by Peter Marks
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Half an hour later Wright thought he’d seen God but it was only his imagination. God told him. As did Kelly when she woke him (Wright, not God). Hissing loudly in a cave echo ear, she recommended he move or prepare for immediate cremation. Wright nodded drowsily.
Having fallen asleep in front of the television, he’d chanced upon the omnipotent one dressed in a white suit selling insurance. Or so Wright explained to Kelly as she led him toward the shower telling him he’d been dreaming but enquired anyway as to what sort of insurance God sold.
‘Life Insurance,’ Wright replied.
Of course. Ask a stupid question get a Nathan answer Kelly sighed, chasing him out of the soiled hockey uniform and stood leaning on the wall watching him strip for the shower to make sure that this time his unclean extremities touched water.
Saw that Nathan was indeed touched.
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Saturday Wright had played and partied, Sunday he’d been hungover and he’d spent most of Monday complaining about just about everything to any-one who was interested (i.e. only the man in his mirror) so that night Wright decided it was about time he did something about himself and the way himself was leading his life.
So on Tuesday Wright tried to change his attitude.
Firstly, he attempted to embrace the morning instead of loathing it as he normally did, and had done for most of his life earnestly experimenting with his attitude that superlative Tuesday morning when, showered and sanitised, Nathan launched himself out the front door smiling and whistling, listening to the birds sing and his lungs breath the fresh dewy air.
Closing the front door gently behind him, he twirled elegantly, rotating lightly on one extended leg before almost falling over the unwelcome mat.
Quickly recovering his poise, he glided onto the porch, then danced down the steps tapping his way from one to the next and pirouetting on the last to soft shoe shuffle down the garden path. The new Nathan was off to work.
From behind the high front fence the paper boy, one of a litter of ten children born of Lebanese parents (and the fattest of the lot) was delivering the morning news when a peculiar vision from the house beyond the fence distracted him from his duties. He saw a performing lunatic coming at him from down the garden path, watching in open mouthed amazement as Wright came waltzing toward him.
In trembling trepidation, his posterior was spread across the bicycle seat like a pudding on a plate, the two vast hemispheres of the kid’s fat, broad bum oozing fluidly over either side of an almost invisible leather saddle. He watched paralysed. Seeing Wright playing fairy Fred Astaire, straddling the blue and gold painted bike, its steel frame groaning under the weight of the day’s news and the kid’s bulk, the paper boy stopped stuffing.
And started howling.
Refused to insert the morning paper in Wright’s letterbox, glaring instead of delivering, staring flabbergasted at the fairy princess who was bouncing delicately toward him. The kid had seen this sort of thing on the late night horror shows on the TV so he knew how to cope.
He yelled POOFTA loud enough for the neighbours to scream AIDS.
The Waltzing Wright stopped whirling while the kid fled having decided to make a run for it, deciding it was time for a fast get-away and, chucking Wright’s paper on the wrong lawn, sped off in a blur of flashing feet pedalling for his life. And virginity.
Such a harsh audience proved to Wright that he was right. That he had always been Wright both in attitude and name and particularly about morning’s so he went back to his original summation- that they were a bloody waste of time.
Wright hated being called a poofta so he swore then and there never to dance pre noon ever again. And so waltzing now joined fornication on the list of morning no no’s.
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It wasn’t a bad day as days went and they went faster than Wright’s metabolism was. He was getting older, his arteries were getting clogged. His lungs wheezed and coughed in rebellion every time he drew breath getting really pissed off with him each time they were assaulted by another cigarette (which was every second breath according to the now liquid sacks).
Nathan’s body was decaying as surely as the leaves on the lawn and Nathan knew it, knowing his physical home was degenerating only fractionally less rapidly than his fangs (which were still his but had turned the colour of mud; coated nicotine and fragile).
These days his mind wandered farther than it had ever been game to when he’d been younger, seemingly taking whole days off to go on holiday.
This caused a surprising, considering his usual verbal diarrhoea, impediment. Wright was occasionally lost for words. Sometimes, when he tried to finish a sentence without the assistance of his sun baking on a beach somewhere brain, he found that he couldn’t finish what he started and had to just stand there hoping the person to whom he was waffling would finish it for him. Mostly they laughed and told him he was senile. Wright in turn would have told them to go find nirvana under a truck but couldn’t. He’d get as far as “Go find n..n..” then lose the thread and so now accepted senility as a logical explanation for such incomplete sentences.
‘Why are you so preoccupied with age?’ Kelly would ask every time he alluded to it. Which was most of the time.
‘Who me ?’ He’d answer innocently, then add that personally he was not the least bit concerned. It’s my organs that are preoccupied he’d say and advice Kelly to speak to them, claiming they were the ones that were moaning and wailing all the time.
‘Ask my legs why they refuse to function at a rate they could have walked at a few years ago. Talk to my heart and ask it why it labours so hard to pump a few measly pints around a few hundred miles of choking tubes. Don’t speak to me, talk to them,’ he’d say. Then punch himself on the chest to give a few sluggish pints a spurt on.
‘Hypochondriac,’ Kelly would huff, then punch him in the kidneys to give a few sluggish pints of whisky a spurt on.
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Then it was Wednesday and the birds sung shrill clear tunes from the greenery above while, from a swamp sky, squadrons of vampire mosquitoes attacked the pedestrians who, heads bowed, ran the gauntlet on their way to work. Meals on heels.
The sun, unretarded by smog or cloud, shone brightly as it strayed over Melbourne and into Nathan Wright’s morning. Hovering on the horizon, it clung steely white to all it touched, delicately lathering the slumbering suburbs with a dense gloss light and painting dark shadowed planes across the broken pavements.
There was no cool breeze to calm or interrupt the influence of this shining example as it beamed malevolently above the walking sleepers now crawling, jogging, or running late for work or school. Or in Wright’s case, his life as he pleaded with his cardiovascular system to give him another day on the planet.
With the enthusiasm of a pig at the abattoir, a pale Wright set about getting out the door before it rusted shut.
Nathan was, as usual, wearing what was his personally perverse idea of appropriate business attire. And what was Wright’s idea of appropriate was another’s idea of appalling for really Wright’s wardrobe was an exercise in individual style more suited to the closet than a conference.
It was an incongruous mix of the miss matched for his uniform consisted of an eternally unpolished pair of poo brown R.M. Williams elastic sided riding boots, blue Levi jeans patched with the stains of a dozen liquid accidents, a pale grey shirt (and the only part of the costume that had seen the backside of an iron) draped with a thin colourless necktie that hung listlessly from his neck ever ready for a full cup or sweaty paint palate to swim in.
Wright was half accountant, half cowboy - a sweet and sour combination of schizoid proportions.
Bloated, his cheeks were tinged blue as if made up to match his mood, they were discoloured and inflamed by the excess of alcohol consumed the night before when his body got pissed and his kidneys took a beating.
Pee
ring out from the dark rings, two red eyes glowed in the darkness like a match dropped into a pool of molasses. They burned and itched beneath three coats of 70% proof whisky varnish also because Kelly had kept him up arguing until three that morning and he was exhausted.
She’d been seeking reassurance when, as usual, all Wright sought was sleep. Or sex.
It had taken hours to reassure her sufficiently to get his way.
Then it had taken just two minutes for Wright to finish having his way according to Kelly who dismissed Wright’s lack of sexual prowess as often as Wright tended to exaggerate it.
Actually the sun had begun to creep through the lace curtains of her fragrant bedroom before both finally rolled over to start sleep, finding their respective territories to settle on either side of the bed, their naked bodies lightly coated with the other’s sweat, post coital and contentedly primal.
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In South Melbourne, in a neat two storey, semi-detached town house painted the colour of Wright’s face after a hard night (paste white) Kelly lived with her dog, her cat, her cosmetics and often with Wright’s face after a hard night.
She suspected the location of her home was the real reason Wright loved her for it was handily located a mere five minutes from where he worked so that when the lazy buggar stayed overnight he had more time to sleep. And perform inadequate sex.
Naturally, Wright was always later getting to work when he stayed the night at Kelly’s than he was when he lived half an hour away. Wright, to compensate for the time he saved travelling, overslept.
He had stayed with Kelly. He was late.
Showered and shaved, he stopped in front of the door and fumbled with the keys, a look of pallid resignation, of sleepy detachment laying etched across a freshly cropped face.
Running a open palm through the still soaked locks, he groped for the dead one, the deadlock he couldn’t master on the door so he couldn’t get out. Adhering brown and brilliantine to a recently irrigated scalp, Nathan’s hair glistened in the dim light, the sound of his spastic escape echoing down the long hall that ran down the entire length of the house like a main artery.
Hung-over, eyes glazed, head throbbing, he gazed vacantly along the street before stepping boldly forward. Badly forward. His gait was immediately interrupted by a small brown dog that was busy sniffing the doormat.
‘Piss off!’ Wright screamed at the ragged pooch on the porch and pointing to the doormat, asked: ‘Can’t you read!’
A long finger outstretched in accusation pointed toward a lifeless brown object he’d given Kelly as a birthday present (Along with an expensive gold watch just in case she hadn’t see the humour which she so often didn’t, thinking Wright’s was wasn’t even deserving of the description).
On the doormat, painted in bold letters six inches high, there was a welcome message for the unwelcome - PISS OFF it said. Wright found this funny and Kelly found it glued to her porch on her last birthday (her twenty-sixth and most recent). Unfortunately she saw red, not the humour, but she couldn’t remove it so there it had lain ever since to guard her door. And defeat her decorum.
Regaining balance, Wright leant against the wall, stared at the illiterate beast noticing it was large enough to be a hazard but small enough to miss. Unless tripped over. It was a diminutive, pink nosed poodle which, if washed would be white, but was currently brown, having been bathing in the deep end of the immortal remains of St. Vitus’, Kelly’s huge St. Bernard.
The poodle had dog paddled through a pool of sainted crap left by the venerable Vitus’ when he’d decided to turn the front yard into a recreation centre. Complete with toilets. Wright looked back at the pooch to see if it had taken his advice.
Almost. It was busy pissing on the mat which told it to piss off. Illiterate as well as unhygienic Wright sighed, immediately leaping to teach it a lesson, making a grab for the incontinent one currently desecrating his gift. He barely managed to grasp the tip of its tail before it writhed free and ran off yelping and barking up the street. And out of reach to join its mates who were busy holding a public rally outside the Chemist Shop on the corner, a scruffy assortment of canine shapes and sizes all busy sniffing critical approval of a thoroughly sprayed brick wall before discovering the joys of the sandwich backside.
‘Shit...’ Wright snorted tersely, one hand caked with brown residue, the sentiment as valid as the sediment.
He now knew why they were called POOdles and wiping his paw on the still dewy weeds that rented space in Kelly’s garden, he took three or four deep breaths and prepared to launch himself yet again.
With some effort Wright finally managed to leave the pad and slumping out the gate moved onto the pavement, white concrete which formed a shimmering pale line stretching littered and cracked under foot. Wright kicked and slid through the garbage, churning through the cans, and bottles and old newspapers lying idly about happily homeless. Glancing over his shoulder at a whole neighbourhood’s refugee rubbish lurking dry and fragile in Kelly’s front yard, he gave the dump a cursory glance, sniffed acknowledgment and made a mental note to help Kelly clean it up sometime.
Sometime next century.
From the cob-webbed depths of the fully anaesthetised, his neutered neurones seedily decided that some orchestrated noise might help clear the head so, reaching (which Wright’s stomach was threatening to do) down, he groped blindly for the bright yellow Sony Walkman. Searched for the jukebox strapped to his side and managed, somewhat heavy-handedly, to stir it to action. Stirring himself into demented reaction as a sudden cacophony leapt at him. Whatever the noise was it wasn’t music. It was an explosion, a deafening roar that swept into two totally defenceless eardrums. The elastic barriers were unprepared for such an onslaught as the sledgehammer sound rebounded in his brain in a noise that was too loud and too much, and caused Wright’s instant resignation from the fan club.
Standing rooted to the spot, he jerked in spastic reaction, frantically trying to rip the raging, invading thunder from his ears. Ripping the headphones out, he smartly cast them onto the pavement.
Eyes glazed, ears dead, he checked his pulse to see if the shock had killed him. Wright, bent over, head to chest, held his wrist between thumb and fingers thumb feeling for palpitations, clutching a vein which stood out purple and restless from the translucent flesh. Breathing quickly, he felt his heart pounding out an ancient tribal rhythm, the screaming mass trying to beat a hasty escape from his throbbing chest.
He was rather impressed by his coronary system’s resilience for the pulse, faster than a speeding bullet, was still in evidence. Frowning in wonderment he concluded that he was still alive and marvelled at his abused systems continued ability to soak shock.
He soon found that his ears weren’t so impressive.
Protesting via deafness, they were in dire need of hearing aid so, awkwardly, leaning to one side, Wright stuck a finger in his left ear and tried to shake some sense into it. No sound, no luck just a thumping vacuum.
‘Fantastic Nathan, you idiot!’ He cursed loudly, another finger in the other ear attempting digit to drum resuscitation much to the amusement of two elderly ladies in bowls white uniforms who nodded in agreement with Wright’s summation. Sauntering smartly by the man with the fingers growing from his head, the two of them were swapping anecdotes and the contents of a brown paper bag. They looked suspiciously at Wright, Wright gazed at them wondering what was in the bag. Geritol? Heroin? Perhaps the remains of a long dead husband? He grinned, still boring either ear hole before returning to his rhetorical.
‘You moron!’ He continued loudly, not noticing the pensioned stares and pointed fingers. ‘10.15... its almost lunchtime and what have you achieved? Nothing! Precisely zip and buggar all that’s what you jerk!’ He berated himself getting louder and louder. ‘So far, all you’ve done is get out of bed, hold your head, chase a dog around the front yard, wipe crap from your fingers and deafen yourself...’
�
�...Brilliant, ‘he told himself. ‘You should be locked up! Shoved in an Asylum some-where,’ he committed himself, too engrossed in self abuse to notice the two old women break into an arthritic canter frantically attempting to get as far away from this self confessed crazy as quickly as their support hose could carry them.
Four varicose veined stumps flashed past a brown, naturally white poodle mating a fire hydrant.
The dog was too busy straddling the metal to chase these delicatessen’s delights, these two pairs of basically blue sausages wobbling by.
Wright was still sentencing himself into an institution, loudly continuing the conversation with the invisible, too engrossed to note the passing pensioners collective agitations they sprinted for the Chemist shop where the dogs were high on each others rears.
Either high on the odour or high atop them, fucking them.
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Out of breath and out of danger, the old girls demanded to know if the pharmacist, a regal gentleman wearing a white coat and thick spectacles, had dispensed any mind altering drugs in the last five minutes to some guy with fingers growing out of his head..
Neither believed the liar in the white coat when he said he hadn’t.
Maude, who was only seventy, so the younger of the two, gently patted the paper bag she was clutching maternally to a sagging bosom, trying to comfort it. Gladys, older and more wizened, had collapsed on a chair in the corner of the shop gasping and crying for last rites.
‘It’s alright Harold,’ Maude said, softly speaking to the bag while telling Gladys to shut up or die, soothingly stroking the wax brown surface. Harold made no audible reply although, as if in mimed answer, his ashes did shift imperceptibly.