A hard man has lost his way.
A beautiful woman and a worthy enemy will take him beyond himself.
A Detective Discovers the Greatest Mystery is in His own Head
A novel about discovering a Tantric Warrior
2.
The Tantric Warrior
By
Christopher Michaels
81998
>Every wretched man is cradled into verse by a wrong
He learns in his suffering what he sings in his song=
- Keats
3.
Dedication
For
My Family, Urbyn, Marian, Serge, Tess, Sue, Penny,
Christina, Kylie, Cynthia, Blair and Tony
4.
One.
THE WARRIOR=S ATTITUDE
The first hit came from behind. Instinct and training allowed me to flow with the impact so
there was little impression. I used the energy from the punch to turn and drive my elbow into
the attacker, winding him. His upper body dropped down protectively. His face met my knee.
The completion of the exchange was clear as he fell heavily to the floor.
I turned warily not knowing the dangers in this obviously unfriendly crowd. I stepped aside
from another punch and kicked backwards. His knee broke. In a crowd like this I had to
neutralize attackers quickly and hope I wouldn=t have to kill anyone. I began weaving,
turning in the eight classic directions to keep my awareness open. I turned, dodging passed a
kick from a steel-tipped boot, fashionably scuffed. My elbow found the pierced nose of a
sneering patterned shaved head. He fell flat on his back.
I kept turning and stepped away from a charging fat feral child the size of a small tank with a
tattoo on his shaven head. I wondered at the art in his ugliness. I left a foot in place to trip
him. I grabbed the chain which connected his nose-ring to an earring, both rings tore flesh as
he fell. I turned away from another kicking attack. The momentum of the turn helped me kick
his supporting leg out from under him. He fell flat on his arse. I kicked him in the head to
make sure he didn=t have another go.
`Why did I come to this place?' Crossed my mind as I step dodged away from a roundhouse
punch, very sloppy. These guys lacked grace and consciousness. I grabbed his arm and
5.
stepped, while twisting his wrist and pulling. He stumbled off balance into two other guys
trying to grab me. I let go at the right moment so that they all went tumbling into the crowd. I
think that group called it dancing.
`How many of these guys were there? Or was this just another Saturday night's fun for them?'
I wondered as I ducked a hit from behind and did an underarm back ball grab, squeezed and
pulled, then, releasing, I stepped behind him so that he became my shield against a guy
coming from the front. I grabbed the Mohawk of my shield and smashed his head into the
nose of my frontal assault. They both went down.
I felt like I was part of a fantasy, synchronicity my ally. It was fighting with the sensitivity of
legend, no need for eyes to know what was happening. It was as smooth as the choreographed
dance fights you see in Chinese martial arts movies, except there was a lack of the flowery
kicks for display or big punches. I kept away from killing strokes. This type of dance was
more intimate and, with the effect of the adrenaline flooding my system, it was more like a
slow dance rather than like rock and roll, break-dancing or ballet.
A guy grabbed me around the neck from behind and pulled. I didn't resist. I pushed
backwards helping him with his pulling motion. He stumbled and fell I went with him. I
pushed extra hard just as I lost footing, accelerating the fall so I landed hard on his torso. The
back of my head connected with his nose. I rolled backwards over my shoulder and out of his
now loosened grip, to a standing crouch, just as two guys came at me, one on each side. I
punched expansively, as I straightened to a tuck position leaving some doubt as to their
reproductive future. As I stood up, I clipped each of their chins with upper cuts. The full
6.
strength of my straightening legs behind the fists. They were not likely to be worrying about
their damaged sex for a while as they fell into unconsciousness.
I turned ready for someone else from my blind spot and found I was beside the fire escape I'd
used for my entrance. I exited.
Chaos was my constant companion, my enemy. I didn't feel comfortable without it. That
situation was another example of my instinctive courtship with it. There I was at the end of a
week's work, in a Hugo Boss suit, my usual natural style, gate crashing a party of feral hippy
punk crossbreeds playing ear bleeding moronic industrial noise (Sorry... they call it `Music').
Before I went out that night, I remembered appraising myself in the mirror. I thought my
nearly two-metre broad-shouldered frame with its brunette curls and high sculptured
cheekbones should've been a model in one of those men's magazines with initials for names.
Instead, there I was seeking adventure as a sleaze bag private dick living a Raymond
Chandler fantasy, about ready to do anything for a fast buck.
I was at that party looking for a kid who didn=t want to be found, in the pay of parents who
couldn't tell love from blackmail and its power trips.
Here's the picture. A crying mother, an angry father, a thirteen-year-old woman-child with
eyes that hit you right in the balls and a ne' do wrong son who got in with the wrong crowd
(like the parents had no part in it), shaved his head, got a tattoo and found drug nirvana, then
disappeared. All so cliche, why couldn't the mother be angry and daddy do the crying. Still
they had the bucks and I had the time and expertise.
7.
The parents were a typical couple living the original all-American middle class movie
lifestyle - working class heroes made good. The mother, Emma, might have been attractive if
her doe eyed gentleness hadn't wreaked of dumb defeat in the face of life's complexities. She
was a comfortable fifteen to twenty kilos overweight. She wore make-up that did not flatter
her face and a floral dress that accentuated everything wrong with her figure. I had the feeling
she would've been a compliant and uninventive fuck. The only admirable talent I felt she
had, was loyalty. Even that resulted from her feelings of powerlessness.
The father, Charlie, was a ruddy faced drunk, though on his best behaviour when we met. He
smelt of sweat, old beer and sour tobacco smoke. The Brut cover up only served to turn my
distaste for him into nausea. He wore a keg where his belly should've been. His clean jacket,
pants, shirt and tie sat on him like a drag queen's dress on an old footballer. Charlie only
seemed to want his son home so he could `pound the living daylights out of the little bastard'.
He was a self-made salesman of the old school, made a reasonable fortune by ripping people
off for the quick high pressure sale and short term profit because there was a `sucker born
every minute.'
The daughter, Joanne, was pure jail-bait. She had a beautiful heart-shaped face with that
combination of intelligent knowing and undress-you-down-to-the-bone eyes that causes
activity in my nether regions just thinking about her. She was wearing two singlets and black
torn jeans and the desperation of a girl that did not want to repeat her mother's mistakes, but
probably would.
8.
The son, Martin, looked like your average sixteen year old, in the pictures his parents showed
me, but then that's what pictures taken by parents are supposed show. The mummy=s boy
colour coordination, pulled faces, clowning with cousins, playing with the dog and the garden
hose on a summer's day. Then came the more recent photos a morose teen in the background,
torn jeans, tee shirt and earrings. The smiling parent pleasing had disappeared.
I figured the kid was growing up, finding the rebellious will needed to rip Mummy's claws
out of his heart and update Daddy's barbarous machismo. Enlightened parents would be
pleased: their little boy was expressing the inner world of their family dynamic.
But enlightenment is so rare.
His teachers had said he was above average at school but he had a strong need for attention.
One of his pre-rebellion friends gave me the real story. After he got fairly high marks at the
end of junior high, he was talked into staying at school. He'd arranged an apprenticeship as a
carpenter without consulting anyone in his family or at school. I liked his initiative.
According to this friend Martin's parents and teachers did a real job on him, using every dirty
trick in the book to get him to fulfil the family ambition: to have him in a university. There
was the teary-eyed blackmail of the mother; the huff, puff and clouts of the father; the
flattering `it's a shame to waste such a fine mind' of one or two teachers; and then finally the
quiet talk from the sister. Of course he wimped out. Martin probably didn't know what hit
him. It was weird. The drunken fathers in these situations usually force the kid out of school,
not in to it.
9.
I guess the Martin-box they built for him got too small for the growth hormones stretching
his self-definition.
As you might expect his most recent tribe of accomplices, who called him `Tigga', were filled
of spit and fire and decidedly unhelpful. They all wore the initiation scars of their primal
escape from civilised childhood, tattoos and earrings into any loose flaps of skin, clothes
stolen from the peasants never referred in the Arthur legend, symbols of their self-righteous
Holy war against the sanctity of their parents= dead passions.
So here I was out of breath outside their sacred celebration. I guess I should have expected to
be attacked for the sacrilege of crashing their party. I represented the enemy. I, dressed in the
armour of society's nobility, a suit, had walked like a conquistador into their pagan world. My
back was soaking with sweat. I hate sweating. They were lucky I didn't cripple anyone. My
senses were aglow, my heart pounded, waves of adrenaline gave an almost erotic aliveness to
my movements.
I looked around. I was in a lane at the back of the warehouse, the scene of the ritual. `Rave' is
the official term, I think. This alley gave new meaning to the word litter. It was everywhere. I
contemplated the bush fire a casually dropped cigarette could start but then remembered the
trouble I'd gone through to stop smoking. I thought I'd better change that line of thought
before the spirit of the Marlborough man got too strong a hold on me again. Even a Camel
might have been nice at that point.
10.
I decided breathing was a better idea, so I did. But that turned out to be an assault on my
person much worse then the physical conflict just completed inside. Urine, shit, pollution,
rotting animals, rotting vegetables, and probably even rotting minerals combined in a vintage
of extraordinary power and depth. It was as if someone was trying to cauterise my senses.
My martial arts teacher, Hui Leng's, words came back to me about calmness and awareness:
`Equanimity. You must be able to accept all inputs, pain and pleasure, equally with
equanimity.'
He had a thing about that word - Equanimity. It was as if he had searched English for the one
word that communicated a particular idea (state of consciousness and way of achieving it)
and having found it, he'd hogtied it to his vocabulary. I don't even know if he was using it the
right way. For us students it became an instrument of torture, a verbal Chinese-water torture.
That symphony of smells only confirmed my feelings that there were a few experiences that I
just never wanted to become neutral or balanced about. I wanted to argue the point with him,
but I knew if I ever saw him again it would not come to light. His way of twisting my
arguments in on me mirrored the way he overpowered me in sparring sessions.
A couple of other sayings of his came back to me: `Beware of narrowness of vision, this is
the great enemy of wisdom and peace.= After a fight like that I appreciated this advice and
paid him homage.
The other piece of his wisdom was less palatable: `Be grateful for the situations and people
who come to you for the opportunities they offer.' I wasn't feeling particularly grateful to
11.
these Mad Max rejects for teaching me that hours built into years of painful martial training
had worked. There were times when I wondered if Mr Hui wasn't some kind of masochistic
Christian in disguise. He=d say `You are never free of an enemy until you have forgiven
them.'
This kind of stuff worried me. I had come to him to escape that kind of bullshit from my
parents' hypocrisy. Since leaving them, maturity had left me few I could trust, he had been
one of them. When it came to sayings I didn't like, I usually gave him the benefit of the
doubt. Either I tried to ignore it or assumed I would understand one day. In the case of
breathing I'd had enough experience of its power already, to want to press on regardless of
the suffocation the smells threatened me with.
The warehouse was essentially a tin shed built on a concrete base. The kind of place built
early this century specifically to strengthen the workers' desire for class war. It had the
specialised ability to magnify seasonal temperatures. Thirty degrees Celsius outside in the
summer becoming forty-five degrees inside, whilst ten degrees in the winter becoming minus
five. The music was still deafening, even outside.
There was no way of telling the original colour of the concrete or the tin. Graffiti had been
pissed all over the walls to mark the local territorial guardians. I walked along the alley
reading some of the graffiti.
"Death to pigs"
12.
"Get out Chinks"
"Jane loves Buzz"
And various stylized signatures. The cliches created a deep literary yawn and the calligraphy
was ala subway New York circa nineteen-eighty-something. New limits in bad taste colour
combinations gave the impression of old vomit. As I got to the front of the warehouse, a
vague fantasy came true. I noticed the signature of a ATigga@. There had to be other people
in a city this size who thought the name of a stuffed tiger was a cute way of showing how
tough he was. But since I had followed my target Tigga's accomplices to this Rave, there was
a good chance it was his signature.
I went to my car, well... my surveillance mobile. I know you thought anyone dumb enough
to walk into a gathering of the tribes dressed as a French stockbroker would probably have
driven a Miami Vice convertible to the gig. I happen to appreciate the irony of Vogue for
Men stepping out of a rust decorated '67 Valiant. The truth is the convertible is just out of
my credit rating's reach right now.
It was an isolated industrial area, dark, dirty, even dank, one of those human creations fit only
for cockroaches and rats but not for the unwashed masses who had to work there. The tribes
of anger dancing their rite of freedom in the midst of its depression threw up the only colour
in the area. Even their intoxicated escapism, the colours of blood and vomit, were better than
the grey death by powerlessness the place represented.
13.
Reality is a tough deal. The deal for a private dick means pissing in bottles, so you don't
chance losing your mark while at the toilet. I was lucky this time, I only spent two hours
questioning the meaning of existence. I got as far as deciding for the fiftieth time that Robert
Deniro should play me when I finally became a movie character. It was hard to choose
between William Hurt and him. But Bill lacks the masculine magnetism needed to be me.
As expected the cops did not turn up to investigate my little invasion. At least I won't get
sued again for assault. I watched a rev-head imported Trans-Am pull up out the front, it was
cliche red with the necessary airbrushed flames along the sides and a Conan-busted,
jewellery-garbed warrior woman painted on the bonnet. The two guys inside had beautifully
coifed chest hair, Revlon dry-look long hair, circa '75 disco Diego. Of course they had the
appropriate gold chains and weight lifter's bulges, it was like the world had stood still for the
last twenty-odd years. My binoculars told me these guys= eyes and skin had not stopped
aging, they looked every bit of their more than forty years. These guys looked destined to
leave truly ugly old corpses.
Amazingly, they were accorded honours by the guardians at the threshold to the rite, but they
refused the invite into the sacred ground. It was easy to estimate the purpose of their visit. A
ritual exchange was about to take place, symbols for social value: money, were to be
exchanged for power tools for opening the doors of perception and lubricating the social and
cultural exchanges of the tribe: drugs.
I didn=t get to watch the exchange. Momentary forgetfulness of Mr Hui's lessons on
broadness of awareness meant I missed the arrival of outriders for the tribe who were
14.
fashionably late. It's fascinating what ten pairs of Doc Martin=s can do to 1967's definition
of automotive pleasure in its old age. I drove off leaving a few inches of rubber in my wake.
The night had not been a total waste. I had a collection of licence plates to research, and the
beginnings of a feeling for this tribe=s hierarchy. There was also the lesson that I had best
improve my disguises if I was to meld with the background enough to get a handle on this
crowd. I hate the silly dressing up games that occasionally come with the territory in these
adventures.
So, it was homeward bound.
Waiting, hungry for the information from the night's adventures was the silicon intelligence
that was an essential tool for my own methodical mind and an unthreatening companion for
my momentary spurts of social retardation. I broke into the motor registry database to get the
lowdown on the tribe's transport. Once I had the licence plates entered, I cross referenced
with the cars= descriptions from the night. This tribe was definitely short of respect for the
nervous system of our great civilization. Half the cars' official descriptions did not match the
observed realities.
I took the registered owners of the cars whose numbers and descriptions matched and tried
the police computer system. You would expect civilization's immune system to apply more
intelligence to their paranoia. After all without paranoia we wouldn't need them. But the
police system was easier to get into than the Motor Registry. Civilized paranoia is based on
the desire for security and security does not like change much. Although true security comes
15.
from responsiveness to change, that kind of thinking is too enlightened for the police force.
They are not very enlightened about their use of our fast developing silica slaves.
The resultant list was a fascinating review of white bread, clean, middle class, peace-loving
citizenry mixed with just a half a dozen nomadic youths, male and female, who lived up to
the mythic expectations needed to maintain the police force's salary. Break and enter,
muggings, prostitution, disturbing the peace, assault, and of course possession and sale of
illegal substances, various - the usual statements of rebellion from the victims at the edge of
civilization.
It was a start.
For now, however, I was hungry. It was too late for healthy digestion so I drank a litre of
water, took a shower and crashed into bed. The phone woke me at the ungodly hour of nine
the next morning. Are there no civilised people in the world?
"What have you got for me?" It was Charlie, no greeting or identification - just a challenge.
"I may have found the gang he is hanging with."
"Hanging with?"
"Joined."
16.
"So?"
"Well....."
I gave him an attractive sketch of the previous night's adventures, sans the drugs and
violence. I decided he did not need the fight scene. He might begin to admire me. If such a
man began to admire me, I would have been sick. If I shared my suspicions about the
seventies= rebates, he might call off the job. If his suspicions about drugs were confirmed,
he might desert his son.
"What next?"
"I will check the cars' license plates with the motor registry then cross check with a friend of
mine in the police.... "
I wasn't going to make him an accomplice to my genius or my crime by telling him what I'd
already done with the computer.
"Then you'll go after them"
His voice dripped with the bloodthirsty glee that attested to his civilised naivete about
violence=s reality.
"Then I will see if I can find your son."
17.
Resenting his tone.
"When will you find him?"
The sub-text - when can I stop paying you?
"I still can't say. There were forty cars I took license numbers from. They will take some
tracing."
"Well... O.K., but don't forget I want an accounting of your time."
He had called every morning at this time since the beginning of the job. His "concern"
seemed closer to a stockbroker's concern about bond values than a father's. I had come across
stranger ways of expressing one's feelings. Every interaction had served to confirm my initial
impression of him.
I was getting back to an R.E.M. coma when the mother rang, on schedule. Her sobbing
concerned voice was a perfect counterpoint to the hard-nosed cynicism of her life partner. I
felt more comfortable with the overt struggle her man provoked than with the empathy she
sought after.
>Hello Mr. Tombs.=
18.
>Hello Emma= She insisted I call her by her first name but insisted on defacing herself by
calling me Mr Tombs.
>How is the search going?=
>I have found some of the friends he's been hanging around with.=
>Do you think it will take much longer?=
>Probably not... last night I was at a party that was organised by this gang.=
>G-gang.....=
>Yes I'm afraid your son has found himself some unsavoury characters to support his
rebellion.=
>W-What sort of characters?=
>They are skinheads, punks... criminal types.....=
>Criminals...=
>Well... of course, that doesn't mean he's a criminal, he might be just... well... you know...
um adventuring or hero worshipping or something....=
19.
Poor dear, she was behaving like a naive old woman who'd been in a nunnery or something
for the last thirty years. >Oh no... what did I do wrong?=
Oh God, I thought to myself, here we go. I didn't think I could stand it. The self-pity was
beginning to feel like a cloud of rancid muddy cooking oil that was going to drown me for
just listening to her.
>You=re going to have to sort out you and your husband's role in your son's life yourselves.=
I was not trained to be a therapist, nor did I ever imagine becoming one. I just wanted to
escape the virus of her pain before I caught it. I have always prided myself on running too
fast to be caught by other people's pain.
>Oh, Oh, Sorry Mr Tombs! I um well....= I couldn't believe it, this kind of woman gets you
into her maze, no matter what you say or do she's got you. Now it was guilt, the sharpest tool
in the emotional blackmailer's arsenal.
>It's all right, Emma, I'm a little busy now. Is there anything else you would like to know?=
>No, not really...= She was letting us both off the hook.
This kind of exchange made me want to go and take a whore just to get even. I guess that's
unfair, both to the whores and to dear little Em... Not to mention being politically incorrect.
She hasn't the intelligence or the self-awareness, any more (giving her the benefit of the
20.
doubt), to realise the prison she creates for herself and tries to build for others. The only
positive thing Emma Colthatcher=s model of passive womanhood may do, is get her spunky
daughter so angry that she'll become a serious feminist with the potential to grow into a
complete human being.
There was no chance of any more sleep. So I had another shower. I might have been
imagining it but the various smells from last night, especially the smoke, still infected my
senses. I would have to dry-clean my suit before I wore it again. I took my first round of
vitamins for the day and had a plate of oat and millet porridge followed by miso soup for
breakfast. I cooked the foul tasting Chinese herbal tea mix which theoretically was supposed
to help me recover from the excesses of my youth and ancestry while supporting my
metabolism in the face of my current life style. I swear the Chinese with their arsenal of
teas, needles, suction cups, electric shock and various other medical tortures still believe that
punishing someone for being sick helps them avoid it next time.
I pulled the police list I had made last night to see if anyone stood out as a priority for my
attention.
He was there. He looked like the logical leader for a gang in a story like this. He had several
charges for violent assault, some drug charges and had ten years on the others. Matt Lang aka
>Dragon= had a history not unlike Charles Manson's. Why do these guys always have such
pretentiously macho nicknames? A childhood in social tumours, institutions euphemistically
called homes. These places were designed to isolate those poor unfortunates who had the
uncivilised luck to be born into families which did not fit the social norms set by the middle
21.
classes last century. Of his nearly thirty years alive, twenty-two had been spent in these
colleges of crime. His description included a collection of Japanese dragon tattoos, thus the
nickname.
His history included his IQ, below average. A guy like this was not likely to rate highly with
a yardstick designed for the authorities to sort the wheat from the chaff. His culture
precluded him from taking these kinds of tests seriously or for that matter understanding the
nature of them. It was like asking a Kalahari bushman to relate to a movie. All he sees is
changing light on canvas rather than three dimensions represented in two. This guy may see
words, pictures and lines making sentences and symbols with no meaning or relevance to his
world - another box to keep him in his appointed place in the universe.
He was one of the many broken souls our immature world keeps on the discard pile to
support its paranoid theories about the fundamental sinfulness of humanity. He could be just
a tool in other people's cruel fantasies. Yet his anger would make him thoroughly sure that he
was living his own dream. Files and numbers told me nothing about the worthiness of this
potential opponent in a battle for influence over the raw rage of a boy seeking manhood's
inner secrets. Experience was, is ultimately my only teacher. A meeting with this Matt Lang
was the first priority.
I dressed in an Italian leather bomber jacket, with a white T-shirt and faded jeans with
designer tears and patches. I made a thermos of the Chinese herbal tea, put together two 2
litre bottles of purified water, and two meals - one of steamed brown rice and vegies with one
of my special high protein miso and tofu sauces; the other was honey and lemon wok-fried
22.
brown rice with a bean meatloaf. No spicing. I'm the only macrobiotic detective on record.
You try sitting in a car for twelve hours remaining alert while your body tries to digest a cold
big Mac or day old KFC chicken pieces. Or try to stay calm with eleven secret herbs and
spices and gods know what preservatives, sugars and other poisons pushing your metabolism
up, down, this way and that.
The previous night's drumming had not affected the smooth purr of my chariot's finely tuned
horses. I dropped last night's suit to the cleaners then found Matt's living quarters with
relative ease. It was the corner of Campbell and Liverpool Streets in Darlinghurst. I knew
the area. It was a post-industrial slum bordered by the bowels of Sydney, Kings Cross to the
north, the downtown City area to the west, the Gay paradise of Oxford Street to the South and
the middle-class' most successful swamp renovation projects - Paddington - to the east. This
area was a sacred site of unrefined urban decay. Here the Beautiful Cities Project had not yet
hidden the poverty essential to the comfortable bureaucratic hierarchies that are city living.
The building was decorated with a multilayered skin of ritual rock and roll messages (posters)
from some future archaeologist's dream. The light patterns apparent through the windows of
the fourth floor suggested that parts of the roof were open to nature. The building had been a
smallish factory built in the 1920's. It=s brick viscera were standing fast against the ignorance
of a generation lost in the land of the lotus eaters. Its front took up a quarter of the block on
Campbell Street and the wall on Liverpool Street ended at a lane half way along that side of
the block.
23.
Six Victorian built two-storey terrace houses filled in Campbell Street to the next lane. These
lanes had once provided access to the outside toilets for the removal of human wastes prior to
underground sewerage systems. Now they provided shelter to overcoats filled by the
discarded prophets of the gods of chaos' destructive intoxication, old men who drank metho,
spoke random words and slept in their own excrement. Most of the windows on the block
were boarded up with blades of broken glass, the tenuous remnants of better days.
If people lived in any of these buildings, they were squatting. A squat, a derelict empty
building occupied by nomads following the laws of nature - no vacuums allowed. I
wondered how they coped with rain and cold, tribal living in our civilized jungle has the
same prices as in any other jungle. Squatters, a time-worn tradition from the pioneers of
Australia's history. They were renowned for conquering the fierce forces of nature to fulfil
their destiny as landed genteel power brokers, with little understanding for swaggies or other
nomadic reminders of their vulnerabilities.
These post-modern squatters fought the fierce forces of five thousand years of dehumanizing
hierarchy and boring accomplishment. They frisked their uniqueness for new experiences,
only to follow the footsteps of imperialist mystics from the third world who are seeking
revenge by captivating their souls with the opiates for the masses, both chemical and cultural.
They fantasized about the coming of the end of the world and the spiritual rebirth of a utopia
ruled by peace, love and rock & roll. Without recognizing what they really wanted was to be
at the top pecking order, instead of being its bottom-dwellers.
24.
I settled in for the wait. It was 11 a.m., daylight savings time, and the day was building a
momentum of increasing temperature which was going to make sitting in the car very
uncomfortable. I hate the sweat unavoidable on days like that. Sweating is our great
reminder of our greasy animal past. Sitting in a car with sweating as the only activity, one
begins to feel like one is melting down. The outer veneer of mother nature's evolutionary
triumph showers down your back, your intelligence drips away from your forehead down the
ridge of your nose. Every movement reminds you of the swamp your body is becoming. The
remnants of our hairy past become a breeding ground for greedy microbes which I can feel
eating away at my life force.
I maybe an adventurer lacking the resources for the cool dude wheels of the fantasy private or
public dick on T.V. but I can afford air-conditioning. Sitting for the long hours of these
stakeouts is part of my training. What Mr Hui calls `inner work'. There are breathing
exercises, visualizations, micro-muscle isolations and occasionally even chanting. I don't
have a lot of patience for the breathing exercises. Ten minutes or less and I'm off into movie
land. I'm Bobby Deniro or Steven Segal beating some bad guys to a pulp with a few very
slick moves executed with the grace of a Russian ballet dancer and the power of
Swarzenegger. I asked Mr. Hui about this lack of focus.
He asked: "Do you see yourself doing the movements from your own point of view?"
"Mostly "
"Do you see the effect of the techniques on your opponents?"
25.
"Oh yeah, I like to see the bones breaking."
"Do you feel your body temperature rise while you=re having these day dreams?"
"Yeah, how did you know? Weird isn't it?"
"No.... Are the movements from the Hua [forms] I teach you or are they from great Master
Blackblack?" He never used the Austrian star=s German name, just the translation. He
thought it was all part of the great master joke. He did love the movies, however.
"Usually yours, sometimes it=s the Karate I used to do, sometimes its some great move I saw
on the box or at the movies or in a fight I saw somewhere..."
"Do you ever try to correct mistakes you made in your own fights?"
"Yea"
"ah......"
"Well?"
"Its fine......"
"What d'you mean `it's fine'? ... That's all you're going to say?"
26.
He was always aggravatingly efficient when answering my questions. His rationale was the
answer to any question is found within the asking. So he gave either no answer or the
minimum he could get away with, leaving me to sort out the meanings. On the other hand he
was aggravatingly inefficient, ineffective, verbose, patronizing and wasteful when he had
something he wanted to tell me uninvited. I'm not sure what his rationale was for this, but
maybe it's explained by one of his favourite obsessions - experience is the best teacher and by
extension talk is cheap. He seemed unwilling to accept that listening, and talking, were
experiences and important to growth too.
I killed the first hour contemplating breaking several well-known movie heroes' limbs in a
variety of wonderfully staged martial scenarios. I momentarily touched the fifth state of
consciousness, that is, every sense working harmoniously to turn an imagined experience into
a nearly real experience. In other words I momentarily smelt the fear of Chuck Norris as he
realised he was facing the infamous Sebastian Tombs. I thought it would be funny to watch
the faces of the peacenik seminar devotees I learnt this technique with if I told them how I
used it. It'd be like watching a bunch of kids meeting the knife-fingered Freddie from
Nightmare on Elm Street in person for the first time.
There was very little activity in the street and no activity around the doorways to the factory
or its neighbours. I'd parked my car near a corner opposite the building close enough to it see
to the whole block without being immediately obvious. I had begun to doubt that any of the
buildings on the block were occupied. It was time to investigate.
27.
I decided to check the lanes for alternative entries to the factory. It turned out that the
backyards of the terrace houses and the factory were united into a politically correct
community garden. There was a two and half metre galvanized iron defence against urban
decay surrounding it. The gate was an industrial pipe frame with a wire lattice supporting a
jigsaw of uncomfortably fitted sheets of scrap wood, fibro, metal and plastic. It gave the
impression of an entrance to a country junkyard with a secret.
Through a crack in the gate I could see that the walls were flourescent murals. It was
post-modern kitsch which angrily sought purification by reaching out to the noble savage and
the golden child for a new myth to free civilization. It was a New York subway married to a
schizophrenic's psychic fracture zone. The back fence was over-grown with a jungle of deep
green vines. The vines covered a pile of rubble that must have been cleaned out of the
derelict buildings to make room for the invasion. There were old doors, long boards and
rotting fake fibrous building materials stacked up against an outside toilet.
Most of the backyard was covered with concrete. In some banana chairs facing the back of
the building was two women and a man unfashionably lying in the sun cultivating
skin-cancer and proving their liberated nature with a complete absence of clothes. The guy
had dread-locks down to the middle of his back with ingrown coloured beads and shaved
sections starting from the temples and fading just behind the ears. The little hair he had on
the rest of his body was tinged blonde from too much exposure to the sun. He was tall,
uncircumcised, evenly tanned and wiry with the well-defined muscles of an athlete. He was
between twenty-five and thirty. His movements told me he was an experienced martial artist.
Probably one of the Japanese or Korean styles - straight-line movements, the elbows and
knees extended beyond the safety threshold, pointing with all fingers flexed into an
28.
unconscious knife strike. The evenness of the development in the muscles suggested Karate,
Kempo or Hapkido rather than Taekwondo which focuses on kicking strategies. He wore a
fashionable but decide unmasculine pink dog collar. I had the sense he was a fanatic, and
therefore dangerous.
One of the women had very short hair, about a centimetre long and too black for nature. She
had astrological runes shaved into it. She had a well-tanned small childlike frame with rather
small and beautiful breasts, just the right size for modelling a champagne glass. To prove her
closeness to our animal origins she had the politically correct hairy armpits, legs and crutch.
The length and area of coverage suggested she had once been a civilized woman who had
shaved these jungles but obviously now had reached a more enlightened stage of life. She
had a line of earrings going up each ear, a small stud in her right nostril and a sleeper through
her left eyebrow. She epitomized the fashionable post-modern primitive.
The other woman was more voluptuous, very much my style. She had no excess of fat. Her
mesomorphs= bone structure would never allow her to be thought of as skinny. Her skin was
pre-tanned olive, and she should not have been lying in the sun. She was an apparently
natural brunette. Strangely, considering the setting, the only apparent statement of rebellion
was a dog collar with very large dangerous studs on it. It might have cut your throat if you
had tried to kiss her. Her hair had a conservative styling suitable for business. I thought she
might have been a slumming office worker or something. She even had the shaved armpits
and legs. But then she changed her lying position. She had two full colour Chinese dragons
tattooed on her lower abdomen. They were facing down; their gaping mouths with sensuous
forked tongues, and outreaching fierce front claws were diving towards her cleanly shaven
vagina. They were angled to follow the diagonal crease that defined the connection between
29.
her hips and her thighs. She had a nipple-ring in her right breast. I shuddered as my rose
coloured glasses of erotic fantasy were shattered by a painfully gothic fantasy of a dimly lit
tattoo salon with a long-haired demon biker drooling as he graffitied the goddess of love with
grease blackened hands. The tattoos had the bright freshness of new acquisitions.
The three of them were talking to someone in the shadows just out of my line of sight. Just
as I glimpsed the woman they were talking to someone tapped me on the shoulder and a
man's voice said:
"What do you think youuu...."
I hate people sneaking up on me. By reflex I hit the man and ran. I had hit him hard so he
would not be able to follow me. I also hit him with a blind technique, that is, I hit without
looking at him, so he didn=t see my face. I took a quick glance at his profile as he lay on the
ground. I ran down the lane a way from my car. I turned every corner I came to in case I was
followed by someone from the community.
I stopped when I reached Oxford Street. While I was running, I was careful to keep my
breathing even and deep so when I stopped I was not breathless. It was only about a
kilometre including all the corners, I would have been very disappointed in myself if, at my
level of fitness, I had lost my breath. By the time I stopped I was pretty sure I had just
knocked out Tigga/Martin, my target. I would have to double check because he wasn't bald
in any of the photos I had.
30.
The girl in the shadows was pure Gothic. She was dressed in a long sleeved fine lace black
dress which covered her to her ankles. In a complete reversal of her apparently liberated
companions all, but her neck and face were protected from nature, she even wore black lace
mittens matching her dress. Her face and neck were covered with the prerequisite dead white
pan cake make-up with a fine line of kohl around her eyes. She had no eyebrows and her hair
was dyed jet black. She looked like Morticia Addams on a bad day or a good day depending
on whose standard you used. The obviousness of her contrived control exposed the way the
rest of us who try to hide behind a casual unselfconscious coolness. Her control challenged
me. I found the desire to infiltrate it extremely erotic.
A question was becoming clear to me. Why were such diverse members of the nations of the
lunatic fringe associating with each other? I decided to go sit in a coffee shop while the stir I
had created settled and consider the implications of this question. Last night it was a tribe
skinheads with their industrial speed metal punk noise. This morning it was feral grime
mixing with Gothic depressives.
This is a mystery story and cliches run rife in these kinds of adventures. The chances are they
had been brought together by the various chemical joys which are their only common
denominators. That was the only thing my limited imagination could come up with.
This story was going too smoothly only a week and I=d already caught sight of my target.
Teenagers are usually much more effective at disappearing. His grief with his family can't
have been too intense, so he was not concerned about being found? Or, maybe he was so
convinced of their disinterest, and he was sure they wouldn=t come after him? Most of these
31.
kids are the mutilated results of long traditions of psychotic throwbacks. Their psychosis is
the result of possession by demons who see the vulnerable as sacrifices to their insatiable
appetite for human fear. Rage was their sacred tool of worship.
The shop was close to Taylor Square, an irregularly shaped patch of dead grass struggling for
notice against two modern geometric monstrosities in artistically bright colours, too much
foot traffic and some of the previously mentioned overcoats using it for as a bed. The grass
reminded me of nature's potential in the face of the human herd. It was a meeting place of the
guerillas for hedonism. This area was an outer suburb of the Cross and like any suburb it was
less flashy but more dangerous.
The coffee shop was on the main drag, Oxford Street, the hub of that flower of capitalism: the
gay community. Here were the most stylish and creative men's clothing stores and the
sleaziest self-punishment dance clubs. In between were some of the most intense experiments
in the understanding of the anima or animus society has tried. The coffee shop was relatively
nondescript. It had patterned red velvet wallpaper, and pretentious French names for toasted
tomato, cheese, bacon open-sandwiches and a hot chocolate. The former is out of bounds for
me now but on colder days the latter serves as reminder of my once rampant coffee addiction.
Today I had my hot day sin, an iced chocolate with all the glorious trimmings, whipped
cream, ice-cream and double chocolate sauce.
After half an hour I decided to head back to the car. My gun was in it and I didn't like
leaving it alone too long. On my way back I took the chance of going through the lanes at the
back of the `community'. As I turned the corner to go past the gate, I found my chariot had
not been lonely.
32.
The smaller woman with the astro hairdo wore a long black T-shirt with Asex = power@ in
tie-dyed letters. I wondered if she had anything on under it until she transferred her weight
from one foot to the other and I glimpsed a couple of strands of hair below the bottom edge.
The dread-man was wearing loose, weight-lifter's pants and standing with a foot on one of
my chariot's now flat front tyres. The passenger-side door on his side was open behind him.
He was leaning his upper body weight on his elbows which were crossed on his knee. He
moved to stand as I came towards them. The woman with the tatts was wearing white shorts
which came up to her high waist and just covered the Dragons. She wore a black lace bra that
in a pre-Madonna era would have been covered but now covered nothing.
Lying on the roof of my wheels was Tigga. His bald head had the purple outline of a dragon
freshly tattooed within what would have been his hair line. I hadn't noticed it in our earlier
encounter. His upper body was raised supported on his left elbow. My gun was in his other
hand. He was tracing graceful lines in the air. He seemed to be getting used to the weight and
at the same time he was clearly exploring various Dirty Harry fantasies to see how they sat on
a real gun.
As I said, it was hot. I had left my coat in the car and the gun in the glove box. I guess I'll
have to figure out a way of hiding it on me even in that kind of weather. I usually carry it in
an adjustable holster that centres it in the small of my back so it doesn=t upset my balance. I
could carry it in an ankle holster but that would really mess up my back after a while.
I decided to take a leaf out of James Bond's book of >Heroic Ways to Deal With Being Shit
Scared=: I'd be cool and witty. And yes we hero types get shit scared, especially when
33.
confronted with a sixteen-year-old pissed off with the world and holding the revolutionary's
favourite organ of retribution. Even with the first chamber empty that only gave me a few
seconds advantage. I didn=t like the odds, but to keep things interesting it was probably
going to get worse.
>Aren=t doing the tyres a bit childish?=
Well not so witty but at least it was cool. I decided not to honour Tigga with any sign of my
distrust of his skills by making him the focus of my intention. Especially considering the
painful pre-bruise contusion on is cheek where I'd hit him could have made for an overly
emotional reaction on his part. So I kept my focus on the Dread man. I thought I=d I try the
patronising approach to provoke him.
"So what's your name, kid?" I was looking at him.
"What's it t'ya?" Weird how these dwellers at the fringe hate America, and yet they are
subconsciously submerged in its loser rebel stereotypes and language.
"I like to know the names of kids I spank."
"Ohoohoho, now we'll see if this `kid' is the superman, he keeps telling us he is." That was
the brunette with the dragons. Her voice was liquid with erotic challenge. This was not a
New Age peacenik feminist, fearful of machismo primitif and the physicality of its
communication styles.
34.
"A man doesn't tell anyone he's a man because he doesn't need to, either they know it or he
could give a shit." My answer was as thick with condescension as I could manage.
He walked out from the car a couple of steps and relaxed into a boxing stance but with left
hand down at the level of his navel and his right level with his throat. Weight forward onto
the balls of his feet. Eyes focussed on a point a couple feet in front of me so he could take in
my movements as whole rather than get caught into a narrow upper body focus. He made me
come to him. So my earlier thought was right, he was an experience fighter.
I had hoped he would make me do the walking. As I walked, I let my breath sink into my
lower abdomen and let all the muscles in my body relax. The natural anti-gravity mechanism
of the body came into play as the relaxing muscles stretched to their full length in the absence
of unnecessary tension. I began to feel taller and lighter. I focussed my attention on the space
between us, the connections, the relationships, his body to mine. I put myself into his shoes.
I wanted to see what he was seeing.
As I got close enough to look into his pale blues eyes I saw shafts of dirty green radiating out
from the pupil and what the iridologists calls nerve rings. He had used drugs and had the
usual civilized toxicities. I also saw my trick was working. He had seen me grow. The
magicians of the pre-Christian era called it a `Glamour'. In showbiz the word still signifies
the same essential trick: the ability to seem bigger than life. I could see in his eyes he wasn't
sure how to deal with it.
35.
He felt vulnerable. So, as per the requirements of the situation, as soon as I was within range
he hit out with his best shot, a turning kick to the head. A dangerous move, flowery, exciting
and well executed, but the danger was to him. Any high kick strains the back and the balance
even in a very flexible person, like him. I stepped under and past it to the car side and tapped
his supporting knee with my left foot just hard enough for him to fall on his arse,
embarrassed.
I dived into the car and tried to start it with the secret button in the lighter I had rigged just for
these kinds of fast getaways. The gothic siren was across the street near the gate with my
distributor cap. Tigga having recovered from my surprise move was leaning over the edge of
the car roof with the gun pointing through the window at my ear. I could probably have
taken it from him, but I decided it was time to let them take the lead in this dance and see
where it went.
The Brunette did the talking while giggling:
"Well that was very neat... Now I think we'll take a walk inside."
I got out on the driver's side, her side. I stood up beside her with my best Brando, the erotic
rebel, no defeat in my look.
"I guess I should search him." She said, with a look reminiscent of a cop rapist in a `B' grade
movie; who just pulled over the beautiful blonde lead for the first scene of gratuitous sex and
violence that would get the hero started on his martial rampage. She obviously did not search
36.
me. She revenged her sex by feeling me up until she got the appropriate bodily response then
she kneed me in the balls.
I'd like to say that my highly-trained reflexes had protected my generative paraphernalia.
There are techniques and I have trained them, sucking your balls back to the embryonic bone
cavity from which they came, but I was enjoying the replacement of the rose-coloured glasses
of eroticism her tattoos had abruptly displaced. Her hands had an energy which suggested
someone who took pride in her craft. So when the knee came I was wide open. I went down
like any other sucker-punched redneck. I had to admire the skill of both her trap and her
execution of the attack. I was in so much pain I was dry-reaching.
"You certainly are a man, aren't you. A hole in your head just as big your prick." She was
bending down to my ear and whispering. She bit it before standing upright. "Come on Lana,
lets help the poor old man inside."
The astro-woman took one arm while the dragon lady took the other. They started to help me
across the road and into the garden. I whispered:
"Would the guys mind locking my car?"
"Tigga, superman here wants to know if you'd mind locking his car?"
37.
The last person to cause me that kind of pain was my teacher, Mr. Hui. He was trying to teach
me some of the above techniques, and his sacred equanimity, of course. He said: `You must
keep your Chi alive.'
Then he grabbed my balls and dragged me around the room, telling me to pay attention to my
life. He dragged me to a chair and asked to describe it to him. Then he made me close my
eyes and describe every room in the house. He kept changing the pain so I would not go
numb. Sometimes, I can't believe what I've done, seeking spiritual strength.
This training allowed me to be conscious of my surroundings for the ten-minute eternity it
took for the pain to fade to the intensity of looking into the sun. The extremes of experience
have in common the narrowing of your focus of attention. So it was that one of Mr Hui's
favourite lessons was driven home in a graphic way, again, and by a woman whose touch I
can still disturb me.
It=s interesting that so many would-be messianic magicians push heavens which are based on
a blissfully narrow focus of consciousness: themselves usually. These `gurus' advertise
themselves as the escape from illusion. Yet by catering to their followers' childish need for
romantic figures of perfection, these so-called teachers feed on illusions - their own and their
followers' need for bliss, love and worship.
The narrowness of pain is, theoretically, an easy trap to avoid. Most sane people
unknowingly chase pain. This unknowingness masked in the avoidance of pain, causes a
narrowness too subtle for most people to cope with. Our society can=t seem to get its head
38.
around the idea that non-avoidance doesn=t mean chasing after it. And the dangers of bliss,
romance, pleasure, and the achievement of a deeply desired dream, the so-called positive end
of the experience spectrum, are beyond the understanding of the vast majority of people, even
intelligent ones. Except, if they=ve been confronted by addiction's insidious possession of
their will and soul.
When I could finally stretch out again, I was in small room with its floor covered in pillows
and a tie-dyed purple curtain as its door. It was tied to one side with a matching chord;
someone here had an eye for detail. There were cracks in the ceiling painted over. There were
clothe hangings on the walls with Arab writing, framing pictures of couples having sex. The
style was similar to pictures I'd seen illustrating a recently published copy of The Perfumed
Garden: the four hundred year old Arab sex manual. In one corner there was a flat river stone
with a candle burning on each side.
Outside the narrow hallway was blue-white and relatively newly painted, considering the
outer appearance of the buildings. I found out later the hall connected all the terraces to the
factory. Its floor was a clean white thick pile carpet. This was not cheap mismatched
synthetic off-cuts, this felt to my socked feet like the real-life harvest from the backs of
enslaved mutton. This sacred site for seeding the anarchistic revolution to rescue urban
humanity from itself was disappointingly bourgeois. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually
owned the building. Whoever `they' were?
Before my guides took me inside, they sat me down on a bench beside the back door of the
terrace closest to the factory and took off my boots before we went inside. Along the wall of
39.
the short entry hall I counted ten or eleven pairs of shoes. We passed through a room with a
black and white lino floor. It was large and in the position the lounge room might be expected
to be. I managed to glance up out of my pain to see a professionally outfitted kitchen with a
large wood workbench. All the usual high tech hardware for serving, slicing, dicing,
containment and decoration you would expect to find in a restaurant backroom. We took a
long narrow carpeted flight of stairs to the first floor, and the hall.
Through the doorway the entrance to another room with a matching curtain could be seen;
this curtain was down. Behind it I heard the sounds of shared intimacy of such intensity that
if they were real they were on the verge of being made illegal. Otherwise, they were up for
the Golden Turkey Awards for bad acting. There was the nauseatingly sweet smell of
incense. At least some of what I smelt were incenses: sandalwood and patchouli, the
traditional choices of the escapist elite for their journey to the east. The rest of the vintage
was the two illegal herbals, hashish and opium.
My guardians lazed on pillows. I followed their lead. The Dread man was sitting glaring at
me. I had the feeling he was not the forgiving type. He pulled out some dope and without
looking at his hands packed a water pipe, or should I say `bong'. Lana looked at me with
distaste and enmity. I wondered if she was Lesbian. Tigga still had the gun trained on me but
his mind was lustily attached to the in the sounds in the other room. His eyes went backwards
and forwards between the two women, like he was hoping one of them would pounce on him
and relieve his overloaded sperm bank.
40.
The brunette was looking at me like a lioness eyeing a freshly killed springbok trying to
decide which part to start the feast with. She moved her hand to her thigh in a way that made
me think she was going start masturbating. I couldn=t help but follow her hand. My face
must have communicated my thoughts because when she stopped at the soft white flesh of
her inner thigh. She giggled. I looked up and realised she had just scored another point in the
game she was playing.
With all the mind-body games I've played in search of invincibility I could still be
mind-fucked by an attractive woman, even in a setting like this, where her intentions were not
the friendliest. I felt like defending myself in the way I knew best. Brute strength over
powering her and fucking her like an animal (me being the animal, of course) but I knew that
would confirm her victory. I would be left feeling even more vulnerable. Giving in to
weakness like that could be the source of enslavement.
Most men are slaves to women. Most of us, men or women, do not know where the power
lies. Men pretentiously strut their worldly power, building cities, making war and conquering
nature in order to impress a woman, or to escape the impotence of their fathers. Most women
do not know how vulnerable we men are to the greatest power of all, a woman's ability to say
`no'. It can leave us feeling castrated or if we respond with a `yes' overpowering their >no=
we become rapists. Most men in their helplessness seem to forget they have the same power.
The sounds were building to a crescendo. Tigga had let the gun slip to the floor between his
legs thus allowing his arm to do the socially acceptable thing: to cover up his natural but
41.
embarrassing hard-on. Lana, the astro-lady, looked at him and said: `Don't cover it up, it's
beautiful'
She still had the look of someone who would chop the cock off if it came close to her
(Excuse the pun). But she went on: `Our society's so hung up, don't give into it.'
The boy did not seem to believe her. He was not moving his hand. My jockey shorts were
keeping my own responses to the sounds from becoming too obvious. She moved over to him
and in a relatively mechanical way gently ran her hand down the inside of his thigh and took
hold of his wrist. It was like a parody of the opening to a sex scene is a bad porno movie. She
lacked the intensity of desire which the brunette exuded. The brunette gave the impression of
an anorexic at a wedding feast.
Tigga matched the brunette as hunger personified. He gave the impression her look was
enough to make him come. He did not, of course. But he did groan when Lana moved
towards him and touched him. It was a teenage boy's dream come true: a pant-less woman
giving him a full view. The sounds in the room peaked with a scream that sounded like a
roller coaster thrill. She moved his hand and began to massage him through his knee length
shorts. He was shirtless. She moved her other hand to his nipples after licking her fingers.
The Gothic siren seemed upset by the scene. She didn't seem to pay into the free sex libertine
ideal Lana was trying to live. She looked around nervously. Her artificial deathly pallor got
tinges of embarrassed pink around the edges. She seemed unable to make up her mind, what
she thought about it all. The brunette was watching me. The Dread man was sucking on
42.
himself. Yes, that's right, he was a member of that cultural and physical minority who had the
right body proportions, flexibility and tastes do it, he was giving himself a blow job. I guest it
could be thought of as the ultimate self-sufficiency but outside any fantasy I=d ever had.
This seemed like the ideal moment to exit. But I still had not met Matt (the Dragon) and that
was the point of today's exercise. This scene was turning into a cut from the editing room
floor of a sixties free-love movie - >Wild In The Street= comes to life. I decided to invite my
ally, chaos, into the scene. It was all too interesting, exciting and comfortable to be left alone
to run its course. I had found the boy. Everything else was a distraction.
I'd been sitting on the pillow with my legs stretched out before me and my hands behind my
head to give the impression of expansive in-charge casualness. My balls still ached but I
managed to manufacture a disdainful look mixed with an appropriate amount of artificial
disinterest. Now I changed the recipe. I focussed my attention on the Lady Dragon. I thought
I would play her at her own game and see how she held up.
I used a technique akin to the Glamour I'd used with the Dread man outside. I took in every
detail of her body: the colours, the smell (even through the incense), I imagined myself lying
in the position she was in. Gradually I brought my gaze up to look into her eyes. I imagined
undressing her slowly. She had a look of victory in her eyes. Next I followed the socially
expected manly routine and made the first move. I moved over to try a couple of well-tested
macho cliches out on her. Isn't that the way GUYS are supposed to show their machismo?
43.
She kissed me before I got a word out. If I=d thought about it I should=ve taken the
opportunity for revenge but all I did was to tap a point on her back and she was out. The same
point worked fine for the others in the room. I picked up Tigga in firemen=s lift and headed
for the hall and out.
Just as I reached the door the curtain to the other room lifted and a dark-skinned Arab or
north Indian, with a white unwrapped turban loosely hanging over his balding head walked
through. He had striking blue eyes that had the intensity of a fanatic, a tribal shaman. I got the
impression of a carnivore, some mix between a rat, a snake and an eagle. He was in his fifties
or else had lived a very full life. He wore another piece of cotton tied around his waist like
the baby's nappy you see men wearing in documentaries. On the left side of his chest, where
you feel the heart beat, was a tattoo of a medieval Dragon. It was about six inches in diameter
and held a sphere with a strange rune on it. His face and other normally exposed areas of his
body were coffee coloured, while his torso was olive. He had spent most of his life in the sun.
Behind him were two naked white skinned maidens lolling in postmortal bliss on pillows
stacked against the far wall on a futon on the floor. Lying on his stomach with his legs toward
the maidens and his head resting on his hands was Matt, the Dragon. His whole back was a
rainbow dragon emerging from water. He could have been Yakuza if he'd had the right
shaped eyes and complexion. Except the Yakuza would never have worn their hair in the
shaved and top-knotted pony tail that was popular with the samurai until last century.
I was about to move against the man in front of me when he moved against me. He moved
with the speed of the previously mentioned snake to strike at my ribs. Mr Hui is the only
44.
person I'd ever seen move with such unpredictable grace and efficiency. The only thing that
saved me from the blow was a coincidental adjustment in balance I had to make because of
the weight of Tigga's body in preparation for my move against him. The blow merely grazed
me and went on past. I brought my elbow up to hit him in the face but he bent his knees and
ducked under it. He was moving under me about to grab me. I could not recognise his way of
moving. I turned and Tigga's feet made a direct hit to his head. He went flying yet he
remained graceful as he was in control of the fall. I didn=t see how he landed but his feet
were probably under him before most people could think about what was next.
I got out of there.
When you've had a lot fights on the street, you develop an instinct for the quality of your
opponents. It is more than simply the movement habits I described earlier with the Dread
man. It is the aggregate of who that person is, beyond and including their training. In the
martial situation, the question of how far you willing to go for the sake of conquest is
fundamental. This brings in values like honour and respect, motivation and spirit. I started
training with Mr Hui because my intuition had told me that he was way out of my league. He
had the power of destruction and conquest yet had a basic respect for life. When we met, I'd
felt like a kindergarten kid compared to him. His training got me to the point of being able to
surprise him sometimes.
This guy was in Mr Hui's league except there was something else. There was a lack of
respect, a power for power sake, it's hard to say. It was like his aura was a solid wall. He
personified primitive pre-civilized hunger conditioned by generations of poverty. The
45.
strength of these people evokes a primal awe that reminds the civilized of the safety their
society was created to provide and of the castration which is the price of its comfort. He was
the raw tribal energy of the previous night's passions allowed to reach its fully focussed
undiluted maturity. The wealthy everywhere believe their luxury blocks them from
knowledge of the deeper spiritual truths, whether they are South American aristocrats taking
advice from Indian cocaine-driven witchdoctors, or middle class whites in the good ol' USA
getting fortunes told by black God-fearing peasants in New Orleans, or Hippies seeking
enlightenment in India. Few of them seem to realise the appetite these so-called enlightened
ones have for those civilized blockages: cars, cigarettes and a diet of well-preserved fast food.
He seemed to embody opportunistic hunger.
On my way out the door I picked up the distributor cap from the bench in the kitchen. I
dumped Tigga on the back seat of my trusty jalopy and readied myself for a battle of escape.
It did not come. It took only a minute and half to get the cap into its rightful place, then I
drove off on the flat tyres. I wondered what happened to the expected pursuers. Within a few
blocks I pulled into a service station to take care of my chariot's injuries. This story had
finally taken an interesting twist. I was ready to bet after looking into that guy's eyes he was
the common dominator bringing the characters together, the inner chemistry of a religious
cult rather than the outer chemistry of hedonism. Both are the chemistry of escapism just
different directions to the same goal.
The story was over now. All I needed was to drop the boy home and the problem was no
longer mine. Halfway through the repairs, the boy=s mind started to reach back into the
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world of the living. I decided I didn=t want to deal with the scene he would pull when he
found out his situation. So he went back to sleep, gently, of course.
I called both Charlie and Em on the mobile phone on the way to their home.
When I got there, Em was waiting out the front in a dither, as you'd expect. This was not
going to be pleasant. She ran to the front passenger=s door. She looked at me with a big
question mark when she did not see her "baby". I curtly thumbed the back seat. She opened
the door and invaded the car:
`What happened to him? Is he all right? Who did this to him?'
I said: `I had to give him a gentle knockout drop because he did want to come... He'll come
around soon.'
`Oh dear...' She sighed helplessly.
She tried to lift him and succeeded only in moving one arm and flopping his head against the
driver's seat. The boy groaned. The mother groaned. I reached her just as she was beginning
to cry. She turned, caught me off-guard and hugged me. I stood there welded to the spot with
my arms tied to my sides by her encirclement. She buried her head into my chest. I felt her fat
body up against me and was repelled, repelled by her helplessness, by my helplessness, my
tense inability to step across the abyss to empathy. For a moment I watched her from the end
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of a tunnel of psychic paralysis. Then I began to feel like she would drown me in her damp
swamp of despair and weakness. Finally I moved my arms to break her hold.
She found herself again, let go and said: `I'm sorry Mr Tombs it=s... this has been....'
Her tears were on my shirt.
I said coldly: `It=s okay.'
I quickly turned away trying to regain my cynical composure saying: `Let me help you get
this guy inside.'
The family home was the ground floor flat of a 1950's quartet in a comfortable coastal
suburb. It lacked the beautiful views or strategic location for top slate prices; it would always
remain a suburb for the "would be if they could be" middle classes. It was a surprisingly
unpretentious red brick with an off-white balcony. The livingroom was a museum of kitsch. It
was as if the family was caught between celebrating their new station in life and holding onto
their roots. They could easily have moved to a "haves" suburb by the harbour and flaunt
Charlie's success. But they only went up one notch, instead of the several leaps I would=ve
expected from Charlie.
Charlie arrived just as I lay the boy on the couch. As walked in he said: `Where is the little
bastard?=
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He was about to live up to his sexual stereotype by expressing his vulnerability with
violence, when, with his wife standing in front of him to block his temper, he saw that
Tigga was still out cold.
`What's wrong with him?' I couldn't make up my mind if he was spitting or expressing
the razor=s edge of concern.
Em filled him in.
I decided it was time to get out. This adventure didn't need me anymore. I looked at my
watch. Charlie said: `What do I owe you?'
`A thousand.'
He pulled out his wallet, counted it out in hundreds: `Send me the dockets'
Em was about to blubber her thanks all over me, so I reached down touched a revivepoint on Tigga's hand. He groaned a distraction and I made my escape.
I entered the lobby of the flats as the daughter entered it from outside. She looked me up
and down as wolf looks at a lost lamb. Her mouth moved and swallowed, not one those
silly movie lip lick attempts at being sexy. It was an embarrassed unconscious taking me
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into her. I did not say anything to her I did not want to feed the feelings. She reminded
me of my painfully youth.
I went home.