The Great Farting Epidemic

Darryl O’Callaghan was an acknowledged master of the surreptitious fart, a fact which alone was sufficient to earn him virtual celebrity status among most of the rest of the boys in the class. However, his talents did not end there. A decade before the emergence of punk rock Darryl was impressing his classmates with his idiosyncratic penchant for adorning various parts of his body with safety pins, which he somehow managed to insert into his flesh without either flinching or drawing blood. Perhaps, I pondered, recalling an episode of Lost In Space (or was it Star Trek?), Darryl was not actually a boy at all, but an android……..

On those days when the wind was low, Darryl would compensate to some degree by generating loud, authentic-sounding fart noises via the time-honoured technique of placing a cupped hand under his naked armpit and swiftly and energetically bringing his arm down to his side. This was guaranteed to infuriate Sister Mary Vincent, although she seldom if ever managed to identify the miscreant.

Not that Darryl was always so fortunate. In academic terms, he was what might most charitably be termed an under-achiever, a state of affairs which nowadays would almost certainly lead to his being provided with remedial help of some sort. As far as the Sisters of Mercy were concerned, however, there was only one cure for stupidity, which to harass, brutalise and flay it into oblivion. As an incentive to our intellectual growth, Sister Mary Vincent would declare, “Now, children, it’s time for a spelling test. I expect you all to achieve a mark of at least six out of ten. Boys who get five out of ten or less will be smacked – one smack for five out of ten, two smacks for four out of ten, three smacks for three out of ten, and so forth. Any boy who gets nought out of ten” – and she would almost invariably stare meaningfully in Darryl’s direction at this point – “will have the pleasure of half a dozen first hand encounters with Sister Mary Paul’s cane during tomorrow morning’s assembly.” And she would lick her in truth almost invisible lips in anticipatory relish. “Girls,” she would then say, “will not, of course, be smacked, but will do an equivalent number of recess detentions instead.”

Darryl, who seldom managed more than one or two out of ten in any test, whether spelling, dictation or mental arithmetic, received his repeated thrashings with the same equanimity and easy-going grin as he bore his self-inflicted safety pin wounds.

Darryl’s trend-setting proclivities also extended to the realms of style and fashion. Presumably bored with using his legs as surrogate pin cushions, he was the first boy in the class to progress from wearing shorts to long trousers. Perhaps even more significantly, he was also the first boy in our class to take up smoking. I am not sure exactly when this was, but by the time he was in grade five he was a hardened chain smoker – when out of the classroom, of course. By this time, several other boys in the class had also started smoking, but Darryl’s head-start was such that, in terms of noticeable side-effects, he was already well into the home straight.

As a ten year old, Darryl had a voice reminiscent of Hollywood actor Lee Marvin, albeit with an Australian accent. Indeed, his pronouncements were typically so deep and gravely in tone that their content, which seemed to consist almost exclusively of words like ‘smokes’, ‘woofters’ and ‘frenchies’, usually uttered with a feeble, almost self-effacing guffaw, seemed irrelevant.

The mere mention of ‘frenchies’ was enough to make any self-respecting male in grade five degenerate into fits of helpless giggles, irrespective of whether they had any clear notion of the nature of the object in question. Most, I suspect, did not. In my own case, as someone who had no idea what an erection was, let alone how penetrative sex occurred, the word ‘frenchy’ was just inherently funny, without any reference to its alleged meaning. Similarly, words like ‘dildo’, ‘pufter’, ‘wanker’, ‘cunt’ and ‘prozzie’ had the undeniable effect of tickling you onomatopoeically in a way that disclosure of meaning would perhaps have undermined.

Almost uniquely, Darryl’s popularity among his peers did not depend, even in part, on any kind of athletic prowess. Indeed, he openly eschewed all forms of physical activity with the exceptions of lighting up, belching, creating farting noises in the way described above, and, of course, and most especially, farting itself. I can not recall ever seeing him so much as breaking into a trot, let alone running. When forced to participate in football matches his sole apparent intention appeared to be to get, and stay, as far away from the ball as possible (which if he could manage it meant the nearest toilet for a sly smoke).

Despite this wilful indolence, however, Darryl O’Callaghan was arguably, with the possible exception of football and cricket captain Gary Walker, the single most respected boy in the class.

That popularity and esteem reached its peak in grade five during what, in hindsight, came to be known as the Great Farting Epidemic. Inspired by Darryl’s example, virtually all the boys in the class endeavoured to develop prowess in the skill of letting one rip both odorifously and unobtrusively. When, as sometimes happened, particularly in the first half an hour or so after lunch, fifteen or twenty boys more or less simultaneously felt constrained to alleviate their colic in the tried and trusted fashion, the result was sublimely, indescribably asphyxiating.

Sister Mary Vincent, who beneath her carefully concocted veneer of assurance was actually quite a confused and disappointed soul, would wrinkle up her nose, and her facial expression would oscillate back and forth between bemusement and irritation, as she instinctively looked for someone to blame, and hurt. “Open some windows please children,” she would say, sniffing repeatedly as though endeavouring to convince herself that she was not imagining things. “We seem to have acquired a quite unpleasant odour from somewhere.”

If for nothing else, Darryl O’Callaghan deserves to be remembered with esteem bordering on veneration for his feat in forging a workable ongoing alliance between boys of very disparate personalities and ideals, not to mention digestive systems. This achievement, which was almost wholly incidental in that it derived, not from any overt act of will, or from strength of character – for, if Darryl had any character, it was virtually indiscernible – but from the inherent urge which all human beings possess, at least initially, to ride the crest of the prevailing wave, rather than be overwhelmed by it.

Darryl presumably died many years ago, most likely from lung cancer. However, imperturbable epicurean that he was, he will no doubt have done so in a happy frame of mind, with the flavour of his last consoling drag still massaging both his taste-buds and the underlying sense of angst that being human generates.

God Runs Out Of Fags

“Some of you,” said Father Abfalter from his pulpit, in an ominously relaxed and quiet voice, “put as little as fifty cents into the offertory plate each week.”

He paused, giving the silence time to cajole, then suddenly bellowed, “Fifty cents! Fifty – measly – cents! That’s not even enough to buy a packet of cigarettes!”

He paused again, as if daring somebody to answer back. “Is that the price you put on your faith?” he asked, almost sorrowfully. “Is that the value you place on God sending his only begotten son to suffer and die in your stead?”

Red-faced with the effort that indignation demands, his eyes danced across the serried ranks of the congregation, hoping either to engage or, it might have been, impale.

I, however, had been left far behind, having become transfixed by the mental image of God going into the local deli to ask for twenty Viscount, only to be told that he did not have sufficient money.

“I’m sorry, God, mate,” said the shopkeeper, “but fifty cents ain’t enough to buy a packet of smokes these days, yer know.”

“Damn and blast!” exclaimed God. “It’s those bloody faithless cheapskates at St Thomas More’s – they’re less committed than a bunch of eunuchs at an orgy!” He sighed morosely. “More than half of ‘em are pommies, yer know,” he added in a low, meaningful voice, tapping his nose, while the shopkeeper looked, but was not in the least, consoling. “Ah well,” chuntered God, foraging on the counter for a pack of juicy fruit and a Milky Bar. “I was thinking of trying to give up anyway, so I reckon I’ll take these instead.”

At that point I tuned back in to Father Abfalter, who now, it seemed, was talking about television. “And then there’s Star Trek,” he veritably spluttered, rolling his eyes as though in disbelief, or else in the sudden thrall of ecstasy. “Has Satan ever had a more compelling piece of propaganda? Yet some of you will sit for hours immersed in such rubbish and never even set aside a quarter of an hour to pray together as a family.”

Enmeshed in the ineffable truth of what he was declaring, or more likely simply short of breath by virtue of his habit of smoking forty a day, Father Abfalter was breathing hard, and glowering with what I imagined must be righteous indignation.

“Dad,” I said, a short while later, as we were walking home from Mass, “do priests ever sin?”

“Yes, of course they do,” my dad replied.

“Well, who hears their confessions then – bishops?”

“No, just other priests.”

I found this disclosure barely credible.

“What about nuns, then?”

“Do you mean, who hears nuns’ confessions?”

“Yes – I mean, no. I mean, do nuns commit sins?”

“Of course they do!”

“Even mortal sins?”

“Yes, sometimes. Even mortal sins.”

“Hmmpphh…..”

I imagined Sister Mary Paul in a bandit mask, threatening a moist-skinned, vacant-eyed bank manager with her red-tipped weapon of choice. “Just put all the money in this bag,” she commanded, smirking at his discomfiture. Then, when he had finished obliging, she began to smite him repeatedly with her cane, all the while pronouncing gleefully, “Oh, I know it hurts – it’s meant to!”

To me, at the age of ten, the world somehow seemed a vastly more complicated place than it had even a year earlier. Sin was omnipresent and inescapable. You could even sin while watching your favourite programme on television. Once, during confession, Father Chekovich had said to me, “God sees right into the depths of your soul, my son. He knows not only your thoughts, but your very motivations. It is not sufficient simply to do what is right – to obey your teachers for fear of getting punished, for example – you must do what is right out of a genuine, heartfelt love of God."

At the time, I had not really understood what Father Chekovich was driving at, but after mulling it over for a while, it finally made sense.

God demanded nothing more nor less than perfection, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that perfection was unattainable. My dad was always haranguing my mum for her “vile, despicable habit” of smoking – and yet Father Abfalter, God’s anointed priest, smoked, by his own admission, forty a day. Nuns wore wedding rings to show that they were married to God and yet my dad had told me they were capable of mortal sins – of murder, grand larceny, even deliberately missing Sunday Mass.

If perfection was truly unattainable, where did that leave God?

When, on the Sunday of Father Abfalter’s wide-ranging if bombastic sermon, the offertory was collected, I watched out of the corner of my eye as my dad, for the first time ever in my recollection, placed some paper money on the plate.

Overlooked Genius In An Era That (Perhaps) Never Was

For some reason, perhaps because 'post punk' is supposedly so much en vogue these days, I've been listening to a fair amount of late seventies and early eighties stuff recently - Gang of Four, Public Image Ltd., the Cure, and, most tellingly and frequently, Dolly Mixture. (Is there a more unfairly overlooked band?)

It's strange, because the late seventies and early eighties seem so long ago, much longer ago than the sixties. In fact, I sometimes wonder if they really happened, maybe in part because, in certain lights and under the influence of certain (entirely legal) substances, I'd genuinely like to believe they didn't.

Ah, but if they didn't, there'd be no Dolly Mixture, and life without Dolly Mixture would scarcely be worth believing in anyway.

On Casting Pearls Before Swine

Once words are committed to the page they become fixed and immutable in a way that no human life ever can be. Thus, anyone who tries to infer a coherent and viable moral framework from any written source is at best a fool, and at worst a budding megalomaniac.

1a and 1b

All my most memorable times have been imagined, but no less real for that ..........

Hiding In A Cave

At the spring, Albert splashes his face with water, while Kate relaxes on the sand. Above the leering rocks the sky is callously brooding. The flavour of the atmosphere has calcified into something resembling an after dinner staleness, although the appetite remains, and Kate salivates compulsively. Albert’s paleness seems to lose itself in omnipresent rock.

The overwhelming sky a dome.

And now she sees the ram, eliciting a murmur of surprised hope, a starting gun which urges Albert into motion. His scurrying feet produce a drum-roll of expectancy, his frantic hands unfurl. The air expended hard, then pulled in against the tightness of emaciated throat, retreating, while his fervent breath rejoices at the sight of sanguine, spurting blood.

An unfamiliar wave of brightness rises as, colliding resolutely with the rock, a merciless pre-eminence of brain becomes exposed. The dying embers float, as weeping might have fallen tears of ecstasy. Kate clasps at Albert’s weary hands, aghast yet gratified.

A nascent unity of purpose arises from their mutual devotion over roasted leg of mutton. Albert’s unctuous lips are close to Kate’s. The damaged succulence inspires their stinted stomachs to a fertile roundness, and they laugh, or wheeze, as though released.

The darkened sky extends a heinous veil, implying admonition, articulated in a clamorous wail of wind. Albert mutters indecipherably, while Kate’s gleaming face is unabashed, her hostile teeth despising. She eats with irredeemable haste, gulping, gnawing, tearing. Voracious fingers strip the undefended bones. She soothes herself with violence, a heavy indignation stirring in her abdomen, stern tugs of passion pulling at her throat.

The sky a purple enmity.

“We’ll have to find some shelter,” Albert says, against the now forbidding backdrop.

Kate is hopeful. “I think I saw some caves,” she says.

So that running through the sympathetic gorge their legs become supreme, inviolable. The exhilarated fervour of a rising coolness in the atmosphere infects them with abandonment as their gushing faces luxuriate in wind. It is good to stand beneath the unexpected sanctuary of caves, to laugh at one another’s suddenly brightened faces as the sky ignites and belches forth a warning. Then clambering madly up the rock face, seeking refuge.

At the same time as Albert’s eyes are suddenly invaded by remembrance, his outward presence settles back. A warm, alluring curl of sensuality enfolds his spine.

“Where are they, sarge?” The hoarse, constricted tones of apprehension.

“For Pete’s sake, McKinley, down it, man! These trees have ears.”

The turbulence of water overwhelms their vision. Albert assuages the sergeant’s anger with a reconciling gesture, but the private is nonetheless awash with remorse.

Motioning briefly with his hand, Albert leads the others on. They confound the ceaseless rain with streamlined expertise, proceeding through the weighted undergrowth on liberated limbs, and finally emerging, sodden, at their hoped for refuge in the forest’s sensuous heart. Their calibrated panting on arrival soothes their saturation.

“How’s the time, Bates?”

“Near enough, sir. Could be any moment now.”

“Get ready, men.”

They wait, perhaps not quite believing. Other than the delirious howling of a bloated mountain stream, no sounds are audible except the crashing of the lunatic, incessant rain on leaves and bark. The sweat which swathes and cools the men’s flesh evokes a spurious consolation, which their gaping mouths, absurd with sweat, appear to contravene.

All at once the frenzied interior of Albert’s mind is rendered manifest in raging, desperate movement, and a brilliant flash of unexpected light reveals in sudden, startling clarity the tangible existence of a foe. While his comrades’ frantic bodies squirm, Albert finds himself consigned to a fit of unrequited torment on the bastard earth.

“ – is time to go. Perhaps we’ll never make it, but we surely have to try.”

His perfect eye investigates. There are occasions when alternatives reinforce.

A sudden, piercing sense of loneliness invades him like a stab wound, compelling him to flinch. His strained, contorted face erupts.

“Are we, then, or aren’t we?”

The woman’s unenlightened cheeks are dour, and Albert, seeing that internal complication may be unavoidable, is induced to vomit on the jungle floor. He edges closer to the brink. “I’m ready if you are.”

For, despite being fixed in place by vicious nails, his outstretched arms have comprehended freedom.

“We’ll go tomorrow, then,” says Kate.

The thunderous cacophony of rain resounding in endorsement.

“I wish you’d told me of this place before,” says Albert, smiling feebly in an effort to disguise his petulance.

“It didn’t seem important earlier.” She dares him to demur.

But Albert merely grunts, a response which Kate is content to interpret as acceptance. “The gorge is filling up,” she remarks. “It’s virtually a river.”

“We might well have to stay here longer then,” says Albert, presuming to hope, but Kate, who has returned to the cave-way entrance, fails to hear.

So that Josephine is breathing in his furtive eyes. The sudden warmth is overwhelming. “I want you, Albert - take me further.”

Amidst the stifling smell of after dinner staleness. Too confusing. Causing him to suck his knuckles.

“Are you all right, my darling?”

“It’s nothing.”

As his rib-cage writhes in unexpected pain. I can not breathe, he thinks. I must escape.

But Josephine is quite inexorable. “I need you, Albert.” Affording him a sudden glimpse of purgatory, as he waits to be engulfed by surging hills of flame. There is hoped for screaming in his cramped, inoperative mouth.

“What keeps happening?” asks Kate, her moist hand firm against his palpitating brow. Albert gasps, though whether from relief or pain even he is not quite able to decide. “We need each other, Kate,” he hears himself declare. The words are like a loose page re-inserted in a book; the glue may take some time to set, but ultimately the book will be restored, if not as good as new, at least sufficiently securely for it to be read from again.

Recalling Burmese brightnesses in steaming jungle depths. The endlessness of two and three times tables, suddenly, and inexplicably, grown comprehensible. I get you now, he irreverently proclaims – to Sister Mary Paul’s amazed disgruntlement.

Enlightenment, though, is blotting paper to the ink of pain; his anguished tears are actually alive with hope, so that Kate becomes dismayed. This new, unwanted complication is disquieting.

“Stop it, Albert, please! We must be serious.” Her face grown quite immense with fear.

I can not bear this, Albert thinks, acutely aware of the sweat-saturated sand upon his back and buttocks, as the rain relentlessly persists.

“Albert, get a grip on yourself!”

And her words are like a dancing swarm of bees, to which Albert’s flesh feels starkly vulnerable. He tries to reassure himself with careful hands, but in the face of such overwhelming odds the gesture is futile. “I can’t stand it!” he sobs, conscious only of an omnipresent buzzing.

But then returns. “I’m – sorry,” he concedes, releasing himself. Kate’s eyes relax, if only a trifle. She winces, though, and says, “There’s no reason to feel sorry, Albert, it’s entirely understandable. This whole situation’s so…….unreal.”

The final, stabbing word inflicts a gash in the spurious veneer of self-assurance that Albert has so meticulously concocted. He hugs his knees to his chest, as though to interpose a barrier between himself and some truth he has found to be distasteful. “What is reality?” he resents himself for asking.

Kate replies: “It’s what we find ourselves confronted by.” And the still air endorses. “It’s what the universe proclaims or asserts.”

Persuading Albert to his feet. “I can’t accept that, Kate,” he says. “Reality is sometimes surreptitious as a worm.”

But “You don’t have to be consciously aware of something to be confronted by it,” Kate insists. “Reality is tantamount to personhood. No matter what, you have to make some manner of response – it forces you.”

As Albert stares across the desert, desperate for conviction.

“Reality,” she postulates, in careful, measured syllables, “is not to be avoided.”

But Albert’s suddenly animated limbs are argumentative. He plunges ostentatiously to the floor, unleashing clouds of whiteness all around, and inducing Kate to splutter, wanly: “I hope you understand me, Albert.”

The conversation wavers. They have either flirted with a breakthrough, or are more enmeshed than ever in disharmony.

As Billy Sutton frantically screams, “Gerroff! Gerroff me! Nasty brutes!” – apparently believing himself assailed by ants, which might as well be Albert’s prying fingers.

I can not stop, thinks Albert, as the beauty of his partner’s suffering flesh excites aroused anticipation in his own.

“Alby, Alby, help!”

His loins ablaze with mirth, as he realises that the frenzied waving of his victim-lover’s ant-infested arms is his own path to freedom. Perhaps, in spite of everything he believes himself to have learned, escape is actually conceivable. There, inside the cave, a nebulous trickle of light glimmers palely on the inner wall, as Albert whispers softly to himself. Could it be that their most enlightened course of action would entail an abnegation of the obvious? He laughs at what is really quite a serious joke. But Kate, whose posture has grown ungainly, retains a prima donna’s right to silence. Whatever is involved in such considerations finally cedes them rest.

2b

Despite the multifarious disappointments that the years have wrought, Albert Langley’s weekly visits to the Royal Botanical Gardens occasion, if not quite hope, at least a transitory illusion of solace. It is as though his conviction is a ghost limb, subject to all the apparent pangs and irritations of the real thing, and just as persuasively palpable, but ultimately unable to withstand the weight of his disillusion. Fleeting recourse to distraction is preferable to none at all, however, and this, presumably, is why Albert chooses to persist.

Shrunken, both in flesh and soul, with teeth and ears too prominent, he is careful to avoid all visible reminders of these defects as he moves, or is pulled, towards his goal, which in a physical sense at least has always been the same. Indeed, he has undertaken these same trips almost every Wednesday for the past half century, and if they seldom leave him feeling consummated, or even enlivened, they are nevertheless essential to his raison d’être. They represent, it might be said, a kind of parody of his life, and as such can neither be avoided nor, entirely, embraced. The person who through force of circumstance has emerged as Albert Langley is enslaved to these walks, embedded in them like a fossil. There is and can be no escape, except perhaps within the pages of a book.

The sky is green with weight, a dark, unwieldy green, which brooks no argument, and seems to imply asphyxiation, in spite of which the air, though motionless, is palpable.

The deepest pools are stagnant ones, thinks Albert, and is almost overwhelmed - though fleetingly - by lust.

He staggers on (though ostensibly striding). The Gardens, opened early in the twentieth century, have ended up supplanting elegance with a kind of primal virginity, a formless, haphazard, wild sort of air, to which Albert feels himself inexorably drawn. They represent, in part through symbol, but chiefly through actual, tangible reminiscences, an exposition of the feminine - or, more properly, of that which Albert Langley has discovered, and believes he understands, of his own intrinsic femininity.

They are as much an affliction as belief, and just as impossible to ignore.

3a

It is one of those bright sunny summer's days when everything is exposed: all the mesmerizing hope and frantic yearning, all the beauty, pain and ugliness. Shimmering facades concealing maggots.

Mostly out of guilt I venture out, confronted by the flagrant sun and my own, suddenly incontrovertible decrepitude, imprisoned in my bloated, fetid, seemingly omnipresent flesh.

A man with a moustache walks by, bewildering me. A young mother with angelic arms, and a tattoo that metamorphoses into a belt buckle, presses against her destiny.

I cross the road, anxious to at least endeavour to escape the inevitable despair, the feelings of regret that sometimes seem to represent my whole existence.

Skin, I realise, is just a metaphor for the importunate inevitability of the grave, which I sometimes think might not be quite the consolation I imagine, as I meander, not quite aimlessly, through Newport Cemetery, amused by all the meaningless headstones. 'Here lies Albert Fraser Langley, born 1919, died 1983, and Rose Josephine Langley, wife of the above, born 1923, died 1990 - Reunited in the arms of the Saviour.'

Millions of years of evolution, and still we lack the courage to confront things as they are.

I go back home. Too much exposure can disable. The blazing, irridescent sun, though not quite forgotten, can briefly be ignored, and I can don my loose fitting trousers again as though my flesh, and insight, have once more shrunk to manageable dimensions.

3b

Rain, thin and web-like, adding to the oppressive nature of the day, has already started with importunate conviction by the time Albert alights from his bus by the Garden gates. The atmosphere is cloying, and Albert, frail and semi-porous, wobbling on incompetent feet, is virtually transfixed (though standing resolutely like a whore). The weather, coupled with the firm and steady greenness of the trees, elicits memories of Burma; of distant, quasi mystical, mythical Japs, buried in tangled undergrowth; of burned flesh and sallow flesh; of damp cigarettes, and dirty, sunburnt faces.

Of moonlit conferences, and sunlit conferences, in dingy, thatched huts.

So that there, thinly and inexpertly disguised as a bandstand, is HQ, venue of so many seismic interludes. Known as the palm-house, it camouflages intensity with soporific calm; no bands have played for decades, no sounds of screeching primates pierced the velvet night for even longer. All is squalid now, dilapidated.

As distant thunder murmurs - or perhaps the sound of gunfire, or of tiger. A languid finger of remembrance tries enticing his desire; there is and can be no escape.

A non-com of unfamiliar face goes by, saluting feebly. Here, where life is lived on tenterhooks, nothing can be guaranteed; nothing is to be regarded as inevitable except the ultimacy of death. But even death itself has a habit of proving elusive until it's least expected, least desired. Like love, he laughs. And wilts in omnipresent green.

My perfect wife and son, he muses. So far away from here. Unreal. Unfelt. Imponderable shadows. Mere vestiges of memory who rise to flail me in my weakness.

An eerie, frigid vision haunts him. His never perfect wife and son lie twitching on the blood-soaked floor, eyes breathless and exuberant, naked flesh marred beyond human semblance, bruised like fruit, and twisted like hair braids.

No, says Albert to himself (a hiss below the range of human hearing). No, I will not allow it, not allow it, not allow it. Repeated like a faulty gramophone record, several times. The last is heard, and people stare, heralding the harsh demise of Burma's steaming undergrowth, of Josephine's and Malcolm's bleeding torpor.

He walks toward the duck pond, his cloistered refuge, where soft-limbed post-industrialists console themselves by means of spuriously rustic forms of meditation. His heart beats faster now, for here it was that in a reverie of long ago, so dim as to defy recollection, so clear as to supersede reality, he first met Josephine, his wife, on a blustery November morning. Here, too - though later - he had kissed her, wooed her, and finally - in an obscure flurry of something akin to passion - engaged her to be his own forever.

Or so he later feared.

4b

Her eyes are wide and unassuming. She is obviously aware of life in all its colours, if not (perhaps) in all its shades. Her voice resembles lark song. She makes him wince with joy and anguish all at once. He wants her, wants to touch her, to have her, to own her; he wants to take her to himself but cannot (for fear of hell) get close enough to do any of this. He cannot (because of laws - of nature and the state) enclose her as he would, enfold her as he would with he himself.

He must, in conscience as much as condescension, refrain from attempting what the universe, in all its wise hypocrisy, endeavours to persuade him is acceptable.

She smiles at him, a hollow, enigmatic Mona Lisa of a smile: a barricade. He tries at once for more, but coyly, knowing in his heart that she will ever remain, however resolutely fucked, inviolable.

Impregnable as wind, he thinks.

Untouched.

Pretend you do not know this, he remembers. Pretend to be enmeshed.

"I was sort of thinking," he says, through terse lips, "I might try the Navy. I've always had a mind to travel, and wouldn't mind the discipline and such. At least" - his mouth meets hers - a moment of ecstasy, of unbridled emotion - his mind an oscillating wireless dial - "at least" - a second try, more forceful than before, but with a voice that trembles - "I don't - think - I would," he almost-not-quite gasps.

Her response, as always, violent, irreligious, harsh; pouring over him with lips, but nothing else. She keeps her body to herself, making him strain to (almost) reach her. Silent as a worm. Infuriating.

"Aren't…..you…..going to say something?" Wheezed out like a geriatric, her breath and his, intermingled, as their hearts should be (he thinks, with optimistic hand stretched out to paw her breast - pushed back, with icy firmness, clam-like). No response.

"In that case" - a cough resisted; heart rattling like a snoring woman - "will you marry me?" He almost laughs, inside, where reality lies submerged and deadly like a stonefish. ("Will you marry me?" it seems a thousand voices mock. He quivers under siege.)

"Yes, Albert," replies Imagination, callous in contempt. But - the wind deflects against his face. Revival.

"Say that again." An emaciated whimper.

"Yes, Albert."

Her lips move (apart from his). Her eyes light up (too briefly).

And time is all at once submerged beneath the welter of the waves of craving which assail him.

"Are you - ?" he begins, but swallows like a guppy. Far too irreverent, he ponders. Far too irrelevant.

Her eyes his executioners.

5b

During his walks his grief, his bitterness, indeed almost all aspects of his malaise became submerged beneath a welter of mundane, but nonetheless distracting, stimuli. Trite as it seemed, there was a sense in which escape of a metaphysical kind could be linked to, might almost be said to derive from, a fleeting awareness of physical freedom. Impending pain was rendered briefly unbelievable, or at any rate unlikely.

All blinkered men-beasts sometimes feel themselves consoled by such delusions, for to think of self is to be capable of, indeed prefigured for, deceit.

6b

In an effort to advertise hmself as an earnest and wholehearted student of the world, Albert Langley decided to grow a beard, but instead of making him seem endearingly inquisitive, he came across as dispassionately inquisitorial. Behind his eyes a vibrant vista of extraordinary possibilities continuously swirled and coalesced, only to fade completely before he was truly aware of their nature.

The Allen Brothers

It was while we were at Smithfield that I first met the Allen brothers, Michael and Richard, who hailed originally from Nottingham. Michael – tall, and solidly constructed, with a grimly sardonic smile almost permanently contorting his features - was eight, but seemed much older. He had already resolved, to his own satisfaction, most of the major philosophical and practical quandaries of life, and tended to be openly impatient, and at times scornful, of anyone with differing views. He found my self-proclaimed belief in God particularly preposterous, and spent much time endeavouring, without success, to disabuse me of it.

The younger brother, Richard, was not quite six, and he and I hit it off immediately. We shared the same vigorously questing imagination and exploratory zeal, and many a happy hour was spent pursuing and inflicting temporary captivity – or worse – on small, comparatively defenceless invertebrates, racing one another across the nearby scrubland or sheep paddocks, or acting out scenes from our favourite cartoons. Much smaller and wirier than his brother, Richard evinced a lithe fluidity of movement that put one in mind of a cat, but in almost every other respect – playful ebullience, sociability, desire to be liked – he was more akin to a puppy dog. Carrying both comparisons further, he was adept at anything requiring guile or subterfuge, but was also prone, at times, to over-estimating his own ability, and to thereby pushing himself beyond his limits. This particular weakness was something Michael was all too often able to exploit in ways which reinforced the brothers’ already glaringly lop-sided pecking order.

The Allens, it emerged, were going to be our near neighbours in Elizabeth West, and Richard would go on to be my longest and, although it was not a term I would have used at the time, closest Australian friend. As time went on, our interests and passions evolved and developed in almost perfect synch, sometimes in ways that made almost everybody else seem like aliens. In seven years, I cannot recall a single harsh world being exchanged between us. It was in all respects a friendship made – and ultimately obliterated – in heaven.

As for Michael, however, he would go on to become something quite other than a friend.

It Just Isn't Cricket

I've decided that as soon as I can I'm going to move away from Lincoln as the place has really gone to the dogs (and you can interpret the word "dogs" in any way you choose, I'm really not fussed). I no longer visit the centre of the city at all if I can help it, but yesterday I simply had to go there because I needed some new cricket flannels, my old ones having acquired a tear in the derriere at which folk are wont to stare. It was my first trip into Lincoln for virtually a year. I came home covered in pigeon shit (sorry, did I mention that Lincoln city centre has more pigeons than there are child molesters in the Catholic Church?) but without any cricket flannels as Lincoln no longer boasts a single sporting goods outlets. I did at least manage to keep hold of most of my money, despite being repeatedly molested by beggars, hawkers and collectors for multifarious "charities", some of whom were downright hostile (particularly the charity workers). As regards the cricket clothing, I guess I'll have to try online and hope that my resultant purchases fit. At least I shouldn't get crapped on. Hopefully.

What I Want ...........

I’ve asked myself this a lot lately. To feel awake occasionally would be nice, but ultimately what it boils down to is one of two  things: death or happiness - and I’m too cowardly to go for the former, while as for the latter, I don’t believe it’s achievable.

Good Friday Blues

As a youngster I was overly impressionable, sentimental and sensitive. I can remember feeling depressed on principle on Good Friday, and enduring nightmares about what it must have felt like to have been crucified. I think I sometimes cried, albeit surreptitiously, whilst performing my duties as an altar boy during Good Friday afternoon services, particularly when Father Abfalter lay prostrate before the altar at a key point during proceedings.  Nowadays, as a committed atheist, it all seems somehow other-worldly, as though it happened to somebody else - which of course, in a sense, it did.

Unrequited Not-Quite-Love

All I ever really had was a single, winsome smile. The rest was fabrication, initially quite mundane and harmless, but ultimately the most elaborately convincing thing in my universe: a cuddly toy that gradually developed a mind and will of its own, together with teeth and claws which regularly drew blood.

The Hub Of The Wheel

It may have been coincidence, it may have been divine or else demonic will, it may have been a catalyst, it may have been my imagination.  I do not know.  Whatever the reason, the arrival at school of the three Hirsch children coincided with a marked change in my outlook on life.  No longer were my perceptive faculties exclusively located above my neck.  My awareness of the things around me was now transmitted, at least as often, and sometimes indeed with exaggerated vividness and intensity, through my groin.

The proximity of Marlene Hirsch, for instance, had such a pronounced, indeed seismic, effect upon my equilibrium that I was sometimes hard-pressed to remain standing.

The Hirsches arrived in Elizabeth from Millicent, a small town in the south-eastern corner of South Australia, via Germany.  They all had scrupulously sculpted, exquisitely balanced features, alabaster skin, fair hair, and merry, lithesome eyes that seemed to promise either romance or adventure – or, in Marlene’s case, perhaps both.

Carl, the oldest of the Hirsches, was as tall as an adult, and extremely strongly built – a bit like Martin Starcevich, without the personality disorder.  I only ever saw Carl each morning and afternoon on the school bus because he was based, along with the other grade sevens, at the newly built extension to the school in Elizabeth Park, known as St Mary’s.

A year younger than Carl, Soren also commenced his time at the school at St Mary’s, and so my initial contact with him was limited.  However, when I too transferred to St Mary’s the following year, Soren and I became the firmest, if in some respects least likely, of friends. Shorter than his brother, but still quite tall for his age, Soren was exceptionally lean and wiry and, while in grade seven, was the focus of considerable adulation for being, by some measure, the fastest sprinter in the school.  He was also an extremely lively and amusing, if occasionally exasperating, companion.

Marlene Hirsch, alas, was never my companion, amusing, exasperating, or otherwise.  What she was, though, was the closest thing to feminine perfection I had ever seen.  Not that others would necessarily have agreed with me, but then perception of genuine beauty was, I somehow suspected, akin to divinely imbued, prophetic insight, and as such was accessible only to a rare few.

The closest thing to a direct personal encounter I ever experienced with Marlene came one Friday evening after football training when I was in grade six.  A group of about a dozen of us decided, for a reason or reasons I shall probably never now recall, to walk home together, dropping people off as we went, and essentially circumnavigating the entire north, north-west and west of the city in the process.  That, at any rate, was our declared intention.

Most members of the group were in grades five and six, but there were also a couple of grade sevens, Soren Hirsch and Francesco Viera, to whose incontrovertibly superior wisdom the rest of us, quite naturally, deferred.

In some respects, Soren and Francesco might almost have been a single entity, with Soren very much the controlling influence (though scarcely what could be called the brains of the operation).  Where Soren went, Francesco followed.  Whatever Soren said, Francesco agreed with, and would often repeat, like a faulty echo, merely changing one or two of the words, or their order, in a somewhat feeble gesture of autonomy.  On the rare occasions that Francesco felt sufficiently audacious or inspired to venture an original utterance of his own he would be careful to construct it in such a way as to permit effortlessly speedy modification should Soren’s reaction – which Francesco would continually, solicitously monitor – suggest in any way that this might be advisable.

One upshot of this was that Soren had comparatively little experience of, and equally little tolerance for, dissension.  Indeed, so used was he to getting his own way that, on the rare occasions that others elected not to defer to him, his reaction could be waywardly, even violently irrational.  You sometimes got the impression that Soren was much less interested in truth than he was in eliciting approbation.  If you disagreed with him, he took it as a personal affront, and his sense of personal betrayal was such that not even undeniable, categorical proof that he was wrong would sway him.
This, at least, is just about the only feasible explanation I can proffer for the bizarre sequence of events that Soren proceeded to orchestrate that Friday night.  “I know a quick way home,” he told us, as we exited St Thomas More’s by the main gate.  With that, he turned left, and headed due east, towards the Adelaide Hills – precisely the opposite direction from that in which most of our homes lay.

“Yes,” said Francesco, eager, as ever, to convey the impression that this was a plan to which he had contributed, “this is a really good short cut.”

Whether intrigued, amused, or simply acquiescent, we all dutifully followed.  Perhaps, we may have thought, among the unimaginable complexities to which life under Mother Christopher’s grade seven tutelage exposed you, was a technique for contravening certain supposedly inviolable physical laws.

Superficially alluring though this thought was, I was sufficiently mature at eleven to realise that truth, however multi-layered, did not include compartments labelled ‘paranormal’ or ‘sublime’.  More likely, I imagined, Soren simply had some kind of ruse, or practical joke, in mind.

And so we trundled on, ignoring the fact that the hitherto distant hills, which lay in the opposite direction from home, were gradually getting closer.  However, when the road along which we were walking began discernibly to slope upwards, Barry Ryan’s trust for one was ruptured.  “This ain’t the way home,” he announced, his tone of voice perhaps a touch less conciliatory than he intended.
Soren said, “It’s just a different way, Bazza,” which Francesco reinforced with “Yeah, Bazza, it’s a short cut.”

But Barry Ryan had come to a stop, his normally quite defiant chin having now become positively rebellious.  “Home’s back that way,” he insisted, pointing behind him, and endeavouring to elicit, with a plaintive stare, the support of others in the group.  “Well, ain’t it?”

No one answered, although Gary Fowler, who looked across a little uncertainly at his older brother, Graham, seemed on the verge of it.

Technically, of course, Bazza undoubtedly had a point, and I am sure that each and every one of us knew it.  However, at some other level we were aware that if we were to allow ourselves to be guided and constrained by technicalities we would end up living pretty charmless, denuded lives.  And so, as though inextricably enmeshed in a collective cobweb of anticipation, we avoided Bazza’s eyes, and guilelessly succumbed to the only kind of life experience that can, when all is said and done, redeem.

“See, Bazza, nothing to worry about,” said Soren, with slightly excessive fervour.

“No worries, Bazza,” added Francesco, with a grim smirk that may have been his version of a reassuring smile.

When we finally reached the boundaries of civilisation Soren cheerily informed us, without missing a beat, that now it was time to turn left.

So we did.

“Who’s gunner win tomorrow, Bazza?” I asked, referring to the big interstate football match in Adelaide that several of us were planning to attend.  In truth, I was not remotely interested in Bazza’s answer, but I imagined that by diverting his attention from the objective reality of our plight I might, in some way, reinforce the solidarity of the group.

“The Vics, of course,” he replied.  “Without Big Bill we’ll get crucified in the rucks.  Their rovers are better too.  And Royce Hart’ll probably kick seven or eight on Elleway.”  He stuck his chin out, as he almost always did, to reinforce, or else to challenge.

This last was too much, however.  “No way!” I demurred, caught up in the topic despite myself.  “Ron’ll be ‘way too tough for that weedy Tasmanian poofter!”  I was consciously eschewing eloquence in order to forge a more elemental connection, sensing perhaps that Bazza needed to find an alternative outlet for his simmering rage.

“Nah,” he retorted.  “Elleway only looks good for Port cos all the full forwards in the league are useless.”

“Eric Freeman’s a good full forward.”

“Yeah, but he plays for Port, and ‘sides, you’re just biased.”

“What about Sashy then?”

Bazza nearly choked on phlegm.  “That great lump of lard!”

But we had reached another pivotal point in our pilgrimage, as Soren breezily announced, “Left here, fellas.”

“Now you’ll see,” said Francesco, who may even have believed it.  However, if he had hoped that his words might provoke an inquisitive craning of necks, he was to be disappointed.

At long last, however, we appeared to be walking downhill.

Bazza and I continued to talk about the footy, with the Fowler brothers, who were also intending to go to the match, occasionally joining in as well.

The sun had set by the time we reached Elizabeth North Shopping Centre, which lies a mere half a kilometre or so from St Thomas More’s.  However, by resorting to Soren’s short-cut it had taken us somewhere in excess of an hour and a half to get there.

“This is me,” said Bazza, who lived just a couple of streets away from the shopping complex.  He was terse-lipped and pale, and studiously avoided eye contact with everyone as he hurriedly effected what no doubt felt like an escape.

Stephen Owen, John Conolly and a couple of others were quick to follow, although their homes lay at least a couple of kilometres away to the south.  I engaged in what I hoped was a surreptitious but meaningful exchange of glances with The Politician and the Fowler brothers, my nearest neighbours in Elizabeth West, but any precipitate action on our part was speedily circumvented by Soren, who said, “Not far to go now, fellas.  This way.”

“Nearly home,” embellished Francesco, whose complete and unequivocal faith in Soren was clearly such as to be independent of experience or circumstance.

And so our pilgrimage resumed, adhering, so far as I could tell, to no predetermined plan or structure, but nevertheless being embraced by Soren – and, to some extent by Francesco – as a kind of evocation of divine will.

With me, the Fowler brothers, and The Politician as the soon-to-be-incinerated sacrificial offerings.

We reached the railway crossing at Broadmeadows, which was about a kilometre away from where Soren and Francesco lived in Elizabeth Field.  The rest of us, though, still had four or five kilometres to go.

With uncharacteristic boldness Francesco, who perhaps gleaned a certain inspiration from having at last reached familiar territory, informed us that we were almost home.

“You might be,” returned The Politician testily.  “We’re still as far away from home as ever.”

But Soren, who presumably considered words superfluous in the face of such indefatigable logic, merely laughed, and Francesco, after evincing a momentary suggestion of discomfiture, joined in.
I, by this time, had immersed myself completely in what I had increasingly begun to perceive, if still somewhat imprecisely, as a kind of rite of passage.  I may even have been grinning.
Soren’s house proved to be almost identical to mine, at least superficially: west facing, red bricked, the trademark tin roof, and a front porch and veranda tacked on to the south wall like a wholly incongruous last minute afterthought.

As befitted tradition, we trooped around to the back of the house, whereupon Soren clambered onto the porch and rapped sharply on the fly door to attract attention.  Moments later his mother appeared, looking a trifle quizzical, but boasting a kindly, winsome smile that put me in mind, paradoxically, of Sister Damien.

My eyes did not linger long on Mrs. Hirsch, however, for peering around from behind her, still dressed in her school uniform, was Marlene, who was gazing unmistakably, or so I convinced myself, in my direction.

As Soren, somewhat ramblingly, and with minimal attention to the facts, attempted to provide his mother with an explanation of his lateness, I allowed myself to stand transfixed, slowly becoming enmeshed in a connection that I was scarcely able to believe was being forged.  A second or two spent staring into Marlene’s eyes was tantamount to a sliver of eternity, and seemed to yield a wordless explanation of all that was necessary.  Perhaps I realised even then that this is as close as we would ever come to being lovers in any conventional, fleshly sense, but the moment contained enough of an intimation of transcendence to sustain me for a life time.

To touch was not to love, I saw.  To touch was an act of desperation, a refusal to accept, and she and I would never, ever touch.

Mrs. Hirsch was addressing me now, her tone of voice at once implying solicitude, and complete obliviousness as to what, in every sense, had just transpired.  Feeling everything with almost too great an intensity to bear, I reassured her blithely, drawing flashes of approval from my beloved, so that ever after, without the sullying need for any kind of intercourse, our destinies, indeed our very cores, would be wholly, haplessly, inexorably intertwined.

For I was Johann Ulrich Voss, and she was Laura Trevelyan.  I was John Evelyn, confused, duplicitous, misled, alongside the vestal incorruptibility of his Margaret Godolphin.  We would die apart, unmourned and possibly unremembered by one another, but somehow still entrenched in that moment.

The rain had started by then, of course (“heavy ground – suit the Vics”), but I even succeeded in turning that to my advantage, with a glib parting shot that was the equivalent of a vow of eternal fidelity.  And so, embedded more deeply than ever in the reality that fate had seemingly proffered, I wandered home, reluctant even to speak, aware that henceforth only through silence and solitude would the true shape and contours of our marriage be affirmed.

By happy chance, I went to the following day’s football match alone, as all of my friends had been ‘grounded’ (The Politician for a full month!) for their collusion in Soren’s and Francesco’s Grand Tour.  Freed from distractions, I was able to concentrate exclusively on the on-field action, and as it went on the match developed, for me, into a kind of religious rite. The fact that I escaped the same censure as my fellow miscreants is almost impossible to credit unless you believe that our destinies are shaped either by fate, or by some divine or demonic will.

Which only goes to prove that the truth is not always as obvious or logically inferable as we would like to imagine.

Izzie's First Swim

Izzie had her first swim this afternoon. The park where I took her for a walk has a small pond containing goldfish. Put one curious five month old poodle puppy on the bank of said pond within paw's reach of an especially large and juicy-looking goldfish and what do you get? One very wet, cold (air temp about 2 deg C) and shocked bundle of fur who probably won't be going swimming again anytime soon. When I got her home I dried her off, gave her a bowl of warm soya milk, wrapped her in a blanket and stuck her inside my fleece against my fat gut where she took fully 20 mins to stop shivering. By then she was also asleep, and soft dork that I am I let her remain in that condition, still huddled up against me in her blanket, for the ensuing two hours. At least I had my IPod handy to stifle the boredom. When she woke up she acted as if nothing untoward had happened and was up to her usual kinds of mischief within minutes.

The Last Day

There would, I knew, be times when I would lust after death with a fervour that was almost irresistible, but death would continue to elude me, preferring to hold back until my circumstances were of a sort likely to make its intervention optimally unpleasant.

Death is no-one's friend; it hates to be welcomed with open arms, and never responds to invitations.

Only when life had lulled me into acquiescence, optimism and equanimity would death arrive, and, without knocking, force its way into the supposed sanctuary of my innermost thoughts, where it would stand, twice as large as life, grinning avariciously, barring my only escape route.

This I knew, with irrevocable certainty.

But there would also be times when I would forget, or pretend it was not so, or convince myself that death was just a myth, like God, or the equality of the sexes, or Father Christmas.

Consequently, when the Last Day in which I had endeavoured so ardently and for so long not to believe finally arrived, I failed at first to perceive it for what it truly was. There was no angelic trumpet blast, and God did not descend in majesty from on high on his throne of judgement, but the unleashing of divine wrath was in the offing nevertheless.

From the moment I awoke, I was conscious of a subtle difference in the atmosphere: the air somehow felt taut, as though being stretched to its limit like an enormous piece of elastic, and as the day went on this impression was reinforced as my physical surroundings seemingly began first to wobble, and then to flicker in and out of focus, as though in response to the strain. At some point – I knew, although not when – everything would snap asunder, releasing hell fire, or purgatorial flame – it mattered little which – to engulf, eviscerate, and purify.

During the morning I mucked around, or at any rate went through the motions of mucking around, because when all was said and done I was still a young teenager, and hence still not wholly committed to acceptance. When the removal lorry lumbered around the corner into our street, however, and disgorged a quantity of nameless, faceless men who proceeded to take away our belongings, denial became almost impossible, and although the air temperature was in the high nineties, I felt chilled to the very marrow.

That afternoon, there were two of me, one palpable and active, the other disembodied and disowned, watching from afar in a state of mingled bemusement and regret. It was the ghostly me who climbed into the car when the time came for the drive to Outer Harbour, while the tangible me regarded the process with detachment and, perhaps, a small amount of derision, before, finally, turning away and re-entering the building that would always, at least to most intents and purposes, remain home.