a doll, soused

In my pajamas at 6pm: pajamas are my favourite clothes. The phone rings. It’s a woman I spent a recent evening immersed in, such kinship, a friend who’s an acquaintance, we hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years. We used once to live in the same tiny village, an island in the centre of town. “I’ve just scored free tickets for A Doll’s House, it starts at 6.30, I can pick you up on my way.” “I’m in my pajamas.” “Or you could meet me there.” So I dive through the shower and go.

La Boite is in a playground of festival furniture, large swings built from slabs of ply painted black, projections onto a huge white screen, an outdoors bar. Under the stars. Too late arriving to be let in for the first act I take my ticket and wander. “Go up the back and read the secrets people have posted,” the lovely usher tells me in a whisper, “you can write your own secrets on a typewriter, get your nails done, get your palm read.” My friend has disappeared and gone inside. I buy a glass of wine in the pallet bar and carry it over to the palm-reading shed and read the wall. Some of the secrets are so lurid surely they must have been confected for the occasion – I can’t believe such a dark confluence of dramas has wandered past this tent, during the week of this festival. It’s my turn to get my palm read. I hold my hand out. “My name,” says the beautiful man in a top hat, “is Tawdry Heartburn.”

The greatest drag name in all the world. He flexes his fingers round mine and asks questions. Strong, long thumb: do you like standing alone? Emotion line is deep in your palm – Oh, I know, I say – and it runs straight up this finger, the seam of intuition. Broad-handed people are across lots of areas of life. “It may be hard to finesse so many skills.” He drops his voice and confides something of his own. All the stars pricking their way across the roof of this white vinyl tent stand to attention like satellite dishes, I imagine, flowers in the dark sea of night. Salt sea polyps.

Afterwards he draws out of his holster round the forearm, black leather, a brand-new fresh emery board. On the back is stamped his website name: this is his card. I go over to the theatre and go in. The stage is made from pallets and the second act is starting. My friend and I take seats right in front, where we can see, and be shouted over by the five actors who have each dyed their hair some lambent colour, as Ibsen insisted.

Did Ibsen really write this way, a string of almost uninterrupted, seamlessly joined cliche? “They’ve rewritten it a bit,” my friend confides, in a whisper, and I whisper back, “Lord, I hate the theatre.” But the game comes down darkly upon us and snatches us away. At the high point where the spare actors rush out of the wings and turn the stage round like a carousel, breath is caught, time is hung. Then in the interval, climbing our way out of the palace of dark attention, I look back and see the immediate blue glow of a dozen screens. Something has happened on facebook, on twitter, on email while I’ve been gone. I’ll stand and suck my thumb, smallest and dearest of my own limbs. I will, I do.

The music at the end is dense and scoring. It has a three/four beat behind four/four that drives it like a wagon. I stand up with everybody, groping our way back to our feet. Behind me is a face I’ve not seen since New York, a pianist who played on my album. We stand exclaiming, his date is impatient, I turn away and go over to the swing. My friend has gone to have her palm read, she says: I must go meet Tawdry. You will love her, I predict, fearlessly psychic now my palm is read. I lie full-length on the biggest swing under the scaffolding and let my heart hum its own earworm melody, unable to predict the night, sweet and buoyant waiting for the drive home, ready to greet myself, itching for paper, for a typewriter, a studio, for all New York. And Brisbane shines at night, that’s when it’s best and beautiful. Thanks Ibsen for the enduring ideas. Thanks West End for the villagers. I am tired and I drive carefully, the lion on my steering wheel yawns at me all the way home.