ME
[something vague about work, referring to my thesis]

STUART
Hey, you can't call your thesis work. That's fun.

ME
Oh rly? Why is that?

STUART
Because you don't need to do it. You don't have anyone screaming down the phone at you, 'Kendrick! Get me this thesis by four o'clock or you're fired!'

Pause

CHLOE
Well, I know what I'm doing to Rachael on Monday.

So last night I was on a tram somewhere, contentedly listening to Radio Lab with my big coat zipped to my chin, when I noticed the little girl pinch her lower lip. She was about twelve or thirteen, sitting diagonally across from me with her dad. She was pretty, but she'd clearly hit the puppy fat stage hard and I felt for her, because being a teenage girl sucks big, hairy balls. She kept catching my eye and pinching her lower lip, and I could tell she and her dad were talking about my lip piercing, which happens sometimes. She pinched her earlobe, then her nose, and while I couldn't hear what they were saying I could tell they were talking about piercings. And she looked relaxed and happy, and her dad looked relaxed and happy, and they were talking quietly, easy and engaged, and then I choked up.

Here's the thing: in times of hormonal normalcy I'm not an especially tearful person. Don't get me wrong, when my uterus gets premenstrual ideas anything will get me going, including, memorably, the Tyra Banks Show, but normally I don't cry very easily. Since implanon has, happily, made me quite barren PMS is no longer an issue.

Here's the other thing: high school was very, very hard for me. It is for many people, but I was an unlikeable introvert with bad acne at a famously catty girls' school. I didn't make it easy for myself. Then, within the space of about 18 months I had to deal with my mother becoming ill with a brain tumour, Rock Eisteddford, my father's death and one hell of an awkward phase. I don't mean to be self-pitying, whatever doesn't kill you etc, but it was a tough time, and on a certain level I never got over it.

So there I was, looking at this girl and her dad, and my eyes welled up. Oh, shit, I thought. Why must I always make a complete arse of myself on public transport? I remembered the time, long ago during the Commonwealth Games, when Chloe told me I had a spider on my knee. I did, and I immediately leapt to my feet, swiping at my knees, squealing 'Get it off! Get it off!' I looked up to see a tram full of grey-haired, horrified Games goers. 'It's okay,' I said loudly. 'I'm not schizophrenic.'

But, you know, when you try not to spontaneously cry on a tram like some kind of overly sentimental crazy person you immediately will, and as big, dumb tears rolled down my cheeks I turned pointedly to the window and tried to wipe them away. When I glanced back up the little girl was looking at me, shame-faced. She must have thought I was crying because they were pointing at my lip piercing. I wanted to get up and tell her it's okay, it's just that I have no dad and I was an awkward teenager, too, and you never get over these things and sometimes they make you cry on a tram like an idiot, but that would have been crazy.

Instead I got off at the next stop and stood there for a moment, feeling the cold night air on my wet cheeks and burning eyes. I took a deep breath and let my old, stale grief speed off down the street with the tram. Then I walked to where I was going, and it only took me a little longer, and when I got there I was fine.

Boy, I'd sure like to have that in a roasted potato salad with a mustard vinaigrette and perhaps some chopped cornichons.

I bet that'd go down well with some smoked salmon and cream cheese.

You best believe I'd eat that one with feta and grilled eggplant.

Man, that sure does look like a small berry pickled in vinegar.

Continental Cup-A-Soup.

Apples on an empty stomach.

Real estate uncertainty.

Too much illicit office Coke.

A short, sharp blow between the knuckles with a sword.

Rooibos tea.

Unfolded laundry.

That Weight Watchers ad they're showing in cinemas, that opens with pleasantly nostalgic stock photos of well-fed, 1950s-ish Australians getting melanomas on the beach, then reels through a familiar, PSA-style litany of statistics on the fattening of our collective arses, illustrated with kids lounging on the sofa, chubby hands poised over overloaded plates, a fat gut laid out in a surgical theatre stuck through with trochars, presumably placing a lap band. Then we learn that we're all to adopt a 'Weight Watchers lifestyle' if we're to save the motherland.

Text messages from the overseas about Matthew Barney, goldfish and dog-shaped soap.

Eating too quickly

Could those involved with Thus Bakes Zarathustra email me at rachaelster AT gmail DOT com tout suite as I need to consult with you on something and cannot for the life of me find the original emails THANKING YOU VERY MUCH IN ADVANCE.

Age 10. Some day I'm going to be a veterinarian living in the mountains surrounded by countless face-nuzzling horses, and I won't have to deal with anyone with fewer than four stomachs at all, and I'll live in a tiny fall-apart house with a proper fire, and that'll show them.

Age 15. (mired in the world of community-based group-devised youth theatre) Some day I'm going to be a real proper theatre actor dressed in layers and layers of enviable, slightly stinky op shop clothes, and I'll live in a tiny fall-apart house with a proper fire, and everyone will be envious of my l33t improv skillz, and that'll show them.

Age 16-22. Some day I'm going to decide to do, uhm, something, but I won't be a sell out and it'll be, like, totally politically engaged and good for humanity, and I'll do ever such clever things with butcher's paper and 'defining parameters,' and I'm going to totally change the world, and that'll show them.

Age 23. Some day I'm going to have a kitchen with enough counter space to leave a big old Kitchen Aid on the counter at all times, a red one, and I'll have all different sizes of those Le Creuset cast iron casseroles, in yellow, and a decent fan forced oven that can take more than two baking sheets at a time, and I'll never have toast for dinner ever again, and that'll show them.

Age 24. See above, but perhaps I could eventually accessorize with some polite, neatly dressed moppet of a child, perhaps like the kid in Mon Oncle?



Today, after enduring the Vic markets packed out with tumbling, mewling kids. Some day I'm going to have a cat. And a fully sick plasma screen. Yeah, that'll show them.