My Life in Share Houses

 

If you are filthy rich, or in possession of one of those rare kinds of lives whereby your shit is bound tightly together, you may have escaped the Era of the Share House.  If you, like me, have spent the entirety of your twenties poor-as-fuck and often floundering, you will be familiar with the tedium of this special time.  No matter how thoroughly you interrogate your would be house-mate during the ubiquitously awkward interview, somehow you always wind up locked in a battle of wills with said person over the cleaning/ persistent goon theft/ intensifying suspicion from both parties that the other is deeply insane.  For Tom and me, this time has been particularly fraught.  We have come to accept that we are either A) really bloody crap at choosing housemates, or B) intensely delusional about our perceived status as generally OK people.  The latter is entirely possible.  But, no matter, because this week marks a special time in the chronicles of our shared lives.  This week we left the Era of the Share House in our dust.   

Which is why I feel it’s appropriate to submit you to an Internet List.  Come, sit by me as we bask in the musky aroma of share-houses gone by. 

Kipling Street, Moonee Ponds (18 and Knew Literally Everything)

In the cradle of Dame Edna and shithouse coffee, I escaped the straggling grip of my parents and entered the equally strangling grip of an ageing couple approaching their 21^st year.  How unreasonable they were to expect me to clean the bathtub and not stay up till 4 in the room adjacent to theirs stoned and babbling to my pale and porn-obsessed English housemate. 

Stafford Street, Abbotsford (21 with a Reluctant Boyfriend in Tow)

The first attempt at grownup-hood having scared me back to mother’s teat, I ventured out afresh to the most hipster-ish locale I could afford.  The boyfriend I brought with me from the suburbs hated it, and so did I until I married a job where my primary responsibilities were boasting about being a manager and flirting with the Italian Sommelier. 

Epsom Road, Ascot Vale (22 and Suffocated by Anxiety)  

Here, sandwiched in compromise between our parents’ place and Where I’d Rather Be, my boyfriend and I earned true de-facto status as we hurtled at great pace toward Boring.  I was no help, my once nibbling anxiety having built to a deafening roar.  Too frightened to tell, I descended unceremoniously into a prison of my own obsessions.  Who knows if it was this or my admission that I’d like a child sometime between now and 2050 that saw my bf talk the walk, but suddenly the minutiae of my painstakingly structured life was shattered.  I found my self bawling and afraid in the tiny bedroom I had spent my girlhood years.

High Street, Armadale (24 and Blinded by Romance)

We should have known we could never make it on THAT side of the Yarra.  We should have considered the stupidity of moving into an expensive room without so much as an inspection.  But Tom and I were in the throes of new love, and when you’re distracted by butterflies and vodka and acid (we were doing a lot of acid), taking the first place you’re offered as A Couple seems like a great idea.  It smelt like meat.  Our room had an indiscriminate wet patch.  Our housemate subsisted purely on white-bread-tomato-sauce sandwiches.  We left after 10 days, donating the month’s rent to a dubious sandwich habit.

Eveline Street, Brunswick (24 and After Actual Consideration)

Nicknamed ‘The Taj’ by our friends at the aptly dubbed ‘Crumble’ over the road, this place was not so much a living space as a social convention centre.  In the sort of twenty-something lifestyle reminiscent of Monkey Grip, we socialised, we partied, and indeed we puked.  Having ironed the rough edges from my anxiety through therapy and hard-work, I embraced the Hipster Life with gusto, discussing over endless drinking and drugging sessions the pointlessness of work, the problems with society, and the idiocy of the ‘pawns’ who had been sucked into the machine.  There were arguments, yes, but nothing that couldn’t be drowned in beer.  Thank you, government, for funding my ludicrous lifestyle.  It was super fun. 

Hosier Street, Eden (27 and Ready to ‘Clean up and Embrace Adulthood’)

Aware that we had pushed partying exactly to the point where further indulgence could have prompted an intervention, Tom and I packed up for the coast, landing in the generously provided beach home of a close friend of Val.  The waves lapped, the beach beckoned, and all there was to do was relax.  I hate relaxing.  It gives me the sweats.  And so, for the first time in years, I wrote.  I couldn’t stop.  Offered a Travel Writer gig by a friend with a budding online mag, I corrupted the content with musings about my sometimes shit life.  The column, that became a blog, that became a career, started here in the lap of boredom and suddenly, acutely, I knew what I had to do.  I had fought, and failed, to carve a different path from that of my mother.  To allow an ironic cliché, it must be in the genes.

Geelong Road, Footscray (28 and Brimming with Naïve Ambition)

Amongst the throng of bogans, immigrants, drug addicts and oh-so-intrepid hipsters, Tom and I felt strangely at home.  Distracted by our bubbling joie de vivre, we somehow managed to assemble a share house comprising a raging alcoholic, a pathological liar, and a tragically OCD hermit.  Our grog was stolen, our disbelief forced into perpetual suspension, our tether run dangerously short by paranoid accusations of Pyrex jug theft, but care, we did not.  Finally Going Somewhere, my writing was garnering a tentative reception, Tom’s dreams being realised in the cultivation of his hobby farm at Wang.  Here, as I people-watched and scribbled endless notes, we battled encroaching poverty and worked our (disappointingly lacklustre) bums off.  On the verge of frustration as I rounded the 2 year mark of striving for creative legitimacy, I was finally approached by a magazine, and then another, and another.  One night, as the alcoholic vomited violently in the room adjacent, I told Tom I was sick of the share house life.  He couldn’t have looked happier.

Stamps Lane, Wangaratta (29 and Embracing Domesticity)                         

Here we are, and I was wrong.  We will never escape the share house life.  But for all the fun we’ve had, I’ll take a dog, a kitten, and a harem of jubilant farm animals for housemates any day.

I did Weird Sex Stuff as a Kid, and Maybe, so did You

When I was a kid, I did weird sex stuff with other kids.  And, to the extent of my sneakily begotten and wildly inaccurate knowledge on the subject, I knew what I was doing.  When my two year old best friend ushered me into the nook between big and little side at crèche to show me her ‘girl doodle’, I was all too aware of the naughtiness of the revelation.  When, at 4, I plodded over on the reg to my next door neighbour’s house for a cubbyhouse session of ‘Doctors and Nurses’, and her mother drew the curtain to find me buried somewhere in between her lovely daughter’s thighs, I was red faced as a touring pom.  Because I had been to a doctor, and never had I seen them engage in such behaviour with their nurse.  My sister and I would play the ‘touching tongues’ game, laughing hysterically as we separated in a spray of spittle.  At Christmas one year my boy cousin and I were caught, butt naked and fawning over each other, in an oh-so-steamy bath.  I liked this cousin very much at the time.  And I liked it even more when we got nakie together.  I knew, he knew, we knew as kids, that we were doing the ‘sex stuff’.     

Do I have to say it?  This stuff is totally normal!  It’s an explorative stage of childhood, driven in equal parts by the desire to understand our bodies, to interpret the messages we are steadily absorbing from the adult world, and, shock(!), for pleasure.  Every single person I’ve gotten pissed enough with to brave the subject has spilt their own sexy can of beans, and psychologists have been telling us for decades that sexual exploration in kids is A-OK. 

So, why am I telling you this?  To relieve my own burden of gnawing guilt and come clean?  Maybe a bit.  But mostly, it’s an extremely cumbersome segue into my declaration of solidarity with Lena Dunham.  No matter your opinion on the Girls creator, the ‘child molester’ accusations being hurled her way by the right wing sleazeballs over at Truth Revolt are, as she puts it, fucking disgusting.  Since the furore blew up, there have been an opportunistic few in the corner of the publication.  I’ll choose to ignore them.  What’s been heartening to see is the out-pouring of support for the artist, most prominently from the newly minted Tumblr site Those Kind of Girls, which serves to normalise the sexy, touchy stuff we do as kids by providing a space for others to tell spill their stories.       

This is obviously awesome.  But it doesn’t go far enough.  Embedded within the context of the tales, a new problem is presented. 

Almost all of the contributors admit to ‘doing stuff’ as kids, but with a loud proviso.  It wasn’t sexual!  They didn’t have a clue what they were doing!  They were just kids, after all!  The implicit message is; it’s OK if you did it, but only if you did it in an innocent, rosy-cheeked way that conforms to our rigid standards on what a child should and shouldn’t be.  The inherent hypocrisy stems from setting out to assuage feelings of shame derived from childhood curiosity, while implicitly shaming those whose experience deviates from this culturally palatable norm.  Those who knew they were being sexy.  Those who enjoyed it.  Me.        

All this stuff hails from our pearl-clutching tendency as a society to anchor our morals on notions of what a child should be.  We’ve constructed anything but picture-book innocence as deviant, as perverted and weird.  Because we cannot stomach what professionals have been telling us for years, we pathologise what should be a normal part of the transition to adulthood.

Before my many drunken chats on the subject, I thought I was a fucking weirdo, too.  In my quieter moments I would reflect in shame on the time spent with my neighbour behind the fitted-sheet curtain.  Every single one of my convo-buddies has admitted to feeling the same.  But really, we got off lightly.  The fucking tragedy derives from the adults out there who haven’t had this cathartic opportunity, whose guilt has led to mental illness, and for what?        

I’m not bitching on the Tumblr site.  It’s doing a good thing.  But if we’re gonna talk, let’s really talk.  Not everyone has the luxury of drunk buddies to tell them it’s ok.    

The People of Melbourne all Hate Me

Earlier today I walked past an older lady on the street.  She was meandering along slowly, pushing her trolley, and appearing to be generally of sound mind and constitution.  A few steps after passing her I became suddenly incensed at my hair flying into my eyes.  I stopped, threw my head back to make a pony tail, and began sliding the elastic from my wrist into my hair.

 

It was at this point, head tossed back and staring in concentration at the sky, that I heard the muttering.  My headphones in, I thought nothing of it and continued. 

‘Excuse me!’  It was the lady.  She must have been trying to get my attention for a while, as by the time I turned around she was glaring at me, positively pissed.  I thought she would ask for money.  Instead she began to huff and puff before producing the following nugget:

‘Look, we’ve all got our problems, our worries.  We’ve all got our cross to bear.’  A regular footpath philosopher!  ‘And I don’t mean to disrespect you.  But,’ exasperation now oozing from her pours, ‘why did you DO that?’

I wasn’t aware I had done anything.  ‘Do what?’  I asked, feeling more curious than defensive. 

What followed was a bizarre sequence of facial twitches that could best be described as startled; confused; exhausted.  She sighed and instructed me to ‘Forget about it.’

But I didn’t want to forget about it!  I wanted to know what I had done to incite her impassioned plea.  ‘Can you just tell me what I did?’  I implored, leaning in close in case the answer was blasphemous. 

The lady would not say.  Drats! 

Since the exchange I have been methodically running over my actions immediately preceding the incident, and have come up with this:  Walked.  Walked.  Tied up hair.  The hair!  Was it the hair?  Was she personally offended by the shaved-ness of one side of my scalp?  It will haunt me!

I called Tom to request input.  What could it have been?

‘It’s just you!’  He offered emphatically.

This to you may seem insensitive, but you do not know the back story.  You see, for some reason, random people of Melbourne find my presence to be deeply angering.  For years, people have approached me on the street to inform me of what a shit I am.  Just last year I was accosted by a dishevelled woman who lambasted me for ‘taking it all’.  Why had I taken it all?  And left her NOTHING.  Ok, you’re thinking, but that woman was nuts. 

There is more.  At the pub once a man (sane but drunk) sat staring at me with such fury that our entire group decided to relocate.  On the way out (I had no choice but to file past him), he produced a seething tirade about my stupidity; ‘You think you’re smarter than me!  Well you’re fucking not you stupid whore!  I am so much smarter than you could ever dream of being!’ 

Ok. 

I was on the tram and it happened.  Leaving a restaurant.  At a pub once a man gave me a dirty look before intentionally sticking out his foot to try to trip me.  Not one of these times had I knowingly glanced, let alone made eye contact with, my haters. 

It’s happened so many times that Tom has become hyper-defensive.  If any random person so much as opens their mouth in my direction, he springs into action.  ‘Don’t even start!  Just leave her alone and sort your own issues out!’  This sounds far fetched but sadly it’s legit.

Tom’s belief is that people are intimidated by my intelligence.  Which is extremely flattering, but highly unlikely, as many of the people who’ve attacked me haven’t heard me speak, let alone corresponded with me sufficiently to establish that.  I honestly have no theory.  Aside from the wishy washy concept that people don’t like the way I look at them.  But surely bitchy resting face doesn’t warrant this level of vitriol?

So you can see why I was so keen to draw an explanation from the incensed older lady.  Why, cruel world?  Why do you taunt me so?    

Detective Dipshit

I watched a show on patterns the other day.  An affable British chap presented his viewers with various everyday scenarios, the point of which was to prove that we lofty humans are just like ants, or the planets, or whatever.  We may feel that we are agents of our own destinies, encountering and navigating a series of random occurrences every day.  But no.  Apparently, our seemingly random existence is made up of a rotating set of pre-determined patterns, as predictable, if you have the right algorithm, as the migrations of whales in winter. 

As mildly uncomfortable as this made me feel, I really had to give it to that English guy.  He was sooooo right.  It was one of those watershed moments.  Nothing I did was random!  Every decision I made was determined by a place in my brain labelled ‘What Katie does when X happens’.  I was trapped. 

If I was a brilliant mathematician, I would get to work figuring out my own algorithm in order to intentionally subvert it and then, then I would do something truly random!  What would it be!  I don’t know.  I don’t know what an algorithm is.  What I have instead done is spend the past week noticing more and more ‘shit that I always do’.  One of the things in the ‘shit that I always do’ box is this… 

Put my headphones in and walk to the local grocery store with Richard Stubbs in the Afternoon and the dog for company.  Tie dog up, reassuring her that I am not abandoning her forever more.  Dog doesn’t believe me.  Leave wining dog and enter said grocery store.  Proceed to magazine isle.  Leaf through one of those truly horrible Kim Kardashian mags for a few minutes, guilt ravaging my soul.  Put magazine down and begin shopping, working my way from the chocolate to the vegie sections, reciting in my head the contents of that night’s intended dinner because I haven’t made a list.  Pay.  Collect hysterically relieved dog.  Walk home.

Nothing ever changes.  Except the other day, when I was at the bit where I stare at the ‘bikini bods’ of celebs, some of whom have always ‘gone too far!’ while other, slightly less skinny ones are ‘embracing their curves!’; something did.

A determined looking woman approached me.  ‘Hello.’  She announced loudly.  ‘I’m the store detective.’  To prove she was indeed the store detective, she produced her detective’s badge, which she waved with gusto for some time in close proximity to my nose.  Did you know there are store detectives and they have badges, just like the police people they weren’t motivated enough to become?  Well, there’s one in Footscray, anyway.

My only thought was that I was being reprimanded for the vulgarity of my magazine choice, that they had planted those mags there as some sort of social experiment to see what cretins would be lured in. 

‘I’m going to have to ask you to put that magazine back.’  Demanded the power-drunk detective.

‘I don’t normally read that one.’  I said in feigned embarrassment as I slid the magazine back onto the rack.  ‘You were out of Vogue Living.’

She didn’t like my joke.  ‘I was watching you.’  She revealed, fired up now.  ‘You weren’t just leafing through to see if you wanted to buy it.  You were reading it.’

She was right.  I considered congratulating her on her fine detective skills.  I refrained.

‘If we let everybody just read the magazines in store,’ she spluttered, ‘then no-one would buy them, would they?’

I nodded, imagining the chaos if they let everybody just read the magazines in store.  Hordes of budget-conscious gossip addicts stopping up the isles, elbowing eachother out of the way while the lady at the checkout rued the day they changed the policy, her job now on the line due to plummeting ‘Famous’ sales. 

The woman had stopped and was glaring at me impatiently.  What did she want?  Remorse?

‘I didn’t know that was a thing.’  I said, picking up a shopping basket before she could unload anymore bottled-rage onto me.  I then began going through the motions of my regular shop.  But something was not right.  I found myself devoid of the concentration required to weigh up the various brands of beans.  I had been wronged. 

I couldn’t let it go.  Who did that woman think she was?  Apprehending good customers to get her kicks?  I wasn’t going to be a pawn in her imaginary moral crusade!  I would get my justice. 

I found the manager and was immediately relieved to see he was the sort of older white male that always seems to like me.  I put on my sweetest I-could-be-your-daughter-voice and invoked his protective instincts as I recounted the monstrous actions of his crazed store detective.  He apologized profusely, assured me he’d sort it out, and strode with purpose into the bowels of the store.   

Collecting the dog, who had befriended some other tethered pooch and was utterly indifferent to my arrival, I realised that life isn’t entirely predetermined.  No matter how concrete our rituals, there’s always some bloodthirsty ego-tripper waiting to throw a spanner in the works.  Ain’t life grand.

Belle and The Great Escape

I had a funny feeling as we left to do the weekly shop last Sunday.  ‘We should shut the front gates, too.’  I said to Tom, and went to hop back out of the car. 

‘Why?’  Was his reply.  ‘She can’t open the side gate.’ 

Recently there had been some conjecture over whether or not Belle, our dog, was able to open the side gate, as on several occasions we’d returned home to find it swinging in the breeze and our mutt sniffing around the nearby laneway.  ‘No, not I!’  The housemates had cried in chorus when questioned, and so we’d had to conclude that Belle, in her infinite wisdom, had deciphered how to jump repeatedly at the mechanism, forcing it after a time to spring open.

Our dog is not smart.  This was never a likely scenario.  A bashful housemate fessed up to me after some coaxing, and the gate-opening theory was dropped. 

Still.  I’d become paranoid about the side gate and against my better judgement, sat as Tom pulled away.  ‘We’ll only be gone a few minutes.’  He reminded me.

When we got home the dog was gone.  ‘Jenny!’  I screamed at my housemate.  ‘Where’s Belle?!  Who let her out?!’

Jenny had just arrived home and knew nothing.  ‘You go that way!’  I instructed Tom and we started up down opposite ends of the street.

For approximately half of one block, I managed to stave off the panic.  She will be in this laneway, I told myself as I neared her favourite sniffing-spot.  She was not.  I broke.

‘HEEEEEY!’  I shrieked at a couple of Bulldogs supporters sauntering down from the footy oval.  ‘Have you seen a black dog?!’

Obviously there was something particularly desperate about my appearance, because despite not having seen the pooch, the two seemed intent on being of assistance, each interrupting the other as they reeled off competing ideas on where a dog might be likely to go.

There was no time for politeness.  I left the old couple standing on the street corner squabbling.  As far as I know they’re still there, stuck in an infinite loop of old dog stories, vaguely aware of some purpose long since lost.

Wild eyed and dripping with sweat, I began a loop of the footy oval.  Repeatedly asking after the dog was demanding too much extra energy, and so I resorted to a process of dashing up to people, pleading stare glued to my face, in hope they’d already registered my incessant cries.  ‘No’, ‘No, ‘No’, came one reply after another, until people began waving me away on approach, a mix of apprehension and pity on their faces.  Keep going, running girl.  We can’t help you here. 

Finally, and just as I was about to give in to a full blown melt down, an annoyed looking man approached.  ‘Hey!  Your dog was here.’  I got the impression he was providing the information on the condition that I cease tearing around the oval.  Two bewildered children were huddled behind him.  ‘She went that way 10 minutes ago.’ 

A lead!  I gasped something at the exasperated man and ran off, my heart straining as I wheezed and coughed.  The people on the street adjacent having apparently been briefed on my imminent arrival, I was met with yet more waves and carry-ons.  I saw a black dog across the street.  It wasn’t Belle.  I felt I might throw up.

‘Hey!’  Another man.  ‘I saw her.  She was following some puppies up that way.’ 

‘HOW LONG AGO?’  My voice frightened even me. 

‘Not long,’ said the man, who seemed genuinely sympathetic, ‘maybe 5 minutes.’

I could make it.  All I knew at that moment was that if I ran fast enough, I could make it.  Adrenaline flooded my system and somehow, I broke into another sprint, my heart now seriously threatening to explode.  I ran.  And ran.  I had to stop.  I couldn’t go on.  I saw my dog. 

The silly mutt was happily trotting after a friendly German Shepard, its concerned owner dialling a number into her phone.  ‘BELLE!’  I screamed as tears began to flow.  Blissfully unaware, my dog ran over to hug and lick me.  The lady, looking almost as relieved as me, told me she’d been just about to call the council.  ‘She’s such a lovely girl.’  She mused.  ‘I’m so glad you found her.’

Intending to thank her, I instead could manage only a garbled, teary noise.  She got the idea.

I have no idea the extent to which Belle comprehended what had happened.  I do know that on the way home, she trotted beside me at my exact pace, not pulling or sniffing once.  Like returning war heroes, we were waved at and applauded by those who’d become involved in the incident.  ‘Lucky dog!’  A few of them yelled.  Indeed.  

             

Bogan Reporter

On Sunday I found myself, wide eyed and bewildered, on the first of what I hope will be many fine journalistic deployments for a Melbourne magazine.  It was a hoot, but prepared, I was not.

You see, I’d spent the better part of the morning loitering aimlessly around Footscray, occasionally peering listlessly into some shop or another, wondering if I should go in.  My back had been giving me such hell that I’d thrown the towel in and elected to take a valium, despite it being the middle of the day.  The directionless meandering appeared to be some sort of side effect, and so, at the moment the phone buzzed me back to consciousness, I was pressed awkwardly against a glass window separating me from a delicious looking fruit flan.

It was the magazine.  Life is cruel.

The editor needed someone urgently to cover a film fest in the city.  By the time I noticed the alert, there was precisely one hour to go till lift off.

I couldn’t think.  I tried desperately to gather a list of pros and cons for analysis, but all I could come up with was this:  Do I have time to have a shower!?  I’ve never really been honest with myself about how long I spend in the shower, so I don’t know!!  I just don’t know!!

These thoughts were not helping.  Time was running thin.  And so, lacking the mental faculties required to make an informed choice, I figured my only option was to go.  I couldn’t risk living with regrets.

I ran home.  My legs felt heavy and like they were not made for running.  Inside, I accosted Tom with my armpit. 

‘DO I SMELL?’

Tom flinched.  ‘Um, maybe a little.’ 

‘FUCK IT!  Quick!  Lay out some edgy looking clothes for me!  I’m going to cover a festival!’

Tom looked very confused but elected not to question me.  I got in the shower and tried hard to hold my face directly under the flow the entire time, in an effort to blast away the latent effects of the pill.  Once out, I asked Tom if he thought it was a good idea to rush into the city and meet my new editor for the first time unprepared and on valium.  He said yes so we jumped in the car.

At the venue, I ran into my editor.  As in, we physically collided, apologised to eachother, then in a moment of recognition/horror, realised who one-another were.  As we said hello, it suddenly occurred to me that this was a terrible idea, that my editor had obviously intended for an experienced journalist to answer the call-out, and not some doped-up-too-keen-wannabe who clearly lacked the analytical skill to have garnered that fact in the first place.

Too late.  He was lovely and gracious and explained that ‘I don’t really know anything about this thing either,’ and in we went. 

The auditorium was big and shiny and buzzing with young arty types.  I began a process of looking at something, then quickly swinging my vision around to focus on something else, in an effort to discern if the valium was still affecting me.  A girl with orange hair looked at me as if I was mad.  This caused me to realise that my repeated head swinging was probably too obvious a test.  I desisted. 

The first video was in an Eastern European language and it was at this point that it occurred to me that I had been too busy drug-testing to think about what I should be doing.  The video was passing my by!  Should I be taking notes?  I decided yes.  But on what?  The general ambiance or the content of the film?  I wanted to pose all these questions to my editor, who was sitting and laughing at the appropriate times and looking decidedly not-confused.  But I wasn’t sure if any of them were professional enough.  So I scrawled random notes and chortled as convincingly as possible at the Romanian guy.

After what felt like 5 minutes but was actually an hour, my editor explained that he had to go and he would speak to me tomorrow.  And with that, I was on my own.  Just as I was beginning to relax, someone tapped me on the shoulder. 

‘Yes?’  I said to the neatly dressed girl with a clipboard.  I half expected to be kicked out.

‘Hi.’  She sounded very astute.  ‘Katie, right?’

Eeek.  ‘Yep.’

‘I’m Sarah.  Just confirming that you’re planning to stay and cover the awards at 7?’

I had no idea what she was talking about.  ‘Of course!’  I beamed, and she seemed satisfied with this response.

And so the end came and I was turfed out, with hours to go till the fabled awards and only a notebook full of frantic scrawl for company.  I figured I had a choice.  I could begin the process of stressing needlessly over what to record/ what direction the article should take/ whether I was even good enough to write it, or I could go to the restaurant and get a little bit drunk.  I elected to do the later.

By the time I returned for the awards, I was full of merriment and anticipation and cheered along with best of them as the hosts warbled out their show tunes.  I clapped, I laughed, I note-took.  I felt very reporter-like.  During an intermission Sarah approached once more, dropped off her email and bade me farewell.  But the paranoid part of me couldn’t help but notice her reserve.  Had I done something wrong?  I racked my brains, and was just about to dismiss the thought as ridiculous when my hand happened to brush against my head wear.  My beany!  I had left my bloody Collingwood beany on!  As the gravity of my faux pas set in, I wondered if Sarah would report back to the mag.  ‘That newbie reporter you sent,’ she would say in the smuggest of smuggery, ‘wore a novelty beany to the awards show!  Hardly the sort of person you want representing your fine publication!’  And they would laugh and laugh and I would be fired and cast from the industry like the dirty bogan Collingwood supporter I truly am.                       

I took the hat off.  I had hat head.  Then the night was over.

I’m yet to find out if Sarah chose to reveal my true identity to the magazine.  I can only hope she’s not a Carlton supporter.    

On Mental Illness

 

I met up with a friend the other day that I hadn’t seen in a very long time.  We were mates in primary school, and since then she’s gone on to get a well paying office job and a lovely, professional boyfriend.  From what I could ascertain from my brief troll of her Facebook, she was living an awesome, successful life.  So I was pretty apprehensive in the lead up to our lunch- what would she think of my career choice?  Would she look down on me for having spent so much of the last five years bumming around and trying to figure out what to do with myself?  Should I embellish a bit to make myself sound more… like her?

In the end I decided against it.  I’m a shithouse liar and would probably have ended up tying myself in knots, anxiety niggling at me as I analysed the convincingness of my creative additions.  I told her the truth, as we sipped our lattes, and of course, she was encouraging and gracious as ever.  As she marvelled at how generous our country is to support its young creatives through grants, I must admit a hint of jealousy crept into my thoughts.  This woman was not only successful, she was unfailingly put-together.  To me, she had the perfect life.

So when eventually she confided that she’d experienced difficulties with her mental health, I was thrown.  I suppose I’d already put her up on a pedestal.  Finally, I’d been thinking, I’ve found someone who hasn’t struggled through their 20’s!

Is it possible that every single one of us has at some point experienced a mental health disorder?  Whether it’s anxiety, depression, or bipolar, I don’t know a single person who has been let off scott free.  Life is tough.  It gets too much sometimes.  And yet, apart from the odd intimate conversation, we don’t talk about it.  Of course we’ve come a long way, but the accepted wisdom still seems to be that mental illness is a relatively uncommon problem. 

I know so many people who have struggled for years before finally realising that they have a clinical illness; that they need to be treated.  For the most part, once they have sought help, their lives have significantly improved.  I am one of these people.  I denied the gravity of my ‘stress’ for years, labouring under the weight of anxiety day after day until I cracked.  If we talked about it more, if we acknowledged that this is something that happens to nearly everyone at some point, we would be in a better position to recognise it when it happens to us, rather than explaining it away until we’re almost at breaking point. 

In theory, we don’t stigmatise mental illness like they did in the old days.  We have awareness campaigns, education in schools, and famous role models.  This is all fantastic.  But day to day, at work, at uni, we are still under an enormous amount of pressure to be ‘happy’.  It’s not really the done thing to admit in everyday chit chat that we cried into our pillows last night, unable to let go of the sadness we’ve held onto since our grandmother died a year ago.  We don’t tell each other that we’re not just ‘stressed’ over study, we’re tied up in knots of worry so pervasive and complex they are consuming our every thought.  The implicit message, for better or worse, is that there’s something slightly wrong with you if you’re not sparkly and content.  Even if we’re not saying it out loud, the daily pressure to be happy means that there is still a degree of shame surrounding mental illness.  My attitude toward my friend, that she was not the ‘success’ I’d assumed her to be due to her experience with mental ill- health, was simply reproducing the incorrect notion that to have a mental illness is somehow to ‘fail’.

It’s not exactly an environment conducive to recognizing mental illness.  We spend so much time faking it that often we fail to understand or accept that we need help.  In my case, I held the misguided belief that there would be a really obvious ‘episode’ or warning sign, that someone would hold a big ugly placard in front of my head blaring ‘YOU HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER’.  For most of us, it creeps up slowly, and our misconceptions on the issue mean we’re not adequately prepared to respond to the signs.  Then, when we finally do accept that we have an illness, we cover it up and discuss it only in the most intimate of circumstances.  We participate in the culture of shame. 

But it’s not shameful to have a mental illness, and it’s not at all uncommon.  We can claim to understand this all we like, but the only way we are really going to believe it is if we lift the lid and start talking.  To talk about it would be to normalise it – to break down the ridiculous expectation that we should always be content.       

Next time I meet up with an old friend, I am not going to omit the fact that I suffer from anxiety.  I am going to challenge the voice in my own mind that tells me I am less of a success because of it.  Wouldn’t it be great if we thought of mental illness in the same way we do physical- we all expect to fall ill from time to time, but we also expect to be able to talk about it, to treat it, and to receive unconditional understanding from everyone around us, not just our closest confidants.    

Lentils and the Vacuum Cleaner Attacker

The weapon in question

Hi everyone!  I’m back from a few weeks of camping in the Blue Mountains with my Dad.  It was magic, especially the Jenolan Caves.  I felt very peaceful traipsing around in the semi darkness. 

Anyway, nice to be back, here’s today’s blog.

The cultural hub of Footscray is Lentil as Anything.  It’s not as upmarket as the city ones, instead functioning as a sort of community center, forever heaving under the weight of the jostling, jovial locals.  Here, old Greek guys shout at eachother over their lattes, newly arrived Sudanese refugees observe politely from the corner table, and the bogans of the West convene to discuss what the fuck is up with Dave, coz he’s been acting like a fuckin’ cunt lately. 

At first I felt a bit intimidated by it all, like it was a noisy, chaotic club I didn’t have the password for.  Everyone there behaves as if they’re in their own private lounge room.  Despite my apprehensions, I took a deep breath one day and entered the fray, notebook in hand.

Scrawling away, I was just beginning to relax when I noticed a hand scratching at the surface of my table.  I lifted my gaze and jumped.  Standing in front of me, sort of swaying back and forth as if he might collapse at any second, was a rather disheveled man.  His eyes were trained in my direction but he clearly didn’t see me, lost in some hazy, swaying dream world.  I told myself he wasn’t a threat and just to ignore him.  But the scratchy-hand advanced further and further toward me, the sways now bumping my table in a sort of rhythmic- heroin- dance.  Bump.  Bump.  Bump.  I began to panic.  What on earth was the appropriate thing to do?  I racked my brain, and just when the space cadet was about to sway his way into my lap, a lanky, smiling guy sat down next to me.

‘Hey dude!’  Yelled lanky man at the intruder.

Mr Spacey’s eyes flung open and he beamed in silent shock at his surroundings.

‘What are you doing?’  Questioned smiles.

‘Ummmmmm….’  Spacey did not know what he was doing.  

Smiley suggested he go do whatever it was somewhere else, and apparently quite happy with this idea, the table scratcher was gone from whence he came.

Part of me felt like throwing my arms around this, admittedly also quite disheveled, man and professing my admiration.  But I refrained, instead offering a thankyou and asking him if he knew that guy.

‘Nah, but he looked like he was pretty out of it to me.’  

Yes, yes he did.  Obligatory chit chat ensued, and if you read this blog, you know how much I looove obligatory chit chat.  I went for a code breaker and asked him about his wrist, which he had been rubbing as if in pain.  What followed was the sort of talking someone does when they have been dying to talk for years, but no-one has bothered to invite them to.  I didn’t mind.  I listened to his list of injuries, and to how he used to be a carpenter but couldn’t work anymore, and to how he was planning to smoke some ice tonight because he just wanted to escape and not have to think for a while.  I felt bad for him and when I eventually managed to remove myself from the conversation, I really hoped that things for my rescuer would work out.

I didn’t realise what I’d started.  

The next time I went to Lentils he happily spotted me and came over for another chat.  About two thirds of the way through my latte, one of the staff rushed over and positioned his face right next to Sam’s.  

‘You better leave,’ the waiter breathed angrily, ‘Right. Fucking. Now.’

Sam immediately launched into a stream of defenses; ‘I’m innocent!  It was that motherfucker who punched me!’  

The waiter stood firm and said he would call the cops, at which point Sam stood up, walked into the kitchen and started ranting to the staff about being wrongly accused.  Unsurprisingly, they were shocked dumb and stood there, at a loss.  Sam continued his tirade, now walking round the café and trying to drum up support for his cause.  He approached one of the Sudanese girls; ‘Sara!  You know I didn’t do anything wrong!  That guy was feeding his dog from the human plates!  From the human plates, Sara!’

Sara’s lack of support was the final straw, and the enraged Sam finally stormed out.  

‘Don’t come back!’  Screamed the waiter as he locked the door.  ‘You’re banned!’

What had just happened?  I needed to know!  But I couldn’t work out if it was appropriate to ask.  Fuck it, I thought after some consideration, and walked up to the waiter who’d done the dirty work.

‘What happened?’  I asked.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not really, he just talks to me when I come in.’

‘Uh, ok.  He’s a regular so we’ll put up with a certain level of bullshit, but lately he’s been really bad.  The other day he came in with a weapon, and went and threatened this dude out the front with it.  If I hadn’t have stepped in he would have used it.’

That didn’t sound good.  ‘What was the weapon?’  I inquired.

‘A vacuum cleaner head.’  

I had to stifle a giggle.  ‘Like, the end of the tube thing that comes out of the vacuum cleaner?’

‘Yeah, that.’        

Confused, I thanked the waiter for his bravery and walked out.  I guess my friend really is disturbed, I thought.

Ok, so that should have been that.  But now I have a little problem.  Every time this guy sees me, he comes right over, happy as Larry, sits next to me and starts chatting away.  To be honest I don’t harbour any fear that he’s gonna use his vacuum on me, but it’s really tedious.  I don’t know how to get him to go away.  And he's one of those people who are completely immune to normal 'winding up the conversation' cues, like saying, 'Well, it's been really nice chatting to you but I should really get back to...'

'And then this dude started being the biggest dick, blah blah blah...'

Even if I’m working, he just sits down and talks over the top of my computer.  Usually I have to excuse myself and physically leave in order to exit the situation.  

So now when I walk in somewhere I have to, like, scan around and make sure it’s all clear.  I've taken to working in really obscure Asian cafes in the hope he won't find me there.  

Just another story from the heart of Footscrazy.           

A Saucy Story: Attack at the pastry party

I was struck down last week by that lame half-cold thingy that’s going around.  It didn’t hit nearly hard enough to justify laying on the couch and moaning about life’s injustices, instead just mushing up the contents of my brain and rendering a week-long series of what political observers call ‘gaffes'.

Despite my handicap, I elected to go to a friend’s party on the Saturday night, feeling like ‘temporary stupidity’, wasn’t a good enough reason not to.  The thing about me and parties is, as I’ve gotten older and less cocksure I’ve developed a pervasive and often disruptive fear of ‘the walk in’.  I always feel like I’m going to forget the name of a good friend, or fail to recognize anyone I know, forcing that awkward, standing-around-panning-the-middle-distance-as-anxiety-rises-by-the-second kind of scenario.  The whole thing is rendered a million times worse if it’s dark, because then you’re forced to peer into an indiscriminate cluster of loud drunk people, trying to pick out which loud drunk people are your friends.

Hence the hesitancy to go in my compromised state.  And of course, my fear ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, because upon walking up to the door I was faced with a big fat sign reading; ‘go around the side please!’  I sighed and proceeded toward the noisy, chattering back yard.  Staring into the darkness, I cursed loudly as I noticed the costumes.  Great!  Now not only was I that girl who didn’t dress up, I couldn’t for the life of me make out who anyone was.  Feeling alternately panicked and sorry for myself, I lumbered around awkwardly until Jim, the birthday boy, saved me from myself.  

‘Hey, you!’  He beamed.

‘Oh hi!’  I noticed a large cardboard structure around his neck and pawed at it clumsily.  ‘Is this a camera?’

Now it was Jim’s turn to look sorry for me.  ‘It’s Star Trek!  The theme, Katie!’

‘Oh.’  I had nothing.

Cursing my stupid brain for forgetting the theme and proceeding to make that fact glaringly obvious to the person whose idea the theme was, I made an excuse and ran inside to where there could be no more darkness-induced incidents.  There, I hid in the corner eating chips and attempting to compose myself.  Just when I figured I was about to hit that critical mass whereupon lone-chip-eating becomes loner-eating-chips, I spied another un-costumed guy wandering around aimlessly.  Noticing me, he swanned over.

‘So, what’s your excuse?’

‘I’m sick.’  I said, immediately realising I should have thought of a better line.  He seemed unimpressed, and this set the general tone of our discussion.  It was one of those conversations that you’re only engaging in because the other option is to stand there alone.  Both of us keenly aware of this fact, there seemed to be this sort of mutual resentment developing, because we were both mildly shitty that we even had to be talking to eachother in the first place.

 

‘Do you like running?’  I asked at one point.

‘Running?’  He replied with a smirk.  ‘Are you kidding me?’ 

I can’t stand those types of responses.  It’s not that I give a shit about your feelings toward exercise, it’s because if you say something like that, it completely shuts down that line of conversation, forcing me to labour to come up with an entirely new thread of acceptable discourse, when I don’t know you and the options are limited as it is.  Anyway. 

It was into this setting that Caitlin emerged from being hidden under a cape all night and announced that she was plating up some homemade vegie sausage rolls.  Both loner boy and I perked up at this news, making a B line for aforementioned pastries.  A couple of bites in, I noticed my unlikely buddy was indulging in some seriously smushy double dipping action.  Seeing an opportunity for a playful dig, I swooped in.

‘I saw you double dip.’  I whispered in faux-disciplinarian voice.

‘What?’  He yelled, apparently having suddenly gone deaf.

‘I saw you double dip!’  I repeated, with emphasis I had not originally intended on including. 

The look he gave me caused me to check I hadn’t accidentally told him his mother was a whore.  He was silent, staring sharp daggers at me.

Concerned, I attempted to back-peddle.  ‘I didn’t mean to….’

Too late.  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’  He yelled.  ‘You need to chill out!’ 

This would have been quite enough reproachfulness, and I was just about to open my mouth to explain when he beat me to it.

‘What is your fucking problem?’  At this point his eyes became possessed by some sort of double dipping demon, and he extended his hand, tore my veggie sausage roll from my grasp, and proceeded to smash it, saliva side down, into the sauce bowl.  He smeared it around until it was a complete mess, then, staring mockingly into my face, shoved it back into my hand.

I was in utter shock.  I looked back at him, at a loss, before whispering quietly ‘It was just a joke.’

His expression turned quickly from incredulous disbelief to mortification.  ‘Oh, um, I guess I should be the one to chill out.’  He said, sheepish.  But the damage had been done.

There was a time when I would have laid into a meany like this, but all I could feel was a weak sense of injustice.  I turned around, wondering what I had done to cause him to develop so much hatred for me so quickly, and walked off.

I’m becoming such a pussy as I get older.  In the past I would have exploded and then felt a bit guilty afterwards.  Lately, I’m becoming familiar with that you-done-me-wrong feeling, because I don’t pipe up the way I used to.  I’m not sure why, exactly.  I think it might just be that brainless confidence of youth waring off.  I guess I just need to accept that I shouldn’t go out unless I’m feeling 100%.  And if you’re reading this, tomato sauce boy, fuck you.     

PS.  Yes I did still eat the sausage roll.  It was lovingly made and I was really hungry.  Obviously I would have preferred less sauce.