Pitch

I first became subjected to this pressure to be breathlessly articulate ten years ago. When my counsellor urged me to only see her once I had specific questions to discuss, it broke my heart. It became apparent that I had to frequently launch into an elevator pitch, particularly when I was compelled to speak with an important type with an impatient manner. Their inattention would rattle me, my chest would constrict when I'd see their wandering eyes search for something else, anybody else they'd rather be talking to. It happens in these momentary interactions, in chance meetings with musical heroes, prospective employers and BBC journalists. I speak quickly. I make it brief.

When I heard a recent recording of his voice, competing for space and attention, I was reminded of how this dynamic plagued him in the days when I knew him. We never discussed it, but I always thought his fast-paced delivery reflected a feeling of creative powerlessness. He was eternally pitching to the eternally distracted. We hadn't spoken in five years but I still felt a level of gratitude towards him. In spite of his cruelty, he checked back frequently to read my Plague essays. Knowing of his silent readership prompted me to lovingly craft my words. I felt relieved at the thought that I still existed in his mind, yet I struggled to obscure the fact that I no longer held onto his memory as I once did. I still don't know if he ever knew that I had loved and lost another.

In a moment of madness, I crafted an email to him in reference to his forthcoming visit to London. It drew heavily on my ancient fear of being in London and being denied the possibility of seeing someone important. I wrote to offer the chance to meet as friends but I never honestly expected a response, because I know that even the caring don't tend to write. Yet, in this instance, he did reply. It was palpably abrupt, condescending and needlessly harsh. What I had intended as a kind gesture managed to shake all the kindness that I had once cultivated in my heart and my head. In that moment, I knew that he would never visit this site again. I had lost my muse... and there's no one around who could possibly understand what that means to me.

It's a loving thing to be generous with your time and space, but I need to reconcile with those suffocating moments where there's no interest, there's no love or warmth. It's best to return to those friends who choose to love and listen and be kind. I need to return to them.

Platform

A large throng of girls huddled tightly. Their school dresses were cut jagged and short, the fabric matted with dried blobs of red and yellow acrylic paint. They struggled to all fit together, some leaned outwards, threatening to topple off the two-foot high wooden platform. They held fast to one another, some girls held hands with their friends. Some pressed their plastic firemens' hats to the heads, others remained poised with party poppers.

I stood around awkwardly. Even in the last moments of high school, I never knew where to stand or who to be with. I never stopped envying those tiny microgestures of acceptance, a pose for a photograph, a pause for a moment's conversation. To be acknowledged meant everything to me, only because for those four years, it seemed as if I perpetually stood with some girl's back to me.

Once I received all the attention on that platform where we stood together. I had performed a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had never been offered the opportunity to perform in a play or a show, not even in the chorus. I had always been predestined for the orchestra pit. It was hugely gratifying to play Bottom, if only for those few moments. I screeched and hammed it up to excess. I died for as long as possible and everybody loved it.

The bell echoed across the courtyard. Girls screamed, arms flailed, confetti fell. Out of nowhere, Nancy suddenly hugged me tightly. She was a tough girl who boasted about hanging out with the Triads on the weekend. On Year 9 camp, she had pinned me down, straddled my mid-section and punched me repeatedly during a night time game. In Year 12, she was reprimanded for punching Amelia. Her swollen left cheek morphed from blue to purple and then black.

I never thought to ask why Nancy suddenly hugged me like that and it was funny that even during that embrace, she still couldn't bring herself to look at me. At the time I consoled myself thinking that the gesture was the apology, albeit the apology of a coward. In retrospect, I think she was just pleased that we would never have to see each other again.

In the years that have followed high school, I have spoken openly about the sadistic bullying practices of our year level. To each other, we used to joke about the widespread myth that every second year level at our school was particularly dysfunctional. It was funny that despite the heightened level of self-awareness (and lengthy group-counselling sessions), we could never get it together.

In theory, it should have all ended in that moment, as we stood in friendship and relief on that platform. In actuality, every incident from those four years seems to spin around in my head forever. The memory of it manifests itself in interesting ways, like I used to live with this insatiable desire to confront any and every bully. Even in my dreams, I wanted to embarrass and condemn those who are cruel.

In more recent times, I haven't been thinking about the cruelty, I have only been thinking about the classes. I loved almost everything that I did and I think back to how inspiring those classes were: Shakespeare in Performance, Women in History, Protest and Conflict, Journalism, Fashion, Photography. In my head, I continue to navigate those grounds, the hallways and the classrooms, but everything is empty. Everyone is gone.

When people ask what high school was like, I say: "It wasn't as bad as it was."

Translations

I was so alarmed when he said it to me, I was convinced that it was a mistranslation from the Dutch: "It takes a real man to hurt a woman." It was such a curious expression that I rushed to write it down, not wanting to forget it. When I asked what he meant by that, he went on to explain that it takes courage for a man to take responsibility for the pain he's caused. I said I agree absolutely, although he probably could have expressed it in a slightly different way.

I like to think of myself as an honourary man. I insist that the men around me treat me as such. I encourage them to confide, discuss and describe the way they treat women. I do not take particular offence when they generate an endless stream of seemingly sexist synonyms, ranging from the fat and the stupid to the needy and hysterical. I do not feel particular disappointment when they detail the hollow physicality of their latest conquest. It is a compliment that I know, it is a compliment that they tell me.

A friend often pleads with me to be careful with such confidences, she tries to convince me that knowing such truths will ultimately damage the way I perceive men. I always laugh, because there's no other way to react to such a suggestion. For me, it seems counter-intuitive to fly the flag for feminism when I'm privy to such discussions. Instead, I listen. I try to understand their motivations and justifications. I try to find the source of their cruelty and thoughtlessness.

When I was younger, my brother predicted that I would marry a wife-beater. I never asked why, I had always assumed it had something to do with his obsessive compulsion to punish, bully and control myself and my mother. For this reason, I'm unsure how we ever became friends, but we did for a short time. I was 15 and we would talk for hours and hours, all while listening to early Depeche Mode on our all-night drives to Nunawading. I once asked him if he ever regretted how he treated us: "I've never hurt either of you. I've never done anything wrong..."

Whenever I recall his brutality, I'm reminded of that moment. I'm reminded of that flippant, completely remorseless sense of entitlement. For whatever reason, he felt like he needed to do what he did.

He and I have not spoken in three years, although I find myself silently counting the years over and over again, as if I've made some huge mistake. I don't recall any words during that last interaction, I just recall the ferociousness with which he spat on me. I'm filled with curious feelings of disgust and self-satisfaction when he tells my mother that he misses my emails. He tells her that he thinks I write better than anyone else in the family. I know that I'll never speak to him again, in the same way that I know that I'll never forgive him.

Perhaps it makes sense then, that I should look for that illusive assumption of responsibility in the uncensored accounts of male friends and heartbreakers. Sure, I will always yearn for a sincere statement of remorse, I will always long for an explanation. The thing is that I know how they speak about us. I know how they think about us. It is a compliment that I know, it is a compliment that they tell me.

Evil > Slow Hands

I had been drafting letters in my head again. It gets worse when I am left alone at work for hours at a time. I become fixated with certain expressions, obsessed with the idea that I can clarify matters. I become obsessed with the idea that I can clear my name, not my memory. I really wanted to write to him. As time has passed, he has brutalised my character to anyone who cares to listen. He portrays me as a drunkard, a heartless selfish manipulator. His descriptions of me have become more and more malicious as months roll on. I suppose the lack of contact gives him that entitlement to distort the facts. I have done the same thing, the only difference is that I am compelled to pay homage to our friendship. I am compelled to value the ambiguities and the complexities of it, now it can never be restored.

I suppose we can never change how they feel about us, but I desperately desire control of the way I am perceived. I hate that he hates me, that he feels compelled to punish me as he does. I hate how that punishment is indicative of his own pain and suffering and that, because of his mandate on the subject, I am forbidden from contact. It frustrates me immeasurably, as I find more and more people are invited to judge. They are invited to comment and dispel my actions. Yet, I am not granted the right to defend myself. Instead, I exist in the shadows, cloaked in my trade mark trenchcoat, averting their eyeline, weltering in the knowledge that they hate me. They really fucking hate me. But should I even really care? I never even liked him, in any case.

What is peculiar is that one evening, it all felt so different. Instead of obsessing over my endless mental drafts, I spent the night laughing with a work colleague. We spoke of the Medellin drug cartels, maquiladoras, Keith Richards and kittens. It was a remarkable thing, because I remembered what it was to be seen as person, not as a monster. It was a blessed feeling, to have some kind of implied assurance that they would never bully or exclude me as I have been bullied and excluded. Yet, in a completely different way, the evening revealed the true extent of my self-loathing. It revealed how much I anticipate strangers and acquaintances to witness the same breed of evil as he saw in me.

I'll stop. I promise I will. I'll stop with the hating and the mental drafting and my earnest willingness to believe the hype. I can't control much, but I know I can control something. Even if it's cultivating a delusion that the hate isn't as severe as it really is. That somewhere, at some point and some time, he remembers all the laughter and affinity that I do. I hope, that in spite of everything, I will be able to convince myself of that fallacy. I hope that I will be able to live in the comfortable ignorance that he doesn't hate me as much he says he does. Maybe then, each night alone at work won't seem as painful as it ought to be.

I Should Have Loved You More

I recently confronted a boy I once knew, my best friend. I went to his house, armed with a letter in anticipation that he would refuse to speak to me. The entire context seemed so odd, this boy knew me better than I knew myself. He loved and encouraged me, then it all fell apart somehow. He eventually fell in love with a more worthy girl, then I fell in love with someone I wasn't meant to. I don't know how it happened, but I know that he will never forgive me for my purported mistreatment. I know he will never forgive me for refusing to commit to him romantically. I know he will never forgive me for falling in love with someone so similar to him. With that being said, I know that I must forgive myself if I ever wish to move on.

That night, he did agree to speak to me. It was so strange. For that half an hour, standing in the starlit courtyard of his apartment, I felt so totally overwhelmed. I couldn't believe he was looking me in the eye for the first time in ten months. Every few moments, I kept on exclaiming how different it was, how strange it felt. It was a different person standing before me, this wasn't my best friend. His body had changed, his posture was different. I don't know what the hell happened to his speech patterns but suddenly he had a lisp. He said that he never thought of me, that I was simply a blank to him. I just didn't exist. I said I admired him for being so strong-willed, for I could never forget the past so easily.

I write all this here because I have been thinking of the evolution of identity. Can you ever truly let go of the person you were? Do the matters that once touched you in the past suddenly bear no meaning once you adopt a new identity? What happens if that new identity is so thoroughly exciting and convincing, so brimming with musical and emotional success? It reminds me of the last words of a lost musician I once knew:

"That person up on that stage isn't me. In some ways it never was. The projection that you might have about that personality is not in the member of the band you see up there. He's just a puppet. I've long since stopped inhabiting him. I don't belong in there and I never did really."

There will never be a satisfying conclusion to all this, I will never find the answers for which I seek. But I know that I desire that which seems to be impossible for my mood and temperament. I want to change myself as he has, to make myself an identity that is so thoroughly exciting and convincing, so brimming with musical and emotional success. I want to make it so exciting and convincing that nobody will ever care to remember what I was like. How wretched and depressed I once was. I want to be the intimidating one, fearless and without any past.

I want to forget you.