Noosa.
Sitting outside by a
jacaranda tree.
I tip my glass, hopefully, searching for
the last golden droplet to savour.
A smile falls on my face.
The sun’s warmth mingles with the fuzzy pleasure
in my belly, in my head.
Content in my thoughtless-ness,
my mild state of oblivion.
Slowly I pick up my book and my bag and glide
through the street, pausing in front of numerous shop windows.
I gaze
carefully
at the overpriced tourist goods inside.
There she is,
my straw hat.
I’ve been looking for this hat for a long time.
Roughly textured, wide corrugated brim,
peachy trim.
Sure to keep the sun off.
Great for redheads
I place the hat gingerly on my head.
Nerdy-chic. Reminds me of something,
somewhere.
“What the hell are you wearing, nerd?!” It was the early 90s and everyone wore those legionnaires caps with the built in mullets at the back.
Fluoro yellows and greens and pinks surrounding my every playground move.
I wore a lampshade that I had spotted in the back of the guest room cupboard. It was made of straw.
Roughly textured, wide corrugated brim,
mustard trim.
Sure to keep the sun off.
In my transition from a remote indigenous community in Arnhem Land to country New South Wales no one had thought to inform me of something critically important: being cool was not about standing out or being different.
It was about fitting in.
Wear the same, speak the same, do the same.
That was cool.
I didn’t know. I thought difference reigned supreme.
So I used adjectives like ‘wonderful’ and ‘fabulous’.
And I read. I liked to read books that were too big to be held with one hand, so big I had to read them with two. Head down, book up, wandering around the school playground reading.
Flaunting my love of literature,
completely oblivious to the appeal of monkey bars and team sports.
I tended towards the macabre. Grisly mysteries, hardly age-appropriate,
in hindsight. Henri René Albert Guy de Mauppasant’s ‘The Hand’ was a particular favourite.
A human hand…muscles exposed, traces of old blood on the bones. This hand,
locked in a drawer that would come out at night like a scorpion, tendons dangling…
I re-told the stories to my classmates.
They pulled my pants down,
in disinterest.
And when I wore that lampshade to school everything changed.
No, it didn’t,
really it didn’t.
But you know, in the long term I’m more resilient. Etc.
Or
the fluoros never
bothered me so much anyway.
Either way,
here I am.
The nerd. The misfit. Nearly thirty years later,
standing in a Noosa boutique.
Surrounded by bikinis and suntans
Lampshade on my head.
I survey her in the mirror
critically.
Ginger-
ly.
How far we’ve come,
full circle.