Queen's Birthday Weekend

June long weekend. Winterdaze, party all night, take drugs all weekend. Queen's Birthday weekend, it always seemed to be our very own, in some sense. That’s what we all would have been doing once, partying. The biggest buzz for this weekend was some pot. I organised it myself, on the way up.

I took Sam up to the country. I, um, er, poisoned him all weekend. So often I looked over at him and he just looked in pain. It stopped me a couple of times. I don’t even want a boyfriend like this, so why am I doing it to him? I don’t want a pot smoking boyfriend, so why when I have one do I feed him pot?

It was a lazy weekend. May and Adrian were up too. Adrian has had breast cancer and she is still going through the chemotherapy. They cooked gnocchi. I cooked an orange cake with whipped crème and raspberry coulis.

I lay around all weekend, on the couch, in front of the open fire. Lovely. Sam dragged me out for one walk in the forest, something about fresh air, whatever. Mark dragged me out to cut fire wood.

You know I came home with pot. Of course. It wasn’t until after 11pm and I was hoping Shane was in bed. Well, after not getting half the dope deal – I just said give me half of what’s left and we’ll be square. Mark turned into his middle child and grabbed it all for himself – and only getting enough for one good days smoking, I suddenly became selfish and wanted to keep it all for myself.

Oh, I know, I’m a bad person. I’ll go to hell. How could I? Shane is the most generous person in the world. Yes, all perfectly valid points.

But, I did. I’m UNEMPLOYED!

The roller door slid open to reveal... oh damn! The lounge room lights on. Damn! The coast isn’t clear. So we’re hoping it’s just Shane, which it could be, he had an exam today.

Head in the door, and go straight upstairs, don’t stop, taking all the bags with you, so the pot is secure.

And the tall, miserable one is out of action, oh please yes. Good news on that front, he had a car accident. Woo-hoo. Pat me, prop me up, support me. Oh please! Spare us! I guess I should just sleep with him and get it out of the way.

And Sebastian will have been out partying, no chance he’ll be even conscious by now.

Oh good, just Shane.

Slip in the door, act nonchalant.

“Did you go to Bolago?” asks Shane.

“Yes.” Oh yes, wince, that’s right, he doesn’t like it when I do that. “I told you... seeing Adrian... remember?” I did tell him that. I mouth the Big C.

“No.”

“Yes, it was a good weekend. And you?”

Around the corner, out of ear shot, up into my room, hide the booty, like a gentle breeze.

Missy is stretched out on the clean washing I just never never leave clean washing on the bed for precisely the picture I’m now looking at. She must have taken up residence before my car was out the driveway Friday night, judging by the spinifex-wheels of fur blowing across my sheets.

She opens one eye. I gather myself. Spin around, down stairs.

Downstairs straight to the kettle. “How was your test?” The reason Shane couldn’t party this weekend, he an exam for night school.

“I didn’t go.”

Oh. Into the study turn the computer on. Back into the kitchen. “You didn’t go?”

“No, I didn’t have to, it was option...”

An option?

The kettle boils. Water in cup, milk in tea… back to the study.

I sneak upstairs and roll a joint crouched by the side of my bed like a thief in the night, to be ready the moment he heads to bed, must be soon. I slip back into the study unnoticed in the dark.

“Well dohl, I’m heading to bed?” Small talk, small talk, blah, blah, blah,  at my study door. I had to turn around, never turn around, sometimes you just got to turn around. Oh really, how lovely. Yes, yes. Ha hah!

Go to bed. Awkward silence. Don’t engage, you can out-stare him, you know that.

“Oh well, good night.”

Ahhhh, there you go. Hooray. “nite.”

Clump, clump, clump go the footsteps on the stairs.

I’m at the kettle nervously pushing the button, as I hear the toilet flush and the sink water being run. The kettle clicks like a gun in the dimmed light as I pour the water into my cup. Jiggle, jiggle, jigger, JIGGLE! goes the tea bag.

Out the back door in the crack in the dark, straight back to my sixteen year old self sneaking out the back door to go have a fag halfway through home work.

Click, click, click, sparks the lighter.

Puff, puff, puff. The night air has a lovely translucent quality to it, you see when you stand and gaze at it.

Back inside, sneaking all the way until I’m back behind the computer in my study. But, I know I have more marijuana and sixteen year old Christian makes a reappearance. Roll another, roll another.

I could see from the atrium that Shane’s bedroom light was off. And I decided that I was probably going to make less noise by reverting back to the lounge room mull station, rather than creeping around at the side of my bed up stairs.

Shane had gone to bed and turned off all the lights in the lounge, unlike him. And I see there is a fire burning, but the screen was there the whole time I was home. Shane probably was just on the moment of going to bed when I got home, see sometimes your timing isn’t so bad. I poke at the logs with the metal poker.

So, I turned the light on over the desk again and pulled the door down and rolled directly onto Mark’s great grandfather’s one hundred year old desk, in the only pool of light falling to the ground anywhere in the room.

It was just me in the lamp light. Shane had been in bed for a good half an hour by now. Sometimes he comes down, but not often. It was a considered risk.

My fingers work quickly.

Then there is a noise, a brush against a table, a flick of a tail. I glance sideways and there’s Missy sitting and staring straight at me, from the very edge of the lamp light on the rug... very big eyes.

I see, she says.