All aboard!

Not only was I unfortunate enough to be born with scoliosis and eyes which look in different directions when I am over-relaxed, but I also belong to a set of parents who insist on living in the Hills.

For those unfamiliar with Sydney, the Hills is an entirely stagnant and insular area north-west of the city where people are born, educated, employed and married all on the same block. People who live in the Hills go to school, church, soccer practice, work, the pub, and the movies all with the same group of friends they have had since pre-school, and they will continue to do so until they all rot beside their colostomy bags at the Anglican Retirement Village on Old Northern Road. If you suggest a visit to a city club or a day trip up the coast, Hills residents will smile and shake their head at you as if you are retarded. “Why would we trek all the way over there when we have everything we need right here?!” In this way, the Hills is exactly like America, but thinner.

The only way to get out of the Hills is to go to uni so you can secure a high-paying job and afford to move somewhere less conservative and tainted by Christians. But if you failed uni, like me, then you have to catch Hillsbus everywhere.

Hillsbus is the only way to get from the Hills to the city without paying $40 in tolls or trawling through three different forms of public transport. It is a privately owned company, which means they have a total monopoly on the norwest city-workers’ commute and can bump up their prices at will. The result is 60,000 passengers who fork over $50 each week for the privilege of spending 2 hours every day standing on a crowded, stuffy, perpetually late piece-of-shit vomit yellow bus. It is inevitable, like the tides – anyone who catches Hillsbus is a cunt.

“Umm Neek,” I can hear you say, “You catch Hillsbus. Does that make you a cunt too?”

Well yes, it does, to be honest. I live my life in a cranky state of constant exhaustion because my commute is so fucking long and tedious, I have considered simply sleeping on a yoga mat under my desk at work and giving myself sponge baths using the office water cooler. I also catch approximately six colds every winter because Hillsbus is so crowded that you will perform fellatio, on average, every three weeks simply by sitting in the aisle seat. I hate everyone on Hillsbus and all the filthy diseases they carry and sneeze on me. I never give up my seat for pregnant people or old women because the ride is so long and expensive that on the rare occasions you can get a seat, you hold onto that fucker like it’s going out of fashion. If someone wants to carry another human inside them for 9 months or commute long distances once they’re past the age of sixty then that’s their business, not mine. You should have thought about how you were going to work that into your life without counting on the generosity and kindness of strangers because really, the average person is fairly shit.

The Evidence

Last week, I was waiting at the Hillsbus bus stop after a few post-work beverages, when I became aware of some crazy bitch screaming up the road. Naturally, I turned to look, but my alcohol-riddled brain was too slow to look away before I had accidentally made eye contact with this raging meth head. I turned away anyway, hoping she would let it go, but ten seconds later I was grabbed around the head and dragged 3 metres by my hair. At this point, my brain cut out and I could not feel any pain or really register what was going on. I assume this is the same protective mental mechanism that shields me during sermons, conferences, and twenty minutes into any family dinner. Also, I was too smashed to know quite what was happening. However, I was aware of being slammed up against a wall and thrown to the ground, while being screamed at and called a cunt, a bitch, a whore, whatever else. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I assumed the fetal position and tried to cover my head. My friend Julia was on the scene fast, and yelled obscene threats until the ice junkie retreated, then she helped me to my feet.

“Are you okay?” Julia said.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“No.”

“Do you want some water?”

“No.”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

“Give me three.”

As we stood back in the bus line, because there seemed little else to do, I became aware that every other person waiting in the queue – all thirty or so of them – had simply watched me get bashed by an ice addict and decided that being a witness was the best civic duty they could provide in this particular situation. One lady (who was not a cunt) phoned the police to let them know what had happened, but everybody else just stood there guarding their place in line and staring at me. I knew they wanted tears. They wanted hysterics. They wanted blood. Instead, I held my cigarette at a jaunty angle and immediately pulled out my iPhone to tweet about the experience. I tossed my hair and LOLed. “Can you believe that just happened?” I asked Julia, who had not blinked or exhaled since the junkie first approached us. As soon as I know somebody wants something from me, I do everything within my power to prevent them from getting it, simply because I can, and I am selfish at heart. So these Hillsbus cunts could have their bus seat, but they wouldn’t get a show out of me.

When I got home, I took three valium and had a bath. Then I stood in front of the television and told my mother I had been attacked by a meth addict at the bus stop.

“That’s awful!” she said, putting down her crossword puzzle book. “Was anyone there?”

“Yeah, but nobody did anything. They didn’t even ask if I was okay. Those arseholes just stood in line watching. Like it was fucking street theatre.”

“Well I probably would have done the same,” Mum said, picking up her book again. “You don’t want to mess with an ice junkie. Besides, you’d never risk losing your place in the Hillsbus line. Those bastards will sidle up like you were never even there.”

The above image was brought to you by the genius man that is @bobearth and my power to persuade people to photoshop genitals into ordinary pictures.

What? Where? Get that fucking camera away from me.

This is my cat, Georgie. I have a rather unique attitude towards pets, in that I generally consider them to be completely disposable. Some call this callousness, I call it post-modernism, whatever. If one dies, I simply buy a new one. And if a live one annoys me too much, I usually take it to the vet and have it put down.

Georgie has been on thin ice for a while now, because despite being cute, she is the most irritating and fickle creature I’ve ever known. (And I have worked at an accounting firm and dated many musicians, for your reference.) Georgie likes to be let in and out of the house roughly every half hour, day and night. When I am sleeping too deeply to hear her scratching at the back door outside, she jumps onto my window-sill, grabs the fly-screen with her claws and slams the frame against the window pane repeatedly until I am jarred from my slumber. “I hate you,” I tell her, cracking open the window and lifting the screen for her to crawl through. She glances at me briefly before wandering to her food bowl, eating one biscuit, and then meowing at the back door to be let out again. I imagine having a child to be similar to this sleepless, constantly annoyed state, which is why I use eleven different methods of contraception, including abstinence.

Georgie does not want anything much to do with any of us, but requires a human around at all times. Just in case. Usually she has my mother, who is lazy and rarely goes out, but whenever my parents are away, Georgie finds herself alone during the day and becomes anxious. She follows me around the house at night and jumps on top of my computer, my dinner plate, my piano, whatever is occupying my attention when I should be more concerned about her needs. When I go to the bathroom, she scratches frantically on the door and wails mournfully. I let her inside and she perches on the edge of the bathtub and stares at me intensely as I sit on the toilet. Unused to such scrutiny, I get stage fright and do not urinate for 3 days.

The reason I cannot get rid of Georgie is because despite the fact that she is cold and sometimes violent, I love the boundaries she forces others to accept. She will allow herself to be patted sometimes, but only if the person patting her doesn’t obviously want it too much, and only if they are satisfied after a few pats. You may not grab her or hold her in any way. You may not pick her up and put her on your lap either, although she may deign to sit on your lap if it is a chilly night and she is feeling sleepy.

I recently complained to my friend Matt about Georgie and how I sometimes wished she was more affectionate with me. I was lying on the lounge while Georgie sat on the coffee table, staring at me suspiciously. She knew that I was talking about her.

“I just don’t know what to do with her,” I told Matt. “She’s not really contributing much to the household. I think it might be time to go, you know? Try a different breed or something?”

“Annik, this cat is you,” Matt said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, reaching out to scratch Georgie behind one ear. She snapped at my hand, then rubbed her nose against my arm.

“Well she looks pretty and friendly, so people want to touch her,” Matt explained, “Sometimes she’s receptive and affectionate, usually with total strangers. But if you’re a nice, caring person and actually try to get close to her, she’ll scratch your fucking face off.”

“Mmm..” I said, rolling onto my back, “I guess she can stay.” As if on cue, Georgie stepped from the coffee table onto the lounge and settled down on my chest. She nuzzled her face into my neck and fell asleep.

Precisely four minutes later she woke up, dug her claws into my shoulder and hissed at my face, then fled from the room.

Those four minutes were nice though.

This is your June petting session. Don't come back until July.

Most of my relatives live interstate or in France and the Sydney ones don’t like us, so my family usually spends Christmas day getting drunk in our living room and letting out all the pent-up rage that has accumulated over the year.

“Why should you get to park in the driveway while my car sits out on the street like a whore?” I snap at my brother, tearing open a carefully wrapped gift from my mother. “Oh look, more Bryce Fucking Courtenay. You know he hasn’t written anything good since Four Fires. Buy me some Tim Winton or something. Goddamn it.”

“I’m the oldest,” my brother says, slurring slightly, “I get to park where ever the hell I want.”

“You’re the ugliest,” I retort. “Besides, you sell cleaning products, you’re going nowhere in life. At least I went to uni. I tried to make something of myself.”

“Yeah, tried being the operative word. Unlucky for you, there isn’t much demand for ice-queen bitch accountants with half a degree under their belt and a drinking problem. Face it, Neek, you’re a fucking failure. You have no career prospects, and no man will ever marry you because you have terrible genes. No offence, Mum.”

“You cunt, I’ll kill you,” I say, smacking his beer off the coffee table and reaching for his eyes, which were recently operated on and cost him $9,000 in medical bills.

At this point, my father rises from his cane chair and sighs. He walks over to his new electric piano and plugs in his headphones. Then he sits and plays Gershwin for three hours, until we have all passed out or gone to our bedrooms. The piano is my father’s happy place. He is an amazing musician, and people often go to my parents’ church just to hear my dad play. But at home, he plays to himself through headphones while the rest of us sit on the couch and watch television. Eventually, my mother falls asleep on the lounge and my brother goes to the garage to work on his motorbike. I walk down the road to the park with play equipment and sit at the top of the slippery-dip. I smoke cigarettes and ash onto the slide, thinking about all the local children who will now go home to their mothers with ashy, smelly pants. I think about how much I hate my family. I think about how much I hate Christmas. I think about the arbitrary cruelty of having a designated day of the year where I am forced to spend 24 hours with my family, regardless of whether I am in a good mood or have a sufficient supply of valium to see me through the holiday.

It wasn’t always like this. We used to have guests over for Christmas. Not traditional guests (ie friends and family) but random people my mother had met throughout the year who didn’t have anything better to do on Christmas day, because they were so scummy that they had failed to achieve basic relationships in life and had nobody to hang out with on the most important holiday of the year.

First there was Warwick, a thirty-something IT professional who lurked around my parents’ church and rode his bicycle everywhere. He came over for Christmas each year, and I hated him passionately.

“I think he’s a pedophile,” I told my mother as we stood at the kitchen window, looking out at  Warwick in the backyard. He was sitting by the pool, supervising the neighbour’s children as they swam.

“Do any of you kids know what skinny dipping means?” he asked them, trailing his big toe through the water. “I like to skinny dip.”

Then there were the pregnant bikie trashbags. They only came once – the last year we had guests. My mum had invited Gail, a crusty woman she met at TAFE, and her daughters. They showed up for lunch at 4pm and were all wearing leather jackets.

“Sorry we’re so late,” Gail said, picking something out of her teeth. “Young Natalie here had to stop every five minutes to take a piss.”

“I’m pregnant,” Natalie explained.

“Cool,” I said, draining my wine glass.

“Not cool!” Gail shouted. “Do you know how many times I’ve driven her to the abortion clinic? She pussies out at the last minute every time and decides to ruin her life instead.”

“How old were you when you had Natalie?” I asked pleasantly.

“She was sixteen,” Natalie replied, “Just a year older than me now.”

“What a charming family tradition,” I smiled, pouring myself a gin and tonic. “I recently turned sixteen myself.”

“If that’s the case,” Gail interrupted, “Should you really be drinking, young lady?”

“Well I’m not pregnant,” I replied.

Just then Warwick entered the house, holding a dripping child under each arm. “Did somebody say something about babies?” he gasped.

“Yeah,” I said, “This is Natalie. She’s pregnant, but she’s still trying to work up the guts to have an abortion.”

“I beg your pardon!” Gail spluttered.

“I like babies,” Warwick said.

“Oh my god, we’re out of wine,” Mum whispered to me.

“I’ll get some more,” I offered. I caught a bus to the local shopping centre and smoked a joint on the loading dock. Then I watched The Ring three times because nothing short of the apocalypse would cause Greater Union to close their doors. By the time I got home, Mum was asleep on the lounge, Dad was playing the piano, and my brother had disappeared to the garage.

A moon or two ago, I wrote a heartfelt post about my brother, who was tragically lost in a gender-reassignment related incident. In response, one of my favourite readers, Eduardo, posted the following comment:

I think Eduardo’s name is actually Ben, and I am pretty sure I know where he works, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s behind you.

Eduardo really got me thinking about Neekersneakers though and what this site is about. (Nothing, really.)

Like most things in life, I actually got bored with my tagline after the site had been live for 15 minutes, but I couldn’t be bothered changing it.

However, Eduardo has inspired me. I am going to open up the forum and let you guys submit suggestions for the new Neekersneakers tagline.

Be creative. Be krazy. Be offensive. Be flattering. I don’t really give a shit, just send me something cool.

You can leave your submission in the comments section below, or tweet it to @Neekatron, or send an email to ilikeblackmen(at)annikskelton.com

The booty up for grabs is your very own pair of Neekersneakers!!

Not really, but it will be just as good. I will send the winner a prize so awesome, it will hurt.

Me: Oh good, you’re home. The phone rang, but I didn’t answer it.

Mum: How helpful.

Me: You know I get phone-phobia.

Mum: You answer the phone for a living.

Me: If you worked at Subway, I wouldn’t ask you to make me sandwiches at home.

Mum: Sometimes your selfishness astounds me.

Me: Actually, I am a little hungry…

When I was in kindergarten, my parents were trying to teach me the concept of sarcasm. One day we were all in the car and my father pulled up at a set of lights.

“Oh boy, traffic!” he cried, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “I just love traffic. Traffic is my favourite thing ever!”

My mother turned around in the passenger seat so that she was facing me. “Neeky,” she said. “What is Daddy being right now?”

I hesitated, uncertain, and glanced at my brother before turning back to Mum.

“A dickhead?” I guessed.

I had just turned nineteen when a routine visit to the dentist suddenly took a nasty turn….

“Look at those wizzies!” Fred said, fingering my gums. “We need to take those babies out asap!”

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling sick.

“Of course I’m sure,” Fred said, offended. “I’ve been a dentist for twenty goddamn years. Don’t worry, they’ll put you under before they get started.”

I relaxed immediately. Several painful things had happened to me under local anesthetic, so I was apprehensive of staying awake during any sort of medical procedure and wanted to be put under for most things, including having my legs waxed. However, up until now, nobody had ever offered me a general anesthetic, so I felt very excited. Furthermore, I would likely be prescribed some sweet pain killers to cope with the post-op agony. My love affair with pharmaceuticals stretched back to infancy, and I had developed quite a strong tolerance for most over-the-counter medications by the time I reached adolescence. An opportunity to legitimately obtain some harder gear was way too good to pass up.

“Will there be panadeine forte or similar involved in this?” I asked Fred, trying to keep my voice casual.

“Hell yes,” he replied. “Do you have any idea how deep your wisdom teeth grow?”

I waved him away and sat back in the chair, already planning how this tooth extraction surgery would pan out. I would get to go to hospital for the first time ever, and the novelty of this would be so intense that it would outweigh any negative aspects of having my teeth wrenched from my head. After the operation, I would stay at my parents’ house, where I would lie on the lounge and watch Dawson’s Creek for a week. Of course, this didn’t differ very much at all from my regular life, except that now I would be doing it while I was fucked up on codeine. Further, I would have my mother and father around to wait on me. It would be like a holiday that didn’t cost any money, just teeth.

The big day arrived and my mother drove me to the hospital in the morning. After I registered with reception, I was taken into a consultation room and instructed to remove all my jewellery and hair accessories.

“I’m having my mouth operated on, not my pony tail,” I told the nurse.

“This is standard procedure,” she replied defensively. “Now, how much do you weigh?”

“That’s a little personal,” I protested.

“We need to know your weight in order to figure out how much anesthetic to give you,” she explained.

“Oh. In that case, put me down for 80kg.”

After I left the consultation room, I was shown into a pre-op area and given a gown to change into. My mother paced around the room, looking anxious.

“Don’t worry, Mum,” I told her, “I’ll be fine!”

“Oh it’s not that,” she said. “I’ve asked your father to tape A Country Practice and I’m worried he won’t remember.”

After I undressed, I was put on a bed and wheeled to the operating theatre. Once there, a man inserted an IV into my arm, smiled, and told me to count backwards from ten. “Ten…” I said, and promptly passed out.

When I came to, I was in a room with several other girls lying in beds. I panicked straight away. Was this an abortion clinic? Had I just gotten breast implants? Been hit by a bus? Donated an organ? I flagged a nurse and grabbed her arm when she came to my bed. She patted my hand reassuringly and adjusted my gown, which had slipped down to my belly button. I hadn’t even noticed, I was so out of it.

I woke up again about half an hour later. This time, my mother was sitting next to me. “Are you ready yet?” she asked. “I’ve been here all freaking day, let’s hit the road.”

When we got home, I strapped a pack of ice around my jaw. Then I took four panadeine forte and got into bed. I woke up at 3pm the next day and prepared to move to the lounge. But here, my holiday began to divert from the original plan. Codeine made me simple-minded and unable to follow the swift, verbose dialogue of Dawson’s Creek. I kept falling asleep during each episode and waking up confused. And despite using the ice pack, after 24 hours, my jaw had swelled incredibly and my head resembled a peanut. My plans to recover glamorously, lying on the couch and entertaining visitors while my parents fetched me ice cream, had been thwarted by the fact that I was too embarrassed to let anybody see me.  My brother came home from work and sat on the coffee table, studying me. “You kind of look like you have Down’s syndrome,” he said. “Except uglier.”

“Fuck you,” I replied, too drugged up to think of any other response.

“I’m going to get my camera!” he said and went to his room.

I took two more panadeine forte and sank into the couch cushions, mentally willing my jaw to shrink.

The swelling did go down eventually, but it took exactly one week. One horribly long week of avoiding mirrors and keeping the blinds closed. Even after the pain in my jaw subsided, I couldn’t leave the house because I now had a deformed head. My brother invited his friends over to show them how ugly I had become. The ironing man looked at me sympathetically, the way one looks at a failed suicide who has inflicted hideous scars on themself but somehow scraped together the will to live, even with a face like a dropped pie. However, I was nowhere near that stoic. I wrapped big scarves around my face, even when I was home alone. And I flat-out refused to move back to my share house until my head had regained its normal shape. I realised that my face was the most important thing in the world to me, and I made a lifelong commitment to protect it. I would wear helmets and mouth guards and goggles and hats and sunscreen forever, because I knew I would never have the strength of character required to live with a crooked nose or a third degree facial burn. Oh I was born with blemishes like everyone else, but I was blessed with imperfections that I could mostly hide with clothing, make up, and lies. The Week of Ugly made me realise how lucky I was. Sure, I might have been dealt short-sightedness, scoliosis and terrible migraines, but at least I didn’t have a head shaped like a fucking peanut.

I was sitting in Dr Riley’s office, thinking about who I would invite to my funeral if I had the option, when he interrupted my train of thought by suggesting I participate in a month-long outpatient program at a nearby hospital. I was immediately alarmed, having only heard the term “outpatient” used in relation to treatment for eating disorders and drug addiction. I had flirted with both those things, but more out of boredom than anything else. I certainly didn’t need to participate in any sort of formal treatment.

“What kind of program?” I asked Dr Riley suspiciously.

“Oh nothing too intense,” he replied. “It’s a full-time day course involving a lot of group therapy. The main focus is on anxiety and anger management.”

Anxiety and anger management? I could see where he was coming from with the first part. I had spent roughly 8 months prior to this hiding under my doona watching Dawson’s Creek all day and refusing to answer my phone or empty the letter box. On the rare occasions I left the house to get food or cigarettes or a bottle of vodka, I wore baggy clothes and went shopping at odd hours to avoid as many people as possible. Doing your groceries is usually a fairly stress-free task, but if I found myself caught in the after-school rush at Woolworths, I would suffer dizzy spells and heart palpitations. By the time I ended up in Dr Riley’s office, I had gained 15kg, dropped out of uni, quit my job, and moved back to my parents’ house because it had become evident I was incapable of dealing with the basics of life. I was twenty years old, and while I could score 98% on my statistics final and organise lavish birthday parties for my friends, I couldn’t get it together enough to open  my mail or wash my own clothes. So I could see why a little anxiety therapy wouldn’t go astray, but anger management? Was he being serious?

I put down my magazine and sat straighter in my chair. “I don’t really think I need to learn how to manage anger,” I told him. “I dont have any.”

“Ah but that’s the problem!” Dr Riley said, “You need to learn how to express your anger, rather than being in denial about its existence in the first place.”

“But what if I genuinely don’t have any?” I asked.

“You do,” he replied. “It’s there, you just can’t feel it.”

This troubled me deeply. If not feeling something meant that my brain wasn’t letting me feel that very thing, who knew what might be lurking underneath the surface? Maybe I was feeling all kinds of things, but my brain was blocking those emotions and tricking me into thinking they were never even there? Maybe I was compassionate? Maybe I cared about the environment? Maybe I was a lesbian?

I stared at Dr Riley for a few seconds. Then I tilted my head back slightly so that I could look down on him from across the room. “I don’t feel the need to rape children,” I said. “Should I go and do a course to learn how to express that too?”

“Please be serious,” Dr Riley said. “I think you’ll find that if you simply let yourself feel things, they won’t be all that bad.”

He had no idea. My feelings (the ones I knew about, anyway) were all-encompassing, omnipresent, and dangerously powerful. If they were all let out at once, my head would explode, the nearest 12 blocks would lose power, and every small animal within a 10km radius would drop dead. Planes would fall out of the sky, the ground would tremble, and Sydney’s elderly population would overheat and wither in their nursing home beds. A national crisis would be declared and a large-scale emergency team would need to be assembled to clean up the mess, and it would all be Dr Riley’s fault.

“I’m not angry,” I repeated.

“There are certain emotions which are healthy and normal, and their absence indicates a problem,” Dr Riley replied.

“Don’t you think that’s a little arrogant?” I asked nastily. “Who the hell are you to declare what the entire human population should or should not be able to feel?”

“Look, you know I can’t work with you when you’re being inflammatory,” Dr Riley said. “I need you to calm down if we’re going to talk about this outpatient program properly.”

“We don’t need to talk about it properly. I’m not going.”

“Will you actually consider this, rather than being so stubborn about it?” he said.

“Actually, you know what? I think this is really helping, cause I’m feeling pretty pissed off right about now,” I said, gathering my things.

“Are you sure you want to finish up on that note?” he asked, looking bored.

“Yes I’m sure. You can shove your anger management course.”

As I left the office, Dr Riley smiled and shook his head, and I felt furious.

I have always felt nervous when people make notes about me. What was so heinous that they could write on a permanent file, but couldn’t say to my face? When I was a child, I wanted the doctor and the dentist to make their notes on sheets of butcher’s paper spread out on the floor, using coloured textas. Maybe we could draw a Venn diagram or do some brain storming together. Then we could stick it on the fridge and I wouldn’t have to spend every night during the third grade sitting up in bed, fretting over what all these people were writing about me.

I didn’t feel that way with Dr Riley though. He was so smart and highly regarded in psychiatry that he didn’t have to cut his hair for work. He kept ugly artworks in his office and wore light pink pants and nobody gave a damn. He took the tough cases too – people who punched walls during sessions and went home to slit their wrists, then came back to the surgery covered in blood and babbling apologies. I had to wait 4 months just to get an appointment.

When Dr Riley made notes about me, I felt special. It was like being interviewed by a famous journalist. I wore distressed jeans and big sunglasses to my sessions. I put my feet on the lounge and made jokes about his other patients.

“I don’t think you’re taking your time here very seriously,” he said at my second appointment.

“I guess I’m just not a very serious kind of girl,” I replied, winking.

Dr Riley rolled his eyes and made some notes. Presumably something along the lines of, Well dressed, biting wit, fascinating and charismatic. I tossed my hair and turned my head so that the better side of my profile was facing him, in case he wanted to make a quick sketch of my features.

By my third appointment, however, Dr Riley was making so many notes that I began to feel nervous again. When I tried to look at his notepad, he gave me a stern look and tilted it away. “These notes are just for me,” he said, and resumed writing. I scanned the room anxiously, looking for something personal. Dr Riley knew so much about me, and I knew practically nothing of him. I needed to restore the balance. I had to get some reciprocal dirt to even things out. I spotted a bicycle in the corner of the room, leaning against one wall, helmet sitting on the seat. Aha! I thought, He’s a cyclist. Interested in fitness. Probably worried about his weight. Finding it harder to keep the pounds off as he gets older. Definitely projecting that onto his patients. Was probably sexually abused as a child. Is no doubt a latent homosexual. May be inclined to violent episodes. I should leave now, this guy’s more nuts than I am.

“You know what I think the problem is?” Dr Riley said, interrupting my diagnosis.

I liked the way he said “the problem” and not “your problem.” It made me feel like I had no responsibility in the matter. It caused me to visualise an obnoxious self-sustaining problem floating in the room; something we would tackle together. I found this comforting because I am inherently lazy.

“What’s the problem?” I asked, looking closely at my cuticles.

“You only have two conscious emotions or states of being. You’re either shit, or you’re okay. That’s it. That is the full spectrum of your feelings as an adult. Shit or okay, shit or okay. Shit… Okay…”

“Hmmmm.” I considered this for a moment.

“Well?” Dr Riley asked, “How does that make you feel?”

“Okay,” I replied.

“I thought so,” he said, and went back to making notes.