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.
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