His foreplay is a rapid flick flick flick of my nipple which I’m more curious about than anything else. It’s utterly unarousing. His penis hurts, it grates, I’m not wet yet and he pushes it in and then out and then harder and harder, ramming it deep inside me as far as it will go as if he wants to puncture something and I imagine that this is close to what it’s like to be raped. My head bang bang bangs against the wall behind me. I cry out. He doesn’t understand I’m hurting. He has no idea. He thinks it’s arousal when all it is is sore. There’s no tenderness. I want him to come and be done with it. The condom splits with the force of it all. He doesn’t come. He flops onto his back. He says his mates will be starting to miss him and he’d better get going. He says see ya and smacks a kiss on my forehead and he’s gone.

It’s a night of scrawny sleep. The wind roars around me. In the cocoon of my thermal sleeping bag I can hear the sea that’s bashing into the cliff below and I can hear the barks and belches of the elephant seals. I wake early and tired. There’s a rawness between my legs. I remember, then, something I’d forgotten, one of the first things Dog told me when I invited him inside.

‘I’m not very good with women, Fin.’

I walk outside. The orange hull’s bright in the grey of the sea. The melancholy horn sounds loudly, summoning me back. I stand high on the cliff and can feel the wind and the wet bashing the city out of me, can feel it bashing away alarm clocks and deadlines and rush. I can feel, in the stiffness of my spine fighting the push of the breeze on the cliff, a readiness in me for change.

Dog seems oblivious of my response to last night as I wait for my chopper to be loaded for the flight back. He’s infectiously cocky. He gives me a quick rundown of the Macca nicknames as we stand by the helipad. Rip, because he’s always sleeping. Chux, because he ties his hair back with strips of Chux Superwipes. Hump, because his surname sounds a bit like a camel. Stretch, because he’s tall. Dog, from grade six and he’s forgotten why. I ask him about Hole.

‘Aw Fin you don’t want to know that one.’

‘Come on, Dog.’

‘It’s not fit for young ladies.’

‘Mate, I’m not as young as you think. And I don’t know about the lady bit either.’