For as long as I can remember, the feedback I have received from society about my looks has been that I do not align with conventional standards of beauty. Essentially, I’m ugly. It used to really upset me, but it doesn’t anymore. I know it probably sounds like I have very low self-esteem, but it’s not that—I just have a realistic view about who I am and how I look.
At the moment, I look terrible. I am very overweight from some health issues I had quite some time ago. I haven’t been able to drop the weight, and if you combine that with my already unpleasant looks, I look hideous. But if you can get past the exterior, I’m okay. I am a curious, nice, flawed but normal woman.
I outlined all of that because, whilst I am okay with it now, when I was younger, I faced rejection from the world on so many levels, and I was desperate to be loved. I sometimes wonder if I cultivated my unique personality as a diversion from the very deep pain I felt about always being considered fat or ugly.
My first real bout of male attention came when I moved to Alice Springs. As I’ve mentioned before, I was living with butchers, chefs, and all sorts of men at my college dorm-style accommodation, Gillen House. Being the only young woman permanently living there, I got a lot of male attention. It was strange how I had gone from almost nothing back home to being very popular with men in the Alice.
I didn’t get a big head about it; on the contrary, it felt very unusual to me. But while I was there, I didn’t take any drastic measures to be loved. I more withdrew and withheld myself because I was too shy. If you met me, you wouldn’t think that I was shy in that regard, but I was, and I still am.
When I returned from Adelaide, there was a shift in me, and I became pathetic in a way.
Fast forward a few years to just before my 21st birthday. I was working at a large Indigenous organisation on reception. At the centre, there was a boxing gym, and a lot of boxers would make their way up the stairs every day.
I got to know this one boxer, Gerhard, quite well, and eventually, he asked for my number. He was so tall—he was 6 foot 6, and he was absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t believe he liked me.
I went through a number of feelings of inadequacy, but he seemed to genuinely like me. In saying that, he took a long time to call me, and when he did, it was the week before my 21st birthday.
I didn’t want to have a 21st birthday party—mainly because I didn’t really have any friends. I know that might sound like I’m harping on with a sorry tale, but it’s true.
I had been to eight schools, I hadn’t been to uni yet, and I’d been temping around, making friends but then leaving the workplace when the contract ended. Everyone I had known was really on a transient level.
The year prior, I had just been to business college, and I had made a group of friends there, but apart from two other girls I was friends with from school, there was no one. I also didn’t have a best friend to make a speech.
But Mum was relentless about me having a 21st birthday party, and I eventually agreed on a sit-down dinner at what was then the Radisson Playford Hotel.
Mum and Dad invited some of their friends, my large extended family were invited, Nanny, her bastard of a husband, and her grandchildren, my friends from business college, and then the odd family friend. I would say there were around 70 people there.
It was quite a formal affair, but it was weird. I think the girls from business college thought they would be part of a larger group of my other friends, not realising that they were my only friends.
And my Dad made the speech, which I love him for, but it wasn’t funny or knowing—it was awkward. I remember him talking about how when I was a child I tried horse riding and I had cried. No one laughed or anything, but that’s the thing I loved about my Dad—he did not care about any of that.
He was proud of me at 21—things changed as the years went on, though.
The Advertiser came, and the photographer was a girl I used to go to primary school with, and we actually became very good friends after that night.
By the time the invitations were sent out and arrangements were made, it was too late for me to invite Gerhard to my party. It would have made the night even weirder if I had invited him because he wasn’t my boyfriend, and we barely knew each other.
But we did arrange to meet after the party. After the dinner wound up, Gerhard came and picked me up, and I left my own 21st birthday party. Everyone else stayed on drinking, but I was gone.
In retrospect, I still can’t believe I did that. It’s funny—I sometimes feel like that is something I can correct, even 23 years on. But I really wanted him to like me, and he wanted to see me that night.
We drove down to the beach, sat on the sand, and he held me while we talked for hours. I felt very safe with him because he was so tall and a competition boxer, but we didn’t kiss that night. In fact, we never kissed.
He picked me up a few times after that from home, and we went for drives and talked, but every time he did, I was almost blind drunk because I was so nervous about seeing him. I’m ashamed.
He then told me I was not the person who he thought I was, and in retrospect, I completely understand that. I was behaving like a drunk.
Gerhard the boxer went to the Olympics about ten years ago. He was on the news and in the paper a few times. I’ve also seen him around, and we always stop for a chat, but I really wish I had of had the confidence to just be myself.
I was 21 years old, and after Gerhard, I had a fling with my friend’s 17-year-old younger brother. He was young but very mature. He drank, took drugs, smoked—actually, those things probably don’t demonstrate maturity, but he did very adult things. He was in a hip-hop group and was also physically mature.
Again, I really liked him, and after we had slept together about four times, I asked him if he liked me, and he said, "I'm 17, you're 21, it's an achievement for me to be with you. It's just about sex for me."
I ended it then.
I had a number of little flings like that and a couple of relationships, mostly in my twenties. I was also involved with two men in my early thirties, but it has now been 12 years since I’ve been with a man.
I don’t want to tell people that. It’s the sort of thing that raises eyebrows. People would say, "There’s something not quite right about that woman," and they would be right to say that.
I didn’t actively look for a man, but then I think if someone had come along, I would have welcomed it. I can honestly say I really don’t want someone now, but there is something happening to my body.
I am not sure if I am at the beginnings of perimenopause, but my sexual appetite has increased to fever pitch. I can’t stop thinking about it. My body is also physically responding, and it’s making me think that in five years or so, I won’t be capable of this kind of desire. I won’t want a man at all.
