So I suppose this is a kind of milestone week for me. I don't often drag out the sanctimony to lovingly and shamelessly polish in the public domain but somehow I feel the need to document it and here and now is as good a place as any.
This week thirty years ago I'd been on a bender, initially with work colleagues, then an old drinking pal and his lass, some friends back in Chippendale, and finally back to the old drinking buddy and his missus. At the end of it all I realised with painful clarity that in certain aspects of my life, I was better off schlepping and striving rather than actually achieving. I must warn you now that the following may appear to be yet more cheap and ego-saturated grandiloquence. But in fact I write it in the hope that someone out there may one day find themselves in similar circumstances and realise that they're not alone. That they too can, in fact, pull off mundane yet potentially life- or sanity-saving miracles.
***
FRIDAY NIGHT
I'd been working a solo afternoon shift as a laser print programmer. The company I worked for, like many startups back then, was small and warmly familial - from the top of the firm down to the cleaners and binders. Around seven in the evening, the secretary showed up and instructed me to shut up shop as I'd been invited to a party to celebrate a ... You know what? Back then, I didn't give a fuck. It could as easily have been a wake as, say, an anniversary. To me it was all the same. It was an excuse to get wasted, so I didn't need to be asked twice to pull down the roller doors.
Again, I'll refrain from naming names - not so much that I'll damn the innocent who footed the bill, as much as they would laugh at my self-aggrandising and patently false hyperbole.
At that party, I started in on a small tower of amphetamine (these were days of shared wealth, generosity and profound self indulgence, after all), a liter bottle of Stolly vodka, and to balance both, a few shots of Ouzo and a lip/sip/suck tournament of El Toro. Oh! And throughout the course of that evening, a few civilised lines of cocaine which like E, was just starting to make an impact in Australia. That took us through until the very small hours. I remember thinking how cool the neighbours were. I was noisy as fuck. My work colleagues even more so. Yet no one complained, as far as I know.
These were the days before mobile phones, so I called up a mate on a landline, slurred the name of a pub by Central and hopped on my FT500 without telling anyone, for fear they try and stop the animal escaping.
I bump-parked the bike around by the Journo's Club off Regent Street and sat slowly drinking beer with my friends, trying it on with the tired barmaids, putting coins through the jukebox and playing pool until the morning light came. The Westminster Hotel as it was then known as, had some great songs on that jukebox and I was known to favour pubs that only played music I liked - preferably live - throughout all my years drinking.
***
SATURDAY.
My mate, having worked hard all week, was tired as the morning light oozed in through the pub windows but his missus, who could go harder than any of us even though she was 'the wrong side of forty', wanted to kick on down the Cross. The Rex and Texas Tavern were early openers so we started there, drinking with the local denizens who all seemed to be knocking off work after a hard night doing burlesque or tricking over by the Siebel Townhouse. As I understand it, these places are all but pale shades of their former selves now but they were something to see in their prime. Every reject in town seemed to wash up at those two hotels and they all had stories that could hold me in thrall - drunk, sober or otherwise. My mate was putting away Bacardi and Cokes, his missus was big on G&Ts (very sensible given that the heat was already melting the streets) and I'd been given some kind of immunity to all effects of alcohol by the goey from the night before, so I was washing beers down with Red Label shots. The only real down side was that the goey felt like ants under my skin every time I stopped drinking and started thinking. A really dirty and shitty drug.
Throughout the afternoon, we went back to the Quay and enjoyed the cheap drinks at the Paragon and the Ship Inn before stumbling up past the Orient and into the Mercantile.
Somewhere along the line, all three of us had been deliberately chundering so that by the time we got to the Merc and the loud, loud Irish band playing there, we were fine to start the whole love fest again.
The Merc was always an easy choice. Guinness on tap with the occasional judicious Jameson to take the edge off. The music and the dancing with strangers took care of the rest. Young and old, scabrous beer hounds and clean shaven tourists, would all magically sweat and sober up out on that dance floor, which pleased the pub owners immensely. No hassle, no heartache. Just booze and dancing and laughter and half heard snatches of cutting insults and conversations.
Sunday morning came up to find me in the Cosmopolitan Cafe on Darlinghurst Road, ravenously attacking a big breakfast and hot black coffee and trying to stop my fucking hands from shaking constantly. I'd lost my friends at one of the numerous dance halls that dotted the landscape back then.
***
SUNDAY
I caught a cab back to Central and let out a loud yelp of joy because I'd forgotten about my bike sometime over the previous twenty four hours and was pleased as punch to see that it hadn't been nicked. I loved that bike. But I loved getting pissed more, I think.
I rode out to a mate's place in North Ryde and spent the early part of the day standing around, passing tools and smoking and drinking his beers as he worked on his Commodore. But drinking and talking to mates as they worked on their cars bored the tits off me almost as much as working on cars had done when I had to make a living that way. Once the beers were gone, I just started the bike and dropped in on my friends up in Ryde to see if they'd made it back from the Cross in one piece.
I needn't have worried.
They were back on the Bacardi and the gin. And since they knew - they just KNEW - that I'd drop by, they had beer in the fridge as well as a small bottle of chilled Smirnoff waiting. As an aside, years later I would run into him. He'd since gone back to England and was telling me about running pirate tobacco across the Channel in the mid 1990s.
As often happens when everyone is in their cups, an argument broke out. In fact, if I'm to be honest, all three of us loved starting them, but this one got vicious and I remember glass being swept up as I slammed the door after me. Most likely I'd said something deliberately insensitive and like the gutless fuck I could be, I figured it was more fun to run out while the blood flowed, rather than stick around to make things right.
The afternoon found me dropping in on friends in Chippendale. I bought some long necks around at the bottle shop on Abercrombie. The old owner was jumpy as hell because they'd had a terrifying robbery the night before and I was too loud and I had that drunken snarl and loud, annoying nasal thing that bad and stupid drunks the world over get, so I guess I made the guy's day a little bit freakier.
So we drank the beers and smoked and watched a Dario Argento film into the night. I was going to stick around and pass out in the kitchen but I was finally starting to crash on the speed and all else, so I set off back to my mate's place. If nothing else, I had the vague intention of apologising for being an arsehole earlier in the day. As it transpires, they'd passed out not long after I left and my knocking had woken them up. I was jittery as fuck and on the defensive, not knowing whether I'd be weaving and dodging the punches or whether we'd simply settle down over a nightcap before I'd pass out on the living room floor as I was often known to do.
The truth is, it came down to neither. The whole argument thing from earlier in the day had been forgotten and after a shit, shave and shower, the three of us went back over to Balmain to make the most of the summer evening's weather. The Commercial in East Balmain, the London, the Cricketers' Arms, the Riverview, Dick's, the Exchange, the Cat and Fiddle, the S(m)ackville, the Bridge, the Lion, until we finally hit the Orange Grove.
Over that distance, over that many pubs, by the end of it, the word crawl was really no exaggeration.
Back then I got paid by the fortnight but over the course of those couple of days, I'd blown most of it - including the rent. At least, I had enough to fill the tank on the bike.
And enough to take the three of us back to the Westminster (soon to be renamed Sutherlands) where we nursed out spirits and our beers and our cigarettes and a couple of joints with the utmost care and love.
***
MONDAY AND HAPPILY EVER AFTER
I went straight from the pub to work the next day and riding across the harbour bridge in the morning light, I realised that something was at an end. Had to be ended.
After a while, friends stopped coming around and conversations were awkwardly altered to suit when I dropped by. Some exchanges became more stilted, laconic. Even more were over before they began.
And when it finally dawned on people that this wasn't simply a phase I was going through (which frankly surprised me, above all others), I suppose that side of me started to atrophy as I realised that many, many people really do not do moderation at all well. Sadly, myself among them.
A week later I turned twenty five.
Spirit
