The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir

by Meshel Laurie

  ‘He thinks I’m playin’ mind games with him, babe, but I weren’t!’ she blurted once through giant quivering lips. I couldn’t help but laugh a lot at this one, and she was a pretty good sport about it, but it took a corn jack and a round of chips from the takeaway next door to finally dry her eyes.

  Katrina was the perpetrator of the head-into-the-locker incident too. ‘I grabbed her by the scruff of the c***, babe . . .’ she said about a million times in the weeks after the incident. The victim had fled the scene moments after the buckled locker door revealed a stash of other girls’ belongings. Katrina was vindicated, and affected quite a strut around the place. She was the cock of the walk, so to speak.

  Katrina’s favourite work outfit wasn’t the most feminine going around either. There was the aforementioned bedazzled G-string, but as she didn’t bother tucking her penis between her legs like the other trannies did, one or both of her testicles were usually protruding from the sides. ‘Your ovaries are hanging out, love,’ the old trannies would tell her, and she’d feign embarrassment and try to wrangle them back in. Under the G-string were the fishnet tights running down her long legs to the oh-so-dainty kitten-heel mules that were the size of water skis. They were hideous but in the days before the internet, ladies’ shoes in those sizes were hard to source. These were hand-me-downs from another tranny and she guarded them with her life, as they were the only ones she had. Some kind of cheap, skimpy top would sit awkwardly on her flat, boys’ chest and her poor burnt hair would be teased to high heaven.

  In due course Katrina started experimenting with drugs. She was a pot-head from way back, but she started buying prescription medication from the other girls, and came to work one night completely blitzed. She sat in front of the mirror for three hours putting her make-up on and slurring her way through some nonsensical stories. Eventually, all made up, she decided she needed some things from the 24-hour Coles just down the street. She produced a long velvet hooded cape from somewhere, popped it over her fishnets and G-string and headed off down the road.

  The rest of us stood in the doorway watching her go, weaving and stumbling towards the shops with her Gothic cape flapping behind her in the moonlight, looking like the ghost of Footy Shows past.

  The back doorbell rang, so we all tumbled back inside and got on with the business at hand so thoroughly that it was over an hour before we realised Katrina hadn’t come back.

  The brothel receptionist is held responsible for any and all kerfuffles arising from her shift, so I hightailed it down to Coles hoping to God she hadn’t wandered any further—or worse, been bashed by some of the kids from the commission flats who tormented us from time to time. As the automatic doors of the supermarket slid open, I knew she was still on the premises.

  I believe there’s an unmistakable atmosphere, a frisson in the air, in any situation in which a lone wolf is flouting the rules of social convention. It’s the feeling you get when you enter a train carriage in which everyone is sitting rigidly, silently looking forward. You brush it off and make your way to the back of the carriage where there is an unfeasible number of empty seats, only to the discover that the one man sitting back there is servicing himself while angrily reciting Banjo Paterson classics. With ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ ringing in your ears, you make your way back to sit quietly with the others, desperately hoping he doesn’t look up and notice you or, God forbid, single you out for some one-on-one bush poetry.

  Coles was electric with frisson that night; the eyes of the one check-out chick on duty said it all. She had a young security guard with her, though he looked as troubled as she was and had squeezed himself into her little check-out cubicle with her. As I stood in the doorway, puffing and obviously seeking the one they feared, they both nodded their heads in the direction of the fresh flower fridge.

  I’ve never seen a fresh flower fridge in any other Coles in Australia, but Port Melbourne Coles had one. It was a sort of walk-in cabinet with shelves of cut flowers, and flowers in pots. As I approached the fridge I saw her. There she was, quite asleep, in a standing position with her long legs spread far apart for balance, like a donkey. Her face was buried in a pot of flowers, her blonde hair spread out over neighbouring pots, and her long arms outstretched, crucifixion style, killing dozens of potted flowers on either side of her.

  Had she wandered the aisles for a while before her snooze? Had she walked straight into the fresh flower fridge and flopped? We’ll never know. She spent the rest of the shift asleep on the girls’ room couch and awoke with no recollection of the night.

  From Katrina I learnt the fundamentals of drag eyes, the dangers of abusing prescription medication, and the term bucket-arse, the definition of which I’ll leave to your own research should you choose to undertake it.

  It pays to remember that nothing is ever as it seems in the sex industry: true colours can be buried very deep below the layers of make-up and desperation.

  I was working reception at an all-girl (no trannies) brothel in Caulfield one night when Mason rang the doorbell. She looked for all the world like a suburban mum who’d mistaken us for dry cleaners, but not only did she turn out to know exactly what we were, she wanted to know if she could ‘get on shift’—that is, if she could work that night.

  Nothing shits a prostitute more than an overstaffed shift because it lessens their chances to make money, and it’s very hard to get comfortable on the couch. Some places don’t care what the girls think, but I always tried to keep them happy, not because I’m a great person, but because their retribution could be swift and merciless. On the night Mason appeared, we happened to be pretty short-staffed so I was pleased to see her, though not expecting much from the tiny tracksuited mum. She ran back out to the car, dragged a tatty canvas bag into the girls’ room and set to work. By the time I strolled in there about fifteen minutes later she was transformed into a hot-panted, face-painted, thigh-high-booted mama and was settling in as only a true veteran can.

  Mason was well into her forties, but under the oversized windcheater she’d arrived in was the wiry, muscular body of a dancer. She was smart, had travelled the world, was funny and considerate, and effortlessly cast a kind and sensible influence over the place. Mason was one of those girls I really missed when she had a night off, which fortunately was almost never.

  As time went by Mason’s life emerged in late-night conversation. She was married. She had three young kids. Her husband thought she worked at the casino—a popular cover story among the married girls. Crown casino is a huge metropolis—so huge it’s not hard to believe that an employee might work some pretty weird shifts, might not know exactly where in the complex she’ll be working on any given shift, and may well have to work a lot of nights. Basically, if a woman wants to leave the house a couple of nights a week and come home twelve hours later, no questions asked, a job at the casino is not a bad cover.

  Mason’s husband had been injured, as it turned out, was unable to work for a long period of time and prescribed some pretty heavy painkillers. Mason had started using the painkillers as well, just to give herself a break from the stress and pressure of caring for him and the kids, but eventually when their doctor refused to prescribe any more pills to the pair, they both started using heroin.

  Her husband was back at work and covering the household bills; Mason was in the girls’ room with us, responsible for making the dope money. Every night after the shift, as dawn was breaking, Mason would drive down to St Kilda and meet her dealer. She’d buy as much gear as she could afford with the money she’d made, and take it home for the two to use before their kids woke up.

  Mason was technically a classic middle-aged junkie prostitute, but she had a dignity about her. The way she talked about her mother and childhood, I got the distinct impression she had come from a wealthy family; her manners and taste suggested elite Melbourne schooling.

  Our friendship progressed to such a level of trust and openness that I knew exactly how much she needed to score, and I was tense
until I knew she’d made it. I knew her dealer and allowed her and a handful of others to meet him in the street outside the brothel during the shift to spare her the job of scoring on the way home. She was always so exhausted, the poor little thing, and I was happy to do what I could to help. I thought of Mason as a real friend. I didn’t hesitate to let her answer the phone, or answer the door, or lots of other things the girls weren’t really supposed to do. I must admit, I grew a bit slack with my security measures around her.

  I spent the turn of the millennium working the street with Mason. It seemed like an obvious choice to me because, as I’ve said, I will always choose work over recreation. Also, I don’t have much faith in New Year’s Eve. I tried it once and ended up passed out on the tiled toilet floor in that hell-hole Toowoomba nightclub Rumours. It turned me off for life. Adrian was more than happy to hit the town for a big drink with friends and to be honest, a night on the street with Mason sounded like an adventure.

  By 10 p.m. New Year’s Eve 1999, Mason and I were the only people left in the brothel and we had not seen a soul in hours. The boss had left the night completely in my hands and I was free to close whenever I chose to, so Mason and I hatched a desperate plan. We decided to go down to Grey Street—St Kilda’s notorious prostitution strip—and Mason would work the street. I would ‘spot’ for her—that is, take down the licence plates of the cars she got into.

  It wasn’t a screaming success, I have to say. New Year’s Eve was never a great night for prostitution. Christmas Eve was massive, even Christmas Day was worth opening up for, but could it be that men feel some sentimental sadness about seeing in a brand new year by paying for sex?

  We went our separate ways at about 2 a.m. I have no idea how she did it, but I know Mason returned home some hours later with heroin. She had to, she didn’t have a choice.

  Mason was friendly with Alex, a real category-two brothel beast. Alex was well known around town as an evil bitch who’d steal the paint off the walls if she could trade it for smack. Mason and I had both run into her many times around the traps before the cat dragged her into this one, so the two of us warned each other endlessly about what Alex was capable of.

  Mason assured me that their increasingly close relationship was purely about the private clients Alex could coax into lucrative threesomes. I never doubted it was about money. I’ve no doubt it was all about money the morning they watched me close up and leave that brothel in Caulfield, before smashing the back window, pulling the safe right out of the floor and dragging it back to Alex’s place to open it with a crowbar. They sat on the couch for weeks afterwards, theorising with everyone else about who may have been responsible—until, quite suddenly, those jungle drums started beating and the word in the girls’ room was that Mason and Alex had done it. Turns out they’d enlisted a third, much younger girl, who was telling anyone who’d listen about her adventure.

  I guess they heard the drums too because we never saw either of them again.

  I thought I caught a glimpse of little Mason’s hotpants years later in the slippery lights of a rain-soaked St Kilda night. I even drove back around the block hoping it was her, but there was no one on that corner by the time I got back around. I wasn’t hoping to find her because I was mad at her. I was just hoping to find her.

  What I learnt from Mason was that when my mum told me to stay away from ‘druggos’, she was right. There have been times in my life when I’ve been a druggo myself, but in the sex industry I met people who had taken it to a whole other level.

  I thought I was so sophisticated, touristing in the muck of Mason’s life—but I was a fool, an opportunity, and as much as I’m sure she regretted it, she took full advantage of my affection. I have to admit though, I still miss her to this day.

  THE KILLING HEIDI INCIDENT

  During the hard-core prostitution years—about eighteen months during 1998 and 1999—I did one gig.

  In fact there were times when I seriously thought I’d retired.

  For about six months I was even the manageress of a small brothel in Caulfield, during which I wondered if this was the real career path I should be pursuing. It reminded me of my time on reception at Triple Z in Brisbane, and how useful and grown-up it made me feel. It was pretty straightforward too in its own way—unlike showbiz, which had turned out to be hurtful, more than anything.

  At the same time though, I was making the mistake I’d made so many times before, using drugs to cope with my growing frustration and boredom. I was exhausted from the shift work, not to mention the revolting drunk men in their stinking cheap suits and the whingeing hookers. Once again I was increasingly reliant on speed to get my mind and body through the grind and keep the fake smile on my face. I was scoring the gear from a sexy little strumpet from New Zealand with an interesting backstory.

  She’d been a fat girl her whole life, married quite young and had two children. Then she discovered diet pills, through which she lost all the weight but gained a speed addiction (speed acts in very much the same way as diet pills but is cheaper and easier to get in certain circles). One morning she woke up and decided she was leaving her husband and children to move to Australia and be a prostitute. There weren’t many girls I knew who’d set out to become prostitutes in the very pragmatic way in which she had—but there weren’t many girls like her for a lot of reasons. She told me once that she loved prostitution because for so many years she couldn’t get a man to look at her, and here they were now paying to be with her. All of this was verified by her sister, who showed up one night looking for her in the hope of dragging her back to New Zealand and her children. She didn’t go that night, and I often wonder if she ever did.

  My reception career came to an abrupt end when the owner of the posh joint I was working in called me into a private room and scared the living daylights out of me, delivering veiled threats and demanding I tell him what I’d done. The truth was I’d been doing a number of things he’d have frowned upon, but nothing I could think of that should’ve turned him that purple colour. Sure, I was often keeping the $1 change the guys were supposed to get from their $210-hour booking fee. The boss got confused by the GST and instituted a bizarre new price list in which an hour cost $209. When $210 was flung in my face, I kept the extra one dollar unless asked for it. So kill me!

  Sure, I was taking drugs with some of the girls on the premises, which could’ve had the place shut down, but it was a brothel! Just like any other brothel, there were drugs in every handbag and in every locker in the joint. This guy was known to indulge when escorting some of the girls to entertain his friends, so it couldn’t all be about that.

  Whatever it was, he was fuming. This episode took place right in the middle of the Melbourne gang war, which was making everyone jumpy. There were lots of rumours about who this guy was in business with, and who really owned the place, so by the time he was finished with me, I was actually frightened for my life. I was also pretty paranoid on account of the little pick-me-ups I’d been using to stay afloat. By that stage I was taking drugs to work, drugs to relax, and drugs to sleep, so I was a bit of a mess (again).

  Adrian and I were living in a tiny flat behind the restaurant strip of Acland Street, St Kilda, at the time, and I was so scared of running into the scary brothel guy I barely left the house for three months. I got some shifts in a real dump in the industrial area of Williamstown, where all the girls were over 40 and knitted and drank Nescafé in between dishing out $15 hand jobs. I got off the gear (again) and tried to figure out what to do next about this life of mine.

  I was so tired of life, I seriously considered moving to a tiny spot outside Warrnambool, where Adrian’s best friend Sid lives with a tribe of kids in an old school. He’s a proper Romani Gypsy, so I thought maybe we could pitch a teepee in his garden and follow his lead for a while. That was actually my plan. I was just so tired.

  Everyone had been telling me I should write a Comedy Festival show about the brothels, but I couldn’t see the point. I’d give
n up, and the comedy world was moving on without me. It seemed like the cream of my generation had been decided upon and anointed with stardom, leaving me very far behind. On top of that, there was a new crew on the scene, consisting of Charlie Pickering, Michael Chamberlin and Terri Psiakis among others, and Melbourne was just in the process of falling headlong in love with Fiona O’Loughlin. They were all very good, highly motivated, and had all the right support. I think Charlie had already been picked up by Token! Jesus Christ. What was I going to do?

  Then my friend died, and the faith he’d shown in me made me feel a bit ashamed of myself and stirred me into action.

  I had done, as I said, one gig in eighteen months, and it came about as follows. I arrived home to find the light on my answering machine blinking, which it very rarely did by 1998. Answering machines were torture devices for performers back then; we’d pray that the light would be flashing whenever we stepped through the door, alerting us to some fabulous life-changing news. I’m not sure if no news was worse than someone else’s news. I once sat on a friend’s couch as she hit play on her answering machine, and watched her shoulders slump and her eyes mist as message after message offered work to her boyfriend, who was also a comedian. They broke up not long after that and I always suspected the answering machine had a lot to do with it.