Hello

Helloooo

Hellooooooooooooo

Can anyone hear me? No?

GOOD.

That’s the way I want it. I’m not writing this for anyone else but me.

Here I am, shouting into the abyss. Well, I’m typing into the abyss.

The abyss of the internet.

And I like it! It feels nice to have somewhere to roll up my thoughts and cast them into the vast blankness, like I’m throwing them dramatically into the vacuum of space.

ZIP
SCHLOCK
ZUP

That’s the vast, uncaring vacuum of space eating up my worries. Thanks, uncaring blank vacuum of space. Say hi to Einstein and Stephen Hawking for me.

Why the internet? A diary hidden around my room might be picked up by Pop during an overly enthusiastic spring-clean, or nested on by my cat Tugboat. Or worse, Mum might find it and try to have a Talk About Feelings with me. A diary left at school might be found by a teacher, trying to help out the Poor Widdle Sick Kid (PWSK).

It all ends the same.

Me being dragged, spitting and hissing, into the counsellor’s office for biscuits that taste like cardboard and watery sympathy, entirely dependent on how good the coffee was at the counsellor’s favourite cafe that morning.

NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH.

It’s much safer to say what I really think here without the minuscule possibility that anyone I know might read it. So, the ancient art form of forum posting it is.

Anyway, I love Jack Ruffian, so using their forum as a diary seems kinda cool. Retro. Gran used to be a bootlegger of their concerts in the nineties, following them all around Australia. That’s how I know about them. That’s how I know about ALL good music, actually. Gran had the best taste. She would have totally used this forum if she knew how to work a computer for anything besides looking at the BOM radar to check if it was okay for her to surf.

No one has posted here in eleven years?! I guess no one likes Jack Ruffian anymore, not since the lead singer changed his name to The Holy Cavoodle, dyed all of his body hair purple and decided that his music was the only method of communicating with extraterrestrial life. So, here I am, typing all my worries up on a dead forum because I’m too scared to write them out for real.

Besides, my fans might find this if I post somewhere else online that’s more alive. I don’t want them knowing about any of this yet.

Yet.

I don’t want anyone to guess who I am, so I’m not going to give away anything about me. Not my age, not my gender (or lack thereof), not anything. I just want to word vomit this all out so it doesn’t swirl around in my head like a surging, plunging vortex of worry, sucking me down further and further every time it circles.

Being anonymous is kind of awesome. For all you know, I could be the most interesting person you’ve ever met. And I assume, being the internet, that you’ve met pretty much everyone.

In that case, please observe the following facts:
I’m a rockstar
I’m a dirt-bike rider
I’m a dog lover
I’m going to become deaf
I’m a billionaire
I have purple armpit hair like The Holy Cavoodle.

Only one of those things is true. Not telling you which.

How do I sign this off without giving away my name?

Guess I’ll just use my username; that seems fitting. It’s a name I chose for myself. My secret superhero identity.

Shooting stars and peace signs,
THUNDERHEAD

Continue reading the extract here.

Buy a copy of Thunderhead here.