Today In The Cafe... The Anger Experiment

Today in the cafe... The friendship between Grumpy and Kafka Woman is quite a unique and unlikely thing, filled with unique and unlikely conversations and occurrences that sometimes perplex both of them as well as their co-workers and the cafe's customers. It's not uncommon for some random conversation to unfold into a practical joke or series of social experiments that leave customers scratching their head, smirking in bewilderment or simply laughing, even though they are not quite sure what exactly it is that they are laughing at.

Kafka Woman has now become the very masculine Diego Belafonte. Grumpy has become Diego's adorably feminine sister, Tallulah Belafonte. Under the circumstances, this is a perfectly normal development. Sometimes, things just are what they are and it's best not to question their nature. Sometimes, you just have to roll with the weirdness.

The identical twins Belafonte have had their fair share of arguments, of course, just like all siblings. Some intense shit has gone down, man, but things seem to have settled into a new and peaceful phase.

So peaceful, in fact, that this conversation took place:

So, erm, my rugged twin brother Diego...

Yes my adorably feminine twin sister Tallulah? What's on that delicate flowerbed of a mind of yours?

I was just thinking that I don't think I am capable of being angry with you any more.

Ohhhh... that's so adorably and perfectly in keeping with that sweet feminine Goddess nature of yours.

Thank you, you Viking of a man-brother you. The thing is, I think we should conduct an experiment.

Oh wow. You know how much I like a good experiment. Tell me about this experiment.

Well... I think to prove this hypothesis, you should try to make me angry with you.

Hmm.

Yes. Just do random things at unexpected moments that you think will make me angry with you.

I like the sound of this experiment. A lot. I mean – a LOT! I'll have to keep a diary of what I have done, how angry I think this thing will make you and how angry – if at all – it has actually made you.

Indeed. I love your attention to detail. And maybe how long the anger – if indeed there is any anger – lasts.

We've conducted quite a few fun experiments in the last eight months that we have been lifelong identical twins with different accents, but this is by far the most fun one. We should start right away.

Okay – ouch! Why did you just poke me in the eye?

How did that make you feel, my most girly of girly girls Tallulah?

Oh I see what you did there. Yeah, that hurt like fuck but nope, not angry.

That's amazing. What if I do this...

No – I think you should be more random and unexpected. And maybe less physically violent, although some physical violence should come into the experiment.

Okay. Fair enough. So dropping things, spilling things, getting customer orders wrong, that sort of thing?

Yeah, just all the things you normally do so well. Although, there is a problem.

Yes my sweetest Tallulah?

The fact that we both know we are conducting this experiment kind of ruins the experiment. You might accidentally do something that should make me angry and I might consciously recall that this experiment is being conducted and consciously not get angry with you. It's not reliably scientific. For it to be a reliably scientific experiment, I would have to be unaware that we were conducting an experiment.

Hmm. I see what you mean. But I think we should try this experiment anyway. Oops – so sorry Tallulah. Did that hurt? Did it make you angry? How angry did it make you? Do you think you will be angry for long? If so, how long?

Oh The Places You'll Go

Man I love this so much. I think Dr Seuss would like it too. I hope I make it to Burning Man in the next couple of years, but aside from the visuals in this clip, it's the story. I love the grounded optimism behind it. It really is quite beautiful.

Ruben Jane

Ruben Jane

(C) Lee Bemrose

Ruben Jane

When you walked into the room, something changed. I felt like I’d known you my entire life. Your gaze swept the room and came to rest on me. You had me from that moment. You looked at me and looked away, then made your languid way through drunk ones dancing. Your image lingered, burned into my mind. I didn’t follow you, not straight away. There was no need.

It was later that same night that we properly met. I was listening to some self-indulgent woes, some manufactured drama, when you sat down next to me. I was being attentive to this other one, but I knew it was you sitting down next to me even before I looked.

When finally the other one realised she was not going to get the desired response, she stood up to leave, pausing briefly to look at you. She called you Ruby, said it with a soulless smile. You replied with a similar smile, calling her by name, told her she was looking well.

When she was gone you leaned towards me, so slightly but without looking directly at me, and you told me that if I want to be your friend, never call you Ruby because your name is Ruben Jane.

You asked me what I thought of the party. You paused at the end of the question, then added my name. Letting me know that you had asked. You had pointed me out and asked. How strange that we had friends in common yet I had never met you, had never heard of you.

I told you that I was not a party person, not really much of a people person. You asked why, then, I was here. I said it’s because it’s what we do. We talk to people we don’t necessarily like. We go to parties when maybe we want to be alone, it’s just what we do.

You should do whatever you want to do, you told me. There are no rules, we just think there are.

And with that you stood up to leave.

Coming? You asked looking down at me, knowing the answer. I stood up and came with you, nothing else I could do.

You asked me where I lived and you took me back to mine. Something too funny about this to laugh at. Just struck me as pure you. Maybe I smiled. Maybe you saw my smile reflected in the taxi’s interior windows. Perhaps you smiled yourself, knowing that this was always how it was going to go.

Back at mine, drugs spilled out onto a glass tabletop. Vodka from the freezer and I knew what music to play. Rapid-fire crunchy electric guitar, throbbing bass and banshee scream. I wanted you to be surprised or at least pleased, but you simply took your place, took your pill, took in that I knew the right music to play.

We should go to Dawnfire sometime, you said when my warmth was kicking in and I’d wanted to say something stupid. You said it at just the right moment because it snapped me and I said instead yeah, we should go. I’ve been there before, but yeah, we should definitely go.

We didn’t fuck on that first night. I didn’t care. We were going to go to Dawnfire. We were going to be we. This was good enough for me. Much better than a fuck.

When we did fuck, it was like thunder. It was insane. It was rapidfirecrunchelectricthrob and I always wanted you to be surprised. But you were never surprised, just quietly pleased, in your way.

Hold me, you said one time as we fucked, and I held you.

No you stupid fuck! Hold me. Properly! Hold me down!

So I took your wrists and I held you down. You fought back and I held you down. My hands around your wrists, sharp tendons, deep guttural grunt, but I held you down. One hand slipped and it found your throat and grunt became a hesitant choke-laugh. You bit me. I kissed you. You kissed then bit me again. We kissed and we fucked. And you were happy. It was the first time I felt I’d made you happy.

*

Almost a year of yours-and-mine and we agreed on yours. You picked up some thing of mine you’d always liked. You paused at the door on your way out and asked if I was coming, as though you and this thing were leaving me and it was entirely up to me if I wanted to come along. I nodded and you turned and left like you always knew this was how it was going to be. And with that, yours became ours. We became a proper we. Much better than the stormy, the exhilarating fucking.

But the fucking was good.

*

Every time we were asked how we met, the story changed. We’d tell them we met on the banks of the Nile. In a Scottish Highland Village. In the ruins of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona or a cobblestone street in Monte Matre. You would take the lead and I would follow and a scenario would come to life, a conversation imagined into reality. At a point our eyes would lock and we were two actors without scripts, inventing memories, living another time now.

Invariably they would think we were joking. They would think we were a little strange or simply in love. They didn’t understand, just didn’t get it at all.

Don’t leave me, you’d tell me from time to time, don’t ever leave me. Promise me that.

And I’d hold you in that other gentler way and tell you, I’ll never leave you Ruben Jane.

*

The cracks were there a long time before I saw them. That’s the nature of cracks. But I forced myself to see them that time on Turtle Beach. Remember that time on Turtle Beach? You’d gone for a swim and I buried your things and while you swam below the surface, I imagined you were not there.

Later you asked why I had done it, why I’d buried your things and imagined you weren’t there. I shrugged; I don’t know. In the twilight you rocked back and forth, tears welling in those eyes as we looked out to sea, a water spout writhing in the distance. I’d seen your tears before; I’d kissed away their saltiness. I’d seen your clenched fists and I’d uncurled your fingers and kissed your palms. But I’d never seen you rock back and forth before, like a dark and broken angel, and I didn’t know what to do.

The thing is, you told me in a voice fighting back a tremble, it’s no good here. It’s no good and it’s not ever going to work.

But we’re on holidays, I replied, it’s just us in some clean, nice place. We’ll go back to the city where everything is all right.

No, you said, that’s not it. That won’t fix things. It’s... it’s this that won’t work.

Your hand swept at this perfect vista, at all this peace, and that’s when I forced myself to see the cracks. Fine and delicate things, like fractures in the glaze of a favourite tea cup.

*

As the blade slid beneath your skin your grip on my hand tightened. I gripped you hard too. The blue vein above your eye pushed against your pale skin as you held back from crying out. I leaned over and watched this stranger slowly slice your skin. He dabbed professionally at the blood. There was a lot of blood. Your grip eased, then tightened again as the blade went back in. I wanted him to stop, but it was what you wanted so I held on and watched and was moved by what we were doing.

We dressed the wound. We dressed you. You looked pale. You looked at me and smiled and said, now your turn.

I think my fingers trembled as I undid my buttons. I dropped my shirt to the floor and climbed onto the bench. I was determined not to squeeze your hand. It would prove something now meaningless to you, but as the searing pain set in it took over everything and I squeezed your hand so tightly. I remember looking up through a red haze of pain, and I remember seeing you smile. Not smiling at my pain, smiling at how tightly I was holding you. I forgot that smile at the time, but it would come back to me later on. Such a gentle, peaceful smile.

It took return visits, but eventually it was done. No wedding rings for us, no tattoos, no swapped vows. Scar tissue, you said, was real.

And our friends, they thought we were strange or kooky or simply in love. They didn’t get us at all.

Do you get us, you’d sometimes ask, do you really?

Yeah, I’d reply, I think I do.

Does it scare you?

Yeah, I think it does. Does it scare you?

Not really, you’d say with a shrug and that distant look.

But I’d see you sway and rock and gaze away into nothing as you absently fingered your scar, and I’d wonder about that.

*

At Dawnfire I sometimes liked to stand back and watch you, try to see you the way others saw you. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of how you must appear to others. They were energy, body spasms shooting at every beat. But you were still, compared to them. You were grace. You were elegance in this sweaty maelstrom. While they reacted to the auditory carnage of the surface, you found the melody, and you moved that body to the melody. You found the melody in the most jangled music, and you danced to the swirls. I thought that was some small miracle, the first time I saw it, and it comforted me every time after that.

Sometimes at Dawnfire, you’d look across and see me smiling. Well, that’s what I was smiling at.

*

All the others saw were the light times. They saw the laughter and the dancing and that special thing we had. They didn’t see the dark times, curtains drawn against the light for days at a time. They didn’t see the fear. You wouldn’t let me leave you for days on end, not even for food. We must stay together, you’d implore, and what could I do? I held you nights and days as you trembled. I gave up asking you what it was because you never knew, just knew that it was real. Sleep was an ugly hallucination. Our darkened home would become a silent nightmare of untidiness. We’d wander the rooms in search of some uncluttered space and we’d bed down there in our dank blankets and pillows and our clothes that reeked of us, and we’d wait for your fear and darkness to slowly pass.

No, they didn’t see the dark times. They didn’t see how scared you were and how much it broke my heart. All those times we’d vanish, all they saw was the eventual re-emergence into the light. They thought it was so romantic, how all we needed was each other and our love. They imagined sex and laughter and good times, just you and me.

They’d smile at how cute we were. They’d smile and admire us, maybe they’d envy us. But they didn’t understand at all.

*

One time, coming down through a cocktail of euphoria, coming down for a smooth landing in our home with chilled sounds in the air, coming down to some piece of Earthly perfection, you asked me the very last question I wanted to hear.

If I wanted to leave, you began in a way that ended the peace, would you do it for me?

My thoughts went from silver to shit in moments. I couldn’t process this.

What do you mean, I asked. Would I let you go?

No, if I wanted to leave all this, would you do it for me? I’d want you to do it for me.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want you to say anything. I wished you hadn’t said anything. And yet, I knew. I knew by then that it’s what you wanted. The late night talks when peaceful minds slept, the trouble inside that found its way to the surface in little ways, the constant flow of it all. The reaction from others, I knew, would be dismissive: get over it, get on with it, get help.

We lay there coming down, silent for so long that I thought you must have fallen asleep. I turned and expected closed eyes, but you were staring at me, waiting for my answer. I turned away and thought of other times, the banks of The Nile, a Highland Village, the streets of Paris.

Don’t get me wrong, you whispered when the music had stopped, I want you to come with me. You want to come with me, don’t you?

Looking away from you, I nodded, resigned to the way of things. It was not such a bad thing. It was inevitable. Things end. An end is a beginning. To end a person’s unhappiness is a good thing.

You must come, you said as you ran fingertips lazily across my skin. The sensation was exquisite.

Of course I’ll come, Ruben Jane, you know that. Followed with a hug, two bodies together, breath merging with breath, two heartbeats colliding. Sleep. Dreams of other times, other places.

*

The time came. No words. Few thoughts. One limb here, another there. Wrists bound. Ankles bound. There would be struggle in spite of everything. I had suggested taking drugs together but that’s not how you wanted to do it. I was to send you first and then I would follow. It just wasn’t right any other way, you said. It was a test of my commitment to you, a test of my love for you.

Your eyes didn’t leave my face as I went about securing you. No expression. What were you thinking? Were you scared? Did you want this to stop? Did you doubt I would go through with it? It’s what you wanted.

I laid down beside you. I caressed your skin, your beautiful skin. I conjured goosebumps, ran my lips over them. I could feel the thud of your heart through skin and bone, could feel the warmth of your blood as it raced through your body. We kissed one last time, so softly, so gently.

You wanted me to look into your eyes, so that’s what I did. I looked into your eyes as you started to struggle. You resisted the struggle at first, but then something took over. Some primal thing possessed us both. It was like it wasn’t me. I became something darker, something greater, something savage. My tears on your skin. Eyes, so wide. And then as it wore on a change, an expression I couldn’t make out. A shake of the head? Stop? Don’t stop? That look. That look in your eyes as you left me – what did it mean?

And you were gone. Just gone. I fell back and a howl came from somewhere deep within. I felt like my entire body would to crack. I wanted it to break.

Then numbness. An acute sense of time. Never before have I been so aware of the utterly blinding speed of time. You were gone, moving further away with each flicker of time. Not coming back. Gone.

Now my turn.

I poured bitter liquid into sweet and drank it. I sank down beside you, unbound your wrists and held you in that gentle way. Still warm. Your hair against my skin. Your scent.

*

I tried to follow you, Ruben Jane. They don’t understand. They don’t understand us at all.

they never change

They don't change, she tells him, they never change. Says it like she knows such things. Says it like she's talking about others but her tone has shifted and he knows who she is really talking about.

Sometimes they do, he says as the hint of a hopeful smile plays with his lips. Sometimes they change. Sometimes?

She looks at him then and shakes her head, looking back into the distance, perhaps into the past or a future never lived. That shake of her head, he's seen it countless times. He's seen it in the good times when her face is squinted shut with laughter, and he's seen it in the grey times when there didn't seem to be any way out.

He wants to believe she is wrong, but as they sit in the fading light of another dying day he suspects she might be right. They promise change, swear they'll change, beg for one more chance because they know they can change.

Again.

And again.

And again.

But then he thinks of a small boy he once knew. The quietest boy, he grew into a quiet young man, his confidence a crippling burden. The others didn't know about the humour. The thoughts and quirky observations formed in his mind but were trapped there because he was afraid. What if they didn't unberstand? What if they didn't laugh or laughed in the wrong way? What if he made a fool of himself? So he remained silent, like a fool.

He thinks about that quiet young boy and the quiet young man. He thinks about now, and he knows she is wrong: sometimes they do change. He turns to her to tell her this, but faintly, ever so faintly, she is shaking her head.

His gentle smile of hope softly dies as he sits beside her and gazes into the distance, into the past or a future never lived. He doesn't say anything.

Perhaps she is right after all.

Love Letter

Following on from the previous post, here is the story that did make it into the pages of Quadrant. Found it after all. Found all sorts of other forgotten stories too. Some are okay... others are not so okay.



LOVE LETTER


“Jesus. It’s big. What is it?”
“Open it,” Jim replies with an almost graceful jerk of the head. “Go on, love, unwrap it.” He is pleased with her curiosity. Usually she is right on to him. Not this time. The corners of his mouth crease with satisfaction.
Brenda removes the cigarette from her lips, straightening her arm and lowering it to her side in a slow, easy sweep. She juts her jaw and blows smoke into the air. She squints at the gift almost with suspicion. She uses the cigarette hand to fix a strand of lank hair behind her ear.
Jim scratches the back of his hand with the bristles on his chin as he watches her. He thinks again about beauty. He knows Brenda is not beautiful in the accepted sense, and yet he sees something beautiful in her. Something... different, on the inside, some small... thing... she’s strong on the outside, more or less functional, built for a purpose, or many purposes, but on the inside he knows she’s... oh, not weak, but sort of... er... fragile? No, not fragile. Vulnerable? Maybe. Bugger words, Jim thinks, frowning now. Then he thinks: it’s like the way you might call a bloody great cliff face beautiful when you see it in the right light. He smiles to himself. That’s it. That’s it, more or less, exactly.
“Well I’m buggered if I know what it is,” Brenda says at last. She kneels down in front of the object, which is leaning against the wall. She thinks it must be a painting or something, perhaps he got one of my paintings framed. She taps it with a knuckle. Nup, hard like glass. A big mirror? But what did he get me a bloody big mirror for?
Brenda starts to peel the bright paper away. She pauses as she gets her first glimpse of the thing. She looks over her shoulder for a moment then continues tearing the paper away. When the gift is completely unwrapped, the curled scraps of paper scattered about like fallen leaves, she gets to her feet and steps back. They both stare in silence.
“Well Bren?” Jim says when he can’t stand her silence any longer. “What do you think?”
Brenda turns and looks at him with an expression he has never seen before.
“A headstone?” she says. “You got me a headstone?”
“Yeah. Beauty isn’t it.”
Brenda turns back to the headstone. She runs a hand through her hair. “An actual headstone with our names on it and everything.”
“You never would have guessed, would you?”
“No, Jimbo, never would have guessed. Not something a girl ever expects her bloke to... and look, everything’s there. Our birth dates, our full names, and... the date of death. You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you.”
Jim is aware that he is smiling like a fool, but he just can’t stop. Brenda is always complaining that no one is original anymore, but he is pretty sure she thinks this is original.
“Do you like it, love?”
She nods slowly. “Yeah,” she says vaguely. “It’s...”
She stops looking at the headstone, but she doesn’t look at Jim. She looks around the room. She bends and pats the newspapers on the coffee table, checks her pockets, finds her cigarette lighter on the television. She stubs her lit cigarette in a full ashtray, then walks across to Jim. She kisses him on the cheek, gently touching the other cheek with her fingertips.
“Got to go,” she tells him as she turns away, tucking the cigarette pack and lighter into her shirt pocket. “Got to finish that picture.”
“Righto,” Jim replies, frowning again because he’s not sure how Brenda is feeling. “I’ll start making us some tea then.”
Jim walks across to the screen door it pulls it shut. He has to lift it to shut it properly because he still hasn’t fixed the hinge. He watches Brenda through the dusty screen as she walks down the yard to the shed. He watches really hard, but he’s damned if he can tell what she is thinking.

They eat lamb shank stew and drink a bottle of red. The wine is a big shiraz – a wine with balls, as Brenda would say. If she was saying anything. They eat in silence, which is not entirely unusual because Brenda often goes quiet when she is working on a picture. Like quiet music, there’s just the gentle slurp of broth, the gurgle of pouring wine, the small sighs of satisfaction. Brenda ignores the headstone. Once Jim thinks she’s about to look at it, but she catches herself and looks away. By now he’s beginning to suspect that she doesn’t even know what it really is.

They take their clothes off, switch off the light and climb into bed. They lie beside each other in silence, blinking into the dark. Jim decides that because she seems to be in a funny mood he’d better say goodnight and tell her that he loves her. He rolls onto his side, reaches across to her, and suddenly they are hugging.
“I’m sorry,” Jim tells Brenda because he knows that at this particular moment his sudden and unexpected erection is inappropriate. “I just meant to say goodnight. That’s all. I didn’t mean to...”
“Funny way of saying good night.”
They move together and lose themselves in writhing sex. They finish with lingering caresses and exhausted breath, rolling back to opposite sides of the bed. Brenda finds a T-shirt at the foot of the bed which she stuffs between her legs. Jim wipes some sweat from one eye.
“That was good,” Jim says eventually.
“Good? I thought the top of my head was going to come off. Whatever else,” Brenda goes on as she swings her legs out of bed, “you’re no dud root.”
Jim smiles at this as Brenda waddles from the room with the shirt clamped between her thighs. Then, listening to the trickle echoing in the bathroom, he starts to frown. Whatever else? What does that mean?

The following day Jim accepts that Brenda doesn’t think much of the headstone. ‘Whatever else’ means that he’s got lousy taste in gifts, that he hasn’t got a bloody clue. When he was only trying to be original. When he was only trying to tell her how much – just how much – he loves her. There are the words, there is the message written in stone. Still.
“Bloody words,” Jim mutters as he lifts the granite panel. “Only ever get a bloke into trouble.”

Brenda pauses as the screen door closes behind her. She looks at the top of the door.
“You fixed the hinge,” she says.
“Thought it was about time.”
Brenda nods. “What’ve you done to the dishwasher? Thought you were going to get the dishwasher bloke in.”
“Bugger the dishwasher bloke. Been telling you it’s just the pump. Had some shit caught in it, that’s all. Just about finished.”
Brenda lights up. She looks around the tidied room, her gaze lingering on the space the headstone had been occupying.
“Kids still coming over tonight?” she asks.
“Yep. Thought we’d crank up the barbie. Good night for it.”
“But isn’t it – “
“Fixed it.”
“And the gas bottle – “
“Filled it.”
“Hm. Did you get some steak?”
“Fillet.”
Brenda laughs at this. Jim smirks, but doesn’t let himself go. On his knees, he puts his head back behind the dismantled dishwasher. Brenda looks at his denim-clad bum. She thinks about slapping it. She decides not to, she’ll have a shower instead and save bum-slapping for when he’s in a better mood.

They lie in the warm darkness and listen to the Irish couple next door in the throes of another beer-fuelled argument. There is always noise coming from their home, either drunken fights or wild laughter. They don’t know easy silence, only celebration or conflict.
“You still awake?” Brenda asks in a lazy murmur.
“Yep. Still awake.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I don’t know. People. What make them stay together.”
“Them next door?”
“Them. James and Karen.”
“You don’t think the kids will last?”
“Who knows. They might. They’ve lasted this long. I just don’t understand the ... what the thing is that keeps them together.”
“The thing?”
“Yeah. The kind of ... the mechanism that drives the relationship.”
“You silly old bugger. It’s not a mechanism, it’s love.”
“You thinks so? You think those two next door love each other? You really think James loves Karen? Because I think that most people these days don’t know what love is. They’ve forgotten all about love. They haven’t got time for love. How do you think James shows his love for Karen? That ring doesn’t mean anything. Not really. It’s just a purchased object.”
“Mm. What kind of a gift is a diamond ring?”
Jim doesn’t have anything to say to this. In any case, he thinks, it’s – what – rhetorical? Yeah, rhetorical. He remains silent and hopes that Brenda will either change the subject or fall asleep.
“If it isn’t love,” Brenda says, “then what is it?”
Less rhetorical, Jim thinks. “That’s what I was wondering.”
Maybe now she’ll fall asleep. The silence grows. Even the Irish couple is silent. Jim feels his eye lids close over.
“Jim?”
“Mm?”
“I just don’t understand why, of all things, you gave me a headstone. I mean, I know what you mean about diamonds, but a headstone?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of it.” Jim wonders why she doesn’t see it for what it is. When did she stop understanding him?
“You don’t have to get rid of it. It’s, you know, quite nice, for what it is. But you have to admit it’s a bit unusual. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose. I just thought... when I was getting the vase fixed on Mum and Dad’s grave I saw all the headstones in the stonemason’s yard and I couldn’t believe how many there were. New ones, old ones waiting to have names added to the spaces and, well, one thing lead to another. I just thought it would be nice to see what it was going to look like. I mean, we’re going to be down there for a long time. I wasn’t keen on the heading – they all say ‘in loving memory of’ – so I got the bloke to shorten it.”
“In Love.”
“Brenda and Jim.”
“And the date of death? Why that date?”
“I liked the way the bloke did threes and fives. He does good threes and fives. And his sevens are pretty good too.” She’s close, Jim thinks; the date of death is the whole point. She has to get it.
“Jesus you’re a funny one Jim,” Brenda slurs, almost asleep. “I do like it. I wonder...”
“What?”
“Wonder what it would look like on a grave. Wonder what it’ll look like.”
Soon they are snoring softly.

The cemetery is vast and still, small hills and shallow valleys, gentle undulations of death. They stand side by side, silent in the heat, and gaze around at the crosses and angels and obelisks broken in half for the young lives cut short. Scattered throughout these thousands of monuments are members of the living, remembering the dead. Just a short distance along this row there is an old lady down on her knees. She looks up and nods solemnly at Brenda and Jim, then continues to trim weeds and fuss with flowers, muttering a quiet monologue to the lost husband, mother or child.
“You expect it to be sad,” Brenda says quietly. “But it’s not. It’s peaceful.”
Jim nods in agreement. He can’t imagine a more peaceful place. He breathes in and notes the faint odour of a distant bush fire, a smell he enjoys and which always takes him back to when he was a boy.
“Do you still want to do it?” Jim asks.
“Yeah,” Brenda replies slowly, thinking. “Yeah, I do. So long as we don’t get caught.”
“Should be all right, if I hurry.”
The stonemason came across as a bit of a sorry bastard, dead keen for a chat. One of those tradesmen who likes to show you how easily they can do their job, at the same time letting you know that it’s not as easy as it looks. He talked and talked and showed Jim how to remove a granite panel from the concrete headstone and how to put it back on. Jim is relieved to find that it is in fact almost as easy as it had looked. He lays his parents’ headstone on the grass behind the grave. With Brenda nervously keeping watch, Jim is soon using the wooden handle of his mallet to gently tap their headstone into place. He hides the tools behind the grave and flicks the few chips of concrete away. He moves back to look at his handiwork. Standing beside Brenda, he nods to himself. Yes, he nods, there it is. There we are.
Time passes. They stand and stare, side by side. They think about themselves, about each other. They think about their life together, how even through the hard times, those rough patches, they somehow knew they would stay together. Even in the mundane times when life doesn’t seem to amount to much, love is still there and you realize this at unexpected moments, watching the other one reading the morning paper or hanging out the washing or trying to get the lid off a jar. They think about how truly lonely life would be without the other to share things with.
Jim thinks he hears something. He turns his head a few degrees. “Bren? You all right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I... thought you sniffed.”
“Why would I sniff? It’s not like it’s a real headstone. Not a headstone at all, is it?”
Jim smiles to himself. “No he says. “No it’s not.”
Jim decides they’d better put the real headstone back on before they get into trouble. Just as he starts to bend, Brenda grips his forearm.
Jim straightens. “What’s wrong?”
Brenda nods her head sideways. Jim turns and sees the mourner from down the row making her way towards them. She has finished her duties for the day.
“You want to wait until she’s gone?” Jim asks.
“We’d better, just in case.”
“But she won’t even know what we’re doing,” Jim says, wondering why their voices have dropped to urgent whispers.
“It just feels wrong. Just... just act natural.”
Jim snorts at this. “But it’s us. We can’t – “
“Sh. Just until she’s gone.”
They stand and read the inscription again as the old woman makes her way along the row of graves. She shuffles along at a painfully slow pace. Jim breathes deeply, the char-tainted air whistling through his nose hairs. He folds his arms and raises one hand to his lips. He pinches his lips, presses them hard together because suddenly he feels like he’s going to piss himself laughing. He feels his eyes start to water.
Brenda sniffs. Jim turns his head a few degrees. “Bren? He says, his voice shaking a little. “You okay?”
Brenda shakes her head slowly. She is biting her bottom lip. Her eyes are full.
“Shit,” Jim whispers because he knows that Brenda is about to piss herself too. We can’t do this, he thinks, we can’t laugh, not here, not now.
One makes a sound which starts the other off. They try to conceal their faces. Brenda makes a quiet, high-pitched warble. Jim is breathless and silent with the hardest laugh he’s had in his life. He makes a rasping draw back, and Brenda repeats her high pitched song. Jim pulls a hanky out of his pocket and hands it to Brenda. She covers her face. The old woman is upon them now. Jim’s face is twisted and he looks at the woman through glistening eyes. She looks at the headstone, then back at Jim and Brenda. She cocks her head to one side and offers an expression of pure and heartfelt sympathy. Jim finds himself nodding back at her. In an inspired bit of improvisation he even indicates to the headstone with a kind of shrug that conveys the message that the loss is just too great to bear. This is too much for Brenda who doubles over, howling. The woman continues to shuffle along, that expression lingering because she knows, she knows. She leaves them to deal with their sorrow alone.
And Jim and Brenda hold each other as their voices swirl around the crosses and angels, their laughter dancing and dancing.

Choosing

I might start posting some short stories here. Some have been published and disappeared into the secrecy of pages between covers surrounded by books sitting undisturbed on shelves. Others have not been published and might never see the light of day.

The very short one below was written a looooong time ago. I've never believed in what this micro-story is about and I still don't, but the idea is a nice one for the purpose of stories. I can't remember what prompted this story, but I do remember that I sent it in to a radio station for some arts thing and they selected it to read on air. I was driving at the time and was caught by surprise when they mentioned the title. I pulled over to the side of the road and everything seemed to stop because my words were coming out of the radio.

It was a nice little moment in time, and I hope others find the story as warm and fuzzy as it's intended to be. The radio announcer liked it, then speculated because of the androgynous nature of my name, "Do you reckon Lee is a girl or a guy? Hmm... I reckon she's probably a girl."

Enjoy.



CHOOSING

Cats, she said simply and slowly.

He gazed down as though she had tossed the idea before him for his scrutiny.

Cats, he repeated, yes cats could be nice.

This really meant that he thought he had a better idea. She knew this. She knew him.

You have a better suggestion? She asked.

In his strange way, he smiled.

What this time, she wondered. Horses? Birds? Or white-eyed fish from the bottom of the ocean? She thought about cats – fur, warmth, laziness, sleep.

What could be better than cats? She asked.

Again he smiled.

People, he replied.

She thought about this. He watched her think about it.

Eventually, after a time, she shared his smile.

Human beings, she said, a good idea.

They joined hands, as formless entities might join hands, and drifted down once more.

The Funniest Man In The World Tells A Funny Story: The Story

Ok, after being inundated with five or six yes votes, here is the story. Not sure what I think of it now. But good or bad it was shortlisted in a comp several years ago and published in a book by Allen & Unwin (and I found the copy of the book I thought I'd lost - woo hoo).

If anyone is interested in reading more, there are a few others that have been published that I don't think are too bad and which I might post here. Seems a shame that they are sitting unread in magazine pages on my bookshelf when someone out there might enjoy them.

Right. A little nervous about this, but for your reading pleasure I give you...

THE FUNNIEST MAN IN THE WORLD TELLS A FUNNY STORY


Just look at them. God how they squawk and carry on, like a flock of seagulls scavenging for the scraps on which they thrive. They would make me sick if they did not amuse me so much. They call me the funniest man in the world, but look at them, for god’s sake. If only they could see themselves from where I sit – shoving and jostling for a snippet of conversation with the most creative humorist alive (their words, not mine!), pointing those damn microphones at me like phallic offerings. And the questions. Breathtaking in their banality. What’s it like, they ask for the thousandth time, to be the funniest man in the world? Jesus gather me in your arms before I hear that question again. What do I say? Once, feeling particularly tired, a reporter asked me that very question, and do you know what I said? I asked her what it was like to have tits. The rest of them laughed, as they always do, and I thought she might take it badly. But she didn’t. She just looked down at her breasts briefly and told me that it was good, mostly. I admired her for that and replied with the same answer; good, mostly. For now I toss them some witty reply and they lap it up. Of course it matters little whether what I say is actually funny, they always laugh. At another one of these gatherings I happened to sneeze. A simple, ordinary sneeze. Do you know what they did? That’s right, they pissed themselves laughing, bloody idiots. It’s an insult that the very people who christened me the funniest man in the world can be so amused by an old man’s bodily functions. Why craft dazzling repartee when a fart can achieve the same result? Not that I don’t think there is comedy in a well placed, properly executed fart, I just think... oh here we go again. Pink Cheeks stands in his ill-fitting suit and nervously clears his throat. I lean forward in anticipation of another gem. He wants to know if I can remember (already I am working on my answer) the first moment I realised that I had a gift for knowing what is funny.
I sit back and purse my lips. He has surprised me with an original question. After facing countless questions about myself you would think I’d have encountered this one before. But no, this is the first time. I think for a moment. A story comes to mind. They look like they have time to spare, so I begin ...

The mother was fat. Not grossly obese, just mildly so. She was fat like a bunch of thick, raw sausages with skin pale and clammy to touch. She was a large, solid woman whose ugliness came from within. It showed in her sneering mouth and her cold, dead eyes. She frequently complained about the arthritic ache in her hands which sometimes became so intense she was forced to stop using them and resort to using an instrument to beat her eldest son – which was how she discovered that the fine, stiff bristles on her hairbrush could bring a satisfying speckling of blood to the boy’s soft cheek.
The woman favoured her younger son in a peculiar way. She showed her affection by encouraging him to humiliate and ridicule his brother. Naturally he went along with this, being too young to understand.
And there was the father who took the older son jogging through the bush and showed him how to split a gum leaf and whistle through it; who showed him how to skim a stone across the creek; who told him jokes and brought brief interludes of happiness to the boy’s life. Yet the father lingered like a frail shadow as the mother smashed the boy’s favourite toy.
The toy was a crane, blue and green with a yellow jib and a handle that could be wound to lift things into the air. When the boy lost the hook he made a loop out of the string and found himself placing the head of a toy dog through it like a noose. The mother discovered this and was disgusted that her son was such a ‘sick little bastard.’ She stamped the crane into a splintered mess with a thick limb of varicose vein and rubber thong, lifted him by the hair and made him stand with his nose in the corner for so long that he wet himself and collapsed with fatigue.

For reasons unknown, the family went on a trip. They drove to the Gold Coast in their dilapidated Valiant, the brothers sharing the back seat with Bernard who the mother had insisted taking. Bernard was an old mongrel who suffered chronic flatulence which added greatly to the already oppressive atmosphere inside the car. From time to time the younger brother thought it was fun to slip in a fart of his own and try to blame it on Bernard. The mother, however, was a connoisseur.
“That wasn’t a Bernard fart, that was a person fart. Now who was it?” she yelled in her hard, ugly voice. The father drove on in silence, staring at the road ahead. The younger son pointed at his sibling and the mother took several wild swings at the falsely accused, connecting sharply each time. Physical defence would only prolong the beating and was as useless as verbal defence. When silence resumed, the younger brother gazed out his window and giggled quietly to himself.

The family stopped at every tawdry tourist trap along the way. The mother was particularly fond of the ‘big’ things. The younger son loved this, finding it all so exotic, but the older one, who even at this young age was developing an acute sense of cynicism, suspected that his mother simply wanted her photo taken in front of lots of big things so that she might appear smaller.
At the Big Banana at Coff’s Harbour the older son wandered away from the family and came across a sulphur-crested cockatoo chained to a perch. At the boy’s approach the bird bowed his head forward, ruffled his head feathers and politely asked for a scratch. The boy smiled and gladly obliged. When the younger brother approached, the bird raised it crest in greeting. The younger brother decided that he wanted one of the brilliant yellow feathers and tried to pull one from the bird’s head. The bird let out a shrill screech. Then the older brother screamed in agony as his finger – still hovering conveniently by – was bitten in retribution. The mother, who could not decide between the Big Banana back scratcher and the Big Banana snow dome, turned in time to see the older son poking the eye of the younger one with a bloodied forefinger (his consequent shriek tortured with unimaginable tragedy). She ran forward to protect her favourite son.
The cockatoo was not satisfied with the small lump of finger in its beak and was furiously searching for something else to attack. A small girl watching these two boys poking each other’s eyes did not see the crazed cockatoo lunge for her gas-filled balloon. The bird, seeing the face on the balloon, believed he was attacking a human cheek. He did not expect the head to explode with such a thunder clap. He let out a final, strangled screech as he fell back from his perch.
And the father, who occasionally displayed a rather peculiar sense of humour, indulged in a secret smirk as he quickly snapped a photo. In it we see two young boys covering their own eyes whilst trying to poke out each other’s; a bawling young girl clutching a piece of string that dangles loosely by her side; a screeching cockatoo bungy jumping backwards from its perch towards death; and a large sausage-shaped woman running in from the side and wielding a souvenir back scratcher. Everyone in the photo has their mouth wide open as though they are performing some bizarre opera.

There was another photo taken of the family on that holiday, but in this one everyone is singing a very different song.
When the family finally reached its destination the mother read about a small picturesque hotel in the hinterland called Bernard’s. She decided that the family should drive there in honour of the family’s own Bernard.
As they parked the car a workman of enormous proportions requested that they park elsewhere as a mobile crane was being driven in to lift a fibreglass swimming over the building and into place out the back. The father did as he was told and the younger son made a joke about the crane really being needed to lift the workman into place. The older son sniggered, thinking of the mother’s own imposing proportions, and this brought an icy stare from those dead eyes. The family patted the dog and said goodbye, leaving him to sleep and fart in the warm car.
The building was old and made of exposed timber beams and floorboards that creaked with each step, a sound that somehow made you feel welcome. Adding to the warm ambience was the erratic hum of lunch-time chatter, and the smell of char-grilled steak and onions. Out the back was a gang of workman looking busy, yet somehow relaxed.
“At least this Bernard doesn’t fart,” the father observed. The boys laughed at his but the mother, though she found it amusing, did not allow herself to laugh.
The family ordered lunch and drinks and went outside to find a table to sit at while the steaks were being cooked. They found one on a shady patch of lawn beneath a large coral tree that was alive with screeching rainbow lorikeets. Between the tree and the building was the hole into which the swimming pool would be gently lowered. At this moment it was high in the air, being swung ever so slowly over he roof of the hotel. Workmen scurried around communicating over small radios.
The older son winced as he bumped his bandaged finger on the table. The pain throbbed through his hand.
“What’s the matter?” the mother sneered. “Is the little boy’s finger sore?” He sarcasm was as stinging as the bristles on her hairbrush.
“Sissy faggot, sissy faggot,” the younger son chanted, looking at his mother for signs of approval.
“Shut your face,” the older boy muttered.
“Don’t you dare use language like that,” the mother spat. “You little sissy.”
“Take it easy on him,” the father said in a tone with less substance than the air he breathed.
“Sissy faggot,” the younger boy hissed once more.
The older boy felt sick as he gazed into his glass of lemonade. He watched the bubbles make their way to the top where they simply popped and became nothing. He thought that being alive was like that, only people were more unhappy than lemonade bubbles. He sat back and clenched his jaw, trying not to give in to his misery. If only he could change the sadness to hate, maybe then he could do something. But he could not hate, could only endure the relentless sickness of unhappiness.
“Look,” said the mother in that cold sharp sneer, “sissy’s going to cry!”
And then, as the boy’s eyes filled with tears of humiliation, the steaming birdshit smacked onto his forehead and ran down his cheek.
His family was delighted. His brother rolled back bubbling with laughter, his mother leaned forward, thumped the table and hurled hard, raucous laughter at him. Even his father tried to stifle a chuckle into his beer.
“Go on,” the father said, trying to sound sympathetic, “go to the bathroom and wash it off.” The boy walked towards the bathroom, wiping his face with his sleeve as he went.
There was a sudden flurry of voices carrying that unique tone of impending doom. The boy turned and watched as the large swimming pool fell silently through the air. Beneath it workmen ran in all directions, screaming “Get out of the way – she’s coming down!” The pool crashed to the ground at the edge of the hole and split neatly into two pieces. A cloud of dust shot out from under it and curled into the air as the two halves, like two halves of a clam shell, tipped apart as though in preparation to catch something.
The boy flinched. His family was concealed by a row of ferns but he knew they were not hurt. A moment later the boy knew that the workmen had not been referring to the pool, they had meant that the arm of the crane itself was coming down. The boy watched as the yellow arm swept down in a smooth, deadly arc. It smashed through the branches of the tree and bounced slightly as it thumped into the ground.
For a moment there was a strange silence, then the frantic screeching of the disgruntled lorikeets, followed by the frantic yelling of humans who weren’t sure what to do. The added weight of the extra jib, along with the off-centre angle, had caused the crane to simply tip over. The building was severed in half and out the front the forty tonne body of the crane was poking into the air at an absurd angle.
The boy ran back to his family. Only his brother had escaped injury. Both parents were buried in a splintered mess of wood and steel. His father was lying face down with his head driven into the turf by a branch of the coral tree. The mother was not quite dead yet. Her limbs were as twisted and shattered as the debris that had rained down on her. She stared into the air through the steel bars that pinned her down, her face reflecting the sickly yellow of the jib. She was in shock, her wide eyes blinking mechanically. The younger brother began to bawl as he shoved at the crane jib without enthusiasm.
And the older brother suddenly knew the meaning of irony. His big mother had smashed his little crane, and now a big crane had smashed his mother – at a place with the same name as their farting dog!
It was here that someone with a morbid sense of posterity took the other photo of the family. In it we see the faceless body of the father pushed mercilessly into the ground; the ghastly yellow face of the mother peering through the wreckage (now looking a little worried); the younger brother with his head tipped back, tears of sorrow rolling down his face as he cries to the heavens; and the older brother doubled over in raptures of delighted laughter, pointing at his mother as though she were a clown who had fallen on her bum. The scene is littered with the brilliant red flowers of the coral tree and cheerful splashes of green, blue, red and yellow of the dead rainbow lorikeets. It is an odd photo – full of such vibrant colour, full of sorrow and death, life and laughter. And irony.
Many people said that the boy in the photo (the laughing one) was ‘a little weirdo’. Many others said that he was simply in a state of extreme shock. He was not in shock and he was not weird. He simply appreciated the irony of it all.

There is silence as they look at me like puzzled children. They don’t know what to make of me. There is a sprinkling of nervous laughter which quickly subsides. They were expecting a funny story – they cannot see that my story was funny, in a funny sort of way. I decide to help them. I begin to chuckle quietly. A few of them follow my lead and pretty soon they are all laughing. They laugh without inhibition as I rock back in my chair, tears rolling down my papery cheeks. We laugh together as though we are sharing the joke of life. I think of the stories that will appear tomorrow and double over in hopeless mirth, and they laugh at my laughter.
What’s it like to be the funniest man in the world? Yes it is good, mostly.