Time is a funny old thing. The passage of it can go unobserved, marking as it occasionally does no significant events. Seasons drift into one another, observing us little folk as we go about the daily tedium of paying bills, eating, lamenting singledom or yearning for romantic freedom, battling unemployment or hating our jobs, wake, eat, sleep, wake, eat, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat.
But there are moments in our lives when the passage of time becomes a remarkable thing; it acts as a benchmark for all that we are capable of doing and learning. We can change our lives with one small action, embark down a path that will forever set us apart from the future we thought had been laid out for us. Our decisions may be inconsequential to the majority of people who will never meet us - rather than stomping gallantly through the countryside, we take the kind of quiet steps that leave scant trace. We notice the peculiar markings on a misshapen leaf, or the particular way a creek chooses to flow downwards; our divergence from the path we thought we knew delivers us into wondrous lands and leads us to store in memory the scent of bluebells on a perfect summer's day.
Two months ago, 116 women strapped themselves into roller skates and began the steady and challenging process known throughout the roller derby community as Fresh Meat. To put this in context for non derby folk, 116 people is unprecedented. It's sort of like the equivalent of 3000 people applying for a handful of promotions within the Tax Office, or what my reaction will be if it turns out Erika Heynatz possesses some form of musical talent. (Although, if my suspicions about the latter are proven correct, I shall merely cry salty tears into my pillow over the woefully nepotistic state of the Modern Arts.)
Approximately 8 weeks later and 67 women fewer, we find ourselves just shy of testing to qualify for a spot in the Adelaide Roller Derby league. Through the excellent tutelage of some of the league's best, we've been trained to skate, stop, fall, block, push, push, push and go for broke.
Approximately 8 weeks later and 67 women fewer, we find ourselves just shy of testing to qualify for a spot in the Adelaide Roller Derby league. Through the excellent tutelage of some of the league's best, we've been trained to skate, stop, fall, block, push, push, push and go for broke.
Derby is tough. Our bruises have bruises. I don't think I've been able to feel my left butt cheek for the last four weeks. We've discovered that there *is* actually such a thing as the unintentional John Wayne gait.
But for all the pain and diabolically challenging tricks, I haven't met one league contender who isn't utterly obsessed with what we're doing. Time spent with my new derby gal pals is spent discussing the intricasies of derby. We talk tactics and equipment and revel in the punk aesthetic of the clothing. We train hard and often, both in mandatory and non mandatory sessions. The lovely Nae (potentially soon to be known as Potty Mouth, and surely one of the best best best skaters in the fresh meat group - y'all should see what the girl can do with a plie on skates..) skates every day, clocking at least 13 hours of hip thrusting, thigh burning, back breaking rollage a week.
Thirteen hours. That's more time than I spend mentally comparing the pros and cons of handsome bachelors I plan on crafting daydreams about - and I spend a LOT of time doing that because I am a) a fantasist and b) useless at real life flirting. This probably explains why my most consistently reliable method for accruing dates is through RSVP, resulting in the kinds of romantic interludes which involve men in boat shoes and fleece jumpers congratulating me on paying for my own meal, telling me that their best (female) friend is their 'only known intellectual equal' or sending me their Hot or Not profile by way of asking for a second outing.
But I digress.
The point is that derby teaches you to be tough. When you collapse in a heap because your skate has clicked someone else's wheels, or you take a corner too sharply, or you're simply not watching what you're doing, your pain and embarrassment isn't indulged. Unless you're seriously injured, you have to pick yourself up as fast as you can and keep on skating as if nothing's happened, while still trying to (legally) take down members of the opposing team. It's the kind of sport that saw my (admittedly rigid) grandmother fix me with a stern and disapproving look when she discovered it involved attempting to wipe out the opposition by bashing into them while grunting.
It contradicts everything society declares vital to femininity and womanhood while taking the aesthetic tropes of those values and turning them on their head. But, to contradict this a third time, its very nature celebrates the kind of cheeky sexuality women are expected to perform but not necessarily own. I don't know a single aspiring rollergirl who doesn't feel more attractive since training began - and it's not because the world has evaluated her and granted her a big red tick, but because she's evaluated herself and she feels like a freaking robo-babe on wheels. She knows what her body is capable of and how to manipulate it to pull off some pretty impressive moves. Empowering women (and I admit to hating that term, so appropriated has it become since Joe Francis decided to start using it as justification for his exploitative lowbrow porn operation - seriously, do you think a guy with a face like this knows anything about doing right by the ladies? Dude looks like Tom Cruise and John Travolta got together and decided to make a test tube baby out of their own DNA and the fundamental tenets of Scientology i.e. ridonkulism) isn't about giving the right to have Brazilian waxes or breast implants or kiss girls in front of boys so that the boys will know their a bit saucy and reductively hot and probably up for it. It comes from encouraging them to see themselves as whole entities, reliant not on others for validation but on themselves. When you become aware of the power of your body in a way that has nothing to do with how how others perceive it, the resulting rush is more intoxicating than any high I can imagine.
A very excellent friend of mine recently expressed (slight) disapproval at the idea of glorifying bruises. She argued that it was a way of celebrating the mutilation of the body, and competitively revelling in pain.
But I don't see showcasing the spoils of a war like roller derby as obscene in the slightest. A well splayed bruise isn't a sign of weakness here - it isn't something that someone has done to you because you aren't as powerful as they are, or the incidental evidence of a clumsy moment. These are the physical reminders that we have discovered a secret room inside ourselves whose door can never now be locked. They may not always be large and impressive, but they remain nonetheless, and the glorification of them has as much to do with marking their inner traces as it does their outer ones.
So check it. This guy came from four solid falls in one night. It was so black it forgot to even turn yellow or green and just scurried away one day.
Hi, Dad's kitchen!
I think my tattoo misses it. They were the same colour there for awhile. Poor, lonely tattoo. If only it too could pay for its own dinner, then it might enjoy some of the same flavour of condescencion I've grown so accustomed to. Sucks to be it, I guess. Stupid, inanimate tattoo with no money. Get a job!
PS My limbs and hands still have pad stink on them. That shit is potent. The stench resembles what I imagine Jon Gosselin's bachelor pad smells like. But to be fair, that could just be the sad odor of an absent father seemingly more interested in obnoxious 'fashion' than his own litter of test tube babies.
H.O.T Positive
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If you would like to contribute your own bruises and tales (and I sincerely hope that you do) please email me on bruiseyourownadventure AT gmail DOT com.
Tales and bruises welcomed from derby girls the world over!
Next post: How to win friends and influence people, derby style! With featured injury from my own derby wife, Union Jackal..
