Post-COVID

After COVID, things began to change in society. I remember that I gained the right to vote in 2024. For me, it is hard to imagine any contrary situation. I really struggle to remember my life before COVID hit in 2020 and cannot really seem to recall much of anything before 2023. I don’t know exactly why but I believe that my life did not begin in earnest until 2023 and before COVID, before 2020 when I was 12. The memories I have are simply a blur of mixed images and things, just a handful of images in total. Some things that I remember are the bikes around our apartment. Dad had thought that he was somehow the manager of the building once. I remember that. I remember that during COVID, we had a day where we had to clear them all out. We went through the bikes and I just kept my bike that I presently rode. There were some kids bikes in there. In ‘26 I got my license and I don’t think I’ve ever ridden a bike since then. I remember my dad initially owned 3 apartments in our building. I think when they were in their twenties they lived in a different one in the same buildling. This was back before I was conceived and when mum was pregnant. They owned 3 apartments in the building and we used to collect rent from them. A few years before COVID, my dad sold one of them, leaving us with two. Point I’m trying to make is there is a difference between life in the past, which I can’t remember and life now. Everything changed during COVID. For me, things became about making up for lost time and for making change. I’d always excelled at school. I’d been an A student since first grade. When I got my driver’s license, it suddenly opened doors for me. I could go places and I wouldn’t need my parents to drive me there. One of the places that I started going was to the Victorian Young Green’s meetings. It was there that I started to develop the activist spirit that I have today and it was with the help of the people there that I decided that I would run for the Senate. I wanted change in the world around me and I wanted to be part of that change. Before I ran as a candidate for the Senate, I had done fundraisers and door-knocking for the Green’s and I had also been to a number of protests. Climate issues were front-and-center for us and I was more passionate about the issues than most. I remember a day when we were in the city, protesting against Big Oil in the street. I arrived early on a cold, misty morning and I picked up some picket signs from my fellow campaigners. We then all marched down the street, yelling our slogans. Honestly, while it did feel good to be doing the protest, afterwards, I couldn’t help but feel that our efforts were somehow in vein. That, somehow, despite all getting together and coming out for the protest that nothing would change, that we essentially had no effect whatsoever and certainly didn’t realise the change we had set out to affect. When I began to campaign, I felt that I was finally breaking through the barriers that had been in effect in my life. I met with important people in the local community and they mostly seem surprised that I was running and were skeptical about someone like me being able to be a Senator. They seemed to humour me and I felt that they did not believe me. If ever, in human history the world needed change it was that moment, in that time more than ever and if we pick the same representatives, those that we’ve always picked, then we would not get the changes that we needed in our society. I wanted to be seen as a candidate that was in sharp contrast to the ways things had always been. When I went out to do speeches at events in the community, I felt that people didn’t take me seriously. Not even the other Green’s candidates nor the volunteers. Most of the other candidates were much older than me, old men and women running to be our political leaders. Already I had had enough of the system. These candidates, these old geezers we’re all apparently voting for had already led all of us to a poorer future, had led us to climate disaster and scandal after scandal. To me, it stood to reason that voting for the same boring, lying old men would lead to more of the same. We needed to shake things up and we needed change. That’s why I liked it when they thought I wouldn’t win. Someone like me, with a seat in the Senate. Their doubt drove me further than I could had gotten if a part of me hadn’t been doing the whole thing simply to prove them wrong. We made up flyers in photoshop with my face on them and some of the key points that I was pushing. We managed to summarise the points down to a total of 6 and we put them next to my photo and the Greens’ logo with bold, dot points. I tried to put on a serious face when I had my photo taken so that voters would take me seriously and vote for me. That day when we were designing the flyers is when I met Jear. I met him when we were talking to someone who did campaigns professionally for the Greens. Unlike the volunteers that were everywhere he was getting a real paycheck. He came into the Branch Office to talk to me and my friend that day. My friend was in the same boat as me, except she was running in the neighbouring seat. The line separated the community and ran down right near the Branch Office and we lived on either side of it which meant we could both run for neighbouring seats. Jear was good-looking and a good-humoured fast-talker. He wore a suit jacket over a coloured shirt and shook my hand when he first met me. He shook both of our hands and we immediately followed him and we all sat down at a small coffee table, the two of us sitting immediately opposite him. He then told us about what he did running campaigns and that he believed in us and that he wanted to work personally with both of us to get our campaigns up and running and to hopefully secure the seats for the Greens. We were both mesmerised and we both said yes and signed up to Jears’ personalised campaign management plan that he brought in with him. The next day, I met him again in the Branch Office, this time on my own. He had printed the flyer’s that we had designed the previous day in the morning, before I had got there. He showed them to me and then we talked about my image. Before long ____ walked in and the three of us discussed what was going to happen next. We talked a bit about elections and how he thought the two of us were in with a real shot. He talked about what it would be like to be in the Senate and how before long we would be. He looked us both in the eyes as he spoke. He was a good looking man and he wore old ties that looked threadbare. He put his hand on my knees, on both of our knees as he spoke to us. He looked desperate when he said certain things. Like how we were going to need votes. Just the word ‘votes’ seemed to mean that he would put on a certain kind of face. I didn’t know it that day. I didn’t know that after two years we would be having sex with him. Both of us. Together. He said he needed to get some photos of me for the newspaper and we went to his car and when we were in the car, he started by lifting me up into the back of the van by my hips, his hands were warm and when he put me down on the van seat, he ran his hands up my thighs and I couldn’t help it, I kissed him. After I had kissed him, I knew it was too late to go back and he lifted up my legs and my skirt held my knees across his arms and fucked me in the back-seat of his van. It was my first time having sex with a man. It wasn’t bad. I mean, it was good. It wasn’t bad like some people say, he had lubricant in his suit jacket and I came and I let him cum in me. Then we fixed up our clothes and I put on my seatbelt and I went with him without asking, I didn’t know where we were going at first. Eventually, I asked him and he said he still needed the shots for the newspaper. Oh no, I thought, we’re going for a photo-shoot. I immediately felt self-concious in my school uniform and I wondered if my hair was alright. We stopped after about 10 minutes drive and we were at the photographers studio. I didn’t have my blazer, all I had on was my plain shooldress and I had ribbons in my hair. I got out and he took my hand and walked me into the photographer’s studio. The pair both are elected to the Senate at 16 and this dramatically changes their lives. With the sitting days being only a few days a week and only for a few months, we were granted time away from classes to sit at the Senate but that still meant that we had to catch up on schoolwork. The rest of the time there was plenty that was Senator related to do. I had to read a lot and learn about all kinds of things and I barely had any time. Year 11 and Year 12 class scheduling was good to us because we had all of our classes together. And we were doing the same subjects. And thanks to Dunstan organising we would often be attending events together too and travelling together. In fact, for much of those two years, Dunstan was everything to us. He would pick me up at my place at 10:30 in the morning (that’s on Mondays) and drive to Katie’s place to pick her up around 10:45 and he would drop off both of us at school at about 10:55. Only it wasn’t just a drop off. He had managed to organise an office at the school that we could use for Senate-related business and we would often sit in there for hours discussing, reading papers and organising things. The school was super-supportive. They allowed us to do everything Dunstan asked and we had the office and the kudos of our peers to boot. We were popular at school. It soon seemed like ‘fake friends’ were my problem. But the two of us, me and Katie stuck together after that campaign in the Senate, at school and in between. I came to spend almost all of my time with Katie and Dunstan. The office at the school became one of the main places that all three of us could be found, working until 8:00 or 9:00 PM when Dunstan would drive us home. We had both of us got our licenses two years ago, just after we started campaigning but Dunstan still drove us because it was better that way. The Senate sits for three days a week only a few months of the year. During these times we were driven into the CBD each day to attend the chamber. We felt small and vulnerable besides the other Senators and we thought we were not heard. Sometimes, there would be protests and demonstrations out the front and I wanted to join them. I wanted to feel like I was making a difference because I felt like I wasn’t making a difference with my voice in the chamber.