A Novel Idea
Oct. 29th, 2008 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanRight ~ Partly because of two or three requests, but mostly because I'm keen to get cracking on the rest of the editing/re-writing... I realised tonight I'm not even halfway finished... here are two more chapters for the price of one LJ Entry. So, you lot... Get reading. Get interested, or don't... & maybe I'll lose interest too.
CHAPTER 2
(A Night On The Town)
I live in Ashfield.
It’s a suburb with a split personality. Split literally & figuratively by train tracks. One side has all the money & the other, well; let’s just say it has all the charm. They’re connected by three tunnels of varying size leading from the main shopping area, under the railway to the wrong side of the tracks where I have my garret.
Ashfield is on the outer rim of Sydney’s inner west, close enough to the action to let yourself feel a part of the throbbing pulse of one of the world’s great cities, but far enough away to get a good night’s sleep. It’s a multicultural little place, originally settled by Italian migrants in the fifties, but now known primarily as a Northern Chinese ghetto. For people who’d been reared under a Communist regime, they nevertheless seem to have capitalism running through their veins. Every second shop is owned by them. Tobacconists, bread shops, bottle shops, newsagents & supermarkets - all the essentials. Unlike the Hong Kong Chinese, who accept the Triads as a natural part of life, these guys can’t believe how easy it is to make money out here, so they see no need for crime, organised or otherwise. Hasn’t stopped the Hong Kong boys from trying though. But apart from a couple of upmarket gang-run restaurants, which everyone avoids more because of the bad karaoke than any unsavoury associations & the odd eruption of modern teenage ennui, everyone gets along pretty happily - the Italians, Chinese, young homebuyers & the artschool & university refugees - all happy with such a peaceful ethnic mix. And the cheap shopping.
Economy is an important factor for somebody trying to live by his wits & only making half a living. Over far too many years, I’d almost, but not quite, made my name as a pen & ink artist several times. Most serious artists blame fate, bad luck or drugs for their lack of success. Being a trifle more realistic than your average creative freeloader, I’m quite well aware of my problem. I have either a penchant or a weakness (depends how you look at it) for aggressive, pouty, dark-haired girls & more than a few times I’ve put my artistic career on hold for them. I even went so far as to marry one. I was completely, madly in love with her... it’s supposed to help. And she’d said she loved me too, which is as good a basis for wedded bliss that I could come up with at the time. I thought she knew me well enough &... as it turned out, maybe she did.
It didn’t take too long to discover that marriage quickly runs to more cash than can be garnered by making an exhibition of oneself triennially in odd galleries. The love of my life was at university with a full timetable & empty pockets, so one of us would have to get some ‘proper’ employment. Call me old-fashioned, chivalrous, traditional, or just the loser of the toss, but it was decided that I’d be the one. Fortunately, amongst my more peripheral, less celebrated skills, I have the ability to talk my way into highly paid, medium-level jobs in the public service - where the hourly rate is in no way commensurate with the miniscule amount of mindless work one actually does. So, I played the public servant while she played the penniless student.
All of this would have been par for the course, if a child hadn’t become involved.
For, as so often happens, there came a day when she announced she was pregnant. Contrary to a lot of other blokes, I was really happy. Here was an opportunity to get my act together for all the right reasons. When our little bundle of joy arrived, it felt like my life finally had a sense of purpose. Here was my incentive to live life rather than simply enduring it, as I had been for years. But beyond all that, here too was unfettered demand accompanied by unconditional love. I could really relate to that & loved the little lord & master right back. We had so much in common.
However, he soon became the innocent victim of some extremely effective psychological wargames his mother & I had started playing. I don’t remember why it all began, but from little things, big things grew. Troubles escalated, relations deteriorated & despite my best intentions, I was losing it all. It takes two special people to really make a marriage work. One of us obviously wasn’t that special, as I was constantly reminded by my wife & her family. Our son was the only reason I kept body & soul together. After a while, I ended up twitter & bisted, fat, ugly & drawing nothing but pay cheques - completely the opposite of the man she married. She ended up throwing me out for someone more to her tastes, got the courts to restrict my access to our child & finally ran away to Lord Howe Island. Or so I’m told, I’ve never been able to make contact since. But I know I’ll see them again. Hope springs eternal, life goes on & sometimes you have to start again. Whether you want to or not.
So now, at the start of my journey to the nearest hospital, I’m single again, back in black - sartorially, if not financially - a bit thinner, but not that much older or wiser - possibly just enough of both to be living in a spartan one & a half bedroom flat, keeping myself in Gitanes, red wine, pens, paper & ink.
On this particular night, I was surrounded by not only the above creature comforts, but also my entire video collection, fast-forwarding through a ream of old television shows looking for something... anything better to do. Life was good.
The screen flickered in & out of life. Every couple of seconds, half familiar characters & situations showed themselves before being swallowed by what looked like an out-take from the light show stuff in '2001'. Vertical hold & a lack of colour seemed to be the problem. A bit like life really. I didn’t like the way this was heading, so I zapped the TV & looked around for distractions.
A couple of half-finished drawings were scattered on the floor next to the telephone. I went over & stared down at them trying to get a different perspective. No bold, Escher-ish inspiration struck me, so… what else? I wandered over to the stereo, lifted the phone off a stack of 7-inch singles & flicked through them listlessly. Forget it, ringing someone was easier. All you have to do is press the first speed dial number you see. Reach out & bug someone. Two rings, then an answering machine. No obscene poetry came to mind, so I didn’t leave a message. Try number six. Answering machine. Answering machine interruptus.
“Hi... it’s a bit late, I just got home.”
“Liar - you’re hanging around like I am.”
“So?”
“You got anything better to do?”
“Scott & the ‘fist are playing at the Red Room...” The voice was tentative, as if the suggestion was less appealing than fast forwarding sporadically through old episodes of I Spy.
“Don’t know it.”
“Yes you do, it’s the old Manzil Room.”
One up to you pal. Justin made it sound like the common knowledge it probably was. Making it sound attractive didn’t take much more effort. At least it was Kings Cross. A chance to check out the wildlife. Outside my window, the road shone in luminous bruises of oil & pools of ice blue reflections from the streetlamps. There weren’t too many cars parked out there & even fewer driving past. I suddenly noticed how quiet it was. The choice was easy - the urban jungle or the cultural backwater. “Let’s do it.”
“Okay, ready in twenty.”
Twenty minutes, hmm... that meant speed dial six must be the number for his band’s pad in Newtown, not his girlfriend’s place in Summer Hill, or the elegant Granny Flat he has underneath his parents’ house on the Northern Beaches. Or it could have been his mobile... just how much of my phone’s memory is taken up by this guy?
I was awake, I was dressed, which meant I was as ready as I’d ever be, so that meant twenty minutes to down a couple of jars from the Chateau Cardboard. If my memory was anything to go by & these days it wasn’t, drinks at the Manzil Room were too limp & too expensive to be effective, so the best thing to do is get yourself charged before you walk in. It would also stop me getting run over whilst foolishly wandering down Memory Lane. I usually forget to look both ways.
History is odd stuff. There had been days when an entire tribe of professional students, amateur musicians & assorted lovers used to meet in North Shore & inner-city pubs listening to jazz & bluegrass, drinking too much & playing mind games with barmaids, shop assistants, artschool girls, nurses & jukeboxes. Now the tribe was disbanded & there were mortgages, telephones, home entertainment systems, computers, day jobs with no reason & life was cluttered with people that, not all that long ago surely, you wouldn’t have even noticed. But people change with the seasons, as a junkie once told me. Mind you, I think he may have died last autumn... stoned. It had been quite a while since the tribe had spoken. So many of us had left the island.
For quarter of an hour I stood looking out the window at the footpath. Nobody walked past. Then the white rustbucket a bunch of us had nicknamed ‘The Lemon’ in past days of camaraderie, pulled up, backfired twice, sighed into silence & collapsed against the gutter. A slim figure sprang out of the car, looking far too lively for the lifestyle I knew he was leading. The first thing to catch the streetlight was an iridescent waistcoat (even Dr Who would have been embarrassed). Then he was gone... up the side passage to the front door - architects in Ashfield are weird.
Twenty seconds later there were two quick knocks on my door. I downed the last of the Summer Wine - I’d have a head start at least - & ran a mental checklist. Black leather jacket, smokes, lighter, cashcard, condoms... no, not even looking. Comb... yeah, vanity rools okay. Two knocks again, slightly louder. Oh shit, I had agreed to go out & that did mean a kind of contractual obligation to at least open the door... enter Justin.
“Evening Squire.” That’s our boy. “Evicted anyone lately?”
Now, even for people who’ve known me a reasonable amount of time, it was a bizarre way to open a conversation. I kept a straight face & let him proffer an overnight bag. “No... you vagrant?”
“I just thought that, seeing I spend so much time over here, I might as well leave a change of clothes.”
Marginally presumptuous, but no more than any other fridge dweller I’d ever accommodated. I wondered if his ‘Hippy Crap’ South Park tie was in the bag. If it was, I was gonna nick it.
“I thought we were goin’ out.” I always drop my ‘g’s when talkin’ to guitar players, derros, public servants & ex-wives. I only make sure they’re intact when talking to octogenarian aunts or vets with degrees in fine arts... both are hard to come by these days, “How long you plannin’ to stay anyway?”
“How much red wine do you have?”
“Enough for one communion, or two drummers.”
“Thank God it’s payday. Even so, we won’t be up late tonight if that’s all you have to offer.”
Show off. Just ‘cause he reckons he doesn’t get hangovers. There was no point explaining that tonight was already tomorrow, payday was too far away, or that buggers can’t be choosers, so I just pointed towards the spare room. With a bit of luck he’d be a great distraction when I was invaded by the Star Trek fan club, which isn’t as unlikely as it sounds. They were overdue soon to monopolise my once-was-state-of-the-art computer to edit their ‘Prime Directive’ fan-magazine. The Star Trek prime directive is all about not interfering with other intelligent life forms, but the fan club don’t extend that courtesy to either me or my cockroaches. I usually hide the fly spray if I think they’re on their way over.
Justin picked a path between the TV & the couch, checked the red wine rack that nestled beside the plaster alien head, noted the four bottles in it, nodded & threw his bag at the cot inside the spare bedroom. The cot was left over from when my son used to visit every fortnight or so. After an acoustic band practice in the living room, when his mother had sprung him yelling for an encore of ‘Baby Come Back’, the thing had never been used, but as I said, hope springs eternal.
I heard a crash & an ominous tinkling of glass. Justin shuffled sheepishly back into the lounge with the remains of my framed Arts degree in his hand. “Oops, sorry.”
“Not to worry, you can pay for the reframing.”
“How about the next time you come around to my place you do the same to mine & we call it even?” The offer seemed to make some kind of sense at the time. He slung the remains of my academic achievement into the kitchen.
“Any chance of a drink before the gig... or instead of it?”
Oh oh, Northern Beaches alcoholics are notoriously picky about hooch; they are, after all, brought up playing in Daddy’s cellar. This one, being a charting guitar player, certainly wouldn’t be terribly happy being served only the cheapest Chateau Cardboard money could afford. Oh well... I casually indicated the wine rack & shrugged. “Sure, you find the corkscrew & it’s yours.”
If you are ever unlucky enough to count truly good guitar players amongst your friends, you’ll find that the common factor among them is... they’re expensive winos. Drummers will usually smoke anything you offer them & be polite enough to bring their own papers, but you can trust a guitar player to be snooty about the red wine he intends to get paralytic on at your expense. To be fair, Justin usually has the grace to bring quality stuff with him when a mutual bender is in the offing, but the trouble is - with both our capacities for wine best described as ‘prodigious’ when we get going, the quality stuff goes pretty quickly, leaving us with the quantity liver-rotting stuff a penniless artist has to offer. This place is a dry county by the time I sober up long enough to throw him out. He examined all four bottles on show in the rack, then unerringly picked the good one I was trying to save for any special occasion. I prised it from his grip & replaced it with a bottle of Bulls Blood.
His face fell. “Oh well, I suppose one glass won’t kill me. Even if it does taste like what it says on the label.”
He uncorked, poured, then raised his glass. “Minosegi Bor.”
“Egri Bikaver.” I responded, clinking my glass against his. It’s the official toast of the Former Yugoslavian Wine Appreciation Society... so Justin tells me anyway.
“We’d better get a move on if we’re going to make it to the gig.” Justin drained his glass in one go, before his tastebuds could figure out what hit them.
I was in no such hurry. There were more useful things I could think of doing that night, like becoming intimately reacquainted with someone who, unfortunately, was probably curled up totally overdressed next to her husband right now... or I could draw another dozen bricks or so on my latest magnum ’opeless... & I hadn’t beaten the computer at backgammon for a while… or there were those videos of I Spy I’d been looking through. Don’t tell me I’ve nothing to do... Then he tried the magic words. “It’s free entry.”
So what? Free entry it may have been, but had I swallowed enough Chateau Cardboard to actually be entertained by a tryhard metal band called Hammerfist? I’d seen one of their early gigs & ‘Hamfist’ was more like it. The rhythm guitarist knew every pose but none of the chords, the drummer looked like he’d been thrown out of Nimbin for overdosing on hair care products & the singer, Scott, could regularly be heckled at the Sydney RSL where he masqueraded as the piano man. There was no way I was going to squander two days rent on a martini at the Red Room/Manzil Room/Rock Garden/ Chequers or whatever it was called this decade. Justin had another go. “I’m driving.”
Nice try. He’s just the kind of demented musician who thinks he can down a bottle of red, pilot a dilapidated, fermented traffic infringement on wheels through the most policed areas of town, be in with a chance of picking up a social disease from a Manzil Room groupie & still blithely assume I’d have a good time. As usual, he was absolutely right.
A surprisingly short, not to mention nerve-wrackingly fast, time later, Justin squeezed the Lemon into an impossibly small space between a Rolls Royce & a police car, either of which were far more appropriate targets for the kind of vandalism & violence that gave the Cross its reputation. Add to that, we were within staggering distance of our destination. Why can’t I ever be so lucky?
We followed our ears down the street & nodded at the black-clad ‘Facilitations Engineer’ looming at the entrance. A dull, thudding, vaguely musical noise from inside exploded into surround sound as I opened the door. The second assault on our senses was olfactory. After all these years & name changes, the Manzil Room still smelled like rotten Parmesan cheese. I’ve worked in almost every sorry excuse for a venue in this town & in a lot of delicatessens as well. It’s easy to guess whose floor it’s better to wake up on. They’re both sticky & slimy, but at least the pickings are better in the deli.
Justin said something about names on the door to a bored looking weed in morning-after dress, who waved us in without even looking. I remembered to duck my head just in time. Like a lot of Kings Cross venues, these guys took the term ‘low overheads’ to literal extremes. I’d forgotten how much of a headache it was seeing bands in here.
The Manzil Room is actually two rooms joined. The first one you walk into has most of the recently chic patrons & a bar with tables & benches firmly welded to the floor - they know their clientele. They keep the lights permanently dimmed, the music just loud enough to prevent intelligible conversation & the drinks in plastic cups. Without a sideways glance we headed straight for the brain-dead room.
Through a haze of smoke, from both cigarettes & a machine on the stage, we could see the ‘Fist was already on. We wormed our way towards the front, where you could feel every beat & I jammed myself into a corner near the mixing desk. Not that there was an excessive crowd, more because it just seemed safer that way. Their rhythm guitar was pointing his leather-clad crotch at the only three girls in the place, who didn’t notice. The lead guitar was in the middle of a solo ripped off from Van Halen, Vai, Satriani or any other refugee from Whitesnake you’d ever tried to forget.
Seven more songs like that & I was starting to feel comfortably numb. God, I hoped they wouldn’t try to play it. After an uninvited encore of a Soundgarden /Pearl Jam medley with lots more gratuitous soloing, the lights came on & the house music farted out of the overworked PA. This was the dangerous part of the evening… with a band like this, there was the all-pervading threat that, now the first set was over, one of the musicians (most likely a guitarist) would come over with adrenalin gleaming in his try-to-please eyes & ask the most dreaded question a musician can... “Sowhaddayathinkmate? Fugginalrightay?!”
Justin hoped aloud that it wouldn’t be the rhythm guitar-player. Fortunately it was Scott the singer, one of Justin’s erstwhile flatmates. Nice guy, but with an annoying habit of trying to look & sound like he came from Seattle rather than Brisbane. He was really happy to boast about his next gig - a week’s residence at a piano bar in Fiji. Justin kept an admirably straight face while asking for the phone number of his agent.
A couple of other band members came up & made extremely small talk for a couple of minutes. One had a black t-shirt with the word ‘Cunt’ in large white letters on the front, the other guy had a, surprise surprise, black t-shirt emblazoned with some unspeakably violent band name written in almost illegible gothic script. At least, I hoped it was just a band name & not some kind of mission statement. When Justin said he regretted not wearing his white ‘Bananas In Pyjamas’ t-shirt, they recoiled & went off in search of social lubrication & fortification for the next set. Scott then asked the second most dreaded question a musician can. “Are you holding?”
A resounding negative from both of us & a look of resigned altruism crawled across Scott’s face as he nodded us over behind the sound desk & started mixing. Hmm, the music was about to sound better. If his stash was up to par, then the girls might even start to look good.
“Okay, who’s got a lighter?”
CHAPTER 3
(Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag)
Next thing I knew, I was being followed up my stairs by Justin in full chatter mode. He always says he’s a quiet stoner, like he reckons he never turned green at the Mittagong Chook Christening party a few years back (he did). I was busy trying to pick the right key out of the five in my wallet when he pointed at the suitcase on the landing outside my door. “What the hell is that?”
Well, on first impression, it looked like a slightly shabby, but nicely expensive piece of luggage. However it seemed a little obvious to say, so I treated the question as rhetorical. It was fairly large, the kind of case that should come with wheels & a strap for dragging it through the arrivals lounge. No wheels on this one though, no carry strap either. There weren’t any stickers on it proclaiming past or future destinations, although it looked like it had seen a few - the plain black material – nougat hide, or whatever the stuff they make luggage from these days is called - was scuffed in a few places & one plastic corner was fraying slightly, either from overuse or overzealous baggage manhandlers. No combination locks, just standard clips & a couple of belts wrapped around to stop it bursting open. And it did look rather full.
What thoughts go through your mind when you find a strange suitcase on your doorstep? They all went through mine. So, she’s come back; she’s finally left her husband; more fridge dwellers; it’s an invasion by the Star Trek fan club & this time they’ll never boldly go home... Stand by to repel boarders - & how do you repel boarders? Never take out the garbage. Works every time.
I opened the door, prepared for anything or anybody, but when we walked in, the place was as devoid of life as the Senate.
Even at three in the morning, I thought it would be pragmatic to find out first if the suitcase had escaped from the Indian sailors downstairs. They seem to sleep in shifts, so someone’s always awake. But none of them knew anything about it. There’d been no new arrivals at their place & they, with their front door permanently open, had seen nobody come up to see me, not even to make me smile. So, a refugee piece of travel furniture had arrived on my doorstep... it would be churlish to make it feel unwelcome. I grabbed the handle & lifted it slightly. For such a packed-looking case, it wasn’t that heavy, so I picked it up & brought it into the loungeroom. Justin kicked a few drawings out of the way so I could put it down in open space. We stood there for a moment. What now?
“You gonna open it?”
“Sure, but if it’s from my cousin Richard it’ll be full of snakes... can you hear anythin' slitherin’?”
Justin knew this was only a whacked mind-game, but was more than willing to play along. He held the case up to his ear. “No, no slithering… I don’t think it’s hissing, but it is rattling.”
I called his bluff. “OK, you open it & I’ll get the coat hanger.”
“What’s the coat hanger for?”
“To pick up snakes with. What do you use to pick up snakes?”
“Well, like most reptiles, cheap booze & a sleazy line usually does the trick.”
I hate people who laugh at their own bad jokes. He’d be pissing himself with something other than laughter if there were a bunch of taipans in there. Still, nothing ventured, I opened it... it was my place after all.
We gazed in glazed amazement at the contents. It was full of dope. Ganja, gear, weed, pot, leaf, whacky baccy, the Colonel’s secret herbs & spices, Mary Jane, manna, the original Taj Mahal. Dozens of packets of the right stuff… enough to pay the rent for three years & still be stoned free. Nobody loved me this much! My birthday wasn’t for months & there was no way it could have been an anniversary present. Firstly, it wasn’t the right date & secondly, if it was from the ex, the thing would have been full of snakes.
“Bloody hell! I’ve never seen vipers with a street value that high.”
Funny bastard. If it was the real Sylvester McCoy & not the sample case of a tarragon salesman down on his luck, I’d be stuck with him for a month. Well, there was only one way to find out. The taste test.
“Dig out that stuff you had a couple of days ago. See how it compares.” Justin said, flicking through my CD collection for something in a less than mellow tone. Not a difficult task.
“Fat chance.” The person currently curled up with her husband had been ’round since then.
“OK, it was an act of pure optimism to have asked in the first place, but can we at least use papers instead of your rancid pickle jar bong?”
See what I mean about Northern Beaches guitar players? Fortunately, a drummer had left me half a packet of Tally-Ho’s & after a few minutes searching I found the scissors & a clean looking bowl. I let Justin mull up & weathered the usual complaints about my French cigarettes.
Now, for those of us determined to kill ourselves through nicotine addiction, French cigarettes are the bee’s knees. They have nothing but tobacco in them - no chemical additives, no preservatives, no filters - nothing but loose packed, unadulterated, dry black tobacco. When these things kill you, it’s with pure tobacco. Montezuma’s ultimate revenge, the real stuff the Aztecs used to cultivate so lovingly, before being culled by Cortez. If Gitanes cigarettes had been around in the fifteenth century, the Spaniards would never have had the lungpower to run the natives into the ground. To the uninitiated, they can be a little rough. Everybody who’d suffered one of my mulls hated them - except for one of my oldest, dearest & now furthest away ex-girlfriends, that obscure French/Irish object of desire.
With The Slim Chance Band’s ‘Roll On Babe’ playing nice & loud on the stereo, I did the deed. Three papers - two joined together parallel, one below to make the catcher. Then the mull, with a strip torn off the Tally Ho packet as a filter & voila, a classic joint... sort of. I was a little out of practice, preferring the pickle jar most times, but if I’d done it right, we’d be able to assess, in a clinical manner, the relative value of the thirty-odd packets in the suitcase.
You know how sometimes you discover multiple hidden layers of depth in music that nobody usually notices? The next twenty minutes were spent marvelling at the amazing complexities & subtleties of urban & western twelve-bar blues. It wasn’t me who put the k.d. lang album of cigarette songs on next, but I wish it had been. A thoroughly appropriate comedown choice. It felt like the fist of God had trammelled our heads.
After a few songs, Justin blinked slowly & peered over at me. “Where am I?” he croaked. “And for a million dollars... who am I?”
“You’re Henry the Eighth, you are. Henry the Eighth you are, you are.”
“Impossible. You don’t look anything like the widow next door, not even like Herman… or one of his Hermits... In fact, you look more like the Mayor of Hiroshima after the big one.”
Personal abuse & a music history lesson from someone who didn’t look any better than I felt. Not that I was feeling that bad... not bad at all actually... but still, damned if I was letting him get away with it. “That’s a bit much, comin’ from someone who’s sittin’ there holdin’ his head like a second rate forgery of ‘The Scream’.”
Personal abuse & an art history lesson. Score tied at fifteen all. Justin retired hurt & returned to studying an indeterminable point in the middle distance. I looked down at my drawing of an apartment block wall, until it seemed I was rushing towards it, in danger of dashing my already cracked head on the finely rendered (if I do say so myself) bricks.
With a little effort, I returned to the subject at hand. Judging from our reactions, something rather special had come into our lives. I spared a passing thought for where it could have come from, but was unwilling to look too closely at this particular gift horse’s dental work. Anyway, being what we were, basically your average sceptical atheist/artist/musician kind of guys, we weren’t going to take first impressions as gospel truth that what we’d just smoked was beyond superlatives. So, as survivors both of life on the road, we had to roll another… as a kind of controlled experiment. One always needs a second opinion. Sometimes even a third.
CHAPTER 2
(A Night On The Town)
I live in Ashfield.
It’s a suburb with a split personality. Split literally & figuratively by train tracks. One side has all the money & the other, well; let’s just say it has all the charm. They’re connected by three tunnels of varying size leading from the main shopping area, under the railway to the wrong side of the tracks where I have my garret.
Ashfield is on the outer rim of Sydney’s inner west, close enough to the action to let yourself feel a part of the throbbing pulse of one of the world’s great cities, but far enough away to get a good night’s sleep. It’s a multicultural little place, originally settled by Italian migrants in the fifties, but now known primarily as a Northern Chinese ghetto. For people who’d been reared under a Communist regime, they nevertheless seem to have capitalism running through their veins. Every second shop is owned by them. Tobacconists, bread shops, bottle shops, newsagents & supermarkets - all the essentials. Unlike the Hong Kong Chinese, who accept the Triads as a natural part of life, these guys can’t believe how easy it is to make money out here, so they see no need for crime, organised or otherwise. Hasn’t stopped the Hong Kong boys from trying though. But apart from a couple of upmarket gang-run restaurants, which everyone avoids more because of the bad karaoke than any unsavoury associations & the odd eruption of modern teenage ennui, everyone gets along pretty happily - the Italians, Chinese, young homebuyers & the artschool & university refugees - all happy with such a peaceful ethnic mix. And the cheap shopping.
Economy is an important factor for somebody trying to live by his wits & only making half a living. Over far too many years, I’d almost, but not quite, made my name as a pen & ink artist several times. Most serious artists blame fate, bad luck or drugs for their lack of success. Being a trifle more realistic than your average creative freeloader, I’m quite well aware of my problem. I have either a penchant or a weakness (depends how you look at it) for aggressive, pouty, dark-haired girls & more than a few times I’ve put my artistic career on hold for them. I even went so far as to marry one. I was completely, madly in love with her... it’s supposed to help. And she’d said she loved me too, which is as good a basis for wedded bliss that I could come up with at the time. I thought she knew me well enough &... as it turned out, maybe she did.
It didn’t take too long to discover that marriage quickly runs to more cash than can be garnered by making an exhibition of oneself triennially in odd galleries. The love of my life was at university with a full timetable & empty pockets, so one of us would have to get some ‘proper’ employment. Call me old-fashioned, chivalrous, traditional, or just the loser of the toss, but it was decided that I’d be the one. Fortunately, amongst my more peripheral, less celebrated skills, I have the ability to talk my way into highly paid, medium-level jobs in the public service - where the hourly rate is in no way commensurate with the miniscule amount of mindless work one actually does. So, I played the public servant while she played the penniless student.
All of this would have been par for the course, if a child hadn’t become involved.
For, as so often happens, there came a day when she announced she was pregnant. Contrary to a lot of other blokes, I was really happy. Here was an opportunity to get my act together for all the right reasons. When our little bundle of joy arrived, it felt like my life finally had a sense of purpose. Here was my incentive to live life rather than simply enduring it, as I had been for years. But beyond all that, here too was unfettered demand accompanied by unconditional love. I could really relate to that & loved the little lord & master right back. We had so much in common.
However, he soon became the innocent victim of some extremely effective psychological wargames his mother & I had started playing. I don’t remember why it all began, but from little things, big things grew. Troubles escalated, relations deteriorated & despite my best intentions, I was losing it all. It takes two special people to really make a marriage work. One of us obviously wasn’t that special, as I was constantly reminded by my wife & her family. Our son was the only reason I kept body & soul together. After a while, I ended up twitter & bisted, fat, ugly & drawing nothing but pay cheques - completely the opposite of the man she married. She ended up throwing me out for someone more to her tastes, got the courts to restrict my access to our child & finally ran away to Lord Howe Island. Or so I’m told, I’ve never been able to make contact since. But I know I’ll see them again. Hope springs eternal, life goes on & sometimes you have to start again. Whether you want to or not.
So now, at the start of my journey to the nearest hospital, I’m single again, back in black - sartorially, if not financially - a bit thinner, but not that much older or wiser - possibly just enough of both to be living in a spartan one & a half bedroom flat, keeping myself in Gitanes, red wine, pens, paper & ink.
On this particular night, I was surrounded by not only the above creature comforts, but also my entire video collection, fast-forwarding through a ream of old television shows looking for something... anything better to do. Life was good.
The screen flickered in & out of life. Every couple of seconds, half familiar characters & situations showed themselves before being swallowed by what looked like an out-take from the light show stuff in '2001'. Vertical hold & a lack of colour seemed to be the problem. A bit like life really. I didn’t like the way this was heading, so I zapped the TV & looked around for distractions.
A couple of half-finished drawings were scattered on the floor next to the telephone. I went over & stared down at them trying to get a different perspective. No bold, Escher-ish inspiration struck me, so… what else? I wandered over to the stereo, lifted the phone off a stack of 7-inch singles & flicked through them listlessly. Forget it, ringing someone was easier. All you have to do is press the first speed dial number you see. Reach out & bug someone. Two rings, then an answering machine. No obscene poetry came to mind, so I didn’t leave a message. Try number six. Answering machine. Answering machine interruptus.
“Hi... it’s a bit late, I just got home.”
“Liar - you’re hanging around like I am.”
“So?”
“You got anything better to do?”
“Scott & the ‘fist are playing at the Red Room...” The voice was tentative, as if the suggestion was less appealing than fast forwarding sporadically through old episodes of I Spy.
“Don’t know it.”
“Yes you do, it’s the old Manzil Room.”
One up to you pal. Justin made it sound like the common knowledge it probably was. Making it sound attractive didn’t take much more effort. At least it was Kings Cross. A chance to check out the wildlife. Outside my window, the road shone in luminous bruises of oil & pools of ice blue reflections from the streetlamps. There weren’t too many cars parked out there & even fewer driving past. I suddenly noticed how quiet it was. The choice was easy - the urban jungle or the cultural backwater. “Let’s do it.”
“Okay, ready in twenty.”
Twenty minutes, hmm... that meant speed dial six must be the number for his band’s pad in Newtown, not his girlfriend’s place in Summer Hill, or the elegant Granny Flat he has underneath his parents’ house on the Northern Beaches. Or it could have been his mobile... just how much of my phone’s memory is taken up by this guy?
I was awake, I was dressed, which meant I was as ready as I’d ever be, so that meant twenty minutes to down a couple of jars from the Chateau Cardboard. If my memory was anything to go by & these days it wasn’t, drinks at the Manzil Room were too limp & too expensive to be effective, so the best thing to do is get yourself charged before you walk in. It would also stop me getting run over whilst foolishly wandering down Memory Lane. I usually forget to look both ways.
History is odd stuff. There had been days when an entire tribe of professional students, amateur musicians & assorted lovers used to meet in North Shore & inner-city pubs listening to jazz & bluegrass, drinking too much & playing mind games with barmaids, shop assistants, artschool girls, nurses & jukeboxes. Now the tribe was disbanded & there were mortgages, telephones, home entertainment systems, computers, day jobs with no reason & life was cluttered with people that, not all that long ago surely, you wouldn’t have even noticed. But people change with the seasons, as a junkie once told me. Mind you, I think he may have died last autumn... stoned. It had been quite a while since the tribe had spoken. So many of us had left the island.
For quarter of an hour I stood looking out the window at the footpath. Nobody walked past. Then the white rustbucket a bunch of us had nicknamed ‘The Lemon’ in past days of camaraderie, pulled up, backfired twice, sighed into silence & collapsed against the gutter. A slim figure sprang out of the car, looking far too lively for the lifestyle I knew he was leading. The first thing to catch the streetlight was an iridescent waistcoat (even Dr Who would have been embarrassed). Then he was gone... up the side passage to the front door - architects in Ashfield are weird.
Twenty seconds later there were two quick knocks on my door. I downed the last of the Summer Wine - I’d have a head start at least - & ran a mental checklist. Black leather jacket, smokes, lighter, cashcard, condoms... no, not even looking. Comb... yeah, vanity rools okay. Two knocks again, slightly louder. Oh shit, I had agreed to go out & that did mean a kind of contractual obligation to at least open the door... enter Justin.
“Evening Squire.” That’s our boy. “Evicted anyone lately?”
Now, even for people who’ve known me a reasonable amount of time, it was a bizarre way to open a conversation. I kept a straight face & let him proffer an overnight bag. “No... you vagrant?”
“I just thought that, seeing I spend so much time over here, I might as well leave a change of clothes.”
Marginally presumptuous, but no more than any other fridge dweller I’d ever accommodated. I wondered if his ‘Hippy Crap’ South Park tie was in the bag. If it was, I was gonna nick it.
“I thought we were goin’ out.” I always drop my ‘g’s when talkin’ to guitar players, derros, public servants & ex-wives. I only make sure they’re intact when talking to octogenarian aunts or vets with degrees in fine arts... both are hard to come by these days, “How long you plannin’ to stay anyway?”
“How much red wine do you have?”
“Enough for one communion, or two drummers.”
“Thank God it’s payday. Even so, we won’t be up late tonight if that’s all you have to offer.”
Show off. Just ‘cause he reckons he doesn’t get hangovers. There was no point explaining that tonight was already tomorrow, payday was too far away, or that buggers can’t be choosers, so I just pointed towards the spare room. With a bit of luck he’d be a great distraction when I was invaded by the Star Trek fan club, which isn’t as unlikely as it sounds. They were overdue soon to monopolise my once-was-state-of-the-art computer to edit their ‘Prime Directive’ fan-magazine. The Star Trek prime directive is all about not interfering with other intelligent life forms, but the fan club don’t extend that courtesy to either me or my cockroaches. I usually hide the fly spray if I think they’re on their way over.
Justin picked a path between the TV & the couch, checked the red wine rack that nestled beside the plaster alien head, noted the four bottles in it, nodded & threw his bag at the cot inside the spare bedroom. The cot was left over from when my son used to visit every fortnight or so. After an acoustic band practice in the living room, when his mother had sprung him yelling for an encore of ‘Baby Come Back’, the thing had never been used, but as I said, hope springs eternal.
I heard a crash & an ominous tinkling of glass. Justin shuffled sheepishly back into the lounge with the remains of my framed Arts degree in his hand. “Oops, sorry.”
“Not to worry, you can pay for the reframing.”
“How about the next time you come around to my place you do the same to mine & we call it even?” The offer seemed to make some kind of sense at the time. He slung the remains of my academic achievement into the kitchen.
“Any chance of a drink before the gig... or instead of it?”
Oh oh, Northern Beaches alcoholics are notoriously picky about hooch; they are, after all, brought up playing in Daddy’s cellar. This one, being a charting guitar player, certainly wouldn’t be terribly happy being served only the cheapest Chateau Cardboard money could afford. Oh well... I casually indicated the wine rack & shrugged. “Sure, you find the corkscrew & it’s yours.”
If you are ever unlucky enough to count truly good guitar players amongst your friends, you’ll find that the common factor among them is... they’re expensive winos. Drummers will usually smoke anything you offer them & be polite enough to bring their own papers, but you can trust a guitar player to be snooty about the red wine he intends to get paralytic on at your expense. To be fair, Justin usually has the grace to bring quality stuff with him when a mutual bender is in the offing, but the trouble is - with both our capacities for wine best described as ‘prodigious’ when we get going, the quality stuff goes pretty quickly, leaving us with the quantity liver-rotting stuff a penniless artist has to offer. This place is a dry county by the time I sober up long enough to throw him out. He examined all four bottles on show in the rack, then unerringly picked the good one I was trying to save for any special occasion. I prised it from his grip & replaced it with a bottle of Bulls Blood.
His face fell. “Oh well, I suppose one glass won’t kill me. Even if it does taste like what it says on the label.”
He uncorked, poured, then raised his glass. “Minosegi Bor.”
“Egri Bikaver.” I responded, clinking my glass against his. It’s the official toast of the Former Yugoslavian Wine Appreciation Society... so Justin tells me anyway.
“We’d better get a move on if we’re going to make it to the gig.” Justin drained his glass in one go, before his tastebuds could figure out what hit them.
I was in no such hurry. There were more useful things I could think of doing that night, like becoming intimately reacquainted with someone who, unfortunately, was probably curled up totally overdressed next to her husband right now... or I could draw another dozen bricks or so on my latest magnum ’opeless... & I hadn’t beaten the computer at backgammon for a while… or there were those videos of I Spy I’d been looking through. Don’t tell me I’ve nothing to do... Then he tried the magic words. “It’s free entry.”
So what? Free entry it may have been, but had I swallowed enough Chateau Cardboard to actually be entertained by a tryhard metal band called Hammerfist? I’d seen one of their early gigs & ‘Hamfist’ was more like it. The rhythm guitarist knew every pose but none of the chords, the drummer looked like he’d been thrown out of Nimbin for overdosing on hair care products & the singer, Scott, could regularly be heckled at the Sydney RSL where he masqueraded as the piano man. There was no way I was going to squander two days rent on a martini at the Red Room/Manzil Room/Rock Garden/ Chequers or whatever it was called this decade. Justin had another go. “I’m driving.”
Nice try. He’s just the kind of demented musician who thinks he can down a bottle of red, pilot a dilapidated, fermented traffic infringement on wheels through the most policed areas of town, be in with a chance of picking up a social disease from a Manzil Room groupie & still blithely assume I’d have a good time. As usual, he was absolutely right.
A surprisingly short, not to mention nerve-wrackingly fast, time later, Justin squeezed the Lemon into an impossibly small space between a Rolls Royce & a police car, either of which were far more appropriate targets for the kind of vandalism & violence that gave the Cross its reputation. Add to that, we were within staggering distance of our destination. Why can’t I ever be so lucky?
We followed our ears down the street & nodded at the black-clad ‘Facilitations Engineer’ looming at the entrance. A dull, thudding, vaguely musical noise from inside exploded into surround sound as I opened the door. The second assault on our senses was olfactory. After all these years & name changes, the Manzil Room still smelled like rotten Parmesan cheese. I’ve worked in almost every sorry excuse for a venue in this town & in a lot of delicatessens as well. It’s easy to guess whose floor it’s better to wake up on. They’re both sticky & slimy, but at least the pickings are better in the deli.
Justin said something about names on the door to a bored looking weed in morning-after dress, who waved us in without even looking. I remembered to duck my head just in time. Like a lot of Kings Cross venues, these guys took the term ‘low overheads’ to literal extremes. I’d forgotten how much of a headache it was seeing bands in here.
The Manzil Room is actually two rooms joined. The first one you walk into has most of the recently chic patrons & a bar with tables & benches firmly welded to the floor - they know their clientele. They keep the lights permanently dimmed, the music just loud enough to prevent intelligible conversation & the drinks in plastic cups. Without a sideways glance we headed straight for the brain-dead room.
Through a haze of smoke, from both cigarettes & a machine on the stage, we could see the ‘Fist was already on. We wormed our way towards the front, where you could feel every beat & I jammed myself into a corner near the mixing desk. Not that there was an excessive crowd, more because it just seemed safer that way. Their rhythm guitar was pointing his leather-clad crotch at the only three girls in the place, who didn’t notice. The lead guitar was in the middle of a solo ripped off from Van Halen, Vai, Satriani or any other refugee from Whitesnake you’d ever tried to forget.
Seven more songs like that & I was starting to feel comfortably numb. God, I hoped they wouldn’t try to play it. After an uninvited encore of a Soundgarden /Pearl Jam medley with lots more gratuitous soloing, the lights came on & the house music farted out of the overworked PA. This was the dangerous part of the evening… with a band like this, there was the all-pervading threat that, now the first set was over, one of the musicians (most likely a guitarist) would come over with adrenalin gleaming in his try-to-please eyes & ask the most dreaded question a musician can... “Sowhaddayathinkmate? Fugginalrightay?!”
Justin hoped aloud that it wouldn’t be the rhythm guitar-player. Fortunately it was Scott the singer, one of Justin’s erstwhile flatmates. Nice guy, but with an annoying habit of trying to look & sound like he came from Seattle rather than Brisbane. He was really happy to boast about his next gig - a week’s residence at a piano bar in Fiji. Justin kept an admirably straight face while asking for the phone number of his agent.
A couple of other band members came up & made extremely small talk for a couple of minutes. One had a black t-shirt with the word ‘Cunt’ in large white letters on the front, the other guy had a, surprise surprise, black t-shirt emblazoned with some unspeakably violent band name written in almost illegible gothic script. At least, I hoped it was just a band name & not some kind of mission statement. When Justin said he regretted not wearing his white ‘Bananas In Pyjamas’ t-shirt, they recoiled & went off in search of social lubrication & fortification for the next set. Scott then asked the second most dreaded question a musician can. “Are you holding?”
A resounding negative from both of us & a look of resigned altruism crawled across Scott’s face as he nodded us over behind the sound desk & started mixing. Hmm, the music was about to sound better. If his stash was up to par, then the girls might even start to look good.
“Okay, who’s got a lighter?”
CHAPTER 3
(Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag)
Next thing I knew, I was being followed up my stairs by Justin in full chatter mode. He always says he’s a quiet stoner, like he reckons he never turned green at the Mittagong Chook Christening party a few years back (he did). I was busy trying to pick the right key out of the five in my wallet when he pointed at the suitcase on the landing outside my door. “What the hell is that?”
Well, on first impression, it looked like a slightly shabby, but nicely expensive piece of luggage. However it seemed a little obvious to say, so I treated the question as rhetorical. It was fairly large, the kind of case that should come with wheels & a strap for dragging it through the arrivals lounge. No wheels on this one though, no carry strap either. There weren’t any stickers on it proclaiming past or future destinations, although it looked like it had seen a few - the plain black material – nougat hide, or whatever the stuff they make luggage from these days is called - was scuffed in a few places & one plastic corner was fraying slightly, either from overuse or overzealous baggage manhandlers. No combination locks, just standard clips & a couple of belts wrapped around to stop it bursting open. And it did look rather full.
What thoughts go through your mind when you find a strange suitcase on your doorstep? They all went through mine. So, she’s come back; she’s finally left her husband; more fridge dwellers; it’s an invasion by the Star Trek fan club & this time they’ll never boldly go home... Stand by to repel boarders - & how do you repel boarders? Never take out the garbage. Works every time.
I opened the door, prepared for anything or anybody, but when we walked in, the place was as devoid of life as the Senate.
Even at three in the morning, I thought it would be pragmatic to find out first if the suitcase had escaped from the Indian sailors downstairs. They seem to sleep in shifts, so someone’s always awake. But none of them knew anything about it. There’d been no new arrivals at their place & they, with their front door permanently open, had seen nobody come up to see me, not even to make me smile. So, a refugee piece of travel furniture had arrived on my doorstep... it would be churlish to make it feel unwelcome. I grabbed the handle & lifted it slightly. For such a packed-looking case, it wasn’t that heavy, so I picked it up & brought it into the loungeroom. Justin kicked a few drawings out of the way so I could put it down in open space. We stood there for a moment. What now?
“You gonna open it?”
“Sure, but if it’s from my cousin Richard it’ll be full of snakes... can you hear anythin' slitherin’?”
Justin knew this was only a whacked mind-game, but was more than willing to play along. He held the case up to his ear. “No, no slithering… I don’t think it’s hissing, but it is rattling.”
I called his bluff. “OK, you open it & I’ll get the coat hanger.”
“What’s the coat hanger for?”
“To pick up snakes with. What do you use to pick up snakes?”
“Well, like most reptiles, cheap booze & a sleazy line usually does the trick.”
I hate people who laugh at their own bad jokes. He’d be pissing himself with something other than laughter if there were a bunch of taipans in there. Still, nothing ventured, I opened it... it was my place after all.
We gazed in glazed amazement at the contents. It was full of dope. Ganja, gear, weed, pot, leaf, whacky baccy, the Colonel’s secret herbs & spices, Mary Jane, manna, the original Taj Mahal. Dozens of packets of the right stuff… enough to pay the rent for three years & still be stoned free. Nobody loved me this much! My birthday wasn’t for months & there was no way it could have been an anniversary present. Firstly, it wasn’t the right date & secondly, if it was from the ex, the thing would have been full of snakes.
“Bloody hell! I’ve never seen vipers with a street value that high.”
Funny bastard. If it was the real Sylvester McCoy & not the sample case of a tarragon salesman down on his luck, I’d be stuck with him for a month. Well, there was only one way to find out. The taste test.
“Dig out that stuff you had a couple of days ago. See how it compares.” Justin said, flicking through my CD collection for something in a less than mellow tone. Not a difficult task.
“Fat chance.” The person currently curled up with her husband had been ’round since then.
“OK, it was an act of pure optimism to have asked in the first place, but can we at least use papers instead of your rancid pickle jar bong?”
See what I mean about Northern Beaches guitar players? Fortunately, a drummer had left me half a packet of Tally-Ho’s & after a few minutes searching I found the scissors & a clean looking bowl. I let Justin mull up & weathered the usual complaints about my French cigarettes.
Now, for those of us determined to kill ourselves through nicotine addiction, French cigarettes are the bee’s knees. They have nothing but tobacco in them - no chemical additives, no preservatives, no filters - nothing but loose packed, unadulterated, dry black tobacco. When these things kill you, it’s with pure tobacco. Montezuma’s ultimate revenge, the real stuff the Aztecs used to cultivate so lovingly, before being culled by Cortez. If Gitanes cigarettes had been around in the fifteenth century, the Spaniards would never have had the lungpower to run the natives into the ground. To the uninitiated, they can be a little rough. Everybody who’d suffered one of my mulls hated them - except for one of my oldest, dearest & now furthest away ex-girlfriends, that obscure French/Irish object of desire.
With The Slim Chance Band’s ‘Roll On Babe’ playing nice & loud on the stereo, I did the deed. Three papers - two joined together parallel, one below to make the catcher. Then the mull, with a strip torn off the Tally Ho packet as a filter & voila, a classic joint... sort of. I was a little out of practice, preferring the pickle jar most times, but if I’d done it right, we’d be able to assess, in a clinical manner, the relative value of the thirty-odd packets in the suitcase.
You know how sometimes you discover multiple hidden layers of depth in music that nobody usually notices? The next twenty minutes were spent marvelling at the amazing complexities & subtleties of urban & western twelve-bar blues. It wasn’t me who put the k.d. lang album of cigarette songs on next, but I wish it had been. A thoroughly appropriate comedown choice. It felt like the fist of God had trammelled our heads.
After a few songs, Justin blinked slowly & peered over at me. “Where am I?” he croaked. “And for a million dollars... who am I?”
“You’re Henry the Eighth, you are. Henry the Eighth you are, you are.”
“Impossible. You don’t look anything like the widow next door, not even like Herman… or one of his Hermits... In fact, you look more like the Mayor of Hiroshima after the big one.”
Personal abuse & a music history lesson from someone who didn’t look any better than I felt. Not that I was feeling that bad... not bad at all actually... but still, damned if I was letting him get away with it. “That’s a bit much, comin’ from someone who’s sittin’ there holdin’ his head like a second rate forgery of ‘The Scream’.”
Personal abuse & an art history lesson. Score tied at fifteen all. Justin retired hurt & returned to studying an indeterminable point in the middle distance. I looked down at my drawing of an apartment block wall, until it seemed I was rushing towards it, in danger of dashing my already cracked head on the finely rendered (if I do say so myself) bricks.
With a little effort, I returned to the subject at hand. Judging from our reactions, something rather special had come into our lives. I spared a passing thought for where it could have come from, but was unwilling to look too closely at this particular gift horse’s dental work. Anyway, being what we were, basically your average sceptical atheist/artist/musician kind of guys, we weren’t going to take first impressions as gospel truth that what we’d just smoked was beyond superlatives. So, as survivors both of life on the road, we had to roll another… as a kind of controlled experiment. One always needs a second opinion. Sometimes even a third.
