ARMS OUTSTRETCHED

Painter John Nelson in front of a recent work, Ballina, NSW, Australia, 20 September, 2017.

There were temptresses in the reaches, but they were not the ones he listened to. 
"He's had cameras on him the whole time." 
Scotland Yard. 
Old Alex could hear the occasional squawk from one of the clarion crows of security agencies, but that was it. A silence as the AIs did their work. Multiplied. Kept out of sight. 
He wrapped his arms around Alex, that grey ghost, transmitting a kind of intense affection, begging, in a way, to be free. Passionate, desperate, suicidal. Self-immolation. Auto-da-fe. A love that transcended everything. 
He wanted to be sure he knew. 
He knew. 
They held the wake more than half a century after they had first met. Candles. Incense. Burning red tissue paper. They wrote messages on a card and placed them in a box, and then burnt the box. 
Several bottles of fine wine followed. 
As the embers died in the late late evening it was clear that Paul had left the building. 
That he'd been waiting just for this. 
"You broke his heart," Chris, the brother said. "You were his favourite boy."
"Across half a century."
"Yes."
"He was in love with the 14, 15, 16 year old version of myself." 
Nobody disagreed with that.
The incense burnt out. 
The thugs kept a respectful distance. 
Old Alex was beyond caring what anybody thought; was perpetually shocked at the level of decay of Australian governance, the decrepit state of the society, the untrammeled bastardy of the agencies. 
And kept repeating to himself: we can be free, we can be free. 
The last of the ashes drifted down through night air. 
Much had happened in that half century since they had known each other so intensely. There was no black and white or moral equivalence or anything else, he simply didn't want to know what had happened in the rest of Paul's often lonely life, why he called himself Pariah. 
He remembered the time they had together, and that was that. 

The truth was, he thought, I ran towards you as I have always run towards trouble. With arms outstretched. Seeking excitement, adventure, experience. Knowledge, perhaps. New worlds. 

And he could feel Paul's ghost in a final embrace. 
Not sad, he was ready to go. 
He had just wanted to say goodbye, across half a lifetime. 
To know he had meant something to someone. That it was not all bad. 
And now, he, too, was free. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

IMAMS and Islamic leaders are ramping up a campaign against same-sex marriage, using their sermons in mosques across Australia to urge the Muslim community to vote no.
Islamic Friendship Association of Australia head Keysar Trad has begun a tour of prayer halls in a bid to thwart same-sex marriage, comparing gay love to incestuous relationships­.
“We might love our mum and dad intensively but you don’t denigrate that love with sexual behaviour,” he said.
And the Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohamad, is understood to have told a Bankstown prayer hall on Friday that legislating same-sex marriage was the start of a change that could mean it would be illegal to tell children homosexuality was wrong.
“We should all love each other but that type of love ends in denigrating people; there is nothing to stop you from having the utmost love for your friends who might be the same gender but it doesn’t mean you strip naked together and start doing things,” Mr Trad, the recent past president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said.
The Australian National Imams Council says that Islam does not allow gay marriage and “marital relationship is only permissible between a man and woman”.

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THE businessowner of a children’s party business who sacked one of her workers for promoting the “no” vote has had a Facebook post deleted for apparently causing hate speech.

It comes as she cops a series of abusive messages and death threats herself.

The 18-year-old worker, who has been identified only by her first name Madeline, was let go as a contractor by the Canberra small business for posting a Facebook profile picture with a filter saying “It’s OK to vote no”.

Capital Kids Parties business owner Madlin Sims said she fired Madeline because “advertising your desire to vote no for SSM [same-sex marriage] is, in my eyes, hate speech”.
She says she has since been called a skank, wh**e, b**ch, putrid and a sl*t.
What followed was a she-said-she-said series of interviews and press attention which culminated in Ms Sims posting to Facebook last night.
In the Facebook post, which she later posted to Instagram, Ms Sims explained she wanted to be “loud and clear” over her version of events and her subsequent treatment by the Australian public.
“Now, I’ve been called a skank, wh**e, b**ch, putrid and a sl*t,” she wrote.
“Someone even brought up my stance on refugees and said they hope my two-year-old son gets raped for it.