as featured in Antithesis Journal, October 25, 2018 John Fawcett’s sophomore film, 2000’s Ginger Snaps, explores the misadventures […]
Category Archive: Non-fiction
I’m late.
I run across the road and try not to trip or drop the contents of my makeup-laden handbag on the road. Abi and Arianna (Ari) smile and wave to me from their table in the café, an offering called My Kingdom For A Horse. The paint scheme inside is divine: a tri-coloured horizontal stripe that skates its way around the café interior. Bright red, orange and yellow fly past us on whitewashed bricks. It’s got a daggy-new-again feel, like my puffer jacket in the 80s. Something you were once embarrassed by, because your mum made you wear it on cold casual days at school. Something you squeal over with delight when you see it again, after you’re old enough to make your own decisions and your mum doesn’t care what you wear anymore.
Two weeks before he was born, Flynn scared me with an episode of Braxton Hicks. I spent a long Saturday night on a pink exercise ball in the lounge. All my organs were dancing and I felt like a soup-bag full of baby feet.
There is a last time for everything, and sometimes I get scared when I think a ‘last time’ is drawing close. The last time I said I loved my father? I can’t tell you when it was.
Was I always a fan of David Bowie? Not particularly. I mean, I quite liked him as Jareth in the wacky cult movie Labyrinth, for which he penned much of the soundtrack. Cue saxophones, bursting singalongs by a jaded romantic prince-villain, and rousing lullabies to a borrowed/stolen baby. Weird, right? I’d expect nothing less of him.
As I walk out of the airport I can barely breathe – the air is too thick and wet for my lungs. I text my husband: I’ve made a mistake, I shouldn’t have come here. He doesn’t reply.
2.00am, Saturday morning: You wake up in the dark. The bed is warm and your husband sleeps soundly next to you. There’s a rhythmic cramp spreading throughout your pelvic area, like a period cramp. But it feels too repetitive for that. You don’t know much about your pelvis except that there’s been a lot going on in that area of late. A person’s head. Their fingernails, nose, feet and elbows. All in there. In that comfy cocoon you built, a baby-sized sleeping bag for your passenger. Your friends tell you you’re a wizard.
Heard of MONA? Tl;dr: self-proclaimed ‘arseholic’ David Walsh makes a fortune playing blackjack (among other things), and invests in a Tasmanian museum now named MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) that he vamps out with art about – what else? – sex and death.
Ginger snaps. Delicious treats constructed from ginger-flavoured biscuity-stuff rolled into a cigar, and pumped full of brandy cream. The cigars can be prepared ahead of time and frozen for several months, so they’re basically available whenever you want to devour them. Ginger Snaps (the film) tells the story of the Fitzgerald girls, who are far less interested in your satisfaction. Ginger Fitzgerald (Katherine Isabelle) and her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) hate anyone acting sweet, and Ginger’s going to do most of the devouring in this feature length film directed by John Fawcett.