Novel Excerpt – Prolix (Working Title) 4

Posted by on June 29, 2011 in Fiction, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Daniel

“Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognising that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humoured, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires.” Cyril Joad

The cavernous thrill passing through Daniel told him this is the day.

This of all days, above and beyond any other – this is the day.

Daniel, it turns out, was a natural. He didn’t need self-help courses, neurolinguistic programming, or to walk over fire. Daniel’s optimism (that this day anything could happen, anything probably will and that he was the instigator of his own destiny) had gotten him through two failed marriages, one failed child, being out of work for twelve years and small bursts of creative, fever-induced-activity injected funds. This unshakable belief in his ability to change the world, and that abilities immediacy, almost defeated the need to actually fulfil on it.

Once up on a time Daniel had been a documentary film maker. What Daniel liked so much about documentary film making was the visions of other people’s gratitude he would experience once the documentary was complete and had become the shock success at Cannes. Daniel devoted hours to making imaginary thank you speeches in his car, visualising becoming more famous for rejecting the offer to appear on Oprah than he would if he’d actually accepted it, and shocking his agent and other members of his extensive entourage, with the time he devoted to the ‘little people’ who approached him to thank him furiously for changing their lives and making sure they never felt the same way about – fill in what you want here: eggs, the Caribbean, dental floss – again.

Daniel wasn’t clear about how it would happen, but he knew two things for sure:

1)     He’d recognise the way (or start of the way) when he saw it

2)     It would happen someday.

Of these two facts he was certain.

Now, on this day, several apparently unrelated events mixed together in the bowl of experience that was Daniel’s life, gelled with a startling intuitive perfection resulting in the actualisation of the first of the things he knew for sure.

The first contributor to the dawn of the new day was the departure of his wife, off to spend an unscheduled day in the town with her sister. It was not that Daniel didn’t love his wife; he simply loved it when she went out, leaving him alone with a school boy’s thrill of having things like food, showers, internet and movie hire free to be enjoyed without the watchful maternal eye of his good wife. She’d been summoned by her sister to a wild day of the ‘free life’. This was meant to be a good old-fashioned fuck you to her recently departed husband who’d embraced cliché and run off with his secretary two months earlier. Both Daniel and his wife knew she’d been invited for her maternal eye, the sister not wanting to get into too much trouble, but it was still with a cheeky wink that his wife had said “don’t wait up” and it was with a false sob he’d replied “be good”. As soon as she was out the door, Daniel – still in bed – shucked off his pyjamas, and massaged his erection to a stirring climax, not really knowing what else to do with how excited he felt.

After he rose, still shockingly naked walking through the house caring little that the blinds were up – oh ok, pulling them down after a second thought – he decided he’d check emails and make a coffee. As the kettle roared its cheery business, he booted up his, what now looked like an antique machine, and began to down load the mail.

Despite the age of his machine and his continued nervousness when dealing with the internet, Daniel managed to download all his mail, and therein lay the other three events that led to the realisation of the achievement of the first of the two things he knew for sure.

First email was from his friend called Alex:

Daniel,

You old bastard! I’m out – just like you said. Flat hunting today.

Want to go to Philosophy cafe tonight in Leichhardt. Whole ‘new life’ thing. Come with me.

Alex.

Alex spoke in the fragmented sentence structure that repelled intimacy and ensured, despite their email exchange, that neither was gay. Given the long-winded conversations they’d had in Alex’s small mobile phone store about women (female store owners, mutual friends, women from their past  – ahhh, the women you’d had who never got old – and customers) one would think there was no need and full pregnant sentences could be used with flourish. But masculinity is not a given and therefore needs to be reinforced like the existence of god or the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day.

The second was from another friend Daniel knew because their wives were friends. They’d shared many a long drunk night talking over the plight of the left in this country and what was to be done about it, each vowing to contact the other the next day to continue the important conversation and meeting only at the next dinner night by which time they were fresh to start the entire conversation over again.

Daniel,

I need to get out tonight.

I have been approached by the Ethics committee at Sydney University to come up with a real life ‘experiment’ to work on in order to ‘enliven the left’, and thought our whistleblowers society idea was a good one. It will need to be documented somehow and I thought you might be interested. Let’s talk.

Do you have any suggestions about where we could go tonight? I’d like to feed my brain, and have a glass of wine with you after.

John

By this stage a small thrill passed through Daniel. Something was happening. These emails sat on top of each other in the inbox, sandwiched between a bulk email from his favourite book store and an offer to make his penis larger. There was one more mail. It held the coin toss of a possible perfect day.

Hi Daniel, mate!

Long time no see mate!

I’ve finished my work in Vietnam. Did you get to catch the doco? ABC filmed it I think.

(Daniel had caught the doco of his old friend Frank – it won Best Documentary at the St Kilda festival, The Australian cinematographers gold award and had even been long listed as a possibility for the academy awards. Needless to say Daniel never expected to hear from his fiend again)

Well, I’m looking for a new project. Am out of town for the next week, but you know I want to work with you mate. I’ve got myself a little pull with some industry folk, and I need a great idea to pitch for the next doco. Can you meet me week after next for a drink?

Frank

There they were.

These three little emails made up the opportunity Daniel was waiting for his entire life. The fact that he’d experienced moments such as this FOR his entire life was forgotten as easily as New Year’s resolutions made on a bus travelling down George Street to The Rocks at twelve twenty am January first. Intuition, or magic – no FAITH told him that this was the turning point. Sure there’d been other times. Even other times with Frank and Alex when he’d tried, reached out, and extended himself with zealotry past the borders of his comfort zone, but they to in their own way were preparing for this moment. They were the trial runs, the practise, the grounding for the excellence he was about to produce. Daniel admired these three men greatly in different ways and now each of them wanted to join forces, and they wanted to join forces at the same time.

For thirty six years Daniel had been trying to make it as a filmmaker. Not just any filmmaker, he wanted – no he needed to be the man who exposed the truth to the grateful masses back home; the television watching, Howard voting, money earning fools simply waiting for a leader, for knowledge and information to be coming their way.

Daniel did not believe people were intrinsically bad, which is how John explained the political success of John Howard. They just didn’t understand. Daniel felt sure that with education anyone could be cured of thinking of themself as well as the preoccupation with wealth that he felt sure was the reason behind the rise and rise of the right-wing factions in the country that he loved so much.

Sure, bad people existed. It was true that some people may see education as an opportunity to exploit other rather than a chance to be something different. But Daniel, for whom his own poverty was a choice he’d made even without ever having very much money, believed that given a chance to do good, the human creature will take it up – it was called reason and it was the opportunity that had presented itself now that we were no longer tree dwellers.

Several opportunities arose in Daniel’s life to educate the masses, real opportunities to change things, chances that could only be called one in a million.

One happened when he was working for Channel Seven on a current affairs program. The shifty show decided to run a bit on a soap powder that word had been called excellent. Faithfully wanting to educate the masses, Daniel prepared the story, including testimonials, images of clean washing on various different clothes lines, and strong pictures of the soap powder box itself.

It was when he collected his testimonials that he spoke to one Mrs Candice, a confidently fed woman with three small children, two of whom had a skin condition not unlike an unsightly outbreak of pimples, all over their arms and legs. She’d even gone to the unfortunate trouble of washing the clothes in the soap powder deliberately to induce this horrible rash on her children for Daniel’s benefit. Strangely, Mrs Candice had contacted Daniel when she heard (Daniel never found out from whom – she would not reveal her source) he was to do the story.

Incredulous, Daniel began his research into his other testimonials and found that sixty-two percent of the people he’d interviewed had children with the same skin condition brought about by an allergy to this soap.

Daniel of course, went directly to his superior, one Harold Margin. Daniel accused his boss of being on the take, and, willing to put himself out on the skinny branches, claimed there was a connection between the story and the high level of sponsorship the soap company in the show. Harold told Daniel in no uncertain terms that there was no proof that the washing powder was causing the trouble and that he was to get on with the story.

But the public had a right to know, and Daniel continued with the story that exposed the rash and the children who had the rash. The company that distributed the rash, he accused of ignoring the many letters they’d received making the complaint. The result was, of course, Daniel’s immanent sacking, the destruction of the story, a complete breakdown on Daniel’s part and a move with his family to the UK to convalesce. It took Daniel the better part of twelve years to recover properly and find work again. One could say, he was sensitive.

Now, like a prize-fighter who can’t see the diminishing audiences because of two bung eyes, Daniel felt the old thrill come upon him and with it the fantasies of grandeur. Age and maturity had done nothing to temper them save for his fresh willingness to share the glory with Frank, his only successful filmmaking friend.

Discussions deep into the night with John had found him a kindred spirit in the realm of political frustration. Did Daniel know people who blow the whistle rarely have any kind of support, even from their loving families? Yes, Daniel knew that. Did Daniel know large corporations could get a whistleblower fired if they threatened to withhold corporate sponsorship? Daniel had a suspicion. And did Daniel know that whistleblowers sometime took years to get over the trauma of their experience? Shit yeah !

They’d agreed, re-agreed and agreed again over countless bottles of red wine to do something about it. Form a society, make a film, write a book or create a march. The possibilities and enthusiasm were endless, not to mention the alcohol. Finally they settled on John wanting to form a society and Daniel wanting to make a film. They’d last left their discussion at this stalemate.

Now, today Daniel saw the chance to do both. And it could all happen tonight at the Leichhardt Philosophy cafe.