‘I really am, Max.’
He looked back to me, his eyes pleading with mine. Yet his face melted to a smile: ‘ Come on, Juz!’ he beamed, and slapped me on the knee. ‘Not like you, dear Juz… You’ve done so much… We love ya, mate.’
In the moment I felt on the edge of a tear. ‘Thanks, mate,’ I managed, and took a breath. ‘It’s just I’m shit-scared of the rest of my life being out of my control. No matter how hard I try to start it right.’
Max smiled. ‘Y’gotta relax, mate. Like when you’re dancing. That’s when you lead the way, mate. When you’re relaxed. Isn’t it.’
I took another breath, a deep one, released it. ‘It’s just so hard to relax when you’re gripping so tight holding on.’
Max paused a moment before speaking again, though never taking his eyes off mine. ‘I’ll tell ya something, Juz,’ he said. ‘You’ve just admitted you’re scared. Full on. Not everyone can do that.’ He let go a single chuckle: ‘ I sure can’t…’ But now his eyes narrowed at me: ‘Plus, my son, you’re making a habit of doing things other people can’t…’
‘Or choose not to,’ I returned.
‘Can’t is what I said.’
I had never seen the Party Animal look so deadly serious.
‘Juz,’ he said, ‘whatever the future holds for you, your life’s work will be doing something other people can’t.’
‘Fucked if I know what…’
‘You’ve just gotta find it, haven’t you. Then you’re away, my son.’ He smiled again. ‘And that’s when your troubles will really start.’
The Worst Invention of All Time
* * *
In no human situation do the seconds move faster than in a 3-hour sit-down exam. My HSC Trial Examinations had commenced, referred to by one and all as the ‘Trials’.
Trials?
They felt like dress rehearsals for my execution.
In the Middle Ages, the Chinese, God-love-them, invented Fireworks. For which I think they deserve 10 out of 10. If I could travel back in time, however, I would travel back to the morning of the day on which they also invented the Public Examination. Having arrived, I would declare a public holiday, locate the culprit and, despite the man’s protestations, strap the largest skyrocket available to his back, light it and launch the bastard into fucking Orbit. My work done, the Chinese would then go down in history as having invented not the Public Examination but Space Travel instead.
And as a direct result I wouldn’t have been condemned in 1986 to witness my future going down the toilet faster than the second-hand raced round my wrist-watch dial. Nor to experience the same acute-stress-induced ‘time compression’ as experienced by astronauts: hours reduced to minutes, minutes to seconds, seconds to nano-moments and PENS DOWN, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE.
All that Glitters…
* * *
Possibly due to Riverview’s grounds being so extensive and each year of boys with a separately demarcated recess area, despite attempts at an inter-year ‘house’ system it was rare for boys from different years to mix or connect. For me it only happened once that I can remember: a brief though genuine connection with one Peter St. John, a boy from a few years below me and no less than the younger brother of a princess called Emma. I’d never spoken to him before though his face was set in a smile as if he knew me. One of Mr Farrow’s next brood, I had recently witnessed the boy’s sparkling performance as ‘Puck’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream — Mr Farrow’s latest Shakespeare production, year after year was he nurturing the talents of Riverview’s lads of theatrical bent.
‘I saw you in Midsummer’s,’ I beamed. ‘You were brilliant.’
His whole face lit up. ‘Y’think so?! I mean, thank you; I’d like to be an actor…’
‘You ought to be, mate.’
‘I used t’see you rollerskating to school.’
I grinned. ‘Your dad told me that once. A very nice man.’
‘Yeah, he is.’
‘How’s Emma?’
‘Oh, Emma?’ the boy chuckled. ‘Who knows?’
‘You’re not close, then…’
He shrugged. ‘How do you get close to an iceberg?’
‘Oh. Like that, is it?’
‘Yeah, like that… I don’t hate her,’ he squinted. ‘I’m sorry for her.’
‘Eh?!’ I flailed. ‘But she’s so beautiful.’
‘Beautiful?’ he returned. ‘Yeah, just like all her beautiful friends. Except they’re not friends; they’re enemies.’
‘What?’
‘They trade each other in all the time. It’s really sad. And what our dear Emma’s gunna trade on once her girlish beauty departs, I’m buggered if I know.’
I took a moment, so impressed was I by the boy’s clear maturity beyond his years. ‘…Poor Emma,’ I offered.
‘Poor Emma. She gets it from her mum. She was a model when she met dad.’
‘I never met your mum…’
‘Y’won’t either; they’ve divorced.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry… How’s y’dad?’
‘He’s alright. I reckon he’ll be fine. He’s such a nice man.’
Where’s Francis?
* * *
The toughest boy in the school had gone AWOL.
Francis Phelan and I had never been too close as friends; too much difference between us: I was theatrical, highly-strung. He was rock-solid, grounded. And though we’d started out together in our early years at Riverview, we had naturally drifted apart, and I’d been so caught up with my own dramas of the past few years that we’d lost contact completely.
‘Why’d he go?! Where?!’
‘He just went,’ shrugged Steve. ‘Left school. Something about an oil rig… Around the time of that drama tour thing you went on.’
‘I heard he joined the Army,’ said Max. ‘Had an interview with the Parachute Regiment or something. Y’know, with the red berets? Yeah, I think that’s what he was doing…’
For a moment I remembered the boy who had single- handedly ensured Riverview’s Under-14D rugby team would be undefeated. On those wonderful, foggy mornings with that team of which Max and Steve had also been part, yes, I had scored plenty of tries but it was Francis, more often than not, who had passed me the ball. Never the captain of the team; he was the boy who won the game.
In my mind I could see him now: Francis Phelan, soon-to-be Sergeant of the Parachute Regiment, Australia’s ‘red devils’ after their coveted beret. With his lack of education now, though they might never make him an officer — never the captain of the team — they’d make him Sergeant alright; he was so tough, that’s the only thing he could be. Yep, that’d be him: red beret, silver and blue parachute wings on his tough shoulders, keeping the young men around him okay. Making sure they were always winning.
Muck-Up Day
* * *
Since witnessing it on their final day of Kindergarten, Australian schoolboys and girls had been aware of their birthright. It would come for them but once, 12 years later, on their final ever day of school.
Muck-Up Day.
In their years then from infants’ school through primary then high school, on the last day of every school year Australian kids had delighted to see graduating Year 12 students let it all hang out, and in public. After 13 years of compulsory daily punctuality, obedience, hard work and worry, on this one day of their school careers graduating students were unofficially permitted to engage in hilarious, chaos-making pranks and in general wild and crazy behaviour…
Bevvies of school girls on crowded train station platforms were pelted by boys from above with eggs and flour and water-bombs. Boys dressed as ballerinas, girls as gorillas would parade down mainstreet. Peak-hour traffic was politely but compulsorily re-routed through schoolyards where detoured cars were wrapped in toilet paper before being politely waved on. Sydney’s inner-city Macdonaldtown train station was painted pink! (True, and I know the girl who did it.) Public fountains were turned into giant bubble-bath monsters of whoop
ing foam-clad teenagers. In the military madness mid-80s, students set drums of dry ice vapour cascading down the steps of the Sydney Town Hall in a simulated Soviet ‘nerve gas attack’, fun things like that. So much to look forward to on this magical day! Once in a lifetime. Muck-Up Day!
In 1986, Riverview’s headmaster had banned it.
Any offending student would be disqualified from
Graduation. Condemned, I presume, to wander the school’s corridors forever as a lost soul and perpetual Year 12 student.
The excellent Mr Soames openly lamented the ban in front of the whole class…
‘It’s such a shame, I reckon. I used to love what the boys would get up to on Muck-Up Day… Liberating it was, liberating. But they had to be really clever pranks — nothing cruel or distasteful, the brilliantly planned type, that’s the kind I hung out for and they happened!’
‘Tell us, sir! Tell us!’
‘Ohh! One of the best was just a few years back! A boy re-wired the P.A. system of this whole classroom block, all three floors, five classrooms on each so that the morning assembly address by the Form Master on each floor broadcast to a different floor and one blaring out in the headmaster’s office! Look! ’ — Mr Soames pointed to the ceiling — ‘you can still see the old dummy wiring they never quite got rid of! Ah, they were the days…’
So. Muck-Up Day forbidden, our time at Riverview was to end with a whimper? Not if I could help it. As far as I was concerned it would end with a bang. There was no ban on a lightning rock concert in the Great Hall, was there!
Arrangements were swiftly made. And what I arranged was Tony Basara and Steve with electric guitars plus about five other guys with electric guitars, an amplifier each, Joe Wong on drums and me on vocals up on the stage in front of a packed Great Hall — every kid in the school unless strapped down in the Infirmary with a tropical disease. It must be noted that a few of the five ring-in guitarists from our year, well, couldn’t really actually play too well, yet it was an easy 3-chord song to be performed, Tony and Steve having taken the novices through it in about 30 seconds’ unplugged rehearsal off in the wings. Yet though the song I had picked was an easy one, it was the song that would blow them away. Wild Thing. Jimi Hendrix’s version.
With our ‘band’ all ready and in position up on stage, with seconds to go before blast-off I caught sight of Peter St. John at the front of the crowd: making a ‘peace sign’ at me, flanked by a group of good mates, as one smiling up at us.
On my 4 — 3 — 2 — 1 count-down seven electric guitars set to full blast let loose a solid WALL of sound, each of the seven players in one frantic E-chord blitz so long and loud it must have killed moths. Behind them, Joe Wong was a man possessed on his drum kit, in the sea of noise now any communication between me and the Seven Guitarists of the Apocalypse by way of hand signal only, Joe getting the message, staggering his drum rolls down to a stop, the guitars finally fading as one into a pause… And 4 — 3 — 2 — 1 and Boww — Boww, bupp-bupp, BOWWW — BOWW, bupp-bupp and Wild Thing by Jimi Hendrix rocked Riverview’s Great Hall.
Volume-wise, I think it’s safe to say we might have brought to mind for those present a band called ‘Disaster Area’: sci-fi creation of author Douglas Adams from his recent cult classic in both book and TV form, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And though we might not have been quite as loud as ‘Disaster Area’ (the loudest band, indeed the loudest sound in the Universe and ideally listened to from the safety of another planet), I’d go so far as to venture that, on that day, we were the loudest sound ever heard at Saint Ignatius College Riverview. Whose Great Hall rocked on Muck-Up Day, 1986.
Blackout
* * *
It was all part of the crazy inside-out, upside-down tension and excitement of Muck-Up Day that we had been celebrating like mad the end of something that hadn’t ended yet. The year was of course set to end with my HSC. The Higher School Certificate. 8 subjects, a 3-hour exam for each. At the end of 12 years, 24 hours to decide the rest of your life.
The human brain has a mysterious yet marvellous capacity to cloak what it doesn’t want to remember. To hide what is too painful to recall and so re-live. It’s as if the brain can turn off the lights in certain compartments of your memory, placing the most horrible of your life’s experiences in darkness. They’re still in your memory, alright, and always will be, yet blacked out.
This is perhaps why I have scarcely any detailed recall of the ordeal which was my HSC. And as far as I’m concerned, if my human brain (which is smarter than me) is so keen to black something out then let it be so.
My dear brain knows what it’s doing…
I do like and thoroughly appreciate my brain and mostly we get along well but it’s a funny old thing, and with its own dark sense of humour…
25 years after my HSC, my brain treats me to a nightmare every now and then. A recurring one…
In the dream I wake up on the morning of my final HSC exam for a subject, a whole subject whose classes I have never once attended.
OH, IS THAT WHAT THAT ‘FREE PERIOD’ WAS ALL YEAR?!
The Big Ugly Number
* * *
Steve had wanted to get into Architecture. With his whole soul he had wanted it. Everything about him made him perfect for it: His innate talents included an artistic passion for design balanced by a draughtsman’s eye and instinct for precision. He fell just short, however, of the entry mark for Architecture. He would do Landscape Architecture instead.
As for me, my big ugly number out of 500 was 370.
I didn’t get into Communications at the University of Technology. I had never expected to. I got into my second choice, Business at the University of Technology. Which, with stunning optimism, I decided would be ‘good for me’; something to balance my ‘artistic nature’. I could major in ‘Advertising’…
At this stage I just wish some ancient god of common sense had descended from the clouds and said, ‘Justin… Go to Art School. East Sydney Tech. Do Graphic Design. You’ll be fab at it. You’ll become a Graphic Designer, end up an Artistic Director in Advertising and make enough money to retire at 40 which you won’t because you love your work. Yes, I know Art School is not a ‘university degree’ as such and that everything about your whole upbringing and your parents’ dearest ambition for you is to go to ‘university’ but whose life is it going to be Anyway, starting now? Your life or your parents’? In any case, the universities will soon be amalgamating with the art schools so ‘Art School’ will be a university degree by the time you finish and your parents’ dearest wish and ambition for you will be satisfied. Y’won the Art prize once, didn’t ya? Yes, y’did. So. Art School. Go THERE. Go now.’
Alas, dear reader, I experienced no such divine visitation.
Tracksuit Haven
* * *
Steve and I needed a holiday. We needed to breathe out. To let GO a bit after so long gripped so tight.
In his white 1970 VW Beetle we drove north out of Sydney on the Pacific Highway towards his family’s holiday house at a place called Boat Harbour just south of Shoal Bay and Port Stephens. Though this place wasn’t on any bay; it was on the Pacific Ocean, though just a bit up the road from it.
Heading north in that fabulous car in the hot sunshine, we listened to music such as Santana and The Jefferson Airplane on Steve’s most excellent car stereo, turning off the highway onto smaller roads after a while just for fun and adventure.
The first thing that struck us on our happy detour was that the coastal holiday towns we began to encounter had arrestingly similar names: The signs went, literally one after the other, Lake Haven, Charm Haven, Blue Haven… We wondered why there was no Next Haven or Inevitable Haven or even Haven Haven and lamented what dazzling lost opportunities those places had been…
Until we came across Tracksuit Haven. Which is surely what the place must have been called given the singular mode of clothing apparently available and/or required by law in the town. By the time we’d made i
t through the place to its outskirts we had seen so many people in tracksuits one after the other that we were fighting to stay on the road we were laughing so hard. It had looked as if the place had some while back been colonised by aliens who, in their research re Earthling apparel, had used as their entire reference the torn-off back page of a K-Mart catalogue.
Should we turn around and go back and check inside shops and buildings to see whether everyone and every thing in the town was wearing tracksuits?! Old ladies? Parrots? Squirrels? Did the local K-Mart indeed have tracksuit aisle after tracksuit aisle after tracksuit aisle?! No, we decided; best we drive on… Lest in Tracksuit Aisle 37B we should hear a voice close behind us: ‘Alright, let’s take it nice and easy, Earthlings… That’s right… Reeeal easy.’
And so it came to pass that we arrived (un-alien-abducted) at Boat Harbour, though we referred to it as Boat Haven forever after. I wear a tracksuit as I write this.
Breathing Out. Breathing In.
* * *
In the late afternoon of that same day, sitting with Steve on the beach, which we had to ourselves, I don’t think I had ever felt more relaxed. More centred.
Boat Harbour (Haven) was a small beach, a natural cove formed by a line of rocks at each end of the beach, each line pointing out to the horizon whose gentle curve reminded me of the Earth’s roundness, of the planetary ball on which I sat. The future, like the silvery-blue ocean out at which I stared, was a thing of danger. Something I could drown and die in. Yet the future, like the ocean, was something magnificently Open in front of me. And just beyond the points of the rock cove lines left and right, a pod of dolphins surfed in the breakers. They were playing. They made me smile. I remembered the clown who’d driven me home, and his philosophy of Nature itself wanting, intending me to smile. What was the point of me being here on this ball in Space? Surely I was meant to be happy. Yes, the perpetual crashing of the waves on the rocks left and right reminded one of the natural world’s unending threat, of the irrepressible conflict and clash of its forces. Yet in perfect harmony with me just beside me on the sand sat my friend.
Memoirs of a Go-Go Dancer Page 13