Memoirs for Fishy

By Beale Stainton

Memoirs for Fishy revisits the first person story telling of the life of Bob, the central autobiographical character from Stainton’s previous novel From behind the Machine. It follows his return to Thailand in search of his past romance with On, while discovering more of Bruce’s excessive and hedonistic lifestyle. At the conclusion of his travels he slips back into his barista job in Sydney and moves in to live with Lars, a character with a shadowy past and questionable accomplices. The narrative then takes on shifts in perspective as Bob roves through scenes of his childhood in rural and small town New Zealand, where he reunites with siblings to unveil the headstone of his deceased mother - all told through a mosaic of memories of landscape and family. The final journey of Memoirs for Fishy is delivered in the third person and trails a surreal voyage as Bob drinks a beer at the Coogee Bay Hotel and is vanished into a dream world by a talking Fish named Fishy. Memoirs for Fishy touches full heartedly upon the themes of loneliness, love, friendship, forgiveness, family, purpose, addiction and acceptance. It is a timely reminder of the vulnerability and uncertainty of experience and the deliverance it bestows when we surrender to it completely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925739916

Book preview

1

I forget if I’m a planner, or if I simply let life take its course, but I once again, without any thought about intentions to do so, found myself flying above the wide and open expanse that is Bangkok at night. It is one of the most unforgettable cities to fly into, especially when you know that awaiting you on the other side is a certain character from your past, one you have brooded over and let go of. I was excited to see her again. I know that much, but there was no way of telling anything else. I didn’t have a phone, but I had her number written onto a small folded piece of paper somewhere in the top of my pack. I had my computer. I had a bunch of cash in my account. It was enough to live wild, careless and free for the next two to three months. I had no real itinerary either, nothing to guide me away from uncertain events. What was I looking for? This is the question we must all stop to ask ourselves every now and again. What is it that we do here on earth? As the runway approached and that uneasy feeling came to my gut, just before the plane hit the ground, I remembered the answer. I simply explore. That’s it.

I had been in Penang, the historic off shore island south of the border, for about a week. I did nothing, but take leisurely walks around old Georgetown and eat streetside gastronomic delight after streetside gastronomic delight, sleeping until noon most days, before I decided that it was time to leave Malaysia and fly north. I was booked into a hotel in Sukhumvit, so my first priority was to find my way through Bangkok somehow, but after landing, I went to an ATM to withdraw cash and it swallowed my card. Luckily, there was a lady from the bank, seated at a teller, beside the machine. She was able to open it and retrieve my card. To my surprise it happened at the next ATM, then the next. I decided not to try again. This was not the first time I had landed into a foreign country without the means of attaining local currency. To my rescue came a passing air stewardess. She was a young Thai woman and exceptionally welcoming at that.

You can use my phone to call your hotel, she said.

Thank you! Yeah I don’t have their number.

What about friends? Do you have any friends you can call?

Yeah there’s Bruce. I’ll try Bruce. He doesn’t live too far from the airport as well.

The friendly stewardess gave me her phone and I called my mate. He was more than happy to shout me a taxi to his place. I thanked the lovely, young lady and she left on her way, back into the crowd of knocked off commuters. Although I now had the means of survival and a plan to make it to safety, I decided to give one more ATM a spin. I inserted my card, tapped on the five thousand baht option and to my surprise money came out the bottom. It was strange. I stood back and noted the indigo coloured, Siam Commercial Bank into my memory. Perhaps it was the only one I could use. I had no idea why.

With that done I found a taxi and headed into the city. Those initial impressions of driving along Bangkok’s outer freeway network in the middle of the evening are an enviable sensation. It is impossible to find an English speaking driver, so the half hour conversation is always limited to the address of the hotel. That’s entertaining enough anyway. He parked up, I got out and stepped up to the front door, coated in heat, a deeply urban soundscape and the smell of the big city. An irate, somewhat feminine man came to the counter. He really wanted to press me for all my reservation details, before charging me a hefty bond price and handing over the key. The room was on the third floor. It was comfortable enough to feel at home in, but there were no windows and so it was always impossible to tell what time of the day it was. There was a phone beside the bed so I called Bruce to tell him everything was fine with me, then I found the folded piece of paper at the top of my pack and I did it. I rang her.

She lived close to Sukhumvit, so it didn’t take all that long for her taxi to appear along the street. She was seated behind the driver when I reached in to pay for her fare. I grabbed her by the hand and we walked up to the room. Once the door shut behind us and the light came on we finally got to embrace and kiss. She was dressed in a green, silk, one piece with a low cut bottom and thin straps over the shoulders. Draped atop this was a spectacularly fine silk scarf I bought from some Muslim traders in the back streets of Varanasi. I gifted it to her the first time we met and so I was pleased to see that she kept it for her own adornment. She was still as thin and petite as I remembered. There was also a scent of expensive perfume in the air, just like always and her hair was so well done. Our initial greeting was brief however, because it was ten at night and we were right in the heart of Sukhumvit.

We got into a taxi while she explained to me a certain nightclub. I had no plans so I was happy to go along with things, although I was a little on the tired side. The taxi drove into an underground carpark where guards came to open our door and welcome us out. There was no need to pay the taxi driver, for some reason, which I can only guess stems from an arrangement between the club and taxi companies. As we entered the place I can only say that it felt somewhat sinful. There were no nude dancers or invitations of those likes, but a certain bad taste filled the air nonetheless. The first thing to describe is that there were some two hundred seemingly young, everyday white guys chatting up some two hundred opportunistic Thai girls. It was almost as if the place was running on demographics. The age cut off for the men was about forty, perhaps. There was nothing apparently sleazy or disgusting about the place. It was more like a mirror upon myself. That is why it felt so confronting. I wasn’t drunk enough to not realise that I was in a room filled with my brothers, not brothers by blood or friendship, but brothers in sin. I paid for a couple of drinks at the bar. It was twice the price of Sydney, which made me feel further unease, then we joined a couple of drunk European guys at a table and I noticed numerous eyes watching people’s drinks. As soon as your beverage emptied you were pressed to buy another and so on. A young woman came by with a tray of tequila shots and On grabbed one for herself and one for me. I was forced to hand over another thirty dollars. That’s when I took her by the hand and walked her out.

This place is obviously run by some kind of mafia. I don’t like it and I can’t afford it. Let’s just find one of the simple drinking places on the pavement.

She understood and if there’s any fun to be had in this world, I’m sure you can find enough of it on the sidewalks of Sukhumvit Road. Especially when you’re with a Thai woman you get to share your drinks with the hard working locals who run small shops selling things like beers and grilled meat. There is no greater joy in Thailand than that, honestly. Some think it’s all about the easy sex. Sure that’s part of it, but the finest joy, the one that brought me back, is the debauchery of getting legless drunk with strange Thais and you kind of need a local woman by your side to enjoy it the most. That’s how this particular night began. Before I knew it I was giving generous tips to buskers, so much so that they gave me their guitars to sing for them, then the sun was up and I was with On down a side street. We joined the company of a local couple and the beers were on me. I was talking and ranting, but I don’t know if anyone understood. Either way there was a lot of intoxicated love and intimacy around. Suddenly, upon a seat in one of the shops, a young woman sat in tears while she took a knife and made long cuts up and down her forearm. Blood fountained out of her human form like oil gushing from the earth. There was a restrained panic, then she was taken away. It was about this time that my group got into a taxi and moved further toward the unknown.

Now I obviously have trouble remembering the ongoing series of events, but we arrived at a bar, which felt like it was opening just for myself and my entourage of selected locals. The host of the bar wished to strike a deal with me so I took him into the front lobby area.

You can pay us a set amount and we’ll provide the alcohol, he said.

I reached into my money and I was at the end of my five thousand baht, so I told him to take me to an ATM. Within moments I was on the back of a motorbike, speeding through the chaotic scenes that is Bangkok in the morning. We stopped into the indigo bank and I withdrew ten thousand baht. That’s what you do when you’re as drunk as I was. I believe I also tipped the motorbike driver one thousand. He was from the bar anyway, so that was just more money for them.

Let me fast forward to sometime later that night, only twenty four hours after I first arrived into Bangkok. I awoke to On by my side. We were in my hotel room. It was like I had arrived into Thailand the night before, but I couldn’t really recall any of it. I remembered the motorbike ride through the streets of Sukhumvit. I remembered the copious amounts of friends I made at some bar. I didn’t remember all the money I paid them. I partially remembered the trip back to the hotel. We weren’t alone. The couple we met in the street in the early morning hours of that day were with us. They had argued and fought in our hotel room. The woman had some kind of breakdown. There seemed to be traces of her tears all over the floor and up the walls, but even after everything I shared with them, the emotional parts included, I couldn’t recall her face, nor his.

When On awoke she remembered everything. She couldn’t believe the amount of money I gave away. Things had obviously gone to a whole new level of release. She picked up the phone and ordered room service. We were in a surreal situation. I found my pants on the floor and checked the pocket. There was only two thousand of the ten thousand I had withdrawn that morning.

You still owe me, she said.

Sure I did, but I didn’t want to hear that. I hoped to be reunited with her, unlike the last time, but a woman who does certain things for a living is a woman who does certain things for a living.

I have to go home, she remembered, as we gobbled fried rice in front of the television, in view of the evening news.

I felt empty, unsure and uncertain of how to handle things. Being alone was the last thing I wanted. Going to an ATM was the last thing I wanted. Anyway, we dressed and I walked her out onto the street. She was obviously distressed and upset. I gave her some money and followed her into Subway, where she bought five subs. We exited and I let her go, but not before she handed me one of the subs. I returned to my room, unpacked it and ate it down, but not without noticing that it was a strange combination of ham, salad and tomato sauce.

Each to their own, I whispered to myself.

2

As the equinox departs, the air lightens, the crispness of the cool, pre-summer wind still blows along Carr Street toward the bay, and there is this feeling before lunch, while the spirits of school children wail through the trees, competing with the sharp, flinging notes of passing cars, there is, without it being too explicit or obviously clear, a certain serenity of uncertainty in the mood of these surroundings, an all too human expression of detachment and distance, one of fear and mistrust. A young mother walks, slightly leant back against the slope of the hillside, as if falling toward the sea. Her hands embrace a stroller, where in sleeps her child, peacefully and blissfully unaware of things. It has no need to wallow or hide, to shudder or sigh. It is but an opening kernel, a seed falling apart of its beginning like all of us unfolding toward our final becoming, an opening scene yet to be blessed with character. The mother is stoic, silent like a robed monk, deeply involved in the same nature as the creatures of the seas, skies and earth. She is not only the door between the previous world and this one, but also the bridge connecting child and adult, the lover between the lamb and the tiger; and all that needs to be found in this austere settlement by the sea can be found in her.

A man walks hurriedly along the pavement. His strides are quick and snappy. He seems somewhat foreign, somewhat removed. His head rises to recognise mother and child in front of him, briefly, without much of a moment of acknowledgement, then it drops back down to the concrete. He is not the tallest man, nor does he appear to take much consideration in his dress, or his general tidiness altogether, but he is nonetheless attractive, alluring and striking to the waving eye. He appears to have simply fallen out of bed, to have taken clothes draped over some significant object in his room and then to have walked straight past any mirror or wall of reflection, but his skin is a fine light brown and his eyes are etched with the most exquisitely deep colours of the wilderness. There is no accident to these pleasing features, for they belong to the face of an imaginative man, one educated in so many secrets and mysteries of life itself. When he was born his mother nursed him by the sea, in a simple house made of wood and glass. He grew up to become a complex character, but the easiness of his mother’s love and care never left him. To be nurtured like that is surely the only end to our desires, the only horizon on our path. He could not recognise what he so much shared with the mother and child before him, as they all of them drifted beside the street. He felt only separation, severance, perhaps even an acquired quantity of disdain perhaps. It never occurred to him to question his feelings, to turn them inside out and see that he, the mother and the child were one in the same thing. Like one side of an imposing wall of ignorance between one perspective and another he selfishly strode through only one ray of an endless spectrum.

As the frontage to the medical centre appears, not a cubed building without personality, but a beautifully tempered villa with freshly cut lawn and manicured fence, the mother and child continue on along Carr Street, while the man turns into Mount Street. He hesitates before stepping out onto the road, until a car approaches, speeding over the hill so that he must hurry back to the pavement for his life. Another vehicle comes, then another, while he patiently waits. When the way clears he briskly crosses to the other side. There are residents going this way and that as the populated valley that is Coogee spreads out far and wide before his eyes. There is not a cloud in the sky. The sun sits comfortably near its zenith for this time of the year. As a motorbike, driven by a uniformed food delivery driver speeds above the coming rise he makes another turn down Kidman Street, where the quietude of settled suburbia feels much more pleasant than anywhere else on his chosen route. Here there are few cars as the short stretch of road fades steeply down the coming slope, flanked by sleepy apartment blocks built ever nearer beside each other. At the end of Kidman he makes a quick turn onto Brook Street before finally weaving into the lower end of Coogee Bay Road, where there is much more bustle and commotion in store.

For the remainder of his journey it would seem that he is destined for the coast, but he is unsure. His head is ringing. His compass is off. There seems to be no plan to his time, to his day, none whatsoever. He walks with his hands in his pockets, his head sometimes raised, but for the most part he avoids direct eye contact with the many faces seated at tables outside cafes and restaurants. He can feel each distinct shop as it passes, like a daily ritual of noting religious icons as he moves toward the destined temple. When the end of the road arrives he crosses over to the beach. There is a paved area where elderly sit alone and the youthful exercise. He arrives at the top of the steps leading down to the sand, takes a deep sharp breath of the air, the sea, sky and the wonderous surrounds of this place he now calls home. With one final meditation upon that great natural wonder before him he turns, strolls back across the street and enters an uninteresting frontage with the less than original name of Coogee Bay Hotel.

3

It was a cool September night when I arrived into Sydney airport after yet another flight from Bangkok, through Kuala Lumpur. Everything I owned in the world I again carried on my back, as if I’d taken too literally to the saying collect memories, not materials. Compared to my previous return from Thailand I managed to play things relatively safe, but that was about it. I had enough money to survive a month at the most, but once again, just like previous times, I was unemployed, homeless and I again left my heart in Bangkok. I gathered myself as best I could and braved the nervous uncertainty of my coming predicament. Perhaps I was getting better at it. Maybe I was growing stronger so to speak. I had proven many a time that I was not just a survivor, but an adept one. If a war broke out, then I assured myself that I would probably be the last man standing. It was becoming clear. Lives of comfort and luxury are for certain people, there to help them sleep at night. It reduces the fear and dread of the inevitable experience of being all alone in a meaningless universe, momentarily holding it at bay before it sets in again. I was obviously not one of these people. I was something else altogether. Luxury, comfort and safety weakened me, serving only as chains to belittle my life force, stunting my growth as a wild soul on an uncertain journey, ruining my essentially poetic growl, because the person who is safe and comfortable has no need or reason to fight and to struggle. It should never be forgotten that struggle is the food of life. Eat from it, sleep with it and be completely surrounded by it.

From the airport I caught a train to Central. This is a journey I look forward to everytime. The characters of Sydney’s commuter system are always the same and so they welcome me home with certain primary sensations, but not always in a pleasant way. The sound of a derelict walking up and down the platform or from one end of a carriage to the other, cursing some invisible figure they are in an incomprehensible conversation with says welcome to Sydney more than anything else. The approaching derelict, dressed always in track pants, a faded sweater and cap, sometimes wearing a goatie beard, is one of those signifiers that lets me know where I am in the world. I’m not in Malaysia, not in Sapporo, but back in Sydney. When the derelict passes by and I look up to the face of the seemingly attractive young woman seated opposite me, and without hesitation all of the eloquence she divines turns to demon, like a beautiful white cloud surrounded by blue sky reforming as a black thunderous one engulfed by storm, then again I remember which city I’m in. It’s a city with its fair share of crazy drifters and self conscious women, but there’s much more to it. These are just the things that stand out after touch down. When you stare at a pretty woman on a train in Asia it’s like she doesn’t even notice you’re there. Do that in Sydney and the sky opens up.

After I get off the train and walk through the corridors of Central, up the escalator and beneath the open expanse of the grand hall, I can’t help but notice how sad and agitated everyone appears. It’s a cold and lonely place, an every man for himself kind of wing. I stride along with a fresh sun tan and the radiant smell of the tropics. Even in Bangkok I don’t remember seeing so many destitute and homeless souls about. There are columns of lost men sleeping by and by along the corridors of every corner I turn down. There are some with their faces pressed to the ground and the open, upheld palms of their hands presented to passers by. They look like religious figures, like the monks I saw all through Myanmar and Cambodia, accept here the people don’t give to them so freely. I look into their eyes as I pass and I notice that there is not much left inside. The human, the creative bud of expression that is the centrepiece of our purpose for being here, is being slowly, but surely eaten away at, fed on by some force of this world only the bravest can uncover and expose. They are products of one of the most prosperous societies on earth, yet they have been beaten back to nothing but a surviving shell, on a sad display for all to see.

From Central I simply cross over onto Broadway and find the backpackers I’m booked into. It is not one of the large, overfilled ones, but a smaller more intimate lodging. It is down a short side street. I ascend the stairway. It’s after eight, but I have arranged to check in after hours with the manager. He’s there when I arrive. He’s a young man with a hefty English accent. I pay the bill and he advises me that a mistake has been made. They forgot to book me into a bunk in one of the rooms. It’s their fault, so to make up for it they put me into a room of my own with double bed, television and balcony to the street. I enter, place my bag down and make myself at home, before I head out for some food and return to call it a night. After two days of sleeping on airplanes and in airports it’s always a luxurious encounter to take that first horizontal spread in a freshly made bed.

I believe I remained living at this particular backpackers for the next two weeks and like anywhere you stop to lay your head and rest it felt like home. I found work after only my second day back. I returned to 36 St Pauls Street, but everything there had changed, so perhaps that is a story to tell later on in this unfolding of memories, or maybe not. I got lucky there and it is perhaps the crowning feature, which allowed me to easily transition back from long term travel to a settled lifestyle. To begin with I only worked three days a week or so, but that was enough to keep me going with the simple life I returned to. My body was still on Thai time and I slept in late there, so for my first few weeks in Sydney I