Every cabeza in the house is full of headache powders. Shattered glasses in twinkling pools on the terraza. No word is heard from the turkey that chased children from the yard all December. He greets the New Year from the kitchen, a carcass of bones attended by his audience of flies.

When the floodwaters come in, one stares at all the shit one has accumulated, packs an emergency bag and then waits for the waters to come up to one’s driveway.

• 1 pr jeans
• 1 Mammut windstopper hoody (both items despite being the middle of summer)
• 5 pr underwear
• 2 plain black t-shirts
• 1 favoured Threadless t-shirt
• 1 aqua maxidress
• 1 blue shirtdress
• 1 pr Chacos sandals
• 1 pr Merrell sneakers
• black and white photo of parents while dating in the 1950s
• small photo of self and best friend in pre-school
• autographed Tori Amos Under the Pink LP
• 1950s edition of Anderson’s Fairy Tales
• Alice in Wonderland given by uncle as first birthday present
• current less literary novel one is reading to take mind off flood
• toiletries
• GHD hair straighteners

After the bag is packed, you can continue to pace uncontrollably and pick up everything off the floor and place onto the kitchen bench while your boyfriend has the calmest nap of his life. When the waters reach your driveway at night and the power is out, it feels almost congenial, with beers and campchairs with your upstairs neighbour, while watching stupid people in four wheel drives try to wade through the water. You shine your mega-wattage torches at them to teach them a lesson. Everyone else has evacuated the apartment block. Days later, it is all mud and rubble and possessions on the footpath and power still out and stench.

It was, as my mother told me later, on a calmer, less ecstatic day, a gift to my father from the American who claimed to have invented electricity. It was soda water.

My mother gave not a fig for the American who had not even known to wear a wig to the château de Barfleur, and yet she unwound the copper wire from around the cork with a certain reverence and when she placed it in my hand I understood I was to keep it as a relic. I folded the wire and tucked it into the pocket of my skeleton suit. My mother then removed the cork. The soda water produced none of the percussive force of champagne, but its own distinctive effect, something rounder and softer, rather like, if I may say so without disrespecting his beloved memory, dear Bébé farting in his sleep.

“When Mrs Reed turned the next page, a massive ball-sack stared us in the face, silencing us.

‘This,’ Mrs Reed said solemnly, ‘is a scrotum.’

With her finger, she proceeded to outline the wrinkly sac of skin, which hung out of the book sadly. We got the sense Mrs Reed didn’t much care for the scrotum. She gave it a way look, as if to say, So, we meet again, scrotum, my old nemesis.

‘And this,’ she said, unimpressed and turning the page, ‘is a man’s erect penis.’ The giant cardboard penis popped out, aroused, pointing at us like a giant, accusing finger. Involuntarily, we rocked back. As she showed us the different parts — the vans deferens, the urethra, the glans — her finger slowly traced the cardboard shaft of the thing, up and down.

Outside, it began to rain.

‘When an adult male is aroused,’ Mrs Reed said, ‘the body pumps lots of blood into it, so it becomes stiff. Sort of like…’ She trailed off.

‘Like a ruler?’ someone asked.
‘Like a bone?’
‘Like a sausage after it’s been in the freezer?’
‘No,’ Mrs Reed said. ‘It’s more like…’
‘Like a rock?’
‘Like a brick, except shaped like a sausage?’

The bell for lunch-time rang.

‘Well, look at that!’ Mrs Reed said, snapping the cardboard penis shut, making it retreat immediately. ‘Time to eat.’”

“I bought a paper and went to the bar and lunch counter at the far end of the store. While I was reading the [Hell's Angels'] rape story I heard a little girl behind me ask: ‘Where are they, Mummy? You said we were going to see them.’ I turned to look at the child, a bandy-legged pixie just getting her permanent teeth, and felt thankful once again that my only issue is male. I glanced at the mother and wondered what strange grooves her mind had been fitted to in these wonderfully prosperous times. She was a downbeat thirty-five, with short blonde hair and a sleeveless blouse only half tucked into her tight Bermuda shorts. It was a vivid tableau…  on a hot Californian afternoon a sag-bellied woman wearing St Tropez sunglasses is hanging around a resort-area market, trailing her grade-school daughter and waiting in the midst of an eager crowd for the arrival of The Hoodlum Circus, as advertised in Life.”

[The aforementioned two concerts? I am such a Tori novice. Within five minutes of talking to another fan, I realised I was only a B+ level fan in terms of how extreme I was. There is something both collegial and competitive about the way that Tori fans talk to one another at a concert. "Well, you may have seen her live six times, but I've been to two meet and greets and had my incredibly rare vinyl autographed, and I know of two more rare B-sides than you."]

I have always had some weird obsession with Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance routine, and the opportunity to learn it at the dance school I go to was too much to pass up. The catch was it was offered as part of the Thrill The World synchronised performance, and that we had to do it in public. Sure. I can stand at the back somewhere, flub it, and no one would care. But the more I thought about it, the more obsessed I came. The first rehearsal my friend Kirsty and I attended was the right amount of awesome, with enthusiastic performers, cheering at the fun bits of the routine, and learnt the entire thing down pat in 2 hours. Learning the routine came with step names we chanted like children: booty bounce. stomp stomp stomp look left. hold and pause hold head head hold and hips and hands. Kirsty, who previously used to be a competitive ballroom dancer, was enjoying the challenge, and for a gumby like me who is vastly uncoordinated but loves dancing, it was remarkably addictive. And this is the point where I went mental. Zombie costume, you say?

Now I am not one for dress-ups. I am retarded at costumes. But this time I was a touch possessed. I had a Vision for my little zombie alter ego, and raided many, many expensive secondhand vintage stores for hideous prom dresses from the 80s. My little zombie developed a back story; she died from a single bullet wound in the forehead, was the 1983 prom queen (with my not-so-subtle reference to when the Thriller album came out), and had a penchant for fake pearls and fingerless fishnet gloves. Fake blood? Face putty? Holy hell, yes! And for someone who hates dressing up, I was determined to get this right. My crafty little mother even got recruited, making the most pitch-perfect prom queen sash for me, which, after gifting I promptly showed my gratitude by throwing fake blood and smearing black eyeshadow on it.

[Back up a second. the dance school I go to? Oh mercy, where are my manners! I take hip hop dance classes once a week in the city, occupying the experience level somewhere between Beginner and Absolute Beginner. Despite being hyper-evangelical about the whole thing, I have yet to convince anyone to come along to regular classes.]

And then suddenly it was a hot Sunday morning, and all 150 performers zombie-walked from the dance studios to outside the casino, and in our desperation to find loved ones in the audience, we found ourselves in the front row. Were we okay with this? Did we remember our steps? I was a vapid narcissist. Yes please! Look at me, having fun and being scary and hitting all my moves! And bless, it was over in just 3 minutes.

Bonus points:

I don’t know where the theme of weird American Road Novel came from in my literary reading for the past six months. But, upon doing a survey of dog-eared books next to my bed, I have regretfully come to the conclusion that I am a little obsessed with the roads that travel through the US. See: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (read in nearly one sitting; will probably place in top five books eventually), The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (book club  thingy; enjoyable but exposed me as an English teacher with no working knowledge of Hamlet), Cold Mountain (never wanted a road journey to finish so quickly; ditched novel halfway and would almost put self through a Renee Zellweger movie just to find out how it ends), Water for Elephants (Depression as road motif works well, I see), Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods, Into the Wild, and Looking for Alaska (the last three for some element of snow and nature, I see). Even though I bought it years ago, I have unsuccessfully attempted Kerouac’s On The Road several times, finding it impossibly boring.

So there is a boyfriend who should guard his passport against the inevitable day where I have planned, at some impossibly unspecific time in the future, to drive around North America for a year, living out the back of a car, probably some Subaru Outback-type deal. I have envisoned this little fantasy on several occasions, you know, on the off-chance that at some point in my life I would have enough money to be even able to have the funds for the petrol for such a wistful but hearty and adventurous deal. Yes, I know I have been to the US on two separate but equally loved occasions, and I have already done the Steinbeckian Stagecoach-y pioneering, bison-shootin’ east-to-west coast thing years ago, but I want to do it again and drag my poor Dan along with me. There will be hiking, and camping, and campfires, and Merino-fibre clothing, and snow, and photography, and laughs, and incorrect navigating, and car singalongs, and affection, and bad food. And then I will write a damn book about it.

(Other recent literary sub-genre of note: the literary stripper; see Diablo  Cody, Belle Du Jour and In My Skin. Desire to become stripper not ignited.)

Dan and Tom climbing at Mt Ngungun

One. Watching Gran Torino, comfortable ass groove already forming in the couch, brownout: lights continually flickering and microwave beeping, but strangely plasma TV and computer only things working properly. Plasma dying exactly five minutes after credits roll allowing me enough time to pretend I wasn’t getting a touch sobby at the end. Computer dying after we have made ourselves comfortable on bed watching anime. Moving back to couch and settle in for evening of music with ipod stereo running on batteries. Starting to enjoy blackout. Have poured several vodkas by this point. Making light sculptures on wall with light from mobile phone and menacing-looking metal Alien sculpture. Lights returning seconds after I capture a silly photo of sculpture. Just in time for Iron Chef on the TV. Drinks continuing. Sleeping in Sunday.

Two. This time both days involved getting out of bed before 8, hereforeto unexperienced. The Saturday involved my first visit to the Farmer’s Markets at the Powerhouse, accompanied by Freyja. I made sure to fit in with the fresh-faced, conspicuous but careful consumered fellow browsers, by buying myself a crêpe and coffee for breakfast, some organic lamb sausages, some Sutton’s apple juice, local honey, Maleny cheese, and a big bunch of maroon proteas for Dan. Dan and I settled on the couch for our Saturday night routine of an Iron Chef and RockWiz marathon. We love SBS’s Sunday nights, and resent any social plans that cut into that two hours of couch snuggling. I was asleep by 10.30. Only, of course, to wake up early yet again to go rock climbing in 35°C heat. I am not an easy person to get along with when it’s hot. But climbing was good, at a spot I’d never been before in the Glasshouse Mountains. Once I pulled my left quad muscle again, I resigned myself to stop sweating and take photos instead. Surprisingly cool in the shade. 

Then there was the realisation that any V-Day evening can be made a gazillion times better with a surprise showing of Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back on late-night TV, which overall is made even better with the adding of yet another glass of vanilla vodka. And the soft comfort of knowing that I am sharing this rainy evening with an awesome boy who will find these kind of pursuits as entertaining as I.