Hélène Sobolewski: Election

MY UNIVERSITY days were quickly coming to an end. I was feeling nostalgic. I had handed in my last assignment, a thesis on the cultural codes in Spanish cinema in the nineties. I didn’t know what to do; more study would raise my HECS debt and put me behind in the job hunt. I was feeling skittish. When I was asked to run for co-editorship of the student rag, I signed up. I had loved that little doozy of a mag. My heart pounded the first time I saw my name in print and I trembled with joy. I was chuffed to think I could be a greater part of it.

I did not hesitate then to sign up to become the last co-editor of the student rag before voluntary student unionism poisoned it.

I was 12 the last time I acted. I was a ‘jolly jam bun’ instead of a jolly jumbuck in a production of ‘Warts off Matilda’ instead of Waltzing Matilda. I wore a cardboard box and I swung my hips and sung like Elvis. “You ain’t nuttin’ but a jam bun.”

It was in front of a lot of people. My little theatre group and I had been chosen to go to the next level in a Tournament of Minds and perform our piece in a lecture theatre, a step above the school assembly. It’s funny to look back now to see my child self pelvic-thrusting in a cardboard box where I would later go to lectures. It was there where I would think myself grown up.

My child self would not believe the second time I acted, just as my adult self wonders how could I ever have donned a cardboard box and pelvic-thrusted my way to obscurity.

The second time I acted was when I was determined to win the student election.

We tried on the t-shirts, all of us getting in each other’s way to grab our size out of the box. The girls wore the tighter t-shirts to show off the outlines of their breasts.
They were orange, similar to the shade Viktor Yushchenko’s party used when they won the 2004 presidential Ukrainian election. It was a strong and inviting colour. It is hard to go past action red combined with friendly yellow.

Our t-shirts stood out in the sea of liberal blue. We hoped the colour would repel any poisonous attacks from the young liberals vying for this short-lived success.

We were three on our team and who knows how many on the ticket. The other smatterings of orange were running around trying to get votes to become office bearers.

We had three days to run around the plaza, chasing votes, winning friends, burning smiles on the retinas of voters.

I think of myself as shy. Never would I have thought I would go up to strangers, my peers, stop them from getting to the bus on time so I could tell them how my team and I would better the uni rag. I made them care what happened to a magazine they never read. I made them vote.

I was pleasantly vicious in convincing possible voters, extraordinarily quick to corner the meek ones I knew would vote for me. They had no choice. I was eloquent, charming, determined.

My Jekyll and Hyde transformation was shocking. The possibility of power, even a power dismissed by people outside of university and by many at university, was so dear to me that I took myself out of my skin and into the skin of someone whose limits had no end. That skin had scales and it was impenetrable.

I forgot to eat and yet I was buzzing full of energy during that campaign. My usual self starts to whimper and wilt when food intervals are too long. I carry nuts and berries with me to keep my energy up. But I didn’t during election week. My campaign fed me.

I scared my future co-editor. He was not so interested in getting votes as he was getting the attention of beautiful young things walking past in their short skirts and low tops. Those darling little strumpets in their short skirts were distracting him and they were too cool to vote. I spat fire and shooed the non-voters away. I had a talking to him. He saw my eyes flitter, the iris turn long like a cat’s and blacken even more. He was soon seen running after votes. I cannot remember what I said, or did but it was worth it.

It was a landslide win, the first in the history of the university.

A few days later I settled into the editor’s desk and shed my campaign skin.