Ghost Wife by Michelle Dicinoski

Author:Michelle Dicinoski [Dicinoski, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Inc.
Published: 2013-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

Breaking Out, Breaking In

In the summer when we were seventeen, my best friend Egg and I followed the well-worn paths of our lives – wandering from the Shopping Fair to the movies, from the fish-and-chip shop to the video shop – with the impatient itch of those who know they’re leaving.

I slept over at her place one night in December so we could make our way down to the newsagency early in the morning. At 6 a.m., there we were, and there were our names in the Courier-Mail’s listing of university places: we were going to the University of Queensland in Brisbane, her to study science, me to study arts. It was really happening. When I remember that morning, I see it from above. The two of us, jubilant, walking back to her house along faded green footpaths and down the delinquent dip that cut beneath the rail bridge. The day, still so early, and already bright and hot.

The minute we knew our fates we felt like traitors, proud traitors, the worst kind. We went back, for a few more weeks, to our pleased and disappointed parents.

*

When we made the eight-hour journey to Brisbane, it was with joy and trepidation. Here was our chance to begin again, to begin. We learned to name our hometown with a hint of scorn, and wouldn’t see for years how much this said about us. But we were discarding old personas, trying new ones on. Now that my escape was complete, I was ready to be the person I’d been waiting out my teenage years to become.

Lesbianism remained frightening and alluring and shadowy. Although I was in a bigger city now, no one around me was gay, and I had no idea how to go about becoming a lesbian. There was talk of gay bars, but my friends and I, under-aged, were turned away the only time we tried to bluff our way in. Being gay seemed to involve a process or a form of secret knowledge that I hadn’t yet uncovered – and I wasn’t ready to start digging. My main goals were to lose my virginity and find a boyfriend and a major.

After a wait that seemed interminable, I lost my virginity to Cameron, an engineering student who was my boyfriend for a year or so before he moved to Melbourne. I decided on a double-major in literature, and surrounded myself with books and movies and music. In my film-studies elective, I even managed to meet a bisexual girl, who trapped me on a verandah at a party and refused to let me leave until I kissed her. And if that brief kiss undid me in the same way that Bridget O’Reilly had undone me, well, that was something I would have to think about for a little longer. That was something I’d have to think about a lot.

*

But by the end of my arts degree, I am sick of myself and my inaction. Although I’m still attracted to men, it’s not the same as what I feel for women.

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