Hello, good-bye: Prequel

This is what comes before Hello, Good-bye and was cut out to make last week's [Fiction] Friday a more manageable read!

I wish I’d got the window seat then I would have been able to watch the headlights grow from the distance and wait for the flash to kiss my retina as my eyes and the light collide head on. Mind numbing stuff like that.

But Maz has the window seat. She’s almost asleep. Opportunities like this rarely present themselves when I need them. Her head bobs every now and again. This is my one and only chance to break someone and get the information. In her sleep befuddled state I’ll harass her and until she caves in.

“Maz. What are you guys going to do to me?”
“Nothing.” She yawns and stretches, trying to get comfortable.
“Steven’s coming - isn’t he?”
“No. He isn’t.” Even though she is on the edge of sleep, the words came out consolidated in the sort of way that tells me she won’t capitulate.

I know she is lying – they all are. I had heard Rachel scream out Steven’s name and something about him coming two days earlier as I’d walked into the school foyer. Then she’d told a heart breaking lie – she was going out with Steven. But I didn’t believe it. It all has something to do with Thursday. If I could just get it out of Maz.

“My lips are sealed.”
“Maz?”
“I said my lips are sealed. Go to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.”

There is the occasional snore and mutter. It was dark and late and we’re probably the only people other than the bus driver who are awake. The play we’ve just seen is now being enacted in my head with Steven and I cast in the leading roles. If only I knew for sure.

“Star crossed lovers Maz. That’s what we are – Steven and I. Just tell me if we’re going to meet up at Maccas on Thursday.
“There’s nothing much Capulet or Montague about either of you.”
“He is from the West.”
“True.”
“So he’s coming on Thursday to my going away party. Isn’t he Maz?”
I said no.”

“Please Maz,” The confident interrogation is disintegrating into a pathetic round of begging. “Tell me if Stephen’s coming.”
“No.” Another yawn and more stretching from her.
“I promise I’ll act surprised if you tell me.”

“OK.” She sighs. “If you’ll shut up and let me get to sleep.”
“Sure.”
“He’s coming.”
“Oh my God!”

One of the teacher’s head shoots up, searching for where the blasphemous exclamation had come from. I’ll never got the hang of all the Catholic stuff.

And there it is. Confirmation – finally. My best and worst nightmares realised in the same moment. I’m cursed.

I hadn’t believed that they would actually do it – that they would ring and invite Steven to my party. What the hell did Rachel say to him when she rang? I shudder to think, knowing what a loose cannon she is most of the time and what I’ve heard come out of her mouth.

“Don’t tell anyone. They’ll kill me if I they know I told you. It’s meant to be a surprise.”
“I promise I’ll act surprised.”

I felt sick.

“You’re still coming aren’t you?”
“I’m staying at Michelle’s house on Wednesday night. How the hell am I meant to get out of it?”
Maz answers with a slight snore and I am left running the scenario that’s presenting for Thursday through my over active imagination.

The Cherry Blossom

This Week’s Theme: What is the first New Year's Resolution your character breaks? How soon? Why? “It is too a sensible New Years resolution Tex,” she argued back, with a pout threatening to drop from her ruby painted bottom lip. She was stretched out felinely across the dark green velvet like couch, that was as much out of place in the tropics, as it was in the one bedroom apartment. Placing her hand under her head she stared intently at him. “And your resolution would be?” she challenged. “I’m not making any this year Jos,” he replied nonchalantly, bending his lean body over to tie up the laces of his Doc Martens. “I broke every single one last year, plus a whole heap of other good intentions so it seems pretty pointless this year.” Tex strode, in his jaggered masculine way, across the elongated room that served as a kitchen, dining room, lounge room and now her bedroom, since she’d moved onto the couch a few days ago. “Let’s go.” Swinging her long legs off the couch, she stood up readjusting her halter neck that tied both around her neck and across her breasts. “I can’t believe that we’re going out for a beer on New Years Day,” Jos commented as they locked the back door and trekked down the squeaky back stairs of the apartment. The smell of Indian food wafted through the air. “Bloody Bobby and Cheryl are cooking curry again,” Tex moaned. “Thank fuck we’re going out.” Tex revved the engine of red Ford Tx3 like it had a bigger gruntier engine and pushed a cassette into the stereo with one hand as he reversed out of the driveway, steering wheel in the other. Immediately the Violent Femmes were blasting distortedly through the speakers. Tex crunched the gear stick through into first and sped down the short street. Jos closed her eyes and wished for a moment that she wore a St Christopher medal, as each time she got in the car with Tex feared that it could indeed be her last trip. She went over her resolution in her head and convinced herself that it was a doable proposition. It had been almost nine months and at some stage it had to come to an end. The New Year seemed to be as good a place as any to say goodbye and steel herself forwards. She didn’t care what Tex thought of the resolution. It was her resolution, her prerogative, her life and her tortured feelings. “I didn’t mean to bag you out about your resolution,” Tex apologised turning down the sound on the stereo so he could be heard. “Cheers.” “No serious Jos. I mean it. It’s your New Year too.” “You don’t own anyone, I agree, but you own your feelings for them.” “Sure,” he agreed, turning his head to smile at her. ‘We’ll go celebrate with a beer OK. Good riddance hey!” There were no fights for car parks as they turned into Lake Street and eased into the closest space. The street was deserted – a shadow of its former New Years Eve self. Walking up the huge grand staircase that led to both the pub and the night club Jos felt free. This year, 1995 was going to be her year. She didn’t feel any guilt that her resolution had nothing to do with building bridges with her family that had fragmented like a cluster bomb in slow motion across the previous 12 months. She didn’t really care that she hadn’t resolved to make an effort to get along with her father, or to support her emotionally fragile mother, nor to nurture the delicate truce with her sister. This year was going to about her. Handing over their five dollar notes to the busty chick in her little box office at the door of the night club, and holding out their hands for the ultra violent stamp perfunctorily doled out by the bouncer at the door, they were initiated into the confines of the night club for the first time that year. “Huge,” Jos commented looking at the couple of people gathered at the main bar. “I feel like I’ve been washed up on the desert island of night clubs.” “I thought we came to have a beer, shoot come pool and let me kick your butt at Daytona,” teased Tex, poking her the side. She smiled a simple smile and was grateful for the umpteenth time for his no string attached friendship. With beers in hand they wandered through the dark room which housed the pin ball machines and the Daytona game on their way out to the balcony. Two people sat driving the virtual race course, the sounds of the engines drowned out by the music. For a fleeting moment she thought she recognised the profile of the second driver and her heart skipped a beat. It was not possible she told herself. Including her and Tex, there were four people at the bar and these two guys on Daytona. Taking a long swig of beer, she grabbed Tex arm and hissed loudly I his ear, as they walked past, “I think that’s Mac.” Tex turned quickly to look and shook his head. “It’s not,” he yelled into her ear and dragged her through onto the balcony. Jos walked the length of the balcony and stopped to stare across the junction of Lake and Spence Streets, over to the Cherry Blossom Japanese Restaurant sign. “The sign’s working,” she muttered, staring in disbelief that the sign was actually all completely lit and flashing in all the appropriate places. She couldn’t remember if the neon sign had ever worked. It always had symoblised to her the fact that she and Mac were as dysfunctional as it got. While one bit was working fine, there was always something else wrong. Something like the fact Mac had had the same girlfriend as long as they had known each other. The same girlfriend he had complained bitterly about as they chatted casually on his back deck or lay naked next to each other fighting both direction of their desire. She didn’t have the energy any more to run with concurrent but diametrically opposed energy of their attraction – desperately wanting him, but desperately trying not to have him. Passion and desire laced with an viscose undercurrent of guilt and improprietory. Her new year’s resolution was to give up Mac - and this time it was final … … Standing on the beach, in the moonlight holding his hand it seemed like the right thing to be doing, the right place to be and the right person to be with. At that moment, with the vision of Mac bouncing bare bottomed up the beach, as he urgently tried to tug his boxer shorts up from around his ankles, she couldn’t help but giggle a little. Sand and mozzies were a given if you were going to get naked on the beach at night. “But who walks their dog on the beach at midnight?” Mac asked, his pale cheeks flushed in the moonlight. “That guy,” she laughed, still feeling her bare breasts pressed into the blanket, racked with laughter, waiting for the lone dog walker to disappear further down the beach. In the parallel universe that existed when they were together, the place and space where it was just them, New Years resolution didn’t matter. They weren’t needed. But that parallel universe dissolved the moment the car door shut behind him and he crossed the well known length of grass from the curb to his door step, dipping his head to keep his face dry in the drizzle that had begun on their way home from the beach. With the thrill of the encounter still coursing through her veins she wasn’t regretful, as he disappeared and the front door closed behind him. But she knew she would be tomorrow and she knew she’d skip out on accepting the responsibility of it – just this once. She would not have done it, had it not been for the Cherry Blossom sign, the springs of pale pink neon blossom and the perfectly lit words; the row of lights around the outside illuminating in military style precision, one after the other – each one working. She’d tell Tex it was the Cherry Blossom sign and he’d understand, because he always did. This short story expands on one line that is mentioned in this very old (circa 1995/ 1999 rewrite) short story
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Monday Memories: Food Glorious Food

Yes ... I am aware that it is actually Tuesday now. However - I had this running around in my head all of yesterday so I'm putting it down, in a strange effort to try and create a little bit of consistency and structure around my blog, as we do the downhill slide into the brilliant new year and more regular blogging ....

Food Glorious Food:

Late yesterday afternoon Dylan and I strolled on into the supermarket to grab a few things, as we're prone to do in these days when I haven't shopped properly for weeks! Dylan saw a packet of Bertie Beetles hanging up in the lolly isle (yes I'm brave enough to traverse it - because it's also the chocolate isle!) I couldn't help but agree to throw them into basket with the other 'essential' items that we were getting - it has been absolute years since I've had a Bertie Beetle. With the insectile chocolate and honeycomb chips melting divinely in my mouth as we pulled out of our carpark and made our way back to the main road I remembered eating Bertie Beetles at high school.

They even out shone my standard favourite of the Caramello Koala, once discovered them ... and Bertie has it all over Freddo as far as I'm concerned (even when Freddo's inners are strawberry). Then the flood of memories came back to me - as we turned onto the high way. All the school lunches I've loved and hated (as Bertie must have been part of my lunch box at some stage - that's where my memory seems to take me back to) the best and worst of them.

My Mum, bless her cotton socks, decided to go al gourmet with my lunches when I was in Grade 3. I only remember this like it was yesterday because gourmet for me - spelt absolute lunch time disaster.

It began with the Jarlsberg cheese on Rivitas. A particularly healthy and interesting lunch if you're into it - my Dad was, I wasn't! I spent a great deal of my lunch times creatively stuffing the said cheese covered biscuits into the rock retaining wall near where we played. Then she began on the French Onion dip sandwiches. To this day I will not touch French Onion dip - double so since our friend Steven crushed a bug at our New Years Pary 1984/85 and put it in the French Onion dip, then we watched on as revellers continued to dig their biscuits into it. But I digress - I'm not sure which parallel universe my Mum resided in, but it was obviosly one in which French Onion dip was not only a suitable and enjoyable but highly sought after lunch option, unlike the universe I was living in!

Last week my kinesiologist asked me what assertiveness meant to me. I understand it now, as I sit and write this. Standing up and letting somone know that what they are doing to you, really bothers you, rather than just eating it, (or not eating as is the case here.)

I never once complained to my Mum, or suggested that perhaps she simply change what she put in my sandwiches. I just suffered through it silently. I guess inside I held a deep seated belief that I was meant to be grateful for the effort that Mum had put into making me lunch, and I didn't want to defile that expectant gratitude. I never thought for a moment that it was more important for a young rapidly growing girl that she actually ATE! Instead I found new little rocky crevices to stuff my lunch into, the only thing I was grateful was that a sandwich was easily to stuff that crunky Rivita biscuits. Thinking back, I even got quite savvy in the disposal of my lunches - I always unwrapped the plastic wrap so it would degrade - or bugs with a more developed sense of gourmet could enjoy.

And it got worse!

Moving to the country - the lunch options changed as well. There were now Cheese topped rolls for lunch - the inners I have no idea, but I took exception to the Cheese topped roll which were yummy the first couple of weeks I had them, but I rapidly grew to hate them. There were no convenient places to wedge the rolls into at my new school and throwing an unopened lunch into the bin was inviting the wrath and investigation of well meaning teachers, so instead I horded them in a secret compartment of my school bag. That was (and I apologise for this) until they began to drip through my bag and I was found out by one of those well meaning teachers - who of course rang home and told my Mum.

You would think that it would have been somehow so much easier just to ask for a simple peanut butter sandwhich - but alas, I still didnt' want to upset Mum. I was forced to home to take them out of my bag, one at a time - around a months worth of lunches if I remember. But something good did finally come out of it, I finally - yes, asked for a peanut butter sandwich and that's what I ate every day until primary school ended.

At high school, the lunch gauntlet was finally thrown open to me. My first term of high school seems characterised by the smell of Johnson and Johnson Baby oil on the tanning legs of the older girls sitting in the quadrangle, or wearing a school uniform for the first time, having constant worries about losing my terms bus ticket and the constant stream of hot and wilted salad sandwiches. For the first term - I think my Mum lovingly made (somewhere in the craziness of getting ready for work and school) salad sandwiches for me because I certainly didn't have the energy nor iniative to make a salad sandwhich before rushing out for the bus.

There was something weird but almost satisfying about a warm salad sandwich where the cheese and the tomato have met in warm enviro of the lunch box and melded into a new sub species of food. Then there was the half warm Two Minute noodles,during the bitter Winter, in the thermos flask that never seemed to keep anything really hot and after a while was prone to leaking. And finally - in amongst all of this - my all time favourite school lunch materialised ... and you'll understand in a moment why the Bertie Beetle bought this back.

In Year 8 I began to enjoy chocolate sprinkle sandwiches - or aptly coined - chocolate ant sandwiches. Ahh ... it didn't matter if it was hot - the butter and sprinkles fused together to form a chocolate paste ganache type filling. In Winter they were crunchy. Nutrition value - almost zero, but it was on wholemeal bread which of course makes all the difference! At high school you could also get vanilla slices and frozen yoghurt. I remember standing in the tuck shop line hoping that there was still a vanilla slice left for me when I reached the front of the four pronged queue.

I'm still really bad at eating lunch - unless I'm going out for lunch (which face it, rarely happens) or I'm enjoying a shared lunch at a gathering of women, or at a friends place I dont eat lunch. Tut tut - I know.

Next year Dylan begins kindy and I am determined not to traumatise him with a lunch box that I think is fantastic. If he wants to keep it simple that will be great because it will be more important for him to enjoy and eat his lunch, than for me to invest my self esteem and self worth in what I believe is right for his lunch box. Let's just hope he doesn't traumatise me with his list of request - fresh foccacia and smoked salmon or sushi.

To Muse on:

What was your worst/best school lunch as a kid? What is in your kids lunch boxes? What as a grown up is your all time favourite lunch?

Life Quake

Mystic Medusa has been describing the recent astrological disturbances as a 'life quake' and that is pretty fitting for me. My life has been thrown up in upheavals of epic proportions in the last two or so weeks.

It began with an exercise in the Artist Way called 'The Awful Truth' - building on work that I have previously done I realised that my terrible habit was being constantly busy, never saying no and being over burdened with committments (with guilt the constant spectre through it all). Then came the insult to injury - I wrote that I believed that I was not worthy of my artistic gifts and talents. If you're forever busy its easy to believe in that and create a reality around that (just as I did when I believed that I didn't deserve love or happiness!)

And that was really the crux of it - self worth, or lack of self worth. As I dug deeper and deeper I saw that I have based my self worth on my volunteer work, and most especially creating Down to Birth magazine for the past three years. I knew that like any nasty and debilitating addiction it needed to be stopped. I needed to go back to basics, to downsize and invest in myself. I need to base my self worth on 'me' - on my gifts and talents, my foibles, my strengths and weakness, my idioyncracies, my passions and my great loves - the best and the worst of me.

At our AGM a week and a bit ago I resigned from all my HMA positions and am now in the process of tidying up all the loose ends. I feel raw and vulnerable - and its doesn't help (or does it?) that I'm in my dark moon phase at the moment - so everything is felt and experienced even more acutely than normal. I don't quite know who I am any more - only what I want to be. I want to be free ... and I know that my writing sets me free. I simply have to trust in something that I have loved since I was a child - turning up to a blank page and turning it into a rollicking adventure, a sad mournful tale, an autobiographical introspective, a scathing social commentary, a suspenseful thriller, a heart wrenching romance - whatever I want it to be.

In 'Overboard' the 80's comedy with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn's husband (who has abandoned her to the the wilds of some hick town) takes the wheel of his yacht and declares in a rather manical voice 'At sea I am a God' ... and there is something of that in being a writer. When you turn up to the empty page you are God/Goddess/The Universe at work - as you create mini little worlds. I can be the centre of my Universe, I can be the Universe at work - I just have to believe in myself, in my talents and my abilities ... all before breakfast huh, as simple as that?

At this point, as I feel like I'm shattered in the face of my future dreams, like crystal dropped on concrete, I have to hold fast to the promise that I made to myself in September - to just write. As The Buddha said "It is your mind that creates this world" ... I need to find the strong warrior dimension of my mind and hold on tight through the last of the upheavals ... knowing that at the end of the quake there must be energy and resilience to rebuild ... and rebuild I will.

I'm wondering if this is the forging of my truth that Lucy Cavendish spoke of to me at the Goddess Conference?

Cool Change

If there's one thing in my life that's missing

It's the time that I spend alone

Sailing on the cool and bright clear waters

It's kind of a special feeling

When you're out on the sea alone

Staring at the full moon

Like a lover

Time fora cool change...

I know that it's time

for a cool change

Now that my life

is so prearranged

I know that it's time

for a cool change
Cool Change - Little River Band

Is it me or is it conspiracy spurned on by Venus retrograde? The past few weeks, every time I visit my local Woolworths store they seem to be playing the soundtrack to my love life - like a lovelorn review. I thought it was coincidence (they simply had Savage Garden on speed rotation) or it was just that their music selection was stuck in bad 80's and 90's music.Tonight, however, it was set in concrete - it is a conspiracy and somehow someone extracted all the loves of my lives and songs associated with them, and sold them to my local Woolworths to torment me every time I go to shop. They must know even reining in an active and inquisitive three year old, can not hold back the tides of nostalgia.

Tonight's offering was 'Cool Change' from the Little River Band's First Under the Wire Album from 1979. No I wasn't falling in love in 1979 as a 6 year old, but in 1991 as I was completing high school I fell heavily in love with a guy who adored this song (he'd even sing along to it, as we trundled around Ballarat in his seen-better-days, dark green Urvan with bright orange stripes down the side) I'm sure that its been years since I actually indulged in a walk down memory lane with Duncan....

We met when I was working in a Christian Youth Cafe, just around the corner from where I lived in central Ballarat. The name of the cfe escapes me now. Walking past one day to the bus stop, I saw a sign advertising for volunteer cafe workers and I thought it sounded like a great idea. The idea of a a youth cafe was appealing - there was no where for teenagers to go. I was also 17 years old, had never worked in my life (other than the odd baby sitting job) and it seemed like a good way to get some hospitality skills before I finished school.

I guess I hadn't been working there long, perhaps a week or two after my training and the cafes official opening, when I sold Duncan our famous lasagne (I should point out at this moment that I have spent the rest of my life aspiring to be able to create lasagne like this - and I still haven't cracked it!) He was tall, incredibly handsome, older (which was a winner in my book!) and quite charming. He was back again when it was time for me to finish my shift and we got talking ... and I honestly dont think that we stopped talking. It was well into the early hours of the morning when we finally got off my front fence and I went inside to bed. We'd talked religion and philosophy mainly, and I was smitten - good looking and well read! And thus began an arduous and bittersweet friendship/unrequited love affair between the two of us, which spanned sitting last term at high school, final exams and then heading off out in the big wide adult world.

He was the first person to 'take me to church' - something I had to repeat three times to my Dad and sister before the believed that I wasn't having them on - as I was a devout critic of established religion. Going to a Catholic school meant mass at least four times a year and I loathed every second of it. It seemed inconceivable to either of them that I would willing get up early on a Sunday morning and go to Church. As it turned out, this became my Sunday morning ritual through the final term of high school. Yes, it definitely put a big dint in my social activities (not as many nights at Troopers with my best friend Michelle and other underage punters!) and my sleeping in patterns, but very quickly Duncan became the centre of my universe when I wasn't at school.

My bestfriend called Duncan 'basic' (which was pretty rich coming from her!) and didn't like the territory that he was coverting for himself in my life. He was basic in the sense of being uncomplicated - what you saw was what you got. Michelle spent hours annoyingly singing 'Love to have a beer with Duncan' at school, particularly as we walked down the corridors between classes, laughing at her own joke because Duncan didn't drink. He was legal to drink and he didn't, to Michelle that was an abomination.

My week from Thursday through to Sunday revolved around Duncan, his friends (who all came from the same Christian community) and a taste of life on the otherside of high school. More than anything I just wanted to be Duncan's girlfriend ... but as time got passed, it seemed less and less likely, rather than more so.

Oh yes - I'd forgotten to mention the age gap of six year. At times it didn't seem to matter that he was well and truly 'grown up' and I was just embarking on my life as an adult. He turned 24 a few weeks before my 18th birthday (which was spent with Mum in Cairns) As intellectual sparring partners, it didn't really seem to matter to me if he was older - I adored him and I didn't get why age had to be an issue. Prince once sang 'Why is age more than a number, when it comes to love?' While I was oblivious to this being an issue, it was at the heart of it for Duncan.

Duncan's 24th birthday ended up being memorable - because for the first time I excitedly believed that I had finally cracked him, and he'd give into us having more than just the platonic relationship we'd been uncomfortably wearing for weeks. We'd spent the afternoon first at a gym, playing around in the spa with two of his mates and a girl that Greg had picked up along the way. Afterwards, we got fish and chips and sat down by the rowing jettys by Lake Wendouree.

We ate, we drank some alcohol, then Greg and Sophie went down on the jetty to get horizontal. I was mortified (not because it was the first time I'd ever seen someone having sex in real life) but for the fact that Sophie was a passing acquaintance of my sister, and couldn't have been more than about 14 at the time. She was also very drunk! I remember Malcom getting into one of his dark moods, and disappearing in a huff leaving Duncan and I alone ... and we kissed. I think perhaps it was the small quoff that had loosened up his inhibitions ... but it was a passing thing.

The next day when I saw him it was more uncomfortable then usual - stilted conversation and finally a declaration from him, that what had happend the previous night should not have happened and it would not be happening again. Crushed ... pissed off too if my memory serves me correctly, I disappeared out the stained glass front door of his parent's place in a wash of tears.

This became a theme. I was certain he was attracted to me, the kiss had sealed it, but he fought it and I at that stage hadn't learnt my feminine wiles. The kiss was pretty soon forgotten, in terms of being able to see each other, chat and carry on until my final night of school. I had gone out with my cohort to drink at Troopers, as cohorts had done the year before and the year before that. It was a Thursday night and we were all dressed up. I had on a black long sleeved body suit (yes well it was the early 80's) with a press stud crutch and jeans. I'd borrowed the top from Michelle.

I had a drink, but wasn't really getting into the mood. One of the girls was really drunk, got up onto one of the pedastal benches to dance and broke it. I left and called Duncan who came and picked me up. We drove around talking and then went back to his place. His parents had become used to my presence there. His sister, a gorgeous blonde hairdresser always made me feel uncomfortable but his parents were always incredibly pleasent to me. It was dark, everyone was asleep and we snuck inside to his room, which would have originally been a formal loungeroom or dining room. The doors opened in like french doors and had wide, thick opaque glass insets.

We went in to talk - but things seemed to steam roll in the opposite direction to which Duncan had firmly stated they would stay. There was much kissing, whispering and giggling as I explained to him the intricacies of a body suit. We were down to our underwear, on top of the bed clothes (for once a balmy Ballarat evening) and locked in each others embrace when foot steps came down the hallway. There was the flash of a torch. His father hearing voices (and not knowing that I was there) had come to investigate the sounds coming from the other end of the house.

I ducked under the blankets as Duncan pretended to sleep, just as the torch cut a swath of light through the opaque glass insets in the door. If my heart had beating fast, it was racing now. With a whispering, though heaving voice Duncan told me to get dressed we had to leave before we got caught. Scrambling around in the dark searching for my jeans and body suit I was terrified that at any moment I would be caught, rabbit in headlights fashion by his father, in my underwear and clutching a body suit that was never meant to be donned in panicked circumstances.

Dressed we dashed out the front door, leaving a less than quiet farewell of mischevious giggles behind. Emerging on the other sides we broke into cathertic laughter as we climbed into the van (hoping that it would start). We kissed tenderly as he dropped me off and I was on a high. Definitely, this time, we'd be together. On my last day of school I was sporting a huge grin from ear to ear, Michelle was sporting dinosaur bumps and scratches from her evening's escapes.

It was Saturday morning before we talked again, and it was a chilly reception I got at the front door. Duncan suggested that we go for a drive, that we needed to talk. My heart and hopes sank, as I realised that we about to dance the same tune as last time. Unlike the night before, the van didn't start this time. It needed a new battery desperately, but Duncan's dole cheque wasn't reaching that far this fornight (or last fortnight for that matter!) Between us we maneouvered it out onto the road, facing down the hill, and off we went on one of those hair raising jump starts. The first try was unsuccessful, as was the second and we came to a coasting halt into a car park at the bottom of the hill.

Duncan flew out of the car, slammed the door, swore angrily and then punched a huge dint in his door. I was so shocked, it took a moment to register what had just happened. Adrenalin kicked in, as I saw the white rage on his face, and I too flew out the door, landing running on the footpath, and ran away, sobbing uncontrollably. In my mind, it seemed that I was the next target of his anger - since I was already in his bad books.

He must have rung later to apologise and promised me that he would never ever hit me. He simply couldn't. He blamed his boxing training on is inability to control his temper (he had told me weeks earlier about the brainwashing that was involved in his boxing training - training them to either be happy or angry, and how to flick effortless between the two!)

Other than the constant sexual undercurrent, the other thing I remember vividly about Duncan was that he was always late. It was embarrassing because we would rock up to Church on a Sunday morning, half way through the service. And the looks we got! I have a vivid memory of sitting at my piano playing, the top of it strewn with pungent jasmine flowers, my bedroom windows open to the street and passing the time, waiting for him to turn up. After a while I too began to run on Duncan time - which was always a minimum of 20 minutes behind the rest of the world. It took years to kick this terrible habit of always running late.

The time eventually came for me to fly to Cairns to have Christmas with my Mum. Duncan had decided to go north to, to Lismore to spend some time with friends there. We arranged that on the return trip, I would catch the bus as far as Lismore and then we'd drive back together to Ballarat. I was looking forward to the road trip, to the freedom of not being on a bus, and of course to spend time together. My hopes that our differences (whatever they were, because we never spoke about WHY we couldn't have a relationships, we'd just accidentally have moments and then Duncan would repeat the spiel about how it wouldn't happen again!) I guess it was my wish that some kind of an understanding would be forged on the trip home together.

The week before I was meant to leave, having organised my return ticket, Duncan rang to say that he had would be leaving in two days time and he wouldn't be able to give me a lift. I dont remember now if he actually came out and stated that he didn't think that it was a good idea for us to be together for all of that time, or that's what I deduced. This was the final straw.

I returned home to Ballarat a few days before I headed off to do volunteer work with Edmund Rice Camps. I was going away for five days to Shoreham, with 20 odd underpriveldged boys and about 30 leaders. It was the necessary distraction. At that camp I met Leon, who would become my second boyfriend and with whom I lost my virginity. I was grateful for Duncan having dropped off the radar ... the certainty of what I had with Leon was the balm I needed after Duncan.

It all came to a rather melodramatic end. In mid January (after I had refused to take Duncan's calls and had done everything possible to avoid him) I was hosting my first ever dinner party. Present were my good friend Regina, her boyfriend Eddie, Leon, myself and my Dad. I'd spent the day preparing chicken cacciatore from scratch and had prepared a chocolate pudding. We'd had some champagne and then some wine. Between mains and dessert there was a knock on the back door (we never used our front door).

The door was open so he let himself in the and before I knew it Duncan was in the kitchen, decked out in his grey tracksuit pants, Hawaii 50 t-shirt and tongs. The kitchen, lounge, dining area was tiny (we lived in a turn of the century miners cottage!) so there was no escaping. He muttered that he was sorry, he'd interrupted. Dad said no, invited him in. I pushed past him and screamed 'You can't be here!" and went to hide in our outside loo (which comes in handy for occassions like this)

Sometime later I came out, went back inside, went to my bedroom and continued to sob. Leon came in and said that he completely understood if I wanted to go back and be with Duncan, he could go home with Eddie and catch the train back to Warrnambool in the morning. I resolutely said no, told him that Duncan had had months to sort out what he wanted and it was too late now. At the time I thought it a pretty admirable quality on Leon's part to be so understanding and willing to step aside, what I really didn't understand was that it was a reasonably clear indication that Leon wasn't particularly committed to our fledgling relationship. But that's the joy of hindsight!

Amongst the tears and the angst, I made some chocolate sauce for the pudding, we got the Tia Maria out, ate dessert, played Trivial Pursuit and later on in the evening, feeling rather merry and more than a little rebellious I lost my virginity to Leon.

The next morning Dad told me that he and Duncan had had a long chat outside. I turned out that the age gap had been something that he had never been able to broach - he'd felt compelled to be honourable and act more like an older brother towards me, even though that's not what he truly felt. Yes - he was confiding this to my father! It came to pass that night, that he'd finally got it into his head that he was going to come around, plucked up the courage to put things right between us - he'd come around to ask me to g out with him ... he'd realised that he really did love me.

"Well he was too bloody late," I remember replying, feeling angry all over again. Angry that I had spent months waiting for him to come around, and when I had finally given up and moved on, he'd finally come around to it. That was the last time I saw Duncan face to face - him with the bunny in the head lights moment, as he was slapped in the face with the happy scene the confronted him the instant he stepped through the back door. It also turned out that he had been visiting Dad while I was away, and that was why he rather casually let himself in through the back door. I would see the green van driving up and down Sturt Street sometimes, and I'd look at the ground believing, like little kids do, that if I couldn't see him, he wouldn't see me. I would have mild panic attacks when I did see the van, worried about what I would say if I did indeed see him.

As I look back now, I find it telling that a young man, born in the sign of fire, would yearn for the promise in a song that stated 'I was born in the sign of water and its there that I feel best'. I can understand now why Duncan was so drawn to this song (though I did muse a few months later about all the sailing references that seemed to be coming into my life when I stood with my third boyfriend at his Nan's funeral, as they were playing Rod Stewart's 'Sailing) I can see his desperate need for change. He was stuck at home with his parents, with an unfinished plumbing apprenticeship (that he'd done with his father and only had another 6 months to do to complete it), no job, his boxing dreams were still unrealised, he had desires that he couldn't be at peace with and perhaps beliefs that really weren't filling his life with all that they promised.

I hope that Duncan did find his cool change, and found love, peace and happiness. And, I hope that I find that next time I set foot through the turnstiles at Woolworths, that they are not playing my tune. There is only so much romantic nostalgia one woman can handle.