under six months ago. Still, though, I stared and thumbed through the issue. Rube was still snoring his head off on the other side of the room.
The funny thing is that looking at those women is supposed to make a kid like me feel pretty good, but all it did was make me angry. I was angry that I could be so weak and stare like some sick degenerate at women who could eat me for breakfast. I thought too, but only for a second, about how a girl my age would feel looking at this stuff. It would probably make her angrier than me, because while all I wanted was to touch these women, the girl was supposed to be the women. This was what she was meant to aspire to. That had to be a lot of pressure.
I fell back, hopeless, to bed.
Hopeless.
“Dirty boy,” I heard Rube saying from the other day at the dentist.
“Yeah, dirty,” I agreed out loud again, and I knew that when I got older I didn’t want to be one of those sicko animal guys who had naked women from Playboy magazines hanging on the garage wall. I didn’t want it. Right then, I didn’t, so I pulled the catalog from under my pillow and tore it in half, then quarters, and so on, knowing I would regret it. I would regret it the next time I wanted a look.
Hopeless.
When I got up I threw the pieces of women in amongst the recycling pile. I guessed they’d be back again next Christmas in a new catalog. Glued back together. It was inevitable.
Another thing that was inevitable was that since today was Sunday I’d be going down to Lumsden Oval to watch Rube and Steve play football. Steve’s side was one of the best sides around, while Rube’s was one of the worst sides you would ever see in your life. Rube and his mates got flogged every week and it was always pretty brutal to watch. Rube himself wasn’t too bad — him and a few others. The rest were completely useless.
Eating breakfast later on in front of Sportsworld, he asked me, “So what’s the bet on today’s scoreline? Seventy-nil? Eighty-nil?”
“I d’know.”
“Maybe we’ll finally crack the triple figures.”
“Maybe.”
We munched.
We munched as Steve came up from the basement and laid out five bananas for himself to eat. He did it every Sunday, and he ate them while grunting at Rube and me.
At the ground, Rube ended up being not too far wrong. He lost, 76–2. The other side was massive. Bigger, stronger, hairier. Rube’s side only got their two points at the end of the game when the ref gave them a mercy penalty. They took the shot at goal just to get on the board. here was no sand boy or anything so the goalkicker took his boot off, put the ball in it, and kicked the goal in just his socks. By comparison, Steve’s side won a pretty good game, 24–10, and Steve, as usual, had a blinder.
All up, there were really only two halfway-interesting things about the whole day.
The first was that I saw Greg Fienni, a guy who had been my best friend until not too long ago. The thing was that we just stopped being best friends. There was no incident, no fight, no anything. We just slowly stopped being best mates. It was probably because Greg became interested in skating and he joined another gang of friends. In all honesty, he even tried to get me into the group with him, but I wasn’t interested. I liked Greg a lot, but I wasn’t going to follow him. He was into the skateboard culture now and I was into, well, I’m not sure what I was into. I was into roaming around on my own, and I enjoyed it.
At the ground, when I arrived, Rube’s game had already started, and there was a pack of boys sitting up in the top corner, watching. When I walked past it, a voice called out to me. I knew it was Greg.
“Cam!” he called. “Cameron Wolfe!”
“Hey.” I turned. “How’s it goin’, Greg.” (I should have put a question mark there, but what I said wasn’t really a question. It was a greeting.)
Next thing, Greg came out from his mates and walked over to me.
It was brief.
He asked, “You wanna know the score?”
“Yeah, I’m a bit late, ay.” I looked strangely at his bleached, knotted hair. “What is it?” “Twenty-nil.”
The other side went