The Anti-Cool Girl

by Rosie Waterland

  But not even the dream could make Mum happy. And just like with every man who came before him, it didn’t take long for her to realise that Joe was not going to be an effective medicine.

  She and Joe both drank a lot. Her drink of choice was wine, usually in a box. His was beer, usually in a stubby holder. But it didn’t make a difference what they drank; after a while, everything just seemed to end in a slurred argument anyway.

  Sometimes Rhiannon and I would come home to nobody in the house. Other nights Joe would take off, drunk and furious, then Mum would take off, drunk and furious, and Rhiannon and I would be at home, not drunk, not furious, and wondering what the hell to do with a baby.

  For the first time ever, my mum was the one filling my body with toxic butterflies.

  And that’s when the rehab trips started. First it was shorter trips in smaller halfway houses, and because Rhiannon, Tayla and I were so young, and Mum was ‘making a genuine effort’ to help herself, we were allowed to live with her whenever she went. But every time the rehab was over and we would come home, she’d head straight to the fridge and fill her glass from a chilled box of wine.

  So, the trips started to become longer, and we would stay in larger, more permanent facilities. Rhiannon and I would make friends, start at new schools (trying to explain to the kids what it meant when the principal said to your new teacher, ‘We’ve got another one from the bloody rehab’).

  I knew the Serenity Prayer by heart and I wasn’t even eight years old, and I had started to think that ‘accepting the things I cannot change’ referred to the fact that rehab would never change anything.

  But then came Karralika. The place that would definitely stop Mum going to the fridge and then disappearing for days. The place that would stop her wanting to drink from a chilled box of wine. The place that would definitely change everything. We were told that we were going to live there for months – however long it would take – to get Mum better.

  And it was definitely a nice place. Karralika was a rehab centre located in Canberra, which, even though I’d lived in fifty different places since being born, and despite being the capital of my country, was somewhere I’d never actually been. It consisted of a bunch of bungalows that families could live in together, with a massive yard and a volleyball net, and the whole thing was in the middle of pretty luscious bushland, so there would be plenty of places for us to sneak off and play.

  Straight away I was dubious that it was going to be different from any other rehab (which by now I considered something my mum just did when she wanted a break). Things were the same at Karralika as they had been at every facility we’d lived at. You wake up in the morning and go to breakfast in a big shared dining hall. Then all the kids get driven to school or day care in a minivan. I had no idea what the adults did while we were out for the day, but I assumed it had something to do with talking about how much they liked wine. After school, the kids would mostly just play together while our parents did more talking about how much they liked the various things they liked that they weren’t supposed to like. Then there’d be dinner in the dining hall, after which our parents would have more meetings and we would do homework, which usually just meant watching TV in some rec room. Then, before bed, there’d be ‘supper’, where you got a biscuit, and Milo and milk in a plastic cup.

  Just like camp.

  Rhiannon and I always liked being friends with the other kids at rehab, because they were the only kids we ever got to meet whose parents seemed worse than ours. There was a kind of hierarchy among us based on what our mums or dads were in for. Heroin was top of the list, and the most impressive, and wine was the bottom. Trust our mum to be addicted to the lamest thing available. But really, being at the bottom of the addiction list just meant Rhiannon, Tayla and I were pretty much the luckiest kids there.

  All the kids felt lucky to be there really, because living in rehab was the only time we ever got to see our parents consistently sober. It was the most stable and unafraid we had ever felt. Living in rehab was the only time I got to make it through entire days without feeling the toxic butterflies.

  I felt more of a sense of belonging around those kids than I had around any others. I think because, even though the oldest of us was only twelve (that was Harley – he could put a condom in his nose and make it come out his mouth, and it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen), we all really respected each other. For what we had been through, for what we were going through and for what we all secretly knew we would probably keep going through after we left. I don’t think at that age we even knew what ‘respect’ meant, but there was a sense of solidarity and empathy between us that I don’t think can be described as anything else.

  And although I’d had my doubts about Karralika being any different from any other place we stayed, there actually was one major development while we were there. It had nothing to do with Mum; she would start drinking the day we left. No, the thing that was different when we went to Karralika was me.

  In a turn of events that would shock me and leave Rhiannon completely baffled, in Canberra, I was considered cool. Cool! It had nothing to do with me; I was still my usual, clueless, bungling self. But Canberra was like this alternate universe where the cool standards were so low, I was basically like a rock star the minute we crossed the border.

  I immediately realised something was up on our first day of school. I was only in Year 4, but I’d been to so many schools by that point, I knew exactly how to play my first day. Things were different for me than they were for Rhiannon. She would just walk into a classroom and the kids would realise they were in the presence of a better human. Not unlike how I imagine it is for Oprah every time she walks into a room. Rhiannon didn’t make friends – friends just immediately appeared at her side. By the end of the day, all the girls would be wearing their hair like hers and all the boys would be obsessed. It would take her exactly one day and zero effort to become Queen Bee.

  I, on the other hand, had to tackle things very differently. I would walk into a classroom and the kids would realise they were in the presence of an average human. I knew I was going to be low on the ladder, so my best strategy was to try and at least avoid being the very bottom rung. I would generally start with a scan of the room for potential friends. I had to play this carefully – it was a very delicate balancing act. I couldn’t go after the total weirdos, but I also had no chance with the cool kids, so I had to try and find the ones who seemed in my league but were also nondescript enough that they didn’t get bullied. Sometimes I managed this and sometimes I didn’t. At one school I misjudged and headed straight for the cool girls; by the end of the day I was playing the dog in their game of ‘house’. At another school I experimented with going it alone, but that was just as much of a mistake. School is like prison – lone drifters are weak and vulnerable to attacks. You need some kind of crew as a buffer.

  So, with many lessons from many schools already learned, and having accepted that I would never own a crowd like Rhiannon, I walked into my new Canberra classroom ready to get to work.

  What happened next confused and frightened me. I didn’t have to make friends – friends immediately appeared by my side. And not the rejects, I’m talking long-blonde hair, probably-all-called-Tiffany cool girls. Everyone kept telling me they liked my hair and my pencil case. There was practically a fistfight when the teacher asked who wanted to be my desk buddy. At recess, I had girls following me around. By lunch, word got out that the coolest and cutest boy in class had an Official Crush on me. In the afternoon, I answered one question correctly and a rumour began to spread that I was some kind of child genius. Waiting to be picked up at the end of the day, I was surrounded by girls wanting to invite me to whatever it was that people did in Canberra. Rhiannon looked perplexed. She’d obviously already taken over her class, but to see me in the same position was a foreign and unsettling experience for both of us.

  And that’s when I realised what had happened. The standards in Canberra were so low, t
hat I’d somehow stumbled across the one school on earth where I was considered the coolest person in class.

  I was a fraudulent Queen Bee.

  And I knew we weren’t going to be in Canberra forever, so I wasted no time taking advantage of my newfound status. I learned how to control my minions and ruled over the class with a tough, charismatic and fair hand. I like to think I was a good leader, but, even with the dweeb-blinders that my Canberran friends seemed to have been born with, I couldn’t hide my true identity forever. I was so far from being a cool kid (my obsession with acrostic poems was proof enough of that), and living outside of my natural habitat started to take its toll. Towards the end of my time there, I could definitely feel the façade slipping away. I was starting to get brief sideways glances whenever I did or said the wrong thing. It was like they were slowly putting a puzzle together, and when the final piece was in place it would reveal a picture of me, wearing a stackhat and riding a tricycle with toilet paper hanging out the back of my pants.

  So I was relieved when, after a few months, our time at Karralika was over. Not because we were finally going home, but because I knew if we stayed much longer, my elaborate lie would be discovered. It was an exhausting way to live, but I left while I was still on top, and will hopefully always be remembered by those kids as the mysterious yet impossibly cool girl from Sydney, who swept through their lives like a trendy hurricane for exactly one term in Year 4. (I also learned an important lesson: if you’re a school kid who’s being bullied and you live in a major city, head to Canberra. They’ll treat you like a god.)

  Tayla had taken her first steps at Karralika, I had been cool and Mum had completed her twelve steps for the twelfth time. Just another standard stay at rehab.

  On our first night back at home, I was still on a high from having accidentally pulled off three months as a fraudulent Queen Bee (although more than a little concerned about going back to the minion end of the food chain). I was excited to be back in my room in our fancy private rental. I was happy to see Joe. Things were good.

  Then I caught Mum standing at the fridge, filling up her glass from a chilled box of wine. I started to cry. Not because I hadn’t expected it, but because I had hoped there would be at least one day where we could all pretend like this time it had worked. Mum told me it was fine, that I didn’t have to worry, that going to rehab meant now she could drink just one glass and then stop. But hours later, the box in the fridge was empty, and I knew that I had always been right: rehab is a lot like camp. And it never stops your parents from drinking.

  You will get caught masturbating while watching Rugrats.

  My mum may have loved wine, and she may have disappeared from time to time when she felt like her kids were unfairly preventing her from drinking wine, but she also had some golden moments where she managed to pull off some spectacular parenting.

  One of those moments, perhaps even the top moment, was the way she delicately handled my not-so-delicate habit of humping my mattress until I climaxed.

  I was eight years old, and I was obsessed with my clitoris.

  I don’t remember the first time I figured out how to orgasm. I didn’t even know what an orgasm was. All I know is that at some point, I figured out that if I rubbed my fanny hard enough, I could make something ‘special’ happen down there. So it became known as my special place. I do remember being about five, and getting out of bed in the middle of the night to put undies on so I would have better friction with my mattress, so I know I started young. I’d had my own room at Smurf Village, and with that kind of privacy I managed to squeeze three or four special place sessions in each night. I’m surprised I slept at all.

  One night, after a particularly good special place explosion, I lay in my bed, staring thoughtfully out the window, knowing that I had discovered the exact job I wanted when I grew up. I wanted to get paid to have special place explosions all day long. I had no idea if such a job existed, or that my mum had firsthand experience of it, but I couldn’t imagine a life where I didn’t touch my fanny at least three times a day. (Sidenote: this also set me up for a massive amount of disappointment when I first started having sex. After watching many sex scenes in many movies, and after seventeen years of getting myself off on cue, I was under the assumption that I would have a special place explosion every time a penis entered my vagina. How wrong I was.)

  Things had been good at Smurf Village. I’d privately built up a lot of experience and felt that I had my technique down to a fine art. I could get the urge and be done within half an hour. Then Mum married Joe the Removalist and we moved into our fancy private rental, in which I had to share a bedroom with Rhiannon.

  This made things particularly difficult for me, since touching my special place was definitely a bedroom activity. If I’d asked for time alone in our room, Rhiannon would have immediately sensed something was up and set about torturing me until I revealed my secret.

  I thought about stopping, just giving up cold turkey, but after a few days without a special place explosion, I was just about ready to drop my pants and hump the first leg that walked past me. I realised that if I was going to continue functioning as a useful eight-year-old member of society, I was going to have to come up with a way to make this work. Humping my mattress was priority one.

  I was both militant and organised in my approach. It took careful scheduling and a very particular set of working conditions before I was able to narrow down the perfect time to pencil in a standing appointment with my special place.

  It couldn’t be at night, obviously, because my sister slept on the bottom bunk and the possibility of her thinking I’d been possessed was too high. It had to be in my bed, because the only way I could make it happen was when I face-planted on my mattress. And I needed about half an hour (it was hit and miss, but generally if I worked hard enough for that amount of time I could get positive results).

  So, all variables considered, I concluded that the only possible opportunity for some ‘me’ time was after school, in my room, while I was watching Rugrats.

  As Rhiannon was now eleven and had continued to widen the cool gap between us with every passing year, we did not often agree on the same television shows. And at 4pm on weekday afternoons, there was a clash in our preferred viewing schedules. She wanted to watch Degrassi Junior High, which was on at the same time as my choice, Rugrats. I didn’t understand Degrassi, with all those denim jackets and lockers and velvet scrunchies. All the kids on that show looked like Rhiannon, and she watched it like she knew it was about her people and not mine.

  It was perfect. I put up a bit of a fight at first, just to throw her off the scent, but after ten minutes of nagging each other, I kindly offered, out of the goodness of my generous and horny heart, to watch Rugrats in the bedroom, so that Rhiannon could watch her show on the good TV.

  And so it began. Each day, at 4pm, I would ‘watch Rugrats’ in the bedroom. With the door closed. In my bed. Under the covers.

  Never mind that my head faced the opposite direction of the television, and that sometimes I was in such a rush to get things started, I completely forgot to turn it on. But this was my alone time, and it didn’t look like I was ever going to get caught, so after a few weeks, I relaxed into a routine. Once I was done, I’d take a breath, wipe my brow and leave the bedroom, sufficiently flushed and ready to join my sister in the living room for Clarissa Explains It All.

  It was the perfect crime. Until it wasn’t.

  One afternoon, I skipped into the bedroom for my daily appointment. I closed the door, switched on the TV and swung up onto the top bunk with anticipation. Lying on my stomach? Check. Covers all the way up to my head? Check. Is the coast clear? Ch – wait a second, I was already off and running. Bless my eager little heart.

  I’d been going at it for about ten minutes and it was a particularly tough appointment that day, so I was panting and I was sweaty (the mattress also had a pretty aggressive bounce happening).

  In my frustration at the lack of
progress, I thought it would be best to change positions. Under immense pressure and in a very time-sensitive situation, I decided to shift my body to face the door instead of the wall, which sometimes worked when I wasn’t getting results. I didn’t want to take my hands off my special place, though, so I would need to turn my whole body around without using my arms. It took me about three almostflips (it’s not easy lifting and turning your entire body when your arms are clamped down on your vagina), but I managed it on the final swing, all without losing my rhythm. And it was just as my face was about to land back down on the bed, my body heaving around like a mental person in a straightjacket, that I locked eyes with my mum and sister, both standing in the doorway, mouths agape.

  The mattress slowly came to a halt.

  I froze. Like an animal that knows it can’t outrun the lion but if it just . . . keeps . . . still . . . the sound of Rugrats combined with my slowly diminishing panting was all that filled the room. My mother gave me one final, pitiful look and began to drag my sister away, closing the door behind her. (‘But Muuuuum, what’s wrong with her? What is she doing?’)

  I’m not even kidding when I say this: I then proceeded to finish what I had started. I was mortified, obviously, but it certainly wasn’t worth not getting the special feeling. Nothing was worth that.

  When I came out of my room twenty minutes later, I was expecting the worst. To Rhiannon, this had to be heaven. I was officially the massive loser she had always insisted I was. I humped mattresses. I was a freak. There would certainly be some kind of humiliating punishment she had decided I would have to endure for the rest of my natural life. I knew it would at least have something to do with being called ‘Mattress Humper’ and the story being told at every birthday party I ever threw until I was ninety.

  I was equally worried about the reaction from my mum. Was she warming up the car right now, waiting to take me straight to the nearest medical professional to be diagnosed with fanny addiction? Would she take me on A Current Affair and beg the nation to help with her middle daughter’s embarrassing ‘problem’? I could picture it clearly: me, ashamed, huddled next to her on the couch as she cries and blames herself, saying that she should have known. She should have done something the first time she thought my fingers smelled fishy.