Hiding in plain sight

When I was a kid, I used to daydream about hiding in the big bucket outside my local KFC joint. You know the bucket I’m talking about; it’s Colonel Sander’s version of the golden arches. And here in Australia, they sit out the front of every Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet on a big pole beckoning hungry patrons. Being a child, I didn’t really grasp the logistics of why such a thing wouldn’t work. Nor did I see the symbolism of my desire. . .

Spending much of my childhood scared, confused, and uncomfortable, I learnt how to hide in plain sight. Concealing what I really thought, veiling what I really wanted, and hiding who I really was – I became a master of disguise. It was fear that led me to do this. Fear of not fitting in. Fear of being judged. Fear of being rejected and misunderstood. Ya know, all the classics. I didn’t realise I was doing this, of course. I was just shy and scared, and I didn’t know how to express myself.

Cultivating a rather deep inner world as a result of fearing the outside world, I also didn’t know how much of that inner stuff was okay to share with others. Nor was I ready to share it. I mean, what was I gonna do? Just tell the kids at school or my parents that “I-feel-like-a-weird-outcast-who-lives-more-in-his-head-than-in-the-world-and-that-a-lot-of-the-time-I-wish-I-could-just-hide-in-a-big-KFC-bucket-because-I-don’t-know-how-to-navigate-this-being-a-person-thing-and-frankly-it’s-scaring-the-fuck-out-of-me.” Beyond the fact that these feelings were opaque at best, even if I could’ve understood them, at nine years old I certainly didn’t have the capacity to put such things into words. And so, I stayed quiet. Choosing instead to adopt the approach of a chameleon.

When I found skateboarding a few years later, everything changed. Riding a skateboard made me feel more like myself than anything ever had. It wasn’t simply that skateboarding was my thing, it was that atop my board the part of me that’d been hiding came alive. The riotous rumble of my wheels roaring over the asphalt; the ecstasy of soaring only inches above the ground; the paradoxical nature of hurtling forward while standing sideways; and the ever-present danger hurling me into the moment – somehow, these essential parts of skateboarding enlivened the dormant part of myself. As time went on, skating not only taught me how to connect to that deeper part of myself, but also how to express it. I could reveal glimpses of that elusive part of myself through the idiosyncratic style I brought to the movements I performed, the tricks I chose to do and the spots I chose to do them on, and the skate videos I ended up filming and editing with my friends. And so, for more than two decades, skateboarding was how I bared my soul.

For the last few years, a chronic injury has driven a wedge between me and my skateboard. And while that hurts in a way I’m yet to fully process, much less describe, I’m reminded of that old saying about a window opening when a door closes. For me, that window has been writing. A confluence of synchronistic forces brought me to writing. There was the inspiration I found while reading other writers at university. There was my burning compulsion to put all that skateboarding had done for me into words. And, as these stories often go, there was also a girl, (or should I say a Chicken).

Knowing now just how well writing fits me, I’m often surprised that it didn’t take root earlier. I mean, if skateboarding empowered me to express the deepest parts of myself through movement, then writing has done the same thing through words. It’s also helped me connect with a broader spectrum of people. After all, few understand the esoteric language of skateboarding, whereas the English language is practically endemic. I was thinking about this very thing just the other day on the cusp of The Curious Platypus’s third birthday. Struck by the thought that for three years now I’ve been sharing my writing with people all over the world, I realised writing for this Substack (and the book I’m working on) has been the truest expression of myself I’ve ever been able to manage. There is something about crafting pieces that reflect the arcane and ineffable parts of myself, and then sharing them in public, despite my fears, which eclipses what I was able to do on my skateboard. Pouring myself into the stories I create engenders a level of vulnerability that, for me, was previously unimaginable. And leaning into that vulnerability for the last three years has been one of the most healing things I could’ve ever done for my nine-year-old self.

Which brings me to YOU – my incredible Substack friends. One day all of you will be held responsible for turning me into the expressive monster I’m slowly becoming. As the gentle, supportive, and genuinely encouraging way you have responded to my writing has emboldened me. It’s super-charged my eccentric whimsy. And, most importantly, it’s helped me show my nine-year-old self that its perfectly okay for him to reveal all the weird and colourful parts of himself. Even the parts that think it’d still be kinda cool to hangout in one of those big KFC buckets.

Thank you, friends. You have no idea how much I appreciate you.

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