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  After the envelope picking, my grandfather would sit us down next to the giant nativity set and tell us stories about his childhood. I think this was to make us feel grateful for the money he’d just given us, but each story was more horrifying than the last. My favourite was the one where he broke his arm as an eight-year-old in Lebanon while climbing a tree. Apparently he was trying to get eggs from a nest when he lost his footing, fell and suffered multiple fractures and breaks. The story goes that, thinking it was a twig, he pulled a protruding bone from his arm, AND with him being too poor and living too far from a hospital, the local medicine man just sewed up the wound with wire. Merry Christmas, kids! Enjoy your Christmas dinner!

  At least we could distract ourselves from the terror of Grandad’s past by gazing at his elaborate nativity scene. He had built the stable so big that as kids we could almost walk inside it. The roof was decorated with hundreds of Christmas lights and the floor was covered in hay. The statues were your typical Mary, Joseph, Jesus and friends set-up except one of the wise men, whose eyes were painted staring in different directions so he looked like a creep. Next to frankincense and Bung-Eye was a donkey that didn’t belong to the nativity scene. ‘But Susan,’ I hear you say, ‘there was indeed a donkey at the birth of Christ! Had it not been for the donkey carrying the Virgin Mary she might not have even made it to Bethlehem. That donkey has every right to be in that nativity scene!’ To which I would reply, ‘Yes, but did that donkey dispense cigarettes from its arsehole?’ Because this guy did. It was a trinket my grandparents had bought: you lifted the tail and out popped a cigarette to offer to your guests after dinner. After all, it’s the early ’90s – cigarettes aren’t even bad for you yet.

  Speaking of dinner, I should say this: the meal was always spectacular. Long tables covered in hams surrounded by pineapple rings decorated with beetroot centres. Trays of turkeys and sauces, platters of prawns, skewered meats, towers of fried flat bread and tabouli and hummus as far as the eye could see. And always, bowls and bowls of figs. Of course it all came with another horrifying story from Grandad to teach us the lesson of not wasting food. The other kids would hide scraps in napkins or get their dads to finish what they couldn’t, but this little porky pie here would lick her plate clean and loudly exclaim she wasn’t even full. My grandmother would kiss my chubby cheeks and bless my appetite – it would be years before I learned portion control. Grandad would sit with his chubby granddaughter and point to the enormous fig tree outside and remind me how expensive figs were and how I couldn’t eat any until I finished my dinner (though that was never a problem). So protective of this fig tree was he that he had rigged a huge netted canopy to an elaborate frame of scaffolding to keep out possums and bats.

  The most memorable of all the Christmas dinners was the year Uncle Ross came along. Uncle Ross wasn’t technically my uncle – he was my aunt’s brother-in-law and a Vietnam veteran who had lost his right leg. He had a wooden leg and walking stick and a persistent fascination with trying to hit us with both. Sometimes he would sit near the back door, unscrew his wooden leg and swing it at us as we tried to get out the back door to play in the garden. Ah, therapy.

  After we had all finished dinner, it was time for poker, and the children were shuffled outside. So we kids hurdled over Ross’s leg and raced out to the swings under the fig tree. Only the men were allowed to play poker and they sat in the formal dining room, playing with snaplock bags of coins we saved up all year. They played twenty-cent rounds till 6 am while the women did all the washing up and cleaning of dishes they had also prepared, eventually retiring to the lounge room to drink West Coast coolers. Along with portion-controlled eating, feminism was still a distant dream.

  Let me preface this next part of the story by saying two things: it was 1993, well before the Australian Gun Law Reforms of 1996; and figs are very expensive.

  As night fell on Christmas of 1993 and we played on the swings under the stars, we heard a rustling in the fig tree. We stared up with our giant ethnic eyes to see that a bat had broken through the net. We froze for a second then heard Grandad dragging a shotgun down the driveway. We all screamed – not out of fear but excitement! We cheered, so happy and so full of the festive spirit! ‘Shoot the bat, shoot the bat!’ Because that’s what you do! Because figs are expensive! Because all our grandfathers have guns at the ready and a blood thirst for bats, right?

  And that’s normal, yes? And it makes for a happy Christmas for all . . . except maybe for those of us who are one-legged Vietnam vets who perhaps did not enjoy the gunshots we weren’t expecting to hear on a Christmas night in Sydney . . .

  For me, while swapping stories on the playground after the Christmas holidays felt like I was breastfeeding my dolls in public, I know these memories are a gift. I will always remember the spinning Christmas tree of 1993, as my grandfather murdered fruit bats and my uncles smoked cigarettes from the arsehole of a donkey as a merry Christmas for most, and for most a good night.

  MARK SUTTON

  Mark is an actor, writer, comedian, producer, crossword maker, literature academic and radio host from Sydney. That list is indicative of the fact that he hasn’t held down a steady job in years. He has a PhD from the University of Sydney and has worked on many TV shows, including The Checkout and The Drum and Huey’s Cooking Adventures, although his role on that last one was solely as an avid viewer.

  ‘These Are the Places in Belgium’ copyright © Mark Sutton 2018

  These Are the Places in Belgium

  by MARK SUTTON

  This story was originally performed at the event The Odyssey

  In the hierarchy of stories you want people to tell you, for the most part travel stories rank just below stories about dreams, and just above stories about that time you seriously drunk like fifty beers and didn’t even spew or nuffin.

  Everyone had the most amazing time. In the most incredible place. With the most beautiful people. Everyone learns. Everyone grows. Everyone discovers themselves. Everyone was in this 2000-year-old temple listening to Sigur Ros on mushrooms and fucking a dreadlocked Canadian.

  But there’s a subset of travel stories, rarely shared because they are just as awful as normal travel stories but have the added bonus that they’re about the taking of unjustified trips and making others pay for them. Welcome to the wonderful world of academic conferences.

  Because if you think federal politicians abuse their travel allowances – well, let me tell you this, academics really know how to junket.

  It’s a pretty simple formula: the society of, say, Charles Dickens academics gets together and declares, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we all went to Barbados and everyone got drunk in the sun and smooched each other while quoting Bleak House?’ And an elaborate system of grants and stipends pays for it.

  Now, if you are an expert in, say, Charles Dickens, or Jane Austen, it’s pretty simple. There’ll be an official Dickens or Austen society, they’ll decide to have a conference, they’ll choose the exotic location – all you have to do is show up and keep your receipts. And the all-important justification of the need for dozens of people to travel thousands of kilometres in order to get the grants is straightforward: so we can cross-pollinate with the leading thinkers in our area – in every sense of the word.

  But if, like me, you make the sound career move of becoming an expert in Bob Dylan, the justifying aspect of it all is slightly more difficult. Firstly, there aren’t specific conferences for you. This is why there are these other types of conferences with names so vague that basically anyone can find a way to pretend to their university that it is relevant to their study. Things like ‘The Re-Establishment of the Centrality of Narrative’, ‘An International Symposium on Defining Re-Genre-fication’ or ‘Words’. It is at these conferences that all the odd-bods and fringey academics who aren’t studying one of the canonical greats get together to discover that they don’t much like each other and aren’t much interested in each other’s work.

  The conference
I was ultimately accepted to had the precise and robust theme of ‘Steps Towards Authorship.’ I, with my topic of Bob Dylan’s later works, was placed on a panel with one person talking about Breaking Bad, and another talking about the guy who wrote Day of the Triffids. This panel was called ‘Is Middle-brow the New Anxiety?’.

  And the conference itself was to be held in Ghent.

  A quick Wikipedia search revealed that Ghent was in Belgium. Belgium, I thought. The jewel of northwest mainland Europe, except Holland obviously. The third best of the low countries.

  With some flowery language and some serious exaggeration I managed to persuade the folks in charge of the grants that it was a worthwhile endeavour for me to fly to Ghent to discuss Bob Dylan with an international group who had no apparent interest in Bob Dylan. I demonstrated the contribution I would be making to world knowledge and the vital discoveries my trip could afford. You have to be selfless when it comes to getting grants. I had to go to Belgium, not for me, you understand, but for you.

  And so it was time to junket. Hard.

  Now, because the conference was only a few days long, I thought I’d get there early and be a bit of a tourist. And because I’d always snubbed my nose at people who did lightning-fast whistle-stop tours all over Europe without really absorbing each place’s unique culture, I elected to spend three full weeks exploring Belgium.

  Good idea!

  I planned my itinerary. Antwerp: surely anywhere where they held an Olympics was worth visiting. Brussels: the hustle and bustle of multinational meetings. Bruges: good film. Ghent: place where the conference was . . . These are the places in Belgium.

  And so my Belgian junket began. And I had a pretty good time and it can all be summed up quickly. Belgium’s basically belfry, chips, dubious religious artefact, chips, old railway station, chips, nice bridge, chips, special monk beer, chips, belfry.

  It was in Bruges, the day before I had to head to Ghent for my conference, that I met an athletic South Carolinian named Hampton and became inspired by his bluster about biking his way around Europe. Hampton said that given Belgium was so flat it was uniquely suited to long-distance biking. Hampton also felt that if you got the train everywhere you missed ‘the real Belgium’. Apparently there was more to Belgium.

  And so, motivated by the ancient and time-honoured human need to not let a complete stranger think I was a softcock, I elected to ride, not from Ghent to Aix as Robert Browning would have it, but from Bruges to Ghent.

  Now, it may surprise you to learn that, in spite of my lithe and lissome frame, I am not a cycling enthusiast, and in fact, this was my first time on a bike in about ten years.

  Hampton had waxed lyrical about the pleasures of riding among the poppies and windmills of the Flemish countryside. But, as I soon discovered, it was just a large highway. And it was winter. And fifteen minutes into my journey it began to rain. Then snow. And then sleet. The journey became a sodden fight along a concrete strip with trucks blasting muddy ice into my face. Soon my water-logged jeans ripped into a gaping maw around the crotch. The bike seat disappeared into the hole in my jeans and rubbed and chafed on everything it found inside. And for another forty kilometres I puffed and wheezed along and with every turn of the spokes my shivering exposed balls bounced up and down on the muddy bike seat.

  The ride should have taken about three hours. It took me ten. It was past dark when I slowly rolled into Ghent.

  As I rode through into the town square and took stock of the belfry, dubious religious artefact, railway station, bridge, special monk beer and chips, I rode straight into a statue of Emperor Charles V and fell off my bike. A group of nearby Belgians approached to see if aid was required, but when they looked down and saw my red, swollen balls dribbling out onto the cobblestones they did a quick about turn and scurried off, even though I clearly needed medical attention.

  I had a sizeable cut on my chin, but there wasn’t a lot I could do, because my clever decision to ride meant that I had only just made it to Ghent in time for the conference’s opening get-to-know-you soiree, where I introduced myself to the other sage and dignified academics; they, tasteful attired and erudite, me, red-faced, runny- nosed, bloody-chinned and leathery-testicled.

  It takes a long time at conferences though before the actual scholarly pursuits begin. After the soiree was one of those dinners at a giant table for forty people where no one knows each other and everyone is convinced that the good conversation is happening at other parts of the table. And then there were drinks. And in the morning there was a hungover breakfast soiree. And then there were coffee and cakes.

  And finally it was my turn to get up and speak. I stood there, in a room built in the year 1060, and reflected on the complicated system of needs and desires that propelled me and every other academic to Ghent and other parts of the globe. As a profession, we seemed to have managed to find the least efficient and most expensive way of accomplishing a task that has no purpose, and still make it look like we are doing something for the public good.

  I thought about the hours of administration, the gallons of plane fuel, the thousands of dollars, the miles of distance and the damage to my genitals that led to me standing behind a lectern with the mission of answering the question ‘Is Middle-brow the New Anxiety?’.

  And I spoke for my allotted twenty minutes, accompanied by a tastefully minimalist PowerPoint presentation.

  And you know what? I think the fifteen people who came to watch enjoyed it.

  CASSIE WORKMAN

  Cassie is probably the most experienced newcomer to comedy in the country, owing to the fact that she previously performed under another name. Early in 2017, she came out as transgender, and began transitioning. After a brief absence from the stage, she is now back and kicking ass. As well as a series of critically acclaimed live shows, Cassie has appeared on TV in It’s a Date and Die on Your Feet. She has written for ABC TV’s Tractor Monkeys and publications as diverse as Blitz Martial Arts Magazine, Tiger Airway’s inflight magazine Tigertales, The West Australian and The Music. Recently, Cassie has been working as a contributor on ABC TV’s Tonightly with her series ‘So You Think You Can Trans’.

  ‘The Mermaid’ copyright © Cassie Workman 2018

  The Mermaid

  by CASSIE WORKMAN

  This story was originally performed at the event If I Could Turn Back Time

  Last year, I experienced a harrowing depression that almost resulted in the end of my life. I feel I owe the people who love me, and took care of me, an explanation. What follows would have been, for all intents and purposes, my suicide note.

  The mermaid is weightless. Her body drifts through currents, breaks through crashing waves, and darts gracefully across coral forests on the ocean floor. She is peaceful, and she is hidden. Her tail, though it bears the shape of a woman, the full hips, round thighs, has no visible sex. Beneath the scales, mother-of-pearl coloured, shimmering in the broken undersea light, there is no vulva, no apparent signifier of womanhood. She is hidden within something not her: half of one, half of the other, not fully either.

  At six I was a mermaid. I was secretly obsessed with her body. I spent a whole day on the floor of the living room with flippers on my feet and a knitted rainbow rug wrapped around my legs in an approximation of her tail. I stared at where my legs turned to fish, trying to blur my body until it was real. I begged my grandmother and mother to make me a mermaid costume, but their expressions changed when I brought it up. They turned their eyes from me, and found some gracious way to decline. They dunked Kingstons in steaming cups of tea and told me to find something to do.

  I began gymnastics class soon after that because I was enthralled by the way gymnasts moved. They were graceful, like her, and their costumes looked like shiny scales. I wasn’t allowed to wear them, of course, but this would be the closest I could get. After class, my single mother would be too tired to cook, and we would eat takeaway on the ride home. In the car, overheated by stifling blasts from the defogger, sh
e turned to me briefly, and said, ‘It’s OK to want to be a mermaid. Even if you’re a boy.’ I screamed, ‘No,’ and we never discussed it again. I said no because, even though she told me it was OK, I knew it wasn’t. I knew from the way people looked and acted, that there was something very wrong with her, that the mermaid could never come out again.

  I became intensely conscious of the boundaries of gender after that. I collected Venetian masks, manufactured from cheap porcelain, gaudily beautiful in a way only a child could appreciate, but I made sure to keep a He-Man close by too. The suspicions about my orientation unnerved my mother and father. I’m sure they only cared about what would happen to me, but effectively, I became an impostor of myself as a result. I began to settle into the role, but occasionally I still slipped up. I’m sure it must have been obvious, when I was caught pretending to be Cleopatra in the bath, or when the skirt I had stolen disappeared from my hiding place.

  Sometimes, we would go to visit my mother’s friend, who had a daughter my age. I didn’t know why we went there so often at the time, but I remember, quite clearly, we would eat Mexican food from a store-bought kit, and I thought it was amazing. Towards the end of the night, my mother’s friend would tell her daughter to have a shower and then come out and say goodnight. Being totally innocent, the girl would wander back into the living room naked. I was utterly enthralled by her, but not for the reasons they might assume (I know they thought I was gay). I didn’t want her – I wanted to be her. She was the completed mermaid.