* 7 June 1981 Sunday 7.30pm

I stayed with Tobsha last night. We shared a bottle of champagne. I enjoyed spending time with her, at her fine little house.

I read some of her writing. She is a terrible speller and seems obsessed by the genital organs.

Why am I speaking in such a detached tone? Is it because I am unsure of my feelings towards her? At a party last night, she made some disturbing suggestions, the exact nature of which I cannot properly recall.

She has the makings of a fine friend, but a lover? Perhaps not for me.

The single remained at nine on the RRR charts this week

*

Yes, I’ve reopened the tattered old green book. Not that stimulating an entry, unless, perhaps, you’re a fan of Tobsha’s work, in which case I suspect the genital obsession will make plenty of sense.

I recall being kind of condescending, and kind of jealous when she told me she’d been writing. She was a sculptor, not a writer, and besides how could you be any sort of writer if you couldn’t spell? I was yet to learn that W B Yeats, one of my literary idols, couldn’t spell to save his life.

And, over the years since, Tobsha has produced a far more successful body of work from her pen than I from mine. Who was I kidding?

Those of you interested in the Beargarden release: we’re having a meeting next Sunday which should produce a very swift timeline.

* 23 April 1981 Thursday 12.30am

After spending most of the day drinking with Pierre, I spent most of the evening drinking with Pierre. He has a vital, but diseased and cynical attitude to life. Through those many hours I shared with him, he must have described in detail at least twenty of his most memorable fucks. There is much to be said for his way of life. I wish I were capable of allowing myself such wanton shallowness.

I don’t think I even like Cathy D--- any more – perhaps because I associate her with Pierre and his bunch of cronies – perhaps because I’ve just lost faith.

I think it’s better to be alone and lonely rather than to be intimate with fools. I drank a bottle of whiskey with old Mick Lewis later that night

I slept with Tobsha on Monday night. We were celibate. She’s a dominant kind of girl. Lovely in many ways, but just not my type.

My voice is better now. It’s exciting to be able to sing again.

I am hating too many people now… or else I am feeling nothing for them… not caring – not at all –their lives seem so bleak and desolate… it depresses me – I keep looking to their deaths, or their old age. It is just one of those times; I cannot keep all those brutal facts of life out of my mind.

It’s to do with fear, you know – feeling so cold towards them …


*

I’ve mentioned the remarkable Pierre Voltaire before. He was a charismatic rake with a charming manner and with a goatish sexuality. To be succinct, a devil. At this time or very soon after he would be singing with The Fabulous Marquises, a pretty cool group which also boasted the talents of Ed Clayton-Jones, [who was later to play for The Wreckery and, briefly, the Bad Seeds].

I recall that night with Tobsha vividly. It was a clean, very white, very comfortable bed in a small room. There was definitely some form of attraction there, but nothing ever happened - I think, in a way, we were polar opposites. And I know I was intimidated by her sexual predation.

Mick Lewis reminded me of something amusing the other day. At some point around this time, [it may even appear later in the diary,] The Crystal Ballroom hosted a battle of the bands, with the voting done by the audience. The Ears took first place and the Serious Young Insects came second. First prize was a record contract with Laurie Richards and second was a crate of cider. There was no way we were going to get into a legal situation with Laurie [as Mick tells it] so we negotiated with the SYI to swap. In those days of short term goals, pennilessness and the necessity of immediate gratification, a crate of cider was magnificent recompense.

Diary of 1981 - index

∆ 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

* 21 February 1981, 11.13am

The following appears to have been written under the influence of amphetamines – therefore I’ve made an editorial judgment to amend some of the crazed grammar that fizzed from my young mind.

Speed was then amphetamine sulphate, not the methamphetamine we have today. Traditionally, it came in small translucent red capsules worth twenty dollars. Heroin came in half clear/half red capsules referred to as double oh’s. The caps were sourced, I think, from a cold medicine and if the smack was not served up in a double oh, it was instantly suspect. Later, foil and paper folds came into fashion. Later still, balloons. In 1981 a ‘cap’ was fifty dollars – and, unless things have changed just recently, the price remains the same.

*

I went off to the Crystal Ballroom last night, though I can remember little of it. Afterwards, we visited Constance at his petrol station, and some friends came over to Milton St. – Jane, Leia & Cathy [a visitor from Adelaide]. We drank a huge amount of vodka and wound up being very sick. At about 9.00 we awoke from our stupor …

The Ballroom was full of friends. Even Warren Coleman was there - he dropped by with [Paul] Storm at four yesterday morning and yapped… and yapped …

I found myself in a very lurid mood. The girl Tobsha was giving me the eye, I’m sure, and I was returning it. My recollections of the night are full of skirt-filled flashes … Sometimes I’m like that; most of the time in fact, but never wholeheartedly. When I think of Christine, I lose any active interest.

I am on speed and have not slept a wink.

It was probably a foolish thing to do, taking it, but it was kind of fun.

There’s a lot I have to say, but I’ve little inclination to say it. I’m experiencing that dreadful speed state in which you are forever teetering on the edge of a ghastly chasm*, waiting for your life to crumble around you…

Somebody asked me to write a story for a magazine last night… Mmm … perhaps ... It will feature a pallbearer and be called ‘The Pallbearer’.

Christine is going to live here for a month, she thinks, before she moves in with Craig Elrick. In my paranoid state I can’t help being worried about that… We may be going to Adelaide. That visitor I mentioned, Cathy, she would be arranging it.

Wally is sweeping the path outside. A slow fly is on this book. Christine is in bed, awake, and probably grumpy….

*

Paul Storm, a school friend, was living around the corner around this time. I remember running to borrow money off him for a cab, after cops – called by my mother - came to my door and alerted me to my father’s terrible stroke. It was only a few months previous to this diary that he died.

I see Paul often these days. He has a daughter Polly’s age, Caitlyn, and as we’re all Sainters, we catch quite a few games together.

1982 beargarden

Constance working at a petrol station … I believe he would die if he knew this information was publicly available. He’s a serious [and I think successful] visual artist now - whom I last encountered at Troy’s wake.

Warren Coleman was another school friend. He was one of the boys in The Devil’s Playground and a co-writer, I understand, of Happy Feet. I don’t know much of what fell between, but we used to share very similar tastes and it was he who came to school with an Aladdin Sane haircut and he who introduced me to The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and thence to Philip K Dick … My parents hated him, blamed him for the incident when I took Bowie’s Young Americans record cover to the hairdresser and asked them to duplicate it. [The Gitane I could arrange myself.]

And Tobsha. Hmmn… A strange game of sexual chess stretched for years before burning out sans consummation. Then a VCA sculptress living at the end of the street, now she lives in LA and writes erotic novels with names like Quiver and Tremble and The Witch of Cologne. I’ve always been jealous of her success, principally because once I was far superior at spelling.

* Wasn’t someone teetering on a brink in my last post? I wonder how often I use that metaphor? Possibly a lot – I always seems to be treading the edge of some abyss or chasm or whatnot ...

Diary of 1981 - index

~ troy

Troy was stricken during the first wave of HIV infections, and, in time, contracted AIDS. Upon his death earlier this year, he must surely have been one of the longest surviving victims in Australia.

Troy's funeral was held in Sydney, where had lived for the last few decades, but in Melbourne, where he had so many friends and admirers, a second memorial service was held in the gardens of Ripponlea mansion.

This was a couple of months ago, when Melanie and I were still able to share a car without beleaguering each other with vicious squabbling. (Melanie is an ex-girlfriend of Ukranian descent, possessed of an extraordinary temper and a withering tongue). I gave her a lift to the memorial, and we were both nervous as we walked up the gravel drive. Most of the guests we would not have seen since Troy's departure to Sydney; it would be the opening of a time capsule, but the contents would have aged along with us.

Graciously, the event was organised by George Huxley, Richard Lowenstein, Bruno Charlesworth and others - and they'd seen fit to provide a liberal bar. This was my first port of call; I was unsteady, I was apprehensive of whom I might set eyes upon. There would be friends - there would also be those with who I did not part on friendly terms.

As mentioned in the previous post, I came to know Troy as his neighbour in Milton St. I'd known of him previously by reputation, but under a different name - Vanessa, allegedly the most gorgeous and authentic drag queen in Melbourne. At that time, the only drag queens I'd known were six foot tall Maoris on mandrax and the idea of an attractive one seemed a contradiction in terms.



When I first met him, Troy still had pert shapely breasts and was the most exotic and inspired individual I had yet encountered in my short life. Not surprisingly, it took me a little while to stop being afraid of him. To that point, most of my experiences with non-heteros had been in the form of older men trying to pick me up from the street, (on one memorable occasion, an airline pilot) - and in my naivety I expected that sooner or later Troy would put the hard word on me. Of course, it never happened, but one night we were up late watching TV and Troy, not wanting to outstay his welcome in my flat, politely asked if I wanted to go to bed. My response was 'No thanks, I'm straight'. Till the day he died, Troy was still embarrassing me by retelling that story to anyone who would listen and laugh. Indeed, it was his habitual pleasure to annoy me - once, he snatched up some of my unfinished poetry and, to my exasperation, I had to chase him around the flat for half an hour to get it back. You see, I was very sensitive about my writing back then...

Troy had sheer talent. He started with fashion and ended with sculpture. He would sew me up crazy outfits to wear on stage. Once, I remember him dressing Tobsha Learner in a magnificent garment that was also a chest of Daliesque drawers - and then blackening up her underarm hair with an eyeliner pencil. Jean Paul Gaultier, you say? This was well before him. Troy also served as my match-matcher, setting me up with inappropriate female after inappropriate female...

At one time he became obsessed with Dinah Shaw - a sort of white-bread Oprah whose show was on TV weekday mornings. I remember him speaking of her repeatedly and once he asked me if I found her attractive. I didn't really take him seriously, till I stepped onto his veranda early one morning and saw him through the window furiously masturbating with Dinah on the black and white telly next to his bed. I backed quietly away and gave him all the time he needed.

I recall entering his flat after the departure of an ambulance, concerned about what had transpired. Troy was the angriest I'd ever seen. He'd spent most of his dole cheque on heroin, immediately OD'd, been shot up with narcan by the paramedics, and now, he spat, was 'fucking straight'. I watched him trying to fix plastic gemstones to the bald sides of his head with super-glue. He was not fucking straight.



In time we became caring friends. Then we drifted, then he moved to Sydney. But I came away with a thorough and gainful appreciation of the perverse.

The occasion of his memorial put my head in a spin. A parade of friends and acquaintances I had not seen for twenty years: Anne Harding, sister of my dearest Christine; Lisa Dethridge, former lover and cheekily smiling imp, now with family; the gorgeous Suzanne Wales, with the sweetest nature in Nature, another lover, now a Barcelonan; Mark Warner, with who I'd fought the Slammerkin, now dead of cancer; Jeff Jaffers, who directed Earthbound, my only screenplay; Marie, an ex lover of both Troy and myself; Mim; Denise; Despina; George Huxley, on whom I relied to colour and cut my hair during my days in the limelight; Karen Hooper; Anthony Smethhurst; Barry Sherman - once a warlock for the local branch of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis; his Sister Sara, the fashion designer; Mark Seymour, Sean Kelly... ad infinitum.

I buried the hatchet and shook hands with Richard Lowenstein, who, since Dogs in Space, had been my declared enemy. Troy's spirit permeated the gathering, dissolving all enmities. I also spoke with Richard's partner Lynne Marie for the first time since those days. Little information passed between us - she speaks as softly as a mouse and I am half deaf - but there was good will in the air. Later, having lost the power of speech, I sat next to a dyspeptic Renee Geyer and tried to hold a conversation. Neither of us could make an ounce of sense. Renee, Mark Seymour and Tim McKew sang songs. George Huxley, Ollie Olsen and Bruno Charlesworth gave elegies. But it was somehow the gathering itself that honoured Troy.

I became dangerously overstimulated and it wasn't long before I was probably suffering from alcohol toxicity. I recall being in a car with my dear friend Paul Goldman, Suzanne Wales & Hugh Marchant (with whom I had had bitter words when last we met). We were on our way into the city, for what I suppose might be called a wake. I have few memories after that. The hangover of the following day was a sheer triumph for the Slammerkin.

It was a special congregation - a particular group who will almost certainly never come together again. As such, it was a final sacred gift from Troy - the genuine cult-figure. We came away feeling graced, our lives in a little more perspective. One last glimpse of Troy's blazing talent, the world he addressed with art and wit, the merciless disease that in later times defined his life. One last glimpse of his holy fire.

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