Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause you’re the only one who can save me, man!’

  17.

  A GROSS INVASION Of PIRACY

  Razz grabbed a hold of Jess as well and we were both dragged through the door and up to the front of the next classroom where Sally was looking confused.

  ‘Go on, tell him. Tell Ishmael what you just told me.’

  The confusion on Sally’s face deepened along with the colour in her cheeks.

  ‘But this isn’t Ishmael’s problem. It’s got nothing to do with him.’

  ‘It has. Just tell him … please.’

  Sally pushed her hair back behind her ears and took a deep breath.

  ‘OK. When Jess and I were on camp she told me … that on the day we did that filming at my place … someone had set up the video camera in my room … to film her while she got changed. And she said the person who was in the room just before she went in … was Razz.’

  Razz’s eyes were fixed on me like satellite dishes. ‘See! See! Tell ’em, Ishmael! Tell ’em!’

  I told them.

  ‘Razz didn’t put the camera there. It was Bill.’

  Sally and Jess looked at one another. They each pulled a weird face and laughed a bit.

  ‘Bill?’ they said in unison before Sally took over. ‘From what I know of Bill, I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t do something like that. Anyway, he wasn’t the one who was going to see it. Only the person doing the editing would. And we all know who that was.’

  ‘Tell ’em, Ishmael! Tell ’em!’

  That seemed to be the only thing Razz appeared capable of saying any more.

  ‘Bill didn’t mean to put the camera there. It was an accident. He just left it on the bed and forgot to turn it off. I saw him do it when I was looking through the other shots with Razz.’

  ‘That’s right. What Ishmael said. That’s exactly what happened. And I still got that shot of Bill doing it.’

  The girls exchanged a frown.

  ‘But if you saw Bill you must have seen me too.’

  Razz and I nodded at Jess.

  ‘Then Razz … how come you didn’t say anything to Sally or me straightaway after you watched the video? Why didn’t you defend yourself then?’

  Now it was our turn to frown.

  ‘Defend myself?’ Razz said. ‘Against what?’

  ‘Against all the things I called you when I saw that little green light on top of the camera and worked out it was still on.’

  ‘You saw the green light?’

  ‘Yeah, you’d have to be an idiot to miss it. I saw it just in time but. Then I totally gave you a gob full before I switched it off.’

  Sally was really frowning hard at Razz now.

  ‘How could you guys not know that? If you watched all the tape, you must have seen Jess do that.’

  ‘We only saw her come in. We didn’t see the rest,’ Razz said. ‘Not the very last bit.’

  ‘How come?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Because we stopped it. As soon as we saw Jess was about to whip her top off, we stopped the video.’

  Both Sally and Jess were studying Razz now like he’d just claimed that not only was Elvis still alive, he was actually working part-time at the local supermarket – along with his friends John Lennon, Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson.

  ‘You’re telling us you stopped watching the video just before Jess took off her top?’

  Razz was nodding now like his life depended on it. Both girls kept their eyes speared on him waiting for him to crack. He didn’t. So they plunged their eyeball spears into me. I felt like breaking down and confessing even though I was innocent.

  ‘It’s true, Sal. I was there. We stopped the video when we saw what was going to happen, you know with Jess and the top and everything … and then we recorded over it.’

  Lucky the ceiling was there, otherwise Jess and Sally’s eyebrows would have been heading into deep space by now.

  ‘You guys stopped the video … and then you recorded over it?’

  This time I gave Sal the good old ‘life-depending-on-it’ nod. The girls seemed too stunned to speak. Razz, on the other hand, had no such trouble.

  ‘Yeah, of course. What do you think we are? Perverts or … peeping Toms or something?’

  I shot Razz a quick warning glance. He completely ignored me and charged on.

  ‘I mean, if Jess wanted us to see her undress she would have got changed in the lounge room, right there in front of us, while we all just sat back and watched.’

  This concept seemed to derail Razz’s concentration and he wavered a bit before finally reboarding his train of thought.

  ‘Ummmmmm … So … like I was saying … of course we stopped the video and recorded over it. Watching it would have been so wrong, man. It would have been, like a, like a … a gross invasion of piracy.’

  ‘Ah, I think that would be “privacy”, Razz.’

  ‘What? Oh yeah, yeah, of course … privacy,’ Razz said, sending me a warning look of his own. We were involved for a moment in a silent eye-to-eye battle before Jess let out a moan that startled us out of it.

  ‘Awwwwwwwwwwww,’ she wailed like she was in pain. ‘That is so sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! You guys are amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing! You are both totally made of awesome!’

  Jess rushed at Razz and wrapped him in a bear hug. Then she flung her arms around my neck and squeezed her body so tight against mine we could have been two Lego blocks clicking into place. When Jess finally levered herself off me, she stepped back and looked around at the rest of us with an uber sad clown face.

  ‘I’m really, really sorry. I’ve been such a dumbo blonde. What a klutz! I should’ve known you guys wouldn’t do anything sicko like that. Ooo! That reminds me. I better ring Brad and tell him. He’s like totally planning to punch your lights out, Razz. Isn’t he sweeeeeeeeet!’

  Jess pulled out her mobile and headed for the corridor. Sally took Razz by the hand.

  ‘I’m really sorry too.’

  Razz shook his head sadly.

  ‘I just don’t understand how you thought I’d do a thing like that. Me? I mean, even if Jess got filmed accidentally I can’t believe you’d think I’d watch it. Man, that’d be like … like … finding a bank vault open and stealing the money and saying it was OK because you weren’t the one who opened it. It just wouldn’t be right. It’d be … wrong.’

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes in case Sally saw me.

  ‘It’s like I said before, Sal, we’re talking about privacy here. And I reckon privacy is one of the most basic rights any …’

  ‘It was Ishmael’s idea not to watch the video, wasn’t it?’ Sally said flatly.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Razz answered immediately.

  ‘Probably had to twist your arm, right?’

  ‘Posssssibly.’

  Razz grimaced and squinted at Sally as if he was bracing for a punch. But Sally didn’t come out swinging. Instead she stepped forward and planted on Razz’s lips the biggest, juiciest, most lingering-est kiss ever. When they finally separated Razz looked like he’d had most of his energy and a good portion of his brain sucked from him.

  ‘What was that for?’ he said like he’d just woken up.

  Sally smiled her best heart-melter smile at him.

  ‘Your reward … for letting your arm be twisted.’

  ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Which was an awesome effort on my part. Huge. So I was thinking maybe I deserve …’

  ‘Don’t push it, Orazio,’ Sally said with all the finality of a guillotine. Then she turned to me.

  ‘Thanks, Ishmael. I’m so glad you’re Razz’s friend. I don’t know what he’d do without you.’

  Then she gave me a big hug.

  I was glad I was Razz’s friend too. But later that night as I walked alone behind Razz and Sally and watched them holding hands and laughing together, I couldn’t stop myself imagining what it would be like to swap places with the Razzman. Even just for a little while.


  Yeah, right, I thought as I shook the idea from my head, like that’d ever happen.

  Year Eleven

  Semester Two

  This above all: to thine own self be true,

  And it must follow as the night the day,

  Thou canst not then be false to any man.

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1 scene 3, lines 78–80

  18.

  THE ALCOHOLIC DANE

  Our first semester of Senior School finished in the usual blaze of assignments and exams. A few people were warmed by the glow, many suffered minor burns and some perished in the inferno.

  Debating-wise, the second semester didn’t start too well. Our third-round contest resulted in an unexpected loss. Miss Tarango diplomatically described the judge’s decision that night as ‘just a little curious and hard to fathom’. Razz described it as ‘totally mental, man!’ When Miss reminded him that we must never criticise the adjudicators he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right, miss. You should never speak ill of the brain-dead.’

  The loss meant that our hopes of making the fourth term debating finals now hinged on us winning the final round. We had gathered in the library to prepare for just that, but as usual Razz wasn’t quite with us.

  ‘Hamlet? We’re doing Hamlet? I still don’t get why Slattery’s making us do Hamlet when all the other classes get to do Macbeth, which is heaps better ’cause it’s way shorter.’

  Razz and Mr Slattery had already had a discussion on this very issue in a previous lesson. It went something like this:

  ‘Hamlet? How come we’re doing that, sir? Everyone else is doing that Macdeath one.’

  Mr Slattery hoisted up his trousers by the belt to make sure they remained unfashionably high on his thin waist. Everything about him was neat and precise, from the razor-sharp creases on his pants and shirt, to his never-out-of-place, slicked-back, straight-from-a-bottle, fiery red hair. He waltzed across to Razz’s desk. Literally. As well as teaching English and French, Mr Slattery was apparently an enthusiastic ballroom dancer. He posed in front of Razz with one hand on his hip. If you threw in a cape and a couple of those swordy things, he would have made a pretty good bullfighter.

  ‘That would be Macbeth, Mr Zorzotto, and while that is a very fine play indeed – a masterpiece in fact – we are doing Hamlet because I believe it shows Shakespeare’s genius at its most … sublime.’

  Razz didn’t look like he was that into ‘sublime’.

  ‘But how come we’re doing some play written thousands of years ago anyway? Why can’t we do something relevant?’

  After twenty years of teaching, Mr Slattery was fully prepared for this and his eyes lit up. ‘Oh, Hamlet is relevant, Mr Zorzotto. It’s all about the conflict between thought and action. You see, Prince Hamlet – or the Melancholy Dane as he has become known – is a thinker, philosopher and poet and yet,’ Mr Slattery said, shooting his finger into the air Prindabel-like, ‘he is called upon by his father to be a warrior, an action hero if you will. As such, Hamlet finds himself torn between thought and action, between thinking about the deed and the doing of it. I’d say the issue of thinking before you act is relevant to everyone, particularly teenage boys like yourself, Mr Zorzotto, who tend to be somewhat impetuous in their actions from time to time.’

  Razz wasn’t impressed.

  ‘What, so the play’s just about some prehistoric prince dude who sits around thinking about doing stuff but doesn’t actually do anything?

  Mr Slattery tapped his fingers together like a spider bouncing on a mirror. ‘Well, yes … that … and murder, revenge, incest, betrayal, death, madness, suicide, love, lust and the supernatural.’

  Razz stared back, unimpressed.

  ‘What? No car chases?’

  Mr Slattery pretty much gave up trying to convince Razz of the benefits of studying Hamlet after that.

  Back in the debating meeting Razz scrunched up his hair in frustration.

  ‘And can someone tell me why those dudes didn’t speak English back in Shakespeare’s time? I haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about most of the time. And another thing, old Willy’s supposed to be a genius, right? Well, instead of all that talking, why not just have Hamlet’s old man come back from the dead and say, “Hey, Hammy, that Claudius dude knocked me off so he could be king and pinch my wife. Kill him for me, will you?” And then just have Hamlet say, “Sure, Dad. You bet I will. Watch me go.” That way at least something would happen and we’d get to see some action. Plus it would be way shorter.’

  ‘Interesting theory,’ Scobie said. ‘You don’t think it might undermine the complexity of Hamlet’s character just a touch?’

  ‘Aw, man, don’t talk to me about Hamlet’s character. I’ve had a gutful of old Slats rabbiting on about the Telescopic Dane or whatever he calls him.’

  Prindabel had his head buried in a New Scientist magazine, and without lifting his eyes off the page he raised a crooked finger into the air and mumbled, ‘Melancholy Dane.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for your input, Professor Pointer. OK, yeah, right, the Alcoholic Dane, whatever.’

  Prindabel’s finger rose up again in silent protest before losing interest and sinking back down to the desk.

  ‘All I’m saying, Scobes, is, wouldn’t it be better if Hamlet forgot about everything else and just got on with it?’

  ‘Perhaps we could discuss that at some other time, Orazio,’ Scobie suggested, ‘because what we really need to get on with is preparing this debating topic. We’re up against Claremont and they’re easily one of the best teams in the competition. If we can’t come up with some very solid arguments to match theirs, then we will certainly lose this next debate and then we’ll be out of the finals again.’

  Unfortunately, to put it simply, we couldn’t, so we did, and we were.

  19.

  THE ACCELERATED JEDI COURSE

  A few days after our fourth-round debating defeat, Scobie scheduled his usual debriefing and review meeting to find out what we did right, what we did wrong and how we could improve for next year. We didn’t know it, but we were about to find out something a lot more than interesting than that.

  As usual, Razz was the last to arrive.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Herr Scobemeister. Uniform detention. Hey, by the way, any of you guys seen my tie? Or my Senior badge? No, forget it, doesn’t matter. Listen up. You know how I’m going to the Lourdes Semi-formal with Sally?’

  How could we not? Razz had been talking about it non-stop for weeks.

  ‘Yeah, well, some chicks still haven’t got partners so they’re looking for volunteers. Just going to draw names out of a hat and match people up. You guys wanna be in it? Come on, it’s two weeks from this Saturday.’

  ‘That rules out Ignatius and me,’ Scobie said, checking his student diary. ‘We’re away on the Accelerated Science Course that weekend. It’s live in.’

  Razz let out a high whistle. ‘A two-day science slumber party, eh? Wicked! You guys must be nearly bursting your Bunsen burners with anticipation. Now make sure you pack plenty of clean lab coats, you hear? Oh, and at dinner time, be sure to remember your Periodic Table manners.’

  Scobie gave an exaggerated Cheshire Cat-type smile. ‘We’ll take lots of notes and photos and post them on your Facebook page, Orazio.’

  ‘Peachy, Scobes. I am fighting so hard to contain my excitement, and hey, what do you know? I have. So OK, you guys are definitely out. But what about you, Ishmael? You might get lucky and draw out another Kelly Faulkner.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Razz. I don’t want to be matched up with someone I’ve never met.’

  ‘What are you worried about, dude? Stranger Danger? Well, never fear. The Razzman will come to your aid if some chick refuses to take advantage of you.’

  ‘Gee, thanks, but I think I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Come on, man! Hey, maybe I can get Sally to pull some strings. You know, make sure you’re not lumped with one of those brainy chicks who look like the Bride of Franken
stein or something.’

  ‘So how did that History of Feminism unit work for you, Orazio?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Scobie said and began humming a few bars of what sounded suspiciously like ‘I am woman’. Razz ignored him.

  ‘So what do you reckon, Ishmael?’

  I shook my head. I was sick of being talked into stuff I wasn’t sure about. I didn’t care if Razz thought there was something wrong with me. For once I wanted to go out with someone I chose.

  Razz rolled his eyes at me. ‘All right, dude, yeah, whatever.’ Then he waved across the table at Bill.

  ‘Hoop Boy! Looks like it’s left to you, Billy, to fight off all those desperate chicks. Better bring the light sabre along.’

  Bill shifted his eyes around the table and mumbled, ‘Sorry, Razz … I don’t want to go either.’

  Razz slapped his forehead.

  ‘You too, Bilbo? What’s your excuse, man? Got the Accelerated Jedi Course on or something? Or are you too busy moping over some chick who’s a million miles away like Ishmael here? Come on, dude, what’s your problem?’

  The vague clouds seemed to shift from Bill’s eyes a little as he focused them on Razz.

  ‘I haven’t got a problem. Just don’t want to go, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, why not?’

  Bill shook his head. ‘Not really … interested.’

  ‘Not interested? Not interested? How can you not be interested? There’s gonna be food, dancing and chicks,’ Razz said, holding up a finger for each item. ‘I’m thinking that’s gotta be pretty close to three out of three for you, big guy.’

  Bill stared hard at Razz then down at his own chubby hands.

  ‘Two out of three … if you really want to know.’

  ‘Well, forget the dancing then. Just feed your face and hit on the chicks. It’ll still be a top night.’

  Across the table Bill gave Razz’s words some serious thought before he replied.

  ‘It’s not the dancing. I like dancing,’ he said. ‘I used to dance all the time when I was little. Mum and me used to dance to her old tapes. The ABBA ones were the best.’