The Best Australian Humorous Writing Read Free

English. This is decided when the art teacher leaves without warning. Something to do with despair, I should imagine, but I am excited by the art room which is astonishingly big and well equipped. I have also become the form-teacher of 3F–K which means I see them first thing every morning and that they come to me when they’re in trouble.
When
they’re in trouble! I don’t often get away from school until well after five, sometimes as late as seven when it is getting dark and the walk to the station becomes a bit of a nightmare. With the requisite tombstones, no less.
    The Maltese kid in 3F–K is my star art student. I’ve worried about him since the first day. He’s so obviously effeminate. I wonder that they haven’t done him over yet. The delicacy of his hands intrigues me. They are long, and the fingers seem to have no joints, like the fingers of Christ in a Byzantine icon. John helps me to set up the room before classes and we talk. His mother is widowed. Some factory accident, but I don’t go into it because I can see how John’s already pallid face drains of all colour when he mentions his father. John is fastidious. He arranges the brushes and the poster paints in long rows along the front table, explaining that it will be easier for students to see what they need, especially because he has graded thecolours of the paints, put the blues near the greens and the reds near the yellows and the purples near the … it all looks like a cubist painting. Then it looks like a mess. Because the others storm in and grab anything they can lay their hands on, anything they can flick, anything they can poke with, anything they can splash on each other in the course of the lesson. It’s chaotic, but amazing things begin to happen in the chaos.
    There are some good artists in the class. Valentino Calluzzi is one of them. He is a stocky Italian with eyebrows that meet over his nose like Frida Kahlo’s. I tell him this and show him a picture of her with Diego Rivera. Valentino says Diego looks like his Uncle Paolo. I reckon Diego does look like someone’s Uncle Paolo and I say that Frida could have had someone more attractive. Valentino says that women often like ugly men. This is the most I’ve ever heard from Valentino. He is reputed to have a shocking temper and I am instinctively wary of him. With good cause.
    In the English class, I have the 3F–K boys working on an obscene magazine that is gradually becoming quite respectable. They’ve changed the name from
Fuck Off
to
I Gotta Get Outta Here
which I secretly like a lot but I keep telling them it’s awful so that they feel they’re winning a fight. By this stage, they have a nickname for me. It’s Dracula. Not surprising. I have long dark hair and I’m usually dressed in black. Something to do with ballet, I think. All that getting about in a black leotard. Or maybe, as my friends say, I’m just morbid. Just look at my choice of schools. The school near the cemetery, I ask you. Valentino has come up with a piece about racing cars for the magazine. We are sitting together at the back of the room going over it for spelling mistakes. “Ooaah! Sucking up to Drac!” wisecracks Roger who has left the bin for good and now sits at a table he drags out of the front line of tables at the beginning of each class.
    Suddenly Valentino is up on his feet. I spring to mine and throw myself between Valentino and Roger. Valentino is swinging achair over his head. He throws it at Roger. It hits me in the shoulder and the corner of the back clips the side of my forehead. There is blood and confusion. Valentino stands white and shaking. I think the others are going to kill him. I don’t know how I do it, but I stay on my feet and calm things down. Wisecracks about blood and Dracula. A macabre song and dance. Anything for peace. When the others are sitting, I look at Valentino who is still standing and I