Lou Sanz

The smell of freshly urinated grass first thing in the morning can’t truly be described by anyone that hasn’t awoken on a bit of lawn, skirt riding up around their waist and the promise that this might be their last day on earth, but believe me I did not set out to finish up this way…

My friend Steve and I weren’t spending enough time together. He was insistent we meet up on the weekend and have a good chin wag, it was comments like that that had led me to push away from Steve, but like a cat trying to get a dead bird out of skirting boards he kept coming back. In hindsight I should never have encouraged my best friend Frannie to sleep with him, but he told me he was dying and I thought I’d do the guy a favour and so I introduced him to Frannie who after a recent pap smear scare was looking to rejoin the human race.

He wasn’t dying, not that he was lying. He’d stepped on a rusty nail earlier that day and had been lakse getting a tetnus injection and had been feeling a bit off all day. Frannie  had her suspicions ‘he didn’t shag like a dying man – he was more like the warm up guy on Wheel of Fortune; he worked on the theory I’d probably seen the show often enough to work it all out myself and he just occasionally yelled out encouraging vowel sounds’.

Frannie’s lack of interest in pursuing anything with Steve led her to give him my number and it turned out that when he wasn’t crying he was kinda alright to hang out with and when I say hang out with I mean a phone call once a year around Christmas generally when I’m about to go into a tunnel and my phone just drops out. So for whatever reason now he wanted a face to face. I agreed to meet him for dinner, drinks and food in a controlled environment with little chance of him bursting into tears or bringing his mother along.

‘I’m not eating chicken anymore’ He told me as the waiter took our order for two medium rare steaks. ‘Nothing off a carcass, it’s just so cruel.’

‘Not to burst your bubble Steve but steak much like the one you just ordered comes off a carcass’.

‘Common misconception Lou, it comes from the rump’

‘Which is part of the skeletal system, the carcass of the animal’

‘Granted its supported by the carcass, but it’s not entirely reliant on it, the rump doesn’t need the carcus to survive’

‘I think you’re thinking of squid’

‘And you Lou are refusing to think full stop’.

The problem was had Steve been an ex of mine, or an off cut of a night of pity then I’d have no trouble treating him with the contempt he deserved, but this was complicated. It was like meeting up with a friends ex-husband to distract him from the restraining order that had been served on him early that week with lots of ‘she told you she needed her space, this isn’t so much about you as it is her new husband that really thinks you can’t let go’ or my personal favourite ‘if you hadn’t slept with her mum there’s a good chance it would never have gotten to this’.

Our food arrived, my second bottle of wine decanted, his mineral water poured and we settled into round two for the night.

‘Why did you and I never hook up Lou. I see a lot of potential in you Lou.’

‘I was gay when I met you’

‘Guess it was just bad timing’

‘Yep’

‘You still gay?’

‘No, just turns out it was something I ate that night’

‘Funny you say that. I’ve met someone’

I nearly fell off my chair.

‘Do they know you’ve met them?’

‘Yes, she’d been on at me for ages to go out with her, it was pretty pathetic but what is it they say ‘give a girl a bone?’

‘You said that to her?’

‘No, I did that to her – gave her a bone…get it?’

I gulped at an empty glass, another drink was in order. I was breaking my latest rule – no drinking around others.

‘But then she got all weird’

‘She’d probably sobered up’

‘No, she doesn’t drink. It’s really very refreshing, you should try it sometime Lou’

‘There are lots of things I should do, but generally I do what I shouldn’t – point and case sitting here with you right now.’

‘Ouch – you’re just drunk’

‘Yes and I’m going to get going in a minute before my brain truly starts to grasp some of the things you’ve said tonight’

‘You’re just like my new girlfriend’

‘No I’m not, for starters I’m not a minor’

‘She’s 40 actually – older then me and you. A proper woman. She’s certified’.

‘They don’t hand out certificates’

‘They should and warning signs, I mean she got upset because I wouldn’t got down on her’.

My steak revisited my throat but I pushed it back down.

‘It’s just not natural Lou, like if I was gay fine, it’s part of the job description but I’m a guy, I mean help me out here Lou’

I slowly picked up my purse.

‘I don’t think we can be friends anymore Steve.’

‘Oh don’t tell me you like that stuff Lou…christ not you too..I’m starting to think it’s all women’.

‘Someone will stab you one day Steve, I’m just giving you a heads up on that’

‘Fine be that way, but I reckon you won’t find one guy who’s ok with doing that to a girl, well maybe a queer’

‘Frannie has chronic herpes Steve – enjoy’

And with that I left, and what I’d failed to realise was quite how drunk I was and at some point I passed out on what I believe was my way home…

….so waking up it took a few moments for my body to figure out where it had landed, where my brain in all it’s learned knowledge had decided I’d best be suited to bring in the new day. That place was my parents front lawn, complete with my father weeding in one corner and much to be horror, my mother languishing on a desk chair and prodding me a stick and yelling at her dog ‘Henry get away from your sister, put your leg down, down…oh honestly I’ve never seen Henry pee on someone so much – he must think you’re his girflfriend’

It was high school and ok, by my own admission my short hair, black Levis jeans, bloodstone boots and Jack Daniels t-shirt had me at a distinct disadvantage with the boys. Not to indulge the stereotype but I wasn’t the kinda girl you’d ask to split a milkshake with, no I looked more like the girl a knowledge hungry high school boy might come to for advice on fisting.

Then came the summer of 96 and with it came the shedding of my sexual ambiguity and out sprung a bonefide boy fancying girl (granted I’d still kept the souvenir of being about 7 pounds overweight, but I wore it well, namely in my breasts, and anyway I was more then willing to work it off with any member of the boys 1^st Eight Row team – I had to settle on the 3rds; private school politics).

But the boys were noticing me and I’d recently developed a talent for giggling and batting my eyelashes. As such I found myself being invited to parties for the first time based on my bustling wit and less to do with my earlier approach of ‘you can put it anywhere I can’t reach’.

One such party was at my neighbour’s house on a Saturday night. She was the year above me at school and for a short while we were friends, until she picked up a pamphlet on ‘Bullying, bitching and f&*kwit behaviour’ and became an instant convert. Now there was a boy at this party – Peter, slightly older, less inclined to wash and shave, more inclined to smoke Wini blues and call girls ‘babe’. HOT!

It was set; I had a date with pash rash and passive emphysema and then Jared showed up. Tall, gangly, most certainly a virgin in every regard and recently suspected of playing with himself behind his Cello in music class, Jared opened every conversation with me the same-

‘Hi Lou, can I touch you…get it it rhymes….good times, good times.’

‘No Jared. Shut up and die’.

He’d then spend the next hour or so sulking and then finally I’d feel bad and dance with him and let him touch my wrist.

The truth was though this was high school and hanging out with Jared, well it made me a loser, and at 16 I’d take the potential labelling as the ‘town bike’ over being a known associate of Jared Robuckle any day.

So pulling my t-shirt down and my skirt up I made straight for Peter, he liked short girls and as long as the school midget Katie didn’t make an appearance I was in a with a shot.

‘Hi Pete’

‘Oh hi Lucy’.

‘It’s Louise’

‘I thought it was Lucy’

‘Oh you’re right. It is. I forgot. I’m always forgetting things like that, I’m such an idiot’ (cue giggle)

‘Cool – so do you go to school?’

‘Yeah, I go to your school’

‘Cool’

HOT!!!!!!!!

…and then I could’ve been as in as Flynn, nothing was going to stop what happened next.

I felt heaving breathing on the back of my neck and knowing it wasn’t the good type I was reluctant to turn around, there was a distinct home invasion feeling in the atmosphere.

‘Hi Lou…’

It was Jared – why was he not dead? I’d told him to go and die somewhere. Could no one commit to basic direction anymore?

‘…good times, good times…’ he mumbled.

Something was wrong.

‘I really like you Lou…’ and with that he threw up all over me, and looking at Peter’s face as he ran away I suddenly knew why so many teenage girls killed themselves, oh and then it started to rain.

It’s not often you get someone’s life placed firmly in your hands, that power to decide if someone lives or dies and unlike the time my little sister locked herself in the fridge and I knew the right thing to do was let her out before she suffocated to death, I was conflicted over to whether to save Jared from choking in a pool of his own vomit. Surely it was his decision – conscious or unconscious?

The rain was persisting and so realising I wasn’t going to be getting to know Peter in the laneway next to the bins anytime I soon, I dropped to my knees and picked up Jared’s head. He drew breath, tried to open his eyes and then started vomiting again, this time down my top –, my own personal money shot.

Seven hours later I awoke to find Jared passed out next to me, one hand trying to reach my wrist, the other trying to get down his pants. Quietly I picked up my shoes, reconciled that the vomit was going to have be shampooed out of my hair and made my escape.

That should have been the end of it, but oh no the Victorian government had to be all serious about school being compulsory and ‘you will be going back to school on Monday Louise –whatever happened on the weekend, well young lady you’ve made your bed and now will just have to lie in it.’

‘But mum, that’s problem – it was the wrong person, wrong bed’.

‘Explain to me Louise, when did beggars become choosers?’

I retuned to school, ready for the stares, the whispers, the gossip, the tabloid press, but to my relief there was nothing but by my own admission it was 6.30am in the morning and I was hoping to make it to the library before anyone noticed I still existed, and that’s when I discovered Jared standing by my locker, my vomit covered bra clutched in his hand.

‘Hi Lou..can I-‘

‘Why have you got my underwear!’

‘You left it behind and why are you yelling at me?’

‘You have my underwear!’

‘Underwear you took off when we spent the night together’

‘Underwear you threw up on’

‘Yes, when we were doing it’.

My world stopped.

‘’We did not do it – you were unconscious’.

‘How do you really know we didn’t do it, you were asleep’.

‘Basic logistics idiot boy’

‘I’m just saying I didn’t feel like a virgin when I woke up the next day’

‘Well I didn’t feel like a virgin when I woke up either, but then again I didn’t go to sleep one!’

‘Exactly! Ha! You admit it – we sooo did it.’

‘No, you threw up on me and kept passing out in pools of your own vomit. No one would come near me because I was also covered in vomit and so I spent most of the evening holding you up over a toilet.’

‘Maybe we can just agree to disagree on this one…?’

‘No’

‘Oh’

I watched as he fingered my bra.

‘Can I have that back’

‘Finders keepers’

‘What!’

‘Ok’ reluctantly he handed it back, his fingers now lingering around my wrist.

‘What do you want Jared?’

‘I just thought now that we’re officially boyfriend and girlfriend…’

‘Are you retarded?’

‘I just wanted to sit down like adults and talk about us, thought maybe I could buy you a milkshake?’

‘Oh and then what? We go down to the army barracks and I give you a hand job?’

‘Christ Lou, that wasn’t what I had in mind…I mean after we did it I thought we’d be talking blow jobs if anything’.

I’d like to say Jared mysteriously lost his penis that day. I’d like to say that I wasn’t so easily swayed by milk products and declined his invitation of a milkshake – to be honest there are a lot of things I’d like to say I never did.

The last time I fell in lust with someone was entirely inappropriate. He was my flatmate, his name was Nathan and to make matters even more embarrassing he was changing a light bulb at the time. Ok, so maybe this moment had been entirely inevitable upon looking back; we were both enthusiastic members of the ‘We love cheese’ club, making fun of people who wore white denim and we lived together, it was cold, the boiler was constantly breaking and maybe if I’m honest neither of us had been able to sustain a functioning relationship since meeting one another. Looking back some substantial ground work had been laid, but that’s only if I’m being honest with myself and I’m a big fan of denial so lets move on.

We’d just bought a new lampshade (and before you ask, this one was only a little bit gay) and the light bulb broke. No rhyme or explanation, but it was definitely broken and so as Nath reached up, supporting himself on our obnoxious glass coffee table (long story), his t-shirt rode up exposing a hint flat snail trail (this was not a proud moment) and suddenly I knew I had a problem and there was only one solution – now, I’m the first to admit that the better idea would’ve been to have moved out thus saving our beautiful platonic existence but at the time I only ever saw one option, one solution to my problem – there were an awful lot of things in our flat suddenly breaking and falling apart and so my solution was to encourage Nathan to become my local handyman. My theory was that maybe if I over indulged in flat maintenance, then just like chocolate it would lose it’s charm and thus everything would return to normal.

When the front door fell off I blamed ‘the junkies’, when the phone jack was ripped from the wall, I blamed ‘the gay’ – our flatmate David, when the sink collapsed into itself it was ‘global warming’, and there I was every time with a step ladder within arms reach and advice on how best to fix the problem. To say this was a bonding experience would be to lie. We constantly fought as a result of his inadequate handy man ways (I never said he was any good, he came from the school of thought that a well placed staple could solve any problem). There was no way I was going to play the little woman and so instead of reaffirming his masculinity with ‘oh my, you’re so amazing Nathan, the way you unstuck the window in the kitchen, you’re such a strong man’, it was more like ‘oh look at you oil a creaky hinge, oh you must think you’re king shit and I’m such a helpless lady because I know nothing about cupboard lubrication, well sod you!’ – by my own admission I went a little overboard, but I didn’t want him thinking for a moment I was enjoying this or liked him – I’d lose all my power.

As you might imagine our constant bickering made life a little uncomfortable for our other flatmate David, not to mention that it appeared that his whole flat was collapsing around him with little explanation, and so it happened over one to many bottles of Sav Blanc one night, amidst the plaster boards and tools scattered in our lounge room that I confessed my guilty little secret to him, and that if I couldn’t get control of this overwhelming urge to jump my flatmate we’d more then likely be looking at a minor flood taking over our flat. The seriousness of the situation could no longer be ignored and so David agreed to help, all I had to do was leave everything to him.

The next day in the midst of Nathan and I sitting on opposite side of the living room, trying to act that was the normal way to have a conversation, David popped his head in and commented that something in the bathroom needed to be repaired. He winked at me as both Nathan and myself bolted the bathroom. The bathroom was a wreck. The shower curtain was ripped and on the floor, the shower rail had been pulled from the door. I turned to David and seeing the look on his face I knew I’d been set up. ‘I was having sex with Troy this morning and let’s say we really need more grip on that shower rail. When you two finally admit you want to f*(k each others brains out you’ll be singing my praises for pointing this out’ and with that he left. ‘Gee, this is uncomfortable’ remarked Nathan as he reached down and picked up his torn Arsenal towel ‘do you think I can ask him to get me a new one?’. ‘Oh shut up!’ I yelled as I ran out of the bathroom, grabbed the last packet of chocolate biscuits and took to my bedroom. I would not leave my room for 4 days.

There was now no other option; I had to move out. I know it seemed to some like I was avoiding the issue, but now having resorted to using wet wipes to clean myself I didn’t really see any other way out. By day four Nathan came knocking at my door. He suggested we should talk, but I knew that when he said ‘talk’ he really meant he wanted to present me with a series of lectures on the objectification of men and why that can destroy perfectly healthy platonic relationships. I left my room, shirking to the lounge room, defeated. Christ he’d even made me dinner – I didn’t need his sympathy, how dare he condescend me as he ran his hand down my back, underneath my jumper – what was he doing now? Checking for lumps? The humiliation was crippling, why wouldn’t he just come out with it – ‘hey Lou, I just think of you as a mate’…if he’d just stop running his hand up my tracksuited thigh, but then something felt wrong, really wrong – I just couldn’t do this. I stopped. I stood up and made my way over to the book cabinet, took a deep breath and then smashed it into the coffee table. Now I was ready. Awesome.