Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 28

Early morning, wind hammering on the windows and the cat curling through my legs to remind me I haven’t yet got round to feeding it.

Thinking about Daniel, or maybe the electronic scene, I e-mail Mac:

>Hey, Mac, do you think it’s possible to make generational statements, or are generations created by the statements made about them?

He mails back:

>What do you have in mind?

I scribble down on a piece of paper all the generational clichés I’ve ever come across. It’s a long list.

>Well, the presumption that 15-25-year-olds have a totally relativist set of morals whereas all us older people are more absolute about things.

You tap out an e-mail message and play it back in your head and Bingo! It becomes the most profound, the most meaningful, the freshest thought you ever had.

>Actually it seems to me that pretty much *everyone* has a relativist set of morals, it’s just that *society’s* morals have traditionally been absolute.

I suppose it’s a silly fantasy of oneness, e-mail. But then again perhaps it’s not a fantasy. Perhaps, maybe. I don’t know yet.

I sit and think blanks for a while, then finish tapping in my note to Mac.

>Maybe the 15-25-year-olds feel that society’s mores have broken down and they’re simply less hypocritical than the rest of us. Or maybe it’s just that they haven’t learnt how to be full-on hypocrites yet.

No, it’s not the perfect communication, but it’s damned near. An imperfect kind of telepathy.

I leave the screen for a moment and fetch myself a can of root beer. Cat follows at a hopeful trot. Mac’s answer is scrolling up on my return.

>I’d go along with that. Younger people are less hypocritical, definitely. Oh wow, it’s just started to rain.:-)

I glance towards the window, notice twists of rainwater spiralling down the panes and whitened in the light of the desk lamp. Cat yells.

>Here too.

How weird.

>What else?

>Well, issues. When I was a teenager… I think back and do my best to stifle the memory … it was nuclear war and trades unions. These days it’s animal rights, anti-racism, ecology and homelessness. We didn’t really think about that stuff. Oh I don’t know. Things change so *fast* is all.

Animal rights. Cat’s begging has become so insistent I’m driven to leaving the screen and pouring him some Go-Cat biscuits. On my return I tap ‘A’ to send the mail, remember all the points I’ve forgotten to mention and open another e-mail file.

>The decline in trust - another generational cliché. Can’t rely on your education to equip you for a job, there aren’t any jobs, can’t rely on your parents to stay together because half of them won’t, can’t rely on care when care means weirdos and sex abuse, can’t rely on god and the church ditto, can’t even turn to that old teenage staple, sex, on account of AIDS. Or how about this? A generation used to the idea that the only power they’ve really got is consumer power. Disenchanted with politics, enamoured of product.

I tap in ‘A’ again and take myself off for a pee. No word from Mac on my return.

>Mac, hello, I’m talking to you!

Electronic silence prevails. I wait a little while, humming over my screen like a wasp circling a honey trap but no word arrives. Mac has taken on such a sudden and unexpected importance in my life and yet I’ve never met him.