Benjamin Law

SOY MILK

Bonsoy

When I first started developing lactose intolerance—a fateful day that involved a large iced coffee; then running down a hill, almost in tears, screaming for a toilet—I started sampling many soy milks. I quickly discovered not all soy milks are made alike. Organic varieties are often as thick as clag, while home-brand numbers often have the watery consistency of liquid paper diluted in a bathtub. So when I discovered Bonsoy, I rejoiced. Made in Japan based on recipes developed by soy masters (these people exist) over centuries, Bonsoy remains the richest, creamiest and tastiest soy milk on the market. If Nigella Lawson was breastfeeding me, I’d expect the stuff spurting forth from her breasts to taste something like this. Some soy aficionados have turned their back on Bonsoy—understandably—after a recent scare found it to have excessively high levels of iodine, which caused thyroid problems. However, it’s back on the shelf now, presumably safe and, for what it’s worth, delicious as ever.

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In September last year, a Melbourne primary school was responsible for a reprehensible anti-gay hate crime. And while I never thought I’d write the following sentence, the innocent victim was not a child, nor a teacher or parent. It was a kookaburra.

We all know how the song goes: Laugh, kookaburra, laugh / how gay your life must be. It’s a cute song about a native bird who is either very jolly or a raging homosexual. Both options should be completely fine with all of us. But when a Melbourne school principal recently discovered his students had cracked up laughing during the “gay” part of the song, he was mortified.

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Like most people, I’ve had some awful haircuts. Even now, just thinking back on some of them makes me feel such intense embarrassment that I physically spasm with shame. There were my monk-like shaves in primary school (not too bad, really), followed by my bowl-shaped undercut phase (getting worse), to the ill-advised Disney prince look: a combed, down-the-middle bum-part that dominated my high school years.

I might’ve been Chinese, but all I really wanted were the same haircuts that the cool white boys had. It’s only later that you look back and realise you can’t just transplant good haircuts between races and expect it to work. Think of those Caucasian women who get their hair tightly braided and beaded by Ghanaian hairdressers on holiday and you’ll get my point. On me, these white boy haircuts were less “Disney Prince”, and more “Merry Little Hermaphrodite from Feudal China”. I never really got the cred I assumed a cool haircut would afford me.

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I didn’t have the life story where I would settle down and have children in my 20s. So if you’re not doing that—which is one way a lot of women went—you’ve got to be on some other journey. So I was on this journey of taking the opportunities as they came.

In your 20s, you just have boundless energy. I never watched television in my 20s, I never went out to restaurants for dinner. I was on the move the whole time. I was singing in bands, I was tap-dancing, I was doing self-defence, I was organising rallies. I was taking everything in. I’d go dancing a couple of nights a week and work through the day when I finished studying.

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