LITMIR.BIZ

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participation, novelty giveaways. But when Father McMahon talked, people picked lint off their cardigans and dug holes into pews with car keys. The priest lacked showmanship. My mother and I called this quality ‘pizzazz’ and divided the world into those who had it and those who didn’t. Mum and I fell into the first category while Dad and John occupied the second. Carmel was impossible to categorise. Mum said I had so much pizzazz I glowed. This was an exaggeration but I knew what she meant.

      A shiny ecclesiastical gown would not have been wasted on me but the priesthood held no appeal. The Catholic Church had too many nutty rules and not enough handsome role models. Father McMahon managed to be even less attractive than the Pope, which was saying something. The best way to get through the hour of what he managed to stretch into half a day was to squint my eyes at the other churchgoers and imagine them without clothes. I’d actually seen my mother naked once when I’d surprised her coming out of the shower and taken in a few crucial points. Ladies had the Stromboli mound, only it was covered by a thatch of what I now knew to be pubic hair. Carmel had explained the mechanics of this anatomical oddity. ‘It’s like Velcro. It helps keep your underpants up.’

      I’d done more research and come a long way since the Ralph Waters field trip. I knew for a fact that women had something called the lady hole, hidden away below the Velcro line. Where John got the point on his head, however, was still a mystery.

      My father had done nothing to help my research. I’d shared a bathroom and towels with him for over a decade but had never seen him naked, not a pubic hair, not once. I’d seen him with his shirt off a handful of times but no Velcro. The mystery of the adult male had been cleared up by Greg Bean, a boy with Down Syndrome who visited the Ulverston Municipal Baths every Saturday in summer. Greg had the body of a teenager but the smiley temperament of a six-year-old. He had absolutely no concept of modesty and walked around inside the changing shed without clothes, singing, while his brother Denny tried to get him to step into his bathers.

      The only times I considered God was when I wanted something expensive or when I was touching myself. If it was the latter case then I preferred to think that God didn’t exist. It made no sense that a higher intelligence would’ve provided such excellent equipment then forbidden me to use it. Masturbation was a key theme at St Kevin’s. We constantly heard about the perils of it from the Christian Brothers who ran our school. I might’ve taken notice if the message had come from another source, but I had no confidence in these particular men of the cloth. For the most part, they were a miserable bunch of failures. They’d given up the worldly joys but didn’t have what it took to become priests. Brother Punt was the school’s anti-wanking fanatic. He gave the religion class twice a week.

      ‘Masturbation is dangerous, boys. It’s a very difficult habit to break.’

      Brother Punt turned his palms upward and spread his hands in front of him with a sweeping gesture. I’d seen a magician on television do the same thing to prove he had nothing to hide. Thomas Owen put up his hand. He was the tallest boy in the class and had permanently chapped lips.

      ‘What about in the bath, sir? I mean how do we wash ourselves down there?’ Thomas pointed to the hot zone below the belt of his trousers.

      That question would’ve been a joke from anyone else in the class but Thomas didn’t have a ha-ha sense of humour. His mother came from somewhere in Germany.

      ‘Good question, Owen. I have two keywords for washing yourself. Be fast and be sure. Soap your flannel into a lather and clean your privates with a brisk rubbing motion.’

      ‘I tried that, sir, but I’m having problems.’

      We all knew what kind of problems Thomas was talking about. These were not problems as far as I was concerned.

      ‘Be brisk, Owen. Do not linger.’

      Poor Owen. His problem wasn’t masturbation. His problem was that he thought it was a crime. I knew he had it wrong. If there was a God and he didn’t want us to touch ourselves, he would’ve given us something useless like the joyless mound of a girl. Thomas was making a Gary Jings of himself. He wasn’t supposed to attract attention to himself. His job was to get on with business and keep quiet about it. Someone had to come to his rescue.

      ‘Do you think Jesus had a problem with…you know?’ I looked Brother Punt in the eye and shrugged knowingly. My question seemed to throw him off balance.

      ‘What sort of question is that?’ The brother’s hands clamped the edge of the desk.

      ‘Well, I mean, did they have flannels in those days? When Jesus Christ took a bath and all, do you think he—?’

      ‘No! Jesus was the son of God.’

      The brother was firm on this point. He lifted a hand and brought it down hard on to the desk. Thomas Owen jumped and let out a squeak.

      ‘But he had a man’s body.’

      This I knew for a fact. I’d admired it every Sunday in its shiny plaster form on the wall of Our Lady of Miracles. I imagined Jesus had quite a Thermos flask inside the old tea towel wrapped around his loins. I’d spent many services redesigning the sculpture in my head, with and without the loincloth. My Jesus was clean-shaven with sexy little sideburns. He had a yellow brocade scarf slung around the hips, just low enough to reveal a hint of pubic hair. My scarf wasn’t tucked between the legs like Our Lady’s tea towel. In my version, the long tassels dangled cheekily in front of the groin. My design was a definite improvement on the original. It certainly would’ve encouraged more people to attend church and look up to Jesus.

      ‘He wouldn’t have done anything impure with his body.’ Brother Punt was leaning forward over his desk in a threatening manner.

      ‘But maybe he touched himself by mistake sometimes.’

      ‘He wouldn’t have.’ The brother’s word was final. The look on his face made that clear.

      ‘But he might have, you know, bumped against something accidentally. Maybe a chair or a goat.’

      ‘Shut up!’

      I wasn’t sure if it was the mention of the chair or the goat that inflamed Brother Punt, but he moved toward me with the speed of a great white shark. I knew these particular sharks moved very fast because I’d just read an article in the Australian Ladies’ Companion about a man who’d lost a leg at Bondi Beach. I’d read it through to the end because it featured a photo of the surf lifesavers who had pulled the victim from the waves. The lifesavers wore tiny nylon bathers and little multicoloured caps that did up under the chin. The story inspired me to add surf lifesaver to my list of possible careers. But I wasn’t going to be one of the lifesavers who actually went in the water. I was going to provide cold drinks and suntan lotion, and speak to television cameras.

      The teacher grabbed me under the armpit and dragged me to his desk. Reaching into the drawer, he pulled out a long, thick, leather instrument of torture. Punt had his own peculiar style with the strap. He brought the base down hard on to the palm, leaving the length of leather to slap at high speed across the delicate inner part of the wrist and forearm. I imagined it wasn’t too different from having nails driven into the wrists then being hung from a wooden cross. The brother’s technique made the veins stand out and left huge red welts on the skin.

      The only good thing about being strapped was the attention it drew. Strap marks were the stigmata at my Catholic school. They were the mark of a star and sent popularity ratings sky high. At playtime I had an audience and even got a pat on the back from Ralph Waters.

       7

      Popularity had a strange effect on me. The more I had, the more I wanted. The Christian Brothers called me a show-off but they didn’t understand the value of good entertainment. My classmates did and so did my mother. This was a good base but if I was going to take my pizzazz to the next level, I needed to develop a look. That look was a lot thinner. I found the ideal solution to weight loss in an advertisement

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