Would Would 17-year-old Dani Say?

Seventeen-year-old Dani would've wanted the bar you are sitting in right now to be a little grungier. But she would never use that word. In 1994, it would still have the stench of a music and fashion catch-all term. She hates using that word; if asked about her favourite music, even though it easily covers about 50% of what she still listens to at this age. She doesn't believe she follows fashion, but she too is a victim of the system, so patiently outlined to her years later in the iconic monologue from Devil Wears Prada. There is a reason why she can buy affordable lumberjack button-up flannelette shirts in stores everywhere in 1994.

But you know. She doesn't follow fashion. She doesn't understand fully about cycles of fashion. She doesn't understand her Doc Martens are a part of the 20-year fashion cycle. She will understand it perfectly when she admires so many of her current students wearing floral dresses, chokers and Docs.

She will understand it. And feel time slipping away from her.

She would fucking LOVE the boots you're wearing tonight. A sophisticated version of Docs. She'd believe the jewellery you're wearing is from Scarab, a hippy shop she frequents. (Does it even exist any more?) It sells the standard, she buys the standard - an amethyst crystal necklace, tie-dye full-length skirt, an autumnal-toned floral dress she picks out on a shopping trip with her mum.

You still think about that dress a lot.

She's in a push and pull. So desperate to seem worldly and sophisticated. She gathers books and music and film around her like a shroud of knowledge, scrapbooking her identity, and bowerbirding a song lyric here, a hairstyle there. To be sophisticated, she would love the cocktail you've just ordered. Pineapple Gin Fizz. Alcoholic, but still sweet enough to be a good gateway drink for a seventeen year old. She'd also fucking love your tattoos.

You're in a bar located in a converted worker's cottage, almost exactly the same style as many cafes popping up in West End in 1994. Its New Farm location is parallel to those in West End; probably even built in the same late 1800s decade. This one, lamentably to your 17-y.o. self, does not have the grunge and dim, candlelit corners of The Three Monkeys. (FUCKING R.I.P. TO THAT BRISBANE INSTITUTION. OH MY GOD I MISS IT). This place is slick, with tiles you are now old enough to be able to identify as Subway Tiles. They are dark green, and you would now secretly like them for a bathroom reno. You are also of an age where you think about choices like that.

Your ex-husband installed the security and sound at this venue, when it was being renovated into a bar.

Your 17-y.o. self gasps. You went and got yourself married? But you were never going to do that! Down with anti-feminist institutions! Why'd you have to go and do that? Surely you at least didn't wear a white dress? Even at seventeen, the symbolism of the white dress would've been incorrect.

Yes. You wore a white dress. It wasn't without trying. You really wanted green, almost the Hunter green of those Subway Tiles and --

Coward.

Fine. Have another drink. You absolutely still love drinking, and it's still a crutch when you're socially awkward. You will be a Fun Drunk. Although, now you consider the health consequences.

You have thought about this a lot recently. You have noticed a stunning parallel with how you feel at 45: a divorced [DIVORCED!] she hisses] perimenopausal woman, free of encumbrance and a brain swirling with new combos of hormones. It's no wonder you have begun considering what your 17 y.o. self would make of all this, Make of her lived future and all the sliding doors moments that have led to sitting at this bar while writing this.

What did she dream for you?

She would absolutely say something sarcastic at you for not being a full-time writer yet. You try to explain yourself away. News journalism wasn't working. You wanted to be a feature writer, they weren't teaching it. In fact, teaching was a perfectly viable, safe option and --

Coward.

You think about 17-y.o. Dani a lot. Her surly veneer, defensiveness, eagerness to eat the world and spit it back out.

You write for her now. Stories she would love to read. You write the birds into stories for her. You write poetry where lines finally don't rhyme with "dark". You write horror she would devour; she re-reads things ritualistically. She will be on stage alongside you the next time you perform poetry, a ghostly member of your Coven.

You took the long way around to follow her pathway.

Yet she would love to have had you as her teacher.

Oh my god, she would love you so much.