Is It Just Me?

by Chrissie Swan

  The world, to my surprise, did not end.

  I am not a sickie-taker, either, but I took TWO whole mornings off my brekky radio show. I warned my boss with a text message at 11pm. It was simply a photo of my current view: the toilet bowl and the words, “Something evil this way comes.” At 2am I texted again, this time from over the kitchen sink, and said I didn’t think my 4.30am alarm would be obeyed. Not this morning. Or the morning after, as it turned out.

  But guess what? The radio show went to air. It was great. The world didn’t end.

  It is refreshing to find that, despite my belief to the contrary, I am not the centre of the universe. Despite the well-thumbed and scribbled-upon pages of my old-fashioned paper diary, I can put a big fat red cross through two or three whole days and nothing diabolical happens. One rogue microbe, lodged in my gut, taught me that it’s okay to let go occasionally and that people will cope.

  Thank you, gastro, for letting me give the incredible people around me a bit more credit for their roles as oarsmen in the canoe of our life. Because sometimes that bossy one who rides along the shore on her bike screaming into a megaphone can hit a rock and come a cropper. And guess what? The canoe will still slide through the water just as it always has. Thank you, gastro. Thank you.

  5th August 2012

  Gym evasion

  I’m being stalked. My tormenter is not clad in a sci-fi merchandise T-shirt, sporting a greasy comb-over, nor is he at my window clocking intimate moments such as me defrosting the mince for dinner or hooking rogue mandarin pips from the mouth of my crawler. No. He is stalking me by phone. From his gym.

  I’ve been a member of four gyms in my life. The first time I signed up and literally never set foot in there again. That “free” assessment ended up costing me more than $1000 and a fair nudge to my self-esteem. The other times I just lost interest because treadmills were boring. But that was then.

  This time, I’m enjoying it. I am forking out for a personal trainer, which should be a tax deduction because, Lord knows, the people who really need the help can’t afford it. Me included. But it’s the only way for me. I’m treating it like piano tuition. I’ll stick with the trainer until I have the vaguest idea of what the hell I’m supposed to be doing, then I’ll be confident to continue on my own.

  I’ve committed to a half-hour session three times a week, and while I’m still waiting to get that endorphin rush every­one tells me will make me addicted, I love that I’m doing something for my body and making it strong and capable. It’s quite fun.

  Finding the time is an issue at the moment, though. I’ve just started filming for a weekly show, which takes a day out of my week. Poof. Gone. I have a normal job, too, and, these two elements, along with a feverish pull to get home to roll around with my kids as soon as possible every day, means I need a gym that will be a bit understanding.

  People who work at gyms must have heard every excuse for non-attendance in the book. Most of them, I admit, have been uttered by yours truly at one time or another. In the ’90s, I told one place I was sick, then never contacted them again, hoping they would think I was dead. Didn’t work.

  ’90s gym girl: “Hi, Chrissie! It’s been seventeen days since we’ve heard from you! Are you dead? Ha ha.”

  ’90s me: “Yes. Makes crunches difficult.”

  What is it about breaking a gym membership that turns us all into liars? If it were anything else, we’d just say we can’t do it any more. So why do we act all crazy?

  I think it’s because we know we’re going to be judged. And no one wants to be called lazy or, even worse, have it be true. So we lie. And act strange. I feel for the gym staff, having to communicate with us when we’re acting as if we’re a mere three signatures away from being committed.

  Yes, I’ve tried every tactic. But guess what, new gym guy? I’m not foxing this time!

  I want to be in your establishment. I like your cross-trainer. I appreciate that lifting stuff until my face quivers is good for me and I’m enjoying it. But I’m busy. It’s the truth this time. Is that so hard to believe? Apparently so.

  I received a text message from my gym guy yesterday. He hadn’t heard from me in five days and he was getting worried. (I’d been flattened by gastro.) It was a picture message. Well-meaning harassment just got creative!

  He had seen a billboard with my face on it spruiking the fact that I’m on breakfast radio. This thing is massive. He’d artfully positioned his camera to make sure his head was next to mine. The resulting photo was my giant, beaming face next to his faux-angry one. Accompanying the pic were the words, “It’s time for Chrissie & Gym Guy time. Monday!”

  I laughed. Then I realised that no matter what I said, he would hear, “Blah, blah, lie.”

  I started to compose a text message, which was, of course, lies, despite the fact the reasons for my temporary disappearance were legitimate. I immediately went into the kind of panicky avoidance you indulge in when you’re in the supermarket looking like hell and buying tampons and you spy the mean girl from school. Avoid! Act dodgy!

  Then I called him. And I told him the truth. I told him I love his gym. I love the half an hour I put aside to make my body stronger. I told him I’d been stymied by illness and a change to my workload. I said I’d be back next week.

  He was quiet for a minute. The truth? He almost didn’t know how to handle it. And I almost didn’t know how to tell it. I felt so empowered. And I promised him I would not be calling him in six months to tell him I’d contracted something, moved interstate or had, in fact, passed away. How grown up.

  12th August 2012

  Uncomplicated men

  I haven’t lived a life full of men. In fact, quite the opposite. I am the youngest of three sisters and my parents separated when I was five. Dad moved to Adelaide while we all stayed in Melbourne. We had four boy cousins, but they all lived in Queensland. Or Canberra. Or somewhere. Add to that the fact I went to all-girls’ schools from Year 3 onwards and you could be forgiven for thinking that my life was loosely modelled on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I even have a sister called Beth.

  For the first twenty years of my life, men were a great mystery to me. Growing up, I never knew how I was supposed to act around them. I got all my cues from movies and TV. Greg Brady, Darrin Stephens and Pa Ingalls all added pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of what men meant to me. I gathered this info and concluded that men like flares, crazy paving and slopping up stew with cornbread after a hard day’s woodchoppin’.

  I met my first true love when I was studying teaching. I followed him to his pigeonhole and learnt his name was Lee. Later that month, I ran into him by chance in the city and we sat in a greasy spoon and fed coins into the little jukebox. We bonded over our mutual appreciation of Massive Attack and Madonna. We stayed together through share houses, graduations, internships and jobs. We had two fights in seven years. The first was over whether or not Ginger Spice was sexy and the second was over whether or not he should go on a tacky bucks’ night at a strip joint. He went. And got decked. That was the end of his foray into sleaziness.

  I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t had too much exposure to the men your friends have warned you about. I just haven’t met them. Or if I have, I haven’t let them into my world. I’m sure they exist … but not in my universe.

  When I worked in advertising I met dozens of creative, hilarious gentlemen. They never wanted to sleep with me, so I was free to love them with complete fervour. I caught up with one fellow eight years after he first gave me my chance at a career in advertising and I thanked him. He told me he never hired anyone he wouldn’t like to sleep with.

  We guffawed over this. And I was flattered. Not horrified. There haven’t been too many men in my life who have hit on me, and frankly I’ll take attention wherever it comes!

  I’ve always appreciated a man’s uncomplicated nature. All th
e women I know are also as transparent. It’s a trait I like.

  People say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and I probably would have agreed with that statement in my teens. The boys on my tram, smelling of a curious “boy blend” of pencil shavings, hockey sticks, orange rind and cheap deodorant, were the most intimidating people I’d ever seen. I’d stare at their school bags just to see what was inside. I was fact-finding. Like Miss Marple, but with newly shaved legs and navy hair ribbon.

  But as I’ve grown, mainly into myself, I can’t muster one example of a man I do not understand. The one I live with now is a dream. Funny, honest and hard-working – like all the women in my life. And I have two little boys of my own and five nephews (no nieces), so now I’m swimming in boys. They are all I know. My sisters and I are trying to raise these tiny human beings to be empathetic, kind and industrious. Just as we would if they wore tutus instead of tool belts. They are defined by their lack of drama. They are a good influence on us all.

  When I was twenty-nine, I was thrown into the Big Brother house and it was there I learnt the most about men. I remember thinking at the time, “They’re so fun!”

  Men have taught me to not sweat the small stuff. They run at life without considering the drama of it all, the consequences. Life is a trip.

  Last night, in a sea of toys and kids’ stuff, with four baskets of washing to fold and a 4am wake-up looming, I was attempting to get my one-year-old into a romper suit for bed. It was like trying to get an octopus into a plastic bag. Sensing my panic, my partner looked at me with his shiny eyes, scruffy beard and a wry grin and said, “Marriage, kids … the whole catastrophe, eh?”

  How do they do that? With one sentence I was able to let it all go and enjoy the chaos.

  Men. Maybe it’s true, you can’t live without them. And why would you want to?

  19th August 2012

  We can meet heroes

  Rick Springfield was in Australia. My friend Tim sent me a link to an article that stated the “Jessie’s Girl” singer had done an impromptu show at a suburban restaurant. One surprised diner said, “I was having lunch with a couple of friends, then the band changed and a few older blokes sang three songs. It wasn’t until he was singing ‘Jessie’s Girl’ that we realised one of them was, in fact, Rick Springfield.”

  This is deeply un-Australian. I would have lost my tiny mind. In fact, if I was enjoying a parma at the Cove Steakhouse and Rick goddamn Springfield turned up, someone would probably have had to call triple 0.

  I can’t tell you exactly why I love him so much. It could be his dreaminess, but it’s probably the fact he wrote these genius lyrics: “I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot.”

  I don’t live too far from the restaurant in question, so I could’ve staked out the place. But I’ve recently learnt that you have to be careful when you meet your hero. Tread carefully. Very carefully.

  You see, my first love was Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran. My sisters and I dreamed of the band every night. When they toured Australia in the early ’80s, my sisters even saved their pennies and caught a TAA flight to Sydney to stalk them. Our sorority owns every vinyl album they have ever released, even Night Versions – essentially laborious 45-minute versions of the radio edits we loved on Countdown. We were hardcore. And it’s a love that has not waned.

  So you can imagine my boundless joy when, earlier this year, I was given an opportunity to interview the band, then meet them backstage before their stadium show. When I told my sister she’d better organise a babysitter as she was finally going to see them face to face, she cried. We both did.

  First came the interview. I sat down with two members, John Taylor and Roger Taylor. I bored them senseless. I told them how much they meant to me. They had no interest whatsoever. Then I tried to get all cerebral and ask serious questions about their influences, but I’d lost them at hello. Within two minutes, they had lost the will to live. When I’m nervous and humiliated, my voice goes high and tight, as if I’m choking on sourdough, so all the interview yielded was a few minutes of me asking inane questions. I couldn’t even listen to the edited audio. Such shame.

  This didn’t bode well for the meet-and-greet planned for later that night. I didn’t tell my sister of my horror. Instead, I cleared the bread from my throat and soldiered on.

  We met outside the arena squealing. We had lipstick on and fully charged iPhones.

  My sister warned me that I was about to see a side of her I might not like. “I’m going to be kind of gross and excited, you know?” I told her it was okay. I’d love her anyway. We were ushered backstage, where we waited. And waited.

  Eventually, we were corralled into a long hallway and asked to wait against the wall, firing-squad-style. There was a kerfuffle and then they appeared, all five members, including the lead singer, Simon Le Bon. A few other fans carried bits and pieces to have signed, but my sister and I just wanted the photo. Finally. A photo. After thirty years of admiration, we wanted three minutes of their time … and they treated us like something they’d stepped in during an outdoor Pilates class. Then it was over. They walked on stage; we went to our seats. We couldn’t even look at each other, the humiliation was so great.

  It took us a few weeks to admit how horrible it was. How bad we felt about ourselves and the disappointment that our fandom was misguided. It is hard for your feelings not to be hurt when your idols make you feel stupid for liking them.

  As I said, you have to be careful what you wish for. I’d heard that meeting someone you greatly admire often ends in tears and now I’ve learnt about it firsthand.

  So, Rick Springfield, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll hide my love for you under a bushel. I’ll keep the feelings of adoration pure. And I’ll be watching you with my eyeeeesss and I’ll be lovin’ you with my body, you just know it … and I’ll be holdin’ you in my arms late, late at night …

  Because it’s probably better to keep some mystery about what it’d be like to be Jessie’s Girl than to find out for sure.

  26th August 2012

  Crap dates and motorbike loans

  I was recently visiting my newfound love, the online bookstore, and something caught my eye just as I was about to hand over my credit-card details. Admittedly, I do know them off by heart, so there is not a lot of time between punching in the numbers, hitting confirm and high-fiving myself for organising the speedy (and free!) delivery of yet another selection of books I do not have the time to read.

  But there it was, causing a rare pause in my Pavlovian book-purchase response – a hardcover called Crap Dates. Just like the Summer Roll impulse buy at the checkout, I knew this baby had to be mine. And so it was.

  A few days later, it arrived and I found myself stirring my chicken soup while chuckling over succinct recollections of the worst dates in history. Succinct because they come from an idea from Twitter to convey the most appalling date stories in history in just 140 characters. Irresistible. Here’s what I would have contributed. (All names have been changed to protect the unhinged.)

  He thought saying he killed a robber with his own boot would impress me. So I agreed to another date because my friends begged me.

  I’d met Kade through a friend and he seemed okay. A bit ruddy and greasy-looking, which I liked at the time because it indicated he had a fondness for wine, and in my late twenties this was as important as an ability to breathe. He was kind of annoying but his compulsive lying was so entertaining and I had no one else on the radar, so I saw him three or four times. Dates would start at a restaurant and usually end up at my place so he could lie to me uninterrupted while I frantically tried to remember all the ridiculous things he’d say. My friends would religiously call me the next morning for a debrief.

  The lies were fairly standard: he was the adopted son of the Ansell condom king; he was dropped on their doorstep with a
$10 note attached to his romper suit. You know, Fibs 101. He had also been an SAS soldier, which came in really handy, as it turned out, when he had to pin down a robber at his local milk bar with his army-issue boot until the thief expired. I’m sure it would have been spooky if it wasn’t so darn HILARIOUS.

  What he didn’t count on, though, was that I was really listening. He mentioned the milk bar where this heinous (and strangely unreported crime) was committed and, to his horror, I knew the place. I get my milk and Helga’s from Dave, the owner, every day. “What are the odds!?” I said. “I’ll bring it up next time I see him!”

  At this, Pinocchio got twitchy. He quickly suggested I shouldn’t mention it because it was so traumatic that Dave’s memory would have deleted any recollection of it for his own good. Really, Kade? Or here’s another theory, Kade. Maybe Dave wouldn’t recall the fact that someone had died in front of his mixed-lollies cabinet from a boot to the throat because, I don’t know … it didn’t happen.

  That was the last time I saw him, much to my friends’ great sadness. The best news about this “relationship” ending, though, was that it put the next one into perspective.

  Knowing I was vegetarian, he took me to a meat-pie shop. But not before visiting a bank to apply for a loan for a motorbike. While I waited.

  This one was a ripper! Jimmy looked like Tim Finn, a look I’d long admired. He had a nervous habit of twirling his curly fringe into something resembling the hair that plumbers have to extract in one long piece from shower drainpipes. He picked me up and said he just had to pop in to the bank. “Score!” I thought. “We’re not going Dutch!” I waited, fixing my hair and readjusting the pale-blue Wayfarer knock-offs I’d bought from Target.