The Chicken Man

Sometime in 2018, walking somewhere in Melbourne with Tristan, we were talking about me. 

‘You’re not a film guy,’ Tristan was saying. 

‘What? Yes I am, of course I am.’ 

‘I mean, you’re not like a Scott Tamburini.’ 

This pissed me off. I was so a film guy! Other people said I was, all I talked about was movies. I was getting paid to write about them. I couldn’t believe Tristan had taken this hard won title away from me.  

And to have given it to the Chicken Man. We went to high school with Scott but he dropped out early after some kind of court case involving his ex-girlfriend. 

I’ve known Scott since we were five years old. During our time at Boneo Primary, Scott had a terrible case of facial acne. Huge, bulbous red spots covered his face. I remember seeing one bleeding on his neck and feeling physically repulsed at the sight. 

This might have made Scott a bit of an outcast, but he wasn’t so easy to bully. He had a calm demeanour that made him seem mature beyond his years. While bullies took their shots, Scott never gave the reactions that spur bullies on to more abuse. The worst that got around about Scott was the kids calling him the Chicken Man.

I don’t know if this is because of the layer of redness produced by his acne, or his squat stature and short legs. It might have been because a fun size bag of chicken-flavoured crisps was a fixture in his lunchbox. 

I remember Scott being teased when we were at the local swimming pool. My friend Mat thought that Scott didn’t dry himself, putting his clothes over his still wet body.

Mat espied this from the other side of the changing room and was quick to rope in fellow football player Luke on this newly acquired information. They brought it to the attention of everyone in the room and Scott merely gathered his things and left, at no hurried pace. 

I was getting changed next to Scott that day, and we’d been talking about Grand Theft Auto. Lining up for the bus back to school, Mat and Luke lobbed a few more shots. Scott turned to me and said, ‘You saw. I dried myself before I got changed.’

In view of Mat, I shrugged and turned away from Scott.   

Although I did my best to hide it, I was friends with the Chicken Man. In many ways I liked Scott more than the people I wasn’t ashamed to say I was friends with. My friendship with the AFL-bound Mat expired the moment we finished primary school. 

Scott stuck around. He’d always been different. He had the refined taste of an older brother who imparts wisdom and experience in the form of CDs and paperbacks.

With Scott, you could stand around on the school yard talking about music, while everyone else was playing downball or tiggy. Both computer savvy from an early age, we burned CDs for each other. I burned Scott a Weird Al CD, he burned me The White Stripes Elephant . 

Discussing The White Stripes on the playground, Mat came up and asked me ‘Why are you talking to the Chicken Man?’

I said nothing.

‘He’s allowed to talk,’ Scott said.

The most time Scott and I spent together was in our last year of primary school, Ms Gadsby’s Grade 5/6 class.

Ms Gadsby’s way of maintaining order in the classroom was with seating plans. You sat next to people to whom you’d been randomly assigned and tried to devise codified messaging to your friends on other tables. 

These seating plans were always abolished at the end of the term. Two weeks later when we returned from holidays, we could sit wherever we liked. We’d usually get a day and a half before the seating plan would be enforced again. It was as if we knew the seating plan was an inevitability, and so we maximised our enjoyment, kamikaze-style. 

Ms Gadsby did all she could to wrestle control over the class, her unhinged screams producing specks of spit—or, on one memorable occasion, a globule right onto Johnno’s desk—flung from her mouth. 

At that point she’d say ‘Right, that’s it!’ And we’d know it was time to shut up. She’d threatened the seating plan, she’d given us a chance to make it work next to our friends—but that was it.

Ms Gadsby had each of us write our name on a piece of paper. We then put these together in a container. We were directed to stand in a clump at the front of the class and make no noise while the names were drawn. Each empty table would be filled randomly and order would be restored.

Each name drawn provoked a flicker of whispers throughout the clump. Ms Gadsby stamped it out with a sharp ‘SHHH!’

My name was among the first four. Bridey was next to Chad, and what do you know, I was next to the Chicken Man himself. In our last year of primary school, Scott had outgrown his fowl nickname but not his acne. It still coated the bottom half of his face. 

Responding to your place in the seating plan required a bit of finesse. You had to stay quiet and move quickly, while listening for any flicker of whispers, and then present your own acceptance to the collective. If you were next to those lower in social stature than yourself, you had to communicate distaste to your peers without letting Ms Gadsby know, lest you lose a playtime or half your lunch break. 

Ours was an interesting arrangement, because Bridey was kind of popular, while Scott and Chad weren’t. She was still the new girl but she was a tall, pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair. Bridey and I were actually friends around this time. I’d been harbouring a crush on her. I downplayed my reaction, because I knew Bridey wouldn’t be happy getting seated with Scott and Chad. She responded to the news with a frozen grin on her face while her eyes flicked to each of her girlfriends. 

Scott cared little for seating plan politics. I have no idea if he was glad to be sitting next to me, but I couldn’t be happier. Scott was my favourite person to talk to at this point, even though I still wouldn’t admit we were friends. 

During our seating plan stint together, I tested Scott’s recall of certain Simpsons episodes, we argued over which of us came up with the noise ‘Plim’ and who used it more, and I hid my appreciation for Metallica’s St Anger. Our friendship grew and evolved. It was acceptable to publicly get on with your seatmate even if they stood in a different social class to the girl you had a crush on. It wasn’t my fault I was stuck Scott, right?

After primary, Scott and I went on to Rosebud High. Scott lost the acne, started smoking, grew a full beard, and got together with Bridey. She’d in turn bleached her hair, blackened her makeup, and was no longer hanging out with her primary school friends. 

Throughout his brief highschool career, Scott was always in his HIM jacket. A black suit jacket with heartagrams drawn and stitched into the fabric, it was extremely not up to school uniform code. Patrolling lunchtime coordinators had eagle eyes for Globe skate shoes and low cut socks, but they let Scott’s ludicrous attire go. Maybe they knew he wouldn’t be around long.

Sometimes I would pass Scott where he and Bridey and their dyed-black friends would be leaning against a portable classroom. He’d say ‘Come and talk’ and gesture in an almost imperceptible way. Still, I wasn’t in his gang. Just like he hadn’t been in mine.

Midway through the year, Scott dropped out. Disinterested in social politics, fully bearded, refusing to wear the uniform, and with a sophisticated cultural palette, it didn’t seem as if he’d failed school. He was just grown up already, done spending his days with a bunch of kids.

Over time we became better friends. Freed from the responsibility of social standing, I’d visit Scott where he worked, minding the entrance to the Target department store. They wouldn’t let him lean, but he got to stand and talk all day. We’d go for cigarettes on his breaks. We drank together, hung out at his house, he’d show me his record collection full of ‘Original pressings’. 

And then there were the films. The reason Scott was a ‘film guy’ and I wasn’t according to Tristan, despite so badly believing I was. 

Scott’s movie collection filled the wall of his bedroom when he still lived at home and only grew in size when he moved out with his girlfriend Rhea. It was the kind of collection you could pore over for hours, for the sheer absurdity of some of the titles he owned and their demented box covers. 

***

Tristan and I continued walking in silence for a few minutes after he’d said that. 

‘I mean, do you want to be a Scott Tamburini?’ 

‘No,’ I said, and we moved on. 

Tristan knew me better than anyone. But even he didn’t know how much I envied the Chicken Man.