funny how
how embarrassment
![how embarrassment](https://i0.wp.com/houseoflovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/H2O-HoL-speckled-pigs.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1)
Tony Abbott threatening to “shirt-front” Putin? And that meme that has the two of them side by side, Tony shirtless in his budgie smugglers and Putin shirtless on his horse? It arose the same day he made his remark and it says, “….wait.”
I just explained all this to my immigrant boyfriend, a Berliner who has gleefully been singing out “Team Australia!” whenever he sees someone do something stupid. I acted out the shirt-fronting to show him what it was. Then I had to let him go because I was weeping with laughter. The aggression and arrogance of the gesture made it ridiculous. I am still laughing and he is shaking his head, muttering to himself in German. “Furchtbar ist es. Peinlich ist es. Unglaublich.”
My stomach aches. My heart too, a little. “It’s so awful. It’s embarrassing. Unbelievable.”
Pilfering the perfidy, melting the pain elsewhere…you are so brave against these odds; odds that pass themselves as normal. Perhaps it’s a paradoxical compliment that the book bypassed such nonsensibilities. Your work creates a world dense and yet spare, like seasons, and as important. Your book is a blueprint for a habitat supporting uncensored life, and I thank you for it.
Hahahaha – I was reading this thinking “That’s Cathoel’s story” (The German boyfriend and “Team Australia”)