MUSE
A very short novel by Tim "GetFucked" Winton
For those who aren't familiar with Tim GetFucked Winton, please note
- he is the most overrated writer not just in Australia, but globally.
- Abalone is a type of clam
CHAPTER 1
I was just 52 years old when we got word that me old man had been crushed to death by an illegal shipment of rogue abalone.
His best mate Sando stood awkwardly on the verandah that Christmas Day in 1972, in 42 degree heat, breaking the news to Mum.
- Mrs Salmon, he died brave, Sando said. Died brave.
Mum went quiet.
I was screaming into that hot blueness.
But then I stopped because Dad's servants came out murmuring. Sando squeezed my shoulder.
"Later, " he said. "I know you're doing it tough, but right now I gotta talk to the servants in simple, totally non-bullshit language they can readily understand".
He turned to face the servants.
- Ole Man Salmon is kill, Sando said.
- No.
- He fucking is. Ole Man is kill. By many clam.
- You bullsheet, Mr Sando.
- No , no bullshit, Sando repeated patiently.
- Ole Man is kill?
- Ole Man is kill. Many evil clams of evil fall on his ass.
- No.
- Clams fall? So fast?
- Not shittin' ya.
- Who pay us now, Mr Sando, someone said softly.
Sando wordlessly turned away and punched his fist through the ice box in agony. But then he pinned them with his blazing orbs and in the exquisite agony of his face I knew that Sando's eyes could just maybe explain what words ought never try to.
Make it easy for your boss-lady, his eyes seemed to plead, Make it easy for her because she loved him, and is just broken, even less than half a person now. But... see! See how in this moment she has a supreme indescribable dignity! For the rest of her days, she'll be little better than a lame dog trembling in sublime anguish, defined by idiot loyalty to a dead master....
or maybe she'll end up on the grog, and become the town bike, and all the blokes'll have a ride, and she'll laugh but there'll be somefing wrong with her laugh...
Or maybe she'll end up as a shithouse stereotype in a novel by an unbelievably overrated Australian writer ...
But see her NOW. And know. And KNOW THAT NOW is all there is, all any of us have got. This fucken moment. The fucking NOW.
But, if her Ole Man is killed by death, who pay us, Mr Sando? said the Servant Peoples annoyingly.
He break fish law, Mr Sando!
Yeah, he broke a bullshit fish law, but he was just maybe doing something maybe none of us will ever fathom, even if we spent five thousand years at sea with the Great Spirit of the Crazy-Beautiful Shit of Everything.
Sando's eyes were screaming now, filling with luminous tears.
And these luminous tears told us that luminous tears were Sando's truth and pain. His suffering was his privilege.
Ya Dad said that if clams could talk, they'd sound like they'd swallowed a fucking dictionary ... slick, charming, real educated. Their pissy dead faces never toldja nothing, but they never stopped hating your Dad: he was everything they fuckin weren't - proud, defiant, questioning authority, with a steaming black fucking head full of dreams. They fucking hated him.
So they raped his bum.
CHAPTER 4(?)
I fucking lost it while Sando started dancing. He danced.
His almighty brutal dancing feet of grief somehow taught me how life can happen sometimes.
That day, Mum and Sando and I drank and laughed and cried and laughed some more.
Sando had shamed the Servants into agreeing to work for us forever for no pay. They finished making Christmas Dinner and served it to us on the verandah. We told stories about Dad.
It was cathartic, natural, authentic, and done so lovingly and well that by the time the flaming ball of life juice had sunk behind the pale asbestos fence of false sentimentality and bullshit psychology, I was completely over Dad. I'd never shed another tear or waste another thought on him.
CHAPTER 3
But Mum still went to shit.
She missed the old man's oddly eloquent silences. His exacting standards of cleanliness. The house no longer smelled of cannabis and semen. She missed his cool head, and his grim sexual wisdom.
Pain etched on her face, Mum sat on the verandah of our caravan, stroking Dad's work boots in mute anguish.
At just 47, I didn't want to understand or help. I hardly had time for this shit.
So with courageous callousness, I pissed off with Sando to Bundedin, a wildly beautiful place on the coast of Western Australia, where everyone knew everyone else, and no-one ever had to lock their doors.
CHAPTER 4
Sando was a sharker. There was a big demand for shark meat in Bundedin, which had only one street with nothing on it except a fish and chip shop and pub that smelt intoxicatingly of dicks.
A lone wolf, Sando sharked while surfing: business should be a pleasure,
he said.
But he wasn't your ordinary sharker. He was also a shark-whisperer.
He apprenticed me in the summer of 1972.
CHAPTER 5
Sharking came natural to me because I was blessed, or maybe cursed, with a bitter love of Western Australia's Indian Ocean.
We'd be up at 4am, paddling south, waiting for the monster rips so we could sync our boards, and ride the shit out of the roiling saltwater, hellalert for the moment. The moment when we'd glimpse a shark baring its teeth and coming at us.
Sando would whisper to the thrashing porpoise until it calmed down, then I'd smash in its wise old bastard head with a harpoon.
Then jumping to it, Sando and me'd net up the catch, and surf the tide back to shore, dragging our catch along behind us, and doing donuts if we wanted. Or just tasting life. Even if it meant getting dumped by the boiling waves.
Enraged, I'd run down the beach ripping my rashi off and screaming.
Sando was more easy.
Being dumped is okay, it's all good, he said, but don't dump on being ....
CHAPTER 5. Or SIX
I was out hunting for sharks one day in Western Australia's fabulous Indian Ocean. That day I missed the old man so much. I wonder at it now.
I was buggered so I had to come in and then behind the dunnies I caught a glimpse of browned legs and flax-blonde hair, plus an arse and some sunburned breasts.
Truth to tell, at the age of 54, I wasn't ready for it. I think was I was more scared than hurt.
"Hey," said the girl. She had a Yank voice like off TV. "I'm Muse."
Please feel free to continue this bullshit novel in your own way - Australian thing not essential. Actually if it suddenly went "gangsta" that would be good ....
A very short novel by Tim "GetFucked" Winton
For those who aren't familiar with Tim GetFucked Winton, please note
- he is the most overrated writer not just in Australia, but globally.
- Abalone is a type of clam
CHAPTER 1
I was just 52 years old when we got word that me old man had been crushed to death by an illegal shipment of rogue abalone.
His best mate Sando stood awkwardly on the verandah that Christmas Day in 1972, in 42 degree heat, breaking the news to Mum.
- Mrs Salmon, he died brave, Sando said. Died brave.
Mum went quiet.
I was screaming into that hot blueness.
But then I stopped because Dad's servants came out murmuring. Sando squeezed my shoulder.
"Later, " he said. "I know you're doing it tough, but right now I gotta talk to the servants in simple, totally non-bullshit language they can readily understand".
He turned to face the servants.
- Ole Man Salmon is kill, Sando said.
- No.
- He fucking is. Ole Man is kill. By many clam.
- You bullsheet, Mr Sando.
- No , no bullshit, Sando repeated patiently.
- Ole Man is kill?
- Ole Man is kill. Many evil clams of evil fall on his ass.
- No.
- Clams fall? So fast?
- Not shittin' ya.
- Who pay us now, Mr Sando, someone said softly.
Sando wordlessly turned away and punched his fist through the ice box in agony. But then he pinned them with his blazing orbs and in the exquisite agony of his face I knew that Sando's eyes could just maybe explain what words ought never try to.
Make it easy for your boss-lady, his eyes seemed to plead, Make it easy for her because she loved him, and is just broken, even less than half a person now. But... see! See how in this moment she has a supreme indescribable dignity! For the rest of her days, she'll be little better than a lame dog trembling in sublime anguish, defined by idiot loyalty to a dead master....
or maybe she'll end up on the grog, and become the town bike, and all the blokes'll have a ride, and she'll laugh but there'll be somefing wrong with her laugh...
Or maybe she'll end up as a shithouse stereotype in a novel by an unbelievably overrated Australian writer ...
But see her NOW. And know. And KNOW THAT NOW is all there is, all any of us have got. This fucken moment. The fucking NOW.
But, if her Ole Man is killed by death, who pay us, Mr Sando? said the Servant Peoples annoyingly.
He break fish law, Mr Sando!
Yeah, he broke a bullshit fish law, but he was just maybe doing something maybe none of us will ever fathom, even if we spent five thousand years at sea with the Great Spirit of the Crazy-Beautiful Shit of Everything.
Sando's eyes were screaming now, filling with luminous tears.
And these luminous tears told us that luminous tears were Sando's truth and pain. His suffering was his privilege.
Ya Dad said that if clams could talk, they'd sound like they'd swallowed a fucking dictionary ... slick, charming, real educated. Their pissy dead faces never toldja nothing, but they never stopped hating your Dad: he was everything they fuckin weren't - proud, defiant, questioning authority, with a steaming black fucking head full of dreams. They fucking hated him.
So they raped his bum.
CHAPTER 4(?)
I fucking lost it while Sando started dancing. He danced.
His almighty brutal dancing feet of grief somehow taught me how life can happen sometimes.
That day, Mum and Sando and I drank and laughed and cried and laughed some more.
Sando had shamed the Servants into agreeing to work for us forever for no pay. They finished making Christmas Dinner and served it to us on the verandah. We told stories about Dad.
It was cathartic, natural, authentic, and done so lovingly and well that by the time the flaming ball of life juice had sunk behind the pale asbestos fence of false sentimentality and bullshit psychology, I was completely over Dad. I'd never shed another tear or waste another thought on him.
CHAPTER 3
But Mum still went to shit.
She missed the old man's oddly eloquent silences. His exacting standards of cleanliness. The house no longer smelled of cannabis and semen. She missed his cool head, and his grim sexual wisdom.
Pain etched on her face, Mum sat on the verandah of our caravan, stroking Dad's work boots in mute anguish.
At just 47, I didn't want to understand or help. I hardly had time for this shit.
So with courageous callousness, I pissed off with Sando to Bundedin, a wildly beautiful place on the coast of Western Australia, where everyone knew everyone else, and no-one ever had to lock their doors.
CHAPTER 4
Sando was a sharker. There was a big demand for shark meat in Bundedin, which had only one street with nothing on it except a fish and chip shop and pub that smelt intoxicatingly of dicks.
A lone wolf, Sando sharked while surfing: business should be a pleasure,
he said.
But he wasn't your ordinary sharker. He was also a shark-whisperer.
He apprenticed me in the summer of 1972.
CHAPTER 5
Sharking came natural to me because I was blessed, or maybe cursed, with a bitter love of Western Australia's Indian Ocean.
We'd be up at 4am, paddling south, waiting for the monster rips so we could sync our boards, and ride the shit out of the roiling saltwater, hellalert for the moment. The moment when we'd glimpse a shark baring its teeth and coming at us.
Sando would whisper to the thrashing porpoise until it calmed down, then I'd smash in its wise old bastard head with a harpoon.
Then jumping to it, Sando and me'd net up the catch, and surf the tide back to shore, dragging our catch along behind us, and doing donuts if we wanted. Or just tasting life. Even if it meant getting dumped by the boiling waves.
Enraged, I'd run down the beach ripping my rashi off and screaming.
Sando was more easy.
Being dumped is okay, it's all good, he said, but don't dump on being ....
CHAPTER 5. Or SIX
I was out hunting for sharks one day in Western Australia's fabulous Indian Ocean. That day I missed the old man so much. I wonder at it now.
I was buggered so I had to come in and then behind the dunnies I caught a glimpse of browned legs and flax-blonde hair, plus an arse and some sunburned breasts.
Truth to tell, at the age of 54, I wasn't ready for it. I think was I was more scared than hurt.
"Hey," said the girl. She had a Yank voice like off TV. "I'm Muse."
Please feel free to continue this bullshit novel in your own way - Australian thing not essential. Actually if it suddenly went "gangsta" that would be good ....
Last edited:
