Yesterday I drove from our place to Munno Para, and it took around an hour. I haven't driven my red Beetle that far before, and I was worried it might break down in the middle of traffic. I've always felt confident with my other cars that I wouldn't have any drastic mechanical problems, but this Beetle is old. It was made in 2007, and it does make some weird noises.
Nevertheless, I made it to my destination, which was my friend Hussein's new house. Hussein is a dear friend of mine. I actually hired him as a personal tutor to teach me how to make websites, and then we started having our classes at his old house and I became friends with the whole family. He's a couple of months older than me and migrated to Australia with his family from Pakistan.
His wife, Miriam, and his oldest daughter are currently in Iraq on a Muslim pilgrimage, so last night it was just Hussein, his two younger kids and me. It was such a massive milestone in Hussein's life when he and Miriam were finally able to buy a house in Australia. They had been renting for six years since they arrived here, and buying this house was literally his dream come true.
It's a lovely house. Hussein gets guests to take their shoes off before they enter, which is something he also does at our house. It was particularly nice last night because they'd just had new carpet put in, and it felt all squishy and new under my feet.
I went to Hussein's house first of all because it had been a long time since we'd caught up, but he'd also offered to fix up my resume for the job at the Centre that I'm applying for on my birthday. Hussein is a techie. He has a commerce degree from Pakistan, but he's also a self-taught computer guru and works for a large organisation doing all their techie stuff. He makes websites too and has pretty much taught me everything I know about AI and graphics programs.
In the middle of doing my resume, I decided to order dinner for everyone, so we got pizza. On Sunday I'm starting a new life and won't be eating food like that anymore, but the kids love pizza and I thought I might have one final hurrah.
Hussein's two children who shared dinner with us are between the ages of nine and eleven, a girl and a boy. Hussein told me that at their Islamic college they hear some very strong views about Israel. I asked his son if he hated Israel, and he said, "No comment." When I asked his daughter, however, she went right into it. She knows I'm pro-Palestinian, so we had a bit of a "Free Palestine" moment together.
Hussein has told me that the kids have attended protests and other events, although I've never seen them at any of the protests I've attended. I think some of the events they go to are smaller community gatherings, including religious and political commemorations connected with Iran.
Hussein himself is a peaceful soul. I've had many conversations with him about Israel and Palestine, and he sees it as a regional conflict rather than a religious one. He doesn't say too much about it, though. His wife, Miriam, is a more observant Muslim than he is. She gets their two girls to wear hijabs, but Hussein actually told me last night that he would prefer that they didn't.
We pushed on with my resume, and it's absolutely perfect. I can't wait to send it off on Sunday along with my application addressing the job and person specifications and my cover letter. Hussein and I also arranged for me to come over again next Friday night so he can help me set up another blog, which will be more focused on my take on current affairs. He told me to bring Mum too because he gets along really well with her.
On the way home, my fuel light came on. I didn't know whether to risk driving all the way home with the needle sitting just above zero, and then I started thinking about how there didn't seem to be any service stations around. That got me thinking about what would happen if I couldn't afford to put petrol in my car at that particular moment. The car could conk out in the middle of the road and I would literally have no other option than to push it to the side and leave it there. I'm sure that happens to people.
Eventually I found a service station and filled up.
When I got home, I was talking to Mum while having a text conversation with Liam at the same time. At first Liam was quite sexual with me, but now he's becoming really amorous, and I don't like it. He says things like, "You're a keeper," and, "I've been thinking about you today."
Last night I really just wanted someone to talk to, and I told him I was freaking out about turning 45. He sent back, "Don't worry, I've got your back."
I really did not appreciate this. It made me feel weird. Disgusted, almost. I don't want him assuming that he knows me well enough to "have my back", or that I need him, or anyone else, to have it. This guy has a partner, and while I was initially attracted to him, that attraction very swiftly disappeared when he started talking to me like that. Strangely enough, I actually prefer the sexual stuff to the whole "I've got your back" business.
I don't really want to talk to him anymore, but I don't want to stop abruptly either. I'll just ease my way out of it.
In the midst of the messages from Liam, I got one from my brother.
"You're going to be 45 on Sunday."
"Thanks for the reminder," I replied.
Then he came back with, "You're closer to 50 than 40 on Monday. So, wasn't sure if you reached the point in life where you needed a reminder."
"Is there some reason you are saying this?" I asked.
"No. Just joking."
But no, he wasn't just joking. I think this was his way of trying to inspire me to seize the day. To make something of what's left of my life. But the thing is, I'm already inspired. I don't need some little shit whispering in my ear that time is slipping away.
It's quite funny. My younger brother is, by most conventional standards, the successful one of the two of us. He has a wife and two beautiful children, a high-paying job, and I actually think he's the CEO of some company. He owns two houses and, hopefully, is in good health. So, in theory, he's so much more respectable than me.
But every now and then, he still pulls out the annoying little brother card and makes comments like that.
Over the last couple of nights, I've talked about the two beautiful houses I lived in that provided the backdrop to my younger years. After I left the elite and exclusive co-ed school, Mum and Dad decided to move again, this time to another affluent area of town, and send me to a school close to our new house.
Mum and Dad settled into this house for around thirty years, and I lived there on and off during that time. It had two storeys and, just like in the previous house, my brother and I had a floor to ourselves. This time, it was the bottom floor.
It was an old house, and we lived there while my parents undertook significant renovations. When it was finished, it actually looked quite similar to the house we'd just come from, but it was beautiful. Some people called it a mansion, and whenever people came through the house they would comment on how lovely it was.
It's too bad the school I was sent to wasn't as beautiful as the house we were living in.
The school was of a similar standard to my previous one, but this time it was an elite, exclusive, private all-girls school. I went to eight schools, and this was the worst one I attended. The girls were cliquey and bitchy, and some went out of their way to make me feel like a complete outsider.
It's funny because at my previous school I'd been part of what was considered the "cool group", so I half expected to step straight into the equivalent at my new school. Instead, I started at the beginning of Year Eight and literally had no friends. I would go to the library at lunchtime just so I had somewhere to be.
In time, I became friends with a girl named Daina, and there was a similar dynamic to the friendship I'd had with Susan because Daina lived on the same street as me. We started hanging out after school and spending a lot of time together. I think her parents may have known or liked my parents and perhaps encouraged her to befriend me, but we did form a genuine friendship. She was one of only two old friends I had at my 21st birthday.
At school, though, Daina had her own crowd. I'm sure she would have included me, but I didn't feel as though I fitted in with any of the girls. Like I've said before, I was an awkward-looking kid and everyone else seemed so pretty. Some of them already had boyfriends, and they were all really good friends with each other. It felt like there was literally no place for me.
Some girls would laugh at me or make fun of me, but it was the deliberate exclusion that upset me more than anything else.
I remember that during my first year at the school I didn't particularly excel at any of my classes, but one day in art we had to present our projects. I'd created a square cushion, painted ladybirds on it and then stuck 20-cent coins all over it. It looked kind of cool.
It really impressed the art teacher, and she told me that art was something I should pursue. I recall her saying something along the lines of, "You have an artist's eye."
Thinking back to that art class now, I appreciate what she saw in it because it wasn't traditional painting or drawing, although it did have painted ladybirds on it. I like to think of it as my first piece of conceptual artwork, where the idea was more important than the aesthetics. Although, to be fair, I think the aesthetics were pretty good for an eighth grader too.
Years later, in 2013, I briefly attended Adelaide Central School of Art. These days, though, I've largely rejected formal artistic education. I feel that too much emphasis on curriculum, technique and prescribed ways of thinking can strip an artist of some of their integrity and inhibit their ability to express themselves to the full extent of their creativity.
Year Eight was a pretty lonely year for me. I would walk to and from school, and we had to wear our blazers and hats whenever we were in uniform off school grounds. Prefects used to hide along the way and catch me and other girls who weren't wearing them. I don't know how many warnings we got before we were given detention, but I know I was sent there a few times.
It was always nice to come home from school and see Nanny. I can't remember whether she picked my brother up from school while I walked home, but she was always there. Always with us. And she remained with me until the day she died.
It was during my second year at this school that things got interesting. A new girl named Riley started, and she was the epitome of cool. She was also a bit of a loner, and the two of us gravitated towards each other.
There was a stark contrast between us. She had short blonde hair, was stick thin and very beautiful. I had shoulder-length jet-black hair, was on the plump side and didn't consider myself nearly as visually pleasing. Thinking back now and knowing how girls can be, I've sometimes wondered whether she was friends with me because I made her look better.
Whatever the reason, we became inseparable. Just the two of us. She would stay at my house for sleepovers. I used to listen to mixed tapes before I went to sleep, and I remember one night when Riley was staying over, I put on a tape that had Kylie Minogue on it. She stopped the tape, turned on the light and told me how unbelievably uncool it was that I was listening to Kylie. I felt so stupid that I took it on board and never played Kylie again when she stayed over.
The thing with Riley was that she really was cool, or at least everything I thought was cool at fifteen. She smoked and drank, and she was much more experienced with boys than I was. She used to tell me all about it.
I don't know what the actual cool group of girls at school thought of Riley, but I was just pleased she wanted to hang out with me instead of them. As well as being cool, she seemed so wise and street smart. She wasn't the typical girl you would imagine going to a school like ours.
After a couple of months of friendship, Riley and I became friends with two Year Eleven girls, Mandy and Louisa. They were both Italian and quite naughty too. We used to go to parties at Mandy's house, where her younger brother, who was in Year Ten, would have all his friends over and we'd all get drunk together.
Most of the people we hung out with were Italian. Riley got together with a few of the boys, but I never did.
That was until one night when we went to a party with Mandy and Louisa. Riley and I were drinking Tia Maria and Coke, and we were considerably drunk for two fifteen year olds. I remember a very good looking Italian boy talking to me and then asking if I wanted to go for a walk.
We went to the park, and things became physical very quickly. It was consensual, but it went considerably further than kissing. I remember feeling a little bit dirty afterwards, and the sad thing is that nobody knew this was actually my first kiss.
Some other kids from the party eventually came looking for us, and I remember this big Italian boy who went to school with my brother coming up to me and saying, "Put your clothes on. You could get raped out here."
I crossed paths with that guy a number of times in the years that followed, and he was a great person. I've always remembered him coming to find me that night and looking out for me.
The boy I'd been kissing asked after me a couple of times afterwards, but I don't think there was anything romantic behind it. At the time, I suspected he'd simply decided I was easy and thought I might have sex with him if he got another opportunity.
Louisa's brother Jack had a large number of male friends, all Italian, who went to the same school together. Thinking back, we were all considerably young to be behaving the way we were, but apart from that one incident in the park, all I really did was drink.
That was, of course, until I tried marijuana.
It was Riley and me with a big group of Italian Year Tens, and they offered us what they called a cone. I don't know what they call it now or what any of the terminology is, but it was something like that. Both Riley and I ended up unbelievably stoned, as were all the guys.
At some point, Riley disappeared with one of them and I was left out the back with the rest of the group. Then they started talking about me.
"If we were going to get stoned, we should have done it with someone good."
"She's so ugly. I'd never get with her."
"Why is she here?"
I can't remember exactly what else they said, but it was all along those lines. I wanted to cry so badly. I don't think I'd ever wanted to cry that much in my life, but I just sat there and pretended I couldn't hear them.
I painfully waited until Riley eventually came back, and I can't even remember how we got home. I didn't tell her what they'd said, mainly because I was so embarrassed.
The thing is, my earliest introductions to boys weren't particularly positive. My first kiss happened during that encounter in the park, and not long afterwards I found myself sitting among a group of boys listening to them tell each other how ugly and unattractive they thought I was.
Then, later, when I went to places like Alice Springs and suddenly had guys all over me, I didn't know what to do with the attention. I still don't really know what to do with it and, these days, I don't particularly want to do anything with it.
Riley and I were in detention quite a lot together. She sometimes used to smoke in the toilets, although I can't remember whether she ever actually got caught.
To spice our lives up a little more, Mum and Dad decided to host an exchange student from Brazil. Her name was Penelope. She was quite short and absolutely gorgeous. She also smoked and got along really well with Riley, but I didn't have much in common with her.
Penelope craved male attention and, I know this sounds horrible, but I used to just send her off for nights with Riley. God knows what they got up to. The only older boys I really knew were some Italian Year Twelves whose father knew my mother.
One of them, Robert, lived on the same street as us, and we used to visit him quite a bit. I remember one night my brother and I collected all the Messenger newspapers from around the neighbourhood and used them to spell out HELLO on the lawn outside Robert's bedroom window.
The school counsellor at this elite all-girls school happened to be the mother of one of the BPs from my previous school. I used to see her from time to time, and I remember her once telling me that I should move out of my parents' house and that she would help me get set up.
I also remember her making some analogy about a triangle trying to fit into a circle, or something along those lines. Whatever the exact shapes were, her point was that I didn't quite fit the mould.
This same school counsellor once drove Penelope to a park away from the school so she could have a cigarette. My parents were incredibly unimpressed when they found out about that.
One morning, when Dad was walking us to the car to drive us to school, Penelope dropped her bag and all her cigarettes fell out. She started stressing because she thought my parents would send her back to Brazil.
They didn't care she smoked; they just didn't want her being taken out of school to do it.
Our exchange student also slept with the son of the man whose company renovated our houses. My brother and I have a theory that she may have left the country pregnant with his child because, after she left, my parents received a bill from a doctor for a pregnancy test.
Penelope was naughty. Riley was naughty. The truth is that I wasn't really naughty at heart.
I just wanted so badly to be considered cool that I would basically do anything Riley said if I thought it would make me look that way. I smoked marijuana because everyone else was doing it. I drank because everyone else was drinking. I got myself into situations that weren't really me because I desperately wanted to belong somewhere.
Daina was the real angel to come out of that horrible school, and I genuinely treasured our friendship. I've seen her mother a few times over the years at my old hairdresser, and apparently Daina now has teenage children and a husband she's been with for years. It's strange to think that the two girls who once lived on the same street and hung around together after school probably wouldn't even recognise each other now.
My parents moved me on from the school at the end of Year Nine. I think the incident with the counsellor taking our exchange student off school grounds so she could have a cigarette may have been the final straw.
I'm glad I left, although part of me wishes I'd been normal enough to make it work in a place like that. Some people would have viewed being sent to a school like that as a wonderful opportunity to receive an education that other children could only dream of. But for me, it was just a cesspool of jumped-up, bitchy, elitist, snobby and, most of all, cruel young women.
