could crawl out of a heap of filthy old hessian.
What would they say if they saw you painted blue in the dunny at school?
‘I’m gunner walk around a bit.’
Shake her off. This girl got in his hair at times.
He swung down quickly out of the tree to show he did not need her company. He would have walked over to Lockharts’, only the old man might stare him out. ‘He mightn’t even know your name. Who are you?’ ‘I’m Gilbert Horsfall—sir,’ ‘Who?’ Hang around outside while they had their tea. Till the boys came out. They still mightn’t want him. He hunched his shoulders trying to count up the people who might know about and want him. The Colonel knew, but you couldn’t say he wanted . After that Ma Bulpit, Irene Sklavos, the teachers while you were in class, the Ballards if they hadn’t forgotten. His list petered out.
Walking down the winding, swooping streets he said his name ‘GILBERT HORSFALL!’ He liked it, but turned round, in case somebody might have heard and thought him a nut. He liked to run his hands over his body. Nobody ever noticed it. It was there, though.
The evening swirled around him. Lights were coming on in some of the homes. An old woman was cuddling a cat on a veranda. Old people. Running her fingers through the cat fur. She had lifted it up and was rubbing noses with the bloody cat. They say a cat has worms in its nose. This old dried up woman had it coming to her if she didn’t know enough by the time she had reached well, fifty at least. Old people got on his tits.
From time to time he pinched his nipples, they itched rather pleasantly, then harder till it hurt.
He didn’t like to think about the old nipples of the woman playing with her cat. The girl on the beach had covered them up as soon as she saw you were looking at what was red and rubbery, sort of flowers cut out of a wet bathing cap.
Sandy skin. What if you sucked on a tit that had been making flowerpots in the sand …
Bruce knew a bloke who got the clap or siph or whatever it was from going with a woman down at Mrs Macquarie’s Seat.
Must be somebody who hasn’t got it.
In the street he was walking down lined with big fuchsias, tree fuchsias, it was already oily dark. The deep blue sky had begun prickling slightly with stars. In a lit window a man was grinding his mouth in a woman’s open one backwards and forwards like he was swallowing her down, all the while running his hands. Some of them had brown nipples (Bruce says they don’t have to be boongs).
Gilbert bloody Horsfall tore off a branch of the giant fuchsia and whipped the darkness. Tassels flew in all directions. The soft, fleshy, sticky stems.
He threw the mangled remains away.
Ohhhh he groaned, swallowing the warm damp sea air, gulping at the stars, he would have swallowed them down if he had been close enough. What was the point of anything at all? Run away, and join up and get killed. A hero on a memorial. Eirene Sklavos had seen killing, if you could believe her. Her father had been murdered. All bullsh probably. But what she had seen, done and knew stuck like splinters in his mind.
Less murders nowadays. Ma Bulpit said it was because there’s a war on. Not without a soldier murders some girl for holding out on him. There was the boy the sailor murdered. Pervs. There was that sailor at Neutral Bay who let down his apron and waved his dick at you. Like you were a perv. You weren’t—or were you?
He lurched round the bend, reeling, like on a ship in a rolling sea beneath the high swirling wastes of an ultra-marine, prickling sky, fell down at last on a bit of wasteland above a culvert, lashing out at lantana and the wiry trailers of morning glory as the stones ate into his back? Or were there others around him in the darkness?
Big boongs with coffee coloured nipples, blousy girls with cut outs of red bathing-cap rubber. Experienced guys in business suits and moustaches grinding into unwilling mouths. Sailor on sailor.
He was so
What would they say if they saw you painted blue in the dunny at school?
‘I’m gunner walk around a bit.’
Shake her off. This girl got in his hair at times.
He swung down quickly out of the tree to show he did not need her company. He would have walked over to Lockharts’, only the old man might stare him out. ‘He mightn’t even know your name. Who are you?’ ‘I’m Gilbert Horsfall—sir,’ ‘Who?’ Hang around outside while they had their tea. Till the boys came out. They still mightn’t want him. He hunched his shoulders trying to count up the people who might know about and want him. The Colonel knew, but you couldn’t say he wanted . After that Ma Bulpit, Irene Sklavos, the teachers while you were in class, the Ballards if they hadn’t forgotten. His list petered out.
Walking down the winding, swooping streets he said his name ‘GILBERT HORSFALL!’ He liked it, but turned round, in case somebody might have heard and thought him a nut. He liked to run his hands over his body. Nobody ever noticed it. It was there, though.
The evening swirled around him. Lights were coming on in some of the homes. An old woman was cuddling a cat on a veranda. Old people. Running her fingers through the cat fur. She had lifted it up and was rubbing noses with the bloody cat. They say a cat has worms in its nose. This old dried up woman had it coming to her if she didn’t know enough by the time she had reached well, fifty at least. Old people got on his tits.
From time to time he pinched his nipples, they itched rather pleasantly, then harder till it hurt.
He didn’t like to think about the old nipples of the woman playing with her cat. The girl on the beach had covered them up as soon as she saw you were looking at what was red and rubbery, sort of flowers cut out of a wet bathing cap.
Sandy skin. What if you sucked on a tit that had been making flowerpots in the sand …
Bruce knew a bloke who got the clap or siph or whatever it was from going with a woman down at Mrs Macquarie’s Seat.
Must be somebody who hasn’t got it.
In the street he was walking down lined with big fuchsias, tree fuchsias, it was already oily dark. The deep blue sky had begun prickling slightly with stars. In a lit window a man was grinding his mouth in a woman’s open one backwards and forwards like he was swallowing her down, all the while running his hands. Some of them had brown nipples (Bruce says they don’t have to be boongs).
Gilbert bloody Horsfall tore off a branch of the giant fuchsia and whipped the darkness. Tassels flew in all directions. The soft, fleshy, sticky stems.
He threw the mangled remains away.
Ohhhh he groaned, swallowing the warm damp sea air, gulping at the stars, he would have swallowed them down if he had been close enough. What was the point of anything at all? Run away, and join up and get killed. A hero on a memorial. Eirene Sklavos had seen killing, if you could believe her. Her father had been murdered. All bullsh probably. But what she had seen, done and knew stuck like splinters in his mind.
Less murders nowadays. Ma Bulpit said it was because there’s a war on. Not without a soldier murders some girl for holding out on him. There was the boy the sailor murdered. Pervs. There was that sailor at Neutral Bay who let down his apron and waved his dick at you. Like you were a perv. You weren’t—or were you?
He lurched round the bend, reeling, like on a ship in a rolling sea beneath the high swirling wastes of an ultra-marine, prickling sky, fell down at last on a bit of wasteland above a culvert, lashing out at lantana and the wiry trailers of morning glory as the stones ate into his back? Or were there others around him in the darkness?
Big boongs with coffee coloured nipples, blousy girls with cut outs of red bathing-cap rubber. Experienced guys in business suits and moustaches grinding into unwilling mouths. Sailor on sailor.
He was so
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