Yearn (21 page)

The hovering girl, who looked as if she'd just come in from the country, was peering self-consciously from under the long greasy hair hanging over her face. Tigger couldn't help but feel her anguish and isolation. As she watched the young artist fiddling nervously with the beads around her neck, Tigger noticed a sudden change come over the girl: she lit up as if an attractive man had just entered her orbit. Following her gaze, Tigger saw that Seth now stood framed in the entrance to the bar, the neon light outside making a silhouette of his tall slim figure. Holding her breath, she wondered whether the young girl might be a lover of his, but then he glanced across at Tigger. Her heart leapt like a teenager's. He nodded and she nodded back, desperate not to appear too eager. Seth then made his way through the crowded dance floor over to the bar. Even surrounded by people pushing to reach the bar he appeared curiously remote, his height and beauty making him stand out. It was almost as if he carried an aura of faint light around those glowering dark features. But I can tell you, he was completely oblivious to the power he held over others, which in retrospect might have been a good thing.

“Not only is he too young; he's also too beautiful,” Tigger thought to herself, trying to repress that old huntress impulse—sexual desire—that had by now formed a rope through the center of her body, from her groin to the edges of her mouth, tugging deliciously, reminding her of how alive one can be. This rope seemed to run like a silver thread from her mouth, looping and curling around the dancers, over the glass-topped coffee tables, and up Seth's trouser leg to curl lovingly around the tip of his penis beneath the denim, and he must have felt it. Indeed, I'm convinced he felt it.

Meanwhile the bar was becoming louder and more rowdy by the minute and all manner of couples ground slowly against each other on the dance floor—boys with boys, girls with girls, and boys with girls. The DJ, sitting in a raised glass booth in one corner, spun records, many of which were covers of older songs Tigger recognized, like revamped versions of “Ziggy Stardust” by David Bowie or “London Calling” by the Clash. The whole effect just amplified Tigger's feeling that she was in some curious time dimension in which elements of her own youth overlapped and intercut with the young people around her. She was jolted out of her reverie by the sudden shouting of male voices. Tigger looked up to discover that a young girl wearing a man's suit and see-through crocheted top had climbed on one of the coffee tables and was slowly stripping with her girlfriend, an uber-femme young creature in pencil skirt and bustier, to the vocal approval of the audience watching.

“Do you want to dance?” Seth had somehow managed to appear before her. The stealthy approach was another thing he'd perfected through practice. Tigger glanced apprehensively at the dance floor: she would be the oldest person dancing by at least fifteen years. Elise and Mike looked up from their conversation, watching her reaction. Elise grinned at Mike, then turned back to Tigger.

“Tigger, the man's asked a question.”

Tigger looked back at Seth, shifting shyly on his feet.

“Come on, it's not that bad out there,” he said, smiling, “and I promise I'll bite.”

If I remember correctly it was she who followed him out onto the dance floor. Luckily it was so packed it was hard to do anything more than shift one's hips from side to side, and out there, with the beat pounding up through the wooden floor, Tigger remembered that she used to be a good dancer, her natural sensuality arching through her body as she spun, lacing her hands through the air as her hips shook rhythmically to the music. Seth followed her movements in a muted mirroring. In those days he had real elegance for a tall man, putting to rest Tigger's fear that they would look ridiculous together.

The other dancers cleared a space for the weaving couple. Just then a Motown track came on that Tigger knew really well. She immediately fell into dance steps from decades ago, grinding her buttocks against Seth, and as she did so she felt the blind promise of an erection. As she wriggled closer, the hard bar of him felt large and alive, while her arse felt so much like paradise to him that for a moment he worried the rubbing of her firm cheeks would make him come in his tight jeans. Trying to distract himself, Seth glanced up at a high window, where the moon hung against a velvet sky. It seemed to dance with them, adding to the illusion that they were at some ancient Dionysian orgy—a fervent, joyous celebration of both youth and sex, uninhibited and innocently exhibitionist. It was then that he thought to himself, “I will never forget this moment no matter how old I live to be, how the years pull me down.” And you know what? He didn't.

They danced for another few songs, then suddenly Tigger's energy left her. As if sensing this, Seth stopped dancing and pulled her to the edge of the dance floor.

“I think I need to get back to Elise's; that's who I'm staying with,” she murmured, unsure about the etiquette of the next step of seduction. She knew she couldn't take Seth back to Elise's house, so she waited for some indication from him.

“Can you give me a lift back? I'm banned from Australian roads.” He grinned cheekily.

“How come?”

“I got pulled over for drunk driving. The crazy thing was, I was on my bike at the time. They decided not to book me when they heard my accent, but warned me if I got pulled over again they would fine me. Now I can't even cycle back home,” he answered, feeling like a total idiot.

Christ, she thought, he hasn't even got a car, but the image of a police car pulling over a bicyclist weaving drunkenly across the road made her smile. Besides, what harm would there be in merely driving him home? She was already talking herself out of a seduction that might seem brutally revealing and unwise in the blazing light of the next day.

“I have a rental car parked outside.”

 • • • 

Tigger drove the rental car carefully, suspecting she might be over the limit herself. They drove through the streets of North Melbourne, an area she used to live in as a student, decades before. Memories loomed up as the car turned in to streets she hadn't been in since then, but what had been small, low-rent cottages lived in by poor immigrants and students was now gentrified, and many of the broader streets had lines of trees running down the center. In her youth the area had been run-down and vibrant in a dangerous way and had made all her peers feel as if they were the first rebels to rise out of the greener suburbs encircling the CBD.

“It's here.”

They pulled up outside an elegant Victorian terrace. Tigger glanced across at the house, surprised; she'd imagined he would live in a humbler accommodation. Reading her reaction, Seth told her the owners had just rented it to him and his two roommates while putting it on the market to sell.

He stayed sitting in the car, trapped in that awkward moment so many men find themselves in—whether to make the first move and risk rejection or be dictated to by the fear of rejection and just leave. Seth didn't want to leave. He wanted her.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?” he asked in the sexiest voice he could muster. He stared out the car window as nonchalantly as he could, as if by looking at her he might jinx her response. Tigger told me later the offer was so quaint and unexpected from a man who looked as if he would have been more comfortable wielding a microphone or a whip than a teapot that she had trouble not to burst out laughing.

“I do have to get some directions back to Elise's place. . . .” she responded, careful to keep her own face turned away.

“. . . And I do have a map inside.”

They both swung around to face each other at the same time, suddenly becoming shy now that they were away from the anonymity of the bar with its noise and transient intimacy.

“Tea and directions, then.” She started to unbuckle her seat belt, praying that the lights weren't too bright inside his house and that he wouldn't get a shock seeing her full age.

Inside, the narrow entrance hall was awash with dirty clothes. Torn posters hung off the walls and a couple of bikes were pushed up against the new white paint. The lights were on, the front door ajar, and yet the house appeared empty.

Two bedrooms ran off the narrow Victorian corridor, both doors gaping open to reveal maelstroms of unmade beds, discarded jeans, underpants, abandoned weights, PlayStations, half-read magazines, and other male messes she didn't care to examine too closely. It also smelt. It's hard to describe how badly it smelt—old runners and the musky scent of young men—but none of us cared. Tigger grimaced.

“What do you expect? I live with two twenty-four-year-old men,” Seth answered before leading her into the kitchen and lounge area adorned with a retro vinyl sofa and a small table covered with a miniature film set made entirely of Legos. A laptop was wired up to a tiny camera, also made of Legos but with a real lens. Seth sauntered across the room to switch on a CD player. Tigger found his movements so seductive that she had to put her hands behind her back to stop herself from reaching out for him. Again, she was secretly appalled at her own lechery, but Christ, she wanted him. Did it show?

The melancholic tones of Leonard Cohen filled the room, giving Tigger a bizarre sensation of déjà vu.

“Who listens to Leonard Cohen these days?”

“I do.” Again, Seth tried not to sound defensive. Tigger stopped herself from telling him that Leonard Cohen was one of her mother's favorite singers, figuring mothers, family, or anything that enabled him to pin down her age might be unwise. Desperate to change the subject, she walked over to the miniature Lego film set.

“You play with Legos?” She failed to keep amazement out of her voice.

Insulted, Seth now stood with a teapot in hand. “It's not just any old Legos; it's a model of a Spielberg set. You can point the camera around the interiors and play the image back on the computer.”

To Tigger it seemed like an adult manifestation of a childlike interest; she could feel Seth watching her. Acutely aware of her own body language and his proximity, she sat down awkwardly, sinking into the old vinyl couch. She glanced back at the model, trying to work out which Spielberg film the set was from—suddenly she recognized the strange mold in the front room of the miniature bungalow.

“
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, right? Richard Dreyfuss's house?”

“You got it!”

“It was that scene where he's obsessively trying to re-create the mountain the aliens are going to land on—I'll never forget it.”

“Yeah, it's my favorite scene too.”

“I loved the way he used dream, creative expression, and coincidence to drive those people to tell their experience of the UFOs. . . .”

“But that's how it is, isn't it? In real life. We glean intelligence from all different kinds of sources. Experience isn't linear; it's a collage.”

Christ, I can remember the kid's passion, his blind conviction, like it was yesterday. Now Seth watched Tigger, wary that he'd given too much of himself away. To his delight she smiled.

“Are you sure you're only interested in being a curator? You talk like an artist.”

He took a deep breath, wondering if he could trust her, really trust her.

“I do draw, small sketches. But I've never shown anyone. I don't think they're good enough.”

“Show me.”

The sudden whistle of the kettle boiling interrupted them.

Seth put the teacups and teapot down on the coffee table in front of Tigger, then walked over to an old chest of drawers in one corner. He reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out two small thick sketch pads.

He sat down beside her, noting the closeness of her body. The warmth of his leg running alongside her own, the elegance of her slender thighs. He placed the sketch pads on the coffee table, his hands hovering over them for a moment, almost reverently.

He dared not look at her, not wanting to betray his nervousness at such exposure; but then, I remember, he reasoned to himself: “This is a woman who doesn't know me—her opinion will be entirely objective; what have I got to lose?”

“You sure you want to look at them?”

“Of course I do. And trust me, I'm known for my brutal honesty and I know good art when I see it.”

“These are from my travels. The first sketch pad is Europe, the second is Asia.”

He pushed the sketch pads toward her. She picked the first one up and opened it. The image was startling: a mass of thick black pencil lines and smudged charcoal, a bull charging a bullfighter. The energy of the collision between the two was palpable, dynamic, and undeniably sensual. She flicked the page—the next was of a young girl emerging from the sea. Her thin pubescent body, just about to break into adulthood, seemed like a metaphor for her emergence from the ocean itself. Again, the drawing was frenetic, both sparse and dense, the rhythm of the image itself suggesting a maturity far beyond the years of the youth sitting in front of her.

“These are extraordinary,” she murmured, unable to keep the awe from her voice.

“You're kidding me.”

“No really, Seth, this has to be your career; promise me.”

He gazed at her. No one had ever really believed him capable of anything extraordinary before, not his parents, not his teachers, not any of his other lovers—which frankly for his age had been rather a lot. A great energy suddenly roared through him as her belief crystallized something that up until then had been vague, nebulous. Together they pored over the open book, their heads almost touching. Seth flicked through the pages excitedly.

“This was Spain, this was Morocco, after that I went over to Algeria. . . .”

His fingers, both animalistic and elegant, distracted her momentarily from the drawings. Tigger found herself wondering about the shape and size of his penis, as often she had noticed a correlation between the two.