I do a double-take as a gentle forty-something man behind the counter asks if I’d like some sprouts in my sandwich, and how strong I’d like my coffee. After the brutal masculinity of Kalgoorlie, this nurturing man is like the mirage of an angelic being.
‘My little addict,’ Jim says, after I blow and bless my cup of liquid gold. He’s addicted too, injecting news into his brain to update his gag list with current affairs.
We both sit, contentedly, in the car, blissfully ingesting our first fresh greenery for weeks. Jim tries to start the car still reading the paper.
‘Babe, do you mind if I just move that from the dashboard?’
I end up reading him the newspaper, thinking how much more enjoyable things are when you’ve missed them for a while. And how contrasts make life so much richer and more beautiful.
A couple of hours of undulating hills, lush valleys and turn-offs to roadside Devonshire teahouses later and we are in the outskirts of Perth passing a Bunnings warehouse and the usual cluster of multinational takeaway conglomerates. The freeway is moving at a steady pace, and we are one of only a handful of cars snaking our way into town on a Tuesday afternoon. But after weeks in the desert, it feels like we’ve landed in a thriving metropolis.
Pulling into Fremantle, it becomes apparent Jim has never been to this bar, as he’s texting, driving and trying to reach over the back seat to fish the Perth street directory out of his boxed set for Australia, all at the same time.
‘Can I help you?’ I don’t mean to seem niggly, but it makes me a little anxious to have someone talking, texting and lunging around in the back seat whilst transporting me in a moving vehicle.
‘Oh nah, it’s okay Lou, that’s the guy there.’
‘Why’s he called Roo?’ I ask as we pull up next to a red bar on the Stirling Highway.
‘Dunno.’
Fifty-something Roo, clad in a purple band t-shirt and jeans, is pacing the floor scratching his head and looking like a faded rock star when we pull in straight off the nine-hundred-kilometre road from Kalgoorlie to say hello. He doesn’t seem at all surprised that Jim’s hair is matted and wild, his t-shirt on inside-out, and the car is covered with a thick coating of red dust. If I’m honest, he barely acknowledges me, but I like the peace of being ignored, after the men in Kalgoorlie.
I quickly understand why Jim didn’t mind driving across the Nullarbor after numerous calls from this crazy Roo, who is giving him free reign to run his own show, in any which way he chooses. ‘Mate, if you just get up on that stage and do what you do, I’ll be happy. Get some new punters in, keep it moving … I’m hoping it takes off.’
Money-wise, things don’t sound too enticing, but according to Jim’s scrawled budgets on scrap paper in the car, we should be okay for a few weeks until the show ‘takes off’ and he can start charging a cover charge. Roo mutters something about a one-hundred-dollar fee, but seems much more interested in talking about running the bar, and everything else on his mind.
I sit, drinking a diet coke he’s given me on the house, happy to be in a place where the breeze blows soft, the sky is warm but the Swan flows gently under the bridge. And the bar even has ‘girl’ drinks, like diet coke. Finally, after assuring him we’ll be back in a couple of hours to set up for the gig, we escape.
‘Now, we just need to find somewhere to live.’
I’m beginning to really like the smell of old pubs. This one has a particular blend of mustiness and carelessly rinsed ashtrays mixed with a touch of Johnson’s baby powder which tells me that someone is washing … or at the very least, regularly vacuuming, around here.
The Rose, a three-storey weatherboard pub on the Stirling Highway, is perfectly perched in between the Swan River and the Indian Ocean.
We hadn’t intended to stay in Fremantle, but after falling into town, liking the look of the place and looking for a place to stay nearby without any particular attachment, the universe must have liked our lack of desperation. As usual, not caring too much seems to get you exactly what you need. We land a room as if by magic, after only one rejection at The Swan up the road. We don’t discover until later, but the chances of our finding accommodation like this at a moment’s notice were impossible.
A tall lady in the TAB, Leigh, greets us with the lack of questions so indicative of how many strangers appear daily in Western Australia. Jim asks for a room and she finishes serving a customer before grabbing a bunch of keys.
‘We don’t have any double beds but this room has two single beds you can move together. If you take this one I’ll let you have it for $130, because of the bed situation.’
‘Awesome Leigh, let’s do it!’ says Jim, casually friends with anyone just as soon as they’ve met, smiling at me like, See? Everything always works out.
We pay cash and she gives us two keys. No bond, no security deposit, she hadn’t even wanted to know our full names.
‘Oh, and you’ll need a key for the lady’s bathroom. Since you’re the only female staying here at the moment …’
Did she say only female? I scamper down the hall to check the ‘facilities’, half expecting a misspelled sign and perhaps a jar of wilted jasmine, a-la the Royal Derby. But no, we’ve landed at The Ritz. The bathroom has a huge spa bath, separate shower and sink. In fact, it’s almost as big as our bedroom. Sweet Baby Jesus it even has a stack of white towels and the faint smell of bleach. And no toast crumbs or anything!
Fremantle, a harbourside fishing village, lies on the mouth of the Swan River, just twenty kilometres out of Perth. With a population of roughly twenty-six thousand, it’s a cross between a country town and a city, with a relaxed, creative and earth-friendly vibe.
Our room is spacious, up three flights of stairs and next to the communal kitchen and living room. We nod ‘g’day’ to a few old men drinking beer silently on the balcony outside, passing every time we bring a fresh load of belongings up from the car. There’s no other way in or out except these steep stairs, so I get used to nodding to the men. On the third trip I hear the same man say the same thing he’s said to me the last two times I went past. ‘Good exercise!’ and nod into his beer.
They seem old and harmless. Having them see me with Jim makes me feel secure. Like they know I’m ‘accounted for’, or something. We slip into our room, number 6, giggling at what the hell we’re doing.
The room is huge, furnished with the two twin beds, a dressing table, chest of drawers, large wardrobe, little fridge and a TV perched on a table. The west-facing window looks across to the Indian Ocean, which is only a ten-minute walk across the train tracks and the highway from the pub.
Delighted that we have a kitchen to cook in and a fridge to keep our food in, I set out to go food shopping next door. Jim is on the phone lining up gigs and chatting with comedian friends in Perth when I leave, so I nod and leave him to it. Downstairs, I can’t believe my luck when I find an organic grocer just next door. Like the Brookton deli it smells like flowers and fresh earth. They make juice with ginger and have a display of fresh salads. Mangoes and avocados are just one dollar, and I can’t control my excitement.
‘It’s so good to get fresh fruit again!’ I say to the young guy behind the counter.
‘Where have you come from?’ he asks, curious. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to someone young and untroubled, so I tell him about our trip across the Nullarbor, that we’re staying at The Rose, that I’m a writer and that Jim is doing a gig tonight, just down the road.
‘I can’t come tonight but maybe next week. If you guys are free on the weekend we’re having a party on Saturday. My housemates are really nice.’
Did he just … invite us to a party?
‘Tell your man he’s welcome too!’
I walk away, full with the parcel of fresh fruit and friendship and walk around the river for a little while, stretching my legs, breathing it all in. When I get back to The Rose I find Jim has bought exactly the same selection of fresh fruit and vegetables that I did: two avocadoes,
two mangoes, two peaches.
‘Did he invite you to his party, too?’
‘Yeah, but I just ran down and gave him a copy of my DVD cause he asked what sort of comedy I do. So he might not want us to come now!’
When it’s time to go to the gig we hear the old men out on the balcony reach a crescendo in their drunken, muttered banter. I’ve showered, unpacked, sent five long emails and even written a column from our bed. When I came to check my emails after my walk, I’d found a slew of names I’d never seen before: editors, PR companies, even some distant relatives I hadn’t heard from in years. They must have bought The Age last Saturday.
Since my first few fashion and beauty columns had been published, it seems my stock has risen in freelance land.
How the hell did I get away with that? was my first thought, upon seeing the printed copy Mum sent me, the week after it was printed. My fashion columns – and the photos I booked on the road – filled the entire page. One beauty company wants to know where to send a package of caviar-encrusted moisturiser for me to try, and another designer asks for an address to send a thank-you gift.
‘Um, Jim, how do you get your mail? You know, when you’re travelling.’
‘Any post office in Australia will hold your mail for you. I just go and collect it.’
I reply to them both, saying my address is – temporarily – c/o the North Fremantle Post Office.
‘Wonderful Louisa, expect a parcel in the next few days. Enjoy your holiday. Which hotel are you staying at?’ comes the reply.
Er. My hotel doesn’t exactly have any stars.
Meanwhile, a sub-editor has lost the fashion copy that I painstakingly sent from the dinosaur-slow internet café in Kalgoorlie, and I need to resend it. The email is timed from early last night, and I have gone almost twenty-four hours without replying. I quickly locate the file, press send and apologise for being away from my ‘desk’. Ten minutes later, I receive another email from the editor, asking if I can continue to write all three weekly columns indefinitely, because my ‘very Melbourne writing style’ has apparently hit the right note.
I’m sitting on the single bed next to Jim in my nightie, under a picture of a dirt-bike racer while the Stirling Highway traffic speeds past and the men on the balcony are scraping chairs and falling over on their way to the toilet. Jim, in his shorts next to me, is emailing Beef and Monique the ‘glamour shots’ he took in Iron Knob.
Why, I wonder, has the best career coup of my life come now that I have thrown away my office, my clothes and possessions, and shacked up in an old-man pub in North Fremantle? Why is it all flowing so well? The fashion emails weren’t the only ones I found in my inbox. Editors I’d pitched to six months ago seemed to have woken from silent slumber and were now commissioning features left, right and centre. After scrawling down my new fashion columns and deadlines, I pencil in my feature deadlines, as well as my other regular columns, and realise I have about ten articles due in the next fortnight.
I make five calls to various contacts for sources from my new office on the bed at The Rose, happy that the accelerator pedal has been put on my work again, that we have a place to stay for longer than a few nights, and that my usual niggling anxiety about money can be temporarily quietened. Jim is pacing the floor, getting anxious about his set-list, but also, excited, like someone gearing up for a race. He starts pulling gags on me, playing around, rougher than usual. He always gets like this when he hasn’t been on stage in a while.
‘This is gunna be a big one, Lou, I can feel it.’
It’s impossible not to get excited when he’s like this. I pull on some jeans and my one nice top which made it through the severe culling of a month ago. We shut our bedroom door and walk through the passageway to the balcony, the only way to the stairs.
‘HEYYYYY!’
There are about six of them, congregating around a full ashtray and six empty longneck bottles. One man even has a plaster cast on his leg. Another is yelling unintelligibly, and appears to have no teeth. Jim, geared up for crowds just like this, is ready and waiting to play.
‘Hey!’ he says back, squatting in a half pounce, frightening them a little with his zeal.
One man, who I’d seen drinking earlier that day, has particularly matted hair, and no teeth.
‘Wow, you look like a cave man or something!’ Jim says to the matted furry man, and the group laughs. Cave Man grunts, laughs despite himself. It sounds like an insult but Jim says it cutely, with a cheeky smile. And he knows – Cave Man is a smart dude under that beard. He knows that he looks like a cave man.
I make for the stairs, wanting to make it obvious I’m not the performer in this relationship and I have nothing to do with what comes out of Jim’s mouth. He’s due on stage in five minutes, but just as he starts backing down the stairs with me the youngest guy, a sort of lost-looking red-head who doesn’t seem as fragile as the rest of them, begs him to come back.
‘Please! I’ve been with these old guys for hours … can you just tell us … one joke?’
Without missing a beat, Jim eagerly pounces back towards them and pulls out one of his favourites, something crass and crude and slightly misogynistic yet also making fun of the misogyny itself. They laugh, and the young guy looks like he’s found a guru to worship. Jim pulls out a t-shirt and hands it to Cave Man, for being a good sport. They cheer as he leaves, awake again, yelling banter, like they’ve been visited by a madman in a drunken dream.
At the bar, Jim’s crowd isn’t much bigger than the one at The Rose. The night goes slowly, and as I’ve heard most of his set-list jokes so many times by now, I zone in and out from his words to the audience.
But the reason I keep coming to his shows, the reason why I love what he does so much, is that he’s the master of improvisation. When he deviates from his set-list and just ‘plays’ with whoever comes into the room, it’s like a return to the days before television.
It’s almost like – magic, a reminder to me of the strange gifts we’re given on this earth. His is an intuitive ability to bring even the most introverted people outside of themselves, for a moment, to a point where they can laugh. You just don’t get that from watching sit-coms, or even a stand-up comic who doesn’t deviate from his set-list. He also has an uncanny ability to read a crowd, almost like a psychic clown.
A tall, wiry looking fellow with pock-marked skin, twitching and looking nervy, walks in halfway through the show. Without even glancing at the door, Jim breaks from the joke he was telling, looks him straight in the eye and says, ‘How much speed have you had tonight, mate?’
The man, to my surprise, smiles, orders a beer and sits down. As Jim says to me, when I ask him over and over how he gets away with saying these things to people, ‘Lou, most of them are just happy to be included in the joke. And they know what they look like too. Sometimes they’re surprised, but they know deep down.’
He follows this up by telling them he lives out of his car and he travels from town to town as a comic. He looks so scruffy you know it’s not about ego. There’s a purity and an innocence which protects Jim, and means that the speed junkies, criminals and cave men of this world immediately respond to him like he’s a brother or best friend.
‘You know, this is a pretty fancy gig for me. You guys are really well behaved. Usually I’m competing against some naked jelly wrestlers over there, a juke box blaring in the corner, and a drunk man comes up to me and vomits at my feet.’
The crowd nods and chuckles, all he’s said so far is pretty much true.
‘That’s when I think, well at least I’m getting a feed tonight.’
Watching the atmosphere change from build-up to punchline to the sated exhaustion after laughing still makes me feel I am with a magician who has the gift of conjuring emotions through words. He gets a few good laughs and a lot of confused head-shaking chuckles. It’s early days yet. As Roo said, he can make this night what he will. It’s a Tuesday, he’s lucky to even have four drinkers, let alone the eig
ht who have now come in after hearing the noise on the street.
‘Everyone clap for the bloke who just walked in – he’s giving real life a crack, yeah! Congratulations mate, you’ve pulled yourself away from The Simpsons to see what’s going on outside your door!’
The crowd laughs and claps, the new man, with his little taste of the spotlight, does too. He really did just crawl away from The Simpsons. He lives next door and heard the noise.
A few young guys come in, eager and smiling, perching in the background at the bar, close to me. When Jim has a break he comes over and introduces them. Budding comedians, they’d come to welcome Jim to Perth. I’m blown away by the sweet camaraderie, compared to how it was back in Melbourne and Sydney. When Jim goes back on stage Kieran, one of the comedians, tells me he’s been following Jim’s career for a few years now.
‘I really admire him. I hope I can be like him one day.’
At that moment, Jim is telling a joke about sleeping in his car being the best type of car alarm. Kieran laughs, sips his beer, like he understands.
‘And you – you just travel with him, now?’ Kieran says.
‘Yeah, yeah I do.’ He’s happy with that. Doesn’t question me on my job or want to know any more information. It’s enough that we both admire the same man, for the same reasons. I like Kieran. And I really like being the side act in this relationship. Working for myself, I’d come home exhausted from dinner parties where I was the ‘interesting’ one brought in to liven up the party of corporates with tales of my ‘weird’ life as a freelance journalist. Now I’m with someone who will always be weirder than me. It’s a relief.
I sit on three drinks for the two-and-a-half-hour show, marvelling at how Jim can do almost three hours on stage after driving nine hundred kilometres from Kalgoorlie earlier that day. This is pure passion, this is why we do what we do. Because it’s not exhausting, when it’s something you love. Like the writing I just did on the fly, my heart skipped a beat in excitement and anticipation at being asked to do it. Jim, too, had been almost tapping his toes in anticipation of this gig, all afternoon. It would have taken more than a ‘measly’ little nine-hundred-kilometre drive to take away his fire. Long drive, sleep or not, telling jokes to a crowd also has a regenerative effect on him. Like it reminds him why he’s here. I feel so blessed to be with someone who knows – and does – what they are obviously meant to be doing. It just saves so much wasted time searching.
Love and Other U-Turns Page 22