Daredevils by Bill Condon

Author:Bill Condon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Queensland Press

The next morning. On the bus.

The 176 was fast becoming our private office where we relived our adventures, made our great plans and spilled our sorry confessions.

‘Your mum and Rigor, eh? You reckon they’ll do it?’ Trust Thorns to head straight for the scary part.

‘Tho-orns.’ I sounded like Mum. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘It’s interesting but, don’t you think? Good old Rigor and your mum. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t want you to try to imagine. Can we find a new subject?’

He didn’t hear me.

‘My mum and Scobe, they wouldn’t do it.’ Thorns considered it for a second. ‘I hope not anyway. Be way off, that.’

We rode on over a few more bumps before sex raised its ugly head again.

‘Did you ever get the sex talk?’ he asked. ‘From your mum?’

‘Not really. But she bought me a book once.’

‘Porn?

‘Nooo. A how-to book. With diagrams and cartoons.’

‘Porn would have been better.’

‘I know. I put it in the bin when Mum wasn’t looking. She probably thinks I’m still reading it.’

‘You want to hear about my sex talk? From Scobe?’

Thorns was full of Scobie stories. Sometimes hearing them gave me tiny pangs of … I don’t know … just tiny pangs. I missed out on having a dad. But I was still never going to say no to a Scobie story.

I nodded and he got straight into it.

‘Scobe says to me one day – I’m around ten – “Let’s go for a little drive”. So he takes me up to Queensland! Like nearly a thousand k’s! And we do the camping-out thing and he tells me his secrets – how he used to be a grog artist before he met Mum – the whole life story. Then he takes me fishing. But get this: he doesn’t use hooks and he’s got no bait! “I want to give the fish a fighting chance,” he says. So he cuts up a banana and we tie pieces of it to the sinkers. And so we’re sitting there, banana fishing, and then he comes out with it – the whole reason for the trip – the sex talk! “You all right with all that stuff?’ he says. “You know. About girls. And babies and things?” And I go, “Yeah. Of course.” He says, “Got any questions? Anything at all?” I say, “Nah. Can’t think of any.” He says, “Thank Christ for that.” And that’s it! We pack up and go home! Good old Scobe.’

We were halfway to school. My turn for a story.

‘I met this girl last night,’ I said, ‘when I was at the mall with Mum. Never seen anyone like her. She’s gorgeous. Just brilliant.’

‘You met her? Does that mean that you talked to her?’

‘Yeah. Naturally.’

He stared at me, eyes wide. ‘She was really good-looking and you just went up to her and started talking?’

There was no way to worm out of it. I had to convince him.

‘It’s true. I’d seen her before and we’d sorted of nodded at each other, from a distance. But last night I made the move.

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