Don't Call Me Ishmael Read online

  DON’T CALL ME

  ISHMAEL!

  MICHAEL GERARD BAUER

  To Greg, Keith and Anne, because it’s all about friendship, love and laughter … and because I took your threats seriously.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Part 1

  1. The Mayor of Loserville

  2. Fancy That

  3. Thar She Blows!

  4. Thanks a Lot, Herman!

  5. A Wussy-crap Name

  6. The Creature from Le Sewer

  7. Moby What?

  8. Five Amazing Facts about Me

  9. Now Listen Carefully

  10. Hey, Blubber Boy!

  11. Inside the Mincing Machine

  Part 2

  12. Geek-seeking Missiles

  13. The Best View of the Iceberg

  14. Bad Barry Versus Twitchy James

  15. Whoosh!

  16. The Unearthly Eardrum-shredding Shriek

  17. The Excrement Has Hit the Fan

  18. A Beast, No More!

  19. The Magnon

  20. Dancing Poles of Jello

  Part 3

  21. Go Team!

  22. The Four Steps of Effective Rebuttal

  23. Two Blushing Penguins

  24. My Brother, My Captain, My King!

  25. Everyone’s Entitled to Their Opinion

  26. The Bat Controller

  27. The Old Brer Rabbit Trick

  28. Dead Man Walking

  29. Dead to the Power Dead

  30. Blanking Hell!

  31. Time for Beddy-byes

  32. Close Encounter of the Nerd Kind

  33. The Really Ugly Part

  34. Drowning in Our Own Offal

  35. Death by Lethal Injection

  36. Like a Light Sabre through Butter

  37. Probably Nothing

  Part 4

  38. Who Ya Gonna Call?

  39. The Thin Brown Line

  40. Like Ice Cream in a Microwave

  41. The King of Drool

  42. The Real Deal

  43. Wired and Ticking

  44. Every Lost Battle

  Parts 5

  45. The Traditional End-of-year Assembly/Mass/Prize-giving/Speech Night/Extravaganza Thingy

  46. Hot Space Chicks Get Naked

  47. Hannibal Lecter’s Mum

  48. Great: Adjective–Large, Enormous, Massive; Unusual or Extreme–As in Great Joy

  49. The Most Important Bit

  50. The Mother of All Wild, Barbaric Yawps

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Also by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Call me Ishmael.

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  1.

  THE MAYOR OF LOSERVILLE

  There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll just say it straight out. It’s time I faced up to the truth. I’m fourteen years old and I have Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome.

  There is no cure.

  Now, as far as I know, I’m the only recorded case of Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome in the world. In fact, the medical profession has probably never even heard of Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome. But it’s real, believe me. The problem is, though, who would believe me?

  For a while there I guess I was in denial, but this year the symptoms have been just too painful and horrifying to ignore. And I’m not exaggerating here. No way. I’m telling you, Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome is capable of turning an otherwise almost normal person into a walking disaster registering nine point nine on the open-ended imbecile scale.

  That’s why I have decided to write all this down. Now everyone will finally understand the truth, and instead of electing me the Mayor of Loserville, they’ll simply shake their heads, smile kindly and say, ‘It’s all right. We understand. The poor boy has Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome. It’s not his fault.’

  Anyway, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. I should really start at the beginning and go through things thoroughly–after all, I guess this needs to be approached scientifically if I’m to convince you that what I claim is true.

  So, first things first. My name is Ishmael Leseur.

  Now wait on, I know what you’re going to say–I have the same name as my condition! You probably think I just invented it so I can use it as an excuse whenever I make a complete fool of myself. But you don’t get it. It’s not that simple. You have to understand that the name is the condition–or at least part of it. I’m not absolutely sure on the precise details of how it works. After all, I am not a scientist, I’m just the victim here, but I do have my theories, and this is one of them.

  THEORY ONE: Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome is triggered by the release of a deadly virus that results from the combination of the words ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Leseur’.

  Now, I have thought about this a lot, so let me explain some of my conclusions. As I see it, the individual letters by themselves are harmless. The combination of letters forming the separate words ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Leseur’ also seem relatively harmless. To illustrate this I refer to the other members of my immediate family: namely, my father Ron Leseur, insurance salesman and co-founder of the 1980s rock group the Dugongs, my mother Carol Leseur, local councillor and chief family organiser, and my thirteen-year-old sister Prue Leseur.

  Now, as you can see, each of the above carries the name Leseur, yet I assure you that none of them suffers from any of the horrible symptoms that you are about to hear described. In fact, I’d have to say that most of the time my mother and father seem painfully happy and content and, to rub it in, my sister Prue, according to every friend, relative and stranger who has ever set eyes on her, is ‘adorable’. She also has an IQ somewhere near genius level. In fact, if brains were cars, Prue would be a Rolls Royce while I would be a Goggomobil up on blocks with half its engine missing. And how do you think that makes me feel? “Well, I’ll tell you. Like the only person ever rejected for the job of village idiot because he was waaaay over-qualified. Or, as Prue so thoughtfully explained it to me one day, ‘Human beings use only ten per cent of their brain, which would seem, in your case, Ishy, nowhere near enough.’

  So there you have it. The only conclusion you can possibly draw from my family’s immunity to the syndrome is that it is triggered only by the fatal combination of the words ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Leseur’.

  The way I see it is, the linking of these particular sounds must result in some kind of chemical reaction that germinates a virus, which then mutates the cells of the body, causing an increase in deadly toxins. These deadly toxins then infect the brain and nervous system, which results in the sufferer saying and doing things that would embarrass even a complete moron. I haven’t quite been able to prove this theory yet: science is not my best subject. I’m much better at English, actually, but who wouldn’t be with Miss Tarango as your teacher? But that’s another story, and as Miss often reminds me, I have to watch my ‘structuring’ when I write. Apparently I have a tendency to wander off the point.

  Anyway, the point is, I didn’t end up with Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome because of any chance combining of those two words. Oh no. I am who I am because of a deliberate act. You see, I know the circumstances surrounding the creation of my name in excruciating detail, and I know exactly who is responsible.

  I will record their names now in this journal for all to see.

  The ones who burdened me with the curse of Ishmael Leseur’s were my parents. That’s right, the aforementioned (this is an excellent word in a serious document such as this–Miss Tarango would approve) Ron and Carol Leseur. You can’t blame them, of course. Parents are supposed to name their children. What happened wasn’t their fault.
They had no idea what a terrible thing they were doing.

  Perhaps, though, I would find it a little easier to accept if they hadn’t been laughing hysterically at the time they did it.

  2.

  FANCY THAT

  The story of how I got my name is a family favourite. Well at least it’s my father’s favourite. Each member of the family has a slightly different reaction to it. Dad just loves to tell it. Mum just loves to hear it. Prue just loves to watch me squirm when it’s told. And me? I just squirm.

  I have heard the how-Ishmael-got-the-name-Ishmael story so many times I feel as if I was there myself. And of course, in a way I was. It’s just that most of the time I was floating like a chubby alien in a sea of amniotic fluid, blissfully unaware that there were people outside the cosy warmth of my mother’s womb who were about to change my life forever.

  Now it’s a known fact that no one and nothing can stop my father telling the how-Ishmael-got-the-name-Ishmael story when he’s made up his mind to. And it doesn’t matter if the intended audience has heard it all before or not. Oh no. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard something like the following exchange:

  Dad: Did I ever tell you the story of how Ishmael got his name?

  Victim: Yes. Yes, I think you did. Wasn’t your wife in hospital … and she was overdue …

  Dad: That’s right, she was way overdue. I’ll never forget it. It’s a great story. I came to visit her after work …

  Victim: Yes. I remember. You told me. A great story-how your wife was feeling a bit upset and said she felt like a …

  Dad: Upset! I’ll say. You should have been there. When I came to visit her after work she’d been crying …

  Victim: Yeah, yeah, and she said she was so big she felt like a …

  Dad: She was huge! And you know it was our first baby and, being overdue, she was tired and worried, so it was pretty hard for her. Anyway, as I was saying, when I came to visit after work …

  Around about this point Dad’s victims usually realise that resistance is useless. Their faces become set with a weak smile that from time to time is accompanied by a shake of the head and a raising of the eyebrows to signal that they are suitably amazed and impressed in the appropriate places. Rarely do they attempt to interrupt, and then it is only to offer such morsels as, ‘Really?’, ‘Fancy that’ or ‘You don’t say’. And meanwhile Dad rumbles on like a runaway semitrailer that can’t be stopped until it has found its final resting place in some unsuspecting lounge room.

  My dad might appear harmless enough, but the ‘Ishmael’ tale is always there, lurking just below the surface of every conversation, like some massive crocodile with only its eyes breaking the water, poised and ready to strike. And all it takes is for some unsuspecting victim to step too close to the water’s edge.

  ‘Ishmael? That’s an interesting name.’

  And they’re gone. Any thought of rescue is pointless. My father will have already exploded from the shallow water of idle chitchat, seized his bewildered prey and dragged it thrashing into the shadowy depths of his memories.

  This leads me to another of my theories.

  THEORY TWO: The carrier of Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome can trigger disturbing behaviour in others.

  At first I thought this phenomenon was isolated to my father, but that was before I encountered Barry Bagsley. I realised then that my father’s symptoms were actually mild and that the name Ishmael Leseur could bring out the very worst in people. Barry Bagsley, however, will have to wait. It’s time for a family favourite. Did I ever tell you the story of how I got my name?

  3.

  THAR SHE BLOWS!

  According to the doctor, I was due before the end of July. By August the first, Mum had been in hospital for a week and after a number of false alarms had become, well, a little emotional.

  ‘I feel like a whale!’ she moaned repeatedly, holding on to her swollen stomach with both hands as if to stop it from exploding. Dad reckons that with her belly button popping out, it looked like she was being attacked by a giant breast. Apparently Mum failed to see the humour in this observation at the time and threw a bedpan at him. Like I said, she was a little emotional. Anyway, Dad decided that Mum needed cheering up. Or as he likes to put it, ‘I had to do something to stop her whaling.’

  But what happened next was no joke for me. Dad made an excuse to go outside, saying he was going to ring family and friends to give them a progress report. Twenty minutes later he returned. But when she looked to where he was standing in the doorway, Mum found herself confronted by a cross between an escapee from a lunatic asylum and some kind of deranged pirate.

  It seems that while Dad was away he had somehow convinced the nurses to help him strap his right leg up behind his thigh and to attach a hollow cardboard cylinder to his knee like a wooden stump. They also supplied him with an old wooden crutch, a surgical eye patch that they had coloured with a black marker, and a bandanna made of gauze from which a tangle of Dad’s red locks sprouted like mad snakes. The costume was topped off by a little blue teddy bear that was sticky-taped to my father’s shoulder as a stand-in parrot.

  Dad posed dramatically in the doorway, with his left hand thrust on his hip while he swayed unsteadily. ‘Arrrrr,’ he cried insanely, with eyes glinting at Mum’s huge, pale belly, ‘I be Cap’n Ahab and I be seeking the white whale!’

  Now that might have been the end of Dad’s demented send-up if it hadn’t been for the fact that Mum had just guzzled a mouthful of water and had been caught pre-swallow. Apparently, as Dad tells it, there was a second or two while my mother stared at him with her cheeks bulging like an ‘obese goldfish’ before a strange, gurgling, humming noise started in her mouth. Soon after, her belly began to shake like blancmange and her eyeballs, under the strain of jamming her mouth shut, looked as if they had decided it was time to abandon their sockets and leave home.

  Eventually the pressure was just too much. Suddenly a short, sharp jet of water shot from my mother’s pursed lips, cleared the bulge of her stomach and scored a bullseye on the chart that hung from the end of her bed.

  Dad’s eyes widened with delight before he shouted triumphantly, ‘Arrrrr–arrrrrhhh! Thar she blows!’

  And blow she did.

  Dad describes the gush of water that came from Mum’s mouth as ‘Niagara Falls on a good day’. In between spluttering, choking and gasping for air, Mum laughed so hard that her own waters broke. Then the contractions started and accelerated straight into overdrive.

  When Dad realised that Mum was roaring as much with pain as with laughter, he sprang into action. Thrusting aside his crutch, he stepped boldly into the room. Unfortunately he had forgotten entirely about his ‘wooden’ leg. As the cardboard cylinder crumbled beneath Dad’s weight, he lurched forward and made a desperate grab for the curtain that hung bunched at the end of the bed. A shower of curtain rings exploded into the air, ricocheted off the walls and ceiling and clattered around the room like plastic hail. At this point tears of laughter were rolling down my mother’s face as she clutched her belly and shrieked hysterically, ‘No, please, stop it! Stop it! Oh please! No more, I can’t bear it! Stop!’

  Dad reckons he knew just how Mum felt at the time. With his leg strapped behind him when he fell, his knee had crashed helplessly into the hard linoleum floor and he was now on his back rocking in agony and choking with laughter. It didn’t last long. A new sound began to fill the room. It was a deep, growling, grinding moan.

  And then … well, I guess you know what happened next. Thankfully my parents have spared me the gruesome details. All I can say is that it wasn’t long before Mum and Dad were gazing lovingly at their firstborn child. Me. We were one small happy family. Everything was perfect. Until …

  ‘A boy, a beautiful boy,’ Mum said, wiping tears from her cheek. ‘But what about a name? We still haven’t decided on a name.’

  Whenever Dad tells the next bit he does all the actions. The scene has become so familiar it’s
as if I remember it myself. He frowns, leans over with his ear hovering close to his newborn son’s gurgling mouth and listens intently while his eyes dart back and forth as if he is hearing some wonderful secret.

  ‘What’s the little fella saying?’ Mum asks.

  Dad raises his head and looks at her in wonder. ‘He’s saying … “Call me Ishmael”!’

  When the doctor finally bustled into Mum’s room that fateful day around fourteen years ago, she found my parents dissolved in joyous, uncontrollable laughter with their baby son between them. I wasn’t laughing though. Dad says I was ‘shrieking like a chainsaw’.

  Maybe even then I knew what my father had done to me.

  4.

  THANKS A LOT, HERMAN!

  Of course there wouldn’t even be any Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome if it weren’t for Herman Melville. He’s the real culprit.

  That’s right. The simple fact is, that if around one hundred and fifty years ago Herman Melville hadn’t written his novel about Captain Ahab and his mad quest for the white whale Moby Dick, then Ron Leseur (my father) would never have studied it at university in American Literature A with Carol McCann (my mother). And if Herman Melville had never written Moby Dick and my parents hadn’t studied it, then seven years later when they were married and expecting their first child (me), my father would never have dressed up as Captain Ahab just because my mother said she looked like a whale, since there wouldn’t have been any Captain Ahab for him to dress up as, or any white whale for him to make a joke about, and therefore he would never have made Mum laugh so much that yours truly would be squeezed out screaming into the world before I was ready and (this is the crucial point) he would never have uttered the name Ishmael in a million years because he wouldn’t have known that Ishmael was the name of the narrator and hero of the novel Moby Dick because Herman Melville would never have written it for my father to have read it and found that out and my mother wouldn’t have laughed at it even if for some bizarre reason my father had mentioned the name Ishmael, because it wouldn’t have made any sense to her any more seeing as how she wouldn’t have read the book because there would have been no book to read since Melville wouldn’t have written it. And if it hadn’t been my terrible fate to end up as Ishmael Leseur then none of the disasters of my life would have happened and today I would be a happy normal teenager like everyone else my age.