Thursday, December 21, 2017

ON FINISHING ANOTHER YEAR


THE year, 2017, has nearly ended. It’s a cliché to say that the year flew by quickly, and that you don’t know what happened. I think it’s true, that as you get older, the years fly by more quickly. I remember a little bit about my twenties and thirties. I’m pretty sure more happened, that I saw and interacted with a greater volume of people, and I went out more and filled the day more brightly. I reflected less back then. So it almost seems like a contradiction to say that time went more slowly then.

I think, sometimes, about time and how it changes people. We have no choice but to become less vain than we once were. People see an image of you when you were sixteen, or twenty-five, or even thirty-two, and remark on how youthful you looked, and how much you have changed. Of course, they’re not rude enough to say you have less hair, or that you have become a bit more pudgy, or round-shouldered, or that lines have appeared around your eyes. But perhaps you can feel a sense of moral victory over all those people of your age who appear on television, whose faces seem damaged somehow, they crease in a funny way when they try and smile, their forehead seems like cement, or they have eyes that are puffy or seem strained in some way, and have teeth that gleam like sunlight on freshly fallen snow.  You haven’t opted for these artificial changes.

We can’t make time stand still but sometimes I would like to try. It’s not really an age thing, but about experiences. You are somewhere that feels really good but it has to end, and you have to move on to something else, like an end of a holiday, and return to responsibility and ordinary life. It’s ordinary life that can be the killer, that can extinguish not only some sense of fun, but more importantly a sense of freedom.  

‘Freedom’ is the operative word. No wonder so many singers and writers express feelings about it.

In his beautiful song, ‘So Quiet In Here’, Van Morrison sings:
Big ships out in the night
And we're floating across the waves
Sailing for some other shore
Where we can be what we want to be
Oh this must be what paradise is like
This must be what paradise is like
Baby it's so quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, you can hear, it's so quiet…’

I have spent this year, and every other year, wanting to be on that boat ‘sailing for some other shore/ where we can be what we want to be…’ This boat is sometimes heading for the northern hemisphere, to England, or Wales, or lately even Iceland. It is a place without too much responsibility, that is steeped in history, full of freedom and creativity, and romanticism. I want to set up camp there after this beautiful journey on the ship, through the darkness, and buy the history of wherever it is that we land in a big, fat book. I want to read this book from cover to cover- say it is ‘The History of Northumberland’, for example- a great leather bound book rich with words and images.  I want to live and breathe in my locale and discover and ponder over every twig and branch, and patch of soil, and river and mountain and castle and harbour and village green and village square. I want to discover the places where the boats were shipwrecked and the grisly murders took place, and bloody battles fought and won, and where great celebrations were held, and estuaries and caves were formed. In the winter, I could have a great open fire and sit at night, trembling with the rest of the family at the storms that shake the foundations of the house, our house, on the edge of the Northumberland coast, all coming from the Farne Islands. There will be seals practically on our doorstep in the morning and all the debris washed away, or pecked at by the glorious puffin birds. But you cannot make time stand still. Time drifts. Sometimes it almost seems to stop, when things are painful.



I get freedom from a lush green valley or the surging sea. Soon, the light alters and you have to be on your way again. Recently I was in a place in NSW called ‘Boomerang Beach’. It was night time and the beach was deserted and it was around twilight time. Everything light and clear, but you knew it would be dark in about an hour. The weather had the lovely cool night feel to it, that freshness you get after a warm day. I was walking with my daughter and we had a plan. To walk as far as the distant bend, and then turn around. There were sea birds surrounding us but nothing else of any life, save for the little fish probably in the shallows. The sea was roaring, as I am sure it is right now. We sang, loudly, because there was no-one around to hear us. The sky featured a faint pink, like a pink flag in the sky. And the colours in the water. Aqua, and mauve, and pink as well. It all, of course, ended and we were closer to closure, and departure, and regret.




Tonight time has passed in another sense. It is December 21, my birthday. We have been to St Kilda- Leo’s spaghetti bar on Fitzroy St, Readings bookstore on Acland St and the beach foreshore, too, too briefly. There were joggers and cyclists and people with dogs. Others were couples holding hands. I felt quite free tonight. Then the radio bulletin. Someone has driven down Flinders St in the city and mowed people down. 



Thursday, November 30, 2017

ON AGEING: a tattered coat upon a stick




The film LUCKY (Harry Dean Stanton), held few surprises. That’s not to say it wasn’t any good. It was pretty good.  But there were things in it, in terms of what LUCKY did, and how Lucky felt, that did not surprise me. I’ve seen some very good films about getting old- the French one by Haneke- AMOUR- comes to mind. And the Paul Cox film, A WOMAN’S TALE. Also something by Sarah Polley- AWAY FROM HER- and older people in some of Mike Leigh’s films as well. LUCKY is as good as most of these.

What wasn’t a surprise was the way in which Lucky did the same thing every day. Got out of bed in his white underwear and did exercises. Then took his crossword to his local coffee shop. Shuffled home again and watched TV even though what was on the screen was crap. Fell asleep. Stared at the alarm clock. Noticed that time was passing. Became irascible with other people and became a bit nasty and anti-social. Began thinking there might not be a good reason for living. Felt very lonely, and after an inexplicable fall, felt more mortal than ever.

Then Lucky was able to tell a kind, female visitor that he felt lonely- or was it scared? Then he accepted an unexpected invitation to a Spanish boy’s birthday. Here he felt moved enough to sing, beautifully, and received genuine, warm applause that touched him. Suddenly life had improved and he felt like he was worth something after all. He looked directly into the camera and smiled for almost the first time- a radiant, beautiful smile, very different to the scowl given by Harriet Anderson in SUMMER WITH MONIKA. And Lucky didn’t die in the end, but walked off into the Arizona distance, possibly even shuffling a little less as well.

I know someone a bit like Lucky.

He stays up very late and becomes very lethargic in the mornings. He shuffles around the unit each day, propped up in his favourite armchair. He sits in that armchair until evening, having short little breaks. These might be regular toilet breaks, or standing up to look out the window at the car that has driven past. He also checks the letterbox at regular intervals. Accompanying him in the armchair is the daily newspaper, the one put out by the Murdoch press, the one he says he loathes.

At the south end of the unit there is the back glass sliding door, and a neat little courtyard, garden table, and garage. It is here that various birds seem to gather during the day. He has always liked birds; always favoured them over cats, for instance. These days’ birds have become more important to him. Something he can talk or whistle to. He also enjoys proffering gifts, such as water, and nibbles and the like.

Memories, the past. These things sometimes invade his thoughts. The issue is, however, that sometimes he is fuzzy on detail. The things that occurred in boyhood, with his parents, are shadowy and far from blunt or acute. Details of the early years of his marriage are easier. But even here he can’t remember the bridal car, the church where the events took place, the details about the honeymoon…except it must have been close. He remembers there wasn’t a lot of money. Like a bright flash in his mind he is suddenly conscious of the money issue again…now. However it wasn’t always like this.

He had money sifting through his leaky hands when he was younger and stronger. He worked more than one job. Sometimes three- well, two at any rate. They were the best of times. The times when he could saunter into a TAB and unleash a whole heap of notes and coins onto the women behind the grill, and take piles of those thin white betting papers into his sweaty palms. He felt like a rich man on these occasions. Money no object. And no matter if he lost. He would work hard and there would be more to play with, and other places to play…poker machines. He deserved it. He worked hard. It was his money. And it was a private matter- that made it more thrilling. He could hide it from his wife.
………………………………………………………

I have had plenty of experience with nursing homes over the years. It may have been visiting relatives, or more commonly, arranged visits associated with my line of work. I have often enjoyed these times. I like talking about different experiences, other people’s families, and memories. Memories are so important. When you’re old I imagine it is very difficult not to look back.

I enjoy associating things with film and literature. When I think about old people and film, I can’t help remembering some awful things, like the young getting onto the old in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (can you spare some cutter, me brothers?’). In ‘Amour’, Georges has difficulty accepting the state of things when his long time marriage companion, Anne, suffers a debilitating stroke. I can think of at least three films that involve suffocation using a pillow, and this is easily the most moving of them. Old age throws up incredible challenges for the sanest and fittest of the partners. He is grief stricken by his wife’s illness and can’t bear to let go of her, and she simply wants to die.

In Colm Toibin’s beautiful novel, ‘The Heather Blazing’, we are presented with a similar situation. Eamon, the retired judge living in Enniscorthy, has to manage his wife, Carmel, who has had a stroke, and on one terribly sad occasion, has to soap her body when she loses control of her bowels after a mountain walk. It is a difficult thing for him to do because their intimacy has always been uneasy. He is a reserved man who loves his wife but has difficulty reaching out to her. She, on the other hand, has always felt this gap painfully, and is able to reflect, after her illness, that she isn’t certain of his feelings. It becomes very important to her, this idea of just wanting to know, of the reinforcement or acknowledgement of his love for her.




Any consideration of old age and the confused and traumatic worlds it conjures up must include a reference to ‘King Lear’. Here it is at least two-fold. Firstly, the moving and deep love for Lear by the wounded and dutiful daughter, Cordelia. Near the end, when he partially regains his senses, and realises the folly in his earlier abandonment of his youngest and kindest child, Lear cannot fathom her undying love. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. And yet, due to her unblinking devotion, he is able to imagine, even if it is futile, a world beyond the crushing defeat of his reign:

Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.’

The other side of the coin is the attitude to the twin monsters, Goneril and Regan, Lear’s other daughters. Lear is expendable. He is no longer useful. He has become a foolish old man. And this is what happens sometimes to the elderly. They become foolish old people. I sometimes wonder if quite young people ever fully realise that they, too, will become quite old. I guess it is something we think about as we get older. At the age of 10, or 15, or even 20 or 25, you don’t contemplate things that are so far away and seem somehow intangible.

W B Yeats wrote a poem called ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress…’
Here, the body has faded, it is beyond use, only scarecrow-like, yet the old man is not defeated. He is raging further along, expressed in his very vibrant and very alive soul that has not departed. He is not falling towards death but rather fighting it and refusing it. He is simply not ready.
………………………………………………………………………………
The man I know feels bereft. He is no longer able to drive. He feels hemmed in, somehow…helpless. Is there any need to dress? Will tomorrow be the same? What of my regrets? Did I work long enough? Do I care that I never went overseas?
The film, LUCKY, throws up new possibilities about getting old. Where routine can be broken and new things and places can be discovered. It doesn’t all have to be futile. For me? All I ask for is the crossword and a pen and a few books if I can still read, and I hope I will still like to talk to other people, but part of me suspects, probably not.
When I walk around shopping centres, in particular, I think about ageing. It’s because here I see teenagers, boys and girls, strutting around, looking for cool clothes and meeting up, maybe seeing a film. They are a world away from getting old, and they know it. Old people have zero significance in their life. The old, grey-haired woman with the walking frame and the slightly sour expression means absolutely nothing to them. They don’t even see her- or, for that matter, the old man in the grey cardigan with balding hair who has allowed his eyebrows to grow wild, as well as the hair in his ears. They are invisible, unless they accidentally stumble and fall, in which they would become a spectacle. Old age, like this, is a world away for them, and they don’t think about it. Like the young Simon and Garfunkel singing OLD FRIENDS- ‘how terribly strange to be seventy’. They surmised that at seventy you would become a ‘bookend’- now, though, they probably see it as not being as old as they once thought (Garfunkel was born in 1941, Simon a month earlier) which makes them both 76. Now, are they both bookends, on park benches?
These teenagers at the shopping centre have a grandfather or grandmother, or Nonno, or Nonna, etc. Living in Rome as a teenager in the 30’s or 40’s, Nonna probably sat on the Spanish Steps in her short skirt, exhibiting almost the exact behaviour as her future granddaughter in Melbourne, or Sydney, etc seventy or eighty years hence.
Someone said the other day- it might have been Barry Humphries- that this is the era of ageism. And I think he is probably right.




Monday, October 9, 2017

The Unfortunate Trout



I fished for the first time in about 30 years the other day, by the banks of the Goulburn River, near Eildon. I felt completely relaxed. I did not expect to catch anything. Inexplicably, however, I somehow landed a good-sized rainbow trout. I didn’t realise this would happen. This is the sorrowful story of the fish I landed.


I skim the surface of the Goulburn River. I am closest to the northern end, a short distance from the small town of Eildon. This has been my home from the time when I was spawned, some eight months ago. I like the way that the currents play with my body, teasing it, encouraging it to go left, then right, then left again, depending, it seems, on the whim of the winds.

I see my body in the morning reflection upon the water. I am silky and colourful. My scales shine brightly. Sometimes there is a silver sheen like a rainbow when I catch the reflection off the sun. I am of the trout family. We are one of the more beautiful fish in the Goulburn. And one of the most rare.

Sometimes I see myself heading straight towards other, less noble fish, and I do my best to steer my silky body away from them, for fear of contamination. These are ugly, more common fish like Murray cod, redfin, carp. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a rainbow trout, no less.
The rainbow trouts of this world, like me, tend to stick together. We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, all of us with the distinctive body sheen and rainbow gills and elegant, slender shape. We are a kind of fish that know its family. I am one of many and I see my fish family every day, gliding the currents as I do, looking for food, tearing along the river’s surface, watching the particles of sand rise as leeches, insects and worms naively explore the seabed. Our mouths rise in anticipation and with our little sharp teeth, we rip the heads off the bigger prey, and swallow in one gulp the smaller ones.

Today the sky is cloudy above, but there is no hint of rain. I have just spent some time nestled beside a log with my younger friends and family. We have been joyously flinging ourselves into the air. We get a glimpse of another world when we do this. Air rushes into our gills momentarily and we feel a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It is as if we want to be land animals for a second or two, before we plunge again into the icy waters that keep us alive.

 I can hear chatter from the nearby bank. Sometimes humans come to explore the creek too, and even wade into the water. This puzzles me because I know how handicapped they are. They are unable to properly swim. Their heaving, clumsy bodies stir up the sand and create a cacophony of noise where only the bravest fish stick around.
I am not particularly hungry this late afternoon. My day has drifted blissfully by. I have eaten when I can be bothered. I have seen plenty of mayflies and midges and consumed any number of them. I am not looking for anything in particular, just planning to head downstream to Thornton and to float across some wild, fun rapids under the bridge. Then I see it. The laziest worm I have ever seen. Thick, and juicy, and virtually impossible to ignore. Its cocky long body is resting on the river floor and it won’t let anything disturb it. It even looks like it might be dead. There is a slender piece of hooked metal next to it, which does not look so appetizing. But the worm? Delicious.

I snap my elegant jaws into the slippery worm and receive the shock of my short life. The curved metal piece hammers into my mouth and I feel it crush painfully across the inside of my mouth near the pharynx. Somehow it is hooked into me. I shake my head in a panic and the pain becomes sharper. I feel as though I am more hooked than ever. I am full of regret for what I have done, but there is little time for regrets. Through an indefinable source I am being dragged across the river by my mouth. My eyes are dazzled by bright light. I am being lifted out of the warm cocoon of the water.


There are humans, people on the bank, and I am inexplicably being hurled towards them. Their faces are shining. Three men. I glide in a dangerous arc towards their feet and smack flat onto a rocky bank. One of the men has grabbed my once proud body in his hands and he is trying to wrench the sharp hook from my gullet. The pain is roaring through me. I want this hook out too, but instead of an unclasping, this awful wrenching continues. My life flashes before me. Blood, my blood, is dripping onto the rocks and I am losing focus, and consciousness. Just when I feel free of the hook at last, and blink to regain my senses, heaving my asphyxiating body across rock, screaming in pain for water- the man lowers a curved blade towards my head, and begins his cutting motion…



Monday, July 10, 2017

Because I Could Not Stop For Death: Terence Davies' Emily Dickinson




I WAS a bit reluctant at first to choose to see A QUIET PASSION. It might be Terence Davies but it is still essentially a biographical film. How many biographical disaster films have there been? You get put off by all the trite. SBS recently screened the one by Oliver Stone about The Doors. OK, lesson learnt. Terence Davies is not Oliver Stone. But that film was an obscene disaster. It made somebody, who was quite interesting in real life, look like a complete idiot. What is the point of making something that is so disrespectful? If the subject matter, according to Stone, is a complete fool, then he is not worthy of biographical treatment. The same goes for the one they did about Sylvia Plath, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Gossipy, scandalous, sensationalist, controversial, shallow, etc, etc.

There are countless others, probably lesser disasters, just misses. Chaplin, Gandhi, Kahlo, Mozart, Monroe, et al.  I’ve seen all of these and been more or less unimpressed about how, in their ‘commercialism’, they have let their subject down.
Terence Davies, though, is a different kettle of fish, as I was reminded of today. A difficult subject, Emily Dickinson. What did she actually do in her life, except for, introspectively, write great, unheralded poetry?

Well, I guess it is worth looking at the New England of its day, the Amherst of the Victorian era. There was the scepticism about God that was the feature of its time. The look at contemporaries, or near contemporaries, the Bronte’s, Elizabeth Gaskell. No mention of Jane Austen. The limited role of women in society, the great questions about the place of women, as writers, but also about wives and being members of society, mothers. The deep unhappiness of Dickinson’s mother and her lack of fulfilment, her own restlessness, and the restlessness of her friends and other members of her family. The impact of the Civil War on America and her consciousness.  These are all the things worthy of consideration, and Davies considers things. It gives him the opportunity to ensure that things don’t become obsessively internal and cloying, that, through Dickinson, we get offered a glimpse of society as well. I don’t, for instance, remember the Plath film doing these things, although Plath was equally preoccupied about the role of women.




Davies wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The film owes its strength to him- and the actress- Cynthia Nixon- a great, great portrayal. She does everything she can. Smiles convincingly, suffers convincingly, shudders convincingly in her fits and becomes convincingly morose but never dull. Davies makes the film glide and engage with beautiful, slow camera movements. It is the music, the spoken poetry that never obtrudes, the slow camera pans, the subtlety of cinematographic composition, the subdued blues and greys, all these things respect their subject matter and offer it a complex recognition. It is all about respect and love, but not really adoration. Davies is not afraid to sugar coat his subject and make her all nobility and grandeur. Yes she suffers, but only as a flawed human being who becomes bloody-minded and depressingly morose, and in a terrible funk. The film implies that she resents being ‘left on the shelf’, resents her lack of beauty and appeal, suffers because of agnostic point of view, resents the lack of recognition as a writer she feels she deserves. In short, that the world owes her something and that she is too maudlin and introspective. This is all great, though. The balance between utmost respect for his subject, but willing to explore her deficiencies as well.

Also the psychic exploration of the need for recognition. The cost of shutting yourself off from society like that. The need to have what little that is yours, validated, by somebody. Emily anxiously peering over towards a critic in her garden setting. Do you like it? Is there something valuable in my world. Is the sacrifice I am making worthwhile? Or is my reason for living generally not worthwhile. I can't help but think of the sisterhood that could have existed here, across the Atlantic, between Emily D and Emily B, and the other Bronte sisters. After all, a reasonable chunk of their lives were lived at the same time.

So, a flawed Emily Dickinson is what we get, which is what was needed- what is absent is the lack of respect and recognition that some of these other films sometimes conjure. Deeply felt respect- where, perhaps, if it was ever possible Dickinson could view herself on film, she might quietly applaud and write an idiosyncratically punctuated poem about it, saying thank you for creating something that is respectful but in its characterisation, flawed and honest at the same time.
The film reminds me, as in the case of the beautiful films that Paul Cox made about Vincent van Gogh and Vaslav Nijinsky- it is best that a poet or a painter make the tribute to another poet or painter if you want something respectful, meaningful, sincere.

Emily Dickinson in unconventional white, which was her practice. Dying in paroxysms of pain like those before her, but with the added grandeur of a noble funeral shown with the moving ‘Because I Could Not Stop For Death…’ over the soundtrack.





Sunday, June 18, 2017

Helen Garner on Sexual Harrassment



JUST caught a train back from the city. The train journey goes so much more quickly when your mind is fully engaged with something. Helen Garner does that to you. I found this when I read the Farquarson drowning story in This House of Grief. Even more so with Joe Cinque’s Consolation. The idea of who Joe was, very intriguing. You felt like you got to know him. The bits at his parents’ house in Newcastle were riveting. Now I am going back in her oeuvre further with The First Stone (I can see I have the ‘trilogy’ backwards).

So I am on this train today, as I said, just getting back now, reading very late into the book, based on the story of the inglorious end of Colin Shepherd’s reign as Master at Ormond House, Melbourne, in 1992-3 (real name Alan Gregory). There was some sort of end of year function- a ‘Smoko’ is what it is apparently called- after a formal Valedictory dinner, where staff and students living at the college get together and drink and dance and probably loosen their inhibitions and have what one would hope would be a fun and scandal free evening for all. During the course of the night, two young women claimed, in separate incidents, that Shepherd touched their breasts. ‘Cupped’, I think was the term they used. The allegations stated that Shepherd began making personal remarks to Elizabeth Rosen when they were alone in his office at some point during the evening. ‘I have indecent thoughts about you’, ‘can I have a real kiss before you go’, etc. This, accompanied by getting on the floor, grasping her hands, then moving his hands to her breasts. The second allegation referred to an incident on the dance floor with one Nicole Stewart, a friend of Elizabeth Rosen. Shepherd agrees he danced with Stewart, and did have a hand on her back during the dance at one point, but vehemently denies moving his hand onto her left breast.

There were complaints made, I think, to the Equal Opportunity Board of the college, and somehow the women felt affronted enough to eventually go to the police. A court case ensued- I am, for some reason, very hazy on these details-  however, Shepherd was found not guilty, but the damage for all parties had been done. The two women documented their own personal cost over the ordeal, and Shepherd lost his job- or, rather, he was given no choice because of the scandal but to resign- and the book details the personal cost for he and his family as well. There is a gripping moment in Garner’s research where she visits the Shepherd’s East Malvern home, and Mrs Shepherd cannot stop crying.

The biggest frustration for Garner was the fact that she was unable to gain an interview with the women. The same thing occurs in Joe Cinque’s Consolation. The female murderer in this saga will not reply to Garner’s letters, and in the end the book becomes unbalanced and ends up being a tribute to Joe. In the case of The First Stone, Garner is ‘on Shepherd’s side’ the whole time, but not just because she cannot properly craft the accusers’ story, but the very nature of what happened made her appalled. We get it very early on- from the point of view of a solicitor at the trial who asked one of the women ‘why didn’t you just slap him?’ then Garner herself, who wrote a sympathetic letter to Shepherd- ‘…I’m writing to say how terribly sorry about what has happened to you.’ Again, from Garner, ‘…why didn’t she get her mother or her friends to help her sort him out later, if she couldn’t deal with it herself at the time?’
The implication here, of helplessness or weakness on the women’s part, and solidarity with Shepherd because of the big, damaging fuss that was made of it when a few terse words might have been the outcome, and indeed is probably often the outcome (how many times a day does this kind of thing happen?)- all of this was apparently viewed outrageously by feminists at the time. Although I cannot remember it, I can well imagine the backlash that a well-respected and talented female writer in her fifties must have encountered.



Here, then, on my train, I am looking about, furtively, whilst I am continually dipping, riveted, to the pages. I am sitting opposite an attractive woman, not too far off my own age, thinking about beginning a conversation because she looks nice, and interesting. She has a compact suitcase on wheels with her, and looks slightly out of place as travellers often do when they are travelling to far-flung places. She spoke into her phone a couple of times, with a thick, possibly Spanish or Portuguese accent. I caught her eye a couple of times but I felt awkward and too shy to speak to her. She didn’t encourage me enough to start a conversation. I needed a return smile, or a long glance from her at the cover of my book. How I longed for her to say ‘Ahhh, Helen Garner, she’s an interesting one!’ Of course, no small part of my shyness and reluctance came from the fact that I am a male and she is a female. Will she think that I am ‘making a pass at her’ by opening up a conversation? Will the assumption be that I want to get to know her better and will probably ask for her number if she reciprocates in conversation too often? Am I in some way possibly a danger to her? There was no-one else in our corner of the carriage. Do strange men start up conversations with her all the time, and does she hate it? Conversely, would she be grateful for the energy and interest, and take the opportunity to ask lots of questions about Melbourne and perhaps my life and my book? Sadly, I am one of those people who are cautious and worry that I might offend.

Garner’s book is laced with the stories of women who have had unfortunate encounters with men. Men who have dived their hands under their skirt when they are young and working in shops. A woman raped by a doctor when she was wanting to find out whether or not she was pregnant. Garner herself who was kissed by a male stranger on a country train when she was a teenager, only to be rescued by somebody walking past her carriage. Her numbness and uncertainty and passivity in this encounter was incredible. She also tells a similar story, as an adult, of not having any idea how to deal with an unexpected kiss from a masseur during a session, whom she had already been to on a number of occasions. Completely vulnerable and naked except for a simple towel, she was unable to do anything but clam up, thank him, and leave.

The by-line for the book- ‘Some questions about sex and power’, throws an extraordinary array of different women’s reactions to unwanted gestures by encroaching males. It seems some men are just incredibly lucky, they get off scot-free- maybe they choose their ‘victims’ carefully- women who do not have the confidence or the will to speak up. Or bold women who think they can handle it themselves and say ‘fuck off’ and move on quickly from the whole experience. Or even women who are in some way ‘flattered’ by the approach- (yes, there are some in this book)- and therefore there are no repercussions, and there is no damage done. The men are just ‘finding out’. Some men will say they don’t know whether or not their actions will be welcomed. I dare say, though, that there must be many ‘wolves’ who have no interest in gaining the approval of the other person, that they are simply after gratification, or seeking power, and have no interest in the considerable cost due to their actions.
Then there are those men who I might say, somewhat sheepishly, may be considered quite unlucky. Was Shepherd one of those? If the allegations are true- and I am guessing Garner has her doubts- did Shepherd merely take on the wrong women in his inebriated state, where many, many males before him may have merely just been put swiftly back in their place?

 I am also thinking, in very, very modern times, of Rolf Harris, who I have no sympathy for, and a little earlier the British con-man, Jimmy Saville, Bill Cosby for a very contemporary case. Here we are in different territory. The shocking abuse of power, and the multiple damaging acts. It is completely different with Shepherd, isn’t it? Did the women need to go to the police? And, interestingly, in these situations, where does the power lie? Is it with Shepherd, older and more experienced, and in a position , as ‘Master’ (interesting title) of authority and respect, possibly admiration or charisma, or is it with the women, young, attractive, possibly beguiling, Rosen for example described by Garner in a photo as ‘a goddess’, ‘daring beauty’, ‘a woman in the full glory of her youth’, even a reference to the ‘the double mass of her splendid bosom…bursting.’ So isn’t she allowed to be enchantingly beautiful?’ one might say.
We keep going back to why the women chose such a strong form of retaliation. I can’t remember who said it, maybe a friend of Garner’s, but somebody said she would hope, if it was her daughter, that she would have the nous to deal with it efficiently, a no-mess implication.

On the train, with all of this on my mind, and my potential friend having just departed, we stopped at Brunswick. A whole lot of hungry-looking, energetic males got on, wearing some kind of haphazard uniform from the local secondary college. They all looked about sixteen, so in about Year 10 or 11. It’s a potential school for my eldest daughter, two years away from high school. The thought struck me. Did I want this collective male gaze settling on her long, brown hair, her wide-eyes and fair complexion, her slim fingers and slender frame…

The title of the book, The First Stone, implies women are equally capable of inappropriate behaviour, that they use their sexual prowess when it is convenient and should be merciful when those of the opposite gender ‘get it wrong’. This line of thinking might consider that men are sometimes clumsy, and awkward, and poor at reading signals, or perhaps oblivious to signals, and that women sometimes ‘send off’ signals, perhaps inadvertently.

Personally, I can’t help but think about those women who reciprocates friendliness- there is no reason to be outright rude, for instance- and smile back, and engage, and even allow the male to buy a drink for them… then the signal is ‘you want to be with me’, ‘you find me mutually appealing’, ‘you want to have sex with me as well…’ It is this part of everything that makes me sad and a bit angry. It’s where, as a woman, you can’t really win.