‘Yes, Mum.’
‘And behave yourself.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
We were off at last. Eight of us in the Holden. I was next to Wayne, who was driving, with my hand on his thigh. There was Tracey, Johnno, Kim, Dave, Sue and Danny.
We drove to a vacant lot in Waratah Street.
‘Where we goin’?’ asked Dave.
‘Dunno,’ said Johnno.
‘We’ll blow a joint first.’ Wayne turned off the ignition.
Out came the hash from the glove box.
‘Anyone got any Drum?’
‘Here yar.’
Wayne mixed it on the street directory; burning the hash and breaking it into the tobacco. He rolled a mean joint. ‘Give us the matches.’
The Holden was soon filled with sweet-smelling smoke. The joint was passed across the front seat, along the back seat and back into the front seat. We all took three huge drags each and then passed it on. And then another joint would be doing the circuit and another, and another.
‘Ey! Don’t bogart* it Johnno.’ Johnno was a hog.
‘Oh, handle it …’
‘That’s ya fourth hit, man.’
He passed it on. The joints went round in silence.
Two hours later we were still sitting in a vacant lot in Waratah Street.
‘Whada we gonna do now?’ asked Johnno, breaking the heavy silence.
Wayne lit up his fortieth cigarette. Everyone watched him pull out the ashtray. He looked at Dave and replied, ‘I dunno.’
An hour later, Wayne wound down the window, and asked, ‘Well, what are we gonna do now?’
Ten minutes later, Tracey squeaked, ‘I dunno,’ and wound up the window.
‘Why don’t we blow another joint?’ suggested Danny from the smoky depths of the back seat.
And so, we passed the hours, in stoned silence, sucking on one soggy joint after another, gazing out at the beautiful sight of yet another half-built block of red brick home units.
‘Whada we gonna do now?’ asked Dave, after we’d blown half a deal.
‘I got the munchies sumfin’ severe,’ said Johnno.
‘Maybe we should get some eats, eh?’
‘Whadaya reckon?’ asked Wayne, his hand on the ignition.
‘I dunno.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Whatever yews wanna do.’
We drove off to Roberto’s Pizza Hut in Caringbah. We all staggered in, bloodshot-eyed, vague, cool and stoned out of our heads, hoping someone would see us.
‘Well, whada you gonna get?’ asked Dave.
‘I dunno …’
‘Whataya gonna get?’ asked Danny.
‘I dunno …’
Kim asked me, ‘Are you gonna get anything?’
‘I dunno … are you?’
‘I dunno … I will if you do …’
‘Um … No,’ I lied, my stomach growling ferociously, ‘I’m not hungry.’
Skinniness was next to godliness.
Danny ordered a thick-shake and a Carbonossi Special. Wayne got a King Prawn De-Luxe, Johnno got Mushroom and Cheese Delight and Dave hogged himself on four double cheeseburgers. We girls smoked cigarettes in silence while the boys ripped in with greasy fingers and dripping mouths. Then it was eleven thirty. Late enough to go home. Wayne pashed me off and I got out of the car. I couldn’t wait to run up the driveway and had to relieve myself behind the camellia bush.
‘Phew.’
Now! I stood panting before the fridge. Out came the sponge cake. The vanilla ice cream. The caramel sauce. One on top of the other. After three huge bowlfuls and a Chocolate Monte, I staggered up to bed and crashed.
It was Monday morning, a few minutes before bell time. We girls clamoured around the heater in the maths room, brushing our hair, pulling up our pantyhose, picking off our split ends and gossiping.
‘Didja go out on Friday night?’ asked Gail, warming her bottom on the heater.
‘Yeah! Didn’t get home till twelve thirty!’
‘No bull? Whatja mum say?’
‘Oh nuffin’. Lend us ya brush will ya?’
‘Yeah. Wadja do?’
‘Wayne had this unroole hash—we just got so stoned.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Ripped. Saw Darren Peters, Jacko, Strack …’
Bbrringg!
‘All right girls. Back to your desks. Books out.’
Gail and I sat together. Sue had to sit next to a nurd on the other side of the room.
‘Gee, wish I was allowed out …’
‘Yeah, it was unroole,’ I said, copying down Gail’s homework answers. ‘Can’t wait till next Friday night.’
15
i can feel something
IT was the same old story of getting all dressed up and having nowhere to go. We were one step further than a year ago, because now we had nowhere to go in a car. That’s why nearly every young Australian girl gets deflowered in a car. That’s the only place there is. At least we knew Dad wouldn’t walk in any minute. At least, not many dads …
One night back when we were thirteen, down Panel Van Point, Cronulla—the deflowering capital of southern Sydney—a distraught father made the rounds. He shone his torch into the backs of all the bouncing panel vans searching desperately for his daughter.
It was Sue and Danny’s turn in the back, while Bruce and I sat in the front seat, checking out the midnight swells. Suddenly a beam of light revealed all.
Susan squealed, ‘It’s the pigs!’ and groped frantically for her bra.
‘Carolyn, is that you? Carolyn?’ The light fell full on her face and then flickered away. Bruce parted the purple curtains and cried out after him, ‘Fuck off, you old perv!’ But he was already inspecting the next parked panel van.
‘Phew,’ gasped Danny, re-mounting, ‘I thought that was the fuzz.’
I always lay in terror in the back of the van, waiting for the police to catch me. They made regular raids on the parked panel vans at Cronulla Point. They hauled the girls out of the back to check how old they were. They’d even caught Sandra Riley one night. They’d taken her down to the police station, rung her parents and then she disappeared to a girl’s home in Parramatta.
I kept my shoes and socks on—just in case. Lucky Sue and I never got caught because we were three years under the age of consent.
But there was nowhere for us kids to go. We couldn’t go to a friend’s place, because we were so stoned and their parents would see us. Besides that, the record player was always in the lounge and the whole family would be in there watching Homicide or Hawaii Five-0. So we all got stoned and sat around in the car, until we got hungry enough to go and get something to eat. Then we’d go and hang out at the Pizza Hut, Ma Brown’s greasy milk bar, or the Arizona.
That’s why it was so great when someone’s parents went out. Just to have somewhere to sit around and drink coffee and watch television. Just to have somewhere to listen to music and cuddle up and relax … even though we were always waiting for the headlights to turn into the driveway.
For a while there we all went down to Cheryl’s on Saturday nights. Her parents were always out. I rang her and used the code:
‘Is it off-shore?’
‘Off-shore’ meant her parents were out and ‘on-shore’ meant they were home.
There was plenty of food. Lots of music and a pool. We all sat around the lounge watching TV, smoking joints and eating cheese on toast. After the third joint, things got horny. Sue was on Danny’s knee in the middle of the armchair, kissing passionately. Cheryl and Gull were stretched out on the lounge, his hand disappearing into her blouse. Wayne and I were lying on the carpet, half under the stereo which was blaring out ‘Close to the Edge’ by Yes. That was the in record to play when you were stoned before Cheech and Chong came along.
We had the TV on with the sound turned down and the stereo up full blast. When things got horny and uncomfortable enough, you’d disappear with your partner and go to find an empty
bedroom. You didn’t just get up and leave though. You had to be cool. You waited until the record needed changing or the dog needed letting out or you wanted a glass of water. While you were out of the room, you’d pretend it suddenly struck you, ‘While I’m up, I wouldn’t mind a root.’
I’d started to really enjoy sex now. It was the only thing I had to look forward to.
Wayne led me down the stairs, past the pool, and into the rumpus room. He locked the door. We used to start on the floral night-and-day but always ended up on the floor.
‘Let’s try a backwards one.’
‘Er,’ I said. If I rolled over he’d see my bare bottom.
‘It’s great. Dave and Johnno said it’s great.’
‘Okay …’I rolled over hesitantly. ‘But I don’t know what to do.’
‘It’s all right.’ He eased cushions under my abdomen.
Finally Wayne said, ‘I’m done.’
‘Okay.’ It was about time to go up for another joint.
‘Give it to me,’ I stretched out my hand.
‘What?’
‘You know?’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘Well, I haven’t got it.’
‘Where can it be?’
‘Gord, I dunno.’
‘Well, we’ll have to look for it.’
Half naked, we started crawling all over the rumpus room floor. Under the night-and-day. Behind the bar. I even looked behind the piano.
‘I can’t find it,’ I whispered, worried.
‘Turn on the light.’
Then I couldn’t find the light switch. Eventually we stumbled upon a lamp.
‘It’s just disappeared … You sure you haven’t got it?’ I was half under the night-and-day, checking and re-checking. I must have lifted up every cushion in that room twenty times. I had horrible visions of Mrs Nolan doing the vacuuming and coming across a soggy, spermy, screwed up plastic thing. I imagined her picking it up and showing it to her husband; then realising what it was and washing her hands.
We had to give it up. It was just nowhere.
It downed on me in the kitchen …
‘I can feel something.’ Wayne looked at me. I looked at him. He looked back at his cheese toastie. I went to the bathroom. It had been inside the whole time. Things had got so frantic it had fallen off.
‘That’s the last time I’m using one of those bloody things,’ Wayne groaned.
A few weeks later I was pregnant.
I didn’t know I was until one morning I felt really sick.
‘I feel sick, Mum.’
‘Do you want a day in bed, dear?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you want some Vegemite on toast and a cup of tea?’
‘Nu.’
‘All right. Look after yourself. Bye now.’
She’d just gone out the door when I desperately wanted to do a pee. Then it happened. It all came out like watery, underset jelly. I flushed it away.
There were certain laws in Sylvania Heights about getting pregnant. We had three ways of trying to get rid of it. You could ride your horse bare-back. Cheryl was always galloping Randy, unsaddled, around the football field. You could get Steve Strachan to punch you in the lower stomach. His friends would hold you while he took aim. It never worked. Some chicks were lucky enough to miscarry but usually you had to tell your father. I could never have told mine. Thank God I didn’t have to. But it scared me enough to tell Sue. I don’t know how Tracey and the other top chicks handled it alone. We went to the doctor’s together.
I used Wayne’s last name, and put my age up. He knew I was lying and treated me like a slut. The chemist knew I was lying, too. He didn’t even put the pill packet in a paper bag. Just as he was handing it to me, Mrs Dixon and Auntie Pam walked in. Sue and I ran home and I hid it in the back of my underpants drawer. Even though it was such a hassle, Sue decided to go on the pill, too.
16
deadset molls
THE Greenhills Gang was changing.
Now we went down the beach for different reasons. We didn’t go down to check out the guys or bask in the sun—we went down to score.
‘Hey Gull, can you get anything?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Wot?’
‘Oh Deak knows a guy who’s got some unroole hash. Twenty-five bucks a cap.’
Sue and I scraped together twenty-five dollars from advances on pocket money, selling old records and pawning old friendship rings.
A cap is about half an inch long and looks like a penicillin capsule. It’s filled with a black, sickly, sweet-smelling, thick, tar-like oil.
We surfie chicks met in the PE changing rooms during the girls’ assembly, for a smoke. We’d all heard Mrs Yelland’s ‘girls only’ lecture a hundred times. ‘Would you girls kindly use the sanitary incinerators provided? Mr Dunstan has been working for us for twelve years and he’s never seen anything like it …’
We had better things to do.
‘Hey, lock the door Kim. Didja get the alfoil?’
‘Yeah, I knocked it off from home science.’
‘Give us it.’
I spotted the hash oil on to the alfoil. Rummaging through my bag I found a half-melted, degutted biro. Tracey lit the alfoil from underneath. I positioned my pen over the brown blotch and sucked up the smoke through the plastic straw.
‘Give us a hit,’ said Sue.
Pretty soon we were all giggling and buzzing.
‘Come on, we’d better split.’
Sue and I headed off for English.
‘Do my eyes look bloodshot?’ Sue grabbed me frantically by the arm.
‘Nah … Do mine?’
‘Na.’
‘Sorry we’re late, Miss. Left something in the PE changing rooms.’
We joined our friends up the back.
‘Deadset, I’m so out of it,’ I confided in Gail. ‘Can you smell it?’
We panicked about our bloodshot eyes all period. If the teacher even glanced in our direction we were sure she knew. The lesson was spent with us freaking out and paranoid behind our books.
For most of us marijuana was enough to relieve the boredom but Frieda Cummins, Jeff Basin and Cheryl Nolan needed more—their mother’s Mandrax, Valium or an acid trip at four dollars a pill. It made the day go faster and improved their reputations.
‘Cheryl’s trippin’.’
‘Wot on?’
‘White Light. Check out the way she’s walkin’! She dropped it on the bus this mornin’.’
During Mr Bishop’s lecture in assembly, Cheryl began to sway drunkenly.
‘And you, lassie!’ he boomed down the microphone, ‘Can’t you hold yourself up?’
Cheryl yawned at him and the headmaster ordered her up to his office, to be ‘dealt with’ later.
‘Go on lassie. Move!’
She started to move across the quadrangle, taking painfully small steps. She walked in slow motion, staring defiantly at Mr Bishop.
No one spoke or moved. The first-form kids even stopped gawking at the dogs screwing outside the science block. We all watched Cheryl totter across the front of the quadrangle. She dragged herself up the steps, planted both feet on the top stair and turned to address the assembly. Letting out a loud raspberry, she stabbed the air savagely with an ‘up-yours’ gesture and turned to continue her trek to the office. The assembly crumbled. We were laughing so loud we didn’t even hear Mr Berkoff blowing his whistle. Cheryl was expelled.
Things were getting heavy for my surfie gang. Vicki’s mother found a dope deal in her daughter’s drawer and rang up to confide in Mrs Dixon. So Kim got grounded and ran away from home. Johnno got busted for smoking hash. Mum freaked when she saw his picture in the local paper. She told me to get some new friends.
Wayne and I didn’t go anywhere anymore. We didn’t even go to the drive-in. Friday and Saturday nights we hung out on the main street of Cronulla, buying, selling and smoking dope. Sue and I sat with the boys on the steps of the Soul Patt
erson’s chemist. We could all tell the junkies. They spent most of the night buying hamburgers and then spewing them up into the garbage bins. We’d started to suspect a lot of our friends. Hitting up was the new cool thing to do. If you had needle pricks in your arm, you were tough, and top. A lot of people pretended to be heroin addicts.
‘Oh look at Lorraine Peck. The bullshit artist.’
‘What? Where?’ asked Wayne.
‘Oh leaning up against the post office. She doesn’t hit up you know. She just scratches herself and coughs, the rag. She’d root for a scaffe,’* I told him.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Wayne. ‘She wouldn’t get rooted for a scag† though. She’s not worth it. No one would waste it on her. Comin’ for a smoke?’
‘Nah.’ I was too stoned to move. Sue and I kept sitting on the cold cement step while Wayne went off to the parking lot with Danny and Gull to blow another number. As I lit up my Marlboro, Sue nudged me urgently.
‘Hey Deb, that’s not Garry is it?’ She pointed across the road to a washed-out figure huddled in the doorway of the shoe shop. From where I was sitting I could see he was pale and thin. His surfie physique had deteriorated into a soggy slouch. He lifted up his blank face and seemed to stare straight through me.
‘God …’ I gasped. ‘It is Garry. Let’s go. Quick.’ We ran down the alley to the beach and stood very close together on the footpath. Leaning against the railing, Sue and I watched the sea surge, swell and smash on the rocks. A thick thread of smoke coiled up into the sky from the Kurnell oil refinery.
‘It stinks,’ I said, stamping out my cigarette.
‘What?’
‘Everything.’
Cronulla was getting duller. More and more of our friends were hitting up. Sue and I were sick of sitting in the car with the boys stoned and paranoid. We were sick of fetching Chiko rolls. We were sick of sun-bathing and towel-minding while the boys surfed. For once we wanted some of the action. So, we bought a board. It was a cut-down Jackson, for ten dollars. We put in five dollars each. It was pretty dinged but we were really proud of it. After a few weeks we got brave enough to take it to the beach.
On Sunday we caught the nine-fifteen train to Cronulla. As usual.
Puberty Blues Page 8