Acknowledgments

by Becky Lucas

  It’s kind of the same reason I’m a bit wary about what entertainment I consume. I love TV shows and books with bad characters who say deplorable things, because what is the point of art that only reaffirms your worldview? But I do worry that once the characters’ thoughts are in my head, my brain won’t categorise the information into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and instead just recognise them as ‘valid’. Sometimes when I say things, I can’t be sure if it’s how I actually feel or whether I’m just repeating something I heard somewhere. I might even be spouting off the opinion of Cruella de Vil. For that reason, I try to never be too tethered to my thoughts or ideas and always welcome counterarguments. For all I know, the thoughts I have might not be my own, and so not worth defending.

  I do remember that Pam would promise me things and never deliver. Like the time she told me we’d get ice cream if I was good, and then acted confused when I brought up my impeccable behaviour hours later. This incident was particularly sinister in my opinion, because she knew that it wasn’t a big-enough crime for me to report back to my mum. It’s one thing when someone lets you down because they’ve honestly dropped the ball, but when they let you down because they think they can get away with it, it feels personal. But maybe I’m projecting my adult assessment onto that scenario – it might have just been because she was too drunk to drive me to the ice cream shop. See, look at me not being tethered to my thoughts.

  Mum stopped letting Pam look after me when, under Pam’s supervision, I backflipped into a pool and cracked my head open, and Pam was too intoxicated to notice. I remember the pool filling with my bright-red blood while my mum swam around in it, trying to keep my head above water.

  But years later, when I was around nine or ten, my mum and her band were asked at short notice to open for a singer from America, and she was desperate enough to ask Pam to watch me backstage.

  The singer had been quite famous in the early 1960s. He had a few songs that you probably wouldn’t know and one that you probably would. He would come to Australia every couple of years and perform shows at various RSLs. Just like at concerts today, the old people would politely nod along to the songs from his back catalogue, then lose it at the one song they recognised.

  I knew that this gig was a big deal. Usually, if my mum performed at an RSL, I would have to just sit underneath one of the plastic tables, playing and drinking pink lemonade until it was time to go home. But on this occasion, she had her own dressing room in the special downstairs area, right next to the American singer’s, where I could wait with Pam.

  Pam arrived in the carpark at the same time as we did, only briefly glancing at the scar on my forehead, her only acknowledgment of our previous time together. Then she sat with me while my mum and her band did their warmup and rehearsal.

  Later, while the audience was filing in (they give them a good hour or so to get seated in those places), we all sat together in the dressing room. Shortly before my mum went onstage, the one-hit wonder from America came in and introduced himself.

  He had a bouffant hairdo and a fancy belt buckle and was very polite, the way all Americans are, because I suppose, in their country, if you aren’t polite, you might get shot.

  I remember being starstruck, even though I had no idea who he was. He remembered my name, said he was so very pleased that we could all be there, and wished my mum luck, also mentioning that anyone was welcome to the drinks in his fridge, which elicited an interested look from Pam. Then my mum and her band left the room to perform their opening set. Pam asked if I wanted to stay in the dressing room or watch the set. As I was halfway through a good book at the time, I chose to stay and eat some of the complimentary crudités.

  I didn’t have long to enjoy either, though, because a few moments later, the American singer popped his head around the door and asked me if I wanted to see his dressing room. I looked over at Pam, who nodded encouragingly. I didn’t actually want to see his dressing room, but I also didn’t want to seem impolite. It was the same feeling I’d had when one of my dad’s friends showed me his Tamagotchi at a dinner party. I couldn’t have cared less about the contraption, but I felt I had to play the role of an excited child.

  I followed the singer into his dressing room, which was much bigger than my mum’s – and empty. As I gazed around the room, I became aware that the air felt different and his demeanour had noticeably changed. His eyes seemed to soften when he looked at me.

  I was examining something on the dresser when I noticed the scent of his cologne getting stronger. He walked up behind me and began cuddling me and rubbing my lower back, while repeating again and again what a pretty girl I was.

  Before I had time to understand what was happening, the door opened and Pam stuck her head into the room, causing him to jump away from me and break into a big, toothy American smile.

  If I ever catch myself staring at the scar on my head, I always think of Pam for saving me in that moment. Looking back, though, I genuinely don’t think she knew what she’d interrupted. I have a feeling she was just looking for those drinks he’d mentioned earlier.

  So thank you to Pam for your dedication to the drink. Your unwavering lust for white wine stopped a bad situation from becoming much worse.

  The man who fell down the stairs

  My friend Sophie and I went on a trip to Europe when we were just a bit too young for it. At least, that’s how I felt at the time – I barely knew what I liked or what cultural exploits to even look out for. The whole thing felt like a bit of a blur, and I’d wondered if the experience was wasted on me.

  It’s always taken me a bit longer to get with the program than most of my friends. Some girls become fully grown women as soon as they graduate from high school. You look down into a packet of Twisties and by the time you look up, they’re rustling around inside a bulging handbag searching for the keys to their Suzuki Swift. By the age of twenty-three, they’re ready for motherhood and a maroon lip. But not me. I’m thirty-one and I still don’t have my driver’s licence. And I’ve never once had a tampon on me when I needed one.

  Sophie and I didn’t really know what we were doing, but we did like to drink, so one afternoon in Croatia, we found a bar and sat down with the intention of drinking at least five standard drinks each. The downstairs section was a busy restaurant, and upstairs was a large outdoor courtyard. We made our way to the courtyard and found ourselves a table close to the stairs.

  Shortly after we’d sat down, two middle-aged couples asked to join us. The only thing I can remember about one of the couples was that the woman had the attitude of an ex-flight attendant who couldn’t be bothered smiling politely anymore. But the other couple, whom we spoke to most, were very chatty and engaging. Not to mention that, after travelling with one person for a few months, it doesn’t take much to lock in on some new social stimulus. I distinctly remember feeling quite adult in that moment, drinking beers with a couple of middle-aged people, going round for round and pulling it off.

  The wife in the more interesting couple seemed very nice, in a ‘manager of T2’ kind of way. She was inoffensive and warm and seemed to take us seriously, so we instantly liked her.

  Her husband was a real estate agent and that checked out completely. His conversation felt more like a one-man show that he’d performed and perfected, in that it didn’t require much of our input at all. I don’t mind that type of person; it can be relaxing to let them orate to the group while you sit back and chime in when you feel like it, often scoring an easy laugh off all their hard work.

  He sat with perfect posture, which is one of my more unpopular pet hates – I often slouch as a way to show people I’ve just met that I don’t think I’m that good. I know it’s wrong, verging on insane, to be annoyed by something that’s genuinely better for people’s health, but there’s just something so grating to me about someone who doesn’t have the humility to slouch, even just a little bit, at first meeting.

  His wife didn’t talk as much as he did, and instead alternated betwee
n suppressing eye rolls every time he used a word he’d clearly just learnt, reminding him that he was sitting near the top of the stairs and to stop moving around so much, and giving us serious side eye every time he lectured us on the benefits of travelling.

  Almost every person who has told me how travelling made them a better person has proved themselves to be an utter dud. Obviously I agree that getting more life experience under your belt will help you become a more well-rounded person, or an extremely effective psychopath, but the idea that travel in and of itself is the best way to do it seems flawed. I suspect the people who travelled back when it was less of a done thing learnt a lot about themselves, as they would have been forced to meet and interact with completely different people just to do simple things, like catch a bus. But nowadays, with all the apps at people’s fingertips and the tour groups that schedule you down to the minute, the only lesson people seem to learn from travelling is how to say, ‘Do you have a phone charger?’ in Spanish.

  And don’t get me started on people who post pictures of their boarding pass next to their glass of Champagne on social media. What a lame ode to the dull process of travelling. What’s next? Posting pictures of your driver’s licence? Or a medical certificate that states you are carrying your EpiPen?

  As the night wore on, this man continued to completely disprove his point about people bettering themselves by travelling, by saying things like, ‘The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read a page,’ while intermittently disappearing into the bathroom to do lines of coke. Meanwhile, the rest of us committed to getting as drunk as possible.

  At one point, sensing the conversation was heading in a direction that didn’t involve him, he once again impressed upon me and Sophie the importance of travelling, claiming, as his chair edged closer and closer to the top of the stairs, that just this year he’d been to Spain, to Rome, to London—

  And in a burst of coke-induced enthusiasm, this man disappeared mid-sentence down an entire flight of stairs. I caught a glimpse of his manic face as he went down and, in that brief moment, he showed so much vulnerability that for the first time that night I found myself liking him.

  He and his chair rocketed to the bottom of the stairs and slid along the restaurant floor, coming to a slow stop beside a big family eating an early dinner. Waiters ran to his aid and he angrily shooed them away, like his fall was their fault. He wiggled out of the chair with some difficulty, jumped up and ran back up the stairs, chair in hand, perhaps thinking that the quicker he returned to us, the less chance we had of noticing that he’d fallen down an entire flight of stairs. He settled back into the group, refusing the sympathies of the other couple and his wife, then, without missing a beat, he continued listing the places he’d been to that year. Then he insisted, once again, that we simply had to travel.

  I remember thinking that if I were to give him advice, it would simply be to not fall down a flight of stairs mid-story.

  The really disappointing thing for me and Sophie was that no one really acknowledged what had happened. The others reacted with genuine expressions of concern for him; meanwhile, Sophie and I had just witnessed possibly the funniest thing that we were ever going to see in our lives, and we weren’t able to enjoy a second of it. For the next half hour, we were forced to sit there and pretend that everything was normal, and that a fully grown man hadn’t just fallen down a flight of stairs midboast. It was a huge effort, and our throats and foreheads nearly exploded with the tension from our suppressed laughter.

  Eventually we stood up, excused ourselves and walked down the stairs, not daring to look at each other. Then, once we were a safe distance from the bar, we locked eyes and stood there laughing solidly for about ten minutes. The entire walk home, we’d scream every couple of minutes and ask each other if what just happened was real. We kept repeating the phrase ‘not normal’, because it was the only way to describe what had happened.

  I often wonder about that couple, and whether the wife was ever able to respect him again. I suppose true love is watching your spouse topple down a flight of stairs and finding it within yourself to honour the lifelong commitment you made to him.

  I want to thank this man for reminding me that, if you stack it hard, it is your responsibility to give permission to those around you to laugh. The only way you can leave that situation without a laugh is if an ambulance is called, but anything less than that, the people around you should be allowed to laugh and laugh and laugh. Otherwise we’re just forced to share in your embarrassment. Never be afraid to take your lumps. You fell. We get to laugh. It’s the natural order of things.

  The nerd in the park

  In my early twenties, I had a relationship end so badly that it sent me grey. I’ve had a few breakups over my slutty little life, all of them varying in severity and, for most of them, I was the one who had ended things. But this one was the kind where I could barely catch my breath from hurt, where the only time I felt relief was midway through crying. Basically what I’m saying is that this time I wasn’t the one who had ended it. I had been dumped.

  When people say that it’s worse to break up with someone than be broken up with, I just laugh, baffled by how they can go around pretending to believe that. Being broken up with is absolutely the worst of the two, because the person you love is sitting across from you, essentially telling you that they’re okay with never knowing you in the same way again. Plus there’s all the time you spend standing at the sink, washing dishes and convincing yourself you’ll never love again. Even if you were able to find it within yourself to try to meet someone new, who could be bothered when there’s so much effort involved in building up intimacy with a total stranger? There are so many inane questions that have to be asked at the start of getting to know someone.

  ‘So, do you have siblings?’

  ‘No. I had a twin, but they died in the womb.’

  Jesus.

  ‘So . . . what countries have you been to?’

  I hate that part. I just want to jump straight into the bit where they know how hard to choke me and promise they’ll be there for me when my parents die.

  During this time of deep breakup depression, one of my friends suggested a walk in the park to cheer me up, which was a big mistake, as most suburban parks depress me. I’m not sure what it is about them; I think it has something to do with when my parents would take me to parks after their divorce, and being aware as a child on these outings that my mum, who’d be chain-smoking cigarettes a few metres away from me, might not be having as much fun as I was. I also think it has something to do with resenting authority and not wanting to have a nice time in the place that the council has designated for that purpose. Or maybe it’s because if you’re feeling depressed, it’s one of the things people suggest doing to make yourself feel better, which means the park is often just full of depressed people.

  I went along on the walk anyway, because I’m good at sensing when sympathy and goodwill is drying up. My friends took me to a fairly isolated park and, as we were walking through the trees, we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from a distant corner. For a split second, I was worried that my friends had enlisted some kind of pagan organisation that put sad, moping women out of their misery. A second scream rang out and the severity of it filled me with dread, like I was hearing a person being murdered. We jogged over to where we suspected the screams had originated and what we saw was much worse than a murder. As we approached the clearing in the park, we discovered that it was four adults between the ages of twenty-five to fifty ‘live action role playing’ or, as they call it, LARPing.

  If you don’t know what LARPing is, it is when a group of people who are eligible to vote choose to dress up in costumes and interact with each other as characters from video games or fantasy novels. I know it sounds as though I’m putting it down, but I’m actually not. I’ll admit, they look like they’re having a lot of fun. Plus, who am I to judge? That very afternoon I had been caught taking selfies of myself whipping my
head around to see what I looked like caught off-guard.

  However, this particular group of nerdy adults were being particularly obnoxious, and, on closer inspection, it became clear that the screaming was emanating from one man in particular, who was writhing around on the ground dressed as a steampunk butterfly as another man pretended to spear him with a sword.

  Why is it that being sexually rejected by women results in such loud hobbies for some men? It reminds me of my neighbour, who insists on revving his motorbike engine for five minutes in his driveway in a menacing pre-show, before accelerating loudly just as he reaches my house. It’s so deafening I can barely hear the details of his divorce below the sound of his two-stroke.

  For a while, there was this trend where girls would talk about how they liked ‘nerdy guys’ – yet, watching the scene before me, I’m pretty sure that if faced with the reality of being in a relationship with a true nerd, they’d change their tune. They don’t really want a nerd; they want a hunk who wears glasses, can download movies and won’t cheat on them with their best friend. If you really want a nerd, there they are, girls – in the park, wearing capes and chasing around their bald friend, who’s pretending a broom is a horse and squealing at the top of his lungs.