Ventiak
an island somewhere in the brain
My head wound has healed nicely. I no longer look like the victim of an axe-wielding maniac.
'Lucky it wasn't worse,' Amanda said.
'Not at all,'Trevor answered. 'A lucky person wouldn't have got hit in the first place.'
'How do you make that out?'
'Well, given that the tree was rotten in that particular spot, it's highly likely that he would get hit on the head when he shook the tree. He would have been lucky if he'd escaped.'
'Not so,' Rupert told him. 'First, we must allow for the probability that the tree was rotten in that particular place. Suppose that to be 80%. Now suppose, given that the tree was rotten, there was a 90% probability of it breaking when it was shaken like that. Given that he shook it by pulling it towards himself and pushing it away, there's a fifty-fifty probability that it would fall on the side of the tree where he was standing. All up that would mean a 36% probability of him being hit and a 64% probability of him escaping.'
'Did you shake it like that?' Trevor asked.
'Yes,' I admitted.
'Some people do have rotten luck,' Janice said.
'Yes' Trevor agreed. 'I know a story about that. There was this farmer who was rich and prosperous but then his luck began to change. His cows died. All his crops got the blight. His wife and children caught the plague and were carried off. Then he himself contracted a wasting disease that left him weak and in terrible pain. And so there he is crawling over his barren earth and raising his feeble hands to the sky.
"Lord, oh, lord," he cries. "Why have you done this to me?"
And the clouds opened and a shaft of light comes down and a big voice says, "Because I hate you, you little bastard!"'
We laughed. All of use except Rupert.
'Is that funny?" he asked.
Rupert always likes to have the last word, even if it is only a question.
Inevitably, perhaps, the conversation turned to pornography.
'Personally,' Amanda said. 'I don't care what people watch as long as it's not too nasty. I mean, as far as I can see there's four kinds. First, there's boring old copulation. Then there's the kinky stuff which is the same thing, except with handcuffs and feathers. Then there's nasty ones involving rape and violence. And finally the truly evil ones - snuff movies, child abuse and the like.'
'How much do we actually know about it, though?' Trevor asked. 'I mean, hands up here everyone who's actually seen a porno film.'
We glanced at one another, each of us wondering how to respond. Then we all raised our hands, except Rupert.
'Okay,' Trevor went on. 'Confession time.' He turned to Felix.
'Ach!' Felix waved him away. 'It was a travesty! The very opposite of love and passion!'
'What did you do?' Trevor asked.
'I walked out. I got drunk.'
Trevor turned to me.
'Well,' I said. 'It was a while ago now. It was one of Amanda's boring old copulation things...'
'They're not my things.'
'... Except, you know, I wonder if boring is the right word. People always say pornography is boring but I think that's most because boring is the opposite of interesting and nobody wants to admit to being interested.'
'Where you interested?' Trevor asked, as I knew he would.
'Not sure. I didn't enjoy it, if that's what you mean. It had a weird sort of fascination, though. But very alienating. Felix is right.'
'Ach!' Felix said again and poured himself another glass of sangre de toro.
'How about you?' Trevor asked Janice.
'Oh,' she said. 'I had this bloke once who insisted I watch this thing with him. I think he thought it was going to be a turn on.'
'And was it?' Trevor asked.
'Well, it might have been for him, I don't know. But part of the story, if you can call it a story, was some stone-age woman who was frozen in a glacier. They were trying to thaw her out and all I could think of was how bad the smell was going to be.'
'Sounds like it marked the end of a beautiful friendship,' I said.
'Beautiful? No. End? Yes.'
Trevor turned to Amanda.
'Curiosity,' she said. 'And a dare. My friend Susan and I were talking about these things and wondering what they were like and she said she couldn't possibly go into a place and hire one. So, of course, I had to show her that I could. And then, once we had it, it seemed silly not to watch it.' She looked at Janice. 'I must say, your's sounds much more interesting than ours. There was no story at all. Well, I suppose there was in a rudimentary sense but there was no shape to it. I think that's what was so awful about it. It had no redeeming aesthetic values whatsoever.'
'I think that's the point,' I said. 'If it was done artfully, it would have to be less graphic and it needs to be graphic for the audience to know that it's real.'
'What about you?' Amanda asked Trevor.
'Oh, I like porn,' he said. 'Occasionally. I think it's very funny. And you're right. It's like reality TV. I always imagine to myself what's really going on. These people with camera's pointing at these other people who are shagging each other. It's ridiculous. Like in Survivor Sahara or something, where you have this contestant crawling across the burning sand, parched and expiring, and of course there has to be a camera there and a sound crew and vehicles and support people and you know sure as hell that they're not expiring and that's there's gallons of fresh cool water around.'
'The new pornography,' I said.
'So,' Rupert said, 'is there a moral issue here?'
'What is this?' Amanda has a copy of the morning paper and is using her most scornful tone.
'A problem?' I ask.
She reads. 'Men find photos of the opposite sex much more rewarding than do women, new research claims.'
'Well, that's probably true.'
'I know it's true but why are we having news items about it?' She turns to Rupert. 'This is more of your brain scan nonsense. Apparently, they've been showing pictures to men and women and scanning their brains. Wonder of wonders the whatever they call them...' she peers at the paper... 'the reward centres in men are triggered by pictures of the opposite gender and women's aren't. Furthermore...' She gives a snort of derision... 'these findings are supposed to shed light on why men are greater consumers of pornography.'
'So?' Rupert is defensive.
'So. Your reward centres are triggered when you see something you like, right?'
'Yes.'
'Presumably, men are greater consumers of pornography because they like it more. If they like it more, their reward centres are going to be triggered. So what's this experiment telling us except that men like pornography?'
'It does sound suspiciously circular,' I say.
'Hmmm.' Rupert realises how close he has come to endorsing a circular argument. It's an anxious moment.
'What this looks like to me,' Amanda goes on, 'is one of those phony sociobiological justifications for something dodgy. It's all right to consume pornography, because liking has somehow got to do with your brain. On that kind of thinking it would be all right for serial killers to murder people because when they did it their reward centres are triggered.'
'I don't think it's quite saying that,' I answer.
'What is it saying then?'
'Not much,' I confess.
'Not all men like pornography,' Rupert says. Somewhat sheepishly.
Amanda laughs. I'm not sure why.
Yesterday gave us a lovely late autumn morning - bright sun, clear air. I was due to go into the city for an appointment but thought I would take a stroll round the garden first to refresh my spirits. On my way, I passed a dead kanuka tree - a spindly thing about three metres high with a broken, twiggy top and flaking bark. A few days earlier, after a period of dithering, I had finally decided that this particular specimen did not look cute and gothic but really rather ugly and that I ought to get rid of it. Now, filled with the brightness of the bright morning, I remembered that such trees I had dealt with in the past were often so rotten at the base that they broke off if you gave the a good yank.
With this in mind I grabbed the tree and shook it vigorously. Suddenly, there was a heavy blow on the top of my head. I let go of the trunk and staggered back, stunned. The tree was rotten all right but not at the base. A piece about two foot long and a couple of inches thick had broken off the top and landed on my crown. Scalp wounds, of course, bleed fulsomely. Within a minute I had blood running down my forehead and was stumbling towards the house, trying to stop it from dripping onto my city-visit clothes.
Barbara was gratifyingly solicitous and eventually we managed to staunch the bleeding and after fifteen minutes or so I was able to continue my day, with a fairly dramatic gash on the top of my head. Fortunately, I am tall enough for most people not to notice such a thing.
In case anyone is wondering, this incident is not the reason I am late posting this blog. I suppose I could claim injury as an excuse but that would be dishonest. Nor could I truly use another excuse - that I have been considering work on a new novel, even though that happens to be true. No, the real reason, I fear, is simple lassitude.