An Open Letter To My Boss

You don't wear make-up or dye your hair, rather you part it down the middle and pull it back into a low ponytail. You prefer to be called by your initials, not your feminine first name. You wear basketball jerseys on casual day. You commute to work from a regional working-class city. You wear your Bonds underwear high enough that it sticks out the top of your business pants. You wear knitted sweater vests.

YOU WEAR KNITTED SWEATER VESTS.

So I think you'll probably understand my confusion when I saw you were wearing a wedding ring. Not a flashy diamond number or anything mind you, just a plain gold band. That plain gold band made my Gaydar hurt.

My Gaydar is pretty exceptional. It's a finely tuned instrument that's really flourished in the last few years, partly because I learned to trust my natural instincts and mostly because Jess and I like to play endless games of 'Dude or Dyke?' while people watching (this can be adapted to 'Hipster or Homo?' at outdoor festivals). When I first saw my boss it started going off like that time-up warning you get in multiplayer mode of Goldeneye on Nintendo 64, all BAAAARMP BAAAAARMP BAAAAAARMP. Then I saw the wedding ring and I was so confused I got a stress headache.

Could I be wrong? Could she just be one of those butch, sporty straight girls with husbands?

“Maybe she's in a committed gay relationship” said my housemate Josie. “I know lots of queer couples that wear commitment rings.”

It was entirely possible. It would explain why my Spidey Sense was going through the roof telling me that there was no way this woman was into men. But then the next day at work, I asked her for help with adding a female customer's partner to her account, and she explained the process to me using all male pronouns.

I went running back to Josie. “Would a lesbian do that? I wouldn't do that.” Josie thought about it. “I might. I hate that I'd make that assumption but sometimes that's just how we're conditioned. I talk to people about doctors all day at work and I find myself saying 'he'."

Okay, so maybe she was gay. I mentioned ye olde faithful Roller Derby in a conversation and she said 'I LOVE roller derby' and from then on the topic was pretty much closed for me.

That wedding ring got me thinking about two things though: does it no longer signify heterosexuality? Am I the one who's making a stupid assumption? Have I been conditioned into thinking something that just doesn't apply anymore?

Secondly, if Jess and I entered some time space continuum where Julia Gillard was no longer standing between us and a tacky shotgun wedding, would I completely lose all queer visibility? If I make the assumption that someone who screams gay to me is straight based on a little piece of jewellery, I'm sure people would make the same judgement about me.

Postscript: A few days after I wrote this, one of my co-workers was discussing the concept of 'bromance' and my boss chimed in with 'Oh, my husband has one of them!'. I resisted the urge to ask if the bromance was with her, briefly doubted my beautiful Gaydar, and then took some Nurofen Plus.

You Know I'm Not Dead

But I am lacking a net connection that isn't my mobile phone. I've also got an awkward between-haircuts mullet. It's really something.

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Totes Goats

I first heard someone say 'totes' in early 2008. It was my friend Joe. He kept slipping it into conversation and he talks kinda fast, so I thought he was suggesting we go to the pub. I informed him that it was The Tote, singular. He told me it was short for 'totally'. I thought it was the most repugnant piece of slang I'd ever encountered, toppled only by it's obnoxious cousin, 'totes goats'.

It's now somehow managed to become such an integral part of my every day vernacular that I don't think I'd be able to stop saying it even if I tried. Sometimes it comes out of my mouth in front of someone classy and I can see the disgust written all over their face and I want to shake them and say NO, NO, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, IT WAS ALL JOE'S FAULT.

On a similar note, my therapist asked me what 'douche' meant today. At first I thought she literally wanted to know the definition, but then I realised that I'm the only person she knows who uses the word in every day conversation and I wound up spending half my session talking about how much I liked using it as a verb, eg, "stop douching me around." True story.

The Cult Of Roller Derby

Roller derby, in my opinion, is a cult. It's a beautiful, wondrous, empowering cult that has transformed my life in ways I never thought possible, but it's a cult none the less.

Like all good cults, I've devoted most of my life to it since I joined just over two years ago. I think about very little else. If we had a compound for me to give up my day job and move into, you know I'd be doing it. I've 'recruited' (infected?) friends, strangers and even my girlfriend. And I've met hundreds of amazing fellow cult members, both from my league and from leagues in other cities, states and countries. There is nothing better than meeting other people that share the same obsession that you do. I love talking plates and surge blocks and Texas two-steps until I'm blue in the face. And as much as I love and value these people, I am under absolutely no illusion that I'd maintain a relationship with any more than about 5 of my so-called 'derby sisters' if I stopped playing derby.

Skaters love to wax lyrical about their 'derby family'. It normally makes me cringe. I think it's a dangerous thing to elevate your fellow cult members to that level. I've seen girls leave derby and disappear off the face of the Earth. It's like they don't exist anymore. You run into them on the street or in a pub one day and until that moment, you'd totally forgotten about them.

I'd like to think the same isn't true for me, but of course it is. The people that I don't see outside of derby anyway would be the first to go - without the hours spent training together, I just wouldn't see them anymore. The people I do hang with outside of training hours would attempt to catch up with me, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd have a few awkward coffee dates where I'd discover that I have very little in common with them now that we don't have skating to talk about. I'd probably offend them when I didn't care about the durometer of their new wheels or the effectiveness of compression tights or who's hooked up with who within the league. (It's the reverse when I run into non-derby friends currently. They say 'what have you been up to?' and I say 'oh, you know... derby!' and then struggle to remember anything else I do with my time).

The last cult I belonged to was a little call centre called Sales Force. They were very big on being a 'fun' place to work and hired mainly 20-somethings and held a lot of social events. I got sucked into the Sales Force void for a few years. When I finally came to and decided to get a real job, I lost most of my social group. I tried to maintain contact with my work friends, people I'd been super tight with for years. I'd shared houses and bodily fluids and countless boozy evenings with these people and we just didn't have any common ground without our co-workers and customers to discuss. I think derby is pretty similar.

My inner circle of friends consists of people I've known for years. They're people that I met for one reason or another and have found it effortless to maintain a tight friendship with. The fact that we are no longer housemates or co-workers or even living in the same city doesn't affect our relationship. Those are the people that I think of as family. They're my 'sisters'. If I stopped playing derby, there'd be a few people would go into that category, but sadly I know that the majority of my derby friendships would fizzle out to the occasional 'like' on a status update.

Good thing I don't have any intention of ever stopping skating.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I only ever seem to blog about my body when I'm feeling negative about it - so let me tell you, world, I FUCKING LOVE MY BODY. Not because of how it looks (although that's pretty awesome too) but because of all of the amazing things it can do on the flat track, all of the things that have taken two and a bit years to develop to this level, all of the blocks and strides and split-second reactions that can only happen because I've dedicated so many countless hours to practising them.

I'm amazed by how one little hour-long bout has switched my brain from 'I'm fat' to 'how much faster and stronger can I be by the next bout?'. Being a certain size or shape suddenly seems irrelevant. And the control panties can stay in my underwear draw - I didn't even bother with them during the game because I decided breathing was a priority. How funny that I thought that was a negotiable.

Introducing... Sperry Rand Remmington Riviera

This piece of magenta coloured love is mine, all mine. Oh, the zines to be made! The love letters to be written! I can't stop running my fingers over it. I'm in a very happy place. I'd wanted a typewriter for a while but hadn't gone about actively finding one that wasn't a stupid amount of dollars... and then I was gifted with this one, which is nicer than I could have possibly dreamed up. Swoon. Thanks lady Ada, you're wonderful.

Standing In The Way Of Control

Last week I bought a pair of those bra-high, Nanna style control panties. I bought them for the very specific purpose of wearing under my Toxic Avengers dress, after seeing one too many pictures of myself that made me want to cry.

I'm very sensitive about my belly. I don't want to hate it, but I do. I try to suck it in as much as possible. I wear black to minimise it. I removed my belly button piercing about 10 kilos ago. I will happily walk down the street in the hottest of hot pants but I wouldn't be caught dead in a midriff. I get all tense and clammy when my girlfriend touches it. You get the idea.

Here's the thing: I love belly on other people. I think a bit of tummy is all kinds of sexy. A flat, washboard stomach is totally boring. I like curves. I like squishy bits. I like love handles. Amazing.

The other night I was Facebook stalking the photos of a friend of a friend (as you do) and there were some photos from a burlesque event. One of the dancers was absolutely stunning. She would have been a bit bigger than me but she was proportioned like I am, all boobs and belly. She had a freaking incredible body. She looked totally soft and sensuous. And I couldn't work out why I could look at a girl who's bigger than me and think HOT, yet look at myself in the mirror and start mentally committing myself to a lifetime of personal training. I looked at that girl and thought it would be such a fucking shame if she thought she was fat, how she would actually be less attractive if she lost weight, yet I had absolutely zero ability to apply these principles to myself.

Anyway, I have some roller derby to play in those fucking control panties tonight, so I really hope I can breathe in them.