I hope I can play an instrument. This is actually one of my biggest regrets. I did play the clarinet in school, but my heart wasn't in it. By the end of two years, I had almost given up on playing it.
My teacher hated my sight-reading - it was no use. If you weren't some baby Mozart pulling symphonies out of your A-hole, they didn't care about you. My teacher was this nasty, fragile lady named Miss Horowitz.
When I couldn't get the scales right, she would get mad at me, and before every weekly lesson, she would quickly pop a Panadol before my class. But she would bring it right in front of me. I'm not joking. When I played, she would rub her temples. How is that supposed to boost your self-esteem? All they wanted was a genius, and if you were just average, then hell with you.
Finally, I did a piece from the opera Habanera. I nailed it at home. After a whole year of garbage, this music started to come together for me. But when I performed for Miss Horowitz, she stood there shrinking back as if every squeak from my clarinet was physically hurting her. It just killed me because I really wanted to show her I could do it. The next second, she opened the window in the middle of the performance, just howling. I was terrified for my life. When she leaned her head in, she clicked her pen, her hands covered in ink. I was like, “Well, that’s me done.”
I had been taking clarinet lessons every Tuesday, but I never went to class. Strangely, she always marked me as “gifted.” I spent half an hour hanging out with my friend Lettie in the girls' bathroom. I sat in a little stall with my clarinet case on my lap while she told me about the boys she was with as she smoked.
Sex scared me. It was this Catholic thing passed down from my mom. She never talked about sex. The sex scenes on TV made the whole family want to die. We all sat there frozen, barely breathing until it was over. The whole family would collectively separate, our souls heading in different directions toward the house. Then after a while, Dad would burp, which would loosen everyone up a bit, maybe enough to breathe a little and get back to our bodies.
I learned everything from Lettie.
She was absolutely a big pile of sexy facts. Almost like walking sex education. She was very straightforward about it. She loved getting into all the details. When she talked about this guy's woodpecker and that guy's woodpecker, I would sit there eating it all up.
It was always “woodpecker” - I loved that name because it always made me feel scared of a good guy. “Woodpecker” made him sound sweet, a little sad. I imagined his stutter and coldness, wearing a cheap cardigan. That’s the thing you feel sorry for. Lettie seemed to feel sorry for her woodpecker. Like they always tried their best but failed under this immense pressure. Afraid they wouldn’t measure up. Our job was to make them feel okay so they could bloom.
It was exactly what we had to do, help a whole generation believe in themselves, no matter how completely inadequate and useless they felt.
I loved being part of the whole growth process of the species. It was a two-way street. Overnight, we helped each other out of training wheels. I was just grateful to Lettie and her crazy sexual appetite and the teenage wisdom of ergot that she had, all of it on us, no one else.
I always wondered what Miss Horowitz did with her woodpecker when she was young, but I knew she would be frantically rubbing her temples and shouting. She would convince them they never hit the high notes of Carmen. Poor woodpecker. And they would never hit her high notes. I knew that.
I’m proud to have a few woodpeckers now (I’m not saying how many) whose names graduate in front of friends and family, graduating from the cock on the plasterboard, cock and penis. If I were the inspirational speaker at graduation, I think I would just say don’t be Miss Horowitz. Let everyone know you’re sure they’ll hit the high notes, then stand up and watch them.
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