I don’t shatter.
After we’ve drunk the bottle of champagne
and my face is starting to feel numb,
Jim and I kiss.
I can feel my skin melding with his.
I savour his body.
The softness of his skin, so soft for a man.
That sweet spicy bitter male scent.
The taste of the champagne in
his mouth
my mouth
our mouths.
I pinch myself
to make sure I’m not dreaming.
Do you feel older?
I lie in bed that night
and think about my birthday.
My first car.
My first diamond.
Not too shabby.
So many people asked me
if I felt older today.
It’s bullshit,
being expected to feel older on one day just because
according to the calendar you are.
I wonder if
my eighteenth year
will be better than my seventeenth.
Bronwyn
I buy some diet pills from the supermarket
just to, like,
see if they work.
The girl at the checkout looks at me suspiciously
but doesn’t say anything.
I hide them at the back of my dresser drawer.
They make me, like, so thirsty.
My head spins,
and my heart beats really fast.
But I’m not hungry, like, at all.
Getting out
Jim has applied for a mechanical apprenticeship next year.
Bronwyn wants to study business
and stresses that she won’t get the grades she needs
to get into the right course.
Our teachers talk about ‘alternate pathways’ to getting
where you want to be, and tell her she can always do a
year of tafe and then get credit for those subjects at uni.
Most everyone seems to know what they want to do.
Right now I feel like I’m only eighteen,
not that grown-up at all.
I don’t have a clue
what I want to do with the rest of my life.
How come I don’t know what I want to do?
Maybe I’m not supposed to have a future.
Maybe I’d suck at everything.
Maybe I’d never be good at anything even if I tried.
Maybe there is no future for me.
I recognise,
like the shrink told me to,
that I’m not thinking rationally and logically.
(At least part of my brain acknowledges that.)
But to the other part of my brain,
it sounds so very true.
I ask everyone I know
to pick a job for me.
Tim comes up with the most outrageous,
outlandish careers.
Contortionist, lollipop taste tester, security guard.
Jim jokingly suggests I could stay at home
washing his socks
and cops a nipple cripple for that.
My Japanese teacher suggests I go to Japan and
teach English,
and Mum cries when I tell her that.
Much to the horror of
my parents
and the school,
I decide to have a year off studying,
working where I can get work,
thinking about what I really want to do.
Mum and Dad are worried,
that I’ll just freeload for a year and then like it so much
I’ll want to do it forever,
but I tell them that I want to have my own place
by the end of next year
and then they’ve got something else to worry about.
Final exams are coming up
and I’ve done no studying this year.
I start locking myself in my room
with four-packs of energy drinks,
lollies
and rice crackers.
I sit at my desk for hours,
thinking about how much useless trivia they make you
learn in high school,
which you never ever use again.
I don’t care what my history teacher says,
I will never again have to know the important dates
in the industrial revolution.
My walls become covered
in Post-its
and sheets of paper.
At night,
I dream about studying.
I feel sorry for the people who are relying on their grades
to get them into the course they want,
into the job they want,
into the life they want.
It seems
the more they want it,
the higher the stakes.
I’m glad
I’m sitting this game out.
There are two
Chars.
One
who is happily outgoing,
cheerful,
loves being around people
and partying,
and who sees the sun peeking from behind the clouds,
no matter how grey.
One
who wants to hide away from the world,
tearful,
tolerates the presence of others,
and parties to get drunk.
And whom the clouds seem to engulf
even on the sunniest of days.
What’s wrong?
I’m making a sandwich in the kitchen
when,
all of a sudden,
I start to cry.
Mum, startled, looks up.
She wants to know why I’m crying.
What’s wrong?
But I don’t know.
And the realisation that I don’t know why I’m crying
makes me cry even more.
So now I’m crying because I don’t know why I’m crying.
I go to my room,
shut myself in.
Tell Mum I want some breathing space.
Right now,
I just want to hide away from it all.
Lock myself away from this goddamn world
I don’t understand.
If only now,
I could shut my brain up.
That look
Jim recognises that look in Char’s eyes.
He’s seen it before,
many a time.
That
desperate
wild
hunted
frantic
pleading
Look.
At night,
he holds her close,
holds her tight,
and tells her,
‘It’ll be OK, Char,
it’ll be all right.’
Drunken talk
Jim drunkenly slurs at me,
‘Shouldn’t you be over it by now?’
I know he’s talking about the abortion.
Maybe he’s wrong.
Maybe he’s right.
But the possibility of him being either
sends shivers down my spine.
My brand of pain
There’s a shy girl in my history class, Lee,
who gets drunk and starts crying
at a party on the weekend.
I befriend her,
glad that, for once, I’m not the
Crying Drunk Girl
at this party.
Her mum and dad are splitting up.
She found a condom in her dad’s wallet,
and it wasn’t there a few days later.
And her parents don’t have sex, of course.
I let her cry on me,
wipe tears and snot off her face,
make her drink some water to sober the fuck up.
While she’s still drunk
she pushes back the bangles that line her arms,
shows me the cuts on them.
Some look old,
healing
scars.
Some are new,
red
and angry.
She tells me between tears and hiccups
that she cuts herself as a release.
That all of her pain and anger and regret and shame
get squished down
into manageable chunks.
A brand of pain she can handle.
I don’t say anything,
just push another glass of water into her hand
and stare at her scars.
I see her at school on Monday,
and we bashfully say hello,
like seeing a boy you’ve kissed after five beers,
when you’re sober and realise that he isn’t cute any more.
She’s sitting by herself at lunchtime.
I crash beside her on the grass
and say,
‘Explain to me,
please.’
Lee/anger management
It’s like
when all of the anger
and pain
and shame
inside
builds up and up and up
and it’s about to explode.
We don’t get angry in my family,
you see.
My parents would freak out
if I screamed, yelled, sulked.
I know it sounds weird,
but it doesn’t hurt.
It actually feels —
better.
Making it OK
Bewildered,
I ask the shrink to explain.
‘Some girls,’ she says,
‘it’s mainly girls,
come from homes where
there’s a lot of pressure to be
the perfect child.
And being flawed
is not OK.
Some girls want an outlet for their anger.
Some are crying for someone to notice they need help.
And physical pain
is OK
so they convert their emotional turmoil
into physical,
which can be fixed up
with some antiseptic and a Bandaid.
They’re making their pain acceptable.
Or, then again, they might loathe themselves so much
that they feel they deserve the pain.
A kind of repentance,
in a really screwed up way.’
Friends
Lee, Bronwyn and I become friends.
We do girly stuff like
painting our nails,
dyeing our hair,
eating an entire block of chocolate and three lots of
popcorn watching chick flicks on TV.
The shrink tells me that this friendship could be
very beneficial
if we bring each other up,
not take each other down.
Gossip in the staffroom
analyses the new friendship formed
with a kind of careful scrutiny.
Tongues click
at the blue fingernail polish all three girls sport one day,
the pink streaks in their hair the next week,
a certain rebellion against the school rules.
And yet,
their teachers feel slightly proud
that these girls,
who they were about to give up on,
are alive enough inside
to be able to rebel.
Bronwyn says
‘Hey,
like my tongue ring?
My olds are spewing.
Tried to get me to take it out.
It caned
but I like it.
a lot.’
Girl talk
At a party the next weekend,
we sit on the grass,
with a bottle,
mostly Coke,
quarter Baccardi.
We take turns drinking it, straight from the bottle.
Lee’s bracelets catch the light and seem to dance
on her arms.
Bronwyn’s tongue ring flashes every time she
opens her mouth.
But nothing on me seems to sparkle.
I speak these thoughts,
and both of the girls are silent,
watching me.
Then Lee says,
‘Your eyes gleam, hon. Your eyes catch all the light.’
Bronwyn says,
‘Inside of me,
I know,
there’s a girl who doesn’t diet and obsess about food,
trying to get out.’
Lee says,
‘Inside of me,
I know,
there’s a girl who doesn’t cut,
trying to get out.’
Then they look at me.
I say,
‘Inside of me,
I’m not sure,
but I think there’s a girl
with so much more purpose to her life,
trying to get out.’
Lee says, ‘Oh, man, that’s deep,’
pushes her hair back behind her ears,
and takes the bottle off me.
The careers officer is none too happy
with my plans for next year.
Even a year studying a course,
any course,
he says,
could help me in ways I’d never know.
I know
that doing a year of something, anything,
that will never lead to anything
will only help the school’s reputation
which boasts of the percentage of graduates
who get into uni
and won’t do a damn thing for me.
He asks
what my psychiatrist thinks.
I tell him
to ask her himself,
and cop a detention.
I write lines in detention
about courtesy and respecting my elders
and I wonder why they can demand, without giving
as a teacher snaps in some kid’s face
and takes jewellery off another.
I think of what my friend said
about being in a fishbowl.
They must be the piranhas of the fish tank.
With filed-down teeth.
Smoker
Lee is a smoker.
She offers me a drag,
huddled behind the sports shed one lunch hour.
I’m too curious to resist —
curious why people seem to like it so much.
I take a puff,
and hack my lungs out coughing.
‘This tastes like shit, Lee.’
She grins
wryly.
‘I know,’ she says,
‘I know. But if you do it enough,
you convince yourself that you actually like doing it.
And then —
then you don’t want to stop.’
Mind power
I tell the shrink about our conversation,
expecting her to agree with me that Lee’s nuts.
Instead, she says,
‘You drink Coke, right?’
‘I was in here sipping on a bottle last week,’ I say.
‘Do you think it’s natural to put fizzy black liquid into your body? Not a chance. But society tells you that you should, that you want to, that it tastes great. Watching a toddler having their first sip of Coke is like watching a teenager try their first cigarette. You tell yourself you like anything enough times, and you will.’
Wake-up call
I’m in Geography one day, not really listening,
when I realise there’s a video playing
(guess our teacher didn’t want to do anything today).
I’ve missed the whole introduction
&n
bsp; but begin to watch with horrified fascination.
It’s gross,
but I can’t turn my head away.
It’s about factory farming and the abattoirs.
One of the girls leaves the classroom to vomit
and even the boys are looking green
as the cows scream when they get poked with prods,
and chickens are held in stacked wire cages
as small as shoeboxes
with their beaks broken off so they won’t peck each other,
covered in shit from the hundreds of chickens above them.
Jim tells me to desensitise myself
but I can’t.
I immediately decide I’m now a vegetarian.
Maybe ignorance was bliss,
but I can’t ignore what I know now,
thanks to
this wake-up call.
Tim
Tim has a girlfriend, Shelley,
who seems nice enough,
though I can’t imagine what she sees
in my smelly little brother.
No way I’d be cuddling up to that walking BO machine.
Tim’s chuffed.
He even puts on deodorant.
Now there’s a bonus.
Just leave me alone
One day
I don’t want to get out of bed.
Nothing’s happened to make me feel sad
but I just don’t.
I lie in bed,
huddled under the covers.
Sniffing into my pillow.
Jim comes over,
tells me that lying in bed won’t help,
jumps on me,
bounces,
telling me to get up.
I give him a shove,
hard,
and tell him to go away.
If he doesn’t know by now
that what I need from him
is a hug
then I’m not going to tell him.
Bugger that.
I stick my head under the pillow
and don’t come out,
even when I hear my door slam
and his footsteps pound down the stairs.
What Does Blue Feel Like? Page 11
