‘Um, shit. Um . . .’
‘HURRY THE FUCK UP,’ I whispered urgently, like we were robbing a bank and he was fumbling with the getaway bag.
‘Okay, okay. A Coke. A chocolate donut. Two rainbow Paddle Pops. And . . . ummm . . . FUCK. Just give me another pie.’
I collected the items in question and put them on the counter in front of him.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘Very casually and normally take some money from your wallet and give it to me.’
He seemed perplexed. ‘But I don’t get it. I thought it was meant to be fr—’
‘JUST GIVE ME SOME FUCKING COINS.’
He handed me a couple of dollars. I gave him back three five-dollar notes. He looked adorably confused and the whole exchange was giving me bean tingles.
‘Keep that and meet me in English after lunch,’ I said, as I called the next person in the line.
I met him later to get my cut and explain the system. It then, bless his good-looking yet simple heart, took less than twenty-four hours for several more students to know about the system. Shit. I knew better than to just bend the rules for someone like that, even someone to whom I had thought about giving a blow job (a thing I had heard about that I assumed just involved blowing on a person’s penis, not unlike blowing out the candles on a birthday cake).
I had broken the cone of silence because I wanted to blow out this boy’s penis candle. Damn my vagina and her power over my brain.
My canteen line continued to grow much longer than any other – comically so. Business was booming, but it made me nervous. Everywhere in school I went, I was getting sly winks and pats on the back, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that a SWAT team was going to descend on me at any moment, brandishing warrants to search my locker and holding up photos of me buying chips and gravy and lip gloss and magazines – my lavish lifestyle clear evidence of my crimes.
I decided that the next week I was refusing all illegitimate service. I needed to lay low for a while and reassess my priorities, maybe even the whole system itself. I just wasn’t built for the kind of heat I had created. The fear of getting caught was too much; every day was filled with an anxious dread that not even the latest NSYNC album could snap me out of. I couldn’t go to prison without knowing what it was like to have an actual living boy make contact with my vagina, rather than just simulating the feeling by humping my mattress. I still had so much to live for.
I lasted one more shift on the canteen counter before I completely retired as prefect. Those close to me with inside knowledge of the system thought I was crazy to give it up, and I’m sure some other group of kids immediately took over and started living the high life. But I never regretted my decision to walk away. From the day I handed in my shoebox for the last time, I felt nothing but relief. My life had been filled with anxiety from the moment I was born, and I was not about to do anything to add to it.
So, do I feel guilty now, or am I just a total psychopath who would be breaking laws left, right and centre if not for her crippling fear of getting caught? Well, honestly, it did take me a while to feel like the world didn’t owe me something for giving me two alcoholic parents. It does take a person some time to stop being pissed off about that. But luckily, because my fear stopped me from committing any more major crimes, my moral compass was able to develop as normal. So, yes, I do feel bad about briefly being the ringleader of a major crime operation. I did not go on to rob convenience stores because of my crappy childhood. I may have ended up with PTSD, but I have not robbed a 7-Eleven. You’re welcome, society.
(And no, that cute but simple boy who told everyone about the system never made contact with my vagina. He blew my cover, but not me. Crime really doesn’t pay.)
Hey mon frère with your derrière something something cush.
‘She’s going to need to be on the drip for at least sixteen hours.’
Something something da da da it’s Jack’s Subway Tush.
‘Do you know how many she took?’
I really need it it’s Jack’s Subway tush.
‘Jacob’s on his way.’
Something something it’s —
‘Hopefully she’ll sleep.’
Jaaaaaaaack’s Suuuubwaaaay Tuuuuuush.
I did not sleep. Here’s a little tip: if despair has taken over your body, is pushing nothing but darkness through your veins and all you want to do is sleep and never wake up, make sure you don’t take pills with caffeine in them. Taking pills with caffeine in them will, in fact, have the opposite effect – they will cause you to stay awake and never sleep. And your despair will still be there, pushing darkness through your veins. It’ll just be laughing at you now as well.
I took the pills to make me sleep forever, and they were specifically designed to keep me awake. I could not believe the hilarious irony of my screw-up.
They were paracetamol pills, but the box said they were ‘EXTRA’, which I took to mean ‘extra strong’. Like, really hardcore paracetamol, filled with lots of codeine. I don’t know why I assumed that. I didn’t read the box properly, I suppose. I had bought them at Abu Dhabi airport the week before, on a stopover during the almost 24-hour journey from London to Melbourne. I was recovering from gastro, was dehydrated, exhausted, and a few days away from having actual hallucinations. So, not exactly in the right mindset to be comprehending the medical labels on boxes of tablets. When I found the ‘EXTRA’ paracetamol in the intense-looking red box in Abu Dhabi, I figured they would have a magic effect, not unlike heroin and general anaesthetic, mixed together with the feeling I get after falling into a food coma from gorging on pasta. Basically I figured if I took a couple, they would knock me out for the entire second leg of my trip.
I did not sleep at all on the second leg of that trip. It turns out, the ‘EXTRA’ magic ingredient in the paracetamol is not actually codeine but caffeine, designed for people who need to take something for a headache without feeling drowsy. Despite this being clearly labelled on the box, it had eluded me.
And it was still eluding me a few days later when I took every single pill left in that clearly labelled box. Pills I took after drinking a lot of vodka just to be sure.
So there I was, lying in a hospital bed, about to be awake for the next forty painful hours. Forced to keep singing that stupid Will & Grace song that I couldn’t remember the words to, forced to look at the poo-stained curtain next to me, and forced to think about why there was so much darkness in my veins that my mind had collapsed in on itself, ending in a complete nervous breakdown.
Forced to think about Tony.
It was strange not having him in the ER with me then. He had been standing next to me both times I had woken up in hospital as an adult. ‘Hey, crazy lady,’ he had said, when I woke up after my PTSD had led to me being hospitalised in my early twenties.
‘You already look skinny!’ was his opening line when I opened my eyes after weight-loss surgery at twenty-seven. ‘Do you remember your name, skinny lady?’
I looked directly into the phone camera he had shoved in my face. ‘Oprah,’ I replied, my voice filled with conviction and sincerity. ‘I am Oprah.’
Both times, we had burst into laughter, because that was us: we laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. Usually at our own expense.
I met Tony on the first day of drama school in 2005. Antonio Sergi was an adorable Italian boy from Griffith, a country town about eight hours’ drive from Sydney. He dressed like he had just stepped off the soundstage of a teen-drama set in the fashion world. Everybody would laugh at the latest ridiculous thing he was wearing, but would be rushing out to buy it just a couple of months later, when Tony had already moved on. He had a trucker hat (very cool at the time, okay?) emblazoned with his nickname, T-BUFF, which had come about in Griffith because of his obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was early 2000s youth culture personified, and we clicked instantly.
Tony was fresh out of high school, and I had just dropped out of my first year at Sydney University, whe
n we both ended up at the Australian Academy of Dramatic Art. We were both eighteen, both obsessed with comedy and already reading this new thing called a ‘blog’ by Perez Hilton, while everybody else devoured Chekhov and Ibsen. Tony didn’t take life, or acting, too seriously, which is why we got along so well. Along with a few others in our year, we were more interested in recreating sketches from Saturday Night Live than we were in rehearsing a traditional soliloquy. But it didn’t matter; drama school tends to be a catchall for young people who know they love being creative, who know they love to perform or write or design or direct, but have no idea how to approach that. Drama school is the safety net that catches the kids who just couldn’t balance on the traditional education tightrope. Some wanted to be Shakespearian actors, others wanted to imitate Tina Fey in Weekend Update. We all ended up together.
I had left university disillusioned and confused about what I actually wanted to do, and I figured since I’d always loved acting and writing, drama school might be a good place to figure out a plan. I kind of floated into it, hoping it would work out. Tony, on the other hand, was completely clear about where he was supposed to be. Famous in his country town for being a born comedian and performer, he was the one who everybody knew was going to ‘get out’. I didn’t realise at the time how huge a deal it was that Tony came to Sydney by himself, looking to build a life away from everything he had ever known. Especially when his massive Italian family in Griffith was already a pretty great ready-made life. All the parents had gone to school together, married, had children, watched them grow up at the same time, and now those children, Tony’s generation, were about to repeat the cycle, by getting married and soon raising children of their own. All going to the same schools, same shops, same church. Tony’s entire life had been spent in the warm embrace of family and familiarity, something that, with my tumultuous childhood, I couldn’t believe he had walked away from. It wasn’t easy for him, especially as he got older, being away from his best friends and family, watching from another city as his generation of Griffith kids grew into adults together. But he knew what he was passionate about, he knew what he wanted to do, and he knew that meant leaving a wonderful life in his hometown. Tony always knew he was too big for Griffith.
From the first day we met, in that crappy drama-school common room, in that crappy building on that crappy street in Sydney, Tony was holding my hand through life. When I met Tony I was struggling with PTSD. After a childhood filled with abuse and neglect, a father who’d died and a mother who’d left my sisters and me as wards of the state, I’d ended up in a boarding school where I was bullied to breaking point, followed by a university where I’d felt confused and alone. By the time I landed at drama school, I was only just beginning to climb out of the hole I’d been hiding in. Tony took my hand and never let it go.
He started by convincing me I was funny, and introduced me to all the female comedians he idolised that I’d never heard of. We’d watch Chelsea Handler, Kathy Griffin, Wanda Sykes, Miranda Hart, Mo’Nique, Sarah Silverman . . . ‘You could do that, Ro,’ he’d say, more sure of me than I ever was.
When I was playing the role of Jan in Grease the Musical, the only time I ever fumbled my lines was the day Tony was in the audience for the first time, because the second I walked out onstage he started cheering and laughing hysterically before I’d even said anything. Afterwards, when I asked him about that premature laugh, he just said, ‘Because I knew you were going to nail it.’
In our last year of drama school, when the uncle I’d been living with asked me to move out, Tony welcomed me into his apartment, no questions asked. We went on to live together, on and off, for ten years. Sometimes heading in different directions to do other things, but always landing back with each other.
We grew into adults together, something I couldn’t have done without Tony by my side. He comforted me after every break-up. He laughed with me through every drunken mishap. He understood my mental health and never judged me for it. He was one of the few friends I introduced to my mother, while she sat drunk and alone in a room filled with empty wine boxes.
Tony was there as jobs came and went, relationships came and went, weight came and went. He witnessed my complete physical transformation: when he met me at drama school, I weighed sixty kilograms. He cried with me as an eating disorder saw that number rise to one hundred and fifty, and he supported me when I had most of my stomach removed to try and get back to a body that I recognised.
From the moment I met Tony at eighteen, he was my North Star. He was the person I looked to when I felt lost. He was the person who would drop everything to be by my side. He was my soulmate.
I’d like to think I was the same to him, but I can’t say that I was. Not because I didn’t try to be, or because our relationship was one-sided, but because Tony was just so generous with his time, his love and his friendship. He was silly and hilarious and loved Real Housewives and sketch comedy and fashion and People magazine (which he ordered from America because celebrity gossip is serious). But those were just the superficial parts of Tony: the parts that made him fun to drink wine with and watch TV with. What was actually most striking about Tony was his ability to make everyone he knew feel like they were the most important person in his life. Tony may have been my soulmate, but he had at least thirty-five other soulmates that he was keeping track of. Every person in his life relied on Tony for love and support, and the fact that he was able to give it to all of them without question was his true gift as a human being. Tony may have always been holding my hand, but he was also holding the hands of many others. He was everybody’s North Star.
A few years out of drama school, Tony and I were living in a tiny apartment in Newtown, just west of the city. We had no money, and besides a bed and a TV each (of course), no furniture. For the first six months we lived there, we used a blow-up mattress instead of a couch, with one of us constantly having to cover the holes that all the air would leak out of. We’d usually get through about three episodes of Honey Boo Boo before the mattress would be flat and on the floor. Then we’d spend half an hour pumping it back up again, before waiting for it to slowly deflate, laughing like banshees as we sunk into each other. We’d head up to King Street at about 10pm, because we knew that’s when Clem’s Chicken Shop would be wanting to get rid of stuff at the end of the night, so we’d order a few measly bits of chicken and then Tony would charm them into giving us free chips and salad. We also figured out that the 7-Eleven had new Krispy Kreme donuts delivered just after midnight, so if we went in just before that we’d usually manage to get all the leftovers from the day. ‘Just here to buy a can of drink,’ we’d say loudly, while looking longingly at the donuts. Whether it was pity or admiration at our sass I’m not sure, but the 7-Eleven guy always gave us the donuts.
Neither of us had ended up where we wanted to after drama school, me in particular. Tony had travelled a bit, lived in Melbourne for a while, went to auditions and tried to get an agent. I had gone to university and finished a degree in creative writing, which meant, combined with drama school, I had studied for six years and was basically only qualified to work in a coffee shop or a call centre.
I ended up in a call centre. My weight gain meant I had no chance of getting any acting auditions, so I hadn’t even bothered. My writing degree was . . . not exactly vocational in its approach. I learned a lot about beat poetry and not so much about how to, you know, get a job. (Our assignments were often of the ‘just do whatever you feel’ variety. I once googled ‘synonyms for vagina’, then copy-and-pasted thirty of them into the centre of a single page, wrote some crap about it being a comment on feminism in literature, and walked away with a High Distinction. I did the whole thing the night before it was due, while laughing hysterically over a box of wine. It was probably the highlight of my entire degree.)
When Tony and I moved into that little apartment in Newtown, I was lost again, just like when we’d first met at drama school. I’d go into work, answer calls on a switchboa
rd (usually just hanging up on people, if I’m being perfectly honest), come home, go into my room and watch TV. Tony could see I was in a hole, and he decided to jump in, stick his hands under my bum and help boost me out of it.
Once again having more faith in me than I had in myself, he reminded me that he thought I was brilliant and talented and funny, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t think I was, because he did. He encouraged me to contribute my first article to an online website, and when it was picked up and published, he jumped around the house screaming for a solid ten minutes. Then he took me out for champagne to celebrate, and told me that it was time I started a blog and a Twitter account, because ‘everything these days is about brand-building’. At that stage, I barely used my computer for anything other than Facebook and Google, but Tony always just had an innate understanding of what was next.
He helped me build a website (Tony-approved branding: ROSIEWATERLAND.COM) and sat and listened as I read every new story I wrote to him, on the blow-up mattress/couch. He laughed hysterically at every word, which may seem indulgent, but I think he just knew that I really needed it.
After a lifetime of struggle and disappointment, I was so broken and scared to do anything, and he knew that I needed him to walk me through becoming a writer in the tiniest of baby steps. Laughing at my jokes. Fawning over everything I wrote. Crying with joy every time I got something published. All of that had the most profound effect on me. He was pulling me out of my hole and pushing me into the spotlight, whether I liked it or not.
When my writing started to build a fan base, and my articles were getting published more and more often, Tony would obsess for days over what he could do to get me even further ‘out there’. He would tweet things like ‘Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez BREAK UP? Read the details here!’ Then he provided a link to the latest story on my blog. One night my website got so many hits it crashed. ‘Now you can tell people that your blog has amazing numbers,’ Tony said, laughing. He bought a chalkboard, hung it up in the living room and would write the blog’s numbers on there every day. I’d get home from the call centre and see ‘50,000 HITS!!! CONGRATULATIONS ROSIE YOU GENIUS!’ the second I walked in the door. The day Mamamia, Australia’s largest women’s website, offered me a full-time writing position, he burst into tears.
Every Lie I've Ever Told Page 3