Title: Sport 37

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2009, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 37: Winter 2009

Chloe Lane

page 91

Chloe Lane

Tentatively Joined

Now someone has graffitied the pigeon. It has been lying face down in the garden for a week, and now someone has tagged a green international post label and stuck it to its wing. I am standing at the window of my studio watching a fat girl with a cigarette in one hand and a camera phone in the other take a picture of this. She is wearing Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses—huge like a ski mask—that she doesn't remove to take the photo. I wonder what she will do with the photo. Will she show it to a boy she likes? There are pigeons sitting on a nearby fence, also watching the girl. This is what kills me the most. Someone should bury the pigeon, or take it away—there's a rubbish bin out front. Put a bucket over it at least.

I look around my studio. Although I know I will not find one here, I am looking for a spade. I forget about the brush and shovel under the sink, and instead I pick up the ceramic kettle plate sitting on the table.

Outside, with the plate in one hand and an umbrella in the other, I try to lever the pigeon out of the garden and onto the plate. While I am doing this I avoid looking into the eyes of the pigeon. Its eyes no longer look like eyes. The only thing to indicate they are eyes is where they are located on its head. So far my levering is only managing to spread the pigeon across more garden area, stretching it out. The pigeon is more decomposed than it looks from above—it is no longer a tidy unit of animal. It is now many pieces, tentatively joined. I close my eyes to a squint and breathe heavily through my mouth. I don't know how bad it smells and I don't want to know.

I think about the council's plan to kill off the pigeons en masse. Can you imagine mercenaries, armed with guns, knocking off the pigeons one by one? While some criminal fulfils his community service by running around after them with a spade and a sack? I hear a door slam behind me and suddenly terrified that someone will catch me page 92 doing what I am doing, I leave the pigeon as it is, and dash back into my studio.

Standing at the window, I watch the fat girl walk past again. She is with someone else this time. Neither of them acknowledges the pigeon. I can see the pigeon is sitting up more convincingly now, half on and half off the ceramic kettle plate, almost as if it were a sculpture on a plinth. I am unsure whether to be ashamed or pleased with myself. I watch the other pigeons slowly come down from their fence. Someone has thrown a loaf of sliced white bread into the courtyard. The pigeons take one slice at a time. All crowding around it, they work away at the middle first, pecking out a small hole that grows till it meets the crusts. They do this slice by slice, working collaboratively, leaving behind rings of crusts in their wake.

Practise

We were walking down Courtenay Place on a Friday night. It was almost 3am. I saw a man perched on a stool, with an electric guitar in his lap and an amplifier and microphone set up beside him on the footpath. As far as I could tell, he wasn't getting much attention from anyone walking down the street—no one was stopping to listen, or stare, or throw him any coins. The man's version of 'Sweet Jane' was a bit bluesier and a lot slower than I was used to.

We were going to buy a kebab. While waiting for the traffic lights to change, I tried not to look at the man though I could hear him fine. The amplifier was growling hoarse and out of tune. The man started making this terrible growling sound in the back of his throat. I think he did it for a soulful effect.

I thought about this man practising his act. I pictured him practising in his garage, belting out such classics as 'You Really Got Me', 'Thunder Road', 'Hotel California'. He is able to convey the essence of these songs with a minimum of chords. People walking past his garage think to themselves, I know that song . . . what is it?

page 93

But chords have nothing to do with it. This man desires to be as much a part of Friday night as booze and sex. In his garage, he practises how to be essential.

I looked at the way the man was sitting on his stool. The man was sitting like the stool wasn't even there. Sitting on a stool is generally awkward. Where do you put your feet? Do you sit upright or with a slouch? The man had practised this poise—he made it look easy and right. But was that enough, I thought?

I forgot about the man for a minute as I crossed the road and neared the kebab shop. I tried to gauge how hungry I really was. Or if I would get a meat kebab, even though my boyfriend was with me. That was when I heard a crash. I turned around and saw cords and bits of microphone and amplifier and drunken youth spread across the footpath. But the man hadn't moved from his stool. I could still hear the faint drumming of the strings of his guitar—low and tinny without the electric. And he was still singing as well, in a voice now barely audible above the street noise, but clearer and sweeter without its microphone, as if he were singing to himself in his own kitchen. Lying at his feet was the drunk kid, with his arms thrust ahead of him, and his head arching up in an awkward gasping manner, looking as if he were a child just learning how to swim.