honest dave
Only those who struggle to live, truly live

I hate photographers, who think it their right to ask you to move out of the way so they can take their oh-so-important photo, and are always asking you to hold the lens but don’t get your fingers on it, and don’t get dust on it, and are always oh, I wish that kid would get out of the way, I wish there was less cloud cover, I wish you hadn’t taken so long getting ready because the light was better half an hour ago.

I hate it when your mate’s kid hates you.

I hate it when you have found a seat on the morning Tokyo commuter train, and are sound asleep, and a loathsome Aussie woman who has been up all night getting her tits out to her workmates in a karaoke booth, vomits on you while you sleep, and you don’t wake up, so you lie there asleep all the way to your station, covered in chuck, and everyone is too polite to wake you.

I hate that there is a tablet for absolutely every single goddam fuckin’ thing.

I hate Europeans, who don’t wait until the water from the tap is hot before they start washing the dishes with it.

I hate it when you have cocaine just at parties, and then end up partying every night just to have cocaine.

I hate it when you decide to only smoke when you drink, and then crack open a beer first thing every morning.

I hate it when you have sex with a girl, not realising at the time that this is the last time you will ever do it.

I hate Australians, who don’t rinse the soap suds off the cleaned dishes.

I hate it when an old bird has her cleavage out, and it’s not that great, but you still can’t stop looking at it.

I hate it when you you’re drunk, and you roll a car, killing the passenger.

I hate it when you get busted by your flatmate’s friend having a flog.

I hate writers who think that that makes it ok for them to behave like pricks.

I hate new mothers who think everyone gives a shit about their kid.

I hate Poms, who wash their dishes in a plastic bucket in the sink.

I hate that every mall, every suburb, every town just looks the same.

I hate it when you’ve quit smoking, and you have a smoke.

I hate newly returned backpackers who think anyone gives a shit about their trip.

I hate it when you are surfing for porn, and then a sheila you’re trying impress sends you an msn, or a Facebook instant message, and it snatches the cursor off the URL line or the Google search field, but you don’t notice, and you end up sending this sheila you’re trying to impress an instant message which says www.chickswithdicks.com or midget porn amputee anal cunt.

I hate that there are still sheilas out there I am trying to impress.

I hate that writing crap like this is not going to help the cause.

I hate cyclists in the Middle East, always poring over their maps, thinking that they are the only ones truly experiencing the Middle East, even though that bikeride that just took them two days of excruciating pain being neutered by the bikeseat, only took me an hour and a half on the bus and cost me three bucks twenty.

I hate pregnant women who think they are the focal point of the universe.

I hate artists and musos, whose stuff you have to pretend to like.

I hate it when you find out that all your flatmates have spent the last six months sniggering about you behind your back for a blob of cum that someone found in the shower and that everyone blames on you, even though everyone in the house is sharing a room except you, and so you would have less recourse to need the public space to masturbate in, and when it was quite feasibly just a blob of shampoo anyway.

I hate that as soon as you buy land you chop down all the trees and put a fence around it.

I hate it when someone’s telling you a joke and you’ve already heard it, but for some reason you pretend you haven’t.

I hate it when you break something that’s not yours.

I hate having blood in my stool.

I hate kiwis in the dole queue.

I hate it when your ex empties the urn full of your son’s ashes out the front window, and then, when you go to beat the fuck out of her, she slams the glass door in your face, and you punch through it and then your ex grabs your arm and forces it down onto a spike of glass, piercing the plump blue vein in that soft spot behind your elbow, causing you to lose 2.8 litres of blood and to die twice, once in the ambulance and once on the operating table.

I hate that the road less travelled doesn’t have any fuckin’ service stations.

I hate it when you buy a sheila a drink and then she won’t go home with you.

I hate cane toads, that hop away after they’ve been driven over by a car.

I hate cabbies who drive like maniacs when they don’t have a fare, and like old women when they do.

I hate that we have to rely on rednecks to grow our food.

I hate it when you’re depressed at work, so you quit, and you go to the doctor, and he says that you have depression, and you get another job, which sucks even more, and then you realise that your earlier job was actually pretty good, and it was just that you had depression which made you think it was shit, and now you have a crappier job, which makes you even more depressed.

I hate it when you go limp in a girl’s mouth.

I hate it when someone doesn’t put the toilet paper roll the right way round.

I hate it when someone pisses on the toilet floor and you walk in it in your socks.

I hate it when the Paris streets are jammed with parked cars, and someone hasn’t quite parked theirs close to the car in front, leaving a space, so all the housewives use that spot to toilet their dogs, and then, being a naive and freshly arrived immigrant, you use that gap between the cars to cross the road and slip up and fall in the enormous pile, and get your denim jacket covered in the shit from thirty terriers, on your way to a dinner-date that you’ve been nervous about all week.

I hate human trafficking and war and and that stuff about the environment.

I hate it when something really awful happens to you, so terrible that you live that moment for the rest of your life.

I hate it when you’re playing pool, and you just can’t ever seem to quite be able to manage to sink a fucking ball.

I hate it when a girl goes round telling everyone you’ve got a small cock, just because you had sex with her and now she hates you.

I hate it when a bloke is really into football, and he goes on and on about it, and even though you tell him you never watch it, it doesn’t register with him, and he keeps going on and on, and you’ve got no idea who these people are he’s talking about.

I hate it when you don’t realise you’re pregnant til you’re, like, six or seven months gone.

I hate when you tell a Jew joke and there’s a Jew in in the room – I think they should always wear those little caps so we know.

I hate it when you have an abortion and then really regret it later.

I hate cliffhangers, and stories that end in a question.

What do you hate?

honest dave

It was at War Camp that I learned something about peace.

The Scouts versus the Venturers. The Venturers were older, stronger; we Scouts, more plentiful.
The setting was a plot of bushland. The hysterics of the kookaburra at dawn, the choir of stars, the occasional wallaby or sugar-glider. But no pleasure in Australia comes without price. Crisp, crackling, with prickles and biting blowflies and mosquitoes and crushing heat that burns your lungs. The dryness of the bush yearns for both healing water and cleansing fire, in equal measures. The bush loves little more than being reduced to grey ash.

The game went for forty-eight hours, and Ace explained the rules, after the flag raising. Ace was a Venturer with some kind of deformity – his face sagged to the left a little and he dragged his leg. Ace was short for Ace-metrical. “The rules,” he boomed, “are thus: each side has a camp about a kilometre-and-a-half from the other. All are armed with waterpistols. If one of us Venturers, say, squirts a Scout, then the Scout is imprisoned in the Venturer camp. The other Scouts can free him by tagging him, if they can avoid being squirted. The team able to imprison the entire other team, wins.”

The Venturers were older, more wily. Immediately after the starting bugle, they claimed the rainwater tank, the stagnant swimming pool, and the goat-tracks down to the creek. Suddenly we Scouts couldn’t resupply water pistol ammunition.
Proudly, we weren’t without our own cockroach cunning. After three hours of my arrival in that place, I was pissing into my waterpistol. After six hours, I didn’t even care if I got some on my hands.

The initial Venturer charge had claimed some of our troops. So we let our opponents know, full-well, that our pistols were full of urine. Even if they shot us first, imprisoning us, we squirted them with our piss out of spite. This knowledge made them very reluctant to break cover, and we easily re-claimed our prisoners of war.

The night passed with the Venturers claiming some more of us stalwart Scouts, due to their hold on the ammo dumps. Eventually they surrendered their claim on the watertank, to stop our dependence on piss-warfare. We’d still use piss, though, when we could, and so would they. They also had access to great quantities of slime from the swimming pool. So you would never know exactly with what you were being squirted – but by then, 18 hours in, you didn’t really care.

My recollection of little Johnny Nugus, after 24 hours at camp, hunkered down, shitting into a plastic bag and missing with some of it, is less one of horror and disgust, and more one of high comedy. I remember it being the colour of English mustard.

We charged a squad of Venturers.
Little Johnny Nugus, wreathed in a crawling halo of flies, stepped out from behind the silver gum. He let fly with the plastic bag. As it tipped, end over end, it broke into fragments and slammed into Ace.
Ace’s grunt, on impact, had a quizzical timbre.

On completion of our mission, we turned, we fled.

I wonder today, whether it was the smell of the shit, or its texture, which conveyed to Ace knowledge of its true substance. However it occurred, this realisation was followed with a bowel-loosening scream. It rang out among silhouettes of tree branches against the sky, and we bolted through the slashing lantana.
And it didn’t stop. He just kept screaming and screaming, until his howls staggered and collapsed over ragged vocal chords into cries, then sobs. What the sobs lacked in volume, they made up for in duration. Occasionally the sobs, emboldened by hatred, would swell again into cracked and wracked screams of rage and vengeance.

Ace’s scream tore apart any sense of fairness. That wail brought on the first true expression of barbarity, of anarchy. The scream was such that the imprisoned Scouts, against all rules of the game, broke rank. They fled the Venturers’ camp without having been tagged.

Little Johnny Nugus was like Cain, having introduced an act into the realm, for which there could be no forgiveness.
So we did what anyone would do. We started shitting in earnest. We shat into any vessel we could, cups and tupperware, plastic bags and purpose-built envelopes folded from porno mags. I remember Damien Bougore laying one out on Corn Flakes box, like a jeweller presenting a Rolex on his counter, to a prospective buyer. Fat Pat slashed the pucker of his sphincter on the torn aluminium half of a Coke can which he was trying to fill with diarhoea. We laid a few nuggets around the campsite, too, as landmines, and as a lure for blowflies. Tom fashioned a woomera, for extra range.
And we entrenched, awaiting the hearkening of Vengeance. We knew it wouldn’t be beneath the Venturers’ dignity to respond to like with like. There would be no mercy, no trust.
And no court in the country would convict them.

Night fell, on fear.
Fear smells, of course, like human shit wrapped up in plastic bags and newspaper. You had to keep your own turd close, not only for protection, but to overpower the scent of your neighbour’s.
Fear feels like a thousand biting and crawling insects, drawn to the cornucopia of excrement. Fear is dark – the fire made one too exposed, none would approach it. It burned out – fear tastes like cold tins of baked beans, and crispy biscuits of two-minute noodles.
Fear grows fat and paranoid on sound. Alert and coiled, our fear was, for the cadences of human voice, or for some rhythm in the constant sound of the bush which may mean footsteps. The ears created illusions for the delight of our fear, which cavorted.

At first the fear swirled in the sloppy recesses of my colon, like a lump in gravy. But the undulations of time acted on it, dulling it, making it sullen and hunched. We became rutted in our bolt-holes, and started to turn our fear into something we could use – hatred. And a lot of the hatred was directed at little Johnny Nugus, the harbinger of this new age.
The protractions of the night acted differently on him. He knew, we all knew, that if it came down to it, we would hand him over. This knowledge acted on his fear, like fire under a pot of water. He became manic, unsettled. He tried to convince us to raid the Venturers, deriding our cowardice. He became more and more alone, striking further and further afield, until he stopped even returning to our camp.

It was in that milky grey and blue hour, just before dawn, that hour claimed by kookaburras, sparrows’ farts and frightened worms, old people and joggers, and home-bound clubbers, that we heard commotion. Our arseholes cinched tight.
Little Johnny Nugus, shouted the password before belting into our camp. We brandished our turds, prepared for the inevitable.
“They ran,” he was victorious. “Soon as they saw me, they turned and ran.”
“What about you Johhny?” I could see that he was still armed with his three turd-bombs.
“I ran too – there were two of them. Let’s go back and get ‘em – they’re gay.”
“We’re not going to get them Johnny.” Nothing, not pride, not the petulant joy of throwing faeces at someone, was worth the risk of getting hit yourself.
And Johnny had just shown us that the Venturers felt no differently. We knew then, that they were afraid, they weren’t going to come. And it was thanks to little Johnny Nugus, our shithouse rat Messiah.

Over time we came back out of our tents and trenches. We even got the fire going again. When I heated up my pea and ham soup, what a joyous time. We always kept our turds close at hand out of instinct, and there were times, during gathering of firewood that we almost came in contact with our enemies, but both sides were careful, and stayed well away. And we all settled into our routines.

It was at War Camp that I learned something about peace.

honest dave

Not all of this story is true. But the part that you’d hope isn’t – ie, young kids flinging shite at one another – is.

Thanks to Gizmo for the recollection, and the inspiration, such as it was.

I know that, among a certain cross-section of my readers, my writing has been further and further alienating me from you. No doubt the following treatise will continue that trend.

Now there are some blessed guys who can just walk into a room and fuck any sheila they see. And usually it isn’t based on anything more than winsome good looks, and a decent body.
And, really, whats to be learned about the art of seduction from these chaps ? They’ll just tell you that you just have to be confident, and that girls aren’t interested in money or good looks and blah blah blah all that fuckin’ bullshit.

Others get roots by their tenacity, and their concrete ego that is completely resistant to denials and turn-downs. There are men for whom the words ‘no’, and ‘get fucked’, mean absolutely nothing.

And on the flip-side, other guys, even good-looking rich ones, who just don’t seem to have the ability to completely self-efface and degrade themselves, which obviously is required when you want to convince some sheila to engage in primitive one-off sexual rituals.

So I am going to pass on what I have discovered. I am offensive to more than one sense, I lack any semblance of decorum, I am too lazy to even bother holding in my farts. No money. No idea of fashion. In fact I have, at first glance, absolutely nothing that a pretty lass might desire.
So it’s tough. I have had to slough away all the fluff and find the essence of it all. What is it all about ? How do us blokes find ourselves a half-decent sheila to root on a Friday night?

Seduction is that simplest of all relationships, that of killer whale and seal, eagle and hare. One person is the dingo, the other the baby; one the spider, with Armani and Rolex web, the other the fly; one the cobra, hypnotising with seductive moves and sultry smile, the other the chicken.

This is it. One chases, and one flees. Remember this always. And be conscious of which of the two you are. Because if you chase her, she will run. But if you give her a taste of something she likes, and back off, then she will chase you. So many interactions in this world are simply the echoes of anthropological archetypal roles. Knowing this allows you to better objectively view the situation.

And don’t allow yourself to become angry, or frustrated. Just remember lads – if you were a girl, would you let some hairy oaf such as yourself, penetrate your body with a sweaty and unwashed member?

The Chat-Up Line

I don’t fuckin’ know about this. All I can suggest is this: be in a foreign country when chatting up chicks. The old cowboy hat with corks swinging from it and the limp rolly dripping from my lips with a Hi I’m Dave from Australia can I buy you a drink just doesn’t seem to work so well in the Royal Hotel in Toowoomba.

In bars in America : ‘ Excuse me darling, I can never remember which one of the coins is the nickel and which is the dime.’ I mean it doesn’t matter what you fuckin’ say, they just gotta hear the accent, and you’re immediately one step ahead of all the other punters.
Her ears prick: ‘This one’s, like, the nickel, and like, this one’s the dime.’
‘Oh right, but it’s all fucked up, I mean this one is bigger than that one, but it’s worth less.’
And her face lights up when she realises how difficult it must be for me. ‘Yeah you’re right, I’d, like, never really thought about it ! So which part of England are you from ?’
A question !! Lions ask questions, deer answer them. The rule of thumb: if you’ve asked five questions, and she’s asked none, give up. Find another hunting patch.

If you absolutely have to be in your own country when chatting up girls, or in a country where your accent is reviled, then it immediately becomes a lot harder.
You could try this one: ‘Don’t you hate it that it’s the year 2007, but we still don’t have flying cars ?’
Witty as this is, it never works, apart from to mingers who would probably react well to you saying that the hormones you’ve been taking have really been making your haemorrhoids itch.

I met this Irish dude, who always appraoches women by telling them that he knows they’ve been building up the confidence to come over and chat to him, but that he thought he’d save them the anguish and come and join them himself.
He’s turning the tables. He is trying to make himself the deer, thus making them the lions. This is the goal. If they become the lion, if you just see a flash of the lion in their eyes then it is all on.
This is the juice, that ancient courtship of death and love-making.

The Approach

Little by little. Learn by the panther. He watches for their movements, he learns from them during the approach.

It’s all about two things, rhythm and momentum.
It’s gotta be reminiscent of what is to come, that being the rhythmic tattoo of your balls slapping against her arsehole, and the swelling momentum toward the kind of spine-shuddering climax that leaves her in a neck-brace.
Even if you have never given a girl a screaming spine-shuddering climax in your life, they aren’t to know. Everything about you should indicate these two things, rhythm and momentum.
NEVER PUT YOURSELF DOWN. Although feel free to leave yourself open so that she can do it ; because if she puts you down, this is the lion doing it, and you want to bring out the lion in her, so that she will want to chase you down and devour you.
So. Small steps. How do you go from not even knowing a girl, to being inside her body in the course of one evening when you are a minging bastard who doesn’t wear deodorant.
(not wearing deodorant is useful, don’t get me wrong – if you don’t manage to pick up, you can always blame that. Great for protecting the ego.)

The age-old ritual of gift exchange. Gifts are vital, especially if you don’t share a common language. If she accepts a gift, even if it’s only a peanut or some chips or a drink, this is a great sign. She has accepted something of yours, psychologically a part of you. Don’t buy off those motherfucker Iranians that wander round trying to pressure you into buying roses, don’t encourage them. And don’t kiss a chick’s hand. I used to do that gallant shit back when I had long hair, and smoked too much grass and never got laid. And it never fuckin’ works.

Get them to touch you or hit you. This is the lion that hits you. Walk around with one side of your collar upturned, it drives Virgos fuckin’ crazy, and they will accost you and fix it up. Say something rude and out of order, so they slap your arm.

Make sure the conversation is always building toward something. And make sure that it is emotional. What emotion doesn’t matter. Make sure that they can feel the chemicals burning in their blood.
You don’t remember the conversation in a night, you remember the emotion. ‘I don’t remember what I had in that restaurant, but I remember that the waiter was an arsehole.’
Make her laugh, embarrass her, annoy her, offend her, praise her (though not too much or you’ll show too much of the lion and she’ll run away), make her feel some emotion. Make shit up. Fantasise. DO NOT, AFTER A PREGNANT PAUSE, ASK HER WHAT SHE DOES FOR A LIVING. This is admission of failure on your part, a lack of imagination. Ask her what job she dreams of. Ask her what name she would like to have, and call her that all night.
And always build toward something. Keep the momentum.
Conversation is not an exchange of ideas, but an exchange of emotion, of juices.

And obviously, keep her drinking. Vital. I mean what sober woman would want some drunk munter doing that to them !

Always have your mates (preferably female if you can manage that) nearby. If this girl can see that you have friends, she can see that you are not some serial killing freak.
Same applies when hitch-hiking, if you have a chick with you you’ll get a ride that much easier.
If the girl is out with a friend, find her a guy to talk to. If you don’t there is absolutely no way this friend of hers is going to let your girl go home with you. Girls suck like that.

GET HER TO DRINK OUT OF YOUR GLASS, OR GET A WAY TO DRINK OUT OF HERS.
‘Um, Esmeralda, does this drink taste alright to you ?’
or….
‘What are you drinking ? Really, a vodka and lemonade, I’ve never tried that, do you mind… ?’

If she drinks out of your glass or lets you drink out of hers, this little mix of saliva is a definite bond, and you are that much closer. Now I am not saying that if she drinks out of your glass she will definitely fuck you, but I am saying that if she doesn’t, she won’t.

Now one definite bridge between the act of not having sex with a girl, and having sex with a girl is dancing. This, for me, is absolutely vital. I mean if you leave my conversation to it’s own devices for more than 30 minutes we are guaranteed to be talking about how as I get older my farts are starting to sound more and more like my old man’s farts, presumable because my sphincter is getting more and more slack, like the elastic on an old pair of jocks. And no girl wants to hear that.
When you’re dancing, you don’t have to talk, and this is where we can show off our rhythm ; our control, our understanding of her needs, we can hold her, all the stuff that chicks want when she is in the sack. She is transferring everything you do on the dancefloor to what you will be doing in bed.
Well I am only guessing thats what she’s doing, because that’s what I am doing.
If you can’t dance, learn. And think of all those birds you’ll meet while you’re learning.
And if the dancing goes well, the pounce is non-existent, if she’s drunk, and you’re a decent dancer, slowly she will be completely within your embrace, and not kissing her would suddenly seem wrong.

The Pounce

This is really where you really throw caution to the wind.

Watch a cat stalk a magpie. It is done in slow steps. Piece by tiny piece. Slowly, imperceptibly forward. And there is always the pounce, the hardest damn thing apart from possibly approaching her, or maintaining an interesting conversation while drunk… ok so it’s all hard. But the sad fact of the matter is, there is always the pounce, where you let out all stops, and invite her back to yours, or go in for the kiss, or whatever, where you open yourself, and wait for her to either stab you right in the ego with a shake of the head and a collecting of the handbag, or whether she gives up her pollen.
But just watch that cat. If he pounces to early, the bird will fly. If he creeps forward, slowly forward, so that the bird doesn’t even see the approach, it becomes simple mathematics.

How to know if she is willing to accept your tongue in her mouth? Is she touching you? When she goes away to the toilet, does she actually come back and sit with you? When you are slow-dancing with you, does she not recoil at your half-mongrel nestled in her groin?
Is there a mirror behind the bar – when you stand up and walk away, check to see if she is checking out your arse as you walk away.

Your inhibition is your worst enemy here.

So crush your inhibition with drugs, and strong drink. And crush hers as well with cocktails. Long Island Iced Teas are deceptively potent.

A Few Inspiring Sentences

Pray for rain, or cold weather so the two of you can huddle beneath umbrellas, or jackets.

I think first kisses have been made more in train stations than any other place, so hang around train stations.

Apparently the chemicals that induce love and lust are the same that are generated after a hot curry, or a horror movie, so keep that in mind when considering a place to go for a date.

We want distance and cool-ness in our demeanour, not the panicked desperation for sex induced by having balls filled to the brim with sperm. So have a wank before going out. Although the sex later won’t feel as gratifying, this is hardly the point.

I hope this is useful chaps. And good luck out there.

I knew the fart was coming long before it happened, and I was really anticipating it with some excitement.
Theresa once told me that I had ‘impulse-gratification’ issues. This was obviously some expression she’d picked up off Oprah, but she did have a point. I mean it doesn’t occur to me, even if I’m on a date, to hold in my farts. I just let it gush out, and then take deep breaths to try and inhale all the stink before it spreads. Denying your urges, restraint, this is what causes cancer.
I don’t know what the Japanese teachers (that is the real teachers) thought of me, this 187cm gorilla that strides in for an hour every Monday morning and can’t communicate with anyone, and strides out, having done nothing, taught nothing, and achieved nothing, and yet is probably getting paid double what the real teachers who spend all day wiping toddlers arses are getting.
But after another all night karaoke binge for no discernible reason, this particular Monday morning was something special. I dragged my hungover carcass to the kindergarten. I was hunched over double. My saggy muscles could barely haul my bulk up the stairs and over the baby-gate.
As usual the kids screamed in terror at my arrival, and scattered like pigeons. And I sat down among the shitty, snotty, slimy little creatures.
Natsuki was the only one who would ever come near me. She only did this because she enjoyed excavating bits of snot out of her nose and putting them in my mouth, or my ear. I would hold up the English flashcards. « Its an apple ! It’s a banana ! That’s it ! Good on ya Natsuki. » I’d give her the card as a reward. She would go and tear it up, or hide it, or use it to interfere with her little playmates, who were hiding in fear in different corners of the classroom.
Let me iterate: I taught these kids NOTHING.

This particular morning I had, under my armpits, huge sopping sweatstains forming replicating self-similar fractal paisleys. A waxy secretion seeped from my pores, like maggots squirming from maggot-holes attracted to carrion. My skin was lacquered – when I washed my face after class, the water beaded and raced around, like mercury.
It was while washing my face – after class, mind you, when it was too late – that I first saw my reflection that day. My teeth were all grapestained from red wine. It looked like I’d been down on my hands and knees eating the loam of gravesoil before class. My teeth were lines of half decayed tombstones.
There we were. Like a swamp. I was hot and mucky, it was damp. My teeth felt like they were falling out, loose and rattling in their gum-sockets. My scalp felt tight like the skin of a drum.
Eyes were lolling in my head and I don’t think they were mine. I was beaming on automatic, above on a flying fox.
—————————–
I could anticipate the coming fart like the way a sailor can anticipate a storm by the anvil-shaped clouds.
A stream of lumpy silver bubbles that started at the base of my throat or somewhere deep in my chest coursed through my body, exiting through my arsehole. My sphincter, slack from the amount of booze wasn’t tight enough to vibrate, it just wobbled soundlessly.
And this fart just poured out all juicy and loose. The hackles on the back of my neck started to rise, and the barometer on the piano twitched to life. The blu-tac got all moist and the posters starting peeling and sliding off the walls. A fly dropped off the ceiling.
As the putrid fetor slowly engulfed the room, the kids started going nutty, their irises reduced to pinpricks. It wasn’t as though the fart was sending them crazy, but as though it’d awakened the insanity inside them. Much as a glass of wine awakens your tastebuds in preparation for a mouthful of chocolate mousse, or masturbation enlivens your sense of hearing.
And that fart kept pouring out, foaming, frothing out, like when spring tears apart winters iron grip, and the glaciers deliquesce into streams behind the ice which pour into rivulets into tiny waterfalls into rivers carrying great cracked pieces of iceberg.
I know I am using a lot of moist-sounding words to describe this fart, but it was mostly dry. Although I was only to find this out for sure when I got home.
Actually I tell a lie, I couldn’t carry the burden of suspicion with me all the way home, and I checked my jocks after class in Daiei’s toilet.
Given the buoyancy of flatulence, it being warm air, I could slowly feel weight soaking back into my body. As the fart was freed from its confinement, I felt gravity tightening. It caressed my entire being like a sedative, with it’s soothing numbness, an old friends welcome home. I slid back into my Dave-shaped hollow in the world, like a peach pit being replaced into its perfect snug fit, into its cosy crater at the centre of the peach.
And the unholy stink. Forgive me father, a pestilential quagmire it was. It’s miasma stuck to me like chewing gum. It clung, like an unpleasant rumour, an unwanted nickname. A yeasty phantom, unable to leave the site of its death. The rank stench was so beyond that of a mortal fart that it wasn’t even recognisable as one, anymore than a baby would see it’s own potential in spilled semen. It’s smell had so eclipsed foul that I smelled it with more than one of my five senses. My tongue got hairy, and white spots splashed in my vision.
The other teacher was in fact my employer. Her name was Hiromi. She was a forty-year old Japanese woman. I tried to look everywhere save at her. “It’s a tiger! Grrrrr! It’s a cat! Meow!” But a quizzical look gathered about her brow, like clouds collecting on mountain peaks. She was on the other side of the room, far from Ground Zero.
Away from the epicentre, the stink had, no doubt, dissipated, and it probably just smelled like a fat man had defecated after eating a tin of dog food. She stood up. Suspicious. She approached. Closer. And closer. My tongue was fat and bloated with guilt. This is the end. I have nothing to my name, not a rag of decency.
The kids were going berserk, clawing at, and inserting things into one another.
Blindly, fiercely ignoring my boss, I continued handing out the cards: “It’s a motorcycle!” “It’s a rocket! That’s it Natsuki!” Hiromi entered the circle. The bunch of grapes that was my heart shriveled and shrank into a kid-size pack of sultanas.
Then she did something, which filled me with a new emotion.
It was an exquisite mélange, of equal parts humiliation and acquittal. Of base muck-dwelling shame, and relief bordering on white-light spirituality.
She reached down for Natuski, picked her up, and checked the back of her nappy. And then she did the same to the next kid, and the next. To find out which one of the dirty, filthy, unhousetrained little savages it was who had shat ‘emselves.

I meant to but I lost my phone. I lost your number. My battery was dead.
I meant to but I was busy. I was out of town. I had no credit. No battery. I had to stay late after work. There’s no reception in my apartment.
I meant to but I had an unexpected visitor. I had to go see my mum. My uncle’s sick. My grandmother’s dying. My sister just got a new job. I meant to but I had an emergency at home. I got called away. My beeper went off.

It’s not you it’s me – I’m not ready for a serious relationship.
Honestly you don’t want me, I’m crap.
You were kind of a rebound thing. I’m leaving town in a month anyway.
Listen I’m really sorry, I’m gay. I’m not a relationship kinda guy.

Christ.
It’s because you can’t dance, alright ?
You’ve got a lisp. You’ve got acne. Your left nipple is, like, three times as big as your right one.
I don’t like your fashion sense. You smell funny. You’ve got that strange kind of mutated ear thing going on. You bullshit on about crap when you’re drunk. You get jealous when I am out with my friends.
My mates wouldn’t like you. You listen to Celine Dion. You’ve got a crap job. You’ve got a flabby stomach. You’ve got big hams, big flanks. You flare your nostrils.
I can’t make you come. Your hands are bigger than mine.
You shave off your eyebrows and then draw them back on with black pen.
You don’t shave your eyebrows.
You get all gooey whenever you see kids, and then everyone realises that I am holding you back from your dream of wanting kids, and they think I’m a fuckhead.
You have an annoying accent. You watch breakfast TV. Your teeth aren’t white enough.
You chew your nails. You steal the covers. You snort when you laugh.
Is that what you wanna hear ?

Cairo sits now in my memory like an enigma rather than
a city. Some strange entity that took a part of me,
fucked it up a bit, and gave it back to me somewhat
changed.

So anyway the following long drawn out email dates
back to one day when I was wandering the teeming
medieval streets of Islamic Cairo…

A sound rose above the shouting and the haggling. A
shrieking. A wailing that seemed to slash at my heart
and steal my strength. Another wrenching, sobbing
banshee siren, and I almost fainted. I looked around
and immediately saw where the stream of human traffic
was being disrupted. There was a flock of
black-swathed women, heads back, keening at the
heavens, the sound seeming to echo from a void of
absolute loss and emptiness. Their black kohl
eyemakeup in rivulets down their cheeks. Two held each
other; one was on her knees in the mud; one was raking
her knuckles a bloody trail down a wall; while another
tore at her clothes her nails seeming to dig into her
flesh as she did so. I bowed my head in empathy with
their sorrow. I caught Amin’s eye, and he looked at
me, his shoulders slumped in aquiescence.
Within earshot of this baleful dirge there was only
sadness. All brightness and joy was leached out of the
air by that mournful cry. A tear seemed to glisten at
the corner of everyone’s eye; a prayer, more for
themselves than for the deceased seemed to play on
everyone’s lips; all heads looked down; two cats,
their hair up on end hissed at one another; and a
donkey fought against it’s owner. None spoke. All
thought about their own mortality.

Death is everywhere in Cairo. The ghosts of the
executed still linger around the great gate of Bab
Zuweila. You can imagine the unseen eyes of the women
in their harems, looking down at the victims from
behind their screens.

Beggars are dying, in front of your eyes, on the
street.

The City of the Dead; mile upon mile of ancient
encrusted tombs and mausoleums, but with clothes
strung on washing lines and children playing amongst
them. People, too poor to afford houses, have had to
move into the very tombs of their ancestors. What a
step that must be, to be forced to take your children,
and move into a cemetery. I wanted to explore this
place, but was too ashamed to be treating their
poverty as a tourists attraction. America has it’s
trailer trash, Cairo has tomb trash. (Now I know that
little joke ruined the flavour of this morbid email,
but I couldn’t resist…).

Out near Farafra, there’s a site of ancient Roman
tombs. The week previous to our visit, a group of
young kids had been playing soccer, with a human
skull!! A shard of bone or a tooth would chip off, and
the hilarity of it would be too much for the children
to cope with. Tears straming; having to even hold each
other up. Imagine seeing your child out trying to kick
a human skull into a goal. Not a sight you would ever
witness in the Western World.

Then there’s the butcher’s shops. The meat isn’t
nicely packaged as it is in, say, Australia. You can
easily forget that a rump steak comes from a cow’s
arse. Not in Cairo – Cairo doesn’t ever let you forget
your place, not for a second. The first thing you are
greeted by is the decapitated head of the camel that
you are about to eat, dangling from a rope, flies
crawling in and out of it’s gaping mouth, and it’s
uncaring jelly eyes. You order your meat, and the
butcher, his apron covered in brown stains, and fat
and gristle, brings out the carcass, and lays it on
the flyblown chopping table; blood soaked into it an
inch thick. Wit hhis massive cleaver he chops off the
desired amount, weighs it, wraps it up, and hands it
over.

Even the mosques remind me of death. The slender
minarets, topped by the crescent moon gaze gently at
the heavens. And the great interiors, cool and open
and quiet, an oasis from the raging multitudes
outside; just as death is the final soft silence from
the clamour of life.

Ferrets drag off bits of meat bigger than themselves
in the dead of night; the ubiquitous pigeon is rarely
seen, except on menus; and people drag chickens down
the street by their legs while they ruffle and thrash
around, trying to stay on their feet.

The vendors seem to be pennies away from starvation as
they argue over a pittance. The lawlessness on the
roads means that you are on the brink of oblivion
every second you are on them. People get on and off
moving buses, stepping right into traffic – old
ladies, pregant women and families.

And lets not forget about the Pyramids that loom over
the city – they themsevles are the biggest, oldest,
most epic tombstones known to mankind. They are
eternal reminders of man’s mortality. They make you
proud and humble, just by their proximity.

But, ironically, there is vitality and laughter in the
air, more than in any other city I’ve seen. Maybe this
comes from constantly staring at death, and accepting
it unfearingly. Maybe this is also why religion, why
Islam plays such a proiminent role, given that
religion and death seem intertwined – religion being
the answer to the question that death begs of us. We
in the West, hide death inside cling wrap, polystyrene
and black hearses; we shut it behind hospital doors
and censorship, and under 6 feet of soil; we
romanticise it and divorce oursleves from its reality
with euphemism and poetry. Maybe as we shut away Death
we shut away God as well.

When I came back to Australia after three years away, my own father didn’t recognise me.

He looked straight past me – like the tourists in the Mona Lisa room look straight past the other paintings – and went to get himself a beer. I mean, the man had been hit pretty hard in the head by a truck that didn’t give way, but you don’t need your presence to be the catalyst that brings back this memory, this knowledge that the old brain isn’t what it once was.

And I didn’t recognise my own brother. It was only the questioning expectation in the eyes behind that black beard that made me realise that apparently I knew this guy.
A strange family dinner that night, let me tell ya.
I felt like a monster.

I don’t want to be unrecognisable again. I don’t want to scare people.

So I try to keep myself centred. I try not to dissolve into the various cultures I live among. I want to keep a familiar part of Honest Dave alive. My nationality helps this. It bolsters my sense of self.
There are times when I am lost in other places other continents and I can’t find my core. But I can find an approximation of myself through my Australian-ness. People let me be rude and irreverant, because that is how Australians are; they let me be a drunk because Australians are drunks.
So I carry a wall around me. A wall of my habits, opinions, and my language, impenetrable. I take pride in that now, in still being recognisable on my return home.

And Australian cliches are a good way to do that. It is like surrounding yourself with FHM posters so that you won’t catch gay. My great cracked-and-baked-and-burned continent is my companion wherever I go. But it doesn’t matter how much beer I drink. Nor how often I say sheila or dunny or doona or thongs or poofter, or scratch my balls or re-use a dirty pair of underpants or wear mis-matched socks, all to maintain either my nationality or my individuality. Countries and cultures and cities always turn out to be bigger than me.

They always manage to soak through even my most bigoted defenses.

---

Pretty much the first person I ever saw in London was a woman on the opposite platform. Absolutely filthy angry she was, looking up at the timetable : « Seven fucking minutes ! Cunt ! ‘sfucking tube ! Seven fucking minutes ! »
I’m thinking, damn, get over it sweetheart.Three months later, I’m on the tube platform and I’m coming down and I’d woken up on a floor somewhere and I’ve got a meeting with my boss and I’m gonna be fucking late and my mouth is full of ulcers and I look across the tracks to a lonesome fly-blown backpacker, innocence in his wide black eyes. And I’m looking up at the timetable, and rage is baking my skin into a hard crust: Seven fucking minutes I’m hissing between grinding teeth.

---

I spent over a year in London, sleeping on floors in lounge rooms, curled around radiators (rolling over every hour to get an even spread of warmth across my body), under staircases, in boiler rooms, church attics, finding refuge in the cooling spaces left behind by those departing.
But what it meant was that I didn’t have space around me that was mine.
This was liberating for me – this unqualified freedom – but Brad and Maria were Kiwis. And they had really helped me out once before. They had naturally thought that I would offer them a place to crash when they visited. But my London just didn’t operate like that. There really was no room.And I had to tell them no. This utter contempt toward hospitality is something unrecognisable to them.
And it left me feeling grimey.
And London defeated me a little. It robbed me of my Aussie-ness.

---

I was in Egypt, on the shores of the sea of Aqaba, during an Islamic festival. I was trying to get into this vegetarian Swedish girl’s nickers.
So I had a little vegetarian picnic all packed, and a nice spot on the beach all worked out.We mounted the dunes. Before us, was a grotesque sight was arrayed.
It looked like the remains of some Satanic ritual.

To celebrate the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan, the Bedouins had earlier been down at the beach, and each group of them had ritually butchered one of their herd for the feast.
And they left the heads there, right there, on the beach. One after another after another evenly spaced into the haze, the eyes, the eyes. Gazing emptily int othe middle distance toward the Saudi coast. Camels and goats mainly. I think they were goats.
And so what does cute Swedish bird do, (who as I’ve mentioned is a vegetarian), but burps up a mouthful of chuck all on herself.

And so much for my date.

They don’t usually chuck till much later.

---

Another Swedish bird, Linda. Another vegetarian too for that matter. Now I think of it, I’m pretty sure all vegetarian girls are Swedish.

We were in a hostel above Talaat Harb in Cairo, and I had managed to entice her out onto the balcony away from all the filthy mongrels that were trying to get into her panties. We’d had a good day together, and to be honest, I thought I deserved a root.
But then we saw him, sent by Allah to stop me getting laid, goddammit, I never used to get laid back then.
Far down he was, on the streets below, shambling asymetrically. I thought at first he was a dwarf. Let’s be clear: I didn’t give a fuck who he was – Linda was the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen. But she always is the one to shed a tear for the crippled masses – that’s one thing I loved about her – and she leaned on the curling banister, her eyes all foggey, to find what was distressingly wrong with this guy.

As he approached it became clear that he actually had no legs. There were just two stumps, with pillows tied onto the ends with filthy rags. And using these two once-were-limbs, and his arms and hands, he heaved and dragged his piteous self down the street. The crumbly sick-white balustrade slowly crumbled behind us. Ferrets dragged meat off down alleys. The Nile pulled foreverness down its course. Time around us set hard like iron. Speaking was a trap. This poor malformed man blossomed thoughts from normally unused brain-coils from deep in the fathoms of my mind.
And I was suddenly and physically incapable to even attempt to try it on with Linda. I mean, I didn’t even really want to any more. Such swollen emotion of sorrow, and gratitude.

And Egypt’s steeped and sacred profanity defeated me once again. My fresh and shiny Tom-and-Jerry shallowness was as meaningless as digging a sandpit in the Sahara. There is the inexorable momentum of 7000 hallowed years of culture. And there’s me in my Aussie-flag boxer shorts thinking I can impress the eternal creeping of a sand dune with my wit and a few sharp dance moves.

You can’t beat Egypt.
Don’t even try.

---

Japan. I didn’t want Japan to seep through. I pissed off train platforms, vomited in class, slept in parks. I tried to be its antithesis. It still got in there. One day I found myself marveling that my yakitori had arrived before my edamame. A few days later I was salivating over plastic food in a restaurant window, and cringeing in sickened distaste at a tourist stabbing his chopsticks into his rice.

Chopsticks are so civilized. Long, slender, wooden. These days I find it wrong when people eat with spoons and forks ; those pieces of metal jangling and rattling about in their mouths, clanking and grinding vulgarly against their teeth. It’s like chewing down on a piece of aluminium foil.

---

I spent three years in New Zealand. This was more than enough time for my razor sharp Aussie accent to be roughed and filed and smoothed into the blunt and jungle Kiwi one. I learned to hear the Aussie accent with Kiwi ears. The piercingness of it slicing at your eardrums. The sound of it blistering paint, and peeling strips of wallpaper from the walls. I eventually affected a Kiwi accent, simply out of politeness to local sensibilities.

Paris. I went down to the municipal pool to go for a swim, build up my muscles, that sort of thing. But did you know that in Paris’s municipal pools they won’t let you swim in boxer shorts. You have to wear dick togs. Meat hangers ! Cock hammocks !
So if you were to go down to the Piscine Blomet on a Sunday morning, you might see someone you recognised. Familiar, but for the fact that he is wearing goggles, a swimming bonnet, and lycra dick togs.

And then, after a while, I started to wear the damn things by choice.
I’ve gone all strange.

---

I see time pass in different ways than most. While, for your average sedentary person, time courses past, I see time in chunks. I don’t see people for years. Time doesn’t pass too slowly for me to notice it’s senescent effect. I see people age in nuggets, chunks of years at a time. And I see how, except for physical appearance, people don’t change. People hang on, there fingers sinking into the clay of the bank, while the river of time courses past them.
And it is hard for me, because I am aware that people see me after I have been ravaged and bloated by the passing of years.

This is my conflict. It is me against the world. The sugar fighting against being dissolved in the hot coffee. I am not afraid of change, but I do want to be recognisable on my return home. My oldies are pushing along a little, and I don’t want to frighten them.

This is the struggle which is turning me unusual. Do I accept change with grace, do I deliquesce into the new culture, do I drink a white wine with my lunch, do I slurp my noodles.

Or do I hang on to what I know, to what I am, do I mention after I gently remove a sliver of foie gras and inhale as it slowly dissolves it my mouth that it ain’t bad, but that it’s got nothing on a T-Bone, chips and gravy from the Spotted Cow.

I worked in a Parisian English school. People I met in there I didn’t know if they were teachers or if they were students or if they spoke English or Spanish or French or Arabic or Japanese.
I didn’t know whether to shake hands when I met someone. I didn’t know whether to nod, offer a hug, bow, kiss one time, two times, four times, start with the left cheek, the right, or just flick my head back Maori-style. I mean none of the options come naturally to me any more.
So I wait for the other to initiate the greeting.
And I wait, ready to accept the pass. And I stutter and stumble and blunder and grope my way through it, thus presenting a first impression of this weak-mannered ill-fitting weirdo.
Which I then counter by not caring what they think, and expecting them to find for themselves my hidden depths, without any help from me.

I mean, fuck.

Sometimes it is easier just to stride in with a « Gday mate, » and a firm slap between the shoulder blades. Cause that’s what all Aussies do after all, this is what I understand.

So forgive me. I have decided. If you think that I overuse works like dunny and root and sheila ; if I sound a bit much, a bit forced and overdone, just remember that I am sticking to what I know – scratching my balls in public, blowing scotchies, and wearing the same undies for days on end.
It has served me well up to now.
And it’s what Mum and Dad will recognise.

honest dave