End of an Era

Don't worry, my getting some is going to deny you your weekly dose of Mike's Adventures In A Bygone Era, that's right, I have more of my diary for you to enjoy, if it takes your fancy.

These entries marked the end of the first two years in Jigalong Remote Community School. There was a kind of changing of the guard after 1997. New principal, three new teachers and they were all women. Basically the school went from six guys to just two, Justin and me.

It was a big change but living with the boys had done its work. I'd managed to reinvent myself in their image, and despite what I may have thought when I first arrived, it was quite an image; one I carry around to this day, in fact.

The Gang in Amsterdam

30 November 1997
Well I have just returned from my last weekend in Newman for this year and I could lie and say that it now feels that this weekend has heralded the ending of an age that will not come again but it truly doesn’t. I suppose that it won’t really hit me that the guys are really leaving until this Friday when I really won’t see them again, at least not for any great length of time.

The last two nights at Ziggys were enjoyable to say the least. Well one of them was enjoyable, Friday night was a bit of a let down since they played really really shitty music all night, they only played two good songs and as I danced to them I pulled the muscles in my neck. It was good that George and Fleur popped along to ‘rave’ with us, though George does little of the raving and a bit more of the sitting around looking really bored, which I guess was exactly what I did not so long ago so I shouldn’t take the piss.

The Saturday night was a 70s night so I didn’t expect too much out of it and I got an awesome night’s entertainment instead for my troubles. Of course the music was really bad and hard to dance to but once I got to that optimum level of drunkenness when you can just go for hours on a real run and not worry about falling over or being really stupid and yet you have lost the better part of your inhibitions then you start dancing and don’t really calm down until about half three when you quit the club. The first song I danced to was Y.M.C.A. which is rather ironic because I spent the whole night and the night before making eyes at this guy (unfortunately it was different guy each night but we can’t win them all).

I hope that I didn’t make a complete idiot of myself and that they were in some small measure at least on my ‘team’ but having lost most of my inhibitions I can’t be one hundred percent clear on the matter. I am pretty sure that I didn’t start either of the staring sessions but was wholly responsible for carrying them on for the rest of the night. On Friday I was at the bar and this I was scoping the room when I noticed this guy was looking at me. He was about my height but much stockier, he had a roundish face and short hair and beard, a great arse and strong legs with that sort of roguish tough mine worker look but with a dash of gentleness, and a great smile. Well here is me staring back at this guy and my mind is screaming out to hold his gaze but the shyness and self consciousness just comes crashing in around me and I drop my eyes into my glass or back to the bar or to the guys I am with and I immediately feel all ridiculous. Of course when I gather up all my courage to look over at him again he picks up my eyes immediately and I am in the same situation all over again and I try not to follow the inevitable path to my glass or the bar or the guys I am with but the eyes do not follow the mind. But the small amount of interest that the poor fellow has shown is enough of a spur for me to place myself in his gaze for the rest of the night, slowly holding his face with mine for a little longer each moment, my heart pounding deeper each time but in the end he is gone and any sense of a real connection is lost to the fear that I was wrong and that he had just happened to be looking my way at the wrong time.

And again last night the deal was exactly the same except the night before must have strengthened my nerve a little because I ended up dancing pretty close to this guy and exchanging smiles with him. He was not Adonis by any means but his eyes were gorgeous and his face had a deep set happiness. Likewise he was no troll and he was well formed, it was just a feeling that he gave out that spoke to me but he too disappeared without anything at all coming of it all. It seems that this eye play is the closest that I am able to come at the moment because I do not feel sure that I am going after ‘eligible’ men and I don’t want to step over that safety net which is the vast expanse that hangs between the gaze, pity. Still, I had a good time.

4 December 1997
Well what can I say, it is the last day of the working year (for me anyway) and I am sitting here thinking how good these years have been and how different the next will be. It is strange how the mind just wipes away all the shit after a while and all that is left is the good memories, maybe it is just that all the things that have happened in the last two years have combined and the resultant average is good rather than bad.

I don’t know if I have written it all down here before but I wouldn’t swap my years in Jigalong for anything (well not many things anyway). I am glad that things turned out the way they have. I am far more alive than I ever was before, and far more secure in myself, though I am still riddled with doubts. Ari said today that she thought I was sensitive and intense, and I am quite proud that I exude those qualities, but then Jo did say that she thought I was an extrovert so I must be a pretty good actor sometimes as well.

I think that I will miss Pete the most. I don’t know why, maybe it is the way we can fool around and yet can get out of each others face when we need to. Of course there are things that really pissed me of when I was around him too long but that is the same with any house mate. I have the strangest feeling that I am going to miss the others a whole lot more next year when the new teachers move in. I just feel that they are going to be total twats, if the rumours are true we could be getting a few forty year old women who are no doubt Christians and missionaries and full of the fire of God. Of course I may have to live with some absolute Adonis who falls passionately in love with me and feeds my soul every night, but I don’t like my chances. I would settle for a free thinking guy about my age who has a decent personality and is interesting to talk to, still I don’t like my chances there either considering the stock they have been sending up for remotes recently. Let’s give it a bit of a rundown.

We had the two ATP students, Rex and Ellik (but you can call me Shaun- I’ve just always wanted to be called Shaun) both of whom where social outcasts with no personalities who were totally incompetent. In the wider field there has been posted... Stuart and Jodi, who are great but I couldn’t live with either of them for fear of going mad. Rick, who seems like a really nice guy with a bit of tosser thrown into the bargain. Kate, the quintessential mature age woman, nice enough but too much like a mother for comfort. Actually, searching through all the stock in the remotes there isn’t really much in the way of strictly well adjusted human beings since the likes of Sarah, George, Fleur and my good self (how modest) are cancelled out by the Tims and the Jills and the Maries and the Tanyas and the Justins which seem to gravitate to these schools.

Still, Ari will be working in Jigalong for a time next year and I think that Linda will be coming back for a quick stint in the early part of the year, and Jo seems reasonably well adjusted for a principal though I think that we will have to do some serious relaxation training on her because she seems so go go go.

12 December 2007
Well, here I am down in Perth and I am bored shitless. There is lots to do but nobody to do it with.

Previous diary entries:
I Wanna Play
Confessions of an Amateur Melodramatist
Before I Sleep a.k.a. Diary Drowsiness
Goodbye 1996!!!
Back To The Bush
How Time Flies

Tags: diary, coming out, gay