by David Thorne
“No. Just playing.”
“Everything okay at home?”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you at school? Are you wagging it?”
“... no.”
“Everything okay at school?”
“... yes.”
“Some kids giving you a hard time?”
“Just Peter Jackson.”
“Ah. Bit of playground bully is he?”
“No, it was in the cafeteria.”
“What happened?”
“He pulled my pants down and everyone saw. Even Emma Jenkins.”
“Walk it off, princess.”
‘Walk it off, princess’ has kind of been my motto since. It might not seem like a very empathetic or kind response to someone’s problems, but it actually is. It’s the optimal response. It says ‘It’s a temporary issue and you’ll be fine, don’t worry about it. It’ll take more than that to keep you down.” Which might also work but it’s a bit of a mouthful and hard to remember. Plus it doesn’t have the princess bit.
My nickname at school for the next few years was Blueberry Dick but it could have been worse, there were kids in my class named Slop Bucket and Carrot Arse. Apparently Carrot Arse had put a baby carrot up his arse and it got stuck and he had to go to the hospital to have it removed but I have no idea how this rumour got started. Slop Bucket’s nickname was originally Drip Tray - due to his severe facial acne that wept pus constantly - but became Slop Bucket after a lengthy discussion about the limited volume of fluid a drip tray could hold.
When I was fourteen, I let a middle aged record store owner take photos of my penis in the bathroom in exchange for a copy of Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill on vinyl and two Depeche Mode tour t-shirts. It seemed like a good deal at the time and had no life changing ramifications so I should probably have thought of a better one for fourteen...
When I was fourteen, I had my heart broken for the first time. Her name was Emma Jenkins and I’d had a crush on her for years. Once, four or so years earlier, I’d pushed her on the playground swing. Just to start her off though; she did the legs-in-legs-out thing after that. She was wearing a blue Scrunchie that day and her hair smelled like bananas. We were paired to do a science class experiment together as Teresa, Emma’s best friend and usual lab-partner, broke her neck and died at a public swimming pool the week before. The school held an assembly and talked to us about the dangers of diving into the shallow end and running on concrete so I was never sure which killed her. Maybe it was a combination of both.
I’d been stuck in a group of three with Hazardous Bog (formerly known as Slop Bucket) and Carrot Arse due to an odd number of students, so it worked out well for me. I had the entire scenario scripted within seconds; I’d be easy-going and funny and she’d laugh at my jokes. Later, one of her friends would tell me that she liked me and I’d let it be known that I liked her as well which would officially mean we were ‘going out with each other’. We’d hold hands at recess and walk around the school with our hands in each other’s back jeans pocket at lunch. I’d buy her one of those heart-shaped necklaces that you break in half and both wear and then she’d let me kiss her at the bus stop. I collected my notebook and Knight Rider pencil case and sat beside Emma, watched her push a blonde strand of hair behind her ear and raise a hand.
“Yes, Emma?”
“Why do I have to be lab partners with Blueberry?”
“Because there are only twelve Bunsen burners. It’s a fifteen minute experiment, Emma, just put up with it.”
‘Well, Kate doesn’t want to be partners with Brian, why can’t Brian be his partner and Kate can be mine?”
“Fine.”
It was my first time in detention. I thought it would be like a normal classroom with a teacher sitting up the front but it was just an empty conference room. Peter Jackson was also in detention that afternoon, for killing a duck in the creek behind the school. He had a bright red ear from being slapped by Mr Connerly, the gym teacher.
“Did you really kill a duck?”
“I had to. Its wing was all mangled.”
“Maybe a vet could have put it in a cast.”
“No, it was really fucked up. There were ants crawling all over it and it could hardly move.”
“Did you at least kill it quickly?”
“Really quick. With a rock. I didn’t want to but...”
“If I was dying and covered in ants, I’d want it to end quickly. My dad ran over my tortoise with the car a few years back and it was still alive so he cut its head off with a shovel. ”
“That’s pretty sad. I like tortoises.”
“Yeah, me too. Does your ear hurt?”
“Not really. What are you in here for?”
“Pouring a beaker of hydrogen peroxide on Emma Jenkins’ head.”
“That’s awesome.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, she’s a bitch. You should have used nitric acid. It’s caustic.”
“I kind of liked her. A lot. Since first grade.”
“Walk it off, princess.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“My dad used to say it. Do you like video games?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever smoked weed?”
“No.”
“Do you want to come over my house after this to play video games and smoke weed?”
“Okay.”
When I was twenty-one, I let myself in the back door of Peter Jackson’s house and found him hanging by a rope in his kitchen. He’d used a length of yellow clothes line that had previously been strung between two trees in his backyard to dry laundry on. It was thin and had cut deep into his neck. His hands were also tied, then tied to his belt; two of the straps the belt passed through were ripped so he must have struggled hard when he kicked away the milk crate. His face looked similar to that scene in Total Recall when Arnold takes off his space helmet off on Mars - as if he was straining to push out a big poo. I thought it was a prank at first, I pushed him and he swayed back and forth for a while, slowly turning.
We usually hung out two or three times a week but he hadn’t answered his phone since breaking up with his girlfriend of three years a few days before. I was with him when he learned Lisa was cheating, someone called him and said she was drunk at a party and was giving guys lap dances. We drove to a house in the suburbs late at night and pulled up in the driveway. As America has its trailer trash and England its chavs, so too does Australia. Easily identified by their high pitched greeting, “Oi, gimme sum fukken money for the bus brah or I’ll fuckken smash ya face in”, these colourful characters serve as a community reminder of how low white people can sink. Guns N' Roses’ Paradise City could be heard coming from the house and the people hanging out on the front porch looked pretty rough, but Peter stormed inside demanding to know where Lisa was. Someone pointed to a bedroom door and he threw it open to discover Lisa, on all fours, taking it from behind by an old guy wearing a hat. It was one of those hats like Crocodile Dundee wears. Lisa, facing away from the door and not even bothering to look around, yelled, “He’s not finished yet.”
“Walk it off, princess.”
“Yeah.”
When I was twenty-eight, I gave one-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars to a con artist.
“It’s a lot of money, Neil.”
“It’s an investment. One that guarantees a return of thirty-five percent in three months. That means your $150,000 will be worth $202,500 by November. You can either invest that for another three months and turn it into $273,375 or take it out. It’s completely up to you. ”
“It’s practically everything I have left in my savings account.”
“How long did it take you to save that money?”
“Three years.”
“Do you want to spend another three years designing brochures and stationery?”
“Can I have a few days to think it over?”
“Of course, if you need to. We all agreed in yesterday’s dire
ctor meeting to hold the spot open for you until the investor meeting on Friday. You just need to let us know before then.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the offer. It’s just a lot of money. Especially at the moment. We lost our main client recently and... well, I won’t go into that but...”
“There was also talk about bringing you on as a director. We need someone to oversee the branding and marketing of Southern Australis and while it’s just a paper title, it comes with a budget that would keep your agency in work for years. We received backing from the Australian Tourism Board yesterday, which means billboards, television advertising, tourism magazine adverts... ”
“Nobody would have to fend for themselves in a forest.”
“Sorry?”
“I’ll have a cashier’s cheque for you this afternoon.”
I’ve made thousands of mistakes in my life. Everyone has. It’s part of what makes us who we are. Sometimes the mistakes make us better people, sometimes they leave scars. There’s mistakes between the two ends of the ‘mistake scale’ of course - the silly mistakes, like washing a wayward red sock with white sheets or leaving a car window down during a rainstorm - but these are hardly worth mentioning. Certainly not every time you offer to do the laundry or take someone’s car to the shops because they parked behind you.
One of the lies we tell ourselves about our mistakes is, “my biggest mistake was trusting x.” This implies fault lies with x and, as trust is generally seen as a positive character trait, is really just presenting ourselves with a little medal. A purple heart for betrayal. There are probably a million different reasons why we trust people but most of them are selfish reasons; we require something from them - companionship, validation, hope, or security...
I trusted Neil Fairhead because a week before I met with him, I sat at my desk at 2am drafting an email to Frank, Yola, Justin and Huang, apologising for failing them, for cowardly sending them an email instead of looking them in the face, for it ending up this way... And because I didn’t want to design stationery and brochures for the next three years - if we even lasted that long. After the SASC work wound down, I’d need to seek out more clients, more brochure and stationery commissions, and the email would be sitting in my drafts folder, waiting.
...................
From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 10 September 2001 9.34am
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Investment contract
Hello Neil,
I hope Friday’s meeting last week went well.
I was reading the investment contract and it lists Onkourse Pty Ltd as the company name - not Southern Australia Shipping Company - from page 3 onwards. Is this an error?
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: Neil Fairhead
Date: Tuesday 10 September 2001 12.55pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Investment contract
David,
Thanks for letting me know. Yes that should be SASC. I will get an amended contract to you this week.
Neil Fairhead, Director
Southern Australia Shipping Company
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 24 September 2001 9.34am
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Re: Re: Investment contract
Hello Neil,
We’ve been working on the website design for the last week and should have something to show you by Friday. I’ve received samples of crew uniforms and big puffy jackets. The embroidered patches look great.
Do you have an ETA for when the ship arrives in port next week? At this point we are planning to meet with Don Prime from Option[a] on-site to go over signage requirements and Mary Harben’s people can meet us a day or two after to measure for the livery. I need to lock in dates for both.
My staff also asked if it would be possible to be at the docks when the ship pulls into port. We’re all excited to see it.
Also, I haven’t received the amended investor contract. Have you had a chance to look at that? We are also yet to receive payment for either the deposit or printing. It’s been 20 days since I was told it had been sent to accounts so if you could also check on that I’d appreciate it.
To be perfectly honest, without those payments being received and cleared by Thursday, I will have difficulty making payroll for my staff this month.
Regards, David
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 27 September 2001 2.16pm
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Invoices
Neil,
Can you give me a call? I left a message yesterday but haven’t heard back from you. Thanks.
David
................................................................................................
From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 2 October 2001 7.58am
To: Neil Fairhead
Subject: Contact
Neil,
Can you call me today please? I’ve left a couple of messages on your office answering machine. Your phone rings out. Still chasing those invoices and I have Don Prime and Mary Harben waiting to lock in dates. What day does the ship arrive?
I realise this is a busy time for you but I had to make payroll using my credit card on Friday and need those invoices cleared this week.
David
...................
There’s a ‘current affairs’ television show that airs weekdays in Australia called Today Tonight. I haven’t seen it in a few years but I assume it’s the same format; people contact the producers of Today Tonight and have a bitch about a company not giving them a refund for faulty goods or something, and Frank Pangallo, an investigative journalist, rushes to the business with a bunch of television cameras to get to the bottom of the problem. Often, the perplexed business owner will be like, “What the fuck? Yes, we sold him the kayak but how is it our fault if he didn’t strap it to the top of his car properly? No, we’re not giving a refund for a flat kayak with truck tire marks all over it but it was nice meeting you, Frank. I watch you on the telly all the time.”
I saw one episode where they hid in a van and filmed for three days to catch an elderly woman who was letting her dog shit on another neighbours lawn and not picking it up. When she saw Frank and the cameramen pile out of the van, she legged it but fell and broke her hip. Occasionally, however, they turn up at a legitimately dodgy business and the owner runs from the cameras and puts his hand over the lens when they catch up. Sometimes they push the camera away and Frank yells, “Don’t touch the camera, that’s assault!” and the owner yells, “I asked you to leave!” and Frank replies, “What do you have to say to the family you ripped off? Will they get their money back for the driveway paving they paid for but never received?”
It’s all pretty stupid but the program reaches a decent-sized audience. I used to watch it fairly regularly. I was watching it the night Neil Fairhead was on.
“Hello, Neil? Frank Pangallo from Today Tonight.”
“Yes, I know who you are. I’m not interested in talking to...”
“We just want to talk to you about the Southern Australian Shipping Company, Neil.”
“I’m busy at the moment. I’ll have to ask you to leave...”
“What do you have to say to the hundreds of investors that believed they were investing in a ship?”
“There is a ship. Look, I’ve asked you to leave. This is my home, you’re welcome to set up an appointment at my office if you want to discuss this like civi...”
“You don’t have an office, Neil. We checked and that property is still the registered address of Onkourse, which is currently under investigation by
the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, but your lease expired last year. It’s now a bakery. Where’s the ship, Neil?”
“We’re currently under discussion with the owners of a decommissioned Russian ice-breaker about purchasing...”
“There is no ship, is there Neil?”
“Yes, there is.”
“Your glossy brochure, which is very nice I must say, states that you have the backing of the Australian Geographic Society. They’ve never heard of you, Neil.”
“I’ve asked you to leave. I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave my property immediately.”
“This isn’t even a real ship in the brochure. The name and logo have been Photoshopped onto it and this picture of people on the ice wearing red jackets with the ship’s logo added to the sleeve is from a 1987 mining expedition in Norway.”
“We commissioned an agency to do th...”
“You keep saying ‘we’, Neil. Who’s we?”
“SASC.”
“That’s just you. You’re under investigation by ASIC for six separate businesses; Earn and Learn, Brink, Netlink, eBoxes, the National Internet Services Provider Network, and Onkourse - and you were the sole proprietor of every one. You’re a con man, Neil.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What would you call yourself then, Neil? A thief? You defrauded Aussie-battlers of almost a million dollars.”
“No, I didn’t. I’m still in discussion with ASIC about those other businesses, I wasn’t even a director of th...”
