BIG MAN: A Wake-Up Call for Women

Chapter 9 - Big Man

As an independent recording artist and producer, I wrote and released a song called 'Big Man'. This song, along with the surge of domestic violence reports in my country, and some 38 deaths of women at the hands of men in a mere 4 months, are what prompted me to write this book. The song came to me while I was aimlessly driving around busy roads, choked with traffic and oppressive industry. I'm not sure how or why, perhaps it was the stench of pollution when I wound down the window, or maybe it was how hard I had to struggle to change gears constantly in stop start traffic driving a 25 year-old car with no air-con. Either way, thoughts of my ex partner pierced my conscious mind, along with the chorus: "Big man. He's such a big man. He'll cover it up, and hide while he can."

More than the innumerable deplorable instances of him playing the part of asshole to perfection during our 5 year relationship, is the fact that he denies all of it. I have never received an apology and probably won't. I'm certainly not expecting anything as gracious as that any time soon and would never bet my life on it. Because we share a son, I have, by default, been in contact with him for various reasons over the last 15 years, and most recently I was shocked to discover that he apparently has no recollection of things like kicking me in the stomach when I was pregnant, or pulling up my skirt when I was 8 months pregnant, pointing and saying "Why would I want to have sex with that?". I'm certain he 'doesn't remember' punching me in the jaw while I was holding our then 3 year old son on my hip, nor would he 'remember' that punch landing on my son either. How incredibly convenient. Perhaps he also 'doesn't remember' that the reason I went to the child support agency after our separation was because his financial support was never on time, and sometimes never came through at all. We had agreed to an amount, in fact it was a fair amount that he suggested, but unless I was prepared to wait for it, sometimes up to 6 weeks, I was being unreasonable to phone and ask him where it was. The only logical step for me to have made was to call on the services of a government agency to ensure his payments would be met on time. Raising a child on a floating budget that fluctuates from one month to the next makes it very difficult to plan finances, and when you are expecting a certain sum of money to arrive on a certain day and it doesn't appear, it throws everything out. When he became aware that the agency would be handling the issue, he was angry. To this day I have no idea why. Thinking about it now I can only assume he was offended that he was no longer permitted to skip payments, that this would mean he had to take financial responsibility for his son, that my 'unreasonable approach' of expecting payments on time (not 6 weeks late) was now going to be supported by Law. I am sure this was unwelcome news to a man who considers himself above this Law, as he clearly demonstrated for 15 years by filing fraudulent tax returns as a self-employed person which never alluded to his real income.

For at least ten of those years he was working with a high profile music artist earning an annual amount which would have (should have) provided fair financial support. Instead, he paid only five dollars a week. There was a year here and there where the amount rose to 25 dollars per week, and it was only in the last year prior to our son turning 18 that he was forced to pay a fair amount. When the agency contacted him about this, he resisted the payments. He claimed I was merely trying to supplement my income. I still marvel at his attempts to shift the focus off himself and slander my character. If I add up all the money he owes us over 15 years based on his accurate income, I could easily sue him for over forty thousand dollars in stolen monies. Why is any of this important? Flashback to the previous chapters entitled 'The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor' and 'Financial Abuse.' He operated purely out of spite for invented reasons and no doubt he doesn't 'remember' this either, but my witnesses do. The third verse of the song 'Big Man' refers to this sad scenario in a few short lines: "You've got a kid but you don't pay no bills, drowning in your self-pity sorrow. Whatcha gunna do when you get the chills, thinkin' 'bout your boy's tomorrows?" The point of it all tends to flow out much more easily when written in song.