‘They don’t know shit. You’re not gonna get hurt. You’re fuckin’ Beretta. They believe every fuckin’ word, ’cause you’re super cool’

It’s awfully embarrassing to confess, but that right there is my bathroom-mirror mantra. I say these rather preposterous words to myself in bathroom mirrors when I’m nervous or about to do some public event that terrifies me and all my social anxieties – generously passed down to me through my nervy dad’s blood – freeze my insides and make me piss more times than is healthy. I get up close to the mirror and whisper these words and pray that nobody’s about to enter the men’s room of some big city hall. On that last line about the Beretta, I point my right forefinger at the reflection of my nose. All the emphasis on the fuckin’. Then I breathe and walk out of the bathroom.

The words are Quentin Tarantino’s. Reservoir Dogs. This is what Tim Roth’s undercover cop character, Mr Orange, says to his bedroom mirror just before a potentially deadly meeting he’s about to have with Harvey Keitel’s seasoned gangster, Mr White. Roth, in fact, says, “You’re fuckin’ Baretta”, a reference to the gritty American 1970s TV detective, Tony Baretta. My minor adjustment to the words is more useful to me because I’m essentially trying to convince myself that I am, despite appearances, a weapon – a gun that is likely to go bang, motherfuckers!

I’ve been whispering this nonsense to myself since I was 17. I said these words before the interview for my first journalism job. Slipped on my Roger David suit. Tied my Lifeline bargain-bin necktie. Said what I had to say to make myself brave; to make myself cool; to make everybody believe anything but the thing that I believed deep down inside – that I was a dirtbag houso chancer who reeked of his own limited potential. The words worked. I got the job. They believed every fuckin’ word.

I said the words again when I was 23 years old and standing before the men’s room mirror of the foyer to the InterContinental Sydney, about to conduct a 15-minute interview with a long-time hero, Hannibal Lecter himself, Sir Anthony Hopkins. The words did not work that day. Hopkins was abrasive and irritable; troubled, I was later informed, by a difficult personal matter. All the Welsh acting titan wanted to talk about was the many things that can kill a person in the average Australian backyard. “You have this creature called the funnel-web spider?” he whispered, sucking air through gritted teeth. Five minutes later I nervously tried to crowbar a question about acting into his glowing three-minute tribute to the stinging power of the Australian box jellyfish. He paused at the interruption and looked at me like he was picturing my fried liver between a sesame seed bun. “Acting is bullshit,” he spat. And I believed every fuckin’ word.

When I was 26, I said the words again. That was the morning of my wedding day. The last time I said the words was just a few days ago when we were about to launch my latest novel, Lola in the Mirror, to an audience of 1200 people in Brisbane’s South Bank Piazza. There was something appropriate about me staring into a mirror and saying those silly words that night. The book is all about a 17-year-old girl who sometimes finds herself staring into a somewhat magical mirror, attempting to uncover the mysteries of her past and process the pain of her present, and hold on to the hope in all her possible futures. She lives with her mum in a van by the Brisbane River – one of the 120,000-plus Australians sleeping rough each night in 2023 – and she feels like a dirtbag houseless chancer who reeks of her own limited potential. But she desperately wants to be a weapon. She wants to be a fuckin’ Beretta. And you better believe that I have given this girl every chance in the world to go bang.

And maybe that’s at the heart of everything I truly believe now. Everybody deserves that chance, to be their own fuckin’ Beretta. Tell yourself that enough times in the mirror and you might even start to believe it.

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