Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space (18 page)

The person behind Fizzer had been straining to read the list. ‘Friend of the band,’ he mumbled, eyes darting every which way.

‘Name?’ Jake demanded.

‘Uh, Chomper.’

‘Three dollars, mate. Chomper and I are like this.’ He held up intertwined fingers. ‘Better luck next time.’

The fellow scowled and walked away, muttering under his breath about how he’d complain to someone or other.

‘Who’s Chomper?’ asked Baby, pushing her stool a centimetre or two closer to Jake’s.

‘Fucked if I know,’ shrugged Jake, hoping she wasn’t
just
making more room for the punters. ‘But the list says “Stomper”. He read it wrong.’

Next in the queue was a clump of crusties. They were standing so close to each other that it looked as though their dreads had all velcroed together. In fact, that’s exactly what had happened. A friend of theirs was supposed to have come over that afternoon to help separate them. But she’d had a few spliffs and forgotten all about it. So they were condemned to another day or two of deep communal living. Which was fine with them. They were into that anyway, even if it was slightly awkward when one of the girls had to go to the toilet. One of them handed over a five and a ten and the entire coagulation shuffled forward, holding out six wrists for stamping. Jake stamped five, and did some sums. ‘That’s another three dollars, mateys.’

They grimaced collectively. ‘That’s all we got,’ a small voice piped up from the centre of the cluster. ‘And we
couldn’t exactly leave one at home.’ Jake stamped the sixth wrist. Grunting gratefully, they amoeba-ed into the pub.

At least three others who fronted up claimed to work at the pub, six said they just wanted to use the toilets, and four were ‘looking for a friend’. One explained she worked at the cafe next door: ‘We’ve got an agreement.’ Another alleged he just wanted to get a bottle from the bar. Like those who’d only come to use the toilets, he disappeared till the end of the evening.

One young fellow, obviously a student, emptied one pocket of his oversized trousers, which hung perilously around the crack of his arse, placing eighty cents in ten and five-cent pieces on the small table in front of Jake. Then he emptied the other pocket. The total came to $2.20. He held it out to Jake with a mournful expression. Jake waved him in. He understood. He’d been there. He
was
there.

‘This,’ he explained dryly to Baby, ‘is the glamorous and exciting world of rock n roll.’

Baby didn’t pick up on Jake’s sarcasm. She was entranced. Earthlings had such peculiar and fascinating rituals. Nufonians would have all just queued up, handed over their three dollars and gone in without a fuss. If they didn’t have three dollars, they’d have stayed at home. She was enjoying every minute.

Prik Harness mounted the stage wearing macrame bikinis. The bikinis would have looked bizarre enough on any woman, but the band was all male. ‘Why is everyone laughing?’ Baby asked Jake. On Nufon, everyone wore macrame bikinis in the summer. Not only were they very practical, but they were aesthetically pleasing against silver skin shimmering under the stars.

A girl with a cheeky grin came to the door, leaned
over the table and whispered, ‘I have a very large pair of underpants for the band.’

Jake waved her in.

‘Is underwear an accepted currency in the rock n roll world?’ Baby was curious.

Jake considered the question. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘It is, actually.’ He’d turned back to the door to collect money from a girl wearing a baby doll nightie over woollen stockings, and sucking on a large carrot. Baby smiled at her and she smiled back, her lips stretching around the vegetable. Baby felt so at home at moments like this. Aliens and earthlings weren’t all
that
different when it came down to it.

‘We wrote this next song for our mate Jake,’ the drummer announced. Baby looked at Jake, impressed. He was pretty impressed himself. He had no idea they’d written something for him. He tried to look nonchalant, though secretly he was thrilled to death. ‘It’s called the “Slacker Song”,’ explained the drummer. A titter rippled through the crowd. Jake felt mildly alarmed.

‘What’s a slacker?’ Baby asked curiously.

‘Some bullshit term invented by the media,’ he replied. ‘I could never figure out what it means, myself.’

Baby, reading his mind, understood that, whatever slacker meant, Jake privately feared he was a quintessential. This wasn’t something he objected to as a matter of principle, or found particularly offensive, but he did hate being a caricature. It offended his dignity. And even quintessential slackers have a certain amount of dignity.

I need a cup of coffee

but there isn’t any milk

so I have some cordial

and I’m feeling ill.

Why am I so tired?

Why am I so bored?

I couldn’t get off my arse

to save my own life

I need a piece of toast

but there isn’t any bread

so I search through the fridge

and eat a carrot instead

Why am I so tired?

Why am I so bored…

How embarrassing. The crowd greeted the song with enthusiastic applause and howls of laughter. A number of people turned, mid-guffaw, to give Jake the thumbs up. He did his best to ignore them.

‘Are you often bored, Jake?’ Baby asked.

‘Nup,’ he replied. ‘I used to be bored.’

‘What happened?’

‘I got tired of it.’

Baby cocked her head. She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but she also suspected he was joking. It was hard to tell sometimes with Earthlings. Personally, Baby didn’t see how it was possible to be bored on Earth.

‘You should like this next song,’ he informed her. ‘It’s called “Space Food”.’ He drained the last drops from his bottle of beer and handed the empty to her. He watched as she greedily munched and swallowed it down. He was no longer shocked by her feeding habits even if they still scared him. Baby was beyond a doubt the most astounding woman Jake had ever met. Alien. Hybrid. Whatever.

‘Nup,’ he disabused two boys in grunge beanies. ‘No discount for Canberrans. Three dollars each, thanks.’

He watched her now, listening to the band. He loved the way that, whether listening or playing, she threw herself into the music. It was so sexy.

At the end of the evening, after repaying the $100 float by the bar, Jake counted out $265.30. The bands paid him $20. ‘I’m a wealthy man,’ Jake informed Baby.

She shrugged. ‘Money can’t buy you love,’ she replied, without meaning to impute anything in particular. Jake felt as though he’d been stabbed in the heart.

‘L
ook! cried a Cherub, bouncing up and down on podgy feet in front of the Space Monitor. ‘It’s the Red Dwarf!’

‘Cool!’ Next to
The X-Files,
probably the most popular program in the outer was the BBC’s
Red Dwarf,
about a mining craft lost in deep space. The craft was populated by one surviving human, a hologram of a dead crew member and a character who had genetically mutated from a cat.

A Sirian, who’d been lying on the floor of the control room asking Captain Qwerk, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ leapt to his feet and gave the Red Dwarf salute, a particularly absurd gesture that involved extending one arm and making a limp-wristed circle with it before snapping it up to the side of the head, military style. Another Sirian, seeing this, laughed so hard he had to be given resuscitation. Meanwhile, more Sirians were pogo-ing all around Qwerk, begging him to alter course so Red Dwarf
wouldn’t see their spaceship. In the TV show, there were no aliens, no other spacecraft, nothing, just space. ‘You’ll ruin it if they see us,’ they begged.

‘We’ll lose too much time if we take a detour,’ argued Qwerk.

‘Please please please,’ they pleaded, swarming around him, stroking his pointy little chin, running tentacles over the thin slit of his silvery mouth, licking his funny little hooves and pinching his knobbly knees.

‘Get off me,’ exclaimed Qwerk desperately, swatting them away. ‘Off me, you mutants!’ This only encouraged them.

‘We love it when you call us names!’ chuckled a Sirian.

‘If you don’t let me go,’ Qwerk growled, ‘I won’t be able to swerve away in time and they definitely will spot us.’ The Sirians were off him faster than you could say ‘Start Me Up’.

Baby, Doll and Lati practised every afternoon at the house in Newtown. The saucer had become too much of a zoo for them to concentrate there. Then there was the Ebola plague. At the close of his concert at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, Ebola Van Axel stunned his fans with the announcement that he’d be staying in Australia indefinitely. He took up what appeared to be permanent residence by the Sebel pool, leaving a daily tribute of red roses at the base of the water tower, writing ‘I luv U, Baby’ in whipped cream on the deck, and crooning endless love ballads to the saucer.

Those weren’t the only reasons the babes hung out in Newtown, of course. They felt thoroughly at home there.
Lots of people had weird hair and green skin in Newtown, especially the morning after a big night out. But mostly, the babes liked being in Newtown because that’s where Their Favourite Earthlings were. Doll had decided that she could easily have been a vampire in another life. Lati, meanwhile, had become the best of drug buddies with the twins who, while continuing to lust after her, were always somehow too slack or too stoned to do anything about it.

As for Baby and Jake, they continued to circle each other like birds who couldn’t get beyond the mating dance. It had been, what,
three weeks
already. What was this, the 1950s? Baby, who coupled with complete strangers at the drop of an Abduct-o-matic, somehow couldn’t bring herself even to give Jake a proper kiss.

She tried to talk to the others about it. Doll curtly replied that she was the last person to consult on a matter concerning Earth
boys.
Lati, for her part, offered to seduce Jake herself. After all, she wickedly enjoyed reminding Baby, Jake had provided her very first taste of the bodilies. Baby made it abundantly clear that if Lati so much as laid a finger on Jake, she’d find her antennae wrapped around her fucken neck.

To make things even more complicated, Jake and Baby were becoming the closest of friends. They hung out together all the time, played music, laughed and talked about everything except their feelings for each other.

For his part, Jake was coming to grips with these feelings. He recognised that he was falling more in, uh, whatever, with her each day. He wanted her more than any girl he’d ever met. He even kind of wanted, he’d decided, sort of, a, uh, you know, thing-o. A, uh, relationwhatsee. And, if that happened, he’d might even give commitment some thought.

Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to make a move.

At least there was progress in the musical department. With an alacrity that was almost alarming, the babes were developing a huge repertoire of original songs. Their playing was fast and furious at times, seductively slow at others. It was passion-fuelled, spontaneous, rough enough around the edges to be called loose, which was considered a good thing in the rock world, and yet controlled and synchronised enough to be called tight, which was also considered a good thing. Baby’s voice was a true chameleon. It could come growling out from under a stone one minute and turn the colour of air the next.

But what was truly extraordinary was the way the music actually changed shape according to the tastes and desires of the listener. Everyone heard it differently. Saturna and Skye perceived a dark undercurrent, a touch of Siouxie and the Banshees or Sisters of Mercy. To Jake and the twins, the babes clearly came out of the girl punk tradition of L7 or Babes in Toyland with satisfyingly grungy touches like fuzzy guitars and more than a hint of metal. George, whose grasp of the genre was a bit on the vague side, simply understood that they were better than Abba, or the Rolling Stones, or whatever the group with that Elvis character called itself. Iggy and Revor appreciated it for the unique skate-and-surf-influenced post-industrial grunge-punk-power-pop-funk synthesis that it was.

‘Kurt Cobain was right,’ sighed Torquil after hearing another new song. ‘The future of rock belongs to women.’

It was Saturday and they were all hanging out in the lounge. The phone rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ offered Tristram.

‘Crazy Joe’s Rock n Roll Warehouse. No, yeah, that’s right. Uh, who’s calling?’ They could all hear the conversation. ‘Julia? Let me see if he’s here.’

By the time Tristram came back into the room, Jake
had a pillow over his face. ‘I take it you’re not here?’ Tristram asked. Saturna and Skye rolled their eyes.

‘Extremely not here,’ replied Jake from under the pillow. ‘Like dead or diseased not here. Gone walkies never expected to return not here.’

Tristram returned to the phone. ‘Uh, Julia? He just stepped out for a minute. Can I get him to call you? Yeah, no worries. No, I’m sure he has your number. No, I won’t forget. Yeah, I’ll tell him.’

Back in the lounge, Tristram pulled the pillow off Jake’s head and whacked him across the arse with it.

The phone rang again. Everyone looked at Jake.

‘Want me to get it?’ Baby offered.

‘Uh, no thanks,’ demurred Jake, remembering the last time she’d taken a call for him. ‘I’ll get it.’ He levered himself off the sofa. ‘Lazy bastards,’ he addressed the others. The phone was on its seventh or eight ring by now.

‘Hullo?’

‘Jake. My man.’

‘Timtam.’ It was Tim from Umbillica. Umbillica was to support Bosnia the following evening at the Sando. They were filling, in for Smokey Stover, who were doing their annual stint in detox.

‘I know it’s a bit on the last minute side of things,’ apologised Tim. ‘But do you know anyone else who could do the support for you tomorrow?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Oh, it’s sorta embarrassing. My girlfriend’s really pissed off at me.’

‘So? What’s new?’

‘Yeah, well, she cut off all my hair in my sleep.’

‘That’s a bit foul. It does rather resolve the Metallica problem though.’

‘And she cut up my clothes with scissors.’

‘Really? Ripped’s a good look.’

‘And trashed all our instruments.’

‘Full on. What’re ya gonna do?’

‘Marry her.’

Jake held the telephone receiver out from his ear and screwed up his face at it, incredulous. ‘Well, that’s fine for the short term,’ he finally said, ‘but I mean, what about the band?’

‘Well, when Styx heard about what she’d done to his drum kit, he decked me. Even if I had my hair, my clothes and my guitar, I couldn’t front up on stage with this doozy of a black eye. Two black eyes actually. I look like some bamboo-cruncher in a Chinese zoo.’

‘How’d the others take it?’

‘Much more civilised. They’re refusing to talk to me.’

Jake shook his head. ‘Bastards.’

‘I know. It’s fucked. But anyway, I was wondering if you could line someone else up or if you wanted us to do it. We should probably call Trace at the Sando in any case and let her know. She’s always got zillions of bands with their tongues poised at her arse, just waiting for their big break.’

‘Timbo, you just whack a few beefsteaks on those shiners and chill. I think I’ve got the solution.’

‘You’re a real mate, Jake.’

Jake wasn’t motivated only by mateship.

‘How about Zaygon?’ Tristram proposed. ‘The evil planet in
This Island Earth
?’

Lati stopped munching on a spoon long enough to
stick her nose up and her thumb down.

‘Scotty?’ suggested Torquil, with a drum roll on a soy sauce bottle.

‘Too boy,’ Baby vetoed.

Although it had been Torquil’s suggestion, Jake felt himself blush at the rebuff.

‘Abduction Theory?’ Now Jake was making himself blush.

‘Mmm,’ Doll considered. ‘Let’s put that one on the list.’

‘Succubus,’ Skye submitted.

‘I like that,’ Lati conceded. ‘What’s it mean?’

‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Skye, trundling downstairs to find a dictionary.

‘How about Spinar Tap?’ said Baby.

Torquil laughed. ‘You mean Spinal Tap. Been done.’

‘No, Spinar Tap. Don’t you know spinars?’ Blank looks all round. ‘They’re black hole suns,’ Baby explained. Didn’t Earthlings know anything?

‘Black Hole Suns?’ repeated Tristram, nonplussed. ‘Like the Soundgarden song?’

Skye reappeared in a flap of maroon and black velvet. ‘It’s a female demon who fucks men in their sleep,’ she announced.

Jake choked on his beer.

‘What’s a female demon who fucks men in their sleep? What are you talking about?’ said Tristram, now thoroughly confused.

Lati jumped up from her seat, clambered up onto the table and, clutching the pepper grinder like a microphone, boomed out, ‘Ladies and gentleman, I give you the one and only, the magnificent, inimitable, fully fucken fabulous—Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space!’

Back at Galgal the following afternoon, it was all systems a-go-go as the babes readied themselves for the gig. Doors whirred open and shut as they scurried from one section of the saucer to another, trailed by abductees, searching for outfits, lipsticks and guitar picks. The saucer was by now a complete brothel—clothing strewn everywhere, graffiti on the walls, Sebel room-service plates and pizza delivery boxes on the floor, sex toys wherever you looked.

Baby emerged from her room wearing a tartan mini, tight white t-shirt and black opaques disappearing into ankle-high leather boots. She was doing a catwalk turn for the others’ benefit when Revor skirred in, sprang up on her leg and slid down, ripping her tights with his claws and riddling them with holes and ladders. Before she had time to react, he did the same to her other leg.

‘Revor’s right,’ Doll nodded. ‘That’s definitely the look.’ Doll was wearing what she always wore. Leather. Black. In a concession to stage glam, however, she’d rubbed glitter all through her hair-horns and over her scalp.