I Wore Leg-Makeup & Got Cat-Called

Saturday night. Queenstown CBD. 7.20pm. I stepped out of the car outside Betty's Liquor. There was a chill in the air. I zipped up my leather jacket and set off, striding towards my destination. Japanese takeaways. At the same time, a guy, late 20s, charged out of Betty's. We looked at each other. For a cool five seconds.

Then he shouted, 'GOD! What a SEXY woman!'

I didn't look back at him. I kept striding. I found myself in a tight alleyway between a concrete wall and a building-site hoarding. Another man was walking towards me. I felt that feeling only women feel in a situation like this. Danger. Irrationally perhaps. But still. Danger. I looked straight ahead. Made no eye contact. My long navy blue shirt dress (worn a million times, Glassons) has two thigh-high splits. Over my thighs. Centre front. I had black platform boots on, sparkly socks and leg makeup (think water-soluble tan tights. Fragrance-free.) I started thinking about a comeback. What I would have said if I was the stunningly dressed, potty-mouthed Katherine Ryan in The Duchess, or the hilarious Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag. If I was right then, being filmed in a middle-aged version of Sex-in-the-City, Queenstown release. 

KR: 'Out of your league, cockwomble.' or 'I've seen your porn channel.'

PWB: 'Does your mum know you're out?' or 'I was in that movie.'

What I was really feeling. Was uncomfortable. And saying, 'You're pissed, mate. I'm 56.'

But his remark wasn’t really about the wrinkles and the silver hair, he clearly couldn't focus in his beer-tinted-goggles, it was aimed at the confidence. I was striding like a woman who looked like she knew where she was going and what she wanted when she got there. A Bento box. Salmon. I wasn't a young woman in an awkward-to-pee-in jumpsuit, teetering on uncomfortable sandals (that looked supportive on the leggy model on Asos) heading out on a night on Aperol Spritzes with my posse. Hoping to pull. Get pashed in a bar. Drop-it on the dance floor. Whatever the young and beautiful do on a Saturday night. In Queenstown.

But older women are sexy. I look at Helen Mirren and think, you sexy bad bitch. Owning that face, owning that body. In that cleavage revealing, haute couture gown. Owning that life. Aged: 75! 

However, I was also slightly unnerved at the time. Would the dude follow me? Down the narrow alley. The H had just dropped me off. We'd just been at our son's pre-formal get together at a hotel in town. And GOD that room was full of some sexy women. 16. 17. All dressed up in subtle tones of slinky stretch satin with spaghetti straps. Under a shroud of fake-tan and professional hair and makeup. Their rose petal corsages bruising each time they hugged their stunned, Hallenstein-clad beaus. All so sweet. All so stunning. The flesh of youth. Lightly encased. Innocent.

Stomping down that alley, I did not smirk to my self, and think, yeah still got it. That is not my station. I alighted at the one before. Station Invisible. Confusion was more my headspace. And hunger. 

More to the point, isn't cat-calling, wolf-whistling not a done thing these days? Or do men still think its okay for their dick-to-shout-a-*compliment* to women in public any old damn time they feel like it? Would a Gen-X have called this guy out? Or walked on to prevent a scene? I proceeded on to my destination. Ordered dinner. While I waited, a guy at a nearby table was retelling a story loudly into his phone. I'll save you from its contents. TMI. Jeesh. If I could have caught his attention, my eyes would have eyed him. Eyeingly. Shut up.

Earlier that day, I stood outside a cafe while my daughter ordered a coffee. In that ten minute-wait, I watched a cafe-worker place a freshly baked loaf of banana bread on a chopping board. Oooh that looks good. Steam rose. I could smell that sweet fruity dough. I watched her slice it. The knife was super sharp, it made no crumbs. She arranged half the loaf and the sliced pieces on a plate. But as she ferried them to the display counter a piece fell to the floor. She looked at her co-worker for advice. The advice must have been something like, 'Five-second rule! Just pick it up.' Because next thing, that slice was on a plate. Then that slice had a butter pat beside it. Then that slice and the butter was being served to an unsuspecting customer. I do not lie. Right then, I wanted to catch the cafe worker's eye. I wanted to give her the two-fingered, two-eyed wave. We live in a Covid world. Times are tough. But. Hygiene.

My Bento boxes arrived within 15 minutes, as advised. A slight drizzle had started. I strode up the street, passed the church and met my ride outside the cop-shop. We went home and watched Election 2020. I was thankful for the results. Humanity is key rn. I went to bed, and hoped, as I always do at the start of a new term of government that Aotearoa will be better. That the world will be better. The cake will be clean. And we will all be good humans. Even after a few beers.

On Writing - To Plot, To Pant, or To Plant

Sissy Spacek in the Carrie, 1976

I don’t usually write about the craft of writing, but after a long (book) publishing spell and only receiving back-pats for writing about my white-witch-hair (and the associated compliments from the general public) a writer begins to questions her methods. Seek a little yoga for the creative brain. Read up on the subject. Want inspo.

Ever since an author mate of mine said, this book made her feel very secure, I've had Stephen King’s ‘On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft’ on my must-read list. Also, he's a panster (like me) not a plotter. There must be no better way to feel positive about your approach to putting a narrative down, than reading pointers from your tribe! 

This book is a real tonic. For any writer. It's hugely entertaining. SK swears like a trooper. The book zooms around his childhood and his high school years. At age four, while his mum worked he was in the care of a string of babysitters. The one he remembers most is a 200 lb, teenager, Eulah-Bulah. He claims she prepared him for being reviewed by The Village Voice. Because she used to fart in his face while shouting, Pow! However, it was feeding Steve seven fried eggs and locking him in his mother’s wardrobe that eventually got her fired. 

In his sophomore year, bored with being the editor of the school mag, he created a satiric newspaper, The Village Vomit ... “filled with fictional titbits about the faculty”. Miss Raypach the study-hall-monitor becomes Miss Rat Pack, for example. Apparently, this rag was the “most useful writing lesson he ever got” and got him into a bunch of trouble. 

On the craft of writing, SK says he only needs a situation in order to get started on a story. He cites his debut novel Carrie as an example. In Carrie there is an unpopular girl (Carrie) taking a shower in a high school locker room. She gets her period for the first time. Her fellow students take tampons from an adjacent dispenser and start throwing them at her, along with cruel insults. Carrie thinks she's dying. All that blood! (BTW SK writes about this with all the casualness of a caretaker making a cup of tea. I blanched the first time I read it too.) Carrie's inconvenient first period just so happens to coincide with her telekinesis ability materialising. SK got this 'situation' while cleaning the girls' showers with a male friend who educated him on the uses of the contents of the wall dispenser. That coupled with an article in Life magazine he'd read years before. The article suggested, some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena. And that girls, around the time of their first period, might have the ability to move objects, just by thinking about them. Carrie was going to get her own back. And it was going to be messy. Red.

The movie Carrie came out in 1976. I was 11. I'm not sure how old I was when I watched it but I was absolutely terrified. I'd quite like to read the book now. There's a scene in the TV series Fleabag, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge is asked what her favourite 'period' movie is. She replies, Carrie! Should you want to revisit this classic-horror-zinger it's on Netflix. Halloween isn't far away ... 

SK "... stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B ...; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings the characters to life through their speech." And "I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, ... I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible."

More than once, when I've got stuck midway in a story I've thought not being a plotter is a curse. I always start with detailed bios of my characters. I created young Lily Max way before I had a story for her to tell. (I have a two new characters mucking about upstairs *raises eyebrows* rn in fact.) I do know where I want to start, and where I'll end (the middle comes when I sit down and get the hell off Twitter.) In book #1 Lily Max: satin, scissors, frock - I knew Lily Max would create a stunning outfit in order to win the Snow Queen crown (I also knew I couldn’t let her win.) In came my antagonist, the ghastly Violet Hughes. Once I had my large cast of kooky characters, and my setting in place the story wrote itself. Ahem. Keeping a sharp eye of course on pacing, dialogue, my underlying theme etc etc. 

Plotters please know I'm knocking plotting. It just doesn’t work for me. If I write a chapter by chapter plan I never stick to it. I get bored. I'm a panster. Such a terrible term. Someone who takes the-seat-of-their-pants approach. Novel writing, anyway you approach it is a lot of sitting on your pants, I mean on your backside in your tracky pants. It's hard graft. Hours and hours of hard graft. Putting word after word. Sentence after sentence. Until you become so obsessed with the characters you've created, you start to prefer their company over your family's. Those living-breathing humans for whom you tear yourself from your labours to prepare evening meals (albeit begrudgingly) when in full flight. Although, I'd say SK's lovely wife Tabby prepares his dinners while he writes at his desk in the corner.

"Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around." SK

I mentioned theme earlier; every writer has one or more themes whether they realise it or not. Mine covers underdogs and believing-in-yourself. SK has many recurring themes in his work, two interesting ones are "the fundamental differences between child and adults, and ... the healing power of the imagination". He says these are no big deal, and that all writers have unique interests that come from our experiences. Our lives.

This made me think. His whole book made me think. (Honestly get a copy from your library and get into it.) Whatever your a station ... I was a child. I am a daughter, a wife, a lover, a mother, a woman and a writer. All under the one umbrella. We all bring our own style to the page. Be we plotters. Pantsers. Or Plantsers - a bit of both.

"Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. //Drink and be filled up."  Stephen King