The Full Catastrophe

by Rebecca Huntley

  In the midst of all of this came the abuse. The MRA (Men’s Rights Activists) army was deployed. Thousands and thousands of comments and emails and tweets from men who took issue with anyone saying that they did not have the right to the time and attention of any woman in public, any time, anywhere. Most of them assumed I was a man, and a man saying these things to other men sent them into a kind of collective fury and rage. Vitriol. Threats of violence. Dick pics. Disgusting screen caps of women’s faces with ejaculate all over them. Jokes about the size of my penis. I had to look up the words ‘chode’ and ‘cuck’ and ‘neckbeard’ and ‘white knight’. My favourite insult was ‘Dickless wonder’. I think that would make a great t-shirt slogan, right? Dickless Wonder, that’s me. I like it.

  I got death threats. Slurs, levelled not just at me, but also at the many, many women and girls who were commenting on my page as well.

  But in the midst of the misogyny and entitlement and abuse there emerged a vital conversation. Women telling their own stories about unsolicited attention. On buses and streets, at work, in parks, on aeroplanes and trains – everywhere. It had started when they were ten or eleven years old, some women said. It happens every day, they said. A real and powerful and painful conversation grew by the minute. I was moved and awed and honoured to host it.

  I became a kind of accidental moderator. I deleted any comment that included the words ‘pussy’, ‘bitch’, ‘cunt’, ‘faggot’ or ‘feminazi’. I erased anything that included a rape threat or was overtly rude. Hundreds and hundreds a day. I got a repetitive strain injury that still ails me to this day (they call it Millennial Thumb) from swiping and hitting ban delete so many times on my iPhone. I wanted the conversation to be kept safe enough for women to come and share their stories.

  Every morning upon waking I would delete nasty comments for a couple of hours, and then several times during the day. The misogynists were especially active in the EU and Australia during the Canadian night.

  One morning I awoke to an email that read I Love Dick in the subject line. I sighed and swiped left to delete it, but luckily something else caught my eye: new Amazon television series by producer of Transparent, Jill Solloway.

  Apparently, she had seen me on YouTube or somewhere, and she wanted me to come and audition to play the part of a – get this – butch writer living in an Airstream trailer. Play? I thought. I was perfect for this role. I would be playing Kevin Bacon’s love rival. Story of my life, I thought.

  I enlisted the help of an actor friend and she coached me for my big audition. But I never heard back, so I can only assume at this point that I did not get the part.

  A couple of days ago my original post was picked up again by a huge online feminist news site, and the slew of abusive comments and name calling has begun anew. So I know my shot at the Hollywood big time is coming around again soon. Any time now I will get the audition call.

  Orange is the New Black and The Handmaid’s Tale, I await your correspondence.

  And this time, I am ready.

  Stung

  Santilla Chingaipe

  FROM AS FAR back as I can remember, I’ve never liked maths. I had some great maths teachers during my school years, but even their support wasn’t enough to get me to like the subject as much as many of my friends did. I enjoyed every other subject, but dreaded maths. I was okay at numbers but the harder the subject got, the less interested I became.

  It didn’t help that one of my close friends, Kylie, was a maths whiz. She was one of those students who always got full marks. A bad result for her was ninety-eight out of a hundred. When I reached high school, I found solace in a group of friends who also hated the subject and we’d wear the pitiful grades we got with pride. I stopped taking the subject seriously and would average twenty-eight out of a hundred in most tests. I was great at science and arts subjects but for reasons unexplained, logic wasn’t my strongest asset at that age.

  One day, a boy I had a crush on was moved into my maths class. Suddenly, my interest in this subject I’d barely bothered with went up. Not only was this boy in my class, he was also really good at the subject – annoyingly so. Just like Kylie.

  One day after class, I noticed that he had stayed back to talk with some of the other students. So, as any reasonable teenager in my position would do, I came up with a plan that would hopefully increase my interaction with the cute boy and require minimal effort in applying my maths skills. I decided to use this opportunity after class to have a chat to him about music and about how great I thought the West Coast Eagles were (even though I was a staunch Fremantle Dockers supporter) and dazzle him with my personality. Then I could go back to not caring about maths.

  The plan seemed to work. I’d spend a bit of time after every class joining in the post-maths class discussion with enthusiasm. It was all going well until one day, Cute Boy, feeling competitive after Kylie beat him in the last test, suggested that we, as a group of exceptional maths students, share our test scores after our next maths test to determine once and for all who the top student was. As far as they knew, I was just as good as any of them at the subject.

  Panic kicked in and I suggested we all knew it was between him and Kylie because the teacher always announced the top scores to the class. Cute Boy disagreed, arguing that if we tallied the last few results and figured out the average, that would determine conclusively who was the better student. Everyone else seemed to agree and so there I was, terrified not only at the thought of having to sit a test I didn’t want to, but also at the prospect of revealing my previous scores to this group who thought I was just as good at maths as they were.

  As test day approached, I grew increasingly scared. I’d made good progress getting to know the cute boy and felt I was so close to him finally asking me out. I couldn’t embarrass myself in front of him and everyone else in the group, so I thought up another plan. I knew it would take a miracle to raise my marks from averaging 30 per cent to 90 per cent in my next test. It would require a lot of study and I didn’t have enough time. I thought I could fake an injury or, at the very least, cause slight injury to my arm so I would have to sit out the test.

  I settled for the latter as my parents would cotton on to the fake injury and I’d get in trouble. I knew I was allergic to wasp stings and I also knew I wasn’t allergic to bees, as they’d stung me before and they usually only left minor swelling. My plan required being around bees and they’d have to sting my right hand to ensure I was out of the game.

  The morning of test day, I made my way to the park closest to my school in search of a bee colony. I knew that I’d been stung before on a hill while picking daisies. I decided to search for said hill, only to discover there weren’t any daisies. I did notice a few bees hovering at the foot of the hill. I dropped my school bag and rolled down the hill, ensuring that my right hand was closest to the bees. Unfortunately, all this seemed to do was ward off the bees and ensure I was covered in grass stains. Just as I was getting up, I noticed a colony of bees swarming next to the tree above my head. I then flapped my right hand to ensure I was in their path, hoping I’d get stung. After what felt like an eternity of jumping up and down and waving my hand around, nothing happened.

  Frustrated and running late for school, I picked up a branch and tried to knock the hive to force the bees to swarm out. Just as I was about to hit it, I felt a sharp pain on my hand – I had been stung. I felt very proud of myself and couldn’t believe my genius plan had worked. As the pain intensified, I looked down at my hands, only to realise I had been stung on the wrong hand.

  I walked to school and the nurse managed to remove the stinger and iced the swollen finger to help ease the pain. I hoped she’d see me suffering and send me home to rest up. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to save me from sitting the test and she quickly ushered me out of her office, leaving me no option but to head to maths class. I took my seat and didn’t speak to anyone, and avoided eye contact with Cute Boy. I hadn’t planned on sitting the test, meaning I
hadn’t studied, and to this day cannot remember if I answered anything on the test paper.

  When the class ended, I quickly ran out, and from then on avoided spending time with the group. Miraculously, the thought of being embarrassed in front of Cute Boy again forced me to try a little bit harder.

  I did improve – slightly.

  Bottomless

  Alannah Hill

  I WAS BORN WITHOUT a bottom.

  I’ll repeat that sentence. I was born without a bottom. Not a bottom to be seen. Not a bottom to be heard. Not a bottom to be ever spoken about. I was what is uncommonly referred to as ‘Bottomless’.

  For those unfamiliar with this scientific term, bottomlessness is, in fact, a rare, little-known condition that means one never, ever mentions their own bottoms, toilets or the bottoms of others. Bottomlessness is believed to be a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder response to repressed childhood memories so very gut-wrenching as to defy repression! My PTSD responses to bottoms, toilets and poo were set years earlier during my collapsible earthquake childhood in rural Tasmania.

  To the outside world, I appeared to be growing up nicely in a run-down milk bar with my family in Penguin. But in reality, I was growing up rather unnicely in an abusive family that ignored me. The ruthless civil war of my parents’ colossal marriage mistake had set brothers against brothers, sister against sister, parents against their own. My brothers ghosted through the milk bar’s cramped quarters like three mysterious giants, no longer able to contain the anger and rage within. All three were possessed with secret powers I had little hope of attaining. My sister and I barely spoke, and my father was rarely home. My mother was always home – waiting for her prey.

  We were instructed by our parents not to trust or talk to each other, and with their round-the-clock encouragement it actually worked. We discovered it was the one activity we did together really, really well. My mother’s histrionic voice made me quake inside but I was bomb-struck by my father’s apocalyptic moods.

  Upon hearing my mother’s shrill account of my father’s impending arrival home, we all knew to run for the hills.

  ‘Your FATHER’S home! Your FATHER’S HOME … he’s in the driveway, OH MY LORD … somebody HELP me! Your FATHER is getting out of the car … he’s coming up the STEPS … dear LORD … he’s WALKING in the door. Your FATHER is IN THE HOUSE. Your father’s HOME!! Lanah, if you need to go to the toilet, go now! I’m timing you!’

  Our toilet sat on four red bricks. The underside of the seat was stained a nasty dark yellow. I remember trying to wipe that stain away with bleach, metho and even turpentine, but nothing wiped that stain away. The toilet and four bricks sat on bug-infested seagrass matting, blackened with butted-out cigarettes and grey ash. The old-fashioned toilet chain was broken, which meant our toilet was often bogged. Toilet paper was scarce.

  I remember listening to the despairing moans and bottomless grunts gasping for air from behind the toilet door. My father read the newspaper, smoked and hid in the toilet for up to three hours a day. My brothers smoked and flicked ash on the seagrass matting for up to two hours a day. My mum smoked and cried in the toilet when no one else was using it.

  When I was a child my mum and Nan told me to keep very quiet whenever sitting on a toilet seat. ‘God is watching you, Lanaaah! God can go anywhere! Just you remember, young lady, God is everywhere. He can see everything you’re doing.’

  I believed them.

  I believed God could see through the toilet door. I believed he was watching every bad thing I did. It got so as I could barely breathe. And so, afraid to even move, often, I did nothing. I stopped eating food and lived on lollies. I was bottomless.

  My mum took a spooky pride in nurturing my fear of all things ‘toiletry’. She loved to sneak up on me, flick my loose pyjama bottoms, shriek and ask, ‘How’s ya crack, Lanaaaaaah? How’s your smelly old crack, dear?’

  If Mum saw my attempts to flee from the toilet arena, she’d quickly intervene, hands poised on hips. ‘How did you GO IN there, dear? Have you got untreatable haemorrhoids, dear?’

  Mum’s fascination with bowels and bowel movements knew no limits. She believed that if you hadn’t been given the gift of untreatable haemorrhoids, a prolapse, a nervous breakdown or chronic constipation by the time you were fifteen years old, you were simply … not living! One of Mum’s happiest moments was when she told me about our neighbour Francine, who had just been admitted to the Burnie hospital with a case of untreatable haemorrhoids. Mum laughed for the first time in months when Francine told her they were the size of a bunch of grapes.

  I stopped eating grapes and concentrated on my dream of becoming an international MTV star.

  Paradoxically, the toilet was also my comfort place. A place I hid whenever I felt trouble looming. I learnt to cover my shut-up fear while I hid by cleaning that little throne of hell. Untoward, unrecognisable floating horrors were left drowning in the toilet bowl.

  I always felt rather unwell in my stomach, but I persevered, and miraculously landed on a winning formula. I liked to call my winning formula Scoop and Throw. The untoward, unrecognisable horrors were thrown through the shattered windows. I’d watch them fall disgracefully onto the muddy lawn below. Nobody noticed I had created a home-made sewerage system. Sheets of heavy rain washed all the evidence away.

  My bottomless fear of being shamed led to certain rules being established. Rules I lived by in order to live a normal life! Any talk of poo or vague acknowledgement that pooing might occur or had already occurred meant I had to leave any social situation in which I found myself. Pooing could not occur anywhere other than in my own home, with nobody else in the home but me. The term ‘Bottoms up’ did not register in my brain. I could not say the words ‘toilet paper’, let alone purchase it.

  My carefully constructed faux-reality came crashing down one spring afternoon in September 1988, in a lavender and rose garden that lay hidden in the quiet, leafy suburb of East Malvern. I had been chosen by film director Richard Lowenstein, he of Dogs in Space infamy, to be the twirling dancing girl in a Crowded House video for their new single Don’t Dream It’s Over, a song of infinite tenderness, destined to become a global Number 1 hit. My razor-sharp girl-smarts knew this was going to be huge, and I dreamed of making my mark on the MTV media monolith through my twirling cat-moves.

  In other words, I was moments away from becoming an international MTV star.

  There was just one minor calamity. I had acquired a cinematic crush on the arty director. I wasn’t sure if I had the skills to manage the conflicting emotions a cinematic crush requires. These kinds of situations usually ended up in a spectacular train wreck.

  Thrilled and determined to do my best, I arrived at the video shoot wearing a lampshade as a fascinator on my wildly teased black hair. I gracefully tumbled forth, announcing, ‘The character actress has arrived!’

  The punky film crew sitting cross-legged on the ground didn’t seem to notice my arrival. They were peering intently at a wall of sound amplifiers. Cool dulcet sounds drifted from the amplifiers, cool dulcet sounds I had never heard before. Apparently, the sounds belonged to a person called Eno.

  Brian Eno.

  I immediately noticed Victoria. Notoriously shy, sensible and intelligent, with the face of a Botticelli angel and a voice like the merest whisper of a kitten’s meow, Victoria was the arty director’s girlfriend. She watched me closely while whispering filmic truisms to her circle of admirers. I winked at her and she smiled shyly back. I was nervous, overdressed and intense. I hoped my post-Blitz make-up wasn’t too blitzy for the Eno and Crowded House gang. I’d already prepared choreographed poses and was learning not to stare into the camera, Fellini style.

  The director was waving his hands around and squinting into the sun. My unrequited crush on the arty director expanded, imploded and catastrophised, triggering the 1000-watt headlights of shame from my past.

  The director approached me and flashed a flirtatious smile, asking if I felt comfortabl
e twirling and whirling. Did I feel comfortable twirling around and around in a spooky, film-noir, slow-motion kind of way? Sure I did! I was very comfortable with that. I was moments away from becoming an international MTV star, after all.

  But of course, I couldn’t hear a word he said. My crush had suddenly made me deaf and mute, and what’s more, I seemed to have shrunk. I felt only one inch tall. With the headlights of shame gathering force, I tried to make myself grow taller. As I spun through a number of practice twirls, I watched my crush stroking his girlfriend’s hair, tenderly whispering into her ear and ignoring my twirling MTV dance moves.

  At that moment, the producer announced loudly to the crew that my face would not be required for the video. Only my arty, dancing-girl body would be required.

  The headlights of shame were shining their brightest glow towards me. I kidded myself that the cutting away from my face was because my white Marcel Marceau make-up was too bright for the screen. But deep within me, I believed the real reason was because I was too plain to be catapulted into people’s lounge rooms on a Sunday evening at six o’clock for Countdown.

  I knew the signs, but I didn’t know the triggers. The familiar, sharp pains ringing the doorbell on every chamber in my museum of memories. It moved from door to door like a religious salesman, unwanted and unexpected.

  I was desperate to find solitude. A place where I could hide for a little while, to hopefully regain my composure. (A common side-effect of childhood trauma is chronic stomach pains. Scientists believe stomach pains are linked to an unconscious clenching of the gut in response to repression.)

  This is when I should have fled! But no … I continued to twirl in my vintage 1940s frock, my head spinning like water down a drain pipe. The memories of all my grand failures and insecurities sparked enough electricity to power a small country town.