On Holidays

In the midst of the stresses of the former part of this year, I booked myself a holiday to visit L in Darwin.  She was on a placement, her boyfriend was away and she was going a bit mental, so our pleasure on seeing one another was mutual.

L and I go back to 2000 whereupon, on returning from Berkeley and not wanting to live in the ‘burbs of the ‘gong for my final year, I flatted in Surry Hills with her and B, both of whom I met through my brother.  I commuted to uni, which, combined with Double Honours and part time work, nearly killed me.  I subsequently adopted a further three of H’s friends and to this day all seven of us remain bound by a shared history of immoderate alcohol consumption, shenanigans canvassing Kingsford, Kensington, Surry Hills and Randwick, and the neuroticism particular to over-achievers.

The house party for the Surry Hills flat was one of the best.  I came up with the theme ‘Come as your deepest, darkest desire’, B designed a wonderfully witty invite requesting attendees to join us in holy flatrimony and L, social butterfly that she is, flounced around inviting every man and his dog from her med course.

I dressed as a tart, as I do with varying degrees of sophistication for every fancy dress party (barring one of L’s where I went as a bridesmaid dressed head to toe in pleated chiffon), B (now working on the reduction of railway noise and vibrations) came as a punk with attendant chain and L (now a nephrologist) was Britney Spears.  SP (now working in energy efficiency) came as a Morman and submitted to having his backside whacked by L with his Bible.  R (now designing microchips for Cochlear) came as Michael Jackson, only his nose of blue-tak fell off halfway through the night and he was reduced to groping his crotch to identify who he was.  Two friends of Bs, fellow mechanical engineers, came as women wearing bras with lights behind them.  When they pressed the lights, their breasts lit up.  It was fantastic.

H, who had a proclivity for spray painting himself and his clothes with gold, came as God.

I digress.

The plane trip to Darwin was surprisingly short.  As always, I love views of the country from a plane, especially when the sun is setting and it lights up the seas and rivers like sheets of gold.  At one stage it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began, especially as they were obscured by smoke from burning-off fires.

I sat next to a young Asian man who read the inflight magazine from cover-to-cover and, when he had finished that, asked if he could borrow my Country Style, which he perused with careful attention while I hid my smile.  As we circled to land, he was reading the flight safety card.

My visions of sitting on a beach in my new bikini with a margarita to hand while breezes waved the palms were, unfortunately, quickly dispelled.  One couldn’t swim in the sea, it transpired, because of the salties.  If one sat in a public place in a bikini, one would be launched upon by the redneck chauvinists who attended the topless girls bar.  When went out for dinner one night, I dressed very neatly in a black top, knee-length skirt and black heels and I still felt uncomfortable.  There was a very strong sense of it still being a raw, frontier town.

However, the surrounding national parks were gorgeous.  With L and her parents, we went to Litchfield National Park and, after a trek through scrubby bush growing out of red soil, dipped down into the rainforest and waterholes.

I love swimming and playing in water, especially pools and dams because, having grown up inland, an eight hour drive from the coast, this was all there was.  So when I dived into the clear waterhole and swam under the waterfall, I got a little breathless with excitement and had to remind myself of Mrs Woodley’s swimming classes, viz. that one must stay calm in water or one will run out of air and drown.

L had brought goggles so we could see the big, blue-grey fish swimming with us.  She had also, a few weeks prior, fallen into a hole at night while walking her dog and still had a scab on her knee.  The fish liked this and nibbled at the scab, twice.

On another trip we went to the Darwin Wildlife Park and watched an amazing display of birds from prey, which had been trained to fly to and from the rangers in an open area.  There was a barking owl, which sounded like a dog barking softly when it called, a big black cockatoo and a jabiru with glossy blue-green feathers and orange stilts for legs, stepping delicately through the reeds.

Later we met Ernie the dingo, who waited for food, and continued to stare when he realised we had none.  We saw some whiprays which I thought were thrilling because I love sea creatures, though I don’t like to be in the water with them.  Later, in the aquarium, we watched the saltwater crocodile do absolutely nothing.  After ten minutes of waiting we went onto the next exhibit of brightly coloured reef fish, then there was a commotion.  The crocodile was moving!  We hurried back and watched it rise for air, then sink again, unblinking.

Although we couldn’t get beach action, I tried out my new bikini by the pool of L’s parents’ apartment.  It seemed to hold everything in place satisfactorily, though I wouldn’t vouch for it in rough seas.  I also started and, over the next two days, finished the third book of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy which wasn’t as tight as his former two, but at least it didn’t contain the same detailed descriptions of violence against women which I found deeply disturbing.

I couldn't keep up my coffee habit because the restuarants either didn't have, or had run out of, soy milk.  Seeing my devastation, poor L took me to the only decent café in town and, after the consumption of a relatively decent soy latte, I was greatly soothed.  By the time I boarded the flight to Bris Vegas however (after a chat with a taxi driver who restored old radios), I was getting antsy again, so I was very pleased to arrive back in civilisation and to have my caffeine hit the next morning.

Part the XVIII: Notes on Paris

Things are not good.  The self-imposed thesis deadline has become an actual deadline.  I must submit this rotting albatross by 1st December, before I fly home to Oz, otherwise the university will charge me fees to the tune of 3750GBP per term, charming people that they are.  On top of the stress generated by trying to complete a thesis to my own (admittedly high, but unconsciously so) standards before the said deadline, I have various other editing and research projects to complete to keep myself financially afloat, with the consequence that I no longer have any days off.  My body has responded to this unpleasant state of affairs with insomnia, two bouts of flu in quick succession, gastroenteritis, a cold and episodes of depression. To this end, I thought I should pen some notes on my last moments of happiness before I become completely shrouded in gloom and send my readers to the Slough of Despond.  Actually this will be the last post between now and December, when I finally finish up four years of work and fly home for three months of sunshine.

So, H and I had arranged to travel to gay Paree a few weeks ago on the Eurostar to meet our dear friend SP and his sister.  Lo and behold, the night before we were to travel, the fire broke out in the Channel tunnel.  H put off telling me for as long as he could, but a friend mentioned it to me when we were out at drinks and I plunged immediately into despair.  I had been looking forward to seeing SP for months.  For the next day I obsessively checked the Eurostar website and, overreacting a little as is my wont, dreamed of tracking down the culprit for the fire and enacting revenge.  Fortunately for the truck driver, the Eurostar got itself up and running again, and I was able to get a ticket after work on Wednesday.  Poor H had to stay behind though and help his boss with Design Week.  He wasn’t very happy.

I got myself through the shiny new St Pancras terminal and onto the Eurostar (which was operating on a case of first in first served).  An excited little boy crowed all the way to the tunnel.  The train shunted through the tunnel slowly and, in the darkness, the child obviously thought it was bedtime and quietened down.  Once on the other side however, the twilight filtered into the carriage and he was off again.  ‘Baba! Baba!  Baba!’  And on and on.

I am a bit slow with maps.  I can read them well enough (and navigated H and I over hairy Thai highways), but not quickly.  Thus it was with some degree of pride that I got myself to the hotel near Notre Dame, which was very sweet and neat, with Lepidoptera mounted in frames on the walls, along with a gnat-like insect that was the size of my head.  I had visions of coming across it in the Amazonian forest, and was disturbed.  SP turned up not long after, a bit shaggier than when I had seem him last, but still delectable.  He had been in the Alps running up mountains that day, as one does.

Realising that I was in one of the worst countries for a gluten and diary intolerance, I had done internet research on Vietnamese restaurants (there was nothing to do at work, ok?) and, to my immense delight, SP took command of the map and directed us to Kim-Lien.  The lighting was warm and red and the food was fresh and tasty, but they stumbled with the Vietnamese pancake, into which they had put bacon and cheese.   We arrived there late and after a while the patrons began to leave and the staff gathered around a table, chatting and laughing.  A man walked down the stairs, blowing out the candles in their red lamps, and a fat tabby came up to say hallo, and I stroked him.  I miss having a cat.  All I have is my rather stupid angel fish, Andromeda, who looks very pretty but doesn’t do a lot.

The next morning the sunshine was abundant and I was happy.  There has been no sunshine in London since the fortnight in May that seems to constitute an English summer these days.  We walked past Notre Dame to the Pompidou as SP wanted to see Brancusi’s studio.  It was a bit chilly en route so SP stopped by a rack of coats outside a shop and five minutes later was purchasing a black jacket for twelve euros and pulling it on.  I couldn’t believe that someone could look so shit hot after a mere five minutes and  twelve euros.  However, as SP pointed out, much of my knowledge of men’s shopping habits stems from H who, admittedly, spent fifteen minutes selecting five pairs of undies from a market in Bangkok, and who even sent me away during the selection process because my disapproval (well, it was mild scorn, actually) was unsettling him.  I can’t imagine why.

The Brancusi studio was shut until the afternoon, so we went on to Montemarte and had a coffee at the café where Amelie was filmed.  We sat outside in the sun and the waiter sneered at us in true Parisian style, which made me laugh, and by the time we left I had managed to get a smile out of him.  We went on to the Eiffel Tower where SP was to meet his sister and their friend, and as we stopped to look at a building-length advertisement for Australia.com juxtaposed beside the tower, there was a commotion behind us.  An old man had tripped on the uneven pavement and grazed his hands.  There was blood, and he was disorientated, but some people helped him and SP asked for my bandaids (blister contingencies) and handed them over, and said this was the third time he’d seen blood on his trip.

At the Eiffel Tower I craned my head back to look at the marvellous lattice of iron beams while SP chatted with his sister.  We arranged to rendezvouz at the Brancusi studio, then jumped on a boat and emerged at the Jardin des Tuileries.  People sat on chairs, tilting them back to feel the sun on their face.  Others read newspapers; some old men played boules.  The light was glorious.

We walked back to Brancusi and my feet started to hurt (I was wearing one of my two pairs of flat shoes, but still, they rubbed), so I was glad to get to the gallery and sit down.  SP liked the smooth, simple forms but I find most modern art quite boring (and was in a vile mood when I was dragged to the Pompidou with H and the parental unit two years before) so was happy to look, then rest, while SP did the circuit more slowly.

That evening I pulled on my brown boots, short black ruffled skirt and my favourite dark pink top, for Londoners never appreciate glamour the way the French do and I needed to make the most of it.  I waited for SP+friend+sister outside the Charonne Metro, and they were late, so I was delivered orders to find three interesting character descriptions by the time they arrived.  I wondered if the three green wheelie bins counted as people but suspected this would be disqualified; instead I made notes on a person going past on red rollerskates and a group of Salvation Army donations collectors, which totalled five people. The area we walked through was dark and nondescript, thus it was with a little shock of pleasure that I turned the corner to see a beautiful Parisian bar lit up with warm light from chandeliers.  Inside, it was luscious: delicate and refined, with a charming waiter, lovely wine and excellent food.  The only odd thing was the bathroom which, instead of having soap from a dispenser, had a ball of yellow soap stuck onto a stick; one had to stroke it to get the suds, which felt Freudian in some obscure way.

The girls were worn out, so SP and I ventured on and found a dinky bar with cheap drinks and the requisite footy showing on the TV.  SP gestured to two boys at the table next to us who were staring silently at their drinks.  ‘Do you think they’re on their first date?’ he asked.  I dissolved into laughter.

We walked back along the Seine, though I was having difficulty negotiating the cobbles by this stage, not least due to that fatal combination of poor (meningitis-induced) balance, high heels and alcohol (see here for effects of said combination).  Naturally any sensible person would remove the high heels from this equation, but I prefer the risk of falling flat on my face to giving up my heels.  Then, as we drew near to Notre Dame, we saw a group of people clustered around a huge, suspended ball of light, which lit up the front of the cathedral.  It transpired they were making a film clip with Bollywood dancers and the light was for the filming.  Then they lit another ball and we moved further back to watch, and found that the Indian families of the dancers had come along too.  It was bizarre and magical.

The next morning I didn’t feel so good as my alcohol tolerance is nil these days.  However I managed to get myself upright, clothed and checked out.  SP had wanted to take me to a café he’d found that served good coffee but it didn’t open until 11, so we wandered through a Medieval garden on the other side of the road which had been redesigned, according to an American tour guide talking to a bunch of people (who I couldn’t hear but SP related) in a contemporary style that was sympathetic to the original herb garden.

We found another café in the sun outside the Jardin des Luxembourg and the excellent boy persuaded the French barista to whip up some soy milk so I could have a coffee.  The Luxembourg gardens were even more beautiful than the Jardin des Tuilieries, and the sun stroked through the trees, some of which were beginning to shed leaves.  Out on the other side we passed a crèche, and saw two women bundling seven toddlers into a trolley, which they pushed and pulled up the pavement, which was unfortunately on an incline.  The kids looked about brightly, their faces alternately jollied and blissful.

The afternoon was passed picnicking with SP’s sister and friend in the gardens of the Rodin Museum, which were formal and plain.  I lay in the sun and snoozed while the others looked at the sculptures.  Then SP and I pushed on to the Sacre Couer, stopping first to buy some tourist tat for H.  ‘It has to be under 5 euros, and exquisitely bad,’ I told SP, and he returned to me with the most marvellous mug, which I think speaks eloquently of how much I love my brother:

Paris mug

At the bottom of the steps of the Sacre Couer we were harassed by Africans trying to sell us their knotted bracelets.  SP merely put his hands up and shook his head but I was angry, for they had invaded my personal space and they were touching me.  ‘No!’ I said loudly and barged away from them all, but SP moved on meditatively ahead, and I felt that I had overreacted again.  Note to self: never travel to India.

At the church we crossed wires and lost one another, so I ended up going to the top alone, up three hundred steps.  There were marvellous views of Paris and, while I’m not afraid of heights, my imagination galloped on and had me toppling over the edge, so I went down again fairly quickly.  And then it was time to leave the heat and sunshine and drag myself back onto the Eurostar, feeling sorry for myself.

Tomorrow is my first day off since then, and likely to be my last before I submit my thesis.  Meanwhile my computer has imploded so I am having to use H’s and my fish is ill.  Even if she is a bit of a bimbo, it would be the nail in the coffin if she died.   Never will I put myself through anything like this ever again.

New Worlds

Beloved readers, I am back from Germany. I am on a diet. This says everything that needs to be said about German food, but I shall continue. It is vile (as M- wrote, whoever thought of having cheese for breakfast?); everything is fried (as M* found, looking bemused at a plate of fried schnitzel and fried potato croquettes) and most of it contains cream. At one dinner a girl ordered a ‘salad’ and was handed a pile of cubed potatoes and meat. The only leafy greens were those in the forests, not on a plate.

But I digress from the fascinating topics of archives, media and narrative, which we were my reasons for visiting Germany. I was sent there by the Consortium, along with 5 other boys (to whom M swiftly began referring as my ‘harem’), with all expenses paid, to a conference titled ‘Ways of Worldmaking.’ So although I hate conferences, it would have been silly to turn it down.

Monday saw me getting up at 4.30am, to be picked up by a greasy-haired taxi driver and taken to Heathrow. It was actually a beautiful morning - the sun glinted off the spire of a church, the sky was still streaked with pink, and then it became so bright I could almost have been in Sydney. We flew into Frankfurt and were conveyed to Castle Rauischolzhausen, near Marburg. It was a very beautiful place, but much newer than it looked - the building being completed in 1875, but designed in the Gothic style. To an Australian, it still seemed pretty old. In the gardens was an arboretum, and, on Wednesday afternoon, when I couldn’t bear another conversation on someone’s thesis topic, I took myself into the grounds and walked through the trees, and became much calmer.

I hate meeting people en masse. I’m fine with a few at a time, because then I can recover the energy needed to listen and to enquire, but to do this hour after hour, for 6 consecutive days, was terrifying and exhausting. To make things worse, nearly everyone who spoke at the conference had an accent, which meant that hearing was even more difficult. There were people from France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Spain, as well as one little fellow, probably feeling even more adrift than I, who was from Chile. As an end result, I took in very little of what was being said. By the time I had figured out the words the person was using and put them into sentences, I didn’t have time to then piece them into an argument; it was all just too fragmentary. The paper I can recall most clearly, apart from that by S, my supervisor, was by an English guy who’d moved to Giessen University (who was hosting the conference) to study W.G. Sebald. His voice was so clear, and his delivery so charming, that for the first time in days I relaxed and listened well.

Having said that, I didn’t get quite as tired as I expected, and I did meet some lovely people. We were taken to nearby Marburg for a tour while at the castle, and a nice fellow asked me how I was going with hearing the tour guide. ‘Not very well,’ I told him, and added that usually, if I wanted to find things out, I just looked them up later on the internet. He said I wasn’t missing much, and I asked, jokingly, how long it would take him to repeat it all to me, and he said, ‘Two minutes. Actually, no, make that one, because I’ll forget half of it,’ and I started laughing.

The boys that I was with were fun, when I could hear what they were saying. S was a nice bloke, but I could never hear him because he mumbled. M spent half the week deliberating what to get his girlfriend, until there were jokes about needing a three-day seminar in the matter. Eventually, on the last evening, he went into a tourist shop full of tat and came out with a small plastic beer mug, which we looked upon with subdued horror and amazement. Each to his own, however, and I didn’t do much better, getting H chocolates at the airport. They had pictures of Mozart on the front, which was confusing as Mozart hailed from Salzburg, but I bought them because they looked so awful they had to be good. They weren't, as it transpired, because they had marzipan in them, and we both hate marzipan. However, I wasn’t prepared to make much of an effort, as the last place I’d got him a present (well, before the nice eggs I got in Salzburg) was in Istanbul, and I’d trudged halfway across the city with a tragic hangover to get him what I thought was a very nice print from the markets, only to receive a fairly noncommittal response.

To continue. B turned out to be one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever met, second only to SP. But where the latter is all sunlight and golden skin, B had a stark Byronic streak, with dark hair and a 5 o’clock shadow, and with eyes that were fringed with long lashes, like a deer’s. He was studying Wordsworth, and I said to H that I didn’t understand how someone so attractive could be so obsessed with Wordsworth, but I found the contradiction amusing, and appealing. The only drawback was that he chainsmoked and he was ruining his lovely teeth.
R won me over by accompanying me in my stupid (but cute) shoes in Marburg. Normally they’re quite comfortable, but not, it transpires, when the town is full of cobbles. At the end of the day we had to walk up a steep hill to get to a castle where the restaurant was, and I found it so difficult I just took the shoes off and went up barefoot. Then, on the last evening in Heidelberg, he laughed at me in despair when I insisted on wearing stiletto sandals (they weren’t very high), and could barely negotiate the cobbles. ‘What were you thinking?’ he asked.
‘I want to feel like a woman!’ I protested. ‘I’m sick of wearing jeans, I wanted to put on a skirt and sandals.’
However the skirt (which was tight, but nothing out of the ordinary – I frequently wear it to work) had ramifications, because the waiter, who had been insistently trying to catch my eye all evening, dropped some coins down the back of my chair and had to slip his hand down there to get them out. R was indignant on my behalf, but I had thought it was an accident, and even if it wasn’t, it was still so pathetic a gesture that it didn’t even register on my radar of contempt. Later, R said to me, ‘Well, if you dress sexy, that’s what you get,’ and I corrected him, saying, ‘No, I have the right to wear what I want without being assaulted.’ H pointed out, when I repeated this incident to him, that if you wear provocative clothing then you haven’t the right to be affronted. I said that it was hardly provocative, and I was wearing minimal makeup, and if I’d wanted attention I would have worn something with a plunging neckline, and what did he expect me to do – wear a hessian sack? Honestly, this is the argument they try to use against women in rape cases – she was dressed inappropriately, therefore she was asking for it. Aren’t I allowed to be a woman, and to dress like one, without fear of reprisal, or at least without some fuckwit trying to get his hand near my arse?

After a few days of the boys’ company, however good, I sorely needed some women to talk to, and made friends with an Irish girl who lived in Sweden. She had one of the most beautiful, lilting accents I’ve ever heard, and told me that women doing their PhDs in Sweden actually get paid for maternity leave! Clearly I am in the wrong country. On another evening, when I couldn’t bear to face another plate of Fried Something in a loud, crowded room, I came across a lady to whom I’d mumbled a few words at breakfast (not being a morning person, that was the best I could do), and who later said she’d liked my paper. She was sitting on a bench, trying to figure out how to get to the designated restaurant for dinner, although she didn’t really want to go, and I asked her to come out for a drink and dinner with me. She turned out to be a barrel of laughs, and I was really glad that I’d met her.

On the Thursday we were taken to Heidelberg and the pace relaxed a bit. We did some sightseeing, and were taken to the ruined castle overlooking the town. Half of it was unfortunately covered in scaffolding, but it was surrounded by some pleasant parks. On the final day, Saturday, we walked up a hill, through some beautiful, dappled forest. It was amazingly green, and the light so soft. I didn’t talk to anyone really, because by this stage I had given up completely and just couldn’t muster any more energy, or even the inclination, to communicate. At the top of the hill was an amphitheatre which had been used by barbarians for their corroborees, and then the Third Reich came along and got their poor serfs to renovate it, brick by brick. Beyond this, further up the hill, was a crumbling monastery, with lots of rooms exposed to the elements. A family was picnic-ing in one of them. On the way down we stopped by a pub and had some apple wine, which was like cider and water, and didn’t even make me drunk, at which I was heartily pleased. When the light shone through the glasses, it seemed like they were holding gold liquid.

So all in all it was good, but I was a little disturbed by the infinitesimal amount of information my brain retained, compared to all the stuff that was going into it. I got one good idea for my thesis however, from Herbert Grabes’ master class, so that made it worth it.

I Remain

I am officially gardened-, stately-mansioned- and leafy-greened-out. Yes, the Whites have returned from their Garden Tour of England. We managed not to kill one another, though things at times were somewhat fraught. An account of our rambles and attendant absurdities will follow, as soon as I see the parental unit off on the plane, catch up on my sleep and batter myself into a sturdier frame of mind, for coming back to London has seemed like returning to prison.

In the interim, those of you in the dark nebulae of cyberspace who are musically inclined might like to listen to my poem, I Remain, which was turned into a song by Sarah Chamberlain of the Guildhall School of Music, and performed at Wigmore Hall by Carleen Ebbs.

Since it's impossible for an author to be objective about their work, I don't know if it's any good, but I like it, so I'm not too fussed about its quality.

Being Intimate

I’ve just got back from Salzburg, where I was presenting at a conference on Persons, Intimacy and Love. It was good, and worthwhile, but utterly exhausting. Two full days of listening, with a hearing impairment, to lectures and to people talking over lunch and wine and coffee, completely did me in. I stayed at the hotel where the conference was being held. It didn’t have much to recommend it except for its pillows, which were the biggest and fluffiest I have ever seen; sleeping on them was like burying my head in a nest of clouds. The town itself didn’t have much to recommend it – it was touristy, and generally unattractive. T told me to piss on anything to do with Mozart, but had I followed his instructions they would have resulted in a bladder complaint. Instead I bought him some Mozart tat, just to be perverse.

And as I rounded the corner in one of the cobbled streets, I came across a shop which had rows and rows of painted eggs in its windows. It reminded me (again) of a fairy tale we’d read when we were kids, and even though I’ve racked my brains for a week I can’t remember which story it was. All I can remember are these beautiful painted eggs, and thinking how much I wanted one of them. You couldn’t get eggs like that in Australia.

At the back of the touristy streets was a big church, and below the church were some fruit markets, and a stall selling lavender. The smell was so rich that I was tempted to buy some, but I resisted. I don’t need lavender.

However, on the 2nd and 3rd days it SNOWED. Not grotty London snow, but big fat snowflakes that settled on the ground; it was just like being in a snowdome. After that the town was much prettier, and as the taxi driver took me to the airport, the mountains appeared in the distance, covered in snow and sunlight; it was gorgeous. On some other hills that rose above the town was a forest without any leaves, very grim and forboding like something out of the Grimms Fairy Tales, and I realised how only those kinds of stories could have been written in Europe. Near the hotel were the Mirabell Gardens, in which the song ‘Do Re Me’ from the Sound of Music was sung.

At this point I must make a most dreadful confession: in 1999 I went on the Sound of Music tour. It was kind of under duress, but mostly due to my own timidity, because I didn’t want to be left behind while my travelling companions went off, so I went and saw a lake with a lot of rubbish in it, a gazebo, the inside of a bus, the tour guide cracking jokes (which E told me were awful) and the selfsame gardens, which were lovelier then as it was summer while we were travelling.

I was glad when it was all over though (both the Sound of Music tour and the conference), and came back to (slightly) warmer climes. People said they enjoyed my paper on Molloy, but I didn’t get much feedback. There weren’t that many literature people there and I think they didn’t feel qualified to comment on it. Well, I didn’t feel I could comment on theirs; half of the papers went over my head. I was grumbling to someone about how academics rarely wrote in an accessible way and she replied that often it was because they couldn’t write in any other way; she certainly couldn’t, and I thought, Oops, I’ve put my foot in that one.

The Launch

Monday was my last chance at finding jewellery to go with my outfit, so H and I paid a trip to The Family Jewels and luckily found a necklace that ended most conveniently just above my cleavage, and a pair of (more subdued) matching earrings. Tuesday I had an interview at the ABC studios in Ultimo about Georgiana Molloy, which went very well despite feeling groggy because I’d eaten a plate of couscous the night before and my body didn’t like the wheat. The interviewer was a very intelligent woman and it was refreshing to be able to talk about my book on a more intellectual level.

On Wednesday arvo, I assembled my outfit and it looked splendid. H and I caught a cab (more lovely cabcharges!) to Redfern where mum and dad were staying. En route I madly rehearsed my speech, scrawled on a tiny bit of paper. We found mum and dad in an airless hotel room with our sister, who was capering about making lots of noise as usual. She told us not to tell any stories while she was in the bathroom because she didn’t want to miss them.

I was nauseous with anxiety, so I made everyone get a move on, and we ended up in Glebe early. Mum flaffed around trying to find money for the parking meter while we had a coffee in the back garden of a café down the road. Some men were sitting a little further down, smelling odiferous. There was a swing, of the nasty plastic variety, at the back of the yard so we sat in that and dad took a family photo – the first one in a year.

Then we headed down to Gleebooks and I introduced myself to M, the lady running the show, who turned out to be a good friend of A+’s. Then the people started flocking in – most who I hadn’t seen for years – and it was hectic, and hard work too, trying to hear them all. I knew pretty much everyone there but the strangers spun me out, because it was hard enough trying to communicate, let alone with people I didn’t know. By the time I got onto the stage (after waiting for L, who was stuck in traffic) I was hyperventilating.

A+ gave an excellent speech and said lots of good things, and described an argument we’d had about my use of the word ‘gleam’ in a poem, which he was against and which I had adamantly refused to change, so he was forced to concede the point. I couldn’t remember this transaction at all but was in no doubt of it having occurred, as it sounded like one of many conversations that we’d had. I was glad that my talk was quite perfunctory in comparison because M had told me not to go on for long, as people were standing and wanting to get back to the wine. I made them laugh though, and that was the important thing. Afterwards I was hurried to the writing table and began signing books. It was only when R* handed me her nice black pen to sign her own book with that I realised I should have been using something fancier than the blue Artline pen A* had given me in Melbourne, because I’d been penless then too. Anyway I will get it right next time.

After a few hours, people began to leave, and I shepherded out the last of them because M was wanting to pack up. We repaired to the Mexican restaurant down the road, and to H’s and my astonishment, my parents, and most of their friends, hadn’t ever had Mexican before and didn’t know what to order. H ordered for them, while L and a friend of R’s from uni got trolleyed on the sangria. I was utterly drained by this point and just wanted to go home, but when I finished dinner I joined E and S-j down the road for a chat, then H and R swung by and said they were going to a Spanish bar up the road.

E and S-j walked me up there, saying, ‘You’re not going on your own dressed like that!’ and my shoes were pretty hard to walk in so I wouldn’t have been able to effect any fatal self-defence moves (apart from a stiletto heel in the groin, but even then my shoe might have gone flying before making the necessary contact), and agreed it would be good to have their company. E knew the bar, so I waited with her out the front until her man picked her up. H generously bought me a Toblerone cocktail and I joined L and R, and L’s toyboy who’d also come to the launch. Then J, who H was hoping was single and available, turned up. He was a lovely man, but unfortunately I was too tired and drunk to chat to him much. There was some kind of metal peacock attached to the wall, its tail fanning out across the wall while the bird itself stuck out of it in a sculptural way. J used its beak as a back scratcher and then, when I got up to go to the loo, my dress got stuck on the wire and I panicked, and J gave an excellent rendition of a peacock squawking violently. It was all very confusing, amusing and worrying as I sought to detach myself without damaging the dress.

After my second cocktail I was pretty much losing the plot and, to the discomfort of H, R and I (J was probably just amused) L was making out with the toyboy with increasing intensity.  I was exhausted, and J had to work the next day, so we called it quits without H being able to make much of a move. We used my final cabcharge to get home, and H got sick with a cold that night because he didn’t turn the air conditioning off.

So it was a wonderful launch, the only sad thing being that I didn’t have a chance to talk to people properly, when they’d made an effort to come and see me.

The next morning we had to get up at 9am, having had a protracted argument with our mother about the absurdity of the hour, but she’d refused to get there any later, saying that she and dad would have nothing to do in the hotel and had to be on their way. When they arrived we had a coffee at the café down the road (which has Rick Hatch pottery) and I painfully mustered some conversation, then they took H home and I went down the road to buy some wine for L and P for having us to stay, then went back to bed. That evening I flew out to Brisbane and my sister met me off the plane, in even worse shape than I was, because she’d had to fly back that morning and go to work, so I decided to stop feeling so sorry for myself.

Literary Traversings

After meeting H and having lunch with C on Chapel Street, I walked back to the hotel to meet my publicist. I was still grumpy, but feeling less violent than in the morning, and as I walked I rehearsed my speech and decided that the sun was uncomfortably warm on my shoulders. A* turned out to be wonderful – young, vibrant and friendly – and she carried my backpack around for me, which made me a little uncomfortable. H had been the designated packhorse but due to a change in plans he couldn’t go back to the hotel to collect the bag for me.

A* and I went first to a gay and lesbian bookshop down the road and signed their two copies, then went on to a beautiful bookshop in Albert Park. ‘The book’s been selling quite well,’ said the manager, rather solemnly and quietly, and I wondered if this reserved estimation was characteristic of all bookshop managers. A* then got us a cab to Dymocks and the manager there was lovely, and gave us cups of tea and hot chocolate from the cafe. She told us about her camping trip for the upcoming weekend, on a plot of land which several families had grouped together to buy, and now she and their descendents kept up with the tradition and still went there to stay. It sounded a bit like life on the farm so I told her about that. Then A* and I went across the road to an independent bookstore and signed some more copies, and then we caught a cab to Brunswick Road for dinner – Malaysian this time, at Blue Chillies. H texted me in alarm to say that there were people queuing on the footpath outside and he wasn’t sure if he could get a ticket. Then he wrote again to say they were the overflow from the previous event, which had a comedian in it, and my heartbeat subsided fractionally.

It surged again as we entered the bookstore, where there were quite a few people. I flapped around trying to get the FM set up so I could hear, and introduced myself to the two women writers beside me, Jesse Blackadder and Susan Hawthorne. There were three blokes, Dallas Angguish, Todd Alexander (Sydney) and Henry von Doussa, sitting in front of us but I couldn’t hear them and was too stressed trying to remember my spiel to try to hear them. Four writers spoke and then there was an interval, in which I caught up with my publisher, who’d come back from maternity leave, and met the head of marketing at Penguin who’d also come along. H chatted to them too then excused himself to attend to his blind date outside – a meeting engineered by L. After the interval a woman got up and sang a song, murmuring into my FM microphone, ‘This song is for you, Jessica,’ then she sang into the microphone for the audience. I giggled, embarrassed by the attention; it was the first time I’d been serenaded by a lesbian, and she was a good singer. Finally I got up and said my bit and gave two readings from my novel and, despite feeling very nervous and ill-prepared, it was fine.

I was utterly relieved when I got back to my seat and forgot that we had to do Q&A. So we all went up and sat on the plush red velvet couch, and everything was fine and dandy until I got asked the question by the MC, ‘Now Jessica, you’re a heterosexual, so how did you go about writing about lesbians?’ Fortunately I’d rehearsed an answer to this question with H, though he assured me that I wouldn’t get asked it because a thing like because it was passé. I explained that the relationship between Ingrid and Ellyn was based on a relationship with a man that hadn’t been working and wasn’t ever going to work, but that the reason why I’d written about two women instead of a man and a woman was because I was a very strong feminist and my ideas about female autonomy and independence were better expressed through a relationship between two women. They seemed happy with that, though I was affronted and, later, quite angry, for the same reason that I was irritated by the review written by Peter Pierce.

Pierce had maintained that I’d chosen quite a conventional structure and genre (ie a romance) to write about an unconventional topic – namely, lesbians. The must frustrating thing about reviews is that you can’t defend yourself or give the reviewer one of your famous expressions of withering scorn. The whole point I’d been making had been that lesbian love is no different to heterosexual love – therefore as a heterosexual writer I’m entirely qualified to write about love. As for the sex scenes, as I pointed out to the MC, I used my imagination – which is what writers tend to do.

After thinking about it some more, I understood that the MC might feel defensive if a heterosexual writer was writing about gays, namely because I was infringing on the very thing that defined them – their sexuality. But to use that line of reasoning would be to say that deaf people can only write about deaf people and black people can only write about black people, which is patently ridiculous. Then I thought about it some more and figured that it might have been a generational thing – maybe that’s how people like the MC thought (and he was at least in his late 50s), and how people like Pierce think - ie that lesbianism is something radical, when in fact it’s not that different – sure, you’re still marginalised, but marginalised in the way that deaf people might be. I can recall one of my writing lecturers (also around the same age as the MC and Pierce) saying in a faintly disparaging tone to a lesbian in my class that the lesbian novel she was writing was the sort of thing that might get picked up by a left wing women’s press but it would never make it to the mainstream. Well, look at where we are now, folks.

Anyway that’s enough of my ranting. Someone then asked a very sensible question about the role that landscape of Australia, both in the city and country, played in our work. I'd already spoken about this before I gave my reading, so I talked about how homesick I was, and that the only good thing about being out of Australia was that I didn't have to listen to John Howard, and I got a round of applause for that one.

There’s one last thing I need to mention: the red velvet flock wallpaper of the bookstore. I spoke to the owner of the store afterwards as he got me to sign a stack of books and told him how much I admired it. He said that it had been a toss up between the wallpaper and the airconditioning and he wasn’t sure if he’d made the right decision. ‘Oh, I’m sure it was,’ I replied. ‘It’s like when I buy shoes – I always favour beauty over pain.’ He looked at me dubiously and said, ‘I don’t think you’d have been saying that if you were here last week when it was 40 degrees in the store.’ I had to concede he had a point, but now I am determined to have the same wallpaper in my house when I get back to Oz.

We went out for dinner afterwards, and as we stood at an intersection figuring out where to go, a girl, who was reasonably well-dressed, came up asking for money. H forked some out and handed it over, then the girl turned to me. I didn't really have any idea of what was going on as I hadn't heard her, so J+ patted her on the shoulder and said patronisingly, 'I think you've done well for tonight, you should go now.' I didn't hear this until afterwards when H repeated it to me, but when he told me I started laughing, and matched up J+'s phrase with the girl's expression of resigned agreement.

The next day we had a picnic with our cousins in the Botanical Gardens, which were beautiful, and the day after that indulged in the panacea of shopping. I found some lovely sparkly shoes to go with my Collette Dinnigan dress - $215 down to $75 – wohoo! And made the mistake of walking into Alannah Hill and walking out again with a red handbag. Ok it was kind of essential and I will use it everyday but I still felt guilty as it was a tad on the expensive side.

That night we went out with G and her boyfriend to the pub. H was supposed to meet up with his blind date again but after the previous night he was a bit reluctant to go. I drank twice my limit (which is a glass and a half – yes, am sad – but cheap) and eventually I got sick of his flaffing around and said, ‘For God’s sake, what do you WANT to do?’ and he said, ‘I want to stay here,’ and I replied, ‘Well, tell him that then!’ Many creative suggestions for texts were proffered and eventually, guilt-ridden, H managed to stay put. After freezing once again (honestly, I didn’t travel 2000 miles to end up shivering in a Melbourne beer garden in the middle of summer) we got up and I tottered after the others, flashing a brilliant smile at the bouncer for the heck of it. There was some kind of scuffle going on across the road. ‘What is it?’ I asked H. ‘A bitch fight,’ he replied gleefully. We walked on some more. ‘What are they saying?’ I asked again, but he replied, ‘Shhhh, just get a move on.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Shut up and keep walking, I’ll tell you in the car.’ When we got to the car he said, ‘Lock your doors, Jess!’ and I asked again, ‘What’s happening?’ and he said that he’d started giggling as we walked down the street and the man fighting with his girlfriend had shouted, ‘What are youse fuckin’ laughing at, you fuckers?’ Hence the reason for not talking and hurrying on. Next time, H said, he would laugh throatily like a man instead of giggling like a girl, and no one would dare to swear at him. At this I, too, burst out laughing.

I caught the plane back the following afternoon after having coffee with C and J* at a hole-in-the-wall cafe. I'd had a bad hangover and so settled on Vietnamese coffee, which was thick black coffee with condensed milk. It was a bit nasty and my tummy was upset so I opted for a freshly baked chocolate cupcake as well. When I got back to Sydney I texted L to tell me where to go but she didn’t answer her phone until 2 hours later (despite me having told her I would arrive at 5) by which time I was sitting at Eddy Avenue at Central in the sun waiting for a bus, angry as all fuck. Later I complained to Mum on the phone, ‘My life is organised, why can’t other people organise theirs?’ and she remonstrated, for the umpteenth time, that everyone was different therefore it wasn’t fair to apply my standards to them. I knew she was going to say this – she’s been saying it since I was small – despite the fact that both of us know it won’t make any difference because I will always be frustrated by disorganisation.