Hieronymous the Anonymous

Do dogs speak English?

I was at the vet this morning (where I spent $307 thanks Rigby) and in the waiting room trying to manage Rigby. In the corner was a woman speaking to her dog in German. How silly I thought, she doesn't expect him to understand that does she?

Then I caught myself: who says dogs speak English? I smiled at myself knowing of course that I'm often muttering something to the dog in the full expectation that he understands at least part of it. There was another point at issue. Maybe the woman knew better - the dog was a German Shepherd after all.

Remembrance

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Since mum got sick I've got in the habit of calling her every day. I call to see how she is, how she is feeling, I call to re-establish that connection, and I call to coax and encourage as her health wanes, and sometimes her spirit. It has become a ritual, something that she looks forward to and expects. When for some reason I get caught up in things and my call is delayed I worry that mum will be concerned - she is that sort of person. It is now part of the pattern.

Of course it is the far greater pattern that sometime in the next 12 months will be torn asunder. Mum will go and everything associated with her will become memory, not living fact. It is hard to believe as I so often assert, yet deep inside me I feel there is a part of me attempting to come to terms with this every day.

Occasionally little flashes of this come to the surface. It's quite regular really, much more so than what I write here. They are complex feelings with many different elements, but there is one element I think more than any other that presses hardest upon me. It surprises me a little, and perhaps I am a little embarassed by it because it is not so much about mum as what she represents. In that way it is a lot more about me.

The insight returns to me weekly: when mum goes then a whole world goes with her. It's the world as I see it though, a very personal perspective mine alone; that the world contained within mum also departs us only makes the tragedy deeper: gone forever. 

I have a multitude of memories connected in my mind by the people in them. It's hard not to look back and think in terms of 'eras', blocks of time often years long when my life moved within a distinct circle of people and activities. You recall the times and the happy memories, look back with fondness at the people you shared them with. It seems impossible that they could ever end - but they do.

In my life mum is the last remaining survivor other than myself and my sister from one such era. You don't realise it at the time, but later you understand how important to your life these eras - patterns of people and activities and conversations - really are. They sort of hold your life together, they give it shape, perhaps even purpose.

My mother naturally transcends every era of my life, but she belongs within them also. The particular era I think of though - my mother happily re-married to a man I loved also (and still miss), and the many adventures we had - seems the most central, or consistently present, of the last 20 years of my life. I am tinged with sadness every time I am touched by the knowledge than when mum goes all of that is the past dead and buried, never to be again. She is the last thread. I lose her, and I lose much more.

So it is with life. As I am always at pains to remind myself the wheel turns inexorably onwards. Everything passes, everything changes, things will come and then be passed by. Proust wrote a whole set of books on it. It is understandable to mourn the passing of things dear to you, and that is still to properly come for me. It's worth remembering though the transience of what we do and feel and experience, and life itself, and appreciate while we can what it and what it means to us. Once gone it will never come to us again.

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Sleeping with the dog

I'm embarassed to admit that I wake up most days with Rigby on the bed beside me. When I go to bed I let him lounge on the covers while I read, but when lights are out he's supposed to get down, and he knows it. Generally he'll sleep on his mattress by the bed, though I suspect he will occasionally mosey down to the lounge and sleep on the couch.

In the wee hours of the night he'll present himself by the bed. He'll stand there sending telepathic messages until I open my eyes and invite him to join me - which he'll generally do in one single, happy bound - or I'll tell him no, whereupon he'll go off for a while only to repeat the gesture half an hour later.

Obviously there are times I don't wake and he makes an executive decision to join me. Sometimes I get the sense of that, his now good sized frame often pressing against me. You're not at your best and brightest early on - I'm not anyway. Experience tells me that I'm in such a fugue that my resistance is mostly token. Given the choice of mounting an argument and going back to sleep I'll do the latter. In the same way I might sense another body beside me, might in some dim and distant way realise that it's the mutt, but somehow that's where the connections generally end. We'll swap sides like an old couple, he accommodating me, me barely aware of him. Occasionally though a message get's through, hello I think, he's not meant to be there. And so I'll rouse myself sufficiently to let him know it's time to get down. He knows, and with a regretetful glance over his shoulder he'll return to his bed.

Funny though, he's always back beside me by morning again.

Bob Franklin, Northcote & desire addiction

Headed into the smoke last night to finally catch some Comedy Festival action. As always at this time of year the place was chockablock. While I waited I spotted yet another woman I had once gone out with. I backed into the shadows before she saw me, thinking you've lived too long in the one place when you keep bumping into ex-girlfriends - or had too many ex-girlfriends.

Anyway the yoga teacher arrived, we had a drink and then popped into the Town Hall to see Bob Franklin do his much lauded schtick.

I love Bob Franklin. Love that dry, deadpan humour and sense of the utter ridiculous. He may be a pom, but he's been out here long enough now to be one of the greats I think, a much respected and occasionally revered member of the comedy fraternity.

In this show he channelled an old English actor regaling us in his 'one man show' with tales of his career, most of which are beautiful nonsense, and occasionally borderline defamatory - though I'm sure Bert Newton doesn't mind being accused of being a mass murderer of drifters anymore than Kate Ritchie does being alleged as a coke fiend. It was a great stuff in a small room with an appreciative crowd well represented with people from Northcote.

That seemed a theme for the night - lot's of Northcote people. Of course I don't know if they really are from Northcote, but they had that look - alternative, grungily civilised, wearing duffel coats and quirky glasses, with back gardens full of home grown vegies and definite views on feminism, music and border protection. And, going by last nights experience, comedy.

There were a few more in Hairy Little Sista, where we went for a meal after the show. I'm sympathetic to Northcoters, though we have a different aesthetic. I don't know where I fit in, but it's somewhere more sensual and stylish. Somehow that became much of what was a surprisingly interesting post-show conversation over eggplant chips, saltimbocca and churros.

The yoga teacher and I have been ring-a-ring-a-rosy for a while now. We're friends, though it's hard to categorise our relationship beyond that except to say she is what I think of one of my 'spares' - spares being one of my reasonably numerous female friends I'll go out with occasionally for a drink, a meal, the odd show, etc. Last night she wanted to talk about relationships, a popular topic amongst many women.

I won't go through the ins and outs of our conversation except to say by nights end she had suggested I come to an arrangement with some suitable woman to have my babies; and that she was open to the friends with benefits concept (which I'm not - too formulaic for me).

The other thing was a minor insight that has come to me much too late. Our conversation was frank and honest throughout, and for one of the rare occasions I felt I could speak pretty openly. We discussed sex and one night stands and the difficulty of finding the right person. At one point I was explaining how much I still desired women on a raw, visceral level - and how I couldn't imagine losing that. We were talking about random sex when it occurred to me that what I really craved was that sense of desire. The sex is lovely, but uncoupled from the elements leading to it - the flirtation and seduction, the anticipation, the slow undressing - then it is merely mechanical. That's why booty calls and paid sex don't work. I'm addicted to desire.

Too easy too much

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Friday afternoon I went on a tour of the CUB brewery with Tim. It was one of those cheap voucher deals I'd picked yup weeks before. Did the tour had, had a few complementary tastings afterwards as well as a couple of paid beers in the beer garden of the pub around the corner.

Got home, changed clothes, dashed off. Caught up with another girl - let's call this one the political advisor. Split a bottle of wine at Walters and a plate of food, had another drink at the very trendy Ponyfish Island before she put it to me that we had three options: another drink, go home separately, or go home together.

Soon enough were in a cab back to my place, a quick glass of wine before the rest of it accompanied by Rigby's whining outside the bedroom door wanting to be part of it.

She left early next day while I mooched around. Felt a bit lost. For once felt the absence of someone to chill out with. I wondered if I was oversexed. Then wondered if it was possible to be 'over' sexed. She was a nice enough girl and someone I could imagine having many interesting conversations with, but not, I knew, someone who was ever going to capture my heart. Did that matter? Normally no, but I figure I've been with 8-10 women over the last 6 months and for all the pleasures of that not one have I contemplated in a more serious way.

Last night was another girl - the Speed Dater. She's different. Feminine, girly, maybe a little demure, smart, but not overly assertive. She's cute with a neat little body, an endearing habit of curling her lip when making an ironic comment and a propensity for saying "totally!".

We saw a movie and then had dinner before ending with a drink. It was a rainy night and the city full of people attending the comedy festival and the remnants of the footy crowd. Our conversation flowed at times and faltered at others. I took the lead asking questions and leading the conversation into interesting, and occasionally provocative avenues. She seemed to enjoy that, though she is not the type to take the initiative.

Nor is she the type to suggest the same propositions as the woman the night before; nor to be propositioned like that. It's not a bad thing. In my present state I am more inclined to woo than conquer; I want to seduce slowly if given the choice, to come at things naturally rather than rush at them in a crazy shedding of clothes. Naturally I imagined that neat body revealed to me, the shy, but encouraging glances, the measured, unhurried lovemaking as we discover each other between scraps of conversation. It seemed sweet to me, though not something unique to us: I was happy to share that with anyone who might be right for it.

Nothing happened. We parted. I left wondering what I am to do, encouraged sometimes, discouraged others. There's a door with a key in it and until you gain entry to the room beyond you can never be sure. You don't always get there though, and sometimes you lose patience trying. One more maybe.

Then there is the other, the Philosopher as Donna likes to call her. She is more earthy again, more direct as I like it, but not as feminine.

Whatever. I'm not about to say no, but I think maybe I need a break from the easy and meaningless sex. I've reached my limit for the moment. I want to seduce and feel it deep inside me.

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Other journies

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Writing of Andrej Pejic I am reminded of some recent ponderings on related subjects.

A little while ago I happened across pictures of very pretty Asian transvestites - she-males as they are known. Some are quite beautiful and there are few you would guess are actually male. I've seen pictures like this before in emails and so on and like most people have been fascinated for about 5 minutes before moving on.

On this occasion there were further pictures post-op and naked. I couldn't take my eyes off the pics. If it had been conventional porn it would have been merely salacious, but my fascination this time went far beyond the lewd.

In the first place I was fascinated by the surgical transformation from male to female genitals. It might seem different when in the same room and up close, but peering through a computer screen the surgically changed genitals of these trans-sexuals looked the real thing. I was gobsmacked, as impressed by the wizardry and surgical skill as much as by the fact that someone would actually choose to do that. There was absolutely no way of discerning that the woman in front of you had started life as a man. And in many cases the 'women' seemed more feminine than a lot of women you know.

This is where it got really interesting. I found myself in a strange grey area I had never ventured before. I know there are a lot of gradations between the masculine and the feminine, but my interest has always been mere curiosity. I knew what I liked and what I wanted and I was pretty definite that it was 100% female.

Asia gets thronged by westerners looking for cheap sex, and some of them have a thing for she-males. It's definitely not my cup of tea, but I can imagine the psychology behind that being quite complex. There's a person who looks, sounds and acts like a woman, and potentially a very attractive woman, who actually has a cock tucked away inside her panties. To me that would be a horrible surprise, but I can understand how exciting that might be for some.

While that's not something I would contemplate I ogled the naked bodies of these trans-sexuals as if they were the real thing. Fascinating or not they were - superficially at least - very attractive. I wondered what I would feel if I discovered the woman I was with was one.

It was an interesting, complex question. My first reaction as a rampant heterosexual was to dismiss it. It wouldn't happen. But what if you only found out after you had been with them (presuming it was not obvious)? I stopped to consider that. Would I be outraged? No, though I would be angry at being deceived. Would I feel less manly? I doubt it. Would I feel tainted? I don't know.

If I am to be absolutely open at this point I'll admit to some sexual curiosity. I'd be as fascinated to closely examine the changed plumbing as I would at the workings of a Swiss watch. And I wonder what the sex would be like - would it be different? Clearly this is not something black and white.

What it leads me to are questions of gender and attraction. Being the heterosexual I am the ideal for me has always been a feminine, preferably beautiful, woman. There's never been any variation on that, but when I consider men who become women I am forced to wonder why.

Do I love women because they have breasts and pussy and I don't? Or do I love them because they think and feel differently to what I do? The answer is probably both. It's in that difference to who I am that I find in the right person someone complementary to my self as a man. It's that cliche, two halves making the whole. That's the chemistry.

That's fine then. What of the post-op transgender then? That's a more complex question obviously, and a little confusing. If we presume that a person choosing to become a woman possesses common feminine traits - a fair presumption? - then potentially half of that equation is already met: they think and feel differently to me. By surgically completing the transition then theoretically the other half is similarly resolved: here is a person who looks like a woman, sounds like a woman, acts, thinks, feels like a woman, and so is...a woman? The only real difference is that a trans-sexual doesn't menstruate and can't have babies.

There's plenty there to rouse contention, argument and potentially abuse. I find myself in the face of all this wondering if in fact I could fall for a trans-sexual. Why not? I don't know because I've never been close enough to go beyond the hypothesis above. Dissecting a scenario objectively and rationally doesn't make it true, let alone real. There's much more to all of this, much more than I can know or understand.

But could I? I suspect not. Not through any prejudice of mine, at least I think not. Gender is permeable, there is no definitive black or white, no correct way to be regardless of what some will tell you.That isn't the issue.

We fall, I think, for individuals who inhabit a body whether it be male or female. The body counts - it is what we are drawn to, what our sex demands of us - but it is the person inside we ultimately love. That person is the combined outcome of all the things that have happened to them up to that point; we are the result of our own journey. In the end that's the reason I doubt I could be intimate with someone who didn't start life a woman - because the journey is different.

Sex, I have to admit, might be a different story.

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The approaching cloud

Cover of On the Beach

I don't know if you know the movie On the Beach, based on the Nevil Shute novel. I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie a few times. It's sort of dated and old fashioned now, and kind of charming because if it. It stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire and is set in Melbourne in the aftermath of a atomic holocaust in the northern hemisphere.

The northern hemisphere is dead, but a radiation cloud slowly drifts southwards, bringing inevitable death to those in its path. As the movie begins the cloud is somewhere to the north of the Australian mainland. Obe country after another, thn one city after another succumb to it as it encroaches further and further south, past Brisbane and nearer to Melbourne. There is no escape from it.

In Melbourne they watch as it comes closer, living wildly some of them, tempting fate and indulging their senses. Others prepare more soberly, committing themselves to a pact of mutual suicide rather than succumb to the toxic cloud. Soon there will be no-one left, amid the sunshine, the parties, the summer romances doom sits, the end of civilisation as we know it nigh.

That's how I feel about mum. I watch as she slowly declines, charting the progress of it while not knowing when it will hit. As in the movie there is a sense of resigned futility: there is nothing any of us can do but wait. As in the movie there is a surreal edge to it: how can it end? The sun shines in the movie, life continues; and mum in her way lives as normally as she can, mostly well, her wits intact. Something looms, unavoidable and terminal, but it seems incompatible with what we see.

We all die at some point. Mum is 70, not a bad age, there is no real reason for complaint. Though she is in no great distress this seems a bad way to die. It's a death sentence waiting to be executed. We sit all and wait, watching closely, measuring how things are, up one day, down another. It's a bad way to be. Better I think, to go quickly, or fade away to a well earned rest.

I can't explain how all of this makes me feel in my stomach. Soon that cloud will be here and in its wake my mum will be gone. Very strange.

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Half gone

Walking around these days feeling half asleep. Been like this for about a week. I wonder if there is some health issue, or if it's something else. I think it's something else. I have a bit of congestion in my chest, but I don't think that's it. I reckon it's because of mum. I think the uncertainty at her prognosis and the ongoing discussion about all manner of things related to it is draining me. It's a kind of emotional exhaustion.

I really don't know what will happen, whether the moment comes next month or in six. It's a fact of life, but it means my mind is left open, exposed and unguarded not knowing what to believe and unwilling to commit to one scenario over another. It's a truth that for us watching and waiting and unable to do anything that some kind of mental adjustment is required. Ideally you can put those things in a box that can be put to one side as you go about your normal life. The uncertainty makes that impossible. The box is open and in the middle of the floor getting in your way.

Connected to that is the morbid talk that my mum seems to relish. She's a curious person my mother. She's quite insecure and needs to to be needed, needs attention and to feel that she is important. She has got in the habit of making demands on us to feed that need. There is little requirement of that now. She is dying and there is no need to embellish that: she is the centre of our attention.

It seems odd, but it seems at times as if she has separated herself from what is happening to her. She knows what's going to happen, no question of that, but at the same time as she makes arrangements it's as if she is planning for an event she is putting on for the rest of us. It may be her death, but it needs arranging.

I'm probably being a little churlish: these things need to be done. It's not so much that, it's the fervour to which she attends to these things that I find slightly disturbing. It's as if she enjoys it, though perhaps it's her way of coping.

For me I accept I need to contribute and so I listen and give my input and advice as she talks about her 'celebration' of her life event, and more so her funeral, how it will happen, who will talk, what they will say, what is said in her eulogy - which she was going to write. I was asked to read a passage from the bible, but declined. I'm an atheist, and while it would be hypocritical to read something I don't believe the worse sin would be insincerity at a time like this.

I feel churlish and I apologise for that. I should be more generous: these things need to be attended to. Attending to them though robs you of some vitality I think. I live my life, I go out, I laugh and play, much of life continues apace - but also part of me is elsewhere, left permanently on, leaking energy so that I am left like this, weary and wan.

What you remember

Memories are like scraps of paper blown randomly across your way by the breeze. Every so often a headline catches your eye before the wind picks it up again and sends it on its way.

It's as random as that mostly, though sometimes the memories are fed by the events of your life. Things happen, the scraps of paper come from the one place, connected in some way by a common thread. It's as if some archivist in your mind works silently and secretly picking up the cues and feeding back the disparate but linked moments of a barely remembered past.

I think much less about mum's situation than I did a month or two ago, though there is a constant awareness that at some point the end will come. For now I have managed an uneasy adjustment to the situation. While I think less, I remember more. As if knowing that soon there will be no more new memories my mind has sought out the old and dusty one's.

It's strange what you remember. You might think that particular occasions are recalled. Key moments in your shared life. But no, not yet, not for me anyway. I recall figments, truly scraps of memories as if torn from larger memories. They come unexpectedly, passing through my mind much as a piece of old newspaper might blow across the street. Sometimes I might linger over these memories, curious again, my foot on the corner of the paper to prevent it blowing away. And then I move on and the wind does its work.

I recalled my mother of the seventies when I was a boy. I remembered in general the parties my parents would have in our home in Lower Plenty, how the Conolly's and the Holton's would visit for a raucous night of free-spirited enjoyment, the wine and beer flowing, Barry White, Neil Diamond (Hot August Night), the Bee Gees playing, and the ribald laughter of the men. We kids, now all grown up and responsible, had our own party which was fun then and fun remembering. I recall mum in all of this, most particularly I remember how she was, an attractive, vibrant woman, her hair permed stylishly in the fashion of the day, the born hostess in her very element.

Another memory comes to me. This one is very prosaic, so much so that you wonder how it can be recalled now, why, in fact, it was stored away in the first instance. There it is nonetheless, and you find something fond in the very ordinariness of the memory: of queuing up in a technical book shop with all these mother's with their children looking to source the school years book list. That was somewhere in the city, and though I can't say where I can close my eyes and can picture the scene.

How does this make me feel? Sad, predictably, though not necessarily in the way you would think. Back then I was dependent on my mum, and I her much loved son. I was held within the warm routine of family, though I took hardly any notice of that. I had a close relationship with my mum.

The relationship must, I guess, change and mature as you yourself mature and become independent. To some degree the shoe is on the other foot. Mum is not dependent upon me, but she leans hard, and did so even before her illness. I'm happy for that to be the case, but in recalling this hatful of old memories I am wistful for what I have lost, lost whether she lives or dies.

We were closer once; our relationship was different; I wish she was as she was then, and not is as she is now. She probably thinks the same of me. What I feel then is regret. Things always change, we lose a little, we gain a little. I'm not sure how possible it is to hold onto some of these things: is it just time that makes them slip from your grasp?

Mum is dying, and that's hard. She has been good with it, but if I am to be selfish and self-indulgent for a moment I wish she was that vibrant woman of yesteryear still. I miss her to a poignant degree. She exists only in those scrap of memories now.

Version 2.0

Well, that's that. My little end of year break is over. This morning I suited up after groaning my way out of bed at an unfamiliar hour, and then joined my fellow wage slaves on the train to work. It's still pretty mellow, but come this time next week the train will be chockas again and I'll be squeezed out at Flinders Street just another journeyman.

It was a very pleasant break. I read about 1200 pages over the 10 days, knocked off two books and halfway through the others. I attended to my scheduled tasks, and had some fun along the way. It was a necessary for me to refresh myself, though I fear that somewhere along the way I wiped some of the knowledge studiously acquired over the last few months. It's still there I'm sure, I just have to find it.

I didn't come up with any resolutions this year, but have found in counselling others, and in a variety of random conversations that some feelings crystallised into things to look at.

I had a girl yesterday describe me as kind and gentle. I liked it. By and large I think it's true, though it's not as simple as that. I thing some of those aspects may be recognised by people close to me and my colleagues, but mixed up with a lot of other, occasionally contradictory, attributes.

This girl also said she thought I was the independent type inclined to go my own way. For a random encounter she was very perceptive (she claimed that 'books and travel' were my things too - correctly). I agreed with her, but after she left and in light of all the encouragement I've been giving my friends I reflected on what I need do.

My first thoughts were to renovate my persona. I have this soft side and I have a hard side, and I thought why not show the world more of that soft side? Is there anything wrong in people believing that I am kind and gentle rather than ambitious and intelligent?

It's been on my mind for some time to own up to my vulnerabilities. Many people are deceived into thinking I'm invulnerable, but that's not true - as anyone reading these pages will know. Everyone has vulnerabilities, and while mine may be in fewer areas than most they are keenly felt.

This was brought home to me hard when mum was diagnosed as terminal. For a few days I floundered with all sorts of thoughts and feelings. I was jammed tight with them, but had no outlet. I remember one night speaking about it with Donna and she told me that it's alright to be sad, it's normal to show your feelings, and that no-one would think the less of me for that. She was right I knew, yet knowing it and being it are two different things. For whatever reason - well, I know why - I have a fear of being 'weak'. Ironically it's also what I crave most - someone I can be weak with, someone with whom I can be myself without shame or second thought.

Amy used to call me the Fonz. I was too cool for school. I heard what she said, but did nothing then or since, much as I should have. Being cool is my defence. Being glib deflects attention, so I'm always ready with a wisecrack or a smart-arse comment. It cost me a friendship then and keeps others on the outer now.

Look at me in the office. Putting aside the professional side of my job, how would most people perceive me? Well I think I'm seen as interesting and smart. They see the maverick in me and sense the social, fun aspects of my personality. I'm easy to talk to and ready to share a laugh, and there are plenty happy to share a beer with me. All of that's good, but there's more to it than that. These things are externals, outside of me. I manage these relationships at arms length from what is inside me, on my terms.

And so I am also perceived as independent, good in a team but a lone wolf by instinct. I speak my mind as if I don't care what other people think, and beat my own path thinking it the only way to go. I'm hard to manage and hard to know, and for all my social graces and occasional charm perhaps difficult to understand. I guess that's the way I've liked it, but the problem is that in erecting that barrier I've kept anyone from getting in. I might get admired, people may like me, but I'm a seamless enigma that no-one really knows. I'm affably aloof.

There was the opportunity to break down some of those barriers when the bad news with mum became known. That didn't happen. The reason it didn't is instructive. The biggest reason is that I'm a private man who doesn't believe in imposing my issues on other people. It is something for me to deal with, not something to burden others with. Much of that is respect for other people, but a lot of it also is not wanting to need anyone (even though I might). Ironically most people are sympathetic and often looking to be imposed upon - particularly those close.

The other reason is bloody-mindedness. When the news broke of mums illness I was taken aside and told take whatever time you need, we know it's tough and we'll cover for you if you want. That was nice I guess, but it got my back up. I was protective of my work and reluctant to make way for anyone else. And my competitive spirit leapt into the fray, fuck that Joe, I'll do it and I'll do it well.

I know enough now to realise that has to change. I'm not about to become less competitive, I may not adopt that kind and gentle persona, not completely, but I have to work towards becoming more open . I'm not a lesser man for owning up to my frailties. As Donna said, as Amy likely meant, I don't have to be that tough guy, or that cool dude, no-one is going to think I'm a lesser man for being human.

I regret now what this has cost me, but I can't go back. Somehow I have to strip off those glib personas. They have become me in some ways, habits I don't know how to break. That random girl saw the two sides of me, but for all my love of independence the man I need to become must be more user friendly. Me, version 2.0.