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I am not as small as those swallows darting in and out of the pylons.
    We all laughed, and took deep swigs, and thought about the bottle ending soon. We handed him the last drop as a gesture of solidarity and goodwill.
    If we give you the money, will you pick up another couple of bottles from the pub down the road? Sure, he said. Not a problem. And we all hauled ourselves from the watery underworld of below-wharf, and climbed the steel ladder facing the sea, up into the above-wharf light. It was actually a warm day, though you wouldn’t have known it below-wharf. The sun had a pleasant heat to it. Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, and a sailor on the stern of a ship moored alongside the wharf watched a large gob of his spittle fall far down to the sea. You could imagine small fish rising to the bait. I’ve seen that happen before. Maybe that’s what the sailor was doing – amusing himself in a time-honoured way.
    Will you fly after we’ve got more grog? we asked.
    I will, he said, though after I fly I will have to leave town. No community tolerates me being among them once they’ve seen me fly. Once airborne I soar high and always attract attention.

    I first thought I could fly when I was six. Not in that run-of-the-mill Superman-ofF-the-shed-roof way, but literally. It started in my dreams – I would fall off a mountain and be crashing to earth, and then I’d pull up just before impact and find myself soaring towards treetops and clouds. Then a few years later I was standing on the beach and saw what I thought was a shark fin, and my sisters were swimming and not looking. I called to them and they couldn’t hear, and the fin was getting closer. I just crouched and leapt into the air, and then I was flying over the waters and plunged down at the fin and splashed the water and the shark snapped at the air, missing me, and I drove it out to sea and then flew back to the shore. My sisters said nothing. No-one said anything and the day at the beach went on as before.

    Last week I had sex with a girl I’ve been lusting after for a year. I think I really like her. We went to the Year 12 ball together but nothing happened. Most of our classmates went down to the city for university but we both stayed on here, planning to head down in a year or two. My close mates had all left school at fifteen and got work on the cray boats or on farms, and I wanted to be around them, drinking and partying. We kind of had a band going as well, so maybe that was it. Anyway, I’ve been in town and still drinking with my mates on weekends. They wanted every gory detail of what went on with Alice, and I told them. Our new below-wharf friend looked uncomfortable and kind of lagged behind as we made a beeline for the pub. But I could tell he was still listening.

    An orgasm isn’t flying.

    Okay, he said, give me your money and wait down the street. He went in and came straight out with two bottles. He gave us the change. He knew how to win trust. Or maybe he was just trustworthy. Let’s go and drink in the park by the Moreton Bay fig, one of my mates suggested. Yes, good launching spaces there, we laughed. Our new friend followed.
    Under the Moreton Bay fig is an old roundabout – a merry-go-round you push yourself. When our friend plonked himself on the boards, two little children leapt off and ran away to their mothers on the thin harbour beach. He laughed uncomfortably, Kids do that. Must be the hair, he said. We laughed again. We were laughing a lot and looking to each other, excluding him more by doing so. We climbed onto the merry-go-round and propelled it with our feet, swigging and getting giddy, and risking losing the bottles which went from hand to hand. Drinking fast, we got pissed quick. The children came back with their mothers, who told us to get off and act our age. Especially you, mate, they said to our friend. One mother said to the other, Christ, he stinks to high heaven.
    We