~ the sweet milk of success

I don’t like to talk too much about football. After all, it’s only football, but sometimes I just get too excited to shut up. I’m hoarse [and more than a tad hungover] today from shouting my lungs out at the Docklands stadium last night. And not because it was a close, edge-of-the-seat type game, but because the St Kilda Football Club were just so, so good it was heaven to watch.

(That it was Collingwood under the sword only made it sweeter.)

For years now, we’ve been up there, a contender, but something’s been missing, some essential spirit or hardness or determination or who knows what. There was always the possibility that, instead of putting the knife in, the team would fall to pieces. You could never really be sure whether they’d shine or be shameful.

But now that elusive final element has clicked into place.

Through the long grey years of St Kilda history, there have been few sunny days and supporters have learned not to expect too much. The disappointment is just too hard to bear. But this year, this supporter, member 31800, is standing up and crying out the news:

This is St Kilda’s time! Our year!

(Will I regret this down the track, I wonder?)

Lynne, the Englishwoman I converted to St Kildaism nearly two decades ago, was with me there last night, lapping up the sweet milk of success. She’s right in the middle of preparations for Snatches, the annual theatrical mosaic she directs at RMIT’s Kaleide theatre.

Snatches' facebook page
Another Snatches link

If you are able or feel inclined to come on Wednesday you’ll see me play a squalid predatory gay psychiatrist. On Friday, I’m a psychopathic German neurosurgeon in Matthew Lambert’s play ‘Hitler’ and a venomous tool of officialdom in my own ‘The Goitre Birds’.

I promise that the title 'The Goitre Birds' came direct from my imagination. I had not the faintest inkling that such a thing might really exist - but here, courtesy of Glittersmacked, proving the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun, is a Supentius camelus or Goitre Bird ...

~ what football can do for a man

My father, Vilis Sejavka, arrived in Australia around 1952. He was a refugee from the Second World War, a displaced person who had spent at least six post-war years in internment camps around Germany.

Latvia, his home country, had fallen under Soviet rule. To return there meant probable incarceration in the Gulags. As he had been a (19yo) conscript for the Latvian division of the Waffen SS, this would more than likely have lead to his death.

His kidneys had been ruined after a night spent playing dead in the snow as a Red Army column passed close by. His German lieutenant, with whom he had deserted, lay beside him but his was no act; the pair had been fired upon earlier by the Russians. It was standard practice for the Communists to bayonet the dead, so Vilis did not so much as twitch. Imagine that. He claimed to have never been quite the same.

As truckload load after truckload of refugees departed Germany, bound for new lands in which to settle, Vilis watched and waited, praying that eventually his turn would come - which, ultimately, it did.

It is not difficult to understand the gratitude he felt towards Australia - though, as a willful, contrary child, I did my best. Once here, he worked in logging camps in order to fulfill his contract with the Government. While doing so, he contracted rheumatic fever and then tuberculosis. Down the track, it was the rheumatic fever that doomed him.

In a TB sanatorium, close to death, he fell in love with a nurse, my mother, and so on and so forth. But that’s not the story for today.

What I want to communicate is his unconditional love for Australia and all things Australian. He threw his heart and soul into this country. He had little contact with the local Latvian community - to my later chagrin - largely because of the Soviet spies who were thought to have infiltrated. He was fervently anti-communist, almost to the point of paranoia - Australia, his country, and the new family it had given him were all that he trusted now.

While I was being called a wog at school, he was calling himself a New Australian with absolute, unadulterated pride. He whole-heartedly embraced our traditions and culture. He acquired English at speed. Though he retained his accent, and was partial to borscht, pickled herring and sauerkraut - these things were all that remained of the Latvian Vilis.

My father grew up with the slow, exasperating species of football we call soccer, but once he hit these shores Australian Rules became his code. He was a New Australian and soccer was for ingrates. Because he lived with my mother in one of those little worker’s cottages on Acland St. up from Greasy Joe’s, St Kilda became his team. Not long after I was born, I was attending matches in my swaddling, first at Junction Oval, then, in actual clothes, at Moorabbin.

My father and I had precious little in common. He was an engineer and I was an artiste, but on football we saw eye to eye. It may seem sad, but it was our strongest link as father and son. The one certain thing we shared. For me the night of St Kilda’s 1966 Grand Final triumph is a volcanically joyous memory, perhaps the sweetest of my boyhood.

Now Vilis is long gone, but our team is not. Whenever I set foot in the stadium, whenever I bellow the team song, whenever St Kilda manages to win a game, the my father's ghost is there. That’s why I sometimes cry at matches, in case you were wondering.

We start another finals campaign this week, and already I feel him stirring. We’ve had a few chances over the years, but, since his death, no premierships. Still just the one ... Just the one ... This year Geelong stands in our way, but there is always hope.

From my father, with his harrowing, unforgiving life, ... from his thankless son ... for Robert Harvey and his twenty-one seasons of scintillating brilliance and old school tenacity … let me just say ... Carn The MIGHTY SAINTS!

∆ george + the decrepitude of the whale

~ please be warned, the following tale may contain disturbing concepts ~

One of the most significant girlfriends of my past – I’ll call her Blackie – lived in a ground floor flat in St Kilda. It was approximately 1983. I think I had almost moved in, but not quite….

Blackie was a notorious door-bitch, guarding the entrances of places like the Razor and Hardware clubs like a sour, permed Cerberus. She had a deep, commanding voice and a scathing wit that could send grown men sulking away, their bellies to the ground. Understandably, at this time, I found myself doing a lot of clubbing.

One evening, there was some kind of party, celebration, I have no recollection what exactly, but I do remember a small, sallow boy with a strange manner who seemed to be deliberately lurking, particularly in the vicinity of Blackie.

It was a particularly drunken night. A whole mob of us retired to Blackie’s flat, including this boyish creep. He wasn’t much more than a kid and he had a way of staying unnoticed, of not being taken into consideration. His interest in Blackie was plainer now, but I just didn’t take him seriously enough to tell him to sod off. He was too innocuous. I think Blackie thought the same and, since she was as utterly inebriated as I, was not really bothered by his feeble advances.

One by one, our guests departed, until at last it was just the two of us and this boy. We pointed him out the couch and went to bed.

What follows is only comprehensible with the understanding of how uselessly drunk we were …

Some time later, from the profound depths of unconsciousness, I sensed some kind of movement in the bed, and also sounds. There was something disturbing about it, but I did not have the wherewithal to wake myself up. Then suddenly, nightmarishly, things started clashing in my head. The sounds I was hearing … they were the sounds Blackie made during sex.

Then what was this motion beside me? The implications began to dawn on me. Blackie, the bitch, had taken some other guy into her bed without even bothering to throw me out first. But then Blackie screamed and everything became dreadfully clear.

Mindless with rage, I chased him out, cornered the pale snivelling gollum near the garage in the weak early morning light. Blackie was curled up naked in the bathroom, weeping. I had acquired a weapon of some sort. I remember exactly what I said.

- I’ll cut your fucking throat, if I ever fucking see you again.

To this day, I wish I hadn’t let the rapist get his pants.


*

This incident still makes me blood rise when I think of it. It had a pretty savage impact on my pride; I couldn’t help feeling I should have been able to stop it. God knows what kind of emotional impact it had on Blackie… We never really talked about it; we couldn’t bear to. I took solace in the fact that she was nothing if not resilient.

But I seethed. As early as an hour later, I began to regret letting him free. I wanted to get this guy. I found out his name, where he lived, that he had done similar things in the past, but I never found occasion to visit revenge upon him – in part because I’m not at all into physical violence, in part because I have difficulty with the very idea of revenge.

But then, while speaking with my friend George, the perfect form of recompense was conceived.


*

Richard Lowenstein was directing a film called Strikebound in the Wonthaggi area of Eastern Victoria. I was playing the part of a police constable and had occasion to travel down there a few times and stay at the famous Pines motel near Inverloch. George came too; I think he had some extra work, or was interested in getting some, or something …

While we were down there - probably lounging in the vicinity of the reopened pit Richard was using as a primary location, waiting for something to do - we learned that further down the coast at Point Hicks approximately eighty false killer whales had beached and died.

We began to examine the possibilities. These false killer whales were said to be smallish, not too much bigger than a porpoise. If we were to acquire one, bring it back to Melbourne, dump it in the front garden of the rapist’s family home [recall that he was very young] and threaten to call the police if he removed it… then would that not be a satisfying turn of events?

We decided that the concept deserved realisation, but neither of us thought it through. The sheer absurdity of the idea buoyed us along, but we never really stopped to consider the possible complications. We could have done with the internet at that stage. Those whales were huge, man.

Our only preparation was to scour the kitchen of The Pines for useful tools. We came away with a ridiculous assortment of knives and forks. We had something like twenty-four hours before our next calls. We got in George’s car and drove, not bothering to consult a map.

The drive took nine hours, about seven hours longer than we assumed.

We arrived exhausted at what I know now is the Cann River National Park. It was here the whales were said to have beached. Obeying some instinct for caution, we decided to conceal our implements. We each tucked up to five bread knives, carving knives and screwdrivers into our belts, and covered them with our shirts. The idea was that if we couldn’t get the whale whole, we would at least bring back a large enough part of it to cause our victim extreme inconvenience.

The path to the beach led past a ranger’s shack. There was little we could do but follow it and, inevitably, a small officious guy in a uniform and slouch hat emerged and challenged us. When we asked for the beached whales, he became suspicious and protective.

Incredibly, he asked us what we had under our shirts and we had no choice but to show him. It was embarrassing really; we should have had something more impressive than cutlery under there, but he took us seriously enough and sent us packing with a warning that it was a crime to remove any part of a protected species.

- They’re dead, aren’t they, I said.

- Living or dead, said he.

There was no point arguing. We returned to the car, stowed our tools, and showed our stomachs to the ranger when we passed him again.

We walked for fifteen minutes along the beach before we encountered our first solitary whale. It was too far. Our plans were dashed. No road access. Legal resistance. And far too small a vehicle. Though it was a false killer whale, it was the size of a real killer whale and …. I don’t know … maybe one and a half, maybe two tons of dead weight? What had we been thinking?

It’s skin was peeling away to reveal the blubber beneath and there was a noticeable scent of decay. It’s tongue was blue and so swollen it was forcing open its great toothed jaws. The whale was a sad and horrible sight.

George, as always, had his camera and disconsolately we began to take photos. I put my foot up on the whale’s back in a kind of safari-hunter’s pose. George positioned himself low, near the mouth.

- Shit. Did you feel that?

- What? asked George.

- Something rumbled, I said. There it is again.

- What?

- The whale’s not dead. It’s moving.

Startled, we took a good long second look at the carcass. It certainly looked dead. After an uncertain moment we resumed our former positions.

Then a huge gout of disgusting red vomitus flew from the whale’s mouth. Only barely did George manage to topple out of he way, avoiding the nauseating stream by inches. It had come out under pressure, a lot of pressure, there were dark clots metres up the beach.

So… is it alive or dead? I asked

The stench was almost paralysing, but we endured it long enough to finish taking photos.

On the way back to the car, we encountered the ranger again, told him what had happened. He nodded sagely.

- You know, people can be killed by exploding whales. If one of them really goes up, it can propel missiles of flesh twenty, thirty metres … at lethal speeds

We stared at him blankly.

- The gases build up as the whale decays, he explained. The blubber forms a strong seal that only ruptures when the pressure is enormous.

What if our plan had worked…? The consequences would have been even more spectacular than we imagined …

It was a hard nine hour drive back to Inverloch. And poor George was the only one with a license


*

As a footnote, some weeks later, my ever thoughtful friend turned up with a huge dead cream-coloured Labrador in his boot – thinking it might serve a similar purpose as the whale.

It didn’t work for me; in fact just looking at the dog made me feel like crying. George kept it in his boot for a couple of weeks in case it ‘came in useful’, but ultimately I had to help him bury it on Beaumaris beach.

It was so heavy, I remember, and we carried it in a sheet. In the furtive dark, we felt like we were burying a human body …

*

A further footnote. It was during this stay at The Pines that George locked on to Tobsha, [the erotic fiction writer]. She must have been doing some acting on the film, and a weirder partnership has never been consummated. My guess is that Tobsha – as was her way - was lured by George’s fantastic Lithuanian body, his heavy uncircumcised penis and, perhaps, his incontrovertible weirdness. The relationship lasted nearly a year and it is said that George even pops up in one of Tobsha’s popular novels.

George + The Decrepitudes - index

* 14 February 1981 11.50pm

One more time, before I leave…

*

It’s a very murky, humid night – my mind is very hazy – I keep drifting off to other things, other places.

Since my last entry, I have not been in any state to write. I did score the heroin. It was average. Rushed off to the recording studio. It was a relative success, I cannot say for sure as yet. The next afternoon me and Christine set off for the city – we visited Missing Link to find out the limitations on the record cover [which must be got under way very soon]. Then we went to the Australia Hotel and drank for some hours – then we ate – I consumed two meals, through sheer gluttony – Veal Cordon Bleu, Veal Parmigiana. The tab was nearly $17 – [am I reading this right?] – so we caught a cab to Craig [McGee] and Lauras’ – A fellow named Dud had some LSD, which we promptly bought – then we drank and smoked – can I tell you everything, my diary? LSD can make me lose control …

[If only I could remember what I was referring to here …]

At about six we went to Wellington St – we bathed – I drank three sachets of Vincent’s Powders – TV – and finally slept – missed a practice – and Cathy Denny’s 21st – most ashamed – acid still frolicking round in my system – Practised today – not long now before we play – prepared ‘The Freighter’ [of dubious quality] – visited my mother – she keeps talking about my father – on and on …

It is a sultry night and I only want to sleep.

*

Transcribing these diaries is beginning to make me nervous … I myself have not read ahead … but I know what is to come.

Vincent’s Powders … I recall them clearly - pink grainy stuff that came in paper folds like heroin… don’t know what was in it, but it’s been banned now. All I remember about the LSD trip was Christine crying because [she thought] her ice-cream was falling off its stick … and her horror at a piece of fairly normal rubbish she saw on the ground. I think she was hallucinating something Lovecraftian.

“The Freighter.” A song which never made it to the Ears’ playlist, though it had a strange and obtuse melody which I recall to this day. The song was a kind of sequel to one of our signature tunes: ‘The Crater’.

The Laura I mention ran a second hand clothes shop in Barkey St St Kilda for years. It was called Junkarucci.

The father I mention was my recently deceased progenitor.

Diary of 1981 - index