by Peter Marks
‘I meant hysteria,’ he explained a week later to shut her up and stop her incessant giggling - and the constant laughing phone calls her friends kept making to him. No-one, especially Nikkie, believed his retraction any more than they’d believed his original prognosis. So he told her he’d been lying.
Then she believed him…’
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The story and his implied stupidity were as much fabrications as were most of his illnesses for the dumb fucker was bright. The man was a Mensa graduate but no show off, so he acted like a moron to cover his impediment. Nathan was, in reality, smart enough to know that an intellectual advantage was of no redeeming value in dealing with the complexities of life as he’d witnessed it.
Although a certified (and certifiable) genius, 190 in the shade, he was also convinced that living brain dead was preferable to stumbling about with a brain over-powered when the journey didn’t require such additional capacity. When friends told him he was clever (usually in prelude to asking for a loan or some other favour) he’d frown dismayed at the inference that this was some sort of an advantage - so worth possessing. Wright, waving a pointed finger at them, would, with furrowed brow, proceed to inform them that any I.Q. over three was a waste of space telling them he was tired of the whirlpool emotions, the glut of knowledge, the sad wisdom's and grey reasoning that constantly filled his head. To bursting. It was too busy up there to let him have any real fun he’d argue but no-one listened; they still believed being bright was not as bad as Wright assured them it was.
He was always, had always been uncomfortable with the accusation that he was any more intelligent than a fence post (like most people he met) so he’d stand lecturing, saying that because of the crush of screaming thoughts all fighting to be heard in the halls of his head there was no room, no-where quiet, no-where left upstairs for the necessities, the more valuable of life’s really valuable accessories - attributes like pure rat cunning, or street savvy - or simple affection. He told them (if they hadn’t wandered off bored with his rendition of Neuron Snakes and Ladders) that these reflex requisites were far superior to any learned luggage. Or elevated artistic talent. Or the precocious ability to always win at Trivial Pursuit without cheating.
Nathan knew that understanding that a quark was one of three hypothetical particles with three corresponding antiparticles which had been postulated as the basis of all other particles in the universe ran a bloody poor second to knowing how to find a wife. Then keep her. Happy.
The bright may seem better off but they are rarely content because their mind was always busy telling them how much better off they could be or how much more there was to learn so they never were blissfully ignorant AND therefore they never could be really happy. Wright was living (well almost) testimony. Shut it down Wright would add about the reactor in his head. Give it a rest, remove the piles he’d say pointing to his bum. (Which was precisely where those, other than a few close friends, thought his brain basked anyway).
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Snapping Wright back from the brickwork at 318 and making him lose count AGAIN, Nikkie got back to business. She wanted to know when the job would be finished, demanding to know when she could have it.
‘Anytime you want,’ he sniggered, offering to engage the crimson folds hidden moist between her safe, safe thighs. Brazenly, provocatively, Nicola said she’d gladly part them if he weren’t present then, lunch on the desk, egg and bacon sandwich poised, she reconsidered the offer and clutching the phone to pink lips, she whispered that she’d consider his proposed insertion if he’d supply her with an all expenses paid holiday for two to London, Paris or Rome. Wright sneered gruffly, explaining that he never paid for it! To which Nicola replied that this was sad, saying that if this was true then he was the only virgin she knew of.
‘Well its something no-one can accuse you of Missed Virtue. You left your honour on the grass behind the shelter shed in the summer of ‘78.’
‘Nice try Nathan. Actually it was the winter of ‘81 on the dunes at Portsea and it was bloody cold. Anyway mine was given gladly in 1981 not 1881 when you donated yours to a maiden palm YOU wanker!’ They exchanged opinions like this for a further few minutes before Wright got worse and Nikkie she got moral and told Nathan his mind needed cleaning before remembering that he already had a vacuum in his head so there was no real need to bother.
Sighing sleepily, his ear still to the phone, he gazed out the window wondering why his existence had become so predictable, so mundane. Nathan thought just how repetitive, how uneventful his life had become. It was the same lies to the same people about the same topics. There were the same demands and the same lame excuses.
Everything was collapsing.
He droned on, Nikkie still demanding between sandwich bites to know when he’d have the job done, Wright dodging an answer unworried for he knew one thing with absolute certainty - he knew that he could outlast and out excuse almost any other being in this or any alternate solar system. Nathan knew just how to beat them, how to conclude any argument. Wright won through pure tedium.
The conversation with Nikkie, who was brighter than a peanut but dumber than Wright, went the way he wanted it too. He outsmarted her. Outlasted her actually and she finally gave up as Wright managed to buy himself and his sloth more time. Literally. The delay would cost him a bottle of Moet Chandon. (So much for Wright’s peanut theory, she was smart enough to blackmail him so smarter than most. This pay-off, considering some of her previously outrageous demands - such as a red Ferrari for instance - was therefore cheap in comparison. On negotiating the settlement, he hung up, allowing a few minutes pass before turning to Colin who was still trying to finish the letter to his solicitor.
The piece of paper was an explosion of red ink on a white background for Colin was still having problems with structure and style.
‘My wife has certain unsavoury habits which I feel should be raised during proceedings. She drinks, she smokes, she talks endlessly on the telephone, she clips her toenails in bed, she steals my pay to look after the children, she wears make-up thick enough to replaster the Empire State Building, she watches afternoon soap operas and has a mother who’s so ugly that even Einstein would have problems justifying her relativity.....’
More red appeared as he crossed all this out believing it made her sound horribly normal so he replaced it with:
‘My wife has all the charm of a serial killer, she sacrifices rather than cooks, she can’t sew (wheat or corn) and she smells like a three week dead haddock. Far be it from me to relate such a sorry list, I know its awful, but she must be exposed. The public has a right to know.’
Which reminded him. Colin glanced suspiciously over his shoulder to check that Wright wasn’t snooping. If the smartarse knew what he was doing he’d undoubtedly wander over and start correcting the spelling. Or the grammar. Or syntax. Or anything just to make himself feel damn superior. Colin, reassured that Wright wasn’t spying for a change, continued:
‘Her legs are hairy and she dresses in clothes bright enough to blind. When she sings she sounds like a screaming mullah and when she makes love she lies there like some-one’s glued her to the sheets. Immovable. Hell, the woman’s about as lively as a bookmark so it beats me how she got that little shithead mechanic to fuck her. Or find doing it with her anything but a pronounced disappointment.....’
Colin found the letter turning to angry inner voice so put it aside, wondering just how lasciviously she did perform with the slime boy. He wondered if she gave him head or got her arse porked; if she did all those things with the sleazy bar kid he’d always desired but she’d refused to do to or with him. Things like grunt or swallow wank in front of him. Or even seem to enjoy sex with him no matter how conventional. He sadly wondered if she did things with her toy boy that she certainly hadn’t even contemplated doing with him. Did she now do all those perverted acts she’d refused him during the many years of their marriage, justifying her Victor
ian attitude to anything resembling the unusual by saying sourly that good catholic girls didn’t do those sort of things? With him anyway. Colin was damn angry.
‘Hey Nathan. What do you think?’ Colin called, holding the letter in mid-air, showing it to the fucking busybody before the fucking busybody demanded Colin show it to him anyway. ‘You hate women,’ Colin added awaiting Nathan’s pronouncement of the viper contents.
Nathan shifted lazily in his seat. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I mean you love bonking women but you don’t like them.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Admit it, you hate them as much as I do!’
Nathan paused to consider Colin’s verdict thinking Colin was as seriously deranged as he was. Then fought back ‘cos it was bullshit.
‘You only hate them because your wife’s one. If you’d married a man you’d hate men so there’s little point in using that tired old excuse. Jesus Colin, your wife has damaged you beyond repair..... what the hell makes you say I hate women?’
‘You aren’t very nice to them.’
‘Don’t confuse confusion with loathing. Fear sure. Hate never. Certainly there’s the odd offender I’d love to send gutted to oblivion but most of them are more human than you or I will ever be.’ Wright said looking curiously intense.
‘I don’t hate them all either. Just my wife,’ defensively.
‘Who probably hates you so you’re even.’ Nathan the sadist said, watching Colin’s eyes moisten. ‘Cheer up you old buggar, I’m sure it’s only temporary. Give her a few years and she’ll probably only dislike you..... Intensely.’
Colin bowed his head and Wright was worried that the levity hadn’t succeeded as it normally did. For one terrible moment he really thought the old buggar was about to burst into tears.
‘Get a grip on yourself Colin,’ Colin’s hand headed for his trousers. ‘I don’t mean that you idiot!’ Wright yelled, pissed off that he’d felt even a fleeting sadness for the grey divorcee and snatching the letter, read it. Then dared Colin to sent it.
‘That’s not the point. I didn’t write it to send it.’
‘So what is the point?’
Colin looked sad and said he needed to get it out of his system so that he wouldn’t have to kill her - or himself - saying she was less threatening and wholly unattractive now that he thought about it. Looking serious, he said she could go fuck the entire first eleven of the Australian Cricket Team for all he cared, sniggering that they could use a bat like her.
Colin knew he wouldn’t dare send the letter but the bile outpouring had sure made him feel better.
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“…Colin’s mood didn’t improve, so the following day I sent the summation certain that this evidence was vital to his case. Unfortunately I forgot his solicitor wasn’t a he. But a she. A she who was totally infuriated on receipt of Colin’s bitter correspondence when it finally made it weeks later after I’d sent it because Australia Post, who, as they’re prone to do occasionally as a practical joke, obligingly re-routed it via Adelaide. (Fortunately at the rate most legal proceedings proceeded the letter could have gone via Saturn and it would still have arrived with light years to spare).
In chambers, a small cell of a room painted legal grey, crowded tight with monstrous texts and smelling of mould innocence and archaic laws Colin’s beak opened the letter. (It was an Old Bailey cramped cubicle with bars on the windows and a more than passing resemblance to where a good percentage of Susan’s clients would be incarcerated for non-payment of her exorbitant fees).
Italian leather feet of varnished crocodile were perched atop a mahogany desk trimmed expensive with the tan leather of a now extinct herd of Tasmanian Gazelle. And the size of a small house. Leaning back in a matching wheeled chair, dressed in clothes worth more than a family sedan, the owner of the world’s most pampered toes dialled carefully.
Susan Touche-Ross rang Rebecca ‘The Anvil’ Price Waterhouse (last names which accounted for their wealth). The two women had been as tight as a Gucci wallet since Switzerland and finishing school. Inseparable, they were joined at the hip pocket and by the cement bond of feminist outrage at the crass chauvinism of their male clients. Rebecca was a Barrister and compatriot advice vendor so the furtive phone call didn’t breach any confidence (was more a flood of fury than a breach of ethics anyway).
‘Men, honestly Rebecca, what an amazing bunch of absurd, neuropathic, simple minded children they are. Dear God, I despair of the entire species sometimes. You must hear this. I have here a letter I have just received from a new client. Listen to this. The man is truly in need of immediate therapy.’ Susan Touche-Ross said reading slowly, deliberately, from Colin’s loveless letter as if giving the final summation in a murder trial.
‘Totally uncalled for I’d submit’, ‘The Anvil’ replied throwing darts at a photo of Judge John Walker who’d yet again refused to dismiss the injunction against her best paying clients, Industrial Waste and Carcinogens.
The great thing about the law was that the professionals involved in the tedious process always won. Client win or loss. Rebecca felt piqued at the rebuff, but her bank account didn’t suffer so she was miffed but not devastated.
About the only thing that concerned Rebecca was peculiarly Chinese in origin. She didn’t like losing face. So due process continued, the client made applications, the court rejected them, she made money. Like a virus crawling computer disk she was corrupted, hooked beyond redemption. Could continue to earn a healthy profit whether the court stopped or allowed the leaking of toxic sludge into a once blue river.
Like death and taxes she was on a sure winner.
‘Totally reprehensible,’ Susan hyphenated stereotype agreed.
‘Totally, the man is a threat to all women. The man needs his attitudes rearranged. Probably a child molester on his days off from wife bashing I don’t doubt. I guarantee that he wants the dark ages back. Wishes that we women were still tied to the kitchen sink doing dishes and washing his rancid socks. The man is a complete wretch.’
‘Completely.’
‘Shall we help him attain a higher spiritual state? Should we reveal the golden path?’
‘We should.’
‘We should.’
‘Plan B?’
‘I think that is the most appropriate.’
‘Great. Lets cut his balls off.’
‘That’s Plan D Susan.’
‘Oh yes.’ Susan was confused.
‘Which is Plan B?’ she queried.
‘We ensure the sexist, prehistoric, Neanderthal loses everything.’
‘Splendid idea. Capital, simply capital.’
‘Men, who needs them!’
I do, Susan thought. Such splendid victimisation always got Susan Touche-Ross randy and, raising her skirt, pulling aside the lace edge of Paris brought panties, she was about to dance delirious with her pet vibrator when the door flew open.
‘What the hell are you doing?…’
…Hang on, that’s not in the script, Nathan thought, looking up to find Alan leering overhead, pen in hand.
‘What the fuck are you doing ?’
‘Writing my will.’
‘Crap.’
‘Okay I’m writing my CRAP,’ Nathan admitted. ‘Though its not a terribly elegant title for such an important document. Ladies and gentleman, we are gathered here today for the reading of THE CRAP. Nathan Wright’s last Crap and Testament. Christ, they’ll have to read it in the washroom..’
‘Jesus Nathan, put a sock in it.’
‘You’re telling me to shut-up I gather.’
‘Shut-up Nathan.’ Nathan was trying to cover his writings with a couple of books. But Alan was too quick. Grabbing the edge of the page, he dragged it back out to write a sentence in thick green pen across its top asking, via ink, if Wright was coming to the pub, underlining that it was time to lunch. Nathan nodded lamely. Actually he rar
ely drank during the day for usually midday grog made him go to sleep - which was exactly why people kept inviting him to the pub at that time of day for they were well aware that alcohol induced sleep at least shut him up for a few hours. Because of this every-one Nathan knew tried to keep him permanently pissed.
This time, caught in the act, Wright was too startled to refuse and so folding the brief, tying it tight with gold tape which he fashioned into a neat bow, Wright placed it securely in the inside pocket of Colin’s blue denim jacket on the way out the door.
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Alan put the beer on the table and he was reaching for a handful of peanuts when Wright asked him how much of the brief he’d read.
‘Most of it.’ Alan replied flatly, filling his face with nuts then beer.
‘You don’t like women do you?’
‘Not you too?’ Nathan grimaced, shocked at what was fast becoming an epidemic.
‘Well, its all you ever write about and they’re always doing something decidedly dirty.’
‘You mean nasty? Or sexual?’
‘Both.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Why don’t you pick on men?’
‘They aren’t worth it.’
‘So what you’re saying is that because you value women more than men, you write wretched things about them?’
‘You’re a genius.’
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It was four that afternoon when the two of them finally crawled back to the office - on all fours. Nathan, a few glasses short of dialysis, was depressed. Booze always made him melancholy (or randy but there was stuff all he could do with that urge because he hadn’t heard from Kelly in days. So he got sad instead).
In heart felt, booze courageous hope, he asked the demented author at the next desk to Alan’s if Kelly had called while he was out. Colin, with brutal relish, said that she hadn’t.
‘You sure?’
