by Tom Dusevic
Could you send me pictures of yourself in the nude? I’d like to see them so that I can get wet and touch myself.
Please write to me and tell me how you are feeling. I’ve left instructions on another piece of paper. If you don’t want to write back to me, do you know any other cute boys who would like to see these kinds of pictures and would like to send me nude pictures of themselves?
I hope you keep winning so I can get to see you on the TV again soon and maybe one day even meet you.
Yours sincerely,
Jane
There’s a small piece of the same blue note paper inside:
Keep this in your wallet
J.W. Russell
[A street address in Emerald]
Please only put my initials and surname on the envelope for me.
Don’t put ‘miss’ or my name on it, so my older sister won’t take it.
That afternoon I show Frank and Wally the letter and the accompanying porno-phernalia. They help me decipher Jane’s handwriting. I had raced through it to get to the last line. The request for naked pictures is weird, too forward, a step too far; I’d need a lot more scruff before showtime.
‘Jane Russell must have friends who will be into all this stuff as well,’ I tell Frank, wondering where to safely stash the letter. ‘As soon as we’re old enough to drive or catch the train, we should all go to meet her. Emerald is either a suburb of Melbourne or a country town.’
I’d look it up in the Britannica Atlas.
I was in private turmoil for weeks. My life was frenetic but I could not stop thinking about lusty Jane and the wild times in Emerald 3782. Turned on and repulsed, empowered in some way, yet even more aware of my lack of firepower. I was unsettled by the attention. I didn’t know anyone who thought about sex in this way or who would go to such elaborate means to put it down on paper. What had she seen on TV to identify me as a degenerate? Was it obvious that I, too, had lewd thoughts? Although not in the manner of Jane’s Fellini-style orgy on Planet Emerald, more like a free-form music video of MacKillop girls in tight jeans and bikini tops doing the go-go scene from Lost in Space.
If I ever met Jane, I wanted it to be strictly on my terms. If all else failed, there was an extreme therapy for terminal virginity.
I didn’t have the erotic wordplay or feverish crudity to match her, so I never replied. But I did not forget. For a time, I wondered if she was good-looking or if that mattered. Doubts crept in. Most of the girls I knew had really neat, light handwriting. How come hers was ragged and hard-pressed, like an old person’s?
The long letter was soon discarded, too creepy. But curiosity persisted. If it wasn’t a schoolgirl, who was the letter writer? God, no. I tucked away the address slip in my cigarette box from Croatia. There it sat, still does, a sinister talisman of what lurks in the wilder world.
I’d heard through back channels – a girl who told a girl who overhead another girl tell a boy at the bus stop – that Sharlene thought I was ‘cute’ or ‘interesting’ or ‘nice’, precision customarily sacrificed for speed on the teen telegraph. Girls talk. She’d made the first move. Or someone had, and I was glad. This was a vital fire-starter because I was too lame to get a flame going. Clearly, the barn dancing and a slight change in body shape were paying dividends for me.
How to proceed? Supercoach knew all the Year Ten girls from gate duty and he engineered a date of sorts. A door-knock appeal was scheduled for Sunday – most likely the Salvos or Red Cross – and MacKillop and St John’s were making an assault on Lakemba homes.
‘Why don’t you pair up with her for the collection?’ he said.
‘Is that even allowed?’
‘We make the rules here, Wombles.’
Brilliant move, and on turf I knew well. Sharlene and I were allocated a few streets and off we went. She was shy at first, eyes doe-like above freckled cheeks. For a few hours we knocked on doors, a budding couple with official collectors’ badges. My nervousness passed because of her smile and we talked easily.
Her father was the coach of the Under-14s, the most successful footy team in the history of the school, four years into a run of five premierships. I thought one of the Firsts would be her type, but I was wrong. We talked about music, TV shows, kids at school, and swimming; her parents managed Greenacre Pool over the summer and she was a squad swimmer. Sharlene had somewhere to be that afternoon and I walked her to a corner to say goodbye. She put her hand on my shoulder and reached up quickly to kiss me on the cheek, catching me by surprise.
‘That was fun,’ she said, soft eyes confirming it was heartfelt. ‘See you at school. Don’t keep all the money.’
I stayed at the corner of Wangee Road and Lakemba Street watching her walk away, the midday sun on smooth, strong shoulders. My heart was rejoicing. I could still smell a fruity hint of lipgloss and I thirsted for another kiss. I could almost taste the next stage, a kiss on the lips, then more, of dating or ‘going round’ with her, although I’d have to keep my parents in the dark. They’d never approve, nor understand that I had these genuine, fresh feelings. I didn’t have the words in Croatian to describe my emotions to them. I wanted to know this lovely girl as a close friend – to hold hands, chat to on the phone about whatever came into our heads.
But, right now, more than anything, I wanted to kiss her again.
A few weeks later there was a party at my mate Sam’s house. His parents were away and almost everyone we knew found their way there. I’d slipped some long-neck beer bottles from the fridge into a bag and shared it among the first boys at the party. The girls were drinking white wine, still and sparkling. Having run out of beer, I went with another boy to the Lakemba Hotel to buy as many more as our wallets would allow. Not many.
Over the winter I’d been to several sixteenth birthday parties. Some of the guys would camp near the backyard fire, straddling a half-carton of cans or stubbies, chugging beers until the gullet wall burst and it came out the way it went in.
Greg was school vice-captain and we ended up having a heart-to-heart over beers in the school grounds, not wanting to be seen drinking on the streets of Lakemba. He’d come to St John’s from the country the previous year and our grade had never seen his like; he spoke in a bush drawl at the time his voice was breaking.
‘Hey Sir, what’s re-connn-sill-eee-ayyy-shun?’ he’d asked the MoD, in front of the whole year at school camp, about the new-wave term for confession that we’d been using for awhile in liberated Lakemba.
Sitting on a bench at MacKillop, a splendid, secret beer garden near a holy statue, we’d almost finished our cans when someone – most likely one of the Brothers – came upon us in the darkness.
‘Hey, who’s over there?’ he said, a voice we did not recognise. ‘You’re not allowed to be here. Come out so I can see you.’
Greg and I bolted, sliding away on wobbly feet, disco-booting it into the night and back to Sam’s party.
Busted. Or were we?
There would be explaining on Monday morning, we figured in our semi-pissed haze of regret. I was sure we’d been identified. Better to get ahead of the story on this one, I urged Greg. Let’s fess up to Brother Paul, face the consequences. It’s not as if they would impeach us like Nixon or sack us like Gough so close to the end of the year.
Sharlene had arrived with friends. Even though we saw each other all the time, we had not had much time alone away from school. It now felt as if we were starting over – talking, dancing and feeling our way to comfortable ground. But all was still fresh. I was conscious of the game clock. Is this the moment to ask her to ‘go around’ with me? Maybe we could go to the rugby league Grand Final or 2SM’s Concert of the Decade at the Opera House.
Eventually we end up in a tipsy, tight squeeze, sitting on a fold-up lawn chair with another girl. It collapses, the split metal tubing slicing a gash over my right wrist in the place you find a pulse. It was a decent-sized wound but I couldn’t feel a thing. I still bear the 2-centimetre scar of a fevered nigh
t, a lasting memory of tender Sharlene in my arms, the air pungent and heavy with spring flowers in Sam’s backyard, a tinny cassette player moaning through a beer buzz, and the joyous wave of laughter as we tumbled to the ground.
13
Crossroads
Not long after he turned fifty-five in 1979, my father took a lump-sum payment of 12,000 and retired from Kellogg’s. I once checked his payslip: #270, ‘hard-working Joe’, was clearing just over 120 a week. It was a heartbreaking figure. Teta Danica’s contributions eased financial pressures, as did rental income from the Adelaide Street property. I’d retired from the milk run, so no one in our household was earning.
How could we possibly afford our living expenses, school fees and fanatical political activism? Tata’s meagre wage meant we had grown up frugally. No family holidays or meals at restaurants. Second-hand Holdens were held for so long they assumed vintage appeal while in Joso’s service. Sam and I had been conditioned to expect little, beyond the treats Mama splurged on every Friday, meant for visitors, but were gone by Saturday morning. Christmases and birthdays were done with little fuss, except on one marvellous occasion. On a ten-week long-service leave towards the end of 1976, Tata was able to secure, through a cousin, a job at an appliance factory. We scored the best Christmas presents of our lives: a metallic purple Speedwell ‘Flying Wedge’ bike for me, a Sanyo radio cassette recorder for Sam. My dad worked under the alias ‘Josip Kovačević’. For a short time, this second income was akin to a modest lottery win. The windfall bought a few luxuries, but was treated as a buffer for contingencies. My parents were children of the 1920s and 1930s, escapees. Security was never taken for granted, the little they had would be saved, built upon, not frittered away.
Yet Joso had set his mind on an ambitious scheme to fund retirement: property development. There was a grand, double-block estate at the back of our house and the flats, with two-street access. The York Street property had a horse stable, workshop, lock-up garages, greenhouse, a fishpond (with red and yellow fish, frogs on lilypads) and a grass tennis court. The house itself wasn’t opulent, just marooned out of time. It fell into disuse after the aged owners passed away. The family divided the estate into three blocks. Tata coveted the parcel that ran behind our house and the flats. But another Croatian (schemes part of the émigré’s DNA) beat him to it. When those development plans were rejected, Tata bought the block for 20,000. Like a marauder, he chopped the back off our property – cricket pitch, palm trees, vegetable garden, shed, and smoking den/dunny, all sacrificed.
It was just like the Berlin Wall in 1961. One day I returned from school to find a new fence. Joso had a large L-shaped block to play with. I lamented what we’d lost. Tata, however, saw four brand-new townhouses, income-producing assets, plus more opportunities down the track. Grassroots capitalism. Wealth accumulation. Up yours Tito, who was on his last legs, literally, holed up in his Adriatic holiday villa. The slogan of a poster on the side of an inner-city terrace house caught the moment: ARMS FOR AFGHANISTAN. Legs for Tito! Someone had added in a graffito scrawl.
And so, despite a genetically dodgy heart and a quiet life of risk aversion, Joso became a spec builder. I’d wandered around construction sites in the adjoining streets as houses were turned into unit blocks, collecting offcut timber, tiles, plastic buckets, and all types of useful detritus for school projects. Or to make things in my shed, just to see what a collection of bits could become. Now, just over the Wall in North Joso-Land, we had a project taking shape out of nothing, except Tata’s urge to make something.
We didn’t have to drive all over Sydney to do the work; ‘Buy Croatian’ came to us, as uncles and friends from every trade participated in the construction. Everything was covered except site demolition – the Lebanese had a lock on knocking things down in our area. We had a working bee that tied up the whole family for the next year: down in the trenches tying steel for the footings, carrying bricks for bricklayers, guarding freshly poured concrete, waiting for deliveries of materials and appliances. The structures (two three-bedroom, two two-bedroom townhouses) were built quickly but the internal fit-out and landscaping dragged on for months. Sam and I were responsible for the constant cleaning of the site as well. As Sam was doing his final year of high school, he secured light duties. My folks had gone back to their roots; tied to the land like pioneer farmers, except now they were growing four dwellings.
Tata was happy as a builder and around all the time. It meant things were stricter, especially at meal times. But Sam and I were older and less likely to be picky at the table. When we were younger Tata would fly into rages for what seemed like the smallest things. He was a stickler for never wasting food. He’d complain to Mama that she’d prepared too much.
‘Why can’t we just have it later as leftovers?’ I’d ask.
‘If the food is there I have to eat it, even if I’m full,’ Tata said, tapping his stomach. ‘I can’t bear to see even a single piece wasted. If you’d ever been hungry my son, you’d understand.’
One night during the school holidays, after he’d finished at Kellogg’s, Tata took Sam and me to the Botany factory he’d worked at for twenty-three years, almost exclusively on the afternoon shift from 3 pm until 11 pm. Everybody know two-seven-oh, hard-working Joe. We timed our visit for the dinner break so he could catch up with his former workmates. Tata introduced us to men, pretty much all of whom were Greek, Italian, Turkish or Lebanese. They knew about our success at school.
‘Are you the clever one on TV?’ asked one of the men.
‘We’ve both been on TV,’ I said.
‘This one does very well at school,’ Tata said, pointing to me. ‘Second last. At least he’s not last!’
Tata didn’t have to boast about us, but I resented him cutting us down, especially me, which he always justified by saying he didn’t want to spoil us, or have us ease off on the effort, by praising us too much. I just wanted my due or for him not to say anything about me.
The canteen was like the United Nations or the mess hall at the Olympics, as men sat around a Laminex table and argued about politics and world affairs: the Middle East, the oil crisis, refugees arriving from Vietnam.
‘When are you coming back to Kellogg’s, Joe?’ a Greek man called Jimmy asked. ‘We don’t have as many Croatian bomb-throwers to stir up anymore.’
‘You Greek communists know more about bombs than we do.’
‘We miss your father, he is a good man,’ Jimmy said, taking me aside. ‘I tell my children “study hard at school so you don’t have to work in a factory, like me”. What you want to be?’
‘I’m thinking about being a journalist or, if I can’t get into that, maybe a lawyer.’
‘Oh, lawyer!’ Tata cut in. ‘More like liar. Lawyer, liar, he’s already a very good liar.’
Joso knew every corner of this sprawling food factory. He’d spent almost his entire working life in Australia in a furnace here, where grains were cooked for cornflakes, rice bubbles and the bran varieties. The heat from the oven was oppressive and everyone wore overalls, hairnets, earplugs and safety glasses. He led us out to a balcony, although it was really the open part of a stairwell.
‘I’d stand here for a break in the cool air for a few minutes when it got too hot inside,’ he said, casting an eye over the harsh yellow-lit truck bays and walkways, the blinking eyes of forklifts.
Night fever. It was quiet enough, a muffled whirr of wheels and machine grind from inside the plant. A cloudless sky was overhead, the night was warm, yet our relief immediate. How did he manage twenty-three years in this inferno?
The makeshift balcony offered the simplest pleasure, a moment alone away from the heat and noise to think about those things that needed to be thought about with a clear, cool head. I imagined Tata in overalls and a hairnet, trying to figure out why the cornflakes coming out of the hopper were charred on one side. And the foreman declaring ‘Bullshit’ when Joso, just a ‘process worker’, figured out why, long before ‘big b
oss’ Kennedy was told. Or maybe he dreamed about what would happen to Yugoslavia once Tito was dead and the republics pressed for autonomy.
Is this where, on a moonless night, he planned his escape from Kellogg’s? One look at Joso, a touch of his elegant hand, as soft as a diplomat’s, a minute of conversation, told you he didn’t belong in a roasting oven. Or in a canefield wielding a machete. Or with a rifle slung over his shoulder. His village and family nickname was the ‘student’, the bookish boy sent into the world to become a storekeeper, not a farmer.
The place and boy were still there, just below the surface crust and grime of a working life, now almost completed, but there was a mysterious past, deep down, a solid inner core that would take me years to reach.
‘Australia.’
I pause to take on ballast, signalling to the audience at Bankstown Civic Centre that this speech will be long and pompous.
‘Where are we now?’ Pause.
‘Where are we going?’ Pause.
‘Are we heading for disaster? Two-beat pause.
‘Or are we on the brink of massive, financial, enrichment?’ Hold that thought, audience.
‘I believe Australia is at a crossroads.’
At this same venue, fourteen years later in 1993, I’ll cover Prime Minister Paul Keating’s back-to-the-wall pitch for re-election as a journalist. He, too, began with a single AUSTRALIA, although craftily he had the letters pinned to a backdrop in case voters forgot where they were.
Right now, I’m projecting Bob Hawke. Actually, I’m shamelessly ripping off the trade-union leader via the helpful concision of Reader’s Digest in the final of the senior public speaking at the St John’s eisteddfod.
‘Mate, you were terrible,’ says Fitz, witness and necessary truth teller. We’ve been together since kindergarten and he is running things backstage. ‘Your head was like a searchlight, this way, then back again. You sounded all Pommy and posh. I’ve never heard you speak like that. How come?’