33 TODAY. WHAT A DECADE IT'S BEEN INDEED!

This time a decade ago I was sitting in a café on the upper west side of NYC, supping on coffee and cake with my new American friends, the adrenalin and excitement at having moved to the Big Apple keeping me warm in a city that was to become my home for the next 7 years and celebrating my 23^rd birthday. 

A decade ago.

Comparatively, this morning began at 3am with my nearly one-year-old daughter practicing her break-dance moves, which saw me leave the marital bed for the second time that week and move to the couch where I watched the dawn creep slowly in.

Where once I was taking 8 dance classes a week, buying ‘standing room only’ tickets to Broadway shows, drinking cheap wine at late night bars on the lower east side and living on Ketchup soup, I now get incidental exercise walking my daughter to the park, see a play at the STC and stress the whole time about my bottle-boycotting daughter, get drunk on a sniff of champagne and am never without food in my mouth.

 Time can be a fickle fiend. But she can also be considerate and accommodating.

Life is long my friends.

And life is good.

Very good.

Here’s to another fabulous decade.

HOMESCHOOLING, BAD PARENTING & WHY AIRPLANES ARE THE PERFECT LOCATION FOR SQUEEZING ZITS!

I don’t mind flying.  It’s like shopping – a necessary evil.  The best part of both being the overhead fluorescent lights found in airplane toilets and dressing room cubicles - perfect lighting for blackhead squeezing. 

I have passed many a shopping hour digging out those hard-to-see-under-ordinary-household-lighting-chin-heads.  I may not have a dress to wear to the wedding I was meant to be shopping for, but at least I know I’ll be going with clear skin. 

It’s a fabulous by-product of an otherwise expensive and rather boring activity, though you do cop a few stares from irritated passengers when you finally come out of the airplane toilet. 

Obviously, due to your time behind the locked door, they think you’ve been getting rid of some seriously hazardous material and they know they’ve got no choice but to head on in there and suffer the scent. 

But I don’t think anyone actually poos on an airplane on account of the bread rolls they serve.  It is like eating a block of mildly flavoured sandstone, guaranteed to wedge in your colon and halt the passing of any solid waste. 

I think it’s a deliberate ploy on the part of the airlines. 

I don’t care which celebrity chef does your airline’s food, every meal contains the sandstone roll to prevent in-flight toilet blockages, overly long queues and potential diarrhea. 

I have contemplated telling my fellow passengers what I’ve really been up to in there, but somehow I’m not sure they would consider my mini-facial worth the fifteen minutes I made them wait.

This time round however, I arrived in LA with the same clogged skin I had at take-off on account of my child only sleeping 3 out of 14 hours, and spending the other 11 hooning up and down the aisles, finding the long legs of only good-looking, single men to help her stand up when she wanted to.

She took a particular liking to a gent in 47A.

Seriously, it looked like a stitch-up. Like I’d deliberately sent her his way.

Luckily she didn’t stay put long enough for me to have to engage in embarrassing small talk. Although I must say, my girl has excellent taste.

What’s that phrase? An old bird like me can look at the menu, I just can’t order.

And so we landed in LA, my skin none the better for it, and the first leg of our journey to the Big Apple over.

It had been our thinking to give Q a chance to stretch her legs by breaking the trip in LA, but since she stretched them the whole way there, she was then ready for a little shut eye, and literally fell face forward into my lap on the cab ride to the hotel, where we were shortly meeting friends, thereby making it impossible for me to nap and leading to a 36 hour stretch of wakedness which seriously blew.

Wakedness is not a word as far as I can tell. Which should indicate to you just how tired I really was. Am.

There is a reason the Army uses sleep deprivation as a means of torture and punishment.

Two days later we boarded an American Airlines flight bound for my favourite town, NYC.

Typically, I am not a fan of AA, but I was a fan this time because I had used my points through Qantas to gain free flights and free makes me a fan of anything.

But it wasn’t just that. Someone in the marketing team, or perhaps is was customer relations, maybe HR, I don’t know, but someone had alerted the flight attendants to the notion that it is in fact their job to serve people, that a pleasant attitude is pretty much mandatory and that ironing your uniform has the dual purpose of making it look like you care a bit even if you don’t, and reassuring a nervous flyer that there is some sort of attention to detail within a company responsible for flying you through the air from one location to another.

Well done American Airlines. I will stop besmirching your name.

In an effort to tire Q out, we let her crawl madly about LAX (the most boring airport in the universe, which meant Q was interesting to all and forced me into more banal conversations about my daughter, parenting and whether or not we’ll try to manipulate the sex of our second child) until boarding time.

The flight wasn’t full, but bulkhead seats are the popular ones, so we had another family across the aisle with a daughter who looked to be about four, and a woman next to us who we immediately apologised to on Q’s behalf.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ she says, ‘I’ve flown with my sister’s two children, I understand. Do you breastfeed? My sister did. Does. Her children are four. She’s still breastfeeding. Oh no, I think it’s weird too, don’t worry. She’s into attachment parenting do you know what that is?’

Gregory was still looking horrified at the four comment, so I shook my head on our behalf.

‘It’s when you never say no to your children, you just give them other suggestions instead.’

‘Excuse me please Quinn, before you go crawling off that veranda there, might I suggest you read a book instead.’

Yeah right.

After we’d overcome our shock, we got ourselves comfortable and it occurred to me as I watched the woman with the daughter wipe down every surface with a sterile wipe, that Q was currently munching on snacks from hands I’d forgotten to wipe clean after crawling on the airport floor.

The fact that I forgot to wipe her hands makes me a bad parent.

The fact that she was eating organic kale puffs with dirty hands makes me a good parent.

They cancel each other out.

‘You have a little baby girl,’ says the woman’s daughter, immediately identifying herself as a genius for not thinking Q was a boy.

And so we begin to chat, I ask her about the toys she brought along, the bible colouring-in book she’s working on and her favourite thing to do at school.

‘Circle time,’ she says to me proudly.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, adding that I thought it was probably something like pass-the-parcel and that that sounded like fun to me.

‘Oh no,’ says the mother, ‘it’s word and picture recognition time. She loves it. She’s homeschooled.’

And then she gave me an ‘I feel sorry for you because it is clear you’re not going to offer your daughter the same opportunities smile’ and stopped talking to me.

Yeah?

Well I made Q a book of the alphabet and numbers. 

If that’s not word and picture recognition I don’t know what is.

Clearly this is a zig-zag & zucchini for the letter Z,
I know, I should be an artist.

QANTAS TRAVEL LEGEND. PS, SHE'S A GIRL.

We’re back.

And we survived.

And so did Qantas.

And so did all the passengers around us because Q was a TOTAL TRAVEL LEGEND.

Seriously. I had very low expectations for this trip.

For the eternal optimist, even I was perilously close to being pessimistic.

I had visions of Q yelling the entire time she had to sit in my lap with the seatbelt on because she doesn’t like to sit still ever and most definitely doesn’t like to sit still when someone else tells her to.

She’s a punk.

I know I’ll admire that individuality and spirit when she’s 30, but not when stuck in a floating tin can with no escape from the few hundred strangers who look at you with undisguised anguish the second you enter your seat.

Instead, she sat quietly and read the distraction book I made her, then the second the seatbelt light went off, she was down, bear crawling up and down the aisles, hooning about the galley and introducing herself to the rest of the plane.

The only drawback being that her mother had to engage in banal conversations with complete strangers:

‘No, she’s a girl. I thought the pink striped pants might give it away.’

‘Yes, she is an active thing.’

‘You’re right, it is a unique crawling style, but I’m sure she’ll manage to walk when she’s ready. Thank you for showing your concern though, despite a complete lack of knowledge on the subject.'

for eleven out of fourteen hours.

That’s right, she only slept for 3.

But she didn’t yell, so while I was so tired it physically hurt to keep my eyelids open, inside I was cheering because my child had exceeded expectations I hadn’t even dared to imagine.

Travelling with a small, mobile human is not an activity I’d recommend for your health or sanity, but miraculously I managed to keep the slim grip on both that I already had.

New York adventures to follow, right now my insatiable appetite needs to be addressed. Again. 

Q tends to go for the familiar when we travel and that would be the two boobs she’s had a love affair with since the second she turned up.

I AM STARVING. I have to go. There is not enough food in the house.

Qs' crawl. Knees don't touch the ground.  Life in the fast lane, just the way she likes it.

NEW YORK SNOWSTORM, SHUTTERS ON THE BEACH AND TEETHING. (Travel with a baby ain't for the faint of heart).

We flew into California and were greeted by this...

Then flew into New York and got involved in this...

Add jet lag, a few time differences, no sleeping on the plane, (and for the few days after) molars coming in, 9 cousins, 5 uncles, 4 aunts, 2 grandparents - all in the one house, several snotty noses and one freak snowstorm and Little Miss Q is rolling with it like a champ.

Roll on week two...

WEDDINGS, COUNTRY TOWNS AND A NEAR MISS WITH PRAWNS

You know you’re in the country when curried egg and prawns drowning in mayo are the sandwich selections at the one bakery in town.

Most people are clued in enough to go for the egg, neatly observing that country towns are – by definition - nowhere near the coast.

Not so the best man of the wedding I attended this weekend past, whose unwise selection early on Saturday morn nearly saw the understudy called in for his role in the proceedings.

Other giveaways you’re not in the big smoke anymore are the inordinate number of Holden’s hooning down the main street, always in either sparkly turquoise or bright bottle green.

The number of roadkill featured on our national emblem is also a fairly sure bet.

Everything shuts at 12.30 on Saturday, which means that the brother who forgets his belt, shoes and hat has to stick his belly out, wear his scuffed chucks and lots of suncream and avoid our mother who will loudly pronounce the shame he brings to the family name.

(Not half as bad as the wedding where he turned up at the post-wedding brunch still in his suit, a rip in the knee, because he had spent the night in a local orchard picking…ah…cherries shall we say).

Yes, missing shoes got nowhere near the response from mum as that did.

Further evidence you’re in the land of the windmills and pig troughs is the DJ playing Cold Chisel and Men At Work like they’re recent discoveries. 

Any band later than the early 80’s hasn’t yet reached Australia’s interior.

Jack Daniels and Coke in a can is also fair indicator, as is champagne served in red wine glasses – actually quite helpful for people like me, those of us encumbered with a large nose.

The stars shining on the paddocks at night, winking to you as you observe the quiet sheep. Fields of canola, a rich, honest yellow disappearing into the valley below.

The air, plenty for everyone, wafting undiluted through your allergy stricken nose.

And the people.

Quiet, calm and considerate. Plenty of time to take care of you in their pragmatic, matter-of-fact-ness. Proud, independent, strong, determined.

The litmus test for being in the country?

Ask a local for help and if they reply ‘she’ll be right mate, no worries,’ you know that’s exactly where you are. 

JETLAG, NIGHTMARES AND THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

You know when you’re on the second leg of a round the world trip after several takeoff and landing delays and a 6 hour layover in some god-forsaken airport and you’re not even travelling premium economy, let alone business or first class, and your eyes are gritty and your brain feels like it’s too big for your skull and your dehydrated and hungry but your digestive system has shut down because it can’t eat anymore of those altitude-affected rock hard bread rolls and you’re sneezing because your immune system is saving itself for more important things than allergies and you have coffee-breath, but not the attractive kind because you’ve been doing too much open-mouthed breathing, and you’re skin looks grey and you’ve definitely put on weight overnight.

That’s how I feel.

Except it’s not because I’m returning from a fabulous holiday sipping on wine and supping on cheese in the south of France, but because I’m on the back end of a couple of weeks of a spectacularly appalling sleeping performance by my daughter, Little Miss Q.

My disclaimer here – before you all tell me to ring Tresillian – is that the poor kid has been turned upside down of late with travel, late night events and nightmares.

She is a nightmare, but I also think she’s having nightmares. 

Poor kid.

And the fun isn’t going to stop just yet. 

Because we have another out-of-town wedding this weekend.

And Q (being the socialite that she is), thinks everyone is there just for her - bugger the bride - and at last week's reception finally fell into an exhausted face-plant on her grandmother’s arm at 10.16pm. (Waking again back at the hotel for another round of cocktails, then rising at 5am for an early morning post-wedding brunch).

She is made of kryptonite. The only person that suffers unduly is her dear, doting mother.

Coffee has once again become my very good friend.

Speaking of…it’s time for a top-up.

So enjoy your Friday friends, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

And if you get too much sleep, send some my way! 

VIRGINS, ABORTIONS, MARRIAGE - JUST YOUR AVERAGE AMERICAN BILLBOARD

I’ve had a new idea for a book and I’m very excited to get started on it, so since today is Nona day (Nona being my mother) she pushes me out the door in between feeds so I can actually try and get some work done.

But before I left, I had to decide which notebook to start my novel notes in.

Yes, I do do the bulk of my writing on my dear computer (I used to give my computers names, but every time I did, they died a tragic death, so they now remain nameless) but I like to jot down ideas in my books in a haphazard mess that makes sense to no one but myself.

I’m quite particular about my notebooks. 

They have to be lined. They have to fit in my purse. 

I don’t like ring binders because I am left-handed and they get in the way, I prefer off white or beige rather than stark white and I certainly don’t like that paper to have a shine. 

Matt recycled if you please.

These Naomi-specific books take up an entire shelf on my bookshelf, some lying in anxious wait, hoping they’re the next to be plucked for use, others filled with thoughts and anecdotes about the people, places and experiences I’ve run into in this funny little world.

So this morning, while I was selecting the one to use for this new novel (I have a general notebook for every day occurrences, but I can’t mix those with a specific topic, that wouldn’t do at all) I found the book I’d used when we did the road trip across America before we moved to Australia last year.

And I tell you something people, Australia comes a pathetic second to America if we judge a nation by its billboards.

Have a gander at some of these gems.

I swear I’m not making any of them up.

I’m not that funny.

Nb – we started off in the more liberal of the US states, and slowly worked our way South. See if you can notice the change…

TAKE THE US OUT OF MY UTERUS

HAPPY FAMILIES = HAPPY KIDS

VIRGIN. TEACH YOUR KIDS IT’S NOT A DIRTY WORD

MARRIAGE. IT WORKS

EVERY 28 SECONDS A NC TEEN HAS A BABY.

TEACH YOUR KIDS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

FOLLOWING YOUR FRIENDS IS EASY. FOLLOWING YOUR HEART IS BRAVE.

LIFE. IT’S A RIGHT NOT A CHOICE

PREGNANT? SCARED? TEXT OPTIONS TO 94685

And my absolute favourite…

BREAST MILK IS THE BEST MILK. EAT AT MUMS.

See, told you, I couldn’t make that stuff up.

God Bless America.

And now to get started on that novel...

NEW YORK WEDDINGS, ANNIVERSARIES AND DANNY ZUKO AND SANDRA DEE

This time three years ago I was squashed into my tiny New York apartment with my roommate, oldest friend, 3 brothers, two parents, aunt, uncle, several cousins, a brother’s girlfriend, a couple of family friends and any cockroaches that had taken up residence in our Washington Heights abode.

My dad had done a lunch run and returned with an assortment of dips, cheeses and fruits which I was too excited to eat because I was getting married later that evening to a fella I had met at the restaurant where I hostessed at on the east side.

Gregory was the head chef of this dining estabishment, a very popular, expensive joint frequented by celebrities, New York dignitaries and a few shady characters affiliated with those people whose name rhymes with bafia.

When he asked me out I was shocked.

What was this ultra cool, tattooed, whiskey drinking, smoking super-chef doing asking out the naïve, poor, non-tattooed, non-smoking hostess? 

Surely he had it wrong.

We were like Danny Zuko and Sandra Dee.

Ah well, I thought, I’ll go out on one awkward, uncomfortable date, he’ll realise we have nothing in common and we’ll continue on at work just as were, since we’d never spoken before anyway.

We met for a 3pm lunch (it was Sunday in New York after all) at a trendy joint on the lower east side and I later discovered Gregory had been so nervous he’d locked his keys and phone in his apartment.

We got to know each other over lunch at the bar, chatted over coffees on the grass in Union Square, made out behind the self help section on level four in the Strand Bookstore and held hands all the way to Christopher street where I was watching a friend perform later that night.

A quick check of my phone saw 12 missed calls from my roommate who I discovered had sprained her ankle at work, and the American health care system being what it is, needed to go to hospital to verify the injury in order to claim workers comp and medical bills.

Six thousand dollars and six hours later, I silently declared this tough exterior, teddy bear interior chef a winner as he accompanied us to the hospital, carried in my friend and held my hand while we waited to see if she was ok.

We dated in secret for 6 months, meeting after work around the corner, then wiling away the night hours at restaurants and bars this tinned tuna, ketchup soup eating actress had never dared to even enter.

I left town for 4 months on a gig, and after enduring such a lengthy separation, was happy to follow my beau to the west coast with a job offer that was a good few rungs up the cheffing ladder.

We planned our wedding from there, returning to New York to get married in a converted foundry, the first and only venue we had looked at in the city.

Gregory’s mates did the food, my mates provided the music, my brothers were my out-of-time under-rehearsed bridesmen, and we danced till 5am at a nearby bar with our dearest friends and family.

Since then, we’ve lived in LA, Gregory has cooked for Bill Gates, Brad and Angelina, and our fellow non-familied Santa Monicans. I’ve written two manuscripts, (both which have come oh-so-close to publication) done a couple of shows and missed many more, we’ve camped in Norway, done a 3-month road trip across the US, got my green card, visited Oz, moved to Oz, visited the US, shifted house a couple of times, changed jobs several times and grown our very own human.

That chef I met four years ago is now a non-smoking, adventure seeking, takeaway over-ordering, sock-dropping-where-I-leave-‘em husband and father, and his two girls think he makes their world.

Dunno what we’ll manage in the next 3 years, but I’m very excited to find out…

TWITTER FOR TWITS. HELP ME, I'VE JOINED!!!

Following the Writing seminar on Friday, I have now joined Twitter.

Please find me and HELP ME.

I don't understand the hash button, I can't find my friend's twitter accounts and I'm feeling very 20th Century!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

HOW TO TRANSPORT A DEAD DOG ON A NEW YORK SUBWAY

The second story in my tales from New York...

I hope you enjoy it.

My friend tells a cracking good story about her escapade on the subway.  She was house sitting, well dog-sitting actually, when one night she comes home to find the dog has up and died on her.  Terrified, she calls the owners but they don’t seem too distressed by their pet’s passing and ask her just to take the dog to their vet and they will sort it out when they get back. 

How am I going to transport a dead dog around the streets of New York the girl wonders the next morning, staring at the deceased canine lying in rigor mortis on the living room floor.  Sensibly (she thinks) she chooses a suitcase and stuffs the stiffened dog inside, pushing his paws into the corners and curling his tail around the special compartment for socks and ties.  It’s a pretty tight fit and she only just manages to close the lid, so she grabs the dog leash, (figuring the owners won’t need it anymore) and ties it around the case for extra support.  There is no elevator to the top floor apartment of this brownstone in Greenwich Village, so she has no choice but to lug the suitcase full of demised dog down the stairs and out into the snowy streets of NY.  Now, the vet is located in midtown and one would assume the ideal mode of transport for courier of a dead dog would be a taxi.  But she’s an actor, therefore she’s poor and doesn’t have the money for a taxi, so she embraces the chariot for the common man, that mighty workhorse…the great New York subway.  She drags the case along the snow-slicked street and kuh-thunk ku-thunk ku-thunk’s her hefty load down two flights of stairs to the subway platform.  So far so good she thinks, waiting for the uptown train.  It arrives and she joins the commuters, her suitcase blending inconspicuously with their double bass cases, shopping carts, un-assembled K-Mart furniture, plants, bikes and assorted paraphernalia other Americans would transport in their car.  She alights at her stop, dragging the doggie bag out just in time to escape the closing doors, then looks up the three flights of stairs, daunted at the prospect of getting her corpse to the top.  The last thing she needed was for the case to bust its seams and spill perished pooch all over the stairs.

“Excuse me ma’am do you need a hand?” asks a young man.

“Oh that would be awesome,” she says gratefully, “thank you so much.  This bag is really heavy.”

“It looks it,” says the Good Samaritan, picking up one end of the case, “what’s in there?”

“Ah…computer supplies,” lies my friend, hoping he doesn’t get too close and catch the faint whiff of expired canine.

“Oh right, like parts of computers?” asks the guy as they reach the first landing.

“Yeah,” agrees the girl, going along with his assumption.  “I’m moving and this seemed like the best way to transport my computer.  Pull it all apart and pack it in a suitcase.” She cringes at her tale, but the guy seems to believe her and they make it to the second landing.  “Nearly there,” she says, “thanks so much for helping me.” 

“No problem,” says the guy, “I’m just glad I was around when you needed me.” 

And then he punches her in the face, prompting her to drop the bag and grab her bleeding nose.  Before she has a chance to recover, the guy grabs the case, sprints up the final flight of stairs and out into the streets of NY never to be seen again. 

Gone. 

And not with a case of dismantled computer pieces like he supposes, but rather of a day-old deceased Fido on its way to the doggie morgue. 

INTRODUCING THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH...

The Sydney Writers' Festival is on this week, but Miss Q provided such a complete and utter distraction, that it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I remembered, and by then all the events I wanted to attend were booked out.

Like this one. A chance to pitch your novel to three international publishers with the possibility that they may choose to represent you.

I’ve come agonisingly close with the manuscript I wrote based on my seven years in the US but it was ultimately rejected by a u-beaut-passionfruit publishing house because the marketing department said the GFC meant people weren’t travelling much at the moment and that short stories are hard to sell.

Three points on that one.

I don’t know much about a lot of things, and virtually nothing about economics, but isn’t the Aussie dollar doing pretty well right now? Maybe lots of us are travelling.

Secondly, I doubt my book would make a very helpful travel guide around NYC anyway, unless you wanted to know which bin it was that I searched in for a Rolex with bad karma, or how a dead dog managed to travel on the subway.

And thirdly, what's wrong with short stories? They're great for people with short attention spans. 

Like me.

Some of these short stories have already made it to various public forums, (see, plenty of us have short attention spans) but I have a lot of stories to tell, so I’ve decided to put them up on this little blog of mine, one story at a time, until all 45 000 words have been posted.

I hope you enjoy…

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

By Naomi Hart

Low Overhead And A Sense of Improvisation Make For A Great Life.

John Leland.

Chapter One

AN ODE TO THE APPLE

My box of chocolates is confiscated on the grounds that it has the same density as a bomb.  Is it legal to rifle through a lady’s underwear in full view of the other passengers?  It seems highly unlikely I’ve constructed an explosive out of my asthma puffer and yet it is still confiscated due to its high security risk.  Am I a security risk? 

Welcome to Los Angeles International Airport, October 2002.  Just long enough after September 11 for Homeland Security to have developed a complex and time consuming screening process that seems to do nothing more than target old men and Australian musical theatre students on their way to New York City.

LAX has to be the most terminally boring airport in the world.  Pardon the pun.  They could learn a thing or two from the Singaporeans.  Or the Thai, or Japanese.  Get off a plane in those airports and you can indulge in a massage, delicious fresh Sushi or buy a twenty thousand dollar Rolex.  LAX has nothing more exciting than a Starbucks. 

Several hours and several more security lines later, (it’s a line now, not a queue, since I’m now in America proper) the sugar-free-hazelnut-flavoured-non-fat-double-shot-soy-latte easing the pain of my jetlag, I boarded the plane for the city that was to become my home not just for the six months I’d originally intended, but for the next seven years. 

My wondrous, overwhelming, passionate, thrilling home.

I had moved to the Big Apple to study musical theatre and found myself in student accommodation on West 100^th in an apartment block called The Midway.  The Midway?  Sounded like a halfway house to me.  In fact, we’re not entirely sure it wasn’t a brothel.  One whole floor was painted bright pink and there was a curious amount of traffic in and out of there all night long. 

I climbed the six flights of stairs (New York did nothing to heal my discontent with elevators) and opened the door to my first American home…four uneven walls, one window with a view of a collapsed fire escape, linoleum floor, leaking radiator, a sink, two shelves and bunk beds.  Bunk beds?  I was twenty-three years old and I was going to sleep in a bunk bed?  As it turned out, the room was large by New York standards and my roommate and I quickly became the envy of all with our very own bathroom.  Our friends shared theirs with cockroaches, rats, and the hermit on the fifth floor.  He died sometime in December but no one knew until right before Christmas when an ungodly odour permeated the place.  The police were called and suddenly I was in my very own episode of Law And Order.  The room was guarded twenty-four hours a day and the yellow tape you see in the movies quarantined half the floor.

“Welcome to New York City, the greatest city in the world.  The envy of the world.”  (Or so we were told by the Dean of our school).  “Remember,” he added, “performing is the X-Ray of your soul.”

With my soul exposed, classes began and I was put in a group with my very own Miss America.  Well, Miss Delaware actually.  She lost out in the finals and had a fight in the dressing room with Miss Nevada and Miss Hawaii.  I was completely fascinated.  The closest I had ever come to someone like her was Miss Granny Smith in the Apple festival at the Eastwood fete.  She wanted to know if “ya’ll have kangerroooos hoppin’ bout yer yard.”  And although I already adored her, she sealed it forever when we all read A Streetcar Named Desire while she thought we’d read A Streetcar Named Desiree. 

We took four different dance disciplines – tap, jazz, theatre and ballet - most of them at eight o’clock in the morning when I was as ready to kick-ball-change as Giuliani was to give up his post.  In our first ballet lesson we had to step forward, say our name, where we were from and whom we had studied dance under. 

“Naomi Hart, Sydney Australia.  I studied ballet at the Armidale Ballet School.”  Do you think anyone had heard of that?  Our teacher took one look at our pirouettes and suggested we practice them in a closet until we could do fifteen in a row.  For a while I used my room since it was about the same size, but it all came together when my jazz teacher told me the elevator theory.  “You know when you’re in a crowded elevator and you need to fart,” he said as if it was perhaps an everyday occurrence for him, “so you clench your butt muscles to keep it in.  It’s the same thing with pirouettes.  Just pretend you need to fart.” 

I didn’t get to fifteen, but it did help me land my triples.

I was the wild card entry into the top tap class (the first class I could actually do was also the last) with a teacher that had snorted so much cocaine, blood dripped from his nose in time to the warm up.  I did get to hang out with the cool dancers though.  You know, the ones who when their tights ladder cut out the crotch and wear them as tops. 

I learned the original choreography for Cats, 42^nd Street, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Tommy to name but a few.  My knees made more noise than popcorn cooking in a microwave, (I should know since it was the only thing I had to cook with) my hamstrings were tighter than an actor’s budget, and when G-Dubbya was looking for those elusive weapons of mass destruction, I though he may have been referring to my leotard and tights.  They were fierce.

Our music theatre teacher advised us not to smoke.  “If you want to rebel against your parents, I suggest lesbianism.”  He also reminded us that “acting is like a virgin on prom night; you just have to put out.”

We were taught never to point one finger on stage because it looks like a small skinny penis, and the first time I work-shopped a sex scene, (laying on a makeshift bed in nothing more than a body stocking) my teacher cautioned me to avoid looking like freshly landed trout.   He then turned to my scene partner and advised seriously, “if she is trying to seduce you, you must account for the significant shift in body mass that is likely to occur.”

The instructors were so concerned with my speech they sent me to accent reduction class to learn standard American for the stage.  It was me, the Mexicans, a couple of French Canadians, and a few blokes who wanted to rid themselves of their gay dialect.  Pretty soon, we were learning to say therrow not thorough, kahndm not condom, can’t not cahn’t.

The rest of my voice and speech class was spent squatting on my haunches “like a beer shitting” as our teacher so eloquently described.  Apparently he was looking for an open space so that if he shone a flashlight up our butts the light would come out our mouths. 

My voice teacher followed this up with a discussion about the fache (jelly) in my face and how an open throat for singing was rather like the feeling of openness during a visit to the gynecologist. 

There were times my teachers caused me great concern. 

One of our subjects required we spend seven hours each week studying the craft.  We could get away with watching reality TV if we wished, but most of us didn’t have one, so instead, we turned to our playground.  Five buck nose-bleeder tickets at the Lincoln Centre to see Jeremy Irons perform in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.  Australia’s own Caroline O’Connor as Velma Kelly in the 2500 anniversary performance of Chicago.  Standing room tickets to see Antonio Banderas play opposite that tour de force Chita Rivera, in a production of Nine that stands in my memory as one of the greatest pieces of theatre I have ever seen.  I cried when Hugh Jackman sang I Still Call Australia Home, cheered silently when my acting teacher came on stage in an off-Broadway production of Sin and saw Kathleen Turner naked.  Clearly I’m not a true artiste if that’s all I can tell you about her playing opposite Jason Biggs in The Graduate, but it did start a run of Broadway nudity for me.  If Kathleen was my appetiser, my entree was a rather meaty course of front row seats to Naked Boys Singing and I sated my sweet tooth with a production of Take Me Out, which held several of its scenes in a locker-room complete with showers.  In my professional opinion, the arctic air conditioning of a New York theatre can do nothing for a man’s self esteem. 

My favourite class, called Film Lab was scheduled once a week.  We’d all file into a dark studio and watch live recordings of the greatest theatre stars Broadway has ever seen.  Chita Rivera, Dame Judi Dench, Nathan Lane, Ann Reinking, Bob Fosse, Julie Andrews, Glenn Close, Tommy Tune…I would sit there with tears running silently down my face and think; This is it.  This is what I want to do.  I want to be like Carol Channing and still performing the title role in ‘Hello Dolly’ at the tender age of 72.

People’s response to NYC is typically both immediate and strong.  You either love her or you don’t.  From the second I landed, New York became my mistress.  For seven glorious, intoxicating years I was privileged enough to be her lover and while I may never live there again, when we finally broke up, she certainly kept a piece of my heart.  New York.  A farrago of cultures, generations and influences crammed together in an area only five miles by seven.  For many her spice and bolshiness seem rude and combative.  Her cauldron of cultures overwhelms and confuses.  Her speed and audacity don’t charm they repel.  She is more than just a mistress, she’s a dominatrix.  She humbles you with her frenetic pace and uncompromising ways, and if you manage to survive all that, she just waits for winter when no one will doubt who’s boss.  

If she sees you’re tired, she’ll send the trash train instead of the last A express.  If she senses you’re frustrated, she’ll send a torrent of rain when you’ve got to cross town for an audition and forgot your umbrella.  If she perceives vulnerability she’ll send your nemesis, wrapped up in a nasty casting director or a canceled flight on your Christmas getaway. 

But where else can you do your laundry at two o’clock in the morning and enjoy a beer in the courtyard while you wait for it to dry?  Not even the sign saying Please Remove All Bullets Before Washing can ruin that experience.  Or go on a first date to Momofuku noodle bar in the east village, initiate him to The Strand bookstore in Union Square, get in a bit of kanoodling in the self help section and marry him eighteen months later at a converted foundry in Queens.

Corn bread and collard greens in Harlem, Ethiopian on the West side, baklava at the Greek café on the corner of Broadway in Astoria.  Pedicures in Spanish, bikini waxes in Vietnamese, haircuts in Polish.  Get your free coffee at the porn store on 48^th and 8^th on your way to a callback at Chelsea Studios.  Study a lady flossing her teeth in the middle of Times Square and watch a man trim his beard on the crowded subway.  Teeming sidewalks, taxis honking, people yelling, everyone ignoring the urgent siren of the ambulance.  The Met, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art.  Twenty-four hour diners with a side of mayonnaise, dance class with original cast members of Broadway shows, the rich and famous mixing inconspicuously with the worker-bees that keep that town alive.

Twenty-fours hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.  She doesn’t stop, she doesn’t slow down, she doesn’t have to.  Don’t even think about trying to change her, if you don’t like the way things run, move to Westchester and commute like all the other pussies do. 

New York.  A city of unconquerable energy and its inhabitants, all thirsting for what they’re not sure, but knowing that if it exists at all, they’ll find it here.  It was the greatest, loneliest, headiest, saddest, ‘funnest’ and toughest time of my life.  I’m stronger now, but I’m more vulnerable, I’m quicker of mind, but more deliberate in action and I oscillate between having all the answers and not knowing a damn thing for sure at all.             

Yes, I thought as I strolled 9^th Avenue one frosty February eve, I’ve made the right choice.  Now let’s get on with the show.