Acknowledgments

by Becky Lucas

  If somebody writes a song about you, there’s no right of reply – and even if you do get the chance to explain yourself, what medium could ever trump a song? Let’s say you did an interview on one of the world’s most popular talk shows. It still wouldn’t infiltrate people’s minds the way a catchy song can. No couple will ever play your interview at their wedding or lip sync to it at karaoke while high on MDMA.

  When I found out that a song written by popular Australian singer-songwriter Missy Higgins called ‘The Special Two’ was actually inspired by an affair she had with her sister’s husband, I was stunned. I had been a huge fan of the song when I was younger, and I had been so sure it was a regular love song. And then I thought of her sister and what must have been running through her mind the first time she’d heard it.

  ‘The special two’ in the song is not Missy and her lover, as I had always assumed, but Missy and her sister. The song is essentially an apology and a promise of sorts that she is determined to mend the relationship and be close to her sister once again.

  This, to me, is an example of a great song made even better by its intense backstory. But I admit, now that I know this, I’m pretty interested in the sister’s version of events. Because I bet that, no matter how incredible the song was and how genuine she thought the sentiment, she probably would have preferred it if there had been no need for a song in the first place.

  My heart really does go out to all the people who have been fucked over by an artist. Not only have they had to go through that trial, but then they have to watch as the person who fucks them over goes on to write a number-one hit about it. It feels like the bad behaviour gets excused just because the artist has processed their feelings in a way the public can enjoy. Meanwhile, the other person has to sit by, quietly eating their tuna salad as they listen to their office co-workers humming along to the lyrics that depict in detail one of the worst moments in their lives.

  In the case of Missy’s sister, I assume finding out that her husband had cheated on her with Missy was enough of a blow. But no, that’s wasn’t the end of it – then she had to endure Missy sitting her down in the lounge room and presenting her with a song. She not only had to deal with the gut-wrenching agony of such a terrible betrayal, but she was also forced to compliment what is undeniably a very good song and watch on as the person who hurt her used that song to advance her career. ‘The Special Two’ went on to win all the big awards in Australia, and rightly so, but imagine the pressure of having to forgive someone when their apology to you wins an actual award.

  Now I think about it, it’s possible I’m jealous that songwriters get to do a little preamble before their song. As a comedian, you can’t really do the same thing with a joke. A joke typically has to be written to get the point across in the least amount of words possible, without losing so much context that it flops and, worse, people think you’re a terrible person. It’s incredible how important context is in making people feel comfortable with what you’re saying.

  There’s a comedian I know who has an incredible capacity for understanding human nature and a genuine empathy that you don’t see much of in my industry – both results of losing his parents at a young age and a lifetime spent working as a labourer to support his wife and kids. He is a man who does the right thing all the time and not just when he’s being watched. Yet sometimes when he’s onstage telling a joke that comes across as the musings of a typical sexist male comedian, I can see people in the crowd pulling away, not understanding that his gruffness is an act or that his jokes are dripping in irony. If they were able to hear his backstory or gain more insight into the way he writes, I believe he’d be considered one of the greatest comedians in the country. But then it wouldn’t be a comedy show, it would be a storytelling night, and those are two very different things.

  A friend of mine once brought a first date along to one of my shows where I told a joke I’d written years ago about orgasm inequality. After seeing the show, she told my friend that she thought I was sexist. I had written the joke after an extended period of what I felt was an unfair orgasm ratio between me and the men I was sleeping with. I went on to explain that I felt a sense of injustice at the fact that, as a woman, I not only seemed to be orgasming less than my male counterparts, but I was also the only one in our pairing who ran the risk of getting pregnant. I suggested that we develop some sort of technology that gave men the capacity to fall pregnant, so the risk of pregnancy was one that would be shared by both sexes. I then posed the idea that whoever orgasms first would then be the one who took on the risk. This, I reasoned, would incentivise men to make sure they weren’t always the first to orgasm, because then they’d be the ones having to nip up to the pharmacist to get the morning-after pill.

  It wasn’t my best joke and seeing it written down only confirms that, but at the time it came from a fairly personal frustration that I was having and I wanted to laugh about it with other people in a frivolous way. I hadn’t even considered that it could be seen as sexist, because I was only speaking for myself and when I’m onstage talking about my life, I don’t think I should have to shoulder the burden of representing nearly half the population.

  However, according to my friend, his date was offended by it, claiming that I was undervaluing the gift of motherhood and making a mockery of women’s fertility. I know in my heart that I would never do that intentionally, and in my mind the joke was not about that at all, but that’s how she felt and there was nothing I could do about that.

  Except I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I became obsessed with the idea of sharing my thought process behind the writing of the joke with her. I hated the idea of someone walking around thinking that I was a sexist. I hated it so much, I had to get in touch with her just so we could get a coffee and I could sit her down and explain to her that she was a stupid bitch.

  Thanks to Stevie Nicks for providing me with the excuse I needed to write this story. I hope that girl sees this.

  Jacinta Allen

  In 2015, my friend Tom told me he was about to try this experiment he’d heard about. He was going to unfollow all his Facebook friends, to help him stop scrolling through Facebook so much.

  The idea was that you could still keep Facebook for the things it was useful for, like replying to invitations or messaging people, but your feed would be completely blank. There was no reason, therefore, to waste hours looking through updates and photos and opinions from people you barely know called Brett who you’d met once and didn’t even like.

  It sounded promising, so I decided to try it for myself. The process of manually unfollowing everyone took a fair bit of effort – it probably took around two weeks to get through everyone – but eventually I had a completely blank feed. I wasn’t able to scroll down, even if I wanted to.

  For a couple of months, it worked. I was free from endless scrolling and found myself not going on Facebook every day because there wasn’t really anything to see. I felt lighter, happier. I had more time to do the things I wanted to do, like stare at a wall or blame my parents for how I turned out.

  Gradually, though, I noticed that whenever I saw friends or acquaintances in real life, their smiles seemed a bit strained and their eyes seemed to be searching for something in mine. It took me a while, but eventually I figured out what was happening after a friend of a friend barely spoke to me all night at a party.

  Later, I went onto her Facebook page and saw that she’d announced her engagement. A mutual friend had told me the news before I saw her at the party and I thought it was enough to congratulate her in person with genuine warmth and sincerity, but I was wrong.

  I started checking out more people’s Facebook pages and saw the same thing: announcements of all types being celebrated by our social circle, with no likes from me or Tom.

  From that point, whenever I noticed people being cold to me in real life, I’d launch straight into an explanation of my Facebook experiment, telling them in light, happy tones that I’d unfollowed everyone, includ
ing my family and best friends. I’d even follow up by saying something like, ‘I’m scared that some people might think I don’t like them because I’m not liking their posts!’

  And just as I predicted, people’s eyes softened, they seemed generally more relaxed around me and even started laughing at my jokes again.

  I had always suspected that people had a bit of a subconscious checklist of who liked and commented on their online posts, and now my suspicions had been confirmed. What seems like a casual like to me is the way some people mentally ease their social anxieties.

  Knowing this, I had to make the decision whether I wanted to spend every future conversation at a party breathlessly letting people know about the experiment and telling them to not be offended if I hadn’t been liking their posts, or to just give in and get back on the Facebook bandwagon like everyone else. Tom had also noticed these real-world ramifications and so, after many conversations weighing up the pros and cons of what we’d done, in the end, we both chose to give in. Not only did I have to spend another couple of weeks following all my friends again, but I was also spending far more time on Facebook than I had before the experiment.

  This wasn’t the only online experiment Tom had tried that had real-world complications. Around the same time as the Facebook experiment, he’d begun mucking around with one of those bots you can buy that supposedly get you more Instagram followers. It works by following people and liking their posts and even commenting generic phrases like ‘wow’ or ‘amazing’ on your friends’ photos. Then it finds out who your friends follow and starts following them and liking their random posts. Those people may then see you following their account and liking their posts and follow you back, therefore gaining you more followers. As well as wanting to broaden his numbers of followers, Tom also claimed purchasing the bot was an intellectual exercise, as he was just interested to see what it could do.

  The problem was the bot had no sentience, so it didn’t really understand who were the right and wrong people to follow. The erratic nature of the bot meant Tom ended up following a fifteen-year-old girl who was the much younger sister of a work colleague. Unbeknownst to him, the bot started liking all her photos, including ones of her and her other teenage friends in their bikinis. That meant that people were talking behind Tom’s back, not about how popular he was on Instagram, as he had initially hoped, but about how he might actually be a paedophile.

  I loved the bot, though; I used to think of it as a conscious little creature, waiting until Tom was off his phone, then grinning maniacally and thinking, ‘Now what shall I do?’ and speeding off into the ether to like some photo of a distant friend’s second cousin doing blackface.

  The bot actually ended up doing me some good. Years ago, I’d had a terrible fight with a friend and we’d stopped talking. Around the time Tom’s bot was ruining his life, I got a message from my old friend out of the blue, telling me she’d just moved to Sydney and asking if I wanted to do something together. We met up and it was just like the old days. We never spoke about the fight or why she had decided to contact me after all this time. I am a coward in that way. I don’t ever like to apologise, because I’m scared the apology won’t be accepted. I never even bring up or acknowledge bad things I’ve done, even when it’s clear the other person has forgiven me, in case I remind them of that bad thing and they decide to take back their forgiveness.

  A couple of months later, my friend and I were back to hanging out all the time. One time, I invited Tom and we started telling her about all the havoc his little bot had been causing. She made this funny face, and I knew immediately what she was about to admit. She said that a while ago, Tom’s Instagram account had begun following her and incessantly liking her photos, and when she looked at his profile, she saw he was friends with me. She figured I must have told him about her because I had wanted to reconnect, and he was liking her photos as a way of hinting that she should reach out to me. So she did.

  Maybe the bot was more sentient than we realised; perhaps it could sense that I had a soft spot for it, so it decided to show me benevolence. But, for me, it was yet another spooky reminder of the power of social media likes and how much they can mean to people.

  I went to school with a peculiar girl called Jacinta Allen, who, among her many eccentricities, seemed to be incapable of telling the truth. She was one of those compulsive liars you mostly come across when you’re young – the kind who tells lies that are so ridiculous that they actually sometimes get away with it, because how do you even begin to discredit the claim that their dad owns Nike?

  While most people eventually grow out of this childish habit, some don’t, abetted by the fact that their lies often have no real-world consequences. It must be addictive to tell that first lie and have people believe it – instantly you have earned the attention and status that would come from actually having done the thing you’re lying about, with little to no work on your behalf. It must seem like the most obvious life hack in the world.

  Whenever I meet an adult that’s a compulsive liar, I always feel sorry for them. Why haven’t they grown out of the habit or had anyone shame them for it? It’s like seeing an adult man on the street sucking on a lollipop, or learning to skateboard – there was a time when that was acceptable, but now, sir, you need to grow up.

  The worst thing about compulsive liars is when you know what they’re saying is made up, yet you’re too uncomfortable to call them out on it, so you become complicit in their lie. They’ve now engaged you in a mutual farce, and you have to go along with the sham.

  It’s one thing to embellish a story you’ve told for years, where the facts are perhaps less important than the actual act of storytelling. I know I’d prefer a few lies sprinkled in with a story if it’s made better for it. I know a girl who is terrible at telling stories – the whole time you’re sitting there listening to her monotonous blow-by-blow account of what happened, all you can think is, This story could really do with a few lies.

  But it’s another thing to lie for no reason at all. I used to know an adult liar like that – this guy wouldn’t technically make up entire stories, but he would stretch the truth whenever possible. If he stayed up until 3 am, he’d say he was up until 6 am; if he got paid two hundred dollars for something, it became two hundred and fifty in the retelling. It was just little lies that he knew he could get away with, which I suppose isn’t all that bad or hurtful to anyone – it’s just a bit weird.

  Jacinta was a liar, that was for sure, but none of us ever felt comfortable shaming or making fun of her for it, because we weren’t sure if she was completely right in the head. At the time, we just diagnosed her as being ‘a bit simple’, but you’re not really supposed to say that sort of thing anymore. I used to describe her as someone that seemed like she might have been held underwater at the local pool for a couple of seconds too long during a game of Marco Polo. Compulsive lying aside, she was a nice-enough girl. I had a few classes with her, as did a couple of my friends, who, like me, never had anything bad to say about her, with the exception of the time she used a mallet to destroy the entire class’s dioramas in a fit of rage.

  Many years later, while scrolling through Facebook, her name came into my feed. It was a post from her account but written by one of her family members – her sister, I think – letting people know that Jacinta had passed away, suddenly.

  I stopped, surprised, and I clicked through to Jacinta’s profile, where I saw tributes flooding in from people I went to school with, most of whom I hadn’t thought about since Year Nine when I moved schools. Apparently, Jacinta had suffered from a massive heart attack a few days earlier and died right there and then.

  I messaged a friend who had gone to the same school and asked if she’d heard about Jacinta Allen. She hadn’t. I told her what I had learnt, and we both felt really sad for Jacinta and her family. It’s funny how when you’re a kid, you think of people like Jacinta as these characters who were a bit weird, and you never think about the fact that o
ne day they’ll die. I guess that’s the reason kids can, as they say, be so cruel.

  Months later, I got a text from the same friend. She told me she had been at the shops the day before, when she walked past a girl who looked a lot like Jacinta Allen. She had nearly kept walking; she said the thought of it actually being Jacinta made her feel sick. But thankfully, she stopped.

  ‘Jacinta?’ she called out.

  The girl who looked like Jacinta turned around and saw my friend. She made a deranged noise and face, and continued to stare without saying anything.

  My friend, realising it was indeed Jacinta, said, ‘Jacinta, I thought you were . . . dead,’ which is a sentence most of us can only dream of saying in real life.

  Jacinta broke down in tears. My friend tried to comfort her, resisting the urge to pull out her phone and cash in some high-level gossip that would see her stock go up in the group chat.

  After Jacinta had finished crying, my friend asked her what was going on. Why was she here in this food court ordering a six-inch Seafood Sensation Subway sandwich when she was supposed to be dead in the ground?

  After some encouragement from my friend, who was either being genuinely sympathetic or just trying to seem that way in order to extract every bit of information she could, Jacinta eventually admitted that she had faked her own death. The posts from her account supposedly written by her sister had actually been from her. She had also blocked anyone who might have known she was lying from seeing the post.

  When my friend asked why she would do this, Jacinta paused for a while. Then she explained that she kept seeing people she knew posting on Facebook about dead friends or family members and getting all these likes.

  ‘No one ever likes my posts,’ she said, before adding, ‘I just wanted to know what it was like to get one hundred likes.’