ME. PART THREE

Kapiti College. Years of mum buying me maroon jerseys I’d never wear. Stuffed like old socks in the back of the hot water cupboard. Missed class photos, quite by accident (you’d think there was a sense of purpose in that). Early years spent shaking the dead skin of the past moved into collecting the tabs off of coke cans (in a flat search for a world trip), Bic biros, and the downy upper-lip hair of puberty. To start with grades were paramount, excelling where I could and existing where couldn’t. History’s pages must have proved inspirational because top marks came easy, much like a back of the bus confession of love that spread like the fire of London (1666 for the record). A crush on Ben’s friend, blonde and sweet, and a note left in my diary that was probably the thing that cursed me to fatalistic romance ever after. Hopeless too.

Another blond, this time more disingenuous. Not smart enough to succeed on her own, yet smart enough to know the power of her touch. Last I heard, hairdressing was her game. Then there was Ms Jonas, all evocative pants and primal armpits. Wild as a banshee but as wonderful as a waterfall; spilling music and madness in one go. And Caleb, the Skywalker look-alike with the force in his red Stratocaster; teaching me what I wanted to know, not what I should. C block reared its head, and funnily, so did C grades as priorities shifted to a life outside school books. Bouts of surfing and Bad Religion thrumming down the fret board to drop D and heavy metal, pool on Ali’s wonky, toy table, and getting drunk at friends’ homes to keep the parents in the dark on my dark hours. But never dim.

All the while, watching Mazda RX-7s get built on State Highway One and cheese rolls being pulled apart for five years straight. Earning the number seven, and forever trying to better describe the sound the guitars made on Siamese Dream (Big Muff). One dollar cheese burgers and a trip to the sunshine coast for theme-park adventure, awkward billeting, and beating the Aussies silly. Kayaking trips to the sounds and Trewern, the affable chemistry teacher who may or may not have shared a pipe with us out back of the Palmer’s, and maybe the lips of a school mate.

Good years those all, mostly. The latter ones full of dreams of Dunedin and sports medicine, though in the end, apathy or laziness put that to bed. With a latent interest in Indiana Jones and the humanities about to evolve into a fully fledged ethnography of self, religion, the opposite sex – and a group of hooky playing friends sticking together though spinning apart. Anthropology a fluke, and an early entry in a bereft prospectus proving a worthy adversary for a new epoch of adulthood. Blue hair and all.

ME. PART TWO

1990, and the Commonwealth Games. Months of jump rope practice in Sunnybrae Normal School’s hall comes to nought as we up sticks to little known Paekakariki – a seaside idyll on the windswept Kapiti Coast. Who needs opening ceremonies anyway. 65 Wellington Road, up the steep driveway that would see many a white knuckled screamer descend, and countless wheels spinning fruitlessly off the edge in space – chewing through the rhododendrons. It all almost never came to be. A previous recky scoped out a ramshackle compound in Whanganui. But a cracked tennis court and high unemployment rates must have been the reason we gave that a miss. And why Jane threw a favourite toy of mine from a speeding vehicle. Whanganui be damned.

Paekak. Land of the green parrot, cheeky boys, and the Rumbling Tum. Mopping its floors in the wee hours of the day, after dreaming of a false dawn and a job done. Crumbs, bleach, Mr Whippy, and squashed mice – with returning dividends in hotdogs in buns and endless credits in the spacies. The latter was probably for the best as Dad’s wallet only housed so many 20c pieces. Sorry Dad – yes, that’s where it went. But if it makes you feel any better, Ben did it, too. Elan and I (my childhood right hand man) even invented the Tum’s ‘Mexican’ pie that went on to – in my humble estimate – sell millions and send the owner to an early retirement in the Seychelles. Or at least Paraparaumu. You’re welcome, everyone.

Then there was Tatou. Tatou master. The broken Maori boy with a broken smile, from a broken home. The poor devil. How he terrorised and entertained us all. Those days, though grim, were the lightest for him no doubt. Wet socks on hot water heaters and booking time to play Carmen San Diego in the class computer. Danish rounders, endless ties for 2nd in three-man sprints, and idol worship the order of those days. Not to mention hedonistically long swims in a shallow sea stretching to the lee of the distant south island. Flounder wriggled underfoot and crabs nipped at toes as Mandy and her blonde bevy of girls giggled in the sand.

BMX bikes through Queen Elizabeth Park – or Queenie – saw me fizz along the noisy track with the two Dutch giants whose house contained not only the Sega Megadrive we all dreamed of (and a pool and the cricket bats) but also an older sister with a heaving bosom. I’d dream of that later when our nether-regions caught on. At the halfway point of our rides we’d swim the dirt out from underneath our fingernails at the Raumati Pool and eat raspberry liquorice straps.

Then there was the paper run that put hairs on my chest early, by putting the Gulf War in my face daily. The ineptitude and malice of war, and those normalising plumes of smoke, became wallpaper. Distant atrocities that fell on deaf ears, gore from Kuwait that hardly compared to the real world. To seeing that cat run over in front of my eyes. The tire went straight over its stomach, squeezing it like a sausage so that bits came out both ends wherever there was give.

And yet more blood, but this time in battling boys’ noses – a misguided, extracurricular attempt to right the balance of power in the school yard. The better man won. Or at least, the bigger. Broken windows, fugitives and their ratting out followed. And an honest, yet feeble, attempt at doing to boy scout movement proud. Dib dib dob dob and all that. We proved too loose for that, though – us Paekak boys. Far better suited to roof-rattling and underachieving as it turned out.

Though with that all cunningly figured, it was now time to start all over again and learn anew. It was off to college – for all eight of us – where the inevitable drift of time, and puberty, was waiting to begin.