CATALYST: 'PLEASURE', Issue 1, Volume 79

PLEASURE

What is “pleasure”?

Pleasure is defined by a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment, used or intended for entertainment rather than business and to give sexual enjoyment or satisfaction to.

It is very sensual and intimate to talk about, but that’s why we want to share. Bring the most intimate parts of ourselves to light and celebrate them!

For each individual this topic may ring differently, and that’s ok! We want to celebrate these differences and continue to learn how to pleasure ourselves.

Contributions.

Catalyst Issue 01 2023

Established in 1944

Contact catalyst@rmit.edu.au

RMIT Media Collective, RMIT City Campus, Building 12, Level 3, Room 97

Printer

Printgraphics Pty Ltd 14 Hardner Road, Mount Waverley, Victoria 3149

Australia

Photographers:

Erina Hoque

Shriya Sudarsan Rao

Jonah Epstein

Editors:

Olivia Hough

Mihika Dhule

Charlie Borracci

Designers:

Brianna Simonsen

Vivian Dobbie-Glazier

Charlie Borracci

Mihika Dhule

Sophia Cuthbertson

Andrea Gocheco

Soumill Sawmill

Editorial Committee:

Juliette Salom

Stella Thomson

Julianna Rajkowski

Claudia Weiskopf

Ruby Edwards

Alyssa Forato

India Curtain

Ruby Box

Creative Writing Officers:

Juliette Salom

Claudia Weiskopf

Julianna Rajkowski

Mina Wakefield

Entertainment Officers:

Ruby Box

Vivian Dobbie-Glazier

Ruby Edwards

Olivia Hough

Mina Wakefield

Cover design:

Mihika Dhule

Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past, present and future.

Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where it contacts its business.

IN THE AIR - DESTIN CONRAD

Girl (feat. KAYTRANADA) - The Internet

honey baby (SPOILED!) - Kali Uchis

Clueless - Duckwrth

I’ll Call U Back - Erykah Badu

Pretty Little Birds (feat. Isaiah Rashad) - SZA

The Worst In Me - KAYTRANADA

still mine - Alextbh

So High - Doja Cat

12:34 AM - Billy Lemos

Pink + White - Frank Ocean

Passionfruit - Yaeji

Shy - Leon Bridges

Dark Red - Steve Lacy

Closer (Ode 2 U) - Ravyn Lenae

Easy (feat. Sumer Walker) - Aminé

Hold On - The Internet

Imagine U - Omar Apollo

Onto Me (With UMI) - Tkay Maidza

11:30 - Duckwrth

Love Affair - UMI

Baby Powder - Jenevieve

Summer Love - bLAck pARty

Lovestained - Hope Tala

4K - Duckwrth

West Savannah (feat. SZA) - Isaiah Rashad

The Recipe - SiR

Tú - maye

dirty dancer - Orion Sun

Hush (Still Woozy Remix) - The Marías

Buzzed - ¿Téo?

Look What U Started - The Internet

Hu Man - Greentea Peng

CRISIS - Sam Ezeh

Loverboy - The Marías

L e t t e r f r o m

M i h i k a

Magazines, Publications, booklets, zines.. In my eyes there’s a special type of magic to them. The way words run across the page, stopping abruptly at the sight of an image or slipping and running over it in the name of a “creative layout”. Little doodles of stars or hearts that fill the white space. Plain backgrounds as simple as a cloudless sky or gradients stretching across the paper like a sunrise. There is immense beauty in these little details of what makes a magazine and I am obsessed. Have you guessed that I’m a graphic designer? I am super grateful to be on this team as a designer and editor. I’d like to thank all the amazing writers who’ve shared their take on Pleasure in our very first issue of the year. Also thankful for our wonderful team at Catalyst who have brought this issue to life with their design magic. And to you readers, Thank you. Thank you for holding this precious piece of our hearts and minds in your hands. Hope you enjoy reading and It’s been a pleasure ; ) to meet you.

t h e E d i t o r s

l i v c h a r l i e

The past editors were distinct in their style, warm organised leaders and most of all welcoming. Having started my journey at Catalyst under Beatrice, Savannah, Jasper and Vivian, I felt prepared yet intimidated to get started in 2023. I just wanted to say thank you to the last editors for handing down such a well established magazine and for all their guidance in the last few months. Many people say things like “we could’nt have done it without you”, but seriously, this print magazine would not be in our hands without you four.

And to our bold designers, each and every one of you are dedicated and talented in your craft and I had the utmost trust in you all that you would do an amazing job. And still, you exceeded my expectations. And y’all are funny, and make meetings that would be stressful an enjoyable rollercoaster - so thank you for all of your hard work.

Just as my other two lovely editors have summed up, thank you to everyone who was in not only this edition but previous ones also. We are just sitting at the beginning and yet it has already been so enjoyable to collaborate with all of you!

I truly can’t wait for what this year will bring from Catalyst, and I strongly encourage anyone to sumbit and join us in this journey.

May this edition bring a smile to your face, as you indulge in the sweet, abstract and downright explicit interpretations of what pleasure means.

Pleasure is the visual manifestation of joy, so I wish that upon each and every one of you reading this, that you may find pleasure in your own life.

However, it all started for me by joining RUSU, getting convinced by the RUSU representatives to in a long line in the summer heat to meet the right people at their events who ultimately inspired me to be a part of creating the same experience to others.

Thus, as RUSU President the essence of my goals and aspirations are to make everyone’s student experience one that we carry through our lives. By ensuring that students are receiving the best quality education that we deserve. Making university at RMIT a place that we grow in ways we expect but also unexpected. Growing as people and characters that are ready to enter the workforce and succeed in them.

So I hope you all create an experience as fun and unforgettable as mine!

I enjoy speaking about sex.

The way people skirt around the topic and how they use tame words as replacements for their experiences and feelings.

I like the pauses people make before they are about to unearth the stories of their night before and the second hand excitement and nerves you feel in return.

Conversations about sex are used as a currency to be exchanged for platonic closeness. Conversations about sex are used to garner excitement and tension.

Conversations about sex spark playlists and art and new connections, embarrassing stories, wants, needs and desires.

The secrecy of someone’s sex life once received feels gratifying, an achievement or accomplishment to acquire.

The goal to have sex, the social pressure to engage in what makes us human and the need for touch. All expressed between friends.

It’s the disgust that makes us feel good and the unspoken acknowledgement that we engage in it.

It’s how people construct outfits with the idea of sex in mind, how its commodification excites us, demonizes us, creates industries, scares others and outlaws those who work for it.

It is lucrative.

Denying the fear of sin to control us, the pride in its attainment and self inflicted breaks for self development.

It’s the way people’s experiences are boiled down to looks, minor facial expressions, inflections in tone, whispers in crowded spaces, giggles between friends, hurried text messages and diary entries. Engaging in sex is exciting, conversing about sex is better.

by blue

My bed rests underneath the Fitzroy window. The small patch of Fitzroy sky passes us as we jump on the cotton bed. Sometimes we look outside, sometimes we stare, sometimes we take it for granted, and sometimes it’s just the sky. Today we show each other texts we received from one another that made us climax. The afternoon clouds float by in a pale blue lullaby.

Our heads where our feet should be, we lie on my cotton-striped sheets. In my Miu Miu lenses I say that’s a fairy floss dog. Our phones lie next to the brown boxes. You say the cloud to its right is a fart from a composer; refined, it still smells like shit. We lie on that bed for what seems like days. We ate lunch at three p.m., it’s nearly seven at night now. I don’t want to leave this, you say. I begin to put my navy EMU’s on.

The shower starts. We time it for ten minutes. We take sixteen. You came hard by the window when we were in doggy yesterday, your head is turned towards my bedroom window. I think what I have in the kitchen, there was a horse with a fairy floss tail in the sky, you say as I think cheese.

I’m sitting on the kitchen bench reading and reading your morning text: fuck my cock is so hard thinking about your hole on my face. It makes my head toasty with memory. Toastie’s with lots of mozzarella string from our mouths. Your text made me feel a certain way today, I tell you, my leg sliding up your inner Kathmandu seam.

The kitchen bench wiped, you make comfy on your dent of the mattress as I fall into mine. Mazzy Star’s ‘Blue Light’ plays on my gifted Olufsen & Bang speaker. What does a full moon mean, you ask, I say a time well spent. We lie on our stomachs, flat doggy, sharpyieing our initials under our sides of the window. Yours has a bubble heart, mine has a full stop.

I think about the boxes, about the rails of clothing. I feel you pasta make, can’t sleep, you ask do you have to move. I let silence be your answer. One last morning missionary then, my head nods yes into your chest. A glowing moon watches us.

A clump of plump clouds watches us eat waffles.

The bed stripped, boxes filled with clutter and potential, we jump on the EVA mattress, the come stain left for chemicals to try and remove. The window shut, the sky floats by us.

Alicia Belle Crowhurst

When I was freshly out of the closet, as a young, maybe a bit naïve 19 year old gay man, I was excited to jump head first into the world of sex and dating. Some encounters were more successful than others, but it was a true time of discovery. During my gap year, before starting uni, I was seeing a guy semiregularly for a few months. There were never any great romantic feelings between us, but any time we met up, we seemed to end up taking our clothes off. Initially we would go to either my place or his, but after a while this changed. One time after having a few drinks in the city, we ended up taking a walk in the park nearby. We snuck into the empty Sydney Myer Music Bowl and we ended up making out there. Eventually as it always is our pants started coming off. The thrill of being in public is something I never experienced before and at that time I ended up having the most thrilling sexual encounter of my life up until that point. Next time I saw him, we ended up

doing the same in the Carlton Gardens, late at night, surrounded by few other couples, who I think might have had the same idea. I never saw that guy again after that, but have had plenty more of public encounters with my current boyfriend. On the beach, in the park, next to the Yarra, even on an elevator once. The thrill of public encounters is as strong now, years after the first time, as they were the very first night, when I found myself lying half-naked on the wet grass of the Sydney Myer. The second the first item of clothing comes off, the heart starts being faster, hands get all clammy, breathing gets all shaky and thoughts start rushing to the brain “what if someone sees”, “is this the time someone calls the police on us”, “don’t get caught”. The physical symptoms never stop, they only enhance the experience, but the thoughts stop soon enough, and are overwhelmed by the pure feeling of joy, thrill, the risqué feeling and pleasure.

‘How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness.’

HUGO BALL, 1916

Moments OF Seeing

The black pot spills over in its bubbling heat, over its trembling lid

Endorphins rush. Fingers tremble. Breath becomes fuel for a motor.

The thrilling flow of a moment of being Falls through the cracks of consciousness.

Like a chameleon’s tongue. The moment when being Is being without seeing.

The black pot settles its shaking; Returns to its slow simmer; No bubbling now.

Fills through the night of our collective shadow.

To see the world in its colour –Like an Andrew Wyeth Or an Edward Hopper.

To see the world in its proper. You and I stand at the cusp of understanding, On the precipice of the next line, On the possibility of the next word: Dada.

DadaDadaDa dada

da da da da da da dadadadadada.

But I can only speak for myself.

Mind your own business, you who read this. These are my words, not yours, And I am no one special. Where is here? I’m never here. I’m nowhere near I fear. But at the we share a collective shadow.

You don’t see the point of it, do you?

That’s alright, neither do I.

There’s no point in pointing fingers

At the figure in the mirror. It means nothing.

Just clay masks worn

For the semblance of tragedies.

Neurons flare, Shoot off like bullets.

They shoot off to remind us

Of the space they leave behind.

Who was it that said the orgasm is death?

The moment when the self unravels

Da.

Oh how I love being a woman

If you’re a tiktok addict like me I’m sure this phrase is familiar.

If you’re a woman like me, I’m sure you’ve resonated with these videos countless times and

If you’re a pisces like me… I’m sure you’ve cried out of joy and gratitude for your female friends.

[especially at 3 am when the world is quiet and your thoughts are too loud]

I find pleasure in female company. A kind of pleasure that can be found nowhere else.

I held Kelly’s small soft hands as we stumbled through a noisy crowd on Bourke street. A warm hug from Alice in front of Gong Cha on that winter night always lingers on my mind when I’m lonely. I will always remember Sophie breaking down in QV as soon as she saw me because a stupid boy broke her heart. Kira never made me feel stupid when she shared her advice with me. Four of us sat in Audrey’s living room listening to Joji as we zoned out and stared at the pretty lights on the ceiling. Alex made me pancakes in the morning when a one night sleepover turned into three because I couldn’t bear to sleep alone that week. I laid on Maria’s bed as she did her makeup on a tiny mirror as I expressed my desperation for that one guy. Sarah always has a compliment for me that rolls over her tongue so sweet. Claire and Sonia’s dinner table always calls for long nights accompanied by food, gossip, tarot card reading dissections and dreaded assignments.I always sneak a kiss on Ava’s head because it makes her giggle. My hopes and dreams are never belittled when I discuss them with Angel.

Oh how I love being a woman.

my cheeks are on fire, your hands are burning, we are nearly completely

Cuthbertson

ablaze

Sofia

PUBLIC (TRANSPORT) INDECENCY

Love in the time of Public Transport

1 - EXT. INNER CITY. DAY.

A crowded tram stop in Melbourne’s sluggish heart shivers licentiously with waves of glossy unrelenting heat. Sweat glistens on collarbones alongside tiny golden necklaces, leaves Rorschach blotches on the armpits of collared shirts. Thighs stick to the scorching bars of metal benches. Flies divebomb for dripping ice creams only to be swatted away by hands as quick and irritated as a horse’s tail.

Summer is here.

So is the tram.

2 - INT. TRAM. DAY

A girl boards the tram, swept up in the crushing wave of bodies eager for home and air conditioning. Her red hair is frizzing beneath heavy noise-cancelling headphones. She’s surrounded by people but seems distinctly alone. She struggles for a seat but there’s none to be found, makes do with a limp piece of green plastic hanging from the tram’s ceiling and holds on tight as they begin to move. Her feet hurt. She shifts her weight, tucks a backpack between ankles.

The tram is full, too full, and as they take off she bumps into the person standing next to her.

She glances up quickly and smiles, slipping off her headphones to let the world rush in.

CLAUDIA.

Sorry.

STRANGER.

All good.

The girl puts her headphones back on, but not before noticing that the person she bumped into - a boyhas eyes like the palest New Zealand jade. Her heart begins to race and she fiddles with her Spotify app to mask the moment. No one knows how shy she really is. The boy has floppy brown curls, her favourite, and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that keep sliding down the bridge of his nose. A baby begins to cry in its mother’s arms but the girl can’t hear it over the sound of Jeff Buckley’s Lover You Should Have Come Over blaring at full volume through frazzled synapses.

The girl watches the boy from the corner of her eye. She likes the way he holds his book; gently, with respect. He opens it again as they trundle ever onwards and she spies the front cover. Hemingway. A Farewell To Arms. Her heart catches again. She thinks about speaking to him but he’s lost in the pages.

She lets the moment drop and goes back to her own book. Her life is a series of missed connections. What’s one more?

3 - INT. TRAM. TWILIGHT

TRAM ANNOUNCER (disembodied):

Stopping at Leonard Street: Stop 15. At the next stop, the doors will open on the right.

The girl looks up from her book. It’s nearly her stop. Just a few more minutes in the scorching heat and then she’ll be home. She needs a shower, can feel itchy fever running heavy fingers down her spine and the back of her legs.

She looks around to see that the tram has emptied. It’s just her, the boy and the mother with the crying baby now.

She stares at the boy from beneath her eyelashes, safe in the knowledge that Hemingway’s words have him thoroughly entranced. She watches as his mouth twitches at the corner and wants desperately to know which line made him smile.

She gathers her bag, gets ready to push the grimy stop button, but the driver brakes too quick and she stumbles into the stranger for a second time.

He catches her instinctively, one arm braced against a shoulder, and waves of something other than heat begin to bloom.

They lock eyes and he smiles, pupils blown wide in the coming dusk. She smiles too, almost apologetically, but can’t break from him – doesn’t want to feel empty air in all the places their bodies meet. A tendril of illicit joy unfurls like a fledgling fern inside her chest and she delights in this simple thrill; brushing up against another body in the sort of warmth that makes you lazy and loose and longing. She feels drunk on promise. On this spiderweb scrap of time, soon to be a memory.

The boy smiles and releases his hand. It’s the girl’s stop. She grabs her bag and drops from the tram onto the road, but not before looking back at the boy one last time. The tram is already speeding off but she can see that he’s watching her right back, intensely, right up until the tram bends artfully around a corner and he’s gone forever.

It might have been another missed opportunity, she thinks.

Or maybe it was exactly what it needed to be ... a tiny skerrick of stolen pleasure and mutual understanding. Hers to treasure. Never to be repeated.

Claudia Weiskopf

BEFORE THE AFTERTASTE

It was second nature to loath the summertime, even fear it. Doses of saturated propaganda felt thrown in her face. There were shorts, singlets, bikinis, melted frozen treats, UV rays, sweat. So much sweat. At times, childhood felt like a distressing montage of sandy socks and getting changed in public toilets.

Like a broken branch, the time comes when it isn’t school holidays anymore, it’s just warmer days.Summertime is a self-led season, like every other once you move to the city to study. The time comes to decide what tomorrow holds, and be the one to follow through.

She’s going to order regrettable milkshakes watch

classic movies she should’ve seen before

try to reignite old hobbies

darn socks

paint walls press flowers bake pies

play charades talk to her grandparents about their ancestors

burn through the money she made doing a thankless job

avoid her reflection to keep from shattering the illusion get into stupid arguments and herself she’s a bad person reacquaint with hometown friends and cousins that used to intimidate her watch the freckles reappear

hear laughter from the other room listen to Lorde, lots of Lorde.

By bus, plane or train, she’ll spend days in the sun with the people she loves. She goes by foot when she has to. Her lips will become crusty with a blend of saltwater, sweat, and SPF 3000. There are days when she feels like she doesn’t know anything, like a child amongst her friends. Other days her brain shrieks that we’re all getting old too fast. She writes about both, a lot.

It will all be over soon enough, might as well greet the sun when you can.

What brings me pleasure when I am in bed?

Pleasure is when my girlfriend exhales her breath on my face as I suck her lower lip by locking my lips around it.

It refers to the currents of pleasure I feel all over me when she rubs her pussy all over the veins on my forearms.

It’s what I feel when my partner puts her upper lip into the space between my upper lip and my upper teeth, and simultaneously places her lower lip in the space between my lower lip and lower teeth, and her tongue on my upper palate, and rubs my upper palate with her tongue, using fast rapid stroke, and exhales all the breath she’s been storing in her lungs as she does all of these.

I love it when my shoulder line is bitten by her. I love to f*ck the space between her breasts (indulge in mammary sex) until I climax right there.

Pleasure is when I suck on her nipples really well and tickle the area around her pussy before going on to give her cunnilingus.

I love to holding her neck and cup her breasts during sex as well.

I love rubbing ice cubes all over her during sex and love it when she rubs them all over me.

It’s very pleasurable when she tickles me all over and I love to tickle her to a full body orgasm (yes, men and women are capable of orgasming just by being tickled all over if it’s done for the right amount of time).

Pleasure is when she deep throats my cock for a long time.

It’s what I feel when she blows her warm breath all over me as I f*ck her with long, fast and hard thrusts, with my dick in its entirety going in and out of her pussy with every stroke.

It’s when I execute four such thrusts per second.

It’s when such hard, fast sex with long thrusts sounds like running in flip flops.

Pleasure is when I spit into her mouth and she spits this combination of our salivae back into mine and this keeps going on until the amount of saliva in our mouths snowballs into too much for us to hold, and we end up swallowing this combination of our salivae.

Ratan Abhijeet Sharma

F L A

I had felt queer pleasure before this night. More romantic and emotional, yes, but infinitely more restrictive and confining? Also yes. These intimate moments always came with the knowedge that we had a limit. Limits. Of the space in which we could be together, and the time we were allowed to share in a single day before we were confronted with some form of imposed shame. Subjected to guilt that would burn within us, lit by the flames of tradition, expectations, and, in our youth, our parents.

A certain brand of shameful secrecy that queer people sadly know all too well. An emphasis on the word ‘friends’. The sound of heavy footsteps that we had memorised, getting louder on the hardwood floor as one of our suspecting parents approached to ‘check on us’ in our childhood bedrooms. Forbidden from soft exploration, the celebration and gentle worship of each other. Needing to spring apart at a moment’s notice. Acting normal. Spinning a neatly packaged holy alibi that was believable to whom we needed to explain ourselves to. ‘Just in case’.

But not on this night. That old script didn’t exist. I am relieved to say that I did not once thinkof recreating that scenario on this night, my now young adult self, newly exploring the night in Fitzroy as a queer fem, straight out of one of Melbourne’s last lockdowns. I was welcomed to a gathering of shared and new friends in my friend’s cozy, unabashedly queer, shared apartment. The laid-back atmosphere paired with the excitement of meeting people, us

M E

all squeezing into the space to make room for anyone and everyone who entered.

And then, we met. Confident, Charming, Competitive. Captivating, if we’re going with alliteration. We initially found pleasure in the comical ridiculousness of questioning eachother. The laughter, the flirtatious teasing that has you asking yourself, ‘is she or isn’t she?’.This shameless testing of the queer waters quickly led us to cementing our answer. Oh yes. We definitely are.

The sudden rush of wanting. The need. The urgency to leave together that I hadn’t felt with anyone before. Now THIS is what it feels like to kiss and be kissed. An insatiable hunger that just felt undeniably good. Right. A different kind of flame from the one lit before.

No longer having the fear of being ‘caught’. No one’s suspecting parents around. No religious shame or guilt to be found. The only limits, boundaries, being ones set by ourselves, instead of those that restrict and strangle. I wasn’t to blame and there was nothing to blame. All we had to do was lose ourselves in each other for a few hours of the night and in the softness of the morning.

There was no doubt in my mind and in my body that I found pleasure in this night. This person. This experience of unbridled and unashamed queer indulgence. My pleasure was found in a sense of queer liberation that I never knew I would be allowed to feel.

2 birds 2 birds

My mind feels like a mess, Thoughts scattering through the wind. And yet there is no time to rest. Stuck inside my own mind.

Then I see you... What am I supposed to do...

I can't make time stop, but you know how to pause. For me I know you would with me and all of my flaws.

What it feels to be me, and how I am with you. For everything I am saying from now is true.

There is a difference between a once of, and a true love.

For you see me for all that I am, no mask may hide me, or another can understand.

I can rest on your comfort, to allude my discomfort.

The familiarity to have you there, When the sky's unknowingly bare.

I don't want to waste my air and words, for one night. I want to save my breath for you, because I know it's right.

Chirping as the sun comes up for the moon, I get to hear your sweet little tune.

You bring a light into my life, Something which can be taken into the afterlife.

For it is just the most simplest things, To watch to grow and spread your wings.

You get me and I get you, There is nothing else to it, besides that I love you.

For we can be two birds in the sky, Just you and I.

Charlie Borracci

Roses are Red

The room fills with cigarette smoke and her warmth runs over my paper thin skin like a gardener tends to roses, gentle and lovingly. She’s tracing patterns of figure eights over my chest, like this feeling could last for eternity in the soft orange light of the setting sun. Her fingers wrap around my cheek following my so-called soft jawline and down my neck eventually falling off my sloped collarbones, only to start again in a slow seducing cycle.

In this moment I feel like a singular red rose, an icon of beauty and her desire, a fuel for her passion and romantic love. And in this split second am I icarus, flying too close to the sun, held in the arms of a forbidden lover. Or does this anthophile see me as Persephone, a red haired sweetheart, an immortal being who would dare eat from the lustful pomegranates and would lie helplessly in the florist’s arms.

As her soft lips push into mine all sense of fear disappears. Her aura is seductive yet exciting and in

little things

The all over consuming pain of living, is accompanied by a will that is teetering on a ledge. For we must draw ourself back, and see the pleasure from the pain. Refer to this list below for when you are feeling low. It may not mean something to you and that’s ok. Because it means something to me, it tells me I’m going to be ok. If it just brings a smile to your face, all I can say is you’re in the right place.

Pleasure is:

Early nights in bed reading

Sleep ins with no intention to awake

Honey joys

Walking anywhere at sunset

Singing musicals loudly

Losing track of time

Being in the moment

Getting caught up in the words of a book

Coming home to someone you love

Coming home to safety and comfort

Learning something new

The joy of finishing a puzzle

Meeting an old acquaintance

Spending moments with family

Relating to another person on an undiscovered level

Being capable of deep conversations

Jumping into a heated blanket

The gift of a pet

Finding your new favourite store

Shopping for things you dream to have

Colourful pieces

Tiny pieces of art

Big things made miniature

Warm lighting

Neon lights

The buzz of a crowd

Movie nights in a blanket fort

Laying on the floor

Swimming or rather floating

Getting lost in the water

A house with stairs

A house with a fairy garden

Nighttime

Watching a movie at dusk

Family dinners

Being proud of myself

Everything and nothing all at once...

Charlie Borracci

This piece was published in collaboration with RMIT Galleries. To find out more about Melbourne’s transformation into a creative city, check out RMIT Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, ‘Radical Utopia’, opening 21st February.

Alexandra Bloom

HOW THE CREATIVE CAPITAL OF AUSTRALIA CAME TO BE.

Melbourne. Eclectic and vibrant, we all know it’s the true cultural hub of this country (sorry Sydney.)

What isn’t to love? It’s fun, creative and unique, and (as obnoxious as we all sound) it’s a pleasure to live here. We’ve all had the chance to experience some of the best the city has to offer, whether it be through nights out, art, music, or fashion.

But it wasn’t always this way. So how did Melbourne become Melbourne?

Experience the birth of a new cultural landscape and relive the pleasures of life in the 1980s, the decade of innovation and transformation in this city.

Forget the spandex and legwarmers, this period was all about the alternative. Taking influence from the US and the UK, Melbourne’s fashion aesthetic quickly evolved into a chaotic mix of reworked and individual style. The post-punk movement meant there was a push for diversity and innovation, and an embracement of striking design and experimentation.

Iconic queer designer, Clarence Chai, was a pioneer of avantgarde and post-modern looks not for the faint of heart. Chai was big presence in Melbourne’s fashion world, with boutique stores located across the CBD. Or Jenny Bannister, ‘fashion sculptress’, who embraced the art of recycled fabric before it was cool. For accessories, Kate Durham’s ‘devoutly decorative’ and extravagant jewellery was constructed out of scrap materials and rejected the idea of good design (Durham walked so Millie Savage could run).

To see these designs in action you’d head to the beloved three-

storey Metro nightclub on Bourke St, for one of the Fashion Design Council’s various shows and parades. Think Melbourne Fashion Week on steroids. Supporting independent up-and-coming Australian designers meant committing to the experimental and individualistic, all done to separate from tradition and ‘the stranglehold of fashion houses’. At what was once the biggest nightclub in the Southern Hemisphere, you could find yourself enjoying fabulously excessive cocktails like a Blue Lagoon or a Fluffy Duck.

Another seminal piece of Melbourne’s nightlife, Razor was the epitome of the underground clubbing scene. Completely cutting edge, the dancefloor was a chance to escape the euro disco and radio trash of other nightclubs. In a 2015 interview with Vice, club photographer Jacqui Riva describes Razor as a ‘beautiful mixture of post-punk, shabby-chic, glamourous, queeny, gay… It was a place where you could do anything, and provided you were not aggressive and remained standing, it was tolerated.’

In the mood for a gig? Look no further than the Crystal Ballroom, located on the corner of Fitzroy St in St Kilda (when St Kilda was more low-rent and less gentrified). A home for the young and discontented, the Ballroom allowed new music and creativity to flourish. Hosting bands such as Mi-Sex, INXS, Simple Minds, XTC, Nick Cave, the Violent Femmes and The Cure, this was the place to escape the mundane.

In a decade of excess, Melburnian pioneers were at the front and centre of a new way of thinking, creating, and living. Forever changing the fabric of this city into the cultural hub we know and love today.

IN ANOTHER LIFE WE WERE RATS IN LOVE

Shit was in the air. Not exactly fresh. Weeks old. Fusing together in the trash from a heatwave that had been beating down the streets for months. An unavoidable smell. I took the deepest breath in I could. Then the memories came flooding back.

A past life where we were two rats in love.

I was short and stout with matted grey fur. You had pointed ears and a white spot on your pink snout. It was not love at first sight. It was a cold April night. Between us was two-day old pizza leftovers that had been dumped in an alleyway. You were in the way of my next meal. I was in the way of yours. The way we fought was biblical. But it was in that fighting was where I fell for you. The fire in your eyes was something I needed to be warmed by. I was intoxicated. You knew what you had done to me. Stunned. In my moment of hesitation, you got what you wanted.

I thought I would never see you again. But there you were. Again and again. Together we would scavenge, scrap and sleep. A force existed between us that kept pulling us into each other’s orbits. Eventually you saw it too. Something beyond survival. Past the need to make little rats that would grow into bigger rats who would later make more little rats… Something special was forming. The smallest moments between us had importance and weight to them. Those whispers in the dark we would share in-between the moments of intimacy was where we were at our most vulnerable. Nobody else could ever have this.

The five weeks we spent together felt like lifetimes lived over. But it would be cut short by the tyres of a garbage truck on a Monday morning. My last memory of you would be your head bursting under the black tyre and your brains spraying out over the pavement. Immediately after, I followed you into hell.

Those memories gave me a new lease on living. On lonely nights I would breathe in the scents from that past life. Rotted fruits and month-old bin juice. Anything to hang onto those memories. The aromas would send my body into a pure ecstasy where my skin would tingle with a surreal electricity I had never felt before.

Eventually memories were not enough. I needed you here. You had to be out there somewhere again.

Months of searching. New places and different faces. But never you. They could never be you. I got older and the longing became unbearable. I prayed to return to a day where I never smelt that shit. I was prepared to give anything to live in a world where I did not remember our past life together.

The search deepened. Maybe you existed in another form. Our connection would cross the boundaries of the forms we inhabited. I navigated through forests and swam through seas. You weren’t a bug. You weren’t a fish. You weren’t a rock.

Looking back. Perhaps you were a rat again. I went from the alleyways to the sewers to the junkyards of every city in every corner of the globe. Living like we used too. Scuttling around on all fours, nesting in bins and eating garbage. I was home again.

And there you were again.

Another cold April night. Another piece of leftovers to fight over. You were different. Shorter ears and a pink spot on your pale white snout. It was confusing at first for both of us. I knew you wanted to run. But speed was on my side this time. Picking you up and tucking you away safely in my pocket.

You tried to claw a way out but slowly submitted. I’m sure you were remembering now too. The memories flooding back like it did for me on that summer’s day.

Never again would our time be cut short. I was going to make sure you were safe in my arms forever.

Together again, my love from that past life.

Objects of Desire

I felt his soft fingers tracing my back, Slowly, his hands glide down my waist, Putting me in a side position where my legs are up my chest, “Take a deep breath,” he whispered. And there it hits-

A heavy pressure capturing and hitting a particular spot where I let out a moan of relief.

Giving my body a well-earned sense of bliss, slowing down my heartbeat as the pleasure circulates in my blood.

No. This is not the type of pleasure your hormonal mind is thinking about.

“Just one more,” my chiropractor said as he put his deep focus on working out those knots tumbling the muscle and pain on my lower back.

No one truly understands the excitement of attending a chiropractic appointment – well, unless you have a crooked spine that gives you the same back pain as a grandmother. Like mine.

Every movement I make feels like torture.

The consistent tightness on my lower back traps my muscle strings, causing them to grip tightly across my bones. The ever-excruciating back pain I go through daily as a young adult, that feels worse than an 80-year-old, is no laughing matter. It hits the worst when you ought to give up your seat on public transport after a long day at work - just so the elderly man with the same back problem as mine can sit. No exaggeration. The pain is so underivable that even if you gift me flowers, chocolates, and love because you feel sorry for me, it does not ease the pain completely.

But a chiropractor? He knows how to pleasure me. Not in that way though.

From the touch of expert soft fingers and techniques that can send shivers down your curvy spine can really give you the perfect remedy than any pain killer. The deep pulling… pressing… cracking of the pain… just releases the bound. It feels as though the stiffness of my back is stretched out like a rubber band. It feels as though the entangled muscles have been relieved from suffocation. What an ecstatic feeling! Oh, yes. The pleasure is real.

PLEASURE Therapist

Alicia Belle Crowhurst

A Moment with the Moon

In our busy lives, simple pleasures can be over-looked. No matter how simple they may seem; they often can be the most impactful.

Modern day pleasures appear flashier now — things like graduating University, a sunset on a cruise, or having a smashing one-night stand. These bring smiles, doubletaps, and are all-around astounding, leaving the simple pleasures of life to subside into the background of mundane routine.

The situation may differ, yet the feeling is the same. My humble pleasures make themselves known as a divine sense of comfort that lingers in my mind. In the moment, it can feel like the calm hug from a close friend or a distant spirit guide. As is passes, I reflect on the gentle embrace.

I realised this one night as I was walking home after a heavy day at work. As if the Earth had arisen in a solemn mood and blamed it all on me, the day overflowed with destructive events. From the morning Myki inspectors parading their intimidation, to the tempered customers at work belittling my existence, my heart weighed more than I could carry, causing my feet to drag with each step.

You could say by the end, I was emotionally exhausted, stuck replaying each conversation in my head on loop, in hopes of understanding all the things that went wrong.

By the time I stepped off the tram and began my walk home, I looked up for a brief moment to the sky and paused. The negative thoughts from the day that burrowed deep inside my sombre chest, released into the night’s breeze through a deep sigh. My gaze softened beneath the moonlight as I basked in the delicate moment.

The glow of the moon stared upon me as I stared back, greeting me with the familiar sense of clarity. The night sky had a clear and glowing aura, as white pinprick stars sprinkled across. All went quiet, the traffic had passed, and the loudness of my mind fell still.

Standing beneath the bright moonlight, the heaviness subsided in my chest, and the accumulated problems from my day, shrank smaller and smaller. Like it was a sight only meant for me, the moon assured me I was okay. My day was just another difficult day, on a planet filled with them.

I soon noticed how insignificant my problems were, and how small of a being I was, as I stood on the empty corner of my street, just the moon and me.

To this day, I acknowledge my humble pleasures no matter how they take form. But, at the most basic level — nothing beats a simple moment with the moon.

Maisie Mateos