My unfortunate father
At four he cut his middle finger off, and damaged the tendons on his index and ring finger. Nanna says he didn't scream much. He didn't have the temerity to find his finger though, and it lay on the lawn for days before anyone thought to retrieve it. By that time Nanna said it looked like a 'porridge sausage,' kind of white, and surprisingly soft. The magpies had pecked out the tasty stuff. So dad was left with a useless piece of his body, and being four he fed it to the dog across the road.
The story of the missing finger was imaginative and very funny. Dad was the brave fire fighter, and his sister, Pauline, was trapped in the wooden crate. She was two at the time, and her presence there was not necessarily her choice. Having three brothers, she could be relied upon to play the victim, and given Nanna spent most of her time looking after Poppa, Pauline had to develop the skill of sneak in order to escape children's games. She was about five when she worked out she should hide behind the workbench in the shed. In the meantime, she suffered. And on this day, she ruined her dress, sprayed as it was by my father's arterial blood.
But she was a fabulous victim, with an eery scream that could be heard down the street. Cheryl-next-door sat in the kitchen, door open, enjoying her Southwark Draught, until she heard Pauline, when she would run up to the fence and yell, 'Ida! I-DAH! Get those mogrel boys off your girl!' And Nanna, mortified, would shrink inside her home, and refuse to come out, in case she was held accountable for the actions of these boys who were her sons, and yet for whom she felt no emotion.
And so Pauline was chopped out of the crate with an axe. A lovely red axe, used by Poppa to trim the almond and peach trees in the winter. It was heavy, and swung so nicely through the air my dad swore he heard it sing before it took from him his left middle finger and created a mutant. Big brother Billy, worried Poppa would tan his behind, took off, while Pauline yelled to be let out from under the splintered and staining box, and my father wrapped his little hanky around his hand, not knowing what had happened, and leaving aforementioned appendix on the grass.
Later on in his life he would use the healed stump to shock children by pretending his finger had been inserted to the knuckle up his hairy, and quite considerable, nose. It was joked often in the Russell family that there was 'abo' blood leaking through the generations. This had manifested itself on my father's face in the form of something flat and wide. It was curious because my Nanna certainly had nothing in her apart from Caucasian Kiwi, as if that wasn't bad enough, but she certainly had no abo blood, nor Maori either. And if you ever accused Poppa of having abo blood, especially in the afternoon when he had sunk a dozen or so of his beloved long necks, you were asking for a hiding, and Poppa had a fair punch on him, having been brought up in Moonta mines, where men were men and women were slaves.
The loss of dad's finger, being quite phallic in its shape, was an irony of events for a man who would complain years and years later of impotence. And before the impotence came the reliance on pornographic material for a quick buzz and a little spray. And before the reliance on pornography, (which he believed was his dirty little secret, but actually I had figured out they existed when I was about 5 years old, and had been selling them at school from grade 3), dad had been a peeping tom, and had written letters to prostitutes, and attended late night screenings of R rated movies in Hindley Street. He lost his finger but became obsessed with his dick.
The butcher probably didn't help. I mean, ten year old boys are pretty impressionable. So when Tom the butcher asked dad to help him out at the shop on Saturday mornings, sweeping up the shavings and wrapping the meat in paper, (coincidence or irony? you be the judge), it was probably fair to say dad had no idea his sexuality was about to blossom. It turned out Tom was rather fond of dad. On his first day, Tom took him out the back and showed him the broom. Then he took his apron off, unzipped his fly, and took out a monstrous member, which my dad was at once fascinated and horrified by. When Tom stroked his hair and put the giant throbber in my dad's hands he created a monster. From that point on, dad's sexuality was confused. He was utterly unable to place himself on a continuum ranging from homo to hetro. He bought books on boys with boobs, and married a woman with enormous knockers who could not understand why he always wanted to take her from behind, hands kneading her breasts.
If sexuality defines who you are, even just a little bit, then dad was royally screwed. Interestingly, so were his siblings, and, later in life, his daughters. It was his youngest brother Robert who introduced me to schooners of port at the tender age of eight. By this time Poppa had shuffled off his mortal coil in a fantastic display of alcoholic-edged-emphysemia. Whilst dying he had been a catherine wheel of colours and fluids, frequently smoking through his sliced trachea, and sticking a straw direct into his stomach for a quick hit of gin. Robert must have picked up some hints about how to be a real man, because he directed me in a technicolour virtuoso after plying me with port and giving me cigarettes at his second wedding. (The first wedding ended when he forgot he was married and brought home the second wife to meet the first).
The story of the missing finger was imaginative and very funny. Dad was the brave fire fighter, and his sister, Pauline, was trapped in the wooden crate. She was two at the time, and her presence there was not necessarily her choice. Having three brothers, she could be relied upon to play the victim, and given Nanna spent most of her time looking after Poppa, Pauline had to develop the skill of sneak in order to escape children's games. She was about five when she worked out she should hide behind the workbench in the shed. In the meantime, she suffered. And on this day, she ruined her dress, sprayed as it was by my father's arterial blood.
But she was a fabulous victim, with an eery scream that could be heard down the street. Cheryl-next-door sat in the kitchen, door open, enjoying her Southwark Draught, until she heard Pauline, when she would run up to the fence and yell, 'Ida! I-DAH! Get those mogrel boys off your girl!' And Nanna, mortified, would shrink inside her home, and refuse to come out, in case she was held accountable for the actions of these boys who were her sons, and yet for whom she felt no emotion.
And so Pauline was chopped out of the crate with an axe. A lovely red axe, used by Poppa to trim the almond and peach trees in the winter. It was heavy, and swung so nicely through the air my dad swore he heard it sing before it took from him his left middle finger and created a mutant. Big brother Billy, worried Poppa would tan his behind, took off, while Pauline yelled to be let out from under the splintered and staining box, and my father wrapped his little hanky around his hand, not knowing what had happened, and leaving aforementioned appendix on the grass.
Later on in his life he would use the healed stump to shock children by pretending his finger had been inserted to the knuckle up his hairy, and quite considerable, nose. It was joked often in the Russell family that there was 'abo' blood leaking through the generations. This had manifested itself on my father's face in the form of something flat and wide. It was curious because my Nanna certainly had nothing in her apart from Caucasian Kiwi, as if that wasn't bad enough, but she certainly had no abo blood, nor Maori either. And if you ever accused Poppa of having abo blood, especially in the afternoon when he had sunk a dozen or so of his beloved long necks, you were asking for a hiding, and Poppa had a fair punch on him, having been brought up in Moonta mines, where men were men and women were slaves.
The loss of dad's finger, being quite phallic in its shape, was an irony of events for a man who would complain years and years later of impotence. And before the impotence came the reliance on pornographic material for a quick buzz and a little spray. And before the reliance on pornography, (which he believed was his dirty little secret, but actually I had figured out they existed when I was about 5 years old, and had been selling them at school from grade 3), dad had been a peeping tom, and had written letters to prostitutes, and attended late night screenings of R rated movies in Hindley Street. He lost his finger but became obsessed with his dick.
The butcher probably didn't help. I mean, ten year old boys are pretty impressionable. So when Tom the butcher asked dad to help him out at the shop on Saturday mornings, sweeping up the shavings and wrapping the meat in paper, (coincidence or irony? you be the judge), it was probably fair to say dad had no idea his sexuality was about to blossom. It turned out Tom was rather fond of dad. On his first day, Tom took him out the back and showed him the broom. Then he took his apron off, unzipped his fly, and took out a monstrous member, which my dad was at once fascinated and horrified by. When Tom stroked his hair and put the giant throbber in my dad's hands he created a monster. From that point on, dad's sexuality was confused. He was utterly unable to place himself on a continuum ranging from homo to hetro. He bought books on boys with boobs, and married a woman with enormous knockers who could not understand why he always wanted to take her from behind, hands kneading her breasts.
If sexuality defines who you are, even just a little bit, then dad was royally screwed. Interestingly, so were his siblings, and, later in life, his daughters. It was his youngest brother Robert who introduced me to schooners of port at the tender age of eight. By this time Poppa had shuffled off his mortal coil in a fantastic display of alcoholic-edged-emphysemia. Whilst dying he had been a catherine wheel of colours and fluids, frequently smoking through his sliced trachea, and sticking a straw direct into his stomach for a quick hit of gin. Robert must have picked up some hints about how to be a real man, because he directed me in a technicolour virtuoso after plying me with port and giving me cigarettes at his second wedding. (The first wedding ended when he forgot he was married and brought home the second wife to meet the first).
posted by Mama Conor @ 9:13 PM
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