I met my husband Scott in late 1999. He was working at the Victorian Institute of Sport where I trained a few days a week. The second I met him I knew he was the one for me. Look, I know everyone says that, but I really mean it. One hot November afternoon I waltzed into the gym and heard a husky male voice from the corridor. Images of the Solo Man meets Russell Crowe circa Gladiator meets the greatest fullback of all time, Hawthorn FC’s Chris Langford, instantly sprang to mind. Being a single nineteen-year-old girl with limited sexual experience but desperately wanting more, I hoped against hope that the person who owned that voice had a physical exterior to match.
A ruggedly handsome man greeted me – he had strong, meaty hands and a jaw for days. Is it strange that I noticed and was turned on by the muscularity of his hands? Honestly, it took me three seconds to decide that he and I were meant to be. I quickly discovered that his name was Scott and that he was a keen surfer, baseballer (explains the hands) and could do the splits three ways. Hello, ladies! Needless to say, it became my mission in life to make him mine. Now remember, this was still before social media existed so I had to engage full-body stalk mode for real. Kids these days are so lazy, they don’t know how hard we had to work to learn the vital information required when you were keen on someone. There were no Facebook check-ins to monitor your crush’s location, you had to actually go and get in your car and drive past their house to confirm where they were. I familiarised myself with his work roster and made sure I came in looking immaculate on those days. I mean I had my business IN CHECK, y’all. I would moisturise, shave and perfume before I arrived. Full-time matching underwear was implemented, I don’t know why, maybe just in case my clothes fell off during a particularly intense chin-up. Scott also had a girlfriend when I first met him but that fact was only a minor challenge to me. My game plan was to pretend to care about their relationship and then to become a sympathetic ear when they started having the troubles I would be encouraging them to have.
They broke up three months after Scott and I met. Did I influence that? Well, the answer isn’t not no . . .
Despite my very best efforts in ridding Scott of his girlfriend and presenting myself as Miss Universe every time I went to the gym, it still took him almost a full year to ask me out and the way it happened was so ridiculous, yet so him. We were in the weights room and Scott was giving my hamstrings a stretch, because of course he was. I was laying flat on my back with one leg in the air and he was kneeling over me pushing my other leg down with his body weight. Our groins were about as close as you could get with clothes on.
Lets go full Mills and Boon here so you can completely enjoy the moment my now husband finally asked me out:
As I lay on my back underneath the weight of Scott’s rock-hard upper body, I felt all my senses heighten. Every opening my body possessed was on the brink of explosion. I was a spring bud ready to flower and all I needed to come of age was his pollen. Our bodies were so close I could smell his intoxicating manliness, it was a mixture of musk and Rexona Sport. I could see he wanted to ask me something, his eyes constantly searching for mine, but at the last minute he would look away, too overwhelmed with desire to be able to articulate his thoughts. All I could focus on was his knee and how tantalisingly close it was to my expectant, lycra-clad lady garden. Finally our eyes met, the planets aligned and he took a deep breath and said: ‘Emy, you have really elastic muscles.’
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Disengage Mills-and-Boon mode. Disengage!
What does that even mean? Was it a compliment? What was the appropriate response here? ‘Er, thanks?’
‘I mean they really respond well to static stretching. I keep pushing and they keep giving. You’re quite lucky.’
‘Oh, do they? That’s . . . I mean, yeah, I have always been flexible, that’s never been a problem. I can get both legs over my head better than anyone I know!’
As you’ll notice, I was desperately trying to steer the conversation back to sexy town. Hoping he would equate my flexibility with interesting sexual positions.
He didn’t seem to notice.
‘Being an athlete and naturally flexible is really great,’ he continued.
Jesus, am I just going to have to draw this guy a map?
And then . . .
‘So do you want to maybe go and get some food this weekend? With me?’
Yessssss! All my efforts had been worth it! I waited a full 2.5 seconds before responding: ‘Yes, Scott, me and my elastic muscles would love to get some food with you.’
And so we did. We had our first kiss that night and, well, our first shag. Like I said, I knew he was the one for me. Plus we had walked the golden mile in the courtship stakes, one whole year of flirtation – my vagina was essentially Mount Vesuvius, ready to erupt with built-up angst. I’m only human, you guys.
The next day my cousin Jess sent me a fax (it was the late nineties) with a question mark on it, wanting to know the outcome of the date, and I drew a picture of a wedding dress and faxed it back.
Scott and I had been dating for four months and living together for seven days when I found out I was expecting our first child. It was Valentine’s Day 2000. I know Scott probably thought he was going to get fucked that night, just not in the way that I did it!
I hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks but had put it down to moving and over-training – that’s also how I explained the missing periods to myself. Plus I was on the Pill, so there was no way I could possibly get pregnant! It was my mother who suggested I could be up the spout. Even as I went to buy the test I didn’t believe it could even be a possibility: I was twenty-one, carefree and, just to recap, on the Pill!
Peeing on the stick and seeing those two blue lines appear was a special kind of experience and by special, I mean terrifying. I sat on the toilet in the one-bedroom apartment we had been living in together for one week and stared at the pregnancy test in absolute shock. I had genuinely expected it to be negative. I was an elite athlete and in absolutely no state to be having a child. I was still a child myself!
My first instinct was to call Scott, but then I remembered that this wasn’t just a parking fine or a fight with my best friend – this would drastically affect him too and what I needed was a reassuring pep talk not a panicked boyfriend. So I called my mum. She told me to get in the car and drive to her place. To this day I do not remember driving the fifteen minutes to my parents’ house, I just ended up there somehow in one piece. Jenni was great about it – by the by, she’s who you want in a crisis. Seriously, if aliens invade and are looking for our leader, send in Jen. The messes that woman has had to clean up for me. Mum told me that whatever I decided to do, she would support me. We both agreed it would be best not to tell my Italian Catholic father until I knew exactly what I was going to do myself. So I drove home and waited for Scott to arrive home from work.
When he walked through the door he was holding a bunch of roses (it was Valentine’s Day, remember), so naturally I burst into tears. I sat him down and gave him the news. As you would expect, he was in complete and utter shock. He told me he felt we couldn’t keep it, he said he wasn’t ready, that we weren’t ready, that it just couldn’t be. Still in a daze, I agreed with him and so the next day I went to see my doctor and arrangements were made for the pregnancy to be terminated.
As I walked into the clinic on the day of the procedure I remember feeling like I had left my body altogether – it was as though I was watching myself. I sat down, was handed a clipboard and told to wait. For some reason, hearing my name called forced me to snap out of the fog I had been in and I instantly knew I didn’t want to end my pregnancy. It was a moment of pure clarity. I have only had that happen to me two other times in my life: when I met Scott and when I quit my breakfast radio job in Perth. I handed the clipboard back and said, ‘I don’t want this, I’ve changed my mind, I’m going to leave.’
Thank all the gods that I did, for the result of that decision is one of the most glorious humans to ever walk the earth: my eldest child, Marchella.
Sorry, you guys, I’ve just got something in my eyes.
I wish to categorically state that while I didn’t want to have an abortion, I support a woman’s right to choose. All ladies should be in charge of their reproductive rights. I don’t want any pro-lifers jumping on this story and making me their poster child. I am staunchly and proudly PRO-CHOICE.
On the way home from the clinic I decided it was probably a good time to make some tough life decisions, you know, since I was in such a strong place mentally, after deciding not to have an abortion and become a mother at twenty-one. The first genius thing I came up with was that I should immediately break up with Scott. Why should he have to carry the burden of my choice? I didn’t want to force a child onto him and I certainly didn’t want him staying with me out of obligation. I had the romantic notion that I would single mother the shit out of this situation. I planned to grow my hair out into a wild curly mess and wear it in a careless bun, held in place with the pen I would be using to write my memoirs. I would dress exclusively in corduroy overalls and white linen frocks, sometimes together, such would be my capacity for whimsy. I would definitely have a vegie patch and chickens and spend large amounts of time drinking tea in a rocking chair. So basically, I was going to join the cast of Steel Magnolias as the sassy Italian neighbour with the secret past and fatherless child.
Again I found myself nervously perched upon our tiny Ikea dining table waiting for Scott to get home from work to tell him that he was still becoming a father. He walked through the door holding some sorry-you-had-to-have-an-abortion flowers and I burst into tears again. In one long, snot-ridden sentence I broke it to him that I didn’t go through with the abortion and that I was planning on doing it all on my own and that he needed to move out and move on. After five minutes of stunned, tense silence he carefully told me that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do and that he needed some time to process the situation. Then he got some of his things and left. Jesus, fuck – that broke me. I mean, I didn’t actually think he would leave! I didn’t want to be Steel Magnolias Em! I didn’t own any overalls, I drank coffee not tea and my hair wasn’t even curly! I now know that he went to stay at his mother’s to try to get some clarity, which I totally understand, but at the time I felt like he had completely abandoned me in an emotional desert, thirsty, barefoot and pregnant.
I still had one more mountain to climb and that was breaking the news to my darling father, Vincie, that his eldest daughter was pregnant to a man he had only met a handful of times. While he is a non-practicing Catholic, the guilt and primal laws are still ingrained in his DNA. My dad is progressive in some ways and traditional in others; me being preggo to an Aussie dude and not being his wife was going to push him somewhat. The day I told him I remember his face looking as though I had physically struck him. He seemed genuinely hurt and of course extremely worried as to how I was going to cope. He tried to be happy for me but I could tell how deeply upset he was. He didn’t quite look me in the eye for months. It wasn’t until he held Marchella for the first time that our relationship began to heal.
It was love at first sight for those two, so much so he gave Chella her middle name without consulting me! Luckily Marchella Vincenza is a pretty great name.
So I was twenty-one and eleven months, still an elite athlete and the only friends I had were gay men. Pregnancy was going to be a breeze, right? I would glow and skip and become Mother Earth incarnate.