by Becky Lucas
People always want to put down the things that are most popular, but vanilla has earned its spot at the top for a reason. It has classic appeal, it works well with other flavours, it doesn’t overpower the senses, and it doesn’t show off. People will always need vanilla as an option on days when mint choc chip or passionfruit swirl are too much.
And similarly, to bring it back to the missionary position, you can’t deny that without being able to come back to one of the classics, none of the other stuff would seem very exciting at all.
My first introduction to sex was during a backyard family gathering one sunny afternoon, when my three-year-old sister slithered up the fence and began rubbing herself up against the pool gate. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this; in fact, randomly humping things had sort of become her thing. My stepmum’s sister pointed it out with barely concealed shock and my stepmum, who was three gins to the wind at that point, told her to relax, ignore it, and just let her finish.
My stepmum’s reaction was uncommon. In my experience, most adults tended to freak out when they saw us kids displaying sexual behaviour, which I totally understand now, but we couldn’t understand what it was we were doing wrong. When I was in kindergarten, a boy named Zac approached me and asked if I’d like to see his penis and in return would it be okay if I showed him my vagina. It seemed like a pretty standard transaction, so I agreed, and we disappeared underneath the playground equipment where he pulled down his shorts and showed me his, quite frankly, tiny penis. I looked at it for a bit and then, remembering my part of the deal, dutifully lifted up my skirt to show him what I was working with, which was when the teacher found us. She immediately put me in timeout, and through the shutters, I watched, absolutely furious, as Zac continued to laugh and play with the other children on the slide and in the tyre tunnel.
Funnily enough, despite most adults’ discomfort when it comes to children and their sexual discoveries, parents are supposed to be the ones to teach you about sex. But when my friends and I try to recall what lessons we were taught about sex by our parents, it’s clear that none of them really figured out how best to do this. I have sympathy for parents who are supposed to carry out this monumental task – how exactly do you teach kids about something like sex? It reminds me of the time somebody asked me how I would describe the internet to a person in the 1500s. I didn’t know where to begin. It’s very hard to articulate something that is so complicated and hard to summarise – it’s just there, we’re all supposed to do it and it’s pretty good.
My boyfriend recalls his dad driving him to school at age ten and telling him that soon he was going to experience a pleasant sensation followed by a substance coming out of his penis. This abstract explanation left my boyfriend, whose pleasure still came mainly from the exchanging of Pokemon cards, thoroughly confused. A couple of weeks later, again while driving to school, his dad said that he’d talked to some of the men at work about their conversation and they’d all agreed that actually that advice was probably a couple of years too early.
‘Just forget I said anything,’ his dad said awkwardly, and after that he never mentioned anything to do with sex again.
This seems to be a common thread I’ve stumbled across. Parents, perhaps wanting to get the sex talk out of the way before they receive the withering stare of a fully fledged teenager, give too much information too soon. I remember being not even twelve and my mum telling me that sex feels better once the man has made the woman orgasm. It felt to me that instead of being given ‘the sex talk’, I was being told something that more resembled sex tips and tricks. I’m surprised she didn’t wink and tell me that sex actually feels better without a condom.
The closest my dad got to giving me the sex talk was the day he was driving me home from school and the song ‘My Neck, My Back (Lick It)’ by Khia came on the radio. We both sat next to each other in uncomfortable silence, my dad’s knuckles white on the steering wheel, until he snapped and changed stations. He loudly declared that Beethoven would be spinning in his grave – a statement that was as cringeworthy to me as the experience we’d just been through together.
When it came to sex, having been told almost nothing of value by our parents, it’s no wonder we were left to piece together what we could from movies, TV shows and out-of-context conversations. But this obviously left quite a few gaps in our knowledge.
When my mum went away on tour and decided to leave me at home, I would often stay with a Czechoslovakian woman named Adrianna, who had a daughter my age also called Adrianna, and a son, Tomas, who was a bit younger. The first time I met her daughter, she arrived with her mother at our house and we shyly introduced ourselves. After my mum and and the older Adrianna spoke for a while, the daughter asked her mum when she was going to get her surprise.
‘This is your surprise: me introducing you to your new friend. She’s going to come and stay with us for a few weeks,’ her mother replied.
The daughter burst into tears and had a full five-minute breakdown while I watched on, sympathetic but slightly put out. I still don’t like it when I’m with a friend on my way to a party or gathering and they call the host and say, ‘And you’ll never guess who I’m bringing!’ or words to that effect. Why even give the person a chance to get excited only to be disappointed by my presence? Better to not say anything at all and if they’re happy to see me, that’s their own business.
In conjunction with the Adriannas’ general cynicism and casual depression, which most Slavic or Eastern European people seem to have, Adrianna’s husband/dad had just recently taken off back to his country that didn’t exist anymore, which did nothing to help improve their moods. Despite this, I loved staying with their family and, having Russian family of my own, their dispositions suited me just fine. Adrianna and I became fast friends and over the years we spent thousands of hours in each other’s company, playing as many games as we could.
Like most kids, we were vaguely familiar with the concept of sex, so one of our favourite games was ‘having sex’, where Adrianna and I would take our clothes off, get under the doona cover and just lie there together. As both our parents were divorced, the game would then include a fiery argument where we’d both agree that ‘it wasn’t working’. Then we would ‘break up’ and have a discussion about who was going to take the kids on what weekend.
In fact, the clearest sexual education I ever received came from my friend Sophie. In Year Nine, she told me that she’d been making herself orgasm with her hand. She said that she’d been able to have orgasms ever since she was much younger and would mount the pool cleaner as it jigged along doing its thing. That made me think of my little sister and the pool gate, and I started to wonder whether I was the only one in the world who’d had a platonic relationship with the pool.
That night, I went to bed and, following Sophie’s instructions, tried to have an orgasm of my own. While it all felt quite good, it wasn’t really anything to go on about the way Sophie had. The next day, I told this to Sophie. She said that I hadn’t actually had one and when I did, I would know. She said I just had to push through and keep going and that eventually it would work. For the next couple of nights, I came close to something, but I knew it wasn’t it. Then one night I felt I was onto a good thing and then it kept getting better and better and then it happened, and I finally understood what she meant when she said that I’d know.
To be perfectly honest, I’m glad I didn’t have parents who taught me about sex in a normal and healthy way. I quite like the old-fashioned way of figuring it out for yourself with the help of fellow misinformed friends. I know that correct parenting these days probably means uncomfortable yet informative conversations that lead to young people being equipped with a healthy view of sex, but I think I prefer the shameful secretive way that I found out about it all. There have to be some things that continue to carry shame; it’s a tradition. Plus shame can be good as a backup for when guilt isn’t enough. Because, let me tell you, once I learnt how to make myself orgasm,
I was an animal. Sure, I felt guilty for how many times I would do it in a day, sometimes running off to the bathrooms during school to do it. But it was shame that stopped me from rubbing myself up against the pool gate.
So thank you to my poor sex education for providing me with the opportunity to figure out my own personal journey, which has ultimately led me to my boring, safe, Nicole Kidman-esque sexuality.
The worst gigs of my life: part one
When you start out in comedy, you’re pretty desperate for two things: stage time and money. And in those early days, if there’s the promise of both, it’s incredible what gigs you’ll say yes to. Which is how I ended up saying yes to performing at a Mexican food franchise in the middle of the day to promote their new three-dollar taco meal.
This sort of thing gets offered to comedians all the time. Someone who works in events or PR will go to a great night of comedy and marvel at how it all seems so off-the-cuff and easy. Then, after about three beers or so, they’ll think, why not use this to promote their product?
The truth is that good comedy happens in places where someone has put a lot of thought into the sound, the lighting, the way people are seated and the ease at which you can get a drink, and if all of those things are just right, then maybe, just maybe, it works.
The exact pitch for this gig was that this particular chain wanted to get a different comedian to perform at every store on the same day all across Australia. They figured these impromptu shows would be an uproarious success and that the randomness of it was sure to go viral.
This sounded like a terrible idea to everyone who was asked to do it, but the fee was five hundred dollars and a free meal, so nearly every comedian they approached said yes. The problem was that there were simply not enough professional comedians to have one at each of their stores Australia-wide, so, in the end, most of the people who ended up doing it were very new to comedy, including myself.
Most comedians got to perform in their local restaurant, or at least one relatively close by, so it wasn’t that big of a deal if it didn’t go well – they could simply eat their free meal and slink out afterwards, five hundred dollars richer. But, for some reason, I was asked to perform at a store in a town in regional Queensland. I was to be flown two and a half hours north to do ten minutes of stand-up comedy to a bunch of unsuspecting customers who were just there to wolf down a secret burrito in their lunch break.
I boarded the plane, not knowing what I was in for but thinking that as long as there were four walls, a microphone and a speaker, it couldn’t be too bad. Once I landed, I turned on my phone and was bombarded with texts from my comedian friends, who regaled me with horror stories from their gigs thus far. Some had turned up to stores where the staff had no idea what was happening, and there was no microphone or space for them to perform. Luckily, most of those who encountered this scenario were turned away and told they would still get paid, which is the ideal outcome.
Others had performed anyway and been mercilessly bullied by passers-by. One of my friends did the gig at one of the franchises situated in an outdoor mall. He told me there were kids on bikes doing laps around him, calling him a ‘fuckin’ poof’. At one point, he thought they’d gone for good, but they had just left to rally more of the troops and returned with ten or so more kids who had some of their own customised insults ready to go.
These stories filled me with dread, but also some hope that maybe I would also be turned away – that way I could fly home and still pocket the money without having to humiliate myself.
I waited in the pick-up area for the franchisee, who was going to drive me to and from the airport as had been arranged by the promoters. After waiting a while, I eventually heard four vicious beeps that came from a silver Toyota Camry.
‘G’day, I’m Trudi! Get in!’ barked the driver, a woman in her mid-fifties with a face painted like a tiger.
I got in the car and it became clear that I would not be as lucky as some of the others. In fact, Trudi couldn’t wait to tell me that her store was extremely prepared for today and very excited to have a comedian come and perform!
‘We had a big staff meeting about it last night,’ she said excitedly, as I began experiencing the early stages of a panic attack. ‘We can’t wait to see the comedy. We’ve put up balloons, we’ve got a face painter,’ she jabbered on, pointing at her face like I might have thought that was her regular day look.
I tried to match her enthusiasm by asking questions. ‘So when we get to the restaurant, what—’
She held a hand up to stop me. ‘Oh, it’s not a restaurant, darl. We’re in the food court in a shopping centre.’
My heart sank.
‘We’ve put everything into the place. It’s been a struggle, but we’re finally starting to see some returns. Mexican food is only getting more and more popular. But my husband’s a cunt – you’ll see, biggest cunt you’ll ever meet.’
As much as I had been dreading the gig, I had at least envisaged doing the show at an actual restaurant with a little stage area and a good sound system. But when we arrived, I realised she wasn’t lying – it was literally in a food court, sandwiched between a Terry White chemist and a McDonald’s.
I tried to keep calm and look as though I was a professional, but inside I was a nervous wreck. Trudi didn’t pick up on my energy at all and instead began eagerly introducing me to the employees: a couple of pimply teens and an older Korean woman who looked very uncomfortable with having to have her face painted.
I briefly thought about getting my face painted too. How good is the artist? I wondered. Can he make me look like a completely different person? Perhaps I can convince people that I’m Carl Barron?
I wanted to throw myself in front of a car so I wouldn’t have to perform. Instead I was plonked down at a plastic table and chairs in the food court and handed a chicken burrito, which I choked down while going over my very limited material, trying to figure out what set could possibly work here, considering my act at the time centred mostly around my vagina and the men who’d been inside it. I looked around – the only other people in the almost-deserted food court were some tradies in hi-vis singlets looking at their phones, a couple of ratbags who looked like they should have been at the magistrates court rather than the food court, and a woman and her child who were sitting in stony-faced silence eating their McDonald’s Happy Meals. None of these people looked like they were up for an impromptu comedy show. You show me someone on their lunch break who wants to make eye contact with anyone, let alone an inexperienced comedian like myself.
I continued to spiral. Every now and then I’d look up from my table and Trudi would be watching me, her gleeful face beaming like crazy over the glass countertop. Each time we made eye contact, she’d give me the double thumbs-up. I’d meekly return the thumbs up, arrange my face into the best version of a smile I could muster, and then keep obsessively scrolling my phone, as news of my friends’ cancelled gigs continued to roll in.
Eventually Trudi’s cunt husband came over to me, wheeling a little portable speaker with a microphone attached, like the ones used by people who spruik products outside of men’s clothing stores that cater to fellows on the larger side.
‘That’s my microphone, is it?’ I laughed as he brought it over.
‘Yeah, is that gonna work for you?’ he replied with not even a hint of a smile. I could tell that it was going to have to work for me.
‘Trudi reckons you should start in the next five minutes,’ he said, then he walked away. I sat next to my little speaker with an attached microphone, feeling like I was about to be taken to the gallows.
The actual ‘performance’ is a bit of blur – my brain simply won’t allow me to access the exact memory of what happened lest it send me to a loony bin. But here’s what I remember: I stood up with resolve and wheeled the speaker through the table and chairs, trying not to knock into anyone. I eventually ended up in a spot halfway between the counter of the Mexican place and where the food court seati
ng began. I timidly began the official spiel about the new taco meal that I’d been given by the promoters, and then explained that what was happening here was happening nationwide and there was a hashtag people could use if they wanted to ‘tweet about it’. I saw an elderly woman shaking her head as she packed up her handbag and walked away, and who could blame her – her husband had probably died in a war for my freedom to do this.
I then awkwardly launched into the first minute of my stand-up routine, which you could barely hear over the din of the shopping centre music. At first, there were a few middle-aged people who smiled at me encouragingly, but once I told my first dirty joke, all goodwill was lost. The mother put her hands over her child’s ears and they walked away. She turned back for a moment to give me a look that was far dirtier than my joke.
I looked away from her and locked eyes with a fifty-something-year-old man who had joined the chorus of people forlornly shaking their heads at me. He kept clutching at his wife’s arm, as though checking to make sure his idea of what a woman should be was still real. I tried to keep going, but the microphone was crackling in and out, and people kept standing up to leave or, worse, chatting among themselves, obviously bored by my anguish.
I thought about Jesus receiving his lashes in public. It must have gone on for some time, and surely after the first horrific fifteen minutes, people started to get bored and left. Not that I’m comparing myself to Jesus, but if you’re suffering in public, you at least want people to be interested in it. It’s somehow worse for them to be bored by it.
It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, made even worse by the fact that after two minutes or so, Trudi came over to me and said, ‘That’s okay, love, that’s enough. It’s not working.’