The Night my Bum Dropped

by Gretel Killeen

  I Tried Talking to My Mother

  I tried talking to my mother even though she doesn’t really know how to find normality in desperate times and is better at finding desperation in normality.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I suspect that I may have a problem. I find myself seriously considering trying to win the lottery as a viable career choice.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ my mother replied. ‘I know that your income is lost, your job has exploded, your son is leaving, your heart is broken, you’re financially bereft and your bum has dropped, but I suspect you’d feel a whole lot better if you just put a smile on your face.’

  I wasn’t upset by this for three reasons:

  because my mother thinks Bill Gates is successful because he has a ‘good head of hair’;

  because my mother thinks Mahatma Gandhi could have achieved a whole lot more if he’d only stood up a little straighter; and

  because I come from a staunch religious background which harbours the belief that one is supposed to suffer in silence and not burden others with trivial matters … like your life.

  Essentially the most personal any of us gets in our congregation is to ask after one another’s bunions. And, if you’re really, really, really close to someone, you might choose a very special occasion, like a birthday or wedding, to ask him or her whether they’re constipated.

  Disclaimer

  I should probably declare at this point that my eleven siblings* and my parents are all very happy, successful and complete people without a hint of the dings and dents that my emotional chassis seems to bear. In fact, none of them even seems to share vaguely similar recollections of our childhood. There are two possible reasons for this:

  that they’re all massive drug takers with damaged long-term memories; or

  that my recollections and perceptions are not entirely accurate. This is possible because one of the hazards of being an occasional fiction writer like myself is that you not only tend to embellish make-believe but you also tend to embellish normality if it doesn’t seem interesting enough (which is why I once told a man sitting next to me on a plane that I’d twice been attacked by a shark).

  In fact, even calling myself a ‘fiction writer’ may be fiction, because while I have had many books published, the last fan letter I received simply said: ‘I have just finished reading your latest book. What was it about?’

  The first book signing I attended was also a traumatic experience. I was seated at a table next to a particularly popular writer, Marie Paula Miendes, who had two hundred people lined up in a queue before her waiting to have their copies of her book signed, while I on the other hand had absolutely no one. The situation continued like this for almost three hours, with Marie developing RSI from the repeated activity of signing her name, and me developing rigor mortis from sitting for so long without either stimulation or movement. But then things suddenly changed as a lone figure approached me holding a book. I could barely contain my excitement as he came nearer. I imagined composing appropriate well wishes to write on the title page and wondered whether I should firmly shake his hand, or whether such a restrained act of familiarity would make people mistake him for one of my relatives. But I needn’t have worried because as he stood before me he presented me with the book that he wished to have signed, and I realised that it wasn’t one of mine.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘but the queue in front of Marie is way too long for me to join, so would you mind just slipping this across and asking her to sign it for me?’

  Being a Writer Sucks

  One thing that is fact, not fiction, is that if clear thinking is required to heal the ache in my heart, then being a writer does not assist one iota, because the inside of a writer’s mind is not clear, linear or logical and instead looks like one of those butterfly-shaped ink blots that psychiatrists will have you interpret as either a clown’s face or a vagina.

  Once I reversed into a stranger’s parked car and then spent an hour and a half writing seven drafts of a note to leave under their windscreen. The note ultimately simply said, Sorry I damaged your car – please give me a call, but if it had taken any longer or required more of a commitment, I could have applied for government funding and a creative writer’s grant (or perhaps just married the note). Before I could place it under the windscreen, I actually rang three separate friends to make sure the message was just right, and even then it took me two days of waiting fearfully for the victim to ring before I realised that I’d forgotten to leave my phone number on the note.

  I must confess, perhaps, at this point that I feel somewhat of a knob calling myself a ‘writer’, as the mere fact that I have to state it assumes that no one will know this if I don’t. But, in defence of myself, I should also state that the current lack of literary proof may be put down to the fact that I have been quite busy for the past twenty years, and this has prevented me from being as prolific as I might like. I do, however, plan on tapping away from now until the day I die and I have already determined the titles of my next five books:

  Kids aren’t Pets

  Underpaid and Overwhelmed

  Forget the Clitoris, What About My Heart!

  I’ve Become the Man I Thought I’d Marry, and

  Survival of the Thickest

  I guess things could be worse. A writer friend of mine has spent two years honing his Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech for a book that he never plans to write.

  A Second Confession

  I must also confess that while I can blame my religious upbringing for many things (my emotional retardation and my innate desire to dress in long floral-print frocks with a matching bonnet that looks like a wagon cover), I cannot blame my religious upbringing for any tendencies I may have towards creative writing. This is because encouraging the arts was expressly forbidden by our belief system in case it led to pleasure in any form and therefore a free ticket to hell. In fact even our hymns were sung without beauty, to a military-style marching tune, and if you moved in any way while you sang (i.e. danced, swayed, jiggled, twitched or simply shifted your weight from one foot to the other), it was assumed that the devil had entered your body and arrangements would be made for you to be exorcised.

  As I look back I think that the most creative experience I ever shared within the church’s four walls was the day that our Sunday school teacher distributed cartoon pamphlets showing ‘little kiddy sinners’ wearing brandings on their foreheads as they were torn from their parents on Judgement Day.

  Oh, and the other creative moment occurred shortly thereafter when the organist waited to be alone with the kiddies and then undid his fly and flashed us his tabernacles.

  It’s Mum’s* Fault

  So, although I can’t blame the Church for any apparent creative bent, I can to a degree blame my mother because throughout my life she has been both a little bent and somewhat creative. Sure it’s true that many mothers of my mum’s generation pursued arts and crafts as a creative escape – and let’s face it, what kid of the seventies didn’t live in a home that was liberally decorated with flyscreens made from macraméd plastic bags? – but my mum talked ‘creatively’ too. Of course I know that other mothers talked creatively (i.e. lied) by telling their children that the eating of crusts would make their hair curly, the eating of carrots would give them great eyesight, and masturbation would make them go blind (which naturally begs the question of just what is the eyesight prognosis of those who masturbate with a carrot?). But it was my mum who told tales of an uncle who fought in World War I and died of the hiccups. (And it was my mum who left out a possible other contributor to his death: the fact that my uncle’s noisy hiccups alerted the enemy to his whereabouts and that’s why he was shot in the head.)

  I Can’t Gloat

  I can’t gloat. This worried time has proven to me that I am superior to no one. I’ve already confessed my emotional bonsaism, and to further prove it, I’ve been emotionally pathetic enough to blame others for this flaw. I dearly love my family of fifty-
two brothers and sisters* but my recollection of our method of dealing with emotional issues was to completely ignore them until they manifested themselves into really big problems, like not looking at someone when they were talking to you or not saying thank you when someone passed you the salt.

  In my childhood the mere suggestion of a problem was responded to with irritation at the very least, and sometimes even anger. This occurred whether the problem exhibited itself through a harried face, slouched shoulders or disinterest in one’s lamb chops, despite them having been cooked in the all-new Vertical Griller (which not only drained all the fat from the meat, but also all the flavour).

  I don’t blame my family for this Problem Avoidance Situation because it’s quite possible, and indeed understandable, that the motive for their response was actually well founded. It is quite possible, in fact, that they responded in this way because the mere existence of a problem suggested to my family that there was a concomitant strain of frailty within the sufferer. And my family, therefore, like any nomadic tribe living in the desert scrounging for an existence, didn’t want the burden of carrying the weight of the weak, the disabled or the sick … or, as it turned out, the occasionally mildly perplexed.

  As a result, I grew up hiding my issues and concerns for fear I’d be abandoned under a baobab tree and then eaten by a lion. I do not recommend this tortured approach to life. The effort of hiding the existence of normal human personal struggle leads to the added burden of ‘just pulling yourself together’ and ‘just getting on with it’. And if you’re so troubled you can’t do either of these things, then enduring the problem becomes even more harrowing because you feel guilty for not being big enough to ‘rise above it’.

  (In desperation the other day, I did try to have a chat on this subject with our local church minister, but it turns out he’s now living in Bangkok where he works in a military-themed male brothel as a feather-wearing baton twirler.)

  My Worried, Empty Space

  Anyway, back to me and my ‘worried, empty space in my heart, need to reinvent myself and get a new career’ problem – or, as my mother refers to it, ‘that … you know … thing which seems to be making your eyes look squintier’.

  Now, as I said, I asked my mum for help with my turmoil and she kind of increased it, so then I asked my Greek friend, George, who has a pet fish called Bird, and he suggested I see a therapist. I told him about my recent anxiety counsellor experience and he told me that the chances of finding really good psychological help in a toilet queue at a school musical were less than ‘poking a man in the eye with an olive when he lives in the village over the mountain and is wearing no socks’.

  ‘You have to go to a therapist in an office!’ he persisted. But unfortunately George’s suggestion still didn’t ring my bells, as I have tried seeking assistance from three other therapists at three different times in my life, also to no avail. The first time I tried was at the suggestion of the nurse who was treating me after a freak plane accident in which I was a passenger and the person beside me got sucked out of the window and presumably died. I remember arriving at the therapist’s front door, reading her nameplate and discovering that she was not only a therapist to humans but she was also a ‘specialist in the mental treatment of pets, including difficult cats and fish’. Despite the nameplate, I did attend two sessions with that therapist, once a week for two weeks, but stopped when she suggested that my state of mind (i.e. sheer terror) might have something to do with my diet. In retrospect I should perhaps be grateful that she didn’t suggest I get de-flead.

  I visited the second therapist, a relationship counsellor, at the behest of my then husband, but that therapist fired me after the very first session when she declared that I clearly had commitment issues and she was worried that this might ultimately affect my ability to commit to my appointments.

  I actually visited the third therapist on someone else’s behalf when I was a backpacker in Italy. At the time I knew an English woman who used to pay me to go to her therapist for her on the grounds that she couldn’t bear to attend the sessions herself because it was too traumatic. So the English woman would pay me to listen to her problems, and then I’d go to the therapist and pretend to be the English woman, tell the therapist all of the English woman’s problems, then report back to the English woman with the therapist’s comments. Miraculously, over six months the English woman got completely well. But I, on the other hand, got mucked up in the head because I fell in love with the therapist who also fell in love with me, but thought that I was someone else, which I actually was. The therapist and I did sleep together once, when ‘my’ sessions were over, and I discovered that he could only have sex while he hummed the percussive section of the soundtrack to Star Wars.

  But not only do I lack faith in ‘therapists’, I also lack faith in any form of psychologist or psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, because I just don’t know anyone who has found success through them. Robert, an old workmate, consulted a psychiatrist twice a week for two years but finally announced that he could no longer afford to attend because he was going broke and there’d been no sign at all of improvement. In reply the psychiatrist begged Robert not to leave. In fact, the psychiatrist insisted on giving Robert free sessions because he found Robert’s problems so entertaining and hilarious that he feared without a weekly dose he might get depressed and need to seek some professional psychological help himself (which it turns out he didn’t believe actually worked).

  Of course, the psychologist was right about finding life’s troubles amusing. Life is kind of hilarious under analysis because life is essentially ridiculous. We’re conceived through an act that is designed to give our parents pleasure but as soon as we’re born, the act of sex is rarely enjoyed by both parents again – or at least not with each other! We adore food, but it makes us fat. We love to bask in the sun’s rays, but it gives us cancer. We fall in love with people we end up hating. We work so hard to live that we leave no time to live. Having no time to live leads to discontentment and misery. Discontentment and misery ruin our families and destroy our health, but despite all of this we’re less likely to change our unhappy jobs and miserable relationships than to change the shape of our chins, boobs or butts through cosmetic surgery. And then we wonder why we have problems ‘finding ourselves’ when the truth is we really do not have a clue what the person we’re searching for actually looks like!

  And when we’re not doing that we’re seeking counsel about the meaning of life, the purpose of life, the avoidance of depression, the pursuit of happiness and the emptiness of existence … while at the same moment spending the rest of our time and money trying to work out how to live longer!

  And So I Asked Ruth

  Yes, a therapist wasn’t for me but I asked another friend, Ruth, for her advice and she suggested I exercise to ease my stress. So I spent some time thinking about this option, and therefore exercising my mind, and resolved to incorporate the physical component of the process as soon as I could find a personal trainer who was fat and unfit and could therefore make me feel good enough about myself that I would start exercising … so that I would feel good about myself.

  I realise that not everyone who wants to exercise feels the need to be motivated by a trainer, but trust me, you do need guidance when you have the ability to confuse a ‘sit-up’ with a ‘get-up off the couch and get a packet of chips from the cupboard’. And, I should confess, I also need the guidance of a trainer just to feel safe during exercise ever since a workmate died while running. Admittedly she wasn’t officially exercising, but she was running at the time, to the loo, in a rather non-supportive bra, and her boobs bounced up, whacked her in the face – boom-boom – and bowled her over in the hallway, where she cracked/bumped/hit her head on the improvised ‘office stapler doorstopper’ … and unfortunately died.

  I Asked Rick as Well

  My friend Rick suggested that a cure for the difficulties I was experiencing in life might be a change of attitude, and the best wa
y to achieve this was by not eating meat. Rick is a non-practising homosexual and his suggestion came moments after we drove past some graffiti that simply said Eat Vegetarians. While I appreciated his suggestion, the fact is that I haven’t eaten red meat, farmed fish or battery chickens for years because I don’t like to eat things that have lived an unhappy life. But by the same token I don’t like to identify as a vegetarian because vegetarians appear to be quite miserable people – and I’m also pretty sure that one day we’ll discover that vegetables have the equivalent of hearts, spirits and brains too and that lentils have really great personalities.

  So Then I Asked Fenella

  And she said that maybe I should fall in love.

  Looking 4 Love in All the Wrong Undies

  I do admit that in the past I’ve wondered whether ‘falling in love’ would fill that space in my heart, and to be honest, for a short time it has been known to. You know that ‘short time’, when everything is golden, your new partner’s hilarious, you’re hilarious, he’s brilliant, you’re brilliant, you’re both magnificently kind, compassionate and unique, and the sex is somehow fabulous even if he does have a small penis. But then one day, who knows how or why (is it something he says, something he doesn’t say, the way he scratches his back inside his shirt with the very same fork he then eats his dinner with – who knows?), the magic love-dust suddenly evaporates and you realise that you’re shopping for bookshelves with a bore in Ikea and he has to be ditched or else you’ll be carsick. And, voila! The emptiness returns.