memories – Noni Doll

How To Feel Sexy In A Flood

Published on January 6, 2023 by NoniLeave a comment

Step 1:

The ground around here is saturated, but the hair on my head is dry as straw. I should go and get it cut, but the only hairdresser in town intimidates me, so I leave it limp and box-dyed with split ends hanging lower than they have in a decade.

I should have used more conditioner.

Step 2:

I can’t even shave my legs, because to even point a razor in the direction of the topographic map of itchy, pink mosquito-borne welts that passes for skin from my thighs down would be to invite a half dozen Krakatoas to burst their aggravated peaks, running lava-blood races down my calves. (They’re already doing that enough, purely thanks to my constant unconscious scratching.)

In an unexpected boon, however: I have gotten surprisingly good at smashing the life out of those bloodsucking little bitches mid-air, so at least my hand-eye coordination is improving.

Step 3:

Spend far too much of the money you were meant to be saving on stockings and suspender belts, only to find that your legs really are the wrong shape for that style, and after all, they’re too sheer to wear on unshaved legs, and we already know how well that crusade is going.

Step 4:

One thing I doubt I will ever learn is How Not To Lust After Incredibly Interesting and Attractive (And Thus Utterly Unattainable) Men, minoring in Especially If they Live 100’s of Kilometres or More Away.

Here is another night spent annoying my dog with the sound of my fanticising about someone so far out of my league that we’re basically playing entirely different sports, while I simultaneously wish he were just a little or a lot less handsome so I could stop worrying that the desire for friendship might be driven entirely by lustiness and hopeless romanticism instead of a genuine interest in the actual human being in question.

How can it be that someone so incredibly besotted with the notion of Happily Ever After-style love can be so utterly bewildered by the idea that it could ever fit in her own brain? That the feeling of warmth and hope for a special person’s future could comfortably reside with a physical attraction and be reciprocated? Sir, I am pretty damn certain that triangle is only permitted two corners in this story.

In conclusion, god damn it, I want to fuck him so bad, but also get to know him, but I’m pretty sure my fate is just to be a weird spinster with a dog.

Also: if you want high quality, ethical porn, you ned to pay for it.

Step 5:

Be isolated. Notice that the last time you felt human touch was when you hugged your mum goodbye weeks ago, and with all the roads out of town closed, you have no idea when you will again. Worry that you’re forgetting how to be intimate, or even just how it feels. You Stress that you don’t mean “intimacy” in a sexual sense, but rather that aura of cosiness shared with another human being where you feel like they might actually be able to see you, like a dust particulae in the thinnest ray of sunlight. Ache from the loss of it, grieving to the point where you could cry, and you desperately want to, but the path your tears would take stays dry, because there’s no water left to fall from your eyes.

It’s all in the river.

The interior of The Phoenix pub in Canberra, Australia. On the left side is a darkened room full of people watching a band play. On the right side is a group of people playing pool in a better lit room, with paintings visible on the walls and a ceiling which is open, showing the rafters.

Resolutions Rejected: A Toast to Intentional Failure

Published on January 3, 2018June 5, 2019 by NoniLeave a comment

Here is number three in the series about my 2018 resolutions/goals/things. Yes, I’m just as shocked as you are. You can find the full list of posts in this series here.

3. Go a year without buying alcohol for myself.

This seemed like a fantastic idea. I already had almost no alcohol in the house: just one bottle of wine, and some terrible gin, which I poured down the sink after the latest attempt to drink it. I had recently come around to soda water, which is something I can sip on slowly, unlike every other soft drink in existence, which I tend to gulp down with the kind of gusto that leaves me wondering if there was even in a drink in the glass to start with, I could have sworn it was there a minute ago. And due to my social life pretty much coming to a halt of late due to my epilepsy flare ups, I wasn’t drinking that much to begin with! How hard could it be?

The best thing about this idea was that it allowed for wiggle room. I could drink alcohol given to me, but I couldn’t go out and buy myself a bottle of wine any time just because I felt like it. I couldn’t ask for a drink, but if someone offered, I was allowed to accept if I wanted.

The reasoning behind the idea was simple. I would save money. I would get better at socialising without a chemical crutch. The chances of suffering a hangover would be lessened, and my sleep patterns would probably thank me for it, as it’s hard to stay out until 4am when your evening high is fueled only by carbonated water. The fact that there would be less calories in my life was just an added bonus.

But then I heard about the woes that one of my favourite watering holes in the whole world, The Phoenix, was facing. I’ve spoken about how much I love that little hole in the wall before, and though I’ve not been frequenting it as much of late, it still holds an incredibly massive part of my heart within its dark walls.

Immediately, I was struck with an ultimatum of sorts. Do I stick to my guns and my soda water on a Saturday night, or do I chuck in a few extra bucks via a few cheeky pints? The Phoenix needs its patrons to step up right now, and for me, that would likely mean breaking my little resolution.

I couldn’t make a choice. I wanted to have a bit of both.

So I made a compromise. A few times a week, after work, I will go in to The Phoenix and buy one drink of whatever I like. Whatever it is, I will nurse it while I read a book for a little while, and then I will go home. Any time outside that period, I will not be purchasing alcohol for myself.

I read somewhere once that allowing yourself to cheat a little bit on massive resolutions can help you keep them overall, so maybe this is for the best.

So should you find yourself in Civic on a weekday afternoon, pop into the friendly little Irish bar on East Row, pull up a pew and join me for a bevvie and a book. It’ll be nice to have the company.

EDIT 26/1/18: You can donate to the Phoenix’s GoFund Me Page here. They’re a little over $30,000 short of their goal, but more importantly, over $40,000 has already been raised to help keep their doors open.

In Which She Has The Confrontation Before It Happens

Published on January 5, 2015February 16, 2016 by NoniLeave a comment

The following is a letter to an unknown subject, and a conversation that is yet to happen.

*****

Why do you keep doing it? Why do you have to share all our secrets with the internet?

I don’t have a satisfactory answer for him/her/them, but I don’t have a satisfactory mind for fiction at the moment, either. All I have right now are memories. So many of them are ripe for retelling, reworking and reinterpreting. There is nobody else living in my head right now, so I only have my own stories to fall back on.

You don’t have to tell everyone everything. You don’t have to write something every day.

Oh, on the contrary. I’ve let myself lie idle for far too long. I need to practice everyday if I can. I need to experiment with form and the way I think about stories, and oil the cogs so they can start turning more easily, all so I can get back to trying to tell the stories pulled from the lives of other characters, rather than being stuck in my own musings.

I don’t need to publish, certainly. But I do need feedback. I need criticism. I need advice and guidance. I’m not going to get that by keeping it all to myself, or by keeping it to those who think I’m already doing well.

Strangely, it’s a lot less confronting throwing it into the online ether than finding a one-on-one mentor. That said, I probably need one of those more than anything else. Until I find one and the courage to ask them, I will simply continue to practice in the public space. I am sure it will open more doors than it closes.

I don’t want to get caught in truncated, unstructured, rambling memoirs, but that’s where I am and I’m running with it. You work with what you’ve got, and these memories are what I have.

Can’t you write non-fiction about other things? You could write about politics, or famous people, or music! You’ve done it before. Why does it have to be about us/your family/your friends/yourself?

I will, and soon. But those things take time, research, resources, passion, and more. Again, my supplies are limited, but I’m trekking towards solutions for most of them. Baby steps, baby. Itty bitty baby steps.

And anyway, nobody even knows it’s you. Nobody knows how many lies are interwoven with my truth. You gave me these moments and I gave you fair warning that they would visit us again from time to time. And here they are.

I know that some will hurt, but maybe some will heal. Perhaps there will be a new peace now that it’s all been pulled apart and laid out like bike parts on the pavement. Maybe you’ll learn something. Maybe I will.

Don’t worry, baby. Don’t let it cloud your thoughts. Let it darken your opinion of me, if that’s what you want, but don’t fret about the marks on your screen. Nobody is paying attention.

Through it all, remember this: it’s just a phase. It will pass and soon I won’t need you to fuel my musings any more. There’s a box of letters under my bed, and that is where I’ll put you, along with all those other wonders, and once you’re there I promise I’ll never share you with strangers again.

Seven Songs

Published on January 4, 2015January 4, 2015 by NoniLeave a comment

Seven songs. Seven stories. Some truths. Some lies.

Life On Mars – David Bowie

In bed, we’re tangled. I’ve lost count of the hours, and I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve done our best to eat each other alive, but I know that I have heard this song twice tonight. The first time was a sub-par cover by a female artist I do not dislike, but this time, it is The Man Himself, singing it how it should be sung.

My eyes are closed, and I see a stage that isn’t there. Performers stand on invisible platforms floating through the air. A grand Grimaldi stands opposite a Pierrot, strangely confident in his stance. Lions and silks and bubbles, all swirling around me, and yet I am not there. It’s all around me, but it’s still distant. It’s like watching television, except that I am surrounded and separated by and from its wonder. I feel like I’m spinning and swirling, draped in loose fitting robes that dance as I soar upwards-

He changes the track and I’m flung out of the trance. I am bitter, but I keep it to myself. The real world doesn’t allow me to float on the wind, but there are worse ways to spend your time than this.

Baby I Am Nobody Now – Andy Bull

Up front. Packed in. Sold out. Who would have thought it? Everyone should have thought it – it’s a well deserved warm welcome, and the audience are rewarded with a swathe of sound that twirls softly around us like a silk scarf. I get that hit, reach the little nirvana where I’m not stuck in this clunky body, instead I’m writhing through the air like an ethereal serpent.

The melodramatic metaphors come easily as the backing vocals swoop in to fill out the chorus. The sound is massive, so dense that it feels like it could scoop up underneath us and lift us to the ceiling like a cushion filled with air.

They’re playing their way through a fucking superb album, one that’s lifted even higher by hearing it being played live. I think about hearing it and seeing it again, this time with an orchestra filling out the places where the synths have been, raising the crescendo even higher. I get chills at the thought, on top of those I’ve already got.

I open my eyes and remember it’s still happening. I drink it in, and dance.

Cold As Canada – Paul Kelly

In the song, she’s watching him sleep, but he left hours ago. I’m sitting on the side of the bed, and I feel the light creep in through the shutters and hit my back. I didn’t stray like the woman in the lyrics, but that’s only because I was never really here to begin with.

There is no sound, save for my deep breaths and the ensuing sighs that reveal just how deep a hole I’m in. My ears don’t need to hear it; it’s embedded itself in my heart and my head and I just want to collapse in on myself and be wiped from the memory of the world.

Maybe not from the world’s memory. Just his.

I don’t know who’s committed a greater betrayal: the woman who knows what on earth she’s done; or the woman who could do no wrong.

She needs to walk away. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know when, but it needs to be soon, before the guilt eats her away to nothing.

It doesn’t matter how it happens. There are no winners here.

There’s no good way to say goodbye.

He Called Me Baby – Patsy Cline

Three times.

She had always hated the idea of being called that word. She was not a child.

But he said it, and she enjoyed it.

Three times.

She heard someone say once, “You should only use the word ‘baby’ in a song if it’s actually about a newborn.” She was pretty sure it was a bastardised David Byrne quote, but it didn’t matter where it came from. It seemed like a good philosophy.

The first time. She figured it was the heat of the moment. She tried to ignore it. Instead, she loved it. But she winced a little. Something was wrong.

The second time. Now it sounded deliberate, like they were actually going places. She felt warm, glowing despite the cold air, but something was still niggling at the back of her mind.

The third time. The last time. It hit her like a concrete slab.

She wanted to tell him: “You’re not calling me that because you care. You’re saying it because you think it’s the right thing to say, and it would be.

“But you’re not saying it to me. The woman you’re saying it to isn’t here, is she?”

Instead, she just said, “Please, don’t call me that.”

And that was the last time it passed his lips.

Grandma’s Herbal Cure All – Moochers Inc

The fact that she would never see these people again intoxicated her to the point that she just let it happen. She danced in the street, tearing her shoes to pieces on the cobblestones, letting her hair fly in the wind.

Man Like That – Gin Wigmore

She often thought about the revenge fantasies she would play out on him.

But every time she thought of one, she would find herself taking him back.

It was a dreadful waste of plotting, in her opinion.

In the end, she just threw coffee on him. Easy and effective, cheap and classic. Him and her.

Good Intent – Kimbra

New shoes. Black. Small heel. Buckled, not laced.

Old shoes. Black-ish. Smaller heel, more worn on the left side; wobbles when walks. Buckles are buckled, coming undone.

These things that are comfortable never last.

Looking Back At 2014 – A Boring Stats Post

Published on January 1, 2015January 5, 2015 by NoniLeave a comment

If there’s one thing I’m certain about in the world of blogging, it’s that nobody likes posts about statistics. It’s pretty much the only thing that people hate more than posts about how you can be a better blogger – they’re self-aggrandising and kind of patronising and really only interesting to the person posting it.

But I have to confess, I love reading the WordPress yearly summaries. This is (I think) the third year they’ve done one up for me (the previous reports were for Cheaper Than Rubies, which is now defunct), and I actually find them really interesting, and good for my confidence when it comes to the year ahead. Not to mention, it’s a great kick up the arse to get writing again, to try and beat my current records and improve the bits and pieces that I’m putting together.

And holy crap, were there some records broken in this last year. I’m still reeling from some of the numbers that flashed up on my screen in the last six months. (Thank you, New Zealand, you beautiful bunch of bastards. I will definitely be seeing you again soon.)

For me however, the biggest takeaway from this report is that there is a massive problem with spam bots on WordPress. Like, huge. And I’m yet to understand exactly how to combat it, as opposed to this blog’s old place of residence on Blogger, where it was actually pretty easy to remove those blips from my stats. But hey, nobody wants to hear shop talk.

Is this report going to guide what I’m going to write and do in 2015? Absolutely not. I’ve got my own plans that are bubbling and brewing (including finally finishing my Blog Carnival roster from back in August), but most of those will be kept under wraps for the time being. I might try and impose some unspoken rules, but I’ll leave it up to you to work out what those are.

In 2014, I set out to “do things that scare me”. With my first solo international jaunt, many magnificent new friendships, 12 months of writing a regular music column, some terrifying (and awesome) performance-y things, and a number of significant personal confessions behind me, I think I can safely say that I achieved that goal. That is why it’s no longer a new year’s resolution; it’s more of a mantra I’m going to try and carry for the rest of my life. Hopefully, over the next year and beyond, you’ll see the fruits of that resolution on your screens, or maybe in your ears or your eyeballs.

Despite some setbacks, 2014 has been pretty damn brilliant. Now it’s time to make 2015 just as awesome. (Fuck it. Even more awesome than that.)

If you’re a bit of a stats nerd and you’ve been desperately wanting me to cut to the chase and show you the numbers, you can click here to see the complete report.

Happy New Year, one and all. Let’s make this one an absolute killer.

His Own Aroma

Published on August 12, 2014January 24, 2018 by NoniLeave a comment

He smelled like cloves.

Then again, I can’t be sure of that. I don’t know what cloves smell like, but they were exactly what he reminded me of: cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger; all those other warm, comforting spices that go into mulled cider or chai. He smelled delicious and exotic and alluring. Most of all, he smelled warm.

When he came close, I inhaled deeply, trying to embed every nuance of his scent deep within my brain. I was incredibly conscious of whether or not I was breathing in too loudly; I didn’t want him to know just how much I loved dragging him deep into my lungs like cigarette smoke. He was my nicotine. He sent my heart racing. My breathing rate increased and my brain tingled with lust-filled sparks. He didn’t even need to touch me; he just had to be close enough to breathe in. It was intoxicating, sending sensations running through my body from my torso to my fingertips like a sound wave. I could physically feel the pleasure of his aroma rippling through me.

I can’t remember ever smelling him on my skin or on my clothes, only when he was in the room. Every other man I had lusted after or loved had left a trail behind him, but for some reason, he did not. This was probably a blessing. I could have lost hours in his perfume. To have it weave its way into my sheets would have been the end of me.

We still see each other, now and then. His face is still handsome, his conversation still engaging, his sense of humour as dry as when I first met him. He still cuts a canyon through my heart, but it would be deeper if we didn’t speak.

We don’t sit close to each other. There is always a table, a friend or an incense between us, stopping our pheromones from mingling in the air the way they used to. We sit together and talk, but I can no longer smell his warmth. My lungs miss his touch, my breath longs to entwine itself in his, but this is the way things are.

Sometimes when I walk through the spice aisle in the supermarket, I look at the packets on the shelves. I am looking for cloves, but I never buy them. I don’t pick them up, and I don’t let their scent register in my brain. Instead, I exhale hard through my nose, wondering if I was right. I wonder if they smell like him after all.

But I never check. The illusion is better than the reality, and the nostalgia tastes better than the present. In the same way spice preserves meat, protecting it from air and rot, I protect my memories by hiding them from the truth.

Noni Did NZ: Putting It Down On Paper

Published on August 10, 2014October 21, 2014 by Noni1 Comment

There’s been a common theme running through the last bunch of posts: my trip to Wellington back in June. This is the final entry in that series. You can find the rest here. Be prepared for a whole bunch of madness and joy, because even though it was just a week, it was everything a girl could wish for in a holiday.

*****

It’s become customary these days to document holidays in an entirely electronic fashion. Photos on Facebook and Instagram, running commentary on Twitter, post-adventure blogging… Apart from the occasional physical souvenir, usually in the form of something bought from a dodgy street stall or a purchase from an incredibly kitschy tourist shop, most of our memories are stored solely in the cloud and in our heads.

I’m usually even worse than this. I rarely take photos at the best of times. The vast majority of photos of me from the last five or so years are highly posed, highly self-censored selfies taken on my Macbook in moments of boredom, vanity or intoxication.

This is in part due to a longing to just experience life rather than constantly stopping to remind myself to document it; I prefer to do things without the filter of a lens. I very rarely ask for photos to be taken of me, so I often don’t have images to remind me of the people I’ve met or proof of the places I’ve been. Many times I have become great friends with a person over a number of years and marvellous times, only to never have a photo with them to remind us of just how brilliant we were. This makes me quite sad; I’d love to have something a little more concrete than just memories to look back on.

Other times, my reluctance or inability to remember to take a few shots comes from the fact that I have an uncanny ability to be absolutely terrible at taking photos that aren’t underwhelming, grainy, poorly framed piles of crap. A lack of practice means it’s simply not top of mind, and when it is, I’m so underwhelmed that I tend to not bother the next time.

When I was preparing for my trip to Wellington, I knew it would be the week of a lifetime. I didn’t want to leave anything unremembered. I’ve already had a taste of how fragile memories can be: a major seizure in 2012 left me with significant short and long term memory issues for the better part of a year; I forgot what had happened at the previous Christmas, and still struggle to recall a lot of things that should be treasured personal memories from that time.

The logical progression from that was to simply post everything online as I went, but I didn’t really feel the need to fill people’s Facebook feeds with a progression of photographic updates, and reading back through old tweets is constantly being made more difficult by Twitter’s scrolling function and new profiles. On top of that, I wanted somewhere to put all the little things I inevitably pick up: bus tickets, interesting labels, flyers and the like.

So while I was waiting for a train in Sydney before heading off on my trip, I picked up an A5 size notebook and began to plan how I would document my trip. There was probably about 300 or so pages in it, but due to my tendency to forget to write in diaries, I figured I would be lucky to fill a third of that.

Instead, I got to the point where I had to pull out pages in order to avoid splitting the binding. With all my photos printed and pasted in, this is how fat my journal got:

Almost every night of my trip, I took at least an hour to write down all the wonderful things that had happened, planning where I would paste photos, bus tickets, email screenshots and newspaper clippings. I scribbled terrible stick-figure drawings and scrawled memories across unlined pages. It was a remarkably therapeutic process, allowing me the chance to run over just how much fun I was having, and to plan what I might do the next day.

I documented everything I could, and tried to make everything as colourful and fun as my experiences. I bought new pens and stickers and collected all the What We Do In The Shadows related bits and pieces I could find to make sure I could do it all justice.

I even grabbed a Te Papa flyer that was written in Italian just so I could stick in something with pictures of the general exhibits – all the ones in English were only for the special short-term exhibitions.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the free-form manner of my scrapbook was when I got to draw stupid little bits and pieces to fill in spaces that I might have put photos that I had forgotten to take, or just for the hell of it.

Initially, I tried to keep all my bits and pieces in chronological order, but I quickly realised that there were photos and stories that I hadn’t accounted for while allocating space in the narrative. This is why there are two parts to my scrapbook: the initial narrative that I filled in while I was away, and a very sizeable appendix, which I have been working on ever since.

The appendix is a strange mish mash of written souvenirs and bits and pieces that didn’t necessarily fit into the story of my trip, but were memorable all the same. From the itinerary I wrote myself before leaving Canberra (which I left at home) to the map of Wellington my mum gave me before I left (which I kept in my suitcase the entire trip), there are a lot of quirky bits and pieces that I still needed to preserve, even if they didn’t make it into the first half.

There were a lot of bus tickets.

And some things that simply defied explanation.

When I got back, working on finalising my scrapbook really helped ease the post-trip blues.It gave me an excuse to relive my trip regularly, bringing a little light to each day, and keeping the fire in my belly for a return visit. I still flick through it every couple of days now it’s almost done, just as a kind of emotional safety blanket, and it definitely in my top three things I will take with me if there is ever a fire in my house.

As of yesterday, my scrapbook is officially finished. All of the spaces I had saved in the main story section have been filled, and there’s only a handful of photos left to put into the appendix (non-essential, but they’re going in because I just happen to have some printed copies). In a book I was sure I would get nowhere near filling, there are only eight pages left blank. Maybe one day I’ll ask Taika and Jemaine to pop their signatures on the last page. Either way, this little chapter has finally closed. I’m back in the real world again.

But with my little green book, I know I can go back to that wonderful, ridiculous week whenever I like. What a wonderful comfort that is.