Story for performance #259
webcast from Sydney at 07:25PM, 06 Mar 06

positive thinking
Source: Ian Mackinnon, ‘Madonna eyes Messiah house’, The Times in The Australian online, 06/03/06.
Writer/s: Margaret Trail

The Golden Coq on New Year’s Day is a seething mass of men frugging up and down. An undulating clump of muscular caterpillars lit in the flash of shredding lasers, swamped by bone-shaking bass. The boys have been out all night on a New Year’s Eve that reached 45 degrees before sunset.

I give Justin a big hug. ‘Happy New Year!’ I shout in his ear. ‘How’s your night been?’ He rolls his eyes, ‘Oh, you know’, he says, ‘laughing on the outside, crying on the inside’, I kiss both his cheeks. ‘Coke?’ he offers, dusting a line onto his hand for me. I sniff it up before I remember: ‘Oh shit! I’m not meant to! My sinus infection!’ He laughs ‘No, no, it’s good for you! Clears everything out! Here, bunny nose’. He taps the tip of my nose with his coke-dusted finger, and I blink soft rabbit eyes for him.

Out on the rooftop Matthew is dancing, he takes my sunglasses off and puts them on himself. He looks so pretty I surrender them. ‘How’s your year?’ I ask, hooking my fingers through his belt loops and rubbing up against his arse. ‘Good’ he says, ‘it all went really well. Oh hang on, did you say year or ear?’ I laugh, ‘I said year, but how is your ear?’ ‘I just had a big operation four days ago’, he explains ‘it’s fantastic, I hardly need to use my hearing aid at all now’. ‘Four days ago! My god! You’re standing next to the speaker stack, you’ll go deaf!’ We laugh, ‘yeah, isn’t it great?’ He smiles, I feel tears welling up. ‘My Pharaoh,’ I sigh, ‘let me buy you a champagne?’ ‘Maybe later’, smiles his sweet smile.

A lovely boy, slim with dark hair falling over his eyes dances beside us, hands cutting the air, feet shimmering, the helium light shuffle of tech dancing, its intricate reserve. ‘Ah’, I say admiringly to Matthew, ‘he dances like a straight boy’. ‘Yeah but HE doesn’t’, Matthew tosses his head at a shirtless shaven-headed bombshell thrusting by, popping flashing blue eyes at us, swinging his hips like a Pussy Cat Doll on speed.

Dino says to me: ‘How are you? Just the short form. I don’t want your life story you boring bitch. Five word limit’. I laugh and rest my head on his shoulder, counting words with my fingers on his chest, ‘Got it’, I say: ‘“I’m good. I’m on anti-depressants”’. ‘Anti-depressants is two words!’ he cries. ‘No it’s not, it’s hyphenated’, I say. ‘So, do you feel altered?’ he asks. ‘No, not at all, it just turns off my ferocious self-savaging voices’. ‘Ha, ha!’ he is exultant, ‘now I shall have no competition in savaging you!’

I bend my head back to shout in the ear of a guy with bulging pecs whose arms, tattooed with wide swirls of black, hug me from behind. ‘This is my wish for 2006!’ I announce, ‘that it feels like this for all of us: laughter and light and love’, ‘Maybe a little bit unrealistic’ he murmurs back, but holds me tightly.

I join John who is standing at the edge of the roof garden. It has started to rain, big fat drops that spatter and steam on the hot concrete. While most have run for cover, some of the boys stay outside dancing, shirtless with hair wet in ringlets and rivulets, they look mythic, fairies dancing, angels. I wrap my arms around John and hold him against my chest. We watch the dancing. It has started to rain: ‘And of all the men’, I say in his ear, ‘Of all the men. Of all the men’.

I hug. I shout. He rolls his eyes. I kiss both cheeks. I sniff.
He laughs. He taps my nose. I blink. He takes my glasses off.
I surrender. Rub against his arse. I laugh.
We laugh. He smiles. I sigh. Smiles his sweet smile. Hands cut the air. His dark hair. He tosses his head. He swings his hips. I stare.
I laugh. I bend my neck. Count on my hands.
He cries. I rest my head.
He murmurs. It has started to rain. He holds me. I wrap my arms around. It has started to rain. Of all the men, I say, of all the men.
I say, of all of them.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Margaret Trail.