Intent

I have always derived personal satisfaction in this idea that I'm sympathetic to the male plight. I never really identified why I've always been like this, but perhaps it's safe to say that there was always comfort in the thought that I was privy to "insider knowledge" and ultimately, I was treated as an equal. I was gifted with a kind of honesty that would only ever be reserved for another man.

I took pride in the way I cultivated honest friendships with men, both single and taken. My brothers educated me in the ways of Mystery Method and I began to easily identify pick up artists during sober nights out in Melbourne. I was told about the endlessly frustrating mechanics of the dreaded friendzone, fully conscious that I had committed the same crime: I had relegated several suitors to the land of no action.

Why did I put guys in the friendzone? Simply put, I was afraid to be forthright. I never had the courage to say no.

I would later try to overcome my relationship reluctance, based upon this idea that I didn't want to be like "those other bitches". Taking down the walls of the friendzone meant that I entered into relationships that I wasn't particularly ready for. I became cold and unfathomably frigid. I knew that my desire to be a more palatable kind of woman backfired and approaching 30, I still struggle with that ability to effectively manage their feelings and my comfort.

I've maintained a healthy interest in the friendzone, particularly since society's recent sympathy shift away from the lovelorn male. Perhaps it was a discussion that came about with the astounding popularity of the Tumblr, The Nice Guys of OKCupid. The revelation is simple, yet compelling: "Your right to be angry with womankind is invalidated because being nice to a girl does not automatically mean you are entitled to have sex with her."

I like to recall the sentiment of one nameless woman from my Tumblr feed, "I happen to think that my friendship is a pretty special thing. It shouldn't be some consolation prize when a man doesn't get what he wants." It's a comforting idea that I continually return to. Growing up, I thought that the existence of the friendzone suggested that my body was more valuable than my mind. Perhaps this is why I have such a strong desire to solely exist as a brain in a jar.

Yet I continue to indulge in these honest discussions with men and usually I'm the one to volunteer an adept summary of the whole situation: "So, what you're saying is that you want her to put out or get out." I'm sure it doesn't sound like it, but I believe that I operate in this perverse role of undercover feminist. I don't admonish their behaviour, I don't go after these guys with a burning cross and a pick-axe. I simply listen and take it all in.

I convince myself that there is a certain power in doing this. I believe I am powerful because they're not saying this to me.

Verification

I've been thinking about glances, unverified glances mostly. They're these momentary things that have remained pinned up in the subconscious. They're always accessible for recollection, those silent intensities that have gone without clarification and yet, they seem to exist forever with their own kind of truth.

When I was younger, I broke one such moment to question how it's possible to even dole out such a charged gaze. The intensity, apparently, was intended to correspond with sincerity. Oddly enough, I walked away, determined that I would never trust those who "gazed". After all, what are intentions without words?

I harbour an ambivalent attitude towards such moments. I look forward to them, knowing that they lead to the most meaningful and meaningless moments of my existence. I want every meaning to be defined, yet their silence provokes a confidence that suggests that I really need no clarification. I am wanted...

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."

Precision

I knew it was the end when I saw that photograph of your smashed up steel-blue Fender Precision Bass. The headstock was roughly decapitated from its thick neck, the strings were severed and hung loose across the bruised body. Fans cooed dramatically, commenting on how rock'n'roll it all was. You never addressed them, but I know you would have loathed that suggestion. You only ever said: "Goodbye old friend."

I imagined your relief that came from that violence. How it must have felt for you to destroy the object that had kept you away for so long. It reminded me of our first conversation, when you told me about how you saw Richey Edwards' last show with the Manic Street Preachers. Years after his disappearance, you still seemed so shaken by the determination of his violence, diving head first into the drum-kit at the end of the show.

I hope you've managed to return to the life you wanted, free of old friends and draining obligations. I'd be lying to say that I didn't miss your hysterics, they were always so poetic. I still think of the world in terms of us and them. There are those who will swoon over the rock'n'roll gesture and then us, those who will try to derive some meaning out of it. I think we live differently to everyone else.

Lacrimosa

The proposition read as a perverse challenge to me: Sad music might actually evoke positive emotions, reveals a new study by Japanese researchers... The summary suggested that there is an odd ambivalence that comes from listening to sad music, suggesting that pleasant feelings derive from sad music because that it does not pose a real threat to personal safety. It was a vague proposition with little scientific certainty in its brief citation. In any case, I decided that I wanted to conduct my own uncontrolled study using myself, an old unfinished C60 cassette and the tape deck in my Volvo.

I tested the theory during a familiar late night drive, when time was indistinct and the streets were empty. I pushed in the tape and pressed rewind. The tape whirred, eventually clicking to start. The plane trees bowed ruefully over Orrong Road, the heavy branches clouded the flossy glow of the passing street lights. I was convinced that I could handle whatever associations it threw at me and I did. I remained stoic throughout the aggressive jangly semiquavers of Fonz. I felt fine through the scarcely discernible French ramblorings of Still Fond. Each lyrical proclamation left me unperturbed: One day, we're gonna live in Paris, I promise...

It was sad, but not in the Lacrimosa sense of the word. It was sad in that everything from its sequence to its sentiments felt so familiar to me, in spite of the fact that it had been so long since I'd listened to it. It felt like living: speeding through the darkness, being bombarded with scarcely-forgotten reminders, always battling to shut up.

Now homeward bound, the last song came on near where I spotted a Toorak fox, some nights before. I was bemused, having momentarily forgotten the song's inclusion on the tape. It was a lo-fi home-made demo with acoustic guitar and loud female backing vocals. I recalled its lyrics and sang along in a plaintive masochistic style, Why don't you call me? As the song went on to describe the devastating possibility of his crush running out of phone credit, I had to smile and acknowledge how dated and painful it all was. As much as I tried to guard the ongoing legacy of this thing, there was always the risk I'd trip over something like that. I'd come across a horrible reminder of how this is life, as it worked out.

I'll admit, I had some doubts about this scientific proposition. For one thing, I don't necessarily believe that music can be divided into the happy and the sad. There are associations, meanings and intentions, always contained and largely untapped. For me, both music and living is all about legacy management. I try to organise memories in the knowledge that time will never make the painful, painless. I appreciate that one point that study did make though: that music, like memory, poses no immediate threat to us in the present moment. Despite my initial reluctance to reacquaint myself with his songs, I will always be protected due to the nature of the past and its complete irrelevance. I am comforted in the idea that I'm strong enough to return as an unmoved silent tourist. I am safe, I will always be safe, so long as I am alone at some indistinct hour.

Experts

Whenever we would have guests around, my Dad would boast about my ability to identify the year of any photograph, film or song. I would be sheepish, downplaying my mad skillz, but I've always made a point to ask the year of everything. Whether it's a deteriorated red hardcover book by Arthur Mee or a DVD of a J. Arthur Rank film, I want to know where it all fits historically. I need to develop this narrative in order to make sense of the past.

When my Dad and I watch old 1950s English films together, he always remarks about how sad he is to learn that all these actors have since died. Together we contemplate what they would have been like in real life, whether the cast were friends with one another, whether they were warm, kind or funny. We often know that they led tragic lives. They were either alcoholic depressives or else closeted homosexuals who would later commit suicide.

His knowledge of this particular genre of film is astounding and whenever we sit together, I encourage him to document all his observations in a blog or even a zine. I urge him to get in touch with his old English teacher, who coincidentally has written two encyclopaedias about the history of British film. He puts it off, expressing anxiety that he needs to learn more before finally making contact. I tell him to hurry up: we don't have much time.

I suppose we share not only the desire to be experts, but also that fear that we may never know enough. I wonder if we'll ever be ready enough to reach out to the establishment. I wonder if we'll ever spar with those we admire, in such a way that might suggest that our views might even carry some kind of authority. I look forward to that feeling that might fill me one day, that satisfaction that would come from knowing enough to finally move forward.

Highly Dangerous

Cyrillic

The days pass quickly when I listen to Кино́. I listen to songs repeatedly, carefully attempting to familiarise myself with Viktor Tsoi's growling Russian diphthongs. I get caught up in those prickly guitar lines and those melodic hooks which seem to always centre upon a B minor arpeggio. The production is shabby, the sound inexplicably panning from one speaker to another. There are noticeable mistakes, wrong notes and poor timing, but with each repeated listen I seem to love it more and more. I don't think of the mistakes, I think of other things. I think about Tsoi. I think about Leningrad in 1984. I think about a place where I can be alone.

I present Кино́ to others, but it is purely out of naive habit. I never seriously expect to get a glowing response, a requited sense of awe when I send over Последний Герой or Красно-желтые Дни. It never particularly disappoints me to hear their dismissal, but it only serves to reinforce the isolation in this practice. It's the same as my beloved night time isolation, that time when hours were vague and my existence was entirely unaccountable. Back then, I didn't care about what anyone else thought, but now, it's different. Approval culture is everywhere. From Likes to Followers, boyfriends and jobs, during the day, it's impossible to escape that desire to demonstrate personal value.

I listen to Восьмиклассница and I think of those ridiculous attempts to impress others during adolescence: You say you got a C in Geography and I don't give a damn, You tell me somebody got bruised over you, I say nothing and we walk on... It forces me to recall a time when I naively presumed that my elderly crush would be impressed with my happenings. It's all so laughable in retrospect, because such mindless gloating only really highlighted how young I was (and how inappropriate it was to be even interacting in such a way). I'm sure my news couldn't have impressed him, but then he allowed me to operate under this impression that I was ultimately worth something.

Now, I present to others, I present without thinking. I present without any genuine desire to connect. Yet I cannot help but get consumed by the purported regard of others. I am continuously preparing for that possibility that fondness could morph into annoyance, in much the same way love invariably morphs into indifference. Such thoughts leave me feeling so tired and wretched that nothing, not creative success, not tens of thousands of Likes, not even the assurance of family and friends can ever make me feel truly "liked". I cannot stop, so I try to make the days pass quickly, I listen to lots and lots of Кино́. I try to escape to a place where I cannot be found.

Hauntings

It was still daylight when we emerged from dinner and we stood at the corner of Little Bourke and Russell Street. I said, "I'll be happy to think that I'll associate all these places with you, when you're gone..." He didn't really respond, in fact he said comparatively very little on that walk back. I suppose we both knew it would be the last few minutes we would ever see each other, but I remained largely unsentimental. I filled the silence, recounting various hauntings of those narrow streets. We walked past Ding Dong and I told him of the friend who carelessly volunteered her heart to someone she shouldn't have. I told him of her heartbreak and how a mutual friend ruthlessly dismissed her grief. He sarcastically summed up the story I just told, highlighting the similarities to us and I playfully smacked his chest. "That was completely different."

We returned to talking about music in those remaining moments, about Parlophone and Steve Osborne and that other movement we thought we had played a part in. We kept walking until we came upon a street sign, a lane bearing his name. We stopped and looked up: "That's so strange..."

I once hated Melbourne for its hauntings. I would emerge from the house knowing that almost every street and intersection would bring up some unwelcomed association, some memory of a loss or mistake. I've never been able to shake that habit and I'm beginning to think that it's not even possible. I'm always attaching a memory to a locality and it was only recently that I learned that this mental process is called Method of Loci. It's a device which relies upon memorised spatial relationships to recall "memorial content". Even as I sit here now, I'm randomly generating geographical associations, namely the east side of Little Lonsdale and Russell Street, for no other reason than I want to remember what it is to be writing this.

Each morning, I take the train and between Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross I survey many places I associate with him. His hauntings don't bother me so much, in fact, I'm happy to think that he's somehow attached to the physicality of this place. I think about Little Collins Street and his thoughts on quantum physics. Through some ridiculous theory, he suggested that it somehow meant that we could have already lived out every path, every choice and possibility together. I said it was completely absurd and without even thinking, I pointed out the half-demolished building on the diametrically opposite corner with its crumbling Art Deco façade. "I don't understand why it needs to be destroyed." As the green man flashed at us and I instinctively stretched out my hand towards his, a thoughtless gesture to ensure we crossed safely.

Legacy

I had this dream last night, where we were in the dimly lit carpark of my local supermarket and you asked me whether I read those essays you wrote, those essays where you described the extent of my influence. I let out this momentary huff of scepticism: "No, I guess not."

If I sleep for long enough, I eventually see these people I've lost. I recently had another dream, this time involving someone else, where we decided to make a break for it. When you were caught, you held me and said: "There will be silence, but I'll remember all you said."

I wake up startled and disoriented, but surprisingly reassured in my blurry-eyed state. It's remarkable how the subconscious can manufacture these consequential moments. It can depict these vivid encounters and these words that, on some level, I want to hear.

When I am awake and lucid, I see there's no real desire to experience these consequential moments. There's nothing particularly unresolved in my heart or head, but I suppose I want a legacy, as stupid and selfish as that sounds. I want to know that I am remembered.

I know that it's never particularly congenial to be included in the official records. More often than not, I feel like an indiscretion that needs to be covered up. I always marvel at how well it is covered up, though. It's much easier to construct a life where I never actually existed.

Brian Cook

Locks

I cannot help but think that my tendency to mourn for conversations developed when I first started writing a diary. I was nine and it was around this time that my best friend left the country and I'd secretly write about how much I missed her and our conversations. She would write me letters with fat wads of pages, telling me about her new life in Texas. With her broad, bombastic print (with large circles over her i's), she'd always complain that I never wrote to her enough. It was true, she was always more vigilant with her letter-writing. However, when I was alone, I thought about the things we had talked about and the things we could have talked about, if only she had been here.

No one really understood the value I placed on that communication. I tried to explain it, that desire I had just to walk around the school oval and talk endlessly about everything and anything, but it didn't make sense in that era of four square and kiss chasey. I thought I was doomed to be the serious misfit until I saw her re-appear in the door way of our class room: She was back! With an American accent! I was thrilled and I shrieked, reacting in a way that again seemed disproportionate and inappropriate but I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I figured things would get back to the way they were, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't the same.

I guess she didn't really care anymore.

I feel that in my heart, I've harboured that same desire to walk around that oval for nearly two decades, laughing and shrieking and carrying on. I had never really thought about the significance of that desire until I acknowledged the sheer amount of time I spent alone: thinking, writing diaries and practising musical instruments. When I was ten, my parents finally took some preventative action, installing brass door locks for my room and the study. The lock to my room is now worn, badly scratched and dinted, from my brother's repeated attempts to break in with a screw driver. To me, those locks are worth more than anything in this whole house.

I had always advertised the abuse, unashamedly. I presented the facts, never considering how anyone else felt. I never understood my friends' stuttering speechlessness. I never understood my parents' desperate willingness to protect his reputation. I never understood my teachers' desire to delegate any kind of investigation. I presented everything, hoping this mythical conversation would come to pass. I never knew what I wanted anyone to say exactly, but I was so disappointed by their failure to say anything, to do anything. I was so disappointed by that suggestion that just hearing about it was so fucking hard.

I was twenty when it finally happened. I heard what I wanted to hear, after hours of sitting in my then-boyfriend's car outside my house. He had intended to leave many times over the course of those few hours, turning on the engine and nudging forward in two metre increments towards his 40km journey home. We had this habit of talking all night, we shared this same breed of passion, wit and musical taste. I loved him in a way that I knew I would never love anyone else more. He'll continue to own that part of me, in the same way he owns this particular time of the morning, where the world is shrouded in a momentary hue of slate grey. It's that time of day he always fled.

What he said was quite incidental to a break up which, in that instance, didn't take: "Whatever it is, wherever you are, whatever happens to us, call me and I'll save you." I cried hard (partly in relief, but mostly in irony). My yearning to connect hinged on that one idea, that I was worthy of protection. It's kind of stunning that someone like him could have stumbled upon that jackpot sentiment, but then perhaps that just adds to the mythic nature of it all. Thankfully, I never did call him under such circumstances. We do get in touch extremely infrequently though, with whimsical recommendations such as a themed-Tumblr of Morrissey posing with cats. It can't go much deeper than that because any actual detail of his life tends to make me go hysterical.

Today, I am happy and grateful. The vast majority of my conversations are full of revelation or hilarity. I spend my time with the most wonderful, kind and loving friends. I adore my family, who are among the funniest and most intelligent people I know. I haven't seen or spoken to my abusive brother in over three years. I don't intend to see him again. I don't think I would have been able to convince that lonely nine year old that it would ever be this good. Saying that, I still harbour that tendency to mourn for those conversations. There are so many people I wish I could talk to. I think about it constantly, remembering expressions like: "It makes me angry to think he was so careless with your heart." I wonder if I could have made it up. I wonder how much of that love ever existed outside of me.

gab on deviantart