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of parties and boyfriends every time we speak on the phone. I live in a small room in my parents’ house. My hair frizzes up around my face no matter how much I comb it down. Chris keeps on flirting with the other girls at work no matter how much I will him to stop. There’s not a single thing I can do about any of it.
    One day last week I’d been mouthing off to Chris about Othello , which we had just started studying at school. He’d listened to me with his head slightly cocked to one side offering small arguments that I talked over.
    ‘Why is it called the Tragedy of Othello – should be the Tragedy of Desdemona!’
    ‘Well, it’s a tragedy for her too, but you know he’s the main protag—’
    ‘He kills his wife! Just kills her! I mean, what kind of psycho kills his wife and then gets to be the hero of the play?’
    ‘He’s a tragic hero, youngster. He has a fatal flaw – they all do.’
    ‘It’s not his tragedy! It’s Desdemona’s!’
    ‘But the play is not about her, youngs—’ ‘How small a man is he? He’s this big war hero but he’s so insecure that he believes all that crap about his wife. Who loves him, the poor woman. Big mistake. But how was she to know?’
    ‘He was wilfully deceived by Iago. If someone is that good at deception, it’s easy to believe them.’
    ‘It shouldn’t have been that easy. Men!’
    Chris gave up.
    ‘You should get your own TV show, youngster,’ he’d said.
    Blimey , I thought, picturing his face yet again. I should have my own TV show, all right. It would be called Lifestyles of the Young and Powerless. Lifestyles of Them What Had a Mouthful of Metal until A Short Time Ago. Lifestyles of Them What Still Let Their Mums Choose Their Clothes for Them and Spent Last Saturday Night at Their Best Mate’s House Studying . I’m a disgrace. The only high points in my life are those rare moments when Chris offers to walk me home after work and listens to my rants with what appears to be tender amusement. I have become a bit of a ranter, I must admit. School, work, the disrespect with which my dad addressed my mum the other morning, the injustice of the universe, the crappy marks I keep getting in maths, Madame Bovary, how one of my teachers pronounces ‘hubris’ like you pronounce ‘debris’.
    ‘Breathe, youngster, breathe. You’re an Angry Young Woman.’
    But he listens.

L ONELY DAYS BEGONE
    The Land of Dreams is abuzz with news of an upcoming social event. Next Sunday after closing, instead of the usual trip to the pub that I almost always don’t go to because of reasons well-bemoaned above, everyone has been invited to a party at Bianca’s house in Rose Bay. Her parents are overseas. Bianca’s father, Chris confided to me, is the CEO of one of the big banks and her mother is a ‘stay-at-home mum’, despite the fact that Bianca is twenty-three. The three of them live in a huge harbourside mansion, complete with tennis court, swimming pool and private jetty. Bianca’s failure to go to uni, her casual job in a supermarket and the various Woolies slackers she sleeps with are, it appears, part of a larger framework of rebellion against her parents. I have no idea what that’s about, but it does solve for me the mystery of how a twenty-three-year-old woman is able to support herself on a part-time wage of $18 per hour and spend most evenings out drinking. She doesn’t have to support herself at all.
    Bianca has always regarded me as one might regard a weevil in a rice jar, but I am invited to the party along with everyone else.
    We’re starting Great Expectations in English next week, having survived The Bell Jar and Othello . I am racing through it, which surprises me, because David Copperfield made me want to stick my hand in a blender. It makes sense to me that Pip falls in love with Estella as a child. Children don’t know any better. But I find it hellishly discouraging – as well as fascinating – that even well into adulthood he is as