
It was one of those days when you’ve just had it with school and classrooms and friends and you need a little alone time, so you chuck a sickie and your parents know, but they let it go.
I was 15 on this wonderful day when mum approved my sickie.
Everyone left the house and it was beautifully quiet.
I jumped out of bed and ate Nutella out of the jar as I planned my day of freedom.
It was a housebound day of course, because mum would call and check in, and we only had a house phone – it was the 90s.
It was sort of like being under house arrest, but in a pleasant sort of way.
I did what every teenager does when they are alone at home with no fear of being caught – they go through their family’s shit.
My brother had a few well-thumbed porno mags under his bed (again, it was the 90s) and a few coins he would definitely notice were missing, but nothing else of interest.
Next stop, my parent’s room. I found my mum’s vibrator (ew), my dad’s stale lung busters that he kept for emergencies (which I routinely bummed and smoked behind the dumpsters at the supermarket nearby), a book about the female orgasm way back in the cupboard, and a stash of VHS tapes.
It was weird, because we had our own impressive collection of VHS tapes proudly displayed alphabetically in the living room. So why were these in here? Hoping to find porn, I started sifting through them. Most were unlabelled, a good sign, I thought.
I took a few out to the lounge room. The first one was just snow and static. The second was a shaky hand held, out of focus home video from a funeral or something.
Then I thought I heard a key in the door and threw all the tapes under the couch and curled up on the lounge with a hang dog face for few minutes. But the coast was clear.