Free Wild Cat Falling by Mudrooroo

June cuts in quick.
    â€œHe only got here yesterday,” she says; “doesn’t know many people yet, but his hobby is jazz. I mean — ” she turns to me — “you’ve made a special study of it, haven’t you?”
    They ask me about it and I talk back some of the book stuff I have read. Jazz, the negro art, evolved in the plantations, in slavery and exile and misery. Triumph of the human spirit. The only valid new art to arise in this century. The only worth while thing to come out of America. They ask me about the
    Australian Aborigines, whether they could ever produce an art to rival jazz. I don’t know much about the Aborigines or how they feel, but I have a shot at answering. “For one thing,” I say, “they wouldn’t have a chance against the imported stuff. It’s big business now and anything home grown would be kept off the market. But, anyway, the Aborigines wouldn’t be interested. If there’s money to be made from their music the whites will use and debase it to suit their ends, until there’s nothing left in it of the black man’s soul.”
    Dorian says he thinks jazz is fascinating too and asks me to a party in his loft tonight. The others all seem to be going, so I say O.K. I don’t know why, because I don’t really want to go. Or maybe I do. They’re not my crowd, but I suppose they’re trying to make me feel at home and they’re interesting in a way.
    It’s time to leave now and I follow them out. June puts a hand on my arm.
    â€œI’ve got to go now,” she says, “but I’ll see you tonight.”
    She tells me how to get to the loft and hopes I enjoyed the afternoon. I tell her it was quite an experience to meet some real, big intellectuals.
    â€œYou can hold your own with them pretty well, can’t you?” she says. I think she means it in a friendly way and I smile down at her to save answering. Then I watch her move away across the lawn, calling out to a friend with that easy belonging voice of hers.

nine
    It’s early evening time and my stomach’s empty except for the coffee and the grog. I make for a Greek cafe back in town. It is stinking hot inside and the greasy three-course meal is no better or worse than I expect. I gulp it down without enjoyment and without disgust.
    My hunger sated, I buy a paper to read the time away till eight o’clock. I turn automatically to the police court news. One acquaintance has been arrested for breaking and entering, two others for attempted rape, and the police have promised an all-out drive to put down the bodgie element. I turn the pages until only the table top remains to be read, its blotches and stains a sickening story of many horrible meals.
    I wonder whether I still consider myself a member of this bodgie element. I don’t want to belong to them any more. They are a pack of morons. Clueless, mindless idiots. What about this other mob? No good pretending I could ever belong with them, even if I imagined life would be any better if I did. Maybe they are really as bored in their way as I am in mine and I amused them for a moment or two being like different. That chap Dorian was a fool really. It didn’t occur to him I wasn’t talking about his bloody awful picture, only about myself. Even that whisper of hope I talked about was me. If I let up a minute on my mental discipline it creeps in again suggesting there might be something in life besides absurdity — even a hint of meaning. I have to shut it out because it is a liar. It is the most dangerous illusion of all. Except maybe love!
    Another hour to this damn party. Will I go or not, and if not, where? Back to the milk-bar gang? Pay good cash to see the glorious fakery of blown-up life from the United States of Utopia? Not on your life! I could go to the public library perhaps and pinch a book to take back to my dingy little room. I remember the book in my