by Alex Roth
Seemingly, this visit is a short one, although one cannot be sure about this, as all our information is limited by the reports of his activities on the Internet. One aspect of his visit there was surprising, even to those of us who have read this account and understand his odd but successful winning ways. On the Internet video when the chancellor introduces him it shows our hero seated among other members of staff, all the men wearing dark suits. What he is wearing, believe it or not, is the same outfit he always wore when starting on a new job- the cheap beige trousers, the short-sleeved shirt and the thin stringy tie! Does he have a wardrobe full of these outfits? Where can one buy them today? Has he a collection of beige polyester trousers, short sleeved shirts and stringy ties or are these the same ones that he wore so long ago when we first made his acquaintance? Is this his lucky outfit? Or is this a hint that he is continuing his quest? Surely, he is no longer seeking the unhappy ladies? Unfortunately, we must report that he is still as he always was. Even here, he manages to find the sad, the deceived and the deserted all dazzled by his brilliance, as they gushingly testify on Facebook.
Chapter 13
Perth North of the River
He now has a job back in Perth. He is going to be sixty-five this year but presumably the university has been misled in the matter of his age by both him, his facelift and probably by Alison as well. It was she who arranged his lectureship at her university. He is now expected to do some academic research and surprise, surprise this is exactly what he is doing. Academic research, especially of the kind the Gingerbread Man does, often gives more insight into the researcher than into the research he is doing.
After his mother’s death, the Gingerbread Man finds some copies of Wife and Mother magazine, popular among women in the 1940s and fifties, among her possessions. He reads these short, sweet violets and white picket fence stories and realises their potential. Our hero has found his research pot of gold. This has been on the sparse side to date We understand that he was too busy to do anything but enjoy himself in Saudi Arabia, but now that he is back at a university in Perth he must research something. Rules are rules. The stories in the magazine are short and there are only four of them, an added point in their favour. He decides that the subject will be the author of the short stories. If anybody asks, he is researching the work of Hilda Watts. No one has ever heard of Hilda Watts, no one has heard of her work. This is not surprising because her whole writing career consists of these four stories. She wrote them in the late 1950’s for Wife and Mother.Never heard of Wife and Mother? That is exactly what the Gingerbread Man hopes.The magazine ceased publication in the early 1960s when women began burning their bras and stopped buying magazines called Wife and Mother.
Hilda Watts was an Australian school teacher from Bendigo in Victoria who wrote four stories, got married and had one or two babies and never wrote another story. The Gingerbread Man looked up her name in the Australian Who’s Who and is delighted when he does not find it. We look it up but could not initially find it on the Internet either. He quickly puts her name and all the information he has on her onto Wikipedia. Now that he knows that no one knows anything about her she must go onto Wikipedia otherwise the powers that be in his faculty might think she is too much of a nobody to be the subject of productive research. So, he diligently puts it there.
At the end of her last story, Bobby and the Angels, the magazine editor includes a short summary about Hilda Watts, her wish to have one or two babies,preferably a pigeon pair. In the parlance of that time it meant one boy and one girl and has nothing to do with pigeons as such. The four stories are Althea finds Peace(three magazine pages in length), Wanda comes Home(four magazine pages long), Mother Knows Best After All(five pages and her longest work). We managed to locate one copy dated 4 November 1959, that included her last story, Bobby and the Angels,and the short summary of her life. We do not care much about Bobby, who has blonde curly hair and winning ways and is the apple of every one’s eye that knows him. He has a short life (2 pages) and we know that the end is near when Bobby sits up and asks his mother who the strangers with white wings standing at the end of his bed are. One guess only is allowed here. His mother now knows that Bobby is going, as the text tells us in case we missed it, to another and better place. Although Bobby and the Angels is shorter than the other three, all who read it must use at least one box of tissues. We have our suspicions that this story is a secret advertisement for tissues thereby adding to landfill, although at that time no one cared about landfill.
We have no idea what the Gingerbread Man intents to do with this meagre fare but as his doctorate only consisted of five interviews we are sure that these four short stories can only add to his reputation. He can always find sad ladies dazzled by his brilliance, not only among his colleagues but working at a university, among his students as well. He can write down if they think that Althea’s Peacewill last or will her no-good husband return; whether Wanda will stay home or go walkabout again and whether mother still knows best when daughter comes home pregnant because mother never told her about contraceptives. The stories are full of promise for one who knows how to extract something from nothing.
Chapter 14
For many years, some of the more optimistic expected a mighty hand to come down through the clouds and smite him. But they waited in vain. He was not smitten. The only one who made things uncomfortable for him was Leslie, when she told everyone about his second marriage and one of his sad ladies who became infuriated at being dumped and threw stuff onto his roof. He said that he felt “betrayed” by Leslie and was indignant about the state of his roof. Both incidents made him a bit put out but cannot be compared to what a mighty hand from the clouds could have done to him. Oh well, dream on, as the producer said to the bit player on the movie set.
We can speculate on what made him run, so often and so far, to so many different destinations. One must also understand that this picture of the Gingerbread Man has focussed on only half his life. Except for Hugh (who made Linda unhappy) and for the builder (who left his house without putting in a boiler) and for Charlie (who still mourned his late partner) we know nothing of any other attachments, although undoubtedly his activities in this direction hotted up when he arrived in Riyadh. After the marriage to Alison, he is seen one evening at a cinema with her and two other men, one of whom he obviously has a close bond. So, we must understand that although in general he is not nearly as successful with men as he is with women, that does not mean that they are absent from his life.
He is always broke, except when he had the benefits of the windfall from Susie’s house. At every stage of his working life he appears to have less cash than his co-workers. He also, as Leslie found out, had no savings. Perhaps given the limits of his attraction for men, that side of his life proves expensive. He lives frugally, does not drink and although initially he did smoke, he later gives it up. His father had emphysema. After the installation of the boiler in the Gingerbread Man’s no longer small house, when his parents lived with him he saw at first hand the ravages of this dreadful disease. One would expect that it was this that led to his giving up smoking. This is not true. He has given up smoking a number of times before and after his father’s death. This is another inexplicable and mysterious aspect of the Gingerbread Man’s personality. Whenever his relationship with a sad lady is in full swing, he gives up smoking and gains weight. When he dumps her, he begins smoking again and loses the weight. This is too complex for an amateur psychologist so no attempt will be made to explain this smoking anomaly.His clothes are frequently gifts and he tries his best to get the finer freebies of life through his charming ways, an indication that he wants them but can never afford them.
One lady who I have not mentioned before was only briefly in his life. She came from a wealthy background but unlike Susie was streetwise when it came to men. She saw through his insincerity quickly and left the adoring multitude. Yes, believe it or not there was such a one, the only one, as far as can be ascertained. Near th
e time of his birthday he took her to a shopping mall, some distance away. This left her wandering what they were doing there, as one shopping mall is usually like all the others. But she was mistaken. This one had a Persian carpet shop, at which he stopped, exclaiming at the beauty of the carpet in the window, saying he had always wanted one just like it. She looked at the price, $600. She agreed that it was a beautiful carpet. They then went off to have coffee and he told her of his coming birthday and how he wanted to spend it just with her and no one else. What’s more he would cook a steak dinner at his place just for the two of them. He cooked the meal, but she did not buy him the carpet. She bought him a watch instead of course, which he exclaimed he would wear forever! But it was nothing to get excited about.
However, he did not waver in his attempt to get something worthwhile from her. A couple of weeks later when visiting her, he commented on a painting by a well-known Australian artist hanging in her living room, saying he would love to have a painting by him. This artist had one of his paintings accepted for the prestigious Archibald Exhibition in Australia. She replied that the artist was an old friend of her mother’s and had given it to her. One or two of his paintings had been made into posters and she could buy one for him if he liked. He told her that what he wanted was not a poster but an original painting and could she ask the artist for one? Although in general a sweet and giving girl, at this, and remembering the earlier Persian carpet saga, she said to herself, “In your dreams, buster,” and dropped him, but gently. She could not be nasty to this adorable man, even when he was so obviously mercenary.
This was unexpected and left him flustered. He had no idea how to handle such a situation because it had never happened to him before (or after) It was most likely an additional reason for running off from wherever it was that he was working then. We can’t be expected to remember where and when this was. They were all running away jobs, some for a few years, some for longer, like the one at the university in Australia that lasted an amazing six years and the still more amazing stint in Saudi Arabia.
Martin Buber the philosopher, wrote a book called I and Thou. In it he postulates his theory there were those, who view others not as equal to themselves but as “It,” someone that could prove useful to them. This was the theory Linda held, after her breakdown and significant dealings with therapists. That was certainly one aspect of our Gingerbread Man. He used everyone for his own benefit, even his son and his wives and his parents. If we are right about how this permanently broke man used his money, then this too, was only for his own benefit. Buber’s book was first published in 1923, it might be outdated, but it does explain aspects of his behaviour.
There is another more modern theory, although Maryanne held it to be outdated (Freudian, you know, apparently passé), that all is due to childhood trauma. The Gingerbread Man spoke of an unpleasant sexual experience he endured as a child. He was born in 1952, at a time when gay men were persecuted in Australia. Repugnance was expressed at the idea and repugnance was synonymous with evil. He said once that his parents regarded him as evil. To be regarded as evil by one’s parents must be terrible. So, could all this result in childhood trauma, as Alice Miller in her book The Drama of Being a Childso ably expresses? How can this correlate to his behaviour later? That he took his parents for a ride was perhaps warranted but why all the others? Was he revenging himself on his mother? Please not another “it’s all his mother’s fault” scenario.
Leslie saw the movie Three Faces of Eve. This was about a woman who had three quite different personalities that manifested themselves throughout her life. Let’s not forget that Leslie views our hero dispassionately, from the outside so to speak, as his glittering personality only effected Dinky and washed off Leslie. She thought he had a couple of personalities because he could be so charming one moment and two minutes later, ice cold as if a dark cloud had suddenly enveloped him. The change seemed too sudden. She could not understand how he could appear so sincere when complimenting his women. Surely such sincerity must at some level be genuine? Therefore, she reasoned could it not mean that the sincere Gingerbread Man was the one whom the ladies adored while when the other personality manifested itself, that was the one that wanted nothing to do with them. Did this explain his compulsion to conquer women and then to desert them? We have another theory. Could he, in our inexpert opinion just be plain bad? He said his parents called him not only evil but also cruel. Yet he said this with a certain relish, as if it was a compliment. If anyone else has any other theories please send them along. Maryanne has never forgotten his words when he was a little woozy and commented that she is so kind to him and he will be so awful to her. This does not sound like a man who suffers from multiple personality disorder or any other disorder for that matter. He is rational and clear about what he does. He seems to enjoy it.
He is still married to Alison, going on for twenty-five years, most of which were spent overseas without her. How happy he is living with her now is debateable. Still, whichever way one looks at it, he thinks he has led a caring and useful life. Every new place worshipped him until it did not but there was always the next place to run to and the inevitable new worshipers. What about Linda (has she changed out of her pyjamas?) and Carol, Susie, Belinda and all the others, not noted because too much repetition would make this a trying account? Are they still thin? Have they recovered? Is he as distant a memory to them as they are to him? What about Alison? Does she ever think longingly of the days when she had spikey hair and wore men’s shirts and belted denims? She was openly gay then instead of being in the closet with her husband.
Does he regard himself as a success? After all, he ran and ran until he found what he was looking for and then wanted to run away from it as well. Perhaps our Gingerbread Man can’t stop running. But where can he run to, now that he has he reached sixty-five with no money and the prospect of never- ending face lifts and an ever-extending bald patch? Will that amazing charm continue to work its magic or will the university discover his true age? Will the sad ladies of the faculty of education fall over themselves in adoration? Will Bobby and the Angels secure him his position?
Why did he never step out of the closet? Today he can even get married, all the old impediments are gone. If he is openly gay he need no longer pretend that he is a compassionate friend where women are concerned, a shoulder to lean on when times are tough. He will be that friend. His chastity ploy was as necessary to him then as Alison is now. It adds that frisson of sexual excitement to his relationships with women. He can never get that if his partner is a man. He doesn’t want to lose that but acting on it is too difficult for him. He will never step out of the closet. After, let’s be realistic-who will support him in his old age, if not a woman?
One day if he comes to Carol, Belinda, Susie, Brigid or Marjorie, broke (of course) and says he has never forgotten them, the chances are they will open the door and say, “Come in.”
Charm has no age limits
About the Author
Alex Roth is 29 and has published humorous articles in magazines newspapers under various names. This is his first fiction novel. He likes anonymity and definitely does not want the Gingerbread Man to catch him!