Look Evelyn, Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them.: A Collection Of New Essays (5 page)

I visited Simon yesterday. He opened the front door of his small second floor apartment wearing pajama pants and a stained I heart LA t-shirt. The apartment reeked of cigarette smoke and all the blinds were closed.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing much, ” I replied, “Just checking in to make sure you haven’t killed yourself. How are you doing?”

“Good.”

Empty pizza boxes covered almost every inch of countertop and the sink was full of dishes. Little flies hovered above them. On a couch seat, next to a pillow and blanket, a pile of pizza crusts and cigarette butts had overflowed to the point where the ashtray had become a foundation rather than a container.

“Are you sleeping on the couch?” I asked.

“I’m not sleeping in that bed.” Simon replied, sneering towards the bedroom he had, up until just a few weeks ago, shared with Cathy. “It smells like her.”

I read the results of a poll once that showed 85% of married women have had an affair while holidaying without their partners. I’m sure it is a common occurrence, people being people, but you have to question how they come by these stats. I could ask a fisherman if he has gutted a fish lately and then state, “100% of all men polled say they have gutted a fish lately.”  The statement may be factual, but it is also construed.

I didn’t know the whole story but according to office gossip, Simon’s partner Cathy slept with a white-water rafting instructor while holidaying with her sister.

I’ve never been white-water rafting. Hurtling down a river in an inflatable boat with several other idiots - high-fiving each other the whole time and saying things like ‘woo’ - is on my reverse bucket-list of stupid things to avoid along with marathons, musical theatre and lip piercings.

“Let’s spend the day getting splashed and possibly being thrown onto rocks or into churning water. We get to wear helmets.”

“Awesome, what kind of helmets?”

“Not sure, I think they’re probably like bicycle helmets.”

“Sign me up then, that’s my favourite type of helmet. How much will it cost?”

“$180 but that includes sex with the instructor afterwards.”

“Woo.”

I know a guy named Roger who got his bottom lip pierced because my friend Bill told him he looked like the lead singer from Blink 182. When he showed us afterwards, Bill said, “Oh, I meant the lead singer from Phish.” Roger’s lip became infected and, despite a course of antibiotics, turned into what looked like mango puree. Eventually he had to have a chunk removed and the two sections of bottom lip sewn together. The reduced width pulled the top lips in at the sides and now he permanently looks like he is about to say something.

“And, if you look at the next slide, you’ll see we have... yes Roger?”

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“Sorry, I thought you were about t... yes Roger?”

When I was ten, my best friend Michael and I built a raft by duct-taping foam pool noodles to an old wooden pallet. Assuming the river down the road from my house eventually led to the ocean, we planned to ride the raft to the beach, make a day of it, then catch a bus home.  Upon discovering the raft was only buoyant enough for one person, Michael waited onboard while I went home to get more pool noodles. When I got back, I discovered he had gone on without me so I went home.

Around 7pm that evening, Michael’s mother rang my house asking as to his whereabouts. Around 9pm, the police had me show them where he had embarked from. He was located a few hours after that. Apparently, while waiting for me to  return, Michael tried testing the raft by crossing the creek gondola-style with a long stick. Reaching the middle, he found the stick wasn’t long enough to reach the bottom and the raft drifted downstream in the current. After about fifteen miles, the river opened out into marshy flatlands. Finding himself bogged in reeds, Michael decided to evacuate the raft and wade back. When they discovered him, he was stuck in mud up to his chest, approximately ten feet from the raft.  The next day’s newspaper had a photo of him being pulled out with a strap, titled, “Boy builds raft, found after search.” I was a bit annoyed at this as he didn’t build the raft by himself and it had been my idea in the first place. We weren’t allowed to hang around with each other after that.

Years later, my mother told me that Michael died while jumping off a roof into a pool and missing. Which was a bit sad. Some time after that I saw Michael collecting trollies at K-Mart. When I told my mother this, she said, “Oh I just told you that so you wouldn’t do it.”

My mother had also told me that my cousin Jeremy died from electrocution while reaching behind a refrigerator so I asked if I was likely to bump into him sometime as well.

“No,” she answered, “I didn’t lie about Jeremy dying. It wasn’t by electrocution though, he was molested and killed by a pedophile.”

“Oh my god, that’s much worse,” I said, “why didn’t you just tell me that instead?”

“You kept fucking around behind the fridge.”

“What about Uncle Carl?”

“No, he really did get hit by a train.”

Uncle Carl really enjoyed tickling so the truth about Jeremy might have served as a much better warning. I stayed overnight at my uncle’s house once while my parents were at the hospital with my sister. He convinced me to have a bath with him by telling me that it was a Japanese custom. He wasn’t Japanese so I have no idea why I agreed to it, but we had been drinking saké beforehand, which might have had something to with it. I was eight. Nobody got hurt though and we both got something out of it. Carl got to see me naked and I got a scarf when we went shopping the next day.

“It looks fantastic on you. Very Bohemian. You should try on these slacks as well.”

My parents were sitting vigil at the hospital because my older sister Leith had swallowed twelve dollars in five-cent pieces and was being kept overnight for observation. It was the third time she had been admitted for swallowing coins. Nobody knew why she kept doing it. I asked Leith about it years later, and she said that she just liked the taste. Apparently she sucked the coins until they had no flavour left and then swallowed them so they didn’t get mixed up with the unsucked coins.

Relatives probably told their children that Leith died doing it. We didn’t leave the house much and rarely had visitors.

As I wasn’t allowed to play with Michael anymore, I mostly messed about with two brothers that lived in the house across the street. Scott and Craig Holland were older than me but they owned a go-cart and I owned an Atari. Their mother was divorced but she had a boyfriend named James Beauregard-Smith who spent a fair amount of time there.

Once, while I was at their house watching television, I spilled Coke on the couch. James grabbed me by the hair, called me a ‘little cunt’ and told me to go home. I heard shouting from the house behind me as I crossed the street. Later that evening, James strangled the mother after she told him she was going back to her ex-husband. He then chased Scott into the bathroom where Craig was having a bath, and drowned them both. Scott and his mother were found under a pile of leaves, Craig was found wrapped in a sheet under the floorboards. 

I only learnt of these details many years later. At the time, when I enquired as to why Scott and Craig weren’t around anymore, my mother told me that they had both gone out without jackets and died of hypothermia.

“Have they replaced me yet?” asked Simon, moving a pile of pizza boxes off a seat so I could sit down.

“We’re doing a second round of interviews this week,” I told him, “Not for a senior designer though, we’re interviewing juniors. I’m fairly sure if you apologised to Mike though he would understand and...”

“I’m not apologising to anyone,” Simon interrupted, “I’d rather be stabbed than ever have to design another business card or logo again.”

I could understand this. When I was in my teens, all I wanted to be was a graphic designer. I lived and breathed typography and identity, idolized the likes of Neville Brody and Designers Republic, and devoted four years to gaining my bachelor of visual communication. The excitement of a .x update to Freehand, Photoshop or MacOS would almost give me an aneurysm and if anyone mentioned they "need something for something", I was the first to raise my hand. Money didn't come into it. I once designed an eight page brochure in exchange for dog grooming clippers and thought it was a pretty good deal. I didn't even own a dog at the time. Twenty years later, I won't even design a missing cat poster without carrying on.

“What are you going to do instead?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” said Simon thoughtfully, “I might turn bowls.”

“Bowls?”

“Wooden bowls. When my grandfather died, I got his wood-turning lathe. There’s a market for wooden bowls.”

“I’m sure there is. Do you know how to use a lathe?” I asked doubtfully.

“No, but how hard can it be? You throw on a big piece of wood, press the button, and cut off all the bits that don’t look like a bowl. People like bowls. Especially those really wide shallow ones you put on a table. For fruit. Or keys and lighters and sunglasses.”

“Where are you going to sell them? Are you going to set up a booth at county fairs?”

“Maybe,” said Simon, “I only just thought of the idea so I don’t have all the details.”

When I was in my first year of high school, a boy named George lost an eye because of a lathe. To ‘turn’ a piece of wood, you use something called a chuck-key - essentially a metal ratchet with handles - to tighten the jaws of a chuck which holds the wood securely. You then *ensure the chuck-key is removed* and press a big yellow button. This spins the chuck, along with whatever is held in its jaws, at horrendous speeds.

While demonstrating how to operate the lathe to a group of boys, including myself and George, who were told to gather around close and watch, our teacher Mr Williams forgot to remove the chuck key.

Afterwards, a few kids swore they had seen a blur as the chuck key left the chuck but I was watching pretty closely and didn’t see anything. George’s head was thrown back as if he had been kicked by a horse. His feet actually left the ground.  As we all stared, in horrified shock, George climbed to his feet with a confused look on his face and put his hand up to his eye. Only the chuck-key’s handle was visible. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of blood. Everybody yelled at the same time. Completely unaware of what was happening due to the noise of the lathe, Mr Williams continued his demonstration.

“Keep the chisel edge at a low angle... “

“MR WILLIAMS!”

“...otherwise it might grab. We don’t want any accidents. As you can see, by applying pressure to only the areas you want removed, the candlestick begins to take shape.”

Mr Williams was placed on leave after that and didn’t come back. George returned after a month or so, but left again after his parents received a large settlement and enrolled him in a private school. He actually went on to take up archery and competed in the 2001 Special Olympics World Games, placing second for a silver medal. The person who took home gold only had missing legs, which seems a bit unfair. They should probably have given George a chair and made the guy in a wheelchair wear a patch.

I lost sight in my left eye once. It was only for a few minutes after accidently stabbing myself with a drinking straw while driving but I know what it’s like to live with a disability.

“Do you want to see a photo of him?” Simon asked.

“Who?”

“The guy she slept with,” Simon said, grabbing his laptop, “he looks like an absolute dickhead.”

He typed furiously then scrolled through the white-water rafting company’s Facebook page.

“That’s him, second on the right. His name is Douglas. Who the fuck is named Douglas? Look at what he’s wearing.”

Douglas wore white board-shorts with a blue palm-tree pattern, gold mirror sunglasses like the ones bicyclists wear, and a t-shirt that had ‘F.B.I.’ written in large letters with ‘Female Body Inspector’ smaller below. He had his tongue out and was making the ‘gnarly’ sign with a thumb and little finger.

“He’s with the FBI, ” I said, “Maybe he only slept with Cathy as part of a sting operation. ”

“What? No, it’s one of those piss-weak joke t-shirts that douchebags like Douglas think is hilarious.”

“Women do like men in uniform though. And sailors. Perhaps it was the combination that drew Cathy to him in the first place.”

“It’s not a uniform and he’s not a sailor,” Simon spat, “He rides blow-up boats down a river for a living.”