Acknowledgments

by Becky Lucas

  There were always a few comedians on, but the headliner, at least while I worked there, was a bleach-blond hypnotist magician called Pauly B, who wore a rhinestone-studded leather jacket and a bright white smile, and drove a zippy little car with his face on it.

  Pauly B would warm up the crowd with ten minutes of short clips from Australia’s Funniest Home Videos and a few standard joke-book jokes. Then he would ask the crowd for a couple of volunteers to come onstage and undergo his special brand of hypnosis. Men in pale-blue jeans and sports jackets would race to be the first with their hand in the air, proving already that they were show-offs. He’d purposefully pick the ones who had the most people cheering for them, because it meant more pressure for them to go along with it.

  Most of the time they were blue-collar workers around the age of fifty, who, by that stage of the show, were ten drinks deep and essentially already hypnotised. He’d seat them all next to each other and heavily imply that they were all gay, which would get huge laughs from the crowd. The lights would go down, a vaguely Middle Eastern tune would ring out over the hall, and a hush would fall over the glassy-eyed crowd as Pauly B began to perform hypnosis on the volunteers. Then bang! He’d put them under and make them act like chickens. People would roar with laughter watching their boss or father-in-law peck at the ground and squawk – though, if you looked closely at the men onstage, you could see the corners of their mouths slightly turned up into a smile, as they clearly enjoyed the attention. Then, out of nowhere, a recording of a ringing phone would start and he would tell them to answer it and say hello one by one.

  Ring, ring.

  ‘Hello?’ one would say.

  ‘Hi there,’ Pauly B would reply in a terrible Indian accent, ‘I’m a telemarketer calling to see if you wanted to upgrade your phone plan.’ He’d smirk at the crowd at this point, then break character and ask the man, ‘Now, what do you want to say to this telemarketer?’

  ‘Fuck off, you curry muncher!’ the hypnotised dunce would scream.

  And the crowd would go crazy!

  Pandering to a drunk suburban crowd was what Pauly B did best. Plus, as an added bonus, he’d cleverly devised a way to get around having to be the one who said anything racist by just getting the volunteers to do it. Not that he needed to worry about causing offence – to my knowledge, not a single audience member ever complained about that joke.

  One customer was a big fan of Pauly B, and would regularly come to his shows, where he would hit on the younger female audience members and bar staff. There were rumours that this customer was a former paedophile – a phrase I always found odd, as I didn’t realise you could be a former paedophile. I thought it was pretty much one of those things that, once was, always will be. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was a paedophile. I think it’s just something you call someone when they’re kind of creepy and you don’t like them. He did go home with a much younger female waitress one night, but if a man in his early forties who sleeps with girls in their twenties is considered a paedophile, then every male comedian I know is one. Sometimes I forget that I’m in my thirties now, and no man who is making a pass at me can ever be considered a paedophile, no matter how much older than me he is. The truth is I’m now at an age where I’m too old for an older man to even consider me a ‘younger woman’. The mind boggles.

  Like this customer, Pauly B also had a penchant for much younger women, and once slept with a female bartender. It always made me laugh that she went to his house to have a one-night stand with him, even though he lived an hour away from the club. It’s actually quite admirable to commit to going home with a sober man with a solid hour’s drive ahead of you. What on Earth do you talk about? I asked the bartender what they had discussed on the trip.

  She shrugged. ‘We didn’t really talk much at all,’ she said. ‘He had a Tony Robbins self-help tape playing and we just sort of listened to that for the whole drive.’

  When I asked her about his house, she told me he lived in this weird soulless mansion on one of the canals at the Gold Coast. It had once belonged to his late aunty, who had been jailed for defrauding a large number of people out of their retirement money. This didn’t surprise me – fraudster is one of the three main vocations you can choose when you live on the Gold Coast, the other two being tattoo artist and owner of a dog-fighting ring.

  She said the house had barely any furniture in it, but she did confirm that he had a large plush bed with black satin sheets, which was something I had always taken bets on with people at work. Apparently once they got to his house, he made her wait in the sparse lounge room while he cleansed, toned and moisturised. After twenty minutes of waiting around, he then called her into the bedroom as he was finishing up a round of push-ups, to make his muscles pop.

  I asked her if he talked about magic at all. She said he refused to discuss anything magic-related with her and asked her not to bring up the subject.

  Every night at the comedy club, the show would drag on, each punchline the same as the night before. If I was lucky, a fight might break out between tables and provide some relief to the monotony. Sometimes my comedian friends would do a warmup spot before the magic show, and they’d stick around after to keep me company. But on nights when it was just me behind the bar, I would grow restless as the faces that approached me got more and more raggedy.

  I once found myself consoling a girl in the bathroom who was crying about how ugly she felt. On a whim, and in a bid to connect with her, I decided to reveal to her my own insecurities. Half an hour later, I had to kick her out of the venue for being enthusiastically fingered by her boyfriend near one of the speakers. I can only assume she was feeling more confident after our chat.

  If I was desperate enough, I’d talk to the manager, Derek. He used to stand by the enclosed bar, blocking any potential escape, and perform his own little comedy routines while the comedians were onstage. I’d do my own little routine by pretending I didn’t understand him.

  ‘Check out that chick.’ He’d point at a blonde in a bandeau dress. ‘She makes me want to pitch a tent,’ he’d say, both eyebrows raised.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I’d reply innocently.

  ‘That girl . . . she, with my . . . never mind,’ and he’d toddle off and try it again with someone else.

  After three long hours, the show would end. Once everyone had left, the lights would turn back on and we’d pack away the plastic chairs and watch the magician gather his things. It’s incredible what turning on a bright light can do to kill a magician’s allure – I think the opposite of magic has got to be a man packing his props into a plastic crate under fluorescent lighting. I used to love watching him, his formerly animated face now all droopy and stern, holding a plastic chicken while actively ignoring the idiotic ramblings of Derek, who was desperate to make someone laugh by the end of the night.

  I was actually invited to Derek’s fiftieth birthday party, after only two weeks of working there. The last thing I remember was politely smiling and agreeing with something he’d said and, before I knew it, I had agreed to be picked up at 5 am from my home in a ’96 Honda Civic to go on an all-day chartered fishing trip with him and five other men from work.

  The next morning, Derek picked me up at 5 am as planned. Also in the car was one of the chefs, Cole – who used to pick meat out of people’s pasta with his fingers if they requested a vegetarian meal – and my only ally at the comedy club, Dan, a cerebral redhead who, like me, lacked the constitution for declining birthday invitations and, as it would turn out, the open sea.

  Dan and I were both starting out in comedy, and we sheepishly admitted to each other before the car ride that we had only accepted the invitation in the hope that we might form relationships with some of the core staff, who might then book us to do one of the comedian spots at the club. We were always looking for stage time.

  Once we were all in the car, Derek passed around a bunch of joints with his fat sausage fingers. By the time we got to the pier, I had lost
my grip on reality and, considering my actual reality, wasn’t even sure I wanted it back.

  After fussing about for ages, we set out for sea – just me, Dan, Derek, Cole and three bearded men. The combination of the rolling sea and the old man’s weed had Dan and me back to back in the foetal position within half an hour. Even though we were similarly afflicted, we were both so sick and stoned that we couldn’t communicate anything to each other, so it was pretty much the same as being alone.

  At one point, the same fat sausage fingers that had passed me the joint in the car started feeding me salami and cheese sandwiches cut into squares. As I was quite hungry, I begrudgingly accepted them, but threw up about ten minutes later.

  As I gripped the silver rail, recovering from my last heave, Cole handed me a hook and a small baitfish and told me I had better throw in a line or I’d waste the whole day. I took the fish and tried to secure it onto the hook, but it kept slipping off. After a few tries, it had so many punctures in it that it was unusable. I was still so stoned I wasn’t sure if this was funny or if I was in trouble. I looked over at Dan, who I thought might be able to help with the fish, but I could see that he was now being fed the salami and cheese sandwiches. I told Cole I needed to lie back down.

  When I woke up, we were back at the dock and all the men were holding up large fish, except Dan, who was vomiting over the other side of the boat.

  On the drive home, Dan and I were both exhausted and feeble, but also very aware of what a good story this would be to tell our friends. When Derek stopped for petrol and the others got out to stretch their legs, Dan lamented to me that he couldn’t even afford this trip and was freaking out about his finances. Looking down at the vomit caked on his shirt, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hadn’t been asked to pay.

  Thank you to the Chuckle Hut Comedy and Magic Club, not only for the opportunity to meet so many people starting out in comedy, some of whom remain my closest friends today, but also for the reminder that nearly all magicians are weird.

  Carlos

  The first time I laid eyes on Carlos, he was licking a bit of carpet, high on mushrooms. Carlos was the sort of guy you might catch stealing twenty dollars out of your purse and have no qualms about forgiving immediately. He was so effortlessly charming that he made whomever he was with feel like they’d arrived just in time to save him from boredom. Even when you saw him make someone else feel this way, you didn’t take it personally; it was like you shared a secret with him, like he was only performing for everyone else and not you.

  I met Carlos one year at the Woodford Folk Festival, which, if you’re over forty, is a week-long celebration of culture and music, but if you’re twenty, like we were at the time, it is just a party. My cousin and his friends would go to the festival every year, and this year I’d decided to join them. I had actually been a few times with my mum, because she had performed there as a musician, but, up until this particular year, my time there had been fairly subdued. I’d been drunk and stoned, sure, but always with the looming deadline of having to return to the tent I shared with my mum and pretend to be sober. The trick, by the way, to appearing sober in front of a parent is to be the same petulant self you are when you’re not drunk or high. For some reason, teenagers trying to cover up the fact that they’re drunk or high seem to think that the best plan of attack is to be extra chatty, engaging and bright with their parents, which, for my mum, would immediately arouse suspicion.

  This particular year, though, I camped with my cousin at his friends’ campsite, which had been set up by one of those men who know how things go together and who at some point in their lives will drive around Australia in their customised truck. He had brought carpet and couches and set up beams of wood that connected together perfectly to form a semipermanent structure that was so comfortable, barely anyone left the campsite to actually enjoy the festival.

  I went into the grounds a couple of times, but regularly found myself annoyed at the groups of hippies who roamed in big packs, sometimes while on stilts or hula-hooping completely naked, and who would stare at me accusatorially as I tried to move past them. The thing about hippies is that they’re just regular people who have the same selfish desires as the rest of us, but never engage in an actual discussion long enough to be called out on it. It’s all peace, love and sharing until they’re cutting in front of you in the line for food – and if you say anything, you need to ‘relax’.

  It wasn’t just the hippies. The whole thing was a bit of a pain in the neck, to be honest. I’d have to queue to get inside the festival, queue to get something to eat, and figure out which artist I wanted to watch. And after all that, I’d constantly find myself at the wrong tent. There I’d be, holding a plate of overpriced lentil curry, trying to decide whose armpit was the least gross to be under, and having to watch an hour and a half of a women’s choir or, worse, a slam poetry semi-final. The thing about slam poetry is that it’s not very good. It seems like anything can be slam poetry if people just talkreallyfast and then SLOOOOW it right down. I don’t even know how I feel about poetry in general; I think I’m too impatient for it. The only kind I’ve ever enjoyed is when a friend is drunk-texting me and keeps accidentally hitting the return key.

  Where are you

  I need

  Help

  Might get kebab first

  Then come

  I have always thought music festivals were so hot and awful, and I could never understand the endless amounts of energy people had around me. My heart would sink every time someone suggested another tent, another band, another bar. After six drinks (which included hours of lining up for said drinks, then needing to piss almost immediately), my entire body would be aching with fatigue and all I’d want to do was get something fried I could eat off a stick and find somewhere to lie down.

  So back to the campsite I would go.

  I at least vaguely knew the thirty or so people staying at the campsite, but Carlos was new. He seemed immediately popular, which made the light he shone on me every now and then feel like even more of a blessing.

  On the first day, Carlos made mushroom brownies and invited neighbouring camps over to party with us. He was great at introductions and knew just who would get along best.

  On the second day, one of his new friends brought around some ‘really good acid’, and I watched on as everyone let this man in a corset drop it into their water bottles. Carlos asked me if I wanted to try it and I flat-out rejected the idea – it seemed like one of the drugs on the ‘too far’ list, one that would make you mental.

  It didn’t take long, however, for persuasive Carlos to convince me to try the acid. I was terrified of what would happen, certain I would die. Instead, about half an hour later, I was overcome with the most intense euphoria, the kind I hadn’t experienced since being a child, which is to say I was just living in the moment, which is where all the good feelings are apparently.

  I don’t want to go on some Kerouacian rant about how I felt, but let’s just say that day I finally understood the appeal of music festivals. Every conversation I had was the most interesting; every idea I had was a genius one (and everyone around me seemed to agree); every mud puddle was worth looking at, sitting in, playing with. I couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of me then or in the future. And the whole campsite was feeling the same way.

  That is one thing about getting older that makes me sad. When you’re younger, you share such close, chemically induced moments with people you barely know, and there’s next to no possibility of that happening to me now. In my day-to-day life, there’s a very slim chance I’ll end up in peals of laughter with a girl wearing fairy wings. Those people probably don’t even exist anymore. It’s not that the girl with fairy wings is dead, but she probably lives in Geelong with two kids and a husband who’s a cop.

  It’s funny, because, now I’ve done most drugs, I find it hard to empathise with someone who’s scared of them. In those moments, I should remember that I am now Carlos
and the scared person is me before my first acid trip.

  There was a time once, not too long ago, when I found myself hanging out with a famous Australian comedian in his late forties. I asked him if he’d like to join me and another comedian as we smoked a joint. He told me that he has never touched the stuff, and that he knew a guy from his hometown who had smoked weed and then killed himself.

  I didn’t say it, but I remember thinking that the guy was probably going to kill himself anyway. The weed he was smoking had probably been one of the few things that helped him get through the day.

  What was funny was that the forty-something-year-old comedian kept insisting that he would try it, definitely, at some point, ‘but not tonight because I have an early flight in the morning’. He then proceeded to drink fourteen vodka sodas and pass out while slumped against the wall standing up.

  It reminded me of that time at Woodford Folk Festival, where I’d first done acid, when a brother of my friend’s friend turned up to the campsite with a carton of Jack Daniels and his own camping chair, and just sat and watched us all in turns melting towards each other and then rolling away, while continually commenting that we were ‘random’. If someone said something outrageous, he’d exclaim that it was ‘awkward’, which it wasn’t — at least not for us.

  Later in the night, at the back of an outdoor amphitheatre in the festival, I watched the trees breathing in and out, and discovered a newfound willingness to forgive anyone who had ever caused me pain. As I was taking in all the tiny acts of humanity happening around me, my friend’s friend’s brother’s face popped up into view and he breathed, ‘I’m so fucking wasted.’ The hot stench of bourbon stung my eyes. It felt like an ungodly act.