Clothes Pony.

When I was two years old, I made AM late for her one-day-a-week of work.
“What happened to you?” Her boss asked when she finally arrived flustered sometime after midday.
“I just wrestled with a toddler over what she would wear to preschool.”
“Why didn’t you tell her what to wear and just put it on her?”
“I tried. But she refused.”
Meanwhile, I was relaxing in story time wearing the eclectic mix of a Cinderella costume with gumboots and a straw hat.

RG has raised me to believe that people judge books by their cover and therefore I should brush my hair.
“Hygiene is not just a tall girl,” he said to me every morning of my childhood when I refused to have a shower or take off my Batman shirt for the eighth day in a row.
I, however, live by the belief that life is too short to waste time standing in front of a mirror with a straightening iron and like to grab the closest shirt possible when I wake up in the morning, forced to go out in public.
“Did you pay good money for the rips in those jeans?” He asked one day when I was getting dressed to go to a job interview.
“No. They are just old. And one sudden movement away from becoming curtains.”
On the random occasions that I have been forced to go somewhere formal, I feel like a lady if I remember to wear underwear and look in awe at the women who know how to curl their hair.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those girls who can wear white and not spill on it or spend an entire day concreting (or similar) and never get a hair out of place. Instead, I buy cheap white shirts because I know that with my hand-eye-coordination they are going to have the life span of about six weeks. I once believed by friend when She told me that girls get their hair shiny by putting glue in it.
“How can someone who understands Logical Mathematics get herself into this situation?” AM asked, perplexed, as she massaged conditioner into my head to save my hair from being shaved off.

When Mary-Kate Olsen started dressing as a hobo, I felt like someone finally understood me.
“I want to be a bag lady,” I told hairdressers when they tried to put something called conditioner into my hair. They would always avert their eyes to my ironic Fendi bag and misinterpret my instruction.
I loved that there was a female ambassador for looking like a derelict and when She landed on the front cover of Vogue, I officially threw away soap.
“This is nothing to be proud of,” AM scoffed.
Meanwhile, I relaxed in a university lecture wearing tracksuit pants and three hundred dollar shoes.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she shook her head.
Some things are beyond logic.

One of my biggest fears about growing up (aside from an increasing age gap between me and twenty-year-old boys) is the idea that We have to dress our age. I get flustered when I am told that certain aspects of appearance are age specific and it is not acceptable to wear a cartoon T-shirt to work. I could not be told what to wear as an infant, so an employer doesn’t have a shot in Hell of convincing me that a uniform is more appropriate. If I had a Fairy Godmother, I would ask her to destroy the concept of acceptable dressing instantly because Lady GaGa’s efforts are taking too long and I may have to seek employment long before it is universally acceptable to not wear pants.

I was holding onto a bar after drinking too much at it when a boy approached me. He was wearing a suit and had shiny hair.
“Are you wearing a parka and high heels at the same time?” He asked.
“Yes I am.”
“OK,” he looked me up and down. “It kind of looks stupid.”
He asked for permission to buy me a drink but I refused.
Life is too short to spend time with people who will judge a book by its cover.

Location, Location, Location.

I have a habit of biting my nails that I desperately try to curb by smoking.
One day, my mother slapped me in public.
“What was that for?” I asked, dumbfounded. My parents have never hit me. Despite many opportunities welcoming it.
“Don’t bite your nails. It isn’t ladylike.”
“Oh, but hitting someone is?”
She then threatened to tie my hands behind my back until I threatened to enlighten her on the last time in my life that wasn’t a success.

My parents have started to get excited because their youngest child (not me) is about to graduate, move out and become an adult.
“This time next year, we will be kid free!” AM squealed in excitement one evening. I ignored my cue to pack up and leave.
“What on earth will you do with all your free time?”
“We are going to have sex all over the house!”
I started packing up my belongings, vowing never to sit on the couch again, and threatened that if she ever said that again I would tell her about all of the places around the house I have had sex.

I once did It with someone on the balcony of a backpackers hostel. Which sounds questionable until you consider the hygienic nature of those beds.
“That is nothing,” my London BFF recounted. “I had sex on my school oval at lunch time.”
“How!?” I was genuinely interested. And impressed.
“Where else are you going to do it when it is noon, you’re horny and your bedroom is still where your mum likes to hang out in search for washing?”

I have had very few experiences of sex in public places, as I find it really hard to get turned on when your faux husband is running past the tent of blankets to throw up, claiming his drink was spiked with alcohol. I have made my way through Europe naked, I know some nightclub bathrooms far too well and I am acquainted with my pool table Biblically. But I am yet to have a, “And then the police arrived…” story that involves a very specific type of gun going off.

Real estate is all about location, location, location. RG has always advised me to buy the cheapest house on the best block to garner the best investment. But anyone I have known to apply such logic to their sex life has ended up with a gynecological condition I can’t even spell. I have always reasoned that a bed is a safe asset.
“I have had sex in a park, in an alley, on the beach, in a cloak room, on a mountain, in a driveway, in a spa, in a barn, under a fish net, inside a fridge and at an aquarium,” a boy friend told me.
“Should I start calling ahead when I meet you in public?”
“I have rarely fucked in a bed.”
I started to feel really generic. I reconsidered my parent’s threat to make me homeless, reasoning that it would at least enhance my sex life.

I always aim to make my sex life interesting.
I left the house, put down the scotch bottle and broke through the walls of self-imposed resistance to arrive at the location of someone I actually like.
I am not an advocate for drunk driving as I worry about the innocent party who can be threatened by an idiot at the hands of a wheel and gin bottle. But I have always been behind drunk sex. And in front of it. Beside it. Underneath it. Upside down…Anyway, I am a fan. I find it interesting, fun and believe it to be hilarious more hilarious than any public park ever could be.
“I have not had sober sex since August,” I guestimated to my girl friend. I started biting my nails.
Bored of the process I have become all too familiar with, I allowed myself to discover the craziest location of all: a sober brain and boy I actually want to snuggle.

“What was that for?” I asked when my friend gave me a hug.
“You are growing up!”
We stood in from the beach, walked through the park, arrived at the driveway, and like a lady, I put my cigarette out before I walked inside the house.

Maid In Memories

I was wearing a bikini, a headband, a 99Cent Store facemask and picking up dog poop with a rusty shovel when the cute boy I have been playing daily ping pong with walked into the compound known as my house. I always assumed that my enclosure was a Hot Man Repellent as so few seem willing to venture in on their own accord. I guess I was wrong.
“What are you doing tonight?” He asked after throwing up in his mouth, debating whether to run out the gate and pretend that This never happened all in the matter of three point nine seconds.
“Cleaning my bedroom,” I said flippantly as I tried to fling a piece of stubborn shit off the rust.
He observed the scene again, regretted not taking option number two and running for the hills, and silently admitted to making a mistake. “I hope that works out for you.”
The poo finally relented, flew off and landed on the fence.
“Yeah, it is going to be great,” I sighed.

When I was younger I was scared of spending my Friday nights alone. But then I discovered do-it-yourself hair dye kits and a whole new world of terror was opened up to me. Loneliness paled in comparison.
Onceuponaletssayatleast2006, I would fret if I didn’t have anything (or one) to do on the ultimate night of the week. But then I discovered how much I enjoy my own company and a whole new world of beauty was opened up to me. The conversation has been brilliant ever since and boredom subsided around the same time midgets started uploading data onto YouTube.

When I had my own car, I stored my entire life in it. It was my mobile bedroom in more ways than one.
“There are rednecks with trailers who would be appalled at your lifestyle,” RG scoffed.
“I wish I had a tennis racquet with me,” someone random would say somewhere random.
“Oh, I think I have one in my car!” I would almost instantaneously pull the desired item out from my boot/glove box/under the accelerator.
“I didn’t know you played tennis,” the random someone would say.
“I don’t.”
Appearing to be Mary Poppins with a magic car was how I once made friends outside of creating them.
I don’t know why I stored hiking boots, red lipstick or a tie-die T-shirt in the Batmobile either. But I like to be prepared for any array of crap I may find myself involved in (Aside: See Hard Hat under the seat circa last relationship).
The excess junk in my trunk meant that I was lucky if I could fit my own trunk into the drivers seat. The key-to-ignition process usually involved the misplacing of several perfectly comfortable Marlboro Lights boxes and, sometimes, a puppy.
Onceaponalisteningtocountrymusic, I threw my phone somewhere between the Just-In-Case bottle of scotch and Who Knows When roller blades. As science is always against me (see aforementioned hair dye hate), my phone bumped the scotch bottle, called my then-crush and left a rendition of me singing The Dixie Chicks followed by a conversation involving only one voice on His voicemail.
My secret was out: I talk to myself. He never called back. He possibly tried to forgot It ever happened.

If Dorothy had just bothered to clean out her closet, she would never have had to go down the yellow brick road because the process is a perfectly enclosed trip down memory lane in itself.
“What the Hell is going on here?” AM screamed when she stepped into my bedroom carrying a bottle of wine and a glass that could easily be mistaken for a bucket.
I was wearing a bikini, a headband and had a 99Cent Store feather sticking out of my head while laying sprawled on the carpet. I was flicking through photographs I had intelligently hidden behind a box of discarded shoes the last time I cleaned (Aside: Otherwise known as 2004).
“I have never acknowledged this before, but I was an incredibly unattractive teenager.”
AM bit her tongue as she tried to accept the feather and unwashed hair all in the space of four point six seconds.
“I am cleaning out my life and realizing how embarrassing it has been actually going out in public to live it.”

Every now and then it is fun to stop making new memories and remember to treasure the old ones. Aside from cleaning being an exercise in shopping without spending any money (“There you are Hooker Heels. I have been looking for you!”), an abundance of crap is found that has been stored away after the applicable situation is over.
There is the My Little Pony dolls you were given for your twenty-fourth birthday by your dad;
There is the ‘I’m With Stupid’ shirt you once wore with pride instead of irony;
And then there are the photographs of your evolution from Idiot to Idiot With A Sexual History.

I sat back with a scotch surrounded by a past I was bored with putting away and thought of the mess and the memories I had spent my evening rummaging through. I decided that, no matter how ugly, every moment has been worth it, as it has forced me to arrive at where I am now.
Which is great, I sighed.

[Untitled].

Onceuponaparty I watched my friend fight with her boyfriend, decide to abruptly leave with a scrap of dignity and then proceed to fall down a flight of stairs onto her ass. I so desperately wanted to help her, but it was difficult to do so through my laughing convulsions.

Any monumental or remotely interesting anecdote to my life is littered with embarrassing incidents that I seem to save for the people I want to impress. I am the girl who will just happen to be wearing fur when I eventually meet Stella McCartney. I am the girl who laughs so hard at a joke that I run directly in to a glass door. And I am the girl who only eats white food because colours stain.
All this and more has culminated in me deciding that a life of reclusiveness is probably my best bet at respect.
I predict that stories prefaced with, “You know Sall? She hasn’t been seen in ten years,” will bode much better than the oft-used, “You know Sall? She is the girl who went to the airplane toilet and forgot to lock the door.”

For five days I have been high on painkillers after a tonsillectomy. My favourite boy friend, my Faux Husband, drove me to the emergency room for a Saturday night Pethodine injection.
“I suddenly understand drug addicts,” I told him while we drove home from the hospital in a magical bubble. “They contribute nothing worthwhile to society, but they don’t care. It feels amazing.”
“Wise words.”
“Lets go to the zoo!”
The feeling of floating at a similar axis to Jupiter has meant that not only is my mind and body completely numb, but so is my ability to be embarrassed.
“Just get ready for the injection,” the doctor instructed. I held out my bicep. “No, no. This one goes in the butt.”
Of course it was the day I chose to wear my oversized, yet often reclusive, novelty Care Bare underpants.

Being imprisoned into ones house, as a form of imposed reclusion, has resulted in ample time to spy on neighbours.
“I have never noticed this before,” I called AM at work because I was bored, high and needing validation. “But every one who lives around us is stunning.”
“Maybe you should take a break from the drugs?”
“Fuck that! I am going stalking! How old do you think the guy across the road is? I don’t even know what a guy my age might look like.”
“That is embarrassing.”

Every morning I wander the streets of my neighbourhood in my pyjamas and somehow manage to return home holding a hot chocolate.
“Where are you going dressed like that?” AM asked after I darted past wearing actual clothes for the first time ever before nine o’clock. My shirt was on backwards, but, you know, painkillers are distorting.
“Mother, I have just noticed that I live in an episode of Australia’s Next Top Model. I am not going to risk it by wearing something with an elasticised waist in public.”
She helped me fix my shirt.
“If you are not back in forty-five minutes, I am declaring you dead.” She gave me my next dose of magic beans and sent me on my way.

I live in an area that was once a notorious refuge for drug addicts, until wealthy people decided that they too wanted to live near the ocean. They built big concrete blocks around the bathtubs of crystal meth and beautiful surfers quickly replaced the dilapidated users.
I floated past the mansions, just how many would have done before me in times of yesteryear, flew around the corner on a unicorn and came to my desired location: the ramshackle home of a beautiful surfer. I continued walking so that I didn’t look like, you know, a freak but subtly searched for any form of life.
With metaphorical binoculars, I squinted into His windows, turning my head so it remained focused on his property despite my increasing distance, until…
CRASH.
I walked directly into a reversing magic bubble (read: car).
“Oh my god, are you ok?” the beautiful surfer yelled. “I almost ran over you!”
I so desperately wanted to say yes, but it was difficult to do so through my laughing convulsions and pain-killers.
I walked home with a scrap of dignity and locked myself in.

The Best And The Worst.

My grade five teacher was a morbidly obese woman named Miss Best. At story time, she failed to disguise the reality that she needed two chairs to be comfortable and was the type of teacher who kept a thigh-size jar of chocolate on her desk. When a student answered a question correctly, she rewarded herself by eating candy in front of us. Recess was generally spent plotting her death, but the goal was never achieved as, we reasoned, we would never be able to commission a crane strong enough to hang her over the lake full of alligators.

When my life was in the hands of a four-hundred-pound, twenty-six-year-old M&M addict, I followed the crowd and agreed with my classmates that the world sucked.
“What have we done to deserve this?” We would ask while drawing sketches of extra thick guillotines.
“The whole school must hate us,” we decided while researching chocolate-based poison recipes.
“She is the most horrible person who ever lived,” was the motto, until we discovered fold-away chairs and realized that they could provide us with at least a giggle.

One day, Miss Best caught a boy hiding a naked picture of Pamela Anderson in his pencil case and confiscated it.
“You’re just jealous!” He yelled at her, in a rage. “Because she is hot and the only thing best about you is your name.”
Hindsight makes me wonder how much chocolate was consumed that night and if Cadbury shareholders were suddenly able to buy summer houses come morning. But at the time, in my pre-adolescent innocence, I realized that what was said to Miss Best was the worst thing possible. I remember her facing the blackboard, fighting tears and staring at the near-empty candy jar in agony.

Suddenly I was overcome with sadness. We had spent months fantasizing the woman’s demise behind her back, but now someone had vocalized what we all thought to her face and it made us look stupid. The superficial words proved how wrong we all were. Unfortunately, Miss Best was going to hit the Freddo Frogs regardless of incorrectness.

If I had an M&M for every time I judged a person based on their appearance and then placed them into a stereotype, I would have about eight super-sized bags of coloured chocolate at my disposal right now and my chair would need to be made of a much more durable metal.
There is the little blonde whore who can’t possibly be intelligent, the intelligent geek who can’t possibly be sexy or the plus-sized woman who must not have feelings, just to name three. But there are hundreds, thousands, if not millions, of stereotypes that are disproved daily by the billions of people on the planet. Out of sheer laziness, we forget about the three-dimensional because, maybe, the reality of that is too heavy.
So we call someone a whore, boring or fat, because it is easier than plotting what their real personality must be like.

I was recently talking to a boy friend who asked, “You really like sex, don’t you?”
It was nine o’clock in the morning, I had not even brushed my teeth, and I was eating chocolate for breakfast. Shockingly, my mind just wasn’t There.
“I do. Yes. Just like everyone does.” I felt comfortable making a generalization in such a context. “The only difference between me and a lot of other people who enjoy sex is that I am vocal about my support for it.”
“True,” he conceded. “But there are still a lot of girls who are ho’s out there.”
I thought for a moment. I will never deny that there are a lot of people Out There who lie, cheat, steal and deceive. But sex in itself cannot be an amoral act. Only the aspects surrounding it. I explained this to boy friend.
“Notice how you only said ‘She’,” I highlighted. “You’re just following the crowd. Why don’t you start actually thinking about the situation and people as complex individuals? Otherwise, it just makes you look stupid.”

All of the chocolate in the world will never be as rewarding as it is to realize that someone is more than their appearance implies.
I sat on the beach and watched a morbidly obese girl self-consciously arrange an umbrella to cover her butt.
“That is brave,” my boy friend observed. “I wouldn’t go to the beach if I looked like that.”
“Why? You have no problem stepping inside a library.”
He took a moment to understand. And then the penny dropped.

Sugar Pie Honey Bunch.

I have a list of fifty things I want to do in my life. I want to go to the North Pole dressed as Santa and Mrs Claus. I want to buy a Hummar and drive over every car that can’t merge. And I want to go to McDonalds and eat one thousand chicken McNuggets in one sitting.
“Aim high!” RG toasts when I arrive home from another date with Jack Daniels and announce a new mission. “Will this be happening before or after your go abseiling with a midget?”

When I was sixteen, I decided to eat only natural food, became a bitch and looked like a concentration camp victim.
“At least your insides will be healthy,” a relative congratulated me.
She said more but I was too busy dreaming about eating a bowl of raw cookie dough. After I found myself sitting in the pantry eating sugar cubes at two o’clock in the morning, I decided to embrace my inner Oprah and go back to eating everything in sight.

There are two great things about going to hospital for surgery: cute doctors and the mandatory eat-your-body-weight-in-candy-before-fasting day.
“Eat everything in sight,” the not-cute tonsillectomy surgeon encouraged. “You won’t be eating for at least five days after the operation.”
He said more but I was too busy dreaming about a bowl of raw cookie dough I would be consuming upon arrival home.
“And another thing,” he warned. “You won’t be able to smoke.”
I have always been amazed at how quickly love can turn to hate.

When I lived in London, I slept on a couch in an apartment that was conveniently located across the street from a supermarket.
“Where are your shoes?” A homeless man sitting outside Sainsbury’s once asked me when I was dressed in my pyjamas to buy my breakfast Malteasers.
The people inside become even more acquainted with me.
“Have you ever eaten anything that doesn’t contain eight tablespoons of sugar?” One lady asked me.
“No.”
“Do you have company tonight?” Another surveyed my bottle of Jack Daniels, four litres of Coke and three boxes of chicken nuggets.
“No.”
“Did you know that an excess consumption of artificial cheese gives you gas?” A life-saver warned.
“No…”

Having the dream diet of a five year old has its advantages, the main one being an ability to create a meal with only Skittles and whipped cream at your disposal.
“Is that what you are having for breakfast?” AM surveyed my cupcakes.
“I am eating them with a spoon. So it is like cereal.”
After breakfast, I walked to the store to see what other pre-surgery-lard-ridden-things-on-a-stick I could find.
After ten o’clock I returned.
By one, I decided that life would be more convenient if I just stayed inside the IGA and ate the candy directly from the shelf.
“Are you having a party?” The man asked when I carried a basket of Smarties, M&Ms, Gummie Bears, Milk Duds, Jelly Beans, Redskins, Doritos, Freddo Frogs and Marlboro Lights to the counter.
“No.”

I frequently read magazine stories telling me that I should not put cheese on pasta because it will help my heart, or I should stop eating after seven o’clock so that my thighs have time to thank me. When I was five years old, eating whatever I wanted, there was never any worry about how many boxes of Hershey’s Kisses were consumed. They gave me the energy to run my parents crazy.
But then we get old and we are told to be health conscious instead of fun conscious, and anyone who has the audacity to eat ice-cream while watching The Biggest Loser is mocked or questioned.

There are so many things I feel I got right as a five year old. But have to admit that a sugar-decayed brain could be a reason for the downfall.

I sat with my last pre-surgery meal of a Quarter Pounder, fries, sushi, ice-cream and Krispy Kreme donuts.
“Your insides are going to be having a party with all that food inside you,” RG observed. “You don’t want to have gas on the operating table.”
I put down the artificial cheese in fear that I could become an even bigger loser.

The Girl Half Liked.

There have been many occasions where people have requested to purchase crack or *insert mood elevating drug here* from me.
“[He Knows Who He Is] said you have stuff…”
“Um. No.” I shrug. I never know what more to say. There is no How To Deny You Are A Walking Pharmacy book available to me [yet].
The potential client then slinks away empty handed and I am left wanting to apologise for being far less interesting and dangerous in person.

OnceuponaCanadianiwassleepingwith, his roommate liked me just about as much as He did (Read: Not very much). In between the scowls, mocking and blatant insults, I got glimpses of Roommates body and desperately wanted to say, “If you are going to have a vocal problem with me being alive, can you at least do it shirtless?”
I never asked, or invested any thought, into his disdain, but I always assumed that he was judging my character based on the few mornings he saw me slink out of his lounge room. Which is [relatively] fair. I look like Jon Bon Jovi circa 1985 at dawn.
“You had sex with my friend!” Roommate said loudly one night in front of a large group of people, not long after I had decided to stop having sex with his friend.
I shrugged. I didn’t know what more to say. There is no Hurrah! Yeah I Did! book available to me [yet].

Roommate joined a laundry list of people who don’t [or didn’t] like me based on either a first impression or a preconceived idea. I have spent many hours (read: days) writing my Magic List, being conscientiously respectful enough to remember every name, but I have never wasted a second putting pen to paper regarding the people who dislike me. I would probably make a much larger carbon footprint than my size eight pump suggests but also it has occurred to me how similar those lists could read.

If one was to go through life seeking approval from other people, I imagine it would be very frustrating and unrewarding. Like trying to find healthy food at McDonalds or intellectual conversation with a twenty-year-old Californian Surfer. I have always figured that I am the only person who will be in my life for the duration of it, so I am really the only person who needs to be happy with It (read: me and my behaviour) overall.
I never try to win over Roommate or people like Him. What is the point? People will have a problem no matter what You do and I reason that if Lindsay Lohan can have fans, there really must be a platonic relationship Out There for all of us that will involve acceptance and encouragement.

I have a lot of respect for the people who hate me for Who I Am. They actually bothered to research and get to know the real characteristics and then, rightfully, conclude that they don’t [have to] like them. It is genuine hatred based on real qualities. It is the people who point and make a loud and uneducated decision that bother me.
But whether they really hate me or just think that they do, it makes no difference to Who I Am. I like me. And, I swear, that was the hardest person to win over.

“Can we be friends?” Roommate asked me at drunk o’clock. He wasn’t shirtless, but I listened to Him anyway. See, I never had an issue with him. The only information I had about him was that He had a problem with my sex life and possessed abs.
“Of course.”
“I used to think you were an idiot,” he admitted. (Aside: Mental note to self: Start reading Kafka while doing the walk of shame). “But I don’t anymore.”
I was going to enquire, “Why?” but the I remembered that it doesn’t matter. Because hate me or love me, I am still going to get up in the morning, find the way back to my house and go about living my life.

There isn’t enough time in life to not judge books by their cover. But there is ample time to not make ignorant assumptions.
“It fills that time,” one of my opinionated boy friends informed. “You can’t love everyone.”
“No, you’re right,” [but I am giving it the old college try]. “Just…why hate someone when you don’t even know them?”
“Because we have to put some kind of emotion to it.”
Personally, I like to think that book covers are half OK, the glass is half full [of scotch] or the person is half likable and so if I really need to place an emotion on something, it may as well be a positive one.
“I am going to get to know people. And then hate them.”

After Roommate became my new boy friend, a giant ab-less boy approached me.
“I hear you are a man eater,” he smirked.
“Um. No. I don’t even like eating lamb.”
“I would let you eat me.”
I shrugged. I didn’t know what more to say. There is no Assumption Is Not The Best Pick-up Technique book available to me [yet].
The potential Magic List member slunk away dejected and I was left wanting to apologise for not being a massive whore in person.