perversity

Groups bring out the perverse in me. No matter how much I like or respect the individuals who comprise it, I can’t comply with a group. I won’t like it’s collective decision, and if I do, I’ll quibble.

My perversity is innate. I am born tidy, keep a tidy room even as a little boy. It’s not obsessive, but it is important. I reject God and gods at nine, and kings and queens not long after. None of my friends is even thinking about this stuff. I subscribe to Hansard as a 16 year-old. I aspire to kick the winning goal in a grand final, but never aspire to money.

During adolescence I reject my peer group instead of my parents; I reject them as an early adult, which coincidentally is when I finally become an adolescent. I reject alcohol while 96 per cent of my late adolescent peers embrace it with gusto.

I’m not perverse in rejecting rules or refusing to do as I’m told: I can be compliant. I’m just perverse in being determined to do those things I deem important my way.

A day of meetings and groupdom stirs my inner contrarian. The second day of our three-day MM meeting closes with an optional yoga session led by the lovely Annette from Adelaide. I retreat to my room. Sasha texts me to say we’re congregating in the bar at 6:30 before setting out for dinner. Bars bring out the oppositional defiant in me.

Three of my colleagues have glasses in their hands. Annette approaches.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Nup.” So instant and final. Everyone laughs. Viv embraces me, celebrates my perversity, then ticks me off for my lack of grace.

The pre-dinner drinks go on. Robyn and Olivia arrive, pull frocks out of shopping bags. Oohs and ahs.  I excuse myself, wander into the night, descend a glass staircase into the Central Station subway and into a bargain book shop.

Some time later my phone rattles in my pocket. Sasha texts: We’re just about to leave. We’re heading to Mamak, 15 Goulburn Street. I text back: Just coming out of subway. Her reply: Think you mean subway food not train so will let everyone know. Enjoy your night in!

Eight of us in a long queue outside Mamak think better of it and walk round the corner. A Chinese woman seduces my female colleagues with an offer of two free bottles of wine on the table. No, not Chinese again. I bid them farewell. They assure me they’ll miss me and I assure them they won’t.

I eat an ordinary Malay-Thai meal in a deserted café. The solitude soothes me and the quiet thrills me.

Rock on.