Word.

I often worry that I am too slow a conversationalist. While other people seem to be able to thwack dialogue back and forth at a jolly rapid pace, I often need to ruminate before saying something worth saying. I’ve been told I talk slowly (this made me paranoid for a week or two that people saw me as some kind of Gump girl). I’ve been criticised, by people who love me, for pausing in midsentence and breaking up my speech with spam (like like like like like) because I haven’t finished translating my thoughts into words.

I know I can be annoying to listen to. I wish I was quicker. Our society values a quick wit, or, at least, what it perceives as one. Fast talkers are seen as confident, smart, charming, knowledgeable. Fast talkers can make you laugh. They’re persuasive –you become synched to the rhythm of their speech and you find yourself nodding almost involuntarily. But how closely are you actually listening to what they say? How carefully do they choose their words? I fear that the faster a person talks, the easier it is for them to lapse into auto-speak. This is a bastard form of communication. I got something to say; I wanna say it fast; my mind whips around snatching up common phrases and pegging them together. As George Orwell might have put it, it’s pre-fab. We don’t like to take the time to consider the meaning, or meanings, of our words (unless they sounded dirty, of course). We want to be heard, and we’ve only got a moment on the air before someone else decides it’s their turn and cuts in. Gotta say it fast. And this comes at the expense of true clarity.

How many times a day do you profess your love or hate? What’s the last thing you said you hated? No, seriously, please write in. And tell me, how much do you really hate that thing (on a scale of HEAPS to NOT MUCH AT ALL ACTUALLY)? Why did you use the word hate? It’s a very strong word. Hatred is bitterly ugly. It speaks of a history of damage and spite. Is that honestly how you feel about broccoli? Giggles aside, no. It’s not. You’re exaggerating on a massive scale. You use love just as indiscriminately. You love this song. You love that dress. You love tequila. It would be exquisite, overwhelming, terrifying to feel so strongly about so much.

We used to know the proper meanings of words. We used to understand what other people meant when they used those words. But black and white got boring and we started to embellish, little by little. In description, the stronger word had a stronger impact; therefore, we neglected the truly appropriate word. Where something was good, we called it great. Where something was great, we called it fantastic. Suddenly everything was super, amazing, incredible, astounding, magnificent, awesome. Things went from big to huge to massive to vast to epic. Awesome and epic were once a pair of grand, sweeping, majestic words. They have both been neutered by adolescent overuse. Now what do they mean? Cool.

It’s gonna be pretty awesome.

Yeah man. Epic.

And, of course, we have completely lost the ability to define the badness of things. Oh, you hated the movie? Why’s that? It was gay. The acting’s shit. The plot was lame. The whole thing was totally retarded. We can’t stop swearing because it seems like the only way to get across our intense malcontent, but swearwords have lost all their potency because now they’re every-fucking-where.

It’s all just etymological sex and violence. Used to be a shock to see a lady’s knees or hear a nice young lad say ‘damn!’ They didn’t need to show any blood to chill our bones in Psycho. But once they’d dumped one bucket of blood on Sissy Spacek, they had to use two buckets next time, and more and more and more and if you show a kid Psycho today he shrugs and deems it ‘lame.’

There is a school of thought that words are given meaning by their usage; that we change language according to our needs. Well, indeed. We give words new meanings all the time. We needed a word to describe the female naughty place that wasn’t so awkwardly clinical, and we chose the adorable pussy. Already had a meaning; now it’s got two, lucky thing. Then we needed a word for describing sad-sack males who are weak and fraidy, and we thought, what about pussy again? Charming. Now this word has become a general-purpose insult which saves us the trouble of individually identifying our bar pick-ups and the guys we don’t like.

There are thousands of words in the English language, and only one of them is shit. Why have we no interest in tilling over these masses of words and finding exactly the right one that means exactly what we mean? Is the day so short that we can’t take a moment to genuinely articulate a thought, or to listen to another person sharing his own words rather than a string of borrowed phrases? Or even to admire the skill involved in constructing a complex insult.
Quoth Blackadder (the first): ‘You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would.’ What a marvellous piece of abuse!
The next time you feel the fat flap of muscle in your mouth poised to declare that something is crap, hold still for a moment and ask yourself what it really is. Because crap is actually stinky doo-doo. Or some kind of casino game, I think. Use your words. Use them properly.

Boxes.

One bleary morning in Melbourne city, I was getting off a tram when I bumped into an old high school acquaintance. We greeted each other and exchanged summaries, and then out of nowhere he asked me, "Excuse me, but are you gay?"

I said well, yes, I was, and he apologised for being so blunt, but his girlfriend had recently informed him she was a lesbian, and then dumped him. So he was starting to develop gaydar and wanted to check it was working.

Then he had to get on the tram, so I didn't get a chance to ask him what had tipped him off. But I suspect it was the voice. You see, I had spent the night before (and several hours of the morning) in a very loud bar, drinking and shouting. My throat was rough as bark and the sounds that passed through it were low, coarse, and totally dykey.

Now, you don't have to spend long with me to know my voice doesn't usually sound like that. I don't, in fact, display any of the traditional hallmarks of lesbianism (apart from the girlfriend. Ooh! what a giveaway). I've got long hair, long eyelashes, pink knickers, a certified chickmobile, and a boundless devotion to cakey sweets. So it won't be such a surprise to hear that this was the one and only time that someone has assumed (without being told) that I was gay. And I believe it was due to a non-characteristic observation.

What I mean to say is that gaydar is a load of old claptrap. Folks get so proud of themselves when they can correctly identify a chatty, catty, lisping man as a homo. They get this idea that they have some incredible psychic ability to see someone's gay aura.
Bullllll-shittttt.
What they have is the ability to recognise stereotypical behaviour and use it to label people. Woman in plaid? Man in pastels? Girl with short hair? Boy with styled hair? That chick plays ice hockey. That guy's drinking a cocktail. She drives a Jeep. He acssentuates his esses.
Get over it. These things aren't hard to spot. Often, that's because they're done deliberately to flag down other gays. I'm not saying that chick doesn't like ice hockey. I'm just saying she joined the team 'cause she heard it was full of girls. I'm not saying that boy doesn't love playing with his hair. So does every boy. It's just that gay boys are allowed to, because their friends won't tell them their hairstyle looks gay.

I thought for a while that I was going to have to get a haircut, or maybe become an apprentice mechanic - otherwise no one would know. And although acting straight keeps you nice and safe from all the mean homophobes, you won't get many offers of rumpy-pumpy. This, I believe, is the reason why a lot of gay kids don't seem gay until after they've come out. Not because they're revealing their true selves: merely because they think that if they're gay, they have to act gay.

Before you get all snarky and tell me 'they can't help the way they are!', let me make it clear that I don't care what anyone wears unless it fails to cover their genitals. I don't think boys-should-be-doctors-and-girls-should-be-nurses. If what you feel is real, don't deny it. But please, don't put on a stereotype mask just so you'll fit into a neat little box. This goes for everyone:
Girls. Nobody is forcing you to wear those frickin' stupid painful stilettos.
Emo kid. There are other colours besides black,and other musicians just as depressing as My Chemical Romance. Haven't you heard of the blues?
Guys. Put down the goddamn beer; you know it's filthy. Pineapple liqueur through a wiggly straw is yummy and fun!
And I know it's a tired line, but lesbians, if you're going to dress, talk and act like men, don't for pete's sake try anything on with me.
I like women.

*Thanks to Liz "Dizzle" Margaronis for telling me I should write this down.

Fracture.

We had been friends for years. Sharing confidences, celebrating together, falling in love, making mistakes and helping each other through them.
The group.
The old high school gang. Everyone warns you things change after high school, but you think, not me. Not us.
And for a couple of years, we stayed true. We saw one another as the go-to guys. We made new uni friends, work friends, but our closest friends were the gang.

At university, you're surrounded by people with the same interests as you. It can be a delightful shock, discovering someone who lives 90 kilometres away, attending your classes and sharing your passions. And, in truth, it made me so happy to have single friends for once. The high school gang had always been neatly paired; only a small minority of us were not dating one another and we singles felt a little sidelined by it. Oddly, it did not draw us closer together, but left us (or in any case, me) skirting around the edges of the circle.

Then, in the first year of uni, I found love. She seemed (still seems) impossibly perfect for me. She understood my sense of humour; she made my mind whirl with her insights. She wanted me first. She placed me at the top of her list. And I was so happy to be important to someone that I found myself gravitating toward her to the exclusion of all other people.

This, obviously, is the traditional course followed by people in love. But love lived in Camberwell, and friendship dwelt resolutely in the Brighton area. And though it took me some time, eventually I chose to move to Camberwell to be with her.

It was my choice, and I accept the consequences. I missed a lot of gatherings; I was rarely visited because of the distance. I was busy a lot. Tired, a lot more. And so often I just felt it wasn't worth going anywhere. I felt lonely, but also I wanted to be alone.

Returning to live with my father was a decision made to save my mind and my marriage. It was two years later and when I arrived back in my hometown, I found the old gang much changed. Relationships had ended. New ones had replaced them. With these fractures, greater cracks had appeared between members of the group. It's something I had heard already, but now I am really seeing it.

I am trying to catch up with old friends one by one. It is more difficult than it should be because I find myself shy: for years I have seen them only in groups, and I am so afraid of finding nothing between us as individuals.

But it must be so; I can't keep pretending that the group is made up of friends, because it's not. I want my friends back. I'm not sure that I want the group to heal. It only made me lazy; it only made me take for granted that I had a whole lotta friends, despite rarely talking to each of them alone. I don't know what will happen next. I don't know if the cracks will fuse together in time.

Are these irreversible changes?

Is that always bad, anyway?

Writer.

Dear reader,

I have begun work on another of My Fabulous Projects. This time I am writing a short guide to sharehousing for kiddies leaving home. It's going to include stuff about saving mulah, getting along with housemates and feeding yourself in a variety of situations (including the five-minutes-or-less meal, the have-$4.89-'til-next-week meal, and the cook-four-portions-at-once meal). It'd be in PDF form and distributed for free.

My question to you is, would you read such a thing? Would you download a free e-copy of it, should one be made available to you? To help you answer this question, I enclose a small sample of the manuscript for your enjoyment. Please let me know whether it's worth completing!

Housemates in profile
It’s handy to know how to read a potential housemate. There are a few basic types that most people seem to fit to varying degrees. Still, pay close attention because some people will overlap into several categories at once, and you don’t want a split personality creeping up on you two months into the lease.

The Stoner
This specimen will often seem pretty laid-back, chummy and eagerly willing to help you procrastinate in front of the TV during exam time. Occasionally a bag of pot, a bong or somesuch will appear somewhere in the living room, or be pulled out during TV time with a casual, ‘You don’t mind if I have a smoke, do you?’
The question is, do you? 

The Party Animal
Party Animals are fairly easy to spot. They are outgoing and talk quite fast, and they usually love ‘fun’ drinks like pink champagne and Jager bombs. If you’re talking to a girl and she mentions she’s hoping to break into PR, no question: she’s a Party Animal.
They tend to prefer houses with large or open-plan living spaces, and kitchens with room for three or four eskies full of ice. You’d better hope you like their taste in music.

The Bureaucrat
If ownership is important to you, you’re going to like living with the Bureaucrat. Housemates in this category like to label things: SARAH’S MILK, SARAH’S EGGS, SARAH’S FABRIC SOFTENER. If you ignore the labels, they start drawing lines and tallies. How much milk? How many eggs? And if things don’t match up to their measurements, you’re going to get a neatly folded, passive-aggressive little note:

DEAR YOU,
I NOTICED SOMEONE TOOK ONE OF MY EGGS
YESTERDAY. THEY ARE CLEARLY LABELLED
SO THERE SHOULD BE NO CONFUSION.
I DON’T WANT TO MAKE A BIG DEAL BUT
PLEASE ALWAYS ASK IN FUTURE!!!
THANKS, SARAH.

The Slob
Natural enemy of the Bureaucrat, these unbelievably slothful creatures spend immeasurable hours not doing the dishes even though they know it’s their turn. Eventually you’ll do them yourself because you really need a fork, and you’ll tell them that now it’s their turn twice in a row. This is not a clever move.

The Scab
The Scab is another of the Bureaucrat’s many foes. This initially warm and helpful housemate will start small by ‘borrowing’ your groceries, always asking first, explaining, ‘I’ll buy you a replacement when I get my paycheck, it’s just I’m skint this week is all.’ Replacements will be given regularly at first, then intermittently, and eventually, not at all. One week they will ask for coinage for the train; next week, if you could just pay their share of the phone bill they swear to pay you back on Friday when they’ve got the funds.
The Scab is not a bad person, just a poor one; but you’d do better to offer them financial advice than to continue being fleeced out of pity.

The Absentee
In some circumstances this type of housemate can seem like the best of all. You see them sign the lease; you see their Rent Paid slips on the fridge, but sometimes you wonder if you’ve just imagined them. They seem real nice but you’ll never be friends, because wherever the hell they go all the time, it must be full of people far more awesome than you.

The Couple: Type A
Living with a couple is always a gamble. There are those couples – which we shall call Type A – who get along almost too well. They tend to use the royal plural, hold hands at the dinner table, and sign every message with two names and a pair of Xs. The upside is, you get a strong sense of family, of togetherness and harmony within the sharehouse. The downside: this doesn’t actually include you. Type A couples will take each other’s side on every issue. They count as two votes, despite their only having one opinion, and they may negotiate a half-share of the rent because they’re only using one bedroom, even though they managed to score the master.

The Couple: Type B
Type A’s evil clone: a couple constantly at war with itself. Type B couples provide a soundtrack to your evening, playing all the classics on repeat: ‘I can’t believe you did it with that fat slut’, ‘Well if you weren’t such a frigid bitch’, ‘I never want to see your face again’, and ‘God I’m so sorry and you’re so beautiful’. Oh, plus the passionate, desperate, extremely disturbing make-up sex.

Peninsula.

Once I gave it a name, I realised I had power over it. I spent the better part of two years pretending it wasn't what it was, but you can't change something if you refuse to define it. And so finally I said it.
I have depression.
It wasn't really a surprise. I had always been a cynic, inclined to taking a bleak view of things; perhaps out of self-consciousness I preferred to criticise rather than praise. It's easier, safer. Except not really.
As well, I just sort of lost interest in that thing called fun. Didn't want to go out, didn't want to spend time. I preferred being alone and what was wrong with that? Yeah, because no one wanted to see me anyway. Except Christine, who was always at my damn shoulder wanting things. Stupid how I'd hate my phone for not ringing, but hate it too for beeping at me with text messages I didn't have the energy to answer.
If I could just drop away from the world.

I am alone

It hurt, but damn, if it wasn't the truth.

I am a rock
I am an island

The way I felt wasn't sad or desperate or dramatic in any way. It wasn't a gasping, aching thing. It was just... flatline. I mean, sure, there were tears. Worse than tears. But in an odd sort of way, crying satisfies you. You take your pain and push your facial muscles tight any way they'll go and you push out that pain and make some goddamn noise. Let someone hold you for as long as it takes, because when it's over and they let you go, everything seems to find its way back to where it belonged.
Flatline, that's something different. You don't remember the last time you looked forward to anything. Not everything sucks. Just, doesn't matter. Energy is in the mind as well as the body, and I had none at all. I didn't write; I didn't draw; I didn't think to. I was so tired.

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.

A long time ago, Christine taught me about bipolar disorder. That's manic depression, for you old-schoolers. She told me about the abyss, and how it's just one step forward and five miles upward to the highest point in the sky. Apparently many people with bipolar, if it were an option, say they'd rather keep their disorder than trade it for normality. It is not a boast - simply a fact - when they tell you they have experienced greater pain, deeper despair and purer happiness than you ever will.
I tell you in earnest that it was Christine who saved me. She was the one who pressed the phone into my hand, already dialled to help. She absorbed so much of my nothing, it amazes me she still managed to give something back; but she did. I am incredibly lucky to have her in my life and I hope she knows I know it. I'm not talking down the help and support offered by my family (who are all really marvellous people I intend to immortalise somehow), but it was Christine who forced me to name my fear. And names make things finite, real, explainable. Controllable.
I have a lot of a way to go. I get stuck thinking a certain way and it's so hard to unstick. Antidepressants help, although they're not any kind of miracle - my doctor told me you don't really feel any different for at least three weeks and then your brain begins to respond. That's if you're on the right dose. No change? Higher dose. And higher, and higher, 'til you start to feel.
And you wait.
Chemical imbalance is often the cause of depression. But unlike a physical illness, treating the cause isn't enough: the symptoms survive because they have become your way of life. You're still half empty. But what I've realised is, I am not an island. It seemed so, but now I can see the bridge that connects me to land. I am a peninsula. Sometimes I feel isolated, but I have to know I'm not.
Because I can reach out.
Because I know I have something to grasp.

(Props to Paul Simon for the song lyrics.)

Better.

"Do you work out?"
Have you noticed that half the people you know belong to a gym now? Some want to lose weight. Others want to lose, specifically, the flub that's interfering with their summer wardrobe. Lotta guys want to be big. "Built" they'll say, as though they're a brick fence or something.
Why?

Gonna take up modeling? Need a good pair of arms for that second job down the docks? I just don't get why someone pays fifty bucks a week to jog on the spot.
Look, I can respect the desire for good health. (I might be a horizontally-inclined sugar depository myself, but) I get that nobody wants high blood pressure, diabetes, or excessive jiggliness. But really, now. If your health is the issue, take your car keys off the ring and buy a bike. Put down the box of frosted corn flakes and buy the bran. And Jesus, man, if you want to get built, go be constructive and really build something. Find the grandma on your street and ask her does she need any roof shingles replaced? Broken fenceposts? Even just mow her lawn.
Don't know how to do that stuff? Well, you should. Here's a totally useless skill for ya: bench presses.
I mean I'm sorry, but it seems as though the world goes a little further off track every day. Self-help is one of the fastest-growing industries in the west because, in between mailing cheques to every third charity that puts out its hand, we find ourselves consumed by the desire to be better. Gotta be better. Moisturiser, makeup, tanning spray, hair product (because the plural is the same as the singular. Like "sheep"). Wardrobe and accessories (each sold separately). Strength and sex appeal, authority and glamour, confidence and not one single telltale drop of sweat.
Because inside that crazy spaceship set called a gym, you can push your body to its limit: pushed-in-the-pool soaked with sweat, fell-asleep-at-the-beach red from blood rush. But not on the Outside. People on the Outside can't handle the sight or the smell of perspiration. They don't want to hear you breathe and they don't want to be exposed to a view of your bulging, disgusting stomach. Cover it up, hide it away. Could it maybe be banned?
I don't know; maybe I've just got weird notions about things. It's just, I'm frightened by how self-absorption is being marketed as self-improvement. It's a two-for-one special on agonising insecurity and bitchy criticism. You can be better - you're not good enough yet. Listen up, you fat, fat fool. We can make you beautiful.

Oh, the sales are through the roof!