by Jim Hearn
HIGH SEASON
A MEMOIR OF HEROIN
& HOSPITALITY
JIM HEARN
First published in Australia in 2012
Copyright © Jim Hearn 2012
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Typeset in 12/14.5pt Bembo by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed and bound in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Alice
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Acknowledgements
1
So I’m standing in front of my six-burner stove at Rae’s on Watego’s in Byron Bay and our head waiter Scotty wants to know if I’ll cook a soft-shell crab for Paris Hilton that isn’t deep-fried. I’m no killjoy so I say sure, it’ll be wet and soggy but it’ll taste like crab. Besides, it’s New Year’s Day and I’m feeling generous. Scotty, who knows what he’s doing, takes care of her security guys with two whole fish, wok-fried vegetables, lotus-leaf rice and a couple of Peronis, then tells Paris he’ll send a few things out. Scotty has a certain arrogance which goes down well with most customers.
The thing about girls and eating, particularly if they’re celebrities or wannabe celebrities, is that they want the following three things when they go to a restaurant: first off, they want to have fun, which is why they travel in packs; next, they want to try a whole lot of different food, which they often share; and finally, they like all the food to look great. And what has become apparent this week with Paris Hilton, last week with Elle Macpherson and at Christmas time with Megan Gale, is that they actually have human bodies that require sustenance. The best of them know this much about themselves but many don’t, and in the latter case it can mean the first rule of going out to lunch gets broken; which is to say, no one’s had fun at a restaurant if they’re still hungry after the meal. Doesn’t matter how good the view is or the service was.
So Scotty goes all out and orders half a dozen entrees for the six girls, doubling up on two so effectively they’ve got eight. When it becomes obvious Paris and her little sister can really eat, Scotty, who’s seen it all before, puts a rush order in for a cooked-through rib-eye steak with sweet potato mash and shitake jus, two fish of the day, three leaf salads, a main-size lemongrass-pasted Moreton Bay bug dish and, to keep the party going (as much for the other punters in the restaurant who are all busy texting their friends about who’s sitting near them), we get the mains out the door as soon as the entree plates start coming back in. A share menu is a great way to eat pan-Asian cuisine anyway. It’s not on a lazy Susan so you need a good waiter, but a share menu—maybe fifteen dishes for six—is a rocking good idea if everyone’s there for the food rather than the Cristal. And these girls eat everything we throw at them.
The last thing they need in order to feel the day has come together for them is a great bathroom. And the bathrooms at Rae’s are small but fucking great. So the girls all trip past and pile in and do whatever six girls do together in a tiny bathroom before they stumble out, giggling as they pass the kitchen where the crackhead apprentices are lined up to catch a glimpse—which is all they’re going to get because the security guy, who in this instance manages things pretty well, stands in the doorway of the kitchen because he’s seen what apprentice chefs are capable of. He knows that the three freaks in my kitchen, Jesse, Choc and Soda—all of whom are under twenty-one and have more body art and piercings than the Illustrated Man—are much more of a potential threat than any paparazzi. Just looking at the security guy I can see he’s worried about the boys. I figure he’s stood in doorways like this all over the world to deter smart-arse apprentices from yelling out, ‘Paris, you want my phone number?’ or ‘Paris, I loved your video’ or ‘Paris, how were the crabs?’
But the thing about Jesse, Choc and Soda is that while they may look like punks and act like punks, they cook like angels. Not everyone can stand the heat, sweat and abuse of a busy five-star restaurant. Not all kids have the necessary survival skills to see out one busy lunch service let alone the three or four years it takes to qualify as a chef. And these kids mess up. Sometimes they’re late, sometimes the police ring looking for one of them, and sometimes they crumble and cry under the pressure, but if one stuck a paring knife between another one’s ribs during service, the one with the knife tickling their lungs would finish plating up their order before removing the steel from their rib cage. Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly; these kids are tough, they can stand the heat . . .
That said, I’m starting to worry about Jesse, who looks less than pristine. He’s been going hard for a couple of weeks now and although he hasn’t let the line down yet, he’s starting to piss everyone off with his bad attitude. Jesse is the oldest of the three apprentices and the leader of the pack. It’s important to the smooth running of the kitchen that Jesse doesn’t get too messed up because if and when he does, he takes the other kids to hell with him. Even though I’m chef—or the old guy at the stove with a speaking part—these boys have their own subculture in which Jesse is the leader, and where he goes they follow. And right now, because it’s high season in Byron Bay, nothing else matters other than getting through the next few weeks with whatever self-respect people can drag along behind them. The stakes are high; fuck up and walk out now, or push things too far until one of the kids break, and we’re finished in this part of the world as chefs. That wouldn’t matter if we’d been here six weeks or even six months, but after a couple of years we’re a team and there’s a certain level of expectation. Besides, Vinnie Rae would cut off our runaway legs.
Vinnie’s a real treat. He’s like our older brother who grew up and got rich and famous and now . . . now he’s like our very rich and very demanding older brother. He looks like a blond Bob Dylan—who can surf. He came from the same kind of working-class neighbourhood as the rest of the guys in the kitchen, had the same sort of parents and same public schooling. But Vinnie was never going to stay a working-class drone. If his first job had been in the transport industry, he’d be a trucking magnate by now; if he’d started out in the fashion industry he’d be an international design star. But he didn’t, he started in a kitchen, and now we live wit
h the consequences of that fateful day.
The kitchen at Rae’s is hot, even though the pass is open through to the bar and you can see the pandanus trees framing the blue-green sea of Watego’s Beach. And it’s hotter than usual lately because a heatwave has blown across town and settled into the neighbourhood like a passive-aggressive, all-seeing bully. The temperature is messing with people’s heads.
Rae’s is a seven-room boutique hotel with a sixty-seat restaurant and a kitchen that was never designed for commercial use. Rooms are a thousand dollars a night or more and it’s not for everyone; it’s expensive, but for some the value of the experience doesn’t come together. That’s partly because the whole time you’re there you sort of feel like you’re at someone’s house, which is what the building was originally—a Mediterranean palace by the sea, but a house nonetheless. So the heat in the kitchen builds up. And when the breeze stops in the galley where the dishes and pots are washed, the air thickens into a vaporous steam that clings and climbs, building pressure and pushing sweat, until eventually even the toughest have to escape to take a few breaths and replace fluids.
Today it’s Soda’s turn to be punished; he knows he’s been bad. Soda’s done plenty wrong in his short life, but beneath a chemical cloud of burnt pots redemption is at hand. Soda got his weirdo name from the character in The Outsiders. Apparently he got called Soda at school when everyone had to read the book and it stuck. No one besides him and his family actually knows what his real name is any more. To us he’s Soda and, like the fictional character, he has that wild, movie-star handsome face and easy smile that manages to keep him floating just above the grease and grime of the galley. Grandmothers, pet dogs, pussy cats—well, just about any female with a pulse—are particularly partial to Soda. Once they’ve looked into his sea-blue eyes and seen his winning smile, they all know who’s boss in the lovable stakes. Not that he tries it on with any of us chefs. In here he’s just a line cook; a kitchen slave like the rest of us. But having him around, like a colourful bird in a stainless-steel cage, somehow makes it easier for us all.
Because Rae’s is small, with only a handful of rooms, a great little spa and a kick-arse restaurant, the rooms are often booked out by the rich and famous. They take over the joint for a week or a weekend and enjoy the privileges of whatever success they’ve had, which is why lunch with Paris is not unusual and today . . . well, the relief on the security guy’s face is palpable. But there’s still tension in the air due to the fact they didn’t tell us they were coming. And Vinnie—who owns Rae’s—likes to be told such things. Scotty looks particularly stressed so I guess he hasn’t been able to contact Vinnie to let him know Paris is in the house. But still, lunch service is going well. And this is despite everyone being hungover from New Year’s Eve. Everyone but me. And I’m not messed up because New Year’s Eve and I go way back.
2
On New Year’s Eve fifteen years ago, from half past ten until four in the morning, there wasn’t a single shot of smack traded on the streets of Kings Cross. There was a calm around the streets that I had never experienced before. There were a few outbursts that blew up like spot fires before being doused or moved along, but the general feeling was one of calm intensity. Everyone was either sitting at outdoor cafes or leaning against doorjambs or slouched into the crevices of buildings, watching . . . waiting . . . for the dope to turn up. Everyone agreed it would; everyone knew someone who knew something who said it was travelling; and all anyone could do was wait. Some people couldn’t sit it out and they blew across town or traded down to alcohol or something else low-grade, but for the purists, for the ones who needed heroin and nothing less, it was just one more challenge in a life of crime. The actual countdown at midnight to the birth of the new year was strictly for the punters. And there were plenty of them, laughing, kissing, drinking, pinching, poking and blowing off steam. Truly, if there’s a bigger amateur’s night than New Year’s Eve, I haven’t heard about it.
It was about four am when the dope hit. There were still a lot of partygoers out and about, and for about twenty minutes they ruled the streets as every hooker, hustler and drugstore cowboy moved through the crowd and disappeared into boltholes and mirror-balled rooms, beneath stairwells and stoops, up to rooftops and into hour-stay motel rooms. And because everyone was so utterly fucking grateful the dope had turned up, there wasn’t a lot of pushing and shoving; there was respect among the crew that we’d waited this one out; we’d come through something, together. And the word was, the dope was good. It was grade-one, straight-off-the-boat, pink-fucking-rocks. It could have been one hundred percent battery acid and no one would have minded. Every single hopeless junkie in the neighbourhood would have shot it up and hoped to get one last ping before the lights went out.
The weirdest thing was, I discovered while sitting in a hotel room in Hampton Court where a hooker lived with her three-year-old son and a bunch of other low-life scum, the dope really was good. As soon as I put my shot away—a larger than usual shot given the utter torment of having waited so long—the rush to my head was better than any I had ever experienced before. And while I’d dropped plenty of times and lived to tell the tale, this was different. Everything went quiet as I pushed the fit home, pulled it out, then instinctively stood up and started for the door. In that moment of bliss, I knew this was as close as I was ever going to get to the sensation of my first shot, no matter how long I kept looking or how much dope I continued to use. It was such a pure, utterly pinging stone that I felt every organ in my body slowing, starting to close down, like . . . they wanted to stop functioning. Another thing I knew was that unless I managed to get across the road and into the club where Caroline, my girlfriend at the time, had been waiting for several hours—without so much as a phone call—she was going to be so powerfully pissed off I might never get close to those unbelievably perfect tits again. And the third thing I knew was that, if I was going to drop from an overdose, it was of the utmost importance that I didn’t do so in that room.
Of course it was rude to just up and leave but I didn’t give a fuck. The pressing nature of my insights motivated me away from any concerns for etiquette and towards the safety of either dying alone in a darkened laneway or collapsing into Caroline’s milky chest.
It wasn’t until I hit the ground at the entrance of the hotel that I realised I wouldn’t make it to the club. And the bitumen, as I hurtled towards it, became a landscape in miniature; layers of rock-hard chewing gum and tiny pot-holes morphed into a patched history that blew up into a storyboard of loves gone wrong and addictive despair. And then nothing.
Until I awoke at St Vincent’s Hospital with a team of medical staff screaming over the top of me, ‘Breathe!’
To which I replied, ‘Fuck off—I can breathe, you idiots.’
Stuff gratitude. They knew the score about giving a junkie Narcan, a drug that immediately nullifies the effects of opiates.
To go from being utterly stoned to awaken more straight than you’ve been for many years . . . well, it’s a shock to the system and one that medical staff in emergency wards are ready for. Never mind that the good hard-working doctors had just saved my life—I was stoned, you morons!
The moment after I began breathing again, all the medical staff except one took off in order to deal with the next crisis while I got a lecture and a bright yellow envelope, the contents of which I was advised to read if I didn’t want to end up dead. The doctor who’d stayed behind asked if I’d seen anything on the other side. But I hadn’t. It was just blackness and nothing.
3
There’s a gentle two-foot swell down at Watego’s Beach where old-timers on longboards slide to the right, two steps forward, one step back, then disappear out of view of the restaurant pass. There are no walls to the restaurant at Rae’s. Diners sit around a semicircular space, and what separates them from the other punters, who are out enjoying the best of what Byron Bay has to offer, is more cultural than physical. If it rains the plastic sheets a
re flung down off the roof but otherwise it’s all fresh sea air and envious looks from those doing the lighthouse walk.
Crisp linen drapes the tables and pink frangipanis, which have fallen from the ancient tree at the entrance to the restaurant, litter the timber floor. Lunch is fully underway with Paris and Nicky and their entourage. Scotty is calm about service but scratching at his bald head because he still can’t raise Vinnie on the phone.
‘How are the girls?’ I ask him.
‘Yeah, yeah, good,’ he replies. ‘Still fucking hungry though. Who said models don’t eat?’
‘They’re not models, mate. They’re—’
‘Yeah, whatever. They want a couple more green papaya salads and another soft-shell crab.’
‘Tell me she wants it fried this time,’ I say.
‘She wants it however it’s on the menu, Chef,’ Scotty says, grinning faintly.
‘Correct answer,’ I say, winking at Choc, whose job it is to get the crab underway.
‘You’re a genius, Chef. They love it all,’ Scotty carries on.
‘Correct again, Scotty. And I don’t care what people say about you, mate—I think you’re a top bloke,’ I tell him, taking the piss. ‘Vinnie called back yet?’
‘Fuck off,’ Scotty replies, and heads back to the floor.
Jesse, Choc and Soda are surprisingly impressed with Paris, Nicky and their friends. Their earlier cynicism has all but disappeared, even Jesse’s, which is actually a little disturbing. No one is used to Jesse being anything other than a relentless piss-taker and for him to be a fan, or at least not outrageously nasty about the girls, is high praise where we come from. And we do all agree that there’s something about the girls. They’re not so much sexy as surprisingly classy. Given that our perceptions of Paris Hilton have been gleaned from tabloids and gossip mags, the boys in the kitchen are a little surprised to find that Paris and the girls look rich, rather than crass. And really, given the wealth and privilege that she must have grown up with, it shouldn’t come as such a shock. Even though they are casually dressed, they exude a different aura to your average pretty girl. They look and smell and move like princess cats, like American royalty might.