Notes of Substance

The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked, my brother and I and the neighbourhood boys. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the train station platform across the road, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation.  The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. One day, my mum greeted me at...

Fears are not rational. But growing up, in my mind, it made perfect sense that a dog could bite me, and moreover, most likely would, given the chance.  My fear was born of repeated backyard encounters with a mauling, snarling dog. We shared the yard with tenants who lived in the other side of our grandfather's house. This meant our sandpit was contested territory, my dolls were easy targets, and my young mind was easily imprinted with the image of slavering jaws crushing heads. Dolls' heads, true, but that had implications. Sure, it wasn't me who had to contend with the bitzer terrier going for my dangling doodle-my brother seemed to emerge from that encounter mentally, and thankfully physically, intact. For me, bearing witness to the dolls' destruction and the attack on the tiny penis, the outcome proved more traumatic. Perhaps being that year older, my mind could seize the sense of threat? What it meant for me was that my space in the world became curtailed. Bo...