22-23 Years Old

Alone again. May’s mother has been in Fiji doing further preparation as a Kabuki artist. I miss her and her fierce painted face. Her ever-changing eye colours. May is happy and so I don’t hear from her. She has a boyfriend now called Stan. It’s serious.

I do not favour Stan. He won’t come here, so they spend all their time at his family home, which is far larger than mine. Stan is tall. He could punch a hole clean through my head if he wanted to. He can buy me and everything I own if he wanted to. He’s got a bottom that seems to go on forever, the idea of my daughter’s intimacy with it makes a smell of stale shit fill my nose and the entire world.

Still determined to be healthy at all times for May, I have erected a square trellis of monkey bars in the back garden. I swing 50 laps and then do sit-ups, hanging from a bar. I pretend I am getting ready for a war. I’ve got a bandana. All of the bars have names, each time I swing from one, I imagine it is a fellow foot-soldier who will fight by my side in the war.

Hanging upside down and doing sit ups, thinking: Do I trust this soldier with my life?

One is a little bit loose. I call it McAllister. I don’t trust McAllister, he might have been responsible for the deaths of local prostitutes (in imaginary Vietnam). McAllister is always taking speed.

I have taken up carpentry to relax me. I made a large rabbit hutch. One night I went out to try and catch a rabbit to put in it. I made a bargain with myself that if I didn’t catch the rabbit I would get in the hutch myself and act like a rabbit.

I was in the hutch for fifteen nights. I had to come out eventually because the fire brigade suspected a gas leak on our street. The guys (monkey-bars) all laughed at me, but they respect my dedication.

“Pester, you crazy bastard! You’re alright!” Those monkey bars are all I’ve got.

The new rabbit is called Stan.