A letter arrives from home. And a newspaper. The letters don’t interest me anymore. Their contents mean nothing to me, cannot compare to my new life of sexual maturity, of man knowingness. Thomas, my older brother, is doing well in the law firm and will soon complete his articles, whatever that means. Billy is, of course, also doing well, in both schoolwork and sport. Dad’s business continues to grow and he recently went on a fishing trip with a number of very important businessmen, including a barrister. Woopty doo. Everyone is always doing well. We hope you too, Jack, are doing well. Yes, Mum, I am a statement machine operator in a bank branch run by two incompetent idiots and a man with a Holden fetish. I am also an incompetent idiot and that’s why they gave me a girl’s job. I get pissed every night and have begun to fuck myself stupid. I have one clear rule when fucking: no white girls. No offence, Mum, but they don’t seem to get it. With the black girls there’s no opening the car door, or buying chocolates, or courting period, or even flirting or foreplay, you just call out, they cross the road and you stick yourself right in. Cool, hey? When I come home I am going to move down to the other end of town and shack up with an Aboriginal woman. There’s no law against it.
I look at the piece of paper. I disgust myself. I tear it into little pieces.
In little Genoralup nothing changes, nothing happens, things are still the way they were and are and have been and everyone does well, but outside, in places beyond, there’s a madness brewing. Students are protesting in the US over the Vietnam War, one of the long-haired radicals in Europe, someone they called Rudi the Red, is shot but not killed, Canada has a new prime minister, a French-Canadian, and French students nearly topple the big man with the big nose, Charles de Gaulle.