Lou Sanz

Hi

I’m producing the highly impressionable Celia Pacquola in her debut solo show – Celia Pacquola in Am I Strange for this years Melbourne Fringe Festival 2008.

It’s on from 7-9 October at 7.30pm, 30 Getrude St Fitzroy. Bookings at www.melbournefringe.com.au or you can grab tickets at the door.

I’m not a big pill popper at the best of times, but recently after finding a lump under my arm (nothing serious) and a last minute scheduled flight to Edinburgh, I was a little stressed. Based on this, my doctor prescribed me some Valium, a little bit of sensory deprivation he called it ‘in a bottle’ for my long haul flight.

Previously the only thing that had kept me sane on while ‘flying’ thousands of miles in air was the idea that on board my flight was the cure to AIDS and my ‘miracle’ flight was going to be ok, cause the world needed to be ok; that the pilot had an important dinner date he needed to keep at the other end, promise he’d made to his little girl that he’d be home for Christmas/ her birthday/ that school play – and he was going to honour that promise no matter what, because no matter where he was in the world he lived for her happy days and to keep that blood oath he’d made to her on the day she was born, that he’d always be there to see her face when she opened her presents on Christmas day/ her birthday…you get the idea, and is wife would be there too and she’d smile, a smile that said ‘you’re a good man’.

The pilot’s story would unfold in more detail as I made it closer to my destination, but with the recent spate of planes being pulled out of the air, I was concerned that my pilots wife had found out about 6 year old on and off affair he’d been having with a ground crew member in Hong Kong and now they were involved in a bitter custody dispute over their daughter – about where she got to spend Christmas, and maybe he had begun to think that without those Christmas/ birthday mornings he had nothing left to live for anymore. Valium was my only hope in making it to Edinburgh – I could only rely on myself from now on.

I’ll say at this point – I think it’s not wise to take a pill before entering customs, where upon getting through passport control you draw attention to yourself when both of your comfy and functional flight shoes fall off and you fall over them and fall on a customs official.

‘If you could just step over here with us madam’

‘It’s ok really, I’ve just taken a pill and it’s gone to my head’

‘You’ve taken a pill?’

‘Yeah, in case the pilot decides he can’t go on anymore’

‘Are you saying there is something wrong with this flight?’

‘Oh, I think I know what this is about – I’m not a terrorist’

‘Why would you say terrorist?’

‘I always get stopped at airports under suspicion’

‘You’ve been stopped before under suspicion of terrorism?’

‘It’s sorted now, Interpol got rid of the flag next to my name’

‘Ok, madam if you’d like to accompany us this way’

‘But I’ve got a flight to catch.’

‘You’ve just admitted to Australian customs officers that you were once detained by Interpol under suspicion of terrorism.’

‘You’ve taken it all out of context, this always happens’

‘I wasn’t detained – I was flagged, and anyway it was a mistake – it was to do with some fraud charges I was supposedly facing – but it’s cool, the embassy got involved and the safe house they put me in was cool.’

‘Madam would you like a legal representative present?’

‘No – I just need to get on this flight’.

‘And why this flight in particular?’

‘I bought a non-refundable ticket’

‘So you’re not coming back’

‘I think you’ve got it confused with a one-way ticket’

‘Don’t play smart’

‘I was just trying to help – and anyway my buzz is about to wear off so I need to hop on that plane’.

‘Do you really think you’re fit to fly?’

‘I’m fine – maybe it’s your captain you should be concerned about…’

‘Captain Stokes is a fine captain.’

‘I’m sure he is…. but tell me, has he told you about this wife?’

‘We didn’t know he was married’

‘He’s going through a bitter custody battle right now…won’t even be able to make it home for Christmas’.

‘We didn’t even know he had a kid’

‘You weren’t to know, how could you? It’s the kinda thing a man keeps bottled up. He’s just trying to save face. Imagine the unrelenting isolation he’s going through right now, coming to terms with the fact no one loves him, needs him or adores him anymore.’

‘His passengers need him’.

‘Do they? Or will we be mid air when it hits him that he never wants anyone to have to feel the pain he is feeling and so in one final act of trying to save humanity from itself he plunges one of your planes into the ground.’

Subsequently my flight to Edinburgh was detained as they led a confused Captain Stokes off the plane – in shackles for this own safety – I hated being right some of the time (even if now was not one of those times).

I hoped for his sake he was married with a young daughter that might love him again in time for Christmas.

Earlier this year I tried to write someone a letter…

It didn’t work out very well, so I decided to tell a story about it at the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Inpress Magazine said I was ‘one to watch in 2009′ , and Chortle UK seconded that by saying I was ‘…decent enough’.

But I also wrote for Life Support (SBS) when Abbie Cornish was on it so if anything that might sway you.

**I’ve written for other things, but Home and Away doesn’t quite have that independent artist edge I\’m going for, but if you’re a fan of Home and Away come along…why not I say. Neighbour’s fans also welcome.

Oct 2, 3 and 4 7pm
Glitch Bar and Cinema, 318 St Georges Rd North Fitzroy Victoria
Tickets @ www.melbournefringe.com.au or at the door.
$14/12

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.

Leaving a friends birthday party with a close friend of mine, a rather cute man confronted me, a gay man but still cute in a way I could appreciate. He asked me if I could light his fire, we giggled, I battered my eyelids, my friend rolled her eyes, lit his cigarette and proclaimed ‘oh for fuck’s sake Lou, he sucks cock!’

Fair point.

I waited in the cold, looking for a cab as my friend finished her ciggie, making idle chit chat with my newfound man friend when he asked how long my friend and I had been dating. I laughed, warming my hands in my pockets.’ We don’t date.’

‘But you’re both gay right? I inhaled deeply, adjusting my scarf.

‘No.’

‘Oh wow, I’m sorry, I just assumed because you were leaving together…’ he trailed off.

Correct me if I’m wrong but last time I checked the phrase ‘leaving together’ did not always mean ‘I’m leaving now to go get finger banged by my same sex travelling companion.’

I was just about to say something when my friend piped in, rather enthusiastically ‘but it would be awesome if we were both gay, because we’d be great together’.

My awkward silence said it all.

‘What? You don’t think we’d great together?

‘Let’s not get into that here’.

Cute boy put out his ciggie and looked to be heading back inside, ‘sorry guys, I didn’t mean to cause an argument’.

‘It’s fine really; she’s just had a little too much to drink – let’s just get in a cab and go. I’m tired.’

‘No, I don’t get it.’ I could see she was getting more upset ‘we’re great mates, your dog likes me, your dad even made chicken soup for me…’

A crowd had begun to draw ‘look, you’re making a scene, shut up.’

‘I’m not going to be silence on this. I’m a great girl’

‘Yes, you are. I’m not debating that, it’s just..don’t make me do this…’

‘Say it, go on, you know you want to’

‘You’re not my type. There I said it. Happy?’

The crowd drew breath, as my friend lit another cigarette.

‘What? You have a type now – I’ve seen the guys you’ve hooked up with lately – seriously you have a type? That’s just bullshit!’

Finally a cab pulled up and I pushed my reluctant friend into the backseat. We both fell silent.

‘I don’t get you Lou. Don’t you want something comfortable, something predictable?’

‘No’ I whispered under my breath. ‘I want more.’

We drove off into the cold wet night and I couldn’t help but be reminded of an incident much like this one….

It was 2002. A bunch of us had gathered at my house for a dinner party. A few bottles of wine in, a game of Yatzee and chocolate cake the conversation began to become more intimate. Each of us revealing some of our most personal desires. My friend Sophie stood up. It was her turn. ‘If Louise was a man I’d date her, we’re great together.’

I remembered that dry feeling on the back of my throat, the way I looked away as she waited for me to reciprocate, the humiliation in her eyes as I helped myself to another piece of cake wishing this moment away.

It was no surprise she’d fancy me as a guy. I knew I’d be her type. Olive skin, dark hair, dark eyes, arty and a good cook and yes, by my own admission we often finished each others sentences, but as she stood at the end of the table, begging me to answer with her silence I knew in my heart she could never be my type if she was a guy.

Sure, I could lie and we’d gone with our lives, occasionally joking to friends about how like a married couple we were, but I’d know in my heart it was wrong. I couldn’t live a lie and she couldn’t ask me.

I needn’t have said anything, we could’ve got on with the evening as planned but I felt compelled to make things right.

‘Hey, enough of this. Sophie I think we’ve run out of wine sweetie, why don’t you make yourself useful’. I could see the tears in her eyes as I tossed her the car keys.

Yes, I knew what I was doing. It was a rainy night, sure she’d been drinking…but I digress…

It was a late night. I was at a bar. It was crowded. It was full of familiar faces; yes it was the sort of place where everyone knew your name. I didn’t care though. I was drunk. A drunkard. A lush is what we might have called me that night in that bar, back in the day.

There was a time I knew her by sight, now I knew her by name. The girl who’d been going round town saying things about me to people, telling them things she had no place to be telling them. Things about me and a boy of no particular consequence, but hey, like I said I was too drunk to care right?

I know that some people would say looking back on the night, that Lou she sure was a crazy broad, where did she get the matches from? But could anyone have stopped me? I doubt it. I was a stubborn filly with money to spend and a reputation to burn.

Earlier that night…

They’d run out of paper towels in the bathroom again. I’d not told Larry the barkeep 2 days earlier that if he wanted to keep the ladies happy all he need do is keep them in a fresh supply of paper towels, but I knew he had other things on his mind. His wife was fiddling Con who owned the local Wash’n’Wear. Everyone knew, Christ his wife knew he knew, but he got a discount on linen, so if he forgot the occasional paper towel, I could forgive him.

The last cubicle door swung open, and out she stepped, that bit of sass I told you bout earlier. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed a gal like her, all plain, dressed up and no one to share it with, but tonight was different, but not right then it wasn’t, because at this point in the story we were just two ladies looking for somewhere to dry our hands.

I settled on my skirt as the right kinda dry place and quickly touched up my lipstick. I could tell she was watching me, watching my lips, wanting to know what it was like to kiss him, feel him. She hadn’t done that yet, but I knew it was her intent, for she was a lady brimming with intention and not of the good variety, no sir, not at all.

‘Why hello there’ she said smirking her flat mouth. ‘Hey’ I responded. We were not friends; I cared not for how she was, if her parents were in good health, if she were to be married in the spring. Her welfare was of no concern to me, but she persisted in making idle chit chat. I had to oblige, I was an accommodating kinda girl. Yeah, some people around town called me too accommodating, but the nights were often cold and long and sometimes I wanted it just like them. It was never about the candy and the chance to ride in a proper motor car, like the ones I’d seen in movie star magazines, it was always bout the being with, accommodating that need.

‘We saw you come in, you here alone again Lou?’ I popped the lipstick back in my purse and savoured the taste of the whiskey sour I’d left at the bar. ‘We?’ I grimaced at the thought. ‘Well, yes me and Tobias’. Ah yes, Tobias, the boy of no particular consequence, the town roundabout. We’d had a short lived tryst, sure it was fun while it lasted, but things went bad fast like a girl in a flammable nightie standing too close to an electric heater on Christmas Eve. It was times like this I missed my sister. I thought about her every night in juvie. Mum and dad thought she was too young to be taken from this earth, but that girl had been a ticking time bomb and she’d seen me on that rainy night, by the freeway with the shovel. She was a wrong time, wrong place girl but she was gone now and I was still standing in the bathroom with another wrong time, wrong place girl – the only difference was she didn’t know it yet.

‘Tobias asked me to grab him a beer on the way back, but I have no idea what he drinks – you’d know, wouldn’t you’. Sure I could’ve told her he’d drink a bum’s urine for the kick, but I wasn’t that kinda girl. ‘He’ll drink whatever you get him, he ain’t that particular’. The last word hung in the air like a kid who’d got in over his head and was now hanging by a noose from a tree in a downtown park where someone was yet to discover his body. His name was Patrick and we’d dated once, but that was long time ago and there was nothing more to be said about that.

‘Thanks’ she replied curtly and held open the door for me as we departed the bathroom. The bar was still buzzing and a quick look around the room confirmed that Tobias was probably out back smoking a smoke. I knew him, she didn’t, but let her find out was my motto. At least it wasn’t me being seduced with the promise of cheap wine and polite conversation anymore. It was her bed now and she could lie in it like my mother use to say, before she’d sit me down in front of the Lord and decide my punishment was another 14 days in my urine soaked bed clothes, cos Jesus was a tough man, a tough teacher and he didn’t appreciate urinator’s and so I’d learn, have to learn the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach me. She’d have to learn a lesson too, Jesus wanted it that way.

She asked me for a light. I obliged her. My whiskey sour still sat there. Lonely, but enjoying the ambience of the evening. My baby was too warm to drink now, its harsh amber liquid wouldn’t burn me like I liked, and the way I needed it, like finger nails deep in my back the moment before the skin tears.

I watched as she lit her cigarette and asked Larry for a couple of pots of draught, the cheap stuff. He wouldn’t know the difference. He was probably already onto the stash of moonshine he kept in a small flask hidden in his boot. She’d never know though. He never took his boots off. Never ever.

I picked up my whiskey one last time and smiled as Tobias walked back in and glanced my way, still looking at me like I was poisoned chalace interrupting his rather predictable evening, again. The whiskey poured itself over her, that girl, the one who had said those things about me. The one who had told them all about the time she seen me at the bus stop with that transient, sure it was all rumour but one day they’d find this body and then they’d come after me and that wasn’t going to happen to this dame, not again.

The match lit first strike. Mama woulda been proud.

My dad was making dinner the other night when suddenly he stopped mid chop, ‘are you eating potatoes these days? It’s just your mother and I were discussing earlier that I might make a nice potato based side tonight, but if you’re not eating potato’s then there isn’t much point’.

Curiously I replied yes to the potato question, hesitating only to pick up the TV Guide.

‘It’s just your mother said that you might not be eating potato, so I was just making sure.’ ‘I don’t think I’ve ever given up potato before dad. It’s really not a problem.’ But he’d seized all chopping now and moved closer to the couch as my mother emerged from the decking, glass of wine in hand, binoculars in the other. ‘No, what I said Michael….’ I watched as my mother sat herself on the chaise lounge, helping herself to a handful of wasabi peas ‘…was that Louise shouldn’t eat potato.’

I reminded myself that track suits pants have elastic waistbands because it’s part of their design and that I was wearing them because I planned on going for a nice brisk walk later on and not because there was no other option now that my girth couldn’t possibly support a zipper or button pant like garment. I was certain an eating disorder lay dormant in me and that maybe this conversation was the catalyst for its release. At 28 and with my self esteem back on track it seemed only right it should rear its ugly head now. I could do with the drama.

‘Now does that include sweet potato?’ my father enquired as he rummaged through this secret potato sack he kept hidden away under the sink. A few months earlier my mother had requested that all carbs be not seen in the house, and that is how I explained the cereal packets in the bathroom cupboard to visitors. No one ever seemed surprised by this after seeing my mother attempt to eat vegemite on toast blind folded – ‘if you’re body can’t see it, then it can’t really be food’. My argument about fat blind people was not welcomed.

‘You know what darling, I’m not sure if it does include sweet potato. I’d have to look it up on the Weight Watcher’s site.’ As my mother pulled out her Blackberry I dreamed of a time when I didn’t live with my parents, but as tears welled in my eyes I thought best not think about what might’ve been.

‘Ok, according to them, she can have half a steamed normal potato or one full steamed sweet potato. I guess it just comes down to how hungry she is. How hungry are you?’ Her eyes burnt into my elasticised waist.

‘Really, I’m not that hungry.’

‘Oh here we go. We’re not having a go at you Louise, so don’t get all victim on us. It’s just that we as your parents are interested in knowing what you put in your mouth.’

It would only fall on deaf ears explaining to my mother and father that at 28 years of age neither of them had any control over what I put in my mouth. It was a brutal truth that an ex boyfriend of mine had learnt the hard way and sometimes I found myself wondering how he explained that scar to all the other girls since me. I’m almost certain all of his encounters since that fateful Christmas night opened with the line ‘sorry bout that’.

‘I think we should have beans as a side this evening, until we work out where we stand as a family on potatoes’, my father proclaimed as he poured himself another glass of wine. ‘Only if you use the fresh olive oil to drizzle them with, otherwise they taste to green’ my mother lamented.

I decided not to self harm that day. I’d save it for a special occasion, or maybe I’d save it for Mother’s Day. I’m still undecided.