The Full Catastrophe

by Rebecca Huntley

  Making excuses of ‘freshening up’, I grabbed my oversized pink bag and high heeled it across the lawn to the back door, and clawed my way up a carpeted Victorian staircase, stickybeaking at the dimly lit, run-down house – the rooms decorated in Bloomsbury style with oversized velvet lounging couches, Persian rugs, naive line drawings and ten curious house cats, twenty eyes watching my every stomach-churning step.

  I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead.

  The recovery room was almost in sight when disaster struck.

  My cinematic crush, appearing out of nowhere, was standing at the top of the staircase. Crushes can do that – simply appear out of nowhere. Just like my father, hammering clenched fists on the toilet doors of my childhood, shouting, ‘How bloody long are you going to be in there?’ The director looked at me in a curious way, then handed me a bucket filled with water and said, ‘You’ll need this, love.’

  His arty finger was on the PTSD trigger. I winced and attempted to look normal.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘toilet’s blocked. It’s always bogging up. You’ll need the water to flush everything down.’

  Suddenly, I was twelve years old, hiding in the milk-bar toilet. I wanted to shout out that I was a bottomless person and wasn’t going to use his blocked toilet anyway. A button had fallen off my dress and I could only sew it back on in the toilet. But I didn’t say any of that. I was engaged in wilful denial. I slunk into the blocked toilet and quickly closed the door.

  ‘All good in there, Alannah?’ he called out. I could see the tips of his boots through the crack under the door, work boots just like my father’s.

  Darkness had engulfed the small room, silence filled the air. My eyes flickered in time to a marching-girl heartbeat.

  And then I saw it. I smelt it. I panicked. I recoiled so fast that I fell against the toilet door. Something was floating in the toilet bowl. The fog of horror from one of my brothers’ monster droppings floated before my eyes. I knew this ghastly intruder had nothing to do with me and everything to do with somebody else.

  What the hell was I going to do? The dulcet sounds of Eno floated up from the garden as I pulled on the wretched chain. I quickly calculated I had enough water in the bucket for only one flush. My stomach was churning. I heard my crush’s boots going down the stairs. Time was running out.

  Giving it one shot, I held my breath and poured the water into the bowl, praying for a miracle. Go down! Go down that toilet bowl, I pleaded. Go DOWN. I watched the flush coming to an end, but it refused to go down. Too big for rusted Victorian pipes.

  ‘Alaaaaarnnaaaaar?’ the director called out playfully from somewhere. ‘You need a hand?’

  All my twelve-year-old smarts kicked in. Everything was crystal clear. I did what any bottomless girl would do when forced into a corner – destroy all evidence. I wrapped my frail, white hands in layers of soft embossed toilet paper, scooped the devil’s fruit from its swampy lair, then carefully swaddled it in freshly prepared toilet paper.

  I heard a noise on the stairs.

  ‘Hey, Alannah … Is the toilet leaking?’

  It was God. He was watching.

  I climbed up onto the toilet seat and peered out the small window above. In the distance, I could see magnificent trees, their branches swaying in time to the twirling, swirling rhythms of my bottomless mind. My throw needed to hold all the mighty girl-force of my skilful basketball days. I was Diana with her hunting bow, dispensing what I’d found in the toilet with clear, controlled composure. Then I aimed that package with as much force behind it as any Penguin State School basketball player could muster. I threw that package of shame far, far away, into another world and dimension. Far away into the distant majestic trees.

  Or so I thought.

  I heard a voice yelling from below, ‘Hey! What the fu—!’

  Fragments of the bomb were gliding through the air like a confetti explosion at a wedding. My triple-wrapped package in embossed toilet paper had bottomed out in mid-air and burst open with almighty gusto. My heart was now outside my body as the bomb of shame splattered across the feet of the entire crew. I watched it fall onto lilac rose bushes and into beds of bright yellow daffodils. Someone complained she’d found fragments in her hair. I looked down as the director looked up, his face a misery of confusion.

  And then the rest of the film crew, Victoria, the director of photography, and the fresh-faced members of Crowded House all looked up as one, just in time to see my face, a shrieking gargoyle sitting atop the Notre Dame cathedral.

  I cannot quite recall what happened next. I remember the shameful memories I associate with an entirely different person, the old Alannah. I remember feeling like someone had suddenly turned a heater on inside my body, and my skin turning from white to beetroot.

  I clambered down from the black toilet seat, grabbed my pink bag and ran to the safety of my car. I found the keys, turned the ignition and pushed the shame away with very loud music.

  I never looked back.

  There are times, dear reader, when I feel it’s important not to look back. Deep shame flourishes in the darkness, pedalling away at our very core.

  We try to overcome shame by demanding to speak to the little child who still exists within us. This little hide and seek child can be hard to find. I reached out to my little Alannah squatting on a stained potty in the deep south of Tasmania. I was struggling to understand what I was meant to do. Little Alannah looked up at me with a pained bottomless expression. She waved her little hands in the air and told me to write a note to myself every morning. She told me to write: ‘Deep shame isn’t real, and it wasn’t my fault.’

  And as I walked away from little Alannah squatting on her stained potty, in the deep south of Tasmania, she turned her head toward the sun, pointed her finger and said, ‘Alannah! If it IS your fault, make sure you get rid of all the evidence.’

  Fireworks in Beirut

  Jan Fran

  IN HINDSIGHT I should never have had my colon cleansed in Lebanon. But then everything is so much clearer in hindsight, isn’t it? If I’m being honest, it should have been clear back then, but I was twenty-two and had just spent eight weeks traipsing around Europe, subsisting solely on a diet of packet gorgonzola and warm 4 euro vodka. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did lug a 1.25-litre glass bottle of 4 euro vodka in a roller bag across several European state boundaries.

  My sabbatical was to conclude at the home of my uncle George, on the Mediterranean’s twenty-seventh best island, Cyprus. Little did I know when he picked me up from Nicosia airport that balmy August afternoon that Cyprus was not to be my final destination.

  My father’s brother George – much like my father – had left Lebanon in search of a better life. Unlike my father, he found it a mere 246 kilometres away in Cyprus. George is a very nice man who also happens to be riddled with guilt at being an absentee godfather to the one niece entrusted to his care in the eyes of God: me. That might go some way towards explaining why, when I casually mentioned feeling tired and sluggish, he wildly overcompensated and suggested flying us both to Lebanon to meet with what he described as an ‘excellent natural doctor’.

  ‘How do you know this doctor?’ I inquired.

  ‘I saw him on the TV!’

  Excellent!

  Now, as Australians, our sense of distance is warped by the fact that we inhabit the world’s sixth largest country and if you live on the east coast, it’s easier to get to Indonesia than it is to get to Perth. Our friends in the correct-side-up hemisphere can spend an hour on a plane and end up on another continent entirely. In our case it was forty minutes.

  Beirut felt like it could explode at any time, either with celebratory fireworks or with the slightly more menacing kind – a fact that appeared to perturb no one.

  The ‘excellent natural doctor’ we had come to see was waiting for us in an obnoxiously well-lit clinic. He greeted us at the reception desk and we made the obligatory small talk about Australia before he showed us to his surg
ery.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked as we took our seats.

  ‘Well,’ I said in a form of Arabic that sounded like it came from a monkey with a brain injury. ‘I’m very tired and … and …’

  I searched for the word ‘sluggish’ to no avail.

  Uncle George interrupted. ‘She’s been travelling all over Europe and she’s very tired and bloated. Can you help her?’

  The excellent natural doctor ignored me. ‘Yes! We help tired and bloated people all the time,’ he said brightly.

  He walked over to a small mahogany cupboard and pulled out several plastic mason jars with bright yellow labels.

  ‘Take two of these, one of these, three of these, one of these and two of these a day.’

  He sensed my apprehension. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured me. ‘They’re only herbs. If you eat well and drink lots of water, in six weeks you won’t be tired or bloated anymore.’

  I held one of the capsules up to the light. It was indeed filled with what looked like finely ground herbs.

  ‘Great,’ exclaimed my uncle. We stood up to leave.

  ‘There is one more thing you could do,’ said the excellent natural doctor.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever thought about cleansing your colon?’

  ‘My colon?’

  ‘Your colon.’

  Friends, I had literally never thought about my colon, let alone the cleansing of it. I wasn’t even sure where my colon was or what it did, and I certainly didn’t know how to cleanse it.

  ‘Her colon could probably use a cleanse,’ chimed Uncle George.

  ‘Yes, probably,’ concurred the excellent natural doctor. ‘It’ll take a few minutes and you’ll feel immediately better.’

  I sat in my seat, quietly taking umbrage at the two men swapping notes about the state of my colon until finally it was decided I would have my colon cleansed and my uncle would foot the bill.

  ‘Fine!’ I was too tired and bloated to argue.

  Dear readers, this is the part where I insist you don’t feel sorry for me in any way because I had ample opportunities to twig to what was about to happen to me … and I didn’t! Not when I was led into a small room complete with an examination table and various other medical paraphernalia; not when I was told to take off my knickers and put on a hospital gown, making sure to leave open the slit at the back; not even when the excellent natural doctor insisted it wouldn’t hurt. At no point did I conclude that in a few moments I would be literally shitting myself.

  That moment finally came when I spotted a spritely, middle-aged woman with unreasonably long fingernails generously applying lubricant to a long plastic tube, the other end of which was attached to a small, unfamiliar machine that was gently humming in the corner of the room.

  ‘What’s this tube for?’ I asked.

  She laughed, then stopped abruptly once she realised I was serious. ‘It’s for your colon cleanse.’

  Sometimes in moments of intense trauma we see our lives flash before our eyes. I only saw the rudimentary anatomy chart that hung on the wall of my grade 3 classroom as my mind desperately scanned itself for any information it may have retained about colons. Colons are associated with poop and poop is associated with butts and butts are associated with lube and lubes are associated with tubes and tubes …

  The colour drained from my face.

  Sensing my distress, the long-fingernailed woman, whose name I later found out was Gina, offered some calming words. ‘Once this tube is in there, you won’t feel a thing.’

  For those who’ve never had a colon cleanse (also known as a colonic irrigation or colonic hydrotherapy for the more posh among us), congratulations, you’ve made a sage life choice. The rest of us would know that a tube goes in your butt, water goes up the tube, poop comes down. Rinse and repeat.

  ‘My daughter loves Australia,’ said Gina casually, inserting the tube into my butt. I winced! She began massaging my stomach with a vibrating gadget akin to an ultrasound probe.

  ‘It helps get things moving.’ She winked.

  I pursed my lips.

  ‘Is it hot in Australia?’

  ‘Umm … yeah it can be.’

  ‘Do you have sharks in Australia?’

  ‘Yup. We have sharks.’

  ‘Have you seen a shark?’

  ‘Nope!’

  ‘I don’t think I’d want to see a shark.’

  I didn’t answer. There’s something disconcerting about making small talk with a stranger as they evacuate your bowels.

  After exhausting all Australia-related topics of conversation we moved on to Lebanon, which proved an avenue for Gina to vent about corrupt government officials and how none of the public amenities functioned properly.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Gina assured me, sensing my restlessness.

  Lebanon has a funny way of pipping you at the post. My cousin Zee used to say that Lebanon is full of action – which kind, however, he’d neglected to specify. You never really knew what fireworks you were going to get, but somehow you knew they were coming.

  The unfamiliar machine attached to the other end of my plastic butt tube, which had been gently humming in the corner of the room, suddenly started to splutter before shutting down entirely. The lights above us began flickering, the sound of static interrupted the dull rumble of medical equipment, and the room suddenly went dark.

  ‘W… what’s going on?’ I stammered. I wanted to get up but was somewhat restricted by the plastic tube poking out of my butt.

  Gina looked concerned. She called out to her colleague in the adjacent room. ‘Samir!’

  Elevated voices. Brisk footsteps. Clanging.

  ‘Let me find out what’s going on,’ she said, removing her rubber gloves.

  ‘Wait!’ I stammered, my neck straining. ‘You can’t just leave me here.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘What if it’s, like, an attack?’ I’m often the first to scold Australians who jump to defamatory conclusions about Lebanon based solely on what they see on the news and yet there I was, Lebanese and a journalist no less, quite certain of imminent war because I’d heard a commotion in a hallway. I looked at Gina, waiting for her to reassure me that it was no such thing.

  ‘It could be.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll be right back. Just stay very still, otherwise you’ll …’ she gestured with her arms. ‘Well, you know, you’ll make a mess.’

  I tried to gather my thoughts. Here I was on a gurney, with a plastic tube in my arse, literally shitting myself in the middle of an attack on Beirut. Is this how it would end for Jeannette Francis? In that moment I thought about my uncle George and the great irony that his desire to be a good godfather ultimately killed his niece. I was too scared to even cross myself lest the movement of my arms inadvertently bumped the plastic tube that suddenly felt only tenuously in place. The commotion in the hallway intensified. If I wasn’t sure whether Beirut was under attack before, I certainly was now. My mind spun! It was Hezbollah; no, it was Israel; no, it was Syria; no, it was the Ottomans! I thought of the authorities eventually finding my body among the rubble, exposed from the waist down with a plastic tube stuck up my arse. I imagined that image on the news being beamed into homes all over the world. ‘Is that Jan from school being pulled from rubble in Beirut with a tube up her arse?’ Yes, this was how it would end for Jeannette Francis. My heart began to pound and I could feel the tears coming. I closed my eyes and tried to drown my thoughts out with a silent prayer.

  ‘Dear God, please don’t let me die like this,’ I pleaded.

  Suddenly, as if by the hand of God herself, the lights came on again. The unfamiliar machine that had spluttered off came back to life and resumed its gentle humming as though nothing had happened. The rest of the machines in the room started whirring and beeping as they had before. The elevated voices hushed. The brisk footsteps slowed. The clanging stopped. Gina flitted into the room, slipped on a new pair of rubber gloves and resumed her seat at my
bedside, inspecting the plastic tube with her eyes.

  ‘You moved!’ she scolded me.

  I stared at her with my mouth open.

  ‘Not to worry,’ she continued, popping the plastic tube out from inside my butt. ‘You’re all done anyway.’ I had no more shits left to give.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘With what?’

  I started at her, incredulous.

  ‘With the … the thing …’ I gestured at the lights with my eyes, still too traumatised to move.

  ‘Oh, the electricity cut out, that’s all!’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘It’s Lebanon, darling,’ she said. ‘I told you, nothing works properly. It happens all the time. That’s why we have generators. How do you feel after that, good?’

  I blinked silently at her.

  I was led out to the reception area where Uncle George was waiting for me.

  ‘How was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Great. Let’s get some lunch. You’re probably hungry after shitting yourself in there,’ he joked.

  If only he knew.

  Gorilla and the Bird

  Zack McDermott

  WHEN THE POLICE found me, I was standing on a subway platform somewhere in Brooklyn. I was shirtless. I was barefoot. I was freezing. I was crying. I’d spent the previous ten hours wandering through the streets of New York, convinced that I was being video-taped, Truman Show style, by my stand-up comedy partner.

  As soon as I walked out of my apartment that afternoon, I knew the cameras were rolling. The people on the streets looked like the normal East Village crowd, but they were all archetypes. The skaters were all wearing the same DC brand shoes. Everyone was wearing the same expensive skinny Levis. The construction workers’ accents were a little too Brooklyn thick and their boots a little too perfectly well worn not to be plants. Even the heroin addicts were too pretty. When I looked really close I could see that their face tattoos were actually professional make-up jobs.