Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
I’ve got 60 minutes to write this. I’ve just returned home from Catherine Deveny’s writing master class “The Gunnas” and I’ve got to go out again in one hour.
I think one of the most important things when you take a creative enema as Catherine called it, is to get cracking. Don’t leave too much time between the enema and the motion. And I didn’t pay good money to have it wear off. “Just write something” and “aim low”, setting the bar too high only puts you off. I’m quite a literal person, so here I go.
I used to know a person who is one of only two people I have ever called a cunt. He went from being my childhood neighbor and incompetent father of his own five children to becoming my step father. He was given carte blanche by my well meaning but misguided mother to parent her three children as he deemed fit.
He was a mean, misogynistic, alcoholic cunt who frequented the pub after work every day for a drink or six and returned home to regularly put me and my two brothers down. Though not physically violent, he was extremely verbally abusive. He did this in ways that my mother seemed not to notice. Mostly when she was out of the house he’d get stuck into us, usually one on one. Accusing us of trying to deceive him or take advantage of him. Comments like being ugly, stupid, untrustworthy, unloveable, or worst of all, being like our good for nothing father were commonly spat at us. If we complained to our mother, all was denied by this bastard and we were then made to apologise to him for making a fuss over nothing.
He made up ridiculous rules such as no touching each other at the table, no eye contact with him when he wasn’t talking to you and earnest, interested eye contact when he was. You couldn’t laugh or get upset when he told you off and you could never, ever disagree with him. If he said jump, you replied how high.
He was also clever at deceiving friends and colleagues and was seen as an upstanding member of the local community. He helped coach the local junior football club, had a few friendly beers with many of the other great blokes and helped out at local fundraisers, fetes and such like.
Me and my two brothers have been affected by his abuse to some degree, as was my mother, who has said that back in the 70’s there was no option to be a single mother, it just wasn’t done. She earnestly believed a woman could not bring kids up without a man. A man was necessary to help discipline and straighten out those kids who were six, nine and 12, and always looking for a way to take advantage of any situation they could get away with.
He kicked me out of home at the age of 16, and my brother was kicked out at 18 for daring to want to go to university. None of his kids had ever gone to university, so he wasn’t going to support some other bastard’s kid at university.
Eventually he left my mother, and ran off with a younger woman. I don’t know whatever happened to him, I think he’s dead. I reckon once a cunt, always a cunt and I sincerely hope he had a shit life.
I have a reasonable relationship with my mother and have never discussed this with her as my brother has tried and it gets heated, my mother feels like she’s being abused and victimised and denies ever having been aware of such verbal abuse. It’s kind of funny now to think how something could happen right under her nose and she not believe it was happening.
I have forgiven my mother for this “invisible” abuse as it allows me to move forward. She had a terrible and cruel childhood herself, much worse than mine, so it’s no good blaming and shaming at this late stage. However, what having a cunt for a stepfather has given me is an ability to never, ever accept shit from anybody, although I will admit to a strange haunting how and again. I have a good life and a loving family whom I highly value. I have a kind partner and have taught my boys to be bloody respectful to their own partners.