HIGH SCHOOL DAZE...(part 2).

1977 was a miserable year but also a good year for me.  At home my parents were constantly arguing and growing further and further apart.  Mum extended her working hours and Dad changed jobs, working for a transport company which kept him out till 8pm 5 nights a week.

On the weekends he absorbed himself totally in his new obsession.  Gambling on the horses.  Saturday mornings he would spend listening to the racing forecasts and studying the forms, totally oblivious to the rest of us.  Saturday afternoons he would spend at the TAB betting and generally losing.

I was left pretty much to my own devices.  I could spend the time with my friends, usually at Warwick's (who was no longer diddling me) with a host of neighbourhood boys. Friends from school became even closer and suddenly I was being invited to their houses with their mother's blessing.  The most surprising of all was the 'pool lady', Mrs C.  After my attack by the Morrisons she let her son who was my age meet me every afternoon to walk the dogs and often invited me around with him to play Atari or swim in the pool.

The neighbours in our street also had more time for me, often letting me hang out and chat and smoke with them - they were all mostly younger than my parents and definitely of the new generation.

I found my first boyfriend that year also.  I was well aware of my own sexuality by this stage.  While my friends all had posters of Evil Knievel  or sports cars on their walls, I had pictures of my TV heartthrobs....Scott Baio, Bobby Driessen and Leif Garret on my walls.

Billy was my age and lived in a house on the highway.  It was directly next to the long drive way which led to my back neighbours.  The driveway ran between two rented houses and led to a large field, totally private, hedged in by fences at the front and one side and bush on the other.

I often spent time just sitting there, away from the world or my parents arguing and one day after a particularly bad morning, in which I had copped a belting from my father for trying to intervene between them, I had escaped there and was sitting, smoking and quietly sobbing.  Suddenly a friendly voice from behind me said hello.  Before my eyes was the most beautiful boy I had seen. 

Billy's family had just emigrated from Italy.  He was my age, with a face like a cherub.  Dark hair, big brown eyes and beautiful olive skin.  His English wasn't great but it was enough for us to start talking.  Like all continentals he saw no wrong in putting his arm around me to comfort me.  This was to be the start of a beautiful friendship.  It wasn't long before we were meeting every afternoon and found a totally secluded spot in which to smoke, talk and eventually kiss.

It wasn't sex for some weeks, but it was love and romance.  I think we were both desperately lonely, he was an only child whose parents were working jobs day and night.  The sex eventually happened, slowly and naturally.  There was no furious fumbling or embarrassed fondling.  It was natural and beautiful....just like the romance movies I used to watch every Friday night with my mother on 'The Golden Years of Hollywood'.

3 months later his family moved and we never saw each other again.

At the end of the year my mother, totally embarrassed at having the whole town and school know about our family life and dramas made the disastrous decision to send me to a Catholic High School which was about 15 km from home.  She thought it would be the best thing for me and in her eyes it would take me away from the constant gossip of our neighbourhood and give me a better education.

How wrong she would be.  By this time I was finishing year 9 in high school.  I had great friends, none of whom cared about our situation, many were in the same or worse situations themselves.  Even the bullying had basically stopped.  One of my 3 bullies had even taken my aside early in the year, I thought to bash me as usual, but he quietly told me he was sorry about my sister and hoped I was alright!  I think he was he one to keep the other bullies from tormenting me.

Besides that I had joined the school drama group and was loving it.  Mixing with equally weird boys and some really cool teachers.  I had one year left before going on to be a senior, and in my school the continuation rate from Year 10 to Year 11 and 12 was only about 40%.  That would have meant I would be amongst the nicer boys, in smaller classes and have much more individual attention from teachers.

But no, mum wanted to send me to an elite school, where not only her snobbish friend's son attended but also one of the local neighbourhood boys.  It would become the worst year so far in my life......