Dipped in Chocolate

The sun, the sun – well sixteen strangers walk into a room, all furled with confetti and absent minded toffee strings. Ho hum, the records play over and over on the old gramophone, the wireless, so suited to the width of the 1950's bee bop. Of course she walks in, dressed all in midnight with her hair curling around her ears and her eyebrows arched to the blow. Pretty, yes, yes she is and she was before, but she walks so purposefully and I want her to fall on her face as she used to. Arms wave over the sixteen figures, forearms joined at the elbows, too lazy to meet us all the way, hug, hug, kiss, kiss – ooh, I feel a silly dullness, but I brush it off like someone else's dandruff because I have never had dandruff, though I wish that she did. Well you look lovely, yes you do, but the eagerness in your eyes does not reflect my words. Let's see, VACANT would be the word to describe your raison detre at the moment, SHALLOW perhaps – let's see. I turn my head to find an attainable friend. Over there by the boardwalk lies a little lad in wait. Blonde tufts of hair strike up from an ever so branded head. It's the cheesy smile on his face that I can't stand, can't help feeling sorry for, cheesy, cheesy, cheesy. His legs are flayed over the chair in an unnatural rhythm as he attempts to flirt with the siamese -twin salad. Yes, she has a sister. High heels have grown accustomed to her flat feet. Pink is all the rage and it secretes her charming regularity. She sits on top of cheesy; smiling vaguely as the black haired girl dipped in dark chocolate dances with twelve-year-old fish in the strobe lit room.

Not a care, a few naked jokes, oh ha ha, I've seen better and such like…. And from within I see it all, with a smile on my face and a Baltic stupidity mask that works a treat. In black and white motion, we all look around the room and I take a snapshot in my mind of the evening, because black haired girl has hogged the camera and I want a photo without the narcissistic insanity. I want a black and white to pin to my mind, to look back on, to see the good, to sepia tone the bad. The next week, the next day the next month, things get complicated, not for me, I don't allow it, for her. Her stories hit the town in hurricane madness and there are phone calls spanning from Mississippi to Timbuktu, arrow in rotation, back to Adelaide and Melbourne; a scenic route bypass. Me, well I sit here typing out her life because that is what she wants me to do. She knows that I am a writer, a painter, a pensive soul, she sees a means to an end, an end to her means. Listen now, it's all becoming too hard my baby girl, my honey loaf, my beloved one, let me stay with you tonight and I promise not to wake you, I'll sit here slowly until you wake in the morning. Well, I say, you can stay, but be kind to my rules, please don't stare and please don't hurt my ears anymore. And there she goes again, blah blah blah blah blah and my typing turns to crap, my oils melt and I turn around, cup the drama in my hand and stroke her hair so that she won't throw up.

At night on the MSN, I read a few lines from a perfect positioning overseas and it's a circumspect firelight in my anxious sensitivity. It says over and over the words I need to hear; fire, heat, sun – we're going in for the count captain, ten, nine, eight, seven, six…. And I look at the Helvetica type with affection because porn names come up, farm animals, slut garden and Toni has huge breasts. All this within makes little edgy nerves in my stomach explode and I laugh without rocking the sleeping boat by my side because I know she will cry crocodile tears at my feet slip me up again.

I never went in too deep before because candy girl with lipstick hair was kind enough to go down that road with me belaying. What a superhero of the trenches – The American Maid, and me, well I'm the Tick and Arthur. She's Pounding out writing after writing for middle aged housewives with illiterate minds, oblivious to the superstars that centre her works.

Proud, straight, statue of liberty strength, immense for such a fox like bird. Bold, intelligent mad. But black haired girl is still staring at the computer screen – she hears the bloop of MSN, who's talking to who? Are they talking about me? Get in there fast dipped in chocolate, before the lies implode and you cut your wrists with packing boxes.

At the end of the day the white skinned girl is staring into space, into the galaxy beyond the timbermill. Her grandfather's roars echo from the space between the land and she jumps off the jetty and into the green, grey sea. At midnight, the sharks come out and she swims around their heads, but they are too busy being large and echoing the states of still currents. Back on the diving board, white skin stretches up straight into the air, her cannonball bathing suit holding her in seal like strokes, her toes cling to the edge as she crouches stealthily to enter the water. Underneath her tendons flex, the muscles rise up from her calves and she feels the spring of the aqua board bounce beneath her feet, pushing her forward, silently, athletically into the chemical depths of the pool tank. She follows the black cocaine line down the pool, breathing in the adrenaline, faster and slower until all that is left behind is a Gaelic stretch of incessant whining, the tender body of American Maid and the skin of a black haired girl dipped in chocolate.