I need to tell you about the most erotic relationship of my teenhood. My most passionate affair was with a roll of adhesive, misunderstood by many, worshipped by few. I learnt her rhythms and limitations, sprawled across cork-tiled floors, unrolling her beneath my careful hands. I was in love with Duraseal

It’s late January, sometime between 1990 and 2015, summer’s dying, and a new school year is approaching. The sweet, chemical tang of adhesive would soon be in the air. An advertisement's ditty on TV reminds you by singing: “Back to school, with books so coooooool! Duraseal. Awesome.”

I’m watching Crime Investigation Channel on Sky, a creamed corn and cheese toastie in hand (made in Fordism production line fashion with my three siblings), when the email’s inbox chirps on the family computer. Our school stationery lists have arrived. I turn off the TV. Not even new evidence in the Madeleine McCann case, can keep me away from The Lists.

I spur into action, printing and laying out the four stationery lists on our dining room table like tarot cards, studying them for patterns, for overlap, for opportunities. How many 1B5 exercise books do we need in total? How many 4B1 notebooks, HB pencils? The pile of circulars (from Whitcoulls, Warehouse Stationery, Paper Plus, The Warehouse) I have been collecting are ready for cross-referencing. I open Microsoft Excel and create columns and rows, with teen devotion, for price comparison.

The cheapest place to buy the 48-pack of Faber-Castell coloured pencils (in the red box), Project Books, and BIC Cascade felt pens (30-packs in snap-together plastic cases resembling deli coleslaw containers) is Whitcoulls. The divine Factis soft eraser, with the red and blue cardboard sleeve, and 1B5 exercise books are cheapest at The Warehouse. Duraseal is usually best value at Paper Plus. The cruel irony is that the Duraseal covering costs at least three times as much as the exercise book it is housing.

I finally, once and for all, decode the exercise book language. The most common exercise book, the 1B5, a classic. ‘1’ meaning soft cover, ‘B’ the line width of the pages, ‘5’ is the size of the book. Applying the knowledge: 4B1 are hardcover, regular lined, pocket-sized notebooks, 1E5: quad gridded book for Maths. 1A5. 

Ah, a personal favourite: soft cover, unlined. Not on my stationery list but one bought for a 40 cent pleasure. 7B8: an exercise book that is pre-punched so you can put it into a ring binder. If you learn a musical instrument: the 1M4 (with music staves).

My patient father agrees to drive me around town, waiting in the car like a chauffeur, while I execute my procurement strategy starting at Paper Plus, then crawling to every other stationery shop I have identified on my spreadsheet, and back again. Word gets around that I am a freak, really into stationery shopping and Durasealing. My brother’s friend’s mum asks me to do her four children’s lists.

“Of course! Just give me the lists and I’ll do the rest,” I say. She hands over a couple of hundred dollar notes. My first paid job, and it is under the table, just how I like it. Then another mother calls. I answer on my Sanyo Pinkalicious, and suddenly I have just a week to spreadsheet, purchase, Duraseal, label, and deliver two families’ stationery, as well as my siblings’, and my own. I am delighted.

I transform the dining table into a sterile space and tell my family, again, that it is out of bounds for the week. I beg, and am successful, in my plea to use mum’s sharp sewing scissors for the task.

I approach the Duraseal with confidence and tenderness. The green grid backing paper suggests scientific precision, with its helpful measuring squares. I unwind the roll, and position it. You have to commit completely once you start. The moment you start to peel the film off its backing, you are all hers, and she is demanding everything: your complete attention, your steady hands, your willingness to surrender to her. I make the triangular cuts that allow the film to fold neatly over book edges.

I check once, twice, thrice the lists, and wrap each child’s stationery pile in brown paper, tied with white string, and write their name on it in Sharpie, then request, again, a ride from dad to deliver these to the families. They give me my cold, hard cash, but truly I’d’ve done it for free (and praise). I could live on praise.

I had been through all the Duraseal rites of passage, years before. Safely bestowed upon only my own books, and that of my siblings: a kind and forgiving audience. Horrors of entire ecosystems of air pockets that you spend the whole school year pushing around. The bubbles were like heel blisters, formed from too-big leather lace up McKinley shoes.

Corners that didn’t quite meet properly. Occasional gaps where the Duraseal had been cut too short and you could see that impertinent ‘Warwick Red’ underneath like exposed skin. 

Perhaps most devastating was when Duraseal would fold onto itself, poor darling, creating impenetrable tangles that resisted all attempts at separation.

One learns pretty quickly that carpet and Duraseal are enemies. It is easy to capture cat hairs, dust, and  fingerprints like prehistoric flies in amber. Somewhere beneath the clear plastic of your Social Studies book, there’s probably a strand of your younger, blonder hair, or maybe one of your mother’s glossy dark brown hairs, her hair now silver. Geoffrey Batchen wrote, in Forget Me Not, about how the Victorians used to preserve locks of hair behind glass, carried as amulets, tender reliquaries of the people they loved. Maybe, although accidental, it’s just the same. 

When I was totally Frankie magazine-pilled, I attempted to cover my exercise books in 1970s orange and brown wallpaper sourced from op shops. It was thick, inflexible, and prone to cracking when folded. It developed consciousness, refusing to stick where intended, and multiple tubes of superglue later, I vowed to never try that again.

Some people’s stationery coordinated with their other school supplies. Their pencil cases, Taurus Flexion rulers, and Duraseal, either by colour (usually purple) or theme. In primary school Winnie the Pooh was for the sweeties who were later the prefects, and Tweety for the ones who were always allowed to go to the all-school social dances. Those licensed Duraseal prints (e.g. SpongeBob, Harry Potter, King Kong, Powerpuff Girls) cost a pretty eye-watering $5 a roll, for just one metre of the stuff. In high school, those same prints became mortifyingly juvenile.

The first day of high school was full of crisp white shirts, cotton summer kilts, lunchboxes featuring LCM bars (to pluck the colourful Kaleidos one by one), a Gladwrapped Vegemite sandwich, Le Snaks (with its weird cheese), and its sweet sister: Dunkaroos (that Nutella-like dipping pool). Lockers were assigned, the fresh exercise books’ new tenancy for the year. In my strict school, the opportunities for self-expression through objects were devastatingly limited. We had regulation hair ribbon, okay. (I heard rumours and tales of ‘other schools’ where you were allowed to carry your books around in a non-regulation bag, and most commonly it was those hot pink SUPRÉ totes with silver lettering).

Within these constraints, we found tiny rebellions. One was carrying around stationery supplies that were not on The List. Correction tape that would have your classmates whispering: “Can I borrow your Twink? Please?” The liquid variety, with the sponge or brush tip, took forever to dry, but was perfect for painting French tips on your fingernails in Maths. The most coveted pens were those scented Signo Uni-ball gels: popcorn, mint, cola, grape, strawberry, and cinnamon [rare].

When my friend Rose unveiled her exercise books there was a huddle and a gasp. She had cut up issues of Dolly, Creme, and Girlfriend magazines to create collages of Nicole Richie, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Hayley Westenra, and Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. The back of her Maths book featured a personality quiz: “Are You A Good Friend?” (if you chose mostly b’s - yes you are). Subject names were constructed ransom-note style, with each letter harvested from different sources. Like monks spending weeks perfecting a single letter in illuminated manuscripts, Rose had searched piles of magazines for the perfect ‘S’ from a Glassons advertisement for the subject label: ‘SCIENCE’. All of this was preserved under clear Duraseal, like it was covered in Thin Lizzy lip gloss. It caught the light.

There was something gorgeous about the way the clear film clung to the magazine images, pressing them flat, making them permanent. You could feel the cut edges of the images, the layers of the collage beneath your fingertips. Oh, Rose, you sorceress of the suburban! She had taken the most mundane object we could imagine, the humble exercise book, and created an altar to teenage divinity! Declarations of who she was, and who she wanted to be! We were in awe.

Inspired by Rose’s magazine collages, the next year I made my own, laying down on my bedroom floor wearing my favourite flared Levis. Creating what I now recognise as my first offering to the gods of teenage longing, though I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then. My collages were mostly shrines to my budding love of Princess Diana and Leonard Cohen. Diana, the doomed and adored icon of vulnerability; Cohen, the Patron Saint of Longing.

I felt morally justified cutting images of Diana from the endless supply of commemorative books that flooded op shops for 50 cents a pop. Leonard Cohen proved more elusive so I resorted to photocopying pages from my copy of ‘The Book of Longing’ at Dunedin Public Library. I only had access to National Geographic Magazine, so I was working with less Mischa Barton, and more archaeological discoveries. If I was lucky, I might find an image of a seashell.

Inside the exercise books were notes from learning how to dissect a film frame by frame, for English class. We studied Heavenly Creatures (1994). Pauline and Juliet had their shrines for Mario Lanza and other various ‘saints’; we had our collaged book covers for Buffy, Don McLean, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, and Paris Hilton, all under Duraseal’s skin. 

Salvation from Duraseal eventually arrived in the form of reusable slip-on exercise book covers called EZ Covers which promised, “No measuring, no cutting, no air bubbles, no wrinkles.” But, as a Duraseal devotee, I’d say, also no LOVE, no JOY. To remove risk is to remove vulnerability and the opportunity of mastery.

I get it, schools have gone increasingly digital, and the importance of physical exercise books has diminished, and with it the reign and importance of Duraseal. We were the last generation of an art form that was finally decided to be unnecessary.

Occasionally, I come across a roll in the gift-wrap bin at an op shop. I buy it and cover journals in it. The holographic roll, the fluro low-opacity tint, the velvet flocked flowers, the slick, and classic clear. The promise on the roll is as self-aware as ever: “Easier To Use!” it pleads. But, Duraseal, darling, fret not, I took the time to know you. Thank you for letting me in. I unfurl her, I remember her. It feels exactly the same.

I think about all the Roses laying on bedroom floors at the end of summer, surrounded by magazines, with scissors, and the only glue stick that ever did its job well – the Korean-made, distinctively green and yellow cylindered, AMOS one. With clear Duraseal, feverish teen obsessions, and dreams. The sound of the backing paper being peeled away, and finally, that moment when you sealed it all under that perfect sheet of plastic. It felt like we were casting spells.

Durasealing was making sure the things we cared about survived the rough handling of the world outside our bedrooms. It was a lesson in patience: with enough of it, you could make the ordinary sacred, truly your own, and maybe even last forever. Even if it was just a fifty-cent 1B5.