A Close Nit Family...

Not all that long ago I was combing my little Son's hair with a nit comb when I made the most peculiar discovery- for as I pulled the comb away and inspected it I could have almost sworn that the two little muunni's I removed were completely different species of lice.

So it got me to wondering. How could he have been infested by two strains at once? And how had he caught lice twice?

Well, I swear that those two have now bred with each other and produced a new strain of Super-Lice, lice that are impervious to combs and foams. Curiously, my Hubby can not get head lice; apparently the dandruff on his scalp is too thick- and his hair too coarse and wiry- to sustain life. Simply put- they starve to death because they can't eat through all that dead dermis to suck blood from the fresh skin.

Both my Son's have inherited the same thick hair but they still manage to become infested. Honestly- it's like steel wool. It grows so quickly that he gives himself haircuts- saving us about three hundred bucks a year I suppose. He's got a criminal's head when it's shaven, and he looks like a thug in a beanie. My sister-in-law's hubby gave him a haircut once but stuffed it up so badly that my Hubby took to his own head with a pair of clippers, but he used the wrong guage and ended up accidentally cutting these really big chunks out of his hair so that he ended up with a Lisa Simpson haircut. It was pretty fucking funny, actually.

We had a lot of funny times there, at his parent's house in Stayton Street. I had a photo taken of Me outside that house four years before He even moved into it- when he was actually still living in another Town- in it I'm sitting on the driveway underneath the street lamp that's outside his bedroom window- where I will one day sit with Him on the cold roof tiles, freezing my bare arse off, wrapped up in a blanket sharing a well-earned cigarette...

Sometimes He'll go downstairs afterwards and make me toasted sandwiches that are layered so perfectly that you get exactly the same amount of ingredients in each and every bite; which he prides himself on doing I might add- and I'll eat this in bed being careful not to leave too many crumbs; he got the bed from St Vinnie's while he was doing four hundred hours of Community Service, but that's another story for another time.

I am sitting cross-legged in the photo, and aged about fourteen. It is Winter or early Spring, as there are no leaves on the Liquid Amber and I am wearing my school jumper that is the same colour as Kermit the Frog, when the uniform requirement actually calls for one that is Bottle Green. I'm such a rebel. And I'm finally Kermit. Bbbb has taken the photo. We are waiting for our friend Fee to meet us on the walk to school, and this house, His Future House, is right at the base of the hill, just where it begins to get really steep, so we pause here every morning before attempting the sharp incline...

The first time I realised it was the same house in the photo was three nights after I lost my virginity to Him. This couldn't be his address- the surname on the letterbox is totally different to the last name he had given me as his. But we knock anyway- and decide that we'll check out number eight if eighteen is the wrong house. The guy who opens the door, who looks a bit like Santa, tells me that this is where he lives, but that he's just not in at the moment- that he's out with his friends at a pub somewhere.

This is the precise moment I should have ruN rUN RUN away...

I lie and tell my future Father-in-Law that I've lost the phone number that his son never gave to me in the first place, and with a new 'replacement' safe in my wallet I walk home- smiling contentedly after a good night's Hunting. I know by now that he has already lied to me about his last name, but that doesn't matter much to me at that moment. Maybe he felt bad about lying but couldn't change his name back again without looking like an idiot? Blokes his age are always trying to get out of committing themselves in a relationship with anyone. They just don't know what they want- or who-or maybe they just haven't met the Right Girl yet.

But 'no' really should mean 'no'.

If they Really don't want a relationship they should stick to it and stop fucking you. Just don't be with someone again if you really don't want to be...

But he was with me again... and again. A week after we first met I sort of invited Myself over to his brother's twenty-first birthday party. Old habits die hard I suppose. I turned up in my Faith No More t-shirt that reads "You Fat Bastards" on the back, the one where all the members of the band are standing around in Y-fronts with their shorts around their ankles. His Father makes mention of it but doesn't seem offended, but I'm cursing myself for wearing it when I'd already met him and had seen first hand that he was a man who wouldn't have been out of place shopping at a Big Man's World Clothing Shop.

Luckily, he's not overly sensitive about the issue, but I'm only wearing it in the first place because it's white and I've got a Killer Tan to show off. All of their relatives are there, even the distant cousins who have travelled throughout the night just to attend. Both of his elderly Nana's are busy slicing slice in the kitchen while his Aunt is retching pink champagne on the front lawn. You can tell their's is a close-knit family as well, but that my bloke is somewhat of the Black Sheep amongst the flock.

I get drunk on three twist tops of VB and after the cake has been cut we drove down to the video shop, his Father driving the mini-van, and He holds my hand while we sit in the back and gently strokes the inside of my palm with his thumb. My stomach's lurching nervously at the pleasing thought of his hands on my body like they were only six nights ago- when I was still a girl- before he made a Woman out of me. I just hope it doesn't have to hurt again, like the first time did, as I held the hand of my best friend who was busy getting rooted by someone else beside me...

I really want this guy to like Me- more than anything else that I've ever wanted in this world. Even more than I wanted a horse- if that were possible. If I thought I'd ever loved before I was wrong- what had I known about love with any of those Boys?

He's an eighteen year old Man. He can always get into the pub, he doesn't need fake ID. And he's so cool. Look at his earring and his love-heart tatt. One day I'm going to have my name written in there- just you wait and see. He used to sometimes let me write my name in there in pen for fun, but then I wrote MUM in it one day and he got the shits at me over it. HE tells me stories about things I have never even heard of, of drugs he's done and the crimes he's been caught for and all the ones he got away with. He tells me that injecting yourself is like feeling a feather tickle your skin and feels better than sex; and demonstrates this fact somehow by gently blowing on the soft skin in the crook of my elbow- this I don't understand- how can anything be better than sex; but then sex is still only new to me, and I've only ever done it with him and with Myself. He tells me about seeing one of his friends dying; they found him dead- literally wrapped around a bus-stop pole after hitting a horse on his motorbike- and this life, His Life, excites Me, because mine is safe and dull and nothing ever happens in it.

He's funny too- he tells me a story about going swimming in a reservoir near some sugar-cane fields in Bundaberg with a bunch of Taipan snakes, but he doesn't see what all the fuss was about- as they weren't very poisonous. No. Not very. They're only the deadliest snake in Australia, that's all. Don't worry about it Mate.

He never led me on- I knew that I was only sex to him, and not even great sex at that. But I wanted it to be more than that. He never treated me like a leper in the morning, but that's only because he was so very seldomly there, next to me still, because he was either up and dressed and Out Of There, or else I had gotten up in the middle of the night and walked home through the dark streets back to my own bed to avoid getting in shit off my Parents for staying out late and drinking all night.

For some reason I always thought 'Next time it will be different'- that This might be the night he realises what a terrible mistake he's been making all these months in not wanting to only be with me, when I am so loyal and dedicated to him. I don't want babies, but I don't do anything to stop them from coming either.

Besides, He's Infertile; remember?

Yep.

That's what He said.

And I believed him.