Day 5

He sticks at everything

The silver Mazda 3 is new.  The boy registers it the second time he sees it, his mind brings him back a picture of it the last time it came by, just a few minutes ago.  In his picture, he sees the two men sitting in the front seats, a tall one driving, the other in the passenger seat.  The car may be new, but the paintwork is faded, there’s a small crack in the windscreen, black plastic louvres on the back window.  The boy knows his cars.

Now, back in real time, the tall driver catches the boy’s eye as he walks on the pavement alongside the highway, on his way to school.  First day back for the year.  As the car passes, the boy tucks the information away and gives it no more thought.  The music inside his ears carries him along, delivered pure from the source by his i-Pod through the distinctive white wires and white bud earphones.

His mother’s always worried that he’ll get mugged one day for his i-Pod. Thankfully that sort of behaviour doesn’t seem to have caught on here; she’s read about it happening in England.  Still, she worries that people will take note of the white wires and that it will make him a target.

The boy continues on to school.  Today, he sees fifteen of his regulars on the way.  He walks past forty-three street lights and listens to six songs.  All in all it’s been a good walk.  He likes this time on his own before he meets up with the other kids and enters a social world where he’s never quite certain that he knows all the rules.  But he keeps at it, keeps learning, keeps on doing the social dance steps.

He sticks at everything, this boy.

The cock in the pale blue shorts

The tall one drives, even though the car belongs to the other man.  They’ve driven the route three times this morning.  From the other man’s home across to the highway, north to the intersection, where the shopping centre sits on a small rise, back from the bitumen.  West at the intersection towards the freeway, but cutting back south after only a few hundred metres.  Driving past a small row of shops – the obligatory deli, video store, butcher – before slowing the car a bit as they cruise past the quiet suburban streets on the left, each of which leads to the school.

The first two times the driver’s kept the car moving south, picking up a bit of speed as he heads for the intersection, where he turns left and then left again to take them back to the lights and the highway.  This time he doesn’t.  This time he takes the last left that they both know will lead them to the school hidden behind the rows of houses.  They both know because they looked it up in the map book the night before, while they were planning.  Dreaming.

The other man – the nonentity – looks over at his mate in the driving seat as they round the last corner and the buildings of the school come into sight.  The driver’s seat is as far back on the rails as it will go and still it looks like there’s not enough room for his legs.  His knees are jammed under the steering wheel, his fingers brush across them as he steers the car, both wrists slumped side-by-side across the bottom of the circle of black plastic.  His eyes are forever looking ahead and to the side, searching.  His cheeks are flushed and he puffs thoughtfully on the rollie wedged between his lips.  Under pale blue shorts, the nonentity can make out the outline of his mate’s hardening cock.

Neither man says a word as they drive past the school. The cock in the pale blue shorts stiffens and a small damp patch begins to grow on the cotton.  The other man looks on, rapt.

No one notices their slow cruise.  It’s the law in this nanny state to slow to a crawl around schools.  They pick up speed once they’re through the school zone, the exhaust from the faded silver car a sick blue against the perfect sky.

Not a single cloud spoils the horizon. It’s never going to rain again.

She’s got fans out there in lounge-room-land

“John Barber, the man once tipped as a future Prime Minister, has admitted that he paid for pornographic movies using his official credit card.  The revelation comes as thousands of pages of parliamentarians’ credit card statements were released under freedom of information laws.  Mr Barber is now said to be considering his future and claimed to be, ‘Just a red-blooded Aussie bloke,’ when questioned earlier about his use of taxpayers’ money.  Barber used his card to pay to view a total of eight adult movies in hotels across the country while on official business during 2008 in his role as Minister for Sustainable Living.  On the 17th of June, two erotic films were billed to his credit card on the one night.  Mr Barber was unavailable for comment as we went to air tonight but has claimed that he is not guilty of misusing taxpayers’ funds, as he paid the money back.  Six News journalists are still going through the spending records of all our politicians, so we can expect more explosive revelations.”

“Now, that’s what I call a quiet Tuesday night indoors.”  Tiffany smirks oh so gently as she looks straight down the camera while she ad libs.  She knows Bob’s going to kill her after the bulletin for this one, but she’s got fans out there in lounge-room-land, she knows, she gets the emails.