I’m blessed by excellent friends who keep me going. Three years ago, one was especially supportive by finally pushing me into seeing a psychologist, refusing to leave until I’d booked my first appointment. Bob the Therapist is hugely down to earth, a former engineer with a taste for practical solutions to practical problems. He has comfy leather chairs but, alas, no chaise longue. He looks a bit like Jonathan Biggins; whether that’s a bonus or not is up to you. It was a huge comfort to know that he’d seen dozens of cracked- up PhD weirdos, and that plenty could be done. He teaches me about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and mindfulness, while I teach him useful new words like microaggression, friendzone and circlejerk. Before each session begins, Bob gives you a special episode recap from last time, which makes me feel like the star of my very own Bold and the Beautiful-esque soap opera, and, given how entrenched the issues are, the plotlines are about as cyclical. Bob’s sessions are now a highlight of my week; I strongly recommend everybody get a Bob of their own.
To buttress the therapy, I’ve gone on antidepressants, which are a mixed bag. The early side effects are brutal – a fog of the vision, sweat of the body, impotence of the penis. But as the drugs and your brain make friends with each other, it all settles down, the boners creep back like sap in the springtime – I knew they wouldn’t get far. For depressed people, there’s an abnormally low amount of happyjuices like serotonin in the brain; selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors work to throw a dam across the brainstream, building up an artificial reservoir of chemical happiness that can reliably irrigate the brainfields to yield better thoughtcrops. It’s not without flaws, the dam prevents floods of excessive happiness, but importantly it stops droughts. The rising waters have even partially inundated the dreadful town in suicide valley where all the thought-viziers live; the urge is far less frequent, and less pressing when it comes. It’s not a perfect solution, and who knows what bouncing bombs the Dambusters of adversity may drop in future, but the right pills and therapy seem a good bet so far.
For a long time, I thought I was alone in all this, but that false belief is just another symptom. It’s all pretty par for the course, and since throwing this coming out on the pile of the other comings out, it transpires there are plenty of friends with similar problems, enough that there is now a secret society of the literally like-minded called Brainclub, where members (Brainzos) share hot brain-tips and keep an eye on one another. It’ll all probably be fine. While I can almost guarantee that the oncoming headlights will beckon on the way home as they do every night, the one who almost got away, but hasn’t, is me.
PS Since first writing this story in 2015, I remain consistently Not Dead, which is pretty good, really!
JESSICA DETTMANN
Jessica is a Sydney-based writer, performer and editor. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and studied at the Bread Loaf School of English, in Vermont and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Jessica once appeared as the City of Sydney Christmas Angel and sat on top of Town Hall in a frock that reached the street. After twelve years working as an editor for Random House Australia and HarperCollins Publishers Australia, Jessica made the transition to writing after two small children rendered her housebound. Her blog, ‘Life with Gusto’, turns a sharp but sometimes still affectionate eye on modern parenthood. She has just published her first novel, How to Be Second Best, with HarperCollins.
‘The Chairs Are Gone’ copyright © Jessica Dettmann 2018
The Chairs Are Gone
by JESSICA DETTMANN
This story was originally performed at the event Performance Anxiety
I have a five-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and what that means, in real terms, is that at least once a week for the past three years I have had to attend a really poorly rehearsed, extremely long-form piece of experimental theatre in my own living room.
It usually happens when we have friends with kids over, and the first sign that anything is about to take place is when you notice that all the chairs are missing from around the dining table. That’s when you know. There’s going to be a show.
One particular Friday evening about a year ago, my mate Jess and I were implementing some independence and resilience training on our four kids, which could have looked to the casual observer like we were ignoring them while we drank gin in the kitchen. She went to clear some dishes from the table and when she came back she’d gone pale.
‘The chairs are gone.’
And sure enough, a minute later a small aggressive tout in the form of my two-year-old son came in to sell us tickets to a show that was about to commence.
‘Sorry, mate, we don’t have any money tonight,’ I told him. But it turned out the tickets were that deadly combination of free and compulsory.
After our tickets were issued, validated, stamped and officiously ticked, circled and torn in half, we were made to stand in a queue of two for a long time. There was a lot of dashing about from the cast and demands for my good eyeliner, which I duly handed over because I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my weekend trying to rub off a Harry Potter scar roughly executed in laundry marker from my son’s forehead.
With the anticipation building, we were finally ushered forcefully to our seats, the upright dining chairs that had been dragged into the middle of the living room.
My daughter appeared and ordered us to turn off our phones, but then confiscated them for good measure. You can’t be too careful with people putting things on YouTube these days.
The show started and, like always, it was as enthusiastically performed as it was incoherent. The script borrowed heavily from Peter Rabbit, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the performers were all triple-threats: equally accomplished at shouting over each other, abusing the audience and jumping off furniture.
It was also interminable. This play was the love child of A Long Day’s Journey into Night and the Ring Cycle, but with more parts where some kid inexplicably put his leggings on his head.
With an appreciative and encouraging smile plastered to my face, I endured, wondering when we would get to the good bit. The dancing. Because often, if you make it to the end of one these things, the kids play some music on my confiscated phone and the cast dances – and it was Friday night and I was tired of being oppressed. Tonight, I was going to dance too.
Sure enough, after ten or twelve curtain calls, on came ‘Gangnam Style’ and they all cut loose, getting down like four possums on ecstasy with their feet stuck in concrete. I started tapping my foot. I jiggled in my chair a bit, and then I thought bugger it, and I got up and danced.
‘SIT DOWN,’ my daughter boomed. ‘You CANNOT dance.’
‘Of course I can,’ I said. ‘Anyone can dance. You don’t own dancing. It’s not illegal. This isn’t Footloose.’
She took my hands and pulled me down into a crouch. She leaned in close and whispered, in a voice of cold, calm, white fury, the absolute worst thing she could think of: ‘I am going to ask Daddy if we can do NOTHING for your birthday.’
From a four-year-old, that is basically the equivalent of a fatwa.
I knew I was in one of those moments where what I did next mattered. Parenting has more than its fair share of moments where what you do next matters but, by and large, I usually manage to not notice it’s an important teachable moment until the moment has passed and it’s too late and I can, in good conscience, go back to looking at Instagram on my phone. But this time I saw it.
It was time to step up as a parent. There were going to have to be consequences.
And it was pretty clear how this was going to go. I’d dole out a punishment, which would be no books at bedtime, because since smacking fell out of fashion that’s literally all I’ve got in my parenting arsenal. She’d be miserable, but I’d stick to my guns because this was a watershed moment.
‘Sweetheart,’ I said. ‘That was a very unkind thing to say. That has hurt my feelings. I would like you to go upstairs to have a think about your behaviour.’
> She spun on her heel in a manner so dramatic that for a second I thought she was actually wearing a cape, and flounced out of the room in a miasma of tears and huff. She stormed up the stairs, almost to the top but still just low enough that she could be seen from the living room. She sat there and sobbed, loudly.
I gave her a couple of minutes, and then I joined her. We sat side by side.
‘Do you have something you want to say to me?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry I said that about your birthday.’ Her little shoulders heaved. I cuddled her. I wanted to let it all go. No punishment. No consequences. Was the crime really that bad?
But was I at the top of a slippery slope? If I let this go, would the threats of birthday cancellation lead to regular episodes of elder abuse, then turn into petty theft, progressing to a little bit of breaking and entering, grand theft auto, and ending up who knows where? Immigration Minister for a Coalition government?
I steeled myself. For the future of humanity, there had to be no books at bedtime. ‘Thank you for apologising. But tonight, because you said such a mean and hurtful thing to me, I’m not going to read you any books. You need to understand that your actions have consequences.’
‘WHAT?’ She was utterly outraged. ‘But I didn’t think consequences were for things like that!’
‘Really? For being horrible to someone you love? What did you think consequences were for?’
‘I don’t know. For killing an animal or something.’
Of all the things I thought she’d say, that was not in my top million.
Why would she say that? Had she thought about killing an animal? What would the consequence be for killing an animal? How much worse should it be than what you’d get for threatening to cancel your mother’s birthday? Four days of no books? A week?
There was nothing about this sort of thing in any parenting book I’d read. I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to have to wonder if I’d rather my kid were a dictatorial theatre impresario or a potential animal murderer.
But I’m her mum. It’s my job to help her navigate difficult emotions and thoughts. And she was only four. So I thought, I’ll go easy on her.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I forgive you for saying what you said. I want you to go downstairs, put away the chairs, and say goodbye to our friends, while I lock the cat safely in the spare room. We will have books tonight. But not American Psycho. We’ll finish that tomorrow.’
JAMES VALENTINE
James presents Afternoons on ABC Radio Sydney. He began his career as a session and touring musician in the heyday of Australian pub rock. He recorded and appeared most notably with Models, Absent Friends and Wendy Matthews. For ABC TV, he has presented and produced The Mix and a reality show for amateur musicians called Exhumed and in the 1980s was the kids TV presenter on the Afternoon Show. James is the author of a successful series of books for young readers: The JumpMan Trilogy. He’s been a regular commentator on Sunrise and a reporter for Midday and Good Morning Australia and for many years reviewed films for Showtime.
‘Kenny’ copyright © James Valentine 2018
Kenny
by JAMES VALENTINE
This story was originally performed at the event There’s No Place Like Home
I remember how great it was to make friends. It was such a rush.
I’m ten years old and I had my best friends: Phil Long, white blond hair, cheeky smile; and Steve Howard – he was cool in that indefinable way that kids and teenagers are cool. They just are and you just aren’t. Steve Howard was cool I think largely because his name was Steve. God I wanted to be called Steve. I’d been Jamie for about the first six years and then I thought – Jamie’s not going to get me anywhere – let’s make it James. But it wasn’t a cool name.
So you have your best friends and they’re the ones you walk out of the classroom into the schoolyard with. I’d have my cricket bat or my footy. We had our spot that we’d staked out in the yard where we played tippity run cricket or kick to kick footy. We allowed others to join in to help field and to make the kick to kick more interesting. Can’t take a specky mark on your own. Got to fly over some smaller kid. So Brett and Craig and Wayne could join in and they were good guys.
I can’t remember if Kenny was always at the school or did he just turn up one day?
But we went out one lunchtime, in those days in Ballarat in the 1960s, we ran out of school and went to the nearby shops to get lunch. Couple of potato scallops and chips – twenty cents.
Eat them on the way back, plenty of time for footy.
And when we got back, Kenny was hanging around.
You didn’t invite kids in. Good afternoon, my name is James, would you care to join us in practising our torpedo punts? Kenny would have hung around waiting for the ball to bounce his way. He would have run in, picked it up and he might have handballed back to me. I would have done the nod. That said yeah thanks.
Then next time he got the ball, maybe he kicked it back himself.
Five minutes after that he’s in the pack. Barging on in. We all self-commentated, like we were on the MCG and we’ve come out of the pack for Richmond.
‘Oh, he’s picked that one up beautifully and now he slams down looking for Royce Hart in the forward pocket!’
Kenny was hilarious. Big smile and one of those kids whose movement was funny. Athletic and goofy. Get the ball every time, great kick, but finish it off with a little sly flourish that said, huh, pretty good eh? Reckon you can do better?
After school we’d have a kick or play a short test match depending on the season and then we’d walk home.
Kenny and I started hanging out after school and we’d make each other laugh. That helpless rolling it’s never going to stop and I am going to die kind of laughing.
We’re ten. We can collapse snorting with laughter for ten minutes if one of us farts. It’s not that hard, but we both thought each other was hilarious. We did impressions of the TV shows, the teachers and the other kids. We had jokes and riddles and then we were just stupid.
We couldn’t wait to crack each other up.
The rush of a new friend. It’s love. It’s such a buzz. It happens in a day.
One day I walked home with Kenny. To his place. It was a tiny little cottage, just over the road from the flour mill on the railway line. His mum was there, we had jam on bread – something I wasn’t allowed after school. We played and cracked gags at his place.
And then I walked home to mine.
‘Where have you been?’ asked my mother.
‘Kenny’s,’ I answered.
‘Do I know Kenny?’ asked my mother, eyes narrowing a little.
‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘He’s at school. He’s my friend.’
‘All right.’
I didn’t live that far from Kenny but our place was much bigger.
It was a big nineteenth-century house now divided in two. We lived in one half and my grandfather lived in the other. It had big rooms and corridors, a tower on the top and one of our rooms was a grand front room – the good room and because it was the good room, it was never used.
There were a lot of rules in our house. You had to wipe your feet on the doormat on the way in, we didn’t have jam and bread after school, we had some crackers and a piece of fruit. At dinner there was always a lot of instruction about how to eat. Forks were particularly worrying, always to be deployed tines down, never to be used in a shovelling fashion. Soup was to be sipped from the side of the spoon, a butter knife was employed to take a piece of butter from the butter dish and then place it on your bread-and-butter plate before spreading butter on your bread with another knife that was on your bread-and-butter plate. The bread and butter was then to be cut into quarters before consumption.
Lots of rules.
A few days later, Kenny came to my place. We tumbled in after school. I introduced him.
‘Mum, this is Kenny. Kenny, that’s Mum.’
‘Well, I’m not Mum to you, am I, Kenny?’ said Mum.
‘Naa,’ said Kenny, ‘I don’t reckon you are.’
After a pause my mother said, ‘Well, I’m Mrs Valentine; what are you boys going to get up to?’
‘Dunno.’ I shrugged. ‘Go out the street.’ And out we went.
The street was out the front of the house, and it wasn’t busy. We’d kick the footy, other kids would come out, bike races, sneak off to the back of the tennis court if someone had nicked some ciggies from their dad.
It started to get dark, so Kenny and I headed inside.
‘Can Kenny stay for dinner?’ I asked.
‘Well, we’d have to check with his parents –’ started my mother.
Welcome to Story Club Page 10
