The People In and Out of My Life: Georgia.

Again, I borrow the words and go off on a slight tangent.

The people in and out of our lives. The phrase evokes an image of a lone wanderer who blows into town one dusty summer’s day and regales you with tales of a land beyond the borders. Then one day you wake up and he’s gone. Leaving you with a dream of new horizons and a fresh view of the world.

There have been a handful of people who have had significant impact on my life in terms of changing my perspective and thinking. They passed by my way for only a season, then off they went. In and out of my life. But what an impression they left.

Meeting these people was one of the many factors that have collectively characterised the four years spent in Australia as the most cathartic of my life.

First up, meet Georgia.

Georgia looks like Angelina Jolie and lived across the hall from my room. Seriously, I swear! It’s really not a secret fantasy gone horribly obsessive! Heh. We were freshers at Jane Franklin Hall, one of three residential halls of the University of Tasmania. I never quite understood why she chose such a kampung of a place like Hobart over Melbourne, where she was from. I love Hobart, but it really isn’t your garden-variety incubator for hatching evil schemes of world domination.

I have never met anyone like Georgia. The character played by Ms. Jolie in Girl, Interrupted, is EXACTLY the image that is called to mind when I think of her. That’s where the greatest resemblance is, a young, blonde and fleshier Angelina with a wicked gleam in her eye and a positively manic smile.

Georgia introduced me to a life of petty crime and debauchery. She taught me how to break into snack-vending machines by using a piece of unravelled wire clothes hanger. I tried that once. Only. For shame! Then she discovered that an easier way to pilfer was to climb to the top of the machine, lean her back against its top and push against the wall with her legs. The machine would tip and the goods would fall out into the slot. My share of the booty from that little escapade was a Mars bar (yum!) and a Wagon Wheel (bleagh!). The hall management finally bolted the machine to the wall.

At the start of our second year, we happened to arrive earlier at Jane than the rest (Jane’s residents were then 90% local, so they didn’t have to go into residence until the very last day before term started). To my geli-est horror, my room had been fitted with the crappiest curtains that must have been reincarnated from life as a mahjong aunty’s sofa. Polite requests to management for a new set were ignored. Georgia decided to conduct a raid. She’d noticed that the top window of one of the rooms on the ground floor was open and the occupant for the year had yet to check in. Somehow, in the dead of night, with me keeping a shivering (I was cold, okay. Just…cold.) watch outside, she managed to pry open the window and slip through a 1.5 x 2ft space into the room inside. All I had to do was to go back inside the building to the room door which was opened with much flourish by a wickedly beaming Georgia. I got a nice new set of curtains and Georgia scored herself an extra bookcase.

Georgia is the first and perhaps the only person I’ve ever met (I don’t get out much) who can bat for both sides. Not that she’s ever tried it but she has no objections to the idea. Despite such accommodating sexual mores, the girl had almost no interest (in 1994) in the actual act itself with either side, describing herself as asexual. All I can say is, her lack of self-consciousness in this respect benefitted me when she gave me an impromptu fashion parade of the stuff she’d bought from her summer in the USA (having shed a lot of weight and developed a killer tan), without needing a change room. Oh, the sexy beast.

After my graduation (she continued with her career of being a professional student… I think she’s got at least 3 degrees and is now pursuing a PhD) she and her boyfriend decided that I was NOT to leave Australia without having been to a strip club and an adult-material shop. What an educational experience that was. Heh.

I’ll say my Hail Marys now.

Yes, I had a crush on her. After all, you know… Angelina. Mrowl. But we never got it on, mainly because I never made a move. Come on, she was scary! She eats raw meat in slivers right out of the freezer. Yes, I know. WTF??

Also, we existed in different time zones. I’d generally hang out with another group during the normal hours of the day when she’d be sleeping (she was most often sighted during the wee-est hours of the night). Most of our interaction was during the pre-wee hours (between 11 pm-2am) when I was still awake. I did have one chance though, one night we had been drinking from a half cask of wine, about 5 litres I think. I had wisely stopped, somewhere between feeling spacey and wanting to chuck. Georgia wasn’t quite as wise. The night ended with me holding her hair as she drove the toilet bus. Then I hauled her back to her room, got her undressed, into bed, chucked the covers over her. And left. * feels saintly*

The last time I visited Melbourne (2004), she had more debauchery planned. She and her boyfriend were bent (in more ways than one) on improving my worldly education by introducing me to 1) day-time gay dance parties and 2) recreational ..umm...stimulants. "It's grrreat!" she declares, pupils dilated into the size of a small dinnerplate, a minor side-effect of the er..stimulants, she explains, that makes one look rather fetchingly like a cat. "All those gorgeous men dancing topless, all hot and sweaty...and not one of them is interested to make a move on me! Bloody excellent!". Asexual, yes, that's my Georgia.

I'm pleased (but slightly regretful) to report that I had no need for Hail Marys that trip. *brushes cobwebs off saintly halo*. Can you say...prude? Spineless chicken, more like.

Two years ago, during my break-up crisis, I emailed Georgia. Strangely enough, she was in the midst of her own. We exchanged perspectives. On an Australian farm somewhere in Geelong, she rode a tractor and hauled hay as she pondered over the issues that I in turn mulled over in the concrete swamp of KL. I don’t quite remember the actual exchange, it was the feeling of being connected, however tremulously, with a very different yet somehow empathetic mind, that provided me no small measure of comfort.

Without even trying, Georgia taught me that a dark and sometimes screwed-up mind can still exist in the light, with humour and an appreciation for life and what you can get out of it despite the madness. One can thrive in chaos! You can be insane and still have a heart of gold!

In being exposed to her philosophy, I started cutting the knots that I had been getting my emotional knickers into, and began on the road towards setting the dragons that guarded my walls free.