Darlinghurst Road Page 8

  Melissa

  One lesson that I learned very early in The Cross is that you can never trust an addict. If you don't learn that fast then it's only a matter of time before you get burnt. An addict will sell their body, their soul and yours as well if you let them.

  Melissa was in her late twenties but the stress of working the streets of Kings Cross and an endless thirst for heroin had aged her ten years or more. I bumped into her on Darlinghurst Road and she gave me the sob story about how she had been kicked out of where she was living. I had known Melissa on and off for a couple of years but she was still only what you'd call an acquaintance. She asked if she could stay with me temporarily and I said no but she talked me around by offering to split the rent and other bills. The offer was appealing and against my better judgment, I accepted.

  I had hopes at first but getting money out of Melissa was like pulling teeth. Melissa managed to scrape up her half of the rent most weeks but not much else. Sadly, most of what she earned from selling her body went straight into her veins. That made her unreliable and unpredictable so this was clearly not a long term situation. Street grade Heroin is not the stuff movies stars use and it is so easy, even for an experienced user like Melissa, to overdose; a constant source of stress for those around them and it gets real old, real fast. They know the risk themselves but take the chance because the drug has such a hold. Heroin withdrawal is one of the most painful things a human body can be subjected to. People think that an addict uses because they choose to... an addict uses because they can’t not use.

  We had a rule that she wouldn't bring her work home but she constantly broke it. On the nights that I worked, it really wasn't an issue but more a case of out of sight, out of mind. She would lose track of what day it was or be scared of losing a job if there was nowhere else to go and her client was nervous. A veteran streetwalker, Melissa always made sure that she took the money up front so if the guy ran off, she didn't care. There were a few funny moments I must admit and we often laughed about the look on a guy's face when he saw me walking through the door.

  Melissa herself could be hilarious. Late one night, we went for a bite at a twenty-four hour joint on Macleay Street. We'd only just sat down and ordered a pizza when a drunk weaved his way across our table; the guy had obviously recognized Melissa and wanted some action. To my surprise, she said “back in minute”, got up and walked out with him. Fifteen minutes later, she strolled back in, head tilted to one side and looking like a naughty school girl. When I gave her a look of not being very happy with her, Melissa started giggling and said “hey lighten up you, it was my turn to pay so I went outside and blew him, you are having dinner with a hooker you know.”

  Well, the inevitable happened and the bickering turned to arguments; usually over Melissa bringing her clients home. It reached the point when Melissa decided that she wanted to live alone and declared, with some relief on my part, that she had decided to move on. The parting happened at a good time because I was over it too. Melissa said that she would stay another week but moved out after a few days and my life went back to where it was.

  Christine

  Christine had been selling her body for heroin since she was fourteen and by twenty-one, she was lucky to be alive. An addict must have a continuous source of money and all those years of working every single night of every single week had taken its toll and Christine was almost finished. She was a sad case, sadder than most but there's an old saying around The Cross: “nurse them and they'll die in your arms.”

  I knew Christine through Melissa and because of that connection, she would come into the store sometimes, try to borrow money or just hang around hoping to get lucky with one of the customers. One night, she over-dosed in the restroom, I called an ambulance in time and she lived but it only kept her off the street for a night or two. After that, I told her that she wasn't welcome back but still she came. We played that game for a while then I gave in because it didn't matter enough, it was a battle that I was tired of fighting.

  Christine rolled the dice once too often and the heroin took her life as it always seemed it would. She died in another sex shop down the road, someone else's restroom, someone else's problem. The police came in that night and asked me to identify her body. Apparently, somebody had told them that we were friends because she was always hanging around on my shift. They couldn't find anybody else so I went down a few days later and made the identification. I thought at the time that I'm not sure how hard they looked, but then she probably was not the highest of priorities for them.

  It turned out that I was wrong; the police managed to track down her mother and they sent her over to me. The story from her was that Christine ran away from home as a kid, never to be seen again by her family. I didn't know what to tell her. The police had already told her that her daughter was a prostitute and that she worked the streets to support her heroin addiction. I didn't have to break that to her, but it was tough just the same.

  That incident clinched it for me, I needed to get out, The Cross can be such a depressing place at times. Who am I kidding, it's depressing all the damn time but when you live it every day, you just close your eyes to it and make another buck.

  A Decision Made

  Living with Melissa had exhausted me mentally and made me feel a little claustrophobic. It was always about money with her; Melissa’s one constant. For me, living life was more important and a little cash in my pocket made that a little easier but if I was broke today then it didn’t make me sweat but with her, it was an obsession. I understood it because of her addiction but I found it incredibly hard to relax around hard core users like her.

  It wasn’t just Melissa, it was everything. On my shift one night, I found a body, an overdose and the needle was still in his arm. In the darkness, I felt the syringe before I saw it. As I knelt down beside him to check for life, I looked up to see two people having sex and the whole scene was just so fucking normal. I walked downstairs to call the Police and then occupied myself with the mechanics of dealing with the situation upstairs. The next day, Trevor seemed more concerned with the fact that I closed the club for an hour while they removed the body.

  The Cross has a way of wearing you out. All of my adult life had been spent surrounded by sex and drugs... violence and death. It was time to leave. Not a break, not a vacation. It was time to walk away from the life and close the door for good.

  I started thinking about when I ran away from home and the traveling that I did. With that in mind, I made a decision that I wanted to see some more of Australia and breathe some country air. I wandered around the country for a couple of years, taking a job for two or three months, building up some cash then hitting the road again. I had a ball learning about life, about myself and about the Australia that most people in the city never really see.

  Charlie

  I had never been to Western Australia and decided to do the trip. I hit the road taking the long way around. Starting in Sydney, down to Melbourne then across to Adelaide and finally, the long straight run to Perth. I spent a few days renewing my acquaintance with some favorite parts of Melbourne then after a lazy morning, headed out of town. Driving out through the suburbs, it hit me that I probably should grab a late lunch before going too far. The little fish and chip shop caught my eye so in I went.

  Have you ever had one of those moments in life that when, looking back, you cannot figure out why you just didn't turn around and walk away? It was a dirty little place. The owner was a dirty old Greek with a three day growth and looked like he had just woke up after sleeping for a week in his clothes. I ordered anyway and the greasy meal ended mostly in the trash.

  Later that night, I started feeling really sick. By the time that I started coming down through the Adelaide Hills, I knew that I was in trouble and there was no doubt in my mind that I had been poisoned from that filthy cafe back in Melbourne. Doubled over with pain, I managed to find a hospital in Adelaide and staggered into the Emergency Room.

  After
some poking and swearing on my part, a nurse came back in with a clipboard: “sign this if you wouldn't mind.” She was polite enough and so was I for the most part until she explained to me that it was a consent form for an operation. When I refused, the Doctor came back.

  There are some people in the medical profession that have the gift of an excellent bedside manner; kindly, patient and well versed in the art of putting a sick person at ease. The gentleman before me with the beard and bad attitude was not one of them. “Okay, here's the situation, your appendix needs to come out, if we don't operate and it bursts, there's a pretty good chance that you'll die, this needs to be done soon so just sign the damn form and let's get going here huh.” Another round of pain hit me about then so I signed his damn form.

  The operation was over, I was still alive and feeling like I'd been hit by a train. Doctor Hasty made an appearance later in the day and he was still full of attitude “feeling okay? Glad we got it, I'd say you had about fifteen minutes before I may not have been able to save you, you shouldn't have piddled about so long.” I was too sore to argue with him. “You can go tomorrow, what's the home situation?” I told him that there wasn't one and that I was just passing through. It was a long weekend and he was worried about me driving he said so he asked me to stay for a few more days “just in case.” I had nowhere else to go apart from the road so I agreed.

  That night, they put someone in the bed beside me and I dozed off. A few hours later I hear a voice “hey mate, got a smoke?” He was a short, red-headed guy with a real dry sense of humor and we hit it off right away. “Charlie” he said by way of introduction, “I'm an alcoholic, they brought me in from the park because I was having alcoholic seizures, you?” As I got to know him, I found out that he actually did live in the park and he explained that the hospital was now his second home.

  Charlie had drank away everything that ever mattered to him, his wife, his three children, his own family and now as the insanity of alcoholism threatened to take his life, he was past caring. It was an honest discussion, he told me about his frequent visits to the alcoholism ward and when I asked him how long he thought he could keep it up, Charlie went all quiet and very thoughtfully said “well, when you get to the stage of institutions mate, you don't have a lot of drinking left in you that's for sure.”

  We shared that room for a few more days, talked about everything imaginable to pass the time as the dreary routine of the ward went on around us. On the Tuesday, I hit the road and Charlie and his bottle went back to the city park. A few years later, I ran into Charlie again in a Sydney department store. He had moved to Sydney to be near his family and I was shocked by the changes; sober, healthy and walking through a mall with one of his kids. Charlie had found the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and it had saved his life.

  Sam And The Guy With The Towel

  After the west, I went to visit Tasmania then returned to the mainland, spent some time in Melbourne and started to review my options. Feeling a little bored with life, I started thinking seriously about going overseas for the first time. I couldn't decide to go or stay but one thing was for sure: either way, I needed a job and I needed some cash.

  The want ads in the paper didn't impress me and this old dog was not in the mood for learning any new tricks so I called someone in Sydney that I knew had a few contacts in Melbourne. One call led to the next and finally, someone's friend had another friend who needed a driver and that was how I met Sam.

  Sam ran a small escort agency and was looking for someone to drive his girls around. It was easy work for pretty good money but it did come with a degree of bullshit on occasion. Typically, escorts handle their own money and the driver just drives but Sam had a different routine. My instructions were that the girl would go into the house or hotel room, negotiate the rate for her time and then come back out to me. I was to hold the cash supposedly for the safety of the girl but I'm more inclined to believe that it was the girl that he didn't trust. When she handed me the money, she would also tell me how long and my job was to watch the clock. If it was an hour session then on the hour, if she didn't come out, I was to knock on the door. Sam's orders were that the girl answered the door one hundred percent of the time. If the client wanted more time as would sometimes happen, we'd start the process all over again. That was the signal though, if the client answered the door then it meant trouble inside the room. I asked Sam how he wanted me to handle that and he replied “they are all told that they must answer the door so if they don't then they can't, there's a baseball bat in the trunk, kick the fucking door down and get her out.”

  Thankfully, it didn't come to that there were a few minor incidents just the same. I gave a knock on a house door and the client answered. The guy stood there in a towel, looked at me and said “yes.” My years in The Cross had taught me to be a real fast judge of character, I had the vibe that this guy was potentially a threat so I took it slowly. “I'm a driver, I'm here to pick up the girl, is she ready?”

  “No, she's busy, she said come back in an hour.”

  “Mate, with all due respect, I need her to tell me that so can you go get her please.”

  “We're in the middle of something, you need to come back later.”

  There was trouble brewing, I could feel it, I looked at the guy again with new eyes and I didn’t like what I saw. Standing at the door wearing nothing but a towel, he didn't look like much of a fighter, but still, you never know. He was about six foot, pretty solid at a second glance and most importantly, on his own turf. I was a driver not a bouncer and this was an argument that I really didn't want to have. I hardened up a little, “Mate, I'm not sure that you understand what's going on here, I don't want to interrupt whatever you have going on but I have a job to do so I really do need to talk to the girl for a moment, it's a safety thing, I'm sure you can understand.”

  “She's safe, she'll come out when she's ready, I'm going back in now, you'll just have to wait.”

  This was turning into a nightmare, I thought of the baseball bat in the trunk. I had no intention of making a bad situation worse by assaulting the guy or possibly worse, so I called Sam. It took less than ten minutes for him to get there. We walked up to the door and knocked again. Towel guy answered, Sam pulled out a Glock automatic hand gun, hit him in the face with the pistol as soon as he opened the door, pushed him inside and as the guy reeled sideways from the blow, Sam started yelling “where's my girl, where's my fucking girl?” She was in the bedroom, tied up and gagged bondage style.

  The three of us walked out together and Sam asked her if she was hurt. She nodded, started to cry and Sam saw red. I was told to put her in the car and take her back to the office. Sam went to his own trunk, I saw the bat in his hand as he marched back to the house as if on a mission and I knew exactly what he was going to do. I drove back to St. Kilda with a sobbing girl in the back and the image in my mind of a psycho boss beating up some guy in a towel.

  My decision was made. I needed some sanity, something different, something real and I needed out of this fucked up world of sex, dramas and bullshit. My old thoughts about a trip overseas started to surface again but this time, I went for it. I had a friend who lived in America and that became my destination. I made some reservations, the travel agent sold me on a side trip to Japan as well and the next thing I knew, I was on a plane headed overseas.

  Breakfast Anyone?

  My welcome to Japan was very polite but I don't mind saying that it scared the pants off me. I cleared immigration, breezed through Customs and as I walked through the terminal, I was approached by two very official looking types. They were Customs agents and I'm not sure why but I had attracted their attention but it was before 9/11 so I would imagine that it was probably drugs. A guy traveling alone, very little luggage and a ticket paid in cash probably checked every box on their list.

  At an American airport these days, I probably would have been surrounded by heavily armed security police and a dog or two but this was Osaka, not New York. Unarme
d and very polite, they led me to a small room and asked me to take off one shoe, checked my passport and carry-on bag then apologized in very slow, Japanese accented English. For one, brief, terrifying moment, I pictured myself in a Japanese prison spending the next twenty years protesting my innocence.

  I chose a business hotel because of the price and the magical promise of an all-you-can-eat breakfast. As I walked in to the dining room that morning, my eyes surveyed the buffet tables and my stomach smiled. After being seated, I made my way to the food and took a closer look. Sushi, sushi, sushi and more sushi; piles of the stuff. Now I like Japanese food but for breakfast, I was thinking more bacon, eggs and toast. Almost crying, I found a small table down the end with the token western food for the occasional lost tourist. There we're only two choices and they were not good. In a container filled with oily hot water, six very pathetic looking hot dogs were floating, on the other side lay a small portion of what looked to be a strange, scrambled egg mix of some description. I left them there for the next victim and picked my way through a sushi breakfast.

  Thumper

  My plane touched down in Chicago and I was in America. For an Australian, America is not really a foreign country, well, at least it wasn't to me. Both countries share a similar cultural heritage in that our ancestors came across from England, we speak the same language, have similar views on a lot of things and generally, get along pretty well. I have to say though, that some things took some getting used to but the transition went smoothly. I spent some time doing a little minor exploring of America then crossed over the border for a look at the land of the Maple leaf.

  It was a cold winter's day in Canada, gloomy, the snow was falling and I was bored. As every gambler knows, Lady Luck can be fickle but when she's in your corner, boy is it nice! Australians tend to be an adventurous breed and there's an old expression that an Aussie will bet on two flies crawling up a wall. Personally, I'm not a big gambler and usually limit myself to the occasional Lotto ticket. With that said, I do occasionally like the atmosphere of a casino. It's nice to be able to relax, enjoy a meal and then spend some time trying to beat the odds.