‘Hillbilly Poofters’: Voices from

Western Sydney and Regional NSW

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by Broede Carmody

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Ornaments from Two Countries is an extraordinary collection of short stories and poems by people from Western Sydney and regional New South Wales. Each of the contributors identifies as gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex or queer. Age is no barrier. There are stories by younger people, older people, and those somewhere in between. I was struck by the honesty resonating from the pages – these are writers who don’t shy away from what it means to be different and to have serious doubts punctuate their everyday lives.

In his introduction, editor Peter Polites writes:

My goals in creating this book were to reaffirm identity and confirm the existence of an invisible community. I want to say with this book, “We are here, we have always been here, we choose to be here and these are our experiences.”

‘Abo Fag’, the opening story in Ornaments, is the strongest in an exceptional collection. There is something excellent and daring about such a title – as though the author is taking the two main insults thrown at him during his childhood and moulding them into something worthwhile, something under his control. The story’s imagery catches the breath, throwing the reader headfirst into the writer’s mindset:

My skin was starched in chlorine, it baked onto the brown, in small crusty white lines and set by a searing outback heat … The fumbling, the groping and the danger was enough to shoot sticky wads streaming across the chipped concrete floor.

The juxtaposition of “white” and “brown” is important – throughout the story the author details the ways in which white gay men fetishise his race. His “honey-coloured skin” is “mauled” by doe-eyed boys who want little more than an orgasm, some lingering self-gratification. Sex becomes easy, a blur – a dust storm belonging to the outback where he grew up. While finding sex is quite literally a walk in the park, the emotional consequences are anything but. The anonymous author explains how his orgasms were “followed by guilt … finding comfort in darkness”. However the most heart-ripping moment is left for the end of the story, whereby he explains:

The ham-fisted freckled teen who took my virginity is now a grown man in a grey singlet, small holes pockmarking the worn seam, he nods hello, the way country men do, outside the newsagent, his three children spryly jumping about behind him.

Another piece that didn’t shy away from sex was ‘Wollongong/Dapto 1988’ by Richard Gurney. The story describes the writer’s introduction into the gay party scene, “late eighties regional style”. He loses his virginity to a man called Paul, who lives in a converted flat above a shopfront:

After rudimentary foreplay in bed he asked to fuck me. Wanting the experience but anxious, I said, ‘Do you have any condoms?’

‘Nah. It’s okay. I don’t have sex with guys from Sydney.’

While the experience is marred by its perceived “trashiness”, we can tell the writer has grown by the end of the piece. Just as the author never sees Paul again, there is a clear break between the voice of the past and attitudes of the present. This story stands out because it reminds us that we are constantly recreating ourselves.

The collection is home to a variety of voices, highlighting the importance of breaking down unhelpful stereotypes and self-marginalisation. One writer puts it succinctly when he mentions that, “one man’s positive is another man’s negative”. Another says:

Most of my friends have stories about how they have always known they were queer. I don’t have a story like that – I saw myself as straight right up until I was nineteen.

It’s important that we find solidarity in diversity – and a book such as Ornaments from Two Countries does exactly that.

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Buy a copy of Ornaments from Two Countries here.

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Broede Carmody is an intern at The Lifted Brow. He is a journalism student at RMIT, poetry editor for Voiceworks, and editor of RMIT’s 2013 O-Week Book.

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This piece is from our just-launched Perth-themed issue. To get your hands on a copy, which has just so many great pieces of writing and artwork inside it, go here.

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Pikkoro and the

Multipurpose Octopus

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by Elizabeth Tan

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And here’s Pikkoro, in the sudden quiet, on this hot afternoon – sighing over the asphalt, school hat low on her brow. Textbooks add five kilos to her back and ten years to her face; hunched by rote wisdom, she awaits the green man and labours through the crosswalk. She is surrounded by cicadas and bicyclists and blurry-faced commuters. On days like this, Pikkoro’s eyes can withdraw so deeply into her head – can resort to oversimplification, express themselves with single lines.

—Hm?

Her eyes become round to the sight of a truck cutting the corner, tipping slightly on one wheel. Overloaded with crates, the truck punts one fruit from the pile – which bounces brightly, then makes a getaway roll for Pikkoro’s foot. She stoops for a closer look: a hard yellow mango, see-sawing to a stop, sticker-side-up. It’s HarvestTime™. The silhouette of a tree growing lovehearts instead of foliage.

Pikkoro scoops up the mango. She decides to take it home.

Pikkoro lives on the second floor of a grey apartment building. It has palm trees at the front gate and a communal pool with uncleared leaves floating on the surface. Her young ankles swell with each grey step. She passes the other homes piping with afternoon television programs and microwave bells. She stops at her welcome mat to peel off her shoes.

—Aaah it’s so hot.

Pikkoro slumps inside the apartment, drops her schoolbag on the tatami and throws herself into the sofa.

Tako, in the kitchen, suctions ice-cubes from a plastic mould. He pops the ice into two glasses.

—Sorry. I should have come to pick you up.

Pikkoro mumbles into the cushion. Her after-school bowl of ramen is steaming on the table. On the mantelpiece there is a row of framed photographs of Pikkoro and her parents, ageing slowly from right to left. In the final photograph there is a snapshot of Pikkoro and Tako. One of Tako’s tentacles is outstretched, off-frame, as he is holding the camera.

Tako shuffles to the sofa with two glasses of iced tea, offering one to Pikkoro. She groans, rolling onto her back, accepting the glass with both hands. Tako sees the mango peeking out of her knapsack.

—What’s this?

—It fell on the road.

Tako picks up the mango. Pikkoro wriggles off the sofa and slips into her chair. A novel, Seeds of Time, is splayed face-down on the table, alongside a pile of unfinished knitting. Pikkoro sets her glass on the placemat and blows weakly on her ramen.

—Har-ve-s-t T-i-me.

Tako puts the mango on the kitchen counter.

 

*                          *                         *

 

The afternoon changes colour. Pikkoro is stretched out on the tatami, her mathematics textbook spread inside the glowing square of television light. She frowns at her spidery calculations and rubs out her latest answer. Tako is sitting on the sofa, knitting with four arms and holding his novel open with two. Although Pikkoro’s head is drooping into her homework, although her sighs grow heavier, Tako clicks through his knitting and there is contentment here, discernible in their soft faces. There’s a game show on television that neither of them is completely watching: warbling with uncertainty, pinging with success, buzzing with failure.

—We’re going to take a short break, folks; don’t go away!

The theme song booms, and Pikkoro finally lays her head down on her exercise book and shuts her eyes.

But she is compelled to open them again when the television falls silent. She raises her head to a commercial unfolding in the hypnotic quiet. The fattest apples, pears, oranges – and mangoes, just like the one Pikkoro plucked from the road – spinning against a backdrop of idyllic orchards, giant and seductive as planets. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to – Pikkoro sits up and lets the fruit spin inside her irises. Her pencil escapes the fold of her exercise book and rolls away. Even the clicking of Tako’s knitting needles has ceased.

Then, fading in – the loveheart tree. It’s HarvestTime™.

—Pikkoro-chan.

—Hm?

—Your costume is finished. Come try it on.

Tako unfurls what he’s been knitting: a woollen octopus poncho, coral red, the eyes and mantle forming a hood. Six stuffed limbs hang off the sides, and Tako helps Pikkoro slip her arms between two extra sleeves that make the seventh and eighth limbs. She wobbles to her bedroom so she can look in the mirror. Tako joins her.

—What do you think?

Pikkoro sways appreciatively.

—It’s perfect.

 

*                          *                         *

_

The next day, Pikkoro’s costume is wrapped in a brown paper parcel and secured to the top of her school bag. It’s set to be another hot day – the sky is white with humidity, and those clouds just seem too close to Pikkoro who, accompanied by Tako, trudges on humpbacked through the heat. Even with Tako carrying the heaviest of her textbooks, she still feels as if she’s bent double. The gradient of the slope to school seems more aggressive than yesterday.

A discerning viewer could perhaps believe that Pikkoro is accustomed to sadness, a kind of non-specific melancholy that infuses her eyes and slides down to her bones, pooling in the young creases of her skin. Sadness that not even her bright hair can obscure; so pedestrian that it could resemble neutrality or fatigue.

Pikkoro arrives at school, reddened by thirst. She stops at the water fountain, then shows Tako to her cubby hole. When all her heavy things are stored, Tako says goodbye.

—Take care today, Pikkoro-chan. I’ll see you after school.

Tako is wearing a mint-striped ice-cream parlour hat. Pikkoro watches him slide-walk through the corridor, against the flow of students, and it seems that her day might become a little duller now. But she looks back into her cubby hole, revived by the brown paper parcel, which turns see-through for a moment to reveal the red costume inside. A piccolo trills.

 

*                          *                         *

 

Pikkoro’s teacher is a drowsy but kindly man, young but worn, talking the class through a long mathematical equation from last night’s homework. Pikkoro stares at it, compares it to her paper, and marks her answer incorrect. The teacher puts down his chalk and Pikkoro’s gaze now expands to take in her entire paper, the red strokes written over last night’s grey pencil, like a village ambushed by assassins.

—Those participating in this semester’s play may attend their rehearsal session now. The rest of you have a reading period.

The teacher has scarcely finished his sentence when a third of the students scrape out of their seats and race to their cubby holes. Over the morning the children’s costumes have accumulated here – cardboard snouts, triangular ears stapled to headbands, mosquito-net wings. Pikkoro unwraps her brown parcel and wriggles into her octopus poncho: though it is woollen it is not tight or uncomfortable enough to make her warm. Pikkoro runs out of the classroom with the other costumed students, her extra limbs bouncing, down the stairs and across the corridor to the auditorium.

On the stage, a cluster of senior students are ruffling scripts and reciting their lines, while others are assembling a giant backdrop made from flattened cardboard boxes.

—Ah, the extras from Class 3B are here! Eh? Those costumes are pretty neat! Come on, Kyo-senpai will show you where to stand.

—Everyone get ready for Act II, Scene 4!

The senior boy called Kyo leads Pikkoro and her classmates up the stairs to the wings of the stage.

—Remember to remain quiet while the lights are off. The actors will have a few lines. Then when your lights come on, jump up and make your best animal sounds! Be as loud as you want! You can move across the stage but don’t get in the way of the actors. Okay?

Away from the tedium of silent reading, the students from Class 3B are thrilled into obedience.

—Places, everyone! Alright, from the top!

The lights dim abruptly. A boy and a girl hobble in from stage left, clutching each other.

—Where are we, Cumbersnatch?

—I don’t know, Honey, but something fishy is going on here.

—Where has the doctor gone? Where are all the other passengers?

—I’m telling you, when we get back to Hawaii…

—Eep! Did you hear that?

—Hear what?

The lights boom on, and the animal students break out across the stage, screeching and hooting and snarling, beating their arms, stomping their feet, charging towards the protagonists.

—Eeeargh! Savage beasts!

—Cumbersnatch, quick! We have to do something!

Pikkoro isn’t sure what sound octopuses are meant to make in the wild, so she spins around the stage, her extra arms flailing, making a kind of bubbling, warbling noise. There is no scalar consistency across the animals that the children have chosen, so a duck cavorts alongside a cardboard-finned shark, a rabbit lunges after a rhinoceros, and the effect of it all is somewhere between endearing and disastrous.

The door to the auditorium snaps open. The drama teacher walks in, flanked by two men in brown suits, and all the students quickly contain themselves. Pikkoro’s mouth twitches into an o when she notices the HarvestTime™ loveheart tree stitched into the smart leather briefcases of the brown-suited men.

Kyo steps in front of the group and bows slightly.

—Excuse us, sensei. I hope you don’t mind that we began rehearsal while you were in your meeting. Since the extras from Class 3B are here, we are practising Act II, Scene 4.

The drama teacher dabs at his mouth with a white handkerchief. He glances at the brown-suited men. They both nod.

—Students, I am pleased to make an announcement. It has come to my attention that our play is terrible. That is why we will be rewriting the play.

A gasp rises from the senior students. The drama teacher casts a critical eye over the ensemble. He gestures a stern hand at the children in their homemade animal costumes.

—We cannot use any of these. These costumes are no good. No, the extras from Class 3B will be supplied with new costumes. They will be dressed as fruit – as pineapples and grapes and watermelons and figs. Then the play will be excellent. I am confident of this new direction.

Pikkoro and the other children look shell-shocked. The senior students are so speechless that they must collaborate on their response.

—Sensei…you want Honey and Cumbersnatch…

—to stumble upon…

—an island of giant fruit?

A girl in a penguin jumpsuit begins to cry.

 

*                          *                         *

 

Pikkoro and Tako walk home from school. The brown paper package, laid across Pikkoro’s arms like a dead pet, is lumpy and folded wrong. Pikkoro and Tako stop at the pedestrian crossing.

—Must I make you a new costume?

—No. Sensei said they’d give us new costumes.

The green man turns on, and they cross the road. They round a familiar corner, but as Pikkoro looks right and left, she does not see the HarvestTime™ truck from yesterday.

In the apartment, Pikkoro watches her ramen grow fat in the steaming soup. Tako unwraps the paper parcel, folds the octopus poncho neatly, rewraps, and walks to Pikkoro’s bedroom. He slides open the wardrobe. Places the parcel on the top shelf.

 

*                          *                         *

_

Was it only yesterday that Pikkoro saw the truck on the way home from school, the mango on the road? Has her life always been this charged with moments of significance, relentless as an assembly line? Pivotal moments advancing from a conveyor belt, delivered with suspicious regularity – some dire newspaper from the cosmos headlining the same cryptic warnings in large black typeface? Pikkoro can’t quite discern the lettering, much less read between the lines – can only understand that there is some threat hovering, spreading a shadow over her tiny life, as she lets herself sink like a waterlogged noodle to the murky bottom.

 

*                          *                         *

 

—Where are we, Cumbersnatch?

—I don’t know, Honey, but something fishy is going on here.

—Where has the doctor gone? Where are all the other passengers?

—I’m telling you, when we get back to Hawaii…

—Eep! Did you hear that?

—Hear what?

The lights boom on and a boy dressed as a raspberry overbalances and – whump! The other fruits totter uncertainly across the stage. The effort of negotiating the costumes’ awkward angles neuters the children’s ferocity, and the actors stutter through their lines, surrounded by the thump of falling fruit students –

—Oh look, Cumbersnatch! There’s every kind of fruit here!

—We’re saved!

—Cut! Cut! Hang on a second, wasn’t there a mango before?

The piccolo – trill! A part of the stage becomes translucent – and there’s Pikkoro, curled up in a mango suit. She sighs, and rolls onto her rotund stomach. The fruit costumes even come with enlarged oval HarvestTime™ stickers. Pikkoro scratches at the edges of hers, but it’s stitched into the fabric.

That senior boy Kyo’s voice is strained.

—Sensei…are you sure about this plot direction?

For the thousandth time Pikkoro is poring over her little collection of facts – such as the truck that swerved around the corner near her home, the mango gleaming on the asphalt, the loveheart tree, those two silent men with their briefcases…and that infuriating slogan, It’s HarvestTime™. And for the thousandth time, Pikkoro thinks: Honey, something fishy is going on here.

—Once again! From the top!

Pikkoro scratches at the fake sticker on her side and puck! One of the stitches snaps. Pikkoro wriggles her finger under the hole and keeps on ripping – puck-puck-puck like subatomic fireworks – until the fake sticker peels off. It curls away like the lid of a sardine tin.

There, exposed to the grimy light of her hidey-hole, is a tiny black mystery nestled in the fabric, shaped like a jellybean. Pikkoro struggles to sit up, craning her neck. Yes, there it is – tight as a parasite, inseparable from the costume. It will not be prised away, not like the fake sticker.

Pikkoro decides that now’s the time for action. She wriggles like a caterpillar shedding old skin, kicks free of her costume, and crawls away.

 

*                          *                         *

 

Later at home Tako and Pikkoro investigate the HarvestTime™ mango on the kitchen counter – large, innocuous, so deeply yellow that its fragrance is very nearly visible. Pikkoro itches off the It’s HarvestTime™ sticker. Denied sunlight, this part of the mango’s skin retains an oval lighter than the rest. Tako takes their sharpest knife to pare back the skin, opening a window to the mango’s flesh. It’s difficult to see but Pikkoro knows it’s there – she slides a square magnifying glass over the wound – a black spot, so small as to be mistaken for a fragment of seed. A flaw in the mango’s perfect design.

—Tako-sama.

—Yes?

—Was it bad of me to sneak away from the play like that?

Tako doesn’t reply right away. He floats to the sink and rinses the knife.

—You felt unsafe somehow, following the other children.

—I don’t like what’s happened to the drama teacher. It’s like he’s been brainwashed.

—Did the men try to brainwash anyone else?

—No. Well, I’m not sure.

Pikkoro sees the drama teacher again, dabbing his mouth with a white handkerchief.

—The fruit is poisoned.

—Poisoned?

—Or bugged.

—Bugged?

—Well, something isn’t right about it.

—Something isn’t right about the convenience of your discoveries.

—Hm?

—You found a mango on the road, and you were cast as the mango in the play. Isn’t that too much of a coincidence?

Pikkoro slumps down into the kitchen counter, pushes her face in her arms.

—I don’t know about that.

Tako extends a brown tentacle over Pikkoro’s shoulder and picks up the mango. He brings it closer to his small eyes, inspecting it like a jeweller.

—Tako-sama.

She reaches out, takes one of Tako’s spare arms in her hand.

—You have to help me.

 

*                          *                         *

 

The next day, Pikkoro sets off to school alone. She has packed light. All this business with HarvestTime™ has meant that she has not completed one stroke of her homework, but she is ready to take the penalty. She takes a moment to gaze at the slope leading to her school. Her eyebrows tip towards her nose in determination. She’s tight-fisted with it. She struggles up the hill.

She endures the roulette of the morning period, in which her teacher calls on a random student for the answer to each question of their night’s homework. One by one all the students around her are called upon, but somehow not her. It’s not even lunchtime and the day is already ringing with portent for young Pikkoro.

At eleven o’clock, after recess, the teacher says:

—Those participating in this semester’s play may attend their rehearsal session now. The rest of you have a reading period.

Pikkoro remains in her seat a little longer than the other students. She has come too far to falter now, but there’s no hint of fear in her eyes. She pushes back her seat.

In the auditorium, the older students help the younger ones put on their fruit costumes over their school uniforms. The drama teacher and the HarvestTime™ men oversee with grim faces.

—The mango girl.

—What about her?

—She isn’t here.

The drama teacher shrugs.

—They are third grade students. I am not responsible for their whereabouts.

The drama teacher is paring the skin from an orange with a small knife. The HarvestTime™ men watch him. Those thick curls falling. One of the men turns to the other:

—The girl will come.

Kyo stoops on one knee and picks up the unclaimed mango costume. The sticker must have been resewn overnight, for the costume is bright and unbroken. Kyo holds the costume as his eyes trawl the room in the manner of a cop late to the crime scene, clutching a thief’s calling card. The boy dressed as the raspberry practises walking. He takes bow-legged sumo steps.

One of the senior girls approaches the drama teacher.

—Sensei…would you like us to begin rehearsal now?

The drama teacher peels the final strip of skin from his orange.

—Please hold on for one minute. Not everyone is here.

One of the HarvestTime™ men flicks back his suit sleeve and consults his watch.

—Where is the mango girl?

Kyo frowns at the HarvestTime™ men and back at the mango costume. The drama teacher licks juice from his knuckles. He lifts the orange to his mouth. The raspberry boy has found a walking rhythm that his legs can tolerate – ichi, ni, ichi, ni, he chants – but then as he wobbles, throws out his arms for balance, he catches something in his unsteady gaze. He points:

—Octopus!

SHHIIIING! Pikkoro stands at the auditorium’s back entrance, hands on her hips. The octopus poncho seems to flare with borrowed light, and she raises a hand:

—Sensei! Don’t eat the fruit!

The drama teacher looks up. A bead of juice slides over his fist. All of a sudden Pikkoro’s right there next to him; she snatches the orange out of his hand. The students gasp. Pikkoro lifts the orange high and flings it hard onto the auditorium floor. Her foot comes down a second later.

SPLAT!

Pikkoro lifts her foot. The orange is a wet, juicy mess. The acid sizzles.

Everyone is silent. A girl in a banana suit begins to cry. The HarvestTime™ men fiddle with their neckties, push their glasses more firmly on their noses. The drama teacher clenches his teeth. He is shaking a little, trying to form syllables: k…k…k…

—What is the meaning of this?!

Pikkoro rests her foot back on the ground. It is unclear who precisely the drama teacher is addressing – Pikkoro, with her loose posture, seemingly satisfied that some great threat has been squashed into the auditorium floor, or the HarvestTime™ men, who are as rigid and inexpressive as the students’ cardboard stage scenery.

There’s a sound coming from outside – like bells, far off, growing louder and closer. The adults and senior students shift nervously, but the children, swiftly availing their memories of the current peculiar situation, light up. Wild understanding dawns in their eyes. The bells reach peak volume, echoing closer and closer, and then, visible through the window, Tako’s ice-cream truck pulls up at the auditorium’s outdoor entrance. The children lose themselves – they gallop to the doors, cheering, straining their arms through their fruit costumes as Tako announces through the loudspeaker of the ice-cream truck:

—Hello! Hello! Students of East Elementary School! Principal Matsumoto rewards you for your hard work today!

One of the children manages to wrestle open the doors and they all pour out, swarming Tako’s ice-cream truck.

—A free ice-cream for each student! A gift from Principal Matsumoto for your hard work today!

The senior students hardly know what to do, but the children aren’t questioning this ridiculous twist, grabbing ice-cream cones with eager hands. One of the senior girls exits the auditorium to find another teacher. Meanwhile, understanding is dawning for the drama teacher too, as he gazes tight-lipped at the pandemonium, at the squashed orange. At the HarvestTime™ men clutching their briefcases.

—W-What’s happening here? What happened to my students’ play? Why are all the children dressed as fruit?

And finally, darkly:

—Who authorised you to come to this school?

The HarvestTime™ men do not reply. One of them readjusts his necktie. They turn to Pikkoro, who is so small in this chaos, peeking out from her clever coral red octopus hood. One of the men twitches his lip – in disgust perhaps, or with smug inside knowledge. He steadies his glasses with two firm fingers. And then, the HarvestTime™ man intones:

—Pikkoro Sugimura.

For the first time, fear colours Pikkoro’s face – gentle as the broad, omniscient stroke of a paintbrush, darkening at the edges, expanding like water. Pikkoro asks:

—How did you know my name?

Tako senses trouble and climbs out of the ice-cream truck, while the drama teacher stands up. The teacher is smaller and older than the HarvestTime™ men but he looks incensed enough to take them both on. The senior students are still frozen in wide-eyed trauma. Everywhere, children are licking ice-cream.

THWACK!

One of the HarvestTime™ men swings his briefcase into the drama teacher’s stomach. Pikkoro cries out. The drama teacher stumbles. The HarvestTime™ men bolt for the exit. Their sensible shoes skid through orange pulp. They knock aside stray kids like a couple of harried fathers struggling to get out the door for work, dodge Tako and scramble into the ice-cream truck. They even snap on their seatbelts. The engine stutters into life and the truck speeds off, kids sprawling in its wake – and a bewildered Tako, his mint-striped ice-cream parlour hat askew.

Pikkoro screams:

—TAKO!!!

Transformation! Tako takes to the air with a powerful whoosh!, arms flaring, sinuously electric. They lock into place – two for the handle bars, two for each wheel – as his suckers shine like polished military brass, his eyes protract into headlights, and then everything’s on this relentless crescendo, crackling with guitars and snares and fluttering woodwinds and blinding triangles of light as Pikkoro jumps onto the seat formed by Tako’s webbing, grabs the handle bars, revs hard and speeds the hell out of the auditorium.

The ice-cream truck bumbles down the hill and Pikkoro and Tako hurtle after it; animated by momentum, the limp arms of Pikkoro’s poncho fly backwards like kite tails. It’s the kind of chase scene that has everything that could possibly be crammed into a chase scene – tight corners, screeching brakes, near-misses, ruffled civilians, blasted horns, dogs springing free of their leashes and barking ecstatically into the street. The vehicles successfully clear, in white-knuckled sequence, a pedestrian crossing, two red lights, a speeding train, a clamouring boomgate, and, for the climax, a rising toll bridge. The ice-cream truck makes the leap – the giant novelty cone cracks away from the roof and plummets into the river. SPLASH! Trumpets groan. The drums fumble while the truck crunches onto the road and skids back into action. Tako leaps after the truck, and for a moment, Pikkoro, hanging only by the handle bars, feels her poncho parachuting open, the arms streamlined perfectly for flight. Red-cheeked, lightning-eyed; so far away from school, home, the ground – Pikkoro has never been so precariously alive.

 

*                          *                         *

 

They chase the truck through the countryside until they arrive at the HarvestTime™ headquarters, monolithic as the orbiting fruit in their TV commercials. A part-silo, part-Ministry of Dystopic Fiction type of deal. The ice-cream truck zips through an entrance which appears like a glitch in the building’s armoured exterior. Pikkoro and Tako plunge into the darkness after it. The ice-cream truck brakes, squeals in a circle; Tako whiplashes out of his motorcycle form and Pikkoro jumps off. She lands on her feet.

The two HarvestTime™ men slither out of the truck and slam the doors. It is so dark in here: the light at Pikkoro’s back fails to clarify the dimensions of the room. A flourescent lamp snaps on overhead; then another, and another, springing like hunting snares. Exposing in their painful light: smooth sloping walls. Inert conveyor belts. Pronged beams. Vertical labyrinths of ladders.

Pikkoro steps backwards into Tako’s arms.

A regal woman with silver hair is poised on a gangplank that overlooks the room. Her fringe obscures her eyes. Her voice is soft but paradoxically resonant.

—Pikkoro Sugimura. What a surprise to see you.

Pikkoro withholds a gasp. Her eyes are shining, lacquered with tears, but it is critical that she does not cry. Tako is perfectly still. The two HarvestTime™ men are so unnoticeable that they may as well disappear between frames.

The silver-haired lady spreads her hand.

—Or maybe it is not such a surprise. You are, after all, highly talented.

Pikkoro allows herself only a few seconds to shiver.

—What do you mean?

The lady’s lips curl into a smile.

—You are special, Pikkoro Sugimura. The other children are not like you. They will never be like you. Not one of them would pick the mango from the road, would question the play, would peel back the sticker. Even for a puzzle of such low difficulty, of such relative transparency to the outside observer – the other children would struggle to perceive even half of what you perceived instantly.

Pikkoro tightens her face. She tries to keep it in, but a tear finally escapes her eye. She bunches her fists.

—No! No, I don’t understand! Why did they come to my school? Why did they change the play? Why did they make us wear those stupid costumes?!

For a moment the lady stops smiling, and Pikkoro shrinks like a child denied a reward. The same fallen face that Pikkoro holds as she marks her mathematics homework with a red cross. That old, large sadness. She lowers her eyes.

The lady, as if with some renewed awareness of Pikkoro – so small, earnest, her octopus poncho hanging so dearly to her little shoulders – offers a different sort of smile.

—Sweet child.

And then:

—You will grow old so beautifully.

Tako shifts his weight. He remains silent, as if speaking would be a trespass. Pikkoro, with her clenched fists, tremoring with indignity and anger and foreboding which exceeds anything she has felt before, must proceed alone.

—Explain it to me!

—Explain what to you, Pikkoro Sugimura?

—Just…explain everything! I don’t get it. What’s the point of all this? I…I don’t even know what questions to ask! I need you to explain what’s going on! And why. Why does it have to be?

The lady laughs. A feathery sound, motherly and infinitely patient.

—How apt, Pikkoro Sugimura. You astutely describe the central problem of existence. What is going on? Why does it have to be? What questions am I supposed to ask? What am I trying to understand? What does it even mean, to understand? Explain everything. Explain, explain.

Pikkoro becomes aware of the giant, open crates that surround them, piled high with silent fruit. Apples. Mangoes. Peaches. Each marked with the HarvestTime™ sticker, like white glossy eyes. The silver-haired lady continues:

—I think you will find, dear Pikkoro, that much of adulthood is dedicated to erasing the why of everything. It is the act – a game, we should say – of adhering to the rules without actually knowing them. Any question that the uninitiated might ask is, inevitably, the wrong question.

The silver-haired lady holds out her hand and unfurls it softly. A dull plum sits on her palm, one which also bears the HarvestTime™ sticker.

—Isn’t it strange, Pikkoro Sugimura? The complexity of these imaginary rules? Even this fruit, which pre-exists humanity, is the follower of rules. Its ancestors have been bred selectively, the pollen scraped from their bodies, the natural logic of their seed corrupted. This fruit does not know that its special genetic code is the intellectual property of this company. A receptacle for crucial data. It does not know that we have intervened. It simply adheres to the rules. As we all must.

The hand that holds the plum remains there, as if the lady is a statue at a shrine. The sticker gleams. Pikkoro seems to swell with something unspeakable; she can hardly breathe, can hardly stop her eyes from trembling with tears. But she must be brave. She must. She must take a new breath. She must ask the next question.

—What has all of this got to do with me?

The silver-haired lady lifts her lips.

A smile like a trapdoor.

—It’s harvest time.

And then Pikkoro is falling, a clean, slow movement – propelled by another’s momentum, unforgiving as gravity. Her eyelids fold, and the limbs of her poncho, so utterly unrelated to her whole, descend separately, splaying like outstretched fingers, scattering from her perfect fall.

Tako catches her before she can hit the ground. He enfolds Pikkoro in his many arms. And then, Tako turns into a helicopter, bursts out of the HarvestTime™ headquarters, away from the invisible gaze of the silver-haired lady – flies Pikkoro over the countryside and across the river, four blades perforating the baffled sky. Humming like a heartbeat.

 

*                          *                         *

 

What does Pikkoro see during her moment of unconsciousness? Does she tumble like Alice through red crosses, eraser shavings, corrective ink? Does her unfinished homework loom around her, large as blimps, fattening with importance? Sly pterodactyls of long division? Gap-toothed comprehension tests? Perhaps she sees newspaper headlines, or white oval stickers, a tree of lovehearts. Perhaps fruit orbits her body, rotating on their secret axes, their unfathomable formulae. Perhaps she sees, again, the silver-haired lady’s smile, disembodied, a terrifying omniscience.

Perhaps she understands that this is merely the first episode of many to come. That she has embarked on a steep trajectory of self-discovery, and her progress is witnessed by more worlds than one.

Or perhaps, with rare benevolence, the universe grants young Pikkoro a moment of respite, sparing her the burden of thought – and she sees nothing at all.

And so, after receiving whatever insights darkness might offer, Pikkoro reawakens at nighttime, in her home, in her soft and colourless bedroom. Tako is sitting next to her bed, reading Seeds of Time beneath a dim lamp. Pikkoro’s octopus poncho hangs over the back of her chair like a sleeping child slung over her father’s shoulder.

Pikkoro sighs – a sigh of safety – and Tako lifts his eyes from his novel. When their eyes meet, they feel keenly the insufficiency of words, so they resist the blunt intrusion of language. Pikkoro rolls over, holds Tako’s closest arm, and together, they fall asleep.

 

*                          *                         *

 

When the morning comes, Pikkoro is dressed for school. Her bag is gridlocked with books, and there are clean white socks on her feet. Tako and Pikkoro stand at the entrance to their home, contemplating a sky which holds no clues.

—Are you sure you want to go to school today?

—Yes. I need to see if things are back to normal.

Pikkoro’s eyes are cleaner and sharper than the sky. She says:

—I’m not scared.

Tako gazes out over the town, at the trim rows of apartments and traffic lights and dotted white lines. In the far distance is the bridge they flew over yesterday – and further out, invisible, the HarvestTime™ headquarters, the silver-haired lady.

Pikkoro says:

—I’m so sorry about your ice-cream truck.

—It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you are safe, Pikkoro-chan.

—What are you going to do now?

—I’m sure I will find something else to do. It doesn’t worry me at all.

Pikkoro looks up at Tako. She encircles him, the best she can, with her small arms. Tako leans close to her.

—Take care, Pikkoro.

With that, Pikkoro sets off to school. She hoists her schoolbag high onto her back and walks down the grey staircase, slips through the apartment gate, patters across the sidewalk. She waits for the green man and crosses the road under his bright approval. She stops at the bottom of the hill, clutching the straps of her bag. She looks up at her school. A flock of birds trawls the sky like a fishing net.

At home, Tako carries a cup of tea from the kitchen and takes his seat at the table. With his peaceful arms, moving in elegant concurrence, Tako rests his cup on the placemat, stirs the water with a spoon, and leafs through the employment section of the newspaper. His sapient eyes study the entries. Outside, early-morning sounds float on the air – drowsy, inseparable, overlapping like tongue-twisters. Bicyclist. Cicada. Bicyclist. Cicada.

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Elizabeth Tan is undertaking a Creative Writing PhD at Curtin. Her work has appeared in Voiceworks, dotdotdash, Epilogue, Verge and The Sleepers Almanac No. 8. Her webcomic can be found at et-maispourquoi.blogspot.com

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This piece is from our just-launched Perth-themed issue. To get your hands on a copy, which has just so many great pieces of writing and artwork inside it, go here.

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Tristan Fidler: writes and draws. His published zine: I Am Still In Yesterday’s Clothes. His comics about Perth icons: Zine Wolf and The Gulls. His further adventures: arichtapestry.tumblr.com

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This piece is from our just-launched Perth-themed issue. To get your hands on a copy, which has just so many great pieces of writing and artwork inside it, go here.

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Andrei Buters is a cartoonist, journalist and creator of the graphic novel ‘Dead by Thirty.’ He is currently illustrating the second book in the trilogy.

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This piece is from our just-launched Perth-themed issue. To get your hands on a copy, which has just so many great pieces of writing and artwork inside it, go here!

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The Sichuan Compromise

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by Samuel M. Lieblich

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When I first decided to coin the now famous phrase “Sichuan compromise”, I certainly didn’t intend it to assume the meaning currently understood. I had intended, as would most, to invent a term that described a concept common enough that it entered life daily but not so common that the term became meaningless. I also wanted the concept to already have a number of apt descriptors so that the ‘Sichuan compromise’ described that same concept but with a particular nuance. In that way, the phrase would never go unrecognised. He who decided to use the ‘Sichuan compromise’ as the general model of his more specific problem was choosing a syntactic flamboyance and also attaching some of the history of the term to his person. My last such attempts ended predictably, when in Year 7 I tried to bring the term ‘strung’ into general discourse as a replacement for the word ‘cool’ but found the canon already too full with similar universal-affirmatives. It’s also possible that because Daniel Bretschneider had a competing term in ‘sack’ that these two terms, intended for the same purpose, collided in a sort of one-step-out-of-phase alliterative cancellation. Neither term was able to hold in the Year 7 classes, let alone spread up or down grades. It would have been something to achieve the up-grade and, in some ways, my life has been a Sichuan compromise since that disappointment.

The ‘Sichuan compromise’, however, was different, or at least I intended it to be different. Firstly, it had compelling imagery. Such Far Eastern archetypes as the sailing junk or the opium-den whore, all rolled into a term you can use for so many various occurrences, tied together with a nuanced general theme. I invoked the province of Sichuan, and this is the only time that I will admit the whole story, because the original compromise involved a restaurant in Melbourne’s China Town, namely ‘Sichuan Palace’, a place famed for its spicy foods. I had in me the general idea that in English transliteration, ‘Szechuan’ was the accepted form. However I now realise, by dietary implication alone, that ‘Sichuan’ is the more genuine. Inasmuch as the region is famed for spicy food, the Z in Sichuan is just like the X in Espresso.

Capsaicin and I have a long history that begins with my father, who always ate more chilli than was wise, and sort of ends at a resolution to never again eat the spicy vegetable. That resolution itself would have been considered a Sichuan compromise the week before I made it, and seeing as the resolution never held, it certainly was one. I had been training in Melbourne for six months, eating the spiciest things I could find, so that I would be ready for the spiciest burger in the world when I flew home to Perth. The burger was produced by an insane Viet named Minh Van, at the previously unassuming Bayley street fish and chips shop in Dianella. I’d visited there as a child, I think Minh’s parents might have run it at that stage, but since Minh took over it hadn’t really been a place of happy memories. Minh is actually a well-trained chef, and before he took over the fish and chips shop, was working at the Hyatt. I feel, based on the stuff he usually brings to conversation, that he must have been a very good chef to keep his job. Minh as I understand him is a madman. He is a genius, in accordance with the saying “talent does what it can, genius does what it must”. He seems to want two things; success at business and sexual mastery, entwined as they are for all of us. To those ends, there are many out there who would plan a reasonably assured path to financial security and maybe get out and meet people. Starting a proven franchise of some sort, and learning croquet or tennis let’s say. Minh, though, is a dreamer, it’s clear to me he doesn’t really want a tennis wife, or to run a Subway. He more wants to cook and eat supermodels whilst literally eviscerating his customers. He in fact approaches full exposure of his unconscious desires in the product of his “Aussie Beach Girl Burger” which includes 10KG of beef, 5 whole lettuces, 35 eggs, a lot of bacon, a lot of tomatoes, 4 litres of sea-water, and an actual woman. I did, as you would have wanted me to, ask the pertinent questions: Has it been ordered? What do you mean by ‘real Aussie beach girl’? He answered, as you would imagine, “It hasn’t been ordered. But I have a particular girl in mind.”

Scovilles are the unit of perceived heat for capsaicin containing foods. The average jalapeno is around 1000 Scoville units, the burger I intended to eat in less than eleven minutes was around 1kg of 3 million Scoville unit death-sandwich. The malevolent professor of spicy burgers had manufactured it such that there was absolutely no escape. He minced the patty with dried Bhut Jolokia, also known as ‘the ghost chilli’ for reasons now obvious. The patty was drenched in a sauce known as ‘Blair’s 3am Reserve’, which had on it a skull and crossbones motif and a large fluorescent label that read ‘Warning this is not a food ingredient’. The sauce itself had to be tracked down via the internet and only with the right connections. Though I myself managed to get hold of some in Melbourne at a 1950s style American diner run by a crazy yank called Misty who herself made a famously spicy dish known as ‘Death Wings’. These wings constituted the bulk of my training for the Burger, along with the use of the ‘3am Reserve’ in almost everything I ate for 4 months. I did not intend to fail. I began my training in February and by May I couldn’t eat anything unless it was spicily inedible to normal humans, I couldn’t taste anything but chilli all day and I often had to have a sleep after a meal because of the intense exertion and the huge release of chilli-endorphins which followed. Eating very spicy chilli is literally the physiologic equivalent of injecting morphine into your brain via your tongue. Ask anybody who is chilli addicted. It’s not the same as chocolate ‘addiction’, though its psychic origins may be similar.

Minh also used a cheese-melt which incorporated a sauce known as ‘ultra-death’ and was by far the most edible ingredient in the burger. The patty was five centimetres high and constructed like an envelope. The outer patty, through which was ground the ghost chilli, was wrapped around a few whole chillis and a few slices of cheese. When you bite into the burger this whole concoction drips over your face and fingers and renders you paralysed. Before you mentally underplay the significance of having this sauce on your face and hands, remember that the burger as a whole was 1,000 times spicier than the pepper-spray used by cops to subdue overcooked meth addicts (also mostly in Dianella) and parts of the burger were 10,000 times hotter still. I had seen people tricked by this before.  Minh really was a genius, there was only one way to eat the whole burger without needing a full decontamination bath; knife and fork. An option neglected by most of the challengers because it didn’t seem as masculine as the alternative two-handed face-stuffing. There was nothing masculine about those same face-stuffers as they ran crying to the bathroom to regurgitate their first bite. Most of them lay on the tiles recovering for a while before their mates carried them home. They universally learnt not to touch their face or cock for weeks afterwards and many developing sexual relationships were soured by the negative Pavlovian conditioning associated with even the slightest caress. Months of preparation and a comprehensive game-day strategy is the only way to conquer the one true Burger.

My plan on the day was to line my stomach with bread and dairy products, take an overdose of powerful antacids, take some anti-nausea medication, chew a packet of Mylanta and I had been hoping to get my hands on some activated charcoal which never materialised. I had been taunting Minh on the internet for weeks. Four days before game day I walked into the shop and swallowed a whole ghost chilli just to psych him out. A clever man would have remembered that experience before he endeavoured to eat 20 ghost-chillies stuffed into a burger the size of a cow’s head, in one sitting, in less than 11 minutes.  A cleverer man. However, once I had determined to eat the Burger, there could be no backing-down, this would not be a Sichuan compromise.

When I arrived at the restaurant at around eleven in the morning Minh was already cooking the Burger. It was impossible to breathe in the kitchen while he grilled the patty so he wore a full-face respirator. I was not afraid. I sat in the chair reserved for challengers and Minh had me sign a waiver absolving him of any duty of care and accepting that I was about to eat something not meant to be eaten. I don’t think a lawyer had really combed through the pencil-drawn contract that read something like “I eat this burger with knowledge I may be harm or die even and also no blame Minh or establishment”. Minh also gave me the roll call of previous challengers to review. A few names were familiar, but most striking were the statistics. There had been 48 challengers, names written in black were failures, names written in red had succeeded. I saw four names in red. Minh also had a book in which all challengers were encouraged to leave a note concerning their experience. Choice extracts included: “My face is on fire, I think I’m going to die”, “I have never vomited like that before, it felt like hot coals coming out of my nose”, “They laughed at me in the emergency department”, “This was a mistake” and, my favourite, “It tastes like pain”. The four triumphant messages were never as exuberant as I imagined I might be after finishing the burger. The first guy to have ever eaten the burger wrote, “Just finished the Burger. Won’t do that again,” and his successor, “Ate the whole thing. Vomited. Was it worth it?”. I remained optimistic.

By the time Minh brought the Burger out, I had drunk a whole McDonald’s thickshake and eaten half a loaf of bread. I had two bottles of mineral water by my side. The common understanding that water makes it worse is based on the fact that water washes the capsaicin off your tongue and around your mouth. But when you have capsaicin all over your mouth already, you can only gain from aqueous dilution. Horses for courses. A crowd of around ten men and one woman had gathered around my table, most of his patrons knew what happened when people ate this meal, and my brother had the camcorder rolling. My father stood nearby cheering me on, behaviour he regretted in retrospect when he realised how close his first-born son had come to serious harm. As Minh rolled the burger out the crowd stood back a step, he placed it in front of me and then stood back himself, ready to time the attempt with the stopwatch on his mobile phone. He took some ‘before’ photos and started a count. My life, since he said ‘3’ has been very different. I only have a few vivid snapshot memories of those seven minutes and four seconds during which I demolished the burger. I picked up the knife and fork and cut off a bite-sized piece. It was far too painful to be held in the mouth for more than 2 chews, I knew this from my experience with the death-wings. You have to maximise those chews, get it down to something that can be swallowed and then get it into your stomach for the gastric enzymes to work on. That strategy was all well and good, until I realised, halfway through the behemoth, that my stomach was definitely full. But I couldn’t stop. I remember the pain; I remember the pride of not having got any on my face. I remember the minor defeat when I passed the four minute mark and realised I wouldn’t break the record. I remember actually enjoying one bite. The only words I said during the attempt; “this is a tasty burger”. Nobody believed me, but I was sincere at the time. The last few bites were a formality. I sat back in my chair, red face, runny nose. My eyes were closed and, apparently, I was shaking violently. I was surprised that I didn’t need to vomit. The pain was subsiding. I was so cold. The primary problem at that time was that the world felt so cold. I also couldn’t stand up. I understood the lacklustre notes written by previous winners. The notoriety, the free burger, these seemed so trivial in the face of the overwhelming regret. What trick of masculinity so intoxicated me that I would poison myself with this inedible agent of pain? I was really quite angry at the parts of myself that had shown such disregard for the welfare of my whole being.

As I sat there shaking, two Maori men entered the shop. One would have weighed at least 200kg. People were still crowded around me and he asked what had happened. “He ate the world’s spiciest burger” somebody from the crowd said. He had that sort of, walked-out-of-the-bright-sun-into-a-slightly-darker-room daze to him over which unmistakeably crept an invigoration borne of the general sexualisation of any sort of competition where there is at least one woman present that was mixed with the winner-takes-all presence of Gina Rinehart on the television in the background. In that atmosphere It took his idiot mind about five seconds to convince his reasonable mind that he too could conquer the burger. I was happy somebody else was following me into a gastric Hades beyond compare. I slowly recovered as we waited for his burger. The crowd remained; they had already tasted the possibility of genuine bodily damage and were waiting for me to die, or for this new guy to hurt himself. I thought, just given his size, he might succeed. The guy could have eaten half the burger in one bite. But he was a fucking amateur. I’ve never seen anybody disrespect the Burger like him. He picked the thing up in two hands, sauce dripping all over him. He took one tentative bite, and even through his dark Kiwi melanin I could see the beetroot colour emerging. The frantic realisation in his eyes that he had been fooled, by himself, to eat this unknown quantity. The fear. He hoped the second bite might be better, it wasn’t. His third, he spat out. He reached over, shook my hand and ran to the bathroom. The Burger will destroy you if you are unprepared. Your id is scared of this Burger. Your worst childhood influences, your bad behaviour facilitators, they are all screaming ‘maybe you should think about this first’.

For me, the next 48 hours were characterised by unmitigated pain. The pain rose to a crescendo in the first four hours and then slowly regressed from an intolerable alternative to death to merely the worst pain I had ever experienced. I was so disabled by the pain that I could not rise from the floor to pack my bag to return home to Melbourne. By the time I was bodily lifted into the car and my bag packed for me, it was too late. I had endured a ride to and from the airport during which all I could do to tolerate my own existence was lie flat and groan. The next day, when I did finally make it to Melbourne, there was no question of my fitness for work. I couldn’t even speak properly.

Minh’s house is made of Sichuan compromise. He would rather dominate your guts than make money. He would rather eat a beautiful Australian girl than marry a homely one. His customers would rather be hurt for days than actually enjoy their meal, because the hurt is the achievement. That the burger comes for free is really just a secondary rationalisation. All the same people would be paying for the burger, it would still be a Sichuan compromise.

It was two months before I again ate anything resembling a capsicum. My friends, knowing how devoted to spicy food I was, took me to Sichuan Palace for my birthday. The food comes in a stew of dried chilli. It was such a feeble heat compared to the Burger that I had to be told by one of the waiters “you’re not meant to eat the chilli”. I now understood why Western society had triumphed over the province of Sichuan and all those other Chinese places. I enjoyed my meal at Sichuan Palace. I looked forward to another chance to dine at the Sichuan Palace.

You see, the original Sichuan compromise arises quite simply: The prospect of eating the burger, and finishing it, was the prospect of triumph. I thought, as some of you might right now, that it would be good to display my masculinity, and to do something other people are unable to do. That my name on the winners list would be an achievement worthy of the risks, which I underplayed in the typical fashion of a minor daredevil. However, as I hope I’ve conveyed, that was not the case. I am happy to have had the experience now, but only because it was a bad experience that didn’t harm me permanently, and taught me something. Not because I am now a recognised chilli champion or because of any such fantasy. That is the Sichuan compromise: That I wanted to do something great, I did it, and it wasn’t that great. It could also be the converse, that I wanted to do something great, that I didn’t do it, and it wasn’t great or anything similar.

How the whole thing got tied up with the province of Sichuan is just because of its association with the Sichuan Palace, and because the spiciness of the food there, along with a very minor problem of logistics, related it in my mind, in an abstract way, to exactly what had happened at Minh’s when I ate that burger. What happened was that one day, I called a friend and suggested to him that we eat at the Sichuan palace. He agreed in principle, but wanted to see a film that day, and would rather go to Sichuan Palace the next day. We agreed to instead eat at the Sichuan Palace the next day, and see the film that day. I thought, ‘What a stroke of luck, I’ll see a good film and I’ll still get to eat at Sichuan Palace in good company.’ We never ended up seeing the film that day, but by the time we’d realised we wouldn’t get there, we’d both already eaten. So we thought, why not do both tomorrow?

The next day when I woke, I decided I had too much work to do, and there was no way I could make time for both Sichuan Palace and the movie. There would have to be a compromise. I called my friend and told him “There shall have to be a compromise”. He said, “it’s only 6am, let’s discuss this later.” I said “Sure.”

I called later, and, having estimated the time required to complete only the most pressing tasks, realised I wouldn’t be able to leave the house for three weeks. I told my friend, “I won’t have time to do any of the things we planned to do today.” He said, “Shame, I suppose I’ll read a book”. That is the primal Sichuan compromise. Well, that and eating the burger.

When I first determined to generalise the event to a repeatable epithet, it was because I found a certain aural enjoyment in it, Sichuan compromise, a certain comic succinctness in the very existence of a general term for this reasonably specific occurrence, but also a relatively high frequency of such abortive events, sufficient to justify a Chinese-inflected-paradigm-definer. Of course, I intended to generalise the paradigm thus: A wants X, A fails to achieve X but arising from the failure of X is X plus Y, A finds X plus Y superior to X alone, but circumstances determine that A must eventually reject both X and Y. I used the term as frequently as the context allowed and explained it to all who heard it. They agreed it was a resonant term and one they might use in the future, but they were usually afraid of its comedy. Most thought it also perfectly described the situation wherein: A wants X, A is disallowed X, A realises X was a trap and is thankful. This paradigm had been previously described as a Reverse-Akbar. However, I agreed, it could be used for either, I was happy it caught on so easily. Many of the Chinese also found some locality-derived racist humour in it and many of the Sichuan-extracted Chinese residents of Melbourne either benefited or suffered, I had trouble knowing which. The fact that most, particularly the young, now use the phrase to represent the simple about-face, as in; A says X, A does Y, especially with respect to politics and business, is really just a Sichuan compromise.

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Sam Lieblich is a Perth-born doctor and writer living in Melbourne. He was a regular contributor to the now defunct blog TheSheetsAreImmaculate, and co-authored a chapter in the forthcoming book The Neuropsychiatry of Headache from Cambridge University Press.

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