JOURNAL OF A COFFIN DODGER, CHAPTER B

CHAPTER B

I reached the tyre workshop, where crumpled food wrappers sprawled along the edge of the broken concrete footpath to either side of the entrance doorway. Greasy detritus, pockmarked with sprouting weeds, that rustled under the cold, poking stabs of a breeze.

I counted to ten to steady my nerves as I faced the glass door of the premises.

Behind me, traffic surged past the footpath.

A smelly, clamorous stream of vehicles on the road that led away from the anxiety and stress I faced inside the workshop. Another encounter with a bloke lurking within a bastion of male chauvinism.

I held the backpack in one hand while with the other, I shoved the cool, indifferent glass surface of the door. The door swung open as I took a deep breath and steeled myself to face the fears eddying around my misogynistic angst.

I stepped through the doorway into a high-ceilinged, spacious room where sly shadows slouched along the dun-coloured walls.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the windows on either side of the door. Beams of brilliant light which mocked the power of glowing neon tubes. Lights that laced their way along the length of the ceiling at the front of the room. Lights beneath which dust motes frolicked.

I paused and took my bearings. The door closed with a cheeky snap as I recommenced my journey.

I trudged towards a counter near the back wall. The further I walked, however, the dimmer the light to guide my way became.

Ousted by a murky half-light that crept towards that wall. An illumination drought fed by missing artificial lighting. Replaced by a tangled mass of electrical wires that dangled from jagged blackened fissures. The gaps that scarred the length of the ceiling at the back of the room.

A man stood beneath a snaky thicket of those cables. His eerie stillness broken by a flickering tongue and the movement of his beady eyes.

Across a green and beige carpet, I tramped as the tongue retreated. Replaced by a lascivious smirk playing across the man's smooth, pasty face as I drew near to him.

His hands were unseen. I wondered if they were fiddling with what lay behind his flies.

His eyes flared into a shameless, predatory light as I stopped just out of his reach.

Those lust-lit globes blazed undimmed as his gaze raked my dial. He fuelled the blaze with a slimy convo. as he stood on one side of that counter near the back wall.

The talking conjured up a verbal web, sticky with sexualised ambiguity. Icky netting for me to dangle in, like a titillating bauble. A verbal sewerage pond strewn with phrases from the British 'Carry On' movies of the last half of the 20th century.

Words and expressions I find it revolting to regurgitate. Dialogue that was reminiscent of characterisations in a funny-not-funny scene from one or the other of those movies. The part where an actress in a revealing dress has an appointment with a white-coated actor who moves a stethoscope around her chest.

Like, the times when broke, I had a role as an extra in those movies. Scenes I played with a similar power imbalance between a man and a woman. Scenes, like now, where a man and I were alone.

Our scene, however, did not call for guffaws at the characterisation of a naïve, simpering female. I was not playing this scene for laughs.

No laughing, either, when I left my friend's house this morning after downing a cup of coffee.

Grim faced, I had picked up the backpack with its snacks and other bits and pieces jumbled inside before climbing into my car. I then drove to this man's domain, the stamping ground of men.

A den, like the descriptions of a man cave I read in a magazine. A space where men find it clever to create and verbalise anxiety-provoking sleazy suggestions. The tyrannical encapsulation of females into a prurient male fantasy world by dick-led wonders.

Like this lowlife behind the counter who inflamed the debilitating fears of my misogynistic angst as he chatted me up.

A pleasant phrase, like the coloured label on a bottle of poison. A demonic variation of the tortuous, metaphorical garbage confronting a woman when she wants a bloke to do something.

A reeking pile of verbalised shit, except if it involved an offer of sex.

Then the crap is minimal.

Like the jobs, which, at other times and venues, I noticed blokes negotiating between themselves to undertake. No bullshit, straightforward transactions.

Routine transactions similar to the one I wanted to start with this sicko spider as he brought his hands up from behind the counter.

He paused and licked his lips as he placed his hands on the worktop while I stood on the other side of that bench.

The sounds of a radio drifted into the silence between us. Though my mind was unfamiliar with the music the radio was playing, I had no trouble discerning the notes that were dancing through the man's mind.

The rhythms of an obsessive, venomous assessment of a female's fuckable ranking. The mind-set that lurked behind men's eyes as their imaginations stalked a woman as she strode along a street. A phallic-centric, toxic shredding of women and girl's right to self-determination that females contend with from the day they are born.

For this man, this creepy spider behind the counter, a poison that doubled its potency through hypocrisy.

He resumed the chatter but dropped the doublespeak as I refused to banter with him.

Sickening sweet images of a family man drifted along his sticky threads and drew a distracting veil over their peril. The man banged on about a wife and three school age daughters as he lowered the lust light in his eyes.

I glanced over his shoulder at the wall behind him while this chicanery sparkled through his spiel.

The calendars parading across that wall displayed the name of a tyre manufacturer and sexualised images of semi-naked young women.

The calendars gave a growth spurt to the uncovering of the man's posturing, deceit and double dealing. Twisted, barbed attributes embedded deep within the character of men.

Attributes that lurk behind the fabrications men conjure into existence as they parley their way through the world. Like, the man's blather about a family. A lure to hook a listener into viewing a parallel universe.

PR prattle, which I interrupted as my gaze returned to his face and talked about my reason for entering his domain.

A transaction for which he will rip me off.

Guaranteed payback for my refusal to glow with delight at what the sticky threads had foreshadowed.

However, the goal of having my car's tyres replaced had to be accomplished.

A task made difficult by the fear of losing it if I stayed in this slimeball's presence to negotiate a price.

My stomach churned and the palms of my hands were greasy with sweat as I struggled to control the simmering turmoil of my angst. A demon fed by the memory laden terrors this predator had unleashed with his sexual innuendos.

With regret, I accepted his unquestioned estimate of the cost of four new tyres and the fitting of them to my car. I handed over the keys and told the creep where I had parked the vehicle.

I clenched my fists, aching to punch the wall. But I rammed them into the pockets of my jeans. I felt a burning urge to get the fuck away from this sleazy arachnid before I spewed my guts out.

I turned away from the counter and headed for the exit from the workshop.

When I stepped outside, I paused and let the sunshine which had dispersed the morning's grey gloom warm my bones and melt the chill from my soul.

I took several deep breaths and walked to the park near where the arsehole had his business.

I walked around the park until I found an unoccupied bench seat in the shade of a tree and sat down.

The walk and the calming distance from the tyre workshop eased my anxiety and settled my stomach.

I reached into the backpack and took out a bottle of fruit juice and a packet of crisps.

I consumed the snacks while I looked over the greenery of the park and thought about families. In particular, whether they knew the men in their lives.

Like the leech, that fucking dingo, at the tyre workshop. If he had contact with reality when he talked about a family as his own, were they aware of his presentation as a family man? Was that veneer their entire knowledge of him?

Or did they know of his Janus-faced nature? That beneath his alluring PR pitch lurked a murky underbelly. A side to his character that winked at the wholesome, beguiling patter.

I wondered, how does a family get to know that sneaky, shady side of the men in their lives? What event strips away that veneer and exposes a man's feral ugliness, his rancid underbelly?

Is it an early morning knock on the door of the family home by law enforcement officers? Officers who are there to question a man about the child pornography on his computer. Or are they there to arrest a man for soliciting to rape a child?

What do you reckon, eh?

Yes, I am talking to you, the male reader who scrutinises my Journal's passages, looking for ammunition with which to abuse my musings. You, the fantasising keyboard soldier, who blasts reptilian horrors across the internet.

That's where your feral ugliness ferments, isn't it?

Rather than what led to those searing revelations, that followed a knock on the door. A banging on the front door of a family home in the cold, grey early morning hours, announcing a visit that chilled the warmth of that family home.

Your modus operandi, however, is that use of a keyboard. A furtive, wicked utilization of a computer keyboard to churn out clandestine vileness, thus revealing your double-dealing and deceit.

A craven warrior of that creative trickery as you sit in a faux leather chair at that computer perched on a nondescript desk in a dingy room.

The place where you are sitting now primed to unleash a hypocritical degeneracy across the internet. A stellar performance that gives an earth-quake like shock to your skillful curation of a decent bloke, family man image. The portrayal of yourself welcomed by your family and your local community.

They see you as a family guy who has a regular job and helps cook meals and plays his part in cleaning the family home. The bloke who takes his family to church every weekend. Or the dad who helps his children get ready for school. The one who attends their school functions. Maybe, the husband with grown up kids and a long-standing membership of a service club. Who takes part in fund-raising activities on weekends to provide free school breakfasts or funds for kids to attend away-from-school excursions.

But, now, you, a Dodgy Dad, like the slimeball in the tyre workshop, reveal those roles, like parts in a well-scripted play, for what they are.

Do you call that room where you are sitting, peeling away the baubles adorning your dark side, a man cave? A den, like a tomb, where you bury respect for women and girls.

Scratch your balls and crack your knuckles. Stretch your fingers, limbering them up for a debauched dance on the computer's keyboard; the one that reclines on the drink blotched, decrepit desk in the corner of that room.

In this room, your undisputed space, your predatory lair, you reveal your slimy underbelly, don't you, Mr Dodgy Dad? A place where you indulge in your favourite hobby of savaging females.

A brutal bastardization of their lives using the internet gateway provided by your secret man cave computer; the one your family knows nothing about. The one hidden behind crappy cardboard boxes whenever you invite anyone into the room.

As the adrenaline surges at the thought of entering the doorway to your marquee pastimes, switch on the computer.

The screen glows, like your radiant misogynistic imagination. Creativity that is as black as the deceit and double-dealing you practice on your young family as you prowl the internet preying on females.

They deserve to be mauled, don't they, Mr Dodgy Dad? They are such mouthy bitches.

But you know how to put them in their place, don't you, you festering slimeball, you putrid arsehole?

Payback for that mouthiness and the smouldering, maggoty memories of the times the snivelling cows didn't open their legs for you. Frustrating occasions that blighted your chances of ramming your big beautiful cock into their vaginas.

Or the times they blanked you at the pub or at the office. Slights designed to hurt you. Why did they do that?

You who, according to your ego, your mates, and your family, are a charming, respectful bloke, well-liked by everyone.

Talk about pissing you off!

What a sour sense of grievance you nurture when women don't make you the centre of their world.

How dare they?

You are an alpha male, a master of the universe, entitled to use their holes in any way you want. Women are stuck-up bitches when they stop you from living out that sense of entitlement, eh?

Or plain dumb for passing up a chance to experience the joy and excitement your dick will bring into their lives. A sick delusion encouraged by internet porn scenes. Scenes that feed the falsity of your heterosexual phallic-centric conviction that every woman and girl hungers for a penis to be thrust into one or other of those holes.

You’ve sent pictures across the internet, haven’t you, of that lovely piece of flesh, like a reeking fly-blown wrinkled loop of a dead animal’s entrails?

Those entrails swelled with shit when the animal was alive.

Like your thoughts of sexualised violence directed at women and girls, that fattens your magnificent piece of meat.

Thoughts that led to unsolicited images of your unwashed, lousy shaft, reeking of sperm, lubricant, and sweat, sent to countless numbers of women and girls. (You've Photoshopped your one-eyed trouser snake, haven't you, to enhance its smirking, upright glory and to scrub out the blemishes, like those scars left by the scabs of poxy sores?)

Including your preference. Young girls with tiny titties or whose physicality has yet to show those bulges which are the focus of your crude, cruel, toxic wet dreams.

Your grandfather had a similar nasty, sleazy streak of unkindness to yours, but he didn’t use pictures, did he?

Do you remember those times as a boy you stayed at your grandparent’s house in the 1980s? Do you recall the evenings when grandad put on an overcoat and took Bitzer for a walk?

While you watched grandad scurry down the hallway, like a rat chasing a whiff of putrescent garbage, you wondered where were his socks?

His bare ankles peeped above his shoes as he held the dog on a leash while he opened the front door. He followed Bitzer out of the house and closed the door behind him.

Grandad was too stiff to stoop and put his socks on and too proud to let anyone help him dress. Or so your grandmother said when you, as a young boy, asked her about Grandpa’s missing socks.

These days, you don’t need to go outside and walk the streets of an evening, terrorizing females while your dog shits on the footpath, do you, eh?

You don’t even have to wear an overcoat.

Instead, you’ve changed into your armour, ready for battle. A BO endowed grotty sweatshirt and your favourite pair of stained, crusty jocks. The aroma of lubricants wafting from those boxers gives your undies pleasant, evocative memories.

You, an unthinking creep, smirk at the image of your grandfather as a 'flasher.' A word introduced to you by your schoolmates. Did they know what your grandfather was up to? Or did you work it out for yourself?

Whatever your knowledge of your grandfather's putrescent antics, that understanding posed no barrier to sharing puerile comments about older males as 'flashers.'

Comments as a schoolboy to garner laughs and like-minded comments from the boys you hung around with in the schoolyard while waiting for classes to begin. The laughter and comments continuing as an adult with your mates.

They join you for beers, as the stink of tobacco smoke and the greasy smell of pizzas drifts around your man cave. A gathering in your den where the sounds and stenches of farts are also the subject of puerile wisecracks.

Grandmother, though, saw danger where you and your mates see mirth.

In the new century, when your grandparents visited your family home for a meal or celebration, grandmother kept a close eye on her husband. She stood close to him when he hugged or kissed your young daughter.

She intervened to keep those contacts brief. And she never let your daughter stay overnight with her and her husband at their house. Overnight stays which you gave up in the 1990s because you found staying with your grandparents boring as you grew older.

There are dots to be joined in these reminiscences, but that's beyond you, isn't it?

By not doing so, you will never work out that one type of aberrant male behaviour towards women or girls will lead to other deviant behaviours towards females.

An unseeing that you live out in that man cave.

Sitting in pitiful, splendid isolation at the scungy, rickety desk, posting dick pics and performing a macabre rite on the computer keyboard. A ritualistic writing of foul-mouthed rants posted on the internet to harvest plaudits from your internet buddies.

I wonder, how similar to your grandfathers are your feelings and actions as you indulge in those alpha male internet pastimes? A metaphysical connection, I guess, with the occasions when the setting sun cast shadows, like long, grey grasping fingers, across a footpath. The foreshadowing of a darkness entering the life of a woman or girl as grandfather fronted them and opened up his overcoat.

I suppose this power play thrilled him.

This unsought, vile, invasive revealing of his piece of meat to a female. This challenge to their right to travel unharmed. The thrill magnified as a woman or girl lowered her guard.

They saw Bitzer as a friendly dog. Grandpa, I guess, saw Bitzer as a lure. Lulled into a false sense of security, the woman, or girl targeted by Grandpa, walked into his orbit to pat the dog and had her life up-ended.

With grandpa's walk with Bitzer finished for the evening, the dog barked as the front door of your grandparent's house opened.

A cool breeze, bringing the sounds and scents of an English autumn, ambled up the hallway as grandfather entered the house with his overcoat buttoned up. He smiled and chuckled as he stooped down and unleashed Bitzer as you stepped out of the living room to pat the dog.

You watched grandad close the door and hang the lead on the coatrack standing beside the wall near the doorway. Bitzer stopped for you to pat him before bounding into the living room.

Grandad, however, did not stop as he strode passed and headed for your grandparent's bedroom. The stench of pipe tobacco lingering in the hallway as he disappeared.

His mind enlivened by thoughts of his spicy evening stroll, and, distracted by a bout of coughing, grandad did not notice your puzzled frown. You were too young to consider another reason, besides not wearing socks, why grandpa's ankles were bare.

In the opening decades of the 21st century, your mind is enlivened like your grandfathers, but not by memories of an evening walk. You bring zest into your life through mind-fucking women and girls in ways that were beyond grandpa's wildest dreams. A world, untouched by the internet, shaped his dreams.

The internet, though, moulds your world.

The realm in which you debase yourself and pervert the lives of women and girls. A diabolical corruption that sends your spirits soaring.

Like, the grand final day when your footy team romped home. Only this time, the feeling of exhilaration is not because of sporting prowess. It's because of your grubby, internet molesting of women and girls.

Your grandfather, though, only had his neighbourhood in which to harm females, while you have a global reach.

Aren’t you the man, Mr Dodgy Dad?

To do this damage to the lives of women and girls from the comfort and security of your man cave.

The place where you tell those mouthy bitches to shut the fuck up.

You need less exertion to tell them to shut their traps by displaying your keyboard skills than by giving them a well-deserved smack on the chops.

Chuckle, as you join an internet pack of like-minded warriors. Follow these internet gang-banging buddies’ lead for the cruel, depraved invective you spew over a woman’s (or is it a girl’s?) social media accounts.

Smirk and glow with pride at the thought of that person breaking down into a sobbing, emotional wreck after she reads your postings.

I guess the females whom your grandfather terrorised did something similar when they arrived at a place of safety. The pall he cast over their lives creating ghoulish dreams and a gnawing lack of confidence in their social interactions.

Isn’t it fun, eh, to give females nightmares and have their lives lacerated by anxiety attacks?

Like the females targeted by your internet groping. If they have suicidal thoughts, so what? That's nothing to do with you, is it? You didn’t ask them to read your postings, did you? Stupid fucking bitches.

Beers all round, though, isn't it when a girl or woman has taken her life after the trolling that you and your internet buddies frolic in? Tragedies you smirk over as you read about them on an internet posting.

Now, tell us, Mr Dodgy Dad, who gets to shout the bar when that female is a woman you know. Or is she a girl like your niece, female cousin, daughter, or daughter’s BFF, eh?

As your cock stirs with the excitement of fucking up the serenity of women and girls, sign off from your internet bros and reach for a bottle of lubricant. That one hidden, like the computer, underneath the boxes.

Open the bottle and answer the siren call of porn sites.

The pornographic websites your family doesn’t know you subscribe to. The ones where, after your family has gone to bed of a night, you partake of a gluttonous, sleazy hour or three scrolling through the 'Daddy and Daughter' sections.

Given the numbers of hours you spend on those sites, are you still able to get it up?

If that's possible, sitting in your man cave after disconnecting from your internet buddies, stream lubricant over your dick and enjoy a well-oiled wank.

An exertion enhanced by entering your secret websites and scrolling through those 'Daddy and Daughter' pages.

The scenes you watch inflame your imagination as you fantasize about you and your daughter living out the parts in the porno sites played by actors and actresses.

Or let your imagination roll into your ultimate fantasy of a three-some with your daughter and your wife's best friend. You know your wife's bestie hungers for your dick by the way she looks at you.

Given an erection is possible, you don't mind going to bed at night with your wife when she aspires to be intimate, eh? You perform well, finding you have no difficulty to get your dick to a thrusting position as you replay, in your mind, your re-enactments from those porn scenarios.

Only if the bedroom light is off, though. The sight of your wife's naked body (you resent the changes to her physicality following childbirth) is a complete downer. The lurid fantasies of you and your daughter will not get your penis to rise on those occasions.

But life has its compensations, doesn't it, Mr Dodgy Dad?

Your daughter is growing those bulges you glanced at through a crack in the bathroom door the other morning as she undressed before showering.

Are those bulges as soft, you wonder, as your daughter’s BFF’s tits? The ones you squeezed when

you played a tickling game with the BFF when she spent the night on a sleepover in your daughter’s bedroom.

Smirk at the sleazy memory of that game and look forward to your daughter's BFF next visit. Groan with happiness as you wipe yourself down and switch off the computer.

It's time to view the physicality of your daughter.

Scratch your balls, get up from the computer, and hide it with the bottle of lubricant by placing them underneath the boxes.

As you leave the room, remember to lock the door. You don’t want your daughter to enter the room if you aren't around. She may find the bottle of lubricant and the screen shots you have taken of her Facebook pages. The ones you printed off and keep in the desk drawer.

After a shower and getting changed, (remember, hide those jocks), join your family at the mall.

You've sent them shopping with your credit card.

While they were out of the house, you felt relaxed and able to give your nefarious internet activities your best shot. Therefore, you feel spiritually and emotionally invigorated and refreshed after spending quality time in your daughter and daddy fantasy realm. As well as with your internet gang-banging buddies.

It’s time for a burger and chips.

Jerking off takes it out of you, physically, doesn't it, Mr Dodgy Dad?

Phone your family and say you will meet them in the food hall.

When you enter the mall, don't think about your daughter's titties when you see her in the food hall. It will not be a good look if your dick rises with the vigour of your adolescence. You will corrode your image of a decent, caring family man if you stroll into the food hall with a bulge in the front of your jeans.

Instead, delight your daughter and distract your mind by buying her a slushy.

An act that will put a smile on her face when, on Facebook, she tells her friends that you are the world’s best dad.

Her response to that deed of yours is to throw her arms around you and hug you.

A spontaneous, loving gesture on her part.

For you, though, as her tiny titties press into you, through your loins an illicit tingle will worm its wicked way.

Do you know if your daughter wears a training bra? How old is she? Eleven, twelve, thirteen?

What’s that team sport she plays on a weekend? You know, the one where you stand on the sidelines with the other dads watching the girls play.

Isn’t it marvellous that the girls, about the same age as your daughter, wear short skirts, not shorts? It gives you a chance to peruse their panties as they, and your daughter, run, jump and call out on the playing courts while throwing a ball.

Other sounds, though, intruded into my thoughts. The cries of birds as they wheeled and swooped while flying from tree to tree across the park.

I looked beyond the birds to watch white, fluffy clouds scudding across a wide blue sky. A soothing distraction as my mind moved away from considering the sordid ways men reveal their double-dealing and deceit.

The multitude of treacheries that breathe life into my misogynistic angst and the myriad ways why I can't stand the bastards.

I switched my gaze and looked down at my watch.

I took slow, deep breaths as I looked up.

Time to collect the car, I muttered, and face the misogyny of a pasty faced man.

Standing up from the bench, I picked up the backpack and dropped the litter of my snacks into the bin standing by the seat.

With slow, purposeful strides, I made my way to the tyre workshop and a slimeball behind a counter.