Darlinghurst Road Page 2

  Barbara And Sunny

  Barbara was in her late forties and nature had endowed her in the style of Dolly Parton so she used them to her advantage. She worked for one of the night clubs that ran girls along the Darlinghurst Road strip and she always seemed sad to me but she could light up when business was involved. She’d been at it since her teens and breasts aside, she knew that it was nearly over. Barbara charged less and gave more because she had to.

  Sunny was her name and in many ways, it also reflected her nature. Jaded at nineteen but still full of life, Sunny was a pretty blond with a lovely disposition. She was one of those people who are just happy to be alive and enjoying her day no matter how good or bad it might have been.

  We often shared a late night coffee at an old pizza place down at the end of Darlinghurst Road and just as often would end up at her place or mine. Ours was a simple kind of relationship, two lonely people laughing, crying and occasionally sleeping together. The relationship continued for a time, not serious, more than casual. Were we in love? I don’t think we knew the meaning of the word if I’m to be honest but there was something very special about bathing in each other’s light after the dark nights around the gloom of The Cross.

  Unlike Barb who did her thing in a room above a strip club with absolute security knowing that a scream would bring the bouncers followed by a violent expulsion of the clown in question; Sunny worked alone. Barb knew how the game was played. Half to the house but the troublemakers end up in the back alley and not all over her.

  Sunny was a country girl and perhaps that’s why we hit it off. With some good, natural instincts and the knowledge acquired from her two years as a prostitute she mostly got it right.

  One Friday in April, a long weekend, she made a serious error in judgment by going out to a house in Newtown with three men. They picked her up at her usual spot and offered her a good payday for entertaining the three of them. She went. They raped her. They beat her. As a result of being raped with some object that she couldn’t see, she spent a week in hospital. The first day to stop the bleeding from that and the rest to recover from the beating, three teeth missing and a scar on her cheek from somebody’s ring. I tried to help her emotionally but although the thought was there, the skills were not.

  Around the middle of May, Sunny left Sydney headed for a different life I’m not sure where. We didn’t keep in touch. I guess that, like The Cross, I was somehow associated with the pain. At least we said our goodbyes, we did have that and on my end at least, some wonderful memories of better times.

  It could have been worse for her had she have stayed in Sydney and turned to something to dull the pain like so many other street workers had. Heroin use was almost a job requirement for the overwhelming majority of women who worked The Cross but to the best of my knowledge, neither Barb nor Sunny ever used.

  The Domino Effect

  Every person who inhabits that sort of world invariably has a use-by-date and ours was in September that year. Harold was nearly eighty and having some Al Capone style troubles with the law. He’d survived for half a century doing things the old way but he was not big enough nor well enough to go beyond the Kings Cross Police district and the local government. A state election was looming and there was pressure to clean up The Cross.

  Several incidents occurred close together including a Kings Cross detective shooting a notorious drug dealer in an alley under very dubious circumstances. The media began to take an interest and organized crime was making headlines.

  Allegations were made in a newspaper that corruption in the State Police rose to the highest level. These were only whispers at the time but would be proven correct in later years as investigations continued after the fact. For me, there was no need for speculation as I was present in the background once to witness the State Commissioner of Police being passed a large roll of money under a table in a hotel bar. As the exchange took place under the table, he took a sip from his glass and the conversation never stopped; it was like watching a beautifully choreographed ballet. Others at the table would not have seen it but I just happened to have a line of sight from where I was standing at the bar. I had no idea about what I had just witnessed until I picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror a few days later, saw his picture in an unrelated item and put two and two together as they say. By that time in my life, nothing surprised me so it was forgotten as easily as putting down the newspaper.

  As the demands increased on the government to move on organized crime, Harold found himself under investigation for tax evasion. On the agenda was thirty years of dodgy book keeping and they were digging deep. He eventually beat the odds by lining up well paid doctors to claim that he had gone senile. In short: he simply forgot where the money went.

  They had very little in the way of actual documentation to back up the charges and no one of any significance to stand up to testify so the case fell apart. Millions of family money was thrown in all directions but there was a lot at stake. The feds wanted an example behind bars before a critical state election for their party but in their haste, they underestimated their enemy. Ultimately, it was over. Warnings were issued from the judge; a hefty fine was levied for failing to keep proper books and life returned to whatever passes for normal.

  Fallout from the case began a few months later when, after the dust had settled, Marc took a more active role in the business. Money was moved from the blatantly illegal operations to the borderline legitimate ones like the sex shops. Selling X-rated movies and sex toys was still technically illegal but as vice goes, it was considered to be the lesser of two social evils. Mandys was one of the early casualties and so yet another chapter in the history of the grand old girl called Kings Cross came to an end.

  It was done without fanfare or a dignified funeral. Mandy called us all together and told the staff it was over. Sunday would be the last night. She wished us well as she apologized for the short notice. No explanation was needed for me. Most of the employees had very little knowledge of the real chain of power but those of us who knew the story also knew that Mandy had no say in the closure. We felt more for her than we did for us. It was an easygoing atmosphere and unlike some of the Asian brothels, the girls were there to earn a living and were never under any sort of duress. Mandy tried to keep the place free of drugs and the girls were generally happy.

  The male staff consisted of me and three bouncers so the girls were her primary concern although Mandy always went out of her way to help all her staff in times of need. However, it was over now so time to move on and see what life had to offer. As I walked out the door of the slightly famous Mandys for the last time, it seemed almost surreal.

  I don’t know about the others but Mandy looked after me till the end. She slipped me the equivalent of a month’s pay and kissed me on the cheek as we parted so I was okay financially. Sunday had come around fast as did Monday. No longer gainfully employed but still cashed up, I sat around for a week or two unsure of what to do next.

  The Other Side Of Darlinghurst Road

  The Pleasure Palace was a Kings Cross institution spanning four stores and three decades. Offering many more additional services than your average adult bookstore, it had gained a reputation catering to the seedier side of the inner city population.

  All the shops were laid out basically the same: a regular type of adult store selling pornographic movies, sex toys and assorted other adult paraphernalia. Upstairs, a gay cruise lounge consisting of a small movie theater with rooms, corridors and various dark areas where people could have sex in the shadows. Downstairs was set up with coin operated movie machines that looked like a row of telephone booths. Each one had a round glory hole cut into the wall at waist height that would allow access to the neighboring booth. Lastly, there was another section of private rooms that were rented out by the hour ostensibly for watching an adult movie in private. In practice, these very small rooms were mostly used by hookers and their clients as a cheap alternative to a motel.

  There was a st
ore on Darlinghurst Road that doubled as an office and two stores hidden away in the Central Business District that were relatively small by comparison. Then came Oxford Street that was bigger than all of them.

  The Oxford Street store was once a proper, big screen adult movie theater that had been converted to a sex shop. The Pleasure Palace on Oxford Street spanned three floors, was seedier, meaner and a twenty-four hour a day marathon of sex, drugs and drama. This was my new home away from home for twelve hours a day and I started to fit right in.

  An Intriguing Cast Of Characters

  We had five very distinct types of customers: The diehard gays cruising for some sleazy sex because they were bored with life that day or were full of party drugs after a night of clubbing, the closet gay who felt that this was the only place he could come and be discreet, the cheap straight guy looking for something his girlfriend wouldn’t do and of course, our usual cast of regulars. Last place belonged to the wall boys.

  The serious gays were the worst because they had a sense of ownership over the street and felt pissed about having to pay for anything and even more pissed when they couldn’t get the type of sex they were looking for within five minutes of walking through the door. The endless questions: How many people are upstairs? Any such and such types? Can I go take a quick look before I pay? It got old and these were the men that I would have no hesitation in kicking out when they became obnoxious.

  On weekends, Oxford Street would be packed with club patrons and party types of all descriptions but during the week it all came down to the regulars. They were what kept us going through the quiet times. Although at one time or another, most of them pissed me off in some way, I was always glad to see the old familiar faces. They knew the boundaries and they were rarely any trouble.

  The regulars were a mixed bunch: at least two lawyers, a judge, a teacher at a leading Sydney private school and various other occupations from professional men to laborers. Some of them would identify as gay but others would not yet here they all were, hanging around a sleazy sex club at three o’clock in the morning. They would talk to me and between themselves, rarely having any sort of conversation with new faces. For some of these men with secrets to keep, it was more a social gathering and the sex if it happened was secondary.

  Male prostitution was a constant problem but we also had our share of female prostitutes and went through the same battles with them. Secretly, I had no problem with them trying to earn a buck and doing it in one of our rooms because it was a lot safer than a back alley. However, policy from on high was no sex workers so I would move them on when someone complained or if they just stood out a mile.

  Occasionally a working girl would try to make friends with one of the staff so that they wouldn't kick her out and that could be difficult to deal with. My policy was the same as it had always been, business only and leave the pleasure side to the customers. It’s too easy to be compromised and ultimately, it just makes the job harder. That was a lesson that Mandy always preached to her staff and it made sense to me.

  There would be the occasional issue on weekends with customers thinking staff walking through the dark club were also cruising but a quick blink of a flashlight usually sent them on their way, embarrassed and apologetic. The regulars were never a problem with that sort of thing because they all knew me. Maybe also, it was because they knew I had the power to throw them out of their second home or maybe it was out of respect because I treated them like human beings unlike most of the outside world. I don’t know, but for whatever reason, we got along.

  After Mandys with all its characters and having seen pretty much everything related to sex and Kings Cross night life, nothing shocked me. The Pleasure Palace and establishments just like it, anywhere in the world, are sometimes the only place where a person can go to be themselves and it's always been my opinion, that a person's private life belongs to them.

  The Wall

  As I mentioned in an earlier, the so called wall boys get their name from the short stretch of stone wall that runs along the end of Darlinghurst Road until it meets up with Oxford Street at its junction in Taylor Square. The wall has served as a pickup address for countless generations of young male prostitutes.

  A few would always figure out that it might be safer to hang around the all-night club's like the Pleasure Palace and try to get picked up. The regulars would object or they would try to steal a wallet in the dark so I’d kick them out and the cycle would begin again the next night with another a new face turning up every week almost like clockwork.

  The older, more experienced ones had learned how to blend a little but the new faces were very young and very obvious. They would be living on the streets, still learning how to survive in that world and desperate for shelter or money, would often end up being taken home and used by some guy who had picked them up that night. I saw plenty of girls in the same situation and it never got any easier. In my opinion, it takes a particular callousness to pick up a young person, use them for sex and then walk away not caring if they’re still alive tomorrow.

  Kayla

  I've never been much good at pinning down ages but she was young, painfully young. I caught her hanging around the coin booths downstairs. My job was clear, I had to ask her to leave because a quick conversation left no doubt that she was looking for someone to pay her for sex and besides, she was definitely underage and I couldn't allow that. When I gave her the speech about no prostitution on the premises, she asked naively “where do I go then?” I offered to buy her a Coke from our machine, she accepted, we went back upstairs to the store and talked for a while.

  She said her name was Kayla and the gist of the story was that her mother had kicked her out. There was no father, her mother was a drug addicted prostitute who worked from a home in the suburbs and it was all the kid had ever known. I remembered how big and bright those streets seemed when I was her age compared to the dirty, cramped world of a few square miles that I knew now.

  I had to do it. I tried to play social worker, call around, maybe find her some shelter somewhere but she refused. Kayla was only a part of my life for around thirty minutes but I will never forget her. The last time that I saw her, she was walking down the street toward her first paid sexual encounter. God, I hope the bastard was gentle with her.

  Cathy

  Cathy was another early starter and she was dead by the age of twenty. She once confided that she had been on the street since the age of thirteen and had been a prostitute just as long. By fifteen, Heroin was in her veins. The spiral down from there is short and nearly always predictable. Heroin quickly becomes the primary motivation in life.

  The back door of the Pleasure Palace is only accessible to the staff but still, no one really uses it and if it wasn't for the fire code, it would probably be boarded up. The door exits to a narrow inner city alley and it's a dark, dirty little place where, apart from the rats, nobody ever seems to go. This is where the police found Cathy on a Sunday morning; dead from an overdose of heroin. I found out that night when the police came in to ask their questions.

  They only asked the basics of course because they already knew the story by heart. It was a regular occurrence around The Cross and Cathy was a case number, a junkie hooker who killed herself in the back alley of a sleazy sex club, not the first, won't be the last.

  She had a small tattoo on her right ankle of a butterfly and a brother by the name of David. I don’t know much more about her but I do know that Cathy was a human being as well as a statistic and her death saddened me.

  Trevor

  Trevor was a real hard man who had been around The Cross for a long time. With serious underworld connections and an attitude to match, he was the real deal as they say and yet, he never flaunted it. Trevor was extremely discrete about his criminal contacts and it wasn't until you really got to know him that some of the veneer started to slip away. Still, after being part of the Kings Cross furniture for so long, most of the people who knew him had probably figured out that T
revor was deeply involved with organized crime but hey, it was The Cross, it didn't affect them and nobody really cared. Only once did I ever see Trevor lose his cool and be indiscrete. A few days earlier, I had a guy in the club who was causing trouble so I kicked him out.

  The guy didn't want to quit and kept coming back. It was a minor annoyance until he walked in one night and threatened me. Now, a sex shop is not the kind of business where one typically calls the police, so consequently, most issues with problem customers tend to be solved in-house. I told Trevor about the incident and the next night he came in for a few hours in case our friend turned back up.

  It was after midnight when he came in and he was belligerent as ever so we threw him out again but this time we did it pretty roughly and Trevor made it plain that it was not a good idea to come back. Angry now, the guy stood out on the street yelling at the top of his voice “you can't throw me out, I've been coming here for twenty years and I know all about this place.” He continued “I know you pay your people cash, no one here pays any taxes, I work for Social Security, I'm going to call my my friend at the Tax Office and have this place shut down for not paying tax, I know your name... it's Trevor.”

  It went on for a few more minutes with his threats until Trevor finally lost it. He stepped out onto the street, dragged the guy back into the store and slammed him up against a wall. Through gritted teeth he said “if anything happens here in the next few weeks, I'll have you shot you cunt!” Trevor slammed his fist into the guy's stomach and threw him back out onto the street. That was the last we heard from him.