Peer pressure....?

Urgh.. Such a human trait. Sure, there are some that are so naturally self assured that you can't help but admire them.There are also those that are so unjustifiably naturally self assured that they can't help but grit your shit. But confronting the fact that something you strive to be good at receives accolades is.. well.. confronting! I thought that it was just because they were family or close friends, to be taken with a healthy dose of  "that's really nice of you to say so.." regardless of how 'well read' they are, or how much you value their opinion on matters not directly concerned with yourself. But when peers and magazine editors start recommending your work to each other and their readers.... Fuck, that's a whole new level of confrontation.

This guy wrote a short story (Okay, my blog, my discretionary prerogative. The story was short, maybe 800 words, but it doesn't deserve that categorisation. It didn't end at the last full stop. How great is it when that happens?) It was an attractive English 'backpackerette', it was love lost, but was it? It was in White Horses and it inspired me to write 'Julian'. 'Julian' was published in the next issue of the magazine and along side it was another contribution by the above author. I love it's rhythm, I love it's colloquialisms, I love it's cursing and I hate/love that I can directly identify with it.

Anyway... he wrote to me and told me how much he enjoyed my latest submission and could he publish it on his blog. He posted a link on his facebook page and in the comments box the magazine editor sang praise and gave directions to my other writing... I'm uncomfortably basking (It's taken 3 Coopers and the best part of a bottle of Shiraz for me to get here).

He is Matt Webber, this is his website and the following, by permission, is awesome.

For my non Antipodean readers

'Pokies' = one arm bandits/fruit machine/slot machine.
'Chook' = chicken
'Clubbie' = surf lifesaver
'cunjie' = type of seaweed

The Rock

Sea breathes in. Sea breathes out.

Prick’s perched up there like a billygoat on The Rock and making like the director of a show, one of the grandest magnitude, one where the ocean’s the fuckin’ stage and we’re but players fighting it out for a cash-in-hand extra’s slot. He barks his charges in with a machine gun staccato.

Yup. Yup. Nup. Nup. Yup.

Like black or red on the fuckin’ pokies.

The bloke out front levers himself to the spot. He’s a most unsurferly wisp, this fella. Sunken smoker’s chest. Cheap smudgy tatt on his pale left shoulder. He get’s a yup. Doesn’t fuck about. Plunges boardlong into the keyhole’s boiling mush.

Sea breathes in.

Sea breathes out.

And Wispy’s exhaled out the rear, back arched, chook arms chuggin’.

Bird’s up next, the languid one who you see down here. Turns heads with her Diaz legs and that blue and white striped mal. Can surf, this one. Nimble. Graceful. Lean. Her old man’s here a bit, too. Clingin’ to that saggin’ ex-clubbie frame, the old fella. Cranky lookin’ point-hog, all sunspots and seen-it-all machismo. That snarl’s foolin’ no one. He knows what they’re thinkin’, these blokes who ogle his baby. He was one of ‘em back in the day. It’s killin’ him.

She leaps, his girl.

Sea breathes in.

Sea breathes out.

Feet skyward, she hardly seems to stroke before she’s sucked around the corner and gone, hair still dry as bone.

My turn now. Billygoat’s all earnest instructiveness.

Hold on. Wait. Hold on.

Then he baulks, sits bolt upright.

YUP. GO. GO. GO.

I dive into the brine.

Sea breathes in.

Sea holds it fuckin’ breath.

World pauses.

I battle for the corner, but I’m retarded by a numbskull current that can’t get its shit together.

By the time I’m around, it’s a steamin’ gurglin’ wall of fuckin’ white.

*

I bail.

What else?

I’m clamberin’ downwards but there’s no grip in this kind airy green stew. Bubbles of nothin’. Just like the chocolate. Board gets caught and tugs at me like a shopping centre mum would her wayward toddler. No fuckin’ idea where I’m goin’. Hug my arms to my head. Save the noggin. Guessed it wrong. Shoulda thought of my ribs. How the ages shaped that rock. How they moulded it and cajoled it. How the tides sharpened it just so. And how the water carries the thud as I introduce myself to its evolution. I clutch for the pain and as I do drag my elbow on stone. Skin rips. Salt bites at a new wound.

Sea breathes out.

Dumps me on barnacles and whatever other godforsaken fuckin’ gremlins grow on that stone. Board’s in two bits, both bobbing, the smaller piece still attached to my ankle, stringers, all three of ‘em, frayed.

There’s a fuckin’ rockhopper standin’ there. Frozen solid, he is. Bucket and rod and just gawkin’ like American Gothic oceanside. Useless, he is. I know the feeling. There’s red seeping from a hole in my side like the one the fuckin’ Romans gave to bloody Jesus. The one that didn’t even bleed. The one that told ‘em the time was nigh. The death prod. They teach you that at school. They don’t teach you to jump The Rock. Note to fuckin’ educators everywhere – get your shit in order.

Sea breathes in.

I rise with it and cling to the cunjie too fucked to go further, too scared to let go.

I shimmy my way around and cop the cut feet and the grazed gut just to get free. Safe, I reel in my board’s lower half. Some kid hands me its torso. Blood’s in rivulets down my shins, dripping off my fingertips. Elbow’s aflame. Rashy’s been got at by Freddie Krueger.

“Fuck,” the kid says. That’s all he can manage.

And up against a clear sky sits The Rock, a fuckin’ great proud slab of conqueror.

Billygoat’s bailed now, too. Well he fuckin’ might.

Car park can’t come soon enough.

I ignore the stares and trudgin’.