Darlinghurst Road Read online

  Darlinghurst Road

  By

  T.C. Doust

  Author Edition

  Cover photo: Flickr: gematrium

  Author Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright 2012 by T.C. Doust

  A Word From The Author

  This book will not appeal to everyone and the more prudish reader should probably look away now. It's a journey through the streets of a red light district after dark complete with sex, drugs, criminals & violence. On these pages, you will find some funny stories, some real strange ones and some that are so tragic that they will break your heart but they deserve to be told.

  When it comes to those stories of sadness, it is my hope that when they are read, their names will be seen, not just as a roll call of those who suffered but as real people. Because of the life they led, a number of people mentioned in this book are now dead but their ghosts remain in the memories of people like me and now, I give them to you.

  From The Cradle To The Cross

  I was born to parents who seemed a little unsure if they wanted children. My mother was thirty nine when she became pregnant with her first and only child and many years later, in a moment of alcohol soaked honesty, my father confessed that my conception had not been part of their longer term plans. An accident I may have been but they welcomed me into their life and my early memories are fond ones.

  It was Australia in the nineteen sixties and the world back then was a very different place to what it is today. Children enjoyed a freedom of movement that would make a modern parent cringe. It was normal to see kids playing in the street or coming back alone from a trip to the store and for most Australian kids, their neighborhood was a safe place.

  Dad was a heavy drinker and not all that big on stable employment so we moved around a lot when I was a kid. There were some lean times that I remember but in spite of his restless nature, there was always food on the table and a roof over our head.

  My mother was a warm, kind-hearted woman who had known great hardship. She was born in 1928 and due to circumstances beyond her control, grew up in the cold surroundings of a church run orphanage. It was a harsh world for orphans back then and like many other kids, she suffered immensely at the hands of people who had no business being around children. My mother’s parents were small-time farmers, dirt poor and struggling to make ends meet in the shattered economy of the Great Depression. When things got really bad, somebody called the Welfare Department and my mother and her siblings were taken from their home by the authorities. She never saw her parents again.

  I was around nine or so when my mother started getting sick. She had developed a serious heart condition and back in the seventies, doctors didn't have a lot in the way of answers for her. Around this time, my grandmother passed away and when we went to live with my grandfather, probably the most stressful two years of my mother's life began. My father’s version of events was that he had been blackmailed with the words: “A son who doesn't look after his father in his old age probably shouldn't expect anything in his will.”

  Whatever was actually said, it doesn't really matter because the result was the same. We moved in with my grandfather and my Mother became the domestic servant that he had lost when my grandmother died. The resentment was obvious and my father had developed such an open hatred of the man he called “the miserable old bastard” that the two men fought constantly. Sometimes it escalated to the point of them getting physical... yet still we stayed.

  Over a period of time, my mother deteriorated to the point of regular hospitalizations. It was during her final trip to hospital that I had my last moments with her. I clearly remember the day she died. I was holding her hand, talking about how she would be out of hospital in a few days. During that conversation, a sudden stroke took her life. I remember walking back to her hospital room with dad to collect her things after he met with the doctor. She was gone, the room had been cleaned, the bed had been carefully made. On the bed sat a hospital issue brown paper bag with her name on it. Less than an hour after my mother died in their hospital, it was as though she never existed.

  I was eleven when I lost my mother and it was a pivotal moment in my life because Dad had absolutely no idea what to do with me. Without my mother's stabilizing influence, what was left of the family fell apart. By the time I reached the age of thirteen, I'd had enough and I needed to escape.

  My grandfather had recently passed away and that brought a lot of changes. Dad had sold the old man's house to the first buyer that he could find, quit his job and was living large on the cash.

  School was a joke for me and I became a regular truant. When he was drunk or with a girlfriend and didn't want me around, dad would give me money to go to the movies.

  Instead of the cinema, I used the time and the money to discover the wider world of the inner city streets of Sydney. One of my adventures took me to a place called Kings Cross and the attraction was immediate.

  The name Kings Cross may sound regal and I guess for some, it was like a kind of private royal kingdom: a magical place where their money could buy soft bodies, hard drugs and every kind of excess known to the hedonistic. It was like a strange sort of parallel universe and the seedy red-light district had an atmosphere all its own. The neon signs, the characters that walked the streets and of course, the hookers. Kings Cross grabbed me and held on tight.

  The Streets Of Sydney

  Sydney is one of those cities that has always managed to walk that fine line between old and new. The skyline is dominated by modern buildings but in some of the inner city back streets, you can still find buildings that go back centuries. Kings Cross has always been known as a bad area and when organized crime started to take root in Australia, The Cross was where it all began. Police corruption was rife, illegal gambling and prostitution flourished. In spite of its reputation or maybe because of it, night owls flocked to the notorious Kings Cross with its strip clubs and seedy bars that were open twenty-four hours a day to receive them.

  The best way to see Kings Cross is on foot. It's not too far from the central business district of downtown Sydney so if you're feeling fit, find William Street and then head up the hill. As you walk, you'll see that things start to thin out for a few blocks and then start to get busy again but with a different pace. Look straight ahead, that huge neon billboard up ahead is the famous Coca Cola advertising sign that has marked the entrance to The Cross for as long as I can remember.

  If the sun has already gone down when you arrive, you might start to notice the girls. The section of William Street that you are walking past is a popular beat for street walkers, female prostitutes on the right side of the road and if you look closely, on the left in the shadows near the Bus Stop, is a favorite haunt for transsexual prostitutes. At the Coke sign, William Street ends in a tee-junction and you have the option of either turning left or right onto Darlinghurst Road. A turn to your left will take you along the Darlinghurst Road strip, long considered the main entertainment area of Kings Cross with its strip clubs, bars and hookers galore. At the end is the El Alamein Fountain with its small park where you will often find casual prostitutes and drug dealers.

  From the Coke sign, a right turn instead will find you walking along the other, more sedate end of Darlinghurst Road.

  If you continue down that way, past the old Fire Station an
d the needle vending machine, you'll start to see an old brick wall on your right. The wall was built in 1840 and is part of the original Darlinghurst Jail. The prison is no longer in use but the wall still is. This section of Darlinghurst Road is the beat for male prostitutes, the so called Wall Boys. Take a few more steps and you'll find yourself in Oxford Street, the heart of Sydney's gay district. There are many other side streets but combined with these main thoroughfares, they make up the general area of Kings Cross. Over the last two hundred years, very little has changed. Kings Cross is still a bad area and unless you're looking for sex, drugs or trouble, then I would strongly recommend giving it a wide berth after dark.

  For me as a kid though, I saw none of these dangers. As evening shadows descended on the outside world and the city workers headed home, Kings Cross leisurely came to life. One by one the girls would appear at their spot as though the day just gone was pure imagination and the world really consisted of one, long, endless night. It was like nothing that I had ever known and it drew me like a magnet.

  The Point Of No Return

  I was only thirteen but I considered myself a man of the world. Times had changed at home, dad had a new girlfriend and I'd had enough. There was no big argument or cataclysmic event that I can recall. Psychologically, I had progressed to the point where I could no longer live this dual life of child by day and adult by night. On the days that I bothered to turn up for class, it was evident that I had no interest in school and school had no interest in me. I packed a few things one night and walked until I found the highway where I stuck out my thumb.

  For just over a year, I hitched my way around the east coast of Australia and then wandered inland. I had no destination so I just drifted for a while, living on my wits and living each day like there was no tomorrow. My thumb eventually took me back to Sydney where I looked up the old man. To my surprise, he seemed happy to see me so, having nowhere else to go, I moved in with dad and his girlfriend Maureen.

  I was only fourteen so dad decided to put me back in school and I was not impressed. At fifteen, I could leave school if I had a job and that became my goal. I left school on my birthday and started work a few days later.

  It didn’t last long because even though I was working in a warehouse during the day, a considerable amount of my night hours were spent hanging around The Cross. I started to form relationships with those around me and I was quickly becoming one of the many characters that blended to make the cocktail of The Cross. One day, tired of lifting boxes for a living and after very little thought, I quit the job and moved permanently to the place where I belonged.

  The Life

  In her fifties when I knew her, Mandy managed a local brothel and put me to work doing odd jobs around the place at night. Mandy took a liking to me and I seemed to fit in well so it wasn't long before it became full-time. From cleaning the rooms to fixing a leaking tap, whatever needed doing, I did it. I saw a few things that I probably shouldn't have from time to time but she trusted me to keep quiet and I always did.

  As it was with many illegal operations around The Cross at the time, Mandy had no stake in the business that she operated. Mandy was the face of the business to the customers, the girls and the outside world but the reality was that she was simply an employee who kept up the illusion by running the place as though it were her own. The real owner was a man named Harold, patriarch of an old organized crime family and a man who liked to remain in the background wherever possible.

  Harold was an old dinosaur still living in the fifties and his standard approach to business was that every man is bribable. In the glory days of Sydney organized crime, Harold had been a pretty big player but now in his seventies, the march of time was catching up fast. Although Harold still had a lot of business interests around The Cross, his influence was fading. To add to his problems, Harold's son Marc had recently returned from England and the two of them were starting to do battle behind the scenes.

  For the most part, I had nothing to do with the money side of the business but from what little I did see, the amount of money that passed through the place was amazing. It was literally moved from A to B in paper bags by men just walking through the inner city streets from one business to the next. Known around The Cross as Bagmen, these men would do the rounds, collecting the daily takings and carrying around thousands of dollars as though it were nothing. A legitimate business takes their profits to the bank, criminals shove it under the proverbial mattress. As would happen sometimes, one day the Bagman didn’t turn up so I was handed a paper bag full of cash and dispatched with a great nervousness on Mandy’s part. It was delivered and that became an occasional part of the job from then on.

  There was never any temptation to steal because I was part of The Life and even if there was, you don’t crap in your own nest. Had I have stolen then yes, there may have been consequences but only if I stayed around to face them. It had happened before and unlike in the movies, no one was really too worried by a few grand taking a walk. For men like Harold, it was simply part of doing business around The Cross and little more than a minor annoyance. Obviously, it was different if the theft was some sort of personal dig directed at someone but it was very difficult to make things personal with people who honestly didn’t care if you lived or died so long as you kept making money for them.

  The Shadow

  We called him The Shadow because he would appear out of nowhere. One moment he would be sitting on his stool near the door and the next, he would be standing beside you. A big man, heavy-built and with a shaved head, he had tattoos covering, what appeared to be, every inch of his body including his face. When trouble would start, seeing that tattooed face coming at you must have been a pretty intimidating sight to a trouble-maker. The Shadow really didn't have to say much, the visual usually did the job and he would walk up to them with an angry look and say just one word: “LEAVE!” One of his favorite expressions was “listen, you need to settle down and be a good boy because if you don't be a good boy... you're going to be a very fucking sore boy!”

  It wasn't all about appearances with The Shadow though, his job was security and if it came down to a problem with a drunken sailor or some smart guy with an aggressive streak then he was the man you wanted on the door. The Shadow was a serious heavyweight who could crack skulls every time he threw a punch and once he started, it was only over when his opponent was unconscious.

  One night, a girl screamed and The Shadow appeared at her door. She was on the bed holding her face and went to get up when the guy punched her in the face a second time. As she slumped back on the bed, her attacker pulled a knife and said to The Shadow with menace, “get out of my fucking way or I'll kill you.” The man had two friends with him and they both came running when they heard the drama.

  Bolstered by the arrival of his backup and looking to fight his way out, the guy threw a punch at the tattooed face and it was on. The Shadow took them apart one at a time and by the time he got to the third man, the guy was so scared he literally wet himself. As it ran down his leg he begged: “Please, let me go, I didn't do anything, please.” The Shadow said “listen fucker, if your friends knew how to fight, I'd be on the ground and you'd be right beside them kicking the shit out of me, you and your buddies came in here looking for a fight so don't cry about it now you got one.” The big tattooed fist slammed into his face and split it open like a watermelon.

  Lenny And His Folks

  Lenny was another bouncer at Mandys and a real nice guy. The Shadow had been working as a heavy in strip clubs and brothels for most of his adult life but Lenny was a country boy who had ended up in Sydney, drifting into the job at Mandys more because he was broke than for any other reason.

  Lenny couldn't bring himself to tell his parents where he worked and made up all sorts of fiction to pacify them when they would ask about his life in the big city. It came to an end one day when his parents decided to make the trip to Sydney for a visit. It was easy lying on paper or in the occasional phone cal
l but once they were there in person, it was a different story. Lenny took a week off, booked into a hotel and told them that, unfortunately, he was in the process of moving house and because of a mix up with the dates, he had a week to wait before he could move in.

  They bought the story and Lenny showed them the town, carefully avoiding his real home of Kings Cross. It was not long after they returned to their little country town that Lenny quit. His reason was that if, by some chance the place was raided and he was arrested, it would break his Mother's heart. The chances of that were slim of course because Mandy was protected but at the end of the day, he had to look after his own interests and that meant moving on.

  Sharon: A Small Battle In A Much Larger War

  Drugs are as much a part of The Cross as the prostitution and just as easily obtainable. Mandy fought a constant battle to keep the drugs outside the door but it was The Cross and there are some things that you just can't fight. It wouldn't take long for Mandy to figure out if a girl was using and it was something that she just wouldn't tolerate.

  That policy made for a high turnover considering how common drugs were in the business but Mandy didn't seem to mind. Mandys was not a high class escort agency, it was a low end brothel in a back street of Kings Cross that catered to drunken sailors and assorted other late night bargain hunters. The girls that worked in this environment were mainly street walkers who had decided to move up in the world, probably not realizing at first, just how slightly they were actually moving up. That was the reason why it was so hard to keep out the drugs; when the street girls came in, the drugs did too.

  Sharon was an addict who managed to keep it hidden long enough to overdose. One of the other girls found her sitting on the toilet, she was still alive and Mandy was furious. Lenny was told to drive her to the hospital and leave her there which he presumably did. Several days later, another girl was found injecting in the same bathroom. Some people have the worst possible timing and only a few hours after that last incident, Sharon's dealer came looking for her. The Shadow was working that night and Mandy had the guy thrown out pretty hard with a warning not to come back. As I recall, he didn’t return to argue.