Adelaidean Gothic

There was a certain middle age, white male, straight, Sports Reporter (yes its a cliche but some cliches are true) who thought he was a real laydeez man. No, it was not the ex-footballer, he was the polite and respectful one. This other dude liked to chat up and talk smutty smut with anything remotely female. You know the type.

One of my co-workers, who I will call Kay, was a cool young female, older than me, who dressed a little alternative and had good taste in bands. She would never go along with his smut talk, unlike some of the other women did, who would laugh it off politely. Kay was studying part time at university and was one of the few females in the library who considered herself to be feminist. Our predictable Sports Reporter did not like this, it bruised his fragile ego, so he started with the moronic put downs. This disingenuous dude started calling Kay out because he thought she didn’t wear a bra. He started calling her ‘saggy tits’ at every opportunity. I think Kay did indeed wear bras, just not bras that were supportive enough for her big breasts. Now, this bullying really upset Kay and she started to become introverted and downbeat. I could sense this teasing bothered her a lot. I wasn't particularly close to Kay because she was friends with the homophobe journos who thought I was a freak. Some of them were also her uni friends. I liked Kay, she was the coolest of that bunch but I thought her friends were assholes. 

The ‘saggy tits’ bullying want on for months. I saw her having meetings with a union rep who was high up on the workers union food chain, he was hubby of a really lovely woman who worked in the library. Their son is now a very high up leftist politician who all of you know. The Wikipedia entry for sonny boy makes it sound like he made it to the top virtually by himself. I can tell you here that no, he was groomed from a young age where he went to the most expensive and prestigious private school and his Fathers connections opened all the doors. His Mum told me the deets.

Anyway these meetings went on for weeks, a lot of intellectualising of the situation went on, but high brow is not the solution for something that is as lowbrow as a toxic male. I thought about the situation myself for weeks and came to the conclusion that reverse psychology would be the order of the day, and that i would try to help out Kay so she could get her groove back, and to also help any future girls who are unlucky enough to encounter Sports Reporter.

All of us researchers were on a permanent rotating roster to do night shifts in the library, where we would work alone helping whatever journalists were also working late. The journalists would come down two floors to the library to get help in person or sometimes ring us instead if they were lazy.

I did not have to wait long for Sports Reporter to make an appearance.

He swaggered into the library late one night, all amorous and louche. He started talking about what he liked to do with the ladies sexually, and seemed to be hinting that he may be interested in me.

I called his bluff.

It was easy as that. 

I had performed spoken word poetry and amateur theatre, I was good to go.

I started disrobing my outer garments and talked the smuttiest of smut back about what I could do to him. Note, I was barely legal then and looked very young for my age, which would of freaked him out even more.

He quickly ran off, terrified of this unexpected turn of events, dashing back to the safety of the elevator and did not come back to the library for a very long time. Months even.

Kay eventually got back to being her old confident self. She even ended up getting a job in the EU and I have heard she is very happy. I never told her what I did.

By Melvin Fechner

From: Australia

Website: https://melvin2019.svbtle.com

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