When Sound Means a Lot to a Person

It's Tuesday afternoon in a suburban Tasmanian living room. Her living room is different to his and that has taken some getting used to in his set in his ways brain. He had an elongated couch, big leather one sold to him by a girl who clicked her teeth when she was spinning for a sale, and the television that said his name when he turned it on - she had a small little box television with wiry old school rabbit ears and instead of a couch she had little chairs with loose wires in it that poked into your arms when you sat down. The TV made Nick Riewoldt look like he was kicking for goal in a snowstorm any time he tried to watch the football. He tried hard not to make the financial discrepancy in their earnings a point of conversation, but sometimes she would bring it up in arguments. Her money went on her children, his money want on frivolities, or it used to. Now it went on her children. He had pondered many times if he had done the right thing, and changed his mind every 7 seconds. For now, his only thoughts were adjusting his tracksuited body in such a way that his tracksuited body didn't combust on her nylon carpet – his secondary thoughts on trying to do some writing in the midst of his afternoon lazy public holiday torpor...

She was eating Pods from a bowl, making noisy deliberate crunches with each bite. Part of his relationship education as a good and charming partner involved learning to be patient. Sure, she was rubbing his back with her feet as she sat behind him on one of her deadly chairs, and causing him irritation, not to mention sparking him with every rub like he was a Scalextric car about to wind up and go. Sure, she was crunching loudly in what had to be a crunch for attention, and sure, she was overlaughing at George and Mildred, featured on one of those terrible Russell Gilbert hosted nostalgia shows they put on in summer, just to try and get him to join her on the couch and enjoy the best sparkling banter British Sitcomery had to offer. Once upon a time he would have gently snapped and thrown a hissy fit, but now he was dulled, tired, full only of apathy and fatigue. He accepted the crunchy noises, he tolerated the gentle constant electrocution, and even accepted sitting through one of the poorer episodes of George and Mildred, the one where they look at the posh property, but what he couldn't escape was his duty to the written word...his calling in life...to be a writer. My son...

UNDER THE KISS OF THE BLOOD-SOAKED TREE

It wasn’t going to change, the challenge, no matter how much he stared at it.

"Whatcha doin..." she said gently, rubbing her toe onto his tracksuit for the tenth time today as he tried to come up with a story around the title given to him. This particular rubbing sent a violent shock into his spine, pure nylon on nylon combustion. Took him right back to his childhood, all those summer evenings where he tried to get off his trampoline only to be shocked right on his big toenail. One time he was on there for 3 hours, just refusing to get off until his Mum assured him he wouldn’t get shocked...he got shocked...he never forgave her...

He looked down at the badge of his Manchester City replica tracksuit, then back up at her. Apathy in the relationship had meant he hadn't even noticed she'd put blonde streaks in her hair. No wonder she was upset with him at the BBQ. He couldn’t put his finger on why she spat out every food request with a hissy tone of voice – he thought it was because she was losing at backyard cricket.

"I'm trying to write something honey", he said, softly, mumbling to himself. He stared at his writing challenge as if he could turn the title into a snap and a breeze through his own intellectual abilities - he glared balefully at the burning mass of words writhing on the screen before coherence fell out of his brain, turning to fuzz and disappearing into the abyss of the nylon carpet. Stared deep into the Dell computer onto which he had typed three words. George and Mildred. He hadn't even meant to do that, but he had been so distracted trying to untangle the meaning of the title given to him, all he had done was type the name of the sitcom on the TV...stared deep into the Dell Computer, staring at the reflection of an inarticulate man, more suited to playing Sensible Soccer than composing something people would like...his thoughts only broken by her voice, trying to break into his world...

"Why don't you write about pirates! I like pirate stories!" - she meant well, she always meant well when he was writing, offering suggestions and making cheese sandwiches, but their intellects often clashed. She was honest, straight forward, liked dancing, saw the best in people, and he thought the world was complex, full of hidden agendas. He wouldn't admit he liked Britney Spears for fear of denting his super cool image, she'd wear the T-shirt and wonder why anyone thought it was strange. He reached up to grab a Pod from the bowl and she playfully slapped his hand. "You never listen to my writing ideas! All you do is tap your fucking rubbish on that computer! Pirates, I'm telling you! That's what people would love to read! A pirate adventure on the high seas! Housewives would buy it..."

He shrugged as he bit into his hard earned Pod, smoothing the crumbs off the zip of his tracksuit as he stared into his Microsoft Word document. "I'm not a pirate story kind of writer, I'm...."

"I know, an observational writer!", she said, mocking his hybrid Scottish Australian accent as she threw a pod at his head. "How fucking laudable!"

He picked the Pod off the ground and returned it to the bowl. "Well, it's better than writing about pirates! Next you'll be telling me to write about a dog that drives a taxi in New York City! And the audience can go why is the dog driving a taxi! What's he up to! We can make it full of hilarious mix ups and crazy ant..."

He stopped. He had gone too far.

"So I'm stupid, that's what you are saying!"

His Dad had often told him that everything in a relationship basically revolved around the same argument endlessly looped from the first time you had it and only slightly changed by events - actually what he'd said was "you get nagged all the time about the same shite" but he had got the idea. In Dad’s case, it was generally that he tried to read the paper and Mum would suddenly have things to talk about, depriving him of the latest wit and wisdom of Bob Shields or Andrew Bolt. Interruptions were his absolute pet hate. He was beginning to know how his Dad felt...

He took her hand in his, risking another electrocution. “I’ve never thought you were stupid, in fact, it’s me who feels stupid trying to work out what to write about!”

She softened. She liked those little moments of insecurity he would give her from time to time – they let her know he was human and not some university educated robot. She smiled a beautiful smile and then ruined the romantic image with another unladylike crunch of her Pod.

“So if you can’t write about pirates, what are you writing about?”

“I’m in a writing competition – I have to write a story based on something someone has given me to write about. In this case, the phrase is under the kiss of the blood soaked tree...”

She looked at him evenly. “What the FUCK does that mean?” she said, scratching a blonde tip with her fingernail.

He tried to say something intelligent, and nothing came out. “I don’t know...I’m too dumb to work it out. I thought if I wrote a horror story...”

He barely got the word horror out before she was laughing, snorting, and then laughing again. “Oh THAT’S original! A horror story! And you think pirates are fucking stupid! You know you can't write horror stories, you can't do it! Seriously, how are you going to end it, with the Scooby gang finding out it was old Mr Johnson from the fairground and not really a ghost! You’ve gone straight to the word blood in the title and come up with that!”

He pouted as if he was a food deprived model on her beloved Fashion TV. He looked at her a little hurt.

“I thought you liked my horror stories!”...

She smirked, threw her hair back. “Babe, they are all set in Kilwinning, and for your information, there’s nothing horrific about art class when you can’t draw and your teacher drinks a lot of vodka...at worst, it’s a mild inconvenience!”

He threw his pen on the ground in a grumpy mood.

“Fine then Steven King – you come up with something!”

She kicked him softly in the back in a playful fashion, and then smiled as if struck by inspiration. “How about a poem!”

He slumped over his computer.

“A poem...that’s your brilliant genre bending idea...”

“What’s wrong with a poem!”

“I hate poems! I can’t do poems! I can do limericks about old women from Nantucket! This isn’t getting me any closer to trying to work out something about a tree that I can submit!”

She was genuinely hurt.

“So you think I’m stupid!”

“How did you turn it back to that! No! I just don’t like poems! And it’s not helping me get this done this whole argument! All I’ve done in the last 10 minutes is eat Pods, and wonder about the tragic demise of Yootha Joyce, get my back set on fire by you, and had a stupid argument! The tree doesn’t have any blood on it at all! It’s completely un-soaked! Now can we PLEASE stop arguing so I can do some work!”

He was never good with silence. His Mum had often bet him a He-Man figure he couldn’t make it all the way from Burnie to Penguin in their Brown Torana without saying a word. He never got one. He would always see something out of the corner of his eye – an amusing dog, a mis-spelled word at the Shell Service station. An illuminated flashing advertisement for some kind of cheap soft drink. Anything that captured his imagination, he would blurt it out and try and weave something out of it. He would then spin some kind of story of it – he had always been able to do it. Set him a task and two hours later, there was something on the page. Sure it wasn’t always good, but it was reliable, his trusty old child like brain...the important thing was, he had to do something, quickly, or the silence would just cripple his day...

The unspoken realisation for him as he kneeled on her carpet was that he had lost his ability to think creatively – sure writing things down on the page, that was difficult enough, but this relationship had stolen his thinking time. He had been peaceful, he had nothing but time, long weekends to invent imaginary chat personas and then watch entire seasons of Weeds while never having to scrape a crumb from his jumper. The accumulated stains on some of his jumpers defied description. Now there were errands to run, her kids needed attention – one of them had a learning difficulty and he had to sit for hours teaching him how to do his multiplication homework. He even had to go and do nice things like shop for antiques...in his single life, e-mail him the sentence UNDER THE KISS OF THE BLOOD-SOAKED TREE and by god his tree would so soaked with blood they’d hold it up at assembly and give him a prize. Now, there was no time to think of anything, no creativity to spark – just maturity and errands and repetitive arguments and wondering how many times you had to hear about the time her last boyfriend rang a prostitute on her mobile phone. Then again, he had been told by one English teacher the world was full of talented but unsuccessful people, maybe he was just one of them...

He broke the silence by kissing her deep on her lips. He knew he loved her – they would be together always, just like this, just sitting around arguing, then being silent, then working it out. It was meant to be. They’d be together in the old folks home, arguing about honey mush and who was first to water aerobics. She was watching the hilarious antics of Mr Roper over his shoulder as he kissed her, but was able to pretend she wasn’t. They held each other’s hand on her carpet and stared at the laptop without anyone speaking for an eternity...

“So, what do you get if you win,” she said, smiling softly.

The adulation of strangers on the Internet? Nah, better not tell her that...

“Um...a hundred bucks?” he said, stammering...

He’s so cute when he lies. His little face. Just like George...