Dentist

My priest....
...did I just say priest?
I meant my dentist....
(...jesus, where did that come from?)
...anyway he killed himself the other day.
I don't mean to sound flippant about all this...
.....I mean, its a sad, terrible thing
...of course it is.
I read somewhere that, statistically speaking, a relatively higher percentage of dentists...
...you know...kill themselves....
...compared to other medical practitioners. 
What is it about dentists? 
Is it because they spend all day looking down into all those gaping mouths?
....all those teeth....
...is it really so bad?
Maybe it's seeing all those people squirm and grimace?
...jerking in pain...
...gripping the arm rest...
...white-knuckling it...
...terrified of those shiny implements
that little stainless steel sickle-shaped one is by far the worst. I hate that thing. 
For me it's the high pitched sound of the drill...
...that is one of my least favourite sounds in the world.
Anyway, no one is happy to be in that chair...are they?
Certainly not me...
...for me, no matter how hard I brushed, eventually the drill came out. 
English teeth. 

In terms of suicide...you would think it would be the proctologists right?
...at the end of the biological process.
Anyway....
I couldn't put it together...
...why my dentist would do it.
At first it didn't seem to make sense.
At first. 
He was a wiry guy...
...brisk but professional.
He was bald with thin hairy arms.
Basically, exactly what you'd expect a dentist to look and behave like.
And he had been my dentist for....
...well, ever since I moved to Sydney with my husband in 2005.
According to his family, there was no indication or warning signs.
And the same goes for me...
...in my limited capacity as one of his patients. 
He always seemed the same.
On the day of my appointments, I'd just come in...
...sit in the chair and he'd get to work.
...and this happened every six months.
Like clockwork.
Then, a month ago...
...I rang up to book my regular appointment and there was this voice message...
...followed by a reference to a different dentist.
I didn't think anything of it.
I thought maybe he was on a holiday?
I'd seen a picture of him...
...standing on top of some ruins in Mexico.
Where had I seen that photograph? 
Anyway.
A short time later we got the news...
...that he had killed himself. 
And later on, it was revealed that he had been up to a lot of...
...well...unsavoury things.

One evening he was one the evening news.
Strange seeing such a familiar face being broadcast directly into your living room. 
Deviant sex, drugs and fraud.
And the sex stuff...my god!
It was all really....weird stuff.
Compulsive.
The subsequent newspaper and the TV reports really only implied what had happened.
To some of the other patients...
....to the people he met online.
In the very office where I got my teeth cleaned. 
From this information you could easily connect the dots.
S&M.
Laughing gas.
A modern day Marquis De Sade.
The dental hygienist was involved as well.
She had seemed like such a nice girl.
Bubbly.
Happy.  
She was Scandinavian I believe.
As the story slowly unfolded over time... 
...there was footage of this same girl...
...at the inquest...
...in expensive sunglasses...
...pushing through the media swarm gathered outside the police station in the CBD.
They chased her down the street like a pack of mongrel dogs.
She claimed she was manipulated...
...that she had been under the sway of the dentist...
...a charismatic and highly persuasive individual.
Charismatic and persuasive?
My dentist?
I just couldn't see it. 
But apparently he was.

At the end of the day...
...what do you really know about somebody? 
And I truely believe that your business is your business.
Just as my business is my business.
People have a right to privacy.
Nothing wrong with that.
But these two freaks....? 
...the dentist and his assistance...
...what they did...
....my god.
and I'm no prude. 
Like I say, do what you want...
...within reason.
But my dentist was into everything.
All taboos were broken.
Or so I'm led to believe.

You don't want to dig too deep...
...they say your search history is sold to the highest bidder.
They say we are all beholden to five or six big corporations.
That all our data is being complied somewhere...
...stored up.
Maybe this irrational but...you begin to fear a moral reckoning. 
You have to be careful. 
Anyway, it was the missing money....
...that was the thing that initially caught the government's attention.
He'd been fleecing his patients and his partner in different ways.  
The drugs and the sexual practices came to light because of that inquiry. 
The freaky sex stuff became the icing on the media cake.
He took the whole thing right up to the very edge...
...came to work everyday, a smile on his face, even when he was under investigation.
Even while the authorities were closing in on him.
And three of his female patients reported so-called immaculate conceptions.
Mysterious pregnancies. 
Morning sickness.  
He never put me under general anesthetic.
Thank goodness.
Hank, my husband, was livid. 
I don't remember anything...untoward happening. 
A reassuring pat on the shoulder from time to time, his face leaning into mine, telling me to spit in the little swirling bowl.
On the other hand, that guy had his hands in my mouth.
I think about that from time to time. 
You bet I do. 

The new dentist was older.
He had the same professional manor.
I took a blood test...
...for my own pease of mind.
I was fine...
There was nothing.
The story faded from the headlines. 
Its funny how these things get consumed so quickly...
...then forgotten. 
Life goes on. 
Then we move onto the next thing.
I filled out the paperwork.
The new dentist was gruff...
...like he'd been doing this for too long. 
I sat back in the chair and opened my mouth...
...he started probing around...
Then he said...
"Well...everything seems to be in order".
And that was it.  

Old world tailoring

One morning I found a suitcase dumped on my front lawn. A blue Samsonite hard shell model with little plastic wheels (one of which was broken). It was lightly scuffed up and had no name tag. An abandoned piece of luggage jarring the predictable view from my living room window.
I picked it up and wheeled it into my garage.
I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to do with it. (Leave it? That didn't seem right. Call somebody? Okay...but who?)
Later, after work, I opened a beer, placed the bottle cap into the coffee tin and I noticed the suitcase once again (I'd completely forgotten about it in the accelerated rush of the day).
And it occurred to me there might be something dangerous inside this thing.
A bomb, a snake, drugs...
Of course then I had to laugh at myself.
What kind of spy novel was I living in that these items would arrive on my front door?
Jesus.
I popped the lock open with a screwdriver and I took a look inside.
The suitcase contained a men's suit.
The suit was in immaculate condition, dark blue, hand-stitched, lined with beautiful material. A three piece suit. None of that natty, swinging 60s bullshit. The pinched and short style that is so popular at the moment.
(Popular and inappropriately tight on older guys such as myself who tend to look like sad, clapped out Italian gigolo wannabes).
This suit was old school tailoring with a generous cut and attention to detail.
It was well-constructed, old world quality.
Anyway, that was it, just the suit, which I hung up in the garage with some of my other clothes.
Through the doorway which led into the kitchen, I could hear my wife Helen talking to her sister on the phone.
It was the usual deformation of other family member's.
A revolving carlcel criticism.
I couldn't hear my daughters which could mean any number of things.
Helen, my wife, was currently accusing me of being an emotionally absent father and husband.
This was her latest thing.
My position was, I give you money, this house, an annual holiday to whatever hot country you and the girls want to visit plus a visit to your mother's in Queensland once a year. Plus all the other incidentals. Plus Helen has the opportunity to study this year. To 'grow'. What was this month? She wanted to become 'a healer' with all the incurred homeopathic lifestyle jargon. And you know those courses aren't cheap.
All I ask is that I have the garage as my space and the opportunity to relax in my own way, in the cracks so to speak, in the spaces between the demands of my incredibly stressful job.
That didn't seem like too much of an ask, correct?
Anyway, currently, this was the main sticking point in our arguments.
The issue that had been popping up again and again.
The emotional separation.
The compartmentalisation.
The same thing my father was accused of when he was my age.
Closing off.
Shutting down.
I can almost understand it now.
And lately? Lately she has been accusing me of being on the spectrum.
Please. 
Anyway, the garage is my zone because the inside of my house is too chaotic.
What with the fucking Lego and toys everywhere? Are you kidding?
Every moment feels like you are teetered on the edge of domestic chaos.
(Every time she goes out, I get this knot in my stomach because I know she is going to come back with more stuff from the shopping centre, the outlets, the supermarkets that charge twice as much as the less prestigious one.)
And look, if I'm being honest, the whole thing, between me and Helen has become a bit of a show.
For her parents and for mine.
(Mainly her parents because they have the money. The dangling carrot).
Emotionally speaking, I honestly feel like I have done everything I can with Helen. And vice-versa. We have exhausted all the feeling. All the emotion. We have had the kids, bought this house in this suburb I would have never chosen to live in, explored all topics of conversation including our fleeting dreams and desires, gone over every square millimetre of each other's bodies, personalities and psyches with a magnifying glass. Done. Finished. Kaput. No stone has been left unturned.
The point is...in my experience, well, people are not inexhaustible mysteries.
I could delude myself.
I could escape into the illusory safety of nostalgia.
I could soften my brain with Sting's greatest hits.
I could expedite my demise with increased alcohol consumption and saturated fats.
Jump back eighteen years ago and it was Helen or Diana.
Helen and Diana was a fork in the road situation, I suppose.
I liked Diana but Helen was the right move.
Long term prospects, I'm talking about here. The dangling carrot.
I'm still in contact with Diana but that ship has sailed.
We serve up carefully vetted versions of ourselves on Facebook (....even this kind of bitter self-realisation becomes trite doesn't it? Another condoned response to the gentle rust of discontent. A vent to let of steam, an attitude learnt from popular movies and music. Something to think about when you're standing out in the back garden, wondering what the stars look like beyond the light pollution...)
Besides, she has changed and I can tell it would have probably been the same with her.
There might have been a few more years of interest but ultimately.....
well...so much for the romanticism of inexhaustible mysteries.
Besides, I'm not about to fuck up my life by running off to explore some missed opportunity.
We become these stereotypes. Stereotype of conformity or middle aged acting up.You go through your twenties and your thirties and you move at neck-break speed into these roles and you can't go back.
You can't.
You can try (Please, be my guest).
My friend tried to make it to the other side of the lava flow, totally ballsed it up and now everyone hates him.
His wife, his kids, all their mutual friends all hate him. (He became the village pariah. Is that a thing? Or do villages only have idiots?)
Anyway, it all turned into a real mess.
And he did all this for the love of a shallow 32-year-old nitwit who ended up hating him anyway.
So I know, from secondhand experience, that course of action is ill-advised.
"You don't shit where you live".
That's what my old man said to me (one of his stock standard pieces of advice).
But the suitcase....the suit.
I wish there was something else....like a note in the pocket.
A phone number on a scrap of paper.
A lottery ticket.
Some sort of deeper mystery.
There wasn't.
That weekend, I go to visit this friend of mine, the one who balled it all up and became a sad sack.
I have a few beers with him.
He was free (he's always free now).
He puts on a brave face but his good humour always falters. He knows that I know that he really messed it up.
His secret life became his real life and guess what? It wasn't any good.
It was shit.
Sitting in his earth tone, under decorated one bedroom apartment, we talk and catch up, while sharing a four pack of Heineken.
Through the sliding glass balcony doors you can see identical lonely balconies.
A self-satisfied cluster of apartments, a concrete hive, conveniently located near the train station and the airport.

One morning I found a suitcase dumped on my front lawn. A blue Samsonite hard shell model with little plastic wheels (one of which was broken). It was lightly scuffed up and had no name tag. An abandoned piece of luggage jarring the predictable view from my living room window.
I got the suit dry-cleaned down the road at the shopping centre.
It fit me like a glove (I wasn't prone to wearing secondhand clothing but the suit was in very good condition).
And it felt good.
And look, even though it exceeded the dress code at work, I started wearing it.
Later that week, I got hit on by a rep.
(I hadn't been hit on by anyone in....three years).
All the supposedly fixed ideas and firm resolutions I had about being stoically faithful to my wife and taking the high road.....
...well, all that went straight out the window the moment the rep placed her hand my thigh in the pub near the office.
Yeah, I took a chance.
(Yeah right......I say this like I actually wrestled over this decision and made a carefully weighed choice. Who am I kidding? I was straight in there, just like an overheated high school kid).
She was staying in the hotel across the street.
The sex was good. It was fine.
Better than good.
Whatever.
We both got what we wanted.
Fifty minutes later we were both showered, dressed and parting ways on the street corner...
(me heading home, her to the airport in an uber) ...just two ordinary work colleagues moving back towards the mutually safe interiors of their respective lives.
As if nothing had happened.
And as far as I was concerned, there was no biblical reckoning.
No great punishment.
No karma activated payback.
I simply rejoined the prescribed flow of things and went about my business, both private and professional.
In fact, after that my life actually became easier in a number of different ways.
Of course, rationally speaking, this had nothing at all to do with this suit.
Having said all this, it became apparent to me that there was a sharp delineation in my luck, a predictable factor which defined when I was successful with opposite sex and when I wasn't. And that point of of delineation was the suit. There was no avoiding this.
Suit on: the ladies took notice like I was fucking Sean Connery.
Suit off: just another schlep hanging out by the photocopier.
Would I would be overstating the relevance of the suit to say it had magical properties?
Maybe.
There was something about it.
The suit shaped me.
Brought me into focus.
When this realisation took hold, I took a long looked at myself in the mirror.
I was in my early fifties and I realised this was it. Most likely last window of opportunity.
It gets you thinking about luck and lucky objects.
How maybe something like a coin, a rabbit's foot....or maybe even a suit could be imbued with luck.
You start to wonder if the suit's power extends beyond your sexual appeal.
Like I say, when I wore that suit I felt more confident, more sharply defined as a person, stronger and more in command of the different situations I found myself in.
More capable of dealing with the people and circumstances which ran counter it to my own needs and objectives.
Non-suit days were drab, tiring, underwhelming and generally unfulfilling. I'd arrive at the end of these days feeling slightly ripped off and anxious. There wasn't any one thing you could put your finger on, just a lot of little problems that seemed to pile up and get in the way. Like you were wading through a sewer pipe as opposed to ice skating across an alpine lake.
Suit wearing days were different.
Suit wearing days meant that I was the best possible version of myself.
Suit days and non-suit days.
What would you choose?
Anyway, the female attention was undeniable. And flattering.
I didn't go off the deep end.
I maintained the stoic married man act to remove as much doubt as possible.
And I had new rules; no social media.
No texting.
No emails.
No bragging to the boys.
Compartmentalisation all the way.
In this way, I was two separately defined people.
In terms of the logistics...
...what was the odd lost afternoon hour here and there?
Apart from the physical act which of course boosted the ego, what I valued was the fact that you could be the person you were before your adult life happened to you.
Before it defined you.
My only rule with these women (there were six that year) was that they commit to non commitment.
That they understand the true nature of the thing.
This was casual sex. Nothing more.
A contained moment.
It wasn't going to spill out into our lives like an oil slick killing all the wildlife.
It wasn't going to poison the environment.
With your wonky haircuts, your ill-advised fashion choices, your extra weight and your un-whitened teeth...there are phases in your life when you will look absolutely terrible.
For me, this wasn't one of those moments.
The suit pulled everything together.
Beyond the mechanics of sex, I liked the emotional intensity.
In relatively short space of time, in those hotel rooms, with six separate women, I could be objective and honest.
I liked that confessional mode.
Two people peeled out of their clothing, in naked afternoon moments, traffic noise drifting up from the street below, for that short but intense period of time.
Made all the sweeter for the compression.
The two of us momentarily released from that life occurring outside the room.
That life which was fixing you in place like fast-drying concrete.
To say it was always like this, free and liberating, would be a bit of a stretch.
One or two of these afternoon liaisons were briefly marred by guilt, momentarily bogged down, but overall there was nothing too off-putting.
I played it by ear. I saw a few of these women more than once.
Their reasons for being in that room?
1. Janet's husband talked too much but had nothing to say.
2. Fiona was happy with her husband but the problem was he was basically gay. Trapped in the closet by his traditional values family.
3. Gillian's was estranged from her husband. She had tourniqueted him off because she was angry with him for a lot of petty things which collectively had come to overwhelm her. And she despised herself for perpetuating this slow erosion of their relationship.
4. Kim's ongoing medical issues had made her husband emotionally ambivalent towards her.
5. Heather's husband had left her with the kids. She'd tried online dating but found that she seemed to attract freaks.
6. Loraine was happily married but she wanted to have some fun. Simple as that.
Anyway, all that happened in 2007.
About midway through 2008, all that suit mojo began to dry up.
It was like the window was slowly being closed.
It was as if the suit had lost its magnetic pull.
I still wore it but stopped expecting the same quota of luck.


One morning I found a suitcase dumped on my front lawn. A blue Samsonite hard shell model with little plastic wheels (one of which was broken). It was lightly scuffed up and had no name tag. An abandoned piece of luggage jarring the predictable view from my living room window.

I went next door.

I wanted to asked them if the suitcase belonged to them.
These people....
They had one of those extra strength security screens on the windows and doors of their home. I don't know about the timing but they had done it the week we had moved in.
I could just about see the woman peering out through the mesh.
Once again I got the sense that our neighbours, like everyone else on our street, preferred to live in this closed off, completely fortified way.
Undoubtedly, in terms of streets to live on, we'd picked a dud.
I'd drive two or three streets over and there were kids playing on that street. Like I used to when I was a kid, kicking a ball around until sunset.
And in my imagination at least, there seemed to be an inordinately high number of well adjusted people pulling up in their cars, carrying their groceries inside, walking well-adjusted pets, waving to each other...
My street?
Not so much.
Hermits.
A student druggie house down the block, old cars crash-parked all over the dead lawn.
We'd offended our immediate neighbours, that much was obvious.
And I'd tried to mend the damage, build a bridge.
The damage that my noisy children inflicted on a daily basis.
That I had inflicted.
If I'm being honest, the problem, the real problem, was their little dog liked to yap at everything. Shadows. Rustling leaves. And one Saturday morning I'd crept out the backdoor, leant over the ribbed asbestos fence and shot that dog in the face with my daughter's orange water pistol.
Just to shut it up.
And the wife saw me doing this (what kind of person stands at a window, watching her little dog yap, yap, yap at 5:35 am on a Saturday morning?)
Anyway that was it.
Anyway, on the day I found the suitcase, I could just about make out her face through the mesh, a pale oval with a hard line scowl and two dots for eyes.
Is this your suitcase? I asked.
No, she said.
And closed the door cutting off my explanation.

One morning I found a suitcase dumped on my front lawn. A blue Samsonite hard shell model with little plastic wheels (one of which was broken). It was lightly scuffed up and had no name tag. An abandoned piece of luggage jarring the predictable view from my living room window.

I don't know happened to the suitcase.

I must have thrown it away.

Eventually I got tired of the company I was working for.
Protected and emboldened by the suit, I got so confident that I decided to strike out on my own.
I was interested in personal security.
I'd been kicking around the idea for sometime.
I saw a great deal of opportunity there.
The more insular people became...
...the more paranoid
...the more they wanted this kind of high-end, personalised service.
The core business would focus on IT security....
...one of those collaborative economy set ups....
...later branching out into other forms of security.
I worked with independent contractors.
I was good at getting people onboard, creating the right vibe.
I mean...we're not as paranoid and fucked up as Americans...
....not yet...
...but we're getting there.
I'd loved in or around the city my entire life...
...moving to the suburbs was....
....wow...
...an education in human nature.
The suburbs were gold for me.
I realised that the isolation tended to breed the kind of fear that might be pay dirt for my company.
To get started, I got a storage unit out by the airport.
A place I could concentrate.
A unit at a reasonable monthly rate. About the size of a small garage.
To begin with I ran the business out of there.
I didn't mind the utilitarian concrete floors and tin walls. The landing planes scraping overhead.
The manager of the storage facility didn't mind me being there, as long as I paid a little extra. Everything was done online so in terms of appearances, it didn't matter I had no office.
I set up a desk, a rug, a filing cabinet and a few chairs. That was it.
I had some university guys, all wearing the same company t-shirts I'd had printed up, doing house calls.
I developed a catalogue containing a range of IT and personal safety items.
Products not strictly allowed in this country. Pepper sprays, a range of concealed brass knuckles, telescopic nightsticks....etc. The kind of stuff people like to have but probably would use.
And all that went well for a little while.
But the women?
What did I say before about rules and no consequences?
That didn't quite pan out the way I had expected.
Funnily enough, it was number 6.
Loraine.
As the power of the suit began to wear off....as the window started closing....I started breaking my own personal rules.
I went back to Loraine, the happy-go-lucky party girl, one too many times.
And don't get me wrong.
She was no femme fatal.
This was all my doing.
I wanted to maintain the afternoon feeling. The buzz.
I needed that boost of confidence while I was venturing out on my own, starting my new business.
Shuttle ahead five years and I can see now the suit is part of a larger pattern.
A larger pattern of bad luck.
And although Loraine wasn't an intentional femme fatal, she still possessed all kinds of dark and destructive craziness.
She was a smiling train wreck.
Anyway, it came to light and Helen left me.
No therapy or attempts at reconciliation.
She was straight out the door.
It was a shock because the narrative usually involves some attempt at painful reconciliation.
Not Helen. She was gone. A child under each arm. Speak to my lawyer.
I can't blame her.
Eventually, the house was also taken away.
The kids were transformed into Helen's angry little mouthpieces.
The money tightened up to the point of strangulation.
I was basically embezzling from myself to keep afloat what with the lawyers emailing me every five minutes.
What do they say?
What is that expression: stealing from Peter to pay Paul?
It was like that.
Anyway, time slowly reveals these things much like the tide pulling back the ocean exposes diving hazards.
And like I say, there was a larger pattern of bad luck.
I can see that now...
...how every time I wore the suit, it contributed to the deterioration of things.
Weddings went septic.
Christenings as well.
The business tanked.
Funerals and the subsequent reading of the will that didn't bear the fruits we'd hoped for.
I'm not even a superstitious person but there you have it.
That's what happened.
You get sucked into these things.
I'm not saying that every time I put that suit on something went wrong. That would be crazy.
I am just talking about accumulative properties. The patterns we unconsciously fall into.
The difference between short term and long term luck.
It was that sort of thing.
The general pattern.
Something you can only see later on.

One morning I found a suitcase dumped on my front lawn. A blue Samsonite hard shell model with little plastic wheels (one of which was broken). It was lightly scuffed up and had no name tag. An abandoned piece of luggage jarring the predictable view from my living room window.
Some guy's suit was inside.

I left it in the garage, hanging on a nail and my wife inadvertently took it, with all the rest of my stuff, to the dry-cleaners.

(I had no intension of doing this).

She must have thought I'd left it out for cleaning with the rest.  

Anyway, a few days later she reminded me to pick it up, handing over the receipt. 

The guy behind the counter took the receipt, rotated the carousel until my numbers came around, then handed over my items.

Very nice suit, he said.

Yeah, I said. 

I drove home, parked, got the stuff out of the car and went inside. 

I pulled the plastic off the suit.

I through about putting it on. 

I had no intension of wearing someone else's clothing but I found myself doing it anyway.  

Snow Princess in New York CIty

We lived in NYC at the same time
this was back in the late '90's
when everyone wore choke collars and dark lipstick
back before email and before smartphones meant everyone was electronically tagged and lobotomised.
I knew her from years ago
....we met in high school
...a boring story really.
We became friends...good friends
...at least from her perspective...
....better friends than we actually were...
then time moved on and...well, you know what happens...
people change and their personalities are revealed...
....their long term personalities.
You don't know anyone when you're young...
I mean...everyone is endlessly malleable
...agreeable.   
You barely know yourself...
...and of course life messes you up along the way....
...and she was no exception.
She thought she was untouched, unscathed, pure, but she wasn't...
And our friendship?...
Well....it became something else
...we remained contractually linked through social media...
....we circled each other in a passive-aggressive texting pattern 
like a neurotic game of table tennis...
the little white ball tick-tacking back and forth across the net...
tick-tack
tick-tack
tick-tack...
...all that smiling aggression funnelled into each mannered return...
...it annoyed me to no end but I played along.
(return serve, put a little spin on the ball)

So yes...

...there was there was defiantly some inbuilt antagonism.

The thing was....
in all that time, when we both lived in NYC, we never once crossed paths...
...at least that was the story she told everyone.
In actual fact, I saw her...
...several times...
in a crowd, coming out of a department store, walking through the park, on the subway...
...once she walked right past me
...too wrapped up in being beautiful and amazing and in the moment 
...snow flakes drifting down through the canyon of buildings.
I don't know why i didn't say something or call out to get her attention...
something stopped me every time...
...maybe i wanted New York as my own
...maybe I didn't want her taking the experience from me...re-contextualising it
...maybe I didn't want to put up with her tiresome competitiveness...
Anyway, now we have this shared story...
...how we lived in the same place, walked the same streets and never saw each other.
And she tells people about this with unfaltering....wonder
...you know these people?
...who dwell on the miracle of a stupid coincidences?
...or near coincidences as the case maybe?
...who think their lives are magic...
...you know what I'm talking about. 
Think of all the near misses, she would say with amazement.
I know right? I would reply, smiling, shaking my head.
Look, maybe this was all my need to control the situation?
Like i said, i find her just so damn competitive
...so controlling.
I find that i'm am always a bit player in her epic narrative.
It's nauseating....
The Princess in the big apple, laughing as snow flakes tumble around her
...like she was in a fairytale
...it was all too much.
I'd flown all the way to New York by myself....
...looking for my own adventure.
...and there she was
So no!
No way....
....i wasn't about to share the city with her...
...that was my time, my place....
I mean if she had seen me, if she could have been distracted from the direct feed of her own ego...
I would have acknowledged her...
of course.
Then she and I would have had a different story to tell. 
Look, i know that i'm a messed up person...
...i'm the first to admit it.
This New York thing is the least of it...
....are you kidding me?

I told my 'therapist' all about this the other day...
this and some of the other shit i have pulled over the past couple of years...
...things i'm none too proud of...
My 'therapist' and i were driving down to the beach
in her car...
...she is actually another friend of mine...
...and I know this is going to sound horrible but here goes...
....she is real pushover
....a real sweetheart, but man is she a pushover
hopeless.
You end up feeling sorry for her and you kind of hate her at same time...
She is so open and generous.
Nothing like the Snow Princess....
Anyway, i'm trying to toughen her up
....get her thinking for herself.
...develop some of her rougher edges. 

This is what i do...
....i confess all this terrible stuff to certain people in my life
I'm honest...
but the thing is....i tend to twist things around
...because its all in the telling right?
I just can't help it
i cast myself as the victim
i set off on the path of truth and get lost in the forrest of self-preservation.
...it's deplorable.
I'm deplorable.
I am aware of all this....
and i want to change...
...i really do.
i just can't help it.
Look, i need to download just like anyone else...
Seriously.
I want to change.
I really do.
...and become....
What?
I don't know...
someone else?
Sure.
Why not.....
....take all the rough edges off...
become a smooth pebble in a fast moving stream
(.....or some such hippie bullshit I happened across when i was free falling through the internet....)
(.....a smooth pebble like all the other smooth pebbles nestled together......)
(.....beige in colour.....)
(.....benign in nature....)
(.....a happy little stone....)
I actually think about changing my life in a significant way as my therapist and i drive down to the beach.
It's a lovely day...
...the sun, the clogging traffic...
...the sweeping coastal view as we round the last corner.
And once again, the eternal question: am I a terrible person? 
I ask my therapist this question not really expecting an answer.
She begins to answer me which is really annoying because she can't detect this was rhetorical question...
...and I really wasn't fishing for her support.
Oh no, she warbles, we all have our faults....right?
She is anxious that every word she utters might offend someone...
...so she tests her options out before delivering them with any real conviction.
She suffers from social anxiety. 
...says she admires me for my assertiveness.
My determination.     
Anyway, we park and set off on our walk.
Sydney is busy even in the middle of the day...
...in the middle of the week.
The ocean batters the shoreline.
Each wave throws itself against the sharp rocks.
Now that's determination.
And I'm sure there is a lesson in this...
for all of us.
And today the ocean is so vast...
it could just swallow you right up. 

Obviously this tension with the Snow Princess has been building for some time...
...playing on my mind...
...which brings us to the night in question.
The New York Snow Princess was sitting there, telling this story again...
....our dull story....
...she laughs, tilting her head back, telling the story again with fresh amazement...
...her friends, left and right are half listening....
(the whole time we were living in the city and we missed each.....etc. ect.)
I'd been drinking all afternoon...
....not that the booze saturation excuses my behaviour.
I just decided to undermine the story.
Throw a spanner in the works.
Mainly, I just didn't want to hear it again.
So I told her.... 
....actually, I interrupted her....
...when she was about half way through.
...and I set the record straight. 
It was worth the expression on her face. 

The paperbark tree

She was 92 years old.
Ancient.
And look....
.....I'm not trying to be uncharitable here but she was...
.....you know, old and frail....
I mean, physically she seemed alright but mentally....?
Naw. Forget it.
She wasn't all there....
....lights on, nobody home.
I don't think 'eccentric' would quite cover it....you know?
Personally, I think there was the onset of something....
Anyway, she kept on repeating herself....
....saying the same things over and over again.
I saw this happen with my own Grandmother.....
Alzheimer's.
Then again...
...what do I know?
That morning was the first time I'd ever met the woman.
Anyway, she made us all a cup of tea
...she insisted we have one.
Such a horrible morning to be working outside
.....she kept saying.
Okay, fine, so we had a cup of tea...
...with stale biscuits that had probably been sitting in the cupboard for a decade.
I don't even drink tea but when someone of her age makes the effort to be hospitable....
....well, you just accept the hospitality, don't you?
You don't really have a choice in the matter.
Anyway, there was a fungus in her back tree.
The paperbark...
....a huge tree
.....and it was rotten with that shit.
The fungus had gone right through it....
......had completely compromised the integrity of the tree.
So it was only a matter of time.
Eventually, it would have come down.
Her son had taken a sample along to the university....
....to test the fungus....
....because that's what they do out there....
....they have a special department devoted to fungus.
Or is it fungi?...plural......I don't know.....
Anyway, the big storm that came through on the weekend....
.....it beat us to it.
The storm pulled the tree down
.....yanking up a huge section of earth and smashing the neighbour's fence in the process.
I'll tell you....the neighbours were lucky it didn't come down on their house.
Or worse.
The point is, it was a complete mess....
And after the insurance company did their bit...
....we turned up....
...at 7 am this morning....the rain still coming down...power outages all over the city.....
....and do you think for one minute that our truck was going to fit down the side of her house?
....down that tiny little driveway?
Yeah right....
....not a chance.
So with this in mind, we knew it was going to be a long day.
Basically, we had to cut the tree up with chainsaws....
...then drag everything up the driveway.
Finally, we had to chip all the limbs and branches on the street....
At least that was the plan.
The thing was....
....45 minutes after starting, we found a skeleton, poking out of the mud.
It was all tangled up in the exposed roots and mud.
When the tree toppled over, it sucked this skeleton up out of the ground.
We didn't see it at first....
...not until our excavator blade cut it in half....
....at the pelvis.
Not that the remains were in one piece...
....the skeleton had been in the ground for a long time.
Really all that was left was a pile of dirty bones and rags.
I told the boys to stop work immediately.
Of course...
....and the old lady?
....she was watching from the kitchen window.
It all came out that dark afternoon....60 years after the fact.....
......56 years to be exact.
She'd had 56 years of freedom.
56 years of walking around....free as a bird
....with her first husband buried out in the back garden.
Next to the Paperbark tree....
...the roots slowly creeping through the earth....
.....paperbacks have very invasive root systems....
....they'll get into your plumbing, they will cause endless problems....
Anyway, for 56 years the roots of that tree were coiling around him down in the soil.....
...this husband of hers who had supposedly gone out for a pack of smokes one night....
...back in 1961
....and who never came back.
That was the story she told everyone.
It was feasible enough.
People do disappear.
For some people, it's easier to walk out the front door and never come back...
.....a clean break.
Anyway, she remarried....
....had children with another man....
....and then had grandchildren....
.....all the while, the first husband was buried out back...
....and she did it.
.....with a little hammer.
...you know those tiny little hammers? That people use for crafts projects and for tacking together picture frames?
The kind you use for hammering in tiny little nails not much bigger than a pin?
....one of those.
Anyway, one night, in 1961, they had an argument....
....she walked out of the room
....and she came back in 2 minutes later.
He was still sitting there, king of his castle, in his chair, with his back to the door.
He probably didn't know what hit him...
....he had a newspaper in his lap...
...and bang!
The daily news was suddenly covered in a fine spray of blood.
It came out that he tried to stand up, slumped back down, into his chair before shouting, 'what are we doing?'
Shock, I guess.
The damaged brain going haywire.
....anyway, then she finished him off.
It took a while....
.....such a small hammer.
.....you know why she did it?
......he'd smashed one of her porcelain figurines.
That was it.
He knocked it over....
....when he was drunk
....he didn't apologise
.....or wouldn't apologise.
Apparently.
You know these things are....in a marriage.
It probably had very little to do with the figurine.
In a marriage, little things always become symbolic of bigger things.
Symptomatic.
Then again, maybe it had everything to do with the figurine....
.....one thing is for sure....
.....after she put him in the ground....
.....and after she realised she was going to get away with it...
....after she convinced everyone that he'd probably run off with his secret girlfriend....
....she had a really good life.
She made the most of her time....
.....had a career....
.....travelled....holidays....
......outlived her second husband by 10 years....
......attended church regularly....
......got involved in charity work....
......became a loving grandmother....
......the whole bit.
Anyway, on this dark wet morning that I'm talking about, two days after the storm hit....
......the cops showed up, lights flashing.
They talked to her in her kitchen...
.....the cups of tea and biscuits came out....
....all that business....
.....and she told them all about the hammer....
....no prompting required.
She basically confessed right then and there...
....said she had probably led a better life because of what happened.
That she appreciated things all the more....
....when you understand your freedom, what it's worth....
....when you realise you could be on borrowed time....
.....well....
......let's just say, she used her time wisely.
She savoured it.
Her daughter showed up in a state of shock....
...angry as hell.
How can you treat my grandmother like this?
Etc, etc....
The old lady had pretty much forgotten what she had told the cops by that point.
She didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
The cops took her away.
No handcuffs required.
She wasn't going to be a threat to anyone.
Of course, the site became a crime scene....
....police tape and forensic people....
.....we couldn't touch anything.
We packed up.....
I called the office....
We moved on to the next tree.