Glass 2021 Annual Edition

ELLA BRUMM

TOM LOUDON CHRISTINA SIMONOSKI

Why Glass?

Whether you’re a glass half-full or glass halfempty kind of person; this issue of Glass is stacked with stories for QUT Students by QUT Students.

Like always, we aim to navigate you through all facets of life that students experience. Glass is here to be a lens on the issues, successes and stories that matter to students, and we hope you enjoy this issue.

Editors’ Letter

Dear Glassies,

We can’t believe the year is already coming to an end.

Publishing a magazine amid a global pandemic comes with its challenges, especially in the environment of uncertainty that has continued over from 2020. The world gets the better of us all sometimes, and we’ve had to adapt the way we interact with the community at QUT. But through QR codes and COVIDsafe launches, you’ve stuck it out with us through thick and thin. Thank you.

In semester one, Christina, Ella, and Tom joined the team for Reset , where we began to explore university life during the pandemic. This evolved into semester two’s Complicated , in which our contributors leant into the beautiful, the profane, and the in-between.

As always, we are incredibly grateful for our online engagement, and your participation in this space has been incredibly heartwarming. With the introduction of the year-round submission window and the very first Glass Newsletter, we are excited to see how this space evolves in the future. Scan the QR codes in this issue to visit our online space and become a part of the broader Glass community.

Our biggest thanks goes to our 2021 contributors; from the people who submitted once, to those who were consistently involved with our magazine. Glass is a home for all QUT students because of your tireless work and stirring contributions. Thank you.

Acknowledgement of Country

Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera peoples as the First Nations owners of the lands where QUT now stands. We pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging, their lores, customs, and creation spirits. We recognise that these lands have always been places of teaching, research, learning, and storytelling.

Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play within the Meanjin community.

Cultural Warning

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following magazine may contain references to deceased persons

Disclaimer

Glass Medi a informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this issue of Glass belong solely to the author, and not necessarily express the views of Glass Media or the QUT Guild.

As we approach the new year and reflect on the last 12 months, we also look forward to the next, and to the future of Glass. With so much past us now, we are excited to continue sharing this space and platform with the students and alumni of QUT.

As always, with love. The Glass Team.

EM READM AN

EM

CHRISTINA

TOM ELLA

Edited Vulnerability

My time as one of the editors at Glass is coming to an end. I’ve been immensely privileged and proud to have spent the past two years in an editorial position. One of the greatest joys of this time has been publishing hundreds of QUT students and their work.

Media organisations like Glass, like Farrago, like Honi Soit, like Vertigo, like Pelican, serve a multitude of purposes in their respective university ecosystems. From demanding accountability from their unions and their universities, to hosting events, to asking questions that need to be answered, student publications are essential. But, one of the greatest purposes a student media publication serves is to help the writers and artists from their university grow and develop. It’s something that university students can do like no one else – send off their work to a fellow student and make something special.

There are a small group of people who have submitted to every print round I’ve edited. I haven’t had an opportunity like this, beyond my own work, to see someone’s unedited writing grow over such a long period. Their work in particular highlights to me how special Glass is. It has transformed, both in quality and content, over the past two years. I have no doubt that I will be seeing their work in other journals long after I have left university. Alongside the people that submit consistently, there are those that send off their work for the first time. I am so grateful that people trust myself and my fellow editors with such an important role in their writing. It takes an immense amount of strength, selfconfidence and vulnerability to send off your work to a stranger. I know how I felt when I sent off my first submission to Orenda

Magazine, in Melbourne. It was nerve wracking. But, Orenda’s editor, Sophia, treated my work with care and walked me through my first publishing process. I hope that I have been that support for many of the contributors to Glass over the past two years.

I feel so grateful for the people who have sent in their work, who have allowed me to edit their work, have taken on my feedback and edits and made for a great piece in our publication. These magazines and our online site have been a labour of love for publishing from many QUT students and editors over the years. I am in awe of what has been achieved in just three years of this publication, considering some university publications have been in circulation for over 50 years.

If you’re reading this, I encourage you to continue supporting your university publication. I encourage you to seek out other community publications, made by independent editors. Our publication is a marker of a moment in time at university, it’s held in the State Library archive for decades to come. What has been made in the past three years is such a solid foundation for the future. I can only imagine what’s to come if this has been the beginning.

To everyone who has trusted me with your work, thank you.

To everyone who will carry this publication on, thank you.

To everyone who has supported, read, or engaged with Glass, thank you.

-Em Readman

BY JULIENNE PANCHO

President’s Letter

After three years, my time as an executive of the Guild will end on December 1st.

I am proud.

Of our team, staff, and organisation; of the difference we’ve made to the lives of QUT students; of our platform; our resilience, and of myself.

I’ve grown with the Guild. Some of the biggest challenges of my personal life have collided headfirst with my professional one. Yet throughout the turbulence of the past three years, I’ve kept one goal in mind: leave it better than you found it.

Rebuilding foundations and setting the groundwork for a brighter, more prosperous future is hard. It involves a lot of work behind the scenes, late nights, and sometimes thankless tasks. It involves hard conversations, building trust, and constantly finding yourself miles outside of your comfort zone.

This has been more than just a job for me. It’s been something I’ve been passionate about and deeply involved in. I was given an opportunity in 2018 to make a difference, and I took a risk and dove headfirst into something I knew very little about, something exciting and different. Investing so much of yourself in a role means the highs are more exhilarating, and the lows are more devastating. The last three years have changed my outlook on life, politics, and leadership. I’ve been exposed to things at the Guild that I would never have been anywhere else this early on in my professional life. But for every hurdle I’ve had to navigate, there has come an accompanying opportunity.

It would be impossible to include even a fraction of the achievements of the last three years in this one letter, so for brevity’s sake, here are the top five:

1. Negotiating with QUT to increase the Guild’s SSAF funding from 3% to 20%, further increasing to 25% in the following year.

This year the Guild secured $1.535 million in funding. This money has been invested straight back into students and paid for social sport, club funding, free sanitary items, support for students on placement, foodbank and transport support, paying student performers, funding for autonomous collectives, and many other initiatives. Student money should be in students’ hands, and I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved given the position we started from.

2. Successfully lobbying for an overhaul to academic concessions and student misconduct procedures and working with the university to develop more studentfriendly policies.

After years of advocacy, steering committees, focus groups, policy re-drafts, and what felt like a never-ending mountain of red tape, the harsh late assessment policy – which meant that any student who submitted a second late received a grade of 0 – was amended. From the end of this year, students will be able to access automatic 48-hour extensions for any assignment, and the extension and concessions process will be more straightforward to navigate. Additionally, student misconduct procedures will be simplified based on recommendations from the Guild to centre around an educative approach that prioritises student welfare in place of the pseudo-legal committee system and long wait times that currently exist.

3. Developing a five-year strategic plan for the organisation that looks to the future and prioritises growth, high-quality services, and financial stability.

This has included hiring nine new staff to fill the gaps in our service delivery, particularly in the student advocacy and marketing space, updating our internal policies and procedures, and cultivating a positive and rewarding workplace culture that focuses on retention.

4. O verhauling the governance structure of the organisation to introduce a Board of Directors.

This new structure will promote good governance through oversight, accountability, and an appropriate balance between continuity and renewal. It will ensure a diversity of relevant skills and expertise and that the student representatives who lead the Guild are given the mentorship and guidance to govern well.

5. Running several large-scale events to enhance the student experience. These included a 6-week ‘Wellfest’ program which focused on financial, social, and mental wellbeing and featured dozens of expert panellists and contributors from around Australia.

The Student Market also gave student entrepreneurs with small businesses an opportunity to promote them on campus showcasing the incredible talent at QUT. Our Adulting 101 sessions included various life-skills-based workshops, including how to budget, CV writing, sustainability, rental rights, career help, and academic integrity.

I feel so privileged and grateful to the student community at QUT for enabling us to achieve all that we have by placing their trust in our administration year after year. I am excited to pass on the reigns to a new group of enthusiastic student representatives.

Student unionism is about ensuring that the student’s voice is at the centre of university decision making. Good quality higher education is the cornerstone of our democratic society, and sadly right now, it is under threat. Universities should be places of idealism that foster curiosity and academic rigour. Funding for higher education should be a bipartisan priority. The shift towards a corporate governance model of higher education will be nothing but a detriment to the prosperity and innovation of our future society.

Strong independent student unions are best placed to fight against this shift, and I am confident that the new Guild administration will continue this fight to ensure that every student at QUT receives the education they deserve

Interviews

Swallowing the Universe with Trent Dalton 14

I Have OCD but My Life is a Mess 44

An Interview with Olympian and QUT Student Jack McLoughlin 48

Memoir

The Space I Take Up 18

Reviews

Untold Resilience by Future Women 22 Lorde - Solar Power 31

Non-Fiction

QUT Introduces New ‘Easier’ 48-Hour Extension Policy 12

An Open Letter to Men from an Exhausted Woman 16 Has #MeToo Gone Too Far?..........................24 Now I’m 22, What Do I Do? 25 Meet Esther Vale: QUT Graduate and Organiser of Viral LGBTQ+ Rights Queensland Parliament Petition 26

A Better Blended Learning Approach in Universities is Sorely Needed 52

On Community, Safe Spaces, and Art: The QUT Guild Queer Lounge 56 Gossip Glass 58

Fiction

Inclement Weather 28

Boys on Trains 54 Going Back 50

A Year in Review:

QUT Literary Salon - 2021

Green Jacket 36 Trolltunga 37 River Split Rock Slick 42

Poetry

argr 23

Loop 23

Art/Photography

Aimee Yarrow 16

In Search for Nostalgia 21 Sam Hope 29-30/39-42/54-55

Ronia Garrett-Benson 32-34 Julienne Pancho 3/10-11 Glass 2021 Wrapped 8 Coffee Map............................................................ 62

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIENNE PANCHO

QUT Introduces New ‘Easier’ 48-Hour Extension Policy

So you’ve probably already heard, the University Academic Board recently approved changes to the Student Academic Concessions policy (see MOPP E/6.3.5(d)). QUT officials claim “the newly revised policy is intended to positively impact student wellbeing and staff processes.”

So what is actually changing?

There is one addition and one fundamental change to the existing policy, and it includes improvements that students at QUT have wanted for a while.

Automatic 48-hour assignment extension without documentation

Upon application, students will be automatically granted a 48-hour extension from the original due date (not the date of application). This addition is called an ‘informal extension’ in the policy. This new type of extension will be available 48 hours before the original due date. The aim is to support students who are unexpectedly interrupted when completing an assignment when the due date is imminent.

Special consideration is being replaced

The special consideration form is often underused and can be hard to understand what it is exactly used for. The University has decided to replace the singular application with specifically named concessions: final grade adjustment; and reweighted, alternative or additional assessment.

The University also wants to remind everyone that the existing process for extension based upon special circumstances is unchanged. There are no changes to deferred exams, assessments for students with a disability or supplementary exams – and no removal or adjustment of the 0% late policy.

Seeing the University implement this alternative solution to removing the 0% Policy is a sombre victory for student advocacy, despite the QUT Guild and other student advocacy groups’ constant efforts to remove or alter the policy.

Here are some of the official examples of how the new policy will work

Example 1 - Student A’s assignment is due on 11 February at 11:59 pm. They are called into work on 10 February at 6 pm. They can complete the application for an automatic extension as it is within 48 hours of the original due date. After application, an extension to 13 February 11:59 pm is automatically granted.

Example 2 - Student B’s assignment is due on 11 February at 11:59 pm. Their internet fails at 10 pm on 11 February and is restored at 8 am on 12 February. They can complete the application for an automatic extension as it is within 48 hours of the original due date. After application, an extension to 13 February 11:59 pm is automatically granted.

So, when can I apply for a 48-hour automatic extension?

Surprisingly the automatic 48-hour assignment extension won’t commence till after 1 November 2021. The University has made it clear that it will not be available in semester 2, 2021 or in teaching periods that start before 1 November.

When asked about the University’s decision to implement the policy during the summer semester, QUT Guild President Olivia Brumm informed Glass that, “the University wants to test the efficacy and procedure of the new policy within a smaller cohort to allow for feedback and improvements.” The QUT Guild Secretary stated that “the reason behind this decision, although to most student’s frustration, is likely another case of the University letting their administrative processes burden the rights of student welfare.”

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA SIMONOSKI

The red tape that has delayed this decision is frustrating as the decision to do something about the 0% Policy was public on 16 November last year. Nevertheless, students will still face a 0% Policy but more time to complete the assessments during hard times, no questions asked.

What else is changing?

Other academic concession changes, including the replacement of the special consideration form, will be introduced from semester 1, 2022. The University has communicated to staff that “further information and training will be provided over the coming months.”

So, we may find some more answers about the scope and application of these new concessions once they decide how the new concessions will be applied and of use to staff and students.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts students’ and staff’s other uses for the special consideration form. For example, will final grade adjustment/reweighting the assessment be the correct form for students who may not perform to their usual standard? Hopefully, the University can provide us with examples of applications for this process.

The Glass Team will bring you the latest when we find out more.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 23rd of September 2021

Swallowing the Universe with Trent Dalton

When Boy Swallows Universe was published in 2018, its author, Trent Dalton, was known for the flowery prose of his feature articles. Well regarded in the world of journalism, his debut novel put him in another spotlight entirely. One year — and 140,000 sales — later Dalton had four Australian Book Industry awards, a second novel on the way, and glowing reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post.

So, it was a surprise when the QUT Literary Salon announced Dalton as a guest speaker last May.

The teenage protagonist of Boy Swallows Universe, Eli Bell, lives a remarkable life - one soon to be immortalised in a sold-out stage adaptation by Queensland Theatre, and a small-screen adaptation headed by Joel Edgerton. In about 450-pages Eli navigates domestic violence, an international drug syndicate, and an infatuation with an older woman. But perhaps the most remarkable part of his life is the fact that it is based on Dalton’s.

“When I was in grade six my teacher told my dad at a parent teacher night that she was convinced I was going to become the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang,” Dalton later tells me, when after I ask how his life has deviated from his expectations.

“It’s certainly turned out a lot different.”

I’d been to a Lit Salon before and was familiar with the format; six readers, six pieces, a small crowd. On this particular night it was seven readers, seven pieces, and a healthier audience. Among the art students and introverts, Dalton’s straightforward style and labrador energy stood out. As his desire to personally meet everyone in attendance became more obvious, this energy became infectious. When I finally caught him, he was on his way out. But there was plenty more of Dalton to go around.

“Oh Tom! Of course,” he says like he’s known me for years. When I ask him if I could get in touch with him for an interview, he loudly shouts his personal email address and one of my coworkers commits it to memory.

When I do email him, his auto-reply defers me to his publicist at HarperCollins, who insists that Trent is on a deadline and not doing any media commitments. Half an hour later, Trent replies to my original email with his personal phone number, and asks me to text him any questions.

Dalton doesn’t feel like he needs to be managed.

“It’s from my twenty years as a journo. It’s that idea that if you can’t sit down at the desk and write for eight hours as a journalist you lose your job. And then the mortgage doesn’t get paid and your kids don’t go to school. These are very powerful motivations and I try to look at any fiction writing I do in exactly the same way. So, I usually start at about eight o’clock and I’ll go right to twelve. Eight to twelve are my best writing hours — I love those writing hours. I don’t really need any convincing or any external encouragement to do it because I feel like I’m the luckiest bastard on earth and I try to recognise that every day.”

Dalton had come to the Lit Salon as a QUT alum and a Brisbane native. When I ask him about Brisbane writing specifically, the event is still firmly in his mind.

“I just had the pleasure recently of going ... to see the incredible creative writing students at QUT do an open mic storytelling night where they read stories about Brisbane from their own lives, and it was the most inspiring thing I think I’ve seen in a year and some of the most incredible stuff I’ve heard come out the mouth of young writers.”

WRITTEN BY TOM LOUDON

“I can’t wait to see what’s ahead for those young writers I saw.

“David Malouf, massive inspiration. Matt Condon, who’s a dear friend of mine, his work, particularly on Brisbane crime has been hugely influential. Kris Olsson — who was actually my QUT creative writing tutor — she was deeply influential in the fact that she got me my first writing job and that I wouldn’t be possibly alive without her.”

He talks about writing from his life, and I glean a little more of the real-life story of Eli Bell. Half of Boy Swallows was “too close to home”, and Dalton came close to losing control. But he stresses that our role as writers is to speak with our own voices.

“Whether we let people know that we’re writing close to home or not is a different story.

“And for me doing that was extremely, deeply cathartic, and it was that or drinking straight burbon every Wednesday night. For me writing a 100,000-word novel is much healthier than that. I think it’s important for us to mine the things that are troubling us. And I think I’ll be digging down into that quarry of emotion for the rest of my life, because just because I wrote some of that stuff in Boy Swallows Universe doesn’t mean I’ve sorted it all out and I look forward to processing that in the future.

“Not to sound like a Bruce Springsteen song or anything but when I was growing up ... you don’t think of anything like what has happened to me as possible or for you, because there’s this invisible wall keeping you away from that and that’s called the outer suburbs of Brisbane. If you don’t know what’s beyond that invisible wall you don’t know that certain things exist.

“That’s not just me being writerly or anything that’s just a fact. I thought for all money I was headed for the G James Glass and Aluminium factory on Kingsford Smith Drive because that’s where a lot of my mates went to work and that’s a good life and it pays well and you can buy a nice house in Bracken Ridge with a job like that and I was ready to go down that road. And I reckon I would have been happy enough. But I’m just so glad I saw some other things and I got to exactly where I think I belong.”

Underneath Dalton’s approachable, energetic exterior is a complicated person, characterised only in part by past trauma. Dalton has never stopped learning and has never lost his enthusiasm for life, which is — if anything — his biggest secret. “In life and in writing – be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is the most underrated human emotion,” Dalton implores. “I’m talking about the fricken way you get out of the bed ... I’m talking about the way you treat your friends and your relationships and the way you listen to music and the way you look at birds flying in the sky and the way you talk to your mum on the phone.

But particularly the way you approach your writing. Because what comes from enthusiasm is curiosity, and what comes from curiosity are answers. All the answers come when you’re enthusiastic.

“[I think that’s been] the thing that’s gotten me where I am today.”

But where he is today is not Dalton’s final destination, as he continues to grow up every day.

“Be careful not to lose yourself in your own fricken head. When you meet the love of your life and you’re in the kitchen cooking dinner and they’re talking to you about the important things that are in their head, don’t be in your head thinking about your fricken story! Make sure you listen to them and you open up to them and you remember that there’s a whole wide world out there that exists beyond your brain and your own little story bubble.”

“I’m actively learning those things as we speak.”

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 29th of July 2021 and in Issue #12, Complicated. Read the full transcript online here.

An Open Letter to Men from an Exhausted Woman

Dear Men (yes, all Men),

Over the previous weekend – which you may have spent drinking with mates, having a laugh and going out to the valley – four of my closest girlfriends and I spent our Saturday night crying in a room together.

You see, we are all fucking exhausted. The news coming out of the UK of Sarah Everard’s tragic murder, allegedly at the hands of a London police officer, has spurred an outcry of anger and frustration from women around the world. It has prompted us all to relive our own experiences with violence, sexual assault and harassment.

WRITTEN BY ELLA BRUMM

Trigger warning: Sexual assault and violence against women

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AIMEE YARROW

While our male friends left to go out last Saturday night, my girlfriends and I discussed our own traumatic experiences. We became enraged and disheartened as we soon realised, we have all faced similar incidents.

At the start of the night, we angrily voiced our frustration at the patriarchy. By the end of the night, we were unpacking years of suppressed feelings that had been eroding our self-confidence, leaving behind a fractured shell of armour tasked with the impossible job of protecting us against future attacks.

Every woman knows the feeling of walking alone at night, heart racing and blood rushing to our head as we enter a heightened state of adrenaline, ready to protect ourselves if needed. If you don’t know already, there are some very simple tasks you may take for granted. It is habitual for women to walk with keys between our fingers at night, mute our music on public transport, wear comfortable shoes that we can run in when going out, share our location with trusted friends and family before we leave for a date, resist the urge to retaliate when being catcalled or yelled at from a car, prepare ourselves for flight when a group of men walk towards us on the street, and feel discouraged knowing the outfit we want to wear will attract unsolicited leers and comments from random men.

These measures that protect us from being raped are drilled into us from the moment a boy pushes us down and teases us in primary school – which was okay because that was just his way of showing ‘he liked us’. We take on these precautions and the burden that comes with constant threat because it’s our issue, right? We can’t pull you guys up on your behaviour because that will make you feel uncomfortable and, God forbid, we make you uneasy about your problematic actions. We are continually reminded when the endemic issue of violence against women is mentioned that it’s ‘not all men!’

Well, I have simply had enough of this. In the past week, I have been reeling from

my own trauma along with every other woman, while combating inflammatory statements from men. You aren’t asking ‘what about International Men’s Day?’ because you truly care – if you did you would already know this day is recognised on November 19th. You aren’t exclaiming at every chance you get ‘not all men’ because you want to soften the blow for women. You make these remarks because you feel uncomfortable and you feel threatened.

I know this because this is not a women’s issue. It’s a men’s issue. And it’s yours to solve. I know you feel attacked because you are not perfect – no one is. But you have made misogynistic jokes, and in turn you have laughed at them. You have called us a slut and believed we deserve that label.

You have pushed the boundaries when we have said we feel uncomfortable, and consequently blamed us for leading you on. You have bought us drinks at the bar, thinking we are suddenly in debt to you and must owe you our bodies. You have moved your hand back down our pants after we already pushed it away. You have gone about your life misunderstanding that even if you have not actively assaulted a woman you are still benefiting from the system that is oppressing us.

If you can say for certain that you have never done these acts, well, can you answer this question with 100% certainty: where were you when it was happening? Why didn’t you call your friend out when they made a rape joke? Why weren’t you there to tell them to stop saying slut and bitch in any meaning of the word? Why didn’t you educate them that no means no and can’t be manipulated into a yes? Why didn’t you burst their entitlement when they exacerbated frustration that a drink didn’t get them laid? Why didn’t you report, stop, and call out rape culture as it was happening?

For every woman who has had these experiences there is a man who could have prevented it from happening in the first place. The onus should not be on us to not get raped; it should be on you to not rape and to hold other men accountable when

they are perpetuating it. Not every rape joke leads to rape, but every rape starts with a problematic comment that none of you pulled them up on.

The perfect man does not exist. You can say that’s inflammatory and generalising but I say you’re wrong. Sweeping statements about men are not hurting you but providing you with nuance is hurting us. I don’t care if all of you are not bad because I don’t have the luxury to decipher between the two. If you were in a pit of snakes where some were venomous, would you take the time to think ‘well, I can’t be rash because not all these snakes will hurt me and it’s not right to hurt the feelings of the ‘good ones’? No! You would find the quickest way out of the pit because they’re fucking snakes!

Even those of you who understand your privilege are still receiving unearned benefits from the current system. You can satisfy the minimum requirements of what it means to be a decent person and yet be praised with a ‘good’ man award.

It is not our job to repair the damage you have caused. I am exhausted. I will not be comforting your egos anymore. I will not sugar coat my words to make this issue more comfortable for you. You need to understand that the burden is on you. So, pick up your act and tell the other men around you to do the same.

Sincerely with much frustration, An ally and survivor

article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 18th of March 2021

This

The Space I Take Up

WRITTEN BY EMMA NAYFIE

I’m 11 years old when I realise that I take up too much space. Mum takes me straight from school to buy an outfit for my impending Confirmation at St Mary’s Catholic Church. One of eight girls in the church group, I’m the only one that hasn’t been able to find a pretty dress to fit my large frame. For me, a young girl with heavy breasts that developed far ahead of their time and hips that demanded sizes from the women’s section in department stores, I have slim chances of finding anything that didn’t resemble either a grown woman’s bridal gown or a large, sequined garbage bag.

In mid-1990s Bundaberg, formal fashion item choices in my size outside of the bridal boutique are limited to the polyester-filled racks at Millers Fashion. I flatly refuse to try anything from these ‘old people shops’, so I watch my mother dive into the back of clothing racks at Target, trying to reach an elusive size 16 dress. We don’t find one.

I leave that day with a dark grey, floor length polyester skirt and a modest, longsleeved black top. I hate it, and in all the

photos that day I make sure my mouth twists in a sad scowl so that everyone knows it. Mum tells me not to worry - the outfit makes me look slimmer. That’s what matters. It’s unspoken, but it sits heavily in the air between us.

* * *

When I’m 16, I realise I’m ugly. I’m washing my hands in the bathroom of my friend Carly’s house. She’s throwing a party; there are boys from school here, Nirvana songs on repeat, and warm bodies that stop just short of touching. It’s 1997 and I’ve perfected the art of deflecting attention from my bulky frame by wearing an oversized Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt, baggy jeans, silver Doc Martens, black nail polish and box-dyed black hair. A strong I totally don’t care what you think vibe.

I hear Carly’s voice through the wall between us – she’s in her room doing her makeup with our friend Taylor, who’s got a similarly large body to my own. You might be fat Tay, but you can change that, she says matter-of-factly. At least you’re not ugly like Emma. You can’t change ugly.

I see myself reflected in the mirror above the sink, but there’s something new there now, a crookedness in my nose, one eye slightly bigger than the other, blotchy freckles in a sunburst across my forehead. I poke at the new geometry of my face, and it fills me with shame. Not only do I take more than my fair share of space in this world, I’ve tarnished that space with this asymmetry, with these blemishes. It takes me another 16 years before I question my place in this world. * * *

At 32, I have a seven-year-old daughter who slips into the bathroom while I’m drying myself from the shower. She examines herself in the mirror, frowning. What are you so grumpy about? I ask. I’m not very pretty, she tells me, and it feels like a slap across my face.

When I ask why she thinks she’s not pretty, she tells me that she’s fat, her arms are too big, her stomach too soft. I could summon a multitude of platitudes in response, but all I can manage is to pull her close and hug her tightly.

So many of us spend our lives feeling not beautiful, just shy of pretty. There are unwritten rules on the space we hold in this world, and our culture demands payment from anyone that fails to conform to the elusive optimum standards of size and beauty, regardless of how fickle and shifting these standards are.

I am angry; at the world, for starting to shape my daughter in its image, at myself for all those times I’d criticised my own body with my daughter in earshot. For criticising myself at all. I know this has to be the moment things change.

I start by throwing away the magazines I’ve collected over the years; hundreds of pages of diets that promise to help me burn belly fat, products to help transform my skin, burst my capillaries into smoothness, laser away soft edges and suck flesh from the stubborn pockets of my thighs; so many ways to erase all the colours of ourselves that have bled outside the lines of a bland, uniform ideal of a woman.

I find an online community of women who are rejecting this pressure to conform. They call themselves “fat acceptance activists” and their bible is a book called Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon, PhD. “Once you consider the extent of the magical thinking that tends to be tied in to the fantasy of thinness,” he says, “you can understand how threatening it is to consider the idea that you may never get the thin body you crave. It means that you never get to become the person you want to be.” His words stick to the walls of my heart.

I read Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. She tells me that “a cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience” and once I’ve read that I can’t unread it. Each bite I take is an act of protest. * * *

I am 33 when I find myself sitting in my doctor’s office, sobbing into a tissue as he records my responses to the K10 Anxiety and Depression Checklist. My blood pressure was through the roof, and the depression so severe I spent several days at home in a near-catatonic state before my husband insisted on taking me to the doctor.

I need you to think about losing some weight. He says it gently, but I immediately bristle at my GP’s suggestion that my mental health issues can be solved by weighing any less than I do. I am protective of my body and will not stand for being told

that it is in some way faulty or unworthy of respect. He shrugs, not wanting to get into a confrontation. Perhaps some exercise then?

Later, a friend suggests my size could be put to good use in the gym, so I begin training for powerlifting and strongwoman and they’re right. My physical strength surprises me at first, and people around me begin to admire the weights I can move not just in spite of my size, but because of it. My depression and anxiety scores improved steadily, and I find myself discovering reserves of self-esteem within myself that I had never experienced before. There’s a saying in the gym that “weight moves weight”, so as my proficiency in weight lifting increased, so do the numbers on the scale.

* * *

In four years, I add 30 kilograms to my frame and I do it unapologetically. Convinced that the fantasy of thinness is designed to oppress those that believe it, and buoyed by the community of strong women I train alongside, I grow in ways not always visible on the bathroom scales. Over those years I come to believe that the space we take up isn’t really a physical ideal, rather it’s the promise of power, for which we relinquish what power we already hold within ourselves.

I gain weight in rebellion against the beauty fantasies that hurt women around the world, from women in India who scar their faces with bleaching creams in the quest for lighter skin, to Asian women who have surgery to re-configure their eyelids in order to make their eyes appear rounder. I gain weight to show my daughter that it does not define my worth as a woman, as a human being.

My stomach grows, along with my breasts, my hips, my thighs. After years of trying to whittle myself down to a smaller space, how strange and wonderful it feels to see my flesh stretch not in shame, but possibility.

* * *

I am 37 years old, my eyes squinting at the stark brightness cast by the hospitals florescent lighting. The nurse tells me the sleeve gastrectomy surgery has been successful, and I’m being moved to my private suite. The pain is intense, so the nurse refills my intravenous pain medication and soon after the cool sting begins to travel through my veins, I drift off to sleep wondering if I’ve made the right choice.

* * *

Twelve months before the surgery, I had walked out of my office and fallen into bed at home, utterly burnt out. Strength training had been the prescription for my mental health issues and I filled it three times a week for the last two years. It was an incredibly effective medicine, supported by anti-depressant medication and regular psychotherapy. But as I grew in size, my endurance levels in the gym suffered. My knees ached from the extra weight, and as I struggled with high repetitions of particular exercises, my technique failed and I spent an increasing amount of time on the bench with injury. The medication didn’t help either, stirring an insatiable craving for food to fill an emptiness in my soul that the medication created. Training became sporadic, then non-existent.

Without this element of self-care, my mental health issues returned with a vengeance. My doctor gave me a referral to a surgeon to discuss options around weight loss surgery. If you love your mind as much as you love your body, you might want to think about this he said. I called the surgery the next day.

* * *

I am 38 when I lower my body into the porcelain-white bathtub, the steam rising in soft curls off the milky flesh of my thighs. I sink deeper, marvelling at the way my stomach disappears under the surface of the water. I am 40 kilograms lighter than I was a year ago, and the bath seems a lot deeper now.

I’ve lost a few friends since the surgery, but not in any explosive argument or war of words. They’ve simply stepped back from our friendship, or faded away completely.

I am seen as a traitor to the fat acceptance cause; someone who succumbed to the fantasy of thinness, a perpetuator of the unrealistic beauty standards. That I’ve sacrificed the space I should take up in the world in order to fit into that elusive ideal.

My daughter, now 15, bursts into the bathroom. She wipes the steam off the mirror with the sleeve of her hoodie and moves her face closer to the mirror. What’cha doing? I ask from the tub. She pokes at a red lump on her chin, a blind pimple that’s threatening to erupt. Urgh, period pimples. She sighs, and I grimace in sympathy. Lucky I’m freaking amazing though, right? She throws me this weird hand sign I’ve seen the kids do on TikTok, smiles and bounces out of the bathroom, forgetting to shut the door.

Over the last six years I’ve learned that I won’t be able to shield my daughter from the forces in our society that conspire to turn her against herself, but I have taught her to understand that the space we take up doesn’t have anything to do with something physical. The choices I have made to show love to my body and mind may not appear on the surface to be acts of body acceptance, but I am absolutely certain that they have helped me to understand who I am on a level that surpasses the physical.

The bath might seem deeper now, but I feel like I take up much more space within it.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 4th of August 2021 and in Issue 12, Complicated

In

Search for Nostalgia:

In Search for Nostalgia (2020) is a six-part series that features archival family photos that have been digitally overlaid with nostalgic objects and environments from my childhood home. The process of digital manipulation, layering, exploration, and collecting were used. This series was my response to the robbed memories COVID-19 stole during lockdown in 2020. As the title suggests, these works were a therapeutic process that allowed me to search for happier and nostalgic times during a year of isolation and uncertainty.

@pipierweller

This work was originally published in Issue 12, Complicated

ARTWORK BY PIPIER WELLER

Untold Resilience By Future Women

It seems almost surreal to be reading a book that heavily features COVID-19. It feels so recent and raw and – as recent lockdowns show – we’re not out of the woods yet. But, here I am, having read Untold Resilience

Untold Resilience is a non-fiction essay collection, curated by the organisation Future Women. The 19 essays in the book are written by women across Australia, reflecting on the theme of resilience. What makes women resilient? What makes women pillars of their communities? How do we take the trauma and hardship that we have been through and turn it into something we can celebrate and be proud of?

This book is filled with stories of women who have one thing in common; they have the ability to overcome what they have been through. The hardships they have faced are varied. War, exile and migration, the Pandemic, discrimination. These women have lived in disaster zones, they have lived

through devastating losses of the people closest to them, but their stories have been told through the lens of the isolation they experienced as they wrote their stories, compiled remotely during the lockdown in Australia. Each woman is over the age of sixty, and their writings reflect their breadth of experience. The Future Women editorial team of journalists worked with the writers of these essays to uncover their stories, bringing the curation to print at the end of October 2020.

The essay that struck me most was written by Faye Snaith. Faye was 92 at the time of writing. Her writing is filled with sharp humour and evident love for life. As domestic as it seemed for her, it felt so vibrant through the way she described everyday aspects of her past and present. She writes about the pandemics she has lived through before COVID-19, such as polio outbreaks, and how her sense of resilience helped her weather the Melbourne lockdowns. As a high-risk person for COVID-19, she spent a significant amount of time in the strictest of isolation periods.

When she wrote about how she felt her youth was stolen from her in isolation and now, the final years of her life were being taken from her too, I thought of my grandmother and my sister. My grandmother, because I worried for her as a vulnerable person during the pandemic and couldn’t see her for a long time. My sister, because she has lost so many formative moments to COVID-19 that she couldn’t spend with family and close friends, such as her final year of school, receiving her driver’s licence, and her 18th birthday. Of course, while I feel sad that I couldn’t share these moments with her, I recognise that they pale in significance when looking at the global tragedy this pandemic has been. However, Faye’s philosophy that life is simply a collection of moments helped me to feel validated in mourning those lost moments because the moments we share with our families, friends, and communities is what makes for a whole and complete life.

While many of these essays detail women going through terrible, terrible hardship, the highlight of this book is in the name. The resilience of these women is nothing short of breathtaking. From heartfelt fights for equality to gentle yet fierce acts of survival, the women featured in this book are extraordinary. They write their stories with an unimaginable humility, with grace and a tenacity that can only be achieved after going through the unimaginable. The 19 women have become installed inspirations in my life and this collection is a hallmark of how tenacity manifests in our everyday lives.

Untold Resilienc e is a remarkable book, which impressed me far beyond what I had expected. With most essay collections, it is easy to read in spare moments, an essay at a time – however, this was one of those books that I started and didn’t stop until I was done. The editorial team at Future Women has curated a stirring collection that unearths how these featured women survive, grow and exude resilience.

Untold Resilience is out now from Penguin Random House Australia. Note: The book featured in this review was provided to Glass and Em Readman free of charge by Penguin Random House as a press copy. However, the opinions of the reviewer are their own.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 15th of February 2021

WRITTEN BY EM READMAN

Content warning: this work deals with topics of suicide, grief, self-harm, gender dysphoria, transphobia and includes profanity.

argr

Someone else stands in the mirror

Reflective chrome coating applied to fragile laughter

Gaze travels down to her chest

Hey asshole, my eyes are up here I stare into them, my pupils contract She is all I can see

She will be present until the day I die Play her up with winged eyeliner and red lipstick Streaks in my foundation, smudged mascara Don’t worry It’s a stylistic choice Goth god Trickster Aesir Janus, tranny, shemale, argr

Someone else stands in the mirror

Dysphoria painted over shapeshifters and decomposition

Gaze travels up to her eyes

Windows to the soul splitting like frozen plastic She whispers, you are oracle and king And I am the unwelcome outcome.

WRITTEN BY ALEX RICH

Looppicked apart on a spinning wheelwe can’t keep doing this — rolling around in an unmade bed pulling pieces from the fray and wearing them like honours so debauched, so futureless so lonely in each other we love one another more tenderly in dreams, we reach absolution in the same old tears and warm breath whispers of repentance. we’re so manipulated, so maligned, so malicious to each other we say we can do better and yet here we are at another inroads — the end of history, emergency transmission, the play-by-play of our self-destruction, lashing out and lashing in, a stab in the back and the front and wherever it counts and I wear a piece that cripples my conscience and you boycott the game and go to sleep in our unmade bed.

WRITTEN BY JAK KIRWIN

Has #MeToo gone too far?

We assembled a diverse panel of men to discuss

FROM THE GLASS GAZETTE

Heavily discussed in recent weeks has been the topic of women’s safety – at home, on campus, and in public spaces.

After the National Summit on Women’s Safety ended without much resolution the Glass editorial board decided to think about what we could do to shed some light on the important issue.

The #MeToo movement has been an important precursor to women coming forward to talk about assault and trauma publicly.

But recent incidents involving our friends from private school really had us wondering if the movement has gone too far.

Richard Tate, a 24-year-old mechanical engineering student, was quick to remind us that not all men should be targeted by threats of accountability.

“I think we are getting better in terms of women’s rights and that stuff,” he said.

“Like, take me – I’m a good guy, right? I don’t make comments about women and that kind of stuff.

“But asking me to police the behaviour of my male friends is really a lot of unpaid labour that I didn’t sign up for.”

The idea of men being forced to pick up the slack of a few bad apples was echoed by Hugh Jorgen, a 39-year-old lecturer of Legal Research.

“I just want to say that I really do believe in equality between the two genders,” Jorgen emphasised between sips of tea from his ‘Bazinga’ mug.

“But if you are looking at equal – where are the male writers and researchers on the topic of women’s safety?”

“In fact, I would like to see a little more research into men’s safety.”

There were general nods in agreement from the panellists, before Patrick Riarchy, an 18-year-old store assistant interjected.

“I get that we’re kind of playing the devil’s advocate a little bit here, but I do think we can find a middle ground.”

“My dad told me that there are always two sides to every story and that you should walk in someone else’s shoes before you judge them.

“Is it possible that some women just haven’t walked a mile in a man’s shoes?”

Guy Faux, a 68-year-old retired mechanic agrees.

“It’s so different nowadays,” he said.

“You know sometimes people really cross the line, but how can we not cross now that they’ve moved it.

“You know, when I was a lad, if they’d have had all this nonsense they have now, they’d have called me a creep and come after me.

“It was a different time and a different culture, or are you saying that people like me are in the wrong now?

“I find that difficult to believe.”

The panellists all left their individual marks on the issue, and collectively raised the question, what are women going to do about women’s safety?

In an effort to achieve gender equity on the Glass team, and donations from their respective fathers, we have offered Mr Tate, Mr Jorgen, and Mr Riarchy, full time roles writing opinion columns.

Glass does not stand for misandry or straightphobia.

In loving memory of Guy Faux, who contracted COVID-19 at a protest in Melbourne. His spirit will live on in our sons and spouses.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 28th of September 2021

Now I’m 22, What Do I Do?

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA SIMONOSKI

So, by the time you’re reading this, I’ve finally graduated. I keep finding myself wondering what exactly other people were doing in their 20s and curious about what I should have already achieved by the time I turn 22.

I’ve definitely made a good start with my first significant milestone of completing my bachelor’s degree. Looking forward, I have two more important life events that almost feel like they’re approaching me at a high-speed rate. One being my Master’s in Digital Communications that I am actually really excited about and the other... turning 22.

I’ve always felt a sense of pressure to set myself up to be someone my siblings can go to for help, support or advice. A Macedonian upbringing kind of does that to you as the oldest sibling (especially when they’re seven and fifteen years younger than you). I know it’s probably an unhealthy amount of co-dependence, but it’s still something I want to be able to do for my sister and brother as they grow up. So, I can’t help but place these ridiculous expectations of achieving some tangible milestones in my 20s more than any other point in my life.

And look, it’s not the number I have a problem with, really, but more so the recent realisation that everything after 21 feels like important groundwork. Whether it be building a career, making general life plans, improving my skills, travelling or moving out of my parents’ place.

I don’t know what steps to take first. I know all of them need to happen at some point, but... what do I even start with?

Some people say to work with lists, I like lists too, but I get extremely overwhelmed when it comes to life goals. The tasks I want to work on start to go round in circles like “what comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

D o I save up for a car or spend money on driving lessons b ecause I am STILL on my learners?

Do I m ove o ut of h ome o r wait t ill I h ave a c ar first?

D o I look for work a reasonable distance from my parents or move closer t o where I find w ork?

D o I live at home and save before moving out with my partner o r just try to start living independently?

D o I save up for travel or save up for a car???

Will I ever get a car???

Maybe someone wiser than me is reading this chuckling, knowing exactly which decisions to make first, but for now, I’m still stuck in a comparison loop. Social media is probably the culprit for making it all look so easy. I know I can’t study forever, and apart from finding work, I never really know which milestone to reach for next. Everyone my age and everyone I look up to seems to just know what steps to take next, and I can’t help but feel like a baby animal learning how to walk.

Will 22 be the age where I find my footing and finally grow up?

This article was originally published in Issue 11, Reset

Meet Esther Vale:

QUT Graduate and Organiser of Viral LGBTQ+ Rights Queensland Parliament Petition

WRITTEN BY EM READMAN

Esther Vale just graduated from a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Film and Television. She’s also behind a Queensland Parliament petition that has garnered almost 10,000 signatures in just over a week.

The Petition, Recognise LGBT+ people within the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act, launched on the 15th of Feburary 2021 and is sponsored by Maiwar MP, Michael Berkman.

The petition description is as follows:

TO: The Honourable Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that the current legislation is the weakest in the country for recognition of trans and gender diverse people, and should be updated. There are several relatively simple changes that will make a vast increase in inclusivity and acceptance of LGBT+ people.

People should have the right to legally register as they self-identify. This means removing the requirement for a person to undergo sex reassignment surgery to change the sex listed on their birth certificate. The sex marker should also be changed without ‘annotation’, as there is no reason for these documents to out people.

To include people of a third or non-binary gender, birth certificates should at least have an additional ‘X’ option. Queensland should also provide ‘recognised details certificates’ as other States and Territories do.

The cost of making a change to one’s birth certificate is also an issue and functions as a prohibitive ‘trans tax’. The limit of one name change per year can also be a roadblock for trans people, and should be increased or given exceptions for name changes with reason of gender a ffirmation.

For recognition of same-sex and non-binary parents, the BDMR Act should also remove the requirement for parents to be listed as one mother and one father. A gender-neutral approach here will be more inclusive and accurate.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to call upon the Attorney General to action reform of the Act, remove the ‘trans tax’, a nd fi x the R egistry’s p rocesses.

I met with Esther over Zoom to speak about the phenomenal response to her petition, and what it’s like to have a petition garner the success it has so far.

“When I did the research that showed every other state is behind Queensland, I realised we’ve got to catch up.” Esther started with. “I wouldn’t have thought we were last but we are.”

She went on to speak about the petition, stating that she has been completely blown away, and says that this huge response really shows how much solidarity is in the community, in regards to rights for trans and gender diverse people. She was also quick to mention a petition from another Queensland trans activist, Lorelei Tuxworth, whose Change.org petition to Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, arguing that sex reassignment surgery shouldn’t be necessary to change gender on a birth certificate, ammassed 23,000 signatures last year.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 25th of February 2021

Esther says that, “it’s bigger than any one person,” and that it is, “so much better to have so many people on the campaign.” Her humility is a testament to her dedication to the cause she is fighting for and her commitment to this change in legislation.

While this petition is sponsored by Greens MP, Michael Berkman, Esther stresses that this issue is bigger than any political party. “This issue shouldn’t be partisan – I hope wholeheartedly the AG introduces the legislation outside of party politics,” she says. Esther also said that she was grateful to have Berkman be fully supportive of her petition.

Michael Berkman MP has been vocal across his social media pages in promotion of the petition. On a Facebook post, he says, “I’m so proud to be sponsoring Esther’s petition and grateful for all the support we’ve had so far. Parliament returns next week, so keep it up and let’s bring Qld LGBT+ recognition into the 21st century!”

Despite the petition having almost a month left open, it has already caught the attention of the Attorney General, confirming that they will definitely introduce updated legislation to the Deaths, Births and Marriages Registry Act, but did not specify which pieces of legislation, as Esther highlighted many aspects of the Act that were defunct in her petition description.

This petition has the support of the QUT Guild Queer Collective. Their statement is plain and simple; “Queensland is the lowest-ranking state in Australia for recognition of trans and gender-diverse people. Let’s change that in 2021.”

Update: On April 27th, the Queensland Attorney General responded to Esther’s petition, reiterating that the Government will introduce legislation to parliament sometime this year.

Michael Berkman MP and Esther Vale with their Courier Mail Article

Inclement Weather

WRITTEN BY CIARAN GREIG

The raindrop landed with a soft thud on Mara’s shoulder. For a moment she stared at it, transfixed, as the water absorbed itself into the fabric of her jacket and bled across its fibres.

“Of course, most couples organise a back-up venue in case of inclement weather.”

Cleo, the venue manager, peeked down at the suede-detailed wedges on her feet. Mara had noticed Cleo’s wedges when they first arrived at The Elderflower Estate moments ago. The shoes were impeccably, impossibly clean – especially for a woman who supposedly spent her days traipsing around an outdoor wedding venue. Mara imagined that Cleo had a supply of baby wipes stashed somewhere on her person, ready to smudge away any hint of mud.

Inclement weather, Mara thought. She felt another raindrop sink itself into the hair on her crown. The sky above them was aflame with leaden clouds. Craig, her fiancé, squeezed her hand.

Cleo led them up a leafy, winding path. The marquee appeared suddenly, standing alone in a wide clearing. A mass of gumtrees and pine guarded it overhead. Behind the trees, a line of ragged mountains carved out the space between the valley and the clouds. Mara could hear birds nearby, squawking and singing in the trees. The scent of the earth floated thick in the air: dust-like from the rain. It reminded Mara of the creek she grew up by. The smell of it always made her feel like she was playing witness to a whole, beautiful eco-system at work.

Craig, usually quiet and unimpressed, flashed Mara a quick smile. Cleo pointed out a eucalypt nearby, where a sleeping koala rested while hugging a branch. Mara felt a laugh bubble up inside her. There was something about the delight of it all. When had she ever seen anything so simple before? So pure?

Mara closed her eyes for a second. Was it just a second? A milli-second? A minute? When she opened them, the venue manager was zipping open the entrance to the marquee and Craig was helping her part the clear plastic sheets that held the front piece together.

Mara squinted at the marquee, her eyes struggling to adjust. It was as if her brain didn’t know how to focus on the mass of thick plastic in the midst of the trees and the mountains and the wildlife. Something about it felt off. She looked at the trees and then back to the marquee. It was ghostly in its transparency, absurd in its clean lines and pointed corners.

In her peripheral vision, Craig waved his arms, mouthing something to her. Come on. Mara hurried in to join them.

Inside the marquee, everything was perfect. It was exceptionally, profoundly clean. The plastic filtered the light flawlessly. Quiet and temperate.

“We can accommodate just about any seating layout you’d like,” Cleo said. “Bridal table at the top, through the middle, circular tables – ”

Mara looked beyond the confines of the marquee. She could see a large clearing in the distance, slightly overgrown. Scraggly.

“Could we sit outside?”

Cleo scrunched up her nose. “We could look into it for you.” she said, drawing out the last syllable. “I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Who wants rain ruining their hair on their big day?” Cleo smiled, then tilted her head.

Mara paused, then smiled back, “right.”

* They booked the venue, eventually. Mara paid the deposit herself, watching the funds disappear from her bank balance in an instant. None of it felt completely real. As spring slid into summer, she found herself spending more and more time talking about the wedding with friends, family, colleagues. She felt like she was always talking about the wedding. She wanted to stop talking about the wedding.

“It’s not that I don’t want to get married,” she explained to Craig one night, through a mouth full of Pad Thai. The useless standing fan they had propped up in their living room squeaked urgently and the air in the room was thick with warmth. She wiped a layer of sweat off her forehead. “It’s just all this wedding crap. I’m over it.”

The summer before the wedding brought fire: hot and wild, spreading across the country like a rash. They watched the flaming maps on TV, noticed how the fire skirted around the hinterland near their wedding venue. Mara found herself waking up frequently in the small hours of the morning, so sure that their whole world had collapsed into grimy ash. It was strangely comforting: those first few, transient minutes when she could believe that nothing else existed in the world but herself and Craig.

*

The flames never reached the boundary of the Elderflower Estate, after all. But the world soon shifted again. The wedding, scheduled for early April, was cancelled anyway. The whole globe seemed to be cleaving itself apart, limb by limb.

But, despite all of it, Mara couldn’t help but feel light. Everything gone. Nothing left. Just Mara, just Craig. She thought of the trees in The Elderflower Estate, imagined them exhaling slowly. All alone. At last.

Mara was on her knees, ripping out weeds in the garden, when Cleo called in a huff.

“You must be so disappointed,” Cleo said, sighing. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

“Yes, of course,” Mara said. With her phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder, she let Cleo’s voice fade into the background as she examined the weeds in her hands, ripped from their roots. She hated the sound they made as she tore them from the earth. It was a scream, low and short, like tearing tendon from bone.

That night, Mara and Craig lay still in their bed. Craig sighed about the work ahead of them: rescheduling the date, reorganising time off from work, the cost of it all. Mara thought again of the greenery of The Elderflower Estate, the bowing branches, the perfect leaves. She remembered the marquee, immense and plastic. She imagined a huge gust of wind sweeping down the valley and blowing the marquee away. Whoosh.

She was a moment away from sleep when she heard the rain. It was soft at first, then stronger. It asserted itself on their roof, insisting on being heard, sounding like huge sheets of water crashing down on their rickety little house. Mara shuffled out of bed and watched from the back deck as the rain battered down on the garden.

She ambled into the yard and laid herself down on the grass, feeling the blades tickle the inside of her ears. She closed her eyes. She let the rain trickle down the side of her neck, let it fall in between her fingers.

This article was originally published in Issue 12, Complicated

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA SIMONOSKI

Kiwi indie-princess Lorde has finally dropped her third album, Solar Power, and I have to admit her new positive vibes are growing on me. Once again Lorde has teamed up with producer Jack Antonoff with whom she collaborated on her last album, Melodrama

The album opens dreamily with a humble track titled The Path . Apparently, it was one of the first tracks to be written for the album when Lorde was home in New Zealand, and it features a strong 70s theme like many people expected from this album. I’d argue it’s a bit deeper than that though. Sonically, it invokes the imagination: what if the 90s kid met the 70s Woodstock hippy? If they met now, they’d probably both love this track and album. You probably don’t need a reminder of the debut single Solar Powe r, but this track gives you your first taste of some of the best features and musical influences of the album. Lorde was especially excited to have Matt Chamberlain feature on this record as he drummed on many of her favourite songs from the 90s. His experienced percussion brings not only this track but the entire album to life. Both in this track and hidden in other little spots across the album, we hear stunning backup vocals and influence from both Clairo and Phoebe Bridgers, who Lorde has described not only as her industry peers but close friends – honestly, I can’t think of a more iconic trio since Haim.

Album Review LordeSolar Power

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 1st of September 2021

You might remember, way back in 2019 Lorde went to Antarctica as an Ambassador to better experience and understand the impacts of climate change. After returning we heard that this album would have a strong environmentalist theme but there is also another story weaved through the experience of the album. Particularly found in tracks like Stoned at the Nail Salon is a tale about musicians growing in fame, popularity, and even the experience of moving to LA. This secondary story is told gently and instrumentally with eerie vocals reminiscent of another indie star Lana Del Rey.

Fallen Fruit is by far my favourite track on the album and describes the feelings Millennials and Gen Z get when it comes to living in the midst of a climate crisis. Lorde describes the track as a message to past generations, saying it asks “do you know what you’ve done? How could you have left us with this?” Something that sets this track leagues above the others is the hauntingly beautiful guitar riff, likely played by Jack Antonoff, which could easily be mistaken for the work of Carlos Santana. A testament to the incredible amount of care and high-level production this album went through.

When exploring the albums environmental perspective Lorde says, “the album is a celebration of the natural world, an attempt at immortalising the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I’m outdoors. In times

of heartache, grief, deep love, or confusion, I look to the natural world for answers. I’ve learned to breathe out, and tune in. This is what came through.”

Old-school fans and people who still use CDs for some reason might be surprised to find out that in regards to the physical release, Lorde said, “I decided early on in the process of making this album that I also wanted to create an environmentally kind, forward-thinking alternative to the CD. I wanted this Music Box product to be similar in size, shape and price to a CD, to live alongside it in a retail environment, but be something which stands apart and that’s committed to the evolving nature of a modern album.” To be fair, you’re getting a lot more merch/posters than you would normally get with a CD or Vinyl, for a pretty good price if you can spare it. I know as a fan I’ll be grabbing a copy, so definitely check it out.

Tickets are still available (so far) for her only show in Brisbane, March 2022. If you’re already a fan or looking forward to seeing her perform live I wouldn’t hesitate because tickets in the US and NZ have already sold out!

BY RONIA GARRETT-BENSON

ARTWORK

ARTWORK BY RONIA GARRETT-BENSON

A Year in Review

The QUT Literary Salon - 2021

The QUT Literary Salon have a confession to make. Perhaps, some sins – or starstudded surprises – about what really goes on behind closed doors. The exclusive truth only for our loyal readers, speakers and supporters. Is it true that we’re foreverbesties with a certain bestselling author and may or may not have his email? Why did we not make an appearance at the Met Gala? One thing that’s not a secret is that we’ve absolutely loved supporting Brisbane’s emerging writers on their publication journey.

Our biggest mission this year for the Lit Salon was to expand our scope, and get as many people involved as possible –especially in the younger years and newer students. No one in our team knew about the Literary Salon until late in our degree, and we wanted to change that for QUT. We started the year in February with our Poetry with Miffy workshop at the Gardens Point Art Museum. We had a great time writing ekphrasis poetry with Sarah Barron, around 30 students from various disciplines, future student-readers like Alisha Davenport (Heirlooms) and Konstanz Muller Hering (Assumptions), and fantastic guests that we’ve seen as recent as our Pride salon! We also held a Q&A session in March to help spread the word and break the ice. We’re so proud of the feedback

that we’ve gotten from all of our guests and readers about being able to foster an increasingly inclusive atmosphere for writers of all levels and forms! We couldn’t have done it without all of our fantastic submitters, whether you were chosen to read or not – thank you all so much for letting us read your work.

We had the honour of having Rohan Wilson (truly our biggest supporter!) as our guest reader for the first salon of the year –Heirlooms, which included some of the salon’s most prolific student readers: Jak Kirwin and Kate MacDonald. We had Vogel winner and all-round icon Emily O’Grady for our Assumptions salon, and perhaps the Literary Salon’s most high-profile reader yet – award-winning author Trent Dalton for Brisbania. Brisbania was our biggest turnout yet, and a hugely positive moment for our team, as well as a big teaching moment. As curators of writing that represents the students of QUT, it’s integral that we respect Indigenous language terms and place names with their correct pronunciation, and we’ve made a point of staying on the ball ever since. We held the Lit Salon’s first Winter Writing Competition this year during the mid-year break, the winner of which – Shelby Lee – became a guest reader for our August Salon: Pink. It was another hugely important salon

Visit the Lit Salon website qutliterarysalon.wordpress.com

for us, as it was the Literary Salon’s first book launch. We soft-launched QUT-Alum and guest reader Sara El Sayed’s debut memoir: Muddy People. This brings us to our most recent salon: Pride. Guest reader Cale Dietrich read an excerpt from youngadult novel If This Gets Out, scheduled for release in December this year. We cannot wait to finish the year off with a bang at our final salon at Avid Reader.

A huge thank you to all our guest readers, submitters, guests, followers, QUT Glass, and team-members from past years for all the work you did before us – especially the 2020 co-presidents Anahita Ebrahimi and Hannah Patten-Kuik. We are so grateful for all your support.

From the 2021 team xx

Co-presidents: Jackson Machado-Nunes and Jakeb Smith

Editor: Madison Blissett de Weger

Social Media Team: Ciaran Grieg and Rebekah Roma

Green Jacket

My ex-stepdad was in the army, or at least spent a lot of time in jail in the army. He was either a demolitions expert in the Special Forces, or head chef for a high-ranking officer, depending on what area of expertise he wanted to impress you with. He knew ninjitsu. He killed a swathe of men with an M60. Served in East Timor. He used to be a bikey. Was called Rattlesnake by his friends. Killed a man there as well. Buried a pistol in the backyard somewhere. As with all things about him, the fog of his distorted reality cleared with distance.

When the marriage finally broke down, after long years of domestic abuse, World of Warcraft addiction and an everincreasing collection of novelty cheap store dancing santas, the ugly intensified.

I was living rent-free with my brother and his friend. I’d just been through a bad breakup, though all of my breakups hit me like a B-Double tearing through a flock of galahs. I was permanently high, fighting and losing against a scabies infection, and spent most of my days smoking, listening to a rotating roster of breakup albums and training alongside my brother with our swords. We’d bought the swords for each other as birthday gifts. I have no idea where we found the money for them, both of us being terminally unemployed. His was a longsword, fashioned as a replica of the Black Prince’s own. Mine was a heavy and brutal two-hander, based off the crusades era. Hand-forged in Canada by Canadians, battle ready and designed for steel-on-steel contact. I’m not sure if they were actually legal.

We trained daily. Wake up at 6:30. Fifty push-ups, sit-ups and squats, then 200 strikes with the sword, ten slow, ten fast. After that we hit the dumbbells and started chain smoking. My brother fed me as much as he could. After my breakup I’d dropped below 60 kilos, and was pretty close to carking it. Putting on muscle was an ample substitute for a relationship.

It was just getting dark when my brother got back from my mum’s, about an hour drive out West from Ipswich. It was late August, and still fairly chill outside under the carport where I was smoking. I wore my stepdad’s old army jacket, olive drab and bulky to hide my coat hanger frame. He didn’t know I had it, I sneaked it from a pile of old things sitting in the shed.

My brother returned shaking and swearing and flooding with rage. He’d gotten into an argument with my stepdad again. They fought constantly, even when my brother was a scrawny twelve-year old, I remember my stepdad holding him against the roof by his throat.

This time had ended badly. My stepdad threatened to kill my brother as he stormed back to his car. My brother called him a cunt as he drove off, not giving him the last word and driving my stepdad crazy. My mum called us and told us to be careful. My stepdad was going to get his bikey friends to pay us a visit.

We smoked a joint together to calm him down, cracked open homebrew beers and started to plan. Our housemate was almost never there, though he owned the place. There were just two of us, and we couldn’t call the cops because of our pretty tame weed stash.

All we had was our swords and a workers cottage on the roughest street in the roughest suburb of Ipswich. Two exits, one for each of us. The walls were pretty solid, so we weren’t too worried about getting shot up if we stayed in the middle of the house, and if we got the drop on them we were sure we’d at least take out several bikeys with our swords.

We’d practiced the strikes every day for months. Shoulder to hip, side to side at the neck, block up and then stab the face.

The night grew darker and colder. We sat outside, me in olive drab and my brother in high vis. Sword belts on, scabbards sticking out between the arm rest of the green plastic Bunnings chairs.

We smoked and turned our heads at every set of headlights that came down the darkened backstreet.

At 3am, after four joints and twice as many beers, we turned in. Our stepdad, as ever, remained all talk.

The marriage dissolved rapidly after that. Drama after drama preceded complete excommunication. Then the slow process of unlearning. Shining light on what I’d experienced, what had grabbed my heels and dragged itself around with me as I matured. Reforging myself into a new shape, devoid of toxic and fragile masculinity.

I still have the jacket. It was the only thing I kept from him. I’ve worn it to parties and events, all around Japan on holidays with my wife. If anyone asks where I got it, I say I racked it from a veteran.

If my stepdad saw me in it he’d probably kill me, and I would let him. Let that wave break against my stone, and fall away, unchanging and impotent. The cliffs don’t hit back against the water, they let the waves destroy themselves.

Besides, I look better in green.

WRITTEN BY SAMUEL MAGUIRE (HEIRLOOMS - LIT SALON)

Trolltunga

WRITTEN BY GRACE HAMMOND (ASSUMPTIONS - LIT SALON)

On the last night, Ewan undercooks the pasta. We sit at the table, ladling stiff spaghetti onto our plates and folding the strands into our mouths. They break like eggshells between our teeth.

“Sorry,” Ewan says. “I can cook another batch.”

“Oh, no.” Eloise waves her hand. “Don’t be silly. It’s delicious.”

Ewan smiles.

We all go for seconds.

Our coats – five trenches, burgundy and black and grey – hang from the hooks in the hallway. One hook is still free, looped with a tiny wreath of plastic lilies. Outside the window, snow flutters down like pinpricks against the black.

“So this new shrink,” Darren says. “What’s his name?”

Eloise swallows, lowering her fork. “Smith.”

“Who Smith?”

“Peter.”

“Peter Smith. And he’s good?”

She nods twice. Then she asks, “Have the two of you finished packing?”

Darren rolls his eyes. “Not yet. You know how this one is.”

Claire rolls her eyes and asks, “What’s he got you on?”

“Claire,” I warn.

She shrugs. “What?”

Eloise laughs. Her fingers touch the edge of her placemat. “It’s ok, guys. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

We glance at each other, the four of us, and I know we’re thinking the same thing.

Eloise picks up her fork again. We keep eating, our knives chinking against china plates. My pasta crunches through my eardrums. Claire reaches for Darren’s hand and says, “You should see this place we’ve bought. It’s downright gorgeous.”

“You’re very lucky.” Eloise nods. “It’s expensive just to get to Europe.”

“You’re telling me,” Darren replies. “My pay rise will make us up,” Claire says, flicking her hair.

We laugh. Darren pretends to punch her shoulder. “Alright, you can stop bringing it up, now.”

I catch Eloise’s eye. She takes a sip of her wine, smiling into the glass.

We all help clear the table, and Eloise scoops the leftover spaghetti into a container. Ewan smiles. We move to the couch.

Darren rubs his hands together. “Who’s brought the game?”

I reveal Monopoly.

“Good one. We haven’t played since.” He says it just like that, as though it were a complete sentence. No one looks at Eloise.

We play for a while, Claire and Darren hiding their cash from each other. Ewan goes bankrupt first. I take fifties directly from the bank so only Eloise can see. She covers her lips with the back of her hand.

“So, Ewan,” Darren says after he’s slammed down his properties and handed Claire his last twenty. “Tell us about the new car.”

“Oh. I’m getting a new car.”

I smile. Darren rolls his head back.

“I know, but we’re not gonna get to see it before we leave for Paris. You have to tell us about it.”

“I’ll just get something standard. Probably a Swift.”

We all nod.

Ewan wipes his thumb over a red stain on the side of his glass. “It was dumb, not getting another one.”

No one says anything for a moment.

“No,” Claire says eventually. “Of course it wasn’t.”

“It broke down right before it happened. And then afterwards, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“We get it,” I tell him.

Ewan shrugs. He says, “I can’t believe it’s been a year.”

I stare at him. When he doesn’t meet my eye, I look at Eloise. She’s rearranging her skirt in her lap.

“Yeah,” Darren says, slowly.

Ewan knocks his knuckles against the arm of the couch.

“The Swift will be good for you,” Eloise says.

Ewan looks at her and smiles.

Eloise turns to me. “How’s your uncle?”

“Uncle?”

“The one in Norway.”

I frown. “He’s fine. He sent a post card the other week, actually.”

Darren points at me. “I remember him.”

“I’d hope so,” said Claire. “He visited, what, two years ago?”

Eloise wets her lips. “Does he still go up to the tongue?”

“The troll tongue?” I ask. “There are lots of tourists. But he knows the good times to go.”

Claire nods. “The tongue. That’s the rock thing.”

“It’s like a diving board over a mountain range,” I tell her. “It’s supposed to be very beautiful.”

“I’d be too scared.”

“Maybe not.” Eloise is looking out the window, watching the silent sprinkling of snow. “Once you get there, you know. I think instinct would take over.” She clears her throat. “So, anyway. I have something for you all.”

She hands the first one to Darren, then Claire and Ewan. Then me.

“El,” Ewan says. “We can’t…”

“I want you to have them.” She takes Ewan’s bracelet and helps him put it on.

“They’re stunning,” Claire says, already wearing hers. “Thank you.”

I look at my bracelet. There’s green in it, and gold and brown. I remember the colours. I saw them years ago, in a jewellery box tucked in an attic. A box with Eloise’s initials on the lid.

Later, Eloise is the first to say, “I think I’ll be heading off.”

I say I’ll walk her to a cab, and we put on our coats. Down on the street, the lights hang like broken limbs over the road. White freckles appear in Eloise’s hair, and we look up.

The sidewalk glints ahead of us as snowflakes melt on its surface. We can hear traffic through the muted frost.

“So, Dr Smith?”

Eloise doesn’t look at me. “They want that for me. What would you have done?”

I shrug. “Not lied.”

“You don’t know,” Eloise says, and I glance away.

“I guess not.”

“Did your uncle really send you a postcard?”

I laugh. “Yeah.”

“Does he remember me?” Her shoes crunch in the snow. “Does he really know the best time to go to the tongue?”

I stop and look at her.

She exhales a forest of mist. “It was nice with us all together.”

I stare at the sidewalk.

“One last time.”

“I know it’s not the same,” I start, “with only five of us.”

Snow patters down like ashes around us.

“It won’t be the last time. Darren and Claire will visit.”

She looks down the street, where yellow spotlights illuminate the snowfall. I slide my bracelet into her pocket. She turns to me, and I shrug. “You didn’t get to keep one. Have mine.” I’d thought she might protest, but she only smiles.

We reach the traffic. I still have Monopoly tucked under my arm. Eloise says, “Someday, we’ll meet in Norway.”

I blink. Her voice was pleasant, rehearsed. I wait for the right words to come.

She hugs me to her chest, and I put my arms around her. “That’s the dream,” I whisper into her hair.

She holds me tighter.

When she turns to leave, I take her arm. I stare hard into her eyes. “Eloise,” I say.

“Hm?” She’s looking down the street. “Eloise.”

She takes in a breath, and shifts her gaze to me.

I stare for a long moment. Then I let go of her arm. “Get home safe, yeah?”

She smiles again, then I watch her drift down the street. She raises an arm over the road and a cab pulls up beside her. The tyres squelch through the slush and she disappears around the corner. I turn and start walking home.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

M ET AT GOMA 2 1’ PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

River Split Rock Slick

WRITTEN BY ELLIE KADDATZ (BRISBANIA - LIT SALON)

I crossed Coro Drive barefoot and dizzy, clutching at the traffic lights until the signal blinked green. My lips were hot despite the bite of the evening air. I couldn’t stop touching them. I wanted to rip them from my face.

The river was a blur of indigo and brown. I stumbled along the bikeway until I got to the section of bank where the fence ended and I could crawl down to the waterline. I stared at the water, waiting for the tearing pain in my chest to lessen. I’d fucked up a lifetime of secrets and silence in the space of thirty seconds, and I wanted to take the whole night and eat it, swallow it all at once and let it congeal in the black of my guts and never touch it again.

The rocks beneath me bled warmth into my palms the same way Rosie’s hands had. Maybe she wouldn’t even remember in the morning. Hope flashed through me keenly, but I could already feel the alcohol finishing its pilgrimage through my bloodstream. I wouldn’t get the luxury of forgetting.

A CityCat split open the river in front of me. I thought back to Tynealle turning up the music as our guests grew rowdier and Brisbane slipped into its evening wear. If I’d paid attention, I would have been able to hear the city hunkering down, the grumble of Milton Road traffic, the clink of my neighbours’ cutlery on their dinner plates. The fairy lights Rosie had hung up became strings of floating stars, and the yeasty smell of the XXXX Brewery made the air thick and warm and mellow.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

Our house parties were all the same. Alcohol in our bellies, our blood warm and loose. We talked a big talk, but put us together in someone’s yard and ply us with beer and Chicken Twisties and suddenly we’d be content with our broad, nasal accents and inability to make a difference. The only person who would transcend that was Rosie.

It could have been her birthday instead of mine. It could have been her wedding, the way she sparkled. She stood a head taller than everyone at the party, so it made sense that my eyes always found her, and somehow her laugh always snaked its way through the ever-drunker crowd into any conversation I had.

The alcohol had gotten to me. I dropped a wine glass and stood laughing among the shards. Rosie and I laid down on the verandah and leeched warmth from the sun-soaked boards beneath our backs. Dusk slipped away until we sat in a shallow dark that reminded me of biking desperately down dirt roads to my childhood house to get there before night-time, of opening my eyes underwater in murky freshwater creeks, of curlews wailing just out of sight.

Unthinking, I grabbed Rosie’s hand and raised it to my beer-sticky lips. We giggled about Tynealle’s music and gossiped about guests. “I just miss the stars from up home,” she sighed.

I nodded. “We could go camping?”

“Imagine sharing a tent with Tynealle,” she laughed. I said I couldn’t.

“What about us?” she said. “We could share.”

She turned to me. I was drunk — we both were — and trying to focus on her face was dizzying. Still talking, she climbed on top of me.

“I would really want to share,” she whispered, her mouth just below my ear. I was shivering, and her legs were draping and slipping between mine and she was breathy and laughing in my ear and my beer bottle was on the floor and my hand was on her back and her mouth was on mine and she was arching into me, Rosie was arching into me, and a kiss had never been like this — A click in my head. A lock in my chest. I pushed Rosie off me and bolted. And now I was here, freezing and alone, watching ferries and ripples and — a figure on the rocks? Shit.

I moved closer to the dark form, beer-clumsy, breathing hard. Was that a person? Oh God, had someone jumped off the Go-Between? It wasn’t until I was almost next to it that I saw it wasn’t a person. Relief flushed sweetly through me, followed by a vicious drop in my stomach. It wasn’t a person, but it was moving. It wasn’t a person, but it had — an arm? fingers? scales? There was river muck in my gut.

It — the fish, the thing — was slippery, uneven, difficult to comprehend. Water slapped at the rocks, percussive. The rhythmic slap of the runners on the bikeway laid out a steady beat behind me. The world was tilted.

The figure groaned. My shorts ripped as I scrambled backwards along the rocks.

I would look anywhere but at that thing. Look, look down at the shit-brown water. Look at the Grammar students viciously dragging their kayaks through the river. Look at the ripples stretching further and further behind that CityCat. Look anywhere but beside you.

It was no use. My neck creaked as I turned to look at the pulsating pile of flesh.

Never mind fight or flight — I was always all freeze, and I was already aching from holding myself still. The air around the creature throbbed, as if the space it took up was pulsing and churning. It was unbearable. I couldn’t tell if I was just drunk, or genuinely seeing something that shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t exist.

It — the fish, the thing, the monster — stretched a mottled limb out across the rocks towards me. Its skin glinted dully in the redblueorange lights of the city. The creature curled its — fingers? — up at me in a gesture I had seen whenever Tynealle got too pissed to stand. That universal gesture for ‘grab, hold, help’. The thing was half-in, half-out of an abandoned net, the nylon twisted under rocks and held down by something unseen, below the surface. I watched the rocks scrape scales from flesh and claws scrabble at air. My blood was molten.

I grabbed the hand and pulled. There was nothing human in that cold grasp. In that moment, I could have killed someone and been impassive to their gurgles and moans. This was the same feeling that dragged me relentlessly through dating men; the same feeling I’d gotten when my aunt declared, “I don’t care if they date, but they don’t get the same rights as me and my husband.” It was the same feeling I cradled every single day leading up to the same-sex marriage survey. My eyelids were squeezing against my skull. The joints in my hands were popping.

Slick body tore from net, up and out and over, and I was covered in moisture and moss and slime. I fell to the rocks, hard, feeling the skin on my wrists and knees bloom open. Blood mixed with river. I could feel the whole city in my veins.

We were both heaving. Someone slap-slap-slapped down the bikeway. Didn’t they see? Didn’t they see this mass of skin and spikes and scales that had dredged itself up and out of somewhere that didn’t even exist?

Maybe, I thought, I didn’t exist at all.

I Have OCD but My Life is a Mess

WRITTEN BY ELLA BRUMM, AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN INGLE

One of my earliest memories as a child is shrouded in fear and shame. I would stare up at my ceiling fan as I tried to sleep, figuring out the best way to contort my body so I wouldn’t be injured or die in the rare event that the fan would suddenly fall. A loud voice inside my mind would scream at me to move my bed or turn my fan off. So, I listened and turned it off even though it was the middle of summer in Queensland. However, the voice persisted. It shrieked again, telling me to move my bed because even if the fan wasn’t on, the weight would still crush my weak body. So, I complied and moved my bed. The voice was still not satisfied. I eventually became so exhausted from the constant yelling that I will die no matter what I did that I passed out.

In the years following this, I began to wonder if my mind was a little bit different to other people. Intrusive thoughts plagued my everyday life and manifested into irrational rituals. Mundane tasks such as hanging the washing out, showering, washing my hands, and leaving the house would be excruciatingly difficult for me to complete. I would frequently rub my skin raw from frequent washing and would be crippled by the thought of my imminent death if I couldn’t find a peg that matched the colour of my clothes. In school I was constantly late to class because I would spend 20 minutes performing rituals before I ate and the break only lasted for 10.

At 16, I was diagnosed with OCD, and a wave of relief wash over me. While I was worried about what my future would look like, I felt assured, knowing it was a disorder that was hijacking my brain and not who I truly am. My OCD takes the stereotypical form that many people associate with the disorder, including contamination, ordering and checking. However, I also experience intrusive thoughts that I have never felt comfortable sharing because of their shame and guilt. Pop culture and the media tend to trivialise OCD despite affecting 2% of the Australian population.

We see this in the character of Monica Geller in Friends, Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, and celebrities like Khloe Kardashian using the pun KhlO-C-D to refer to her YouTube channel where she shows people how to be more organised. The reality of OCD is not a cute and quirky way of saying you like things to be clean and organised. It’s a debilitating illness that haunts the people who suffer from it.

A show that has acted as a beacon of hope for me is You Can’t Ask That . They recently produced an episode on OCD that delves deeper into the true lived experience of everyday Australians who have the disorder. One participant stood out for me in particular. I had never heard a more raw and honest depiction of the illness, let alone on national TV. Martin Ingle answered each probing question thrown his way with a sense of candour and willingness.

I got in contact with him after I finished watching to express how meaningful it was to hear someone talk about their experience with intrusive thoughts. I sat down with Martin to ask him about his relationship with OCD and how the true lived experience differs from colloquial perception.

What were you like as a child? In later years did you notice any warning signs that you may have OCD?

I was definitely a quiet, shy, and deep-thinking child. Looking back, you can always find evidence whether it’s there or not, but I definitely didn’t have OCD back then - I was just lost in my own world. Perhaps that just set a good foundation for OCD to flourish later!

When did you realise there was something different about your mind?

My OCD started out of nowhere when I was 23. This might be confusing to hear - how can I know when it began so specifically? Honestly, I can break my life into before OCD and after OCD. The difference was huge and obvious. It was like suddenly I had my thoughts, memories, and personality transplanted into a different brain. I was experiencing the same world but using a completely different machine. Some people with OCD can even nail it down to one specific thought that started it! Mine kicked in over a period of a few weeks.

For those people who are unaware of the complexity of OCD, how would you describe it?

I almost don’t like to start by even saying “OCD” because people think they already know what it is, and they switch off. In reality it’s about distressing, unwanted intrusive thoughts. Everyone has these thoughts - maybe I could steer into oncoming traffic, what if I don’t really love my partner, why did I just have a sex dream about a family member -- but someone with OCD gives these unwanted thoughts more meaning and want to do anything they can to make them go away.

These intrusive thoughts can focus on any topic at all. One of those topics can be germs or cleanliness, absolutely - that’s the picture of OCD we know of. But the truth is you can get obsessed with anything. If it upsets you, OCD can latch on to it. It’s often horrible things like harming people or sex or violence. The more you try to make the thoughts go away, the more they come. It’s a vicious cycle.

Some people describe depression as a dark cloud being held over their head, or not being able to climb out of a deep pit. How would you describe OCD in this way?

Oh, I’d describe OCD as feeling sort of drunk on your thoughts, but not in a nice way. It’s very overwhelming and traps everything in its grip. Like quicksand for your thoughts. You can’t escape, particularly the harder you struggle.

Many people assume OCD means frequent hand washing and turning light switches on and off. While these are rituals that fall under types of OCD, they’re not the only forms. How does your OCD manifest?

Totally! Some people with OCD obsess over germs or sickness, so they wash to try to make the thoughts go away. My intrusive thoughts are mainly about sexual topics. I’m afraid I could secretly be dangerous or sexually perverted - so secretly that I don’t even know it myself. I’m constantly on the lookout for internal evidence that this might be true so that I can protect the world from myself. This is fucking torture to experience, and even more difficult to talk about it publicly - like here!

They call this sort of OCD “Pure O”. It’s exactly the same as a person with OCD who obsesses over germs, but the compulsion isn’t visible like washing is. It all happens in my head. From the outside you wouldn’t know anything was wrong at all.

It’s really important to make clear that whatever your intrusive thoughts are, they are 100% unwanted. People who have unwanted thoughts about sex or violence don’t get pleasure from them any more than someone afraid of germs gets pleasure from theirs. It’s actually the opposite: people with OCD who obsess about a topic want to do anything they can to get away from it. They are the least likely people to get sick and the least likely to be dangerous; because they worry about it so damn much.

For myself, I felt a sense of relief when I was diagnosed with OCD as it helped me recognise that my thoughts and behaviours weren’t my own, they were a disorder. How did you feel when you were diagnosed?

There’s a great scene in a 2019 UK show called Pure (it’s on Stan) where the main character finally discovers she has OCD and realises that she isn’t actually dangerous and breaks down crying in a library. To learn your intrusive thoughts are uncontrollable and not your fault is such a gift, and I reckon most people with ‘Pure O’ remember this moment. The problem is many people still don’t know that this type of OCD exists, which means there are so many people silently suffering. There are people all around us with OCD who have no idea they have OCD. They think they are secretly dangerous, and so they’re too terrified to tell anyone about their thoughts. I know these people exist because I was one of them.

In the You Can’t Ask That episode on OCD, you said, “if someone could guarantee me that if I chopped off my own arm, I would never experience OCD again, I would go into the kitchen right now and do it”. Do you think the general public is aware of how damaging OCD is for the people suffering with it?

I actually heard a guy with OCD in a doco say that a few years ago; I instantly knew I would do the same thing. Another cliche is to say, “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy”, but I truly wouldn’t. I think people are vaguely aware that OCD can affect your life; they just don’t know the full extent of the damage. They don’t know the true face of OCD. At my worst, it grew and infected every part of my life: I couldn’t work, I could hardly sleep, I couldn’t even go to the toilet. It’s there at every moment of every day.

How would you describe the difference between anxiety and OCD?

I had general anxiety before OCD - anxiety attacks, nausea and stuff - so, in the beginning, I assumed the OCD was just an extreme version of that. The difference between my anxiety and my obsessive intrusive thoughts was so extreme you almost can’t compare, though. There’s really nothing I could have told my past self that would have prepared me for what I was about to experience after OCD hit. For me, it is anxiety but 1000x worse. How does your OCD affect your social and romantic life?

OCD grew to affect every single part of my life, but the worst impacted was my romantic and sex life, without a doubt. I was so terrified of getting a disgusting, intrusive thought that I went about six years without masturbating - and a couple of those without any sexual release at all. I was basically celibate by choice, not because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t stand to be alone with my own brain. I was too terrified of what thoughts it might throw me next.

Trying to date with this kind of OCD is next to impossible, too. You obviously can’t tell your partner about it because it’s too shocking - and that’s even if you’re lucky enough to know you have OCD in the first place.

Rose Cartwright talks about the darkness of living undiagnosed with this kind of OCD as feeling like you have a body buried in your backyard and nobody knows except you. You are expected to go on living life normally—reading the daily paper, going to work, taking a lunch break, calling your mother—you are doing all these really mundane or perhaps even enjoyable things, all while this body is buried in your backyard.

You feel like an imposter. Maybe you are that guy who moves to a small town, and everybody thinks it is really nice until they discover he was a serial killer on the run and skinned cats in his bathtub while singing Wagner or something. You fear that is you. And you despise it. But you can’t stop thinking it.

How does it affect your study and work?

When I was at my worst, I hardly worked at all. I chewed through all my savings, going to extra psychologist appointments and buying food out because I couldn’t prepare anything in my own kitchen. I know I lost loads of work because I missed deadlines or meetings, sometimes with no explanation at all.

Once, I turned up to a meeting two hours late because I was at home, over the sink, gouging under my fingernails with a butter knife because I thought there could be some remnants of my semen or “dick germs” under there, and I didn’t want to spread that out in the world because to me that would essentially be immoral. Like I was sexually assaulting people, or worse - that I might be getting secret pleasure out of it. And that’s just one example!

The fear is the most haunting thing to you, and you’d do anything to make it go away. So, of course, you sacrifice your health, your looks, your job, everything. I washed my penis so much my foreskin started to peel back and bleed. I chose to do this to myself rather than have my fears come true. So yeah, everything in your life takes a back seat to OCD.

Do you try to conceal your OCD from people around you? If so, why? Alternatively, do you feel like you have to pre-emptively warn people of your OCD so you can explain your behaviours/thoughts?

I don’t conceal OCD anymore. OCD is hard enough to deal with on its own. To add the pressure of having to hide it from people is too much of a burden for me. Being honest about it is a weight off my shoulders and means I can focus on the actual illness, not trying to hide the illness.

It’s like a mushroom or a fungus that grows more in the dark.

For me keeping it secret kept feeding it. So, what if I did the opposite? What if I made my greatest weakness, the thing I am most ashamed of, my greatest strength? When I did that, I learned there was really nothing to fear. Your OCD wants you to stay silent because it knows that makes it stronger.

How do you feel when people say they’re ‘a little OCD’ because they like to be organised and clean?

I know a lot of OCD folk who hate it when people say they’re a little OCD. I definitely think you should never say that to someone with OCD - it’s very hurtful. I feel when people say things like that, it’s mostly out of ignorance, so I don’t hold it against people. I probably said things like that before I got OCD. It’s not their fault; they just don’t know what OCD really is.

Of course, if you read this and know better and still choose to say shit like that, then you’re a fuckwit, for sure, so pull your head in.

What is your relationship with recovery? Have you found anything that has helped you to manage your symptoms?

There are many things I’ve tried, but nothing worked as well as therapy (and medication). Meds can take the stickiness out of thoughts a little bit and give you the confidence to tackle therapy. The main therapy for OCD is called Exposure with Response Prevention (ERP), and it more or less involves exposing yourself to your fears without doing the compulsion to make them go away. You keep doing this until you aren’t afraid anymore. This therapy is torturous and easy to get wrong if you don’t work with a therapist who knows what they’re doing, but it’s amazing when you feel your brain start to change.

Of course, mostly, it’s about managing the OCD every day rather than curing it. I’ve accepted that I’ll probably live with it forever, and that’s most people’s journey too. It’s a chronic condition, and recovery looks like figuring out how to live in spite of it, not without it.

If you could leave the readers with one thing, what would you want them to know?

To say OCD is about a compulsion like washing your hands is like saying the flu is about blowing your nose.

We all have a brain, and we all have thoughts. People with OCD are like the canary in the coalmine of thoughts. Our brains force us to go to extreme places that are actually relevant to everyone, but most people have the luxury of not worrying about. Everyone has intrusive thoughts, so I strongly believe this stuff is relevant to everyone with a brain.

I really like talking to people about their thoughts because most people believe whatever their brain throws at them. We’re taught to believe our thoughts. OCD teaches me that thoughts are actually pretty meaningless, life is chaotic, and there is no control. Someone with OCD accepts this every day, but we actually all have to, to live a life worth living at all.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 28th of May 2021

An Interview with Olympian and QUT Student Jack McLouhglin

WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA SIMONOSKI

After watching the (belated) 2020 Olympic & Paralympic Summer Games in Tokyo earlier this year, it was hard to miss the sheer number of Australian (and QUT) Athletes making an impression on the world's greatest stage.

One such swimmer and Olympian is Jack McLoughlin, who won a Silver Medal in the Men’s 400 Metre Freestyle in Tokyo. He is one of the many QUT elite athletes who not only highlighted our uni's elite athlete program, but the outstanding achievements young Aussie athletes are making while also managing to study!

I chatted with Jack about his training, post-Olympics reflections, and how he manages a healthy work, life and study balance in one of the most competitive sports in Australia - let alone the world. Here are some of the key lessons I learned from talking to Jack about living a competitive lifestyle while juggling university and career aspirations.

Find Your Balance

After talking to Jack, the first thing I thought was, "damn, this is a person who has truly mastered the art of time management." He refers to this skill as a triangle, balancing training, study and social life equally.

It's not something I personally considered when it came to time management and performing at my best academically; picturing it as learning the art of balance has been quite eye-opening and a fresh new perspective on approaching my study, career goals, and social life.

Pick Your Battles

Another lesson I learned from Jack was that even elite athletes pick their battles. In Jack's case, it more specifically referred to prioritising medalling in the 400m free rather than putting all his eggs in one basket with 1500m freestyle races.

It's not a matter of whether or not he could do well in 1500m – he knows he probably could, but was selective and strategic about balancing and putting the right amount of time, effort, and training into a race where he knew for sure he could get a medal.

I relate to this a lot but in a more academic than competitive sense. I'm one of those people who often doesn't know when to say no to projects and tries to put 100% into every assessment. If I picked my battles better, I'd be a lot prouder of my results in the future.

Plan Your Rest

Something that stood out a lot to me was how Jack talked about rest being an integral part of his training as an athlete and a factor when coming back from the Olympics. It was just jumping straight back into study or training again.

We probably can't expect the uni to start granting us extensions for rest days, but we can schedule time for it ourselves. I know, easier said than done.

I don't know about you, but I think it's safe to assume the average, non-Olympic, student probably spends a lot of sleepless nights studying, working, and crashing after exams or assessments. For Jack, this just isn't the case; he has a regimen for every facet of his life and planning essential rest is a big part of that routine.

Chatting to Jack was a fantastic experience; these are just a few of the anecdotes that stood out to me. Jack is not only an outstanding athlete but also a humble and inspiring person when it comes to life and study.

The Glass team and I extend a massive congratulations to Jack and all our QUT Athletes, who we were lucky enough to have represented Australia and our University on a global stage.

If you’d like to find out more specific reflections and insights from Jack, check out the full interview transcript at qutglass.com.

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 18th of October 2021

Going Back

WRITTEN BY GRACE HAMMOND

The first time, it happened like this: “I think I’m taking the offer.”

I looked at you. “That’s your decision?”

“I guess it is.”

The cars whispered past us on the light-streaked street. Rain pattered into our hair.

I said, “You know what will happen, then.”

You replied, “I know.”

I went home alone.

Two days later, it was the third of June. I woke up by myself and made toast. I took the tram to work. I laid on my couch until I couldn’t stand it. The closet drawer was empty when I changed for bed and your book was gone from the night stand when I laid down.

The next day, I did it all again. And the next. Days seeped quietly into months. Time was supposed to be the cure, but the longer I went without you the more my organs dislodged; my heart and lungs and eyes drifting into vacancy. It wasn’t getting better. So I went back.

The second time, it was this: “I think I’m going to take the offer.”

I didn’t pause. “I’ll go with you.”

Both of us were gone, together, by the third of June. We packed our lives into suitcases and flew across the country. We slept in the same bed and made pancakes on Saturdays. We watched movies and filled your bookshelves. But mostly, more than anything, you worshipped your nine to five while I haunted our apartment. There were no jobs for me in this city. I lived inside four walls, surrounded by your scent, your clothes, your financial support. I stared at television screens and hated myself. I told you I couldn’t stay.

The third time, we tried to stay together. Days were crowded trams, empty bedsheets, buttered halves of toast. Nights were video calls and sitcom laughing tracks. It was wrong. The closet drawer was still bare, your books still missing. Your voice wasn’t enough. I spent months, years stretching it into something I could live with. But I couldn’t, and I couldn’t leave. So I went back.

The next time was different. You said, “I think I’m going to take the offer.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am, actually.”

“You know I can’t leave.”

“I know that.”

“And you know I want you.”

You put your hands in your pockets. “Yes.”

“Stay. Please.”

“You want me to?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to give this up?”

“I want to be with you.”

“You said you wanted whatever I wanted.”

“That was before you chose this over me.”

You looked at me then. I still remember your expression. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“When you strip it down.”

“Please don’t be selfish now.”

“You are being selfish.”

You were still for a moment. The traffic lights played ping pong while the rain fell like frost.

You walked away from me.

I went home alone.

So I went back. Again. And again.

You said, “I think I’m going to take the offer.”

I replied, “I don’t want you to.”

I replied, “Please don’t go.”

I replied, “That ridiculous job?”

I replied, “You are the one who’s tearing us apart.”

Then you would leave. With or without me. There was no combination of words that could make you stay. So I went back. The last time, it happened like this: “I think I’m taking the offer.”

I looked at you. “That’s your decision?”

“I guess it is.”

The cars whispered past us on the light-streaked street. Rain pattered into our hair.

I said, “You know what will happen, then.”

You replied, “I know.”

I went home alone.

This story was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 28th of May 2021

Grace is a Brisbane-based writer studying Creative Writing. She is part of the ScratchThat team, where some of her own work has appeared. She was included in last year’s Literary Salon Collection, and is currently working on a young adult novel set in the Gold Coast hinterlands. While her writing tends to skip haphazardly across genres, it’s unlikely she’ll ever write something that isn’t a little bit creepy.

A Better Blended Learning Approach in Universities is Sorely Needed

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA BRUMM

The hasty transition to online learning last year utterly destabilised university life. For many sandstone institutions, it was largely uncharted territory. However, the Queensland University of Technology seemed better positioned than most for a smooth transfer to online delivery; after all, it was quite literally in the name. Despite this, the lack of sophistication of QUT’s digital learning platforms caused significant roadblocks. By the end of the year, it was abundantly clear that many students were fatigued with distanced education. They wanted to return to their pre-covid university life as soon as possible.

In a conversation with an ABC radio presenter late last year, the ViceChancellor of my university QUT spoke of her wish to return to face to face learning, full lecture halls and a bustling and vibrant campus. Then earlier this year, QLD Health announced that on-campus activities could return at full capacity with appropriate tracing precautions, finally allowing students to come back to campus for O-week.

Unfortunately, that dream was shortlived. In week one, many students once again had their first introduction to the teaching semester from behind a computer screen, unable to secure an on-campus tutorial or lecture spot amidst the chaos of the class registration process. Despite the green light from QLD health and

the initial enthusiasm by the university administration, the move to transition more and more content online has shown no sign of slowing down.

One of the first major casualties of this change in direction was the traditional face-to-face lecture, quickly replaced by pre-recorded podcasts. The increasing use of podcasts as a primary form of content delivery was flagged as an issue by students last year. Often shorter than a traditional lecture, podcasts provide no opportunity for interactive learning and are often recycled from semester to semester leading to complaints that the content is outdated or irrelevant. In a few instances, podcast recordings made mention of current news events from years ago. In others, a date stamp of the wrong year on the first slide was a blatant sign that the content was recycled. Although podcasts can be valuable in reinforcing important information from interactive lectures, they are not designed to be the primary source of information delivery for a university unit.

Slightly more overt than the move toward podcasts is the rise of the ‘lectorial’. A combination of a traditional lecture and tutorial rolled into one neat cost-efficient bundle. The rationale for this move from QUT’s perspective was to allow flexibility to continue to offer courses with smaller uptakes. The reality was that many students wouldn’t know if the unit they’d

chosen had less than half of the regular contact hours until after they’d already enrolled. Units that previously had a two-hour weekly lecture followed by an hour and a half tutorial class suddenly only had one opportunity each week for students to engage with their tutors on course content. It’s even more difficult if that one opportunity is online through a zoom class with 30-35 other students. Sitting in front of a screen can be a lonely and isolating way to learn, particularly if it’s your first year at university.

The response from the university administration has been to argue that most students want to learn online, and in any case, physical classes aren’t well attended after the beginning of the semester anyway. This argument sidesteps the central point entirely. What the majority of students want is a flexible approach to learning that provides sufficient on-campus and online classes. In other words, what students want are options. Options that reflect the depths and breadth of diversity within our student body. Not sacrificing the learning opportunities of one student for that of another. We all learn differently, and including options for online delivery is undoubtedly essential for increasing the accessibility of education. But replacing traditional learning methods with a predominately online model jeopardises the most important aspects

This article was originally published online at qutglass.com on the 3rd of June 2021

of our education: synchronous learning and social engagement. By simply moving existing content online, universities risk retaining the worst parts of passive learning by transposing them into an even more detached and less interactive virtual environment. How many students will be left behind in this transition? What about mature aged students with less technological literacy? Or those with disabilities? How about visual learners and students who struggle to form connections without the opportunity to be immersed on campus with their peers?

The reality is that for many students, online-only learning is not innovative; it’s regressive. This issue was brought to the forefront during the COVID lockdowns last year when campuses were shut, and the hasty transition to online learning left many students in the dust. At the end of last year, the industry standards and quality assurance regulator TEQSA released a report based on feedback surveys from 118 universities. The report found that between 33%-50% of students were unhappy with online learning in semester one. A significant proportion of those surveyed stated that they ‘did not wish to ever experience remote learning again’. Particular issues cited included a lack of engagement, isolation from their peers, less interaction and consultations with teachers, as well as an overall decrease

in motivation. All of these issues were mirrored in the responses provided by QUT students.

However, a lot has changed in the space of a year. Australia has settled into a cautious new normal with case numbers consistently low. So why are our universities digging their heels in? Well, my guess is money. Or more precisely, lack of it. But it appears some universities are being more transparent about their motives for a permanent push towards online delivery than others.

Over the past few months, universities in other parts of the country have announced their plans to continue with the transition towards online-only learning. Victoria University has confirmed that the majority of its courses will continue to be delivered digitally. Curtin has unveiled a proposal which plans to move all lectures online by the end of the year while Murdoch’s COO has publicly said that he believes that ‘the face-to-face mass lecture’ is all but dead. Meanwhile, QUT’s administration has attempted to quell the growing unrest amongst the student body by promising that face to face content delivery is still a priority, all while outsourcing more and more of our education to private corporations specialising in online delivery like OES. QUT initially partnered with OES in 2018 to increase flexibility for students

and expand its online offering. However, the disruption caused by the pandemic increased the demand for services resulting in more content being pushed online, stripping academics of their autonomy and turning them into glorified podcasters in the process.

The trickle-down effect on the quality of learning and teaching students are experiencing is devastating. When our universities see themselves as businesses first and education institutions second, students and academics suffer. Podcasts, lectorials, ballooning class sizes and reduced consultation hours are not hallmarks of a world-class education. Relying on casualisation and outsourcing as a way of coping with financial stress and funding cuts jeopardises the quality of students’ educations, the career opportunities of our graduates and the livelihoods of academics.

For online content delivery to even come close to rivalling the traditional university learning experience, universities must adopt a blended and flexible approach and utilise appropriate and sophisticated technology in furtherance of this aim. Something that the Queensland University of Technology is ironically lacking.

Olivia Brumm is the 2021 QUT Guild President.

Boys on Trains

‘Have you got gonorrhoea?’ Is one of the many questions he could have asked you today. Instead, he opts for learning absolutely nothing about you before leading you into his bedroom.

The sun is up when you both lay down on his bed to watch TV. By the time the sun sets, nothing has changed. You barely talk through two episodes of House Hunters International. By the time regular House Hunters starts, speaking feels so far removed from possibility that you can’t think of a single thing to say to him. The four episode Friends marathon sucks the life from every periodic “yes I’m still here” giggle you can muster, to the point where the succeeding four episode Seinfeld marathon (a show you know and love) makes genuine laughter seem out of place.

He gets to lean against some pillows while you sit uncomfortably on the bed corner. Your bones are fucked. Hours and hours and hours of this. You stifle delirious laughs at Elaine’s expense, becoming trapped in roiling waves of silent laughter. Tears stream from your eyes. Because this is so funny isn’t it? Absolutely HILARIOUS. Episodes of old comedy shows and breaking news alerts pass-by like sands through the hour glass – the days of our lives – painful and tedious. Until finally – something! He gets up and adjusts the blanket. However it happens, you’re laying side by side now, still watching the TV. You’re beginning to feel the life drain out of you and into the floor in search for hell below.

WRITTEN BY JACKSON MACHADO

But there’s hope now.

The fire within you that desired so badly to fold perfectly into his arms when this date started is back.

Over the next episode of Barnwood Builders, you slowly inch your hand toward his. With one finger, you push against his nail (quite pathetically), begging him to meet you halfway and save you from the blisteringly boring night it’s been. The TV announces that a show called Best Of Postcards is about to begin and something snaps within you. You resort to lightly brushing his fingers with your fingertips like an annoying, lonely child. He moves, and you catch his eyes. He tries to cover a large smile with his pillow.

He’s nervous. Omg. I thought he was just made of fucking STONE. He slides his hand into yours.

The sun had set, but it begins to rise again.

Hours on this bed. But only now - straddling his hips, underwear against underwear – do you feel truly together.

His hands move from your waist, to your hips, to your thighs. You kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his nose.

You kiss his lips for the first time. Kissing is always so fantastic in your head. Movies don’t prepare you for the feeling of a human skull against your own. A human jaw against yours. He kisses you back, but out of nowhere there’s too much passion. Lust, and far too sudden.

You spend a while gliding your fingertips over his arms, his shoulders, his neck, his chest.

Once you feel you’ve memorised his frame - you rest your head on his shoulder. You close your eyes.

Your eyes are still closed as you slip into wakeness. You feel his shoulder beneath your neck, and it’s wet.

Ew, I was drooling.

You quickly but softly wipe your saliva from his shoulder. He doesn’t stir, thankfully.

How odd you feel.

A boy you don’t know (because let’s face it, you don’t know him). A boy that’s hardly even been nice to you. He hasn’t been horrible, or even mean. But he’s really made no effort to try and learn anything about you, or to understand you. Yet, it’s like with him you get to feel something you never get to feel. He has something

that you have no access to without him. Him. It may be the only thing about him that you’ll ever come to truly value.

If there’s a word for it, you don’t know it. It’s just that boy thing.

That magnetism. That thing beneath their warm skin that makes you want to press yourself against them for the rest of your life. That thing that courses through the veins in their arms when they flex, and their lips and their cheeks when they blush.

You want to find it - spot it crawling up his arm (like a scarab from those Mummy movies), and cut it out of him. Just to ask it some questions, like

Why were you given to all the boys but me? He doesn’t walk you out.

You leave his house. You walk straight to the 7-11 down the roadand buy the biggest Kit-Kat you can find.

This article was originally published in Issue 11, Reset

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAM HOPE

On Community, Safe Spaces, and Art: The QUT Guild Queer Lounge

WRITTEN BY EMILY READMAN

The QUT Guild Queer Lounge was refurbished in 2020, and is now becoming a safe space for more students as COVID-19 restrictions ease. Glass sat down with three of the people involved in this upgrade of the space and the community that has formed around it.

Julian Trueman: QUT Guild Queer Collective Convener

What is the Queer Collective and what does it stand for?

The Queer Collective is a group on campus that brings together LGBT+ students from QUT, giving us a place to spend time with others just like us. It can be hard knowing what to do with yourself when you come to university, particularly for people who’ve moved from a place where they were the only queer person they knew. The Collective provides a place where we can really find our roots in our community and connect with others around us.

How has the reception been for the refurbished Queer Room so far, and what are your hopes for the space in 2021?

The new Queer Lounge has gone down a treat! It’s such a welcoming space, and it’s already proven to be a brilliant atmosphere whether having a study day or hanging out and having fun with other queer people. I’d love to see more people finding a home in the Queer Lounge in 2021, and hopefully as the handling of COVID-19 improves we’ll see the Queer Lounge become a comfortable hub for our community.

Samuel Leighton-Dore: Queer Room Muralist

What does it mean to you to have your art on the walls of a safe space for QUT students?

I didn’t have a lot of queer specific safe spaces growing up, so the fact that they exist represents how far we’ve come in such a short period of time. To be able to lend my work to making the QUT space feel warm and welcoming for all members of the LGBTIQ+ community is a particularly special thing for me. What considerations went through your mind when making the mural?

I had to be mindful of making a work that people could see themselves in, which meant not being too specific with my characterisations and leaving room for the imagination. That’s part of the reason behind choosing to do line work, rather than full colour, and creating a bit of a fantastical, nonsensical landscape that (hopefully) everyone feels welcome to inhabit.

Amy

Sargeant:

QUT Guild Queer Officer

What does the existence of dedicated queer safe-spaces on campus represent for LGBTQIA+ students?

Yeah, good question. The common (and worn out) joke is “Well where’s the straight room?”. The reality is that as queer people, we don’t feel safe in all spaces at all times - because of our choice to live as our authentic selves. The reality too is that our openness as a minority means communal safe spaces are necessary, important resources to foster relationships, hold events and embrace our queer identities. Our queer rooms are spaces where students can be unapologetically queer without fear of retribution or judgement.

Beyond the Guild queer spaces, what other avenues are available to LGBTQIA+ QUT students to help them find community at university?

Our QUT Guild Queer Collective is thriving right now - as far as I’m concerned, any queer student who hasn’t gotten involved yet is missing out! We’ve got so much planned for all facets of our community in 2021. You can find us on Facebook at QUT Guild Queer Collective.

Since these interviews took place, the QUT Guild has officially opened a dedicated Queer space at the Garden’s Point campus, with a Women’s soon to follow. The Garden’s Point Queer Space can be found at X-204, and the new Women’s Space will be coming soon right next door.

This article was originally published in Issue 11, Reset

Gossip Glass is your one-stop-shop for all campus confessions, gossip, and advice. Subscribe to the Glass newsletter today, and keep up with Gossip Glass.

Here are our favourites from 2021.

Rants

So, one of my friends at uni is going through a hard time. And because of the intense nature of my course, we have to be aware of everyone’s feelings all the time so we don’t trigger anything. So, we check in every day. Lately he’s been checking in with really low numbers out of 10, like 3s and 4s. This is all fine and we all are here to support him. But after he checks in, he says “so if I’m more short than usual, that’s why”. This is 100% not the point of the check ins. They’re not a vehicle for excusing poor behaviour, which is what he’s engaging in. The other day he and one of the other guys had a small disagreement and he came back at him like “Oh yeah? Well, you often say shit that doesn’t land and then we all go away and laugh at you behind your back”. SUCH a low blow. Anyway, he’s basically making his bad mood everyone’s bad mood which is so not it. What the heck do we do? – H

Gossip Glass: 1:30pm – Life is too short to put up with whiny soft bois who think showing emotion means they get a free pass to treat others like shit. Cut em lose. Snip Snip Snip.

7:30pm (after a glass of red and a bubble bath) –*glug* *glug* *glug* This friend clearly has a lot going on and doesn’t know how to properly deal with it. It’s understandably hard to remain empathetic towards someone who is taking out their frustrations on you. Some ideas that could help when interacting with this friend:

Talk openly to him about the issues you have with how he interacts with you and your friends

Approach the issue in a balanced way that isn’t emotive so he doesn’t feel attacked

Let him know that you’re there for support but you need to look after yourself first

Gossip

An ode to my roommate

You are so frustrating

You never clean the apartment You always micromanage And you always leave your greasy frypan on the stove

You are so overbearing You don’t know how to share I think you’d probably vote for Trump And you need 24 hours’ notice on literally everything

You are an only child Which I use to explain everything But that isn’t really an excuse

For your ever-present nagging in my life I promise I do love you But I can really use some space But I see you every day

At the University degree that we study – P

Gossip Glass: Yikes, you better play your cards right otherwise some fresh 18-year-old army boy will snap your roommate right up.

Let them know that you’re there for support but you need to look after yourself first

Are you the asshole?

I (22NB) opened up to a close friend (22M) about a dark habit of mine. For context, we’ve been friends for a long time and we’ve both been there for each other through serious situations: i.e., health crises, final exams and family drama. I trust and love him unconditionally –– and, to be honest, I expected the same in return.

So, you can imagine my genuine heart break, when after I revealed my secret shame, he’s stopped replying to my Facebook (and Instagram!) tags and, in reply, told me “you’re a sick fuck”. Truthfully, I did not expect this from him.

I told him that once I decided to shit in the Gardens Point Library and not flush, just to trap the next person in the stall with my shit. It’s not like I got sexual gratification out of it, I’m just a proud pooper and wanted to share that with someone else. It was funny, and I guess it was gross. But it was ONE TIME! It’s not like I posted a picture of it with a caption “this is my shit, it is large and stinky, and I’m not getting enough fibre!” Anyway, I think my friend is the asshole for not talking to me anymore over this. Like, it’s not that big a deal. It’s been two years :(

Am I the asshole here?

– J

Gossip Glass: Everyone sucks here. Yes, pooping and not flushing is quite icky and I feel sorry for that poor innocent person who was trapped in there after you but your friend should definitely be more forgiving. Can he honestly say that that thought has never crossed his mind?

I genuinely cannot even believe I am writing this but something has gotten so under my skin and I would honestly take validation from anywhere.

So my boyfriend and I had a bit of a tiff. We went to see the new Black Widow movie (I didn’t mind it but I don’t really watch those movies as much as him) and when we got out it was dark. He doesn’t live far from the theatre so we were just going to walk to his place. On the way there’s this little public bathroom across the road from the main shopping complex, and I had to pee pretty bad. He decided to go as well, but for some reason was taking a while and I was a little uncomfortable standing out in the dark by myself.

Basically, a big guy in a hoodie was walking towards me (I know, probably to use the bathroom, but still ugh). I was a bit creeped out and alone so I crossed the road and waited for my boyfriend on the other side (where the shopping centre is).

On the walk home he asked me why I’d been waiting over there and I told him. But here’s where it gets stupid. Instead of agreeing with me, he got mad at me!? And he said it was so sexist to avoid men just because their vibe was off.

Anyway, we’ve been arguing all day and most of our friends agree with him. Am I going crazy?

– M

Gossip Glass: WOW. You! Are! Not! Crazy! First of all, sexism towards men does not exist. I’m sure many MRA will be gouging their eyes out at that but sue me, it’s fact. The oppressor I.e., m*n can’t be oppressed by the oppressed I.e., women. Makes no sense. So, no what you did is not ‘sexist’ to men. That big dude probably didn’t even notice tbh. As women I reserve the right to walk away from men or do anything that makes me feel safer from them if I feel uncomfortable even if they don’t have bad intentions because there’s no way of us knowing that until it’s too late. Furthermore, just from my own experience, if it’s late at night and I’m out with my boyfriend, if I need to go to the toilet, he’ll wait outside for me until I come out and he’ll just hold it if he needs to go. I mean that’s just basic courtesy considering men can pee in any vacant bush too.

TRIGGER WARNING, lost/dead animal

Over the winter break, I (20M) was asked to house sit for about two weeks for some friends of my parents. This involved standard housework; feeding their pets (two cats), some basic gardening, taking out their rubbish and generally just keeping an eye on the place (they are very security-conscious despite owning a pretty rundown-looking house). For context, they have two young children (boy and girl) whom I babysit every now and then, so I am quite well-acquainted with the family, their pets and the layout of the house.

Anyway, despite keeping their cats indoors for the first year of their life, they had recently started letting them go outside to explore during the day. So as part of my housework I was to feed the cats first thing in the morning, open a side-door just enough to let them get in and out, and then feed them again in the evening, where I was told they would return by themselves and then lock them inside for the night.

For the first week everything was dandy, I’d feed them, let them out and they would be waiting inside when I returned to feed them at night. However, on Friday (the family was due back the following Thursday), one of the cats had not returned. I waited until 11pm and it still had not come in, so, thinking it would return in the morning or when it got hungry, I closed up the house.

The cat did not return for the following few nights either. Getting worried I texted the family explaining the situation, but they didn’t seem too upset and said it wasn’t unusual for that particular cat to be gone a couple of days at a time (someone else must have been feeding it). Anyway, the following night, same deal.

Then a few days later I got in my car and just as I was driving home I hit a small bump; I knew almost immediately what it was. Jumping out of my car I looked under my front tyre and sure enough, there was the other cat, essentially laid out and mangled; but still breathing. Naturally I was upset, but I could also see the cat was in a lot of pain. I didn’t know what to do and didn’t want to know feeling of putting an animal out of its misery with my bare hands, so I got back in the car and reversed over it.

At this point I was distraught, but also didn’t know what to tell the family (bear in mind it was about 11:30pm at this point) so I wouldn’t be able to call them until the morning and I would also be required to store the cat’s body somewhere. The logistics of this weren’t something I was prepared to deal with at that moment so I threw the cat into the bin. When I returned the next day, the rubbish bin had been emptied and I had more or less gotten away with it. However, over the last week, my guilt has started to mount, and the family texted me today to ask if the cat had come home since I had last messaged them, I didn’t have the heart to tell them I killed their cat and denied it a proper burial so I just apologised and said I hadn’t seen it.

AITA?

Gossip Glass: You’re the asshole.

What a bitch gotta do?

This isn’t really a lockdown story, but it was a time I had to put my bitch pants on.

CONTEXT: I study music and an important part of my work is rehearsing and recording. Luckily, at QUT we have some of the best facilities available for recording.

When I was in first year (now fourth) I booked a space in Z9 to do my work. It was a two hour booking from 7 PM, and I was a little bit stressed because I was already running late. It takes a long time to make the magic happen and I didn’t want to waste any. But to my surprise, when I got to the room it was already occupied.

We’ve all been there before - you book a room and someone else takes it. Ugh. So annoying. I don’t know if it was the stress, the fact I hadn’t eaten all day, or the knowledge of my impending deadlines, but I was at the end of wits with this idiot. So I knocked on the door.

A big guy with curly hair opened the door and told me to please not disturb them. Like, SERIOUSLY? Dude, I’ve booked the room! I told him I had a booking and he just looked at me confused. I showed him the booking on my phone and he just stared at it, then looked up and told me to give him a second. He then closed the door and disappeared. When the door opened again he apologised and walked out sheepishly, followed by at least three or four other guys.

At this point I was wondering what on earth was going on. Who could have the AUDACITY to fuck over a first year? Who would be that ENTITLED?

Then she walked out: tall, blonde - as seen on The Voice, Neighbours, Australian Idol, etc. Her jaw was practically on the floor with disbelief that she had been kicked out by a fucking kid.

And that’s the story of the time I kicked Delta Goodrem out of a recording studio. Apparently it was a So Good milk ad that never got made. QUT staff apologised and thanked me because they’d been trying to get her to leave for nearly an hour, but she just kept throwing wine down.

Anyway, I got a 7. Bitch gotta do what a bitch gotta do. Subscribe to the Glass Newsl etter

HOROSCOPE

There is a cute little Sagittarius for you just around the corner.

Be kind to the people causing you stress, but don’t forget to take care of yourself.

21 MAR - 19 APR 23 JULY - 22 AUG 22 NOV - 21 DEC

Stay away from Aries at all cost.

Stop overworking yourself and then blaming everyone else for your burn out.

You might be physically under the weather, but mentally you’re flying high

20 APR - 20 MAY 23 AUG - 22 SEP 21 DEC - 20 JAN

An old friend seems suddenly different to you. A new romance, or is this relationship too much?

You have a trip in your future. Overseas or down some steps – who’s to say?

That high horse you’re on: get off it and put it in the stable. Yee-haw.

21 MAY - 20 JUNE 23 SEP - 22 OCT 21 JAN - 18 FEB

Stop exerting yourself so much. No wonder you barely have time to think.

Everything’s in retrograde babe, just stay inside

Never stop expanding your knowledge, even in the face of pressure.

21 JUNE - 22 JULY 23 OCT - 21 NOV 19 FEB - 20 MAR

Nothing is forever, and feelings change. Take as much time as you need to be your best self.

Editors

Em Readman

Ella Brumm

Tom Loudon

Christina Simonoski

Graphic Designer

May Lyn Chew

Contributors

Aimee Yarrow

Alex Rich

Christina Simonoski

Ciaran Greig

Ella Brumm

Ellie Kaddatz

Em Readman

Emma Nayfie

Grace Hammond

Jackson Machado

Jak Kirwin

Julienne Pancho

May Lyn Chew

Olivia Brumm

Pipier Weller

Ronia Garrett-Benson

Sam Hope

Samuel Maguire

Tom Loudon

We love celebrating and publishing the work of QUT Students and Alumni. Our online submissions are always open and our print edition submissions open as advertised. You can find information about the submission themes and how to submit to Glass on our website, qutglass.com/submit, or our Facebook page @qutguildnewspaper.

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