My brother has been dead for nearly 4 years now. This is how it happened…

It was a dark and stormy night during my first year of uni. But I didn’t know that, because I was drunk off my guts at some underground club in King’s Cross. As is usually the way that these things happen, I found myself staring into the mirror in a bathroom at the Moulin Rouge and wondering who had smeared all my eye make up onto my cheeks.

You’re drunk, my reflection said, Go home.

And so I stumbled up the stairs, out onto the street, and realised that it was 3am (the witching hour, and also taxi change-over time), pissing down with rain, and I had lost my friends at some stage of the night. Unphased, I wandered up and down Darlinghurst Road a few times looking for a cab or similar form of transport, and trying to stay under shelter. Suddenly it began to pour. There was hail and thunder and strong winds. I realised, very abruptly, that my feet were in the worst pain they had ever experienced. I had roughly $7 in my purse, I was too drunk to write a text message without keeping one eye closed, and I was getting yelled at for loitering outside clubs.

Eventually I found a bus stop and sat inside it, in the weak hope that a bus might arrive and take me somewhere dry. Sheets of rain blew inside and soaked me as I methodically rang everyone in my phone book. All my friends were either asleep or too drunk to drive, and none of my acquaintances owed me any favours. I left a series of slurred, abusive voice mail messages, then apologised and begged people to call me back. My parents were out of town and I didn’t have any other relatives’ phone numbers handy. I considered committing some sort of crime so that I could catch a ride with the police, or throwing myself in front of a car in order to get taken to hospital in an ambulance and then tucked into a warm bed by nurses. I suddenly felt very young and small and officially fucked.

As I sat in the bus stop on Macleay Street in the pouring rain and tried not to cry, a transvestite hooker came and sat next to me.

“I’m Jean,” it said, as I shifted away on the seat.

“I make jewellery,” it added, holding out an arm full of bangles and track marks.

“Maybe I can help you get home?” it offered with a wink as I turned away and frantically dialled my brother’s number.

“What?” he answered, awake and sober.

“Chris, I’m stranded in the cross in a thunderstorm in a bus shelter with some junkie jewellery-making eternal question and there are no cabs. Please come and get me. You’re my big brother – you have to do this.”

“What’s an eternal question?” he asked.

“It’s when you can’t tell whether a person is male or female,” I explained, “Will you pick me up?”

“Nah…” he said, “I think I’m just gonna go to bed, I’m pretty tired.” And he hung up.

As I stared at my phone in disbelief, the hooker asked me whether my brother was coming to pick us up.

“I have no brother,” I corrected it, and walked out into the rain.

My mother has this tendency to try and talk to me whenever I am walking out the door, blow-drying my hair, on the toilet, asleep in bed or otherwise engaged.

Last Monday night, she waited until I was brushing my teeth before asking me if I had a good physio appointment. I gave a thumbs up.

“And did Elizabeth get my message?”

I shrugged.

“Did you have some dinner?”

I shook my head.

“Are you going to work tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“Well you’re just full of information tonight, aren’t you?”

“Woman,” I spat in the sink, “I am brushing my teeth.”

“Okay, no need to be such a cow. Did you know I gave birth to you without any anesthetic? I pushed out your selfish head without so much as a goddamn epidural. And this is the thanks I get.”

The following is a text message conversation that occurred sometime during 2006.

Me: “If I had to give you awkward and unpleasant news, what would be your preferred mode of delivery?”

Boy: “Text is fine.”

Me: “I really don’t like you.”

Boy: “No worries.”

I am one of those people for whom massage is useless. Despite going to great lengths to appear laidback and easygoing, underneath I am in a state of constant agitation. I am always stressed about work, money, the weather, my mother, the size of the gap between my thighs, being a shitty friend, and the state of my love life. On holidays, I worry about the absences: the emails I’m not receiving, the work-outs I’m not fulfilling, the people I’m not spending time with, the dollars I’m not saving. The last time I felt truly relaxed was on a weekend trip to Forster in September 2008, after I smoked so much pot that I couldn’t figure out how to climb a set of stairs.

So it was basically a waste for me to be spending 3 hours in a day spa at an island resort off Penang. But I went anyway, because I was on holidays and there was little else to do. As a young Malaysian girl rubbed exfoliating scrub into me, I thought, does she hate this? Maybe she had kids or ailing relatives, and instead of staying home taking care of them, she was stuck rubbing oil onto soft white people for $4 an hour. If she was anything like me, this would make her bitter and overly critical. She would sniff at my uneven tan and scoff at my undefined arms. She would snicker at the disposable day spa underpants cutting into my well-fed western flesh. She would shake her head at the scars on my leg (a sure symbol of poor-little-rich-white-girl syndrome.) She would hate me, and every minute she had to touch me would be torture.

I began to wish that the massage girl was older. I wished she was taller, more Asian, and spoke no English. I wished she was a large, elderly African gay man.  I wished she was anything that would make her less like me; less likely to judge everything before her down to each individual hair follicle.

I worried that the exfoliating procedure was chaffing her hands. Perhaps she had a paper cut that needed to be kept clean, and all this day spa gunk was preventing her wound from healing. Maybe she’d pulled a muscle in her back, and climbing onto the table to crawl over me was painful for her.

I was getting hot under my towel, despite being nearly naked beneath it. I could feel the beginning of a headache behind my eyes. I wanted a glass of water. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to go back to my room and sit alone under the air-conditioning and watch the cooking channel, even though I had no intention of ever cooking anything in life. I wanted to check my phone to see whether my friend Kahlee had texted me. I’ve known Kahlee for 4 years, and I am used to emailing her ten times a day to update her, in immense detail, on everything that has occured within the last hour. If I do not document my life in mundane emails to Kahlee, it has not transpired.

By then, the massage had become mentally excruciating. I should have been enjoying this luxurious treatment; basking in the extravagance of it and wishing it would never end. Instead, I was considering pushing the girl away, explaining, “I’m sorry but I’m nuts and I can’t lie here for 3 hours listening to my brain,” and leaving the spa.

But then, just as I was trying to figure out how to communicate my sentiments in Engrish, the girl interrupted my thoughts by saying, “Miss, may I scrub your breasts?”

I had 2 seconds to think about this. I needed 3 more.

“I’m sorry – what?”

“Miss, may I scrub your breasts?”

“Ohh, of course,” I said graciously, as though she had asked to borrow a light.

And then, as the impoverished Malaysian woman exfoliated my nipples, my brain magically switched off. I had landed myself in a situation so awkward, so culturally imbalanced, so close to paying an Asian girl to perform sexual favours, that my mind was simply unable to worry about anything else. I relaxed.

After a morning of intense shopping at KLCC Centre in Kuala Lumpur, my friend Niki and I retreated to a nearby park to rest our legs and eat some lunch. We had already attracted stares everywhere in KL – mostly from the Indian men – but now we really seemed to be the main focal point in the park. Every few minutes, we were approached by somebody wanting to take our picture. Others simply took sneaky shots of us when they thought we weren’t looking, or pretended to take photos of their friends while clearly pointing their camera lens at us.

“This is great!” I told Niki as I struck a pose and smiled winningly while a Chinese girl photographed me. “I’ve never been to a country where everyone thinks I’m so hot!”

“They don’t think you’re hot,” Niki explained, “They think you’re a whore. A white western whore who will spread her legs after three margaritas by a cheap motel pool.”

“Oh.” I said.

After that, I scowled whenever anyone asked to take my picture. And if I noticed somebody photographing me without my permission, I twisted my face into a snarl and raised both my middle fingers towards the camera. If I was going to be uploaded to some seedy Indian guy’s Facebook album and tagged as his girlfriend, framed and placed on somebody’s bedside table, or possibly even masturbated over, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it smiling.

I have always hated flying. Not out of fear (the statistics of fatal plane crashes puts me completely at ease) but out of my general distaste for humans. The idea of being forcibly seated amongst people not of my choosing for 9 consecutive hours gives me heart palpitations.

So my friend Niki and I were stoked when we boarded our flight to Kuala Lumpur and saw that there weren’t any other passengers seated within five rows of us. The morning had already been stressful enough – we’d gotten up at 4:30am after going to bed at midnight, and had been forced to stop several times on the drive from Brisbane to Coolangatta so that I could be violently sick in filthy service station bathrooms. The attendants all gave me dirty looks as I exited the bathrooms, pale and sweaty and looking every part the junkie.

Therefore it was a relief to get to the airport on time and know that we’d be able to spend our flight stretched out across three seats – a whole row each – and catch up on sleep. But then, 20 minutes before we were due to depart, 300 Malaysians suddenly boarded the plane and filled all the available seats around us. Worse, these people all had kids. Obnoxious, bratty, whiney kids, who took turns losing their shit and hollering like psych patients throughout the entire 9 hour flight. The worst of these children, a little Malaysian Dennis the Menace in denim overalls who looked about 2 years old, sat directly behind me. He immediately proceeded to wail, thrashing under his seatbelt and kicking the back of my seat. I allowed 10 minues of this – ample time for parental administration of corporal punishment – then I stood up and faced his grandmother, who stared back at me impassively. I looked pointedly at her horrid rat-baby and then back at her. Control your spawn, I told her with my eyes, Make it quiet, or kill it. Then I sat back down and took 3 valium.

An hour later, I awoke to the same screeching and seat-kicking. Full of buzz and lacking my usual sober inhibitions, I stood up and went to the child. “Please stop kicking my seat, sweetheart,” I said, “Or I will kick you.” And he stopped after that.

I spent the remainder of the flight drifting in and our of a valium-induced slumber and calling the flight attendants every time I woke up. It was impossible to attract their attention as they walked throughout the cabin, but if I pushed a small orange button above my seat, I was attended to within seconds. Perhaps this magical orange button was intended for medical emergencies or similar. Whatever. I would press it without hesitation whenever I needed some water, another blanket, or a hot Milo. The flight attendant would drop whatever she was doing and come running over. “What is the matter?” she would ask breathlessly, and I would hold out my Air Asia neck pillow. “I can’t blow this up,” I would explain, and she would stare for a moment before realising I was serious and demonstrating how to blow-up the pillow. “Maybe instead of showing me,”  I suggested, “You could just do it for me?”

“Oh. Ha ha. No.” Their English was limited.

I was sitting at my desk last Tuesday when I heard a crash and screaming. I jumped up and ran to the window, assuming one of the junkies that hang around Town Hall had lost their shit. Downstairs, outside McDonald’s on Park Street in Sydney’s CBD, a cab was half-sitting on the curb and a woman lay writhing on the ground, shouting incoherently.

“Fuck!” I said articulately and my co-worker ran to the window.

“There’s a cab up on the curb and a woman is screaming!” I explained.

“Hmm” my co-worker said and returned to his desk.

I stayed at the window and watched as the taxi driver got out of his car and walked awkwardly towards the woman he had just run over. I should go to her, I thought, I should help her. She needs me. But I was afraid of missing some of the action from my window seat. Besides, a group of people instantly flocked to the woman’s aid and whipped out their mobile phones. They cast hostile glances towards the taxi driver. Look what you’ve done, you arsehole, their eyes said. I was annoyed when enough people surrounded the lady as to partially obscure her from my vision, but I was glad that she had help. She had stopped screaming and was sitting on the ground, talking to those around her. The taxi driver moved his cab off the curb and leaned against a telegraph pole with his arms folded. There were at least ten people sitting with the lady, taking care of her. There was nothing for me to do. Except watch.

I ran to the fridge and grabbed my lunch, then dragged my chair over to the window and continued watching while I ate. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later and one of the paramedics attended to the lady. She used wild hand gestures to explain how the taxi had run over her. The taxi driver still stood with his arms folded. I began to feel jealous. This woman had just been through a traumatic and potentially life-threatening experience, but she seemed to be physically fine. Maybe a broken leg or something, but nothing too serious. And yet she was about to become a millionaire. A taxi driver who runs up the curb is going to get his pants sued off. Better, his company would have way more money than he would. And his company’s insurance company would have even MORE money. Money that would soon belong to the lady.

I had to take a phone call, then when I went back to the window, the ambulance and the run-over lady were gone, but the police had arrived and were taking statements from four of the witnesses. That should be me, I thought, I would have given a better statement than any of those jokers.

“Linda was really special,” I would have told the police, “I saw her give $5 to a homeless man right before it happened. Did you know she was a ballet dancer? Yeah, well, there goes that.”

Then I would go to the hospital to see Linda. I would explain how I had given such a great statement. A statement that would probably be used in court while determining the amount of compensation awarded to her. Linda would owe me.

I was reading my friend Helen’s Live Journal when I came across the following paragraphs:

We grabbed a beer and headed for the front bar. I accidentally caught the eye of someone sitting next to the door… As I walked past he ducked his head and gave this long, breathy snort, before bursting into laughter and going, ‘FAT chance.’

What I never understand about these situations is that your attacker doesn’t ever tell you anything you don’t already KNOW. Unattractive people are more than aware of their unattractiveness, always. We carry it with us daily, and the weight of it makes us grunt. Every time we look in the mirror – hello, horror. Every time we get caught unawares on camera – god forbid, put that red-herring-cross-Appaloosa face away. So yeah, we know about it. Why the need to verbally reinforce? Who is born with such cruelty in their genes?

I’ve never actually met Helen, but I can tell from my Facebook stalking that she is one of those beautifully quirky, colourful, witty, clever people you rarely come across. To imagine somebody pissing on her birthday cake over something so stupid as how she looks really hacks me off. And it breaks my heart a little too, because I know that no matter how brazen and confident you are, a dumb passing comment from some random douchebag can reduce the toughest of us to a self-loathing mess.

For me, it’s less about my face and more about the size of my arse. As an adult, I’ve weighed 70kg and I’ve weighed 45kg at different points in time (I’m 5’6″.) I wasn’t particularly well in either of those situations, but I’ve never gotten more (positive) attention in my life than when I resembled a broomstick. Hell, even at 60kg, I was rarely given a second glance. I was referred to as “the fat one.” Guys would approach my friends in bars and say, “Hey, gorgeous,” then turn to me and say, “Hey not-so-gorgeous.” And when I had the guts to wear a singlet that said “UGLY” one night, a girl pointed me out to her friends and shouted “Yeah, she is ugly!” All of these incidents were unprovoked, unless you count the shape of my body or the arrangement of my facial features as an invitation for rebuke. Apparently, I was so hideous on those occasions that complete strangers felt the need to comment. And not in private either – they commented right to my ugly face.

Despite all this, I think I’ve managed to come out the other side with a pretty healthy self esteem. I’m no supermodel, but I’m not bad looking either. As long as I stay below a size 10 (the upper limit of the “acceptable weight range” of most guys I date) I think I look reasonable. If I tell this to people though, there is guffawing and rolling of eyes. Girls are not supposed to think they’re pretty. We are supposed to be insecure to the point of obsession. Pout in front of the mirror and squeeze at the fat on our arms and bellies. Shove our fingers down our throats and lose sleep over the wrinkles around our eyes. When somebody compliments you on your appearance, deny it! Don’t say thank you or actually agree with them. Good god, the scandal.

Sometimes little pokes and prods have the desired effect. An overweight person might use their unflattering nicknames to fuel their fire at the gym. Another person wearing tights as pants might need to catch a few disapproving glances before they figure out what they’re doing wrong. But simply telling somebody they’re ugly isn’t exactly constructive. What reaction do these people expect? “Oh really? Shit, thanks for letting me know. I’ll get a new face asap.”

So are people randomly insulting girls in order to make sure we don’t get too sure of ourselves? Modesty is becoming in a woman, so make sure she damn well knows she’s not hot enough? Or is it the old “I make fun of the other kids to make myself feel better” syndrome? Cutting down everyone around you to make yourself taller?

Is consumerism to blame? Entire industries are built on our insecurities: weight loss products, cosmetics, plastic surgery, fake tanning, etc. Every day, the TV and magazines tell us that we’re ugly and overweight, so what’s wrong with telling each other the same thing? Have we been desensitised to our own cruelties?

Personally, I blame fairy tales. The good guys were always hot, and the bad guys were butt ugly. Snow White was a babe, while Rumpelstiltskin was a hideous dwarf. From the day we’re born, there’s a very strong reinforcement that people who look nice are usually nice, and people who look dodgy are usually dodgy. In some cases, this is true, but not always.

Maybe when we tell our kids not to discriminate against people who are black or homosexual or female, we should also tell them not to discriminate against those who have been dealt a dose of acne or a bad nose.

And maybe next time you see someone who you think could use some improvement, you should shut the fuck up.

I was out to dinner with my lady friends, when the conversation turned to gay guys.

“I always wanted to be a fag hag,” one of my friends lamented, “But they’re too bitchy.”

“Not all of them,” I said, “I think that’s more of a gay cultural thing. Like certain strains of gay culture are more bitchy than others.”

“Well my fag is lovely,” another girl offered, “And he’s always there for me when I get gastro.”