Steve Toltz - Quicksand

XXIII

How quickly habits form! Before each suicide attempt, before kicking myself to the biological curb, I’ve become accustomed to yielding once more to this lifelong libidinal urge, to one last go on the opposite-sex rollercoaster. Thank God for the oldest profession — after warmongering — in our quarter-million years on the clock!

The Enigma Variations, the familiar pink room with its coal fireplace and deceased-estate furniture, discoloured armchairs and died-upon sofas, and its faded wallpaper stained from fire damage. The room still had the quality of the inside of a wet cheek, notwithstanding it being redolent of condoms and cigarettes. I asked the Korean madam for Gretel and was told she was with a client and to choose another girl, but they all had overadventured, unrefreshable, unsurprisable faces that tried to look inviting but had the opposite effect. I ran my eyes over rope burns, bite marks, hickeys, bruises, general sores, and an obvious lack of camaraderie.

— I’ll wait.

Forty minutes later, Gretel came down the stairs with her kind eyes and her wonderful hook nose.

— Hi Gretel.

— Hey! Simon Simonson!

Up the same carpeted staircase, along the same dreary hallway where on the other side of closed doors orgasms sounded like bitter protests, with the same fire exit and its partial view of a cement staircase, and, at the end of the hallway, that same old room with the sinister padlock on it. (What the fuck was in there?) Into the same bedroom with the curtainless windows that looked onto a brick wall and rusted drainpipe. Only the chair was new. They’d bothered to refurnish! Gretel stripped down to her underwear and kicked off her shoes and asked me what I wanted to do with her. I had no great ideas. She led the charge — we reverse-cowgirled — during which she let out a few credible moans and I thought: I am incongruous here in this place. Morrell is incongruous in the residency. Liam is incongruous in the police force. Elliot is incongruous in his prison cell. Yet at the same time, we are all exactly where we belong.

— We’ve still got half an hour. You want to talk a while, Simon?

— Aldo.

Gretel smiled, lit a cigarette and dragged the glass ashtray onto her naked stomach and told me about the last client, a regular who always fucked her in a corkscrewing motion as if upon penetration his penis had to navigate a spiralling warren of vaginas. Then about another client’s penis that was hard but strangely ice-cold. I laughed.

— Everybody fucks at a snail’s pace these days. Viagra’s made the job unbearable. Men, for the first time, are able to get their money’s worth. Sorry, I shouldn’t be sharing this with you.

— That’s all right, go on.

— Do you know there are still people who come here and just want to masturbate! Can you imagine? In this economy?

She stroked my arm lifelessly and rambled on about emotionless men who gave the blankest stares while she was riding them; about creepy hair-strokers and love-declarers, men who wanted to go from zero to a hundred in terms of emotional intimacy. She explained how it was worse to be dependent on one man (marriage) than on hundreds (prostitution). I loved listening to her. This was the last conversation I was ever going to have and I was grateful that it was so interesting.

Back in the hallway I felt a violent disquiet when I saw her next client, a man built like an old steamer trunk. All of a sudden I felt like one of the endured horrors she won’t be telling her grandkids about.

— Goodbye, Aldo.

— Goodbye, Gretel.

As the man trudged into the bedroom, she leaned in close to me and brushed a feather of a kiss on my cheek.

— Saffron, she whispered, with an awkward smile.

With almost contented resignation, I left The Enigma Variations to go to the abandoned supermarket near Princess Highway where I could do a perfectly clean two-kilometre run into a brick wall.

XXIV

My unregistered car near Luna Park was graffitied and radioless, with about a dozen tickets on it. I flagged down a plumber’s van and an amiable apprentice with jumper cables helped me get it started. It was a damp, weak-sunned morning in Sydney. There was a steady, somnolent stream of four-door sedans, the sound of wheels on wet asphalt. I took a handful of sleeping pills and accelerated down the windswept road with nothing but factories, apartment blocks, empty parks and bandaged trees on either side, then swallowed a second handful, filled with a fear that was no longer frightening. I felt like a beloved musical group disbanding after years of infighting. Clouds and the humungous shadows of skyscrapers conspired to keep us in a dark-grey air-locked dome. I pressed my foot on the accelerator and took a third handful of pills. The car swerved and slid sideways as I overtook in fast lanes, shot over roundabouts, turned treacherously without indicating. I can’t explain the unwavering faith I had in my driving reflexes — no living being would be harmed in the production of this suicide, I said out loud. The city flew by — first trees, then whole buildings. I sped down a street flanked by refrigerator showrooms, a service station, veterinary hospital, pub, bottle shop, real estate agent, pharmacy, rug warehouse, pub, smash repairs, police station, pub, pub, office supplies, upended supermarket trolleys on traffic islands, underwear billboards, telegraph wires like exposed nerves. I soared past people who should have been subterranean dwellers but who were right out there on the earth’s surface. I imagined I was drifting through the universe like in my old dream, as a voiceless faceless thoughtless drifting eye. I accelerated over speed bumps, crossed the cabled bridge, thinking: You can’t stuff a suicide back into its tube. The car veered as if tottering along a high ridge in high winds, and the cold air stung through the sliver of open window. I thought of the burning love I felt for Mimi, and the love I felt for Stella flared up even brighter. I would drive into the ocean, or into the metaphor of the ocean. I could now see the silhouette of the shipping containers against the slate-grey sky, huge flocks of birds flying in a tight arc. Removing my seatbelt, I drove faster and downed another handful of pills. They’d never think to pump my stomach in all that twisted metal. This was it. No more notes. No more preparations. No more goodbyes. So many of us die like spoiled children, in a tantrum, over nothing — obdurate, melodramatic, curt deaths. I was swerving all over the place, bursting through intersections, cutting corners. I was on the sidewalk now — I could barely keep my eyes open. To suicide is to die from complications after one’s birth. I spotted a sign on an overpass: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIRANDA. I thought: Fuck Miranda and her shitty birthday. At which moment my mental fog cleared and I screeched to a halt, inches in front of a chain of hand-holding preschoolers in yellow raincoats.

The children burst into tears. At the window of an empty sushi restaurant, a waitress pressed her head against the glass. I turned off the engine and took the keys out of the ignition. My body was numb but I was OK. Except I was dying. Once and for all. The dying epiphanies, only five in number, came thick and fast:

1. There must be bacteria on plastic banknotes. I’m sure I got E. coli from a fiver.

2. Idea for a neurotic ladies’ man: a product line of condoms made of antibiotic-laced polymer.

3. Whenever someone said to me, What would Jesus do? I should have said, They say that the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour, and then just walked away.

4. All those times people pretended to be impressed, nobody really believed that I could tickle myself — they all thought I was faking.