After

Chapter 1-1

One

‘It says here that a bloke can expect to live until he’s ninety, maybe even older if he’s fit and healthy, and gets plenty of sex.’

‘Paul, turn out the light and go to sleep. I’m too tired.’

‘Relax. I wasn’t chatting you up. I just hadn’t thought about living that long. I thought I’d be dead way before ninety.’

‘You’ll be bloody dead before morning if you don’t shut up and let me get some sleep.’

Paul switched off the light. He lay there thinking about living for another fifty years or so and wondering how he was going to pay for twenty five to thirty years of retirement living. He would just have to get serious about financial planning, once they had passed through the private school fees paying phase of middle class living. The last time he had seriously reviewed the family budget the most obvious fact was that their expenses matched their income. There was no surplus for contingencies.

His thoughts turned to Josie. It was always a challenge being next to her in the bed. He wanted s*x every time he touched her naked body. Josie, however, had a different perspective. Obviously, as far as Paul could see, God had a twisted sense of humour. How else could you explain the different arousal rates between the sexes? He sees or thinks naked woman - instant arousal, with lumping great erection advertising the state of his interior monologue. She requires hours of talking, coupled with gentle, slow foreplay, before she even thinks about having s*x and, even after all that, she is just as likely to roll over and go to sleep, and leave him there with his dripping erection. At least, that had been his experience.

‘Paul, stop tossing and turning! Every time you move you pull the covers off my shoulders.’

‘Sorry. I’ll try to die as soon as possible.’

She ran her smooth hand over his belly. It felt good. His p***s stirred from its frustrated slumber.

‘I’m sorry, honey. I’m just really exhausted and I’m finding it hard to go to sleep.’

She snuggled up to him. Within three minutes she was asleep.

It was no wonder prostitution was a thriving business, he thought. It was married men who required the services of prostitutes and supposedly celibate men, in the guise of clergy, who were most strident in their opposition to the profession. He wondered what it would be like having s*x with a prostitute. She certainly wouldn’t engage with the client on a personal level. After all, the client was just another transaction and, to survive as a person, the prostitute would have to shut down her emotional self while she was on the job. He decided he’d stick with Josie.

He thought of those times when they did connect and the s*x was indescribable. What was the point of s*x anyway? It wasn’t about the physical relief, even though that was good, it was about the sacredness of intimacy and that required connection on all three levels of being: physical, emotional and spiritual. He understood why communication failure led to relationship breakdown. The blokes were too much into the physical to notice that the girls were coming from the emotional looking for the spiritual. He knew it was when he came from the emotional, and they touched the spiritual, that they had great s*x in the physical.

He looked at the clock: 11:55. He got up and went down the corridor to the toilet for a piss.

He got back into bed to wait for sleep. Josie was snoring softly. He knew he didn’t snore softly because Josie always woke him up and told him to stop it.

Josie wasn’t the only one snoring. He could hear Matthew trumpeting away in the next room. That boy was always making noise. He spoke with a sonic boom and whenever he blew his nose you thought of a ship lost somewhere in a mid-Atlantic fog.

He drifted back to thinking about money. They were spending a fortune on the boys’ education and it looked like Matthew wanted to become a musician, while Luke was dreaming about becoming the next Michael Jordan. Well, they had no-one to blame but themselves. They had encouraged the boys to go after their dreams. What was the point of insisting they go into a profession or pursue a safe career?

The alarm clock displayed the time in big red numerals: 12:36. It looked like he wasn’t going to get any sleep. At least Josie had rolled over and stopped snoring. If he could only go to sleep he could stop thinking about this stuff.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Paul’s hand shot out and hit the switch to kill the electronic rooster. Josie was already out of bed. No wonder she’s always tired, he thought. He looked at the clock. 6:00. Time to start the day.

He eased himself out of the bed and ambled down the corridor to the toilet for a morning piss. Then he went into the bathroom, where Josie was fixing her face in front of the mirror.

‘Morning, sweetheart’.

He patted Josie’s backside as he stepped into the shower to spend five minutes standing under a stream of hot water. After the shower, he rubbed himself dry with a towel and lathered up for his morning shave. By the time he had finished in the bathroom it was 6:30.

He went into the boys’ rooms to play alarm clock and start the morning struggle to have them out of the house by ten to eight.

‘Come on you lot, out of bed! It’s already half past six. Get a move on!’

Then he went to the kitchen for breakfast: two slices of toasted multigrain bread and a cup of coffee.

‘Did you sleep well, sweetheart?’ he asked, as he sat down at the table.

Josie looked up and shook her head. ‘I feel like I’ve run a marathon. Just can’t get my head to switch off.’

‘Why don’t you call in sick and give yourself a mental health day?’

‘You know what it’s like at school. Taking a day off just makes more work. Besides, I’ve promised my year eights I’d listen to their speeches this morning.’

By seven Josie was ready to go. She searched through her handbag for her purse. Found it, opened it and revealed its emptiness.

‘Can you give me twenty dollars? I’ll pay you back tomorrow when I get paid.’

Paul opened his wallet. It held thirty dollars. He checked his bus ticket. It still had six trips on it. He extracted the twenty dollar note.

‘Seems like we are always running out of money,’ he said as he handed it over.

‘Let’s not go there. I’ve got to go.’ She kissed him on the cheek, went up to the boys’ rooms, said goodbye to them and left to catch the early bus, so she could enjoy a fifteen minute walk through City Park on the way to work.

After Josie had gone, Paul made another trip to the boys’ rooms to make sure they were up and getting dressed. Then he went back to the kitchen to finish cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

‘Morning, Dad.’ Matthew arrived in the kitchen and started making himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

‘Where’s Luke?’

‘He should be here in a minute.’

Before he knew it, it was ten to eight and wouldn’t you know it, Luke was in the toilet.

‘I’m ready, Dad,’ said Matthew as he finalised the packing of his bag.

‘Come on Luke, time to go!’

Luke appeared with his tie in one hand and his overstuffed school bag in the other. They were ready.

It took ten minutes to drive the boys to school, then another ten to drive to the interchange to catch the bus. If a bus arrived just after he got there he would make it to work on time. Every morning the boys were not ready to leave at ten to eight he was late for work.

Today he had to wait ten minutes for a bus. Fortunately, it was sunny. He hated waiting at the interchange on cold, wet and windy mornings. The flat roofed, no walls, structure had obviously been designed by someone who would never have to use it.

8:30. Five buses arrived at the same time. The first bus pulled into stop A. Several people rushed towards it, only to be disappointed as the driver shut the door and pulled out. He wondered if the i***t understood he was supposed to be driving people to and from the city according to a timetable and not just driving to a timetable.

He boarded the 578, which stopped at stop B, and got a seat at the back of the bus. He looked at the thirty or so passengers on the bus.

Couples and friends were obvious. Couples touched each other. They held hands or leaned together. Some hugged and kissed as if they had to fit in as much physical contact as possible before the separation of the working day. Friends talked, smiled and laughed. The strangers sat next to each other in the intimate space of the bus seat, often sharing more body heat through the enforced contact with the person alongside them than they shared with any other person in their day. Yet the strangers ignored each other. They stared blankly from glazed eyes, read papers, magazines or novels, blissed out plugged into their iPods or feigned sleep. It was a rare sight to see two apparent strangers strike up a conversation on a bus.

Paul wondered why he didn’t speak to the person he was sitting next to. He looked at her as she gazed out the window. He was old enough to be her father but he couldn’t help admiring the curves of her young body. Just as well most people couldn’t read auras. His would betray his lust every time he looked at a gorgeous young woman.

He wondered if young women noticed. Or did age give older men a veil of invisibility? What chance did the average forty to fifty year old male have of scoring with a gorgeous twenty something year old? He wasn’t even on her radar screen. That’s why he didn’t talk to her. He looked away.

If he couldn’t have a gorgeous young woman in his waking life, why were all the women in his dreams gorgeous young women with bodies full of sensual desire? In the dreams they came to him. They beckoned him. They opened their secret parts for him and pulled him into deep penetration. He always awoke at the moment of climax. The subconscious had a lot to answer for.

Maybe his dreams of screwing gorgeous young women were simply expressions of his suppressed s****l desires. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough s*x at home. No maybe about it. He wasn’t.

The bus arrived at his stop in the city. He got off and ambled towards the bank. No point in rushing in for another routine day in the world of banking.

Paul started his day, like he did most mornings, sharing a cup of coffee with Henry, his team leader for the last two years. It was an opportunity to sort out the day’s priorities and discuss the state of the world before they got down to the serious stuff.

‘I look at the people working here, Paul, especially the ones that have been here for twenty years or more, and wonder how anyone can work in a place like this for that long and be satisfied with a basic clerical position.’

‘I think I might know why. It’s called economic slavery.’

‘Slavery?’

‘Think about it. The first workers anywhere were slaves. I mean, who built the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China?’

‘I thought it was the emperor.’

‘Well, he got the credit but who actually did all the work? The slaves and all they got for it was food and lodging. The emperor lived in luxury while the ordinary working man slaved away building the great whatever.’

‘But you can’t be serious about slavery in today’s world.’

‘It’s more subtle these days. In the past, the rich could buy and sell slaves on the open market. They can’t do that anymore and they don’t have to. We turn ourselves into slaves. Think about it. The rich still own the means of production. They make all the things we need and want. They advertise all their wonderful stuff, which we can buy in their shops with money they will lend us, provided we agree to sign a mortgage, a bill of sale or credit card and work for them for minimal wages to pay it all off.’

‘Paul, you’re having me on, aren’t you?’