50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 1 20th Anniversary Edition

‘I loved this funny sad tale of growing up a sissy in New Zealand. Graeme Aitken proves that even the most extraordinary events can occur to wonderfully ordinary people. If I knew fifty ways of saying fabulous, I’d use them all to praise this charming first novel.’ EDMUND WHITE

‘It has the fast-running clarity of a good yarn, yet this is a fresh telling of the story of a gay awakening. Infinitely real … grotesque and funny and moving by turns.’ PETER WELLS

‘An entertainment, a gentle, poignant story of a fat boy who fantasises romance and glamour without yet having a name for what he is … Aitken writes with a distinctive voice, one that is wonderfully evocative.’ DENNIS ALTMAN,
THE AGE

‘A wonderful cast of characters, lovingly drawn and lightened with the right dash of maliciousness … Aitken manages to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary … (and) shows so much skill and gives so much pleasure.’ 
CAMPAIGN

‘
50 Ways of Saying Fabulous
is an honest, funny and sometimes painful read. Confidently and convincingly written, it is a welcome addition to the gay coming of age genre; the collection of works in which we see ourselves reflected and refracted, and find fifty ways of saying “me”.’ 
MELBOURNE STAR OBSERVER

‘Its humour will guarantee you stares as you snicker on the train. Aitken understands the hopelessly daggy and uncool nature of the 12-year-old and he reproduces it as if it were yesterday. Popularity and acceptance take a lot of time and pain to procure. I think he’ll be guaranteed it with this book.’ NEIL DRINNAN,
OUTRAGE

‘… an important work … What Aitken has demonstrated fabulously is his skill in the art of telling a good story … his honesty and fearlessness in confronting those squirmy adolescent secrets is to be admired.’ 
CANBERRA TIMES

‘… one of the very best novels released this year. Witty, warm and original.’ 
CLEO

‘… a secret and magic story which is grotesque and infinitely funny … a zany book, highly entertaining, and with enough twists and turns to keep you glued to the end … 
50 Ways
is fabulous, whichever way you say it.’
BARFLY

‘Touching and sad,
50 Ways of Saying Fabulous
also has some very funny moments.’ 
THE TIMES

‘A sort of gay Adrian Mole … There are laughs aplenty but also moments of agony … Told with bare-faced honesty, it is a warm, cruel, funny tale.’ 
THE SUNDAY AGE

‘A funny but also achingly sad first novel.’
THE OBSERVER

This edition published in 2015 by 20Ten Books, Sydney, Australia.

This book was first published by Random House Australia in 1995, reprinted 2000 and 2005.

Copyright © Graeme Aitken 1995

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. The novel’s characters, incidents and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination and are entirely fictional.

Aitken, Graeme, 1963–.

50 ways of saying fabulous book 1.

ISBN 9780987329363

Cover photograph by Craig Wright

To my parents,

Tom and Sue Aitken,

who were nothing like the characters in this novel

Many people helped me bring this book to publication and I am extremely grateful for their support, advice and expertise.

Thank you to Craig Stevens, Dean Baxter, Rosanna Arciuli, Keith Buss, Laurin McKinnon, Gary Dunne, Jane Palfreyman, Julia Stiles, Rois McCann, Andrew Freeman, Geraldine Cooke, Paul Bailey, Olivier Colette, Mitchell Waters, Peter Wells, Stewart Main, Michele Fantl, Andrew Moors, and Kate Evans.

Thanks also to my design team:

Cover Design – Ricafeli Design

Original Photograph – Craig Wright

This novel is set in Central Otago, New Zealand, an area where I grew up and know very well. However, when this novel was first published, I decided in consultation with my Australian editor to fictionalise some of the place names. This was done out of respect to friends and family who still lived in this district and to lessen the impact of people reading the novel and concluding that the mother character Reebie was based on my mother etc.

So for those readers who know this region and perhaps found this curious, I just wanted to explain why some place names are made up, while others (Dunedin, Palmerston etc) are not.

The fictionalised setting names are as follows:

Mawera – the farming community where Billy’s family lives

Crayburn – a small village with a shop and a pub, located some 15 miles from Mawera

Glenora – the major town in the district, located some 30 miles from Mawera

Serpentine county – the district which encompasses all of these locations

When I was twelve years old, my most precious possession was the tail of a heifer that had died giving birth. My father cut it off and handed it to me when I asked for it, presuming I wanted it as a trophy, pleased that I was finally taking an interest in his cows. Rather, I had recognised a potential in that tail my father would never have dreamt of. I trimmed the dags off, washed, dried, brushed it tirelessly with my own hairbrush and tied the end of it with some red ribbon. After days of top secret preparation, with Babe banned from my bedroom, it was ready. Before going to bed, I announced that there would be a surprise at breakfast the next morning.

Morning came. I could barely dress myself for the excite­ment. My fingers were trembling. I gave up on the idea of a shirt and pulled on a skivvy instead. I put on my woolly hat (though hats weren’t allowed indoors) and tucked one end of the tail beneath it. When I made my entrance into the kitchen, the cow’s tail draped over one shoulder, Babe clapped her hands together in delight. My parents looked up from their porridge. I informed them that they were to call me Judy from now on. Babe applauded even louder. My parents looked bewildered. Babe explained that I was Judy Robinson out of ‘Lost in Space’. With that long white ponytail, I was convinced I looked exactly like my favourite television star.

‘Porridge is on the stove, Judy,’ was my mother’s only comment. She regarded it as yet another of my fantasies. My father tried his best to ignore it. There were no reprimands. Neither of them told me not to wear the cow tail. But they didn’t tell me I looked ravishing and just like Judy either. Which I did.

Their lack of enthusiasm prompted me to find an outfit to enhance the resemblance. My mother’s lavender bed jacket was the obvious choice. Its clinging fit and shimmering satin made it the most futuristic garment in the house. When I modelled myself for Lou, she insisted I take her black swimming cap. It was far superior to my hat in terms of space age fashion. Studying myself in the mirror, I was impressed by my transformation. I insisted that Lou and Babe play ‘Lost in Space’ with me in the turnip paddock immediately. The dogs acted as various forms of repulsive alien life to run from screaming.

Being Judy, I got to scream the most.

To get to the turnip paddock we had to trek across the Field of Blood, which Babe and I wearily pretended to be terrified by. This meant Lou could lead the way, bragging and making up stories, saying the sheep found the grass sweeter in this paddock, as it had been nourished by the blood of Maori warriors. Certainly the sheep did have their heads down, chomping away furiously, but that seemed to be their perpetual state wherever they were. I wasn’t entirely convinced that this was the site of the battle my grandfather was always telling us about, but it was near enough. We liked to brag at school that there’d been a massacre on our land.

The turnip paddock held greater appeal. It was incredibly sci-fi. There were all these half-eaten turnips sticking up out of the mud and the effect was distinctly lunar crater-like. We played the most wonderful games of ‘Lost in Space’ there. Lou was always Don, and Babe was ordered to be Doctor Smith which would make her cry, but as she was the youngest she had no choice. I, of course, was Judy.

Judy screamed at the aliens who got terribly excited and jumped up on her, barking. Don rushed to save her and Doctor Smith snivelled in terror. Unfortunately, the lavender bed jacket always ended up getting extremely mud splattered from the dogs’ paws, and my mother got sick of sponging it off before she could wear it. She banned its participation in any further games. It was never as realistic without it.

My parents had humoured me in my new impersonation and I felt encouraged to wear my new hairpiece to school. I wanted to show it off. I was so thrilled by my new appear­ance that it never occurred to me that others wouldn’t share in my enthusiasm.

‘What’s that you’ve got hanging down your back?’ demanded Arch Sampson as soon as I got onto the school bus.

‘It’s my hair,’ I replied demurely.

I was about to instruct Arch to call me Judy, when he yanked the cow’s tail out from under my hat and waved it in my face. ‘Are you trying to be a girl?’ Arch said, in a loud voice.

Several people turned round to stare at me. Behind me, I could hear the Hammer brothers snickering together. I sud­denly realised that was exactly what I was doing, though it hadn’t occurred to me quite so bluntly until then. Now that Arch had put a name to my behaviour, I understood that it probably wasn’t the fun that I thought it had been. It was something to be ashamed of.

No one wanted to be a girl. Even girls. Like Lou, for instance, who was always hanging round up at our place, helping out on our farm, because her mother, Aunt Evelyn, wouldn’t permit her to do ‘dirty work like that’. Lou wore old clothes of mine when she did my chores. She could get as dirty as was necessary without her mother being any the wiser. All anybody ever talked about in school was being allowed to ride their father’s motorbike, or shoot a rabbit, or shear a sheep. Even the girls aspired to these rural rites of passage, though they shied away from slaughtering. With the exception of Lou. She was the fiercest and most ambitious out of the entire school. She always carried a sharpened pocket-knife.

So it was strange that I could never summon up any enthusiasm for these pursuits, a zeal which came so easily to my peers. To my mind, they were merely chores which I would have preferred to avoid altogether. I never admitted my disinterest, but joined in with the others claiming extravagant achievements for myself. None of it was true. I couldn’t kick-start the motorbike, let alone ride it. I couldn’t bear the agony of suspense waiting for a gun to fire. Even the gunshots on television made me cringe. As for shearing, just holding the handpiece made my whole body, which was kind of flabby, vibrate in a most alarming manner. The runtiest of lambs could kick itself free of my feeble hold before I even got the shearing machine running.

I was inept. But Lou covered up for me. She did the chores my father left by herself and never claimed any credit. I would tag along with her and admire her skill at whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. Then I’d lose interest and start playing out some game of my own; acting out an episode of ‘Lost in Space’, or pretending to be one of the go-go dancers off ‘Happen Inn’, or maybe even looking for clues to an adventure ‘Famous Five’ style. Lou did my chores and I entertained her while she worked. My cow tail lent a superior authenticity to my performances.

When Arch challenged me, my first thought was to try to make him understand how much fun it was to dress up and pretend to be someone else. Maybe, promise him the tail off the next cow that died and he could be Penny … but it would have to be a black cow and my father didn’t have black cows. The scorn with which Arch looked at me made me think better of that idea. I decided to try and downplay it.

‘It’s only a tail, Arch, I was bringing to school to show everyone,’ I said.

‘We’ve all seen a dumb old cow’s tail plenty of times before,’ sneered Arch. ‘Why’d ya have it hanging out of yer hat like a ponytail, like a girl?’

I blushed. Everyone was listening and looking at me. ‘That was just a joke,’ I muttered.

‘You’re a joke alright,’ said Arch, beginning to laugh in a fake, malicious way. ‘Seems more like you were acting the poof.’

I didn’t know what that meant, and by the bewildered looks of everybody on the bus, no one else did either. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lou demanded, moving down a seat to sit opposite Arch.

Arch didn’t like Lou. She could beat him in arm-wrestling and he lived in constant terror of her chal­lenging him in front of an audience. ‘It’s somethin’ me dad warned me about,’ said Arch quickly.

‘What is it?’ said Lou.

Arch seemed lost for an answer.

‘Don’t you know?’ Lou continued. ‘You shouldn’t use words you don’t know the meaning of. It’s pretentious.’

Everyone gasped. Lou had the most sophisticated vocabulary of anyone at school, on account of Aunt Evelyn, who had been a school teacher before she married Uncle Arthur. Aunt Evelyn was always trying to improve Lou’s mind and anyone else’s she could get to. Sometimes, she’d fill in at the school when the teacher was sick or away on a course, and accomplish more in a single day than the teacher did in a week. Everyone was relieved that the teacher was in pretty good health generally.

‘So what does that mean then?’ said Arch.

‘It describes silly boys like you, using words you don’t know the meaning of.’

‘I know what it means,’ Arch flared, going a little red. ‘It’s men who act funny, you know.’

Lou stared at Arch. ‘No, I don’t know. You explain it.’

‘Well, they’re men but they wear wigs and dress up in frocks and …
they’ve got fifty ways of saying fabulous
.’

Arch crossed his arms and stared at Lou defiantly. Lou stared right on back at him. The whole school bus was watching the two of them. Suddenly, Lou snatched the cow’s tail out of his hand. ‘Arch,’ she said, in her most sarcastic voice. ‘This isn’t a wig. It’s the tail of a purebred Charolais heifer that Billy-Boy was bringing along to show the school, ’cause it’s valuable. That heifer that died was worth a lot of money. More than any of your father’s boring old Hereford cows.’

Arch snatched it back. ‘So how much is it worth then?’

I saw my opportunity and grabbed it. Before Arch had time to register what I’d done, I had the tail safely stuffed inside my school bag. I didn’t want him getting ideas that it was valuable enough to interest him. There was no way I wanted to lose that tail and spoil my new game forever. It was going to have to become top secret.

I clasped my bag to my chest and stared down at my feet, avoiding the eyes of Arch and the others on the bus. The panic of the confrontation was ebbing away and a new sense of wonder slowly took its place.
Men who wear wigs and dress up in frocks and have fifty ways of saying fabulous
. Dressing up was my favourite thing to do.

It was always me who was the keenest to get out the dressing-up basket. I’d have to tempt or even bribe Lou into joining me. The dressing-up basket contained all these wonderful garments cast off by the women of our family. They were mostly my grandmother’s clothes that Grampy had bundled up after she died but couldn’t bear to destroy. There were fringed silken shawls and chiffon scarves and stiff floral dresses made out of material that looked like curtains and coats with real fur collars and elaborate hats Nan used to wear to church. But the most illicit item in the basket was a pair of Aunt Evelyn’s long lacy bloomers. Unbeknownst to her, Lou and I had rescued them frem the rubbish to be burned.

Playing dress up became so much more
real
once I had my cow’s tail. Previously I’d had to use the tent as a wig. It was the right colour (gold) and exceptionally long, but otherwise it wasn’t wildly convincing hair. Lou used to say I looked like the Virgin Mary with the tent clasped round my face. It wasn’t the image I was striving for at all.

I wanted to be like the heroines I read about in books; the ones who suffered dreadful handicaps or hardships but who always triumphed in the end with true love assured and a miraculous recovery from their invalidism. I snitched ideas from those books and devised my own plays and insisted Lou and Babe take part in them. I always cast myself in the central tragic role. I had a penchant for crippled heroines rather than blind or mute as there was an old pair of crutches in the wash-house. They were an excellent prop and I could never resist incorporating them. Every year, on Christmas Eve, Lou, Babe and I gave a concert which Aunt Evelyn always tried to take over.

Aunt Evelyn was the local star. She had ambitions to be an opera singer which she’d ‘sensibly’ put aside in favour of teacher’s college. She took major roles in shows throughout school and college. But after she married Uncle Arthur, her aspirations faltered. The Glenora Musical Society put on Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals once a year. ‘Are there any others?’ the society’s secretary had asked Aunt Evelyn in surprise.

Aunt Evelyn always took the leading roles in those shows but she also complained to anyone who would listen that it was no challenge to her. She wanted something that would inspire her. That was why she got so excited one year, when she saw an advertisement in the newspaper inviting actors to audition for
Hair
. Aunt Evelyn couldn’t drive, so my mother drove her to Dunedin for the audition. They had to keep it a secret from Uncle Arthur who wouldn’t have approved of them travelling one hundred miles for such a flimsy reason. Trips to Dunedin were for important matters like visiting the accountant or taking advantage of a special offer on sheep drench.

Aunt Evelyn was tremendously excited about
Hair
. She had been thrilled when she heard it was coming to New Zealand. She said it was avant-garde. Most other people said it was disgusting, celebrating as it did drug taking and free love, with full-frontal nudity to boot. Aunt Evelyn had no qualms about tossing off her clothes on stage. ‘It’s a challenge,’ she said dreamily. ‘At long last, a challenge.’

Three days after her audition, Aunt Evelyn got the phone call to say that she didn’t get a part. The director had been looking for a more youthful cast. Aunt Evelyn was terribly disappointed. ‘Not that Arthur would have allowed me to do it anyway,’ she said. ‘But you know, I wanted the part so badly, that I just might have insisted.’

She suggested to the Glenora Musical Society that they might like to do their own version of
Hair
, but they voted unanimously in favour of
The King and I
instead. That year, instead of dancing naked on stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Dunedin, Aunt Evelyn waltzed demurely round the stage of the Glenora hall with John Mason. He had been cast in the role of the king, as he had the least hair out of any of the musical society’s members. No one was prepared to be shaved bald for the role. Not when it was the middle of winter and sub-zero most mornings.

I adored watching Aunt Evelyn in that show, transformed into this shimmering creature in her elaborate costumes. I used to test her on her lines as Lou wouldn’t or I’d act out scenes with her for practice. We rehearsed ‘Shall We Dance?’ countless times and Aunt Evelyn used to gurgle with pleasure when we’d finished, and called me John Mason’s understudy. She never guessed that I was under­studying her role. I longed for her to fall off the stage during rehearsals and be consigned to crutches. I knew her role almost as well as she did.