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Chrysanthemum

Apart from a mass of dark dreadlocks, which flop on his head like a dolly mop and an equally scruffy Goatee beard, there doesn't appear to be any other fur on his face. Side burns and neck hair have been trimmed away with a razor to a baby bum finish. Rick wears his hair as a statement.

Rick is an addict.

Love, avoidance, rock-and-roll, fast cars, his mother, and basically any substance illicit or otherwise that will fit in any orifice. You name it and Rick has done it. When you talk to him for a while you begin to understand why. A domineering, brutal father who abused him as a child and didn't give him the support and love he needed, has left him ill equipped to face the world. Rick's pain is immense. To medicate the pain, Rick became an addict.

He's been into endless rehabilitation programs but always seems to fall back into a heap.

Today, with the help of his therapist, he will try to break the cycle where it all began by having a heart-to-heart talk with his father. This is the hardest thing that Rick has ever had to face. Sure, he is angry but also terrified. But at least he is trying. It isn't the first time he has tried, but all other sessions disintegrated into slanging matches. If it does work, it will be the first time Rick and his father have had a meaningful conversation since he left home twenty-six years ago.

Rick is now forty-four.

A knock at the door. It opens to reveal a thickset man of about 70. Mr Taggart enters. From Rick emanates a palpable fear. "Hi", his greeting is met with a grunt, a cursory handshake and barely a look in his direction. On seeing the Lawyer, Taggart's mouth set in an ugly scowl.

Jack Taggart's face said it all.

It was a tough face on the day of his birth and it was worked on every day since. The eldest son of an equally brutal father. A bully at school. Brutalised from fifty years working on the Woolloomooloo docks and State Rail as a rigger and navvy foreman. A face bearing the imprint of too many beers, too many smokes, too much sun and too many knuckle sandwiches. A skin surfaced with blackheads - leaving one to fantasise about the possibility of joining the dots to form a picture of the craters of the moon. A face potmarked by excessive acne. A face that seldom, if ever, had felt the gentle touch of a woman. A uncared for face. It was not, however, a forgettable one.

Taggart slumped into the chair the therapist pulled out for him.

"Lets try to keep this discussion impersonal and calm" the therapist began.

Rick half stood up, then sat down again as the therapist motioned to him with his hand. Rick looked awkward and said nothing. Taggart saw the exchange and smiled a yellow stained smile. He reached forward and grabbed a chocolate biscuit off the plate in front of him and, stuffing it into his mouth, first looked at his son, then to the lawyer and back again. He spoke with his mouth full.

"Well? What do you fuckin' poofters want?"

"Dad..!" Rick never finished.

"If it's fuckin' money you want, you can forget it. You left years ago - never been home since, you bastard. It killed your mother."

"Dad...!" Rick's protest was interrupted once more.

He remembered the endless black eyes that his mother wore, the bruises on her arms, the broken fingernails and the dull lifeless eyes that greeted him when he got home from school. His father worked the early shift and was usually home before him - if he got home at all. On paydays, he wouldn't get home for a couple of days, or until his pockets were empty. Then he'd be carrying the king of hangovers. That was a time to keep out of his way. He remembered he'd brought home a school project - a chair he'd made for his father. It had taken him all term. He had hoped it would show how much he loved him and wanted love in return. His father broke it up in front of his mother while Rick lay on the landing biting back his tears. Mr Taggart used it as firewood that same night as he sang maudlin Irish songs well into the night.

Rick had tried to get his mother to leave, but she never did. She felt responsible somehow. Or perhaps she was just afraid to leave - when Taggart found out, all it got for her was yet another beating. She had died while he was overseas. The doctor said from an accidental fall. Rick believed otherwise.

He looked for help from the therapist, but got none. This was something he had to do for himself.

"Well! What do you want? C'mon... I haven't got all day. You're just like that slut of your mother - anyway, the pub opens in half an hour and I've got better things to do than to wank on with you blokes".

Taggart pulled out a large bushman's knife from his belt and started cleaning his fingernails, wiping the resulting sludge on the arm of the upholstered chair.

The knife took Rick back to a time when his mother had made some shirts for his brothers and sisters from some old curtains. Taggart came home drunk as usual and saw the colourful shirts hanging on the kitchen doors. They were like red flags to a bull. He started ranting and raving about how he wasn't going to have his kids dressed up like "Fuckin' Yanks". Rick's mother sank into a kitchen chair as she watched him slash them into shreds with that same knife he was now using to clean out his fingers.

Perhaps it was Taggart's disrespect for his mother.

Perhaps it was remembering the years of degradation he had experienced at the hands of his father or the inability of Taggart to love anything except his ale and his mates down at the pub where, for a few hours every night, his sheer size turned him into a king. Perhaps it was the sight of the knife this action on the part of Taggart, but something inside Rick finally snapped. Perhaps it was the simple act of watching his father clean his filthy fingernails finally broke down any semblance of Rick's self-control.

Everything happened at once. Rick picked up a heavy cut glass vase of white lilies and chrysanthemums from where it stood on the therapist's desk and tried to smash it down onto Taggart's head. The lawyer jumped up to try to intervene - sending his file full of papers onto the floor. Had it made contact it would have split Taggart's head open.

As it was, Taggart saw it coming and for all his seventy years he pushed himself away from the table. His chair got caught in the office rug and tipped over backwards, sending him flying against a book shelf which collapsed on top of him along with a pair of china King Charles spaniels that were displayed on it.On its way to where Taggart had been, the vase emptied its contents drowning the papers on the floor and landing on Taggart's nuts. Taggart was in severe pain, but lucky.

Rick started screaming at his father - something about the inside of his brain being like a bucket of fucking dog shit, or something like that. Meanwhile, his father continued to cradle his genitalia, doubled up in pain, and moan like a rhino on heat - the silly part was that he was neatly surrounded by a wreath of white chrysanthemums.

Rick kicked at his father's shins and turned to leave. But the sound of breaking bone was so enticing he turned back. Tears were streaming down his face. He kicked again. The therapist sat down again and stared at his appointment book and what was left of his once pristine office.

"Well, I think we shouldn't make another appointment at time"

But Rick was gone. The monkey was no longer on his back.

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