Benjamin Law

Edited version originally published in frankie #42 (July/Aug 2011)

I moved to Sydney when I was 16. It was like I was being pulled by a magnet to explore a future I had in my mind at school: to venture into the city, as a country boy, in the search for a music career.

I liked the whole variety of Sydney: the trams; the double-decker buses; people from all walks of life. There were about eight cinemas in the city. I’m a movie buff, so I had all these movies to go see. And I’m a big milkshake drinker, and there were milkshake bars everywhere. And hamburgers! So all of this was tripled and doubled and you-name-it, especially when you come from a town where you had one or two cinemas, and one or two milkbars.

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Edited version originally published in frankie #42 (July/Aug 2011)

Dear Future Daughter/Son/Non-Specific-Gender-Identifying Trans Child,

Take a seat. Daddy has some things he’d like to get off his chest. And no, it’s not just the piles of festering plates and clothes that have piled around him over the years, because boy, parenting sure does lower your standards over time. No, the things Daddy would like to get off his chest are more philosophical and emotional than that. I would like us to have a heart-to-heart—even though, over the years, you have slowly broken mine.

Oh shut up; you so have! And before you continue on with your terrible whining (a noise that has always made me gag), go out and ask any mother or father out there and I guarantee they’ll say the same thing: All children break their parents’ hearts. It’s just what children do. In fact, it’s what Daddy’s own mother continues to remind him still, to this very day, every time they speak on the phone. (Will she never die?)

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Edited version originally published in frankie #42 (July/Aug 2011)

Some time later this year, I’ll turn 29, which is a funny, nowhere-ish kind of age. In fact, all of the late 20s are this entirely non-remarkable, in-between phase of life: old enough to horrify teenagers, but still young enough to be envied by the elderly, who demonstrate this by groaning in an almost sexual way while touching your face.

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Edited version originally published in frankie #41 (May/Jun 2011)

My fellow Australians,

Let us all rejoice, for we are young and free—not to mention well-travelled and worldly. Compared to the rest of the world, our passports aren’t so much “well stamped” as “heavily vandalised”, and this is a great thing. Between us, we’ve travelled to Bali and London, Berlin and Lagos, Baltimore and La Paz. And while some of us have yet to leave the country, we’re still a nation who wants to travel, at least. We’ve got world maps stuck to our walls and dream about visiting far-off places at night. Part of it, I think, has to do with living on a big island with a relatively small population. Most of us are huddled on the coastlines, so we look out across the ocean with dewey eyes and wonder: “What, exactly, is fuckin’ out there, eh?”

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Edited version originally published in frankie #41 (May/Jun 2011)

When I look back over my 28 years, it turns out I’ve managed to do some pretty hideous things. Even now, some memories catch me off guard and make me want to curl with shame. I could be doing anything—driving my car, buying groceries—and out of nowhere, bam: suddenly I’m 10-years-old and urinating myself in front of the church congregation. Or I’m 18 and losing consciousness in the middle of a one-night stand, reeking of beer. Or I’m 19 and projectile spewing a bottle of bargain-bin shiraz on my mother’s carpets as she looks on helplessly in teary horror.

It’s always been like this: a cycle of rank stupidity followed by crippling mortification. As a kid, I told my entire Year 3 class that my mum had had an “abortion” before conceiving me. Then I had years of panic attacks after realising I’d gotten my terminology wrong and actually meant “miscarriage”.* Sometimes though, I’ll have good days where I feel okay about myself, when my boyfriend suddenly brings up the time I awkwardly picked up friend’s cat and accidentally fingered its anus in front of everyone. We all try to bury our shames deep down, but if you’re anything like me, it only ever turns out to be a shallow grave.

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