The oldest man in the universe goes to Groovin the Moo

The oldest man in the universe
goes to Groovin the Moo
The Hunter Press
A true story by Mark MacLean
Illustrated by Trevor Dickinson
I
’m walking down Beaumont Street towards Hamilton
Station and while I don’t kid myself that I’m young
any more I don’t feel like the oldest man in the uni-
verse either. That feeling, that delicious
Jesus-I-really-am-getting-old
feeling, starts to set in just after the Gallipoli Legion
Club when I start to merge with flocks of gaily dressed
kids, as bright as lorikeets, moving in ones and twos and
connecting into denser knots and groups the nearer we
get to the station. We’re all off to Groovin the Moo, all
of us, me and the young folk. Our artist has painted a
picture of a crowd of people going to a youth spectacular
but he’s made one silly mistake. Can you spot it?
1
By the time I round Rolador cafe and into the car
park I’m feeling older than’s good for me. I’m not exactly
Uncle Stan at the wedding reception—the old git with the
comb-over who boogies to Jive Bunny and Mixmasters
then hits on all the bridesmaids—but I am, let’s say, undergoing a process of
lerated
acce
maturat
ion.
A squealing, groaning noise cuts through the air and I’m
not sure if it’s a coal truck being shunted or my dicky
knees.
Up the ramp to the platform. It’s crowded but there
are no station staff. They’ve given up, hidden. The place
is kind of running itself. I’m reminded of a Christmas I
spent in Manhattan; it was bedlam on the streets but I
didn’t see a single cop the whole time I was there and I
remember wondering,
‘What happens if something goes
wrong? Will we all start clawing at one
another’s faces or will we just dust
ourselves down and keep going?’*
* I didn’t really think that, not at Hamilton Station anyway, but I
was in Manhattan one Christmas and I did have that thought back
then, and my character could do with a bit of positive back-story to
show that he was once a streetwise libertarian brimful of youthful
potential.
2
I put my hand in my pocket and check for my ticket,
my VIP comp, and tell myself I’ll be all right. My VIP
comp for Groovin the Moo, I got it off Steve. We were at
the Orient on quiz night and Steve says,
Do you wanna ticket for the Moo?
VIP comp;
I’ll email you.
I’m not sure what I was thinking, if anything. It was late,
after the double-up round and we’d moved on from jugs
of Coopers to the vodka nips. I’m not sure if I thought,
Yeah!
Groovin the Moo:
that’s for groovers like me!
or if I just thought,
Yeah!
VIP comp!
Two little words that are like a Fry’s Turkish Delight: full
of eastern promise. I’m in a room—no, a tent, the kind of
tent from the Arabian Nights full of cushions and rugs
3
and clouds of incense—and my feet are being massaged
by a Tahitian maiden with frangipani blossoms in her
hair. I’ve got no idea what a Tahitian maiden’s doing in
an Arabian tent but all kinds of weird stuff happens in
fantasies. I’m drinking ambrosia or nectar or something
nice—I’m not exactly sure what it is but it’s free for VIPs
and, like I said, it’s nice and there’s an endless supply of
it and no queue to get it because VIPs don’t queue. Whatever it is, if I want some more I just click my fingers
and—voila—there it is.
Yeah, VIP comp. Email me, Steve.
They’ll all be up there now, my posse of middle-aged
funksters, lying back on the big pouffy cushions in the
VIP tent with a bowl of ambrosia in one hand and complimentary falafel in the other, having their feet massaged.
I get a train ticket from the machine because there’s
no one at the window and I think
—caution: old person thought approaching—
that I’m probably the only person
here who’s bought one.
Kids are spilling off the seats and off each other;
they’ve all been at mum and dad’s drinks cabinet. The
girls have got tiny denim shorts, ripped tights and singlets with scalloped sleeves so you can see their bra
4
straps cutting into their flesh. The guys have got tight
T-shirts to show off their fat muscles, biceps that they’ve
been working on through endless reps in some glasswalled gym. I don’t get it, these biceps. They don’t look
strong, just huge, like Christmas hams. When I was a
lad—listen up, sunny Jim—men were skinny; skinny legs
and skinny jeans and eyes wild from too much speed.
Them were the days.
A guard appears, a Sikh with a turban and a big
don’t-fuck-with-me moustache, and he makes a point of
striding out along the platform’s yellow line; he’s got a
mixture of calm authority and complete resignation on
his face, like he knows that the worst thing possible’s
about to kick off at any moment but he’s not going to
let it bother him. Above him the clock flashes in orange
. The train from Newcastle’s already six
numerals:
minutes late and it only takes three minutes to get from
Newcastle to Hamilton so they must be having fun down
at Civic, those kids.
2:09
I’m watching these kids and I think
Oh God
and then I think that the VIP tent—or caravan, or building, or demountable, or whatever it is—probably hasn’t
got incense and ambrosia and Tahitian massage girls.
And I’ll bet there’s queues. But before I can change my
5
6
mind and slink away the train pulls in and we all clamber
on board.
There’s a free row of seats—three seats facing backwards opposite three atypically scrawny kids in flannos—and I’m so amazed to see that these seats are free
I check them with my fingers: anyone spewed or pissed
on here? They seem okay so I sit down and four girls
squash in next to me, two sitting down and the other
two on their laps, and—being a man of my age and generation—instinctively think of that Terry Thomas ‘Well,
hello!’ thing. But, thankfully, I don’t actually say it. The
train pulls out and crosses Beaumont Street, trundles
slowly through that dead part of town you don’t see from
the road, the graffitied back fences of Islington and the
acres of scrub around the old gasworks, always more of
it than you expect.
The flanno boys are pretending to talk to each other
but they’re checking out the girls. You can spot their
hierarchy in an instant and it doesn’t take long before
the one that has that skerrick more confidence than the
others—and a skerrick’s all you need when you’re seventeen—makes his move.
Where youse girls goin?
Though the boys have got hip flasks they’re pretty sober but the girls are three parts hammered, or at least I
7
think they are—most of being drunk at that age is knowing how to look like you’re drunk. The girl on the lap of
the girl next to me goes
Groovin the Moo,
you morons!
What’s that?
says flanno boy.
Groovin the Moo?
Oh my God, what
are you guys?
I dunno. We’re just guys. We’re from Scone.
Is it some kind of agricultural show?
Oh!
My!
God!
I smile out the window. He’s doing a good job.
She offers him her lemon cordial bottle and he pretends to be shocked that it’s got alcohol in it. The row of
boys and the row of girls: as they talk and flirt the space
between their knees becomes that little bit less and locks
a little bit more like the teeth of two big cogs. They’re
drinking and flirting and the combination of their half
8
9
10
drunkenness and complete teenage self-absorption allows
me to watch them with the kind of unblinking curiosity
that only children get away with. I’m invisible to them.
They try to guess each other’s age, that old standby
of teen interaction. One of the boys, the middle-ranking
one with the dark, cropped hair, has got a fake ID and
shows it off but one of the girls snatches it off him and
passes it behind her back to one her friends, who hides
it in her handbag. It’s comical and at the same time a bit
nerve-jangling. He grabs at the girl’s handbag and I can
see he’s embarrassed, a bit pissed off, bit red around the
neck, and the other boys laugh at him. I’ve known scenes
like this turn ugly.
Through the dirty window the suburbs go by and I get
glimpses into backyards and the lives lived in them. Gardens filled with children’s broken play equipment, trampolines and sagging above-ground pools sit open to our
gaze, exposed but indifferent. We press on through the
semi-feral bush of Warabrook and stop at the station. A
sign reads
Alight for University
and I wonder if this is the only station in the Hunter and
Central Coast where the word ‘alight’ appears. Alight for
Morriset Megamart. Alight for Worimi Children’s Detention Centre.
11
More drunk kids get on. The train’s already crowded
and those standing in the aisle are pushed further back
and, in a little domino fall, the girl on the lap of the girl
next to me lands on my thigh. Our noses are about two
centimetres apart and I think it’s the first time she’s noticed me.
Hello! she says,
and I say, Hello.
But not in a Terry Thomas kind of way. She’s beautiful, beautiful in the way that youth is beautiful, shining
in spite of all that’s going to be thrown at it. Her bare
shoulders have the earthy glow of new potatoes.
She says,
I hope I didn’t squash you
and I say, No harm done. I’ll live.
We pull away from Warabrook and hit more light industry, all of it plastered with tags and graffiti. It’s on
everywhere, on everything. Every flat surface, every slab
of the concrete barrier fences, every shed. Occasionally a
word makes itself clear—
Flicka,
Waste
12
Cunz,
—but mostly it’s just a blur of angular swirls, each shining piece of individual brilliance blurring into an aerosol
slurry.
She says,
How do they get up there?
On the wall of a vast, green steel fabrication shed is
the single word
cube
in five-foot-high letters. I’ve seen this word before, in
this style, maybe on the concrete banks of Styx Creek in
Broadmeadow.
God knows.
She says,It
seems like a long way to
come out here with a ladder.
It does.
I’m thinking about Cube and his friends sneaking
through the bush with ladders and trestles, when the
sound of retching slices through the chatter. Bodies arch
like windblown reeds away from something acidic and
spattery down the aisle; when the pulsing ends the bodies straighten themselves. She’s slipped back onto my lap,
and though she hasn’t realised this the three flanno boys
have. Their three sets of eyes, as inscrutable as sharks,
bore into me.
13
Oh how they wish I were dead.
Her friends point out what’s happened and she giggles and shuffles her buttocks back into position.
She says, You goin to
‘Yeah. Believe it or not.’
GTM?
Choice! she laughs. That is g
… rouse!
I laugh.
‘Is that an olden-times word you remembered?’
‘My uncle says it.’
‘Uncle Stan?’
‘No,’ she says, puzzled. ‘Uncle Alan. Hey, who ya gonna see?’
‘Who is there? Who should I see?’
Kisschasy!
her two friends shout.
‘Jesus fucken aitch Christ,’
groan the flanno boys.
No, they’re tops, you
you
spud heads.
The boys laugh and the girls shout
Shut up!
I’m not even going to pretend that I’m cool so I ask,
‘Are Vampire Weekend any good?’
14
15
Awesome! shriek the girls.
The boys shake their heads.
‘Well, I’ll give them a go. They sound fun.’
The flanno boy with the fake ID tries to get it back
off the girls and they squeal and push. It’s a schoolyard wrestle but as it keeps going and won’t stop and he
can’t get his ID back and his mates start to mock him the
colour begins to drain from his cheeks. His hand dives
behind the girls, into their bags, and they squeal even
more but his jaw’s grimly determined. The girl on
the lap of the girl next to me shouts,
Ow! You stupid wanker,
you scratched me!
and so he gives up, pushes himself back into his seat,
pretends not to be bothered, seethes. The girl turns to
me and says,
Jesus, boys are wankers,
and I shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Yeah’.
Damn right we are.
We rattle over flat, open scrub with sprawling new
suburbs in the distance, rows of houses punched from
the same mould. The train tells me what I’m seeing, like
a song, it sings in a trainy rattle,
miles and miles of terracotta tiles
on the roofs of the houses in the Hexham wilds.
16
We see Ozzie the Mozzie and the girls all scream his
name. They’re funny. We go past a cemetery, an old battler one with cracked slabs and then a new one with
gleaming marble tops. They remind me of the rows of
houses we just passed: a suburb of the dead to rest in
after you’ve finished in the suburb of the living.
Bodies press at us again and someone in the aisle
shouts
Coming through!
A young woman appears, her blouse and chin smeared
with vomit. Her eyes loll glassily like a cow’s in an abattoir as she instinctively heads for escape through the
door even though the train’s clacking through Metford at
a clip. The girls push up against me as she pauses in the
aisle and stares at them.
One of the girls goes,
Oh my God,
and the boys go
she’s gonna spew
Fuck off, bitch!
Poor SiCk GiRl tries to focus on the boys then back
at the girl who is, once again, half on and half off my
lap. She reaches out to the girl and says, slowly and deliberately,
Yo u ’ r e b e a u t i f u l .
Yo u ’ v e g o t P o c a h o n t a s h a i r .
17
18
Which I realise is true, now it’s been pointed out to
me. But Pocahontas pushes hard away from SiCk GiRl
and further into me until someone grabs SiCk GiRl and
leads her away.
Ohem
gee! gasps Pocahontas, still half on
my lap. She looks at me: ‘Dead
set, I thought she was gonna
spew on me.’
There’s lots of things I could say here but, of all of
them, I hear my mouth saying,
Be careful,
you don’t want to end up like that.
I am all the world’s Uncle Stans rolled into one, all the
dads of teenage girls everywhere. We watch SiCk GiRl’s
rear staggering away between people who separate like a
hair-parting and Pocahontas turns back to me and nods
solemnly.
I say, ‘It’s gonna be a long afternoon. Drink plenty of
water. Promise me you’ll do that.’
She nods again. All the girls nod.
They actually say,
I promise. Each one of them.
19
The one with a girl on her lap next to Pocahontas
leans over and says,
Are you a policeman?
She looks like the only genuinely drunk one of the
four.
‘No. I’m not a policeman.’
‘What are you then?’
‘I’m an editor.’
An editor? She’s trying to figure out
why the state government
has stopped putting
policemen on the trains
and replaced them with
editors.
I say, ‘What do you do? Are you a student?’
I’m stun pishology.
‘You’re what?’
Pocahontas translates for me.
‘She’s studying speech pathology.’
‘Ah! Right.’ Great future there.
How come you goin to GTM?
asks one of
the flanno boys. He’s pissed off that this ancient
reptile has cornered the girls’ attention.
You someone’s old man?
20
The two other flanno boys laugh. They’re looking for
a wedge, but that’s fine. That’s how it is. They’re probably about seventeen, two of them straw-haired with
complexions rough from junk food and the avoidance
of soap, the third—the cranky one with the fake ID—has
close-cropped dark hair. He looks uncomfortable: with
his flanno shirt, with his friends, with the girls opposite
who still haven’t given him his ID back.
‘Someone gave me a ticket so I thought, why not?’
Man, you’re so lucky,
says Pocahontas.
‘I am, yeah.’
See you in the mosh pit,
poppie says one of the boys.
The girl next to Pocahontas, the one sitting on the lap
of the drunken speech pathologist, says,
Leave him alone!
I tell her, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll manage.’
She turns to the boys and mouths the word
and they mouth the words
back.
21
We’re slowing, nearing Maitland, and people start to
get out of their seats so the aisle’s even more crowded
than it was before, if that’s possible.
There are two endings from here.
There’s the one where the girls all go
Come with us, it’ll be fun!
and I go, all modest,
‘Nah, I’m too old for that kind of malarkey’
and they go
No way!
You’re still pretty groovy
and I’m like, I shouldn’t be doing this,
but I go
WTF:
all
right
and we go off to Groovin the Moo and—guess
what—we like have this amazing time and
there’s this bond we form and I realise that,
hey,
age is just a concept, and
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…
48’s the newerm
22.
23
And there’s the other ending. The one where they get
off, the girls and the flanno boys, and I stay in my seat
for a few minutes watching this sea of youth oozing out
of the train and onto the platform, past SiCk GiRl who’s
now lying prone in the recovery position under a silver
shock blanket being attended to by St John Ambulance,
her face plastered in sweat and drool and sick, and I
wait till it’s finally quiet and then I get off and I walk
over the footbridge through the park past the guys playing soccer and the family having a birthday picnic while
pretending not to see the young guys pissing up against
a tree and I go to Groovin the Moo. I meet up with my
posse. And though there isn’t an Arabian tent or Tahitian
massage girls or a never-ending supply of ambrosia I
still have a good time.
And I think, yeah, that’s all right.
VIP comps.
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Also by Mark MacLean
Available from the
author or MacLean’s
Booksellers, Hamilton,
Newcastle, NSW
The Hunter Press
PO Box 671
Hamilton NSW 2303
Australia
email: [email protected]
© Mark MacLean 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher. The Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent
of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for
its education purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers
it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Illustrations and text design: Trevor Dickinson (www.trevordickinson.com)
Cover design and typesetting: Christine Bruderlin
The oldest man in the universe
goes to Groovin the Moo
The Hunter Press
A true story by Mark MacLean
Illustrated by Trevor Dickinson