by Peter Marks
Minutes later she breathed easy, relieved to find the gym members card but no note from shithead.
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“.......for the past few years I’ve taken to begging or grovelling or lying prostrate on the front lawn politely asking God to supply me with a wife - or the money to bribe one. No answer, no bribe - no bride. God wouldn’t help so I tried my friends. Offered them cash inducements to supply me with a woman worthy of me but they haven’t helped either. They say the only woman worthy of me has the devil for a friend so refuse to assist. Sad isn’t it. No ploy, prayer or pay-off performed the miracle so desperate I sought help.
Psychiatric help.
Even therapy regurgitated my hopes when, three visits in, in a fit of Freudian lust I proposed to the psychiatrist (female, 5’10’, great tits, no sense of humour) who unmercifully, callously, clinically rejected my psychotic advances (the woman was wise beyond her knockers).
Poor woman tried to help but I was, and am, beyond earthly assistance. She sat me on her brown leather couch one afternoon then earnestly, caringly, explained life to me. Spoke about my fears and frustrations. Spoke softly, optimistically of my plight. I, being the idiot I am, misplaced my optimism. Seeing what a caring human being she was I fell in love (transference she called it, a glib term for such an undying emotion) and spellbound with hope I asked her to marry me. She wasn’t impressed.
Or tempted. Instead of hugging me, crying yes on my shoulder she started yelling at me. Said that no-one could help me but myself so I asked her if she was prescribing masturbation - enquired if she was advising me to marry my hand. Cheeks red, fist raised she advised me to get help. And get out.
C’est la vie.
Nothing changes. Just last week I took out a computer listing in a singles magazine but they misspelt my name, got the phone number wrong and had me living three doors down so there was no joy there (and no date either). Unbowed after such a disaster I went to the beach looking for a date but with no prospects loitering busts heaving, thighs oiled, string bikini’s leaving nothing to the imagination on the wet sand I decided to look elsewhere. Looked under a rock. Found some crabs but no women scratching them so that was a dead loss...”
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Wright glanced out the window searching for Stevie Blunder, wondering if the bird had made it home without being eaten. Or colliding with a wall.
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“.....at this point, in case I die and some-one actually reads this drivel and takes me seriously, I must do a George Washington. Confess that I’m prone to (in fact quite famous for) slight exaggeration (scurrilously described as lies by my less adoring fans).
In truth, in reality, I do have a girlfriend and, with due humility must add that I have never had too much trouble finding one. It’s just that they never marry me (they run rather than remain).
The current adoptee of my affections is nice. Splendid actually. Her name is Kelly and I love her deeply, but she won’t last. Moments never do. They never do, they run out of steam and then run out on me. I offer them a title, they become heavyweights and punch me in the heart. Then piss off.
Sadly, the truth seems to be that no-one wants to be my wife. Be Mrs. Wright. (Not even my mother. Even she’s deserted the name, disposed of her title by remarrying. Now I can’t even marry my mother, even she wasn’t satisfied with being Mrs. Wright.
Life is grim, names rented....”
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The moron sage stopped writing and hundreds of grave dwelling philosophers sighed in chorus relief. When Has He Ever Been Wright? placed the pen behind his ear and stared out the window. Weather everywhere.
Outside, beyond the bushes, beyond the birds who found Wright’s window so attractive that they tried to mate with it at a zillion miles an hour, it was getting late. The sky had cleared, the day was now bright and expansive and the colour of a schoolgirl’s knickers - all pale blue with white cotton clouds trimming the distant horizon.
Melbourne weather was as fickle as a woman’s affections, Nathan grumbled. It was summer again. Only it was Autumn, so what this weather was doing annoying him Wright couldn’t guess. If he weren’t so intent on writing his memories, he would undoubtedly have done what he normally did when he found no reasonable explanation to what was happening. He’d dial a prayer.
He would have telephoned the priest at St. Mary’s, Father Thomas, the landlord of the fine old Catholic Church which lodged snugly amongst tall trees of wattle and snow-gum on the main road by the supermarket where Nathan always shopped, to ask what God was doing with the weather.
Erected in 1913, and therefore Inca old by Australian standards, this bluestone prayer palace stood serene amongst lush flower beds which clung loyally about its rock solid foundations. On ample acreage, a few hundred metres from the bottle shop that sold Nathan bottled liver damage, the church plotted serene amongst writhing waves of exotic buds set out in neat rows which formed a verdant crucifix about its portly extremities. Colour that created a cross garden lovingly tended by the stout women of the ladies auxiliary (petalphiles Wright called them).
Wright would have rung Father Michael to query this weather had words not failed him (he was currently hunched over the typewriter dictionary in hand). He would, had his vocabulary been better, have requested that Father Michael ask God what the hell summer was doing in an Australian autumn. Nathan hated heat so hated summer (didn’t much care for this sunburnt country for much the same reason).
As usual Father Michael would’ve refused his request were Nathan to have bothered making it for he’d long ago been deflocked. Also there was the distinct possibility that Nathan would have done decidedly better with the good Father had he remembered the devoted one’s right name. Called him Thomas not Michael. And said please. No matter. An indignant Father Thomas would’ve refused Wright for the same reason he denied all requests by non-believers for advice or assistance. God told Father Thomas not to.
So Father Thomas, sycophantic servant, didn’t. Stated in solemn tones every Sunday sermon that only those who welcomed Jesus as Lord and Saviour could bother God. The Father. Of the son. Being a heretic wasn’t easy. Nor was being God Wright guessed considering that he or she had idiot soothsayers like Father Michael feebly attempting to spread the good word to a generation who’s major beliefs seemed to be that margarine was better than butter and that Planet Earth was expendable. Wright knew if he were God he’d be more particular about who he allowed in a pulpit (Wright, beyond reasonable doubt, would establish a clergy of beautiful women. Long haired, neatly crotch clipped sex goddesses worthy of stapled centrefolds who topless, and tempting, would spread their legs to spread Wright’s word - The Gospel According To Saint Fuckhead. Sadly, were Wright ever deified, it’s a sure thing but a sad indictment of the human condition that his church would be the more successful. Father Michael wouldn’t see a soul, lost or otherwise. The Church of Wright however would undoubtedly be packed to overflowing).
In reality there was only one person who could save Nathan. Or explain the weather. Wright, brains in a safety deposit box somewhere, would have phoned his bank manager for an explanation.
The Bank Manager would have reminded Wright that his overdraft was overdue, whispered that the weather was weird because the Dow Jones was down. And gossiped that the Loans Manager was up one of the tellers (female, nothing perverse).
Wright would’ve mumbled something about interest bearing deposits and hung up.
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“......Wife where are you? (Probably hiding from her fate if she’s got any sense).
If, by some miracle, or via black magic, I do ever manage to locate her the first thing we’ll do is dine. Then we’ll dance. Then we’ll fuck (sorry....make love). We’ll mate on the grass and if she conceives then conceivably they’d be Land Wright’s. If she refused? Then I’d have No Wright’s. Be forced to bribery so she’d be Buy Wright (and her in-laws Buy-laws).
If she turned out to be a nymphomaniac then neither of us could claim to be Wrighteous. Insatiable she’d exhaust me and I’d be a Wright Off (..soon sick of sex claiming hospital benefits. So much for Women’s Lib. Women’s Libido more like it which I do so long as I don’t have to exhaust myself in the cause. I’m all for the Women’s Movement so long as it’s confined to a bit of pelvic thrusting).
Speaking of women; what if post exertion, post insertion, I was one day faced with a fertile fact? Had sometime months previous actually managed to insert tadpole into egg. What then? How would I cope?
How would I react when faced with a balloon dress and the expanding mid-section of some girl I’d once wet, some fuck once met, what then? What if she told me, with tears in her eyes and a bun in the oven, she was pregnant. I the impregnator. What would I do? Head for the wharves? Head for the hills? Or foot the bills?
What if it happened?
What if one balmy spring day I was busy avoiding the sun by doing some shopping at the local supermarket. What if, half way down aisle three, an ex-lust pounced at me from behind a stand loaded ceiling high with imported cheeses? What if this girl who I’d so generously wedged months before suddenly appeared from behind the Gouda mountain to confront me? Stood there with face flooded, mop handkerchief soaking the sniffling and crying blocking the path of my loaded shopping trolley. What would I do? (I’d try to get the trolley moving fast for a start. But it’d be maimed, mine always are. Mine always have one bung wheel which causes massive understeer making the damn thing uncontrollable to the degree that I have to attach eight Husky dogs to make any straight line progress).
How would I feel as she accusingly sobbed and wept an appaling accusation. Said solemnly I was about to become a father and, between maternal tears, confirmed that it had been my friendly fluids responsible for the ever-expanding egg hibernating with-in. What then? What would I do? It’s all conjecture of course, all hypothetical but my guess is I’d deny all knowledge. Then faint. Then realise it’s hard to run horizontal so wake up and on regaining consciousness probably call her irresponsible; me innocent; and it a bastard. Not Wright’s. And being the insensitive prick I am I’d ask for evidence. Enquire as to why she thinks me the father - why she hasn’t queried the butcher, the baker or her pogo stick maker.
Chances are she’d reply with a clenched fist and paternity suite so I’d be forced to flee. Then forced into fatherhood when trapped at the check-out counter by Wyatt Earp. By her gun totting foaming father who would inevitably have accompanied his mother-to-be daughter to the supermarket show down and graciously accept (under duress and under the counter shotgun at left ear) responsibility for such an intimate interlude - for the condom-less conspiracy.
Sex. More trouble than its worth most of the time (and its worth loads apparently my friend Lisa the hooker tells me. Says time is money and a good time a fortune).
Sex was so much simpler before AIDS arrived. Unfortunately now death is.
Now one can contract death conceiving life. Now love really can kill you and sex won’t be safe until all women are decontaminated. Or they do what mum did. Have their knees super-glued. (Or all men have their dicks stored in a warehouse somewhere until the virus is cornered or bundled into the nose cone of a Titan rocket and shot off into space as man-kind’s gift to the universe).
But I digress, where was I? Ah yes, the supermarket. If she persisted, if her father insisted, then I’d marry the girl, call the kid Whose Wright? (Mind you, my motives would be strictly ulterior for I wouldn’t be waltzing her up the aisle out of any moral obligation. Or sense of decency. This wedding would be more out of desperation than obligation as this is the only way I’ll probably get myself a wife. Reverse psychology. I’d force her to marry me which would certainly be a new twist on the old rules of the game.... and certainly harsh punishment for the poor girl’s momentary sexual aberration).
Sadly even this scenario seems unlikely, reality being what it is (i.e. real). I’m desperate. (I’m 35 so of course I’m desperate). Time is running out as quickly as the women tend to so with no willing aspirants for my marital ambitions lurking locally it won’t be long before I’m forced to export my aspirations. To import some inspiration.
Any day now I’ll be forced off-shore in search of a suitable sheila. I’ll scour the globe, find a female, buy myself a bride. Perhaps she’ll be locked up somewhere, maybe they keep them in jars or bottles or just hold them in pens on an island somewhere in the Pacific ready and waiting for men like me (....and men do like me more than women seem to so perhaps I should turn homosexual...terrific people I’ve always found but women have more orifices so are far better value so I won’t deviate....straight I wait).
Maybe I could buy a petit Asian bride, a small bright women from a destitute background who was too poor to be too fussy..”
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The floor shook again. Abuse rose from the carpet at him again. Bloody Jenny. Now what’s wrong? ....Oh yeah.....up yours too.....Up the Amazon! ..Why not? Every desperate man in Melbourne has been......
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“.... I’ve seen them, tiny Asian imports wandering down the main streets of Springvale and Richmond escorted by gorillas even the zoos have rejected - frail, frightened concubines trying teach the anthropological throwback they’ve married how to walk upright without tripping and crushing them. Me, I’ve learned how to walk without dragging my knuckles over the concrete so I’m an evolutionary hop ahead of these tree dwellers.
After much research it is my professional opinion that these poor (literally as well as metaphorically speaking) girls are the only females desperate enough to marry my mother’s Neanderthal son (i.e. me) so I’ll purchase a virgin maid from Manila, or Miss Wing from Peking. Or maybe a Wong from Hong Kong (me and Miss Wong, we’d be Wright and Wong).
Maybe if she had a sister (and I had the money) I could offer to divide my carnal desires. Offer them a fevered menage a trois for I’m not against sharing, or sin. Or troiing. Unfortunately they probably would be, would probably tell me the idea was immoral - force me to concede that Two Wongs don’t mate a Wright. Typical.
Perhaps if I ever found a wife daft enough to love me, then heavily sedated, actually marry me she’d become N. Wright/Mrs. (Or simply Not Wright/Mrs. ...certainly her mind wouldn’t be) but on the brighter side (which she certainly wouldn’t be) at least she’d be all mine so she’d be All Wright. Were she four foot nothing she could call herself Half Wright. Or two foot tall she could call herself what every-one else would - a midget. At five foot eleven she’d be the Wright height. Or six foot eight? Then she’d have to be kidding.
Who-ever she turns out to be at least on engagement she’d be Almost Wright’s. After the wedding she’d be a Connubial Wright. Dead she’d be the Wright Stuffed and kept in a glass cabinet by the door. On divorce - she’d be free of me. Well it’s all hypothetical anyway. Perhaps I should forget about being Wright. Just give up. Admit I’m Wong......”
Chapter Twelve
SIMPLE SIMON
A WEEK HAD PASSED. But Wright was still at it. Still writing, still trying desperately to fill every desolate moment with some sort of mind engaging exercise so that the unhappiness lurching through his hurt heart, due to Kelly’s continued absence, wouldn’t get the chance to sicken him with the pain stabbing reminders of her.
God, how he missed her.
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The light was fading. His head ached, his fingers were weary and the story of his wifeless life was beginning to resemble harsh truth. So he left it there. He didn’t really know what else to do with it anyway, so he gave up and with a sudden rush of almost extinct energy, pushed himself back from the desk, stretching, then yawning and reaching for another cigarette.
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Upright, Wright stood five foot eleven. Seated, he sat four foot three. Or so he claimed, having a couple of weeks ago, in a moment of spasmodi
c boredom, measured his stoop.
Wright never had learned metric measures. What he stood, or sat or travelled, or drank in metric measures he didn’t know. Nor would he ever choose to learn, or find out, for if they hadn’t taught him a measurement at school - then it didn’t exist. And when Wright went to school everything was in Imperial. Even his stoop.
His flimsy excuse for an education had ended years ago. Decades in fact, when a naive young Wright imagined the Imperial measure had something to do with the Queen’s height. Back then, in the good old days, length had been in feet, or yards, or erect inches young boys boasted about on first noticing the ruler between their legs.
Back then the Queen had been in her palace; temperature recorded in Fahrenheit; distance was travelled in miles and overweight flab measured in pounds (or tons in his Aunt Bessie’s case). So ever since high school Wright had been in a state of total confusion about any measurement that was different to what he’d been taught. And he’d been taught Imperial. NOT Metric.
Nathan firmly believed that metric measures had been dreamt up by the same shit who’d invented the notion of chastity for women.
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Wright did the drawback. Coughing through a lapsed lung, he sat back in the chair as the cat stuck its white cotton whiskers around the corner before entering through the door. Softly, Serepax padded stealthily through the opening and, arriving near the bed, made the almost fatal mistake of breathing deeply, nearly dropping terminally dead when the aroma of Wright’s socks leapt viciously into his nostrils. Stunned, the suddenly green cat stood there transfixed. Glued to the spot, its small chest quivering, its large eyes watering, its head was madly shaking in an attempt to exorcise such an evil stench. Finally, with some effort, it acclimatised to the noxious fumes and casually strolled on, ignoring the danger. But plotting revenge.
