Praise Read Online Free Page B

something huge and purple and bulging with veins. I wanted a
pole
. This life of mine was cursed with all the wrong attributes.
    Cynthia meanwhile had started muttering and whispering to my cuteness. I watched her. She kissed it, sucked it. It rose up. She pulled back, considered.
    â€˜I think it wants to fuck me,’ she said.
    â€˜I think I know what my own penis wants.’
    â€˜Bullshit. I’m the only one that knows.’
    She came climbing back up, lifted herself and descended. She was wet. I slid straight in. ‘Another fucking Gordon,’ she said.
    â€˜Gordon is a useful name. Not a single famous person has ever been called Gordon.’
    She was pushing down, sliding back. ‘What about Gordon Lightfoot?’
    â€˜Who’s Gordon Lightfoot?’
    â€˜Forget it. And
move
.’
    I moved. I did my best.
    She rode me into the ground.
    Later that day I retrieved my car from Louise’s place, then drove Cynthia home. Her parents were due back and she wanted to get the house clean.
    â€˜I’ll call you in a day or two, okay?’
    â€˜Okay.’
    We didn’t kiss goodbye. That was good. She closed the car door and walked up the path. She always moved fast when she walked. She was impatient.
    I drove home.

F IVE
    It was time to consider money. I still had about five hundred dollars left, but the idea of finding another job was becoming incomprehensible. I was destined for unemployment. I walked down to the Fortitude Valley C.E.S. I told the woman behind the counter that I’d like to register. This was the first step towards getting the dole. Once the C.E.S. had you listed, then you could register yourself at Social Security for unemployment benefits. She gave me a form. I looked at it, read it through, then filled it in. It was a surrender of sorts. She told me to wait for an interview. I sat down along the wall and waited.
    The place was crowded. Bad times in the economic world. There weren’t many jobs listed on the boards. People walked around, staring at the adds for assistant cooks, builders’ labourers, service station attendants...and maybe they all
needed
the work. Maybe they had kids to support, maybe they had debts. I didn’t need the work. I was young and single and male. Society was constructed for the likes of me.
    But I was worried. My fear of bureaucracies was real, and the C.E.S. and the Department of Social Security were reputedly monsters. I’d spent most of my life avoiding going on the dole, just to stay out of their grasp. They needed to know things. They needed to limit and define. They created motives where motives didn’t exist. They assumed guilt, they searched for it, rooted it out and pinned it down. And I
was
guilty. Every form I’d ever filled out had told me that. I didn’t have the right desires. The only safe course was employment. No one bothered you if you were employed. But then no one bothered you if you were dead either. Employment was death. Safety was death. These things had to be understood.
    A man called out ‘Gordon Buchanan’. I got up and followed him down a line of small cubicles until we came to his. He was middle-aged, round, balding. He was the monster personified, but there was no joy in it for him either. He was carrying the form I’d filled in. I sat down and he sat down. He read through the pages, typing the information into his computer terminal.
    â€˜So you’re a barman?’ he said.
    â€˜Well, I’m usually in the bottle shops, not behind the bar.’
    â€˜Okay. And you’re capable and willing to look for full-time work?’
    Well ... only part-time really. I’ve only ever worked twenty or thirty hours a week. It’s all I need to get by.’
    He typed it in. ‘Of course we can’t help you much with your job searching. Not with part-time work. Things are so busy these days we can only concentrate on the full-time