The Sleeper
You could say I'm into deconstructionalist minimalism,
or you could just say I'm sleeping in my car.
You could say that there's precipitatious inundation,
or you could say it's raining bloody hard.
You could say that I'm in reproductional hibernation,
or you could just say that I ain't gettin' none.
You could say it's karmic retributional quantification...
or you could just say I've had it comin'.
06 May 1997
At least thank me for choosing one of the shortest ones. I wrote this while sitting in my courier van at the Blue Lake Caravan Park up by the Blue Lake. At this stage I was working part-time nights in Adelaide and spending the rest of the week sleeping in my car at the caravan park.
With hindsight I now understand that I was technically 'homeless' for about 8 of the 12 years up to 2003, but that's another post.
A lot of people think that I'm a vain, arrogant, prick...but that's only because they've met me...ahhhh, self-deprecating bazinga.
Seriously though, in an earlier post I stated that at about 20 "I decided" that I was quite attractive when the basest truth would be that others were telling me that...alot.
Shortly after moving to Mt Gambier, someone was jokingly explaining to their partner that I was quite "arrogant" when it came to women. I said "I know I can be a bit cocky..." but I didn't finish before he snorted and said "Cocky? That's like saying Charles Manson was a bit of a larrikin." We all had a jolly laugh because it was genuinely hilarious. And the truth often is.
In my previous posts I described in broad terms what I considered to be my fundamental character and/or personality and/or 'psychological' flaws; essentially a total lack of (rather than an issue of low) self-esteem, and the inherent problems that this causes. But it's not all problems, it's certainly not all bad.
Unfortunately a lot of it is; and that's the ego, arrogance, etc. And it's not entirely my fault, and I'm certainly not Robinson Crusoe, this stuff happens all the time to others so this post is just about how it has happened to and/or around me.
And much of it can be summed up with what I like to call 'Fresh Meat Syndrome'. When you are in a relatively small town and every one knows every body, then a new 'item' on the menu, such as moi, is obviously going to garner a lot of attention...and you can take that to the bank.
But my problems started long before coming to Mt Gambier, way back when I came to understand that I wasn't the least attractive lump of meat in the room; any room.
I'll put it as it's been put to me, and use some of my Pops' slightly modified language...I'm 46 now but back in the day (as Pops would say) I was built like a brick 'out'-house, even if these days I look a little more like (go Pops) a loosely tied sack of 'out'....I miss Pops...(and he wouldn't have used 'out')...
As it's been put to me at various times by various people, either;
1) you are the most beautiful man I've ever seen, or,
2) he's so ugly, why do all the women want him?....deadset, that actually happened while sitting on some lounges at a nightclub this guy came up to my friend (whom he knew) sitting opposite me, and with huge staring eyes, asked her "he's so ugly, etc."
If I may steal a line from the Eagles, "...he was brutally handsome...". I like that because, ego and self-esteem, etc, aside, it's very much what I honestly think of myself.
The fact remains that I've had a lot of people do a lot of staring. A quaint anecdote;
When I was working nights in 1997/8 we would go into Hindley St at 1 or 2 in the morning, and that led to my first visit to the Mars Bar, a gay bar in Gouger St (?) with one of the people I worked with; he was going to meet his boyfriend.
I'd never been in a 'gay bar' as such, but being around gay people wasn't anything new. My friend 'advised' me to stay in the main bar area, and he went off to find his boyfriend. He was gone maybe 5 minutes, and when he came back he was grinning inanely at me. "Look around you" he said, "everybody in the room is standing closer to you...even the lesbians.." and he burst into laughter.
He later explained that it looked like I had some sort of 'personal gravity' and that literally everyone had been 'dragged' across the room toward me. The base reality was simply 'attractive fresh meat'...and yes, even for the lesbians...apparently they dig that whole brutally handsome with beautiful lips, great big gentle bear, broken child kinda thing that I've got goin on...just what the people are telling me...I ain't makin' this stuff up for somethin' to do now...
And as I've said before, it is this sort of attention that has scuppered every relationshiop I've ever had, to the point that I just stopped having them. In the middle of a committed relationship with someone I genuinely cared about and felt affection for, I would be repeatedly blind-sided by the volatile mix of un-expected attention and my own automatic response mired in ego, self-estem, blah, blah, blah.
I've never been a 'player' or 'a ladies man' or any of that, but in the moment, any given moment, I have been capable of extraordinary charm and wit, albeit fueled by ego and desire...but hey...
I have apparently been chastised 'off-blog' for this sort of self-reflective, indulgent nonsense, so I might close out my 100th post with a nice slice of reality by talking right down to earth...in a language that everybody here, can easily understand.
This blog exists at all because of the St Martins Lutheran School Child Abuse Cover-up; the cover-up of the multiple systematic abuses perpetrated against 7 year old children by their 50 year old teacher Glyn Dorling in 2002.
Parents were the second group of people to attend Commissioner Ted Mullighan's Child Abuse Inquiry; the first group were the ones whom helped prepare the notorious 'leaked' document (March 2005 - naming senior public figures, politicians, police, etc, as paedophiles) that saw Speaker Peter Lewis resign, etc. (Please see previous posts)
As widely reported in the media, several of those people were murdered shortly after the document was released, and no-one who saw it will forget the footage of a shaking, tearful, stammering Peter Lewis reporting to parliament that a fourth person "I had met...(sic)" had been murdered.
By early 2006, nearly 4 years into the St Martins Cover-up, and with us parents unbelievably being forced to fight against the Lutherans, SAPol, the Teachers Registration Board and Crown Solicitor, MP Rory McEwen, Rann Labor, whilst engaging with the Mullighan Inquiry, etc, etc, other people who had gone down that exact same path immediately ahead of us, were being murdered.
So it came to be that in early/mid 2006 I had other parents expressing to me their very specific concerns for my safety; they were worried that the reality of what we were all going through would eventuate with me being hurt or killed as an example to the others...and the logic?...this is exactly what we saw happening in Parliament House and Adelaide, and as they were all 'conservative family sorts', that I was the 'loose unit' who could be harmed without arousing excessive suspicion.
Only a year after finishing nearly 10 months of chemo and radiotherapy treatment for a massive tumour in my chest, I and those few parents around me were far more concerned that I might expire from excessive lead in my system or some such.
Bottomline, at a time when I should have still been completely pre-occupied with my receeding illness, I was more concerned for my safety relative to the raging conflict between parents and authorities...far more concerned about my safety from the authorities....just for trying to get something done about the man who abused our children...how Shrekked up is that?
That's the South Australia I live in...how about you...I think that's probaly enough reality for one day.
Remember though; the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself.
This Arvo: MP Rory McEwen Tries To Have Parents Arrested
Just a couple of documents that are still real, but compared to the above are just another sick joke...Rory writes to the Police Commissioner and 15 months later the then Minister for Police Paul Holloway writes back...did someone say 'Separation of Powers, the 3 independent levels of government'....no?...must just be me then.
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