by Becky Lucas
I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but I decided to walk over there and let them know that, while I didn’t have a problem with their hobby, perhaps the screaming might be a bit much on a Saturday afternoon. I approached the man I assumed was the head nerd, as he was holding a big leatherbound book and barking orders at the others, and tapped him on the shoulder.
What I intended to say was, ‘Hi, I don’t want to be rude, but my friends and I were walking past and we heard really loud screaming and thought something terrible was happening, so maybe it’s best to keep it down a bit.’
But all I got out was ‘Hi—’ before being immediately interrupted.
‘Sorry, I have a girlfriend. I’m not interested,’ he spat.
I was stunned. Not just because he had a girlfriend but because he was so sure I was approaching him for sex! The confidence he displayed almost made me want to have sex with him right then and there. It was very confusing. I ended up mumbling some sort of apology and slunk off back to my group of friends, feeling somehow less desirable than before.
I know I come off a little mean in that story, but at the time I remember having a revelatory thought: nerds can also be really mean.
There’s this narrative in storytelling that the nerdy kid who gets bullied is always in the right and the bully is always in the wrong. I think it’s unfair, because we all have the capacity to make each other feel bad. But it’s the nerds who did their schoolwork who are better equipped with the tools they need to tell their story, when they emerge on the other side of schooling. So they go on to write books and movies where the mean bullies are defeated and the nerd is revealed to be the hero.
The bullies I encountered, however, were generally from families where the parents were horrible or absent and gave their kid no boundaries, and because of this the kid rarely attained a tertiary education and usually ended up in an undesirable job. They were typically, therefore, unable to defend themselves when the victims of their bullying painted them as villains, born cruel. Bullies rarely get to explain where they’re coming from. If you had parents who treated you with neglect and forced you to grow up quickly, then it’s no wonder why you’d get to school and be infuriated by the confidence of someone who had parents who packed their lunches perfectly every day and told them they were brilliant.
I grew up in a very low socio-economic area and I was friends with bullies. I was also bullied, sometimes by those very same friends. There was a girl called Sarah who I was good friends with for many years, though she really terrified me. My mum was always hesitant about letting me go to Sarah’s house, because it smelt like cigarettes and had walls with holes in them where people had punched them in. Every time we were there, the house was full of adults who were clearly drunk and on drugs, but it didn’t matter to us at the time; it just meant we could stay up late and drink cans of Coke and no one would say anything. I loved it.
Over the next few years, my friend transitioned into what could really only be described as my bully. She used to push me over into bushes and spread vicious rumours about me. I could never understand what it was about me that had pissed her off so much.
It wasn’t just me copping the brunt though – she had it out for everyone, especially one girl who was a bit of a nerd. One day, the girl decided she’d had enough of Sarah’s shit and announced at school that she was going to kill herself, then ran off in a big dramatic display. The teachers were freaking out because they had found an envelope in her locker that they’d assumed was a suicide note, but they couldn’t be sure because no one could read Elvish (a fictionalised language from The Lord of the Rings). In order to locate her, the teachers had to find a kid with the credentials to decipher this note, and become bullies themselves to get that kid to translate it. They immediately singled out a boy in the year below, because his name was Lorkin and he had bacne, and they were right, he was fluent in Elvish. After some cajoling and a few threats, the boy duly told them where the note said she’d be.
After they found her, I remember the way my drama teacher, Mrs McCarthy, who was openly drunk during school hours, announced it to us. ‘She’s been found at the back of the oval,’ she slurred, matter-of-factly.
We all gasped and asked if she was okay.
Mrs McCarthy snapped, ‘Oh, she’s fine. She’d taken four Panadols; she probably felt better.’ Then she knocked back another swig of whiskey from her coffee cup.
The girl who was bullied by Sarah is now thriving, by the way. The last I heard of her, she was engaged and working as a tour guide operator in the Whitsundays.
Months after the incident in the park, I was back in Brisbane telling an old friend about the nerd who had belittled and sexually rejected me, and how shocked I had been at my deep desire to bully him.
She said that, funnily enough, she’d run into our school bully/friend Sarah at a shopping centre a few weeks earlier. They’d sat down for a coffee and caught up on the past eight years or so, which had turned out to be pretty full on for Sarah. She was now a mum and had been dealing with severe drug and alcohol problems for a number of years.
Meanwhile, the only thing my friend was suffering from was a huge bout of middle-class guilt, as she revealed to Sarah that she’d lived in Paris for a couple of years and dropped out of multiple university degrees.
As they were getting ready to wrap things up, Sarah had apparently gone a bit quiet and then asked my friend if she could tell her something. She went on to explain that her drug and alcohol problems had stemmed from the fact that, at age thirteen, unbeknownst to us all, her mum had been letting her stepdad’s friends have sex with her in exchange for drugs and money. She said that she’s always felt bad about how much of a bitch she was to everyone at school, and that whenever she gets the opportunity to apologise, she does.
When I heard this, just like that, the things Sarah had said to me during school didn’t seem so bad. Of course she had bullied us – she had every right to be irrationally angry. Yet, for many people in our year, including myself up until that moment, she’d been immortalised as simply a bad person who had got what she deserved in life.
It’s a symptom of binary storytelling in movies and TV where the bullies are bad and the kids they bully are good and deserve justice that we tend to make those same assumptions about people. But life is much more complicated than that. And I’m not trying to downplay the devastating effect bullying can have on people. For so many people like myself, being bullied by a kid at high school will remain one of the greatest injustices they will ever suffer in life. It’s not fair to be bullied.
But it’s a privilege to come from a home where things are fair.
For me, my fear of Sarah was not just about what she would do or say to me, but how completely unfazed she was by the consequences she might face. It turned out Sarah had been completely unfazed because the worst punishment anyone could give her was nothing compared to what was happening at home.
So thank you, nerd in the park – your actions got me thinking more about how we think of bullies and, in the process, I was able to forgive Sarah and understand what motivated her all those years ago. I now look back on that time and think how lucky I am that I didn’t have a reason to be a bully myself.
The woman in the castle
A few years ago, I received a terse phone call from my dad. He informed me that my stepmum had been involved in an accident.
When I asked him what had happened, he began clearing his throat over and over again. After a few attempts at getting the story out of him while he steadfastly avoided my questions, I just began naming potentially affected body parts. ‘Head? Stomach? Her leg? Her foot?’
There was a long silence. ‘Ahh, a bit higher than her foot,’ he replied.
Eventually he came out with the whole story. She’d gone on a ride on their neighbour’s new scooter in her Peter Alexander pyjamas, fallen off, and in the process had somehow managed to vaginally impale herself. I imagine it was on the kickstand, or perhaps even
the handlebar – I’ve never asked what it was on exactly, because I don’t really want the answer. As ridiculous as the incident sounded, it was a serious accident that required her to go to hospital so they could make sure there hadn’t been any internal damage. A truly suburban nightmare.
My stepmum never wanted to discuss her scooter accident, which was fair enough. That is, until one night after she’d downed four margaritas, and clearly decided to try to own the narrative.
It’s my belief that everyone, given the right stimulants, can perform, and this was her night. She got up and began strutting around the living room, regaling me and four family friends with a fairly sanitised version of events. Then, sensing she needed a strong closer, she ended the story with, ‘So yes, basically I fucked a scooter!’
It was a shocking finale. My fairly conservative stepmum, who had been quite proud of the fact that in her whole life she’d only slept with two men, had now publicly revealed her third conquest.
I’d like to mention that this whole scooter incident happened only months before the holiday where my dad jumped into a pool without checking underwater and split his ball sack wide open, requiring twelve stitches. Interestingly, I didn’t have to pry much that time to get the information out of him.
‘Split my sack open!’ he sang out over the phone.
These two incidents also occurred in the same year my stepmum was attacked by a bat in the middle of Brisbane city in broad daylight.
This series of cursed events is important to keep in mind as I detour a little bit to tell you about the woman to whom the scooter belonged.
I had always been fascinated by this woman with long, black, shiny hair who lived near my dad and stepmum out in the suburbs, in a gothic-style house that looked like a castle and dwarfed all the other houses nearby. The life of the woman who lived there looked so traditionally perfect that I knew it couldn’t possibly be the case – but, then again, maybe it was. She and her husband had two cute kids, aged one and five, and two matching BMWs that sat side by side in their tidy garage. She’d smile easily to all the neighbours.
As I was walking past one day, she called me over and asked if I’d be interested in doing some nannying for her. I was eighteen, needed the money and was desperate to get a look inside the house, so I agreed.
‘Wonderful, darling. Come over tomorrow morning,’ she said.
The next day, I rang the doorbell a few times. No one answered, so I walked around the back and found her drunk and completely naked with her two kids, splashing around in the pool. It occurred to me in that moment, as I stared at both of her nipples, that I didn’t actually know her name.
My first job that day was to order a bucket of KFC and run her a hot bath, while also preparing lunch for the kids, during which time she poured herself several more glasses of wine. I made sure to heap the bath with soap so there would be lots of bubbles to cover her enormous breasts (which were an anniversary gift from her husband, she later told me). After the kids had eaten and I’d successfully put them both down for a nap, she put on a luxurious robe, took me by the hand and walked me through the house, showing me all of her wonderful things and recounting stories of her youth. She unapologetically told me about her desire from age sixteen to find a rich man, and how this had led to years of coke-fuelled parties on yachts, and spending her twenties dating sixty-year-old finance men who still ended up leaving her for someone even younger. The whole thing just felt so clichéd to me. If you wrote her as a character in a script, you’d be told she lacked depth and believability.
She despondently toyed with her crystal glassware and then brightly declared that I should come upstairs and go through her wardrobe with her. We were upstairs for barely a minute before she burst into tears, and then broke into a watery smile and insisted that I have her diamond necklace and fur coat.
This would happen like clockwork each time I went over: she’d drink, take me upstairs and, with her wild, drunken eyes boring into mine, she’d push her luxurious items into my hands. It was sort of understood that I’d politely accept them, then return them all the next morning, when she’d be waiting sheepishly at the door, ready to take them from my arms, while whispering urgent apologies about her behaviour the previous day.
I understood that her desire to give me her things came from a need to feel close to someone, and it made me sad when I realised that this must be how a lot of rich people tried to form intimacy. Didn’t she realise we could just bitch about someone we both knew?
She had a kind heart, but she was so relentlessly stupid and I came to resent her for how powerless she was. One glass of wine in, she’d brag about how she’d successfully bagged a rich man, then four glasses in, she’d curl up into a ball and tell me she had nothing of her own and couldn’t even use a computer.
‘Darling, I can’t even type. I never had to.’ She couldn’t help but boast even when she was trying to feel sorry for herself.
Her husband was a puny man with wispy blond hair and zero chin, who, instead of being a decent person and providing his kids with any love or guidance whatsoever, made the choice to be a massive arsehole instead. One of my jobs at the end of the day was to vacuum all the dirt and dust off the ground. To make sure I’d done the job properly, when he got home he’d take his socks off and walk around to check there was nothing underfoot. One night I had run out of time between making dinner and putting the kids to sleep, so I’d not been able to get to the vacuuming. He stood there, barefoot, in a three-piece suit, screaming at the top of his lungs over and over again, ‘There’s dirt under my feet!’
He was a caricature of a bad husband, a man who I felt was incapable of showing genuine affection. He spoke to his wife like she was a work-experience kid on her first day at the office, getting everything wrong and messing up coffee orders. There was no respect or tenderness in his tone of voice, and there would be a collective household shudder when we heard his car pull up at night.
I always found it strange that he couldn’t even pretend to be a loving man in the presence of me, an outsider. If he was happy to act like this in front of me, I couldn’t bear to think what life with him was like behind closed doors.
In 2017, my family was on some fabulous holiday overseas and I was at home in Sydney, toying with the idea of taking a weed edible given to me by a comedian from the US. He had explicitly warned me I should only take half at most. The thing was, I had nothing on all day, so I didn’t see the harm in taking all of it – my nature has always been to do more of something to ensure I don’t end up with half the experience.
I ate the whole thing before lunchtime and felt it almost immediately, a warm numbing sensation crashing through my extremities, and I knew immediately that I should have listened to him. By 3 pm, I could barely move, yet my mind was racing a million miles an hour. Complete paranoia took over me. I began sending strange messages to past boyfriends, explaining how they’d ‘never really been there for me’, then listening to Blink-182 songs before bursting into tears at the thought of my mum making dinner for herself.
Around 5 pm, I gave in to the heavy sensation weighing down on me and fell into a deep sleep, feeling like I’d never wake up. I did wake up, though, around 10 pm. I looked at my phone and among the confused messages from people I hadn’t talked to in years were four missed calls from the woman in the gothic-style castle house. I remembered that my stepmum had told me if I needed to get into their house or wanted to get in contact with them, she’d given their holiday information and keys to the woman up the street. ‘You know, the one you used to babysit for?’
I sat upright. I hadn’t talked to her properly for seven years. What did she want from me? Then I remembered my accident-prone family and my residual paranoia got me thinking that this woman might be trying to contact me to tell me they had all died in some horrific turn of events. My heart was beating so fast I could barely use my fingers to call her back. When I eventually did, she picked up on the second ring.
‘Darling?�
� she said, her voice dripping with concern.
My eyes welled up. I couldn’t believe this was how I was going to find out my dad had died: stoned out of my mind, fingers covered in hours-old Cheezels dust.
‘Darling, I have something to tell you,’ she went on. ‘As you know your family are overseas, and . . .’
I held the phone away from my body while a silent sob erupted from me.
‘Darling? Darling?’ I could hear her repeat.
I bravely put the phone back to my ear.
‘Yes?’ I said, just wanting it to be over.
‘Darling . . . I didn’t have anyone else to call but I’ve finally done it. I’m leaving him.’
She was leaving her husband. She’d called me after seven years to tell me about her divorce.
‘Fucking hell!’ I exclaimed. Before she could respond, I hung up on her and fell back onto my bed.
It wasn’t her fault I was stoned and thought the worst, but I didn’t care. I was just so happy my clumsy family was alive.
So thank you to the woman in the big castle house for the harsh lesson that if someone tells you to take half of something, then just take half. They’re trying to help you.
My very poor sex education
I’m quite sexually repressed, broadly speaking. I haven’t always been, but I’m finding as I get older the whole concept of sex seems like too much bother.
I suppose a more accurate description of my feelings towards sex these days is that I’m not on the lookout to broaden my sexual horizon, and I often get sick of the idea that we have to push the boundaries every time we do it. I’m happy to admit and even commit to the page that I like the missionary position. I get sick of people bemoaning missionary and equating it to the flavour vanilla, which I also happen to think is pretty great. They are two equally great things that I can enjoy any night of the week.