Paul J Penton – Songwriter

With his prized metal case of magic tricks he leaves the rented second story flat on Riversdale Road Hawthorne to head for the equally well to do Camberwell.  No need to go into the office this morning, this job is just a couple of suburbs away. The air still has a taint of cold about it as he pulls up in front of a late model office monstrosity – no doubt glued together with pre-formed concrete walls with as much privacy as Chinese toilet. A claustrophobic two person elevator whisks him to the fifth floor where he encounters a charming receptionist, she’s around twenty something with a stripey zebra pattern top that droops on the right shoulder revealing a hint of exposed skin. He states his business and her crescent smile glows with delight. Her smile warms the autumn chill out of his soul as he follows her down a well lit corridor. He feels a mild sense of shame as he admires her pump class posterior, but also a sense of exitement and possibility stirring within.

 “ here ’tis then, just come and see me when you’re done”.

Zebra girl gallops back down the corridor, again he savours the disappearing bottom.

He wasn’t given a model number when the call came in but when he realises it is a Fujitsa PCF 17725 – capable of simultaneous fax reception, transmission and photocopying, his inner technician lights gets turned on –  “Wow, nice model;” he thinks to himself.

   Usually there are one of three elements that make these babies fail; paper jams – which he was sure the cute receptionist would have looked into, greasy pinch rollers or foreign objects embedded within the machine – this last scenario is the trickiest to fix, involving almost a total disassembly!

  He rolls up his sleeves and dives into his bag of tricks, conjuring a pair of disposable gloves- just to make sure no foreign grease strays anywhere – and also in case it’s a toner problem; He definitely doesn’t want toner stains all over his hands, it’s harder to get off than sump oil.

   Approaching the machine he whispers quietly to it, not wanting to be heard by workers in the surrounding area who might think the ‘fix it’ guy is a ‘whacko’. It’s sort of a secret serviceman’s prayer.  He finds it helpful to establish a relationship with the device at the earliest convenience, then it’s a matter of various interrogation techniques to show who the master is until the subject yields the necessary secrets. His hands caress the control panel and in a soft voice he enquires, “what have you got for me then?”

   The first step in controlling the mind of a photocopier is to switch the machine on and off, at the power point – it’s surprising the number of times this simple task fixes things. After closing its eyes for barely twenty seconds the machine wakes up with a series of page shufflings and flittering noises. This always, reminds him of a distressed horse he saw one time in a stable shuffling around in the straw and whinnying. The fidgeting machine settles down but that red symbol and those annoying dots and diagonal slashes still flash like a bridge beacon

   Option one then is a failure, so, in prayerful attitude he moves to his knees and begins pulling out  the paper draws, they slide out with a hollow plastic sound as he looks for tell tale signs of a piece of jagged paper that might be impeding the natural flow of the machine. On the right hand side of the take up for tray number two he finds a few traces of white which he excises with fine tweezers. Hopes rise warmly in his belly for an early end to the interrogation and a few more moments shared with the receptionist. It would be nice to get this over with A.S.A.P.

   As he gently pulls the strip of strangled paper from the roller his mind wanders back to his decision to leave school early. It seemed that earning a wage, having money in your pocket and moving out of home as soon as possible were highly desirable things, especially when you grow up in a place as tiny as Blackwood, population 500. Living off your own means has not turned out to be all he believed it would be though. It seemed to be a sensible thing to do at the time, but now he regrets not going to uni like his former mates. All those guys he went to school with now have high paying careers in medical labs and various multinational companies, and here he is toying with innards of photocopiers – that he talks too no less! Sometimes these machines are the only thing he talks to all day. Being stuck in this cycle of fixing and cleaning and talking to machine has been wearing thin with his conscience for some time now.

  He clicks shut the doors and replaces the paper draws mechanically and performs the standard on-off procedure. The machine seems to be complaining and choking as those rollers and inks warm up again. At the end of the opening performance there’s no red roller symbol flashing. A dart of happiness pings his heart. He places his standard test image on the glass and engages the machine for one print. The temporary sun beneath the hood sweeps the image, rollers start turning and toner starts gurgling and the machine comes to a jerky halt with a long warning beep.

“Unco-operative eh!” , he thinks inwardly while experiencing a momentary deflation. Just a minor set-back, this will not deter him. He brings to bare his marathon training to know the journey does not end so soon. Running is teaching him that nothing good comes without effort. When he’s there out pacing on his own, through the parks and the open roads, feeling the wind tunneling his ears and tasting the drip of healthy sweat staining his lips, the extra chemicals released in his brain glide him to a place of serenity and calm where nothing can touch him. He focuses on those feelings now as he pulls out some more serious tools of enquiry from his kit bag, ready to step up the interrogation a notch.

  He mentally runs through his options as if it’s a military campaign. The pinch roller is the next thing to check. The front draw drops down in a swivel and sends out a hollow PVC ring. He manipulates several green handles to give him access to the toner. It is extracted and handled with the delicacy of an unexploded bomb by his gloved hand allowing him access to a thumb sized roller, right in the guts of the machine. He uses a dentists mirror to have a look around checking for paper jams or anything out of place. The light struggles to pierce the angular space, but to his well trained eye it all looks fine.

    He checks his watch and let’s out a yawn – nine o’clock. It was a late one last night. Why do Channel Seven put his favourite show on so late he wonders? Beauty and the Geek is every tech- heads fantasy show;  collect ten Playboy Bunny wannabe models and ten M.I.T. graduates and put them in a house together competing in teams of two for a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar prize – you’ve got Beauty and the Geek. His mind wanders over Samantha’s curves while he unconsciously looks over the curves of the photocopier, tickling the pinch roller checking for any signs of greasiness, but it all seems normal.    

  Tonight, once he’s dealt with this and five other ‘machines’ it’s his monthly chance to meet a real girl at speed dating. He’s only been doing it for three months now, and has had a few bites of interest from the hopefuls he’s noted down, and one actual date. Unfortunately nerves usually get the better of him on these nights, his inadequacies around women reduce him to classic opening lines such as “Hello, I’m Eugene, I fix photocopy machines what’s do you do?” Part of him believes women might find this opening gambit interesting and if any of them are like those girls on the Beauty and the Geek show, they’ll pick up on his ‘geekyness’ and realise what a sweet guy he really is. Most women find his opening line about as appealing as cleaning a toilet bowl. If he could only mention the running it might get him a lot further, but this doesn’t occur to him.

  The one date he has been on so far he was a complete loss. His shyness reduced him to asking her questions by rote, as if she were a photocopier that needed fixing. He mechanically drilled through a series of pre programmed backup questions to try to elicit appropriate responses, if only he felt that freedom he experienced when running around women. Perhaps if he could just stop thinking about sex the whole time then they might have connected a bit more, but it just ended with a handshake goodbye  and a ”nice to meet you”. More than he gets from these stupid photocopy machines.

   Now this machine was proving to be a real problem. That pinch roller trick didn’t work so what else was left? He’d read in some M.Scott Peck book that a lot of the time all you really need to do to solve a problem is have a long hard look at it, so that’s what he did this time. Sitting with that front door open, he lets his eye wander over every roller, every lever and handle to see if his unconscious mind throws up anything from the training manual and his years of experience. As his eye meanders his mind floats off to his perfect fantasy date. Instead of feeling as awkward as a whale in a toilet cubicle, he sits there completely comfortable – his hair done in one of those Beauty and the Geek makeovers wearing a trendy top and maybe a loose fitting jacket, his head’s thrown back laughing and smiling, the conversation flowing, he’s witty, he’s funny, he’s making her laugh, that’ll surely get her into bed. Their eyes meet for longer than the accustomed glance and ……That’s it! He realises that the upper quadratic engagement lever seems to have a strange angularity as if it’s bent out of shape – why didn’t he notice it before?  He unleashes one of the magic screwdrivers and gleefully extracts the tiny grub screws to get to the lever and sure enough it seems to have become bent somehow – perhaps through incorrect closure of the drawer. A few twists with the pliers and it’s back in shape. He’s certain he’s got it this time. He watches the handle closely as he clicks shut the front drawer to make sure nothing catches. On and off again the machine goes, through it’s shuffling and clattering procedures. The test piece still naked on the glass is scanned and a perfect copy emerges at the other end, a perfect copy of Samantha from Beauty and the Geek.

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A grey overcast morning
taxi arriving at 6.53
stepping out into a brisk memory
of chilly winter mornings
the taxi atmosphere
warps around me in a blanket of safety
hopefully like the journey before me

Check in
forms filled
waivers waived
credit cards swiped
health insurance checked
all looking good and above board

Not sure what to expect
ascending the lift to level one
I hand in forms
and they direct me to bed 11
- a private room
the window broken
with a lightening of sky

a series of practitioners call
one inspects me veins
and installs a Catheter
in my left hand
it aches for hours after
is that normal?
A slight prick
as he burrows in
under the skin
and applies a series of plasters and things
leaving me with a plastic tube
and an attachment hose
I feel like a cyborg
ready for a dose

Another nurse comes to check me
with an ECG
does the test but is called away
and does it again and remarks
“you read about it,
but this is the first I’ve ever seen”
‘Wolff-Parkinson-White’
blood pressure normal
like everything else

a small elephant
rests on my chest
just a foot or maybe a leg
but I know it’s there….
he plays with the butterfly
on the left ventricle
that continues to flutter and tickle
will this go away?
she asks how do I rate it
on a scale of 1 to 10
- maybe 3 I say

an assistant is next to visit
a little less confident than the others
explains the procedures
that once in place
the probes will come up through the thigh
the groin
it’ll all be on the screen
that area in my heart
with the extra junction box
will be exposed to a series of shocks
to help them learn
how dangerous this is
later I learn I have been ‘oblated’
the surgeon drops by to check in
all ready then

A male nurse gives me
two sleeping pills
so by the time they wheel me out
I’m slightly out of it
I trundle to just outside the theater
funny thing is
I don’t know what time it is
I’m aware as they feed me
drips through the catheter
as they burrow into my regions down nether
and I slip into a half land
a half place
where I’m aware of numbers being called out
and the lights flash on and off
and pictures of wires probing my inside
are displayed on LCD screens

I’m sat outside the operating theater
as I sit there they monitor
later I’m told there might be another oblation needed
I’ll wear a monitor for twenty four hours to assess the need

back in the room I snooze and drift
time seems to have disappeared
haven’t eaten since last night
and can’t eat now -another procedure is to follow
the drip machine to my left feeds me saline or drugs or something

when I’m aware again I ask the time
3pm
another hour ’til the next procedure
an angiogram with pictures of my veins
I’m uncomfortable in this bed
my back aching
wanting to move my leg
but being told to keep it straight
the secondary catheter still in my groin
a second penis I have grown
temporarily

4.30 pm procedure two
taken and waken again
almost straight through
an Indian doctor
explains the procedure
says there’s a point three percent chance of things going wrong
blood clots
hemorrhages
reactions
a few things
I sign a form disinterested and drowsy

In the theater it seems to be only five minutes
more drugs administered
a warm flush as dye is released into the blood
pictures taken
and then back to the room
to sleep, to rest
with more drugs

I sleep what seems a couple of hours
I wake and ask
“what time is it”
10 pm!
I need to eat
hungry
he gets a cup of tea and some sandwiches for me
don’t move about too much they tell me
the night passes
turbulent sleep
keeping that damn leg as straight as possible
and the bad back making it intolerable
longing to get back to reality
the stream of humanity
the life I know
though this has been
a pleasant stay
by all accounts
they’re really very nice!

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A girl on the train
in a school uniform
cheeks blushed red
hides in the corner
a Maori boy
is acting cool
she’s looking at him
you can tell she’s keen
maybe tonight
she’ll write about him
in her diary
confess her love
express her dreams.
Maybe by the end of the week
she might talk to him
bump into him
accidentally on purpose on the train
just like she planned to do last week

She’ll be cool
and offhand
just like her dreams
She doesn’t wear the clothes
like other girls
but she’s got something
if only he would notice her-
but she’s hiding in the corner
she thinks he might have
a tender heart
beneath his cool exterior

The boy carries on
acting for his mates
telling jokes
in a maroon jumper
He probably plays football
with those coat hanger shoulders
They hold up his frame

He doesn’t notice her
the shy one in the corner
every day on the train’
she longs to be noticed by him
longs
she chooses the carriage that he is in
to be next to him
hoping
he might notice

But the train just creeks and rattles
passers by jostle
to escape to the platform
it stops at every station
this train full of commuters and punters
on their way to work
dressed in corporate uniforms
lit by flickering fluros
closed in by beeping doors
that say “stand clear please”
“stand clear please”
but she can’t stand clear of him

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Based on an article I read in ‘Sunday life’ – original story appeared in The Telegraph U.K.

I’d been living in Los Angeles
since I was seven years old
my daddy was a truck driver
mama worked the county court
when I was 11 they divorced
and I started doing some bad things
Pretty soon I was into drugs
And from there things just went from bad to worse
before I knew it I was under arrest
sentenced forty years to life
by the time that I was twenty five

[in Folsom]
Every where that you were lookin’ -
was down the barrel of a gun
you always had to check your walk
in case you took just one step wrong
When I stretched out my arms at night
I could touch both cold brick walls
things were pretty rough in there
it WAS a thousand living hells

and I was in there on the day
that Cash played Folsom prison
The only lights they had on him
were hanging from the ceiling
Johnny and his Tennessee three
and June Carter his wife to be
They played that show for a straight four hours
I was shoutin’ and singin’ with the rest
we felt like we’d all been released
the whole 2000 of us

I’d have to say that concert day
was when my life began to change
While I was stuck in my prison cell
I got me an education
I wrote a wrap on prison reform
for which Johnny Cash was Campaignin’
That’s why he did that show that day
right there in Folsom prison

Now when I got out in ‘78
with no clothing and no money
they gave me 200 bucks at the gate
and acted like I was lucky
I’d learned to carve a side of beef
While I was on the inside
and just nearby was military base
and they said they needed my knife

And I know that I’m not perfect now
but I’m not the way I was
I see so many kids these days
hangin’ on the streets
going down that same old road
I wish someone could show them
That there’s a different way
and I wonder what Johnny Cash could say
to make them change their mind

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It started out quite innocent, just a trip down to the supermarket to buy an ice cream, specifically an Eskimo pie -a rectangular brick of Ice cream coated in chocolate – you can’t just buy one though, they come in a pack of six. You take home the polar blue packet and chisel out a space in the freezer – stuffing the packet between the fish-fingers and mixed frozen veg and then like a siren from antiquity they start calling to you.

So, there I am having acquired my box of pies, the chilled packet just beginning to nip at the pads of my fingers and the thought occurs to me to do a decent cooked breakfast tomorrow, being the death of the Lord and all. The notion of rindless bacon – though not exactly Kosher – got hold of me and I was impelled toward the deli. Arriving, it seemed there was an unusual queue of people for 9.18 pm on a Maundy Thursday, so I scooted around a corner display in search of a Vine ripened tomatoes, anticipating a thinning of the crowd. Well, it seems vine ripened tomatoes must be popular or out of season, for all that was left were a few orangey red pustules that held no interest So, back I hike to the Deli, all lit up like a cruise liner in standard fluro white with a couple of young Indian guys at the helm doing their best to manage the crowd.

It seems the ticket machine is quite some way out of order… people are almost having screaming matches and hissy fits because they reckon it’s their turn. I of course see it as a great opportunity for another story line so start texting it all into my mobile phone, not having a pen or voice recorder to make notes with. After the second minute of observation I gathered there was some sort of competition going on – a group of what sounded like Russian ladies in their late sixties, each with a coloured rinse hairset were having severe conversations with the boys running the Deli about “1/2 price”. My curiosity rose like a charmed viper… and then it dawned on me that the supermarket would not be open tomorrow so they were getting rid of all the deli stuff that wouldn’t keep, but, the ticketing fiasco meant the Russian ladies stood a good chance of missing out on some bargains…. I chortled and sniggered at the ridiculousness of it, but they seemed deadly serious. Maybe they were on a pension….definitely on a mission.

Right then, just when I thought I was about to be served, the numbers start whizzing by on the ticket machine 11, 12, 13 , 15 ,17 he called out – I held D41 .. faster and faster the numbers went by almost like a vignette from a classic piece of film Noir where calendar pages flip over simulating the passage of time… it got to 32 and he stopped…

The woman to my right was a late-comer I reckon and I just started to get a little ticked off as she jostled in, but indeed she did have 32. I mustn’t have noticed her. By this stage I am the only other person in the queue and I wave my D41 about like a team scarf at a football match attracting the attention of serving boy Number two. “1/2 a dozen bits of the rindless thanks”…. surprisingly he checks with the colleague #1 and I get it for half price! Beauty!

I begin to wonder if the Eskimo pies have begun to melt because it seems I’ve been here about as long as a polar bear stuck on an ice flow. At the checkout some of the Russians are bonded together in a caravan of shopping bags near the entrance of the store… again I start rippling with laughter on the inside, sniggering as I enquire about withdrawing a hundred dollars…… that and the Eskimo pies should see me through to Monday.

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