The Missive #80

Farewell to my beloved shitbox. Putting in effort. Chucking a mosh at the Opera House.

The first Christmas after I turned 18, my first serious boyfriend, N, flew to meet my family in my small rural hometown. He stepped off the plane into the baking December heat, a tall emo dreamboat with a gentle manner and a smile like his whole face was cracking open with joy. He was a singing drummer in a cool band, and we were very much in love.

Mum was warm and welcoming. My poor Dad — a bespectacled short king accountant who uses grumpiness as a cover for being a real softy — was polite but deeply uncomfortable with the presence of this man in his house, and what it meant.

N wasn’t just in Emerald to meet the in-laws. He’d come to drive back a very generous gift from my Dad: a brand new metallic blue Toyota Yaris. I went to boarding school when I was 13 and moved out of home at 17, which meant I missed out on learning how to drive. Queensland was about to tighten its driver licencing laws, so I had six months to pass my driver’s test.

I don’t think Dad was thrilled about the situation, but he and Mum waved us off on our 800km trip back to Brissy, unaware that N had already lost his licence once, and would make a detour on the way home to buy drugs. N patiently taught me how to drive in five months, and I got my licence on my third attempt. This was fortunate, as N managed to lose his licence for a second time a week later.

In the first few years I had the Yaris, it made me feel invincible. It was like wearing an exoskeleton and rocket boots. I could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. I went on road trips, slept in the back after parties, and ferried my music gear around. Once, a cop re-wrote a speeding ticket because he couldn’t believe this car could go as fast as the radar had clocked. I regularly took photos from behind the wheel, at high speed.

Often, I’d get up 3AM for work, then drive my siblings home from boarding school at dusk. Most of that three-hour-long journey didn’t have phone service, and Dad would spend the whole time tense, terrified that we’d hit a kangaroo without a bullbar and all three of his children would die.

People laughed at my tiny messy car, but I knew it was possible to fit a drum kit, a flat pack couch, or three sleeping humans in there. L called it “The Lawnmower” due to its size and loud motor. My friend R gave it the nickname of “the Benjmobile” or “Benj Kart”, and joked about taking rubbish out of my car every time she was in it. “It’s like when you visit a national park - leave it better than you found it.” Once I drove my friends to a weekend away at the beach, and gave my friend T a towel to put over her feet because the aircon was leaking into the front passenger footwell.

In recent years, my car was as a reminder of my younger, braver, stupider self. While I reaped the rewards of pivoting my career and learned how mortgages and ETFs worked, I missed that girl who never obeyed the speed limit and only cared about journalism and music. As I got closer to the age my Dad was when he bought it for me, it reminded me of my parents care for me and their desire to sacrifice anything to make sure their kids were safe and independent.

However, time and age humbled myself and the Yaris alike. In a break between Covid lockdowns, I drove back to Melbourne from rural Victoria along the Hume. L slept sounded while I was drenched in sweat, stressing myself into an early grave as b-doubles roared past. A decade earlier, I’d thought nothing of driving 7 hours down the Bruce Highway on five hours sleep, overtaking b-doubles on a single lane highway. Now, my persistent dislike of driving had morphed into a driving phobia so bad I needed hypnotherapy to overcome it. There’s nothing the Yaris did to deserve this — unlike me it’s never had a breakdown, and has passed every roadworthy performed on it. It just kept on keeping on.

So many people have sent me this meme over the years, but the Yaris is healthy and mid-00s Toyotas never die.

In 2021 we paid to freight this car to Newcastle. We had no choice — Newy is a car-centric city and we’d sold L’s more valuable car to fund our house deposit. Years of damage from the Queensland sun and fruit bats shitting on it had peeled the paint, and the body had plenty of scrapes and dents. “Some people get funny about paint damage from the truck, but I don’t think you’ll cause me any problems,” said the delivery driver with a laugh. I got teary when I got into the driver’s seat. Amid so many big changes in my life, here was my one constant: this little beat-up car with Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication stuck in the CD player.

Now we’re moving back to Melbourne and don’t need a second car, so the Yaris has gone to a new owner. L handled the sale because I was too emotional, and I took the car for a ceremonial final Maccas run. Farewell, Yaris/Benjkart/Benjmobile/Lawnmower. May you stay low-maintenance and reliable for many years to come.

“It’s been a looong day without you my friend, and I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again”

Reading

• Barbara Kingsolver - “Demon Copperhead”. It’s good, but hard going.

• I recently moved over to Storygraph as a reading tracker. Let me know if you’re on there, and I’ll add you.

• This is the best thing I’ve ever read on Substack. Settle in.

• I hate ornamental lawns so much that L and I ripped out my front lawn last year and replaced it with natives. What’s the deal with the cult of lawns?

• I’m a bit baffled by young people turning their backs on music as a rejection of overconsumption, but that shows my age, I guess. Old heads will remember the days of dropping $30 in 1990s money on a CD and hoping you liked it.

• Economic lessons from CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters rewired my brain as a child¹ - fear and greed is timeless, I guess. “Satan and his devils want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”

  “We cannot keep buying the fallacy that everything meaningful should feel effortless, including the relationships that make life worth living… We've made ‘work’ synonymous with suffering, when it should be synonymous with building. Instead of asking children what their dream job is, we should be asking different questions entirely! What kind of life do you want to build? What values do you want your work to reflect? What skills do you want to develop? How do you want to contribute to the world around you? What kind of people do you want to work alongside? And then: What are you willing to sacrifice for those things? What discomfort are you willing to endure? What would make you proud to be tired at the end of the day?”
  
  — This Substack post was written by a Gen Z author, but reminded me of advice from my late Granny.²

Listening

• My May playlist. It’s all over the shop.

Once again, this newsletter is the Parkway Drive gazette, sorry. In February, the band announced a one-off show at the Sydney Opera House, backed by a full symphonic orchestra and choir.³ The audience was encouraged to wear black tie, and the whole thing was being professionally filmed and recorded for future release. Absolutely insane idea for a metalcore band who used to play at youth centers. I got into the ticketing queue, realised there were literally 6000 people ahead of me for an event at a 2500 capacity venue, and knew I’d missed out.

I love a hustle and a challenge, and I’m a firm believer that when God closes a door, he opens a window. So, on the day of the show, I got up early and refreshed reseller websites every 30 minutes to see if I could snag last-minute tickets from someone who couldn’t make it. A few hours and a horrifying amount of money later, I secured tickets for L and I. We glammed up, got on a train, and made it into our seats with 20 minutes to spare.

It was the best show I’ve ever seen (bumping “Single Ladies”-era Beyonce down to #2, and Les Miserables at QPAC when I was 10 years old down to #3). This email’s already super-long so I won’t bore you with the why and how — I’ll just leave you with this professionally-shot hype reel and this fan-shot video⁴.

I’m looking forward to the new GoGo Penguin album. They’re an instrumental three-piece (piano, drums, upright bass) who play using the arrangements that are more common to electronic music. Their new stuff has brought in more electronic instrumentation, and it really works.

1. Not sure The Screwtape Letters were child-appropriate, but my Mum wasn’t deterred

2. While packing up my house, I found my 18th birthday card from her. She wrote “Your 18th birthday is a very important occasion, as I’m sure you’re well aware. You must ask yourself these questions: who are you? Where are you going?”. The “happy birthday” was added at the end as an afterthought!

3. Very much an S&M moment.

4. I really don’t get why this dude paid hundreds of dollars for fantastic seats to this incredible event that was being professionally filmed through 30+ different cameras, and yet still chose to record on his phone. Thanks anyway though.