Geoff zoomed down the highway that was the foot path not bothering to veer to one side when encountering his fellow pedestrians. Geoff enjoyed the subtle yet noticeable feeling of power he got from people having to move out of HIS way.
Geoff could walk; he just didn’t want to. He learned long ago on a workshop that was being conducted at his workplace that he should take care of his mental health. He had no idea what they were talking about. He didn’t understand that those two words could appear next to each other. He thought mental meant those crazy homeless people down at the train station and health had something to do with salad and going for a run. But the facilitators of the workshop told him that his thoughts were really important and if he wasn’t having fun happy thoughts then maybe he needed a mental health day. When he realised that this meant a day off work, he started taking his mental health really seriously. He was determined to be as mentally healthy as he possibly could.
After trying really hard with his mental health for several weeks his company wanted to make sure that he was indeed mentally healthy and requested some proof of his condition. That’s when Geoff discovered Tele-health. He could simply type in his symptoms and through some miracle of the modern era a remote doctor could accurately assess his condition and give him medical leave from work. Geoff wasn’t sure how they could know this, but he knew doctors were very smart, so he trusted in their wisdom “Probably have sumpin’ set up in the telephone” he concluded.
Geoff continued to research about mental health and was surprised by how many conditions he probably had. He had depression, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, Bipolar disorder, OCD, personality disorder, he was also pre-diabetic and possibly pregnant! He continued to send through his self-diagnosed symptoms to his compassionate omniscient Tele-health doctor, and they continued to acknowledge his unique suffering and recommend more rest days. “Lucky they’ve got a subscription service” thought Geoff “otherwise this’d be costin’ me heaps!”.
Over time Geoff’s resting began to manifest legitimate issues. He was after all spending most days on the couch watching television and ordering uber eats and so his muscles began to atrophy. This was not the lifestyle the human body had evolved for. He began to have aches and pains all over. Eventually NDIS got involved and were supporting Geoff for his various conditions. They eventually installed a wheelchair access ramp at Geoff’s home and gave him an electric scooter.
These thoughts were sporadically spawning and passing, spawning and passing, in Geoff’s mind when he passed the bottle shop at 10:58 am. “A bit early to start drinkin’” Geoff said. Geoff had let himself go of late, but holding himself to a standard of never drinking before noon made him believe that he had a handle on things.
He rolled into the Newsagents and bought himself 10 scratchies.
“Got a good feelin’ about this one.” He told the cashier who was not listening as they were on a phone call to their cousin in Calcutta.
Geoff went to go and buy a Banh mi from what he called ‘That Asian shop’ but was really called ‘Vinh Pham’s Bakery’. He ordered his Banh mi and always took a peculiar pride in saying “no chilli!” which he believed was the ingredient that separated his culture from what he called ‘The Asians’. He believed if he were to start eating chilli, eventually somehow, he would start to become one of them. He felt he was already on a pretty slippery slope eating their sandwiches. But they just tasted so damn good.
Geoff left the bakery. It was now 11:07 am. “Pretty much lunchtime” Geoff said to no one but himself as if the absence of any objection was an affirmation. 11:07, in Geoff’s mind, was close enough to noon and so drinking alcohol became an acceptable part of the rest of his day. He rolled into the bottle shop and picked out from the fridge a 4 pack of Woodstock double strength bourbon and coke’s and headed to the counter. Geoff had calculated long ago that this was the most cost-effective way to consume bourbon with coke without actually having to mix the two ingredients yourself.
“Day for it” said Geoff to the store clerk who wasn’t listening when he scanned Geoff’s drinks as he was watching the footy on his phone.
Feeling empty from his lack of connection with other human beings, he then zoomed on down to the local park.
He found a nice spot by the lake and put down the plastic bags containing his lunch both solid and liquid. He pulled the scratchies from his pocket and a 20c piece from his wallet and imagined all the things he would do with his newly acquired riches. It involved large boats, champagne, beautiful women, fast cars and other stereotypical concepts embedded in Geoff’s mind by advertising. But with each failure to line up 3 cartoon money bags Geoff’s dream cracked, shattered and gave way to the reality which Geoff so detested.
“Fuck!” yelled Geoff startling an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter as they were walking through the park.
Geoff now turned his attention to his lunch, and the anticipation of the pleasure it would produce in his mouth slightly brightened his mood. He proceeded to unwrap his banh mi, several pieces of wrapping paper fell to the ground, which Geoff noticed, then promptly forgot about.
He attacked his Vietnamese sandwich with gusto. “Reward for a hard day’s work” he chuckled to himself as a drizzle of melted butter infused with duck pate slid down his chin. The friction from his week-old beard slowed the fall just in time before it dripped off onto t-shirt. He wiped his face unceremoniously with the back of his hand and rubbed the collected diary and liver products onto the side of his tracksuit pants, as was his custom.
About halfway through his Banh Mi, Geoff was breathing heavily and felt like a cigarette would soothe his breathing. He wiped his hands on his pants again and lit a cigarette. The petrochemicals and combusted tobacco leaf permeated the masticated white bread and pork flesh that was still undigested in his mouth, creating a gastronomical sensation only a chimney could enjoy. Geoff didn’t mind that he was smoking right next to a children’s playground, but several parents did. One parent thought about walking over and saying something but felt compromised when they noticed Geoff was in a mobility scooter. Geoff once again revelled in the subtle yet noticeable feeling of power he got from his ‘disability’.
An appreciable amount of sandwich crumb had escaped Geoff’s gullet, bounced off his tracksuit pants and was beginning to form a nice radius of carbohydrates around Geoff’s scooter that caught the attention of a shy yet inquisitive duck.
This duck was the runt of the brood and the principles of survival of the fittest dictated that he was ostracised from the rest of the ducks. Not a particularly skilled hunter of insects and worms, his diet therefore consisted of whatever plant foods his fellow ducks had not eaten first and whatever foods careless humans happened to abandon. Geoff’s cavalier approach to the consumption of his lunch provided just the occasion for such a motivated opportunist.
The duck paddled over to the edge of the lake then waddled over to within 2 meters of Geoff. Geoff noticed his new guest to which his natural reaction was to feign a kick in the ducks’ direction accompanied by an irritable “Piss off!”. With a mouth still half full of Banh Mi; pickled carrot, pork belly, and other ingredients spewed out in a spectacular plume; several particularly succulent pieces landed right in front of the little duck. The duck was surprised. No one had ever shown him such kindness. He was confused about the preceding body language, but humans were strange creatures after all and it was not his job to understand them, he was a duck. But what all animals understood was that the sharing of food was kindness. The duck nibbled on a tender piece of pork belly, the salt and fat squeezed out of the flesh and sent delicious signals to his brain which only enamoured him further. Who was this kind, generous man the duck thought? Could he have made a friend?
Geoff looked on as the duck gulped down the last of the pork belly. His acquired taste of a personality and casual violence had not scared the duck off, there he remained, still and receptive. He had not left like so many others in Geoff’s life. He thought of friends’ past, of family members, of ex-colleagues, of the multitudes of people who, one after the other, eventually distanced themselves from him. Whether it was something he did, which was often the case, or whether it was simply his being, Geoff came to believe that eventually they would leave, it was inevitable. To this realisation, he constructed a reenforcing world view that crudely intended to defend Geoff’s ego. It projected a cruel and unfair world populated by selfish actors and the only logical way to participate was to counter with greater selfishness.
Geoff had behaved this way toward the duck and yet there he remained. Why had he not left him like all the rest? Could there be such a thing as unconditional love? Could someone love Geoff as he is in all his prickly abrasive glory? With all his slobbish and slothish tendencies? Even if it was only just a small bird?
He began to feel the defensive walls he had built around him lower, began to feel the fortress erode and crumble.
He looked into the duck’s eyes. His vision began to focus; all peripheral imagery dissolved. It felt like he was falling into the duck’s pupils, accelerating towards darkness. For a moment, time ceased to exist. A wormhole of experience had opened between their gazes, Geoff was sucked right in, the ducks’ eyes formed the backdrop of this new universe, the canvas unto which all the regrets and follies of his life were now painted. Memories dilated in and out of this avian’s ocular nucleus in rapid succession. Each more potent than the last. That time he drank too much at a work Christmas party, and came on to Sarah from accounting, appeared to him in 4-dimensional high definition. The time he stole $100 from his mate’s bedroom at a house party, a supernova of intergalactic surround sound. The time his brother caught him sniffing his wife’s underwear in the bathroom, a gamma ray burst of shame sent back through time at the speed of light. The emotion of it all was overwhelming. Feelings Geoff had denied or buried for a lifetime now flooded his being as if he had been standing in a monsoon arms spread out wide screaming toward the heavens as each thick raindrop exploded hidden suppressed emotions that were desperate to be processed.
Through the duck’s gentle and all-encompassing gaze Geoff finally realised what he had been denying his entire life. That there is good in the world and that a man can change. He may not be able to change the past, but he could change the now, he could be the man he always believed he was. The peak of this moment was ecstatic. He made vows in all directions. He would hit the gym, go back to work, give up smoking, stop rorting the system, be kind to people, help out in the community, he might even volunteer! He envisioned himself as this person, as one who was loved universally. He would make up with his family, he would make friends, people would respect him. Women would find him attractive, he would get married, have kids. He would realise that all along this love was there waiting for him, all he had to do was step up and step into the man he always should have been.
All he had to do was start.
With this last sobering thought, the wormhole began to close. The universe shrank and warped back into reality, HIS reality. Slightly disoriented and confused he realised he was still staring at the duck. The duck stared back at him yearningly, lovingly. Geoff was still filled with emotion, not a feeling he was accustomed to. He remembered his vows only a moment ago. Change. It sounded like a lot of work. He looked down at his protruding waistline; t-shirt and pants stained with various sauces over numerous days. How many hours on the treadmill would it take until he got in shape? How many salads would he have to eat? Would his brother really want to talk to him again? He sought comfort in another drag of his cigarette as his mind began to build a mountain of impossibility around his transfiguration.
It did sound like a lot of work. Familiar voices echoed in the chamber of his mind the injustices of the world and the impossibility of it all. Could he really lose all that weight? Would women ever find him attractive? Would his friends forgive him? And why should he help people? When has anyone ever done anything for him? And why should he give up his precious time for a stranger? And like pulling up a warm blanket he receded back into the comfort of his world view.
Still looking at the duck who looked back at him with affectionate hoping eyes, the defensive reflex took over, and he muttered to himself “I think this duck is gay for me.” Geoff took one final drag of his cigarette, aimed and threw it in the duck’s direction, several sparks just missing the animal upon impact. The duck, frightened, flew away to the shelter of the lake. “Get out of here gay duck!” Geoff spat, as more pieces of sandwich sprayed onto the dirt, their fate now with the worms. And with that final burst of homophobia, Geoff’s epiphany collapsed, unrealised.
Gilbert Strauss' Blog 
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