Risk, Fear, and Ecstasy Theme Analysis

That was the first of many such days and we were friends and rivals from then on. It was the beginning of something. We scared people, pushing each other harder and further until often as not we scared ourselves.

I leant across the wall of upstanding water and the board came with me as though it was part of my body and mind. The blur of spray. The billion shards of light. I remember the solitary watching figure on the beach and the flash of Loonie’s smile as I flew by; I was intoxicated. And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

More than once since then I’ve wondered whether the life-threatening high jinks that Loonie and I and Sando and Eva got up to in the years of my adolescence were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath.

Nothing would have made me own up to this at the time but I actually liked being in school. There was a soothing dullness in the classroom, a calm in which part of me thrived. Could be it was the orderly home I grew up in, the safety of always knowing what came next.

That eye, said Loonie, was like a fuckin hole in the universe.

It was as close as he got to poetry. I envied him the moment and the story that went with it.

I am chicken, I said.

Oh, fuck, said Sando. Everyone’s a chicken. That’s why we do this silly shit.

You reckon?

Yeah, to face it down, mate. To feel it, eat it. And shit it out with a big hallelujah.

He laughed. And I laughed because he did, to hide my fear.

I shat meself, I said. I took the worst floggin. I freaked.

But he did the deed, said Sando. Made himself a little bit of history.

It took me a moment to absorb what he’d said. For if Sando was the first to have ridden Old Smoky, then I was surely the youngest. I could see Loonie thinking it through right there in front of me. He flapped the soggy hems of his jeans. The gesture was nonchalant, but I knew him better than that.

Your time’ll come, said Sando.

For the past few months I’d been an outrider, a trailblazer, and the excitement and strangeness of it had changed me. There was such an intoxicating power to be had from doing things that no one else dared try. But once we started talking about the Nautilus I got the creeping sense that I’d begun something I didn’t know how to finish.

I had the sudden and perilous urge to touch her. I wanted to feel her ruined knee and I didn’t know why. I reached out.

When I looked at girls now I compared them to Eva – the shape of their legs, the skinniness of their arms, the way they sheltered their breasts with their shoulders. Their perfumes smelt sugary as cordial. I hated all their rattly plastic bangles, and the way they plastered their zits with prosthetic-pink goo and chewed their lips when they thought no one was looking. Unless every single one of them was lying, they were all going out with older blokes, guys with cars and jobs, men who liked their peroxided fringes and bought them stuff. They suddenly looked so … ordinary.

I understand you, Pikelet. And I understand Sando. But he’s never had anything precious taken away.

Eva —

But you, she said taking my hand. You’re different. I can see it in your face. You’ve got this look. Like you’re expecting to lose something – everything – every moment.

Man, what a disappointment he turned out to be.

I spose.

Mate, I thought he was the real deal, y’know? The man not-ordinary.

Maybe ordinary’s not so bad, I offered.

There are nights like last night when you’re always going to be too late, where you’re just holding people’s hands. I tried not to take it personally but it set me back, that call-out to the burbs. Just a rush of wind from the past, like a window momentarily slid aside. I know the difference between teenage suicide and a fatal abundance of confidence. I know what a boy looks like when he’s strangled himself for fun.

I blow the didj until it hurts, until my lips are numb, until some old lady across the way gives me the finger.