I’ve got a cold. I’m not a very good invalid. Sickness — the sort that can’t be cured by whiskey — I normally give twenty four hours, before I assume myself cured. This cold has bedded me for three enraged and cough-cough mildly feverish days.
I went out into the world for the first time in 72 hours today. Went to Barkly Square/Sparkly Bear, bought fruit juice, and had my head rubbed at the Chinese massage place, one of those matter of fact, plastic chair, strange tinkle bang Mandarin music, five dollar places.
Just after I sat down, an old Italian woman came in and inserted herself into a chair next to me, and loudly instructed her skinny masseuse that she liked it “HARD, VERY HARD, VERY PAINFUL.”
As soon as he touched her she began to moan, orgasmically, to let out these sobbing, yelping cries, interspersed with pleas of “MORE, PLEASE… MORE, HARDER, PAINFUL, I LIKE PAINFUL… MORE HARDER, MORE HARDER, YES…”
The room quickly cleared as other patrons made a run for it, and my masseuse and I just sat there and watched as this woman shook and cried and pleaded while her mortified masseuse beat her up. Afterwards, flinging her head back, she said quietly: “Thank you. Was beautiful.” And left.
I’m obsessed with Divinyls at the moment. I finished reading Chrissy Amphlett’s autobiography the other day, Pleasure and Pain: My Life. It was as you’d expect it to be: knee deep in coke, drenched in booze, and a bit hazy on details. Over dinner with my father last week he told me that I’d been to a Divinyls concert when I was younger. I don’t remember, I said. Oh, he said, you were in your mother’s stomach. But you could hear, I know. It was loud.
I have to go back to bed now.
Ruby J. Murray 
Yes, your Dad was right. I was eight months pregnant with you when we all (you, me, JM) went to hear the Divinyls. JM insisted on catching them that night at Macy’s in South Yarra – a once-upon-a-time iconic venue – partly because once you were born he was worried we’d never get another chance to see any rock and roll, as per the apocalyptic attitude to parenting. You were outraged by the volume. I hung out in a distant room as far from the stage as I could get but you put up a fight, tattooing your protest on my belly. I’ll never forget our mutual relief (yours and mine) when I stood in Toorak Road and breathed a sigh of relief that we had escaped. You lay very still, then. Maybe it was just an early demonstration of willfulness.