KerrieJean.com

The Leeton Redlegs Australian Rules Club’s glory period co-incided with my less than glorious adolescence….

I was soooo pathologically nervy, soooooo godamm ‘kookified’ it’s a wonder I’m not writing as the Pacific Rim’s only known survivor of early seventies spontaneous self-combustion.

But……I’m not here [thankfully in one piece] to boast about how a very tortured teenager conquered her fears, eventually exploding onto the highly competitive Riverina dating scene as an audacious, even gleefully obnoxious participant.

No.

I want to speak candidly about a highly charged sports fitness/public/private life debate which always erupted in my hometown whenever a football team of any code resurrected traditional and potent images of masculinity……and made The Finals.

The question?

In the pursuit of maximum testosterone payloads, vital on-field aggression and team coherence should players refrain from conjugal activities the night before The Big Match?

[Coach and team: Pre-grand final training session. Cr: National Library Ireland: flickr]

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was right. Everyone got cranky.

And, as the big day loomed closer, things got downright ugly.  

The Pre Big Match Abstainer Bloc was made up of sports loving spinsters, clergy, lawn bowlers and 50 percent of club officials. 

They were persistent, mad – and bad.

They even spoke of  kidnapping finals footballers’ wives.

For twenty four hours before The Big Game, they’d be held in camouflaged [dirt covered] caravans in the local Dusty Retreat Van Park and Dirt Slide. 

Their only comforts?

Nine dozen Cadbury Milk Trays and 10 dozen bottles of vintage Porphyry Pearl.

The Pre Big Match match Pro Conjugal Lobby was an unlikely coalition of potential players, players, former players, human rights activists and 50 percent of club officials.

They [many for the first time] spoke of sacred and mysterious relations between man and wife.

And they invoked a breathtaking range of anthropological, literary and scientific sources in support of their argument. 

Those sacred and mysterious relations had served as powerful nerve settlers for sportsmen throughout history -  chariot drivers and gladiators in particular. 

Furthermore, how could you ask brave men to do something which had never – and would NEVER - be asked of young and fit members of a champion netball team?

And so it was that The Big Game would be played – and won or lost.

And I’ll tell you this………

Post The Big Match,  no one ever dared to re-ignite the Coital Conversation whatever the result.   

*About 10 years ago, I was recording a story about the Australian Rules Football Club in the Tasmanian mining town of Queenstown.

It’s a famous club and so it should be.

Games in Queenstown are played on Australia’s only gravel oval. [Mine site 'leftovers']

Anyway, I finally had the chance to ask  a coach of the ‘modern game’ era his view on the ’sacred relations before finals footy’ imbroglio.

He thought, he thought again……he leaned into the mike……..

“There’s tremendous pressure on the blokes in the lead up to Big Games. Tremendous pressure….. 

“My recommendation? ’Don’t change ya routine no matter what it is.’”

…………………………………………………………….

So, is it okay that sports administrators think they have the God given right to go into bedrooms of young Australian sportsmen?

….Or is it just another sign of the ‘win at any cost’ mentality that has taken over our fine sporting traditions?

While I’ve got your attention, many commentators are saying it was very, very disrespectful for the ABC to portray Mr Mathieson and Ms Gillard in an intimate moment under the Southern Cross.

My response?

I think it’s time we got a new flag.

Anything else going on in your life….terrible or terrific?

Do report in…… 

By:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

If more than six people of an obvious gender approach me over a period of at least three days with startling news of an intimate nature I declare it a ‘Trend’………

Never one to blow my own trumpet BUT this methodology has proved far more reliable than all the resources of the Nifty Nielsen Box Ticking Corp combined.

And so it is I am able to report a trend so outrageous, so gobsmackingly audacious, so potentially explosive that for a couple of tense moments I feared my hearing was deteriorating as fast as the elastic sides of a size I6F homebrand bra.

[I'm back!: cr: Library of Congress: flickr]

SURVEY SAMPLE: 

Six women aged 50+: Reasonably presentable. Blood alcohol content, medium range.

Research fields: Three drinks and goats cheese [phew!] and dolmade platter parties.

Demeanour of sample: Flushed, excitable, disconcerting flickering of pupils, copybook post dolmade-ingestion windpipe constriction.

THE NEWS: That after periods ranging from 10 to 25 years, all six women were about to reconnect with their passionate/sensual selves.

HOW?????????????: By both *traditional and *non-traditional means.

*Traditional means included lies and subterfuge. 

[Example: To potential suitor: 'I'm 39 and haven't got a bitter bone in my body.' ]

*Non-traditional means included new lies and new means of subterfuge.

[Example: Posting up to 1200 different profiles on dating sites claiming everything from being a fomer Miss Pacific Rim -  to having the most expensive and well maintained Sealy Posturepedic King Ensemble ever manufactured in the Southern Hemisphere.

WHY???????????

All six women reported the need for a challenge other than the not inconsiderable ones presented by Pilates, delinquent teenage sons and the spectre of  blissfully happy former husbands et al who [10 to 25 years ago] had taken precisely 36 hours to recover from their drawn out, shockingly malevolent separations. 

The women also all reported recent sensations of  ‘veils of bitterness’  mysteriously lifting from their bodies.

CONCLUSION:

Australian rules of sensual relations are about to be re-written in nothing short of explosive terms.

Men of all ages will be fighting for the attentions of a significant cohort of attractive and intelligent women who’ve not been seen on the market since the ‘True Believers’ Federal Election of 1993.

In terms of infrastructure, restaurants, bars and nightclubs will have to meet new and expensive safety regulations to cater for the new cohort.

As it is in all social revolutions, everybody will be thinking differently……….

The lady is a ramp!

**********************************

Isn’t it great?

Even 22-year-olds will be heard on buses saying things like: ‘Gee, I wish I was over 50!’

Please report in on your thoughts and plans. You don’t want to be left behind – it’s a terrible feeling.

Perhaps you’re worried about the new sensual landscape…….why, why, why?

I really can’t see why you would be……..

 [I bet many of you said you'd never get a flat screen telly - and guess what.....guess what?]

Would love to hear from you……do it by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Is one just not enough?

Have just returned from my daily unconstitutional with this alarming observation…..

Multiple births are not only de rigueur: they’re the norm…..

And from the number of dual carriageway prams on my main street [being jogged along by 45 kilo 45-year-olds in Olympic cycling team lycra] conception by traditional means, is over.

[........Do you take this man, woman, indeterminate to have and to hold and from this day forth, promise to embark on all the IVF treatments it takes to have at least two children in one go...?]

It wasn’t always like this…..

I am the product of sex and when I was growing up in Leeton, Murray-Darling Basin, the Pacific Rim in the 1960’s, there were many, many children from similar backgrounds.

And everyone knew the couples who ‘could not have children’ because even though they’d been married for more than nine months, they didn’t have any.

People were deeply compassionate towards couples who ‘could not have children’.

And working out just whose fault it was, was very important.

[Cr: Oregon State University Archives: flickr]

….It’s him/it’s a blockage/it’s her/it’s a twisted something/it’s both/it’s a blockage and a twisted something/ it’s God’s will/ there’s no blockage or twisted something……..

No one dared ask the couple who ‘could not have children’ what the problem was…..

That’d be rude……

I liked the couples who ‘could not have children’.

They were always snazzily turned out and could afford to go on P&O Cruises to exotic places on the Pacific Rim.

They were very dignified and even pinched each others’ bums in public.

In restrospect, I wonder how many of them could have children but didn’t want any.

……Perhaps with the prevailing mood, best to let the talk of blockages and twisted things go unchecked.

And for those couples who did want kids but found the quest elusive and did not have access to technologies to change the situation, good on you…..

You moved well through my town……

And try as they will, the Fecundity Police could never catch ya!

*************************

Those of us of a certain age all remember those special couples I speak of, don’t we?

Perhaps you were even part of one of them……

Would love to hear from you…..on this or any other front…….

It’s free, it’s easy……how about you throw caution to the wind – and DO it now by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

Loyal readers are well aware that my romantic history is best described as a romp through terrain both sublime – and ridiculous.

I’m proud of it……

Over the decades I’ve supped and danced and frolicked and done crosswords…….and fought and had perverse dealings with…..well, quite a few men.

However, there’s one category of Man of which I have little intimate knowledge  -  something I’ve decided to remedy as a matter of urgency in the interests of a well rounded Mid- Romantic-Career.

My next target group?

That of the historically significant but largely forgotton Self Made Men…….

Glory Days: Self Made Men [Cr: Swedish National Heritage Board: flickr]

Decades ago – when my love trajectory was still firmly on the launch pad – Self Made Men were much admired.

It was as if they had not emerged via the time tested means of sexual embrace.

Being Self Made, they just popped on Leeton’s main street…..

But the process of becoming a fully formed Self-Made Man was complex – and not always pretty……

For Self Made Men saw opportunites where mere mortals did not.

Self Made Men made big money in commodities like sewage, gravel and stone fruit stones.

They said they were ‘gunna buy up half of Wagga’ with the profits – and they did.

Self Made Men were often [dare I say it?] on the plain or short side.

But that didn’t matter.

Their wives were always ‘the best sorts’ in town: resplendent in tropical jumpsuits purchased in Sydney enroute to the P &O passenger terminal.

…….Tales circulated about Self-Made Men and their wives and obnoxious offspring sailing to exotic locales in the South Pacific…..

…..Arriving back in Leeton with never before seen five-metre high decorative village totems, glorious muumuus and 25.4 gallon bottles of duty free Tia Maria.

Not that Self-Made Men didn’t have a social conscience.

Quite the opposite.

They sponsored…….

….New goals posts, new goal posts unveiling ceremony barbeques, cardiac arrest gizmos, cardiac arrest gizmo acquisition barbeques……

It was good to know that Self-Made Men never forgot where they came from – themselves.

So…..I’m looking for a Self-Made Man.

A Self-Made Man who’d feel privileged to sponsor me……

HOWEVER, if you’re a Self-Made Man who’s managed to make an unmitigated mess of yourself, please do not apply…..

…………………………….

So, how are we all. Just quietly, my search for a viable Self-Made Man has really put a spring in my step.

Isn’t it always the same?

….You feel a little jaded – and then, zippity do da, a new project emerges!

I’d be very interested to know whether you have experiences of Self-Made Men…….even voting for Mark Latham counts!

…Or – even better – maybe you’re the real deal yourself……oh boy……

As per usual, I’d like [very much] to hear news from your fertile [or hopelessly barren] patch…..

Do it by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

God help me – it’s on again!

…There I was at an exclusive gathering minding my own business [always a crowd pleaser] when a family heavyweight popped THE question:

And where are you spending Christmas this year?

IT’S underway.

Apart from the traditional Australian Magpie Aerial Dogfight Festival, my least favorite time of the year. 

…..The ‘And where are you spending Christmas this year?’ season.

So, soooooooo tedious.

And so, sooooooooo shallow…..

Because there’s every likelihood that the ’and where are you spending Christmas this year?’ questioners dislike you [quite a bit]

They hope very much you’ll answer:

‘As per tradition I’m spending Christmas alone.  But between 1:28-1:30 pm I’ll be on skype watching my one friend interstate eating a drumstick…’

Answer: ‘Good, good KJ. Good bye.’

So, join me.

DO NOT participate in the ‘And where are you spending  Christmas this year?’ fiasco.

STOP the perpetrators in their dismal tracks – with:

‘As per tradition I’m spending Christmas alone.  But between 1:28-1:30 pm I’ll be on skype watching my one friend interstate eating a drumstick…’

Note: If you are indeed doing that change ‘interstate’ to ‘Alaska’  -  and ‘drumstick’ to  ’moose mousse’.

cr: Field Museum Library: flickr

[Merry Moose Mousse! ]

Read on for Australian Masculinity Week.

There are people who take pride in recognising the call of the triple-buttocked Riverina sparrow…….

Fair enough - but I work on the other, more complex, side of town…..

And what I’m recognising is a desperate collective call for help from the men of Australia – further, I’m honouring it…..

Enough of the negativity, enough of counting chest hairs, enough of strong, super fit men on construction sites so desiring to wolf whistle but afraid they’ll be arrested, enough of  boudoirs as battlegrounds – ‘do this Wazza, don’t do that Wazza, refer to the anatomy wall chart Wazza’…………

…..And enough of good Australian men proud to present well and, for example, having their endeavours laughed off the back of the Fashions on the Field truck at the Broken Hill Maltese Cup [so-called] Fun Day. 

* It is our correspondent Old College Day Bum’s recent report of the shocking Maltese Cup incident that sees me at the barricades, declaring this no less than:

AUSTRALIAN MASCULINITY WEEK.

It’s about bloody time.

As the last born of Hec and Gwennie’s five lovely daughters, I witnessed a raw regional brand of Australian Masculinity trying, dying to ‘come out’ on a daily basis.

The terrible truth?

Behind the facade, we were living with a suppressed Ernest Hemingway without the book royalties.

Tragically, Hec’s Masculinity was deemed ‘family hostile’, even downright dangerous.

And in a futile attempt at control which only served to make our Hemingway even more prone to bouts of  Masculine Murrumbigee Melancholia, his very manhood was literally padlocked, locked up in a top secret cupboard on an otherwise ordinary back verandah.

The gendered contraband?

* Three rifles [Duck shooting and comforting shots in the air to ward off  smelly wild cats spraying the wood heap.

* Enough ammo to take out every endangered duck from the South Australian border to Leeton's famed Tuckerbill Swamp.

* Four, 'lucky' pairs of Y-Fronts. Long rubber pants. Gum boots. ( *The little known sensual side of duck shooting. Hemingway always wanted to write about it but sadly his editors deemed it inappropriate).

* Three World War Two regulation issue army blankets (Ground cover, Hec's famous deadly serious Anzac Day two-up schools).

Now, isn't it just awful that for Hec -  and so many men of his generation - the most potent symbols of their Australian Masculinity HAD to be locked away?

NO wonder our Hec Hemingway spent his days dreaming of the back verandah cache - sipping strong liquor and secretly planning adventures.

The saddest thing of all?

The knowledge that his loved ones would never understand, let alone approve.

So, let us NOT perpetuate the confusion that has so plagued Australian men.

This is a week where feats of derring-do, embarrassing stumbles in love, the futile search for the right words, the inherent contraditions of trying to be 'Australian' and 'male' - and the mysteries of that special brand of Pacific Rim libido - will all be celebrated.

Ladies and gentleman, I declare Australian Masculinity Week, open........

*******************************

Well, well, well.......if Australian Masculity Week is not a 'big ticket' event I will ring Mr Scott of the Corporation and tell him I shouldn't be in the business.

.....Tell him I've completely lost my way. Tell him I'm coming out as a real 'has been' who shouldn't be in charge of a Breville hand mixer let along a major cultural forum.

[Help me out baby, help me out....]

What does Australian Masculinity mean to you?

What’s the most exciting display of Australian Masculinity you’ve ever witnessed? 

Do Australian women feel cheated because they’ve never been given the chance to explore their Masculinity?

Are there regional variations of Australian Masculinity?

And, of course, anything else that’s happening in your patch, gender based or not……

[Help me out baby, help me out.....] by:

Just clicking on the ‘comment’ thingo and following the simple instructions. The place to write your gems is at the bottom of the last published comment. *A little bit of counsel for people new to this caper. Your email (just called ‘mail’ in this case) address does NOT come up on site. And just ignore the URL thingo.

5:30pm.

And our space has been given over to our poet-in-residence The Big Lebowski:

Blow winds, crack your cheeks
Send destruction upon me
Break my lyre, light for me
A funereal pyre in all codes
Sing only in mournful tones.

Earlier story…….

I am in a state so will be necessarily brief……

Today, an inescapable truth….

Ugly.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people are gonna get hurt – and they’re gonna get hurt real bad.

Today, at 5:30pm, there will be thousands of grieving folks on the streets of Melbourne.

Please afford them all the respect they deserve.

Whether they be Collingwood or Kt Kilda diehards, DO NOT approach them….

Neither to offer succour or belligerent comment.

These are people for whom life itself has come to nought.

And if this realisation is accompanied by bizarre behaviours – nudity, semi-nudity, disorientation, self-guernsey mutilation or even refusal to pay for a tram ticket – leave them be.

Let them go into the night as whence they came.

As people who deeply feel. On several mysterious fronts.

*I’ve just been on the phone to Miss Julie, our family’s St Kilda apostle.

She is very quiet.

I played her this down the line: for the [only heartbeats away] culmination of  Season 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWlth2csLNw

Amen.