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  Slapping together the Velcro of the runners, I was ahead of the women when I began the last leg of the Port Water triathlon. Virginia just dropped her bike and ran barefoot; Tiger Cat and sponsored girls were right behind her. Three or four men were in front of me. I took the last of them as my mark and stretched my stride. The run was a straight two kilometres up to the breakwater, a circle through the surf club car park and back along the road to the last 100 metres in the park. I made the turn and could see where the other women were. The stocky girl with the glittering lights of future success in her eyes was running fast and scheming to overtake me if I stayed at my present rate. I more or less gave the race to her when I saw that. However, I upped my pace and was really pushing it when I reached the path to the finish line. I got a burst of barracking from the feral lesbians and broke down.

  There and then, my Achilles tendon tore. Agony. I hopped, groaned and fell. The gurls ran to help me and officials screamed at them to get off the track. They kept egging on Beetle', as they helped me. I looked at her back out of curiosity as I lay, moaning. Her gait was funny, heels flinging outwards, the soles of her large feet black and leathery. Tiger Cat was puffing furiously to catch up to her. The little, serious triathlete from the Gold Coast broke the tape for the Open Women's event, but second place was so exciting it was ridiculous, Virginia, Tiger Cat, and one of the teenagers neck and neck.

  The TV cameras preferred to photograph me in my distress than the place-getters; no doubt to get shots of the logos on my dress and towel. I felt like giving the shoes away. Two strong gurls armed me to Sean's table. He rubbed his magic potions into my injury, ice, warmth, ice, warmth. He made me drink something. It relaxed me. As I was being massaged, Rory came in and asked me how I was. Her sincere concern was touching. I developed a soft spot for Rory and managed to ask how Beetle finished to confirm what I had seen.

  'Second,' she grinned. 'First in her age group by a mile.'

  Sean affirmed that with a happy laugh, 'Yeah. The cat is positively spitting french fries.' He fluttered his hands as he hissed. With mischief. I laughed.

  'I don't want to blame my track shoes,' I lied, 'but here, Rory, take them. If they don't fit you, give them to one of the gurls. Compliments of Nike,' I added bitterly.

  Jody from the Gold Coast wins, Beetle second, the doctor's daughter beats Tiger Cat for third. Officially. The cardiac specialist and his family gather round, a tribe of beautiful people with two cars, the Beamer and the Range Rover.

  Cybil Crabbe pays out with stubby fingers. She manages to score a good sum of straight dollars; having targeted some macho males, she flirts as they tear up their bets. Rory watches her with distaste as she strolls back to her crowd with Margot's expensive footwear.

  'Hardly one of us,' she comments.

  'I don't know,' boasts Ti Dyer, her two large dogs straining at their collars because the local inspector made her tie them up. 'She gave me twenties outright on the swim leg. So I'm laughing.'

  Virginia White is chuffed. Dee grabs her for a massage before she sees the thunderous scowl of her girlfriend.

  'So you bet on me, hey?' she asks, her head in the towel.

  Dee says, 'I'll take a lesbian any day. You know me.'

  Virginia exclaims, 'That was satisfying. I was totally inside my body, forty years of worry dropped away! No doubt, no ambition and absolute concentration.'

  The gurls have a billy boiling on the gas barbecue, but the party-minded have already popped a beer. It gratifies Virginia to know that she has a fan club. It makes up for all those meets that Jeff and she went to together without their parents. She grins like a Cheshire cat. Their breakfast picnic is a distance from the sponsored area. Dee Knox gives Virginia a rub-down on a thin camping mattress. They are the only people in the whole place to sit down, let alone smoke.

  'The speed did it, my personal pace did it,' Virginia goes on permitting herself to skite, knowing the put-down will come soon enough. 'If I let my mind wander I would have hit something or broken a leg. I loved you gurls geeing me up.' She smiles, now, with affection, and like a yobbo hero, she wants to punch the air.

  Rory rolls a cigarette, and opines, 'Women are from the sea, as Elaine Morgan said in Descent of Woman.'

  'Don't get serious.'

  'Shut up about evolution, already.' Yvonne says, 'Let's celebrate.'

  Dello and Maz turn up when the race is over. The presentation is at the local Bowling Club at half past eleven, two and a half hours after it finishes. Bea, Zee and Gig arrive with sausages.

  Jody, the feisty girl from the Gold Coast, with the graciousness of winning, comes over to congratulate Virginia. She is tiny, maybe five foot one, a solid, tanned body. The lesbians clap her on the back and call her a champion. This good humour is interrupted by a thunderous Tiger Cat in her short vest top like a sports bra, flat stomach showing her navel dead centre and briefs like men's swimmers held up with a draw-string.

  'Very form-fitting,' nods Bea.

  Zee reckons, 'Don't know why she's got 'em on at all!'

  'Hang on, that's not cloth, it's acrylic paint!'

  Tiger Cat is accompanied by one of the 'sweepers', volunteers from the SES, in bright overalls, who was warning traffic at the factory corner during the triathlon.

  'I'm putting in a complaint,' she states. 'To the committee.'

  The gurls go silent. The official looks uncomfortable. Rory's hand plays with the stone in her pocket. Virginia is resting on the massage mat.

  Dee, wiping the apricot kernel oil from her palms with a rag, asks, 'You're a cop, aren't you?'

  'I was,' she says with dignity. 'This is not about politics, it is about illegally cutting corners. As this gentleman will attest, this competitor,' Tiger Cat points rudely at Virginia, 'went off the course by going up onto the verge.'

  The gurls scoff and deride, 'Talk about sour grapes.'

  'Sore loser.'

  The SES volunteer is not so sure it was against the rules and assures them that correct and just procedure will be undertaken. He walks away.

  'You cheat!' Tiger Cat accuses.

  'What? Virginia cheat?' Rory closes a fist about the rock that Hope gave her and feels a surge of power.

  'Nu-uh, mate,' Ti fronts Tiger Cat, 'You were just too chicken. Afraid you'd fall off your al-foil wheels.' Her dogs growl in sympathy with her aggression.

  'You know,' Rory says with quiet menace, 'People who criticise others for something are generally considered guilty of that thing themselves. So Constable Loser, do you cheat?'

  'Ask the marshals,' says she and storms off.

  Sean put me on crutches for twenty-four hours. A tendon injury needed absolute rest, not strapping. Nor he would he let me drive, which meant I had to go across town with him to where the Spiders Coalition were putting the finishing touches on their Mardi Gras float. Bananas in Pyjamas at the Seaside, would you believe? Actually it was a fairly impressively decorated truck with lots of foam rubber shells and things. Lola Pointless was active, no Libby Gnash. Barry, the school-teacher, was without his boys, last seen on roller blades at the Orlando dance. Poofters and dykes in blue stripes trying on yellow heads in a fever of frivolous creativity amused me as I just sat and watched. Alison's two younger children were running around. Tilly said hello. Alison herself was a centre of interest, as she was reading palms. Maria sat on Neptune's throne, which would be put on the float at the last minute in Sydney; no Sofia. Pissed off about missing the Forster Minolta World qualifier, I did not feel like being socially out-going. I waited until Sean finished his fluffing around in a fug of self-pity.

  18

  …like a kid again…

  'Dawn, for crying out loud,' Rory cries fairly loudly as Chandra is in the kitchen and she is sitting comfortably outside and taking in the view. 'Virginia was ageless. Her bicycle by no means state of the art! Although the frame is an old-fashioned female design, the gears are new. Tyres blown up.'

  Chandra produces tea and listens.

 
; 'Margot and the others are ploughing up the sea smashing into the water and splashing. VeeDub is cruising. Hardly a ripple, then she rides in wet bathers, bare-headed, and runs barefooted. Near the end Margot tore her Achilles tendon. Reminded me of primary school, you know, dashing about with all the energy of insects. Margot has a beautiful body!'

  'Yes,' says Chandra. 'She does.' Rory becomes expansive on Chandra's verandah, giving her a full account of the morning's event. 'There were no smells. I expected to smell sweat. By the river with mangroves on the other side there were not even mudflat smells or sea smells, strange. Port Water is so sanitised. Little treated pine walls separate the dirt from the sand. Glamorous pelicans in groups on the water. Moored yachts. A cheesy little meet, really. For Margot to injure herself.'

  Rory just wants to keep talking about Margot and her sport. Chandra spins her wheels round to lift the cosy from the pot and pour some more.

  'This cat-woman accused VeeDub of cheating! So I said, that must mean you cheat, sister,' Rory effuses. 'Like I thoroughly believe that, maybe not in the sports event, but you know, something? Margot's rival from the old days, Tiger Cat, is an ex-cop. We want to watch her. She is a worry.'

  Chandra nods. 'Probably on drugs. How can you, Rory, trust one excop and suspect another?'

  'You've got to meet Margot,' Rory offers as an explanation.

  Chandra nods. 'I have.'

  Rory grins, 'See what I mean?'

  'I don't know.' Chandra suspects the prejudice of sexual desire beneath Rory's argument.

  Rory looks at her for a moment, recalling the ferocity of the barney with Meghan. Chandra is prepared to lose friends over principles; to use her fists, something Rory herself could not do. But she goes on, enthusiastically.

  'One chap was running alongside his bike, having had a puncture, later I saw him finish, second last.' Rory continues, laughing. 'He had plainly fancied himself. His buzz seemed higher than most.' Rory puts her cup down, 'Virginia second, hey!'

  'You don't know Virginia if you don't think she's competitive,' Chandra says sharply. 'Takes one to know one.'

  'Yeah, I suppose,' Rory frowns; in fact, she hadn't thought of Virginia as competitive at all.

  'I have competed in equestrian events,' Chandra confesses.

  'True?' Rory makes a show of looking at the lovely dappled grey horse in his paddock. Rory doesn't really know Chandra, tries to cover her nervousness with talk, but Chandra says quietly, 'Come inside. I want to show you something.'

  Virginia White has her back to the window of Cybil Crabbe's flat with its ocean views. She is great, feeling inviolate. Plenty of cyclists tried to cut through the sharp bend as she had and some had come to grief. Virginia, at the presentation, was given a caution about not wearing a helmet, but the placings remained the same. A triumph. Gurls were thrown out of the club for unruly behaviour. Although Virginia is excited at her success at the triathlon and the progress of her artistic vision, from the dismembered Gaia to the group composition, and full of herself, she does not feel she deserves the shit Cybil is laying on.

  Virginia laughs, and boasts, 'You're just jealous.'

  Dangerously vicious, Cybil tries to rattle her with insults Virginia cannot believe. 'I'm not the one who's jealous.'

  'What do you mean? What's this all about? You're acting like you're guilty of something. You're picking a fight. It doesn't make sense to me,' Virginia leaves the windowsill to stretch out on the sofa. The poodle sleeps in a tight ball in the armchair, making a pair with the woolly cushion. Cybil is trying to make her feel like a loser.

  After niggling and bickering most of the afternoon, eventually Cybil loses it, screaming, 'You hate women.'

  'Me?' Virginia cannot imagine what is motivating such violent passion. Cybil had made her money. Virginia proved herself an Amazon! At fifty, she was as brave as a nine-year-old. But Cybil likes a stouch.

  'Women's culture is in the realm of your imagination, somewhere between Amazons and aliens. In the clouds. You don't care about ordinary women.' Cybil ends her tirade with, 'You actually hate women! You won't admit it.'

  'I don't hate women, they just disappoint me sometimes,' Virginia says patiently, assuming that beneath the verbal abuse her girlfriend is trying to find her own truth. 'I do judge and analyse other women because I want, at least to see, the ideal. It's so easy for women to work in the male cause without, sometimes, even knowing it. All that good lesbian energy nurturing gay men, for instance.'

  The relentless argument goes around in circles without Virginia believing that Cybil is mean-minded. 'What have I done?' she asks. 'Do you really think only victims and losers are real women? Well, I'm here to prove they're not.' But like a spoilt child playing its mother's patience to the end of the tether, Cybil keeps at her, following her about the cage of a flat. Virginia tries to prove strong women are not trying to be men.

  'You are a hypocrite,' Cybil goads. She finally hits the mark. Virginia cracks.

  'A hypocrite?' Virginia yells. 'I've already been called a cheat today!'

  'You are a hypocrite because you are the most androgynous woman I have ever known! You're practically masculine. All that women's culture stuff, it's a pipe-dream. You don't even know what it's like for women. You are really boring. Not living in the real world.' Cybil expresses her humiliation, 'Getting us chucked out of a club!'

  'Is that all? But, as I was saying,' Virginia continues, 'lesbians who think androgyny is the way to go, I mean as a philosophy, are fucked. It white-ants the foundations of whatever female culture we have. You let the male into your head, you have a spy there.'

  'I felt so embarrassed, bunch of drug-taking, drunken deros: how can you call them your friends?' Cybil cleans a clot of lipstick from the corners of her mouth. 'You don't care about me. Or anybody else but yourself.'

  Virginia refuses to cry, but her fists want to smash something. 'I do. Who don't I care about? There's nobody I don't care about. I have to care. I can't create unless I care. I care deeply.'

  'You don't care about your mother. You dismiss her along with your father, you call her a lush. You care about your brother more than your mother.' Cybil keeps winding her up, pumping her handle like a spinning top.

  Virginia throws a plate against the wall. Suddenly, definitively. Puddles takes off, yelping. The shards of crockery, globs of dolmades and pink dip sticking to the plaster give Cybil some measure of satisfaction. Although not one for cleaning, she makes a show of picking up the pieces she can see. She loosens her pressure. Virginia watches her as she giggles at her poodle running up and down the doona on the double bed, yapping. Now, having made Virginia angry, she is quite happy. Turning soft and longing, she kisses VeeDub on the mouth; and the Amazon melts. She then gossips about gurls she hardly knows; curiosity without judgement, but without tolerance either. Cybil is a postmodern being.

  'Catherine Tobin,' Cybil conveys, 'works for a gay and lesbian merchant bank, an investment business. The idea's not bad, but I would not sign over my hard-earned to that one. She said she is really successful, getting more women every day.'