By Fab Marsani
“ You not like football, you not interesting in cars and you like flowers. But I know you not homo-sexual.”
Mirko’s world is Black & White.
No room for ambiguity, fluidity or any of those non-conforming gender roles the ABC love to showcase.
Ever since his wife left him for a bonsai enthusiast, he’s been very uncomfortable with blokes who don’t fit into ‘historical gender roles’. He started his working life as a butcher, then became a builder. He’s always enjoyed the company of so called ‘real men’. As opposed to those who like gardening purely for ornamental reasons.
“Listen, I understand a man who grow vegetables or plants fruit trees in his backyard. But what can you do with this bloody bonsai Japanese tree? They are bloody useless.”
His wife left him for a sensitive-nonmaterialistic man and his daughter is married to another one, and he grapples with what women possibly see in these men.
“My daughter tell me, he is caring and sensitive man, and she love him. OK, I’m happy for this, but he can’t change flat Tyre if he not watch YouTube video, and if he not have Welfare he will starve. What type of man she marry?
You cannot make a life with this type of man I tell her. He wants to take her OFF GRID. You must be OUT OF YOUR MIND I tell her. But she not listen. “
My all-time Mirko outburst has to be, “This woman [ ex-wife] was bloody crazy. She leave me for this Slovenian poofter from Altona.
I build her a three story, 5-bedroom mansion in East Keilor but she still not happy and she leave me to live in weatherboard house in North Altona. What more she want from life I ask her?
And my daughter is same like her mother… UNSTABLE.”
When I suggest that he’s comparing his materialistic values with those who grapple with their inner world, and he should step back and try to show some empathy and understanding.
“What bullshit you talk about. They spend all day meditating. I tell them you cannot earn money to buy a house and nice things lying on the floor making stupid Indian OM sounds all day.
In life you must work and make money.”
A vegetarian diet is apparently the most effective tool in reducing global carbon emissions Mirko. More effective than driving an electric vehicle or abstaining from clocking up aviation miles.”
” Listen, asking an old Croatian butcher to become a vegetarian is like asking a Catholic Priest to baptize a baby in a mosque. ”
The old butcher has very strong views on Meat and the Combustion Engine!
“No Car, No Job…and No Shoes…this is the type of man my daughter like. When I was young, if you no have one nice new suit or car, no woman will be interested in going out with you. But she have boyfriends who look like BEGGARS…I no understand.”
Poor Mirko, he doesn’t get his daughter’s taste in blokes, or their Eco Warrior values and personas.
” This bludger come to my house and he not wearing shoes. She tell me that in Muslim and some Asian cultures you must take off shoes before entering a house. I tell her, I am not Muslim, and I am not Asian. I am CROATIAN…and when this bludger come to my house, he must wear shoes!”
