Cover

PRAISE FOR POLY

‘A fresh, witty take on modern masculinity and the lengths a man will go to for love. And sex. Lots and lots of sex.’

ANGELA SAVAGE

‘A quintessential twenty-first-century love story, Poly will shake you up, madden you, have you in stitches and, most significantly, make you consider your own life more deeply. I couldn’t put this novel down.’

LEE KOFMAN

‘No one uncovers our human frailties quite like Paul Dalgarno – part relentless investigative journalist, part poet of the bohemian suburbs. Poly is authentic, merciless and wincingly accurate; black humour at its best.’

JANE RAWSON

‘An engaging entanglement of love, desire and distraction.’

ANGELA MEYER

‘Poly takes us into the heart of a loving family we want to be part of, no matter how dysfunctional it gets. A rip-roaring ride through contemporary Melbourne that will have you heartbroken one moment and laughing the next. This is a portrait of real, lived poly life – with all of its paradoxes and complications – that I recognise with delight.’

ROCHELLE SIEMIENOWICZ

POLY

Title Page

POLY

And they lived happily ever after …
Anon.

1

1

The house was quiet in the way it only ever was when the kids were staying elsewhere. I glanced at the ceiling, the bedsheets, plumped my pillow, let my head fall. A drawing of a fallow deer stood out from all the other school artwork on the wall. Its sausage body, its oblong head, its blank expression. One shot – bang – and it would gallop away, dragging its crayon hoofs.

I looked at my phone, no new texts. The last was from Sarah, at 1.27 am:

So high, feeling over the rainbow, kissed a French guy, dancing now, love you, spunky xxx

It was 9.15 am. Anything could have happened between then and now. I hoped it had. Something. We’d been gearing up to it for so long. Years of coochie-coo baby-raising and no sex. Years of rejection and disappointment. Years.

* * *

I’d gone from shop to shop in Melbourne’s CBD looking for a gift for Sarah’s fortieth: a teapot, some cups. But not just any teapot, not just any cups: rustic, handmade, aesthetically pleasing, robust and entirely functional cups, no two the same but still clearly from the same kiln.

After a few false starts and a flurry of back-and-forth texts with my new friend-of-a-friend, Zac, I found a ceramics specialist down some steep stairs. Each item was marked with the name of the artisan, each price tag sobering. Fuck. Just for a cup?

To Zac: May need to remortgage the house …

To me: Aren’t you guys renting, dude? Sorry – don’t mean to undermine you

Four cups, four saucers, the teapot – that was the plan – but it wasn’t going to happen. The most I could stretch to was a teapot and two saucerless cups – but which teapot, and which saucerless cups?