When I arrived in Australia as a teenager, I was sent to a boarding school for farmers’ kids. Back then, words like weirdo, wanker and poofter were thrown around like plates at a Greek restaurant.

Anyone who was a bit different got hammered. I remember the chubby boy with a small pink penis and shriveled nuts who got called Chihuahua.

For me, I often got called a weirdo or a poofter, or sometimes both together – a weird poofter.

I’ve tried to fathom out whether it was because I was maybe a bit feminine or or odd, or both. Sure, I liked to express myself – write poetry and act in plays. But hey, I played sport and girls made me horny so figured i was not gay but maybe I was just a bit weird.

Over the years, the poofter label faded, but the weirdo tag stuck. I could prove to myself that I was not a poofter but I could not prove I was not weird.

Sure, I drift into abstraction, articulate thoughts mid-flight, and sometimes don’t know what I’m saying until I’ve said it. I forget where I left my keys, but I notice the stitching on your buttons is diagonal and you’ve got a similar curvature in your mouth to a cat.

Oh, and sometimes I’ll start telling you one story, remember another halfway through, then realise the second story reminds me of a song lyric, and before I know it I’m explaining a completely different point from the one I opened my mouth for. Thats not weird. I am just busy thinking.

But, more than once, that’s been met with:

“Mate, you’re a weirdo.”

People often say it like it’s nothing. Like they’re flicking lint or a flake of dandruff off your shirt.

But being called a weirdo hurts because it strikes right at the core of who you are. Once it was fun being me — kids can be silly and different and not care.

Then adulthood arrives. Boys become blokes, but the edgy lingo entrenched in Aussie culture pervades. The weirdo label outlives its welcome, and it hits you over and over again until it starts to feel easier to fake an identity than to keep risking the real one.

“I am a creep, I am a weirdo….”

Enter the imposter, the clown, the fraud, the great pretender — the version of self seeking acceptance. The people pleaser, hidng behind the truth. What a fucking huge waste of energy.

I didn’t realise it at the time, and I still don’t know if I properly realise it now, but that weirdo label did push me into a shell. I buried parts of me I actually used to like.

Sometimes, I think about Christopher and how his life turned out. He sure copped it a lot worse than I did.

Me, I no longer care. At sixty, there is no point in caring too much about what others think… is there? There is however one person I want to thank, and they know who they are. We ocassionaly share bird pictures.