and one for sorrow

A catastrophic domestic tragedy unfolds in Melbourne. Comment is vain in time of such grief. What will happen to this boy? How will he heal? How can we heal?

one for the roos

The big kangaroos are highly sensitive and sentient entities with clear tribal social structures and complex modes of communication. I inadvertently confronted a mob once, on the edge of their territory, and got a strong sense of guarded but non-aggressive warning.

As of last March, it appears they feel the need to reclaim Mt Ainslie.

I eat kangaroo because Aboriginal people do, and because it’s delicious. And like most Aboriginal people, I presume, I don’t do it often and I don’t do it unmindfully. I really like the idea of a large kangaroo mob maintaining a bareknuckle defense of Mt Ainslie – or, for that matter, the idea of one big irascible grey powering up the hill, sideswiping and then laying out some random male human, out of sheer angry contempt…

they called you salty

Goddamn, if I’d known, if I’d had the slightest idea he was close to the edge – (especially over a relationship, for chrissakes) – I’d've called him.

I’d've called him. I’d've gone and stirred him up, like I always could, since we were toddlers. My cousin Adam, my father’s sister’s son, three months older than me. He hanged himself last week.

I hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years. He has an eight-year-old daughter I met at the funeral. Bombshell of a child, as you’d expect. Errant golden boy produces lively golden offspring. At the funeral they made it clear he lived for her. No comment.

It goes without saying I am furious with him. You bastard – you always were a proud, arrogant, wilful, righteous sonofabitch and now it’s killed you. And a stupid, vengeful, graceless, futile gesture it was too – loser. Come back and do life again and do it better, you-with-all-the-talent. Make all the stupid gestures you like, but try and make sure they teach you something.

I loved him (though I’d forgotten how much), and he loved me. Classic kissing cousins, we declared it, age five, and he got his friend to conduct a marriage ceremony. We each had a sister three years younger, so the parents put the four of us together often. My parents were raising Clare and me in a quiet, conservative, religious environment; Adam and Sarah’s parents were in advertising, social and cultural butterflies, the picture of sharp, fine, fashionable taste. Ideological conflicts were frequent – subtle between the parents, overt amongst the kids.

By around eleven or twelve we were fighting more than playing; at his birthday party he flaunted his ravishing blonde girlfriend Paris (yeah, they were, like, twelve). I had crushes on boys, who sometimes had crushes on me, but our interactions consisted largely of moments of sweet, paralysed, mad, joyous terror. We didn’t go around together. I had few boys to my parties; I don’t remember having Adam there at all. We never saw each other through our teens; I heard word here and there: he got caught growing weed on his parents’ country weekender, he wanted to be a chef, he played a bit of guitar, he’d moved to Manly. I’d moved to Melbourne, to the Australian Ballet School, and later the Company. When we were 23 or thereabouts, out of curiosity, I called him.

We had a drink at the Steyne (oh, when I walked in those doors for the wake yesterday! The place holds far fewer memories for me than for most who were there; just this one of such bittersweet power) and then we found our way back to his – what was it? my memory is blank till we were inside that small space – a cabin, a caravan perhaps, a tiny granny flat. All I remember is the bed, and a Turkish rug. We fell pretty much straight on it – the bed, mostly. I wanted so much – but I couldn’t, oh god no; I was too young and too delicately raised to survive the thing it would have been if we’d slept together – once would be traumatic, more often was not viable for too many reasons. So I retreated, leaving him shrugging.

We met another couple of times over the years, and it always went the same way. The last time was during my marriage, and again I backed off, somewhat distrait. He said, ‘If we don’t do it this time, we never will.’ I said, ‘Then so be it: I can’t.’ He wouldn’t wait a day for me to honour an agreement with my husband; the next day he was unreachable. Typical; fucking prince.

When I went polyamorous – nine, ten years ago? he came straight to mind. I called him; he was here in impressively short time. I opened the door, but my wild child was gone. It was Adam, but not as I remembered him. He looked every inch the suburban family man he was soon to become. His late-thirties beer-drinker’s body had set as they do, even the active ones. Gone were the long streaky brown-gold locks, the front now receding, the rest cut. His face was tough and ruddy from a life of sun and surf; he was wearing (surely not ?) apricot chinos. (Forgive me, but the cultural shift from Manly to Redfern is akin to that from Barbados to Berlin, and he had crossed it without changing his pants. That’s salty for you.)

Now call me shallow, but I had just discovered a penchant for young men, a delightful number of whom seemed rather keen for the kind of encounter I had in mind. My head, shall we say, was turned in another direction, and I did not see my cousin as I might have. I fear he may have caught disappointment in my face: we were both outwardly relaxed but very much less than forthcoming. We talked lightly about music and the industry… strangely, I don’t think we even played each other anything. I had a number 2 crop, limited skills and a bad attitude at the time; I would’ve been far too out there for his taste. We were too different and too much alike: proud, intense, angry.

He left, and shortly after I heard he had settled with a partner, and then there was a child. I never called, and nor did he. There didn’t seem to be any reason to complicate each other’s lives. But if I’d known, goddamnit, if I’d known – that he had talked of suicide, that his partner felt he was morbidly obsessed with her, paranoid about her fidelity and constantly angry, miserable and often mean. That he had withdrawn from his friends of late, or that at the end he left: she did not kick him out as he claimed. If I had known he was in such a desperate hole I’d've come straight over. The man was in need, and knowing him deep but not well I could’ve got him talking all sorts. I would hardly expect him to call, but how I wish that word had got round to me.

By now, by this age, we could’ve been great friends, with or without sex, that most likely depending on whether I helped him repair his relationship or survive the ending of it. Take that as it comes: I would’ve been content either way – anything but this.

Such Is Life

© Adam Jenkins

*If his friends see this and know a link to where you can hear it, please leave it in a comment.*

Well I fell from your grace once too often
More often than it comes in five long measures
The length of life that surrounds you
And calls you to the end

So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life
Don’t you know it

Well I came from higher up oh so briefly
Even more when the call came from God
We will dance around the outlife
Never seeking more

So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life

I come from a town where I used to know
Where the places were to go
Then I packed my things
And I’m on the road again

So it’s goodbye hello to the ones I’ll never know
Such is life such is life
Don’t you blow it

oh my lordy – going down?

Handy info for everyone who ever wondered – in fact everything you ever wanted to know about cunnilingus but were too afraid to ask. Even my friends who are well-versed in the art will find the frankness amusing.

http://content.libida.com/how-to-cunnilingus

I’ve given some thought to the missing verb in ‘how to cunnilingus’. Do is clumsy, but I hardly want to criminalise the act with commit. Engage in makes it sound like you can only do it in marriage or a toilet cubicle; what’s left – execute? How to Execute Cunnilingus.

mystery-coated chocolate

The other day I reached into the box of tissues beside my bed to get the last one, and my hand closed around… a small chocolate bar. I can’t begin to tell you what bemusement this brings. How long has this little foil-wrapped treasure been hiding there? Who would’ve put it there? How do I find out? (It seems kind of uncouth to go around asking people… after all, I can’t even guess how many weeks or months it took to go through that big box of tissues – it seems an indelicate question… ‘did you, um, when you were at my place, might you’ve…’ and if they didn’t, I’ve obviously let them into someone else’s intimate joke.)

I do hope that somehow, whoever it was gets to hear that I am searching for them without me broadcasting my confusion too indiscreetly. Then, having had the satisfaction of seeing me thoroughly mystified, they can gain the further satisfaction of enlightening me – so that I in turn, having enjoyed the pleasure of not knowing, may also have the pleasure of knowing.

dishonour killing

There’s not much we can do. But we can at least stop using the phrase ‘honour killing’. There’s no honour for anyone in such an action. These are ‘dishonour killings’ – they dishonour everyone involved.

“Turkish police recently recovered the body of Medine Memi, a 16-year-old girl, who was buried alive by her father and grandfather in an “honor” killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.”

in islam-watch

in the daily news

i am the new hip

So, for those of you who haven’t already heard the saga live, so to speak, I am now part cyborg. My right hip joint has been replaced with a ceramic-coated metal ball and socket – X-rays will be duly scanned and uploaded.

I checked into the Mater Hospital in Crows Nest on Thursday afternoon, 28th January. Was late, of course, and as a result nearly missed dinner. Not a good start, especially as when dinner arrived it turned out to be a cheese and tomato sandwich and something steaming under a hot lid… beans and potatoes. And this place is eight hundred and something dollars a night, I thought. Hmph. That’s what you get for not giving the kitchen proper notice.

My surgeon came to see me and drew fat black arrows on the appropriate leg. Well, exactly – let’s avoid the unthinkable. He informed me, in response to my earlier request to be allowed to bring in a video documentarist, that although that wasn’t possible he’d arranged to move my surgery into the theatre that has a camera in the overhead light fitting, so I’d have my record of the action. He seemed as pleased with me as I was with him.

The following morning I was wheeled down to surgery, given a silly hat (the sort that makes your average shower cap look tailored) and had a few things stuck on me which would aid the monitoring process while I was under. Had a chat with the anaesthetist and decided to opt for a spinal injection. Apparently people get nervous about it but it sounded like a marginally better option for me. She put a little something into my cannula – first stage knockout drops. They wheeled me into theatre; the surgeon said hi and pointed out where the camera was. I felt fine at that point but was apparently already too dopey to wave.

I woke up in Recovery with the anaesthetist standing over me and the surgeon grinning beside her. He put my blue hospital file on the bed with me and said, “your DVD’s in there.” I was wheeled back up to my room where I discovered a general anaesthetic has little impact on your appetite. Soup, sandwiches, sleep. At 5pm: a modest but tasty three-course dinner, then more sleep. All this time, I’m lying on my back. A hospital bed is the coolest thing: you can raise and lower the whole bed, or just the back, or just the point under your knees, or you can tilt the whole thing – or any combination thereof. All by pushing buttons on a little device at your side. Though I couldn’t bend much in the middle, by dint of raising the back slightly, then tilting the whole bed a fair way, I could get a cup with a straw to my mouth without spilling anything. Perversely, I was having fun.

I also had PCA – Patient-Controlled Analgesic. A little button you can press which delivers a dash of morphine straight into your cannula… ☺ …After each dose it locks you out for five minutes, but even taking a dose every five minutes is safe. I don’t know how long the spinal block lasted, but I was only hitting the button every two hours or so. And I was perfectly happy. In fact, for the first few hours I felt downright vivacious – though if I look back through the texts I sent I wasn’t at my most coherent.

Sometime late in the evening, unsurprisingly, my back started to hurt. All it needed was a stretch I do without thinking many times a day, a simple spinal twist. When lying on your back, this is achieved by crossing one knee over the other leg, bringing the hips up onto one side and twisting the shoulders in opposition. No chance of that. I began to shift around in bed, trying to get my upper body round this way and that while not moving my lower half at all. For a long time I had no success, and the kink in my back got more and more uncomfortable. Around midnight they rolled me, which is a wondrous process. You get a nurse on one side and an orderly on the other, they put a pillow between your legs and tell you what to do with your arms and then they neatly heft your whole body onto its side without you moving a muscle. Doesn’t hurt a bit. Then the nurse wipes down your back with something to stop you getting bedsores and they roll you back down again. While I was on one side I got them to hold me there a moment while I got a proper, satisfactory spinal twist, turning my face and shoulders toward the mattress. No click, but a definite improvement. I did squirm around for a while more after that, trying to get rid of the back pain altogether. Then I gave up, and decided it was time to get some sleep.

But by then the pain in my hip was increasing. By early morning I was hitting the morphine button every twenty minutes or so, and using a little (entirely unnecessary) pride to keep it to not more than that. Maybe the spinal’s worn off, I thought. I don’t know what to expect; what could’ve gone wrong, lying here on my back? Around 6am they rolled me again, and this time the neat manoeuvre came with a moment of cold-sweat, white-knuckle agony. Something was certainly wrong, but I was too doped to understand, or to impress the nurse when I said shakily, “that didn’t hurt like that last night.”

But I ate my breakfast okay, and the nurses and I were only mildly concerned by the fact that my leg had rolled outward (a natural enough circumstance for a ballet dancer) and, try as I might, I couldn’t raise the muscle to make the kneecap face the ceiling. I got a bit nervous when they took away my PCA, but they gave me a nice strong tablet and promised more whenever I felt the need. At 10am I was given a cup of tea and a biscuit. I remember taking half an hour to finish them. At 11 I was due for a routine post-op X-ray.

They wheel you out in your bed, take you down in the lift, position you under the X-ray machine and it’s done. Because it was a Saturday, the X-ray was coming back up to my ward with me instead of through the normal weekday administrative channels. The dude from the X-ray booth came out and dropped the envelope in my lap. (No doubt he was a highly qualified medical technician but he’s now forever ‘the dude’, due to his bandanna and his droll, low-key attitude.) “Been moving around a bit, have you?” he asked me. “No,” I vowed in surprise, confused by the idea of getting up and walking. “I’ve been on my back all the time.”

“Well,” he drawled, classically laconic, shaking his head slightly, “I think you might have a bit of a dislocation there.” I pulled the X-ray out of the envelope and looked at it… Oh. My. God. There was the new prosthesis, plain for the most inexpert viewer to see, but the ball was a good four centimetres from where it should’ve been, right out of the cup and up beside it. Oops. I began to giggle. Morphine makes light of everything.

We rolled back up to the ward where I waved the X-ray at them cheerfully saying, “bad news!” As the orderly repositioned my bed I could hear them out at the nurses’ station, going nuts over the X-ray. They called my surgeon, who arrived in remarkably short time and showed absolutely no ill feeling about me complicating what was presumably his day off. “If I just take your leg like this and” – I winced audibly – “no, we’re going to have to put you under. When did you last eat? Ten o’clock? We’ll book surgery for two.” He disappeared and a nurse gave me a morphine injection in the thigh. I slept, and woke at about twenty to two. In pain. But, I thought, I’ll shortly be under general anaesthetic, so that’ll do. The nurse came back, all apologetic. “There’s a woman with twins has to have a caesar – you’ve been bumped to three thirty.”

“In that case,” I said immediately, “I’ll have another shot.” They put me back in the arms of Morpheus until I was wheeled back to theatre. A droll Irish surgeon came to chat with me while mine was prepping, and apologised for his twins taking my spot. We bantered back and forth until my anaesthetist (#2) arrived and said he’d put me out for “between two and twenty minutes”. The procedure itself took, presumably, only seconds.

Since then I’ve been healing like a champion. In hospital-speak, the day of the surgery is Day Zero, so the clicking back in or ‘closed reduction’ as they called it was on Day 1. Day 2, I think (it’s a bit of a blur) they took the catheter out and I hobbled to the bathroom and back on a frame. I also ‘sat out’ – spent some time out of bed on a chair. Day 3 I swapped the frame for calliper-type crutches and almost immediately ditched one of those to get about on just the one. Day 4 I swapped that for a walking stick. Day 5 they said I could go home if I wanted, but given I’d lost a day with the dislocation I elected to stay one more. My private health insurance doesn’t cover me for outpatient rehab so I wanted to be as stable as possible before leaving. By my last night I’d outstripped the physios’ requirements by so much I’d become a star patient. But of course.

And how’s this? I had only enough private health cover for my choice of doctor in a public hospital, but my choice of doctor doesn’t operate in a public hospital, so I was paying a gap of several thousand dollars, much of which was the cost of a bed at the Mater. But on my final morning as I waited to be released, I was visited by someone senior from Accounts (I think) who wanted to let me know that because I’d dislocated – treatment for which constituted a different kind of procedure with a different level of cover – it appeared, subject to confirmation, that my health fund would cover all my hospital costs from dislocation to release. She came up to let me know because, having paid on admission, I was likely to get a sizeable refund check from the hospital, with not much explanation. I felt like I was having a particularly good birthday.

I’m staying with a friend for the first two weeks out of hospital. Alison’s apartment is quiet, airy and simply furnished; very restful, and Alison, who works 9-5, is a remarkably good-hearted and eminently sensible person. She likes to cook and – like most people – would rather cook for two than one. She seems to enjoy having me here and I’m loving being here. I spend most of each day reading, writing or sleeping – especially at first I slept for several hours each day, as well as all night. My body was healing at a phenomenal rate and really didn’t have much energy for anything else. I still sleep a lot, but I’m trying to use these weeks of recuperation time to knock out a draft of a novel. I’m also about halfway through Geoffrey Robertson’s Crimes Against Humanity, a 4cm-thick tome about the development of human rights law, tiny print but actually very readable. It’s nice to have the time for it.

Day 8 from the surgery was a Saturday, and we were invited to a party at Area 51 (our friends’ notorious party house). I promised to make an appearance, but when the time came I was party-ready in a truly shameless way. I took my stick for the sake of caution and fatigue, but I was walking without. I wore long pants to hide my compulsory knee-high compression stockings – but I lost track of how many times I unzipped them to show my dressings. I’d brought the dislocation X-ray because it’s a doozy and was bound to reap applause. I lasted a good seven hours partying – including, ahem, a few minutes on the dance floor. Believe it or not, that time was anything but a careless indulgence: I had the room to myself with Pablo on DJ duty (always magic) and I started with my hands on the back of a chair, doing slow stretching and reps of my hospital exercises. Soon I could feel the joint properly for the first time. That’s when I had a little bop. Just because I could. Then I stopped before I did something stupid. But hallelujah.

Alison, who has watched me improve day by day, says I’m a legend. I like that. Eugene has also been supportive, driving me to and from the hospital and running the odd errand. The staff of the Mater deserve acknowledgement, because they were wonderful, and my surgeon Michael O’Sullivan did an absolutely brilliant, textbook-precise job: I had very little bleeding, almost no bruising, and the way he cut in seems to have done minimal damage to the surrounding musculature. Fabulous work.

I have to tell you: the joint functions pretty much like the real thing, and a whole lot better than my old arthritic one. But it doesn’t feel like the real thing – for one thing, the ball rotates within the socket with an uncanny smoothness. An uncannily frictionless, hard smoothness. I can feel – not the joint itself, obviously, because it has no nerves – but the movement of the joint, which is sensed by, I suppose, the various muscles and other tissue around it and connected to the bone either side of it. And it feels… not organic. The tiny, all-important degree of give in an organic joint – the layer of cartilage, the various fibrous attachments, the softness of bone relative to metal – is not there, nor the tiny softening asymmetricalities of things made by nature. Part of me is now machine-made. Machine-like. It’s likely I’ll have to get the other hip done in a few years; I wonder how many parts I’ll have replaced by the time I die. They’ll have to take me to pieces for recycling.

adventures in solitude (forthcoming noir zombie vs vampire film)

adventures in solitude pt 1: fact

A little after dark I am driving a pale blue Kombi down an unlit country road and suddenly I come to a barred gate. Damn, not such a good shortcut. I swing the Kombi into a three-point turn and while I’m facing an open field my lights go out. The darkness around me is immense, shadowy and silent beyond my little engine. I have the parkers, which on the Kombi are negligible, and I can see only by holding the high beam on. I check my phone: no reception. Steering while holding the high beam against the wheel and trying not to turn the indicators on, I head back to the point where I took the wrong turn, remembering houses there. On the way, I see a house I hadn’t noticed before and pull over. I knock repeatedly on the front door; no answer. I step back down into the yard and walk round one side, dodging bits of farm junk. There’s a light on inside, but no-one’s home. Suddenly I can hear my own rough accelerated breathing above the anxious orange clicking of the hazard lights, and the rustling quiet of the surrounding night. This is how horror movies start. Hn. Better get back on the road.

adventures in solitude pt 2: fiction

She stood at the black dresser in the lamplight, twirling a toothpick round the cone and gazing darkly into the mirror. Casey appeared in the doorway, looking insomniac. ‘Casey,’ she growled, low, slow and husky. ‘Go back to bed. Don’t come out here tonight. Forget anything you see or hear, and don’t come near me till daylight. I’m -’ her upper lip curled slightly ‘- dangerous… I’m in a mood to do some damage; hell, I’m in the mood that will do damage if I’m anywhere near anyone! Please, go back to bed. And shut your goddamn door.’

coming home to strangeness

I’m home, but I’m in a strange state. It’s 11.30pm, the plane got in after eight but it took me a couple of hours to get from the airport to Redfern.

That was fun… not. Just under a week ago my bank got wind that my debit card details “may have been compromised” and cancelled the damn thing. My financial lifeline in Europe, you understand. I survived on friend credit (fredit? A froan?) as far as the boarding gate, and I had AUD$10 in my wallet.

Not enough for a cab, though I thought I might be able to share one. But the first cabbie I approached with that plan demanded 75% of the fare, which is his right by law, but he was unpleasantly aggro about it and I hadn’t, at that point, the resilience to keep trying. I was hoping to avoid the train because it meant changing at Central and hauling my bags up 30 steps at Redfern. So I investigated the bus. ‘Investigated’ in this context means queued for, since signage at the airport bus/coach stops is minimal and information non-existent, and after 15 minutes along came a bus whose driver said I needed the 400, which would be along in another 15 minutes, and I’d have to change at Mascot shops and cross the road for the 309. I reconsidered the train, in case it came sooner, but it turns out the train fare on that rip-off private line is over $15. Back to the bus.

A journey by car, planes, and buses that began at 9.30 GMT yesterday ended sometime after 22.00 EST tonight with me collapsing into a chair on the terrace, crumb of herbal anaesthetic in hand. No-one was home, but the new presence is everywhere evident in little differences, someone else’s stuff. Where is Casey? Is he coming home tonight? Is he hiding out? Does he even expect me? I really should’ve Facebook messaged him, I realise after a while, because I don’t have his phone number. This is a little weird.

And so I unpack my laptop and set up, but though it tells me I’m connected to my wireless network, Firefox can’t find anything; Skype won’t open, I’m just not online. I plug in, but it’s not that. A problem with my ISP? I don’t know if I even have their phone number, and I’m too sore and tired to go look for it. Worse, I’ve put my Australian SIM back in my phone but my credit’s expired, and I can only top up online. Worse still, like an idiot I months ago let myself be booked to model tomorrow afternoon, and of course with no phone credit the SOS texts I tried to send this evening to organise a replacement wouldn’t have gone. I’ll have to call the models tomorrow morning, because at the moment, my only means of communication is the landline and it’s a little late to be making calls.

Suddenly, I’m strangely isolated. I can’t even call the people I should. All I can do is write – offline – about coming home to strangeness. And try to reassemble the thoughts I had while away, about coming back.

It’s 1am. I’ve cooked and eaten a bowl of noodles, by my calculations my sixth light meal in about 32 hours. I’m tired and buzzy; and I’ve finished the chocolate. I should try to sleep.

Oh yeah. Don’t worry, I do plan to write about the trip, the whole trip (though don’t expect ‘nothing but’) – but at the moment I just have scattered notes, so bear with me while I construct and reconstruct, over the coming days and weeks. Each section will have its moment, backdated to its time. Do backdated entries show up on an RSS feed? Keep me posted.

necessarily cryptic

Woh… this ride is wild

Talk about Knowledge: I did it – I got it. I was there. In my body, in the room – I could feel myself. I could see myself…

:) Hallelu Jaqi