Jessie was his name. I was “Jessie’s girl”. Whenever I thought about him, I would hear that song and place myself in the middle of the story; and hope that the other character’s longing for me was felt by him. I was young, but Hollywood had a hold on my heart and I ached to be needed and wanted just like I’d seen in the movies and in those songs. I was sucked in by it at that age and I succumbed to that little gendered role playing. That’s what Hollywood told me was romance.  This was what it said I should yearn for.

Jessie and I hung out every Tuesday night when our Fathers played Baseball together at the local Football ground. It was always cold – I guess Baseball is a winter sport. The Football ground had lots of interesting places to explore and Jessie and I would find all the secret hollows in the bushes where kangaroos had laid down to rest at some point. I crushed on him, hard from the night I first met him.

He was slightly older and I thought he was such a badass. He was an outsider: someone who had had such a different upbringing to my own and I found that incredibly attractive. He had a fire inside him unaffected by his estranged family, their reliance on government handouts, the months living in the family car, the holey hand-me-down jumpers. It wasn’t his first kiss and I wasn’t jealous – I was excited. My eleven year old self thought he’d teach me a thing or two.

Jessie had been talking about kissing me for weeks but there hadn’t yet been a good time. Parents or siblings were around, he’d had a cold: excuses. I was relieved every time and disappointed, too. He could not admit he was as nervous about the kiss as much as I was. He was the tough, older boy. Of course he wasn’t nervous, he’d done this millions of times.

Hollywood did not prepare me for the anticlimax that was my first kiss. The final innings of the Baseball game was upon us. There were no Parents or siblings around. We were both without illness. Soon, the siren would sound and time would be up – our parents would call for us and we’d go back to our contrasting lives and homes. Now was the time to do it.

Unlike any other on-screen kiss I’d ever seen, we were next to a giant skip bin, filled with construction rubbish, dirt and dust. I have no idea why he chose this place to kiss me. Despite the location, my tummy churned with anticipation and my face burned with the blush and the cold night air. He put his arm around my waist and drew me into him. I guess he was affected by Hollywood’s cues too – what kind of thirteen year old boy knows to do this?

He looked me in the eyes and planted his lips on mine and pressed into my face. It was lovely. It was clumsy, but it was lovely. It’s hard to kiss when you are smiling. He gave me another. The siren sounded and he pulled away, looking urgently towards the field.

“Shit!” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that second one”. He squeezed my hand and ran towards the Club house, leaving me standing next to a skip bin watching my Hollywood moment disappearing into the bright lights. That was the last night that I was Jessie’s girl. I never saw him again.

This is not my story. These are not my words. I could not alter this story as it’s perfect just as it came in.

______

All the doors are locked

Our dog stares out into the dark at the sounds of a different house

And I miss you

The rain falls in our house through the roof to a small green pot that sits in the middle of the kitchen floor

Do you miss me?

Will I ever sleep again in that house, with the doors wide open breeze flowing

Safe because nothing can hurt us when we are standing together?

And I miss you

I know its not right because I’ve never felt so wrong

God damn do I wish I never felt this way

Constant knots in my stomach

Sweet saliva fills the back of my mouth

I’m retching over an empty foreign toilet bowl

And I miss you

I wonder if that pot rests alone tonight

It’s filling the only sound in our now locked house

Or if you are there, retching and writhing in a bed of pain like mine

And do you miss me?

I sometimes hear birds singing sweetly at all hours of the night from my apartment window. I’ve read that the parent-bird does this as a way of protecting it’s babies from nocturnal predators such as cats. They sing from a nearby tree to entice the hunters to a different tree to that which houses their nest of helpless children. Now when I hear those birds singing “happily” at night, I know that they’re actually frightened and trying desperately to protect their precious ones from harm with a distraction. It doesn’t sound so sweet anymore.

I remember that I saw you having the talk with mum and dad on the back patio as the sun went down. I watched and listened from the kitchen window. Every serious conversation they ever had with us had a hint of hilarity associated with it. It never fit their image or my idea of them to have serious conversations.

Your silhouettes were framed by the purple and orange of the setting sun behind you. This has made this image forever burnt into my brain as if it were a dream – hazy, beautiful and with a sadness that doesn’t need any explanation.

You saw me there, watching from the kitchen window. I couldn’t see your face because of the location of the sun but you complained that I was listening. Mum and dad told you that it mattered to me too.

I don’t remember what was said specifically. I think you were pretty nervous but at the same time relieved that they cared and something was being said. It wasn’t a secret anymore. Mum and dad knew and they weren’t turning a blind eye to it. I don’t remember how they found out or how long they’d known before they said something to you. I hope it wasn’t long.

We weren’t close like I’d wanted us to be, for so long. I think now, at 23, you’re finally letting me in again. You’re finally able to trust me. I guess you never did that to begin with, really. We didn’t know each other.

I see those scars on your thighs now, long since healed – and all I see is a frightened, lonely, little girl that I neglected for years. I was too caught up in my own nightmares to see yours playing out right in front of me.

You’re not ashamed of those scars – you don’t hide them. I always wonder whether you explain to your lovers – if you say anything about them at all. Do they even ask about them?

Where did you do that little sister? Did you do it in your room, with your closed door without the lock? Did you cut deep enough for the blood and the pain to come and hope family wouldn”t – or would – interrupt you? Was I the singing bird that distracted our parents from you? Did they miss the real danger here and focus on the wrong cry for help?

I was only in the room next door, little sister. How did I not hear this? I was only in my own head. I didn’t see your pain through my own. How did I let my head get so full of darkness and self pity that I didn’t see you drowning just next door? I think about how many nights I must have sat alone in my room, staring at the wall, wishing I felt anything other than despair, while you were less than three steps from me, behind that wall I was concentrating on, cutting into your own flesh because you wanted to feel something, too.

You’re such a beautiful person and I’m so proud of you. Beyond words. I look at you – a grown woman now, and I still see that precious little girl who I wasn’t there for when she really needed it. Despite those physical and, no doubt, psychological scars that you carry around with you, you’re so self assured and loving. Your personal strength has always been an inspiration to me. In a whole lot of ways, you’ve been the big sister who’s been strong for me and put me together when I’ve fallen apart. You’re still my precious girl, you’re just as fragile. How are you all of these things but still fill me with such strength and conviction of character?

You inspire me, little sister. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. I’ll never let you down again. You’ve never let me down.

[Trigger warning: sexual assault]

Can I be mad at you for causing me to find all men disgusting and for highlighting all the slightly sexist,  misogynistic things they don’t mean seriously in the slightest?

Can I blame you entirely for my heightened awareness of and my tendency to violently respond to each and every comment that hints at something that could suggest a disrespect of women? Of Me?

Can I say you’re the cause of my need to disagree with everything even the loveliest man says to me just so I can show my words matter and I should be respected – this time?

Can I attribute my understanding of “It’s only funny until it happens to you”? entirely to your lesson?

Can I think I see your face and hear your fucked, lying words everytime he opens his mouth and tells me he cares?
Can I know it’s you who’s made it impossible for me to see any worth inside this head or in my words and instead only in my body?

Can I tell you that you’ve put me on a crusade now to right all the potential wrongs I come across because I wasn’t able to right the wrong you did to me?

Say Yes. Give me a Yes, screamed out into the wild from the rooftop or from the top of a mountain. Emphatic. Etched onto my forehead, burnt into my wrist.  Stitched into everyone’s collar. Written in the sand with a twig on a deserted beach, pebbles on the dirt spelling out the letters in the Woods. A one word email to “allstaff@domain.com”. A batman type symbol in the sky.

How’s that for consent, you piece of shit?

Close your eyes, Darling
And pretend
His arms are wrapped around you
Like you’re a gift
And pretend
This is a world where he chose you

Take deep breaths, Darling
And imagine
He’ll be there in the morning
With tea and toast
And imagine
It didn’t end and he didn’t turn away

Listen softly, Darling
And hear
The words you longed for
Instead of silence
And hear
Love and affection returned to you

Now wake up, Darling
And be here now
In real life where you matter
To more than one
And be here now
Where you lived before love and will after too

I look up at this stranger through my painted lashes. My face made up with last night’s deception.

He’s with a girl – she’s oblivious – but I am not. His mouth is set, hard, and he holds my gaze while he walks past me. We both dare each other to look away first. He does.

I think maybe I imagined the story in his eyes – the red-hot story in which our mouths are the protagonists. The one where his hand cups my chin and his lips brush mine before our tongues caress. The one where my fingers pull at the hair at the base of his neck and my moans rest on his earlobe. The one where no words are uttered and all that is known about each other is what we see and feel.

I turn back to my book, where the story is written in unquestionable black and white. A few seconds pass. I look over to where he’s standing – he looked back! The story in his eyes is black and white too. And then he’s gone.

I used to work as an usher at a Theatre in the City a few years ago. We weren’t allowed to have our phones on our person when we were working. One evening I signed on and put my bag in the staff room as usual. As I was greeting all my Theatre friends in our respective positions in the venue, my Manager, Andrea called me back into the staff room and told me there was a phone call for me. Staff never got phone calls. My just-catching-up-with-friends-smile fell from my face when my Fiance’s brother’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Mark’s been in a car accident – No, stay calm – he’s OK. He wanted me to call you and ask you to meet him there.”

Stay calm. His voice was authoritative and the call lasted only a minute. My heart rate shot up immediately upon car accident and then stabilised again following stay calm. I hated how much he knew exactly how I would react. This guy did not like me in his family at all and I cannot remember why. I could tell this phone call was for Mark, not for me in the slightest.

I immediately left work and checked my phone: 11 missed calls from Mark. Fuck. I was distraught – I wasn’t there when he needed me. His goddamn brother had to call me. Shame was hot on my face despite the lack of colour in my cheeks.

I knew what had happened already. I was so angry but I had to stay calm. He needed me. An equation appeared in my head: that new red sports car, plus that stretch of road in the middle of nowhere plus writing your car off equals hooning. I was livid that he had done this. If it were a cartoon, I am sure steam would have been piling out of my ears.

I called Mark as I fell into my car and frantically pulled out of the car park. I recognised the stupidity of calling my partner about his car accident while I was driving, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not being there for him as soon as was possible. If he hadn’t whimpered when he picked up I would have screamed and cried “How could you be so fucking selfish? How could you put yourself in such danger??”. He cried and I cried and I knew he was terrified – I knew he needed support and so I kept my screams inside.

I did not know what to expect when I arrived. The scene caused me to feel physically ill – it’s a miracle he’s alive. The entire left side of the windscreen was completely shattered as it had ploughed right into a tree on one of the many complete rolls the car had done after leaving the bitumen road. The image could only have been made more dramatic if the car had exploded and Mark had walked towards me while the rubble burned behind his silhouetted frame.

His brother had beat me there. Again an overwhelming sense of shame and failure washed over me. Mark ran to me and hugged me tightly. I think I hugged him back. Then he kissed me – full on the lips. To this day, this kiss has been the most shocking, memorable moment of my life. Why would he kiss me? This question makes perfect sense to me, to be asked. At the same time, why shouldn’t he kiss me in this moment? I saw in front of me the man I planned to marry and raise children with juxtapositioned with a scene of complete carnage that was entirely his own doing. On the periphery of this vision was his brother whom I was completely jealous and distrustful of. I felt so alone.

Following the kiss, I wanted so badly to pound on his chest and scream and point at this goddamn nightmare in front of me, but I didn’t. Instead of “How can you kiss me – how can you possibly love me enough to kiss me – when you can do this to me? How??” I simply took off my jacket and placed it around his shaking shoulders. It was my job now to help him stay calm.

Later I would learn that Mark was speed testing his car despite his assurances to me that he simply did not see the bend in the road. His brother knew the truth and they both agreed to keep it from me. To me, this was the ultimate betrayal in a long list of betrayals including infidelity. This was no longer a time for me to stay calm. 

The next night we spent together in our shared bed, I penned a letter to Mark while he slept peacefully next to me. I began with the words “This is why I’m leaving you”. If he had died that night, it would have felt exactly the same as this did.

Apparently the Banana is the most Romeo-Don-Juan-Cassanova of all the fruits. Maybe just Cupid in disguise. It’s 3am or something – I’m pretty buzzed, but not too buzzed that I’m imagining the Bananaman picking up on the other side of the dancefloor. It’s Halloween so it’s probably not a hallucination.

A non-fruit woman writes something on his arm – I can only assume it’s her number. It could be a recipe for banana bread for all I care. These characters are the parentheses around the sentence I am focused on: one beautiful girl standing between them who I am enjoying that coy, sexual tension filled eye contact with. I gesture at the scene in front of her – as if to share in the absurdity of a fruit getting lucky.

I don’t expect the beautiful girl to take this as an invitation to so confidently cross the dance floor, to meet me at the other side of this disgusting nightclub and strike up a conversation. I don’t feel so confident when she stops in front of me, gorgeous smile beaming, doe-like eyes staring into mine. Fuck, she is stunning. What do I do now? She’s said something. Jesus Christ, I think to myself, her mouth makes the most beautiful movements when she talks. I hope I didn’t just say that shit out loud. I tell myself to stop staring at her stained lips. 

I find it easy to flirt and play with men but women scare the shit out of me. I don’t know why this is. I don’t think she notices how nervous I am during our conversation. I feel like a duck on the water – calm up top, but churning that lake down below. It’s probably the rum talking, but I feel like I’m hitting home runs. She’s funny. We laugh. She touches my arm. She cocks her head. Our body language is mirrored. A young man joins us sometime later and I discover this is the beauty’s boyfriend. I am disappointed but more than a little relieved that tonight isn’t going to get real after all. Or is it? 

“Is this your boyfriend?”. She nods. Those eyelids flutter. She isn’t embarassed and doesn’t hide that she’s taken. Maybe she wasn’t flirting with me at all.

“That’s a shame. I would have loved to take you home tonight”. I’m so goddamn cocky when I’m drinking. I’m puffed up with bravado. I think I’m so clever.

She doesn’t skip a beat. “You could come home with us…if you wanted”. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. The air rushes out of me and I’m speechless, probably with a slack jaw, wide eyes. Unsure. Did a threesome just get put on the table?

I’m not attracted to the man in the least, but this doesn’t matter to me. Does it not matter to me because I don’t have to be attracted to men to sleep with them? That’s a fucked up thought to think further about another time. 

I manage to gather control of my face and mouth: “Yeah, I’d love to”. Am I smiling or grimacing? Oh God, I hope the former. The words come out just as the excitement of having a threesome overtakes the fear of having my kidneys removed and waking up in an ice bath the following morning. 

I think the beauty can see through my facade so adds something about not feeling obliged to come home with them: “Only if you feel comfortable!”. She’s sweet as hell in addition to being smoking hot. Like some sort of chocolate vindaloo. 

She gives me several opportunities to back out before we’re in a maxi-taxi, taking a 45 minute awkward drive to Fremantle where they live. Two of their friends are in the car with us – it’s weird. I know that they know that in less than an hour, the three of us are going to be writhing around naked together in the same house they’ll be passing out in. The two other people and I don’t speak much – I don’t think we even exchange names. I want to pretend they don’t exist right now.

I feel like a toy that’s just been purchased: I’m a package, eagerly anticipated but unable to be opened until we get home. Batteries not included. This idea excites and disgusts me at the same time. I’m halfway to Fremantle and I want to back out. I’m halfway to Fremantle and I wish I was there already. A couple searches for a girl to share tonight and they’ve found one. As easy as pie – just a question asked and an affirmative reply. Is it this easy for others? Is this how threesomes generally happen?

I’m so nervous when we get to our destination. They ask me if I want a drink. I’m not a big drinker and all they have is XXX gold. No. I can’t think of anything worse. I am visibly uncomfortable standing there in their kitchen under the unflattering, bright lights: less flawless makeup at a club and more insecure stranger, all shuffled feet, waiting for the relative safety of the darkness in their bedroom. Isn’t that bizarre? I feel more comfortable with the idea of being naked, in the dark with a couple of strangers than I do standing in their kitchen, having a conversation with them.

The idea of a sexual experience with two people instead of one, being romantic, seems odd to me. But that is how it goes. It is a loving, intensely erotic night between a solid couple and a random girl they’ve met that evening. I’ve always wondered how I would deal with the dynamics of being the third – the invited – the outsider. I do not feel unwanted at all. I feel welcomed, completely. We have little sleep and spend more of the night laughing than anything else. It surprises me that it takes only a minute of being naked in their collective presence for me to be completely, unreservedly comfortable with the situation I find myself in. 

A few hours of sleep and here they are, driving me home – all the way to Leederville. A peck on the cheek for the beauty and a friendly hug for the beauty’s boyfriend and with a click of a few buttons, we’re all facebook friends. Does that mean there’s the expectation or chance of round two?

Modern dating has come so far. I wouldn’t even need a Bananaman the next time. 

Baby, I’m sorry I hurt you. I’d say you played some part in the end of this relationship, but I wouldn’t say it convincingly. I’ve been cheated on before and I’d punch that guy in the dick if he suggested I’d caused his infidelity in any way. I know it was my choice entirely, just like it was his.

I know it won’t make you feel any better but I’m hurting. Much more than when something like this happened to me. That pain went away after a while but this guilt lingers. This guilt stains. This guilt is like a swarm of blowflies on a sweaty t-shirt in the summer heat. I know you’d say I was trying too hard with that analogy and I’d tell you to shut the fuck up… I miss that shit.

I don’t tell you about my pain to belittle yours in anyway. One of our friends told me you’d put yourself into hospital after I told you. It made me sick to know that I’d done this to you. It made me even more sick to know that I was halfway across the world and couldn’t be there for you, whether you wanted me or not.

I don’t know whether you’ll read this or whether it matters at all but I’m trying to explain why it happened. If that’d help at all. Maybe this is just for me. Maybe like every bad thing I’ve done, I’m trying to convince myself that I’m still a good person regardless.

You left me all alone over here. I felt you’d abandoned me when I needed your support the most. I was lost. This was the first time I had questioned your love. I feel there’s a sense of painful irony in that I’m aching to come to your side across the Ocean right now, but you flew away from mine.

I got high and I got drunk. He was there and he was nice and I was lonely and I was sad. I’ve done some stupid, bad, bad shit in my life, Baby. I’ve done drugs and I’ve stolen but even then I’ve considered myself a good person. When I woke up, naked, hazy, in that bed with a man beside me who wasn’t you, well, I don’t know what I considered myself anymore.

Am I a good person? I was once, to you. I was once, to me. It’s been a long time and I haven’t tried to convince myself I’m good since.

That everyone was scared
Like little lost children in their grown up clothes and poses
So we ended up alone here
Floating through long wasted days
Or great tribulations
While everything felt wrong

____________________

I’ve been soothing a broken heart for a while now. Oh boy, this one is pretty tender. In a lot of ways I feel the getting-over-of-someone would be simpler if those who can’t love me the way I want them to love me were just complete trash. It would feel a little more easy to reason with your brain and heart that someone isn’t worth being sad over, if they hadn’t treated you very well. Life isn’t black and white like this though, so there’s quite a long, painful period of reasoning in my head to be done: “They don’t want you, therefore they aren’t the one for YOU”. That’s kind of the only argument; and it’s a shitty one. I don’t want to listen to that argument. I want to rebel against that, I want to stamp my feet. Why don’t they want me?

I do sometimes feel exactly like a little lost child, parading around in my grown up clothes, pretending to be an adult, keeping it together, presenting a veneer of knowing-what-I’m-doing-ness. Yes, I can handle this mature relationship – I can handle my pain when faced with someone else’s needs and wants that don’t match mine. Yes, I can move on and not be petty that this particular someone doesn’t want me as a partner. Yes, I can cast away the urge to convince and beg because I’ve got more self-respect than that. Yes, I’m adult enough to realise it doesn’t work like that. I am, right?

Today, I considered a new reason for my inappropriateness as his partner that I’d never before contemplated, despite the description literally coming out of his mouth many times. This one hurt more than anything I had ever regarded as a reason not to have a relationship with me. He told me many times that we would not raise children in the same way. I don’t think I took in the gravity of those words until now: I cannot be the Mother of his children.

I’d never thought about anyone considering me as a potential Mother to their children and I’d certainly never thought about them deciding I wasn’t fit for that role in their life. Somehow “I don’t want you as my girlfriend” just wasn’t hurtful at all compared to “I don’t want to raise children with you”.

This revelation was as devastating as it was a release. Despite it being crushing, there’s no changing something as fundamental as not being seen as someone you can raise children with.

Hope in this may be futile, however now I have only one option: Move on. There is nothing to reason with.

____________________

Brothers and Sisters
Hope still waits in the wings
Like a bitter spinster
Impatient
Lonely
And shivering
Waiting to build her glorious fires.