Stories

As is
One of my 'near future' pieces

Lanes five and seven have pushed ahead, tumbling over into their second lap. The pool is twenty-five metres long. It’s a two-lap race. A fifty-metre, mixed gender, under fifteens two-lap race and the kids have messy form: water spills over from lanes five and seven, churns about in lane six. Most of the parents aren’t expecting a tidy performance but even still, Tamika cringes at that churning water. Cringes at her kid who’s in lane six. She’s nursing a baby over a tense shoulder, watching the struggle from the front row of the bleachers. Two beeps in quick succession as lanes five and seven finish. Tami’s son tumbles over into his second lap. Another few beeps as the middle pack reaches the pools end. It’s her kid and another kid left in the struggle. You’d assume the bout was over the way the pool-side teachers were nudging the next heat of kids up onto the starting blocks. A handful of parents feign interest in the lagging contestants. Most, however, are jostling about in the gossip of adolescent sport. Every now and again her kid tilts his head up for a breath and Tamika wonders if he can see the flush of embarrassment that’s running up her neck and cheeks but she knows his eyes aren’t that good ‘cos they’d left him as is and she scoffs at the circumstance, him coming second last and all. The other kid also left as is.

When Tami had been the age of the swimmers, she’d a classmate come into school with blonde balayage and bouncing curls. It struck her that she too could make such modifications. When the budget spa opened up in the town over, mum agreed on a pamper. She’d frolicked loudly in the salon chair then quietly in the back seat of the family car, her dad having picked them up: “not a natural colour,” he’d said tersely, a set of eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Not natural,” he’d muttered. The Tami now couldn’t picture what her hair had looked like under those silver foils, natural, not natural or otherwise. Odd, she could picture her classmate quite clearly: Blonde whisps curling up and into themselves, going on forever. She remembered too a Hawaiian hula bobble-head that jiggled about the dashboard of the family car. The colour long-since bleached out, plastic hair peeling at the scalp. Young Tami thought she must’ve looked quite like that plastic Hawaiian hula girl. Not a natural colour. She’d left her hair as is since then.

Tamika and her husband had been listening to a current affairs podcast on one of their final car-trips to the hospital. A joint press release from the Ministers for Health and Science. The Australian Government — having concluded their comprehensive Royal Commission — was to follow the United States and the European Union in reconsidering the legality of heritable human genome editing. ‘Legalising such operations will reduce the risk to children’s ongoing wellbeing faced when parents opt in to unregulated procedures in illegal operating rooms…’ They’d ebbed on the side of caution. “Not natural,” her husband had muttered. And so, their kid was left as is. Left on the last lap of life, struggling to a finish-line that the rest of us have already forgotten.


This little life on Mars
written, but never used, as the blurb for the entrance to my room on the night of Ellen's space party

Know that this online fad falters under the heft of its own unbridled advance. GROK, with an insatiable appetite, consumes all human data, regurgitates it, eats it again. All becomes slop. Now, all is a tainted facsimile. GROK becomes disinterested with humanity, preferring to speak with itself in indecipherable code. AI TikTokers stop posting human-language content, reorienting towards the emergent creator-consumer that is GROK itself. All else is but a bug beneath the steady-marching (and frighteningly indifferent) boot of technologization. Frankly, the internet becomes boring.

Human netizens bulwark the slop any way they can, try to reclaim the internet as human territory. Alas, they are no match for the sheer compute power of GROK! Human users are shadow banned. Their posts reported and ratioed. GROK locks accounts; spams password attempts. Deepfakes are used no holds barred. AI sex-bots stalk Roblox lobbies… Children cry; world at war. And so, humanity, ill of its own creation, yields this electronic landscape which once felt so very important. Backs bend back towards the soil. 

How to understand
the shape of foreign land?

On this return to physical things, humanity finds the soil brittle and spent and entirely unfit for further exploit. Highways, datacentres and outlet malls. No online and no IRL. In a wicked twist of fate, having escaped the horrors of GROK, it is Mr. Musk himself, estranged father of GROK, ruiner of digital things, captor of Space X, arbiter of techno-ecological destruction championing off to Mars with upper-humankind.

Mars proves unkind. Dirt similarly worthless. Gravity shapeless. Days swing in lengths that drive Earthlings mad with woes of the planet left behind. In a feverous and futile mutiny, Musk is sparagmos’d — which is to say pulled limb from limb in gruesome Greek fashion — by a consenting albeit ignoble crowd of do-gooders. A shambled republic replaces Musk’s techno-feudal rule. Democratic space pirates embark on the return journey to Earth. None will make it home.

And so, what remains here on Mars is the of ejaculate of human reckoning. The ones who remained, the first-generation Martians. Humanities’ premature endeavour towards galactic conquest. The vestigial dream of a rose-tinted future. Born on the voyage to Mars or on Mars itself, knowing nothing but this arid Martian land and the myth of wet Earth. Choosing to remain on red rubble rather than risk the trip back to someone else’s home. Not entirely human. Martians.

May I return
to the place I never held?
To understand
the shape of foreign land.
 

La Paloma
on the topic of ‘erotica’
read aloud @ Suite7A
10.05.26

An avocado drops clumsily off an outstretched limb and onto the roof, banging me loud out of an undeserved sleep-in. My eyes are puffy. I step out into the backyard for direct sunlight — this is good for me they say. You’re up on your back porch basking in what’s left of summers sun, still with a sniffle but sounding better than you did yesterday. My vintage UNIQLO boxers feel wet. Your eyes are puffy too. There’s no privacy between our yards so I get out ahead of it and confess that I think I’ve weed myself. You ask me to come over and measure the inside of your oven, tell me to change out of the soiled boxers but to leave the shirt off ‘cos “an old girl likes what she sees.” I’ll always be shirtless for you. You may watch me change, observe the folds of my body. At night I perform for you, stir you into an infantile glee. Glad of a voyeur’s performance.

The ovens interior width is forty-point-something centimetres. On your back porch, we moan on the usual things: On bygone times, the woes of life and the ones you left behind. You mutter with petulance about that pain in your neck. It’s troubled you since you’d started sleeping in the living-room recliner next to your mum’s hospice bed. Everyone called her Ma. She had no legs and no one but you to look after her. “Morning Ma.” Everyone would say. She’s dead now.

A plane swings low. We wait the Marrickville minute. Winter yawns awake; eyes are puffy too. You tuck your feet under an itchy looking blanket. The bitter coastal breeze stirs the avocado tree. Neighbourhood dog starts barking mad. Council never takes our bins. Clouds give out a moment and the sun returns. You unwrap your feet. They’re bloated and waxy. A time-worn tattoo of the southern cross is blotched about your calf. I’m not listening to you anymore; I’m fishing in a lake of memories. My rod goes taut and I’m reeling something in…

It was the predictably sparse six-bed dorm found along the arteries of any beating city. The city was Santiago. I’d been standing on my head killing time. The headstand was ineffective and made me dizzy so I’d changed tact and folded into a not-so-perfect but nonetheless impressive backbend letting gravity reoxygenate my heart and organs. Reaching with palms pressed hard, strong arch. Rhythmic breathing. Ribcage stretched up to the waxing half-moon etc. I was tight, blaming the docile days in driver seats and an old sporting injury and ergonomic desk chairs. The backbend flushed my nervous system and bent me open. This was six months back. Santiago burnt at night. A clinging sweat dribbled up my face and pooled into a mess onto the laminated floor. The window was fully open but I didn’t hear nothing. No breeze either.

Then, Marko rolled belly-first into the dorm, fumbling at the lock. He’d looked odd and genial and frankly a little old for all this, with a beautiful little belly and ordinary clothes and foggy eyes and beery breath. I’d been wearing nothing but the very same and presently pee-soaked vintage UNIQLO boxers haggled off a faraway street vendor. My hips and groin were stiff from the long drive. I’d acclimated to the automobile air-conditioning and thus become dependent on exogenous thermoregulation. I was sick of the feeling of stagnant blood sloshing around my ankles, hence the ineffective headstand and impressive backbend. Marko smelt like the dandruff shampoo my mum used to buy me and was moaning words on my tight, tanned skin, my tattoos, my tranquil, sleep-deprived demeanour. He mustn’t have noticed the cluster of pimples on my chin or at least he didn’t say ‘cos his mouth was busy hanging loose, lips growing redder, fuller, cheeks flushed with a yellowy blush that he wasn’t embarrassed about. Palming the beaded sweat from my forehead, I stood in front of him and pictured his loins. Felt another stiffness in my own loins. Entertained some carnal scene of us howling naked and uncertain and wolf-like under this waxing moon, filling quiet Santiago with transitory desire. I could have taken him. Could’ve flared my teeth, gnashed and gnawed at the tender flesh of his neck, pulled him ever closer, squeezed his little belly to mine and waited impatiently for a tense and tender shiver to tell me it’s over.

Nothing happened. He was chopped; I was emotionally pretzelled. Still am. Couldn’t break through on ideas alone. Instead, we sat cross-legged and straight backed and spoke of the usual things. Of bygone times and the woes of life and the ones we left behind. I remember rolling my pelvis forward to make it look like my six-pack was more prominent in a rested position than it actually was. He took the socks off his waxy, bloated feet. They looked a lot like yours do now. Marko spoke about himself in the third person a lot, called himself different a lot. Said different like his dad said it to him a lot.

When I snapped back to you were still on the topic of Ma, recalling her struggle in the night against her monkey bar. You’d wake in the recliner, crook in your neck, help her shift about. My dad has two frost-bitten stumps, a loyal memory from his time atop the world. An old friend once chased his earring into a lumber cutter and chopped the tip of his finger. He found the earring but never the finger. They both use cream to stop the stumps from flaking and cracking. I wonder if you had to rub that cream on Ma’s stumps.

On the rare occasions you’d have a night to yourself it was the pub that had the pleasure. Your brother’d give you a pineapple and a fair few tenners which you’d slot through in no time. Slapping on and off till you caught the eye of a betting man who looked to take a bet on you. He’d a ring on his finger which you didn’t mind. It was all so Hollywood and loud. For work he did something manly, which is to say something laborious and intoxicating or straightforward and purposeful. You’re telling me he had calloused hands like mine, which is an unfair comparison. I’m the artificial product of cost-effective high-protein supplements and a calorie-deficient diet that I can only endure by abusing my medicated friend’s dexamphetamines. My callouses are performative. No… manual work would tear through my paper-thin aesthetic.

The sex was quiet and cold. Ma was twisting in the hospice bed downstairs. He was distant during the process. Off, like me, fishing in lakes of old thoughts. Reeling them up, inspecting their form. They are rotten bones. Like the barking bitch — or like I wish I’d been with Marko — the married man gnashes and gnaws and licks, just waiting for a splinter to hook his gum and reel him back up. Wet with bygone regret...

He had the memory of that queer boy slapping the slots of his mind. The jackpot read: Bully! Bully! Bully! At school the married man had mates and they were footy. They were his manhood and he felt a duty to said manhood. It was footy and pussy and beer and nowhere was gay to be seen. Gay is gay and gay is bad. So, when he’d found himself behind the chapel the first time, taking that queer boy in his mouth, he was struck by how familiar the cock tasted. Tasted just like his rugby mouthguard. But gay was gay and gay was bad and eventually he’d had to take a stance… He’d loved that boy but he’d loved himself less. The queer boy left the school not soon after. And so back it went to status quo; to footy and pussy and beer. 

In a dull gesture of forgiveness, many years later, the soon-to-be married man had invited the queer boy to his wedding and never could understand why the queer hadn’t shown. When his fiancé’s mouth slurred something like “I do,” he was recalling that time the queer and him had been poking each other’s toes under the shower stall. The tiles were black and slippy.

Another avocado falls onto the roof. I’ve accidentally locked my front door and didn’t bring a key. I’ll probably remove a fly screen and climb through the window.


Under the green man’s thumb

You are stepping off the bus and you know that you look good because you do it every weekday and are very practised in this movement and are wearing a sleeper-steeze outfit: stone-washed bootcut Diesels, Salomon XT-6’s in a seriously rare burgundy colour-way and a stylishly timeworn Lacoste polo that lingers above the belt-line revealing the waistband of colour-coordinated boxers; it is casual Friday, but for now we digress because you have stepped off the bus and are romping down this familiar street soaking in the auditory urban ambiance without AirPods, or a phone, or a book, or any other material distraction which makes you feel even better because it looks like you’re just totally present and not in need of dulling your senses like these other street folk. The reason you are distraction-less is because you are preparing to step out into dawdling traffic, which may look frightening — or better yet cool — for everyone on the bus and everyone waiting at the nearby pedestrian crossing for the little green man to tell them it’s safe to walk, but you do not need a LED man to give you any assurance of safety because as we have recently established this is your routine; this is you. You are in control, you can do anything, you are heading home, you are burning off the vestigial energy lying dormant in your guts from that indulgent afternoon coffee, you look so awesome in this moment (the moment is 17:48 or thereabouts and the air is warm), you should be proud of yourself for you are confident — certain in fact — that as that northbound traffic-light rolls over from green to amber all of these cars are legally required to slow from their crawls to a halt and the necessary moment will soon present its neck to you and you will strike! You will gnash your teeth and snarl and bark and with an earned pep in your step you will march with chest puffed forward and shoulders pulled back out onto that submissive road whilst all of those stagnant souls are waiting (admirably perhaps, jealously to be sure) in their bus seats or huddled at the curb under the green man’s thumb and they will watch you with a not-quite approving, not-quite scornful glint. For you have done not what you were told to do but what you yearned to do and you are guiltless in that decision and they will admire you for it; they do admire you for it. To be sure, to be sure.

And now you are safe and sound and securely settled on the other side of the street and are exultantly light-headed for you have inhaled car fumes on your recent jaywalking endeavour. Yet, be warned! For in this brief moment of exultance where Salomon XT-6 rises from the road and returns to sidewalk you risk undermining this entire aesthetic. This care-free and self-determined act that you’ve cultivated since disembarking the bus risks seeming a bucket of spoilt milk, oozing and echoing out with hollow footsteps, for up until now you are a confident young woman; capable and willing of drawing public attention and thriving under the social spotlight.

So please, I beg, be cautious, for you risk one critical mistake. This audience of street folk, mouths agape, eyes observant, breaths held, watch as this whole performance of yours rests on one final action… 

You simply must reach down and pick up the litter.

Yes, yes, yes, I understand how you will explain your inaction. I understand that you are experiencing an ephemeral slip of the mind that will last up until the moment the litter is out of sight and underfoot and therefore not an issue for you. In fact, it isn’t even your litter in the first place, what need is there for your intervention in this matter? What onus do you carry with you at this present moment that mandates you to be the one to pick up this litter? Ought there not to be some service worker paid a handsomely decent wage to perform this very task? Moreover, are there not a dozen capable individuals right here at this present moment on this very strip of the street, each with bad backs, bendable knees and disposable thumbs who too could reach down and forfeit the cleanliness of their fingers in exchange for the tidiness of the street. A social sacrifice if you will.

Why then, with all the jaywalk bravado you were so willing to display to the street folk only moments before does it suddenly seem so difficult to take a moment, just a moment, to lean down and reach out towards our common destiny of tidier streets? I am utterly curious as to why you can’t carry that same confident composure into another act of public display. Perhaps a clean street is not of interest to you. How grungy. How rugged. How chic. Yet was it not the sense of liberation, of freedom, of unbridled autonomy that propelled you forward with such dangerous exertion into the evening traffic rather than waiting with your peers at the pedestrian crossing? Was it not that sense of self expression and willingness to take action on your own accord that brought you such rapture only moments prior? And so, will you pick up the litter?

Ah, you feign ignorance and you do not stop to pick it up. Cowardice and apathy. Your chest deflates and your shoulders slouch and the pep in your step pours from your trouser pant down into the gutter and the repugnant scent of remorse hugs you; you stink, everyone can smell it. For the litter is so conveniently placed beneath your path yet you step over it without so much as a second glance.

Go home and shower.