Paul Kennedy - Funkytown

First published by Affirm Press in 2021
28 Thistlethwaite Street, South Melbourne,
Boonwurrung Country, VIC 3205
affirmpress.com.au

Text and copyright Paul Kennedy, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission of the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in the final printed edition or future editions and reprints of this book.

Title: Funkytown / Paul Kennedy, author
ISBN: 9781922419828 (paperback)

Cover design by Luke Causby, Blue Cork
Cover photograph by AAP Image/Ben Macmahon
Typeset in Granjon 12/17.5 pt by J&M Typesetting

For Joan and Mick, who gave us everything. And for my wife Kim, with love and thanks.

Some names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of old friends and acquaintances.

Contents

All of childhoods unanswered questions must finally be
passed back to the town and answered there.

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , 1969

Dont mess with the bull, young man,
youll get the horns.

Mr Vernon, The Breakfast Club , 1985

part one

Drinking the Rain

Backyard birdcalls and a streak of summer sun crept into my room to wake me, making me squint. It was January 1993. The first day of my final year of school. I was seventeen. I kicked off my sweat-damp sheet with a sigh, rolled off my single bed onto the carpet, and started doing push-ups. In my cheap elastic jocks, elbows tucked, eyes up, arse down, counting.

More than anything, I wanted to play football under lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Push-ups were going to help me get there. Often, I pictured myself running, bouncing, twisting one way then another, a record crowd standing to applaud my courage and skill. Every night I fell asleep in that room I had the same visions, only they were in silent slow-motion. This was my last chance to turn ambition into reality. Most recruits got drafted into the Australian Football League when they were seventeen. This was my big year, and I knew it. What I didnt know was just how momentous it would be.

We lived in Seaford, two train stops from Frankston. There were plenty of nicknames for Frankston. Franger. Frangalas (after a 1980s footballer). Im sure there were others, but my favourite was the one my little sister Kate used: Funkytown. She always said it with a cheeky smile. The city was more than forty kilometres away. Not that we cared. In Funkytown, we had it all: a Myer, two surf shops, a double-storey Maccas, and a popcorn cinema with a magical domed ceiling that changed colour every few seconds. The ever-expanding shopping district had an American-style mall a singular high-rise building so ugly it was quaint a Brashs music store, a Pancake Parlour, a rotating dance floor nightclub, and an annual foreshore circus with caged African lions. Above it all was the lookout at Olivers Hill, where you could linger on the expanse of Port Phillip, a majestic bay with as many moods and secrets as an ocean.

At fifty push-ups I stopped, turned onto my back and did crunches till my stomach burned with pain. With arms and legs stretched out, I let my pulse return to normal. Then I went to the mirror on my wall and admired my torso. A plaster cast covered my left hand like an oversized glove. My skin was itching under it, but I knew the bone was healing because the aching had stopped. I didnt want to think about how Id broken my hand. I just wanted it fixed. Another week or so and Id be able to cut the bloody cast off.

I checked in the mirror for pimples on my chin. My skin was hardening from fortnightly shaving, but I still got the odd whitehead. If one appeared, I squeezed it hard to send a message to others. I ran my fingers through my wiry hair, which Id started to grow long. Until this year Id only ever had a short back and sides, trimmed straight as a ruler across my forehead, like a Lego man. Mum used to cut our hair. She learnt how to do it from a Womens Weekly article. The four of us Kennedy kids werent prima donnas: we didnt request anything fancy, although after seeing Top Gun in 1986 I begged for a Maverick hairdo. Mum rolled her eyes and cut off my fringe altogether. My older sister, Jo, said it made me look simple and nothing whatsoever like Tom Cruise. I wore a hat and a frown for a month.

Youd better hurry up, Mum called to me from the kitchen. Dont wanna be late first day back.

She was wrapping a sandwich when I came out of my room. She wore a green shirt, gold earrings, and a necklace so long she looped it twice around.

You look nice, I told her.

Thanks love. She kissed me on the cheek. I gotta go to work. Love you.

She strode down the hall and I heard the front door bang shut behind her.

I made myself breakfast: seven Vita Brits and milk. We only ever had skinny milk in our house. I drank it like water, often straight from the carton when no one was watching.

The house was unusually tranquil and spacious. Id been noticing things like this recently. My family home was changing. It used to be busy and full. Now, it was as if it didnt belong to me as much as it used to, or I had started to outgrow it. In my diary I called it a growing restlessness. I also suspected I was becoming nostalgic.

For five months Id been filling pages of a school notebook with my thoughts. The entries had begun when a girl from school dumped me. Louise King. This led me to writing about other things prospects beyond high school, short stories and movie quotes. I wrote slowly to make it last, hovering my pen over the page at the beginning of new sentences and paragraphs, crossing out some words to replace them with something more specific and honest. I wrote about my feelings. It felt like a cure for some undiagnosed ailment.

I stuffed my schoolbooks into my backpack and rode my bike to my best friends house. I could get there in two minutes if I fanged it. Adam Ray lived on the corner of East and Downs Roads, one of the main intersections in our estate. I bunny-hopped up the gutter, squeezed my brakes and jumped off, flinging my bike on his lawn. The handlebars jackknifed against the frame and the back wheel kept spinning. Luke, the Ray family dog, was watching me through the loungeroom window.