Tamara Sheward - Your Mother Would Be Proud: True Tales of Mayhem and Misadventure

True Tales of
Mayhem & Misadventure

EDITED BY
T AMARA S HEWARD
& J ENNY V ALENTISH

Some names and details have been changed
to protect the innocent.

First published in 2009

Copyright Allen & Unwin 2009
Stories are copyright of individual authors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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ISBN 978 1 74175 650 0

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All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Riders on the Storm and Love Her Madly by Jim Morrison

Hal Leonard Corporation.

A Few Words Straight Up TAMARA SHEWARD
AND JENNY VALENTISH

Id Like to Thank the David Jones Makeup Counter
SARAH WILSON

How to Blackmail by the Stars YASMIN BOLAND
AND KELLY SURTEES

If your kids not in this book, then Mayoure doing all right!

Like all good ideas, this project was conceived at the pub. Having recently met, your editors were making up for lost time, racing through past indiscretions over chilli vodkas that were, sorry to report, not claim-backable at tax time.

In between recountings of public nudity, public idiocy and mother-bothering woefulness, we discovered that both of usat opposite ends of the worldhad written autobiographical tales entitled Confessions of a Smut Peddler, recounting our individual stints writing for stick mags and flogging marital aids.

We could fill a book! we guffawed, spilling valuable inspiration all over the table. Several wet ones later, we had a moment of clarity: if we, a couple of relatively normalish people had plenty of salacious tales to tell, imagine what we could dredge up from the freakishly talented and rightfully famous?

Despite us having a bout of the collywobbles (would anyone really come out publicly with stories theyve hidden from their loved onesand in some cases from themselvesfor no fiscal reward?), all of our contributors prostrated themselves enthusiastically for the cause: cracking open cans of worms left, right and centre, and flinging the squirmy bastards about with no pause for remorse. Occasionally we were sickened and appalledand at times we had to beg household names to tone it downbut throughout it all, we never stopped laughing. We bet you wont either.

Bravery, candour, knee-slapping goodness and all royalties going to worthy charity the Mirabel Foundation. Actually, Mum, if your kid is in this book, maybe you should be proud.

Tamara Sheward and Jenny Valentish

It all started with Cleo magazine. At fifteen, I bought the magazine every month, not because I gave a crap about sassy office-wear or sex tips for women in their twenties, but because looking at super-thin fashion models helped me stick to my near-starvation diet.

I had recently started at the local high school, having failed utterly at making the gradesocially or academicallyat the prestigious selective school Id attended for two years. At my old school, I was the fat girl who lost weight, turned into a slut and failed half her classes. At my new school, I was the hot girl who had left her previous school in mysterious circumstances. Some said Id been expelled for drinking in school hours; others had it on good authority that Id had to leave to escape my possessive older boyfriend. The kids in my year wouldnt have accepted the boring truthfailure and sadness and a desperate desire to make a new startany more than I would have shared it.

So, this one night, I was sitting up in bed in the granny flat that used to house my actual granny but which, since shed moved back to Queensland, had been gifted to me. I was flipping through the new Cleo, and smoking to quell the hunger pains and cover the smell of sausages drifting down from the house. I was annoyed because this months issue had a focus on mens style, which meant a good proportion of the fashion spreads were of thin men and therefore of no use to me at all.

I was about to give up and pull out my old copy of Womens Weekly with the feature article on anorexia when I saw him. There, in the top left-hand corner, taking up less than one eighth of the page but filling my vision and rocking my world, was a shirtless man in charcoal leather pants. Dark curls hung over his forehead and the look in his eyes made all my muscles contract.

Above the photo it said, Jim Morrison of the Doors. Below the photo it said: The only man who could get away with leather pants has been dead for years.

In the space of thirty seconds I went from being hungry to horny to a tragic figure whose only true love was dead.

Within a week, I was an expert on Jim Morrison and the Doors. Within a month, my flat was a shrine: Jim posters on every wall, Jims poetry books scattered across the floor and Jims voice coming from my tape-deck at every moment. I also bought a Doors live-in-concert video, but since I had to go to the house to watch it, I mostly just gazed longingly at the cover on which Jims hips were cocked at an angle that made me quite faint. Once a fortnight or so, my longing would become too painful and I would enter the house, nostrils squeezed shut against the smell of food, ears deaf to the questions of my parents and the taunts of my siblings. I sat ramrod straight and silent while watching the video, then the second it was finished, ran back to my bed to recover.

My new best friends, Suze and Fiona, were sceptical about my grieving widow act. Looking at the pictures on my wallsall of them topless, one of them featuring snail trail and a pelvic bonethe girls suggested that maybe this was just lust.

He is kind of sexy Suze offered, scrunching up her nose.

If you like dead guys, Fiona said.

Or old guys.

Or guys with long hair.

And weeds growing on their chest.

I was deeply offended. Jim was undeniably sexy. But that wasnt the point. The point was that this wasnt about sex. This was true, deep, committed love and I would prove it.