Three Minutes
By Jackson Kaye
Published by Jackson Kaye at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Jackson Kaye
All rights reserved.
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Email: jackson AT jacksonkaye.com
1
Three minutes.
That’s all I have.
More than that is foreplay, a waste of time.
This is my new theory.
The first bite of a greasy hamburger, drag of a cigarette, sip of a cold beer. After that, the pleasure wanes.
The best part of sex is penetration.
Not everyone agrees with me. Actually, no-one does. Most people quibble about the time frame – that it should be called three seconds, or one minute.
Pedantic fucks.
My girlfriend made a cruel (and highly inaccurate) comment about my sexual performance.
They’re all missing the concept.
Most of our thrills, what really excites us, takes place in a short time frame.
Long-term mortgages, expensive therapy bills, 40-hour working weeks.
They’re all distractions.
We should be focusing on short-term thrills instead.
You might think I’m shallow, I may not be bald and wearing a kaftan, but I think I’m onto something.
I may not know exactly what it is, but I want my groupies.
Three minutes.
The clock is ticking.
2.
But what if you’re sceptical?
Step onto my balcony between 9:40 and 10 at night and you’ll usually see my fat pasty neighbour posing in front of his mirror. He’ll flex his biceps, suck in his gut, check himself out from different angles. Why he does this naked, the window completely open, I’ll never know: maybe he likes having neighbours watch him, perhaps he thinks he’s a stud.
Two windows across you can see the flicker of his neighbour’s TV on the painted-pink wall of a lounge or bedroom (I can’t tell which). You obviously can’t see the image but you can often hear the sound – they’re particularly fond of reality TV and game shows.
Step back into my lounge room, past my TV, video player, DVD player, stereo, stacks of CDs on the ground, piles of books and magazines in my makeshift bookshelf made of milk crates, through my hallway, past my mould-encrusted bathroom, my furry mat, my orthopaedic slippers (I have flat feet), into my bedroom, over to my bedroom window, and you can peer into another neighbour’s life, if you can call it that, as he’s hunched over his computer at all hours of the day and night, silhouetted by the dark.
Loser.
We all know my three-minute theory, even if we’re not conscious of it, even if we don’t call it that, even if we rarely act on it. Lord knows I never used to.
Actually, I still don’t.
That’s what pisses me off.
3.
There’s a sign in Redfern that says “You are still alive”. It’s painted on a wall on Regent Street and I see it every day on my way to work. At first it cheered me up, making me think, “Well, sure I have no friends, a shitty job and I work in an industrial wasteland, but things could still be worse.” After nine months of working in that rat-infested hellhole, however, of dealing with bosses and subordinates that patronise and terrorise me respectively, of being approached for money every time I venture out onto the street while dodging needles and piles of junkie vomit on the ground, I’ve started to feel differently. I’ve started to feel like the sign is taunting me, teasing me by stating the simple fact: I am still alive. I am still here.
And there’s nothing you can say back to a brick wall.
I work as a regurgitator in a converted factory on Cope Street. I show up around 9:30 in the morning, slink past the snarling receptionist who I suspect is a transsexual (at least, that’s the rumour I’m spreading) and climb the stairs to my little cubby-hole on a floor condemned by the council for being a firetrap. There I sit in my little cell and work with second-rate material sourced from overseas, repackaging it before flinging it back into the newsagencies disguised as local content.
My magazine’s the publishing equivalent of sausages, a shoddy product remodelled from the offcuts of something better.
Called PC Extra!, it’s one of those computer rags trainspotter-types buy for the cover CD. In my resume of ludicrous jobs – I was once the features editor on a porno mag, the content producer on a website no-one went to – this slots in nicely.
Some people may be out there saving dolphins and finding cures for cancer, but I’m sure as hell not.
This job in Redfern, however, beats them all. Every day’s an exercise in stupidity, in decisions being made by a bunch of young underqualified morons hired because they’re cheap. The fact that many are insane is beside the point.
Aside from the trannie there’s James, our suave-looking sub-editor who’s sometimes kind enough to share his rape fantasises and various sleazy opinions with me. Just yesterday, for example, he oozed up and whispered:
“See Jackie over there?”
Jackie is a journalist for a kid’s magazine. She wears thin blouses, tight jeans, a sharp tongue, I’ve always had a yearning for her.
“I reckon she’d have a hairy, smelly pussy.”
What do you say to that? And how do you get that image out of your mind?
(Actually, I must confess that image sometimes turns me on and … Sorry. Never mind.)
There’s Tantrum Tony, my designer with an oddly-shaped head who throws hissy fits on a bi-weekly basis – in our first editorial meeting, for example, he stood up and yelled at me because his computer kept crashing. I don’t know if he thought I was party to some grand PC conspiracy, but even if I were it was only my third day on the job.
There’s the firing squad, made up of two women from management who power walk into my office together and verbally abuse me for trivial mistakes, often their own. Then they march off before I can reply. There’s Mandy, the skeletal advertising manager everyone likes because they never see her whisper to me about how they should all be fired. And of course there’s my boss, the lovely John Anderson, a fat freak of a man with pointy yellow teeth and wisps of sickly pale blond hair pasted over his balding pate.
It’s Anderson who gives me the nightmares.
I usually have at least one a week and they’re always the same. They always feature Anderson watching me have sex with my girlfriend, watching and making his nasty little comments.
“No, that’s not what she wants,” he says, as if criticising a magazine. “That’s not what she paid for. She wants length, stamina, durability. No-one would buy you for that.”
My girlfriend in the dreams never sees him, never pays him any attention, but I do. I pump away while looking at his wan yellow face, his teeth glistening in the darkened room, awaiting his approval that never comes. Approval I shouldn’t want anyway.
I hate those dreams.
I also hate Anderson. He delights in playing power games, in giving you the run around just for pleasure, the cruel sick bastard. If you come up with a cover design he’ll change it, even for the worse, just to have his say. Just to give you more work. And he’ll always keep you waiting. He’ll arrange a meeting for five in the afternoon and delay it till seven, keeping you in that rank, dingy little office until you fill with despair. Until you wonder what you’re doing there.
You know it’s time to resign when you look out your window and think about jumping, if only for a split-second. That’s when you know you’ve hit a new low, when you’ve reached the bottom of your downwardly mobile trajectory.
Some may think that’s childish and melodramatic, some may think that’s normal.
I’m thinking it’s sad and pathetic.
It’s a Thursday night and this is where I am, right now.
Outside night is falling and through the window I hear the sound of street kids hooting.
I don’t have a plan, I don’t know what to do.
I know that I’m depressed.
Actually, I’m depressed and I’m a pussy, but I’m not going to let myself sink too low.
I think of James Bond, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
They wouldn’t live their lives like this.
I have to change things.
I can’t imagine Batman taking this shit.
The phone rings – it’s Anderson.
He tells me he’s ready.
4.
I don’t write my resignation then and there, however, I don’t ditch the meeting.
I walk up to Baldy’s office, wondering what to do.
I try to summon my Batman persona, but right now he’s weaving through the streets of Gotham, he’s leaving me high and dry.
I haven’t figured anything out.
So I go through the motions, servile duties, pants round my ankles, blood trickling down my thigh. I haul myself through the meeting, grinning and saluting, telling myself I need a plan before I do anything.
I still don’t feel good, though, I don’t feel like a man.
Afterwards I labour home on public transport, feeling sick, telling myself I will resign, I just want to tell Bambi of my plans first.
She is my other half, after all.
It’s the only decent thing to do.
In my scum encrusted lair, our sumptuous love nest, I confess all to my beloved who then looks at me with large innocent eyes, those almost doll-like orbs I’d once found attractive, and says, “Oh. That’s a surprise.”
Blink blink.
“Well,” I say, “I’ve been miserable.”
Jamie Oliver’s on TV, grinning like a baboon.
“But I thought you liked that job,” Bambi says.
I’m dumbstruck.
I’ve hated that job since day one, I never fucking liked it, and now she’s staring at me bewilderedly, dazed by my headlights.
Surely she must have known it, a defective child could have known it, I’ve told her before, over and over, my rantings and ravings ...
“Well, yes,” she says slowly, chewing her words like cud, “but I didn’t think you hated it that much.”
But …
How many times have I …
My anger revs ups, I can’t believe she never acknowledged my unhappiness, I want to plant my foot on the accelerator, stomp on it, but instead I do nothing.
Poor innocent Bambi, so close to my bumper bar, so unaware of how I feel.
So where does my aggression go?
Well it doesn’t go into sex, into nasty vengeful intercourse where you take out your frustrations and call it passion. I not only haven’t had sex in weeks, I can’t even remember the last time I wanted it – after a day of office politics, of jamming your finger up a printer’s orifice looking for crumpled paper, of worrying about deadlines and the arseholes at work, only to spend an hour breathing in other people’s bad breath, farts, BO, inane mobile conversations, on an overcrowded bus stuck in gridlocked traffic, you’re too tired, preoccupied, for sex. Hell, you don’t feel human enough to fuck.
And that’s not right.
No, my aggression has to be sublimated because Bambi doesn’t believe in it. I’ve never met someone so allergic to emotion. Throw a cushion across the lounge and she cowers, raise your voice in public and she hushes you, hit your keyboard in frustration and she looks at you like you’re psychotic – “what’s wrong with you?” she demands – and after two years of dating you learn to repress: it’s passive aggressive brainwashing. So eventually the anger becomes residual, toxic, seething under your skin and slowly building like a boil.
I make dinner, have a shower, watch a medical drama with yet another cynically gruff-yet-good-hearted doctor as its hero, and collapse in bed in disgust.
Sometime after three I wake up, sweating, panting, and close my eyes in annoyance.
I’ve just had that nightmare again.
5.
Bambi.
Does she deserve a chapter to herself? Hell no, but I hear the inevitable question: if you’re so pissed off with her then why are you still dating?
So, to briefly fulfil storytelling conventions, here’s how it all happened:
I met her over a year ago in a yuppie city bar
I was with a friend and so was she
Both our friends knew each other
Bambi and I talked, flirted, ignored our friends
Within a week had dirty, nasty sex
Hey, who has time for long narratives? (her hair was raven black, her eyes sky blue …) If you want more detail buy a Mills and Boon, you perverted genre-loving freak.
But what does she do? (legal secretary)
And what is she like? (bovine)
Does she have any hobbies? (she likes cats).
Perhaps if our relationship was worth describing I’d do a better job of this, but it isn’t. I mean, it all started promisingly enough, we didn’t fight (sublimated anger, remember), so we just kept rolling on.
And we never ended it.
The sex ended, of course, or at least faded to use the correct term. It went from phenomenal to good to passable to inadequate. Now, apparently, I don’t “woo” her enough before doing the deed, I don’t “warm her up”… you know, I don’t recall having to warm her up when we first started fucking. But I digress.
Little things annoy us too, but I’ve been telling myself this is normal. Like the way she doesn’t laugh at my jokes anymore, or how I leave my tissues around everywhere (it isn’t like I have cooties).
The question is, do I want to be normal?
Is normal good enough?
What makes things worse is that we are comfortable and have our routine. At night we have a warm body beside us in bed, a person to tell our banalities and problems to (although whether she listens has obviously become questionable), we go out to dinner together which fills in the time, we even, to some extent, trust each other. We may have a loveless existence but it’s cosy nevertheless.
And it’s not human nature to want to end something comfortable.
I tell myself this happens to everyone, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, and I also tell myself that doesn’t make it right. How many people are in bad, boring relationships? People who have affairs, who flirt so they can feel alive again, if only for a few moments, people who see therapists?
I say if you need therapy you need a new relationship.
There’ve been times in the past when I’ve decided to break up with Bambi, axe it once and for all, but then I arrive home to find her grazing on my sofa and it’s just easier to open a bottle of wine and drink than to go through with it.
Avoid another fight, another emotional scene.
But I know James Bond wouldn’t live like this.
I know I have to forget what my parents and those furniture commercials tell me.
After all, comfort leads to more problems than it’s worth.
6.
I never had a problem with explosive diarrhoea until I worked in Redfern. Before then I was normal, porcelain bowls were safe, regardless of what stress I was under. Drinking binges, sleepless nights, sure I went through those – but I still got through the mornings without desecrating public bathrooms.
I thrived on stress until this shithouse job.
Aside from Anderson and the freaks I’ve mentioned there’s Pamela, my bitch deputy editor who makes my life miserable. She hated me from day one because I wasn’t funky enough, because I replaced the previous editor who was a mentor to her, because she has the maturity of a 15 year old.
Nothing I do appeases her.
None of her work is on time, it’s all half arsed, she swans in at 11 and leaves at five, if I’m nice she acts like a bitch, firm she acts like a bitch, rude … bitch.
One afternoon not long after I started I was bored and feeling lonely. I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day – the office is cliquey and since Pamela is popular I, as in high school, am not – and I was desperate for human contact. I went up and asked her how she was.
“Tired,” she spat back.
“Ah,” I said. “I’m not feeling that great either.”
“I don’t care,” she said matter of factly.
I was put off but pretended not to be.
“Well that’s why I like talking to you,” I said. “Because you’re so sympathetic.”
“No,” she said slowly. “You don’t get it. I don’t care.”
I hate that job.
Worse still, editor and all, I’m just the publisher’s bitch.
Whenever I’m called into his office by his anorexic secretary, black leg hair trapped like a furry animal beneath her stockings, I find myself saying yes to his instructions, commands and criticisms. I could say no, of course, I could tell him where to shove it, but I don’t. I’m too sick, scared, unmotivated. But I have enough emotion to dread it every morning and my stomach gnaws in sympathy. It gnaws and grinds from the moment I wake up until I can’t stand it anymore, until I half run/half walk rapidly towards the nearest toilet, gritting my teeth idiotically whenever I pass someone on the way.
It’s a good morning if I make it through public transport and into the office before things get ugly.
This has become my morning ritual, one my stomach follows religiously, and I’m used to it the way a bulimic gets used to throwing up.
But I don’t want it to happen now.
This, after all, is the day I resign.
I’m going to be strong, this is my day.
I’m the man.
I tighten my muscles on the bus into Central.
I’m not going to succumb.
I try not to think about releasing my bowels on the train into Redfern.
James Bond. He wouldn’t soil his Savile Row suit.
Then again, I’m not wearing a suit, but …
Focus.
Walking out of Redfern station, I tell myself I don’t want my body to betray my intentions.
This is my day.
But when I enter the office …
Gritting, walking, my guts performing the Macarena …
Well, you try controlling your colon when you’re under my kind of
pressure. You can’t be perfect all the time, you know. And I’m
starting a new life – it isn’t like I can just change
immediately.
Anyway, after my morning purge I feel better, a new man. Now I can march up to Yellow Teeth, hand over my resignation, regain my manhood.
I will be free.
I go to my desk, tap out my letter of emancipation, and as I walk to the printer I see a man in blue overalls setting up a ladder.
Tradesmen have been coming in and out of the building all week – some say rats have been chewing on the cables, others think Mein Führer is setting up a surveillance network of cameras. No-one really knows.
I don’t care.
I pick up my piece of paper and strut to Baldy’s office.
Toilets will soon know no fear.
“I need to see John,” I say.
The anorexic hair trapper keeps looking at her screen.
“He’s not free till five,” she says into her monitor.
I can see into Anderson’s office. He’s alone.
I lower my voice.
“I’m resigning,” I say.
“Oh.”
She looks up, curious. She picks up the phone, presses a button.
Her arms are as hairy as a monkey’s.
“Are you free?” she says conspiratorially into the receiver. A pause. “David’s resigning.”
Pause.
“Ok.”
She puts the phone down.
“He’ll see you at five.”
I look at Andersen through the glass as he resumes staring at his computer screen, acting as if I’m not right outside.
Motherfucker.
I go back to my desk and stare at the ceiling. I browse the net aimlessly, update my Facebook profile, and enter Anderson’s email address onto mass marketing spam sites that thrive on people volunteering enemies’ addresses, and then walk out of the office.
To think, I shat for him.
I feel ashamed.
The Clover Hotel, a good old-fashioned pub, filled with malcontents and losers, my home away from home. I sidle up to the counter, order a beer and out of a dark decrepit corner I see the dirty old man emerge.
The dirty old man – his real name’s Harold, but what does that tell you about him? – is a bum, and a conceited, arrogant one at that. If you believe everything he tells you he was once a media consultant, an award-winning screenwriter and a newspaper columnist. His stories don’t end there either – in his world The Clover Hotel is the crime epicentre of Sydney, the hotbed where you can get anything from heroin to stolen Porsches and, if you pay the Russian taxi drivers slumped over the tables at 3:30 in the afternoon enough money, a mafia-style kneecapping. Then again, the only thing I’ve ever been offered there was a cheap imitation Rolex.
My drink is placed on the soaked beer rug.
The weird thing is there may be some truth behind his stories – lurking within that booze-addled mind is just enough intelligence for him to have been a fallen consultant, screenwriter or newspaper hack (not that that says much), while some of those taxi drivers certainly look vicious enough.
You just can’t tell.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he says, spraying me with spit as he moves closer to me.
“It’s only been a couple of days.”
“A lot can happen in a few days,” he smirks, as happy as if he’d just fucked a gymnast.
Fetid creature that he is, I actually have affection – albeit reluctantly and mildly – for Harold. He first ambled up to me several months back when I was reading Elizabeth McNeill’s 9 ½ Weeks (a timeless tale of a sadistic and disturbed love affair) at the bar and as I looked up I saw this manic, badly dressed man with a moustache raving about it being a masterpiece of literary fiction and how the subsequent movie version killed it. My primary instinct, of course, was to assume Harold was a horrid man but … I don’t know. There was something about him that registered with me and so I agreed with him wholeheartedly, even though I never saw the movie, and before I knew it he was sitting beside me comparing McNeill to Henry Miller.
Look, if I moved in better circles (I’m imagining a refined bookclub held in a harbourside mansion and comprised of me and several stunning young women with reading glasses all sipping chardonnay on a pool deck) then I’m sure I’d have politely ignored him. But compared to the well-dressed illiterate funky freaks at work Harold was a breath of fresh stagnant air.
Now, unfortunately, he’s just stagnant.
He’s also somewhat unhinged: the second time I saw him, for example, he told me about his dream – which rapidly disappeared – of owning a McHooker franchise.
“Men want women to be like burgers, milkshakes and French fries,” he exclaimed wildly, spit flying everywhere. “We just want to go to the corner, grab a blowjob and some anal and then drive on. Drive-through, fast food sex. It should be franchised! There should be a Blow and Gulp on every corner in the land! What do you feel like? I feel like a B&G, thanks!”
I have to admit, the idea has merit.
“What happened?” I now ask, expecting another ludicrous story.
“I landed the perfect job,” he says, raising his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
“You’re not talking about that consultancy job you mentioned a while back, are you?”
“Oh, no, they didn’t like some of my suggestions,” he says dismissively. “I wouldn’t want to work for those wankers anyway. No, this is even better – I’ll be a part-time janitor in a high school!”
This is unexpected.
“What’s so good about that?”
“Think about it David! It’s only three days a week, I’m left to myself most of the time except when I have to report to the head janitor who is a complete moron, and – this will kill you – I’ve got these nubile teenage girls swanning past me all the time in their uniforms.”
His face is glowing like someone’s shoved a giant candle up his khyber.
“Girls in uniforms,” he repeats. “I’m like a rooster in the hen house.”
“They are underage, you know,” I say.
“Oh, you’d be surprised how well-developed some of them are.”
At the risk of sounding moral, the thought of Harold running amok amongst a herd of innocent schoolgirls disturbs me.
“Don’t you think you should be focusing on women closer to your age?” I suggest. “You know, like grandmothers?”
“Fuck off,” he laughs. “Wait till you’re my age – then you’ll realise teenage girls only get more attractive the older you get.”
I have, I must confess, already noticed that.
“Well, I guess congratulations are in order,” I say, wondering whether I should toast him – but is the moment toast-worthy?
“Thanks,” he says, raising his beer. I tap it gently with mine.
“Nubile girls aside, I have news as well,” I say. “I’ve resigned – or will this afternoon.”
“Really?” he says, almost sounding impressed. Normally he’s too absorbed with himself and nipples to be interested in anything else. “Where are you moving to?”
“Nowhere,” I say, proud of myself. “I’m just going to be unemployed for a while until I figure something out. No matter what, I’ve had it with full-time work.”
Now the dirty old man looks anything but impressed – in fact, he appears as if I’ve failed him. Sometimes I suspect he thinks of me paternally.
“It’s not a good idea to leave a job without something to fall back on,” he says, sounding like a career counsellor.
I look at him incredulously. He’s the biggest bum I’ve ever met.
“You’ve only just got a job!” I say. “You’ve been unemployed the whole time I’ve known you – up till now your income’s consisted of the dole and selling crap over eBay!”
“It wasn’t all crap,” he says. “And anyway, I’m just saying you should have another … income stream.”
He thoughtfully slurps his beer.
“They’re not firing you, right? They’re happy with you?” It’s as if he believes he’s an alcoholic Zen master. “Why don’t you freelance for them? Or consult? Once, I left a job and acted as a consultant to the same company for a while. Rorted them senseless.”
“I couldn’t …”
I trail off. The thought of freelance writing had occurred to me, but consulting …
The “I-fucked-a-gymnast” gleam is back in Harold’s eye.
“Just be smart about how you sell it.”
The idea forms in my head, malevolent and vengeful, as I enter that cesspit of a building. Past the trannie, the roach-ridden coffee machine, up the metal stairs …
“Jesus, did you know there’s asbestos up there?”
The electrician is folding his ladder and, since the office is half deserted, he fixes his indignant glare on me.
“No,” I say, absorbing what he just said. “Asbestos? You sure?”
“Mate, I know what fucking asbestos looks like.”
I look up at the hole in the ceiling that the electrician must have made. I shouldn’t be surprised.
“Shit,” I say.
“I’ll say. Your boss better get that removed if he wants that cabling installed.”
“Ah, sure.”
The electrician looks at me, shakes his head in disgust and leaves.
Tantrum Tony immediately sidles up, like a tubby shadow I can’t shake off. He must have been lurking in the background.
“Did you hear that? That’s all I fucking need. Asbestos poisoning. As if this job wasn’t bad enough!” he rants. “Well I’m not going to work under these conditions. You can find yourself another designer. This is ridiculous.”
I watch Tony’s face become bright red.
“It’s not my fault we work in a death-trap,” I say.
“You’re the editor. Fix it.”
He storms off.
“Not for long,” I say, as soon as he’s out of earshot.
“Asbestos? That’s the first I ever heard of it.”
John Anderson sits back in his chair, a bemused look on his face. He doesn’t seem to care.
“Well, the electrician was pretty sure about it. And now Tony refuses to work until it’s removed.”
“Ah huh.” Anderson leans forward. “And you can’t persuade him otherwise?”
“Well, it’s a bit hard – I mean, there’s asbestos …”
“Uh huh.”
He leans back and fixes me with beady little eyes.
“Tell Tony I’m sending someone in to check out the situation.”
“Okay,” I say, not convinced. “Ah … when will the guy come?”
“Soon.” He gives his usual dismissive smile. “So I hear you want to resign?”
I hate the guy.
“That’s right.”
I hand over my letter, pushing it across the table.
Suck it, baby, suck it.
Anderson glances at it dismissively.
“You know, you’re in line for promotion. You could become group publisher if you stay. Have you got another job to go to?”
“No … I wanted some time to myself.”
He gives me a quizzical look. I think of Harold.
“We’d hate to lose you.”
I think of how he made me wait all day.
“Well, you don’t have to lose me completely,” I say.
I tell him my plan.
The job doesn’t need two full-time people. Bitchface can do all the grunt work, provided she has some guidance – which is where I fit in. I can come in one day a week, give advice, point her in the right direction and oversee what she does. The company would save money, the magazine wouldn’t be any different, it’s time Bitchface was given more responsibility. We’ll give her the title of editor to cushion the fact she’ll be doing twice the work for barely more money.
“Don’t you think she’ll resent you coming in, giving advice and then leaving?” Anderson asks.
I mirror his own Machiavellian attitude.
“She won’t have a choice,” I say.
I think he’s sold.
7.
I’d like to be a bad-ass motherfucker.
I know this sounds wrong, that I ought to be happy with who I am, blah blah, hippie bullshit, fuck off and eat some lentils, but let’s face it: don’t we all want to be someone else? If we didn’t there’d be no pop idols, fashion magazines would be empty, James Bond movies would only have psychos in the aisles.
The thing is, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Why should it be? What I don’t understand is why there has to be a line between fantasy and reality at all. If you want to become someone else, then I say get off your arse and do it. So while I may have the shits everyday and Anderson makes me feel … well, let’s not get too personal here … I think that, with effort, I could develop more, I could become someone better. I could become someone like Bond, or Batman, or … ok, I’ll draw the line at Wonder Woman (although she has got great muscle tone).
This doesn’t mean, however, that I’m currently pathetic. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. When pushed against a wall I still do what has to be done, I wear my trousers buttoned up, but in the past if I could avoid confrontation I always dodged it. So facing up to Pamela, standing up to her and not letting her get to me anymore – well, I haven’t actually done that before.
That’s virgin territory.
Though she isn’t a virgin.
I mean, I doubt it.
Anyway, I think I can stand up to her.
I’m now walking back to Redfern station after my victorious meeting with Anderson, imagining myself in a skin-tight leather suit stalking the streets of Gotham.
I have to remember, hold onto, how good I felt about myself as I strutted out of Baldy’s office. I stood up for myself, got what I wanted, from now on I only have to work a measly one or two days a week. For once I was assertive with my career and it worked. But still … as I wait at the red lights I feel doubt seeping in. Sure, I only have to work one or two days a week, but those are still one or two days in Redfern, with Pamela. I still have to work with her, deal with her shit, even one or two days fills me with dread.
Why does she get to me so much?
I try to push these thoughts out of my head, I shouldn’t care about her at all. I stare at the other people on the footpath, at the bum throwing up on a car parked a block away, at the underage kids strolling out of the tobacconist’s store with an oversized bong, but as I cross the road the thoughts crowd back in.
No. I should rise above Pamela (I think I’ll call her Bitchface from now on), do what I have to do and let everything else slide. I should be a man, bulletproof, I have to stop this pussy footing.
But I still don’t want to talk to her tomorrow.
No, don’t say that.
For fuck’s sake be a man.
I get on the train and move through the crowd. A kid in front of me chews his gum loudly, his mouth open, the smacking sound’s loud and clear. I pass an old wino who smells like he soiled himself, an old woman who keeps blowing her nose vigorously into a dainty handkerchief, I go down into the bottom carriage, looking for a seat and then … and then I see a familiar face that stops me in my tracks. A highly attractive familiar face.
My heart pounds, but I still can’t place exactly who she is.
Her eyes look at me and flash recognition. Then it hits.
She’s the private school girl.
Or was the private school girl.
When I was in high school I had to walk past Brigidine College every afternoon on my way home and I’d always see this girl in her Catholic school uniform sitting outside at the bus stop, this stunning girl with her golden blonde hair (my teenage mind was fertile with clichéd adjectives), limpid green eyes, a girl completely unattainable by anyone – especially me. You see, I wasn’t exactly hot stuff back then.
I am, you might say, a slow learner and at that stage of my life I didn’t understand fashion or style. My glasses were too big, my hair too short (and cut by the local geriatric hairdresser), I wore daggy Kmart clothes …
Well, you get the point.
Anyway, one day as I innocently traipsed by this stunning vision of girlhood called out and said hi, smiling that gorgeous smile.
I was 16 and stupid. I nervously said hi back and kept walking, thinking I was a stud.
Every afternoon for the next several months it was the same. Sometimes my friends were with me and told me I was “in”. Once or twice she’d stop me and we’d talk, briefly, banalities, her name was Angela, I was too nervous to find out much more.
I thought she was beautiful.
Finally, one afternoon toward the end of the year, I summoned my courage.
I’d never dated a girl before.
I went up and asked her out, my heart hammering, nervous as all fuck, and my courage failed, pressed the eject button and bailed, and I found myself stammering. I was barely able to get my words out, I was a nervous breakdown in motion.
She was sitting with a friend, there were smiles on their faces, possibly smirks, I wanted to be swallowed up by the ground then and there and vanish.
She said she’d think it over.
After that day we went back to just saying hi again, but now it became more awkward, this time for both of us. I never got my answer, and after the holidays came and passed I never saw her again.
Until now.
Over ten years later.
And she still looks young, she could pass for a 22 year old, she’s just as gorgeous.
“Hi,” I say, trying to deepen my voice.
“Hi. I know you, don’t I?”
“Yes – you used to laugh at me every afternoon as I walked past your bus stop. I lived near Brigidine.”
“Oh, you!” she laughs, the confusion leaving her face. “I wasn’t laughing at you … well, ok, maybe I was.” She laughs again, and I’m beginning to hope the earth will open up again when she touches my arm. “Sit down …” she pats the seat next to her … “Tell me, what are you doing now?”
“I’m a journalist … I edit a magazine … well, starting today, well technically a few weeks time, I’ll be a consulting editor … you?”
I’m not doing much better than when I was a kid.
“I always wanted to be a journalist!” she exclaims, eyes open wide. “That’s great! Who do you work for?”
She actually seems interested, almost unnaturally and unnervingly so.
“Oh, I work on a variety of magazines – music ones, computer ones, I freelance for others …” I fudge. Why didn’t I work on a cool magazine like Rolling Stone? “You? What are you doing?”
“I’m a primary school teacher … can you believe someone put me in charge of young children?”
For some reason I think of the dirty old man.
“Wow,” I say, trying to match her enthusiasm. “That’s great.”
She could drown puppies for a living and I’d have said the same thing.
“You don’t look old enough to be a teacher,” I continue, trying to compliment her. “I mean, I can still easily imagine you in your uniform …”
A thought occurs to me.
“Although that might sound kinkier than I meant it to …”
She laughs, and now the image of her in a uniform does seem kinky.
The train’s slowing, it’s pulling into Central, my stop.
I think about Bambi, my apartment, the way Angela looked in her uniform, I ought to get off, I can’t believe I’m talking to her, we’re having a conversation, am I better looking now? …
“Where are you heading?” Angela asks.
I’m not leaving her.
“Town Hall.”
The train doors close, a lurch forward.
“So am I!” she says, as if it’s a giant coincidence, as if Town Hall isn’t one of Sydney’s busier stations.
The thought occurs to me that maybe acting in an exaggerated, dramatic way is an occupational hazard for her.
“Do you like teaching?” I ask, even though I hate small talk. I never really mastered the art of doing it without sounding like I’m stretching the conversation.
“I do, though some days more than others … and the other teachers are a little straight,” she says. “But the kids are great. And I like having power over little people.”
She laughs again.
I get the feeling she’s a little crazy, but in a sexy kind of way.
“You know, I’m already talking to you as if we’re close friends,” she says.
The word “already” seems an intimation.
“Are you still friends with the girls you went to school with?” I ask.
“Only a few, but I’m still really close with one – she used to catch the same bus as me in the afternoon – I’m sure she’d remember you.”
Great.
“You look so different now, though,” she says, as if reading my mind. “Better.”
“Well, my glasses are smaller now,” I say. “The ones I had back then were obscene, they made me look like Harry Potter. On a good day. Actually, compared to me Harry Potter could have been a porn star, and now to think of it there is a porn flick called Hairy Pooter and the Sorcerer’s Bone but …”
What am I saying?
“Not that I saw that film,” I quickly add, “or any other porno, for that matter, and it’s a long story how I know about the Potter porn movie ...”
She’s laughing, and says: “I’m sure even if you watched porn you wouldn’t see one based on Harry Potter. And your glasses weren’t … that bad.”
Unfortunately she’s wrong on both counts, but I keep my mouth shut and attempt to smile disarmingly.
The train slows down again, people are getting up, my mind scrambles. I’m thinking Bambi, Pamela, large hideous glasses, getting home, Hairy Pooter …
We step out of the train, onto the platform, up the stairs, through the groin-grabbing turnstile.
“It was nice seeing you again,” I say, trying to sound adult.
“It was nice to see you,” she says, sounding genuine. “Are you busy now? Maybe we can have coffee.”
My mind’s scrambling. Say yes, say yes, thinking of Bambi, Pamela, getting home, meant to be meeting one of Bambi’s couple friends, bored games, Scrabble, oh god, say something, Bambi, I feel like a grotesque freak compared to this girl …
“I can’t. I have to ...” (my mind’s screaming “don’t mention Bambi!”), “go out with my girlfriend, one of her friends – boring but I said yes,” (my mind screaming “IDIOT! IDIOT!”), “but I’d like to meet up sometime …” (MORON! PUTZ!)
Why did I mention Bambi? Why?
“Ok,” she says, a puzzled look in her eyes.
“Maybe you could give me your number,” I say.
I know I’ve fucked it.
“Actually, you should give me yours,” she says, matter of factly.
It’s never good when women use that tone. She takes out her mobile phone.
Game Over.
On my way home to Glebe my mind is screaming, wailing the question: why? I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned Bambi, I knew I should have said, “Yes, I’d love to have coffee,” so why? Why?
I had to get home. Didn’t think she could really be interested in me.
Bambi.
Dinner plans.
Idiot.
Technically, I try to console myself, I did the right thing. According to TV sitcoms we’re not meant to cheat. I did the right thing by Bambi, the honourable thing, but I knew I hadn’t done the right thing, Angela is so gorgeous!
High school fantasy.
I’m an idiot.
Why?
It makes no sense.
I think of mental impotence, no control, Bambi, Pamela, Catholic school uniforms, why? I’d die to go out with Angela, so why did I let it go, Bambi, Pamela, I think about how I have to get control back, control over my life and how I act, what I do.
I have to get control.
The next day I storm into the office, knowing what I have to do, determined not to be a pussy.
Pamela, Angela, all the mistakes I’ve made.
My stomach gurgles but I refuse to acknowledge it.
I’ve made enough mistakes for one week.
I wait until past 11, when Bitchface finally swans in. My nerves turn to anger, how can she arrive so late, each and every day? I call her into my office and hit her with it immediately, I tell her everything. I say I’m promoting her to editor, that I’ll be resigning but act as consulting editor and she’ll get a four grand a year pay rise.
She looks stunned, off guard.
“I’ll have to think about it,” she says.
Whatever.
40 minutes later, predictably, she comes up. She says if she does become editor she’d rather have a deputy than me as a consultant.
No shit.
My stomach burbles like a bucolic baby, but I know what I have to do.
Ignore it. Be strong. And finally, after 29 years of having a big empty space between my legs where my nuts ought to be, grow up and be a man.
“There’s no choice,” I say firmly. “If you want to be an editor …” I pause – we both know this is the only way she could ever be an editor, and she’s young and dumb enough to want it – “this is all we’re offering.”
She’s obviously not happy.
A pout begins to form.
“I guess I have no choice,” she says sulkily.
I feel triumphant, like I’ve just had sex with a porn star or defeated an evil villain. Then again, I suppose it’s probably the villains who get the porn stars while the heroes land the nice girls, like Spider-Man with Mary Jane …
Either way, I really want to masturbate.
8.
The company’s a revolving door of disgruntled employees and almost every Friday there’s a farewell party. Last week, for example, it was for Kim, a bonny big-breasted Scottish lass from subscriptions who everyone liked. I’d see her chat with people in the corridors and have drinks and lunches with her pod mates, although when I once tried talking to her she just gave me a polite reply before turning away.
Haggis muncher.
Today’s party celebrates the exodus of both myself and Rod, a perpetually unshaven accountant who wears white shirts with dried yellow sweat patches in the armpits. In his forties and thus older than most in the office, he assumes a father-figure status although he isn’t loyal to his children – like my advertising manager he loves nothing more than to bitch about them. Well, except for spitting on the ground compulsively like a carnie, which he really seems to relish.
And yet he, too, is liked by most people here.
“We’re doing the right thing mate,” he says conspiratorially to me as he leans against my office’s crumbling wall. It’s after three in the afternoon and we’re killing time.
“Yeah,” I say, wondering whether he can smell the tequila on my breath. A PR firm once sent me the bottle and I’ve kept it in my bottom desk drawer ever since.
I’m not sharing it.
“This place is a viper’s nest. You can’t trust any of them - they’re all scum.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” I agree, wondering what he says about me behind my back.
“Yep, we’re doing the right thing.”
Two hours later, surrounded by the vipers at the farewell, he’s apparently changed his mind.
“I’ll miss you all,” he says humbly as he looks at the gift he’s been given, a small metal cigarette lighter with the word “Rod” engraved on it. “This company was great to work for and I’d like to think we could all remain friends.”
The lying bastard.
Oh – and all I get is a stinking Parker pen.
9.
I open my eyes, feeling drowsy, and peer at my alarm clock.
It’s almost midday.
I close my eyes and yawn.
My mind starts assembling facts.
It’s Monday.
The weekend’s passed.
I don’t have to go anywhere.
If I wanted to, I could just keep sleeping.
I turn over on my sheets, luxuriating in the freedom, and wallow.
No work.
No Redfern.
Most importantly, no nutlickers from the office to torture me.
I lay back and think.
The world is my oyster.
…
What will I do?
I have vague memories of Bambi leaving earlier. Sounds of the toilet flushing, kettle steaming, shower, hairdryer, the scent of perfume.
The door slamming behind her.
Gone to work, sucker, while I drifted back to sleep.
She’s on the corporate treadmill, while I’ve stepped off it.
I now have free time.
Freedom.
No work-related tension.
But …
What do I do now?
Without the arseholes to work with, what is there?
Leisurely breakfast.
Daytime TV.
I should relax …
…
I’m feeling a little nervous.
Did I do the right thing?
Money.
What will I do? The contract work I sold Anderson on isn’t enough to live well on.
It barely pays the rent.
Freelance? Depend on Bambi?
How could I have dismissed these questions so easily before?
I’m feeling a little flushed.
Work is a fucked-up way to spend my time, but will I find something better?
I’m meant to find something better, I think, my heart beating faster.
Calm down.
I have to make the most of this or I’m screwed.
I’m stupid.
Now I’m thinking all this?
The dirty old man may have been right.
Money.
Security.
I’ll come up with alternate plans …
…
What plans?
I’m feeling clammy.
I don’t want to think about this right now. I want to go back to how I was when I just woke up.
Distract myself.
I slide my hands downtown and fondle myself.
Hmmmmm …
it’s pleasant, but …
but …
I pull off my boxers, toss them over the side of the bed, try harder.
Nothing.
I’m feeling flushed again.
Nothing’s moving.
I try to think of Pamela, naked and begging for my hard manhood, but my mind won’t focus.
My peeper’s not stirring.
Oh fuck.
What’s wrong with me?
What if I’m now both impotent and poor?
Great, two birds with one stone. I’m a genius!
I flop it around, Pamela’s telling me how sexy and authoritative I am, but …
Shit.
My recalcitrant penis just lies there stubbornly.
Shit shit shit.
Calm down.
Don’t be stupid.
Ignore my cock’s taunts.
I’ve had difficulties in the morning before, not often, mind you, but …
I just have to relax.
It’ll be fine.
My heart beating fast.
It’ll be fine.
I’ve been through this before.
Get a grip.
Think Batman. He wouldn’t panic.
But what if Batman’s impotent? That suit does look constricting.
I close my eyes, trying to calm down.
I’ll try again later.
I just have to be patient.
Calm down.
I stretch out.
Think about something else.
Calm down.
Time stretches, the day stretches before me.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Every day.
Free.
…
..
!
I crawl off the bed and take a shower.
10 minutes of the day gone.
I’m still nervy.
I tell myself I’m not impotent.
I make myself peanut butter toast and coffee.
Another five minutes gone.
Most of the day still to go.
I slump on the couch and turn on the telly.
One channel: A US talk show on Twitter love affairs. Another channel: an American soap opera.
Crap.
I flick again, and again, find TeenWolf, a dodgy 80s comedy in which Michael J. Fox plays a guy who turns into …
Crap.
The peanut butter toast and coffee, however, are nice. Actually, they’re really nice. Peanut butter alone is good, coffee great, but eat them together and it’s alchemy …
This gourmet treat soothes me a little, and as teenage girls in 80s clothes parade on screen I find myself relaxing, settling in, warming to TeenWolf.
I’ve had morning trouble before, I remind myself again. It’s just a momentary thing. Relax.
And you know, this movie’s actually better than I gave it credit for. Sure it’s an odious concept, tacky and cringe-worthy, but there are one or two cute moments, even arty flourishes, to be found … a hidden intelligence …
I become engrossed.
When the film ends I turn off the TV, feeling satisfied, and go to the hi-fi. Art house fans be damned, I like that film. And I’m not poor yet, I have some income, everything will work out. I have time to work it out. And impotence my arse, Mr Peeps just didn’t wake up yet. It’s early. But wait till later, when I have a few drinks … that always does the trick, not, mind you, that it happens all that often …
T-Rex’s Get it On is playing on the radio, I love this song, it must be a sign. This day is going to be great, my day will be great, I can turn things around.
What can I do that the office drones can’t? What can I do to make the most of my time?
I’m shaking my hair in time to the music when it hits me.
It’s what Teen Wolf would do, if he didn’t live in the Midwest.
I look for my boardshorts.
To think: before now my life sucked.
Before now I was stuck in a shithouse job, working in a hellhole, pissed off as all hell and wanting to twist the heads off coworkers. Now I’m lying on fine pale sand, water before me, surrounded by more nubile teens in skimpy bikinis than I can count.
I’m in coconut-scented tanning-oil heaven.
This is life.
The morning’s perils are fading.
I can do anything I want. Well, almost. And I will again, soon. But I have to stop worrying about the Peepster. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I hadn’t been to the beach in over a year but now, without even really thinking about it, I went because it just seemed like the right thing to do. I had an itch and I scratched it.
I’m in control.
I turn to my side (I have a cheap bath blanket under me, and I make a note to buy a proper beach towel) and look at the 19-year-old lying topless with friends just two metres away. I perve at her B-cup breast, her left nipple staring at the sky, and think about how it’s so different to Bambi’s nipple, almost exotic, how I just want to kiss it, caress it, devour it.
Lying here, right now, I realise I’ve done the right thing.
I can sort out money later.
Priorities, that’s what it’s all about.
And relaxing …
I stare at the breast, wanting it, desiring it. I want to slide my tongue around the nipple, the skin looks so smooth, so brown …
And then I think of Bambi.
You know, I don’t feel this way about her breasts anymore.
I ought to, though, I ought to be able to touch a breast I actually want, I ought to …
A negative, positive thought hits me.
That’s what’s wrong: Bambi.
That’s it.
The more I think about it … the more it makes sense.
I can start all over again.
I wasn’t happy with my job, so I left. Why not do the same with Bambi?
It’s so cold, logical, it’s almost chilling.
But the logic is impeccable.
Of course, I’ve wanted to break up with Bambi before, after fights, disagreements, stupid things she said and idiotic things I’ve done. I’ve told you all this before, I know.
But now there’s a giddy thrill, it’s not just me thinking I ought to do it – now I genuinely want to. I feel a charge, this time the idea of breaking up feels different: I will change my life, not just grumble about it, I will make it better.
Jolly Roger’s stirring downstairs and it’s not just from the nubile nipple. It’s alive!
I’m not impotent!
I find myself smiling, happy, and as I look out at the sea, at the surfers carving up the waves like men, I want to take a mental snapshot, remember how this moment feels. Right now, everything is perfect. This is what life’s about.
I’m so happy, in fact, I ought to make the beach a regular part of my life. Why not? I have the time. Surfing may be going too far – I’m not exactly the physical type (although I hasten to add that I’m remarkably agile) but maybe I should get a bodyboard. I imagine myself hanging out at the local milkbar in the afternoons, board by my side, surfer kids talking to me, I’ll be part of the scene.
Yeah.
I’m getting hot just lying on the sand, I don’t know how these girls sunbake for so long, it’s time I jumped into the water. I reach into my bag and dig out my secret weapon: a pair of flippers some PR company once sent me for a reason I can’t remember. PR companies always send crap to tie in with some event or other and my apartment is littered with the devil’s caps, pens, cocktail shakers … I even have a pillow case riddled with the logo of a condom manufacturer. I wobble the flippers in the air, wondering whether to use them. I’d never worn a pair before, but when I packed them today I had this vision of me swimming effortlessly through the ocean like a Jewish seal.
It’s worth a shot. It might even attract the attention of those nubies.
I put them on and waddle down to the water, feeling ludicrous and only just keeping my balance. I fervently pray the topless girls aren’t watching.
The beach is alive and filled with background noise. There are guys lobbing a mini football at each other, brats careening around screaming, teenagers in groups talking and jabbing at each other, and the sound of the lifeguards’ whistles periodically going off.
I wade into the water – it’s cold! – and splash a lot as I head into waist deep territory. There are kids all around me, tubby toddlers surrounded by inflatable rings, boys with mini bodyboards trying to catch the kiddie waves.
I have no idea how to use these flippers. I dive in, stretching out my arms and kicking my feet, but I don’t get anywhere. I try to move my arms as if I’m swimming freestyle, but I don’t really know how to swim freestyle and so I remain in the same spot. My feet are just splashing aimlessly, they’re not propelling me.
I stand up again and try to figure it out. Maybe I have to keep my feet more underwater? I try again, my arms and fins thrashing, I hear kids, teenagers, whistles in the background, I’m basically stationary, I can’t move far. How hard can it be? Why aren’t I moving? This time I try doing breaststroke, I’m better at that, when something grabs me around the arm, scaring the shit out of me – a giant octopus?! – and yanks me up.
What the fuck?
I squirm around to see a stony-faced brute of a lifeguard towering over me.
“You have to get out,” he says, in a thick Austrian accent.
I’m being rescued by the Terminator.
His hand’s still gripping my arm.
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