Mama Mia Read online

  When we met, Charlie was living with his bandmates in a rundown house on the other side of the city. The band wasn’t earning much from their sporadic gigs so he did the occasional shift as a waiter to earn extra cash. From the start, he never offered to pay for anything but that was okay. I’d dated broke guys my whole life and I was always happy to pay my own way.

  The share house was grungy and Charlie slept on a mattress on the floor so staying there wasn’t an option for me. Within a few months, I suggested he move into the apartment I was renting. He already spent a few nights a week there and in my haste to move the relationship forward, I thought living together was an obvious decision. He was reticent at first, which made me push harder. I knew cash was a problem so I told him not to worry about rent, I’d cover it. He didn’t argue.

  From the moment he moved in, it began. The gradual ebbing away of my confidence and the imperceptible shift from me being in the driver’s seat of my life and my relationship, to him decisively taking the wheel. Of both.

  One night as we were getting ready to go out, I put on a bright blue satin shirt. It was new and a Gucci rip-off and I loved it.

  ‘What are you wearing that for?’ he sneered.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I replied, surprised. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Look at yourself in the mirror! It’s so bright. Are you trying to get attention? Trying to flirt with all the boys? Hoping they’ll notice you?’ His tone was now mocking, his face contorted into a scowl.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I was crestfallen and genuinely confused. ‘It’s a shirt not a midriff top. It’s not even tight.’

  ‘Yeah but it’s all…bright and that’s because you want guys to look at you, don’t you, Mia? You know you do. Don’t deny it. That’s what you’re like. A flirt.’

  Crushed, I took off the shirt and put on something black and shapeless. I wore black a lot during that relationship. It was appropriate, really. My wardrobe was in mourning for my self-esteem.

  The clothes I wore were one of a million different ways in which I apparently tried to attract men. The more outlandish Charlie’s accusations, the more desperately I tried to prove otherwise until I stopped talking to any guys when we went out, even my male friends and his. Especially my male friends and his.

  Eventually, it was easier to just stay home rather than have to defend myself and justify every action. My increasing isolation gave him more power and me less. And so the cycle continued.

  Infuriatingly, the same rules never applied to him. He’d flirt openly. Even though his band was pretty awful, there were always girls who came to gigs and tried to pick him up afterwards. One night in a pub, he humiliated me by pulling a pissed girl over to sit on his lap and sharing his drink with her. When I hesitantly complained about it later at the bar, he exploded. ‘Stop being an unreasonable bitch, Mia! Nothing was going on and if you can’t see that, you have a fucking mental problem.’ I left in tears. He stayed out partying until 4 am. There was no apology and when I tried to discuss it the next day, he simply shouted at me. ‘Maybe we should just break up! Maybe you should get another boyfriend, if I’m such a loser!’

  Somehow, he always managed to turn every argument around and cast himself as the victim. I never understood how he did this but it worked every time. I was repeatedly left feeling powerless, mute, needy and backed into a corner.

  I had no name for his behaviour at the time. I’d never heard of emotional abuse. It’s easy to mistake control for passion and possessiveness for love and I did. If he was so jealous and fiery, he must really love me, right?

  Emotional abuse is very different to the now famous ‘he’s just not that into you’ syndrome. With emotional abuse, he’s into you big time. So into you that he seeks to control you, to ensure you won’t leave him. When I first met Charlie, I had all the cards and he knew it. The only way to capture my attention and keep it was to systematically dismantle my confidence and isolate me from my support network.

  To this day, I don’t know if he did it consciously. I hope not. I don’t think he was an evil person, just one with very mixed-up ideas about relationships.

  Emotionally abusive men are often extremely charismatic. Charlie certainly was. Charming, amusing and great fun to be around. When it was good it was great, or so I thought. But when it was bad, it was paralysing.

  One day Charlie was yelling abuse at me so aggressively, I found myself thinking, ‘Please just hit me.’ The thought shocked me but I knew physical violence was a very clear line in the sand for me. A tangible reason for ending the relationship and never looking back. I wanted that tangible reason because when you’re being shouted at and taunted and belittled and criticised every day, the line between a volatile relationship and an abusive one becomes strangely blurred. You lose sight of what’s normal. Even so, I thought my situation was unique. I felt trapped and ashamed by the way Charlie treated me. Had I read an article about emotional abuse, it would have changed my life. But in the early 1990s it was not yet a mainstream issue and it wasn’t a subject I ever saw featured in magazines. When I became an editor, I would change that.

  My situation wasn’t something I could discuss with my friends or family. I’d gradually distanced myself from them during this relationship. It seemed easier to keep my life with Charlie quarantined from the people who knew me best. He didn’t like my friends and because he was very possessive of my time—which at first I found endearing—I began seeing them less and then barely at all.

  I knew if they spent time around me and saw our relationship up close, they’d immediately see how damaging it was. Despite my unhappiness, I wasn’t yet ready to hear the truth or to have a mirror held up in front of me.

  Often when Charlie’s band had gigs, I went and hung out in whatever small pub they were playing at. I became quite friendly with some of the other girlfriends and one night when Charlie was doing a rare income-producing shift as a waiter, some of them asked me along to a party. We met up with Charlie after he finished work and he was ominously quiet. I could sense an explosion brewing.

  That night when we got home he used some tiny excuse to erupt. ‘And what do you think you’re doing hanging out with my friends, anyway?’ he shouted. ‘They’re not your friends, they don’t even like you.’

  I felt like I’d been slapped. Again. I knew it wasn’t true; well, I hoped it wasn’t true. Was it true? Maybe it was true. It must be true.

  That’s how my mind had begun to work. My self-esteem was so low, my insecurity so overwhelming that I quickly believed what Charlie said. Clearly, I’d done the wrong thing by going out with them on my own. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Next time I’d stay home alone.

  The following weekend one of his friends pulled me aside to say, ‘You know I was so pissed off with Charlie for saying we weren’t your friends. That’s bullshit. He’s just being an idiot.’

  Yes, he was. So why didn’t I just say, ‘Fuck off and get out of my house?’ I truly don’t know. Not then and not now.

  I knew I was miserable and that I was living with a man who didn’t respect me and treated me like shit. But somehow, I was stuck. The idea of being alone was too scary. So I backed down. Every time.

  The other major feature of my dysfunctional relationship with Charlie was dope. I’d hear that first ‘tap tap tap’ of the bong cone being banged on the coffee table about 10 am on weekends and it would continue every few hours until he crashed out at midnight. I assumed the same thing happened while I was at work.

  I grew to loathe that sound. It meant glazed eyes, toxic lethargy, an inability to make decisions or conversation, extreme paranoia and inertia. It also meant he’d eat every piece of food in the house while playing Nintendo for hours.

  Charlie didn’t have a car and since I left for work each day at 8 am and didn’t come home until seven in the evening, this was a problem. For Charlie, and so for me. I didn’t want him to be unhappy because it would make my life more difficult. So I was fore
ver trying to find ways to smooth his path and clear roadblocks, even when they had been carelessly strewn there by Charlie himself.

  Somehow, I came up with the genius idea of catching a cab to work each morning so Charlie could have my car during the day. The reason he couldn’t drop me at Cleo was because he had an urgent meeting with his pillow, after a late night. Pulling bongs and playing Nintendo.

  I never complained. I didn’t dare. Charlie’s temper was something I’d quickly learned to fear. Worse, was the unspoken threat that if it all got too hard, he’d leave. Mysteriously, I still didn’t want him to and redoubled my efforts to make him happy.

  If he felt like it, Charlie might agree to pick me up from work. As the end of my day loomed, I’d grow increasingly tense. I worked in a small room with three other women, one of whom was my direct boss. She always worked late and although it was never a spoken thing, I tried to stay as late as I could to impress her. Also I was busy and I loved my job.

  Charlie would turn up when it suited him, usually between bongs at about five-thirty or 6 pm. Barely anyone left before 7 pm, so when he’d call me the knot in my stomach would morph instantly into a large stone. ‘I’m here, come down now,’ he’d bark.

  ‘But wait, I can’t leave yet because—’

  He’d hung up on me.

  Every day, I was torn. I didn’t want to risk raised eyebrows from my colleagues for leaving before they did and I was terrified that Lisa would see me scampering to the lift and think I wasn’t committed to my job.

  The alternative was equally hideous. If I kept Charlie waiting for more than a couple of minutes, he would explode as soon as I got into the car. My car. Filled with petrol I had paid for.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he’d rage. I’d calmly try to explain that I couldn’t just bolt out the door as soon as he called but this only made him more angry. I learned that the best way to deal with it was to just shut up and shrink into my seat.

  THE DOS AND DON’TS OF DIETS

  Voicemail to Charlie from me:

  ‘Charlie, I’m at the airport, have you forgotten to pick me up? It’s 11.45 and I’m waiting outside…should I get a cab? Call me, will you?’

  One of my early responsibilities, soon after I started at Cleo, was to help produce the annual diet special. This was a ‘best-of’ compilation of the hottest diets the magazine had published during the year and—sadly—it was always a bumper-selling issue.

  I say sadly because even then, publishing diets made me uncomfortable. I’ve always thought they were evil. Perhaps this is because I was never able to stick to one. Or maybe because in my teens I saw so many girls torture themselves trying to follow some kind of punishing food regime. A few of them tumbled from dieting into eating disorders as issues of food, control and body image twisted around in their minds.

  But I had nothing concrete to support my gut feeling that publishing diets was wrong. The first year, I just shut up and did as I was told, putting my amateur opinions to one side and carefully retyping the year’s hottest diets into the new compilation feature.

  There were some doozies in there including the Fish Diet, the Fruit Diet and my personal fave, the Drop A Dress Size By Saturday diet—which, as you may imagine, required fairly extreme measures to execute. Would you like some stir-fried air with that?

  The second year, when diet-book time rolled around, I went to the features editor with my concerns. ‘I think these diets are terrible,’ I told her earnestly. ‘In fact I think all diets are terrible. You have to practically starve yourself to drop lots of weight quickly and you just end up putting it back on anyway. Most girls can’t stick to them and it makes them feel even worse about themselves.’

  I paused to draw breath, unsure whether to continue. How far could I push it?

  ‘All that stuff about calories just makes girls obsessed with food—in a bad way. And it makes them feel terrible about their bodies. Shouldn’t we be trying to encourage them to treat food as food and not numbers?’

  My arguments were simplistic, unscientific, personal and emotional. More importantly, they completely ignored the fundamental principle of commercial publishing: give readers what they want, not what you think they should have. And how do you know what they want? By watching circulation.

  The circulation of the diet-book issue was always up on the average, which proved conclusively that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Women wanted diets. In my passionate naïvety, I didn’t understand that editors couldn’t use their magazines to push their personal beliefs—not if those beliefs were in direct opposition to the bottom line.

  A magazine is a business, not a community service announcement. And the objective of that business is to make money, not push a wheelbarrow or launch a crusade. In the future, I would come to better appreciate the difficulty editors sometimes face in balancing their private views with what they know will sell.

  It was too late to drop the feature that year—it had already been promoted in previous issues and advertising pages had been booked around it—but by the following year it was significantly reduced in size and emphasis. The year after that it was gone.

  I’d like to think this was due to my convincing speeches (of which I made several more), but in reality it was probably because it no longer spiked sales. Like any editorial gimmick, crash diets lost their potency in the nineties after being wheeled out enough times. They’d be back.

  At home, even my job was the cause of argument and angst between Charlie and me. I was sometimes assigned to interview male models or celebrities and to help compile the annual eligible bachelor list. And although I carefully tried to hide these assignments from Charlie, knowing the reaction they’d provoke, he’d invariably pick up a copy of Cleo lying around at home, see my by-line on an interview with, say, Julian McMahon and accuse me of using my job as a way to meet men. Oh yes, that’s why I’d chosen to work at a women’s magazine as a beauty editor. To meet men.

  One time, I was sent around Australia as a judge in a model competition for a week. My head was in such a mess by then—about nine months into our relationship—that I spent the trip desperate to come home.

  My plane landed at 11 am on a Sunday morning and since I’d been travelling back from Perth straight from a shoot, I’d carefully packed a change of clothes for the last hour of the flight so I could arrive looking nice. I crammed myself into the aeroplane toilet and got changed into my new outfit. Did my hair. Put on make-up. I was excited to see him.

  I’ve always loved an airport reunion and as I walked to the baggage area, I looked around expectantly for Charlie, imagining a big hug and a smiling face.

  But he wasn’t there. I tried his mobile but it was switched off. No answer at home either. So I sat on my bag outside the airport like a backpacker and I waited. An hour and a half later, he turned up, ambling towards the terminal, looking like hell. No apology.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, my anticipatory buzz already dead, replaced by a deep disappointment.

  ‘Look, don’t hassle me, okay?’ he snapped. ‘We had a gig last night and then I went out and had a huge one. Everyone came back to our place and I didn’t get to sleep until six this morning.’

  ‘But you knew I was arriving at eleven…’ I said plaintively.

  ‘Fucking give me a break, will you?’ he exploded. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? And I’m bloody exhausted, all right?’

  I was shattered. He had no money to pay for the parking so I had to go back into the airport, find an ATM and withdraw some cash.

  I was silent during the drive. When we arrived home, though, we had a screaming argument and I fled to my parents’ house because I was so desperate for someone to be pleased to see me. But I didn’t tell them what had happened with Charlie. I never did. I wasn’t yet ready to be told I should leave.

  GREENER GRASS AND CUSTOMS DOGS

  Voicemail to me from a headhunter:

  ‘Yes, hello. This is a message for Mia Freedman. My name is Josh
Bradley and I’m calling about a potential job opportunity. Would you be able to give me a call back so we could discuss it further?’

  With my home life so messy, Cleo was my refuge. I was still very young and fiercely ambitious. I was also impatient. So when a rival publisher approached me about the editor’s job at Girlfriend magazine, I was excited. We had a few secret meetings and I thrillingly mulled over the prospect of being an editor at twenty-one. It was tempting. Lisa had become editor of Dolly at twenty-one. I was keen to do the same. Competitive—me?

  Ego fought with pragmatism. The idea of saying I was an editor and actually being one? Being the boss of a magazine? With my own staff? That was a sexy proposition. But compared to Cleo, teen mags weren’t the main game, they were off-Broadway.

  Could I still reach my goal of editing Cleo at twenty-five if I diverted to the teen market first? Possibly. I’d have a few years of editing experience on my CV by then, which would help. Or would it? I hadn’t been at Cleo very long but I knew I had so much more to learn if I was to lay proper foundations and be a successful editor at any magazine.

  Still, I was torn. As negotiations with the other publisher intensified, I knew I had to tell Lisa. Also, I wanted to impress her with the news that I’d been offered an editorship. To my surprise, she made a counter offer.

  ‘We’ve been thinking of doing Cleo in New Zealand. Would you be interested in moving there to edit it?’

  New Zealand? Like the teen market, New Zealand was away from the main game, even though I’d be able to keep working closely with the brand I still felt so connected to. It was an invaluable opportunity to launch an established magazine in a new country. Even I could see that. But I wasn’t convinced.