He stared into space, stoned, lost to his surroundings, lost in thought.
Where had it all gone wrong? When he was born, the low station he’d been born
into? When he hit puberty and found his sexuality aberrant, his personality
disordered? When he crash-landed in Sydney, choosing the wrong city to operate
from, a city rigidly class conscious and cruel? No matter, he couldn’t afford
regrets, he tried to let go of his grudges, it would only drive him further into
madness and dysfunction.
He snapped to attention, aware a garrulous fool was asking him a question,
hoping to impress him with a rambling story about what a hipster he was. Arthur
knew he didn’t really rate when, in the middle of his reply, his vacuous
companion looked over his shoulder to see if anyone more glamorous had come
through the door of the Piccolo Bar Cafe. He gave up, Hell indeed was the need
for other people, and they didn’t give a fuck, wasting one’s time, gazing
fixedly into their own narcissistic projections; he wondered why he bothered, no
one seemed to have anything really interesting to say.
Can a few words in the right place save someone’s life, or change History,
by inspiring a different course of action and thus defying fate? He cynically
didn’t think so. He knew he wouldn’t have listened if someone had said to him
not long after his arrival in this convict city, “Leave Sydney now, it’s not
the city for you, go overseas, you’d stand a better chance of being recognised
as a happening artist!” He had persevered for he felt a burning desire to prove
something to the country that had bred and fucked him. He ordered a café latte
from Vitto, the grungy Italian barrista, maitre’d and carnie-barker for this
Café on Desolation Row, and he thought of Godfry and his shocking story, that
not even Mother Theresa could’ve averted, with all her pious prayers and words
of wisdom.
Arthur and Vitto agreed that Godfry was one of the best looking, hunkiest
of men they’d ever clapped eyes on, good natured and masculine, alluring and
athletic. Arthur remembered the night he’d sat at this very table with young
Godfry, smoking a joint in bonhomie, before the shit came down. If only he’d
spoken up and said what he truly thought, he might have helped avoid a lot of
angst. Nobody was listening, what to do? Godfry had inherited the Cafe Bread
and Circuses from his Uncle Ozzie but he was only nineteen and had grander
ambitions, too young and silly to take charge of a Second Reality Cafe.
Whereupon his father, Joe Pollenta, stood in the breach and tried to run the
Cafe for him, keeping old Vittorio on as front man and star attraction.
Joe was dying slowly from prostate cancer and was in no fit state to handle
or humor the rag-tag, freaky crew that frequented the Kitty-Litter Café. He
particularly hated drug dealers and addicts, loudly bemoaning the Welfare State
that supported them, forever trying to rouse the dazed Kings Cross
Businessmen’s Association into cleaning up Roslyn Street of all its suspect
denizens. Joe’s own daughter had been a long-time heroin abuser and had dragged
him to the end of his tether; after all the wheedling and stealing he could
only ban her from his presence, and blame drugs for all that was wrong with the
world. His rancor built until he took to carrying a gun and waving it at would
be drug interlopers, frothing at the mouth, scaring them off, for awhile, and scaring
most of his fainthearted customers as well.
All the excitement was doing poor Joe in, arse on fire he called in the
cavalry and hired a Security Firm to visit the Cafe three-hourly to check all
was quiet on the battle-front. Whenever trouble exploded, the Security Guards
came after the event, making of themselves an added nuisance by glowering at
the innocent potheads cowering over their coffees. Joe badgered the Police into
harassing the area’s vagrants off the scene, any Bohemian type got questioned
and searched, and the Café regulars couldn’t talk their subversive bullshit or
smoke their ganja in a relaxed and civilized manner. As a last resort, when
some down and out junkie proved particularly tenacious at clinging to a table
or shooting up in the dungeon toilets, he called in his burly son, Godfry, to
beat the shit out of the recalcitrant. There was much muttering and moaning of
shock-horror from his peacenik patrons who had to witness the degrading
spectacle of humans reduced to punching bags. The Café was devolving into a
zombie-plagued wasteland, not like the Golden days when Ozzie ran everything
smoothly, and the place was a haven for artistes and intellectuals.
The mutinous mutterings against Joe wound down and the regulars stuck to
their perches, for they belonged nowhere else. Vitto endured every calamitous
brouhaha, ignoring the blandishments and threats thrown his way by the
never-ending stream of seductive hoods, coping with Joe’s cranky peccadilloes
and the cacophony of abuse and demands from the Café patrons. Joe had been a
Security Guard himself for twenty years and dreamed of his son going one rung
higher and becoming a Policeman, the epitome of a respectable career in his
eyes. Godfry should have settled for the Sacred Weed Cafe; with pot dealing on
the side it was a hip, viable business, but why be a small time crim, he
thought, when you could get into the big-time and get a Doctorate in
Crookedness simply by joining the Police Force. He was smart enough to realize
he could amass greater wealth under the cover of a Cop, a legalised, protected
criminal as it were.
Thus Godfry and his father’s dreams vaguely coincided, though Joe would
turn to stone if he knew the eventual outcome. That night when they sat at
the table together, as he passed the joint, Godfry told Arthur that he was
applying to the Police Academy to be a Cop. Arthur should have strongly emphasised,
“No, don’t do it! You’ll make your family miserable, destroy your youth and
bring on ruination for all. Everyone will hate you and disown you. You are
inviting disaster and damnation!” Instead Arthur said nothing, he just mouthed
platitudes like “Everyone’s gotta do what they gotta do” and “Que sera sera,
whatever will be will be”, toking on the spliff, smiling enigmatically, for he
hated Pigs and hoped never to know one. What to do? Godfry had a date with his
Kismet.
While most people derided Joe as a mean old dork who wouldn’t even give
Vitto a Christmas bonus, Arthur still liked him, for he was a stalwart old
bastard, straight forward and upright, gruffly naïve for all his conservative,
narrow-minded views. Poor Honest Joe died of cancer within the year and Godfry
went on to become an outstanding Police Officer who tried to corner the
franchise on party drugs for the inner-city ravers, running his whole operation
from the Bondi Junction Police Station. His partner was a steroid-addicted
fellow cop by the name of Johnny Stompano, not too smart, but as an over-muscled
body-builder, could stomp on anyone who got in their way. Together they hustled
the Sydney-city clubs and ware-house raves, the gyms and beach-side cafes,
selling Ecstasy tablets, marihuana, Acid, Speed, cocaine and steroids by the
plane-load, and, devil may care, they sampled too much of their own wares. It
all got away from them, blew up in their faces, and try-hard Old Joe rolled
over in his grave.
Urban Myth would have it that Godfry’s courier, a naïve French guy, also
sampled the goods he was carrying, taking copious amounts of Ecstasy and Acid
on a three-day binge, till in the end he didn’t know which planet he was on. He
tried to do a runner with all the contraband but Godfry and partner were on the
trail and soon caught up with him, for there was no way they were gonna let
this French wanker rip them off. They cornered the tripping Frenchman at dawn
on Bondi Beach, he blathered on
idiotically and was about to give the game away to anybody with ears to
listen, slashing a butter-knife at the demonic cops’ advancing upon him. They wanted their
drugs back and they wanted him to shut the fuck up! But he kept on babbling,
waving the knife in their faces, he was in Lala land with the fairies and ogres
were about to devour him.
A crowd gathered to watch as the pressure mounted up, Godfry and Johnny the
Stomper both shaking their Service revolvers at the Frenchman, screaming for
him to put down his weapon. The group hysteria ballooned, the maniac tripper
jerked about like a robot in shock, the Cop’s fury flared white-hot, and the
onlookers screeched. Godfry was drug-addled himself, lost in the heat of the
moment, there was no way out, the fucker wouldn’t shut his goddamned, thieving
mouth and chill out! Rave! Rave! Rave! Blam! Blam! Blam! They shot him dead.
The ensuing scandal shook the Halls of Piggery to their dungeons. While
Godfry was hauled over the coals and indicted for murder, his partner fled to
New Zealand where he eventually hung himself in his hotel room from the shame
of it all. The outrageous details of their drug business were revealed at the
Inquest, and it was mooted that their tentacles of corruption spread far and
wide in the Emerald City. Johnny Stompano committed suicide over the mortification
he had caused his good Italian family but he should’ve braved it out because
after many years of investigation and sub-trials, like every other cop ever
accused of anything, Godfry got acquitted of manslaughter. As a Police Officer
who had suffered a stressful situation in the line of duty, he was allowed to
get away with anything, cops being masters of mayhem. To this day his name is
whispered ingloriously amongst the
cognoscenti of deadbeat Café society and the stupid mug must hang his head in
regret that he never took on the Dumb Luck Café where he could’ve led a laid
back life, Prince of the Potheads, lording it over the hordes of damp-squids
and bandage-queens.
If only Arthur had tried to talk him out of the Pig idea but he couldn’t
have influenced such a destiny, he was hard put to organise his own affairs,
waking life was like a dream in which one tried to wrest control and provide
direction while a hurricane raged about one’s head. Swimming in a torrent of
chaos, distracted, it was a miracle he stayed afloat and it was a hell of a job
to get focused. All was in flux, the Café shimmering, its collective particles
colliding, scintillating, as if experiencing the flashback of a psychedelic
hallucination, life-forms rushing by like in a time-lapsed film, the light
strobing, darker, fainter, until the Café Time Machine disappeared and Arthur
passed out, too stoned to care any more
Before cranky, upright Joe Pollenta died, fed up with all the malicious
dramas, he tried to sell the Lifeboat For Losers Café but there were no takers,
it was too much trouble and quackery for most businessmen's taste. In fear that
he’d have no reason for living if he was booted from his galley-post, Vitto
mortgaged his apartment to raise the money Joe hankered for and thus, in his
old age, Vitto had finally become the owner of the establishment he’d slaved in
for forty years.
Vitto had humored, outwitted and cajoled the druggies for the longest time
and they were unable to drag him down so easily, and while the Ship of Fools
Café felt like it was sinking into a morass of self-indulgent
mind-obliteration, it was full steam ahead as far as the Old Queen was
concerned. Night after calamitous night, Arthur jived to all the Café’s
shamanic gigs with Vitto as the old Berdache, nights like a cave-man’s seance
attracting restless spirits with a never-ending variation on absurdity, a
freak-show wherein Vitto was the Mother of all Monsters. Movie stars, non-stars
and monstars patronized the Vampyres’ Crypt Café over the years, Vitto welcoming
them in like a camp Count Yorga, and if he were asked who was the Crown
Prince of Monsters he would unreservedly shriek “Arthur Farthing!” and cross
himself, for he was still a good Catholic, lapses notwithstanding, and Arthur
was a child of Lucifer.
Arthur had worked hard to be the accomplished monster he was, he’d studied
under Grand Masters in Divine Foolishness, and nobody could crack a ribald
triple entendre, a salacious witticism, a scathing curse, faster than he. He
often had Vitto lamenting his victimisation because he couldn’t get the joke,
he had no sense of humor about himself, moaning like a mock-turtle, “Oh why
don’t you cunts leave me fucking alone? Why are you always putting shit on me!”
Arthur treated the Café like a stand-up comedy club with Vitto as the straight
man, and he milked the silly old poof for every laugh he could get. The passing
crowd lapped it up like it was a twisted Laurel and Hardy born again show.
Vitto loved to waffle on, making grandiloquent pronouncements about
obscure, meaningless Hollywood movies and Arthur would tear him to shreds by
making up ridiculous titles like “Splendour in the Arse” starring Arnie
Shwartzbugger and Dolly Farton. The bad joke would suck the silly queen in for
awhile, mulling over the conjured-up, sordid movie scenarios, then he would
suddenly realise his third leg was being yanked and he would hiss, “ Is nothing
sacred in your fucking universe, Arthur?”
Vitto loved to dish out the crap but couldn’t take it, so it was with
mischievous pleasure that Arthur constantly teased the old Fairy, and anyone
else who wanted to join in the banter. To Arthur, Reality was a Divine Comedy
of Horrors; laughter made the sadness bearable, if he didn’t laugh, he would
cry, like Jimmie Dean at the police station, Beauty could only laugh in the
face of the Beast. The very mention of that long dead film-star would suck
Vitto into the movie histrionics further, mooning and ballyhooing, as if he
were drowning in a bottomless muck-pit of Hollywood detritus. Movies, shmovies,
he went on and on about them like a scratched gramaphone record, lamenting the passing
of the “Golden Years”, “they don’t make stars like they used to” and "where has all the glamour gone?" He was a fan of Mussolini,
pre World War Two in mindset and he couldn’t swing with the pop culture of today.
The rest of the peanut gallery joined in on the litany to the gods of the
silver screen and Arthur found plenty of dumb opinions to crack apart with bad
jokes.
Arthur felt fearless, he had been through a thousand levels of Heaven and
Hell, been called every fag-cunt under the sun, sat with the mighty and the
humble, won a few accolades and suffered many kicks in the arse, and nothing seemed to really phase
him any more. Life was short and shy boys got left without a dance. Toking down
deep on his joint, Arthur reminisced into his cup of café latte on how it had
been a long, bloody hard road to attain his kind of resilience, confidence and
humour. He’d lived through much to become a monster freak and was determined to
make subversive use of it, the sacred cow of celebrity-mad Sydney needing badly
to be satirised. Ever the horny satyr he determined to be the satirist to do
it.
If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB
address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up
anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India
of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
DEADBEAT REALISM IN THE QUEER UNDERWORLD
