Emily Clements - The Lotus Eaters

These are my memories. I have drawn on notes and journals and messages but in the end, this is still a series of events framed through my own experience. Conversations are written as I remember them or as I recorded them at the time. The Ting Vit dialogue has been subject to the bias of an English-speaking brain; received, rearranged, retranslated. To the best of my ability, I have strived for accuracy. Names have been changed. Some identifying details are obscured, some are not. Some events that do not have bearing on the veracity of this story have been omitted. Everything is true. Nothing is absolute.

Where I begin and air stops is my motherland.

Alice Birch

Table of Contents

At age fifteen, I take an inventory. My fingers are pudgy. My thigh rolls onto my calf without the hollow that I see on other girls legs. My bellybutton isnt taut. When I sit, I hate the way my stomach bundles up on my lap like white linen. Stretch marks are freshly torn in across my hips and breasts; mystery boils carve silver craters into my inner thighs. The skin on my arms is rough and bumpy. Tegin, my best friend, takes a photo and zooms in.

Ew, it looks like the surface of Mars, she says.

My mouth simpers. My chin is weak. I research my lack of jawline, come up with names to describe it: Pope chin, slope jaw. Another, more colourful, is given to me by Tegin. She whispers it at the side of my face after careful, callous consideration. Cane toad. I change my Myspace username to Cane Toad, to show that I dont care. To try to take away its power.

It doesnt.

A group of us mill around Hyde Park with the grass wet against our ankles. Our bodies are awkward, thick or thin, our mouths bigger than what our hearts can handle. Tegin has brought us there, drawn by Ross, a boy shes been talking about for weeks. He is tall and milk-pale and knows where to get drugs. Ross has a hole beneath his ribs so deep he can hold liquid in it. At first I thought it was a stab wound. He says its something he was born with. He lifts his shirt to show Tegin, and she puts her fingers inside it.

Museum Station stands with its back to us, wearing a coat of cold lamplight. The others grip goon sacks over their mouths; UDL cans lie crumpled on the ground. I hold a Double Black between two fingers and dribble it into the bushes. Tegin cuts her eyes at me. I shrug: a challenge. She turns back to Ross with a deep sigh, as if to say, Well, I tried.

Thats a waste.

The voice comes from a mouth wet with wine. The boys eyes are bloodshot-blue. I know his name already Tegin had mentioned it, like, You should talk to Jake, hes totally a chubby-chaser. Chubby is not a cute word. Not here. Its a word that says, I hate fat people but I like you.

Jake steps closer. He indicates the Double Black. You know how much those things cost?

Heat rises in my cheeks. I didnt buy it.

He nudges my arm with his elbow. Drink it!

Later, maybe.

His body is very close to mine. I focus on the lower half of his face, the ginger stubble and pointed jaw.

Tegin says youve never been drunk before.

I hesitate. To tell the truth seems like an invitation but I do it anyway. Nope, not yet.

He shows me a mouthful of teeth. Drink! Get drunk!

Giggling in defence, I lift the empty can to my mouth. There.

You think Im stupid? Wait a second.

He turns and jogs toward Ross, whose shirt has fallen back down. I can still imagine the place where the hole is. Tegin pops a hip and looks back at me, a laugh within her lips but not her eyes. I want desperately for her to come and stand beside me. Jake returns with a goon sack. It bulges silver. I look at it and he looks at me and with an accidental swerve, my eyes crash into his and my brain is burned blue.

He grins. Cmon. Lets do this properly.

The others drift over, Tegin snug at Rosss waist.

Arent you drinking, Em? she asks, coy.

Aw, drink! Youll have more fun, says one of the other girls, her eyes wide and well-meaning.

She just hasnt had any goon yet, Jake says, brandishing the sack like a scalp.

Goon! Ross cheers.

Goon! the others chorus.

Tegin nods at me with her eyebrows raised, like, Isnt this what you came here for?

I think of turning on my heel, rounding the corner and disappearing down the green-and-white tiled Museum Station tunnel, through train doors, running, running, running home. But its too late, that moment is gone. I got myself here and the light has left. There is a roiling in my gut and I dont know if its dread or excitement or pleasure that everyone is clustered around me, looking at me, caring if I do or do not do something. A hundred pimples, piercings and metal-caged teeth point in my direction. We are all just children, really. Fifteen, barely. Just children, pricking and sticking ourselves into adult shapes.

Jake and Ross, of course, are older.

Fine, I announce.

They cheer; I glow.

Scull! Scull! Scull!

Jake approaches, holding the goon sack above my head. An errant drip lands in my hair and slides down the back of my neck cold, like a warning. I let my head fall back on my shoulders and open my mouth. Jake draws his finger on the trigger of the goon nozzle. Thin, sour liquid shoots into my mouth and with adolescent baying in my ears, I swallow and swallow until I choke.

Jake seems pleased. He pulls his arm back and I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, our eyes fixed together. Some threshold has been crossed. Ive shown him what Im made of something as pale and yellow as the cask wine hed poured down my throat.

Later that night, the girls crouch behind a bench while Jake and Ross and another boy stalk through the dark in a predatory lope. The train station glows behind us. The boys have spotted a man hurrying through the park with his hands jammed into his pockets. They push him to the ground, kick him in the stomach. I see his feet flailing. The boys crouch over him like vultures picking through a carcass. Jake straightens, holding a wallet. This is a signal. Tegin pulls at my arm and then I am running, running, running with her.

In the small Laos town of Vang Vieng, nestled among mountains and swarming with backpackers, the alcohol was served in buckets. For six dollars, you could get a drink to hang off your arm. I swigged my vodka Red Bull; nineteen years old now, the days of pouring drinks in bushes a whole lifetime away. That girl looked at me through the funnel of time and I narrowed my eyes back at her and hated her. Hated her for her fear. Hated her for her submission. Hated her for a lot of things.

Tegin winked at me by the bar, waiting for her own bucket to be handed over by a local bartender with bags under her eyes. The river ran alongside us, brown and dotted with inflated neon tubes. Tegins boyfriend, Zack, had his head in a book at the hotel room because he was, Quite frankly, above the whole sordid business and who would want to get drunk when you could walk ten metres from the hotel and pick up a perfectly good hash brownie, but that was alright because Tegin was going to dump him as soon as we got back to Sydney and the de facto Centrelink payments were set up, so bring on the cute man from Melbourne who looked exactly like Chris Evans with his blond buzz cut and red lips. Koi swam in geometric swirls around his upper forearm. Struggling for a good way to introduce myself, I asked him how much the tattoo had cost. He furrowed his brow, disapproving.

That doesnt matter, Tegin murmured, stroking it. Warmth spread over Chris Evanss features. I buried my face in my bucket. We jumped in the river, the three of us, and Chris Evanss hands shimmied over my body but the expression on his face when she looked at him was already imprinted on my mind, and there was no rubbing it out.