Puberty Blues by Nell Schofield

Author:Nell Schofield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Currency Press

My surfie buddies and I used to ‘scull’ grog too before hitting the Bondi Junction disco. I remember being busted by the police in a shocking state outside the Whale Car Wash. But we kept on drinking and chundering every weekend. Getting trashed was almost mandatory for a good night out. At least we could surf it off the next day.

5

ROOTING MACHINES

In the classroom the teenagers aren’t getting any wiser. All they’re interested in is their sexual development, which is simply not being addressed. The book states that they ‘didn’t do sex in Science till third form’—exactly one year too late for these girls.42 Sue writes a note and passes it to Deb across the aisle, recalling their earlier cheating session. Again the teacher spots them and we cut to a close-up of the note, which reads: ‘I think Danny wants to do it. I don’t want him to think I’m just a rooting machine. Do you reckon I should let him???’

‘A rooting machine’, intones an authorative male voice. It is the headmaster interrogating Sue about this outrageous description of herself. He stiltedly asks the embarrassing, almost salacious question: ‘Am I to presume that you are contemplating having sexual intercourse … ?’ Sue denies the suggestion emphatically. The headmaster softens into a paternalistic role and sums up his generation’s expectations of young girls with the following patronising statement: ‘I know you’ll do the right thing eventually, Susan. You’ll settle down, marry, raise a family.’

With this sort of adult worldview bearing down on them it’s no wonder that these girls do everything in their power to rebel, becoming mistresses of subterfuge in the process. To avoid the mundane path mapped out for them by their elders they side with their peers in a war of defiance, submitting themselves to their own code of cool which includes everything but ‘settling down’. They will not be the virgin brides that their mothers were. Nor, presumably, will they raise kids as blindly as their parents. At the very least, they are experiencing life, in all its feral glory. When ‘Old Bishop’ dismisses Sue, he tears up the incriminating note and throws it in the wastepaper basket, wiping his hands of the whole sordid affair as he does so. By not addressing the issues facing these teenagers, the educators and parents leave them open to all sorts of dangers. In the very next scene we find Gary toying with the idea of buying heroin. It leads us straight into the darkest chapter of the entire film.

It is Saturday night in the local mall and Freda’s approach is heralded by the usual abuse from the boys. They even bark at her indicating exactly what they think of her. Debbie’s narration explains:

If you were pimply, a migrant, or just plain ugly you couldn’t get a boyfriend. If you couldn’t get a boyfriend there were two options. You could be a prude or a moll. Being a prude was too boring. At least if you were a moll people knew who you were.

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