By the time I reached twenty-one, I had returned to Australia and taken up my place at university. Shortly before his death, my father purchased a two-bedroom unit for me that was within walking distance of the campus and I began the slow process of re-acclimatisation.
It felt odd to be surrounded by the English language after so long in Spain and it felt odd to be considered a Pom by my fellow-Australians. I had been gone so long that my Aussie accent had disappeared completely. I did my best to fall back into the local accent but it took a long while and, to this day, there is still a strong whiff of the clipped British old-school-tie in my speech.
My first year in the law faculty was very much a year of study and application. I made friends within my year but we were all a bit nerdy and dedicated. We were always waiting at the door when the law library opened each morning and we were generally the last to leave at night. Our sole concession to normalcy was to play endless tennis on Saturdays and Sundays.
My unit was one of nine in a small three-storey cluster. I was on good terms with my neighbours but saw little of them. I was happy enough with life and I was faring very well academically, but perhaps I was a bit lonely at times. Suddenly moving from the bustle and vibrancy of Barcelona to quiet, sedate and conservative Melbourne was a huge leap.
One evening, just before sunset, one of the girls who shared a nearby unit was on her balcony and called out a cheery "hello" as I trudged along the driveway with my usual heavy load of text books and notes. We had a very watered-down Romeo and Juliet exchange and she invited me over for a coffee once I'd shed my weary load.
This girl - Julia - was about five years older than me and she was a nursing sister at a nearby pyschiatric hospital. She was very attractive with dark blonde hair, extremely blue eyes and a lovely smile. She was also very intelligent and possessed a wicked sense of humour. For all my varied experiences abroad, I considered her vastly more sophisticated than I was; after all, she had a car and a driver's licence - I had neither. She also drank beer occasionally and smoked cigarettes whereas I - true to my nerd status - indulged in neither of these "vices".
Over coffee, it transpired that Julia was a Scrabble fanatic. Before long, the board was on a table between us and we were playing. She was a good Scrabble player but so am I, and so it became a real battle to win. At one stage my rack contained just one consonant - an "H" - and six useless vowels. I wanted to put down a word like "aha" or "ooh" and, without thinking of any other possible meanings, I said to Julia: "Are ejaculations allowed?"
A silence ensued during which I realised my question might be interpreted in two ways. I caught her eye. She had one eyebrow raised interrogatively and her eyes sparkled merrily. I blushed of course, and then we both laughed until the tears rolled down our cheeks. That's when our friendship was sealed. (And, by the way, I was allowed to place an ejaculation on the board. It was a long time ago but I am fairly sure the word was "ooh" - quite appropriate really!)
Over the coming weeks and months, romance blossomed. Sex did not blossom with it, however, because I was unaccountably constrained by ideas of morality and propriety between the opposite sexes. It would appear that I was not merely slipping back into Australian speech patterns; I was also slipping back into the conventional beliefs of yesteryear. So the most Julia and I did was to pet heavily, which is quite bizarre when one considers that I was constantly aroused and had a place of my own with a very comfortable bed in it.
My inheritance included two beach houses situated some distance from Melbourne along a strip of excellent surf and sparsely populated beaches. One long weekend it was agreed that Julia would drive me down to one of these houses so I could do some routine maintenance and we could both do some bodysurfing afterwards.
There was one small problem before we could go. Julia had recently acquired a kitten and didn't want to leave poor "Tiger" unloved for three days. So the kitten travelled with us, roaming freely under our seats as we motored along. Disaster struck when a tyre blew out. It transpired that Julia's spare was also useless so I volunteered to walk to the nearest hamlet - carrying the damned spare wheel - to get assistance. It was a very warm day and, before leaving, I warned Julia not to wind the windows down too far or leave a car door open just in case Tiger escaped.
Hours later, feeling very hot and tired, I returned to the scene courtesy of a breakdown truck. As we neared the car, I could see that all its doors were wide open while Julia was wandering around in an adjacent field of dense grasses and scrub. While the maintenance guy sorted out the tyre, I fought my way through the long grass to join Julia.
"Tiger. Tiger." she was calling. "Here Tiger. C'mon puddy."
"You've got to be kidding" I said.
"I'm sorry" she wailed. "I forgot. I got out to get some fresh air and he must have wandered off."
Long after the tyre was fixed, we were still scouring that bloody field. We gave up at dusk and Julia conveyed us to the beach house in floods of tears for poor little Tiger. As we came to a halt in the driveway, I heard a plaintive miaow under my passenger seat. It was Tiger. He was fine and had been in the car the entire time!
Of course my sudden fit of morality meant that Julia was to sleep in one bedroom and I in another. This plan went awry almost immediately. Julia was not a large girl. She was in fact quite petite. But for some reason, as she tried out her bed, it collapsed and the wooden frame became useful only as firewood. That was enough for me. The gods were ordaining this. We would sleep together. And we did - for the very first time. And it was wonderful.
On the following day, I quickly raced through some puttying, painting and routine "carpentry for dummies" so we could hit the beautiful waves at Bells Beach. It was a fabulous day - blazing sun and conditions just right for surfing - and we dined out afterwards, feeling salty and satisfied with life. I was looking forward to continuing our sex life that night.
Well, we did have sex that night. And that also left me feeling salty and satisfied with life, but then the time came when Julia needed to pee.
Now this was a fairly ancient beach house. Its toilet was in a wooden lean-to some distance from the back door. Electricity had not yet been hooked up to this structure, so I equipped Julia with a candle and some matches to help with her fear of the dark and of the spiders that always seem to congregate in wooden outhouses.
She returned unscathed and we continued to bonk merrily until there arose the sounds of a siren and furious banging at the front door. When I answered the door, a fireman stood there telling me that a fire had been reported at this address.
"There must be some mistake" I said. "Everything's fine."
And then I could hear the crackling and smell the smoke. We peered around the side of the house.
"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. "Your shit-house is on fire!"
Julia had left the candle behind her, still flickering, and it had apparently set fire to the trailing roll of toilet paper. By the time the flames were extinguished, I no longer had a toilet at all.
I am a steadfast character. Despite the fiasco of the missing kitten, despite the destruction of the spare bed, and even despite the torching of the toilet, I continued to enjoy the company of this female wrecking-ball for the remainder of the weekend. The next day we purchased a torch. The local shopkeeper - indeed everyone in that small community - knew of the calamity of the night before. Every second person felt compelled to say: "G'day. Jesus, that was a shit-house fire you had last night!" We had become the village idiots, but still I soldiered on - pussy power had me in its thrall.
For the remaining two nights we pissed in the bushes around the house. We relieved ourselves of heavier burdens by visiting the public toilets on the beachfront. With torch in hand, we both used the ladies' block in a show of solidarity.
I might as well tell you how things went from bad to worse. On the way home, the battery of Julia's trusty VW bug exploded behind the back seat. The upholstery smouldered furiously and our travel bags and their contents were similarly singed.
So Julia lit up my life in more ways than one. Looking back, what strikes me most is how much we laughed over all this mayhem, and how we just kept on fucking while everything disintegrated around us. Laughter is a powerful aphrodisiac.
It felt odd to be surrounded by the English language after so long in Spain and it felt odd to be considered a Pom by my fellow-Australians. I had been gone so long that my Aussie accent had disappeared completely. I did my best to fall back into the local accent but it took a long while and, to this day, there is still a strong whiff of the clipped British old-school-tie in my speech.
My first year in the law faculty was very much a year of study and application. I made friends within my year but we were all a bit nerdy and dedicated. We were always waiting at the door when the law library opened each morning and we were generally the last to leave at night. Our sole concession to normalcy was to play endless tennis on Saturdays and Sundays.
My unit was one of nine in a small three-storey cluster. I was on good terms with my neighbours but saw little of them. I was happy enough with life and I was faring very well academically, but perhaps I was a bit lonely at times. Suddenly moving from the bustle and vibrancy of Barcelona to quiet, sedate and conservative Melbourne was a huge leap.
One evening, just before sunset, one of the girls who shared a nearby unit was on her balcony and called out a cheery "hello" as I trudged along the driveway with my usual heavy load of text books and notes. We had a very watered-down Romeo and Juliet exchange and she invited me over for a coffee once I'd shed my weary load.
This girl - Julia - was about five years older than me and she was a nursing sister at a nearby pyschiatric hospital. She was very attractive with dark blonde hair, extremely blue eyes and a lovely smile. She was also very intelligent and possessed a wicked sense of humour. For all my varied experiences abroad, I considered her vastly more sophisticated than I was; after all, she had a car and a driver's licence - I had neither. She also drank beer occasionally and smoked cigarettes whereas I - true to my nerd status - indulged in neither of these "vices".
Over coffee, it transpired that Julia was a Scrabble fanatic. Before long, the board was on a table between us and we were playing. She was a good Scrabble player but so am I, and so it became a real battle to win. At one stage my rack contained just one consonant - an "H" - and six useless vowels. I wanted to put down a word like "aha" or "ooh" and, without thinking of any other possible meanings, I said to Julia: "Are ejaculations allowed?"
A silence ensued during which I realised my question might be interpreted in two ways. I caught her eye. She had one eyebrow raised interrogatively and her eyes sparkled merrily. I blushed of course, and then we both laughed until the tears rolled down our cheeks. That's when our friendship was sealed. (And, by the way, I was allowed to place an ejaculation on the board. It was a long time ago but I am fairly sure the word was "ooh" - quite appropriate really!)
Over the coming weeks and months, romance blossomed. Sex did not blossom with it, however, because I was unaccountably constrained by ideas of morality and propriety between the opposite sexes. It would appear that I was not merely slipping back into Australian speech patterns; I was also slipping back into the conventional beliefs of yesteryear. So the most Julia and I did was to pet heavily, which is quite bizarre when one considers that I was constantly aroused and had a place of my own with a very comfortable bed in it.
My inheritance included two beach houses situated some distance from Melbourne along a strip of excellent surf and sparsely populated beaches. One long weekend it was agreed that Julia would drive me down to one of these houses so I could do some routine maintenance and we could both do some bodysurfing afterwards.
There was one small problem before we could go. Julia had recently acquired a kitten and didn't want to leave poor "Tiger" unloved for three days. So the kitten travelled with us, roaming freely under our seats as we motored along. Disaster struck when a tyre blew out. It transpired that Julia's spare was also useless so I volunteered to walk to the nearest hamlet - carrying the damned spare wheel - to get assistance. It was a very warm day and, before leaving, I warned Julia not to wind the windows down too far or leave a car door open just in case Tiger escaped.
Hours later, feeling very hot and tired, I returned to the scene courtesy of a breakdown truck. As we neared the car, I could see that all its doors were wide open while Julia was wandering around in an adjacent field of dense grasses and scrub. While the maintenance guy sorted out the tyre, I fought my way through the long grass to join Julia.
"Tiger. Tiger." she was calling. "Here Tiger. C'mon puddy."
"You've got to be kidding" I said.
"I'm sorry" she wailed. "I forgot. I got out to get some fresh air and he must have wandered off."
Long after the tyre was fixed, we were still scouring that bloody field. We gave up at dusk and Julia conveyed us to the beach house in floods of tears for poor little Tiger. As we came to a halt in the driveway, I heard a plaintive miaow under my passenger seat. It was Tiger. He was fine and had been in the car the entire time!
Of course my sudden fit of morality meant that Julia was to sleep in one bedroom and I in another. This plan went awry almost immediately. Julia was not a large girl. She was in fact quite petite. But for some reason, as she tried out her bed, it collapsed and the wooden frame became useful only as firewood. That was enough for me. The gods were ordaining this. We would sleep together. And we did - for the very first time. And it was wonderful.
On the following day, I quickly raced through some puttying, painting and routine "carpentry for dummies" so we could hit the beautiful waves at Bells Beach. It was a fabulous day - blazing sun and conditions just right for surfing - and we dined out afterwards, feeling salty and satisfied with life. I was looking forward to continuing our sex life that night.
Well, we did have sex that night. And that also left me feeling salty and satisfied with life, but then the time came when Julia needed to pee.
Now this was a fairly ancient beach house. Its toilet was in a wooden lean-to some distance from the back door. Electricity had not yet been hooked up to this structure, so I equipped Julia with a candle and some matches to help with her fear of the dark and of the spiders that always seem to congregate in wooden outhouses.
She returned unscathed and we continued to bonk merrily until there arose the sounds of a siren and furious banging at the front door. When I answered the door, a fireman stood there telling me that a fire had been reported at this address.
"There must be some mistake" I said. "Everything's fine."
And then I could hear the crackling and smell the smoke. We peered around the side of the house.
"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. "Your shit-house is on fire!"
Julia had left the candle behind her, still flickering, and it had apparently set fire to the trailing roll of toilet paper. By the time the flames were extinguished, I no longer had a toilet at all.
I am a steadfast character. Despite the fiasco of the missing kitten, despite the destruction of the spare bed, and even despite the torching of the toilet, I continued to enjoy the company of this female wrecking-ball for the remainder of the weekend. The next day we purchased a torch. The local shopkeeper - indeed everyone in that small community - knew of the calamity of the night before. Every second person felt compelled to say: "G'day. Jesus, that was a shit-house fire you had last night!" We had become the village idiots, but still I soldiered on - pussy power had me in its thrall.
For the remaining two nights we pissed in the bushes around the house. We relieved ourselves of heavier burdens by visiting the public toilets on the beachfront. With torch in hand, we both used the ladies' block in a show of solidarity.
I might as well tell you how things went from bad to worse. On the way home, the battery of Julia's trusty VW bug exploded behind the back seat. The upholstery smouldered furiously and our travel bags and their contents were similarly singed.
So Julia lit up my life in more ways than one. Looking back, what strikes me most is how much we laughed over all this mayhem, and how we just kept on fucking while everything disintegrated around us. Laughter is a powerful aphrodisiac.