Wall Of Sexy Men

It’s 3:06am on Sunday, 15 February, and I can’t sleep. It’s not the normal, everyday insomnia I’ve been suffering from for years; this is hardcore, sick-to-the-bone, worry-soaked sleep deprivation. But I’m not going to go into that. I need a distraction. So I’ll tell you about how, over the period of a week or so, my thinking significantly shifted.

I’ve mentioned in this blog that I am creating some artwork for SALA this August, and it will be made up of coffins. Each coffin will represent one Aboriginal person who has died in custody since the Royal Commission in 1991. I have had 1,000 coffins manufactured in China, and I am waiting for them to arrive. One thousand Aboriginal people haven’t died in custody, I am waiting on the exact numbers, but I think it is just over 600. I got the extras just in case.

I had a sample coffin sent out to me from China; you can see it below. To give you an idea of its size, its internal dimensions are 7.5 × 4.5 × 2 cm.

I told my brother what I was doing, and he sent me the following message:

Out of curiosity, how many people in total have died in prisons since then? And what percentage of the prison population are Aboriginal people? Do they make up a disproportionate number of deaths compared to the prison population rate?

I responded with this:

Yes they make a disproportionate number of deaths. That's why there is a thing about it.

To which he responded:

Whilst I see the point you are getting at. I think you could be focussing on the wrong thing.Indigenous people make up circa 3.8% of the population. However, when it comes to the deaths in custody rate Indigenous people make up 37% of the prisoners but only 29% of the deaths. Non-Indigenous people make up 63% of the prisoners but 71% of the deaths. The real figure driving it is the disproportionate rate of imprisonment, deaths align with the rate of imprisonment. Thats what the stats say in any case.

I wanted to cut it short, so I simply said:

I'm going to stick with it anyway. Wyd?

The next day, I sent him this message:

I understand what you were saying yesterday about the stats but the reality is if you’re going to send more Aboriginal people to prison, more of them will die. Is that what you are trying to say?

And he responded:

Not really. That logic means you send anyone to prison you are more likely to die. The real issue is that Aboriginal people at being jailed at a disproportionate rate, deaths in custody are actually 2% lower than the rest of the prison population. Hence why so many in there is the actual issue.

Then I said:

Prison increases the risk of death for anyone. Aboriginal people are sent to prison much more often, so more Aboriginal people die in custody.

When authorities choose prison instead of available alternatives, they knowingly expose people to a higher risk of harm and death.

Then he said:

Why are you trying to argue with me?

I don't want to argue

So I replied:

Oh no, I’m not trying to argue with you. Sorry if it appears that way.

He finished the conversation by saying:

I'm done with this topic

He god damn started it!! I wasn’t trying to argue with him; I was trying to have a reasonable exchange of ideas, but he just shut me down. That literally infuriated me. He tells me my heart is in the right place in relation to Palestine, but that I am wrong. Then he calls me up and tells me to start some ridiculous origami art business. How little respect does the man actually have for me? And what did I do to deserve that?

Last weekend I went to visit my friend Mariah. We first dropped her step-son and his friend off at an engagement party at Waterloo Corner, out Salisbury way. From memory, one of the bodies from the Snowtown Murders was found somewhere around Waterloo Corner.

On the way back, Mariah and I got talking. First we talked about Palestine, and I told her I was waiting to get a ticket to see Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian-Australian author, academic, and commentator who was scheduled to speak at the now-cancelled Adelaide Writers’ Week. Her invitation to speak was revoked, which caused the cancellation of Writers’ Week, but she is now speaking at the alternative event, Constellations.

Mariah started saying how much she hates Dr Abdel-Fattah. I sort of bit back at first, but then I thought there was no point because I couldn’t win that battle.

We then moved onto colonialism, but what really got me was when we started talking about refugees and asylum seekers. She was saying how we need to help Australians and not let refugees or asylum seekers into the country, and my argument was that yes, we need to help Australians in need, but that doesn’t mean we should turn our backs on our international responsibilities and indeed international law.

I then went on to say that it is not illegal to seek asylum, and that globally Australia’s border security is considered cruel and inhumane. She raised her voice at me and we got into a genuinely heated discussion about it.

She talked about how she liked Pauline Hanson and how her whole family will be voting One Nation at the upcoming state election.

We got back to her place and, before we watched Frankenstein, she told me that everyone who marches at a pro-Palestine rally supports Hamas. She said she hated Albo because he once marched at a pro-Palestine rally.

She knows that I regularly go to those rallies and that I had one coming up on Monday night. I told her that not everyone who goes supports Hamas, but she wouldn’t listen.

Mariah is unbelievably smart. She knows everything about everything and is very up to date with current affairs. I was surprised she was talking like this. She spoke loudly, aggressively, and dismissed what I was saying.

We’ve been friends for five years, and it was the first time we have had such a colourful discussion. I didn’t like it one bit.

Then came the rally. On Monday night, the South Australian pro-Palestine community held a rally on the steps of Parliament House and then marched to Hindmarsh Square to protest the Australian visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. I went along and, below, you can see a photo I took of the crowd gathering on the steps of Parliament House.

It is now 1:33pm, still Sunday, 15 February. I fell asleep at some point this morning. I woke up at around 6:30am for my volunteer shift at 7:30am, and then I fell back asleep until now. This erratic sleep is nothing but a luxury at the moment because, when uni goes back in just over a week, I can’t muck around anymore.

Anyway, there were around 500 people at the rally. I looked around and took some photos of the signs people were holding up.

Then I saw this sign of Albo, and it really set the tone for an event that pushed a very anti-Labor agenda.

Once the speakers started, they ripped into Albo, Mali, and Labor in general for, first of all, facilitating Herzog’s Australian visit and for Mali’s handling of Adelaide Writers’ Week, which rescinded the invitation for Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian-Australian author, academic, and commentator, to speak.

I can understand where they were coming from, but I didn’t like it. Out of the two major parties, it is the Labor Party that recognised Palestinian statehood and is more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in general. I intend to join the Labor Party and commit to it, and as I stood there, I found myself fiercely objecting to the words coming out of the speakers’ mouths.

I also looked over at the SA Labor Friends of Palestine, and the guys holding up the sign were nodding in response to the vitriol being put out into the universe about Albo and Mali. I don’t understand why they were nodding. It all seemed a little bit hypocritical to me. You can still support Palestine without supporting every hateful thing being said about the party that brought you there.

There was so much hate in general — hate towards Labor, hate towards Israel. I could feel it seeping through my skin into the core of my being. Further fuelling the hatred was pro-Palestine activist and SA Socialists member Ahmed Azhar, who is running as an independent candidate in Mali’s seat of Croydon in the upcoming state election. You can see Ahmed below.

He had a lot to say about Mali, but to me he used his entire speech as a political platform for his election campaign. After the speakers were done, we marched from Parliament House to Hindmarsh Square. As we marched, people beat on their handmade drums made from buckets turned upside down. People chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Free, free Palestine,” and a whole lot of other familiar, catchy phrases.

Every beat of the drum, every sound of a chant grated on me. It annoys me when people criticise “From the river to the sea” based on the fact that they think it’s genocidal in intent. It really gets to me because even if it is genocidal in intent, Israel is committing an actual genocide against the Palestinians, and those same people who criticise the chant don’t seem to have a lot to say about that.

But as people were yelling it out on the road to Hindmarsh Square, I questioned why they were saying it at all. Were they being deliberately antagonistic and hateful?

I took these two photos during the march; you can see them below.

When I got home on Monday night, I checked The Advertiser online and saw that they had published an article about the rally, basically saying that they asked participants what “from the river to the sea” actually means and then reported that the protesters were unable to give a definitive answer.

This really annoyed me because I saw hypocrisy in it. While protesters were being questioned over a chant, far more explicit genocidal words had been spoken by the President of Israel himself, Isaac Herzog. So on Tuesday, I wrote a letter to the editor about the rally.

To the Editor,

Coverage of Monday night’s rally at Parliament House and the subsequent march to Hindmarsh Square — held to protest the Australian visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog — focused heavily on the chant “from the river to the sea”, with particular emphasis on protesters allegedly refusing to define its meaning. The phrase is often treated as having a single, fixed meaning, yet it is understood and used in different ways by different people. Language matters. But if we are going to be serious about the power of words, that seriousness must be applied consistently.

In the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, President Herzog stated: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true.” These words were spoken by a head of state during an active military campaign that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

If protest chants are to be scrutinised for their meaning and potential impact, then so too should statements by political leaders that appear to assign collective responsibility to an entire population of people. International legal bodies have long recognised that language which erases the distinction between civilians and combatants is not neutral — it shapes public consent for collective punishment.

Public debate has increasingly collapsed pro-Palestinian advocacy into support for Hamas, as though protest can only be motivated by sympathy for terrorism. I proudly marched on Monday night and I will march every time, because to me civilian lives matter, international law matters, and words spoken by those in power matter.

Yours sincerely,

Me

They didn’t publish the letter. I didn’t think they would, but it was worth a try. You know I wrote about how proud I was to march on Monday night and then went on to say that I will march every time. I was, and I will, but there was so much hate, and after my experience with my brother and my friend Mariah aggressively coming at me for my opinions, or for having a differing point of view, it got me thinking.

I remember how my brother once told me that he wanted to live on an island with his family and all the do-gooders could live somewhere else, and he could focus on his family and their immediate needs and not worry about all the other stuff. I now think I understand what he means.

I believe in speaking out against injustice, but this shift in my thinking has got me to the point where I wonder: is it worth it? Is it worth having my brother constantly patronising me simply because he doesn’t like to be challenged? Is it worth having my friend Mariah attack me like I’m some sort of common criminal, all because she doesn’t have an open mind to see the other point of view? Is it worth being smack bang in the middle of a cesspool of pure hatred to stick up for the Palestinians, who themselves are met with the same hate that lives among their supporters?

I don’t want this. I don’t want this for my life. I’m going to go to the marches. I am going to make my Aboriginal deaths in custody art exhibition, but I think that has to be it. I seek peace and gentleness.

This shift in thinking has extended even to my desire to travel. For so long now I have wanted to travel to Europe. I am conscious of the fact that I would need to travel business class because of my flaw, and also I think, as a woman travelling alone, it’s good to fly business. So I would need to have a lot of money just for the airfares. Then there’s the accommodation and all the other costs involved in travelling around Europe. I came to realise that I will literally never be able to afford to do it in my lifetime.

The other place I had my heart set on seeing was Egypt. But after I started thinking about the peace I crave in relation to the issues I focus my attention on, I thought: what if I completely ditched the idea of travelling at all? What if I was okay with where I have been and accepted the fact that I’m not going anywhere else?

I honestly don’t want to travel. I want to be with my mother, make some new friends, make stuff, write stuff, and live a simple, clean, peaceful, and gentle life here in Adelaide. I want this to be enough. And I think it is.

Uni starts in just over a week, and I had to upload a photo for a student card. I elected to pick the card up at the Magill campus because it’s just up the road from where I live, even though I will be studying at the City West campus. I have studied social work at the Magill campus before, and it is so beautiful. I seek peace; well, this place is so peaceful. Lush green grounds, classic historical buildings — when I went to pick up my student card, I was reminded how gentle and lovely the campus really is.

I got a bit lost, and an Aboriginal woman who obviously worked at the uni came up to me and asked if I needed any help with directions. She explained where I needed to go. She was such a nice, helpful person, and as I left her and headed towards Student Assist, I couldn’t help but wonder about the discrimination she might have personally endured across her lifetime simply for being Aboriginal. I hoped it wasn’t too much, and I also hoped that I was wrong and that she hadn’t experienced any at all.

Walking back through the campus, I took a few photos of the peaceful path back to my car. You can see them below.

I absolutely love the following photo. I found this plastic tub underneath a tap. The tub was full, and it was just this mess of found objects, nature, rocks, and water. There were bees hanging around, and it made me really happy to see it. There was something magical about it, and it made me feel good.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and, talking about things I’ll never do again, like travel, one other thing I know I’ll never do again is be with a man. But I am genuinely okay with that. For so long I had the thought in the back of my mind that I might meet someone who would be okay with my flaws and really, genuinely love me, but I know in my heart that that is simply not going to happen. And, like I said before, I really am okay with that.

But that doesn’t stop me loving Valentine’s Day. I always send my friend Rebecca and my mother flowers, and below you can see the flowers and balloon I sent Rebecca. She sent me these two photos because she couldn’t fit it all into one.

Mum loved her flowers and balloons. 

I was thinking about it yesterday, and I haven’t actually received a Valentine’s myself for twenty years. My Dad sometimes used to give me a Valentine’s Day gift because I think he felt sorry for me, but I haven’t received anything from a partner for twenty years. Twenty whole years. That is an entire lifetime.

I’ll be 45 this year, and I have spent the past 20 years without a man. My calculations have been based on the fact that I’ve spent the past 13 years not interacting with men at all. The last man I was with was in 2013, and it’s hard to believe, but I actually think he may very well be the last man I will ever be with, which is kind of tragic.

My last boyfriend was in 2006. I had flings, encounters, and long casual relationships after that, up until 2013, but I literally haven’t been in a relationship for 20 years. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It’s not normal. Most people are in relationships or have immediate past relationships. I think if people knew my history, they would think there is something wrong with me. And they would be fucking right.

But I am okay with that.

Over twenty years ago, before my last partner, life was so much simpler. I didn’t think too much about anything, really, and I would just go to work, and every day was a new adventure.

I had a temp job at the Service SA call centre, which was actually the state government switchboard, and we would answer for most state government departments and agencies. I temped at that place a huge number of times because they kept asking me back and extending my contract. In the end, they did make me permanent, but I up and left because that’s the way I used to roll back then.

I am the opposite now. I crave stability and security.

At that call centre, we had a designated “wall of sexy men,” and we would put up photos or magazine cut-outs of men we found sexy on the wall. I had recently done a fundraiser for my mother and contacted a former AFL footballer, asking if he would sign a few things for the raffles. We arranged it, and we kept texting each other afterwards. He wanted to meet up at my local watering hole, as he called it, but I just didn’t want to meet him.

I hated the way I looked so much, even back then, that I simply couldn’t let him see me. I chose not to meet him at all rather than have to face him judging me and not wanting to see me again based on the fact that I have looks that defy conventional beauty standards. I wasn’t fat back then like I am now, but I still looked bad.

I’m hoping to have lost a whole lot of weight by my birthday in August, but it will still be the same as back then — I can’t change the way I look.

Anyway, I stuck a photo of the football player up on the wall of sexy men, and I told him about it, and he liked it. Our little texting friendship fizzled out, but his image stayed up on the wall of the Service SA call centre.

If I were in an occupational setting with a wall of sexy men now, I would put images of two men up on it. The first is Jacob Elordi. He’s an Australian actor from Brisbane taking Hollywood by storm. He’s 28 years old, he’s 6'5", and I think he is incredibly sexy.

He played the monster in the new Frankenstein movie directed by Guillermo del Toro. He’s actually been nominated for an Oscar for this role, which proves he can act. But I don’t care about his acting skills — the man is gorgeous.

You can see photos of him below.

Photo of Jacob Elordi by Harald Krichel, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of Jacob Elordi by JoshPopov, licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The second man I would put up on the wall of sexy men is another actor, Javier Bardem. He’s 56 years old, he’s Spanish, he’s conquered Hollywood, and he’s married to the beautiful actress Penélope Cruz. I literally love this guy. I didn’t care about Jacob Elordi’s acting skills, but Javier is the master.

He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in a disturbing movie called No Country for Old Men. When you watch him act, you can really see that he has perfected his craft. He is incredibly masculine, and I like that about him, but he also seems to have a softer side, which I find equally as appealing.

The thing I like most about Javier is that he has publicly called out Israel for its genocide in Gaza, and he doesn’t care if it loses him work in Hollywood or affects public perception of him. He encourages other people to speak up and is very vocal about his support for Palestinians. I am currently on a journey trying to figure out how I want to express myself about issues like this, but if I had a platform like Javier, I would probably use it the way he does.

He is also incredibly physically attractive; I am particularly drawn to his dark features. While I know I will remain without a man for the rest of my life, that doesn’t make me immune to the odd fantasy about someone like Javier Bardem.

You can see him below.

Photo of Javier Bardem by Marc Piasecki, licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Javier_Bardem_Cannes_2018_2.jpg

Photo of Javier Bardem by Martin Kraft, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ via Wikimedia Commons.

I love the last photo of him where he’s grown a beard. Sometimes I like it when a man hasn’t shaved for a few days, and then when they let it grow wild every now and then.

Lately, I’ve gotten into binge-watching Australian TV shows. I watched one series on Stan called Dear Life, which stars Brooke Satchwell, and now I’m on the third and final season of another Aussie series, also on Stan, called Wonderland. Brooke Satchwell’s in it too, but she’s part of an ensemble cast.

So I’m off to watch Wonderland now as the countdown to uni begins.