We were in a rented truck travelling up the Western Ring Road. Anna’s mum, Vickie, was behind the wheel. The back of the truck was filled with hand-me-down furniture and appliances, masterfully arranged like some sort of reverse Jenga installation. Anna had to balance her fish tank on her lap the whole ride up; three tiny occupants swam in loops about it, coming perilously close to the rim at every pothole. I was being serious about the rag-gag though. I have no sisters, and my mum and nonna were experts at hiding any feminine goods. My mum had a separate bathroom to us, and she hid her pads better than our Christmas presents. We never came across them, even after 19 years of mostly peaceful co-existence. Going to an all-boys school probably didn’t help my limited understanding of the female reproductive system either. Imagine my shock at discovering what those little bins with the flaps in bathrooms were really for, or that when girls mentioned shark week they didn’t mean there was a Jaws marathon on SBS. Somewhere between Werribee and the city, Vickie told us that her special time had just begun. It was apparently a surprise, too. Upon arrival in Preston, we discovered that Vickie had bled through her pants, marking the seat of the rental. And because we had no groceries in the house yet, she had to go into the yard and use some fallen leaves to clean herself up a bit. We all laughed and joked about it, which was a new experience for me. I’d always imagined that these sorts of situations would be a cause for drama than humility and humour. The only stories in the same vein I’d heard previously were tinged with embarrassment. A mate of mine once accidently dropped a soiled tampon on the floor of a toilet cubicle. It rolled into the next booth which, of course, was occupied. Cue screaming. She had to sprint out before she could be identified Another friend would tell me about unfortunate, red-faced Year 7 girls having to run to the bathroom with books gripped tightly behind their bums. But Vickie and Cass couldn’t have cared less—shit happens. As it would turn out, this basic education in menstruation very early on in our lease was a far more important lesson than I could have realised. Living in a share house is never easy, even if you move in with some of your best mates. It doesn’t really matter how long you’ve all been friends for; the original dynamics tend to fade into the background and tensions develop as you take on new roles. I was a lazy prick. I left dirty dishes around the house, spent too much time playing video games and I never took out the trash or put the bins out. My role was that of the slack-arse son who never did his chores. The girls took me aside one afternoon, near the end of the lease, and laid it bare: “We want to keep the house next year, and we think you should leave.” I’m just going to rewind this yarn a bit by saying we had some really great times before I got the boot. We used to play sip-or-strip on a weekly basis, even
in winter. The loser had to sprint to the bottom of our overgrown yard and back, but we’d end up so pissed that it often turned into a race, replete with long, cold fronds of wet grass brushing our special bits. You’d have to dodge the less benign weeds. If we were really trashed, it ended up a slip-and-slide. Whenever we had these sorts of nights, our neighbour Margaret would come around. By which I mean she’d walk into our house uninvited, peering at us in the hallway until someone noticed her: thickrimmed glasses and frizzy bottle-red hair illuminated in the patio light. Margaret was a middle-aged nurse on the verge of retirement who would drink most of our booze and make us roll smokes for her all night. The first time we met her, she told us that she tried to resuscitate the previous tenant after he had a heart attack on the toilet, but she got there too late. Shit happens when you’re living in a sharehouse for the first time. Especially when that house is next to a bunch of commission flats in Preston. Naturally, that lesson didn’t seem relevant once I got evicted, so I decided to go tit-for-tat with the girls. I bitched about my situation ad nauseam to anybody who would listen. I told people that Cass’s cat’s litter tray was always overflowing with shit and soggy paper, and that the kitchen would be left filthy for days—caked in facon and mayonnaise—whenever Anna tried to play Vegetarian Master Chef. And you know what? Those stories were completely true, but retelling them made me feel like a fucking ogre who couldn’t have a normal conversation without trailing off into a bitter tirade.
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“I wouldn’t go to the toilet straight away.” “What happened, Cass?” asked Anna. “Well, the water hasn’t been turned on yet so I couldn’t flush it, and—” she said, pausing for dramatic effect, “—it’s like a crime scene in there.” I heard muted sniggering. “Did you have Indian or something last night?” I asked innocently. The girls looked at me funny for a bit before losing their self-control, slapping the dashboard in fits of laughter. “Dude, seriously?”
My role was that of the slack-arse son who never did his chores.
Getting kicked out by your friends is embarrassing. Having to move back in with your parents—with your tail firmly between your legs—is embarrassing. Having to explain your living situation to mutual friends after the fact is embarrassing. But, once again, shit happens. I wish I could have remembered Vickie bleeding on the seat of that white Budget truck whenever I retold my pathetic story to every poor soul willing to listen. I wish I could have remembered ol’ goon-breath Margaret whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a squirming 20-year-old boy every time I gave my exhousemates the cold shoulder. Whenever you let a situation embarrass you, you relinquish control over it, and you diminish the entire experience. Why be a victim when you could laugh about it instead? After all, Vickie didn’t blame the cosmos because she had to clean herself up with the local flora. Instead, she joked that she’d christened the backyard for us. And we didn’t whine about Margaret coming over unannounced—we’d laugh because she was the life of the whole friggin’ party. Now, whenever I leave half-finished coffee cups around my parents’ house, my dad jokes that they’re going to kick me out. And I have a laugh. @mikehwalsh