The man in black

4/3 "life writing" exercise, in which a "model" comes into the room, looks at us and then sits down so we can look at him and write...

(pretty much verbatim and only slightly edited)

He goes by his middle name, because one day at school when he was six, a big kid asked his name and laughed when he said it.

But no one laughs at him any more. His Maori genes kicked in when he was 12, and he grew big and solid. He also learned the trick of engaging a room when he entered, sweeping the faces with electric eyes, swiftly hooded, finding friends and warning off potential enemies.

The effect of someone you don't fuck with was heightened when he turned 30: he swept one broad-fingered hand across his thinning hair and said in broader vowels: "This has to go."

Since then he's been bareheaded; on the hooks inside the front door of his cottage in Collingwood are a row of fishermans' caps, straw fedoras and woollen beanies, a wardrobe for the constantly ringing changes of Melbourne's weather.

Sometimes, when he walks home late at night, the oyoung men going to and from Collingwood's backstreet gay bars cruise him - always from a distance - and migrant women from the Commission flats veer out of his path and he wants to say to both: "I'm not that person".

Today he's life modelling. he's removed his jewellery, which is silver and patterned with Pacific Islander designs. He's deliberately dressed to give away as little as possible: black T-shirt, black short-sleeved collared shirt, unbottoned, covering his one small tattoo. There's a pen hidden in his top pocket.

As he waits for the exercise to be over, trapped under glass by the gaze of 11 students telling lies about his life, he spreads his right hand on his knee and drums a rolling rhythm, thinking about the book in his bag and remembering the incredulity with which he met the request to do this thing.

He's hungry too: there's an apple in his bag, but he doesn't think he should eat it now. In a minute, someone's going to ask his middle name and he'll laugh a laugh of relief, tinged with a realisation that that big kid can't get at him any more, and he'll say: