Weird Shit

It had been a disastrous week.  Everything that could go wrong at work, went wrong.  I couldn’t remember a week when I’d been so busy or had to deal with such a bunch of whining grown ups who declared that they were the busiest of them all.  You see the thing about teachers is that we can all be a little melodramatic.  We honestly do think sometimes that our job is harder than anyone elses and no one else could possibly understand the stress we are under.  Poppycock.  I teach year 8 students to write a paragraph and I spend maybe four weekends a year sitting in my underwear reading crap paragraphs while eating twisties and watching reruns of Friends. That doesn’t mean that it’s not stressful when I have crammed 180 kids into one room to teach them the Heel and Toe Polka with only three other helpful grown ups and seven standing around outside whining about how much work they have to do, it is, but I am not replacing heart valves, negotiating with Syria or testing the cure for children’s leukaemia.  So by the time I arrived at show number one on Thursday night, light hearted entertainment was all I was after.  Preferably seated in the back row with maybe a little distraction on stage or even in the seat to my right.  

Arriving at the QUT Theatre district I was miserable and bless her cotton socks, my friend did all she could to raise my spirits.  I did what any fat woman in misery does, I headed to the bar.  (You thought I was going to say eat – didn’t you?  Well, I didn’t)  With a glass of wine in hand, I spilled my guts about work and hoped to God that I could shake the shit off and get on with the rest of my life.  I drew a flower on one of the graffiti tents and wrote ‘Positivity is a Choice’ in big letters.  As much for me as the as the guy who had slandered Australians on the same tent a little higher up.  As we marched to the front door of the studio, we handed over our tickets only to be given name badges in return.  With a ‘what the fuck?’  to my friend and an insidious groan, I remembered that one of the plays we’d chosen was interactive.  There goes any thought of mindless fun and hiding in the back row with a hot stranger.  My friend’s only response was, “But I didn’t have a drink!”

The room was laid in a giant circle and a woman with a name badge and ‘I’m a volunteer’ written across her t-shirt took our bags and phones and any semblance of comfort.  In a brightly lit, black-walled room we sat with a bunch of strangers looking at a karaoke machine, miniature ping pong table and a pile of board games. This was not what I had in mind.  I am not a particularly shy person, but this had me feeling a little naked.  I stared at the others in the room and mentally judged them all.  Because that’s what you do when you’re feeling average, on the inside, you find the things that make you feel not as bad about yourself.  (It’s terrible I know, but don’t you dare claim that you don’t do it.)  I used to be one of those people that thought about all of the things that those people were saying about me.  In my recent years of wisdom I have worked out that I am actually not that important and they are probably dwelling on their own insecurities rather than mine.  Anyway, I did the sweep and I was left underwhelmed.  They all looked a little left of centre and just as petrified as we did.  I was hoping to find a lamb.  Someone who was going to take the brunt of the action that was about to play out in front of us.  There wasn’t one.  A few couples who were obviously very early on in their dating lives, you could tell by how the nervous the guy looked.  Sitting there panicking at the idea that he may have just brought a woman he quite likes to a show where he could be made to look like a dickhead.  A few just like us, who didn’t really read the blurb all that closely and a few who were obviously arty types and looked completely comfortable in their berets and flower headbands. 

The premise was that this woman was running a workshop on how to change your life through social transformation.  We were the workshop participants. It was funny, I laughed and played a little bit of pictionary  with a strange woman who had come alone to interactive theatre.  We did a little night walk to collect succulents, which there were none, and then came back to find the room set up with all the seats looking at a stage with an empty chair.  The volunteer, Nicola, by this stage was wearing a bathrobe.  On each chair sat a board, paper and clip holding it all together.  The pencil tins of charcoal were being passed around and my heart rose in my throat.  ‘Is she naked?’ was the only question I could manage to stumble out.  My friend just laughed at me and picked up her easel from the seat.  Within moments, Nicola began her monologue about life, it’s busy-ness and how sometimes we just take things for granted.  Without her robe she moved to the seat and issued instructions on what to draw.  Her monologue continued and she described various people in her life and the situations she’d found herself in.  She was blogging.  Out loud and nude while 25 people sketched her bits.

It felt slightly wrong at the beginning.  I drew the chair, a flower lying on the ground, her arm, anything I could stare at long enough without looking at her bits.  The guy next to me headed straight to the curve of her arse cheeks, while everywoman in the room concentrated on her foot.  Within a few minutes I had forgotten she was real.  I had forgotten that we were all in a room with a woman who was divulging all of herself.  I chanced a look at the cellulite on her bum.  Moved slowly to her breasts and finally forced myself to look at all of her.  She wasn’t a supermodel but she was no big frilly knicker wearer either.  But her body had flaws,  like they all do, but the more she talked, the easier it was to make the curves of her body appear on the page.  I was sitting in a room with 24 others drawing a naked lady.  

She dressed in a care bear onesie eventually and stood in the corner with her arms out.  At the beginning of the night she’d said that we would want to hold hands with strangers at some point of the night and that we’d know when that was.  This was obviously it.  On the ten foot screen behind her was video footage someone had taken of us during the night.  Laughing, dancing, playing and looking genuinely happy.  The cheesy music filled the room and yet not a single human moved.  My friend and I looked at each other and felt her pain.  As teachers we do know what it’s like to be left hanging.  We stood, moved to corner and held the naked lady dressed in a care bear onesie’s hand.  The rest of the group moved quite quickly and soon we were holding hands in a circle with a bunch of strangers.  With the music, the footage, the hand holding, there were stories in my head playing about what was to happen next.  Luckily for me, and the rest of the audience, the lights came on and the performance was over.

The day had started terribly and ended weirdly.  I did like the performance and I was slightly uplifted about the fact that even though work was tough, that no longer meant that the rest of my life was following suit.  I’d had a great time and the naked lady had reminded me that there are many parts of us on display and we choose which parts people get to see.  School is not all that I am so why should it take the rest of my day?  The most important thing that happened that Thursday was not what happened at work or what was done to me by people at work.  It was that I was able to do something that made me laugh with someone who loved me in spite of my bad mood.  

In hilarious giggles and examination of where not to look, we went back to the car.  This one was going to be cannon fodder for a little while and I knew that the ‘remember when we had to draw that naked lady’ story would be one that would be coming up for a little while.  “What’s next?” she asked.   

“The one with the guy in the gold undies,” I said.  We both roared in the carpark.

“God, you get me into some weird shit lady.”