Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Writing sucks balls. Big, hairy, hangy, veiny, lumpy balls. It takes years of procrastinating, actual blood, and a significant amount of wailing. And never have I wailed so hard as when I realised that Caitlin Moran stole my book. Ok, not stole it, just, you know, wrote it first… and better. After I read How to Be a Woman and I cried because she’d written what I’ve been trying to write my entire adult life and I felt like my life purpose had been maliciously filched by this incredible person that I wanted to loathe, but begrudgingly admired. I’ve considered calling my next book Caitlin Moran Stole my Life, but that doesn’t seem fair to either of us.
Maybe I just need to get over myself and write my own story, in my own words, and let my festering jealousy percolate quietly in the background where all good festering should fester. But my own story feels like an anomalous non-story – a mash-up of odd things. And not a cool Peter-Gunn-meets-Every-Breath-You-Take mash-up. More like Edelweiss-meets-Never-Gonna-Give-You-Up mash-up. You know, daggy.
I started life in an in-between place. Not quite Italian, not really Australian. Not Australian like my friends were: Chicko Roll eating, choc-milk drinking, football-loving Australian. I had leftover Italian meatballs in my lunchbox and ate gnocchi every weekend at my Nonna’s house. But I couldn’t speak Italian and I could sense my father’s discomfort with his Italianess, so it was never celebrated either. We didn’t make tomato sugo or stomp on grapes or sing. We ate and were maudlin and never went to football games or ate Chicko Rolls. It was confusing. Basically I had an identity crisis as far back as the womb, when my dad said he wanted a boy and I was already growing girl bits.
So I was dramatic and withdrawn all at once. And I fought, with my sense of self, my talents, my sex, and with everyone around me. And now here I am, feeling like I’ve swallowed the world and with a story stuck in my throat. One that I’ll never cough out. And it aches. Like my father when he thinks of home and snow and mountains. Like my mother when she yearns for adventure. But maybe this is my story. This stolen, not stolen tale of building a girl.
I am built from many things. From my father’s house. From white rendering and Italian tile. From the smell of spaghetti that makes you weep to be fed. From my Nonna’s thick thumbs. From rose gardens and the smell of frangipani. From a sister who held my hand. From a mother who weeps for the sorrows of the world. From Grandmothers who buried their husbands. From a quince tree in the backyard. From strong women. From bike rides and gumboots in the creek. I am from pig farmers and professors. I am a writer. Yes I am.
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