Acknowledgments

by Becky Lucas

One Friday night, during a particularly frenzied text session, Nick told me he was going to be busking in the Valley Mall on Saturday morning and I should ‘come hang’. I began planning my outfit in my head as I messaged him saying that I’d do my best.

  I spent that whole Saturday wandering the city alone from 9 am to 4 pm keeping a lookout for him, while also trying to seem like I had things to do in the city in case he saw me from afar.

  I waited in line for a Krispy Kreme donut, which was something people did a lot in Brisbane. For a while there, you couldn’t get Krispy Kreme donuts unless a visiting relative brought them for you from Sydney or Melbourne. Thanks to this novelty, the first Krispy Kreme store in Brisbane constantly had a line and that made them seem so . . . exclusive. This may be another false memory, but I’m seventy per cent sure that at one point there was even a red velvet rope at the entrance of the store.

  After I’d done that, I really didn’t have a lot more to do, and my vagina was starting to chafe. I’d made a strange last-minute decision to shave it for the first time in my life and I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I think I missed a few sections of hair, which created a rough, abrasive situation that made it difficult for me to walk.

  Eventually I had to give up. I was already running late and would be in trouble if I didn’t check in with Mum soon, so I got on the bus home.

  As we were pulling away from the stop, I received a message from Nick that read, ‘Hey! How was your day? Ended up not busking . . . couldn’t be fucked haha.’

  And I sat there smiling so hard my face hurt. The fact that he’d thought to message me meant that the whole day had been worth it.

  There was eventually a second hookup that happened on one of our parents’ camping trips, just a couple of months before he was due to graduate from high school. I spent a few more months living off that memory, but I was starting to wonder whether I’d ever see him again. He had graduated, after all, and was now living in the real world, no longer obligated to attend family parties or holidays, which were just about the only times I ever saw him. Our text messages had become few and far between and he was constantly about to move to Melbourne or even overseas with his friends.

  The only pieces of information I could gather were from Nick’s vague Myspace updates or from overheard conversations between my mum and her friends. This was always a dangerous game as they had no idea how much I loved him, so I was privy to information that hadn’t been run through a filter aimed at protecting my feelings. I’d be sitting at the kitchen table and one of my mum’s friends would casually mention that Nick had a new girlfriend. Then six months later, I’d find myself sitting at the same table eating a cream finger bun and hear that they’d broken up, at which an evil smile would dance across my sugar-frosted lips.

  Then something truly miraculous happened. My mum ran into Nick busking outside of the shops near where I lived. He told her he was broke and that the move to Melbourne hadn’t been as smooth as he would have liked, which was why he had come back to Brisbane. There must be a surplus of optimism in the brains of musicians who move to big cities to pursue their art. There’s typically only a short amount of time between the moment you get off at Central Station, guitar case in hand, spinning around in wonderment at the Big Smoke, and the moment you realise you have no more money in your bank account and that, actually, Ben Harper covers probably aren’t going to cut the mustard.

  Upon hearing Nick’s plight, my mum told him he was welcome to come and live with us rent free until he got back on his feet.

  Even though I felt bad that Nick was having trouble financially, I couldn’t deny that this was really quite an unbelievable turn of events for me. My forever crush was moving into my actual house where I could get to him whenever I pleased, and I thought that was just great.

  Within a couple of weeks of living together and forcing occasional hookups, I wore him down into officially becoming my boyfriend. I suppose he felt bad for living rent free in our home and not making an honest woman out of me. So he begrudgingly let me call him my boyfriend and did the bare minimum that a boyfriend would do, and that was, as they say, good enough for me.

  After a couple of months of living with us, he moved into a share house not too far from us, just up the street, left for five blocks and right up the hill.

  The day he broke up with me, I stood outside his house, already nervous about seeing his twenty-something-year-old roommates. They were these two gorgeous Brazilian girls with bouncy hair, perfect skin and womanly bodies, who had both treated me with pity the last couple of times I had come over.

  Through the window, I could see Nick sitting at his kitchen table. He clocked me standing outside, poised to walk up the stairs into the house, and jumped up out of his chair and walked down to meet me, presumably to try to intercept me and prevent me from coming inside and making a scene in front of his friends.

  The flat he lived in had a communal area underneath where there were some old couches and candles and other bohemian party artefacts. I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to go downstairs with him; it was a great place to break up with someone. And he was definitely breaking up with me, because he’d never been so attentive and present before.

  The most painful thing for me in that moment was watching the person I loved breathe a sigh of relief that they finally did not have to spend time with me anymore. I resented being the subject of what no doubt would have been a household discussion about what he was about to do and how he was going to do it. He held my hand as he delivered a spiel about not being in the right place for a relationship. My lip started trembling the way they do in cartoons. I couldn’t control it no matter how hard I tried, and it became my main focus, instead of listening to Nick dance around the reasons he didn’t like me, which I already knew. I instead just kept trying to not let my lip tremble.

  At the end of it, he asked me if I had any questions.

  I said, ‘No, all good, that’s fine,’ and continued tensing my lip hard against my teeth.

  Afterwards, he gave me one of those big disgusting hippy hugs where they push their heart against yours, absolving himself of his guilt, and then walked me back up to the top of the street. I waved goodbye, then sobbed my heart out for the entire way home, my bottom lip now completely out of control.

  I was so sad that it felt otherworldly, but there was also an underlying sense of relief. It’s tiring knowing someone doesn’t love you back and there’s only so long you can do it to yourself. It wasn’t long, though, before the clarity of that revelation subsided and was replaced by a hard move into denial, where I began to convince myself that he’d eventually want me back.

  I gave him many opportunities to figure this out and threw myself in front of him as often as I could. In the last few months of high school, I found myself walking down his street on my way home from school ever so slowly, hoping to run into him. I must have made my mum detour past his place thousands of times, so I could try to get a peek inside his house and see who he was kissing nowadays. I stood at the back of concert halls and gigs I knew he was performing at and hung around afterwards, knowing that basic manners would force him to come over and say hello. I didn’t care that he wasn’t talking to me by choice. I was addicted to trying to make him love me.

  My younger sister Hannah called me the other day and asked my advice on how to play it cool in front of a boy who had rejected her. Before I could stop myself, I let out a laugh, which I immediately felt bad about – just because I’m old and emotionally calloused, doesn’t mean she is yet. I realised that for her and other young people, there is this idea that there is a solution to all of life’s problems out there and they just have to find it. My sister has been able to order Ubers since she was fifteen; she can look up the answer to almost anything on the internet; and if there’s something more complex she doesn’t know or fully understand, she can watch YouTube videos that will feed her opinions she can use as her own.

  I didn’t want to have to be the one t
o tell her that there is not and has never been a way to successfully play it cool around a guy you care about. You could not look at them all night and it would still seem glaringly obvious that you have feelings for them. The only time you will ever actually appear cool and aloof towards them is when you truly don’t care about them anymore, and then you don’t even get to enjoy it.

  And that’s what happened to me. You don’t get a letter or a notification telling you that you’re over someone. Sometimes you think you are and you’ll try to test yourself by looking at their social media profile or putting yourself in their presence again, which is when you’ll realise, no, those feelings are still there. But when they’re actually gone, you don’t even realise because you’ve forgotten to even think about it. After years of suffering and indignity, all of a sudden, it’s over.

  I realised it was over about eighteen months after we’d broken up. I was going to get something to eat with my mum and there he was, busking on the corner of two main streets, and I felt nothing. If anything, I was a little grossed out by his outfit, which was a loose hemp caftan paired with pants made from paisley patchwork. We didn’t cross the road to talk to him and instead kept walking on our side of the street to our destination.

  Okay, perhaps I wasn’t completely unmoved by the sight of him. It’s similar to when I see a Krispy Kreme donut with a ‘Quick sale’ sticker on it, haphazardly displayed on the counter of a 7-Eleven. I know Krispy Kreme donuts have lost their cultural currency, but I can still remember what it felt like to really want them.

  There’s a deep feeling of melancholy when you realise you aren’t in love with someone anymore. While it’s a relief to not be held prisoner by the idea of them, there is a sense of, Okay, well, what now? What do I think about when the bus is late, or when I can’t fall asleep? There’s also the fear that perhaps they’re the last person you’ll ever have strong feelings for, and maybe you’ll never feel anything as intense again for the rest of your life.

  By the time Mum and I were walking back to the car, Nick had just finished, and was putting cords and cables into little sections of his guitar case. Mum asked if he’d like a lift home and, looking pretty tired, he happily accepted her offer.

  As we were nearing his house, I began tensing up, realising that, to his knowledge, Mum had never been to his place. Nick had no idea about the daily drive-bys I insisted Mum do right after the breakup. I knew it would look suspicious if she knew where he lived and, just because I was over him, that didn’t mean I wanted him to know I’d driven down that road more times than I could count (or that I’d pissed on his car twice).

  I couldn’t explain any of this to my mum without Nick hearing me, so I tried my hardest to telepathically shoot her an urgent message. Maybe we were just in tune that day or perhaps my mum has had years of experience herself at trying to play it cool in front of guys. Whatever it was, I’ll be forever grateful to her for finding his eyes in the rearview mirror and feigning confusion.

  ‘Sorry, where is it? You’ll have to direct me.’

  Thank you to Nick for breaking up with me. I am open-minded, but there’s just no way I could have married a busker.

  Hens’ parties

  I’ve always hated the idea of hens’ parties. I think it’s their garish aesthetic – even when it’s done ironically, it still makes me feel uneasy. Or maybe it’s the idea that this is supposed to be the one ‘final hurrah’ for the bride-to-be, the ‘last time’ they’ll do shots before vomiting into a bucket by 9 pm.

  But the thing is, it’s not really a final hurrah like it used to be, when women were sold off along with a cow and a good set of riding boots. Nowadays, even when you’re married, you’re still allowed out of the house for a night out (if you’re lucky!). So, really, it just ends up being this fake celebration that you feel like you have to have fun at.

  I don’t like my fun being prescribed to me either. The idea that there is a time and place where we are all expected to get blind drunk and play games makes me immediately anxious. The whole lead-up to it feels so unnatural – and it doesn’t help that you’re usually required to deposit large sums of money into some girl’s bank account two weeks prior to the event. The girl organising the whole thing is always some girl you barely know, a wishy-washy work friend called Samantha who ends up planning four activities in one night, while you know you’re going to be exhausted by the end of the first activity. For some reason, we all have to drink cocktails, even if that’s not what you feel like, because ‘They’re fun!’ So after a night of drinking five litres of sugar syrup blended up into a fruit purée while teetering around on high heels, you end up with a pounding headache and feeling acidic.

  There also doesn’t seem to be much point to the whole exercise. Traditionally, the idea of the hens’ party was so women could share information on how to have a good marriage, and trade sex tips to keep their husbands happy. But since most hens aren’t getting married until they’re in their thirties these days, most of the attendees are either in admittedly shit marriages, still single or already divorced.

  It also feels like a fake performative way of getting back at the boys for their raucous bucks’ party, by insisting that we’re having just as much horny and hedonistic fun with a male stripper. But, to me, it’s not quite the same thing. The female body is just so beautiful that a girl writhing around in a G-string is objectively sexy for everyone, whereas when you see a man doing the same thing in a G-string, it makes you worry for him and his priorities. And in my experience, concern does not usually facilitate the feeling of horniness. If a man I didn’t know were to turn up and make me immediately horny, it wouldn’t be from showing me his abs – my sexuality is more complicated than that. He would need to do something like help me download a TV show I can’t find on any of the streaming services, or listen to a long and complicated story I’m telling and confirm that yes, I’m right, that person is an idiot.

  However, just because I don’t particularly like the idea of hens’ parties, doesn’t mean I haven’t ever had a good time at one. There was one hens’ party I went to years ago where, at one point in the night, I and four other girls had congregated at one area of the bar for a debrief. I’ve always wanted to be someone who can live in the moment, but unfortunately I fall into the category of ‘person who needs to discuss and dissect everything going on around me as it happens’. During this crucial meeting of the minds, we were spotted by an older man who looked like he’d have a few travel tips if anyone were going to Thailand.

  Now, I’m not usually the girl to point out a creep at the bar; in fact, I’ve always felt a bit left out whenever my friends complain that they’ve noticed a creep giving them the eye, because most of the time he hasn’t given me any attention whatsoever. Sometimes I’ve felt so excluded that I’ve even contemplated flirting with him simply so I can join in on admonishing him along with everyone else.

  For once though, it seemed like the creep was looking at all of us, which was really something! We felt his eyes on us as we continued to talk and managed to ignore him for about fifteen minutes until, mid-way through my sentence, I felt a tap on the shoulder. The creep had approached the group holding a tray of tequila shots he’d bought for us all.

  None of us felt like a tequila shot, nor did we want to accept a drink from a man who might think we owed him five minutes of conversation in return. Plus he gave us the feeling that if we took the shots, we’d eventually find ourselves stepping forward as a group, pointing at him and tearfully clutching each other while saying in unison, ‘Yes, your Honour, that’s him. That’s the man.’

  We shooed him away as compassionately as possible, claiming we didn’t like tequila. ‘But thank you anyway, sir,’ we said with the residual guilt that comes from saying no to a man who is offering you something.

  He took the shots and walked back to his seat where he sat down and proceeded to do the five tequila shots all by himself. I remember thinking that this was much better entertainment than any m
ale stripper could ever provide. A lonesome man at the bar downing nearly a quarter of a bottle of tequila to save face? Well . . . that was something that could make me horny.

  Thank you to hens’ parties for roping me into having ‘fun’ and providing me with a quintessential female experience I may not get to encounter if left to my own devices.

  Stevie Nicks

  In 2018, I saw Stevie Nicks in concert when she was touring Australia. I found myself captivated by the stories she would tell before she began singing. I loved listening to her acid-warped voice warbling on about her former flames, industry jealousies and drug-induced mental breakdowns. These stories made the following lyrics so much more revealing and intimate.

  It was especially helpful for me, because she was doing a lot of stuff from her new album, which I hadn’t listened to yet, and it usually takes me a few listens of any song to figure out if I like it or not. But with these little anecdotal introductions, I could focus less on whether I found the tune catchy and more on what the song was actually about. It’s great fun as an audience member to hear a song sung by the person who actually wrote the lyrics, and to feel like you’re being let in on a part of their life that meant so much to them that they were compelled to immortalise it in music.

  I do wonder, though, whether it’s as fun for the people who are being written about. Artists can’t exist in a vacuum; their craft is dependent on the world around them. If you happen to cross paths with an artist who turns your interaction into art, it must feel infuriating to see entire audiences accept the artist’s version of events – not even consciously but merely through the enraptured enjoyment of their art. It’s the equivalent of someone you’ve had a falling out with, who also happens to possess the gift of persuasive storytelling, getting to the party first and explaining what happened between you two before you’ve arrived.