‘There’s a notice here about the correct wearing of the school uniform. It says that shirts should be tucked in, trousers should be worn above the hips and that underwear should not be visible at any time. It says “Underwear is underwear”. Now that’s interesting.’
This was bizarre behaviour, even for Razz.
‘And did you know that sports uniforms can only be worn on designated sport days and that you have to bring your sports gear to change into for PE lessons but sports gear must not be worn to and from school? Man, I’m glad I got that cleared up. And look at this … Apparently the Maths department is offering morning and afternoon tutoring every Tuesday and Thursday leading up to the exam block … But wow, check this out. Someone’s calculator’s gone missing … It says here he last had it in the …’
‘Razz, are you all right?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘Well, it’s just that if you’re about to say, “Hey look, a timetable! Apparently all our subjects are on at different times and places each day during the week and this is how you work out where to go”, then I think it might be time for a little shopping trip to Straitjackets-R-Us.’
Razza was about to say something when a voice came from up the corridor. ‘Sorry, fellas. Hope you haven’t been waiting too long.’
Mr Guthrie was standing at the door to his Homeroom. ‘Come on in.’
I flashed a glare at Razza, who countered with a stupid toothy grin. ‘Well, you said that there was no way you’d ask Guthrie, so I thought you might like me to do it for you.’
I breathed deeply and tried to keep myself together by picturing in my mind the excited huddle that would form around the Year Ten noticeboard tomorrow morning.
‘Hey, look at this,’ one of them would say. ‘Some boy had to be taken to hospital yesterday for emergency surgery. Apparently they found The Complete Love Sonnets of Shakespeare stuffed down his throat.’
17.
RIGID!
Mr Guthrie looked at Razza and me from across the teacher’s desk. On the wall behind him were big posters about recycling, alternative energy sources and global warming and on a long noticeboard beside him were dozens of newspaper articles with headlines on things like refugees, whaling, deforestation, homelessness, sweat shops and land rights. There were also two framed quotes. One was No man is an island entire to himself and the other one was No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
‘So, Orazio,’ Mr Guthrie said in his soft voice, ‘what’s this “serious problem” you said you both needed help with?’
I leapt in before Razza had a chance to open his sizeable mouth. ‘Sir, look, it’s really not that important … We shouldn’t even be here … Razz … Orazio shouldn’t have bothered you … I told him not to … It’s stupid … We’re just wasting your lunchtime … We’ll go … really, it’s all right … We’ll just go.’
I stood up to leave and grabbed Razza by the shirt.
‘Your choice, Ishmael. But I’m here now,’ Mr Guthrie said calmly, ‘and you’ve got me interested. Besides, lunch is for wimps, right? I’m embarrassed that I even brought this wimpy apple along. Anyway, they pay me such an enormous salary that I feel guilty taking time off to eat.’
‘Really, sir? You teachers get paid heaps, eh?’
Sometimes Razza wasn’t quite on the same page as other people – often he wasn’t even in the same library.
Mr Guthrie nodded. ‘Well, relative to ninety per cent of the world’s population, Orazio, I guess you’re absolutely right.’
Then Mr Guthrie looked up at me. ‘So, Ishmael, what do you say? You want to stick around?’
I really didn’t, but for some reason I sat down. Maybe it had something to do with the way Mr Guthrie smiled when he asked me the question or maybe it was because I knew he had the Miss Tarango seal of approval or maybe it was just that Razza didn’t look like shifting and who knew what he would say or do if I wasn’t there.
‘Great. So tell me about this problem and how you think I can help?’
‘Well, it’s like this,’ Razza said, and then before I could stop him he was doing that tip-truck thing again, only the load seemed to have expanded this time around. ‘There’s this chick called Kelly Faulkner that Ishmael’s all freaked out over-you know, like he goes into la-la land every time he thinks about her – but apparently she’s already hooked up with this Brad dude at the moment and he’s like a macho sports jock, so naturally Ishmael figures he’s got no hope against him, you know, on account of the fact that the Bradster’s like bigger, stronger, better-looking and a really cool guy as well. But then I came up with the awesome idea that Ishmael’s only chance to win this Kelly chick over was to write her a wicked love poem – you know, like one of those sonnety things that Shakespeare and the other old poet dudes used to give to chicks in the prehistoric times to send them mental – only we need some help to get it just right.’
Just in case you missed it, the topic of tonight’s debate is, That Ishmael Leseur is a complete loser, and the first speaker for the Affirmative team was Orazio ‘I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut’ Zorzotto. Now I would like to call on the Negative team to rebut. What, no rebuttal? Conceding defeat already?
Mr Guthrie shifted his eyes back and forth between the two of us. ‘That’s your problem? You want help to write a poem … a love poem … to get a girl?’
‘Yep,’ Razza said as if it rated right up there with widespread human rights abuses, the hole in the ozone layer, the rapid extinction of animal and plant species, the mass destruction of fragile ecosystems and the end of civilisation as we now know it.
Mr Guthrie shook his head so that his little sausages of hair wriggled about. ‘Well, I have to admit, boys, you’ve thrown me a bit. I was thinking along the lines of drug problems, maybe being tossed out of home and living on the street, in trouble with the police perhaps or targeted by the criminal underworld – that sort of thing. But poetry … this is serious stuff.’
I was about to make another attempt to leave when Mr Guthrie turned to me.
‘So, Ishmael, this girl, have you actually spoken to her? I mean, does she know you exist?’
I couldn’t believe that I was talking to a teacher about Kelly Faulkner. ‘She knows I exist … but I’m not sure if she cares that much.’
A smile came from across the desk. ‘Well, at least that’s better than knowing you exist and wishing you didn’t, right?’
‘Naaah,’ Razza broke in, ‘Ishmael’s got no idea, sir – I reckon she’s secretly got the hots for him. Do you know that he rang her up once and when she answered the phone she told him, she actually told him, that she was practically nak …’
‘Razz! Don’t! … Ah … I mean … Aah … Don’t you think … we should focus on the poem?’
Razza slumped back in his chair.
Mr Guthrie looked at both of us and tapped his pen on the desk. ‘Have you spoken to anyone else about this? Like your Homeroom or English teacher?’
‘That’s Miss Tarango,’ Razza said, and Mr Guthrie’s eyes flicked up. ‘Sure, we talked to her first, because that’s where I got the idea from-’cause we’re doing sonnets and love stuff in English. But Miss didn’t think she could help. She reckoned we needed to get a mature male perversion …’
‘Perspective!’
‘Yeah, right, what Ishmael said … Anyway, she said we should check it out with you.’
The pen tapping stopped. ‘Zoe … Ah … Miss Tarango … suggested that you come and see me?’
‘Yeah.’
Mr Guthrie shuffled a few bits of paper around his desk and then picked up a big paper clip and began levering it apart until it looked like a lopsided silver heart. ‘Did she … she say why … Ah … Give a reason … at all?’
‘Not really. She just said if we asked anyone for help it should be you – I guess because you’re an English teacher and all, and then she told me you’d written some stuff yourself. She definitely didn’t want us to go to Mr McCracken
, I know that for sure. Man, she really gave him the flick.’
‘Mr McCracken?’
‘Yeah, he was my first pick – sorry sir – but Miss wasn’t hot on that idea at all. That’s when she came up with you.’
‘So she … wasn’t … that keen … on Mr McCracken?’
‘No. Like I said, she reckoned we should speak to you.’
‘And not Mr McCracken?’
Razza shook his head.
‘So she suggested me?’
‘Yeah.’
I had no idea what sort of a writer Mr Guthrie was, but I was beginning to have serious doubts about his comprehension skills.
‘Right … good … right. Well, that’s … good,’ Mr Guthrie said, glancing at the twisted paper clip in his hand and quickly dropping it in the bin.
The scrape of a chair on linoleum came from beside me. Razza had moved closer into the desk and was reaching into his shirt pocket.
‘You’re a writer, sir. Have a squiz at this,’ he said, pulling out a folded sheet of paper.
‘Razza, what are you doing!’
But it was too late. Mr Guthrie was already pressing the sheet flat on the desk. ‘Hot or what!’ was written at the top of the page in big red letters and decorated in leaping flames. I watched Sir’s eyes widen as they made their way slowly down the lines. When he came to the end he sat in silence nodding his head.
‘What d’ya reckon, sir? And it’s all my own work. Don’t you reckon if Ishmael sent that to Kelly it would do the trick? Don’t you think it’s totally wicked?’
Mr Guthrie looked as if he’d been asked to come up with a solution to global poverty by next Tuesday.
‘Well, Orazio … it’s um … You’ve um … There’s um … certainly a lot of … feeling there … and I think … ah … you’ve developed a unique voice … and certainly your theme is … well, unmistakeable …’
‘You reckon Billy Shakespeare would be impressed?’
‘Ahh, well … I think he would certainly be … moved,’ Mr Guthrie said, then added in a mumble, ‘I can almost imagine him rolling over as we speak.’
‘So what you’re saying is, that it’s fully sick, right, sir?’
Mr Guthrie’s eyes shot up. He looked like a drowning man who had just been tossed a lifeline. ‘Yes, Orazio, yes it is. That is exactly what I am saying. In my opinion your poem is literally … fully sick.’
‘Awesome!’
‘In fact,’ Mr Guthrie said as he examined the words in front of him as if he were attempting to break the Da Vinci code, ‘as far as degrees of sickness go, I think it could almost be described as … chromc.’
‘Chronic?’ Razza echoed.
‘Yes … and some might even go so far as to say that as a piece of literature … it is rigid with rigor mortis.’
‘Rigid! All right!’ Razza shouted, turning to me and grinning like a maniac. ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear what Sir said? Sir reckons my poem is chronic and rigid. I knew it! Just wait till I tell Prindabel. He wouldn’t recognise a poem if it jumped up and bit him on the dic –’
Razza looked over to Mr Guthrie and grinned.
‘– tionary … Right … well … That’s cool, then. See, I told you, Ishmael, but you wouldn’t believe me, would you? Man, all we have to do now is whip my poem off to Kelly and everything’ll be sweet.’
Razza pushed his chair back and reached forward for the poem. ‘Thanks a lot, sir.’
It was probably the look of horror on my face that caused Mr Guthrie to hold up his hand. ‘Wait, Orazio … there might be one small problem. As … rigid … as your poem is … it’s still your poem, not Ishmael’s. And I think if anyone’s going to write this poem it should be Ishmael, don’t you?’
Razza looked shattered. ‘Man, I spent nearly an hour writing that thing.’
‘That long?’ Mr Guthrie said.
‘Yeah, well, almost. I could only work on it during the ad breaks, ’cause you gotta really concentrate if you want to figure out whether they should go Deal or No Deal.’
For a couple of seconds there, Mr Guthrie did a fine impression of Prindabel’s ‘abstract painting’ response. Then he spoke as if he was coming out of a trance. ‘OK … right … let’s see … How about if you take this pen and paper, Orazio, grab yourself a seat at the back of the room and reel off an epic or two while I have a quiet word with Ishmael? How does that sound?’
Razza reluctantly agreed and I was left alone with Mr Guthrie.
‘So, Ishmael-the old unrequited love? It’s a bugger, eh? Well, you’ve come to the right place. That was my special subject at school. I was in the extension class for that, you know. Went on to do honours in it at uni. I’m still considered by many to be a leading authority.’ He smiled. I didn’t mind Mr Guthrie at all. ‘So tell me … what’s she like … this Kelly of yours?’
How could I explain to a teacher what Kelly Faulkner was like? How could I tell him that when she looked my way it was like everything inside me lit up and when she wasn’t around I felt as grey and boring and pointless as a TV on standby.
‘I dunno. She’s like … She’s like … perfect or something. I know that sounds really stupid.’
‘No … No, I don’t think it’s stupid at all. More like “human”,’ Mr Guthrie said, and he looked as if he really meant it. ‘What did you notice first about her, then?’
‘Well … she’s got these eyes.’
And Shakespeare reckoned he was a poet.
‘All the better to see you with,’ Mr Guthrie said with a laugh. ‘Don’t worry. I know exactly what it’s like. It’s really hard to find the words sometimes, isn’t it?’
‘I can never find them.’
‘Well, I’m no expert, but there’s one thing I’ve learnt-you can’t force these things. Sometimes I think all you can do is wait, and then maybe when the time is right, the words will find you.’
Could that be true? The only words that ever found me seemed to be the wrong ones.
‘Look, Ishmael, I don’t know if I can help you much. My only advice would be, if you did decide to write something, just keep it simple and straightforward. Don’t worry about trying to be Shakespeare, and definitely don’t try to be Zorzotto … just be yourself.’
That’s what Miss Tarango reckoned – that I should be myself. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, and besides, what if just being me wasn’t good enough?
Mr Guthrie and I talked a bit longer till the end of lunch – not just about poetry and Kelly Faulkner, but about some of the stuff on the posters and newspaper articles. When I left I didn’t know whether I was any closer to solving my problems, but I was kind of glad that the planet had someone like Mr Guthrie worrying about it.
That night I actually did have a go at writing a poem about Kelly Faulkner, but it was useless – a bit like trying to catch a butterfly with a bear trap. Eventually I gave it away as a bad joke. Maybe Mr Guthrie was right: maybe what I needed to do was to wait and let the words find me.
I was still waiting a few weeks later when Barry Bagsley found me instead.
Track 4:
Pain
I got pain in my heart
Pain in my head
Pain in my body for you
I got pain I can’t hide
Pain all inside
So much pain I don’t know what to do
From The Dugongs: Returned & Remastered
Music & lyrics: W. Mangan and R. Leseur
18.
THE NERDMAN Of ALCATRAZ
In what surely must have been a personal best, Barry Bagsley had somehow managed to keep his major criminal tendencies under wraps for almost an entire semester. I guess I should have realised that it was only a matter of time before something had to give. My only question was, why did it have to give all over me?
It started the day of our rescheduled debating meeting. Because things between Ignatius and Razza were a little tense following the infamous crap-a-thon episode, Scobie had decided that it might be a
good idea to wait a while before trying again. So it wasn’t until a couple of weeks out from the end of first semester that we met in one of the library discussion rooms. Four of us sat around a table. This time we were waiting on Prindabel.
‘He’s probably off somewhere reading the Periodic Table for a laugh.’
Bill and Scobie and I looked at Razza but no one replied. We just filed this last comment away with all the others he had suggested for Prindabel’s absence. Like:
He’d been arrested for impersonating a human being.
He’d run off with a laptop dancer.
He was writing his autobiography – The Nerdman of Alcatraz.
I’m pretty sure Razza was just about to offer another possibility when Ignatius came stalking through the library and stepped awkwardly into the room. He was carrying some books and a plastic bag.
‘Glad you could make it, Prindabel. What kept you? Were you delivering the keynote address at the International Geek Convention or something?’
‘No. Our Pi Club T-shirts have just arrived. Had to collect mine from Mrs Mathieson.’
‘Pie Club? Geez, Prindabel, I knew you were weird, but I didn’t think you were into cooking. Are you planning on being the next Jamie Oliver? I can see it now … Ignatius Prindabel-The Nerdy Chef.’
Ignatius started off giving Razza the old abstract painting look, but then a flicker of understanding appeared in his eyes. ‘No … Not pie as in p-i-e. Pi as in p-i.’
Now it was Razza’s turn to try the abstract painting look.
‘Pi – the mathematical constant? Twenty-two over seven? Three-point-one-four to two decimal places? We did it in Maths. You must remember that.’
Razza tilted his head and leant forward slightly as if he was straining to recall.
‘You know, the equation for the circumference of a circle – two pi r? The area of a circle – pi r squared?’
‘Aaaaaaah riiiiiiiight,’ Razza said, not entirely convincingly. ‘So let me get this straight. You’re in a club … based on a number?’
‘That’s right,’ Ignatius replied casually.