by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

The adult who was bullied once-too-much-so-long-ago will always retain inside within them an element of the tormented child that was. For most the element is, like an iceberg, small on the surface with its main bulk repressed underneath. There is a weighing down effect. Matakinski knew this, and he had a novel idea to help round off the harsh edges of those old memories, for himself and the others.

So now the ‘breakaway private reunion’ he had envisioned was about to begin. Well, that’s the way he imperfectly described it to himself. It was to be a reunion of a number of the ex-bullied kids of Trudgeton High. They’d all been in contact via email from all over the country. Now finally they’d made it happen. Mal Matakinski had came up with the idea first – he was the unelected but seemingly fully accepted, leader of them all. The ‘Nerdies’ as they affectionately called themselves were now all together in one room. They had had a few nibbles and peripheral re-connect chats. Now was the time for Mal Matakinski to shine a little. The tall, late forty-something small business owner and ex high-school-nerd probably hadn’t yet reached his true potential. But at least now he was looking the part all suited up and being the leader of the Nerdies, and about to start the speech. Matakinski’s speech would be the official opening this rebel ex-Trudgeton High , ex-nerd re-union weekend. He began speaking in a confidant leader-like manner.

“We members of the E.H.S.N.C – that is ‘The Ex High School Nerds Coalition’ – aka us ‘Nerdies’ – don’t know much. But we do know this:

Those mean, monsters – the popular ‘in-crowd girls’ who picked on us without mercy, who made our pimply bespectacled faces blanch for their and their lackeys based enjoyment? Well I can report that time has done its due justice – they now also look on the outside like the monsters they were on the inside when they were young. But I’m not telling you anything you all already don’t know – am I? We all know all ex-high school bullies don’t truly prosper. But I think it’s worth revisiting these things – lest we forget.

Yes folks, let’s put those ‘mean girls’ in the firing line. Their formerly pert breasts are now around their knees, if not wallowing joylessly around their ankles. Pretty soon they’ll be venturing out by themselves, slithering like snakes knocking on doors and sitting down on some barstool at some bar ordering the finest ‘bitch diesel’ on offer….while talking to some flakey old dick who’s also attached to some old bully somewhere and doing the same for the same reasons. Excuse my exaggeration dear members, but the world needs laughter just as much as truth. And why not joke about the failing genitalia & mammary glands of that horrible genus of caveman scientifically known as washdupitus-ex-highschoolius-bulius?.

Those demon-chick-in-crowd-er’s former mean but still supple bright faces – yes the same very ones that they wore at Trudgeton High – have now totally collapsed under the weight of decades of concealer, caked on make-up & the collective weight of years of daily mega-wrinkle-making mean-girl facial contortions. Truly they look awful friends. I can report that they are far more permanently ugly now than we ever were temporarily. But we were only ugly only on the surface at Trudgeton, never was our ugliness deeply ingrained, at that social and educational disaster zone also known as Trudgeton High. Let me continue the analysis friends.

Their mean-girl hair once long flowing & lustrous, is now as frizzy as their bad to non-existent ideas once were, and surely still are. The mean-girls hair is now so frizzy that some scientists contend they may have indeed had a full dose of radiation applied to it by their local suburban beauty therapists, in a vain CIA vs JFK like effort to hide the sad truth of their decaying-but-still-living, corpse-faces. The old mean girl bags always wanted Jackie-O’s hair, but they got Lee Harvey Oswald’s pattern baldness friends! I will continue.

The now saggy, wrinkled, soggy & frizzy joyless old high-school mean girls only joy in life is hating their rich ex husbands, who they have at least half cleaned out of all their cash, cars, children & property. Of course they took 100% of his joy, that goes without saying. I guess It’s not entirely true that these joy-stealers they are ‘joyless’ themselves – after all, they do get to mistreat their customers at their go-to mean rich girl jobs. These are the retail malls & charity shops that they now all work at – or should I say ‘dispense sneers at’. So technically I was wrong to call them joyless just now- they do still get their false but fleeting, mean-girl-at-the-cashier schadenfreude joy. But we all know that’s not real joy is it friends?

I could go on in further laundry-list like fashion – but I’m sure you all bright E.H.S.N.C’s catch my drift. I’ve now surely covered a few of the the basics of mean-girl-high-school-bitchology 101.

So folks, let’s now refrain to raise a glass to glorious, glorious, poetic justice – for it has been done to them. And as a special sign of respect – let us do our special unique sign of high respect: Let us raise our eye-glasses to the sky & make a high-voltage transformer humming sound, while learn forward with a slooping stance, pointing always to the north-east. While quirky and unnecessary, this fun greeting of ours has served us well of late and is much better than the ‘secret handshakes’ from those other shadowy lesser IQ clubs that abound – The Freemasons et al.

Great work!, I’m glad you all remembered intuitively where north-east is. And the sloop angle was impressive! Now we have done that now please forgive me – I have been talking too much of the bitches, & not enough of the bastards. The jocks. I will now make amends immediately.

And what of the ‘Mean Jocks’ from Trudgeton High? – well, for the most part they just became bald, boring, hen-pecked, pen-pushing ‘schlubbs’ in some non-descript corporate office,. they sit their in their dusty crusty keyboard cubicles still dreaming away at the of their social high point in life – as popular bullies at Zombie High School Limited aka Trudgeton High. They of course are mostly hardened bully types – rumor has it they only shed a tear when they remember that they no longer can give us nerds wedge-ies or verbally harangue us at will in the hallways. But the tear doesn’t last long – we know they’ve moved on to their poor unfortunate workmates.

yes the bully jocks still today dream and re-live the shitty fake glories they got playing football for Trudgeton High. Correct me if I’m wrong my fellow Nerdies, but didn’t they get always get beaten one hundred nil every game? Excuse my French but They were fucking useless! And of course their former muscles are gone, their skin pasty, their eyes crossed, their words mumbled and barely audible. Their former false but passable confidence has indeed forever left them. For the Jocks thought they were on top of the social pecking order. Then they turned seventeen or eighteen, left Trudgeton and they never mentally recovered. Oh isn’t this how delightful! The Schadenfreude is intoxicating my fellow Nerdies of the E.H.S.N.C!

So ladies & gents – let’s again raise what I hope will be our annual ‘Bullies go and get f*cked glass’ to that sweet slither of justice that has been dished out to those now pathetic losers who used to bully us so long ago and with reckless demonic intentions and gay abandon.

Yes – I’m sure they – the mean girls and the jocks – still have their little ‘mean arseholes from high-school reunions’ – where they play act that they have not been totally found out by life, and re-live their past glory days of picking on the temporarily socially weak – i.e. us ‘nerds’. . .

…but alas it can’t work…and deep down they know it…

Because even though the world is indeed a f*cked-up place….

Those assholes from high school still aren’t capable of creating anything unique, original or good…

Let’s face it my fellows – if they were still assholes by age 16 – nothing was going to ever change..as the Jesuits correctly alluded to long ago in their tale of ‘show me the boy of seven & I will show you the man’ etc etc.

Now yes I have been one sided in my appraisals of them. They are not all as of today one-hundred percent bad. Of course I applaud the reformed high-school bully, the bully come good. When that blue moon happens, that my friends is as beautiful as the lark singing right outside your window in the morning. Let us always repay good with good – I not talk badly of the well reformed high-school bullies out there. God speed to them. They have, I must sorely admit, moved mountains to rehabilitate themselves to get to where they are today. But Nerdies let us not kid ourselves – they are surely as rare as Helium-3 is on planet Earth.

Ok back to the stock standard garden variety specimens boringly known as non-reformed bullies…but a more interesting and anthropological way to describe them would be: non-reformedus-cuntus-bullius-maximus. Unlike us Nerdies – they mostly didn’t graduate from ‘proper courses’ – because they are/were stupid. You know – we did Math’s, Chemistry, Economics, Biology Physics etc. In High School they naturally finally graduated to become the now barely living, sloop-walking, poetic-justice-receiving-empty receptacles. These are the faces they see daily in their cracked mirrors and in the windows of shop fronts as they shuffle by them – as if their is still an invisible ‘ball & chain’ attached that their distant ancestors wore – and not for fashion reasons either. They amble along with the gait of a true ex-convict with a long ancestral knowledge of crookedness imbued into their DNA. For surely – as sure as gravity warps sunlight – their ancestors were a long ancient shitty lineage too . For the particular blood lineage of the high-school bully/mean girl sure goes as far back as the primordial ‘cave bully’ times.

Yes fellows, I’m sure my ancient grandad-nerd Eugene-Myron-Poindexter the first, was having his fig leaf regularly stolen by Troy the Neanderthal. I’m sure if he complained of his nakedness to ‘Troy the cave bully’, he would have been clubbed over his overly large bulbous head. Eugene’s ancient proto-glasses – which were perhaps transparent crystals of some sort broken off the cave ceiling- would have duly ended up smashed on the ground in the process. Bullies and their methods have changed little over the eons.

Yes my Nerdies friends – all in all regarding the fate of our High-School bullies, summarily speaking – their ‘Just deserts’ have been served and eaten….nay gorged down on at the ‘all night’, ‘all you can eat’ buffet of that hard unforgiving taskmaster known as old lady time.

But comrades, let me now show my softer more forgiving side. For vengeance is not so admirable. Even for us aged-wealthy-but-still-jilted Nerdies. Even as my advanced age, my soft side in particular has not entirely bean beaten out of me. It does exist for sure. Luckily it has not been made quite so as extinct as the Tasmanian Tiger from all that childhood high-school trauma those bullies inflicted upon me. That is something I am forever thankful for.

Now fellows and fellow-esses of the E.H.S.N.C let me float an unpopular idea: perhaps we good reputable citizen folk should even thank those now aged, zombified, mean ‘cool kids’ of yesteryear…we should thank those that tormented us at Trudgeton.

No no no, quieten your mutterings…I can see why you think that’s an outrageous suggestion. So let me explain: Through their unrelenting mental and physical abuse, they made us battle hardened for later adult life. Because of their war-like attacks we saw all of life’s bullsh*t early, so when we left high school, we dodged it all so much better in real life. So you see my fellow Nerdies – do you agree that they gave us all a distinct advantage, do you see the truth?!

This is why we ex-nerds – our should I say ‘current glorious Nerdies’? – have risen to at or near the top of our respective fields. And where we have not attained external material & career success or wealth, we have at least retained & developed our highly attuned excellent knowledge seeking attitudes and respects for true wisdom! Is that not also wealth? And that my fellow Nerdies, if you’ll excuse the double negative – that is not nothing.

Of course fellows – I hear your pertinent cries. I’m not living in la-la-land. All that prison-like pain, anxiety and grief – while it did eventually build upwards our characters, it still wasn’t entirely in-the-end-beneficial for all of us. No No No – there was some collateral damage…perhaps more than some...yes…we lost quite a few nerd-souls…some of them are rocking back & forth in some halfway house, or more likely a quasi -halfway halfway house….or perhaps never left their parent’s basements…many more of us still reside in dingy clutter-filled units in roughshod probably violent drug-filled suburbs of those many overly populated hell-holes – the worst of which being of course the ghastly, ghastly, rat infested hellhole known as Schmelbourne City.

But that bad stuff for us collectivized-aging-ex-bullied-Nerdies is not the rule at all my comrades – as you all know firsthand as you go about your stellar lives! Many of us have even become ‘captains of industry’ or Top University Professors for crissakes! And on that, I don’t need to tell our colleague over their, the one now hiding in the corner, the very think bespectacled Sir Wangle McTangle – yes!! What an amazing genius inventor he became! We all know of his beer-cozy that cools your beer in only seven nanoseconds. I ask you all, hasn’t that not changed the world for the better? And their are so many great success stories just like him in this room.

And what of the bad, I hear you say? It is true my friends – a bit of ‘Colat Dam’ – ‘collateral damage’ – is all but the the price of engaging in the ‘Nerds Vs Jocks Everlasting War’…and don’t be so foolish to think that the word war is an overstatement, or is made-up, or is a delusion of the mind. It’s a capital W War, indeed a War of good vs evil.

Alas back then at Trudgeton we didn’t know we were fighting pure evil. Now my Nerdies, we are not so naive. Now we have the knowledge, now we have the advantage. After all – you all now the adage knowledge is power, I don’t even need to ask.

The Nerd Vs Jock War is on and always has been, since Eugene & Brad in the cave. And I now say in hushed tones:

It is all one hundred percent worth it, my fellow brilliant Nerdies of the E.H.S.N.C. After all – the adage is ‘The Nerds win in the end’, not ‘The Jocks win in the end’, is it not? But alas – we probably should be good winners – even if it’s a hard and bitter pill to swallow. After all ‘payback’ is a thing. But do we need to seek it? No, of course not. Life has figured it all out for us perfectly, we didn’t need to lift a finger towards the center strut of our glasses even a millimeter.

And in that vein, I’d like to say I’m not happy to see the Jocks/Mean girls deteriorate into the walking dead corpses they today now so surely are…

I really would like to do that….but I gotta be honest – it’s a beautiful thing to see them suffer….it really is!

After all – they can only blame themselves…they could have easily have quit being – and please excuse my bad Scottish accent – ‘total nasty coonts’, at the age of twenty five…

Yet they doubled down…

They cold have again – easily quit being total nasty coonts at age thirty-five…

Yet again – they doubled down…

In fact…they cold have even easily quit being total demonically inspired total nasty coonts at age forty five...

Yet they again, again, again – simply doubled right down…

et cetera, etcetera, et cetera… – and to continue with the Latin phraseology – mala facere elegerunt – ‘they chose to do wrong’.

So my friends while they still insist on being aging mean high school nasty coonts…surely, I am free to simply report the dry facts of it all.

And now my glorious victorious soldiers of the E.H.S.N.C Army – my Nerdies – let us all retire to the bar of our privately hired club…aka it can be a little oasis of the Post High-School world…the one where we still ‘Rule OK’ despite and in-spite of it all.

I declare the Ex-Nerdies of Trudgeton High school re-union begun! Now lets file out of the room in an orderly fashion”.

As the celebratory clapping of all the audience of Nerdies had just only finished, it was then just before the first Nerdie had left the room that someone dressed as the buildings maintenance staff rushed in, pushing his way through the amassed Nerdies, storming the stage, aggressively grabbing the mic. It was the now-well-aged ‘King of the ex-bullies’ from Trudgeton High – Tony McLackener. But people didn’t know that was who he was just yet. It took a few seconds or two before a few caught on and whispered the information around. He started talking far more calmly than was expected given his abrupt Napoleon-like entrance.

You probably don’t recognise me – but I heard all this as I was outside checkin’ a broken light switch. Yes it’s me Tony McLackener. It was me who bullied you all like mad at Trudgeton. I’ll say it now I’m sorry for all that and on behalf of the cronies that egged me on to pick on you guys mercessly. Carrie – I’m sorry I called you a ‘tiny titty girl from a tiny titty city’. Geoffrey I’m sorry I stole you lunch money for three years straight, and I still owe your parents for that exploratory surgery to recover your coke-bottle glasses. Lex, I’m sorry I punched you in the nuts half way through your valedictorian speech. Tamara I’m sorry I…well look you all know what kinds of horrible things I did! – I’ll just say it here on my knees…I’M FUCKING SORRY OK!!

Now I don’t want to stay long, I’ve disrupted things enough ok? But I’ll just say one more thing. It might help you understand things better. What you guys got, bullies like me got a lot worse at home. Why the f*ck do you think we were like that? We didn’t at heart want to be like that. As was said from this great speech that I listened in on outside the room with my ear to the wall – you could see in our faces were were being fucked up by something dark, some unknown dark force.

What he -Mal Matakinsi over there said was true – it was a WAR. And by the way Mal, that time I buzzed cut your long flowing but greasy as hell hair while my cronies tied you to that chair – I’m sorry, ok. What Mal said just now was right in what he said – it was a Nerd Vs Bully War. But he was only half right. The Nerd Vs Bully War at Trudgeton has just one front of the War. You guys didn’t see the other theatre of War – the Bully Kid vs his Bully Parent. Or if in the rare cases that the bullies parents were still together – then sometimes we were bullied by both parents.

Now let me talk about me. I got punched at breakfast, punched at dinner & literally had to scrape shit of my street sweeper dad’s shoes. Once because I hadn’t done a good enough job at wiping the bench – he even made me lick that fresh dog shit that was stuck in the groves of his work boots right off his shoe. Then he made me thank him for him allowing me to spit it out instead of swallowing it.

My dad was such a mean drunk we were in constant fear that he’d beat us all up. His beatings often included my mum and once or twice it went so far as to reach even my seven-year-old sister. And after my dad had finished, our mum would turn on me because I was the oldest one and somehow that meant it was my fault. And I could tell you a lot more sh*t – like how he would kill my pet frogs in front of me, but I won’t tell of the popping croaking noise they made when he stomped on them, because it’ll just make you sick ok?!

I know now you’ve heard enough to get the gist of it all. But believe be it got worst than all that. So now you know why I was like that and believe me every high-school bully has roughly the same story. It’s onlt the details that change. All bullies everywhere had lives kinda like that and worse. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying it as an excuse for what I and the others did to you all.

I’ll finish up but I just want to say this – Mal Matakinski – he was right in his speech – we’ve lost compared to you all that are here and not here – you were all the poor guys, the ones we dumped all our shit from home on in Trudgeton High. So I have two last requests: One can you forgive my type for the past injustices? And secondly can I ask you all to quit your fucken wallowing in all this pity? Ok? I don’t know why the fuck would you make an event of all this past pain? Take your fucking heads out of your asses – each and every one of you! Thankyou for listening, and once again I apologize, for interrupting so rudely and for the past. I wish you good luck for the rest of your – thanks to us ex high-school bullies – now mostly comfortable lives.

Tony McLackener physically left the stage. He moved through the crowded room with both the style of an swiftly exiting diplomat mixed with the upright rigidity of a military general. This time on the way out he didn’t need to push his way through. Though the Nerdies were all in shock, they all parted to let him through unmolested. After his brutal but genuine words, they’d all realized their folly. They now saw things far more clearly. No one said anything to each other just yet, they’d need a few drinks before they could get over the shock, collect their thoughts. Of course their was no question that would chat about it vigorously.

As the Nerdies stood in the room – including Mal Matakinski who himself was still half-frozen on stage, they all looked at each other rather sheepishly. They were all feeling an equal ‘cocktail mix’ of embarrassment, confusion, anger, enlightenment, surprise, and of being humbled by Tony’s seemingly genuine words.

The noise of Tony’s exit had now dissipated – his loud steps on the hard flooring were now barely audible. With the ‘coast clear’ they all slumped out the door in single file, avoiding direct eye contact.Tthey were to continue the re-union plans – to all go on to the bar for drinks and to properly re-connect as was originally planned in the re-union schedule.

They all knew that the wind had been taken out of their sails. But it was also true that they were happy to have some new information to mull over, to ingest and to try to come to terms with. Despite their party being crashed, they all knew this was not the time to be angry, upset or even bamboozled. After all they were all highly intelligent types – they all wanted to understand what had happened. After all, It was actually a good thing – it was new information about their lives. And as Mal Matakinski had said matter-of-factly in his opening speech, they were no longer high-school sissies anymore – they could all well handle the ugly truth when it arose. They had been doing so expertly all their adult lives.

Of course he was no sissy. It was because of his leadership position in the Nerdies that Mal Matakinski himself did start to have more conflicting thoughts: should he have stepped in early and stopped Tony McLackener’s speech?; was it right that he gave him a ‘fair hearing’ so to let the audience decide for themselves the truth or falsity of McLackener’s words?; could or should he have just pushed or manhandled him off stage?; was this just a opportunistic stunt by McLackener?; was he re-bullying the Nerdies all over again? Had he – Mal Matakinski – failed them as a leader all by not acting swiftly? And Why did he – Mal Matakinski – half-freeze on stage like that? They were all tough questions to know the answer for.

Perhaps what was more annoying than what had actually just happened, was the fact that Matakinski couldn’t know exact truth of the situation. Surely a man of his now ample life experience should know what the case was? but he was asking a lot of questions in his mind to himself:

Was it was a case of the Nerdies metaphorical myopia being at fault, or was McLackener simply the ‘returning bully-villain’ here, having never ever mended his mean high-school ways? Maybe both parties – The Nerdies & McLackener – were both ‘right’, and everything had played out perfectly to uncover the true anthropological complexity of the situation?

Matakinski was looking forward to having a big pint of beer and a chin-wag with his fellow Nerdies. He wasn’t one to sweep things under the carpet – especially if the situation was an intellectual problem to be solved in itself. This would help give him clarity on all the questions. This would help reduce the ambiguity, this would help sooth his now jangled nerves. Matakinski certainly liked certainty, ambiguity had always had the effect of overstressing him. It was just how he was wired.

Another stressful thought now popped into Matakinski’s head. He also had the unnerving thought of what if Tony McLackener turns up – it might get worse than what just happened at the speech, after all alcohol is on hand! All hell could break loose! McLackener might still be unhinged and violent like he was at Trudgeton. He was self aware enough to notice in himself that was losing a bit of composure. It was all now feeling a little bit deja-vu-ish, it was almost like he was back at that dreaded Trudgeton High, being bullied all over again. A socially backward teenager under attack, having no idea how to navigate the social landscape whatsoever. Was Matakinski the supposed calm ‘leader of the Nerdies’ mind running away on him? He tied to block it out. He didn’t like these conjured up feelings. He felt the uncertainty of the situation had somewhat weakened him. He tried to brush it all off and mentally reminded himself he was a leader, at least of this weekend re-union.

Matakinski was now catching up to the group. They had gained ground on him while going to the next one-mile-away venue. Matakinski felt he had now pulled himself together. He reminded himself he was actually a very accomplished man in his late forties. This helped his heart rate return to normal. He forgave himself and kept walking, quickening his pace. This up & coming pint of my current favourite beer – Indian Pale Ale – would taste pretty good he told himself. He told himself what was I worried about? I had wanted the weekend to be interesting anyway. Sure I like intellectual certainty, but I also hate boredom.

The Nerdies had now after the ten minute walk arrived at the next venue – the bar which they had booked privately for the occasion of the re-union. Of course as is standard with these things their ‘private area’ was just a small roped off part of the main bar area, so that the normal patrons could still be drinking and socializing in the main bar as normal. When Matakinski had asked why the area roped off for them wasn’t larger, The bar manager bluntly told him they weren’t going to go broke that night on account of their perhaps thirty-strong groups comfort.

The Nerdies reunion had barely even begun yet. Their was a whole two days to go, packed with the usual type re-union activities: ten pin bowling, cafe brunches and dinners, a scenic boat trip, a walk to a viewing platform. It wasn’t clear yet as they now relaxed in the bar and began to drink and kick their heels up whether how the unexpected twist at the end Matakinski’s speech – the surprise interruption and arrival of Tony McLackener – would make the weekend better or worse. But Matakinski himself at least knew ‘you could never prove a negative anyway’ – it’s not like he could go back in time and stop Tony McLackener from entering the room. He used this reasoning to help other Nerdies who had voiced their fears to him relax more while they drank.

Matakinski was now three India-Pale-Ales in and was well into his conversation with a fellow Nerdie named Connie. She was once a long term municipal official working on god knows what, but had pivoted from being in council to being a counsellor. She told people who had asked why the pivot? – that she just wanted to help people think more clearly. She didn’t usually tell people the real reason – that in her new job as a counsellor she’d actually be dealing with far less crazy people than as a municiple councilor. Matakinski was now slightly drunk and he lowered his guard a little in his and Connies up-until-now mostly dry chit-chat like conversation.

“Connie I gotta tell ya – sure I’m a ‘confirmed bachelor’ and I’ve mostly been happy with that. I noticed long ago that most guys just get trapped by domesticity so I thought what the hey – I’ll just kick back read books, have as many Brewski’s as I like, invite ‘the boys’ over for drinks, go out when I want and for as long as I want, see as many women as I want, then go to the next when I want. That was the theory at least.”

“But”….said Connie inviting Matakinski to keep talking, knowing that Matakinski’s juvenile-like last few sentences did not amount to a good long-term-life-plan, especially as you age. She knew that ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ was called a ‘Syndrome’ for a reason – at a certain point to keep living like a twenty-year-old is just living out a pathology. Connie now being self-employed counsellor had seen this pattern in her patients – who were mostly, but not exclusively male. She knew at best, someone could stretch ‘refusing to grow up’ perhaps out till their mid-thirties, but after that the ‘house of cards’ would finally fall. Matakinski now took up her offer to keep talking.

“You’re a smart cookie Connie and you’re right – that theory worked a treat until I was about thirty seven, after that I’ve been saddled with a totally trailed off social life and feelings of regret – like wanting to go back to when I was thirty and start all over again. I know most people probably think the same, but I can’t avoid the reality that my life’s been far to dull for too far at least a decade”. He knew it to be true unquestionably but Connie wanted to cheer him up, because she knew Matakinski was like that for more reasons than just having “Peter Pan Syndrome”. Connie had a knack for seeing underlying reasons for things, which is probably why she finally changed careers late in life to become a counsellor. She knew Matakinski was right, but that he was also being far too hard on himself, so he thought she’d use a little humor to lift him up.

“Look, don’t be so hard on yourself – sure you’ve had some dullness in the last decade, but you’ve also had stability – you’ve built a little self-employed biz for yourself! Let me tell you Matakinski – social life falls swiftly on everyone at about age thirty-five – unless of course you’re some socialite-airhead-flotation-device-bitch married to some arrogant-concrete-smiled-plastic-surgeon-living-in-the-hills” . She nailed the last ‘line’ with perfect roll-off-the-tongue delivery. They both laughed heartily – Matakinski loved anything that put a swift kick up the jacksee’s of those banal materialistic upwardly striving type folk that now littered the world everywhere you look. He decided to take Connie’s advice and try to give himself a small break from his mental interrogations. But ingrained habits are always hard to break. He looked kindly in Connie’s eyes and started up again.

“True, when getting older the social life falls suddenly like a falling theatrical curtain. But I guess it’s about growing older gracefully – or at least trying to, failing, and then trying again. I guess partying loses its luster after about twenty seven anyway. Actually it’s not like a theatrical curtain falling – that’s far to swift and final. It’s more like a series of slow declines, then a large fall then a slow decline again, then a larger fall again, and so on and so on until you reach the bottom-most point and crawl out. Yes that’s a good analogy I think – getting older and watching your social life decline is really like being in a dingy on a long river with a series of interconnected cascading waterfalls. Each fall takes you to a even lower height that before until their can be no more falling because you have reached the end”. Matakinski was prone to being overly analytical in social situations – but Connie didn’t mind that, because she was one of the few still alive that also liked to think. Matkinski rounded off hi analysis of creeping loneliness.

“Look Connie at heart I know these feelings I’m having aren’t exactly rare, or strange – I guess this is just life playing out – I guess this is why people always say ‘getting old sucks’ ay Conns – am I right? Connie like most over forties these days of course knew what he was talking about.

“Exaaactly Connie crooned – so what ya complaining about? Of course you’re right – that’s why they have a label that describes people who have particular bad dose of troubles going through the transition – ‘the mid-life crisis’. Look I’ve watched you for longer than tonight. I think you’ve at least doing ‘ok’ these days. You are busying yourself and doing some good things. I’m impressed with your leadership with getting this show off the ground with the Nerdies group – and your speech was hilarious! I loved the irreverence! That’s my sense of humor! Look Matakinski – if you don’t mind I’ll engage my counselling skills here; life’s probably just giving him what you need and you’ve been smart and experienced enough to accept it in all it’s imperfections. Just view this shall we call it the ‘post age thirty-seven era’ as a nice little jolt in the arm. And besides, there’s nothing worse that an aging party animal drunk and alone at the bar of some nightclub with people half their age – don’t you think?”. It was a slightly loaded question as Connie had divorced her husband for being that kind of person, some seven years ago.

“Correct-amun-do Conns” said Matakinski borrowing a line from the typical nineteen eighties golden era of Hollywood films. He continued the quasi-philosophizing vein of communication.

“Conn you’re making sense I’m doing ok I guess, I at least quit being that type by my late thirties. I guess I’m a just little off my game right now. It’s easy to be overly hard on yourself when you’re feeling a little down.Tony McLackener’s dramatic unannounced return shook me up a little – my thinking’s a little off. But I’m distracting myself from it nicely – I’m now four beers in – boys these India Pale Ales’s are a trick! How is the Martini Conn? I dunno how you can drink that stuff, that percentage can sneak up on ya, don’t ya think – what is it eleven percent?”

“It’s more like fourteen. Luckily I can hold my liquor these days – it’s about drinking slowly. Who was it that said the line in that old eighties movie?”Connie remembered it perfectly ” Oh yeah it was ‘What are you worried about? – these Martinis are just the mules by which the doctor’s orders get done’. I think it was..uh..” Connie’s memory had failed her as to who had said the line. Matkinski in perhaps the smoothest he’s been since he was a younger, thinner, better dressed man age thirty-five jumped in to finish her sentence.

“It was a outtake of a James Bond movie – double o seven said it to M, of course I could do my Sean Connery impression but it’s more than shit” Matakinski said cheerily.

“Yes don’t, I heard he slapped his wife up in his private life, so let’s not go there and reward him too much huh?”

“Correct-amun-do Conns” said Matakinski, pointing his finger at her in a fun way but also ironically doing it in a very bad Connery voice.

“You tool! – I told you not to do it!” said Connie with a fun smile.

“Hey – I’ll be right back Conns, gotta go to the little boys room” Connie noticed a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. She’s seen that as a stress sign many a time. But he seem ok she told herself.

Unbeknown to her Matakinski was rushing away to the toilet not to ‘relieve himself’ but because he could feel a ‘panic attack’ coming on. Unfortunately he’s always had these since he was sixteen – it was a permanent scar from being bullied. It had resisted all attempts to cue it professionally. It was a random occurrence and weirdly it also put his mind into overdrive, often these moments were accompanied with great creativity. In these panic attacks, Matakinski experienced wild, often interesting ideas like a hurricane. But it wasn’t fun – they were all a symptom of the panic attack. But after the attack was over, Matakinski sometimes wrote down the promising ideas. As Matakinski sat there suited up sitting on the toilet seat trying and failing to bat the waterfall like beads of sweat from falling he listened in to his own mind as an observer. The voice he heard was that of a narrator.

Perhaps there was no meaning to it all. Perhaps the universe wasn’t interested in Matakinski at all. Perhaps that was the entire problem. Perhaps that’s why he was now hurtling towards a very bad outcome while he was seemingly fine, as he sipped his overly tasty, extra hoppy ‘India Pale Ale’ with the beautiful Connie Contralis! As he chatted to the now well composed also drinking Nerdies. This is the problem with life. No one really knows anything about it. The blind lead are leading the blind mostly pretending they can see a lot more than misshapen fuzzy indistinct outlines. As far as human progress in concerned – It’s all a giant scam. But as Mal Matakinski always said – at least it’s an interesting scam. And so the future held, what the future held. Some minds were changed a lot, some barely at all. Some minds had even reversed their original position, and thought worse of it all. But Matakinski felt the Truth had at least partially appeared that weekend. And what can be better than capital T Truth? It is the medicine that tastes bad but slowly cures. Yeah that’s all it is Medicine! Medicine! Medicine! And Matakinski – you know what started this don’t you that bully that still won’t give up, that one that embarrassed you after your amazing speech – he ruined it! Don’t you see, it’s been thirty years and he’s still pushing you and all the others around – you know what you need to do Matakinski. Give him his Medicine…Medicine…Medicine. He’s at the other side of the room with all the others…didn’t you see him already? He’s half hiding with a hat and a coat out there. You need to get him Matakinski, teach him a lesson he’ll finally learn!

When the police came to take Matakinski away, he was still repeating the words ‘Medicine’ over and over. He was standing there being held upright by the three burly bouncers, who arrived late on the scene as the damage to McLackener was being done, being dealt out by a rampaging seemingly possessed Matakinski. All around the carnage was everywhere, the small bar table McLackener was at was now flat on the ground with Tony sprawled on top of it barely moving, blood coming from his mouth and nose and making continual groaning sounds. The shrapnel of broken glass and broken table and chair legs was littered in a large circle like a grenade blast. Matakinski’s eyes were dilated – he was acting like a MKULTRA hypnotized zombie from a old tv show. Tony McLackener was beaten pretty bad. He was taken to ER but was quickly released – nothing was broken, he was just generally bloodied and ‘roughed up’.

This turn of events of course signaled the sad early end of the Nerdies reunion weekend. Everyone in the Nerdies group left to go back to the hotel, where they’d try to sleep off the madness. The next morning they would return to their daily real-world lives trying to shake of the depressiveness and disappointment of the whole affair. Of course Connie went into professional mode – she stuck around to make sure Matakinski would be ok and dealt with fairly by the authorities. To cut a long story short, Matakinski was booked into a mental health ward of the local hospital overnight where they heavily sedated him. The next morning Connie was woken in her chair by the head Doctor dealing with the case. She had stayed all night with Matakinski by his bedside.

“Sorry Connie, thanks for being the contact person here, you’ve been amazing. I’ll keep it brief. I’ve adjudged what happened with Mr Matakinski as a temporary but acute psychotic break, brought on by a dangerous mix of too much alcohol mixed with his usual medication. And I shouldn’t be telling you this but since you are in the mental health field, I’ll can you. To be honest – and this is just between you and me – I’ve talked to his local doctor on the phone – I think his local doctor has over prescribed and also switched the brand of his anxiety medication without stressing the need for him to stay off alcohol entirely. He also should have advised that he avoid all stressful scenarios in general until they know his body is ok with the change. You’ve already told me about what happened on you’re reunion weekend after the speech – so thanks for that. That sudden interruption to his speech didn’t help his stress levels. I think he’ll be ok when he wakes up you can take him home to recover. I’ve advised the local police, their won’t be a problem with any charges as it’s a medical case, not a criminal case. Ok I must get going. Make sure you look after him.

“Thanks Doctor, that all makes sense. That’s a relief. I will”. The doctor was already walking away to the next crisis.

Not long after the weekend was over Mal Matakinski received an anonymous email. It had the following highlighted section of the newspaper article attached to it:

……The newspaper The Evening Describer has managed to contact a member of The Nerdies, They didn’t want to share their name but agreed to talk. They said the following “It was a pity that Matakinski hadn’t done a few more checks on what had happened to the ex-bullies of Trudgeton High. If he had just done his due diligence as a leader, he would have read the file on Tony McLackener. It could of all been so easily avoided in the first place. Who would have thought that embarrassing drunken psychotic moment on his [i.e. Matakinski’s] part. Don’t worry he’ll certainly be summarily banned from the Nerdies entirely. He won’t like it but we’re gonna put in Tony [McLackener]. It’s only fair, given what had happened to him. It’s our [The Nerdies Group aka The Ex High School Nerds Coalition] way of making things up to him. Sure we know Mal Matakinski had a ‘medical event’, so we can’t hold a grudge or anything BUT clearly we can’t risk these things happening again”. So it looks like Mal Matakinski will be left facing the ignominy of having his former high-school arch enemy and ex-bully (i.e. Tony. McLackener) – who in an ironic twist is now the newly appointed the new leader of the The Ex High School Nerds Coalition aka The Nerdies…..

As Matakinski read the news article, Connie cuddled him, giving him emotional support as was natural for her. She had a deep naturally kindness, the kind that can’t easily be corrupted by money, career, bad company etc. They were both in his bed with his electronic ‘tablet’, as these small mobile computers are called.

It was all quite the blow to his ego, but it helped explain a lot about the events and fallout from that ‘Nerdies Reunion’ weekend. He had since the event been totally ghosted by all of The Nerdies, he had been hung up on, not replied to, blocked entirely, ignored in every way possible. Intellectually he knew this is what had to happen after that event at the bar at the Nerdies Reunion. Emotionally speaking it was a different matter. Emotionally he felt betrayed. But he was now in his late forties and smart enough to know not to trust his emotions of his central cortex region. Of course having a mental health professional by you side – the fellow ‘Ex Nerdie’ Connie Contralis – certainly helped him see things clearly. With Connie by his side he knew he’d struck the jackpot. It was a twist, a silver lining. It was a gem that had fallen from out of the pocket of that fateful re-union weekend. Something that he never saw coming. She had after all ‘fallen in his lap’ after all. He had not chased her a bit. But he wasn’t complaining – he was attracted to her, he liked her, he respected her. He ‘took the win’, as they say.

Mal Matakinski did feel quite spiritually crushed in the years that followed his ousting as the leader of ‘The Nerdies’. After all it was quite the fall from grace. Sure he wasn’t the town mayor or anything, but he also wasn’t the town drunk either. Of course he was lucky that his business was small and he was the owner operator – so he kept all his customers. Sure their were rumors here and there, but the people that knew him well backed him. They knew he was no ‘marauding thug’. Most didn’t know of the unsavory event at all, thanks to the re-union weekend being so far away from his home base. The one customer of his that did know accepted the medical explanation – after all it was the truth – yes Matakinski had been a little reckless with the IPA beer that night – but that was perhaps only the smaller part of the reason. Was it his fault his doctor had been so overly relaxed about changes to his meds? This was officially backed up on paper by Doc Hatchetberger, the one that had released him from the overnight psych ward that weekend. Of course it was natural under the circumstances to doubt yourself, to question your own decency – Matakinski certainly did that. He was still just a human being underneath all of the extra built-up layers of complexity that his life’s years had created. He could snap just as easily as anyone else under the correct mix of conditions and timing.

Time is indeed a wonderful thing. Though dull, the cliché is true. Matakinski eventually felt much better about the whole affair and after the dust had settled he decided to use it all as creative fuel. After all – the story was bloody interesting – it’d be a crime not to share it with the world. It also helped that Connie was by his side. Without her, he’d have done away with himself in the traditional old-fashioned way – via liver damage via alcohol addiction. After all he had always been a on the cusp alcoholic anyway, if not an official undeclared one. After all it had run in the family. His grandfather was a roaring drunk, his father could easily have been one. Matakinski had of course been a terrible drinker up to age thirty five – but it was easily obscured by his relative youthfulness. he had battled the beast of brooding casual alcoholism pretty successfully after the age thirty-five via following the theory and practice of the form of stoicism that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius championed.

A decade and a half after the ‘reunion weekend’ his mind had finally peaked in every aspect of emotional and intellectual scales. He was well into his sixties when his novel ‘Full Circle Indeed’ was published. It managed to gain far more success and profile than he could have ever wished for. He had of course expected it to flop entirely, as most first efforts do, or even second third or fourth efforts do. After all true publishing success is as rare as hens teeth on a living pterodactyl Matakinski’s used to quip to anyone who asked him about his likelihood of success – it was a line stolen off of his favourite author the late Hank Krumb-Brakowski, affectionately know as “The writer who surfed the gutters of life on a crumbled old beer can”.

The Novel “Full Circle Indeed” was based on the themes and his experiences in his life as a bullied kid at Trudgeton, a bully recovering adult with a corporate job in technology, and then in his late thirties as a small business owner interested in both leadership and creativity, finally figuring out who he was and what he actually wanted. Of course in his book he had mentioned the fictionalized version of himself as the leader and then the disgraced ousted leader of The Ex High School Nerds Coalition aka The Nerdies. Of course it mentioned a more dramatized version of the already dramatic bar scene with a fictionalized version of Tony McLackener. In the book version Tony had died in the bar fight; Connie had left him rather than stayed; & he had been convicted sentenced and imprisoned on death row instead of released on medical grounds. Matakinski felt the real story was too ‘slice of life’ if he had not dressed it up. The book soon became the biggest New York Times best seller of all time. They loved the jailbreak climax section of the book, and though he was eventually killed by the cops in a shoot-out, while he was ‘on the loose’ he’d channeled his softer side and managed to save the deeply troubled fictionalized version of Connie aka ‘the lover that left him’ from ending her life with her own hand. Of course Connie didn’t like that he’d twisted her persona in such a reverse to who she was way, but then she accepted it was much needed dramatic spice.

This eventual publishing success with ‘Full Circle Indeed’ was not to say his intervening years in the wilderness post The Nerdies weekend breakdown were not difficult – of course they were. His blacklisting and shunning of by those who he thought were his kinfolk, and the fact the that ex-Trudgeton bully Tony McLackener had somehow taken over his leadership role in The Nerdies, was not exactly the original leadership plan he had in mind. Of course he had the small matter of Connie Contralis by his side – his ‘counsellor to the stars’ as he falsely-for-fun called her. They were Mal Matakinski’s stars not some clueless Hollywood drip’s. She didn’t seek the limelight, she didn’t need to. Matakinski with his book ‘Full Circle Indeed’ did seek stars, but it was not for fame – it was for the kicks he would get by making the most possible of a bad situation. And of course like all first time writers, he had expected it to be a total flop – so had he really ‘seeked fame’? Not at all, really. And besides, he was only really ‘famous’ amongst the psuedo-intellectual crowd. The kind of people he at least half-despised. But he realized via his study of stoicism that he couldn’t change what was – all he had to do was say ‘no I’m not Mal Matakinski’ when one of those fans approached him. How did he know? They announced themselves from more acceptable more chilled out fans by their gait, and the way they stared at him.

All-in-all, Mal Matakinski was a man of latent, late-blooming strength. Luckily making ‘stain glass windows out of broken beer bottles’ so to speak, had always at least ‘kind of’ been a strength of his all throughout his life. He was glad that fateful weekend had happened, he was glad he had ruined it inadvertently out of over-stress and bad meds – he was glad he had that violent punch-up with Tony McLackener. He was glad that in the end via his book, he had enjoyed the fallout. He had simply made an executive decision that it would make him much stronger, like the original bullying at Trudgeton High had done for him and the others. For those unsavory events of and following that ‘Nerdies Reunion Weekend’ had certainly reached into the future and created an alternate timeline that would never have existed otherwise. He wouldn’t have had a best-selling book, he most certainly wouldn’t have had Connie at home with him.

Mal Matakinski was smart enough to know that all those things surrounding that fateful weekend had brought him to where he was today: totally finally free from the shackles of the past, a peaceful man, and as a bonus, instead of being a semi-comfortable but struggling small business owner – he was now a best-selling author – well at least in the American market anyway. The Europeans hated him. But everyone knew Europe was not really Europe anymore.

In one of his final interviews, many years after “Full Circle Indeed” was first published Mal Matakinski mused:

It’s really just a ‘minor pity’ that it was only the American readers ever really got me as a late-blooming writer, but then again, but even back then America was the singular surviving true Western-cultured country to still exist. No wonder the rest of the world, especially the Europeans hated ‘Full Circle Indeed’ – they couldn’t understand the real meaning of it all.

During his last few years of life Matakinski would continue to happily chalk his trickling & flagging European and all non-American international sales of ‘Full Circle Indeed’ to ‘cultural misunderstandings’. All in all it was quite fitting in a way, given how everything had started off with him while he was a nerd moping around in ever-present-fear of bullies. Bullies the likes of Tony McLackener at Trudgeton High. For Matakinski had by the end of his life come to fully accept that Tony McLackener’s sentiments about Trudgeton were totally right all those years ago, when he’d stormed the Nerdies’ Reunion stage. The problem at base, was simply a clash of cultures: the bully culture of passing on mistreatment at home onto the weak outside the home; The other side of the coin was the nerd culture of taking on the mistreatment to easily. So perhaps the phenomena of bullying and being bullied is not a clash at all – perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps it is actually scarier than that – perhaps it is more of a hand & glove thing.

With age Matakinski had also come to realize that McLackener’s so called leadership coup to lead The Nerdies was in some ways a righteous thing – for that weekend Matakinski had arguably also allowed himself to become the thing he thought he was rallying against – a bully. Sure he had the Doctors note saying otherwise – but was that note more about future prescription money than the truth? Was it a case of professional covering for a business owner? Deep down Matakinski knew he had somehow been drawn into some kind of mental abyss that weekend of ‘the bar incident’ with McLackener. Another painful truth was a truth that he had finally had admitted to himself: that Tony McLackener had already long since reformed himself from being that dreaded Trudgeton ‘King Bully’ – so he was in truth the ideal leader of The Nerdies – a reformed addict, you might say.

As an old man Matakinski had often sat in his study ‘creatively dreaming’ – a process designed to create new ideas & also solve existing writing problems. His study was primarily a for writing and reading, and secondarily a hobby art space. He often kept the door locked to keep Connie from interrupting him. Yes, it was selfish – but also necessary. Most writers do that kind of thing.

As he sat amongst his and other’s books he daydreamed about the meaning of it all. Yes he liked his original theory that that fateful re-union weekend had splintered off an ‘alternate timeline’ the one gave birth to the alternate universe that had made him more settled as a man, and also a best-selling author. But after some great thinking time in his study, he now had now come up with a new theory that for fun he wrote down on some scrap paper as such:

The Re-writable Mulitiple Solutioned Universe – an original (?) conjecture by Malcolm Matakinski

Perhaps some things in the future are already ‘booked in’ so to speak. These ‘booked in’ things simply have to happen, they cannot not happen (please excuse the double negative). Once that is the case, the ‘booked in things’ must reach backwards in time and erase the old events and then re-create new events so as to make the inevitable future self-consistent and logical. This theory was quite different from the the ‘standard parallel universe’ theory of infinite number of totally separate and slightly different stacked realities that taken as a whole cover all possible outcomes . This new theory said there was one core universe, a re-writable universe that continually deletes and does not necessarily save it’s changes (but it also may choose to do so). Perhaps both the past influences the future and the future influences the past, and the result after the relevant ‘Law of logical consistancy’ deletions are made, is the most optimal and sensible compromise of the two opposing forces of events-past and events-future. Perhaps there are even multiple combinations of equally rational outcomes – and in this case a set of child universes exist. Perhaps everything we see as a human being sitting in an easy chair is just one particular ‘child universe’ – that is one that is one particular solution of many possible ones. Perhaps the Universe is a cross between a mathematical equation that must be satisfied, an always running computer program, and a cosmic programmer who plays by the rules of the game they created but sometimes allows themselves to play around – so long as the ‘Law of Logical and Mathematical Consistancy’ is never violated.

Of course when digesting his so called ‘new theory’ – which was probably wasn’t new at all – Matakinski knew he could never know the ‘capital T Truth’, but he enjoyed the musing of it all just the same. He mused that at least he was smart enough to give birth to his idle musings via writing them down. He believed that most of the best ideas are wasted, as the thinker discounts them immediately for lack of confidence in themselves. One thing was for sure – he could never quite believe that things had somehow turned out so well for him. His life had somehow belatedly turned out for the best. But he tried to stop thinking at that point. After all he didn’t want to jinx anything that couldn’t be un-jinxed.

It was usually at this point after thinking far too hard at his writing desk that he fell happily asleep with his face planted in one of his many heavy, long-winded, hard to understand books from his personal library. After all, if his latest theory was correct, he was now an old man living in simultaneously in the past’s future and the future’s past as one optimised mathematical solution of many – and surely that’s going to tire almost anyone’s brain out.

One theory was certainly ironclad. For sure, Mal Matakinski had come a long very long way from being that bullied kid at Trudgeton high,. So had Tony McLackener for that matter. It’s just a pity their were now unconfirmed reports that The he Ex High School Nerds Coalition aka the E.H.S.N.C aka The Nerdies had thanks to McLackener beng in charge had now become a cult of some sort – one where the ‘end of the world’ is always going to happen ‘sometime the next week’. Hopefully for all involved that was just a capital L Lie. But then again how often do ‘Leopards chance their spots’? Not very often. Sure it can lighten them here and there, paint over them to a degree. But can a Leopard erase its spots entirely? Never. Although if Matakinski’s grand theory was correct then perhaps it could? But even then, it would still not be the Leopard’s final decision to make.

Mal had been made aware of this ‘cult rumor’ by his wife Connie, who how had heard about it from friends while on a ‘girls night out’ at the pub. Connie had eventually gone home around midnight jumped into bed with Mal and after filling him in on the basics of the matter she then half-slurred out the words:

“Mal do ya think it’s pos’ble that that our ex ‘Nerdies’ friends have, succumbed to an older even more evil, Tony McLackener? Have they gone and bin hoodwinked d’ya think?” She then let out a small hiccup & then slugged a drink of water from a glass on the bedside table. She then stared with eyes half closed at Mal’s face awaiting his response. He took only a couple of seconds to reply.

“Darling Connie, that’s a good question. I’ve thought of this a little. Yes, I was surprised. But after what happened at the pub that re-union night the group obviously entered ‘fog-of-war’ conditions. This is when strange unpredictable things do and can happen. In this case the wisest of Nerdies lost their mental compasses and opened their eyes to find that they all had had their glasses tinted the wrong color. Now with this ‘fog of war’ completely enveloping their frontal lobes, they adjudged the sinner as a saint, the psychotic cult leader for the ‘sincerely reformed bully’ who wanted to prepare them for the ‘always next week’ – but ‘never actually arriving’ Armageddon.” Matakinski said the words dryly, he’d come to terms with it all. Connie had one more question before she was going to blank out from middle-aged post-pub exhaustion.

“If the rumors are true, d’ya think we should try and save them?” She stroked her chin as she waited for the reply, this time staring at his face with three-quarter closed eyes. Mal replied with a proposition.

“Ok how about this Conns – I’ll give you two opposing answers and you choose what we do ok?”

“Deal” Connie said firmly but quietly now struggling to stay awake at all.

“Ok option A is ‘Nah – why would I save them? They got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out, and besides we’ve done ok with my book and all, so lets just keep ‘cutting and running’. It’s a cold hard logical decision. Option B is ‘Yes we have to save them, that bastard Tony McLackener might lead them to their deaths for all we know – just like that ‘Heavens Gate’ thing. It’s a risk to us as we’ve got it good with my books, but that doesn’t matter as it’s never a bad idea to do the right thing, if not righteous thing in life.” He looked over at Connie she let out her reply.

“ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” She had fallen asleep on him and was snoring.

Matakinski was off the hook for that line of questioning, well for tonight at least. He wondered if she’d remember where they’d left off when she awoke in the morning. Of course he was taking a big risk with this game he was playing, he knew he’d done the right thing already by letting sleeping dogs lie, and leaving Leopards – or the universe – to partially disguise their spots. Of course if in the morning Connie remembered their conversation and then chose ‘Option B’, he made a pact to himself that he would be ‘a man of his word’ and agree to try to save the Nerdies from ‘the probably still evil’ McLackener.

Then Matakinski realized he’d left out an option. Of course there was actually a third ‘Option C’, that the rumor was false. Option C says The Nerdies were happy and not a crazy ‘it’s the end of the world again this week cult’ at all, and their leader Tony McLackener was indeed a sincerely reformed bully. option C said that he was now leading the Nerdies group from strength-to-strength and in fact far better than he Mal Matakinski ever could.

Of course it was his ego had protected him from thinking of this possibility from the moment he was ousted, and even when Connie had brought up just before. But his ego had allowed this possibility to now be recognised and thought of. It was then that Matakinski realized Option B – saving them – was no where near as bad as Option C ‘McLackener was a good man leading The Nerdies much better than him’. Yes, he realized it was a bit pathetic he was thinking this way, because it implied he sill had a ‘far to big ego’, an oversized ego with which he would have to continue his long ongoing battle with into the indefinite future. But then he relaxed from this mini existential crisis he was having as his brain gave him the now urgent message:

‘OF COURSE YOU HAVE A FUCKING BIG EGO – that’s why your last book ‘Fill Circle Indeed’ was created at all and also a best seller in America, YOU DOLT!!!. You cannot be a proper writer and not have an ego Matakinski! It’s a hand and glove thing – GOT IT!!!???’

With that last soothing thought and with Connie’s snoring as usual only slightly annoying him, Matakinski rolled over to go to sleep. He was snow starting to regret the pact he’d made to himself, about putting his fate about wether to intervene in The Nerdies in Connie’s answer, A or B, when she woke up in the morning . It was cavalier, he chastised himself mentally. All I really want to really do is keep moving with my writing he thought pleading to himself. After all, he was right to think of himself. Their would be a book tour coming in just four weeks. He was indeed potentially derailing himself. Perhaps he was even self-sabotaging himself – a trait he thought he’d finally gotten over. Why should he and Connie save them all? Why should he add an unnecessary liability back into his life? Because given what had happened that weekend with the psychotic break and the fight with McLackener, surely it was possible that the Nerdies group was some kind of ‘sword of Damocles’ moment? Yes in theory they could be ‘in good shape under Tony’s leadership’ & his own breakdown that weekend was an entirely independent event – but does that ever happen in real life? Is not everything intertwined by nature?

Matakinski tried to tell himself that whatever happened he could always use the classic ‘ego saving technique’ for a creative: If the worst happens then the associated badness, hurt feelings, emotional distress can be used to make ‘good art’. He reckoned that if worst happened on the proposed ‘liberate the Nerdies mission’ and it ends as an embarrassing disaster – then he can use it as creative fuel for the next book. Perfect.

Matinski told himself this positivity strategy means the ‘liberate the Nerdies’ plan by definition can’t actually be a real risk at all – unless somehow he ended up dead, which surely couldn’t happen. Sure Tony McLackener was a bastard at Trudgeton, & might still be, he might – if the rumors are true – even be a power-crazed cult-leader. But there’s no way he was a killer – surely. But then he had the unnerving thought of what if he kills me in a rematch of the first bar fight, simply by accident? I mean in theory he knew that he might have accidentally done the same in the first fight, had things gone against him more. Matakinski was now having more anxiety about the idea of ‘liberating the Nerdies’. He was feeling less confident of his ‘positivity strategy’.

Matakinski did have that strange saying of his: ‘In life I like to make stain glass windows of life’s broken bottles’. He’d figuratively speaking collected a lot of beautiful stain glass windows in his house, and a lot of nice lemonade in the fridge out of life’s broken bottles and handed-to-him lemons. Ultimately he decided in his mind that he as an artist needed to stay with the plan and not scram for fear of feeling uncomfortable, even if that was a certainty, and even if the ‘black swan event’ thing happens and he doesn’t get through the mission alive.

He made a final commitment to fate and this meant his fate would rest with Connie. Matakinski would see what would happen with Connie’s memory in the morning. If he’s lucky she’d forget the whole ‘save the Nerdies from the cult’ thesis entirely.

Matakinski was now very tired & couldn’t keep his eyes open much longer, or for that matter have his overactive probably ADHD brain’s neurons keep firing like crazy. Just before he nodded off to sleep he had his final final thought –‘This must be how Schrodinger’s Cat sleeps’. In this thought he was right – in truth the decision as to what to do had already been made in Connie’s subconscious mind – but he didn’t know that so to him the outcome was still a ‘cloud of all possibilities’ – until tomorrow when ‘the box opens’ and Connie awakes. Just before he fell asleep Matakinski’s anxiety had been quelled his enjoyment of that little ‘Schrodingers Cat’ analogy. He was after all, still a bone-fide-real-life nerd – in the best possible sense of the word nerd.

Because of that cleansing positive last final thought, Matakinski slept soundly that night. Connie’s loud post-alcohol snoring did not wake him once , as it usually did. He then awoke suddenly & dramatically to Connie’s usual alarm clock trick – pitching his nose and covering his mouth with her hand so he wakes up in a panic via the autonomic self preservation processes of the body. She was very much like Matakinski in that way – a bit of a ‘shit stirrer’. They were a good match – two shit stirrers stirring each other up for laughs, but also knowing where the line was. Matakinski gasped for air, and was sat up in his bed wide awake and panting.

“You fucking bitch” he said between sucking the oxygen in with big breaths. Then he laughed half-loudly, as Connie was as usual smirking away proudly to herself. After this the little ritual continued. Connie perkily asked:

“Toast or Oats Hon?”

To which Matakinski replied with equal chirp: “Hmm let’s go Oats”.

But of course he was now thinking away. He having not drank, had remembered the entire ‘save/don’t save the Nerdies’ conversation from last night. But had Connie? He said to himself to shut up about it and not prompt her. He’d just wait it out. If she had remembered their conversation, she’d undoubtedly bring it up over breakfast – otherwise she’d of course say nothing. They both got out of bed and went to the kitchenette. They lived in a studio apartment – small but perfect for them, especially as Matakinski was now a writer. Matakinski had always thought that Writers after they had ‘made it’ should still chose to never live in or have too-much opulence – else the writing becomes swiftly bland.

Matakinski always mentioned to anyone that would listen that ‘good writers can’t live in mansions’. His rational was that If they did that, they’d divorce themselves from their troubled impoverished to semi-impoverished lower middle class upbringings – whichever the case may be. Sure their were ‘acclaimed writers’ that had indeed came from money, but that situation was mostly just fake – a regular process where they those always moneyed dull writers were ‘pre-appointed’ by the machinery of dull middle class critics, also from comfortable moneyed lives.

Matakinski believed that to create something good as an adult, you had to know true struggle as a child as you grew up. Of course their was an exception: Middleclass writers did have a version of true struggle in that their parents usually showed no love or affection, especially their fathers – and if they also experienced a living hell called boarding school, then they could potentially write well by tapping into that beautiful creative gold-mine. The problem was most of those types of writers never do. They write of stupid French holidays where the husband and wife argue over which five star hotel to book into.

Matakinski was sitting down at the breakfast table waiting. Connie came over with her vegemite on toast and his oats in a cup with plain water in it. His liking for a raw oats in water breakfast was like he was a street urchin from Dickensian London – something out of Oliver Twist. He liked it, he’d had a lot of it as a kid growing up poor with only one parent on the scene – his mother. Perhaps he liked this simple gruel breakfast because he had the nineteen eighties version of Dickensian London. Anyway, the breakfast of oats was bland but to him it was a ‘good bland’. And besides she’d always made him an instant coffee too. A great simple breakfast. And so as the talking began. Matakinski was waiting on the edge of his seat for her to remember last nights discussion about the Nerdies. He could feel the odd sweat bead roll down his forehead, but he wiped them away quickly before she could tell. Connie started talking.

“You know I don’t mind making you breakfast, you only have oats with water, in a cup filled halfway. Then you have a instant coffee. That’ pretty low maintenance”.

“Hey babe, you know I love to promote that false image – the laid back guy who’s mind is really a chaotic seething landscape of twisted psychic maelstrom”

“Well, not really you only had that certified psychotic break where all you did was make sure Tony McLackener finally had to pay for his sins of being a bully to no doubt hundreds, over the last thirty years”. Connie bit firmly into her vegemite toast – she liked it slightly burnt – she was a weirdo like that.

“If not thousands, Conn. Isn’t it weird how most high school bullies never get their dues – I mean in terms of direct revenge. Of course their lives being shit is the indirect cosmic justice karmic revenge – and slowly but surely doled out too”.

“Well he got it that night you went nuts – every Nerdie was shocked but I was secretly saying to myself ‘he deserved something like that at some point'” Connie now took a slug of her lukewarm tea, another slightly odd thing she liked breakfast-wise.

“Hey and that kind of loyalty tinged with dark cornered ‘Jungian shadow’ is why I de-facto married you Conn”.

Matakinski was geting a little bored waiting to see if she remembered last nights conversation, so he broke his plan to keep schtum and decided he would prompt her memory in direct fashion.

“So do you remember what we talked about last night?” Matakinski said while shoveling a spoon of damp raw oats in to his mouth.

“Oh yeah of course – that stupid ‘Option A or B’ thing. So if I remember correctly you were either going to ‘free the Nerdies from McLackener’s duly returned tyranny’ or you were going to say ‘fuck them, they ditched me they can eat shit sandwiches from now on’. And now you want me to make the decision which way to go?”.

“Yeah that’s it, in a nutshell – but then I though of a scarier option C where Tony has reformed and leading them to greater heights than I could, and so I also leave them alone to fester in their happiness – my ego deflated when I thought of that new option, Option C.”

“Well you do know that all those options are no good – because you shouldn’t have even though of going back in any way shape or form in the first place. I can only assume its misplaced guilt that’s drove you to think like that. That’s an example of rearview thinking at its worst. Don’t you see? – you’re now that eagle that rose above that nest that was perched on the edge of that crumbling canyon? We’ve already emerged victorious, you silly fool”. Connie looked at Matakinski squarely with a raised eyebrow and a squinted eye, wanting to know if he saw the light.

“And that kind of executice function is why I defacto married you Conn! – I can’t really argue with that assessment. While you were snoring away last night, I had come to thinking that my thinking was a bit off, but then I thought that that thinking about my thinking was off – it was a bit of a curveball I’d thrown myself, psychologically speaking…..good! so let’s make it that the official decision is that they all no longer exist to me, so then that means the three options A, B & C have been unwritten retrospectively by the non linear nature of time, and events”. Matakinski thrust another scoop of raw oats in & then as he chewed looked at Connie with squinted eyes. he would have rasied an eyebrow on it’s own like she had, but his brain wasn’t wired correctly to do that, unlike Connies.

“Yeah, I couln’t have said it better myself! I would have just said ‘fuck ’em’ but that’s way more smooth. That why I defacto married you Matkinski – you can weave your weird olden-days-advanced-physics into any particular everyday social problem – it’s almost kinda sexy, there I’ll admit it!” as she said that she simultaneously banged her fist down and crunched extra loudly on the toast.

“Shaddap – don’t talk about sexyness – it’s the morning – and you know I hate mornings”. Matakinski said in jest – though he was indeed not at all a morning person. He then felt the need to summarise Connie’s position out loud “Ok good that’s sorted! – let’s not ever mention those past ‘nothings’ who may or may not still call themselves ‘The Nerdies’ ever again – we have books to write and sell on the road. Decision made-a-mundo Conn!”

“Did you know that when you say that ad-word ‘a-mun-do’ that the former physics-knowledge-sexyness you temporarily had instantly evaporates anyway?. This is not nineteen eighty nine anymore you know? But I guess it’s kinda cute – the eighties were pretty cool to grow up in, weren’t they? But I’m glad we’ve got rid of that silly idea of your to ‘save The Nerdies’ “.

“True. I wonder if by thinking of returning to The Nerdies I was trying to self destruct myself again, like that wild night. On a subconscious level, I mean. You’re a counsellor, and you’ve read Jung and all the rest. You must have an idea – was I self-sabotaging?”.

“Yes – I’d say it’s self sabotage. Your subconscious was grabbing at something that would end up ruining your current success as a Writer. Your latent hidden but always operating inner wounded child doesn’t want what you had growing up to ever change. From what you’ve told me in the past, you were poor and miserable as a child in more ways than one, and that wounded inner child hates your success. This is because the wounded child in your mind is experiencing it’s own cognitive dissonance about your success. It doesn’t think you deserve it, because that’s not the universe it thinks is the real one“. Connie knew she had nailed it and took a long drawn out sip of her earl grey tea.

“Well that’s hard to disagree with – but I have one small quibble Conn”

“Fire away, I’m l ears” Connie tugs theatrically with confidence at her ear-lobe with her thumb and index finger.

“Well, you do know that this means everyone has a ‘wounded inner child trying to sabotage them’. If that’s true then it doesn’t really matter does it? I’ll live on like everyone else. You know I’ve always survived through all the slings and arrows of my imperfect, mostly malfunctioning life”. Matakinsi rubed his forehead as he spoke displaying increasing stress. As he heard himself he knew he was trying to convince himself of some ‘I believe in fate’ type of thinking that is typical the average fools way of accepting bad life outcomes. He knew Connie would probably say a very short sentence to knock this ‘silliness’ right out of the park. She got right to it.

“Well, you have a point – but the only reason that you have some success late in life is because you decided to stop listening to that ‘wounded inner child’ – you’ve finally sidelined that little monster that wants you to be like every other fool who never lived up to their true potential. Of course I take at least quarter of the credit – you didn’t explode – in terms of your writing – until about the time I started to spend more time with you – I’ll take a little slice of that recognition pal”.

“Well I knew you’d go and sort my brains missfirin’s Conn. You do it all in just a very dew short coupla of sentences. Ok ok, there’s now only one left thing to say and do before we get into the gritty real world of the book tour”

Matakinski was on his feet now at the table of the breakfast nook, having now finished his last swig of instant coffee, and Connie was now also on her feet. In unison they both took off their glasses and leaned forward, slightly to the left and made the same hum noise that a large electrical transformer makes. Sure they had psychologically moved on from the Nerdies, but they kept that little tradition going – after all Matakinski did invent this geeky form of celebration in the first place anyway when he started the group in the first place. It was simply a ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’ type thing.

They went upstairs to begin packing. They had a long book promotion tour of ‘Full Circle Indeed’ to endure, and at times enjoy. From now untill the next six months, they were now in business mode as they criss-crossed the USA from state to state, from big city to big-ish town to small town to small-ish town.

So for Matakinski it seems ‘all’s well that ends well’. But then again I shouldn’t speak so soon – after all book tours have been known to derail. With big book tours the best laid plans are easily ruined or cancelled early by the ‘overstress of a sensitive instrument effect’, and the accompanied bad medicine of overdrinking or over-pill-popping, or both. But so far for Matakinski goes, it just goes to show that life does imitate art…..but that’s only half of it, as art also imitates life does it not? Or as Matakinski puts it from time to time – If life then art, then art then life. Perhaps Connie Contralis was right when she quipped that that was the wisest sounding thing he had ever said in his life up until now. But then again incorporating a high voltage hum sound into a ritualistic thankfulness gesture was both wise and pure comedy gold.

Malcolm Matakinski was a complex man of many talents and mis-talents combined – even if he doesn’t say so himself, but is reminded by someone nearby who strangely and at times unfathomably still cares. The book tour most probably went as well as could be reasonably expected.

The End