Text: Love at Cumbersome Corner - More sex
The life and times of Cumbersome lovers...
Text
Pool team advises that this contribution contains adult themes.
Fred sits on his full schooner of cider until I’m a sip from finishing my schooner of beer. Then he drains his drink and lands his glass with a thump on his coaster – an easy second before mine. Your shout.
“How’s things with Betty?” He asks because he knows.
When we were school mates at 16, on the Northern Beaches, Fed joined an amateur theatre group, which we – meaning me, Jim, Grant and Carmellino (that is, everyone who mattered) – thought was a pretty dumb thing to do. And we continued to think so all the way through his rehearsal stories, and especially upon seeing him on stage as Morrie in the Coastal Players Production of Dimboola.
Dimboola is the most produced play in Australia’s dramatic history: about a wedding that goes horribly wrong. It ran for two-and-a-half years at the Wisky au Go Go until it burned down. The Wisky is history. Dimboola lives on.
That was in Melbourne in the mid ‘70s. In the late ‘70s, on Sydney’s northern peninsula, came the Coastal Players Dimboola after-party. After which, a 16-year-old boy named Fred came to school with stories of 30-year-old sex. And we all joined (even Grant) the Coastal Players.
Fred settles another swiftly-drained cider onto its NRL-promotion coaster, and it seems things have come full circle.
He tells me he’s been seeing a girl just out of school.
“She was behind the counter when I borrowed Videodrome and Fargo on DVD. She said she’d seen Videodrome but not Fargo. I took a punt, and asked her out,” said Fred.
“The next weekend, we each took the day off, and we had sex all day. We ate lunch and drank and showered and started again. All day. Overall she seemed, you know, pleased - even pretty pleased. But I thought - that’s it. That’s all I’ve got - the full repertoire done in a day. From now on, it’s variations on a theme.”
“Then about two weeks later we were having sex again, and she was coming back at me with a few tricks of her own that she learnt off internet porn. And she was happy and proud because she’d driven me wild. And I did my best to drive her just as wild.
And do you know what she says? ‘That was the best fck I have ever had’.
"Think about it," said Fred. “Someone turns to you and says that’s the best ever. And she’s 18, right: so there’s the faintest chance that it might be true. Think about it!”
And I tried. But it was too horrible.
So I drained my beer, said thanks to Fed; kissed the mouth of Fred; and walked out through the doors of Glebe’s Ancient Briton, 20 blocks back to my darling Betty, cranky as hell in Cumbersome. Cider on my lips, beer on my breath. Love in my heart.
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29.03.09 — michalraise
This is very nice to read your experience Astrobruce.i really enjoyed it.
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14.11.08 — Astrobruce
all this fuss over a little kiss - now i know how judas felt...
When i was in high school, I aroused the dis/pleasure of a slightly older and much bigger boy. he grabbed me by my shirt front and pinned me to a wall. and in his anger, the best insult he could come up with was "you've got poofter lips". I didn't know what he meant then, and i don't think he did either.
From my current perspective, it is clear that his was a conflicted young man, who didn't know whether to punch me or kiss me.
In Cumbersome, they err on the side of kissing.
19.12.08 — Pool team
Ah of course they do. Love the explanation...
ta!
GM
(Pool Team)
09.11.08 — ed_admin
Hi Astrobruce,
Yes I'd like to know about the kiss on the mouth of fred... since your narrator seems on the whole straight... though yes, it is Newtown... is it one of those macho beery bloke footy type kisses - a sort of anti-kiss? What is it this Fred has, able to get both the schoolgals and middle aged fellas?
AND... why not tag your stories "Newtown"? I think there could be a nice collection of various works on the site around that part of town that might go well together...
cheers
Gretchen
(Pool Team)
02.11.08 — Astrobruce
you will have to wait for the thrilling finale of season one! It's all about love.
02.11.08 — Nicole Steinke
You're a very good storyteller, aren't you? I hope you can get a collection of these tales of love and other assorted emotions published and make a bit of money off writing them one day.
I get sucked in there each time and carried along by the gossipy urge to know more about other people's lives. "Then what happened?"
Details that don't quite fit niggle at me though.
Having accepted the collossal improbability of Fred's cider flavoured relationship with the 18 year old in the first place; why did you kiss the mouth of Fred? What did it add? Or was it meant to convey something i didn't get...