The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

  We were once found in someone’s pocket in an evil bar Americaine in Paris and it was very nice, but that was after Someone Had Slipped Something Into Our Drink.

  We admit this now, following the example of Lenny Bruce who, at the beginning of his US presidential campaign, made it quite clear that he had sex with dogs.

  As with Lenny Bruce, we do not wish to have the Paris Being-In-Someone’s-Pocket-Incident flung in our face at some later stage. Our newly appointed team at the Office of Misconception will look at the Great Australian Errors of Common Wisdom.

  We will also examine Fallacies Propagated by the Intelligentsia and we want to clear out of public discussion and conversation Some Things Which We Suspect We Have Heard Once Too Often and Gravely Doubt.

  Let us begin our investigations of Australian misconceptions at the very soul of the nation, Gallipoli.

  As recently as this month, Our Office heard a Larrikin explaining to two Japanese businessmen that Australians commemorate Anzac Day because Australians glorify ‘defeat’.

  The Japanese businessmen were told that it says something about the Australian Character that we alone as a nation would celebrate a defeat.

  Our Office was worried that these Japanese businessmen could have been spies and would report this back to their military.

  But we have been hearing this misrepresentation about Gallipoli all our life.

  The question facing the Inquiry is why are so many of the Australian intelligentsia tickled by this notion that Anzac Day is about defeat?

  The intelligentsia like this notion perhaps as an example of some sort of admirable Australian counter-patriotism? Or that those who celebrate it are being amusingly tricked by the historical truth?

  We suspected that it had to do with a much-vaunted thing called Larrikinism in the Australian character which exists strongly in the minds of intellectuals and nowhere else and whose elegant spokesman is Brian Matthews.

  We subpoenaed a Larrikin to give evidence and after hunting high and low we dragged one into the Inquiry chambers.

  He was shockingly casual in his approach, in stark comparison to our own judicial demeanour and costuming. Our newly designed robes are gorgeously lined in red satin with an ermine trim.

  We ‘swept’ into the Investigation Chamber led by a youth dressed as a pixie trumpeting The Call to Attention.

  We were tempted to describe the behaviour and dress of the Larrikin as disrespectful but our minders suggest that we give him the benefit of the doubt and called it ‘casual’, which is also, we’re told, a much-vaunted part of the Australian demeanour.

  He said that, for the record, he saw himself more as a Yobbo than a Larrikin.

  Let it be so noted.

  Having refused to stand or take the oath, he said, in reply to our close questioning, that the Larrikin Spirit refused to acknowledge, and resisted, all authority.

  We probed by asking whether in its most destructive form, the Larrikin Spirit refuses to acknowledge the social conventions by which fragile society arranges itself for the protection of citizens and their rights one to the other?

  ‘Bloody oath,’ said the witness. We took this to be a form of a ‘street avouching’ and had it recorded as an affirmative.

  We asked him if he would categorise the claim that by commemorating Gallipoli we are glorifying defeat, as an example of the much-vaunted Larrikin Spirit?

  The Larrikin witness winked at his mates in the gallery, and while rolling a cigarette, said that ‘in his bloody view, the Larrikin Spirit was to never give a stuff’.

  Cupping his hands, he lit what he called ‘his fag’, and drew on it deeply, coughing in a very tubercular way.

  We suggested from the bench, construction of which had finished only that day, with the varnish not yet dry, we suggested that this Larrikin Spirit was the capacity to laugh in the face of the existential pain? Or to put it another way, at its most negative and destructive, was a refusal to cry when crying is appropriate?

  Did it rather tend to be against sissies, for instance?

  The Larrikin witness’s friends waiting in the public gallery guffawed.

  They were heard repeating the word ‘sissies’ among themselves which seemed, each time, to recharge their humorous reaction to the word. Despite our calls for order they went on repeating it to each other, until there was no laughter left in them, except for an occasional dying snort.

  We could see that the Larrikin Spirit did not have much time for sissy talk.

  The Larrikin witness then opened a can of Foster’s lager thrown to him from the public gallery, the spray from which reached the bench and our ermine trimmed robe. A minder who rushed to wipe away the beer whispered to us that we should let the beer spray matter pass without comment. We refrained from telling the Larrikin that a thrown can of beer will always froth.

  Addressing the Larrikin, we suggested that this Larrikin Attitude would also fail to mourn when mourning is appropriate, nor to admit defeat nor to admit error.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘For instance, do you believe that someone who had a lifetime of studying and tasting wine might know a superior wine from an inferior wine?’

  ‘A load of bullshit.’

  ‘Do you think it is not true that a person could have discernment, or is it that even if discernment were possible it would be a waste of time and not worthy of consideration?’

  ‘Both.’

  We returned to the notion that Australians glorify defeat on Anzac Day which has within it the suggestion that Australians react in the opposite way to all other people on the planet.

  ‘Bloody oath.’

  Very patiently we began by pointing out to the Larrikin that the notion of defeat is historically wrong.

  Although the Gallipoli campaign was a failure in the sense that the attacking troops did not take their objective, this was not what was being commemorated.

  Australian troops were not defeated as such, in that they did not surrender, nor were they forced off the peninsula.

  What was being commemorated, we pointed out, was a grim feat of arms which showed rather extraordinary bravery, resilience and military innovation by the Australian troops.

  Furthermore, it may come as a surprise, we said to the Larrikin and his mates in the public gallery, that many nations pretend to relish their so-called ‘defeats’.

  We called as a witness, writer Alan Moorehead, who told the Inquiry, ‘Both the English and the Germans adore defeats. Dunkirk will remain in the English mind … the siege of Stalingrad will rally future generations of Germans …’

  In the US, the Alamo is a celebrated defeat but really a celebration of what is seen as a splendid performance in battle by a handful of men. So is the Battle of Little Bighorn where Custer was wiped out by the Indians (seen at the time as the ‘enemy’).

  The Serbs celebrate each year at the Field of Kosovo (or did until recent events made the journey rather risky) the defeat of the Serbs by the Turks (about one million attended the 600th anniversary in 1998).

  We also pointed out that the Canadian intelligentsia like to believe that they as a nation also glorify their ‘defeats’.

  We put it to you, we said leaning forward and again sticking to the newly varnished bench, ‘This manoeuvre – of glorifying defeat – is a way of “winning”; that is, by rising above winning and losing. Those who do not care about winning can therefore never be “beaten”.’

  Curiously, we added, it could well be that the failure to ‘win’ at Gallipoli, after all these years, still hurts in the Australian memory, and the ‘glorifying of defeat’ manoeuvre is a way of covering over that hurt. And so with other countries.

  We were pleased that the Larrikin witness shuffled uncomfortably at this information but as usual there was, without any pause for thought, a chorus of ‘bullshit’ from those in the public gallery.

  We had the court cleared.

  Ruling: Gallipoli and Anzac Day does not say anything about defeat or about th
e distinctiveness of the Australian national character when faced with perceived ‘defeat’.

  Sorry.

  It does say a lot about military ingenuity and gallantry.

  PUTTING AN END TO THE MATTER: GENITALS VS. HANDS AND SITTING DOWN TO PEE

  The Office polled Australians on what they considered their chief dilemma.

  It was done not so much as a ‘snapshot’ in the style of Hugh Mackay but more as a ‘hidden camera’ in the style of investigative journalism; that is, the people being surveyed were not aware of what it was that was being surveyed.

  We decided against sampling because of the error factor and decided instead to ask everyone. People hate not to be asked and we think that polls offend by not giving everyone a chance to have a say.

  Our poll turned up a fairly predictable finding.

  Among males the chief dilemma was whether one should wash hands before urinating or after.

  We traced this dilemma to a piece of male folklore which masquerades as wisdom and which imparts that it is more sensible for men (and perhaps women?) to wash the hands before going to the toilet, rather than after, because the genitals are cleaner than the hands.

  Any male under twenty-one who has been in a public toilet has been told this by wise older men at least seventy-six times (Australian Bureau of Statistics figure).

  Geoffrey Dutton even records this piece of lore in one of his fine poems and we have admitted that as evidence in our official findings.

  Our Researchers believe that this erroneous male belief amuses because it is seen as evidence of how bourgeois society always gets things wrong (or perhaps how our parents turned out to be wrong); it is also seen as a delightful contradiction; and finally, it is seen as evidence of the nonsense of official hygiene.

  The ranking female concern was whether men ever wash their hands.

  Or more specifically, women were tormented about whether their sexual partners – men or women – wash their hands before engaging in hand-sex.

  Hand-sex is our homey way of saying ‘digital stimulation’ (to climax or beyond) with partners. Hand-sex without partners was not part of the survey.

  Fingernail care has always been a consideration in hand-sex; of that, more later. Though, at this point, we state that the erotic role and erotic charge given off by painted fingernails is as strong as ever. Which shouldn’t surprise, given the elemental character of fingernails as loving claws.

  If, predicably, life is to be more focused on hand-sex because of the Terrible Time of the AIDS Plague in Which We Live, the fingers and the fingernails will inevitably receive more cosmetic and featured attention and that is one of our Official Recommendations.

  Certainly, we intend to conduct a further telephone poll with special reference to the fashion of heavily be-ringed fingers.

  As a footnote to our survey, it was revealed that men never worry about whether women (or male sexual partners) have clean hands. Probably because most men keep their eyes shut and hope for the best.

  There is another class of men who are happy to take what they get. This report in no way condemns this position.

  The Medical Team here at Our Office went to work on these beliefs and practices.

  Firstly, they said, the whole body is teeming with bacteria, inside and outside; some harmful some not.

  Secondly, they said, it is more likely that potent illness-causing bacteria will be found around and about the genitals. Excreta and the urine both carry, from time to time, dangerous bacteria, especially if the person has been or is ill.

  So, our Medical Team concluded that the genitals are not ‘cleaner’ than are the hands. The genitals are more likely to harbour dangerous bacteria.

  Our Office intends putting out an Edict on the matter effective today.

  Our Medical Team also pointed out that the hands also engage in much minute-to-minute friction which reduces bacterial presence, but that is not the point. It is which bacteria you encounter and where you put those bacteria which matters.

  Unless you are putting your hands in strange places and touching dangerous substances you are okay.

  More so with the genitals.

  On this matter, we speak here as men-and-women-of-the-world. It is much harder to control where the genitals go, what they touch, and what they get up to.

  Given that we don’t know where the hands or genitals of others have been, maybe they should be washed, as our mothers told us, both before and after the meal. Or whatever.

  We hope never again to go into a male public toilet and hear a Wise Old Man tell some kid that the hands are dirtier than the genitals.

  Whether people should wash after sex is another divergence shown up by our studies. It seems that the romantiques believe that you should delay washing for as long as possible (By the way, the results of a supplementary poll of Pastoral Poets on this matter are still not in.) so as to preserve, through odour, the memory of the moment.

  Readers will be amused to know that we still remember the time we first used our hand sexually with a girl at high school after which we kept our hand unwashed for seven months. We are, perhaps, ultra-romantique, even old-fashioned.

  But we digress.

  What we call the hygienists believe you wash both before and as soon as possible after sex. Or preferably the sexual act is performed under a running shower with heavy mutual soaping with a medicated soap which, judging by American movies, is the preferred form of American intercourse.

  As for sex and dirt generally, the experts here in Our Office say it is a question more of aesthetics, symbolism and style.

  But isn’t everything?

  As part of our follow-up study, we interviewed a cross-section of Professional Sex Workers who said that as a rule both the visitor and they shower before sex.

  They said that they were not so much protecting themselves from disease as eliminating body odours.

  The Sex Workers also shared with us the insight that the shower was more than that. That the showering was a symbolic return to some sort of innocence; that there was poetry in the showering.

  Everyone in The Office found that quite charming.

  We have never underestimated the Power of the Shower.

  The Shower accents one set of activities from another.

  The Shower is a way of rearranging the perimeter of the mind.

  The Shower creates attitude. And as our Professional Sex Workers told us, it can be a return to innocence. It moulds us, melts us, sluices us. And is, of course, a purification rite.

  But wet hair, as Helen Gurley Brown said, can be sexually off-putting. The wetdog effect.

  We rush to say that Our Office has nothing against wet dogs. Not that we personally, nor our staff (they wish to have this put on the record) recall that much about wet dogs in our lives.

  Perhaps the odd, friendly stray.

  Some of those polled said that they found newly washed bodies too aseptic to be erotic.

  There is a type of romantique who wants the smells of the body and the smells of life; underarm smells for instance. These romantiques enjoy gutter sex. For them, deodorants and so on spoil it all. We once heard a young woman say, ‘I’m going to the Q bar to get dirty.’

  Anthropologist Mary Douglas was brought in to give evidence to our Inquiry and she told us that she saw dirt and its management as symbolic – involving femininity and cleanliness.

  Mary Douglas stated that, ‘If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notions … This idea of dirt takes us straight into the field of symbolism …’

  Thank you Ms Douglas, you may step down now.

  ‘Dirt is not a scientific fact but a principal means to arrange cultures,’ sociologist Phyllis Palmer told us.

  We concur. Thank you Ms Palmer.

  Theorists Jesus Fuenmayor, Kate Haug and Frazer Ward, told us that, ‘Femininity seems to be defined in terms of how women manage dirt. Women who had servants to deal with dirt were perceived to be more feminine, more ladylike.’
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  We told the Theorists that at Our Office we are very concerned with the problem of cultural and theoretical universals as in ‘The Male’ and ‘Femininity’ constructs.

  That is, all those people who are for one reason or another exceptions to generalised statements about ‘The Male’ and ‘The Female’ are a category which may be larger or at least as significant as the generalised category.

  The Theorists went away musing on our words, and we think that they felt there was a lot of sense in what we said.

  It seems important to clear up the question of soap.

  Soaps do not sterilise. Warm water used in handwashing does not sterilise, although it may dissolve some substances caught on the skin. Soaps dislodge foreign particles and molecules from the host skin.

  Dr Stuart Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston is an outspoken critic of household use of so-called antibacterial soaps. They provide, he says, a false sense of security and may be creating superbugs resistant to bacterial methods used in critical situations in hospitals.

  Tests show that the so-called antibacterial soaps are no more effective than ordinary soap.

  And the medical wisdom is that it is beneficial for kids to ‘get dirty’ – it helps the immune system to mature.

  Washing your hands before and after anything reduces the foreign bacteria on your skin temporarily – for how long after washing anyhow are we ‘clean’? For how long after absolution are we sinless?

  And another thing, those wretched hot air dryers are not ‘more hygienic’, they are less hygienic.

  It is the friction with a towel that removes dirt. The soap simply loosens the particles. Have a look at the hand towel after you’ve used it. It always has some dirt on it. If the soap and water were enough, towels would never get dirty.

  So let’s hear no more nonsense about all that.

  While we are talking about lavatories, why is it considered thoughtful for men to put the seat of the toilet down for women?

  Wouldn’t reasoning then lead women to ‘thoughtfully’ put the seat up for men?