Profiles

Profile: Darren

“I tried out my racist humour the other day,” Darren informs me mid-rally of our table tennis game. His remark causes me to hit a forehand that goes flying off the table. I wait for him to continue, he smiles. “Yeah, with Steve, my new black friend. I asked him whether golliwogs ever have any luck in love or if Ken just gets all the action.” He pauses, trying to suss out whether or not I understand the reference. He shrugs, “It was funny at the time,” and goes off in search of the ball.

I realise that Darren’s wearing ‘the t-shirt’ and chastise him for it. “Geez you’re a bit slow today Dale – your mum noticed when I walked in!” It was the exact same shirt that was once my favourite, but it shrunk in the wash and I mourned its loss, so Darren decided to go out and buy one of his own. He does things like that, but then again he also does things like buy me a two-hundred dollar bracelet for my birthday. I saw him quickly glance at my bare wrist when I opened the front door this afternoon. He didn’t comment though, just stood there grinning, hands in the pockets of his black shorts. “Hey.”

We sit down on beanbags and play PS2. The game – general knowledge Buzz. A question about George Orwell’s 1984 baffles me, but he answers correctly. “I think I’m gonna make it my mission to culture you,” he says slash gloats. He offers to lend me 1984 and then suggests we go to the theatre and see Priscilla: Queen of the Desert the stage show. I laugh, he looks at me with one eyebrow raised, his head slightly tilted to the side, and smiling with his entire face.

I take Darren for a walk around my neighbourhood. “I drive too much. Sometimes I just get in my car and drive – I ended up at work instead of uni once.”

We come to a forest of sorts. “A fork in the road…” he remarks as we’re confronted with two separate paths. During our foray into the woods I told him all the things that were happening in my life in a way that I didn’t tell anyone else; I was brutally honest. He listened and chimed in with things that would always make me smile or laugh, and make me take myself less seriously. He also said some things that I needed to hear. He laughed when I called him my moral centre.

“Car was broken into again last night,” he mentions out of the blue. I ask if there was any damage. “Only emotional,” was his response, his eyes downcast. His mood reminded me of his turbulent emotional state of late – I didn’t hear from him for a week until one night he called me and apologised and explained a little of what was going through his head; how he wasn’t happy with certain things about himself and his life.

“I’ve got three assignments due in the next two weeks,” he sighs. “I’ll get them done but it won’t be easy.” He always manages to get them done. We talk some more about uni and the future, moving out of home, his career, and whether we’ll know each other when we’re forty.

We go round the bend and take a right into my street. “Think I might start writing again at the end of this semester,” he says as we ascend the gradual incline to my house. “Just blogs though, not stories. I can’t do stories.” I begin to object before realising that most of the stories Darren writes are dark.

“Good to see you again,” Darren says, slouching, hands in pockets, awkward eye contact. I echo his thoughts and watch as he walks down my driveway and drives off in his bomby blue car.

Profile: Brittany

“Yeah, I know dude, I have big boobs,” Brittany says before taking even half a step out of the changing cubicle. “So what do you think?” She’s referring to the black cocktail dress with silver accents that she’s trying on. I nod and make reassuring noises. “Ugh, guys are hopeless at shopping.” She teases and retreats into the cubicle once again. I sigh with relief. She talks to me while she’s changing – in that perky voice that always seems to carry across the room – about people from work. I switch to making agreeable noises.

“Don’t you reckon this bag is just so me? I was with mates and they saw it and they were like, ‘You have to get that bag Brit!’” I inspect her colourful, eclectic-patterned bag and agree whole-heartedly. We walk past a department store and Brittany stops, looking at one of the plasmas hanging from the ceiling, “Oh my god I love this song,” she grins and literally drags me in with her.

We sit on opposing couches at the Coffee Club and she laughs at my milkshake while sipping her chocolate frappe. She seems to have been smiling and bright this whole time. We talk of a McDonalds awards night after-party a few days previous. “You drove a couple of carloads of people home didn’t you? Yeah sometimes I’ll take three or four carloads of people home; I just want to make sure they get there safe, you know?”

I thank her for covering two of my shifts over the last week. “No worries dude, I needed the money anyway – got a parking ticket the other day which sucks. Plus I’m always saving up for my trip.” She tells me how she plans to travel around Europe and North America at the end of 2008 – for three years. “After that I’ll come home and hopefully get married and have kids. I love kids,” she beams.

“I don’t speak to my parents much,” she responds when I ask what they think of the travel plans; her smile vanishing for the first time. “I dunno what happened – we used to be really close.”

Absent-mindedly she fiddles with the piercing just above her lip on the right side of her mouth. “Come here,” she says, and motions to the place next to her on her couch. Hesitantly, I obey. “I give the best massages,” she declares and goes to work on my shoulders, back and neck. Her touch was extremely relaxing.

I utter a “Thanks Brittany,” managing to surface briefly from my stupor.

“Dude call me Brit. Only the parentals call me Brittany.”

Reluctantly I told her to end the massage before I fell asleep, and I went and bought us ice creams. We sat looking out towards the Dandenong’s and she began to open up to me. It was as though I was now massaging her mind, in some kind of strange role reversal. She told me how she practically had to raise her younger brother by herself, because her parents separated. How, despite that, she doggedly finished year twelve – a feat which neither or her older siblings achieved. “It was something that I had to do for me,” she affirmed. Then she spoke of her tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend of one year. “My friends think we’re destined to be together, that we’re still in love. Please don’t tell me you believe in all that fate stuff. I don’t, I think it’s crap.”

We consume our ice cream and are about to part ways when she says, “I don’t ever tell anyone these things…” and then hugs me. Her smile returns as we disentangle.