Snakeman's Dance, Malade Zine No.1

MALADE ZINE number one

snakeman's dance /// MALADE ZINE NO.1 1

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mike danischewski

snakeman's dance /// MALADE ZINE NO.1 1 snakeman's dance /// MALADE ZINE NO.1 MIKE DANISCHEWSKI 2

Mike D’s photos capture the esoteric nature of subcultures that are hard to define. Words can sound corny, because they’re often written in retrospect. Mike’s right there amongst it as it happens and it shows in the gritty detail.Essentially, he’s the fly on the wall overseeing all of the cool shit you want to be a part of. That’s the best part about Mike’s work; it brings everyone along for the ride. No one’s left out.

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snakeman's dance /// MALADE ZINE NO.1 MIKE DANISCHEWSKI 3

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Garrett was down on his hands and knees peering through the hand-hole of his side gate at the commo-tion out in the street. There was a van parked in front of the empty house at the dead-end of the cul-de-sac, next door to Garrett’s house, with the driver’s side door open, the radio on and a mattress tied to the roof. The driver had climbed up on top of the van and was lying face up on the mattress, with one arm shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. The van’s other occupant, a black kelpie, was in the front yard of the empty house. Mesmerised by something in the grass and following it intently with his snout, the dog let out a singular bark every thirty seconds or so. Pin Oak Close had appealed to Garrett because he wouldn’t have to be around people like the woman on top of the van. He also liked the fact that he was the first owner of his house. The thought of hav-ing strangers’ feet exfoliate themselves on the grout in between the tiles of his shower floor, or dimpled thighs having once warmed his toilet seat made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn’t just his house that was new either; the road was still pitch black, the footpath was white and free of someone’s initials love someone else’s initials, and more impor-tantly the other houses were new too. In fact, when Garrett moved in to Pin Oak you could still see the string-line straight lines in the lawn where the turf had been rolled out. The kelpie gave up barking and started digging furiously, apparently it had zeroed in on whatever it was stalking. The woman on the roof of the van payed no attention to the actions of her dog, rather she replaced the noise of the dog barking by singing along to the radio. Garrett pursed his lips together tight making a cat’s

bum with his mouth. Forty odd years ago, kids at school would make fun of his red hair by calling him ‘Garrett the Carrot’ and his bottom lip would start to quiver. Then they’d laugh at him for being a cry-ba-by. To counteract the lip wobble Garrett had started to purse his lips together, as he was doing now, and it had become a permanent side effect to his temper rising. He got on his feet, unlatched the gate and stormed towards the van. The kelpie intercepted his approach and jumped up, front paws dragging a muddy new pattern down the front of his polo shirt. ‘Get down you stupid thing,’ Garrett said, alerting the character on the roof of the van to his presence. The woman let out a sharp whistle and the kelpie jumped up through the open door of the van and sat up in the driver’s seat. ‘Sorry about that,’ the woman said, propping her-self up on both elbows to address Garrett from her vantage point. ‘You shouldn’t let animals run around loose like that, children live in this street you know,’ Garrett let out in a huff. The woman jumped down off the van and pulled her fringe back behind her ear. The rest of the hair on her head was shaved. ‘Gorky loves kids, don’t you Gork?’ she said reach-ing into the van and ruffling the fur on the dog’s head. She held the same hand out toward Garrett. ‘Sam’s the name.’ Garrett hesitated at the thought of where else Sam’s hand had been. ‘Garrett,’ he said and briefly shook Sam’s hand. ‘So, what brings you here, Sam?’ Garrett asked, inspecting the dings in the side of the van. ‘I’m just waiting for my aunty, she was one of the

writ ten by JAMES TURVEY

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investors for this whole estate. She has the keys. In fact, here she comes now,’ Sam said nodding at the approaching car. Garrett looked to the top of the street and felt a flood of relief wash over him as he saw a black BMW coming towards them. The vehicle pulled into the driveway and a small lady about Garrett’s age, in her early fifties, got out. ‘Hey Sammy, what do you think?’ she said throw-ing her the keys. ‘Not too bad, Aunty Kim. This is Garrett, he lives next door - I think.’ Garrett held out his hand to greet the woman. ‘How nice of your niece to help you move in,’ he said. Kim laughed. ‘Oh no, I won’t be living here; I have a place in the city. No, this place is as good as hers. I’ve been helping her look for a studio to paint in and then I thought, well, if she pays the rates, she can keep it.” ‘Oh an artist, is she?” Garrett asked, talking about Sam, not to her. ‘Well, this is a pretty quiet street, not many parties or the like around here,’ he continued. ‘That’s exactly why I wanted to come out here, pret-ty hard to paint with parties going on,’ Sam called back from the front step of the house. Sam unlocked the front door while Kim made small talk with Garrett about the neighbourhood. Gorky jumped down from the van and ran to in-vestigate his new home, skidding as his claws lost friction on the tiled front veranda. ‘I feel like a giant in here, the ceilings are only about seven foot high,’ Sam called out from inside the house. ‘It’s pretty stark too, might have to add some colour.’ ‘Do whatever you like Sammy, just don’t go to sleep with the grill on and burn the place down,’ Kim called following her inside. ‘Nice to meet you Gary,’ she said over her shoulder. Garrett opened his mouth to correct her but it was too late: she had disappeared into the house. He de-cided to go back inside his house before he got roped into helping unpack the van. Vans, dogs and painters were not things that belonged in Pin Oak Close he thought, and locked the screen door behind him.

Sam spent the next few days setting up the garage as her studio. She kept the roller door up so that the morning sun would warm her when she came out to paint or sketch after breakfast. It also made her more approachable to the other residents of Pin Oak Close. Lyle and Jean, who lived next door, on the opposite side of Sam to Garrett, had been over and invited her to afternoon tea, and she had befriend-ed Ben, the inquisitive ten year old that lived at the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Garrett had been keeping a distance from Sam, but he had also been keeping his eyes firmly on eve-rything she did. He didn’t like that Lyle had mown the strip of grass separating the footpath from the road outside Sam’s house. In the year since they’d all moved in to Pin Oak, Lyle had said no more than a handful of words to Garrett. One afternoon after school, Ben was tic-tacking around the dead end on his skateboard, trying to get Sam’s attention, when Garrett appeared. ‘Go and ride that thing out the front of your own place, I’m trying to watch the news. You’ll break your neck if you’re not careful, go on!’ He shouted from the front door at the young boy who was confused as to what he was doing wrong. Ben picked his skate-board up and started to walk back towards his own house when Sam called out to him. ‘Hey Ben, want to earn some money?’ Ben dropped his skateboard in Sam’s front yard and went down the driveway into the garage. Leaning up against the wall were seven or eight Masonite boards with the pattern of a brick wall stencilled onto them. ‘Do you like art classes at school?’ Sam asked him as he entered the garage. ‘Everyone in my class says I’m the best at drawing, even Miss Lawler,’ he said, picking up the lace-like mesh of paint-covered paper cut-out. He figured that it was the stencil for the brickwork on the canvases. ‘Excellent, well you’re familiar with my trade then. Look, I’m going to need some help over the next few weeks, kind of like a studio assistant. I’ll pay you five bucks a week.’ ‘I already get ten a week pocket money off Dad,’ he said looking around. ‘How about you show me how to use those,’ he asked pointing to some paints up on the workbench. Ben and Sam came to an agreement. Ben would

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come down three afternoons per week and help Sam clean up, wash brushes and whatever else needed do-ing around the studio until everything was ready for the exhibition that she was having in the city in a month’s time. In exchange Sam would let Ben sit in as she worked, learning various techniques and he could also come down and use the garage-come-studio whenever he liked, provided he only used the materials that Sam set aside for him and said were okay to use. The next day, after school, Sam taught Ben how to use the jigsaw to cut out some rough figures she had drawn in pencil on some more Masonite. Then af-ter they swept up the sawdust, they each set to work on their own pieces; Sam filling in detail with pencil on the Masonite cut-outs and Ben mixing paint so he could start filling in a picture for his mum that he’d started at school for Mother’s Day. From time to time Sam would look over Ben’s shoulder and make suggestions. Pretty soon Ben was coming down every afternoon rather than just the three in their agree-ment. His youthful enthusiasm was the perfect fuel to keep Sam motivated. One autumn afternoon, when darkness seemed to be creeping closer and closer to the school bell, limit-ing his time down in the studio because his parents liked him home before nightfall, Ben went down to finish the painting he was working on for his mum. Sam wasn’t home, however, the garage door was open as usual, so he went in, turned the lights on and got to work. He dabbed away, until he felt that he had made something worthy of a present. He placed his masterpiece up on an easel so that Sam would see it when she got home. After sweeping the garage floor, he took the brushes outside and cleaned them thor-oughly in an old ice cream container, tipping the contents out onto the grass bordering Sam’s property with Garrett’s once the brushes were clean. Garrett, coming home from his afternoon walk, or as he liked to think to himself his ‘neighbourhood watch patrol’, noticed Ben up to something near his front yard and came over to inspect. ‘What’s this?’ he shouted at Ben who was about to turn the lights off over in the studio. ‘It’s just a little bit of turps and paint,’ Ben an-swered innocently. ‘I can hose it in if you like.’

‘Hose it in? Water’s not going to do any good now. It would have already seeped into the roots. The grass is as good as dead. You shouldn’t even be here, this isn’t your house!’ Garrett screamed. Bits of marsh-mallow like foam gathered in the corners of his lips. Ben took off up the street, passing Sam’s van com-ing in the opposite direction as he went. The tears in his eyes sparkled in the headlights. Sam pulled over and chased after him. ‘What’s wrong Ben, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ she said grabbing a hold of him. Ben explained what had happened, repeatedly say-ing he didn’t mean to. Sam assured him that it was okay. It was almost completely dark now and Ben’s dad was out on the footpath looking around for him to come home. ‘Look, there’s your dad. Don’t worry about Garrett, he hasn’t got anything better to do than be a grump. Come down after school tomorrow and we’ll fix the grass,’ Sam reassured him. When Ben arrived at Sam’s the next day, the work-bench had been cleared and on top were some old fashioned wooden clothes pegs, a plastic takeaway container filled with water, some green food colour-ing, a towel and a hair dryer. Gorky smelled Ben’s arrival and ran out to meet him in the studio. Sam soon joined them. ‘Do you believe in magic, Ben?’ Sam asked. ‘I grew out of that stuff years ago,’ Ben replied, roll-ing his eyes. ‘Grew out of it? I still believe in it and I’m going to prove it to you.’ Sam explained the process in which they’d fix the patch of dead grass. First they would mix the green food colouring in with the water in the container. Then they would soak the wooden pegs in the mix-ture until they were as green as Garrett’s lawn and dry them one by one with the hair dryer. Finally they’d go outside and make sure Garrett wasn’t watching and they’d plant the pegs so that they were sticking up out of the dead patch. Sam added that it was a full moon tonight and that would take care of everything else. After they’d finished planting the green wooden pegs in the patch of browning grass, Ben said that it looked silly and that Garrett was going to be even angrier when he saw pegs all over the lawn.


‘You leave Garrett to me,’ Sam reassured him, ‘Besides, these are magic pegs. I bought them off an old woman I painted a portrait of once.’ ‘Sam, I’m ten years old, almost eleven,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘Well, you’ll see tomorrow,’ Sam replied, playfully pushing Gorky over as she got up off the grass. That night Sam waited until dark and spread out a blue plastic tarp in the back of her van. She left Gorky behind – barks weren’t needed on this mis-sion – and drove off up the street, with a spade in the passenger seat, smiling as she passed Ben’s house. After a short drive the van pulled up outside a house not dissimilar to Sam’s own, in another hous-ing estate. This one slightly more fancy than Pin Oak Close, called Silver Ridge. The landscaping had been completed the day before and the owners were yet to move in. Sam took the spade from her van and looked around. Standing there with the spade she felt like a grave robber, except this graveyard had all the tombstones in place and the bodies hadn’t arrived yet. She quickly got to work cutting out a patch of freshly laid turf. Lifting it up in one piece like an oversized green felt tile she dumped it spade and all into the back of the van and made her get away. Now all she had to do was wait until Garrett was fast asleep so that she could dig up the dead, peg-implanted patch that bordered both their properties and replace it with the new turf.

Ben couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that the grass had grown back overnight just as Sam said it would. He had skipped the Saturday morning car-toons to come down and check on the grass. He also wanted to get his painting so he could wrap it, as the next day was Mother’s day. He lifted up the unlocked roller-door and Gorky jumped out at him wanting to play. ‘Not now Gork,’ Ben laughed patting the dog to subdue his eagerness. It was then that Ben noticed Sam’s artworks were all finished. The brick-work stencilled boards now had the masonite figures he had helped cut out with the jigsaw bolted to them so that they stood out an inch or so in relief from the boards, and the masonite figures themselves had been painted, so that each one was somebody from Pin Oak Close. There was one of Lyle and Jean, Steve

from the other side of Garrett’s house, Trevor from up the road, Garrett and one of Ben and his parents. Ben was tracing his fingers around the outline of his own face when Sam sneaked up behind him. ‘Be careful mate, that could still be wet,’ she said softly. Ben pulled his fingers away. ‘Did you see the grass? It grew back, just like you said!’ ‘I’m not surprised. Funny though, I was up all night finishing off the last of these paintings and I didn’t hear anything out there. I told you those pegs were magic.’ ‘There’s one missing you know,’ Ben said looking at the portraits of his neighbours. ‘I know. I’m not good at self-portraits. I was hoping you’d do one of me,’ Sam said, pointing to one last brick-stencilled board in the corner of the room. ‘I don’t want to see it until it’s finished though. So for the next week the studio is yours, I’m not gunna come out here. I need to look at these works with fresh eyes anyway.’ ‘Does that mean my work will be in your exhibi-tion?’ Ben asked excitedly. ‘As long as you don’t make me too ugly,’ she laughed. ‘Taking this one for a walk, see ya later on,’ she said, clipping the leash on Gorky. Ben watched them walk up the street, and quickly grabbed the Masonite to sketch the outline of their figures before they disappeared.

Garrett saw Sam and Gorky coming back from their walk as he reversed his car out of the garage to give it a wash. ‘I see you fixed the patch of grass Sam,’ he called to them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Garrett, it just grew back on its own like magic.’ ‘That’s funny, because this morning I was talking to a friend who just purchased a house around at the Silver Ridge estate and his lawn was vandalised last night. A patch of turf was stolen,’ Garrett said lower-ing his voice as he walked towards them. ‘What do you care Garrett? Your grass is fixed. I wouldn’t worry about the residents of Silver Ridge if I were you.’ With that Sam took Gorky in through the front door of the house rather than the garage so


that they wouldn’t disturb the young man making a portrait of an artist. During that week while Ben worked away in the studio, Garrett started to ask around if anybody had seen Sam fixing the lawn. It was eating him up in-side. Half the grass fell on Garrett’s property; there-fore if the grass was one and the same that had gone missing from Silver Ridge, he was guilty of receiving stolen goods. His lips pursed at the thought of it. When enquiring about the grass over at Lyle and Jean’s (Lyle had told him to grow up and mind his own business), Jean informed Garrett about Sam’s exhibition in the city, and that the residents of Pin Oak Close were all subjects of her work, including Garrett himself. Garret went home and stewed in fury. He was posi-tive if any artworks in his likeness had been made that they would be mocking in nature, ridiculing him and his place in the hierarchy of residents, which existed only in his head. At first Garrett planned to let Sam exhibit the painting of him and then sue her for the use of his likeness without permission. That is, until his sister, a legal secretary informed him that it’s a painting, not a photo, and it doesn’t say his name so there would be no point in taking legal action. Garrett knew what he had to do. The following afternoon Garrett waited until he saw Sam leave to take Gorky out for a walk. He un-latched the front door and walked briskly over to Sam’s van that was in its usual position: at the top of the driveway facing nose first at the open garage. The van was unlocked, as always, and Garrett reached in, put it in neutral and took the handbrake off. The van lurched forward and started to roll down the slight incline of the driveway towards the artworks that were set up in the garage. He then made the quick retreat back to his own property. Since the incident with the grass, Ben had started to wash the brushes in the laundry sink. He stared at the coloured drips of paint on the side of the jar of brushes as he walked back into the garage from inside the house. He didn’t notice the van rolling to-ward him until it was too late. Garrett heard the crash as he stepped up onto his front porch, but it wasn’t until he placed his hand on the door handle that he heard the scream. He ran

back to the scene of his crime. There, amongst the ruins of artwork was Ben, pinned at the shoulder to the wall of the garage by the van. Garrett stood star-ing at the boy. Lyle, having heard the crash, came bursting into the garage, knocking the stunned Garrett to the side. ‘Jean! Jean! Call an ambulance!’ he cried out, then turned on Garrett. ‘Don’t just stand there you fuckin’ mug, help me get the van off the boy!’ But Garrett just stood there. Sam came running down the driveway with Gorky. She chucked the keys to Lyle, who jumped in and reversed the van back. Ben crumpled to the floor and Sam caught him, cradling his body like a baby. ‘The paintings,’ Ben said quietly underneath his sobs. ‘Don’t worry about the paintings, mate,’ Sam whis-pered to him. ‘Try to stay still until the ambulance gets here,’ she said kissing him on the cheek. Garrett looked down at his feet. He was standing on what was left of his own portrait. It did him more justice than any photo ever taken of him. His hair was the colour of fire and his chin wasn’t as weak. The painting was how he’d always imagined himself: almost handsome. A jar of thinners that had broken in the crash start-ed to drip from the bench. The drips broke on the portrait of Garrett; trickling like tears down its face, taking the colour with them as they ran.


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Snakeman's Dance, Malade Zine No.1

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