Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2002 21:58:13 +1000
From: David Spencer <davidspencer1@hotmail.com>
Subject: Landlord-Stephen-04

So Stephen was into landscaping and Matthew was into making concrete
statues for gardens. Both pretty physical work. Both pretty blokey type
work.  No girlie, squealy types here, right?  Right.  Stephen told me once
he was gay because he liked sex with males.  If he was interested in sex
with girlie types he'd be hetero.  Most females were almost as girlie as
the girlie type gays.  The others of course are so butch it makes you feel
as if you're back behind bars again.  I rather gathered Stephen was not so
impressed with butch dykes.  Though some of them make pretty good motor
bike mechanics, he said. I thought he might be making some obscure cross
allusion here to town bikes that everybody rides, and the people servicing
the bikes, with a play on the words ride and servicing.
  But I couldn't work it out at the time.  I still can't, but I'm so tired
these days that I don't think it matters anymore.

So Stephen and Matthew were into much the same thing.  Work wise, at least.
I didn't really want to know about any other wise.  Well, only from a
parental point of view, maybe.  I wasn't completely sure Matthew knew about
some of the walking-death bug-bags.  Shazza had told me bout some of the
ones at the Barracks who were HIV positive.  They seemed to think that
since they were HIV positive then everyone else should be too.  And they
seemed to delight in taking the youngest first-timers home and ramming
them.  If the youngsters got infected, well, so what.  Serves them right
for being so young and desirable.  If the rammers could no longer be young
and desirable, then why should anyone else be.  I was appalled that anyone
could have that sort of attitude.  Shazza told me about it at great length
for weeks and weeks.  It was like looking into the eyes of a king cobra.
Both fascinating and deadly together.

Apparently these HIV infected bug bags were so pissed off about their death
sentences that they wanted to spread their ill-fortune among as many people
as possible.  Since they were losing their looks as well, they delighted in
the idea of all these young things rapidly losing their good looks too.  I
suppose it made sense in some sort of ghastly way.  Thank goodness only a
small number of HIV positive people behave that way.

So I was worried about Matthew.  I mean almost every kid experiments.  As
dear Grandpapa Freud used to say: 'we're all unselective at first'. I
gathered Freud meant that we choose just any object for our sexual
attention, indiscriminately, until we somehow learn what sort of objects to
select.  Well most of us learn by trial and error. Experience might teach
the hardest lessons, but by goodness you learn those lessons quickly. So I
was somewhat concerned that Matthew might be a little unselective in his
object preferences.  I didn't want him to end up being unprotected with the
walking dead.

I didn't really know what had been going on up there in Matthew's bedroom
when Mum was downstairs talking with Dale.  I wasn't all that concerned
because Matthew was the sort of person who would go for what he wanted in
his own personal life no matter what other people felt about it.  And
Stephen was a pretty decent sort of bloke.  He would never harm Matthew.
So if Matthew wanted to experiment that way, then I preferred him doing it
in his own bed with someone who wouldn't hurt him.  But exactly how much
Matthew needed to learn for his own self protection I didn't really know.
I did not want to talk to him about it because I did not want to be seen to
be prying into his own personal affairs.  Stephen must have been feeling
rather, um, delicate, about the whole thing. He didn't know that Mum was
downstairs until he came wandering down.  Matthew had not returned to alert
him.  Stephen gravitated down the stairs and walked right into it.  No
wonder he scooted off back to his place straight away.

So I put the last video into next door's letter box.  I'd changed the label
to include a printed Postage Paid rectangle.  Looked really professional, I
thought.  Stephen wandered in early the next afternoon.  Matthew was at
work.  Dale was off doing Dale things.  Stephen's partner was at work with
the arty stuff.  A good opportunity to have a quiet talk.  It only took me
about 20 minutes to realise that was what Stephen intended.

He started off by saying the change in label made no difference.  Except it
confirmed it was me.  Stephen admitted he had related most of last week's
conversation to the partner.  So when the last video turned up with the
altered label, it was proof positive that I was responsible.  Oh, hum.  One
for the partner.  Of course this irritated me even more than I was usually
irritated at the time.  So I asked Stephen, he was the messenger of the bad
tidings wasn't he; I asked Stephen whether he was seeing Matthew outside of
here.  That stirred up the ants nest, didn't it.  Stephen tried not to
blush.  Strike one for the retaliators.  I pressed home the advantage.  So
when are you going to see him next.  Squirm, shuffle,unshuffle. Got him
well hooked here.  I lay back to watch the barb dig in.  Stephen took a
deep breath, squared his shoulders, exhaled and collapsed.  I almost
started to realise what a prick I was being.

`I really like Matthew.  I mean he is so fresh.  He is so active.  He's
full of life.  He likes the same things I like.  He likes the same music.
He's easy to talk with'.  `And you give him the loco weed don't you; he
likes that too, doesn't he'.  `I don't give him that much.  He's got his
own sources.  He's growing some of his own too, you know'.  `No, I didn't.
Go on'.  Well Stephen did go on.  At length.  About how he is trying to cut
down on the silly weed and how Matthew wants to too.  That took another 20
minutes.  I was totally fed up with the direction of the conversation by
then.  `But what about sex.'  Well, that blew the lid off it, didn't it.

Not that Stephen was at all interested in talking to me about his sexual
interest in Matthew.  And Matthew was my own first born son after all. I
wasn't going to pry into his bedroom affairs. What happened there was not
really my business unless he was likely to burn the place down.  Even then
I was only concerned that we could both get out before the place burnt down
around our ears.  For some odd reason the insurance company decided to
insure the building on a reinstatement basis.  If it burnt down they would
pay the cost for it to be rebuilt. They worked out the cost of rebuilding
on a floor area basis times a standard rate which increased year by year
and was determined by the region in which the house was located.  So if the
house burnt down I would have had enough insurance to rebuild it new.

I didn't want to lose the staircase though.  It was solid kauri pine with a
Red Cedar handrail.  The king post was over 18 feet long, was a single
piece and was turned for the top three feet.  It had a large ball turned on
the top which was part of the one piece of timber.  It must have been
turned in a spar lathe.  The type they used a couple of centuries ago for
turning ships spars.  I didn't think you could get a single stick of clear
kauri like that again.  I doubted whether you could find a lathe to turn
the piece like that either.  So when the offer was made to have the place
burn down I thanked the person profusely and said I shall consider.

On the couple of occasions when Queen Victoria refused assent to laws
passed by the New South Wales parliament, the legal formula for refusing
assent was `We shall consider'.  And of course she considered, and
considered, and is probably still considering, wherever she is at the
moment.  Similarly, I was suggesting as politely as I possibly could to
this rather alarming person, that I really was not all that interested. But
I didn't want to offend the person in any way at all by suggesting that he
was an out and out loony, or something like that.  When I was telling
Stephen about it the next afternoon over a cup of Russian Caravan in his
back garden, he suggested I didn't really want it burnt down because I
didn't want to run the risk of the insurance company doing me for arson.

I explained that was not a worry because I was insured with the same
insurance company which insured the same bloke who torched seventeen houses
and made claims on all of them with the same company.  It was only when he
torched number eighteen that someone twigged.  And it was not the insurance
boffins at head office.  The clerk of the local court was also an agent for
this particular insurance company.  The gentleman with the phosphor finger
tips took out his seventeenth policy through the local court house when he
first moved into Coonabarabran.  The house burnt down and the local coroner
was informed of the fire.  Phosphor fingers came back in after his payout
and asked to insure number eighteen at the same office.  The clerk
organised it and wondered a bit.  When number eighteen burnt down a few
months later it was reported to the local coroner again. The local coroner
remembered the previous fire with the same owner.  The local coroner was
also the clerk of the local court.  The clerk of the local court was also
the local agent for said insurance company.

Funny about that.  He had a few drinkies with the local sergeant that
Friday evening at the local rissole club and, goodness me, the following
week the arson squad travelled the three hundred miles up country from
police headquarters to sniff around.  They sniffed propellant in the latest
torched house.  They also sniffed a rat.  The rat came before the court.
The beak on the bench had been oiled up before not to ask questions about
how the accused came to be caught.  It didn't make the press, but this was
the same insurance company I was insured with for my house in Islington.
No Stephen, I was not the slightest bit worried about the insurance company
smelling arson. They wouldn't recognise arson if it burnt their pubes.

After the case went up for trial, we found out that the insurance company
decided to ferret around through their records and found he was a regular
customer of theirs.  Regular for signing up, and regular for being paid out
too.  Seventeen payouts.  Would you believe?  Duh.  I mean?  The insurance
company attitude seemed to be, who cares.  We can just lift premiums to
meet any shortfall can't we.  We don't have to suffer, do we.  We will
always be able to wander in to the Leagues Club next door for a long liquid
lunch before shuffling off to Wynyard to catch the early train back home
each afternoon, won't we.  Why worry?

No Stephen.  I wasn't worried about those clowns.  But I didn't want my
staircase burnt.  Or Matthew.  And I suppose it was probably better if I
didn't get cindered too.  Well not that way anyhow.  I didn't have a valid
will anymore.  Not since the divorce.  So what's on between you and Matthew
huh?


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