and-me

things: ‘Until a few of us stepped in kids from way up north

were servicing half of this town. Then some prick shredded the files!’

He saw her cringe. ‘Oh Carrie . . . your game’s got nothing to do with it!’

          But there’s always a tang to cop-menace

and sometimes she could near to conjure it: Gary-and-menace

springing a minor lag in some absurd slum-motel.

Keeping his charm, yet nasty with it,

There’s you he’d announce there’s me and then there’s you and me.

So which will she be fuckhead? For Gary had little need of files

when west, south, east and north

lay wherever he turned. Or, better still, here at his North

Pole an entire world started spreading.

                                                                                 But, since he’d rarely show his menace,

not to her, here’s one for the happy-files:

the weekend they flew to Melbourne and stayed in an upmarket motel,

The Corroboree Rex.

                                            And, on the bed, primed for a spot of you-and-me,

all she heard were gags, cop-gags.

                                                                       ‘Gary! Get on with it!’

she howled. ‘Just get on with it!’

          He was always surprises. Like one day they drove north

to Amanda’s where ‘G’day Kostas,’ he sprang on everyone, ‘you and me

go back decades. ‘And he grinned wider than Dennis the Menace.

          Though it hadn’t been decades since Kostas, paying off Gary in that motel,

was told ‘Sure mate sure. This’ll never make the files.’

          An extortionist cop and a matchmaker madam never need files.

Only a knowing love of people. With that (plus the memory going with it)

they should’ve opened a motel!

Not that they would.

                                             Kostas kept moving north.

Whoever wanted to stay around Gary’s hearty menace?

          As for the cop and the nurse (Amanda’s ultimate you-and-me)

they went touring. Up north there always was that next motel.

           ‘You and me,’ he explained, ‘we’ll never need files

on each other.’

                               And Carrie just had to trust his love; and all that menace with it.

Carrie

          Yet there’d still be time to consider Adrian (when Gary, to her knowledge,

was elsewhere in Sydney getting crooks arrested)

for thinking of Adrian was hardly taboo,

and it would always exist,

this obsession.

                               Oh she understood why so many Aussies

loved Adrian: he was always making the news!

(He was made for always making the news!)

          Yet few if any had the Carrie-knowledge:

how Adrian sure helped to make her sick of certain Aussies/

certain men. ‘Sometimes I’d love to see them all arrested,’

she told herself. Or ‘I sure don’t need him to make me exist!’

Then thinking of Adrian became ridiculous, near enough taboo,

but a common or garden taboo

made to be broken.

                                       And she wasn’t waiting for the News

at Five that afternoon. (Since someone decreed Wal shouldn’t exist

she never had.) TV was mere events, hardly information, never knowledge.

Why there might be Adrian, a date on his arm (she’d have them arrested

too, these tanned, blonde, celebrity-Aussies).

          Of course here’s how they saw Adrian, most Aussies;

how they looked on his affairs: little was wrong in a touch of taboo.

What would you have them do? Get him arrested?

For what? Taste? His past? Somewhere a News

Limited columnist might possess the required knowledge;

but she was safe: when it came to the celebritocracy Carrie didn’t exist.

          Funny how being Gary’s girl helped her exist.

Even if in eighteen million Aussies

I am alone, my self knowledge

tells me that falling for a one-time client, a cop, isn’t taboo.

          This afternoon she did turn on the television. Leading its news

two men, some place up north, had been arrested.

But weren’t two men always being arrested

anywhere in Asia? Why else would they exist?

(Since Wal had died all that Carrie heard about the world was News

to me!) Until now, now with two men, Aussies,

expecting everyone would believe how certain drugs weren’t taboo.

           ‘Fuckwits!’ Carrie muttered. ‘That goes against common knowledge!’

          And here was just as pathetic a taboo: how you couldn’t exist

without your proper knowledge of the news.

          Like how, today, up there (Penang? Bangkok?) two Aussies were arrested.