The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe

‘Ask me a question, and I’ll tell you no lies.’

I was in a relationship with a guy called Jordan. After I was fired from my job in the cafe, I wasn’t too worried because I had plenty of savings and not too many bills. With 15K in savings and rent only $100 a week, I wasn’t too stressed about finding a job. Yes, my canny readers, you saw this one coming, I went through my savings a lot quicker than expected. It turns out having champagne tastes and a high maintenance loafer for a partner costs a lot of money. Some things are an acquired taste, but I took to sitting on the couch all day like a duck to water. I think I was born to be a sugar baby, so any rich daddies looking for a man to lavish your affections and money on for very little in return, I’m a natural. As the one doing the sugar daddying, yeah, it’s not my strong point. I applied for jobs off and on but didn't turn up to half the interviews. It’s hard to find the motivation to get back on your feet when you have a partner with no drive or motivation. Jordan never encouraged me to get back out there. Looking back, I now realise, for Jordan, I was just a meal ticket, and I was just too naïve to see it at the time. Jordan was my first love and despite hindsight showing me how dysfunctional it was, he still holds a big place in my heart.

I applied for a job as a store manager at a new and upcoming gourmet burger franchise restaurant. I may have been down and out, but I was still gourmet all the way. The interview was at a T2 store, how epic is that? Interviewing for a management position while drinking tea. It’s like a poor man’s version of the backroom deals you see on TV shows with an English twist to it. As awesome as this sounds on paper its actually quite a confrontational interview technique and not for the faint hearted, which I very much am. I’m like one of those fainting goats. There’s a tree, faint etc etc, avoidance is one of my favourite coping strategies. I consider it a strength. If I had to name my spirit animal it would probably be the fainting goat. The atmosphere was civilised but the undertone of the interview was intense.

This man was the sort that you see in military movies whose sole purpose is to sort the weak from the strong. I bullshitted my way through it pretty well, all the time worried my bowels would betray me and cause me to actually shit myself while bullshitting the sort of man whose bowels are probably too scared of his intensity to work unless he gives them a signed permission slip. You know those overbearing people who want you to thank them for the life lesson they gave you while you are almost psychotic from trauma? He was one of them, and annoyingly I did learn a life lesson from the smug sanctimonious fucker. I progressed to the next interview and I thought I would nail it. In professional sport there is a term called choking. Don’t worry gentle readers I too had to google the meaning of such terminology in the sporting arena. It turns out it’s a lot like the choking I was more familiar with, not the air play version, but the other version. When you are doing something you are really good at and suddenly for no reason at all you mess it up and find yourself vomiting, or in this case unable to answer questions like “Why would you be good at this job?”

I didn’t get the job. For some reason this rejection hit me like an atom bomb, and everything fell both into and out of place. My problems were the result of my insecurities, of always feeling like I was performing for others instead of being what came naturally to me. It was time to come out to my family. I was exhausted trying to be different things to different people, like a better-looking version of that movie about split personalities, Sybil. I broke down in the car on the way home. Now I’m not much of a crier unless I’m hungover, or sexually frustrated, or uber eats is down, or my serotonin levels have depleted by life which happens every Monday morning, just the usual stuff. Here I was ready to shout my truth to the world through streams of tears and snot, and my mother didn’t answer her phone. I called her repeatedly with no answer. I don’t know why parents even bother to have phones if they won’t answer them when you are trying to come out of the closet on the side of the road. It’s not the kind of thing you leave in a voicemail or send as a text. I tried my sister and she answered on the third call. As you can see in the case of an emergency, I would be dead for a week before my family got around to responding to my calls for help. My sister thought someone must have died for me to be calling, so I spent the first 20 minutes re-assuring her before I could make the announcement. It’s hard to describe, the weight that lifts off you when you come out. It’s a feeling of weightlessness, like a rollercoaster going in reverse. I don’t want to sound like one of those smug arseholes who waits for people to applaud after each sentence that comes out of their unoriginal mouths but until you have come out, you don’t realise how much not speaking your truth holds you down. I promise not to frighten you further with too much emotion my gentle readers. I include these stories because they matter to me and I don’t want you to think I am just a shallow hottie. An occasional flashing of my renaissance man depth to draw you in with the promise of emotional connection incompatible with my man-whoring ways, so to speak. The next couple of chapters will definitely be full of the savagery and sass you have come to expect from your humble hero.