I’m against gay marriage. I’m against straight marriage. I’m against marriage full stop. Why are we hanging on to this relic of an anachronistic system (which still reeks of misogyny and bigotry), established so men could own women to ensure their estates and titles were passed on to their kids – sorry, their sons? Maybe I’ve just never married because I haven’t found the right owner. Or the right dress.

Why do we hang on to this old cultural carcass when we happily disregard others? Almost all women and men think it’s the man’s job to propose. What? Because ‘women are hard-wired to like shiny things in velvet boxes because something something caveman days’.

Feel those uptight white honkies squirm! Hear their sphincters tighten!  I love the smell of Balwyn seething in the morning!

Marriage is bullshit.  It is such a croc not even Steve Irwin would dangle a baby in front of it.  It doesn’t work.  For more evidence see the divorce rate climbing closer to 50% at every click of the RSVP.com website. The waving of the magic wedding wand is no guarantee of a successful marriage or a happy family.  No amount of confetti, profiteroles and  $10,000 photo shoots will counteract the dismantling of religious oppression, social taboo and financial constraint making far more options acceptable despite the beige majority’s fixation on fairytale endings that don’t exist and never have.

Weddings and marriage are spin-doctoring propaganda to ‘maintain social order’.  Which is code for ‘making sure the blokes are running the joint while women are oppressed and conned into doing the majority of the unpaid domestic and emotional heavy lifting’ (and a hefty whack of the income earning as well). Married men live longer than single ones.  Unmarried women live longer than wives. Read the fine print girls and ask yourself “What’s in it for me?”

I’m all for love, intimacy, sex, companionship and growing into wiser, more beautiful compassionate human beings through sharing parts of your journey with others.  And I quite like going to weddings. I just prefer funerals.  The chat’s more earthy, you hear more secrets, you don’t have to buy a present and there’s no group on the balcony muttering, “I give it three months tops.” Funerals celebrate something that actually happened.

Celebrating 20 years of being together and not killing each other makes far more sense than weddings celebrating something that hasn’t even started. Love needs no public statement, no witnesses. The stage-managed perfection of a wedding is the antithesis of the hard yakka of surviving a long-term relationship. Weddings are an advertisement for something that only exists in the imagination of seven-year-old girls.

Me?  No.  Never have, never will, never wanted to.  Better dead than wed. Wouldn’t I like to be princess for a day? No thanks. I’m a princess every day.

I don’t judge you if you have an ownership ceremony. I do laugh at you behind your back when you defend it with hilarious and irrational rhetoric.  Decisions made emotionally but backed up rationally.  So I’ll never know what the reason is and neither will you.

“I’m just doing it for the party.”  Why don’t you just have a party then? “Our parents want us to.”  Hang on, aren’t you adults? Do you do everything they want you to? No?  Well why is this an exception? “It’s just so our families could meet.”  Why don’t you just have a barbeque?  “We all want to have the same name.”  What?  Why? Okay, whatever your non-sencical excuse is (and by the way, let me guess, she’s changing her name to yours and the kids will have your surname too? How totally enabling patriarchy by issuing the “it’s just easier” defense when clearly it’s not) ever heard of deedpoll?’

Just once I’d like someone to say, “I’m getting married because I’m needy, insecure, deeply conservative and have abandonment issues.”

The “we got married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas”, “our celebrant was a transvestite and our best man was a donkey” and “we wore gimp masks and wrote our own vows” brigade make me laugh.  Flaunting their superficial subversion in a tragic attempt to delude themselves they’re not participating in something incredibly conservative don’t fool me.

My boyfriend  asked me to marry him.  I said ‘I won’t marry you but I will get a permanant Brazillian. Les painful, lasts longer and cheaper.’ He then offerend to buy me a ring.  I said ‘Can I just have the money?’

Why are forms always asking me if I’m married, divorced, de facto, single, separated, never married?  Seriously.  It’s irrelevant and none of their business. Don’t try and baffle me with bullshit about gathering statistics for better service. They don’t need to know.  A contact person or two.  That’s all they need.

Referring  to de facto relationships as common law marriage is offensive and discriminatory.  It’s not marriage. It’s a relationship. If de factos wanted to get married they would.  They don’t.   Why don’t they call marriage state/religion sanctioned co-habitation?

I loved the way married people say “Married, defacto, it’s the same thing.”  No it’s not.  If it is, why are they married? If it’s the same thing.  People ask me what the difference is in practical terms. People who choose not marry tend to be more flexible, innovative and non traditional in their relationship decisions and life choices. A couple’s decision to not marry sets them off on a path of questioning every traditional heterosexual realtionship and procreation expectation that comes their way.  You will find people in de facto relationships don’t just stick to the traditional joint back account, female change’s change name, child has paternal surnames, majority of the childcare domestic burden rests on the female. People who marry are far more likely just to apply the marriage template without questioning or challenging why.

It’s just a piece of paper?  It’s so much more than that.  It’s the reinforcement of unrealistic expectations, outdated gender stereotypes and proof we’re still being sucked in to happily ever after endings.  And a scathing indictment on our lack of cultural maturity, spiritual imagination and proof we’re emotionally medieval.

Marriage is not a word it’s a sentence.

 

We had a Love Party. A wedding with no God and no government. Check it out here…

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Yesterday the cops came over. I wasn’t here. They left their card with my teenage son who was home from school. I assume watching porn and mastubating into socks. The cops told Dom to get me to give them a call. They were from the criminal investigation unit.

It was one of those flat knacker days where I had left the house at 8am and was only flying through to put on some fried rice for everyone before jumping back on my bike for a speaking gig in the city.

Cops? WTF? I had no idea. I was concerned. I have had a full on week and was there something I didn’t know?

So I spoke to the cops this morning.  They were being directed by the top brass of the Queensland Police to give me a ‘talking to’ about this twitter conversation about Campbell Newman.

The police and I pissed ourselves laughing. Particularly considering the hate mail, death and sexually violent threats I and many I expect, high profile women cop on a regular basis and I particularly this week after my appearance on ABC’s QandA with Peter Jensen.

Did the cops go over to Robbie Farah’s place for his suggestion PM Gillard should get a noose for her birthday, or Alan Jones’ joint for suggesting ‘there is not a chaff bag big enough for Gillard’ or Graeme Morris’ house when he suggested Gillard should be kicked to death?

Women live in fear of men killing them. Men live in fear of women laughing at them.

I never had any intention of procecuting any of the haters, trolls, maggots or creeps. I am not at all scared or intimidated by weak, insecure misogynists who call me  an ugly, extremist, stupid, unintelligent, idiotic, thoughtless, self-righteous, self-centred, self-absorbed, nasty, confused, frustrated, bitter, twisted, humourless, un-funny, unreasonable, unrespectable, disrespectful, sarcastic, mocking, catty, hateful, boorish, blustering, bullying bitch.

Clearly they feel very threatened. And so they fucking should. We’re winning.

A note on QandA. 

In the green room Chris, Concetta and Jensen all had personal assistants/advisers. Anna and I were there on our own as usual, advising, preparing and looking after ourselves. At one point I watched Jensen’s adviser straighten his tie and wondered how much Jensen had been groomed and prepared for the appearance. He was not wearing his religious garb, clearly a strategic point and requested to be seated next to me. How much more was he coached in?

It did shock me how the creepy ‘gentlemen with manners’ routine managed to distract people from his hateful poisonous rhetoric and speaking in circles, ‘We need to have a conversation about that’. This IS the conversation. Is that code for ‘I need to make you agree with me’?  How people were not aware of the sinister, softly spoken clear messenger of hate, inequality and intolerance.

For what it’s worth I have sat next to John Elliot, Corey Bernadi, Peter Dutton, Gerard Henderson, Tony Abbott and of course spent time with Peter Reith, Angry Anderson and Mike Smith and I have never been so physically repelled by anyone as I have by Jensen. He is pure evil.

I think people are unused to seeing someone like me, who does not work for a particular media outlet, political party or religious group and has to couch what they say to push the company line. I speak for no one but myself. And I am not here, there or anywhere to convince people or win arguments. I don’t give a fuck what you think. Even if you agree with me, I simply stand up for what I believe in.

I was called a ‘noisy atheist’ on Q and A. What I find hilarious is that I have spent about 80 hours on stage talking about atheism. Yet people like Peter Jensen spend hundreds of thousands of hours talking about religion, from a pulpit and I’m the one being called preachy. No one has ever accused Peter Jensen of being ‘preachy’.

They can no longer burn me at the stake,  put me in jail or throw me in an asylum so all they can do now is accuse me violating some social norm.  Offence is a mode of social control. And just because you are offended does not mean you are right. More damage is done by taking offence than giving it. Offence is taken. NOT given.

We’re winning.  Thank you all for your support. I hope you don’t die and I hope you get laid.

Check this out! First ‘a spokesman for Mr Newman said the Premier nor anyone from his office had made the complaint after originally saying he would offer no comment because it was a police matter.’ They are now saying it was an anonymous tip off from Crimestoppers. Are you serious?

Not only is Campbell Newman a sooky la la, now his pants are on fire.

And by the way, there’s no point suggesting how better I can get my point across. My point is I will do it however the fuck I want. Go sit at the kids table and watch Packed To The Rafters.

 

More good reads…

An open letter to Catherine Deveny from an ex fundamentalist Christian and pastor’s wife. Must read. Fascinating!

PZ Myers weighs in. “Speak Louder Catherine Deveny!”

Anne Summers speech on the systematic, abusive and gender based persecution of Julia Gillard was so popular it CRASHED HER SITE. Read it here or watch it here.

This is nothing. Cardinal George Pell once attempted to sue me and Twitter for defamation after i tweeted a meme with six words HE ACTUALLY SAID.

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I love town slogans. On a trip to Bland to visit the Bland Museum a few years back (don’t ask), the ones I remember were: Albury – A Proud Seat Belt Wearing Community; Gympie – Free Regulated Parking; and Narrandera – Home Of The World’s Largest Playable Guitar. It’s no wonder they call this place the lucky country.

I love travel. Just thinking about my suitcase makes my heart race. Airports make me incredibly frisky. Don’t pretend like I’m the only person who requests a cavity search at Tullamarine. After dropping off a friend. For a domestic flight. To Mildura. Stuff it. I pay my taxes.

Mile-high club? I’m just happy if I’m on tip-toes, my head’s thrown back, my knees are trembling and a bloke called Glen from Diggers Rest is flicking his rubber gloves.

”Ask me what flight I just arrived on. And where I’ll be disembarking. Do I have anything to declare? Actually I do. You smell like Brut 33 and dim sims. Ask me if I packed my bag myself. And where I’m travelling to. Yes! Yes! I’m almost there. Don’t stop …”

The smell of my passport makes me vibrate with excitement. When I die I want to be reincarnated as Catriona Rowntree.

Just without the ersatz warmth, fake bubbliness and that ”my life is a dream come true!” look I want to slap right off her smug, self-satisfied face.

I love travel, but I’m not that keen on holidays. My favourite holiday is work. Which any parent will understand.

Last week’s drag up the Hume found me trawling for a place to break up the 800 kilometres. Sussing out the possibilities it dawned on me the term ”gateway” is code for ”it’s a hole”. Basically we’re shit, but we’re close to a place that isn’t.

I thought about stopping in Holbrook! Premier Driver Reviver Town! Halfway on the Hume! (We have a submarine! Please stay! Or take us with you. Come back. Please! We’ll do anything.) Or Tarcutta: Home Of The Nation’s Only Truck Driver Memorial. The evening we drown through there was ‘stew’ on in the ‘bistro’ for ‘tea’. Grouse!

We ended up staying in Gundagai. Why? Because it’s not every day you give your kids an unforgettable forgetfulness experience. ”That’s the dog on the tuckerbox, boys; don’t worry if you miss it, you won’t remember it anyway.”

Which was preceded by the once-in-a-lifetime experience of eating the worst toasted sandwich on earth served by the saddest people in the universe. We ended the night with dinner (dinner as in tea) at the Gundagai restaurant (restaurant as in roadhouse), the only place in the world where fish and chips is under the heading ”light meals”. It was very Wolf Creek.

The motel had an exterior festooned with wagon wheels and an interior with a nautical theme. With ”ironing board”, ”ashtray” and ”kettle” listed under luxury features, and toast arriving in small white waxed bags, its slogan should be ”Australia’s favourite crime scene”.

We’re holidaying in a place called Manyana, which is Spanish for tomorrow. Which is of no use because I don’t even know what today is. So basically we’re time travelling.

”Wait until you go back to school and tell your mates you holidayed in THE FUTURE. An ice-cream from the shop? Tomorrow. What do you mean we’re already in tomorrow. Someone’s been overdosing on mummy’s smart-arse pills.”

Just in case you were wondering, in Manyana (aka THE FUTURE) there are chenille bedspreads, washing machines that attempt to walk out the door when they agitate, grillers that burn your eyebrows off when you light them, board games with missing pieces, no decent cutting knives but 10 shit ones, and wood panelling peeling off the kitchen cabinets.

It’s like a student house, just without a bong. But near a beach.

Wish you were here.

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OH MY GOD!

Did you hear that?

It’s mango season o’clock!

I know. Shake out the sarong, grab those cheap and cheerful sunglasses and slap on your holiday hat! Golden fever has arrived! Hallelujah!

Bright, sunny, yellowy, silky, luscious goodness. It’s enough to make an atheist like me feel as if there really is a god. Intelligent design? Mangos are exotic pleasure incarnate. When I see a mango, I have an overwhelming urge to tear off my clothes and run around in the nude. Frequently I ovulate. And occasionally I lactate. (Sorry I should have put a trigger warning before that.)

We’ve worked hard all year and now it’s time to MANGO UP. We’ve endured the dull grapes, predictable apples, tedious bananas, pedestrian oranges, obvious pears and frumpy apricots and disappointment in a bowl known as fruit salad. And you know what that means? Now it’s time for the king of fruits! So get your mango on bitches!

Chilled mango daiquiris, comforting mango lassies, tangy mango sorbets and the mouth explosion, the piece de resistance, MangoChicken! A tastegasm, artwork and cultural revolution all in one! No! I’m not exaggerating. That’s why they call this place The Lucky Country. Mangos.

Perhaps your moment of mango communion is simpler than a recipe. More pure. More honest. More intimate.

Selecting your perfect mango, you cast your eyes across the plump, juicy shameless harlots. You slip your hand into the box ofmangos, slide your finger beneath the weighty pregnant fruit, gently molesting the ripe lush flesh encased in a confident yet vulnerable skin.

You trail your fingernail across, feeling the flesh quiver in expectation beneath. You exhale with relief; your heart beats with desire. You’ve found her. She’s your’s. She belongs to you.

You choose your perfect mango knife. Your mouth waters. Your nostrils flare hungrily sniffing the air for that intoxicating sweet smell of the sea, the summer and all that is right and good.

Your knife of choice is fine, commanding and perfectly weighted. You position your mango on the chopping board holding it with your strong confident hand. You pierce the skin of this flirting, wanton tease and you almost climax as she yields to you as you slide through the flesh gently but firmly skimming the seed. The cheek is helpless to your desire and succumbs like the fruity wench it is. You continue your reign of seduction and slice through the other cheek. You gently draw your implement across the shameless deliciousness despite her protests. You take your time to make a perfect thatch pattern across her. Not too deep that you break the skin but deliberate enough for the mango to know who’s boss.

Then comes the moment. You raise the fragrant mango to your hungry mouth, caress it, tease it you’re your lips, penetrate it with your tongue and when you can’t contain yourself any longer you submit to your lust. You moan, you groan, you growl it out. You growl out the mango as you devour something more than a fruit. Mango is a tantric taste nirvana.

You do know the collective noun for mangos is orgy. As in an orgy of mangos. Google it (no don’t).

What makes mangos and the few other fruits that are still seasonal (like cherries, mandarins,  and peaches) so special is their brief season and it’s collision with the weather, the celebration, yearly markers. You just can’t get mango on any street corner whenever it takes your fancy. When I travelled to Afghanistan I saw oranges everywhere. And no offence to this noble and loyal fruit I thought ‘If I can get oranges in Kabul in the middle of winter I don’t want ‘em’. Familiarity breeds contempt. Oranges are dead to me now.

These days everything is so available. Convenience 24/7. Sometimes it feels, particularly with food that used to be seasonal as if their specialness is gone. As much as we love having special things, what makes them special is not being about to have them all the time.

I love mango season and everything it signifies. It is one of the few fruits we can only get at a certain time of year for a limited period. It says work is over, holidays are here, summer reigns. Yay party!

But you know what? I fucking hate mangos. They’re slimy, sticky and they taste weird. And they’ve got these gross hairs, like anchovies. Blergh. Give me a carrot any day.

Sure mangos look like a sculpture you want to make love to and smell like a place you never want to leave but they’re sickly sweet, taste as if they’re on the turn and make me feel funny in the pants.

And they are a nightmare to eat. You only choices are changing your clothes after you eat one or growling one out in the bath.

Sure, mangos, I get it. I get you. But I just don’t like it. But I love what you bring.  Summer. But don’t you think you should tone it down a bit?

Fuck you mango. You slut.

 

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Chadstone is the largest shrine to Mammon in Australia. So I went to find out whether the population of Australia (the amount of people who visit each year) could be wrong.

They are. Or I am. You choose.

Chadstone is a metastasised tumour of offensive proportions that’s easy to find. You simply follow the line of dead-eyed wage slaves attracted to this cynical, hermetically sealed weatherless biosphere by the promise a new phone will fix their punctured soul and homewares and jumbo caramel mugachinos will fill their gaping cavern of disappointment.

I was thrilled to have the ”almost 9000 car spaces but I still couldn’t find a park” experience along with everyone else who’d thought on this beautiful Sunday morning: ”Mmmm, how can we spend the day avoiding marinating in each other’s emotional cesspool and distracting ourselves from the darkness of our souls? I know! Let’s head down to the abattoir of souls and buy cheap clothes, processed food and anything with a remote control.”

Chadstone is the same as any other shopping centre, just bigger. The domed glass roof and palm trees only highlight the vast gap between life and this soul-destroying cathedral to emptiness.

Four-wheel-drive mums trading passive-aggressive insults over skinny lattes in the food court. Eight-year-old girls looking like they’re about to audition for the Pussycat Dolls. Fat people with a burger in one hand and a bucket of Coke in the other. Old folk on scooters who’d give their right ventricle to be euthanased. A guy in a T-shirt that said Duck My Sick. Sneering, shuffling teenagers. And grown men having clothes bought for them by their mothers, I mean their wives, reminding me women marry men expecting to change them and men marry women expecting them to stay the same.

Why buy a doughnut when you can buy a doughnut maker? Water when you can buy a water filtration unit? Or a pie when you can buy a pie maker? Easy to clean, easy to store and 20 per cent off! Why buy clothes when you could purchase a garment to enhance your ”lifestyle experience”? Most people had more than 10 loyalty cards in their wallets. Loyalty card sluts.

The food is obscene. Its abundance and pointless variety communicate a lack of intrinsic value. As if it were not grown and prepared by humans. Just processed. As I passed the giant cookies and monstrous muffins, The Pancake Parlour looked lamer than usual. But there was an honesty in its lameness I respected. If anyone can illuminate me to the point of Pretzel World I’d forever be in their debt.

No one looks happy. Everyone looks anaesthetised. A day spent at Chadstone made me understand why they call these shopping centres complexes. Complex as in a psychological problem that’s difficult to analyse, understand or solve.

What does it say about a culture when shopping is considered a valid form of recreation? It says we have far too much money. The lemmings entering and exiting Chadstone look exactly like the gamblers at the casino. They bound in all excitement and optimism and leave stooped, sad and dragging their feet. Because as tragic as it is, Chadstone seems better than their real lives.

Memento mori is a Latin phrase that means ”remember you will die”. The phrase is also used to describe objects that remind people of their mortality. A mate has a skull as hers, to remind her to live life to the fullest and treasure each day and the people she loves.

Chadstone should be a huge memento mori for us all. If we knew we were all going to be dead in a week, shopping centres would be empty. Truth is, some of us will be dead. If you find yourself heading towards one of these spiritless palaces of consumption, memento mori. Remember you will die and chuck a screaming uey. And if you find yourself in captivity shuffling round with the walking cadavers in search of the next hit, ask yourself if you are already dead.

Christmas shopping tips for people who hate shopping 

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An essay I wrote on working in the city for Bed Therapy, Georges Mora Fellow Inez de Vega’s remarkable ACCA art installation.

Why erect a warm, cosy bed in a shipping container where a total stranger can unload their fears, hopes and troubles to another total stranger?

Why create a bubble of calm and connection, a soft warm space in the middle of a cold, hard, grey, steel city?

Get a real job.  A proper job. A job that helps people. Go work in a bank.

A bed where you can exhale. Where you can talk to a total stranger who asks nothing of you other than to be given the opportunity to comfort. A space to exhale, unwind, decompress, restore to factory settings.

 

What a waste of money.
Is it art? Is it porn?

My five year old could have done that.

What’s the point?

There is nothing colder, sadder or more lonely than a city full of people trying to act normal when you feel broken, vulnerable and raw.

Let me tell you a secret. Most of the people sitting next to you on the train, waiting at the lights, rushing to work in throngs who look as if they are keeping it together are as falling apart as you are.

A friend of mine is a psychiatrist. She says people spend the majority of their time and energy just trying to act normal. Her included.

Click here to read more.

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My partner and I both had toxic, abusive fathers. We were in love when we were 18 and became smug retrosexuals in 2010.

Two days before we reunited his dad had died.  “Dad died on Tuesday” was one of the first things he said. “Good” I replied. The speech he made at his father’s funeral made me fall instantly and deeply in love with him.

It is also one of the finest pieces of writing I have ever read.

Here it is…

‘Early in my life I naively held a belief that there is some good in everybody. I would always give the benefit of the doubt and assume that someone was simply “having a bad day” or “going through a rough phase” before judging or condemning them. The bitter lesson that I have since learned is that some people are just “arseholes to the core”. These people live to sap joy, confidence and enthusiasm from others. It’s what fuels them.

So what do I do? Make something up or speak up for myself and the others who suffered his company.

Fuck it. I’m going for it.

Dad was a cruel, bitter, hateful misogynist.

If he was ever nice to you it was to lull you into lowering your guard so that the inevitable punch in the face would hit harder.

As a child I simply feared him but as a teenager he served as a solid anti-role model. Yes, he was an inspiration. He was everything I did not want to be.

Poor Dad was incompetent to a level where he was unaware of his incompetence and closed minded enough to not be able to rise above it.

He would constantly denigrate mum and his own “mates”. Long tirades, normally while driving, so I couldn’t escape. His famous words of wisdom? “all women are moles”.

Dad was never wrong about anything and it was not your right to disagree with him, in fact, he was not at all interested in your opinion.

And somehow he still demanded respect for no other reason than “he was my father”. I did not buy this as, by now, in my teens I had encountered far superior male role models. Men who earned respect through their actions.

In typical style, he rode my poor sister into the ground on his way out. Capitalising on her kind nature and perhaps ill conceived sense of duty.

On the up side, he was a good cook and a great skier. 

Thankyou.’

 

 

Fuck ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’. If you want people to speak well of you when you are dead behave better when you are alive.

Hell is truth seen too late and the truth will set you free.

“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.” – Voltaire.

When people are on their death bed they don’t regret the risks they took that didn’t work out, they regret the risks they didn’t take. Gunnas Writing Masterclass click here.

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s not a cookie. It’s a biscuit.
It’s not candy. It’s a lolly.
It’s not a butt. It’s a bum.

It’s not a diaper. It’s a nappy.

It’s not 911. It’s 000.

It’s not a thong. It’s a g-string.

They’re not flip flops. They’re thongs.

It’s not wait up. It’s wait for me.

It’s not zee. It’s zed.

It’s not soda. It’s soft drink.

It’s not math. It’s maths.

It’s not take out. It’s take away.

It’s not a cupcake. It’s a patty cake.

It’s not gas. It’s petrol.

It’s not taking out the trash. It’s putting the bloody rubbish out.

It’s not poop and pee. It’s poo and wee.

They’re not sweatpants. They’re tracky dacks.

It’s not mooning. It’s a brown eye.

They’re not bugs. They’re insects.

 

And it’s not fucking Halloween. It’s October 31st.

 

I’m not pissed. I’m pissed off.

I’m not done. I’m finished.

Full stop. Not period.

And don’t tell me what to do. You’re not mum. Not mom.

You can shove your ‘but multiculturalism’ up your arse. Not ass.

 

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Forward from Stamping Ground-Stories Of The Northern Suburbs Of Melbourne (text used in the 2014 HSC English exam.)

‘I grew up in Reservoir. If you are not familiar with Reservoir it’s not a place where people live it’s a place where people’s cousins who just got out of jail live. And it’s the only place in the world apart from Russia where people get married in track suits, and they have bouncers in the supermarket. I’m thinking of doing a one woman show about my teenage years and calling it Reservoir Dog …’

Part true, part my stand up routine. The Reservoir I grew up in was populated by menacing tattooed toothless Torana driving blokes called Craig, Shane or Wayne, crushed menthol smoking pensioners and toddlers who swore. You know the Big Banana and the Big Pineapple? Back then we had the Big 12-Year-Old Single Mother with Tatts And Crabs. You should’ve seen the Mayor cut the ribbon at that opening as Davo, Ferret and Wanger all yelled, ‘Root her! We all did!’ Ah the 70s: ashtrays in every hospital and mullets running free. Things have changed. As my mum prophesied, ‘You wait, one day the yuppies will be doing up the houses out here.’ And guess what? They are. How do I know? Overheard at the Reservoir Pool, ‘Elliot, Hannah, come eat your crudites and humus.’

‘So, you grew up in Reserve Wá ( sic)?’

‘Not Reserve Wá, Res a vor ( sic). Only people who’ve never lived there call it Reserve Wá ( sic).’

We spoke English proper all right. The place we lived was Res a vor but the huge man-made body of water that it was named after we called the Reserve Wá.

I used to lie, I used to tell people that I lived in other places. I was so committed to this masquerade that, in my late teens, I even managed to get a Toorak library card and a chequebook at a bank in Toorak so my cheques had TOORAK written across the top. Tragic, I know. I’m not proud of it, I’m just telling you. I may have inherited this suburban cringe from my grandparents. When my grandmother was young growing up in Richmond she would tell people that she lived in North Toorak. We had another relative who didn’t live in Northcote but in Westgarth. When people asked where Westgarth was she’d reply, ‘Near Ivanhoe and Hawthorn.’

How things change. These days I am thrilled I grew up in Reservoir. I couldn’t buy that kind of street cred. ‘Oh yes commission house, blah, blah, large family, very poor, blah, blah, alcoholic father, blah, blah, yes, yes, bogan peasants, blah, blah.’ Other guests bow their heads in shame and own up to growing up in Balwyn. Intriguing dinner party conversation. My years of feeling like inferior uncleanable suburban scum are superficially fascinating for a short period of time, then we get on to arts funding.

Where I lived there were no Italian peasants singing ‘Funiculi Funicula’ or Asians with their fragrant markets and duck decorated shop windows. Even an odd pisshead Scottish family would have sufficed. I lived in a housing commission colony of unhappy, badly dressed, chip on their shoulder Skips. Terrifying graffiti at the station kept me in line by informing me that Resa Boys Rule, Sharon Is A MOLE and Terry Is Dead.

Sentimental bullshit and selective memory aside there was nothing charming about where I grew up at all. But there was something funny. The sign on the public dunny in Broadway; ‘Reservoir Comfort Station’. Sure we lived in Reservoir, but at least we were comfortable. I grew up in Fitzroy. Sure I spent most of my first 20 years in Reservoir and moved to Fitzroy in 1989. But Fitzroy was where I really grew up. Where I landed in my skin. In the grubby incense-wafting share houses and the cutlery-clattering Cafés on Brunswick Street. And sitting in front bars having a glass or two over a gossip, bitch or a laugh.

I can hear you all now, ‘What a wanker, came of age in Fitzroy, what a toss’. I wish it was somewhere less cliched, more earthy and not as predictable as Fitzroy, but it wasn’t. It was Fitzroy. Sitting on balconies wearing Blundstones, smoking Styvos and pretending I was Judy Davis was where I found myself.

Oh yeah, I was a wanker all right. I conditioned myself to drink coffee without milk simply so I could impress people by ordering a long black.

My crush on Fitzroy started while driving through the inner-city on twinkling blue-sky days in the early 70s. I was intoxicated by the cobblestone lanes, the crumbling little houses packed tightly together and the brick walls painted with flaking advertisements for Robur tea. I used to screech with delight at the multi-coloured double-storey terraces on Nicholson Street with a fleet of orange Kombis parked out the front.

We called them the Rainbow Houses. I remember telling my mother that I was going to live in one when I grew up. She replied, ‘You wouldn’t want to live in one of those old terraces. They’re damp, dark and horrible—just ask your grandmother.’

But I loved living in them. The creaking boards, the outside dunny, and the windows and doors that either didn’t open or didn’t close. In the summer it was high-ceilinged refrigerated bliss, and in the winter we had to wear spencers, eat soup and smoke a lot of dope to take our mind off the fact that our fingers and toes were so cold they could snap off any minute.

I lived in a handful of terraces while at uni, but the most important was a Rainbow House in Bell Street. The colour scheme of the rooms inside could have been coordinated by the colour consultant for Darrell Lea. I lived with three guys and we were all penny-pinching, op-shop-dwelling, rabble-rousing students. We chained our bikes to the front fence and would have had a clapped-out brown loose-weave couch on the veranda if someone had given us one.

I have great memories of that time, a constant stream of drop-ins, the espresso machine never cold and the stereo never off. Having a break from essays and wandering down to The Black Cat to devour a plate of nachos washed down with a milkshake in a frosty steel beaker. The joy of the first warm day in September when the girls would head for the shops to buy a cheap floral dress made in India and the boys would pull out their jolly shirts and shoplift a new pair of sunglasses to wear to the Brunswick Street festival. I was so addicted to the The Fitz breakfast that at one stage a friend called me there to ask for a lift to uni. We were not blind to the cliches; even at the time we would refer to it as being ‘so Aqua Profunda’, referring to Helen Garner’s novels and short stories set in inner-city share houses.

In the suburbs I felt poor, ripped-off and oppressed. But it was in Brunswick Street in the late 80s where I felt those feelings of freedom, confidence and liberation that blossom when you have your own money and are running your own race. With a pocket full of the night before’s waitressing tips I would wander home on a caffeine high after a brunch at Rumbas. Picking up a bag of groceries from the Italian delicatessen that we called The Smelly Shop and lashing out on a bunch of orange marigolds from Flowers Vasette would make me feel like a queen.

But it was at Mario’s Café that what would be my little world started to reveal itself to me. It was the beat that I liked, not the music but the beat. It was the percussion of the no-frills waiters, no-mucking-round customers and no dud coffees that made my heart sing. The glow and warmth of the place in the winter would melt the chilliest soul just by wandering past. Nothing ever changed at Marios, and that is why I liked it. I travelled my emotional length and breadth on those tables: spiritual crises, overseas farewells and returns, fly-by catch ups, career dramas, post-coital breakfasts, counselling brokenhearted friends, reading the first review of my stand-up, long-time reunions, political stoushes, and teary meetings with exes all over perfectly temperatured lattes.

I’d managed to successfully escape the numbing certainty of suburbia. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged. And then I was grown up, and for me, it was time to move on after a few overseas detours to the People’s Republic of Moreland. It’s pretty trendy these days. I know this because we now have junkies and Pilates. All we need is a juice bar and we’ll be completely up ourselves. Oh, that’s right: we do, and we are. Brunswick, home of the latte crawl.

It’s all book groups, polar fleeces and stay-at-home dads who read the Monthly and drink soy lattes. I’ve lived on the same page of the Melways my whole life. I even went to La Trobe Uni. Three kilometres in 40 years. Are we there yet?

Right now, we’re excited too. It’s hard rubbish collection season or, as I prefer to call it, the Tightarse Festival. I’ll tell you something for free: if you want to get 60-year-old men walking four times a day, put on a hard rubbish collection. They’re gagging for a shuffle around the block when there’s a possibility they may find a replacement catcher for their mower, a piece of cyclone fencing to store in their shed and never use, or a broken carpet sweeper they can put out for next year’s collection. (I can only imagine the look on the face of the wife as one of these men drags another air-conditioning unit the size of a Torana up the driveway, explaining: ‘Before you say anything, love, it’s for parts.’)

Come dusk, every man and his Crocs are out. Pushers, walking frames, scooters and even attractive people with glasses of wine are doing the hard rubbish shuffle. The participants in this Carnival of the Once Loved but Now Unwanted stroll by in a trance. Having a squiz, poking stuff with a foot and, after careful assessment, selecting only the best to proudly lug home. There’s an element of addiction about it, too. ‘Just one more street,’ you hear people saying. ‘I hear Campbell Avenue has lifted its game this year.’

And there’s no shyness about it. Bold as brass. ‘Look at this,’ said a man to me as he pried a smoked-glass coffee table with ornate brass legs from under a piece of corrugated iron. ‘Why would anyone get rid of this?’ I don’t know, maybe because they don’t spend evenings listening to Neil Diamond, snorting cocaine and sharing crack-addicted hookers with David Hasselhoff.

And that’s why I love this place, a suburb where old Aussies, young Lebanese families, student households, Italian nonnas, Greek yayas, Somalian youths, Indian cab drivers and latte-frothing lefties like me live side by side and covet each other’s rubbish. It’s United Colours of Benetton one day and an episode of Mind Your Language the next.

But maybe I’ve misjudged it, and this place is changing faster than I’d realised. When the wind blows in the right direction, you can smell the gentrification. Now I’m a little worried about the hard rubbish I’ve selected to release into the wild this year.

You can take the girl out of Reservoir all you like but you can’t take the Reservoir out of the girl. On a wander during the Tightarse Festival I walked past a house with a huge garden and said to the owner, ‘You could fit at least three cars up on blocks in this yard.’

I love this book. Because people love the northern suburbs the way I do. It’s not just where we live. It’s our home.

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Young female producer emailed me a while back asking if I would like to talk on 3AW about private schools.
I said “Sure, $500.”
She said “We don’t pay for interviews.”
Me “Like you I do not work for free.”
She said “Lots of people would come on 3AW simply for the exposure they would get from it. ”
Me “Do you expect your hairdresser, mechanic, plumber to work for free? Only people who enjoy enabling misogyny, fear, homophobia. racism and discrimination would work for 3AW for exposure.
Why would anyone want to be exposed to the mouth breathing morons who listen to your line up of Pale Stale Males?
Do you work for exposure? To you pay your rent with ‘exposure’.
Do you ask your hairdresser to?
Your mechanic?
Your petrol station?
How rude asking people to work for free.
How unprofessional to create a budget that relies on not paying people.
I am a single mum and I pay every person who works for me.
I would not dream of asking someone to work for nothing.
The people who listen to your ‘radio station’ I do not want or need to be exposed to. Who knows what I would contract.
Me being on 3AW would look great on your advertising, embarassing and shameful on mine.
I don’t need exposure. I am financially independent from my work.
No husband.
No rich parents.
No advertising pre paid funerals, lapband surgery or no win no pay whiplash lawyers.
And not working for cunts like the people you work for and with who do not see you as an equal but as a service provider.
Make a run for it sister.
You can do so much better than working in the 1950s for neanderthals, chauvinists and arseholes.
3AW is a business that makes dumb hateful sexist frightened people dumber, more sexist, frightened and hateful.
Is that how you want to spend you life?”

(She has since contacted me asking me to appear AGAIN! Gave similar response)

When you work for free you are PAYING to work for people. Time, travel. childcare (if req) make-up (if req) prep etc. When women appear on these sausage festival/cock forrest stations it enables misogyny. Because one woman appearing for five minutes as a guest equals gender equality.

The ‘gender adjusted appearance scale’.
One volunteer woman for five minutes = to three full time male hosts on yearly six figure contracts.

Friends don’t let friends listen to 3AW.

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