Now there is a third sound that begins taking up space inside the cubicle. Nearby, a man talks loudly into his phone. His manner is brisk, his sentences trying to be businesslike.
‘Bullshit, Rod. He said the caveat would hold out till Monday . . . Yes, the LGA mayor agreed . . . No, I sent it in an email on Tuesday.’
When I look down again, the floor is littered with a lighter, a spoon, a half-filled water bottle.
‘You ready?’ she asks.
For a moment I am confused. Ready for what, I want to ask. Where are we going? Outside, the businessman with the caveat has moved on. A group of young boys has taken his place.
‘The 1970s? INXS for sure . . . Nah, man, you only heard their third album. Listen to the stuff before that. Before they went for the glory over the soul of the stuff . . . yeah, that’s it.’
I nod.
‘The next train will arrive at platform three in five minutes. This train will stop at . . .’
A small, cold pinprick draws my attention to my inner elbow. Before I can look down, her hand reaches up and pushes my chin skywards, towards the sound of feet walking on the platform overhead.
One, two, one, two, one, two, a pair of shoes hurries over us.
One . . . two . . . one . . . two. Another pair replaces the first, moving at a slower pace.
‘The next train on platform four will arrive in seven minutes.’
‘Count down with me,’ she says. ‘Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.’
For a moment, there is no sound around us. The footsteps have frozen, cemented to the ground in silence. The train master is resting, leaving an empty space in the air that, only moments before, his voice occupied. There are no trains coming, no people talking, no bodies shuffling around each other in the hallways and brightly lit staircases.
Instead, these sounds funnel themselves into my body. The footsteps, voiceovers, mobile ringtones, train brakes, escalator squeals, baby cries, vending-machine pops and conversations are pulled from the platform, into the cubicle and down into my vein. They spread slowly at first. One sentence, two footsteps, a small cry: each enters my body at my inner elbow and sits there, in a small whirlpool, beginning to send heat out. And then, all at once and very quickly, each of them—every coin drop, conversation, footstep and squeak—rushes headlong into my body, up through my arm, before splitting off into hundreds of tiny branches, running through my chest, down my torso, snaking around the muscles and bones and veins in my thighs and then calves and toes, only to bounce straight back up like a hard basketball, pushing warmth into my crotch, my hips, my stomach, before splitting again and again and again into tiny threads of sound that push themselves through my neck and chin and cheeks and eye sockets until finally reaching my brain. And then, just as suddenly, the sounds disappear. And there is nothing. No strings inside, no noise outside. Only me, Charlotte and warmth.
Later, walking the streets that night, talking incessantly, high on life, wanting to make out with her.
Calling an old high school friend. Saying, ‘What are you doing? I just shot up heroin.’
Meeting up with one of Charlotte’s friends somewhere in the city, the three of us catching a train to his house, even though we don’t have tickets. I hesitate, worried we’ll get caught, until she pushes me into the carriage and I don’t object. Standing in the entryway, holding the yellow vertical rails, ignoring the seats. ‘We’re only going two stops,’ she says.
Being back at that man’s house, he and another male friend uninterested in us, even when I take my bra off and walk around the house with no underwear beneath my thin, flimsy dress. Charlotte and I lying on the bed. Me trying to kiss her, her pushing me away, me pushing back until she gives in.
Later, smoking cigarettes on the tiny, dirty balcony somewhere in the centre of Sydney, our only view the dark skyscrapers reaching above us.
After that, my memory fails me.
‘How’s the artichoke?’ Mum asks.
‘Fine,’ I say, unable to help switching into angry, silent mode. ‘The artichoke is fine.’
8
A couple of months after I leave the psych ward, I begin working in the sex industry.
I am curious about other worlds, hungry to try on different identities. I think it is somewhere in the second half of 2007, but it is hard to know for sure: 2007 and 2008 are a blur. I think I am nineteen years old.
For a long time, I’ve had fantasies of stripping but have never done it. The risk of someone I know seeing me seems too great. In my everyday reality, I would never allow a man to disrespect me based on gender. I fall for men whose small refusals of female objectification make them all the more attractive. But in my quiet hours of solitude, there are parts of me that crave the absolution of responsibility that comes with objectification, and the affirmation that comes with being desired.
Before checking into the psych ward, my mother and I went shopping at Macarthur Square—a suburban maze of a mall an hour outside of Sydney city. I was out having a cigarette while Mum browsed inside, and a man approached me. He asked if I was having a good day and what I was doing there.
‘I’m shopping with Mum,’ I replied.
‘Well,’ he said, and introduced himself. He spoke softly, looking at the ground more than at my eyes, giving the impression it would be impossible for him to be dangerous. ‘I have a friend who runs a massage parlour, it’s a nice one—clean, safe, she looks after the girls well—and she’s looking for a receptionist. I saw you standing over here, you have such nice hair, and I thought you might be interested. So I wanted to give you her number. Would that be all right?’
Since before the accident, I’ve had conflicting feelings about attention. When I attend weddings, I can’t help but wonder how anyone feels comfortable enough to kiss their lover in such a well-lit and crowded place. But there is something seductive about the idea of being desired within the protective shield of anonymity. Even now, while writing this book, I want my work—and therefore myself—to be acknowledged in a way that shows it matters, that it’s doing something important. But equally, I hate it when relative strangers make an effort to remember my name and try to engage in small talk. I think many of us want to be left alone as much as we want to belong.
I had not thought about a massage parlour before. I hardly knew what a massage parlour was.
‘Sure,’ I said, and took the scrap of paper with a number and name scrawled on it. Although I couldn’t articulate it, I had a feeling it wasn’t just receptionist work.
‘Her name is Tilda,’ he said.
I watched him walk away, and I looked around at the others moving through the public space. I enjoy observing people interacting in public. You can tell how close they are by the physical distance between their gestures. There is an ease, a slimness to the gaps left in the air between the hands and shoulders of a couple, which is fascinating to watch. Likewise, siblings have a particular type of physicality in their relationships. Besides Kris, before she died Lisa was the only person I was comfortable hugging. I have always had a complex relationship with touch.
Later that week, I checked into the psychiatric ward.
Kris was the first boy to pick me up for a proper date. I remember small things about that night: the silver-grey of his car, the sunken, hug-like seats, the crispness of the night air as we leaned on the front bonnet, the expansiveness of the sky as the occasional plane landed and took off at the regional airport we’d parked near. How tall he was, how large his hands seemed even before I’d touched them.
But the main image in my mind is this: the way my father hovered by our large front windows looking over the street, jotting down his number plate. ‘In case he doesn’t bring her home,’ he said.
We were so young.
When I get out of hospital, I text the woman who owns the massage parlour.
Inside the safety of the ps
ych ward, I had big ideas about doing things to help myself get better. But once I am on the outside again, life beyond our small house beckons, and I am eager to see it. I do not see this choice as a risk, only as an adventure.
It’s been months since the man approached me at Macarthur Square, but it does not occur to me that the job might no longer be available. Somehow, I know what kind of work I am signing up for and I have a feeling she will always be looking for girls.
I met your friend at Macarthur Square. He said you’re looking for a receptionist?
I don’t know where my confidence has come from. A life with neat rows of cafe tables and scheduled study days and weekend sport no longer satisfies. The accident bred in me a hunger to experience all of life. I experienced it at its worst, and now I want to experience it at its best, at its most unusual, at its most interesting. I begin doing things I never would have contemplated before. Going into sex work gives me a taste of what will later become a defining feature of my life: a hunger for freedom.
Tilda replies, asking me to meet her at a local RSL, and when I pull into the carpark after university one afternoon, I am surprised by how normal things feel. It is still suburban Sydney, there are still kids being hushed by their parents, and I still have to think about the weather and if I’ll need a cardigan. Tilda texts, saying she has long red hair and is sitting in the bar area at the back.
I can’t remember exactly how long it was, but I’d hazard a guess Kris and I had been together for seven months before we first slept together. He was patient, I was cautious. Years later, I found a note in my then-diary:
I’ll never sleep with another guy.
I kept my body close, lived in it as a contained thing.
Now, this makes me laugh. I feel nostalgic and contemplative and sad, and also kind of happy. My naivety is endearing. I had no idea what was to come.
Grief stains the body.
When I enter the room and see Tilda, I am surprised. Her fringe is old-fashioned, from a nineties style magazine. Motherly-chubby, she wears all black, with a cheap-looking blazer. She asks about me and my schedule, and I tell her about my studies, and how I live with my parents. Neither of us goes to the bar, and I sip water from the bottle I keep in my handbag. She keeps one eye on the time, mentioning she has a kid to pick up at three. She explains that she has a house nearby where she runs the parlour, and says if I am interested she can show me around it some time. I nod, and we continue chatting until she says she thinks we might work well together, that she has to leave, but that she can probably get me a job in the next few days. Neither of us mentions the word receptionist, nor any other job title.
The other day, I was watching Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a film that chronicles the story of a mother seeking justice for the murder of her daughter. I found the film’s cinematography stunning, particularly the many close-ups of faces weathered by age. I was with a new friend and asked if he was afraid of getting old.
‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said.
I was surprised. How could he have lived thirty-three years of life and never thought about getting old?
‘Do you?’ he asked.
I paused, wondering how honest I could be.
I thought: I’m afraid of getting fat and ugly and ending up alone.
I said: ‘Yeah, sometimes.’
As women, we are trained to believe physical attractiveness is the best safeguard against loneliness. My desire to feel attractive has never been about my looks, it has always been about my fear of abandonment.
That day in the mall, for a moment, a stranger’s attention made me feel a little less likely to end up old and alone.
Tilda texts again, asking if I want to come around at midday tomorrow. I reply, and she sends me an address, tells me to park a couple of doors up the street. The next day, as I leave home, I give my mother a vague excuse about meeting up with friends.
I don’t know what I’m expecting, but when I turn up at the house, again I am surprised. A single-storey brick home with unmaintained gardens and barred windows, it looks like it belongs to what my mother would call a ‘rough family’ in any street near our own. I am excited.
I ring the doorbell and Tilda’s face appears at the window. She nods at me and opens the door. Inside, the house is dark and mostly bare of furniture. She leads me into a hallway with a lounge room on either side, a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms at the end, and a kitchen around the back. One of the lounge rooms is blocked off by a thin, cheap-looking black curtain.
‘That’s where I’ll wait for you, to make sure you’re safe,’ she says, pointing to the curtain. She leads me into the opposite lounge room. There are two couches, and a small table with pornographic magazines stacked on top. We take seats opposite each other.
‘There’s a man who wants to see you soon. Do you want to see him?’
I am nervous as I think about what this means. I try to picture myself having sex with a stranger but I have slept with only two people and I can’t form an image. My body is visibly vibrating, and I can’t still it.
I tell her I didn’t bring anything to wear and she hands me a lace slip.
‘You can wear this?’ she asks. She points out back. ‘There’s a bathroom behind there if you want to try it on. The gentleman will be here in about thirty minutes.’
In the bathroom I remove my clothes and shrug the black slip over my head. It is sheer, my nipples visible beneath it. I pull on the black undies that she’s given me. My heart begins to pound and I smile at myself in the mirror.
Back in the lounge room, I fold my arms across my chest to cover myself. Tilda hands me a fake silk robe, says she’ll let him know I’m ready. The house feels both mundane and exciting, like a midday cigarette out the back of a shopping centre during a break from a shitty job. I flick through one of the porn magazines. Like my time in the psych ward, something about not being the one in control appeals to me. I put the magazine back and pick up my phone. Flicking through my text messages, I wonder what my friends are up to. Even though they are less than twenty kilometres away, I feel so separated from them.
Tilda returns and tells me the man is on his way. She explains that when he knocks on the door, I should answer, wearing my robe. I am to show him into the lounge room and introduce myself. Hand him a towel, ask him to get undressed, put the money on the table, and use the shower at the end of the hallway. Afterwards, I should take him into the bedroom.
I try to see that first time, but there is no film roll of memories left in my mind. What I see when I return to that moment is like a low-light black-and-white artistic photo, a torch or spotlight illuminating a single object, and the circle of light around it fading into grey and then pitch black, blocking out everything else around it.
He was older than me, but not yet middle-aged. Thirty or thirty-five, perhaps. I remember thinking that he looked Asian. He was of average height, wore average clothing, had an average build.
Other than that, I remember nothing. There is a blank space in my mind where his hands and voice should be. I cannot picture the bedroom, or recall what happened inside it with that first man, or the others that came after him. It will be a decade before I begin to understand the psychological impact of my decision.
I do remember the night Kris and I met.
We were at a mutual friend’s seventeenth birthday party. The birthday girl and Kris’s mate were making out or wanting to make out—the memories are hazy now—and they tried to convince Kris and me to also kiss.
‘We’ll go first, and then you guys do the same,’ Emma said.
I didn’t want to, but I was susceptible to peer pressure. Still, I had a plan. I asked Emma for lip gloss and we both put some on and then she and her crush disappeared around the corner. The house was a suburban-sprawl type, with a large, fenced-in backyard and plenty of corners to hide between the fence and
the back walls. Behind us, some painful dance-pop music was playing and a machine filled the back pergola with smoke, making everyone a little less self-conscious as they tried to dance along.
Emma and her crush returned from around the corner, and Kris glanced at me, waiting but not pushing. His skin looked soft, but also his face was rugged: manly already at eighteen in a way that felt much older than the boys in my year at school. He was a year above me, with blonde stubble on his chin and a beauty spot in one corner of his face.
‘Did you do it?’ I asked Emma.
‘Yep. Your turn now.’
‘If you kissed him, why isn’t your lip gloss smudged?’
Emma had these full lips that we were all envious of. My top lip was so thin Mum couldn’t even put lipstick on it for my year six graduation.
Emma paused, unsure how to respond. And then: ‘I reapplied,’ she said, looking pleased with herself.
But I had her lip gloss in my hand. I told her this, feeling so smart, and Kris and I got out of it after all.
We didn’t make out that night, but Kris and I sat out the front of the party chatting until my parents came to pick me up. He asked for my mobile number and I was glad to give it, feeling special that someone so tall was interested in me.
All the beautiful girls have thick top lips, a friend once told me.
In the year after leaving the psychiatric ward, I fall into a routine where there are things to distract me and take up time, but if I am unable to get out of bed on any particular day things won’t fall apart.
A couple of days a week, my mother and I drive all over Sydney and western Sydney going to galleries and theatre shows and arthouse films. Most of them are sad, or indecipherable, or both at once and in no small measure. We spend hours in libraries and museums and bookstores, desperate for a way out of what is happening inside us. But I am so wrapped up in my own grief, I cannot see my mother’s.
Again I don’t remember much of these visits, just flashes of exhibitions and her driving me around. My mother remembers more; it is she who tells me these outings were frequent.
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