It’s 1982. We’re cross-legged in the waist-high grass of a vacant lot, three minutes’ walk from Henderson High. Our friend Spice nicknamed this space The Cybernetic Meadow — don’t know why — but he’s not here right now. It’s just me and Michael and this fat joint we’re smoking. The workers in the industrial estate could smell it if they were out and about, see faint smoke rising, but no one takes any notice and we’re well-hidden in the dandelions and weeds.
It’s a special day. Sam Hunt is coming to do a gig at our school. Last term it was Auckland pop band the Screaming Mee Mees. Everyone pogoed about to their big hit ‘See Me Go’ up the front of the assembly hall. Fourth form, we had Golden Harvest. One of the guitarists, in a black felt hat, plucked the strings with his teeth.
That was five years ago, which makes it seem like I’ve been at school forever, but I left in 1980, worked for a year, then came back to try to get the qualifications I failed to work hard enough for the first time round. Now, instead of being a year younger than my classmates, I’m a year older, just not any wiser.
It’s no good blaming teachers or the system or the wild West Auckland culture. As my lovely English teacher Mr Stubbs pointed out when I grumbled about how hard it was to last the distance, “Studying is hard. Doing the wrong thing’s easy. Anyone can do that.”
He’s a good sort, Mr Stubbs, and he likes my poetry, even though it’s bad. He’s the one who introduced our class to New Zealand poets Sam Hunt, Hone Tuwhare, Jan Kemp and James K. Baxter. Sam’s the favourite. Word has it, he performed at Nambassa a few years back. I would love to have gone, but the final festival was last year, so that ship’s sailed. Closest I got to it was scoring a forest-green Nambassa T-shirt from Cook Street market, and the white ink’s already peeling off it.
Michael and I finish the joint. We rustle out from The Cybernetic Meadow and float back down Railside Ave to the school. Through the gates, past the giant macrocarpa, its huge roots cracking the asphalt. Almost to the bike sheds…
Heading straight for us are a formidable duo: the deans. And they mean business.
“Headmaster’s office. Now.”
We exchange hazy glances and slope along behind them. “We’ve been waiting a long time to catch you,” one of the deans says.
It’s a relief, to be honest. No more pretending I can make something useful of my teenage self.
The principal, Mr Lily, has donned his black bat-robe, and is waiting, stern-faced. Elbows on his desk, he steeples his hands, pointing them from left to right and back. He begins, “Now I know you’re both very high.”
Michael is contrite. It works. Since the school year is almost at an end, the principal allows him to come back when exam time arrives.
He asks me, “Would you like to do the same?”
But I just… can’t.
“An unfortunate choice.” Mr Lily frowns. “You can stay for Sam Hunt’s performance, then I’d like you both to leave the school grounds.”
It’s a fair plan.
Our rock star poet is taller than I expected. He strides up and down at the foot of the stage in pointy boots, an unbuttoned shirt, and a thin, white scarf. Words flow from his ragged voice and he gestures, pauses, points. There’s an aura around him like there is with all charismatic people.
When the gig’s over, everyone spills out of the hall to mill about in the afternoon sunshine.
Mr Stubbs and a few others are talking to Sam Hunt. I have to meet him.
As I approach, Mr Stubbs stretches an arm in my direction. “Sam, I’d like you to meet another poet, Anne.”
We shake hands, and I tell him, “I just got expelled.”
“I was expelled,” he says.
I drift from the gates one last time. My school days are over, forever. Thanks to Sam, I can’t help but feel they’re ending with a bang and a burst of fireworks.
Tauranga writer Anne Cleary is the author of The Nowhere Boy by Anne Cleary (Allen & Unwin, $37.99), available in bookstores nationwide. Her manuscript won the Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize, and was published in May. It’s about the West Auckland bogan parents of a little boy who is abducted from Muriwai Beach, and is the year’s most exciting NZ thriller by a long stretch.
