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?

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.

coffee men

‘How d’you take your coffee, luv?’ asked a friend.

‘White with one.’ I paused… and observed with interest: ‘nothing like I take my men.’

‘Darlin’,’ drawled my rugged friend without missing a beat, ‘if you took your coffee like you take your men you’d end up burned.’

time flies, and so shall i

The new – now newish – love affair has (as they are wont to do) driven all before it, drowned much in its briny rush, and generally spread chaos and glory all around. I’m now amid a couple of weeks’ respite before being reunited with the Troublemaker Himself in his home country for a few weeks. The man known herein as Knowledge (for the sake of his online modesty) is from Surrey, more precisely the village of Ewell – now (I gather) pretty much swallowed up by Greater London. I’ll be joining him there before we take various trips into the English countryside and through the Channel tunnel to France, Spain and Germany. I’ll be away six weeks altogether, from September 2 to October 20. If you’re in Europe, plan to see me. If you’re in Australia, catch up before and/or after. More details soon.

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

Protected: caveat emptor, fool in love… Warning to family etc: white-hot implicit content… Password: knowledge

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ancient conversation

“When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over…”
(Sappho)

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”
(Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

the public acknowledgement of reality

Oh. My. God.

I can’t believe I’m doing it again.

I keep asking myself why I do it, and I keep coming back with the same gleeful answer: because I can.

It appears there is a virtually unlimited number of handsome, bold, intelligent, engaging young men out there keen for some fun – and often something more, some warm/hot/cool experience – with an older woman. And when I say young I mean they’re in their twenties. I look 30-something but am 46. Now darlings I know I’m bragging, but while my life isn’t really all that unusual, it’s just not the sort of thing you often see mentioned in print. And as a result, this not-so-unusual reality doesn’t get much public acknowledgement.

And I’m all for the public acknowledgement of reality. So here’s mine.

In the 12 or so years since my divorce, there have been something less than 20 lovers in my life, one of whom has been older than me. (He, incidentally, was quite botanically batty, but then so were several of the others.) They range in age from 21 (when I was 41) and 22 (just recently) up to a year or two younger than me. Length of relationships varied from a night or a few weeks (3 months is a nice affair, I find), up to several deep friendships of overlapping years and varying intensities. The longest lasted over 10 years as a primary partnership, travelling together, living together, living not far apart. He was 10 years younger than I; the next longest, still going at six years… he’s 16 years younger.

Is there something unseemly in this lifestyle? Or perhaps particularly in the public confession of it..? If my sexual history had been like my mother’s (may her god rest her soul) and her mother’s, and as mine was intended to be – I met my husband when I was a virgin a year or so out of school, we have two children -  would it then have been perfectly fine to tell you? Guess it would’ve caused no blushes. Unless you’re the kind of person that blushes at the mention of virginity. In truth, I barely recognise that as a sexual history; it comes from a time when you weren’t supposed to have one. But I was a kid during the revolution.

Are these musings prompted by the cover of this week’s Drum Media, where Tim Rogers and Charlie Thorpe do a John and Yoko love-in for Homebake? (Note Tim’s ironically turned wrist… mm, Tim Rogers, tops the list of people I’d like to meet in Sydney.) Homebake’s slogan this year: Peace. Love …or something like that, deadpanned Bernard Zuel. All more arch than the Bridge. Peace, Love? What decade are we in? What do these words mean post-’80s, between the ecstasy and the drug dogs, post-Tiananmen, in the ugly scramble for the planet, post-Bush/9/11/Guantanamo? Peace, Love and my sweet purple furry hotpants. Homebake, reduced to stylistic nostalgia; how are the mighty fallen? Sure, I doubt any of the amped-up rentacrowd thugs that turn up to this mass gathering on the chance of a bit of biffo so much as paused for thought.

Yeah, anyway, so some brave ideals were upheld in that decade of love: most proved absurdly untenable. But I have this one that seems to work for me. Does this make me wicked, or a freak? I wonder who thinks so, and why? Does it make me some kind of female Don Juan? Casanovella? My friends would snort at the idea; I’m more often seduced than seducer.

No, seriously. I rarely go looking for it, but with so much on offer, what’s a girl to do? I laugh up my sleeve about the supposed man drought – I wondered for a moment whether I should write to the Herald and explain that the lads must all be at my place, but it’s marriageable (or at least breeding-ready) men in their thirties that are apparently in short supply, and while I count three of them among my dearest friends I’m hardly holding them from the market.

But these men in their twenties… ladies, do not miss out. They are fit and skilled and ripe for adventure, open-minded and curious and insanely good fun – and they mostly move on before you get sick of them. Though at least one of mine has become a lifelong friend.

Vive la difference. Vive la tribu.

:)

spring cycle

Oh dear.

Who the blazing hell are you and where did you spring from? And don’t get pert and give me Pakistan via Saudi Arabia you know that isn’t what I mean. Oh I’m scared. I’m right scared and it’s got very little to do with where you’re from, boy.

Man.

It’s ‘cos of who you are, and who I am.

God help me (it sucks being an atheist) I can’t do this. Please let me not do this.

(*sigh* …As it happens that’s the very prayer that began my journey to atheism)

[whispers] …but I close mine on his hands his eyes his hips his smile

- the heat in him

Oh dear

…

What do you want from me? Pretty sure I’m in trouble either way. Big trouble.

Your family will hate me, so this can’t be serious, right?

As if!

when you’re so goddamn young (why do I do this? why do they want me to?)

And, grand boutade, you don’t fall in love anyway, right? Never have, anyway…

and will surely marry a nice girl fairly soon, maybe a friend of a cousin…

I am staring down the barrel of heaven and/or disaster and I do not like these odds.

But you’re not half intense, are you?

And me, I’m cool as a fucking cucumber, yeah?

[shivers]

[LOL]

Oh dear… :)