Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway. The kind of shit I listened to when I was destroyed and fourteen. I like that the song is sweetly described as “techno/folk”.

Birds – Electrelane. I think this is as close as I get to being properly indie-fae, but pretty indicative of what I was like a few years ago, when I was, say, 22? I would sit and scream along the last stanza in my car while I slapped myself in the face repeatedly to try and keep myself from crying. I had my shit together.

Photo of a girl’s arse off Fetlife. She says she’s 19 in her profile and writes: “i hope to find on this way a Master to train and control me. But i dont want a softy or a young want to be master. I would like to get into touch with an experienced older Master. He should be at least double of my age. And he must be real strict and very demanding. And i would like when he has a real pervert streak.” She then adds that her hobbies are: swimming, riding, gymnastics, computer, reading

Poly Styrene – FUCK. GOD. YES.

Penn Jillette Wikipedia entry.

On Penn Jilliette’s House .

Returning to being fourteen again. TYPICAL GIRLS DON’T THINK TOO CLEARLY.

Japanese smut.

Mundane X-Art tube smut.

Law and Order vocal theme.

I think at this stage, it safe to say I’m soused.

Oh god.

My main motivation for a cobra tattoo is Snake PLISSKEN.

Pasty Bruised Limbs.

The internet on “alternative girls with bruises”:
“There’s just something rlly sexie about ‘the unknown.’ Like u have no idea why a girl would have bruises. Here is what usually goes through my mind when I see a lil alt girl with bruises:

Maybe she is in an abusive relationship…but maybe that means u can be the next BF in her life who ‘treats her right’/exploits her insecurities.
Maybe it’s not abuse. Maybe she just does xtreme stuff to rebel against her parents, like ‘trainhopping’ or something else that is unsafe.
Maybe she ‘puts out’ in a crazy way.
Maybe she ‘did it to herself’ to ‘get attention.’
Maybe mutilating herself is ‘the only way that the world can see the amount of pain she is in.’
Maybe it’s a sexie birthmark/beauty mark.
Maybe it is a warning sign to ‘stay away’, no matter how ‘attracted’ u r 2 her brand.”

Friends – I’m His Girl

At this point, my housemate’s come home with another bottle of lambrusco for me to drink and I talk to her for a few hours. Now I’m going to run a bath and turn all the lights off, hop in and pretend I’m in some kind of womb space, submerging my face. That’s how I cope with most anything. Good night.

Today:

- Two of my clients cancelled at the last minute.
- I spent an hour and a half at the RTA to try and process a refund on my rego only to have it thwarted.
- I got into an argument with a colleague.
- An elderly dementia client beat me with a broom while we stood out in the rain and I begged her to come inside and to let me help her walk.
- Another client didn’t want me in her house at all, but I had to cook her dinner.
- My giant basil plant mysteriously toppled off the ledge of my balcony, two floors down and I almost cried.
- I scraped the side of my new car on a pole trying to get past a dick who parked his car in our driveway.
- My room flooded and I stood on my balcony with a bucket in the pouring rain, scooping the water out as quickly as I could to try and stop it.

So I’m just gonna sit and look at 17 year old, Taylor-Ruth’s comics.

Valuable skills/things I can and have done:

- Can talk about turn of the century British imperial fiction while giving professional handjob if placed in a sufficiently professional environment (dim lighting, a health-check and shower for you beforehand, some ridiculously themed room). Please note: am unable to perform handjob if you want to talk about your pets rather than literature.
- Perform a pro-park in a tight spot while over the legal limit. We have this one on hearsay.
- Please parents with a charming, awkward smile and discussion about food, university studies, potential job prospects, etc.
- I can wear floral prints while still being able to kick guys in the shins.
- Turn men gay.
- Take a good slap in the face and some hard hits on the arse while being fucked, all without crying.
- Prepare wholesome, nutritional meals for the young and old alike and make lemon syrup cakes.
- Relate to people on the spectrum.
- Write college students’ essays for cash.
- Make a pipe out of al-foil for use in smoking weed.
- Point out and utilise all the best areas for fucking in a five-star hotel room.
- Help a chum with a verbal walk-through of an Ocarina of Time dungeon over a land-line telephone.
- Double-fist men for cash.
- Can hold hands and smile sweetly.
- Teach college students about why Henry James is trash and the value of studying authors you loathe.
- Can play-act the gentleman by discussing Islay malts and demonstrating the use of a tobacco pipe.
- Will watch wrestling matches and cringe with utmost sincerity when people are genuinely getting hurt.
- Am able to discuss the use of different sex toys and sex implements in an entirely professional manner.
- Can get shit done, just in general.
- Trustworthy enough to hold a high security clearance.
- Can drink multiple bottles of alcohol and still manage semi-coherent conversation.
- Teach small children to fist-bump and hi-five in a satisfactory manner.
- Able to eat cake, talk about Fantagraphics comics and get tattooed simultaneously. Multitasking.
- Can grow and care for a wide variety of plants for varying uses.
- Take mental note of all available exits. SAFETY FIRST.
- Pin a grown man, sometimes.
- Able to drive long distances without break, except for drive through coffee and obligatory tiny-bladder pee.
- More than proficient in being the big spoon.

Possible friend material.

Bonus: the contents of my mind at the moment look something like this:

**

Twenty people screaming and jumping in a too-small karaoke booth to Blink 182, with no sense of irony, just elation. Taking the mic and singing Nothing Compares 2 U with a guy I’d never met before – both of us singing it to you. I make tenuous connections with people and smile, feeling open and honest. All anxiety totally ceases when you’re pulled along with a group of people who are all happy enough to just be in each other’s company, all bright eyed from a couple of drinks and faces flushed from talking. I can’t remember the last time I was with a group this large and enjoyed myself, but I think the atmosphere of love was infectious – everyone there for a purpose, to tell S they love him and that they will miss him – demonstrating that through their actions, as they stuck close together and sung loudly for him and for the sake of sharing that moment with each other.

**

Crawling into bed, exhausted, throat sore from screaming along to songs at karaoke and being completely out of practice. These past few weeks have been so frantic that I haven’t had time to actually consider feelings beyond a brief acknowledgement. I know I feel a lot of things, though. I know I’ve fallen into that habit of using small, essentially meaningless phrases to convey great, ungainly and inarticulate feelings and ideas. I mean a lot when I say I like you – even more when I say I like you a lot. I have no idea beyond that, though, except that I want to hold on to all the sweetness of these past few week, because I know that sweetness makes me less abrasive and kinder. I can see that in my face when I get up and look in the mirror. It’s such a change that I actually embody it. I feel like I’ve spent these past few weeks forgoing complicated fears and doubts in exchange for something a lot lighter and less daunting. Lighter maybe because it’s transient and that’s possibly how I should treat it all: something fleeting. I don’t know. I get to kick a lot of thoughts around in my mind now. I want to get to know you better, but then maybe time and space are still conducive to that. I just need to learn to deal with quick shifts, but then, I guess there are no options except to deal and keep moving. Question everything with “but then”, consider all sides – but then – remind myself that I should take things at face value, too. That over-thinking can mean ruin.

**

When I said goodbye in the underground carpark, I tried to push everything down. I felt stupid for not saying enough. In my car, I stared straight ahead as I drove to work and felt small.

- Strangled with my own knickers
- Face pushed down into the bed
- Struggling against the weight
- Laughing uncontrollably
- Flinching without thought against a raised hand
- The widest smile
- The most devious grin
- No fear to actually open my eyes, to look right into his. I’d always thought that looking away was just instinctual and natural, but now I wonder if maybe I was hiding something – discomfort? All the thinking I was doing instead of focusing on my partner? The inability to lock out everything else? Fear? I didn’t want to look into partners’ eyes in case I gave something away, in case they saw that my heart wasn’t in it somehow. All gone here, though. I want to catch his eyes, I want him to see how I’m feeling, I want him to know it’s all right, that he should keep going, that even if my mouth’s open and I’m about to yell out.
- Spit running down the side of my face
- Bruises from fingers holding down the inside of my arm growing darker by the day
- All the tenderness afterwards, collapse, my head resting on his chest, fingers tangled in his hair while one of his arms holds me close

Every morning I wake up and realise it’s one day closer to when I lose this – I’m keenly aware of it and the sadness is palpable, but still manageable and I’m trying to push it aside for now, treating it as something to deal with later. Whenever it gets to me, I think about shit like how nice it is to feel these emotions again, after years of nothing. It wasn’t that I’d become this hard, unfeeling husk, but I felt broken and defeated and after what happened with my last relationship and coping meant returning to a time when I was more of a fierce loner who was slow to trust. That’s what’s disarmed me – trust is suddenly implicit and given freely and it hasn’t taken months or years to build up to that. I couldn’t let someone do all these things to me and feel good about it if I didn’t trust them to the point where I no longer have to question anything. I think a lot about when I started really getting turned on by violence and sex – that sometimes my favourite sex is where someone has the courage to hurt me or to manhandle me – and what that actually means. There’s so much trust involved in allowing someone to fuck you without explicitly defined borders. I find it difficult but rewarding to make myself vulnerable – but have even greater difficulty in trusting someone deeply. I think about the fucking I did after D and I broke up, where I threw myself into violent situations and told myself there was trust, while knowing that the sex I had was fuelled on self-loathing – sex where I wanted someone to hurt me in the same way I would hurt myself, in a period where I didn’t matter and could be fucked out of thinking and feeling. I realise now that there was no trust there, I just had no boundaries and no self-worth – there were no lines to cross. The difference now is that none of this is fed on my own hatred. I feel everything really keenly. I am connected to this person I’m with and I don’t feel debased or devalued while all of this is happening. Instead, I feel this intense feeling of mutual trust and I feed off his reactions when he realises he can keep going. Whatever happens, just thinking and feeling like this makes it worthwhile – just liking someone this much.

Shymaking to write this, because it makes me feel lame and open, but there you go.

(I also sometimes really like tender sex and am prone to having as strong a reaction to that as to this.)

There are bruises on the inside of my thigh, stains on my sheets, a pretty grin on my face and I’m exhausted, but so fucking happy and prepared to put all other thoughts and emotions on hold for the time being, while I lie in bed hearing him talk about Faulkner before I try to articulate my thing for Updike.

- Nervous chatter as we walk down the spiral staircase into the bowels of MONA. Collective uncertainty – no one seems to know what to expect.
- The artist told us that when we enter the cinema, we should take our clothes off together.
- Is it weird to glance looks at people undressing? Is it wrong to think that this is always erotic, even when it’s ostensibly “for art” and even more specifically, for art that focuses on discomfort? Nudity itself is less erotic, but even hastily undressing, with all that shyness of being around people you don’t know, is still pretty hot.
- I’m doing this with a porn mogul by my side. He looks considerably less comfortable than most people in the room. A huge part of my joy is derived from his overt discomfort, as tables are turned. Think about how this is not the first time I’ve seen him this uncomfortable. Catch him gazing at others undressing, too.
- The porn mogul’s presence also makes me aware that in this environment, women are sort of privileged. While my friend was keenly aware that his staring may be interpreted as prurient (which it was), my staring is somehow more acceptable, though just as sleazy.
- So, try to focus on people’s faces.
- Instead notice that the vast majority of people have pubic hair – often completely untouched.
- And so many shitty tattoos on people’s arses! I didn’t know that was a thing.
- Meeting in a bar area of the gallery. Aware of the light on people’s skin, a woman stands up against a sandstone wall that is illuminated from the ground with coloured light.
- The artist looks slightly uncomfortable, despite having conducted these tours before. Suspect that may just be his natural state of being. He has an awkward laugh and a slight break in his voice.
- The gallery is far removed from the sterile white box space that I am used to, there are clear embellishments everywhere that are decadent and seemed designed to add to the artworks. Areas of the gallery were built specifically to house certain artworks, sometimes following the requests of the artists and sometimes just following the whims of the owner of the space.
- Spend a lot of time thinking about how most of this gallery was funded by one man, supposedly from the proceeds obtained through his complex, international gambling syndicate. Am constantly aware of money as I wander through the space – think about how much money it takes to cut a gallery into a sandstone cliff.
- When people take their clothes off, there is some sense of levelling. People who were attractive with their clothes on seem less attractive now, while others are more so. Mostly, though, everyone looks the same.
- Before we started, we signed model releases and a guy with a camera, also naked, runs around and shoots us. The presence of the cameraman ups the ante a bit and it’s hard to lose sight of him and to act naturally.
- Naked people standing beside a large, fleshy nude oil painting, no clothes to detract from the piece.
- One guy joyfully rolls naked and with great speed on beanbags set up for one artwork. I find it especially endearing, because he was one of the few people who requested that no photos be taken.
- Vulnerable bodies standing up close against sharp Wim Delvoye metalwork of colossal size. In particular, Suppo, the large metal “suppository” made from laser-cut metal cathedral models that were twisted almost beyond recognition into this sharp, beautiful suppository shape, suspended from the ceiling. It looked sharp enough to cut flesh. One woman in a wheelchair wheeled herself, naked, underneath it so it hovered over her crotch.
- In the Cloaca room, naked people in a clinical environment, with mirror walls reflecting bodies into infinity. A white floor. Aware that my feet are now almost black.
- The smell of shit from the cloaca machines and a further stripping of the body – we’ve taken our clothes off, the machine has taken its skin off.
- Awkward laughter as people realise Delvoye’s Sybille II film, with it’s romantic music building to a crescendo, is in fact highly magnified footage of Wim squeezing people’s pimples.
- The photographer snags me and a guy with tattoos so he can take pictures of us looking at Delvoye’s tattooed pig skins. Wonder if I’m ever going to be published like this.
- Similarly, photo taken observing a cloaca at close range. Wonder if future students will ever see these.
- Returning to the bar. They give us really nice wine from the onsite vineyard. Get stuck thinking it’s a pretty decent deal, free entry to the gallery, free tour, free nudes, free wine.
- Feeling more comfortable now, strangers chat with each other, naked.
- Questions from strangers about my tattoos that are normally covered by clothes. The same awkwardness of explaining the Carson translation of Sappho to people, despite the hipster-art-fag crowd.
- I excitedly visit another of the gallery’s highlights, a converted toilet cubicle. Upon entering, a light goes on inside the toilet bowl and you realise there are mirrors set up inside the bowl. Sitting on the toilet, directly ahead is another mirror, reflecting the view from below through a periscope system. Beside you, as you sit, are a pair of binoculars you can use to view the reflection magnified. Laughing, staring at my cunt from directly below and pissing.
- Talking to the beautiful gallery guide afterwards about my giddy joy at using the toilet. She admits she’s taken a dump with it and I’m just pleased by the honesty. It’s okay to talk about poo if it’s in the context of art, right?
- A group refuse to put their clothes on and climb back up and out of the gallery to frolick and smoke outside on the astro-turfed roof, overlooking the Derwent. The photographer nearly wets himself at the opportunity and the atmosphere is joyous.
- I’m disappointed, because I’d already put my clothes back on. Any excuse to take my clothes off: any.
- Making friends with other people on the tour and bringing them back to the camp site. The overall feeling is jubilant and a kind of exhilaration. I realise tame nudity in a gallery is not at all risque, but the communal experience and energy is a pretty great draw card. I spoke to the artist nervously about completing the tour a second time, aware that it defeats some of his purpose, to consider and confront fear, but he welcomed and encouraged me to come again. I did and it felt very different and gave me more of an opportunity to take in the reactions of others, but these are just notes I made after the first tour.

I’ve been spending more time alone these past couple of days and it’s done me a lot of good. Yesterday, I sat in a cathedral perched on a hill overlooking Hobart and there, I listened to an organ recital of Messiaen compositions – the 20th century organist whose compositions are often avant garde and always deeply spiritual. Some of the pieces sounded like they could be accompaniments to experimental 70s video art pieces depicting what Messiaen called “the marvellous aspects of the faith”. After the recital and once I was back at the campsite, I sat out on a rock as the sun set, staring out into the Derwent watching ducks do their thing while smoking a cigar. I’d had a couple of drinks before then and the combination of that, exhaustion and the cigar made me feel peaceful and light-headed. I’m finishing Revolutionary Road after holding on to it for a few years. When I first bought it, I was in a relationship that filled me with a false, strained hope and found I could barely get past the first fifty pages of the book, because it played on so many of my looming insecurities. Now, though, as I feel better and more comfortable with everything, I’ve found it easy to plough through. The only thing that gets to me is the bitter portrayal of April as an everywoman, capable of little more than falling pregnant unexpectedly.

Today, I’ve finally walked around the bay to MONA – the Museum of Old and New Art. I’d heard and read so much about the place, that I was terrified it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. I knew that the galleries follow strong themes of sex and death – or as the book-learning side of me would say, eros and thanatos. Like most anyone, those are themes I’m interested in and that I want to see played out to their extreme. I had read about the permanent collection at MONA, the Cloaca (the “poo machine”), the cunts, the video art of people shitting, the artefacts and knew that those things would interest me, but then there’s still a big part of me that is turned off by gallery spaces and by the implication that I need to appreciate galleries and their content on an intellectual level in a way that requires reverence, time and an understanding of art and world history.

Anyway, I want to write about MONA and what I saw there and the things that I thought about and how others reacted to the exhibits, but I’m also tired now and impatient and aware that soon I’ll be tottering off to a bathhouse like the decadent fuck I am, to swan around in hot baths and sauna before getting a facial. So fuck that, I’ll do it later when I’ve actually processed and when I’m possibly capable of writing something coherent rather than a list of monosyllabic words of appreciation like: FUCK. YES. We can just say, for now, that I really liked it and was moved. Also that I spent hours there, but didn’t get past the first floor. Tomorrow, I go back there after hours with R as company. We’re going to take off our clothes and be led around with other naked people and a naked artist. I know it’s contrived, wanky and self-conscious, but I am still giddy at the thought of taking my clothes off in that space and being a part of something. That’s been a theme these past few years: taking my clothes off whenever possible, in increasingly bizarre places, sometimes for many reasons, but often just for the base reason of appealing to my curiosity and the curiosity of others.

I’ve spent two nights here and two nights there and two nights somewhere else, but we’ve settled now in Hobart now for a longer period. My tent is just meters away from the Derwent River and this morning, I pulled open the zip and gasped, because there was nothing but water and mountains cloaked in mist and the air was biting and cold, even though it’s meant to be the middle of summer. The streets here are quiet like back home, but there’s more things to notice. Last night, we waited in a long line on the streets to be let into a carpark that had been taken over by a giant street party. I was pushed into the throng of people and to start with, I protectively held my hands to my chest as people pushed past. After a while, though, I relaxed into things and was hit with a wall of noise as Hanggai, a group of guys from China performed. The guys dressed like a modern approximation of Genghis Khan and their music was a mix of rock and traditional throat singing. The crowd were initially hesitant, but after a few songs, they warmed up to it and began to process what they were hearing, realising they needed to participate in a call and response. Everyone screamed as they sung drinking songs and rocked out and I felt the kind of catharsis you’re meant to feel when you’re at a gig with a large group of people.

There’s loneliness mixed in with all of this – the loneliness that’s really particular to travel, even when you’re with others – but it’s not overwhelming and it’s not unpleasant in and of itself. Part of it has to do with bad timing, since I’ve left S behind, just when I wanted to spend time with him and get to know him better while processing all of my feelings. We joke a lot at uni about how we are being trained to “think thoughts and feel feelings” and every once in a while, I come back to that line and laugh about it in a kind of bittersweet way. It was easier when I had minimal emotions to process, but in no way better. The longing is a pretty palpable reminder that I’m feeling better about most everything. So I send ginger, awkward messages back and count down the days, without allowing myself to get too distracted, because despite everything, I’m happy. The hardest thing to process is just the feeling of hope that’s flowing underneath the surface of everything and I’m almost too frightened to call it by its name, in case it is false or some kind of illusion that will pass. That’s kind of sick, that I’ve trained myself into second-guessing and doubting everything, but that awareness is at least making me want to fight against that impulse. Anyway: the best new year. The best.