Buddhas and Bikinis - Vetbook

Buddhas 

and 

Bikinis 

(C) Jim Euclid, 2011 

Buddhas and Bikinis 1

Buddhas and Bikinis 2 

‛Who am I? That is always the hardest question. I love butterflies, so I 

have learned to live with the caterpillars. I am the girl that occupies her 

time in supermarket queues by studying the chocolate racks. I love the 

serenity of mountain tops but abhor the climb (why doesn’t Mt Everest 

have a chairlift?). I love timeless conversation but very ambitious about 

getting enough sleep. I love intelligent people, but a degree can’t buy you 

happiness. I love negativity, but mostly when my car needs a jump start. 

Love is the only answer, but who ever asks that question these days? I have 

found happiness in a bowl of rice, in a stranger’s generosity, in a lover's 

kiss and in a cat's purr, but there's more to life than chasing rainbows. 

There is someone for everyone but sometimes ‛anyone’ is not enough.’

My name was Aristotle Mylonas. I was a dreamer. 


Every time I closed my eyes, I was transported into my greatest fear, water. Within 

that mariner’s world, beneath my closed eyelids, what troubled imago lay but my greatest 

want and woe; she, my most treasured possession, my arch-desire, my Neptune, my water 

kingdom. 

The first time I met Hiroshi I had a black eye. 

I was taking a break from final-year veterinary school, spending a day down at 

Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland. Personally, I loathed what Surfer’s Paradise stood for; 

wealthy retirees, predators of time who killed hours on park benches; milestone pundits 

who gambled their life’s earnings to spend their few days seaside. Mixed into this flotsam, 

the floral-shirted Americans, drug jocks, and the six-pack surfies and D-rack girls with 

their velcro wallets and teflon minds. 

But what the hell, any change is pennies when you need a break from study. I was 

lucky; my first exam was more than twenty-four hours away. That’s forever in the life of a 

butterfly, or a uni student. 

Venturing out waist-deep on main beach was no small feat given my hydrophobia. I 

was challenging my fears by slowly stepping into the water, asking it to be gentle to me, 

but I may as well have been talking to myself. That’s the thing that bugs me the most about 

water - it’s indifference to form and content. 

I was pounded many times, under massive waves. I got up time and again, spitting 

out mouthfuls of sand, beaten like a sari on the steps of the Ganges. One wave threw me 

down so hard that I temporarily blacked out. In that moment, I saw my whole insignificant 

life flash before me. 

I was saved from the jaws of death only by a following wave that tossed me up 

onto the beach, coughing and spluttering like Jonah after his ordeal with the whale. 

Walking back up the beach, I noticed a petite Japanese girl lying on her left side, 

curved like an Abyssinian cat beneath a bright blue fedora hat and floral bikini pants. She


was topless, her breasts obscured with the fluttering pages of Albert Camus’ The Plague. 

Even more remarkable, she was singing softly in the most melodious voice, her 

words floating to my ears, ♫ ‛One thought and a thousand worlds come into being.’ 

So overwhelmed by the sight, I steadily walked toward her, and as my shadow 

crossed her face, she turned, held her hand to her eyes and squinted. 

‛Can I help you?’ she asked. 

I smiled then nodded, falling to my knees into the sand beside her. 

‛Hi,’ I said. ‛My name is Ari.’ 

After a few moments, during which she looked at me with incredible disbelief, she 

rested the book against her chest. 

‛How nice.’ 

‛Are there any rats?’ I asked. 

She frowned, incredulous, ‛No.’ 

‛So the books not about rats?’ 

I already knew there were no rats in The Plague. I had read the book twice because 

I didn’t get it the first time and didn’t enjoy it the second time. Existentialism, even when 

explained by Camus, and backed by evidential proof of Darwinian evolution, still smacked 

of simplicity to anyone with an enquiring mind. Call me a romantic, but this serendipitous 

meeting with Hiroshi, which would forever alter my understanding of life, had as much 

chance of happening as the pieces of a 747 jet assembling themselves in a tornado. My 

God didn’t play dice. I went with Bergson; immediate experience and intuition are more 

potent than science at understanding reality. Bergson came from a musical family, and 

Charles Darwin was tone deaf; my defence rests. 

She returned to her book. 

‛It’s a serious question,’ I reiterated. 

‛No,’ she chuckled, removing her Fedora to reveal a shorn head. ‛No rats.’ 

I admired the sunlight glistening off her dome-shaped skull. 

She stroked her scalp as if she knew my next question, ‛I’m a nun or should I say 

was a nun, but hey I realise now there’s no buddha. I only ended up falling in love with 

Rinpoche, head monk at Karuna. Hey,’ she continued, with a rebuking smile on her face, 

‛don’t laugh at me you look like you couldn’t give a shit anyway!’ 

‛You’re weird, but it suits you. The hair, I mean, or lack of it.’ 

‛What happened to your eye?’ she enquired. 

‛Karate.’


She rested the novel in the sand, ‛Looks like you need to dodge a bit more.’ 

I was captivated by her smile. In the time it took for a cigarette match to burst into 

flames, I had fallen for her. 

My mother once said that the heart is like a parachute which only works when it is 

open. Maybe this is why when we fall in love, we calmly watch as we plummet thirty 

storeys to the ground, and at level fifteen say, ‛So far so good’, without realising the 

impending disaster. 

She reached across to shake my hand. 

‛I’m Hiroshi,’ she informed me. ‛We actually met a month ago but you were with 

that blonde bimbo Renee.’ 

I admired the slender fullness of her milk-white breasts as she put on her bikini top, 

then gathered her belongings. As she began walking toward Cavill Avenue, I followed her 

along the roadside. 

‛What do you want?’ she asked, eyeing me suspiciously as she backed against her 

car, a bruised, early model Corolla. 

kiss. 

‛I don’t know,’ I said, dumbly. 

She suddenly grabbed my face as if to head-butt me, then unloaded a passionate 

‛That’s all you’ll get. I hate you rich jocks,’ she said, slapping me, ‛You just fuck a 

girl and throw her away after Christmas like an unwanted puppy.’ 

Hiroshi got into her car and slammed the door shut. 

‛See you on campus some time, Superman!’ 

She drove off. 

My exam the next day was in Parasitology, the study of parasites. Strongyle worms 

are long slender gastrointestinal parasites that affect all mammals, including humans. They 

can be, literally, a pain in the arse. And after studying Bowman’s Feline Clinical 

Parasitology, I was none the wiser as to the difference between Toxacara canis and 

Toxascaris leonina, two of the most common gut parasites in cats and dogs. Could I 

identify their unique mouth-parts under a microscope and describe their different life- 

cycles, and what part of the intestine they preferred to reside in? Not on your life. 

At three in the morning, I was shaking with fear. The exam was six hours away and 

I had barely covered half the material. 

Wind was blowing outside my college-room window, teasing the Jacaranda, the

courtyard a blur of lavender and magenta leaves like a Renoir impression. 

There came a rustling sound, a note thrust under the door. 


The hallway was empty when I glanced down the corridor. I sat down on my bed, 

unfolding the scented parchment, across which beautiful calligraphy flowed: 

One thought and a thousand worlds come into being... 

A young girl stands on a beach, wishing for an angel, 

The sand falls through her fingers, yet she is the beach. 

‛Where are you?’ she asks. 

‛Here,’ he says. 

She frowns, disappointed. ‛You are but an ordinary boy; pretty, vain and fearful of 

passion. You are but a fallen angel. Why should I love you?’ 

‛I am a messenger of God’s sacred contract,’ he says. ‛Signed, sealed, delivered.' 

But all she sees is bitter irony; she has ignored those who adored her, adored those 

who ignored her, hurt those who loved her and loved those who hurt her. 

One world and a thousand angels come into being... 

I smiled, forgetting momentarily my pending exam. 

The opening line of Hiroshi’s letter made me realise that this girl had faith, the 

same as my mother. Now there was a woman blinded by faith. She lived in a reflective 

chrysalis of gilded-framed icons and butter-lamps, reminiscent of her Christian childhood 

in Kastellorizo, Greece. She was a social butterfly until she married a devil who clipped 

her wings, and called her fat, like a caterpillar. She weaned my father, Stavros, of his 

infidelities on the lathe of her ample breasts, gave him twins, first me the oldest by twelve 

minutes, then Maria. The synchronised squealing offspring reminding her just how lucky 

she was to be the wife of a somebody. 

‛Saints are worthless,’ I said to my mother. I was ten, leading my sister astray. 

‛Saints - they’re like the Joker when you’re playing seven card stud. Tits on a bull.’ 

She laughed with her egg-and-lettuce-Tuesdays’ mouth and poker-dotted dress that 

made her fat jiggle ten years longer than it should. 

‛Son,’ she said, appended to her solemn epistle on God and raising children, ‛Be 

careful, life is not a card game, the ego thrives on self-beatification as much as self- 

beautification, both hindrances on the path to heaven. Work out your own salvation with 

fear and trembling.’ 

But I disagreed, loudly shouting, ‛You’re an idiot, Mum!’

for a student.’ 

She then drew the kicker, the Ace; the alpha and omega. 


‛You’re ten,’ she said, ‛you’re just a boy trying to teach himself wisdom with a fool 

Case closed. I lost, in her mind. 

So I continued studying, turning the pages of Feline Clinical Parasitology, but the 

textbook was a blur, eclipsed by words that arose not from scientific endeavours, but a 

girl's passionate release in words. I read Hiroshi’s letter once more. 

My hands began to shake, and I walked out of my room. 

Any other night of the week at three o’clock in the morning, the only creatures who 

would be moving around would be the college mice, but the night before an exam, chaos 

took over the halls of learning. Students rushed about with midnight’s fury; some laughing, 

some crying, most hysterical about their impending exams. 

I sat on the stairwell with a cigarette and a half-empty bottle of Scotch. 

‛I am going to fail my exam,’ I said aloud. 

Defeated by gloomy prospects of repeating another year, I stood up, unzipped my 

fly and pissed down the stairwell. A group of girls walked past me. One laughed, another 

called me a freak. I watched the urine dripping down the concrete stairs and shook my 

cock until there was nothing left. I had become a shadow of Ari Mylonas. Woe to this poor 

Japanese student, Hiroshi, I thought, who dreamt of love. I knew she would be 

disappointed once she discovered the real face of her masked lover-to-be.

≈ 


When Hiroshi first asked me about my childhood, the first thing that came to my 

mind was my sister Maria at Mission Beach. 

It wasn’t easy for me to confess to Hiroshi that the only female who held a special 

place in my heart was my own sister. 

Mission Beach in North Queensland was an aboriginal mission until a cyclone 

struck the coastal community in 1918. The superintendent of the mission at the time, Mr. 

Kennedy, was killed, along with his daughter. 

Following his death, the Queensland Government resettled the aboriginal 

community to Palm Island, really just a euphemism for a penal colony, situated 100 

kilometres to the south. 

The local aborigines, now addicted to opium and alcohol through the benevolent 

generosity of European settlers, grew rebellious over land-rights, and with the only 

effective peace-maker gone, riots were common. 

Palm Island was an ideal solution for the aboriginal unrest situated as it was on a 

tropical island forty kilometres off the coast. As well as eliminating the black problem, it 

allowed mainland traders to continue selling their opium, tobacco and alcohol to the 

islanders from their modern cargo ships in exchange for cheap labour and prostitutes. 

Palm Island would grow into one of the largest aboriginal communities in Australia, 

with the unenviable reputation of having ninety percent unemployment, the highest rate of 

youth suicide in the world, an average life expectancy of forty years, and a listing in the 

1999 Guinness Book of Records as the most violent place on earth. 

Since the relocation of the aborigines, Mission Beach had evolved into a sleepy 

coastal community of mostly AngloSaxon farmers, who enjoyed a leisurely middle-class 

tropical lifestyle, where their families could flourish economically, grow and eventually


sell local crops such as bananas, pineapples, coconuts, mangoes, and coffee to southern 

markets. 

I was twelve at the time, sitting in the back of the family’s Land-cruiser with my 

sister, Maria, listening to my Father giving us this lecture on Australian history as we were 

driving along, returning to Townsville after a weekend break. 

I had been nodding off to sleep as he worried the air with his monotony while 

Maria sat next to me playing with a magnetic chess set. Mother just stared at the road 

ahead, having heard all this many times before. 

Suddenly, I looked out the back window, hearing the clanking of the cable stay-wire 

on the Hobi Cat 16-footer catamaran we were towing. The hull of the cat was bouncing on 

the trailer. 

‛Dad, are you sure you tied the tow-bar properly?’ I asked. 

Dad refused to answer because it would betray a mistake, or his forgetfulness; both 

inexorably linked in his politician’s mind. 

He pulled over and checked the tow ball. He pulled out the Stilsons from his 

toolkit, and tightened the loose nut. Satisfied, he walked around the Hobi Cat trailer, 

kicking the tyres like he had a clue. He had bought the Hobi Cat about a year after the 

fiasco with the Bertram on Hinchinbrook Island. 

He got back behind the wheel, and continued where he had left off, harping on 

about Australian history like he had invented it. 

Out of nowhere, Maria dropped her chess set and curled into a ball beside me, 

screaming. I figured that she, too, was sick of my father’s ranting, but there was a new 

colour to her face, a grey-green hue. She heaved, then vomited onto the floor of the car. 

The Landcruiser was bouncing over corrugations along the back roads of Mission Beach. 

Maria continued to groan. Five minutes later, Mum told Dad to stop the Landcruiser. 

Maria was squeezing my hand hard, ‛Please make it stop. Please Ari. Please.’ 

Maria looked like death warmed up and sweating profusely. Dad came around to 

the passenger side and asked Maria what was wrong, but she could only say the obvious, 

she was in pain. 

I asked Maria what it felt like, and she said like a sore tooth but all over her body. I 

didn’t know what she meant because I’ve never had a toothache. Mum took a good look at 

Maria. 

‛Is it sore here?’ Mum asked, pushing Maria’s lower abdomen, and she screamed. 

‛Yes,’ Mum affirmed, ‛she’s got appendicitis.’


Mum told Dad to find a doctor, and for once, Dad nodded in agreement. 

‛I told you,’ Mum said, as Dad started off down the road. 

‛What?’ Dad replied. 

‛Didn’t I tell you this is what happens when your brother Bart gets involved with 

our family. Stealing land from the blacks is wrong. They were here before us. And don’t 

tell me that orphanage he runs is about Christian charity - it’s nothing but a bordello!’ 

My father looked like he was going to explode. 

My mother had the final word, ‛I don’t want your brother Bart near my children!’ 

For a while, there was silence in the car except for Mum who kneaded her worry 

beads, making a sound like fireworks at Chinese New Year. 

Finally in temper, Dad grabbed the worry beads and flung them out the window. 

‛What’s a bordello, Mum?’ I asked. 

‛You’ll learn soon enough,’ my father replied, deadpan. 

Maria’s groans then ascended to a crescendo. 

‛Aww,’ Maria panted, and I pacified her by holding her head in my lap, stroking her 

brow because there’s nothing else I could do to ease her pain. 

After thirty minutes, we arrived in Ingham. We went to the local hospital, but the 

receptionist said the doctor was out on a house call and wouldn’t be back for two hours. 

We rushed back to the car and drove to a chemist in Lannercost Street where Dad rushed 

in, asking for ‛pethidine, morphine, something strong.’ The pharmacist, a middle-aged 

Chinese lady listened as Father pleaded at length to persuade her to open her Dangerous 

Drugs Safe. 

‛I am sorry,’ the pharmacist apologised, ‛but we can only dispense paracetamol or 

aspirin without a prescription.’ 

Landcruiser. 

So Dad bought a box of fortified paracetamol and we all piled back into the 

My parents decided to make a dash to Townsville General Hospital. Dad, as if the 

urgency of the ordeal had been forgotten, began a speech about Townsville General 

Hospital, how it was the largest hospital in North Queensland, built back in 1882, only to 

be destroyed by a cyclone, and rebuilt in 1951. 

Mother pulled out her sewing needle and threatened him with it if he didn’t shut up. 

We rode the noisy road in silence for the next hour. 

Maria lay with her head on my lap, sick as a dog. She kept looking to me for 

assurance that everything was going to be okay because I was the eldest, even though I was

orn only twelve minutes before she was. 

was dying. 


By the time we got to Townsville, Maria was grey and cold. I was worried that she 

I watched as Dad carried her out of the Landcruiser and up the front steps of TGH. 

We waited in the car for what seemed forever. 

It was dark when Dad slowly walked out of the hospital. He whispered something 

to my mother, and all I heard was that ‛It wasn’t appendicitis.’ 

We drove back home to Yarrawonga in silence. I saw the tears on my mother’s 

cheeks, and Dad’s stoic face. I didn’t know if Maria was alive or dead. 

When we got back home, Dad did his little speech thing, giving Mum and me a 

lecture about the great advances of modern medicine and how a cure was just around the 

corner. My mother believed him, but finally, I asked the obvious. 

medicine.’ 

‛Hey, Dad, what the hell is wrong with Maria?’ 

‛Great cures just around the corner,’ he continued. ‛The miracles of modern 

‛You don’t know, do you?’ I said, angry and frustrated. 

He looked away, ‛She has something. They just don’t know what it is called. 

‛But how can they fix her,’ I asked, ‛when they don’t know what’s wrong?’ 

He slapped me, saying I had no respect, and how dare I question the doctors, but I 

knew that he was more scared than me. 

The next day, Mum took me to the hospital to see Maria. 

The doctor explained to my mother that Maria had her spleen removed. But none of 

us were the wiser as to her malady. She looked worse than death now because she was 

recovering. That’s how life works. 

For the next week, Mum took me every day after school to see my sister, and 

slowly the life returned to her face. We brought her favourite toys from home, and I bought 

her an ice-cream. On the fifth day, the doctor removed the bandaging and Maria showed 

me her scar. It was a gruesome cut, from below her left rib to her right hip, the skin 

puckered with angry rope stitches. 

She looked sadly at me, ‛Why did I get this?’ 

But I was all thumbs, unable to finger a culprit. 

‛God simply asks us to have faith,’ Mum answered. 

‛Fuck faith!’ I shouted. 

I got another resounding slap from Dad. I crashed into the cart beside the bed and

scattered bed pans across the floor. 


Dad leaned over and kissed Maria gently, ‛Now get some rest and when your better, 

I’ve got that new motorbike you always wanted.’ 

That’s my father, making promises he never keeps. But a month later, Maria did get 

her bike, a Honda CR-125, courtesy of her near-death experience. Sadly, she never got to 

ride it, because every six weeks after her splenectomy, she was back in hospital getting a 

blood transfusion. 

It would be another year before specialists in Brisbane diagnosed Maria with 

Thalassaemia, a genetic blood disorder whose name is derived from Thalassa, the Greek 

word for the ocean, because originally it was diagnosed in people who lived near the 

Mediterranean Sea. So my parents were to blame. 

By the time Maria was discharged from hospital, I owned the CR125 by default, 

and took every opportunity to get away from Yarrawonga and my father. 

It would take years before my father came to terms with there being no cure, no 

miraculous treatment to mitigate Thalassaemia. This was years before the advent of 

chelation drugs such as deferoxamine that would allow Maria to undertake tertiary 

education and live a normal life. Her childhood had passed without her really experiencing 

it.

≈ 


The first time Hiroshi and I made love was on her birthday. I recalled it was also 

the day before one of my exams. Down in the courtyard, outside my college window, 

second year students who had passed their exams were partying. I could hear laughter, 

screams, and occasionally beer bottles smashing on the concrete. Those who had failed 

were probably sulking in their rooms, contemplating career suicide to the sounds of The 

Cure. 

As I closed the large cantilever window of my room, there came a knock at the 

door. Hiroshi was standing at the doorway, a beach towel slung over her shoulder. 

‛I’m going to a party, would you like to come?’ 

I leaned against the door, chewing on a biro. Behind me was a pile of books on the 

floor, the study desk littered with lecture notes and scrunched revisions. I went to scratch 

my head and hit myself on the forehead with a dog’s head, an anatomy specimen I had 

been using to study the various cranial landmarks. 

‛Exams tomorrow,’ I pouted. 

‛People say you never sleep, you’re mad like a dog with rabies, but if you can’t 

make it tonight I understand, because I don’t sleep much these days - my thesis is driving 

me crazy. It’s my birthday, and some friends asked me to the pool, but if you can’t make it 

I might just go back to the monastery.’ 

‛Going back to being a celebrated nun?’ 

‛Celebrated? You must mean celibate, oh I get it because we are idealised by men 

because they can’t sleep with us, yes I can see why you are so smart, but I don’t know 

about celibacy any more. It’s overrated. I think I may have too many expectations about 

being a nun, and Rinpoche says that what I feel for him is only puppy love.’ 

‛Maybe he’s right - you don’t want to end up living like a dog.’ I pecked her on the

cheek. ‛Happy twenty first, anyway.’ 


‛Twenty first?’ she perked. ‛I’ve been twenty one for twelve years. You are a 

terrible flirt.’ In an awkward pause, she looked nervously about the room, ‛What subject 

are you studying?’ 

‛I’ve got a canine neuroanatomy exam. But I’ve had to go back to basic physiology 

because I failed a subject last year when I was sick.’ 

‛What was wrong with you?’ 

‛My shrink calls it depression, but it was definitely a virus. I couldn’t get the taste 

of metal out of my mouth.’ I nervously looked away, ‛Anyway, I’d better get back to the 

Raas system, so unless you know a bit about basic physiology...’ 

She took a step into my room, ‛Raas? That sounds Egyptian.’ 

‛Raas as in renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system. It’s how blood pressure is 

controlled in mammals.’ 

‛I thought Raas as in maybe your past life in Egypt which is where I think you 

came from because you have such a big nose.’ 

I laughed awkwardly, momentarily lost for words. 

‛You should see my sisters,’ I said. Gone was my glib confidence of yesterday, gone 

like the sun and the melodic beach we had walked on. This night was different. In the wan 

light of my darkened room, her eyes preyed upon me. She had a wildness about her that I 

hadn't seen before. 

hours.’ 

‛In my past life,’ I replied sarcastically, ‛I was a successful student getting As.’ 

After a pause, she sighed, disappointed, ‛I should let you get back to your study.’ 

‛Have fun.’ 

I watched her walk down the corridor, my heart pounding. 

‛Wait,’ I shouted. ‛Where’s this party?’ 

‛Down at the pool, If you want to come, hurry because the guard comes past in two 

I gave her a lift on my motorbike. She didn’t know about the pillion foot-pegs, so 

for the three minute ride, she cranked her pelvis hard against mine and clung to my ribs 

with the ferocity of a cat, her feet swinging wildly akimbo. The sensation was so erotic 

with her thighs wrapped around mine. 

When we got to the pool, I noticed about twenty students already swimming in 

various states of undress. I could barely make anyone out, the only light came from the 

tennis courts a few hundred yards away.


After we jumped the fence, Hiroshi ran off to the edge of the pool, stripped naked 

and jumped in. I slowly edged beside the water at the shallow end, dangling my feet into 

the cool water. 

I could hear her coughing, flailing in three feet of water. She was a poor swimmer. 

She needed saving, I thought, but I just sat, waiting. 

‛Aren’t you coming in?’ she paddled toward me. 

I didn’t tell her about my fear of water. How my father once nearly drowned me 

and my sister Maria when we were kids. 

We were just eight at the time. My father, Stavros, owned a Bertram 25-footer he 

got as a kickback from my Uncle Bart who owned a mining firm that wanted to dump their 

tailings onto aboriginal land. Uncle Bart was a ruthless man, but not the smartest, his crude 

intellect like a cheap hotel, all the finery in the lobby. 

My father took us fishing that night, just me and Maria, out near Port Lucinda, a 

hundred and fifty kilometre north of Townsville. Maria is everything good in this world 

and I got short-changed. It’s not her fault - it’s how nature works out. She always happy 

and positive like a june-bug and most times I’m wondering if the sky is blue because of 

me. 

At midnight I was on the flybridge screaming to Dad and Maria below about at a 

pod of dolphins circling us and how they looked like sharks when I see this leviathan 

swell, a freak wave headed toward the boat. I’m shouting port, port, turn port to face the 

wave, and Dad, idiot that he was, turned the boat starboard against the wave and the boat 

capsized. 

I was clinging to Maria, screaming and she’s saying ‛it will be fine,’ like she can 

see into the murky future, and next thing I know, father’s grabbed us both around the chest 

and proceeded to swim through three miles of shark infested water (though it was really 

only dolphins), all the while with the outboard engine hanging from a rope caught around 

his ankle. By now he was talking hysterically in tongues like Billy Graham on TV, and I 

knew he was a fair-weather atheist like myself. 

Finally, my father pulled us onto a mangrove bank on Hinchinbrook Island, a place 

swarming with crocs. He said God will save us in a language that sounded like Hebrew 

mixed with Jim Beam. Were he not a giant of a man with herculean strength, we would 

have perished hours before. 

The roaring mosquitoes bit at us mercilessly through the night. Dad flailed at them 

with a tree branch that was heavy with a green ant’s nest. These ant bites were worse than


the mosquitoes, and by sunrise, we were covered in welts, and Maria's face looked like a 

football. 

For two miles that morning, we trekked through squelching mangroves until a 

walking track appeared. Not long after, we stumbled across a lone bush-walker, Karina 

Stylok, a backpacker from Warsaw who was trekking the virgins of Hinchinbrook Island. 

Karina, with her nineteen-year-old innocent smile and freckles, was at first 

frightened, then speechless, as she saw the motley shipwreck crew of monkeys standing 

before her covered in stinking mud. She must have thought we were creatures from the 

black lagoon. 

‛Thank you, angel,’ Father fell at her feet. ‛You have saved us.’ 

Karina alerted the police where we were, sharing her meagre food and water 

supplies while we waited to be rescued. 

Later that day, the sorry tale was broadcast on all the news; how a hero saved his 

two kids, swam all night bravely fighting off sharks. He was a national hero. It even made 

it on CNN. So, the clever man that he was, he rode the wave of all that fifteen seconds of 

fame, becoming a politician and winning the seat of Ingerton just because he couldn’t tell 

his left from his right. He was a fuckin’ idiot and I never trusted water again, unless it was 

mixed with Black Label. 

pool. 

This is what Hiroshi misinterpreted as hesitance on my part about getting into the 

With goosebumps on her shapely breasts that floated on the water’s surface, 

Hiroshi looked more breathtaking than the first time I saw her on the beach, a beauty 

enhanced by the soft lighting off the water, reflecting her pale translucent skin. I stared at 

her, quite lost for words. 

‛Have you never seen a woman naked before?’ 

‛Yes,’ I commented, ‛but not someone so divine.’ 

She looked at me with surprise, ‛Yesterday you were in a hurry, but now my big 

Superman has hit the go slow button. Maybe you like the chase and that’s all. Maybe you 

don’t know what to do once you’ve got your prey in your hands. It makes no sense why 

you’re so shy. I think you are turning Japanese.’ 

I was shaking. 

‛Are you cold?’ she asked. 

I couldn’t tell her I was shaking from fear. Any relationship I had with women had 

turned into a disaster. Even my cousin Melina, who attempted to steal my virginity at


thirteen, gave up in despair. She said I looked like Sylvester Stallone, a man she would one 

day marry. Melina was a hunter, a predator, whereas Hiroshi - well, she was just childlike, 

having fun. 

‛Ah,’ Hiroshi smiled, ‛You’re scared of me.’ 

How immature I thought, to assume I was scared of her. There were only two 

emotions I possessed; anger and desire - one opened the door, the other lured me out. 

‛I think you are scared of me!’ I shouted. 

I flicked water in her face until she laughed. 

She pulled me violently into the pool. I went down to the bottom, and rose slowly 

between her legs. My heart was pounding so fast that I lost my bearing and began to 

struggle, but her hands held me firm. A moment later, I surfaced, gasping for air. 

Slowly, in her tender embrace and in the vast spaces between my naive thoughts 

and awkwardness, she pulled me toward her and we met in a passionate kiss. I felt 

engulfed by an octopus, her legs surrounding me, her hips grinding against mine. I felt 

myself give way to the advancing waves of urgency. She became my own portable 

soundless poet-trembling floatation device. And there, semi-submerged in the dark water, I 

dissolved into water. 

seconds later. 

I lay exhausted beside her on the pool’s steps, three minutes and a universe of 

‛You western men,’ she laughed, ‛have such big dicks!’ 

For a moment I felt jealous at not being her first lover. 

I coughed out water from my lungs, ‛I don’t think so.’ 

I rested my face on her chest, feeling the coolness of her breasts against my cheek, 

my fingers traipsing the stubble of hair at her broad brow. My breathing had steadied from 

the rushing cadence of moments before. 

Hiroshi’s doona-soft eyelids fluttered as I kissed her. 

‛You’re something,’ she said, breathless. 

The next day, I returned from my exam, deadbeat but elated. It was the only exam 

in my life I ever scored one hundred percent, perhaps because of a sudden disinterest in 

whether I passed or not. Returning to my study room, I found a note Hiroshi had left under 

the door: 

I know you need an answer 

You need an explanation

How feeble the light would be 

You have been searching for it to guide you 

Through the pitchy tunnel safely 

You say all you know is you don’t know much 

Do I know? 

I look around. How can I explain to you? 

Who can explain for me, Time or Holy Spirit? 

Please, wait. Let me try to explain 

No. I don’t know how you want your eggs in the morning 

How can I be so sure you can be the father of my children 

I can explain, I can, wait for me 

Please, allow me to start from now on 

The time to explain is that for my whole life 

Will you be waiting for me? 


Later that second night, when I came back from the library, I found Hiroshi in my 

room asleep. I stirred her from her slumber, entering her sleep with my cock from behind 

her. She rocked her pelvis against mine, then came softly. I came soon after and remained 

inside her until my cock slipped out. 

We got to talking. 

I found her an intriguing character. I learned that Hiroshi had finished her high 

schooling at Hirakata High School, Osaka, and that soon afterwards she was shipped to 

Australia for an arranged marriage with a young Japanese accountant working at Norske 

Skogindustrier, a paper mill in Albury. They met, but Hiroshi told me it was a fiasco. He 

looked like a young Pierre Cardin, she said she was bored five minutes after meeting him. 

She applied to a number of Australian universities and accepted an external enrolment 

through the Queensland University. She renounced her past entirely by becoming a nun. 

She was already finishing her masters degree when I met her, vacillating between academia 

and abstinence. 

After regaling this brief autobiography she turned to me quite excited. 

‛We have been together,’ she remarked. ‛Before, in another life three hundred years 

ago in south-east Asia. We were sisters back then.’ 

‛Sorry,’ I laughed. ‛I don’t believe in that reincarnation stuff.’ 

For me, Buddha’s simple truths were neither simple or true. Reincarnation was


nothing more than complex theory. My God would send me to eternal damnation if I told 

Him about her belief in godlessness, soullessness and transmigration. But then again, He 

probably knew all that anyway. 

‛Let’s just fuck!’ she replied. 

My cock was hard by the time she was on top of me. Three times in one night and 

she was sore as hell, yet she told me not to stop. We were knotted at the hips and glued at 

the lips. 

Exhausted, I laid back on the bed, ‛Hiroshi, you can’t be serious about knowing me 

in a past life? Reincarnation seems such a complicated answer to a simple problem.’ 

She frowned, ‛That’s pretty heavy stuff after something as benign as sex.’ 

I took a professorial tone, ‛Rather than an elaborate and unprovable theory like 

reincarnation, I think it’s more likely that our minds bring a repressed desire to the surface 

when we experience something we have been wanting for a long time. The experience and 

the repressed desire meet as a synchronous event, a moment of symmetry or psychological 

mirroring. We desire something, then as a consequence, we experience it. The anticipation 

and the experience merge, causing a temporal resonance or flashback that some people like 

to call deja-vu. But realistically, there’s nothing mystical in it!’ 

‛Temporal resonance?’ she reiterated, thoughtfully. ‛So, what you’re saying is, I’ve 

been wanting you a long time and now because we’ve fucked, I’m having flashbacks, 

that’s interesting, but you’re wrong, I’m happy without you, within you, either way is 

good. I like your theories, they are well thought out, but you have some higher thinking 

errors like those new computers, they can add one and one, but there is more than logic in 

truth, and the best truth makes no sense, it just is, I hope one day before I die you get it.’ 

wall. 

She dressed, pulling on her bra, leaning over my desk. 

‛Who’s the guys in the photo?’ she asked, staring at a happy snap blue-tacked to the 

‛That’s Horatio van Aken and Uncle Bart outside the Opera House.’ 

‛Van Aken, the writer of ‛The Fourth Warrior’?’ 

‛Yeah, he’s a friend of my uncle. I hope one day to meet him.’ 

‛He’s quite a tortured soul,’ she said, staring hard at the photo. 

I lay there staring at the ceiling, sucking in the cool air from the window, my body 

drugged by sex, watching her pull on her panties over her bush. I felt heavy, my skin 

tingling, her sandalwood perfume still thick in my nostrils, the taste of her still wet on my 

lips. My heartbeat had slowed, but my mind was racing.

tortured type.’ 

Superman.’ 


‛Van Aken writes about love and beauty and historical revolutions. Hardly the 

She kissed me goodbye, ‛You know nothing about nothing, that’s why I love you, 

She slammed the door as she left. 

I dragged myself off the bed, lit a cigarette and leaned out the window. Looking 

down at the Union College canteen, I saw Hiroshi walking toward the car-park. 

‛Hey, you! Pretty Japanese girl!’ I shouted out the window. She looked up at me. ‛I 

think you are the craziest person I’ve ever met, and I want you to know something?’ 

‛What?’ 

‛I like you’re hat!’ 

She shook her head and walked off. 

I whispered to the wind, ‛though our past be weighty, and future dread, I feel like 

an angel weightless, to be wed.’ 

deception. 

Even as the words left my lips, a darkness swallowed them, borne of distrust and 

It is said that when a pick-pocket meets a saint, all he sees are the pockets. I felt the 

same way about Hiroshi, and yet powerless to alter the fact. I was the pick-pocket who had 

come across a most spectacular treasure to be plundered, hopelessly blind to the greater 

treasures beyond his immediate grasp. 

The following evening, I got her poem, Caterpillar. 

‛Why’ hides an invisible thunder to daze my eyes 

Sounds a huge inaudible sound, to deafen my ears 

I asked myself how could you run to him with legs trembling 

That night I kept talking with a relief of pain. 

What I said that night won’t be said again 

I remember he said ‛I like your hat’, but where’s my head? 

Are we really who we are or is there a prophet in disguise 

Between two on the beach 

I cried and laughed with tears in my eyes on the phone 

I wonder, why should I talk in this way - don’t you all know 

Tomorrow is the end of the world,

Yet I still don’t know who is my 'we' at another end of the phone 

Is he smiling listening to me? 


As I meditated on her sombre words, I realised I had been asleep all my life. Now, 

realising that I was alive, it suddenly occurred to me that I would die. 

My exams were over. I had suddenly metamorphosed into an adult. My years as a 

gamester, player and pickpocket had ended.

It was a Sunday night, mid-year holidays. 

≈ 


I was packing for the long ride to Townsville. Hiroshi had already moved in to my 

one-room college dorm three months earlier. She was sitting at the desk in a flowing one- 

piece cotton dress, writing. There was a stillness about her, reminding me of those small 

eddies in a stream that are formed by underwater rocks, where a leaf floats at the centre 

while the water whirlpools around it. 

I was her Superman. She was the first real woman I had known. She had so simple 

an adoration of me, so replete of expectations. So worshipful. 

hurt. 

I am so fucked, I thought. 

She had been back from Japan only five days. I had missed her presence so much, it 

I stood behind her, slipped my hand down her shoulder and cupped her breast. She 

leant her head against my arm but continued her ferocious writing. 

‛You don’t know how to stop working, do you?’ I asked. 

She smiled, ‛I stop when I die you know that because you ride like a crazy man on 

that bike and one day you're gonna stop too and I hope its not into a tree. I’d kill myself if 

you weren’t here, now leave me alone or I’ll never finish this, you sex fiend.’ 

I was supposed to be helping Hiroshi edit her thesis, Husserl versus Nagarjuna; 

differing opinions, same perspectives. I knew very little about Husserl's phenomenology, 

an early twentieth century philosophy about existentialism. However, Nagarjuna was a 

buddhist, and I was an expert in that topic, seeing as I was sleeping with one. But the more 

I read her thesis, the more I disagreed with both branches of philosophy. I was a scientist, 

reared on Bacon’s scientific method from childhood, instilled by my fiercely intellectual 

father who believed that evidence-based methodology must be employed for understanding

the universe. 


Hiroshi was a romanticist, believing in ghosts and miracles. My father, erudite 

though he was, took the hypocritic oath; praying to God at night, while dismissing religion 

during the day. In politics as in love, truth was negotiable but ultimate truth non- 

negotiable. 

On the other hand, I was a pragmatist; that which can not be observed, examined, 

dissected, and recorded is inessential to science. Prayers never cured polio or smallpox - 

vaccines did. Faith never made scientific breakthroughs - passion did. There I rested my 

case. 

However, my love for Hiroshi helped me overlook her intellectual short-comings. 

She believed, for example, that Milarepa, a famous Buddhist saint who lived on herbs and 

turned green because of it, could perform black magic that killed people. She believed 

quite implicitly that the Buddha’s brother, Devadatta, could levitate. She believed in the 

power of prayer and that love could transform demons. I remember her saying the night of 

her birthday that she didn’t believe in Buddhism, but that was her head speaking, not her 

heart. My immunity to fanciful stories came from being raised on an arsenic diet of my 

mother’s mystical tales of how Christ turned water to wine, healed cripples and raised the 

dead. To my mind, the debate between religion and science was tiring and effete. It’s the 

whole left-brain right-brain struggle that’s made the world schizophrenic. 

‛You know this is all just bullshit? It’s a great thesis, but...’ 

Hiroshi went from calm to demented in one second. She threw the first thing that 

came to hand, a heavy stapler that hit me so hard on the forehead that I saw a pink flash. I 

grabbed the stapler from the floor, held it trembling in my hand above her, then threw it out 

the window. 

‛What’s your problem?’ I asked. 

‛You’re the dumbest smart person I have ever met! You’re like a rock, sometimes I 

want to kick you, you know nothing about anything, and all you know is what you hear 

people say. A head full of other people’s thinking doesn’t make you an expert!’ She was 

shaking with anger, then slumped exhausted into the chair, panting. 

‛What the fuck do you expect? I’ve read these ninety pages of your thesis and all I 

can think is - beautiful handwriting.’ 

Breathless, she added, ‛You don’t understand emptiness, formlessness or 

impermanence. You don’t get it at all?’ 

I went to touch her shoulder, worried at how pale she looked. She pulled away.

‛Don’t touch me!’ 

‛Well, I think I know a bit about impermanence.’ 


‛Liar!’ she growled. ‛You’ve sat through weekend retreats with me and Rinpoche 

asking you fifty questions, do you get it? No! And you say yeah yeah piece of cake, but 

where’s the cake?’ 

Warily, I sat down, ‛Okay, so explain impermanence to me like it’s the first time 

I’m hearing it.’ 

Then she grabbed a sheet of paper from her thesis and stabbed it at me. 

‛What?’ I looked at the paper in her hand. ‛What!’ 

‛What do you see?’ she asked, waving the paper in my face. 

‛Paper.’ 

‛Is that all?’ 

I looked again at the paper, ‛I see words, paper, black, white?’ 

‛Exactly!’ she exploded. ‛Black and white, that’s you mister superman, I can 

conquer the world and nothing can hurt me, but I want to know where the hell is Clark 

Kent, where the hell is he, I need to know? Exactly, because you don’t know yourself. 

You’re a cardboard cut-out, you can’t even see me, all you see is in black and white, like 

those old movies you love, like Casablanca, black and white, friend or foe, whoa or woe, 

but its not Casablanca in the real world, because in the real world there is only happy 

endings when you pay for them!’ 

‛Is that so?’ 

‛Yes that is so. Your cup is so full it’s leaking out your ears.’ 

Ten minutes passed and not a sound save the metronome clacking of the cheap wall 

clock, and the indifferent thub thub as I noisily thumped my fingers against the wall. 

‛Okay,’ I finally submitted, ‛What am I supposed to see on that paper?’ 

‛What ever you want to see, I don’t give a shit.’ 

Then she broke down and began sobbing and I had her cold limp body in my arms, 

holding her tighter than a child holds eggs at Easter. She calmed down, moving from anger 

to limpid calm in the ease of a dewdrop leaf. 

‛Tell me what you see,’ I asked gently. 

After wiping her tears away, she explained, ‛I see a piece of paper, but then I see 

sunlight from a distant star that kick-starts photosynthesis and the move of sap, the smell of 

Tasmanian pine, a German woodcutter’s sweat, his Polish wife cooking bacon-and-eggs, 

the mill worker late for work because his child’s sick with the flu, the factory worker in


California working seven-days-straight with bony knuckles who isn’t aware of American 

imperialism in the middle east, fighting a seventy-year-old wood press machine that will 

end up a munitions factory one day, the floor sweeper brushing wood-chips with an Italian 

broom made in China, a rope hawser lifting a Swedish-made container at Port of Brisbane, 

the smell of Arab diesel, a Turkish truck driver getting to the uni before closing time, my 

superman rushing to find it because I’m too tired to walk the three hundred metres to the 

store, that’s what I see!’ 

She was breathless, and strangely pale. I held her hand nervously. 

‛You’ve made your point. I think maybe you should see a doctor...’ 

‘I did, but they are like you, they never listen, but hey, you’ll get the idea when 

you’re a father. By then it’ll all make sense.’ 

‛Me, a father? Like that’s ever gonna happen.’ 

She walked to the window and looked out, leaning against the wall, ‛No, not yet, 

not for at least another seven months.’ 

it. 

Oh shit, was my only thought. 

The following night, Hiroshi was away at Karuna. 

Bored, I looked through her belongings in my cupboard. I found her diary and read 

Something has died in me. Something I had clung to so vehemently 

and didn’t want to lose. Here in Osaka, away from Ari, I am no longer 

me. I am something else, something ineffable, sublime, weightless. What 

is this thing? I do not know. I only know what I am not. I am not hungry. 

I am not tired. I am not lonely. I get out of bed, and attend to my niece’s 

bath. I am crouching over her as she sits in the bath tub, holding a 

napkin and washing her face as she chatters silly English words she is 

learning, words that make no sense because she does not comprehend the 

meaning behind them. It was as if I wrote 漢字 to Ari and told him to 

repeat the words. He could play his tongue over the vowels, but his 

breath would be empty of meaning. He would merely parrot the words in 

the same way that my niece is parroting English. I don’t want to leave 

Japan. Yet, all my anger at knowing Ari loves me, knowing I could stay in 

Japan with my family, there remains this pulling from inside my heart 

which says that soon I must return to Australia, to finish what I have


started. Maybe next time I will come back with him? What a joke. 

Bringing a man back here to my traditional family, a man who isn’t 

Japanese. A man as lowly as him to my family. They would laugh at me. 

They would say, ‛Have you gone mad? An Australian?’ 

And they would look him up and down and wonder what on earth I 

saw in him. They would suspect I just felt pity for him, or to make a 

mockery of him, to hurt him, to make this Aussie love me so that I could 

leave him. But these angry thoughts don’t seem to be coming from me 

anymore. It is like there has been a separation, of a me and I that are no 

longer one. I cannot identify with I. Who is this angry Japanese girl I see 

in the mirror getting dressed for the airport. Who is this small Japanese 

girl whose body craves a man thousands of miles away, but who is the ‛I’ 

that hates him - loathes him. Who am I? 

All ‛I’ have ever wanted is someone who understands me, who can 

love me for what I am rather than what they see me as. My ‛I’ knows that 

men are so easy to please, and hence manipulate. You play with their 

cock and you have them coming in the palm on your hand. But this man, 

I make him come and he doesn’t leave. And then he makes me come and I 

ask him to stay! ‛I’ must be mad. Who is this ‛I’? I do not know her any 

more. Where has this emptiness gone that ‛I’ craved for, for so long? I 

once asked Ari about emptiness and he sighed, as if blowing out a 

lifetime's frustration. 

‛Emptiness? What emptiness? Maybe you have come home, to 

yourself.’ 

I laughed - the fool, what would he know? An ugly boy who thinks 

because he’s read a few books on Buddhism that he is a Buddha?! The 

only nice thing about him is his cock. 

Pfugh! Men, I do not need them. I will not return to Australia. Never. 

At the airport, I am waving goodbye to my family. I am wetting my 

niece’s face with my tears. I cannot speak because of the heartache of 

leaving my family. It tears me apart that I will be travelling all alone. It 

is like death, like dying. You say goodbye to those you love and you know 

there is nothing you can do to stop the departure. The time draws you 

away from them. You say your last goodbyes, and you are spirited away


into the sky - until the next time. If there is ever a next time. Ari, who I 

now think of as some modern El Deuce, can conquer me, but he is a 

dictator over his own heart. He thinks he can tell me about 

reincarnation, but I think he is rubbish on legs. He may be right, all of 

life is suffering, samsara, but he has no exit, no escape route. If I am 

suffering, then so is he. 

I feel a trembling within me as I think of him. My body begins to 

tingle as I settle into the seat on the plane. I am leaving all my love 

behind me and going to a stranger’s arms and bed. But will it be enough 

to satisfy the emptiness that I feel? But then I look and cannot find my 

emptiness. There is only me and ‛I’ left. 

I am floating through clouds, my family growing smaller and 

smaller in my eyes as I look out the plane’s window, but though their size 

grows smaller, yet in my heart they grow bigger and bigger. When I 

return in six months or a year, they will be bigger, and I will have to 

remember them all over again. But I will never leave my family. They will 

never leave me. I will always cherish them in my heart, until the day I 

die. I can never forget them. I can never forget the feeling of love. 

Love is like a boat that belongs on the water of life - but ironically 

the water never belongs in the boat. 

The aircraft streaks through the blue, taking me away from the only 

place and only souls I have ever loved. Much later, it deposits me on a 

cold hard antipodean continent with the insouciance of bird droppings. I 

feel utterly alone, and a long way from home. But there is that silly young 

boy again, waiting for me to fill his arms. He embraces me until my 

emptiness is forever gone. I have come home, to another home, my new 

home, a new love. 

As I returned the diary to the cupboard, I realised how complex Hiroshi was. I 

would never truly understand her. 

Hiroshi discovered my alcoholic tendencies the hard way. The next day, I spent the 

afternoon down at the pub. I returned to the college and passed out drunk on my bed. Some 

time later, I awoke to see a figure moving around the darkness of my room. I thought it


was Hiroshi, but then I noticed the rastafarian hair, and the immense shape of the man. I 

turned on my beside lamp. 

‛Good evening, Harry,’ the man said, clutching my record player under his arm. 

I recognised the intruder as Joel, a Jamaican who lived at King’s college. He was an 

engineering student and a part-time body-builder. We had run into each other a few times at 

the campus gym. He knew I was from a wealthy family and would taunt me about my 

skinny arms, and gay clothes, hoping to bait me into a fight. 

‛I see you’re fucking that Asian chick now,’ he said. ‛Did you get bored with sheep? 

Mind you, Harry, I can see the attraction. Japanese tits - they’re the best in the world.’ 

I slowly got off the bed, ‛Put down my stuff, Joel. Everyone knows you’re a thief 

and I’m not going to be one of your victims.’ 

‛Sorry, Dude.’ 

‛I won’t ask you again.’ 

I walked to the door, blocking his path. 

He growled down at me, ‛Harry, don’t make me hurt you.’ 

‛The name’s Ari.’ 

I looked at one of the LP in his hand, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. I 

rolled my eyes in contempt, having just bought it a few days before. 

‛Hey, Harry, I’ll count to three.’ 

He went to head-butt me on three, but I elbowed his forehead as he swung down on 

me. His head cracked against my elbow. He staggered back, dazed. I knocked him out cold 

with a single punch to the jaw, only calling security after I had mangled his face and 

thrown him down a flight of stairs. 

My propensity for drunken violence always worried me. It seemed only during a 

rage could I find relief from my unhappiness. 

While I waited for the university security to turn up, Hiroshi arrived. She looked at 

the blood-spattered student’s face, his twisted legs and the long line of blood down the 

stairs. She walked over the unconscious body. 

‛Are you okay?’ she asked. 

‛Fine,’ I growled, trembling with rage. 

I explained to her what had transpired, and we sat and waited on the stairs until two 

security guards arrived. By then, Joel was coming around, groaning about his broken nose. 

After hearing about the burglary, one of the guards said he was glad someone had finally 

done what he wanted to do months before. When they had left, Hiroshi and I walked to my

oom. 

‛I’m sorry about all that, Hiroshi,’ I said. ‛I think I need therapy.’ 

‛You don’t need therapy,’ she rebutted me. 


I put the record player onto the sideboard, ‛Maybe I’m evil, like my father says?' 

‛Maybe you have just been lying to yourself that you’re not.’ 

‛You know you can be really depressing.’ 

‛More depressing than alcohol?’ 

‛No,’ I concluded, plugging the player into the socket. ‛I want to stop drinking.’ 

‛No you don’t.’ 

‛You’re supposed to be helping me!’ 

‛Hell no,’ she laughed. 

I turned the record player on, and checked the stylus wasn’t broken. Hiroshi sat 

down on the bed, watching me. 

‛Your thoughts make you drink, Ari. Your thoughts, not your mind.’ 

‛Same bloody thing.’ 

Hiroshi handed me the LP which had fallen down beside the bed, ‛The brain needs 

three things; food, water, sleep. But your thoughts, your ego, creates a world of needs; 

chocolate, booze, parties, fancy clothes, prestige, praise, fame, wealth, sex.’ 

I removed the LP from its jacket, ‛I could do without your Buddhist bullshit.’ 

‛Do you want to listen, or do you want to stay drunk all your life?’ 

‛Go on. I’m listening.’ 

‛You are two people; one is buddha nature, one is human nature, one pure, one 

impure, one is mind, one is thoughts. Until you separate the two, you will never be happy. 

Most people can’t distinguish them, and are driven by their thoughts, their desires, their 

needs. They are asleep. Around us are all these uni students, most of them are invested in 

their future careers as doctor, lawyers, vet. But why?’ 

‛Because they want a good career.’ 

‛No, because they think it will make them happy. Their investing in future luxuries 

that usually lead to poverty; a deeply-indebted spiritual poverty.’ 

I dropped the record on the platter and lifted the stylus onto it, ‛Who are you to 

talk, doing a Masters degree on Eastern philosophy?’ 

‛It’s an immediate passion, not a step to a future one. I am passionate about the 

pursuit of wisdom. Education never freed a single mind from suffering. The Buddha didn’t 

become enlightened from what he knew, but what he did with that knowledge, the wisdom


to take what’s good and discard the rest. The ability to unlearn and relearn. Few people 

understand the power of being empty. Of being still. It is to behave like water; shapeless. 

When an obstacle gets in the way, it simply moves around or over, effortlessly.’ 

‛So you think I’m schizophrenic?’ 

‛No, but possible manic depressive. You identify totally with your thoughts. Thus, 

you drink. You are yet to learn you are not your thoughts.’ 

Frustrated, I growled, ‛If I’m so fucking imperfect, why the hell are you still 

hanging around?’ 

She smiled unexpectedly, ‛Because I am attracted to you.' 

The melodic notes of Stevie Wonder stirred in the background. 

‛I find that hard that believe.’ 

She kissed me tentatively. 

‛When you’re inside me,’ she said, ‛When I feel you coming, for those three or four 

seconds, you no longer exist. I no longer exist.’ She looks longingly into my eyes, ‛For 

those few moments in eternity, there is only the moment.’ 

I turned up the music loud, then pulled her toward me. 

‛The wise might one day weep at your plight, Hiroshi.’ 

She lay down, awash with music and the waves of my attentive hands. 

‛Why is that?’ 

‛For lust loses itself in the longing.’ 

She sighed, disappointed, ‛Let’s just fuck.’ 

The next morning, I was outside the college car-park, Hiroshi in her jungle 

camouflage pyjamas. I took a Polaroid of her and then rode away. 

I was fishing around for coins to buy a coffee when I found a letter she had hidden 

in my rucksack. 

I never believed in marrying in haste, to then repent at leisure. 

If you are so wise, why can’t you be tolerant? 

If you are so passionate, why can't you be patient? 

If you are so enthusiastic, why can’t you be generous with your time? 

If you call this friendship off, please don’t blame me. 

If you think I am deluded, is it so much to ask for some compassion? 

If you complain that I don’t kiss you first thing in the morning, shall I stop

giving you hundreds of kisses at night? 

Don’t break my heart into war and pieces. 


Such eloquence I thought, from a girl whose profound beauty, of both mind and 

body, so deceptively stole my heart. I was duped into believing she was immortal.

irthday. 

≈ 


I was in Townsville to participate in the celebrations for my father’s fiftieth 

Home was a Grecian manor with a steep driveway to the top. I keyed in the security 

pin and the gates opened. My heart sank as I rode into the estate and saw the Greek flag 

fluttering from the roof. 

A week in Townsville with my family was like being caught in a time eddy, my 

mother a temporal vortex that sucked reality out me. She made our home a shrine to her 

Hellenic past, how she imagined it was in Kastellorizo before she left, when she was too 

young to understand the communist civil war, the corruption of the law, the exodus of the 

brave. 

She’s lived in 1950s Kastellorizo in her mind for the last thirty years and I told her 

Greece was Bankrupt, and Kastellorizo was a red rock as barren as my spinster Aunt 

Despina. 

I told her this just to make her cry. When babies cry, they wake up, but mother just 

kept sucking the nipple of dream-time. Maria and I were truly weaned of dreams and spat 

the milk in her face every chance we got. 

Jimmy Porter, a wiry old man on a postman’s motorbike had been delivering the 

mail to Yarrawonga since I was a school kid and he remembered me because I used to race 

him down the winding streets to the Strand. He had no fingers on his left hand; some said a 

farming accident, but Maria recked it was God’s punishment for being a masturbator. 

Maria and I used to call him Dim Jim, because we’d open the front gate to let out 

our childhood dog, Minnie, when we heard his motorbike reach the top of the rise at the 

head of our street. He’d see the dog as if it was the first time, and not know what to do. 

Fear had made him a moron, not a good trait for a postman.


He gave me a letter on the day after I arrived as well as a cautionary glance, ‛I 

really thought you’d be dead or in jail by now, Ari.’ 

‛Just goes to prove, doesn’t it, old man.’ 

‛What’s that?’ he asked with a toothless grin. 

‛Only the good die young.’ 

He thrust a letter into my chest and rode off, never sure of whether the dog was 

listening or not. 

I opened the letter from Hiroshi. 

Dear Ari, 

I know I scared you away last week with my vulgarity. I am sorry. 

I don’t know what’s wrong. I feel so tired and felt you didn’t care 

about me. Maybe I got angry to impress you! But now, I don't know what 

I think. In the instant I opened my heart and my body to you, it made me 

feel unwanted and unloved by someone who is so important to me, as 

important as your career is to you. 

This letter is about nothing except my feelings, that I feel I have 

become just another burden to you. As I have said to you before, it is how 

we behave at bad times that shows our true colours. Are you showing me, 

at this hard time in your life that you really only see me as a good fuck? I 

know I sound selfish, but I feel that I had to share my feelings the last 

night we were together, showing you that I was angry with you but still 

desired you. Feeling is nothing like knowing. Sometimes you feel like 

everything is going well. But you know when things aren’t. Where I stand 

at the moment is a place of pure feeling. I don’t know. I am confused, 

hence this letter... 

I know this is probably the most negative letter I have ever sent 

anyone, but it is a missive coming from the despair of feeling unwanted. I 

realise today that I could wait ten years for you to decide that you love 

me, and at the end of it, still be waiting for you to say something more 

than ‛It’s a bit early for that.’ Ari, I’m not a mind reader. 

When the dust has settled in the next few weeks, will there just be 

dust between us? I can’t see through this at the moment. I feel only 

confusion; it makes me want to walk away from my commitments because 

they mean nothing without love. I want to have this child with you.


Imagine the depth of my feelings to want to do that. I have never said it 

before in my life! 

What is the use of me imagining myself to be a mother to your child 

if her father doesn’t love me? How is our child going to see me in ten 

years time, and what would she say if you left? I guess she will become 

distrustful of people. I know that if we are still together when our child is 

15, and we split up then, she will ask me, ‛Why couldn’t you love my 

father enough to make him stay,’ to which I could only reply, ‛Because he 

didn’t love me.’ There is nothing without love, and everything with it. 

It saddens me that you might read this and feel only disgust without 

also feeling what I may be going through. Can you imagine that I feel 

ashamed to have to write this letter because I am unable to communicate 

it to you in any other way? I see myself as a failure, someone who is 

scared to be without you, but who’d rather walk away from the one great 

love she has found in her life, than try to survive without that love being 

reciprocated? They say that true love is a capacity to love regardless of 

how the other person feels about you. To love your enemy even if they 

hate you, but I am not a great person. Far from it! Because I am selfish 

in my love, I ask too much of you; to be with me, to share your life with 

me, to be my lover and partner. I realise there is an addiction in my love 

for you, that it is impossible to ignore you, to not love you, but the pain of 

not having you in my life is great. I know you will see this expression of 

love as a burden, but it is not meant to be. I have, in the past, been told 

by others that they love me, but I have had the courage to say I don’t love 

them. And whatever they feel as a result, at least they know where I 

stand. If this letter is a burden to you, it means quite simply that you 

don’t love me, because love shouldn’t be a burden. 

You don’t have to carry another person. Love asks only that you hold 

their hand. Cuddle them if they cry, nurse them when sick, change their 

nappy if their dirty. But would you say your love, your sleepless nights 

and tired days were a burden if that love were about our child? That is 

love in its greatest form, which you show me amply and constantly in 

your attentiveness to orphaned and injured animals. And I don’t expect 

as much from you, because I can never be compared to a dog. No woman

would dare to even try! 


There is nothing more painful than the mirror, to see yourself as 

others see you. In that looking-glass, I see myself as somewhat pitiful, 

somewhat lost and in need of love and understanding. I don’t need 

someone who understands my poetry. I need someone who understands 

that I am worthy of being loved by them. I am like any woman, who, full 

of faults and physical imperfections, can still be loved for the few 

qualities she has: a commitment to what she thinks is important, a 

genuine desire to care and nurture those who appreciate her soul. If a 

baby cries, give him some attention. If a woman cries, try and 

understand her. If you can’t understand her, don’t be her friend. 

Where do I go from here? I have backed myself into a corner. I won’t 

come out lashing. I have loved you to the best of my ability these months 

we have been together, and I know I could have loved you a whole lot 

more. I wished I had a bigger heart, I really do! Still, I choose to put my 

faith in love. 

I believe that the universe is a living thing, galaxies like cells in our 

body, growing old and dying, then to be replaced, all the while the entity 

called life remaining. My body, my whole universe, I have offered up to 

you, not as a sacrifice but as a service that you may find the peace you so 

earnestly need. 

The greatest lovers I ever met were my parents, who showed me 

what true love could be, given enough effort and tolerance. They taught 

me that true love, lasting love, is just ‛hard work between two friends.’ I 

am still hoping to explore that love with you. 

Is what we have worth waiting for, or has this love-train long since 

departed? Am I here alone, standing at the station with the wrong 

timetable in my hands. I can only conclude that there is no train, unless I 

hear otherwise. 

I leave you with this thought... 

There is no such thing as good or evil, only love or fear; one 

sublimates the ego, the other manifests it; one unites, the other divides; 

one creates heaven, the other hell. 

Hiroshi


Some fifty or so of the immediate family had arrived for the party. The women, 

particularly Aunt Despina, Mum and Maria, spent all night preparing the food, polishing 

the cutlery, cleaning the house. The two maids were frenetically making the house as 

spotless as Mother dictated to them on a hourly basis. 

The house was a hive of activity and I spent most of my time in Dad’s library, 

reading old classics, avoiding interactions as much as possible. 

He arrived from Canberra the evening before his birthday. I didn’t see him until he 

came into the study about midnight. I was buried in a The Tibetan Book of Living and 

Dying, a book I had bought en route to Townsville. I had met Sogyal Rinpoche just a week 

before when he gave a presentation at the University of Queensland. Hiroshi had dragged 

me along. I was bored before I got there, but the monk had an intensity I had seen only in 

my martial arts teacher. There was something about him which exuded intense 

concentration and confidence - a man I would not like to meet in a dark alley. 

Despite my reluctance, I found the book interesting, if only as an intellectual 

pursuit. There was some coincidental symmetry between the twelve stages of karma which 

Sogyal Rinpoche alluded to in his book and and the twelve steps of the AA’s creed. Karma 

was all about the addiction of desire, and how the buddha meditated upon the stages to 

liberate himself from samsara. AA’s twelve steps were about a movement toward a higher 

purpose in living with addiction to alcohol. But unlike AA’s motives of individual 

salvation, there is nothing personal about karma - it’s just the business of causality. 

I concluded that numbers appeared to be pivotal in any philosophical pursuit. 

‛Ari, are you deaf!’ 

I looked up, realising my father had been talking to me for some time. 

‛Sorry, what were you saying?’ 

‛I was saying when you’ve finished uni, are you going to look for a job?’ 

‛Maybe.’ 

Taking the book from my hand, he looked at the cover, ‛Why are you reading about 

cults?’ He threw the book at me, then walked to his desk and placed his heavy briefcase on 

it. 

‛Dad, there’s something we need to talk about.’ 

‛Tomorrow, Son. God I hate flying.’ 

‛It won’t take long.’ 

He sat down and removed his glasses, ‛Well...?’


I explained how I had fallen in love. He momentarily seemed pleased until I 

showed him my photo of Hiroshi, and told him she was pregnant. 

‛A Jap student, you say?’ his racism showing in his expression. ‛And on a study 

visa. For god sake, Ari. If your mother finds out, she’ll have a fit! I’ll give you the money 

for an abortion. Make the hard decision now, Son, or you’ll regret it like I did, for the rest 

of your life.’ 

He took a thousand dollars from the safe and thrust it in my hand. 

I threw the money in his face and stormed out. 

By mid-morning the next day, the family began arriving for the party, a steady flow 

of relatives and friends from all over Queensland bearing gifts. 

Uncle Bart arrived with his entourage of security, which seemed over-kill, but I had 

never seen him without two or three burly men shadowing his every move. He looked 

more bluish than usual, which I assumed was his heart condition deteriorating. My cousin 

Melina, his daughter and heir, sat down next to him, continuing a heated argument in 

Greek which seemed to have begun sometime in the car before they had arrived. 

As the sun rose high, I eased through the festivities with the assistance of the Ouzo. 

Just as I was relaxing into it, Mum informed me that Uncle Bart wanted to have a word 

with me. I found him near the pool, harangued by Melina, whose voice rose and fell with 

every protesting breath. 

‛I don’t care, Dad!’ Melina screamed, as I walked toward them. ‛You said I could 

come back when I was ready. I was only there a month!’ 

‛Am I interrupting?’ I asked. 

Melina gave me a look of despair and with a huff, marched off. 

Uncle Bart beckoned me to sit down beside him, while his bodyguard sat 

uncomfortably crushed into a small plastic pool-side chair. What a comical sight he made. 

‛She’s got to learn, Ari. God knows I have tried. She’s come back from Nebraska 

with this bloody attitude, talking like she’s a New York broker, saying she wants to marry 

some guy called Warren Buffett. Talk to her, will you! She’s always liked you.’ He gestured 

to the vacant chair beside him. ‛Your father rang me in quite an agitated state last night.’ 

He looked across the lawn to where my father was holding court with family members, 

talking in a loud voice about God-knows-what. ‛I told your father he worries too much 

about you. Young Ari has a good heart, I told him.’ 

‛Yes, Uncle.’


‛Now let me be straight. Your father, for all his faults, and I know every one of 

them, has a good heart. He wants the best for his family; for you and Maria. You have a 

great future, but what I don’t understand is why you want to sabotage all that?’ 

‛Sabotage?’ 

‛By getting mixed up with this Japanese girl? Take my advice - marry any girl you 

want, as long as she’s Greek - they expect to be disappointed.’ 

His massive hands rested on the armrests of the chair and I admired the casualness 

with which he held a cigar between his fingers. He had expensive tastes, and an exquisite 

sense of the sophisticated as the 18-carat diamond ring on his left finger attested to. 

‛I wanted to marry your mother you know, but she said she didn’t love me. Thank 

God for her wisdom. I would have made her very unhappy.’ 

I frowned, ‛More than she is now?’ 

‛We would have killed each other,’ he laughed. ‛There’s only one thing worse than 

a smart women, and that’s a fiery one!’ 

I couldn’t believe he was talking about the same woman who I had never seen raise 

her voice to anyone, except my father. 

He looked away, as if recollecting some fond memories, ‛The only problems in life 

are the ones that money can’t fix, and those problems are thorns you just learn to live with. 

Sex, money, power; these things mean nothing. Two things money can’t buy - love or life. I 

believe only in family, in blood. You are a kind boy, so do not confuse emotions with 

compassion or love with loyalty. Bleating, attentive flattery can dull your heart to true 

affection. The only reliable feeling is action. A commitment is not for an afternoon or 

week, but a lifetime. Do not bend to compromise. Judge no man except by what he does, 

for in the test of time, the sins of the many make crime a legal tender. Help only the ones 

who help themselves. And for those who cross us, we have to punish them to warn the 

future.’ 

He sounded like Chairman Mao on crack. 

Uncle Bart then relit his cigar and leaned back, coughing. ‛Your father knows these 

things but he’s stubborn like a mule. He thinks he can save people by fixing their ills. Such 

naivety! People cannot change - they are either dust or diamonds. And he thinks politics 

was his idea.’ 

He leaned forward in his chair and looked me right in the eye. ‛He hasn't a clue! 

Your father knows nothing about nothing, but he loves you. Believe me when I say this - I 

know he has been tough on you, but he does love you.’


Suddenly he leaned back in his chair and flicked the ash off his cigar. ‛My only 

advice is don’t be brainwashed by the dreams of others like my daughter, Melina. Dreams 

are poison, Ari, they’ll kill you quicker than cyanide. Think for yourself and you’ll never 

be led astray.’ 

I nodded, overweighed by his speech. 

He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. 

‛Go now,’ he smiled. ‛And do me a favour. Marry Melina.’ 

‛Funny,’ I laughed then walked off. I knew that no one could change my destiny, 

not even myself. 

Melina was in the kitchen with my mother. There was something about Melina 

which had changed. Her eyes, once mischievous, were cold and calculating. Then I realised 

it was the same eyes I wore, those of a tertiary educated mind. 

‛How’s uni going, Melina?’ 

‛Hate it,’ she growled, infuriated. ‛Accounting is the worst! Soon as I finish this 

MBA, I’m out of this country. Going to South America.’ She leant over and whispered to 

me, ‛I’ve made some investments in Browfield Oil shares and their stock has produced a 

total return of eighty-three percent in the last fiscal quarter versus a negative eleven percent 

for the S&P five hundred. Isn’t that exciting?’ 

I sipped on whiskey, ‛Have you tried my mother’s cooking?’ 

I watched my mother from the corner of my eye. Since the night before, when 

Mum found out about Hiroshi, her hair seemed to have gone completely grey and when she 

looked at me she would burst into tears. As she walked around the kitchen, she resembled 

one of those half-naked fakirs of Calcutta who shuffle the streets with a begging-bowl 

pleading for rice. 

‛Mum, for God’s sake!’ I shouted, interrupting Melina mid-sentence. ‛It’s not the 

end of the world!’ 

She burst into tears once more, lamenting in a confused babel of Greek and English 

about the corruption of her kids by Western immorality. 

I told her so many times about her old world attitude but soon grew tired of 

repeating myself. 

‛Ari!’ Melina shouted. ‛Of all the people, a Jap!’ 

I walked out into the back yard and ran into Julianne. She had just finished her 

MBA, and was now officially my father’s personal secretary, but she had ambitions. I 

could tell it in the way she worked the family. I sensed that one day she would take her


own personal political directions. Maybe when my family no longer benefited her, or she 

grew tired of my father. I really disliked the woman. 

Canberra?’ 

‛How goes it, Ari?’ Julianne asked. 

‛Can’t complain,’ I replied, indifferent. ‛When are you and Dad headed back to 

‛We’re catching the red-eye tonight. Three weeks of caucus meetings, then back 

here to open a new gold mine near Charters Towers.’ 

‛Sounds like fun,’ I said, totally disinterested. 

She looked around to ensure no one was watching. She put her hand on my 

shoulder, then thrust her over-exposed cleavage in front of me. 

‛You must come down to Canberra some time, Ari. We have a nice apartment there. 

And your father is away a lot. It would be good to have some company.’ 

There was no ambiguity in her invitation. 

I stared at her cleavage, which had grown remarkably since her last visit to 

Townsville. I wondered how much it had cost my father, and whether my mother even 

noticed. I’m sure she had, but as always, she pretended nothing was going on. 

Melina pushed in between us and grabbed my hand. 

‛Why are you ignoring me, Ari?’ she asked, pulling me aside. 

‛I’m not.’ 

‛Excuse me, Julianne,’ Melina said and pulled me away. ‛I don’t pretend to hide the 

fact that anyone here is half as educated as us, that we are light-speed ahead of that 

generation. Father knows he can’t survive without me. You have to know that we can do so 

much together, Ari. With my brains, and your financial backing...’ 

‛Whoa, cousin,’ I held her shoulder. ‛I don’t have a brass razoo.’ 

She laughed, ‛Ari, don’t lie to me. I knew you before you had pubic hair. Trust me, 

when we are both forty, we’ll look back on these plebiscites and laugh. We’ll be in Rio, 

sipping on champagne and you’ll thank me for getting you out of this prison.’ 

I quite liked the sound of Rio, especially when sung by Peter Allen. 

‛Melina, the only reason I got through uni was not because I was the sharpest tool 

in the box, but because I was blessed with a photographic memory. Maybe you can get 

back to me when you’ve got it all figured out.’ 

‛I have figured it out!’ she expostulated. ‛It’s all planned! All I need is fifty grand.’ 

She stood against me, her hands on my chest, ‛Fifty grand, and in two years, we’ll 

have everything we could possible desire. Dad won’t let me have the money.’


My decision was saved by the family gathering excitedly for the birthday cake. 

Everyone sang ‛Happy Birthday,’ as my father blew out the candles. 

Someone foolishly asked for a speech, and despite his initial protestations, father 

gave them what they asked for. But instead of simply thanking everyone for their 

attendance and presents, my father gave an impromptu speech that was long enough to 

rival Fidel Castro’s eight-hour marathon before the General Assembly. It began as ever 

with a paraphrase of a theological argument we had a few months before. 

‛It is a universally recognised truth,’ he pontificated, ‛that if one commits murder in 

the name of God, one should at least believe in God.’ After pausing for effect, he 

continued. ‛This was my clarion call, the opening line of my maiden speech at the 

Townsville City Council Chambers when I first ran for the seat of Ingerton.’ 

I was so bored with his speech that I went off and changed into my bathers, 

returning to the pool to talk with Clyffe, my dog. A few moments later Maria came and sat 

down beside me, taking out sunscreen and rubbing it onto her long legs. 

‛Don’t you just hate Julianne?’ she said, sipping from my glass of champagne, 

‛She’s just a whore with claws using Dad as a ladder.’ 

The sun beat down on me as I laughed. 

Maria lathered sunscreen on her skinny arms, ‛Julianne can pick from our money 

tree. You know Uncle Bart’s fucking her too, and if she crosses him, she’ll find that tree 

has thorns bigger than her tits. As for Melina, she’s a loose door that just needs a good 

banging.’ 

That’s what I loved most about Maria, she had no illusions about people. No 

bullshit, just day-to-day reality, like 60 Minutes, without the ads. 

‛About time you shaved your legs,’ I complained. ‛They’re hairier than mine!’ 

‛Fuck off,’ she chirped. ‛What’s this I hear about you getting a girl up the duff?’ she 

replied. ‛You love her?’ 

‛I don’t know. She does my head in. She’s a buddhist.’ 

‛I think she will be good for you. Though it is sad.’ 

‛Why?’ 

She lay back on the banana lounge, ‛You know if you get married to this Jap, Mum 

and Dad will never talk to you again.’ 

‛Will you?’ 

She smiled, ‛As long as you invite me to the wedding.’ 

We soaked up the beating sun for an hour. Maria would make a great wife, I

thought. I just hoped she would find the right man. 


As soon as the party had ended, I kissed Maria good-bye, bid adieu to the dog, then 

quickly evaded Melina near the front door. 

I cranked up throttle on the motorbike and scooted down the driveway, seeing 

Melina waving frantically at me in the rear-view mirror. 

The long departure had begun with a push.

I had been away from Hiroshi for a fortnight. 

≈ 


Instead of returning to Brisbane, I rode up to Port Douglas and spent some time 

chilling out in a motel near the ocean, mostly drinking and watching porn. After a week, I 

felt sane enough to return south. 

I took my time getting back to Brisbane. 

Riding into Union College that night, I returned to my room and slept for an hour, 

then noticed a post-it note on my desk. 

It said, ‛I am gone. Don’t come looking for me.’ 

Near to panic, I knew where she would be. It normally took an hour and forty-five 

minutes to ride to Karuna. I got to the temple in twenty-seven minutes. 

As my Honda ticked to cool on its side-stand, I rushed up the long earthen steps to 

the main office. 

Karuna, a disorderly array of huts through tall eucalyptus trees, seemed darker and 

quieter than I remembered just a few weeks earlier, until I realised it was five-thirty in the 

morning. 

On a verdant mountainside, Zen prayer flags fluttered noisily in a pre-dawn breeze. 

I went to the female dorms and inquired about Hiroshi. A nun sat lotus-prone 

against a wall, fast asleep or in meditation, I wasn’t quite sure which, but I failed to rally 

her. 

Finally, I found Rinpoche at the septic tanks, wading through waist-deep shit, 

clearing a blockage. He saw me and laughed like a jackal, wide-mouthed and quite 

toothless except for a few black pegs. 

‛Ah, the warrior has returned,’ his voice echoing from inside the septic tank. ‛Here 

is the fight, Ari - to see complexity in shit and simplicity in manure.’ He pointed with a


black hand to a small room at the far end of the block. ‛But don’t listen; go go hurry up, 

she is waiting.’ 

Hiroshi was in a small room the size of a pantry. I opened her door, rehearsing 

words of apology. 

She was sitting in meditation, her thin protruding cheekbones giving her a gaunt 

look in the dim light. I could see the slight protruding belly that heralded the infant in her 

womb. I was overcome with tears of joy, as I listened to her chanting a Buddhist prayer, 

but dismayed at how much her physical condition had deteriorated; 

‘May there be the good fortune of Yidams and hosts of deities, 

May there be the good fortune of Buddhas and Dakinis, 

May there be the good fortune of Dharma protectors and guardians.’ 

When she finished praying, I walked toward her. 

‛Why would you pray to buddhas and bikinis?’ I said, mishearing what she had 

been mumbling in prayer. 

Hiroshi, who hadn’t noticed my presence, jumped startled. 

I walked to her and kissed her cold cheek. 

She looked pale and her once mischievous eyes seemed lifeless. Around us 

bellowed the gongs of morning prayer and the soft groans of nuns stirring in the dorms. 

‛You should not be here,’ Hiroshi said, but her voice was like an echo. She turned 

away, her feeble hands trembling, her lips blue. 

‛Let’s get out of here.’ 

She fell back, like a bird falling off a tree, closing her eyes. 

The prayer gongs rang for a full minute, waking the sleeping Rosellas who began to 

symphony the morning. 

Hiroshi slowly regained conscious as the ambulance arrived from Noosa. While I 

was waiting in the car-park for the ambulance men to wheel Hiroshi into the van, Rinpoche 

came and stood beside me and kicked the tyres of my bike. 

‛Do not be confused with the appearances of things,’ he crouched down to 

inspecting my bike. He stunk, and his clothes were blackened with the slime of human 

effluent. I was wild with fury that he seemed so disinterested in Hiroshi’s welfare, until he 

said, ‛Hiroshi is stronger than you think Ari, but weaker than you know.’ I quickly put on 

my helmet, hoping to chase the ambulance, now a mile down the road. ‛No hurry,’ he 

added, holding his hand to my chest. ‛They will do some tests, then tell her she is dying. 

Don’t listen to them. They are only doctors.’ He held the bike by both handlebars and


rocked it from side to side. ‛Very fast. Very fast, no?’ He wiped his hand on his trousers, 

and extended it to shake my hand, then thought better of it. ‛You go now,’ he concluded. 

‛Because love gives you only one choice. From now on, Rinpoche, you must always say 

yes.’ 

‛Yes,’ I replied, ‛I have to go,’ wondering why the hell he called me Rinpoche. 

‛Ah, you not understand nothing yet, a great treasure you have inside, but you look 

everywhere as if you’ve lost it. But it is not lost. One day, not long from now, you will see 

a lonely young girl singing to herself and your heart will go out to her, and so the circle 

will begin once again. The universe is only made of distance, time and intention. Until that 

day, you keep learning to surf the waves and swim. Everything is water. Everything is 

nothing. Who am I, a Tibetan monk in a Japanese monastery, talking to a Greek in 

Australia. I must go now. My shit awaits me, and then after, I must cook breakfast for the 

nuns.’ 

I left, thinking that everyone in this place spoke in riddles.

In war against disease, the first martyr is innocence. 

≈ 


During Spring 2001, long after Hiroshi’s fight with cancer, Novartis released 

Gleevec, a drug to cure acute myelogenous leukaemia. Hailed as a new ‛magic bullet’, it 

promised to save over 60,000 lives a year through its ability to specifically target 

neoplastic cells without damaging healthy tissue. It was motivated by a promise of $3 

billion in profits for share holders. In that same year, a Russian spring, the spin-stabilised 

supersonic missile was unveiled by the Moscow military. Hailed as a new ‛smart bomb’, it 

predicted an enhanced range of fire, reliability and combat efficiency that could easily kill 

over 100,000 enemy combatants with a single strike. It was motivated by the KGB’s fears 

of Kazakhstan. 

In the war against death, the first martyr is hope. 

I felt hope slipping through my fingers as I listened to the doctor explaining that 

Hiroshi had acute myelogenous leukaemia. He explained that chemotherapy was essential 

to survival but Hiroshi refused. She said she wasn’t putting her unborn child at risk, that 

chemotherapy was an act akin to Mabiki, the Japanese term for infanticide. I explained to 

her she was overreacting, but her face showed her resolve. 

‛I refuse,’ she growled. ‛You may as well kill me now!’ 

After she calmed down, the doctor spoke calmly. 

‛You will not survive six months,’ he warned. 

‛I don’t care.’ 

She finally agreed to sign a document to say she agreed on her own undertaking to 

refuse any medical treatment. 

technique.’ 

‛This can be managed,’ Hiroshi assured me. ‛Rinpoche will find a meditation


We checked out of the Noosa hospital and caught a cab back to Karuna. 

‛Everything is karma,’ Hiroshi said to me as we rode back to the temple. ‛It is 

everything in the past, present and future. Karma is your God and your devil, it is the ying 

and yang. When you pray to God, you are praying to yourself. Every experience brings you 

closer to understanding the way out of the web. I will never leave you, Ari, not even when 

I die.’ 

‛Don’t be absurd,’ I growled, ‛You’re not going to die. There have been some 

incredible advances made lately in medicine...’ 

I stopped mid-sentence, knowing I was repeating my father’s words, that I had 

nothing original to offer her in the way of advice. I felt sad, and my longing for her began 

to eclipse my hopes for her survival. I began to cry. 

‛I love you, Ari,’ she hugged me. ‛For however long we are together, that will be 

enough. We have been together many times and this will not be the last time.’ 

Her bravery in the face of the diagnosis surprised me. I felt more devastated, or at 

least showed it more. What was most devastating at the time was that the green valley we 

drove through seemed so untouched by our sadness. The car jostled across a bridge and we 

turned a tight corner beside a dry river bed, full of granite boulders and dead grass. Life 

went on, regardless of the gravity of the situation. 

‛It’s just not fair,’ I cried angrily. 

Hiroshi held my hand, silently gazing out the window. 

When we arrived at Karuna, Rinpoche had organised a room for us close to the 

toilet block, not the most romantic of places but comfortable, with a TV set and a small 

couch. 

We had dinner with that night with Rinpoche, who made light of the situation by 

doing Hollywood impersonations. He was bad at it, but Hiroshi seemed entertained and 

laughed throughout his improvisations of Charlie Chaplin and Robert DeNiro. 

Later, while the silent trees hid the evening’s birds, I remarked to him that I was 

stung by his sacrifice, to give up worldly life altogether and pursue a monastic life. 

of Nirvana.’ 

‛It must be hard,’ I said, ‛having to sacrifice personal dreams for an insecure hope 

‛Marriage is not so different,’ Rinpoche smiled. ‛Like I always tell the student 

monks, if you don’t want to be a monk, then at least get married. Both require the 

abandoning of hope.’ 

I chuckled, as the food teased my nostrils.


There was no meat to be seen, just alfalfa-sprout salads, steamed vegetables, bean- 

curd soup and fruit. Hiroshi never looked up, eating her rice, her perfumed hair on my 

shoulder, and her thigh against mine. 

silence. 

‛Marriage kills love,’ I warned. 

‛So does sex,’ he laughed. 

The moon glowed over the roof of the temple as Hiroshi drank from her glass in 

Afterwards, Hiroshi and I walked through the evening gardens. I held her against a 

tree’s cleft and kissed her, as the ghost of the day was forgotten, and the night air filled 

with promise. The melody of romance had settled into a familiar tune. 

‛She will be here soon,’ she said. And I knew she meant our child. 

In our room, I sat on the window ledge and looked out over the park, the glass-pane 

cold against my hand. The shadows of trees and flashes of the distant city. I knew such a 

tender moments was fleeting, before the moon set over the valley and midnight’s silhouette 

swept up the memories and put them to bed. This was the divided line between now and 

eternity, as I crossed the room and lay beside Hiroshi while she moved uncomfortably with 

child. In this cozened room, the universe disappeared and all that remained was her 

laboured breathing. 

My god, I thought, I’m going to be a father. 

Toward the end of the week, Rinpoche began his Samadhi treatment, a form of 

meditation that involved stilling the mind. I listened to Hiroshi explain the treatment with 

as much patience as I could muster. 

Hiroshi, now five months pregnant, was already finding it difficult to get around. 

Her meditation protocol was rigorous, early-mornings in the temple with Rinpoche 

watching her. Beautifully painted Zen Thangkas hung from the wall with a large golden 

statue of the Buddha behind us. The air was perfumed with incense and it was relatively 

silent except for the odd call of a bird or a distant barking dog. 

Hiroshi was lying on a mattress on the floor. Sitting beside her was Rinpoche. 

As I entered the hall, Rinpoche was speaking intermittently, saying only, ‛think of 

nothing.’ He repeated this every few minutes. I sat and waited. An hour passed, and still 

nothing but the sound of Rinpoche’s voice. 

I grew steadily impatient. Finally, Rinpoche got up. 

‛Please continue, Hiroshi,’ he said, ‛I will come back in a few hours to check your

progress.’ 


Rinpoche led me out of the hall. I looked back to see Hiroshi laying there, her eyes 

closed, breathing slowly and rhythmically. 

We walked in silence down in front of the hall. He pulled out a bag of seeds from 

his robe and began feeding a flock of Rosella that were worrying the lawn. 

grass. 

‛You have something on your mind, Ari?’ Rinpoche asked, tossing seeds onto the 

‛Yes,’ I replied, ‛I have been reading about some new treatments for cancer. There’s 

a new drug they have in Sydney...’ 

‛This is Hiroshi’s choice, Ari.’ 

‛It’s not an informed one.’ 

‛You’re wrong.’ 

‛You can’t cure disease by avoiding it.’ 

‛You’re the only one avoiding what’s happening.’ 

‛But she’s in pain!’ I exploded. 

‛Ah,’ Rinpoche smiled. So there we have you dilemma. You’re compassion is 

admirable Ari, but though Hiroshi may be in pain, she’s not suffering. You’re confusing the 

wagging tail with the dog.’ 

I shook my head, wondering what he was talking about. 

‛Hiroshi has been staring at the ceiling like a zombie. What sort of fucking 

treatment do you call that?’ 

Rinpoche patiently spoke, ‛You think what she is doing is nothing? How long can 

you stop your thoughts? I’ll give you a dollar for every minute you don’t think. No, make a 

dollar for every second!’ He looked at me with assurance. ‛See, Ari. You try, but a second 

later, oops you’re off on some tangent going mad like a gadfly. Samadhi is one of the 

oldest remedies for cancer. It was around before the Buddha, before Christ, the Jains and 

the Hindus. Some say it was around at the time of the Zoroastrians. All I know is that it 

works. Samadhi is the hardest thing a person can do. Show me a man who has no thoughts 

and I’ll show you a buddha.’ 

‛Or a rock,’ I frowned. 

He smiled, ‛Same thing.’ 

‛You’re a charlatan.’ 

‛Of course!’ Rinpoche laughed, then eyeballed me. ‛But the greatest charlatan of 

them all is ego, making you believe it exists when it doesn’t. You and your self-righteous

anger, Ari - you’re like a steamy fart on a winter’s morning!’ 

Rosella. 


Rinpoche laughed aloud, then turned his back on me and resumed feeding the 

What an idiot, I thought, storming through the gardens surrounding Karuna. Damn 

it! Are all these Buddhists the same; so casual about living or dying, like death was just 

walking out of the room? Had all this meditation in pursuit of an altered state or altered 

fate just rotted their brains? Perhaps, I feared, Karl Marx was right when he said that 

religion, like television, is just another form of opium. 

impotent rage. 

I went to Hiroshi’s room and listened to music from the radio, stewing with 

At sunset, the gong rang for evening prayers. I lay on the small hard cot, harried by 

mosquitoes. Finally I got up and walked around the grounds until the sun had set and the 

temple had all but emptied. 

A cool wind blew up from the valley floor. Through the darkness I saw the only 

light, coming from the library. I walked off past the long line of stupas and statues, climbed 

up the stone stairs and into temple. 

Inside, Hiroshi was still meditating. 

‛Hiroshi, you need to see a specialist. Rinpoche doesn’t know shit.’ 

‛My answer is the same. I do nothing now or later. You can’t understand the light 

when you’re sitting in the dark.’ 

I slumped in a chair defeated. 

‛It’s our child.’ 

She turned on me, ‛No, my child.’ 

The words hit me like a hammer. In that moment, I understood that a woman 

becomes a mother not at a baby’s birth, but at its conception, and I had paid the ultimate 

price for motherhood, irrelevancy. 

‛This religion!’ I shouted, ‛It’s brainwashed you!’ 

She turned polemic, ‛The one who is brainwashed is the one who leans on recited 

ideology. You think in your arrogance that every illness has a remedy and every disease a 

cure, but you never once consider the cause. Have you ever asked what causes cancer?’ 

‛How would I know? I’m not a doctor.’ 

‛The cause is here!’ she shouted, tapping her head with her fist so violently, I could 

hear the thunk of her knuckles against her skull. ‛I caused the cancer. And I will deal with 

it, not you!’


Enraged with her stupidity, I threw a cushion at the wall and stormed down the 

stairs of the temple. 

Outside, Rinpoche was sitting in the lotus position on the lawn. I ignored him as I 

marched malevolently past him. 

‛No mind, never mind,’ he laughed. ‛To know nothing, do nothing, create nothing, 

is a harder conviction than most could imagine. Few believe truth to be so simple.’ 

I was angry. Even a blind monk could see that Hiroshi was dying. 

The next morning, Hiroshi wrote me her last poem; 

I asked myself, how could you run to him with legs trembling 

That night I kept talking with a relief of pain 

Why won’t you listen? Why do you look so tortured? 

Because these words rock your boat and you cannot swim? 

What I said that night won’t be said again 

I cry with tears in my eyes on the phone 

I am the murderer, the murdered, the gun and the bullet. 

Why should I talk in this way? Don’t you know 

Tomorrow is the end of world and yesterday was the start! 

Who is ‛he’ at another end of phone 

Is he smiling, listening to me today? 

In frustration, I screwed up the letter into a tight ball and threw it away. 

Hiroshi was dying and there was nothing I could do about it.

Hiroshi was six months pregnant when I did my black belt grading. 

≈ 


My interest in karate was born when I started uni. As a boy growing up in North 

Queensland, surrounded by racism on all sides, I had to learn how to protect myself from 

the offspring of parents who had instilled in their children the same racism that had been 

passed down to them from former generations. 

Not long after starting uni, I went to the local gym. While pumping iron, I watched 

the karate guys climbing the stairs to the upstairs dojo. I heard them screaming out their 

katas, and bored with what I was doing, went upstairs to watch. I was smiling in disbelief 

as Kyoshi Stephen, the instructor and a legend on campus, walked past. 

‛What’s so funny, kid?’ he asked 

‛I doubt those guys in there could handle a real brawl.’ 

I had been in hundreds of fights as a kid at school. Most school lunch breaks were 

punctuated by bullying and protecting Maria. One day, after tiring of running from bullies, 

I lost my temper and swung a fist at one of them who was chasing me. To my surprise, my 

fist hit him square in the nose. The guy collapsed to his knees, holding his bloody nose, 

crying. After that, I no longer ran. After three more victorious fights, no one ever touched 

Maria or myself again. 

I followed Kyoshi into the dojo. He bowed at the entrance, under a hand-printed 

poster over the entrance, ‛Survival teaches us ‛how’ to live, death teaches us ‛when’, and 

love the reason ‛why’.’ 

Kyoshi invited one of the green-belt students over, an off-campus thirteen-year-old 

boy with acne. He faced up to me, ready to fight. 

I laughed, ‛this ain’t fair, he’s just a kid,’ but as I stood to block his advance, he 

grabbed my hand and flung me with an Aikido throw. I was on my back, winded.

Kyoshi laughed, 'Welcome to my office.’ 


The green-belt student was looking down on me with a twisted smile and a helping 

hand. This is how I was introduced into the world of martial arts. 

Kyoshi was Dutch, silent as the sphinx, an Eighth Dan master. He used to break 

twenty-three tiles with his fist, but at seventy he no longer bragged about it. He was old 

school, did his apprenticeship working doors at night clubs from the age of fourteen. On 

his time off, he helped clean up the street gangs. This was back in the drug-wars era of 

inner city Townsville in the ‛70s. No security cameras, no incidence reports. Cops turned a 

blind-eye to security guards’ methods of crowd-control. It was a time when the drug gangs 

ruled the streets and all the cops could do was to police the aftermath of their violence. 

Kyoshi never taught me anything he hadn’t used on some unfortunate punter at 

some time in his career. He’d been in thousands of street fights. He’d say during class that 

he’d had more hits than the Beatles. That he’d been shot, stabbed, beaten almost to death. I 

remember him saying jokingly that the only fight he lost was in court against his ex-wife. 

For the regular punters; the drunks, the crims, the bullies, the deluge that threatens 

to burst the dam of social order, he’d take a page out of Bruce Lee’s book. ‛You can’t stop 

water,’ he’d say, ‛only redirect it, or plug it at its source. Stop it before it begins, or turn its 

force against itself.’ This was martial arts 101. This is what I had been sweating about 

leading up to this week of my black-belt grading. When my stud mates were playing 

virgins like violins, I was perfecting katas. 

My last semester of veterinary school was spent learning how to spay dogs, and my 

nights when I wasn’t at karate, I was nursing Hiroshi at our college dorm. I slept two to 

three hours a night, cramming and training. 

On this day, I explained to Kyoshi why I wanted to postpone my black-belt 

grading; my pending exams and Hiroshi’s illness to name a few. 

Kyoshi shook his head emphatically, no. 

‛Why?’ I asked. 

‛Because you are scared of her.’ 

‛I love her!’ 

Kyoshi smiles, ‛Same thing.’ 

He made me think. Maybe Henry Ford was right when he said people would rather 

die than think. Henry Ford did after all make nice motorcars. 

‛There’s always next year,’ I implored, walking off. 

‛Ari!’


I picked up my gym-bag and turned to give a ritual bow at the door. Somehow 

Kyoshi had covered twenty feet without a sound and was in my face. I could smell the 

tom-cat sting of sweat on his Gi. 

this?’ he asks. 

‛I thought you were smarter than this.’ 

‛Kyoshi, you don’t know what it’s like!’ 

Slowly, he reached for his necklace, showing me the gold Bushido cross. ‛What’s 

‛The gold Bushido.’ 

It was the holy grail of Zen-Do-Kai, a priceless cross carried with pride by the 

fortunate few; men of steel and ruggedness, the true samurai. The Bushido cross 

symbolises our brotherhood. It symbolises the warrior who has endured the rigours to 

become a trusted brother, to defend another wearer of the Bushido.’ 

‛And?’ Kyoshi asked. 

I groaned, reciting from memory, ‛It means dedication to the Brotherhood, and to 

the family encircling the Brotherhood, the loved ones, the clan. It symbolises their 

sacrifice...’ 

‛Yes...’ 

‛Their sacrifice of self for others...’ 

He nodded. 

‛To have the strength to face death...’ 

‛Bingo!’ 

I clenched my fists, ‛You think I am scared to die?’ 

‛Fuck no. You’re scared to live!’ 

I bowed out of the dojo, stung with indignation. 

‛See you at the grading, kid,’ Kyoshi said as I left. 

Lest my karate mentor became my tormentor, I decided at the last minute to attend 

the black belt grading. 

Kyoshi was right about facing my own death. One cannot appreciate the mind-fuck 

of a black-belt grading; no athlete could. How the mental journey far excels the physical 

one. I had been in school punch-ups and street brawls, but a black-belt grading starts where 

most fights end, when one signals defeat or is unconscious. To make matters worse, I had 

come down with a bad dose of the flu the night before, brought on, no doubt, from my 

adopted lifestyle.

at the front. 


The dojo was packed with people when I entered. Kyoshi was standing statue-like 

A nervous sweat beaded my brow as I opened my gym bag, unpacked my mouth- 

guard, MMA gloves and water bottles. 

One of the other brown belts, obviously nervous about the grading whispered to 

me, ‛Don’t you ever get scared?’ 

‛I’m like a duck on a pond,’ I said. ‛Smooth on the surface, but its legs are going 

flat out underneath.’ 

He laughed, standing with me and the other black belt candidates in the centre of 

the dojo before the stern faced grading panel; mostly third, fourth and fifth dans who 

would be marking our grading forms and sparring with us toward the end of the 

examination. 

‛First kata,’ Kyoshi called out. ‛Begin!’ 

Almost on cue, a load of adrenaline dumped into my veins. I crouched into a horse 

stance for the first movement of saenshin kata, my nausea and nerves evaporated 

completely. Kyoshi had repeated to us thousands of times to project our mind out of our 

body. We did what we are told, and robotically, my body responded. 

For the black belt grading, we had learnt eight katas, and twenty separate kick and 

punching routines, all of them repeated randomly during the examination, each routine 

interspersed with twenty sit-ups and push-ups. After thirty minutes in, having done all the 

katas and routines over ten times each at a marathon pace, I spewed into my gym bag. One 

of the green belts came over to offer me support. 

Kyoshi, seeing me talking to a lower belt, squared up to me, hands on his hips. 

‛What’s going on here? A fuckin’ conference?’ 

‛I just wanted to ...’ 

Kyoshi was so fast at unloading a front kick at me that I failed to realise what had 

happened until I crashed into the back wall. 

He stood over me as I clutched my sternum. 

‛Seems to me that you want to give up,’ he shouted. 

I got to my feet, ‛Definitely not!’ 

Guarding my left side, I painfully resumed a stance for the next kata. 

‛Hajime,’ Kyoshi cried once more, and after another hour of gruelling katas, I was 

out-of-body looking down at myself, my brain numb from pain.


Exhausted, we went back to the wall and put on shin guards and mouth-guards for 

the first of ten rounds of full-contact sparring. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my friends, Alan, a first Dan. He had 

been itching to spar with me for the last hour, waiting on the sideline, and was now pacing 

like a tiger. 

Kristen faced me for sparring. 

We touched gloves. 

‛How you doing?’ he asked, grinning. 

‛Fucked.’ 

‛How's your head?’ 

‛Fucked.’ 

‛That’s good, the tank’s still half full!’ 

The bell rang, and he came at me madly with punches. 

I was trembling with fatigue, but managed to avoid most of them, backing away 

and blocking some of them but he caught me fumbling and I eventually copped a 

roundhouse kick to the head. 

I got to my feet, and from out of some dark recess, found enough strength to deliver 

a kick. I missed, but Kristen stepped back slowly enough so that I could clip him with an 

undercut. I saw his knees tremble. 

jaw. 

‛I can do this,’ I thought, excitedly. The uppercut had found his weak spot - a glass 

I threw another combination and clipped him again on the jaw, followed by a front 

kick. He fell to the ground, winded. 

The bell rang, the round had ended. 

Round two started with the same ferocity, only with a fresh third dan opponent. The 

rounds wore on, one by one the higher belts beating the crap out of me. 

What seemed just a few moments more, the bell to the tenth round rang. The 

grading had ended. 

I looked around, my entire body trembling with weakness, my Gi soaked with 

sweat. People were clapping and cheering. Ten rounds of sparing had passed, but to this 

day I don’t remember them. 

Later that night, I gazed at a ten-by-five polaroid of me and Kyoshi standing 

shoulder to shoulder, my nose broken, two black eyes, wine-coloured face and realised 

most of it had been a blur after that kick by Kyoshi which broke two ribs. I had an out-of-


mind smile and a new black belt. I had, it could be said, finally shattered my first illusion, 

that there was such a thing as ‛self’, confirming what Rinpoche thought.

Last time I saw Hiroshi, I wet the bed. 

≈ 


I hadn’t been incontinent since I was thirteen, at my cousin Melina’s place. That 

memorable time found me lying on Melina’s bed. Her and Uncle Bart had just finished a 

huge row out in the kitchen and she came into the room, flustered and frustrated. I was 

reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, indifferent to her 

mood. Compared to my father’s ferocious temper, Bart was meek as a lamb. 

Melina flopped onto the bed beside me, crying. I handed her a tissue, dolefully 

turning the pages of the book. 

She eventually cleared her throat, seeking attention from me. 

‛One day, Ari,’ she announced, ‛I’m going to be famous. Will you come with me?’ 

‛I can’t,’ I replied. ‛I’ve got homework.’ 

She pushed the book down onto my chest. 

‛You’re not listening. Let’s get out of here.’ 

‛You want to go for a ride?’ 

She rolled her eyes, ‛I’m going to New York! You coming?’ 

‛New York? I can’t. I have football in the morning.’ 

She sighed, dived under the sheet and turned off the light. 

This has always been how it was with Melina and I, two aliens whose only 

commonality was our fathers. She never did got to New York that summer, her intentions 

all lightening but no thunder. Instead, she fell asleep in my arms. Soon she was curled up 

beside me, and before long, my body began aching for her in ways my innocent mind 

couldn’t fathom. As moonlight filled the room, I watched her small crooked feet, her bony 

hips, the frightful thrush of hairs at her groin. A few hours later, she woke me rudely, 

demanding to know why there was a wet spot beside her. Then she laughed insanely, and I


ran off home, dull with doubts, through a sweaty night. I sought refuge in my father’s attic, 

to the flickering porn light of a Super-8 fantasy of vampires, beating away at this fright of 

adolescence. 

But this latest bout of bed-wetting, as I lay next to Hiroshi, could be attributed to 

my nerves about final-year exams; this one in particular a four-hour paper and an hour-long 

oral exam on equine surgery. I knew nothing about horses. I preferred to keep it that way. 

I got out of the wet bed and had a quick shower. 

My sister Maria was staying with us at the time. She was asleep on the couch and I 

kneeled down to wake her. 

‛Sis, don’t forget to get Hiroshi to take her vitamins today.’ 

She opened one eye, ‛What time is it?’ 

‛Six.’ 

She rolled over, ‛I’ve got an eight o’clock lecture. I’ll be up in ten.’ 

I was so proud of Maria. She was going to be the doctor in the family. 

I went and sat on the bed next to Hiroshi, who was still asleep. She weighed little 

more than thirty-five kilograms now, with sunken cheeks and a smell of stale fish. Her 

immense belly mapped with large blue veins. I gently woke her. Her eyelids parted and 

those luminescent eyes, as haunting as ever, stared at me. 

studying.’ 

‛Why is the bed wet?’ she asked. 

‛I knocked over a glass,’ I lied, embarrassed, ‛I must have fallen asleep while 

She yawned, ‛That’s okay. Ari, I had a lovely dream last night. I saw a white 

elephant carrying a lotus in its trunk as it climbed the mountain to Karuna.’ 

I held her hand, ‛What does it mean?’ 

‛I think she is going to be someone... special.’ 

‛I have to go,’ I sighed. 

‛Good luck with the exam,’ she smiled, ‛Maybe when you get back, we can go to 

Karuna. I’d like to talk to Rinpoche about the dream.’ 

With that, I left. 

At midday, I walked out of the veterinary medicine department, exhausted. As I got 

to the front door of the foyer, Uncle Bart was standing there, his face hard like an SS 

officer. 

‛Uncle Bart? What are you doing here?’

morning!’ 

He hugged me, ‛Ari, bad news. Hiroshi... is dead.’ 


‛Don’t be ridiculous!’ I laughed, walking off to my bike. ‛I was with her this 

Then I realised his presence at the uni, and the sombre look on his face meant the 

impossible. He wasn’t lying. 

‛Come, sit down, Ari.’ 

He led me to a picnic table near the cafeteria, his every word a knife in my heart. 

‛It was godawful, Ari. Best you weren’t there. She was in labour all of a sudden. 

Maria called triple O then called me. I flew down straight away.’ 

‛What happened?’ 

‛The ambulance took her to Royal Brisbane. An emergency caesarian, they said.’ 

‛The baby?’ 

‛Stillborn. Poor Hiroshi when she saw it, she screamed and passed out.’ 

I interrogated him with bloodshot eyes. 

‛No, it can’t be. Hiroshi was fine when I left this morning. She was laughing about 

us going up to Karuna for the weekend!’ 

‛Ari,’ he assured me, ‛I’m sorry. She never regained consciousness. There was 

nothing the doctors could do.’ 

‛No,’ I cried, ‛No, I don’t believe you!’ 

He tried to hold me, but I broke free, and ran through the lunchtime crowd of 

students, kids laughing and talking about their studies. 

I got to my bike and raced to the hospital. 

Only when I was standing looking at Hiroshi’s cold dead body did reality impugn 

on my thoughts, and I was forced to fathom the tragedy before me. I walked out, my feet 

like lead, a childless widower. 

I collapsed, crying on a bench on Gympie Road. 

Later, I rode off toward Mt Cootha. At the summit, I parked the bike and walked to 

the lookout. Hours went by, no thoughts, only pain, like from an amputated limb. 

The blood-red sun sank through the western clouds, a bright warm day turning into 

night. I walked down the winding lane toward bushland, sat on a root under a tree, 

overlooking the city. 

Is she dead. Can she really be? 

I lay on the ground, my head in the clouds. Lizards scuttled beneath fallen leaves, a 

wallaby chewing cud at the edge of a thicket. The stars came out, one by one. I fell asleep


and awoke hours later by the rain, shivering in the cold. Siddhartha had given up his 

kingdom, wife and son, wasting away under a fig tree like this. What else is left but 

enlightenment or madness. 

After the long ride back to campus, midnight found me curled on my bed, wet with 

rage. Maria lay in bed beside me. I emptied my grief, rambling into her warm breast until 

the dreamless fields of sleep embraced me.

≈ 


Next day, Uncle Bart rang me to say he had made all the arrangements for Hiroshi’s 

body to be flown back to Osaka at her family’s request. On his insistence, he asked for me 

to accompany the coffin to Tokyo. 

It was a difficult decision, but I knew I had to meet her family. As well, it was best 

that Hiroshi’s body was not buried in Australia because I would have made it a temple, 

never being able to let go. 

As I was packing my gear for the flight that morning, Rinpoche visited me at 

college. He had never done this before, so I was surprised. 

passing.’ 

‛Sadness,’ he said after I turned off the record player. ‛Such sadness for us all at her 

‛Yes.’ 

He began fingering my record collection. ‛I do not understand this modern music.’ 

An album slipped out of its cover between his fingers, crashing to the floor. I 

picked it up, Tea for the Tillerman, broken into three pieces. 

‛You’re good,’ I growled sarcastically. ‛Just broke the record for clumsiness.’ 

He laughed hysterically, ‛I can see why Hiroshi loves you. So much resentment, so 

many unresolved issues. A warrior who has never faced his greatest enemy - himself. This 

is masculinity at its best!’ 

I gathered the pieces off the floor, ‛You’re so cold, man.’ 

‛The mountaintop is always cold. Maybe you prefer base-camp, the pub?’ 

I laughed at his arrogance, thinking he was superior to me. 

‛What do you want, Rinpoche?’ I asked. ‛To gloat over my loss?’ 

He sat on the bed, folding his robe over his skinny brown legs. 

‛No, you are wrong about me. I loved her dearly as a sister. I came to tell you this. I


was gardening yesterday and saw a magnificent rainbow over the valley. It is an auspicious 

sign, the sign of a buddha entering into paranirvana. An hour later, I got a call from the 

hospital about her death.’ Rinpoche fingered his prayer beads, then let out a long, noisy 

sigh. ‛The greatest love a man has is for the woman he never marries.’ 

lap. 

I swung the backpack over my shoulder, then threw the keys to the motorbike at his 

‛Enjoy, old man. I hope you treat my bike better than you did Hiroshi.’ 

I left him to his wily regrets, rambled down the street to a cab. Auchenflower 

passed my window, Milton factory chimneys whipped past in brick-stack grey and white. 

Fast clouds overhead, wispy thin hues of white pastiche against indifferent blue. Where 

kangaroos once grazed, joggers toiled the Quay. 

‛What a jackass!’ I shouted. 

Rinpoche got under my skin. I felt he lacked the courage to sleep with Hiroshi 

despite admitting her loved her, choosing immersion in meditative states to sensual ones. 

Even in a temple, a monk cannot hide his needs. He was a thoroughbred wearing a stock- 

horse saddle. 

‛Humanity is a farce!’ 

The taxi driver looked at me concerned. I looked away, down at the brown waters 

of the Brisbane River. In that slow flowing water, I saw Hiroshi. In the waves against the 

bow of a commuter boat, I saw her hair spilling onto the surface. In the mother shouting at 

her son at a bus stop, I heard her voice. In the taxi-driver’s hand tapping against the wheel 

at the red light, her beating heart. 

At the airport, Uncle Bart saw my heavy face and held my shoulder. 

‛I have a business associate in Tokyo you should meet.’ 

He gave me the name and telephone number of his associate, a man called Kema. 

‛Keep your eyes and ears open,’ Bart added, ‛You might learn something 

worthwhile.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. 

In the flight across the Pacific, my sadness could only be equated with Horatio van 

Aken’s poem on loss, said to be written when he was just thirteen, which was eventually 

published in his first book On Calvary’s Cross; poems of a latter-day sinner. 

I read the poem as if it were the first time; 

This is the salted glass separating object from desire, 

A veiled transparency so wispy yet refrained, 

How only in presence does it rose the perceptions,

Turns languid flesh to turgid wings, an angel from a butterfly. 


Hiroshi’s parents were waiting at the airport terminal when I arrived with a small 

gift of origami swans. In the taxi, they explained how proud they were to finally meet me, 

how their daughter had sung nothing but praise about me. I was stunned at their constant 

bowing, the gentleness of their voices, their apparent humility. 

We arrived outside a block of apartments in Yodogawa. I followed them up the lift 

to a modest third floor studio which they said they had bought for Hiroshi and her brother, 

Jensin, five years before. 

Jensin bowed to me at the front door. He had spiked hair, a Nick Cave T-shirt and a 

cigarette in his left hand, such a contrast to his traditional parents. 

After welcoming me inside, Hiroshi’s parents sat down, and I explained everything, 

with Jensin interpreting for me. I left nothing out about Hiroshi and my relationship. At the 

end of it, they just nodded. Hiroshi’s father stood up and cleared his throat. 

‛We choose to believe that she found in Australia what she could not find here; 

love. And in finding that which she sought, so was her life fulfilled. And in her death, she 

has come back to us, complete. Thank you, Ari Son. It was not an easy path she took, but a 

noble one. One without compromise. This is how we will remember her.’ 

Hiroshi’s father and mother bowed, saying they would return the next day for 

Hiroshi’s funeral. 

After they left, Jensin, seeing me in tears, asked if I’d like to go out for a drink. 

I agreed, so he jumped up whooping and got changed. 

‛I’ve just killed their daughter and they thank me!’ I thought. 

I spent a few minutes teasing the three goldfish that circled the water’s surface in a 

small aquarium on top of the television. At the door, I noticed the quaintly framed photos 

of Hiroshi and her parents, one with her grandfather, and a small one of Hiroshi as a 

schoolgirl. 

A beautifully decorated framed poster, written in Japanese, hung over the lounge 

suite in Hiroshi’s unmistakable calligraphy. The yellowing edges of the paper suggested it 

had been written many years ago. 

Jensin, understanding my curiosity, translated it for me; 

Everything seeks its source 

As we think we are; mind and karma are one. 

To make an enemy, we must first end a friendship,

To seek respect, we must first destroy our ego, 

To create war, we must relinquish a peaceful heart. 

Water shapeless, earth firm, air unseen, 

Fire transmutes the impure and removes the chaff, 

The mind has all these elements yet is not the soul. 

The karma of brotherhood is not of blood but deed; 

Better to seek the fame of gods through wisdom, 

To seek justice by shepherding the weak, 

To pacify one desire than satisfying a hundred. 


Jensin was beside me, smiling, ‛I remember Hiroshi wrote that a few months before 

she was expelled from school.’ 

that.’ 

‛Expelled?’ 

‛She got pregnant to a local fisherman. My father had his first heart-attack over 

‛What happened to the baby?’ 

‛She miscarried.’ He went to a side-drawer and opened it. ‛By the way, I think she 

would have wanted you to have this.’ He handed me a small notebook. ‛It’s her diary.’ 

Before I could open it, Jensin said ‛Let’s go.’ I put the diary in my pocket and 

followed him down the stairs and out onto the street. 

We caught the subway into Osaka, then waited at the railway station for ten minutes 

on the Shinkansen line then caught the bullet train for the three hour ride to Tokyo. The 

ride’s tedium was broken only by Jensin’s admiration for martial arts. He had learned I had 

more than a passing interest in karate and said he would take me to a dojo. 

Downtown Tokyo was strikingly clean, with an orderly orchestration of people and 

traffic going at a frenetic pace. This was the city Hiroshi had talked about many times; a 

place of order, like a leggo city. 

He took me to a dojo in Bunkyo-ku. A training session was already underway, and 

we bowed and entered. Midway through the session, Jensin bowed to the teacher and 

introduced me. 

I bowed politely to Kyoshi Irutami, a wizened old man of eighty. He waved to me 

with a flick of his wrist, and with Jensin translating, he asked if I wanted to spar with him. 

I bowed and declined the offer. 

‛He says if you can touch him,’ Jensin translated, ‛you may have his role as

teacher.’ 

I thought it was a joke and retreated to the sidelines. 


As if to prove his skills, he asked if any student wished to challenge him. 

Three young men volunteered. 

I watched as they approached Kyoshi, who stood on his bent old legs and with his 

arms at his side, looking as frail as a young boy. 

As one student went to grab him, he leaned casually aside and in a fluid motion 

twisted his opponents hand. The student flew into the air, somersaulting onto his back with 

a thud. Another student rushed in, and Kyoshi ducked and threw him with a hip throw that 

seemed so effortless for a man his age. The third student retreated, knowing better than to 

attack as his fellow students lay on the ground groaning. 

I watched the remainder of the session of katas in awe, realising that though I had 

learnt so much in Australia, my karate had a long way to go, especially at an emotional 

level. I wish I had the same control that this old master possessed. 

‛We eat now!’ Jensin declared, and led me downstairs to a Sushi bar. 

After a dozen saki, my shyness evaporated and I began to share some of myself 

with Jensin. We talked about university and work and before long, we were sharing a 

microphone, abusing ’80s hit songs with the perfection that only saki can inspire. 

As we staggered onto the footpath at midnight, he walked me into a side door down 

a lane way. I realised pretty quickly we had entered a strip club. 

Jensin ordered drinks, and slipped me a tab. 

‛She was the best and the worst!’ he shouted over the din, holding his glass up. 

‛Who?’ 

‛Hiroshi!' 

I felt like Harold Holt, wanting to go out for a swim in the cold night air, not caring 

about risks, only I would rather die like a meteor, fade away into stardust, the way the 

universe began and ends. 

The tab kicked in ferocious and Jensin turned into a mystic. He had Hiroshi’s 

earlobes, long and curled, like Rabindranath, only his eyes weren’t so distant as that 

famous poet, just dilated and eyeing off the girls like a typical male. He knew the meaning 

of everything, but I couldn’t speak, and he just smiled at me with the omnipresence that 

comes with omnipotence. 

‛I loved her,’ Jensin added, ‛but she drove me nuts - everything to extremes. We 

went camping one time during school holidays, a group of us up Mt Fuji. Mum and dad


were away in America. Hiroshi was fifteen and bored with school. My friend Koti wanted 

to fuck her because she was like a goat, climbing the mountain in her miniskirt, all of us 

sweating and heaving all day long.’ 

Jensin threw back his head and laughed, ‛Koti got a black eye after Hiroshi saw 

him wanking off while she was washing herself in a creek.’ 

technology.’ 

‛What do you do for a living?’ I asked. 

‛I work for IBM, hundred bucks an hour, no future in science unless it’s jacked into 

A pretty girl with orange hair and a blue lipstick sat on my lap. 

‛You’re so sweet, Ari San,’ she said, removing the lolly-stick from her mouth and 

dropping it into the ashtray. 

She was a pretty teen, warm-pillow breasts that sported a tattoo of Elvis’ face 

across the left one. The tattoo was inked with turquoise and indigo and Elvis’ face smiled 

as she folded her arms. Elvis never looked so sad when she threw her arms back to mess 

with her hair that fell again like a waterfall across the lovely white cheeks of the King. 

‛What’s your name?’ I asked. 

‛My name Priscilla,’ the girl said, playing her fingernails like a fiddle over my 

groin. ‛You want me suck you?’ 

thigh. 

daughter.’ 

I looked across the booth to Jensin, who had a girl on his lap, his hand on her inner 

‛No,’ I replied, kissing Elvis’ cheek, ‛But thank the King for having such a beautiful 

She giggled, ‛Oh, you like my Elvis tattoo? You want to see all of it?’ 

She pulled her top down, revealing both her breasts and abdomen, Elvis swinging 

his guitar all the way down to her navel. She smiled in a way that usually ignites 

unpredictable flesh. I gently covered her sweet breasts. Bent like a harvest moon in 

disappointment, she slapped me gently on the face. 

‛Why you not want me?’ she complained jokingly. 

Jensin interjected, ‛Leave him alone. His girlfriend just died.’ 

He ordered more drinks. 

Priscilla leaned against me, her face showing sadness, ‛I wonder why you so quiet, 

so zen.’ She seemed to be genuinely saddened. 

Jensin leaned over to me, ‛What you said back there to my parents was a brave 

thing. Had you not come back here with her body, they would have called you a murderer.

Now they think you’re a hero.’ He laughed. ‛Tradition - they’re insane!’ 


He laughed and walked me out onto the main street, the two giggling girls in tow. 

‛This is the Ministry of Defence,’ he indicated with a beer-clutched hand. ‛The 

perfect location for a strip club, quick access for politicians during their lunch break. The 

hypocrisy of Japan. You have the same in Australia, I believe? In your capital, you have 

porn factories next to parliament?’ 

‛Yes, in Canberra.’ 

I looked at the building he was referring to, the Ministry of Defence which was at 

the time waging war against the International Whaling Commission, eventually sanctioning 

the legalised slaughtering of whales. Juro Oka, the laconic father of modern whaling was a 

name Hiroshi mentioned many times. Her family were the few who openly voiced their 

disapproval of government-sanctioned killing of cetaceans. 

As the LSD soaked into my saki-rich veins, I took a deep breath as an Humpback 

whale slithered down the road like a Gorgon and engulfed me whole, returning with me in 

its belly to the Japanese Sea, only to deposit me into the bowels of Hell. 

I awoke the next morning with a head like lead. Beside me was Jensin, naked and 

his arms wrapped around the two girls, with their beautiful white skin, perfect breasts and 

hair-brushed venus mounds. 

Jensin made coffee. 

‛You’re nothing like Hiroshi,’ I said to him. 

‛Yeah,’ Jensin laughed, ‛thank God!’ 

I looked at my watch, ‛We better get ready. The funeral is in an hour.’ 

We left the girls sleeping on the tatami. Jensin took a photo of them with my phone. 

Jensin handed me back my phone. 

‛Souvenir of Japan.’ 

Hiroshi’s parents were waiting outside the temple, dressed in traditional white. 

Inside, mourners numbered in the hundreds. Strangers looked at me with reverence. Jensin 

introduced a few of them; the headmaster from Hiroshi’s school, a German factory boss, a 

Pentecostal nun, a postal worker. 

A young man sat in a corner on a chair, his face bruised with grief. 

‛That was Hiroshi’s first love,’ Jensin explained. ‛Do not say hello. If he knew 

about you, he would make a scene.’ 

The coffin was an ornamental arrangement, which I walked past, only briefly

glancing at it before retreating to a corner of the room. 


The family’s shrine inside their house was closed and covered with white paper, a 

petite table delicately adorned with flowers, incense and candles. I felt I was beginning to 

understand Hiroshi in a new light, where her Buddhist beliefs seemed perfectly aligned 

with the Japanese cultural beliefs of spiritual reincarnation and immortality. 

While the Buddhist monk chanted a Zen sutra, the men gathered around and shook 

my hand, offering me saki in tiny white cups. I had not known how influential her family 

were, or how wealthy, how steeped in tradition, how rich in historical importance these 

ritual were. I was bestowed the honours worthy of a visiting dignitary, with gifts from 

family members from all over Japan. I felt so undeserving. 

After her cremation the following day, I went back to Tokyo, trying to find in travel 

what I had lost in time. I knew I could never face another relationship with a woman again; 

death and sex seemed too entwined to offer a salvation from my loneliness. 

On the bullet train, I opened Hiroshi’s diary. An entry entitled ‛Antipodean 

dreams,’ intrigued me as it was around the time Hiroshi and I first became lovers. 

I have abandoned this ridiculous obsession with love because it does 

not exist. Why do I say this? Because I met this stupid Greek boy in 

Brisbane. We met on a beach. He spoke like Genghis Khan, despite 

looking like Woody Allen. So disappointing! 

We shouted at each other for a while as we walked to my car and he 

said that the love I was looking for ‛didn't exist outside of myself’. That I 

would eventually find what I was looking for inside myself. Stupid man! 

A Greek idiot speaking Zen words as empty as his head! And he is ugly. 

But his faraway eyes make me tremble in fear. 

Angrily, I kissed him, because my legs were trembling, and when I 

slapped him, I felt my whole body electrified. 

Today is my birthday, friendless except for Rinpoche holding a 

candle for me at Karuna. He speaks wise words, my candle of 

illumination, asking me to not trip on my own shadow. We went for a 

walk to the little cave at Karuna and there we let go of everything. The 

earth was silent, and we looked out over the valley until the valley was 

inside us, and the rolling green hills played over our skin. I submitted 

myself to him and he to me, and the rain fell from my eyes. Karma is 

dead. ‛You must go now,’ he said, a little sadly.


Feeling so empty, I went to the Greek’s door, and said I was going 

for a swim. He’s still got the black eye from his stupid Karate. His eyes 

are like a tiger’s as he walks me to his bike. Doesn’t he know war and 

peace are the same blade. 

He is ugly. I told him so. He laughs. I say I want to kill him rather 

than sleep with him. He laughs again, saying he is not afraid of death, 

only women, and why do I assume he is interested in me. 

I say cocks don’t lie, because they don’t have a brain. 

When we got to the pool I asked him if he knew what I was feeling? 

This emptiness? 

‛Yes, I have been there,’ he said with arrogance. 

I could spit in his face and walk away from him forever and he 

wouldn’t care less. I knew he came from a rich family, and he just wanted 

my tits, my arse, my face. 

He is a predator. I have seen the type before. Conquerors, like 

Napoleon, they always end up falling on their own swords. 

I laughed and he asked what’s so funny. 

‛You are so naive!’ I said. 

He corrected me by saying ‛simple’ not naive, and the way he says 

‛simple’ makes me feel like he is a village idiot. 

And then later, when I am thoroughly fed up with his stalking eyes, I 

dive into the water. 

Why are men so stupid? 

Last night, I went to another man’s bed, a young writer who is 

studying literature, but I feel nothing for him. I laid down with him in bed 

that night and he had such control that he didn’t touch me. I saw he 

wanted me, but he said he respected me. I know this to be a male flaw. 

They lie to make you think you believe they like you, not your pussy. 

If they respect you enough to not take what they want, it cannot be 

love. I would rather he pinned me down and had his way - at least then I 

would have a reason to hate him, but now, I just pity him worse than that 

ugly Greek who is standing beside the pool, eyes glued on my body. 

He trembled. I knew he was scared of me, so I pulled him into the 

water. I wanted to drown this baby, so I forced his face down underwater


to my pussy. I had an orgasm before he came up spluttering, and then he 

was brutally inside me. I don’t not know what he did to me, but my years 

of emptiness were quashed by his ferocity. 

He was hurting me, his large cock causing me pain that was almost 

unbearable but I rather that pain than the loneliness. He came too quick, 

yet despite that, there was peace in me. Silence. Of not caring to think 

about anything, not even the guys watching us, wanking off as they stood 

at the pool’s edge. 

We went back to his room after, and fucked three times. He had his 

hands around my throat. I felt he wanted to kill me! He is an animal, but 

I am a tree, because afterwards, I slept like a log. Hah! 

In the morning, he was already gone. No kiss goodbye. I looked in 

the mirror, an old hag. Who will care for me when I cannot support 

myself, when I am too sick and tired of caring for a house and paying 

bills and working? Will there be anyone there to care for me? I miss my 

family. Why did I leave them? 

I hate this world. Men disgust me - they are only interested in 

themselves, in sex, especially this Greek. Oh, it was wonderful, but 

he said he only wanted me for a lover, not as a wife. Such assumptions he 

makes! The arrogance of his deductions are criminal. I could have killed 

him if I didn’t need someone’s arms around me. He sheltered me from the 

emptiness for a while, but I still fear him. There is something wrong with 

him, I am sure. He has bumps all over his head. 

I will never see him again. I will tell him, no I will write him a letter 

and tell him I hate him! 

This emptiness has returned. 

I am missing my family terribly. How can I love anyone when I hate 

myself? In the Greek’s arms, I felt for a minute that there was someone 

on this planet who let me be myself. No, this is madness. I would never 

lower myself to be with someone so physically repulsive. I am beautiful, 

therefore I need beauty around me. How do I know I am beautiful? 

Because the Greek said so, and for once in my life I believed him, though 

this was the only thing he said all night that I believed. He had the 

arrogance to repeat what he said the night before, that he only wanted a


lover, not a wife or a family or a mortgage. What does he expect from 

me? I tested him by saying I wanted to marry him and have his child. 

This usually frightens men away, but he didn’t run away. He just said no. 

The prick! He gives me nothing but his arms, a cock to fill the emptiness 

of me, his silence for my ranting at the darkness, a mouth to penetrate 

with my inquisitive tongue. 

So I amuse this Greek for a while. I say I want to marry him, to have 

his child and buy a house with him. He asks me what I really truly want, 

and I say to be a millionaire. He finds this amusing. A few days later I 

tell him I want to return to the monastery, and he merely smiles and says 

with a sort of apology, ‛for the briefest moment here with you, I have 

touched love.’ 

I am offended that he even uses the word love to describe what to 

him can only be lust or craving or pure desire. Love? He wouldn’t know 

the meaning of the word. And for the briefest moment? We had sex for 

hours - has he no sense of time?! 

I am so hostile to him that I go to his room and I tell him ‛I hate you. 

Leave me alone.. I don’t ever want to see you again.’ 

But then he smiles, gets his bag and walks away. 

‛Where are you going?’ I shout at him. 

‛To class,’ he says, and pats me on the shoulder like I’m a dog. 

A few nights later, I go to his room, angry that he is screwing 

another woman. So I wait inside his room until he returns so I can spring 

him in the act. He returns hours later, a Dharma text under one arm. He 

looks at me in disbelief. 

know.’ 

‛Where have you been?’ I asked. 

‛To the library,’ he says. 'I thought I'd never see you again?' 

‛Why are you reading Buddhist books?’ 

‛Research,’ he said, intensely, ‛because I want to know what you 

He could have just asked. 

I said ‛I know nothing. That’s all you need to know!’ 

He is so manic. Where is a baseball bat, I want to kill him.


Then he begins to rebuke me for my angry words and for being so 

hypocritical. I burst into tears, and he saves me the embarrassment by 

hugging me. We had sex again. 

But I do not want to talk to him again. What is it about this man that 

drives me mad? And there is an infection going on in my pussy. It hurts 

to pee. He has infected me! Does he have syphilis? I hate him for it. I tell 

him my problem and he laughs, ‛That’s weird, because I have an 

infection too!’ 

say no. 

He says it with an accusatory tone in his voice. Bastard, I think. 

And he then has the nerve to ask me if I want to move in with him. I 

He asks am I sure. I say no, again. 

A few days later, I go down to the corner store and call him. I say I 

am leaving for Japan, just ringing to say goodbye. 

There is a long silence. He utters the words ‛I love you’ as if they are 

a sentence a judge has just passed to a condemned man, and with a 

seriousness and conviction that I have never heard another man ever 

utter. Something inside him has died. His madness perhaps? I do not 

know. I have lied to get him to say these words. I was not going 

anywhere. Where could I go? I wasn’t thinking of leaving him at all! 

Guilt plagues me... 

I write the Greek a letter, telling him that by the time he got this 

letter I would be in Japan. (I was such a liar). I know he is pining for me, 

and I want to hurt him more than I care. I slip it under his door and run 

off. 

Two hours later, I am knocking at his moonlit door again, despite my 

loathing of him, this man who now loves me! He doesn’t ask for anything, 

just wants me to be myself. I can be anything except that. I see no child 

in him that needs comforting, only an aching for something he cannot see 

or understand. He is like a mystic, the loneliest man I have ever met. In 

my arms, I feel he has briefly forgotten what he should be looking for. 

‛What the hell,’ he says, ‛tomorrow can wait.’ 

We sit in his room, holding hands like an old married couple. What 

drug am I giving him? Have I gone from being a spiritual prostitute to a


spiritual druggie? I laughed and said goodbye. I have never seen a man 

so lonely. 

In a few days, we will be moving in together. 

I wipe the tears from my eyes, seeing a side of Hiroshi hitherto unknown. 

‛Damn,’ I thought. ‛Have I been asleep all this time?’ 

Putting her diary away, I took out the phone number Bart had given me. After a few 

rings, there was a curt voice on the other end. 

you?’ 

‛Konichiwa?’ 

‛Is that Kema? My name is Ari - Bart Mylonas’ nephew.’ 

‛Ah, yes’, came the voice. ‛You were supposed to ring three days ago. Where are 

‛On the bullet train to Tokyo,’ I replied. 

‛A man will pick you up when you arrive. A man with a black hat.’ 

The man hung up. 

When the train arrived at Tokyo station, a young man, maybe eighteen was standing 

on the platform, wearing a black hat. 

I walked up to him, ‛Hi, I’m Ari.’ 

Without a word, he beckoned me to follow him. We walked through the station, to 

an awaiting black BMW with heavily tinted windows. 

He opened the back door. As we drove off, the other passenger, a tall, cold-face 

man in his thirties introduced himself as Kema. I noticed the dragon and flowers tattoo on 

his neck. 

‛Your uncle has told me much,’ Kema remarked. ‛He said you will be taking over 

the family business soon.’ 

This was news to me. 

I noticed the pinky finger was missing on his left hand, a sign of the Yakuza as he 

reached over and shook my hand. 

talk.’ 

‛Welcome to Tokyo,’ he said. ‛We have some business to deal with first, before we 

He leant forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. 

We drove through the streets of Tokyo, heading east to the neon-lit Ginza 

entertainment district. The car pulled up in a back alley and I followed the men into a back 

door of a pachinko parlour, then climbed the stair to a warehouse. In the outer office the


Yakuza boss put his hand on my chest. I knew I was about to see the other side of Japanese 

life, the brutal side. 

‛You wait here,’ he said. 

After they walked out, I peeped around the corner into the next room, where I saw a 

man, a woman and a young girl seated on chairs, handcuffed. 

Another two men in dark pin-striped suits were standing over them. The prisoners 

were pleading pitifully as Kema approached them. The man’s face showed he had been 

beaten badly. Urine was on the floor beneath the woman’s chair. 

Kema approached the man and screamed at him. Kema was ferocious in his verbal 

abuse. Then, at the pinnacle of his anger and to my horror he clawed out the eyes of the 

man, who writhed and screamed, then passed out. He then started shouting abuse at the 

woman and girl. He spat in the woman’s face and hit her several times. He then grabbed 

the young girl by the hair and dragged her to the nearby table and raped her brutally while 

his men held her down. 

When he was finished, Kema waved to his men, who then shot the three prisoners 

in the head at point blank range. 

I quickly darted back to the centre of the outer office, shaking uncontrollably as 

Kema returned. There was blood on his knuckles, and he wiped it attentively with a 

handkerchief. 

‛We go now,’ he said, heading towards the stairs. 

I followed Kema and his associates down the stairs to the car. 

We stopped outside a shopping mall and entered another pachinko parlour, the 

pinball machines making such a racket that my head began to throb. 

I noticed the casualness of Kema’s walk, the ease with which he negotiated the 

human traffic in his tight-fitting suit with pointy-toed alligator skin shoes. His rage of 

moments before had dissipated with a slipperiness that could only come from long practise. 

As the koto and flute play Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata amongst the cacophony of 

pachinko bells, we walked out into a restaurant. Kema approached a table where two 

women sat, one in schoolgirl’s skirt and blouse, the other in a cocktail dress. The women 

rose and bowed deferentially. 

‛Those people back there,’ he said, ordering saki. ‛They think they can come onto 

my turf. They are like cockroaches. You send a message to their friends. They think twice 

before doing it again.’ 

He made a toast to my Uncle Bart. We chinked cups. I sipped in silence as the hot


saki flowed down my parched throat. I watched as the girl in the school uniform moved 

across to sit on my lap. 

with us.’ 

money. 

Kema slid an envelope across to me. 

‛Give this to your Uncle,’ he said. ‛Tell him I look forward to his future business 

‛Okay,’ I said. I didn’t open the large brown envelope, but knew it was full of 

Business concluded, Kema explained how he owned the entire block of buildings, 

that his territory covered four thousand businesses, with a control of gambling and loan- 

sharking enterprises, as well as organised unskilled labour for the port. 

‛If you ever get bored in Australia, Ari San, we could find a nice place for you here. 

Your Uncle says you are smart and good with your fists.’ 

to Osaka. 

I chuckled, ‛My uncle tends to exaggerate!’ 

Kema eyed me carefully, ‛Modesty has no place here. 

I nodded, ‛Thank you for your generous offer.’ 

He slapped my back, ‛I see Samurai in you, Ari San.’ 

As the sun rose over Tokyo, I walked out of the bar and caught the bullet train back 

Jensin and Hiroshi’s parents took me to the airport. As we rode along the freeway, I 

knew I’d never see them again, that this last connection with Hiroshi was irretrievably 

ending. 

customs. 

It was with tears in my eyes that I waved goodbye to them at the airport and entered 

When I returned to Brisbane the following day, I hired a car and drove to Karuna. I 

wanted to meet Rinpoche one last time, to apologise for my harsh words. 

I parked the car, saw my motorbike and walked over to it. 

The whole right side scratched, the right rearview mirror broken off, the indicator 

hanging off like an enucleated eye. 

Rinpoche was in the office, selling incense to a German couple who said they 

wanted to become Buddhists because they loved the cuisine. Afterwards, he walked me out 

into the gardens. 

‛What are you going to do now?’ 

‛I don’t know.’


‛You western people always want to go out and have fun, but we choose to go in. If 

in doubt, do nothing.’ 

I turned to Rinpoche with tears in my eyes, ‛With all due respect, Rinpoche, doing 

nothing is why Hiroshi died. And thanks for wrecking my bike.’ 

He gave me the keys, ‛Your bike has bad karma. If you had been on it, you would 

have been dead. Best to sell it.’ 

Just another bullshit excuse, I thought. 

He stopped, indicating he had to go to the kitchen. 

‛Maybe you should travel, Ari. An overseas trip would do you the world of good, 

especially knowing your fear of water.’ 

There was a twinkle of sarcasm in his eye before he smiled and left. 

Walking down to the bike, I lay in the cool grass beside it, fingering Hiroshi’s diary. 

One page caught my eye, written toward the end of her book. 

Sentience, the ability to think... 

I can see worlds of infinite number throughout the universe. We are just one form of 

sentience on a nearly barren hot rock in a small corner of a minute galaxy. What other 

sentient forms could there be? Maybe world populated by sentient insects, plants, rocks or 

water. Can an ocean think? Can a tree whose roots interconnect with other trees not have 

the ability to feel, aspire, create? 

She is within me now, growing, her own life within mine, yet her destiny unknown 

to me. Will I live to see her go to school, to hold the hand of her first boyfriend, to endure 

her first heartbreak, to see me dying before her, to be forgotten by her when I am gone. To 

give life is the ultimate gift, and the ultimate testament to the impermanence of self. I can 

feel my baby inside me thinking about who she is, where she is. I feel her fear and joy and 

wonderment and confusion. 

Soon she will come. Soon she will be gone from me. I miss her already. 

I rode away from Karuna, my bike screeching as the mudguard scraped against the 

rear wheel. Maybe Rinpoche was right. I needed to get away, away from here, away from 

the pain, away from myself.

I had arrived in Fujariah, United Arab Emirates. 


Standing beside Yousaf, I showed my passport at customs, standing in my filthy 

overalls before a machine-gun-armed customs official. I had just spent two weeks sailing 

from Fremantle on the Lyttleton, a converted 60,000-ton cargo ship owned by SteerCorp 

and used for hauling livestock. As the chief veterinary officer, I had personally killed three 

thousand sheep during the trip, from a total cargo of 150,000 sheep and three hundred 

cattle. Yousaf had killed double that as he was quicker with a knife. 

What we slaughtered due to dehydration and shock was considered an acceptable 

loss by SteerCorp. Anything less than ten percent was normal. Some trips resulted in fifty 

percent losses. I had done this trip seven times. This was to be my last. 

The guard looked at my passport, then ruffled through my back-pack, glancing at a 

novel I was reading, Horatio van Aken’s Silicon Soldiers. 

‛Where you headed?’ he asked. 

‛Just staying here for a few days holiday then back to Australia.’ 

‛Holiday?’ he grimaced, ‛Saddam just invaded Kuwait!’ 

‛Who?’ 

He shook his head in disbelief, fingered the remnants of my pack, then glanced to 

the ship’s Captain standing next to him before dismissing us with a wave of his hand. 

Yousaf and I walked out of customs, but before parting company with the Captain, 

he gave me an envelope containing my pay, three grand in crisp Australian dollars and an 

air ticket to Australia. 

Outside customs, I gave Yousaf half my pay packet. 

‛Compliments of SteerCorp,’ I said. ‛For your wife and three kids.’ 

For Yousaf, it was the equivalent of five years wages. 

‛Thank you, Ari,’ he held my hands fervently, ‛May Allah bless you in this life and 

the next. May you find solace in the memory of your beloved friend who I am sure will be 

waiting for you in Paradise when your time comes. But hopefully not too soon.' 

He bowed before me, parting company. I felt like I was saying goodbye to Gandhi. 

As I walked out onto the Arab street, morning had begun to dawn over the seaside 

city. Hailing a taxi, I took the short ride to the Fujairah Hilton where I was given a spacious 

suite, compliments of SteerCorp, the multinational corporation who has employed me as a 

locum veterinarian. SteerCorp spared no expense at looking after their employees. They 

even provided me with free champagne and taxi vouchers.


‛Fuck SteerCorp,’ I said, falling onto the soft bed in my room overlooking a pool 

big enough to land a seaplane. 

They said I’d be implementing new veterinary protocols on-board to coincide with 

the Australian Government’s hard-line on animal welfare. But once on-board, I was given a 

butcher’s knife and a rubber apron as my veterinary equipment. 

On the ship, I killed a hundred sheep every day with a butcher’s knife and vaccinate 

the Brahman against Rinderpest when we were out of Australian territorial waters. I eased 

my fatigue at night watching Betamax porn videos in the library with my well-dressed 

Captain and First Mate. We sipped twelve-year-old scotch while below decks the 

Pakistanis, some three hundred labourers, slept ten to a cabin and made a dollar a day. 

I befriended Yousaf a few days into the trip, and he showed me the workers’ cabins, 

where they survived on Dahl bread and lentils, shovelling shit in twelve-hour shifts 

through the nights and days of the journey, while we Westerners dined on T-bone and 

prawn cocktails. 

There was a constant smell of blood, piss and shit, and the hum of the massive 

exhaust fans as they relentlessly blew from aft to stern through all fifteen decks. It was a 

floating condominium of hoof-to-muzzle meat. Every night I scrubbed myself for an hour 

in my cabin, but it didn’t help get the smell from my nostrils. 

The logic of this entire enterprise escaped me. There was three times more profit in 

shipping frozen meat, and the sheep were killed more humanely in Australian abattoirs but 

Halal meat was more popular in the Middle East. 

Four million live sheep freighted a year, with 400,000 loss and a net profit of three 

hundred million dollars. So the fresh dungaree and stethoscope boys like me, fresh out of 

vet school, kept signing up on the ships. First they recruited the impressionable, then they 

denigrated the animal victims with species-derogatory terms. To commit such grand-scale 

slaughter, psychological devaluation was essential. They were called livestock; cattle, 

sheep, pigs - they’re the Coloureds, the degenerates, the Jews of the animal world. Cats, 

dogs and horses - they were the Aryan race. 

The impressionable did the killing, while the guilty did the maths. It’s a no-brainer, 

but somewhere between the good intentions and the bottom line, sheep turned into 

numbers. The sweetener on the deal for SteerCorp was to use an untraceable name, to an 

Australian company based in Sweden, operating Asian crew on ships registered in Panama. 

‛Fuck SteerCorp,’ I said as I fell asleep.


I had a week to kill before SteerCorp organised a cheap flight back to Australia, so I 

thought a road-trip was in order. The next morning I checked out of the hotel, took a taxi 

into Dubai and bought an airline ticket to Cairo. There was a three hour wait for a 

connecting flight. I paced the lounge as machine-gunned security men walked around 

restlessly. 

sunburnt eyes. 

‛What’s going on?’ I asked a fellow passenger, a freckle-faced Canadian with 

‛The Americans have just invaded Iraq. I wouldn’t be too worried, these conflicts 

boil over quick enough.’ 

He oozed confidence, and went back to reading his Khaleej Times. 

The flight was uneventful, and when I got to Cairo it was midday. 

A blast of hot air hit my face as I walked out of the terminal and caught a black- 

and-white Cairo cab into the old sprawling city of seventeen million souls. I had the taxi 

driver drop me at BMW in Heliopolis. I bought a brand-new K-75 bike on credit card, with 

the idea of selling it back to the dealership when I returned. I chose a red one, because they 

go faster. I wasted a thousand dollars on Fox Titan leathers. I heard my mother moaning in 

my ear about my profligacy, but I was beyond caring. She never understood the adrenalin- 

based freedom of motorbikes. 

I rode around Cairo all afternoon until I was hopelessly lost, finally stopping at a 

small dingy cafe in a back street in the old part of the city. I order coffee while studying my 

map, none the wiser. As I was resting my map down, I noticed a tall stunning woman 

staring at me. She had striking blonde hair, Asian eyes and legs the envy of the Nile. 

‛Where are you going?’ she said in impeccable english. 

I replied laconically, ‛Dunno.’ 

She held out a long delicate hand for me to shake. 

‛I’m Maya,’ she said. ‛I’m on a mission to Alexandria but my friend hasn’t shown 

up. I need to be there like an hour ago.’ 

I leaned back evasively, ‛Hi Maya.’ 

She looked across the road nervously. 

‛Please help me. I’ll make it worth your while.’ 

Just as I was going to shake Maya’s hand, two Egyptian thugs came to my table. 

Thugs have a signature look and carriage. It’s nothing about how they look but how they 

carry themselves, an arrogance born of ignorance. The only men I fear are guys like my old 

school foe, Mitch Melvin, who walked smooth as Fred Astaire, his quicksilver eyes never


changing temperature, even in the midst of a brawl. He had a friendly face that always 

smiled down at me as I nursed a broken nose or black eye. 

These Egyptian thugs were just bullies. 

One of them gave me a piercing look, then waved me away. 

‛American, you go now!’ he shouted. 

I casually sipped coffee, purveying the dregs and its bitter taste. 

‛I’m Australian,’ I replied. 

‛You go!’ he shouted, ‛Or I kill you.’ 

Maya began trembling and her hand squeezed mine like a vice. 

‛She whispered, ‛Just leave.’ 

I stood up, dropping ten dollars onto the table for my drink. 

The smaller of the two men approached me with clenched fists. I grabbed his wrist 

as he thrust his weight at me. I felt the reassuring snap, and leaned him down onto the 

concrete, where he screamed in pain. On cue, and this is always so with the alpha dog who 

is last to step into a fight, the other man swung his fists at me. I ducked under his immense 

arms and swung a flick kick to the groin. I heard the reassuring snap of my boot against his 

groin, a light flick more potent than a hard boot, and his legs began to shake. As he drew a 

breath to recover, I struck at his throat with a tiger-claw. 

He fell to his knees, went blue then passed out. 

‛You’re not pretty,’ she bemused. ‛Not like Bruce Lee.’ 

‛I know,’ I remarked, grabbing her hand and leading her to the bike. ‛I’m not 

Chinese like you.’ 

‛I’m Thai!’ she laughed. 

As a youth I aspired to be a magician to let loose the constraints of physics and 

unfold the prophet of metaphysics. I aspired to be like Christ, to heal the sick but a youth 

preoccupied with constant survival against daily beatings at school unleashed another 

saviour, the archetypal beast that possesses one entirely with rage at the mere sight of 

bullies. I got a reputation at high school, enjoyed the nickname ‛the hammer’. I got a 

handle on rage, so much so I could turn it off and on at will; a three-stage switch, first 

green, then yellow then red. Eventually I was sent to boarding school after being expelled 

for the third time from a state school. It was at Townsville Grammar that I finally managed 

to become the epitome of Clark Kent and relegated my rage into a distant part of myself. I 

let three Thursday Island boys initiate me on day one of school just because I wanted to

test my pain levels. No switches flicking on. 

I had tamed the rage. 


By the time I met Hiroshi I realised there was no future in being a thug. I’d seen 

them selling used cars celebrating the memories of their youth with a beer-gut for failed 

dreams. I was confident that my archetypal hero was long gone until the death of Hiroshi 

cast an even greater shadow over my life. Superman had died with Hiroshi. 

These were the stages I had read about so many times in van Aken’s book, The 

Fourth Warrior. I had discovered this novel in my father’s library, next to Narcissus and 

Goldmund and Moby Dick. Father read books merely so he could quote great writers 

during speeches, as if the erudition of writers may pass off via osmosis into his hard bony 

skull. Books, music and people were just trophies he adorned his library with. There were 

photographs of my father next to Peter Carey at his launch of Oscar and Lucinda, dining 

with Colleen McCulloch, sharing the podium with Bryce Courtenay, not to mention his 

adoration of van Aken, who was a much younger man in the photo, but just as ugly. 

Regardless, I had read most of the library’s books by the time I was fifteen for no 

other reason than an insatiable appetite to solve that great riddle ‛who am I?’ Books are 

like a finger pointing to the moon. Words can allude to that distant, unreachable target, but 

it may as well be written in Braille. Years later, I deferred to Hiroshi’s simple sentiment 

that truth does not exist, it is merely the shadow of wisdom’s light. 

Van Aken’s book was one of my favourites - I knew the warrior stages like the back 

of my hand; all the warriors except the fourth, whom no one knew; it was a conundrum 

that had plagued scholars since the book was first published. 

After graduating high school, I decided to follow in the steps of the ancient 

Samurai. That was my ambition. And fifteen years later I had finally met the man who had 

crystallised my pubertal yearnings, the author of the The Fourth Warrior, and all I say to 

him was that he’s an idiot. Perhaps I had been quick to judge, or I had become so cynical 

he no longer mattered. 

Within forty minutes, I had delivered Maya to her destination, Alexandria, that 

pearl of the Mediterranean, the fabled library city. But the poverty crushed my idyll image 

into dust as we drove into a poor district. 

Outside a dilapidated tenement block, Maya asked me to pull over. We were miles 

from any tourist road, and the smell of sewers and rotting vegetables nauseated me. Born 

into a wealthy family, this was my first contact with third-world poverty. A place where


education could never reach, where Sophocles or Pythagoras was never heard. The lack of 

any opportunity but that which was immediate to survival. 

‛You wait here,’ she said, dismounting my bike, ‛And try not to kill anyone.’ 

I sat on the steps, lit a joint and leaned against the handrail. 

She came back ten minutes later. In tow was a young Middle-eastern guy with 

sculptured MichaelAngelo looks. 

‛Ari, this is my friend Nawal,’ she said. 

I shook the guy’s hand, stared into his eyes. 

‛Everything okay?’ I asked, suspicious. 

‛Yes.’ 

Nawal spoke to me with a thick accent. 

‛You beat up my friends?’ he laughed. 

‛I thought they were going to hurt your girlfriend,’ I apologised. 

‛That’s okay. They not understand, you not American.’ 

I walked off to my bike but a moment later, I heard running footsteps. 

I turned to see Maya running toward me. Nawal had gone. 

‛Wait,’ she cried, ‛I owe you.’ 

‛No,’ I replied, ‛You'll only be disappointed.’ 

‛With what?’ 

I put on my helmet, ‛I’m totally wasted.’ 

I pushed the electric start and the bike roared into life. 

Maya hopped on the bike behind me. 

‛You need a shower,’ she said. ‛I can show you a clean hotel not far from here.’ 

‛What about your friend Nawal?’ 

‛He understands. Just drive.’ 

We rode down past the Alexandria Golf Club, while Maya gave me directions, 

shouting to me about the beauty of Alexandria while fondling me through my leathers. We 

pulled into the Aifu Horizon Hotel. She went off and booked a room. I waited in the foyer 

covered in dust and grease, looking like a Mohammedan goat herder. 

With keys in one hand, and a complimentary hotel robe in the other, Maya led me 

to the elevators. Outside our room, she slid her door card into a lock and kicked open the 

door, flooding our faces with the bright light of the honeymoon suite overlooking the 

Mediterranean. 

‛I’m just going to take a bath,’ she said, ‛Then, if you want, I can go.’

She walked off toward the bathroom. 


I dropped my backpack onto a blue wicker chair, and went to the window. I could 

see tiny fishing boats bobbing on the sea and cars rushing by on the Al-Askandar Al- 

Alkbar. I pressed my face against the cool glass and gazed at the dome of the Library of 

Alexandria in the distance. I sighed, partly from fatigue, but also because I recalled my 

father once lecturing me ad nauseum about the history of this great library, founded by 

Ptolemy I in 300 BC and how it was burned accidentally by Julius Caesar in his frustrated 

attempts to resist Achilles’ advances. 

Father told me back in ’73, that one day soon all human knowledge would be an 

open market, free to all. ‛One day, Ari,’ he prophesied, ‛all knowledge will be free, 

heralding a new world order. Next, financial systems will start to crumble, as knowledge 

ends corruption. Tyranny, usury, injustice and inhumanity will cease to exist. Then the only 

wars will be between the sexes.’ 

I knew he was ranting, that my mother had poisoned his food again. But he was a 

little right, though he could not imagine the behemoth rise of Google. Humanity would be 

shadowed in an avalanche of knowledge a googol times greater than the Library of 

Alexandria, a database that anyone with a laptop could access, yet few would use for the 

purpose it was intended; to further scientific endeavours. It was an empire founded on 

science and funded by pornography, then promulgated by the U.S. military. Its primary 

function to feed the voracious social appetite for self-flagellation via networking and porn. 

Father overestimated the ‛greater good’ of humanity, and was saddened to learn that for 

most of his electoral constituents, personal freedom meant Facebook and Fuckbook. Porn 

makers already knew this, as did the pentagon Generals and most right-wing politicians. 

Waiting until I heard the running of the shower, I opened Maya’s carry-bag. Inside, 

beside her make-up case was fifty grand in U.S. dollars, a box of condoms, three sachets of 

coke and a hundred grams of marijuana. I took one of the sachets and put it in my 

backpack, then lit a joint. I threw myself onto the large King-sized bed and lazed in the 

quiet, peaceful paradise. 

I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. CNN was broadcasting American tanks 

rolling through Kuwait, George Bush extolled the evils of an Iraqi dictator. The only other 

channel showed Leeds United playing against Southampton, two one. ‛Go Leeds,’ I 

thought and ordered room service. 

After an hour, I was comfortably fed, stoned and through my third bottle of bar- 

fridge Johnny Walker, but I wouldn’t say happy with the scene. I was stuck in neutral about


everything. There had been a time when my heart would have been beating madly about 

where I was and who was sharing my cot. Since Hiroshi, loneliness - that curse of the 

upperclass - had become my bedfellow. I was making a new start in life, under the 

suggestion of Rinpoche, Hiroshi’s mentor, teacher and one-time crush. My solipsism was 

interrupted by a noise. 

Looking through the smoke of my joint, Maya came out, standing before me 

wearing a towel around her head and nothing else. She had olive skin, pert rounded breasts 

and a stiff eight inch cock. She was circumcised, and the head of her cock glistened with 

oil. For some reason, I was surprised that I wasn’t surprised by the fact that my Thai friend 

was a she-male. 

I offered her a drag, and she took it. 

‛I hope you’re not disappointed?’ she said, noticing me staring at her genitals. 

This is how my romance with Maya began. With a she-male, there was no bullshit 

lies, false seduction or paltry romance. It was business. If there’s an attraction, it happens. 

Later, much later, feelings get involved, and the relationship sours or sweetens, depending 

on one’s fiscal acumen. 

She blew a smoke ring into the air then sat beside me on the bed. 

‛How long have you been a mule?’ I asked. 

‛Since I was eight. My father found out, and beat me black and blue, he didn’t want 

a ladyboy in his house he said, then kicked me out and that was that. By ten I was making a 

fine living in Bangkok, thousand baht a night keeping tourist men happy, bought my first 

motorcycle at twelve, my first condominium at twenty.’ 

‛Donald Trump eat your heart out,’ I laughed, ‛No, I meant a drug mule.’ 

‛Oh no, I don’t do that,’ she smiled, ‛That’s just a bit of pocket money, and it helps 

me forget the bullshit and hellish heat.’ 

I began stroking her, and her eyes closed with pleasure. 

We missed the beautiful sunset, her face against mine as the magenta sky turned to 

grey then black. We were two sad fucked-up angels, my maiden and I, embracing to forget 

what lay outside the motel, all the poor and miserable folk eating the dust of misery, 

ignorant of our bliss and beastliness. 

We enjoyed a hearty breakfast next morning in the hotel’s restaurant, a buffet of 

beans, eggs, sausages and coffee. Then, we rode west. Occasionally we’d stop for a coffee, 

and Maya would talk about anything and everything. I’d ignore the personal questions,


talking about poetry or books. In Tripoli, I bought her a copy of On the Road from a 

cadaverous priest-like man at a bookstore, but she preferred me to read it to her, which I 

did, whenever we had the chance. We had little in common, but somehow that void was 

enough to fill the vacuum. 

One night we camped beside the sea just west of Tripoli, our feet burnt from the 

heat. We laughed with fatigue with our naked feet in the cold sea. After we rued the day’s 

adventures over a gas-cooked dinner of beef and carrots, I read to Maya by the lamp. She 

fell silent. Before long, she was asleep. 

I walked along the nearby beach where no human foot had trod. The moon big 

enough to touch, water the colour of grapes. I returned hours later to our dying-ambers fire, 

Maya warming her thoughts on the book I’d bought her. 

She read a passage to me, slowly. I listened. Her words sounded like music, with a 

jazzy cadence. She said she had discovered in reading something new for the first time in 

her world. I guessed it was akin to what Einstein must have felt when he solved the theory 

of relativity. But the power of those spoken words would only ever rock my world for one 

night. The next day she lost the book, at a fuel station she said. 

I threw a few pieces of driftwood onto the fire, warmed my toes and lay down 

against her. I was still excited about adventure, the unknown road ahead, the stranger in my 

arms. I watched the fire lick the sky, Maya’s voice rising and falling in tender notes until I 

drifted off. 

The sky was grey when I awoke early the next morning, Maya fast asleep beside 

me. My head throbbed a hangover, and I made coffee over the remnants of the fire. 

As the sun rose, we rode to Medina, to where my sister Maria said there was a 

temple called Assaraya al-Hamra, the red castle. Maria said I had to visit it, a name sake 

for Kastellorizo in Greece where my family emigrated from. Assaraya al-Hamra had been 

reconstructed on the outskirts of town with a few statues of the Ottoman heritage, and a 

monument of Gaddafi who liberated it during his September revolution in ’69. 

Maya thought the Roman and Greek statue rather cool, admiring the athletic forms 

of the male busts. I took a photo of her standing beside Gaddafi’s green Volkswagen, and 

found myself hypnotised by the mosaics of ancient greece and Rome, the skeletal remains 

of prehistoric man. 

broadminded.’ 

‛That was me,’ I laughed at Maya. ‛Long ago in a past life.’ 

‛You’re weird, Ari. Don’t go talking that shit around here. People aren’t so

‛You should talk.’ 

‛What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, hands on hips. 

‛A ladyboy is a muslim country,’ I shouted. ‛Come on!’ 


She held me earnestly as a British couple walked past, ‛Let’s keep some things a 

secret, shall we? People are killed for less.’ 

I apologised for my outburst, and we returned to the bike in silence. 

We got stoned under the stars that night, our only companions that of wind-rustled 

palm trees, rocks, dead bushes and gentle breezes off the Mediterranean. It was a rare 

moment of silence in my heart, timeless existence at its best. I emptied my frustrations 

onto Maya’s warmness, her soft body easing me into the sanity of forgetfulness. 

feelings. 

‛I think I am falling for you!’ 

She said it off-handed, as if joking, but I could see she was fearful of her own 

‛You can’t love anyone, Maya.’ 

‛I know,’ she admitted. ‛At least you accept me for what I am. No one has done that 

before. People do not see me, they only see a tranny with a fanny.’ 

She had taught me the pleasures of the third sex, so I couldn’t complain about her 

unloading her life story to me. 

‛I was born in Phimai, eastern Thailand,’ she told me the next night, ‛I worked in 

Pattaya for a year, then met Nawal there. He owned a bar. I worked for him for a while, 

entertaining tourists, learning the trade. We became friends. Then he asked me to deliver 

some coke to Cairo for some friend.’ 

‛You weren’t worried?’ 

‛No one suspects a beautiful woman. I made three trips a year for Nawal. Then 

finally I wanted a boob job, so he said if I did one last trip for him, he’d pay for it. He 

made the same promise every trip, so I decided I’d keep the money and get the boob job 

when when I met you.’ 

unhappy with. 

‛So where are you going next? Back to Thailand?’ 

Maya sighed, ‛I can’t. He’d kill me. But what else can I do?’ 

My heart went out to this sad girl stuck in a man’s body, stuck in a life she was 

I walked down to the beach near our camp, and stared into the ocean. Australia 

seemed so distant as to be non-existent. And compared to the poverty and hunger of North


Africa, I felt ashamed of where I had come from, a privileged family in a privileged 

country. 

Maya came and stood next to me on the beach, wearing a pink jumpsuit. 

‛I didn’t say all that for you to feel sorry for me, Ari. I don’t need rescuing.’ 

‛I know,’ I finally said. ‛So what is Thailand like?’ 

‛So poor, I didn’t see my first porn film until I was ten. It’s my only vice. I watch as 

much as eight hours a day when I can. It’s dirty, I know, but if I don’t, I go quite mad.’ 

‛You don’t think the porn makes your lust worse?’ 

‛Maybe. Perhaps. I don’t know...’ 

I could see she hadn’t really thought it through. 

I had. 

The first time I saw a porn film was in a 1966 hit, Vampires in Eden. My father was 

running an election campaign in Tully, my mother at an all-day meeting with Country 

Women's Association, while I, all six years and three months, had discovered my father’s 

porn stash in the attic above his bedroom. 

I don’t remember who produced Vampires in Eden - maybe that General from 

Boogie Nights, but the film was badly scripted and overacted. The lighting was shit. The 

audio overdubbed from English to Australian. It was shot in a dungeon, so there’s this 

whole BDSM counter-culture confused with horror, and you could tell the director was 

some ghost hack aspiring to Alfred Hitchcock, but reached only that great auteur’s 

shoestrings. Lacking in talent, he overcompensated with tits and tights. I felt nothing but 

amusement watching mousse and moustache actors overact, with massive cocks that 

ejaculated down silicon valleys in slow-motion, then rewound to come over them again, 

then again, as if the director was environmentally conscious, recycling cum. Jizz, jizz, jizz. 

It was a Hollywood style of the time to overemphasize the obvious, or else to compensate 

for geriatrics who found it hard fisting to cum. 

The Super-8 projector hummed in the background, while I, all six years and three 

months of age, watched with curiosity. The attic was cigarette stained and a stiff cum-rag 

lay beside the Jason recliner. Next to it, loose pieces of paper with numbers scrawled over 

them. Later, when I was twelve, I nervously called one of those numbers and it was a 

brothel in Townsville, some girl called Stacey, with a man’s voice. It left me with a 

loathing of porn. 

Next to the chair, there were handcuffs, fluffy pink ones, and a riding crop. I found 

my father handcuffed to the wall one evening. Mother was away on a weekend Country


Women’s meetings. He was dressed in lingerie, a blonde wig and make-up, trying to reach a 

set of keys on the chair, well out of reach. 

I was naive, asking, ‛Have we been robbed,’ because how else would my father get 

handcuffed. It took me years to realise he was a closet cross-dresser. It was one of the 

family’s secrets he took to his grave. 

The next day, Maya and I rode west along the Mediterranean, through Libya, 

Tunisia and Algeria. We stopped overnight at Maghnia, then crossed over into Morocco at 

daybreak. We avoided the checkpoints, Maya showing me the routes she had used in the 

past when couriering drugs across north Africa for Nawal. 

We travelled south toward Marrakesh, deciding on a whim to take a detour to view 

the Atlas Mountains, a place I had always wanted to see. 

A hundred and fifty miles south of Marrakesh, we entered the Toubkhal National 

Park. Maya reached around and unzipped my fly and started jerking me off. Distracted, I 

took a sharp bend in the road too quickly only to see a herd of wild goats grazing across 

the road. I grabbed the brake, but the tail end slid out fro behind and we crashed into the 

herd. 

With a gut-wrenching thump as a goat smashed into the front fairing, I hit a the 

road, slid into a large boulder and blacked out. 

I woke up beside my wrecked motorbike on the edge of a precipice, a bloated 

carcass beside me. I looked closer, and realised it was a goat. As I looked down the road, 

there was nothing but an endless expanse of barren land with the Atlas Mountains in the 

distance. 

I crawled about, calling to Maya, but she was nowhere to be seen. The date on my 

watch said March twenty-third. I had been unconscious for at least a day. Suddenly there 

was a shooting pain in my leg and I passed out. 

When I awoke again, another day has passed and still no sign of Maya. 

The stench of the dead goat was overpowering. It reminded me of SteerCorp and 

the slaughter of innocent sheep. A bitter cold crept into my bones. I hadn’t seen a vehicle 

the entire time, and no life except bleating goats, and the occasional wild dog. 

The next morning I awoke with severe sunburn. Wild dogs were chewing on the 

dead goat, and I threw rocks at them when they began to eye me hungrily. The soil about 

me was as harsh and unforgiving as the centre of Australia, the dust in my socks, red, like 

Ayers Rock, soaked with sweat, had turned to a slimy paste between my toes. Time here


seemed endless, like when you’re waiting for the the principal at school to ream you out 

after you’d started a fire in a garbage can at recess, because you just discovered the power 

of fire. A mate at high school, Alan Freeman, showed me how he jacked off when he burnt 

down his father’s barn. He said he hated the place, his dad a no-good drunk who beat his 

Mum, and that fire gave him a raging hard-on, because it reminded him of the many ways 

his father could die. The sun reminded me of Alan; unrelenting, pig-headed. They say he 

was jail for burning down his ex-wife’s house five years later, but I doubt it - Alan was too 

scared of women to ever get married. I can see Alan laughing at me despite being dead for 

three years after he relieved a migraine with a shotgun in his grandfather’s dank garage. 

That night I drank the last of my whiskey that I had been saving for the riot of 

Casablanca and managed to light my gas cooker and boil water. Smoke rose into the night, 

and my breath a fog. Crickets chirped, and midges harped about my curious bent smile. A 

twig snapped and I turned to see my shadow. I shivered in the cold. I tried to meditate, 

closing my eyes like Hiroshi taught me, but my thoughts began to bubble. The jug began to 

rock, the water boiling in the tin cup. I scooped in coffee and then whiskey. 

Not long ago, Maya said to me her eyes were blue because she had Aryan blood in 

her veins, but that sunset morning I caught her sleeping like a flounder, one eye half-open 

and the contact lens sliding away like a cataract, revealing her natural-brown pupils. I 

sighed disappointed, nothing is true in friendship, except bondage. 

The brew warmed me, steaming out the cup and onto my cold hands. 

After a few minutes, I was ready to conquer Alexandria, Tripoli, damn the whole of 

North Africa, but the emptiness of this place defeated me. Here in the heavens of the Atlas 

mountains alone with my ambitions, blissful content came over me until the whiskey bottle 

lay empty beside my foot and the thought of enforced abstinence sunk me into cold hell. I 

was still drunk and already feeling the withdrawal. 

Afraid to move too much and entice the pain in my leg to strike again, I stared at 

the distant mountains, black against the moonlight, undulating like a woman's breasts. The 

wind began to howl. I dozed, nightmares of slaughtered animals begging me to spare them, 

ruined my slumber. They say that memories are laid down with chemicals, that the 

chemicals reinforce the circuitry, and how flashbacks are worse when more chemicals are 

involved. I think I’ll still be seeing slaughtered sheep a millennium from now, even if 

sheep have evolved into angels. 

I awoke disoriented some time later. The phosphorus dial on my wrist told me its


three o’clock in the morning. I tried to get up, but my knee wouldn’t co-operate. I fell to 

the ground cursing. My chest was on fire, my breathing laboured. The cold fogged my 

breath. I sucked in the air, looking like a dragon. I cursed God for my bad luck. But I know 

that it was my punishment for murder of three thousand sheep on the Lyttelton. 

I dreamed about my father, his victorious election day when he became the local 

labour member of Ingerton, a proud Gough Whitlam supporter. How intoxicated the family 

was, the first Greek immigrant to win a local seat that had been occupied for fifty years by 

conservative AngloSaxons. Even Maria cried with delight. 

But I pissed on his parade, arguing that when good men remain silent in the face of 

tyranny, they become cowards; ergo, God commits the sin of cowardice in any Holy war. 

My father gave me a black eye, and told me to respect God. Sadly his grand 

empire, his future paradise, foundered on this elegiac ideology, that ‛temporicide can 

reinvent the future, just as dream-time can reinvent the past.’ He didn’t understand the 

simple fact that time cannot be killed. He didn’t understand that his rise to power had been 

entirely orchestrated by Uncle Bart, a man with a crayon tongue; blunt and colourful. 

The sun rose on the third day. Flies descended upon me. A lone bird in the sky, 

circling, then from somewhere, a dog howling. As the heat rose like a frying-pan, I saw 

dust rising on the road down below in the valley. I looked hard, wondering which direction 

it was travelling, to or fro. 

Then I saw Maya. 

She came out of the haze like a camel train, arriving in a WW-II American jeep. 

She had on a different dress, leather-strap sandals and a new handbag; ripe, black cleavage 

lower than I have seen it before. And her hair, now auburn with red tips wildly cascaded 

over her shoulders. 

farmer. 

The Jeep came to a halt and Maya climbed out. Beside her was a toothless Berber 

‛Sorry we’re so late,’ she said as if we were meeting at a coffee shop. 

‛We now, is it?’ I wanted to ask, but I thought better of it. I looked at the Berber, his 

crooked smile beneath a two-day growth, knowing that it was probably him who had been 

holding her up while I slowly died. 

‛Would you like water?’ she asked as she walked casually back to the jeep. 

‛Would I like water?!’ 

She splashed me in water like a baby, laughing in her inimitable way. ‛You’re a 

funny boy. Why didn’t you find some shade?’


I slurped from the can, and ate the unleavened bread offered to me between freshly 

manicured nails. She smelt of scented oils, of basil and frankincense. Through my sensual 

delirium, I felt the strong hands of the Berber help me to my feet. 

‛You from America?’ came his broken English. 

‛No,’ I replied, croaking like a frog. 

‛This is good. America no good.’ 

‛Me from Australia,’ I said, slowly. 

‛Ah,’ he smiled, toothless. ‛Every street you have kangaroo, yes!’ 

‛Yes,’ I sighed, ‛everywhere kangaroos. Even down the main street of Sydney!’ 

I pointed to the BMW, prostrate against the side of my philosopher’s stone, where I 

had spent the last two days. He gave me those North-African eyes, razor blades and oasis 

palms at the same time. Like a pleased child, he gave me a big toothless smile. 

‛Be a good boy,’ Maya added, ‛And bring the bike.’ 

He smiled for her, nodded and bowed, like a down-at-heel porter boy as Maya 

helped me to the jeep. 

Obsequiously, he pulled up the baggy sleeves of his tunic. 

Taut, tanned biceps glistened. He made the K-75 look like a Tonka toy as he 

wheeled it to the Jeep, then lifted it into the back. 

‛We go now,’ he gesticulated behind the wheel. 

I tried to hold Maya’s hand, but she looked busy directing her new-found friend 

around the mountain goat-track. 

‛So beautiful here, Ari,’ she said, then turned to her new Berber friend. ‛We might 

stay awhile here?’ 

The Moroccan smiled, rugged like the mountains all around us as he crunched 

through the gears. 

‛Stay with your friend!’ I protested, my brow furrowed in betrayal. I couldn’t hold a 

poker face to this stunning model. 

‛Yes,’ she insisted. ‛I’ll stay with him. But I want you to come too.’ 

‛What does he think?’ I nodded to his sunburnt eyes in the rear-view mirror, 

windows to nothing but the eternal desert. 

‘He’s very happy?’ I remarked sarcastically. 

The Berber smiled like the capricious goat-herder he was. I noticed the rifle beside 

his thigh, rubbing the gear stick as he climbed through the gears. It was a dangerous part of 

the world, but I couldn’t help feeling that I was caught in some sort of conspiracy, the

muzzle of the gun pointing lazily in my direction. 

‛Would you mind?’ she asked. 


‛Yes, Ari would mind.’ I thought. The Jeep hit a pothole and my chin smashed 

against the back of the seat. I bit my tongue, the pain in my leg unbearable. 

‛You stay with him. Perhaps we’ll meet later in Casablanca?’ 

She hesitated, ‛No, no...’ She finally said with a smile, her voice raised with an 

inflection, hesitating as if she no longer remembered my name. 

‛Ari,’ I added for completeness. 

‛No, Ari. I’ll never leave you!’ she looked back at me so quickly I could tell she 

meant every word. 

We trundled along, Maya sitting like a princess beside her knight in shining goat 

skins while I hugged the foot-peg of my faithful and likewise crippled companion. 

Once we got to Marrakesh, and I received the medical attention that was needed (a 

plaster of paris cast for a fractured proximal tibia), I gave the bike away to Maya’s Berber 

friend. 

Pumped full of morphine, Maya took me to her favourite bar, the Petit Poucet in 

Casablanca, a gay night-club rumoured to have once been a watering hole for the famous 

French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry during his mail flights across the Sahara. Maya 

added in her tour-guide voice that Oscar Wilde was there at the club the week before. 

‛Oscar Wilde?’ I laughed condescendingly. 

‛Darling,’ she protested, ‛he was the most charming man I have ever had the 

pleasure of being sucked off by.’ 

‛Okay.’ I chuckled, ‛so then where’s his autograph?’ 

Her eyes were dilated from the cocktail of ketamine and cognac, ‛Honey, in such a 

compromising position, I could hardly ask him to do me yet another favour!’ 

cheap here.’ 

I looked across the bar to an old Arab with an underaged boy. 

‛See all, say nothing,’ Maya warned me, seeing my judgemental eyes. ‛Life is very 

A tall man, with quicksilver eyes and a flash of perfect teeth approached us, then 

whispered something in Maya’s ear. 

She smiled, then turned to me. 

‛Honey, I have to go make two hundred buck. Mind my drink, will you?’ 

‛Maya!’ I complained. 

‛Ari,’ she replied, emphatically, ‛I love you, but this is business. I won’t be long.


Besides, who do you think paid for your medical expenses. That operation on your knee 

cost three thousand U.S. dollars. If you weren’t so fucking lame, it would be you going 

down on that German tourist.’ 

After she disappeared into the toilets, I finished my drink and hopped over to a 

cubicle. I rested my foot up on the bench, easing the pain with a cold glass of beer. 

club. 

Maya returned fifteen minutes later, grabbed my hand and helped me out of the 

In the motel room that night, I went to bed, pissed off. I felt Maya’s arm around me, 

but I pushed her away. 

I awoke the next morning to see Maya sipping coffee beside me. 

‛Now don’t go getting all sad on me, Ari.’ 

I dressed and we caught a taxi to the airport. 

As we approached the airport, Maya opened her purse, ‛What do you think, Ari?’ 

‛About what?’ 

‛About us getting married?’ 

‛Don’t be ridiculous!’ 

She held a document in one hand with a ready pen in the other, ‛Either we get 

married in Casablanca, or I have to say goodbye. I can’t go to Australia without a spouse 

visa. Think of it as a business agreement.’ 

Dispensing with logic, I agreed. After all, love is the only game where cheating is 

forbidden but deception tolerated. She made me laugh, her barbarity and cruelty, her total 

lack of emotions; she reminded me so much of myself. 

me.’ 

‛I’m not sure about going back to Australia. I have nothing waiting at home for 

Maya smiled, ‛My love, come to Pattaya with me!’ 

I exchanged the ticket I had from SteerCorp for the trip to Bangkok. 

So it was that with a leg in plaster, a wedding ring, and a fake Moroccan wedding 

certificate, we boarded a flight to Lagos, then caught a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok. 

It was with a leg in plaster, a wedding ring, and a fake Moroccan wedding 

certificate that I boarded a flight to Australia. 

Somewhere over the skies of India, I opened van Aken’s book and randomly read; 

She rocks before Him in an ocean of wicker on boots of clay 

Like Eve’s eternal Snake, ‘I will devour him,’ she thinks,

He’s a Man-child, a sentimental pauper of never happenings 

But before pity came, She pushes the door shut upon night’s regret 

And sings a Jazz beat, knowing there’s no salvation in Swing. 


The chair creaks like a old man’s knuckle, and she removes a stocking 

Playfully charging by the hour for a second’s taste of joy 

She holds his hands with a smile that flowers like a missile. 

‘I cannot love you,’ she says, and crosses her fingers beneath her skirt 

To await his kiss of Life, that marries one breath to another. 

I was beginning to understand what Hiroshi had once said, that we are defined not 

by what we are, but what we do.

≈ 


From the twelfth floor Marriott Hotel in Pattaya, I cast my eyes down over the hot 

busy district of Pattaya. Immediately nearest is Ripley’s Believe it or Not adjacent to 

Sizzler’s Restaurant. In the distance, over the street-side bazaars, the Bay of Thailand. 

Maya was snoring, her naked form the colour of timber contrasting to the white 

sheets of the bed, her legs akimbo in exhaustion. 

I had come to Pattaya once before with Kyoshi Stephen and a team of twenty-five 

Aussie lads. We trained in Sityodtong for two weeks, a frugal international camp with 

canvas-over-dirt floors, and decades-old punching bags, home to fighters from Russian, 

Germany, New Zealand and South Africa. I was a green belt in karate back then. The Thai 

boxing trainers were easy on us, two two-hour sessions a day interspersed with weight 

training, swimming and jogging. Professional fighters trained here, but I saw it as an 

excuse to get away from the rat-race of Uni studies, some down-time R&R with cheap sex 

thrown in along the bars that dotted the streets of Pattaya. 

Muay Thai is close combat battlefield fighting, using elbows, knees and breaks, less 

traditional than most martial arts. Muay Thai exponents like Tony Jaa might argue that it is 

better karate, kungfu or taekwondo, but on the street, I begged to differ. One is born a 

warrior, without name, culture, style. 

My personal trainer at Sityodtong was a fifty-year-old guy with a paunch, covered 

in tattoos, and a broken smile. He had been a local champion (a prerequisite for anyone to 

become a trainer at Sityodtong), and had surprising speed and agility. Unlike me, he didn’t 

faint or vomit from exertion in the forty degree heat. Like most Thais, he learnt kickboxing 

from kindergarten, as integral a sport to Thai society as footy is to Aussies. It was hard to 

find a place in Thailand without posters of upcoming fights. T-shirt of Muay Thai boxers 

could be bought at any market at three hundred baht. Kickboxing was in their blood. In


Thailand, the smiling chameleon of Asia, the monks still bless their nak muay comrades 

prior to a Muay Thai championship. In a nation grinding its teeth in poverty, any 

distraction is a respite from drudgery. 

On my last trip to Thailand, I went three rounds with a young Thai kid in the Best 

Friends Bar, a popular ring down on Beach Road. I never laid a glove on him, fast as a 

bullet. He broke an incisor and my nose (for the third time), but we hugged afterwards and 

he bought me a beer. 

‛You farang, very good fighter!’ he smiled at me, half my weight and skinny 

enough to blow over in a slight breeze, his elbows wearing my dental impressions, his 

shins bloody from my forearm blocks that bore the brunt of his thump thump cadence of 

hits. It took me a week to recover, and three thousand baht at the local dentist to fix the 

tooth, but I stayed standing until he emptied his beer and said he had to go off to work the 

night shift at a go-go bar down town before I collapsed onto a stool and got a good rub 

down from one of the bar girls. 

As I was leaning against the balcony with a coffee in hand, Maya came out, slid her 

arm around my waist and told me she wanted to meet up with her friend Kanga at Jomtien 

Beach. 

‛She met an Aussie farmer a year ago, who lives near a town called Alice.’ 

After breakfast down in the restaurant, we caught a baht-bus for the fifteen minute 

ride down to Jomtien Beach. We met up with Kanga at Surf Kitchen on Soi 3. 

were.’ 

Kanga greeted me with an arcane smile and kissed me. 

‛Ah, ti luk,’ she says, calling me her love. ‛Maya never said how handsome you 

Her and Maya started babbling away, jumping up and down like excited children as 

they caught up with the past. 

‛Ari!’ Maya said excitedly, ‛Kanga has just got engaged to that Australian man!’ 

‛That’s wonderful,’ I said politely. 

By the time we reached the beach, Kanga had already told me ten times how she 

was so excited about going to Australia. 

We sat on the beach under an umbrella. 

The southern end of Jomtien was reserved for queers, and guys like me; the 

experimental type. I looked around at men with wedding rings and Thai boys at heel and 

one by one they winked at me. 

Kanga, in her bikini and sarong gave me a massage while Maya sipped on a beer.


My cock grew hard and with Maya’s permission, Kanga gave me a happy ending. I came 

over smooth lithe thighs reminiscent of a David Hamilton model. She smiled, her stiff cock 

poking out through her sarong, her coconut-white teeth glistening on chocolate skin. She 

lay beside me in the sand, with Maya on the other side, and wrapped an arm around us 

both. Kanga lacked the negative in her vocabulary and said yes to everything. She was 

twenty-four-years old, hung like a horse and swung like a revolving door. 

you marry us.’ 

‛Maya?’ I asked. 

‛Yes, honey,’ she replied, looking over the top of her sunglasses. 

‛Am I just a meal ticket to you?’ 

‛No honey. Don’t be jealous.’ 

‛Why would I be jealous?’ 

‛Because you want me for yourself.’ 

Maya lifted her head, ‛Ari, I love you long time.’ 

‛What’s that mean?’ I asked. 

Kanga looked to Maya in complicity. 

‛As long as the money lasts,’ Kanga replied. ‛Until we find the next customer, until 

‛That sucks!’ I growled. 

She laughed, ‛Ari, you come from a rich family in one of the richest countries in 

the world! Who are you to judge?’ 

‛So long time means as long as the cash lasts?’ I retorted. 

I walked off down the beach. 

At the water’s edge, I waded slowly into the cool water. As the ocean encircled my 

knees, I tried to come to terms with their Thai attitude. Slowly the water inched up to my 

waist and I sank to my knees. 

Underwater, I opened my eyes, my head raging with thoughts about Maya, and 

what I felt was a betrayal of our relationship. 

I looked through the murky waters, and in my mind, I was transported back to 

Surfer’s Paradise in Queensland. I could hear from somewhere the ring of a temple gong, 

and then as I came out of the water, I saw Hiroshi lying on a beach. My heart raced, and I 

blinked many times in disbelief as I saw Hiroshi lying with her back to me, her hair 

blowing in a gentle breeze as she read her book. 

Slowly, I sank under the water once more. 

When I came back up, it was Jomtien Beach. I laid at the water’s edge, haunted by


flashbacks. My skin had begun to burn by the time I returned to the shade of our umbrella. 

‛Are you okay?’ Maya asked. ‛You look really upset.’ 

‛No,’ I smiled. 

She held my hand, ‛You’re not angry with me?’ 

‛No,’ I said. ‛Not at all.’ 

Friends do that; they lie to each other. It’s only with family that we can be so brutal 

as to be honest. 

That night, we went to Tiffany’s, a lady-boy cabaret in Pattaya. 

We entered the grand theatre with its huge faux-marble lobby, jammed like 

sardines. The show was a riot of performers, dressed in elaborate headdress, gowns, 

feathers plumes and swimwear. The songs, dances and skits crossed cultures of Bollywood, 

Korean fan dances, and homages to Sino-Siam history. Maya and Kanga sat on the edge of 

their seats. Only the slapstick burlesque captured my immature imagination. 

After the show, Maya went backstage and introduced me to some of the show-girls, 

with their painted nails, feline grace and delicious pouts that only hormone-enhanced 

transgenders can display. 

She was at home in this place, but after a brief soiree with one of the lady-boys, a 

robust ambassador of the third sex, her eyes wild and demented like a racehorse as she 

asked where I was staying that night, I eventually waited outside sipping on beer. 

Afterwards, Maya, Kanga and I shopped on Walking Street for an hour before 

retiring to the Marriott. I was drunk enough to no longer care about Maya and Kanga 

pashing off in the lift as we rode to the eleventh floor. I opened the door to our room and 

they flowed like water after me, giggling in high pitches. Kanga was a passionate lover, but 

like an amateur actress, she had learnt her lines, but failed on the delivery. 

Later, we sat on the verandah, the warm night cooling our hot skin. Men worked on 

an apartment building, bamboo cane scaffolding cobwebbing the side of the building. 

married?’ 

‛Why didn’t you two ever get married?’ I asked them. 

Kanga and Maya look at each other. 

‛Married?’ Maya laughed, ‛Kanga and I are best friends. Why would we want to get 

‛That’s what people do in my country. You marry your best friend.’ 

Kanga kissed my hand, ‛Ari, you are such a sweet innocent boy!’ 

I pulled my hand away, got dressed and walked out. 

Maya and Kanga found me down at Sizzlers. They walked in and sat down at the

table with me. I was happily ignoring them, chewing on a steak. 

hand. 

‛We’re going shopping, if you’d like to come?’ Maya asked. 


‛Whatever,’ I said. Being a third wheel was not my idea of a good time. 

They waited until I had finished eating. 

As we walked down to Beach Road, strolling through the bazaars, Maya held my 

‛Don’t go all Gucci on me, Ari.’ 

‛What?’ 

‛You’re labelling me. I thought you were better than that.’ 

Maya went off shopping. I stood in the arcade, staring at a TV in Royal Garden 

Plaza, listening to George W. Bush’s polemic speech about victory in the Middle East. 

Maya walked over, showing me some bling she wanted to buy. I opened my wallet 

automatically, but she pushed it away. 

‛I will never spend your money again!’ she said, defiantly. ‛I will love you long 

time. And I don’t want this relationship to be anything but what it is. Expectation have 

their limits.’ 

off.’ 

‛And what are yours?’ I asked, angrily. 

She squared up to me, ‛An honest friendship. If that’s too much for you, then fuck 

I broke down, ‛You are such a ballsy chick!’ 

‛Are we still friends?’ 

I leaned her into a passionate kiss against a T-shirt stall. We fell onto the stall and 

the table collapsed under us. 

vendor. 

The vendor started screaming at us as we ran off with Kanga shouting abuse at the 

Back on Walking Street, we walked like the three amigos. 

I told Maya that she drove me crazy, then recited a Van Aken poem I had 

memorised from youth; 

‛I see us laughing at our grey hair, 

the fallen shape of her womanhood, 

our sexes blurred by gravity and misshapen by neglect, 

our family tree spread out across a continent, its roots unseen. 

But whose astral sap navigates us like dancing bees, 

to affirm this long ago witness of a loin’s chakral lust,

In celebration of what is more than three score and ten.’ 


I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the bemused faces of my two Thai butterflies. 

Just as I was about to explain the meaning of the poem, a short, muscular Thai man 

elbowed Maya. 

She stumbled on her stilettos and I grabbed her before she fell. 

I turned and called out to the Thai man, who abused me in his native tongue. 

‛What’s your problem mate?’ I shouted back. 

He began shouting at me again. 

‛He’s angry,’ Maya explained, ‛because some farang has got two Thai girls.’ 

‛That’s not my fault!’ I complained, and squared up to him. ‛I know you can 

understand English, so if you have something to say, bloody well say it.’ 

Rather than speak, he threw a punch at me. I blocked it and palm-heeled his chest. 

He stumbled backward and fell onto his backside. 

Within seconds, tourist police had descended upon us. By the time the offender was 

on his feet, the police had arrested him. 

‛You go now,’ one of the Thai police said to me. ‛We not want problem. Thai man 

fault. Always Thai man fault.’ 

They dragged the Thai man away in handcuffs, while I walked off with my 

companions on a street under the immunity of Pattaya laws that had one for Thais and 

another for farangs. 

When we got to Thepprasit Road, I took Maya into an upmarket perfumery and 

bought the most expensive perfume. 

‛So I can remember your smell,’ I said, giving it to her. 

The words reassured her, that unspoken expectation that every Thai girl dreams of, 

a happy ending that ends not in a wet spot but a wedding. 

Afterwards, the three of us went to Tony’s bowling, where we shot pool for an hour 

then hired a lane. I lost the first two games and won the third. I think Maya felt sorry for 

me in the final round, and offered to shout me dinner. 

We walked out onto the night street. Like Thailand’s native fauna, the sexual 

proclivities of the Thai prostitutes in the adjacent bars were diverse. Only Brazil had 

comparable sexual supermarkets. 

As I turned a circle, arms spread-eagle in high-octane joy, I saw the four points of 

the crucifix; a gogo bar, a 7-eleven, a pharmacy and an ATM. Amongst the horny, I also


saw the honed; foreign bodybuilders who came to bulk up on cheap over-the-counter 

steroids. They frequented the bars, but were content with getting laid once or twice a week, 

and preferred to show off their pump in tight singlets. I could aspire to such a bod but 

couldn’t be bothered spending so much time in front of the mirror, or knowing how 

steroids kills your libido. 

Maya took us to a Thai restaurant within sight of The Dragon, the bar where she 

and Kanga had first met. They ordered while I sipped on bottled water. The cuisine was 

simple; local catfish, rice and vegetables. 

Kanga talked incessantly, showed me photos on her phone of her farang fiancee, a 

sixty-year-old business man from Alice Springs. It wasn’t hard to see what he saw in 

Kanga, and must have been happy to share his superannuation dividends with a stunning 

youthful she-male. A small exchange when compared to his no-doubt dull life and cold ex- 

wife. 

Sadly, I knew that some foreigners who retired to the new life here in Thailand 

couldn’t escape their dissatisfaction. Some retirees were drunks, clinging to the flotsam of 

their youth, trying to forget some past hell while living here in heaven. But could 

geography move a man’s soul, could a fish move the moon? 

I just came to Thailand for the food. 

Near our table, old men hung around the bars, basking in the sunset of their sins, 

with heavy gold chains, Rolex watches and beer guts. The receding tide of their long-ago 

ambitions merely served as an invite to hungry women who feasted on their wallets. Few 

of these men had homes to go to, just investment condos in Chicago, Moscow, or Prague; 

their families long since abandoned them to their selfishness. Who could save them from 

the drug-delirium of sex. I hope I never ended like this. 

That night, Maya and I made love with such tenderness that I fell asleep in her 

arms. Hours later, I awoke beside her. Life was simple here; no confusion, no pretension, 

just truthfulness. The next day, Kanga had to return to The Dragon bar, so Maya and I went 

to the Million Years Crocodile Farm at Banglamung, about fifteen minutes out of Pattaya. 

After touring the historic stone gardens, with their Jurassic petrified trees, bonsai 

and animal-shaped rocks, I watched as Maya fed a wild crocodile, hanging a bamboo pole 

with a chicken carcass attached to it over a water bridge. She screamed as the croc caught 

her line, and I had to race over to save her from being pulled in. I laughed, but I could see 

she was absolutely terrified.


I hugged her as we fed a tiger cub with a bottle of milk, then posed for a photo and 

laughed when we saw ourselves in the picture. 

Afterwards, as we were sitting in the taxi, she held my hands in hers. 

‛Ari, I want to ask you something. Would you like to come see my home?’ 

‛Is it far?’ 

‛No,’ she lied. 

Five hours later, we finally arrived in the eastern city of Phimai, the old capital of 

Siam and now a small city in the province of Nhakon Rhatchasima. Endless rice fields 

passed as I lay back in the taxi, sipping beers. There were a few western franchises; 

McDonald’s, KFCs, but mostly indigenous roadside stalls. Traffic slowed our journey, the 

endless bustle of rickshaws, families piled onto scooters and home-made vehicles which 

should never be on the road. 

The taxi finally stopped outside the historical ruin of the Khmer, the old palace of 

Siam’s first king. 

We spent an hour walking amongst the two thousand year old ruins then walked 

across the street to the village market, which Maya explained was a thrice weekly excuses 

for hectic social gatherings. The King’s face was posted on every street corner and the 

Buddha was not a statue but a living presence in every minute’s occupation. The village 

clock was the temple prayers, and the slow morning procession of monks past the market 

stalls reminded me of the power of contrast in this country where stark poverty neighbours 

spiritual wealth. 

Maya bought me lunch from a road-side stall. It was blazing hot, and my skin was 

already turning red as I chewed on pork sausages. Maya informed me we were still some 

way from her home. 

She bought some fresh meat and fruit from the market before we climbed into a 

local taxi, a Nissan utility with wooden benches for the hour-long ride to her home. The 

taxi was crowded with locals carrying their groceries and babies. 

We rode along a rough bitumen road beside an irrigation canal. The smell of shit 

was ripe to the nostrils. Dogs roamed the roadsides, and lean cattle foraged where they 

could on parched earth. My skin was burnt, and I was tired from the long bus trip. Maya 

rarely spoke, her gaze never wandering from the endless rice fields of her youth. I noticed 

a few of the women gave us a look of disdain, but Maya simply ignored them. 

We finally arrived in the small village of Dongyai, where Maya grew up. Dongyai 

is no different to the ten thousand other villages scattered across Thailand. Temple song


regaled the sunrise air, and flies busied the sleeping cattle. Women did frenetic work before 

the heat began, around mid-morning. Washing laundry by hand, preparing food to sell in 

the market, killing a hen to prepare for the evening meal. 

There were a few stalls visible as we drove through the village streets; endless 

shacks, a public telephone, a medical clinic and a primary school. The taxi crossed a bridge 

over an irrigation canal. Dust filled the air, and wild chickens foraged noisily in the bushes 

beside the road. 

We stopped outside a corrugated iron shack, a front lawn wild with weeds and 

twisted iron that belonged to a last-century tractor. An old lady came out of the shack and 

whistled in glee. She smiled at me, then hugged Maya. 

‛This is my grandmother,’ Maya said with pride. 

Kon, a blind old man, emerged from the house, his hair completely grey and his 

steps aided with a bamboo cane. He shook my hand like I was royalty, the first farang he 

had ever met. I was invited to sit down on a mat on the bare concrete floor. 

As Maya’s grandmother prepared a meal of cold pork sausages and melon which 

Maya bought in Phimai, I looked around her home. This was where Maya had spent her 

childhood. A concrete floor, two windows, an attic for storage and a small old cupboard 

with some cooking utensils, a small room to one side where Maya’s bed lay. Outside, 

amongst the free-roaming chickens and dogs, there was a concrete slab that was the 

makeshift bathroom, a hole in the back served as the toilet, a 44-gallon drum served as the 

bath. 

Maya said that when she was young, she would do her homework by candlelight, 

the family too poor to afford electricity. 

After the meal, she took me for a walk around the village. She met some childhood 

friends from school, the few who had chosen to stay in the village and work on the cane 

and rice farms. Young children and old women were in the majority. 

‘The grandmothers look after babies,’ Maya said in response to my observation of a 

lack of males in the village. ‘The parents work in Bangkok. and make two hundred baht a 

week. I was lucky, my father was a farang from Germany. We haven’t seen him for years.’ 

Maya’s mother worked in Bangkok, sending money home when she could, 

returning once or twice a year to remind herself of the reason for her sacrifices. 

The next day, we caught a ride back to Phimai on an old scooter, chauffeured by 

Maya’s aunt. Three people on an old Honda scooter made for interesting travel.


By the time we got to Phimai, I was wind-burnt and my back aching. Maya then 

hailed a taxi back to Pattaya. 

When we arrived back at the Marriott, I gazed across the busy night streets. Maya’s 

village had infected me with a new reality, and an insight into morality that I hadn’t 

explored before. In the West, sex was a pleasant past-time, while here it was a meal ticket, 

a way out of poverty. 

Collapsing into the comfort of the bed, I listened to Maya running a bath. A few 

minutes later, she coaxed me into the bathroom, and I gingerly eased into the warmth of the 

water. 

‛I want you to come to Australia, Maya!’ I suddenly declared. 

‛Are you sure?’ 

‛It won’t be easy.’ I explained. ‛But my uncle is very influential. He might be able 

to get you a holiday visa. It could only be for three month, but maybe later...’ 

my cock.’ 

She kissed me, ‛And here I was thinking you were just interested in me because of 

For once in my life I didn’t feel ashamed of who or what I was. 

I chose my words carefully, ‛I feel that with you, I can be truly...’ 

She pressed her finger against my lips, ‛It’s okay, Ari. I know you’re not quite 

ready to come out of the closet.’ 

‛No, it’s not that,’ I said. ‛Your family accept me as I am. They have shown me 

more love in a day than my family have ever shown me.’ 

I felt that my soul, long imprisoned by neglect, had suddenly been shown a new 

delight. Somewhere in my education I must have gone amiss, thinking as I did that 

learning served merely to whet the wits, not the appetite. Though my education had 

afforded me an easy life, I would have traded it for one glimpse that a Thai farmer sensed 

when he had herded his buffalo home and peacefully awaited his evening meal, knowing 

that he was exactly where he should have been, weary but awake; not like me, torn 

between dreams and nightmares. 

I ran my hands down her slim body, no longer a mysterious enchantment but a 

familiar pleasure. We wrapped our legs around each other and lay back, sharing a joint 

while the water grew tepid. The world beyond the bathroom seemed more distant than 

Mars, and nothing seemed more taxing than the thought of how to eventually get out of the 

bath and into bed.

has cancer.’ 

Come home.’ 

An hour later, I got a phone call from my mother. 


‛Ari,’ Mother said, sobbing over the phone. ‛I am so sorry. Your dad is dying, he 

Then I heard my father on the phone, ‛The truth is, Son, your mother misses you. 

I hung up, shocked and saddened. 

The phone call, so unannounced, was father’s way of saying he loved me, a father’s 

verbal dyslexia, reflecting his illiterate feelings. This one-time remark of such profound 

honesty rocked the earth beneath me. I realised that I had grown so high that I had 

forgotten my roots. 

I booked a flight back to Australia, explaining to Maya that I would speak to my 

uncle about getting her a visa.

≈ 


Although I could not logically clarify my feelings, I felt my father had spent his 

whole life lying to me, and now that he was dying, I wanted him to apologise. It was a 

selfish need, but after grieving for Hiroshi, I felt unable to grieve for a father that had spent 

his entire life dedicated solely to his own ambitions. 

When I got to Yarrawonga, I entered the front door to find a crowd of civil-service 

sycophants in the lounge, all holding rosaries like it was passover. At the foot of the 

staircase, I saw young labour-party men waiting for a decision on who was taking my 

father’s job when he was gone, dressed in their business suits, hoping to be Malcolm Fraser 

one day with their tight eyes and collars, and pencil-thin red ties. 

The back verandah was thick and black with the greek mothers, holding their silent 

handkerchiefs as the waiters filled their glasses and Clyffe the dog pulled on his chain at 

the tennis court. 

The sea was grey and tossed with whitewash. 

‛Where’s my father?’ I asked Nicole, my ten-year-old niece, who was sobbing alone 

against a wall. She looked me over with her olive eyes streaming sad and her chin dreary 

with fret. She said nothing, just hugged me, ‛I’m so sorry Ari,’ and pointed to the ceiling, 

like he’d already gone to heaven. 

Dr Moraitis was leaning against a wall, talking to my cousin Christine, who was 

fifteen going on thirty in her fuck-me boots and tits like Ayers Rock. Suddenly all my 

anger, all my grief, boiled inside of me, suppressed for so long. Hiroshi, unfairly taken 

from me, a dysfunctional family who had given me nothing but grief; who had turned me 

into a loathing creature, who I found near impossible to manage. I grabbed Moraitis by the 

collar. 

‛You!’ I growled, ‛You useless doctor - come with me!’


I man-handled his carcass up the ivory staircase, along the carpeted corridors to the 

master bedroom. All around, mouths were agape. Not a sole moved. 

I kicked open the heavy door and pushed him inside. My two cousins Yiannis and 

Manolis stood like lost sheep, hands clasped together in front of their groins. Melina was 

holding my father’s hand next to the bed. Mother sat silently in the chair in the corner, with 

her poker-dot apron, her worried hands, and prayer lips. 

him. 

goldfish. 

Pushing Moraitis aside, I stormed to the foot of the bed. 

‛So kind you could wait,’ I said through my swollen lip and black eyes. 

Father coughed blood onto a gold embroidered handkerchief that Melina held for 

‛Look at you,’ my father barked. ‛An animal!’ 

He threw his arms back, trying to breathe, his mouth opened wide, gasping like a 

I slowly moved around the bed as he heaved in pain. I pushed Maria aside. For a 

moment, I stared at my father, trying to remember his features; the large mole on his right 

cheek, the burn mark to right elbow, the large bushy hairs of his eyebrows. 

As I opened my mouth to speak, he let out a curdled groan which went on for a full 

thirty seconds, shaking the walls. Finally, he let out a roar and blood poured like soup from 

his mouth that ran a rivulet down onto the satin sheets and spilled onto the floor at Maria’s 

feet. She pulled back, screaming. Yiannis, the biggest and hardiest of my cousins, fainted. 

Victor was hugging Dimitri, their mumbling voices slowing until there are just sobs 

coming from their lips. 

I walked out onto the chipped marble staircase for the last time. 

As I reached the bottom step, I heard the piercing wail of my mother. There was a 

hesitating moment as I looked over my shoulder, before pushing through the crowd of 

strangers at the bottom of the stairs. 

Out back, I left Clyffe go free. He ran to the kitchen, pushing his way through 

dumb feet and children’s smiles, barking at the fridge, his tail wagging. 

I opened the door of the refrigerator and dropped some lamb keftethes into his 

bowl. He ate hungrily. I pulled his ear, smacked his greying hairy shoulder and walked off, 

holding my macabre grin as I jumped my new Honda bike into life. 

Riding off down the steep driveway, I felt nothing but relief. Another anchor which 

had burdened my life was gone.


Uncle Bart rang me the next day, said he wanted to meet me at the church. ‛It’s not 

a request,’ he said, and I knew I couldn’t avoid him. 

I arrived an hour later. 

St. Spyridon’s was a Romanesque building with a bell tower, a garden in the 

foreground, a small brick fence, flowering gladioli and jasmine vines. A burst of white 

frangipani flowers littering the driveway to the rectory. A clerestory window of St. Gabriel 

in saffron and indigo lead lighting. Sepulchral crosses on the wall of last war’s fallen 

soldiers. Above a gabled entrance, a marble statue of Christ on the crucifix, hanging from 

nails in his hands and feet. 

As I entered the church, I could hear the peregrinations of an organist at the 

keyboard. From somewhere, a waft of incense assails my nostrils. 

In my sleepless state, I imagine it to be ’72, when I was being led by my maternal 

grandmother. She was leading me to the communal step, lifting me into her bountiful 

bosom. From the chancel came the priest with the communion wine. Choirboys shadowing 

him with candlelight. The soporific chant of the psaltis. The clutter of men’s boots against 

the pews as they arouse their children and wives to the aisles for communion. Mothers with 

deferential eyes, singing the Kyrie eleison. The faces of toothless widows lining the walls 

in their blackened dresses. The dumb belief in the resurrection. The unwavering faith in 

immortality. 

The organ grew louder, a toil of notes rose in the morning air, the tempo of a 

Russian symphony, an adagio, but I couldn’t place the musician. Then I heard a frightful 

abuse of notes, a girl’s high shrill laughter and a tintinnabulation of clapping. 

Then I saw in the dim recess of the nave, a church organ and sitting at the organ, 

Melina, dressed in a floral cotton dress. Her face was shrouded by a Carmen Miranda hat. 

‛Where’s your father?’ 

‛Inside,’ she said. 

Uncle Bart was sitting at a cleric’s desk, under a deluge of cerulean light 

penetrating the lead-lighting, his face bathed in the light bisectrix of a majestic Jesus and 

the twelve apostles, skin the colour of lapis lazuli. 

He held out a hand and I shook it. 

‛My commiserations, Ari. Very sad. Very sad indeed!’ 

I leant over his desk, ‛Why am I here?’ 

Uncle Bart deliberated, before removing his glasses. 

‛Don’t even think about missing your father’s funeral. Don’t you dare. Now, sit


down, because I have come to a decision about what you are going to do with your life.’ 

‛And what is that?’ 

He cleared his throat, ‛I want you to marry Melina.’ 

I ground my teeth. ‛I’m not marrying anyone, especially not that nut case. No 

offence, Uncle!’ 

Uncle Bart slowly stood up, resting his hands on the desk. 

‛I know she is a pain. What can I do?’ 

‛She needs meds. I think she has Asperger syndrome.’ 

Not long after the bed-wetting episode when we were thirteen, she tried to kill me 

when I refused her advances. We were playing beside the pool when she pulled off her 

bikini top, wanting me to play with her tits. My rebuttal resulted in her trying to strangle 

me with her bikini top. 

‛Honestly, Uncle,’ I finally spoke, ‛As much as I respect your offer, there must be 

some other way?’ 

‛It’s complicated,’ he replied, walking from behind the desk to sit me in a chair. He 

looked down at me with a father’s concern, flicking ash carelessly on the floor. 

‛If you don’t marry her,’ Bart confessed, ‛Melina will end up marrying someone 

like me. Some dumb thug with no future, only a past. I see it happening, and god knows I 

don’t want to throw away all the work I have invested in this family to see it squandered. 

Melina needs someone stable, who understands our culture, who has a good job, and the 

brains and balls to keep her in line. She only respects force. I know, that is my fault. I have 

been hard on her because in time, she inherits everything. She is my only child. She is what 

she is. By the way, Maria tells me you have a new girl, the one you spent time with 

travelling around the Middle East?’ 

I looked up at him with shock, my feet turning cold with fear. 

‛How the hell did you know about her...’ 

‛My job is to know things.’ 

‛Then can I ask a favour?’ I said. ‛I need a visa for her to come to Australia.’ 

He smiled, ‛You are no different to your father.’ He leaned against the desk, lighting 

the cigar. Taking a few puffs before continuing, all the while examining me like a piece of 

furniture he was hoping to acquire. 

‛Ari, let me tell you some things about yourself which you probably don’t even 

understand, and why you need this. If you marry Melina, and this is purely hypothetical, it 

would mean living two lives, one with my daughter, one with this Maya girl; one a lie, the


other a deception - neither of them totally disagreeable since the needs of the heart 

occasionally requires exceptional selfishness. Melina offers you the familiarity with Greek 

traditions, culture and language, as well as financial security. Those benefits outweighed 

your loathing of Melina’s pain in the arse attitude, or your obvious yearning for a free and 

independent life. Logic rules. In matters of the heart, ignoring one’s feelings is not the 

same as denial. Melina has been long sidelined by men whose attention were more focused 

on her purse than her pussy. I think she would embrace the paparazzi that came with the 

announcement that she was marrying you, a respectable man with a promising future. 

Convinced her of your undying love and genuine intentions, etc, etc, and she will suffer 

that glittering feminine illusion that she had found a man whom she believed was truly in 

love with her. You must endure her inanely hysterical excitement as she rings all her 

female friends without so much as a whimper of conceited yawning. Despite all your 

misgivings and dread of what you will have agreed to, proposing to a crazy Greek girl with 

a privileged upbringing and spoiling by my hands, Melina has a good heart and your 

mother would be pleased. You would have satisfied everyone’s expectations and therefore 

finally be liberated from the tyranny of your past.’ 

I sat there, stunned by his intimate understanding of my conundrum. 

‛My God,’ I finally responded. ‛You should have been a psychiatrist!’ 

Uncle Bart rose to his feet, ‛So we have a deal?’ 

I did not respond. Instead, we shook hands. 

‛Good,’ Bart tapped my shoulder. ‛I'll arrange everything. I think right here in St. 

Spyridon's, with lots of confetti and ouzo. You’re mother will be over the moon to know 

that you've finally married a good Greek girl.’ 

A silence fell onto the room. 

Bart chuckled, as he walked me out of the cloister, 'By the way, how is the 

veterinary studies coming along?' 

‛Yeah, well. About that - I’ve graduated but I don’t think I want to work as a vet. I 

am thinking about doing a PhD. There’s a professor I know in Brisbane, he’s offered me a 

research position, studying heartworm disease in dogs.’ 

But I think...’ 

Bart knelt before an icon of St. Gabriel and crossed himself. ‛It’s up to you, Ari. 

As he stood up, he staggered, and fell toward me, clutching his chest. 

‛Are you okay?’ I asked. 

‛A bad ticker, nothing more. What keeps me alive,’ he added, ‛is to see have you in


my family. You are the son I never had. And when you marry Melina, I know you’ll 

straighten her out.’ 

Bart returned to the cloister. 

I followed Melina out into the cathedral’s belly, where candles spluttered and icons 

shone down in seraphic propensity behind glassy sanctums. I crossed myself before Jesus, 

kneeling on one knee, what a hypocrite. 

When we got to the front steps of the cathedral, Melina lit a cigarette. She stood on 

the step above me, her dress penetrated by sunlight, showing an absence of underwear, the 

muslin dress covering a darkness of crotch. Her arms, crossed showed defiant breasts, 

beaded with sweat. 

miracle.’ 

'Apparently, we’re getting married,’ she said. ‛What a tragedy disguised as a 

‛Could be worse,’ I remarked. 

‛What could possibly be worse!’ 

‛We’d end up falling in love.’ 

Her eyes flickered for a brief moment, instantly betraying feelings she had hidden 

from me since we were teenagers. 

She laughed, ‛Love is an overpriced commodity, Ari.’ 

But her words were empty things, like butterflies that turned into moths as she 

returned inside the church. 

Down the stony steps onto the pavement, my fatigue evaporated, thoughts flowing 

like a steady river. 

Walking into town, I felt that chaos was subsiding, the way water builds, then 

suddenly flows over an obstacle. 

For better or worse, there was movement, direction and a purpose, however inane 

and shallow as the betrothal of marriage.

‛I hate Frank Sinatra!’ Maria said. 

≈ 


I didn’t want to go to my father’s funeral, but Maria pushed my buttons. I felt I had 

no choice but to relent to her wishes and drag myself to a place I loathed; the disingenuous 

mourners, the weeping grandmothers, the crocodile-teared friends. 

We sat on the old headstone of someone long forgotten fifty metres away, listening 

to the string quartet as they strained the air with the mournful melody ‛I did it my way.’ 

‛Uncle Bart insisted on it,’ Maria explained. ‛He said Dad would have loved it. He 

gave a good speech, though. He talked about how Dad came from Kastellorizo as a 

penniless immigrant and put himself through law school and became a politician. He didn’t 

mention us kids. Mum got up and said a few words. She said how Dad took to his grave 

only the few vices which God refused to accept.’ 

‛How sweet.’ I groaned. 

We watched as the mournful wailing continued as the coffin was slowly lowered 

into the grave. The hearse parked nearby, a white Cadillac, the driver leaning against the 

door, smoking a cigarette, loosening his tie in the heat. 

‛I better go and comfort Mum,’ Maria said as she jumped off the headstone and 

walked toward the funeral party. 

From a car parked about twenty metres away from me, a man got out of a late 

model Ford. He approached me with the casualness of a Sunday stroller, whistling. As he 

got closer, I recognised him as Nick Kelso, a fellow graduate of Townsville Grammar. 

He’d graduated from the police academy when I was in first year uni. By the time I had 

finished vet school he was promoted to detective over his bust of a million-dollar 

marijuana ring operating out of Mt Fox, near Ingham. 

Even at school, his eyes sparkled with ambition. A gifted student, never studied,


always got As. We shared a dorm together in final year boarding school. He once wrote an 

essay about Cat Steven’s Another Saturday Night an hour before lesson and the teacher 

was so impressed he had Kelso read it out in front of the class. 

‛This boy will go far,’ the teacher pronounced, while I ground my teeth in the back 

seat, having spent three days rewriting my ten page epistle on Socrates that scored a B 

minus. He dated the girl of my dreams, Penny Goodfellow, seduced her on a night cruise 

around Magnetic Island. They married a year later. Had four kids, one after the other like a 

car factory. 

Kelso was a stout, red-headed guy with big hands and small feet. He played ping- 

pong in his spare time. I knew this because he always carried one in his pocket, usually 

orange or red. It was rumoured his father once played China’s Hsi En-Ting in the ’72 

Olympics, but no one bothered to confirm the tale. 

I hated his easy nous, his confident air, his glib way with words. In essence, he was 

everything I wanted to be. 

Walking towards me, he lit a cigarette and smoked lazily. 

‛My condolences on your loss, Ari.’ 

‛Thanks, how’s the wife.’ 

‛She’s an old banjo, but can still pluck a good tune. But not as good as old blue 

eyes.’ He raised his head to the sky. ‛Sinatra was a goddamn genius. Not just his singing 

ability, and for sure he had remarkable talent, but his skills at pleasing a crowd. And what 

gave him that genius? He had the necessary prerequisites; poverty, personal tragedy and a 

defiant belief in providence - sort of reminds me of your Uncle before he came to 

Australia.’ 

‛Sinatra was good looking - that’s all you need for success.’ 

‛Maybe you’re right. We both lucked out on that one. So how’s uni? I hear you 

finished vet school?’ 

‛Yep.’ 

‛I never saw you as a veterinary - more a footballer turned coach, but then I’m a 

bad judge of character, always see the worst. Must be great to have such an opportunity to 

travel the world, make new friends, all those pussies at your beckoned call.’ 

‛Did you really come here to psychoanalyse me?’ 

Kelso’s eyes darkened, ‛I came to warn you.’ 

‛How’s that?’ 

‛You’re uncle’s going to come to a sticky end.’

‛The cops have been saying that for twenty years.’ 

‛I hope you’re not in the net when we drag it.’ 

‛Fuck off Kelso,’ I said, not really meaning it. 

‛I hear you’re marrying his daughter? Quite a catch.’ 

‛Yeah, she’s easy on the eye.’ 


‛Personally I’m not into incest, but hey, you Greeks invented everything; 

paedophilia, homosexuality, slavery, capital punishment.’ 

‛What about democracy?’ 

‛All one and the same wouldn’t you say?’ he retorted with a smile. 

Kelso guffawed, ‛You’ll find it was India who invented it in the sixth century BC, 

but then if I remember, history was never your strong point in school. You didn’t even 

invent mathematics - you stole it from the Egyptians and called it your own. You killed 

Socrates, the greatest logician of all times, while you prided yourselves on democratic 

laws. All you are good for is re-branding.’ 

eyes bleed red. 

‛I didn’t kill anyone.’ 

‛How’s your poor Mum? She’s aged since I saw her last.’ 

I grabbed his tie, squeezing it. I wanted to crush the blood out of his throat, see his 

‛Fuck you!’ I growled. 

‛Ease up, Ari. We’re just talking here.’ 

I let him go. Kelso adjusted his tie. 

‛I didn’t mean to intrude on your grieving and I apologise for that,’ he remarked. 

‛But here’s the thing, Ari - you’re a great strategist, you’ve manoeuvred into a particularly 

fortunate position, at least from our perspective.’ 

‛What are you on about?’ 

‛Your marriage to Melina will open doors for you. Access to the family’s records, 

accounting ledgers. We need your help, to get to your uncle. We need those books. I’d 

rather this worked out in your favour. I wouldn’t like to see you go down. We know about 

your recent travels - North Africa, Middle East, Japan, Thailand. It seems pretty obvious 

your uncle’s been grooming you for expansion of his empire.’ 

‛I know nothing about these things.’ 

Kelso handed me a photograph. 

‛What’s this?’ I asked. 

‛Bart’s been lying to you for the last fifteen years.’

eyes. 


The photo showed a smiling girl, a pretty teenager with dreadlocks and haunting 

‛She’s cute,’ I said. 

Kelso had his back to me, gazing at the service nearby. 

‛Yes, she is. Don’t you love this song?’ Kelso mused, his hands moving like a 

conductor. ‛It’s not just about individuality but the revelation of truth at death, in a cadence 

at once both simple yet sublime.’ 

I held the photo out at him. 

‛Thanks, but I have enough woman problems in my life.’ 

‛My number is on the back,’ he declared. ‛Call me when you’ve sobered up. You 

might want to meet her. She’s your daughter. Goddamn, listen to that chorus line.’ 

He turned away, throwing his cigarette to the ground. 

‛Daughter?’ I shouted at him, ‛You don’t know shit, Sherlock.’ 

Kelso slowly turned around, his hand rocking in tune with the finishing chorus of 

Frank Sinatra’s song. 

‛Ah, old blue eyes at his best. Such music! Have a nice day, Ari.’ 

He walked off without a care in the world.

≈ 


Melina wore a wedding dress made by her mother who graduated seamstress school 

in a godknewwhere village east of Athens. The stitching resembled something my uni 

lecturer had attempted one night when he was drunk at a party and tried to show us the art 

of overlocking sutures using just a pen and his girlfriends lascivious thigh. Melina the 

meringue, happy as a white cloud, her hair teased with product, stiff as cardboard. How I 

laughed inside when she entered the church. And a young kid feinted in the heat, a choir 

boy, but the church organ just kept on moaning as Melina crawled down the aisle longer 

than the great wall of China. Firesome stuff, like watching Joan of Arc go up in flames. 

Uncle Bart had to get drunk to endure Melina’s bitchiness for the hour-long ride to 

St Spyridon’s, his nose like a tomato on his cauliflower face. My mother serious as a 

stigmata at Easter. Father, well god knows where he was, probably cloaking a girl in a 

Canberra motel and his absence was sorely missed by no one. 

I’m drunk and callous, trying to maintain pythagoras’ notion of the vertical, trying 

not to become the hypotenuse of Melina’s contempt. 

She held my hand, we kissed and thank god it was over. 

Clicked went the cameras, and we spooned and swooned for the hundred chalky- 

sweat faces that blessed us with a long and fertile life. My smiles were feeding alphabet 

soup to the illiterates, but life was always like the last supper for Greeks, even at breakfast. 

Standing on Castle Hill for the photographer, the wind flagging Melina’s dress into 

my face, the world was chintz and blue and I was sipping whiskey from a hip flask. 

The reception dinner was the last time I ever ate souvlaki. 

Uncle Bart gave the father-of-the-bride speech, which concluded with Melina and I 

receiving the keys to a new house. I asked Melina why he had bought in Kensington, 

Melbourne.

‛Does he want to get rid of us?’ I enquired. 


Melina dismissed my question with a look of disdain as if I were too stupid to 

understand. She knew everything about business, her thoughts a drop-down menu of 

trading sheets, account balances, credit losses, you name it. 

own.’ 

‛Melbourne is our future, we’re running an importation business.’ 

‛I thought your father was a green-grocer?’ 

Melina shook her head, ‛Ari, all you need to know about business is to mind your 

Everyone looked at me because Melina’s voice is like a cat on a hot tin roof. I raise 

my glass and hide sheepishly behind it. 

clothes. 

After the bridal waltz, we both went off to a changing room to repair into casual 

While Melina got out of her wedding dress, I snorted a line of coke. Melina pulled 

down my pants to take her first look of my adult cock. She wasn’t disappointed, not 

because of its size, but because it was stiff. She had waited a long time for this. 

I leaned back, self-absorbed in the cocaine hit as she sucked me. I took a photo on 

my cell phone as a memento. 

‛You never told me you did drugs,’ she said, holding my shaft in her long fingers. 

‛You never told me your were a bitch.’ 

She smiled, undid her blouse and pulled me into a kiss. She tasted of white wine, 

garlic and olives. 

‛Fuck me, maestro,’ she said. 

She pulled down her panties and inched my cock toward her. Her panties were 

bloody with her period. I locked the cubicle door and we fucked. 

Afterwards, she sat on the toilet, panting and disheveled, staring at my bloody cock. 

The change-room door opened and we heard the giggle of women. 

Melina slapped me, ‛I feel like I’ve just been butchered.’ 

I threw her dress at her, ‛Be careful what you ask for,’ and walked out. 

The men were getting drunk, and kids were running about in mayhem. Greek music 

played loud enough to disturbed the dogs across the road. 

Melina barked, ‛Be a good boy and get me a drink, will you?’ 

I looked at Melina anew. 

‛I beg your pardon?’ I laughed. 

‛I said get me a drink. Are you deaf?’


I grabbed her arm, ‛Let’s get one thing straight. You do what you like but if you 

ever try to tell me what to do...’ 

She looked at me in horror, then tears welled in her eyes. 

For a moment we stood at a cross-roads, and I wondered if the marriage, only two 

hours old, was already over. 

scene.’ 

Finally she took a tissue from her pocket, ‛Okay, Ari. I’m sorry. Just don’t make a 

Uncle Bart walked across to us. 

‛Is everything okay?’ he asked me. 

‛Fine,’ I answered him coldly. 

He grabbed Melina’s arm. 

‛May I have the pleasure of one last dance with my daughter?’ 

They floated out onto the dance floor. He snapped his fingers and the band on his 

cue began the Zorba. 

The ouzo flowed down my throat as a congo line of people spilled onto the dance 

floor. Men formed a circle and danced a tradition that had been going on since time 

immemorial. 

My mother sat in her chair, clapping her hands like a relic to a lost Greece. About 

her children danced, and she smiled, her eyes reflecting a village girl who once dreamed of 

coming to Australia. How God cursed her by granting her wish. I wondered whether she 

understood me at all, me who asked for nothing from God but the wisdom to know 

everything and accept nothing. 

‛I love you, Ari,’ she said, clenching my hands. ‛My prodigal son has returned.’ 

And then the music turned on a beat. My feet began to dance of their own accord. I 

smiled because I knew that’s what she wanted. I found myself singing loudly amongst the 

riotous colonnade of men who stunk of garlic and grog. 

Who are you Ari?, I thought. I felt my father’s presence in my heart. I went to the 

bar, got another beer. 

white shirt. 

‛Good I, Bad me,’ I said to a stranger, a man with a thick grey beard and beer-soiled 

He slapped my back, a caricature from a Kazantsakis novel. 

The words ‛Yiasou, Ari!’ exploded from his mouth like C4. He led me onto the 

dance floor, his hairy hands like a bear’s. We clung to each other like castaways, pounded 

by waves of music.


I found myself encircled by adoring women, all of them relatives, whose names I 

no longer remembered, who loved their new groom. I opened my heart to them, hoping to 

feel what they felt, that elixir of joy and salvation that Jesus has been promising for two 

millennium. 

I kissed Maria on the mouth, and wanted to tell her that I loved her, but thought 

better of it, seeing as Melina was standing next to us. 

and gone.’ 

‛Don’t wait for judgement day, Sister!’ I laughed as Melina disappeared. ‛It’s been 

There was a moment of complicity between us. Nothing needed to be said. Maria 

and I knew we were soul-mates. It was just a tragedy that we were blood-mates. 

‛It’s not fair!’ I shouted above the music. 

‛What isn’t?’ Maria asked. 

I thought of her childhood with Thalassaemia, her sidelined life so full of promise. 

‛It’s not fair that I get everything so fucken easy and you have a shit life.’ 

Maria smiled, ‛Are you sure about that, Ari?’ 

She was right of course, holding me close, waltzing across the dance floor. I could 

feel her heart beating against mine, her breast pushing into mine, her groin against my 

thigh. I wanted the moment to last forever. Inside my heart there was nothing except the 

swirling music and my whirling dervish thoughts that spun reckless like a compass needle 

at the south pole. 

The song ended, and Maria kissed me the last time. 

‛You know I love you, Sis?’ 

‛May God bless the two of you,’ she said, before Melina returned, parting the 

waters between us. 

‛Time to go, Ari!’ Melina barked. 

Under the arbour of three hundred arms, my wife and I walked off into an awaiting 

limo, husband and wife, while the guests cheered us on. Beer cans and confetti clanged 

noisily as the limo pulled out onto the road and Melina laughed at me. 

‛At last,’ Melina thumped the seat. She had achieved a lifelong dream, like one had 

just bought a prized piece of real-estate. In the morning, the mortgage deeds would be 

reckoned with, but until the ouzo evaporated, at least for a brief interlude, her drunken 

smile hinted at eternity.

≈ 


Tasmania is an island state, twelve hours sailing by The Spirit of Tasmania, or a one 

hour flight with Qantas, from Melbourne. It is the Ireland of the Pacific, notorious for 

eccentrics, alcoholics and poets. Located in the southern ocean, Tasmania’s weather is 

unkind, with nine months of winter. They say if you live in Tasmania too long, you forget 

you’re an Aussie. Tasmania, like the lost civilisation of Atlantis, is a Siren who can sing at 

you until you've got amnesia. 

At the start of our honeymoon, Melina and I rented a car in Hobart. I waited while 

Melina drove a hard-bargain, the agent almost in tears as he gave me the keys. We headed 

up to Great Lake through rising farmlands, stopping near sunset to take pictures of snow- 

white foam in creek bottoms, pitch-black trees that bent like old men, wiry leafless thickets 

the colour of lava, and ice-capped creeks that hinted of Eden. I had got her a good Canon 

digital camera, and she shot off film like a Beirut commando, until she realised the 

batteries were flat the whole damned time. 

We made love in the back of the Subaru hire-car that night, our butts freezing in an 

out-of-the-way picnic plateau beside a lake overflowing with the Milky Way. The creek 

gurgled silver in our ears as I laughed at her naked moonlit urges, the Andes-high place 

seeming to have stolen her prudishness. 

She was quite breathless afterwards. 

‛I feel so lonely tonight,’ she said. ‛Maybe we should have a baby.’ 

Her face turned to shadows, only her nose visible, and she was sniffing in the cold. 

‛Sure,’ I said. 

‛But they’re expensive,’ she sighed. 

In Ulverstone, on the north coast, we met up with an old colleague of mine from 

uni days, Peter Thames. He owned a small practise, doing well, settled and mortgaged with

kids. 


On the spur of the moment, he asked me if I was interested in doing a two-week 

locum for him. He said the family needed a break. 

I talked Melina into the idea, thinking it would be a great chance to really 

experience Tasmania. God knows how she agreed to my insane impetuosity. She was so 

cosmopolitan. 

We moved into Peter’s house, a quaint three-bedroom residence at Turner’s Beach. 

One of the first calls I took in Peter’s clinic was to a Simmental stud out near 

Burnie, where I delivered a calf from a cow, only to find that the farmer had tried to get the 

calf out before calling me and the calving jack had snapped the calf’s foreleg. I told the 

farmer to send the calf to the knackery. It was a disappointing consultation and no doubt 

the farmer probably wouldn’t call me again. 

The next call was to a colicky horse in North Motton. I passed a stomach tube 

down its nostril and poured in a litre of paraffin oil, explaining to the farmer that the 

commonest cause of colic in horses was due to the sandy soil. I kicked potato spuds in the 

paddock at my feet, waiting for the paraffin bucket to empty. The horse dropped dead a few 

minutes later. I realised I had passed the tube into the trachea rather than the oesophagus. 

For the first week, I spent my days working thus, torn between inexperience and 

incompetence. 

In the evenings, I’d tread the cold sands of Turner’s Beach alone, regretting the 

whole idea of being a vet and married to Melina. I longed for Maya, and at night I would 

secretly call her. 

Melina forbade me drinking or doing drugs in the house. On weekends, I would get 

stoned and bush-walk the nature trails around the north-east. Melina found nirvana in retail 

therapy. Every morning, she’d be warm eyed like a Hindu saint, staring at me, smugly 

purveying a rag-worn man who’d turn up at dawn from an all-night calvings or benders to 

catch some shut-eye before going back to work. 

She spent her days in Davenport, about thirty minutes from Turner’s Beach. She’d 

sit for hours watching the Spirit of Tasmania coming into port, turn to strangers for 

comfort. Once a week she had a hair appointment at Mirrors, a hair-salon run by a 

nineteen-year-old hairdresser fresh out of TAFE. His bristling arms enticed her and she 

spent an hour with him, conversing the colours of gossip. Some days they’d share a coffee, 

and she’d sigh flirtatiously with him. One day, she went with him to see a new film, 

American Beauty.


I watched them leave the cinema, from the pub across the street, and eventually 

followed Valentyne home. 

A few days later, Maya walked into Mirrors but left after a few minutes. I followed 

her Mazda to Mersey Bluff where she sobbed over the steering wheel for an hour, her car 

pelted with hail beside a grey and turbulent Bass Strait. 

sake!’ 

Melina confronted me that night. 

‛What the hell did you say to my hairdresser?’ 

‛Valentyne?’ I asked. ‛I just warned him who he was messing with.’ 

‛You think I am having a fling?’ she laughed incredulously. ‛He’s gay, for god’s 

When I confronted Valentyne the day before, he was on his knees with a banged 

eye and bloody nose, apologising for flirting with my wife. Yes, he confessed to me, it did 

cross his mind to sleep with her, but her arrogance was intolerable. 

‛She’s so damned conceited!’ 

I had threatened to kill him if I ever saw him again but it was just to scare him, 

nothing more. I didn’t think he would leave town. 

I could have told Melina this, but it would have been pointless. She wouldn’t have 

listened anyway. She was lying about him being gay, but it’s like marriage; forgiving and 

forgetting, and we were both blessed with amnesia. 

My father was blessed with the same amnesia. He’d rant and rave, then ten seconds 

later, after his hurricane mood had abated, he’d expect everything to return to normal. As a 

young man, he was engaged to Anastasia Coustas, whose father was the Greek 

Archdiocese of Sydney. Four months before the wedding, he was playing trumpet in a local 

jazz band, The Neptunes, performing at the Townsville Greek Community Centre. It was at 

the after-gig party, at three in the morning, with enough Ouzo to make any woman look 

attractive, that he met my mother. The Ouzo was talking when he seduced her, deciding to 

sow the last of his wild oats. A month before his wedding, my mother told my father she 

was pregnant. He said it was the hardest decision of his life, to hang up his trumpet. 

Because I was the eldest son, my father shared everything with me; his sins, his foibles, 

because he knew to keep his enemies close. He told me everything because I was the guilt 

whisperer; I can tame anyone’s guilt. I inherited this from my mother, who blamed herself 

for every misdemeanour in her life; her husband’s foibles, my truancy and Maria’s illness. 

Being in Tasmania had lessened my grief about Maya being so far away. Not 

because the beautiful verdant hills of Ulverstone can turn even a raging bull mellow, but


because I had just read a book, Conversations with God, where it said even Hitler went to 

heaven. Melina loved the book. She quoted entire passages from it, but I never listened to 

her because she was just a camel stuck in the eye of a needle. She had started 

experimenting with Chinese herbs and Italian spices to pass the time. I knew she was 

reinventing herself because she was trying to yield to her new life, to the new and absent 

husband. Most nights we had nothing to say to each other at the dinner table and I figured 

this was how marriages worked, that not talking was the same as silence. 

At the Ulverstone practise, I put in eighty-hour weeks. It keep my ferociously busy 

mind occupied. Peter Thames practise serviced a district the size of Massachusetts. 

Country practise is hard work, but the farmers have realistic expectations. Country vets are 

not the same as North Shore veterinary specialists who are desperate to do prosthetic eyes, 

bionic limbs, pacemakers or root-canals. Somewhere in our frantic attempts to be heroic, 

vets have missed the importance of being earnest. 

I’d been out of uni seven years, but I still made mistakes; it was the cost of 

inexperience. A lecturer friend of mine, Professor Rick Abbey, once told me it takes about 

eighty years to be a good vet, but I doubted I'd be around even a quarter of that. I was so 

burnt out, I smoked even without a cigarette. 

One night toward the end of my locum, I was arrested, drunken and disorderly. I 

had been swinging from a streetlight in downtown Ulverstone, the lamp-post serving more 

as support than illumination. The copper asked me what I was doing and I drunkenly 

replied I’d locked my keys in my car, but it was so dark over there so I was trying to find 

them on the street. I spent the remainder of the night in the lock-up, wondering why the 

cop didn’t get my Rumi joke. I vowed to Melina over the phone the next day that I would 

attend AA and for a while, I managed the weekly sessions. And the barrage of vet work 

continued, one phone call at a time. 

Ulverstone had all the beauty of a temperate Paradise. I had travelled across its 

woods, wandered over land that had never seen a human footprint, past lakes that reflected 

a sky greater than the whole island state. Melina saw just wild desolation and savagery, 

hoping that man would one day encroach upon this wild forest land, and manicure the wild 

grasses into a respectable cud of suburbia. I had seen Melina in one green moment, 

loathing her manipulative ways and felt bone-weary of her, deciding to rest one night in a 

camping site ten kilometres out of Cradle Mountain curled up beside a log fire with a bottle 

of booze. 

As the evening got cold and the firewood ran short, I stamped my feet and cursed


Hiroshi’s name for not saving me from this insane marriage. I had asked her to come back 

to me in my dreams and she said as much, that when she died she’d look over me like a 

guardian angel, but the only angels I saw were little fireflies hovering the flames of the 

cinders left in the log fire at my cold, numb feet. 

It was a lie, I thought. Everything was nothing, and Hiroshi’s firm beliefs in 

Siddhartha were just dreamtime make-believes. Only the fire was real and it too was dead. 

I poured out my water-can onto the coals, steam rising into the morning sunlight fell onto 

the treetops around me. A stray cat pestered the wild grass and scattered when I threw a 

breadcrumb at it. My car was stiff as I pulled on the door to open it, and my drug case fell 

onto the ground, scattering penicillin bottles, used syringes, embryotomy wire and eye 

hooks at my feet. My hands were cold stiff as I swung the calving chains into the backseat, 

still covered in dry afterbirth and smelling of blood, while flies arose from their sleep and 

began to worry my boots, thick with shit and crackling with the mud of a paddocks. 

My locum was ended. 

Melina’s face said it all - nothing. Our bags were already packed. She chewed on a 

carrot, rabbit-thin from marital bondage, her skin vegan pale. 

Over roast beef and vegetables, Peter and I talked about fond memories of uni days, 

while Melina struggled with her vegetarian palate. 

‛You’ve change, Ari,’ Peter Thames remarked to his wife across the table. ‛My 

God, Marjorie, Ari was so confident, so questioning of everything. Mad about karate he 

was! Always coming to lectures with one bruise of another. And that Japanese girl he was 

always hanging around with. What was her name, Ari?’ 

to Melbourne. 

‛Hiroshi!’ Melina interjected coldly. ‛She’s dead.’ 

The dinner went downhill after that and I couldn’t wait to leave. 

We had a four hour drive ahead of us, back to Hobart, catching a connecting flight 

In the car, Melina couldn’t wait to close her door on the cold winter’s night that 

blew razor winds off the Bass Strait. 

‛They’re fucking Hillbillies!’ she protested. 

It was with much sadness that I waved goodbye to Peter Thames, a country lad 

whose veterinary skills were sublime and whose only ambition was to love his family, be 

the best vet he could be and one day return to Australia. He had a contentment I longed for, 

and looking at Melina, I felt envious for this man’s humble heart.


≈ 


The ten a.m. Melbourne sun filtered through the still-frosted bedroom window like 

a cathedral, and outside the Kensington apartment an azure cloudless sky promised a warm 

day. 

Detective Nick Kelso was in my earpiece, saying stuff through the phone with a 

slurping tone, no doubt sipping coffee mid-sentence, while a gaggle of people murmured in 

the background. I wondered where the hell he was. 

‛You’ll need to come now,’ he informed me. 

But I knew I couldn’t go anywhere. Melina had already left for work, and Maya 

was due in an hour. 

‛Maybe tomorrow, Detective,’ I said, ‛I’m kinda busy at the moment. Preparing for 

a locum job in Bendigo...’ 

I was standing naked before the window of my apartment, my body lathered with 

soap like a warmblood horse after a race. 

‛Now,’ Kelso barked. 

‛Can’t it wait?’ I snorted. 

‛I just thought you wanted to meet her.’ 

‛Who?’ 

‛Your daughter. She’s here, as we speak.’ 

Oh, God, I thought. It is happening. She is real after all. 

‛Be here in thirty minutes Ari,’ Kelso insisted. 

‛Where?’ 

‛Acland Street.’ 

I hung up the phone. 

I had been scrubbing myself for an hour straight with my favoured instrument, a


brillo brush - trying to get rid of the dirty cancer in my soul. Frustrated by Kelso’s call, I 

strutted butt-naked in front of the full-length bay window and didn’t give a shit about the 

spinster, Mrs Mirrabon looking at me from the flat across from mine. Her false teeth 

clucked every time she drew back her curtain and saw me. She was my barometer most 

days - when I was clean enough and red enough, she closed her louvred blinds. 

briefcase. 

I called Maya for a rain-check as I dressed in slider jeans, T-shirt and leathers. 

‛Again, honey?’ she asked. ‛My cock has been waiting for you for days.’ 

I ran to my bike, kissing Maya through the phone. 

The bike rattled the garage windows with its throaty note. 

When I got to Acland Street, I found Kelso inside Nick’s, sitting at a booth with his 

‛Where is she?’ I asked, looking around. 

Kelso laughed, ‛She’s in a long flowing white gown and a tiara, riding in a 

pumpkin. Sit the fuck down.’ 

I slumped defeated into the booth. 

‛I pride myself on being a connoisseur of coffee. I normally drink straight blacks, 

but the Macciato here is exquisite. The ratio of milk to coffee has to be just perfect, four to 

one, or its just flat white and worthless.’ 

Kelso motioned to me, ‛What will it be?’ 

He ordered coffees with the graciousness of an Arabian prince. 

‛Short black, thanks!’ I said to the waitress a little too abruptly, so that her smile 

washed from her face like a soapsud. 

‛Don’t forget the magic words,’ she said, chirpy voice like a rosella on speed. 

‛Please,’ I corrected myself. 

Kelso took his time lighting a cigarette, then opened a file from his briefcase, ‛Have 

a look at these and tell me what you think.’ 

summaries. 

I ran my hand over what appeared to be accountants sheets, bank balances, ATO 

‛Yes, they look familiar,’ I concluded, pushing the pages away. 

‛We need the originals, undoctored, the ones Melina keeps on her computer that 

show where the money really goes.’ 

‛I don’t have access to those.’ 

Kelso eyed me threateningly, ‛Then get them.’ 

He got to his feet, clipping his briefcase closed. Emptying his coffee cup in one


final sip, he added, ‛Ah what irony. In this blue-sky land of open-cut mining and sheep we 

can brew the ultimate Americano, a single shot of espresso with seven ounces of hot water. 

Oh and by the way van Aken is out on the footpath at the table near the door.’ 

I looked to the table a few feet away outside on the pavement, at a lean old man 

sitting alone with a coffee. 

‛The weirdo in the speedos?’ I enquired. 

Kelso smiled, ‛No accounting for taste, is there? Personally I hate the guy’s writing. 

His saccharine-sweet stories are enough to give me diabetes.’ 

I was dumbfounded at the sight of van Aken, a man I had been so keen to meet for 

forever, sitting out there the sidewalk like a bum in his speedos and beatnik sandles. I 

imagined a debonair, cigar-puffing modern day Che Guevara, not this relic from the 70s. 

‛Your daughter’s also out there,’ Kelso added. ‛Go and talk to him. Tell him you’re 

a journo or something.’ 

He left, disappearing into the crowd.

≈ 


‛Why do I write?’ van Aken said, repeating my question to himself, ‛I guess I write 

because I can’t play the piano.’ 

Maybe it was a rehearsed retort, but it sounded genuine enough, sounded like he 

knew what he was talking about. He was a famous writer after all, the man I had been 

dying to meet for twenty years. I guess if you’re good at something, people start to listen, 

people start coming to you for advice, people start expecting more than you are, and 

eventually they’re disappointed. I hadn’t met the guy before, and already I was 

disappointed. This man was ugly, trite and desperate. 

‛I can’t play the piano or write,’ I replied. 

‛Good,’ he declared, ‛I never trust a man who shares the same talents as myself.’ 

He was still quite famous in literary circles. Sure he made millions on The Fourth 

Warrior, The Just City, Silicon Soldiers, The Trial of Margonot and a whole host of other 

books. They had all been successes. But looking at him sitting there, I understood all too 

painfully that genius chooses strange bed fellows. 

He held my hands, ‛I haven’t written for five years. It’s taken me this long to get 

my thoughts ready for the next one.’ 

Van Aken was sitting across from me, wearing nothing but a bright pair of Speedo 

bathing trunks. People splashed around us, a fountain of noise, the lowest octave to the 

highest decibel. There was nothing vanilla about this suburb, St. Kilda, not even van Aken 

with his bent-fender face and buckled-hood body. 

‛What possesses you to write?’ I asked, flicking cigarette ash from the table. 

‛There’s five motivations for writing,’ Horatio crossed his long sun-tanned legs. 

‛First you do it for yourself, then for her, then for everyone, then you just do it...’ 

‛That’s four,’ I said.

lack of it.’ 


‛Eventually, your greatest motivator is time.’ He looked at his watch, ‛Or rather, the 

‛You said you wrote for ‛her’. Who is it you were referring to?’ 

Horatio looked at me cautiously, ‛What newspaper did you say you work for?’ 

‛I didn’t. I don’t. I’m a fan.’ 

‛What’s your name again?’ 

I gave him my business card, wondering where my daughter was. 

Horatio read my business card slowly, mouthing every word like a five-year-old. 

‛Dr Ari Mylonas, BVSc. Very impressive title!’ he said, tapping my business card with his 

index finger, as if to accentuate a point. ‛You’re not related to Bart Mylonas?’ 

‛My uncle.’ 

‛Well, well. What a ruthless business man you have for an uncle. But I guess in 

business, like politics, the fist can be mightier than a filibuster.’ He then stirred his coffee 

with my business card, ‛You know that having a lot of degrees doesn’t necessarily make 

you hot?’ 

‛I’m not hot. Just ask my wife.’ 

He threw my card into the ashtray, ‛Total disrespect. I like that in a man. But as for 

your qualifications, it’s a sad indictment on our education system when we assume a 

student could be professional at anything other than parroting the thoughts of another. As if 

the more qualified someone is, the more useful then they are. We’d rather be surgically 

proficient and have a patient die than simply hold their hand and say goodbye.’ 

‛I’m a vet, not a doctor.’ 

‛Euthanasia, murder; it’s just semantics.’ He stubbed his cigarette butt onto my 

business card, adding insult to injury. He then pointed to the table next to us. ‛In reference 

to who ‛she’ is, I am talking about my step-daughter, Cassandra, that young waitress over 

there. She’s got an IQ of 153, and spends her days serving coffee to dim-witted tourists and 

at night she invents new ways of murdering a piano. I just don’t have the heart to tell her 

she can’t play.’ 

He wolf-whistled to her. 

Cassandra was singing to herself as she served a customer, and as Horatio whistled, 

she stopped turned side-on to face us. Such a melancholy face, full of beauty but immense 

sadness in someone so young. Her face curtained by long chestnut dreadlocks that swished 

about her face like a horse’s tail. I felt my heart stop momentarily. The photo Kelso had 

given me was of a younger girl, but there was no mistake this was the girl in the

photograph. Looking at her was like looking into a mirror. 


Cassandra was holding a note book which she put back into her apron. She then 

rolled her almond, coal-black eyes in contempt and came to our table. 

‛Kassie,’ he said. ‛Come.’ 

And that’s how my heart awoke from a long sleep. 

Cassandra smiled politely at me, knowing she was relying on tips. Nick, the 

proprietor, was too tight to pay his girls more than $6 an hour cash. She could make more 

money in a decent cafe, but then they would ask her questions, want a Medicare card or a 

driver’s license. Without ID, you’re a nobody - that’s how Nick wanted it. 

He held her hand, ‛This is Cassandra van Aken.’ 

‛Hi,’ she pushed his hand off her thigh. ‛Horatio, really! If you were any sleazier 

you’d be a salad dressing.’ 

Horatio laughed, ‛Kassie is the one. Aren’t you, my dear?’ 

‛What one would that be?’ she asked. ‛The one that gets your yacht when you die?’ 

He held her with a light touch, the touch that exudes money, like she was a chattel. 

The sort of money my parents had, the sort that ruins families like a fire, hardening them to 

penny emotions. 

heart.’ 

‛I was just telling my friend here about your music, the eighty-eight ways into your 

‛On my piano, there’s one hundred and two keys!’ She took out her pen and 

notebook. ‛Not that you would know a Steinway from a cement mixer.’ She tapped her pen 

on her book impatiently. ‛And what about you, Sir? A coffee, or would you prefer to banter 

with this geriatric?’ She moved impatiently from one leg to another. ‛I’m not being paid to 

do stand-up.’ She pulled the menu away from my face. ‛Is there something funny on 

today’s menu or do you find my face amusing?’ 

name is Ari.’ 

I held out my hand to Cassandra, ‛Neither, I am just delighted to meet you. The 

She resigned herself to a handshake, ‛Ari, as in Aristotle or Aristocrat? I think the 

latter - you look like you’ve been raised on silver spoons and napkins.’ 

her palms. 

‛Aristotle,’ I said, admiring her long, delicate fingers. I turned them over to inspect 

‛Oh?’ she chirped, ‛Just what Acland Street needs - another palm reader.’ 

‛No,’ I said. ‛I just like hands.’ 

‛You’re weird,’ she said, pulling away.

I rested my menu to the table, ‛I’ll have a short black, thanks.’ 


Horatio put his arm around Cassandra’s waist, ‛At least with palm readers and 

prostitutes they have the courtesy to ask you to pay before they lie with you or to you.’ 

She slapped him playfully on the face, and walked off. Horatio rubbed his cheek, 

smiling, ‛That it’s not love is her tragedy; that it is love is mine.’ 

‛How did she become your daughter?’ 

Horatio took out his false teeth and inspected them, ‛I found her in a library cubicle 

at the University of Melbourne. I was doing research on Maritime history and she said 

study rooms are cheaper than a motel. She was using my novel as a pillow. Oh, she was so 

beautiful back then, before puberty hit and she went all feral. I said to her that’s a crap 

book, then she asked how would an old fart like me know, so I showed her the face on the 

back of the book. That’s you, she said, and that’s how true love starts for a teen idol.’ 

‛Really?’ 

‛No,’ he laughed. ‛I’m kidding. We adopted her. I can’t have kids.’ 

He flicked his finger over his dentures then replaced them into his cavernous 

mouth. ‛I keep telling her that one day we’ll sail off into the sunset, just me and her and the 

trade winds. Women like that romantic shit.’ 

‛You’re an idiot’, I said. 

‛This is true!’ he said with a chuckle and he slapped me hard on the shoulder. 

‛Cassandra says that all the time, but that’s because she suffers fools gladly. She is one of 

these New Age magicsmiths, a Deepak Choprah-warrior, working love potions on the lathe 

of her heart, a love that has become a ravenous snake which having run out of food now 

eats itself. She is essentially a romantic. With her it is love at first sight which in time 

turned to hate. Like all teenagers she despised me but she’s trapped. Why do I love this 

ugly fuck, she thinks. Why, when I hate him? She is snared in a web of selfishness, prey to 

those whose intent are stronger than her own, having long forgotten that truth. What 

matters is money. So I hold up the money-mirror to her desires and what she sees is such 

unrelenting discord, of jangled noises and pungent smells, such conflicting sensations that 

she cannot believe her own heart that screams ‛I want him’. Like an anorexic empowered 

by hunger.’ 

Horatio’s outburst left me cold. 

‛You’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this.’ 

‛What is blatantly obvious to all is that man’s promiscuity has destroyed more lives 

than alcohol, cigarettes, war and motor vehicle accidents combined. Yet, it has also created

as many lives.’ 

Cassandra arrived with my coffee. 


Horatio pulled her into his lap, arguing about something to do with movies, how 

they needed a face for a new Indy film. The way he held her, with his hand on her thigh, 

and his Speedos bulging, made me feel sick. 

‛You got a problem?’ he asked, threateningly. 

I clenched my fists beneath the table, ‛You say you’re looking for an actor? Maybe 

my wife Melina could audition?’ 

‛Does she have experience?’ 

‛She married to an alcoholic.’ 

Horatio pushed Cassandra off his lap, and folded his elbows on the table, 

‛Fascinating, so she obviously knows how to humiliate herself. And you, young man, know 

how to lie. But tell me this - is she poor and irresponsible, because those are the last 

necessary ingredients for acting. No? Then is she at least attractive?’ 

Cassandra interrupted us, ‛My God, you two could compete in the disabled 

Olympics. You're both mental.’ 

I opened my wallet, as Cassandra hewed the footpath chairs. 

I showed Horatio the photo of Melina from the year before, leaning on the bonnet 

of the Saab, behind her the Great Ocean Road and the infinite cerulean blue of the Bass 

Strait. She was squinting from the glare, her honey-dyed hair windblown wild and 

inviting. 

‛Yes, quite a fappable face. But if you think she’s cute, have a look at this.’ He 

returned my picture and placed one before me, ‛This is my wife,’ he said, thumping his 

finger on the photo of a boat. 

The image was captured from the stern of a large yacht, with Cassandra lying naked 

on the bow, holding her hand against the sunlight. She was wearing a Captain’s hat and her 

skin glistening with sunblock. Behind her a tropical beach, and on the horizon, a steep 

mountain rising to the sky. 

‛She’s seventy-three feet of pure pleasure, bought her in Thailand a few years back. 

That’s Cassandra, showing off her sunburn when we were stuck at Phuket. She fell asleep 

in the sun that day while I was out introducing myself to the natives. I took that shot when 

I got back to the boat with a local fisherman. She had just woken up, her face blank as a 

zombie. The local Thai fisherman had never seen a white girl naked before and asked me if 

he would trade Kassie for one of his buffalo. I said I’d think about it if he’d fix my


outboard. He goes off and ten minutes later there’s ten Thais working on the engine like a 

pit-crew at the Grand Prix. Poor Kassie, she did her best to appease the men before we 

high-tailed it out of there. I couldn’t stop laughing for hours afterwards. Kassie never sees 

the funny side of anything. She’s autistic, I am sure of it. Now where were we?’ 

for a part.’ 

I took out ten dollars for the coffees, ‛You were talking about auditioning Melina 

‛Was I? Okay, what a great idea.’ He leant forward, seriousness on his face. ‛Keep 

this under your hat. We are going to make a film of the Fourth Warrior. ’ 

Horatio finished his coffee and took my packet of cigarettes. He lit one and had the 

nerve to offer me one. After a few moments, during which I mused over the psychic 

meaning of coffee grains in the bottom of my coffee cup, Horatio began to tell me about 

the new novel he had just started writing. 

‛What’s it about?’ I asked. 

‛It’s about everything. In particular, life. All of human history leads back to one 

original point, the Garden of Eden, or the Big Bang. At that one point, one can safely say 

that life was inevitable. Therefore, we can infer that life is pre-destined. My question is 

why?’ 

He stared at me for some time. 

I asked, ‛The Age newspaper said that you had cancer.’ 

Horatio stirred his coffee, ‛Ah! Just a touch of it. What they were insinuating was 

that I could no longer write. They hated me for slagging them over a bad review they gave 

me on The Just City. Actually I got the critic fired. Oh vengeance is sweet.’ 

I smiled, ‛The media giveth and the media taketh away.’ 

‛Not if I can help it,’ he laughed. 

‛I liked that book actually,’ I replied. ‛A little cynical perhaps, but an honest 

appraisal of spiritual and social degeneration of baby boomers.’ 

‛Thank you,’ Horatio replied, genuinely touched. 

Cassandra leant over to touch my shoulder, asking if I wanted another coffee. I 

waved a ‛no’, and handed her the money, gazing at a gold ‛Om’ necklace rocking in her 

cleavage. She walked away, her low-cut skirt hanging off her hips. I noticed a gun-metal 

grey birthmark on her right hip, like a cigarette burn. 

Horatio’s eyes shone with clarity, ‛Life is all there is when one is dying. After 

living with cancer for five years, I am convinced that death can’t be the end of life any 

more than sleep the end of thinking.’ He lit another of my cigarettes before continuing, ‛I


saw men dying in oncology wards thinking the world should stop for them, that their pain 

was the only pain. But cancer is no different to that ancient syphilitic disease we call 

capitalism. Both have killed more people than she has pleasured. You either learn to live 

with it or die from it.’ 

Just as I was going to reply, a speed-addict suddenly crashed through the crowd. He 

roughly pushed Cassandra aside in his haste. I saw red, as Cassandra stumbled to the 

pavement. I jumped to my feet and threw a coat-hanger arm at his throat. Bam! He fell to 

the ground, unconscious. 

Speed junkies are hard to drop, they just bounce straight back up like those 

inflatable clowns. When they’re on drugs, they’re like Lionel Rose, raging bulls, you can 

break their bones, taser them, shoot five rounds into them, they just keep coming. 

Fortuitously, this guy had a pencil neck. I felt his larynx crush as my hook collected his 

throat. By the time a fat copper arrived in his wake, I had the guy on his side in a recovery 

position. 

‛What happened?’ the copper asked. 

I explained, ‛The guy just slipped - cracked his head on the pavement.’ 

The copped nodded, yeah yeah whatever. He leant down to handcuff the guy and 

began wheezing into his two-way. 

I ran to Cassandra, who was getting to her feet, looking at the unconscious punk. 

‛You killed him!’ she cried in shock. 

I smile reassuringly, no. 

She looked white as milk as I walked her into the cafe and got her a glass of water. 

Nick, the proprietor, walked out from behind the counter. 

‛Want a job?’ he asked me. 

‛A job?’ I replied, ‛I can’t even boil water.’ 

‛I meant as a door man. These vlakas have been terrorising these street for months.’ 

‛I don’t bounce,’ I said, pleasured enough with the thought that the drug-addict 

would talk with a government-funded voice-box like Steven Hawkins for the rest of his 

miserable existence. 

I sat Cassandra down, put her head between her legs and rubbed her shoulder. She 

felt so soft. Her knees were shaking. I could smell her breath, stale ketone smell like dairy 

cows with milk fever. 

‛Maybe I’ll see you again,’ I said, expectantly. 

She sat up and shrugged me off with a causal smile, fanning her face with her hand.


As I strolled onto the side-walk, the punk lay on the footpath groaning. He looked 

up at me, and let loose a volley of filth wheezing from that anus below his nose. I booted 

his jaw into two pieces when the copper wasn’t looking. 

After the ambulance left, I shook Horatio’s hand. ‛Nice meeting you.’ 

‛Oh, yes,’ he murmured dismissively, ‛I’ll give you a call sometime.’ 

Then as an afterthought, he invited me to a party he was having at his home. 

I walked off, delirious about Cassandra. I whistled at the afternoon air; 

‛Cassandra, I marvel how you sing, 

Queen of the waters, bowing to no King, 

the golden orb upon your breast, 

the mongol hip mark that God has pressed 

an crease your palm where head and heart are one 

I call your name, manna to my thoughts undone!’ 

I looked at my watch, remembering that Melina was with her lawyers in Fitzroy 

Street. I called her and waited in the fishbowl of MacDonald’s. She arrived fifteen minutes 

later, her hair spoiled by wind and her face red with exertion. 

movie.’ 

‛I just met Horatio van Aken,’ I said. ‛He’s invited us to a party.’ 

‛The writer?’ 

‛Yes,’ I replied. ‛If you’re lucky, there might be a part for you in his up-coming 

Her face lit up, ‛Why are you doing this?’ 

‛Didn’t you want to be an actress?’ 

‛It was just a fantasy.’ 

‛You said when we were thirteen you wanted to become famous, marry Sylvester 

Stallone - wasn’t that your dream?’ 

Melina sighed, ‛I’m not thirteen!’ 

‛You think you’ve changed?’ 

She rolled her eyes in contempt as we walked off toward a parking lot in Carlisle 

Street, peppered with street-kids and druggies. 

Street. 

‛Is that blood on your elbow?’ Melina asked, fingering my jacket. 

I wiped my favourite Barbour jacket, $350 dollar from an exclusive store in Chapel 

I lied, ‛It’s just sauce.’ 

Melina wore stilettos that clicked loud enough to echolocate the life around us. I


could hear two teenage pushers a few metres away, beating on a pimp, while a toothless 

Tiger-supporter was filling a shopping trolley of aluminium cans from a dumpster, sending 

rainbows sparkling out beneath the pale yellow streetlight. A kitten lapped noisily at a 

puddle of water behind a Chinese takeaway, making a humming sound with its furred 

tongue. The Honda motorbike, with its snub-nose fairing and curlicue tail-lights, stood out 

like a blue pearl. 

There was a young Asian man in a suit who was eyeing me suspiciously. He walked 

past me, whispering, ‛you chasing?’ 

‛Fifty,’ I said. 

He pressed a gram into my palm, eyeing my wife, ‛How much for the cougar?’ 

‛Free, but I don’t hate you enough.’ 

‛That bad?’ he grinned, flashing a gold tooth in the night. 

I walked away, pocketing the cocaine, misquoting King James from childhood to 

the pusher, ‛...read your Bible, Son, where it says...and the cougar shall lie down with the 

lamb, and a little child shall lead them.’ 

He shook his head at me and disappeared into the alley. 

Melina was sitting on the bike by the time I got to it, pulling at her dress. Clutching 

the handlebars impatiently, I pulled onto Carlisle Street, cars honking in our wake. 

We rode past the open maw of Luna Park. 

I wanted to be inside that festival of circus rides, swallowed like a ball in a hungry- 

clown arcade, chewed by fairy-floss children, squeezed between the rustle of wind-cheater 

lovers, into helium balloons under neon lights. To take flight with the mendicant magicians 

who threw security to the wind like confetti, whose idea of hell was my concept of heaven. 

We drove along in silence, oil and water sharing the same space. 

In Kensington that night, Melina watched the news on TV while I made a mess of 

dinner. At midnight she went to bed and I could hear her playing with her vibrator. I 

walked in, the door ajar, and watched her get off. She came with a muffled whimper. I 

closed the door and returned to my office. 

The impasse between us had been steadily growing over the last few months since 

our return from Tasmania. I wanted to leave her but my fear of Uncle Bart kept me 

chained. I laughed, remembering that just the night before I had given an impassioned 

hour-long drunkalogue at the AA meeting on how many years I’d been sober. I recalled the 

unloading last night as quite cathartic and epiphanous, even if I was acting. 

Hiroshi was right; people knew nothing about water.

Melina was wrong; I didn’t hate her, our marriage was just a game. 

Horatio was right and wrong; Cassandra is the one, but not for him. 


≈ 


I had read about Milton House in a real-estate magazine, how it was one of the 

most expensive homes in Melbourne, a four-storey Edwardian mansion with a large indoor 

pool, tennis court and putting green. 

‛We’re having a bash for my sixtieth,’ Horatio said over the phone. ‛I don’t want a 

party, but Kassie and Desre insist, so what can I do? Bring your wife. I’m dying to meet 

her.’ 

I was in a dairy shed when Horatio called on my mobile. I was doing a locum for a 

dairy vet in Leongatha and had my whole arm inside the rectum of a cow when he called. 

Even though I wore gloves, my left arm was stained green for weeks afterwards, an 

occupational hazard. 

On Saturday evening, I rang Kelso to tell him my wife and I would be away for a 

few hours. I told him about the spare key left in the garage under a paint tin and to leave 

the place tidy when he left. I knew the combination to Melina’s safe even though she didn’t 

think I knew, so I gave him that as well. 

Unbeknownst to the plot I had conspired with Kelso, I drove with Melina to 

Brighton for Horatio’s party. We stopped in front of a sandstone mansion. 

‘This must be the place,’ I remarked, looking at the address scribbled hastily on the 

scrappy old piece of paper. 

me with that!’ 

‛You’re disgusting,’ she snapped, looking at my stained hand. ‛You’re not touching 

We walked across the street. Outside a foreboding security gate, I pushed an 

intercom button, looking up to a CCTV camera. 

Horatio’s voice chirped over the intercom. 

‛Hi, Ari. Come in!’

driveway. 


A moment later, the security gates swung open. Melina and I walked up the 

‛Fuck me,’ Melina whispered as we approached a massive wooden door with 

engraved Egyptian figurines. ‛This place is like the playboy mansion on acid.’ 

Horatio met us at the door wearing a pin-striped suit. 

‛Thank you for coming,’ he smiled. ‛Ari said he had a wife, but he didn’t say she 

was so beautiful.’ 

Melina bleated nervously, ‛Why thank you.’ 

I walked off, leaving the two of them to get acquainted. 

The mansion was packed with guests. A few scantily-dressed men worked the floor 

with trays of finger-food and drinks. 

By the third glass of champagne, a smile began to creep across my face. My 

suspicion that this decadent lifestyle was an exhibition of materialism began to soften. 

They were no different to me. 

As I began to look for Melina, a woman materialised before me with a joint. She 

was five-foot ten, a gorgeous raven-haired beauty with black eyes and the voluptuous 

figure reminiscent of a 1950s model. The transparent skin over her breast allowed an 

intricate anatomy lesson on the venous supply of the mammary glands. 

indiscretions.’ 

‛Hello,’ she said, in a middle-eastern accent. ‛I’m Desre, Horatio’s wife?’ 

‛Oh, yes. Horatio’s muse,’ I smiled. 

‛Hardly his muse, more his a-muse-ment,’ she laughed. ‛Let me show you my 

She proceeded to give me a guided tour of her house, apologising in her sultry 

voice about her expensive tastes in sculpture, paintings, and retro furnishings. I learned she 

was an amateur painter. She showed me some of her work, simple landscapes, the sort that 

would sell for a few hundred dollars in a Peninsula art gallery. 

‛You’re quite talented,’ I commented. 

‛Painting keeps me from going mad. A writer’s wife is a lonely profession...’ 

‛I wouldn’t know,’ I smiled. 

‛Horatio mentioned you,’ she said. ‛He said you defended Cassandra from some 

street thug, that you were good with your hands. I like a man with strong hands. Horatio’s 

hands are only good for writing. You have no idea how much upkeep there is in a marriage 

and how expensive the therapists. Are you a therapist, Mr Ari? God knows Horatio has 

many such friends. Would you cleanse my troubles for a hundred?’


She was quite frank with her double entendre as she looked down at her own 

cleavage. Dark seductive eyes that had led many married men astray. 

‛Not for a hundred,’ I replied. ‛And it’s just Ari, not mister.’ 

‛Then what is your price, sweet man?’ 

‛I don’t know. I’d need to think about it.’ 

She turned to me, her immense heaving breasts smelling like tropical fruit. She 

caught me eyeing them, and smiled. 

‛Who is the pretty lady you came with?’ 

‛My wife,’ I said. 

‛Yes, a wife never has a name only a position.’ 

She puffed on a cigarette with one hand, the other stroking my face. 

‛I don’t know what women see in you. Cassandra seems quite bewitched.’ 

Ignoring her insult, I asked, ‛Is she here tonight?’ 

‛No, she has a recital.’ She leaned in close, whispering, ‛Your eyes look quite feral. 

Have you ever killed a man, Mr Ari?’ 

‛No.’ 

‛I have often thought about what if must feel like.’ 

She looked at me, demanding a response. 

‛I imagine it is quite disappointing.’ 

She looked away as if dismissing the subject, ‛Yes, you’re probably right.’ She 

finished her cigarette and dropped it into my half-emptied champagne glass. ‛Walk with 

me,’ she said. She gave me a tour of the immense ballroom. At the foot of a spiral staircase, 

she turned and faced me, and quite unexpectedly, kissed me. She then ran her tongue over 

her lips. ‛Hmm. A woman can tell a lot about a man from the first kiss,’ she remarked. 

‛How it will begin, how it will end. You are a tragic man, Mr Ari.’ She led me slowly down 

the winding stairs into a darkened corridor. At the end of the corridor we stood before a 

heavy wooden door. She took the champagne glass from my hand and deposited it on the 

small wooden table near the door. Producing a key from her cleavage, she added, ‛What 

you are about to see is confidential, but you are no stranger to secrets, I can tell.’ 

She turned the key in the padlock. 

‛What is this place?’ I asked. 

‛Shadows,’ she declared. 

We entered a dark expansive room lit by soft red light. The walls were 

soundproofed with heavy concrete, lined with wood-panelling. On the ceiling were a


complex array of pulleys and levers connecting to a central fuck table where stirrups hung. 

To my left, a stock. On the wall beside it rows of snap shots, faces of famous and not-so- 

famous men and women. I walked over and inspected the photos. It was a collection of 

who’s who in Australia. 

‛Horatio has enough photos here to embarrass half of the elite of Melbourne.’ 

There were other photos, mostly nudes and bondage snaps. In one shot, Horatio is 

wearing a mask, but it was unmistakably him with an imposing erect cock. In another 

photo, Crispin Trent, a famous Australian poet, strapped to a Berkley Horse, dressed in a 

woman’s bra and motorcycle chaps, being whipped by Desre, dressed in black latex spank 

skirt and high heels. 

‛I liked that photo,’ Desre said, when she saw me looking at it. ‛He’s a very bad 

boy, our Crispin. Likes the young boys more than the girls. At least in here, it’s consensual, 

so no one’s sensibilities are hurt.’ 

‛Yes,’ I remarked, ‛I am sure you’re right.’ 

I walked past the photos to a row of torture instruments hanging from hooks. My 

hands ran over birches and sneakers, torture clips and nails, pussy-lip spreaders, piercing 

pins and clamps. As I crossed to the centre of the room, I rested my hand on the large 

wooden table, toying with handcuffs. 

free. 

Unseen by me, Desre had picked up a riding crop. She whipped me across the butt. 

‛Want to go for a ride?’ she said. 

I grab the crop as she swung it again. 

‛Careful,’ I warned her, ‛Some stallions have been known to buck!’ 

She leant against the table, pulled down her blouse and let her enormous breasts fall 

She took my hands and rested them on her chest. 

‛In this room, the safe word is ‛canary’, she whimpered, closing her eyes. ‛Do you 

want to play, Mr Ari?’ 

Her skin, so freckled and tanned, was soft to touch. Her blank face, with long ruby 

eyelashes over closed lids, hidden beneath a velvet of makeup. In her youth, she would 

have been breathtaking to behold, but the weather of years were betrayed at the corners of 

her mouth, the tense pull of her cheeks. 

Taking her hands off my shoulders, an indication I was not interested, she smiled 

and straightened my tie. 

‛Beware, Horatio is not all he appears to be. You’ll like him at first but you may


change your opinion of him in time,’ she noted. ‛Great men cast long shadows.’ 

I nodded, ‛And great women illuminate the darkest of men.’ 

‛Oh,’ she exclaimed rhetorically, ‛Maybe I could be that light?’ 

When I got to the top of the staircase, Desre enticed me along a baroque hallway of 

felt wainscoting and exquisitely carved marble columns. We strolled past the infidelity of a 

dozen bedrooms, some occupied with lovers in progress on deep satin sheets and even 

deeper mattresses emitting carnal noises. 

Desre commented casually, ‛This is what I call the expression of the animus, people 

lost for a while in the sedition of spirit. It can be quite refreshing unless your soul is 

already condemned to vice. Then its just a sad foray into decadence.’ 

I felt unsettled. 

‛At least pornography has an off switch,’ I replied. 

‛My thoughts exactly, Mr Ari.’ 

She laughed, then walked me toward a room of antiques, showing off a second 

century BC statue of Buddha on the Lion Throne, a replica Guelph Cross spangled in gold 

and pearls and rubies, a sculpture of Queen Nefertiti and golden vessels from a Priamus 

Treasure. She fingered a gilded, leather-bound book and removed it from the shelf. The 

room contained millions of dollars worth of artefacts. 

‛How did you meet Horatio?’ 

She smiled reminiscing, ‛I was introduced to Horatio at a club in Istanbul, years 

ago,’ Desre informed me. ‛He was a man of the world, who had no allegiance to any moral 

code; he lived as he pleased, paying no tribute to any philosophical creed. An idealist. I 

was a dancer. We were introduced, and when I found out who he was, I escaped with him 

on his yacht. We were married three months later. That was a long time ago. He seduced 

me with a poem, and after that first night, we sailed away from Istanbul. She recited a 

poem; 

‛They exchange glances like Hallmark cards, all smiles and crossed 

swords of long-ago battles, one hopes, the other ponders, as the eye 

which fell upon them on that long black Night.’ 

She added, ‛Horatio spoke those words and I knew I had met the loneliest man in 

the world. I foolishly thought I could save him from his demons. We were happy for a 

while, but then I realised Horatio collected demons like some men collect cars.’ 

She offered me another joint. After a few puffs, I realised it was spiked with acid 

and before long, I collapsed on a chaise longue, slurring my words.


Desre disappeared into the haze of the room. I could hear Horatio and Melina 

nearby talking loud as if they were in a long echoing chamber. 

‛You’ll be starring at MTC next year,’ Horatio said. ‛I know a star when I see one.’ 

‛I’m not that good,’ Melina replied, her voice pulling octaves of sympathy. 

‛Darling,’ Horatio retorted adamantly, ‛Some people like to live next to a church to 

hear the bells ringing, to remind them of their faith, but others prefer the septic to the 

sepulchre. All you need as an actor is a head full of Shakespeare, an armful of scotch and 

both feet planted firmly in the air.’ 

And here I blacked out for a few moments, revived only by Melina’s hysterical 

laughter in the background. 

‛Oh, I like vodka,’ Melina giggled. ‛I even enjoy Shakespeare. I just don’t like the 

missionary position.’ 

How true, I thought. 

Horatio let out a long belly laugh that could be heard clear across the room. 

Melina was so full of shit. 

The next thing I knew, Horatio was sitting next to me. 

‛Enjoying the party?’ he asked. 

‛Yes.’ 

Horatio sat beside me for some time, smoking in silence. As I rose to leave, he 

grabbed my hand earnestly. 

‛What did you really want to be when you grew up?’ he asked. 

‛I don’t know.’ 

‛What are you passionate about?’ 

‛Nothing.’ 

‛You must have something that gets you out of bed each morning?’ 

‛Yes, my wife.’ 

‛Enough of this evasiveness!’ he insisted, ‛It doesn’t suit you.’ 

I shrugged my shoulders, ‛After my first lover died, I guess I lost my way.’ 

He nodded sagely. I couldn’t believe what I had just said. 

He whispered in my ear, ‛The good thing about getting lost is finding yourself 

again.’ Looking down at my green hand, he added, ‛You have a charming mind for 

someone so green.’ 

‛Cow shit,’ I said, matter-of-factly. 

‛Never mind - we are all a bit dirty.’


Horatio and I wandered aimlessly for what seemed like three years in my stoned 

state, until I realised I had walked little more than five metres, and had now arrived back in 

the ballroom. Try as I may, the threshold of the room seemed an interminable frontier to 

cross, let alone reach. 

Just then, when I thought I couldn’t go on, a comforting hand led me adventurously 

into the room. I heard animated laughter, and the chatter of cutlery. Dinner, it appeared, 

had already been served and my companion and I were late. 

Desre escorted me to a chair, at a table so gigantic it looked like Henry V might 

have once banqueted there. Horatio sat across the table from me, far enough we could play 

tennis with fruit. I rocked back and forth, tongue-tied by drugs, leering between hillocks of 

fruit, swamps of antipasto and sweetmeats, trying to make small talk with the stranger next 

to me, who after a few glasses of wine, I found intelligent and interesting - only finally 

realising it was Melina. 

Melina was making conversation to Desre. She was flirtatious, leaning over the 

table to pluck at stuffed olives, to laugh at something not funny, so that she could expose 

her ample cleavage to Desre, who gazed longingly at her while sipping at her soup in slow, 

inviting ways. I watched Melina eat her fillet mignon in delicate manoeuvres, seeing her 

for the first time in a new light; predatory. 

Melina broke out into a singing session after many glasses of wine, performing a 

duet with Desre on the Tom Jones’ song ‛She’s a lady.’ Desre’s toe would occasionally drift 

along the inside of my ankle, though never once did she speak to me or even turn an eye in 

my direction. 

Before long, the meal had ended. I was forced to follow the guests to an indoor 

pool at the rear of the mansion. I couldn’t find Melina. 

Desre asked me to sit with her beside the pool. Around our lazy chairs, a carnival of 

flesh presided. By now I had a blinding headache and a bad taste in my mouth. I had to get 

away from here, to find Melina and leave before something regrettable occurred. 

I must go, I thought. I must leave, before… 

‛Don’t leave!’ Desre laughed, her wet body glistening in the moonlight. She 

embraced me, her arms crushing my ribs. She then forced a sensuous tongue between my 

teeth. 

‛Let me finish that poem,’ she whispered in my ear. 

‛Poem?’ I asked. ‛What poem?’ 

She led me down into the heated pool until we were waist deep.

writer.’ 


‛Horatio’s poem,’ she replied. ‛How could you forget? You said you loved him as a 

‛Did I?’ I said. 

She began quoting the poem. 

‛Deep upon the arcuate banks of nether-land, 

Where Hades sought his pomegranate girl, 

Beloved Persephone marries not the Lord of Night, 

for that old phoenix karma entices delights’ 

I joined in with her as I knew the passage by heart. 

‛Spawning lowly king for Zeus. 

Whereupon comes Ajax, suppliant in deceit, 

Whose brow creased by names unrelenting, 

Hercules, Orpheus, Theseus and Pirithous, he recalls, 

Hunted by stolen memory, once noble god of Locri, 

For Poseidon shattered his golden stone, 

Alas, did Ajax, want to drown, 

To drown, to know no more.’ 

The hymnal flow of my words, arisen from my memory of The Fourth Warrior, 

were punctuated by the sight of Desre’s magnificent body, her chalybeate eyes, her cleaved 

flesh, her hot breath upon my chest. 

‛Did you like it?’ she asked, as her grip on me turned furious. ‛Do you like the bit 

that goes, To drown, to drown?' 

‛Ah yes.’ 

She murmured the words into my wet ear, ‛To know no more.’ 

She laughed churlishly like a child-bride, with an effusion of such merriment that 

her words regurgitated the lullaby like a bird of prey down my throat, while fist upon fist 

her mission went, thrusting until she convinced me in a flurry of whines and groans and a 

sudden shout above the air of the water, that ‛Yes. Of course. You are good.’ 

She held my head and stared into my eyes as I came. Her legs wrapped around 

mine, her breath coming in sharp shudders. She grabbed my head forcibly, forcing her 

mouth upon mine. 

pool’s edge. 

‛I am better,’ she groaned, her eyes rolling back in her head, ‛Than her!’ 

When I turned to see who she meant by ‛her’, Melina was standing above me at the

my loins. 


‛Dr Ari Mylonas!’ Melina scowled, ‛I do believe you have been seduced!’ 

At once her voice was light and playful, but I could feel her sabre eyes jabbing at 

Like a mirage, Desre floated away, then climbed out of the pool beside Melina. 

Grabbing my trunks, I covered the damp remnants of my erection. My clothes wet 

against my skin, I sloshed noisily through gilded spandrels, into the magnificent ballroom. 

The room was crowded thick with elemental bodies, staring at me like executioners. 

Melina hung close to Desre like they were lovers. I burst out the front door, staggering 

down the gravel driveway. 

Down on Brighton Beach, I collapsed on the cold sand. There was comfort in the 

rhythmic sound of the crashing waves. After some time, I felt the sea talking to me, a voice 

riding on the crests of waves, booming like tenors, guiding me like lights, the voice of a 

petite Japanese nun in a bikini, singing softly from the shallows. 

It’s over, I thought. It’s done! 

Later, I found Melina walking to the Saab on Bay Road. 

‛I hope you are happy!’ she spat at me, getting in the driver’s side. 

‛I know you are!’ I spat back. ‛You’ve just got your part in the film.’ 

‛I don’t need it. That’s not who I am.’ 

‛Really?’ I laughed. ‛Money, fame - That’s not you?’ 

She shook her head in disbelief. 

‛You have no idea who I am.’ 

Melina sunk into the seat, started the engine and drove off. 

I walked slowly back to the front door of the mansion. Horatio was standing there, 

having watched Melina leave. 

salmon-pink. 

‛Let’s go for a drive,’ he said, and walked me to his Porsche. 

The car sped along Bay Road, the waves of the bay bent against the moon in 

‛Whenever women get too much for me,’ Horatio dawdled, ‛I head for the sea. 

Some people run to the ocean to escape. Others seek out the sea for freedom, or to be rid of 

family, a mistress or the law. Whatever the cause, the effect of the sea is always 

transforming. My first flight to the ocean was to escape from the success of my first book 

Elements of Childhood, only to stumble on Desre in a bar in Istanbul. Tonight, to escape 

from my guilt over wanting a divorce.’ 

‛Elements of childhood was a heavy book,’ I remarked.


‛Yeah,’ Horatio laughed. ‛It was the literary equivalent of trigonometry.’ 

‛So, are you and Desre tight? After what just happened with me and her’ 

He petted my thigh, ‛You aren’t the first, nor the last, Ari. Don’t want to break your 

heart, but it’s just sex for her. She knows the code, what happens in flesh, stays in flesh.’ 

He looked out the window in thought. ‛Ari, you and I have a lot in common. We are both 

sailors stuck on land, always looking to our watch, always hurrying to get back to the sea, 

as if haunted by a memory or a phantom. When at long last we reached the ocean, we 

immediately surrenders to its timelessness. The sea moulds us to a likeness of herself; 

shapeless, timeless, placeless.’ 

thorns. 

I watched the pathless waves turn ivory as the headlights shone on it. 

‛I have no idea what you are talking about.’ 

Horatio glanced at me as he pulled the handbrake and slowed the car. 

‛That’s always been my problem, Ari. Misunderstood, misquoted.’ 

He had a way with words like a carpenter, reminding me of Jesus without the 

We were at the beach, minions before the almighty sea.

We got out of the porsche, and began walking down onto the beach. 

≈ 


‛Despite what I said at the party, I’m disappointed with Desre,’ Horatio finally 

spoke, walking at the water’s edge. 

I sneered, ‛From what I’ve heard, you haven’t exactly been a saint.’ 

‛True!’ he laughed. ‛I guess I was expecting an apology, but I guess your generation 

lack the vocabulary.’ 

There was no breeze, only a light vapour of musty smells from the water’s edge, 

where jellyfish dotted the shore. 

Horatio cleared his throat, ‛When you remove from a man all his hopes and dreams, 

is there nothing left for him but the performance of good deeds?’ 

‛I don’t know,’ I said. 

An hour after a riotous party here he was asking me deep and meaningfuls. Maybe I 

misjudged him, I thought. After all, everything he said ended with a question mark. I began 

to see him in a new light entirely. 

‛What has fame brought me, Ari? Nothing but endless attentive woman and critical 

men. Twice recipient of the Miles Franklin, the ’73 winner of the Booker Prize, five 

million copies sold, twenty nine books published over thirty years - these things mean 

nothing, mere padding for my coffin. One of my only great loves is my boat,’ he said. ‛And 

why? Because she symbolises what is important to me; a way to explore the infinite, the 

timeless, the home of infinity. I have become a homeless minstrel, the troubadour to the 

enslaved, a Pied Piper to lost souls. But my audience no longer need me - they need a 

compass. I bought Cassandra in Pattaya in ’98 from some rich bored Russian. She 

underwent a three month refit, including a Yanmar and Brunton’s folding propeller. I 

named her after Kassie, the other love in my life. She sails like a charm with her wine- 

glass hull and semi-long keel. She’s so easy to manoeuvre even Kassie had her tacking

across Port Phillip Bay after an hour.’ 

mooring. 


For a moment, he stared out over the millpond water to the Cassandra at its 

It was late, perhaps after midnight. I yawned from exhaustion. 

‛Where are you going with this, Horatio?’ I asked. 

‛I haven’t told anyone Ari, but I’m nearly finished this new book.’ 

‛That was quick. Stream of conscious or is there a new computer program that 

writes it for you?’ 

He shook his head, ‛I’m just fast. This is my last book. I want to stretch it out, but 

my muse won’t have it. There isn’t much time left. When it is done I am done.’ 

‛I think you are being overly dramatic.’ 

‛You know nothing, Ari.’ 

He strolled beside me, the water’s edge thinly lit with a glow of red dusk 

shimmering off the sea. A string of seagulls sat on the beach. I listened to the rolling 

melody of gentle waves lapping the shore. White pencil lines of wave crests scored criss- 

cross over the surface, reflecting the harvest moonlight spilling from overhead. 

The Cassandra was bathed in a halo of moonlight, at peace on a tranquil sea. 

He pointed to the ocean beside us. 

‛The nature of water is easiest seen when it is impure,’ he remarked, ‛Just as a man 

with a mask is more prone to speak the truth.’ 

waters to fill?’ 

Tiny crabs scurried as we walked silently along the wet sand. 

He asked, ‛Can our soul then be nothing more than an empty cup for the divine 

I looked at him blankly, exquisitely restless and interminably confused by his 

expansive thoughts. 

Horatio stooped to pick up a log on the shore. He flung it hard up the beach. He 

bent down again and picked up a furled plastic bag, his moonlight silhouette against the 

sand cast a languid fossicking shadow. 

‛A man and an ape cast the same shadow, Ari.’ 

He stared at his shadow, a grey immortal sceptre, commenting how much larger his 

shadow appeared, how free of imperfections and lacking in momentum, so much like 

himself years before. 

In the wan light of the moon, he lifted a dead jellyfish into the palm of his hand and 

examined it with the myopic intensity of a professor. I felt as if he didn’t even realise I was

watching him. 


I could hear the whispering lips of the sea, the screeching of a gull in the distance, 

but over it all, the heavy wheezing of his chest. 

‛Before, there had been so much,’ he added. ‛A life full of tiny pleasures, of day to 

day triumphs, struggles, joys and pains. But now the tide which had flooded my life now 

recedes. Even the critics have abandoned me. They have said all that can be said.’ 

He dropped the jellyfish into the water. 

‛Are you okay, Horatio?’ I said, concerned. 

Horatio laughed, ‛Forty years of writing and the memories of so many millions of 

words, thousands of characters and events, and all that remains is the recurring visions of 

her, the one solitary character I have longed for so hard; the femme fatale. Cassandra 

reminded me of her, but now she has turned into a spoilt rebellious teenager.’ 

He then slapped my shoulder as his melancholy evaporated. 

‛Come,’ he said. ‛It is getting late. I’ll drive you home.’ 

We walked slowly back to the car. 

As we drove off, his eyes went distant once more. 

‛My next book is called Weltanschauung,’ he remarked. ‛It is a fancy name for not 

much really. Hardly a world view unless you are old enough to believe that everything is 

contained in the most trivial of things; a sunset, a girl’s pubic hair caught between your 

teeth, a fart in the morning.’ 

He looked at me and laughed. 

‛Who are we Ari that in our arrogance we think ourselves special? Nothing makes 

sense, especially our senses. The sea is not what we hear or see or taste. Remove a man’s 

senses and the water remains. When we are nothing the sea is still there. When we are 

nought it is still infinity. Ari, are you asleep?’ 

‛No,’ I replied. But I wish I was. 

My friend had shown me a dark side of himself, an existential time-bomb that 

appeared to have begun ticking. 

By then, Horatio had pulled into the cul-de-sac at Kensington. 

He laughed, ‛Don’t listen to me rave, Ari. I am just a jarhead let loose on a page 

like a dog of war. I have no special skills, only my hands that have been a weapon that has 

changed a generation.’ 

I kissed his hand in jest and got out. He drove off in a flurry of smoke. 

In my empty apartment, I looked out onto the cityscape, and above it to the fireball

stars that were spinning supernova and black-hole above me. 


≈ 


About a month after Horatio’s birthday party, Melina found an advertisement in 

The Age seeking actors for a part in The Albatross. 

Melina not waiting on a chance for a part in Horatio’s film, asked if I could take her 

to the audition. I read the advertisement, which said the playwright was Alisha Dunedin, a 

well-to-do author who owned a grunge stage venue in St Kilda, a space called the Organic 

Theatre. 

I’d just come from an AA meeting, and I had that glow about me that comes from 

the bonding with like souls. I was almost perfect in my contentment. On average, this 

feeling lasted for at least an hour. The back slapping, hand-clapping and Ra! Ra! 

motivational speeches had given me an almost super-human kinship, and I began to 

understand the words inscribed over the temple of Apollo in ancient Greece that said 

‛know thyself.’ I began almost to believe that one can change. In the end, being in AA was 

about being there, about turning up. It’s about the free coffee, free mateship, listening to 

my friends describe their train wreck jobs and marriages, their nights in jail and car 

accidents during black-outs and waking up in strange homes and gutters. I listened, 

laughed, cried. I realised I was just another grandiose, childish, perfectionist and moody 

drunk. Yet despite so many instant friends, they couldn’t protect me from myself. 

When we arrived at the address shown in the newspaper clipping, it was just a 

factory with a side entrance, a cloth mill recently refurbished. A heavy steel side-door 

covered in graffiti led into a dark vacant factory floor. 

A fat girl wearing clinging tights and ear piercings like a barbed-wire fence, 

ushered Maya and me into a gaggle of old wooden chairs in one corner. 

‛What’s the play about?’ I asked as she handed Melina a form to fill out. 

‛It’s new,’ the fat girl said. ‛About a female lawyer, an aboriginal tracker, a plastic


surgeon and a young girl. A story of young love and old lust, a modern play set in central 

Australia.’ 

‛So it’s a lesbian play?’ 

The fat girl sighed in indignation. 

Melina elbowed me into silence. 

Alisha Dunedin was wearing a beret, army boots and flak-jacket. She smoked like 

an AK47, talked like a jungle carbine and whined like a Pomeranian on steroids. Purring 

around her, a clowder of lighting directors, stage managers, a producer and various 

hangers-on, most just out of puberty. 

‛I presume this is your bodyguard?’ she asked, pointing to me with disdain. 

‛No,’ Melina apologised. ‛My husband.’ 

‛You poor girl.’ She then turned to me. ‛Don’t interrupt us.’ 

‛He’s quiet as a mouse,’ Melina said, ‛Aren’t you, Ari?’ 

‛Yes,’ I shouted. ‛Quiet as a mouse.’ 

I gazed around the factory. There were already a few girls auditioning for the part. 

Most were late teens, ambitious naive girls wanting to become stars. The stage was being 

built as we were being interviewed, with four young carpenters busy at work with nail guns 

and electric saws. 

Alisha Dunedin puffed arrogantly on a cigarillo. 

‛You may as well begin,’ she shouted. 

‛I have prepared a monologue from Wole Soyinka.’ 

‛Soyinka?’ Alisha barked. ‛This is a play about unrequited love, about man’s 

cruelty to women, not a macho political rebellion. It’s more like Giraudoux than Soyinka.’ 

Melina’s hands were shaking. 

‛I’m sorry,’ Melina choked. 

‛And?’ Alisha shouted impatiently. ‛Look around, you’re not the only one here 

waiting for me to make them a star.’ 

I stopped fidgeting with my phone and grabbed Melina's hand. 

‘Come on, Melina!’ I shouted. ‛It’s obvious these bitches wouldn’t know the 

difference between an albatross and an aardvark.’ 

‛And you do?’ Alisha shouted at me. 

‛Probably,’ Melina interjected, ‛He’s a vet.’ 

‛Really?’ Alisha replied. ‛You mean to say - all that brawn and you can actually 

string words into a sentence?’

‛Please, give me a chance,’ Melina implored. 


There was a long pause, like the hiatus in Für Elise as it alternates between A major 

and E minor. Alisha migrated to the front of her desk, crossing one boot over the other and 

folding her arms in an authoritative stance reminiscent of Katharine Hepburn. 

‛Do do you remember any nursery rhymes?’ 

Melina replied, ‛What about ‛Mary had a little lamb’?’ 

‛Mary it is,’ Alisha laughed. ‛I want you to be Mary. Convince me why I should not 

carve up that cute lamb in your arms and serve it to my friends for dinner.’ 

Melina closed her eyes. 

A moment later, she opened them, in character as Mary the shepherd. I leaned 

against the wall and watched with amazement. Never had I heard such a sad rendition of 

the nursery rhyme told as a eulogy of lost love. I was convinced that her skills lay not in 

her capacity to act, but to act at ease. So impressed was I, she made me believe that I too 

could do such a simple act, but when I mouthed the words she has just said, they came out 

like an omelette. 

I clapped proudly, believing she would be the next Nicole Kidman. 

‛Thank you,’ Alisha said, expressionless. ‛We’ll let you know.’ 

I walked with Melina out of the hall, both of us gutted by rejection 

‛I knew we shouldn’t have wasted our time,’ I finally spoke. ‛I’m not saying you’re 

not talented darling, you are, but you’ve done your best and it might be sensible to take 

stock of our losses.’ 

‛Shut up, Ari!’ 

When we got back to her apartment, she went upstairs to the bathroom. I heard the 

bath water running, and I knew she's going to be there for hours, so I poured her a glass of 

champagne and took it to her. Later, as I was stirring the pasta sauce, her mobile phone 

rang. It was Alisha Dunedin. 

‛Is Melina there?’ 

‛She’s taking a bath.’ 

‛Interesting,’ she replied. ‛Is she alone?’ 

‛What do you want?’ I retorted coldly. 

‛Can you tell her we’re interested in her for a bit-part in the play?’ 

‛Sure,’ I replied, and she gave me her number. 

My speciality was spaghetti. I enjoyed the smell of Neapolitan sauce as it rose to a 

simmer. My Siamese cat hovered at my feet, and I opened a tin of tuna for her and put the


remainder into a sauce. With the penne cooked al dente, I poured myself a scotch and 

relaxed on the couch. Through the window, I saw Mrs Mirrabon, arriving by taxi with her 

weekly groceries. The cabbie was carrying her large bunch of celery sticks which she told 

me once was to ward off Alzheimers. I never had the heart to tell her she always forgot her 

keys. She waved at me from the window and opened the front door to her menagerie of 

cats. I went upstairs. Melina was in the bath, bubbles to her chin. She looked defeated, her 

eyes puffed like fish. 

‛Melina, what’s wrong?’ 

‛What?’ she asked, coldly. 

‛Why are you crying?’ 

‛I am sick of living two lives.’ 

‛Whatever!’ I said. She wasn’t making sense any more. ‛That crazy lesbian just 

rang. She said you’ve got a bit part in that play. Personally I think you’d be mad to do it. It 

will be a flop for sure.’ 

Melina stared at the wall, miles away. 

I hated it when Melina ignored me. She was an only child and had that enviable 

outlook that saw no further than tomorrow. She had never fretted about the past the way I 

had over lost opportunities and rejected chances. We were sharing the same fate, our lives 

running parallel, never meeting. 

Like clockwork, after her bath, we ate in silence. Melina watched the world affairs 

on SBS while I locked myself upstairs in the office. We had a routine that most couples 

enjoy, but co-dependency is not the same as sharing. 

I drove over to Maya’s apartment that night. As I got out of the car, Kelso emerged 

from behind a tree. 

about Maya.’ 

‛Evening, Ari.’ 

‛What are you doing here?’ 

‛Just keeping you updated on the progress of things.’ 

‛Haven’t you heard of telephones?’ 

Kelso smiled, ‛You should realise that Melina monitors all your calls. She knows 

‛Bullshit!’ I looked away, confused. 

Kelso lit a cigarette, the smoke trailing wistfully in a gentle evening breeze. 

‛We had some success the other night,’ he informed me, ‛but we need more

information. Access codes to her bank accounts in Geneva.’ 

was gone. 

‛I don’t know about any of that stuff.’ 

‛You have to help us, or we can’t protect you.’ 

‛Protect me. From what?’ 

Kelso threw his cigarette butt to the ground. 

‛From your wife and her father.’ 


Kelso walked off into the darkness. I saw him turn a corner on Carlisle Street and 

I knocked on Maya’s door. A few moments later, it opened. 

She stood at the doorway. I could see her bare fingers, long and thin, against the 

wall as she leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. She was wearing a red kimono I had 

bought her the week before, with a Quicksilver bikini beneath it. 

She kissed me, then led me to the bedroom. She took a stoke of amyl, then lit a 

joint and took a deep puff. She then slowly stripped naked. I admired her cock resting 

against her belly, heavy breasts with large brown areolae resting against her arms. 

‛You are a bad man,’ she said, stroking her cock. ‛Why don’t you ever want to fuck 

me these days?’ 

‛You want me to?’ 

‛No.’ 

She went down on me. I came quickly. Afterwards, she lay on the bed beside me 

and lit a cigarette. ‛After ten years Ari, you’re still a mystery.’ 

I laughed, ‛It hasn’t been ten years.’ 

‛Honey, it has.’ 

‛Whatever,’ I pushed her. 

Maya pushed her fist against my face, playful. 

‛You looking for a fight?’ I asked, playfully. 

‛Anytime, sport,’ she smirked, ‛Thais make great warriors.’ 

‛Unless it’s karaoke night.’ 

She laughed, and my lips travelled across her face, down her neck, to her shoulder, 

over the dimple she got from a pox vaccine when she was eight, down her arm to the scar 

when she fell from a bicycle on her way to ballet classes. Her cock was getting hard, and a 

long string of fluid stretched from the tip to her belly. I began to tease her. 

arms.’ 

She gently pulled me toward her, ‛Honey, I am happy just to have someone in my


She held me tightly, like a child would her mother. I let her nestle in my chest while 

I stroked her cock. 

‛What can I do, Ari? Nawal says he loves me, and you never do. It is so tragic.’ 

‛You’re greatest tragedy,’ I explained, ‛is that you are beautiful.’ 

‛I know honey - I’m like a Porn Queen. Oh, I love porn, and porn loves me. Who 

wouldn’t want me as a lover? But I’m not exactly someone you can take home to see your 

mother. Not if she knew I had an eight-inch cock.’ She sighed. ‛Okay, only seven and a 

half, but I include the foreskin!’ 

I forced her to sit on my chest and I began to fondle her cock with one hand and 

finger her arse with the other. She slowly came to an orgasm. 

Sweating from exertion, she lay down on my chest, her now short black hair 

smelling of coriander. I played with her pearl earring in my mouth. She giggled and began 

to sigh. 

‛I want you to come meet my family,’ I said. 

‛Are you sure?’ she smiled. 

‛Why not? I’d love to see the look on my mother’s face.’ 

‛You know you’re completely fucked up. You want the crown but not the 

crucifixion.’ She slowly drifted into my arms, ‛To be a saint, you must be able to hold the 

seed and taste the fruit.’ 

I laughed, then dozed with her. 

I awoke later and gently moved her to the bed beside me. The cum had dried to a 

sticky glue on my chest. I tasted the sweet amritsa, the ambrosial nectar of the gods, and 

for a moment, I played it between my fingers, watching the buddhas dancing in the creamy 

fluid stringing between my digits. The taste hung on my tongue, tingling a rush of 

memories. This sought-after juice from the cock of a she-male is priceless, said to catalyse 

euphoric states of consciousness and restore the most condemned of souls to an immortal 

life. Maya, my Lord Buddha, is birthless, indestructible, stainless, beyond redemption. I 

had cupped her balls and milked her amritsa, I had extracted every drop until her balls 

were swollen and her cock ached. I had drunk my fill from Maya’s salty eternalness as she 

came into my mouth year after year. I was addicted to her hot cock, the way its soft skin 

slid over my tongue and made me gag when she came. I let her hot liquid spurt into the 

back of my throat like a hungry pup, hungry for the allure of enlightenment. 

I quietly dressed, looking down at Maya, her arm draped across the edge of the bed, 

touching the kimono. In the dim boudoir light, Hiroshi was smiling, but then gasping,


turning white and finally fading into the mist from an incense stick burning on the corner 

table. 

‛Look up. Look up,’ I heard Hiroshi say, but when I did, all I saw was a dreary 

room slowly orbiting a rattan ceiling fan. The bedroom door pushed me out into the 

weightless corridor and I space-walked into the night air. 

My feet cracked on chestnuts in the gutter, and I could taste the sea in the trees 

from the St Kilda beach a few blocks down the road.

≈ 


I was just finishing a two-week veterinary locum in a small-animal practise 

employing eleven vets, eighteen nurses and nine ancillary staff. My head was numb with 

exhaustion, eighteen hour shifts for fourteen days straight. 

In the lunch room in the vast corridors that ran through the rabbit-warren hospital, I 

sat and chewed on a beef and curry sandwich, listening to Dr Bert Monahan prophesy in 

cold logic how science would one day cure all ills. I admired his Buddha-eyed reasoning, 

but I was trembling to get home, hanging out for a drink. He asked why I hadn’t attend any 

conferences, why I never read journals. He interpreted my silence for stupidity; he was 

probably right. 

‛We don’t see many poor clients here,’ I remarked. 

Working for Blue Shield, the company who employed me, was problematic. They 

operated a dozen veterinary clinic throughout Victoria, and had clearly identified clinical 

protocols and expectations of their employees. I had quotas to fill and poor clients, unable 

to pay for expensive treatments, were referred to practises who were more affordable or 

offered payment plans. Though I understood the way veterinary business was evolving, my 

gut ached with contradictions. I wanted to work in a modern clinic with access to all the 

latest surgical equipment, digital radiography, CT scans, in-house pathology machines and 

ultrasounds, but the more we geared up in technology, the greater the chasm of 

accessibility for the financially challenged. Some animals just slipped through the system. 

The nightmare of the HMO system in the US medical system was fast becoming a reality 

in the veterinary world. To quote George Orwell, some animals were more equal than 

others. 

‛Hell Ari!’ Bert Monahan whined, ‛A hundred thousand cats and dogs are 

euthanased every year due to disease or delinquency, and you’re complaining about one or 

two!’


The writing was on the wall. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tow the corporate line 

much longer. I was employed by invisible share-holders, where profits outweighed more 

immediate concerns of providing care for the disadvantaged. My myopic notion of living a 

James Herriot-like lifestyle or the idyll of a relaxed professorial position at a utopian 

university had long since evaporated in the economic turmoil of global economics. 

Most of my graduate colleagues had more than five employment positions in the 

last ten years, markedly different to how it was in the ’70s when one job lasted the life of 

the veterinarian. My colleagues vacillated between self-employment, locum work, research 

and part-time employment, some still looking for the ideal veterinary job well into their 

forties and fifties. In this profession, the more you know, the more enjoyable the job. But it 

is still a vocation that demands enormous self-sacrifice; both emotionally, financially and 

spiritually. Add to this the expectations of an increasingly internet-educated and litigious 

general public, compulsory continuing education demands and compassion fatigue due to 

the long hours, and it was no wonder more than forty percent of my graduating year had 

chosen an exit strategy within ten years post-graduation; be that a new job (like me), drug 

abuse (like me) or suicide (not yet me). The booze made it easier for me to cash my pay 

check at the bank when I left. 

As I rode off back to Kensington through the afternoon rain and fog, I felt I’d done 

my service for Blue Shield shareholders, but it begged the question why the hell I stuck at 

it. Sometimes answers come before question. Loyalty, to a profession that had dedicated 

five years to train me up. I guess I didn’t want to let them down. 

When I got home, I carried groceries from the bike, shivering wet. 

The house smelled of rose-hip incense, flowers burst out of a vase on the kitchen 

bench, a roast cooking in the oven, music playing on the stereo. 

I threw down my helmet, jacket, kicked off my boots and walked upstairs. As I 

entered the bathroom, Melina was stepping out of the shower. 

‛Hi,’ I said. 

She jumped, startled. 

I hadn’t seen her naked for a long time, and I felt instantly aroused by her beauty. I 

loosened my tie. 

‛Dr Mylonas, I presume?’ she said. ‛It’s hard to tell these days. Where have you 

been these last two weeks?’ 

‛Locum.’ 

‛You never thought of telling me?’

‛You were in Japan.’ 


‛A call would have been nice. I remember another Ari Mylonas, one who was going 

to be a writer one day. You wrote me poems once, remember? Well frankly, they weren’t 

that good. With all your extensive and encyclopaedic knowledge and writing skills, you’d 

make a great drummer!’ 

‛What’s up your arse?’ 

‛Maybe I should ask you the same question?’ she growled. ‛ What’s up your arse. 

Oh, that’s right - her names Maya, isn’t it?’ 

‛I don’t know what you are talking about!’ 

‛I don’t care! I have swallowed so many of your lies I have a gastrinoma!’ 

I laughed at her ridiculous diagnosis and went to calm her, but she shoved me away 

violently. I stumbled out of the bathroom. 

‛Don’t touch me,’ she cried. ‛Don’t ever touch me again!’ 

I turned side on and side-kick the bathroom door shut in her face. 

‛How intelligent,’ she shouted through the door. ‛How really really intelligent!’ 

‛You can’t have a gastrinoma,’ I explained to the door. ‛No disease would be mad 

enough to come near you!’ 

I felt more defeated than the Wallabies rugby team against the All Blacks, and 

jumped down twenty steps and slam the glass door with my elbow. I heard shards of 

broken glass in my wake. I stormed out into the rain of Friday night shoppers on the back- 

streets of Kensington where the pavement told of whining Lexus, mid-life crisis Porsches 

and baby-care Pajeros trying to find a space in permit parking zones. 

It wasn’t until I reached the 7-Eleven that I began to calm down. I sat in the gutter 

holding my hand to quell the bleeding. I entered the 7-Eleven. The teller looked at me and 

reached under the counter for the panic button. 

water?’ 

‛Where is the paracetamol?’ I asked, and he sighed, pointing to a back shelf. 

‛You want water with that?’ he asked when I return to the counter. 

I was dripping blood and water onto the beige and grey floor, ‛Do I look like I need 

I tossed five bucks across the counter and walked out. 

I swallowed two pills and sat under the alcove watching the passing trade; a 

businessman buying flowers; a single mum buying chocolate and a video to see her 

through another lonely night; a jogger buying milk en-route to his neat and crisp home; a 

shift-worker with black eyes from sleep deprivation; a taxi-driver parked under a street-

light, waiting for a job. 


We are one of many species capable of altruism, I thought, but the only one with a 

capacity to hate. Mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, even insects can feel anger, but hate 

requires an executive function unique to the human cerebral cortex. Anger may be a vital, 

survival instinct of the cognitively-impoverished ‛primitive’ brain, but hate is a ‛luxury’, a 

lavish trophy of the evolved fore-brain. Hate is the pinnacle of evolution. Hate is an idea. 

Slowly returning home, I reflected on a paragraph from van Aken’s The Fourth 

Warrior where Margonot is preparing for a long voyage at sea without his beloved. Like all 

men, he questions Beatrice’s fidelity (though in fact the philandering sailor should have 

been questioning his own): 

‘Beatrice no longer fought me, for her heart was not besieged. She was no longer 

tethered to me by her head, which said ‛Yes I will be faithful to you, Margonot,’ but by her 

heart, which said ‛I will be faithful only to myself.’ 

After a long battle, her head surrendered to her heart. Beatrice’s strategic siege 

was to endure the head’s trickster thoughts of compassion, love, anger, hurt, jealousy, fear 

and avarice, until it was completely exhausted. Then the heart triumphed in overcoming. 

In this way Beatrice did not dull her contempt of Margonot as he devotedly 

promised her his chastity and accepted hers. He sailed across the Atlantic Ocean 

convinced of Beatrice’s purity. Her victory over his fears and her own had been complete, 

subtle and totally illusory.’ 

When I returned home, Horatio and Cassandra had arrived. I had forgotten Horatio 

mentioned he wanted to audition Melina for the film. 

There was already a party going on inside, maybe a dozen folk. 

‛A nice house you’ve got here,’ Horatio picked a piece of glass from the door. ‛I 

like the original decor.’ 

Vandals!’ 

Melina was standing at the door, telling white lies like a pro, ‛Sorry about the mess. 

She invited them into the house. 

Melina and I were complicit in our lies again and she smiled as the guests entered 

where the front door used to swing. 

But then she pulled me aside, ‛You have gone too far this time, Ari.’ 

‛So divorce me!’ I threatened her. 

She glared at me for a moment before walking into the house. 

I kicked the flowerpot, sending daffodils sprawling across the driveway, then

followed Melina inside. 


The room was lit with a dozen spluttering candles, cozy like Christmas. 

‛Would anyone care for a coffee?’ Melina asked. 

‛Is it’s expresso?’ Horatio enquired. ‛I simply hate the instant stuff. Good things 

should take time, like friendship, affection, beauty...’ 

‛... overnight success?’ I added. 

Horatio laughed, ‛You’re a funny guy. They say intuition is the sixth sense but I 

think the sixth is a sense of humour. Intuition is the seventh, and the eight...’ 

Cassandra interjected, ‛He has a thing for numbers, don’t you, old man?’ 

Melina reduced me to a wetback waiter, ‛Put the kettle on, would you?’ 

Horatio continued as I walked into the kitchen, ‛Numbers and words - eventually 

they will be just one language...’ 

Cassandra was pashing a skinny punk chick against the fridge. I gave them a dirty 

look. The punk chick walked out to the lounge, leaving Cassandra to watch me washing 

my elbow in the sink. 

‛Who the hell are all these people? I thought Horatio was just going to audition 

Melina for a part?’ 

Cassandra rolled her eyes, ‛Even the mundane turns into a party around Horatio. He 

has an illustrious list of hangers-on,’ she asked. 

‛How old are you?’ I asked. 

‛Seventeen. Legal, if that’s what you’re asking.’ 

‛You’re still young.’ 

‛What would you know?’ 

‛More than you think?’ 

‛Like what?’ 

‛Like I knew the minute I met you - that you liked to play the piano.’ 

‛How do you know that?’ 

‛Callouses on your fingertips. I come from a musical family.’ 

‛Really? What do you play?’ 

‛According to my wife, the drums.’ 

She put a BandAid on my elbow. 

‛What is it with you and Horatio?’ 

I laughed scornfully, ‛I hate the fact I worshipped him. This was the guy who 

changed my life when I was a kid. I imagined him a god of sorts. But he’s like my father -


he needs my approval, almost like he wants redemption, hoping to find it from me. It’s a 

great disappointment that I can’t even redeem myself, and he looks to me for something I 

can’t give.’ She looked saddened by my confession. ‛Forget it, I’m pissed.’ 

‛Has it never occurred to you that he just wanted to be a friend?’ 

We made coffee and carried them into the lounge. 

Melina was parading around the lounge, naked. A dozen people whooping her, 

clapping and making lurid suggestions. Shaun, an aboriginal actor in Horatio’s film, was 

holding up a wall cradling his guitar, tapping an unheard tune. Desre was shooting Melina 

with a Nikon. Melina, much to my amazement, seemed unfazed by the spectacle of people 

watching her. 

‛What this?’ I asked, flopping into a chair. 

Horatio explained, ‛For research on the film’s nude scenes.’ 

‘For God’s sake, Ari!’ Melina interrupted. ‛Don’t be such a prude - you of all 

people, with your twenty gigabytes of porn on your computer.’ 

Jude Minton, a tall thin actor with white hair and a goatee was sitting on the back of 

a chair next to me, a joint in one hand, a bible on his lap, reciting Revelations. 

‛Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.’ 

His Indian wife, an apostrophe to his travels, was hanging off him in her ruby sari 

and third-eye tattoo. She had doll-twinkled eyelids and was breathtakingly exotic. 

The camera clacked like a morning bird. The candles cast odd shadows like 

elemental ghosts around an apocalyptic fire. 

Desre’s eyes roamed over my wife’s naked form, the candles casting a flickering 

sheen over her olive skin. Jude’s rhyme of the ancient text in my ears as seven golden 

bodies glistened in the candle-lighted night; Cassandra, Desre, me, the goateed guy and his 

wife all sitting around the bonfire, my wife. 

Jude had a rough life, growing up in Collingwood, beatings a common thing for a 

baker’s son. He sought refuge in drama and dharma, spent five years in Dharmsala after 

graduating from NIDA. He said he once caught an audience with the Dalai Lama, Tensin 

he called him, spoke about him like they were intimate buddies. Explained to me how that 

Tibetan saint spoke so simply. Said his words were like arrows shot straight to his heart. 

‛Simple truths are often the hardest,’ Jude complained. ‛The great Tensin said like 

five words to me, asked me what I did and I was dumb retarded, crying and pissing my 

pants. I thought shaking hands with Mel Gibson was big, but speaking with Tensin; it was 

better than sex!’


I knew he still held a candle for Tensin. When you’ve been beaten to an inch of 

your life you cling to the rocks, the unmoveable things that endure life’s storms. Mine was 

Hiroshi, his Tensin. 

life after all. 

His wife frowned; maybe she was beginning to wake up in the dream of married 

Jude sneered, ‛Maybe I’ll come back as Tensin’s secretary in my next life.’ 

I laughed, pouring more Jack Daniels down my gullet. 

‛Be careful what you wish for.’ 

I lay on the floor, watching Melina and beside her a stunning young blonde Betty, 

with braces and tits too small for her bra, trying to get her photo taken, moving in and out 

of frame, shaking her toothpick legs and concave belly. Desre wasn’t interested, kept 

pushing her aside and shooting Melina. 

Betty let out a scream as she twisted her ankle and fell broken at my feet, blocking 

my view, a fly in the sweet ointment of my cinematic fantasy. She climbed up my grassy 

jeans with her manicured hands and foxy-tight bloodshot eyes, her metallic mouth open 

like Belial, clutching my hand like I was her soulmate. She kept calling me ‛my Andy’ like 

there was any other, until she passed out, her head flopping into my lap, her eyes rolling 

back in their sockets, before she rolled over onto the floor, vomiting into her hands. 

She hopped off to the toilet. 

‛You foolish trampoline!’ I laughed, kicking at her. 

Jude on his high-chair stopped momentarily, kicked a cushion after Betty and went 

on with his invocations while Shaun pecked at his guitar like a hungry rooster 

cockadoodling at the dawn. 

‛The seven stars are the angels of the seven assemblies.’ 

Pissed as a mute, I popped a tab and went over to Cassandra pouting in the corner, 

took her by the waist and tried to serenade her. She looked at me terrified and said she was 

too tired to dance. I leant her against the corner like a mannequin and she glanced over her 

champagne while Jude chuffed on his joint, fingered the bible and chanted on. 

‛But I have this against you, that you left your first love.’ 

This line made me angry. Revelations was reminding me of Hiroshi. I didn’t want 

her raised from the dead like Lazarus. 

I danced with Shaun to forget myself. He stunk of beer, and sported a hard-on he 

had been saving for the blonde. His guitar between us, he never stopped playing the whole 

time, until Betty returned from the toilet, listing like a sloop and sat on my lap, her hips

grinding me like a peppermill. 


A hundred clacks of the camera, Desre like a catwalk photographer. She kept a 

hand constantly on Melina, holding her this way and that, ever attentive with the lens. 

Shaun played like he was the reincarnation of Cat Stevens, singing soulful ballads 

that made my head swim and my face beam with a stupid smile of delight. 

‛You can’t eat her with a Nikon,’ I shouted at Desre. ‛Would you rather a fork?’ 

‛He who keeps my works to the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.’ 

And then I heard it, a booming crash overhead and I thought someone upstairs had 

fallen over. I looked around - no one else had heard it. 

I got to my feet, ‛Didn’t anyone hear that?’ 

Slowly I walked upstairs, climbing the steps like I was as old as Methuselah, with 

Betty clinging to my belt, asking ‛where are you going my Andy, I feel so happy, don’t you 

wanna dance?’ 

I opened the door to find the bedroom empty. 

I lay down on the dishevelled bed, the room turning to water. I closed my eyes, 

nauseated with the feel of drowning. I felt Betty’s weight on the bed beside me. Her hand 

sought my groin, but then a sharp stinging smell of phosphorus haunted my nostrils. 

Immediately this was accompanied by a snorting sound. 

As I opened my eyes I saw the cloudy outline of a ferocious beast shimmering in 

the moonlight. My heart began to race. The snorting grew louder. Its hot breath steaming 

my face, eyes burnt orange, horns like the black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis. 

‛I’m not scared,’ I shouted, ‛I’m dead already!’ 

In my mind, I charged at the beast. It then charged me, and roared so loud it shook 

my body, like the doof doof of a hoodlum’s car. Then, just as quickly, the beast turned 

away and was gone. 

I rolled over to Betty, who was peeling off her jeans. She had boy’s hips and tight 

hairs shaved into a heart-shape. She tugged at her black and yellow football socks, 

laughing. 

advice. 

‛Did you say something, Andy?’ 

I feverishly whispered what had just transpired. 

She looked at me, shook her head incredulously, then spoke a litany of adolescent 

‛A dragon, you say? Why Andy, don’t you know it’s better to stay awake all night 

wrestling the dragon, than to awake in its lair the next morning? Come here, I think you

need to relax and maybe I can help you.’ 

She kicked off her jeans and leant over to kiss me. 

I slapped her hands away. 

‛It was a rhino, not a fucken dragon!’ 

Her eyes watered and she raced out of the room, clutching her clothes. 


I awoke much later in the darkness to the deafening sound of the fire alarm. I was 

alone in bed. Out the window, I saw figures moving. I finally saw Melina walking to the 

Saab. I called out, and she gave me the finger. 

‛I pity you, Ari,’ she shouted. ‛The same way I used to pity Hiroshi.’ 

‛What the fuck are you talking about?’ 

‛Who do you think runs Mylonas Inc.? You have no idea who I am, or what I am 

capable of doing?’ 

The car door gun-shot the night. I listened to the finely-tuned purr of the V6 engine 

and the clacking of gears as the car pulled out into the pallid moonlit street. I didn’t think I 

would ever buy a Saab again. 

I turned on the lounge light, the room filled with smoke, empty bottles scattered 

every which way. I looked to the kitchen as flames rose into the air over the bench. I bolted 

into the kitchen and saw the rubbish bin was aflame with my personal documents. 

I shoved my hand into the flames, pulling out a few half-burnt love letters, my last 

reminders of Hiroshi. 

death. 

For a while, I more resembled beast than man, such was my fury. 

One solitary page survived the inferno, written by Hiroshi just a week before her 

We give ourselves, of mind and bodies as tokens, 

In place of feelings oft left unspoken 

The girl within this woman yearns no regret 

What only a child’s open heart can get 

No simple plan to win or lose 

No must decide or have to chose 

It is love, nothing more nothing less 

Two Gods descended as mortals blessed. 

As I walked around the apartment, I felt Hiroshi’s footsteps beside me and a soft


voice reminding me that ahead I must see no wrong, and behind me no error. This, Hiroshi 

would have remarked, was the true path to freedom. 

All I knew was this house had become a home to ghosts.

≈ 


I had been feeling unwell since returning from my honeymoon in Tasmania, 

awakening at night in a cold sweat, fearful dreams tormenting me, and my thirst for liquor 

had unexpectedly abated. I had a portend of death, and with it a sense of the futility of 

work. 

One morning I lightened my mood by cleaning out my collection of memorabilia. 

As I was throwing away tax receipts, wedding photos, Melina’s attempted love letters, and 

birthday cards, my hands fell onto the bruised novel, The Fourth Warrior. I had read it 

more times than I cared to remember. I sat down on a stool and read the introduction, 

sweat dripping from me onto the open page. 

‛The human warrior begins his journey along the path with three symbolic stages; 

firstly as Superman, then Soldier and finally as Samurai; each stage a growing maturity 

and a transition from physical to mental and finally spiritual strength. They represent 

chaos, causation and cognition. 

The Superman is a well recognised caricature of the all-powerful hero who is 

without fear, immortal and ever present saviour from physical harm. He is the protector of 

humanity, Nietzsche’s ‛Übermensch’, who has loyalty to all that is good within humanity. 

He has however a shadow archetype, an alter-ego, represented as Clarke Kent. As the 

warrior grows in physical skill, his ego begins to grow in parallel and risk developing an 

unbalanced sense of self. In his immature state, he also sees all enemies in black and 

white, right and wrong, with little understanding of the importance of sensitivity, 

tenderness and compassion. Without reconciling the alter-ego as the Superman/Civilian, 

he is bound, tunnel-visioned, in the warriorhood of flesh, of destroying evil. 

As the warrior continues his journey, he next moves to the stature of the statesman 

Soldier. As a war-hardened fighter, he has come to rely less on brute strength as tactical


knowledge, the use of dialogue with the enemy and fighting when all else fails. Faith has 

been superseded by experience. Yet he must fight when commanded to. Being mortal, he 

has fears, but has faced them with brave resolution and is rarely moved to retreat except in 

recognising defeat. He sees the elements of good and evil and complex, in shades of grey 

rather than black and white. He is the policer of evil, with broader view of reality, keeping 

evil in check rather than trying to destroy it. Being of more intellectual dynamism, he 

becomes increasing aware of his alter-ego, the intellectual Statesman; replacing swords 

with words. Soldiers do not retire, they just turn to brass, unless they can embody the 

Soldier/Statesman dualism. 

In the final stage of evolution, all aspirants attain the meta-physical and meta- 

mental level of fighting. It is the art of fighting without fighting. This warrior, the Samurai, 

sees good and evil in technicolour, and laced with the full implications of karma. He fights 

only when necessity commands, when the karma ripens and he fights only those which 

need to be fought. Faith and experience have been superseded by knowledge. But his 

vision is incomplete without balancing his alter-ego, the Saint. This aspect allows him the 

vision of total awareness. The Samurai becomes the mystic; the spiritual warrior. The 

Samurai/Saint is the pinnacle of all martial arts to which all students aspire, where body 

and mind have become tools for a more sublime goal of balancing good and evil. 

The aspiration in beginning the warrior journey, moving from Superman to Soldier 

then Samurai is one of the most noblest in life. One journey ends, as it begins, when the 

student has integrated the teachings into every aspect of his life and no longer needs to 

learn. He now knows. Knowledge has replaced faith. The teacher and student have become 

one.’ 

The fourth warrior is king of all. It cannot be halted though it never moves, is Lord 

of all but has no throne, sees everything but is invisible, and has a seed in all things yet 

never flowers’ 

Who the hell was the fourth warrior, I thought. It was a question asked by literary 

critics for more than thirty years. Some scholars argued that it was Satan, sex, death, the 

feminine principle, other that it was the author himself. Others conjectured it was time 

itself. But to all inquiries, Horatio said no. Personally I believed there was no such thing as 

a fourth warrior, having come to know Horatio fairly well. The man created mysteries to 

hide his own cardboard cut-out personality. 

I threw the novel onto the bedside table and took a shower. 

Cassandra rang not long afterwards to say her and Horatio had just returned from a


sail to Geelong. I quickly dressed and wheeled the bike out of the garage. I was sweating 

like a pig. Suddenly, I began to shiver. I walked back into the clinic, swallowed a handful 

of antibiotics and returned to the garage. 

‛Must be a flu,’ I thought as I zipped up my leather jacket and returned to the bike. 

By the time I got to the freeway I was feeling better, and my morbid mood had lifted. 

from the cold. 

At the marina, Cassandra was tying up some loose ropes on deck. She was blue 

‛You okay?’ she asked, ‛You look like shit!’ 

I found Horatio down in his cabin, putting away navigation charts. He seemed 

distant, but it could have been the ocean still haunting his eyes. 

‛I’m supposed to be doing a guest appearance at the Grand Prix tomorrow,’ he said, 

‛But the last thing I feel like doing right now is talking to racing-fuel adrenalin junkies.’ 

Cassandra walked in with coffee. She smiled stiffly, like a puppet. They talked 

about sailing across to Perth at the end of the shoot, but it sounded choreographed. After a 

few minutes of awkwardness, Horatio said he wanted to take a walk with me. 

As we walked down onto the jetty, he looked dishevelled. 

‛How’s Geelong?’ I asked. 

He shrugged his shoulders dismissively, then handed me a large envelope. 

‛What’s this?’ I asked. 

‛I need a favour, Ari.’ 

I looked inside the envelope, which contained a ream of typed pages. 

‛A manuscript?’ 

‛I want you to destroy it.’ 

‛What’s going on?’ 

‛I can’t do it myself.’ His face ghostly white, he added, ‛I have spent my whole life 

trying to achieve with words what you achieved in the first ten minutes I met you.’ 

‛And what’s that?’ 

He looked back to the boat where Cassandra was stowing the deck ropes. 

‛To understand love,’ he said. ‛Ari, you must tell no one this. While I was in 

Geelong, I went to a specialist. He did some tests. Metastases, he said. I know what it 

means, and I don’t want to waste these last few precious months with anyone except 

Kassie and you.’ 

I was honoured but the news gutted me, and for a while we walked in silence. 

I stopped him in his tracks.

‛On one condition,’ I asked, wiping tears away. 

‛What?’ 

‛Tell me who the fourth warrior is?’ 

He smiled, his face crinkling like an old leather glove. 


As I rode off, I realised I was the only person on the planet who knew the identity 

of the fourth warrior apart from the author. 

On the way home, I stopped at Maya’s apartment. 

I rang her apartment bell a few times, but there was no answer. Since coming back 

from Apollo Bay, I hadn’t heard from her, and her mobile phone was turned off. I began to 

worry that something was dreadfully wrong. I walked across the road to the park opposite 

her apartment to await her return. The sun had burst through the clouds. I strolled for a 

while, then lay down under an oak. I didn’t care that the grass was wet, that children and 

parents were having birthday parties around me. I was too tired to care and the medication 

I took didn’t seem to help. 

I opened Horatio’s manuscript Weltanschauung at a random page; 

Helping the red tortoise 

Summarily asks me what is required 

An immortal shell, hard, fixed intention 

She cannot see, as if ears are wax and steel 

Unbending, waterless, landlubber tied, tired, tie-die, dying 

He pulls hard the quivering bow 

A boa feather, draped around his neck 

Against his chin, aiming, sights, sightless 

He cannot shoot, 

Shoot!, he cannot see, let alone love 

Beyond him to see the fast hare, her fast flowing magenta hair 

She takes his anaconda moods 

Ties, tired, tying abut her loins, kidneys, womb 

Fleeting fast, too fast for his oven baked suffocating times 

Which are the memories of what was, can be, but if - no. 

See me, see my desire-aims, my egg future 

She is tired of his amphibious thoughts and ways 

Take me in your arms, she cries, we are just shore-dwellers 

The air was laden with hydrocarbons. Distant reverberations of an 18-wheeler’s air-

akes vibrated against my ear. An ant crawled over my ankle. 


I hated Horatio’s obsession with poetry. I threw the manuscript to the grass, and lay 

back, watching the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the overhead tree. 

Suddenly my meditation was rudely interrupted by a boisterous dog with a long, 

attentive tongue. I sat up as a wire-haired terrier jumped excitedly at my face, licking my 

cheeks and sniffing my groin. 

A voice cried out from a distance, ‛Sheba!, which I recognised as Maya’s. 

‛I’m sorry for not calling, Ari,’ Maya said, putting the terrier back on its leash. ‛I’ve 

been busy lately.’ 

She’s sick.’ 

‛Whose dog?’ 

‛My neighbours. She’s away for a few days and I said I’d take it for a walk.’ 

‛Is everything okay?’ 

‛I have to go back to Thailand for a while. Something has come up. It’s Kanga. 

‛I thought she was coming to Australia?’ 

Maya sighed dramatically, ‛He found out she was a ladyboy.’ 

I listened, stunned, ‛How could he not know! It’s not as if she’s got a small cock.’ 

Maya held her hand to her mouth, ‛They didn’t actually do it. He wanted to wait 

until they were married. Honey, most men are naive. Anyway, she’s sick as, and I have this 

godawful feeling it may be HIV. It’s probably not - she’s always careful.’ 

‛Have you been tested?’ 

‛Hell yes. Ari, can I ask a favour? I’m a bit strapped for the airfare.’ 

‛How much do you need?’ 

‛Five grand.’ 

We walked down to Westpac on Acland Street. She waited outside while I went in 

to withdraw the cash. 

‛Thank you, Ari,’ she kissed me as I handed over the cash. ‛I’ll pay it back in three 

or four weeks.’ 

‛Don’t bother,’ I held her hand. ‛Have you got time for a coffee at Nick’s?’ 

She smiled, ‛Raincheck? Maybe we can have one before I leave next week.’ 

I watched as she led the dog down the pavement to her apartment, marvelling how 

sometimes a wagging tail can be more satisfying than a wagging tongue. 

This was how life worked, I realised. Life is like a blurred movie shot in Super-8. It 

seems pointless, and our thoughts are like a rickety projector, and the script sucks, and no


one knows who the director is, but somehow, we just keep shovelling down the popcorn.

Cassandra and I were lying on the bed, stoned. 

≈ 


Through the porthole window the sunset was flooding the cabin with red light. 

Chopin was playing on the laptop, while Cassandra, in her T-shirt and underwear, 

reminisced her childhood. 

‛I feel like I’m in a confessional.’ 

‛Go on,’ I assured her. 

‛Well, next I remember being awake on a theatre trolley, haunted by the smell of 

alcohol and the green gowns of the surgeons. Outside my window, I could see the tall 

steeple of a Catholic church. Brisbane, I think. I was never good at geography. Outside, 

there were birds playing in the sky, and from where I was lying on the trolley, it appeared 

as if they were fish swimming through an azure ocean. For as long as I could remember, I 

had a fascination for music. Children’s nursery rhymes I found boring although Snow 

White and the Seven Dwarfs had a magical appeal.’ 

‛I remember the surgeon, he played the classics every time I was being wheeled 

into the operating theatre. He told me that I was a brave girl and that one day I would look 

back on all my surgeries as nothing more than growing pains, and that I would grow into a 

lovely girl. I could see that he was as genuine as Geppetto, the kind old man who made 

Pinocchio. I loved listening to the music he played, particularly Beethoven’s Ninth, and I 

could remember it by heart, and one day, I promised myself, I would learn to play it.’ 

‛How old were you?’ 

‛I was seven. I was being wheeled out of the theatre, four surgical procedures in as 

many months. I had steel pins coming out my head, stretching it in all four directions. I had 

a headache for as long as I could remember.’ 

‛Were you angry?’


‛No, just lonely. There was no one to greet me when I was wheeled back to my 

hospital bed, no mother to weep tears over the pain or a mother’s guilt she must have 

carried for so many years over my inherited disease, no caring hand to hold me during the 

ordeals I had to undergo. I couldn’t recall a single person ever worrying about me, caring if 

I lived or die. No one who stayed up during the night’s vigil beside my bed, resting a 

caring hand on my shoulder to assure me everything was going okay, that everything 

would be fine. I had seen other patients with their families fussing about them. But not 

me.’ 

Tears welled in her eyes. 

I felt guilt at making her tell me her sad tale, but I persisted. 

‛My only companion was pain. The hospital the only world I knew. I’d had more 

X-rays than Madame Curie. My radiographs on the wall, the doctors mumbling amongst 

themselves like I wasn’t there. They said I had Pfeiffer Syndrome. It’s actually quite 

common you know. Kids born without suture lines in their skull, and the brain can’t grow 

because the skull fuses too early. Mine was apparently a severe case.’ 

dreadlocks. 

I ran my hand over her head, the tell-tale bumps unmistakable beneath her 

‛You hide them well,’ I said, gently. 

‛You lose the paranoia after a while. Eventually, you laugh about it. But that took a 

long time. back then, every time I looked in the mirror, it was a new face, fortunately each 

one less hideous than the other, until I began to notice how the male doctors began to pay 

more attention to me, how one of them actually called me pretty.’ 

‛Then one day, there came this gentleman, the man of flowers I called him, because 

on each visit he would come with a large bouquet of flowers. He would come more 

frequently after the last operation, the one that hurt the most, that changed me into what I 

am today. He would stay long after visiting hours to watch me. He never said who he was, 

never anything more than a few words of tenderness, such kindness I had never seen in 

anyone before, or since. He was a giant of a man, with tender eyes and an ugly face. He 

would just sit there, quoting poetry, none of which I understood.’ 

‛Horatio?’ 

‛Yes,’ she continued. ‛On one particular day, Horatio came with Desre and another 

man. The other man asked me if I wanted to live with Horatio and Desre. We have a 

beautiful big house, they said and I would be happy there.’ 

‛They wanted to adopt you?’

‛Yeah.’ 

‛Who was the other man?’ 


‛I don’t know. Just some short guy with a moustache, a Greek with a gold ring on 

his finger. I remember it clearly because his skin was blue.’ 

‛Blue? You sure?’ 

I was stunned by this revelation, realising she was referring to Uncle Bart. What 

was worse, Kelso had been right all along. 

‛The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves.’ 

‛What?’ she asked. 

‛Nothing, the dope is talking. I have to get some fresh air.’ 

‛Sure,’ she replied, ‛I need to do some practise anyway.’ 

I walked up onto the deck, as the music from Cassandra’s synthesiser wafted up 

from the cabin. 

I staggered aft, looking up at the new moon in a sky as I called Kelso on my phone. 

‛We have to meet,’ I said. 

‛Give me an hour,’ Kelso responded. ‛At Nick’s.’ 

I was fingering an ashtray with anger as the night street buzzed with evening 

diners. Kelso approached from across the street, wearing a heavy jacket. 

cake. 

I was livid, ‛Why didn’t you tell me about Bart and Cassandra?’ 

He calmly ordered coffees, then calmly lit a cigarette. 

‛I tried to tell back at the funeral, but you wouldn’t have listened.’ 

‛What else do you know? I want to know. Tell me everything!’ 

The coffees arrived, a young waitress pushing them onto our table, latte and carrot 

Kelso sampled the cake, ‛Your daughter was born by emergency caesarian at Royal 

Brisbane Hospital. From the death certificate, she died 3 a.m. on November fourteenth 

1994 from severe deformities associated with Pfeiffer Syndrome, the death certificate 

forged by a Dr Andreas Moraitis, your family’s physician. Moraitis smuggled the baby to 

The Sisters of Mercy orphanage. Moraitis admitted her as a ward of the state. Over the next 

seven years, Medicare funded eleven reconstructive procedures, and finally was referred to 

a craniofacial specialist, Dr William McGregor, Chief Surgeon at Royal Children’s 

Hospital, Parkville, Melbourne. Age eight, she was adopted by...’ 

I held my head in my hands, like listening to bad dream.

‛Why would they do this?’ I begged the question. 

Kelso leaned back in his chair. 


‛One word - leverage. Imagine the headlines if your father didn’t do what his 

brother wanted and Bart told the press about this monster child that he had put away in 

some orphanage. Local MP hides his shame. It would ruin your father. Who knows how 

Bart Mylonas’ sick mind works. Oh well, I guess your father’s name is going to be dragged 

through the mud by the time we are finished with them. What worries me is how your 

mother is going to feel about all this?’ 

‛You bastard!’ 

He flicked his cigarette stub away. 

‛Ari, I know we didn’t exactly see eye to eye at school, but I’m trying to help you. 

Help us, and I’ll arrange immunity - you don’t need to go down. You’re the innocent party 

in all this.’ 

hands on.’ 

‛What do you want me to do?’ 

‛I need access codes to Melina’s computer, hard disks, anything you can get your 

I walked off down the beach and popped a tab. Washed it down with merlot, tore 

off my clothes and felt the cold air against my naked skin. My feet squelched in the cold 

sand at the water’s edge, the water dancing its eternal rhythm. I felt a snare beat, the shush 

of water playing on the sand, a jazz tune syncopated to my heart. The wine opened my eyes 

and I saw Hiroshi lying in pieces on the sand, a leg here, another over there, her head 

sitting lopsided on a dune and her lower torso opening at the water’s edge for an awaiting 

cock. Bart had killed her. And our loin seed, Cassandra, just a Tonka toy for his 

imaginative amusement. 

I sunk to my knees at the water’s edge, watching Hiroshi’s visceral parts scuttling 

the sand like crabs. Hiroshi’s dismemberment like a tea party. Bits of intestine here, a 

spleen, parts of her liver, a half-eaten kidney floating amongst sea-shell. All that was left 

was the gnawing claws of crabs fighting over bits of entrails that were stretched out over 

the sand. I stood back, reading from the entrails, the unmistakable word, ‛Inri.’ 

I laughed, backing into the ocean, my skin tingling, my ears submerged, listening to 

the gnawing crabs at the beachside. The cold water penetrated me until I dissolved into a 

bright aura of lights that emerged as a halo over the surface of Brighton. My hand emerged 

from the water with the wine bottle clutched between my fingers. I drank the last dregs of 

wine, floated to the surface, then arose to my feet over the water. I walked across the cold


water’s surface, dropping the bottle at my feet, walking all night, clean across forty 

kilometres of water to Geelong on the other side of the bay.

≈ 


I awoke to a wet grey sky full of deceit, with the high tide’s sand in my mouth. 

I walked back to where my soggy clothes lay on the wet sand. I dressed. Walking 

toward along the esplanade, watching the cars lining up for fuel, the weekenders getting 

away for a jaunt down at Sorrento with their screaming kids and blow-up dingies. Kids 

with their weekend minds, summer bathers and fishing lines. Girls in their bikinis, lipstick 

and new handbags. Mothers with their sunscreen and sunglasses and Vogue magazine they 

were hoping to read. Fathers on prozac, red-eyed from Friday night football with their 

mates. 

It was mid-morning when I got to Horatio’s yacht. I took a shower and made 

myself a steaming hot mug of coffee to warm me up and clear my head. 

I saw Cassandra’s laptop open on the table. She came through the forward cabin as 

I started to read her blog. 

‛Did you write this blog?’ I asked, looking at her laptop. 

‛This is just me,’ she affirmed, a little too defensively, ‛I play with ideas when I’m 

too sore to play the piano.’ 

physics?’ 

physics.’ 

‛You’re a nerd. Most people have dolls or motorbikes, not blogs on quantum 

‛So? Quantum physics is the dreams stuff is made of. I love the paradox of 

‛What paradox?’ 

‛Well, for example, if you pass light through a horizontal filter, it cannot then pass 

through a vertical filter. However, if you place an oblique filter between the horizontal and 

the vertical filters, the light waves are able to pass through all three. It got me thinking 

why? So I’ve come up with an idea that maybe light rotates in a helix, like those spiral

wind chimes you see at Sunday markets, or in the shape of a spring...’ 

‛Or the helix of DNA.’ 

‛Yes, exactly!’ 

‛So what?’ 


‛If light is helical, it therefore has the capacity to contain information in much the 

same way as DNA does.’ 

come?’ 

‛That’s a huge assumption.’ 

‛Whatever,’ she said. ‛I’m going to Springvale to do some shopping... Want to 

She walked to the plank and jumped onto the jetty. I followed her and as she 

opened Horatio's car, I grabbed her hand. 

‛I’ll drive.’ I grabbed the keys. 

In the main shopping centre, she held my hand. 

‛You want anything, Ari?’ 

‛I’ll settle for a pie, steak and kidney with peas, if they have it.’ 

She walked off. 

Knowing she may be a while, I went into a book store and bought her a book, then 

waited amidst the maelstrom on shoppers in a central food court, idling over a cappuccino. 

There were kids sitting at the table next to me, spooning flavoured ice from a cup, 

raspberry blueberry peach and grape. They were noisy and laughing. I saw Cassandra walk 

past the 18 Lucky Lotto store, her chestnut-dyed dreadlocks flowing like an Arab yearling. 

She entered Moon 360 fashion store. 

Mothers were standing about with hands on hips as their kids finished their ice- 

creams. A young girl sold mobile phone cards at five cent a minute to old Chinese men 

playing checkers. A pensioner in a Magpie beanie, corduroy short and soiled slacks 

chomped his gums as he pushed discourteously through a trio of Vietnamese mothers 

rocking their prams on their hips. A child’s carousel turned in a whirling dervish of lights, 

beating my ears with Disney tunes, while the scent of crushed sugar-cane as ripe as a farm- 

hand’s blisters teased me to sneeze, with a lingering taste as sweet as honeydew on cold 

rainy Saturdays. 

Where had all the warriors gone, I thought. Maybe it’s easier just to open up a 

franchise. My eyes weakened from weary use searching for the answer in a haystack mind 

that cogitated but didn’t liberate. 

I felt her hand on my shoulder.

just gargle.’ 

pretty.’ 

‛You ready to go?’ Cassandra asked. 

‛Sorry I’m so precious about your blog.’ 


‛Forget it,’ she grinned, ‛Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, and others 

We carried the groceries to the car. 

Later, at Horatio’s yacht, I gave her The Little Prince. 

‛Thank you,’ she said. ‛That’s very thoughtful.’ 

Cassandra was cooking fried rice. 

‛Horatio says your first wife was Asian.’ 

‛Yes, she was Japanese. But we never married.’ 

‛What was she like?’ 

‛Smart, like you,’ I replied, showing her Hiroshi’s photo from my wallet. ‛And 

Cassandra smiled, ‛I’m not that pretty.’ 

‛At least you can cook.’ 

While we ate, she continued gazing at the photo. 

‛Is that a temple behind her?’ 

‛Yeah, a place called Karuna. Hiroshi was a buddhist. Almost converted me.’ 

‛What stopped you?’ 

‛I didn’t want to be vegetarian.’ 

‛You’re such a dag,’ she smiled. 

I awoke the next morning to the sound of Horatio’s booming voice. I looked across 

to see him in pink sailing shorts and a pair of worn yellow thongs. 

‛Good morning, my cherubs,’ Horatio banged his fist against the wall to wake 

Cassandra, ‛it’s nearly midday.’ 

‛So?’ I growled. 

‛Just an interesting revelation. Thought you might be interested. Come up on deck 

when you’re decent. I want to show you something.’ With that he disappeared upstairs. 

I pulled on a pair of shorts and came up onto the deck. 

‛What?’ I asked, blinded by sunlight. 

Horatio was sitting in the centre cockpit. 

‛There I was,’ Horatio began. ‛One leg up on the tiller, trying to read or should I say 

digest Kierkegaard for the third time this week! After an hour or so of reading his thoughts, 

I threw the blasted book away. But before I could think much more about it - Bam! It was


like God had spoken. That book, which I had thrown away just a few seconds before, flew 

right back at me. I tell you I prayed devotedly for at least a few seconds when I saw, 

shimmering at starboard, an angel. There she was, my salvation. I prayed to her in gratitude 

for delivering that important book back into my lap, but then as my eyes began to focus. I 

realised my angel was Mrs Fortescue.’ 

‛Who?’ 

Horatio leant over the tumble-home side of the boat. 

‛Her!’ he said, pointing to the neighbouring boat. 

Laying aboard the Lullaby, a sixty-five footer docked beside us was Mrs Fortescue. 

She was topless, with her fifty-year-old crocodile-leathered skin, her trout-mouth and 

glazed-china eyes. 

and smiled. 

Horatio clucked his teeth, then whistled at her. She momentarily raised her head 

‛I think she likes me,’ he scowled. ‛How tragic that in my youth, before fame got 

hold of me, women saw no value in me and now all they see is profit. Oh well, time for 

breakfast.’ 

I returned to the galley. 

Cassandra yawned as I walked past her. 

‛We’re going for some breakfast if you want to come,’ I said. 

I took a shower, feeling the hot water over my skin, the floor rocking ever so gently 

as the boat listed with gentle waves. The water ran through my hair and down my back. 

The reassuring noise of it crashing at my feet, the grime spilling down into the hole 

beneath my toes. I stood there until the water turned tepid. 

The sun was fire-balling the pavement as we took a table in front of Nick’s. Horatio 

smacked his dentures at the cakes in the window. Cassandra was rolling a joint as we 

ordered coffees. 

‛Those things give you permanent head damage,’ I complain. 

She put the joint down, ‛Permanent head damage - that spells PhD? Weren’t you 

going to do one of those?’ 

I leant back, exasperated, ‛Do what you want.’ 

‛I will.’ 

‛Christ,’ Horatio complained, ‛you two sound as if you’re married.’ 

‛There’s only one way I’d ever get married,’ Cassandra took out her zippo and


flicked it into flame. ‛A shotgun wedding, where the former is discharged before the 

latter!’ 

‛Well said Kassie,’ Horatio added. ‛Love is blind and marriage restores your sight.’ 

Horatio put his spectacles on and perused the menu. ‛It’s a dreadful thing is love. My only 

escape was on the back streets of St Kilda, where there is always an open heart to embrace, 

a mouth to probe and an open hand to fuck. I was hunted, I tell you. I ran from bosom to 

breast to evade her but do you think she’d let me be? I think I might have the sausages 

today.’ 

‛Is Desre that bad?’ 

‛Desre?’ he laughed. ‛No, I was talking about my muse!’ 

‛You’re so sad,’ Cassandra groaned. 

‛What’s sad is I expect the highest virtues of men, yet never find it. And in women, 

I expect nothing but beauty or pleasure and always seem to find both. Alas I have reached 

that age where everything appears to shine but nothing truly glows.’ 

‛Maybe you have cataracts?’ Cassandra complained, bored with the menu. ‛I think 

I’ll just have an egg. Boiled.’ 

They were an odd couple, these two. And the more I knew them, the more I wished 

I had what they shared. 

Horatio had written about love in The Fourth Warrior. How poignant, I thought, 

that writers explore that which they seem to know so little about. 

‘When at first we love, it is a fiery flame that makes us lose ourselves into another’s 

arms, into another’s heart, mind and soul. We go mad with love. We are beside ourselves. 

We cannot think, or eat, or do anything more complicated than just breathing, unless it is 

motivated by happiness shared with that special ‛other’. We feel an acute death every time 

our beloved leaves the room and we spend the rest of the day anticipating their imminent 

return. Our soul slows. We go into a stasis, a hibernating state until we see them again, 

and then the sun begins to shine, the sounds return to our world and all the cold which had 

seeped into our soul evaporates instantly the moment they appear at the door with a smile 

on their face and a laugh on their lips. They breathe for us and we breathe for them. It is 

insanity. It is lucidity. It is everything and nothing.’ 

Horatio could be such a pedagogue when it suited him. There he was, picking 

scrambled eggs from his dentures, him and Cassandra squabbling like siblings over the 

criminality of battery cages. 

I excused myself to go to the toilet and walked off.


Beyond the threnody of Acland street, a northerly wind descended onto Port Philip 

Bay. I sat on the beach across the water, a freighter loaded with cargo sailed slowly, en 

route to Malaysia, a few miles behind it a ketch with a blood-red sail like a balloon at its 

stern, pulling it toward Sorrento. 

I gazed over the bay recalling a young martial arts student of the Wing Chun Kung 

Fu master, Yip Man, who had been sailing a small boat on Hong Kong harbour. Enraged by 

a perceived weakness in his mental attitude, he angrily punched the water. This simple 

action resulted in a satori, a momentous epiphany. The student observed that no matter how 

hard he hit the water, it could not be hurt. Water’s unique defence was its shapelessness. He 

came to understand the wisdom of the second element, water. 

interview; 

The student, Bruce Lee, later remarked of this experience during a television 

‛Be formless... shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it 

becomes the cup. You pour water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You 

put water into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or 

creep or drip or crash! Be water, my friend...’

young couple. 

≈ 


Cassandra was just finishing her shift at Nick’s. She waved to me as she served a 

I parked my bike on the footpath, pulled off my helmet, and walked two streets 

simultaneously, seventeen years apart. I can manage this, one step at a time, as Cassandra 

comes over and tells me cheerfully about her day; of coffees, customers. How different 

she was to Hiroshi. 

My tooth began to throb on the ride to the marina. 

‛Horatio wants to meet you tomorrow,’ she said, struggling to find keys in her 

handbag that opened the security gate. 

‛I need to see a dentist,’ I replied. ‛Is it important?’ 

‛I think so.’ 

We entered the marina and walked across the jetty to the yacht. 

‛Make yourself at home. I’ve just got a bit of work to do on my computer.’ 

With that, she disappeared below decks. 

I sat near the tiller, removing the leathers I’d been wearing for the last three days. I 

leaned over the tiller and listened to the sound of water lapping like a metronome against 

the hull. 

Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call wafted from the galley, voice like gravel. I closed 

my eyes, listening to the drug-fucked maestro from Melbourne sing out across the water. 

Later, I found Cassandra down below, playing her synthesiser. I listen for a while as 

she played Morning by Grieg. When she saw me at the door, she stopped. 

‛Don’t stop.’ 

She continued playing. I listened with awe at this child prodigy. Horatio must be 

tone deaf to think she couldn’t play, or maybe it was because he couldn’t play himself.


She finally stopped playing, ‛Want to come for a walk? I’m out of smokes.’ 

She put on a pith helmet and zoot suit, and we walked up the jetty and onto Beach 

Road. She started dancing as we walked beside the gardens. 

‛Why do you do it?’ I asked. 

She spun, her dreadlocks flailing the air , ‛Why do I do what?’ 

‛Why do you stay with Horatio?’ 

‛I love the old bastard.’ 

Cassandra touched my hand. 

‛And who do you love, Ari?’ 

‛She died a long time ago.’ 

‛Real love doesn’t exist anyway.’ 

‛You’re too young to be so cynical.’ 

Cassandra skipped toward the entrance of the Caltex, the sun dancing on her 

shoulders. I capped my eyes, gazing at her face. 

There was nothing in Cassandra that equated with Hiroshi’s soul. The more I knew 

Cassandra, the more I realised she was like me, just another soul stuck in a body, trying to 

get out. 

She walked to the glass door which slid open as she approached. The sun blazed 

tears onto my cheeks as the throbbing in my tooth washed over me like a tsunami. 

A few minutes later, she came out with a packet of cigarettes in her hand. 

‛He’s scared of you, you know?’ she said, fingering my chest with a chuckle. 

‛Who?’ 

‛Horatio,’ she blew smoke circles in the still evening air. She looked up into the 

sky, at the pillow-buff clouds over the bay. ‛He said you’re like Hannibal on prozac.’ 

the bay. 

I took off my shirt and threw it over my shoulder. 

‛Prozac is useless.’ 

She looked at my chest, inhaled and blew smoke out her nostrils. 

‛You need to eat more, Ari.’ 

‛Yeah,’ I groaned. ‛Not enough humble pie.’ 

Our steps slowed as we approached the marina. The sun was beginning to set over 

Back at the yacht, we nestled down on deck, watching the sun set. We drank Merlot 

from the bottle after raiding Horatio’s liquor cabinet. Listened intently as Cassandra talked 

about inconsequential things; why people order fish at the cafe when it’s a full moon, why

it snows on the Himalayas - until it grew late and she started to yawn. 


When I awoke, it was morning. The world was underwater bubbles and hummed 

like I’d got the bends. After five minutes, it was replaced by the dreary din of noises above 

deck. Seagulls squawking, voices shouting, ropes being thrown over the boat, engines 

roaring. I slowly rolled over and saw Cassandra beside me. She was still asleep, her 

breathing shallow. I gazed at her for some moments. She rolled over and was sucking her 

thumb. Her other hand rested against my thigh. Her skin was warm, and soft. I held her 

hand, felt the smooth skin, the dimples on knuckles, a small scar on her thumb. 

I took a shower before waking her. 

We drove through Frankston. Nepean Highway backed-up bumpers to Bon Beach 

while we waited for the stragglers of the Around the Bay in a Day bicycle race. Cassandra 

was driving, bored and smoking her tenth cigarette. 

I pointed to her fag, ‛You know those things aren’t good for you?’ 

She snake-eyed me, ‛You’re like Helen Keller giving advice to musicians.’ A 

cigarette hung like a fish hook from her mouth. ‛That wine last night gave me a fuckin’ 

hangover. I’d much rather get stoned, but I can’t do that any more. Doctors say I may have 

bipolar.’ 

‛Being bipolar has its advantages.’ 

‛Like what?’ she asked. 

‛Like in the beginning when I created heaven and earth, there weren’t men and 

women, just one sex with two pairs of genitals.’ 

‛Really?’ she remarked, flat-line. ‛I guess you could go fuck yourself then?’ 

The traffic began to move quicker, two lanes flowing like a gurgling creek. 

‛I am scared,’ she said, suddenly honest. ‛Horatio says it will get worse.’ 

‛It probably will,’ I agreed. ‛Mine did until I reached twenty.’ 

‛Then what happened?’ 

‛I met a girl who gave me some tools.’ 

She cut off a Hyundai towing a trailer. It jack-knifed and pulled to a smoking halt. 

In the rear-view mirror, I watched as trees flew from the trailer onto the highway behind 

us. She lit another cigarette, veered off the road temporarily. I white-knuckled the arm rest, 

seeing a washout in the dirt that would up-end the car in one sudden motion. At the last 

moment, she lazily pulled on the wheel and the car slid back onto the road. 

the driver.’ 

‛Call me a control freak, Kassie, but if I’m going to die in a car crash, I want to be

‛You ain’t gonna die, old man!’ 

‛How long have you been driving?’ 


She side-swiped me with a smile, ‛Ages, I just don’t have a license yet.’ 

It was with immense relief when I saw we had arrived at Sunnyside beach. She 

pulled the car to the kerb, and I looked out onto the ocean. Cassandra grabbed my hand as I 

opened my door. 

‛Ari, the thing about bipolar, some days when I’m in a hole, all I see are shovels.’ 

I patted her hand reassuringly, ‛One day, I’ll show you how to use a ladder.’ 

We walk out onto the beach. 

‛I’d rather you showed me some karate.’ 

‛Why?’ 

‛So I can beat the crap out of you.’ 

‛Good luck with that, babe.’ 

‛Yeah, well good luck with finding a woman when you call them Babe. What is 

that, something out of the fifties?’ 

She took my hand and led me down to the beach. The sand was hot, and glare from 

the water blinded my eyes. I squinted hard until a pain shot through the back of my mouth, 

cramping my jaw. Large granite boulders littered the waterline and we walked over them, 

her in a bikini and me in motorbike leathers. A couple were swimming naked in the water; 

the women had large pendulous breast like a cow, and her male partner bloated nine- 

months-pregnant. In the distance, a man waved at me. 

‘Strange,' I remarked, pointing at the umbrella. ‛If I didn’t know better, I’d swear 

that was Horatio!’ 

‛It is,’ Cassandra laughed. ‛Ari, this is a nudist beach. Horatio comes here to write. 

It’s where he wrote The Fourth Warrior.’ 

Horatio lay on a beach-chair under a faded-lemon umbrella. He had the biggest 

cock I have ever seen. Desre lay naked beside him, reading a magazine. 

next to Desre. 

Horatio got to his feet and shook my hand. 

‛Ari,’ he said. ‛You might feel more comfortable with your clothes off.’ 

‛No thanks,’ I quipped, staring at the cock lying limp against his thigh. 

Horatio dusted the sand from his bare backside, ‛Let’s walk.’ 

I went with him, looking back to see Cassandra laying down under the umbrella 

Horatio walked beside me, then bent over and picked up a large crab shell. He


studied it intensely. I stood looking at him, a statue lost in thought. I gazed out onto the 

bay, feeling the pulsing pain from my tooth. Tears were flowing down my cheeks from the 

pain. After what felt like five minutes, Horatio dropped the shell like a piece of confetti, 

‛Where were we?’ He tapped my head like I was blackboard and he’s fingering a physics 

theorem on my face, ‛Yes, yes, of course. As I was going to say, the AFC in their infinite 

wisdom are reluctant to put up the last three hundred grand for the project.’ 

‛What project?’ 

‛The Fourth Warrior!’ he said, incredulous. ‛Keep up, Ari. And to make things 

worse, I get a call from Melina this yesterday to say she’s pulling out. You don’t know 

anything about this?’ 

‛No.’ 

‛There it was, the last of my grand ambitions, making a film of my book, floating 

on its back in my cold cappuccino, the corpse of my last hurray, and all because of you.’ 

‛Me?’ 

‛Tell me you haven’t lost Melina!’ 

‛She’s not like a sock that goes missing.’ 

‛No, no, of course not, she’s not a sock.’ He opens his arms against the wide ocean 

before us. ‛She’s a flipper and Prince Charming has fuckin’ lost it.’ 

onto the sand. 

I sunk into the sand, a volcano of pain erupting across my face. I spat pus and blood 

Horatio looked down at me like I was a shoe-shine boy. 

‛I could take her to court for breach of contract,’ he said, irately, ‛but the film will 

be wrapped before that we get into that mischief.’ 

you.’ 

‛What?’ 

‛Like I tell all my actors who renege on their contracts - if I can’t shoot you, I’ll sue 

‛Not good,’ I groaned, gasping from the pain. 

‛It’s fucked, is what it is.’ 

On all fours, I gripped the sand, ‛I think I need to see a... dentist.’ 

Horatio’s penis hung limply near my face. 

‛I am so disappointed in you. I haven’t been this disappointed since I was an 

Anglican priest.’ 

‛You - a priest?’ I said, cradling my aching jaw. 

‛Yes,’ he said, ‛In 1961, the year your miserable existence came into being, I was


ordained a Baptist priest, but I had came to that dark place which Nietzsche described as 

the abyss. My abyss was my dying girlfriend of the time, Tracey Alison. She was this 

sweet red-head, angelic smile, a wit like Whitman, devout as any disciple of the Lord. We 

were engaged. When I found out about the cancer, I promised her that if I treated her 

according to the good book, using the holy oils and prayers, she would be healed. The bible 

says ‛do these things and I promise thou will be healed,’ but she died. Now, I accepted that 

God may work in mysterious ways, that was the beginning of the end of my religious 

period.’ 

‛So like any reputable scholar, you did what naturally comes next, to write your 

own good book! Don’t you think that’s a bit arrogant, almost making yourself a god?’ 

Horatio picked up a shell from the sand, skimming it across the water. 

‛God? That’s just a word. I am sick of these NewAge hippies who are high on God 

and sickly sweet compassion. But soon their compassion turns to manipulation and soon 

enough, hate. Mark my words, compassion is as evil as cruelty. God and the Devil are 

one.’ 

I could see the calm stillness in his eyes, the way his chin tittered on the verge of 

laughter, that it was an epic catharsis for him, but I couldn’t stand his mouth, bigger than a 

car park, and his lean, sun-browned jowls like throw cushions that never stopped puffing 

with wise justifications for his morbid fascination with sex, and his stout, muscular cock 

that bragged a wayward life. 

‛I am not so arrogant as to think myself a god,’ he added. ‛As a writer I see myself 

more like a father giving his son away at a wedding, wondering about his future happiness 

and whether my role as parent has been fulfilled. Like any father, I present the groom, 

warts and all, to his awaiting bride, while nodding my trembling head before the almighty. 

The words ‛I do’ are ready on his lips. How will she respond, I ask. There are some 

moments of silence that last forever.’ 

movies.’ 

I laughed, ‛Nicely put.’ 

‛Nicely put, but no prize, no film.’ 

‛Why don’t you fund it? You have lots of money.’ 

Horatio laughed, ‛You know nothing, my boy. No one puts their own money into 

‛Three hundred, you say? When do you need it?’ 

Horatio’s face showed surprise, ‛You have that sort of cash?’ 

‛On one condition. You consider Kassie for the lead role.’

piano...’ 


‛Sure I’ll consider it, but it’s an absurd notion! Why, she can’t even play the 

He put an arm around me, and we watched as out on the bay, a small jet ski 

bounced across the waves. A white plume of water furled behind it, as it roared angrily 

past. Seagulls careened noisily on the beach where a couple tossed them food. 

Desre and Cassandra came down the beach to meet us. 

I could see Horatio’s cock steadily growing hard. As Desre floated toward us, he 

opened his arms to swallow her whole. 

all its clarity.’ 

‛What greater movement than to come to a full stop, and see the rushing universe in 

After he had said this, Desre walked into his embrace, his stiff cock slapping 

against her midriff. 

Cassandra turned sadly to me, ‛He’s fucking pathetic, isn’t he?’ 

I closed my eyes as a fresh wave of pain hit me. The sight of Horatio’s embrace 

burnt a hole in my retinas, which exploded into stars, then pained into blackness. 

When you’re unconscious, there is an awareness of time having passed, but only 

when you’ve awoken, not during that dreamless state. It is akin to anaesthesia and, I 

imagine, death. You fall unconscious embraced by a dark void. When you awaken from 

surgery you remember the pain present before the operation. But when one awakens from 

death in the next life, if one does, why does one not remember the passing through time, 

the passing through pain? Can it be that if Buddhism is right, what erases the passage of 

time and suffering is compassion? Can love wipe away the pain, the passing of time, the 

way a mother holds a crying child in her timeless arms? 

suffering. 

There there, the mother said. 

‛There, there,’ she said, and someone was stroking my forehead. 

Opening my eyes, I saw Cassandra leaning over me, her face flushed with panic. 

‛You okay?’ 

‛Yeah,’ I groaned, ‛It’s all good.’ 

‛I thought you had a heart attack.’ 

Horatio and Desre were at the water’s edge collecting shells, oblivious to my 

‛Do me a favour, will you?’ I asked, as Cassandra helped me to my feet. 

‛Anything!’ 

‛Just let me do the driving on the way back.’

As we walked along the beach toward the car, she held my hand. 

‛I was ready to take you to the vet,’ she smiled. 

‛Know any good ones?’ I asked. 


‛No, and Horatio says he wouldn’t trust you with his dog. By the way, what were 

you two talking about?’ 

‛What men always talk about - football.’ 

She smiled, warm as a fireplace. 

I stared at her for a moment before adding, ‛So many moments have stolen his 

innocence, but whenever he smiled, he stole something back from those robbers of time.’ 

Cassandra looked at me perplexed, ‛What?’ 

I smiled, ‛Something Hiroshi said once.’ 

‛Whatever!’ 

We drove off, leaving the Mornington Peninsula for the city lights. We drove along 

the coast road, past lavish cliff-top mansions of limestone and lace. Through Mornington, 

we drove along the four lane highway that rolled over the hills of Mt Eliza, past lustrous 

vineyards and empty grass fields that bent under the sea-breeze. 

I was glad to be behind the wheel.

≈ 


Alighieri Dante once remarked that there is no greater misery than to recall 

happiness during suffering. 

Dante meant this as a joke, but unlike Bob Hope who was also a Gemini, Dante 

didn’t deliver the punch line. This is why no one laughed at his Divine Comedy. Or it they 

did laugh, it was a laugh not with him, but at him. I knew this because I was shit-faced, 

sucking nitrous-oxide like a bong in my pretty-in-pink velvet-lined dentist’s chair, 

watching myself out-of-body as my skull vibrated under the machinations of a dental drill. 

Geminis make good comedians. My dentist, Dr Silvia Nguyen, is a Gemini and she made 

me laugh. She’s on the cusp between Gemini and Cancer, so she’s a comedian home-maker 

who vacillated between indifference and intensity while making sure her children were 

eating the right food and brushing their teeth regularly. She told me this because it’s a 

monologue she conducted with all her clients. Who can argue when your jaw is ratcheted 

open like a bear trap? 

Her three-month-old daughter kicked and screamed in a bassinet in the corner of 

the room. My eyes rolled back as Silvia Nguyen leant into my mouth with her drill, with 

her wet-nurse nipples dripping milk against my chest. I shudder beneath her searching 

hand, her clinical touch. 

‛Yes,’ she said, ‛it’s a stubborn little tooth, this one.’ 

I felt her groin against my arm, her hot breath against my forehead. 

The nitrous kicked in once more and I drifted away, floating like a boom mike over 

the set of The Fourth Warrior. 

Shaun, the lead male actor in the film, was an aboriginal boy with an afro. He is 

beneath me reciting the lines of Margonot before the King Tyraisus. 

King Tyraisus: (approaching the dock): Permission to come aboard!


Margonot: (angrily): But who are you to ask the Captain’s permission to board? 

Can you play the game? Do you know the rules? It is not shuffle-board we are playing 

here, but the game of life. 

King Tyraisus: Well may I ask what nerves you to show that wizened face of yours 

before myself, before my subjects, before my royal ship and dare question me, the King, 

what or who I wish to see. Who are you? 

Shaun was a typical artist, channelling grandeur through the sieve of his mind. One 

should never worship the sieve. Shaun smiles at Oliver, a supporting actor in black tights 

and blonde locks. I see the love between Shaun and Oliver as a thin red line. He belittles 

me like I’m a rusted chrome bolt in a latrine. I have resuscitated his Hollywood ambitions, 

a human defibrillator kick-starting his career. I am his divine paramedic. The nitrous eases 

the pain of Dante’s inferno. 

Margonot (sword raised): Who am I, your majesty? I am who I am.’ 

Then enter Beatrice (played in this particular scene by Cassandra). 

Beatrice: Margonot, you have fought many battles for me, but this one you will lose 

unless you fight with words. 

Margonot: Beatrice, my sight, my soul, you are right yet again. (To King Tyraisus) 

Aye is the ensign. Aye, Aye, to any command the Captain asks. Aye the affirmation to an 

order, the proclamation of accepting an order. But I say not ‛Aye’ to you but ‛I am the 

Captain of my own soul, who will do battle with you on the game board.’ 

Dr Nguyen removed the four-pronged root molar. She showed it to me as I came 

round, before tossing it into the surgical waste bin. I paid Silvia in sage-green notes, my 

face numb and swollen to touch, my jocks soggy from fret. 

At my bike, I sat on the pillion seat and lit a smoke to settle the vertigo of Shaun, 

Silvia and Dante. I pulled on my helmet and rode down to Maya’s apartment to say 

goodbye. 

A burly Lebanese man greeted me in the foyer, his face dark with mischief. He has 

a varicose nose and vampire-pointed canines that give him the appearance of a bellicose 

Sekhmet. It took me a good minute to recognise him as the same man I had seen years 

before in Alexandria. 

‛What do you want?’ he grunted. 

The penny dropped, ‛You must be Nawal?’ 

I realised he didn’t recognise me.

‛Who the fuck are you?’ he asked. 

‛Nobody.’ 


‛Don’t act smart, you dumb cunt. You’re the guy banging Maya.’ He bristled like a 

bear, ‛You come back here again, you’re dead.’ 

The first of three switches clicked over in my head. 

‛Is that a promise?’ I asked. ‛Few people make promises they keep.’ 

Two other guys, wearing beanies and dirty joggers approached me from behind. 

There’s another guy leaning against the bonnet of a ruby-duco Holden nearby. That makes 

four. 

‛You got a death wish?’ he asked me, pushing me against the wall of the staircase. 

‛We all wish for something. World peace, free milk at school...’ 

Maya appeared at the top of the stairs, ‛Ari, you better go.’ 

She has a black eye and swollen lip. 

Drool spilled from my mouth as I watched the sun sitting over the rooftop, a seagull 

noisily screeching in a gutter. Nawal was in my face, blood falling from my numb lip onto 

the ground, splashing the thug’s boot. 

Nawal looked to his boot in disgust, ‛You trying to give me rabies?’ 

Rabies has prodromal signs; hydrophobia, ictal seizures and hyperthermia. I don’t 

have rabies. I tried to explain this, but my tongue lolled uselessly around my mouth, so I 

just said, ‛I don’t know you that well.’ 

Nawal thumps me on the chest with a beefy forefinger. 

The second switch clicked in my head. 

‛Any last words?’ Nawal asked. 

He thumped another finger onto my leather jacket. There’s grease under his finger 

nails, dirty hands that I imagined would disgust Maya. 

‛Just a question, actually,’ I ask, as our eyes meet, ‛Is that your Ford?’ 

Nawal looked to the car parked on the road, with fat tyres and fairing. ‛That’s not a 

Ford, it’s a fuckin’ Holden Commodore Series II SV6.’ 

‛So that’s a yes, then?’ I smiled. 

He swung a fist and the third switch clicked. The warrior, soldier and samurai 

emerge all at once in a flurry of fury. 

After I was finished with the Lebanese nationals, I got Maya to call an ambulance, 

if only for completeness’ sake. The guys wouldn’t be back, I assured her. Nor would they 

report the incident to the cops. Ten grand to repair the Commodore would set them back a


month’s wage amongst them, and they’d be three months licking their wounds. The 

smashed windscreen that Nawal penetrated, the dented door I smashed his comrade into. 

The third, just got a broken knee for his troubles. I felt sorry for the dude - he lisped when 

he said ‛I don’t want trouble.’ The same words Dr Ian Moraitis said when I asked where 

my daughter was. 

Maya said she’d see me when she got back from Thailand. I had the feeling we 

were parting company for the last time. I could see it in her eyes. 

I rode off to my locum job. 

As I walk into the vet clinic at Albert Park, Julian, a one-legged stock-broker, was 

frantically crutching about the reception, kneading his hands like a seamstress. His old 

Rottweiler, Tyson, lay like a rock on the floor, and there’s blood pooling from its mouth. 

He told me between sobs that Tyson had been hit by a truck. The dog’s gums were white, 

its pupils fixed and dilated. I palpated its abdomen, feeling fluid swishing around in its 

belly. 

‛Haemangiosarcoma,’ I explained to Julian. ‛It’s best to put him to sleep.’ 

The distraught owner signed the consent form, kissed the dog goodbye and left. 

The nurse held the dogs foreleg as I administered the ‛green dream’, a colloquial 

term used by veterinarians to describe a verdant lethal cocktail of pentobarbitone. It lends 

its name from the bitterant green dye added to the solution to deter people - particularly 

children, animals and the destitute of mind from drinking it. It was a common exit strategy 

in my profession. And odd side-effect was that survivors were often left with a permanent 

green skin discoloration. 

After finishing the shift, I rode home. 

The wind shuffled banksia leaves across the deck in Kensington, and I sat for a 

while in an easy chair as the red pollinated petals fell like wedding rice about me. I felt 

empty. Melina had moved out and Maya was gone. Tears welled up in my eyes. Oh how I 

missed Hiroshi. 

As the sun set over the neighbour’s roof, I heard the croak of a green tree frog. I 

turned to see it diving for cover beneath the lotus leaves in the artificial pond near my feet. 

It emerged moments later with its inverted cat’s-eyes flickering on the lime surface. My 

Siamese queen, Anaïs, pawed disappointedly at the water and walked off in search of more 

ready prey. 

I went into the house and got the carry box from the laundry, then returned to the 

deck. I picked up Anaïs, kissed her then put her in the box. Cassandra would take her.


Shedding my possessions one by one, that was where I was at, like an impoverished 

monk whose only recourse to generosity was the giving of his time.

≈ 


‛It’s weird,’ Moraitis said. ‛Your mother used to speak Greek and now she can only 

speak English.’ 

I was back in Townsville, looking at my mother lying flat on her back in a hospital 

bed. She’d had a massive stroke a few days before, and Moraitis was sceptical she’d 

recover. 

related.’ 

slithers. 

‛I suggest surgery. She’s also got a tumour at the base of her brain. It may be 

A stroke and an astrocytoma are as related as lizards and snakes - one runs, one 

‛Touch her and you’re a dead man,’ I whispered to Moraitis. 

I never saw him again. 

Maria spent the week with me at the hospital, there was not much we could do 

except wait. Visitors came and went, but we spent most nights beside her bed, watching 

and waiting while I listened to Maria reminisce about childhood stories. I remembered 

dates and faces, but she remembered specific feelings, worries, fears; all the negative 

images of my photographic memories. She felt warm sitting next to me, and we’d sit for 

hours with no words on our lips, her thin, long fingers dancing with mine like a loom 

weaving a tapestry of tender moments we had shared over four decades of memories next 

to the bed where mother lay. She who had fed us, clothed us, sheltered us, taught us, 

nurtured us. Her body was as inert as the rock that Jesus stood on when he gave his 

antitypical sermon about salt of the earth and turning cheeks. She just lay there breathing 

mechanically, her face dishevelled, blotched skin and wrinkled grey blue. Occasionally 

Maria would speak, but only to herself in the first person, as if she were alone in a dark


forest, her head hung down, her trembling chin against her chest. She can be sad in the 

evenings and then she looks into my mirror face and smiles. She can’t hide things from me. 

Only a twin understands what it means to be lonely. 

By the time I was out of diapers as a child, my mother had read all the classics. I 

thought books was my father’s love, but now it dawned on me that it was mother who 

inspired his tastes for all things literary. Mothers can sometimes be like this, a quiet giant 

shadowing their husbands, who defer any praise they receive as just a bit of luck, who oft- 

times look back on their life as a failure despite raising a family and supporting their 

husband the best they could. My mother was no different, I just didn’t realise this until she 

lay dying one sunny Saturday afternoon. 

The air out in the hospital foyer was hot and humid. Sticky July weather in the 

tropics, perfect one day, paradise the next. Lots of flies and mosquitos to make you realise 

you haven’t quite died and gone to heaven. 

I told Maria I wanted to go to Magnetic Island. Unfortunately, the only way there 

was by boat, so I held Maria’s hand the whole way, twenty minutes across emerald flat 

water in a fast catamaran, the decks packed with commuters. 

The jetty was dotted with fishermen, lines hanging over the handrails as we walked 

to the beach and hired a moke at Picnic Bay. We bought overpriced drinks at a corner store 

and walked down onto a deserted beach. 

drinks. 

‛I’m in love, Ari,’ Maria finally confessed, after neatly arraying her towel and 

I smiled, genuinely glad but a little surprised. 

‛Who is he?’ 

‛Actually, we got married a few months ago...’ 

‛What!’ I screamed, surprised, elated. 

‛...but Mum’s been sick, it was a registry wedding. I hope you’re not angry?’ 

‛Do I know this lucky sonofabitch?’ 

‛Frank Poutris.’ 

The Poutris family lived in Pallarenda. Friends of my mother’s, owned an LJ 

Hooker franchise. Nice family, but square as alphabet blocks. 

‛Frank’s nineteen!’ 

‛He’s twenty seven, an engineer at Lavarack Barracks?’ 

I coughed up my Pepsi. 

‛You married an A.J.?’

‛Not all army guys are jerks, Ari!’ 

‛I’m kidding, Sis. I’m happy for you.’ 


She sipped from a straw, and it was then I noticed the wedding band as she twisted 

it back and forth on her finger. 

‛It’s not easy. He’s going to Baghdad next month. The U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de 

Mello was just assassinated and they are saying Iraqi insurgents are planning an all-out 

civil war.’ 

believe it.’ 

I looked at her dumbfounded, ‛Frank’s twenty seven years old already? I can’t 

‛It’s not a joke, Ari.’ 

‛Sorry. I hope Frank is nice to you or I’ll have a word with him.’ 

‛Yes, he’s very nice,’ she sighed. 

Holding her hand, I felt as if the moment would last forever, and we watched the 

sun set before returning to the moke. 

By the time we got off the ferry in Townsville, it was dark. 

‛I’m not going back to the hospital, Sis,’ I said, holding her at the front gates of the 

house. ‛It’s not Mum, I just can’t stand that same old crowd, and Uncle Bart.’ 

Ari.’ 

She looked at the house for a moment, before looking back at me, ‛I understand, 

She hugged me, and I felt her tiny frame against mine. The years had not been kind 

to her, despite the control of her Thalassaemia. I wished I could hold her forever and 

protect her from the ravages of time, but some things cannot be fought, only endured, 

holding you heart open for fear of it collapsing completely. 

I rode off, waving goodbye. Mother died that evening, and the only thing I missed 

was being able to say goodbye to the woman who nurtured me so selflessly, whose only 

vice was wanting everything that she could not have in her life, the very best. 

Melina, Maya, Dad, Hiroshi and now Mum - they had all deserted me, leaving me 

to flounder alone in the abyss, the dark water closing in around me.

A few months went by. 

≈ 


Filming of The Fourth Warrior was well underway, shot in dark barns, on 

centenary sail ships and in dank cellars. With nothing to do, I sat on the sidelines, a curious 

observer sitting in the wings through a marathon of all-night retakes, the director’s 

tantrums, the endless screenplay rewrites, and a legion of lawyers and accountants who 

dropped in and out complaining about everything except the author’s vision. 

I did a few locum jobs for Blue Shield during this time, but my reputation had 

preceded me and work was hard to find. The CEO, Mick Steares rang me one day after the 

last locum job I did for them. He very politely reminded me of Blue Shield company 

policies. 

‛You’re not in Townsville any more,’ he reminded me. ‛Metropolitan practitioners 

can’t be doing charity work at the expense of clinical protocols. We aren’t the red cross. 

And by the way, Dr Henderson at the Essendon branch has reported a discrepancy in 

morphine amounts in the drug registry. You wouldn’t know anything about that would 

you?’ 

The tone in his voice was summer-breeze friendly. 

I told him to fuck the nearest dog he found. I was done being a vet. 

Not that I needed the money. I’d sold the apartment in Kensington three weeks after 

my talk at Sunnyside Beach with Horatio. I gave him the three hundred grand and lived off 

the remaining two hundred, renting a St. Kilda bedsit opposite the marina. 

Cassandra was my only visitor during this time. She’d drop in after a day’s 

shooting, tired and short-tempered, and we’d talk and drink. It was nice to have someone to 

talk to, to keep me abreast of the world outside my unkempt flat. 

Melina had rung not long after, saying she was back in Queensland and wanted a


divorce. Her tone reminded me of how she spoke to her father, the same spoilt child 

wanting wanting wanting. 

My suggestion of auditioning Cassandra for the lead role paid off. With Melina 

gone, a last minute’s desperate salutation by the director. She trumped the role. 

Horatio was quietly stoked, but was nervous as hell about his step-daughter taking 

on such a monumental part as Margonot’s wife. She had thirty pages of dialogue, and a 

sword-fight scene. It was poetry to watch her in action. What the hell, I thought. It could 

have been Melina’s day of triumph, but karma is not cruel or unjust, only impersonal. 

Around this lonely time for me, I got a frantic call from Desre. She wanted to meet 

me, but didn’t say why. 

That same afternoon, I rode my new Ducati through a westerly squall to meet her. I 

parked the Monster 990 on the footpath in front of the Pint and Pickle in Frankston, revved 

it a few times to clear my thoughts, the throaty blare shook my body before I killed the 

motor. 

Inside the pub, Desre was already waiting for me at a booth. 

She wore a black overcoat and mock furs, and a perfume Hiroshi once wore. 

‛Sorry to drag you out in this weather and all.’ 

‛You said on the phone you needed to talk. Something important?’ 

She shivered, ‛I could kill for a drink.’ 

A bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon was ordered. 

The cappuccino machine nearby chortled like an eighteenth century industrial 

revolution, boiling the milk the way oxy-torches attack steel while I pondered the 

magnificence of self-dissolution in my booth of despair. 

‛You’ve lost weight,’ she noted. 

‛Divorced.’ 

She smiled, ‛Yes, it can be hard on men. Living on two minute noodles?’ 

‛Something like that. How is the painting going?’ 

The bottle was uncorked and our glasses filled. 

She saw me staring at the paint on her fingers. 

‛It keeps me busy,’ she said. ‛I adore the fauvism of Matisse, the gold-rich colours 

of Gustav Klimpt. The smell of oils and wood and turpentine just takes me to another 

place.’ 

‛That’s nice,’ I said, politely. ‛Why did you want to see me?’ 

She sipped from the glass, ‛I’m worried about Horatio.’


The wine was young and gripping. I drank a glass straight and refilled it, savouring 

the delicate aroma. My nose, dripping from the cold, hung on the faint whiff of oak. 

‛In what way?’ I asked. 

She refilled my glass, ‛As you may know, Horatio is computer illiterate. So over 

the years, I’ve had to be not only his wife but his secretary; he left it to me to sort out his 

accounts, bookings, appointments, schedules, tax returns. All the stuff that he says distracts 

him from his writing. Anyway, yesterday I went to pay the rates for Milton House. I went 

into his online account, then panicked when I saw the account virtually empty. A few 

thousand dollars - that’s all. I rang the bank manager, but he assured me there was no 

irregularities, that Horatio had come into the Prahran branch the day before and transferred 

over eleven million dollars into various accounts; mine, Cassandra’s, and various other 

philanthropic agencies.' 

I looked at her in puzzlement. 

‛Strange indeed. What does it mean?’ 

Desre’s hands were trembling, ‛I’ve known Horatio a long time. I think he is going 

to do something stupid.’ 

‛Like what?’ I asked. 

‛He’s been out of character of late. He’s not interested in anything, not even 

writing. He flies off the handle, then next thing, he’s in tears about some ridiculous thing 

like the kettle won’t work and he storms off in a huff. I’ve never seen him so moody. He 

doesn’t even seem to be interested in the movie. I’m very worried, Ari. I know you and 

him were close at one point. You will keep an eye on him, won’t you? Promise me you 

will.’ 

I nodded, ‛I’ll do what I can, Desre.’ 

She was trembling with cold. 

‛Ari, I feel so lonely. Don’t think me wrong, but I need someone to hold.’ My heart 

sank at the sight of her tragic sadness. ‛Horatio and I haven’t loved for a long time - he is 

so busy these days.’ 

bike. 

‛I’m sorry, Desre, I have to go.’ 

‛Yes, yes, of course!’ she smiled with a hint of embarrassment. 

She kissed me at the door, the aroma of oleander staying with me as I walked to the 

Watching her leave, I lit a cigarette, wondering how long before every odour that 

reminded me of Hiroshi would be extinguished from the earth.


By the time filming had ended, I had lost seven kilos. 

≈ 


I sported a hacking cough which shadow my every movement. My thoughts, once 

clear and circumspect, had thickened like winter fog. 

During the editing, which was rushed through in six weeks, I fought three bouts of 

the flu back to back, followed by a gastro. I dared not cough during this bed-ridden week, 

and when it abated, I got a head cold that left me partly deaf. 

I spent weeks in bed, catching up on some reading. I rediscovered the beauty of 

Whitman and Thoreau, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoyevsky. I loved authors who shared my 

fondness for vodka. 

AA meetings were my last religion. 

My sole mate at this time was Charlie, a local AA member. It was an odd 

friendship, no surnames, no history, just pub-mates living the high life. He was Horatio’s 

age, a drummer living off welfare, wore Pakistani boots just for the image. He spent the 

odd night at my flat when he was broke, just me and his wild afro black hair and trout lips 

that made him look like Satchmo only he was Anglo with freckles. We always ate chinese 

and he would tap his chopsticks to Jazz or sometimes Reggae, depending on the mood or 

the motif of drugs. He pushed speed at gigs, and made a handy profit from it. He thought I 

was penny poor and on the dole, and gave me donations, but I was sitting on my father’s 

inheritance with my stubble haircut. It would all be Cassandra’s one day. It said so in my 

will, but only my lawyer knew it. 

Once a week Charlie and I did the vigil; we lit candles in a circle on the floor in my 

flat and sit cross-legged like the saints Marpa and Milarepa of Tibetan fame, and recite the 

twelve steps like we were Bodhisattvas. 

‛Ari, my man,’ Charlie exclaimed, ‛this is like a bloody seance.’


We were reborn evangelists, neither of us are believers, we’ve just exchanged one 

addiction for another. We hug fervently, and share the tears. 

‛I love you, Man,’ I say. 

‛Me too, Bro.’ 

‛Be strong, be strong,’ I say, ‛We can change.’ 

But nothing changed, we just hug each other ferociously. 

It’s unspoken that my self-destructive habits will one day lead to an inevitable 

impasse; either my body will die or the ego which created it. We are the whores of St. 

Kilda, but there’s no money changing hands. Something within us both will die, but we 

wager that it is our bodies, not our immortal thirst. 

One day, I realised it had been raining for three weeks straight, and my Rossi boots 

were out in the weather, like flip-flops next to my worn-out leathers from Dubai. How I 

hated the thought of walking the ten metres across the road to the servo for cigarettes. 

Then, while I was holding my sad cow-skins in my numb-cold hands, contemplating the 

dash across the street for smokes, Cassandra rang to ask if I was still coming to the 

premiere of The Fourth Warrior at the Jam factory. 

‛What premiere. When?’ I asked. 

‛What’s wrong with you, Ari? It starts in two hours. Are you coming?’ 

I said I’d think about it, because I was busy with my brillo brush. 

‛Think about?’ Cassandra shouted into the phone. ‛Are you mad?’ 

I pulled open the dank and musty curtain of my apartment and looked out onto the 

street of an alien planet. Seagulls hung off wires, huddling against the scissor July wind. 

People walked past under umbrellas, a mother and her daughter sheltering from the rain 

under an awning, a flock of cyclists flashing past in a swastika haiku of noise and colour, 

lycra lizards on speed. 

The marina across the park cold and lifeless, reflecting the bond of me and Horatio, 

now but a distant memory. 

‛Are you still there?’ Cassandra whimpered. 

‛Yes, I’m just admiring the beautiful scenery.’ 

‛You’re not going Martin Bryant on me, Ari? You sure you’re okay?’ 

I said I was fine, hung up and took a shower. I’m nothing like that psychopathic 

Tasmanian murderer, how dare she! 

My Ducati was in being serviced, so I caught a cab to the city. 

Charlie was waiting on the corner. I bought some tabs; no way I could face Horatio


sober. We chatted a while about not much. He had a gig up in the Dandenongs, his band 

playing for a wedding. His hands like hammers, dressed in a T-shirt in the freezing cold. 

He asked me if I wanted to go for a beer, but I said I was late for a date. 

‛Who’s the lucky guy?’ he asked. 

‛My daughter,’ I said proudly. 

‛A daughter? Man I thought you were gay!’ 

He walked off, tapping his thighs. 

I stood outside Flinders Street Station. 

I felt a shadow of my former self as I gazed in a shopwindow, my reflection looked 

gaunt like the street bums that hovered on every city corner. My joints ached, and my chest 

was on fire. 

A tram approached, rolling along Flinders Street, screeching wheels and thunder as 

it turned into St Kilda Road. I jumped on, pedestrians hurried like ants, hither thither, 

dodging the rain, workaday noises like a gurgling river, jumping on, jumping off. 

From overhead, a clock rang out the hours, six. 

The tram pulled away from the lights. I bought a ticket and drowned out the world, 

my iPod blaring Stevie Wonder’s ‛Isn’t she lovely.’ 

Two stops later, a pair of lads slumped down on to the seat opposite me, recovering 

from a bruising down at the pub. Drunken anger looks the same the world over. I am one of 

them, wearing the uniform, still a little proud. The taller of the two, a handsome blonde lad, 

held a bottle in one hand, drinking the golden froth, his face a mess from someone’s 

knuckles, all black and white chiaroscuro, screed with pain that criss-crossed his brow like 

a Jackson Pollock painting. 

‛Tough night, boys?’ I asked, pulling off my earphones. 

They both looked at me. One smiled, a tooth missing, a bloody gum socket. The 

other squinted through a black eye banged sideways. 

‛You should see the other guys!’ the blonde laughed. 

I envied their distress, and wanted to share war-stories, trade insights like baseball 

cards that accorded with our emotions, however paltry they may have been, for after all, a 

drunk’s life is as shallow as a keg, but trading them is the balm of anodyne. 

‛Keep it up, fellas!’ I coughed. 

Men bleed in battle, women in bed. Drunks know that it’s more than a mere 

geographical difference between a battlefield and a bed; it’s a rite of passage for the young. 

I shuffled my feet to keep them warm.


Idiots, that’s what we are. We think we’re tough in a pub, until we sober up and 

experience the hell of love. To see her drawn and quartered by disease until what you 

desire most, you loathe most. She became a skeleton. How can you desire a corpse, even if 

those eyes still shine like Gautama’s and remind you of that great lottery - immortality? 

My cock failed me the last three months with Hiroshi. The sight of her dying body muted 

my desires. I cried the last time we tried to make love. Hiroshi just sighed, said it made no 

difference to our love. 

The scenery changed as we trundled along Chapel Street, a car with headlights 

gone yellow with a dying battery, Colette Dinnigan couture that Melina adored, packed 

restaurants with exotic culinary orgies at discount prices entertaining business men 

scratching at glass ceilings, and fashion-victim lolitas with their wild earth bodies and 

moon-warm smiles. 

The tram screeched, someone shouted, a baby cried, and a skateboard hammered 

the concrete near my window. 

when we met. 

I jumped off. Cassandra was stamping her feet in the cold outside the Jam Factory 

‛You look like a corpse,’ she remarked. ‛When was the last time you ate, Ari?’ 

I didn’t respond and followed her into the foyer. She took two glasses of 

champagne from the Adonis-in-a-bowtie waiter at the door. 

‛Thank you Sir,’ she said. 

‛You’re the gal in the movie, aren’t you?’ 

‛Yes,’ she said, butterflying her eyelids. 

‛May I have an autograph?’ 

She scribbled her signature on his sleeve in blue pen, just as Horatio and Desre 

came over to us. 

‛Thank you, Mam,’ the waiter said. 

Horatio grabbed Cassandra’s arm and scowled at the waiter. 

‛Enough of that mam ham shit,’ he barked. ‛She’s not bloody royalty!’ 

‛Of course, Sir!’ the waiter apologised and excused himself. 

‛Leave your ego at the door, Kassie,’ he commanded. 

I felt he was wagering a fight, but the booze had relaxed me into a mute sneer as he 

looked my way. 

‛I am so proud of you, Kassie,’ Desre giggled with excitement. 

‛Yes,’ I agreed. ‛Everyone’s riding on Horatio’s coat-tails tonight!’


Fame had built him into a Caesar and here we were, savages fighting in the 

Colosseum of friendship. 

‛Ari,’ Horatio finally spoke, ‛The secret to being a bore is to tell everyone.’ 

Desre held my hand, ‛Will you two stop fighting!’ 

I had to admit, I missed our little tête à têtes. 

I left Horatio to his vices, Cassandra and Desre dissolving into the crowd. I leaned 

against a wall, my bowels gurgling like an open sewer, watching the celebrities as they 

walked the red carpet to Cinema Europa. 

The steady flow of crimson sequins, black suits, tight sculptured flesh, brunettes, 

tiaras, rainbow dresses, a Humphrey Bogart hat, old Tuxedo men their faces a chalk-mark 

of murdered dreams, anorexic starlets hanging off their arms snacking on truffles and foie 

gras. Folls Henderson, the bearded director, doing a Benjamin Franklin impersonation, 

stuffing duck confit with his fists thinking tomorrow I’ll start that Pritikin diet, while the 

plastic surgeon to the rich-n-famous webs the room with scalpel eyes, willing to deny the 

hands of time and lie through his hollywood smile about how ‛you’re still young darling’ to 

mutton dressed as lamb. Young studs in pressed jeans and gangster coats navigating the 

haute cuisine to pray on their knees to the hollywood talents, maybe I’ll get lucky tonight, 

waft him with my cologne as the camera’s flashes, a lighthouse of fans, look at me look at 

me. 

I slung my fleshless face onto my shoulders, heading for the toilets. 

My hands were shaking, I splashed my face with cold water. 

Shaun, the lead actor, so handsome in his suit, smiled his white pearlies at me. He 

must be excited, I thought. His first major gig in a film, destined for celluloid immortality. 

‛Hey man,’ he warmed to my cold face. ‛What gives, you’ve been under a rock of 

something? Doesn’t Kassie look diamond sharp?’ 

‛I just shat a quart of blood.’ 

He laughed, ‛Fuck the ephedrine man, that’ll do it every time. Here, take one of 

these. Hey, call me up when you’re in town next. Missed you, soldier!’ 

behind him. 

He handed me a tablet of godknowswhat, slapped my back, and the door closed 

I took three aspirin, a valium and Shaun’s suggestion pill, washed them down with 

champagne. I looked up at the bathroom mirror only to realise I was sitting in a cinema 

seat. 

Horatio was to my left, knowing that should he insult someone, I’d be good at


defending him from a fist or a kick and no doubt, he imagined, even a stray bullet. 

Wondering how I got there, I opened the program in my lap, all gold and glossy 

like they hand out at the Oscars and read the evening’s attractions, then a biography of the 

cast, Cassandra’s name second only to Horatio’s. The velvet seat like a cloud, a brook of 

strangers around me, I sunk into obscurity. 

He must be proud, I thought. I knew Hiroshi would be. 

Horatio snapped at me when I held Cassandra’s hand to help her into her seat. 

‛You couldn’t even stay sober for the premiere, could you?’ 

‛Behave,’ Cassandra said, with a look that could kill. 

Horatio just growled, dog-like. 

‛I’m disappointed with you,’ he said. ‛We could have done so much together.’ 

The curtains rolled back. The film began, opening score played a flamenco tune. I 

looked around at the hundreds of famous faces around us; actors, writers, politicians, 

dignitaries from all walks of life. The cream of society. 

I leaned over to Cassandra, ‛Who picked this music?’ 

Cassandra leaned close, her perfume hauntingly light and playful on my sense. 

‛Jules found him on Youtube. He learnt the guitar as a boy but when he joined Rock 

Central, this grunge band in Richmond, the notes all sounded muddy, so he went out on his 

own. Says he preferred the punchy feel of the flamenco.’ 

restaurants.’ 

I laughed, ‛You don’t think he might have been better playing in Spanish 

She laughed loudly, and Horatio shhhed us. 

I skulled more champagne and listened to a boring speech by a local celebrity 

comedian who compèred the film’s premiere. 

Everyone laughed, but Horatio was stone-faced. 

It was fanfare and frolic, with every woman at his beckoned call, and every man his 

jealous envy. But he refused to acknowledge the praise. 

I closed my eyes, as my head spun. 

Horatio leant over to me, ‛We need to talk.’ 

I looked at him, perplexed. I shouldn’t have smiled. It made his face so red, I was 

worried I might have to give him CPR. 

The opening scene was a swashbuckling action sequence on HMS Juliana in 

Botany Bay, set in 1810. Horatio stared at me, with eyes distant, like he had forgotten 

about what it was he was going to say.


I yawned as the film rolled on, the only unexpected scene was the fade to black 

before the credits. 

After the movie, we sat silently in the limo, getting to Thai City in Lygon Street. 

Horatio just stared out the window, lost. 

The film was a resounding flop. The reviews that came out that evening were worse 

than anyone expected. A critic from The Australian said The Fourth Warrior was a 

forgetful film peppered with woeful tirades of van Aken poetry...a bloody war that 

terrorises the audience into amnesia.’ The Herald called it a confused miasma of hype and 

hope that ‛still fails to solve the eternal conundrum - who’s afraid of the fourth warrior?’ 

The Age newspaper captured the moment best when it described the film as ‛a swash-un- 

buckling mess of insensibility...’. Despite the bloody autopsy, the critic for the Greek 

Newspaper, Neos Kosmos, declared Cassandra van Aken a promising young actress 

destined for stardom. 

Horatio, drunk for the first time ever, raised a glass. 

‛Any fucker brave enough to call me a friend after this disaster, is welcome to a 

piss-up on my boat.’ 

He got to his feet and staggered over to the director of the film and punched him 

hard in the face. He then lit one of the newspapers and watched it burn in the ice-bucket, 

throwing his credit card at a poor waitress whose only mistake was to take the late shift 

that night. 

We all spilled out of the restaurant, wandering Lygon Street like drunken bums 

looking for our lost cars amongst the sea of evening diners. 

Horatio caught a cab, not wanting to share any of his thoughts with us, his head all 

squalls like cumulonimbus. 

me.’ 

‛I love you,’ I said to Cassandra, and I meant it. ‛When you’re famous, don’t forget 

She smiled, pulling hard on a joint, ‛You’re highly forgettable, Ari. Just another 

face riding the escalator to nowhere.’ 

‛Fuck you,’ I laughed and kissed her hand. 

She ran off, one shoe in her hand, limping like a lame horse. 

I found her sitting alone on the deck of the yacht. She looked lovely in the spring 

moonlight, her goose-bump milk skin, warm to the touch, her nose watering in the cold. 

‛It’s a beautiful night,’she said. ‛Such things should last forever.’ 

I held her hand just as Horatio staggered up from below with whiskey and a Cuban

cigar. He walked to me bullish then kicked my ribs. 

destroy her.’ 

‛What’s up your arse?’ I laughed. 

His eyed were wild and dark. 

‛You’ve ruined her.’ 

Cassandra pushed Horatio away, ‛I think you’re jealous.’ 


‛It’s your fault, Ari. She should never have been in this film. Hollywood will 

‛Why is it his fault?’ Cassandra bit back. 

Horatio slapped her and she ran off in tears. 

He was shaking with rage, ‛I should never have taken your money. She’s going to 

get drunk on fame. Abused by arseholes. You’ve thrown her to the wolves. It’s like you 

don’t care.’ 

‛Oh, I care. She’s my daughter,’ I whispered. 

‛You haven’t been here for the last nine years. And what have you done with my 

latest manuscript?’ 

‛I threw it away. Just like you asked me to.’ 

His eyes flushed with fire and I counted the slow, indifferent seconds before he 

threw a wild punch at me. I dodged it at the last moment and his momentum unbalanced 

him. He face-planted the deck, out cold. 

‛I hate you,’ I shouted at Horatio. But I am like Hamlet, protesting his fate. I hate 

my absent father, I hate my mother, the blind love to his philandering life; I hate myself for 

letting Hiroshi die. 

himself. 

Cassandra sat down beside me, her hand on my leg. 

‛When you burn for someone, don’t go drinking gasoline.’ 

I held her arm tightly, ‛What?’ 

She winced with pain and pulled away, ‛I was talking about Horatio.’ 

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if Hamlet really would have had the balls to kill

≈ 


I awoke in the galley of Horatio’s yacht, bodies strewn about like corpses. 

Shaun lay naked on the bunk with his chiselled body and soft hands twitching 

occasionally in sleep. He stunk of Vodka. I was on the floor, my legs curled around a 

cushion beside a blond girl wearing only a bra. I pulled her arms off me and went to the 

bathroom. 

There was piss at the base of the toilet, and I stood to one side, aiming a hard jet of 

urine into the bowl. My balls ached. I hadn’t been able to get a hard-on for a month. I 

shook the limp flesh at my groin, sending drops of urine across the wall. This is how we 

die, I thought, a slow leakage of bodily fluids until all that is left is dry, dusty bones. 

Horatio and Cassandra were nowhere to be seen. I dressed and walked down to 

Acland Street, young Dutch girls sucking on ice-creams, too young to fuck, too old to 

teach. Retirees were sitting outside Nick’s on tables the size of napkins, with trams pushing 

their shoulders, and a million clapping pigeons shitting into their cafe lattes. These 

vampires of art, who steal the cream and shit the dreams that other men pine for. 

bike. 

Once I had my caffeine fix, I hailed a cab and went to Ducati World to pick up my 

The mechanic said he’d replaced the rear tyre. 

‛Take it easy. You have to wear off the skin on the new rubber. It’s a bit slippery for 

the first hundred kilometres.’ 

Yeah yeah, I nodded impatiently, just wheel my steed out of the stable. She wants to 

gallop. I paid the seven hundred dollars and rode off. 

After resting the bike on its stand in front of the doors of Milton House, I dumped 

my leather jacket on the seat and polished the fuel tank with my sleeve where the mechanic 

had stained it with grease.


So proud of this latest acquisition, my twenty first motorcycle. The same pride I felt 

when I was sitting on the Honda CR125 as an eleven year old, with Maria watching me 

perfect jumps on a motocross circuit. I rested the helmet on the mirror, remembering the 

millions of kilometres I had ridden in pursuit of freedom that had brought me to this 

mansion in Brighton. A path that criss-crossed nations, nationalities and time. 

The engine ticked, birds sung in the trees, and as I closed my eyes, I could imagine 

Karuna. I blinked, unzipped my windcheater and walked into the house. 

I found Horatio reading a book beside the pool. 

‛We need to talk, Horatio.’ 

‛About last night - forget it, Ari. I was pissed.’ 

I went inside, opened a bottle of scotch and watched TV, knowing that this coldness 

between me and Horatio was still unresolved. Horatio mirrored my feelings for my father 

at times like these - the same hostility, the same overwhelming sense of impotence. Ironic 

that what we hate never dies, it just reincarnates as friendship. 

A nightmare woke me after midnight. 

I yawned, glanced at the still glaring muted TV which showed images of New York 

city’s twine towers ablaze. I turned up the volume, and listened as CNN reporters spoke in 

those solemn tones about the United States being under terrorist attack. 

World War III, and all I could think about was if Cassandra was safe. 

In the master bed, I found Cassandra. She was fitfully talking in her sleep. 

Whatever dream-time fantasy she happened to be living out, I didn’t want to interrupt it. I 

knew whatever was being said on CNN would change the whole world, but it could wait 

until morning for me to tell her about the end of the world. 

A sudden sadness engulfed me knowing I had missed watching Cassandra grow up. 

Even my anger for Horatio flowed out of me like water. I looked around for Horatio but he 

was nowhere to be seen. 

I climbed onto the Ducati with a bottle of Sangiovese in my jacket. 

I liked this wine brew, produced in Italy’s Tuscany region. It has a medium-body 

with fresh berry and plum flavours. Horatio paid a fortune for it. I pulled the cork out with 

my teeth as the bike started with a roar. 

I spun out of the mansion onto the road, determined to clear the air with Horatio. 

There was something intensely liberating for me knowing that a world which was 

so familiar and despised had suddenly ended. It was the liberation that comes with war and 

natural disasters, where the weight of social status, beauty, reputation, fame, and a million


other petty concerns just fade into the background replaced by the more important things; 

loved ones and survival. Calamity was a slap in the face that brought me to a reality that 

was immediate, purposeful and meaningful. How ironic that old timers had said that the 

best years of their life had been the war years. 

I drove slowly through the night streets of Brighton, finishing the last of the wine. I 

marvelled at the simplicity that comes with fate’s inevitability. The start of war had 

simplified my resolve. On the many roads to nirvana, my path sought refuge in Cassandra. 

As I got to the marina, I decided to tell Horatio as much. But the yacht was gone. 

Finally, I saw it at anchor about five hundred metres off shore. 

An old man in a old timber dingy was fishing just near the jetty and I called out to 

him. For twenty bucks, he offered to take me out to the yacht. He pulled up beside the jetty, 

motor idling. Dressed in an old drizabone and greasy felt hat like the man from Snowy 

River, singing incessantly an old football ditty, a fiery Collingwood supporter, whistling 

through his grimy teeth like a bird. 

I jumped in, my feet splashing in water. 

We rode off, his tiny outboard whirring like a choked frog, his sad old voice a 

gargle of pebbles. 

‛Bail out the water will you Sonny?’ 

He threw me a baked-beans tin and I scooped out dark organic material floating at 

my feet. I took to it for many minutes, my hands frigid in the icy water. ‛Hiroshi,’ I 

thought, ‛you would have made some inane remark about how this leaky boat resembled 

the dharma, but how wrong you are.’ This boat belongs in The Odyssey and I am Ulysses 

detained by my Calypso muse Hiroshi who seemed determined to make me immortal. I 

scooped fish heads and rotting bits of seaweed from the tureen of swill and sloshed it into 

the bay, cursing as I stared up at the Southern Cross overhead, ‛O, nymph, I won’t be long 

fretting and grieving in this snakeskin life.’ 

‛You say something Sonny?’ came a croaking voice. 

‛Why don’t you fix these damned leaks?’ I shouted, but the old fisherman just kept 

on whistling dixie, steering the dingy toward the bleak dark horizon. The world is mad, a 

monster, I concluded. The world must die, and now the Americans will do it. 

the mess. 

Before long the seepage was around my ankles, swishing about, and I vomited into 

‛Ah, not got sea legs, I see!’ shouted the old man, chuckling. 

It took fifteen minutes of painful bailing to reach the yacht. By then, my eyes could


see the rings of Saturn. The roils of the bay penetrated my boots and socks, sending cold 

shivers up my spine. 

I scrambled up onto the yacht. 

‛Wait here, will you?’ I asked the fisherman, and he killed the motor, dropped 

anchor and began calmly baiting a line. 

with words...’ 

Down the deck steps, a cabin light burned in the main office. 

‛Horatio,’ I shouted in anger, ‛the world’s gone to shit and you’re wasting your time 

Descending into the half-lit cabin, I finally saw Horatio, slumped lifeless against 

the cabin bunk, his eyes staring upward, the back of his head awash with blood, a pistol on 

the bench beside him. On the table, a half eaten fruit cake in wax paper. 

I fell defeated into the bunk beside him. 

‛You coward!’ I cried. 

Bits of brain, the smell of camphor. My whole body shuddered like a train coming 

to a halt. No more poetry to be heard, that great voice silenced, Hiroshi’s words about 

Horatio, ‛he’s quite a tortured soul,’ echoing in the vast emptiness of my mind. My only 

confidante, my all-weather friend, gone. He, who had spent a life in creativity, contrasted 

with my narcissism. 

I wiped the blood from his face, sat him square in the bunk, and held his cold stiff 

hand. The boat rocked gently against the waves. The table before him empty save a 

newspaper opened to the sports section, which he had always hated to read. There was 

nothing for me to do, except to kiss his forehead, and leave. 

I slowly climbed the stairs, reached for my phone and called Desre. I told her what 

happened and asked her to call the police. 

‛I’ll be over in ten minutes,’ I said, as tenderly as the moment asked, but my heart 

had sunk to the seabed. 

I jumped down into the dingy. 

‛We go now?’ he asked, and when I nodded, he reluctantly retrieved the line. The 

water whipped over his hands as he rapidly curled the line around a spool. 

‛Not much biting tonight anyway,’ he added. 

‛Have you heard the news?’ 

‛What news would that be Sonny?’ 

‛There’s a war starting. America’s been bombed.’ 

He smiled, ‛Got nothing to do with me,’ pulling on the outboard cord which flung


the two-stroke into stuttering life. ‛All this water is mine and until they come to lay a stake 

on this here water, I’m not budging until doomsday. Don’t think they’ll want what I’ve got, 

just a few snapper and whiting here and there to keep for myself and fools like you 

wanting to pay me for going where I was going anyways. Damn world and all its madness. 

Don’t they realise you can’t throw a hot coal at someone without picking it up and burning 

your own hand first?’ 

He pulled out a bottle of port and shared it with me. 

We headed back to land, the dingy’s bow rising, water slapping against the hull 

until we finally got back to land. I breathed a sigh of relief, sadness my only companion. I 

had only one thought left, Cassandra. 

I got back on the bike, my hands trembling with cold exhaustion. 

The Ducati burst into life. I spun scrunching gravel, my boots kicking at the road as 

I pulled on the throttle. The bike accelerated, vibrations rising tight up my arms; a wild 

horse and me galloping to nowhere. 

The wind pushed against my head, and I ducked down. The speedo, black on white 

LED, rose past 180 along Bay Road. Beyond the road’s cliff-edge, the ocean’s silvery 

sheen. Nirvana just a few feet away from my fingertips, the zephyr breeze at my neck, cold 

and immortal. I wanted to go to Karuna, grow fat and indolent like Rinpoche, chew on 

Hiroshi’s memories for a few million years, then when I knew all that Zen crap, I’d go 

stand on the hill and look down on the golden-roof stupa and sing the song of sutras like 

Julie Andrews until my bohemian hatred of the dharma reincarnated me as the one and 

only God Jehovah and I could breathe into dust and bring Hiroshi back to me. There, I’d be 

sitting in a lean-to shack, chewing on a stick of grass asking her why she took so long to 

come back. 

Fuck the past being dead - it could be reinvented. I didn’t want to end up married to 

some sweet girl who wanted a salad and martini every night, a kitchen with espresso 

machine, dishwasher and fridge from China. I was going to be a monk drunk on speed. 

The faster the bike went, the more it made sense. At two hundred and forty ks, I 

leant into a lazy sweep of road beside the vast empire of water that was cold and grey and 

foreboding. My knee hugged the road, and I felt like Odysseus returning from his journeys 

abroad, coming home to his family. 

Oops, there went the rear of the bike, sliding to the left. What was it the mechanic 

said about the new tyre? 

I hastily corrected the slide but the weight of the bike spun out from beneath me. I


pulled harshly to the left but already I was ninety degrees to the highway, veering toward 

the cliff-edge. The next three seconds seemed to take an hour, and during it, I felt a warmth 

over me, like a presence, someone holding me tight and warm. 

The road vanished, I was floating through space. 

Hiroshi was with me, protecting like the buddha Manjushri. 

I felt no fear as an approaching pylon grew through the helmet visor. There came a 

hard kick at my head, then a stabbing pain at my chest, like I was doing my black belt 

grading all over again. Then the bike beneath me bounced off the guard rail and catapulted 

into a tree thirty feet below, near the sea. Leaves flailed against my helmet, and ended with 

a final excruciating whack as my head hit dirt. I glimpsed the widdershin spinning of the 

bike’s front wheel that spun so fast it appeared to be moving backwards. I gasped in pain 

and blacked out. 

When I came to, I was lying face-down in sand. My jaw wouldn’t work, and there 

were teeth loose on my tongue. I spat them out. 

Over my shoulder, the bike lay concertinaed against rocks. I heard shouting voices 

from up on the road, then the wail of sirens and rainbow lights. 

I tried to move, but couldn’t. 

This is death, I thought. One sees all but is powerless to touch the living.

My head banged like a piano whose ivories had been removed. 

≈ 


I opened my eyes to see a doctor fussing with an infusion pump next to my bed. 

A policeman began interrogating me; my name and address, why I had been 

drinking, my occupation - the stoic sheriff stuff. The pain across my chest was unbearable 

and kept interrupting my thoughts. 

He opened my wallet, and studied my driver's license like he’s prepping for an 

exam. I told him to fuck off - what could he do anyway - I wasn’t going anywhere, 

especially with the Apocalypse coming that started in New York. 

After the copper left, a doctor came into the room. 

‛I’m Dr Mala Burns,’ she declared, making notes. 

I tried to sit up, but the pain smacked me back. 

‛How’s the war going?’ I asked. ‛Are we winning?’ 

‛What war? Take it easy, Dr Mylonas,’ she added. ‛You’ve been in a coma for the 

last two weeks.’ 

Fourteen days? I thought. I’ve lost fourteen days of my life. Does God keep a 

record of heartbeats. Did he owe me? Did I get them back? All I knew was that time 

changes everything except the mind; it is the only thing in the universe that holds a grudge. 

In a million years I’d still be angry with Horatio for killing himself. 

‛You’re lucky to be alive,’ she added, ‛especially after that sort of accident.’ 

She emptied the contents of a syringe into my drip. 

A few moments later, everything turned surreal, like an opiate dream. I felt a cold 

rush flow through me. 

I saw my father come into the room, leaning over me with his bushy eyebrows and 

a sallow, hard smile, to give me a long spittoon of a political speech on the great Australian


republic, every word wetting my face. As I looked away repulsed, I saw Hiroshi, her arms 

outstretched toward me. 

‛Help me, help me Ari.’ 

I tried to move but my head was shackled with straps underneath a monstrous X- 

Ray machine that shot fire from its mouth until the straps turned heavy and became chains 

that snapped straight and I felt the snap of a crop, then looked up to see Desre in her 

unbuttoned blouse whipping me, laughing and holding the crop that rose into the air and 

descended as Kanga’s cock that thrust into Maya’s mouth and ejaculated, spilling semen 

from her lips as Maya’s face turned milk-white until it became Horatio, sitting in the chair 

in speedos, smoking a long-ash cigarette, his toothless mouth clucking like a stringed 

puppet, brains against the back wall, a pathetic smile on his face. Next, I was walking 

down the hallway, an IV drip on wheels beside me. 

‛Help me, Ari.’ 

I walked the corridor as the walls shook from mortar fire by Al Queda and dust fell 

from the ceiling. Rain thundered down and sirens howled through town. The machine guns 

moth-ate the down of Jewish lambs. I ran, two miles per hour, through the wards, my 

patient’s robe at my ankles, hoping the Taliban couldn’t catch me as I swam through the 

smoking night, under a wet black sky that had seen our worst at being better. The moon 

shed no tears on Jerusalem’s children, the dead piled up like Mt Golgotha, and rotted under 

a rubber sun that would be lost by the third generation, who would call the moon their 

father, and the cold, flat earth would be forever forgotten. Where is my homeland, my 

waterworld, bled out like a hung steer, thrashing its last under the carving knife of 

gunpowder, greed and mediocrity. 

The clock swept its hands across my face. 

I had no idea of time passing, day or night. 

‛The bad news is,’ Dr Burns called out at me from down a long corridor, wearing a 

white shimmering dress with angel’s wings. I tried to stop myself from moving toward her, 

but a power from behind me forced me forward. 

‛...you have HIV. We’ve started you on antivirals. There’ll be a few side-effects, but 

they show great promise...’ 

Side-effects? No shit, I thought. This drug felt like ketamine. It made you feel like 

your retinas weren’t working and there was ants in your teeth. Reality mixed with non- 

reality, the borders of both blurred to the point where one did not know where one began 

and the other finished. This was how cats must have felt after they had been spayed.

And there it was, an afterthought... HIV. 


You can’t run from your past. Just as the Zen boys says, ‛When you get to the 

bottom of a hole, keep digging.’ I kept digging my way out of my past, not knowing it was 

already pay-dirt finished, and my future was here, ready or not. 

Fuck the past, I thought. 

Hiroshi once said that the past, or one’s personal history, is not ‛out there’ like a 

malevolent wind or up on God’s abacus, it’s inside the amygdala of the brain, an organ 

responsible for most of our emotional perceptions. This, Hiroshi affirmed, was the loculus 

of karma, our destiny. I just laughed and said destiny is indifferent to our emotions. I knew 

there was no other way out of the confrontation except through violence. Suicide was now 

the only violent act left to me. 

This is what Johnny Mandel must have been trying to say when he wrote the theme 

song from M*A*S*H; ‛suicide is painless’, words by a perfect-pitched singer who played 

with Joe Venuti and Nat King Cole. The jazz of cognitive dissonance never sung so sweet. 

Perhaps Horatio said it more eloquently in The Just City: 

‛It is the noise of a soul as it travels through a city which defines that city. Like the 

constant, ever-present thrum of Gomorrah, this noise is defined by the souls which live 

within it. There is no such thing as a silent city or silent soul, but if a city is occupied by 

people on a silent journey, it has every chance of becoming silent. Who can remain silent 

until the music is called for?’ 

‛But you’ll be fine, Ari,’ Dr Burns insisted, right in front of me, hovering a foot off 

the floor, her wings extended, ‛AIDS isn’t a terminal disease these days but you will be 

helpless and gradually fade away. Like all mortals you will die with regrets on your lips.’ 

Dr Burns hushed out of the room, leaving me with two choices, to either be taken 

hostage by my dreams or host their awakening. 

I heard them in the corridors; the whispers, the sudden footfalls, the roar of a 

football crowd, the clicking noises that herald disaster. Here they come, I thought, my 

childhood fears; the water snakes, the octopuses, the sharks. Has there ever been a warless 

time in my life? I try to remember. Never. 

The man lying in the hospital bed next to me groans, delirious. 

‛I came here in 1743, on board the HMS Isabella.’ 

His voice was raspy, but familiar. I tried to thumb the nurse’s button but couldn’t 

because it was the size of a ten tonne truck. 

The air was cold and dew frosted the winter windows. Strange luminescence orbs


danced across the glass, miasmic shadows of suburban streets, vehicle lights that pulsed 

like corpuscles against the curtain of ceiling neons. I looked down past my hospital gown 

to the motorbike between my legs. I opened up the throttle fully, pushing the ruby blue 

bike to its limits through the alien street as lights whisked past like a meteor shower. 

Then a familiar voice echoed in the silence of my head. 

‛I came here in 1843 on board the HMS Condor.’ 

I looked around for help, but we were alone, my body weighed down with fear. 

‛I came here in 1943 on board the HMS Europa.’ 

The corridors were quiet, as cold air echoed my blanket. My feet hung off the end 

of the bed, like a cadaver ill-fitted to a coffin. 

‛Who are you?’ I asked. 

‛Horatio,’ he gasped, then was gone. 

I calculated that when I died, cremation was cheaper at $793.26 plus GST, and 

though it destroyed the ozone, it’s a more practical way of disposing of human waste. 

Numbers have the weight of logic, even if they’re wrong; so the buddha said. He knew the 

abacus of numbers, but only mentioned zero and one, emptiness and fullness. The rest were 

just Kabbalah. 

When I awoke, Cassandra was sitting next to my bed, holding my hand. 

‛I just saw a ghost,’ I exhaled. 

‛They have many ghosts here, honey,’ she noted. ‛I’ve been worried sick about you! 

Now let me see if I can fix this mess up. The nurses here are atrocious!’ She fetched out a 

cloth from the bedside table and started sponging my arms with a cloth. I reminisced about 

sunny days on Horatio’s yacht in St Kilda. She washed me down for a long time, 

massaging my legs. Finished, she put away the bowl and cloth. ‛I have to go, Ari. They 

only give me five minutes. I love you,’ she said, combing my hair with her fingers. ‛I’ll be 

back.’ Then with a smile, ‛And don’t forget to eat your vegetables.’ 

I managed a weak smile for her benefit. 

She kissed me on the forehead and was gone. 

Days turned into nights but in the AIDS ward there was never darkness. There were 

twelve beds in the room and a dozen patients gathered like DaVinci’s Last Supper, only the 

food came by nasogastric tubes in neat little colours of grey-brown and brown-grey. 

Nurses move from one bed to another. Most patients were inert, one assisted by


artificial respirator. The hum of technology reassuring me that eventually medicine would 

become the arena of robots, machines evolving into sentient beings with legal rights and 

artificial counsellors, Microsoft psychiatrists counselling robotic pimps who sell 

contraband software to synthetic executives, God just a digital image of homo sapiens, 

long since forgotten in the pursuit to replicate humanity. 

There were no windows, only the artificial light of soft fluorescent globes. It was 

peaceful in this place, and the nurses vigilant in their rostered rotations. Every eight hours, 

the shifts changed and a new duty nurse introduced herself. I counted five faces, and the 

sixth face was the first one I met. Her name was Kelly. I counted the days by the number of 

times Kelly changes my bed pan. She was Iranian, with dark eyes and an all-business 

smile. She was athletic in her movements, annotating every medication on my chart. She 

wore Adidas runners. 

My perambulatory reveries on how to die with some modicum of dignity was 

interrupted by a visit by my sister Maria. 

‛How are you doing, Ari?' she asked, kissing my cheek. 

‛Can’t complain. The drugs are good.’ 

‛You know you’re quite green?’ She took a close look at my skin. ‛I should get a 

specialist to take a look at that. I am sure it’s a temporary thing.’ 

Her hand rested heavily on my shoulder, then her chin started to tremble, and she 

buried her face on my shoulder, and sobbed. 

I held her tight. 

When she was finished, she wiped her nose on a tissue. 

‛Frank’s left me,’ she said. 

‛Frank?’ 

She held up her wedding finger in a gesture of fuck you, choking on tears. 

‛Baghdad changed him...’ 

She fell into a deep despair, sobbing uncontrollably. 

‛I’m so sorry, Sis.’ 

She held my hand, ‛I tried to call you but you’d sold your apartment in Kensington. 

I even rang the AVA to see if they had your number. You’d disappeared off the planet. If it 

wasn’t for the accident...’ 

‛It doesn’t matter.’ 

Maria was me a year ago. There are divorcées born every day. Until you start 

seeing others who are divorced, you cannot recognise yourself as one.

‛It’s a start,’ I said. ‛At least you know it’s over.’ 

She gave me a surprised look, ‛Over? I didn’t say that!’ 

Stage one of divorce, denial. 

‛I need to think this through,’ she emphasised. 


But Maria and I were twins - I already knew that her thinking had become a 

disease. It was no longer a symptom. It’s a disease with no cure. 

She got to her feet. The way she paced, with her heavy shuffling feet, betrayed 

years of travelling hospital corridors as a patient. She had become a part of the institution 

of ‛sickness’, slowly morphed into her shadowy archetype ‛Maria the sick girl’, until the 

original Maria, once so youthful, curious and carefree became just a spare coat-jacket she 

left in a downstairs cupboard for when it’s raining. And then, one day, she’d forget herself, 

and it would be tossed out with the remnants of her souls still in it. 

‛You want me to just let it go? You don’t think I should fight for him?’ 

‛You already are, so stop beating yourself up.’ 

She walked to the window, chewing on a knuckle. 

Stage two of divorce, denial. 

‛I wanna kill someone. I wanna kill John Howard for making him go to Iraq. 

Fucking Americans!’ She breathed hard, seeing I wasn’t engaged to her fury. ‛What would 

you do?’ 

She thought I was smart, but I’m only educated, and she was asking a parrot the 

meaning of life. 

‛Maria,’ I said, to break the tedium, ‛Look at what you are doing.’ 

‛What?’ 

‛All this pacing back and forth. You’ve been doing it all your life, like me and 

where has it got us?’ 

She looked at me blankly. 

Thinking is akin to flight. At any velocity greater than zero, a curved wing can 

generate lift. At a critical velocity, it can soar. Over a period of half a million years, the 

human brain has finally learnt to fly, it just can’t escape the cage. Thinking is like a bird 

trapped in a cage, but it’s not the bird and it’s not the cage. 

‛What should I do?’ she asked, fearful. ‛There’s no backstop.’ 

As she started to cry again, I opened my arms. She softened, slowly wrapping those 

skinny, hairy arms around me. 

The final stage of divorce, denial.

‛Just stop,’ I said. ‛Just stop. That’s all you have to do.’ 


The words were for myself. Maria was no longer there, just a mirror to make 

gravity of my endgame. 

Like a monkey hand trap, a bird’s only escape is to stop flapping. 

What moves the universe is unseen. What we observe is only the appearance of 

things, not their true reality. 

Cassandra moved in and out of my world like a graviton wave, passing through my 

physical decline totally unaffected. But her devotion made me feel guilty. 

One afternoon, she walked in, more sullen than usual. 

‛I found this letter addressed to you amongst Horatio’s effects on the yacht.’ 

She rested the envelope in my weakened hand. I looked at it, noticing Horatio’s 

indelible stamp of authority, the scraggly signature of genius. 

‛You look terrible, Ari,’ she said. But her smile righted the world’s wrong. 

‛Get fucked,’ I laughed, opening the envelope. 

Dear Ari, 

The time has come to put aside the flowery rhetoric. 

I do not fear death, for loneliness is a greater Hell than anything 

imaginable either in this life or the next. I have lived a good life, and have 

no remorse for this final act. What use is it to live a hundred years where 

every day is the same. The soul is not a machine. When there is no growth, 

there is only death. 

I have loved you more than you know, more than either of us had the 

courage to declare. When I first met Cassandra, your Uncle Bartholomew 

told me who her father was, warning me that one day he (you) would find 

me. 

‛Be careful,’ he said. ‛He is a devil.’ 

But I just laughed, ‛I’ll make him my friend.’ 

You have been a catalyst in my life. You have never done anything 

wrong to me, and I ask your forgiveness for my outbursts of anger. 

In such moments of acute regret, I find solace in the words of the 

Buddha, who said, ‛It matters not what fate falls on men if they act, but 

what befalls them when they don’t.’ 

Nothing matters, only everything.


I had so many reservations about Cassandra becoming involved in 

the theatrical life, but I sensed that you saw something in her future that I 

did not. Now I realise that whatever becomes of her, she has a strength 

that I have omitted to see, that she has inherited from you. Find her when 

you read this and kiss our daughter, wherever she may be. 

The Lord giveth and the devil taketh away! 

Your dear friend, 

Horatio 

I cried inconsolably until my chest ignited in fire and my breath turned to cinders. I 

cried for the pain of twenty years of grief that I had never let flow, for the years of 

tormenting ghosts, and haunting smells, the scent of Hiroshi on my lips whenever I drank, 

the sound of her in my too-often silences. Cassandra held me until my spasmodic fits 

elapsed and I was left an exhausted shell of laughter. 

‛What’s so funny?’ 

I held the letter up, ‛After all his Christian antics, Horatio went Zen on me!’ 

‛Get some rest,’ Cassandra concluded. 

I kissed her for Horatio and myself, before she left. 

Years before, Hiroshi had explained that the first necessity for Buddhism to work 

was the law of ‛erasure’. 

Erasure is the process of wiping past-life memories. Reincarnation could only be 

valid if past-lives are forgotten when we are reborn. Otherwise, karma is flawed as an 

hypothesis. Unfortunately, this first law of reincarnation is unprovable. But all is not lost. 

Theoretical physicists have the same problem with unprovable theories. When they 

conjured up hypothetical constructs like quantum mechanics, string theory, etc, they had to 

make other laws to keep that imaginary world afloat; quarks, gravitons and bosons - these 

are the laws designed by thinkers of the subtlest kind. 

Reincarnation is just another plausible theory. 

We may not be able to prove or disprove erasure as a phenomenon, even though 

Socrates talks about it in ‛The Myth of Er’, but that does not deny its possibility. Likewise, 

physicists know that some of quantum mechanic theories can be proved by obvious 

examples in everyday life; such as the fact that satellites orbiting the earth have to be 

readjusted, because time passes quicker out in space - about two seconds faster a day -


equating to a two-kilometre drift in a GPS setting. In black holes, of infinite mass, time 

stops completely. 

Physicists know that all we see in black holes are fields of energy in flux. At a point 

that is an infinite distance from any planetary mass, time is so fast as to be unmeasurable, 

and from that point the universe would appear as a perfect ball, beating like a heart, with 

the entire universe going from big-bang to big-crunch in what equate to about a minute of 

the viewer’s time. 

Reincarnation is no less incredulous or immediate. 

Horatio knew a lot about Abrahamic religions as well as Eastern philosophies. 

Regardless of his beliefs, he must have known what was going to happen when he died. 

Buddha never spoke about these things. Buddha’s last words were merely, ‛All is 

impermanent’. Even he could not vanquish time. We make our greatest dreams, aspire to 

lofty ambitions, but we are just tracing our name in water which leaves no record of our 

passing. 

‛Work out your own salvation with diligence,’ Buddha said, then passed into 

nirvana. What historians recollect most vividly about this pivotal moment in the Buddha’s 

life was his last meal; fried mushrooms. Coincidentally, Christ’s last meal was leavened 

bread. Socrates was hemlock. Hiroshi’s was steamed rice and asparagus. Horatio’s was 

stale fruit cake. What was it about the last meal that deems important? A final human 

gesture denuded of its importance by a pathologist who might record it in more bland 

scientific terms such as, ‛Yes, the man had so and so for his last meal. You can see the 

gastric juices have partially digested...’ 

Perhaps science’s greatest weakness was to miss the romance, to miss the big 

picture, the collective whole, the context in content. 

But what would it matter. Horatio’s famous grave would be covered in the flowers, 

the worn footprints of his fans, Cassandra married to some Hollywood beau, and I, an 

unmarked grave in Pakenham. 

Weltanschauung was Horatio’s most autobiographical novel. Although based on the 

life of Sappho, the tenth muse and poetess of Lesbos in ancient Greece, Horatio was the 

protagonist female who eventually killed herself when she had reached the impasse at 

love’s end. 

Horatio had obviously made up his mind by the end of the manuscript that he had 

enough of living. The cycle had completed itself, he was living in an endless circle of


recycled emotions. He said as much when he wrote in the margins of the manuscript, 

‛The wobbly wheels of fate, all out of kilter, about to fall off...’ 

I’d forgotten about the manuscript until Cassandra visited me the next morning and 

reminded me again of Horatio’s death when she asked what I thought about an epitaph on 

his gravestone. I said it didn’t matter, just as long as it was a quote from the bible. She 

chose, 

‛If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, 

I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again. ’ 

I had asked her to go to Fort Knox Storage in Moorabbin where I had stored all of 

my things after moving out of Kensington, and to bring me my briefcase which was stored 

there. 

The following day, she was in my hospital room with the aforementioned case, 

arriving with her trademark flurry of couture. 

I took the manuscript out. Cassandra stared at it in disbelief, but before she could 

say anything, I read from it: 

‛If I cast my eye on Her, imagination explodes. I am transfixed. I lose myself, 

forgetting momentarily my own existence, and melding with that object of my affection. 

Thus, for a while, I am on an existential mind trip. But when it dawned upon me of my 

separateness from Her, suffering thence ensued. Alas poor Lass am I, such Pain! Whence 

did this possessiveness possess me? I long to be a part of Her, to have Her, own Her, 

control Her. Knowing I cannot, anxiety cripples me. Beatrice, how could you walk away 

from the jetty. The tide was high. Our future awaited us. Ripe fears emerged and gripped 

my heart. I contemplated stealing Beauty again, but where and how? She was gone. 

Hunger becomes its own worse enemy. I need to enjoy once more, to feel oneness with Her 

again. Finally, when all was hopelessly lost, I began my biggest folly; an obscene, 

regrettable, empty act of unrepentant worship. It was, dear Beatrice, the last stages of my 

soul? decay. A graven image of you I made from wax and fixed it near my port hole. I 

made a Religion around you. I paint your face, write you endless, unsent poems. My fall 

from divine grace is complete.’ 

And then I turned to the last chapter, where Sappho snubs the young merchant 

Phaon, before she throws herself from the Leucadian cliffs. 

‘I ask you men of Hellenic shores, what pain have we made our women to bear, to 

expect of them this supernatural beauty? What happens for those pretty women when their 

train of good looks loses its steam? What sadness do they feel when the world appears to


turn on them, when old tricks fail to find new treats. When no new smile awaits them at the 

door, and no young man stands up from their seat. To once be looked over with eager 

wanton eyes, but now only to be overlooked by hungry youths in search of ready prey. One 

day, Phaon, you will see your beauty in a youthful girl and feel as I now do, hatred. I hope 

you feel the enmity burn in your heart as you watch men attending to her, when only 

yesterday you were in that spot. Fickle is beauty, as fickle as pain.’ 

I have trusted him, and now it seems I’m just a fool. 

In the galley of his old ship, I watch the candle swinging gently overhead, 

hypnotised by its movements. I watch the slow walk of shadows cast up and down the wall 

by the rocking candle light, the grotesque gymkhana of shadows from the chair, cupboard 

and sword stand across the ceiling, a vision of wood and bronze compressed. A melted 

time, warped history and liquid thoughts the only witness to my rape at the hands of an 

infidel. 

It bends, I thought. Light bends, in order not to break. 

I put the manuscript gently down as if it were the Turin shroud. Cassandra had tears 

running down her cheeks. 

‛I want you to keep this,’ I advised, giving the manuscript to Cassandra with as 

much gravity as I could. ‛Horatio asked me to destroy it, but I didn’t have the heart. You 

will see it gets to the right people?’ 

I looked into her familiar face, Hiroshi on every inch of her smile. Oh beloved thee, 

angel of inspired verse, grand maker of lyrics and hallowed song, you inspire my life, 

turned beautiful, sensual, bountiful, eternal. 

Cassandra kissed me goodbye. 

In a few seconds, she was gone. 

Tomorrow, I concluded, I would have to tell her everything. 

I was in my bed in palliative care, my misadventurous life stalled under the duress 

of antiviral medication and the verdant wallpaper of my hospital room. Green is a healing 

colour. Surgeons use it in theatre to soothe patients because it is the opposite colour of red. 

I explained all of this to Cassandra as she sat next to me, her eyes wet with tears. 

We knew I was dying - it was unspoken between us, only I didn’t want to be in denial, the 

way my father was. When you embrace the inevitable, there’s no pain, only acceptance. 

‛I’m going to Queensland for a short break,’ she said. ‛I’m taking Horatio’s yacht.

A friend of mine from Uni, he knows how to sail and he said...’ 

I knew I wouldn’t see her again. I held my fingers against her lips. 


‛I need to tell you something.’ I showed her Hiroshi’s letter, and afterwards, I 

explained everything, from go to woe, the whole caboodle of who she was, the story of 

Hiroshi and I, her parents. By the time I was finished, Cassandra looked a mess. Had 

rocking her world been a mistake? 

I held my feeble skeletal hand out to her. She took it. 

‛I’ve done with the world, Kassie. Do me one last favour.’ She nodded, checking 

back her tears. ‛Don’t come back. Just sail off into the sunset.’ 

I let her hand fall. 

Then, just as easily, she was gone. 

In solitude, thoughts crossed my mind like clouds. I could barely think any more, 

just a few morbid thoughts, and the forlorn hope that I would be with Hiroshi soon. 

My fingers danced shakily across the bars of my ribs, upward to my fleshless face 

and my unkempt beard, across to the cold dankness of my temples, down to the scurf 

peppering the roof of my shaved scalp. The faded saffron hospital robe hung loose over my 

bony frame. I marvelled at how life submitted to its sublime master, death, with its utter 

simplicity, its nascent need to unfold and be experienced. 

By now it was five in the morning. I no longer slept, eyes open twentyfourseven 

like a fish. Pulling my lifeless legs beneath me like a flowering lotus, I placed my hands in 

my lap and began meditating. Light as a feather, not long now, maybe an hour and I would 

be dead. 

The door squeaked. 

A creature slowly entered my room, a tattered monk’s robe over a bent frame. The 

creature shuffled noisily, wheezing as if with immense effort. 

‛Who are you?’ I asked. 

As the door closed behind him, the creature lifted his head. 

‛Rinpoche?’ 

‛Ari,’ he wheezed. ‛Good to see a friend!’ 

God, I thought, he must be a hundred years old by now and still he walks the earth 

with such disdain. 

Rinpoche stared into my face, piercing eyes warm with familiarity. ‛It has been a 

while. I see you have turned green. Yes, yes, this is a nice colour. Not unexpected. Karma

has all the reliability of a Rolex - tick tock, tick tock.’ 


He removed a prayer wheel from his robe and rested it on the bed before me. ‛We 

do not have long,’ he said. ‛We must not - how do you say - dally?’ Slowly, he picked up a 

porcelain cup from the sink and filled it with water. His hands, trembling with age, passed 

over the surface of the cup, as he mumbled some prayers, before bringing the cup back to 

the bed. He rested the cup beside me, and smiled with a child-like simpleness. ‛Now my 

friend, you must drink.’ 

‛What is it?’ I asked. 

‛Water.’ 

I drank, and he inspected the cup to ensure I had emptied it. 

‛Good,’ he responded, taking the cup from my hand. ‛You have gone far, Ari. Many 

adventures; joys, sorrows. This is a dream at its best, is it not?’ 

‛Rinpoche, if you’ve come here for a confession, forget it. I have no regrets, no last 

minute confessions to the almighty.’ 

Rinpoche chuckled, ‛What almighty? There is no god. The illusion that you have 

any real choice in life is the final realisation that you must accept.’ 

My mind, normally lucid was spinning like a tyre in mud. I heard the crashing of 

water, and my heart began to beat maddeningly. 

‛Where am I?’ I said, startled. 

‛Right here in Paradise.’ 

‛This is not nirvana, heaven or paradise...’ 

‛Yes it is, Ari. Surfer’s Paradise.’ 

As he said this, I felt the cold water in my stomach swirling. Waves of nausea 

overwhelmed me. A moment later, I burped, and the fumes from my mouth were rich in the 

scent of asparagus. 

I cast an accusatory glance at him, ‛You’ve poisoned me!’ 

‛No,’ he smiled. 

Suddenly the walls began to soften like gel, becoming transparent as if defying 

physical laws. Everything turned within seconds into water. Suddenly the walls were gone 

and I was swimming in a deep green ocean, and far above me, the daylight of the water’s 

surface. 

‛Look, Ari. Look up.’ 

As I did so, I watched fish swimming around me, currents of sand moving slowly 

along the ocean floor. I was underwater in a deep blue sea. I felt the water against my skin,


a cold current ripping at my limbs, the stillness of the water around me. Then, most 

incredibly, I saw the keel of a yacht above sailing away, its bright yellow hull unmistakably 

that of the Cassandra. In its wake, the light grew lighter and lighter with every beat of my 

heart. I found myself moving toward a beach. 

Rinpoche’s voice was growing more distant, ‛Let go of the dream, Ari.’ 

The light grew more intense, almost unbearable. Then came the sound of waves 

crashing against a shore that grew steadily in volume. I felt compelled to move toward the 

beach, and remarkably, my legs moved. 

I kicked and pushed against the sand, with the water growing more shallow, and the 

lights about me more reflective and coloured. I looked down at my body, no longer 

emaciated. 

As I approached the beach, the swells began to surge about me until finally an 

immense wave lifted me from the water and threw me out onto the beach. I landed on my 

back, stunned and breathless, coughing water as I struggled to the shore. 

I blacked out.

≈ 


Walking up the beach, I noticed a petite Japanese girl lying on her left side, curved 

like an Abyssinian cat beneath a bright blue fedora hat and floral bikini pants. She was 

topless, her breasts obscured with the fluttering pages of Albert Camus’ The Plague. 

Even more remarkable, she was singing softly in the most melodious voice, her 

words floating to my ears, ♫ ‛One thought and a thousand worlds come into being...’

Buddhas and Bikinis - Vetbook

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