Quiver

QUIN

My name’s Quin, “the Wolf” to some. They call me that because of my hair. I haven’t brushed it in years. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t clean. It is. I like to keep it clean for the ladies. They like to weave their fingers through it and pull hard, especially when they’re coming. I keep it matted, like an animal’s. A wild, untamed animal. That’s why they call me the Wolf.

I don’t say much. I don’t need to. When I’m standing at the back of some gig in the dark with the music washing over me I’m in paradise. And the women sense it, they come to me without me even having to move a muscle. Instinct, that’s what they love, a man who knows his own pleasure.

MACK

I first saw Quin at a recording session. It was in the late seventies and I was twenty-six, young enough to still get excited when I heard those guitar riffs pounding at the studio window. I can’t remember the band now, but I remember Quin. He was curled up on the floor, crouching against the wall. His eyes were closed and that demented hair was snaking all over the large nose, the oily skin, the bat ears. Jerking rhythmically to the music, he looked like a gypsy violinist in a wedding somewhere in Prussia last century. I remember leaning across and shouting in the singer’s ear; “Get the fucking junkie out!” All the singer did was smile.

“Quin, what were the last four bass chords?”

Quin didn’t even bother to open his eyes. “A, E, B and F sharp.”

That’s my man, best ears in the industry grafted onto the body of a spider.

QUIN

I don’t like to say much in case I miss something. I like listening—to every nuance, every tonal gradation. I live through my ears. The first thing I can remember is the sound of a beer can being ripped open, my Irish father celebrating my birth with a toast. In the background I could detect the rat-tat-tat of Yiddish as my mother, Esther, organized my circumcision with my grandfather. Some people have really sharp eyesight, others can feel emotions with their fingers. Me, I hear everything. Sometimes I think I can hear the ants in the soil. Mack thinks it’s a gift. I think it’s a handicap: I hear too much.

Music is different: It’s color. It’s blue laced with silver. It’s lightning in a storm. It’s an orgasm through the veins. When I’m listening to music, I shut my eyes and pretend that my body is cat-gut stretched over a drum. In moments like this I am nothing but pure vibration. In moments like this I forget thought.

That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to music, to the recording and preservation of acoustic beauty. I put that in my résumé when I applied for the job at Mack’s studio. That’s why he employed me, so he can point me out to visiting artists and say, “That’s Quin. Mention digital audio technology around him and he’ll cut your balls off, but if you’re into acoustics he’s the best in Australia.”

Mack’s a victim of history. He solidified years ago, but he respects me. I like that. It gives me somewhere to touch down.

MACK

Digital audio technology. Yeah, been around for a while and it ain’t going away. Quin loathed it with a vengeance. He said it minimized sound, flattened it and spat it out onto a disk at the other end. He blamed the media giants and fabricated his own conspiracy theory. But what could I do? I’m a businessman. I had business to do and the clients wanted the latest. So I converted all the studios to DAT—all except Quin’s. Maybe I have a soft spot for the past. Superstition has always been my wea

kness; my old dad used to say, a little bit of the past will help with the future. Dad used to sell clothes wringers under Central Station. Then they introduced washing machines and he went bankrupt. Anyway, Quin had become a mascot for the studio, and mascots have their uses.

QUIN

My homemade record player has twelve valves that all glow in the dark. Little red throbbing beacons. It takes half an hour to warm them up before I can put the needle down on the spinning black disc. I only listen to records. They really knew how to record bands then—now it’s all sound reproduced by computers, no soul, no space between the musicians.

Women? It’s simple: I’ve never had a problem.

Every encounter is sonorous. On the skin, on the lips, on the cock. Like sediment it builds up, and the women can smell it on you. Of course, working in the rock ‘n’ roll industry helps. Like, you’ve been in the studio with the band for a week running, day and night, and the girlfriends, well, they start to feel neglected. So I play this tune in my head: You-poor-little-furry-thing-you-need-some-loving-I’m-here-for-you-I’m-here-to-serve-every-part-of-your-delicious-body-yes-I-will.

Over and over; mantra-like. And the women, they start quivering. Their antennae spin frantically and bend in my direction. Before they know it they’re leaning toward the mixing desk, those low, silent frequencies converging, drawing them closer and closer. The boyfriend, the singer, disappears into the toilets to do a line of coke. I balance the descent as she slips me her telephone number written in lipstick on the back of a matchbox.

Later at my place, I lay her down between the speakers, undressing her on the lounge-room floor. It’s my ritual. There is a great symmetry in repetition. If I have any musical talent it is this, drawing out pleasure through the skin. A tattoo of rhythm. Of timbre.

After the crescendo, the woman lies like the hull of a ship, lit by the glowing valves of my record player. Buttocks pushing up octaves, nipples cutting through the descent. She is pinned by the music; her wings bash against the bass like a dying butterfly that has burst into color before its final fatal flight.

MACK

Quin had this thing about the female voice, the alto to be precise. Shirley Bassey, Nancy Wilson, Barbra Streisand—all were tonal pleasure for Quin. Just as some men are tit men, Quin was a voice man.

He had the weirdest record collection I’d ever seen, as well as this ancient system with valves, for Christ’s sake! But his speakers were strawberry and cream. The edges of the acoustic space were razor sharp, especially on classical recordings: you knew where the bassoonist was sitting; it picked up the fourth violinist scratching his four o’clock beard. I’m telling you, you could hear the conductor draw breath just before his baton swished through the air.

I used to love sitting there, beer in one hand, joint in the other, just listening with the man. No women, no babies, no barking dogs, just Quin and his moldy furniture—the ultimate bachelor.

QUIN

I always leave work around five a.m., that way I avoid the white noise of this city. Discordant, man-made, eating up nature, swallowing birdsong, the wind, the percussion of rain.

I’ve fitted the car with mufflers and sealed the windows; it’s my time capsule of tranquility. My silence. Mornings. Me and my car, we’re black against the dawn. I drive over the bridge at Rozelle, past the new museum of fire towering like a huge red ghost. Every time my car accelerates over that bridge, I’m flying.