By JANET BROWN
31 August 2017
For “Words From the Surf Coast Arts Trail” event at Anglesea Arts Space.
Photographer Wayne Reid from Winchelsea took this photo in 1976, when he was living in Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand. He used a Minolta SLR and at the time street photography interested him. Dunedin North was a university precinct – about 5 minutes from Otago University – shabby old houses, cheap student share housing – you could look through the windows and see Jimi Hendrix and political posters stuck with tape to the walls. The original graffiti had worn a bit, and had also been defaced somewhat, by the time Wayne saw and captured it. When Wayne returned in the early 2000s, the graffiti was gone, the house was well painted, the area becoming gentrified.
But here is a story, a possible story, of how that street art came to be:
(AFTER READING THE STORY BELOW, just close the page and you will return to the images...)
"OH JIM"
3pm. October 8. 1975. North Dunedin, New Zealand.
She rushes down the hall, the door bangs behind her, she’s in his room, eyes red rimmed, throws her bag of books on the floor and simultaneously her arms are immediately around his neck. Tight. She bursts into tears, and says ‘I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry. I’m late.’
He’s been reviewing the Krebs citric acid cycle, is deep in the mechanics of how intermediates are regenerated during each turn of the cycle. He’s marvelling at the elegance of the process, where the pyruvic acid molecule is…
‘W‘hooa….hey,’ his concentration is broken, she’s warm and red faced, sobbing. He’s confused. Has he forgotten something. Were they to meet in the caf? Time disappears for him when he’s studying. He checks his watch, it’s 3pm, it means nothing. ‘I thought we weren’t meeting until five?’ Slightly taken aback by the intensity of the embrace, and in the space of a few seconds, his mind is shifted from the delights of citric acid enzyme catalysed conversions and now he’s giving her his full attention.
There’s something amiss, he’s missed, she’s a mess, what’s the matter, what’s going on, ‘Hey, hey whatever it is, stop crying, Karen… what is it?’ She’s lovely, in the way that eighteen year old girls are lovely. She’s soft eyed, soft haired, soft faced, soft body, everything so soft. ‘What is it?’ He passes her his hanky… she stays clutching him, resumes… ‘You’re such a dag. Who carries a hanky?’ she wipes her nose, her eyes. Holds onto the hanky as though it’s the most important thing she’s ever been given. Between sobs ‘You’ re the best thing that ever, and I mean ever, has happened to me, and now I’ve ruined everything. Now you are going to hate me. You are going to loathe me. You will drop me. And I don’t blame you. I would too. And I will never see you again. I won’t will I?”
‘I don’t know.’ He says, and that seems to promote another bout of crying hiccups from her as she attempts to talk at the same time.
‘So now I’ll be like every other stupid girl and have to leave uni and hang my head in shame and what am I going to do? Tell me that? What on earth am I going to do? And my mum and dad will kill me, well, dad will anyway and mum’ll just be all ‘I knew this would happen, knew you’d get mixed up with the wrong crowd at uni,’ but you’re not, Jim, you’re not wrong, or bad for me, or didn’t force me into anything or take advantage of me. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I just wish I was twenty seven cos I always had it in the back of my mind that I would wait until I was twenty seven and then I’d have a baby. Not before. It’s all my own fault, and now everything’s wrecked.’ She wipes her eyes, blows her nose ‘I was so hoping it was stress.’ She hands him back the wet hanky.
‘Stress?’
‘Stressed…about the exams coming up.’
‘You’re not stressed.’
‘I didn’t think I was.’
‘You’ve got nothing to be stressed about the exams. You’ll be fine. You know that.’
‘Everyone else is stressed, so I thought maybe I might have been, that’s what I was hoping.’ She looks straight into his eyes. His beautiful, dreamy, adoring brown eyes. ‘Can’t you see this is a catastrophe?’
‘No, it’s not a catastrophe.’ He knows now what’s going on. ‘It’s just consequences.’ He takes a deep breath.
‘Consequences! It’s all right for you. It’s not going to make a great deal of difference to you, oh no, you’ll just ditch me cos I am so stupid and I’ll be back home, back on the bloody farm, with a baby, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll think of me occasionally and think how dumb I was.’
‘No. I won’t.’ He kisses the top of her head. ‘You’re upset. Okay. A baby. I certainly wasn’t expecting you to tell me that today.’
Another wail of tears.
‘Hey. We’ll work something out, Karen. We will. I promise you.’ He kisses her salty eyelids.
‘Don’t say that. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’
‘You’re exhausted.’ He hates seeing her upset like this. He pulls the quilt back from his bed, she kicks off her shoes, climbs under it. He holds her, rubbing her back, until she sobs herself quietly to sleep.
By November 8, she’s moved her stuff into Jim’s room, quit hers, there’s a young arts student moved in there and painted the walls black. Everyone knows, including her parents, his mother, his sister. It’s been a big month, a huge month, a difficult month. Girls are gossiping. People are staring, but it might be all in her imagination. Friends are being ‘nice’, giving advice, concerned. He convinced her to study hard for her exams.
They have a tenuous plan, and the miraculous thing is he’s become quite chuffed about the idea of becoming a father. At twenty one, in North Dunedin, in 1975, it’s not so unusual and he’s even told Vanessa the news: brainy Vanessa, two years his senior, who wanted him to announce their engagement last year before she’d ‘give in’, as she so enthusiastically called it. He’d ‘given up’ before she ‘gave in’, and in retrospect he can see clearly why he is mad about Karen – he loves her humour, her intelligence, her face and her enthusiastic loving abandon. So she’s very young, is that the end of the world? He just can’t see the problem. His mother is even proud that he stands by his girl - they liked each other awkwardly on meeting. She’s already started knitting.
‘You’re a good match’. Said his mum. In a nice way. That made all the difference.
Karen, determined not to be a drop out, has blitzed her first year exams, will ‘defer’ next year, hoping, wishing, praying that she’ll be able to return to her studies the following year – there’s a creche at the uni - finish her degree, become a medical scientist as planned, eventually move to Australia with Jim – there’ll be work for them both over on the big west island. That’s the five year plan. All going well.
By January she is wearing loose caftans and only occasionally quibbling about their situation. He’s made good his promise to stand by her, they won’t marry, yet. She will definitely have a natural birth without any drugs (so she believes, we’ll let her have her fantasy). She’s decided she will breastfeed in public but there’ll be no homebirth: they aren’t hippies; he’s a scientist (a research scholarship student - ends can be made to meet), and she will be one day.
But there is one argument. Not quite - one niggle. One middle of the night conversation. In his bed. When she’s going over, just one more time, all the likely difficulties of the situation and her fears. And he says, calmly, sincerely, ‘I only wish it had been a bit different. Not such a big upset to you. Not such a… disappointment’. Her head’s laying on his arm, his right hand’s tenderly rubbing her slightly swollen belly.
‘What do you mean?’
He’s quiet. Not quite sure how to say it.
‘It’s not like I want you to yell it from the roof tops or anything.’
‘Go on’ she whispers.
‘Well. We’re both used to the idea now. We’re having our baby and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, it’s not so bad is it? I love you. You love me. So we start this baby stuff a few years earlier than we might have.’
‘Okay.’
‘You can’t really imagine us not being …’us’ can you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s just… it would have been…. It must be… you know. When the girl’s pleased about it. Kinda proud of it. The father… it must be kinda great to think she’s… Not sorry. But I understand… it’s not about me… I shouldn’t have…’
‘Sh.’ she nuzzles his chest.
Karen decides she will wake up very early, and she does, when she hears the milk van crawling along the road delivering pints. That early morning jingle jangle of glass bottles set down. He’s sleeping. She throws on yesterday’s t shirt and jeans. Grabs a can of black spray paint from his desk. Leaves the house quietly, all the other students are asleep, their doors shut. She crosses the road to the white house on the corner, opposite Jim’s room’s window.
Nobody is around, except for the milkman. He’s stopped to light his first of the day ciggie and watches Karen, intrigued, as she writes in large letters on the wall of the white house:
Oh Jim, I want to have your baby.
‘Lucky Jim’, smiles the milkman.
She stands back, checks it. Satisfied, Karen crosses the road, quietly opens and closes the door, returns to bed.
Two hours later JIm wakes, scratches his balls, kisses the top of Karen’s sleepy head.
‘I’ve gotta get up. Early lab today, bugger it.’ He says.
‘Put the blind up. Let’s see what sort of a day it is.’ Karen yawns.
He lifts the blind. Immediately his vision is filled by the white wall over the road.
‘Oh Jim, I want to have your baby.’
He smiles. Sucks it in. Shuts his eyes. Now his heart fills, now his chest swells, now he says to himself ‘Yes. We can do this.’
By Janet Brown
31 August 2017
For “Words From the Surf Coast Arts Trail” event
At Anglesea Arts Space