It was a crisp autumn morning when I stepped out of the shower and saw a half-naked middle-aged Redhead standing on my towel in the rancid swimming pool change room.
Each week I attend classes at a local heated pool to improve the density of my 54 year old bones. In the embryonic waves we indulge in a synchronised low impact dance, pumping aquatic dumbbells to the deafening beat of the 80’s. Clucking chatter about grandkids and bung knees harmonise with the Eurythmics and ‘Material Girl’. Our compulsory hygiene caps crown our middle to late-aged indiscernible invisibility. Or so I thought?
I stared at my sullied towel on the wet concrete, but the wobble of her pendulous naked breasts caught my eye. She was learning burlesque at the Moonah Arts Centre but I was unconvinced her current movement counted as a textbook Shimmy.
Her two gormless bottle Redhead gang members were close by as always. The smaller one resembled a crumpled Chucky doll and, as always, provided the laugh track for this moment. I had never bothered to name these two, however ‘Big Bird’ was a different story. She was over six foot tall, had a buzzcut, wore too much make-up for any water activity, was often bruised and unlike her chatty Sesame Street namesake – she never spoke. Her two expressions were confusion and fear – but that day she faced the wall.
As the only Non-Binary Lesbian of Colour at the pool – I knew from a half a century of survival-fuelled observation that the Mean Reds were aggressively Straight. The film where a naked Viggo Mortensen fought for his life in a slippery bathhouse came flooding back to me. That scene was memorable for similar reasons because danger, nudity, running water and sagging wilted tattoos is a very confusing combination.Therefore when confronted with this fleshly change room display, I wasn’t sure whether to file it under initiation, intimidation or an invitation to a poorly executed unconscious bogan BDSM scene.
When I later told a Butch friend about the bullying, they offered to beat-up the Mean Reds for me. This offer repulsed me even though this is what ‘should’ happen? Instead I did what everyone else did and avoided them. Like Audrey/Holly says – ‘The Mean Reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you’re not sure what you’re afraid of.’
Recently a friend invited me to a cool cafe on the other side of the water which was famous for its vintage motor bikes and memorabilia. We sat outside because the place was stuffed with retired club leather jackets, ZZ Top sunglasses, angry grey beards and the low, guttural growl of Harley Davidsons slumming it on the sidewalk with mobility scooters.
It was here I saw the Mean Reds outside our familiar humid chlorine habitat. When they saw me they stopped in their tracks, looked down and shuffled away…
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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