Parting Company: Part 9

Jane:



Jane: Thanks for coming with me.

Stella: Don´t worry about it - its horrible going to the hospital on your own. And i needed to get out of the hostel anyway, been going crazy couped up in there with all this rain. You still feeling the same? Hmmm, well if you´re going to be sick or anything like that just pick a target that isn´t me. Maybe that guy, he looks half dead already, maybe it´ll wake him up a bit.

Jane: You´d make a lovely nurse.

Stella: I wanted to be one once! Don´t think I´d have had the patience tho.

Jane: So what do you do?

Stella: Well, I was teaching in a primary school

Jane: Don´t you need a lot of patience for that?

Stella: Yeah, but you get to take your frustrations out on the naughty ones. Probably shouldn´t say that! Well, I dunno - when I started, obviously I knew they´d hve to fear you a bit when it came to discipline. I thought a strict policy of doing exactly what I said I would when it came to warnings and punishments would be enough. But after a while, with the persistent offenders, it only showed up how limited my options were for making life uncomfortable for them.  I know it sounds a bit, harsh, but without a system for discipline, none of them learn anything.

Jane: No, no, I agree, I spose. Well, I don´t know anything about it really. So are you a bit of a dragon then?

Stella: I am now, yeah - they buy into the pantomine of it more. I guess with kids, there´s more fear in uncertainty.

Jane: Not just kids.

Stella: Yeah. like old people being less scared of death. Aren´t we being profound!

Jane: Makes a change from asking someone where they´ve been travelling so far and then nodding and say "Oh, ok", "Yeah, someone told me it was really nice there."

Stella: Actually, I´m not sure that´s right - about the old people. So what about you, what do you do?

Jane: I´m a curator. Well, assistant curator.

Stella: Oh yeah? So you´re the one who decides which paintings go where and what to say about them?

Jane: Something like that. Although the temporary exhibitions often come with instructions from the lending gallery or museum. Lots artists insist on certain display conditions too. How did you know it was art?

Stella: I didn´t think about it. Although now I do I can definitely see you hanging paintings more than putting dinosaur bones together or something!

Jane: Yeah, I always hated puzzles and lego and things like that when I was a kid.

Stella: Oh my God, Lego was all my brother thought did or talked about for a few years. Poor little Kyle.

Jane: Why poor?

Stella: Its a long story.

Jane: Perfect for a hospital waiting room!

Stella: Ok, well once I caught him making, and forced to admit to making "a lady´s part". It was hideous. And I wouldn´t have know either - I thought he was doing the grand canyon or something, except that he was drawing the pubes on with a pen when I caught him - laughs- he went beetroot!

Jane: Oh no.

Stella: It gets worse. So, he slams his hands over it and squeals, "Its not a human´s!" - laughing- He was so embarressed, I´ve never seen someone look so desperate. He made me promise not to tell mum and dad. I didn´t tell, but I told my sister. She made him put it back together and said he had to make the male "compliment" and that he´d better do it more justice than he had done the female one or she would tell mum and dad.

Jane: Poor little guy!

Stella: I know. At the time tho, we just thought we had something we would always be able to use over him, that we´d be able to get our way in every argument. So anyway for a couple of weeks or so he´s secretly working away in his bedroom at night on this lego dick. We were terrible, we kept saying that if it wasn´t life like enough we´d tell. The pressure made him ill though. Mum an dad noticed how pale he´d gotten and he even got a day off school for it. So eventually he comes into our room one night and wakes us up to tell us, "Its finished." We jumped out of bed and we already pissing ourselves laughing as he shuffled us into his room, begging us to be quiet. But when we got in there, we were speechless. It was incredible!

Jane: How big was it? Oh, God, that was uncouth!

Stella: About this high. Definitely a scaled up model! But it was so detailed. He´d made like, little seams of different coloured bricks to give it veins and it had this kinda delicate foreskin and everything. We we dumbfounded - here was the finest lego penis ever created and we were the only people who would ever see it! I was sort of proud of him, and then felt really bad about making him do it. I mean, he must have got pictures or diagrams from somewhere. He couldn´t have done it from life - he was only 10 or so at the time. Imagine this terribly shy little boy going into the library to try and secretly photocopy the rude bits from a biology book or something. It must have nearly killed him.

Jane: Aww, you were horrible!

Stella: I know. When we saw how much work he´d put into it and how must distress it must have caused him, we both felt it too. He was crying, out of fear or relief, and we apologised there and then - which was something that almost never happens in our family. We helped him disassemble it. It was strange actually. A weird bonding moment. The three of us sitting there on the floor his bedroom, breaking up this incredible lego dick we´d made him build. Probably the only time I´ve really felt close to him.

Jane: Wow, that must have really given you a new perspective on lego!

Stella: Yeah it really did. I could actually see the point of it more. Like, if I´d made something like that I´d be really proud of it. And so when he made a boat or spaceship or something normal, I could understand the satisfaction he got out of it. And maybe a bit how making things out of lego kind of helped him understand the world, or process it or something. Why did you hate lego?

Jane: I´m not sure, I suppose it frustrated me that there was a perfectly good model all broken into little pieces, waiting to be put together again. I guess I don´t have much patience either.

Stella: Or you´re a perfectionist.

Jane: What makes you say that? I mean, I probably am, but

Stella: You said it frustrated you having a perfectly good thing broken up, altho, doesn´t lego give you the possibility of making something perfect?

Jane: Yeah, but I didn´t see the point when, at most, all it took was a long time to put it all back together again.

Stella: Or some patience.

Jane: Or some patience. And bearing in mind of course that I didn´t have a terrified little brother to make me a majestic penis to get me into it!

Stella: - Laughing - I´m so glad you weren´t in my class!

Jane: Oow, why?

Stella: You´re a questioner. Its a good thing - but you were probably one of those kids who needs a load of reasons for anything before you´ll get on with it.

Jane: I probably was a bit of a nightmare. I think I was quite stubborn. Definitely much more strong willed when I was at school, college even.

Stella: You don´t think you´re strong willed now?

Jane: I´m not sure. Sometimes I look back to when I was 17 or so and miss having, or well, being sassy.

Stella: - Laughs -

Jane: No I mean, confident, well no, sassy, why not! But I´m also embarressed of the way I acted sometimes. Unaware, y´know?

Stella: Yeah, but I think everyone looks back on themselves like that, in smiles and blushes.

Jane: No, you´re right. I spose I just feel disconnected from all that. Like, I still identify with that 17yr old completely, and see her as me. But I´m someone different now aswell and I wonder how that other person would do things differently if they were me now - if they´d let themselves get into situations or, be more proactive - sighs - I´m sorry I´m being pathetic

Stella: Don´t be silly, just sounds like you´ve got some regrets. Who doesn´t?

Jane: Not regrets exactly, it, it would be a long story too and I´m not even quite sure how it goes yet. Anyway, you said you were working in a primary school, how come you came out here?

Stella: Oh, well that would definitely count as pathetic - I broke up with my boyfriend, or well, he broke up with me.

Jane: What´s pathetc about that?

Stella: Well, its a bit cowardly isn´t it? I´ve run away, or at least that´s what my family thinks and its probably what people at work suspect.

Jane: Maybe you´ve run to something?

Stella: It would be nice to see it that way. But I never really had any desire to come here before, I´ve got no desire to find myself or anything like that. I was very happy with who I was and my situation at home. I just couldn´t bare the thought of having to bump into him or his family around town and hearing about him from mutual friends. I mainly came out here cos it was far away and there would be no associations with him here.

Jane: But you´ve come to a place where you don´t know anyone and don´t speak the language and that´s not cowardly.

Stella: Given how much I feared the alternative it was.

Jane: Well, even if you ran away, why is that bad?

Stella: Because I was happy with my life. Happy with my life outside of things with Carl and I did nothing to try and keep it. And it hasn´t worked anyway. Every new place I imagine what it would be like if he was there with me.. End up thinking about the past almost whenever I´m alone.

Jane: I know what you mean, but I suppose its just a habit and it will change.

Stella: Perhaps, but however hard I try to block him out he´s still there. I still think about what he´d like here and not. I can even recognise some of my attitudes or sort of things I say as his. Parts that are now me but came from him, I can´t imagine that going away.

Jane: ...

Stella: So you´ve had a break up recently too?

Jane: No, no I haven´t. I´m sorry, I suppose I don´t really know wat you´re going through at all. I just came away to, well to have some time away from him, but also from everything really.

Stella: So he´s waiting for you?

Jane: Yeah. There was nothing wrong between us. I just needed to feel in control things again, be my own person again.

Stella: I had that feeling too once. Used to get frustrated with Carl for it, or maybe more at myself, but it came his way. But in the end I realised that despite wanting things that I could have with a fairly settled life and despite having had plans that changed because of my situation, I was happy. Just realised that you can´t have it all. But I guess there´s no choice now.

Jane: Well then maybe you´re getting somethign back then. The opportunity for all the other stuff?

Stella: Yeah, I suppose. Sorry I´m being so negative.

Jane: Don´t worry about it. I´m not sure I´m doing a great job of being sensitive about it!

Stella: Its just good to feel ok talking about it. Feel quite embarresed about it all in general.

Jane: Why on earth would you feel embarressed about it?

Stella: You know, the whole pathetic jilted woman thing. Don´t want to put that on anyone.

Jane: Would it be any different if you were a man?? Look, these things happen - how can you be expected to feel one way or another? Of course it gonna hurt and, at least you´re doing something about it - what more can you do?

Stella: Dunno, something that seems to have an effect! 487, you´re next.