by Woog
Fluoro pink jeans, fluoro green top, two studded belts (orange and yellow) that were tied together and went around my hips twice. And the pièce de résistance? Two pairs of fluoro socks, worn in such a way that, when folded down, both colours were displayed!
Magic happened in the change room that day, my friends. Magic.
We took our items to the counter to pay for them. Mum pulled out her credit card. Then, just as she was about to hand it over, she paused.
‘What is it, Mum?’ I asked anxiously.
‘I think you need this . . .’ she replied. And then she handed me—get this—MY VERY FIRST LIPSTICK OF MY OWN!
It was gorgeous. A very shiny tube in the shape of a bullet. Inside was the thickest, brightest pink shade that was ever made. I swear it was almost radioactive. I almost fainted with glee. I hugged Mum tight and told her that I was the happiest girl in the whole world. But deep down I knew there was one thing that would make me even happier.
If I could make my sister envious, my life would be complete.
When I got home, I got dressed in my new clothes. I teased my fringe until it stood straight up on end. I ever so carefully applied my hot-pink lippie. I was ready.
I knocked on my sister’s door and entered her room. She was lying on her bed reading a Dolly magazine. She glanced up from the pages and gave me the once-over before declaring that I looked like a retard* and going back to her reading.
I was not crushed, however, as she was going through a goth phase, which meant she spent her time listening to The Cure, dying her hair black (much to the chagrin of the oldies), and wearing black on black on black. She was also basically non-verbal to everyone in the house. Mum kept saying something about hormones and we all gradually learnt not to poke the beast.
There was one other day, one other glorious day that I will never forget, which cemented my passage into being a fashion victim forever. Mum and I were shopping at Penrith Plaza when I came across something so fantastic, I was rendered speechless.
A pair of white lace ankle boots.
It was like there was a light beaming down on them from the ceiling of Grace Bros, and they were calling to me. I picked them up and inspected them from every angle. They were perfect. Like something Madonna would try to steal from me if I were ever to go to one of her live shows and she somehow caught a glimpse of my feet.
It was apparently a perfect storm of my mum’s generous mood and my lack of speech that saw me skipping through the front door of our house later that afternoon wearing the most marvellous boots the world had ever seen. Even my sisters were completely jealous.
I finally owned something enviable.
I told everyone at school about my boots, and the next week, Lynette Bitch Face and her mother went off to Penrith Plaza and bought the very same ones. But we were not allowed to be mean to Lynette because her brother was in jail, so I had to just cop that one on the chin.
Pretty soon nearly every girl in my class had the Madonna Lace Boots and we all wore them to the school social, giving pitying looks to those girls who were wearing Apple Pies.
My mum sometimes fancied herself as a fashion designer, so when the puffball skirt craze hit and I showed her a photo of Madonna wearing one in Smash Hits, and asked if we could get one from Sportsgirl, she waved the magazine away and told me that she could whip one up for me.
I wanted a black one, but she objected, telling me I was too young to wear black. Instead she made me a puffball skirt out of a pale blue grosgrain material. The skirt was not puffy. It was limp. Saggy might be a good word to describe it. A saggy, limp skirt. I wasn’t a fan. But this didn’t mean I was against homemade clothes per se. It was around this time that a film came out featuring homemade clothes that seemed to me the epitome of high fashion: Pretty in Pink. This film would also mark the zenith of my obsession with the combined oeuvre of filmmaker John Hughes and actor Molly Ringwald.
In each film Molly played a girl who was ‘different’ but who nevertheless ended up with the cute guy. Molly was Sam Baker in Sixteen Candles and, while she was pissed off that everyone forgot her birthday, she did get to pash foxy Jake Ryan in the end.
She was Claire Standish in The Breakfast Club, which was about a group of kids who were on detention. Her character was snooty and standoffish. A lot of this film went way over my head at the time, but I always appreciated a makeover scene.
But my absolute favourite film was Pretty in Pink, in which Molly played Andie Walsh, a motherless waif from the wrong side of the tracks who made all her own clothes and they were cool and quirky. Andie became the target of the school jock when she dared to reject his advances; she had her eyes on another prize, said jock’s best mate, a preppy lad by the name of Blane McDonnagh, played by Andrew McCarthy. Blane was not handsome in a traditional sense, and neither was Andie. Despite all the obstacles standing in their way, love blossomed between them.
My first experience of loin-stirrage occurred when Blane asked Andie to the prom and they went for the big tongue-slurping kiss. Looking back on that scene now, you can really see how awkward and unsexy it was, but at the time it was like someone had released a dozen drunk butterflies directly into my guts. I wanted to be kissed like that.
I also wanted to unpick a couple of dresses and put them back together. But I was not allowed to use Mum’s Singer . . . because I didn’t know how to sew.
If Pretty in Pink had any legacy to leave, it was the sexual awakening of millions of girls. I was not alone in my quest to be kissed like that but, unlike some of the other girls, it would be years before someone stuck their tongue down my throat.
So I had to make do with practising on my pillow.
DON’T YOU DARE SIT THERE JUDGING ME! I bet you did it too. Or perhaps you might have pashed wall posters as well. Wall posters of Boy George even.
Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.
Which is such bullshit. After one particular slumber party, during which I displayed my superior kissing techniques, complete with correct hand placement, word got around the school that I had pashed my pillow—even though all the girls present had taken the secret oath of the sisterhood never to tell.
Kids can be so cruel. I just wanted to have some intimate time with my pillow, and share my knowledge with the other girls, and all of a sudden I was a laughing-stock. I deeply regretted being so generous with my knowledge. I’m sure that’s the reason no boys wanted to kiss me in primary school. Which was quite frustrating at the time, because I was becoming more aware of boys—and more aware of myself and what others thought of me. I was about to enter the cruel world of primary school politics . . .
_____________
* A super-offensive term, but one that was used frequently during my youth.
5
SOCIAL DEATH
For many readers, to mention 1984 is to evoke George Orwell’s eerily prescient dystopian novel. For music lovers it might evoke the soundtrack album by the Eurythmics. But, for me, 1984 will always be remembered as the year Countdown first screened Madonna’s hit song ‘Holiday’. That Sunday night changed my life forever. I had never seen someone so cool, so gorgeous and so funky. I shoved Ramona Alvarez into the back of my wardrobe and fell head over heels in love with the world of pop singers.
It’s no coincidence that 1984 was also the year that Smash Hits magazine was first published in Australia. I was on board from day one. I would save all the pocket money I earned by picking up dogshit in the backyard and every second Friday I would pop off to the newsagency to get my copy.
I became a collector of compilation cassette tapes and would proudly line up my copies of 1984 Shakin’, H’its Huge ’84 and Throbbin’ 84, fully believing that the blatant abuse of the apostrophe thought up by some dipshit in the marketing department of Polygram was actually cool. I would listen to the tapes over and over and over again on my new red Walkman while flicking through the latest issue of Smash Hits.
In 1984 I was in Year 5 at school and things were ch
anging for me. I started looking in the mirror a little more, wondering why I didn’t look like Madonna. Boys were becoming less of a nuisance and more interesting to me, while my parents were becoming less interesting and starting to give me the legitimate shits.
I was learning, too, that the world was unfair in many respects. I discovered to my horror that millions of Ethiopians were starving to death; thank God that my virtual gods were able to sing a song about it and save the planet.
I found it to be grossly unfair that the teenagers of a small town somewhere in the Midwest of the United States were forbidden to dance, and breathed a huge sigh of relief when Ren, the kid from Chicago, challenged the small town’s small minds with some canny quotes from the Bible and the school prom was able to take place after all. (That Ren proceeds to suck face with Ariel, the rebellious daughter of the anti-dancing reverend, was a delightfully ironic twist!)
And I fell in love for the very first time, with a small and quite creepy-looking chap who went by the name of Prince. Because he was funky.
I longed to go to the Entertainment Centre and see Joe Cocker or The Police, but my oldies were not having a bar of it, which is not to say they were averse to culture. They took the family to see Torvill and Dean on ice and any number of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.
There is nothing worse for someone on the cusp of becoming a teenager than spending time with her family. Each evening, my family would come together to eat at the dinner table. This was extremely annoying, as all my friends got to eat dinner in front of the television. However, it did set the stage for my older sister—already a fully-fledged teenager—to throw her nightly temper tantrum. You could set your clock by it. Sullen and sulky, she would sit at the table glowering, pushing her specially prepared vegetarian meal around on her plate. Inevitably, someone would say something to her and, however innocuous, she would crack the shits. Heated words would be spat out like bullets from an AK-47, a punishment threatened, and then she would dramatically push her chair back, and run up the stairs and into her room. The scene would end with a very loud slamming of the door. Observing the evolution of a teenager was both fascinating and terrifying, and total respect to my oldies, who rode that wild ride five times.
As I began to develop my own taste in music and fashion (taste that was hardly unique, I have to admit), I was starting to become aware that trends and fads were different when you were at the pointy end of primary school. Image started to play an important role. Wearing your hair the right way. Wearing the right socks. Not being different. Going with the flow. Not questioning the playground powerbrokers. Toeing the line. It is a sad fact that these years can shape the sort of person that you turn out to be, unless you have the confidence to stand on your own two feet.
But I wasn’t one of those people! I wanted to belong and was acutely aware of what could happen if you dared question the establishment: social death.
I would see it happen all the time. The worst thing was to be excluded from someone’s birthday party. Birthday parties were a huge deal, easily the highlight of the Year 5 social scene. Looking back, there is one in particular that stands out.
Sally Griffin’s slumber party.
We had spent the afternoon tearing about, dancing to INXS and Michael Jackson, talking about boys, eating crap and watching Back to the Future. When it came time to sleep, well, we were not having a bar of it!
At 11 pm Mrs Griffin appeared at the door of the rumpus room and pleaded with us to be quiet.
At 1 am Mrs Griffin returned, and threatened to shut the party down via several urgent phone calls to our parents.
At 4 am Mr Griffin barged through the door and completely lost his shit.
The thing about Mr Griffin was that he was Scottish and his accent was thicker than pea soup. The more he yelled, the redder his face got. His tirade went something along the lines of: ‘Listen up, ye wee shits. Ahm gonnae kick yer behinds intae next week unless ye gang tae sleep. Ah hae tae gie up fur wark in tois hoors, ye wee fuckers. Noo jobby th’ buck up.’
And I swear I heard someone urinate in her pants.
Sleep came quickly after that for most, but not me. I snuggled into my sleeping bag, too frightened to move. It was only as the sun came up, and I heard Mr Griffin go off to work, that I could finally exhale.
I remember the next day was very long, and I was very tired and emotional, so much so that Sally Griffin’s was the last slumber party I was allowed to go to for a long time.
But back to social death. I experienced it for exactly two days in Year 6 and will never forget the dreadful feeling that comes with being on the outer. You see, my friend and I—subject to peer pressure—had choked on a cigarette with a couple of high school boys. When this news travelled back to the playground, we were instant social pariahs. We were BANISHED from the traditional game of handball that was the measure of social standing.
Our so-called friends decided that if we were to play with them and they should accidentally touch us, they would immediately die from cancer. It was a very upsetting state of affairs, and one that I could not share with my parents for obvious reasons. For two days my friend and I spent recess and lunchtime sitting in the library and reading the rude bits of a Judy Blume book aloud to each other. Then another kid wet her pants (probably the same one who’d wet her pants at Sally Griffin’s slumber party the year before), so we got swapped back in. But we had learnt our lesson: don’t rock the boat.
6
YOUNG LOVE (OF THE NON-EQUINE KIND)
I grew up surrounded by horses, as Dad was a bigwig in the racing industry and my Poppa was a famed breeder of the world’s slowest thoroughbreds. A few times I was the recipient of one of the backward runners, which I used to then take to pony club and ride alongside my peers. While they bounced around on their Shetland ponies, I would be galloping around on a horse that was fresh off the track. I won any event that involved speed. Not because my horse was particularly fast, just because it was eleven times the size of the others.
I recall one summer, a KFC store opened up, causing much excitement because there was a drive-thru. An actual drive-thru! KFC was called by its full name, Kentucky Fried Chicken, back then, because everyone still believed that fried chicken was healthy.
I was in my swimmers, in the pool, when I had a sudden craving for hot chips. I think I would have been about ten. Those hot-chip cravings have been around a long time, and remain a part of my life to this day.
Anyway, I jumped out of the pool, stole a couple of bucks from Mum’s wallet and headed down to the paddock, swinging a halter and lead in my hand. I then proceeded to ride my horse, which was about seventeen hands high, through the streets—navigating some very busy intersections—and into the drive-thru, where I ordered some hot chips with extra salt. The slack-jawed teenagers serving could hardly believe their eyes. I took the hot chips down to the river, hoovered them up, then treated Abby the horse to a little swim. I did all this without the benefit of a helmet. Or a saddle. Or any sense whatsoever.
Horses were my first love, closely followed by hot chips. But that was about to all change for me.
The first time a boy ever told me that he loved me I was all of seven years old. We had only known each other for two days. He looked me in the eyes and said confidently, ‘I love you, Kelly.’
Which was fine by me, even though my name was, and still is, Kayte. But, hey, he was cute and someone loved me and so I was Kelly for the next twenty-four hours until the end of that pony club camp.
I didn’t think about boys for a few years, then all of a sudden they were all I could think about! I flew through a handful of crushes. There was Lance, who looked like a sheep, so thick and curly was his white-blond hair. And then there was Christopher, with whom I was quite smitten until my mum remarried and we moved towns. So he was gone (though, clearly, not forgotten).
By the time I reached Year 5, if you didn’t have a boyfriend you were considered a complete loser. I wished not to be a complete loser
and by this stage I had, fortunately, lost my Coke-bottle glasses, my hair looked relatively normal and my teeth had decided to straighten themselves out. The only problem was I was quite tall for my age, and all the boys were midgets. But this was a minor impediment. I wouldn’t say that I was in the running to win the Dolly Covergirl competition, but I was not a complete cretin either.
So I put the word out via my little gang of friends that I was ready to ‘go with’ someone. (The term ‘go with’ was the vernacular at the time and the ironic thing was that you ended up going nowhere. It was just a label.) It was like I was putting out a request to tender for the role of my boyfriend. At recess and lunch, interested suitors were put forward.
‘Alan said he would go with you,’ came the word.
And I would be all like, ‘Alan! He has fricking warts!’
Next!
‘Peter said he would go with you.’
Sweet Mary, mother of GOD! Peter shat in his pants two years ago. Was this it for me? Was I already scraping the bottom of the barrel at the age of eleven?
‘Paul said he would go with you.’
‘Ryan or Waters?’
‘Paul Ryan in Year 6.’
And that is how I got my first boyfriend.
Now that I had my boyfriend, what was I supposed to do with him?
The answer, my friends, was handball. Using chalk, a huge grid was drawn up on the concrete with allocated spots for King, Queen, Jack and Dunce. We played mixed doubles, with each square accommodating one happy couple.
I was a very good handball player and Paul proved to be a good match for me in that department. We didn’t speak much. Just played handball a lot.
The relationship, perhaps due to its non-verbal nature, failed to thrive. But little did I know just how bad things had got. Shortly after acquiring my first boyfriend, I would find myself on the receiving end of my first dumping.
