Baby haze – Ella Bourke

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

Is it morning yet?

The roar of the neighbour’s car

It must be 5am 

Another day begins

The roar of the neighbour’s car

Light at the side of the blinds

Another day begins

Again, I hold the baby and watch news twenty-four. 

Light at the side of the blinds 

Are you teary, asked the nurse 

Again, I hold the baby and watch news twenty-four

The dim of evening starts to fall. 

Are you teary, asked the nurse 

It must be 5am 

The dim of evening starts to fall

Is it morning yet? 

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Zoladex – Bron Willis

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

 
Every month we do this together like some sort of wedding ritual. I lie down on the bed. I try to relax. He gets out the needle. He takes a breath. I take a breath. He removes the safety cap. I refuse to look. Which side is it again?
 
March, left, April, right, May, left. It’s left. Left of the belly button. Think of your happy place.
 
I remember the first time we did this. It was at the end of all the treatment. The IVF, the surgery, the chemo, the radiation. All finished. The doctors had given me the monthly needle until now. But the doctors were gone, the hospitals were gone. And we were left sitting on a bed at home, just the two of us, trying to figure out what the fuck came next.
 
We sat on the bed together, trying to come to grips with the idea of this monthly date. I’d asked him to do it for me. I was sick of all the appointments; it was easier just to do at home and besides, I told him, it would give him the chance to save my life every single month. He could be a hero, a lifesaver – every single month.
 
It’s the thickest needle I have ever seen. Once, early on, I got the nurse at my local GP to administer it. She gasped at the size of the needle. And once, my dad, an anaesthetist who spent half his life giving needles, did it for me – and even he was taken aback at the size of the needle.
 
But Terry learnt how to do it. The doctor showed him how to remove the safety catch. How to grab the fold of my skin, just next to my belly button. And how to plunge the needle into that skin.
 
Every month my happy place changes. Sometimes it’s swimming in the ocean at our summer beach holiday at Tura. Sometimes it’s a white and soft and fluffy cloud. Sometimes it’s Lake Rosanna, a place we sat listening to the frogs in the Tasmanian wilderness. I go there while my body lies on the bed.

 

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6 Prompts, Two visual Aids, a book and a pen – Sally Jones

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

The first time I saw his face, I remember it, so soulful, large coffee dark liquid eyes, full lips, crooked, inquisitive eyebrows. A camera in his hand, he asked if he could take my picture. He had a nice face, an English accent, an expensive vintage camera, so I said “Yeah, sure, why not?”

Flattered, I struck a campy pose and flicked my hair from my shoulder. I asked him, when he was done, “Why did you want to take my photo? Are you an artist? A model scout? A photo journalist?” He grinned and said he liked my style, particularly my beanie. I snatched the beanie off my head, embarrassed that I had forgotten it and was out in public. My 4 year old nephew had put his Buzz Lightyear beanie on me to keep my head warm when I was leaving the house earlier in the day.

What took you so long? He demanded as I busted through the door and fell onto the kitchen floor

These shoes are shit.. Fucken platforms.

I was getting pissed with Woody. How long have I been? Did I miss something?

You said you would be home in an hour , two tops, you said. I made dinner, you said you’d be home to eat. Why didn’t you answer your phone?

Because , like I told you, we had a meeting I can’t answer my phone in meetings. It’s fucken rude.

You just said you were getting pissed with Woody

I was

Where is Woody now?

I don’t fucken know, I haven’t seen him in ages.

*sigh* I was worried sick. This can’t keep happening. You were gone for three whole days.

My feet are freezing, the seat’s stuck to my bum. My breath thinks that it’s smoking and the bus will never come.I wish I’d kept my licence, I wish I’d not been bad. I wish I’d never drunk so much, more than I’ve ever had

I wasn’t expecting that fucking huge thing to be attached to such a skinny, slip of a fella.It’s like that’s where all of the food he eats goes, all of the sustenance. His heart moves blood around his body just for that….thing. It’s more than a penis, it’s a small planet; a drag on resources, a reason for large, wide legged pants. He told me he sometimes passes out when he gets an erection. He told me he has never… not once, not properly and to the end anyway.

The only answer was to keep fighting the urge to have a crack, loosen my jaw and see if I could make him pass out. I suffer from TMD, temporo mandibular disorder and opening my mouth that wide would kill me.

I considered the downstairs option but didn’t fancy bleeding or walking like a cowgirl (assuming I could walk) for a week.

Until finally I needed relief and handed him my vibrator. He had a mild woody, but neither of us wanted to die today. He put down his camera and helped me set a few things straight.

Afterward, we talked about surgery as an option for either or both of us, and devised a plan to pump him with extra bags of blood so he could at least stay conscious just one time.

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Gutted – Christopher Townsend

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

The first time I looked at this …… this thing, funnily enough, I saw Saturn, Venus and Mercury …. One through each whole, perfectly aligned aloft over the Pyramids of Giza. ‘It is a very rare event’ I am told, that these planets should align so perfectly – a serendipitous moment in time. But I know the idealised, romanticised and spiritualised version of the ‘event’ is not completely true – nothing lines up quite like that, the alignment is actually quite skewed; our imagination succumbs to symmetry but imagining such serendipity is sometimes enough to inspire.

The second time I saw the crocodile that snapped in stories of my younger days; from Peter Pan to Cape Tribulation; ‘what the fuck are you doing swimming across here’ I asked myself at the time. I have seen those jaws snap shut in my nightmares, surely they will snap shut in my waking hours? The third time, I looked closely at the spring mechanism and I saw ‘Mr Chopsticks’ himself, revealing how being so hopelessly gutted after several failed attempts at marketing his spring-loaded cutlery to urban Australians eventually led to him making a fortune. I wondered what purged him out of his gloom, and think perhaps it was a combination of chance and a long period of time. In my imaginary conversation with this entrepreneur I ask him, “How did you figure out that your crazy spring-loaded chopsticks would be a blessing to the arthritic ageing folks of Beijing – what took you so long to see things this way”? 

I wasn’t expecting that when this ‘invention’ was put in front of me, I could be so curious and so full of imaginary stories that link up in some as-yet unexplained way. Again, serendipity is part real, part imagination. In my journey toward wherever it is I am going, my doubt is the tundra of procrastination; I see that my hands have thawed, my mind is not so far behind, but for now at least, my feet are freezing. Despite the good fortune of others, I shouldn’t wait for serendipity to rescue me; the task is now mine alone. Dev has been talking of how to push on through, regardless of obstacles, forging ahead, unrelenting, kami-fucking-kazi. The only answer is to keep fighting.  

So I think I am accepting that to thaw my frozen feet and step toward my own progress, I must fight and write and write and fight; in little pieces, in set times, standing up and sitting down, with music, in silence, very straight or slightly bent, in strange places, in less than ideal circumstances, in terrible circumstances, regardless of what anyone thinks, free of judgement, for the pure joy of just being able to write …. until finally I can take that first step away from the tundra.

The invention, by the way was a plastic clothes peg, and I shall invent the great ice thawing lever, although I think Dev has beat me to it; my foot is coming free.

 

 

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Star Gazing and Navel Gazing – Anni Moss

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

“God, don’t you ever get sick of navel gazing?” my sister spits in that slightly – ok, not slightly – very – righteous disapproving tone she reserves for me, the youngest.

That voice, and that of my mother, have taken out equal shares in the space either side of my ears, hanging out on my ample swimmer’s shoulders, picking fluff and dandruff off my clothes and passing silent commentary on my life and choices.  One of those ears doesn’t even work but it doesn’t need to; the disapproval ratings register through the unkempt clothes and have enmeshed themselves into my bones.

The naval gazing commentary is prompted by the apparently disproportionate amount of grandparent time we have unfairly consumed whilst tripping off to our many ‘self-development’ retreats and excursions.  Our journey into the world of self-examination has its roots partly in my star gazing nature (another gripe:  “you’re such a dreamer!”), and partly in the fact that I had fallen in love with a man other than my husband.  Whilst I was swept away in the romance of someone who really “saw” me, “got” me and “loved” me, an unusually helpful voice from somewhere in my psyche was telling me that this could in fact all be bullshit, that my children needed to come first, and that I had actually married a really good bloke and he must still be in there somewhere.  I told myself my children were my number one motivation but if I’m honest, retrieval of my battered ego was fairly high on my list of priorities.  Of course, I couldn’t even begin to share the real motivation for all this ‘self-help’ with my sister.  The crushing realisation that I was not as lovely, kind, loving and faithful as I had carefully crafted and believed myself to be, and the risk of loss of that beautiful mask was too much to bear.  This careful crafting of my perfection had begun early in life, as I had gone about wincingly trying to protect my mother from her sometimes harsh, judgemental, demanding and unthinking mouth, and the repercussions for her friendships, marriage and my reputation.  Like it was any of my business.  But we’re not great in our family at figuring out what is our business and what is not.

“When are you going to get a real job?”  “When are you going to pull your weight and start helping with the mortgage?”  “You really should start thinking about your retirement plans.”  More helpful commentary from my sister, this time out loud.  My ego suffered the blows quietly like a battered wife.  My husband made me fall in love with him again with his response:  “We have chosen to invest in our relationship, our well-being and our self-awareness as these are more important gifts to our children than inheriting the brick and mortar products of our ‘well-invested’ money and over-work.”
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Meeting Vera – BevelledEdge

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

I am on foreign ground, literally; a nursing home in a moderately small Californian town, inland and between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The staff are friendly and mildly surprised at my presence and the request I have. My husband and I follow a carer down a passageway to a two bed room, all the while my heart thumping in my chest.

The nurse pokes her head into the curtained space. “There’s someone here to see you Mrs. Armstrong”, she says. She steps aside and the curtain is gathered to reveal an elderly woman with white hair swept back and a ‘don’t get too close’ air about her. I come face to face with my mother, sitting up in bed, looking quizzically at this person before her. She looks much older than the last time I saw her: thin (always was), dignified, aloof and a little bit apprehensive, possibly due to the novelty of visitors.

“Do you know who I am?” I hear myself say.

“No”, she returns bluntly.

“I’m your daughter”, I respond hopefully.

“Oh, how interesting” she drawls in her mild American accent.

 

Where do we go from here after 37 years?

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A SPENT COIN – Chapter 1 – Max Mournian

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

The first time I came across a foreign coin wrapped in paper was when I was walking along a dirty cluttered street in America. The front of my shoe kicked it along the sidewalk as I was rushing through the street. I thought nothing of it at first, but after kicking it a second time  I bent down to retrieve it and felt something solid in the middle, carefully unfolding the paper around it so as not to disturb the piece inside or wanting to drop it, I revealed a Vietnam coin, which on inspection the paper around it read the words Emotionally Vibrant.

I sat on a cement  wall just off the sidewalk to ponder what it might have meant. Knowing this coin had travelled from a third world country and seeing the words that accompanied it the temperature dropped around me giving me chills as it took me straight back to the time I visited Vietnam and how I felt after being there. Vietnamese faces were definitely vibrant and always smiling even though they had very little and were living in poverty. Emotionally it made me sad for them, but I smiled to myself as the thought of how little meant so much to all who live there and how it changed me in terms of living my life and being grateful for everything I have because being materialistic and greedy  is a power that no one should own.

Next minute I found myself wondering about the coin, whether it was someone’s good luck charm? Are they devastated they have lost it? Did someone special give it to them? And, have they in fact realized it was even missing yet?

Away with my thoughts and in a dream like state, a voice approached me asking me if that was my dog? A little startled, my mind still feeling very foggy I answered no, but he’s gorgeous. You look faraway, are you ok? Smiling I answered yes I’m fine. I’ve just found something that could possibly mean a lot to someone as for myself it has already taken me back on a memorable journey and I would really love to have the pleasure of meeting the owner, finding out their story and re-uniting them with the coin.

I advertised in the local newspaper, I put picture posters up in the street where I found the coin and surrounding areas with a phone number so they could reach me, but to no avail, which saddened me greatly.

To this day I still have that very coin wrapped in the same paper I found it in and whenever I pick it up I still wonder how it came to be on that particular street and what sort of person it left behind.

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 A life-long friend – Chapter 1 – Feee

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

‘To whom it may concern’ was written on the folded piece of paper in the mailbox. The lined paper had been roughly torn from a notebook and folded twice. What added a level of menace, but also the compulsion to open the folded piece of paper was firstly, the use of thick red pen strokes and the capitals, but more importantly, the rarity of a written note in these days of electronic communication. It must be from a stranger, he thought, and most likely a local stranger at that.
His heart skipped a tiny beat at that point, as the thought of an opportunity to connect with a stranger, or in fact any totally new living person, was not something that ever seemed to happen to him, or anyone he presumed, anymore. He had been mainly housebound these past few years. He could survive on the produce from his own garden and the air-borne drops from the suppliers, when he needed anything different. There seemed no point in heading outside to be ignored or even worse, stared at.
His wife had died 9 years ago now and all of his life-long friends were long gone. Unfortunately, it was one of many disadvantages of the life-extending cryogenic drugs. He still remembered when he was a boy and the excitement and hope that everyone had felt when this scientific breakthrough became mainstream and rolled out to the masses. Now everyone could join the rich and famous in their extended time on this planet and for his first hundred and twenty years of life, he was content. The drugs did work for most people, to some extent, but the differences in successful outcomes had the potential to put you out of kilter with not only your own generation, but the succeeding generation too. It had become so hard to lose everyone he had been close to, including his children and grandchildren, one by one. He was bitterly lonely.
Another disadvantage was the cultural change to society induced by this science. He had lost three grandchildren to the now viral fascination of extreme sports and pastimes. The young lived to push the boundaries of existence. The ability to extend life and delay ageing in most respects, appeared to have had the unintended effect of shortening average life expectancy, as ironically the value of a long life was now diminished.
He tentatively unfolded the note.
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Suffer In Your Undies – You Don’t Have To! A tale from the table by Ainslie Bryce

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

Suffer in your undies! You don’t have to. While I treat a lot of women
& men in my clinic, I also take note of the underwear they leave on
the chair… usually bras.

So I try, if I get close enough, to see the size – cup & girth of the
back strap. Now if the lady has a red mark or indentation anywhere her
bra sits, she needs to re-adjust. Re-adjust her hook & eye or the
shoulder strap. If it’s too tight it’s not good for her health. Her
girls might look  good but she struggles to breathe & this creates an
image that is detrimental to her lover & herself. Once the over the
shoulder boulder holder releases its captured audience – thats it. The
truth is revealed! The show’s over, she cant hold them in, or up, any
more.
Now, some people take my advice quite well. Others refuse to
acknowledge the issue.
So when I see a mature woman who rolls her ‘girls’ up into her bra –
she needs to be measured for a new bra. There’s new technology out
there I’m sure that your bra does the rolling for you! I haven’t seen
it or used it myself but I’m sure its out there or at least being
developed as I write!
Now please hear me when I say this too – when I treat women who look
like a Christmas Ham in a mesh bag, THESE WOMEN NEED TO BE MEASURED
FOR A NEW BRA!
“So you’ve got shoulder pain have you?”
“So all the headaches you had- how are they since your last
appointment? Oh they’re still happening…”
“… did you, at least, get measured for a new bra?”

All answers lead to no!

There’s part of your problem. I don’t mind ’cause as long as you keep
paying me to treat you for your pain, I’ll keep taking your money. As
long as you ignore my suggestions at getting measured for a new bra,
please keep coming to see me for treatment.
Not eating well? It could be a digestive issue, but see how your bra
cuts into your diaphragm & stomach area? That could be part of your
problem!?

Guys I see you laughing. Thinking about your Nanna, your mum or the
teacher you always made fun of, you don’t  get away with this subject
either. Please wear the right fitting underwear. The pain you feel in
your nether regions could be because you’re wearing little boys undies
from K-mart. Grow up & start buying your undies from the adult
section. They make Batman undies for “adult” men these days too you
know?! Ive seen them. If only they made Wonder Woman undies… oh,
hang on, they do Im wearing them at the moment!

When looking for good undies you need the right amount of support &
give in the material as well as the elastic. Not too tight around your
intestines & lower back, or top of your leg/groin area. This is
another set of issues.

Ladies if you keep pulling & tugging at your bra & undies – you might
need a new set? It doesn’t have to be expensive or matching, just
fitted properly & comfortable. Your headaches will ease. You will
breathe better & you’ll look better because you wont have VPL’s
through your clothes. In the mean time you’ll see me for treatment to
undo all the years that bad undies have done to you.

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Tennis Racquet – Jodie Whitehurst

Gunnas-Masters

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER  

‘Tennis racquet…….tennis racquet!” Quiet snigger. ‘Tennis Racquet…..tennis Racquet!’ More sniggering. Louder this time.

The sound of those words and the cocky, intimidating voices of her tormentors made the blood rise to Rebecca’s cheeks and her heart race alarmingly. She fought the urge to cry. It was the crying that had got her into this trap in the first place. She felt the cracked vinyl of the school bus seat, sticking to the bare part of her legs. The urge to peel her legs off the sticky surface and pull her dress down further to form a barrier, was niggling at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, for fear of attracting some new kind of taunt.

Rebecca had never been possessed of the self-assured nature of some of her classmates. At this moment, she longed to be the sort of person who could just turn around, say, “Fuck off losers!” to be rewarded by approving chuckles and cheers from admiring onlookers. Unfortunately, she was anything but. She was a compliant people-pleaser. A good girl. The shame of having been caught out as a ‘dobber’ and the resulting humiliation was excruciating. If only she had even one ally on the bus, but as usual, she sat alone in the front seat.

Her most recent moment of humiliation (the second one in a matter of days) had occurred only five minutes earlier. Mrs Stepwell or ‘Steppy’ as she was known by most of the students had cornered Rebecca as she ascended the undercover walkway towards the school bus stop. There was a common catch cry amongst the students: “Steppy’s on the war-path”. This ‘war-path’, on any given day might be carved out of a need to ensure all girls were wearing the regulation navy blue ribbon (“It must be 2.5cm in width, girls”) or simply out of desire to create fear. Today, she had been on her biggest war-path of the year so far: to catch the perpetrator of an act of vandalism: the smashing of a year 7 girl’s tennis racquet.

“Show me these boys then. Where are they?

“But Mrs Stepwell,” Rebecca had backpedalled desperately “I’m not sure if they actually did it. They might just be saying they did as a joke or something.”

“Just point them out”, she had ordered, and with that, Rebecca’s fate had been sealed.

Still stuck to her seat, Rebecca closed her eyes and tried unsuccessfully, not to think about her initial moment of public shame: the way she had cried on Monday upon finding her shiny new tennis racquet ruthlessly smashed up and sticking out of the school dumpster. There had been a significant number of witnesses to her tears. She had cried in a way that could not have been described as composed or measured. Her shoulders had heaved and the guttural howl emerging from her had provoked great mirth from the growing group of voyeurs who had stopped for the entertainment. Her sorrow was born of a feeling of horror at the prospect of telling her parents that she had let this happen to the racquet they had only bought her a week earlier. She had left it on the court after tennis coaching (an initiative her parents had organised in an attempt to help their un-sporty daughter fit in at her new school), and by the time she had gone back to the tennis court, it was gone.

Among the group of amused onlookers had been Max and Mike, two popular Year 8 boys with trendy haircuts and a plethora of female admirers. She had recognised them as the boys who always sat at the back of the bus, having conversations littered with obsceneties, in voices designed to be audible to everyone but the elderly driver.

On that Monday afternoon, however, Max and Mike had chosen not to sit in the back seat. Instead, they sat pointedly in the seat directly behind Rebecca, something which struck her immediately as unusual and unnerving. Then the taunting began.

“We saw you crying today. You looked really upset! Do you know who broke your tennis racquet?” asked Max, in an elaborately insincere imitation of concern.

“No.” Rebecca kept her head down, studying the pale blue stripes on her school dress.

“Well we know who did it”, piped up Max gleefully.

Despite her instinctive grasp of their mockery, she whipped her head around to face them.

“Who? Who did it?”

Both boys smirked.

“Us. We did it.”

“What? But, why?

“For fun”.

In her state of shock, it wasn’t clear to Rebecca whether or not they were telling the truth, but as the horror of their words sank in, the two boys stood up and strode triumphantly to the back of the bus, laughing. Once they had slid into their backseat throne, they started to quietly chant the words: “Tennis Racquet………….tennis racquet….tennis racquet” like some maniacal broken record.  Other kids watched her for a reaction, while Rebecca just sat, looking deeper into the lines of her uniform fabric wishing to somehow melt into them. The sickening chanting routine had continued for three more painful afternoons.

Now, as she sat on the bus, overwhelmed with shame but grateful at least that it was Friday, Rebecca was full of regret. Why had she been stupid enough to report their taunting to Mrs Annesly, her homeroom teacher, that morning? Why couldn’t she have just toughed it out for one more afternoon, knowing that a two-day reprieve was in sight. Maybe if she had done that, a new victim would have caught their interest by Monday and she would have been off the hook. Now, however, she had reached a whole new level of vulnerability. Sure, she would have a break next week, while Max and Mike served their week of detention with Steppy, but after that, she knew she would be fair game.

“Tennis Racquet…. Tennis racquet…tennis racquet….”they chanted, their tone of amusement, today replaced with one of menace. As it built to a crescendo, Rebecca studied her lap with increased determination.

She felt a wayward tear escape and roll down her cheek. As it splashed between the blue lines of her school dress, she dreamed of being home, safe under her doona with a Milo and her favourite cartoons to distract her. Only ten more minutes to go.

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