OUR FATHER

content warning: coarse language, religious themes, anxiety, depression, self harm.

Shithouse ride in on the train. Crowded, smelly, everyone in a shitty mood. Arms up, holding the straps. Rancid underarm stink. Stifling. One bitch hadn’t shaved her underarms, had her big, brown stinky bush right in my face and she was talking – yap, yap, yap – to her friend so loudly the whole carriage could hear. I put on my headphones and drowned her out. Ears were ringing after.

Work.

Avoided Every. Fucking. Cunt.

Lunch. Concrete bench out front. No shade. Fucking hot. Sandwich came apart in my bag. Tomato sauce splodged everywhere. Bag squished on the fucking train. Warm coke spoofed all over my crotch when I opened it. Fat-boss Cara and her boytoy, Leaky Phil walked past. They’re recently fucking after months of public foreplay. Their fuck-stink is a pollution risk. They pretended not to see me. Headache.

Dinner.

Burning hot on the edges, frozen in the middle.

Learn to cook.

When?

How?

Kids coming soon. Work out something… Dr Krebs?

***

Good Friday. Sunny day. Out for a walk. Stiff legs and arse. Kids running around their front yard looking for eggs. Squeals and yells of joy when they find one. A fat kid, breathless and shame-crimson because he can’t run or bend fast enough throws a tantrum, punching his jowly cheeks slowly, over and over, hard enough to make himself scream. Easter eggs confuse me.

And I’m standing on the cracked asphalt of St Brigid’s. The Alma Mater. Fifty years later and fuck me rough coz I’m still within walking distance. The crippling silence of a playground on holiday gives me heart-pounding dry-mouth. I sit on the once dark green wood-slatted bench, now grey, munched by ants and baked to a crisp by years of oven-hot Februarys. And when I close my eyes, I can feel the tickle of Sister Bibi’s beige veil as she leans over my desk, hear her tight sigh as she tries, once again, to bring this pugnacious twelve-year-old toward the revelation of The Word: wooden rosary beads swinging gently off her hips; crucifix a pendulum at her knees. And somewhere behind her, Golgotha shimmers in my imagination: Jesus bleeding out on the cross; the all-night vigil; the centurion beneath, piercing Christ’s side with a spear, swabbing him with vinegar-soaked linen – Christ gasps in pain and now the soldier is laughing. And now I’m flying, and my Altar Boy days are flooding back: I’m smelling incense in wafts, I’m hearing tinkling bells. I’m feeling the float of the red cassock with its white filmy surplice swish over my thighs. My voice is high and light, it soars. He lifts the wafer and I ring the bells hard. Communion wine. Lux in perpetua.

Then afterwards, in the vestry, softly: Why aren’t you wearing trousers, fag?

My breath’s weird. Shallow.

Hard landing, shaking thighs.

And now I lay me down.

***

Kerrie rang. Kids can’t come for the week, just the weekend. Music Camp – something. Couldn’t breathe. Started crying. Hung up on her in the middle of everything. Plane fucking tickets fucking non-refundable. Bought more but I couldn’t work out how to email them. Heart racing with the mess. Stared at their photo until my eyes lolled backwards.

Dreamless. Blank.

***

Meeting after work. Town. Wet, dark Basement. A crimped circle of beige plastic chairs. Twelve shivering losers. Tea urn, plate of biscuits and a cock in a cardigan. Pledging. Peacocking. Gripping. Sliding. Some fucker drones on about vomiting in a lift. Spurty tears. Grant me the strength. Eyes drilled to the floor on the way out coz feel like I might blurt. Group Shame Shuffle up the terrazzo steps, then we flop like old penguins onto the rainy Elizabeth Street night.

Empty train. My reflection stares back at me. Sodium-lit, spectral. I’m a frozen ghost superimposed on the whizzing, black city darkness.

***

            Krebs told me to go back to the medical centre to get a certificate for another ten sessions. Has to charge me full otherwise. Rent’s jacked up again. No end in sight. Shopped for the kids on the way home. Coco Pops, Froot Loops, all the sweet shit Kerrie won’t let them have. I’m cool. On my watch, the kids will laugh.

***

Kerrie-Saviour came in Husband-Chariot. Electric. Jack hadn’t shut up about it the whole time. Took them away. Ungrateful fucking cunts. Lasted one fucking day. Don’t smoke inside WHINE. FUCK OFF!!! YELL.

Fuck them.

Never again says Kerrie.

See you in fucking COURT CUNT! I spat. In front of them.

Revved. Whizzing like a Catherine Wheel.

Maze snivelling. Didn’t hit her.

Fucking wanted, fucking wanted, fucking wanted to.

Seeing Krebs. Probably a bit urgent coz.

Coz.

***

Why’re you called Krebs I said.

German for cancer he says.

Biggest laugh for weeks.

***

Found Phil crying – literally leaking – at the urinal. Fat-Boss Cara’s face is concrete like a mafia boot. Gimlet eyed, heat-seeking missile in search of ground to raze. Trouble in paradise.

***

Krebs says we’re changing meds. Court coming soon. Always delays, but he reckons not this time. Gotta find you a good fit, mate he says, Gotta get you calm.

Asks me about Maze and Jack. I work out Kerrie’s been on the phone. Didn’t get a shot I tell him, just didn’t get a fuckin’ shot. They just hate on it all. Hate the flat. Hate trams. Hate walking. Want things, restaurants, movies. Don’t want to talk or play or hang out. Got nothing to talk to them about. Don’t know from school now, all so different. My school stories make them go round-eyed and pinky weird.

It suddenly explodes in my head — truth in rain-fire clarity. This, I think, this fucking mess is nothing like what I thought my life would be. When did the wind change? Jesus, Jesus somehow - without noticing - without consciousness - I have squandered my gifts, Wasted Fucking Muthafuck Wasted Wasted! A song from long ago drifts in my skull. Distant and tinny, like it’s coming from a transistor two towels down on a beach: Thin Line Between Love and Hate. More like Shit and Fucked in my case. And I know now what I should have known then – that this is not poetry, that this is truth, and I should have listened, and I shouldn’t have let myself believe, and I shouldn’t have given up. But I slipped and I slid, flailing for balance all the way down the mountain, grasping at air, speeding backwards in the mud. And He is not benevolent. His resistance burns. Ask His beloved Lucifer. Once you’ve really, properly fallen, no amount of pleading, begging, weeping can restore you. My stocks of faith are depleted.

Krebs kicks me out. Never again, he says sternly, that can never happen again. Keep them happy or they’ll crucify you.

They’re my bloody kids, I say, and they treat me like I was some kind of piss-stained, stink-arse junkie — they’re supposed to be hard-wired to love.

They’re not, he says,

That’s true, I say, but it’s fucking fucked anyway.

On the way home I pass a pub. I don’t go in. I stand outside around the corner in a laneway kicking the wall in a shitstorm screaming frenzy. Frightened a couple of people but I couldn’t stop and now I’ve got a fucking sore foot.

***

I can’t. I just –

***

Foot’s bright red, soft and flabby. Starting to limp. Can’t carry anything at work. Which is my bloody job. Well, who’s going to do it then? says Cara, agressive stare over the top of her multi-coloured bifocals and very high-stumped breasts. Me? Har har har yah yah yuk yuk she laughs at her joke.

But I can’t, cunt.

Tried.

Ankle buckles under me on the train. Home, I take my shoe off Stink-Fuckin-Stinky-Fuckin-Yuck-Fuck-Stink. Breathe through my mouth while I figure out what to do. All night med centre the only option, hobble down. Wait wait wait. Then tired, very bored doctor pokes at it. Penicillin and emergency room.

Hop (literally) on tram. ER, triage – sounds like ballet, but it’s bloody not – I once said to Maze when she fucked her arm. Slumped. More waiting. Tiny Chinese doctor, very nice – so thin, fine-boned – cleans my foot, wraps it, then plaster cast. Stay off it four weeks she says…

***

Cara rings. Sly, shitty bitch. Tries to talk me into leaving. Two weeks pay’s the bribe. I know my rights. Fuck Off I say. Blood Sucking Cunt!! (actually, I say I have to think about it – just wish I’d said the rest). I wish I were a warrior instead of a fat loser cunt.

I make a list of what I have – two children (kind of), an ex-wife, a shitty job, a rental flat, some saucepans, a French mantel clock from my 21st, seven pairs of permanently-stained undies, a heap of odd socks and some crusty shirts that once fitted me. Wellington boots. A suit in a bag.

Remnants.

Got fuck all. Can’t leave work with nothing up my sleeve.

***

Court. Lost. Kerrie, Jack, Maze and Electric-Husband hula-dance in the front vestibule. Lawyer-cunt mumbles about bill in the mail. Can’t face going back to work. Ring in sick.

I’ll start a fire with it when it comes.

The one thing about living alone is that you can masturbate whenever and wherever you like. Kitchen felt novel. Couldn’t get anything to happen. Porn – reading and watching – nothing in my head, trying, trying, stitch in my side, not even a tremor. Limp useless fucken noodle, raw from rubbing. Back in my pants. Nowhere else to go, nothing left to do. Sat hugging myself hard like a straightjacket to stop myself slipping down the stairs to the pub for a bit of relief. Didn’t/couldn’t sleep.

***

6am. Train. Very empty. Very early. Get to work. Nazim still cleaning – emptying bins and polishing lino. Grins at me. Friendly guy. I feel real with Naz. Problem is not much vocab. Says Morning boss in his very strong accent. I smile, my breath does a sudden deep-suction catch and I get around the corner just in time. I’m crying because I am so, so, so far from Boss, and I can’t tell if he’s being nice to me, or just patronising me, or maybe I and all us honkys are a complete fucking mystery to him. None of us will know this for a generation or so. I’m flooded with super-charged nostalgia, remembering the crazy, brilliant, relentless determination of the Balkan cleaners and mediterranean shopkeepers of my childhood. Fat-boss Cara’s parents.

***

10am.

Cara wants to see you says Leaky Phil.

Now? I say.

I think so, yes he says.

***

10:10am. I am sacked. Not sure why. Not sure what “recourse” I have. Never thought I’d use that word.

***

2:15pm. My vision is swimming. Strange room. Bed with marble-cold sheets, nasty pastel plastic blanket, smells like Bon Ami. Legs won’t move, hands feel heavy. Very bandaged. My skin stings as if someone has scoured it with sandpaper, then doused me with vinegar. Inside, I feel scratchy, freeze-dried, tiny.

Door opens. Granite-eyed copper. Crewcut, wiry, middle-aged, pen-pushing, dirty little fucking dog. Hello there, he says…

No, I don’t have any memory at all, at all, at all after stumbling out of the meeting this morning. Yes, my throat hurts I don’t know why. Screaming he says. Smashed a window with a chair apparently. Held back by Leaky Phil – that flabby fucking ponce. Apparently, he’s got a green belt in something unpronounceable and managed to render me semi-paralysed until the cops arrived. This, after I dragged the paper-soft skin of the underside of my wrists across the broken glass, howling like some animal in a trap the copper said someone said.

Smashed up the whiteboard. The self-cleaning, printable new one.

It will spearhead the damage claim.

***

Breathing.

Staring.

Breathing.

Staring.

Breathing.

Staring.

Please.

deliver me