Somewhere around my ninth year of schooling, I found myself at the library during a free period and sitting in a study room full of boys not studying. As is wont to occur at Christian highschools, the conversation rapidly turned from the canteen’s new lunch menu to masturbation.

“It must be so awesome to be a chick,” a certain young man remarked.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Well don’t you all orgasm every time you put in a tampon?”

“Actually, a vagina is a little more complicated than that.”

“Whatever.”

This is a true story. It happened to a friend of mine.

It began in Athens. It was the last night of our 6 week European adventure. The next morning, we would have to make the long journey home and go back to work, uni, and other mundane bullshit. It was a bittersweet occasion. I wanted to celebrate, but instead I went to bed early, my liver threatening to implode after a month-long binge on tequila and gyros. My travel-buddies still wanted to party, so I joined them for a pre-drink at the hotel bar before they went out and then I retired to my room, where I promptly passed out.

The next morning, there was a soft knock on my door.

“Can I come in?” a small voice asked.

“Sure,” I opened the door and my friend came tumbling in.

“Ohmygod,” she said, “That arsehole!“

“What??” I asked.

“So I took this guy back to my hotel room last night…”

“Yes?”

“And we were just, like, making out and stuff, but he was too drunk to…you know…”

“Fuck?”

“Yeah. So I just went to sleep. Then I woke up a few hours later because he was jerking off beside me.”

“Gross.”

“So I was ignoring this guy and just trying to get some sleep, when he suddenly grabbed me, flipped me over, and came all over my face.”

“Oh my god.” This was bad, even by my standards. “What did you do?”

“I told him to leave. Then I jumped out of bed and ran into the shower.”

“Was he gone when you came out again?”

“Yeah, and so was all the money I had on the bedside table.”

“So not only were you plied with alcohol and forced to go to sleep unsatisfied. You were then rudely awoken, white-zombied and robbed?”

“Why does this stuff always happen to me?”

I was recently driving some friends to a bar when I became aware of a fairly inane conversation taking place in my backseat.

Friend #1: Which do you think is worse – a pedophile, or a rapist?

Friend #2: I think they’re both pretty bad.

Friend #1: See, I think a pedophile is much worse.

Friend #2: How come?

Friend #1: Well a pedophile is, like, twisted and fucked in the head. Whereas a rapist is just Lebanese.

Copacabana, early 2003

boyfriend-at-the-time: Why are there bins in all the girls’ toilets?

me: So women can throw out their tampons and stuff.

boyfriend-at-the-time: But don’t they dissolve? Like inside you?

A few years ago I was lonely, bored, depressed and rarely left my bedroom. After too many white wines one night, I created a profile for myself on RSVP and sat back to watch my inbox fill with eligible young bachelors. One guy in particular sparked my interest. Let’s call him Gavin, because that was his name, and still is his name, assuming he hasn’t died.

Gavin and I exchanged a few emails and chatted on MSN. He was smart and funny, and looked cute in his profile picture.

I asked Gavin if he wanted to meet up for coffee. (Like I said – I was extremely single at this point in my life.) He agreed, but said I’d have to meet him in Penrith because that’s where he lived and he didn’t drive.

Alarm bells began to ring softly in my head, but I ignored them. Unlike today when a single spelling mistake can disqualify somebody, back then I was a lot more tolerant. I liked to think that I would never judge a person based on where they lived.

And so I made the long drive out west, found the shopping centre Gavin had nominated, and located the coffee shop he wished to meet at. It was closed, so I sat outside on a bench and watched the local ageing men walk past. Suddenly one of them stopped in front of me and asked, “Annik?”

I considered denying my identity, but I’d already hesitated too long and confirmed it. Gavin bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr Burns from The Simpsons. He was completely bald, hunched over, and had rotting teeth. He smelled like cheap cologne and was wearing a block-colour charcoal track suit. He embodied every physical Penrith cliche.

“The coffee shop’s closed,” I stammered.

“That’s okay, we can just go for a walk,” he replied.

We strolled slowly to the side of the carpark as he babbled awkwardly about a holiday he once took, I can’t even remember where, because my brain was busy going “JESUS FUCK I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.”

As we approached the road, I turned to Gavin and said, “You know what? I have to go.”

Then I walked over to my car and drove home.

When I got there, I had a text on my phone from Gavin saying, “Sorry if that was disappointing.”

I didn’t write back. I blocked him on MSN and changed my email address. I removed my profile from RSVP and showered thoroughly. Then I burst into tears.

Never before had I felt so incredibly shallow. I’d enjoyed conversing with somebody and exchanging stories, then as soon as I knew what they really looked like, I wanted nothing to do with them. I was a bitch and I was going to hell.

Later that night, I related my online-dating experience to a friend’s mother.

“Am I totally horrible?” I asked her when I had finished.

“God, no,” she replied, “You can’t fuck an ugly person.”

When I was ten years old, my parents made me change schools mid-term. We’d moved a few suburbs away and the 30+ minutes of driving every morning and afternoon was giving mum the shits.

I’ve never been able to make new friends easily, and I was no better at it back then. In fact, the only friend I managed to recruit that year was a girl named Kim, who wore thick glasses and constantly had the faint aroma of shit about her.

“Kim wears nappies,” the other kids gossiped, “cause she poos her pants all the time.”

I didn’t find the smell too bad, so I hung out with Kim and invited her over to my house a few times. She was nice enough and she always gave me half of her roll-up.

When school finished for the year, Kim went away on holiday with her family. She sent me a postcard from Jenolan Caves that read:

Dear Annik,

I miss you. I’m glad you came to our school. Thank you for being my friend and for not making fun of me like the others do.

Love, Kim.

After the summer break, Kim and I were enrolled in different classes because I was smarter than her. In my new class, a group of four girls, who were reasonably pretty, started letting me sit with them at lunch and invited me to the movies and their birthday parties. I never really spoke to Kim again after that.

This week I have written something for the rather clever and attractive Kate Richardson. You can read it here and then you should read her other stuff because you’ll learn far more over there than you will here.

P.S. If you dig that Hillsong shit, let me know because I am considering checking out more crazy churches and blogging about them. Fuck it, I will even visit a cult (other than Hillsong) if you guys are keen.

Me: Dad, there’s something gross on my neck. Can you take a look?

My brother: Is it your face?

Dad: It’s eczema.

Me: I’m going to my room.

Somewhere around my fifteenth year, I sat at the kitchen table one evening, doing my homework and eating a frozen piece of banana cake. My mother entered the room and looked from the cake to me.

“What?” I asked her.

“It’s not that you’re fat, darling,” she explained, “You’re just…flabby.”