Vale, Peter
* * *
There was a knock on the door at Gibbes Street. As always, I smiled all the way up the hall and opened it.
‘MAX!’
Max Van Cleef wasn’t smiling back.
‘What’s wrong, mate?’ I said. ‘Come in!’
I was stopped in my tracks halfway back down the hall.
‘It’s Peter St. John,’ said Max. ‘He died of AIDS.’
By the time we’d reached the lounge room I knew I’d missed the funeral.
I sat, found the Longueville phone number in the telephone book, and dialled it.
‘Hello?’ came a man’s voice.
‘Professor St. John?’
‘Yes…’
‘Professor, it’s Justin Sheedy. You may not remember me, sir, but we had a bit of a chat a few years back…’
‘On the contrary, Justin; I remember you very fondly. And please do call me Doug, my friend.’
‘Doug… I’ve just heard about Peter. Just this minute. I do so hope you’ll accept my very best wishes to you and family. He was such a lovely guy. We’d got out of touch.’
‘Yes, our dear Peter. It all happened rather quickly, I’m afraid. And very kind of you to call. When did you see him last?’
‘It was New Year’s Eve 1987.’
‘How was he? I mean, I hope it was a happy night…’
‘It was, sir. A very happy night. I guarantee you. Peter was just so happy. We all were. All dancing together.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. …My God, how we danced.’
A Fork in the Road
* * *
In an attempt to actually make some Art instead of just talking about the way we talked about Art, I had started making Super-8 films at Sydney Uni’s famous Tin Sheds Gallery on City Road. There was a hell of a long waiting list to get in but, when at long last you did, here you could do ‘practical’ art (film, photography, painting, sculpture, something strange called ‘mixed media’) for academic credit towards your Arts degree. The minute I learnt of this delightful possibility I devoted myself to squeezing every possible skerrick of ‘Art School’ value out of my time at Sydney Uni.
I took to Super-8 Film classes like the proverbial Duck, my film-making tutor giving me a Distinction for my first film and, I shit you not, screening it thereafter to each intake of First Year students as his example of the ‘mode’ of film he’d like them to make. Pat McCleary was an institution at the Tin Sheds: intensely artistic, unconcerned whether you liked him or not, with slightly greying ringletty black hair and 80s red-framed glasses, he was never seen wearing anything other than his black leather jacket to match his otherwise black everything else. And though his stare was hard, there was a sparkle in it, and I liked him immediately. With zero patience for students with anything less than 100% creative commitment he saw mine in its raw form, focused it, finessed it. And his filmic ‘mode’ was ‘Show, don’t Tell’…
‘Sheedy, don’t make me a short film that tells a story, beginning, middle and end, make me a short film that captures a single moment in life in all its precious detail. Make it in ‘slo-mo’. Something that captures ‘the moment’. Because that’s all life is, m’boy: a very long series of single moments, each moment something we almost never appreciate and then it’s all over. So capture the moment, Sheedy… That’s m’ boy…’
Of all the films I made, as my story here draws to a close I’ll describe one, titled My City.
Every night of my childhood and teenage, TV Channel 7 closed down its transmission for the night by playing the film clip to a song from 1969 called My City of Sydney by American-Australian crooner, Tommy Leonetti. Think an Australian cross between New York, New York and I Left My Heart in San Francisco and you’ve got My City of Sydney. Though a bright baritone singer of the Sinatra ‘old school’, Leonetti projected himself as an early middle-aged hipster with ‘young ideas’ — as now obligatory in 1969, the year of Easy Rider. His song was a sentimental homage to his adopted home town, the song’s lyrics luxuriously trite as he took his slightly ‘swinging’ saunter through Sydney’s warm and friendly metropolis: a place of outdoor vitality, of refreshing youth despite occasional grandeur, of nightlife ever vibrant, never sordid or obscene.
My film used the audio of the song from the original film clip but changed the visuals…
It began, in identical vein to the original, with glorious images of the Sydney Opera House, of sailboats on the sparkling blue harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, then of Kings Cross, a staggeringly beautiful friend of mine from uni posing as a prostitute open for business on its crowded main strip. There was a view from an overpass directly down onto gridlocked cars in an expressway traffic jam extending as if infinitely into the distance. Over images of an auto graveyard beside a belching chemical refinery the old song persisted with its all-is-right-with-the-world lustre only to be not just interrupted but obliterated by the sound of a jumbo jet landing directly overhead in full room-shaking stereo left to right, more images, more of the song, another jumbo monstering overhead. The sun glinted off appalling residential tower blocks followed by images of the very worst of suburbia including classic Australian racist-kitsch Aboriginal black garden gnomes with their hideous bright red painted lips. Yet, as the song swelled to its lump-in-your-throat crescendo, my final image was a slow zoom-in to an extreme close-up on the white-haired and bearded face of a Sydney inner-city homeless man by the name of Sean. Having visited Sydney’s famous Matt Talbot Hostel for homeless men, with the full co-operation of its devoted staff I had asked Sean’s permission to film him, which without a word he had granted. Having captured my footage of him, I quietly insisted to one of the staff that I’d like to make a cash donation to him, only to be advised, ‘Oh, no, Sean’ll never accept money,’ my film ending with the close-up on his so haunting eyes, his face with its slight tremor despite the fierce dignity of his stare directly into the camera lens.
My City was to have its premiere at an upcoming Tin Sheds Gallery end-of-semester film showing, these gala nights being heavily attended.
And I couldn’t MAKE it.
On the very same night as the event, Atlantic Moose was booked to play a gig. And a big one. I told Pat McCleary…
‘Y’ve gotta make your choice, Justin,’ he returned. ‘It’s rock and roll or your artistic career, m’boy…’
By this time I had let my hair grow long. Whereas since school most had called me ‘Juz’, now many in the local band scene called me ‘Fuzz’. Some called me ‘Tree’. For in addition to a long string of rocking-fantastic uni parties and more gigs at The Tomb, Atlantic Moose had already played The Sandringham Hotel (known and loved by one and all as ‘The Sando’) and not just once but a couple of times to good crowd response, the iconic Landsdowne Hotel too…
A band called ‘The Elastique Mind Bladder’ had taken a shine to us and kept giving us gigs as their support act. The Bladders were a refreshingly entertaining outfit amongst a depressing number of ‘indie’ bands too fixated on their own ‘street cred’ levels to stop a crowd from yawning. Just for the rock-historical record here, at the time for me the scene’s most entertaining band, and certainly the friendliest (they still are), was ‘The Amazing Woolloomooloosers’ whose beautiful singer, Missy Chick, was voted by many that I knew as ‘The Indie Scene’s Most Deserving of Pop Stardom’ — Missy even did a short but stellar stint go-going in the cage at The Plastic Inevitable at my invitation. In any case, with Atlantic Moose I was now part of Sydney’s indie band scene and my rock efforts within it were being well received.
As to my choice between the film premiere or the gig, even in the moment I knew it was a fork in the road for me. It would be the biggest gig we had ever played: supporting ‘GANGgajang’, high on the chart success of their bewitching hit song, The Sounds of Then, more popularly known as This Is Australia. And this gig wasn’t just at a buzzing inner-city venue like the Sando or Landsdowne but at ‘The Venue’ at the Dee
Why Hotel, one of the giant beer-barns of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. There’d be a thousand people there. In any case, though my choice was painful it was straight-forward: I was being relied upon by the guys in my band. And to miss my own film premiere was the choice I made. Pat McCleary just shrugged.
On the night of the big gig, after a radio interview to publicise it on Sydney’s largest community radio station, 2SER-FM, in the moment of going on stage to my shock it was visibly clear to me from the crowd that, though we were only the ‘support act’, some in that packed barn had come to see Us and we gave them our rock and roll Everything. Julian even played a guitar solo with his teeth.
The following Monday back at uni I sought out Pat McCleary. ‘How’d it GO?!’ I bustled up to him. He came right out with it…
‘The Film and Television School’s not for you, y’know, Juz…’
‘Why ever not?!’
‘They’re too straight-down-the-line for you.’
‘Well then I’ll just become more straight-down-the-line, won’t I.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘…No, I guess I won’t. …Anyway, how’d m’film go?’
‘You should have been there, Juz. They cheered. All turned around and faced back to the projector looking for you.’
‘You’re fucking kidding me.’
Pat McCleary smiled. ‘Ever been in the Tin Sheds when there’s a bloody great downpour on the roof?’
The Thing About Fireworks
* * *
Dear Reader, THANK YOU for reading my Memoirs of a Go-Go Dancer and I hope you’ve enjoyed them.
My story began with ZITS. At the above fork in my road, my facial skin was just starting to clear. For good. Yes, I’d been the first kid in high school to get zits and I really WAS the last kid at uni to lose them. Goodbye, Adolescence. And good riddance. To the zit-filled part of it anyway. I had survived the Terrible Teens. I had survived the 1980s. Or had I? Life and time would tell. I just hoped I hadn’t already made mistakes which, as described of Wake In Fright’s main character, I would spend the rest of my life paying and paying and paying for.
What you’ve just read, my adolescence story, is the sequel to my childhood story, Goodbye Crackernight. And my adolescence was in truth one long search for the lost fireworks of my childhood.
I’m still searching for them.
And just now and then I find them.
As a result of my life-long quest, I’ve learnt one or two things about fireworks…
Though so magically elevating to the soul, they’re so transient, so fleeting in nature. Though they make life worth living they are always all-too-soon over. They are momentary bliss, and then they’re gone, always in the past, as time goes by remembered with a secret tear, with yearning…
Until they happen again.
Which, though we never expect them to, they always do.
There will always be more Fireworks.
Epilogue
* * *
If Walter Mason has a bad bone in his body, I’m sure he hasn’t the faintest idea where it is. A conference of the finest Bone Specialists could examine him, compare notes, and walk away flummoxed. These days Walter is a well-established and well-loved author. In 1989 we were new friends. Yet with Walter I felt as upliftedly safe as if old friends.
I had met him at our housewarming party for 35 Gibbes Street. To this day I know not who invited him yet remain eternally grateful that they did, the party was a riot, and after the Police closed it down Walter and I ended up dancing together in the early hours at a warehouse party a few blocks away on Newtown’s Wilson Street. Picture a smiling, dancing Buddha though in his early ‘slim’ phase and you’ve got Walter Mason.
In 2012 I was invited to address a group of writing students at the New South Wales Writers’ Centre, me haranguing them on the virtues of bashing one’s head against the wall of publishing success until such time as one starts to see a small hole in it — even in the wall. To my complete surprise, also addressing the students on the day was the dear Walter Mason. Having lost contact with each other over the past 20 years, on that day we enjoyed the most marvellous reunion, me on the rise as an author, Walter now a fully successful one with a major Australian publishing company behind him. And though a full 20 years had passed since we’d last seen each other, between us on that day it felt like five minutes; his butterfly-inducing smile and charm exactly as they had been so long ago.
I’ve had some lovely moments in my life so far but one of the nicest was the recurring one back in 1989 when Walter would visit Gibbes Street, him Gay, me Straight, his arrival peck on my cheek and mine on his seeming the most natural thing in the world: me celebrating him and his sexuality, him celebrating me and mine. Far from the sort of fashionable and tokenistic ‘homage to diversity’ so typical of the age, our friendship was one of 24-carat Harmony: two young souls smiling at each other, there for each other, ahead of us a great big scary thing called the Future, the unknown, a sea that could drown us both, yet a sea we looked out on then back to each other with excited faces.
One night at Gibbes Street, as we did many nights, we sat in its candlelit lounge room listening to music, talking quietly, on the cassette player White Rabbit by ‘The Jefferson Airplane’ softly but ominously pumping.
Though a sparkling soul, Walter’s charm was an old-fashioned one. He possessed, even at age 21, a genuine spirituality. One which would only mature and find its full voice 20 years later in his soulful literary portraits of South-East Asia, Destination Saigon and Destination Cambodia. Though, just like me in 1989, Walter had no clear idea what he was going to ‘do with his life’. Yet even then Walter was committed to an ambition that, in principle, it should be ‘something fabulous’.
‘I’ve met someone,’ he said. ‘I am blessed. He cherishes me.’
‘He should,’ I returned.
‘What about you, Juz? Met the girl of your dreams yet?’ Walter smiled like Slim Buddha in the candlelight. ‘The one you deserve.’
‘Oh, I see her all the time,’ I replied. ‘I just haven’t met her yet…’
At that moment I heard keys in the front door, the door opening, closing, steps down the hall. And down into the lounge room stepped Steve.
‘Walter. My man!’ he hailed, in his usual way outstretching his hand palm-up. ‘Put it there!’
I smiled at these two young men I was lucky enough to be able to call friends — one old, one new. ‘Hey,’ I slapped the arm of my chair, ‘let’s go out dancing. Who’s up for it?’
‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ put Steve.
‘My dear Juz,’ Walter raised an eyebrow, ‘you’re not usually so slow…’
* * *
Other Writings by Justin Sheedy
“Memoirs of a Go-Go Dancer” is Justin Sheedy’s fourth book and sequel to his first, “Goodbye Crackernight” from 2009, his warmly received comic memoir of growing up in 1970s Australia. Do be sure to seek out his recent books: “Nor the Years Condemn” from 2012, Justin’s highly acclaimed Australian war historical fiction and its much anticipated sequel, “Ghosts of the Empire” from 2013. Justin’s books are currently available via all bookstores and online. He would love to hear from you at his personal and book Facebook pages (Goodbye Crackernight / Nor the Years Condemn), or via the ‘About’ page of his website (Crackernight.com) or on Twitter.
GOODBYE CRACKERNIGHT
by Justin Sheedy
“Goodbye Crackernight” is the story of one boy’s childhood in 1970s Australia. It is a story of fireworks, of fun that cost nothing, of second-hand bikes, UFO-crowded skies, streakers, lime green Valiants, half- sucked Sunny Boys and electric pink hotpants. It is a story of growing up and innocence left behind — at a three-day pool party. It is the tale of an era, of far simpler times, of an annual neighbourhood festival and an Australia now long gone.
NOR THE YEARS CONDEMN
by Justin Sheedy
At the beginning of World War II, Britain was in the dee
pest trouble imaginable. 5 minutes flying time away crouched a monster. Alone against it, Britain called out to her Empire. For pilots. From all corners of that Empire, they volunteered. Only the best & brightest were chosen. Australian Daniel Quinn was one of these young men who came to fly against the monster. They had a 1-in-3 chance of survival.
“Nor the Years Condemn” is based on the true story of the young Australians who flew Spitfires against the all-conquering might of Nazi Ger-many. In their late teens and early-20s, for the job at hand they had to be the ‘shining ones’, rendering the death of so many of them doubly heart-rending for the reader. Daniel Quinn, flanked by the often hilarious young men of his elite ilk, leaves his peacetime life behind to fight tyranny in this portrait of doomed, brilliant youth.
With in-the-cockpit flying sequences that readers have described as ‘cinematic’, “Nor the Years Condemn” is also a story of the mothers cursed to relinquish their wonderful sons to war, of first love, of strategic deception and betrayal, of broth-erhood and once-in-a-lifetime friendship on a knife’s edge. It is a story of shining young men destined never to grow old, and of those who do: the survivors ‘condemned by the years’, and to their memory of friends who remain forever young.
GHOSTS OF THE EMPIRE
by Justin Sheedy
As the storm of World War II breaks, Mick O’Regan is a peaceful Sydney working-class boy. Yet he and the shining youth of his generation are cursed to enter a world of high-speed life and death. Like first-time Aussie backpackers they cross the planet to save the British Empire, their job on arrival the most dangerous of the War: flying for Royal Air Force Bomber Command.
Memoirs of a Go-Go Dancer Page 21
