Welcome to Story Club

by Zoe Norton Lodge

  Michael Malloy says, ‘Whoa. Did you ride all the way from your house?’

  Coolly, I say, ‘Sure did.’

  Then Mitchell Cayless says, ‘On that piece of shit?’

  Whatever is said next, I don’t hear it. My guts twist inwards and my face burns. I try to laugh, but I falter.

  Don’t they know? It’s a racing bike. It’s a classic. It’s rare.

  I think I catch a look of pity from Michael Malloy, but Mitchell Cayless just smiles his proud shining Mitchell Cayless smile. They make their way towards the school buildings, and I’m left alone, looking down at my first true love.

  It’s not a classic, it’s just old.

  It’s not fast, it’s goofy.

  It’s not rare, it’s a freak.

  I wheel my gaudy monstrosity to the bike shed, and lug my broken heart to class.

  The day is a murky blur of numb anticipation. Because the day will inevitably end. And then it will be time to ride home.

  I hide beside the toilet block and watch the other kids take their bikes and ride away. From my stinking refuge I observe the amusement and disdain elicited by my hateful steed. Matthew Blake says, ‘It’s not even a girl’s bike. It’s just weird.’ Ciaran Rodney points at the purple seat, then kicks the whole thing over.

  When the coast is clear, I take my bike and try for a quick getaway. But I have to pass a line of kids waiting for a bus and now a chorus of laughter rings out. Three dozen kids united in derision of me and my wretched conveyance. Mr Mullen the PE teacher is on bus bay duty and witnesses the shameful spectacle, but says nothing; he just looks embarrassed to be there.

  I take to the road as fast as I can. Now the huge handlebars seem absurd, stupid, cumbersome. The warm morning has given way to a baking hot afternoon.

  I pedal hard, and quickly I’m red-faced and puffing. I soon reach the long hill by the golf course.

  But it’s too steep, it’s too long, so now I’m off and pushing, hauling this useless Frankenbastard up the side of Hawkesbury Road.

  And then the bus comes past, with the same three dozen kids, and the old grinding engine can barely make the hill, so the bus passes me at a painfully slow rate, slow enough for me to register each mocking face and for each pointing finger to skewer my heart.

  Finally, I get home.

  I don’t put the bike back in the shed. Instead, I head under the house, to the cellar, that dank spiders’ lair that I never go to. And I take that bike, and I dump it in the darkest corner next to a pile of old broken bricks.

  And I never ride it again.

  It’s still there today.

  A few weeks later I work up the courage to ask my parents for forty bucks.

  ‘What do you need forty bucks for?’ asks Dad.

  I look at the floor, and again my guts twist inwards and my face burns.

  My voice is tiny.

  ‘Travis Calasanti, he’s got this black BMX. He’s selling it,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve already got a bike,’ says Dad.

  I don’t say anything.

  Neither does Dad.

  The next morning Mum gives me forty bucks.

  DEBRA OSWALD

  Debra is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and was creator/head writer of the first five seasons of the TV series Offspring. Her stage plays have been performed around the world, and Gary’s House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences: Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. Her television credits include award-winning episodes of Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, The Secret Life of Us, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Debra has written two novels for adults, Useful and The Whole Bright Year, three Aussie Bite books for kids and six children’s novels.

  ‘A Chatty Girl’ copyright © Debra Oswald 2018

  A Chatty Girl

  by DEBRA OSWALD

  This story was originally performed at the event Taking the Plunge

  All my life, I have yearned to be a woman with enigma. The kind of mysterious and alluring woman where people wonder, What is she thinking? Her demeanour is so inscrutable.

  But, it turns out, I’m too fucking chatty. So I can’t manage inscrutable – I’m just, well, scrutable.

  I’m also a pretty good listener – but shutting up to listen is not the same as quiet mystery. My complete failure to achieve enigma was a handicap when it came to attracting boys as a teenager. Guys always picked the intriguingly distant, thin girls as girlfriends. I was just the friend you could chat to.

  But then one day, in the last year of high school – I was sixteen – the boy I was helplessly in love with invited me out. The guy – let’s call him Peter because that was his name – Peter took me on a date. It’d just be me and him. And his girlfriend. Vicki was very pretty with – you know, HAIR. Not that I was hairless. Not bald at all. But I didn’t have flowing golden tresses of princess hair. Vicki may have had the hair, but she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. That was my role in the proceedings. The date consisted of a train trip into George Street to see a movie. On the train, Peter sat between the two of us, leaning over to pash Vicki, while I stared ahead concentrating on not dying from unrequited love and resisting the urge to shove Biros deep into my ear canals to end the torment of hearing their wet tongue action. Then, periodically, Peter would pop up for air and chat to me. I would listen to his observations on some topic and entertain him with conversational quips of my own, before he would dive back down for another bout of pashing Vicki.

  Looking back on this now as a grown-up, I think, Poor fucking Vicki. It can’t have been great for her either. But at the time I thought, She’s OK: she’s got the HAIR. And look, I am still to this day making handy cash from that experience because I used it in a play called Dags. Writers can always spin misery into gold.

  A year later I left home to go to uni in Canberra and, by the time I got there, aged seventeen, I was the only person in Australia over the age of sixteen who was still a virgin. This shameful situation had to be rectified. I would have to shut up long enough to trick someone of the male persuasion to rid me of the burden of my virginity.

  One glorious night, I lured a candidate into my share house bedroom – he was twenty-seven, American, kind of pretty, very short (you might even say elfin) and he was a born-again Christian I’d met at Baptist Youth Fellowship. I’m not proud of that last part. I myself was not a Christian, born-again or otherwise, but one of my housemates was. (By the by, the youth fellowship world seems to be a hotbed of promiscuity if anyone here is in the market for that.) In my case, I effectively went undercover in the born-again world to get sex. You see the problem? If I’ll admit that to a roomful of strangers, what chance do I have to be a Woman of Mystery?

  Anyway, the point is, I lured the Christian elf into my room and I lay down on the bed, not talking, attempting to look desirably enigmatic. Things went well to start with – there was enough pashing going on that I couldn’t chat even if I’d wanted to. But then . . . well, you’ll remember I was a late starter when it came to sex. I mean, I was SEVENTEEN. During those long teenage years in the friendzone, I had been studying. Cleo magazine. Cleo was saucy and packed full of information about sexual techniques, including diagrams. I had made use of my lonely hours to diligently swot up on the theory of sexing.

  By that night in Canberra, I had a LIST. A list of sexual positions and activities I was keen to try out in a real-life scenario with an actual human being. That’s why I couldn’t stay silent for long – how else would I be able to let the elf know all the items on my list? ‘Let’s do this! And afterwards, I want to try this! Ooh, and let’s not forget that!’

  I must tell you, I had a fantastic time and all that theory prep meant I had a solid grounding now I’d finally got to the practical component. It should be noted that the elf did not at any point complain and he kept up, so to speak
. In the moment, I assumed his slightly horrified expression was religious guilt about all this sinning but later I realised he must’ve been a bit afraid of this girl chattering at him, like the overly enthusiastic choreographer of a porn movie.

  That night I fell down on the enigma front and possibly traumatised a Christian pixie for years to come. But, at least, I’d taken the plunge and the job was done. There was no need to speak of it again – certainly not at Baptist Youth Fellowship.

  The following year, aged eighteen, I moved into a student hostel on campus. By then, I was well on my way in the sexually active department. But in terms of landing a proper boyfriend, no joy.

  Along the corridor from my new room was a guy doing his Honours year in pure mathematics. The mathematician and I hit it off straight away and I fancied him something chronic. We would stay up together in the shared lounge area yabbering until 2 or 3 am. It was pretty clear the mathematician was aroused, panting with desire for more, more, more of my steaming hot insights into movies, books, politics, while I sucked every last drop of his juicy anecdotes. Yes – the trouble was, in my enthusiasm, I’d forgotten to be mysteriously taciturn and I’d gone straight into chatty mode. Night after night – with hope quivering in the heart of a chatty-girl-who-wants-to-be-loved-for-more-than-her-massive-conversational-gifts – things never went beyond robust exchange of ideas. Eventually, I would give up and scuff across the nylon carpet squares to my own room. Alone.

  Some of you might be jumping ahead here and speculating that the mathematician was gay. Just wait.

  That night, I lay on my narrow student bed. ‘Let it go, Debra. It’s obvious the mathematician just regards you as a friend. Don’t spoil a lovely friendship by SAYING anything.’

  But as we established earlier, not saying things is not my strong suit.

  So I got out of bed and walked up the corridor in my pyjamas, heart thumping against my pyjama top. Please take a moment to appreciate the raw courage involved in that walk – I was going, in the middle of the night, to knock on the bedroom door of a guy I lusted after, who I was convinced didn’t lust after me. Some of you might feel the urge to cry out, ‘Don’t be a fool, Chatty Girl!’ Others might say, ‘You lack enigma, Chatty Girl, but you are Crazy Brave.’

  I reached his room. Still a light on under his door, so I knocked. ‘It’s just me.’

  ‘Come in,’ said the mathematician.

  I opened the door to see him sitting up in bed in a red nightshirt. This was Canberra 1978 – a red nightshirt was hot – just trust me.

  I stood in the half-open doorway in my pyjamas and blurted out my rehearsed dialogue, ‘Hi. I had a good time tonight.’ Did I mention I was a dazzling conversationalist?

  ‘Yep. Me too,’ said the man in the red nightshirt.

  ‘Great. Look, um, I just wanted to be clear about something. Am I correct in assuming what kind of relationship you want with me?’

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ said the mathematician.

  There it was. He just wanted to be mates. Rejected, yet again, as a potential girlfriend.

  ‘OK. I’ll leave you alone,’ I said abruptly, shut the door and scurried back to my own room. I had to scurry quickly so I wouldn’t burst into tears in front of the watchful North Vietnamese student always cooking what looked like lumps of bark in the communal kitchen.

  So. I had been brave – taken the plunge, laid myself bare in the ultimate act of vulnerability – and it had backfired. I’d made a monumental idiot of myself.

  Some of you may already have picked the flaw in my fact-finding mission. When I had asked ‘Am I correct in assuming what kind of relationship you want with me?’ the mathematician said ‘Yes,’ by which he meant that he wanted to rip off his red nightshirt and have steaming Cleo-trained sex with me. So when I had replied, ‘OK. I’ll leave you alone,’ and promptly left, he assumed I was rejecting him. He couldn’t risk cracking on to me after that.

  We were two people who were great at talking, but so locked into low self-esteem, that we couldn’t make coherent sense to each other. Luckily, one of the most powerful forces in the universe is undergraduate lust and a few weeks later we both shut the fuck up and fucked. In fact, we ended up cohabiting for nearly two years. We’re still friends and he’s now a world-renowned professor of molecular biophysics at Yale. YALE. If I’d stuck with him, I’d now have children who’d be very good at sums. Missed my chance there.

  I’ve shared these scenes of my humiliation with you all and, of course, I have enjoyed hearing your murmurs of pity. But – pity me no more. I eventually found a young gentleman who was drawn to a Chatty Girl and could overlook my lack of enigma. As life partners for many years now, we both rarely shut up.

  Maybe what I should do at this point is offer my skills to others. If anyone is here tonight with a hot date but the conversation feels hard going, put your hand up. I could pop down, take the seat next to you – you can get busy pashing each other, but when you come up for air, I’ll be sitting there, happy to chat.

  LEWIS HOBBA

  Lewis is a comedian, writer and co-host of the triple j Drive show with his high school-friend Veronica Milsom. He’s written and directed TV for The Comedy Channel, the ABC and Network Ten, and has appeared on shows such as Spicks and Specks and The Chaser’s Media Circus. Lewis has performed at comedy festivals around the country and was the head writer for the political comedy show A Rational Fear, touring everywhere from Splendour in the Grass to the Sydney Opera House. He also once did stand-up in a butcher, which went as well as you’d imagine.

  ‘Unisex’ copyright © Lewis Hobba 2018

  Unisex

  by LEWIS HOBBA

  This story was originally performed at the event Fool Me Once?

  I was fifteen years old. I was in General Pants. It was the year 2000, and youth culture was a disappointing mélange where boy bands thrived in synchronicity, Sisqó released ‘The Thong Song’ and people were describing Powderfinger as ‘fresh’.

  I went to an affluent school in Victoria that was half full of boarders from the country, and half full of dentists’ children from the surf coast. This meant the out-of-uniform dress code was either RM Williams boots and Akubras or, my personal choice, massive jeans and an oversized hoodie from Rip Curl.

  The General Pants change rooms were covered in posters for local Melbourne bands I’d never heard of and the girl serving me was probably at uni and probably had an asymmetrical haircut and even though I’d never met her and don’t remember anything about her, I know I was in love with her. And it was real.

  The first round of jeans my dream girl brought out were perfect for the year 2000 because they could fit one of me in each leg, but I sent them back without trying them on because none of them were made in Australia. I knew I’d have to show anything I bought to my parents, and for them, anything that wasn’t made in Australia was definitely made by a six-year-old in a sweatshop. From shoes to toothbrushes – if it didn’t come with a Made in Australia badge and a signed photo of the of-age Australian labourer who crafted it, it would not be allowed in the Hobba home.

  After explaining this to my shop assistant/new love interest, she looked into my eyes and deep into my soul, and said, ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  She came back with something less like a pair of jeans and more akin to a revolution. Sure, I’d seen skinny jeans before. In photos, not in real life. Not in Geelong, where the main exports were wool, Ford automobiles and bikie speed.

  ‘Are these men’s jeans?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re unisex.’

  Unisex.

  Now, I may not have known the names of the bands on the change room wall, but I knew what I had seen, and those jeans came from the women’s section.

  The tension grew as she proffered the leg-hugging, gender-contorting denim – I looked at her with fully fledged panic. I’d been here before.

  To fully understand my fear of women’s clothes beyond the normal masculine anxiousness of a teenage boy with feminine legs,
there are a few things you need to know. One, I grew up with two sisters. They were both older than me, and due to the linear nature of time, they still are.

  The second is that my parents are beautiful, lovely, full-on hippies. The kind who only like the Beatles because they collaborated with Ravi Shankar, who was definitely only just on their list of top-ten sitar players. The kind that since I was seven years old took me to yoga camps in the mountains every summer. My parents refused to let teachers give me standardised tests because they felt that to standardise children stunted their creativity. For several difficult years, my parents didn’t believe in dairy. I suffered through many Easters with eggs made from carob bought from a store recommended by my naturopath. Yes, I had my own naturopath.

  My sisters on the other hand were evil masters of mental manipulation who tricked, cajoled, hoodwinked, inveigled and deceived me on a daily basis. Every week I managed to stay alive my soul grew harder, until I trusted nothing and no one.

  When I was five, my eldest sister, Tilly, told me the tooth fairy didn’t exist. I scoffed, ‘Sister dearest, I may not know much about the world – geopolitics and macroeconomics remain a mystery to me, but I know this – there is a fairy who lives in a wonderful cloud land who makes pianos out of my teeth then plays beautiful teeth music. I didn’t come down in the last shower.’

  Tilly said, ‘Fine, put your tooth under your pillow. But this time, don’t tell Mum and Dad. See what happens.’

  The next morning, I awoke to the realisation that magic didn’t exist, and for the first time, as a five-year-old, I wept the tears of a world-weary adult.

  At this point I was yet to attend my first day of school. For that my sisters were saving up something truly Machiavellian.

  My parents believed in letting me be whoever I wanted to be, and so when my sisters had started taking dance classes taught by a wonderful woman who was also my parents’ meditation guru, I started to go too. It wasn’t a traditional dance class; it was called ‘movement’, and it was twenty children, all the spawn of hippies, doing what could only very generously be called interpretive dance. There were no rules, no mistakes and no routines. Tony Bartuccio would have wept at the sight of it.