The Odd Amorous Adventures of the Gay Gingerbread Man Read online

  He knows she must be unhappy and does not even bother to look for any actual signs of unhappiness at which he is becoming something of an expert. Once he is familiar with his new surroundings he can immediately pounce on the swollen red eyes, or downcast demeanour, but not, of course, the first time he sees them. But in the case of overweight ladies, further observation is unnecessary. In any case, he has the perfect remedy. His own special diet, a diet that has a 100% success rate. Dr Atkins, Weight Watchers and calorie counters eat your heart out! This is the only diet that can guarantee that the fat will literally melt away, like butter left out of the fridge in mid-summer in Alice Springs. So, without more ado, and in the interests of the overweight, here is the magic diet:

  Gingerbread Man’s Magic Diet

  Important first step: Take one large cabbage, put in even larger saucepan, cover with water and boil until squishy. Add salt and pepper. This is free all day and is the dinner meal for the whole week.

  Monday:

  Breakfast: Slice toast, poached egg, coffee (no milk or sugar)

  Lunch: ½ small sausage, tomato, 4 lettuce leaves, 5 slices cucumber

  Tuesday:

  Breakfast: Slice toast, teaspoon butter, teaspoon honey, coffee (no milk or sugar)

  Lunch: ½ small sausage (the other half from yesterday), sliced green capsicum, teaspoon mayonnaise.

  Wednesday:

  Breakfast: Slice Toast, I tablespoon cottage cheese, coffee as before

  Lunch: Meat Patty (small), 4 lettuce leaves, one cooked small potato, sliced, with I teaspoon mayonnaise

  Thursday:

  Breakfast: Slice toast, one sardine, coffee as before

  Lunch: ½ small sausage, one tomato

  Friday:

  Breakfast:Slice toast,teaspoon butter, teaspoon honey, coffee as before

  Lunch:½ small sausage, 4 lettuce leaves,5 pieces cucumber, teaspoon mayonnaise.

  Saturday:

  Breakfast: 3 Prunes (for the digestion) plus one mandarin (against the possibility of Scurvy)

  Lunch: One sardine, 4 lettuce leaves, 3 stuffed olives (provides that touch of class to the whole diet)

  Sunday:Free but be cautious

  If hungry have cabbage soup

  Repeat as often as necessary, until desired weight is reached

  Bon Appetit! Enjoy!

  This is his magic diet and no one can dispute that the weight will just fall off if you stick to it. The question is how can anyone stick to such a diet? Are you seriously questioning that any lady given this diet by our twinkly eyed Gingerbread Man would fail to complete it? Our Gingerbread Man, with his bucket load of charm, the promise of how dear Belinda (that is the lady’s name) would be to him, is already dear to him, if only all her reasons for her lack of enjoyment of life (her weight and the absence of a beloved Gingerbread Man) were removed. Luckily, she realises the beloved has now appeared. The free Sunday on the above diet is important, because he manages to imply, but not quite promise, that lunch, if she is a good girl (and eats all her prunes), might be spent with him. Wow! What an incentive, what bliss! No more lonely Sundays. Can such attention and devotion be hers and from such a charismatic man, a least ten years younger than she is? An irresistible hope for the selected dieter, in this case our overweight teacher, Belinda.

  She falls for him like a ton of bricks (sorry, inappropriate comment for a 140kilo lady). She falls madly in love with him (that’s better) and he appears devoted to her as well. Brings her small but thoughtful gifts, such as daisies picked from the front path of his rental property. He can’t afford to buy flowers, she understands this and is sympathetic. She notes his lack of a watch. She buys him one and a few other knick-knacks. She earns the same salary a he does and therefore all her presents are not particularly expensive. He gives her a hug now and then and holds her hand sometimes This is enough for her. Her love only increases, her opinion of his looks, intelligence and all-round superiority only soars as the months fly past.

  Belinda’s adoration is not enough for the Gingerbread Man. One swallow does not make a summer and what he wants is to bask in the adulation of as many as possible. There was firstly, the lady with the stiffly nose. By this time, he was already in his late twenties but he often chooses women considerably older than he is. As they are not marriageable material, as previously mentioned, neither their age, their weight, or any other aspect of their appearance matters to him. He finds that the lady with the sniffily nose did have pollen allergies (no worries, she is now taking medication) and between her sniffles she tells him the sad story of the man she thought was her soul mate. She found him in a bar as she was sorrowfully sipping her Gin and Tonic and contemplating her sad and lonely life. Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that at this critical moment she was sipping her third Gin and Tonic. Her judgment in the bar may thus have been a bit impaired. She did not notice his tattoos consisting mainly of skulls, knives and other interesting paraphernalia. She found his large moustache attractive and his even larger motor bike, parked outside, an interesting mode of locomotion. Anyone could have told her that he was unlikely to be her soulmate. But by the fourth Gin and Tonic the matter was settled. This was the man she had been waiting for! He was, appearances notwithstanding rather a lovely man but there was one impediment to their continuing romance. No, not that her friends and family are taken aback by her choice and try to talk her out of it, it is that she has never learnt to ride a bicycle. She has a terrible sense of balance and cannot picture herself on a motorbike with all the other bikies, on the open road. In any case wearing leather is not romantic in her eyes and black is not her colour. Could all those Gin and Tonics have influenced her choice of a soulmate? She has to admit that that was a possibility. Thus, with a heavy heart she says goodbye to the moustache and the skull tattoos. Another broken romance, but now she has the Gingerbread Man’s shoulder to cry on so every cloud has a silver lining and other clichés. She buys our hero a watch and a cute teddy bear for Nicholas as a thank you for all the tears on his shirt. This is not an appropriate gift for Nicholas who is ten by this time and would have preferred a fire engine, but then, as we noted, she is not a perceptive lady.

  The other teacher, who had the red eyes is in the midst of a divorce. Her red eyes were due to a viral eye infection rather than to her divorce. She is not all that upset at losing her husband, she just thought it unkind of him to make off with his eighteen- year- old articled clerk (he was a solicitor). The girl was only a year older than their eldest son. The Gingerbread Man tells her that the eighteen-year-old will probably take him for all the cash he has and then leave him once she realises he is an old man. This conversation cheers her immensely. He seems to both teachers like a knight in shining army slaying all the dragons that made them unhappy for so long. Compassion and kindness are his mottos.

  Have we dismissed the luscious blonde too soon? The Gingerbread Man is a little nervous of the luscious blonde. Once the staff accept that he and the now 100 -kilo lady are a couple, he tries his charm on her as well, but always at a distance. He compliments her on her attributes- her dress sense, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, her smile. He tells her he knows that she must have a hundred men running after her. Whoops, he slips. It turns out that the man she loves is married and they only spend the odd hour or so together and never Christmas or even her last birthday. She is so miserable. What now? Does he offer her his ever- ready shoulder to cry on? He considers, is it more important to hide his gay side or to get another adoring convert? He makes his choice and only commiserates with her when the fat fatter lady is by his side and the luscious blonde is sitting on the other side of the room.

  He stays in Wollongong for nearly three years. Always devoted to the ex 140 kilo Belinda but available to all who need his soothing presence. Belinda feels that two and a half years is long enough for our hero to leave chastity behind, especially as she has lost a great deal of weight. Still fat but no longer fatter and fattest. Are they not always together, doesn’t everyone
on the staff think they are a couple? He puts in his bit about chastity and the Catholic church, etc but when she asks if he wants to visit St. Michael’s Cathedral, the most important church in Wollongong, he shows no interest. So, she thinks, how religious is he? Then she goes on and thinks that all his talk about chastity as unlikely as his religiosity. Thus, she makes her fatal error. There is some talk on her part of taking the relationship a little further. Sex tentatively rears its ugly head (calm down, on her part, not on his). He now ends their relationship but not by telling her all is over. He never uses the direct approach. When Belinda goes to her classroom one morning, what does she find on her desk, but the watch and all the little things she gave him, that he told her meant so much to him. Then he simply ignores her. She is not only hurt and puzzled but now wonders and expresses her puzzlement to her colleagues. Why did he never himself suggested taking their relationship any further? Implications on his masculinity now reach his ears. What can he do? He can only deny that he ever had any serious intentions towards her- after all he tells everyone, do they think that he could fall in love with a 140-kilo lady, even though she now weighs only 100. Only one other solution occurs to him; he frantically writes job applications to schools all over the country. He finds one and off he runs, this time to Darwin. His time in Wollongong is over.

  Surely Wollongong, a city that even has a university, must have any number of primary schools so why can’t he simply stay in the same place? It’s a puzzle. One possible explanation could be that he is in such a hurry to leave, that he simply takes the first job that comes along, no matter where it is, but then why is it never in the same city? No clear answer comes to mind, except that perhaps he is afraid the scorned one may follow him to his new job and muddy the waters.

  Chapter 5

  Darwin

  So, we find our Gingerbread Man fleeing north, to Darwin, during the wet season. Not only is it wet in the wet season, it is also humid and there are lots of crocodiles round and about but this does not bother him one bit, he is again on the hunt. Not of crocodiles. Hunting crocodiles is illegal, hunting sad ladies in the new primary school he finds himself in, is not. His necessity of looking for adulation is always at his place of work. His charisma would surely be just as effective if he found the adoring one somewhere else, such as at a pub. However, school adoration, as we have seen, spills over to other worshipping females at work, even if they are not his chosen one. What we have overlooked is the effect created by the presence of Nicholas (the adorable baby). Nicholas is his witness to the fact that our chaste hero is indeed chaste by choice. Despite this, some of the women he chooses have rather active libidos and in time want more than having their hands held and loving words, they want some action as well. He thought he would be safe with Belinda, overweight as she was and not particularly attractive even at 100 kilos. The Gingerbread Man has never learnt how to discern this aspect of his chosen lady. The obvious way would be to start a conversation on sex but this might be misinterpreted, so he never mentions the word at all. He once thought that if the girl (this was at university) was Jewish she would be a safe bet, but his charm overcame even this impediment. So, a hopeless case- fat thin, plain, age differences, religious differences, they always fall for him, even when he makes it clear that he is only a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

  He is also not always the innocent where sex is concerned, as he makes out. He wants to be wanted and sexual teasing of his harem (can we refer to them like this?) does occur. At times, when the chosen devotee of the moment is stressed, he tells her that one of his strengths is his ability to message her stress away. She lies on the floor, he straddles her and proceeds to message her neck, back and even a little lower. Then it is her turn and she straddles him etc. According to him, this is a perfectly innocent stress relieving exercise but it has overtones of something else, especially when his hand slips a little lower or a little higher and he says “oops.”

  Another suggestive little something is the notes he adds to the magic diet. He also slips little notes to the preferred one during staff meetings- little notes full of innuendo. Time has passed and now computers have taken the place of stolen typewriters. These are the days of hard and floppy disks and he loved to play on these words. He is hard while the other male member of staff was a floppy(disc), of course. There is no ambiguity there.

  An odd thing happens to him in Darwin. There is the usual scene in the staff room when he enters and looks around for the vulnerable ones. But before he makes his move, one of the teachers looks up, pats the empty chair next to her and in effect, picks him up. He is surprised and intrigued. He did not have to use his charm and his shapely legs were not visible under his long pants. Where his twinkly eyes enough to engender instant admiration? He has misunderstood Jenny, she thought he looked lost and this was her attempt at making him feel at home. He discovers that she is not miserable, loves her boyfriend and they will get married as soon as he returns from Sydney, in a couple of months. He missed the nice diamond ring on her left hand. She is also not overweight and is in no need of his magic diet.

  Jenny learns that he has never been in Darwin before and offers to spend her weekends showing him around. Will she fall in love with our hero? He does not doubt it. A couple of weekends with him and the boyfriend/fiancée will be no more. The Gingerbread Man does not purposely (appearances to the contrary) want to break up her relationship. This is not about her, it is about him. He has never failed before. A failure of this kind is something he does not want to contemplate. He who bruises egos all over the place, does not want his own knocked about, thank you very much. Of course not.

  The next Sunday they visit the Esplanade, look at the outdoor artistic displays and walk about the village of shops and food stalls, until they reach Lyon’s cottage which, Jenny informs him, is an example of building houses using local stone. Our hero has no interest in outdoor artistic displays or houses built of local stone. He takes her to an intimate café where over a couple of cappuccinos his allure can begin. Jenny has lovely soft, light brown hair and our hero has already compiled a speech in which he will mention Edgar Allen Poe’s poem about Jenny with the light brown hair. He also interrupts her monologue on Tom (fiancée and purchaser of diamond ring), with the tale of his conversion to Catholicism, declaring that if it were not for his little boy, he would join the priesthood. Under the circumstances, chastity is his only option. Jenny hears him but takes little notice and keeps steering the conversation back herself and the plans she has made for the future with Tom. He finds this irritating but thinks there is plenty of time.

  His lack of interest in local stone leads her to suppose that his interest lies in fauna and flora. The most prolific fauna in Darwin are the crocodiles. Jenny takes him on the crocodile jumping tour. The skipper of the boat dangles a piece of meat over the side of the boat. The crocodile obligingly jumps out and up and eats it. The Gingerbread Man becomes the hero of the hour when he holds back an enthusiastic Japanese lady who, in her eagerness to film the crocodile, nearly falls in the water and becomes the crocodile’s next meal. Jenny is impressed by his heroics but her conversation is all about Tom, Tom, Tom. One weekend follows another. He visits all the prominent beauty spots in and around Darwin-Bennett’s Park, the Botanic Gardens, Vesteys Beach and the suburban oasis called the Water Gardens. He is appalled to learn that no-one can swim in the sea in Darwin due to such nasties as saltwater crocodiles and unusually venomous jellyfish. Jenny takes him to Easy Point Reserve, the only place he can swim in the sea. Eventually that is the only place they go. It is all getting to be a bit much.

  Why is she still not in love with him? Is Tom so alluring, so handsome? What is it about him that is holding her attached to him? Tom visits Darwin on leave. He is neither alluring nor handsome, nor especially interesting. The Gingerbread Man keeps a close watch on their interaction. Eventually the penny drops. Just to make sure, however, he asks Jenny directly and she tells him the shattering truth. The man is a tornado in bed.
It is a case of no contest for our Gingerbread Man. He is beaten and he knows it. A year after his arrival in Darwin he attends their wedding. They are both fond of him and she even wants to make him their best man but Tom says no, it must be his brother. Our hero wishes them well and then considers his next move.

  He does not quite understand what happened, he always insists that married people never have sex, except for the odd occasion that gives rise to a couple of offspring. Could it be that he is wrong? He now recalls the lady in Wollongong, one of his conquests, who had recently been divorced. She told him that although she and her husband had sex twice a week, it was not the sex that was the reason for the divorce but his miserly ways. The Gingerbread Man takes no notice of this at the time, thinking this an exaggeration but perhaps it is true? He is now dispirited and makes no effort to engage the interests of another member of staff. Enough is enough. Who knows, maybe the climate in Darwin makes men tornadoes in bed and women who long for tornadoes? Anyway, he muses, what is a tornado in bed? He doesn’t understand any of it. He leaves Darwin. He never liked the climate and was uninterested in such things as hikes along the Kakadu Trail. It all sounds wet and muddy and what does one get for it at the end? Another unadoring female. No thanks.