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daughter today.
    When they asked me what I wanted to do with my life I would act smart and brattish and tell them that I wanted to be a garbage collector. Then they would ask me again and I told them that I wanted to be an actress. As I’ve said my grandmother had a few connections with the theatre and media world and my parents thought about trying to get me into an acting school in St Kilda’s. Nothing came of this however. I think they thought me a little young and preferred me to finish high school first.
    They were never heavy-handed or forbidding with me. They always kept the lines of communication open between us—none of this banishing me to my room without supper stuff. In truth I was very stoned most of the time in the house and they never realised. I remember my poor father coming into my room one evening to talk to me about something. I don’t remember now what he said because I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about then, thanks to being completely off my face. He rested his hand on my TV, and just inches away from his fist was a massive joint, about six inches long and one inch thick, but he never saw it.

    My cousins were attending a posh, co-ed, private school in Melbourne and my poor parents decided that this could be the making of me. I howled when I heard about it but they were adamant that I should, at least, try it. I was 14 years old; with my nose and face in a bloody cast which was inscribed with ‘Fuck You’. Unsurprisingly, no one rushed to befriend me on that first awful day. The school was full of rich, snobby kids who all surfed and rode horses; well that’s what it seemed like. To say I was a novelty is an understatement.
    There were rules, rules and more rules that only served to push my rebellious side creatively. I was told I couldn’t pluck my eyebrows so I shaved mine off; I was told that I couldn’t wear five earrings in my ears so I put in safety pins instead; I was told that I couldn’t dye my hair so I shaved it all off too. Sometimes I would substitute the safety pins for tampons—imagine that, getting on the tram to school with tampons dangling from my ears. My outrageousness always seemed to involve public transport. I especially liked to spray my upper body with body paint and then put on a completely transparent top, just to see how uncomfortable it made passengers on the bus or tram.
    My cheeks burn when I remember the party that my grandparents threw for their 50th wedding anniversary. I got chatting to this ‘hip’ pastor, who was maybe 40-ish and probably prided himself on being able to connect with young people. That sounds sarcastic and I don’t mean to mock him because he seemed like a nice guy. It’s just that he met me during my smartass period. I was wearing a colourful and mostly see-through hippie dress; what I wasn’t wearing was a bra, and I kept daring him, silently, to look at my breasts. Finally he passed some remark about my dark tan and I, brazen as you like, pointed out that I didn’t even have any white strap-marks. He smiled to himself as I pouted away in a manner I imagined to be provocative, but in hindsight probably made me look the young ignorant brat I was.
    People tended to steer clear of me in school, out of fear as well as everything else. When the initial shock-factor wore off there were some muttering of distaste from the older girls. Apparently they didn’t like my attitude and thought that I needed to be brought down a peg or three. A group of them let it be known that they were going to beat me up after school.
    Of all people it was Simon who once again saved the day for me. On the day of the arranged ‘pegging down’ he and his mate Bobby skidded up to the school fence, during recess, in a noisy pink and grey battered, stolen car. They fell out of it while swigging bottles of gin—no tonic—and started ogling the girls and calling out insults to the boys. Simon then yelled at the general school body to fetch Susan