The explosive opening chapter of a new novel
Identity remains secret
A thirty-nine-year-old Point Heed businessman and father of two convicted for possession and distribution of child pornography has been granted permanent name suppression.
Bridget’s throat caught. Point Heed: lovely, leafy Point Heed. Her neighbourhood.
It was only in the briefs. Insulting, almost. Someone, somewhere, must have decided that was the extent of its newsworthiness. But there it was. Two paltry lines sitting below a missing fisherman and above an overturned milk tanker. There was a correction in there, too, languishing at the foot of the narrow column. Something the newspaper had screwed up the previous week. Bridget wondered if anyone would read their mea culpa. Whether the paper even cared. Probably not. They were only covering their arses. She’d been told once the real stories of the day were buried in the briefs. You just needed to know where to look.
Porn. As teenagers she and her friends would sometimes hang round the entrance to the X-rated room at the local video store. They’d snigger at the men who slunk in. Sad lonely bastards! Now, though, everyone seemed to watch it. Actually, Greg reckoned they always had, it was just these days they felt more comfortable admitting to it.
They’d been at a dinner party a few weeks ago, and somehow the conversation had got on to a clip several of them had seen online. A professor/student scenario, except the professor was a woman with fake tits, who ejaculated like a man (‘squirting’ they called it) all over the young male student she’d inveigled to go down on her. A guy Bridget didn’t know very well had brought it up on his phone, and passed it to her with a smirk. Keeping her face deliberately blank while she watched, Bridget had helped herself to the cheese board. "So, is it a triumph or a strike against feminism?" she’d asked the table.
Initially it had only been Bridget and a small woman with an unusually husky voice on the ‘strike against’ side, but in the end they’d won some of them over.
Porn’s audience might have changed, Bridget had said, however the statistics haven’t. Three-quarters of women working in the sex industry have been sexually abused. She couldn’t remember where she’d read that. Some study or other. It was bona fide, though.
Under her bleeding liberal heart, a redneck lurked
The discussion had invigorated her; she’d been positively fizzing when they got in the car. Until Greg had done his best to burst her ‘self-righteous bubble’ on the way home. Accused her and ‘Deep Throat’ of getting on their collective soapbox. Of turning playful banter into an ugly scene. "You know," he’d said, "not every man is a misogynist, and not every woman needs to be empowered. Most people just want to be happy."
Bridget had been quiet, crushed. When they’d climbed into bed, she’d thought he might take her in his arms, like he once would have after a fight. Never go to sleep on an argument, they’d promised each other when they were young and stupid with love. "You need to get over yourself," he’d said as he rolled away.
The next morning he’d behaved as if nothing was wrong. Kissing her goodbye, even though she was patently ignoring him. Blithely telling her he wouldn’t be late home. It pissed her off how he did that. It ran in his family. Sweep. Sweep. Everything’s fine. Even if you can’t walk on the carpet for all the shit underneath. Bridget couldn’t remember whether they’d discussed it in the end, or if they’d just moved on. If the pretending everything was fine had eventually made it true.
"Mum! Mum!"
She looked up; Abigail was balancing on top of the highest climbing pole. She knew Abigail was wearing a harness, that, even if she were to slip, a gigantic safety net would catch her, but she felt a terrible hollowness as she imagined that little body crumpled in a heap.
When she’d fallen pregnant with Jackson, she was convinced he’d be born with a hole in his heart. "I just want him out," she’d said to her mother, "so I know he’s okay". "Oh darling," her mother had replied, "this is only the beginning. Irrational fear is the price of parenthood."
"Wow. How tall are you?" she exclaimed, averting her eyes as Abigail blindly leapt off.
She smoothed out the newspaper lying open in front of her.
No, she thought, in itself the word ‘pornography’ isn’t shocking any more. Child. That was the bit that made it repugnant. The sandwiching of those two words together. Child pornography. One did not belong with the other.
She had never shied from the vile. Unlike her girlfriends, Bridget hadn’t cowered when those animals had brutally raped Jodie Foster over a pinball machine in The Accused. She’d watched. Closely. Taking in every angry thrust.
She was proud of her unflinching curiosity when it came to the underbelly. Her threshold for savagery. Not that she’d ever admit it. Admit she’d happily skip the full-page feature on the US–China trade war, while poring over the story about the street kid who’d scalped the old guy who offered him a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in exchange for a blowjob.
Her interest in the seedy didn’t exactly sit well with her BA minoring in women’s studies, or her Green Party membership. Sometimes she wondered if deep down, in spite of her monthly Oxfam donation, her preference for organic milk, she’d be happier with some tabloid paper and a cheap sausage in nasty white bread. If under her bleeding liberal heart, a redneck lurked.
Taken from the opening chapter of One of Those Mothers by Megan Nicole Reed (Allen & Unwin, $37), available in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to a novel set to roar up the bestseller charts. Tomorrow: the author's thoughts about sex
