On Exposure: a journey

On Exposure: a journey (Joel Magarey, Wakefield Press, 2009)

I the Reader

I approached Joel Magarey’s book Exposure: A Journey with twin measures of hope and scepticism. I hoped that he might enlighten me about certain aspects of my own life during my late teens and twenties, but I was sceptical that there was very much to discover through the perspective of someone who was actually writing about something else.

I took the book personally – after all, Penny was Best Woman to the man I married, Joel juggled at our wedding, and Basil’s band provided the music at the reception afterwards. The shattered constellation of my first marriage remains as a facet of my identity that looms large when an old ghost like Joel pops into view from time to time.

Had my first marriage lasted, we would be coming up to our twentieth anniversary this month. It’s a staggering idea. It is significant that Joel’s book appeared in 2009 – a year during which I have been learning how to be a partner within a new marriage; how to mother children in their late teens, when I myself became a mother; and some different ways and contexts there are to be Christian. My response to the book is necessarily framed within this context, and would have been a very different response had my circumstances not changed so greatly.

I was never taught that suffering is the human condition; or that good can emerge from suffering. These kinds of Christian ideas were foreign to me and in bumping up against them again as a mature woman in my 30s I find myself better able to deal with them than I was, in my late teens.

Joel and I grew up in two very different worlds. Our respective backgrounds set us up to impact upon one another in different ways. The fact that I as a non-Catholic ended up pregnant and married at 19 is ironic. I recall the sex education that I received at school – we were told about condoms yes, but only for prevention of AIDS and other STDs. I knew about the birth control pill yes, but only for sexually active young women (not me) and those whose menstrual agonies were such, that the Pill could alleviate their severity. I got pregnant very easily and thoughtlessly. I did not entertain the notion of terminating the pregnancy, even though I wasn’t sure how it had happened or how having a baby was going to affect my life. The idea of abortion was repugnant to me.

It might sound quite odd, but the fact is that I was brought up in silence more than spokenness, when it comes to sex and marriage. I had never been inculcated into the idea that the best way for humans to live is as part of a heterosexual couple who have children together. I had not been taught that I needed a partner at all. I did not feel loneliness or isolation – I was filled instead with the ebullience of knowing I had my life to live and that I could be the person I wanted to be.

Some might have assumed that I grew up in a permissive household – that is far from my experience! The unwritten rules that I unwittingly broke were not defined and never made explicit to me until it was too late. So I was fascinated to learn that Joel was explicitly taught about those things I didn’t know about – what it means to have sex with someone, and how the consequences of these acts may impact on his future life choices.

Book Review

Exposure moves frequently between times – distant past, recent past, present – but never into the future. This structure effectively builds and maintains momentum and injects suspense into the narrative. As an insider I was aware of certain elements of the story, but still found myself guessing and occasionally gasping with surprise whilst reading it. I finished the story wondering – what next?

I enjoyed immensely the well-crafted descriptive elements of the travel narrative. I was conscious of reading Joel’s descriptions, closing my eyes and imagining the skies, lakes, mountains and weather conditions of those faraway places.

Although Joel’s diagnosis and experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is prominent in Exposure, I see the main themes as being sex and responsibility, inlaid with a heavy dose of questions about morality.

Extramarital sex and the unwanted child are prominent triggers for the OCD, and occur as motifs throughout the narrative. These issues are linked with the relationships that Joel writes about, most obviously his relationship with Penny, but they are never framed within the expected context of marriage. This forms the underlying crux of the matter. The idea of marriage pops up at the tail end of Joel’s narrative, after long journeys of separation and rapturous rejoining. Penny and Joel’s relationship could be seen as a kind of marriage, with the implicit understanding that these years of learning how to travel and live together were all part of a togetherness that would continue to be built upon in years to come.

One of the largest limitations of the novel is in itself significant, because it functions as a signpost as to why things turned out the way that they did. The lack of insight into Penny as a person with her own needs, her own motivations, her own desires and her own responses has left me wanting to know so much more about her.

When it comes to the crunch, Ahmad and Joel set themselves up as rivals, with Penny choosing one and rejecting the other. However, this still seems to occur without Joel’s realising that Penny has some agency in the matter – she has needs and desires that he has not yet considered fully in light of their relationship and its future.

I am intensely curious about Penny’s life now. When I heard what she had done, I was appalled. It looked to me as though she had deliberately placed herself in a position of being oppressed and repressed. It felt to me at the time as though she were punishing herself. I could not imagine her choice as being real. Knowing more now than I did then, about other cultures, I have a less closed-minded attitude as to who she might have become within the structure of her chosen culture. I would love to hear what her experiences have been; how she has grown within the parameters placed around her, what she has been able to achieve and discover about herself, her husband, her new family and the culture in which she now lives, loves and works.

My Narrative

As a 16, 17 and 18 year old, the years between meeting the man I married and our wedding itself, I was still firmly fixed on my future as being one of
- travelling and seeing the world
- learning languages and getting to know the people of the world
- never getting married
- never having children
- living independently with my cats
- writing, making, creating, studying.

Ever afraid of being forced to do things against my will, I was well aware that I was not on the ball when it came to producing appropriate reactions and responses to what confronted me. I have always required more time to process things than is generally allowed me, particularly by intelligent, selfish, manipulative and aggressive young men who see themselves as invincible and entitled to whatever catches their fancy at any given moment. Isn’t that how I ended up pregnant in the first place?

Of those who condemned my actions in leaving that marriage after three years, one of the strongest came from Joel’s father, whom I had known from my first days at university, when I was part of the Sudan Relief Committee that held its meetings in his staff room in the Napier Building at Adelaide University.

Kevin took me aside at a New Year’s Eve party some time after I had left. I described the circumstances that had led me to my leaving and he told me I was wrong. He painted a picture for me of some of the lowest, most difficult points of his marriage and explained that such things occur in every marriage; that they don’t mean the marriage should break or be destroyed; rather that the people in that marriage need to work harder to strengthen the marriage.

I had no idea what he was talking about. It made me very angry to hear him blame me for breaking up my marriage. It felt as though he conceptualised marriage as a separate entity from the two people who had entered into the institution; an entity precious and valuable as to subjugate both parties into its service, to their ultimate self-denial and self-destruction. And I wanted no part of such a condition. I was unwilling to bend and to break myself down in order to fit into the mould of marriage, if in fact that was, what marriage meant.

The thought that parents can lecture children about sex and marriage fills me with a certain amount of dread, particularly as I have also failed to make this a part of my children’s education. I wonder to what extent my ideas about being the poor girl who set such a bad example to her peers had any impact on the moral struggles that Joel experienced as a sexually active young man who had been exceptionally well educated on the evil consequences of sex outside marriage?

When I was pregnant with my first child, Joel waylaid me at one end of our share house and mischievously teased me, trying to convince me that if I were to have sex with him it wouldn’t matter at all, because I was already pregnant – whom could it possibly harm? (Secondhand Notoriety, 2007) I have pondered Joel’s behaviour many times since that afternoon, and assigned several possible reasons to it. Was he jealous; was this some kind of resistance action against the institution of marriage; was he just testosterone-driven? He scared me.

His sister took me aside and encouraged me at one point after I had already fallen pregnant. She said it is idiotic to “wait to have sex until you’re married”, because you can never know whether you’ll be sexually compatible with your chosen partner until you try. I was just embarrassed. None of this had been my idea.

I attended Joel’s birthday party at his family home just off King William Road. I wonder whether this was the party he describes, where he and Penny first got together? I remember walking home from that party to my parents’ house in Payneham. I was unaccustomed to being out so late at night, but the young man whom I regarded at that time as my “best friend”, entertained me and encouraged me as we walked. I recall our late night walks with some fondness.

Just before I agreed to have sex for the first time in my late teens I was confronted with a similar situation to the Penny / Ahmad / Joel triangle. I wanted neither suitor. Attracted to neither man, I was not looking for marriage, and the situation was both ludicrous and unwelcome. When I first heard about Penny, I wondered whether something similar had happened to her. I assumed it had, and I pitied her.

Penny is clearly an unconventional woman, with her own ideas about right and wrong. We see this in Exposure mapped out through Joel’s eyes as they form their bonds and celebrate their relationship outside the bounds of his parents’ explicit expectations. I also remember Penny as an important member of the Legal team assisting protesters at the Narrungar Protests (late 1980s to early 1990s). She is capable and smart. Her plain-spoken sensible attitude was refreshing, matched against the snobbish and intellectual cynicism that prevailed during our university days. It should not be mistaken for stupidity or a simplistic Pollyannaish response to the world.

I felt squeamish, reading the idealised version of Penny’s character – just as squeamish as when twenty years ago she was held up to me as an example of the kind of woman I ought to be aspiring to become. And I wonder, who was she, who has she become?

What I remember about Penny is worth remembering. She was independent and resourceful, and lived alone, without any family around her, in a little converted garage off Grange Road. I never thought very much about how she afforded this, although at that time our peers were dependent on their parents for support. She was interesting and knowledgeable, and passionate about seeing the world. She was left-wing and alternative. During my fuzzy-headed days of reproduction and new motherhood, I failed to take very much in, but I do remember seeing books and posters at her place that roused my interest and caused me to howl in the depths of my soul for the chances to see the world that I had given up, having married and borne children so very young.

I recall a conversation Penny and I had, that terrible spring when I had lost all control of my own life and future. The man I married set this conversation up, just as he had carefully impregnated me and then injected me with the poison of his own anti-abortion beliefs. Penny may well have been aware of this, but she would have trusted me as an intelligent young woman to be capable of seeing the other side and making my own choices and decisions.

We were outside the Art Gallery on North Terrace. I was a little awestruck, as Penny had never really paid me much attention. My husband-to-be and I had already performed our “Three Foetuses” manoeuvre on the floor of the university refectory so that the whole group had been clued into the fact that we had (unprotected) sex and conceived a child, as he had planned. That I remained clueless was an option no one seemed to have considered, and it probably didn’t matter to anyone but me.

The way I operated mostly back then, was on pure intuition, and my intuition has always been excellent. I would tune in to the person who was speaking to me at the time, intuit what she or he wanted me to say, and say it. It was simple. That it bypassed any interpretation, decision and choice-making on my part was beside the point. I did not allow myself the slightest bit of agency.

“You know the choice is up to you,” Penny said. Or something very like that. Startled, I said “What do you mean?” “You don’t have to have a baby.” “Oh,” I replied brightly, defensively, feeling as though Penny were a traitor, steering me up the steep path towards abortion. “It’s OK. I understand. But I want to have this baby.” “Well that’s all right then,” Penny said gently, “just as long as you don’t forget it’s your choice.”

Months later, my husband and I went to her place to meet some friends for a meal. Our baby, a winter child, was just a few weeks old. We travelled across town on at least two buses. The weather was cold and wet. The food wasn’t ready on time, because keeping to time was unimportant. No one but me was responsible for anything but themselves. I was hungry, tired, nipple-sore and miserable, being both on show as “the new mother” and overlooked as a human being with needs of my own. I sat in a corner with my baby and cried. Penny was kind and sensible. She took my husband aside and suggested he take me home to rest. I was very grateful to her.