One Way or Another (11 page)

From the bus stop at the Five Ways roundabout in Paddington, Billy and I walked down the gently sloping footpath of Goodhope Street. The suburb was steeped in history, and after the shiny tinsel of Surfers the tiny wrought-iron gates, quaint courtyards and ornate terraces made me feel I had stepped into an earlier era. I was certainly dressed for one, my puffy white pirate shirt billowing from beneath a thick black belt. Rouge slashed my cheeks in stark stripes and my hair was teased into a frizzy halo. Billy was a worthy partner in his stove-pipe jeans, green-and-black striped shirt and dangerously pointed shoes. We looked like we'd just jumped Black Beard's ship.

For years, 39 Goodhope Street had been dubbed ‘Boystown'. A slightly shabby double-storey terrace painted faded yellow, it was the colour of a piece of newspaper left in a bottom drawer for twenty years. Skeletal trees and shrubs stood guard in the neglected excuse for a front courtyard. Thick black bars lined the front windows, as if the house was afraid the convicts might escape. A heavy wooden door with an ancient brass doorknob opened to Rhonda's blazing smile.

‘Welcome, people.' She dragged us down the tunnelled hallway to the living room.

I had never been inside a terrace house and was fascinated by the long, narrow layout. With framed gold records on the walls and faded green velvet lounges, the house was homely and hip at the same time. We were introduced to the two current tenants, Joey and Jock. I wasn't sure which was Rhonda's latest squeeze but soon discovered it was a fairly interchangeable arrangement. Jock was a tall but wiry fellow who could have given me a few tips on my Scottish accent. About thirty, he was charming and talked a lot about his work as a sound technician for Midnight Oil. Joey, a little younger, did lights for the Divinyls and was a small, ferrety guy with dark eyes and a floppy fringe. He busied himself in the little kitchen at the back of the house, making coffee and cracking open a packet of stale lamingtons. In what might have been a dining alcove sat a strange contraption that looked like a torture device.

‘I hang upside down,' Joey explained to me. ‘For my spine.'

Upon closer inspection, I found that a giant pair of shoes, like snow boots, encased a person's feet while they were elevated in mid-air. It was a hanging-upside-down machine and possibly the strangest thing I had ever seen.

‘That can't be very comfortable.'

‘It's actually very peaceful,' smiled Joey as he bit into a coconut-encrusted cake. ‘You should try it.'

*

We were shown the large master bedroom upstairs, where a cute balcony overlooked the barren front courtyard. It was a beautifully furnished room with a large bed and an antique dresser. A lovely, intricately detailed mirror hung on one wall.

‘It's great,' I whispered to Billy, who nodded in assent.

‘We've never had a girl live here. It's been strictly boys' own. But hey, it might be nice to have a den mother,' Jock laughed.

‘Plenty of girls visit but none get to stay, is that it?' Rhonda teased.

With that, we all sat down and did the paperwork and made it official. I would be the first woman to live in Boystown. I felt quite honoured. In a neat twist, our room had just been vacated by Shane, the roadie who had let me backstage at my very first Australian Crawl gig at Bombay Rock. Boystown had a long rock-and-roll history and was inhabited by a changing parade of roadies, techies and musicians. The tenant backlist included members of the Divinyls, Hoodoo Gurus, the Models and the Angels and crew members from just about every band that had ever appeared on
Countdown
or in
Rolling Stone
. All watched over by Possum, the house cat, so named for her enormously bushy tail. She was a beautiful tabby with the most gentle and affectionate nature. I loved her immediately.

‘She just leapt through those bars on the front window one night,' Joey told me. ‘Straight into my lap.'

We raced home and packed. As our apartment had come furnished, we only had the bags we'd arrived with. Glen was still soundly asleep and we left our keys on the table and crept out quietly. No note. No confrontation. Stuff the lease, bugger the rent and screw the flatmate from hell. Later we'd wonder how long it took Glen to realise that everyone had abandoned ship and left him floating in his own little apartment in the sky. We couldn't help but laugh. Cruel but funny.

We moved into Boystown just as Rhonda flew back to sunny Queensland, and so began our roller-coaster ride into rock-and-roll Disneyland. Life would never be the same.

*

Flatting with Jock and Joey meant never having to pay to see a gig ever again. We were suddenly on the door-list for just about any act we wanted to see. In the first few months we watched Midnight Oil turn the Hordern Pavilion into a fiery cataclysm, the Divinyls tear into an audience with ferocious energy, the Hooters bore an auditorium to death, Paul Young whine about where he'd left his hat
and INXS seduce their fans with sultry grunt.

Billy and I were in our element, and we became quite arrogant about our newfound status. I'd been promoted from groupie to friend of the band. No longer was I hooking up with musicians in tawdry motels; I was travelling to gigs with them and shooting the breeze during sound-check. This was a whole new side of the game.

We also became quite snobbish in our attitude to the punters. We watched most gigs from the side of the stage, so as not to be contaminated by the plebeian masses out front. This was particularly true of bands like Midnight Oil and the Angels, who had quite blue-collar followings. The singlet and flannelette-shirt brigade would get drunk and spit and fight. We were above all that now; we were with the band.

At Pseudo Echo concerts we'd laugh at the cockatoo hairdos and lose sight of our own ludicrous reflections. We didn't want to be boxed into one particular category. We weren't mods, or heavy-metal boofheads, or new-wave romantic knob-jobs. We were serious pub-rockers, into real music. At home around the Boystown dinner table, we'd argue about bands like our parents argued about politics. Groupies, roadies, techies and us – we were all fiercely loyal to the bands we supported.

The music scene was changing, with new styles and sects emerging. There were still a few Sid Vicious characters lurking about the edges, but they were morphing into a more gothic type, epitomised by Nick Cave and his dark-lord cronies, crooning about suicide. Deep down, however, I remained a pop tart and avoided this more serious stuff. I liked songs about safe topics – love and sex and the wider world, things outside of me. I didn't want to listen to music that made me look too hard within. I feared I might not like what I found.

*

In the months since I'd left the family home, my domestic skills had gone into hibernation. I revelled in mess and loved the freedom of living in chaos. Joey put an end to that. He was a lunatic when it came to housekeeping. Many a time I was woken by him slamming the vacuum cleaner against my closed bedroom door at three in the morning, having arrived home from a gig and found the place dusty. He raged through mountains of dirty crockery, smashing dishes as he went. His ranting and hyperventilating became tiresome after a time, and so I pulled on the rubber gloves and got into the swing of being more house-proud.

Billy taught me how to cook. His spaghetti Bolognese ran rings around my parents' dry and crumbly mince-based meals. Rich tomatoes, crunchy celery and carrots, a huge crush of garlic and fresh basil were topped with shavings of parmesan cheese. It had never occurred to me, growing up at home, to take an interest in the kitchen and at work I did little more than grate cheese and squish boiled eggs. But Billy had a recipe book full of interesting dishes in his head. Having imparted his culinary wisdom, he promptly resigned any interest in actually cooking again and I became the stereotypical little wife, doing all the cooking for the household. The boys loved it and for a time I was happy to inhabit this old-fashioned fantasy. But when a pizza parlour opened up the road at Five Ways, I gladly hung up my wooden spoon and we returned to eating takeaway nearly every night.

*

When we could afford it, that is.

Money was tight. Growing up with two parents who worked meant I'd never experienced anything remotely like poverty. I had never wanted for anything as a young girl, but now I found myself living in the big city, trying to scratch together enough to pay for an endless stream of bills, not to mention drinks and clothes and food. I started slipping occasional apples and bananas into my bag at work, just to tide us over until payday.

Billy had given up his job at the clothing store and was getting the odd bit of freelance work from the shipyards down at Rushcutters Bay. These jobs were infrequent, but the money wasn't half bad. I was still working in the café, slaving over boiled eggs and lentil burgers and wondering what the hell this had to do with my dreams of fame and fortune. Between work and gigs and partying, when was I supposed to forge a career as an actress? I lay awake at night, listening to Billy snoring, and scrunched the sheets into balls beneath my fists. Oscar. Hollywood. New York. Yet I was wafting through my days as a frazzled kitchen-hand.

‘What happened to you becoming a rock star and me becoming a film actress?' I asked Billy one morning, watching shards of sunlight stab his freckled chest.

‘It takes time. Hey, but I saw an ad on a noticeboard for a bass player …'

‘That's bullshit. We have to start doing something real. With all our contacts, can't you get some session work?'

‘I don't see you auditioning for anything.'

‘We had all these dreams, and now we're just pissing them away, partying all the time.'

I sounded like a drag but it was true. We were getting nowhere.

*

But maybe our luck was about to change. One night over a few drinks, Billy told Joey he'd had some training as a boat builder.

‘So you're handy with a hammer, are you?' Joey looked interested.

‘Mate, I could build you anything you want. What do you want, a boat, a table, a book case, a house?'

Joey leaned across the table. ‘A stage.'

And so Billy's new career as a rock-and-roll stage designer began.

Meanwhile, I quit my job at the café and decided to hit the talent agencies. It was time to kick-start the career I had run away from home to pursue. Billy had been given a generous advance for his first set – a design of his own invention for an upcoming Divinyls tour – and I was anxious to get some real work as an actress. Somewhat ironically, my dad provided what proved to be my first real break.

Buoyed by our new living arrangements and my happiness with life in general, I had finally found the courage to phone home and chat with my family. Huge swells of emotion washed over me when I heard my parents' voices for the first time in months. They cried and I cried. There were no recriminations, just joy that we were speaking again. My siblings sent me funny little letters and drawings and I felt closer to them all than I ever had before, now that I was no longer secretly wrestling against my parents' discipline.

During one of these phone calls, Dad told me excitedly about a new Australian film he had invested money in.
Bliss
. It was being adapted from the Peter Carey novel and was currently in pre-production, Dad explained. He urged me to seek out the casting people and try for a role. I took his advice and made some calls, finally learning that Suzie Maizels was the casting director. She had offices in North Sydney and so, without warning her, I put on my best outfit, did my hair nicely and caught the train across the Harbour Bridge. I would just rock up and charm her into casting me in the film, I reasoned. Naïveté can sometimes be an asset.

‘I want a role in
Bliss
,' I announced as she emerged from her office into the waiting room.

‘I'm sorry, dear, that's already been cast. Who's your agent?'

I shook my head and shrugged. ‘I don't have an agent. Are you sure there isn't a small role … anything? I am a very good actress. Really.'

‘I'm sure you are,' she smirked. ‘Get yourself an agent and some photos and we'll talk again down the track.'

‘What about something in another film? I'd even do television.' My voice was firm and I was not moving. She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.

‘You know what? Can you come back tomorrow at, say, ten o'clock?'

I nodded enthusiastically.

‘There's something about you. I think you'd be good for the role of Lucy … we haven't signed Gia yet.'

‘Gia Carides?' I asked.

‘Yes,' Suzie said. ‘Do you know her?'

‘Not personally,' I smiled sweetly. ‘But I believe she has lovely teeth.'

The next day I was standing in front of Peter Carey, who sat in a bean bag, and Ray Lawrence, the film's director. After a casual conversation and a reading from the script, Ray asked me to meet him in the city the next day for a screen test. I was so puffed up with hope I thought I might burst. Halfway home I rang Billy from a public phone because I couldn't wait to tell him the news.

Life was moving in the right direction; I could feel the cold gold of Oscar in my little hands already. I had three pages of script folded up in my pocket and a copy of the novel, lent to me by Peter Carey himself. I stayed up all night and read it from cover to cover, with Possum keeping me company by licking my feet.
Bliss
was the most bent and beautiful book I'd ever read.

*

I was to read for the disturbing role of Lucy Joy, who gave her brother blowjobs in exchange for drugs. She was sassy, ruthless and perverse, all beneath a demure facade. She was me all over.

The screen test was an ordeal and a half. I was paired with Alex, a young actor who took the whole thing very seriously. Knowing we were both novices, Ray gave us all he could to get our best performances.