By Kimberley Pearson
It is not every day that you take a roller coaster ride in a ball gown. By special arrangement, Sea World on the Gold Coast had been opened at night for my university’s Law Ball in 1995. The water shone in the moonlight, and the sound of light-hearted laughter and dance music filled the air. I had slipped away from the celebrations to take a ride on the corkscrew. As the roller coaster wound us around the track, turning us upside down, I thought how lucky I was to have landed on my feet. Girls in chic formal dresses and young men in black tie shrieked and shouted as we watched the stars disappear and reappear.
I have always loved roller coasters. During my teen years, my family went to Maui and a Disney theme park every year between trips to Europe, Asia, and various holiday homes. My younger siblings rode the children’s rides while I tried every roller coaster that I could.
I’d recently returned from traveling through India and Europe and living in London. I’d spent some time in Miami and Venezuala, taking side trips to New York and Paris, but I’d fallen in with some music industry types in London, and it wasn’t a good place to be. Finally, I was back home; my ordinary world was not ordinary. I wished that I had retrurned to Paris or New York to live for a while. That had been the original plan, I hadn’t shared it, as the people with whom I would meet up with, were not from the same background, they weren’t from moneyed but quite ordinary North Shore backgrounds, so most did not have the freedom, to circle the globe or live in Paris, New York, London before settling into a double advanced degree. None of those people had degrees; they had matriculated but were not international types, and they were narrowminded on the whole and a bit provincial in view. Most of these people were also Anglo-Saxon and benchmarked everyone against their Anglo-Saxon standards; they knew relatively little about Europe or European culture. So as not to be racially taunted or bullied, many Australian’s of European and other cultures habitually hid cultural views, high culture, cuisine, and so as not be taunted or pulled down by the Anglo-Saxon is “superior to all other cultures” mindset typical of isolated Australians who had not been exposed to the rest of the world.
I lived in a lovely waterfront home with my law student brother. Our house was frequented by the brightest law students, as he had some of the best law notes. I was home in time for his 21st birthday and attended a low-key celebration at a restaurant with his friends. We hailed from Sydney, not from tree-lined suburbs but from a top-tier area with estate after estate, nicknamed Millionaire Road.
Drum and Bass and dance music were in relative infancy; this was the time of raves and burgeoning music festivals. London in the 1990s was vibrant and eclectic; something was always happening. It wasn’t too difficult to leave, my writing was being taken, plus I had fallen into a situation of Coercive Control. Easy to prosecute now. I had never been mistreated before and didn’t know how to react to it so I just sauntered on back home. I had every area of my life controlled so the freedom and luxury of home was so treasured. It was like being able to breathe again as soon as I decided to leave. I had booked to commence a double masters degree months prior to announcing I would leave. I was under constant control, I was not allowed to wear my favourite outfits, not allowed to shower at the flat, instead I worked out at a women’s gym 5 times per week, almost every detail about me was changed, they were attempting to affect my identity. Due to the stealing I was a subject of gossip and a target for lies, they made my life hell. As the only Australian or Kiwi there from a well to do background who wasn’t trying to pull a scam or portray themselves as someone they were not, there was jealousy, plus I was not interested in paying for or playing the games of the music industry. I simply had no need for it. At home I had a luxury car, a canal home and a prestige lifestyle, and am amazing group of people with whom to hang out.
At first, I didn’t think I would like Bond. Having just come from a bohemian crowd in London, I doubted that I would fit in, my friends had the same doubts. The carpark looked like the showroom of a luxury car dealership. It was a far cry from the grunge scene of Sydney University. At Sydney, students were politically aware, feminists, music lovers, they had mastered the art of appearing poor even though a large majority of them came from the North Shore and had parents that were doctors and lawyers.
At first, I thought I would keep to myself but found making friends to be relatively easy. What we had in common outweighed the differences between us. The atmosphere of the university was welcoming, friendly and surprisingly down to earth. At the start, everything just seemed to be falling into place. With the ease of taking things for granted in the way that youth sometimes do, I slipped easily into the Bond atmosphere.
On a roller coaster, you can see little of the track ahead, each twist and turn takes you by surprise, one moment you are right side up and then all of a sudden you are upside down. Fear, breathlessness, exhilaration. Held in place by centrifugal force. It was during the following year that my freedom and appetite for adventure slipped away. It was the last roller coaster ride that I ever took.
The only things he knew about wealth were to do with his experiences in the entertainment industry, he hadn’t branched out and tried to apply every trope to me even though they didn’t apply even a little bit. I existed outside the industry as a wealthy person, with quite a few important and wealthy friends. When he realised that I was not “straight off the turnip truck” like his informants, who were ignorant but also jealous and malicious about me because they were not a part of the club of well to do people he lost it, and realised that one day he would be caught out for stealing. He had been consistently reassured that this would be a victimless crime and that he would never be caught, that she will never meet another important person, that she didn’t know of any important people and that no one had the power to stop him in her world. The first explosion came when he realised that I was dating someone wealthier than him, wealthier beyond his dreams, he had more toys and was from a respected legal family. He was in immediate danger of being caught for stealing lyrics. I could not wait to put down the phone to him and begged him to stop calling me. When he attempted to “turnip truck” my date, I said well, “he is from another country”. He hissed down the phone at me demanding to know his name. When I told him, he rang back a few hours later and said, “I’ve asked around, and he doesn’t know anyone, all the biggest people have never heard of them.’
He tried to re-turnip truck by sending a turnip truck to my home on the Gold Coast, and then years later when I wasn’t dating the Master of Laws student, when I wasn’t surround by law students and at law ball, he send turnip truck again to try to re-turnip truck me in front of the other men who witnessed these atrocities. When the men in London started up with the turnip truck women, and I wasn’t permitted to bring any GPS women, well read women, Dural women, women from Bowral, Dural, I just up and left. I now think I should have travelled back to Paris to settle there for a few months,. This was done by a man who hadn’t finished school, a plumber, and someone a bit dumb, who can’t write anything much other than limericks; he thinks the double entredes are fun and dirty, straight from the whorehouse.
I lived in the same house as my brother so he and the man I was dating, and his friends sent turnip truck back to the farm.
He started trying to turnip truck everyone at university, including jetset, billionaires, artistocrats, through forcing he did managed to win, and he sent turnip truck from Timbuktu into my home, to imbue me with his turnip truck views.
Was “turnip truck” really off the turnip truck. To the very letter. I found this out when I visited his home in Timbuktu. He wasn’t well read, he didn’t know about world affairs, he didn’t know about art, poetry, literature, philosophy he was as redneck as redneck, and espoused vile racist views. When I saw the state of the home he was raised him, a tiny home on a “farm” in the country, I had caught him red handed fabricating a “high-falutin” story about his pastoral home at his city boarding school. What was it like