by Alice Pung
We moved to Australia the year I turned fourteen. On my first day at my Australian high school, the only students who approached me were the other overseas-born Asians. One was a Hong Kong Chinese and the other was Vietnamese. None of the white kids really took an interest in me. I had been placed in the English as a Second Language (ESL) class, based on the fact that I’d just arrived in Melbourne. This despite the fact that I’d spoken English all my life and had always done well in English at school. In Malaysia, for two years I had attended a private school at which English was the main written and spoken language. Although there were good things about ESL – the classes were small and I made some good friends – I resented being in a class where I wasn’t challenged.
I only started to make friends with the non-Asian kids later, after I enrolled in Year 11 literature class. I was the only Asian and the only ESL student in the class; one of the highlights of high school for me was walking up to the stage at the end-of-year ceremony to accept the joint award for the highest marks in Year 12 literature.
Throughout this time, despite my little friendship posse, I still could not shake my shyness. Although English was the language I spoke in, dreamt in and created my reality in, I felt a foreigner whenever I opened my mouth. Whenever I spoke, my accent betrayed my origins. It was a mix of a Malaysian-lilt, Manglish, TV-influenced Americanisms, the Queen’s English and Australian. Most times the Malaysian-lilt was dominant; the Manglish somehow faded away without my notice. I never said ‘mate’ or ‘how ya going?’ or ‘g’day’ in a ‘Strine’ enough way. I always spoke diffidently. And when I did speak, a barrage of questions would follow: ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘How long have you been here?’ My attempts to blend in failed as soon as I opened my mouth.
Like most teenage girls, I had long hair, pimples and too many crushes. Unlike any other girl I knew, my secret crushes were on Linda Hamilton from the Terminator series and Amanda Keller from the Australian science show Beyond 2000. I had no one to share these feelings with, and my journal became my best friend:
I once met a beautiful girl in a camera shop: I wanted to drown in her almond brown eyes. I couldn’t listen as she explained the technicalities of the camera to me. She went on about f-stops, shutter speeds and depths of focus – while I got very unfocused. All I saw were her animated hands, her beautiful slender fingers, the way her mouth moved. Inside I was aching.
I couldn’t imagine feeling this way for a man. It just didn’t feel natural. Everyone wants romance in their life, but it’s always the same boring guy-meets-girl Hollywood love formula. I wondered where my story was in these narratives? Where was my fairytale ending? ‘Oh dear Lord Buddha,’ I prayed, ‘where can I go to find answers?’
When I told another girl how much I loved kd lang, she asked, ‘You’re not the L-word, are you?’ Of course I denied it. I guessed my Malaysian badminton buddies wouldn’t take so well to it either, or my Malaysian Christian friends.
When I was sixteen, my brother’s friend Ken, from the chess club we both belonged to, teased, ‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.’ Ken was the stereotypical nerd – thick eye-glasses and greasy hair, which was thinning on the crown of his head. Being a bit of a nerd myself, finding a fellow nerd could be quite charming. Unfortunately, Ken was boring. And he wasn’t such a crash-hot chess player. Ken took my brother and me out to the Astor Theatre once, and then asked if he could give me a kiss on the cheek when he dropped us home. I said yes, but that was the last time I went out with Ken.
Four years later, at university, I orchestrated my first real kiss. I had a short-film project to do and I wanted to have a kissing scene in it. My short film was to be set in the cavernous toilets in the basement of the Menzies building at Monash University. My star was a tall, skinny, gorgeous woman; I used to spy on her sitting in the front row of the Melbourne Cinematheque. By fate, she was also a Monash student, and we had met through a coalescence of coincidences – the Women’s Room, the student newspaper and student theatre. Sitting ourselves by the staircase outside the toilets just before the shoot, I confessed to her, ‘I’ve never kissed anyone before.’ She didn’t blink. ‘Really?’ was all she said. And then we kissed. I closed my eyes, bent towards her and felt her lips on my mouth. When I started to rush the kiss, she said, ‘Slow down’ and guided me. Her lips left a waxy taste in my mouth. Coming out of the kiss, I was spinning, and the lenses of my eye-glasses had oil-skin smudges on them. We rehearsed kissing a number of times before the actual take. It was bliss.
Creativity and my personal growth have gone hand in hand. Thanks to my writing and performing, the big private turning points in my life have become very memorable public events. The year before my first kiss, I came out to my parents, my uncle, my grandmother, my brother and a packed theatre. I was the Under-25 winner of a prestigious inaugural short-play competition.
The afternoon of the performance I was a mix of nerves and worries. What would my family think? What would the audience think? My parents had some idea what the monologue was about and my brother had been taping kd lang videos for me. All my uncle and grandmother knew was that I had won a playwriting competition. I sank low in my seat as an actor began to perform my monologue:
I dreamed of kd lang and her girlfriend in a dark place underneath a big busty table, but I don’t know what they’re doing down there. Dear Lord Buddha, what does the dream mean?…
After the performance, my brother exclaimed, ‘That was so funny! Mum was gripping my arm so hard.’ My mother smiled tightly, but then beamed and told me she was very proud. My father rolled his eyes and asked, ‘Why so vulgar?’ but I knew he too was proud of me. My uncle and grandmother congratulated me, and so did so many other people. The day had ended well.
Writing and performance have been outlets. They have let me be myself, express myself and explore my multiple identities: Asian, woman, queer, migrant, Chinese-Malaysian-Australian. And within the framework of performances, sides of me that were suppressed or ridiculed throughout my school years have been accepted and applauded.
A Big Life
Jenny Kee
Nineteen-fifty-eight was my last year at Bondi Beach Public. I was a champion runner and captain of the school captain-ball team that year. On my final day in primary school my teacher said to Mum, ‘Mrs Kee, Jenny’s such a good little girl – but watch her.’ I think she’d had a premonition that the devil in me would emerge.
Mum tried to convince me to go to Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School because the local high school, Dover Heights, was a huge concrete jungle and she thought it was rough. That made it all the more attractive as far as I was concerned. I also didn’t want to be separated from my friends.
I didn’t go to school to learn. It was where I met my friends. It was where I continued my popularity project. Even as a self-conscious teenager with Clearasil and pancake make-up concealing my pimples, I concentrated on the survival strategy. But gradually my technique changed. In Forms One and Two I still had a bit of the princess about me, but by Form Three I’d become a full-blown rebel. My greatest strengths were art, jazz ballet and athletics – I loved to move my body. In Form Two I came second in art, but in Form Three Mum insisted I do maths instead of art, and that was the beginning of the end for me educationally.
Once art, my only creative outlet at school, was closed to me, I rebelled. At twelve or thirteen I was secretly reading Peyton Place, which I’d found hidden in Dad’s wardrobe. Sexuality became my chosen form of expression in the years that followed. I became sex-obsessed. I had recurring dreams of being a slave girl, imprisoned in a cage in ancient, torch-lit catacombs, doing the Dance of the Seven Veils while surrounded by hordes of Victor Mature types clawing at the bars. They could look but not touch.
I discovered that boys liked me, and that entirely changed my self-image. Right up until I turned thirteen I’d wanted to be Jennifer Ackroyd. Then came spin the bottle and the teen pashing parties. I knew instinctively what to do and the boys
responded. It was a revelation. For the first time in my life I began to feel comfortable about my Chinese appearance. Indeed, I was coming to see being Asian as an asset. Boys, I learnt, found ‘exotic’ girls ‘sexy.’
Suddenly I had the confidence to cope with troublesome teachers, bullies, racists. Going up to Bondi Junction I’d always been conscious of being part of a minority. I’d always looked over my shoulder, prepared for a racist taunt. Now I was ready to hurl a jibe back, or a punch. If anyone tried to mess with me they’d get a rock in their face. Along with my father’s will, I’d inherited his temper. My attitude was: I’ll show you – I’m going to go out and get it all. I wasn’t going to be like most of my Chinese family: sedate, pious, conservative. I was going to break free, and I wasn’t going to do it by halves. Nothing, ever, by halves.
The first boys I hung out with were the Jewish ones at Bondi. I’d sit with them on the steps below the Bondi Pavilion in the middle of the beach. My close neighbourhood friend Margaret Peard and the surfies hung out at south Bondi, by the baths. That was too blond for me. I went to surf-club dances but I felt like a bit of an outsider there. They played early surfer music such as the Ventures and the Beach Boys, and some of the crowd were already dropping tabs of acid, which came via the Californian surfing circuit. I preferred the Jewish kids, and the Hungarians, because they had rich cultures and traditions.
I wore a tiny leopard-skin one-piece cossie, which came up to my collarbone at the front but had a low back. As soon as I got to the beach I put the make-up on: foundation to conceal the pimples, thick black Cleopatra eyeliner and pink lipstick. Mum came down to the beach one day and freaked out when she saw me. In front of everyone she shouted, ‘Get into the change-room and take that make-up off this instant!’ I was so humiliated I ran home.
In the afternoons we’d hang out in the small pavilions on the grass above the beach. Bobby Steinberg (my first kiss) and his friends played cards there. The Jewish boys had dark, greasy rocker haircuts and stovepipe jeans like the Jets in West Side Story. They had a rocker manner about them as well. Robert Symonds was my favourite. We pashed on the cliffs at Dover Heights and I would have gone all the way with him but he was too scared. The boys I knew were big on kissing but not much else, including dating. They’d pash the night away on the sand, then the next day walk right past without a second glance, which felt awful. When I got moody and depressed about it I’d walk along the water’s edge at Rose Bay with my trannie, listening to the Drifters’ ‘Save the Last Dance for Me’ or the Shirelles’ ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’.
After the beach we’d move on to the home of anyone whose parents weren’t there and throw parties. There were steamy afternoons in Bondi flats with Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway,’ Chubby Checker’s ‘The Hucklebuck’ and ‘Let’s Twist Again,’ and Wanda Jackson’s ‘Let’s Have a Party’ on the turntables. I was the best dancer and I knew it. I had the body beat and animal magnetism to match. Even King Kong, Taronga’s newly acquired gorilla, felt it. On a school excursion he went absolutely ape for me – throwing grass in the air, beating his chest at me and showing off. He didn’t do it for any of the other girls, much to everyone’s amusement.
*
November 1962 was the Form Four formal. My dress was made by Ariane of Double Bay in white organza with huge mauve-pink cabbage roses. It had a tight bodice, a bell-shaped skirt and a scooped, shoulder-skimming Audrey Hepburn neckline. I wore matching fabric stiletto slingbacks and my hair was teased into a bouffant by John from Carita’s (Carita’s of Edgecliff was the place to have your hair done). I was a Chinese Annette Funicello.
I’d been nagging Mum for a year to let me leave school. I was determined to study dress design at East Sydney Technical College. Mum wouldn’t hear a word of it until I deliberately failed my fourth-year exams, scoring 11 out of 100 in biology. She realised then that I was as willful as her and my father put together, and relented. I twisted the night away at the formal, ecstatic that I was never coming back.
This is an edited extract from A Big Life by Jenny Kee (Penguin Books, 2006).
UnAustralian?
..........................
Be Good, Little Migrants
Be good, little migrants
We’ve saved you from starvation
war, landlessness, oppression
Just display your gratitude
but don’t be heard, don’t be seen
Be good, little migrants
Give us your faithful service
sweep factories, clean mansions
prepare cheap exotic food
pay taxes, feed the mainstream
Be good, little migrants
Use leisure with prudence
sew costumes, paint murals
write music, and dance to our tune
Our culture must not be dull
Be good, little migrants
We’ve given you opportunity
for family reunion
equality, and status, though
your colour could be wrong
Be good, little migrants
Learn English to distinguish
ESL from RSL
avoid unions, and teach children
respect for institutions
Be good, little migrants
You may fight one another, but
attend Sunday School, learn manners
keep violence within your culture
save industry from criminals
Be good, little migrants
Intelligence means obedience
just follow ASIO, CIA
spy on your fellow countrymen
hunt commies for Americans
Be good, little migrants
Museums are built for your low arts
for your multiculturalism
in time, you’ll reach excellence
Just waste a few generations.
—UYEN LOEWALD
How to Be Japanese
Leanne Hall
The view from the car park is amazing. Once you’re past the raggedy asphalt and the clumps of dry grass, the vista explodes into layers of white and blue. A long arc of powdery white sand extends to the left and right, further than my eyes can reach; beyond that is the kind of deep blue sea that creates instant contemplation. The sun burns so brightly overhead we all have our hands permanently shielding our eyes.
But we’re not looking at the blinding sand or the sparkling water or the far-off horizon; we’re looking at Emma’s breasts. She’s wearing a hot-pink bikini and the effect, to say the least, is impressive.
The stylist is the first to speak.
‘Wow. An Asian with boobs.’
‘It’s a miracle.’ The make-up artist reverently sponges bronzer across Emma’s cleavage.
‘I’m half-Aussie,’ says Emma. ‘It doesn’t really count.’ She smokes lazily while women cluck around her, pulling at threads, smoothing down stray hairs and wrangling her breasts.
Almost everyone on the shoot is Asian in some way. The stylist is half-Malaysian; the make-up artist, the woman organising the shoot and one of the models are Japanese. Emma and I are both half-Chinese and half-Australian, but to very different effect. Emma’s Anglo blood has given her boobs, while I have inherited my Australian father’s beanpole gene. My bikini top is crammed so full of rubbery ‘chicken fillets’ I’d probably bounce if you threw me.
These Clayton’s breasts jiggle realistically when I jump up and down on the spot. It’s a strange but pleasant feeling having weight up top; I’m not sure I’ll be able to hand the fillets back at the end of the day. I’ve always derided other women for wearing push-up bras and padding; now I’m feeling temptation pull at me like a rip.
The shoot is for a famous Japanese beer brand that wants to make a greater impact in the Australian market. The idea of the campaign is to mimic the Japanese ‘image girl’ look. The image girl is kind of like the Japanese version of the Big M girl of the seventies and eighties, with the difference that she i
s created to be infinitely more innocent than her antipodean counterpart. It’s a big deal in Japan to be picked as the image girl for a well-known brand and it is often the launching pad for an acting or singing career.
The photographer shows us examples of Japanese advertisements that he’s using as reference shots. The ads walk the thin line between virginal and sexy. The girls are young, their smiles are coy and the fashion is a few years out of date. The models look as if they’ve never held a beer in their lives, let alone drunk one. The Japanese are deadly serious but we are aiming for coolly ironic and kitsch. It’s difficult to judge whether what we’re doing is homage or just making fun of a different cultural aesthetic.
When it’s time to shoot I camp it up, making my eyes and teeth sparkle with fake delight. I wear an outmoded bikini and hold a glass of warm beer in one hand. I can’t drink the beer because alcohol makes my cheeks flush bright red, and I’m not allowed to take a dip in the sea because my make-up will wash off. I’ve never felt more decorative in my life. An assistant follows me around with a large golden reflector, making sure the sunlight is always pinging off my face. I yell out nonsensical Japanese phrases and aim for an ultra-kawaii look.
Although I never anticipated this when I accepted the job, the photo shoot turns into an exorcism. I get to act out my worst nightmare: the cutesy, Hello Kitty-loving Asian manga-girl people sometimes mistake me to be, before I open my mouth and they hear my unmistakably Australian voice. It’s surprisingly cathartic to let myself become the enemy, the stereotype I have always tried to avoid. The pleasure I get from this is unexpected and slightly puzzling. There’s something seductive in acting out a stereotype; life would be simpler if I only had to exist in one dimension.
