I keep getting mugged. I’ve been mugged like four or five times. All over the world. There’s something about me – I just scream “mug me”, which I should probably stop screaming to people because it’s making them mug me. They’re calling my bluff.
Some of the muggings were kind of scary and boring and just like, you know, general movie mugging. “That’s not a knife” kind of stuff. But there are these two specific times that really stand out. The first one – I would say the main mugging in my life – was back many years ago. It was different time, it was 2009. McLeod’s Daughters was still on our screens if that gives you any context of who we were as a people.
I was living in Newtown in Sydney in a very, very shitty apartment with my two lovely housemates and I would go out and started doing stand up. I was 19, where you go out and you get very drunk and you don’t walk home. You kind of pinball yourself off things, pole to pole to pole, and then you just find yourself somewhere. Often I would find myself awake in my hallway, fast asleep with the front door open.
I was walking home one night after a show and I was on my street, Australia Street, and in the distance I could literally see a police station. I got mugged while looking at a police station. I was walking up the street, very drunk with a hangover brewing, and a group of youths, about five of them, came up to me and I remember not being scared.
They were not scary youths, just regular youths, and they came up to me and started talking in that kind of way that you talk to anyone in the middle of the night. And then it became clear through the conversation that they wanted my things. It was like a stagecoach robbery. It was very, very, very polite.
One of them said to me: “Hey, what would happen if you were to just give us your phone and your wallet?” And I was like: “What, guys? What? We’re just having a nice chat. What’s going on?” And then it became a little bit darker. One of them said: “If you don’t give me your phone or your wallet, we are going to beat you up.” Then we started negotiating. I was drunk enough that we started negotiating. I said: “Look, I have a bank card in here. I can give you this cash, but if I give you the whole wallet, I’m just going to cancel these cards. But don’t worry about it. I can give you this packet of cigarettes.” And it was all very fine. I gave them my phone and everything.
As they were walking away – this is where it got strange – one of them said: “Just so you know, I think it’s really shit that we don’t have gay marriage.” And there was a weird pause and I went “what?” and he said: “My sister’s a lesbian. I just think it’s really shit you guys can’t get married. But have a good night.”
He walked away and I was just standing there thinking, even our thieves are pro-gay marriage at this time in history. And then I had to go to the police station.
Have you ever had to give a police report where the officer is kind of laughing at the semantics of the mugging? It was very uncomfortable.
My most recent mugging happened when I was in New Zealand filming a popular competition reality show. We finished filming and it was all going great. We were very happy. We were having our Covid-safe after party in the car park of the Auckland studio, with our masks on and hands over our drinks, and then all of our phones lit up to say that we were going into lockdown straight away. I was meant to be flying home the next day.
I had been away for six months and it was very hard. Then I was trapped in New Zealand and I couldn’t leave and I didn’t know what to do. And I was angry. It was that time in Covid, when we were furious at each other. We were like: “Someone might have eaten a bat!’’
The next day I was walking around the block of my accommodation within the Covid-safe parameters and speaking on the phone with my partner. We were having an argument. One of those arguments you have when you’re in a long-term relationship – not about anything. We were just kind of shouting at each other. And I’m walking down the street, Queen Street, one of the main streets in Auckland, and a youth came up to me, and because I’ve been mugged so much, I knew in an instant that I was being mugged.
I literally said to my husband on the phone: “Kyran, I’m being mugged, I’ll call you back.” And I prepared myself for the mugging. It became clear to me that this was his first or second mugging. He was really new to this, which was annoying to me because I’m an old hat at this, and now I’m working with the fucking work experience kid. I’m going to have to show him the ropes here.
He kind of hyped himself up a bit and he got really up in my face and said: “Hey man. Give me your phone or your wallet.” I had quite recently come out as a non-binary person and had been very angry at the world for the last few years due to everything that had been going on geopolitically. I don’t like conflict. I’m a very non-confrontational person. I’ve recently apologised to a doorframe for running into it (I’m not making that up). But something snapped in my brain.
I got real close to him, right up in his face, and I went: “Hey, fuck you. I’m not a man.”
This poor guy – it was his first mugging. He did not know what to do with that information. He just aborted the mugging and he went to run away. But in that time, when I was turning away, I slipped over and fell on to the ground flat on my back. He stopped and turned around to look at me and said: “Hey, are you OK?”
I think about this guy a lot. Genuinely. I think about him going into his bathroom at night, looking in the mirror and saying: “Next time you try this, you got to get in there. You got to be fast. And, you know, don’t misgender them. They don’t like that. Make sure you don’t misgender them. You can do this. You’re a real mugger. You’re a man.”
This is an edited version of a Full Story podcast episode
