Freak out!

Aw f*ck aw shit.

I fell down a long worn slope in the Royal Botanical Garden, into something warm and tacky.

I didn’t see her there. At the bottom of the hill. Right before unfiltered webs, the soupy ropes of algae and steaming piss water, grey as the threatening sky above.

Her eyes, lurid green, brown, black, goose shit, say too much. Drive me crazy.

I didn’t want it. Too Soon Too Horny Not Right Too Owned Too Tracked For Too Long All Of It.

Until I wanted her more than anything, more than I’ve ever wanted anyone ever in my life and millions of futures blossomed wetly into my palms, like goat births, the thin pursed lips of a furry vulva opening to a flood of gossamer pink, red and purple, disgusting, yawning, writhing forever gifts. She makes me want to have kids, and I hate kids. She makes me not want kids, and I love kids, because she will be enough. Sometimes I look at her and see her as a little kid. Sometimes I look at her and I see an ancient woman. I wonder if her eyes will fade from their distinctive piercing yellow as she gets older. If I will remember the goose shit, or love the new creamy sheen, or if I will be too demented, too drug fucked and reeling, to care.

It isn’t her. (Or is it?). Every winter, my brain dips into a wave of death. But this winter it calls me especially. I chase jobs like kelpies chase utes, desperate strings of saliva slapping the road. My car breaks down. The cash dwindles, Centrelink fucks me around. I have to get new tenants on the lease, evade criminal records, add zeros. And just like every winter, past 7 pm, my sense leaves me and I wake to insane scribbles, worried texts, ink on my hands and my sheets, my brain hurting. But when I see her, time stops. She seems to me to be the only person who doesn’t want something. And I want to give her everything. When I think people look at her funny, I have to push down my urge to lose it, freak out, kick and spit at them (cause I know she wouldn’t want that).

My family and friends are suspicious of my “sudden” lurch into “madness”, like it doesn’t happen annually. Looks and whispers her way (if they know of her. I try to keep her, her skinny arms and wild eyes, and her smart face and deep rustling voice all to myself. Anything I tell them about her is begrudging, drawn long and thin). It isn’t her, she is solace, peace and quiet, she is hope, I bat their mild concern away with a ferocity that surprises me, hurts me even.

We went to see the Catherine Opie exhibition, a lesbian photographer my mate Imogen put me onto. It was expensive (32 bucks, 2 concession tickets) but worth it to see the wild diving in her pupils. She told me if I ever transition, she will still love me, “of course”. We fucked quickly but not quietly against a tree outside. We ate halva all the way home and I felt my teeth rotting.

We can’t do anything when we are together, too lost in eachother and the crazy magic of knowing, but for me, it’s almost worse when we are apart, my heart aches and wriggles against the bone. Even though the words come in heavy, relentless buckets, pressure hoses worth, enough to split your skin from its flesh in a silvery sheet. Even though shit get sorted, the bills get paid, the essays get written, I can’t help but feel she is more real than all of it. More real than anything ever. And I’m worried sick. I’m terrified.

By Pup Kermit