Читать книгу The Gap Year(s) - Nathy Gaffney - Страница 4

When I split from my husband, I fell headlong into the arms of my friends, certain in the knowledge that they would cushion my fall.

One group of women in particular carried me not only through my divorce, but triumphantly into singledom. My core group of long-term girlfriends. We’ve been friends for over 25 years, having met in our 20s whilst living inLondon, with some of us knowing each other so far back as university and even high school. The rest of us werepicked up under a mirror ball at dance parties that were our stomping ground in the early 90s.

We partied together throughout the 90s, with only one of us pausing to have babies. The rest of us were too busybuilding ca- reers, travelling the world, and working out our shit. Partners and progeny came later, along with a modicum of restraint (no more Bloody Marys for breakfast!). Today, this core group of women, numbering abouttwelve, still make up my inner sanctum of besties. For close to thirty years now, we have been having a regulardinner we call “The Women’s Room”. It began when we were liv- ing in London in the early 90s. Back then – as we do now – we had many gay male friends with whom we lived, worked, travelled, and partied. At the time, there were a handful of clubs the boys frequented that had a ‘No Women’ policy. The Women’s Room be- gan as a tongue-in-cheek ‘girls only’ night, a time to get together and have an estrogen download.

Over the years, we’ve workshopped each other’s career op- portunities and challenges, taken delight in each other’s sexual conquests, counselled one another through sticky relationship moments, shared the latest wrinkle-busting, age-defying trends, and generally gossiped about anyone who wasn’t in the room.

In the early days, there was even an agenda that (surprisingly) was adhered to. We took minutes, which wererecapped at the top of the next gathering in case anyone had missed the last one and needed to be caught up. (This was pre-Facebook days, clearly.)

After about the 4th bottle of champagne though, it pretty much descended into up to a dozen women laughing, shrieking, and talk- ing over each other in a booze-soaked free-for-all until the wee hours of the night (and beyond). Time did not matter. We were young, strong, opinionated, unstoppable, and utterly fabulous.

The Women’s Room endures to this day. The regularity of the dinners has ebbed and flowed over the ensuing decades, but we commit to at least four get-togethers every year. Several years ago, we added ‘Women’s Room on theRun’ – weekends away and the odd offshore adventure. This was introduced as a much- needed periodical decompressor from partners and kids. We love each other fiercely. We’ve each walked our own paths in life, but our collective secondment of living in London in the early 90’s brought us together, and together we have stayed.

If you stick around long enough in this world, hopefully you’ll be lucky enough to have a group of people in your life that mean as much to you as these women mean to me.

The title for this book was born at one of these gatherings in November of 2011. Out at a new swanky JustinHemmes restau- rant in the Sydney CBD, we were already the loudest table in the place, with palpable enthusiasm in the air about my newfound freedom.

I was about to embark on an exciting adventure and everyone was along for the ride. After a long, unhappy separation, I was finally single. My ex-husband had finally moved out, custody ar- rangements were sorted, and I was free. Free from years of the misery and sadness of trying to keep my marriage alive and all the sobbing confessions my friends had seen me through… all of it was behind us. I had made it out alive and it was a time for celebration.

The conversation got straight to the point.

“Oh my god, all the sex you’ll be able to have!”

“Get back in the game, back on the bike!”

“Time to blast out the cobwebs!”

I was encouraged by the collective to embark on a sexual re- naissance. To cast off the shackles of my loveless, sexless mar- riage and go forth and multiply – or, well, to engage in the act of multiplying. Basically, to just go out and shag myself stupid.

They already had a man for the job, too (journalist, handsome, single, and quite a bit younger than me), as the ‘first cab off the rank’. He was known to all of us, and had (we all suspected) been waiting for the opportunity.

“He’ll be a great drought-buster,” Margot chortled.

I didn’t want to seem too excited, but who was I kidding? The thought of a sexual encounter fuelled by lust, desire, and long- ing rather than obligation, resentment, and dusty familiarity was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I feltlike a kid the night before Christmas. Barely unable to resist tearing down the stairs and ripping the wrapping off the presents under the tree, but panic- stricken that the very thing I’d been hoping for might not be there. The energy and sheer momentum of being released from my unhappy marriage had given me a renewed lustfor life. And I in-

tended to embrace that “lust” in every sense of the word.

At one point, my pal Sue leaned over to whisper loudly in my ear, “It’s the start of your gap year, honey… do us proud!”

It was during this gap year (which extended to four) that I en- countered a few other gaps.

This period of my life presented me with the cold hard reality of the ‘gaps’ in my own development, particularly in terms of my financial education and the fish slap in the face consequences of my learned (fiscal) helplessness.

I reflected on the gap (which eventually became an unbridge- able chasm) that had grown between me and my husband, and ultimately led to my decision to walk away from my fifteen-year marriage with a young child, no money, an ailing acting career, and what were at best sketchy mid-life career prospects.

I also spent considerable time looking back and taking stock of my life, from my childhood, teens, and twentieson all the way into my fifties. It occurred to me that, as much as I’d spent ‘do- ing’ in life – doing assignments, doing auditions, doing shows, doing my nails, doing drugs – I’d also spent a lot of time ‘being’… being single, being unemployed, being scared, being broke, being lonely. I’d had too many times when I’d felt like nothing good (or of any consequence) was going on.

And you’ll find out that the very last ‘gap’ in this tale come in the form of a relationship I found myself in with a man 20 years my junior. Cue: ‘Age Gap, much?’

So, this book is all about the gaps…

…what I’ve learned from them, and who I’ve become as a result. Okay. Ready?