by Peter Marks
Sitting alone in the darkness, surrounded by the all pervading waft of thousand year old moth balls, he began to think seriously about renting space in there on a more permanent basis.
Perched sullenly in the deepest darkness, he began contemplating his cowardice. He realised thirty minutes later that he was indeed chicken so started clucking like a chased chook. Arching an already bent back, he groped in his pockets until he found the bulge in his jeans that wasn’t him and removing a soiled white kleenex he gingerly, clucking loudly, wearing a lampshade for a helmet, stuck a nervous hand out the wardrobe door. Wright had decided to capitulate.
Waving piteously in abject abdication, feeling that surrender and shoes were preferable to such prolonged incarceration (or having to celebrate his fiftieth birthday here in this cathedral for clothes) he hoisted the white snot flag of surrender.
Surrendered in vain unfortunately for there was no General. Nothing generally pernicious to accept his humiliation. Jenny had better things to do than persecute Wright ad infinitum.
She’d left him sweating in the closet while she went downstairs to change then head for the gym to do some sweating of her own, hostilities on hold.
Nathan, white flag Kleenex returned to an empty pocket, smiled triumphantly. Victory was his. Yet again he’d out lasted the foe.
Creeping from self-imposed exile, he wandered aimlessly back to the desk, walking carefully to the humming typewriter trying to dodge the minefield of rubbish on the dump floor and only stopped smiling when, sitting down, it occurred to him that he’d have to play Tarzan and do some fairly rapid tree climbing if he wanted shoes on his feet when he arrived at work on Monday.
Bellowing, thumping a chimney chest, he leapt sole searching from the upstairs window.
Chapter Seven
KID’S STUFFED
SEATED ON LARGE ROCKS in a garden hewn from the hillside, four boys, spotty and not yet grown to any significant size, sat exchanging voices.
Robert, already obese with sausage fingers and the rear of a rhino, picked his nose. Then ate it (this being his idea of a dietary supplement). On the rock next to him Simon, buck teeth and poor eyesight, searched in his marble bag for his favourite tom bowler, a red/black monster that had thus-far conquered all-comers. Trevor, already handsome with straight teeth and wealthy parents, and so set for an easy life, drew pictures in the dusty soil. Wearing grey shorts, neat shirt and tie, the young Wright was chewing an apple (Nathan was a cute kid and there was little to indicate a future that would be almost as dim as Robert’s mind was).
Eating mum packed lunches above the sandpit, slides and monkey bars of the school playground, they were waiting to catch a glimpse of the coloured linen. Or cotton panty'd backsides belonging to the laughing prepubescent girls who’d hang upside down on the metal apparatus. Playful evidence that Darwin’s theory was not as misguided as creationists would have their zit minded converts believe. Certainly, there was a strong streak of chimpanzee in this lot.
‘Look at Mary Hecktor, she’s got green one’s on today.’
‘She had green one’s on yesterday.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘Did.’
‘Didn’t.’
‘Did.’
‘Didn’t.’
This sparkling repartee went on for another ten minutes and was only halted by the appearance of the ever naked rear end of Wanda Louise Hogg (whose mother perennially neglected to rivet panties to this subsequently perennially bare bum).
‘Wanda’s got no pants on!’
‘Wanda’s never got any pants on, pooh brain.’
‘Do you think she’s too poor to buy some?’
‘Nah, she was born that way.’
‘What, she was born without pants on?’
‘Holy shamoly you twit face nerd. We all get born without pants on! I mean she’s a free spirit...’
‘What, like my dad?’ Simon said, still searching. ‘Only his spirits aren’t free. Me mum says we could buy a small island with what pop spends at the pub.’
‘Where were you when they gave out brains? In the stupid cue? My mum says Wanda was born a free spirit..’
‘You told your mum?’ There was a tangible hush. The other kids looked horrified. Their most private secret had been revealed to an outsider. Worse, to a mother.
‘Nah, what do think I am, a stupid?’ There were murmurings from the others. Murmurings of a unanimous yes.
‘I told her I saw it on TV.’
‘And she said Wanda was a free spirit?’
‘Yep.’
‘What’s a free spirit?’
Fortunately the bell rang and the question stayed asked but unanswered.
________________
Sadly, most women’s spirits weren’t as free as Wanda’s. Most cost. At eighteen, Wright was happy (a rare and thoroughly temporary affliction). He did a paper round in the morning, absconded from school in the afternoon and gave resuscitation lessons in the back seat of his mother’s Mini Minor at night. Life was good and so were his dates. Unfortunately.
Good girls didn’t so he was constantly searching for the bad ones who did. But none of them did either. No girl Wright tried to fondle followed Wanda’s lead. None of them were so casual about their underwear. The women Wright tried to mate wore glue linen, not no linen. He’d tried scissors, oxyacetylene blow torches, wire cutters. Begging and bribery but nothing would separate these girls from their mum locked panties.
While Nathan wanted lust, they wanted no part of it (or his fumbling of theirs). Nathan was beginning to think that maybe his old school friend had been right.
Maybe girls were born with their pants on?
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Playtime, and they were back watching Wanda. For the boys, grouped in their voyeur huddle, observing the inverted was supposed to be exiting. Supposedly, it would give them some mysterious thrill. Only it didn’t. They were too young to know what a thrill was - or what to do with it. After six months of solid study, none of them were any the wiser as to why the rest of the world was so interested in girls. (And their backsides. Or for that matter, front sides - clad or unclad).
When the boys saw underwear, the boys saw underwear. They saw nothing exotic, nothing exciting - just underwear. With senses as yet unwrapped, they were retarded by youth and the still dormant urges.
Nathan, unwrapping an ice-cream, speaking to no-one in particular, asked. ‘If you had one wish, what would it be?’
‘I’d wish we lived in a lolly shop with chocolate bars as big as the moon,’ Robert answered, his arms outstretched, giving an idea just how big he wanted them to be. Somehow, unwrapping two chocolate coated vanilla ice-creams, he managed to jam both of them into his tremendous gob at the same time. Trevor laughed at him. What a lack of vision, there was no way he’d squander his one wish on anything so trivial.
‘I’d wish for all the money in the world so I could buy your dumpy little lolly shop and then I’d force you an’ your family onto the street where you’d have to live in a cardboard box what I’d charge you rent for,’ he said. Even then, Trevor was a budding capitalist. A budding capitalist arsehole .
Simon had been silently considering the options.
‘I’d wish for peace on earth,’ he said. There was spontaneous laughter and Simon knew he’d done it again. Said the wrong thing. Or the right thing badly. Simon was far to sensitive for this lot or the reality which awaited him. Later, after University and divorce, he was to became a famous alcoholic who slept on park benches and smelt worse than Wright’s feet. And who died in 1985 when his liver failed him as miserably as humanity had.
‘What would you wish for?’ Robert said to the kid on the end.
‘I’d wish that every wish I wished would come true.’ Nathan said.
Even then Wright was a greedy son of a bitch.
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Wright refused to age gracefully. His years had fled so casually that aside from the
fact that his body and brain were failing him, he’d almost hadn’t noticed their passing. Until a birthday rolled around. Then he noticed, then he wept. He was almost oblivious to the passing years because not much seemed to change. They hadn’t helped him gain him fame or fortune, and he particularly begrudged this fact. He resented the people in the papers, and those who stared back at him from the bowels of his TV, who seemed as mediocre as he was, yet. God knows how but somehow they’d managed to crawl into the spotlight whilst he’d remained in a black backstage.
Wright was old, going on relic, and melancholia was turning to manic depression.
________________
Wanda meanwhile had found God and underwear as the wife of a Florida evangelist - Brother Bob who stole with equanimity. From rich and poor alike.
________________
Wright meanwhile, had found God to be a poor ally. He discovered that underwear needed to be changed at least twice a year if the fetid fabric wasn’t to turn to cardboard and make him walk like one of those tight-arsed women who wandered about the wealthier suburbs, their buns clenched as tight as the Gates of Paradise (Neither of which Nathan had much hope of prizing open).
Chapter Eight
DILIGENTLY DOING ZIP
IT WAS MORNING AGAIN and Nathan, throwing a pillow at the cat, wondered why his brain had become so habitually locked into this memory drift. Why he should think of Primary school at eight o’clock on a ...on a ...Hell what day is it? How come I can remember events pre-Boer War yet I can’t achieve a modicum of calendar comprehension. Scratching his head, he rather hoped the agitation would free the information from its sealed box. No luck. A shower of powder dandruff dusted his shoulders so he decided to forget what he couldn’t remember to slink out of bed, drag himself to the shower then stroll downstairs his hair wet, his brain suffering dry-rot.
No wonder his brain kept going backward (historically as well as obviously). It was March and his birthday was due shortly. Wright wasn’t the least bit impressed. He thought once anyone survived to 35 one should be allowed to start reversing the order. End up -35 at 70 instead of minus all one’s faculties. Based on this equation Nathan was now about to turn 34.
‘Just what day is it?’ Wright wondered, curious again, speaking to himself as he wandered about the kitchen filling the kettle and putting some coffee, then water and sugar into a blue and white striped mug. Himself still didn’t know so, downing the lot in a single gulp, he checked the line of fine print beneath the banner of the morning paper laying unread on the kitchen table. Thursday eh? I could have sworn it was Friday he coughed silently through nicotine tanned teeth, somewhat perplexed by the paper’s day stealing opinion, shrugging two blue shirted shoulders in solid bemusement.
The kitchen was empty. Martin, his girlfriend Ceil, Fionna and his nemesis Jenny, had left for work hours ago. Wright had come down for a while to steal the breakfast they’d made but then he’d gone back to bed to recover his breath after chasing Jenny around the house, yet again. Pouring another coffee, slurping loudly, spilling some, he considered his confusion, wondering if should attend night school to learn what day it was. Then, throwing the dregs black and granulated down a parched gullet, he suggested that Serepax, fat cat and fast expanding, join Weight Watchers. The cat told Wright to get stuffed and get a girdle and sauntered smirking from the room.
Still half asleep, he looked up from the chair his bum currently inhabited to notice the pale faced clock busy eating what little time he had left in this life. Hell, time flees, pants have flies, my years have flown he grumbled, shifting from rest. Getting to his feet, he grabbed for a grey overcoat as the wall watch ticked like an ailing heart by the open window.
Outside, circling in the dull morning, famished mosquitoes waited hovering outside, their credit cards at the ready waiting to pay an entrepreneurial money spider (Legs by name, scary by nature) three dollars a pint for entry to the house. And Nathan’s bloodstream. Wisely, Nathan left before they sped in, dodging the little suckers by leaving the kitchen. Racing upstairs he snatched a paper full brief case from the litter bin desk and, munching a half eaten toast, tumbled out the door covering his head with the case.
It was 9.30. and Wright was late. (Nothing unusual).
________________
Weather wise the day was a dud. Large grey cumulus haunted a slate stained sky, barrel rain ready to cascade on an umbrella city. Above the car humming through dense traffic, massed flocks of seagulls struggled silently against wild elements. Wings outstretched, they flapped gracefully in constant battle against the prevailing South Westerly that blew strong and surly from Port Phillip Bay. A few drops of rain splashed on Wright’s windscreen as he lit a cigarette, coughed, changed lungs then changed radio stations three times before finding some suitably sombre song while following the spastic traffic that fled the suburbs toward a workday Melbourne.
The sky, grey and sickly, began to vomit. The drops turned to buckets as the clouds cried a deluge filling the gutters and swamping streets. Wright, wrapped in the metal raincoat of his petrol powered ark remained dry as the dead and so protected from the torrent, ploughed on through the flood and the traffic.
________________
Pulling into the curb, he stopped in front of the Milk Bar a block from work. For a few moments he sat mesmerised by the calm swish of wipers on windscreen as they heaved aside rivers of the drowning onto a mirror black road before finally turning off the engine. Then he shifted. Clumsily. Nathan fell out the car door sprawling flat on his face by the car. Picking his palms from the bitumen, cursing, retrieving the far flung car keys and brushing the wet from his suddenly soaked clothes, he sprinted for cover.
‘Two Alpine Lights and a jam doughnut,’ Wright wheezed at the old women dressed in funeral black from head to grave who was standing mute behind the sweet stacked counter. Wet, he rummaged in a canyon pocket in search of some cash to pay for this lung losing extravagance.
________________
The Milk Bar was the local Wog Shop, a busy establishment titled thus because it was run by Greeks. Wright called all Greeks ‘Wogs’ so naturally this establishment was a Wog Shop. He called it this not because he was prejudice, or bigoted, or xenophobic (or a wog obviously) but because every-one else did, so why shouldn’t he? He called it what every-one did. They called it a Wog Shop so Wright called it a Wog Shop (he may not have been prejudice but he wasn’t oblivious to peer pressure).
The reality was that had the corner take-away not been run by these Greeks then more than likely it would have been run by others decidedly ethnic. Italians perhaps, or Turks, or more recently, Vietnamese. (Or Martians with antennae for ears and hinged rabbit traps for teeth some-day Wright didn’t doubt).
According to him, who was idiot expert on such matters, had the woman behind the counter been Italian, not Greek, then this would have been a ‘Dago’ Shop. Or had she been Turkish; a ‘Spick Bar’, were she and the family Vietnamese this would have been a ‘Slope’ Shop. (And had she been a short green alien with antennae for ears and death for jaws Wright would have called it staggering and her ‘Sir’ then pleaded for mercy. Then cigarettes).
Pathetically, had the same shop been staffed by white Anglo-Saxons it would have been what exactly what it was; a Milk Bar. Wright’s propensity for idiot stereotyping, for verbal if not heartfelt intolerance amazed even him sometimes, for personally he had nothing against them. They were simply foreigners. They were just different and so treated the way society treated anybody who was ‘different.’
Very badly.
________________
‘Yu shoulda gif up ya know, smoking very bad for ze lungs,’ the small woman clad in cemetery fabric advised the breathless Wright who hadn’t been on speaking terms with his soiled sacks for ages and so ignored all pleas for sanity.
Wright was fully aware of the habit’s unseemly consequences and patiently awaited the day the paramedics would have to kick start his heart or the sur
geon would amputate a strangled limb, or three, or attach his ruined organs to a bellowing silver machine that would breath for him, all apparently the almost inevitable consequence of such a long term love affair with such a shortening term hazard. But the budding corpse took no notice.
‘Very bad tings cigarettes,’ the black widow reiterated, handing him two packets of Alpine Lights and accepting his money. Wright sneered. Christ, every-one’s an expert these days he snorted separating cellophane from cigarettes.
‘We’ve all got to die sometime,’ he confided. ‘Anyway, I’m giving them up soon...’ Nathan said choking back a guilty cough that crawled from coal throat from pitch black lungs groaning in slow suffocation beneath anaconda tight ribs over wheezing chest. ‘.. one of these days,’ Wright added softly. ‘When hell freezes over..’ he whispered. Meddling old hag, he thought silently turning to leave clutching his doom in the palm of his right hand. Suicide purchased, carcinogens ready to join their mates in his chest, it was time to depart to the dire warning wog. He said farewell and was out the door.
It was back to the car and off to work.
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His career, so his friends kept reminding him, was best described as a sort of laboured masturbation for when Wright worked he worked for himself which was fortunate for he was fairly certain no-one else would employ him, feeling in all honesty that he was the only person on the planet foolish enough to give himself a job (although the girls who worked two doors down from the office at Bubbles Massage and Manipulation did keep offering him one. A blow job - twenty dollars a lip and no swallowing so he declined to recline).
Wright was in advertising, advertising was in trouble. He was managing director of ‘Immaculate Conceptions Pty. Ltd. - Specialists in Advertising, Design & Media.’ (And its only employee). A firm believer in overstatement, Wright, being a devout follower of the think big, be big theory, had given the company a long name and impressive credentials secure in the knowledge that the likelihood of anybody putting his boast to the test was minimal - as minimal as others believed Wright knew about advertising, design or media. (Or life for that matter which it didn’t for in reality he was talented so he didn’t need to work as hard as others. He was better than most so he could usually get away with being casual).
