At the Cafe of the Fool's Nemesis.

At the Café of the Fool’s Nemesis.

Arthur stared into space, stoned, lost to his surroundings, lost in thought. Where had it all gone wrong? Was it when he was born into his low, working class station? When his father beat him too many times about the head? Or was it when he hit puberty and found his sexuality aberrant and his personality disordered? Was it when he crash-landed in Sydney, choosing the wrong city to operate from, a city rigidly class conscious, shallow and cruel? No matter, he couldn’t afford regrets; he was determined to let go of his grudges as 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 in the guy’s estimation 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. Artie 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, at least not to him. And what of import could he communicate?

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 recognized as a happening artist!” He had persevered with Sydney for forty years as he felt a burning desire to prove something to the nation that had bred and fucked him. He ordered a café latte from Vitto, the grumpy Italian barista, waiter and carnie barker for this Café on Freakshow Alley. With melancholy he then thought of Godfry and his shocking story, whose fate not even Mother Mary could’ve averted, with all her pious prayers and wise emanations.

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. If nobody ever really listens, what could a poor poof 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 hotspot. Whereupon his father, Joe Podesta, 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, wherein the Cafe was positioned, ejecting the suspect denizens lurking in its doorways. Joe’s own daughter had been a long-time heroin user and had dragged him to the end of his tether; after all her 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 faint-hearted 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 sod. 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 deaf to the cacophony of abuse and demands from the Café’s 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 ganja crim, he thought, when you could jump 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 legalized, protected criminal as it were. Thus Godfry and his father’s dreams vaguely coincided, though Joe would turn into 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 emphasized, “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 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 he 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, after an all night drug binge also unhinged them, they badly spun out and would’ve done in Queen Elizabeth if she’d crossed their path. The Frechman’s room-mate stupidly rushed to the Bondi Police Station and blabbed to them he was worried about his mate who was running amok on the beach with a knife. This was the info Godfry was waiting for and, rounding up a posses of pigs to back him up, they blundered down to Bondi Beach to confront him and stop him from ruining the drug-running scam. They had worked themselves up into a tizzy and there was no way they were going to let this French wanker rip them off.

They cornered the tripping Frenchman at dawn on the famous beach; he blathered on idiotically about the drugs and their bastardry and was about to give the game away to anybody who had ears to listen, slashing a butter-knife at the demonic cops advancing upon him. While most of the cops from the station must’ve known about the illicit business, they kept their mouths shut and, as usual, closed ranks and let Godfry do what he will. He wanted his drugs back and he wanted the Frenchie to shut the fuck up! But the guy kept on babbling, waving the knife in their faces, he was in Lala-land with the fairies, and ogres were about to devour him. And Godfry was just as dizzy.

A few joggers passing by watched as the pressure mounted, 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! Gobble gobble! Gook gook!” gabbled the Frenchman.

“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 it, cops being masters of mayhem and deceit. To this day his name is whispered ingloriously among 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 slurping at their coffees.

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 organize his own affairs; waking life for him was like a dream in which he tried to wrest control and find direction while a hurricane raged about his 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 quantum particles colliding, scintillating, as if he was experiencing the flashback of a psychedelic hallucination, life-forms rushing by like in a time-lapsed film, the light strobing, darker, fainter, darker, fainter, until the Café Time Machine disappeared and Arthur passed out, too stoned to care anymore.

Before cranky, upright Joe Podesta 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 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 Vitto 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 séance 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 become the accomplished terror 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 waxed ecstatic taking the piss, calling Vitto Mother Theresa or Grandma Moses, mocking his mythic saintliness. He often had Vitto lamenting his victimization 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!” Long before other accomplished cabaret artists used the “Hole in the Wall Theatre” to portray its generic red-light history Arthur had treated the Café as if it were a twisted 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 bent 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 “Splendor in the Arse” starring Arnie Shwartzbugger and Dolly Farton. The bad joke would suck the tizzy old queen in for awhile, mulling over the conjured-up, sordid movie scenarios, then he would suddenly flash that his third leg was being pulled 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 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 gramophone 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 his 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-arsehole under the sun, sat with the mighty and the humble, won a few accolades and many kicks in the arse, and nothing seemed to really faze him anymore. 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 humor. He’d lived through much to become a punk freak and was determined to make subversive use of it, for the sacred cow of celebrity-mad Sydney needing badly to be satirized. Ever the horny satyr he determined to be the satirist to do it. And though its gutters were the toughest to surf, even if it took fifty years, he would make of Sydney a breakfast of champions.

The Man Who Got Trumped.

I performed this story on Friday night 16th March at a gig called The Giant Dwarf  in Redfern, Sydney as part of "Queer Stories - The 78ers Tell of Their Lives." I was accompanied by a junkie guitarist, Paul Vassallo, and I had visuals projected on a screen beside me, some of which are presented here. I dedicated my performance to Jeff St. John who died last week. He was a great soul/blues singer who was born with spina bifida and when we teenagers in mid 1960s Melbourne knew he was coming from Sydney to our club, The Catcher, we were thrilled as he was a great inspiration as well as musician, for he showed us anything was possible if you had heart and guts, even from a wheelchair.

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Growing up I had a grumpy Stalinist grandfather, my mother’s father, who had roof-shaking political arguments with my dad over Communism versus Socialism and the weakness of the Labor Party of which my dad was an avid supporter. After nearly every visit we had to rush from his house in a fury, my dad cursing the old fellow, much to my befuddlement, the political arguments background psycho-babble to my childhood education.

Grandpa had been a larrikin in the early twentieth century. Originating in the 1880s they were an inner-city Melbourne gang that dressed nattily in short black coats with lots of pockets and braids, bell bottomed trousers, pointy-toed boots and broad-rimmed hats. They loved to dance energetic polkas and Irish jigs, and often fought the police, like hoodlums from which today’s rebellious youth evolved. Grandpa went on to run a two-up school during the Great Depression, filling his house with costly object d’art collected from those gamblers who lost but had no money.

Being a very cute blue-eyed child my grandpa spoiled me terribly, always giving me the highly desirous loose change from his pockets. I often fingered his precious bric a brac, staring in fear and wonder at various statues such as one of a leering red devil, soul-tempting Mephistopheles himself. Grandpa asked me to choose which piece I liked the best and I chose a gem-studded, silver Ghengis Khan riding a horse, and the old fellow laughed and exclaimed that I had good taste, and I would inherit all the treasure when he died.

Among the piles of jeweled ornaments was a chipped plaster statue of a bedraggled tramp passed out on a park bench, a pack of playing cards scattered at his feet, with the legend, “the man who got trumped” written on its base. I was fascinated by it and in bewilderment asked my grandpa, "What does it mean? “You’ll find out one day,” the old man wisely assured me.

Around that time, one night while my parents were arguing in the kitchen, I sneaked out to the lounge room and watched on TV a most magical movie, the Korda Brothers 1940 production of “The Thief of Baghdad” starring my henceforth dreamboat companion, the ebullient Indian youth Sabu. As I thrilled to him flying upon a genie’s back up to the high Himalayas to steal an omniscient jewel from an alien godhead’s brow I crossed my heart and swore that one day I too would fly to that mystical temple, have the most fabulous of adventures and achieve wondrous things in my life.

When I grew into a teenager my true nature became more evident, I walked, talked and thought gay, and by 1967 I had come out to all my friends and some of my workmates, but still thought it would be too much of a burden to drop upon my working-class parents who had enough worries. I was seventeen and going through a Mod phase, chasing all the hot bands of the time such as Lobby Lloyd and “The Wild Strawberries”, Max Merritt and “The Meteors”, Billy Thorpe and “The Aztecs”, Gerry Humphries and “The Loved Ones”, “Jeff Saint John and The Id”, “Python Lee Jackson”, “The Chelsea Set” and “The Purple Hearts” in inner-city clubs like The Biting Eye, The Catcher and The Thumping Tum. I was mad for pop culture and rock’n roll, and nothing could sway me from following my rebellious teenage bent.

While I was out dancing all night my mother had been beaten up one last time by my drunken father causing her to flee, back to her parents’ house for succor as there were no women’s refuges in those days. She was a grown woman yet her stern father insisted, if not home every night for dinner, at least she was never go out after nine pm and under these penal-like conditions I visited her diligently. I then ran away from home myself and shared a grungy flat with the first love of my life, a long-haired rock’n roll drummer named Tony. I was quite the dandy, ironically not too dissimilar to the Larrikins of yore, and on visiting my mum I proudly wore my latest Carnaby Street gear, a high-collared blue paisley shirt, striped bell-bottomed trousers, velvet jacket and my long curly hair obscuring my face.

Presenting myself thus at my grandparents’ dinner table caused the old Stalinist to flip out. “My grandson’s grown into a bloody poofter! Look at his disgusting get up! Get out of my house ya little fairy!” He yelled for me to never come back again and slammed the door on my crestfallen face. I never did see the old grump again and I inherited exactly nothing from him, I was disowned and disaffected.

From then on I found life as an obvious homo to be a terrifying, disreputable one, suffering beatings, rapes, insults, poverty, homelessness, harassment, exclusion and bitchiness, from straight society and fellow gays alike. It was hard to keep a job, rent a room, escape the sharp claws of the Law and avoid mental breakdown in the institutions of psychiatry, in fact all the world tried to fuck me, for if you don’t have middle-class support you are left open to the harsh elements. 

THE EASYBEATS.

I did indeed spend years sleeping on park-benches and by the side of the road like a washed-up tramp, a school of hard knocks in which I grew strong. At twenty-one I hit the road, became a dharma bum and hoped to find myself while practicing yoga, meditation and abandoned dancing in India for four years in the early ‘Seventies. I grew into a resilient, determined adult, confident about who I was and what I wanted.

I gambled, I lost, I dared to win, for instance at writing literature, influenced by Jean Genet and Edmond White, where, in the early ‘Eighties, I admitted in popular short story anthologies to the outlaw’s search for sexual gratification at the city’s beats. This compromised any career I might find in the arts where all accolades went to heterosexuals or well behaved, nice gays. At all those gallery receptions and movie premiers, I was looked at askance, the poof who confessed to sucking cocks in dark parks.

Yet I have lived life to the max, refusing to go on my knees to the gods of money, power and fame, instead I appreciated art, creating posters, films, murals, comics and stories. I’ve trekked many times to the high Himalayas and danced ecstatically with freaks by the Arabian Sea, and in Auz in the 1980s I grappled in the mosh-pits in Sydney’s wildest rock clubs such as Frenchs, The Trade Union and Sellinas at Coogee Bay to bands like The Angels, The Saints, The Cramps and Butthole Surfers, and The Divinyls: dancing up close with the musical genius of Chrissie Amphlet, her head-spinning, skirt-lifting highland fling as she growled and yodeled rock soprano sent us punters into a nirvanic swoon.

THE DIVINYLS.

Beyond single-issue identity politics I’ve fought for prisoners rights, Koori rights, women’s rights and, as a ‘78er, for my own liberation as a gay man. Though ignominious I’ve lived my life as if I were “The Thief of Baghdad”, riding a flying carpet, challenging a wicked regime, enthused by finding the light given off by a jewel-studded silver statue of my own creation. Oh, and I got over being trumped.

SABU

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The four 78er story-tellers before me were superlative, each one so funny I near pissed myself laughing but also poignant to the point of tears and heartache. All of them hard acts to follow, I was on last and I was not going to tell any jokes so I was somewhat in trepidation. My tale was hard-arsed drama and the audience was hushed, still, I would like to think transfixed, nary a guffaw was to be heard. I could let this get to me if I wasn't such an experienced showman, I carried on for I simply had a different story and a different way of presenting it, in fact it was all rock'n roll, in style and content. 

I went into a shamanic trance performing my story, almost a dervish whirl as befits its inspiring folkloric content, my arms thrown up in the air, a hot white light seeming to descend upon me as I swayed to the electric guitar. Afterwards I was congratulated by my peers and told I did great, all of which I didn't have a clue as I had entered "the Zone". Just to make sure I didn't get tabs on myself, in the midst of all the back-slapping, a serious-faced young woman approached me, the usual one curmudgeon in the crowd, who always seems to zero in on me, and asked if I didn't think I was racist. I couldn't believe my ears and asked her what she was talking about. I had just finished a tale about getting back-stabbed by the world and here she was trying to get another knife in. I guess she was trying to "trump" me, like no god farting in my face.

She claimed that my mentioning India was me appropriating Indian culture for my own benefit. Was I born in India, did my family come from there, blah, blah, blah. She hadn't seemed to listen to the M.C.s introduction that told of my studies at the Sivananda Jungle University. I repeated that I'd lived in India much of my life, that I studied and practiced yoga and meditation, that I certainly didn't teach yoga, dress as an Indian or call myself Baba Rumballs. I was just a tourist and the tourist industry was one of the biggest employers in India and India definitely encouraged tourists to visit.

She had some axe to grind, a serious young thing playing the racist card as her membership of a cause celebre. "But what about all that "Thief of Baghdad" stuff you went on about, isn't that appropriating Indian culture?" "Hello, Baghdad is in Iraq! The Thief is a Suffi tale from the 1001 Arabian Nights, a collection of inspirational mystic folktales from the Middle East that inflamed my imagination when I was ten years old. Are you telling me a child selfishly appropriated another culture to get a leg up in the world? Anyway, what ever happened to us all sharing World Culture? Should Ravi Shankar not have taught George Harrison to play the sitar? I have Chinese and Koori ancestry, am I not to be inspired by their stories as well as those of the Irish Celts? 

I sweetly smiled at her and said, "I suggest you go watch the Korda Brothers film of "The Thief" and maybe you'll  understand why a poor, working class gay boy was so turned on by it." She had a confused, glum look on her pretty face, mumbling my performance was good as she turned away, and I surmised the dear young serious politico didn't know much, and it was good for my ego to be questioned, if I didn't create a little controversy I'd think something was wrong.

                            www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

Heart Attack Number 7 at Northcott.

On Monday 19^th of February I handed in a complaint to the Housing Department that here on the 2nd of March has still not been dealt with. I asked for an appointment with my building’s client officer and did not get it. I rang in a notice to Maintenance, concerning the leakage of water from a flooded flat above me through my ceiling and into my living room. It dripped into my TV set which was on at the time and just as I tried to lift it away it blew up in my hands, so this is also an ongoing Health and Safety issue. Nobody has come yet to inspect the damage.

I have lived here for 28 years, am 68 years old, and have worked as a Palliative care nurse for much of my career, though I have also contributed to the city’s cultural life as an artist. I have suffered much while living here. My apartment at B02/50 is right on the common path through Northcott and everyone from the Estate plus many from Redfern and Waterloo walk right past my front door, I have no Security door/gate/wall, no concierge or guard ready to help. I’ve had many ne’er-do-wells come to my door at all times of the night and day on some nefarious agenda which I have to repel. I’ve had rocks thrown through my window and I was bashed at my front door about 10 years ago by a drug addict with an iron bar who was urinating against my wall and when I asked him to desist I was attacked in a rage, injured and the police had to be called.

I have seen many "jumper" suicides, one right at my doorstep jumping from the 4^th floor and dying before my very eyes. I was in the middle of the Surry Hills massacre in 1990 when five residents were shot dead, again not far from my front door. I was here the day the police surrounded the building to catch the gay serial killer on the third floor above me whose last victim had his head chopped off and thrown down the garbage chute.

I am surrounded by the neighbors from Hell. In the apartment next to me, whose  front door faces mine, is a ghastly poly-drug abuser who I call Cursula; heroin, methadone, Valium, Zanax, alcohol, are all imbibed by the truckload. She lies unconscious in her manky bed for weeks, nothing can mollify her existential angst. She is an egregious hoarder, so much rubbish is piled into her flat she can't receive her guests, they can't fit amid the putrid garbage so she entertains them by my front door, yakking, squabbling, yahooing till I have to put my head out the door and scream for them to "fuck off!"

Every day she parks more junk from the local dumpsters on my porch and every day I cart it back to the dumpsters. She leaves a slimy mess behind her like some drunken slug, spilled coffee, cigarette butts, junk food packaging, empty booze bottles, cleaning it up daily has me exhausted, I just can't do it anymore.

She's always at my door whining, asking for something,  even if it's just verbal abuse, calling through my door at 3am when I'm trying to sleep, "Toby, are you awake?" or when I have guests so she can join in our conversations, she's driving me fucking bonkers till I hope some serial killer strangles her with a necktie like in Hitchcock's movie "Frenzy". I know this is a shocking incitement of violence towards a woman but it shows to what pathetic, psychotic depths I've sunk to think of such things, obviously not good for my mental health. And don't worry, every day I forgive her and we have a near cat and dog symbiotic relationship, she's the dog.

I stupidly introduced my non-friend Bawl to her as they both needed a fuck. He would've split after 3 days except as a means of hanging onto him she told him she had $30,000 hidden under her mattress which she'd scammed over a few years, (mostly from selling her methadone.) He must've thought, "Good one! I'll be onto that baby!" They fell into a co-dependent symbiosis and proceeded to shoot it all up in 6 months, sometimes 3 heroin hits a day. By the time the money had gone Cursula was pregnant and Bawl reverted to his natural state of being the stolid, toxic male abuser, snarling nasty insults to every one of her pathetic pleas.

"You ugly useless cunt, no wonder I don't want to fuck you! You're a slovenly slut who throws all your rubbish straight to the floor."

"Oh Bawl, why do you have to be so rotten to me? I feed you, run for the drugs for you, try to clean up your mess, if you're so worried about the rubbish on the floor, why don't you clean it up? All you do is sit there fiddling with your guitar like you're god's gift to the planet."

"You fucking piece of shit! I'm sick of looking at your sad sack face. Why don't you do us all a favour and drop dead! I'm fucking off from this shit heap!"

"Before you go can you pay me back that money you owe me? You've bludged off me too long. Where's my money? I want my fucking money!"

Of fuck off ya mole, you'll get nothing from me, I'm out of here. I don't know why I've stayed, you're a lousy fuck!"

I heard it all through her open door, even through the walls, they screamed so loud, it was horrible. One of my girlfriends heard it and swore she'd never look him in the face again. Bawl hid his monstrous toxicity behind a surly, stoic, sullen strong man's silent front, the big bad rock guitarist who nobody dare question as his bulk was intimidating. It all contributed towards Cursula's eventual destruction. While she didn't know whether she was Martha or barfer she allowed another kreepy guy to give her a hotshot and kill her at the age of 47.

 

For the last 4 years the whole building, and those back of us, have suffered from the disturbances of the guy living in flat LG02/50 above me. He verbally, violently abuses everyone constantly whenever he meets them in the grounds or stairway, especially old women who he loves to stand over. He slams his door many times a day, so hard the whole building shakes. He throws dirty tissues from his balcony. But worst of all he plays the same loud, bad music, which we call Russian disco, from speakers placed at his windows to scare the demon birds away, over and over 24/7 so I myself am having temper tantrums all around the city because I’m a nervous wreck and sleep deprived. The very beginning of the first few notes of his music now induces nausea in me. 

The cops have been called fifty times but he acts all innocent like butter wouldn't melt in his pudgy arse, "Who me, I wouldn't do that." As soon as the cops go, up blares the bad music, "The Boys of Summer", Christmas carols or the American National Anthem. Lately it's been Justin Bieber's "Sorry", it's sacharine melody prepping me to be an axe murderer.

Last week he left his taps running and flooded his flat so bad Maintenance had to come and pump it out, not before it seeped through the thick concrete of my ceiling. And my TV was ruined and I bet there will be no compensation. I’m a Pensioner, poor, and now I sit without even the comfort of a television. The creep often runs around the grounds with his shorts down around his knees and we all have to see his ugly arse, buttocks like two soggy suet puddings wobbling... uggghhh, it makes me sick thinking about it!

The Housing Department has a Duty of Care for all the residents, including myself, not just one rotten apple who is spoiling it for everyone. I’m 68 and I think he will give me my 7th heart attack. I want an appointment with my Client Officer to talk about a solution to my dilemma, if there is one. (I think of Richard Widmark giggling maniacally as he pushed the old lady in a wheelchair down the long flight of stairs: that would make me happy, Birdbrain screaming as he is squashed under an oncoming pig van. I've put in this complaint twice and, after three weeks, nobody has yet come to deal with the problem. 

I sent this Statement of Living Conditions at Northcott Estate to every person who is the Manager at every level of the Housing Dept Bureaucracy, to the Ombudsman, to the Lord Mayor’s Office, to the Health Dept to see if someone will lend me succour. Nobody replied except, after a month, my "client officer" who commiserated but could do little except have a word with the nut-job, for the bastard is under the protection of the Mental Health Department. What a joke! In the meantime I'm writing, painting, keeping the wolves from my door, and trying not to have another heart attack.

                                                   

                            

Dorian Gray On My Facebook Wall.

"Smart phone, smart phone, on my wall,
who's the fairest of them all?"
"Not you, you fucking narcissistic arsehole!"

Sorry folks, I've been away for quite awhile, taking a break, leaving my creative field fallow, hoping for regrowth. I went to India as I usually do, to get away from my mundane Sydney existence, experience the exotic, and risk life and limb to have some out of control adventure. And I did, we had a car crash zooming around the narrow roads of the Himalayan foothills, a drunken fuckwit in a large SUV jeep, taking up the whole narrow road, sped around a bend and slammed straight into us. For 3 seconds I thought it was all over, dead at last, for our tiny car got pushed to the edge of the precipice and only the inertia of my mate braking hard and turning the wheels inwards stopped us going over.

But I aged ten years in the process, or maybe I simply have been ignoring the mirror for a long time and believing the delusion that I'll live forever and I can do the same things I've done since I was 25. Yet I'm getting close to 70 and when those 20 something millennials clap eyes on me they turn away disinterested, as if old age is contagious and they might catch it from me. No more sitting at the feet of the old and wise to learn of life's long hard lessons as I did in my youth. The 1960s did have some cool things going for it other than the drugs and the rock'n'roll, such as sharing and respect for the aged; I was apprentice to several old Masters, in yoga and art and learned much that helped me throughout my rambunctious life. Lets face it, we must've done something right to survive all the shit that has gone down since.

My mate's poor wrecked car, which he wants me to pay for!!!

 

Oh how I love the Himalayas, cruising around and around at high speeds, I admit it's an extreme sport  but worth the risk. The natural splendours, the dangerous thrills and always something new to discover, such as the huge Hanuman Temple I was taken to. My Indian friends' prayers to the monkey god must've paid off as none of us were injured in the crash, the girl in the backseat only getting a slight concussion. I was resigned to spending the night on the chilly side of the road except my mate changed the shredded wheel and tore off the ripped-up front sheet-metal so that we were able to slowly chug chug back down the mountain to Rishikesh.

I survived India with no safety rails, made it to Delhi airport with $3 in my pocket, enough for a cup of coffee at MacDonalds. And here in Sydney I'm destitute. A reader of my Blogs must've noticed by now that I've been advertising my novel, Vagabond Freak, on every page, but for all that I've now had 60,000 readers I've not had one sale of the paperback or e-book version of it, not in the whole wide world, via Amazon, though I seem to have a readership in France, Germany, Russia and America! 

I suspect Amazon is ripping off most of my royalties, under-reporting the sales, as I've seen that proof of sales from relatives and friends don't match the sales charts Amazon cons me with. Bozo, the Amazon billionaire, seems to have a team of spin doctors paid to bullshit me that my family and friends have been lying to me!!! They assure us suss complainers that the company gets audited every year: how could they audit a zillion transactions and as if THEY couldn't rig it anyway! What a bastard the Bozo guy is, to rip off his suppliers and everybody else. Why? Surely being heralded as the best boss ever would be worth far more than a few extra billion dollars?

(Is it that the cool cats of the world hate Amazon so much they refuse to buy anything from the bastards, monopolists, polluters and slave drivers that they are, and that's the reason there's been no sales of my book globally? What to do, nobody has put me onto an alternative online print-on-demand publisher which doesn't censor or edit any independents. Amazon is an easy platform to access, and ships it to your door reasonably fast.)

I've Googled it and discovered other independent writers also have complained they've been ripped off, (a few sycophants have stated they haven't, they got their fair dues, so it must be us whingers who are deluded); it seems this is how Bozo got his $100,000,000,000, ripping off his suppliers!!! I certainly can never prove how many strangers around the world have bought my book, I'm totally reliant on Amazon being honest. And under corporate capitalism, is commercial honesty possible? America has exploited, raped and plundered the planet for a hundred years and the pace of daylight robbery has picked up egregiously under Trump. As Brad Pitt says at the end of "Killing Them Softly", "America is not a country, it's a business, now give me my fucking money!!"

Troma of New York ripped me off of my film royalties for "Virgin Beasts", (7 years of slave-work) and now Amazon looks like they are ripping me off of all my hard work in writing the book, (30 years of rewrites.) I'm not going to let this shit stop me, I'm nearly finished with my second novel,"Punk Outsider" in my trilogy "The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cat" and somehow I'll publish it in a few months, but not on Amazon. I'm compulsive and passionate enough to keep going even though I'm constantly aware of the position of the artist in Australia, pathetically undervalued and class-ridden crushed. In Europe or America I might've made a living from talent and perseverance and be fetching good prices for my work. Here in Auz I'm penniless, kicked in the arse and told to "exit through the toilet." Oh yeah, I am  easily ripped off by American companies as I'm a hobo homo from way down under with no connections and wherewithal. There's possibly been a class-action against Amazon by independent publishers who are sure they've been ripped off but I am not in the know to figure out what's going on.

Obviously I'm quite fucked up and deranged over my existential predicament. Shocking world events reduce my sorrows to zero importance yet I exist at the center of my universe so I can't help bitching about how the world treats me. I'm a flaky loser, I admit, I don't even have an Australian Business Number to chase work and make sure I get paid for it as I have never had the yuppie ambition to run a plastic and stainless steel commercial-arts office. I guess I got what I asked for, sweet fuck all. The myth of the romantic artist certainly went out the window with Van Gogh's ear.

                       www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

Cry Baby.

It's true, I admit it, I'm nothing but a cry baby, always whinging about some perceived slight, as if the universe were centered around me, when in fact the world is burning and I don't amount to a pile of cat-shit. One foolishness I have to redress is my umbrage towards the Sydney City Council; I've had a few blues with the Lady Mayoress because one of my paintings got rejected or my arse got kicked on the Town Hall steps. I guess it's because I'm paranoid, too long crushed at the bottom of an unjust world, and I indulge in too much pot smoking, I'm like a ragged alley-cat hissing at monsters imagined in the moon's shadow projected between flying storm clouds.

Anyway, I hallucinated THEY had bricked into the wall, like Poe's black cat, my Northcott painting as too horrible. I am never to be seen by the public, as if I were Dorian Gray. THEY only bought it because a friend took up a petition as to it's historical/folkloric importance, "the travails of life in high-rise social housing" and as I feel I'm persona non grata I figured it would never actually be shown. Now, after some investigation, I'm told THEY exhibited it at Customs House down at Circular Quay earlier this year, and in September it will be displayed in the Lower Town Hall in some extravaganza called "175 Years of the Council's Service to Sydney." And so this mangy poofy cat is quite chuffed, and mollified, for a few brief days till some other trespass catches my ire.

21Years Under Northcott - 2012 - acrylic on canvas.

I'm kind of embarrassed about all the bullshit I write about getting stepped on in the race to the top of the heap, though I hope to make the travail of the working class artist one of my major subtexts; it must also be obvious I use Blogging not just to tell wild stories but to get entangled hairs out of my cake-hole, otherwise I choke on them, stupidities though they are. I do tell my truth, creating my own cinema verite via urban folklore, as nobodies don't ever get to tell their side of the story in the mainstream, and thus I can give reality checks to my phantom listeners. I'd like my carping to come across as funny satire rather than vitriolic insults. I'm going to delete most of these Blogs soon as they will be republished in books, only a few whines left, nobody gives a damn, life is more fucked for many more people than me, I'm happy I got to express myself at all.

Life's not too bad for me, I'm neither in the absolute gutter, filthy and mad, nor am I feted by high society, with money pouring out of my ears. I walk the middle path, my art occasionally surfaces and gets an overwhelming laudatory response, not bad for a guy who got rejected from art school, never enters any of the classy competitions or gets invited anywhere.

I'm a happy recluse in my social housing dungeon. Northcott has been a space where I am mostly free to create without any stand-over merchants, conducive to my democratic freedom of speech, with many highs and sometimes lashings of pain. Mostly it has settled down here. ICE addicts still run amok at night but we oldies don't venture out when the zombies are at large. I've got Cursula next door under control, every day she dumps piles of garbage from the dumpster by my front door and every day I cart it back to the bins. She has her eighteen year old son living with her nowadays which has grounded her a bit, and he has turned out the opposite of her, upright, sensible, polite, hardworking, determined to avoid her wastrel lifestyle.

Birdbrain upstairs still plays the same bad music over and over but he has it turned down, only when he's in a super manic mood does the American national anthem or corny Christmas carols get blasted through a thousand brains on edge, and we just grate our teeth till he calms down. Lately it's been Justin Bieber's "Sorry" played a thousand times over till we're spewing in existential depression but that's how life is, full of sorrow.

I lost the spirit to paint for the last three years as the "art world" is corrupt, ignorant, empty, hostage to money, fame and elitism. But a show for the '78ers is coming up in 2018 for the 40th anniversary of the Sydney LGBQTI Mardi Gras and I'm one of those original protesters from 1978 who got punched up in the riot way back then. So I've decided to contribute a new work which I'm working on now and it will be fun to splash the paint about upon one of my feisty drawings, ugly pigs, sweet poofs and beautiful dykes in a whirling heap of fists and boots and angry faces. 

Then it's back to tweaking the second volume in my trilogy, "The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cat" and then self-publishing it. I'm heading towards 70 and about to realize my life's goals and for a poor boy from the Olympic Village, West Heidelberg, Melbourne, strung out in the lower echelons of alien Sydney, that's pretty fucking cool.

"Deadbeat Realism in the Queer Underworld"

www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates

If you like my stories please consider buying my book. I have given my writing away for free for 10 years, with no advertising, but starved in my garret while I did so, and now I'm asking for support.