Doing things differently

Everything seems to be picking up speed at the moment.

Last week I picked up some casual work here. I did one weekend and was offered a full time job elsewhere. Nothing terribly exciting, just reception/office admin at a motel in town and I start Monday. I'm taking a massive pay cut and the work is brain dead stuff, but it's a good opportunity to get some experience with different booking systems and the like. It also brings in enough cash that while I am looking for something more appropriate I can MOVE OUT OF MY MOTHER'S HOUSE!

We had our first big bust up earlier this week. I was lamenting the absence of a Japanese restaurant in Kalgoorlie* and after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing she told me I needed to stop whingeing about being here and get out there and try things instead of sitting at home all day eating and moping. This is, indeed, a valid point (except for the eating thing. If anything it is my daily cigarette quota that she ought to be worried about). I did not take it as such at the time and informed her in my best shriek-y adolescent voice that I was well within my rights to be miserable and mopey as I had just moved to the other side of Australia and was busy dealing with that, OK. We both retired to our respective bedrooms (cue the obligatory door slamming) with massive glasses of wine and have not spoken about it since. Given that I have been sleeping in her spare room for just over a month and that I have, in fact, been acting the miserable chain-smoking, non dish washing (30 year old) adolescent, I'm surprised this hadn't happened sooner.

I love my mother intensely and I will defend her to the death but, good lord, she is a trying woman. She nags - my god she nags - and she is judgemental and, to be frank, quite narrow minded some times. A trait that I have only just discovered. She drinks too much and she is always much too loud. And worst, that is what people find endearing about her. She is a 'woman of a certain age' yet she will not let me pay for her to get a style hair cut and she talks way too openly about sex.

For example: there is another person living in this house and he is attempting to set me up with his friend. This is not going to happen. This evening, in a gentle attempt to rebuff his suggestions, I mentioned that there was someone on the scene that I was interested in and that I would like to see what happens there. Mother darling responded to this by bellowing 'HIM, he's just a booty call. (Name) is just a booty call. Booty call, booty call, booty call.'


I stomped off with my glass of wine. Of course.


Oh, so yeah, something seems to be happening on the boy front.


A little about him - he is only slightly younger than me (28), lovely and tall (6ft 3") and heavy on the shyness. He is also, quite frankly, gorgeous. He does, unfortunately, have a penchant for what I will call 'rap' music (I am a Nanna and shall be judged accordingly) and, as such, I will refer to him as Marshall**. And I like him.


As you might have already gathered, I am useless with boys. I have an unfortunate tendancy to not deal with my feelings, leaving the potential relationship to hang in never-never land until it fizzles out or veers into the dreaded 'casual' zone. I will also usually sleep with them too quickly. I am hideously self conscious, and filled with jealousy and I will read too much into text messages or conversations. All this gets dressed neatly, for the fellow, in a veneer of lightness and, potentially, coldness. I don't like to hold hands and I will always find an opportunity to interrupt a nice touchy-feely moment on the lounge with a distraction.


However, as I said, I like him. And I don't want this to happen here. I did wait until our third 'date' to sleep with him and I have been more open to 'togetherness,' something that he seems very comfortable with.This change of tack does mean that I will have to have a 'conversation' with him sooner rather than later. Something I am dreading more than I can say. I don't even know how to start one of these conversations.


"So, do you like me?"


"So, what do you want from this - us?"


"So..."




I came here to do something different, but most importantly to do things differently. And I will damn well have this conversation if it kills me. Rest assured, I'll let you know how it goes...




*I have been having some serious cravings for salmon sashimi. Almost pregnancy-esque cravings. Except, of course, if I was indeed pregnant, I would be unable to partake in said craving due to the whole raw fish yada yada doo-hickey.

**Yes, as in Marshall Mathers III, aka Eminem. I had the joy of listening to one of his albums the other night - I also listened to Tupac for the first time. I don't think that name quite suits him though.

The small stuff

   



The phrase 'don't sweat the small stuff' has always irritated me. I understand it conceptually, I even agree with it to a certain extent, but you know what? I love the small stuff. My three weeks in Kalgoorlie has been all about the small stuff - good and bad.

I adore the fact that everyone here has a Ute, or a Holden or one of those yummy mummy 4 wheel drives. It amuses me no end that there is a house around the corner entirely decked out in Fremantle Docker's colours. And it makes me literally laugh out loud that the same team has recently changed their strip.

 

I love that it is so quiet here at night and that the birds wake up when it is still dark, 3.30 - 4 in the morning. I am encouraged by the fact that I can afford to purchase real estate - something entirely unobtainable, for me, in Sydney.

My faith in mankind is restored when I receive a hearty farewell when I leave the local pub. And that these same people remember small details of conversations previously had. And it's kinda cool that I get to sit at the bar and the bartender will automatically bring over a refill when I'm close to finishing my glass.

I am relieved that the dry climate has cleared up my problem skin and that I haven't had a frizzy bad hair day since I arrived.

On the other hand.

Every bloody householder owns a dog, generally a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and it is those same dogs that bark CONSTANTLY. At night, or from behind a tall fence, or the back of one of the aforementioned Utes every time I walk past. Combined with the incessant early morning chirping of the birds, the silence is less and less attractive.

The same Utes and cars may also have a 'Fuck Off We're Full' sticker proudly displayed across the back. The misappropriation of Australian imagery far exceeds that of Cronulla in the wake of the riots some years back. Without putting anyone offside - I'm not terribly fond of Southern Cross tattoos. At one of the other pubs in town, I saw a perfectly lovely, normal looking girl with one ON HER NECK. At another I saw a skimpy (lingerie waitress - in polite terms) with one on the small of her back. 

It is the same sense of community that gives rise to the whole of bar farewell, that works to exclude anyone that operates outside of what is considered the norm. Indigenous patrons are blatantly, and often forcibly, removed from establishments. There is such absolute and open hostility toward the community and quite frankly I find it appalling. I have also learnt that I should keep these opinions to myself.

My frizz free hair comes at a price. The dry desert climate has left my sinuses completely stripped bare - I wake up with a bleeding nose some mornings and I'm prone to spontaneous and simultaneous sneezing and coughing fits. I seriously sound like a cat with a fur ball.

I am having fun though. I have made a new 'friend' and a new friend. The former is a lovely boy - quite gorgeous really - though it is nothing to get too excited about. And the latter is an absolutely fabulous girl - a Sydney girl originally - with a sense of humour entirely too close to mine.

I still have my moments when I think I'm getting back on a plane next week to go back to my little apartment and my lovely pussy cat, only to come crashing back to reality. And I did have a face in my hands 'Mummy, I want to go home' episode not so long ago...

What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that it really is the 'small stuff' that can make or break me here. It's up to me to decide what to sweat.

In which I reject fatalism.

A sensitive soul asked my darling mother the other night why she wasn't a Grandmother yet. Her standard response of 'Well, Lucy is a career girl, and Sabine just hasn't met the right man yet' followed. My rebuttal of 'That's why I came to Kalgoorlie - I heard that the men were easy' was met with much laughter. Truth be told I was only half joking.

Anecdotaly, the ratio of men to women in this town is 7/1. Taking out the married/attached, the age inappropriate and the down right dodgy, you are still left with pretty good odds. I've always been - shall we say - lucky in my previous visits.

On my first visit, some 2 years ago now, I became acquainted with a fabulously tall gorgeous man. He challenged me to rock, paper, scissors with the promise that the winner could name their prize and that he always won. He didn't. Needless to say my idea of an appropriate reward wasn't far from his. The next night he cooked me dinner and we shagged like rabbits. We kept in contact for a while, until he resumed his relationship with his long term on again, off again partner. On my second visit we had arranged to catch up for dinner. We didn't and on the night we were to dine, I met The Cowboy instead. The Cowboy was the quintessential country boy, all RM Williams and awkward conversation. Completely irresistible really.

The Cowboy plays quite a key role in my Kalgoorlie story. On our first night together there was, what I like to call, a contraceptive fail. An inconvenience that I think most of us have experienced. He was very sweet about it, I brushed it off with the intention to pop in to the chemist the next day for the morning after pill. The next morning he wasn't so sweet and couldn't be woken. I stormed out declaring him an arsehole of the first order.

The visit to the chemist didn't happen that morning - I was late for a day at the races (I'm a classy wench). That night at the pub he came up to me with open arms declaring how sorry he was and that he ran after me when he heard me leave but I was already out of sight. The image of him standing naked at the front door was too much and we left soon after. That night he stated that if I didn't want to take the morning after pill he would be supportive - that he had never met anyone like me before and could really see us together. I cried (I do that a lot), and decided that I wouldn't. That I would take a chance.

Obviously it wasn't to be and our previously constant communication faded after a few months. I was oddly devastated. it wasn't that I'd lost him, or some hypothetical child, it was that I had lost the opportunity to have my directionless life thrust toward something. It was here that both the Dutch Boy and the anxiety enter the picture. Something was definitely wrong and I didn't know how to fix it.

I visited Kalgoorlie again. I spent 10 disappointing days trying to reestablish that initial connection with the Cowboy only to return at night to sit on the edge of my darling mother's bed and cry. She correctly identified my crisis as being more than just my inability to speak country boy and the seeds for the move had been sown. She also recommended some medication might be in order - a suggestion I steadfastly refuse to entertain.

My coming here has been my way of attempting to take the reins, to build a life for myself that for whatever reason has been crumbling slowly. Why or how I've allowed this to happen, I can quite say and I keep reminding myself that where ever I go I will always take me with me, but I'm going to try and make it work.

The timetable

Shortly before I turned 25, I imposed a timetable. By 30 I would have a well developed relationship, if not a marriage, with children imminent. Shortly before I turned 25, I met the previously refered to ex. I'll call him the Little Dutch Boy.

It was made clear to me that he was never really physically attracted to me. Sure he liked me, and he had a timetable of his own so we stuck with it. A physical attraction certainly developed, but I never really believed it. This knowledge tainted the relationship. I never felt that anything I did was good enough and it was definitely communicated to me when it wasn't. I rested the steaks for too long and they were cold, he didn't like the way I cooked beans, I didn't earn enough money and I didn't dust behind the television. Suffice to say he had some issues.

We both drank too much, I put on a lot of weight and cried a lot. I started fights practically begging him to show me something. Prove to me that you wanted to be here. The end of the relationship coincided with the end of my last year at Uni. After 3 years I couldn't do it anymore and in the middle of the same fight we always had and over the phone on my lunch break at work I ended it. I moved out and spent 2 weeks on my sister's lounge drinking and crying.

In the 3 years since, apart from one brief but intense fling, I have been single. I got on with things. I lost some weight, I started earning decent money and I slept around a little. While that makes it sound like an easy time, it wasn't and I probably wasn't until about a year and a half ago that I started to feel 'right.'

Early this year the Dutch Boy came back into my life. He sought me out after his rebound relationship ended with accusations of infidelity and a miscarriage. He told me how great I looked, how proud of me he was, how much he desired me and how deeply he regretted that our relationship ended. He fought for me. He was giving me everything that I begged for during our 3 years together. I softened, but after a number of heavy duty panic attacks, came to the realisation that I couldn't do it. I love him dearly and always will, but I just couldn't do it.

So ends a potted version of the most significant relationship in my life thus far. More examination of love and Kalgoorlie next post...