Men

If I was an Aboriginal I'd be nearly middle aged. That'd be great - I've always wanted a little red convertible and a young, attractive and irritatingly stupid girlfriend. It's in these times of personal crisis when a man knows he's really alive. He hates his life, but at least he has a dynamic and emotional relationship with it. He has drive and passion and hateful passive-aggressive responses to arbitrary things. It's a special time - a coming of age. I think I'd enjoy that. It'd give me an excuse to do all those really fun self-destructive behaviors like drink-driving, drink-drinking and drink-parasailing. But I'm not an Aboriginal - something about me not being black and having no basis to my claim of traditional land rights to that apartment block in St Kilda. Aboriginal men seem to have a life crisis completely different to our own.

For a middle-class white male the character arc is simple. You spend your childhood believing that you've inherited the earth and all its freedoms. The world is a safe place, your Dad's the strongest man in the world, and you don't understand why your mother, with a universe of choice at her fingertips, insists on serving you peas. You hit adolescence, get a job at Safeway and live like the crowned prince of Belgium on 100 bucks a week. Life is all bikes and chocolate. Your parents and teachers try to weigh you down with all this shit about social responsibility and morality, but you'll be shoplifting and blowing up letterboxes well into your late teens. They call this the honeymoon period. Mainly because life is sweet and you moon people like your arse was suffocating in your shorts.

Then comes the quarter life crisis. You find out the world is not going to come through on its promise of that life it owes you. You panic. Take a year in London to 'find yourself', only to 'find yourself' working a shittier job than the one you had at home and not-getting-laid by chicks from all over the world. Back home uni is finished and the degree you've got doesn't translate to any tangible employment. While deferring further study, fall into a job that accidentally becomes a career. Propose to that girl you've been going out with for 2 or more years, basically because you're getting fat and complacent. Besides, one 2 year relationship is enough to warn anyone off a second. Do the mortgage thing. Suffer children. Buy a really big telly and a Playstation. Fill the time sitting around and listening to your wife tell you that you're lazy.

Mid-life crisis. Wake up one day and wonder what the fuck happened to the last 10 years. Realise that you didn't want to be a fat, bored desk-jockey. Buy a set of weights and put them in the garage where you'll never use them. Have an affair, file for divorce or both. Write that book you always planned to and get writers-block halfway through chapter one. Books are long - you forgot that bit. Invest money in some stupid enterprise, like that restaurant you always wanted to own. Be a silent partner so you can silently hemorrhage as your money vanishes quicker than tiramisu at pregnant mother's club. Realise that you were less miserable before you found out you were miserable. Try to rebuild.

Three quarter life crisis. Where ever you are by now, you're old. You've just retired knowing full well that the super you've accumulated is not keep you fed until your life expectancy expires. Can't wish to die just yet because your yuppie kids haven't had children yet, and you don't want to pass from this earth until you're sure that they've suffered the same twisted torture they put you through. Face a fate of knowing that you'll live out the same week over and over for 20 more years, while everything around you gets faster, more confusing and shiny. Sound tough? Don’t be petty.

It's been a particularly rough run for Aboriginal men for some time now - I don't know... 220 years, give or take. They've copped the brunt of the stereotyping and animosity towards Aboriginals - right in the brunt copper. People don't often complain about the lazy, drunken Aboriginal women of the world. The public don't fear crime and violence from our dark skinned ladies. And, let's face it, it's hard to flog a woman for being unemployed when she's got a houseful of kids to chase after. So the blokes cop it. It's their faces we see in Crimestoppers reconstructions, it's their hands that orchestrate the sexual abuse, it's their spears that killed white settlers. Masculinity is the symbol of all that is feared and despised in the Aboriginal people. It hangs like a storm cloud over the average life of a Maningrida man.

Grow up half-naked and oblivious, surrounded by noise and family, though somehow remaining a little attention starved. Muck around, miss a lot of school and be initiated as a man long before you actually are one – exacerbate your feelings of inadequacy and isolation. Be exposed to world of sex, drugs and alcohol all the while listening to funny sounding pale people who tell you to avoid all three, but who never hang about long enough to make a lasting impression. Feel abandoned and inferior - take solace in the music of angry black Americans (suicide is also a common option at this point).

Want to leave home but have nowhere to go, and no means to go there. Find out that all the school you missed will stop you from getting a job - though truth be told you still wouldn't be 'educated' if you went to all of it, but fuck it, there aren't any jobs to get here anyway. Feel stranded, forgotten, and patronized. Get depressed, get government money, get yourself in a family way, and start to get physically sick. Get to a big city get drunk and live up to the nation’s expectations for you, bitterly and deliberately. If this is not your story, it is the story of many of your friends and family. If you want to, you can spend your nights working yourself into knots over that. Follow with a hearty dose of depression and helplessness. Die young.

I never know, when I start these entries, what I'm going to write about. I start with some glib comment and see where it takes me. Usually halfway through I find a way to tie it all together that reflects the positive spirit of the people of Maningrida and makes Balandas look like the twats they are. It didn't work this time. Sometimes things are genuinely fucked up. There's no laughing at that. No pithy solutions. No coming back. I feel guilty for writing it down - making it real. But what else is there to feel when this is the earth you have inherited, and this is how people enjoy its freedoms. Maningrida is a bullshit, industry-less town fabricated in the 50’s to stop Aboriginals from moving to big cities. It’s social growth has outstripped it’s economic growth. It’s a dead end. A government funded black-hole that will take generations to turn into a place of any viable and accessible opportunity. If I was Aboriginal I'd nearly be middle aged - halfway through a lifelong crisis.