17 August 2020

I feel like a character in Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day in that I woke to find that many months had passed more or less without me noticing. Have I been in an anaesthetised state? Pretty sure I was aware of being alive: stuff happened, I’m up to date with how things have changed and we are now in Stage IV lockdown. What the heck?

Stage IV in metropolitan Melbourne, cases surging. We are the black sheep of the country, mostly because of our criminal neglect in our Aged Care system. There was a Royal Commission into this: it was a known problem. But the full results have not been released yet and the culpable shit-sacks who should be executed for their crimes have not yet been named, let alone any meaningful changes made to conditions.

I bumped into the Man With the Dog down at Coles this morning. After expressing wonder and pleasure that we were both still alive and asking after our respective families (including his Himalayan Yak Hound), we moved onto the world in general. Isn’t it interesting the things that are no longer on the shelves? Turns out we didn’t need fifteen different brands of the same bloody product. Turns out all those imported bullshit items full of high-fructose-corn-syrup used to take up a fair bit of room. Turns out there is now so much toilet paper you could use it to form the basis of a house frame: just spray the structure with concrete and you have an instant insulated adobe. Strangely enough he too commented that Woolworths appeared to be better stocked than Coles these days. I’d heard others say this. I wonder why?

As we were leaving the Mall I bumped into the mother of one of the kids who went to school with one of my kids. She had a face mask, but not over her mouth and nose. It was hanging around her throat. I instinctively took a step back from her. She narrowed her eyes in a condescending smile.

“So you’re a believer?” she thrust.

I raised my eyebrows.

“In all this nonsense,” she waved at her mask. “It’s all a scam to control us, and anyway,” she went on, “how’s an immune system supposed to learn if it’s blocked up? That’s what they can’t answer. You know: strengthen the old muscle by using it.”

I was pretty sure that’s not how an immune system works. But I’m not really the confronting sort. She took my silence as agreement.

“Think for yourself,” she said. “They’ve been planning this for years. Why isn’t Bill Gates in prison? That’s what I want to know.”

At that moment the Man With the Dog, who had been standing with me, who I’d totally forgotten about in the shock, spoke.

“I completely agree with you,” he said.

I took a deep breath, causing my mask to suck onto my face. My heart sank, and a cold feeling descended on my chest.

“Think for yourself,” said the Man With the Dog with a smile in his voice.

“Here’s what I think,” he said. “I think that this is the Great Plague that we’ve been planning for for at least a half a century. And I think that very dedicated people have devoted their careers to working out how to save as many lives as possible in what is going to be the greatest trauma in a century.”

I exhaled with an astonished puff that fogged my glasses.

“And I reckon,” he went on, “that I wear a mask as kindness to the poor bastards that have to work to provide me with what I need so that they don’t get sick and die. That’s what I think.”

“Yeah, but,” she started.

He didn’t let her get far. “But the Government,” he emphasised the ‘G’ like the Americans do when they get on their bandwagon about superhuman forces, “is trying to steal your freedom by making you wear things?”

“Well…”

“You should actually try thinking for yourself rather than repeating the mantra of cynical wankers that think it funny to pull your chain and watch you dance.”

He turned away, swinging his shopping bags, and started walking. She tried to speak to me but I followed him. We when got to our cars he turned to me.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come down so hard on your friend.”

“S’OK,” I said. “She wasn’t a friend.”

“It’s not her fault,” he said. “The tragic irony is she is exactly what she thinks she’s rebelling against: an easily herded sheep who swallows the story that the noises coming from the abattoir are exaggerated.”