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 ~: FICTION / ROMANCE :~  We Rose Up Slowly by Jon Gresham The phenomenon began with birds flying higher and things falling slower. Now the phenomenon is everywhere and it has changed the way we touch each other. One evening, once you finished your ice cream, I came close to you and we took our clothes off; socks floating around the room. I handled you roughly, as requested, leaving marks and bruises on your skin. Afterwards, you turned to me and said it was like being tickled by a giant slice of Spam. How unsatisfied you were and it was my turn to giggle. So then you chased and spanked me with a tennis racquet leaving hatches and bumps on my buttocks like a pale danish ice cream cone. Later, you turned to me and said, "Being bonked by you that day was like having a mosquito attack my privates." I looked at you with your arms folded. I saw you and reached out. But you turned around and walked away; your buttocks flabby like two fat ladies bumping bellies. And I must admit you were right, it wasn't fun anymore. -o00oo00o- The phenomenon began with birds flying higher and things falling slower. Your father, the chicken farmer, who once limped with a jerk and bump, found himself walking with improved ease and greater smoothness. "Hey, don't forget the people with goiters." I remember you telling me once. Your mother had one. Your mother had one stuck, like a bloated parrot, on her left shoulder. Well, people with goiters found their goiters growing. Goiters clamouring for attention, sprouting white hairs, veins protruding, wrinkles deepening, tissues & fluid swilling about, ballooning big, waiting to be popped. Once, suddenly, while watching TV, I stopped staring at the screen and I wandered over to you and under the pretext of practising a Korean massage technique I pressed my hands about your body searching for any protuberances, any early indication of goiters. The only odd shape touched was your nose. -o00oo00o- The phenomenon began with birds flying higher and things falling slower. I can remember. I can remember the first time the phenomenon touched our lives. Of course we'd heard about it and seen it on TV but the first time we'd experienced it first hand we were walking in the parklands. We'd just eaten breakfast at a cafe near the river. I had a steak sandwich with extra onions and you had muesli. We were walking to digest. We were walking, hand in hand, on an autumn day, in the parklands, carefree beneath an avenue of overhanging branches. We were discussing your mother, and her problems with the chooks. Then suddenly mid conversation you stopped and you clenched my hand tightly and said, "Look. Look at the leaves." I looked. I saw. I said, "The leaves. The leaves. The falling leaves. This is ... just ... too much." We stood there gaping like stunned mullets and we turned around, and turned around, and turned around again. We couldn't believe our eyes. The leaves. The yellow green leaves were falling ... sure ... as they do in Autumn ... falling to the ground. But they were falling as though playfully resisting their inevitable rendezvous with the earth. They were falling too softly, floating down too slowly, as though taking their time, well aware they were being watched and enjoying the attention. You said, "Wow. Is this a dream?" And so I kissed you just to confirm we were not asleep. I said, "Perhaps its always been this way and we've never been in love enough to notice." Later, you said, "Of course it wasn't a dream. When you kissed me I smelt onions." -o00oo00o- I remember when I first met you. Somewhere, sometime in the mid eighties a long time before we rose up slowly. A long time before the phenomenon. But then I don't think I remember the details well at all ... yes, I can. Oh yes I can. I think it was someone's 18th birthday party in someone's big yellow house. A house overlooking the beach; a house with a pool and ten pin bowling alley. In the kitchen I found you. You were wearing a hot pink boob tube and aqua, polystyrene bauble earrings. You winked at me. I saw glitter eye shadow. You told me I could call you 'Chook'. I mouthed those words and put my hands against my sides, stuck my elbows out, hands on my hips, leant back, extended my neck and flapped. I stared at you smiling and smiled back. You giggled and stretched both arms upwards showing me your shaven armpits in celebration. Beyond the spiky peroxide hair I noticed a fragile silver locket, a tiny booklet hanging from your neck. As you laughed, it banged against your breast. I stopped flapping. I said something, anything, you laughed. And also I couldn't help noticing, in the kitchen light, your tongue was blue black, and around your gums ... the edges were blue black too. This made me laugh even more and I said something pseudo witty like, "Ah. I see the black plague has reached Hallet Cove." That had you giggling. The delicate little locket bounces. You pointed towards the freezer. "You caught the black plague from a freezer?" More giggling. "No silly." And you opened the freezer and pulled out a black tub with a silver label stuck to its lid. "Liquorice ice cream." You licked your lips with your long black tongue. You prised open the lid and smiled at me. "Do you want some too?" So I ate and felt the cold sweetness inside my mouth. I slobbered over you, dribbled a drop on your breast, and created a mole. Another black drop fell on your locket. "Aren't you gonna clean it up?' So I came even closer and leant down towards the hollow of your neck just above your chest and I stretched out my tongue and licked the surface of the locket and said, "Open your locket for me." I could see your mood darkening as I leant even farther down. "Show me what's inside. I think I ... dropped ... some ice cream ... in between ... its silver pages." I opened my mouth in the shape of a kiss and sucked the little booklet inside my mouth. Suddenly, you snapped at me. "Hey you. Nobody goes there." And you drew back ... and although the locket left my mouth. I was drawn towards you. It felt like you'd taken a fish hook and snared a tonsil at the back of my throat. I looked at you and said, "Hey sorry. I must've got the wrong message." I turned to walk away. But then you checked yourself and smiled. "Hey. My mother gave it to me but it's OK. I'm sorry. You can lick here." And you pointed to the ice cream mole on your left breast. So that's how we first got to know each other. And now, so long after, we have the phenomenon and we will rise up slowly. We are going to do it. There's no going back. I'm waiting for you to finish your ice cream then you will return and we will follow your parents and we will rise up slowly. -o00oo00o- The phenomenon is everywhere and you are eating more liquorice ice cream than ever before. The phenomenon has become part of our lives. We can't escape it. It is no longer extraordinary. Scientists drop rats from above the clouds and record the rate of descent by measuring the circumference of the blood splattered on impact. Nobody approves but the tests continue because people want to find out more. The media love it. There are cameras tied to balloons hanging in the air, shooting footage for a tacky TV program called 'The Floating World Video Show.' The show is presented by a bimbo and an old English sheepdog who waft and woof about the set showing video of strange objects in the sky. You scream with laughter and I say, "No wonder they call it light entertainment." The government has published warnings in the Advertiser and on billboards. Government minivans drive the suburbs with loudspeakers welded to their roof racks blaring slogans of bureaucratic concern for the health and safety of citizens in a floating world. Have they ever cared this much for us before? -o00oo00o- You were eating a bowl of liquorice ice cream with blueberries and Milo sprinkled on top. You said, "The phenomenon is good. Today, when Mum and Dad step onto their bathroom scales they look at the numbers and they think they weigh less. This makes them happy." A thin brown powder line of Milo stretched across the top of your lips. You looked as if you'd borrowed Errol Flynn's moustache. I said, "It may look like they weigh less but they don't really. They haven't changed, have they?" "Yeah. But they're happy. They're happy. That's all anybody wants, isn't it?" "But they haven't changed? Surely, their happiness is an illusion?" "All happiness is an illusion," you replied. "You name me one happiness without some kind of illusion, some kind of deception." "Us." I said. You sighed, dug your spoon into your bowl and licked away your moustache. "See. What did I tell you? You've proved my point perfectly." You were a right Kookaburra that day. I should have rebutted with the happiness your parents brought to you. You've always believed in them. -o00oo00o- Now the phenomenon is everywhere but as a species we've adapted wonderfully, almost learned to love it. Your parents found they had to brush their hair a lot more in the mornings and so ... your mother's afro has become chic again. Of course there are drawbacks, nobody in their right mind ventures outside anymore without an anchor, some heavy objects, without attachments. But we are no longer incapable of making love on the ceiling. Diving weights sold out quickly. Kids go to school wearing back packs loaded with bricks. Horseshoes hang from dog collars. Your mother ropes herself to the fence and triple pegs the laundry on the washing line. Teenagers in hot air balloons scavenge the skies, catch junk with boathooks and tuna nets and drag their flotsam and jetsam on thick, steel cables behind them. It is not unusual to gaze upwards and hear fighting between different balloon gangs. Kids going at each other with baseball bats and harpoons 300 metres above the ground. They abseil down long snaking ropes wearing chain mail gloves and sell their junk at the entrance to shopping malls. The silver locket floats in the air just below your nose. Sometimes it gets caught in a nostril but only when you turn your head to the side and back and forth too fast. -o00oo00o- Then over the radio we heard the beaches were disappearing. So we drove to your parent's beach house by the sea. Your mother met us there. Your father stayed behind to tend the chickens. The three of us stood outside on the steps leading up to the shack. We had a wonderful view of the beach. Your mother, in a large frock splattered with red roses, wept uncontrollably. She sat on the steps beside me, as I stood, she tugged at my trousers, scrunching the cloth, rubbed her eyes and leant her face, against my leg. Her tears dampened my knees. I held your hand. You stood beside me silent and thoughtful. We looked below to the sea and the beach. We stood there mesmerised and lost, your mother weeping the whole time as if she was crying the sea. We watched the sea and the beach. At first it began slowly. Grain by grain. Then it happened faster and faster, more and more sand rose then poured upwards, as if it were raining the wrong way round. Clouds of sand whirling upwards. The beach dissolving. In a twinkling blur, specks flew up until there was no golden sand left. As the tide rolled in, the waves crashed in on nothing. No white water just a brown, blue, black, swirling, sodden silt. As we watched and your mother wept, you whispered in my ear, "Do you think I'll ever be happy? Do you think I'll ever be happy?" And I said, "No. No, why should you be happy if I'm not." -o00oo00o- Your mother told us that she'd heard on the radio that something had happened elsewhere in the universe. She said, after a period of uncertainty, several conclusions were beginning to emerge. In simple terms, she said, there wasn't the same attraction between masses. And I got the feeling you didn't really give a stuff. Your parents seemed happier and as long as you had your liquorice ice cream things were OK. It didn't matter to you things were getting worse for everybody else. We weren't happy together but we lived in a state of easy, comfortable security and mild, safe contentment. We shared everything. Meanwhile, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not even in a decade from now ... but one day: the planet would fall apart. Once, we ran out of liquorice ice cream. You headed out into the city, dumbbells in your backpack, hoping the 24 hour convenience store would not disappoint you. You came back empty handed, blank, pale grey. "They don't bloody well make it anymore." And then you laughed, "I saw a cow in the sky. The cow was freaking out and crapping all over the place. It was so funny. You should have seen the people running for cover." Also, that day too, you were a right kookaburra. For a week you were drooping and wrecked. Then, for a lot of money, your mother arranged some kind of dubious deal with a balloon kid; two chickens for one tub. From then on each week, a 5 kilogram tub of weighed down, black market liquorice ice cream fell from the sky and spiralled delicately onto the grass in our backyard. -o00oo00o- I arrived home from work one day, to find you on the phone, tears streaming down your face. You were speaking to your mother; your mother that hideous lovely lady with the bagpipe voice and aluminium alloy pelvis. You turned your back to me and wept into the wall with a finger in one ear and the telephone earpiece pressed hard against the other. The lobe of that ear looked so red and bright like a fat pink leech. You didn't want to let me see you cry. I left the room and found a window and watched a lawnmower floating in the sky. Looking out above the city, I watched the crap in the air float upwards. Newspapers, bottles, black baseball caps, aluminium cans, broken umbrellas, dead cats, rolls of toilet paper unwinding long white tails, dirty underwear, cotton candy, a box of half eaten heart shaped chocolates, a pair of hand cuffs, somebody's resume. Is it not wonderful to look out the window and see the loose things of the city escape? -o00oo00o- Later, you told me what your mother said. How your father, the farmer rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goiter perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the verandah and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn't flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze. She told you, your father stepped from the verandah to recover the recalcitrant chook, to find the soles of his feet missing the ground, landing on thin air and the chook drifting higher. He couldn't let the chook go but with each step he found the chook rose higher. And of course he had to follow. She told you it was like watching him walk a stairway to heaven. Your mother said, it didn't appear at all as if he was flying, more like floating, like someone rising from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of the sea. On the verandah your mother watched from below until your father and the chook became flecks in the sky. She rushed inside and grabbed the brass navy telescope. She saw him and the chook slowly ascending. She saw him wheeze and hold his chest. She could just see his head turning from one side to the other; in wonder, marvelling at the view. He appeared to turn towards her. He was white and he coughed violently. But he did manage to stiffly turn around and, ever so slowly, raise his arm in a wave. And she thought she saw the chook, rising up slowly beside him, its neck outstretched and its scrawny beak open in a silent chicken scream. She squinted through the telescope and thought she saw the frost fur crystallising about his eyebrows and his false teeth chattering so hard the blood ran from his gums to warm his mouth and down his chin. His arm stopped moving and she knew he was hard as a block of ice and she had been left behind. Towards the end of that phone call, I heard you in a weak, simple voice say, "No, mum. No. Stay here with us. No, mum. No." I watched you breathe deeply, slowly and shake your head ... and then you hung up. That was the last time you spoke to your mother. You turned to me and said, "She wants to be with Dad. She was just saying goodbye." You wandered into the kitchen in search of liquorice ice cream. It wasn't long after that we heard your mother had gone. She settled the phone and other bills, put the garbage out, left the cat with the neighbours, wrapped her clothes in brown paper and sent them to the Salvation Army. She arranged for the liquorice ice cream drops to continue. We talked. We examined our reasons for living. We talked about the future. I asked whether, now your parents had gone, you'd want to rise up slowly too. You looked at me and didn't say anything. I knew by your silence what the answer was. I knew you'd decided to rise up slowly to follow the path your parents had taken. By the look in your eyes, I could tell you were asking me whether I would come too. -o00oo00o- That morning, in the kitchen I found you making toast and eating ice cream. You were wearing a red sports bra and a tartan mini. "Hey chook." I said. "Hey you." You said. "Today's the day. I'm going to rise up slowly." The toast popped out of the toaster and hit the kitchen ceiling. You finished your bowl of liquorice ice cream. You knew what you had to do. I ate my toast. We washed up, wiped the bench tops and put the dishes away. We kissed. Then, almost to clean your mouth, you got the liquorice ice cream out again and ate straight from the tub. "Hey chook. It's OK. This is what you wanted. Come on. Think of your parents." You stopped scooping liquorice ice cream and you looked straight at me, a tear ran down your cheek and dropped from your chin to your chest. "Come on." I told you, "You said it to me yourself. Do we have more reasons to live than to die? Can we really say we have each other?" I walked to you and I traced the path of the tear with my finger. Then I drew my finger over your locket and I traced around its edges and I couldn't tell the difference between silver, skin and tears. They all felt the same to me. "Come on." I walked outside. Really, I wasn't that pissed off. I wasn't upset or sad. I just wanted to get it over and done with. You followed me outside post liquorice ice cream and you held my hand and squeezed and smiled. You looked scared and anxious and you turned to me, "Thank you, anyway. I guess you're staying. I guess this is goodbye." "Hey, it's going to be OK." "Yeah, I know." You went inside for more liquorice ice cream. I stood outside watching the sky and remembered when we first met. Boob tube and baubles. Cold Chisel and Blue Monday playing on the stereo. Then you returned. Liquorice ice cream over. You looked at me and unclasped the silver locket from around your neck. Instead of handing it to me you tossed it high into the air where it wafted slowly upwards. You stepped up onto thin air. "Come on. Follow me. Let's do this together." I will follow you anywhere. And so we let ourselves go. We rose up slowly. |
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| Jon Gresham | |
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| Jon Gresham was born in England and then emigrated to Adelaide just before Maggie and the eighties. ...>> | |
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