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.”

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 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.”

“Have you met Skelton’s sister?”

“Yeah, she’s like Skelton, but with long hair.”

“She has the biting wit of Skelton, and the looks he missed out on, but she’s not as tall and she doesn’t have his eyes.”

“Oh my god, have you ever looked into Skelton’s eyes?”

“Yes, they sparkle like diamonds.”

“It was like the first time I heard The Beatles.”

I was returning to the office after purchasing my daily coke zero from the Asian grocer, and as I was waiting for the elevator,  I made eye contact with a group of six people entering the lobby from the street. The moment the lift doors opened, I got in and pressed “Level 2″. As I ascended to my floor, I pressed my ear to the doors and listened to the six people as they waited below in the lobby and bitched about me.

“What happened?”

“Didn’t she hold the lift?”

“Oh my god, what a bitch.”

The truth is, normally I would hold the lift. But sometimes, I feel like if I do one more good deed, the karmic balance of the earth will implode due to my profligate saintliness. I give blood. I donate to charities. I give my coffee change to homeless people. I pick up other people’s litter when I see it. I believe in freedom of speech and same sex marriage and doing unto others and random acts of kindness. But every so often, I just need to be a cunt.

Every 6 months, I go to the dentist. My dentist’s name is Fred. He has an enormous belly and wears a white coat, so he resembles a giant pillow. I rest my head against his soft stomach while he peers into my mouth, pokes around, and says “You have a sensationally healthy mouth.” This takes roughly 45 seconds and $75 and then I am free to go. Every 6 months, the exchange is identical. Well, it was until this week.

On Monday, I went to see Fred for my regular check up. As I nestled my head against his tummy, he peered into my mouth for longer than usual. Then he scraped the side of one of my teeth. A mild, yet definite ache spread throughout my jaw. Fred scraped another tooth and it hurt too. He stood up and loomed over me.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he asked.
“Nothing, I swear, it was one time!”I cried uncertainly.
“Your gums are receding, girl.” Fred said.

Anytime somebody calls me “girl”, I know I am either in trouble or they are hitting on me. This was the former.

“That’s impossible,” I replied, “I’m only twenty-three. I have perfect teeth. I take real good care of them too.  Look at them, they’re beautiful.”
“Look again,” Fred answered, and peeled my bottom lip away from my jaw. Sure enough, the gums on either side of my mouth were slowly wearing away, exposing the roots of my teeth, which were beginning to turn a distinct shade of dark yellow.
“What the hell is that?” I asked and Fred replied, “Decay.”

Decay? Decay was what happened to corpses buried inside coffins in the ground. It involved maggots and bad smells and smug relatives. And now it was happening inside my mouth.

“What do I do?” I asked Fred. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, because for some reason I believed that the less I knew, the less serious the entire situation.

“Put this cream on your gums at night,” he said, handing me a small tube labeled $25, “And go see a goddamn specialist.”

After I paid and left the surgery, I sat in my car and cried for twenty minutes. I hadn’t realised how much of my self esteem was tied to my teeth up until then. At that moment, my entire personality seemed to hinge on the quality of my pearly whites. If I lost a single molar, I would lose my sense of humour, or compassion, or balance.

I calmed down eventually, drove home and made banana muffins. I rubbed the cream on my gums every fifteen minutes. I googled “causes of gum recession” and was confused that none of the typical reasons applied to me. As soon as my brother got home from work, I made him look inside my mouth and inspect the decay on my exposed teeth.

“That’s gross,” he observed, “And weird. Your teeth look fine everywhere else.”

“I know!” I agreed, “They’re perfectly nice looking on the outside, but underneath they are rotten and ugly and slowly dying.”

“Kind of like the rest of you,” he replied.

I went to my 5 year highschool reunion last weekend, and I was really excited to see how all my old class-mates had grown and matured into well-adjusted young adults. Apparently nothing really changes though.

classmate, finishing up a boring story: “…but that was when my license was suspended, so I didn’t drive anyway.”

me: “How did you lose your license?”

classmate: “High range DUI.”

me: “How embarrassing.”

classmate: “Nah, it was fucken great. Mum dropped me at the pub every night so I could still get pissed!”

me: “I’m so glad this experience has humbled you and made you wiser. The legal system should be proud.”

me: how long did it take you to get home from the farm?

ex-boyfriend: well I stopped for an hour at the pub, so I got home two hours later than if I’d driven straight through.

me: no, you would have been one hour later than if you’d driven straight through.

ex-boyfriend: nah, two hours. One for the time I stopped, and one for the distance I would have traveled if I hadn’t stopped.

me: that’s completely illogical, you weren’t moving backwards at the pub.

ex-boyfriend: what would you know? Women can’t drive for shit.