Page 54 of Anything but Easy
It seemed that although Bunt Fest was all about love and acceptance and a peaceful (if slightly stoned) existence, that didn’t stop some of the attendees taking pics of Barclay and me and selling them to the media. Mark sent me a link to an article that morning entitled ‘Hippy Lucas’ True Colours Revealed’, with a picture showing Barclay receiving a second glitter blessing from the well-endowed Shirley. I was in the background laughing my arse off – unfortunately post-sliming, so my t-shirt was see-through and my bra was clearly on show. The pic with Barclay and his expensive suit covered in glitter made me smile, but that smile died as I read the article.
Barclay, described as a ‘secret lefty’ and ‘green crusader’, is now considered by some to be a liar, trying to trick the country into becoming a bunch of green-tea-drinking, pot-smoking . . .
(Unfortunately, they’d managed to get wind of the Bunt Fest Bong, which had been passed around throughout the day.)
. . .environmentalists without a care for industry or jobs, or the country as a whole.
The whole thing made my blood boil. And to make things worse, there were pics of us together. The main offender was taken just as the Ferret’s Testicles were about to start their performance. As the singers had picked up various tambourines and ukuleles, I’d whispered to him not to expect Guns ‘n’ Roses, and he’d pulled me into his side and thrown his head back to laugh. I was staring up at him like a lovesick puppy and the whole moment was captured on film. One of the biggest tabloids had been busy overnight and had dug up that I was a ‘sex doctor’. My crusade for both boys and girls to have the HPV vaccine was couched as some sort of obsession with genital warts (ok so maybe I was a little obsessed, but hello, a vaccine against cervical cancer and genital warts? What’s not to love about that?).
“I must say, I like that they’ve called me a sex doctor,” I told Henry, trying to look on the bright side. “It sounds so much more glam thanregistrar in Genito Urinary Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Like I might be in a fabulous LA clinic tutoring celebs in some sort of group therapy session on the best way to administer cunnilingus – all of us on yoga mats in an aromatherapy-oil-scented studio. Not like what my mum does, which is conducted in a community centre that doubles as a day centre for the local elderly population.”
Henry stared at me and blinked once. “You have a strange and vivid imagination, and an even stranger family,” he said. “Why haven’t I met your mother? She sounds even more bizarre than you, and that’s saying something.”
“Just cause someone doesn’t fit into your conventional norms does not mean they’re weird, loser.” Henry raised his eyebrows. “Well, okay. Even I can admit my mum is out-there in wacky town.”
“What’s your dad like?”
I sighed. “He works in insurance. I wouldn’t call him my dad. I’m sure he is a good dad to the two children he actually wanted, but to me, not so much.”
“Oh . . . shit, sorry Kira. I didn’t mean to –”
“Nah, it’s okay. I’m over it . . . kind of. And I had Libby’s parents growing up. Libby’s dad is as good a father figure as you could hope for and her mum is the opposite of mine. Our terraced houses were next door to each other. So if Mum was on one of her retreats or at a festival and hadn’t dragged me along, I’d stay with them. Mum was great, but there was a lot of craziness that came along with her. Still is. I had a rebellion as a teenager, which consisted of wearing button-down shirts and sensible shoes. That’s the reason I ended up doing medicine; I was so bloody studious at school I got all As in the sciences, and Libby had her heart set on it, so I thought, why not?”
“No more button-down shirts now though?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, when I realised that I wasn’t really sticking it to my mum like I thought I would be, and that my dad still had zero interest in me, I went back to my roots. Must be in the genes.”
“And you thought you’d treat sexually transmitted infections rather than encourage their spread?”
“Ha! Yeah, well, GU medicine tends to attract the less conventional peeps in medicine and I wanted something I could use to make an actual difference to the world. Infectious diseases and family planning are some of the best ways to do that, so I guess it was meant to be.”
“You want to save the world, just like my brother,” Henry said, tilting his head to the side. “You know, you two are actually more similar than I’d realised, I think.”
I snorted and shook my head but didn’t say anything more.
“And now you’re his own personal sex physician. Am I right?” He raised an eyebrow and winked at me.
“Well, Henry,” I said in a sing-song voice. “When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much, they sometimes go upstairs and have a special cuddle, where the daddy’s–”
“Argh!” Henry shouted, cutting me off and grimacing as he put his hands over his ears. “Stop, I donotneed to hear the gory details of my brother’s sex life.”
“Ugh, some people aresorepressed. You should be happy for him that he can do this thing with his tongue that–”
“La la la,” Henry sang loudly with his fingers in his ears. “La la – please don’t scar me permanently with any more traumatising information – la la la–”
“Okay, little bro,” I shouted above his singing, and he gingerly took his fingers out of his ears. “No more sex deets. I want to know about you anyway. I’ve shared–”
“Overshared.”
“Don’t be such a big girl’s blouse. I barely told you any of the good stuff.”
He put his hands over his ears again and I held my hands up. “Calm down, Clare Raynor” I said as I moved to the kettle and started filling it up. “Listen, how are you – really?”
He sighed. “I’m getting there.” He cleared his throat and shifted his feet. I bit my lips to stop myself speaking. “I went to the counsellor again yesterday. It’s . . . I’m getting there.”
“What about your old friends? You said on Tuesday that you were going to contact them this week.”
“Yeah, I did. Texted like a pussy at first. Just sort of a hi and sorry, blah, blah, blah.”
