Up Front by Emma Hart

When my brothers were small, my family lived in the North Island. Luckily, by the time I was growing up, we'd moved to Timaru. No, genuinely, I'm not being sarcastic. Stick with me here. 

When she moved back to South Canterbury my mother wasn't just moving back to her family. More importantly, she was moving back to her friends, my "aunts". 

There were three of them: Aunty Winne, Aunty Bev and Aunty Jean. All teachers. They were friends from their college years until they died; a thought which now rather awes me. My closest friends know far too much about me now. Give them another forty years... and I just have to hope I die last. 

Aunty Winnie was the one I knew the least. She died of emphysema when I was still a child. I remember her as slightly prim, with a penchant for jigsaws and wearing her cardigans draped over her shoulders. She was the bridesmaid at my mother's first wedding though, the one Mum's parents and sister refused to come to, so she obviously meant a lot to Mum. 

Not that it would have been hard to be the quiet sensible one in company with Bev and Jean. Jean was my favourite of my aunties, and possibly one of my favourite people. She was warm and flamboyant and a living contradiction of every stereotype about Scottish people. Well, except all the ones to do with alcohol, parties, and extravagant story-telling with higher values than strict accuracy. My favourite story of hers involved all of those things, the Robbie Burns statue in the Octagon, and the police. She used to sit me on her hip and dance around her kitchen with me when I was little – something my mother, much as we loved each other, would never have dreamed of. Jean wouldn't think twice. She lived life hugely, or not at all. 

Jean had a precious bluntness too. After my mother died and we were cleaning out the house, I dug out the box of letters and telegrams she'd kept from when her first husband died, leaving her in a town where she had no ties, with three pre-school children. In it was a letter from Jean, full of genuine effusions of grief and love and swearing.  Also, though, there was Jean's practical bluntness. She'd talked to Winnie and Bev and they were all worried that Mum didn't have enough money to survive. The others considered the issue too delicate to raise. Not Jean. Tell us what you need, she said, and we'll do it. Send the boys down. (Somewhat oddly, Mum and Jean both called their eldest children Nigel. That I can't fathom.) 

Jean's old farmhouse was the only place I could be happily sent for a holiday. I felt safe and loved, and I could play with the dogs and get lost in the garden and fall in the swamp all I wanted. (That's "once", as far as the falling in the swamp thing goes. It's exactly as much fun as it sounds.) I was, with assured childish logic, going to marry Jean's youngest son. And while I didn't realise it at the time, those days Lincoln and I spent setting fire to his secret laboratory were the only time my mother ever got to herself. That's what aunties are for. 

The latter years of Jean's life weren't quite so much fun. Her health and her husband's deteriorated and they had to give up the farm. She didn't long outlive him. That's not how she'd want me to remember her, though, so I don't. I remember my mother driving me home when I was about fourteen and saying, with obvious delicacy, "You don't want to believe everything Jean says. I think if that story were true I would have heard it." And even back then I could say, "I know that, Mum, and it doesn't matter." She worried about Jean's influence on me a whole lot less after that. 

My Aunty Bev is the last of them left now. She spoke at my mother's funeral beautifully, of being there when Mum met her first husband for the first time, of their travels in Australia. Not, of course, the same stories she'd regaled us with a couple of years earlier when we gathered in Hanmer for Mum's 80^th birthday. Then she'd really let rip with tales of truck drivers and fruit pickers, and showed us photographs from their trip around eastern Australia before the Melbourne Olympics. My mother was mortified, in a particularly delighted way. That, too, is what aunties are for. And it still doesn't matter if the stories are true. 

This Christmas, my son sat in slight mortification in rooms where my best friends were telling stories. That's what aunties are for. The lying bitches.

Recently I ran across a discussion between acquaintances of mine on Facebook, about how a single gent should approach women. I'd like to thank the particular gent whose discussion it was for allowing me to use it as the jumping-off point for this column, which seems to be sorely needed. Nonetheless, this should not be taken as criticism or endorsement of him or any of the other participants.

So. This column will be written with het-cis-vanilla-monogamous people in mind. What the fuck is wrong with you straight people? The thing about women? Is that they're from Earth. And the thing about men? Is that they're from Earth. They're not aliens. Alienating you from each other was a strategy to sell shitty books. Why do you need tactics for talking to girls? Why do women need to know what to do with "feminine men"?

Many women complain that the men they meet are brutish bastards.

The fuck? Really? Where are you hanging out that ALL the men you meet are arseholes? Even your male friends? Oh wait, you don't have male friends, do you? What with men being aliens.

I assume this woman and her friends live on the same planet where this is true:

It's simple, if you're nice, you end up alone. If you're a creep, you get the girl, but you won't keep her... The only way a nice guy seems to get anywhere is if the woman makes the first move.

Ah, yes. Nice guys finish last*. Here's a hint. If you genuinely believe that women only like jerks, you're saying two things. One, all women are stupid. Two, every guy you know who's in a relationship is an arsehole. And if you genuinely think that? You're not a nice guy. You're an arsehole. (To the addendum in the above, if only creeps get the girl, no woman is going to make the first move on a nice guy.) 

Here's the thing about women – and I say this as someone who both is a woman, and occasionally hits on them. They're people. And just like non-vagina people, they're all different. Every woman's experience is as valid as any other's. Ergo, one woman's account of her own interaction with men is, I'm sorry to say, completely fucking useless to you if you're not dealing with that woman.

If I try asking a woman out for coffee and acting interested, there's a high chance she'll feel threatened and nervous. Such is my experience, not just a feeling gained from "reading feminist bloggage". 

Let me tell you a story. I was trying to remember how men had let me know they were interested in me, back in the mists of the nineties when stuff like this used to happen. And it's all a bit vague, but this I do remember. It was a nice day, I was in a good mood, walking along Colombo Street smiling to myself. I crossed the road, and met the eyes of a man walking the other way. He smiled back at me. 

Half a block later, he caught up to me and said, "You know, you should be careful who you smile at." And then he asked me for coffee, and I accepted. We went to the Garden City Café, had some coffee, chatted, I told him I was engaged, I finished my coffee, thanked him and left. At no point did I feel in the slightest bit threatened. I still remember it, because it made me feel flattered and happy. 

And I understand that another woman might not have been as comfortable. I understand that I might not be the best benchmark for what's "threatening" to women, being as how I've failed to feel threatened while actually being physically and verbally threatened. But a woman who is scared of every man she meets is also not the best benchmark for what's "threatening" to women. 

And if you were trying to indicate interest in me, what matters is what you know about me. And, the above example aside, by the time you're trying to get me to go out with you, you should have talked to me enough to have some kind of idea of what I'm like. Because what you want is to go out with me, right? Not "a woman", me. You're attracted to the individual person I am. Same goes for every woman. We're all unique fucking snowflakes, alright? You want any chance of her saying yes? Treat her as her, not as "a woman". All women are terrified all the time to the same extent that all men are brutish bastards. 

Neither men nor women are psychic. We won't know you're interested unless you do something to indicate it. And there's an awful lot of space between doing nothing, and sexual harassment. (In fact, one of the creepiest things you can do? Hang close by all night, and never say anything.) 

Now I'll admit that, being as I'm in a relationship, I'm speaking from a position of privilege. But I am also really good at starting relationships. I must be, because I've certainly done it a LOT. The beginnings of my relationships seem, from hazy memory, to involve a lot of alcohol. That's the Kiwi Way, right? My current partner insists I just bowled up to him at a party and snogged him, while dressed as a Playboy Bunny. I don't remember this, but it does sound like something I might do. 

One thing I do know, though. No matter how someone might have approached me, there was no way I was going to start a relationship with someone I didn't physically desire. Surely, no amount of niceness should persuade anyone to date someone they don't fancy. What would be the point? And there is, unfortunately, buggery-fuck all you can do about that. Sorry. 

 

*Not necessarily. But they don't get up from the table until everyone is finished.

September

Come back from a trip to Wellington very aware that I need to find a cheaper way of distracting myself. Think, what I really need is a short-term job doing something completely different - i.e. not writing. That'd be nice.

Two days later, see an Electoral Commission tweet that they're hiring election day staff. That. Ideal. Make the application, which is suspiciously easy. Get a couple of referees prepared to testify to my general fine upstanding pillarness.

October

Employment contract arrives in the mail. Ace. All job applications should involve no CV and no-one bothering to contact my referees.

Start reading my Personal Instruction Manual. Have to keep stopping to snigger like a teenager. I have a Personal Instruction Manual. I wish. Man this is well-written. If you're out there, Technical Writer for the Electoral Commission, Well Fucking Done.

Having slight qualms about restrictions on my public statements. I was completely okay with not advocating for a party or candidate because I've never done that, but an issue? Probably best to just not say anything political publicly. When I tell this to a friend, he says, "Really? Did ACT pay you to do this?" But it's only a month, and this is seriously looking like the most boring election campaign in ages. How bad could it be?

November

Seriously running out of other things to write columns about. There's only so much porn you can link to. Theoretically. I suppose.

Extensively study my PIM on the plane on the way to Wellington. Spend the next five days in various states of inebriation. Still, sort of revise by having several conversations with friends about the stuff none of us knew. Devise several frighteningly feasible ways to carry out small-scale voter fraud.

Have training two days after coming home, so a day after sobering up. Arrive feeling like I know nothing. Leave feeling like no-one else knows anything. Realise just how long it's been since I had to deal with "normal people".

Our polling place manager did the same polling booth last year. Tells us to vote in advance because we won't have time on the day. Can tell how busy a booth is expected to be by the staffing level. There are eleven of us.

Spend more and more of my time bitching about politics to journalists. Those are private conversations.

The Teapot Tapes

Okay, wait a minute, what the fuck just happened? How is anyone managing their photo opportunities this badly? How do you not notice something like that? How... Goddammit, can't say anything. Luckily, my Twitter feed is saying it all for me. God I love social media, it's the only thing getting me through this enforced silence.

Hipsters for Goldsmith

OH COME ON!

 You fuckers are trying to kill me.

Election Day

Get up at seven a.m. Look like a half-developed negative of myself. Haven't had a hypoglycaemic attack for two days. Pack in enough food to feed a teenage boy for nearly an hour.

Spend the next hour and a half building furniture and signage from cardboard kitsets. Finish with ten minutes to spare. A queue has formed outside the door. Quite excited.

Ten minutes later, have cleared the queue and the polling place is empty.

By lunchtime, every time a voter comes in they're confronted by a row of six people at tables absolutely desperate to issue their vote. So. Bored. Meanwhile, there's a constant queue for Special Votes, and at the end of the night we can't get them all in the box.

Partner comes up to vote while I'm on my break. Vent a bit. "And people keep saying, 'Gosh, that was easy!' It's the EasyVote Card. It's right there in the name! It's not called a Total Fucking Pain in the Arse Vote Card."

By about three, have discovered why the tables are made of cardboard. Turns out the signs behind us, that say which electorate we're issuing votes for, are invisible. As are the signs on, and behind, the ballot boxes. This happens, over and over again:

Me: ...and when you're done, the papers go...

Voter: *walks away*

Me: IN THE PORT HILLS... fuck.

Voter: *comes out of the booth, walks past the Port Hills boxes, shoves votes in the Chch East boxes*

Me: *head thunks dully into cardboard table*

About four p.m., in yet another quiet patch, a sweet sort of burning leaves smell starts drifting in the open doors. Later, we find seven ALPC votes. They're even in the right fucking box.

Booth closes. Count. Counting is fun. Find self counting NZF votes three times. Inside of head while sorting votes goes "Nope nope nope nope Fuck nope nope Fuck nope nope..."

Leave polling place fifteen hours after arriving. Partner picks me up. "Do you want to hear the bad news?"

"Do you mean, 'Do I want to hear the bad news first?'"

"Um. No."

"Fuck."

So when I first heard about the plan to re-open Cashel Mall by November, in time for Show Week, I have to admit I wasn't all that impressed. It seemed like a perfect demonstration of some pretty fucked-up Canterbury priorities. I might have said some pretty scornful things. Several times.

 As time has gone on, though, I've come to appreciate more and more that anything that makes some people feel better here, that lifts their spirits, is worth doing. I might loathe Show Week, and the idea that the height of glamour is puking in your fascinator while wearing heels on grass, but some people love it. It's an institution, and a way of feeling, no matter how shallowly, that something is getting back to normal.

 So yesterday, my partner and I went to the Container Mall. We wanted to wait until the politicians pissed off and the crowds died down a bit, and see what it was actually like. 

And let me say, in case it isn't obvious, this isn't about consumerism. It's not about getting back to a life where you can buy a jar of marmalade with Paddington on it, or a $130 garlic crusher. (I'm assuming it crushes garlic into diamonds, Ballantynes.) This is about feeling like we've got a piece of our city back – one of those pieces we always thought were public space, and which the public hasn't been allowed near for eight months. 

 Also, for some of us, I think it's about proving something. We've been told so many times that people won't want to go back into the central city, that it's too frightening. People are too scared to walk in the shadows of those buildings, to be where people died. And no doubt some people are, but a lot of us are not. We want back in. That's clear from the crowds at the mall, and the overwhelming (but surely entirely expected) response to the CBD bus tours. We want our city back. We want, quite literally, to occupy Christchurch.

 The thing about the container mall is that it's quite nice. They've taken the time to make gardens, put up sculptures, and possibly loot the CBD for every intact bench and planter. It's a place you can be, and sit, and talk – and have a coffee and a muffin if you're prepared to queue for half an hour. 

And that's what people were doing: talking. I didn't see a lot of buying going on, but every server behind every counter was talking to someone. Through the constant sound of construction and deconstruction was the washing tide of conversation. My previous ventures to the edges of the Red Zone had been marked by an eerie desolate silence. The container mall was a tiny oasis of life.

 At the eastern edge, where the mall hits Colombo Street, is a broad wooden bench around a garden. Here, people weren't sitting and talking. They were taking unspoken polite turns to stand, and stare over the fence, past the boundaries of civilisation. We want to see: to know, yes, but also to reclaim, and to bear witness. It was important to me, in a way I can't really articulate, to take my turn standing on that bench, and take this photo: 

If there's one thing I'm not very good at (there are lots, I've said many times I'm only actually good at two things) it's talking. Particularly, talking to women. Now, I can tell already that this statement is straining the credulity of some in my audience. Some of you are thinking, "I've seen you talk. I've seen you and women talking and you could not be shut up, even when you very much should have been."

 That's different. Those women are my best friends: all both of them. And if you've seen me do Champion Talking, you've seen me Drink Alcohol.

 What I can't do is make conversation. I can have conversations, for hours. I can reliably be one of the last people to leave a venue because of all the conversing. But I completely suck at making small-talk. I can't do the contentless chit-chat that makes society function. This is not in any way to brag: it's something I often wish I could do.

 It's not just face-to-face, either. Once an email correspondence has passed all the important functional information it needs to, I tend to consider it over. If I don't reply, it doesn't mean I don't like you, I'm just done.

 One of my problems is that the things I enjoy talking about don't make for safe topics of conversation with strangers. Sex. Politics. Sexual politics. The evolution of the detective novel in the Victorian Period. Also, while I'm improving, I'm still not very good at spotting when a conversational thread is inappropriate. Let me give you an example.

 Taking a taxi home from a bar one night, I got chatting to my taxi driver. His doing: if they don't talk, neither will I. Turned out this guy was fascinating: he'd been a wedding dress designer in Malaysia. So I was all being compelled by his life story. He told me about this Japanese girl he'd known, then we were talking about staying in and falling out of touch with people, so laughingly I told him a story about Facebook's recent friend suggestions for me, and why they were so appalling. He nearly ran off the road. He was all, "Oh my God, this is like an episode of Shortland Street," and I was thinking, "Dude, that's just the kind of stuff that happens to me." At least he was shocked and amused. Sometimes people are shocked and appalled.

 While I'm okay dealing with individual women, mostly, put me in a group of women I don't know very well and I'm completely lost. Once I went to a Book Look (like a Tupperware party, but for children's books) a friend of mine was holding, which was all mothers from the school her kids attended. I'd spent pretty much the whole day watching American mid-term election results come in, and my partner was coaching me before I left.

 "What are you not going to talk about?"

 "Politics."

 "And what are you going to talk about?"

 "Children. I don't want to go!"

 I was very quiet all night. Once, a very nice woman kindly asked me if my daughter read the Color Fairies books like all the other daughters, and I got to say no, actually, she prefers Captain Underpants. We never saw those people again.

 The other thing I'm really bad at in casual conversation is lying. I prefer people to believe I'm a terrible liar generally –and also that I can't keep a secret -  but I really struggle to tell the inclusive, inconsequential white lie. How bad is this? One of the questions I struggle to not tell the truth in reply to is, "How are you?" I've learned to say "Fine" largely because my partner is sick of seeing That Expression on the faces of checkout operators.

 So all things considered, you can imagine the state of mind in which I went to my hairdresser on Saturday. Now, my hairdresser herself is lovely, but I can only really deal with that kind of environment by viewing the experience as an anthropological field trip. Even then, when the conversation about ghosts (underlying universal assumption, ghosts are real) was punctuated by the phrase "Typical Libra", I quailed. This is, of course, because I'm such a typical Aquarius.

 So I am grateful to the earthquakes for providing Christchurch with a universal topic of casual conversation I can understand. I am also very grateful for smartphones. Though you can rest assured that the kind of text which has made me snorfle with laughter in the hairdressers has content which is Not Suitable for Casual Conversation.