'Not that I'd kiss a girl' by Lil O'Brien

Nelson’s Pukapuka talks 2020 included a conversation between Lil O’Brien and Eamonn Marra, two young writers with topics outside the usual book festival fare. I love the book’s cover design, enjoyed listening to the well facilitated conversation and the story itself inspired me to buy the book ‘Not that I’d kiss a girl’ by Lil O’Brien.

Lil’s parents unceremoniously throw her out of the house when she’s home from her first year at Otago University, after overhearing a phone conversation that she’s attracted to girls. She’s dismissed from the family with the words ‘you’re a disgrace, an embarrassment’ and more. Put in front of the door in the middle of the night she’s given a time when to come back the next day to retrieve her belongings.

Wow. An unlikely scenario these days. The shame her white, wealthy, privileged family perceives Lil imposes on them by not being ‘normal’ seems weird and outdated.

A few pages in I wondered if I could bring myself to read the book – I did not relate to the character who comes across as spoiled, entitled, self centred and judgmental. The self centred is probably normal for teenagers, yet the book was written while she was well into her thirties. The entitled and its extent were new to me. I considered putting the book aside, yet – the story… I still wanted to know what happened in the 15+ years since, so I persevered.

The book is an insight into a world that’s strange to me. The abundance of money, the social environment. I get the story without being able to meet or visualise the people in this world. The descriptions of the family home are bare; I get to know that it’s beside the ocean; yet it’s a shell that does not convey any sense of home – something the author refers back to as something she’s lost. As a reader I love detail, I want to be able to see a house, to participate in a family dinner before the drama, the happy times – they are mentioned yet as a reader I have nothing to imagine them. It’s the challenge of a memoir – how can you tell your story, without hurting the people who are part of it? Without telling their story too? Lil’s decision to abstain from description is probably to protect the privacy of the family home. She does not turn her parents into real characters - they have no name, no physique, no hobbies nor interests, no existence outside their role as parent. The rare glimpse of character and love (of her mother, who buys fabulous presents, you can identify her mood by the way she makes the bed; yet she’s terrorising the remaining family by her distress over Lil’s disgrace) seem accidental. The book lacks adherence to the mantra ‘show, don’t tell.’ This lack of exploring her relationship to her parents, and her privilege, is also highlighted in The Spinoff’s review of the memoir.

After a while I gave up on the writing, and read for the story and the social environment it describes. My comments below relate to the memoir’s content, the social environment, the choices Lil makes. Which feels odd – who am I to comment on a young woman’s choice? Yet, she put her life out there, and stirred me into thought, so here they are…

Lil is privileged in all respects. Plenty of money, lots of friends, success at university and in her first job. Friends who drink and party with her and remain through challenging times of outing herself as gay, exploring a different way of being. While family relations are strained she determinedly goes her way. The friends only exist in relation to Lil, none of them have a physique, a fully developed character.

I’m stunned by the amount of alcohol Lil imbibes, for years she’s drunk three to four times per week; it does not matter if it’s her university soccer team or the colleagues at the first job – life is lived with copious amounts of alcohol. While she wants to explore sex she’s often too drunk, to have sex, or to remember what happened. It seems lucky indeed that none of the men she thought she’d lose her virginity with took advantage of her drunken status, but went their ways when she decided that actually, no, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to have sex with you. Whichever page the book falls open, it describes a scene affected by alcohol, and by social norms that must make sensitive people deeply unhappy. The descriptions of her soccer team, what happens in changing rooms, on the field and on the social gatherings are, to this sober, past middle-age, sensitive woman utterly repulsive.

Why do I read? Books provide an insight into other worlds, they might allow me to see how other people think, feel, function. This book is an insight into a world of zero appeal. A book that makes me wonder how anybody can survive studying at Otago without turning into an alcoholic – at least when, like the author, lack of money is not a limiting factor in the acquisition and consumption of alcohol. I heard the expression ‘I survived drinking 101’ more than once in other contexts, in this book I was given a vivid picture of its appalling reality.

Lil seems ‘normal’ at the end of the book. She’s confident in a career, in a long-term relationship and reconciled somewhat with her parents. How did this happen? A façade of happy family re-created? The trauma inflicted in the intervening years is not addressed. Nor is how she manages to create a stable relationship after years of drunken sex. Which leaves me feeling a bit disappointed – how did she turn her life around? When, and why? And what happened to her friends when she changed her ways? Which makes me wonder – if friendships are based around substance abuse – no matter if it’s alcohol or something else – it requires profound change to stop, which affects the social environment and can be another, sometimes unexpected, loss. How did she do that? Or, did she?