IT TOOK A LITTLE time to untether myself from my relationship with Ben. There was the unavoidable and taxing division of belongings, the repeated conversations with friends and family explaining what had happened and, within that, the exhaustion of conveying the sentiment that it was sad but ultimately ‘we’re better off’.
It was an adjustment getting used to the foreign quiet at night-time in bed. No steady breath alongside me, no parallel body shifting its weight. I managed to swallow these developments, but the gradual change in tone between myself and Ben was a harsher reality. It was inevitable that we wouldn’t interact like the close partners we had been for most of our relationship. But for a little while after he left, our emails still began and were signed off with nicknames, and ‘x’. Then one day I opened my laptop and read an email from him that started with ‘Linda’ and ended with the business-like initial of his name. No kisses, no comfort. It was a purely logistical email and the civility was an ideal outcome for the end of any relationship. Zero malice—and yet it stung.
I turned to my work for distraction. My mother was, in some ways, correct. I was a good career girl. I threw myself into my radio job after the breakup. It provided friendship and stimulation, validation and purpose. I felt a daily physical connection to the passionate team I worked within, as well as an intangible bond to my audience.
And I cared more than I liked to admit about that weird bond. You could play a request, you could talk to a caller, or at the very least you were the voice they decided not to switch away from. I reached out to people by turning the microphone on, and sometimes they reached back. There was a direct textline to the on-air studio; a screen that automatically refreshed with live commentary from anyone who wanted to text in. Throughout the show, texts would steadily stream in from a sea of anonymous mobile numbers. I read relevant texts out on air; it was constant feedback in real time. For better or worse. Compliments or criticism. Part of the job.
It was a regular Tuesday evening and I was in the studio presenting my show, when I spotted a new text at the top of the screen.
Linda, you fucking suck.
Beautifully blunt, an uncreative insult. A few seconds later, another text popped up from the same mobile number.
Get off the air asian cunt.
They kept coming over the course of the night. Every few minutes. Among the general shoutouts, requests and enthused feedback on the music I was playing came assorted versions of Shut up bitch and You sound so fucking dumb Linda.
I should have ignored them (basic trolling etiquette 101), but they were getting to me. At first I laughed it off as I mentioned it to my producer. Her brow immediately furrowed. ‘No, Lindy! You’re not meant to be looking at those, I’m putting this arsehole in the rejected list. You okay?’
Putting a phone number in the rejected list meant their texts wouldn’t come through on the main feed anymore. But you could still click to the rejected list and see them, which I did frequently. I couldn’t help myself. Every time I played a song I would turn back to the rejected screen, wondering who this person was who hated me so passionately. I cringed whenever I turned my mic back on, smiling and talking as usual, but secretly wondering if maybe I should fuck off. I knew it was irrational, but the messages made me want to crawl into a fucking hole. How could a total stranger hate me that much?
The messages continued for a while until, one night, curiosity overcame me, and I typed the mobile number into a Facebook search.
Boom. A profile that was linked to the mobile number flashed onto the screen. The username was Gnarley Davidson. A chubby white man in his fifties, with a huge grey beard and a leering grin in his profile picture. I clicked through to his page. His cover photo was a blonde babe in a string bikini; huge tits and an arched back straddling a motorcycle. I had found my hater, and he looked like a mean old prick. Armed with that knowledge, I shouldn’t have cared about his opinion, but the truth was, I still did. Each curtly worded, bland insult made me feel small, like I wasn’t good enough. It was my job to ensure people enjoyed my company and it was definitely not my job to turn people off.
Gnarley continued texting in every night over the next few weeks, until eventually he stopped. By this time, my jaw had started hurting, a slight dull ache that I would notice in the mornings if I’d felt a little stressed the night before.
Months later, I was presenting the same evening program when I spied a lengthy message at the top of the text feed.
Hi Linda. You might not remember me, but a few months ago I gave you a really hard time. Not sure if you ever saw my texts, but I’m sorry to say I judged you and I said some mean things. I think you actually do a really good job. Well done.
I hastily pasted the number into Facebook. It was him. Gnarley Davidson. Same leering grin in the profile photo, same boobs in a bikini on a bike. I smiled like an idiot and read that text over and over again. A deep satisfaction oozed through me. I had won this stranger over; I had made him like me. I had pleased the arsehole prick. It may have been unreasonable, but I found it deeply gratifying.
Sitting in my father’s hairdressing salon a few weeks later, I noticed Dad stretching and massaging his fingers before picking up his scissors and holding them poised over my fringe. My hair grew quickly and would sway into my eyes every few weeks, so I would often visit his salon for a swift fringe trim.
‘Are your hands hurting?’ I asked.
‘No, no, just a little bit of arthritis coming on. Don’t worry h’about your papa!’ he joked back to me.
Dad had mentioned the arthritis in his hands before, but this was the first time I’d seen him struggling to use his scissors properly. I frowned slightly. I knew that being on his feet all day made him extra tired and achy because of his varicose veins, but he never wanted to talk about it. He took a spray bottle and splattered my fringe with water, then combed it out and started meticulously snipping.
‘Have you thought about working less? You don’t need to work full time anymore, Dad.’
‘Linda.’ He stopped cutting and looked at me in the mirror. ‘You don’t h’understand. These people, I been doing their ’air for twenty, even thirty years, some of them. They h’are not my clients, they h’are my friends. H’and you, h’and all the family, you all come to get your ’air done every couple a weeks. So I can’t pick and choose to turn some people h’away, because h’all of these a people rely on me. And I don’t want to be feeling guilty h’about it.’
He emphasised the word ‘guilty’. I mumbled an agreeable ‘mmm-hmm’ and tried not to move my head as the scissor’s slender blades made their way across my brow line. He continued, ‘And don’t forget, I started ’airdressing when I was ten years old. If I am not ’ere, what h’am I going to do? Retire? Sit around h’and die?’
I replied with a less agreeable ‘mmm-hmm’ and sighed, knowing that my father, who was well into his sixties and working full time, was nowhere near retiring. He had been plucked out of school early, after Nonna and Nonno decided to move from the small village of Mirabella Eclano in Italy to Sydney, Australia, in the mid-1960s. In search of a better life for their three sons, they were advised by a family friend that, instead of having the boys struggle at a new English-speaking school, the older boys should learn a useful trade so they could make a living in Australia. My father was delivered to the local hair salon, his older brother learned how to be a tradesman and the youngest son was able to stay in school and learn English properly. My father spent a couple of months at primary school, just long enough to understand that being called a ‘wog’ in the playground meant something bad. He would have loved to stay in school—he was always a fan of reading and writing. Even in later days, he wrote poetry on the backs of the envelopes his electricity bills came in and gave them to me.
I pictured him all those years ago as a ten-year-old boy, wearing the same outfit he wore to the salon every day now: a black t-shirt tucked into black trousers, with a black vest over the top; a short thick gold chain around his neck; gold rings on his fingers. His green almond-shaped eyes watching intently as he learned how to perm, cut and colour women’s hair instead of finishing primary school. I wanted to hug that child version of my dad.
But because he started working as a child, by the time he was in his mid-twenties he was running his own salon in Kings Cross—which was when he met Mum.
When my brother and I were growing up, Dad’s hairdressing salon became another home for us. By now, he’d swapped the Kings Cross city location for a large shopfront nearer our home. It may have been the suburbs, but it was colourful as ever, with a rotating lineup of regular clients. After school, we spent our afternoons on the big brown couch by the reception desk. We did our homework on the coffee table, neatly moving aside the magazines to fit our exercise books. On Saturdays, Dad would work on clients’ hair while Mum helped out alongside him. I answered the phone when it rang, and we used the huge broom to sweep up the piles of hair that gathered around the clients’ feet. Sam and I stood cramped in the cupboard-sized kitchenette eating bread rolls above the sink, and every so often we’d be allowed to venture to the chicken shop in the neighbouring strip mall to buy a small serving of hot chips. Sometimes we would visit clients at home on Sundays, and while Mum and Dad chatted, Sam and I wandered through houses that were much more opulent than ours.
Our entire family prided themselves on being hardworking and useful; I had never seen my dad take a sick day, ever. No Marigliano complained and no one was lazy. Who Dad was and what he did for a living seemed to overlap completely. Even when he was away from the salon, family friends and acquaintances would sing out, ‘Ah, Michael the hairdresser!’ and he would smile at them, ‘That’s me!’, his green eyes dancing.
Back in the salon, where Dad’s hands did not waver despite the pain his arthritis was causing him, my fringe was done. Dad stepped back to admire his work, and I recognised the look on his face—it was like looking in the mirror. A proud workhorse.
I was grateful to have a job to bounce into instead of wallowing after my breakup with Ben, but I had noticed the ache in my jaw was becoming more frequent. Still, it didn’t seem like anything to worry about. Dad had his sore hands, I had my sore jaw. We all had our troubles, but they were nothing to linger on.
I was living alone in the apartment Ben and I had shared, and when I got home from work that night I checked the mailbox, expecting my usual weekly delivery of advertisements despite the clear ‘No Junk Mail’ tag on the box. There was a pale pink envelope nestled among the real estate and plumbers’ ads. My name and address were handwritten on the front. I was immediately curious. I took it inside and sat on my bed looking at it. When I carefully tore the envelope open, the paper inside was the same soft shade of pink. A faint floral design bordered handwriting that I recognised straightaway. My shoulders sank as I read the words. It was a letter from Ben’s mum. We had been very close, but it had been months since the breakup and we hadn’t spoken at all. I had thought about her and Ben’s father a lot, and about the family I had stepped away from without saying goodbye. I had sent them Christmas cards but hadn’t heard anything back from them.
Her letter was heartbreaking. She had been deeply saddened to hear about my decision to leave the relationship. She wrote that they would never know why I did what I did. She had been upset and speechless for her son’s heartache, but she was also accepting and would always have love for me. I held those pages of graceful grief loosely in my hands, her soft running writing reminding me of the shopping lists on her fridge and the handwritten labels on jars of tea next to her kettle. I hadn’t yet really mourned the loss of the mother and father who had accepted me into their family for so many years. My eyes welled up as I read it over again, then I folded the letter neatly back into its envelope.
I took a deep breath in then let it out slowly, clenching my jaw tightly and willing the tears that had coated my eyes not to slide out. A single tear fought its way out of my right eye and down my cheek. Fucking rebel tear. Another deep breath and I slid my body from the bed and onto the floor in front of my wardrobe. I pulled open my underwear drawer and shoved the letter in towards the back, on top of the hidden pile of greeting cards. I moved my undies and bras back in place and shut the drawer. Out of sight.
The next day I headed to work with a bright outlook despite feeling incredibly tender. I almost enjoyed a stubborn sense of righteousness about ploughing on and forcing myself to be a positive person in a work environment that demanded energy and charm. I was proud that I didn’t complain or need a shoulder to cry on—I was fairly certain that faking a smile eventually made it a reality.
My work–life balance consisted of simple pleasures; the most non-negotiable was a solo stroll for coffee each day before starting work. The weather was warm the morning after I received the letter; I was drinking an iced long black coffee while meandering down the streets towards my office. I people-watched at the pedestrian crossing, noting a group of immaculately dressed uni students in designer outfits stomping past pigeons outside a KFC. I crunched on the ice and waited for the lights to change, and I thought about the letter. I might have tucked it away from sight in my drawer, but some of the lines I remembered word for word: We’ll never understand why you did it, but have come to accept that this is it. A wave of sadness and guilt rushed to my chest. But I didn’t have time for that shit, I was about to arrive at work. I looked up at the sky, pressing my teeth defiantly on the ice chunks in my mouth. I knew it was bad for your teeth but I did it anyway.
Until click.
My jaw locked into place. I stood stunned, not quite sure what had just happened. It felt like my jaw had been tightly screwed into position. It had been aching that morning, but this locking was a new sensation. Ever so slowly, I closed my mouth. Then, cautiously, I opened it, thinking I could push through where it had clenched. Surely this feeling was only going to last a couple of seconds. But once my jaw hit that locked point, which was a couple of centimetres wide, it stuck. Hard. It seemed utterly immovable. It was hurting more now that I was trying to push it open, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I had to wrench my jaw apart. I stood at the intersection while the lights changed and everyone around me crossed the street. I placed a couple of fingers on my bottom front teeth, trying to pull them downwards and prise my mouth open. I still had little dancer’s biceps after all these years, surely it was simply a matter of the right force at the right angle. But the pain was too much. It seared the right side of my jaw, through my head, towards my ear. I closed my mouth and stared straight ahead, trying not to panic. The pain eased up slightly when I wasn’t trying to push against the immovable point. I could manage it. I waited for the lights to change again. When they did, I crossed the road and went to work.
I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Even though it was painful, I could still talk and smile. No one noticed. I could pop a painkiller, tune out the pain and simply focus on my show. I was surprised at how animated I could still be as a presenter with such limited movement in my face. Only when I got off air and stopped pretending did I notice how much my jaw was throbbing. I went straight home, telling myself it would unlock naturally overnight—all I needed was a good night’s sleep.
But it did not unlock.
Each day for the next two weeks I worked without telling anyone of the increasing pain that my face was in. When my colleagues went to lunch, I would insist that I’d eaten earlier or that I was craving a big smoothie or a cosy soup. No one questioned my liquid diet. This is fine, I thought, proud of the boundaries I had created for myself. Unless I was on some sort of deathbed, I couldn’t imagine asking for time off. I didn’t want to explain my physical ailment, let alone how I suspected it had been brought on from being too emotional about my ex-boyfriend’s mum’s letter. I loved being seen as unflappable and reliable at work, and I truly believed that part of a good presenter’s skill set was to turn up no matter what, even with a little lockjaw.
It made me think about my dad, ‘Michael the hairdresser’, and his commitment to his clients, the people who relied on his consistent presence. I thought of my mum, who was constantly moving—cleaning, cooking, working, never sitting still. Growing up, Sam and I had chores to do each day: feather dusting, spray ’n’ wiping, vacuuming, sweeping outside. We weren’t allowed to complain or slack off. ‘You’re going to do it, Linda, and you’re going to do it with pleasure,’ Mum’s stern voice rang in my ears when I began to roll my eyes as a teenager.
The nights went on and my jaw remained locked in place. After extensive online searches I tried applying warm compresses and cold packs, but nothing worked. No amount of calm internal force would jut it open, hard as I tried. It would hit the locked point and then hurt too much to push through. So I kept drinking the smoothies and the coffees. One afternoon I chewed infinitely on a piece of mud cake for a colleague’s birthday, sliding soft bite-sized pieces through my mouth slit.
Eventually, my producer confronted me about my bizarre liquid diet, thinking that I was trying to lose weight. I explained that my jaw had locked in place but I told her that it wasn’t painful at all. I said it had happened before (another lie) and that it would fix itself in a couple of days. She accepted my bright assurance, thankful that I wasn’t on some twisted non-solids diet.
I was relieved when it got to Friday afternoon; I knew I could rest my jaw over the weekend. As much as I liked the purpose of turning up to work each day, it was getting harder to ignore the pain each night and, worst of all, my ears were plagued by a growing ringing, made worse by the loud music playing at work. The throbbing in my jaw had ballooned out into my ears; they had become extremely sensitive. My headphones in the studio felt heavy and tight, and I couldn’t wait to yank them off at the end of each show. My mouth had adjusted to its new limited range of motion by adopting a sort of gritted teeth position. I must have looked like a creepy ventriloquist doll as I stood talking each night but I was careful to keep the studio lights dimmed even more than usual so my producer could barely see me. I knew I simply had to get through this final show of the week, plus a DJ set at a club later that night, and then I could lie back in the quiet tranquillity of my bed.
By nine o’clock that Friday night the ringing in my ears became almost too much to bear. I pulled my cumbersome headphones off while a song was playing and left the studio, walking to the bathroom down the hall. I sat on the toilet, leaning forward on my legs, bracing myself to go back into the studio. Pain sliced across my face to my ears. Come on, Lindy, not long to go now, I cooed to myself. I had one more hour on air, and then I needed to prepare my DJ set and head to the club where I was playing at midnight. It would be fine.
I got back into the studio and continued my show. The minutes crept by. I spoke to a caller, though I could scarcely concentrate on what they were saying. I played songs as softly as I could, wincing whenever I turned my mic back on to speak. And then, finally, it was over. My producer went home as the last song was playing out. The now deserted office stared back at me as I exited the studio. My ears were ringing, jaw throbbing and tight; my entire face was exhausted. My head was a Dali painting; melting and rolling over into abstraction. Now that I wasn’t faking it for the audience, the pain set in. I sank into my chair at my desk.
Opening my laptop, I clicked on the music software application so I could start preparing my DJ set. As it fired up, I let out a great big fucking sob. As big a sob as I could collapse into, given my limited jaw movement. The thought of having to go to a nightclub, to DJ with headphones on, and to hear the normally comforting heartbeat of drums radiating from monumental speakers seemed impossible. I called the club’s promoter, Pat, who was also an old friend. I apologised profusely, explaining the pain in my jaw and my ears. I said perhaps I could play a shorter DJ set—just zip in and out of there. Tears ran down my cheeks. I was so sorry to leave him hanging. I could hear music in the background; he was at the club already. Pat replied bombastically, without skipping a beat, ‘Linda, fuck dude! Do NOT come to the club tonight. It’s all good, don’t worry, we got you! Frank can cover your set, you need to take care of yourself, man. Don’t be sorry and don’t come!’
I hung up and slammed my laptop shut, angry at myself for having to cancel, upset at how painful my jaw had become, and sick of eating shit soups and overpriced smoothies. I couldn’t keep going on like this. It wasn’t going to get better unless something changed. I couldn’t act like it was okay when, very clearly, it was not. I need help to fix this. I went home and crumpled into sleep.
The next day I went for a long walk along the beach. I stood looking at the water as I called my producer and manager, explaining that I would need a couple of days off. They were understanding and sympathetic. I called my brother, who was now an exercise physiologist, and after tutting at me for not looking after myself, Sam recommended his friend Tad, who was a jaw joint physiotherapist. Tad was able to squeeze me in that week to begin the painstaking physical therapy of slowly but surely prising my jaw open, one millimetre at a time.
He sat me in a chair opposite a full-length mirror so I could watch what he was doing to me and take note for the exercises I would need to do several times a day in between our sessions. I sat still, terrified, as Tad snapped on fresh latex gloves and proceeded to slide his hand into my mouth and cup my jaw from the inside. Holding the back of my head in his other hand, he worked with gentle strength to force my mouth open. It was painful, and painfully slow, but every session we opened my jaw a little further, despite my fear that he would suddenly decide to use a quicker, more brutal tactic and just crack my fucking chin off.
After a few weeks Tad was able to wrestle most of his hand between my teeth and almost pull my jaw back to its normal range of motion. My ears had stopped ringing, but my right ear was still blocked and the right side of my jaw clicked loudly every time I opened it past the original locking point, like a door with a slightly stuck hinge. Every day I stretched and manipulated it the way that Tad showed me. I put my own fingers into my mouth and inflicted pain for the greater good.
I had taken two days off after the nightmarish Friday night, but after that, I went back to work. I did my sessions with Tad before work and completed my exercises throughout the day. I followed every instruction he gave me, except the one about resting my jaw. But I had reached out when I needed help, my jaw and ears were slowly getting better, and presenting was beginning to feel normal again. No more ventriloquist-doll gritted teeth, just the loud clicking to remind me of what I’d been through.
A friend of mine once joked that lockjaw was usually the result of either cocaine abuse or unresolved anxiety issues, and since I didn’t enjoy nose dinner I took that as a subtle sign that perhaps I should seek a bit of emotional management. So I sought out the in-house psychologist at work, Kevin. He had white hair and looked older than my father. His thin ankles poked out from his trousers as he crossed his legs in the chair opposite me. Kevin said he’d been working with presenters and staff at my organisation for decades. I wondered if it was his business card I had been handed all those years before, when I quit to move to London. After explaining my lockjaw situation, and how I had been feeling stressed and upset lately, he prodded as to why I was so wound up.
‘Are you a perfectionist?’
I twisted my lips. ‘Umm, yes, I believe so.’
‘Are you a perfectionist because you like things to be in a certain order, or do you need things to be perfect because you think you’re going to disappoint someone if they aren’t?’
The memory of my mum’s face in the crowd at dancing concerts flashed into my brain. Then Ben’s mum’s handwriting on the soft pink paper.
‘It’s the second one. The disappointment one.’
I told Kevin how I had been feeling squished lately, how my work commitments seemed to bleed into one another and I spent a lot of time worrying about not doing a good enough job. I told him I was afraid to take time off if I needed it. Kevin said I needed to work on my anxiety, which he thought was undoubtedly the main trigger for my jaw locking up. Had I really been clenching my jaw that much? I supposed I had. He asked about the first day my jaw had seized up, and whether there may have been a specific emotional stress trigger. I couldn’t bring myself to divulge my recent breakup or the letter from Ben’s mum. I had given Kevin enough of my story for this session, I thought. I didn’t want him to think of me as some post-breakup emotional trainwreck; I preferred him to see me as a workaholic who needed stress management. He wheeled his chair towards his computer, thin ankles skittering across the floor, and emailed me some tools and apps I could use to centre my being. By the time I got home, my mind was clearer and calmer than it had been in days, so I didn’t bother reading his email or opening any of the articles he had sent me. I’m finding balance my own way, I told myself.
Kevin had also suggested regular exercise and meditation, so the next day I did exactly one yin yoga class. I walked into the darkened room and sat on one of the mats I assumed had been laid out for students. There was a putrid smell radiating from it and after sitting on it for several minutes I realised that it was a used mat from the class beforehand. I shuddered to think that my body had been lying against a stranger’s foulest pong but I was too embarrassed to move positions. Eventually, I gave in to my sheer exhaustion and woke myself up snoring towards the end of the class. Relaxation achieved.
Emerging from the yoga studio that afternoon, I felt smug. I had been through the ringer of exhaustion and pain and I was learning how to take back a bit of that calm control. From now on, if my jaw started hurting I knew I could simply perform the exercises Tad had taught me, and while I didn’t download any of Kevin’s anti-anxiety apps, his question about perfectionism buzzed around my mind—a tiny lightning bolt of an epiphany. The realisation that I had been ruled by guilt and fear of disappointment made me feel surprisingly clear-headed. I knew I couldn’t stop the perfectionism at work—that went against the grain of anyone’s work ethic, let alone someone with parents as dedicated as mine. But maybe I could try for a bit more work–life balance, so my fixation on not disappointing people was limited to a few hours each day.
Since the breakup with Ben, I’d thrown all my energy into work. I thought of the friends I was overdue to catch up with, whose texts had remained unanswered in my phone. I thought of the brown-haired boy I had spotted at one of my DJ sets recently. I wondered if I would be so lucky as to run into him again. I thought of my dad, massaging his sore hands after he cut my fringe. I had turned the volume down on so much of my life outside of work, and I deserved to get back to it.
Outside the yoga studio I pulled out my phone and clicked on Ben’s mum’s name. I wrote a long text, attempting to respond to the points I could recall from her letter. I backspaced it completely, then tapped out a shorter, more succinct message thanking her for reaching out to me, signing off with Thinking of you, and sending you love always xox. My jaw gave a tiny throb as I hit send.
Dealing with things in my own way was an exhilarating new kind of control. I could work hard, and I could let myself have fun, too. It was a powerful realisation.