Trash and treasure on the South Seas

Keeping up with the Joneses is difficult, no matter where you live. Out in the McSuburbs, there’re ever expanding flat screen TVs to be purchased; mandatory upgrading to the bigger, faster, louder, redder Holden Commodore to be managed; and children’s birthday party entertainment to be sourced which out-does Little Johnny’s surprise visit from Dorothy the Dinosaur’s illegitimate offspring last summer. It’s relentless, exhausting and mind-numbing, not to mention economically crippling.

But killing yourself slowly just to fit-in with the neighbours is not peculiar to the identical, pastel dwellings on the urban fringes. Even when you’re a funky couple of kats like Mrs Donkey and I, living in the uber trendy, fur-hat and petticoat-wearing, latte-sipping pockets of the inner north, the pressure to ‘fit in or fuck off’ is just as insipid. However, when doing so means sourcing the finest second-hand clothing the early ‘80s can offer, it’s not as simple as firing up the V8 and chugging down to the local Megamall for new pair of daks.

Far from it! Having an eye for a piece of risque, second-hand fashion that hasn’t yet been picked over by the hoards of freaks on Victoria St is an essential survival skill. Hesitate over that Shanghai silk dress with the ridiculous slit up the back, and you may just find yourself with nothing funkier in your wardrobe than a mink coat and a pair of purple, sequinned thongs/flip-flops to wear to the café – a “so yesterday” look which’ll see you shunned to the dark tables down the back, beneath the staircase where only the work experience waitress will occasionally dare to visit on her way out to the bogs for a smoke.

It’s a slippery tightrope; that of social acceptability in the cut-and-thrust world of unwashed bohemia and having ready access to a steady supply of ridiculous, second-hand threads is commensurate to one’s need for oxygen. Fortunately for us, my being notoriously too tight to purchase new clothing unless it comes with a sweat shop-sized price-tag to match the age of its maker, and Mrs D’s expert eye for eclectic, exotic threads complements well with our local area boasting the highest ratio of second-hand clothing stores per capita in the known world. It even works for lil’ Hambones, who, much to his grandparents’ collective derision, has never worn a new item of clothing in his short life. So to date, all three of us have managed to hold our own as we cram onto a single, uncomfortable wooden box on a frigid, Sunday morning winter pavement, sipping our lattes and offering a rigamortis smile to our equally uncomfortable, yet outwardly content, fellow funkies.

It’s a pretty recent phenomenon, this rapid rise in the social acceptability of second-hand clothing stores. Wearing someone else’s used duds has certainly not always been well received. Back in the day, it was a mark of upwardly, socially mobile suburbanites to clear the cupboards every spring through a donation of last-season rags to the poor and destitute. This convenient means of getting rid of unwanted garments had the added bonus of filling the donor with a great sense of satisfaction at their civic contribution, but strangely enough, it was generally assumed that the charities which received these clothes directed them towards dressing the poor and street-living folk; an odd assumption given that no one in my neighbourhood had ever seen homeless women getting around in pink, backless evening frocks or elbow-length white gloves, nor had anyone witnessed unshaven, urine-smelling drunks lying in the putrid back-alleyways wearing full-length, paisley smoking jackets!

Such is the nature of western charity, since the days of the Victorian poor houses, that once disposed of, the moneyed classes rarely gave much thought to their donation … until recently, when the sale of second hand clothing exploded into a multi-million dollar industry!

You can imagine the talkback radio-led outrage of the masses when they came to learn that charities, rather than using out-dated tuxedos and feather boas to clothe the homeless, were actually making a buck out of other people's [unwanted] donated gear (albeit a buck which was then used to pay for food and lodgings directed at the poor and homeless). Of course, despite their impotent frustration, the moneyed classes were unable to argue with the fact that the poor were still receiving a benefit from the donations (at least, they weren’t prepared to argue about it in plain daylight, but the issue burned for weeks thanks to the anonymous lens of talkback radio), and the issue eventually faded. People became used to seeing the funkies (and subsequently, TV soapie stars) getting around in used threads, and the industry took off.

But before all this recycled commerce came the fore, what was never recognised was what the charities did with all those crap clothes in order to make the money to help the poor BEFORE we had embraced second-hand clothing stores. The answer to that, my friends, is the Pacific. Throughout Melanesia, Polynesia and I presume Micronesia, it is not uncommon for an entire village to pool their resources and purchase from some third-tiered middleman, a huge bale of used Australian women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, and, come arrival day, to almost rip each others’ jugulars out in a mad scramble to nab the best gear with which to clothe the family for the following year.

As mentioned previously, the moneyed folk of Australia’s urban sprawls tend not to give anything appropriate away, however, only what they don’t want, so as a result, one recognises some pretty strange (and hauntingly familiar) fashions on the Islands.

For instance, it’s a pretty regular sight throughout Polynesia to witness a buff, young, tattooed, cropped-haired tough-guy strutting through a village wearing a t-shirt with a fluffy pink dog painted on the front. Or an old man wearing a thread-bare, child’s nightie baring a sickly-smiling, Strawberry Shortcake! About the only island folk who ever end-up looking the part are the grotesquely masculine transvestites, their obese legs and shoulders (and machetes) crammed into pink or pale yellow, sequined, backless, full-length dresses.

And you'd be surprised at just how close to home it all gets. Late one night in 1999, I came across a security guard manning the guard house of the National University of Samoa wearing a t-shirt from an Australian student association I was a member of in 1993, of which there would have been only about 100 t-shirts printed at most!

Freaky coincidences aside, the other great thing about unwanted Australian clothing ending up in the Pacific, is a) that a considerable number of inappropriate garments get shipped abroad, and b) that what is inappropriate in Australia, is not always perceived so amongst the 'English-as-a-second-language' islanders. So it is therefore not uncommon for a man to be standing in a Samoan church on a Sunday, all dressed in pristine white and beaming a beatific smile, and across whose chest is plastered one of a number of rather suspect phrases such as "I've seen God and she's black" ... and no one seems to mind.

My personal favourite, however, was an elderly, wrinkled, hunch-backed Solomon Island woman hobbling along the streets of Honiara wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a sprightly Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli, trade-mark thumbs in the air and twinkle in his eye, issuing the speech-bubble caption, "I just fucked your girlfriend!". Magical stuff!

More recently, it appears that wearing clothing which sports inappropriate English phrases in non-English speaking cultures is becoming very fashionable, so much so that it is being extended beyond dumped, second-hand clothing, to new clothing produced locally. A perfect example seems to be the preferred head gear of high school students in Lhasa at present, who in order to protect their scones from the intense, Tibetan sun, are sporting American-style baseball caps with the rather obscure, priceless phrase, "I Fuck the Fakeshit". I dunno what it means ... and most likely, neither do they (or their teachers), but it has been widely embraced, and I just wish I had have had the guts to wear one to school when I was a lad!

Caption seen on an elderly Solomon Island woman's t-shirt, circa 2005. Pic: http://media.photobucket.com/image/Fonzie%20fucked%20your%20girlfriend/RKCFonzie/Fonzie.jpg

The power of metaphor

The Populous Security Bureau bugging devices must’ve been popping like cherries at a B&S ball the other night as I sat in one of the world’s highest restaurants discussing the history and current political situation in Burma with my high-altitude colleagues.

You can imagine the freedom I felt after a week (and in their case, a lifetime) of being careful about everything one said and did, so as not to openly express any opinions or attitudes at odds with the government, openly discussing in a public place the activities of an undemocratically appointed, unlawful military regime, imposed upon the people, and which restricts religious, political and social freedoms, whilst deliberately and systematically culling huge swathes of the population, from the urban intelligentsia to the rural peasantry.

You might also imagine what was going through the minds of these colleagues as they lapped-up information about events and government processes in this neighbouring country; happenings which, although having never heard about them before, must have seemed so very familiar. Occurrences such as the systematic and aggressive persecution of monks, violent military responses to peaceful protests, restrictions upon the populace in terms of their freedom to worship according to their religion, lengthy incarceration of citizens without charge or trial, the unspoken and unexplained disappearance of generations of loved ones.

It is no surprise that they were so interested in asking questions and listening to what I knew of the happenings in “Burma”. I wonder if they wondered why they’d never heard this before?

I also wonder about the poor drone up there in the communications control tower who was deciphering our monitored conversation, and writhing in anguish and indecision as to whether they should bring the discussion to the attention of their superiors; whether they would be praised for their diligence, or chastised for wasting the time of their betters on a conversation about another country’s irrelevant activities. Being a bureaucrat cog must suck.

We all thought it would lead to change - again this sounds oh, so familiar. Pic: www.apheda.org.au

It’s a boy! … and we’re back and runnin’

…hopefully.

Three months ago, after an arduous ordeal spanning a-day-and-half, I was again, for perhaps the third or fourth time in my life, fortunate to find myself on the receiving end of that most joyous of life’s lessons; where one’s fate can alter from seemingly utter despair to hope and good fortune in the blink of an eye.

In the harried confusion of surgical masks, scrubbing-up and calamitous crash trolleys, I was fearing the worst. Just when I began to give up hope, and thought I was about to lose the greatest gift of my life, a sudden gasp, a splutter and a wail, followed immediately by two great, big hands being flown over the top of a surgical screen towards his Mummy and Daddy’s astonished faces, my life changed forever; bestowing upon me two fabulous gifts, namely Mrs Donkey - safe, happy, healthy … and a mother to the bumper-sized new addition, a largish, but completely healthy, baby Donkey (henceforth, owing to his advanced, athletic physique, referred to as “Hambones”).

Since that day, I’ve been busting my ass in an attempt to successfully implement the only job in your life for which no academic course, on-the-job training or subcutaneous patch exists with which to prepare or assist you. I’ve been wandering around in a sleep-deprived, semi-lucid state trying to look after my new boy-o, and have had absolutely nothing extra to add to society but a vacuous gaze and a stupid, proud father’s grin. Certainly no creative juice left in the tank with which to direct towards this decrepit, forgotten by-lane on the information super-highway.

But I must say, despite a lack of parental experience or direction, I’ve discovered some kind of inherent, naturally-selective, guiding quality within; a force which leads one to love one’s own child unconditionally; a force which can turn even the most irresponsible individual (yours truly) into a diligent guardian, entirely committed to protecting his child from whatever evils may darken his horizons, no matter how threatening or cruel.

I remember a Warner Bros cartoon where the drunken stork drops the wrong babies off at the wrong homes, and when he sobers-up and realises his mistake, he heads to the top of the bean stalk, where the Daddy giant is trying to change the nappy of a tiny little baby with the aid of one of those old-fashioned jewellers’ eye pieces. I always thought it was touching how Big Daddy clearly loved his family’s tiny new addition, even though the wee babe was perhaps not quite what he’d signed up for. Fiction, as always, is built on basic truths, and I can attest that there’s definitely something there between a parent and his newborn … something magical … and despite the severe lack of sleep, it’s a wonderful feeling.

Aside from a lack of creative energy associated with multiple, nocturnal nappy changes, the other reason for the poor frequency of despatches on this blog has been my mistaken understanding that I’ve got nothing interesting to say to the masses these days, seeing as though Junior’s arrival has temporarily put paid to exotic locales and unusual work practices – after all, who wants to hear about living in the inner suburbs next door to grammatically challenged “drug deelers” (sic), across from a Polynesian truck driver with an anger management problem, who takes it out on his drug-addled trophy-wife to the sound of The Eagles’ Hotel California on a weekly basis? Or how two of the biggest nerds in the barnyard manage to fit-in with the brown-cord-wearing funksters (read: wankers) of inner-Melbourne’s fastest emerging, hippest slice of urban bohemia? Or Donkey’s foul-mouthed, daily exchanges with bicycle-ignoring taxi drivers? Or office antics with a bunch of colleagues comprising alcoholics, bogans, Antarctic explorers, drug abusers, mad scientists and psychotic feminists?

Clearly I’ve got nothing to write about! Unless, of course, people are actually interested in hearing about the neighbourhood vigilantes’ ruthless campaigns against the resident, although poorly educated drug deelers (sic), and what it’s like living across from the street from Eti the truckin’ maniac and his very own Judy Garland (circa 1947, when Jude was dallying fairly heavily in the nose candy), and how two geeks try, but fail pitifully to fit-in with the funky, ‘latte-sipping hoards in their designer, recycled brown, and Donkey’s daily, crotch-ripping defeats by the barely-discernible verbal taunts of immigrant taxi drivers, and the various conflicts and intrigues of an eclectic mix of colleagues comprising functioning and non-functioning alcoholics, heavy-metal tragics, second-rate, illegal airplane pilots/Antarctic explorers, drug users and abusers, mad (although not-quite-qualified) scientists and psychotic feminists … and y’know, I was thinking to myself today that maybe there just might be enough material there to get me started.

So I’m gonna give it a go … parental duties permitting, I’m gonna pour my creative talents back into this literary pillar; apply iron-hard self discipline and commit myself to regular, insightful commentary into the daily machinations of this inner city barnyard; stand fast in the face of suburban mediocrity … QOIJWDiqjgvriweirjgikdWQAjidwiQJNJIUJIIK … slurp!

Whoops, sorry, I just fell asleep on my keyboard and will have to turn it upside down for a while to let the saliva drain out and … hang on, what is this milky vomit in my hair? Urgh! OK, so I’m not entirely sure how this is gonna go.

Wish me luck.

Donkey.

The big baby has arrived Pic: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/

This raging life

What happens at 9.30 on a Saturday night? 

Well about an hour ago, the kids of the neighbours next door sold 2 grams to the even younger kids from down the street, and with their spoils have headed off to the nudie bar up on Sydney Rd and are currently getting a private show from the freshest young thing on the menu who just this week arrived back from Bangkok with her new pair, which have been workin' a treat for her now for five nights running.  Right this minute, as she's blowing a bubble with her grape-flavoured gum and shaking her new acquisitions in front of young Aristos' slavering leer, she's trying to work out how many more weeks of bucks' parties and footy club break-ups she's got before she's able to pay off her investment.

Not all that long ago, I would have been down at the Evelyn by 9.30 on a Saturday night, already with six or seven pots under my belt and watching Matt Healey from The Fireballs bashing-out psychobilly power riffs whilst hanging upside down from one of the designer-unfinished-ceiling beams.  As I swayed and staggered back and forth across the sticky carpet (occasionally in time with the music), I'd catch the eye of one of my fellow revellers; an eclectic mix of piercings, fedoras, acid wash denim and faux fur-trimmed parkers, and give a conspiratorial nod which would be returned with a welcoming grin.  The Evelyn Hotel's always been a bit of a freak show, and back then, I was as much part of the circus as anyone.  At 9.30 on a Saturday night, the front bar of "The Ev" was a scene of tribal belonging, in which I, with my pains-takingly scuffed and muddied work boots, slashed jeans and skin-tight, Albert Einstein t-shirt, was as much a member of the community as anybody.

But things change.  Tonight at 9.30pm, I was on my way back from the convenience store where I'd been charged with the mission of procuring life-or-death quantities of chocolate.  I was in a tremendous rush to get back for RocKwiz, because sitting at home in front of the box watching people enjoying themselves at the pub on a Saturday night is about as close as I get to it these days, and I couldn't afford to miss even a minute of the fun.

In my urgency, I unthinkingly broke one of the after-dark golden rules of all discerning inner-suburbanites, and executed a short-cut down one of the sinister, cobbled alleys along which the night soil men once executed the householders' sanitation requirements in the wee, small hours, but along which decades of decay and misuse had left nothing behind but uneven, broken blue-stones and fetid microcosms of breeding parasites.  As if staying-in on a Saturday night and watching TV wasn't enough of a signal of the inevitable ebb of time, the contrast of my current circumstances with the good ol' days at The Evelyn was brought crashing home to me when a misplaced step into one of these breeding sites, from which my trusty, Saturday night work boots may once have spared me a pedal dowsing, saw my sandal-shod sock suddenly transformed into a stinking, slimy mess. 

I cursed as the mucky ooze blended with the tinea in my inter-digital spaces, and I staggered blindly around the corner of the alley before catching my dry foot on something soft but solid, and sprawling onto the dirty stones.  "Fuck off, will ya old man!" howled a female teen with pin-point pupils who was down on her knees in front of her male companion who, with equally narrowed, yet un-focusing eyes, was grinning slyly at me.  Clearly the afore-mentioned "even younger kids" had successfully cut their 2 grams into something a little more voluminous and were out here in the alleys making their product work for them as only crack can.  Shocked, disoriented and curiously embarrassed, I mumbled some lame apology for my disturbing presence in their nocturnal habitat, and I soggily and groggily hot-footed it back home with my chocolatey spoils to hug my wife in a fierce embrace which silently shouted, "Don't make me go back out there again!".

There's oh-so-much going on at 9.30 on a Saturday night, but that doesn't mean we all have to be a part of it.  There's a place for everyone, and being locked-up tightly behind security doors and shuttered windows, with a beer and chocolate and watching make believe junkies and whores in far-off America on CSI is definitely mine.

Don't go near Mebourne's alleys after dark if you're an old, yeller suburbanite.  Pic: http://farm4.static.flickr.com

Underbelly III: a tale of no bollocks

If it had’ve been a young Donkey that had wound-up on a deserted beach with all the other scamps in that classic “survival of the fittest” tale, Lord of the Flies, I would certainly have been the first to have had his legs hacked-off with blunt stones by the other urchins in order for them to have something to rub together in aide of a fire, over which my tubby torso would’ve been slowly roasted in my own, succulent juices for the delightful consumption of the conch-holding bully-boys.

There’s no question – I would have been the odds-on favourite for a first-night bastin’. It’s a scenario which is about as natural selectionist as it gets; I was what Darwin had in mind when he was banging-on through his tobacco-stained beard about krill being the most likely organism in the sea to get its arse kicked. I am, and have been a spineless, snivelling Mummy’s Boy, ever since the days of my early childhood.

But it wasn't my fault; I blame my parents. Y'see, back in the hey-day of the corner store, before the advent of a 7-11 every 4.5 metres; back when no self-respecting suburban estate was complete without a decaying brick shopfront above which one dysfunctional, single parent family after another traded living quarters every four months and outside which a gang of six or seven tough-looking boys could be found, from midday until late in the night, loitering, fighting, sneering at passers-by and clumsily flirting with the other mandatory feature outside of any suburban Milk Bar, a solitary, early teenage girl with a penchant for Hubba Bubba, who’d recently discovered both thick, black eye shadow and that she and her parents just didn’t get along. Back then, I was completely smothered by my parents' over-protectiveness, and denied all exposure to danger and confrontation.

All through my early childhood, I was strictly forbidden from going anywhere near the Milk Bar and its undesirable entourage, so by the time I was four years old, I'd decided that I was man enough to subvert Mummy's strict instructions for the very first time, so I nicked five cents out of Daddy's change bowl and headed to the Milk Bar for some lollies. Geez I was tough!

Full of piss and vinegar, and with a heavy, echidna-branded five cent coin in my hot, mischievous hand, I skipped along down the road (in a masculine, the-world-is-mine-for-the-taking kind of way), and with a deep, excited breath, I rounded the corner which marked the furthest of my permitted boundaries.

As the Milk Bar came into my view, however, so too did I come into the view of none other than Johnny Butler; the biggest Neighbourhood Tough since Slobodan Milosevic assumed supremacy of the pre-school sandpit by burying the head of his rival, Antonije Bojan, in the corner where Sooty the cat always took her early-morning constitutional. Johnny Butler's reputation for cruelty and torture was legendary throughout the five streets of our suburb, and he was to be strictly avoided by any self-respecting youngster with an aversion to physical pain and suffering.

Seeing Johnny Butler positioned between me and the entrance to the Milk Bar, I immediately discharged a discreet, rabbit-sized poo in my Spiderman underpants, and turned to flee back to Mummy's skirts with a full confession and a promise to stay in my room for the next twenty years (how prophetic!), but by a stroke of extreme misfortune, as Johnny Butler turned his gaze from ogling the Bubblegum Goth beside him to taking-in my trembling form on the corner, the shiny five cent coin in my hand caught the afternoon sunshine, announcing to all gathered at the Milk Bar entrance that I was a well-heeled citizen carrying a substantial Booty.

Johnny Butler, far from shouting something menacing at me, rather called out to me in a friendly, welcoming voice (by name, mind you - man, this gangster was good). He asked what I was doing with that sparkling fiver, and when I told him, he asked if, seeing as though we were friends, he could have half of the lollies I intended to procure with my ill-gotten fortune. By this stage, I was so numb with fear that I could only nod in reply, so I walked through the front door of the Milk Bar with the murderous hand of Johnny Butler firmly gripping my shoulder, and trembling with abject terror, I proceeded to point out to the bored shop-keeper which lollies I wanted in my little, white paper bag.

After gobbling down the spoils of his protection racket, Johnny Butler took me under his wing, and for the rest of the afternoon, I became the second most important person in the neighbourhood. Johnny Butler talked to me of his hopes for the future; today this Milk Bar, tomorrow the one on Fraser Street, "and who knows?", he mused aloud, "maybe one day we'll be hanging-out at the Shell up on Springvale Road!" And then he looked me straight in the eye and told me that if I played my cards right, I could be there with him.

Imagine that! One of Johnny Butler's crew! Ignoring the disgruntled scowls of the other lads, I allowed myself to be taken-in by this juvenile delinquent's dream, and I too looked towards a future of being Johnny Butler's right-hand man, breathing in the heady heights of life at the top of the heap, terrorizing the young and the innocent.

But it was all too good to last. I was soon to learn that fame and fortune can be fickle companions, and that the green light wasn't all beer and skittles.

For Johnny Butler wasn't prepared to just hand over half of his terror network to any old would-be bad boy with two-and-a-half cents worth of mixed lollies to his name. "Oh no, Little Man," he said sternly, "I gotta be sure you're gonna be here for me when I need ya". Of course, by that stage I was fully hooked on the taste of power and privilege I'd enjoyed over those few hours, and I swore I would do anything he asked. So off we went, me and my new gang, to the nearby playground on Woodlea Drive (pretty tough, hey? Woodlea Drive was another place I wasn't allowed to go to).

As soon as we arrived, the other toughs and the Bubblegum Goth formed a tight circle near some trees at the back of the park, and Johnny Butler took me by the elbow and led me into the middle of the circle, where we both stood, shoulder to shoulder, and looked down at a completely unfamiliar object - what I now know to be a used condom. "Pick it up and give it to me, Little Man", he ordered. I slowly bent and reached for the oozing dinger, wondering as I did what it was. I hesitated slightly, but after gulping down a great, viscous lump of fear, I resolved to do as my new Master bade. But just before I grabbed hold of the sticky sheath, one of the toughs sniggered.

My hand froze, and I looked up at Johnny Butler, who was grinning down at me with a glint of cruelty in his narrow eyes. "Pick it up, Donkey, or I'll bash ya", sneered Johnny Butler. I stood up straight and ... did I actually shake my head defiantly, or was I simply trembling with terror? Regardless, Johnny Butler clenched both fists as he lunged towards me, and I sobbed in terror, before sounding-off a piercing howl that caught the attention of young Mrs Cherney, who was approaching the park with her two-year old. "What's going on there you kids?", she bellowed, and that was enough to put the wind up Johnny Butler and his crew, who hot-footed it off down Woodlea Drive towards the safety of their patch outside the Milk Bar.

And there it was. My big, life choice; do I pick up the greasy dinger and become one of Johnny Butler's crew, terrorising the neighbourhood youth before moving onto organised protection rackets, illegal poker halls and eventually leading a life of luxury on stinking, ill-gotten cash, socialising with society's most wanted, professional footballers and dodgy accountants, and snorting lines of coke off a prostitute's arse through a rolled-up fifty three times a night? Or do I defy Johnny Butler's orders, and tell him to stick his fawning sycophants and all-pervasive neighbourhood power where it fits, and head back to my homely existence with the family I love, who cares for and nurtures me, in good times and bad?

I'd like to think I actually made my choice that day, but the truth is I never had the balls. As Johnny Butler lunged towards me, I'd lost it, pissed my pants and cried like a baby. Mrs Cheney had saved my arse and held my hand as she walked me all the way home. I had survived, sure, escaping a bashing and possibly a sexually transmitted infection-induced skin rash into the bargain, but it hadn't been a survival of the fittest; my dignity and pride had been destroyed that day in the park on Woodlea Drive, when I had gone from being Melbourne's newest crime boss to being a snivelling mess in the space of a heartbeat, and the stink of failure and weakness has remained with me ever since; a stench which can be sensed immediately by any opportunistic predator who comes my way.

There's a lot to be said for the old adage, "We've gotta toughen you up son, it's a jungle out there and you'll get eaten alive." Too true.

"Hey Bitches. Hey Hos..." Jay and Silent Bob, two regulars outside the Quick Stop, were not as threatening as Johnny Butler, but equally as opportunistic. Pic: http://arcticmonkey.files.wordpress.com

Putting the “fun” back into the fundus

There’re laws for everything these days; where to walk, where not to walk; where to stand, where not to stand; what to eat/what you’re not allowed to eat (eg: people, dogs, cats); what trees to plant and where/what you’re not allowed to cut down; laws for housing; laws for building; laws for waste management and even laws which tell you where you can take a dump/where you can’t (eg: train carriages, street corners, department store fragrance counters); laws about having to go to school and where; there are even laws about who can marry/who can’t/what to marry (eg: boys vs girls vs Chihuahuas).

So many laws … covering so many things … and each one (supposedly) developed and enforced both in the best interests of society today, and for its future development. So tell me why, with all of these stringent boundaries directing us towards a better community and nation, they are still letting idiots breed?

Given that Mrs Donkey has been “in foal” of late, and ready to burst any day now, we have been touring the parental rapid training circuit for the past few months and have discovered that we are surrounded by a world of humourless, insular, self-obsessed dim-wits with nary an awareness of the world three blocks away from their hovels between them, and all of whom are soon to release/inflict similarly soft-baked offspring onto a society with, in my view, inadequate mental health and rehabilitation services to cope with the onslaught. Surely something needs to be done immediately to address this scourge which looks liable to set the development of this nation back a couple of decades?

I can tell by your sceptical frown that you think the recent nights I’ve spent sleeping on the floor in order to accommodate Mrs Donkey’s expanding (and aggressively demanding) bed-space requirements are sending me a little fruity, but before you click back to YouPorn, allow me to describe some of the cretins (oops, I mean) characters from our prenatal classes.

The fun kicked-off immediately in Session #1, when in response to a question from the midwife, “What will each of you bring to the birth?”, this one guy, either an imbecile or a comic genius, replied in a cocky manner and without so much as a hint of a smile, “My Mum!”. Both the midwife and Donkey displayed super-human powers of self control to stay upright on our chairs and to smother our chuckles and guffaws as it became clear from his confusion and bemusement moments later that he was actually deadly serious … as was his partner; and she was staring down the barrel of 24+ hours of pain, puffing and panting, all in the company of her mother-in-law! I mean, this was the stuff of crappy ‘70s TV sitcoms, and yet there was not a self-deprecating smile in sight!

The midwife’s response to all this, after 20-odd years of circumventing the unenlightened chauvinism of over-bearing fathers-to-be, was to repeatedly remind the clearly misguided partner of this Mummy’s Boy at every possible opportunity over the following 5 weeks that she didn’t have to have her partner’s mother helping her son ‘down at the business end’ during the birth if she didn’t want to, but on reflection, I think she may have been a-few-ova-short-of-a-conception herself, and never quite grasped the implications of her feller’s maternal dependence.

As I mentioned, this revelation from Little Lord Fauntleroy emerged only minutes into Session #1, at which time I suddenly grew fearful that I may have stumbled into a real-life zombie scenario, so in order to preserve my life, I resolved to pay a little more attention to my fellow prenatal class mates, only to discover that I had unwittingly stumbled into a real-life zombie scenario!

At the time of our first prenatal class, Mrs D and I were the least-baked of all the attendees – most of whom were expecting within the following three months. The maternity outfits of the ladies were tightening into a myriad of multi-coloured beach balls, and one might have expected their lads to have had some ideas and plans for what to do come beach-ball deflation time. On the contrary, a quick look at the male faces around the room revealed a mixture of either blank surprise and wonderment, or the tight-knit brows of a gathering of super-sleuths executing elementary deduction in an effort to ascertain a) how they came to be in this room, b) how long it had been that their partners had been walking around looking like beach-balls (and why), or c) how they could convince their partners to allow them to invite their mothers to attend the birth.

Honestly, these guys, (allegedly) the fathers of six-month-old, unborn children, looked genuinely, acutely shocked at their situation - sagging eyes, slack-jaws, white knuckles gripping the arms of chairs. It was as though they’d only just found out, on the way to the class, that their missus was knocked-up.

This observation was confirmed immediately thereafter when, in response to the second question of Session #1, “What would you do to support your partner during labour?”, at least three of them answered that they’d probably stay out of the room so as not to get in the way of the experts, while two others said they didn’t know, “…and that’s why [they’d] been forced to come here tonight!”

Hang-on a minute, these are the people who are having children?!

As the weeks unfolded, these nit-wits learned that there are resources such as the internet and books that one can (SHOULD) access for information which can help them prepare for having a baby (“Wot, are we having a bay-bee?”), but overall, very few of the half of the participants that Donkey ended up having to talk to had any insight into their situation, and absolutely no interest in dwelling-on any of the opportunities for humorous exchange to which the presented material lent itself, such as one of the pregnant participants referring to her post-natal self as a milk-factory, or one of the male participants worriedly asking when his partner’s figure would return to normal, or when one couple asked in unison when they could get their hands on the government’s baby bonus. C’mon people, this is funny stuff; comedy gold! How ‘bout a chuckle at the ape who just wants the baby out so that he can climb back on board, or perhaps a disbelieving snort at the prissy social-climber who refuses to breastfeed in case she will no longer be able turn the heads of the ball-boys down at The Club.

You may have guessed from these observations that Mrs Donkey and I didn’t quite endear ourselves with our fellow classmates. Our constant giggling and chuckling as we joked with each other about strategically placed mirrors and women down on all fours grunting like a barnyard animal may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, Australians are culturally-renowned for using humour to help deal with fear. At least our approach (we think/hope), which requires one to have intellectually confronted one’s fears in order to turn them into something amusing, reflects a certain spark of intelligence; an admirable contrast, we think, to the stinking, viscous muck oozing about inside the skulls of our compatriots.

Which brings me back to my earlier comments regarding laws. We have laws for and against so many things in this society, so how come these morons are allowed to stick their appendages into each other and create offspring? Shouldn’t the long-term best interests of society prevail here? Couldn’t the money currently spent by the government on baby bonuses be better employed in the purchase of a bulk-order of Ginsu knives with which said appendages could be liberated from their intellectually-challenged owners?

Something needs to be done … and fast! I don’t want to inflict Baby Donkey on a social group whose favourite pastime is picking lice from each other’s back hair and cracking them in their teeth. I want more for my child; literature, art, music, dancing and above all, humour … not football, motor sport, World Wrestling and The Biggest Loser. But if our pre-natal classes are anything to go by, I think that’s all she/he’s going to get.

I’m calling for a major judicial overhaul. Remember former-Prime Minister, John Howard’s famous anti-immigration battle-cry some five years ago, “We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances under which they come”? Well there’s a whole generation of new arrivals who’ve come-in through the back-door (not literally … but you know what I mean), and it’s high time we turned the same, tough stance we’ve committed to border-control upon our home-grown stock. Selective breeding, people, the time is most definitely nigh.


The scene outside Donkey's prenatal classes just the other night. There goes the neighbourhood. Pic : http://www.revok.com/zombie.html

Gaggin' for a shag

S'no wonder I'm such a sexually and emotionally repressed Donkey, I've been deprived of the basic human right to an education! Let me explain, I'm not talking about the usual, reading, writing and arithmetic kind of education here (believe me, I've had Shakespeare, spelling bees and calculus coming out of my whatsit for years!). No, I'm talking about the fundamental building blocks of education which exist in the form of children's fairy tales.

Now before you hit speed-dial to dob Ma and Pa Donkey into the child protection authorities, I must clarify that I did get the usual, Mother Goose-style fairy tales from my folks, such as Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk etc, but what I didn't get were the "real" fairy tales, as compiled by the good Brothers (indeed very Grimm by name and nature).

Such as the one I've stumbled across this very early morning while struck with an almighty, new year's hangover and unable to sleep with Mrs Donkey snoring away beside me. The story's called Old Hildebrand, and features a silly peasant whose saucy wife's having it off (I kid you not) with the fat parson. The two illicit lovers, in order to get Old Hildebrand out of the way so that they can "...spend a whole day happily together...", concoct a scheme in which the trusting peasant is sent by the sly, randy, old Churchman on a holy pilgrimage to Italy.

Of course, thanks to the wily intervention of a travelling egg salesman (who has no doubt been around the block a few times himself), Old Hildebrand comes home early, where he finds that "...everything was already very merry...". Very merry indeed! It seems Old Hilde's Missus and the dirty old Man of the Cloth were well into things by the time he got home, described by the Brothers G as follows;

"...The woman had already had nearly everything killed that was in the farmyard [a euphemism, if ever I've heard one], and had made pancakes [ooh err], and the parson was there, and had brought his fiddle with him [I'll bet he had, the dirty old bastard!]".

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before? How is it that the real world was denied me so callously? How different my adolescence would have been if those brave princes looking upon an enchanted, sleeping maiden, or up at a flaxen-haired beauty trapped in a tower, had done so, not with a melting heart, but with a raging erection! How different Sunday school might have been if I'd known of Old Hildebrand's saucy minx of a wife and what she and her kind get up to with Father O'Flannagan in the pantry out the back of the Presbytery (I almost certainly would have had a different answer for Father McNaughton when he tapped me on the shoulder and put the vocational question to me if I'd known it was all about "making pancakes" with the parish ladies while their hubbies were at work, and almost certainly, were this knowledge available to the young Catholic lads of Australia, the dwindling numbers of recruits in seminaries across the country could have been prevented right from the outset).

And by far the best thing about the story of Old Hildebrand, unlike those told by the fusty old Goose with the straw hat and wire specs, is that, just as in life, there doesn't have to be any great moral message at the end of it. In Old Hildebrand, there's no "don't talk to strangers", no "even ugly people have hidden qualities", no "respect your elders and loved ones". Rather, far from having to be portrayed as some moral crusader, when he learns of the treachery against him, Old Hildebrand gives the parson a flogging and then throws his leg over the Missus for a bit of pancake-making himself. Great stuff! There should be more of it ... much more, in fact. I'm as angry as all get-out to have been deprived for so long; blinded as to the true nature of children's fairy stories. I've missed so much, and need to make up for some pretty serious, lost time. Please excuse me, I'm off to church...


Why didn't anyone tell me it wasn't all virtuous chastity? A few more learning aids like this wouldn't have gone astray. Pic: http://www.measureformeasure.co.uk

The Global Circus, Part II: Caine

Japan’s a strange place! Pick-up any old travel brochure for the tiny country and there seems to be a major emphasis on formality; it’s all Geisha’s serving tea and the carefully manicured gardens in temples on Mt Fuji. Likewise, pictures of Tokyo all feature men in dark suits rushing for trains, and elegantly dressed, beautifully manicured women in sparkling jewellery and evening gowns. It’s as if the whole country is marketed as a place to go for perfect lines, order and neatness.

The traditional aspect of Japan gets a real pounding, too. Back in the ‘80s, when the Yen was going gang-busters and Australians had decided that “the Japs” were OK now, especially seeing as though they’d developed a love-affair with our coastlines and were willing to throw their hearty wallets into the experience, every kid with near-sighted, socially-climbing parents was forced to learn Japanese at school and pushed into a career in tourism. Consequently, literature and movies about Japan began to emerge, and in each one of them we were exposed to a culture characterised by formality and unquestioning respect for one’s elders (especially for one’s father). We learned that Japanese families were held together by tradition, and that honour and order were qualities to be highly prized.

As Japanese Corporations continued to rise and dominate international business, we also came to learn about a corporate culture in which young Japanese would compete for graduate positions, and once established in a corporation, would remain there, wearing there neatly-pressed, plain business suits, working 20 hour days with only a fortnight’s holidays each year, for the rest of their working life. Loyalty and respect to the Corporation was highly valued, as was anonymity and conformity, and it all contributed to the economic super power that was 1980s Japan.

Consequently, as outsiders, we came to recognise the Japanese as being a well- and sensibly-dressed, perfectly groomed, impeccably mannered and … well … stuffy race of people, and indeed that was my idea of them when I landed on the shores of Samoa in the late ‘90s; a volunteer with a limited world view and looking for adventure.

I found it in the bosom of the large, and eclectic volunteer community which comprised we seven, fairly young Australians, all out looking for a good time; three ancient, cantankerous, life-bitter Kiwis; about fifty small-town, ultra-right Christian, US Peace Corps; a handful of stand-offish, well heeled, superior UN volunteers; and twenty of the most whacked-out, extreme, 24-hour party-people from Japan.

It wasn’t long before I discovered where the Japanese hung-out by day; a squat, three-story fibro apartment block in the centre of town which looked more like an American College frat house than a Corporation office (the Japanese volunteer program refers to itself as a corporation). Any day of the week, hard-core metal would be blaring from the massive speakers mounted on the balcony (Sony, of course), and young Japanese would be lounging around in various states of undress on ripped sofas that had been ejected from the building onto the front lawn. A thick, pall of cigarette smoke would surround the seedy-looking, chain-smoking youngsters, no doubt recovering from the massive party they’d thrown on Monday night.

But despite the loud, relaxed, celebratory scene at Corporation Headquarters on any given day, it was at night that these young, hipsters really went nuts. It wasn’t difficult to get to know the Japanese volunteers; they’d be present, en masse, at any party going, on any given night. And there was certainly no missing them. Far from dressing in the staid, pressed, formal suits I’d been led to expect of the most formally attired race in the world, the Japanese volunteers generally wore some pretty out-there threads; for the guys it was generally ripped, studded, graffitied denim, tatty, fraying t-shirts and thongs, while the girls sported tartan micro-minis with decoration safety pins, garish, slashed stockings and provocatively ripped, cropped t-shirts.

Punk certainly wasn’t dead amongst the Japanese volunteers, as attested not only by their clothes, but also by their avante guarde approach to grooming. Gone were the neatly parted, short backs-and-sides, and clean-shaven mugs of the Corporate gents; these lads had dirty, matted hair reaching three quarters of the way down their backs, and long, scruffy beards that any 1970s martial arts movie grand master’d be proud of. And the girls had forsaken the shiny, long, black, straight hair of the office for bright pinks, blues, greens, oranges and beaded braids. And amongst the whole ensemble, whether male or female, was a collection of metal the likes of which could sink an ocean liner – these guys had piercings on just about every appendage and orifice going. How they managed international air travel is beyond me – I am just glad I never got stuck behind one of them at the metal detectors.

And it wasn’t just their appearance which distinguished our Japanese colleagues from the rest of the volunteers, it was they way they partied! It wouldn’t matter how long the party had been going for, the Japanese volunteers would always be completely wired on booze and fags, and going nuts on the dance floor to the heavy beats. They’d be yelling, screaming, laughing and smiling – they really knew how to have a great time.

So how could I have been so wrong about Japan and its people? How could I have thought it was all conformity, commitment and commerce, when I had these … animals in front of me, partying like it was their last night on earth?

Well as it happens, another great quality of the Japanese volunteers was that they were very open and friendly, so before long I came to understand a bit more about them. Each and every one of them did, in fact, belong to a corporation in Japan, having joined after college and having put in the long hours, day after day, wearing the pressed suits and parting their hair in order to be promoted up the ladder to a level at which the Corporation agreed to sponsor them for one or two years as a volunteer in a developing country. Many of them saw the opportunity as their last great “hoorah”, before returning to Japan, and really knuckling-down to work, marriage, family, a mortgage, crowded trains and dark suits … and they were all committed to giving the experience an almighty nudge while they still could.

As the years went by, I came to recognise these traits in many young Japanese abroad, not only volunteers. Out on The Trail, I met many Japanese back-packers who had decided to take a year off from the corporate grind in order to see the world, and almost always, the girls wore bright, funky clothes and smoked like chimneys, and the guys grew their hair and beards long. While the girls often travelled in twos and threes, and could generally be found dancing in bars to loud music, I noticed that the guys would often travel alone, and would assume an air of quiet dignity. I eventually came to recognise this persona in many of these young men, with their matted hair, long beards and John Lennon glasses, as they attempted to pass themselves off as wizened, travelling sages on some kind of wandering, spiritual journey in search of the truth of life.

At first I was sucked-in by the stories of these higher-planed enigmas, such as the young man who, in order to save money on entry permits, risked imprisonment in a Chinese labour camp by hiding in the woods to skirt around border crossings, or the guy who shaved his head and face to pass himself off as a Tibetan monk as he spent three years studying in a mountain monastery (I now know this to be a centuries old story of the first foreigner to study Buddhism in Tibet). But eventually, I came to understand a little more about Japan; about the safe, privileged family environment, and the rigid corporate culture that these young men had come from, and I came to realise that, far from being the spiritually enlightened and centred souls that they portrayed, they were just as insecure and out-to-impress as the rest of us.

Over the years, I met many of these young Japanese men who claimed to be wandering the world on a spiritual quest for the answers to life’s mysteries, but there was one that I met which really hit home to me just how ridiculous this invented persona really is, and I would like to introduce you to him as the main attraction in the Global Circus Big Top today.

It was the 29th December, 1999. I was holidaying in a budget, beach-side resort with the future Mrs Donkey, and a fluffy-haired friend of mine, and we were naturally gearing-up for the big party that would herald the meltdown of all the machines and computers in the world. For three days we’d joined about fifteen other, like-minded young people in a beer- and music-fuelled binge which was definitely gaining momentum.

During this time, through all the raucous laughter, dancing and singing, I’d noticed a young, wild-haired, bearded Japanese man sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room. He had not spoken to another soul in three days, but instead simply watched-on as we got louder and drunker, and from time to time, nodded knowingly to himself.

So by this day, I was suitably drunk enough to have few remaining inhibitions, so I staggered over to engage with this young fellow. He spoke and answered my questions haltingly, with short, three word statements, annoyingly punctuated with pauses which I assume he felt added weight and mystery to his persona.

After a while, my fluffy-haired friend staggered over to join us, just as this enigma was telling me about himself,

“I have been travelling [pause] for many months”, he informed us.

“Cool”, says I, “I love travelling”.

Ignoring me, he continues, “I travel [pause] alone”.

Fluffy drunkenly pipes-up, “You’re like Caine, that guy from the TV show, Kung Fu. He wanders the world alone … can you do Kung Fu?”, and with that, Fluffy leaps into a flying kick before hitting the deck in a drunken crash to hoots of laughter from everyone present … except Caine.

“I do not [pause] approve of violence”, he replies, “I am searching for [pause] truths”.

“Huh?”, Fluffy and I grunt in unison.

“I am writing [pause] a story”, he says.

“Oh yeah? Cool”, says I, “What kind of story?”.

Caine fixes me in his weighty gaze “I am writing [pause] a Millennium story”.

Just then, the future Mrs Donkey sends out a sharp, high-pitched scream as Fluffy, having been in the act of taking a sip of beer, suddenly sprays her in a golden mist of laughter, “Well you’d better get on with it, Mate, you’ve only got two days”, and then turns to me, “What a twat!”.

Caine says nothing. He rises, and wanders off into the trees.

To this day, we are none the wiser as to whether Caine’s Millennium [pause] story was ever written, but no doubt the long hours of data entry in a poorly-lit, open-plan office alongside an army of well groomed, dark-suited, fellow data entry clerks on his return home to Japan may have proved an insurmountable barrier to the development of this truly remarkable breakthrough in modern literature.


Given a scowl, some odd garments an air of self assuredness, any insecure youngster can travel the world pretending to find the truth to life’s mysteries, just like Kwai Chang Caine. Pic: http://media.monstersandcritics.com

Movember in Jaipur

Movember my ass! Now these guys have really got it goin’ on this November. Pic: www.daylife.com

I recently spent a few days with an old friend who’s reaching the point in her life where her father is doing all he can to set her up with a nice, prosperous young man from the homeland. Sanjita was sitting back in a fancy bar in one of the city’s more stylish precincts, a glass of sauvignon blanc in one, slender hand, and a smouldering cigarillo, dangling glamorously from the other, as she discussed her predicament.

“Oh Donkey,” she pouts provocatively, “Bapa’s finding me one, skinny, high-panted young executive after another. Most of them are nice enough … one or two have even been quite charming, but I just don’t think I could ever get past those bloody, twitching moustaches! Kissing them must be like eating a mouldy mango! Why do these deluded fools think they look so attractive with those tufts of black fuzz on their lips?”.


Movember is over for another year – hoo-bloody-ray!

I shall be spared (at least for another eleven months) from having to listen to the boys from IT swanning around the office, rattling their tins for donations, banging-on about the wispy growth on their upper lips, showing off to the women in the office by stroking their manliness (am talking about their moustaches, here) while at the same time emphasizing their sensitive, new age sides by contributing to what they consider to be a worthwhile cause.

They are like a bunch of strutting peacocks, these men who have fallen into the Movember fad. They stand around the water cooler comparing the size of their droops, secretly (and often, not-so-secretly) fancying themselves as ‘70s porno-stars, something they surmise to be quite endearing to your average, modern, professional woman.

Well, lads, on behalf of those of us who don’t mind getting a bit of work done every now and then, I have a little message for you…

First of all, that pathetic, tufty protuberance below your schnoz isn’t making you the apple of every woman’s eye. You gotta understand that it was never the moustache that made Long Dong Silver and Johnny Holmes famous - it just happened to be the ‘70s when they were doing their thing, a decade synonymous with T-shades and the mo. So just ‘cause you work in IT, and therefore watch a fair bit of porn on the company’s time, that doesn’t necessarily make you a super stud in the sack.

And secondly, it’s pretty obvious that most women with any sort of taste don’t really go for moustaches these days, otherwise every bloke’d have one, or every gal would be married to a cop, dig?

So finally, with the end of a long, slow Movember now upon us, I can breathe a sigh of relief from all the grief and abuse I receive for being a Donkey who hasn’t decided to let himself go in the preening department this November.

It seems that, just because these selfish dudes who are doing something for charity for the first time in their lives (and let’s face it, the reality is that they’re not shaving for a month, which actually means they’re doing less!), they think it’s OK to judge those of us who choose to maintain minimal facial follicularity, and accuse us publically of not contributing to “the cause”; after all, they’re the ones growing the mo, so the least I could do is sling ‘em a donation.

“The cause”, hey? - and this is where Movember really gives me the shits. Usually, when someone does something for a cause, they tend to know something about that cause, but ask any of these judging bogans what the cause is, and they’ll tell you the stock, standard line,

“We’re raising funds and awareness about men’s health issues”, they parrot the Movember website.

“Oh really? That’s interesting…” offers Doubting Donkey, all smarmy and patronising, while at the same time, oozing sophistication, “and what health issues would they be?”.

“Um … men’s health issues”.

“Right”, says I, rapidly losing all patience and suave, “Now take you’re fucking ugly caterpillar lip, complete with crumbs from the Lunchtime Seafood Special, and get the fuck out of here!”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a good cause, and I really should be proud that one has come along that even selfish people who are only interested in silicon- and computer-enhanced women and football (and not necessarily in that order) can get into. But the thing about Movember is that no one really knows who or what they are raising money for, and the level of awareness of the “men’s health issues” that they’re raising awareness about, for the most part, seems to be remarkably absent.

I’m from the old school of alms-giving. If you want my cash, you gotta perform. Dress a monkey up in a vest and fez, and have him dance on a wire in front of my balcony while I drink chilled French champagne, and here’s a tenner. Have a young girl kidnapped at birth and sent to the circus to have ribs and vertebrae removed so she can perform all manner of contortions in front of myself and my fellows, and I’ll gladly sling her a fiver. Have an armless and legless man write an essay on pre-war European existentialism using only his mouth and blunt pencil, and I’ll shout “Bravo” while I shower him with loose change, or simply be able to tell me why you’re growing that ridiculous fungus on your upper lip, and I’ll gladly provide you with a modest, tax deductable donation. Anything less, my lazy, young, bogan, IT friends, and you can move your rattling tin on past ol’ Donkey.

That is of course, unless you can grow a real moustache like my two Rajasthani camel-riding friends (pictured above) in a single month. Now that’s manhood, and that, not the embarrassing wisps you’re sporting in this office, is what’ll drive the ladies wild with desire. Right girls?

What the parents don't know...

Ma and Pa Donkey and I have a bit of an unspoken understanding – they don’t ask me what I do, so I don’t have to lie to them. It’s a pretty good system, ‘cause although they know I am out there saving the world from horrible, nasty things, and can bandy-about down at The Club that their little baby and his Missus are kind of … um … “modern-day missionaries”, they may not be very happy to learn about what it is I am doing to make the world a better place, some of which may not go down too well over a few stiff, mid-afternoon gins and a couple of rounds of bridge.

It’s a bit of an odd conundrum, I guess. On the one hand they know that I am doing good stuff, and they are clearly proud of it (even though I think they’d secretly prefer to be able to stick-it to Lord and Lady Wexford-Southerby-Smith by boasting that their son is clearing six figures a month), and yet on the other hand, if The Club ladies actually knew what I talk to people about all day long, and what I teach others to do, Ma’s reception at the first-Tuesday cake stall would be frostier than the top of Mrs Whitaker’s prize-winning lemon sponge.

Basically, the problem comes down to values. Y’see, Ma and Pa Donkey are strict Catholics, and I was brought up in the full traditions of the Church; Sunday mass, weekly confessions, love and respect for one’s neighbour, faith, hope and charity and, of course, not to touch oneself.

(With that knowledge finally out in the open, no doubt many of you will be nodding in satisfaction as the penny finally drops regarding why I am such an emotional and sexual cripple).

I was a pretty good religious sponge, too. I took on-board all of the various rules and teachings of the Mother Church, and like so many others, never questioned a thing. Unfortunately, the whole dogma of the Catholic Church is flawed, because to be “a good, young Catholic gentleman”, and to adhere to all the teachings, one ended up contradicting oneself.

The case in point was the one about providing charity, love and support to all those in need, or, to quote the Ten Commandments, that whole “do unto others as you’d have them do to you” thing. At about the time that I was struggling to do everything right, and trying to follow all that religious gaff to the letter, there was something going on in the world which was really throwing the cat among the religious zealots … that thing was called AIDS.

All of a sudden, from about 1984, there was this thing out there called AIDS that was killing everyone. It didn’t seem to matter whether it was wealthy tycoons in New York, movie stars in Europe or poor, peasant farmers in Zimbabwe – the pictures were the same; emaciated bodies, no hair and horrible pain.

Our Catholic upbringing went into overdrive to do something about all this – to help the poor, the afflicted, the helpless, and indeed there was a distinct half of the media who were urging us to do something. But oddly enough, in support of the other half, who were telling us to leave these poor wretches well alone, were our very own clergymen, and of course, head amongst them, none other than his Holiness, The Pope. Because, despite a couple of typically misguided reports from tabloid current affairs media that the disease was carried and spread by household cats, it soon became apparent that AIDS was getting around thanks to a world which had “suddenly” gone crazy for sex!

While thousands of gay men and drug users were dropping like flies, we, the Faithful remained firm; singing our hymns and saying our Rosaries. When AIDS moved-on from the streets of San Francisco and took hold in Africa, we looked-on and prayed for the souls of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. As the pictures on TV and in magazines got more graphic and the stories more personable and real, our spiritual leaders stood firm on their condemnation of condoms, and even began to spread lies about them.

By this time, however, some of us had snapped-out of the secure daze of ignorance. By this time, some of us had realized that to be a good Catholic was impossible, because you couldn’t just stand by and watch innocents suffer and die when something could clearly be done to prevent it –put simply, you couldn’t obey all the rules about sex and condoms AND help those who were in need. The two were incompatible.

So, poor, ol’ misguided Donkey had finally realized that there were more important things amongst the religious teachings than just a set of rules to be followed. He realized that humanity needed to be valued above the dictates of a faceless following; that a human life was worth saving from suffering, regardless of what the person had done or continues to do. In coming to this realization, I realized that the Catholic rules about sex and condoms were ridiculous – they were simply rules to be obeyed, and absolutely nothing to do with caring for people.

So nowadays I devote my time to preventing the transmission of HIV (which causes AIDS) and other nasties created by an individual inserting their dick into someone’s bum, vagina or other orifice, of which one or both of the owners are infected, or a used, infected syringe into an arm. I go out into the world, ramming condoms down people’s throats (not literally), and I tell them to use these all the time. I ask detailed questions of men who stick their dicks into each others arses, of young girls who sell sex for money or new clothes and of young men who sell their bums for money to buy drugs which they shoot into their arms with (hopefully, but not often enough) sterile needles. I work solidly to try to ensure that the people who are the least likely to be invited to Ma Donkey’s bridge games, namely sex workers, drug users and men who have sex with men can have the knowledge and resources they need to live for as long as they should, with minimal pain and suffering.

While some who sit along the pew from Ma and Pa every Sunday morning would not approve of the offspring of two of their number peddling the sinful, depraved wares of Asia’s latex manufacturers on a daily basis, I am convinced (and I think, deep down, so are Ma and Pa) that the Big Bloke Upstairs is nodding in approval at what some of us are trying to do, even if we are breaking a few of “his” rules.

It’s World AIDS Day again. Please go out and buy a red ribbon, and wear it proudly to commemorate all those who have died from, or who are living with AIDS. But most importantly, try to find out about the organization from whom you are buying that red ribbon – no doubt they’ll be the ones who are out there doing all the things that Ma and Pa Donkey’s Club friends would disapprove of, and that’s definitely an organization worth supporting.