New Normal

When you are not doing very much, it becomes more and more difficult to find something interesting to say. True of life really, hey? But even more true when one is experiencing a pandemic the likes of which most of us haven't seen before. 

So, I’m just going to make shit up. 

Harriet the Hatchet was around during the Spanish flu. The universe blessed her with good genes and longevity. She's 122 this year and has a face like a relief map of Melbourne, all green and blue and brown. She walks with a slight stoop but that is a recent development. She spent a life time collecting male lovers.

"But when they are all dead, so is part of you," she said. “So there is no happy ending.”

“Can you remember them all?”

“Most of them, honey.” She wipes the corner of her mouth almost absentmindedly. “There have been a few, as you may understand.”

Ah, Harriet. What a life.

She kissed Wilbur Snodgrass, her first sweet heart, her first, when he went away to the Great War. They hugged and kissed. He gave a cheeky smile and his last words to her were, “Don’t worry, I’ll be alright.” Then he turned and walked away. She never saw Wilbur again.

The 1920s was the best era in which to live, the pinnacle of human civilisation, the most fun and the most free. It was one long party. They drank a lot.

“Yes, well,” said Harriet. “Certainly, for me and my socio economic group, anyway.”

She met the dashing Jay Devine at university. They spent the 1920s together and were betrothed to each other. Jay’s family were rich from the Devine Perfume Empire.

That was until everyone got greedy and it all came crashing down. It became a downward spiral, with conservative types trying to repress the majority ever since.

Jay’s family lost all their money in the ’29 crash and he disappeared. And Harriet never saw him again.

Her heart broken, she disappeared into bohemian society where the gays picked her up and soothed her torched soul.

She used to dress up in a trench coat and Trilby hat and run with the 1930s gays.

"Those boys were the truest of any boys in any era," she said. "They had to be in their secret society."

She met her girlfriend Sasha Blatt, a PHD scientist, and started going by the name Harry Hatch.

She officiated at same sex weddings and was fabulous at tea parties with her beautiful boys. “It was one long Gin Sling, darling.”

“It was all bebop Jazz in the forties.” She smiled at the memory. 

Henry Star took her heart, but he was drafted into the second great war, and she lost him too. She found out she was pregnant, when she was far too old to be so. And then she had Henry Junior to share her life. She carried him in a papoose.

“All those cool cats. Of course, the religious types protested that we were losing our souls to devil music and that ushered in the 1950s.”

She was mama to the James Dean types of the 1950s. "It wasn't all Porsche sports cars and full skirts, you know," she said. “All that hair cream and repression.” She pulled a face.

She tie-dyed her life in the sixties. She moved to a collective. And smoked a huge amount of pot. They grew their own food and remained barefooted for most of the decade. The children were home schooled with emphasis on freedom to choose your own path in life. “How could we not,” she said.

It was heroin in the 70s. She joined a folk band, Big Red Taxi, and toured the world. She adopted young George when her bandmate lover, Parker Bird, succumbed to his addiction, and then she had a pair of boys. 

Cocaine in the 80s. She organised one large shipment from Bolivia with Pegleg Jack and Murry the Immobilizer (don’t ask, it is too gruesome) and then invested the money in hedge funds and secured her future. “From one crime gang to another crime gang, still you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.” Young Henry Star finished his degree, while young George Bird started his.

Amphetamines in the 90s. She followed the party circuit around the world, dancing to nirvana, on beaches and in deserts, in rain forests and on docks on bays, dressed in cheese cloth dresses with daisies in her hair. 

“Of course, every time we found a good drug, the fun police would move in and make them illegal.”

Ketamine in the noughties. She became a grandmother and started sitting her new grandsons. Henry had a son, Felix, with his best friend, Kayla. George had a son, Hugo, with his girlfriend, Mack. It was all boys in Harriet’s family, she was happy though, of course.

And Crystal meth in the 2010s. She taught her grandsons responsible drug taking and taught them dance party etiquette. Felix told her he liked boys and Hugo told her he liked girls. “One of each,” she replied. “You two should look out for each other, you know, as brothers do.”

She retired to country Daylesford, just beyond the city’s limits. And planted a vegi garden. She and Sasha experimented with human growth hormone in their garage, which managed to halt Harry’s aging process. She bought a red sports car to celebrate.

The world spun on Harriet’s desire. “The problem with the world has always been the conservative element trying to drag society backwards because of their own fears.”

Why hatchet, I hear you ask? That was because Harriet always had an idea, she was always hatching new plans to follow.

 

Always have a plan? I think that is probably a good way to live, even if you don’t follow it religiously, for want of a better word. It is an ideal. It is good to have a dream, it keeps the imagination working, and the old brain cells ticking over. It keeps you thinking and looking forward.

 

I think I am still in lock down mode, I haven't, me and the husband, got back into leaving the house, on a regular basis, just yet. Oh, you know, other than walking the dogs, or sniffing around the supermarket for sustenance. We were a little on the reclusive side before all this happened and while it’s not exactly still fortress-home, it's just like we got out of the habit of going out. Staying home has very much become the order of the day.

I wonder how long it will be before conservative commentators are agitating for govt to instruct us all to go out to save the restaurants and night clubs?

I've taken to collecting Peter Hujar B&W images and reading Allan Bennett's writing.