do not resuscitate

To what point is it valid to not function? I have moments where it’s ok and hours where it’s not. Punishing my brain cells into apathy has been unsuccessful- I’m still angry and scared, only now I’m angry and scared with a headache and a general physical feeling of crapness to accompany.

I have missed things, failed to complete things, stayed in bed when I should have been out and functional. Deadlines passed that I must now make up for. I don’t want to. I want to be curled up at home with a blanket, and a guard at the door, and a doctor’s note forgiving me from any expectation of functionality. I want peace and quiet but company to hold my hand and bring me tea. I want calm, and safety. I do not want to be at work.

A friend cried and cried because she didn’t know how to react or make me feel better. I’m angry because there shouldn’t be a need to know how to respond when your friend is assaulted. It isn’t in the etiquette guidebooks and it shouldn’t need to be. You aren’t meant to know what to do, or have a script to run through in the event. This isn’t first aid: elevate the limb above the heart to slow bleeding.

Some things that have scared me since Friday night:

• Leaving my house on Saturday morning to go and have coffee with a friend. I left and re-entered the house three times before I could properly leave.
• Being at a warehouse art event and being told that the bathroom was outside, through a carpark, around a corner, and through a door. I couldn’t go out there, and had to leave.
• Waiting at the same warehouse party for my friend to say her goodbyes and leave with me, and the number of men who saw me sitting alone and approached me, repeatedly. I stood up and ran away.
• Every time someone knocks on the door.
• Movement seen from the corner of my eyes.

How dare he?

I woke up this morning still crying. Still looking over my shoulder every couple of seconds, pacing into all the rooms in the house. Checking the windows, the curtains, the doors. I recognise this behaviour. Is this me, or is this me enacting some perfectly visualised victim response? I am sick to the stomach, that is real enough. My hands are shaking. My shoulders ache from how tensely I am holding myself, how tensely I slept. I can't sit here for more than a few minutes at a time without needing to get up again, pace the house again, check the rooms again. And my blunt little lesbian fingernails are digging grooves into my upper arms from nervous scratching.

I am scared, and outraged by my fear. I know myself as self-sufficient. I don't need anyone to come and hold my hand in my own house, right, in the broad daylight? I don't need to be told it's ok, that the man is gone, that it's morning now, that I am safe. I can tell myself these things, can't I? Then why do I keep staring at the phone, mind ticking over all the possible people I could call? But hesitating. Because if I called them and admitted a fear, a hurt, then I would hurt myself all over again.

I can be alone. I will be alone. The police stood in my kitchen and told me, well of course, I should not have been walking home by myself. At that hour of night. Of course. It isn't safe. Three blocks from the pub to my home is not safe, and how dare I think it is? How dare I dress the way I do, walk alone without a jacket, and assume I will be safe?

He got me on my street, achingly close to home. He could have been any of the dozens of men who have seen me, alone, and sought to chastise me for my arrogance. To teach me that it is they, and not I, who control safety on the streets. But most of them- every other time this has happened- something happens. Or rather, nothing happens. They do not act on their projection of male potential violence. I am privileged to walk another few metres, another night, my illusions intact.

Why him, then? Why last night? What did I do, or not do? Did he see me, and choose me? Or was I a coincidence, happening to pass the same way as him? He came up behind me so quietly and so quickly, he was beside me before I knew there was anyone there. How did I not hear his footsteps, on an open concrete road in the light rain? It's two am, there are no other sources of sound. My heels clacking on the wet road, and his voice.

He talked to me from the top of my street near the park, to almost my house. Stupid, absent words that gave me, I thought, the space to turn him away and untangle his path from mine. It usually works. I am the master of making men go away. It didn't work, last night. He didn't want what he wanted because we were talking, he didn't decide to take it despite my refusal to participate in his friendly conversation. He knew, and the words had nothing to do with it. "Do you know where there's a phone booth?" he asked as he grabbed me.

Maybe he said something else. I don't know. I don't remember. I remember his hands hurt, they were like claws around my breasts. He had me by the shoulders and I couldn't shake him off. I screamed and screamed, I don't know how long I screamed, except that I kept screaming until he let me go and ran. Back the way he had come. He ran so fast. No lights came on, up the street, while I stood there and watched him run away. Did they not hear me screaming, or was it so quick that they hadn't had time to react? Or is normal, now, to hear a girl screaming on the street outside your door?

I know. I know I'm what is to be considered lucky. I am not injured. I am not raped. Only a little bruised, and terrified, and angry. Assault from men is not… rare. In my life. This is not a first, of having hands when I don't want them, or being followed, or having a man or group of men put me back in my place. But this- is more. And worse, somehow. His violence made it worse, the way he planned it, the way he attacked. This is not the so many times that a man has gently, forcefully, enacted what they see as their right, violence by stealth, always done in a way that he could, later, justify himself, feel that it was all just terribly normal. Something about the viciousness of last night has me scared.

And so. I have been told. Silly little girls should not be allowed to be by themselves. Foolish children should know better than to think they may be allowed out, at night, alone. A girl who walks herself home, the three blocks from the pub, at two in the morning (especially dressed like that) should be expecting this. And should consider herself lucky that it was nothing worse.

And is it mere stubbornness then that I sit at home alone, refuse to call for help when I know I could get it? Rejecting, for a little while at least, the cluster of clucking, sorry friends who could surround me. Or maybe I just feel silly, like it shouldn't be such a big deal, like I'm being weak for being too scared to close the door to the bathroom or open the curtains to see outside.

At least I could scream. Loud and long and piercing, I could scream. It isn't a sound I've had cause to properly test before, and recurring nightmares of voicelessness had made me doubt it. But my lungs and my vocal chords did not let me down. I screamed, and he ran away. Eventually.

Summer Loving

I have tragic disco on high rotation in my head at the moment, resulting in my fingers tapping across the desk to Alicia Bridges, which is not so bad I suppose as the fact that for three days last week I couldn’t budge “Hey Big Spender” (on account of being at The Newtown watching drag shows last Friday night). It was somewhat disturbing being cloistered in the media labs at uni until obscene hours of the morning or night, accompanied only by the other desperate students, and every now and then bursting out with lines like “won’t you spe-e-e-e-end a little tiiiiiime with me” with accompanying twirl on the swivel chair.

But that’s all over with, at least, uni is all over with! I handed in my final assignment last night, which feels good for all sorts of reasons, primarily because it’s the first assignment I’ve ever made that I’m truly proud of. I put a lot of work into it, and it turned out well. It’s about pony training, so it’s obviously very personal, and since Strawberry is one of the stars, it was taking quite a big personal risk to produce that for a university audience. The response was better than I could have expected, and honestly? Sensational content aside, our project was the best in terms of coherence, realisation, aesthetics and production values. Sure no-one who was looking at it could see past the “aaah! It’s a girl pretending to be a pony! I can see her boobies!” but to me that’s a positive response because it means the production was completely seamless and the content was the most visible and important aspect.

So I had the most glorious and perfect weekend. Even despite spending my Friday and Saturday nights in the media labs working, it was perfect. On Saturday I went with Miss Eliza to Sculptures By The Sea, which was windy and beautiful. We took so many photos. I had an ice-block that melted down my hands. The metal crabs and the cyborg flowers were my favourite sculptures. There were lots of lesbian couples there, or at least, there were some who were visible which isn’t always the case. They were also my favourites.

By Saturday night my last assignment was just about finished, so Sunday was all free for the revelling and beautiful trashiness. Newtown Festival was glorious and grand. This is the first time I’ve done it properly, and by properly I mean under a tree, in the shade, beside the good music stage, with a rug, a few cases of beer, and everyone I’ve ever met. Well, maybe not everyone, but a lovely and scenic selection of my favourites. The theory when you’re in a crowd as enormous as converged on my local park this Sunday is, do not move for the crowd looking for people or things. Find a comfy spot, sit down, and wait for people or things to come to you. It worked. I had such a good time, and managed to be out all day in the hot, bright sun without getting sunburned (which is quite a feat for pale and insipid skin such as mine).

After a quick costume change when the festival wound up, it was off to the night part of the celebrations, which involved a mini-pub crawl down to the Imperial, and then off to Kooky (again). This is shaping up to be something of a summer of Kooky, which I do not mind at all. I tumbled home some time like 5am, woke up the next day, went to uni, handed in my final assignment, and now here I am- in the time that is “Next”, “After”, “Something new”. This is The Future, the bit between finishing the semester and leaving the country. Time is ticking away. It’s less than two months now. Holy Fuck.

I dearly and desperately want a set of gorgeous pink candystriped suitcases to go travelling with, but this is unlikely. I will have to find some form of detachable décor to make my luggage visible and girly without forever ruining it’s respectability (as I will have to presumably return it to whoever I borrow it from on my return).

Season Opening

Sydney is beautiful today. The way this city is meant to be. Even better I think for the enormous storm that swept through last night, dumping dramatic sheets of water across the streets. This I know because I was on my way out the door to go have dinner, when the storm arrived in full force. Flashing lightning, near-by thunder, water streaming down the footpaths to a sizeable depth. On given the options (run through the rain, or forego dinner) I decided that, eh, water is water and drama is fun, so I ran for it. And quickly stopped running because the water on the concrete was flowing so thick and fast that if my feet landed heavily (as in running) it splashed back to drench me to above the knee. Trying to walk in a sopping wet satin fishtail skirt, oh my! So I slowed down and picked my way around the running streams that were the footpaths and the road, and was glad for braving it. Dinner was excellent. And I love the kind of weather where, in the pitch black of night, the lightning is so bright that I could see the blades of grass three inches below the surface of the water.

I went shopping yesterday with reckless abandon. What fun. I bought an insanely expensive skincare product, which makes me feel that (despite all financial evidence to the contrary) I have arrived in the middle class and the land of discretionary income. And today I noticed that my cute flat shoes with the buttons on them are splitting along one seam, which gives me all the excuse I need to go shoe shopping. No heels, mind (I am banned from buying high heels for at least the next few months). What I want is black, fully enclosed but not boots, slightly platform shoes with square toes and some kind of cute detail (such as contrast insets or a T-bar strap or similar). This should prove difficult enough to find that I will have to spend countless hours combing the shoe stores of Sydney. Which I’m sure I’ll hate. Every moment.

Festival this Sunday. I’m excited. Not so much about the park being packed full of people, or the mess and rubbish, or the likelihood that there will be rain. I’m excited about the excitement and the energy that will swallow the suburb for the day and which won’t quite go away until the end of Summer. This weekend is like the official opening of promenade season, the months of the year when well-dressed queers strut up and down the major streets eyeing each other off from behind fashionable sunglasses (even at eight o’clock at night). And that’s my favourite time of year.

Alien Beneficiary

My acceptance papers arrived from San Francisco State University. They don't feel real, these endless letters and forms in bureaucratese, scribbled and stamped and approved. I am addressed, on two of them, as "the Alien Beneficiary" (capitalisation courtesy of the US State Department) which makes me wonder if that's how they'll talk to me at my visa interview in a few weeks: "Can Alien Beneficiary please present at the counter to be processed?".

One assignment in, two to go. The focus required to churn out this intensity of work in such a small space of time is lacking when my mind is in the clouds above the Pacific (do I cross the Pacific when I fly? I need to check that). Departure dates and places of residence and oh goodness I'll be leaving here in the middle of summer, I'll need to buy thermal underwear for US winter and where do I buy thermal underwear in JANUARY?? And I arrive on a Monday, so how soon will it be polite for me to go out drinking and locating the gay bars, the dyke bars, the clubs and what's where? I have a horrible suspicion that the lesbians-go-out-drinking-on-Wednesday phenomena may be specific to Sydney. And all of this is a very, very long way from Flash assembley and colour perfectionism and the need to spend twelve hour days in front of the computer to get this done.

Happy. I'm so happy. I don't recognise this. Who did this? Who applied? Who got these wheels in motion? It doesn't feel like me, like something I would do. But anyway. I'm going.

blue sky sunday

Creating things is just my favourite activity. Making things happen. Which is why I am not so unhappy to be at uni on a beautiful, blue-sky Sunday, and why responses to an event I will be jointly running make me so proud. Especially when the thing I make, or make happen, is personal or close to me, I don’t expect responses from people that indicate a more universal understanding. More specifically, I don’t expect people to respond as though it is as close to them as it is to me. The strength of other people’s responses to things that I make blows me away.

One day I was at a pub and a girl walked up to me to tell me how much she’d liked my zine, especially one particular part of it, which she then proceeded to quote to me almost word for word, in it’s entirety. What is that feeling? It belongs in a separate class that I am not fully aware of, along with the pony-happy feeling, and the curling joy of having needles in my hands and skin before me to place them in. Maybe its a little bit about taking a small step to the left and around a bit from normal boundaries of happiness, pleasure and pride, and doing other things to achieve the feelings. And feeling as though through something so domestic as doing the things that I do, I am larger than myself and overstep my own identity.

Which is all just an elaborate way of saying that I have received communications recently about things that I do or propose to do, that have reflected all of this back to me. And it makes me happy.

Oddly pleasing

A thing I found oddly pleasing, some time last week I think. I did a load of laundry that consisted almost entirely of underwear, and hung it out to dry on the line. Once I had finished, I realised that the knickers alone took up an entire quarter of the Hills Hoist, that is, from the small inside rung to the wide outside rung, four rows of lacy knickers neatly pegged. For no reason at all, the sight made me happy. Even more so when Zoo commented on the same sight later, and said “it makes me happy that at least one of the House of Femme can put on that sort of display”.

Crisis last night. My beautiful new pair of slightly metallic pink high heels from Quick Brown Fox, with pink and white bows on them (making them utterly the most perfect shoes I have ever worn), destroyed! One miss-step and the shoddily constructed heel on one of them broke. Argh! As if it’s not bad enough losing such beautiful objects (seriously, just looking at them was making me happy), this happened during drinks with someone… well… someone that just compounded my perceived level of crisis. Of course there was nothing to be done except to run home barefoot and change into boots- sensible, sensible, not nearly as pretty footwear, but far less likely to spontaneously disintegrate. But I very clearly remember crying out, heartbroken: “NO! You can’t look! No!” to my companion, as I struggled to hide the malfunction behind someone else’s feet.

To add to the trauma of femininity last night, I broke a nail on my mascara tube. How is that even possible, I’d like to know?

Today has had no time for any such frivolities (although I did return the shoes, with a grumpy pout, to QBF, because I’ve only had them for a week and that’s a poor showing). I’ve been working away on my uni assignments, feeling quite good about progress. Nothing beats the pride of watching my work actually work the way it’s supposed to: scroll the right way, flash or move or chime or whatever. This is why I study how to make things move when you click on them (otherwise known as New Media). It makes me happy like playing with Lego makes me happy. Even when it does take hours and hours of time I’d probably rather spend sitting in the park with an ice cream in my hand.

Pre Depart

Sure, I'm going to a state that elected the Terminator as governor, and sure, I'm going to the country that elected the challenged chimpanzee as their president, again (as though the pain weren't enough the first time round, and the USA is hard-core masochist with no safe word and probably no lube or alcohol swabs either). But- I'm GOING! Or at least, it's seeming more likely by the minute, by the day, by the pile of paperwork and meeting about nothing that it is imperative that I attend because by the way i'm GOING! To the United States of Voluntary Voting Because By The Way The TiVo Is Much More Interesting Than The Election! I'm going to live there! I am going to meet the people and learn their obscure local customs! I'm going to navigate the public transport system, discover their local breeds of parasitic bugs that dwell in low-end share housing, get into arguments all the time because swear words mean different things there than they do here! I'm going to figure out where to buy coffee, I'm going to make use of a thing called creamer instead of milk, I'm going to avoid eating at all-you-can-eat buffets! I promise to myself that my breakfast cereal will contain less than 20% sugar, and that I will never use alternate meanings of the word fanny, and that I WILL be able to compete as a loud, assertive person in a nation full of loud, assertive people!

San Francisco, here I come.

---

It's quietly hilarious that as I panic about living with people who think bacon means fat, breakfast means sugar fried in fat, coffee means instant with powder, food means meat and serving size means enough to feed a small family... well, honestly? I'm going to live in the wankiest of wanky cities in a wanky state full of probiotic wankers. I will have no trouble finding tofu, I know that. There will be rice. There will be noodles. There will be serving sizes that would struggle to fit the diameter of a tea spoon, so that I am forced to recant my criticisms. Good grief. It's not like I'm moving to the Bible belt, here (unless there are things no-one ever told me about San Francisco?).

But best of all, and i think we all agree that this is the main reason I'm going, there will be queers! Many queers! Most of whom i have never slept with, and nor has anyone I know! An entire new pool of queer to screw around in until it gets just as tangled and inbred for me as home is already! And then I will return. Hopefully, with the cultural memory of lesbianism being about that of goldfish, by the time I get back, I'll get to come out all over again.

Yeah, so today, despite the money situation still being perilous, the confirmation papers still lost somewhere in the international mail, the university assignments due in a ridiculously small number of hours from now: today, I am excited. So excited. So happy. We had the pre-departure briefing today, where they drag all the departing students into a room and tell them how to catch a taxi in America, and between the pallid excuses for tips on cross-cultural communication, I felt it come closer. Maybe a little bit almost real. Maybe like I could touch it if I tried. And maybe like, I could be living this. For real.

Crazy.

Flood and breeze

I went to see The Burlesque Hour last night. Fantastic! Sexy, visually interesting, and oddly inoffensive, all at once. I suppose since I'm more used to the Gurlesque style of cabaret, it was a little odd watching sexy! sensational! Burlesque! that is safe enough to take your grandma to. But, safe is no suggestion that it wasn't still vivid and interesting and intelligent, because it was all those things.

I got there late, of course, because my afternoon was one long-winded drama. More waterworks, of the hysterical sobbing as I walked in the door kind, which makes me immediately suspect I have some glandular issues going on, but I think I'm actually just, uh, 'tired and emotional'. Also stressed out, and going through normal things that would make a girl cry on the messy, sticky, kinda icky front that has been my love life of late. I think it's interesting that, although I got the traumatic series of phone calls while I was waiting for a bus, my body waited until I'd walked into my house before erupting in waterworks- even though I then needed to leave the house five minutes later to head for the Opera House. So, scrabbling for shoes, changing my clothes, trying to make myself drink water in an effort to stop it with the crying. Standing on Parramatta road waiting for a bus and sobbing at the traffic. At least I'm not the kind of drama girl who wouldn't go out on account of the crying. And, again with the wonders of mood lighting, The Studio at the Opera House was red-lit during the intermission so the remnants of trauma weren't even visible. Hooray.

I wound up having a wonderful time, maybe partially because I was rubbed raw from the crying, so the beautiful feeling of having my housemates surround me when they found me in the crowd, protective and chirping and demanding to know who had wronged me... well, I was kind of open to that. And for once, I was not one of the most visible of the cohort (being that I hadn't had time to frock up, and all my housemates and soon-to-be-housemates were looking glamorous and dolled-up). Even the lovely, nice-looking, matching dyke couple at our table (who I got excited about, because such things still excite me) seemed perplexed by us, and tried to explain our presence with such questions as: "So... do you know the performers?" Because yes, corsets and facial piercings at the Opera House must immediately imply our involvement in, at the very least, performing Circus side-shows.

Clacking precariously in kitten heels along the uneven cobblestones that form the walk between Circular Quay and the Opera House, I got suddenly so very excited about the fact that I was walking by the harbour, at eight o'clock at night, in a spaghetti-strap dress, and no jacket. A warm breeze came off the water. I left the house early this morning, and again no jacket, enjoying the cold-shade, warm-sunlight contrast. The jacaranda trees are floating purple in the wind. The christmas catalogues are bulging from the letterboxes. It's starting, it really is.

Beautiful wreck

Oh, foolishness. I'm hooked. This disco-dancing thing, I just can't seem to stop. And such good times are had, but unfortunately the world and arrangements of time aren't always inclined to be gentle with the scheduling of things for, generally, the morning after a particularly good night. So I haven't had an awful lot of sleep, and odd muscles hurt from spending the night dancing in an enormous pair of black, curlicue butterfly wings. But despite the exhaustion and the general feeling of foolishness, my feet are still tapping away and my hips are trying to swing in my seat. It was the kind of night that just didn't want to be over, even at seven o'clock on a Monday morning when sensible people in business suits are seeping through the city, staring like tourists at the glitter trash still partying away in pubs with the windows wide open. I haven't had a Sunday like that since- actually, I can't remember. Not for a long time. I'm particularly pleased because it was Kooky, and I've been really really wanting for Kooky to be good in it's current incarnation. So their Hallowe'en party last night exceeded my requirements for a damn good night- decorated with floating ghost panels and real jack o'lanterns (you don't see them much in Australia), and packed to the rafters with a who's who of the beautiful people of the Sydney queer alternative (which is always a hilarious crowd to be sharing a dance floor with).

The energy was still so high when it wound up that we tumbled (or rather, puffed and struggled) our way up the hill to the Oxford, where we danced to appalling trash pop and I did my best to give the wide-eyed, confused-looking bartender a heart attack (or at least, something to look at). Man, I don't know what it is about me and teasing bartenders at obscure hours of the morning, but it's fun! And when her eyebrows shot up to her hairline and her mouth gaped open as we walked in, well, it was like she was crying out to be taunted by dancing girls in elaborate, skimpy costumes! I especially like when they're doing a really good impression of being efficient and productive and hard-working while watching my friends and I dance in the mirror on the back of the bar. She did quite a lot of that.

I was wearing: black PVC knee-high boots, red and black striped stockings, huge gauze wings, long and curly black horns, red hotpants and a very brief tunic-type thing, red with spiderwebs and spiders in black. Figuring out how to dance with the different weight and spread of the wings was interesting, especially because people in catch-able outfits kept brushing right behind me and tangling themselves. It's nice to have an ice-breaker, I think, and nothing says "hi! How's your night going?" like trying to detach costume elements from each other.