reveries of a solitary wanker - wank one

1989 - an individual in the process of becoming historical

I’m not at all sure how life is going at present. Of course there’s the absurd court case, and its consequences, which have been costly, and I speak only of the financial cost. It’s because of the case that I’ve moved house, moved back with Sarah, as ‘just good friends’, having virtually given up on foster caring in the future. Two can just about live more cheaply than one, and here I can help her with housework, the garden, child-minding and the like. I lead a busy life if perhaps not an entirely fulfilling one. In my fiftieth year I’m as sexually frustrated as ever, but with less hope in that arena than in the past, but I’ve become inured to this state and don’t suffer too horribly.

Of course, unlike a few other celibates, I don’t feel spiritually purified by my condition, but I’m realistic about the future. It’s likely that I’ll never have sex again, that I’ll never travel overseas or make a substantial living, in terms of the astonishingly high standard of living taken for granted these days by my peers and juniors. These are not so much my decisions as the consequences of decisions I’ve made, to dabble in blogging, to teach, garden and perform other tasks on a purely voluntary basis. Of course I would love it if I was commissioned to write a book about some inner or outer journey in space or time, but only famous and tested writers receive such offers, which is probably just as it should be.

For my sins I work one day a week in a community centre, but it really isn’t my cup of tea. Today, in fact, was the day. As voluntary help goes, I’m probably one of the best of the crop, but that isn’t saying too much. Many of the others are elderly and afraid to use the computers, or else they’re immigrants, and afraid to use the telephones. I potter about, troubleshooting a few simple computer problems, doing layouts for newsletters and such, and being a receptionist. I like it when the Chinese senior citizens come in and Mr Chen cooks lunch for them, and us, which at least saves me money and at best is a thought-provoking culinary experience – I’d never though of stir-frying cucumber.

I prefer Mondays, though, when I teach English there. There are three or four teachers floating around, and I’m supposed to teach the advanced students, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Often there are no advanced students. Yesterday I taught two Chinese women, one of them a newcomer. The classes are for English conversation, so the structure is minimal, and with new students I like to use the opportunity to talk to them about themselves, the country they came from, their reasons for coming to Australia, their impressions of the new country and other things about their background and experience. I suppose this lets me off the hook of preparing lessons, but it’s often interesting, even if only to observe people’s styles of avoidance, or forms of politeness. And occasionally, though not often, we drift into troubled waters. We spoke the other day of recent Chinese immigration and asylum-seeking, of those who arrived here after the Tianenmen Square massacre, though I didn’t mention a massacre, they wouldn’t have recognized the word, they knew so very little English, and it took a while even for the older woman, who hailed from Beijing, to catch on to the place I was talking about. I couldn’t give up on it, and finally their faces registered the story of students and tanks and shooting I half acted out for them. I’ve no idea what they thought of it, if anything.

It’s pleasant to have a captive audience. You can steer the discussion in any direction you choose – it’s all English after all, and you’re the only one at the table who can command it. Not that I take too many liberties, and anyway their swamped expressions hold me in check. I find though that most of my students, whatever their English level, are neither well informed about nor much interested in the broad political scene (whatever that means). Doubtless they have enough on their plate. I don’t talk to them about their sex lives, that’s one for the future.

Of course, talk of sex is verboten, I might be had up for sexual harassment, or attempted rape. My case is to be heard again on April 19, and I expect that once the DPP receives a report from the police photographers, their qualms will only increase. The boy’s story, or one of them, is that he escaped to his bedroom and locked the door after the initial attack in the toilet. The summary of evidence [sic] presented to me at my very first court appearance stated that ‘accused left toilet and victim went into toilet and locked door’, which was a different story from that told to me upon my arrest at the police station. Anyway, the summary of evidence version will now be shown to be false in one important particular – there wasn’t and never has been a lock on the bedroom door.

I imagine the DPP will have to confront at least the mother – how could her son make such a mistake? Is he still adamant about this part of his story? If he is, the prosecution will fail, or be abandoned, because the evidence contradicts him. His only hope lies in treating it as a trauma-induced memory slip, but this naturally raises the issue of what actually did happen after the attack? Did I follow him in and attack him again – the gist of his first story?

This is a key issue – or rather not, since there’s no lock to fit any key. My feeling is that, since this is one of the few pieces of evidence that has changed, it will have been dwelt on during questioning of the boy. I can well imagine him describing the imaginary lock in some detail to his mother, perhaps confusing it with some other lock in some other house he has lived in. Perhaps he even described me trying the lock, thumping on the door, or talking to him through it, threatening or pleading.

And perhaps by now his mother will have received the incontrovertible evidence that there was no lock. Will her animus towards me lead her to believe that I’ve changed the lock? But why would I do that since the main incident was described as having taken place in the toilet? Wouldn’t I be keen to tamper with the toilet door lock instead?

No, it’s more likely that this evidence will have jolted the mother, and shaken her belief in her son to the core. Hopefully someone will confront the boy himself with this key, or non-key, evidence. I would love to see him trying to explain it away. Perhaps the Big Lie is being exposed as I write.