Everything was bright and shiny and promising and new, and it all got driven into the ground. I’ve been killing myself off ever since.

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  I heard a song that I hadn’t heard in ages the other day, coming from the café next door to our house. It’s called Lies in the Eyes of Love, or something similar to that. The band has another song called Virgo’s Maze, and I really can’t remember the name of the band right now as I’m writing this.

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  I remember listening to this song when I was maybe 13 or 14, at the house of my cousin’s family friend on the radio.

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  I remember they lived by the beach in San Remo in this semi-renovated house, where all the renovations seemed to have lagged and then stopped altogether. The property had big palm trees and a sort of man-made grotto at the very bottom, hidden away amongst the willows, with an algae-filled pond. There was a half-deserted tennis court where my cousin and I would sometimes play when it became dusky and filled with mosquitoes, kicking up clay.

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‍Six-love. 

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My uncle, his friend, and his friend’s wife, Dionne, would spend hours drinking Coronas on the half-done verandah, talking about a mortgage or an affair or some obscure band. These people weren't my parents; I wasn't interested in eavesdropping. I was glad to be away from home, and my father. I remember we were at an age where my cousin had a phone, and she was far more occupied with whatever boy was inside that tinny box. But we were free to roam and get up to whatever no good was then.

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  These family friends had two sons. I don’t recall their names or ages; I don’t even remember their faces, but occasionally they would be around. I was semi-besotted, and in bed at night, would will one of them to kiss me. 

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  I do remember going on dirt bikes in this time, and making ourselves gin and whatever-was-the-sweetest-tonics in the rumpus room bar, where on its brick façade, hosted dusty bottles of Tia Maria and Galliano and Midori, delights from yesteryear, which, with a very sticky copy of Margaret Fulton's Book of Cocktails and Party Drinks, we would try to use substitutes and recreate what the smart and sophisticated drank. Sometimes we brought our drinks onto the wilting blow-up flamingo that floated lamely on the forgotten and freezing indoor pool.

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  These days spent at the house blurred themselves into one liminal stretch of time; calendars and clocks ceased to exist, and the only thing that shifted was our skin from white to pink to brown and peeling.

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  One particularly hot day, my uncle took my cousin and me to visit yet another middle-aged friend, Peter, whose sons were friends with the ones I longed for. Peter was a wealthy horticulturalist and a naturalist with a penchant for collecting rusty old objects and had sea shanties framed in his pool room. He lived on an enormous plot of land that had been turned into this sort of Mayan-themed resort, or jungle, really.

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  His wife had passed away recently, I recall, and after we did the mandatory exploration of the property, my cousin and I retreated to the pool shack with the boys.

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  My sheltered girls' school bubble never taught me to be self-conscious around them, or fearful, so I figured the only way to get what you want is just going for it, or in this case, sitting very close to them on the peeling leather couch and watching their brothers play pool while an old jukebox whines and sputters Elvis.

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  By this age I had smoked a cigarette before, but wasn't quite a pro at finishing them. My cousin and I knicked some earlier from the house, something we had been told a million times not to do, and shortly after, a peace offering was made.

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  I lit his cigarette on the end of mine, Winnie Blues no less, and leaned back onto the couch lying flat with my legs atop his. At this time, my everyday uniform was Reeboks with white tennis socks, Levi’s lightwash cutoffs and this pale blue Lee shirt with the logo on the front that was completely and utterly see-through.

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  I had not yet learnt to be ashamed, and no one seemed to mind. My knees were darker than the rest of my legs, clear-skinned and glowing with two blonde French braids down my back. I had no truly foul memories, never was distrustful, thought I was beautiful, unscarred, tattooed or pierced. I knew I could do all these things with this boy and still go home to bicker with my mum and unpack my school bag. I had an answer to every question. I was never apathetic, and I could at least be sad. Now, it is much easier to placate people and never bother at all.

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  Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me… actually, no, touch me? Yes, touch me, whatever that means. Whatever it means, I’ll do it if you do it first.

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  Cigarette still in hand, he shifts closer towards me, almost moving underneath me, until my feet and legs are no longer lying flat but dangling over his side. I’m sort of above him now. He’s breathing heavily, but so am I. I’m conscious of it, though, and instead I just hold my breath. He presses his face into my right inner thigh. For a second, we’re both completely still. Ash falls to the ground. The jukebox still whines. Everyone else is gone.

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  Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me… actually, no, touch me? Yes, touch me, whatever that means. Whatever it means, I’ll do it if you do it first.

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  He lifts his head and slowly makes his way up towards my face, not making eye contact and instead glancing to the right of the room. We fancy ourselves as little adults. There has been no dialogue between us. I think, I hope, that maybe he was willing and we willed together. 

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A bit like Georges Bataille’s Histoire de l'œil, without the liquid and all the globular shapes of an eyeball and pursed lips and an eight ball.  

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  Naturally, we kiss. His mouth is sweet and gummy and stale like tobacco, and I can feel my head pressing really hard against the couch arm, but I must persevere, because for what use is all this willing if I were to stop it now.

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  His hair parts in the middle, two curtains, like every other boy his age, and his face is clammy pressed against mine, making a suction noise when he lifts it off my skin. He has little keratin bumps under his eyes and ice pick acne marks, and for a second he smiles at me, a smile of approval, a beg for help, for guidance. I don’t smile back; all I can think about is how the moment is over, and my top is see-through, and who is he going to tell. And why can’t he love me?

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  Chemical fumes waft from the industrial-size tropical aquarium next to the couch; an angelfish swims frantically back and forth. Sometimes we take turns tapping the glass to make it move, even though we all know better. My armpits are wet, sticking together the hairs underneath them, and my shorts are ridden too far up, and one sock has been pulled down over the heel of my shoe.

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  We made the drive home very late that night; Triple R's The Graveyard Shift played Hymns by Waves of Nothing, some ambiguous electronic dance track that lulled me into a daze. I slept at my cousins' that night on the freshly laid, stiff carpeting and told myself that when I see him again, I’d tell him he can do more than just kiss my right inner thigh and suck on my bottom lip.

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  I never saw him again, and the last I heard he was in a car accident while drinking. I don't know if he's alive or not.

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  What I do know is that adolescent summertimes spent in beach houses alone are portals to knowledge and fear, and I want to go back. Nothing mattered; you’d get away with everything. Misdeeds were enacted on this wondrous thing called school holidays, and when you were back into the ‘routine’ everything was already washed away.

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         Not even a year later, I was back. Not at the same house, but a different one, with my cousins again, in this rather ersatz beach-community in Lorne. I was used to going away with my cousins every year, but this time we were kind of falling apart from each other. We’d explore, and fall, and graze our knees all by ourselves this time. I was a year older, but still the same and baby-faced. 

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          I was conscious of my presence, yet still uninhibited. Every morning of this summer, my cousin and I would take turns using my aunt's razor and dry-shaving our legs in the bathtub. Everything stunk of Reef Oil and Nivea Soft Cream. We shared balconetted bikini tops and would walk up and down the aggregate strip, seeing what reactions our bodies would get us.

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        Wow, you get attention just existing. We couldn't believe it. 

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I befriended a boy who would wear camouflage nearly every day and had a surfer-themed bedroom. His parents owned this beach house. Together we listened to Beach House. He had a flip phone and never went to school. His brother was a pro boxer. For dinner one summer night we had meatloaf, and it was disgusting. He had no table manners and became obsessed quickly. We liked Moonrise Kingdom and smoking weed.

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       “Am I…like, being inappropriate?”, I’d ask.

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        “Nah, you look good”, Hannah would always tell me, as if to be ‘inappropriate’ was the opposite of sexy. 

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I had a nasty case of hair-pulling, just to hear the snap of the fibres, and, being acutely aware of a little bald patch at the front right of my head, styled a side bang religiously.

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          The future was just the minute that comes after the one we were in right now.

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