Story for performance #154
webcast from Sydney at 07:42PM, 21 Nov 05

a show of hands
Source: AAP, ‘Israel’s Labour party quits coalition’, The Age online, 21/11/05.
Writer/s: Brian Fuata

I am riding a bike. It is hot in Brisbane, and it is only the morning. It will get hotter as the day goes on I know that for a fact, the sun is the time in Brisbane. It is constant and tells you when and where you are. My mother is in her morning dress and waving goodbye. Her hands are coarse. Her hands love me. She shows me to school…

In every year of primary school I was the best drawer in my class. I enjoyed it very much. I would draw everywhere I was. At home near the television, at home near the oven, at home with my head resting on the family dog, at the park near the magpie nest, at the park on the swing with blood in the sand, in class during English lesson, on the school oval during sports lesson, in mass during choir practice. On the bus, in the car, on the road walking home when my mother would forget to pick us up. I would draw everything from my family, farm animals, wild animals, beer bottles, white people, milk bottles, cars, to a winter moon over a snow covered village in Japan. Being quite effeminate, drawing was the only thing that stopped me from being killed on the school grounds. I wore my pad and pen like a soft armour. When it rained, I used it as an umbrella.

In grade 6 there was T [full name deleted]. At the school camp of that year, T had revealed to the entire cabin right before bed time, a body of pubic hair around his penis. Seeing that all the boys in the cabin were built like girls, T’s revelation was biblical. He stripped off all his clothes, and ran up and down, screaming with laughter, thrusting his hips frantically so that his penis would flap up and down, to and fro, like the broken neck of a chicken, making this fantastic whacking sound when it hit the lower part of his tummy. I remember being transfixed, but then broken from this trance with the realization of who this body of hair and this hideous appendage belonged to. I was never a big fan of T. He was loud. He swore a lot. He was very poor. He had a pretty mother that all the boys wanted to fuck. He was popular, and a bully. However, to the rest of the cabin, from that moment onwards, T became God. The boys fell in love with him. From then on they would dream nightly, beside their posters of sports stars and toys of mass destruction, of T’s body over them, inside them. They wanted to fuck with T. Word of his wonder had spread out from us and to the girl’s cabin next door. The girls wanted to fuck him. They loved him like a poster. T would walk past and their limbs would fall off. They would eat their frizzed hair, and gouge each others eyes. When we returned to school, the school was hit with T fever. It was a frenzy of science and religion. Teachers would chase him with rulers and a pair of scissors, the principal, Sister Helen Clarke would randomly call his mother just to say hello. The boys would collapse to the floor wherever T walked so that his feet didn’t have to touch the ground. T made front page in the local newspaper for a month. Sometimes, they would cut the headline all together and just have a picture of his hair. Meanwhile, my latest drawing curiosity was the portraits of famous Hollywood actresses.

One day I was in class, we were learning about pollution and forest devastation, when Troy and two of his disciples who both had drawn fake moustaches above their top lip, accosted me. I was sitting by the window thinking of Meryl Streep.

‘Hey Cunt’, T greeted in a nice way.

‘Hi, T’, I replied.

‘I want you to draw a naked woman on my bag’, he asked. And there, he opened up the flap of his knapsack.

I obliged under rule, and began to draw. I began with the face. Her delicate eyes, a strong nose, the indent above the top lip (I always forget what that’s called) two firm lips, cute ears. T looked eagerly on, and I became nervous. What I thought was going to be a walk in the park, became a walk in the dark. I then started the hair.

‘Aw, don’t worry about that shit. I just want the good bits, the titties and pussy’, T said.

‘Yeah—I know! I just thought you would…“

‘No I don’t, just hurry and draw the titties and pussy.’

I began to draw the neck. The shoulders were broad like a dinner table.

‘Yeah! Yeah, Good. Keep goin’, you’re doin’ a good job.’ T was falling in love with me.

The arms came next, they were long, and she began to look like an ape.

‘Aw…um…yeah, it’s okay…just, yeah, keep going. I just want titties and pussy!’

T & P, [name deleted]. T & P, Titties and Pussy!

Her breasts came next. And they were perfect circles, her nipples were targets. I felt like crying. Her ribs came in like a funnel, her hips jutted back out like nothing in this world and then came her pussy. It was doll like and useless. Her thighs, and legs, and knees, ankles and feet followed suit. I finished her arms off with huge hands. Last came her hair that came down to her elbows. I was crying but I didn’t know why. T was happy, and hooted with laughter, he kissed me on the cheek, and no one cared.

‘Who has their parent consent forms for the camp next month?’, Mr Ainsley blurted out. He was tall, and handsome, and had a brown moustache.

‘C’mon…Simon, pipe down would you! C’mon, consent forms! A show of hands please!’, Mr Ainsley commanded.

I raised my left hand.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Brian Fuata.