South.

To be aware of all that is around me with crystal clear clarity is a real clanger at eight in the morning.I suppose I should suck it up and get shit done that is usually off limits to me due to the nocturnal sleeping pattens of a life time.

Laundry has been tendered,room is getting cleaned in small spurts and here I lie on my eiderdown choked white cloud of a bed in Mickey Mouse hot pants and a distressed Rage Against The Machine tee shirt circa ’95.The kids next door wail demands at their mother like Islamic fundamentalists on a sugar binged prayer rota.The pool cleaner sucks and gurgles ominously in the murky green depths and I don’t listen to music when I know it will harm me.

Hence a month long ban on The Descendants,Johnny Thunders,Trash Talk and Thin Lizzy.These are the sonic levers that edge  under psychic scabs that would best be left alone at present.Take my crooked word for it.

I spent Saturday night on the door as always being rude and getting paid handsomely for it.I quizzed one gurning group of try-hards with my usual parry of  “What is your favorite Ramones song?”  The gaggle looked blank and I was about to launch into a profanity laden tirade when a fey young faggot with Oscar Wilde’s hair piped up from the back of the pack “53rd and 3rd” he simpered timidly and was swept up in my tattooed arms as I hooted with delight.He looked as if he was going to pass out while his wannabe mates looked on aghast ,addled and utterly mystified.

“YOU!” I bellowed at the pack “SHOULD PAY DOUBLE!!!” They shrank back into the window of the tattoo shop next door.”But you darling” I cooed to the butt loving punk nestled quite happily beneath my tattooed wing “Are getting in for free” .I threw a look of pure malevolent thunder back at the infidels who ceased muttering and dared not make another peep.That shut ’em up. As I walked my trinket to the door he stood on tip toe and beckoned me forward to place the lightest butterfly fart of a  kiss on my spectacularly high-lit cheek bone.”I love Dee Dee the most” he whispered before scampering down the stairs.I swooned ever so briefly in his sodomy searching wake.

Gathering myself I got back to work.

Bless.

I also yelled at an emo in a Maiden Tee and a prat in a Ramones number.Wankers.

Due to the trains being down I bartered with an exhausted fat Indian cab driver smelling rather strongly of saffron and sleepless indignation to take me home for 5o dollars.He agreed and proceeded to tell me of  Madras in India and all I could see in my tired minds eye were ancient sadus clad in golf shorts praying to nine irons.Insomnia kept me up all day and I finally passed out at five in the afternoon which has brought me all the way around the clock almost twice and to being awake during civilian hours.

I have lost nine hated pounds due to heavy nocturnal gym abuse and a healthy dose of semi starvation.My hips are heading out of hibernation at long last.Not bikini ready by a long shot but no longer quite so suicidal over my corpse ,but Elvis only knows,there are days…so there you have it.Miss Ash has told me that we shoot in January come hell or high water.So that is that.There is also a tasty movie role on the horizon which will call for maximum physical fitness and being that I have slid so far the climb back will be long and difficult.Serves me right.Going to aim for 9% body fat.Both awesome and fearful to behold.

I am fending off the well meaning.But here is where I confess and rightfully so,I am guilty of what I hate in others. I make myself hard to love.I fired off a line into the trenches of Hollywood asking why the reciprocant made it so hard for the ones who desire to do so,(ie;moi.)  to love him.I then retreated into the quagmire of my inbox and saw all the well meaning missives from those who try desperately hard to hold on to me while I am determined in nothing in life anymore but to fade away.

Twisted ain’t it?

Bio-mother wants to meet up for coffee.I don’t.My dear friend Miss L of the LBC asks me “When are you coming home?” meaning my lost LA. Diamond Lil telling me tales.And Saint Tina informs me with a voice filled with granite and angry wasps “People will give up” and in a pastel whisper on the long distance line I sigh by way of reply “Good”

And Elvis help me but I know in what is left of my heart that I mean it.

And I wonder why I can’t love myself and I know the answers.I have always known.

Strange things happen on my patch of pavement come Saturday night….I live in my head and in the dark.People think that I am gregarious and brilliant.Ho,ho,ho.Smoke and mirrors.Great make up.I snigger thinking of how I strip that persona off and leave it like spiderweb shroud on platform 23 when the night is done and I have been paid.For money.I am the finest actress you will never know.I get on the train spent and retreat back into myself ,communicating with my memories and my faults.

There are a few who tolerate me and one of them is my boss,Mr G. I met him a long time ago,dangerously under-aged and tempered by violence he sensed a vulnerability and closed ranks around me.I was protected and pandered to.I was a mascot and a door kicker.When I think of how it could have ended for me at such a tender age on such cruel streets I know that in a lot of ways I owe him my life.We always pick up where we leave off. No questions asked.

After returning from Canada ,desperately sick,broke and afraid waiting to get into hospital,he swooped down in one of his long line of huge high powered cars that attract speeding tickets from envious pigs and girls like bees to honey  and promptly sequestered me into a red room above a shop in Enmore. I worked for him in lieu of rent and hoped that I was not going to die.He gave me back enough self respect to keep writing and meandering down the left hand path.

Club 77 was awash in GHB and beer.The Bang Gang ruled the roost and we were packed to the rafters every drug addled week.It was a licence to print money and we took all we could,laughing at the pastel clad hipsters that we were fleecing all the way to the bank.I wore a bandanna pulled low like Mike Muir to cover the tumors sprouting from my ears that itched and stank like rancid meat as they rotted on my head and corroded my confidence.Matted dreadlocks swept the length of my spine and converse clad my fast  feet.I worked the bar with a seven foot cross dresser  named Dave with a shock of blonde hair and carried a knife in my belt.The barback had a mohawk and backed me in every fight I got into eyes flaring and fists flying.

I have an uncanny nack of forgetting who I am and what I have done.There was a young rock inclined bar girl who would observe me with huge eyes,study.So young you could still smell the tit milk on her.Nice kid.I wrote another album full of secret messages and slept my days away and she drank me in,me unobservant and locked in the war against my fast failing corpse.She played in a band while I tried to forget that I did as well, due to the hatred that festered in my gut for the  drunk guitarist I was stuck with and despised.I called her princess and life,as it does, moved on.

She came back to the bar on Saturday night.Five years gone after playing a show with her band.Told me things that I had said that I could not remember, we are so caviler are we not?.I carry words of people who have forgotten that I exist in the same way.She sent a message home with my big brother when he was on tour in Adelaide.It was bocoo sweet. I don’t know how I can mean anything to anyone but there you have it.She told me that she has followed everything that I have done,read and listened to it all and that I was her hero.

“And here I am ,still working in a bar” I laughed like a drain. She pretended not to hear me and thanked me again.

For what? Being a fuck up in public?

I gave her a hug and her eyes looked wet.A bunch of our mutual friends came and swept her away.I stood there and wondering what it all means.Apparently the last thing I said to her before Germany beckoned and spirited  me away was “I will see you on the road.”

“I did it Michele!”

“SO you did….” I replied and the night and her band swallowed her.

And I though of thanking Mr Rollins in much the same way after we watched The Beasts of Bourbon deliver sonic gospel in the forty degree heat.Hanging out with Dimebag and him telling me I could rule the world as I lay on the floor chain smoking Marlboro’s and he sat on his bed drinking beer before sound check.Layne’s copy of “The Prophet” tucked snug beneath my pillow in the cold Melbourne winter kicking my frozen ass in the mid 90’s a million fucking years ago unaware that my drummer was about to steal every cent I had made and saved to get our band to America and spend it on some fat harridan in Europe.My dead friends,my lost friends to time.The asides that we treasure,that sustain.The backstage passes and load ins.

The shows I roared though barefoot that I thought wanted me dead.

And somehow,by way of all it’s parts,shallow victories and staggering losses, it’s a life.

I hold too much stock in the past.I dwell there and am then shocked to find that a decade had slid by and I am a foot note.I keep the flame,always happier in my own company.To wit….

I laughed like I hyena when I opened the magazine that I had found crumpled and forgotten on the floor of the train and saw his wedding laid out for all to see.Peeling off my high heels in the empty carriage I flexed and cracked my long feet and hunkered down for the journey,both home to the suburbs and to the past.So I go back into the ether….he was slick,no doubt.Practiced in his shallow slight of hand.A poser to be sure.A private schoolboy from the north shore with a fast line and a host of punk rock pretension.I watched him woo a minimally  talented,over processed friend of mine while claiming to be separated from his hard faced wife.

She told me tales of getting nailed in the back of his range rover ,parked down dark twisted streets,her head banging against the booster seat in the back seat.Oh romance! Ah folly! Captivated by this sordid suburban seduction,I ran into him at a long forgotten show at the Annandale and dressed like a boy,my hair hidden under a black beanie I held him spell bound while all the make up plastered rockabilly girls spat and spluttered in my wake.

Sherazade of pop culture with a machine gun mouth.He was spellbound and I toyed with him.

He wrote to me in blood.A necklace slipped beneath my door.Smitten.

We made out on a park bench once and proceed to torture each other with e-mails.Being adored for my brain was the salve that I needed.The physical paled and was soon forgotten.I called him from fleabag motels on tour and chuckled at his desire.I held myself away from it all.It floundered as such things do and I filed it away.

So  a daunting decade on from said disastrous debacle, I read the gushing tale in lurid color.I wonder how long ago wife number one was left in the dust? I hope he doesn’t cheat on this one. Leopard and spots though right? But today buoyed with sleep and fresh laundry I’m gonna hold out a little hope for the dead dreamer within.She looks quite sweet,a touch simple but sweet.She would have to be.Something has to make up for such lacklustre bedroom skills and lack of length if the tales I heard from his ex conquests are true.I chortle and slide the magazine out the window speeding away from Kingsgrove station.It pinwheels back into the darkness.I sigh and settle down to a heap of AC/DC blasting from the stolen I pod that my felonious lost love programed for me on Beachwood so long ago.

I will continue to hide myself in plain sight.George the limo driver assured me as I sat on the end of the bar surveying the end of the night,that if I ever needed a car to call him.Glen sidled up and gave me the fifty dollar handshake and a dry peck on the cheek.My 19 year old bar-boy Povy hands me my cranberry juice with a grin and all is well.

My veneer is alluring and misleading but I need it so I can walk out the door.I have been asked out twice in as many weeks and it has disturbed me greatly as I see my self as dead behind the ribs and below the belt.I am admittedly graceless in my refusals,ever so sorry.I say that I am celibate and broken hearted and I don’t see it changing anytime in the future.Poor guys were just asking me out for dinner.The second one even admitted to me “Your not the kind of girl that I am usually drawn too”.

I answered that I am not the kind of girl that anyone should be drawn to.He sees that I am being honest and knows that it is not some kind of flirtatious challenge being thrown like a gauntlet into some kind of carnal ring,thank Elvis, and retreats.Povy tells me that I am a comic book heroine come to life as I swish up the stairs cleavage barred in a lime Green bra beneath one of my skin tight customized jackets,huge blue contact lenses shining like stolen sapphires from under the sultry shade of three sets of ink black lashes.Skintight ,I smile and drop a slow wink over my shoulder and undulate away.He is delighted.

Back to the velvet ropes.For the next six hours I decide your fate.Be nice kids.I hand out lollipops and insults.I get paid for this.

Then’ post shower and locked in my dark room I put her in a box for another week,sleep,wake up and go back to the gym.

Quite.In plain sight.

Another six pounds and I get another tattoo.A show in Wollongong with Blackie this Friday.Chris Haskett is home soon and I can’t wait to play with them both.The Punk rock Highwaymen? Cool. I think that I will be Waylon Jennings to Blackie’s Johnny Cash and Chris’s Willie Nelson.I always get a charge around Chris. The countless times I drowned in his work with The Rollins Band through my still persisting misspent youth.( Shut up.). He is a charming and sweet man and it will be a honor to share the stage with him.

I know how lucky I am.

Finally got my hands on The Hard ons single I sang on. Which gets me to thinking about when they supported the Foo Fighters and Dave watched me make a fool of myself at sound check. Chatting with him in the glassed in greenroom after the show was surreal.I can’t remember what we spoke about but till my dying day I will never forget what he said with a grin before leaving “You have got to meet my friend Nick…” “Who?” I thought and straighted up my white Stetson barely believing I was getting to play with my friends in such  hallowed company.

Just trash from the south.The 2615….