The Last Fucking Unicorn.

Well, it made me laugh.

On Sunday, I could barely walk, I was in that much pain.

It was my foot, my left one. It was swollen and red and that niggling pain in it I had had since the previous weekend had not, as I had hoped, gone away, but in fact gotten very worse. My toes were fat and stiff and I could barely move them. Using the walls, I navigated my way round to my phone, and sent a text message out to complain.

I live alone. What you going to do?

Still, I figured, after I had done that, that a doctor was in order. Say what you will about me, but when using the walls of my hallway to help me move down it, I know it’s time to seek some medical help. I’m smart like that.

I had no idea what I’d done, of course, and I resisted any urge to self diagnose, which unfortunately my friends didn’t. It’s broken. It’s going to be amputated. It’s frostbite. It’s deep vein thrombosis. The list was huge. I left my phone at home, left the internet, and went up to my local doctor, wondering just how easy or difficult it would be to find one of those motorised scooters that old people ride around in. That’d be cool. I could ask my local doctor. Well, I could ask my local doctor, if he was there, but he wasn’t.

No, no problem. There are two medical centres in my neighbourhood.

Two Six Day Medical Centres, as the sign proclaimed.

Well, fuck.

There should really be someone to drive me around for this shit, I thought, as I drove back home and stumbled my way back inside. There’s something about acute pain that suggests that someone else should be around with you at the time, if only so they can look concerned and not suggest various wild theories on what you might have. There was a list of things I could have been bitten in my email when I returned. You know, in Australia, we really do have too many things that you can be bitten by. The White Tail Spider, for example. Though for future reference, necrosis in it’s bite is merely suspected, and probably not true.

Still, not to be defeated by the lack of open doctors, I realised there was another medical centre up near some of the students I teach. Fortunately, really, because I have a lot of year eleven students right now, and they start exams next week, which is followed by holidays, so I was looking at a drop in cash for about a month, thanks to well timed exams and a lack of year 12 students this year. I had been rather enjoying the fact that I wouldn’t be losing half my students in October, so I guess that showed me, though I still think that at the end of the year, I’ll be better off. Next month is cheap living, though. Anyhow: this information is important, not because I like everyone to understand my financial situation or concerns, but to impress upon you this thought when I went to the first medical centre, and was told that they don’t bulk bill.

“A consultation fee is sixty seven dollars,” the woman told me. “You should get around forty back from Medicare. Oh, and our X-Ray Machine is not working today, so likely you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Yeah, I passed.

Instead, I hobbled up the road to the second medical centre, which was open. I suppose you can spot the more affluent neighbourhoods by their open medical centres and this one, which did bulk bill, had at least a two and a half hour wait. “Probably longer,” the woman at the counter said.

My next student was within two hours–a gap made by a student whose grandmother had died, and he had gone to China for the funeral–and aware of the need for cash, I, yes, declined.

I was feeling pretty lousy by the time I got back to the car, lousy for a lot of things in general, but it was just that general lousy you get when you’re limping round in pain and wondering how you can score something to dull the pain. Mostly, I just went home and distracted myself with TV and video games and reading till the next student, then did the same until I crashed that night.

This morning, I began the search for a doctor again.

My regular doctor appears to have gone to Sweden with his filthy doctor money, judging by the perpetually closed sign on his door, by the second medical centre was open, and I got to see someone there, and this doctor poked things, took blood pressure, and stole some blood.

He did that after he had poked around with my foot and told me that, no, I’d have to pass on the peg leg look, because I had gout.

I think I’d rather have broken my foot.

Lynda Hawrlyuk provided me with the name of the film from yesterday’s post, 11′09′01 - September 11th. “An international film composed of 11 contributions from different filmmakers, each from a different country. Each gave their own vision of the events in New York City on September 11, 2001, in a short film of 11 minutes, 9 seconds, and one frame,” according to wikipedia.

I entirely forgot that it was September 11th today.

I’ve been sort of keeping a low profile when it comes to TV and the media of late, so perhaps that’s not too surprising, but still, I was genuinely surprised that I’d forgotten about the day. It’s not, I will be honest, because I was affected or touched in some way by the disaster, because I wasn’t; no one I knew died, and by virtue of being on the other side of the planet, I was fairly removed from the entire thing. It was–and perhaps this will upset some–just another tragedy unfolding on the TV for me. At the time, I was interested in the politics, and the events that lead up to the day, but it was a hindsight thing, a curiosity I had while being force fed the government line that it was an unprovoked, evil attack. Trace these things back and you can always find reasons and I was interested in that, for a while. But it was fairly impossible to avoid the media saturation of the event itself after it had happened, and I believed, back then, that I would simply not be allowed to forget the day, that the community as a whole would force me to remember it. To a degree, that’s exactly what happened, since I learnt about it while reading blogs and sites this afternoon.

Yet still, until then, I had no idea, and the fact that I had forgotten surprised me.

The effects of it can still be felt, however: the use of the word terrorism, the way certain cultures became suddenly exploitable in ways that they had not before, and the hysteria that followed the days, weeks, months and years after it.

When I was originally writing this post, I thought I might throw an image, or a youtube video in, but after a while, I began looking for a certain short film I saw, years ago. I’ve forgotten the title, so if someone could help me out, I’d appreciate it, since I’d like to watch it again. It was, if I remember right, a film that was part of a set of short films about 9/11, and which were made by directors from around the world. If I remember right, there was a lot of that after the day. Stories, films, comics, opinion pieces, everyone had something to say, which is how it should be, though only a few stick in my mind now. One is this film of one of the towers. It begins as a long shot, and all you can see is debris falling from it, little black pieces plunging to the ground. As it continues, however, the camera zooms in, and you begin to realise, somewhat painfully, that the debris you’re watching is actually people, a person, in fact, in a suit jacket plunging down to the ground, having chosen to leap out of the building, rather than stay.

There was something about the image that stuck in my head. It managed to convey that sense of falling, of rushing down at the ground, but drawn out in those moments–I can only imagine–that stretch before you as the broken pavement forms before you, grey and solid and without give.

What the fuck is that?

Cas!

You’re awake!

Fuck, sorry bout the noise man.

And this, if you must know, is a platypus.

The little bill at the front gives it away.

Where the fuck you get it from?

I have no idea. I just hope I didn’t mug a child.

Maybe it belonged to the girl you came in with?

You were awake for that?

I wasn’t asleep. I haven’t take a shit for three days. Everything inside of me has turned to stone. I touch my stomach and there’s no longer flesh there, but a cold surface that reminds me only of the toilets I will never again visit.

I no longer do normal, human things.

I think I’m becoming Post-Human.

Dude.

Dude.

I am not–I can’t have that conversation right now. I have been drinking.

I see.

So, yeah. You see how this will have to wait.

The girl was cute.

Yes!

Shame about her friends.

The contempt in their eyes was not concealed at all.

I thought it was a bit more of an over protective vibe. I got that from the guy who followed you both into the room.

I think he’s in love with her. That’s my theory.

You talk to him?

What?

No!

Fuck.

No, I talked to her. She was interesting and cute. He was just some dude so as you can clearly see, there is no basis in reality for this theory of mine.

Do you want the platypus?

Will it make me regular?

It could have strange powers I don’t know about. Perhaps God sent it here to make you take a fucking shit and stop fucking bitching about your ass.

The Shit Platypus?

Robin to your Batman, mate. Catch.

Thanks.

When did you start drinking, anyway?

‘Bout the time I went to that Australian Party.

You didn’t do shit to Strahan, did you?

No.

But, like, karma settled that anyway.

Karma?

Yes.

See, I heard this story, right. ‘Bout Strahan.

It goes like this, it goes. It goes: he’s got this fancy agent or something fucking like that, right. Big wig dude. And each time at this convention, this agent, his agent, he like has this black tie dinner for all his clients. The gold Amex card comes out and shomp shomp shomp, y’know? It’s all about business and getting in tight and all that that shit you see on TV. All you got to do for that is arrive nicely dressed.

‘Cept Strahan, he’s, like, a fucking dork, man, and he doesn’t bring is a black tie get up even though he knows about this thing, and his agent–his agent says, “Well, you can’t come to my dinner,” rather like John Wayne, I would imagine.

Was that your John Wayne impersonation?

It not good?

Say it again.

“Well you can’t come to my dinner.”

You sound Russian.

It’s note fucking perfect!

Fuck you.

Anyway!

Want to hear the end of the story?

Does he throw a tantrum?

No!

He’s just not the fuck allowed to go like he’s some fucking child, y’know?

Is that even true?

Who knows, but it makes the world even, I say.

You wussed the fuck out, didn’t you?

No way.

Dude.

This is gold.

You let some dick treat you like shit so you didn’t rock no boat, man. That’s what you did.

…

…

When I’m sober, I’m going to argue against that.

I’m sure you will.

Yeah.

…

…

…

It’s fucking hard to be in room with people who don’t like you, y’know?

It digs inside your skin, man. Makes you full of paranoid bullshit. You figure you got to be on your guard all the time and watch for some fuck who wants to put you down and who wants to score points with their friends off you. Some asshole whose balls got boosted by the numbers of mates they got round them, cause normally they wouldn’t say shit. So you watch for them so you can be crueler to them than they are to you so no one fucking assumes you going to lay down for shit opinions.

But it’s fucking crazy, that animosity. It’s so fucking personal, like they think they know you.

You only got yourself to blame for that.

Maybe.

No maybes, man.

You know how to do this shit, just like I do. You don’t talk about another’s work, you don’t point out the flaws, you don’t show them up when they’re fucking morons. What you do is have no opinions, no thoughts, unless it’s real private, and you’re sure that other person thinks the same as you..

That Consulate Party that Strahan and whoever put on is an example of you not doing that cause you didn’t want to do it. I mean, what is it, a party at some Consulate for Australian writers to stand round, drink wine and meet people who don’t give a shit bout their work, and won’t do anything for them after. Not exactly exciting, and you could’ve said, no, sorry, I don’t get in till its started, and no one would have said shit. It was true, after all. But instead, you’re like, what the fuck do I want to go to a consulate party? These people don’t invite me to parties in Australia, so why would I go to a ridiculous one in the States. Fuck ‘em!

That’s you making a situation worse.

Is true though.

Yeah, man, but they’re trying to be inclusive, and you’re just ragging on their show. That’s why half of them got the shits with you before you even show.

Pfft.

People.

I’m not saying that excuses treatment from dicks like Strahan, but you got to make a choice, man: you either going to play this shit right, or you going to do what you normally fucking do, and just live with whatever happens cause of it.

…

…

I really did wuss out, didn’t I?

You were afraid a whole bunch of people who’d buy your work would see you being an asshole and that’d fuck you over.

I got to work on that.

I’m enjoying this though.

I don’t suppose you could tell me I was right, could you? I’d like to record that.

…

…

…

Where you going?

First: Fuck you.

Second: In case you didn’t notice, the cute girl is gone, and you are a poor fucking substitute for her cause you keep pointing out my foibles. So I’m going find more drink and more girls and hopefully forget this conversation.

Enjoy the platypus, man.

It was Father’s Day yesterday, so Dee came up to Sydney to see Phil for the weekend, and the pair of them crashed at my place.

My little joke about children on this blog seemed to come back to haunt me, as is what happens with this kind of thing, since after a weekend with a seven year, I’m quite happy to never see anyone under the age of sixteen ever again. We fed Phil pizza, chocolate, soft drink, tacos, and let him run round playing video games and watching TV until midnight, maybe later, who knows. Time meant nothing after a while. Anyhow, it sounded like a good idea at the time, and sure it was fun, but come Sunday I just worn the fuck out and was happy to see the two of them leaving.

Afterward, I ended up watching Predator. I don’t know why. I’d like to tell you it was because I hadn’t seen it, but I had, and I’ve seen it a number of times, because when my mind ditches out on me, I end up watching stupid action flicks from the eighties, and Predator is a real stupid favourite of mine. A special military ops go into the jungle, characterised as much by the weapons as they carry as they are their scant characterisation in the script, are attacked and killed by an alien that is characterised by its ability to blend into its surroundings. About half way through, however, I began to think of the film as a coming out story for gay men. It was all the muscles, really, and it certainly wasn’t helped by that big muscle bulging test of strength that Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger give each other upon seeing the other. Tiny erections dancing on their arms. Maybe I was fatigued or something, but I swear I could see it in the film. Bill Duke’s Mac ends up going insane after the death of his ‘friend’, Blain, played by Jesse Ventura. In the strict military world that the pair occupied, of course their love would have to be hidden, would have to be hinted at, and the audience would have to find it. Perhaps in the way Mac sings about women while chasing the Predator down at the end. Yes. Of course. And I’d be a bad critic if I didn’t note that Hawkins, the first of the soldiers to die, does so after another soldier makes ‘eyes’ at the only female within the film–is it not apt that the Predator strikes then, choosing the moment to punish one man for his betrayal of sexuality? Perhaps he decides to kill them then, of course, because there is a taint in the midst of the men, and that they will be lead astray. Certainly been my experience with women.

I figured I was onto something here. I figured I could make something more out of the fact that Sonny Landham, the man who played Billie, the psuedo tracker due to his Indian heritage, had been a porn star in the seventies. I figured it was brilliant.

I really thought that this would have passed by the time I woke up in the morning, though.

Recently, the girls I talk to have started telling me how much they don’t want children, how the vagina expands, how it’s gross, how it’s the last thing in the world they would want–

I can take a hint, y’know.

I wrote a review for issue 191 of Overland, which maybe some of you read, and which maybe some of you didn’t. In that review I took a small tour through books in the independent scene and used them to both review the books and to make a larger argument about the kinds of books you can find in the independent scene. At any rate, issue 192 was released a few weeks or so back, and in it was a letter that responded to my review.

Who wrote this letter?

Louise Swinn, one of the editors of The Sleepers Almanac, a short story collection put out by an independent publisher, and which I reviewed.

I bet you think she wrote to praise me, yes?

“In his attempt to ’show the diversity that exists in the independent scene’, Ben Peek (Overland 191), by looking at only five books, actually ends up misrepresenting the rich independent publishing scene. His is in no way a ’small tour through the content of the lesser-known independent presses of Australia’.

Of the books reviewed, four were from publishing houses and one was self-published; of the four not self-published, three were from Melbourne. This is not a genuine attempt to show diversity. While poor editing and low-quality cover design can be frustrating, it seems churlish in such a small review space to spend so long focusing on these matters. The discussion of the stories themselves was brief, lightweight and, sometimes, non-existent. The overview ended up jamming a bizarre bundle of books together with an attempt to weigh up a speculative fiction anthology, three novels and a literary fiction anthology beside each other.

I am one of the editors of the last book looked at in the overview, The Sleepers Almanac No.4, but it is not the treatment of that book with which I take issue. The self published novel, The Ascension of Phoebus Klein, is given short shift by any standard. At a time when review space is in decline, Peek explains that ‘there is nothing about the novel worth recommending,’ and then goes on to draw comparisons with the independent music scene, without attempting to engage with the text at all. The reader comes away with no idea of the narrative, the writing style, the themes being broached, or any real idea whether they might enjoy the book.

If this is a ’small tour’, it feel slike a tour outsdie a building, when it would have been more interesting delving into the musty interior. That is, after all, where books’ magic really lies.

Louise Swinn.”

Hahaha.

Ah.

That’s awesome.

The easy mark in her reply is the elitism that forms her resentment of me jamming a spec fic anthology, three novels and a literary fiction anthology together. I’m always impressed when someone values one genre over another, and it appears that Swinn, who names her own anthology ‘literary’ fiction and her inability to name the genres of the novels I reviewed is quite telling. In case you’re curious, they were a comedy and two pieces of literary fiction, the first of which is the self published kind that features a narrator who stutters for two hundred odd pages in first person, and the second that belongs to the gritty urban novel that is about prostitutes and boys with amnesia. But, hey, why worry about those three books, when you can make a snide comparison between literary fiction and speculative fiction and how they <i>don’t</i> belong together. In case you’re curious, the speculative fiction book was an exploration of the masculinity in our culture, and the ‘literary’ anthology a collection of short fiction that aimed to give new authors their start.

In fact, here’s what I wrote about the Sleepers Almanac:

By and large, the independent-released anthologies of each year in Australia are the main place that readers will be able to hear authors gain their voices. In the case of The Sleepers Almanac, this also applies to the editors and publishers, Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn, since the reader will, upon seeing the book, make the immediate connection to McSweeney’s. McSweeney’s, if you haven’t heard of it, is a quarterly anthology out of the States with a reputation for beautiful, but ever changing, book design, and quirky, offbeat stories. Sleepers is obviously influenced by the reputable collection, as the altered book details inside, the quirky quizzes taken from Robert Heinlein and lists of books and TV shows the editors have enjoyed, attest. The too-strong influence of an already existing series does diminish Sleepers compared to someone like Forsyth (whose influences are less obvious) – but then, if you are going to be inspired, there are few better publications to be inspired by.

The book is primarily made up of new authors, a large portion of their stories relying on quirk, such as Jeff Hoogenboom’s ‘The Miracle of the Beer and Tim Tams’, where Jesus comes over for dinner, or on relationships that have the shallowness of the early twenties, such as Jo Bowers’ ‘Game’. There are established authors here, but they are, to be polite, slumming it – it’s been a long held belief in the independent press that, for collections to sell, a few name authors must be included. As most of the books do not pay professional rates, the fiction that they end up with from the name-authors is bottom-drawer stuff. An example is Max Barry’s contribution, ‘A Shade Less Perfect,’ which is about children and vampires and werewolves, and leaves the reader groaning at its idiocy. The true joy of reading Sleepers lies not in what the established authors are (or aren’t) doing, but in the discovery of writers who have a little something extra to distinguish themselves. Where else but a collection like Sleepers would I find Jessica Au’s story about struggling immigrant worker, ‘Leopards’? Writing in a beautifully, strong clear voice, Au was the find of the book for me, and I would readily buy more work from her.

Of course, if I had been given more space it’s entirely possible that I would have spent more time talking about the fiction in the book, but since–as Swinn herself knows, having reviewed for Overland–there’s a limit to the space involved, and I was purposefully bouncing off a article by Mark Davis in the issue before, some choices had to be made.

Still, I personally love this letter she wrote, because I love it when editors and publishers and writers are so offended that they are forced to take up pens against me. To me, it shows that I struck the nerve, the weakness, the raw spot that they themselves know within their work.

And in this case?

Well, it’s that Sleepers is nothing but a rip off of McSweeney’s with substandard fiction in it.

I hope you all took notes.

Apparently a seventeen year old girl is pregnant, and she’s going to keep the baby and marry the father, but we’re not allowed to talk about that, or so Papa Obama says, and so we’re going to talk about not talking about it.

Usually, I don’t go for talking about American politics, but you have to laugh at this one. A teenager is pregnant because she was stupid, and like the white elephant in the room, people are going to skirt round the issue and not talk about it, while making various jokes at the expense of the girl and the parents. It’s rather like you’re at Xmas with the family and there’s a scandal because one of your cousins has a bump and she hasn’t even done the HSC yet. You think it would raise questions about sex education, about abortion, about rights, about being young and stupid and making mistakes, about the sanctity of marriage, about the rights of gays, and oh, a whole lot more you could perhaps spiral out of it and make candidates squirm around having opinions.