By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
My Friend Kaboosekov
He’s over six foot and is not just as lanky as a bean pole .
well to be more true, he is as lanky as a bean pole that’s been whittled to javelin-like proportions.
He is in his late forties.
Perhaps this ‘whittled-javelin’ look he’s cultivating is about ‘getting into character’.
Only the character is the guy on the news who was ‘just arrested for putting a mirror on you shoes and going up an elevator’.
Never mind Kaboosekov – ‘ya canny win ’em all’, as my Scottish forebears said between whisky glugs.
Now Kaboosekov lives in an empty (formerly goat filled) paddock at the very bottom of his parents hobby farm.
This where he feels safely insulated from the calamity-filled outside world.
He might say that the exigencies of the hard-nosed and not at all anodyne 21st century reality specifically demand this orientation.
But he wouldn’t do this because his vocabulary couldn’t muster it – he’s not at all reader of books.
Of course he says he works everyday but I highly doubt that.
I think like the office worker who endlessly reads his newspaper in the lavatory – he to is running a good cover story.
He came to visit today and I’d I quizzed him with ‘pointed questions about his laboring duties’ –
To see if he had done anything at all on that day in question.
You see percentage wise, I think he’s mostly just ‘pretending to work’.
In answer to the pointed questions he umm’ed and ahh’d and I picked up ‘sheepish deception’ (excuse the pun).
I think to talk like the revered NZ dirt digger of yesteryear- ‘He’s clearly had done F all’.
I reckon he must only do one hour a day on average, perhaps two or three during ‘lambing time’ tops.
He’s almost certainly quasi-autistic – he can’t really communicate properly in conversation –
Eye contact is indeed a problem.
And when talking to him you have to pry out the answers and he so often answers a totally different question you never asked.
He does all these highly technical electronics things which are quite impressive in themselves (more autism evidence?).
He is as cheap as an old Scotsman – and he feels no wider social compunction to support local businesses etc.
I’m not calling him a ‘parasite’ but let’s just say if he was a parasite – his kinfolk would harass him for not pitching in enough.
His main trick is going to a Supermarket to buy a single can of bens – and nothing more.
If everyone was as cheap as him there would be a dire unending Great Depression probably ending in cannabilism.
Alas with more Kaboosekovs, the world would resemble what the Nazis did to the Russian POW’s.
On another level sometimes I conjecturize if he has that thing called “temporary prison homo-sexuality”,
But then again this kind of thing is probably rife in every small rural town where men are punished for talking to women.
Kaboosekov is a bit too ‘clingy’ and sometimes I wonder about his vibes – & no I am not ‘projecting’.
I am pretty sure ‘I am not gay’ but you never know – after all I do like Italian architecture (p.s. I’m not gay).
Kaboosekov studied Computer Sci at Uni and did ONLY computer related courses – not a single liberal arts or business paper.
After university he went into the world for 18 months, and it was all too much for him –
He was soon scampering back in a beaten up rusted honda-civic to his safe womb-like parent’s lower paddock,
Where he has been ‘paddock-maxxing’ (as the kids say these days) for the last twenty five years.
Consequently he has never benefitted from a ‘layer of real world programming’ to help combat autistic behaviors.
I would say – to hazard a guess that Kaboosekov has a mental age of perhaps twenty five (he’s now pushing fifty).
Perhaps he’s not quasi-Autistic – perhaps its ‘only’ Asperger’s.
Alas, perhaps my diagnosis is an overdone one.
Maybe he’s just ultra-ultra-eccentric.
After all we all know the field of Psychiatry has been inflated syndromes to make more cash at least since the DSM 2.
Kaboosekov – He’s not a bad guy of course, BUT if you’re stuck mentally at twenty five – you are going to stay ‘too selfish’ (autistic or not).
Of course I am not perfect, and there are some parallels with how I’ve lived my live and I have some similar odd/life avoidant traits.
BUT
I’ve always realized (after many psychic crash outs) you have to fight those internal programmings that socially hold you back.
Life is so much about fighting your bad human traits and doing it on a daily basis.
I won’t say I’ve succeeded in winning the ‘war for your own mind’,
But I’ve had a few ‘battlefield wins’ at least – I will not bore you with a list – lest it fall into enemy hands.
I do try to be a good influence on ol’ javelin joe when he visits me, which is clockwork-twice weekly.
I don’t mind, as life in these tiny towns we both live in are by their very nature ‘isolating old-world alternate realities’.
Kaboosekov does have some interesting socio-political views, albeit very naïve ones.
This is why he voted for the very insane Green Party at the last election.
Pretty soon they’ll be stuffing crayons in various orifices and calling themselves post-modern art pieces.
So executive decision made!: I’ll keep sociio-culturally looking after him for a while.
Alas all-in-all – Kaboosekov is not a bad egg.
And being a ‘normal office blat-blah-clack-boob’ would be infinitely much worse than a paddock-grown-quasi-autist-asperger.
And besides,
He’s very good to ‘casually pick on’ on account of his schoolboy-ish naivety.
And a friend that takes being ‘casually picked on’ is priceless no matter what.
I guess in that way I am half-Australian after all – born with a bent to pick on/be picked on (in equal spades).
That decade in Melbourne has infected me or perhaps just amplified me that way.
So long live my cheap-ass weirdo friend Kaboosekov – ‘the closet-quasi-autist-asperger’,
Who is probably not suffering ‘prison-gay-syndrome’ but you never really know for sure (and if he is that’s ok).
And ‘the skinny prick’ (as we say in the woods in NZ) will probably live to be a hundred too –
That is prob thanks to his father’s overly restricted calorific diet regimen he is shackled to.
And also thanks entirely to his now elderly farmer parents – he’ll be probably a multi-millionaire soon.
Which reminds me of that like by Bukowski (Life’s funny – some people get rich and others get to east s**t).
And what of the future you wisely ask?
When I finally meet a new woman (or return to the a back catalogue item female #56-00-ASP/B) yes – I’ll tire of him somewhat.
But until then, I’ll keep him on as a patient with with his ‘weekly psychiatrist visit’ intact.
The prescription will be as always ‘listen to my wisdom fool & take my casual picking on you with good humor’d warmth’.
Yes friends – It would be mean to kick Kaboosekov to the silt-filled-apple-containing-kerbs.
I agree – that would be Treasonous.
After all I’ve known the freak Kaboosekov since we were thirteen.
Since he was standing at PE class hugging and rocking himself to reduce psychological stress overload.
And I have always been way too overly loyal to a flaw.
But that’s probably a good thing overall.
It is far better to be too loyal that too disloyal.
And these is why we live in the faded grandeur ruins of some poorly resurrected Roman Empire.
But I am not here to talk of Rome.
Back to Kaboosekov.
Sometimes in life’s relationships – you’ve just got to give the baby their bottle.
And bedsides,
Excuse me if I talk like a fridge salesman for a moment:
Isn’t the feeling of being better than your friends just so flippin’ fantastic?
For is it not just ‘the other side’ of the famed Australasian sport called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’?
Yes I know what you are saying – YES I am indeed guilty – of soaking in ones own crapulence.
But all the same in this letter I hope I have raised a few ideas and at least one bushy literary eyebrow.
Ahh Isn’t it great to not just wallow but to crawl on all fours militarily style in these shallow delightful social quagmires?
This the low-brow delights of being ‘better than your friends’.
Like alcoholism that fiend called Reverse Tall Poppy Syndrome (RTPS) is a hard illness to shake off.
So Kaboosekov better not move out of his giant green paddock or start acting his age,
Lest I lose my sense of being ‘better than him’ – I couldn’t take the blow to my ego.
Consider his execution stayed indefinitely.
P.S. In touting my superiority I am discounting my quasi-bankruptcy (inter alia) of course, as you do.
P.P.S I hope dear reader, that I don’t sound to much like an arrogant solipsistic bastard (for I usually hide it so well).
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Anton Martin Smith Writer 