One time, when Mum told him “I think you’ve had enough beer, you should go to bed,” Dad made it clear he wanted another bottle by picking up a La-Z-Boy chair and chucking it through a window. Although not tall like Mum and my brothers, he was a strong man, so there was no telling what he might destroy when he crossed over to the dark side, let alone who he’d pick on.
I knew when it was time to go, and Mum knew when it was time to get me away from him. She always had a change of clothes in the car, and I had a school uniform in there just in case we needed to spend the night at a friend’s house because Daddy Dearest was in one of his moods. I remember an incident when I was twelve: he was drunk, and after Mum found him staggering down the street from a pub, she tried to cajole him to get into the car. Of course, he became abusive, so she tried to play the child card, telling him, “Get in for your daughter’s sake.” He responded by calling me a cunt and kept walking.
My father didn’t actually lash out at me very much. Still, I knew when to hide and my mother wouldn’t leave me with him if he was drinking. The only time she did was when I was a toddler. He paid less attention to me than to the bottle and I ended up in the hospital after eating a box of matches. Mum never made that mistake again.
From a young age, I could see my father’s loss of control when he drank, and I knew I never wanted to be like that. Self-control has always been a priority, and while I’m not going to say there haven’t been nights when I’ve drunk too much, acted a bit of a fool, and had a hell of a headache the next morning, booze has never been an issue for me. Ditto Mum, who never drank and never needed to. I can remember just one occasion when she had a couple of drinks, and she was immediately red-faced and tipsy.
That’s why there was a split in our house. My father clearly needed to drink, and this need increased to the point where Mum actually tried to curb it with pills that were prescribed by a doctor friend. Dad didn’t realize she was sneaking the pills into the vitamin regime that he took every morning, but she sure as hell knew when he’d been imbibing because just one nip would give him stomach pains, make him nauseous, and turn his ears bright red. It was hilarious to watch him try to figure out why he couldn’t get past that first drink.
I never quite knew what my father’s demons were, but without a shadow of a doubt he was fighting something. When the alcohol kicked in, it was as if he turned into the devil, and the next day he’d invariably be sorry—the archetypal dog with his tail between his legs. Acting all nicey-nice, he’d try to be the good husband and father by abstaining from drink, taking us to a fancy restaurant, or splashing out on gifts and flowers. But none of that worked on me because it was too late. I already knew I couldn’t trust him. He was my father but he was also a monster. Sad but true.
And the gifts weren’t all that innocent, as it turned out. Whether or not he’d been drinking, he always bought us flowers on Friday. It was a thoughtful treat . . . until Mum went to collect him from work one day and discovered he was fucking the florist. A year earlier, when I was ten, my parents had closed the strip clubs and opened a sex shop on Flinders Street, in Adelaide’s central business district, where they sold books, toys, videos, and other paraphernalia. Not only did they want to dissolve the roller-coaster partnership with Abe Saffron, but the club hours were crazy and they knew they could make good money more easily with one of the city’s first adult stores. My parents were entrepreneurs for sure.
The place was called Ecstasy, and this turned out to be pretty bloody appropriate that afternoon. Assuming that Daddy had gone out to get a newspaper because the door to the store was locked, Mum let herself in and found him fooling around with the flower lady. I was sitting in the car, and I remember her coming out, giving me five bucks to buy myself a milk shake, and telling me she was going to be a while because she’d just caught him with another woman. As usual, nothing was kept from me.
While I sat in the car, drank my milk shake, and listened to the radio—as one does on such occasions—Mum confronted her husband and kicked out his lover. Then we drove home without him. Mum was pretty angry and she certainly knew some people who had less than savory jobs, so she hired someone to make her point for her. The next day the bloke drove a truck through the front window of the girl’s nursery. No one was hurt but my mother felt a hell of a lot better.
But the fact of the matter was Dad was not going to give up the girl, so Mum came up with a truly stunning arrangement: one week, Daddy would spend four days with his bit on the side and three days with us; then, the following week, he’d spend three days with her and four with us, continuing this schedule on a rotating basis. It was bizarre to me because my parents still shared the same bed—God only knows what was going on between them. And I soon began to wish that Dad would just leave.
My father didn’t act crazy when he was home—he was on quite good behavior—but I kept thinking our lives would be so much easier if he wasn’t around. Not only did I know his affair was wrong, but I could also see what it was doing to my mother. Things were really awkward and uncomfortable when he walked in the door. I mean, we could hardly sit down and say, “So, what have you been up to for the past three days?” or “What did you do last night?” I was more tempted to ask, “If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you fucking go?” Clearly, he was not invested in my mother or me.
To me, the whole setup didn’t make any sense, but it continued for several months until Mum finally said, “Enough.” She understandably bore a lot of hostility toward the cow who was servicing her husband, and matters came to a head one night when, after having dinner with my brother Gary, we returned home to find Daddy lying in bed, covered in blood, wearing a suit that was totally shredded. Of course, he was drunk, and he’d apparently jumped out of the florist’s car while she was driving down the highway. She had given him an ultimatum: him and her or him and us, and he made his decision by leaping from her speeding vehicle and landing on our doorstep. Quite the fucking bargain . . .
Dad behaved himself during the next couple of months, even though he kept saying the store wasn’t doing so well and money was tight. This was strange for me because I had always been able to have anything I wanted and this was the only time when Mum would tell me she had to check with my father before we bought something. But aside from the pocketbook, family life appeared to be bubbling along until we all returned from spending the weekend with my grandmother in Melbourne, which was about a ten-hour drive away. The next morning, I went to school, Daddy went to work, and when Mum collected me she said, “We’re going to pick up your father, who’s tired from the trip and wants an early dinner. He called to ask what we’re having and I told him we’re having roast chicken.”
When we arrived at the shop, the door was locked, and Mum said, “Oh, he must have gone to get a paper. I’ll collect his things . . .” Talk about déjà vu all over again! The only difference was instead of catching my father with the florist, she found a suicide note, five dollars, and his wedding ring.
During the strip club days, Mum had befriended the local police and paid them to keep things running smoothly. So she called a couple of the sergeants to try to locate Dad because she knew damn well he hadn’t killed himself. So did I. My father had no balls, as I have said before. And I knew there was no way he could have done anything that involved inflicting pain on himself. He may have been a drunk who would leap from a speeding car, but he was definitely not suicidal. The guy was a total fucking pussy. And he was also a bloody crook. When Mum went to the bank the next day, she discovered that during the time he’d returned to live with us, her “better half” had been methodically siphoning their joint account and had left us with nothing.
While my mother may have ruled the business with an iron fist, my father was an accountant by trade and he had always been the one to do the banking and pay the bills. The result was that after years of slogging her guts out, treating him like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and putting up with his drunken shit, Mum now had just five bucks and
me. Despite being broke, I was relieved about the situation. No more drunken binges and crazy nights driving around in the car with my school uniform in hand. My mother, however, wanted to know where the fuck her husband had gone with all our money. And if anyone could have found him, it was her—she certainly had the connections—but he had disappeared into thin air. Even the police, with the help of Abe Saffron, couldn’t find him, and that was saying something. But instead of wallowing in anger, she went into survival mode. And no matter how hard it would be to start over on five dollars, I knew she would be able to take care of me and move on with our lives. You see, my mum is a survivor. No matter what life throws at her, she comes up swinging—or hiring someone to drive a truck through your window. And that is exactly how she raised me. I will survive.
Once we regrouped, Mum tried to run the sex shop on her own. But she quickly realized it was hard to do that while taking care of me and even harder to pay my posh private school’s astronomical fees. So, within a few months Ecstasy was closed, and with my father nowhere to be found and her own mother in failing health, she moved us to Melbourne.
We initially lived with my grandmother so Mum could care for her while we started over. I attended a public school and Mum worked as a restaurant manager to make some money. At least that job was similar to what she’d done at the clubs, and it also provided her with a little more flexibility to look after me. She had gone from being a business owner and boss to the hired help slogging in a greasy spoon, but she did it with grace and with an intense work ethic. And I carry that with me even today. No matter how life sets you back on your heels, you have to come back with poise and drive. I remember meeting a minister once who when asked, “How are you?” would reply, “Quite gracious, thank you.” And grace is all you need.
My older brothers Geoffrey and Greig lived in Melbourne, and so did some of the strip club drag queens from Adelaide who had relocated there, so Mum and I had a solid network of familiar faces, friends and family. Since Melbourne was definitely a lot more cosmopolitan and sophisticated than Adelaide, the move was exciting for me. Sure, there were times when I’d think about Dad, but I was still too young to get really pissed off at him. That would come later, when I hit my teens and was able to fully comprehend what an asshole he was. This is when I also started to understand the difference between being a bitch and being an asshole—and I don’t make the distinction tongue in cheek. A bitch is someone who is self-possessed and will take care of herself. She is not looking to hurt anyone and is, in fact, often quite empathetic and caring. An asshole is someone who doesn’t give a shit about anyone else, mostly because he is quite self-destructive. I am a bitch. My father was an asshole.
Long after Mum found my father’s phony suicide note and we moved to Melbourne, Gary ran into my father at a shopping mall in Adelaide, but Dad just walked right past him. Stunned, my brother followed him and noticed that he was working in a store there—amazingly, it was a flower shop. Gary gave Mum the details, and while she wanted no part of my father, I called the store and asked to speak with him. The silence on the other end of the phone lasted an eternity. Finally, he got on the line, and although I immediately recognized his voice, he said no one by that name worked there and hung up on me. I finally had confirmation that he wasn’t dead; that I was right; that he had walked out. It was a double-edged sword. I wanted to be right, but I wanted to be wrong. I wanted him to be alive, but I wanted him dead, too. And I couldn’t very well let it go.
My father didn’t come from a very close family, but his father kept in distant contact with me and he’d send checks for my birthday. So I wrote Dad a letter, asking him, “How could you walk out on us in that way?” and “What kind of gutless wonder doesn’t even acknowledge his own kid?” Then I sent it to my grandfather to forward to his son. My grandfather responded by sending me the phone number of Dad’s lawyer, but when I called the attorney, he told me I was a very angry little girl and that he wouldn’t let me speak to my father. It was surreal on every level.
About eighteen months after our move, my maternal grandmother passed away, and Mum decided we should relocate to Surfers Paradise, a suburb of Queensland’s Gold Coast that, thanks to its subtropical climate, golden beaches, canal waterfront homes, and modern high-rise apartments, truly does live up to its name. I began working as a hairdresser’s apprentice, found a girlfriend, and started to let go of all the resentment I had toward my father walking out . . . until I was seventeen and needed a passport to travel to London.
In those days, minors applying for a passport had to be accompanied by their parents to an interview with the local postmaster, and since my father wasn’t around, Mum had to bring her divorce papers. I hadn’t seen them and didn’t know anything about how the event had transpired, so this was yet another cold shower. Without her knowledge, Dad had placed newspaper advertisements stating he was looking for her in order to file a divorce action. Mum never saw any of the ads, so, after placing them for the requisite number of months, he was able to divorce her in absentia. The papers had arrived out of the blue, but what really shocked me was that in the section where he’d been asked to list his dependents, he’d stated there were none. Zero, zilch. In other words, I didn’t exist according to my “suicided” father.
When Mum showed the postmaster my birth certificate with both of my parents’ names, as well as her marriage and divorce certificates, she explained the situation and I got my passport. But the father odyssey was not over. Apparently, Australia is not as big as one would like to think. Shortly after I’d relocated to London, Mum and I returned to Adelaide to spend Christmas with my brother Gary, and while we were there we ran into an old family friend who said she’d seen Dad in a shopping mall.
Mum, my sister-in-law, and I scoured every single store in that mall, but there was no sign of him. We were convinced our friend was seeing things, mistaking hairy old codgers for my father years later. We gave up and went to have lunch in the food court . . . and there he was. As I turned around, he was standing about twenty feet away, so I pointed him out to my mother and she immediately marched me over to him and gave a speech about what a good person I had grown into and how much I’d accomplished. The entire time, Dad looked down at the ground and never said a word. Then he got up from his seat and walked away.
I couldn’t fucking believe it. The coward wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I told my mother, “I’ll be back,” and followed him to a clothing store. He was just standing there, so I walked over to him, and cornered like a rat, he managed to open his mouth and say, “You’re a very lucky little girl.” I was twenty-one years old, and in that moment I looked at him and thought, “You know what, I really am lucky. Because you left and I didn’t have to deal with your shit. It doesn’t matter what I say to you, because you’ll never understand. And it doesn’t matter what you say to me, because it’ll never change what you did. All that matters is, I survived.” Ironically, it was partly because of my father that I grew up around tranny strippers who never pussied out or walked away from who they were. And in that moment I knew I didn’t need my dad in order to be whole. I knew that on some level he really was dead to me. I turned around, walked out, and never saw him again.
And I knew I would never be like him either. I am incredibly responsible and I make sure I can always take care of myself and the people I love. Watching my mother relinquish far too much trust to my father taught me to take responsibility for myself, even if I’m in a relationship. It’s okay to trust someone, but you still have to be present, which is something Mum clearly wasn’t when her husband was helping himself to their money and running off with the florist. The number one person you need to trust is yourself. Then you know you can survive no matter what.
When a marriage falls apart, inevitably people wonder, “What the fuck am I going to do now?” My mum was responsible enough to realize, “I’ve got to pick up the pieces, make money, feed the two of us, put clothes on our backs, send my child to school, and keep
some semblance of normality,” and that’s exactly what she did. You can’t sit around and whinge and wallow in the circumstances. You have to survive. And being strong for yourself is the best way to do that. Ironically, my father’s presence made my mother weak, but his disappearance made her strong. She survived. And so did I.
How to Survive a Shit Storm
• Hunker down. You have to be steady on your feet—literally and metaphorically. Batten down the hatches for the bumpy ride. If you don’t, you’ll blow away.
• Make sure you can rely on yourself. Dear God, if you can’t rely on yourself, who can you rely on? I am talking to you: the drunks standing outside a club looking for someone to get them home, the idiot who leaves his wallet hanging out of his pocket and it’s gone, all the people out there who hope someone else will look out for them or assume nothing bad will happen no matter how careless they are. Rely on yourself because that’s your best hope. Am I saying never trust anyone? No. Am I saying don’t ask for help? No. But in the end, you need to know you yourself are solid, good to go, and reliable.
• Know what’s going on. There is nothing worse than someone who is just a hot mess, lost and wondering how they got there. You need to always keep your wits about you and have a plan. The more you don’t know, the more vulnerable you are.
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