A cup of tea made by another’s hands really is really a brew of disappointment and lies.

Yesterday a friend of mine made a Facebook post about a fear of a poorly-made cup of tea and I practically commented a fucking novel in support for this claim. Because while people tell themselves that they’re doing you a favour by fixing you a cup of love, in reality they’re constructing a no win situation for the drinker. That’s right, I’m turning making someone a comforting drink into a punch to the breast.

I never really understood my mother, who would get incredibly stressed when people did things for her. As a bright-eyed and horrendously chubby child, I was shocked to find that my mother didn’t react to me and my siblings’ offering of breakfast in bed of a Mothers’ Day like the women on the Suzannes ads did. Instead of waking up with perfect hair, unwrinkled pyjamas and a warm, loving embrace for the sheer perfections of human beings she brewed up in her woman cave, all we got were disgruntled sighs. I used to think it was because she was a heartless grump who scoffs at the selfless gestures of her love-starved offspring. But today I understand completely. What I now realise is that not only would we have left the kitchen in a mess and woken her up early with our toaster-getting-out-of-the-cupboard noises and poorly-hushed disagreements, the end result was about as underwhelming as opening a bottle of liquid whiteout. Tepid tea, smears of butter on all utensils and some form of toasted bread or pancakes which we never saw Mum eat for breakfast but were repeatedly told by Target catalogues that she would love so much her ovaries would swell to the size of medium grapefruits. If I were to see that little jerk of a human being putting someone through that and expecting a hug to the soundtrack of various versions of It Must Be Love, I would probably slap myself across the face. Mum doesn’t like crumbs in her bed. Mum doesn’t like unnecessary washing up. And she sure as shit won’t stand for a badly-made, lukewarm cup of tea. She didn’t overcome polio for a big old cup of disappointment, for fuck’s sake.

While my mother may sound like a cold, heartless diva (she isn’t, by the way. She still bakes slices and fruitcake for my old work colleagues, does meals on wheels and sends me Happy Unbirthday cards using the free stationary she was given as a gift for donating money to weirdly-specific charities) I think she was right to be disgruntled. Because the only thing worse than a shit cup of tea is having to feign gratitude to the evil creature who made it for you.

As much as I enjoy the thought of someone dedicating five minutes of their life purely for the satisfaction of my needs (hashtag relationship goals), that’s pretty much where it stops for me. Because no matter how many times someone tries to brew you a cuppa, it’s never going to be quite right. I’ve been through some stuff. I’ve experienced the highs and lows of life. I’ve stared at landscapes through public transport windows with a pensive look on my face; I’ve been on a journey to myself and know who I am. So don’t just assume that you know how much milk I want in my fucking tea. You’ll never get me. When Britney Spears’ backup singers sang “you’ve just got to do it your way” in Overprotected (wow, two Britney references in two weeks) I’m pretty sure they were envisaging me, sassily pouring boiling water over a teabag in the mug I always fucking use.

It’s for this reason (and the fact that I am apparently so full of hate my pimples are actually clogged with viscous distain) that I try to avoid making a cup of tea for someone else. Because I’m either serving them a steaming hot cup of I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-as-a-person or forcing my view of the world onto someone and trying to make them conform to my standards. If I want to dismiss all regard for a person’s worth or shape them into a mediocre version of me, I’ll usually do that with my words, not a beverage.

Inevitably someone will add too much sugar, not let the tea steep for as long, go too hard on the milk or assume you like some kind of wanky brew that doesn’t have a name, just an affect labelled in wispy letters over a adjective-laden ingredient list – such as “calming”, “energising” or “suddenly forgetting your life is a pathetic waste of resources because of these organic cranberry flakes”. If you think that literally condensing a person in a standard-sized mug is tricky, then doing it metaphorically is all kinds of impossible. Just like only you can decide if Blurred Lines actually offends you, only you can know how to make your tea.

We all know this, but are regularly cornered in a situation in which it’s good manners to take the cup of tea. You tell yourself how nice it is that you get to set comfortably in the couch while the kind soul fixes you a drink, but that’s just what they want. They lull you into an acceptance of their offer with your warm memories of tea you made yourself and then they piss all over it. They slap a teabag in, slosh around an unmeasured amount of water, dump in a non-descript sweetener and present you with a mug of insults. But they don’t just hand you the cup of tea and leave you be, they expect conversation and gratification. As if drinking the lukewarm piss of Satan isn’t bad enough, now this sadist wants to share things about their life with you and expects you to nod earnestly between over enthusiastic sips of gratitude. It’s kind of like when a lass is bought a drink at Da Clubz and is therefore expected to reciprocate with sexual rubbing of some degree, only instead of a watered down cheap vodka and raspberry you’re given watered down dreams and what’s being violently shoved down your throat is some dribble about their douchebag partner/frivolously pointless university to degree/vague career aspirations to set up a fashion brand in Bali/yoga. As in both situations, you can’t help but wonder how you, as the proud owner of a supposedly fully-formed brain, find yourself in such positions. But despite all your discomfort you grin and bare it, hoping that at least an offer of a sandwich will follow and make everything worth it.

Unfortunately, that sandwich rarely comes.

Nah yeah: Waking up at 7.30pm, giving me so many hours of potential productivity on a Sunday.

Yeah nah: Spending most of that potential productivity time watching old Britney Spears video clips on YouTube, and feeling incredibly inadequate. Britney had become an international superstar by 17, while I the only thing I had achieved by that age was the knowledge that extreme side fringes aren’t a great idea. At 23, instead of being a multi Grammy winner, I have become the person who dedicates a whole day to a former child star. Because this has transcended idle watching, now I’ve hit the obsessive researching phase. So far I’ve Googled:

“Does Melissa Joan Hart have a lazy eye?”

“Britney Spears wedding tracksuit”

and

“How old was Britney Spears when she shaved her head?”

Apparently she shaved her head at 26, which means that if I’m charting my life using the Britney Spears Life Events Scale (which everyone should be), I have three years to to go through a downward spiral and then a few more after that to put myself spectacularly back together and buy a mansion with a golf course. I’m also supposed to have killer abs right now and have frenched Madonna. Hmm.

Life lesson number 347: just because its still daylight and you haven’t taken off your shoes/thrown up on yourself/interpretive danced in public, it doesn’t mean your level of drunkenness is isn’t something to ignore when messaging contacts.

Yesterday I put on a goddamned wide-brimmed, floppy hat and took myself to the races. Now, for someone who has as much horse paraphernalia in her room as I do (I have two trophies with a galloping pony on them, an ice bucket with a horse head, a brown toy horse that looks like it comes alive at night and tries to smother me, a golden cup from the 1957 Queensland Polo Association Championship and in my wardrobe I have hung up a square of wrapping paper with a pattern of frolicking horses with a Post-It note stuck to it telling me “you don’t want to root some grot”) I don’t know the first thing about horse racing.

I am aware that there are horses who run around in a circle and people called bookies, but that’s about the extent of it. For me, horse racing has always been merely an opportunity to stick flowers in my head and get day drunk.

Yesterday’s big-hatted outing was an impulsive decision made after I realised my big Friday night plans involved me scrolling through my colleagues’ life history in Facebook pictures while waiting for my clothes to wash at the laundromat. Me and my Blonde Sidekick were offered a ride to the races earlier that day and I decided that, to prevent my Saturday night being on par with my wild Friday, we should take up that offer. That decision was only further cemented when our Kind-Hearted Noble Steed informed me she was planning on cooking up a lasagne as a post-races feed.

So I found myself sitting on a freshly-painted grandstand watching horses running around a circle in the dying hours of the afternoon hurling abuse at the one person I knew who I assumed should have the knowledge I needed to win money by correctly identifying which of the horses would run around the circle the fastest. My Blonde Sidekick and I started a group chat expecting the tips to come rolling in, but were bitterly disappointed. Looking back at the exchange, perhaps the conversation could have been a bit more cordial:

1.50pm

Useless Acquaintance: I don’t have any tips.

Me: That’s pathetic. I can’t believe you.

4.10pm

Useless Acquaintance: Apologies.

It is here when I realised I had to come up with an eloquent way of expressing my disappointment over the lack of insight about which horse would run around the circle the fastest. I was prepared to take a bit of extra time to formulate a response, as I wanted it to be fair, but also representative of my dissatisfaction. I had to express my feelings without being offensive, and that could take time and, quite possibly, a few paragraphs explaining my thoughts in great depth. After a brief pause, I was able to compose something that was worthy of the situation.

4.49pm

Me: eat a dick [strong cuss word].

Useless Acquaintance: A couple of beers deep?

I think it’s about here where I need to provide a bit of context to this the back and forth. I was, in fact, a few beverages deep. I had struck up a friendship with a delightful lass at the members’ bar (our Kind-Hearted Noble Steed had connections), which can only be described as profoundly in-depth. Yes, it was built on her pouring pink alcoholic liquid into a plastic champagne flute while I scrounged around my clutch for money, but it was deeper than that. She knew me down to my core and was there for me in my time of need. It was basically what I imagine Ronhan Keating was describing when he penned his smash hit When You Say Nothing At All. This girl knew what I needed just by looking at me, and I didn’t have to say a thing: I simply smacked my clutch on the beer-soaked bar mat, our eyes met and she fetched more fancy pink races juice. It was a beautiful connection. So this, along with the few ciders I’d polished off in during the ride to the circle the horses ran around, meant I was in a somewhat-fragile state. I had emotions.

I wanted to say something rude back, but my Also Somewhat-Fragile Blonde Sidekick told me not to be mean. So I responded accordingly.

Me: [Also Somewhat-Fragile Blonde Sidekick] won’t let me be myself (say something mean).

She’s a [strong cuss word] too.

A shit-stained [strong suss word].

After a few jibes at my autocorrect fails from said Also Somewhat-Fragile Blonde Sidekick, our Useless Acquaintance wasn’t impressed.

Useless Acquaintance: For fuck sake.

Me: Well that’s rude.

*sends unexplained close ups of Also Somewhat-Fragile Blonde Sidekick’s face with no context.

Useless Acquaintance: From the girl that said “shit-stained [strong cuss word]”.

Me: I am a woman.

(Because I was wearing a skirt that covered my knees and sensible fucking shoes, thank you very much!)

Useless Acquaintance: are you sure?

It was clear at this point that the conversation was only going to disintegrate. I had had far too much sun already and I was mildly depressed by the line up of fashions on the field so it could have only gone one way. I also wanted to end the conversation and dedicate myself to the tray of free deep-fried, pastry-wrapped parcels of questionable meat that had been going around the members’ bar. But obviously I had to respond because Useless Acquaintance had asked a question and I have a compulsion to fill empty silences, even when those silences are digital. But I just didn’t have the words. Thankfully Britney Spears did.

So I decided to respond not through my own words, but by the vision of a contemplative, yet empowered Britney Spears sitting on a rock with big sleeves and flared jeans. At the time, I thought the YouTube clip to I’m not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman said it all.

And that’s how the conversation came to a meaningful end.

Life lesson number 348: When you can’t speak, let Britney be your voice.

The other week we bought ear candles to celebrate the end of the working week, because that’s apparently how we celebrate Fridays in our office.

Some workplaces go out for beers, others shoot hoops, while apparently we’re the people who take an excursion en masse to a crystal shop and buy so many earwax products the staff feel inclined to give a group discount. I’m not entirely sure how it started, but one flippant comment about someone wanting to try to clear their ear holes of apparently useful orange gunk sent me off into a spin.

I’ve written about ear candles before. I can’t be bothered trying to find the link containing that poetic prose, but suffice to say that my enthusiasm for ear candling is perhaps on par with Pauline Hanson’s passion for hating on Muslim immigrants: it’s kind of irrational, clearly repulsive and something you should be embarrassed about posting about on social media. I know that earwax is helpful, contributes to positive functioning of the body as a whole and any harm it is causing me is purely a work of fiction flamed by an overactive imagination, but, just like Pauline Hanson and Pauline Pantdown, I don’t like it (I think I just used earwax as a metaphor for Muslim immigrants, but I’d like to point out that I didn’t exactly plan this to be a political comment; it just sort of happened that way).

I also really enjoy looking at gross things. Those videos where people pop monstrosities of pimples are my pornography. That video were a family digs out a decades-old blackhead was almost (ALMOST) a turn on for me. My brother in law has a nose that excretes gunk from the pores just by a little pressure and it’s enthralling; I’m almost certain that was one of the key reasons my sister married him in the first place.

So of course ear candling is right up there in my list of favourite pastimes, along with “being fantastic” and “having skin”.

Because ear candles bring together a great many of my interests like laying down, burning things, seeing how much wax can be packed into an ear canal at any one time and grand reveals. Seriously, the last episode of The Biggest Loser in which the contestants are all glammed up and show off their miraculous bods has nothing on what happened when you unwrap that wax cone and see the orange delights inside. I’ve never been a mother, but I imagine finding those irregularly-shaped nuggets of wax is not unlike that feeling I assume all women get when they have their by-product of their bodies thrust into their arms for the first time: sheer amazement at what you’ve created.

Then you look around and, like I also imagine all mothers do, compare your creation to what your friends have had ripped out of an orifice. That’s when things get really juicy, because expectations are always high going into a candle sesh, particularly for those who haven’t done it before. The people you expect to have wax sausages have a mere smear, while those dainty fucks in your friendship circle produce enough of the stuff to make a crayon. It can be a very revealing activity.

So I was incredibly disappointed when only myself and one other brave soul candled that afternoon. The person who suggested the idea backed out, and said they’d do it at home. Which obviously is not the point.

The point is to do it as a group. I mean, we bought the shit from a store that sold rocks for calming purposes and had oils for the soul; clearly this was supposed to be a ritualistic fucking experience. This was supposed to be circle of truth. Because we all know there are few things more spiritual than becoming one with a group by comparing how much gunk was shoved in your ears. On my sister’s hen’s weekend we set aside an hour to light up our canals and I’d have to say it really cemented the bonds of friendship. We laughed, we gasped, we dry retched, we poked excrement with cotton buds. It was a beautiful thing to watch and be a part of.

But, alas, we would have no such encounter with corporate candling. The whole thing kind of fizzled. Perhaps I’d revealed too much too soon. Perhaps I was too eager. Perhaps that kind of intimacy is something that just can’t be rushed.

Maybe I simply should rethink my friendship-building methods. Coincidentally, I’m going to take a dark orange-coloured sweet potato pie to work tomorrow.

It’s 2.49am and I can’t sleep.

I went to bed at roughly 11pm and had a dream that violated almost all the copyrights of the movie Jawbreaker even down to the Verruca Salt song that’s playing in my head, and apparently that’s enough for my body. Apparently I don’t need anymore sleep tonight.

But the thing is that I am bloody exhausted. Tired as a Beau Repairs shop. Weary as a Dunlop. Worn out as a … thing that is worn a lot. My eyes are actually sore and I am 103.4 per cent sure that I am squinting like I am starting into the sun. I need to go back to sleep and it needs to happen in the next four minutes because it’s 2.56am and I can’t handle staying awake past 3am on a Sunday without having worn something shiny while drinking the weight of a medium-sized dog in pre-mixed alcohol and cheap sparkling wine.

So naturally I decided the only thing to help me out was to switch on my laptop and stare at a glowing screen. I read somewhere that if you’re struggling to sleep you should do something other than try to sleep for 20 minutes and I don’t really feel like mopping right now so this is my alternative.

The rationale behind starting up my computer and opening a blank Word Document was that I am obviously awake for some grand reason; like I’ll have a sudden realisation of truth and purpose at the keyboard which will change my life. In reality, I’ve already logged on to Facebook and flicked through one of those questions web stories about the top discontinued Macca’s foods (I’m sorry, but what the fuck ever happened to Fruit Fizz? Whoever made the suggestion to pull that one from the menu and out of our hearts deserves to have every seventh apple they bite into be mushy and floury) and a gallery of proud dog parents. I’ve also turned on my Facebook chat – something I rarely do because I can’t take the pressure of having to engage thanks to that “seen” notification – in the hope a drunken acquaintance decides to dabble in a bit of early morning banter after their normal, fun Saturday night.

I don’t think I’m alone in turning to social media for some form of life-changing experience, or at least something to prompt a real-life occurrence of interest. But tonight the only realisation I’ve had is that I’m a bit of a twit and that the reason I happen to only watch reality television or talk shows these days is because I have the tendency to think in episodes and exposing myself to that sort of shit is damaging to my mental health. Watching scripted television is fantastic but it’s given me the false impression that life is an interesting set of experiences all neatly wrapped up around one theme.

In the back of my mind I am always thinking about how what I am doing would tie into an episode and what the voiceover would be saying. I’m trying to pinpoint which people in my life would be major characters and where certain events would fall in terms of the narrative arc of each hour-long primetime slot (because obviously a show about me would be put on at the same time to take on My Kitchen Rules and by god it would wipe that grin of Paleo Pete’s gaunt face). It’s actually becoming a bit of a problem for me in that I look for patterns and themes in my day-to-day life to try to suss out the topic of whatever completely fictional and delusional episode I happen to be in. Is it a sad one? Is it upbeat? Does it have a takeaway message that will empower young professional women? This all sounds very Abed from Community, except instead of being cleverly meta, I’m just a pathetic deludednoid. I am constantly trying to link small occurrences into a overarching concept through semi-original storylines. My head is one big sheet of butcher’s paper with a whole heap of lazily-drawn storyboards linked frantically to vague plotlines by a confusing spider’s web of red texta arrows. I suppose it doesn’t help that I actually try to turn my life into some form of entertaining series through this indulgent online format.

In the past few minutes a notification has popped up on my Facebook feed, which has reinforced the whole “my life is an episode of a witty, underrated show with an incredibly articulate and well-dressed lead character who is likeably flawed” idea. This just might be the adventure I am looking for:

A person I don’t know liked a photo I posted featuring two of my friends and not me.

In my head I can warp this into a couple of plotlines, but the consistent predominant theme is that sitting on Facebook in the early hours of the morning hoping for something meaningful is all kinds of pathetic.

But that’s not the message I want to wrap up on before the credits roll, so I decided to have another spin in this game of life and scroll through Facebook for one last punch to the guts. And boy did it deliver.

One of my bucket-hatted, moustache-rocking friends had his mate film him talking about fishing on a jetty at Fraser Island like he was in his own fucking television show. There his is, rig fully out, talking to an imaginary audience. And while it’s all filmed on a slightly shaky iPhone, there are two episodes and the promise of more. You can’t make this stuff up.

Here’s episode one:

And here’s the second glorious installment:

So clearly I’m not alone in my episodic thinking. Obviously I am friends with the next big thing to hit television like the Scotty Cam, Big Marn and Karl Stefonovic hybrid the world has been fanging for since the dawning of time. Obviously, my delusions are anything but.

I now feel wildly optimistic, because not only did I just watch roughly one minute of open Hawiian-shirted gold, but I also have a conclusion after my intro, build-up and climax which all fits nicely into one little theme. I even have a take home message for your guys sitting in the lounge room of my imagination. But you have to work that one out yourself, because we can’t always write the script in the episodes of our lives but we sure as shit can overthink ourselves to some kind of bulshit resolution that fulfils a need to legitimise our irrational behaviour.

Now I can go back to bed.

Yeah nah: Waking up inside a hot tent and feeling like I had slept with my head in someone’s trousers after a day on the tinnies at some form of grand final. 

Nah yeah: Witnessing the sheer grace and selflessness of man when the guy behind the counter at the bottle-o had a bleeding nose but innovated so he wasn’t out of action for the big half-time beer run: the cluey bastard shoved some tissue up his nose and just kept on fucking going. 

Humans are awesome. 

There’s nothing like essentially calling someone a giant loser to start off a winning streak of a working week.

This morning I was minding my own business when a man in a suit started chatting to me. Man in Suit had engaged in what he thought was a harmless spot of small talk with me, not knowing what he had unwittingly stepped into a vessel of tragedy, much like the ill-fated French friend of Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Titanic.

Like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ill-Fated French Friend, Man in Suit thought he was innocently stepping onto the potential to for a life-changing adventure (or a way to pass the time by doing something more interesting than cleaning underneath his nails, some thing really) but instead he was travelling full-steam ahead to the conversational equivalent of a 18.9 metre-high smoke stack (I actually just Googled, ‘how big were the smoke stacks on The Titanic?’ and then had to use Google again to convert 62 feet into a more logical/metric way of communicating the length)falling directly onto his face.

He was telling me that he was somewhat of a locum, saying that he usually did temp work because we was able to.

That last few words should have given me the indication that Man in Suit was romantically unattached. Any normal person with actual social skills would have interpreted this throwaway line as a flashing motorway sign with capital yellow letters flashing “DO NOT IN ANY WAY ALLUDE TO RELATIONSHIPS OF ANY KIND BECAUSE SHIT’S GOING TO GET UNCOMFORTABLE” over oncoming traffic. But because I’m Dannielle I must have thought this meant he had a super flexible rental situation and a goal to wrack up a shittonne of Frequent Flyer points instead. Or at least that must have been what I thought, because that’s the only way I can explain what follows:

Man in Suit says he’s been to 44 different towns in the state for work.

Me: Over how many years?

At this point it is all going swimmingly. I’m asking appropriate questions and seem to be absolutely nailing the professional-casual vibe I’ve been channelling for a few years now. I was actually feeling confident.

Man in Suit: “About four.”

Me: “Do you send a lot of post cards?”

Man in Suit: “There aren’t a lot of postcards *makes joke about postcards and small towns in wording I can’t remember* … I have no one to send them too.”

So here is where most people would show a bit of tact and change the subject and direct the conversation to a smoother course of ocean distracting him from his apparent solitude by maybe joking about the weather or asking about which work station he liked the most. Instead I decide not only to go as fast as my industrial-era boat will take me into waters littered with figurative icebergs of emotional blows, but I also decide to throw the fucking binoculars into the water from the damned crow’s nest just for good measure.

What I didn’t know was at this point in the conversation, an English sailor somewhere was ringing a bell and screaming “iceberg, dead ahead”.

Me: “You could just send them to yourself.”

Around about now the whole fucking crew were freaking out, dramatically closing gates and sealing their colleagues off to a terrible, watery death. I, like everyone else on the damn ship, felt the rumble of the contact with the floating continent of ice, but I chose to respond like the father and son up on deck kicking ice around. I chose to believe that everything was fine.

A few mumbled exchanges had passed by this time, so I channelled that guy with the moustache and ordered a brandy, continuing going about my business.

Little did I know the musicians were gathering to play their mournful tune up on deck.

Me: “You could be like the episode of Mr Bean where he sends those Christmas cards to himself.”

“Actually, that’s really sad!”

And that’s when it finally hit me. There was no way this voyage was awaiting a happy dock in the land of the free. I realised that there was no boyishly-handsome penniless artist around to save me; I’d have to find my own damn floating door or push some selfish 17-year-old clinging to a frozen man off one myself.

Just as things were becoming increasingly desperate, the person/lifeboat we had been waiting for to come back did indeed come back, interrupting the conversation like the poetic metaphor for hope that she was.

She wasn’t holding a torch or shouting in slow motion, but inside I was blowing that whistle with all the strength my half-frozen lungs could allow. And I was saved from those icy waters.

I think I had an epiphany while watching an action movie over the weekend.

My sister and I were walking down memory lane at my parents’ house, and by walking down memory lane, I mean we were sitting on our arses watching video cassette tapes. We decided to watch both feature-length reboots of Charlie’s Angels, mostly because they order burgers in the first movie , with which we had expertly-paired with our room temperature Whopper burgers like that guy with no authority other than his curly hair and authentic dress sense who used to appear in the free Coles magazines and badger you with wine suggestions for recipes.

As we were watching an incognito Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu detonate a bomb while falling from an aeroplane before landing on a speedboat driven by a bikini-clad Cameron Diaz, I was shocked to find I was more struck Barrymore’s choice of words than the several gaping plot holes I’d just witnessed in the space of about 42 seconds. The guy an incognito Barrymore drags from the plane calls her a “crazy bastard” because she is dressed as a man before she reveals herself as a woman by pulling off her mask and shaking out her unrestrained hair (because why have a practical mess bun holding your hair back during an extremely dangerous assignment when you can shake your hair like you’re on a goddamned Pantine commercial if you manage to pull the highly-unpredictable stunt off?). Before releasing her wild hair that somehow manages not to get stuck in her lipgloss, she says, “I think you mean crazy bitch”.

Now, I’m going to get up on my feminism horse (its name is Uterussa de Fallopian and she is obviously coloured bright crimson because all women who like being treated equally are OBSESSED with making men aware that their vagina is an exit passage for magical menstrual blood and not a mere pleasure sheath for their penis daggers – right?) and raise myself a quizzical brow.

I obviously know why “bitch” is usually associated with women because that’s the name of female dog, but why in the heck is “bastard” limited to male the men in the illegitimate house?

I have always felt I had quite a bit of knowledge about the word. As the daughter of a bastard and a technical one myself, I like ot think I am know. As the resident Queenslander in my office, I have a tendency to follow up/add an air of bogan legitimacy to multiple statements a day by tacking a “ya bastards” on the end. When I’m not referring to someone whose name I don’t know/can’t remember/can’t pronounce as “old mate”, it’s usually replaced with a “this bastard”. But even I have to admit that bastard has its male connotations. And I’d like to know why.

As a well-educated, resourceful young adult, I decided to turn my interests to thoroughly researching the topic: I typed “bastard male term” into Google and clicked the first few links that popped up.

The first link I clicked on was a web forum that looks like it would still be able to “glammed up” by a MySpace profile code.

A couple of cluey people cited conditions, which I can only assume date back to feudal society, when it was all about your inheritance. To me, the term “inheritance” makes me think of the ultimate heiress Paris Hilton and my brain fills with the associated imagery of Von Dutch trucker caps, stringy hair extensions and that weird gargle-scream she would let out when forced to do something gross on The Simple Life. But back then your inheritance was less about whether you’d be able to dress a shaking chihuahua in diamonds and more about whether you’d spend your days literally in the gutter or sitting in a castle as decadent overlord. And you couldn’t inherit the family jewels if you’re the spawn of unwed parents.

Back then women were only valued for their looks (not at all like today) and so while a daughter born to un-wed parents wouldn’t inherit anything, if she had, and I’m paraphrasing here, a knock-out bod and fuckable face she’d be able to marry out of complete poverty. Because women rarely inherited family wealth even if her father put a ring on the woman he planted his seed in, being a bastard didn’t “sting as much”.

But sons of unholy unions had no land, or money, and no future. Apparently marrying rich wasn’t something the fellas cold fall back on in those days.

Then I saw this answer:

“Bullshit, a bastard child has always been a boy child. At least here in the American South. Here we recognise that the female is the benevolent progenitor of all life that folows. They are sacred. Here, only boys are allowed to be bastards.”

which was kind of like biting into a sausage and finding out it’s the penis of Theon Greyjoy: you kind of enjoyed it, but you don’t like knowing where it came from can’t bring yourself to swallow it.

What I could gather from this information is that females are worthless but are also sacred but can destroy a child’s life because of the relationship status of the porksword she falls on. It didn’t really answer my question. I had delve deeper.

I investigated a straight up definition like I was a French exchange student trying to figure out if the new word I’d just been taught by a smart arse kid on my bus route was an appropriate term to slip into conversations with my Australian host parents. But poor Fleur is still just as confused. An online slang dictionary had four definitions for the term:

a derogatory term, usually for an unkind male.

a person born to unmarried parents.

a general insult

a male. Used in e.g. “poor bastard”, “lucky bastard”, etc.

My third link was from a Yahoo answers page, which had generated a bit of discussion from the original question (which isn’t really a question but this is a pressing issue, so who has time to phrase correctly?!):

I heard that Bastard was the term for a “male dog”. I thought it was for a person without a father?

In the answers to follow, each person said a bastard was a child born out of wedlock, or some variant. But each time they said “child” and not “person born with a penis”.

This brings us back to the whole bastard vs bitch debate. The whole notion that as there was a derogatory term from a woman, namely bitch, there had to be an equal term for men. Bastard does kind of make sense. I mean, they both start with “b” so it all fits together very nicely. But then, you can’t really ignore that while a bastard was considered some kind of white trash baby, at least it still belongs to the human race. A bitch is more than a whole other species, it’s a whole other genus, family AND order. So they sort of are COMPLETELY, ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

Not that I’m advocating for use against either word. Colloquially, each have transcended their original meaning to become something completely new. And they each have their place in our vernacular. Exclaiming, “that was an absolute female dog of an exam” just doesn’t have the same ring to it without “bitch”. And shouting “which one of you children born to parents outside of wedlock changed the order of my highlighters?!” just doesn’t strike the same tone as a cheeky “bastards” would. We use these words because their meaning has evolved to a point where no other term will describe what we’re trying to convey as accurately. Sometimes all you need is a bitch.

I’m sorry, Drew Barrymore’s character who doesn’t have a last name until we find out her true identity is Helen Zaas, but I don’t think the words need to refer specially and exclusively to a particular gender. And this isn’t just because I’m a raging feminist who is burning down the joint using bras and hairspray as starter fuel; it’s because “bastard” is such a fantastic word that its use shouldn’t be limited to referring to just half the population of this magnificent planet. And the same goes for “bitch”.

It’s because while Lisa Wilkinson has been called a saucy bitch, she is also one glorious bastard.

And even though Karl Stefonovic has been called a glorious bastard, he is also one saucy bitch.

And I think we can all agree on that.