Now I’m at
the end of my life, in my seventies, I look back at my long travail and I feel
weary, beat, depleted of my reserves of optimism, hoping to end it all. Yet at
the same time I can say, for all the beat-ups and betrayals, I still had a great
life, I went for it like a whirling dervish and squeezed it of maximum euphoria,
adventure and achievement. I didn’t need to push my way to the front to receive
some gilt statue, it was enough to read an inspiring book, hear some soulful
music, dance abandoned by a fabled sea, and watch a sunset from a temple atop
the highest mountain in the world.
So before I
go let me tell you about one man’s tough journey, a tale both harrowing and
informative. In the veritable dark ages of 1955, a five year old child was left
to run wild on the streets of an inner-city Melbourne slum. He didn’t seem to
have any guardians, no mother or father, only an old grandmother who was always
in the front room of the house attending to his dying grandfather. He was as
cute as a kewpie doll, with huge blue eyes, a Tony Curtis cow-lick hanging down
upon his forehead and an angelic, shy smile. He was new to the neighborhood
and lonely, desperate for friends.
When he tried
to befriend the bigger kids across the road one of them, for no good reason
except heartless cruelty, kicked him viciously in the balls. The pain was explosive,
the attack incomprehensible, as if innocent beauty had to be destroyed. He ran
home holding his crotch and writhed upon his bed in an agony that lasted
several days. Yet he didn’t relinquish his desire for friendship and he tried
again to approach the nasty lords of the flies as they played upon their
veranda.
He was
fascinated by a pile of glass baubles they were fingering, the scintillating lights
of which were psychedelic in his impressive mind. He put his hand upon the gate
and asked if he could join them to which they yelled, “No! Go away!” And then
they slammed the metal gate upon his thumb, crushing it, a fountain of blood
spurting out upon their precious gems. He shrieked in dismay as they shuddered
in horror. He ran home to his grandmother who quickly bandaged the wound and
soothed his broken spirit.
To compensate
for the trauma she took him to his first movie at a cinema nearby, a convict
melodrama starring Alan Ladd and Patricia Medina called “Botany Bay”, the
protagonists in chains and getting whipped, a fitting allegory for what life
held in store for him in class bound Australia, of slaves, whip-masters and callous
captains. Yet at the same time the silver-screen magic of sailing ships and
exotic destinations thrilled the boy and fired his imagination with the
possibilities of life entwined with art, if one could only find the wherewithal to realize one’s dreams.
Not long after a little girl up the street was having a birthday party and her parents built her a stage in their backyard upon which she was going to perform a song and dance, like a spoilt Shirley Temple. An audience of local kids and their parents gathered to watch the little genius, only she had a hissy fit and wouldn’t go on. They waited an eternity and our little blue-eyed, scene stealing Tony Curtis look-a-like lost patience and jumped upon the stage and performed Doris Day’s latest hit, “Que Sera Sera”, tap-dancing to the beat and singing perfectly note for note.
The audience
clapped along, enjoying his act enormously but party-girl was furious, she'd been upstaged. She
enlisted a few cohorts and they rushed upon the podium and pushed him off the
edge to land hard upon his arse, and everybody laughed at his humiliation, as
if it were a clown act.
All this
drama was a reality check for the little boy who henceforth sang the blues. The
world in general was not fair, people could be insufferably cruel, and even the
smallest ray of limelight was precious to ego-maniacs and fought over with no
compunction.
For the rest
of his life his path was blocked by the (not so) hidden agendas of class,
tribalism, nepotism, fame-whores, backstabbers, plagiarists, brain-washers and
power-players, desperate wannabes willing to sell their souls for money and
fame. And in the face of this ugly rat-race many applaud the brats, winners are
grinners no matter how they won, and losers are boozers no matter what great
work they’ve done. For a gay boy from skid-row it was a hundred times more difficult,
more tortuous, more unjust.
This flawed human condition left him bewildered as he believed in caring, sharing, co-operating, informing, entertaining for the joy of it, remaining that naive five year old at heart for much of his life. Beware, for those who snigger at this story are probably one of the cold fish who screwed him over and cold fish they remained, all their lives with just a hook in their mouth to show for it.
Possibly the greatest betrayal of his life happened at the very beginning when, as a one year old baby, his father hit him because he was crying and knocked him off the bed to crack his head against a dressing table. It was a rude awakening. Next, after beating his mother to a bloody pulp and having her taken away in an ambulance, at three years old he was told his mother was dead, never to return. This was devastating and untrue, a betrayal he could not get over, perhaps leading him to grow up queer and recalcitrant, with an oppositional defiance disorder.
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| Newhaven Clinic |
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| Anne Hamilton-Byrne |
