Today I ride bareback, as in my morning dream when I offered to perform a dance solo, one I had never rehearsed before. My plan to improvise and ham it up. But the iPad I planned to use for back up music evaded me and the friend whom I’d asked to help was slow to pass on instructions.
I was terrified but determined to go onto the stage and dance to something grand like Rackmaninoff. But I woke before I had my chance.
Strange to be on holidays and not be ruled by the clock that says you must get out of bed now and get on with your day. The freedom of such moments when we can find our way, clawing to the top.
The year I turned twenty-three I went with a group of colleagues from the Melbourne Family Care Centre to a restaurant called Gatsby’s. The place boasted a delicious menu in honour of its namesake, a blast from the days of the Hollywood dream and one of my colleagues brought along one of her friend’s, a man whom she admired named Bill. She had him earmarked as a great companion for the receptionist from our work.
Carol, my colleague, told us Bill was a clever lawyer or at least he worked in the law, and she was in awe of him.
When I first met him that evening I was not.
We planned later to go as a group to see Les Girls in St Kilda, an act of dancing and miming crossdressers with huge bosoms and sequinned frocks that made every gyration stand out.
I did not see Bill for several months, then one day soon after I had broken up with the third in a string of boyfriends, I decided to go to Carol’s dinner party alongside another colleague with whom I shared an office.
He was a hard worker, far harder than me, ambitious in line with his wishes to become a family therapist and couples counsellor but whenever he and I worked with a couple he dominated.
As for our social lives I was ahead of this colleague there. He was thin as I remember with dark wiry hair and an American accent that grated. He was pleased to accompany me to this event; I was less so and as soon as we arrived I made a beeline for Bill and spent the evening close to him.
We sat side by side at the dinner table and Bill taught me how to smoke cigars. I smoked cigarettes in those days. He talked with confidence about the food Carol had cooked as if he knew all there was to know about the best way to prepare a roast, or brown potatoes or make a cake rise.
After dinner we danced, I flipped off my stacked shoes so I would not intimidate Bill with my false height. He was not much taller than me and when we went to leave he invited me over to his place. I followed his Renault in my crumpled VW all the way from Glen Waverly to Camberwell in second gear.
He told me later he did not speed up for fear of losing me and imagined that I preferred to travel slowly, hence we crawled like snails to our destination. In these days people drove after drinking with careless disregard and I was no exception. Exhausted after a peremptory attempt at sex I fell asleep but not before noticing his bookshelf which included books like the Kinsey report. He impressed me as a man of learning.
This was the beginning of our long life together only I didn’t know this then.
It’s something to behold, the way a life unfolds, and you can only look back and see in retrospect the paths you have taken. If you told me then that Bill would be the man I’d marry and stay with for fifty years and more I would not have believed you.
I was too full of the idea of freedom and women’s liberation to consider commitment and tying myself down to one person only. Even as I did in the long run. I also rocked the boat at least twice in greater significance that I choose to describe but it was not always easy being married to Bill, for either of us. Both engaged in different theories to sort out our messes and our childhood traumas.
Here I am in two minds, to go to visit a test garden with this man I married to join our daughter and her small son, or to stay home and continue grappling with the tax. I can in any case tackle more of the tax in the afternoon, so better I should be a human and go on a trip into the city for the joy of it. I rarely tackle such adventures even though it will be hot.
And tomorrow I might have something to write about in the present rather than so often dipping into the past.
