7 September 2005

The suspicion that the parents would want to marry me off as soon as I got home and landed a real career was my biggest nightmare. I thought I was safe until the parents started a rather subtle campaign; Mum taking me shopping for flirty, girlie clothes while holding forth on the advantages of arranged marriages and being a wife that supports a husband in his job; my dad, once so proud of my studies and my travel, questioning me closely as to how I was going to support myself until my marriage, steadily ignoring my flippant remarks about not getting married. It seems that my time to myself is finished, that my time to pay my parents back for my creation and upbringing is at hand.

It was this hammering in of their expectations that came to mind as, primped and curled, I stood outside the church as Romeo's best friend got married, as the beaming bride and groom greeted their guests and watched Mum and Dad cooing at one of my brother's classmates.

The Charming Italian is everything my parents adore; worldly, brilliant, charming, well connected and soon to finish medicine. I only ever attended my school Formals and Balls with boys like the Charming Italian because they were the boys sanctioned by my parents while they still had a say. Men like The Charming Italian command my respect and my admiration, but I have no inclination to play house with someone who will keep me in Perth.

I muttered out of the corner of my mouth to my brothers that the parents would LOVE the Charming Italian for a son-in-law and Elbow was nowhere near clever enough for him, so I guessed I was the lucky girl. Then, with true Hollywood timing, his mother caught my eye and summoned me. The dance began, his mother complimented and admired, I was coy and bashful. She asked me how the last two years had been; I said all the right things about finding myself and achieving goals. I admired her strapping son's sartorial elegance and she minutely detailed his impressive record since I last saw him - overseas scholarships, a year living in Rome and Sweden, travelling with his parents and beloved sister around the world.

I was steered across to meet this paragon of a man himself as he talked to my brother and the Charming Italian leant down to flash long-lashed dark eyes at me while I peeped out from under my mascara and tried not to make faces at Romeo. He accused Mrs B of matchmaking as she hustled him off so the Charming Italian and I were left to swap travel stories and try and make the best of an unusual situation. Though, him being a good Italian son, I guess it was only me that was truly in an unusual situation!

As the Charming Italian charmed me into a simpering heap I remembered other boys. S catching the eye of Sarah Harvey at the Formal, and although she barely acknowledged my existence, she crossed the hall to flirt with him in front of me. His cool reception of her endears him to me to this day. And of course, P at the Ball, a better partner could not have been found for me!

Admired, clever, happy and confident, these boys are the ones who will be running Perth in 30 years, their elegant and beautiful girlfriends becoming trim wives presiding over big houses and a select brood of uniformed children. Their fathers are lawyers and doctors, own the family business and expect great things of them. They have years to prove their worth and live up to their promise, while their future wives have a bare few years to catch them.

I think I have just realised that my parents had brought up their daughters to catch one of these men, and since my sister had abdicated her right to a city boy by aiming for farming, I was the daughter that had to bring in a good husband. They had moved to the right suburb to live and had sent us to the right schools and university so our classmates were respectable. They had let me wander off to be 'finished' overseas and had cultivated the right parents in my absence. Now that I was home to stay it was time for me to get myself into gear and ensnare one of the good boys so I could be propelled to the heady heights of a BMW, a 4WD and a house in Peppermint Grove.

The Charming Italian and I greeted the bride and groom as a couple, the four of us chatting away, the parents watching with calculating eyes. The next day at the reception we danced around each other through the crowd under parental eyes again. When the Charming Italian and his mother had gone all his classmates teased me, reminding me of my remarks many years ago that the Charming Italian was the best of their year. I await the next move with anticipation. The Charming Italian mentioned we had to continue our conversation about travel; I said he knew where to find me, my brother grinned and his friends smirked.

I was actually lucky enough to see almost every young man I grew up within two days – I got to see all my brothers' friends at both the wedding and the reception the next day. These boys have always been high achievers, gregarious, fascinating and charming. They were still growing up though when I left, and I come back to find them men. We were at the first wedding from their group and at such an adult occasion I was able to talk to them on a new and mature level, as an old friend just home from travelling, not just Romeo's older sister.

From a group of young university students had emerged gruff mining engineers, successful entrepreneurs, heedless playboys, spotlight-stealing comedians and tortured artists. I swapped bawdy stories with the playboys, I discussed politics with the engineer and his glamorous and lovely girlfriend, the artist and I retreated to a corner to discuss working within the confines of the expectations of those around us and I had a joke off with the comedian.

Driving home Romeo told me that each one had complimented me to him during the course of the two days, and he glanced at me with pride. The four of us are so close-knit that we have always expected to get along with each other's friends, and it was clear to him that I have still had it. And it was clear to me that the next year and a bit was going to be a great adventure as I started meeting the same people in a new mindset.

On Saturday night I saw my FSO and all his friends as well as a startling array of men from the past. At one stage on Saturday night I was standing with Nik in The Queens fearing to move because in each corner of the pub were groups of men gossiping with each other about my return and they were not making me feel comfortable!

I've said it once and I will say it again – Perth is too small to breathe in sometimes. The party I was at The Queens for held some guests that made me squirm with discomfort as each face brought years of intertwined love affairs and feuds wriggling back into my consciousness. There was:

#1 FSO who was spectacularly late. I had to leave the party frequently to talk to others in the pub as his friends were watching me speculatively and hinting that I was waiting around just for him. When he finally did arrive, the shock of seeing him had me almost tongue-tired – I went out with him?

#3 Three of his friends are friends of mine in their own right, long before I met FSO. They were reassuringly welcoming and constant and I was there to wish my favourite the best of luck for his move to London.

#4 The other three ranged from one who despised me from the first day I started going out with FSO one of the two who had tried to go out with me after FSO and I broke up and were swiftly discouraged by the rest of the group, and one that went out with my best friend and was her partner at my 21st. Needless to say these three looked straight through me that night.

#5 A friend from first-year uni with an ego directly proportional to his attractiveness who is constantly hinting that Che and I are gagging to go out with his smelly, fat little self. G'ah!

Thankfully Nik and I were spared having to be too polite to rude boys by the plethora of other familiar faces we were able to distract ourselves with. Generally, it was posing, eyeballing the talent and being impressed. And a few of the men on this top-shelf talent were a blast from our past.

Six years ago, in first-year university, Nik and I were the back row bandits in Politics 101, spending our halcyon first semester ignoring the lecturer and gazing, entranced, at two tall gorgeous boys in the next row. One was Peter, the blue-eyed white-blond son of the Headmaster of Wesley, and the other his equally gorgeous brunet mate. Nik went on to have a crush of many years on Peter as he went over to Law when she did and was in many of her classes and he became her perfect man.

Two years out of University had moved Peter out of her everyday life, and she does not frequent the places his crowd of rich kids play, so seeing him on our turf was a bit of a shock. What was even more of a shock was that even after six years we were remembered. As we became aware of them and Nik walked away to the bar, they saw me and nudged each other. I was mortified, suddenly realising that since I had NEVER talked to them and had only seen them in class six years ago, the fact that they knew my face did not mean good things. We made like a tree and left, but not before Nik realised Peter was no longer the only man worth mooning over.

Walking home after a night of negotiating the social shoals, Nik and I were glad of one thing – each of us had finally realised that it wasn't all about the boy anymore. Nik was over her epic crush, and I no longer cared if Matt still loved me or not, nor what his friends thought of me. We had grown up.

I love Perth, I love my family, I love my friends. But there is no freedom in this town unless you cut yourself off from all you knew before. The weekend brought out the Perth society hunter in me. I had to fight against the habits of five years learning who to chase in Perth and I have only had two years of freedom to preserve my sanity. Now that I have been in the situation, I realise that much as I love Jane Austen, I do not want to be in a Regency-type marriage market presided over by dynastic parents.

It's kind of funny, but I wish I could just tell them that trying to keep me here by throwing me in the way of eligible men is not going to do it, although Mum mentioned the bloody 'Max has to meet this man' topic again tonight. My dentist's son for Christ's sake! Sure he has been in London for the same two years as me, but why would that make him inclined to want to do anything with me? G'ah.

Holding Out For A Hero - The Charming Italian, Again