Prologue
Kāpiti Island: an ominous vista just off the mainland. In the old world, it was filled with mystery and import – Te Raupraha, the Musket Wars, the Pākehā settlers who drove the people off their land… That was the old world. This is the new world. Sean stared at the island through the grimy windows of his crappy car. The air was still and silent as the breaking light drenched the scene with a hazy glow. It could have been a tourist brochure, give or take the bogan vibes that Sean emanated. Sean opened his glove box. A juicy bag of weed was sitting inside.
* The waves carried his surfboard gently into the Tasman Sea. Sean paddled lazily; he wasn’t in a hurry, and there weren’t any waves anyway. His tattoos glistened from the salt water reflecting the sun - there wasn’t anything culturally significant about them, just some random patterns. Nevertheless, Sean wore them as a mark of maturity: a way of inventing himself and signifying which ‘tribe’ he belonged to. So many tribes… he thought himself lucky that he’d left Facebook ages ago. A lull in the waves. Sean pivoted from swimming to sitting on his board. He rummaged through the pockets of his wetsuit, finding his paraphernalia. He loaded his pipe, and sparked up – weed always tastes better at sea, he thought.
*
Sean’s room was a tip: a stolen street sign or two; weighed-out bags of weed; clothes in a pile on the floor – it felt claustrophobic.
He changed out of his wetsuit and into a uniform. His nametag: Sean – caregiver.
There wasn’t time for breakfast. Sean grabbed an Up&Go from the kitchen. Guitar strums were thrashing from the room behind him.
‘Jade’s coming by tonight,’ said Sean, voice slightly raised. 'Ok, I’ll tidy up then.’ - another voice. Sean finished sculling his drink – apparently equivalent to 2 Weet-Bix and milk – and chucked it in the bin. He strolled out the front door, with loud footsteps that echoed around the high ceilings. The guitarist in the other room continued playing. This room was slightly tidier; clothes hamper and a framed degree on the wall. She kept on with her scales: a transvestite in women’s workout clothes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Harsh fluorescent lights; an open plan office: a modern-day hell. Bored people drifting through aimless lives working for the Wellington bureaucracy. Jade was getting coffee. In another era, she might have been proclaimed a beautiful ebony specimen and paraded around Victorian England but, in 21st Century Aotearoa, she was another office drone. She pulled her cup out of the machine; her office BFF Madison began filling hers. ‘I feel more confident when everyone has the same cultural touchstones. My last job involved supervising children of recent migrants, and that was really frustrating,' said Madison. ‘Uh-huh,’ Jade replied sarcastically. Madison pulled her cup from the machine. Jade pulled the fingers behind her back. *
The retirement village was quaint. People live for a lot longer than they used to, so the residents were senile-as. They weren’t even Boomers; this was the last bastion of the pre-Boomer world. Sean changed a bedpan while a crusty old bugger with a thick Kiwi accent tore into him. ‘Everyone's harping on about plastic! Didn't have that when I grew up.’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘Old enough. Clean up my piss, Shamus.’ Sean grunted disagreeably, and left the room. Another caregiver saw the look on his face. ‘I guess he’s in one of his moods again.’ ‘Yup.’ Sean trudged off into the next room. 3 more hours of this, he thought! *
Mid-morning light. The guitarist was changing into a subtler outfit. Still obviously out, but toning it down due to the rampant transphobia that had been spreading like wildfire over Covid… bloody NZ First and ACT endorsing the TERFs wasn’t helping.
She wished the parents of her students were more tolerant, but it’s a difficult subject to bring up when you’re essentially hired help for their spoiled brats.
Sure, the Headless Chickens were on the dole too, but the romance of being a broke muso had long gone for Tim. Now it was just a bummer. Thank Saraswati for the weed sales.
She sighed in the mirror, closing the wardrobe door; a lacy slip was caught between the doors…
*
Tim gazed at the hills as she drove by them in the flat car, which was mostly Sean's. The rolling greens of Kāpiti were a far cry from the Canterbury plains of her youth: the Port Hills; winter frosts and snows; seeing one's own breath all winter through.
These, she traded for the Wellington winds. She doubted she could have been herself in Christchurch, though; Wellington is something of a trans mecca thanks to Carmen Rupe.
As a mecca, it was far from perfect, but the trans supporters outnumbered the haters by a significant margin. Still, a few bad comments is enough to ruin anyone’s self-esteem, and there’s certainly enough bad eggs out there with hostile, regressive views.
*
The composition of the early settlers to New Zealand was predominantly Scottish; kilts were in use during the New Zealand Wars by Māori and Pākehā alike, so why was it that people were so resistant to the idea that someone might prefer those to stifling, itchy trousers?
Because the ruling class was English, thought Tim; sure, many settlers were from the poorer parts of Northern England, Scotland and Ireland, crowded out of their homelands by industrialisation, but who was in charge of things? Tim knew the answer; the same as always: a bunch of stiff upper lip cunts Her Majesty relied on to steal natural resources from Indigenous communities. Regardless of how noble their intentions, that was the legacy of the British Empire.
New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik says that Britain embezzled nearly $45 trillion from India between 1765 and 1938. Tim wondered how many billions the Crown had embezzled from Aotearoa between 1769 and 1945? *
Up the hill into the part of town where the better half lives. Another game of chicken with Devon St., aka the worst two-way road on the planet. Steep, hilly, treacherous.
Worse than that, how many of the parents that she dreaded talking to were modern-day incarnations of those stiff upper lip cunts that colonised Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu?
Sure, Governor Grey was Irish, but Ireland was merely another colony back then: the philosophy that colonised our traditional rugby rivals (and us) was pure HMS bullshit.
Pacific Peoples were also fond of skirts, mused Tim. This is a Pacific Island, after all, so why shouldn’t she go with the flow and wear a lava-lava?
They play cricket in the islands too, Tim thought. The missionaries completely upended their traditional beliefs, but they found ways of folding those into the nascent Christianity, much as the Irish had over a millenia earlier with their Celtic Christianity.
* Kilikiti is what they call cricket. A four is worth one point, and a six is worth two.
The ball is made of hard rubber and the players play in a lava-lava.
It’s the national sport in Samoa… much like colonial test cricket, it’s a festival atmosphere.
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II.
Lunchtime. Sean and another caregiver are in the dining room, supervising the old folks.
Dana is the other caregiver. Small, but feisty.
‘You remember when people said that loving animals meant you were a psycho?’ - Sean.
‘Yeah…’ - Dana.
‘But we love our pets.’
‘Not the same way as people, bro’
‘Depends on the people.’
Sean gestures to a table. The old sod is holding court with his cronies. Big laughs. 'Better than the sad cunts, though.' - Dana. 'Rather have a dick than a cunt, eh?' - Sean's eyes gleam. He loves flirting with coworkers. 'Maybe at work. Unless you're up for something else?' Dana grabs his collar in a sensual way, then laughs; Sean's cheeks flush nervously. 'Not used to being objectified?' 'I guess not.' 'Well, get used to it.' - Dana smacks his arse in a sportsmanlike fashion, then gleefully flips the bird to the old prick and his buddies.
* 5pm. Jade and Madison are riding down in the lift of the old Dominion Post building. 'Comparing boyfriends is like comparing slave owners.' - Jade, forthright as always. 'Harsh!' 'But true?' Madison thinks for a moment. 'Sometimes... I feel cheap when he calls me the missus.' 'Then get up in there! It's your life, girl: be respected.' 'But he only says it around the bros.' 'That's 'cause they're more important to him. You are woman, hear you roar!' 'Easy for you to say, Jade.' 'Yup.' That shut her up. *
Jade was riding her motorcycle down the main highway strip, admiring the beautiful view of Wellington in the moonlight. The city is truly unusual: there's a reason that this is the stronghold of the New Zealand Green Party. Pōneke is what architects call a biophilic city: Wellington's hills and nature reserves are a protected town belt that can't be developed on. It's built around green spaces and walks the talk when it comes to environmental conservation, but the ancient infrastructure and truly bizarre topology make it as much of an oddity as San Francisco. Plus the strong alternative scene. That's more of a Portland vibe, though. The old legend goes that The New Zealand Company designed the city in London, presuming that the land would be flat, and then proceeded to follow that design and transplant it to the hilly terrain. Hence a whole bunch of crumbling, disastrous roads. The infrastructure problem is another one entirely: Wellington is the seat of government, so there's often a lack of direct investment into city infrastructure. Half of all the drinking water in Wellington was now escaping out from leaky pipes, and the deficit is in the tens of billions. Jade wondered if she'd live long enough to see the pipes fixed, or if they'd leak into eternity. * Plus there's 'The Big One' -- Wellington sits on a fault line, and there's been a prophecy that there'll be a major earthquake centered on Wellington this century. Even a quake in the South Island resulted in several buildings being demolished recently. As a survivor of the Christchurch earthquakes, Jade wasn't concerned and she thought that the native Wellingtonians were total pussies when it came to small tremors. * 'Most people don't have weird thoughts all the time.' - Tim, in a classy skirt and blouse. 'What kind of weird?' - Jade, still wearing her leather jacket. The backyard is small. More of a patio really. 'Kinky thoughts; freak stuff. They try them on as Halloween costumes or at the fetish ball, but it's not the background noise for those people.' 'I'm pretty kinky online.' Sean comes out from the kitchen. 'If it ain't my favourite sisters!' - selling it with some flavour. No response. He couldn't have picked a worse time. 'Eh?' 'That's sweet. Very bromantic, bro.' - J. 'You were there too.' - T. 'Yeah, but I was older, and doing mature things.' 'Yeah, you're so mature, Jade.' 'More than you two, anyway.'
Sean goes off to smoke in another corner. The conversation begins again... 'So, about this freak stuff... Tina' 'Well...' - Tina strikes a coquettish pose. 'What do you see when you see me?' 'Oh no, we're not doing that again! it's a trick question!!' 'Then shut up and go home!' Jade laughs; She can't get out of this that easily. She takes a moment to size him up. 'I see a fairy pulling off a skirt.' 'Fine. How do you come onto girls like us at the club, then?' 'Uh, I don't.' - Jade squirms; she really doesn't want to answer these personal questions. She decides to flip the tables. 'How about you, then, Tina? How do you get your candlewick dipped?' 'I don't. It's against my religion.' 'So you think you're a priest?' 'Not exactly. I see myself as an agent of the spirit.' 'The spirit?' 'That desire within me that wants me to be Tina and to spread my message.' 'What's your religion, then?' 'It's a syncretic polytheistic athiesm.' 'That's three hugely pretentious words. We aren't all nerdy bookworms.' 'I'm a Pagan, but I can see the silly side of it.' - Fuck you, Tim, Jade thought! Just when we were getting somewhere, you're back to talking all that stupid stoner mystical mumbo-jumbo. Fuck you, you arrogant dick!
- 'Let's get back to the candlewick. What happens?' 'I .. I don't make the first move. I don't know why! Sometimes I really wish that I knew how, but that's just not what happens.' Tina is about to cry. Jade realises that she overstepped. 'Guys, right?' 'Sometimes.' Sean is back in frame, and notices the awkward silence. 'Why is it that after I have a durry, someone's always crying?' That breaks the tension. The three of them laugh; friends again. (end of part 1)
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