Sweaty socked

Uncouth and hairy

Tiny brain

Suppurating with salacious sexual scenarios

Last weeks grubby underpants

Buried among the rubble on his bedroom floor

Donkey voiced

Aggressive and swaggering

He obsedes arrogance

Self confidence

But underneath

He is racked with feelings of inadequacy

That are sometimes overwhelming

Not me of course

Good grief no

But I can certainly identify with some of it

I have two loving parents and two larger than life brothers

But I was lonely

Compelled by an instinctive need to distance myself from my family, and it’s values

Which was entirely consistent with my stage of life

I had no idea how to go about finding acceptance and approval in other circles

My best dreams are always of some mythical back lane where life is an uninterrupted innocent romp

I began to dread the weekends

Which were always another reminder of my inadequacy

The teenage rat race I called it

Where were all the wonderful parties and other social events?

How did one get to them?

Walk? bike? Take a bus? Get a lift?

With whom?

How come I never got drunk

And how did one get hold of booze anyway

On the inside I opted out completely

But on the outside I adopted the required bravado

And amazingly fooled many people

In reality I went to the pictures a lot, on my own

Gidday Watty! Out on the randan they would say, genuinely pleased to see me it seemed

But equally pleased to leave me to my own devices

I appeared to have dozens of acquaintances

But no friends

Perhaps they really did believe I had something better to do

I ached to be asked “What you doing tonight Watty? Wanna come with us?

But they never did

Later.. much later.. I did go to parties and they were often unmitigated disasters

It seemed that I had somehow lost a vital piece in the jigsaw puzzle of life

As if I had been out at the dental clinic

When my primary school class was taught some essential parcel of knowledge

I realise now that I was not physically unattractive or lacking in communication skills

I also know that I was no more ignorant or innocent or different than perhaps 90% of the school population

It was my own lack of self esteem and fear of rejection that kept me locked on a course of isolation