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10. fucking with the family
Frazer regularly defended the paedophiles. 'No, you're not listening again,' he said to me. 'I'm not defending paedophiles. I'm just telling you that all those blokes didn't do it.' I said, 'Did you do it?' Then he went off his head saying that I had accused him of being a paedophile. He ran upstairs and smashed a few things around the room. Later when he had calmed down he said, 'I did have an erection once when my stepdaughter came out of the bathroom in a skimpy dress and so fucking what?! She was good looking'. I asked, 'How old was she?' 'Fourteen'. He looked at me a little doubtful. 'How old were you?' He said, 'thirty eight'. By this stage Frazer would have been growing tubby and bald. He would have been sweeping those precious strands across. He would have been slightly grey along the sideburns with severe emphysema. She would have been leaving on her first date, perhaps with a fellow classmate that she had met at the last school dance. I didn't think that someone so corrupt and decrepit had the right to have an erection around energy and innocence. I also failed to see how a parent could be turned on by their own child. Yet this was to be just the lead in to a greater world of danger for the stepdaughter. For everywhere that she walked in that tight and slinky dress, there would be men like Frazer, leering and slobbering at her on the streets. In the stale smoke-filled nightclubs there would be men like her stepfather, with their blood-filled cocks just beneath it all. They would be hunting her down with their eyes that said something silly and powerful was going on inside their trousers. Some mysterious phenomenon that they insisted turned their brains to putty. So that mindlessness became the ultimate excuse for any wrong that they might inflict upon another human being of the opposite sex. So that everywhere that innocence and beauty walked, there would be something to slobber on it. It was a risk for her that began once she left the bathroom of her stepfather, and ended once she was raped and murdered, either in her home or on the streets. I am twenty-four. I know that if an interesting fifteen-year-old boy walks into the room, that I would most likely want to know about him. For instance what had brought him here, or if there was anything I could do for him. I would admire his beauty as if he was my own brother, or it would make me think of myself at that age. I would welcome him into the world and promote his assets. I would enjoy his company, like one would enjoy the company of adolescents, and that is with compassion and respect. I would think of many other things. We may even laugh and be happy together. He could display his innocence, to remind me that some of my own still existed. I could give him my experience so that he might guard himself, as he walked the path into his future. This is assuming that I am not a mother or a parent to him. Even if he had a crush on me, as this particular boy had confessed, after having sent me a small opal bracelet through the mail, I would know that we were lifetimes apart and would not destroy the world for him. Even if he were to come close to me and say he loved me, my clitoris would not fill with blood. And this very creepy predatory slimy feeling would not enter my heart. To think that the only thing that mattered would be to push him down on the floor into my life and bring myself off on him, before completely disregarding him, is unacceptable. I would not do it. Even if my body had been attuned to him I would think carefully. I am not that empty and desperate that I would sacrifice beauty or try to snatch it down into myself, for some vague and temporary physical fulfilment. I shook his hand when he tried to kiss me good-bye. I watched his bright walk off down the road. Later he was to find girls on his own emotional level. I knew that he was hurting a little bit, but not nearly so much as he would have been hurting, if I had been careless and selfish with him. We were good friends for many years after that day. He is as precious as the sun and still shining. My exploration of hate began through loving Frazer. I made a list of what I most hated in others, then I had to admit it was in myself. Either because I was that thing, or that someone had placed the idea that I was that thing inside me. I had to kill the cruel perverts in my dreams, and know that everything in my dreams represented myself. Since Frazer was so full of hate, I tried to convince him to do the same. I said, 'I would rather be dead than live my life corrupted inside'. So the cleansing process continued. But there was always that little piece inside, still left quivering and edgy like rotten cheese. Frazer wouldn't budge into admission at any time. He was the only one not to admit, in front of a loungeroom of visitors, that he was capable of killing someone. I was the first to admit it, followed by the others. I said, 'I could, given the right circumstances, kill someone and furthermore I would do it, but the law prevents me. I believe we would all do it.' One by one, everyone in the loungeroom went through and listed under what circumstances they would be likely to kill someone, whether they were protecting their own lives, or that of their children, partners, parents or companion animals. Frazer would not admit to being able to do it. He acted disgusted and shocked by the situation, as if we had all admitted to our guilt or that we were in the process of conspiring to create a horrendous crime together. Yet it was to be during the next couple of weeks, that he would be the one to commit the greatest amount of violence. |
