Wild Sovereign Development Site

Category: street life

  • I’ve been beautiful since I was nine years old

    Being shoved up against the train windows by a much older man whose friends looked on and hooted. Waking up as the blankets were stripped off my upper bunk and the passport controller’s flashlight swept up and down my body. Having to leap from a moving car on a back road after accepting a lift with a girlfriend from two seemingly friendly, laid-back university students we had been chatting with for some time. Having a man grab and wrench my breast as I passed. Innumerable insultingly degrading sexual suggestions, often from immaculate men in suits. Erections pressed up against me by hairdressers, fellow commuters, shoppers. Being lifted out of the way every time the manager at the place I waitressed needed to pass. I was fifteen. Being called sunshine, baby, darlin, hot lips, sweet mamma, etc etc. Being called “that.” Being spoken of and numerically rated by men who address their friends rather than me. Having various uncles slide their hands up my leg and one of them tell me, “You are so beautiful I can see how uncles might have Funny Feelings about their nieces.” Being told this year by a male gynaecologist he finds me “too erotic.” Facedown in underwear after a massage feeling an elderly, frail physiotherapist recommended by a trusted (male) friend plant a kiss on my outer butt cheek and then crow to himself, “I’m allowed to do that, because I’m your Uncle So and So.”

    Being grabbed between the legs from behind as I walked off a dance floor, by a man I’d not even had eye contact with. Being followed. Being crowded in doorways. Being told “Ohhh, I love your eyes,” by a man staring at my breasts. Being asked a thousand times, in injured tones, “Hey, where you going?” Being wolf-whistled, cat-called, followed in slow cars. Having my drink spiked at a nightclub, fighting off the swarming feeling of faintness, and later hearing from a friend that she had woken up in the alleyway behind the club. Being attacked whenever I speak up against misogyny and called frigid, ugly, a bitch, a lesbian bitch, accused of man-hating. I had a fork shoved into my butt as I leaned across a broad table of well-dressed executive couples by a man who said when I turned, “Are you done?” Waitressing felt so hazardous. A sweet, shy, tiny elderly man tunnelled his head under my arms to nuzzle my breasts, in front of all his family, as I was leaning across the table with my hands filled with platters of hot food. I looked down and he was smiling up at me with a blissful expression of entitled boyish naughtiness.

    I am a shy but fairly outspoken person and am protected, to some extent, by my strong and athletic tallness. I’m taller than most men. Talking to other women shows these experiences not to be very unusual. It’s endemic. For many of us it spreads across our entire life from the age of eleven or twelve. I’ve tried a range of responses. Ignore him. Pour his beer over his head. Report him to a bouncer. Yell at him. Most times men seemed gleeful to have gotten a response; sometimes the lack of a response seems to invite further harassment.

    If you are a man, picture to yourself how intimidating any one of these experiences might feel. Now picture a barrage of them, week in week out, regardless of what you wear or of how you conduct yourself. The only way you can escape this treatment is by sticking close to another man, who owned you first. There’s nowhere safe.

  • gardening clothes

    We went out to a swanky bar without getting out of our gardening clothes. It was quiet til a busload of people staggered in in some serious clobber. One of them came up to us and said, “How cool is it possible for two people to look as they drink their beers?” She was drunk. She looked me up and down and then told my companion, “Only five people in the world can wear dungarees – and she’s one of them.” I said, “Did you all just get off a bus or something? Did the cinema empty? Where did you all come from?” She pointed with her handbag. “Her – and her – they’re twins – it’s their 33rd birthday, we’ve been drinking in the park.” “66!” I said, because I am mathematical like that.

    Afterwards we watched them taking turns to take selfies of each other. Can you take a selfie of someone else, can you even take a selfie at all when you’re not actually in it? Turns out you can. You just point any device at a group of made-up people and then watch as they instantly assemble themselves into sunny, close-headed groups. Everyone has a smile they can keep for ten minutes at a time. All the girls have long, straight glossy hair. They fall into varying heights, so that every face is seen, and it doesn’t matter how long the papparassist has to fiddle with his device, they’ll wait unmoving. “Australian women,” said my companion, dourly. “Somehow they all look like Jennifer Aniston.”

  • the pickling palace

    The people across the road are drunk and two of them are planning to have sex together tonight for the first time. That’s at this stage, it’s not even dark yet, we’ve still got the Fight that Blows Up Out of Nowhere and Falling Asleep in the Pizza up our sleeves. Their voices carry and then the Friday afternoon traffic will surge up the hill again to carry them away. He says something and she says, “You are fucking kidding me.” “No,” he says, something something. “You’re just making that up!” Her incredulity is a dare. Climb this tree for me and bring that fruit. He says, “No, I’m deadset serious. Anything you like.” One of the other blokes says something and then the girl begins to sing, or chant, like she was at a football game: “Je-sus, Je-sus, Je-sus, Je-sus.” The positive guy sings something over the top of her, harmonizing. He’s making it up. He’s fucking-kidding her. Their verandah falls apart in a seething heap of laughs just as a truck roars down the road. When the noise clears he is saying, aggrieved, “…been doing it all my life.” I know that feeling, I have too. I have just got home from a delicate day of negotiations in my unconscious and as we swept over the bridge with its hanging-lantern streetlights and banners I felt a song unbrew in me. I sang it out the window in handfuls of confetti and as we pulled away from under the biggest fig tree, that the road goes around (the greatest kind of road), I said, to my long-legged companion who was driving, “Did you see that girl on the corner, the beautiful girl, with the guy who’s just so in love with her?” “Yes,” he said, his voice warm as if fond of them. “How she was just standing there in her little purple dress,” I said, “holding the orange flowers he brought her. He’s looking at her so carefully, he’s in love with her every little gesture. She’s not even noticing, telling him something, he’s in love with the way that she says it.” “So is she in love?” he wanted to know. I said, “Could be. But she’s not thinking about it, she is remembering something that happened and telling him. So it was hard to tell.”

    We drove round a sweeping corner prickly with pedestrians. We had watched a giant ibis as it took off from a street sign and flew the length of Charlotte Street, its white wings insignia. The prosperous tropical colonialism and sandstone and big bunches of trees made me feel at home. I wound my seat back and propped my foot out the side window. I said, sentimentally, “Both of them standing there with their bicycles.”

  • exactly right like Goldilocks

    I was working in a cafe today for the first time in a while and the woman behind me had an extremely carrying voice. I had sought out a quiet corner by the fountain to write and she came along borne on her throaty rolling laugh, which she brought out every time the good-looking, shaven-headed maitre d’ came past, and sat down to wait for her friend. The friend arrived. The coffees were brought by a Japanese waitress who spoke in a very high, girlish voice, anxious to please. The throaty lady responded to this waitress in her own high pitch, the kind of friendliness that lacks warmth and is in fact sharply dismissive, “Ok great! Thank you!” Then they settled down to conversation and I was reaching the end of my narrative by now and her voice interrupted my thoughts, lazy me, I couldn’t help it.

    Her favourite word was “Exactly!” She used it twenty-three times. With emphasis, and pronounced “Igg-ZAK-ly.” I pronounce it rather that way too, more of an “egg.” Exactly, she would say when her friend finally got to talk, exactly. ExACTly. Her second-favourite was “Ab…so….LUTEly,” drawn out in a way that seems sexy in a tired way to me, almost mechanical. So much affirmation, so much praise. She was like the world’s best world-champion good listener, only louder. Her voice was still ringing in my ears as I walked away. Under a fig tree I ducked into a shoe shop to turn over some suede pair of green things for men, and the sales guy came up and we chatted. We were telling each other how hot it’s been. I told him how the Berliner I brought with me couldn’t grasp it, how he said, I’ll just wear my jeans. “We arrived in December.” “Oh, no.” “I told him, you will NOT want to wear denim, in Brisbane in the summer.”

    He told me his bedroom has no windows. “Wow,” I said, “that’s hardcore.” “I know,” he said. “But then – you couldn’t open a window anyway! Because of the mosquitoes.” “Iggsackly,” I told him, “iggsackly.”

     

  • supermantra

    We were on the markets when a tiny, white-haired lady came up to my partner and offered him a brochure. “Save Victoria Park!” she said. He is two metres tall. He looked down at her with his arms full of leafy vegetables and said, very gently, in a deep voice, “I will.” “Oh, thank you!” As I watched, her whole body relaxed. She believed him. She laid her hand trustingly on his upper arm. From the juice stall behind us Bob Marley was still singing, One love… One heart, a song he started singing forty-odd years ago and he has not given it up yet. As we drove home we both had that song caught in our heads. I said, “That lady! She looked up at you so sweetly. ‘Oh! It’s Superman!’” He laughed, singing, filling in the lyrics he didn’t know with only a slight hesitation: “One love, one soul…” “One love, one groove…” All the vegetables nodded on the back seat whenever we went over a bump, frondy and inviting and waiting to be sliced for German soup.

  • dusk, dusk, dusk

    The strange screeching of tropical birds spurling into midnight’s blue sky at 6 o’clock, as the night gathers like a dew, forms like a band, a marching band of strange and unaccountable, uncountable, nasty-beaked bird, weird big birds, glossy little birds, green birds and brown. Brisbanana. You are utterly the weirdest, my sweet suburban love.

  • a strange moustache

    Lady Barista and I made each other laugh today, or maybe I just made myself laugh, which is lamer but still enjoyable. I turned up with my curly-handed mug and passed it across. “Just the uzh?” she said, which is her uzhual question. I was reading the band posters behind her. “Oh! I’m performing in that!” “What?” she said. “Queensland Poetry Festival. We have this fantasy that my poetry book & my CD will be out by that time but I think…. it’s not going to be both.” She picked up my loyalty card and said, “Hey! You’ve got a free one here.” Instead of throwing the full card away she passed it back. “You should keep that.” It had a bright yellow postage sticker on it, for tracking an overnight bag. “Ok,” I said, “but I think you better stamp it anyway. Just in case I try to come back and claim that free coffee again.” She said, dryly, “I think I might recognise you.” I said, “Wearing a fake moustache.” We started to laugh. “Dark glasses,” she said. She said, “I think the cup might give it away.” I was lying on the counter, laughing. “So if someone turns up,” I gasped, “in a plastic moustache – and a big hat – and dark glasses… and a shonky foreign accent – ‘Chello. Do you haff ze decaf?’ – I have to confess that might be me.”

  • a singer I’d never heard of

    Our nearest cafe has made such a bold and tender innovation. Simple, really. How shall I describe it? Ok, imagine it’s Monday morning. It’s earlier than you’d like. For reasons unusual you have had to stagger out of bed and you feel grumpy. There’s no milk, argh. You grab your mug and stumble almost literally down the hill. Over your head trees are waving to each other across the asphalt, they would join hands if they could. The crows cark, the traffic spurls, the world is bright and full of love and if I could just get my eyes to open properly I’d see it all. At the bottom of a steep slope there’s a little coffee shop. If you had a billycart you’d be there within seconds. The usual clot of people in suits standing not looking at each other parts on a sweet and familiar sound: a strummed guitar. Monday morning gig! First thing, in the grumpy hour. It’s genius.

    A guy sits curved over a mic whose stand, set at an enquiring angle, seems to be interviewing him. Guitar is plugged into a tiny amp, one of those kerbside amps you carry under one arm. You reach the head of the queue and buy coffee. He is singing. He sings with a tentative grace. The customers, embarrassed, so strenuously ignore him it almost must break his heart. The songs are familiar, radio fodder, he is doing them an injustice. You love him for that. With his voice he breaks open the idea that all songs come fully formed from a studio, there is no struggle, only gloss; that everyone’s life is far better than yours.

    You have had to kind of climb out of your sleep and sleep’s warm privacy to emerge in public city life, to use your vocal chords. Your hair is all over your face and you’re wearing the tshirt you slept in. You lean over and say, You have got the sweetest voice, it’s such a lovely surprise of a Monday morning. Oh! he says: thanks. He takes hold of his guitar differently. Over the back of his machine the barista asks, Did you just request the Beastie Boys? I told him he has the sweetest voice, you say: same thing.

    You are slouched against the besser block wall in the sun. Your hips swing and one clog is knocking on the other, you emit an appreciative murmur when the song is done. This emboldens a man in his suit standing nearby to say, That was better than the original! The singer laughs, thanks him. All of a sudden the music is not invisible and we don’t have to pretend it hasn’t happened. A girl in knee-length boots comes striding in and sits at a spindly table opposite. A guy in a striped tie looks up and smiles. At the end of the next song your coffee is ready, in its own curling-handled brown mug. You can’t leave because you’ve asked the guitarist, Do you write stuff, as well? And very diffidently he has offered: I could pull one of those out… if you like. And he pulls out like a long swathe of coloured scarves knotted one end to the other a lilting song about a little bird; sitting on my shoulder; telling me you’re not the man you use to be. It is a song about self-belief: that thing we’re all in need of. The things this little bird says to him seem cruel and they remind you of the kinds of things your own little bird sometimes whispers, the reasons why you are not also sitting out in the sun in a coffee shop, playing. You think about your dusty guitar and how he said, I haven’t played my own songs for a long time. You notice how he is curled in on himself but from the outside there is nothing not to like: his gentle presence, his tortured and reedy voice, plaintive and frayed but strong inside, like a rope. When the song is done it is a gift that he has given you. You want to give it back, to show it to him. You say, That was really lovely. Have more confidence in your own stuff. Thanks! he says, already sitting up straighter. You look at him and keep seeing yourself. I was so happy when I came down the hill just now! you say: Monday morning gig! it’s brilliant! You’ve made a big difference to my day.

    You pick up your mug off the railing. He ducks his head, says, You’ve made a big difference to my day, too. Thank you, you say again, and leaving the music behind, carrying the music, start walking up the hill for home. Carrying milk and honey and beans. A small swirling land of milk and honey. Pot of steam. A bright morning. A singer you’ve never heard of, but heard, and who heard you. What more can be grace? Come, Monday: come.

  • surprise party

    “Meet us at Southbank on Saturday night, birthday party, surprise party.” We turn up late, missing the great unveiling, and sit at the very end of a long table outdoors. Gray Street is one long dinner party, a half mile of revelry and carousing. How many teaspoons, I’m thinking, how much milk. After dinner there is a general dispersal but seven people close to the bride, sorry, the birthday girl want to have a drink someplace quiet before heading home.

    There’s a bar in Paddington. “Is that quiet?” A bar in the Valley. “But the parking!” It comes down to The End, nearby in West End, or a place called Lefties in Paddington which I have visited once before, hardly quiet but hearty, a merry joint, both of them sound good, no one can decide.

    “The End is nigher,” says my German friend, thus proving if you can make puns in your second language you can make half a dozen people really happy at once. Birthday girl comes weaving through us on her high high heels. She is holding up her loot, a clank of wine bottles in different sparkly carrier bags with gift tags, in bunches either side of her head like a victorious shopper. “I’ve got 6 litres of wine,” she says. “Why are we going to a bar?”

    Later at home I tell my companion, her husband must have said the same to everyone when he invited them. I asked him, “What kind of thing would she like, for a little birthday present?” and he said, “She likes wine…” Her sister is also well-equipped and after we finally find a beer bar that’s open in West End and accidentally shove some other people off their table and buy a round of local brewed beers and down those, she says, “I’ve got a hip flask. Who wants gin?” Someone goes up to buy glasses of tonic and after the G&T spools its way down to my stomach I am feeling so restful, so possum-like, so inexplicably toasty. I dance in my seat, I unwind the scarf from my neck and sling it onto our large pile of coats and bags. Birthday girl opens her gorgeous black purse when I admire it and says, “In the op shop it came with this little wallet inside…” It is Glomesh and came with the original brochure, cunningly tucked in a windowed plastic wallet, the price in the old money hand written on the back, in its satin side pocket. I say, “You want to know the best thing about Glomesh? How it sags into your hand so soft and comforting, like a really old and worn pair of soft underpants, you can just cup it, it just falls into your palm.” “I know!” she says, “I love that!” and her sister says, “Me too!” and we spend some time passing the purse between us to cup the fall of heavy enamelled mesh in one palm after another. Oh, Glomesh. My companion nudges me. “I’ve never seen that before. People dancing on the dance floor to a cover songs guitarist.” It’s true! Lost in a sea of writhing bodies the guitarist is bearded and intently concentrating, oblivious to the girls gyrating in front of him waving their hands like they’re attracting air craft and are stranded on some deserted island. Boys are dancing too, everybody’s dancing, although the song he’s covering seems to be… “That’s Katy Perry!” I slowly realise. “He’s singing Teenage Dream.” He goes on to cover Don’t Stop, by Fleetwood Mac, Africa by Toto which gets half the room singing along with its moving and meaningless lyrics, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper – “This guy is fearless!” Birthday girl returns from the bathrooms and slaps her Glomesh down on the long wooden table. She beckons me and says into my ear, “In the bathroom? There was this long line and every girl in the queue was on her phone, scrolling and texting. So funny.” I say, “No! What?” She says, “I was watching in the mirrors and it just looked so funny and sad. And then this other girl? came out of a cubicle flushing behind her – with her eyes on her phone, texting and texting – and she stuck out one hand and turned the tap, like this, still texting, and washed that hand and dried it, texting, and went out the door, still -”

    I say, “No!” “I know!” she says. We are both laughing painfully, trying to draw breath, getting out these little squeaks of sounds that resemble those furry animals you keep in a cage and feed on sawdust, mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters. We stagger to our feet, weak with laughter, cramming our arms into jackets and coats, winding scarves. The beautiful Indian girl raises luminous eyes to mine and I lean forward, clapping down on the table, and tell her, “You – are one of the most beautiful women I have ever met in real life.” She silently bows her head to one side and glancing at me lengthwise indicates with a wash of one pale-palmed hand, No, you… Between the high tables a couple is dancing, dreamy and fast, he spins her thus and that, forth and back, over, she ducks a quivering ponytail under his arm; they are only in jeans and tshirts but the Viennese splendour of tea dances, gold-rimmed cake dishes, and penguin orchestras wafts round them like smoke in a Berlin nightclub.

  • bicycling on

    Finally my bike! There have been various substitute treadlies in between but my own blue bike, bought in Alice Springs a decade back, is now out of storage and dusted and greased and today for the first time we hit the black road. Wahoo! The freedom and terror. Raced down the tumult of traffic to a sleepy golden markets, where under the trees people had laid out vegetables, sprouting herbs, tempting red circles of handmade saucisson. After a coffee and waxy croissant we sauntered out as the stallholders packed up. One was a big bloke with black beard and a huge smile who stopped packing, and straightened, when I said, “Can I take a photo of your red stuff and the red stuff behind? Would that bother you?”

    He grinned. He looked at the bunch of marigolds and bouquet of red rubber gloves and turned to see that behind him, now that the intervening stalls had folded away, the scarlet florals of a fashion stall made another layer of colour. “The red stuff, and the red stuff behind,” he said. “Spoken like a true photographer.”

    I was rummaging in my bag. “Yeah the professional terminology, eh?” I made a dozen photographs with people swiping by obligingly as my coloured-cotton, human scenery. Showed him the last and most successful shot. We wished each other a good week with enormous cordiality and I had the feeling we both would have liked to have given up a hug. On the narrow, shaded road outside the markets I wobbled and nearly fell as a car overtook me within an arm’s length. He accelerated to pass me, even though the standing traffic was banked at the traffic lights metres ahead. When he stopped I swooped round onto his driver’s side and stopped, and spoke to the guy through his unwound window. “Excuse me, Sir. There’s a new law, you have to stay a metre and a half away from the nearest bike, because it’s much safer. Thanks!” And I patted his windowsill familiarly, patronisingly, and pedalled off. It feels good to be back on the bike. But it wouldn’t feel good to be forever extinguished and flattened like a pizza on asphalt because some guy with “fat eggs” as they call it in German wanted to prove he could escape my hand-built speed.