Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  ‘Son, I know you feel like playing with your mates all day but if you want to get ahead in this world it’s going to take hard work. You get nothing for nothing.’ I could see he was almost crying so I knew it meant the world to him.

  ‘Your brother John had so much promise but he’s ruined his life by leaving school and wasting his time with bands. Don’t do the same, son.’

  Reg went to his mum’s place and came back with a desk to help me study. Not just any old desk, but the desk he’d had as a young man when he went to the same school as I was going to now. It was a great desk with a map of Australia stained into the top of it.

  This desk was made by his father for him and I knew how much it meant to him. It meant the world to me too. I placed the lighthouse lamp he had given me on the desk, spread my papers and pencils and sat and thought about working. But I had the attention span of a small soap dish and very soon the idea of sitting at any desk, studying, wore off. And I was once again daydreaming about football or trouble or something else, anything but work.

  With high school came new challenges. Going from the top of the primary school to the bottom of the pecking order at high school didn’t feel safe. It was a new world and I would take a while to settle in. Everyone paid some sort of price to be there, bullying or some form of intimidation. But I had to ride that out. It would get worse when I went to Elizabeth again.

  I started borrowing clothes from John’s wardrobe and dressing cooler than all the other kids. He had cool clothes because he was in a band. John later said that the rule seemed to be ‘first up, best dressed’. Seeing as I had no good clothes for him to pinch, I was always going to get the best end of that deal.

  There were very strict uniform codes at Le Fevre, and I had long drawn-out fights with the staff. I would sneak in slight changes every day. Some days they wouldn’t even notice. I would be in full uniform but my shirt was a little different. My tie would be missing one day; the next I would be wearing R.M. Williams boots. I would tell the school, ‘Mum and Dad can’t afford the right shoes to go with the uniform.’ But my boots cost more than the official shoes I was supposed to wear. That negated that argument. Letters were sent home to my folks and I started to sneak clothes out of the house.

  I loved the fact that this was Reg’s school, and it was my first school where they really cared about how the students looked and felt about themselves. But for some reason I didn’t want to look like they wanted me to look. And I didn’t feel the way they wanted me to feel. I was at the stage in my life when I wanted to look like me, or so I thought. It’s pretty funny when you think about it, because I was pinching my brother’s clothes. So I was probably trying to look like him.

  I was still the best student in my class so the teachers were at odds as to what to do with me. They didn’t want to suspend me but I was creating unrest in the school. Some of the older boys thought it was cool and started wearing different shoes or shirts too.

  Every week I would be in the headmaster’s office declaring my innocence. ‘I’m sorry, I’m only wearing these flares because I don’t have the right pants. Dad is working two jobs to pay for our uniforms.’

  Slowly they loosened the rules. By the end of my first year of high school I was dux of the year and there were no compulsory uniform rules to fight against.

  I was becoming more and more rebellious and I liked the feeling. This would be the start of more troubled times for me. And once girls were added to the equation, all bets were off; I would be running wild whether they liked it or not.

  There was a girl who lived not far from our street who was just a little bit older than me, but she caught my eye and for some reason I caught her eye too. We would meet on the way home from school and walk together. It was quite innocent at first, but slowly the games began to change.

  We would walk down to where I used to fish and sit by ourselves and she let me kiss her. I’d kissed girls before and, as I told you, I’d even seen girls without their clothes on, but I knew that this was different. This was a new feeling, better than anything I’d ever felt. Before too long we would end up hiding near the railway bridge where she would take off her clothes and let me touch her and kiss her. One day she put her hands on my crotch and then pulled down my trousers and what she did to me with her hands under that bridge changed my life forever. This was the best I had ever felt.

  ‘We can do this any time you want to. Just don’t let anyone else know about it,’ she whispered. It was our secret. But I felt that I was finally in control of my own happiness.

  We went to the bridge often and there was not a lot of fishing done by either of us.

  Well, it was time to move again and Mum wanted to be back in Elizabeth. A big question I keep asking myself is why was Mum drawn to Elizabeth, over and over again? When we first moved there, things didn’t work out. That was nothing to do with the place as far as I know but it held nothing but bad memories for all of us. Especially her. But it seemed that Mum would escape from Elizabeth, vowing never to return, only to announce a few months later that we were moving back once again. The past was forgotten and we were all going to be happy in yet another part of Elizabeth. No sooner would we move in than she would curse and swear about how much she hated it and couldn’t wait to leave again.

  I guess it’s like going on a roller-coaster. It looks like fun from a distance. So you jump on and as it pulls itself to the top of the hill you suddenly remember that you shouldn’t be there. But it’s too late. The whole world falls from beneath your feet and you get turned upside down. Mum was a thrill-seeker but every time she stepped into the void she dragged us with her. All we could do was shut our eyes and hope for the best.

  I didn’t want to quit my school, so every day I would be up at five to take a train and a bus to school. It would take me a few hours to get to school and a few to get home. This was almost the same trip that I used to take when I would run away from home as a kid. But I was always getting home after dark and I seemed to be constantly tired. My schoolwork was suffering and I decided that as much as I loved my school, I would have to change and go to a high school in Elizabeth.

  This was a hard move for me; for the first time I had felt like I was beginning to settle into a routine. I could have gone to stay with Reg’s parents, but they were old and it would have been too much for them. Not to mention that their house looked haunted. I remembered all the stuff Linda told me about seeing dead people walking around and talking to her there, so that was out of the question. I could fight other people but ghosts were a different story. I would have to try to survive in Elizabeth again.

  I moved to Elizabeth West High School. This school was much rougher than Le Fevre. Every student went through some form of initiation. Some had their ties cut off, some were made to be slaves to the older boys. Some were beaten up and had their head shoved down the toilet and flushed. No one seemed to escape without some sort of scars. But nothing happened to me. I surely wasn’t that intimidating that I scared off the big kids? After a short time, I worked it out. The tough kids were terrified of my brother John so I got away with murder. Even some of the younger teachers knew my brother and were afraid of him.

  John had fought from the day we arrived in Elizabeth. It was as if he had something to prove. I don’t know what that was. At primary school his kilt was like a red flag that he waved at everyone. Daring them to say a word. If they did he would swing at them. He spent a lot of time in the headmaster’s office with blood on his face and knuckles. When he moved to high school he refused to be intimidated by older kids and often fought with them, winning a lot of the time. As I said before, he was asked to leave after knocking one of his teachers to the ground.

  Once out of school, John got mixed up with the hardest people in Elizabeth, sometimes through choice but often by chance. He fought with the gangs that roamed around the streets and shops and anywhere else. By the time I came through the system, he had established himself as a force to be reckoned with. Everyone saw
him as fierce and unafraid, but I knew a different John. He was always a gentle, caring big brother to me. But I soon learned from others that if he was cornered he could be frightening. His reputation as a street fighter saved me a lot of beatings as I grew up on the streets.

  The first thing that I noticed was I didn’t care as much about my schoolwork. Well, the first thing I noticed were the girls, this was a co-ed school. Girls were all I was interested in. I loved them all. I wasn’t worried about fighting or playing up; the only thing on my mind by this time was girls.

  There was one girl at the school who took my breath away. I was smitten with her. She was a beautiful, blonde, smart girl but she had no time for me when we first met. Girls didn’t go out with guys their own age, it seemed. This was something that I would have to put up with for a few years. I couldn’t work it out. What did the older guys have that we younger guys didn’t have? Besides cars, money, self-confidence, a vocabulary and good skin?

  I heard through the grapevine that she was seeing one of the teachers and this seemed very weird to me. Surely that was illegal or something? We were only fourteen years old and it had me baffled why she would be seeing someone so much older than her when she could be seeing me. I adored her, but to be fair I hadn’t told her that; I don’t think I had spoken to her at all. Every time I got the chance to talk to her, nothing came out. It was like an affliction of some sort, acute nerves.

  I watched her all day in class. She was my first love. She had style and grace and I had none of either. But I was smart and tough and persistent and I began to build up the courage to speak to her. Then I did it whenever I got the chance.

  Once I could actually get a few sentences out, I could tell she was warming to me; I made her laugh. She probably laughed at me, not with me, but she laughed all the same.

  ‘Why are you going out with that teacher? Isn’t that a bit wrong?’

  ‘None of your business. He’s very nice anyway.’

  ‘He’s a bit of a dork, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s gentle and sophisticated actually.’

  ‘That’s what I said, a dork.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Why don’t you go out with me? I’m sophisticated.’

  ‘You don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m gentle.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘But I know you like me. I’ve caught you looking at me.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I was looking behind you, not at you.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure you were. You like me. Admit it.’

  ‘Why am I talking to you anyway? I’ve got better things to do.’

  ‘Like what? Come on. You know you like me.’

  One day before school, we were talking and she said, ‘Come over to my house after school. We can have some fun.’

  I had no idea what I would say to her when I got to the house. What sort of fun was she talking about anyway – board games, that kind of fun? I had no idea but I couldn’t wait to be alone with her.

  ‘Sure, that would be great,’ I spluttered out, hoping my voice wouldn’t break.

  That day at school felt like the longest day of my life. It dragged on forever. I couldn’t concentrate at all. She was in every thought I had. Whatever she wanted of me, I was ready to give her. Or was I? What if she didn’t really like me and she was bringing me over to let me down gently?

  I got to her house five minutes after school got out. I ran the whole way. Pretty quickly I worked out that things would only go well if we did things her way, and to my surprise that included having sex.

  By this point I’d had sex a few times but it was always rushed, in a paddock or a shed somewhere, with girls who were as confused by it as I was and were equally as scared. But with her it was different. It was at her home, in her bed, and it was the best thing I’d shared with anyone.

  As usual, the voice in my head was saying, ‘You’re from the wrong side of the tracks for her and this will have to end badly.’ And eventually I made that happen. We broke up. Either I was too uncomfortable around her or I turned up late one too many times or missed a date completely. Whatever it was, I pushed us to the end quite quickly.

  I don’t think her parents knew how serious I was about her and they certainly didn’t know we were having sex but they were always nice to me and made me feel at home. She still makes me smile when I think about her.

  This was a significant time for me in other ways too. I became very interested in music, not through the school but through my brother. At school, music classes were boring, ending up with the teacher wanting me to play the triangle or something equally as stupid. This was kids’ stuff and it bored me senseless. The only classical music I had ever heard was in cartoons, so hearing it without the cartoons made no sense to me at all. This piece was where Mickey Mouse was in a car chase, another piece was where he became a wizard. So why were we hearing it at school? This wasn’t music.

  The music I liked moved me, made me think or feel something. It stirred something inside me that hadn’t been stirred before. It was sexual or rebellious or both if that’s possible.

  I wanted to be in a band like my big brother. In fact, myself and a few mates started a little band with the intention of playing at the school dance. The band needed a bass player and as the guitar player had a bass going spare, that was it. I wasn’t really interested in singing at this stage. I loved the band Free and thought Andy Fraser, the bass player, was the man. I thought the bass was the driving force behind the band. And chicks liked bass players. It was settled: I would be a bass player. There were only four strings too so there was less that could go wrong.

  We worked and worked at learning songs in every spare minute we had and we started to sound pretty good. We did songs like ‘All Right Now’ by Free and ‘American Woman’ by The Guess Who. We were a rock band and thought we were really cool.

  We all plugged into one amp because that’s all we had – one amp. Even the microphone plugged into that guitar amp. It couldn’t have sounded very good at all. Our singer Stuart was also the goalkeeper for our local football team. He was a tall, good-looking guy who all the girls liked. He sang pretty well too. He was cool and he dressed just like us. Ripped blue jeans and T-shirts. But it all went horribly wrong when the day of the show arrived.

  ‘Hi, guys, I’m so excited about this show. I couldn’t sleep last night.’

  We looked over at him. There he was, dressed up for the gig in a full David Bowie outfit. Now I liked David Bowie as much as the next guy but I didn’t want to dress like him. Stuart was wearing fishnet stockings, high silver boots and full Ziggy Stardust make-up. We didn’t know where to look. We weren’t a glam rock band at all.

  So we had no choice.

  ‘You’re not getting on the stage with us dressed like that,’ we all said in unison. ‘You’re sacked.’

  We couldn’t go on stage with him dressed that way. It was a matter of personal safety. We were in Elizabeth remember, and anything even slightly showbiz could get you killed or at least badly beaten.

  ‘Come on, guys, you can’t be serious. Are you? I could lose the boots if you want.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t help, just get out of here now before someone thinks one of us is dating you,’ I said, winking at the guitar player.

  Stuart wasn’t happy but he did go on to have a career as a singer in a band that played on Countdown and had a successful single. His band was called Scandal and they were a bit of a glam band even then. Many years later, while I was working in London, I was looking for a sound guy to mix my band. And a guy was recommended to me by the record company. ‘You must use this guy. He’s the best sound guy in England. He mixes a lot of really big bands. And guess what, he used to live in Australia too.’

  ‘Great, what’s his name?’

  ‘Stuart Kerrison. You might know him. He used to sing with a band called Scandal.’

  Stuart turned up for rehearsals dressed in ripped blue jeans and
a T-shirt.

  ‘Sorry we sacked you, man.’

  ‘Na, it doesn’t matter Jim. I was a shit singer anyway. I make a lot more money mixing bands than I would have singing.’

  I’m glad he had a sense of humour or my band could have sounded really bad.

  But anyway, back at the school dance, we didn’t have a singer. Well, I’d been singing all my life but never rock songs and never in a band.

  ‘Who wants to be the singer?’ I asked enthusiastically.

  It appeared the rest of the guys couldn’t or didn’t want to sing at all. So I was the obvious choice, in fact I was the only choice.

  I had never been so nervous in my life. I couldn’t play bass and sing at the same time, so this meant that anywhere there was singing, there was no bass playing, and anywhere there was bass playing, there was no singing. This was interesting but not good. It was a concept that would not catch on with bands, not even ours.

  The audience were as young as us and it appeared their ears were as musically trained as ours were. They clapped but not all at the same time.

  ‘If you’re going to clap your hands like that, shut your mouth or someone will throw a fish into it.’ I had all the good stage patter.

  The band broke up. I can’t even remember our name, but it couldn’t have been good. I hope it wasn’t Spiders from Mars.

  * * *

  I was spending a bit of time at the gym, getting fit and learning to box at the place where my dad taught my brother to fight. I wanted to be like John and I thought boxing was a good place to start. Followed closely by drinking.

  I thought I was getting pretty handy with my fists. But in fact I wasn’t. Well, not handy enough, I was soon to find out. Apparently it was a lot easier to hit a punching bag than it was to fight a human. Two things are important here. Firstly, the bag doesn’t move a lot. And secondly, and this is the most important thing, the punching bag doesn’t hit you back or try to kill you. But I was about to find all this out, and, unfortunately for me, I found it out just a little too late.