Man
Bites Dog Sample Chapter
DOG
Satan stands up on his hind legs and
leans against the fence, drool falling from his lips. He bares his
fangs and growls a deep, bear-like growl. His paws rest on the top
of the fence. His head is level with mine. As I approach the gate,
the beat of his growl gets faster. I reach into my pocket and pull
out a fresh piece of uncooked chicken. The slimy skin feels cold
through the Gladwrap. Satan licks his lips and continues his one-note
song. I unwrap the chicken and lob it over the fence, and it hits
the wooden veranda with a dull thump. Satan drops onto all fours
and trots over to the chicken, and in the brief moment he takes
to wolf it down I slip the mail into the slot beside the gate and
jump back to my waiting bike. I step on the pedals and push off.
I’m not even at the next house when Satan’s evil baritone
fills my ears.
I don’t speak dog, I’ve
never met anyone who speaks dog, but there’s no doubt in my
mind what Satan is saying.
“Don’t think you can buy me off with chicken, little
man. On the day I get through to the other side of this fence, I’m
having mailman for breakfast.”
MAN
I never hated university. Never liked it
either. Just went there. Didn’t have any better ideas about
what I could be doing with my time. Actually, that’s a lie.
I had a lot of ideas. Most of them involved not getting out of bed
until about 8.30 the following Thursday, going down to the pub to
see what bands were playing, and scamming free drinks off Gina.
But given the effort that everyone (myself included) had made to
get me to university, I needed a better reason for dropping out
than a nagging feeling of ambivalence about the whole tertiary education
system. And given that I was only ambivalent - not angry, not resentful,
not disappointed, not even contemptuous - it seemed like the best
thing to do was just hang in there and slog on through until the
end.
So, when the final day of university came around, after three moderately
dull years of exploring the inner suburbs of Melbourne and trying
to stay awake during Psychology of Adolescence, I found myself standing
at the edge of the campus, staring down at my shoes.
I love my shoes. The Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star is a classic.
Unpretentious in form, functional in function. You put them on your
feet and they stop rocks and glass jabbing into you. Plus they’re
green. Green shoes are cool. But the reason I was staring down at
my excellent bottle-green feet-protecting Chucks wasn’t the
deep admiration I had for them. It was because the thought had just
occurred to me that once I stepped off campus I would be crossing
an Imaginary Line separating the Real World from the World of University.
Not that I was unfamiliar with the Real World. I had travelled through
it almost daily as I cycled from my house to uni. I’d walked
around in the Real World on weekends, checking it all out, smelling
its smells, tripping over its small animals, bumping my head on
its doorways. I was as well-travelled in the Real World as anyone
else. But this time there was no turning back. Once I stepped over
the Imaginary Line I’d become a permanent resident of the
Real World instead of a tourist who could nick off home if things
got too freaky.
Once I stepped off-campus I’d be faced with the Big Question.
The question I’d avoided these last few weeks as I concentrated
on finishing my end-of-semester essays. The question I feared being
asked. The question that there was no way to avoid.
The Question: What are you going to do with the rest of your life?
The Answer: I have no fucking idea.
I never
really planned my life. I sort of had it planned for me, but not
in any grandiose manipulative way. A better way to look at it is
that I never spent any time actually working out what I was going
to do from day to day. It was all kind of laid out for me. Primary
school to secondary school, secondary school to university, university
to... some kind of job related to my “field of expertise”.
But after three years of wiping drool from my lecture notes, the
only thing I could state with confidence was that I would rather
strip my skin off with a razor blade and dive into a swimming pool
filled with lemon juice than hand in another essay or sit through
another three-hour exam again. I may have had no idea what I wanted
to do with my life, but I was deadly certain about what I didn’t
want to do.
I stood
with my toes resting just behind the line where the brick-paved
university walkway met the bitumen footpath along Swanston Street.
I stood there, caught in what I flattered myself was an existential
crisis. I didn’t know the exact definition of the word, so
I couldn’t be entirely sure that an existential crisis was
what I was having. But I liked the sound of the word. It made me
feel kind of romantic, which was better than confused, which was
how - if I was honest with myself - I really felt.
I continued to stare down at my Chucks. To the outside world I would
have looked like someone simply staring at his shoes, which was
perfectly understandable. The outside world could not be expected
to appreciate the importance of my thought processes at that moment.
The outside world could even be forgiven for bumping straight into
me as it made its way to a geology lecture in the building across
the road, sending me sprawling onto my hands and knees, a good fifteen
centimetres on the wrong side of the border of University Life and
the Real World.
What was not understandable, what was pretty much unforgivable,
was the subsequent lack of acknowledgement from the outside world
as it sprinted across the street to catch the flashing red man.
Wincing, I picked myself up and inspected my knee for damage. It
wasn’t too bad - a little bit of shredded skin and a little
bit of blood. An auspicious debut, I thought to myself. Welcome
to the Real World.
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