He will make it impossible for Baldy to stay. He will sabotage the plumbing, the sink, the sewer, whatever it takes. Back it up, up there, and that will send Baldy tumbling down and out.
He takes a spanner, some carrier bags, and a big onion up the stairs, bolts himself into the bathroom and thinks. The bathroom, a limited rectangle with the basic apparatus included, has suffered in his absence. Baldy Conscience has created a volcano of a towel and sock pile. He’s draped his dirty clothes, spent plastic razors, empty deodorant bottles, sweet foils, crisp wrappers, cigarette cartons and newspapers all over the floor. There is no sign of toilet paper, which registers immediate alarm for Martin John. How is the man wiping his arse? This may not be his business, nor does he wish it to become his concern — he is aware of the dangers if he ponders it too long — but he lifts up the newspaper from the bathroom floor to discover Badly Conscience has been using his archive of Eurovision newspapers in the place of the common man’s approach to bathrooming himself, the sane person’s employment of a fucking toilet roll. The stuff manufactured for the task.
Carefully, slowly, he retrieves what remains of this paper, examines the date and tries to calculate how many years’ worth of his treasure Baldy has been balling, searing, tearing up to wipe himself. It’s devastating to discover the depth this uncultured zombie will sink too. Tonight, tomorrow, any night that has not yet approached, the battle is on. If he cannot force Baldy Conscience to exit, he will bar him outside. He will replace the exit push with an entry bar. This will mean he, Martin John, will have to remain inside the house, until he, Baldy Conscience, pushes off or gives up all hope of ever gaining entry again.
Like all his plans, Martin John must execute this one with careful attention. If he wants Baldy Conscience out and permanently out, Martin John must ready up to remain permanently in. The man who refuses to budge will prevail. If he has learnt nothing from Baldy Conscience he has learnt that.
Inadequate: The inadequate molester is the sex offender who least resembles social and behavioural norms. He is characterized as a social misfit, an isolate, who appears unusual or eccentric. He may be mentally ill and prefers non-threatening sexual partners.
~ ~ ~
Once mam was more direct with Martin John:
I am glad it is finished she wrote.
I am glad you have stopped.
I am glad you are done with it.
They beat him. They beat him hard and relentless. Then they beat him again. It was because of the incident outside SuperValu they beat him. That’s what he thought. But it could have been another incident. The incidents backed up, formed a retroactive queue. He longed to know which incident had sent them because a response, whatever form it took, was victory. He derived pleasure from their aggression. They desired him. He noticed this. He liked the desire. That they desired to pummel him, secondary to the reasons they felt they needed to.
There was a baring incident outside the SuperValu Supermarket in the small town. She was the one that took him out. Or was it the other one, the later one? He longed to know, to have a chart, a recording, to indicate which girl or young woman had knocked him off the island precisely.
He had kept going and going. He had made it seem to mam that he’d stopped, but all the while he was still at it in slow and pin-sticking ways. Small rubs here, a nudge there, a hand over the line, all leading up, leading on, leading under the band. He wants under the band of skirts and trousers. Hand down. Hand up. He was watching. He waited. Sometimes he moved.
It was rough calculating who might let out a yell or raise hell or ream him yonder. He was random. Mostly random. But there was one girl he went back at a few times. She was the only one who ever really seemed scared. Martin John would say he went back as contrition to let her know he wasn’t so bad and hadn’t meant it that way, the way it seemed. But instead he found himself back with abandon, trying harder to go further, trying always to re-raise that first alarm he elicited from her. Those eyes. She had no brothers he was sure. He did the worst stuff to her and no brother ever came after him. Was this why he went back? He couldn’t tell you. It doesn’t do for Martin John to get too active in the thinking around all this. It is rooted in defiance. In the back of his head, he has his mother’s face primed. Each and every time he makes such a move — and there have been more incidences than his fingers and toes could count thrice — he is catapulted by his mother’s gaze. It is the band that fires him. Or that is what he’d have us believe. But we’re not fooled. We’re onto you Martin John, more than you may realize.
Maybe 12 years of age this one, the age where early bumps of flesh are filling out, and he, the elder, can imagine small mounds of her in his mouth. Inside the shop he had breezily followed her about, noted her selection of chicken breasts and rashers. When she stopped at the fridge and examined packs of sausages, he watched her turn the packet over with her fingers and squish-/squeeze-/squelch-/press-even the tips of them. She peered in at them.
She lifted the packet to her nose and, strangely, smelt it. Absentish, she could be holding anything. Maybe she was thinking of a boy, he prospected, or a pop song or a hairdryer. Clairol, wasn’t that the name of a hair dryer? He exited the shop ahead of her to anticipate her route home.
He recalled a group of four girls at this checkout years earlier. He was nearby and observed them behave fidgety around a boy queuing to pay for a packet of crisps. They failed to notice him, but he did not fail to notice they noticed the other lad. He recorded something of that, kept the rind of it as a reminder. The other boy was indifferent to the girls’ attention; he was reading an offer on the back of the crisp packet. An older woman walked past and asked that boy something, likely about his mother. He was responsive, warm. Martin John watched as the girls vied for the boy’s attention by stealing a glance at him and then speaking just a little bit louder and shaking their hair over their shoulders, sticking one hip out and adjusting their clothes. He was, at that time, older than the boy. He was aware that none had ever performed thus for him.
It was a risk to allow that she might walk down this alley. A lotto-notion that she could cut through here. He was going to try to talk to her. Maybe tease her about smelling the sausages. He had not planned to take it out. But as she approached and noticed him there, she looked away. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that she wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at him the way he’d seen other girls stare and rummage around that boy with the crisps. Yet she chose this route. She chose this route because she knew he’d be there. She didn’t choose another route. That might have lifted him. If she had obviously avoided him. Ha! That would be progress then. It wasn’t enough. He would have her attention. He would have her attention no matter what it took. No matter if he only had it for five seconds, he would have it and he knew just how to get it.
How’d he navigate the zip so fast?
He’d prepared. His hand was in his underwear. Wrapped around it. Had she or had she not looked away? He wouldn’t have known. He couldn’t have known. Had he imagined she’d look away?