1992

- the height of my career in acting and theatre. Spent time thinking great things about myself, until my friends began to tire of me, so I learnt to keep my mad skills on the down-low. Acting became big part of my small life, the auditioning rehearsing and performing, and meeting other young people with mad skills from all over Sydney
- my brief career as a film extra, starting with a short film about a girl who could use her Walkman to tune into the thoughts of other commuters on the morning train. We filmed in a disused carriage at the old Clyde rail yards, and of course I was playing a teenage thug terrorising the suits on the train. On the Bondi set of another film I met a well known Aussie actor and felt very important.
- my even briefer career as a director, where I directed the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Obviously I was desperately in love with the actual director and copied her every incantation.
- I borrowed my high school's old video camera after they got a new one, and sort of held onto it. This marked the beginning of my career as a short film director, capturing the sublime and the ridiculous days of my early adult life
- Got my learner's permit and mum took me on my first driving lesson, during which I crashed into a parked car. An excellent beginning to a life of driving. My mum was so horrified of what dad would do that we quickly swapped drivers and made with the hit and run. Of course that ended well, with cops at the doorbell and dad finding out anyway, and mum having a crisis about her moral compass. I was at the age of lying for breakfast so I thought the whole thing was kinda overwrought.
- Went to the first Big Day Out music festival. Saw Nirvana play live on their one and only Aussie tour. Took my first acid tab. In fact tried many new flavours of illicit substances this year, which is probably why I grew emo hair 15 years before it was cool.
- Became accustomed to the very lovely feeling of hanging out with boys without any of the usual teen boy/girl angst making things complicated.
- Mum finally sprung me for being a dirty queer, on account of the HIV awareness T-shirt she found hidden in my drawer. I'm sure she knew before that, there's no way she wouldn't have read my diary seeing as it was hidden under my mattress, a place mothers go when they change sheets. But this evil T-shirt was her first admissable concrete evidence. She dragged me into her closet (HAHAHA) and screamed at me in whispers about my various abominations. I was dutifully informed that if my father ever found out he would leave us, and if my grandmother ever found out she would drop dead of shock shame and despair. She said a bunch of other stuff that I have repressed and therefore cannot recall. Hence my childhood trauma.
- Kept on being a dirty queer, just quietly. I started losing touch with aunts and uncles and cousins based on mum's advice. I also got one of my boy friends to be my boyfriend to help my poor mum sleep at night. Didn't work.
- Had a love affair with my hot new best friend, it was all very illicit smoochies in the library of the Catholic girl's school. Very, very, very. Mum was very pleased that my new best friend was so straight and feminine, and I'm sure she hoped some of these traits would rub off on me. Yeah baby.