Open Writing

**

(A tall, beautiful woman kneels to pray in a pool of light. She has long hair and looks simply gorgeous – stunning. Her hands are raised in supplication.)

Heavenly Father, please forgive your daughter the deadly sin of anger.

She’s not greedy.

She doesn’t envy anybody anything.

She’s not a glutton.

She’s not lazy or slothful.

There’s no overweening pride or compelling lust in her.

She’s tried so hard to be good.

All she asks is your forgiveness.

(She rises and takes a seat, showing in profile an excellent figure before turning to face the audience. She sighs.)

Sometimes I’m so angry I could scream.

On a scale of anger from one to ten, I’m at eleven.

It shouldn’t be like this. My life should be a dream, not a nightmare.

I’ve got my own business, two delightful children, and I’m fit and healthy. People tell me I’m beautiful. They ought to see my Mum and my two sisters.

We’re from an area of Europe famous for beautiful women – it’s taken for granted that daughters are good looking.

We were all taught to be well groomed – to take a pride in our bodies and our appearance.

So what’s wrong?

In Australia, my good looks have turned out to be a curse.

When we came here, my father tried to sell me – for a ten thousand dollar dowry – to a settler who wanted a big family as cheap labour to work his farm.

That was the old way of doing things. The men thought they owned the women. I was furious. I ran away and father had to give the money back. Serves the bastard right.

I checked up on the farmer years later. He married this quiet country girl from southern Italy – such a pretty little thing at the time – and she bore him six children.

When I last saw her, she was enormous – but happy. How about that?

Why does being a good-looking healthy woman have to be such a problem.

Girls who aspire to be beautiful need to be careful what they wish for. It might be granted and it’s not what they think it’ll be.

Men are always looking at my cleavage. Some of them stare so hard you’d think it would make their eyes sore.

Sometimes I feel like yelling at them, “Haven’t you seen breasts before?”

I’m tempted to wear one of those tight T-shirts with the message, “Stop staring at my tits.”

If I go down the street to the deli for a lunch time roll, you ought to hear the guys on the building site.

Even the young ones whistle and call at me. I’m nearly forty. I could be their mother, for heaven’s sake.

Somebody should tell them to get on with the bloody job. Is there any wonder some building projects run late.

I was walking past a site in South Perth last week, wearing this slinky new dress, and the guys went bananas.

My mobile rang and I answered it. The voice on the end demanded, “How do you think I feel when everybody’s whistling and calling after you all the time?” He sounded most aggrieved.

Who was it? You’d never guess, my new boyfriend, a builder. He was there among them.

I’ve had to take a restraining order out against my ex.

He came at me in the dark with a knife. He was intending to disfigure my face with it.

I ducked and took a glancing wound along the hairline at the side of my head. I screamed for help.

I took other cuts on my arms, fending him off. They needed stitching. There was blood everywhere. What a mess.

He was yelling and raving that if he couldn’t have me, he’d make sure with his knife that nobody else would want me.

The neighbours saved the day. They called the police and he was subdued and taken away.

I’m having trouble getting support from him for the kids.

My self esteem keeps me going. I’ll look after the kids myself. They’ve done nothing wrong. They’re good kids, and they’re my kids, too. Who needs a guy around who’s so out of control?

When I was parking my little Celica the other day, a man drove up alongside. He was so busy staring at my breasts – lest he missed something – he bumped into the kerb.

“If you can’t park your car properly, catch a bloody taxi next time,” I told him.

If there was a switch for anger, I’d keep mine turned off.

Anger doesn’t help. It’s so controlling.

It overwhelms natural commonsense.

It disengages the natural self defence mechanism.

It’s a deadly sin in the sense that it can be so corrosive…..so destructive.

I’ve heard it said, and it’s true, I’m sure, that cancer is a disease of anger.

How this seems to work is that in anger mode the body’s clean-up brigade are all dismissed. All your energy then goes into the fight or flight crew.
So if there’s a bug around, instead of getting mopped up and expelled, it can get a toehold and multiply.

Have you noticed with men that an angry man always thinks he can do more than he actually can?

The emotion gets him into trouble. And there’s not always a lifeline out of the morass.

“Of course we can build that railway line to Rockingham, on time and to budget.” Everybody else knows that is just not going to happen.

But how many times have you heard that sort of macho bullshit statement from the highest levels.

It leaves no room for retreat, no room for negotiation when the unexpected happens – a storm, a strike, a bad accident, whatever. In the end, you just have to back down.

So do not make any promises or pledges in anger.

Because it’s Perth city to a grain of sand that you haven’t allowed for the embuggerance factor, sometimes referred to as Murphy’s Law, meaning roughly that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and furthermore, things will get worse before they get better.

So what can a girl do?

Should she follow the mufti’s advice and veil herself from head to toe?

Hello, is this the 21st Century or are we back in the Middle Ages?

It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun going round dressed like a medieval nun on a hot summer day in Perth.

Maybe a girl should think about taking an easier way out.

It takes about twenty-eight muscles to smile at some arsehole.

But it takes only four to give him a good slap across the kisser.

And she’ll feel much better.

(She lifts up her fingers, with the long painted nails.)

You might think it would be better to give him a good scratch.

I don’t think so. Think of what it could do to your beautiful finger nails.

Also, you could get his blood on your dress.

Just be cool, and remember what they used to say in the old country,
Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

A nice court order for fifty per cent of his income and forty per cent of his superannuation will give you more satisfaction and him more pain.

You must keep the house, of course. But you’re always so sweet and reasonable and can make concessions. He can keep his stupid boat and that gas-guzzling V8 motor car.

You have to take the kids because he can’t look after them. You also take the dog, and that will hurt.

And then you move on, because let’s face it, the quickest way to get over a man is to get under another one.

And the fact of the matter is – was it Rose Porteous who said this? – there’s a new one coming by just about every ten minutes.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m just angry. I’m not against men. I like men – some of them, anyway.

And I’m sure they have a useful role. After all, you can’t mow the lawn with a vibrator.