Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

‘Well, it’s access to a certain right or advantage by a particular group or person. For example, yours is being male,’ says Georgie, wrinkling her nose.

‘And yours is being white,’ I shoot back. ‘Privilege is power. Privilege is the opportunity to exert power over others, to be corrupt.’

‘No, that’s abuse of privilege.’

They are all staring at me, and I am feeling like I am holding court, warming to my subject. ‘Abuse is inherent within privilege — they’re one and the same. The feeling I get most of the time is that the fervour that fuels these so-called activists is the same that fuels a racist or a sexist. They’re not actually aiming for equality. They’re aiming for a direct exchange so they can be the one in the privileged position and lord it over someone else. Different side of the same coin.’

‘That’s a really cynical way of looking at the world.’

‘Yeah? Well, it’s dog-eat-dog out there,’ I say, shrugging.

They all go silent for a moment, mulling something over. I’m not sure whether it’s my arguments or the fact that a guy who looks like me can speak on their level. Then mole-chin says, ‘Looks like a male ego has yet again hijacked the conversation.’

‘Yeah, because there’s no such thing as a woman with a big ego —’ I stop, and look around. Staring faces. Mole-chin is smiling. I feel like I’ve fallen into some sort of a trap; but what kind, I don’t know. Tiredness overwhelms me and I remember something I saw on a Facebook meme, ‘Yep. Sorry. I guess I have to check my privilege. My bad.’

The conversation scurries on. I sip my water and stare away, still taken aback by seeing Jana Janeski. A boiling torment in my spine. I wish I could twist a valve in my shoulders and release it like steam, like I used to with basketball. Georgie, always conciliatory, scratches me on the shoulder and then rubs the back of my hand tenderly. When we first got together she couldn’t get enough of putting her hand next to mine, admiring the contrast of brown and white, touching my tatts, telling her mates how spiritual I was. She couldn’t stop asking questions about Samoa, questions I found hard to answer.

‘There’s a new exhibition of Pacific art on at the gallery, Solomon. Should be amazing,’ she whispers. ‘Wanna go on the weekend?’

‘I dunno.’

‘But I thought you’d be into it.’

‘Why?’ I say sharply. I’m about to add something else when I hear a familiar voice.

‘Oi, Solomon, ya dumb cunt.’

I turn and see Jimmy grinning lopsidedly,

Some of the uni students look at him angrily,

but he doesn’t seem to notice.

He strokes his chin like a faux-intellectual and nods to himself,

as if he’s come up with a brilliant idea.

Silly bastard,

but thank fuck he’s here.

‘Come on, bro, let’s go get Mercury Fire,’ says Jimmy. ‘Hey, Georgie.’

Georgie doesn’t look at him. He has never been of interest to her.

She gazes at me steadily then sighs.

‘Go on then.’

The day hot and strange and flattened, almost monochrome.

Aleks drives calmly, rolling the blue bead between forefinger and thumb. Spice 1’s voice rat-ta-tats over funked-out keys and synths as the land unfolds before the Hilux. This part of suburbia has a wildness, as if the flats and houses on the edge of the bushland are in danger of being overtaken by it. He stops at a red light, and on the corner is a large electricity box with the ghost of a buffed chromie on it, its letters only vaguely decipherable.

Near the Greek Orthodox church, he sees a man in an orange hi-vis jacket standing in the middle of a field where there were once massive blackberry bushes, long since poisoned. The man has a measuring tape in his hands and the grass at his feet is almost white, bleached by drought. Aleks swings the wheel and turns into the old graveyard. He goes down a blue metal driveway lined by a calligraphy of ghost gums and observes a bird settle on a tombstone. As it lands, its wings take the shape of hands in supplication.

A ute is parked next to the far fence under an ironbark. He pulls up beside it. It’s covered in Southern Cross stickers and bikie insignia. There are two men inside, both with long hair and thick, bristly beards. The driver climbs out. He’s a bikie, wearing wraparound sunnies, and has a strange triangular dent in his forehead, almost squarely above the gap in his eyebrows. Tattoos cover his arms, hands and throat. He offers Aleks a cigarette. They smoke together for a while, looking at the gravestones, between which are patches of dying daisies and purple bush sarsaparilla, the stones slanting in opposite directions, stained maroon and green by rust and moss. A magpie hops sideways down the cemetery’s far fence and beyond that is the river, drying up.

After a while, the man speaks.

‘This is one of the oldest cemeteries in the state, you know. It’s divided into four sections, see.’ He gestures with a hairy hand towards the opposite fence, which is buckling and dark with treeshadow, then makes a chopping motion four times in the air, hand moving left to right. ‘Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic. A few Jews over there. A few gravestones in Arabic there — Syrians who came during the goldrush, you know? All the Abos and Chinks were buried outside the fence cos they were heathens. No headstones for the unconsecrated. Somewhere beneath us, there’s hundreds of em. Thousands maybe.’ He taps the ground three times with his shoe, as if knocking on a door. ‘A hundred years ago, most people in the Town couldn’t even be buried here with a gravestone.’ He smiles vaguely, then says, ‘Well. maybe you or me.’

‘Fuck that. I wouldn’t wanna be buried here anyway.’ Aleks catches himself and stamps out his cigarette. ‘No offence. ’

‘None taken, mate.’

‘How do you know all that shit, anyway?’

‘Library card.’

‘Good for you.’ Aleks scratches his ear. ‘So.’

‘So.’ The man plucks a gum leaf from a branch and methodically folds it in half. He has very dry lips, which he wets with his tongue before speaking. ‘I’ve heard things, Janeski. Things that offend me. Things that make my life more complicated. I like my things to be simple.’

‘Life is never simple, brother.’

‘True. But a bloke can dream, can’t he? You know, I wasn’t even sure if I should come here today. I almost sent someone else.’

The men look across the headstones at a stand of poplar trees on the other side of the river. A boy in a wheelchair rolls off an unseen track and parks beneath them.

‘But you’re here now,’ says Aleks.

‘I am, indeed. But we’re jumping the gun, Janeski. I feel like you had something to say to me.’

Aleks smiles magnanimously. ‘Look here, brother. Let’s not mess around, all right? I know you’re not here to fuck spiders. You’re a smart fella. You’d be able to tell that I’m what you call a people’s person. I meet all sorts of characters in this funny game. So recently, I made the acquaintance of some fellas in Sydney. Fellas with a bit of dash. Fellas that it’s better to be friends with than enemies, understand? More importantly, these fellas have a lot of product in their possession. Cheap. Good quality. Direct from Afghanistan.’

‘How cheap?’ the bikie asks. The man in the passenger seat of the ute is cocking his head, obviously trying to catch every word.

Aleks cracks his knuckles and says a number. The bikie nods. ‘Competitive. But what if I don’t want to meet your friends?’

‘Well. Then things get. complicated again,’ says Aleks. The boy in the wheelchair whirs a handline over his head and hurls it into the river. ‘But there’s no need for that, brother. Let’s be businessmen about this. Not animals. Let’s. how do you say? Compromise. The way nations do it.’