The Tour

by Denise Scott

  With all the strength of a strong ocean tide I could feel myself being pulled further and further towards these people; it was as though I had no willpower to do anything but join them.

  And then my friend Anne farted. It was one of those long, quiet farts that go up in pitch towards the end, making it sound like a question. At first, no-one reacted. But then Jacinta, Anne and I got the giggles. We couldn’t stop laughing—we became quite hysterical. The Pentecostals were not amused.

  Anne did a lot more than break wind that night; she broke the spell of Pentecostalism. It was thanks to that fart that I walked out of the tent and in so doing was saved from having to live life without the Stones. It also inadvertently broke the spell of Catholicism. It gave me confidence: I thought, If I can walk away from the Pentecostals, I can walk away from the Catholics. Sure, it was a much bigger deal but then again, was it? Suddenly it seemed like something that just had to be done. I didn’t believe in it any more, and how could I continue to practise something I didn’t believe in?

  The following week I returned to Australia and never went to Sunday mass again. I was surprised how easy it was. There were no awful consequences—no lightning strikes, no earthquakes—I wasn’t even struck down with sudden inexplicable blindness. And as for Mum? Well, she showed no reaction whatsoever.

  * * *

  During my second year at teachers college I joined an improvisation troupe called Madhat, and we were oh so experimental. Moving to a primitive drum beat we’d go into a ‘trance’ state and then put on a mask, at which point our teacher would hold a mirror in front of our face and yell ‘Flash!’ and we’d immediately respond, moving in weird and wonderful ways and speaking total gibberish (it really was all the go at college), having been completely taken over by the spirit of the mask we were wearing.

  Early in that year I was sitting in the canteen when a couple of fourth-year chaps came over to my table. I didn’t know them but had admired them from afar, having seen them in numerous college theatre shows. They were both exceptionally talented, funny and extremely popular. So why had they chosen to come to my table? I was in a state of swoon when they introduced themselves.

  ‘Hi, I’m Phid.’

  ‘And I’m Mr Right.’ (Of course, that wasn’t exactly what he said, but for the purposes of my story he shall henceforth be known by that moniker.)

  Phid continued, ‘We’re part of a fourth-year group called D Team.’ I knew all about D Team. It was notorious at the college for being the hippie class in which students devised their own curriculum; thus, subjects included bread baking, silk-screen printing for t-shirts, and the formation of a Jimi Hendrix tribute band. ‘As part of our fourth-year assessment a group of us are setting up a drop-in centre for street kids. It’s in a shopfront in Collingwood. It’s a cool place. We’ve put seagrass matting on the floor, painted the walls, and there’s a beautiful open fire …’

  Mr Right took over. ‘In order to help cover the rent, Phid and I are going to move in upstairs. There are three bedrooms, and we need a third person, and no-one else from D Team is interested, so we were wondering if you wanted to move in with us.’

  If I had been in a state of swoon before, I was now in serious danger of fainting. Phid and Mr Right wanted me to move into a drop-in centre with them? I was dizzy with excitement. Coyly, I enquired, ‘But why me?’

  Phid responded, ‘I don’t know; you just seem like you’d be crazy enough to want to do something like that.’

  I said yes on the spot. No thinking time was needed.

  The night I left home, Mr Right came to pick me up in a van he’d borrowed. I’d already fallen in love with him. He was tall, handsome—dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair, beautiful eyes, excellent teeth—funny, a great actor, a marvellous conversationalist, and he could sing and play the sax! But I dared not dream; he already had a girlfriend, and so I contented myself to bask in a delicious feverish, Jane Eyre–state of unrequited love.

  As Mr Right helped me move out, my mother sat at the kitchen table, sewing. My sister had married a year earlier, so was already living away from home. My father was out at a footy meeting. We carried my few possessions, including the carafe and water glass, out to the van, while Mum remained fully focussed on her machine. She kept her eyes on the fabric and her foot on the treadle. When it was time to say goodbye she came to the front door and we kissed, just a quick peck on the cheek. Mr Right told her he’d take good care of me, whereupon my heart fluttered and I fell just a tiny bit more in love.

  * * *

  For a young girl desperate to have an amazing, not-so-normal life, the Shop (as it was known) could not have been more perfect. My upstairs bedroom was literally an extension of the hallway; to get to the bathroom you had to pass through my room. Mr Right and Phid were always very polite.

  Knock, knock. ‘Sorry, Scotty, but I just need to have a shower. Is that okay?’

  Knock, knock. ‘Sorry, Scotty, just need to have a piss.’

  Knock, knock. ‘Sorry, Scotty, I need to clean my teeth.’

  Regular visitors from the ’hood included Rodney, Toots, Stretch, Mim and Porky, all between fourteen and seventeen years old. They came to the Shop most nights and hung out in front of the open fire. Wood was never a problem: if we ran out someone would just go and rip a few palings off a neighbour’s back fence. Once, I saw Stretch stand up and, cool as a cucumber, proceed to smash up the old chair he’d been sitting on and throw it on the flames. Then there was little Arlan, who at the age of seven used to arrive at the Shop on his own every night and stay until 10 pm, at which point we closed up, so I would then have to walk him home and knock loudly on his front door and wait ten minutes or so before anyone answered. Arlan’s favourite pastime at the Shop was to kick back on the tie-dye cushions, smoke cigarettes and blow perfect smoke rings with all the worldliness of a middle-aged man.

  Police raids were frequent, as were punch-ups, usually a result of local gang rivalry. There were abusive neighbours who wanted us shut down, there was the occasional fire (not in the fireplace but in the backyard, where burning black rubber tyres became a popular activity for a while), and we were once accused of kidnapping a child. No matter how much I tried to explain to the Greek couple from the nearby cake shop that their eight-year-old had come to our drop-in centre of his own accord, they remained hysterical and had the police come and ‘rescue’ him.

  I was in my element!

  There was the memorable night that a few of our regulars arrived all pumped up and ready to go and shoot some guy from a rival gang. I was curious. ‘Why do you want to shoot him?’

  I have never forgotten the answer. ‘Because he’s a cunt.’

  I responded accordingly. ‘Well, going on that logic you may as well shoot everyone in this room, because that’s exactly what you’ve called all of us.’

  ‘Yeah, but this guy, he’s, well, he’s a special sort of cunt.’

  Oh yes, for a girl from Greensborough in search of adventure, the Shop was a dream come true.

  One night I was sitting in the lounge with a small group of younger kids, including Arlan, when a large, toothless, tattooed male arrived on the premises. He was about my age. ‘So, youse a virgin, are ya?’ That was Mr Tattooed and Toothless’s opening remark. His next remark was, ‘I said, youse a virgin, are ya?’

  Alright, keep your hat on, handsome, I heard you the first time. (Of course, I didn’t actually say that, because, unlike the guy who was asking the question, I wasn’t a complete idiot. I knew the situation called for some tact, or who knew where it might lead?) Uncertain what to do, I chose to ignore him and instead kept doing what I was doing—stoking the fire.

  Next thing I knew, he had me in a headlock, holding a huge lump of wood above my head. ‘I said, youse a virgin or aren’t ya? If ya don’t tell me I’m gonna bash ya.’

  I decided to play cool and continued to ignore him.

  ‘Answer the question. Are youse a virgin or not? Answer me or I’ll fuckin’ bash ya.
’

  ‘Yeah, well, go right ahead, cos I’m not going to answer your question.’

  ‘I mean it. I’m gonna fuckin’ hit ya.’

  ‘And I mean it. Hit me, cos I’m not going to answer you.’

  I learnt something that day—namely, if an angry young man gets you in a headlock and holds a piece of wood above your head and tells you he’s going to bash you if you don’t tell him whether you’re virgin or not and you don’t do as he says, it means he’s going to bash you.

  Gee, it hurt. I actually saw stars. And to think I’d always believed that only happened in cartoons.

  Not long after that incident I saw a picture of Mr Tattooed and Toothless in the newspaper. It seemed he’d achieved his dream and had been sent to Pentridge for armed robbery.

  And, just to clarify, the answer was yes, I was still a virgin.

  * * *

  While living at the Shop I would ring my mother at least twice a week. I loved chatting to her, keeping her up to speed with all the comings and goings at the Shop. I thought it would do her good to get a bit of insight into the underbelly side of life. And yes, I told her about being hit over the head, although I didn’t tell her the reason. It would have been too awkward discussing the ‘Are youse a virgin?’ question with my mother, sex being the taboo topic it was.

  Every week I went home for a visit, no question about it. Regular contact and regular visits with one’s parents were a child’s responsibility, and so consequently it was always me who rang Mum and me who visited her, rarely the other way around. As with Mum’s ‘no sex while you live under my roof’ rule, her ‘keep in weekly contact’ rule was never spoken; my sister and I just knew that it was expected. And it wasn’t as if it was hard to stick to. I loved my parents’ company and I loved Mum’s cooking and I loved the fact she did my washing for me. Of course, I would have done it myself, but my mother never allowed my sister or me to touch her washing machine; it was way too precious.

  Only once did my parents come to visit me at the Shop, an extremely brave move on their part. I took them into the kitchen. It was only when I went to close the door that I realised it had been kicked in, leaving a huge, gaping hole in the middle. I shut it anyway, to at least give the impression of privacy. As my mother sat drinking tea from a chipped cup I noticed, on the wall behind her, sitting just above her perm, a drawing of a large cock and balls, and beside it a detailed record of all the various dick lengths of our most regular visitors.

  * * *

  Anyway, to cut a long story shortish, over the next few months I began spending more time with Mr Right. Not only were we living together and saving the poor youth of Collingwood, but we were also performing in a musical together. It had been specially written to celebrate the opening of a new, oh-so-modern theatre at college. I was a heroin addict (in the show, not real life). Mr Right was a guru who, at the show’s climax, was raised skywards on a cherry picker, at which point I, along with the cast of thousands, gazed up at him, our arms raised in adoration, as we sang, ‘Knowing this is the time we’ve waited for we stand below you gazing in awe …’ Suffice to say there was no acting required on my part.

  After the show we’d go back to the Shop and, being on a showbiz, adrenalin-charged high, Mr Right and I would lie on his bed and listen to his amazing record collection—the Monterey International Pop Festival, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Boz Scaggs—and we’d talk and laugh and drink freshly brewed coffee. (I never knew it existed until Mr Right introduced me to his Melitta drip filter.) Mr Right still had a girlfriend, a different one from when I first met him. It seemed there was no shortage of interested women, especially since his star turn as a guru. Not that that stopped me dreaming and hoping and being Miss Personality, trying to impress him as I lay on his bed, regaling him with amusing stories, attempting to blow his mind with my intelligence, charm and wit. Alas, at some point in the early morning, Mr Right would inevitably announce that he’d better get some sleep, at which point I’d head back to my room.

  But then, one night, approximately six months after moving into the shop, I didn’t go back to my room.

  * * *

  A week or so later I went home to my parents’ place and shared a roast dinner with them. After the meal, as usual, my mother washed the dishes and I dried. As was customary when standing at the kitchen sink, my mother and I looked straight ahead, never at one another.

  As we gazed out into the garden I announced, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Mum, but when I do a wee it burns like hell.’

  Continuing to look straight ahead and without any change to her calm dish-washing rhythm my mother replied in her best no-fuss, low-key voice, ‘In our day we called that honeymooners’ disease. You need to see a doctor.’

  And so, mother and daughter carried on washing and drying the dishes in thoughtful silence.

  * * *

  Mr Right and I became an item, the tricky part being how to tell my parents about our change in status. It wasn’t as if I could say, ‘Oh, by the way, Mum, Mr Right and I aren’t just housemates any more; we’re actually having sex,’ especially since shacking up with your boyfriend at that time was still considered controversial and in fact referred to as ‘living in sin’. I chose to handle it by constantly referring to Mr Right every time I went home for a visit, telling my mother about where we’d been, what we’d done, what we planned to do next.

  Eventually, one day when I was standing in my parents’ bathroom brushing my hair after having stayed the night, my mother called out from the kitchen, ‘So, Denise …’

  ‘Yes, Mum?’

  ‘Are you and Mr Right …’

  My stomach knotted.

  ‘… going together?’

  ‘Yes, Mum, we are,’ I replied.

  And that was it. My mother chose to make no comment on the fact that Mr Right and I lived together without being married. If she didn’t like it she certainly never mentioned it. Not a word. Indeed, from that moment forth Mr Right was welcome, in fact expected, to attend all Scott-family events. Mum did give me single-bed flannelette sheets for Christmas that year, though. Then again, I did still have a single bed.

  (Historical note for younger readers: back in the 1970s, parents did not buy their adolescent child a king, or a queen, or even a double bed for their bedroom at home. Nor did they allow their child’s boyfriend or girlfriend to stay in their bed with them overnight—at least, not knowingly. That was why our generation was so keen to move out of home: so we could have sex. And have sex we did; it was just that it was easier, from everyone’s point of view, to pretend that we didn’t; hence, we kept separate bedrooms and single beds.)

  Mr Right and I always slept in his bed. Being a single, it was a cosy situation, but we were in love and, more to the point, extremely slim, and as long as we faced the same way and spooned and didn’t ever attempt to turn over, unless of course we both turned at exactly the same time, we were snug and comfortable.

  However, ‘meet the parents’ didn’t go quite so smoothly with Mr and Mrs Right Senior. Things got off to a bad start the first time I met them. On the day of the big meet and greet, the plan was to go to Mr Right’s family home, be introduced to his folks and then head off together to an extendedfamily function. I was wearing a long dress. When I say ‘dress’, it was more like a nightie. Well, it was a nightie. It had always been a nightie and always would be a nightie—that is, until it came to a sad and sorry end that night. To give me some credit, it was a lovely nightie, a white cotton vintage affair, the sort of thing a young lass might have worn after a hard day’s work on the goldfields. In 1974 those old-fashioned nighties were all the go, in hippie circles at least, the tragedy for me being that Mr Right’s parents weren’t hippies.

  Look, who knows? Maybe the nightie would have won their approval had I not, upon getting out of the car at their house, caught the heel of my shoe in the hem. There followed the most gut-wrenching tearing sound as the fabric across my back ripped, right along the bodice seam. T
his meant that at the back of my ‘dress’, the bottom half was no longer attached to the top and now dragged along behind me like a wedding train. Also, the consequent gap between the two halves exposed a great deal of my back, revealing a once-white, now dull-grey bra strap and the top of my equally dull-grey underpants, the elastic of which had long ago lost its joie de vivre.

  As luck would have it, Mr Right had a cardigan on the back seat of his car. I put it on and, had it not been for the fact that Mr Right was 6 foot 4 and I was 5 foot 2 and that it was over 35 degrees Celsius that day, it might not have seemed odd that I was wearing an enormous, thick woollen cardigan (whose sleeves, when I stood with my arms by my sides, reached the ground).

  Mr Right and I headed towards his parents’ house.

  I stumbled. ‘Oh my God …’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘My shoe …’

  ‘What about your shoe?’

  ‘The sole—it’s come completely unstuck. Must have happened when it got caught in my hem. Do you think your parents will have some gaffer tape?’

  We were at the bottom of the driveway, and Mr Right’s parents were standing on the porch witnessing the entire event. Mr Right took off up the drive. I followed behind, my nightie now not the only thing trailing behind me, because in an attempt to keep the upper and lower parts of my shoe together I was also dragging my foot along the ground.

  I made it up the stairs and was introduced to Mr and Mrs Right Senior. Mr Right’s dad was friendly enough, but his mother—a tall, good-postured, bespectacled woman—how can I describe the look on her face? Let’s just say that had I been a huge, steaming dog turd she’d just stepped on she could not have looked less impressed.

  And that was it: the first and consequently last time I ever saw Mr and Mrs Right Senior in a social situation. Given that Mr Right and I were together for some years and he used to visit his parents frequently, this indicated—and hey, this is just a guess—that they quite possibly didn’t like me very much.