Opiuo

I turned around and I saw her. Busting out of her bright yellow bikini top like a buttercup in a muddy field. Her long brown was hair clumped together with sweat.
"Hey," she said. She had come to find me.
"Hey." Her pupils were in full eclipse, like twin dark moons.
"What happened to you earlier?" I said.
"I had to get out of there, it was too much."
My mind flitted back.

We sat legs crossed and knees touching, fucked to the skulls as flaming staves and fire poi whistled through the air, lithe and beautiful twins flipping like cardboard across dark earth while the cackle of a vaudevillian conductor on stilts bellowed through the speakers. I looked at Lana and she looked at me, mouth hung wide as if frozen in the maw of some huge mythical beast. Its thick wet tongue licking at my face.

"We're trapped," She whispered. I looked behind us. She was right. While preoccupied with the magnanimous display of fire and flesh in front of us, a legion, hundreds deep had formed behind. Her eyes spoke of fear. I put my hand on her shoulder and put on my best confident face,
"It's ok," I smiled. "We're going be fine. I promise."
"Ok," she said. I puffed up my chest with pride, and thought about taking her hand. Five minutes later, the crowd shifted. She said "I have to go," and ran off into the night.

Back in this moment I was happy again. She had come to find me. Waking from memory I began:
"You know, it's a shame..." as I turned to her. But she was gone, slinking behind some anonymous raver, looking at me with wide eyes of apology and fear. I finished under my breath - "I would have liked to see this with you" - and she was gone.

I reeled, suddenly alone in the midst of cosmic bedlam, faces swimming around me as the world tilted and swooned. I tried to dance, but my feet were nowhere to be found. Something deep and universal eluded me. A tangible, biological yearning, a need for this one girl that in this moment it reached a crescendo. Hope swirled down my ankles as I swayed back and forth like the ghost of a tree. I was tired. Tired of my endless search for meaning. Tired of constantly trying to fuck the nearest thing with breasts and somewhat symmetrical features. Tired of the craving in my chest that clawed out at everything beautiful and tried to claim it for its own. I could feel it all within me. Swirling hopelessness; a typhoon of feeling that I, as a man, was not equipped to bear. I looked up at the stars while the world span out, and said a prayer to myself and the universe.
"I give up," I said.

I wandered through a patchy crowd, drifting like some lone spectre through an ancient wood. Curious faces as I meandered in and out of the swell, following my humble feet to wherever they felt like taking me. Reaching the edge of the human forest, I came to a grove. There was a ceiling of woven spider web and two lone girls sitting on a woven mat on the dirt. One wore a red and black corset beneath a wide brimmed scarlet hat, like a little red riding hood with daddy issues. The other looked young. Maybe 17. She had long soft blonde hair and wore a thin purple tie dye dress like a second skin, pink pixie wings playing on her back and a five fingered jester's hat hanging from her head. A round drunkard swayed in the background.

I walked past, hands in pockets and head hung low. Little red riding hood looked up at me. She wasn't little at all. She was old. Deep wrinkles lined her face like branching rivers. She smiled at me, warm and real.
"Hello, who are you?"
Comfort.
"Hey, I'm Dan."

She offered me a seat and I sat down. We talked. She made me feel at home. She was motherly and understanding like some fairy godmother, nursing the lost and confused back to sanity. She told me about sandalwood and herbal remedies. Maternal warmth. I curled up in her words, cross legged, ego nowhere to be seen. I looked at the other girl, she introduced herself.
"Hi, I'm Olivia."
"Hey I'm Dan." She had pretty blue eyes.
"I'm from Kingaroy, where are you from?" The thickness of her accent made me smile. It was almost satirical.
"What?" She said.
"Nothing," I said. I waved my hand.
"No, what?" She persisted.
"It's just the way you said that. It was so...Australian."
"Well I am Australian," she asserted. Her tone was like a sandbelt. "Where are you from?"
"Australia," I smiled. "Canberra originally."
"No you're not. You sound like a Pommy."
"Well I moved to England when I was nine." Her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed.
"Oh yeah? Why did you move?"
I paused. I had answered this question a thousand times over, with the same veiled words. It was one of those autopilot responses that take off from your tongue and land, blandly, on the recipient's ear drums before your mind has figured out what's going on. For some reason, perhaps because I felt so lost, or full of acid, I considered the question, and told the truth.
"To get away from my father."
She paused, and for a split second eyed me with a sharpness unbefitting of her character.
"Why? Was he violent?" She asked, sawdust all gone.
"No, not that I know of. He had a heroin addiction and other...problems. My mother was scared he would kidnap me and take me to Malaysia." I considered telling her more, but deemed it would come across as either showing off or playing victim. I noticed my mind clawing its way back up my skull. Down you heartless beast. If in doubt, withhold.
"Righto," she said. My honesty seemed to have knocked the teeth off of her.
"What about you?" I asked.
"What about me?" She replied.
"Your family."
"Well," she began "It was alright I guess. We lived on the Gold Coast and moved to Kingaroy when I was young. They finally broke up when I was 13."
Finally, I thought. Telling.
"Did they fight a lot?" I asked.
"No, not really. He just slept a lot."
The drunk guy from the background came over and slurred at her. They seemed to know each other, so I talked to the lady in red. Her eyes seemed slimmer and her manner a few degrees colder. When our words had run their course I turned back to Olivia.

I often think about a human relationship as an entity in itself. Born when two people meet, it grows, changes, matures and tries to survive in spite of the harshness of the outside world. As with humans, its infancy is the most defining point of its life. Butterflies and hurricanes and such. First impressions last a life time, and truth becomes cliché for a reason.

I tell her this. The rest flies by in an acid swirl montage. Smiles and stories of childhood. Perspiring cans of UDL. The darkness and the light. Watching her toy with others in wonder and seeing the sadness behind it. A joint and a pure white pill, pulled from an empty cracker packet in my pocket. Bathing, luxuriously in her fascination. She prods me, pulling ideas and half baked philosophies out of my mind like junk from a stink spirit. The fat guy from the background is her boyfriend. It makes no sense. He keeps coming over and she keeps directing him back to the dance floor.

She says 'who are you?' I say Dan. Who am I here with? Friends. She says she doesn't really have any friends. I say well you do come off as somewhat abrasive. So I'm abrasive huh? Yes, but not really. What do you mean? Nothing. No tell me, what do you mean? I think you pretend to be, you hide behind it. She looks at me with eyes that could cut diamonds, and the world zooms around their pain. She says if she hadn't learned to pretend she would be dead. I believe her. I begin to fall. Time passes. I pull a joint from behind my ear. We smoke, she coughs, I laugh and the background man stumbles over. He's her boyfriend. Curious. I hypothesise. Safety, control, things from childhood, always things from childhood. My mother's a psychologist, you know? He leaves. She writes. I write too. Short stories mostly, some scraps of screenplay. She writes poetry. I lied, I write poetry. She has been hiding in the daylight for years. She keeps reverting. So you come over here, call me abrasive and we tell each other about our shitty childhoods. Now what? I am fascinated by her subtext. I sound like her mother. What else? I think words shape the world. What else Danny? Mind shapes environment, environment shapes mind. Who are you? I'm Dan. Her mind prowls around me like a cat. I am a shining beam of light. I like you. I like you too. A stranger asks her a question and like a light switch she's back in character, the accent and the affectation of naiveté. She tells him she's looking for weed. My eyebrows furrow. She says don't judge me so I try not to judge. She feeds me UDLs. The spider webs are beautiful. She says you're fucked. I say we all are. What else Danny? I look at her. She is beautiful.
"We're at an impasse," I say.
She asks what an impasse is. I say a point on the road where you can go no further. She asks why. I consider the question. I say "because you're hot."
Her face goes awry.
She says "what?"
"What?"
"Because I'm hot." Her face contorts. She turns away. Something about men all being the same. Guilt and silence. I go to say something but there's nothing, just an empty ball of air twirling in my gullet. She mutters and fumes.
"You're hot."
I chide myself. Retard. I cross my legs under my arms and sit in silence while the deep cogs churn. Minutes pass.
I shuffle over next to her.
"I..." I take a deep breath "I'm sorry. I did not mean to imply that the only reason I like you is because you're hot. You are fascinating and talking to you over the last hour is perhaps the most honest thing I have ever done. It was just my awkward way of letting you know I'm attracted to you."
Her lips are all pouty like a child. They're nice lips. She is quiet for a long moment.
"I forgive you," she says.
"Wow I think we just had a fight," I say
"I know," she says. "What the fuck."
We sit cross legged in silence, knees touching.
"You know," I begin, "before I came over here I had a bit of a breakdown."
She turns her head. "I had this feeling that something deep and universal was missing, that I was searching for something I would never be able to find because I didn't know what it was."
"And?" She says
"Well, I think I found it."
"What was it?" She says
"Connection."
I shake my head and take a swig of UDL, and hand it back to her. She takes it, and leaves her hand around mine. My heart begins to beam like a little sun.
"Doesn't it just make you want to throw up? I say, embarrassed by the romantic cliché.
"No, not really," she says. "Do you?"
I smirk and look back and forth.
"No, not really."
I look at her big blue eyes and pixie smile.
"Yes, you do," she says.
"What?" I reply. I am confused.
"You want to throw up." My mind runs around the block for a moment. Suddenly a light turns on.
"Oh." I smile, stand up and run down the grassy hill to behind the stage. I sit on the grass by a wooden fence and wait with my arms folded over my knees. My breath is mist, curling around Parisian streets. I peek around the corner. She is standing alone in the grass, stepping back and forth and shaking her head. I turn back to the grass, still swimming in contented joy. It doesn't matter anymore. I smile and watch my dragon breath curl around in front of me. Footsteps in the grass. I smile to myself, and stand up. She is standing in front of me, small, undecided and vulnerable in her three pronged jester hat. I put my hand on her waist. She looks up at me.
"I..." she begins.
I turn us around, push her lightly up against the fence, and kiss her. A small, endlessly soft kiss that seems to stretch beyond time. I close my eyes and fall into the gentle moment. Our lips sink into a world of alcopop bliss . She pushes me away, an the clocks resume their ticking.

She walks around the fence and starts shaking her head again. Up on the hill we boyfriends is bobbing around, confused. I sit by the fence and smile as she walks out and stands in the field, dangling the jesters hat in her hand until he notices. Cunning girl. He walks down and she points at me while I pretend to be sick. The walk back up the hill to the edge of the crowd.
I wait a few minutes, basking in the afterglow, then walk back up the hill and sit on the mat. I look all around me, at the fisherman pant hippies smoking in a circle and rave kids getting crunk as crunk can be on the dirt trodden dance floor.
I see Olivia and her boyfriend. He is carting her off and away to the tents while she skirts around his giant frame like a mongoose, waving at me with each hand beneath his notice. I smile gently, and wave. She blows me a kiss from below his armpit, and they blend into the crowd.
I fall back onto the mat and let out a giant, smiling sigh. I watch my breath curl around beneath the stars before floating away, into nothing.