Chapter 4 – Tinder
AB, that’s one of Fred’s nicknames given to him by his mates. Given the night he made out with a girl of the initials AB. That’s all they did, there were stories and rumours, none of which were true. They never are. AB, she and Fred kissed pretty good that night. That’s it.
52, another nickname, Fred’s footy jumper number when he played at the local club. It regularly occurs in his current life, on many things. Just the other day it showed up on his shopping docket, $52.52, the day after he saw a number plate 5252. It goes on.
27, another, he is exploring sex at the moment. Well intimacy. He has mastered it by himself and now is looking to add another someone to that equation, starting working on mastering it with two people, him and another. Three is a crowd here, he knows this from experience. Not going to complain about it but not really interested in re-exploring it.
Nope, just the duo here, wants to get that right. Did some pretty good learning with his ex-partner, learned an important lesson. The more free he is, she is, the better the sex is. Their’s got to great, then it ended up not great.
Great is not good enough for Freddy however. This one is the most popular of the nicknames, Freddy, he doesn’t mind it. So great isn’t good enough, great is not mastery, mastery is all he cares about. This is the reason he wants to explore sex, it is not a macho or ego driven motivation. It is that he knows there is a lot more to this thing than he currently understands, he wants to understand it.
He knows too that sex plays a part in his quitting smoking. He has experienced it already. That experience he is currently integrating into his life. Understand what it all means, coming to know what the link between tobacco and sex is. He hasn’t worked it out yet. He’s not getting any sex, he’s smoking a lot of burners. He cannot understand the relationship until the former changes.
He is working on changing it, reached out to couple of ladies he has unfinished business with. They’ll finish it, when the woman is ready, voluntarily presents to explore the proposition presented. Fred won’t contact them or reach out to them again, he will not pursue them, it does not matter if these things happen or do not.
He knows he is exploring sex, he will get to a point where he does not need to explore it further. These things are some of the ways he wants to explore it on the way, but it doesn’t matter if they do not happen.
He will learn what he needs to all the same. He won’t regret not doing these things, he won’t regret anything, he has told everyone the truth. He has offered his intentions. What is there to regret he thinks. ‘I’ll learn it how I learn it’ is the line that flows through his mind. This simply means that he will learn it and that is all that matters to him. What he wants to experience now along the way won’t be a consideration then. When it is mastered, it is mastered. This is the plan.
He has just put himself on Tinder and wrote quite a brilliant bio if I must say so myself. It shows how light-hearted this is, that he likes drugs, loves the place where he lives, loves his life, has a sense of humour. He doesn’t say a single I am this or that. Just gives what he is now. The bio, let’s bring it to the book;
I can’t drive today. Had cannabis now. This will be regular.
Luckily, however, I live in a place that is worth visiting. Often. It is beautiful beyond words.
I’ll drive should I have a reason I can justify choosing over sitting here, getting stoned by the fire and doing next to nothing.
Next to nothing often includes mushrooms, acid, ayahuasca, swims in the river, walking within this paradise and mowing lawns. Often combined. Even the mower and the river.
The river said no to a trim.
He wondered how he does this Tinder thing. He decided best not to read the bios. He did read a couple, confirmed for him not to read anymore. No, he’ll know you from the shit that comes out of your mouth and the actions that either comply or do not comply. He’ll know whether you know how to listen. He knows without this any intimacy is limited in its progress, it can only go so far.
He’s willing to start somewhere though so some sex has got to be a better starting point than none.
So, he knows he needs to swipe, doesn’t want to, but knows it is part of the game. ‘What are my conditions’ he said aloud.
‘I do not like the feel of too much adipose tissue’. Easy, Filter one.
‘How does one not put a photo with a smile on this thing’. Filter two, The narrator struggles with this one too, how is my best foot forward not the one where I am happy? To not be able to smile is a really hard thing, hard time, Fred knows this one too.
They were his filters. There were five or so profiles that met his criteria out of maybe 60. Five out of 60. 55 out of 60 did not look after their bodies at all, did not have a smile in any of their photos, or were in both categories.
On the radio today they presented that 2.5 million more Aussies are classified as overweight versus 10 years ago. Take our current population, 25.69 million, this number of overweight people is basically 10%, just under, the total population of this country. Fred tries hard to understand how Australia did not take action at this crisis point. He doesn’t want to look at what the actual figure is for now. He knows it is horrific.
He’s giving it a go, Tinder. Not his preferred method of exploring this thing but he does what he needs to do. He takes action, it’s hard to where he is so he does what he does with what is available to him. He does not like the platform at all, disagrees with it strongly, however will use it when its outcomes are justified.
This is, intimacy and quitting smoking are the two priorities for him. Priorities because of the space they take up in his head, the regularity of the time they consume versus other things. There are not many other things for this bloke though, he has cleared just about all of it out. He knows he is on the last ones, the very last maybe, maybe not, close to. He knows the outcomes of understanding these and freeing the space in the head far outweigh his objection to the tool.
After all, he knows it’s not the tool that is the problem, it is his relationship with it. Same as sex and cigarettes.
Chapter 5 – Scotty
Talking about sex and all the while an old mate, Scotty, pops into Fred’s head. He pops in a few times. They were good mates those two. Really good mates.
Wagged school together once, the first time Freddy tried cannabis. On their way out of school one of the teacher’s rode past on his bike. Freddy Boy, well, he said ‘G’day, Mr Mell’. They wagged anyway. They smoked pot anyway. Had a rip roaring day knowing all the while the next day was going to be less pleasant. The Narrator reckons this is a story Fred himself will elaborate more on so we will let it be.
They went to primary school together, inseperable. A couple of pretty big barnies, that’s a fight in Aussie, Scotty always won. The next day they were thick as thieves again. They weren’t thieves, well, actually, they were a few times. They weren’t thieves often, really innocent young boys who knew nothing but the countryside. Knew nothing about women, what it was like to live in towns that had more than 200 people, or what it was like to go to a school with 500 kids sharing the space they were used to with 60. Naieve is probably a good word.
Year Seven, high school, and Scotty.
Wait. First, the Narrator needs to shame Scotty’s folks here as much as he loves them. We’ll return to this story in a bit.
Grade Six, last of Primary School, there is an opportunity to visit the senior schools in the region. The school opens its facilities to the public and families walk through and inspect. There is an opportunity to talk to teachers and students, a bunch of other shit.
So, Fred and his folks arrive at the technical school, it is packed. No way they will get a park within blocks. Then all of a sudden there is this vacant spot directly opposite the school entrance. Ridiciulous timing. Fred’s Dad puts the indicator on, drives a little past it and prepares to parallel park as is the law.
Nek-fucking-minute, not even minute, split second, this big white fucking Ford F50 goes basically screeching sideways into the spot. Big Fred, Fred’s Dad is Fred too. Big Fred, well, shit starts coming out of his ears that should not be.
Not. Happy. Jan.
Drive on, nothing to do right now, get a spot, blocks away. Maybe two, not so bad, but still not opposite the entrance.
Fred, both of them, and Mum, we’ll just say Mum before it gets too confusing, walk into the school and see Scotty and his parents standing around waiting. The families come together, the first thing out of Fred’s mouth is something like ‘bastards stole my park when parallel parking, when I find out who they are blah blah blah’.
Family Scotty have gone awfully quite. Big Fred is a pretty scary looking fella, Scotty’s Dad not so much. They are giving each other little looks. Scotty starts to snicker, cannot help himself. They all burst out laughing.
It was them, bastards. Family Fred got in on the laughing act too.
So Scotty went to this school, it was the lower standard of the three available. Freddy went to the middle standard school. Standard in terms of the educational outcomes based on numbers.
Freddy and Scotty didn’t see each other for a term. By far the longest they had been apart since they met. Fred was still Fred, Scott was a little different. Fred did not understand the words coming out of his mates mouth. Never was there talk about sex, and now there was. Fred knew three words about a female, two of them were his Sister’s and Mother’s names. Scotty seemed to have the dictionary on it in his head.
The other word was germs. They learnt very different things.
Fred can’t exactly remember what Scotty had to say in those days, probably still not sure of what a majority of it means. A couple of things are examples in his everyday life, mowing lawns is one, Scotty may have had another interpretation.
Trimming hedges, did this one yesterday, important to have a nice trimmed hedge where he lives. That is what trimming a hedge means to Freddy, Scotty may have said something like, ‘best she has a trimmed hedge’. Freddy didn’t have pubes yet, didn’t know they existed. Two very different languages suddenly.
Fred creamed the top of the big van today. Literally, creamed it. Put the cream paint on the very top. These things look beautiful, even more so when they are creamed.
So Fred is exploring sex, we have opened this up. It gets him thinking about Scotty. A mate he wouldn’t mind sitting down sharing a joint with. It was, after all, Scotty who introduced him to it, cannabis. Fred wonders what Scotty’s journey turned out with his relationship to Mary Jane, to himself. They haven’t seen each other in 15 or so years.
There are stories about Scotty, they are very similar to the ones being told about Fred. Fred knows that to listen to one and not the other gets him nowhere, listening to both less-where. He listens to none, it’s the only path that takes him somewhere. He wants to hang out with Scotty himself and see if he is still there, he will be. The stories say he is not, the Fred stories the same, Fred knows Fred is here.
Every chance Scotty will be too.