1978, 2021 Edition

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY This edition of 1978 was edited, compiled, and published on the occupied lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and that the occupation is violent and ongoing. We give our deep respect and solidarity to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

This land always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

First published 2021 by The University of Sydney Funded by the University of Sydney Union and the University of Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Individual Contributors 2021 Introduction © Jenna Lorge and Thomas Israel Foreword © Sean Young Afterword © Francesca Rentsch and Neve Peters Graphic design © Bonnie Huang and Kate Scott Layout © Bonnie Huang, Jenna Lorge, Kate Scott & Thomas Israel © The University of Sydney 2021 Images and some short quotations have been used in this book. Every effort has been made to identify and attribute credit appropriately. The editors thank contributors for permission to reproduce their work.

ISBN: 978-1-74210-474-4 1978 Reproduction and Communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below.

Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Email: sup.info@sydney.edu.au Web: sydney.edu.au/sup Cover Design by Ida Combley

Dedicated to all the students who fight to learn, to express, to love, and to be heard.

Editors-in-Chief Jenna Lorge Thomas Israel

General Editors Francesca Rentsch Neve Peters

Creative Directors Bonnie Huang Kate Scott

Lead Editors Kat Porritt-Fraser Sally Chik Trinity Kim

Editors Angela Leech Angela Xu Ariana Haghighi Arielle Tarlington Iris Yuan Karen Leong Luc van Vliet Portia Brajkovic Thomas Sargeant Vishali Seshadri Zara Zadro

CONTENTS Jenna Lorge &

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Introduction

10 13 14 16 17 18 19 22 23 24 25 29 31 34 40 41 42 44 49 50 51

Foreword

Thomas Israel Sean Young Hannah Roux Neve Peters Nicola Brayan Cat Turner Kat Porritt-Fraser Kate Scott Chloe Fu Nicole Yang Rhian Mordaunt Nishta Gupta Karen Leong Neve Peters Angela Leech Nicola Brayan Ava Lansley Tamara Thompson Aidan Pollock Nicola Brayan Hannah Roux Kate Scott

With my body Camouflage boy, Nature’s friend Opalescent The Mystery of Me Girlness ‘It all started with hayloft...’

Revelation Colour Bear Traps Smiles Are My Currency stock-still a chick’s advice to getting huge Werriwa 5pm 24 Plucked Jawbone Shudder Bejwelled Imprinting Not Gay Enough: The Flaws in Australia’s LGBTQIA+ Refugees Policies

Nicola Brayan

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Woven

Karen Leong

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Runny

Anonymous

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The Life Cycle

Chloe Fu

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I am Growing

Angela Xu

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The Chair

Angela Xu

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Love Language

Kate Scott

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Four Friends

Lucy Bailey

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Water Balloons

Francesca Rentsch & Neve Peters

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Afterword

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Contributors

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Editors

INTRODUCTION

By Jenna Lorge & Thomas Israel, Publication Directors If you have ever studied history, you will have noticed a lack of queer and women’s voices. You maybe even thought this was due to their lack of existence. In traditional history discourses, these voices have been silenced, but the claim that they do not exist is simply false.

Across the world, the voices of queer people and of women existed – you just have to know where to look. Oftentimes you have to look really hard, for humankind has long laboured to stifle them.

But, they are there. When you find them, they’re incredibly beautiful. They are the result of perseverance; the ability to create and express amidst adversity. And, they exist here in this publication today.

This journal was created last year with the purpose of being a space for queer people and women to share their insights, feelings, and unparalleled ingenuity. This year’s edition did not only achieve this but exceeded it beyond our expectations. Treat every page as an insight into the creative power our community holds. Allow yourself to understand what we can do when faced with adversity. Let the words and images stick with you and speak to you – because they will.

Despite the utter strangeness of 2021, with fluctuations of COVID-19 pulling us in and out of varying states of normalcy, we continued. The home-locked community of queer and femaleidentifying students expressed resilience in their creativity. From their quiet homes of seclusion, our community came powerfully forward to present the pieces in front of you. They are not only a marker of student talent, but our community’s strength in unapologetic expression. In them, you will find our community’s struggles, pains, and continued difficulties. You will also find our power, our pride, our happiness, and resounding wit.

It has been our honour to direct this year’s iteration of 1978. In its second edition, this journal is in a state of growth and evolution. However, it stands before you with blistering confidence. It is not just a reflection of all of its contributors, but also the strength and talent of its editors and illustrators. We have been privileged to not only witness their immense skill, but also are now lucky to call many of them our friends. This journal has become a site of community expansion for our editors and contributors, and we hope that it is for you too. Through the combined effort of our Editorial Team, Illustrators, Creative Directors, General Editors, and us Publication Directors, a collection has been forged unlike any other.

This journal honours the history of our community. It honours the tradition of storytelling, of creation, and of having a voice. It screams loudly, for all those that have come before and will come after, in proof to the world that we are here, we exist, and we are ready to be heard.

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FOREWORD

By Sean Young, on behalf of SHADES Content Warning: Mentions of Explicit Homophobia and Violence It is hard to follow the previous foreword of LGBTIQ activists, Diane Minnis and Ken David, of the trailblazing 78ers. I began to overthink - asking myself how I could write something that would match the story of the first Mardi Gras, an event that would change the course of gay rights activism, and become part of a broader campaign for human rights and against police brutality. Re-educating myself led me to reflect on my privilege as a 20-something year old student who has never faced the kind of hardship previous generations have because of my sexual identity. I wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the brave acts of early activists that have granted myself, and every other queer person, the right to be who we are.

I grew up in Hobart, Tasmania – a place where, just one year before I was born, homosexuality was still criminalised, and sex between consenting adult men was punishable by 21 years’ imprisonment. Not only was Tasmania the last state to put these laws in place, but it was also the only state that stigmatised transgender people by criminalising ‘cross-dressing’. The first push for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania occurred in the mid-1970s after the formation of the Tasmanian Homosexual Law Reform Group and the coming out of a Launceston-based doctor and environmentalist, Dr Bob Brown. Despite a promising report from Tasmania’s Victimless Crime Committee in 1979, optimism for reform was soon shut down by an apathetic state Labor government.

Just under a decade later, the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group (TGLR) was formed and, alongside Brown and the Tasmanian Greens movement, successfully appealed to international tribunals, and raised attention to public opinion through high-profile media presence and civil disobedience. When the minority state government’s legislation to decriminse homosexuality was turned down by the Legislative Council, advocates brought the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. This was the first case of its kind from anywhere in the world. The UN ruled against Tasmania’s laws, which drew significant national and international attention to the state for all the wrong reasons.

Despite aggressive, homophobic campaigns that mimicked rhetoric from the religious right in the United States, queer activists pushed harder with a community education campaign that drove support. The state Liberal government finally allowed a conscience vote in 1997 that narrowly won in the Legislative Council. This major achievement not only abolished criminal sanctions against homosexuality, but helped launch a new era of activism, and solidified gay rights within the international human rights agenda for the very first time.

Stories like these should never be forgotten. Rodney Croome, a Tasmanian activist who helped run the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality, and was a founder of Australian Marriage Equality, said: ​​‘At the first gay community meeting I attended I was 10

warned there might be police outside waiting to write down the car registration numbers of those leaving the meeting to add to their “pink list” of “known homosexuals”…while other Tasmanians believed they lived in a democracy, LGBTIQ Tasmanians lived in a police state’. How different our experiences were despite growing up in the same home state.

My experience has not been perfect: homophobic slurs were still thrown around at my school, and I wasn’t comfortable with coming out until moving to Sydney. I thought that moving away would allow me to separate two lives – one at home where I felt I had to be someone I wasn’t, and one where I could be myself.

Despite coming out in first year, there was still something holding me back – perhaps an internalised homophobia that stemmed from growing up in a relatively sheltered town where I had never met a queer person. It was only until joining SHADES, the Sydney University queer society, that I found pride in my identity. I felt part of something bigger, alongside peers with shared experiences, and in a safe space where I could express myself without fear of judgement. I remember my first event vividly – wearing my SHADES shirt, surrounded by queer people dancing, and seeing my first ever drag show. I finally felt at home. Queer people especially find strength in community when a lot of us don’t have the privilege of support from our families or our friends. Now, in a time when we are more disconnected from each other than ever, a strong community has never been more important. This is why I am so proud to be president of SHADES, as I want to ensure that every new student has that opportunity to find their queer family. What makes me happy is seeing first years from their first event of the year to their last, as I see the friends they have made through the society, and the confidence they have gained in their queer identities. This is the power of community.

This journal is not only a beautiful collection of raw, queer creativity, but also a representation of the fight for freedom of expression. We continue to fight through the strength in our community and the support of our allies. Our art and our stories keep our history alive.

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With my body Hannah Roux

With my body I thee worship. Lick and lavish with my weapon-tongue and make your breathing savage.

Your wings are white and hang upon the ceiling. My words are loud and seething. Will you comfort me? Comfort, comfort ye.

Circle this beating singing tree.

My heart is like a bird wound round with winter.

White feathers fall like words enfleshed in summer. Will you burn with me? This is my body which is for thee

Illustrated by Bonnie Huang

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Camouflage

Camouflage boy, Nature’s friend Neve Peters

There are things that I am used to.

Like sticky mixer on my hands, spilled Ruskov I love doing inappropriate things, Having a story to tell.

My little sister’s fifteen; she calls with cheap gossip Snapchats and soft kisses.

I am still in pain from sex I can’t remember Sun hurting, head hurting, bleeding as I go to wee What on earth is wrong with me?

I can wait out the low, pay my penance I can serve my time in the in-between.

Intensity pulls me around like candy I fall into his sloppy arms at night And bask in hell the next day.

Nature is my caring friend.

She cries a little every time I wake up drunk.

But she tries to make the sun rise, the trees shake.

In stolen moments, when I am focussed, fresh-faced She calls the wind to settle.

Magpies caw in the morning dew And again, gently, Nature guides me back to you.

You are warm air on a sober day.

But be careful! I can wear my hair out long, too Yesterday, I woke up in a pool of my own vomit And someone else’s clothes.

You sit in the foggy bushes with Nature, sipping tea She bites her mossy nails – What will we do?

You really are friends with everyone, aren’t you?

– Don’t worry, look what I’ve got – You hold such care for me in your calloused hands.

There are things that I am used to.

This behaviour of yours doesn’t feature on that 14

Long and drink-stained list One foot in both games, I don’t want to hedge my bets What if you’re just like the rest?

Maybe you’re just a beautiful illusion Nature’s shadow in the scrub A teasing reminder of what I could have, could be If I had the guts to give up this life, this hate, this deep and desperate Intensity.

Photo by Thomas Sargeant

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The Mystery of Me Cat Turner

‘You’ll grow out of it’ ‘You just need the right person’ ‘How can’t you look at someone like that?’

They act like their words can change me, like I haven’t told myself the same things since the tender age of twelve, acting like I didn’t pray to be ‘normal’ or blame it as a side effect that could be fixed.

They don’t understand how I can make a sex joke one second but not want it.

But that’s exactly what it is to me, a joke. A funny interest and music aesthetic, the awkward moment of the movie, not something to be desired and yet apparently so desired you’re deemed inhuman if you don’t.

Perhaps they’re right, perhaps I’m an old God trapped in a mortal body, a creature from the deep. Perhaps I’m a descendant of the ancient Greeks that survived the call of a siren and decided to protect their bloodline from their treachery. Or perhaps I’m the reincarnation of a huntress of Artemis, veins filled with the blood of the moonlight instead of such attraction.

They find it weird. How I can crack jokes and listen to music about it and yet be free of such pulls. And so I let them laugh, I let them be confused and make fun while I remain a mystery to myself and this world.

Illustrated by Angela Xu

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GIRLNESS Kat Porritt-Fraser

I felt like a girl on tuesday. the bathroom door smiled back at me as I sat in the cubicle. a shimmering striped cloud of purple, white, and green floating above me I leave it at the door, usually ‘girl’ was a choice on tuesdayto let my boots move, clicking over thick white strips of pedestrian crossing, not startling with every pronoun thought silently at me “her, in the pink jeans” did not latch on my body or tangle in a daydream typed into my phone screen to validate the memory of not quite really being on just how many ‘good days’ has girlness been a feeling filled with helium for convenience, a balloon pulled down from ceiling sticky plastic still resisting granted passage through my sternum just to find it while I’m sleeping in the mattress watch it twisting in the purple, white and green and it is wednesday, early morning.

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‘It The all started with hayloft...’ rise of quarantine TikToks and the fall of performative femininity

By Kate Scott It’s 12:32am.

I know I should be asleep or at the very least working on the essay that’s been sitting on my screen untouched for the past 10 minutes. The cursor blinks at me as if at any moment I will take up my keyboard and finish writing. But alas, my attempt to watch the TikTok my friend sent me inevitably evolves into mindlessly swiping through my For You page.

At first, it was a video joking about not really feeling the gender vibes and miss/mrs/ms titles, so obviously doing another six years of study to be dr. would be much easier. Looking at the bookmarks of PhD programs I have on my browser, I smirk to myself. I too, am not really vibing miss/mrs/ms. It’s funny, kinda relatable, but I move on.

A few swipes later, we have another video: this time a creator explaining that ‘I’m a woman in the same way that a tomato is a vegetable.’ It takes me a moment, (I am not going to lie to you dear people, I am solidly in the tomato-IS-avegetable camp) but then I realise that it definitely resonates. Unwilling to have that conversation yet, I keep scrolling.

After a while, my FYP simply bleeds into a continuous scroll of she/they videos, leading to reflections about my own gender expression and identity, of course set to the

soundtrack of Hayloft by Mother Mother (which has shortly become something of the enby national anthem).

Now if your TikTok accounts have also been overrun by she/they content, do not be alarmed. Take a moment. Breathe.

And then come reflect with me on the phenomenon of gender performativity.

I think it’s safe to say that we are all well acquainted with the gender binary: female and male, feminine and masculine.

But as anyone who’s ever taken a Gender Studies class will tell you, those binary opposites are socially constructed. Our idea of what it means to be feminine and masculine is only held together by societal norms, discourses, and visual cues that change with each passing decade. People are groomed to act in certain ways to fit within and reproduce those binary categories (albeit with varying levels of success). Subconsciously or not, we know the way in which men and women are expected to behave, dress, speak, and emote.

Judith Butler calls this phenomenon gender performativity. Now, if you’ve never taken a Gender Studies class, and you’re a little lost, a good way Butler explains this is comparing performativity of gender as ‘an act [in a play] which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which 19

requires individual actors in order to be actualised and reproduced as reality once again’.1 Think of a performance where the script is so memorised, so rehearsed, that the line blurs between the character and the actor itself – it becomes muscle memory: a ‘natural sort of being’.2 So what happens when COVID takes away the stage and the audience? What happens when the actors start questioning whether they still wish to use the script that they were once so comfortable performing?

If you too were questioning your gender identity during quarantine, don’t worry. You are far from alone. Stuck inside with limited face-to-face interactions, a lot of people began to realise just how much their gender was something that they did, not something that they are.

In August last year, @fuglibetty tweeted: ‘the amount of ppl coming 2 terms w gender identity over lockdown really proves how social interaction is inseparable from gender performance like… the moment ur isolated from constant promotion of gendered behaviour u have the space to question what it even means for u.’

Since then, it’s been retweeted over 15

thousand times.

The reality is, pardon my French, gender is absolute bullshit. In westernised society, we try to predicate gender on this biological binary of the ‘male’ and ‘female’ sex.3 However, as noted by Chinyere Ezie, every year we see people evade those neat and tidy categorisations based on genital morphology.4 Each year, thousands of babies are born intersex, meaning they are born with innate sex characteristics that do not fit medical norms for female or male bodies.5 Each year, thousands of transgender adults seek out sex confirmation surgery and hormone replacement therapy, challenging the ideology that sex is fixed and determined at birth.6 This is not to say that these individuals are representative of a universal experience, as everyone’s experience of gender and sex is different, but their relationships with sex and gender can be far more complex than we are led to believe. Within our society we can see that there simply is no clear and naturally bounded connection between sex and gender; one does not equate the other.

If our perception of the biological binary of ‘male’ and ‘female’ is inherently flawed and does not encompass all, then what follows is that the strict gender binary supposedly based on them is flawed also. Butler suggests that gender is not a biological component as we’ve

1 Butler 1988, 526.

2 Butler 1999, 33.

3 It’s important to note in other countries and cultures, the acknowledgement of other genders have existed for centuries (predominantly prior to colonisation), such as the Muxe in Mexico, and Māhū in Hawaii and Tahiti, among many others.

4 Ezie 2011.

5 Intersex Human Rights Australia 2019.

6 Ezie 2011.

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perceived. It allowed them to push the boundaries of what would be considered traditional femininity and perhaps find that they preferred the more masculine side of gender presentation or landed somewhere in the middle.

been led to believe, but rather an ‘identity [that] is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results’.7 If gender is performative, it makes sense that when the audience of our everyday interactions are taken away in COVID isolation, what emerges is a clearer understanding of what our gender is and how it exists outside the binary. We learn who we are innately, not simply what we perform for others. Through COVID quarantine, we see Butler’s suggestions clearer than ever; this respite from the continual stylisation of masculine and feminine ideals forced onto us by society potentially created an opportunity to acknowledge their existence.

I think it’s safe to say that the rise of TikTok she/theys during quarantine is hardly a coincidence. Femininity is complex and beautiful but, sometimes and for some people, it can feel restrictive. COVID isolation allowed people the opportunity to sit with themselves and reflect. It allowed them to simply ‘be’ without subconsciously worrying about how they are being 7

To put it simply, gender is just what you make of it. Every day, we are encouraged to have an inquisitive mind and question everything. But when was the last time we turned that questioning mind inwards? Gender does not have to be rigid, it does not have to exist within a binary, and does not even have to be labeled. If gender is performative, then maybe it is time to throw away the script and just do improv with the confidence of a straight white man: see what comes naturally.

References: Butler, Judith (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge.

Butler, Judith (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.

Theatre Journal, 40(4): 519–531.

Intersex Human Rights Australia (2019). https://ihra.org.au/.

Ezie, Chinyere (2011). Deconstructing the body: transgender and intersex identities and sex discrimination - the need for strict scrutiny. Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 20(1).

Butler 1999, 33.

Illustrated by Justine Hu Illustrated by Justine Hu

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Revelation Chloe Fu 22

Colour 07.06.2020 Nicole Yang It’s orange My hair The warm sensation of sand around your toes the friction of two matches’ production or the first ray of sunshine on your fence It’s blue My unresponded texts Your over-washed jeans laying on my dark, lonely couch A time of burning liquor and regrettable decisions The midnight blue It’s red My heart, beating loud but in pieces, The deadly ripped petals on the sidewalk after a holiday A drip of ketchup on your counter with some out-cold fries My letter to you Written, erased, left unsent It’s white Your t-shirt, stained – bleached – abandoned The unsettled clouds, high, high up, moving, watching, taunting me An aircraft cuts through the clouds Tearing the sky in two

Illustrated by Adelaide Neilson

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Rhian Mordaunt

Bear Traps I think you’re breaking me.

As you yell, your breath erodes my body.

I fall to the floor, Picking up the pieces of what once was mine, But too many of them are missing.

I try to escape, But the eggshells have turned into bear traps, and I’m stuck. The trap’s jaws sink into my flesh, I bleed out until I am

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Empty.

I crawl into bed, covering up the marks on my feet.

You’re asleep.

You’re beautiful.

I forget why I wanted to leave.

I lift up the covers and look down at your feet.

You have the same scars.

I think I’m breaking you too.

Illustrated by Hana Rossi

Nishta Gupta

Smiles Are My Currency

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Karen Leong

I = moment of inertia of the body december 2020 chase each day that rises in stiffened peaks pressure is something that mounts behind the eye clammy for release, now I’m playing the fool! my time is not up for grabs I become the bargaining chip real life mortar and pestle grind away these fleeting fancies and take flight in the flightless while cases bracket area codes in senseless wonder I too, am a spiral.

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my nail is a worry stone I squint at refreshed scoreboards peppered across what they’ve deemed greater than thou Sydney I am cornered while the hotter spot evolves – picks up pace, breaks into an easy run while I remain, as I was all these months ago lulled by saccharine security when I let myself breathe, a dam breaks

H = distance between the two axes july 2021 There will be todays My hope is slippery – freshly caught, let it smoke in the sun numbers they stack like the bodies – catch and you’re it! sometimes I think we are primed for this gathering en masse we think convergence Is the way herded sheep a misnomer lamb to crook, a cane for every self-hearted soul fear is the lure, and humans the fishes so we make do sequestered away life for the rest of us an ellipsis what is to do good? wait with bated breath? freedom fight knuckled In the breath of ignorance or is it to stare holes down four walls collective the gusty sigh cutting through siren squeal a rind of particularly sharp cheese again, Again.

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Neve Peters

a chick’s advice on getting huge

I don’t mean to brag, but I’m huge. Benchpress, sumo-squat, bounce-wasabi-peasoff-my-pecs huge. I’m so ripped that if you place a piece of raw sweetcorn between my tricep and deltoid at the back of my arm, I can twitch and squash it.

I see you, girls, out here, trying to be like me. You do your little kickbacks at the gym.

You walk at a medium pace on the step machine. Don’t lie to me – I know you tried Chloe Ting. You have some deep-seated angry motivation for being a better version of yourself and you can tell because your Pinterest board is full of girls in tank tops posing in the mirror. I’m all for it. All I’m saying is that if you want to take all of ‘this’ to the next level, hear me out. I have some advice you’ve never heard before and will likely never hear again.

I’ve done the research. I have watched all the vlogs, read the articles, spoken to the guys in the shorts by the lat pulldown machine. I have been inspired by the emojis in long Instagram captions. They (the mysterious, ambiguous, faceless fitness people) reckon that to get ripped, you need to do three things: manage your food properly, work out, and get your heart broken.

You girls are probably doing these things and wondering why you’re still not as good-looking as I am. My vast and hardearned expertise, drawn entirely from my own experience but supported by unquestionable results (my sexy body) have taught me that food, exercise, and heartbreak are

simply not enough to carry you through to greatness. So, I’ve made some tweaks to what the experts say.

1. Take care of your food and fluids.

This one I agree with considering it is simple science. Firstly, you must eat a lot to put on mass. Seconds at dinner, seconds at breakfast, seconds at snack time. Lots of protein and chicken. That, however, is the easy part for someone like me, whose body picks up muscle like beavers pick up those little sticks to make their dams (quickly, efficiently, and ravenous for more). Before you start drinking chicken shakes, though, keep in mind that this part of the process might take a little change in thinking. We girls are led to believe that our worth is defined by how small we are. Well, to hell with heroin chic! Girl, you need to listen to some Megan Thee Stallion. Some Juicy by Doja Cat. You need to get some hard-coreness in those bones. Wear some tight flare pants and show off your new booty. Trust me (and I know this): they’ll love it. They will love it.

Some take the nervous step towards looking even more ripped. I’ll say it now: I won’t touch this. I’ve been down the calorie road.

Correction: I used to live on that street. Hell, they’ve got my face up in the lights down there. I was once an example to the bikini crew. Sadly, that road – the tracking, the coffee, the hunger – leads straight to the gates of hell. Listen, I don’t preach. The fact remains, however, that people can go a bit loopy with their food sometimes. So I don’t count calories. Focus on your perfor31

mance, put on some tracksuit pants, play some Scrabble with a loved one and eat your cookies after a long day’s work at the gym – you’re beautiful.

But mainly get excited because you’re getting RIIIIIIPED BABY!!!!

2. Fitness Your fitness routine will depend on your ability and your goals, and nobody is more encouraging and willing to give advice than gym bros. They will show you how to use the machines, make you programs, suggest protein brands, and more. If you wear your LuluLemon compression leggings (you know the ones, with the v-waist?) they’ll probably ask you out as well. Oh, what fun! Romance blossoms by the squat rack! There’s nothing I love more than love.

man needs to have not only a job but also a plan.’ I liked that, it empowered me and made me feel in control. Then she went on to discuss what men should look for in a woman. ‘Boys,’ said Suzanne, ‘there is only one thing you need to be aware of when looking for a future wife: Is. She. A. Feminist? Has she drunk the kool-aid? If that’s the case, run away.’

Damn you, Suzanne Venker! I bet you can’t run this fast!

Smashed a PB that day. And a PB&J forty minutes later. See? Fitness is full of double wins.

Get into lifting heavy stuff. Once I was on the phone with this guy I was tuning back in lockdown. He said, ‘Damn, I really miss the gym. I don’t want to do callisthenics, I don’t want to do sit-ups, I just want to pick up heavy shit and put it down again.’ I was shocked and inspired. Girls, this is the attitude I need you to take on. Go to the gym, pick up heavy stuff, and leave. You’ll be surprised how much muscle you put on.

You’ll be surprised how much you can lift.

3. Get your heart broken This is where I begin to disagree with the experts. Oh, yeah, you’re the girl he didn’t want so you become the girl he couldn’t have? Piss off. The truth is that heartbreak will only get you so far. Working out will help to distract you from and get over the deep and burning sting of clumsy love, which is great because after a couple of months you’ll be really fit and over your ex.

But girl, if there is one dangerous combination, it’s being hot and having something to prove. Trust me – I’m an expert on both.

Only when you get over him will you realise that the real change occurs inside yourself.

Soon enough, though, you’ll have to start running. You don’t have to go very fast. I put on Suzanne Venker’s ultra-traditional anti-feminist podcast to keep me going.

Not only does it force me to re-think my opinions on the place of gender tropes in postmodern Western society with a critical eye (I enjoy being intellectually challenged), but also, it makes me really damn angry sometimes. I was listening to an episode where she was giving advice to girls on what to look for in a man. She said, ‘Ladies, your

You’ve got to wake up every day and say your blessings. I pray to the one true Father every day and ask him kindly for fitness motivation. However, if you’re not religiously inclined, try a gratitude journal, or have an agreement with a friend to send each other things you are thankful for. The world will begin to open up to you; when you see every good thing not as a right, but rather as a gift freely given, you will be overcome with joy for the world in which you live. The butterflies and the smiles and the gym will

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all be wonderful opportunities to appreciate the glory of humankind and planet earth.

When your ex comes back wanting seconds, you won’t be angry or tell him to leave, but rather you will wish him well, cast him away on a fluff of pretty heavenly wind, and you will feel calm, quiet, and at peace. You’ll also be strong enough to kick his ass.

4. The Secret All of this is great, but do you want to know the real secret as to why I’m so deliciously huge? It’s crazy and ground-breaking. Goes against everything the YouTube gym bros say. Doctors actually do hate me.

I have changed my diet and fitness routine.

I have had my heart broken a few times and dragged my hungover, worthless body to the gym. I have listened to Suzanne Venker and run for my life. I have said my prayers and done my best to stay off the drink. This is all great, but at the end of the day, the one true thing I ever did to score this immaculate, Grecian, sculpted body, was falling in love.

That’s right. You guys remember that guy I was tuning back in lockdown? Well, um, it’s still lockdown, and I’m still tuning him.

Whoops. We compare PB run scores. He’s going to teach me how to bench-press properly when the gym re-opens. He is taller and stronger than me for sure, which keeps me motivated at all times. Before I fell in love, I was a wayward creature, running here and there, feeling sad and then happy again, crying to the lost and confused possums in my building about how tragic my love life was. My life has changed for the better since I agreed to give this guy a chance. It’s not just honeymoon better either – it’s real better. Guys, I have something to nurture now. Every now and again, I can put this hugely muscular body into bed and let it feel

small and taken care of (and so can he). You know girls, you don’t always have to be the biggest, the strongest, or the most hard-core.

Sometimes, you can be soft and weak too.

Don’t let the world make you choose – you can have both if you truly believe that you deserve it. (You do).

You might not all be as lucky as me. You might not all have the perfect genetic combinations to expose your delts at their peak potential. You might never find love and you might spend your life alone. Some of you might be really short. That sucks. Haha.

But if you follow these steps, I promise you that your muscle fibres will strengthen, your triceps will ripen, and your skin will become buttery and clear. Getting huge, it’s really not that hard. Let your food, your exercise, and your emotions work for you. And above all, ladies, for goodness’ sake, give love a goddamn chance.

Good luck.

This author is completely unqualified to give fitness advice. Progress pictures can be forwarded to hrrrrpete@gmail.com.

Photos by Mariam Sheikh

33

W e r r i w a Angela Leech

The sun’s just grazed the front yard when I hear Tom’s car roll around the corner. He toots the horn as I’m stumbling out the front door, even though he doesn’t have to, even though he can see me and it’s barely half past six in the morning.

Fresh red P-plates, a few shades whiter than the rest of the car. The back wheel of his Mum’s hand-me-down Subaru mounts the curb as Tom attempts a reverse park.

‘You’re an animal,’ I say, throwing open the car door.

‘Nice to see you, too.’

There’s a surfboard wedged behind the backseat and Tom’s clothes are squashed into Woolies bags, spilling out all over. I get in the passenger seat and Tom tosses me a bag of Doritos, half gone already. He pushes the car into first.

It’s three hours from Bowral to the Airbnb we booked for schoolies in Bateman’s Bay. Maybe more, because Tom wants to drive through Canberra. Everyone else arrived last night.

There’s about half an hour of triple j before we get on the Hume and Tom asks me about my ATAR. I’d woken up early, forgetting they wouldn’t be posted until nine. And then when the clock ticked over I logged in and just started at it. 80.30.

Anticlimax.

Not as good as Mel’s 94.15.

Got me into Arts in Sydney.

Out of our Rural Australian Town.

But not much else.

I don’t ask Tom what his ended up being.

Tom’s had early entry into an Undergrad Medicine thing in Melbourne since September.

‘Like, I’ll still have to do GAMSAT and stuff,’ he’d said. ‘But that’s not for another two years or whatever.’

Shovelling the remaining Dorito crumbs into his mouth with one hand, Tom asks if I’ll live with my sister when I move up to Sydney.

I shake my head. ‘Jonah’s moved in with her now. So it might be kind of awkward.’

Jonah is Mel’s ‘partner’ because she says ‘boyfriend’ implies too many normative gender roles and suggests patriarchal power imbalances within a relationship. You can always count on a gender studies inspired tirade or a passive aggressive remark on the intelligence of pigs when Mel comes home for dinner. Sometimes she brings Jonah with her from Syd34

ney. He’s alright. He came to watch my footy semi-finals by himself once when Mum and Dad were away. Shouted Denny and I Subway afterwards, too.

Jonah’s cousin Amy was in our year at Oxley. Her and Tom have been broken up since just after Trials. She was meant to be coming down to schoolies with us this week but bailed a few days ago. I check my phone and Denny’s sent a message to me and a few other guys asking if anyone actually found out why Amy isn’t coming on the trip.

I turn down the talk-back and ask Tom, ‘How’s Amy?’ ‘She’s okay, I guess.’

‘Spoken to her much?’

‘Not really. I don’t think she wants to talk to me.’

I shrug and say, ‘Fair enough’, and Tom looks at me for a second and then looks back at the road and doesn’t reply and I know it was the wrong thing to say.

Tom had been dating Amy since Year 10. I reckon he thought he’d marry her. But Amy had taken his applying for Med school in Melbourne instead of Sydney as a personal offence and decided it was better they go their separate ways sooner rather than later. It was a very Amy thing to do. I remember her in primary school, all cross-country and YoungWomen-in-STEM even then. We’d grown up together. I remember how Denny had been whipped for her for as long as anyone could remember.

It’s almost nine when Tom’s phone starts ringing from the boot.

‘That’ll be my Mum, for sure,’ he says, and asks me if I can grab it for him.

‘From the boot?’

‘How else?’

I hesitate, and the ringing stops. Tom keeps looking over at me anyway. A few moments pass. The ringtone starts again.

A cursory glance around, and then I click off my seat-belt. Sliding over the centre console into the backseat and my leg almost gets stuck. Tom tells me to hurry up. Kneeling on the middle-seat I lean into the boot and tip out some of the bags.

‘It’s Amy,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to call her back?’

Tom doesn’t say anything until I’m back in the front.

35

‘Did she text anything?’

‘No, just three missed calls.’

He is quiet.

‘Yeah,’ Tom says. ‘Call her back, would you?’

‘Hey, it’s Jack,’ I say, ‘You’re on speaker.’

‘Oh, hi. Could I just talk to Tom?’ Tom says, ‘I’m driving, Ames. Can it wait?’

‘Not really.’

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. And then he says, ‘Yeah, alright,’ and reaches his hand towards me. Tom tucks the phone under his ear, on the side furthest away from me, so I can’t hear what she’s saying. Tom’s expression gives nothing away but I keep my eyes trained on him anyway, something keeping me from looking at the road or out the window or at anything else.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Okay. I’m still driving, Ames. Can I call you back in a bit?’

He turns up the radio.

‘What did she say?’

‘What?’

‘What did Amy say.’

‘Oh,’ he says. And then he says, ‘Did you end up going to Denny’s party that night exams finished?’

I tell him no. I remember it because my parents, Mel and Jonah took me to dinner to celebrate and I spent the night wishing I was at the piss-up instead.

Tom says, ‘Amy ended up getting pretty plastered, so I walked her home.’

Everyone knows about how Amy left the party, and how before that, Denny had to babysit her upstairs so she wouldn’t be sick in his Mum’s bathroom on the ground floor.

Tom continues, ‘She didn’t have the best time, I guess. She just wanted to talk about that.’

36

I laugh. ‘Was there much to say?’

Tom doesn’t reply.

Something like guilt churns in my stomach.

I ask Tom if he knows why Amy isn’t coming down.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘I think she had a fight with someone.’

It’s quiet for a little while. I am reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles while Tom drives. I want to ask him to pull over at the next rest stop so I can stretch my legs but there is this look on his face – and so I don’t.

‘You want me to drive for a bit?’

‘Nah, all good.’

Tom is our friend because he was Amy’s boyfriend. Before that, I remember him spending lunchtimes in the library or walking laps around the oval with kids I can’t remember the names of. After they got together Tom started working at the movies with Denny and I and when she got her license, Amy used to pick us up and drive us all home.

I feel the Subaru speed up before I hear the truck and Tom swerves and then we’re back in the left-hand lane and the bumps on the edge of the road shudder the car.

It takes me a while to let go of the handle above the window. I don’t remember when I grabbed it.

Tom doesn’t speak. His face is white and his breathing is heavy.

‘Pull over,’ I say. I can’t take my eyes off the truck in front of us, half expecting the driver to give us the finger out his window.

Tom frowns. ‘You’re joking,’ he says.

‘Pull over,’ I say, and within a moment, the indicator is on and Tom’s swerved into the emergency stopping lane. ‘Jesus, Tom.’ He closes his eyes and takes his hands off the wheel and leans back onto the headrest. I am still thinking of something to say when he reaches out and slaps the wheel with the base of his hands and says fuck.

I look out the window. We’re next to Lake George. Google Maps on my phone has it like 37

a chunk of paint-by-numbers blue. But through the cloudy glass of Tom’s Subaru it’s just grass. I think there are sheep grazing across the other side. My eye catches on the wind turbines, standing like worship, and they spin me around for a while.

Tom clicks off his seatbelt and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. And then he starts talking.

Tom says he got there late. He tells me when he arrived at Denny’s, Amy was dancing alone in the middle of the lounge room, Vodka Cruiser held in one arm above her head.

He remembers Denny, spread out on an armchair nearby, watching.

Everyone else, Tom says, was in the kitchen. Most people still in school uniform, a pile of bags in the corner. Tom tells me he had a few drinks and followed the party back into the lounge, where they found Amy sitting down and Denny on the floor with paper-towels and a dustbin, cleaning up a smashed Vodka Cruiser.

Tom says he heard Amy tell the girls she was dizzy. He tells me fifteen minutes or so later, someone decided Amy was about to be sick. Tom says Denny made a fuss about keeping the downstairs bathroom clean. Tom says everyone watched as Denny guided her upstairs, and no one went with them.

Tom remembers checking his phone at ten o’clock and a text from his Mum asking when he would be home. Tom says he looked around the house for Amy. Upstairs, Tom says, Denny’s bedroom door was closed.

I don’t say anything. Then I ask if we are still going through Canberra. Tom shakes his head. He looks out the passenger window at Lake George and turns the engine back on.

Another half hour of triple j. I try to Shazam something unearthed.

‘Amy says she’s thinking of going to the police,’ says Tom. ‘And doing what?’

‘What do you think?’

I don’t say anything.

‘She’s asked if I’d give a statement.’

I’ve known Denny since we were kids. We both have. He played in the footy 4ths with me this year.

38

‘Did anything happen?’

‘Tom?’ I turn off the radio.

Tom’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel and he says, ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

He says he doesn’t know. He says when he opened Denny’s bedroom door, he saw them sitting together on the side of the bed. He says there was sudden movement and Amy’s school dress was bunched around her hips.

Then, he says, she threw up into a bucket on the ground in front of her.

He says Denny held his nose and walked out of the room. Tom says he got her a glass of water and walked her home. He says she didn’t speak all the way to her front door.

Empty farmland out the window. Occasionally, cows. About forty minutes left. I turn the page.

I say, ‘Have you spoken to Denny?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

Tom doesn’t say anything the rest of the drive. I haven’t seen Amy since our last exam. I wonder if she has said anything to anyone else. I wonder if I would be on her list of people to confide in. Maybe I am too close to Denny. But he never said anything to me either.

Maybe I am too close to Tom. I look over at Tom and wonder what he is thinking. He shifts into second and we turn right across double lines into a long gravelly driveway.

I put my phone away as Tom pulls up beside the house. We are quiet as the gravel settles.

Movement from the side of the house. I turn my head and there’s Denny, waving with his footy jersey on.

‘Hey,’ I say to Tom. ‘What happens now?’

He looks at me. He looks back at the house.

Tom opens the door and steps outside.

39

Nicola Brayan 40

5pm

24

A va

Lansley

I’ve started taking collagen. I wait for the cashier to ask for my ID. A bottle of wine clinks against skim milk and sugar-free.

He doesn’t look up at me.

Cash or card. My jumper is covered with bows and ducks.

My childlike curls bounce from underma’am Cash or card.

I’ve started using retinoids. I mistake my own hands for my mother’s.

A student said I looked like her teenage sister.

I check myself now twice in the mirror.

Miss I can guess your age!

A grey hair crawls from under my bow.

You’re 22. A gold star sticker.

I’ve started swallowing zinc pills. I don’t press my eyes too tightly when I cry.

Wear sunscreen to get letters.

I suck in my tummy for the neighbours.

How old is she now?

Babies coo from other homes.

I’ve started thinking about my death. My nerves tangle with morning coffees.

And winter aches in my evening bones.

My pills rest in Pooh bear cases My bills filed in glittery sleeves.

You’ll be alone.

I’ve started thinking about my death my body and when I will finally be left alone.

I bought a pink Barbie stamp.

You’re running out of time.

It’s being delivered from Japan.

But this voice is not my own.

When will my body be my own.

Illustrated by Kritika Rathore

41

Plucked

Tamara Thompson

Trigger Warning: Mentions of Sexual Harrassment and Sexual Assault

12

My growth spurt ended before high school started. It seemed as though one day I had woken up to discover my former awkward, bony body was replaced with the soft curves of a woman’s. At the end of my growth spurt, my metabolism slowed and I began to notice a gut blossoming. Looking back, I’m sure not a single other soul noticed, but I was at the peak of my susceptibility to patriarchal body ideals and consequently developed a depressingly negative body image. So yeah, I thought I was fat. Immediately, I threw on a baggy running shirt, shorts, joggers and I went for a run. I actually quite liked the solitude, the cool breeze running through my hair, the endorphins, and I was desperate for a flat tummy, so the runs became regular.

Cars honk.

Cars have horns and drivers use them. When you’re 12 and jogging around, not even 200 metres away from your front door, the thought that they might be honking at you doesn’t cross your mind. It doesn’t even enter this realm of existence. They’re honking because of another car, because of a stupid pedestrian or because of a cat on the road. These naive lies begin to reveal themselves one by one every time a man drives by in a ute with his head hanging out the window like a dog yelling, ‘sexy’, ‘sexy legs’, ‘put some clothes on’, ‘hey baby’ and don’t forget that goddamn whistle. Every honk of a car was like a petal being plucked from the flower of my childhood bliss.

***

13

***

14

My bike tyre was flat so I was walking my bike home from a friend’s house. If this scenario isn’t the epitome of youthful innocence and friendships, I don’t know what is. It was like a scene straight out of an 80s movie. It goes without saying, when you’re 13, walking from one suburb to the next with your bike in hand, you don’t expect attention from middle aged men. Well, I should have expected the unexpected because – big shock! – a middle aged man crossed paths with me, looked me up and down like a piece of meat and stretched out the word: beautiful. Beeauuutiful. And it was just oh so flattering. Funny how you never see the girl getting called ‘beeauuutiful’ on the street in the movies. Maybe if the movie happens to be about the forced and premature stripping of every girl’s childhood innocence.

I was walking to Central station from work. My hoodie strings were pulled tight to shield my face from the biting breeze of mid-July. When the man flashed green, I crossed the road. On my path, a man vocalised ‘hey sweetie’ with his eyes trained on my legs as if there was something to read off them. Before I even reached the other end of the road, I realised I hadn’t been cat-called in a long time. You realise when you get cat-called but you don’t 42

realise when you don’t. You’d realise if a flower was missing petals; you wouldn’t realise if it wasn’t.

Turns out shaving your head, or any defiance of feminine beauty, does wonders if you’re experiencing harassment on the street. I kept my hood off after that, despite the harsh wind against my face and scalp.

***

15

In this one, I’m at school. Unlike the others, this story isn’t invasive in nature but still blatantly offensive. So these two boys made some joke about me being a boy (because I have short hair), or maybe it was about me being lesbian (also because I have short hair). Amongst this friendly, but not so creative banter, I had mentioned that I stopped getting cat-called after I shaved my head. Now you’d think after all these experiences with men’s insensitivity towards sexual harassment I’d know better than to go to men to vent. Alas, I did not.

‘Cat-called?, yeah sure. You’re just desperate for attention’.

Of course, how attention-seeking of me to, what was it, walk. My bad for not adopting a more modest stride.

***

16

I found myself defending the humanity of of rape victims one day while waiting for the bus home from school. For some reason, my school’s bus stop was a provoking environment for ‘not all men’ defenders. So this one boy, with a fine-tuned radar for where his male privilege was unwanted, joined the conversation. His contribution was unheard of and oh so insightful: ‘boys get raped too ya know’. He then proceeded to correct himself with: ‘actually no, men always want it’.

I think it’s safe to say that this insight didn’t come from first-hand experience, nor is Simone de Beauvoir very high on his reading list. Unlike his, my contributions do come from experience.

We were the same age and went to the same school, our upbringings were relatively similar. So I was taken aback by our starkly polar perspectives.

You think that your first sexual encounter will be a wholesome experience with a significant other. You’ll do some hand stuff then tell your best friend all about it. I worry this debut of sex is reserved for men. I’d have loved a ticket but years earlier I had front row seats to the premiere of unwanted hands down my pants at a party. The recount to my friends was cold and sad.

We have to be hyper-vigilant and yet boys my age believe cat-calls are positive, welcome attention and can’t even fathom the prospect of being a victim.

We fear it before we even want it; petals plucked before full bloom.

43

Jawbone S hu d d e r Aidan Pollock

He’s stuck to my mouth like an ulcer. Bright young thing from some city niche. I pull him away, press our cheeks together. His stubble is a thousand grinding points of contact. Sand on glass. I pull back and stare at him. He opens his mouth and asks me something, and I laugh because I can’t hear a single thing he said. He smiles. I’m holding his hand and it’s as though I can feel his chest and now I can’t stop smiling. His heart is pounding. Or it’s my heart. Or they’re the same. Or maybe it’s the music. I feel like I’m about to collapse. He places his mouth kiss-shaped onto my lips and I forget where I am.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask as he drifts away from me.

‘David.’

We’re standing outside the club now, pretending we’d just met. We would never go into a place like that – we’re not like that. His hands are in his pockets and he looks tired.

My head’s running pretty close to the earth too.

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two, twenty-three in July.’

‘New to this?’

He looks away as I ask him this.

‘Kind of.’

‘Girlfriend?’ I raise my eyebrows.

‘No, no, man. Tried it, didn’t work.’

‘You sound disappointed.’

David rounds his face towards me, chin towards my shoes, eyes half-moon.

‘Do you do this a lot?’

‘You mean go to clubs?’

‘Yeah.’ this.

His face is pained. What does he want me to say? He thinks there’s more to it than

‘I suppose so. What else is there to do on a Friday night?’

There’s a buzzing between my ears, moving left and right behind my eyes. My tongue’s stuck to the side of my cheek and my hands and legs and the rest of my body feel like they’ve been dipped in honey. I can’t get myself to move just yet, but I can tell I’m somewhere else. I remember getting in a taxi with David, arriving at his home. I look around the room. The sun is burning through the open window, a thousand dust mites held constellation-shaped in its light. The blue jacket he wore last night over the back of a chair, a pile of books on the desk in front. To my right there’s a glass of water; my hands still a little slow as I raise it to my mouth, headache pounding as I reorient myself against the bed’s headboard. As I’m drinking I hear the door to the room open. David’s face is peering through.

44

You’re awake.’ Smiles, walks to the foot of the bed.

‘My head feels like it’s been blown apart.’

Sits down next to my feet.

‘I mean, that makes sense to me.’

Points to an opened wine bottle on the nightstand further from me.

His eyes are still tired, I notice, but there’s a kindness to them too. I take another drink of the water, emptying it. He notices and gestures to me. I hand him the glass. He returns and I take the cold of the glass in my hands, fingertips smoothing against his.

‘What are you doing for the rest of the day? You have work or something?’

Takes his place by my feet again, hands soft over the bedspread as he leans back.

Pauses. Assesses me, kind eyes working over my face. Responds: ‘I work nights mostly. Casual gig at a bar. Leaves me free during the day.’

I sip my water.

‘Well…’ I begin.

‘Well?’

Another car pulls alongside mine under the petrol-station halogens, a red Buick, the hood quivering. I have the sense of eyes on me. The quivering stops. The owner steps out.

He’s about my height, a scrappy kind-of crew cut above a broad forehead. He gives me a look – the look. I turn away for a moment; when I turn back he’s still staring.

I place the nozzle back into the petrol-pump. His eyes are boring holes into my back, and my arms nearly come unscrewed as I pay the clerk for the petrol. I step back into the night and walk around the building to where the toilets are.

The door opens with a bit of coaxing. The stench hits me like a baton across the temple. I hold my breath. Whoever was in here before left the faucet running. I turn the handle and wait.

I pull my eyes from tracing the etchings on the wall. Names of travellers passing by, a phone number inside a cartoon heart, a joke with a scrawled out punchline. The smell is more bearable now. I take a piss and wash my hands in the sink, pushing the soap dispenser tab. Empty.

Perhaps he’s waiting out there, doesn’t feel safe walking into a bathroom blind.

Pretty normal, maybe he even has a place to go to. Or maybe he’s chickened out. Maybe he just looked at me because I’m the first person he’ll see in kilometres either direction and there’s nothing to say that describes that sort of feeling. So you stare at someone and hope they understand. At least that’s what I’ll say to him when we’re driving to whichever spot he’s picked. If I have any luck he’ll know what I’m talking about.

I finish washing my hands and open the door. I walk down the length of the toilet block towards the open space. I round the corner and see my car, a patch of dirt where the 45

Buick sat.

The highway’s ivory-keys play out beside me as I drive. The trees ahead curve into a corridor in the dim haze of my headlights. I tap my fingers against the steering-wheel. There’s a spot not too far ahead, a place I was shown by a guy at a club: ‘You take a left when you reach the sign for the national park. If you go the wrong way you can turn around a little bit further in. You’ll know you’re going the right way if you’re heading uphill.’

As I’m driving I feel the earth begin to shake. It’s the same as when a plane is flying overhead, only without the familiar mechanical screech. I move my car to the centre of the road, off the shoulder, but the shaking continues. Earthquake? It doesn’t feel like one. It has less weight to it. The tops of the trees bend in an arc above me. A flash of light comes across the rear-view, a stubborn pinprick in the corner of my eye. Without noticing, I speed up, but the light grows, consumes the mirror, metastasises into two opalescent rings. I rub my eyes and the rumbling fades. The steering-wheel is digging into my palms, so I relax my grip and look again at the rear-view, the two chasing beams now attached to the reassuring silhouette of a car. The sign for the national park comes into view.

I come in slow and park at the edge of an embankment, hood almost scraping the wooden barrier in front of the parking square. I turn off the engine but keep the headlights on. My car is the only one here. Maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere below? I shake my head and settle into my seat. You’ve got to wait out this sort of thing.

I take a pull on my cigarette, hand on the radio volume, my breathing easy. Just as I contemplate leaving, I hear the insecure scraping of gravel I’ve been waiting for. I turn the radio down and toss my cigarette out the window. A figure passes slowly through the twin-spotlights of my car. I shift in my seat, but otherwise remain still. The figure passes by again, I get a better look of him. I flash the headlights twice, then snap them off. I hold my breath. The scraping resumes. I roll down the passenger-side window and switch the interior light on. His face suddenly hangs through the open frame of the window. He looks at me, palomino eyes searching.

‘Hey.’ ‘Hey. Nice view.’

The stranger places his hands on the lip of the window and leans back. He takes his right hand off and raises it into the empty space.

‘Do you mind if I?..’

His voice trails off. I lean over and open the door.

The thud of his heart. Hot-wax tongue. I look at him as he kisses my chest. Our bodies are twisting heat against the cool sky. I place my hand against his face. He’s moving with me and I ask to slow down. I just want to look at him for a bit. He smiles and asks if we should stop. I shake my head and tell him he just reminds me of someone.

46

‘Someone you used to do this with?’ he responds, still smiling.

I close my eyes and tell him to go faster. He’s slumped over me after. I pull my hand through his hair. The interior light is off, our skin blue. He asks the first question.

‘Are you from here?’

I twist one of his curls around my finger.

‘Just passing through.’

‘Where from?’

‘Out of state. Nowhere I’d like to return to.’

‘No family?’

‘I’ve got family, but they didn’t want me around.’

I suck in my teeth.

‘My father’s house had many rooms.’

I go to a different curl.

‘But none for a son like me.’

At this the stranger is silent. He feels for my hand, removing it from his hair, his palm blanketing my own. We stay like this for a while. My free hand rubbing his back. Our breathing working slow and soft.

‘Who do I remind you of ?’

I stop rubbing his back.

‘Just someone from where I used to live. You have his eyes.’

I hear the stranger’s voice as if he’s underwater, bubbles from his mouth.

He asks me a question and I murmur in assent. His lips hover over my chest. He brings his face closer to mine, I open my mouth. As he kisses me my vision blurs, the confines of the car ricocheting across my eyes. The chassis is tilting on its axis. The world outside melts and reforms against the wavering glass.

‘What the fuck is that?’

I raise myself up, place my body against the back of the driver’s seat. The shaking is getting louder. The body beside me grabs onto my shoulder. White-hot iron bolts are being drilled into my skull through my ears. A few moments more and I think I’m going to explode. I pull my hands over my ears. Then, the shaking lessens – becomes softer. Teeth still chattering, I turn to his arm and pull it closer. A shadow passes over the thin light of the moon, dropping our surroundings into darkness. The shadow moves forward, its frame positioned above the slope of the hill in front of us. There’s the glint of metal, a spinning disk. Three lights stationary at equal distances.

Quickly, I turn on the radio. Nothing but sounds bouncing around like shrapnel in a tin can. The object is floating, soundless now, a few hundred metres away. The lights face towards us, intermittently dying out and reigniting. A phosphorescent triplet blinking across the sky.

‘What is that?’ I remember the stranger next to me, his outline resettling against my skin.

47

‘I don’t know.’

I draw my arm back from the dash, the space between my fingers cold. I search for the rest of the stranger, climb his chest, find a shoulder, travel down until our hands are together.

I look at him – something’s caught in my throat and it won’t come out. His eyes flash towards me, pupils wide. I turn as he looks back to the object. We’re waiting for something to happen, for the lights to intensify, for it to land, for us to wake up. Anything.

‘What the hell is that?’ He asks again, shaking his head as he speaks.

He continues to talk, just the same sentence over and over again. At times he glances over to me – are you seeing this? What are we seeing? What is that?

I don’t respond. I can’t respond. Whatever it is, I can’t make sense of it. Against the windshield I can see my face reflected, equal size and superimposed upon the object. A deep calm stretches over my skin.

The voice beside me tapers to a close, his jaw hanging open. His hand has fallen from mine in his motions to lean out the window. I move my legs from him and press them against my chest. The lights from the object outside jump between my forehead and the darks of my pupils.

I open the door and step out. I can’t tell if I’m imagining it but it feels warmer here than inside the car. I walk the distance of the car, stopping a few steps past the hubcap. Although it’s a few hundred metres away the rush of air coming from the object still slips over my body. The stranger asks me what I’m doing. I just want to understand it, to know what I’m seeing. Commit it to memory.

His door opens, but I can’t hear his footsteps. I turn around and see him with one foot on gravel, the other inside the car.

He leans down, snake-like as he puts on his jumper. He goes for his pants, moving back inside to find them. As he does this I feel a change in the air, as though it’s solidifying.

The rumbling noise returns, pulsing against the sky. The shape begins to move, and I watch as it speeds up, the thundering cascading over my body. At this new distance it fits within the palm of my hand.

The rumbling quiets to a hum. It stays at this size for a while, balancing on top of my skin. I shiver; the cold has returned.

Another three blips spread out against my fingertips – all three the same amber-blood hue – needle-point rips in the blank spacious sky. I try to etch out its image in my mind, hold onto its presence. The object resumes its ascent. The sound, the lights, all quietly fading to nothing.

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Illustrated by Kate Scott

Nicola Brayan

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Hannah Roux

Imprinting Imprinting Imprinting listen soon to hear the sound of the heart’s sinews twining round the iron-darknesses; the cold imprinting patterns delicate and tight on flesh like flowers. listen, roses twine around dark edges of their trellises and soon the heart will make a sound like perfect pink magnolias (which, inside, white and swollen smell of wet and pulsing nothingness.) the heart will make this swollen sound as loud as flowers – sinews wound as tight as roses twined around their chilled dark trellises – draw taut as spluttering, furled magnolias their dark lips pursed, about to make their wet and swollen pinkness sound.

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Not Gay Enough: The Flaws in Australia’s LGBTQIA+ Refugees Policies Kate Scott In 72 countries same-sex acts are still criminalised. Punishments range from whipping, life imprisonment, torture, and for some states, death.1 The systemic oppression and fear of prosecution force many individuals to flee for safety and seek asylum in other nations, including Australia.

Refugees are defined as those who experience a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion,’ if they were to return to their country of origin.2 That includes those who would be required to ‘alter [their] sexual orientation or gender identity or conceal [their] true sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status’ to ensure their safety’.3 However, despite these protections, only 20% of LGBTQIA+ refugee applicants receive a protection visa from the Australian government.4 This is not because applicants lack legitimate claims, but rather the result of a deeply flawed approval process.

Verifying ‘Gayness’ In 2003, Australia finally granted refugee status based on sexual orientation.5 This decision was pivotal for abolishing the belief that individuals of diverse sexualities were invulnerable to persecution as they could just pretend to be straight. However, in the long term, this ruling hasn’t protected gender and sexually diverse refugees effectively. From 2003 to 2017, the only guide in place when assessing a claim for asylum based on sexual orientation or gender identity was that the questions should relate exclusively ‘to the applicant’s realisation and experience of sexual orientation or gender identity rather than questions that focus on sexual acts.’6 This single rule was not only violated time and again, but the apparent vagueness allowed the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribune (AAT) magistrates to conduct lines of questioning that were insensitive to the lived experiences of sexually diverse individuals.

In a 2007 case, the applicant’s claim was rejected on the grounds that they were Catholic; according to the Tribunal, you could not possibly be religious and gay.7 The AAT 1 Erasing 76 Crimes 2020.

2 Migration Act 1958 (Cth)5J(1)(a) 3 Migration Act 1958 (Cth) 5J(3)(c)(vi) 4 Burton-Bradley 2017.

5 Appellants S395/2002 and S396/2002 v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2003] 216 CLR 473 6 Administrative Appeals Tribune 2015. [21] 7 SZJSL v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2007] FMCA 313 (19 February 2007)

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argued that ‘a person of single-sex orientation must have at least considered their position in the Church and whether they wished to continue to practise [their religion].’8 Such lines of questioning didn’t take into account any of the potential dangers facing refugees, but simply reinforced the stereotype that you can either have faith or be queer, but never both.

Likewise, in another case, an individual fleeing from Iran’s sodomy laws was denied asylum after they failed questions surrounding popular culture.9 The Tribune asked about a series of questions on queer topics such as Oscar Wilde, Greco-Roman wrestling, Bette Midler, and Madonna, and suggested that the applicant’s lack of knowledge of such topics proved that they could not be queer.10 When this decision was appealed, the Full Federal Court agreed that it was ‘perfectly legitimate’ to test an individual’s knowledge on queer icons, pointing out that a Catholic applicant would have to prove their knowledge of Catholic doctrines, and beliefs.11 The Court seemed not to realise that sexual identity, expression and orientation is not governed by a set of doctrinal beliefs like Catholicism is.

During the proceedings of this case, Justice Gummow openly criticised the Tribune’s training upon matters of diversity and sensitivity: Gummow: What sort of training do these people get in decision making before they are appointed to this body, Mr Solicitor?

Mr Bennett: I cannot assist your Honour on that.

Gummow: No. Well, whatever it is, what happened here does not speak highly of the results of it.12 Progress?

A decade later, the Department of Home Affairs released a document called ‘Assessing claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity’ in 2017.13 The guidelines are relatively comprehensive in describing the experiences of LGBTQIA+ refugees and the processes expected of decision-makers. However, the continued inappropriate lines of questioning in Tribunal hearings suggests that these guidelines have been ineffective in practice.

For example, in January 2017, an individual seeking asylum was asked to prove their homosexuality by explaining whether they watched gay porn. Funnily enough, such questioning was in direct violation of Department of Home Affairs’ guidelines.14 Similarly, in another case that year, a woman seeking asylum from Malaysian sodomy laws was criticised on the basis that ‘when asked, [she] could not tell the Tribunal of any gay-inspired literature she had read or knew of that was in current circulation’.15 This mirrors the case 15 years earlier, where ignorantly assumed knowledge of queer icons deter8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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Millbank 2009, 400.

WAAG v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2002] FMCA 191, para. 12 Quoted on review in ibid., para. 10.

SBAN v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2002] FCAFC 431, para. 65.

WAAG v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2004], per Gummow J. 5.

Department of Home Affairs 2017.

1611522 (Refugee) [2017] AATA 131 (23 January 2017).

1603678 (Refugee) [2017] AATA 1494 (10 August 2017), para. 28.

mined the safety, lives, and futures of refugees. Consequently, the tradition of ignorance in the AAT was clearly continued.

At this point I feel that I should point out that LGBTQIA+ cultural phenomena are highly unlikely to be circulated in countries where same-sex acts are illegal, nor at the forefront of an individual’s attention whilst fleeing the death penalty. A fact which I’m sure many of you have already ruled as common sense. Despite guidelines and legal precedents existing within the Australian application system, this common sense is lacking among the ministers of the AAT. As such, the Department of Home Affairs and the AAT’s lacklustre performance in providing sensitive application processes convey a desperate need for legal reform. At the very least, employees should be made to undergo mandatory training as well as ensuring a greater transparency regarding the cases and procedures relating to queer refugees.

Room for Growth LGBTQIA+-considerate guidelines already exist in the form of the Department of Home Affairs’ ‘Assessing claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity’. However, they serve as a building block upon which necessary and dramatic reforms are required. We need a legal system that is regulated and sensitive to the intricacies and dangers present in the lives of queer refugees.

The first concern is the need for regular training for all employees involved in decision-making, as well as the increased employment of LGBTQIA+ individuals in these roles.

The AAT’s Workplace Diversity Plan 2018-20 includes a reference to the Code of Conduct and Australian Psychological Society values training for all new employees and staff. However, there is little information on how this training explicitly addresses the issues facing members of the LGBTQIA+ community.16 In fact, despite providing detailed steps for respecting those of culturally diverse backgrounds, Indigenous heritage, and women, the plan only mentions sexual orientation in passing, calling into question whether LGBTQIA+ concerns are discussed in any depth during AAT training.17 The Department of Home Affairs has recorded 5% of its staff identifying as LGBTQIA+, whilst the AAT records 7%.18 However, there is no information on whether any of these staff members can influence the decision-making process regarding asylum seekers, nor does the AAT’s Workplace Diversity Plan 2018-20 include detailed information on how LGBTQIA+ individuals are being recruited.

Workplace training and increased recruitment of LGBTQIA+ individuals within the 16 17 18

Administrative Appeals Tribune 2018.

Ibid.

Australian Public Service Commission 2019a, 6.

Australian Public Service Commission 2019b, 6.

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Department of Home Affairs and the AAT would echo throughout the workplace culture and demand generalised respect and consideration for queer individuals. Furthermore, it would ensure that sexually diverse individuals are involved in the decision making processes that affect their refugee counterparts. This would likely help to prevent lines of questioning based upon preconceived ideas of queer identity and disrespectful inquiries into people’s personal sex lives.

Another issue is the overwhelming lack of transparency around refugee approval processes in Australia. Whilst the Department of Home Affairs document ‘Assessing claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity’ has now been released under the Freedom of Information Act, it is troubling that these guidelines were not published publicly. To ensure that such processes reflect our most current understandings of LGBTQIA+ culture and identity, these guidelines should have been open for external scrutiny.

Likewise, only 13.7% of the decisions regarding refugee approvals are made publicly available, as a majority of the assessments are privately conducted by the Immigration Department.19 The secretive nature of refugee processes regarding sexually diverse individuals allows for bureaucratic oversights and glaring issues to occur with limited backlash.

For example, researchers Mary Crock and Laurie Berg found that within the private review process, applicants were being denied legal representation.20 These assessments should be available for public scrutiny to ensure that those who have lived experiences of being queer can weigh in on the conditions facing these vulnerable individuals.

Conclusion Much can be said about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Nonetheless, the gaping faults that lie within Australia’s assessment of LGBTQIA+ claims for asylum are but another form of oppression and disregard for the lived experiences of refugees. The AAT application process is meant to ensure the safety of these individuals, and yet, it is currently predicated upon prejudiced understandings of queer experiences. Sexually diverse asylum seekers have repeatedly been subjected to an unfair and ill-informed legal system that demands conformity to rigid stereotypes. In reality, LGBTQIA+ experiences are fluid and subjective, and the legal processes within Australia need to reflect this.

This article was first published in SULS Yemaya 2020 19 Mary Crock and Laurie Berg, Immigration, Refugees and Forced Migration (Sydney, 2011) 353.

20 Jaz Dawson, ‘Past and Present: From Misunderstanding Sexuality to Misunderstanding Gender Identity in Australian Refugee Claims.’ (2019) 65(4) Australian Journal of Politics & History 610, 607.

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References: Administrative Appeals Tribune (2019). Guidelines on Gender. Canberra: Administrative Appeals Tribune Migration and Refugee Division Administrative Appeals Tribune (2015). Guidelines on the Assessment of Credibility. Canberra: Administrative Appeals Tribune Migration and Refugee Division Administrative Appeals Tribune (2018). Workplace Diversity Plan 2018-20 Canberra: Administrative Appeals Tribune Migration and Refugee Division https://www.aat.gov.au/about-the-aat/ working-at-the-aat/workplace-diversity-plan-2018-20 Australian Public Service Commission (2019). Employee Census, Highlights Report: HOME AFFAIRS Canberra: Australian Public Service Commission. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reportsand-pubs/files/aps-census-home-affairs-highlights.pdf Australian Public Service Commission (2019). Employee Census, Highlights Report: AAT Canberra: Australian Public Service Commission. https://www.aat.gov.au/AAT/media/AAT/Files/Corporate/AAT_Census_results_2019.pdf Burton-Bradley, Robert (2017). Not gay enough: the bizarre hoops asylum seekers have to leap through. Sydney Morninng Herald, 8 December. https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/not-gay-enoughthe-bizarre-hoops-asylum-seekers-have-to-leap-through-20171128-gzu1vq.html Dawson, Jaz (2019). Past and Present: From Misunderstanding Sexuality to Misunderstanding Gender Identity in Australian Refugee Claims. Australian Journal of Politics & History 65(4): 600-619 Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (1996) Guidelines on Gender Issues for Decision Makers, Canberra: Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Erasing 76 Crimes (2020). 72 Countries Where Homosexuality Is Illegal. Erasing 76 Crimes. https://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/ Jansen, Sabine (2014). Good Practices Related to LGBT Asylum Applicants in Europe. ILGA Europe.

Millbank, Jenni (2009) From discretion to disbelief: recent trends in refugee determinations on the basis of sexual orientation in Australia and the United Kingdom. The International Journal of Human Rights 13(2-3): 391-414, Ryan, Hannah (2020). Australia Asked Gay Asylum Seekers If They Could Pretend To Be Straight To Stay Safe At Home. Buzzfeed, 28 January. https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/ lgbt-gay-refugees-asylum-seekers-interview-australia 1603678 (Refugee) [2017] AATA 1494 (10 August 2017), 1611522 (Refugee) [2017] AATA 131 (23 January 2017).

Appellants S395/2002 and S396/2002 v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (2003) 216 CLR 473 (S395 and S396) SBAN v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2002] FCAFC 431 (18 December 2002), SZJSL v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2007] FMCA 313 (19 February 2007) WAAG v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2002] FMCA 191 (30 August 2002), WAAG v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2004] HCA Trans 475,Migration Act 1958 (Cth)

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Woven Nicola Brayan 56

Runny A woman’s account of fertilisation, furore, and interlocking relationships.

Karen Leong ‘The sky was a boiled egg.’

The sky was not, he declared.

But oh, it had been. The type of egg eaten by the methodical, food-is-fuel type who would reserve one’s palate simply for that, a single egg in the morning, dropped in a hissing pot and cracked with a silver spoon.

It was more of a sunny side up, to be fair, he amended.

‘Think about the crisped edges of egg white that clouds make. No boiled egg could look like that, could it?’

She paused. Perhaps a boiled egg was a bit nondescript, too ovaline to match the cloud that had hung over them last Tuesday. He was not going to budge on the manner.

‘Fine, it was a fried egg.’

They lapsed into mutual silence, their legs gridlocked together. It was a bed of wet grass that they were sitting so prettily on, above a mass of screaming shit and champagne swilling mothers in Lorna Jane.

The playground sloped downwards, like the site of a meteor crash, and they were stationed on the incline directly above the seesaw in their own little checkered enclave, mere inches away from one tot who dribbled down her shirt. Something hitched in her throat.

‘Enchanting, no?’

Just like you, poppet, he fired back.

That cracked a smile. She didn’t want to give him the pleasure of knowing he amused her, though, so she turned away to refill their cups with more red.

Look at me, he said.

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She focused on her wrist instead. One precarious tip from the mouth of the bottle and the entire medley of afternoon delight she’d planned would be ruined. The charcuterie board was painstakingly curated, personalised cuts from the midtown butcher, whose prosciutto collection dwarfed a fortnight’s pay. It was paired with oven roasted peppers and sprigs of rocket, the rest of the board lavished with fat wedges of cheese; brie and chevre and a fine sprinkling of parmesan that kissed the entirety like fairy dust.

Carmen.

Look at me.

Car-men.

The two syllables seemed to drag for twenty.

He was insolent, as he had always been, from the moment they met in the eye-roll inducing speakeasy on the corner of George. Of course, she had come as an after work drink mercy to her two colleagues, Janet and Sherry.

‘Cool, isn’t it?’ Janet-or-Sherry had beamed.

Surely the bar, with all its Prohibition-era vibe and muted lighting, should have impressed her. Carmen forced a smile that felt like glue. She thought about the half-eaten turkey on rye sitting on her desk. If she doubled back now she could make it before security closed the doors at quarter past.

It was in that moment of comic desperation, so exaggerated in its urgency, that Carmen had found him. Pretty boy, charming, with a backbone supported by so much privilege one didn’t have to lift a finger to glean that a gated upbringing had been involved. The sprinkling of pepper in his hair should have been the tipping point, really. Smarmy was good for some things; buying a bar’s worth of alcohol was one of them.

Sherry-and-Janet had disappeared after the sixth paddle of gin tasters. Carmen watched the disastrously cliché line form in slo-mo as he said, ‘Wanna get out of here?’

Later, once she gathered her slip dress and her wits, she was moving towards the door when a sleepy arm shot out from under the duvet, snatching her wrist. She slunk back in and didn’t bother leaving until her thighs were slicked once again. It wasn’t like she was objecting.

They reconvened a few days later.

And then a couple more times after that.

The eighth round had her stumped. They had slipped into routine, of course, the way these things transpire; covertly first, on plush seats and hotel sinks and her single cot when her flatmate was at her boyfriend’s, to carousing stinking drunk at his daughter’s school play 58

and at his home office with the door ajar.

Once, on her way out of his place, she heard the swift clack of kitten heels move in her direction, accompanied by a full-bodied, throaty voice. She ducked behind a potted fern and watched as he draped the very hand that had bound her wrists to the headboard mere minutes ago across portly shoulders swathed in navy blue. Carmen watched their heads near one another dully.

A perfunctory kiss on the lips.

Pleasantries. Was that the tie she picked? Yes, darling. No, I won’t be back for dinner.

Shame. You know I love your shepherd’s pie. Love to the kiddos. She watched their backs recede. Pinstripe and polka dot. This hopelessly antiquated haven had almost been breached by the sheer presence of disillusion. Disillusion on two legs in garters and lace, squatting behind a ficus. The ghost of a laugh rose inside her belly. Of course they had passed without noticing. She could hardly tell between herself and the fronds that tickled her cheek which one was more ornamental, more green.

She brought the encounter up offhandedly two nights later while nursing a martini.

They were back at his again, the limestone monstrosity nestled deep in Vaucluse, this time in those dark, skittish hours when all of Sydney seemed to collectively exhale and turn in for the night.

Carmen was careful to hide the sniping resentment when she recalled to him the surge of uncertainty that bubbled as she peered, unseen, at the juggernaut of society itself - man and woman, vested in marriage. His subsequent attempts to shrug off her worries imbued the rest of the night with a frosty stalemate. He tried to untie her robe. She slapped his hand away. He appealed, cajolingly, to her baser senses, and as the night dipped in temperature she gave in, assuming their usual post-coital position; back to chest, chin on head, arms down stupidly by her sides while he tightened his vise-like grip on her goosebumpy skin.

Even then, the ice between them didn’t thaw fully until the early hours of Tuesday. She roused early, while the sky was tinged with orange, and sat placidly by the bay window where the trickle of light warmed her face. The light danced behind her eyelids. She had slept, after all, between a rock and a hard place. By the looks of it, the latter had risen just as early as she had, and she chuckled quietly at its tented outline.

A clatter.

Her eyes zeroed in on pink terry cloth, motionless by the door. Something clogged in Carmen’s throat as she processed the situation. The situation stared back guilelessly, eyes marbled with the yolky rays of light that wobbled ominously into the room.

Morning. Dawn.

That was her cue to exit from centre stage, upstage right though the wings and into the 59

driveway, where the taxi would be waiting.

She was contemplating the merits of launching head first through the window when the figure shuffled. Carmen froze and thought of Virgin Marys, legal contracts, scarlet letters, and what Sherry-or-Janet would have made of the situation.

A stubby finger levelled itself in the general direction above Carmen’s head.

‘Look like boil egg. Like the one I ate foh brekky.’

Turning, almost delirious with relief, Carmen appraised the jagged line of orange sky.

She swivelled back to compliment the little one’s eye for colour to find the door ajar with no one beside it. Poof. Just like smoke.

But that didn’t concern him.

No: it was her unsaid duty, as those before her, to tread that line with precision. Be there and be shaved. Be the gatekeeper who watched while he moved between his two worlds.

Materialise and then leave without a filmy trace. But she had failed that morning.

So when he had hoisted her onto his lap the following week, she was pliant. Not a single word. Even as he tore through without restraint, she balanced herself, demurely, while he railed in and out. Carmen watched him patter out to take a call while she wiped off his scent with a wet cloth.

Afterwards, there was a fourteen-day scare. She told him under the swollen teat of the sun.

‘So,’ she mustered at the end, valiantly.

So, he echoed.

The almost callous edge to his voice was all brittle, no emotion. *** Sweetheart.

Carmen jolted sharply.

You’re spilling, sweetheart.

The tablecloth looked like it had been shot.

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Though it took a second to register that the splotches were blossoming from underneath, and not the mouth of the bottle. It then took another to register that the spillage trailed from the crease between her legs.

Deliciously light, she leaned into the incriminating blob which had already seeped onto the charcuterie board. She couldn’t bring herself to care about their picnic. She didn’t even mind that the skirt she was soiling was her DKNY best. In fact, the very site that burned just beneath her navel shuddered as the lightness took hold of her body, and she clambered up, straddling him in full sight. He jerked hastily. She could hear the lusty wail of the same snotnosed tot from before, closing in on them.

Carmen, stop.

His voice broke through the final defence. She heard it first, the plaintive, insolent whine that had ensnared her mere months ago, before feeling the final whoosh of phosphate and mucus puddle onto his trousered quads.

The halo of red started to clump prodigiously around his lap as she thrashed for control, bucking like a horse as he squirmed underneath. Fourteen days of delusive nausea that had swelled with her breasts seemed to still, just for a second, as she pressed a single finger against the base of her opening. She lifted it to the sun. Shards of light glinted off the reddened tip of her nail.

The delicate axis of her position, after teetering dangerously for months, had ground its heels firmly into the ground. It may be a minute victory, but it was one for her and her only. Layers of trimming and tissue and lining, all coddled deep within, aiding and abetting in freeing her from the very chokehold she had set for herself. She could feel the ribbons of red unspool deep inside. Willingly. Eagerly.

And what a beautiful, viscous, rebuttal it was.

Carmen dug her pelvis deeper until she could feel bone on bone, and lifted his chin with a bloodied finger. Good thing the chicken came first. And not the egg.

Illustrated by Emily Elvish

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The Life Cycle I you’re a little egg, surrounded by a throng of other little eggs indistinguishable from you. you aren’t sure how they think, float in plasma, twitch in sync but you mimic every behaviour, like a mirror that quivers so that no one will think you cracked, shell-broken, for now, you are safe. ensconced by friends, shrouded in a sea of normality cloaked in naïveté II daylight enters your view in patches, like a wall – demolished jigsaw piece by piece. you relish in new knowledge, you wiggle your cramped body, your first task: consume your old home. how fast the feeling of freedom flees – a little larva gliding alone on a little leaf. all too soon, your do-good heart trampled upon by the predators of the forest. the world is not as exciting as it once seemed. your colours churn too bright, one little leg is askew, you’re not as long as your brothers. no longer can normality be feigned in the shape of a little egg; you are different. and that makes your stomach crawl.

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III world-weary, you spin yourself into a chrysalis, the silk strands tight the chokehold reassures. only now can you breathe, your differences unseen, imperceptible even to your own little eyes. you yourself do not notice as you metamorphose, too wrapped up by your own fearful projections that you miss – IV emergence.

I am Growing Chloe Fu 63

Angela Xu

The Chair

I love this chair.

Its legs carve hollows into the carpet underneath. Faded grey upholstery covers the seat and a crocheted quilt hangs on its back. Two grooves are pressed into the seat cushion, tree rings that mark the years gone by. Time and use have stained it, frayed its edges, deformed its cushions. Yet, it stands proudly as expendable furniture has come and gone.

• • • The grooves haven’t always been there.

In my childhood memories, they were barely a wrinkle. Waipo always made sure to pat the cushion smooth before sitting down and hoisting me onto her lap. This practice proved to be fruitless, and we ended up making more wrinkles through knee-bounces and dancing to nursery rhymes in sing-song Mandarin. When our throats grew hoarse, she’d fish the TV remote out from where it was wedged between the seat back and the cushion, place me on the couch, and put on my favourite cartoons. She would then reach for her crinkly paper packet of sunflower seeds and her empty ice cream container, feeding me a seed before peeling one for herself. The click of her teeth cracking open the seed and the clack of the shell dropping into the container would become the metronome of the afternoon.

By the edge of the seat, a bloodstain fades into grey, the gentle rust keeping hold of an afternoon I remember like yesterday.

I had gotten a scooter for Christmas and tried to shoot down the slope of our driveway, scraping my kneecap along the gravel as I fell. Waipo carried me and placed me in the chair, holding her handkerchief to my knee, the blood blossoming on it like crimson embroidery. She busied herself with the first aid kit and hurried to disinfect and bandage the wound, dropping the handkerchief on the edge of the chair. As the sting and stench of the antiseptic set in, she wrapped her arms around me and let my tears stain her shirt. My face came over her shoulder and I watched as red bled into powder grey.

The chair is where she had hemmed my skirt for the first day of high school.

I stood stick-straight in front of her as she pulled out a battered cookie tin of chalk, 64

making minute marks where the skirt hit my knee. A mooncake tin containing her needles and thread was opened next. For the next two hours, she stitched and unstitched, indulging me with stories of my childhood and her memories of China. She asked whether I remembered the time I got a bean stuck up my nose and couldn’t breathe. It was a red bean, she insisted, and it was in the left nostril. She spoke about relearning life upon immigrating, acquiring enough English to get around on buses, navigating the streets to take me and my sister to school, and learning new recipes to make the Western foods we liked. She told me about her hometown in China, and the dusks spent digging up clams by the coast. By the time she’d finished, I had re-lived my life and hers, and my skirt had a perfectly straight hem to wear to school the next day.

The crocheted quilt sits like a trophy on the seat back. Baby blue and bright red weave into ghoulish yellow, twisting into lumps and clusters.

The colour scheme was my doing, favourites fished from her prized crate of yarn.

Looking at it, it’s easy to tell the bits that she had crocheted and where I had built tangles of yarn on top of her uniform stitches. Though I gave up quickly, she let me cover the finished quilt in rainbow clumps of yarn that vaguely resemble flowers. After we finished, she let me lay it on her chair, the corners of her mouth twisting up as if lifted with a crochet hook. Each year as winter set in, she would pull it from the back of the cupboard and drape it over her lap as she watched Chinese dramas, eating her home-cooked mantou.

• • • I run my hand across the quilt and sink into the grooved cushion, a familiar stain peeking out from under my thigh. Feeling for the TV remote behind my back, I emerge with two sunflower seed shells instead. I drop them with a familiar clack into the ice cream container and stand. Outside the house, a car full of boxes and suitcases greets me and people come to say goodbye. Waipo is the last. I tower over her now but she still wraps her arms around me as if I were half her size. Bending down, I smell the familiar scent of sunflower seeds and chalk, the tang of the chives she’d just made dumplings with, the sweetness of tieguanyin tea she drinks in place of water. The clang of her sewing tins and the click-clack of her snacks become the background music to her thick Eastern accent as she says goodbye to me.

For fourteen years I have lived in this house. But the thing I’m going to miss the most, is the chair.

Glossary: Waipo（外婆）- Grandma Mantou（馒头）- Chinese steamed buns Illustrated by Angela Xu

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Angela Xu

Love Language

metal cools raw skin flesh falls and fractures flushed and fibrous clung to bone encased in its womb. plump scarlet tendrils torn away unlatched from the nipple that sustains it washed in sugared dew. the plate cradles it and nests it in powder blue wilting china flowers and falling leaves bought with her first pay cheque. a rap on the door hinges that cry and blubber take a break. here I cut you some fruit.

Illustrated by Kritika Rathore

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Four Friends by Kate Scott

67

r e t Wa Scorched sun leaks through the smattering of leaves and we hear the shouts of slow soccer games.

The smoky air of late twenty nineteen is dense and drowsy with exudation, at the groaning taps, a boy is filling two green buckets up with water balloons.

Us girls, sitting languid beneath the acacias in rolled-up, pleated skirts and blue jerseys, our bums itching from the hot, raw gravel which is alive with ants towing crumbs, sweating through our stiff and starchy blouses.

The stout boy thumps along the path on which we spread our long-haired circle: stomping through us, a bucket in each hand, towards the carved-up benches near the bins, where sit and laugh his lank, pale clique

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s n o o Ball Lucy Bailey

with shirts unbuttoned and chests to the sky.

We giggle when we realise the logic behind the team-making schism: virgins, four of them, on one side and non-virgins, five of them, on the other. Five friends blush around me, and say bashful ‘Oh my god’s: at once aware that they were accolades.

The balloons pounce out of overarm throws and sink their innards in the dirt.

Transparent shirts, pink plastic skin in their hair, we sit reticent and watch, the droplets spattering our shoes.

We hold apple cores between our fingers, and sit, waiting for them to swagger off down the stubby hill towards the oval, until they are halfway across, and we creep out towards the grubby red bins and throw our food scraps away unobserved.

Illustrated by Emily Elvish

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AFTERWORD

By Francesca Rentsch & Neve Peters, General Editors In Year Six I sprouted tits. Swollen nipples bloomed, and with the growth of flesh I was woman. Wearing that body was strange for my girlness; I couldn’t run anymore, with the way that it moved, and as pimples bubbled to my surface I smeared my face with makeup for the first time. Wearing that body twisted the world. As a woman covers everything with a glaze; you can still see through it but the colours are changed.

Woman was more than looking pretty. Woman was soy sauce on my school uniform, woman was the Priceline Sister Club: goodbye allowance and hello Maybelline. Woman was learning that meaning dwelled not only in soft acoustics and heartbreak and different types of pillow fights. It was the back-and-forth between wanting straight hair and encouraging my natural curls: heat styling and Moroccan oil were my introduction to the contradictions I would soon write about, the grating grey where meaning really dwelled.

The stories in this collection begin to explore the palimpsest of femininity, gender identity and sexuality. They seek out the grey, the reinforcement and erosion; they shatter calcified strictures and erect in their place nebulous towers, not governed by any laws of geometry, that sing and screech and grate together.

They build these ideas across cultures and generations; they confront these ideas with aging, with family, with COVID isolation, and with cut up fruit.

In ‘Imprinting,’ Hannah Roux’s sapphic flowers clutched an iron trellis with engorged stems. In ‘Jawbone Shudder,’ an anonymous vehicular hookup is interrupted by the appearance of a UFO. Karen Leong’s ‘Runny’ oozed vengeance and gooey fertility all over a picnic blanket under an eggy sky. And if you’ve ever wanted to get huge, Neve Peters is here to tell you how in ‘A chick’s advice on getting huge’ (hint: the secret is love).

All the voices in this anthology are coloured with our gender and sexual identities. We’ve been shaped, plucked, and fucked, we’ve bled, begged, and brawled, we’ve been crushed and we’ve been watered, we’ve watered ourselves god damn it and we’ve picked heavy shit up and put it back down again.

This edition of 1978 is finished. To those who contributed, we thank you for trusting us with your voices. To the editors, it has been a privilege to work alongside you. To be completed, however, a story needs to be heard: for this, 70

reader, we turn to you. Most of all, we hope that you noticed the gaps, the lacunae, the shifting, grating, grey complexities that only you can see. We hope this anthology has been evidence that your coloured world can be explored and spun into something beautiful or funny or heartbreaking but always something important. Take this anthology as motivation to right any injustice you see and spin it into something else. Yours, too, is a tale that needs to be told.

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MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS Aidan Pollock Aidan is a queer Australian interested in the use of literature as a mode of expression for authentic identity and cultural isolation that occurs in the absence of family or community.

Their influences can most easily be traced to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and the works of David Wojnarowicz, the last of whom is quickly becoming their guiding star as an author for his ability to translate the queer experience 1:1 onto the page.

Angela Leech Angela doesn’t normally think writing has to say something. But being in a woman in the age of #MeToo, the short story ‘Werriwa’ came from wondering what that conversation looks like.

Angela Xu Angela is a second year Law/Arts student with a knack for terrible puns and a love for dogs. She took up writing again during quarantine last year and finds particular inspiration in her culture and family.

Ava Lansley Ava is a bisexual woman and often creates poems that centre her experiences being bisexual. That being – at the crossroad of heteronormativity and queerness. Her piece in particular highlights her experiences dealing with heterofatalism – ‘in that my sole purpose is to maintain my youthfulness to attract a male’. This poem explores her experiences being subject to the social pressures of heteronormativity, yet being a bisexual person. In turn, how it is difficult to abstain from that penetrative paranoia of her sole enemy being ageing, and her sole purpose being reproduction.

Cat Turner Cat is a Greek Australian, asexual/queer girl (although still debating that) from Sydney’s Western Suburbs. In regards to their pieces: ‘Usually, my works are creative and based on whatever my brain comes up with when I’m bored but with these, they have been inspired by aspects of my life such as my sexuality, my alienation yet knowledge with my Australian side of my family and I suppose a bit of a creative element of dramatising things that haven’t happened yet.’.

Chloe Fu Chloe says the following: ‘It took 21 years for me to realise that many of the self-sabotaging narratives I held to heart were other people’s stories and beliefs. These two pieces are inspired by my desire to grow beyond what anyone has told me was possible. I will revel in my own truth, my own divinity.’.

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Hannah Roux Hannah is an eternal university student, currently working on their PhD in English Literature.

‘My artistic philosophy is flavoured progressive Christian, mystic, Daoist, and Buddhist. My favourite poet should probably be T.S. Eliot (one of the two subjects of my PhD), but I think that the prize instead goes in equal parts to Rosemary Dobson and W.H. Auden, whose poetry is often too personal for me to make a success studying it academically.’.

Kanika Khemlani Kanika is a second year occupational therapy student who likes to create art almost as much as she likes to consume it.

Karen Leong Karen is a writer of poetry, prose, and nonfiction. Plucking inspiration from reclamation and desire, her works mainly involve hong kong, women of colour, and her lived experience in straddling both. She has been featured on Cantocutie, Zami, Doof Magazine, Artisan Alley and Vice Asia. In her spare time, she scrapbooks, models, and waxes poetic about being an Aries sun.

She is currently gritting her teeth and focusing on the little things.

Kat Porritt-Fraser Kat is a queer non-binary writer with a big interest in trying to capture the messiness of identity in lived reality in their poetry. They love and take inspiration from self-help books, non-fiction and the quirky lyricism of indie pop music.

Kate Scott Kate is a queer creative in their final year of university. Their piece Four Friends is an ode to Salmon Toor’s piece by the same name and explores intimacy, nostalgia and vulnerability in moments of passivity. Having helped establish the inaugural edition of 1978, Kate cherishes the ability to explore, verbalise and engage with their queer community through art and literature.

Lucy Bailey Lucy is an eager writer whose poems aim to reflect on the kaleidoscopic experiences of Australian youth. Lucy has worked as an English tutor and teaching assistant since she left school, and is enthusiastic about interrogating and uncovering textual meaning with her students. She is greatly influenced by the work of Australian writers such as Tim Winton and Gwen Harwood, for whom the Australian landscape lies, omnipresent, in the background of their work.

Neve Peters Neve is a third year arts student from Melbourne. Neve has been publishing stories, poems and other mysterious literature in ARNA and 1978 since her first year in 2019. Neve’s recent lockdown habits include very slow running and analysing budding romances on Love Island.

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Nicola Brayan Nicole Yang Nicole is a second year International student majoring in cultural studies and marketing.

‘I was born in Hong Kong and raised in mainland China, educated in a Canadian school and moved to Australia for uni. I have a fairly diverse cultural background which is why I’m passionate about cultural studies. I write down scenarios from my dreams in poetry.’.

Nishta Gupta Nishta says the following about their pieces: ‘In a moment of bizarre inspiration, I covered my face in smiley stickers during a self portrait session. They were the cheap, two-dollar-store kind, too. I didn’t particularly like how they looked in the images, so took them off, documenting as I went. In the process of removal, I began to cry as it pulled on my face and the soft skin on my eyelids. My self-portrait series explores how smiles form part of the ‘currency’ of contemporary beauty standards, in which women are required to exist in transactional and conforming ways. Gendered expectations are heightened under the camera’s interrogative gaze, where personal idiosyncrasies are rejected. My own blemished, un-edited and raw face acts as an intimate canvas for examining the anonymity that is ironically created from conformity, and how true authenticity is only possible by unraveling such expectations.’.

Rhian Mordaunt Rhian is a writer whose work explores issues regarding race, sexuality and religion.

Tamara Thompson Tamara says the following: ‘Whether it be for the personal catharsis and expression, to connect with others who can relate or to educate those who can’t, there is immense value in sharing your story. This is even more the case in our cultural backdrop in which the narratives we are exposed to majorly come from the male, heterosexual, and white point of view.

So, although I’m a maths student with a strong affinity for STEM, creative writing keeps me coming back.’.

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MEET THE Jenna Lorge is a fourth-year Media & Communications and Gender Studies student. She has been the 2020 and 2021 director for both ARNA and 1978, and has loved the opportunity to publish the work of so many insanely talented students and watch the journal grow into what it is today. The first album she ever bought on her iPod Nano was the best she’s ever had; Hook Me Up by The Veronicas.

Thomas Israel is a fourth-year Secondary Education (English + Ancient History) student. He is one of the Publication Directors for 2021, was published in 1978 in 2020, and was an editor in both 1978 and ARNA in 2020. To him, directing this journal has been an ever-important celebration of the passion, hard work, and talent of queer students and women at USYD. He exclusively plays as Scarlet in Cluedo, Peach in MarioKart, and Jade in Mortal Kombat. You get the vibe.

Bonnie Huang is a Creative Director for 1978.

They are a second-year Media & Communications and visual arts student. They’ve edited for ACAR Honi and was visual arts sub-editor for last year’s edition of 1978. Bonnie loves independent publications and gaudy spreads.

1978 EDITORS Francesca Rentsch is a General editor for 1978.

She is in the final year of her arts degree, majoring in Art History and English and doing a French diploma on the side.

Her written and visual works have been published in ARNA, Hermes and The University of Sydney Anthology. Her ultimate dream is to be a gentleman farmer; in the meantime, she contents herself with growing backyard tomatoes and dissecting the piercing social commentary in the real housewives of Beverley hills.

Neve Peters is a third year arts student from Melbourne. Neve has been publishing stories, poems and other mysterious literature in ARNA and 1978 since her first year in 2019. Neve’s recent lockdown habits include very slow running and analysing budding romances on Love Island.

Kate Scott is a fourth-year Politics, International Relations, and History student. Having written, illustrated and edited several student publications on campus, Kate is looking forward to everyone seeing the kickass edition of 1978 this year.

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Trinity Kim is a second-year International Relations & Nursing student.

She has previously worked as an editor for ARNA and gets excited by anyone who has an interesting story to share.

Currently, she’s trying to germinate some avocado pits and reads random Wikipedia pages in her spare time.

Iris Yuan Angela Leech is a second-year Media and is in her third year of a PoliCommunications student with tics, International Relations, and English degree. She’s pre- a second major in Sociology.

She has previously worked as viously contributed to ARNA 2021, though her creative-writ- an editor for ARNA 2021, and wrote for the 2020 edition of ing really peaked at 14, when 1978. Iris is excited to continue she ranked on the Wattpad helping shape works of fiction Teen-Fiction list with some and prose to share with the really embarrassing stories. world.

MEET THE 1978 EDIT

Kat Porritt-Fraser is a Lead Poetry Editor for 1978. They’re a third year Gender Studies and English student and have previously edited for ARNA’s 2021 edition, written for uni publications and has brought their love for poetry to 1978. They can basically always be found somewhere in the Cellar Theatre working on a SUDS production, falling into the depths of Logic Pro or listening to 2000s pop mixes from their childhood on repeat late into the night.

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Ariana Haghighi Karen Leong is a poetry editor for this year’s is a writer of poetry, prose, and 1978. She’s a first-year student nonfiction. Plucking inspirastudying Arts/Law who loves all things writing – from poetry tion from reclamation and deto prose. She loves writing little sire, her works mainly involve Hong Kong, Women of colour, animal fluff pieces for Honi and her lived experience in Soit, and in her spare time straddling both. She has been likes to read, cheerlead, and featured on Artisan Alley, Astroother things that don’t rhyme phe Magazine, Doof Magazine, with -ead.

Vice Asia and others. This is Arielle Tarlington her second run as an editor for is a nonfiction editor for 1978 a student-led literary journal. and is studying first year enCurrently, she is a staff writer glish and international relaat The Peahce Project and tions. She contributed to ARNA focusing on the little things. last semester, and has loved helping to edit this publication.

Luc van Vliet moved to Sydney to complete an Honours year in politics.

He loves writing and has enjoyed learning from all the incredible authors of this year’s edition. If it weren’t for lockdown, he could be found trying to visit every beach possible in Sydney.

TORS Portia Brajkovic is a Poetry Editor for 1978 and is in her fourth year of Law. This is her first time editing a uni publication and she’s super keen (!!) to put her editing and writing experience to good use.

Portia still can’t drive without supervision at the age of 21, but she makes up for it by being a Taurus. Was described as ‘rebarbative’ by a straight dude once and she agrees.

Vishali Seshadri is on our Visual Arts Team and is a postgraduate Education student holding a Bachelors Angela Xu in English and Commerce. is a second year Law/Arts While she has not worked on student majoring in History. any previous publications for She’s written and edited for USYD, she is excited to utilise a number of publications, her editorial skills and passion including Honi Soit, ARNA, for literature to amplify diverse ZAMI, and Yemaya, and is super student voices. You can find excited to help bring 1978 to her consuming an unhealthy life. She cures homesickness amount of true crime conwith chocolate, has rewatched tent and perusing bookshops How I Met Your Mother way – making her pile of unread too many times, and loves the books grow steadily longer.

Oxford comma.

Sally Chik is the Lead Prose Editor of 1978. She is a poet published in Australian Love Poems, FourW, Cordite Poetry Review and others.

She was Lead Poetry Editor for past editions of 1978, Zami and ARNA, and she tries to read every single submission for each journal she’s a part of.

CONT...

Thomas Sargeant is in his third year of Politics and Art History, and very much misses when either of those activities took place on campus. He is passionate about queer stories, queer joy, and font-spotting. Thomas can be found at the art gallery or on the dancefloor.

Zara Zadro is a third year Media and Communications and English student. She loves story-telling and has written nonfiction and fiction for USYD and UTS publications. She was an editor for ARNA 2021, and has loved helping to make an amazing edition of 1978 this year.

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Infinite thanks to Kate Scott, for her accomplishment in creating the first edition of this journal alongside Jenna Lorge in 2020; Our Visual Arts Team and illustrators for their efforts in making this journal a visual feat; Nicole Baxter, Aiden Cheney, and Jamaica Leech for all their support; All the students who shared their talent with us; and of course, The University of Sydney Union The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The Syndey Arts Students Society The Sydney University Press

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