The Disadvantages of Being Tall

By Lindsay Boyd

In 'Goat's Milk' a poor Dominican Republic labourer wistfully contemplates what his life might have been like had he never been plied with goat's milk as a baby. 'Into the Light' is about a religious who slowly becomes reconciled to the thought that his dreams may be a valid reflection of the progress of his spiritual journey. 'Card' is set on Valentine's Day. In their hometown of Bendigo, Australia a young woman toting a card that she has bought to commemorate the occasion tries desperately to bring out the romantic in her slow, unthinking boyfriend. A Japanese travels to Manila in 'Caught', intent on some extramarital fun with the local professional women. In 'Adrift' a young German visiting Australia's tropics has cause to lament both a love that has ended and one tragically cut short in its early stages. The young married couple of 'Something Resembling Love' come face to face, not for the first time, with the frequently painful reality of their union. 'Here They Do Things Differently', the only non-contemporary story in the collection, follows two 19th century Yucatan explorers as they learn that love can manifest in divergent ways across cultures. The heroines of 'The Young Woman Who Loved To Hug', 'Emie' and 'Lidia' each seek a liberation that embraces both their sexuality and deeper yearnings. The long-distance lovers of 'Stolen Kisses' meet in the realisation that their lives are never likely to align in the way they have always wished for. 'Giving Joy Transcendent' portrays the friendship that develops between a centenarian and her considerably younger male caregiver. The vignette 'The Conversation We Might Have Had' encapsulates a moment of separation and at the same time looks ahead with joyous anticipation. The collection closes with the novella 'The Disadvantages Of Being Tall'. The coordinator of a refuge for homeless people in Dublin, Ireland must pick up the pieces of his life after the shock break-up with his long-term lover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lindsay Boyd
• Release date: Feb 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311133595

Lindsay Boyd

I am a writer, personal carer and traveller, among other things, originally from Melbourne, Australia. Since 1987 I have visited around seventy countries for the purposes of work and / or travel. As a writer I am principally a novelist though I also write shorter pieces, both fiction and non-fiction. I have published, and self-published, poetry, articles, stories and novels. My most recent novels were a trilogy dealing principally with the themes of healing and reconciliation. I also write screenplays and the have made a number of low-budget films.

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THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING TALL

Tales of human and divine love

Lindsay Boyd

Published by Changeling at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Lindsay Boyd

Cover by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Goat’s Milk

Into The Light

Card

Caught

Adrift

Something Resembling Love

Here They Do Things Differently

The Young Woman Who Loved To Hug

Emie

Lidia

Stolen Kisses

Giving Joy Transcendent

The Conversation We Might Have Had

The Disadvantages Of Being Tall

About the author

Other titles by Lindsay Boyd

Connect with Lindsay Boyd

Author’s note

Goat’s Milk and Into The Light first appeared on http://www.languageandculture.net;

Emie, under a different title, and Caught were originally published in issues 15 and 16 respectively of Anak Sastra http://www.anaksastra.com;

He bids his beloved be at peace.

William Butler Yeats

Goat’s Milk

I should mention right at the beginning that Juan first came to my notice weeks before Mercedes brought him into our midst. Impoverished labourers with leathery, weather-beaten faces plodded by the fence in front of the house from sunup to sundown. But I used to pay the one no more heed than the next and more than likely I would also have lost him on the edge of my peripheral vision had he been as resolute as the majority in his quest for work.

Unlike most, he stuck to the one place – by the flourishing pine yards from our front gate. He sought the shade of its wing-like branches on days when the sun gave no quarter, moving a step or two out from its protective canopy in cooler, grey weather. I suspected a life cornerstoned by privation and need had worn him out, or he had concluded that by holding to the same clod of earth he stood as good a chance of finding work as did the men who traipsed round the neighbourhood. The sickle he never let out of his grasp and the glance he bestowed on all who peered at him in passing bespoke need and willingness.

On occasions I looked up from the front porch and glimpsed him. If I glanced in the same direction an hour later and failed to sight him, I imagined someone must have taken note of his plight and offered him a chore that paid. But if I sighted him again later in the day I gnawed on doubt and would wonder if he had had any luck.

Ministering to Delgado, Mercedes and I frequented the front porch often. Unlike the girls and his roommate Humberto, he attended our workshop only in the mornings. He could achieve very little. Most everyone else gave their all to the mainstays – card and candle making – when they weren’t inserting tiny foam pieces in the lids of medicine bottles – a task the manufacturer commissioned us to do – or putting brittle clothes pegs to any number of ingenious uses. To accomplish anything of note, Delgado needed to be guided hand over hand.

It would have been asking a lot of the girls who volunteered their time to oversee the workshop to show one person this much attention the whole day long. So we kept Delgado with us after the midday meal. In any case, Mercedes and I surmised he needed the rest. She had lived and worked in the house more than two years when I joined the team and as the newcomer I followed her lead in most everything.

After lunch she let him sit in the open air for a spell before insisting he prepare for a nap. The time on the front porch varied, more often than not depending on his mood. If his habitual rocking back and forth and the yelping and pounding on his chest suggested an increase in his agitation level, she brought him inside. She let him stay out there longer if all passed calmly. At such moments I could well imagine him gazing sad-eyed at the early afternoon round.

We had recourse to the front porch of a late afternoon and early evening too, around the time of his bath and supper respectively. He became more peaceful then regardless of how long it took for this grace to fall on him on his bad days. In the first few weeks, I became upset over trifles – when he refused to eat and tossed his spoon on the table, for instance, or whenever he twisted his slender, midget frame in the bathroom or struggled to slip free of my grasp while we strolled the dusty streets of the village. But my impatience exacerbated the situation. In time, I learnt to harness the rebukes and combine firmness with love.

Soon enough I grew comfortable in Delgado’s rambunctious presence. I appreciated mostly the private moments we shared, side by side on the porch, or at the table in the main room with the sun streaming in, and the nigh on wordless bond that developed as a result. But more often than not I could only be present to him for minutes at a time. I had much to do in the house and the girls and Humberto also required guidance and care.

I had not seen or thought of the stranger with the sickle for several days when I arrived at the house on the fine Saturday morning of his direct entry into our lives. Bent at the waist, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, a slim built man of below average height was labouring in the grassy patch that comprised our front garden. He had filled a white plastic bucket with leaves and broken branches and moved on to pulling weeds, which he deposited in another bucket of the same dimensions as the white, handleless one.

I failed to identify the frail figure until I noticed the blade of his sickle on the grass several feet away. Moments later I caught him gazing at me and there we stood, each studying the other. The flicker of a smile on his face left no doubt he recognised me. He worked through to lunchtime. Dishes filled with steaming food, a pitcher of juice, mugs and cutlery already stood on the table when Mercedes positioned an extra chair between her place and Humberto’s, hurried outside and insisted he join us. I overheard him demur but she refused to take no for an answer. Juan entered the room and with a deferential tilt of his head in our direction took the vacant place on Humberto’s left.

Humberto reached out and began patting him on his thin right forearm while Delgado ate in his time-honoured fashion. Once every thirty seconds or so he reached for his spoon, dipped it in his portion of the rice casserole and swallowed what he managed to pick up. In between mouthfuls he yelped, pounded his chest or the back of his head, or bit the index finger of his left hand. Juan could not take his eyes off him. Mercedes explained that Delgado had spent his earlier life on the streets without adequate clothing or food and that he had been the first person welcomed into our community.

Juan finished his dessert and then sat back and told us his story. I’ve spent hours watching him on your front porch, thumping his chest like he’s doing now. Some days are better for work than others. I’ve had to wait minutes. I’ve had to wait whole mornings or afternoons. But I see Delgado sitting outside every day.

He paused and glanced at each of us in turn.

As a baby I was sickly. Everyone was afraid I wouldn’t live long. But one day someone advised my mother to feed me goat’s milk. It wasn’t long after I started taking it that my health improved.

Delgado ceased his motions, as though under the spell of the visitor’s melodic tone. Juan swung his gaze round to him. Had I never been given goat’s milk, I might now be an invalid and someone would love and care for me as you love and care for Delgado.

By his side, Humberto resumed tapping our guest on his bony forearm.

Into the Light

When Setsuko called him to relay the news that Brother Vittorio had died in hospital, Leon hung up the phone, sat back in his swivel chair and remembered the precise moment when his own journey with the community began. It had been ten years ago. Visiting a centre for migrant youth on Cordillera Street in Retiro, he chanced to meet both Setsuko and Jose. They had just started out, having recently opened a domicile in the Nagathan section of Manila. There they resided with Ramón.

Did they have an inkling that part of God’s plan for them – and how often they both spoke of the centrality of God’s ideas, or God’s inspiration, in everything they undertook – might consist of dreams and the healing effect these could have? Leon believed so for they reacted with enthusiasm to his suggestion that they participate in a course on dreams at his Makati office.

They met for two hours every other Monday afternoon unless unforeseen factors intervened and Setsuko and Jose had to cancel out. The sessions provided riches for all and they agreed to go on meeting on an indefinite basis when the course drew to an end. On the first afternoon Leon pointed out that he viewed his dreams as a way to experience the companionship of God on his life pilgrimage. This could have special resonance for a single person, one without a spouse, partner or significant other through whom God could show care for them.

The therapist spoke out of his experience as a single man and ascertained from his listeners’ receptivity that they wished to give themselves wholeheartedly to their roles as caregivers. At the same time they realised they would need to ensure they cared for themselves.

Months after his first visit to the Nagathan house, he found himself alone in the living room with Ramón. A ceiling fan above their heads kept mosquitoes at bay in its consistent draughts. Smiling broadly, the boy brought the house’s clothbound photo album from a bookshelf and shifted next to Leon on the settee. He watched Ramón turn the pages until he came to a picture in which he, the visitor, featured. He guessed that Setsuko or Jose had snapped it many weeks ago.

Leon had not imagined a boy with autism could possess the capacity to truly recognise him. The realisation touched him to such a degree that his eyes moistened. Years later he pondered the question of whether this almost always silent boy had been pointing out to him that he would remain a friend and associate of the community, an important cog in the works. If so, time proved Ramón right.

For the edification of Setsuko and Jose he posited interpretations of many of his own dreams. He worked with Jose on a possible analysis of his recurring piggyback dream. Setsuko, too, experienced recurring dreams or dreams that presented similar leitmotifs, such as her dreams of steaming kettles or huge containers of boiling water. Gentle counsel over a lengthy period of time led to a diminution of the fear inherent and before long the bob-haired Japanese began dreaming of eye-catching, elegant butterfly displays in the windows of jewellery stores.

Inexorable as ever, time passed, bringing with it inevitable change. In one of Setsuko’s more vivid dreams, she experienced Ramón as a giant turtle, ponderous and a burden to care for. Jose married and left the community. Ramón gained two new housemates and many live-in carers and volunteers shared their lives with the permanent residents for shorter or longer periods. In spite of the changes in personnel, Leon continued to conduct dream group sharing with the caregivers on a regular basis, believing they might reap the same spiritual benefits that Setsuko and Jose had.

Unlike most, Brother Vittorio exhibited resistance. His religious order had transferred him to the Philippines from Communist-ruled Vietnam – where he lived and worked with the local populace for years. Leon met him for the first time at his Makati office. Setsuko, his good friend, invited him to sit in on one of the dream sharing sessions. He passed the two-hour period in an attitude of respectful if dubious silence broken once or twice when Setsuko remarked something to him.

You don’t set much store on dreams? Leon remarked to him afterwards, when Setsuko left. No hint of accusation underlay the statement; Leon well knew that most people lacked the time and / or the desire to delve into an unknown world.

I’m a child of my religious training, Vittorio explained in his accented English, a faint smile of his lips. We were told it’s wrong to prioritise our dreams.

Why’s that?

Because it can lead to an unhealthy degree of self-preoccupation. That, in its turn, can mar the most important thing: a relationship with God.

Ah, said Leon, regaining his chair. Having done so, he motioned for Vittorio, who had risen, to sit back down on the easy chair he had occupied through the afternoon. But that needn’t be so. Quite the contrary.

Vittorio gazed unblinking at Leon, whose tea-coloured complexion brought to mind many of his Vietnamese friends. But he waited in vain for him to elaborate on his remark. Whereabouts in the city do you live?

Rizal, when I come to the city, which isn’t often. The order has a house here. Most of the time I live in a hut I asked be provided for me. It’s half a day away. I go by jeepney. Then, I take a boat and have to walk uphill along a trail for twenty minutes or so.

Leon’s curiosity had been piqued but he made a point of not interrupting or leading with questions. He behaved the same with the people who came to see him for counselling. Ofttimes, as it happened, they volunteered answers to any questions he might have raised on his own account. This non-interventionist approach could also enable a patient to seek for himself a potential solution to the conundrum of his life, whether this manifested symbolically in a dream or not.

He did not view the man seated opposite him as a patient although something about Vittorio announced loud and clear that he was unsettled in the Philippines, that he had still to come to terms with the course his life had taken since leaving Vietnam. What do you do with your time?

I meditate and walk every day. Sometimes I take a tent and camp out for a night in the hills. If the people living in the area need help or advice I try and offer it. They’ve grown used to me among them. He laughed, a trifle uneasily. There isn’t much expected of an old brother who at one time or another must’ve contracted every tropical ailment known to man!

Leon noticed the time and asked to be excused; he had an appointment elsewhere in Makati. Showing Vittorio to the door, he thanked him for their conversation and expressed the hope that they would meet again.

When they belittled dreams during my time of formation, Vittorio added at the last, turning to Leon in the open doorway, I decided to forget them. I made no effort at recall whatsoever.

You could get back in the habit. It’s not difficult.

But isn’t much of it stuff and nonsense? Should we be mindful of that?

Leon looked as if Vittorio had touched on a crucial point. We should be mindful of everything because everything can be interpreted.

They met again soon and Leon became privy to Vittorio’s pivotal waking dream or desire. An invitation to visit his retreat for a day arose from a chance meeting on the streets of Rizal. While they made the requisite boat journey over quiescent water, the brother remarked on the memories the landscape evoked, reminiscences of Vietnam.

How homesick you are for that country.

Vittorio turned his head and gazed into the distance. I can’t forget the persecuted people I left behind. I feel I deserted them. I want to die with them in prison. My place is there, not here.

He related the fate of a friend who to that day languished in a prison cell because he once made an off the cuff ironical remark, held to be a slanderous allusion to the country’s supreme leader, then popularly known as the mountainous one. What a mountainous pile of trash, the hapless man observed while passing an enormous mound by the roadside. Many people regarded as suspect in their allegiance to the regime went to work in refuse collecting details such as this one.

The motor driven boat glided to a stop by the riverbank. Leon and Vittorio paid the fare collector and set off along the trail leading to the wooden hideaway. Vittorio carried no key. He retrieved it from beneath a rock near the front door. Once inside he lit three candles in front of a makeshift altar. They sputtered to life and revealed a ramshackle space bearing little else besides a bed, a small table and two chairs. He then activated a gas burner, placing a pot of water on top of it.

The two men passed much of the next few hours in earnest discussion, thus initiating a friendship that intensified over time. Much of Vittorio’s resistance to dreams melted away until he took the unprecedented step of personally calling on Leon to inform him of a night dream he had experienced.

I’m walking along a road like many in Vietnam. There are paddy fields to either side and water buffalo are blowing jets through their snouts. Setsuko and Ramón are ahead of me. I’m following them as they move, ever so resolutely, toward a bright, wondrous light.

The dream played on Leon’s mind until Setsuko rang again – this time to inform him of the funeral arrangements. In response to his inquiry, she assured him Brother Vittorio had been happy when he took ill. He had been present at a celebration with other members of the community and in the best of spirits.

It took a long time but he managed to feel at home in the Philippines, didn’t he? Setsuko asked what led him to this conjecture. Leon shared Vittorio’s walking dream with her. Walking toward the light is a dream motif usually interpreted as a sign of death. But it can also refer to new life. Vittorio’s road to God didn’t end in Vietnam, as he feared. It took another direction here – with you and Ramón.

Card

Though they had been in the Golden Gate Hotel since late in the morning and it was now approaching a quarter past one, Wayne and John’s meandering conversation showed no sign of drawing to a close. Lisa had given up staring at her boyfriend and his slow-talking pal. She was sitting tall in her seat, darting glances out the window on her right. But these capricious movements of her eyes, intended to relay a message to Wayne, never achieved their aim.

Some Valentine’s Day this was turning out to be. She had called Wayne the evening before and suggested they meet for a walk and, if the weather proved agreeable, a picnic in Rosalind Park. He agreed in his halfhearted manner though she doubted he remembered the significance of the day.

After all the years they had been together this came as no surprise. All the same she hoped to strike a romantic chord in him during the course of the assignation. Harried and short of breath, she had rushed to his aunt’s place on Myrtle Street at eleven o’clock and off they went together.

Grey cloud, lifted on a cool breeze, drifted from west to east in the late summer February sky. When they turned the corner on to High Street, along which the tourist tram from the Central Deborah Mine trundled numerous times a day, they felt the wind at their backs. Wayne walked with his gaze averted. His stock mode. But she gave up contemplating him when she sighted John making stolid progress toward them.

Lisa prayed they would not see one another. For a moment, it seemed that her wish would be granted. But fate intervened at the last. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed John’s glance of recognition. There was nothing she could do in that case but stand back and listen to the pair of them. Two minutes into an unfathomable conversation, Wayne insisted on inviting his friend to join them for a counter meal at the Golden Gate. He might as well have clean forgotten Lisa’s proposition of the previous night.

Walking toward the pub, the Valentine’s Day adjurations in nearby store windows – the splashes of red, the gift boxes and flowers – sent a shiver the length of her spine. And what arrant guff she had to listen to over the next hour and three quarters. She had heard it all before and tired of it long ago. Lumpen John inevitably brought out the soul-searching side of her boyfriend, heaven forbid. Over and over again in John’s company, Wayne asked himself the same unanswerable questions.

Lisa’s resentment of her boyfriend’s friend had long since translated into physical distaste for the man and his idiosyncrasies, first and foremost the painful laboured speech and his occasional habit of opening his mouth wide and laughing without emitting a sound, for no apparent rhyme or reason.

John relaxed his chops in the wake of a similar convulsion and brought the side of his face against his open right hand. He propped his elbow on the tabletop among plates, knives, forks and glasses. Wayne’s eyes had barely deviated from this sea of utensils since they dispensed with them more than an hour ago.

Did your family send you to a psychiatrist?

Yeah, said John, opening his mouth a centimetre.

My mum was always takin’ me to a psychiatrist. I dunno why.

With a jerky movement, Lisa backed her chair away from the table. But instead of clearing it in the action of standing, her legs knocked against the side, sending the utensils spinning. Wayne and John looked up in a delayed response, as though her gruff departure registered only on the periphery of their consciousness. In no time, Wayne perused the table top as before and John again spoke into his open right palm. I guess we weren’t givin’ her enough notice.

Wayne said nothing. In fact he was still ruminating on the inexplicable reasons behind his now deceased mother’s actions of so many years ago. Why, at the first hint of trouble, had she deemed psychiatric treatment necessary? What had it achieved? Opposite him, John opened his mouth wide and shook with soundless laughter.

Lisa, meanwhile, approached Alexandra Fountain. The prevailing wind gained in strength and the sky in the south-west corner looked as obtrusive as it had done for the duration of the morning. Not once did she turn to see if her boyfriend had set off in pursuit. As much as she wished to convey the appearance of not caring, her brusque measured step suggested otherwise. The edge of the Valentine’s Day card she had placed in the right pocket of her skirt stabbed her thigh.

She recalled the design of the card. I’ve got you where I want you, it said on the front. The centre featured a big, red heart, the word You inside it and below this, again in red, In my heart! and Happy Valentine’s Day. Lisa had written Dearest Wayne at the top and signed off at the bottom with an avowal of love.

She reached the end of High Street, where a cluster of Indian, Chinese, Mexican and American-style fast food establishments vied for clientele, their most decisive weapons the aromas besieging passers-by. Lisa stopped by the window of a clothing store. Inside, a blonde member of the sales staff tossed abundant hair away from her right shoulder before showing a garment to a prospective buyer. Her skirt barely extended below her hips.

Lisa thought it indecently short until she glimpsed the tan, shapely legs it flattered. She glowered in envy of the stripling for the effortlessness with which she wore such a dress and then, cringing, imagined her own pale thighs beneath the garment she had on. The youngster put her in mind of certain of the girls with whom she had attended secondary school. Girls as disgustingly free and easy in their chatter as their relations with boys. She had detested every one of them. They, in their turn, had regarded Lisa as an oddball and divided their time