Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

In the early 90s, I had my 15 minutes of fame across a couple of National Rugby League football seasons. The media called me ‘the feminist fighting football’ after I wrote a controversial article on masculinity, football and players’ violence on and off the field. This article focused on an unpleasant incident in a Brisbane nightclub where some Queensland National Rugby League players, fuelled up by drink and testosterone, played dirty by manhandling a girl’s boobs and roughing up the club manager who tried to stop them. This incident was glossed over by the Sunday Mail because News Limited were major sponsors of the State of Origin.

When the match against the Blues happened on the Wednesday, these abusive males were glorified as Maroon heroic warriors on the field and their off-field transgressions were muted. The woman concerned was objectified and rendered invisible, while the manager was marginalised as an inferior form of masculinity.

I was bombarded by requests to comment on radio, TV, in newspapers, and even to commentate a whole NRL match on TV for Seven, from a feminist perspective. As a media academic I became both object and subject in the media, quite an uncomfortable position to be in. Funnily enough, often drive-time male radio announcers would agree with me, congratulating me, for instance, in the NRL heartland of Newcastle and Western Sydney, for being game enough to tackle a taboo topic. By contrast, I was viciously attacked once by a female radio announcer in Hobart, for daring to criticise sporting heroes.

After that, I wrote a couple more articles on sporting masculinity, homoeroticism in football, and further explored off-field violence against women including rape. I was almost signed up by a well known publisher to write a book. Unfortunately, they wanted me to write about violence and masculinity across all footie codes, whereas I felt I had enough material on NRL. When that contract fell through, I decided to leave sporting heroes to others, and began to specialise in the representation of disgracefully ageing male bodies in popular culture – e.g. Andy Sipowitz in NYPD. Funnily enough the media rush transformed into a mere trickle! Ironically, however, while I still fiercely condemn excessive violence on-field, and any manifestations of violence and abuse off-field, particularly against women, I have become a great fan of State of Origin matches.

An old Queensland comrade has recently written a musical on the State of Origin. Hopefully this will be produced by 2015, and will then tour the NRL heartland, delighting everyone. Watch this space! I have fond memories of the momentous Origin 1 when our team, led by the legendary Artie Beetson, beat the Blues for the first time. I was actually present at Lang Park for that historic occasion.

My one-time spouse played on the wing for Easts and when he stopped playing, we used to go along to watch various games. He had boarded at one of the top Brisbane church schools where Union was king. However out of rejection of that school’s culture, when his school days finished, he chose to play the working man’s game, Rugby League.

Over the years, vacillating between enchantment and disenchantment, I have found that I did not enjoy the TV commentary at State of Origin time, preferring to turn it off and listen to the wit and wisdom of comedy duo Roy and H.G. Hence I chuckled when they commented on Deborah Kerr – from The King and I – ie Wally Lewis, the King. Also of course Glen Lazarus the Brick with Eyes featured a lot; he is now a member of Clive Palmer’s party and even more brick-like than before.

These days I am a dedicated fan of the brilliant S of O Queenslanders Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Jonathan Thurston in particular. My friend Juanita and I were hoping that Cameron would leave Storm in Melbourne and that the boy from Logan would return to play in Queensland for the Broncos. Sadly this did not eventuate; we will just have to enjoy his playing as Queensland and Australian captain.

I am still fascinated by media reportage on the NRL. For instance recently the Courier-Mail earnestly discussed at length the ramifications of the fact that Greg Inglis’s partner was expecting their baby on the same date as Origin 2. We await with bated breath for the outcome, a battle between nature and culture writ large.

Right now I am already humming possible tunes in my head for the (hopefully) upcoming State of Origin musical extravaganza. Who indeed will play the onstage Wally, Mal, the Brick, Alan, Cameron, Billy, Greg and Jonathan..?
http://moviebuffq.wordpress.com

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time in Wonderland, Alice was sitting quietly under her favourite tree, reading her book, when she looked up and saw the Mad Hatter bouncing down the road towards her.

“Whatever is the matter?” she called out.

“The circus,” he shouted. “The circus is here and I’m going to be late!”

Alice closed her book with a *pop* and stood up excitedly.

“Circus?” she said. “Where?”

“At the castle!” cried the Mad Hatter as he bounced past.

Alice fell into step beside him, skipping to his bouncing, her long legs allowing her to keep up. Every day she had practiced her skipping, so she was now just as fast as he…. and she looked a lot more graceful!

“What do they have in the circus?” she asked. “Animals?”

“No!”

“Clowns?”

“Pah!”

“Trapeze artists?”

“Oh good gosh, no!”

“What a strange circus!” declared Alice. “One day this silly land might learn to be normal!”

“Harrumph!” huffed the Mad Hatter. “Wonderland is normal, it’s you who is strange.”

As they got closer to the castle Alice could see the bright flags flying from the top of a big tent, and she could hear the sounds of a fair. Because of that sound people were streaming in from all over the countryside. Alice saw the White Rabbit and Bill and Ben, and the Cheshire Cat leapt from branch to branch above her, not at all his usual gruff self. Even the Smurfs had come out of their village for the spectacle!

So many people, and because of that the castle grounds were filled to swelling and the noise was ginormous in Alice’s poor ears.

She put her hands over her ears and shouted “I wish this wasn’t so loud!” and immediately everything went quiet.

“Thank you,” said Alice, graciously, as she made her way through the crowd to get her ticket.

The acts were already lining up inside the tent but this was not like any circus Alice had ever seen, it was all back to front!  There was a rabbit which pulled a man out of a hat, the top and bottom of a person who had been sawn in half waddled into the ring and were magicked back together by a Bearded Lady, and two jugglers rode in on a push-me-pull-you bike and juggled each other. Alice thought it was all very strange.

Then it was time for the final act.

“I wonder what it will be,” said Alice to no-one in particular, and, of course, no-one answered her.

The Ringmaster spoke but Alice, because she hadn’t unwished the silence she had wished for earlier, couldn’t hear a word he was saying, so she just had to sit quietly and wait.

And, just when she thought she was going to see something spectacular….

She woke up under her favourite tree, with her book still in her lap.

“Oh well,” she said, “I suppose in Wonderland even dreams have no ending!”

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

I was accidentally outed at work. Why was I ‘in’, you might ask? Well, I wasn’t completely. I’m a teacher in a northern suburbs state school and to staff, I’ve always been loudly and proudly myself – my girlfriend attends work functions, I mention her in conversation. Why wouldn’t I, right? Everyone talks about their families. I’m not going to self-censor. How completely contrary to all my politics and beliefs around being unapologetically who you are and damn the consequences. And yet, up until four years ago, I wouldn’t dream of putting a photograph of my girlfriend on my desk. What if a student saw it and asked who it was? I would happily answer ‘No’ to the question ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Miss?’ but never follow it with: ‘But I do have a very lovely girlfriend. Thanks for asking’. Oh, I know what you’re thinking: Why do students have to know if you have a partner or not? Isn’t it better to keep your personal life to yourself? This was my rationale for years. I reasoned  it wasn’t their business anyway and was irrelevant to my teaching. I often replayed the words of an old Diploma of Education lecturer who had said, ‘I’ve never known a single gay colleague to have come out successfully to a student body; it always ended badly for them.’ So when I was accidentally outed to a large group of students by two of my colleagues, I panicked.

I don’t blame these two teachers. It happened innocently enough. I had been communicating via email with the author of one of our Year 11 texts; an awesome collection of short stories. In one story, a young man’s sexuality is questioned by a friend and he laughs her off. The students always choose to believe that the character wasn’t gay, but I was convinced he was – which the author confirmed for me. I think I wrote to him something like, ‘As a big lezzo myself, I generally pick up on the homo subtext.’ Anyway, our emails back and forth contained some other insights regarding this story and others relevant to the teaching of the book, so I cut and pasted this email stream onto an A4 page with a heading that read, ‘Please do not show this to your students, but this may be helpful in teaching the text blah blah.’ Now, you may have heard that teachers are overworked. It’s true. If another teacher gives you a resource and you trust that teacher, you may not have time to read the resource before a class starts (shock, horror) and you may just photocopy it in the ten minutes you have before class because of all the other stuff you had to do over lunch and then hand it out to your class to read. And that’s exactly what happened. My two colleagues accidentally outed me to about 40 students. Aghast at their actions, they came to find me after their classes, to apologise.  They were spoken to by the assistant principal about their unprofessionalism. For those of you who work at schools, you know that this pretty much means everyone in the school now knew – and if not at that time, then at least by the end of the week.

So, holy shit, they know. They know I’m a big ol’ lesbian. And I had to teach a bunch of the same Year 11 kids the next morning in Literature. I was beside myself. I skulked off from work that day feeling very exposed. What would they think of me now? I was suddenly confronted with the idea that I wasn’t actually as comfortable with my sexuality as I thought. All the worst homophobic prejudices I publicly denounced (amongst my entirely supportive friendship group and family) were the ones I was convinced my students would have of me. She’s a freak, it’s unnatural, it’s perverse – even, it’s sinful! I imagined parents calling the school to have their children removed from my classes; I imagined corridor and class bullying. I became that frightened teenager again and was so angry and ashamed at myself for losing the courage of my convictions. ‘Don’t show this to your students,’ I had written – ‘because I’m ashamed of who I am,’ I may as well have added and now they all knew it.  It was with pure terror that I faced my Literature class that next morning. ‘I know that something was given to you in class yesterday that I said I’m a lesbian (nearly choking on the word) and I don’t want you to think that I’m worried that you know that, because it doesn’t really worry me. It’s just that, you know, you just want to keep some things to yourself.’ Urgh, it sounded so lame and it was. And the kids, they couldn’t have cared less. They barely raised an eyebrow. One of them, sensing my distress, said something soothing, bless her, like, ‘Don’t worry about it Miss.’ And the class continued as normal. And so did the next one and four years later not a single parent has called to remove their child from my class.

It’s not like one day the students didn’t know and the next they did. Some students still don’t know and it’s not like I’m running around the school, jumping out of closets at them. But when I hear homophobic language used, I say, ‘That’s really offensive language and offends me personally because I’m gay”. Works a treat. Never seen kids have a re-think so quickly! And, even if it’s not because they’re really sorry for having said it, but because they’re simply stunned that a teacher is willing to say they’re gay in front of them, that’s fine too. At least they’re thinking. I talk about my girlfriend in class sometimes, I might say something really controversial like, ‘Oh, my girlfriend loves that stupid show, too’. It’s really no big deal. Sometimes the boys squirm, sometimes they even tell me it’s bad because God/Allah says so. I just reply that we’re all entitled to our own beliefs but my belief is that I deserve to be happy. On these occasions I notice the looks of triumph on some students’ faces and this makes me immeasurably happy. I am generally a lot happier in fact, since I was accidentally outed at work. I don’t recommend it for everyone but for me, it’s worked out fine.

Students don’t seem to ask me as much anymore if I have a boyfriend, but I do have a photo of my girlfriend stuck to my desk. And if they want to know, I say, ‘She’s lovely. Thanks for asking.’

POSTSCRIPT

For the last couple of years, following a professional development class at Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, I have facilitated a queer/straight alliance group at my school. We meet every now again and talk and do things like baking and selling rainbow iced cupcakes to promote IDAHOT (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia). The first year we celebrated IDOHOT we gave out some badges with an anti-homophobia message and got heckled a bit, but mostly the kids grabbed them and wore them on their uniform long after the official day. Safe Schools Coalition came to our school and did some professional development with the staff, which was very well received.  We also made a huge effort to address the all-pervasive homophobic language used at school.  We also work with the Equal Opportunities and Human Rights Commission on ‘Fair Go, Sport!’, a student led project that aims to increase awareness of sexual and gender diversity in schools and to promote safe and inclusive environments, particularly in the sporting arena. Sometimes I despair when I overhear some homophobic language used, or worse, witness some bullying, but I honestly believe that what we’re doing is slowly changing this culture. We can’t expect to change everyone’s mind on this issue, but I like to think that we can create an environment in which queer kids can at least feel like their school has their back. Please check out the links below.

Safe Schools Coalition Victoria link:

http://safeschoolscoalitionvictoria.org.au/

Fair Go, Sport! project link:

http://www.humanrightscommission.vic.gov.au/index.php/reservoir-high-school

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time there was a man who fell in love with his cat. He was convinced that the cat was truly the soul of his dear departed and beloved wife reborn.

The tragic death of his true love had left him heart broken in the extreme and his mournful cries and moans had driven his fellow neighbours to distraction. It is not that they were uncaring. They could understand the depth of his emotions for a year. It was only after it had dragged on for the second year that they took action. The sounds of his haunted wailing as he woke from traumatic dreams interrupted their sleep. Many of the people had not experienced a peaceful slumber for many moons. After careful consideration the neighbours decided to speak to the Landlord and convince him to evict the man from his apartment.

The Landlord was a reasonable and kind hearted man and after much deliberation and argumentation with his wife, he evicted the man from his apartment but offered him the option to rent the Landlord’s remote hunting cabin high in the nearby mountains.

Every day the man would be so cold from the snow that he would welcome the relief of sleep and his body refused to wake up from his troubled dreams. On waking he would go to a nearby creek and crack through the ice with his bare hands to wash his face and his dreams away with the icy water. Soon it became a test of his physical pain threshold – to show how much cold and pain he could bare for the lost love of his heart. After six months had passed, he would wear only a thin shirt and his boots in the midst of the winter sleet, such was his devotion.

One day while performing his daily face washing ritual, he looked up to find two large green eyes staring unblinkingly from beneath the snow. A shadow of a kitten watched him with such hope and devotion that he was instantly convinced that it was his true love re-born.

Because of that, he and the kitten from that day forward could never be parted. When he had to chop wood, he would place the tiny kitten on top of his helmet so that the snow would not harm her. Everywhere he went, the kitten would be with him and day by day the bond between them grew as their hearts filled with their mutual love.

Because of that, the townspeople began to tell stories of the crazy man in the mountain who loved a cat more than any person. People could not understand why he would want to live by himself with only the love of a cat to keep him warm.

The man and the cat did not care what the townspeople thought. Soon it became impossible for them to live near the town, and the man decided that he no longer needed the shelter of a cabin. He and the cat walked off into the snowy mountain cold to start their new life together, away from the people of the world so that their love would never be judged again.

KV Perkin

kvperkin@gmail.com

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

“Welcome. Thanks for coming in today Tom” I said enthusiastically shaking the young boy’s hand and trying to make him comfortable cupping my hands around his. Tom’s lack of eye contact and his sweaty palms were an instant giveaway that this process was not going to be easy for him. Or for me.

“Thanks for the opportunity” Tom said with a passing glance as he perused the number of chairs around the table and pensively sat down directly across from me placing his hands on his thighs.

I smiled and gave him a few moments until we regained eye contact. “Can I get you a water Tom?”

“Ah, no thanks, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Well, let’s get straight into it then” I continued feeling the awkwardness and hearing the shallow breathing from the other side of the table as Tom pulled a lot of paperwork out of an envelope.

“Why would you like to work for Allan’s Music Store Tom? What is it about Allan’s that appeals to you?”

My inner critic kicked in. “Oh bugger, two questions. I shouldn’t have asked him two questions in a row like that.”

“I play the piano, cello and flute. I love music and I would really enjoy the opportunity to work part time with people like myself who know a lot about the industry,” he replied before moving his paperwork so that it lined up accurately with a join in the mahogany table.

“Do you listen to music a lot Tom?”

“Yes, I do” he replied. Again, our eyes met and he smoothed his right thumb along the edges of both paperwork and tabletop.

My inner critic again… “Note to self Soozey – no closed questions. Only open questions. What am I thinking?”

“Tom what is it that you enjoy so much about playing such a wonderful variety of instruments?”

Tom straightened up a little and looked up to the ceiling behind me for what seemed like at least 10 seconds. “To me, one note is one hundred words.” Tom paused for a moment and continued, “Music is an expression. It’s a story. It’s an experience. It’s everything.”

I felt a lump in my throat and I awkwardly looked away hoping that this young man didn’t see my eyes welling up with emotion. I took a moment to make a few interview notes writing his exact words so that I could Google them at my first possible opportunity.

“Wow, did he really just say that? Or, has he memorised a quote from Mozart or Bach in preparation for our mock interview?” were my immediate thoughts while making notes and trying to compose myself in preparation for the next question.

“So, you only have a few more years left at school Tom. What do you see yourself doing when you finish here?”

“My plan is to get into engineering at Melbourne”

“Oh?”

We sat in silence for a moment as I thought about a response, and then Tom fired up a little: “Well, my Dad’s an engineer. My grandfather was an engineer too. There’s just not the money in a music career.”

With a sense of relief, my inner critic started being much more sensible. “OK Soozey, stop the interview. Tom and I have such a short time together today. Use this opportunity for a real, vulnerable, heart-felt conversation. What’s there to lose? You know that this young man will end up as a 45 year old adult in a broken marriage, in a job he hates earning big money to buy a lifestyle he doesn’t need and stuff he doesn’t want if he keeps going down this path.”

“Hey Tom, would you mind if we stopped the interview right now so that I can give you some feedback?”

Tom’s first smile emerged and he took a deep breath and pushed himself into the back of his chair. “Absolutely, that would be great thank you,” he replied.

I went on to give Tom some feedback and we discussed some tips, strategies and responses for his upcoming interviews. Finally, we chatted about his future, his passion for music, his father’s expectations and the long life benefits of choosing what you love. “Tom, as an executive coach, I see supposedly highly successful people going to work each day to do a job to pay a mortgage. They are screaming inside.”

“So are you saying that I should continue with my music through my final years at school?”

“Tom, I’m not saying anything. I’m asking you to consider what makes you happy. To choose the subjects that you most enjoy. To further explore what lights you up.”

Tom looked at me with such intensity. No words were necessary. I could feel his relief as a quavering “thank you” emerged while he leaned forward to shake my hand. In that moment, there was such a confidence in him. The heaviness lifted.

As an executive coach I work with a lot of middle and senior managers who go to work to do a job for a wage. People who started their working lives on the path to achieving someone else’s goals. Only to find themselves working in a soulless business surrounded by many others like themselves doing a job with the primary motivation to pay for more stuff, more things, more crap that brings limited or no happiness?

Why do we put so much pressure on our children so young? Why is the question “What do you want to do when you grow up” part of so many adult child conversations? Why is it that the word ‘career’ still used in 2014? Why is the education system skewed towards subject choice, getting high marks, choosing a ‘career’ early, starting VCE in year 10, getting the right ATAR score so that you can get into the right degree at the right university?

Why not choose the one note, the one hundred words while the choice doesn’t involve starting over?

Soozey Johnstone is the author of the soon to be released book entitled “I am the Problem” – the “tell it like it is” real-world stories of why some businesses grow and prosper and others inevitably stumble and decline. 

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.

Once upon a time, in the rural hamlet of Bunyip, a young lady named Betsy fell in love. Betsy worked in the Bunyip tobacco sheds, rolling and packing cigarettes as part of the war effort in order to provide support and comfort to the brave soldiers who were fighting on the frontline to protect us all.  Betsy dreamt what those soldiers looked like, their names and where they were from.  She hoped her efforts offered, albeit small relief to their fears when going into battle and during the long days and nights not knowing when they would have to face the enemy.

Betsy herself had faced one or two enemies during her time in the tobacco sheds.  She had dated a man named Bruce who had been declared unfit to fight in active service on account of his “deteriorating” eyesight.  Bruce was tall, handsome and strong and he hated the nips and the hun in general.  He talked with incessant fervour about what he would do if he was ever confronted by them.  At first this talk alarmed, but very quickly started to bore Betsy. Realising what life would be like if she settled down with someone who was both so hateful in the absence of any real experience alarmed her.

After Bruce, Betsy then met a man named Bobby.  Bobby was a gun shearer, but was considered too old to fight overseas.  He enlisted in the home guard to protect the home front, much of which seemed to be centred on the Bunyip tobacco sheds. Bobby was the sort of man who liked to have a long sit on the toilet every morning after a coffee and one of Betsy’s hand rolled cigarettes. Betsy thought it best not to encourage Bobby so she introduced him to her friend Beryl. Beryl had confessed her great admiration for the brave men in their home guard uniforms.  The Bunyip Tobacco Company hosted their wedding shortly after to Betsy’s relief and Beryl and Bobby’s great joy.

One day, while working in the tobacco shed, Betsy was thinking about the brave boys on the front line and she decided to write a message of hope and love on one of her freshly rolled cigarettes: “to whomever gets to enjoy this smoke, I hope you come home safely to your loved ones. Betsy, from Bunyip, Victoria, Australia”.

Shortly before the war ended, Betsy was at work one day when a man appeared at the door to the shed.  He was a rugged little nugget of a man, with a split chin, three fingers missing, a mermaid tattoo and a slight limp in his left leg.  Betsy saw him speaking to Big Barb, the cutting and rolling supervisor while she was having a fag near at the entrance to the shed and sending him in her direction.  The nuggety man walked to Betsy, his blue Naval bellbottoms swaying as he limped. He stopped in front of Betsy, took out a cigarette tin and removed the cigarette with the message she had written 3 years earlier.

Their romance was short and sweet and the following year, Betsy gave birth to a beautiful baby boy that she named Bertie. Bertie was adorable in every sense. He was small, plump, happy and in every way lovable. He was the apple of Betsy’s adoring eye and the image of his fallen, but very brave father. Betsy felt like she was the most loved and loving woman in the world.

Julia Cusack (sandj123@hotmail.com)