The short, quiet guy next to me asks, ‘What medium do you work in?’

‘What?’ I lean down to hear him better. He’s also dressed like an off-duty fisherman and I don’t know how he can stand to wear a beanie in this sauna. A hot flush starts to creep over my cheeks and I know I need to slow down on the beer or my face will start to look like a tomato.

‘Your art…what medium?’

It takes me a few seconds to figure out what he means.

‘Oh. Photography, I guess. What’s, uh, your medium?’

‘These are all my pieces.’ He gestures around us; his fingers are covered in tiny tattooed symbols. We’re in a corner of small ceramic objects: arranged on shelves and hanging up on fine wire above our heads. I look closer.

‘What are—oh.’

Each shape is a vulva. We’re surrounded by pottery vulvas. Some with jagged teeth, some leaking red, others with thin sausages of clay balanced in them.

Olivia’s friend looks at me, waiting for my response.

‘They’re very powerful?’ I say, and that seems to satisfy him. Someone pushes past us, squishing our bodies close together. I can feel heat from the vulva artist’s front and a stranger’s drink trickling down my shoulder.

‘Have you shown your work anywhere?’ He lifts his drink to his mouth. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like he presses even closer. His head is right at my chest level.

‘No. I’m still learning.’ I definitely don’t imagine the way his gaze slides away. He scans the room over my shoulder, looking for someone better to talk to. Natalia has been drawn even further into Olivia’s group of friends. It looks like she’s telling them the funniest story they’ve ever heard.

‘You know, at high school.’ I say it loudly enough to be heard over the din.

The vulva artist steps slightly away from me, appraising my underage body afresh.

‘Take my advice,’ he says, without checking that I want any, ‘work hard on your folio. You could even take a few years after school to develop your practice, then apply for VCA. It usually takes a few attempts to get accepted, but you want to start your career on the right foot. Of course, I was accepted straight from high school, but that’s quite rare—’

‘Thanks, but I’m not sure I even want to do it as a career.’ I stop his flow. I don’t think Mum intended me to take an academic scholarship just so I could bunk off and be an artist.

The vulva artist smiles tightly, no teeth. He looks disapproving—a disapproving, creepy uncle who is only a few years older than me and might touch me on the butt. ‘Well. I guess art is not for everyone.’

‘I guess it’s not.’