There’s certainly no shortage of slanderous content written about the man. I could curate a three-volume philippic just with the anonymous comments left on various blogs and news sites. They say he’s dangerous. They say he doesn’t represent Canadian values. Some even say that he’s evil. ‘Evil’, as if he were supervillain. But I know Max better than those people do. He’s not evil. What does evil mean anyway? But a certain something does seem to emanate from him. I hesitate to call it a darkness, but it’s something. Something beyond my own projections and interpretations. I submit to the jury last night’s dinner conversation. After a lengthy lull in our conversation, which to this point had been trivial, the accused broke the silence.
“I can recall with uncompromised clarity the feeling of collapsing cartilage against my knuckles. I had entered puberty at a relatively early age and by thirteen I was markedly larger in stature than most of my peers, still a fact today. It was my size that was the focus of ridicule that day. James Colquhoun shared my age but attended a secularized public school that had been erected adjacent to a small forest that has long since been cut down. When he came across me in this forest he was with his brother, three years his senior and whose name was never uttered. All I knew of the family Colquhoun was what my mother would insipidly account to my father at the dinner table. Routinely she would share whispers and canards of neighbouring families to my father who by this point would scarcely feign any interest beyond a mechanical nodding of his head, his eyes ever focused on his plate. Pedestrian as my family dinners were, the Colquhoun boys would likely look upon them with envy. Their father had been in prison for the better part of five years following a violent streak that culminated in the near-murder of a fellow miner for reasons lost to rampant speculation. Apparently his violence had routinely found its way home to Mrs. Colquhoun, though she never once confirmed this. Despite my averted gaze and fast steps, the brothers Colquhoun were intent on engaging with me on my way through the woods. They wanted to know how big my mother’s cunt was that I could be pushed out of it. It was the older brother who said this and it was him I chose to target. It was the first time I had been stirred to the point of violence and it occurred not because I felt an overwhelming need to protect the honour of my mother or what reputation I may have had, it occurred precisely because I did not want it to occur. After the first strike the elder Colquhoun fell to his back and I followed closely, landing on top of him. I can’t say with certainty how many blows my barrage consisted of, but it was roughly a dozen before James through primal volition could separate the two of us. I drew rapid breaths as I looked down upon the mostly still body of the elder Colquhoun, his left eye involuntarily shut and his nose unnaturally displaced, pointing now to the side rather than straightaway. A prayer, for he was not an attractive man to begin with. Wordlessly I resumed my journey through the forest at a pace now even quicker than the one that failed to dissuade my agitator. As the adrenaline produced by the exchange began to fade and the pain in my hand hitherto unnoticed became more pronounced, I remember feeling sympathetic toward James, for it wasn’t James who pitched insults, on the contrary, he was silent during much of the ordeal. Nor was it any fault of James that his father was incarcerated when his presence was needed most. It was about five years ago when I called upon the services of a governmental colleague to locate James Colquhoun, still my same age. He has a family of his own now as it happens. A son and twin daughters. And I wonder about that. I wonder about that rather intently.”
Then, without anticipating a response, M directed his attention to the plate in front of him and began eating the food that had since cooled off. And as I stared across the table at the man who may very soon become the leader of this country, wondering what possible reason he might have had for telling me the story he just did, I couldn’t help but imagine how closely he must have resembled his own father in this exact moment.
XXX
PRURIENCE
“DO YOU CONSIDER yourself a sexual person, Lawrence?”
“Nah-nah-nah not really, no.”
“Coward.”
A slight uneasiness lays its soft and sweatered arms over my collarbone. My response to the parliamentarian’s prodding was pure and I was content to leave it at that, unexcavated and light, disintegrating toward the doldrums I was once forced to read about. No such peace granted for me today as Montblanc provides an addendum to his feathery insult.
“What can you truly know of yourself when you deny your own carnality?”
“I think mmm-my denying, my denying pr-pr-pr-probably says a lot.”
“You are acutely self-aware, my friend, but a coward nonetheless. I won’t subject you to further inquiries regarding your own sins of flesh, but with your permission I would like to share with you some of the more striking examples of the fascinating sexual appetites of my political colleagues, for there is a lesson to be learnt that may well enhance your understanding of this confection I myself must navigate.”
Guilt, guilt, guilt, and then shame, as I was in my mind so eager to assure MM that this was, at this very moment in time, exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘Yes, please tell me all you can of the particularly perverse presentations of politically perpetrated prurient power that occur in the world of the elite.’ I’m fine-tuned, feeding on alien frequencies that describe a world I could never inhabit. Press my face up to the glass and allow me to gawk wide-eyed at the rituals and habits of the uninhibited. Don’t reach over the fence. Don’t throw things into the cage. Don’t make direct eye contact. Follow these rules and a good, family-friendly time is guaranteed to all. Yes Mr. Mole, pray tell me all you can. But wait—modesty, my oldest friend, perhaps I should invite you into this party, that you might keep my frothing mouth wiped and clean.
“If-if-if-if if you think this is imp-imp-important . . .”
“Ah, young voyeur, I knew there resided a dancer within you yet. Very well, but no true names, lest I become the monster I am so often made out to be. And Lawrence?”
“Yes?”
“No interruptions.”
And with that, Big M began regaling me with tales of the licentious tastes of his esteemed parliamentary peers. Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, however on the nose, still strikes me as the most appropriate for those playing conductor at home.
***
“John”, Age: 54. Political Party: Conservatives
A married and by all means a wealthy member of parliament, John willfully put his entire personal and professional careers in jeopardy when he entered into a virtual arrangement with a sexually precocious nineteen-year-old on the other side of the country. Relatively innocent in its inception, John would pay this young entrepreneur via credit card for her services, at the time nothing more than private camera shows. For a set price, our young temptress would provide an hour of her time on the camera, dancing, stripping, talking dirty, masturbating, whatever John’s particular nighttime fancy happened to be. Initially it was her youth, her attractiveness, and her wise-beyond-her-years approach to seduction that appealed to John, but soon an indecent inciting incident occurred that excited him in a way welcomingly unfamiliar. She, with his credit card number on file, decided to buy herself a gift—a lamb skin shoulder bag with an impressive price tag attached. When John confronted her about this unagreed charge, she assured him that not only did she deserve this gift, but he would certainly be buying her many more. After all, she knew who he was, and it would be quite the controversy should his wife or his thousands of constituents find out about their salacious engagements. And with that threat she awoke something in John that had been lying dormant for some time. You see, his immediate reaction was not to change his credit card number, or confess to his wife, or involve law enforcement, rather, he reacted instead by masturbating in a manner so furious and so vigorous that the vitality and untenable urges of his youth returned to him in full insatiable force. From that moment on he obliged to every demand sh
e made, whether it be buying her gifts, paying her rent, her university tuition—she had planned on attending law school after finishing her undergraduate degree, bless her heart—while also providing her with more personal information as she demanded it. His home address, his office location, the name and contact details of his secretary, the school his children attended, and of course, he allowed her to record all their lovingly consensual virtual meetings so in the event that she ever needed to incriminate or expose him it would be easy for her to do. John felt euphoric that a nineteen-year-old girl could, whenever she felt like doing so, destroy everything that he had worked to build, a euphoria that provided him access to orgasms with an intensity that he in his comfortable age had forgotten were possible, while she—only two years older than his own daughter—held the legitimacy of his life in one of her tiny hands, simultaneously using the other to orchestrate the crescendo of his sexual reawakening.
“Jack”, Age: 31, Political Party: Liberals
One of our younger members in the House of Commons, Jack had previously dabbled in the craft of emotional abuse with past partners, though not to particularly noteworthy levels of severity. Though far from perfect—not physically violent, but with something of a temper—Jack and his fiancé had, for the most part, skirted the potential pitfalls of modern romance, opting to keep their increasingly aggressive boudoir experimentation mutually consensual. It was a muggy June afternoon when Jack’s fiancé received the phone call she had anticipated but hoped would never come. ‘Grandma didn’t make it.’ She had wished to be there in person for this cross-country ordeal to say her last goodbye, but the haste with which it all happened complicated her best intentions and travel plans. Powerless and distraught, her tears introduced themselves without delay upon ending the short phone call as she looked to her betrothed for the unfiltered support he was expected to deliver during such times. But, by the absence of divinity, undelivered it was to remain.
Her tears—which he could rightly count on one hand the number of times he had seen previous, for she was a notoriously strong woman, seemingly impervious to expectation—had fostered in him a medley of mixed emotion beginning with a soft overture of curiosity before shifting seamlessly into the main movement of contempt. She must be truly hurting inside. ‘How pitiful’, thought he. He wondered what he might say to hurt her even more, to further widen the schism in her once invulnerable floodgates. A careful balance needed to be maintained, for any words that were conspicuously direct would surely illicit anger, and not the despair that he inexplicably craved.
‘Grandma was probably wondering why you weren’t there. That was probably her last thought.’
As Jack commenced down this line, the tears of his lovely fiancé flowed freer still. Not a particularly elegant man in the way of articulating his feelings, I doubt he could explain to you or I why her tears and his continued torment of her satisfied him so. Nevertheless, he continued.
‘You know people shit themselves when they die. Do you think she was wearing a diaper at the time? What a humiliating way to go.’
And there was his once strong fiancé, collapsed in a leaking pile on the floor, hugging her knees as she wrestled simultaneously with her bereavement and with her bewilderment at the actions of the man whose name she was soon to take.
‘It’s okay, babe, your family doesn’t really like you that much anyway right? I’m sure nobody missed you. The senile old bitch probably wouldn’t have even recognized you.’
Jack’s erection was now visibly protruding from his shorts on this muggy June afternoon as he set about pleasuring himself with his unwavering gaze fixated on the broken object before him. Several hours later he would successfully argue that his actions were the result of confusion and shock. Apologies, please understand. She didn’t, but just a trip, not a fall.
Two months later I sat in the second row of their wedding ceremony, during which the beautiful bride let not free a single tear.
***
A brief silence meets us as, thoroughly engrossed, I use my eyes to encourage the storyteller to continue.
“Tell me, Lawrence, have you noticed a particular theme shared between these two examples?”
“I think, I think so.”
I hadn’t.
“Well, I’d rather not cautiously flirt with the idea so I’ll be direct. The theme is power. It permeates everything”
I can see now that Monty is keen on making a point, venerably sharpened to a lethal tip as he was so often wont to do. But in this instance I’d rather he didn’t. Truth is, my embarrassing thirst for sexual gossip had yet to be quenched. ‘Tell me more, Max, I know we’ve only just covered the tip of this lascivious iceberg, and I’m so enjoying this glimpse into your strangely engrossing world.’ Still, best to indulge him, I suppose.
“W-w-what do you mmmmmm-muh-mean by that?”
“I myself lost my virginity at the age of thirteen to my eighth-grade science teacher. Understand? She taught me of the physical world during class time before proceeding to do the same in a more extracurricular manner. My intellectual virginity, on the other hand, was to remain in tact for a number of years yet. Power. It permeates everything.”
A moment passes before the ribald raconteur demonstrates his own powers of perception.
“Your eyes explicate your intentions, Lawrence. You’re inclined to hear more, aren’t you?”
I was. I point a half-smile in his direction and we share an unvoiced look of secret culpability.
“Very well. But I will caution you against absorbing my words as mere entertainment. Far be it from me to assume responsibility for your moral education, but do remember that a theme is under examination here. And what theme am I referring to?”
“Puh-puh-power.”
“It permeates everything. Alors, let us carry on.”
***
“Jim”, Age: 40, Political Party: Conservatives
Unlike you or I, Jim’s thirst was never quenched by the water of small-town wells. He is a true metropolitan, born and raised amid the social squalor and blasé desensitization that only ferments in the space between skyscrapers. As such, Jim was not accustomed to the company of any animals beyond cats, dogs, rats, and pigeons. He’d never looked his dinner in the eyes and he’d never needed to. A bully on the playgrounds of his youth, he had transitioned—quite successfully—his aggression into the business world, securing for himself a cozy net worth that helped secure his seat in parliament. Jim’s sexual disposition was relatively tame, and while he occasionally called upon the services of escorts, his sessions with them were generally of a vanilla nature. His darker perversions first saw light during a campaign stop at a farm on the outskirts of his jurisdiction.
It was a goat that teased the evil actions that would soon become habitual. A curious goat that continued to harmlessly run its head against Jim’s blue-jeaned leg. A winsome scene that made for a successful photo opportunity. Though he smiled through the ordeal while under the camera’s gaze, once no eyes remained, his annoyance progressed to action. Jim delivered a light kick to the goat’s side in an attempt to shoo him away, but the goat continued his cranial affront against his leg. More intrigued than annoyed now, Jim kicked the goat again, a little harder each successive time. This cycle continued for some time until Jim finally approached the farmer and inquired into the cost of a young goat. $300 a head. Was that it? And I can do anything I want to them once they’re mine? Shortly thereafter Jim had worked out an arrangement with the farmer. When time permitted he would visit the farm and pay $600 cash for one young kid and for the farmer’s compliance.
And what would Jim do with these goats he would purchase? He had sampled a few arrangements to varying degrees of success, but the one he found most effective was to simply wrap his legs around the goat, ensuring that it couldn’t escape, and repeatedly slap it in the face and occasionally the testicles. The more the goat struggle
d, the harder he would hit, finding ecstasy in the pained bleats. When he tired of this, he would lift the goat above his head and throw it down to the ground with as much force as he could manage, usually stunning the creature in the process. Occasionally they would attempt to run away at this point—Jim liked it when they did this and they never made it far. At this point he would usually grab the goat by its hind legs, swinging it around and eventually smashing it on the ground once again. A few more kicks, and the finale—a stomp to the head—and Jim’s session, now a monthly affair, would come to an end. I can’t say for certain whether the pleasure he found in this activity was immediately sexual, though it nevertheless helped satisfy those inescapably familiar desires.
***
I feel my curiosity transition into disgust as the garrulous gossiper finishes his story. I want to stop this now. I want to go back to work. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m a kid who’s eaten too much candy. I’m naked eyes staring at the sun. I am Lazarus, reanimated with a hole where my headache should go. My uneasiness is apparently not a well-kept secret.
“Forgive me, Larry, but do recall a fundamental lesson of Ecclesiastes—with much wisdom comes much sorrow. Power is not something we may inconsequentially accumulate; it is a spire that demands additional nails be driven into our feet with every significant elevation. And what of I, now within grasp of the most powerful political position one can openly attain in this country? Have I not engaged in acts of obscenity more potent or troubling than any of those I have described to you today? Some say that power resembles a muscle in need of consistent exercise. I myself do not fully subscribe to this line of thought, though I do see the merits in this metaphor. Regardless, if there is one lesson that I may leave with you on the subject of power, it would be what?”
“It puh-puh-puh, it puh-permeates everything.”
Panegyric Page 9