incorporated lesbians
last sunday i pulled out my failing sense of duty and spent my afternoon at the women’s library. this in itself is no chore, though libraries are no longer the refuges they used to be.
i was there for an agm.
linc, lesbians incorporated, is what grew out of the lesbian space project. these days, it deals exclusively in grants. and grants are something my projects lack.
it was an interesting afternoon, though i was in a strange position. i was being welcomed as a member with a shared sense of history and linguistics, whereas i am actually based somewhere quite different, as much as i feel affection for their point of view. more than anything, i was simply suprised, unprepared for walking into what felt like a little time warp, back to collectives that i have archives for, but am just too young to have participated in.
apparently usage the word ‘lesbian’ had been debated previously and noone wanted to revisit it. ‘herstory’ was taken as almost entirely uncontroversial, and ‘femtors’, instead of ‘mentors’, gently amused some but was slid into conversation quite seriously.
i’m kinda glad this stuff is still alive, somewhere.
i spent tonight in wollstonecraft, at an old school friend’s housewarming. sally and her boy have bought a stunning unit –walking distance from our old school. it was a pleasant evening, and good to see sally again, but i have caught up with her recently; what was really interesting was seeing ngaire and alex again.
ngaire was always quiet, a bit nervous and uncomfortable, unassuming, trying not to take up space. these days she’s spending her time excavating cambodia, egypt and jordan. she just discovered temples in cambodia as part of her honours thesis. discovered! but her demeanour hasn’t changed much.
when alex walked in I didn’t recognise her. i didn’t expect her, as i’d heard she’s usually in america, and she’s filled out and has long straight hair, both of which are striking changes visually. she didn’t greet me, and when sally asked if she remembered ngaire and me she said of course, and kept right on talking. just like high school.
she did interact with me a little, like a complete stranger. it’s not so far from the truth – i don’t think I’ve seen her once since 1996, and while i knew her fairly well back then, she probably didn’t know me at all.
alex was always compelling. charismatic, the centre of attention. desperate to be so at all times. it seems that hasn’t changed all that much, i couldn’t stop watching her. her conversations were interesting though there was nothing in them.
she reminded me of someone. inflections, gestures, words, posture, at first i thought she must remind me of the old her, but no, there was only a little bit of that in there. then i realised she reminds me of many different people. kat, dez, hexy, kat, tim’s girlfriend… she seems to share mannerisms with most of the larger than life personalities i know. She won’t know these women, but my guess is that they all share cultural heritage, especially from tv, and bits that I thought of as characteristic of one person are actually just attractive snippets that they’ve picked up from a public source.
What i’m not so sure about is why these people are all the larger women i know. i suspect it isn’t just my eyes that make this grouping. i think their expression of confidence is different from that of my confident, charismatic but short statured friends. maybe it’s something about how they interact with me, i have known for a long time that i’m universally ignored when i am the odd one out in a sea of people who don’t come far past my shoulders. this happens more often than i’d like. it’s an interesting question, and a thorny one. it interacts with questions of perception and body image, stereotype and generalisation, and doesn’t fit at all with the simplistic but fundamental concept that people are equal and that appearance does not, should not, matter. this discordance needs to be rectified. an interesting question indeed.
eventful
it’s been an eventful few days. friday was the first day of my two weeks of holidays. meela was around all day. in the evening we went for gelato and had, finally, a fairly traumatic talk about where we were really up to, since we’ve been living a fiction and it’s not going to hold up to the fact that she’s moving in with daniel. indefinitely.
i wanted to do something exciting, but the best we could manage was to walk to her house. she cleaned a little, we sat and watched the cat and i cut her hair, which fairly uncomplicated and pleasant, as we got her tasks done and she was happy.
i got an sms from sally, a competition for the wittiest response to win a ticket to sleaze ball.
we got back to my place and sat in front of the tv with mim and nat – the first episode of six feet under and a whole miniseries, the fingersmith. we were just heading to bed when i got a call from heather, which i stayed up for. she was not joining the army, but she was going to new zealand, and wanted me to come to a concert with her first. we talked, subdued, deep and beautiful as i walked round and round and round the kitchen table. in the end she told me to go upstairs and make love to my girlfriend. when we finally managed to hang up, i went upstairs and cried in her arms instead.
in the morning i got a call back from katharine and arranged to have dinner that night, so meela said she’d make other arrangements for the evening. she had to be at her house so off she went. heather messaged asking if i wanted to have lunch, so in the next half an hour i discovered that sleaze was that night, wrote the response to sally and dashed up the street. had a lovely lunch and a nice wander and chat with heather, we sat around newq for a while and i took her to her train to work. wandering back to the newtown markets, i got the sms saying i’m going to the ball, just as i pass a corsetry stall. i now own a lovely black with blue pinstripe underbust corset, laced front and back.
i spent far too long at the markets, chatting to everyone. i giggled my way home, but my feet were so sore. i wanted to hang around and watch the film being made in the lounge room, but i had to have a rest
i told katharine i was going to the ball and she said we should do dinner the next week instead. so i stayed in bed till an hour before i had to be at sally’s, and consequently got there nearly an hour late.
we got dressed, i ended up in my corset and a blue bra, undies, stockings, suspenders and heels, top hat, tails, long gloves and a very thin scarf.
sleaze ball was interesting, i wandered about a bit and watched the spectacle, which was unfortunately ninety percent boys in jeans. the rest were spectacular though, heavily weighted with tutu-corset-fishnets outfits, and a sprinkling of spectacular ponies. i found some friends and got very cold sitting outside and chatting with them at the back of the ladies’ section. then i played balloon soccer and got too warm for my clothes, stripping down to bra and undies which made it much easier to kick above my head. not that i didn’t manage it in full heels and corset anyway!
i never found sally again after the first half hour, but i ran into cotton right at the end, and nat, hexy and i limped her to her car and she drove us to mine. it was dawn. nat and i took hexy home and we got home ourselves at about 5.30 or 6.
broadway tormenting centre
the shopping centre has been tormenting me.
i seem to have enough money to breathe at the moment, and i need stuff. i’m not always sure what stuff i need, but there’s never anything in the house to pick up and eat, my clothes are all inappropriate for certain occasions, my boots are falling apart severely and everything on my walls feels crumpled and tired.
the shopping centre is supposed to be the easy way to fix all this. get new things to replace the old; shiny, ready made, in a choice of colours and sizes. with that many clothes shops, shoe shops, food shops and everything shops, surely you can find what you’re looking for. and on sale. the price tags proclaim how cheap everything is, but the things that really are cheap really aren’t exciting, furthermore they’re definitely not what i need. things that i may need, or even want in any serious way, aren’t actually cheap.
this year, bright colours and wild patterns on all the women’s wear are luring me in. long elegant dresses – at least they look good on the models. what a shock, they’re making things i’d wear. if i found one of those dresses for $5 in an op shop i’d cheer. but there are hundreds and hundreds of them, and they’re not $5. it’s probably good they’re well out of my pricerange, for if i contemplated buying one i’d suffer immediate choice paralysis.
retro feel is an illusion as they’re brand new but i’m still being drawn into fashion. it’s happened once or twice before in my life. people start reacting differently to what i wear. i’m happy being right out of fashion, that distance says a little about who i am, identifies interesting people and makes people smile on the street. it’s disconcerting to be accepted, unnoticed.
ten years coming
i finally had a market stall yesterday. it was a big deal, selling my own work. i’d been mildly stressed in the leadup, but it happened, and was even moderately successful.
the day was quite pleasant, if very slow. i showed up before 9am, set up my card table, tablecloth, rubber stuff, screen printing and canes, and proceeded to sit there.
gretchen showed up at ten, as arranged. company was very good.
i talked to a bunch of friends and people i haven’t seen in a while, but even more dashed past not noticing, with the fixed gaze of someone scared a stallholder might want to talk to them and try to get them to buy something.
i made a custom cuff to fit the sister of a friend who was working another stall. she was quite young and thought her mother would kill her if she came home with spikes, so she settled for purple sparkles. she was so happy with it that she kept coming up to show me she was still wearing it, which created some much needed interest. when she asked why i had made one of them so small i tried it on a little boy who was fortituously hanging around, and he walked away happy with blue sparkles. someone else bought a collar with brown knobs on it, and paddy decided my black and silver canes were the perfect accessory for bloodlust that night, and so was very generous – telling me what he thought i should charge for them, then actually paying it! that all came to $70. i probably would’ve done better waiting till the bitter end, but i was already late for my dinner plans.
aurelie had come past earlier, leaving all excited to drag heather back to see my stall. they finally showed when we had packed up and were crossing the road loaded up with stuff. both parties kept walking, and that was the end of the day.
meeting mothers
my life has been very very interesting recently, but i’ve felt constrained by ambiguity not to set anything down in writing. secrets are silly but secrets in blogs are sillier, even if they aren’t really secrets. now all parties know everything, whether they consider themselves parties or not, and i can write what i will. this one i want to keep for posterity!
a couple of weeks ago circumstances conspired to introduce me to heather’s mother an hour after i met meela’s mother.
meela knew all about it, debriefed it all and walked me down from breakfast with her family to lunch with heather’s. i had enough trouble eating a cafe breakfast, let alone lunch! there’s not much between me and heather these days, but i still, or maybe because of that, hadn’t managed to tell her what was going on with me until yesterday. i didn’t really think she’d be upset, maybe she’d wonder why i was bothering to tell her, but the response came back ‘and about time you’re seeing someone!’ i was glad to fill her in on that day, and she was amused. of course she also said that now i have someone around she’s free to be a drunk. i think that’s what i was afraid of – but it can hardly make much difference.
today was sewing day. one person turned up. and i was the only person to turn up to her website workshop on monday. she was the only person to turn up to my last rubber workshop too. one person turned up to my last tap workshop. this fortnightly resurgence meeting was the first one in three that anyone but me turned up to, except for the meeting before the dinner. that was supposed to lure people in – but only peter showed up at the meeting time, so we talked personally and nat cooked. if it’s just me and nat, we don’t have to advertise a meeting time.
but everyone is always so enthusiastic and pesters me to put things on. why don’t they show up? ever?
third day of barefootedness
it was cold today. the ground was still mostly warm though. of course, you don’t know what it’ll be like before you leave the house in a hurry. the weekend made me think that at least midday would be baking again. it was quite a sudden warm spell; my feet weren’t prepared to be let out for three whole days – i can remember walking barefoot twice, briefly, since the end of last summer. my soles have stood up to it quite well, but my calves are in a bit of shock.
it’s lovely though, feeling the ground beneath my feet, the texture of the world. it makes me breathe deeper and remember there are good things in life, even if they’re not big.
mattress joy
i had to hire a ute for the community cafe last night, so i took the opportunity to duck in to my parents’ and pick up my bed. it’s a lovely queen ensemble, non matching. it says it’s chiropractor approved, and i’d believe it. it’s firm but you sink into it, with a cozy, pillowy top layer. i’ve been pining for it
i first got this bed two and a half years ago, when kat was first in town. i was living in a lovely little house in epping and she in a cockroach infested dump in st peters, with all her fancy mini travel electrical equipment, but only a nasty old single mattress on the dubious floor. she wanted us to spend more time in her dump than in my palace, because of the location. we needed a bed.
one night in council cleanup season, we took the bug around the streets of ryde and bounced on all the mattresses available. there were quite a few – three in one particular street. we selected the base of one set, and the mattress of another, and had just gotten them secured to the roofracks when it started to rain. lightly at first, then pouring down – i remember sheltering the car in a closed servo for the worst of it, but we still had to air them for days after. when both pieces were suitably dry, we strung them back onto the car and headed citywards. it was a ridiculous sight, and a scary ride. the mattress was bent over the car, sticking out on all sides and engulfing the simple roofracks, which were having trouble gripping their flanges. on top was perched the base, seesawing with every change of speed, or any other excuse. we had to stop, just over the gladesville bridge, to hoist it all back into place and retie, and for much of the trip we each had an arm out the window, trying to hold on and stop it slipping down over the windows!
when kat left sydney nick inherited bed and room together, then took the bed all the way to his new place in clovelly. i picked it up when i got back from turkey, and lived with it for four months at breakfast point. when i left the country it got stored back at gladesville, and i slept on the mattress for a month, with it perched squishily on top of a double bed, before finally getting the move to newtown organised. as there was an acceptable spare bed already here, it took me ten months to organise transport for my largest possession not on wheels, but now it’s here and i’m off to enjoy it again!
i can breathe!!!!!
this is the first wednesday of the wonderful new anti smoking laws. after passing up offers to go out for a few weeks before – why deal with smoke when i soon wouldn’t have to – i was beginning to wonder if it was a horrible mistake and laws were only changing in england. that was all i could find media on.
so i was a little nervous of disappointment tonight, as most of the household trouped up to the sly fox. on walking past a huddle of smokers on the pavement, i felt a strange mix of revulsion and elation. it smelt so bad, but could only mean one thing: they’re real, the laws are real, they’re being taken seriously, the day has finally come!
inside, the place became packed. many people i knew were there. i got many complements on my good old favourite red dress, and lots of attention for the collar i was wearing, with a double layer, red press studs and short spikes. several people wanted to know if i sold them. the frisson of alter ego discussion continued. a few people i didn’t know said hello to me, apparently because i was wearing a red dress.
i stood in the front area, which is quieter but usually so smoky that i hold my breath most of the time. i took a deep breath. i filled my lungs with air as clean as it comes in sydney. without turning my head, surreptitiously searching for the best pocket of oxygen. without measuring my breaths. without covering my mouth. without analysing, and dodging, wafts of smoke.
i danced without coughing, and without half my brain and one eye logging the precise location, probable path and reach of each wildly swinging cigarette in view.
i went home without stinking of smoke. when i go to bed without a shower i’ll be able to sleep without stretching my neck unnaturally so as to keep my nose as far away from my body as possible. when i take my clothes off i don’t have to dump them over the bath rail in a futile attempt at airing; i can put them in the washing pile without it stinking out my room and needing to be washed twice. i’ll wake up with no more goop in my head than i already would’ve had, and when i get up and have to put on the same coat i wore last night, i can do so without asphyxiating myself for a week, and generally smelling disreputable.
i can breathe.
