Attention

His name was Ollie. The name invokes a childish nature into your perception of him. Ten years made up the gap between us; I thought it to be less, though only a few years, so it failed to suffocate my interest. I wish it were as innocent as that. I wish it stayed as interest. Ollie (oh god, I wish he’d gone by Oliver) had striking blue eyes, the kind you don’t want to like; he had strong forearms and a large, ugly, mermaid tattoo on his right rib cage, looking back it reminded me of my mother. 

From the second I saw him, I knew I wanted something to do with him. I wanted to have a footnote of Ollie. Maybe that’s where it got complicated -the very start- when I wanted to associate with him before knowing him. I walked slowly across the dusty earth outside The shed, the ground under me laden with tracks I could feel through my Birkenstocks. I swallowed my youth and looked over my shoulder, my ass knowingly perky in thick denim jeans. He held my gaze, and it felt like a pat on the back. 

At that time, I didn't know that I’d go on to work with Ollie. In the same shearing gang for two weeks before I went back to school. I can’t remember if I ever thought of him as a New Zealander; it feels wrong, but how would’ve I known before speaking to him? He had a strong English accent, not a posh one, one that would use words like “fam” and “bruv”. He smoked hand-rolled, but in the middle of a run, he held a vape in his mouth with his teeth while changing the comb with both hands. He was truly so British; It was novel. One thing I cannot stress enough is that I am not a farm girl. Even then, I didn’t think of myself as that; hell, I was using the money I made to complete a student exchange trip in Sweden. That’s what I was there for, money. When the going got tough, I would estimate my earnings that day in my head so my legs wouldn’t buckle. 

Our days started at five and ended at five that night. Working in two hours, flat-out stretches. When breakfast, lunch and dinner were laid down, we were silent with the exception of cutlery knocking against our plastic plates. You talked as you finished your kai and did it quietly so as not to ruin the peace in the gang's silence.  I liked holding my cup close to my face, letting the steam tickle my eyelashes. I looked out at whatever window I faced that day. Ollie, who often sat to my left, once or twice tried to see what I was looking at, but saw nothing but sheep and trees. I did it to let my eyes rest, I wrote sentences in my head. Centring around something probably involving sheep or Ollie. Equally exciting topics to someone who wasn’t me. I would sit and pick and peel my fruit at morning and afternoon tea. Oranges and apricots, my tea brewing nearby. The guys passed their phones around with videos they thought were funny but usually weren’t, and figures were written down in the tally book. Things were done in a special way, and once you knew that way, you felt special. I wish it had been enough. 

I thought I had him so figured out. I over-intellectualised my experience to death and psychoanalysed a boy, a man, a guy let’s say, that I did not know. Though, credit where it’s due, my calculated guesses are never far off when it comes to psychology. Ollie noticed almost everything I did, he was loud- obnoxiously so, and always wanted nothing more than to be seen. I drew from these observations, that Ollie desires attention. He notices every move in the hope of someone just catching his eye. Attention? I thought, consider it done.  Sometimes before answering me he would smile and close his eyes, head bent, and would bring up a hand like he was preparing to teach me something. I knew he found pleasure when he knew more than me. When he wasn’t looking, I would roll my eyes. When he shut his eyes, it gave me enough time to guess what he would say next. I was almost never wrong.  From gentle eavesdropping and probing that lacked real purpose, I learnt what Ollie would do for attention, and this new thing, something that still felt foreign on my skin, admiration. Dropping another in hot water with the boss, joining any conversation ever, and sleeping with a nineteen-year-old who’d been in love with another man, a married one, for almost a year. Only when a clearer picture had been put in front of me, a more fucked up one, I realised that he and I have the same issues. After all, the way he played along with this gazing game was half his appeal. I wanted attention. Retrospectively, horrifying. Had I really used all my perceptiveness and intelligence, traits that are my strongest, to absorb and comprehend what is desired of me. I am a sell-out for the patriarchy. Ollie is just like me, but Ollie is a man, so Ollie got an Adhd diagnosis, adoring fans happy to watch the show, and is labelled with an extroverted, charismatic personality.  I get writing. 

I loaded expectations but not criteria onto the shoulders of our interactions. I settled for as much as I  could get, of whatever he was offering. It ranged from being made coffee while I read, to being offered tape for my blistering hands, to him quite literally telling me about his ex (the only time I let myself cry those two weeks) But I sat on my black sheets staring at the moth-eaten walls, reeling in the moments. The moments that made me feel chosen again and again. Intoxicatingly so. 

There was another boy, James. James was from England too. He was the first shearer I swept for and a cursed choice at that as he shore the difficult parts with the speed of lightning. James was funny, and I actually had great banter with him, far better than I ever had with Ollie. We teased each other endlessly, and once got into a screaming match over whether it was a hedgehog or a possum he’d swerved to miss. Sometimes he used this ridiculous made-up accent that made me scream with laughter. It’d be reasonable to wonder, why wasn’t my infatuation for James? I could say that I didn't feel it for him, or maybe that Ollie was more my type, but deep down, I know it was because James was a good person. And I knew that James wouldn't ever go for me. 

It is important to note that I was reading piles of books, currently a book of essays on capitalism and the patriarchy during this period. I was listening to various podcasts and interviews detailing the injustices women felt under the hand of men and how various systems need restructuring (code for abolishing) I wrote, practised affirmations and manifested daily. I was not technically uneducated on how much power Ollie had over me. I just forced myself to forget somewhere along the way. I thought that in pursuing Ollie, I was empowering myself. I, selfishly and wrongly thought of myself as above another girl my age. I believed that I was enlightened. I convinced myself that I was of the maturity of a twenty-five-year-old.  I thought I had fixed my hurt. 

I wonder every day how much of the mess was my fault, I asked for it, didn’t I? We both begged for attention. Though at the end of the day, I was two months over sixteen. But please, judge me without age in mind, lord knows I did. 

Interestingly I never wanted love from Ollie. I was deluded, but not masochistic with my emotions. I didn’t respect Ollie, I don't even think I especially liked him. An indifference lived adjacent to an infatuation. Perhaps it speaks to my narcissism, but I don't think so, more my deeply rooted longing for validation. My mother is a schoolteacher, and she said that in University, she had a lecturer who had told her 

“If a child is looking for attention, give it to them because chances are they're not getting it elsewhere.” I applied this mantra too widely.   

An inside joke Ollie and I shared started with him asking why I drank green tea. I said I liked it, a twisting of the truth (though I promise I'm a reliable narrator) as I liked that green tea promotes weight loss. But he had in his head that it was good for you. He casually asked what the book I was reading at that moment was about,  

“Cults. Mainly Californian religious ones.” He then said the most Ollie thing I've ever heard.

“Ah. I’d never do that.”

I looked up from the couch into the kitchen; he was facing the microwave with his back to me.

“Join a cult?” 

“Read a book.” 

And I just laughed. I didn’t let the shallowness of his statement sink in. I don't know if I was letting myself be as airy as him by laughing or if it was forced. He went on to ask why I read. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I think I said, “Because I like it” Ollie saw this as another write-off for my strange, healthy lifestyle. He sat down at a bench next to the dining table. He sat backwards on it, spinning around to face me. If the couch had been less sunken, our knees would have been touching. He asked me, “Why are you so healthy?” I chuckled, unsure; such a delicious feeling, predictability out the window. I probably said something close to my other answers, that I liked being healthy, that it made me feel good. I must have teased him for drinking seven thermoses of coffee a day (with sugar) and his little sleep as he claimed to go to bed at 11 with a four-thirty rise and probably said we couldn’t all live up to his example. Somehow we talked about age, a topic I think we expected the other to veer away from, but I wouldn’t back down. I expressed my disinterest in getting much older than 28. “It’s pretty much over after that; I’d be happy to get to 35 and then cap it, " I said, shrugging and joking about it. My fear of getting older is a fear of irrelevance, but I knew better than to attempt to explain this to him. Ollie chuckled and exclaimed

“Why on earth are you acting so healthy then!” 

I wish I’d said, “You’re right! Chuck the vape over!” Instead, I just laughed and agreed it didn’t make any sense. When I went to bed, Ollie had moved outside to paint pink glue over metal wheels and put sanding paper over them. I leaned against the door and watched for a moment, he was painting the glue on the pavement outside the door when the grass was right there. He was getting bright pink glue on the cement. Careless.  Ignorant? I swallowed my distaste. 

“Before I go to bed, do you have any more questions about why I’m so healthy?”

His head stayed bent over the wheel in his hands, but it dropped slightly as he laughed into his chest. I liked making him laugh, compared to the pat on the back, his gaze earned me, a laugh was a certificate of achievement.

“No, not at the moment, actually, Ivy.” 

Good job, you’ve got it, I thought. 

“Right, well, let me know if you think of any”, and then we said goodnight. I felt sexy. I felt powerful. And that’s what we were, healthy and unhealthy, two ends of a spectrum. Of course, none of this matters. Things change. I drink milky chai nowadays.

I flitted between feeling in control and spiralling. In the moments I felt things were moving too quickly, I could feel the attention leaking into my brain, I felt giddy; I felt drunk. Once or twice, he said something and the attention I thought I wanted made my cheeks burn and my tongue feel heavy; in an instant, I wanted it to be on anyone else. 

“I usually end up having a go at new rousies”, something inside me twinged, wanting to hate him in defence of my new peers. But how he said “usually” rattled around in my brain. Validation sang out at me. It wrapped around and enclosed me in its warmth and power. Guiltily safe. He othered me in that moment, and I knew it. But I wasn’t strong enough to shoot it down and give myself the validation I craved, instead, I was there, in that moment, relying on him. I swallowed my conscience and continued listening to what he was saying; it clawed at my throat as I forced it down. The desire to be special was stronger than any other desire I felt. 

However much power I thought I had, it often ceased to exist. My power was a creation of comfort; it lulled me into a sense of safety that has been denied my whole life. The moment I was born as a girl in this world, many things were promised to me, safety and power not. I wonder if I was the only one creating.  

My best memory of Ollie and I, was when we were in the van on our way to a new shed. Ollie sat in the seat in front of me. I was chewing on vegan lollies as we drove, and I nodded to the music James played. The sun was setting around us on a blue-skied day, and we drove along the coastline, but it wasn‘t the romantics that made the moment memorable; it was how hard I was laughing. He had “confiscated” my book and was joking around with me. I could tell he liked laughing with me, but I tried not to think about if the way he was commanding me, spoke to his view of me. Spoke to how he liked having power over me. Spoke to something more sinister. I tried to be as airy and nonchalant as him, looking no deeper than the surface. Ollie played with me like a child. It took weeks for me to realise that's just what I was. A child. 

I spoke to almost no one about what had happened. One friend I hurriedly told in the school library. Leaning on a bench and rocking absent-mindedly on my chair. A habitually childish mannerism. I finished my story and felt a little embarrassed but also grossly proud that I'd had an experience so bizarre. Near the end of my story, I must have repeated the phrase, “but like it’s not a big deal” five times. I finished with a-

“And it’s not like he used me or anything!” 

My friend looked at me for a moment, I thought she wouldn't say anything, but she did. 

“Even if…you know, even if, nothing physical happened, you’re allowed to feel used or even taken advantage of”

When my friend said this, I felt everything stop. I realised that Ollie evoked a lot of feelings in me. When he said, I was “going to mature in different ways”, or when he brushed his hands against mine under the guise of handing me things, or maybe when he squeezed my shoulders from behind while moving past me- I felt special. I felt chosen. But that feeling wears off. And I feel nothing but used. Not a new feeling, but just as stinging as the first time. I feel tainted. I feel tricked, I feel like a baby. I thought that being a creation of male desire would feel empowering; I feel empty.  I was the book containing a million ideas he didn't care to open. I was the cement ground covered in glue that wasn’t worth protection. I had let myself be defined as something as simple as another “new rousie”. To Ollie I was just a pair of eyes to watch him and a mouth that's most important function was to agree with him. To make him feel like a man. Ollie did not physically hurt me, nor did he say anything especially biting, and so to feel “used” would mean that I really was a needy, little brat who’d gotten carried away in her fantasies of attention from an older man. So that feeling was stripped of validation and value, it was ridiculed to no end. Discarded as a frivolous, childish, untruth. And I was the one doing it. Until my friend looked at me with her kind eyes and tight smile, the edges of her mouth curling with acceptance. I didn't know I had a right to this feeling. Ollie made me feel used. 

When I'm within the safety of my girls, I'm dramatic, I grin, I drag my feet and laugh personably loud. I am unsophisticated. Restrictionless. I am free. I like acting like a child because, in pursuit of guys like Ollie, I've spent my entire meticulously policed life, acting like a woman. Whatever they tell me that is. A child who is worried she isn’t enough of a sex symbol, too much of a fan girl, not smart enough, maybe too excited, a poor conversationalist, awfully plain, and worst of all, disgustingly needy. This is further than the male gaze, or, maybe it is the male gaze entirely. 

Ironically, this was the time I was ugliest. I gained beautiful muscle with all the exercise, but I never saw a speck of make up for two weeks and my pale, egg-shaped head had to get used to having my hair pulled back, always. Taking the irony further, I felt empowered. I wanted to be ugly, I wanted to be uglier. I spat down the porthole; I embraced the stench of lanolin, sheep shit and b.o. coming off of me because it united me, I yawned with my mouth uncovered, and I wore nothing but singlets, while my pit hair grew by the minute. I was dirty. I was high on endorphins. I was eating large meals, and I never felt guilty. Not even once. I had stories to tell and money to make. I ticked off milestones, like catching my first lamb. I learnt how to hold a broom without using my fucking hands. Despite all of the mind games I forced myself to play when performing for Ollie (for myself), I felt the fage of b-wool my numb ass perched on, the dirt under my fingernails, the lambs blood poorly mopped up all over the deck, and I felt separate from society. Special. Untainted. Far from pure, but with my dusty eyebrows, and joints that cried out, I felt closer to complete. Working in the shearing shed was one of the greatest times of my life. 

I wish it got to remain perfect in my memories; Ollie, just like he did to me, tainted it a little.