hello!

I’ve been writing a lot recently, although not very much of it has ended up here. A lot of it has gone to Fashion Journal, which I’m grateful for, but I really want to do more of my own stuff here as well. I’m thinking I’m going to start posting more of my own fashion content (thrifting anyone!?) and also more creative/fiction work alongside my usual creative nonfiction stuff. Hope that’s ok.

Anyway, I wrote a short story for uni last semester and I thought I’d share some of it with you. I think it definitely still needs some work but I figured I’d let y’all read it anyway. It’s called Fraser Street, and it’s about housemates, shitty boyfriends and feeling adrift in your twenties.

Feedback very welcome!!

hope you enjoy! xx

Present

I’m stepping out through the front door of the house when I see it. In scraggly letters, made of rocks, of pieces of gravel he’d picked up from the ground. My name, wonky, capitalised, right there on the pavement. Martha.

“Um... Lola?”

“Yeah?” She’s trying to pull the key from the lock. The weather’s changed recently, the cold compacted the ground, shifted the door frame.                     

“Turn around”

“Yeah, just give me a se-”

“No, like… now”

“Oh my god fine.” She swivels around, bag heavy on her shoulder. “Oh for fucks sake.” We must have looked mad standing there, heads cocked. Lola slots the key back in the door and yells for Hayden, whose footsteps down the stairs I can hear from the street.

“What?” he asks as he stumbles through the door, sleep in his eyes. The dog slips out the door in the chaos, sniffs delicately around the rocks and sits, tail wagging, like she’s found buried treasure. “Oh my fucking god.”

“Shut your gob or you’ll catch a fly” I say, half laughing, half wanting to die. 

“This has to be documented.” He goes to grab his phone from his pocket, patted nothing but pilled flannelette, and realising that he is in fact on the street in his pajamas, swivels around so fast that he forgets to duck, and smacks his head on the rotting wood of the doorframe. “FUCK!” He doubles over, holding his head.

“Jesus Hayden, you’re gonna concuss yourself again” Lola says, nails tapping on her phone screen as she focuses her camera. 

Hayden groans. “I am wounded, but like a soldier in battle, I must rise.” He holds his palm to his forehead, where a soft round bump is already forming. “I will fight again.” He stoops through the door, whistling sharply for Sadie.

Lola turns to me. “Martha. Babe. This is why you need to date women.”

“Oh, you think a woman wouldn’t do this shit?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Right. Well. It’s too early for this bullshit. I need a coffee.”

***

Ben was a bit useless I suppose, in the nicest sense of the word. One huge contradiction, and not in that John Green way you might imagine, if you too happen to have read a little too much YA fiction in your teenage years, but in the way that made me feel like shit. He’d make me dinner, present me with a plate and a glass of ice-cold Pepsi, then leave me the dishes. He’d make me a cup of tea but forget the milk. He’d watch my favourite movie with me, but halfway through it I’d feel his hands slide down the front of my jeans, testing, searching for a more satisfying option.

He’d make plans without me, and act like it was my fault when I couldn’t make them. Like we were supposed to have some freaky mind connection, where his thoughts were mine and mine his. He made me feel gooey and like I had soft plush insides and then throw me out with the trash.

A typical text conversation between the two of us might go something like this:

ok so I’ve picked up some wine for tonight

wait, what?

for tonight

i’m gonna come over and we’ll drink wine                                                                                                      

and watch reruns of america’s next top model

no bc I have book club tonight

not that I don’t appreciate it!!

thx for wanting to watch antm with me

tomorrow??

i have hockey tomorrow

friday then??

i’m free at 6?

bennnnn?

And then I wouldn’t hear from him until Saturday night, when he was inevitably out at some bar with his friends, talking at them about his feelings. They’d probably gotten sick of his yapping, told him to just text me if he cared so much. And so he would.

u out?

noooo

wanna come out?

no not really

can I come to u?

i’m in bed

perfect

And then he’d show up, stumbling through the front door like a drunk kid, flop onto the bed and say sorry Martha, sorry for being a dick. And I’d say that it’s okay, and I know you didn’t mean it, and yes I love you too, because the bed felt empty without him.

***

I met him at uni in a literature and culture class. In week two of the tute he sat in the seat I’d sat in the week before, which made me notice him. I took a mental note, thinking that this guy must shun cultural convention, and how easy it must be for him to glide through the world not thinking about all that stuff. 

After he’d sat down, he ripped open the Velcro of his bag and cluttered the table with his possessions. There was a beat-up key to a Holden Commodore (no keyring), a small Moleskin diary (no pen) and multiple gum packets (all empty). He swivelled around and accidentally caught my eyes. I could tell he hadn’t meant to. They’d met for just a moment too long, too long for us to pretend it hadn’t happened, but not long enough for any good to come of acknowledging it.

“Um.. sorry, what was your name?”

“Oh, it’s Martha.”

“Cool, I’m Ben.” He silently nodded, breathing out audibly through his nose. “So what degree are you doing?” For fucks sake.

“Oh, I’m doing lit”

“Nice.” More nodding. “Nice.”

“Yep”

For the next few weeks, after the eye contact incident, we said little to each other. It was a boring, useless class. So boring that I started noticing things. I noticed his hair, the way it glinted auburn when the midday sun shone through the window. I noticed that he always wore a thick silver ring on his right middle finger, and sometimes a pinky ring too. I noticed that he always smelled different, and I found myself picturing what his bedroom might look like, if he had a shelf dedicated to cologne, and if he’d bought them all himself or whether they were gifts from friends, mothers, girlfriends.

About halfway through semester I walked into class, and a guy I’d never seen before was sitting on our table. His hair was limp and desperately needed a wash, his shirt (which had some weird meme from before 2012 on it) was covered in lint, and his skin was weedy and pale, like he needed to spend more time in the sun (and not in a Stephenie Meyer kind of way). I was bursting to talk to someone about this new development. I wanted to write incel, much? on a note and slide it to someone, anyone.

Now, I know it’s bad to put someone in such a shallow, loaded box before they’ve even said a word, but in my defence, this guy did turn out to be an asshole. An electric charge shot through the room at every new ridiculous thing he decided to say.

“But how do you even know that she was gay?”

The energy in a room switched up a level. Like everyone somehow now existed on a higher plane, tensely watching, waiting.

“Just because she wrote that a girl was pretty doesn’t mean she was, like, into her”

And to me, personally, under his breath: “fuck I hate Dickinson.” I rolled my eyes, and Ben caught it. Snap.

Over the next few weeks I learned that he was a science major, and just doing this subject for the credit points. I told him I wanted to be a writer. I learned that he’s really good at physics, but not so great at chemistry. I told him I lived with my two best friends, Lola and Hayden. He told me that he still lived with his mum. I learned that his favourite movie was Call Me By Your Name. I told him that I loved it too, and that maybe we should watch it together sometime. And we did.

We started missing class. We’d sneak off, my back pressed into the cold plastic-coated chipboard of the toilet stall, him all over me. It was like wandering into oncoming traffic, and I’d willingly ignored the red light.

The flaking started early. We’d text through the weekend, chat about this and that, and then Monday in class his seat would be empty.

hey where are u

wagging lol

why tho

nah jks my brother’s in town we’re hanging out

oh cool?

When I brought it up with Lola she said not to worry, boys are just like that. Emotionally immature. I didn’t think there was anything emotional about keeping someone in the loop, but whatever.

He’d come to the house, skin on skin, then roll off the mattress and to the kitchen for water, and an hour later the bed would still be empty. I’d slide out from under the covers into the frostbitten air, creep in my socks down the hall and find him leaning on the kitchen bench, holding Hayden hostage with stories from high school. Hayden has always been too nice.

***

“I think I should text him,” I say to Lola as we walk down Fraser Street, away from the scene of the crime.

“Bub, do not fucking text him.”

“I really feel like-”

“Martha. He cannot go on in life thinking he can just get what he wants by doing insane shit like leaving messages in rocks outside people’s houses.”

“Lola, and I’m being so serious right now, have I done it? Have I actually done it? Have I driven a man insane?”

She gives me the look. Lola has lots of different looks. This is the serious one, the one she reserves for situations where she doesn’t want back-talk, self-deprecation, an argument.

“Come here bub.” I follow her over to the side of the pavement, where she pats her hand on the lumpy top of a short bluestone fence, beckoning me to sit. She’s talking to me now but all I can think about is if someone is in the front room of this house, the house with the fence, and if they can hear us through a crack under their window. Maybe they were enjoying a peaceful cup of tea, and now they’ve been confronted with my bullshit, with Ben’s bullshit, and all against their will.

“Martha. Are you even listening to me.”

“Yes – yes. Sorry.”

“Not to hark on about the stereotypical shit, ok, but the man didn’t even have bed base.”

“Bed bases are expens-”

“He lives at home!”

“Yep. Yes, he does.”

At the café I order a coffee and then retreat to the waiting area, in which there’s just a few too many people squished to stand comfortably. My iced latte costs me $8.20. For a second I think that Lola might shout, considering the circumstances, but then she says that although she loves me more than life, she is very poor right now and her bank account couldn’t take the hit, even for a charity case like me.

As we wait for our names to be called, Lola launches into what I call the best-friend speech. She tells me the stuff you’d expect a friend to tell you after your ex-boyfriend leaves a mural made out of rocks outside your house. Of course it’s not your fault. He’s clearly a nutcase. Blah blah blah. And the kicker: I can’t believe you dated him for so fucking long.

***

When we first moved into Fraser Street a few years back the house seemed to swell. It swelled with the anticipation that accompanies any new space: I’ll drink coffee in the morning here, I’ll sit at that window when I’m on the phone, I’ll eat dinner on the couch and watch television just here.

Now, though, the house creaks and groans under the weight of what our lives have grown into. What all lives grow into. It settled. Settled into the mechanics of the everyday: wiping hardened toothpaste from the communal bathroom sink; dragging overflowing rubbish bin bags across the driveway, juices trailing behind on the pavement; and trying our best to fall asleep to the banging of the neighbours’ headboard against the shared wall (at least someone’s having a good time). We got used to the draughty, shivering cold, and we got used to writing long-winded sob stories to the council in an attempt to get out of parking tickets. I’m not sure why we bothered; they never worked.

Lying in my bed with a book propped open on my knees, I can hear the screeching sound of the blender from the kitchen, undercut by Lola singing along (badly) to Dominic Fike. Her voice bounces along the floorboards and stretches through the inch-wide gap under my door; the door snake (knitted for me by a previous situationship, I’d kept it just to spite her) doesn’t do much in the way of soundproofing.

Dust floats through the cylindrical glow of the bedside lamp. It’s like the beam of light a UFO might send down if it was trying to suck you up into space. A bug throws itself violently against the leadlight, the colours of which reflect into the carpet and the walls, creating a warped kaleidoscope of red, green and blue. Lola hates the lamp. The day I brought it home from the op shop she said the cord was the colour of snot, and that the colours made her think of the church she was forced to go to in school, of the tinted sunlight shining down on her in the pews.

From somewhere in the doona comes a buzzing. I lift up the sheets and see the bright square of my phone screen, and Ben’s name.

please don’t hate me

i don’t hate you

i just wish you’d leave me alone

is it because of the gay thing

no???

are u sure

yes???

is it bc u prefer girls really

and u just don’t want to tell me

the problem is literally you

***

Four weeks earlier

We were sitting on my bed when it all tumbled out. Ben was leaning against the window. I could see it bending, groaning against his weight.

“I think that, um, maybe-”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“Um..”

“What the fuck.”

“I’m sorr-”

“You can’t do this to me. You can’t. You actually fucking can’t.” He was up off the bed by this point. “Why?”

“I’m ju-”

“Why?”

“Ben can you let me fucking speak.” He stopped and stared at the floor, like he’d been switched off at the wall.

“You can’t”

“I can, and I am. I’m sorry.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

I didn’t know what to say to this. How do you explain to someone that you never felt loved, that you want something more, something more than them? That it really is them, and not you?

On the bed again, he’s laid himself face down, feet hanging from the mattress, shoes still on.

“Ben?”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Do you think you could, maybe, think somewhere else?”

“I’m not leaving” he said, his voice muffled by the doona. 

“Can you please not do this.”

“Do what?”

“Act like a child.”

“You’re always telling me I should work on processing my emotions, and here I am doing it.”

He awkwardly reached into his pockets, still face down in the bedsheets, and pushed his airpods into his ears. It was so loud I could hear it across the room. That tinny, metallic sound of music that’s not meant for you.

In the kitchen, tears streaming now that I was out of the room, I grabbed Hayden (who was leaning against the bench, waiting on a toastie) by the arms. “I broke up with him Hayden. I did it. But now he won’t leave, he won’t listen. You have to help me ge-”

“I’m on it” he said. “As long as you watch my ham and cheese.”

As I watched cheese escape from Hayden’s toastie and sizzle on the grill, Sadie wriggled her way between my legs. I stroked her long nose and scratched behind her ears and she leaned her body up against the oven door for warmth.

I’m not sure what Hayden did or said in there, but after about twenty minutes Ben shuffled silently out of my bedroom, down the hall and out onto the street. The front door made a thud. Dust rose.

“Your toastie’s a bit cold now” I said to Hayden as he slunk back into the kitchen. He grabbed me and folded me into himself, like a weighted blanket in human form.

Later, in the shower, I twisted the hot water tap until it wouldn’t twist any more. I looked up towards the roof, at the circle of grey mould on the ceiling, expanding outwards by the day, its own little ecosystem. Icy, fat droplets fell, built up from the condensation, and the skin of my scalp burnt with the cold.

***

Present

A hand curls around my bedroom door. Then an arm, then a leg.

“I think we should do something fun today” says a voice. I’m lying in bed, head under the covers.

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I feel like shit.”

Hayden jumps on me then, launching from the doorway onto the bed, his bodyweight making the mattress rock like jelly.

“What if we got tattoos?”

“No.”

“Martha we need to get you outside.”

“I like being inside.”

“Inside is making you sad.”

“Wrong. Life is making me sad.” He climbs off me. “What would I even get anyway?”

“I don’t know, a butterfly? A Noah Kahan quote? Some spiritual white girl shit’ll fix you up.”

“I love your enthusiasm, but it’s severely misplaced.”

We lay there in silence for a moment.

“Hayden?”

“Yes my love?”

“We should get our nipples pierced.”

Hayden’s eyebrows shoot up. There’s an awkward silence. I’m embarrassed.

“Don’t even worry about it it was a stupid idea anywa-”

“I once dated a guy who had his nipple done”

“And?”

“It was kinda hot actually.” He looks at me. “Ok fine let’s go.” 

 In the car, Hayden spins the volume dial up with practiced precision.

“What do you want?” he says, opening up the glove box to reveal his CD collection. “I’ve got Justin, I’ve got-”

“Timberlake?”

“Ew, no, Bieber. There’s One Direction, the Wicked soundtrack?”

“Maybe just the radio.”

“Right. Ok, sure. Just put on whatever station then.”

I press all the radio preset buttons, but nothing jumps out. I ask him what button number six is set to, not recognising the song.

“That’s the mystery station.”

“And why is it a mystery?”

“Because I don’t know what station it is.”

“What do you mean you don’t know what station it is? The numbers are right there.”

“I’ve never heard them say the name, and they always play the whackiest shit, so it’s the mystery station.”

“You could google it?” I take out my phone.

“Don’t you dare google it Martha, I forbid you.”

“Fine, ok. It’s the mystery station.”

“Yes, thank you.”

In the shopping centre entrance way, a middle-aged woman with bad black hair-dye rides a child-sized dragon train in circles. Eerie medieval music accompanies the squeaking of its plastic wheels against the linoleum floors.

“I don’t feel so good about this anymore” I say to Hayden.

“I didn’t drive us both out to Northland for you to pussy out ok? Just think of the adrenaline. It’ll heal your soul.”

“Right. Sure.”

The shop assistant pops gum as she shoves the cold needle through my nipple.

“Just a quick sting hun.” Blood drips onto my jeans.

stay tuned for part two :)