8. Insight and Foresight
Cooper was a no-show at school the next day. It hardly registered with Michael while he casually read through the pages of Catcher in the Rye that his adversary was not there, until the point when Mr Sutton’s roll call got to Cooper’s name, and the call and response was silent. Michael looked up, listened to the silence and looked down again. It was a long time before that name entered his consciousness again.
The task of the morning was to start writing an analytical essay of the themes found in their just-completed novel. It had been more than a quarter century since Michael had read The Hobbit, and a sense of Middle Earth overload had prevented him from seeing the Peter Jackson film adaptations. But there was a trailer he’d seen, and could probably riff on the themes in that. It didn’t seem too subtle, from what he’d remembered.
‘Can anyone tell me what the overall theme of the novel is?’ Mr Sutton asked. He was dressed in pastels today, somewhat garishly in a salmon pink which had already drawn a few none-too-subtle comments about the man’s sexuality. Michael hadn’t joined in, thinking that the best thing to do would have been to take a picture of the man, in his outfit, with his proto-mullet and earring and show him the same snapshot perhaps 10-15 years later. But everyone is a victim of the fashion of the day.
‘Anyone? We discussed the idea of ‘theme’.’
There was a no-show of hands. They might not have known the answer, or they might have known it and not wanted to be the one to venture an incorrect response. Michael no longer cared, he was going to make a go of it. He raised his hand.
‘Michael.’
He cleared his throat and hoped it would hold. It had been sporadically breaking that morning.
‘Tolkien is exploring the idea of making the most out of life’s opportunities. Bilbo hasn’t been doing much with his life, just smoking his pipe and over eating as he went about his days in The Shire, so it takes someone like Gandalf to come along and push him in the direction of going on an adventure. Even one as dangerous as stealing something from a dragon.’
Sutton smiled and nodded.
‘Very good. Why do you think JRR Tolkien was saying that?’
He thought for a second, then, ‘Same reason every older person, parent, grandparent, whatever seems to think about kids. They’re not doing enough, not making the most of the fact that there’s a world out there. Perhaps he’s using the book as a way to get kids out into the world and have fun, rather than stay cooped up indoors watching TV.’
Again, Sutton looked impressed and nodded his approval.
‘That’s probably spot on. Except for the TV bit, which wasn’t around then. But you’re right about Mr Tolkien wanting young people to make the most of life and nature.’
‘Ironic, too. That he’d use a book, which most people seem to read indoors, as a means by which to get kids to go outside and not sit around the house. Reading.’
Mr Sutton laughed. ‘It is ironic, in a roundabout way.’
‘I’d have thought it was ironic in more of an actual, literal way.’
Again, Mr Sutton laughed. ‘You’re right.’
He stood up from the desk and approached the blackboard. He took a small piece of chalk and wrote in large letters ‘Making the most of life’.
‘So,’ he asked the class generally, indirectly re-questioning Michael. ‘Who do you think Bilbo represents?’
Several eyes had focussed on Michael by this time. He noticed this and ventured a thought, all the while defying the rule requiring a hand to be raised first.
‘The reader. Presumably Tolkien’s asking the readers who we’re guessing are people our age, to finish his book, go out and explore life and nature and all that. The Hobbits are children, young people; Gandalf symbolises the generation above that, and the dragon … he’s a metaphor for risk. Or Nazis. Authors from this era, particularly English ones, were pretty obsessed with them.’
Mr Sutton picked up his tattered copy of the novel and looked at the publisher’s information page.
‘I think this book pre-dates the war… there … ‘First published 1937’,’ he read.
‘Well, maybe Tolkien was just intuitive. Or maybe he had no real themes attached to it, and we’re reading more into it than what’s there. Little fella goes for a run with some other fellas, steals some jewellery from a dragon, goes home, eats pie. The end.’
Sutton laughed. He was the only one, as Michael’s class mates – the ones who were paying attention at least – were staring at him, bewildered by his bravado and clueless as to his meaning.
‘Anyone else?’ Mr Sutton asked. There was nothing. The bell rang signalling the end of the period.
‘Right, first drafts of the essay by tomorrow so we can review them in class. Come see me if you want help figuring out the spider diagram method.’
The boys stood and stacked their books to head to the science block. Mr Sutton approached Michael.
‘You’ve really gotten in to this, Michael. Good work.’
‘Thank you, sir. Just a few thoughts I had.’
Mr Sutton put his hand on Michael’s desk.
‘Mrs Baskin showed me the letter you wrote her. Very good use of language.’
‘Thank you,’ Michael replied, nonplussed.
‘Have you taken the aptitude test?’
‘I don’t know what that is, sir.’
‘The standard test they make you take before you start here.’
‘I don’t think I took it. I was living in Melbourne before I came here.’
‘Hmm,’ Mr Sutton hummed. ‘Let me look into it for you.’
Here we go.
And so began Michael’s journey to scale the academic heights of Wellings. They weren’t that impressive heights to scale, but they seemed to generate a significant amount of praise. Michael was not alone in being someone who craved the warmth of the spotlight. It gave him pause on occasion to consider that it was no real accomplishment to achieve academic greatness when you are surrounded by children as the only competition, but since he had been dealt this paranormal, metaphysical and science fictitious scenario, he was not in the slightest put off by the idea. Why not play the advantage you have when the situation is against your will and make the most of it?
So he began to speak up. To answer questions he knew about, and even if it did draw attention to him, he still had enough control over his life – even at 12 – that should it come down to scalpels and MRIs he’d simply refuse.
On a Tuesday, the miserable old bastard Mr Gunn deemed himself kind enough to let the class know of a test they’d be having the next day. History had been about ancient Greece and that particular unit was coming to a close – until the exams, that was. The next day, there would be a test on life in ancient Greece. Nothing more specific than that, which proved a sticking point when Michael sought more specifics.
‘Would you like me to give you the question in advance, Curtin?’
‘What I’d like and what you’d be willing to do are distant cousins at the best of times, sir. I was just hoping you could narrow the scope of the potential essay question tomorrow, perhaps let us know about what aspect of life in ancient Greece we’ll need to revise tonight.’
Mr Gunn was having none of it, as the bell went.
‘If you’ve kept up with the reading and study regularly, it shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise to you.’
He collected his books and tersely exited the room before the class had a chance to collectively stand, as per custom. So, without knowing how specific it was going to have to be, this mean spirited old codger was basically asking this score-and-some of kids to be as well-versed as imaginable about something as broad as ancient Greece to come in and write an essay about it. That only a handful of them knew as much as how to write an essay, let alone one about something specific, was beside the point. Gunn had delivered the curriculum, assigned the work, and was now going to assess it. If anyone asked, he had completed his required work, had lesson plans to back it up; he’d assigned assessments, and the students had taken them. It wasn’t his fault if they failed – parents today!
That night, Michael returned home, showered, and read all he could from the flimsy, condescendingly-worded text book from which he was supposed to garner all his historic knowledge, and having decided it wasn’t enough, picked up the ‘G’ volume from his family set of Funk & Wagnalls and read as much as he could about the time. His brain was extra absorbent of late, and the information was easily digested. He was sure he’d be able to go to it with ease the next morning, which is exactly what he did. It was the very quaint policy of Wellings when it came to tests and exams, they were all done on a unique cut of lined paper. Maybe 2/3rds the size of A4, they had a poultice of it stored somewhere, and was their iron-clad and analogous way to prevent cheating on essays in exams. Lest the students got wind of the question prior to the test and wrote an essay at home ahead of time, sneak it into the exam room and submit it as something done prior to the start time. These mini papers were collected at the end of the exam too, the extra ones, so nobody could take them home and create their own secret stash.
So, as was the practice, in strode Mr Gunn to third period history; on this day dressed in his beige safari suit, festooned with four pockets on the jacket. For all the wrong reasons, it made quite the impression. There were palpable nerves in the class, and enough nerves-based farting had taken place to make the room smell like the south end of a north-bound horse. Testing got taken very seriously among the student body – you couldn’t just phone it in when there was a countdown clock and actual grades at stake.
The question paper was handed out one at a time, face down. Gunn reached the front of the room, looked at his watch and said, ‘You have thirty minutes. When you finish, put your hand up. Go.’
For all the build-up, it was a bit of a letdown. Gunn’s sole question was ‘Describe what life was like in ancient Greece for normal people.’ Michael looked at the question, pondered what ‘normal’ meant in this context, and then realised it was just what Gunn had wanted his class to regard in terms of ordinary day-to-day Grecian folks. Shop keepers, merchants, farmers. So he began writing, knowing he had 30 minutes to write, and two very small pieces of paper on which to do it.
He wrote some standard pabulum of life in Greece at the time, the political structure, a fleeting reference to Alexander the Great, the usual. He remembered the simplicity of the Funk & Wagnall entry and it rolled from his pen as if he knew it by rote. Then came a paragraph – a simple, straight forward and in no way controversial note, about the Grecian economy.
‘At the very height of its economic standing during the 5th and 4th centuries BC, ancient Greece was then, and has since been regarded by historians, as the most advanced economy in the world. It remains among the most advanced of all pre-industrial economies. An agrarian society by-and-large, the average daily wage for the average Greek worker was 12kgs of wheat, which was roughly three times that of the wage of the average Egyptian worker at the time.’
It wasn’t much of a paragraph, and the too-close-together doubling up of ‘average’ looked shoddy when Michael re-read it just before handing it in. He made reference a few paragraphs later to Aristotle, and the nobility of tiling the soil, just to add a hint of flavour. But it was not that big a deal to him. Gunn had his pun-inducing metaphoric sights set on him and he figured that no matter what kind of insight, genius or academic doldrums he was jotting down, he’d get the same middling result. The old man was a grudge bearer. Michael still couldn’t fathom why. That paragraph in question was going to be a controversial one, and Michael hadn’t the first clue how it would impact on his life for some time.
It was small potatoes, this first year business. Seriously, on the grand scheme of things, what one says, does or writes at that age is neither here nor there. You’d need to be some kind of biomorphic blob to be kept back at such a level. Yet the feeling of relief that the unit of work was over, that he had all but nailed the test filled Michael with something short of euphoria. Again, this eventually registered in his shorts, and when he was at home later that day, showering with unequivocal vigour that he realised he had been in this time warp for several weeks, and he did in fact miss the company of women. Quite profoundly.
He was in a barely used train carriage, trying as he might to drown out the pan-Baltic noise salad coming from a pair of selfishly loud track suited foreign chaps, when his whole consciousness seemed to take a dramatic narrative U-turn.
Adult Michael was divorced. He had been married for three years to Bethany, his all-but childhood sweetheart who was, up until their fateful nuptials, been his girlfriend since they were both at university – Michael studying Theatre Arts; Bethany, Design. It had never occurred to him that things would ever be any different between them than it was, and when he found a modicum of professional success, it went from aspiration to establishment, comfort and love. She loved him passionately, she said as much. He felt the absolute same to it being at the point of comprehensive, almost deific relief that comes with the knowledge of finding ‘it’ spoken of in story and song, that certainty and calm that comes from perfect, never-to-be sullied love.
They were together as a married couple three years, and it was on a normal Tuesday when she turned to him, looked at him with sad eyes, and said very simply, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
Michael fought to defend what he perceived as ‘this’, the union they had. There had been not even a hint of Bethany’s unhappiness or lack of contentment. The simple fact was, that somehow, she was in love, then changed her mind. There were searing hot tears, weeping that made his skin ache, and an all-over consumptive grief he couldn’t shake. She made her mind up without qualms, shed the love and desire she ever felt for him, and walked away as easy as she would have a losing hand at poker.
What was left was the external essence, the shell of who Michael was; his exterior and what was tantamount to a well-honed impersonation, or parody of him at his best. He was able to function, but his functioning was achieved out of habit, accomplished for the expectations of others, and the absence of the wherewithal to achieve the opposite. The only thing that stopped him killing himself from the plague of grief and sadness, was the lack of energy he had to achieve the outcome. And he couldn’t do that to his father, who had been dealt such a cruel blow with the loss of Sylvia.
His life had these past couple of years continued on a kind of auto pilot. He functioned, was friendly, was capable and occasionally good on the show. He had auditioned – unsuccessfully – for Ridley Scott once, and had sleepwalked his way through a low budget murder mystery called Death Kiss. It was a film that back in the day was referred to as ‘direct to video’, and Michael had never seen it. He wasn’t even sure if it got that far. He simply took the payday and could not remember the first thing about the production. The director was Russian, probably, and had a name like Tamir. Michael’s agent, Susan, suggested that on the strength of a second season mini-surge in popularity of Clues, he was likely to be nominated for a Golden Globe in the previous year, in the strangely worded category of ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini Series or Motion Picture Made for Television’, which Michael thought odd, but pleasing. Her sources proved to be unfounded, and he wound up watching the ceremony from home while some buffed blonde himbo took the statue home for an HBO movie that had flown under Michael’s malfunctioning cultural radar. He consoled himself with the idea that it is an honour to be considered for a nomination. This was a thought that went through his head and he glanced at his mantle, empty of shiny show business trinkets.
To remedy the ills, he had tried drink, he had tried drugs, he had indulged in all manner of meaningless sex with any number of women seeking fame through association. Some of them feigned interest in him, which on a certain level he appreciated, but he knew every one of them who went to bed with him was getting a lurid thrill out of his middling stardom and hoping for a way in to the business, or a step up a higher showbiz rung. None of it mattered to him, as the emotional wound he had been inflicted became infected to the point where his very soul felt poisoned, ruined, broken. Better that nobody penetrate his emotional defenses that have someone do the same thing to him again. Few remedies were so enjoyable as avoiding the truth, avoiding the consequences and avoiding yourself, as doing so through and with sex.
Reality as it was, and reality as it is, melded for Michael at that one moment as his train arrived at Chatswood. The weight and depth of the emotional wreckage he was subjected to was something that figured into his life every day since it happened, in one form or another. A thought, a song, the memory tied to a certain food, or where his mind turned to during sex – or self-abuse these past few baffling months.
She, Bethany was everywhere; the hurt was everywhere. Admittedly it was less present than it had been, but present none the less – like a watermark, which you could see if you sought it out deliberately. He stepped onto the city-bound platform with his school bag flung over his shoulder just as the doors behind him closed. His eyes squinted from the sun, and he thought for a second about how he never wore sun glasses as a kid, even though the sun was just as bright. Nobody did. It was strange.
The mild euphoria of middling academic accomplishment gave way to the weight of his adult emotional burdens, and it struck him as odd that the two kinds of weight could intercept in such a strange landscape. His worst, most pressing concerns as a 12-year-old were the physical weight of his text books, the burdens that come from homework and the wisp of hair gesturing above his junk. As an adult, he had every ounce of freedom available to him, yet he was weighed down by responsibility and a mostly untapped ambition to do great things in acting. He walked up the station platform with deliberate intent, with a litany of competing thoughts and quandaries filing through his mind, each of them on their own individually labelled index card. Each of them shrugged off by the more present hand of his circumstances. Homework, parents, love, beating the shit out of Cooper, the acrimony foisted on him by old man Gunn. None got any play, none got the merit or worth of deep reflection, as they all seemed to have less heft than was on the card labelled ‘Bethany’. A palm card that was weighted down by its emotional titanium core.
This was just a random Wednesday; Michael got home, let himself in to find that Sophie was at home first, sitting on the floor of the hallway on the phone with someone she went to school with, again, speaking uninteresting bollocks with the girl she probably saw last less than an hour ago. Michael looked at her, she initially ignored him, and after about seven seconds of what was all but staring, Sophie poked her tongue into the gap between the inside of her lip and her bottom gum line, eyes blazing at him, silently suggesting Michael was, in fact, retarded.
She’s probably right.
He shuffled his worn-down shoes down the hallway, fell on his bed and reached over to switch on Rob Duckworth on the radio. It was ‘Run to Paradise’ by The Choirboys. He never liked it, inoffensive as it was. Between the radio, his sister, his circumstance, his never-ending teenage body odour, the hormones that were all but making his head explode and the fact that he couldn’t exorcise the traumas of his future-past from his head, he had another moment of self-doubt, self-pity and helplessness.
It was funny, tragic-funny, how he could meld from one extreme of emotion through a cruel osmosis for its polar opposite. Perhaps his delusion, his whole experience in the past was part of a greater cognitive failure, that on top of the psychosis, he was also bipolar. Someone would get rich doing a case study on this thing one day. They’d christen it Curtin’s Disorder.
What if the truth was uncomfortable, ugly and foetid? What if he was somewhere else being batshit insane? He was a mid-level actor whose cerebral cortex just straight-up fucking popped one night and he found himself sitting in the corner of his bathroom, wallowing in his own waste, all the while talking about the stuff only he could see, figuring his mind had travelled back in time to his boyhood. So he might very well be in a padded room in a nuthouse, tied up in a strait jacket, jabbering about the late 80s, figuring he was in all, subjective reality, lying on a Bed Shed single with thick white curved tubing for a header and footer, breathing in his own hormonal armpit funk and hearing a shitty pub rock band play their one hit on the FM radio. There were few-to-none of his senses that weren’t being offended at that point in time.
Imprisoned in reality as it was, and his self-imposed mental and emotional Gulag, he drew the single conclusion that since the sole consolation of his situation, being that he was academically excelling at first year high school, he had it down to two syllables: life sucked.