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What Does Blue Feel Like?

Page 11

by Jessica Davidson


  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.

 

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