Skunk
confesses to his Jesus the reasons for the severity of that day’s
drinking.
Skunk: The truth is that...
a low moaning sound
Skunk: hawwwww I don’t. I don’t, I don’t even, I don’t
really wanna talk about this at all, I
followed by an unhealthy length of silence.
Skunk: Well, this afternoon and eh, I was walking down
the street and I saw a woman on the other side of the street and uh, she
reminded me of my mum, I mean the way Mum looks, or looked when she was in
hospital rather than the way she did before all, the same kind of hair and,
something about her physical make-up that just reminded me of Mum. Anyway eh,
all the shops were shut you know, it being Sunday and everything, anyway eh,
she was standing looking in this one shop window that had a, it had a, a
shutter down over it, but not a solid, it wasn’t a solid shutter, it was you
know like a, I don’t even know what what, you might, what you would call that.
Anyways... she was standing looking through, she was peering through the slats
of this shutter at the clothes in this shop, and it’s not, it’s not an expensive shop in any way, but they had
some women’s clothes in there and ehm, she was looking in and eh, it just, it
reminded me of Mum, you know a, it reminded me of... of being with her when she
looked in shop windows, at clothes
sighs
Skunk:
and eh...
He is
not self-conscious enough at this point to even understand that there are tears
now running down his face, or that this weeping might be seen as anything besides alcohol-enhanced
emotion or sentimentality. Jesus cannot take his eyes off him.
Skunk:
..because this woman was on her own, that kind of came through too. I didn’t
know what what she wanted, what did she want these clothes to do, for her, you know, or how did she
see herself in these, or... just even what she was thinking, and it made me
really sad, because everybody’s like that to to to, to a degree. We’re just
wandering around on our own, and looking in shop windows, wondering what there
is for us, and what it’ll do for us,
how we can improve ourselves with some... product. I think what upset me most
was this, such a small level of happiness or or, that in your life you could be
looking for something so...
silence
Skunk:
..such a small part, that the internal, the whole internal world of a single
human being and all of that that Mum went through for years, that I knew
nothing about, that had no relevance to anybody other than her, and that upset
me. And then, you know, I was just, she was gone. I was just watching her, she
finished looking in the, in the shop and... she walked off, and my head was on fire with thinking, what is she thinking about, is she thinking about
those clothes or, what is she thinking about just as a, as an individual, as a
human being, and all that just because she looked a little like my mother, but
everybody, every single person on the street is like that, and I don’t know how
we, how we all of us aren’t going insane,
knowing that each of us has such a complicated process, such a complicated
thought process. How can we not all be going insane?
And
Brother Skunk moans again, passing over into sleep, or its inebriate equivalent
for now, his conscious mind finally locating a rest of sorts.
And
Jesus abides, wishing what he himself
knows upon no-one.
