Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
Danny was one of the barefoot boys in primary school. Which was pretty much all the boys, except for the ones with prissy mums who made their boys wear polished black Bata Scouts with animal footprint soles. The barefoot boys were boisterous and strong and always chosen as bin monitors. At the end of Big Lunch, they hoisted the bins on their shoulders and took them to be emptied – the green ones with food scraps for Mr Edgerton’s pigs and the yellow ones with paper for the school yardsman to burn in the incinerator.
At high school, Danny grew big, really big. Like the size of Hoss Cartwright in “Bonanza“ when he was in only Year Nine. But that didn’t stop the bully boys punching him in the arm after we all got our needle. Don’t remember what the needle was for, some immunisation programme they were doing to all us kids in high school. Anyway, I remember seeing poor Danny, trapped in a stairwell, being punched in the arm where he had had his needle. There was no escape. Danny cried and I looked away, embarrassment, shame and anger burning me.
The stairwells didn’t just trap Danny. They trapped everyone in a thick miasma of stink. Sweaty, humid, school-kid stink. After lunch, between classes, anytime of day, didn’t matter, always the same stink.
It wasn’t just the stairwells that trapped Danny. Danny was different – “stupid”, “spaz”, “idiot” the bullies called him, laughing when they asked him if he was a virgin and Danny replied, “No, I’m a Presbyterian”.