Tour de Pants

Following on from the previous post in which was introduced the unfinished pisshead opus In The Worst Possible Taste, the tale of irreverent and irrelevant Strayan rock group Flange Gasket, which was the follow up to the post before which talked about fuck-off-awesome road trips and in particular the Captain's band trip to Port Douglas that inspired me starting to write the thing in the first place, this bloody ridiculously long post is the extended 12" remix of the fictional Flange Gasket's first-ever FNQ Road Trip, aka the Tour de Pants. It's longer than God's Own, but what else were you going to do this week - go to work? Fuck that for a game of soldiers. To be fair I'm unlikely to be posting content again this week unless Choadafone extract digit wit' a quickness and get the new place hooked up sooner rather than later, so consider this your weekly dose of Bollocks in one simple-to-digest congealed fetid lump.

One minor warning: there are rude bits in this. Not just sweary rude. Boy-and-girl-bits-in-fairly-graphic-detail rude. Just so you know. Anyone likely to become offended by such materials is advised to... hang on, what the fuck would you be doing here in the first place?

First a bit of backgrounding (borrowed from the intro to the liner notes for the band's Best Of):

Flange Gasket didn’t set out to change the world… which was probably just as well in the end. They didn’t set out to be bigger than Jesus; being bigger than Fred Nile would have done. They had no delusions of grandeur, no pretentions of their own artistic or cultural significance - at least to begin with. They wrote no-bullshit rock and roll songs about sex, booze and misbehaviour, like their heroes had done, and in the process became heroes themselves… only to lose the plot and self-destruct, courtesy the same sex, booze and misbehaviour issues which were the source of their best material. This, then is the story, and the Least Worst, of Flange Gasket.
Bands are started for all manner of reasons - to explore common musical interests, to give the participants something to do, to make shitloads of money for some faceless producer. Flange Gasket started for two reasons: to get Sam McCarthy laid, and to enable Marty di Biagini and Phil Duff to pass an assessment task for their third year audio engineering subject at Southern Cross Uni. It failed on both counts… at least in the short term. Their lecturer, local promotions agent and former Velvet Curtains bassist Chris Kurtin, soon signed the boys up and they headed out to seek their fortune as that most hardy and ubiquitous of collectives: the pub covers band. When the balloon goes up, there will be three forms of life left on the planet: cockroaches, parking officers, and pub covers bands.
Flange Gasket may well still be a pub covers band today, if not for one man. His name was Bob Cunliffe. He wasn’t a record label executive, or an A&R guy, or an agent. He was the local National Party MP, and he took a dislike to the boys’ first single Learn To Swim With Harold Holt, off their home-recorded EP Insert Title Here. The ensuing controversy put him out of office and Flange Gasket on the road to becoming known for their originals far more than their inventive take on other peoples’ songs…

[Yada yada yada. We rejoin play shortly after the boys' catastrophic third-ever gig at the Gollan Hotel, a tiled urinal frequented by bogans and fuckwits, where the only take-home positive was that they left under their own steam rather than in the back of an ambulance, managing to avoid having seven shades of shite beaten out of them by local death metal thugs Razorslash - ironically, stablemates of the Gasket under the (mis)management umbrella of Seek Discoveries, run by SCU music lecturer and obnoxious slaphead Chris Kurtin.]

My attitude was: It didn’t kill us. Ergo, it made us stronger. I was quite confident that it could never get as bad as that on stage, ever again. I was wrong, but at least I didn’t know any better. The Duffer just let it wash over him. Marty and Sam, though, took it pretty hard. Uncle Sam needed a lot of consoling and ego-massaging from new girl Andrea - not the ideal personality type to supply such attention, I would have thought - while Marty just sulked, and refused to consider ever stepping on stage again, with us or anyone else.

Next week, if we made it that far, wouldn’t be another triple-header of one-night stands. We only had one date pencilled in - the SCU union band comp on the Saturday night, to mark the end of semester one. So only twenty minutes’ work, rather than ten hours. And we didn’t have to play Blister In The fuckin' Sun, either. Of the half-dozen bands that had been accepted into the event - some evidence of pre-culling by the organisers - we’d drawn second-last slot. Actually, to say we ‘drew’ second-last slot suggests that the process was random in some way, or at least, not a complete and utter rort of due process.

Of the six bands, there were two who stood a realistic chance of claiming triumph (and not the insult comic dog from the Conan O’Brian show): Razorslash, those behemoths of hard-core death/speed/thrash/scrap metal who we'd already crossed swords with, and Sagittaria, an all-girl three-piece with strong folk and Celtic influences - like Enya but a lot less crap, not least because they were all fairly hot (particularly their lead singer) in a daughers-of-Aquarius, hippie Earth-mother kind of way. And they also threw in a little psychedelia-influenced stuff as well to keep the male punters interested, sounding a little like the trippier elements of Hendrix or Zeppelin, just without so much of the electrified gee-tar. I could have offered to help out on that count I guess, but I don’t think Jessica would have appreciated my interest in their affairs. Anyway, Sagittaria had a solid groundswell of support behind them from the local folkie community, who were both numerous (blame the proximity of Byron and/or Nimbin) and loyal.

This being a student union, the organisers had a steering committee to deliberate over who should play and when, consisting of the same committee who were down to judge on the night, just given a different and more silly name. The committee was chaired by SCU Union president and women’s advocacy representative Mandela-Jane Vanderkuyt (Mandy to her friends), and rounded out by SCU music lecherer and local industry identity Mr Christopher Kurtin, and for a bit of local rock-celeb colour, Phil Jamieson from Grinspoon. However Phil couldn’t make it to (or more likely couldn’t be arsed with) the pre-selection deliberations on the Thursday prior, so it was a straight arm-wrestle between Chris, who managed Razorslash, and Mandy, who despised them. Originally they did attempt drawing names out of a hat, but that left Sagittaria playing last and Razorslash just before them. Mandy, who was yet to lose an argument in four years of student politics, declared that there was no way the Union would allow an aggressive, misogynistic heavy metal band to play immediately before Sagittaria and their peace-loving, urban-gypsy audience. She predicted violence, rape, pillage and general Ugly Shit as Razorslash’s disaffected white-boy audience thrashed around hyperactively in a sea of muslin skirts and braided ponytails. Kurtin, whose Zoloft prescription had run out that morning and was a bit cranky, said that was garbage. President Mandy threatened to pull rank and have the ‘Slash dumped from the competition altogether, based on their aggression, misogyny etc.

“What misogyny?” Kretin demanded to know.

Mandy read flatly from a sheet in front of her. “Buried alive bitch, I bury you alive; buried alive bitch, scratch against your coffin lid; buried alive bitch, choke on maggots like you choked on my…”

“Okay, okay. They have the odd female issue, but hey, don’t we all.”

To break the stalemate Kretin put forward the name of Flange Gasket as a transitory act who could act as a buffer in space and time between the metal-heads and the Earth-mothers, as we stood to offend only the Young Nationals. Mandela-Jane Vanderkuyt, who hated the Young Nationals even more than Razorslash, concurred.

The first couple of bands weren’t too bad. Both were skate-punk threesomes, easily distinguished on the basis that the first band’s front guy had green hair and a Hurley T-shirt, the second band’s front guy had blue hair and a Independent T-shirt. But they knew their Green Day-esque riffs, played nice and tight, and threw themselves around to an appropriate extent. I belatedly realised, just as they were heading off-stage, that the snotty, hyperactive little bass player for the second outfit was actually Phil’s snotty, hyperactive little first-year brother Duncan. We went to find Phil and tell him, but he was still at home trying to coax Marty out of his room. I’m not coming out to play, Marty insisted. Third cab off the rank was a reggae-dub act with about nine members, including a brass trio, so that lot were buggered if they won - splitting $500 between nine guys would have barely left enough to get silly after the show.

The Bob Marley Nine (not their real name; that, in fact, was much more stupid) began to decamp from the stage we were due to play on, as the crowd turned through 180 degrees to watch Razorslash’s set on the stage at the other end of the union hall. Aggressive and misogynistic didn’t really do them justice, I felt. They were a bunch of absolute fucking charmers. They played a set which sounded like the bowels of the Earth opening up around us; if one wanted to continue the ‘bowel’ metaphor to its logical conclusion, you might guess how the four members of the band fitted (or floated) into it. I couldn’t tell one song from another, let alone where one ended and another began, but I was reliably informed that they finished their twenty-minute set with the beautiful and touching Hack Up Your Daughters, a parable for our times.

Phil and Marty had finally turned up with little time to spare - the tension had practically sent us spare as it was - but Marty still didn’t look like he wanted to go through with this. I told him about tonight, about how we were going to exorcise some demons, how we would lay down the gauntlet to those who’d challenged us. I then told him about the last-minute change to our set list which McCarthy and I had worked through while enduring Razorslash’s barrage of Earthly bowel movements. For some strange reason, this didn’t reassure him like we thought it would.

With a lovely welcoming touch, little Steve Bennett let out one final gutteral roar, then declared, “Just fuckin’ try and top that, Fag Gasket.” And lo, the pissed bogans rejoiced.

It’s very odd staring at the back of a few hundred peoples’ heads. I felt like shouting ‘Behind you, behind you,’ Christmas panto-style. No need though, they turned around sharply after McCarthy smashed a sustained E chord out of his Epiphone with the Big Muff flat to the floor; and let the bastard hang in the confined space of the Union complex until the feedback threatened to make the new front row's heads begin grenading. “Think I got their attention,” he confided.

“G’day folks,” I said. “Thanks for coming out... we’re Flange Gasket, and can we just say, thanks very much to Razorslash for that kind welcome.” Marty began to tinker around with some incidental music on keys - I think we told him to play the intro bit from Everybody Needs Somebody, that song off the Blues Brothers movie, as we intended to have a bit of a chat with our crowd here. “You know, it takes a special kind of talent to play hard-core death metal these days, and a special kind of man to sing about defiling disembodied corpses with the business end of his night tools. And that man is Steve Bennett, folks. A big hand for our man Stevo, please.”

“And Angus, you know the most beautiful thing about his art?”

“What’s that, Uncle Sam?”

“He writes entirely from his own experience...”

At which point Phil cracked the seamy night air open with a sustained machine-gun blast of double-kick, speed-metal drumming fury. One hell of a full-scale twin metal guitar assault followed, picks splintering with the insane power and furious speed, churning and chundering out riffs heavier than God’s own dick. Think mid-90s Pantera covering early ‘80s Metallica covering late ‘70s Motorhead and you’re getting close. Then double it.

From somewhere deep in the blackness of my soul I conjured the most throat-tearingly evil vocal I could, knowing McCarthy would be doing the same.

It was a simple call-and-response, really. We knew it well. For something we'd just made up.

“FATAL DEATH FATAL DEATH!” I bellowed.

“EXPLODING ARSE EXPLODING ARSE!” McCarthy roared.

“FATAL DEATH!”

“EXPLODING ARSE!”

“FATAL ARSE EXPLODING DEATH AAAAARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!!!” we screamed in unison over the massive metal crescendo of our fully eighteen-second-long set opener.

“Right, that’s enough of that,” declared Uncle Sam abruptly. The sudden silence was steamrolled by an encouraging swell of drunken cheering at our engaging attempt to out-‘Slash the ‘Slash. I was sure even the Razorslash fans were giving us the thumbs-up, though it may have been another digit they were waving in our direction.

“So, anyone here know how to swim?”

A cheer of recognition.

“It’s fuckin’ easy, really. Angus here can tell you about it, he was taught by a former Liberal Prime Minister. Sadly I was taught by Bob Cunliffe, so I tend to drown in my shit of my own making.”

He cranked right into that gorgeous little riff with enthusiasm like I’d never seen, not even when he was duck-walking over the back of the couch on recording day at Chateau Dodgy. He was absolutely shredding, throwing Big Rock shapes with axe and hips alike, twisting and shaking like he was routed directly into 240 volts, while I began telling the story of our surfin’ protagonist with the panelvan and the skills and sundry other stuff.

Squinting, I saw something I never really thought I’d see. Lips moving. Hundreds of them. All mouthing the same words, at the same time. I couldn’t hear them, but I knew what they were singing, because I was leading them. There was apparently no need to go and do the bolt, because according to a lot of these lovely people, I’d learned to swim with Harold Holt.

Well I’ll be fucked, I thought. I suddenly realised the enormity of what we’d achieved, and have to say I was momentarily overwhelmed. I almost forgot to sing the line about not getting crabs in your pubic hair, which would have been a cardinal sin - it was clearly what everyone in the building was hanging out for.

I let McCarthy loose for his solo, not that he needed any encouragement, and decided to be real brave when he came back.

“You’re in fine form tonight ladies and gents. In fact, you’re in such good form, I’m gonna let you sing so I can skive off work for a bit… Ready?”

No need to go and do the bolt, I learned to swim with Harold Holt…

Thus bellowed by a hall-full of drunken students, accompanied only by the Duffer’s open hi-hat, it sounded quite impressive.

I didn’t want it to end. Damn McCarthy and damn me for writing three-minute rock songs instead of 15-minute transcendental post-modern operettas. But we reached the end, reluctantly, and allowed the audience to scream at us for a little while.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ folks, you are one awesome audience. Where the fuck were you lovely people on Sunday night, that’s my question.”

“Not at the bloody Gollan, it would seem,” Marty piped up behind us, to much amusement. Our Italian contingent was back on deck.

We charged through Sketchy at Best, seethed through Nirvana In Pyjamas, and grooved through Git The Led Out. We had a fuckin’ ball.

“Folks, you’ve been tops, and we’ve been Flange Gasket. On the skins has been Phil Duff, on the keys has been Marty di Biagini…”

“Are we already has-beens then?” The Italian Stallion with more comedy gold! He’s on fire tonight ladies.

“That guy over there with the axe has been Uncle Sam and I’ve been Andy. Though,” I mused, “sometimes I wish I was someone else.”

“Yeah, Andy? How so?”

“Well, sometimes,” I segued seamlessly, “I’d prefer to be Angus Young.”

We’d written I Wanna Be Angus Young that week. It sounded like a Bon Scott era AC/DC riff that had been unearthed after 20 years. It rocked. I don’t need to say anything more about it, really.

Our time was up. Coincidentally, we were out of material, and Sagittaria looked like they were quite prepared to take over from us on the stage across the way.

“Folks, you’ve been awesome. We’re Flange Gasket, we’re outta here… we leave you in the capable hands of the beautiful and talented Artemisia, and the girls from Sagittaria. Cheers.”

The lights died around us, our mikes were faded out, and again, we were presented with the backs of a couple of hundred peoples’ heads. Something of an anticlimax, really. Sagittaria’s melodies swelled to fill the room, as Artemisia rather sweetly thanked us for our gentlemanly welcome.

The Duffer clambered out of his drumkit, Marty wandered around from behind his keys, and the two of us switched off our guitars and set them down. For a moment, we just stood around and looked at each other in the darkness. We were all on a high from such an awesome show, having so many people screaming our name, and even our lyrics as we thundered through our silly little songs, written in our garage, about former Play School presenters and Prime Ministers who couldn’t swim. McCarthy was the first to break the moment’s silence, summing up in a few words the intensity of the experience which had been shared that evening with each other, and with all those wonderful shining faces out there.

“Can’t believe I fucked up the solo in Sketchy,” McCarthy grinned ruefully.

We were no chance. We knew we were no chance by the fact that the judging panel were situated in front of the stage… at the other end of the hall, where Razorslash and Sagittaria had been scheduled to play. From our vantage point, we could barely see the light glinting off Chris Kurtin’s bald head. It was at that far end of the hall, the ‘main stage’ in all but name, where the presentation was due to take place shortly after Artemisia and the girls finished up. We packed up - only a small-scale lug-out this time, seeing as though the PA was theirs and staying - and made our way up to the big boys’ end of town to try and score some free piss, should there be any in the offing.

“Drunken Duff!” McCarthy declared. Phil’s younger brother had dyed his hair jet black and was wearing cargo pants, faded Chuck Taylors and a sweaty Millencolin T-shirt. He was living the new-skool-punk cliché so enthusiastically you’d have thought he’d just been spat out of a Blink 182 moshpit. We caught up with Duncan over a couple of warm cans of VB (cheers SCU Union, you cheap pricks) in traditional fashion - we slagged off his band’s performance and he slagged off ours.

“Actually,” he eventually admitted, “you weren’t bad out there for a fat old man, Angus. Granted, Jeff shits all over you for technique, but at least you can sing, he’s appalling… he couldn’t hold a tune if it had handles. And Phil actually kept time for once, even if he is a walking non-event.”

A little later, while off trying to find more warm cans of VB (I’m a glutton for punishment, and free beer is free beer after all), I was accosted by a worldly, intense-looking little girl in a magnificent floaty red dress.

“Hi, you’re Andrew aren’t you… the one they call Angus?” Artemisia Bailey was even more of an uber-babe from close range. Raven-haired with green eyes, she was a striking looking girl. But that was hardly my concern, I had Jessica at home (or at work, in the case of tonight, but she’d be along later, she promised.)

“Sure am... Artemisia, isn’t it. I did pronounce that right earlier on?”

She offered a sweet smile as affirmation. “I just wanted to say,” she began, “thanks for your lovely words of introduction, it was very kind and respectful. Particularly as you guys weren’t treated with the same respect yourselves.”

“Oh, that,” I said dismissively. “Hardly worth worrying about. Steve has a few issues, but I’m sure he’s seeking help. And we give as good as we get, as you probably heard. Hey, I like your frock, it’s gorgeous,” I commented. It wasn’t a pick-up line, obviously, because I was already dating Jessica.

“What, this old thing?” she replied. Artemisia was softly spoken, her voice low and musical, yet charged with quiet intensity. You had the impression that everything she said was carefully considered, and deeply profound. Jessica, by contrast, was confident and engaging, and spoke her mind; Andrea, Uncle Sam’s girlfriend, spoke like a coal-miner’s daughter from Cessnock, which she was. “Madeleine, our cellist, calls this my Wuthering Heights outfit.”

“It is a bit Kate Bush, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Next thing you know,” she deadpanned self-deprecatingly, “I’ll be dancing about on the moors singing Heeeeathcliff, it’s meeee, it’s Cathieeeee, I’ve come home…” Judging by her Kate Bush impressions, Artemisia didn’t take herself anywhere near as seriously as I’d expected. She sipped elegantly from a bottle of mineral water, green eyes sparkling; for an instant I was glad to be rid of the green-can-o’-Satan which would have clearly denoted me as a sad bogan. Not that I was concerned about how I appeared to her, of course. I already had a girlfriend.

Artemisia smelled fantastic, exotic, like Arabian spices. I’d grown accustomed to Jessica coming home from work, reeking of sweat (not so bad) and stale smoke (not so good). “Hey, I gotta get back,” she indicated, “but it was cool to meet you. You guys are really good - not usually my thing, but your Zeppelin medley was especially cool. Don’t you ever worry, though, that people won’t take you seriously?”

I shook my head. “I’m very worried people might start taking us seriously. It’d be a clear sign the world was about to end, I think. Nostradamus predicted that as a portent of the coming apocalypse, didn’t he? I’m sure there was something in there about four idiots singing about Harold Holt.”

She gave me a farewelling smile, and sashayed away, wavy raven hair and swishy red frock disappearing into the backstage throng. I was tingling. Why was I tingling? I shook it off. Standard issue post-show adrenalin rush. What I needed was another beer. Or for Jess to escape work and get here. Preferably with the keys to one of the deserted teaching labs in her hot little hand so all this pesky adrenalin could be put to good use.

We didn’t win. But then again, neither did Razorslash. Sagittaria claimed first prize, not unexpectedly, and were allowed back onstage to play a final farewell song - we’d guessed they were morals for the Big Cheese On Offer given that they’d not actually been asked to pack up after their set. The most interesting thing was that Razorslash not only hadn’t won, but hadn’t even come second. Flange Gasket had outpointed the ‘Slash for the silver. In fact, the crowd response at this result seemed to be evenly split between meathead bogans booing Razorslash’s demotion, and actual members of the human species who thought we were more deserving of aforementioned grand fromage than my new friend Artemisia and co. So, we'd come second. Not a bad result. The ladies like it, I'm told.


Steve Bennett hadn’t had the worst of days, all told; at least it’d been better than Saturday. At this afternoon’s band rehearsal (and subsequent pissup/smokeup) he’d successfully started a rumour, bound to race through the local muso communuity like a bushfire, that the previous Saturday evening’s guest judge, Phil from the Grinners, was in fact giving it to Sagittaria’s spunky blonde cellist Madeleine, therefore explaining why he and Mandy had overruled Chris Kurtin in the deliberations. All had agreed, convinced there was no way it could have been because their band was actually rather shit.

Staggering home, vaguely realising he was far too drunk for a mid-week afternoon (given that he was supposed to clock on at Woolies nightfill in four hours), Steve Bennett was rather surprised to find an envelope stuffed through his letterbox. His surprise welled from the fact that he didn’t usually get mail that didn’t have ‘Final Notice’ stamped across it. In truth, this almost looked like personal mail... fan mail, even?

Curiousity piqued, he ripped it open on the spot.

The envelope contained no letter, no note - just a small rectangle of blue-patterned cardboard. It was, in fact, a ‘Chance’ card from an ancient, incomplete Monopoly set, originally found behind a downstairs cupboard in the Chateau Dodgy laundry, and used only as a source of fake currency as wagering stock for drunken late-night poker games.

Bennett turned it over and read the inscription:

You have won third place in a beauty contest. Collect $10.

Those fuckin’ Fag Gasket poofs, he thought, and stormed up the overgrown path to his front door. Taped to the door was a ten dollar note. In Monopoly money, of course.

You can’t say we weren’t thorough.


[Okay, okay, we'll get onto the road trip bit now. Honest]


It was the mid-year break in season 1998, with barely even time for the oranges let alone the half-time talk. We’d been gigging as Flange Gasket for a few months now - usually doing the Friday night/Saturday night/Sunday afternoon weekend routine, other nights as work and uni commitments allowed (or, since the kickoff of France 98, as our World Cup-watching commitments allowed). We’d been north as far as Tweed Heads (playing at Seagulls for five hours to the back of a row of poker machines - at least the cheque was large and didn’t bounce) and as far south as Coffs Harbour (I believe I’ve already waxed lyrical on the qualities or otherwise of the ‘old’ Plantation Hotel, yeah?); as far west as Farmadale (where our old high school mates Chops and Harold Bishop, each four-and-a-half years into three-year UNE courses, rallied a huge bunch of drunken lunatics together to mark our performance at the union bistro) and as far east as Byron, because it was as far east as you could go without ending up underwater. And plenty of places in between, of course. Sometimes as in our own right, other times supporting others; some good venues, a lot of dodgy ones. Kretin’s contacts in terms of scoring bookings were on the whole pretty good, even if Kretin himself was erratic, vain and self-obsessed.

A couple of Seek’s bands were amassed to head up the Queensland coast for a mini-tour in the July holidays - ourselves, ACME Industries (young Duncan Duff’s punk outfit), Three by Three (aka the Bob Marley Nine) and Sagittaria, Seek’s newest signing. Artemisia Bailey had dropped by one of our gigs in Ballina - some obscure Western-themed place called the Mad Cow Café which isn’t there anymore so don’t bother looking - and had asked our thoughts on signing with Chris Kurtin. Our thoughts were essentially unprintable. However, we slipped her a copy of the ‘good’ contract (as distinct from the ‘evil’ variant which Kretin was continuing to wave in front of potential signees despite it being legally Very Dodgy Indeed) and she was most impressed with our legal nous. Kretin was less impressed with us, but he agreed to welcome Sagittaria aboard under the same terms and conditions. As such we almost had our own mini-touring festival, with rock, punk, dub-reggae-funk-whatever-the-fuck-Three-By-Three-played, and Sagittaria’s equally unclassifiable folkie mysticism.

We almost had misogynistic death metal as well - Razorslash were originally down to join the circus but Steve Bennett put it to Chris Kurtin that his band would refuse to join the tour if Flange Gasket were on the bill. To which Chris Kurtin put it to Steve Bennett that he could bugger off. We were mildly thrilled that Bennett went through with his ultimatum and Razorslash were left behind - partly because it reflected our new-found ascendancy over them, mostly because the ‘Slash were arseholes and we didn’t want to go on tour with them. In the end, money won the argument; we were vaguely marketable, they weren’t.

Also left behind, but for very different reasons, was ACME’s blue-haired frontman/guitarist, known to all (apart from his mother) as Gerbil. Gerbil had made the excellent career move of falling off the top deck of the Lismore Shopping Square carpark while trying to rail-grind the access ramp, breaking his wrist - Christ knows how he didn’t break everything else - precisely one week before his band were due to head up the Queensland coast to play a week’s residence in Port Douglas followed by a couple of nights on the way back at Airlie Beach. Gerbil very shortly thereafter discovered that it is very difficult, in fact nigh impossible, to play guitar with a broken wrist. Once he had finished offering Gerbil a free character assessment (also unprintable), Duff the Younger, now obliged to take over frontperson duties, attempted to remedy their sudden lack of guitar expertise by picking up the phone and dialling his ever-reliable old buddy Jeffrey Michael Young. The Jeff perhaps lacked Gerbil’s incredibly technical playing ability, but also lacked his incredibly stupid hair.

Drunken Duff and The Jeff had met a few years ago playing soccer for the same regional high schools junior rep team, after which they’d signed on to play for the Ballina team’s under-16s side in the local comp. Punk rock was their other major common interest - Green Day and the Offspring had led the ‘new punk’ vanguard, but these two and their mates were into less mainstream bands like NOFX, Millencolin, Pennywise, and Newtown’s own Frenzal Rhomb. (And Blink 182, at least until they went ‘commercial’ in the very late 90s.) In those days Duncan, Jeff and another dodgy mate whose name escapes me had a band called The Toilets who were, fittingly, shithouse. They got together at weekends in the massive shed in the South Ballina industrial estate that housed Phil and Duncan’s old man’s marine engineering business, and played every song they knew - mostly covers by NOFX, Millencolin, Pennywise and Frenzals, with Green Day and the Offspring thrown in just to give the kids in the crowd something they could recognise. They played at friends’ parties, school socials and skate park openings, and managed to get to the point where they weren’t entirely appalling anymore. Of course this was also the point at which they all finished high school and moved in a variety of random directions, most of which were away, and the band dissolved; so endeth The Toilets’ brave bid for immortality. At least until old mate Gerbil snapped his wrist skateboarding, and Drunken went straight for the Jeffphone. The Jeff was on mid-year break from UQ Gatton, was bored shitless kicking around the farm, and wasn’t going to let a minor thing like not having picked up a guitar in months get between him and a couple of weeks pissing it up furiously in Port Douglas and Airlie Beach.

But it wasn’t a holiday, as Kretin repeatedly reminded (lectured) us; it was work. Hard work. Just because we were long way from home, in a world-renown tourist destination teeming with drunken European backpacker chicks, did not mean this was supposed to be a holiday. We tried to take him seriously, but seeing as though he was trying to cram his scuba suit and flippers into the boot of his Mazda MX5 while he lectured us, the impact was a little lost on us.

Now, I love road trips. I shouldn’t, I know. Being crammed into a car with a bunch of idiots shouldn’t be regarded as entertaining, particularly after being crammed into as many cars with as many idiots as I have throughout my ‘career’ (such as it is, or was). But I love it. I love the countryside flashing past the windows, the tunes cranking on the stereo as the miles fly by in good company and good humour. I love the cabin-fever banter, the onset of road-trip insanity as the piss-taking observations and in-jokes start to layer upon layer on top of each other. It should have been the absolute worst part of being in a touring, gigging rock band, and some days it was. But to be honest, it’s the bit I missed the most.

The trip up the coast in July ’98 was a massive logistical event; even the convoy itself was impressive enough. Aboard the postie van were myself, McCarthy and The Famous Jeff, plus musical equipment for the playing thereof. The brothers Duff and the drummer from ACME Industries (the infamous Krusty) joined Marty in the diesel LandCruiser from his old man’s farm, towing an old enclosed trailer which was basically the back half of a series one Ford Escort panelvan - about the only useful purpose to which you could put a series one Escort panelvan, in all honesty. Sagittaria’s triumvirate of feminine loveliness were packed into cellist Madeleine’s old HJ Premier station wagon, emblazoned with sparkly bumper stickers offering platitudes like ‘Magic Happens’, while Three by Three, long since used to the logistical perils of taking nine-elevenths of a football team on tour, these days had a Hi-Ace minivan on semi-permanent lease from Budget. And of course there was Kretin in his MX5 dinky toy, though he didn’t really want to associate with us. He tore away up the Bruce Highway (only Queenslanders could call a highway Bruce - I’m surprised I didn’t see a bridge called Bazza or a river called Jonno), sighted again only when we passed him somewhere between Rocky and Gladstone, pulled over by the local cuntstabulary in a shiny new SS Commodore. We didn’t wait up for him.

The trip had everything necessary to make it a classic.

Tunes? Check. All in the postie van came well-armed in that department. Of course, given that the three of us had pretty much grown up together, we had a lot of musical common ground anyway. For his part, our favourite Uncle was a madman with putting together very cool compilation CDs. Each had a theme - his Short Attention Span series was popular with the punk rock lads, the Non-Aggression Pact albums were great for laid-back cruising - and McCarthy even got to indulge his latent graphic designer tendencies with the cover art.

Scenery? Check. The weather was great, the air-con even needed cranking on in places as canefields shone in the winter sun and swayed in the seabreeze.

Idiot banter? Check. With we three, there was never any doubt it’d be puerile, juvenile, and fun. The highlights were many. The truck with the bumper sticker ‘If you can’t stop, then at least smile as you go under’, which we promoted as our motto for the rest of the tour. Kretin getting pulled over for speeding, of course. Krusty hanging his arse out of the window of the CannedLoser rolling down the main street of Ayr at three in the afternoon, to the delight of a school bus full of primary kids and the horror of a Corolla full of bowls ladies. Two full days of silly, smutty conversations between the lads in the cabin of the postie van. Camping at the beachside caravan park at Airlie Beach (again, don’t bother to look; it’s now a resort and a stack of arse-ugly condos) as our (roughly) halfway stopover, revelling in paradise, and knowing we’d be back here in a week to play a few nights. Sagittaria’s old Holden breaking down (twice) en route - a highlight because we farmers’ boys were able to show off our roadside-mechanic skills to a trio of gorgeous, slightly heat-affected damsels in distress. After growing up surrounded by six-cylinder Toranas and Kingswood utes, Jeff and I certainly knew one end of a 202 Holden grey motor from the other. The old Premier threw a fan belt beneath the concrete bull with the concrete balls (usually missing, presumed stolen) in Rocky - conveniently just down the street from Repco, so we ducked in, grabbed a replacement and strapped it on - and again expired at the first set of lights as we rolled into Townsville. We picked up a replacement alternator from the local wreckers in Townsville and bolted it on in quick time, to the delight and appreciation of the girls, particularly Madeleine who Jeff was spading furiously with intent to cause a disturbance of the peace. Of course we kept it quite that the existing alternator had only lunched itself because we hadn’t tensioned the replacement fan belt properly in Rocky, because that could have significantly endangered The Jeff’s chances of getting any.

The Jeff was quite relaxed and open about his interest in Madeleine. He could afford to be; he was single. Artemisia (or Anastasia, as he usually called her) was too serious, Imogen (their reclusive third member) was too quiet; he liked funky, zany girls, and Madeleine fitted the bill nicely. Which of the three Sagittarians was the most attractive was a worryingly common topic of conversation aboard the postie van. Worrying for those of us who wished to stay on good terms with their girlfriends for the duration of the fortnight: McCarthy and myself were both under strict instructions to return unmolested.

McCarthy, for which this long(ish)-term-relationship bizzo was very much a novel experience, dealt with this by going on and on (and on) about Andrea. It was a big deal for them to be apart - they worked together, socialised together, ate and slept together (though not necessarily at the same time), so to be apart for two weeks was a major issue. Which he was kind enough to externalise for all our listening enjoyment.

Port Douglas is a long way from anywhere. Think of anywhere, and I can pretty much guarantee Port Douglas is a long way from it. (Cairns doesn’t count.) Even so, the place had a ravenous appetite for entertainment in its various bars, pubs and clubs, particularly over the northern hemisphere winter when Poms, Euros and Seppos alike flock to FNQ to thaw out in the sunshine. There was a ready-made market for bands up here; they simply couldn’t get enough decent acts at certain peak periods, like mid-year. Enter Chris Kurtin and Seek Discoveries, who through a masterful display of networking and relationship-building within the industry (i.e. his brother Terry owned a couple of bars up here) had managed to match venues needing acts, with bands to play them.

We met Terry on our arrival, weary and stinking from our two-day-drive, in the late-evening FNQ humidity. Terry Kurtin if anything was even dodgier than Chris, but engagingly so, not taking himself quite so deathly seriously. His venues were seedy dives, but endearingly seedy, much like their owner, or ourselves. He put us up in a rundown block of motel units near the beach which he’d bought as an investment property a few years back - the investment being his plans to make a bucket o’ coin out of Christopher Skase once the latter inevitably looked to expand his hold over the Port Douglas beachfront. It hadn’t really worked out - these days Skase was now occy-strapped to an oversized Ventolin inhaler in Majorca, and the Marlin Coast Holiday Court had seen better days (and lots of ‘em). But the view, my Lord, that was something special indeed. From the corner unit which the Duff boys shared, you could see through the window into the girls changing rooms at the fitness centre next door. Dirty buggers, those Duff boys.

Between us, Seek’s four bands had the run of the place - Kretin and his scuba suit weren’t sighted all week, his MX5 parked securely outside Terry’s house up on Millionaire’s Row (not that either of them were) rather than deigning to slum it with the plebs at the Marlin Coast Holiday Court - and in truth we did go just a little bit silly. Let’s face it, our only responsibilities were to turn up with our gear and play, once we’d remembered which of the three venues in town it was our turn to play that night (which we managed to bugger up on more than one occasion) - the dodgy Hawaiian-themed bar, the dodgy Irish pub, or the dodgier-than-both backpacker-slash-meatmarket nightclub which made the Powerhouse in Lismore look like Studio 54 in its mid-Seventies New York pomp. The pseudo-Irish pub, Tam O’Shanter Kilpatrick’s or Dodgy O’Shonkys or whatever it was called, ended up our favourite of the three as (a) the bar staff were babes; (b) the dress code did not include a luau or a grass skirt; (c) the bar staff were babes; (d) curfew was half-twelve so we got to go home before stupid o’clock and get back to our drinking, unlike the poor hapless saps who were trapped at the Powerhouse’s evil twin until the ugly lights came on at 3am - our new mates from Three By Three seemed to get that gig most nights, poor bastards, so we saw bugger-all of them for the duration of our stay in Port Douglas; and (e) the bar staff were babes.

I may have mentioned that the bar staff at Hackney O’Clichés were babes. I should also mention that I had a girlfriend. Yes, Jessica, the same one as before, as much to my surprise as it must be yours. Sure, it hadn’t been all that dazzlingly fresh and exciting these latter months, but the mere fact that our relationship could be measured in months was an achievement. I measured it at several months, as I tended to use the counting system one, two, several when it came to how many months I’d been in a relationship. Several was typically a synonym for far too fucking long thanks v. much but I was determined to stick this out, dammit. Jessica was a great girl, she seemed to think the world of me, and that little voice in the back of my head which pointed out the gorgeousness of pretty much every other girl in a ten mile vicinity was going to be ignored this time - as an exercise in self-control, as much as anything.

So you’re thinking, hey, this guy’s a cunt, can’t keep it trousered, fuck 'im. But listen. Here’s the deal. You meet someone new, you start dating them perhaps. Sometimes, there’s a spark. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, there’s a big fuck-off bolt of lightning, like there was with Jessica. They’re fascinating, they’re amazing, their company so enrapturing and fulfilling that you want to spend as much time with them as you can. You ditch your friends, you blow off your commitments, whatever, to be with them. They’re everything you were looking for at that particular moment. Jessica was blonde, gorgeous, funny, spunky, free-spirited, open-minded, made fantastic cocktails and was spectacular in bed. Complaints? None. You can’t help but congratulate yourself, along with everyone else slapping your back, for your astounding success in landing such a brilliant catch as her. It’s all good.

Then you settle into the relationship, and it’s still all good. Maybe it’s three days in, maybe it’s three months, you start finding yourself making little mental notes. I don’t really like the way she does this. Or that. To start with, these little mental Post-Its are swamped by full-scale billboards reminding you of all the things about her that are just Fucken Awesome (to quote those great philosophers of our time, Spiderbait). She’s smart, funny, provides you with free drinks, laughs at your jokes, and has proven her willingness to initiate various filthy acts of a sexual nature that could get both of you locked up in various backward states in the Deep South, like Tasmania.

Then again, though… she’s always working when we have gigs. And she comes home reeking of cigarette smoke, and when she does she’s too tired and cranky to wanna get hot and sticky. And her parents vote National, and she can’t see anything wrong with that. And she starts nearly every sentence with ‘Like’ or ‘You know’ like Frank Zappa’s apocryphal Valley Girl. And she thinks all teachers are lazy because they get fourteen weeks off a year (that was one of the main reasons I chose the profession!) when she can barely be bothered turning up to lectures for her mid-morning ecology lectures, and doesn’t want to be an environmental scientist anyway, so why the hell did she enrol in the course in the first place. And she shaves her legs with my razor, blunting the motherfuckers faster than if Bigfoot had used it to denude his back hair. Admittedly, she shaves a lot of other places as well, so it’s not all negative. But it’s never the big things that kill a relationship, never the Wuthering Heights-style blazing arguments and running out across the moors in the storm screaming someone’s name in sheer passion and fury. It’s the annoying little things, like blunt razors and smoke-flavoured hair on the pillow next to you.

And, of course, the sex.

It’s not that the sex gets boring, or infrequent; sure it gets a little of both, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that it gets efficient. Efficient, predictable, even clinical. By now, if you’re not completely rubbish, you’ve experimented thoroughly over the past few months, you know exactly what trips her trigger, what kind of dirty talk gets her going, what she likes to hear whispered in her ear, and at what point she’s just going to get offended; where she likes to be touched, with how much pressure, with how much insistence or repetition; what she’s freely willing to do, what she’s prepared to do with a little persuasion (alcoholic or otherwise), and what’s wayyyy out of bounds. Bluntly, you know how to make her come just about as long and as hard as she’ll ever manage under your tutelage, and now you don’t ever seem to find yourself deviating from the script: kiss neck, nuzzle earlobe, stroke here, suckle there, tease here, rub there, stick that there on that precise angle of incidence as determined by experiment, repeat as necessary; hey presto, who’s your daddy. One recipe for gorgeous blonde on the brink of meltdown. Here’s one I prepared earlier.

McCarthy’s legendary chemical engineer mate Super Dave had a saying. Sex is like pizza: it’s never bad. Now presumably Super Dave had his fair share of greasy (and possibly triple-cheese-encrusted) rumpy-pumpy over the years, but he’s got a point. Sex with Jessica was never, ever bad. It was just getting a little… formulaic. Whereas sex with all the utterly gorgeous girls I’d suddenly started noticing in my local vicinity had the potential to be mind-blowingly, stratospherically brilliant. That’s one side of the problem: other girls start to become more and more attractive to you. Call it the biological prerogative of the male of the species, call it just being a horny bastard - call it what you will, it is what it is: the grass just looks greener.

And on the other side, even more problematically, you start to become more and more attractive to other girls. I have no doubt that women find men within a relationship more attractive than those without. It’s the ‘stamp of approval’ that this guy has met the global sisterhood’s exacting criteria and has been deemed worthy - let’s face it, how many long-term-single guys do you know who are single by choice? Even if they aren’t aware you’re already in a relationship, you’re automatically going to compare favourably to your ‘single’ brethren - girls can see you’re more confident, more sure of yourself; you’ve had someone laughing at your jokes and telling you you’re wonderful, so you know you’re the shit; and you don’t need to even try because, after all, you know what you have waiting at home, so you’ve got nothing to prove. And if they do know you’re already in a relationship, well for some that’s just a little challenge that their egos are more than keen to meet.

Let’s be unequivocal. Jessica was awesome. I liked her a lot. I didn’t love her, but I wasn’t deluding myself that she loved me, either. I’d been with her about as long as I’d ever been with anyone up to that point, and I was happy being with her. And if keeping her meant ignoring all the little subconscious signs and signals which I’d always obeyed before, the ones that said Exit This Way, then so be it. But the question remained: Did I have itchy feet? Maybe. Then again, maybe that was just from the shower block at the caravan park back in Airlie.

And I was hardly on my Pat Malone on the being-tempted front. If the Jeff still had romantic intentions regarding Sagittaria’s lively strawberry-blonde cellist Madeleine, he probably hadn’t helped the situation by seducing (read ‘being woefully drunk and almost charming in the proximity of’) a series of attractive (read ‘attractive enough at the time’) foreign backpacker girlies during our week in Port Douglas. He didn’t discriminate: most nobly, he saw not race, or colour, or creed, largely because he’d encumbered himself with beer goggles like the lenses on the Hubble telescope, and would probably, in the rather unkind characterisation of our man Krusty Kristensen, ‘root a rat on a chain’. On Tuesday, our first night in town, it was a wacky Dutchie, who seemed to like the odd wacky Dutchie herself; on Wednesday, a flirty French girl, who presumably enjoyed a little French as well; and on Thursday, a Greek goddess… not sure what she was into actually. On Friday, he took the night off ref. pants action (it was his RDO, apparently) and on the weekend he entertained some female visitors to our shores from Canada (yes, two of them, the little bastard). The reason I know all of this is, dear reader, is that this hapless bastard happened to share a two-bedroom suite with the Young family’s hereto-undiscovered pants man, and the walls at the Marlin Coast Holiday Court were a little on the thin side, constructed as they were from wallpaper, reinforced with more wallpaper – the latter no more structurally sound that the underlying wallpaper, but much uglier.

Most nights, once we’d breached closing time at the various alcohol-retailing establishments in town, I ended up camped out on the balcony knocking back a few more than necessary with McCarthy, pining for his beloved Andrea (the difference between mine and his long-term relationships was he really did believe it was love) and the Duffer, another refugee from his homeland - his snotty little brother was also getting more skirt than he was. We usually ended up crashing out on the carpet in one of the other units, usually McCarthy and Marty’s impromptu refugee camp, keeping Marty awake until daylight with the talking of rubbish and the drinking of yet more piss.

Late on the Saturday night (call it Sunday morning, to be factually correct), Phil and I proceeded to write a song together for the very first time, describing and reflecting upon our common experiences of the week. It was called, naturally enough, My Snotty Little Brother Gets More Skirt Than I Do. To which Drunken and the Jeff released the following joint statement: 'Those that can, do. Those that can’t, whinge about it.'

Sunday was our last ‘playing’ night at Port Douglas; the Brothers Very Grimm (i.e. the Youngs and the Duffs, each as members of Flange Gasket and ACME Industries) were lucky enough to play the Irish theme pub on the last night, the redeeming qualities of which I’d already described; more specifically they could be described as Natasha, Brigitte, Siobhan and Holly, each amongst their respective nations’ finest exports. (Which were, from hazy recollection, Scotland, Belgium, Ireland and the good ol’ US of A. In fact the only remotely Irish thing about Terry’s Irish pub was Siobhan.) The girls were kind enough to ply us with massive amounts of free alcohol while we played, making a total farce of the Responsible Service of Alcohol legislation, if anyone cared. I remember looking over my shoulder while we were cranking through one of our originals - we were at the point of playing about fifty-fifty originals to covers by this stage in our career - and seeing the Duffer craned backwards off his drum stool, being supported by Holly and Natasha, who were pouring Jose Cuervo laybacks into his gob straight from the one litre bar stocks. Holly was squeezing a lemon into his mouth, and Natasha was providing the salt ‘lick’ - I won’t say from where and while it wasn’t enough to get them both arrested, it wasn’t by much. The Duffer, heroically, just kept on drumming. To say he still managed to keep the beat would be an exaggeration - he never actually managed that when stone cold sober - but it was still a remarkable performance, considering he was mostly off the chair and buried in Holly’s voluminous cleavage at the time. What a powerhouse. What a machine.

I turned to McCarthy, currently playing a slide guitar solo with the neck of a bottomless Corona bottle (every time I turned around, it seemed to be full again). He flashed a winning grin. I flicked a thumb over my shoulder. “The Duffer’s a fuckin’ tank,” I slurred, shouting over the racket. Okay, so I’d had the odd free drinkie myself, courtesy Belgium’s finest export since Stella Artois, young Brigitte. “You couldn’t kill him with an axe.”

At which point the Duffer collapsed off his stool with an almighty crash of cymbals and a hearty cheer from our superb and very well lubricated Sunday night audience, most of whom were new friends or acquaintances we’d picked up along the way during our gigs in town. Krusty, man of action, slung his bourbon aside, leapt off his barstool, vaulted over the comatose Duffer into the hot seat (well, it was more sticky than hot, courtesy all the tequila spilling over the stool), and proceeded to save the day. Admittedly all he could play were hundred-mile-an-hour punk rock rhythms, but that was OK. Ever heard U2’s Mysterious Ways covered by an Offspring tribute band? Neither had I. Or anyone else, apparently.

It was a rather large evening, curtailed only by exhaustion after a hard week’s gigging (and an even harder week’s pissing it up.) We were only permitted to head back to the motel and crash on our sworn pledge to come out with the bar girls on the following (Monday) evening, traditionally the night when hospitality staff are allowed out to play. We staggered back to the Marlin Coast and blacked out till late afternoon. Even though Monday and Tuesday were nominally ‘off’ days (Wednesday was marked in our official Seek diaries as a ‘transit’ day to Airlie Beach, with gigs booked for the Thurs/Fri/Sat nights), Chris Kurtin had told us that we were to be packed up and ready to check out by ten, and that he’d be there to ensure we were. However his dear brother Terence proceeded to get him monstrously drunk at the Hawaiian joint while his employees were dutifully sullying the purity of our performance at the Irish pub further down the street, and we didn’t see Chris until four in the afternoon. He looked like death warmed up, and not warmed up by much at that.

But at least we could locate him - we’d managed to lose the Duffer somewhere between him dropping off the perch at the gig, and us waking up at the hotel the next afternoon, but no matter - he’d surface somewhere, no doubt. After throwing ourselves in the surf in a vain attempt to revive our major life signs, we wandered into town for ‘breakfast’ (two pies-and-sauce and a Black Aspro) - the staff at the bakery by now were regarding us as long-lost friends - and found the Duffer propping up a table outside, monstering a steak, cheese and bacon pie. Between massive gulps of delicious, protein-infused lard, Phil detailed how he’d passed out on the way home and had ended up kipping on a bench in the park. Apparently. Needless to say, he looked a wreck - there were still park-bench imprints in his face. He finished inhaling the pie, ordered another in a cheerful spray of pastry flakes, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and addressed us all:

“Last night was fuckin’ tops. Same again this evening?”

My word yes. We met the girls at seven for a few preliminary drinks at the Irish pub - we being the Brothers Very Grimm, Uncle Sam and Krusty; Marty had accepted the invitation of the Sagittaria lovelies for a low-key Thai meal and a quiet night without quite so much alcohol poisoning. The inside word from Madeleine, according to the Jeff (yes, he was persisting) was that she and Artemisia were trying to set him up with Imogen, figuring they were similar personality types - shy, reserved, intense souls, given to poetry and introspection, not so comfortable in the raw, rough-edged world of the rest of us. Apparently they hadn’t seen Marty last evening when he’d bared his pasty drunken arse to the world and performed a heroic nude run down the street to the motel. Not that I’m one to notice these sorts of things, but our Italian contingent was reported to be a lot hairier of arse than anyone could have reasonably expected. I was rather thankful he wasn’t borrowing my razors also.

The plan was to grab some food at a Mexican place down the way from the Irish pub, but our ‘appetiser’ drinks went well into second or third course and we ended up in a pokey-but-cheerful Italian joint in a side alley off Macrossan St. Nastro Azzurro, Lambrusco and (eventually) grappa flowed in torrents as we scarfed pizza and pasta of more than passable quality, talked a lot of bollocks and generally made merry. Then it was on to the Hawaiian place, happily tripping over the Three By Three lads and their new entourage of local aficionados (including the bar staff from the dodgy nightclub, or Powerhouse Northern Branch Office as we’d tagged it). A few fearsomely overhopped cocktails and a lot of shakin’ dat ass later, closing time threatened to bring a premature end to proceedings. Bollocks to that, we declared. Powerhouse North it was then.

I wasn’t sure how this had happened, but as recently as a few minutes earlier on the walk up to the nightclub, I’d realised there was something soft and warm nestled under my arm. It turned out to be Holly, the seriously cute platinum-blonde barmaid from Southern California (via the Irish pub up the road). Holly wasn’t the tallest of lasses, fitting securely under my arm, but she did have grrrreat tits and seemed to have no problem at all with me leering drunkenly at them (it was all I could do not to fall in, to be fair.) Away to starboard (listing precariously to starboard, in truth) McCarthy had somehow contrived to hook up with one of her workmates, the Belgian brunette Brigitte - try saying that after four pints of Kilkenny, half a dozen Nastros, most of a bottle of an Italian red most kindly described as ‘rustic’, a couple of shots of grappa which could peel wallpaper (best not to try this at the Marlin Coast Holiday Court as the walls would disintegrate), several largely unidentifiable island-themed cocktails, and… well, I stopped counting after that. McCarthy, loud, lucid and animated, was several hundred sheets to the wind and was feeling no pain whatsoever. What he was feeling was Brigitte’s rather lovely arse, which she didn’t seem to mind at all. Various other souls had found members of the opposite gender to drape themselves over - the gospel according to Holly was that we lads would stand a much greater chance of getting in if we were attached to attractive females, but in truth we knew there was bugger-all chance they’d turn us away on a Monday, particularly as we’d all played the place in the past week. Hell, we owned this town, dammit. But the excuse to tighten my squeeze around Holly’s waist was gratefully exploited by both of us, as Holly winked at the m-a-s-s-i-v-e Samoan dude on the door - hey, if he had decided he didn’t want us to come in, the decision was final and no correspondence would be entered into - and we were ushered in.

Hey, this wasn’t so bad. We still hadn’t paid full price for a beer all night, and since we were last here, they’d canned the Top 40 dance detritus in favour of cool old shit like early Stones and Beatles. Yes, the same ‘crusty old shit’ I’d objecting to playing as covers in the band, but I reserved the right to change my mind on this or any other subject, as I was pissed as a fart. Somehow, after arseloads of grog, with the volumptuous Holly gyrating against me, the old stuff didn’t seem so bad. The way that girl could move to Honkytonk Women… I tell you, it gimme (gimme, gimme) the honky-tonk blues. Or at least it made me want to bang her silly right there on the dancefloor. Instead, we retreated to a corner, where she clambered into my lap, and boldly pushed her tongue down my throat. I reciprocated, cupping, then kneading her heavy breasts with my hands while I kissed her. I’d guessed right; from the wicked little smile this produced, she seemed to appreciate a firm hand. I could feel her breath, hot and hard, on my neck, and her inner thighs, warm and damp, through her tight black pants, almost grinding her pussy against my lap. Hang on, I’ll rephrase that. I’d be lying if I said I could feel her breath, hot and hard, on my neck, and her inner thighs, warm and damp, through her tight black pants, almost grinding her pussy against my lap. But it sounds pretty good so let’s say that’s how it happened. Hell, I was too drunk to remember little nuances and details anyway.

I wasn’t drunk enough, though, not to hear that little voice, now raised to a scream, echoing through the fog in my head:

For fuck’s sake, STOP.

It’s ironic. The same little voice in the back of one’s mind that gleefully informed of the blisteringly attractiveness of each and every girl within visible range, was now a panicked shrill. Don’t you DARE do anything that jeopardises our chances of getting regular lovin’, you stupid fuckin eejit! All that stuff about Jessica being an annoying pain in the arse, look, just forget we mentioned it. You’re not thinking straight. Cease and desist all further gropage!

Like a shaft of light through the thick alcoholic clouds, a moment of cold logic that I couldn’t refute: No good could possibly come of this. This can’t end well.

Holly must have read my reticence. “What’s up, baby?”

I gave a wry, regretful smile. “I have a girlfriend,” I said. Pretty weak, I realise.

“So?” she said suggestively.

But I just shook my head ruefully. “Sorry. I promised her I’d behave myself when I was away. Look, I’ll catch you around.” The latter was a total lie, and she knew it. We were heading south tomorrow, just as soon as our hungovers allowed it. All of a sudden, the cumulative effect of all those drinks hit me. I left Holly with a wave and made a ragged beeline for the exit. Not my most dignified exit, I know. But I felt like shit - physically and psychologically - and I needed fresh air. Like all nightclubs, particularly pre-Smokefree legislation, Powerhouse Northern Division stank to the Jesus fuck. It stank of sweat, smoke, and sexual desperation, and I had to get out.

The night air was cool and clarifying. I gave the big Samoan bouncer a professional nod of recognition; he was professional enough not to mention the lurid magenta lipstick stain that was smeared across my face. I wandered a little way down the street, fed some change into a Coke machine in return for a Powerade (doing next to bugger all in depleting my massive stocks of spare change - ever notice how you can gauge the success of a night out by how heavy your wallet is next morning?) and sat down on what I presumed to be the Philip Duff Memorial Bench opposite the park.

By now, I felt good, surprisingly. The panicked nausea had gone, drifted away on the cool night seabreeze. Sure, I could still taste Holly on my lips and smell her on my clothes - thank you Butthole Surfers - but I hadn’t slept with her. It might sound odd, even mildly pathetic, but I was rather proud of myself. In some half-arsed, deluded way, I’d managed to stay true to Jessica, under extreme duress. I sipped my Powerade, thinking about what tomorrow…. [checks watch] …uh, later today would bring. We’d probably take it easy rolling on southwards, maybe a night in Cairns - I’d heard Trinity Beach was nice - maybe then on to the Whitsundays, a trip out to the reef if fun tickets permitted. We had plenty of time to get down to Airlie by Wednesday night to check into our salubrious on-site vans at the caravan park near the beach. Which reminded me, I thought. I should pick up some thongs for the shower block. Or at least some Tinaderm.

My phone bleeped an incoming message. I hadn’t had the phone long, or any mobile phone for that matter. I’d always thought they were a bit of a wank, and like those phone-sex lines they used to advertise on late night TV (until Brian Harradine shut them down), an expensive wank at that. But given our line of work, they had their uses. I found myself hoping it was Jessica. Not that I was about to call her up and declare my undying love for her, or even mention in passing what had gone on that night - even in my sub-optimal state I recognised that snogging some random big-titted barmaid from California wasn’t necessarily a winner in the ‘Earn Your Girlfriend’s Undying Gratitude’ stakes - but I would have preferred it was her that, say, Uncle Sam McCarthy, who it turned out to be.

‘CALL ASAP!!!!’ barked the uncharacteristically terse message - he usually wrote texts in full sentences, with punctuation and everything; what a massive nerd he was.
Curiosity got the better of me. I’ll bite, I thought, and tried to locate his name in my phone. I found it under 'S' for Sam, which I took as a positive result, and pressed the green button.

McCarthy answered the phone in the midst of a reenactment of Hiroshima; or failing that, the dancefloor of the Powerhouse’s northern sibling. “Hang on,” he called, and within moments the turmoil receded and he was out into the night air - presumably only a few hundred yards up the road.

“What’s up mate?”

“Andrea! Wow, babe, what time is it in New Zealand?” he declared loudly.

“No, mate, it’s…”

“No, I’m not still out at this time of night…” he said, projecting his voice as best he could. In the background, a feminine giggle, tinged with a little European haughtiness. Brigitte?

“What the fuck are you up to, my son?” I grinned.

“No, there’s noone else with me… Andrea, seriously, just listen to me. You know I wouldn’t lie to you…” The sound became muffled, like McCarthy had pressed his hand over the speaker. “Look, I’m so sorry. It’s my girlfriend. She’s over in New Zealand, I promised to call her hours ago…”

“So you don’t want to get hot and sweaty with me any more, Sammy?” I could hear Brigitte coo. She was drunk and horny and had the delivery of a Hungarian porn actress in her first English enunciation class. I was almost wetting myself, it was the funniest shit I’d heard in years.

“No baby, I’m sorry…”

“Not even with these?” Something that could only be a zip being undone. Brigitte’s outfit for the eve involved a zip which ran right down her cleavage. No prizes for guessing, folks. I couldn’t help myself. I practically cried with laughter.

“How dare you, Samuel, you bastard!” I squealed in an appropriately high register, and hung up. Then tossed the phone onto the park bench, and curled up into a guffawing mess next to it. I was still giggling intermittently when McCarthy appeared some minutes later, alone, dishevelled and out of breath. I took one look at him - Brigitte’s lipstick was a darker shade of tan than Holly’s, judging by the smear on his face - and cracked up helplessly all over again.

“You think this is funny?” he panted angrily. Then turned a little pale, and looked around nervously for somewhere to throw up. The jog down the road had upset his tummy, it seemed. Of course, the ninety-seven beers and multitudes of overly-creamy fettuccine alfredo had nowt to do with it.

“Fuck oath I do,” I giggled. “Getting me to call you and pretending it was Andrea, that was seriously the best you could come up with to get out of the situation?”

“I panicked,” he retorted, like it was my fault. Which, apparently, it was. “Unlike you, I’m no fuckin’ world expert in cheating on my girlfriend. I don’t fuckin' do it as often as you.”

“Oh, fuckin' harden up princess…”

He stomped his feet. I wondered if he was getting his moves off Kretin. If so, the point ’n’ click couldn’t be too far away. “This is all your fuckin’ fault, dammit! If you hadn’t encouraged me…”

“Encouraged you?”

“All that, ‘don’t worry, she’s miles away, she’ll never know’ bullshit…” I couldn’t actually remember saying anything of the sort, but I couldn’t remember much at all of the night’s conversation, so there was a moderate chance I had actually egged him on thus. Bad Angus. “You might be able to delude yourself with that crap, but I can’t. I care about Andrea, I really do. I can’t believe you’ve led me into this. This is not the way I conduct my relationships.”

I let him finish, then paused.

“You done?”

He considered this for a moment, then wandered thoughtfully over to a nearby rubbish bin, and violently deposited his fettuccine therein with a voluble growl. Some moments later, he resurfaced. He gestured for the remnants of the Powerade, gargled profusely, and spat.

“I’m done,” he said mildly.

I waited until he’d settled into his stumbling gait for the long walk home, before propping an arm on his shoulder in as reassuring a manner as I could, and offering the following as condolences:

“So… a pretty good rack on Brigitte, in your opinion?”


I was hoping McCarthy had gotten over his sense-of-humour-failure by the morning. Yes, we’d gotten familiar with a couple of barmaids in a distant Port, after a string of nights in the same venue. Yes, we’d ended up going out with them the night after our last gig, and yes, we’d managed to end up snogging one example each while verrry drrrrunk. A bad error on both our parts, granted, but not worth sacrificing our respective relationships over. In other words, I’d tried to suggest the following: don’t ask, don’t tell. It meant nothing, to you or to them. Regret it all you like, but keep it to yourself; use your shame and guilt positively to bring her closer to you.

Of course, I wish I’d actually made that point before he phoned up Andrea the next morning.

The unit phone rang sometime in mid-morning; I didn’t get it, but Jeff made sure I took the call by tapping on my forehead with the receiver. I think it was Morse code for S.O.S. Pertinent, perhaps. It was Jessica.

“Hey Jess, what’s going on,” I said, my voice gravelly from singing, drinking, second-hand smoke, and generally acting up.

“You tell me,” she said. “I’ve just had Andrea call me up, very distressed. Seems her ever-loving boyfriend has managed to pash on with some random bit of slutty Eurotrash. Is that true?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” I replied. Pash on? How fuckin' 80s is that? “I lost track of him later in the night.”

“I can tell when you’re lying, Andy. Your lips are moving.”
Ack. Oy vey. (I was turning Jewish, all of a sudden. Hey, at least now I’d have a chance of getting laid in Bondi.) I glanced over at Jeff, who looked rather bemused by the whole situation. And in the doorway had suddenly appeared our Pontius (or was it Judas?), McCarthy, looking mortified and white as a sheet after getting off the phone with Andrea.

“Yeah, I’ve just seen him, and judging by his expression, he’s in a world of hurt. But hey, he’s a big boy, has nothing to do with me. I am not my brother’s keeper.” Just as well, as my brother had been doing a damn sight more than snogging barmaids.

“Look, I really don’t want to know what Jeff gets up to, so long as you aren’t doing the same. I just want you to tell me you’ve been behaving yourself, like you promised. I’ve just had Andrea bitching at me for twenty minutes about Sam, telling me how lucky I am to have you rather than him. I barely know the girl, for Christ’s sake. ‘Your Andy would never do something like that’, she tells me.” A little hesitancy in her breathing betrayed her emotion. “Tell me she’s right, Andy.”

I glanced up at Jeff, who was steadfastly avoiding my gaze, and at McCarthy, guilty as sin.

Fuck it.

“Well,” I began, “here’s the thing…”


I needed a break. I needed to get away from Jeff, who like all younger brothers was really getting on my tits after a week living out of a suitcase together, and I needed to get away from McCarthy, whose mournful distress over ‘losing’ Andrea - Jesus Christ, she was only refusing his calls, he’d inevitably get to plead his case again once he got home - was becoming achingly tedious. Salvation came in an unlikely vehicle: a 1975 Holden Premier station wagon, beige-gold with a vinyl rooflining and a string of ethereal, earth-motherly bumper stickers. Madeleine and Artemisia were heading south via the Atherton Tablelands, planning to detour through the hinterland to rejoin the Bruce southward down around Innisfail.

I’d been up there years before with the family, and jumped at the chance to tag along, even going so far as to willingly entrust the keys to the postie van to my delinquent brother and sulking best mate, at least until our planned rendezvous in Airlie. Imogen, for her part, had bravely joined her new paramour Marty in the big truck, with the rest of the boys on their best behaviour - amazing how relationships blossom on the road. What happens on tour, stays on tour, as they say. (Noone had seen fit to enlighten McCarthy of this comment, of course.)

We spent the morning winding up the range in the old Holden, coaxing it through the twisties and pausing a while to enjoy the gorgeous view from the rainforest to the reef, when the temperature gauge began bouncing off the upper limit a little too regularly. We explored the rainforest around Atherton and Kuranda, tramping along short bushwalks, splashing around under waterfalls, and generally acting like silly kids. Madeleine was definitely the ringleader when it came to spontaneous fun, but as I’d long suspected, Artemisia wasn’t as serious as she was made out to be. After all, she was the one who instigated the waterfight under the Millaa Millaa falls. Can’t say she looked bad in a soaked T-shirt, either. Bras weren’t her thing, apparently.

Before we knew it the day was defeated and retreating and we needed somewhere to stay. We considered a few local options, but the truth of the matter was the thriving metropolis of Cairns was barely 30 or 40 km away down the range, and there’d probably be more last-minute accommodation options down there than up here - we could head back up the range next morning, I suggested, and the girls agreed. Of course, this didn’t account for one small detail. The road from Kuranda to Cairns isn’t overly long, but it’s probably one of the steepest and sharpest sections of Australian road north of the Snowy Mountains. And it was too much for Harry the Holden. The brakes went halfway down, meaning I had to slow the car on the gearbox. Which started to go three-quarters of the way down. Somehow, we made it to the base of the range and staggered into Trinity Beach, lobbing into a random backpackers’ near the shoreline. Which, miraculously, featured (a) enough room at the inn for all three of us, and even better, (b) a hapless trio of Austrian backpackers, fresh off the big bird from Europe, staying at the hostel who were absolutely delighted to hand Madeleine four thousand newly-converted Australian dollars for the privilege of taking Harry the Holden off her hands. Sorting our transport from here was pretty straightforward; having started late from Port Douglas for predictable reasons, the postie van had only made it as far as Cairns city (about 20 kays south) for the night, so I asked the boys to double back for us in the morning. I wasn’t entirely sure how all Sagittaria’s shit was going to fit into the Skyline, but as I pointed out, we could always occy-strap Jeff to the roof racks.

“So what will you spend the four grand on?” I mused. “Reef dive? Trip to Europe? Witness protection plan once the Austrians figure out how buggered the old Holden is?”

Madeleine thought for a moment. “I think I’ll probably give some of it to my boyfriend,” she said sweetly.

“Awww,” I said. “That’s very romantic of you...”

“Not as much as you’d think,” observed Artemisia wryly. “It’s actually his car.”


It wasn’t going to be as cramped aboard the postie van as we’d predicted. “No need to lash Jeff across the roof after all,” I noted, once we’d finished packing.

“Mind if I do it anyway?” Madeleine quipped, with a flirtaceous wink directed at the Jeff. She’d made me promise not to tell him she actually had a boyfriend, which she’d managed to keep quiet to date, in case it dissuaded him. She quite liked the attention. I figured it was a victimless crime.

The reason we had room to spare (even if we had to strap Madeleine’s cello case into the back seat with the centre seatbelt) was that McCarthy had chosen to bail on us at his earliest possible convenience, even before the Jeff had doubled back for us on the Tuesday morning, and had clambered aboard Marty’s LandCruiser - now almost as full as the Three By Three bus service - for the trip down to Airlie.

It was a very different vibe with two-thirds of Sagittaria on board. The music selections were a little more diverse, and the level of conversation finally clambered heroically out of the gutter. It was almost like a bizarre double-date - the Jeff was still bravely advancing his cause with Madeleine, to the point where most of his conversation was directed towards her. Out of the car, they ended up going off together more often than not - even if it was just into the servo shop at fuel stops to pick up some drinks or other ‘road’ supplies - which left Artemisia and I spending quite a bit more time in each other’s company. Can’t say it was any great imposition. I enjoyed her company, particularly the calming effect she seemed to bring to our (often shambolic) environment. You knew every word was carefully considered and every situation was completely under control; you suspected there was a lot more going on beneath those intense green eyes of hers than she chose to let on, but she always remained professional, unflustered, unaffected.

We decided to head straight for Airlie and spend an extra day there before our gigs later in the week, as we were all rather enamoured with the place. The on-site vans upon which Kretin had spared no expense (read 'spent no expense') were aging and shabby, but the view down to the beach made up for it. In an odd kind of way, it reminded me of our Schoolies camping trip to Ten Mile Beach south of Woodburn - particularly once the others rolled into Dodge - except we actually had girls with us this time. Airlie was a touch smaller and more relaxed than Port Douglas, the pace wasn’t as intense - less frenetic partying in backpacker bars, more kicking-back on the beachfront with a cold beverage in hand and watching the world go by.

After our insane week in Port Douglas, it was much-needed detox. It gave me time to reflect on important matters of state, such as whether Artemisia had a boyfriend or not, or what the hell I was going to say to Jessica once I got home. She’d been eerily calm and composed when I’d ‘fessed up over the phone, in contrast to the ear-bashing Uncle Sam had received; she’d also strongly suggested she didn’t want to hear from me again for the rest of my time away, so I hadn’t called since.

Like the town itself, the venue was smaller and lower-key than in Port - there was only one of them this time, another Terry Kurtin investment (he’d only recently bought it, hadn’t even had time to slap a chintzy ‘theme’ onto the décor.) Whitsun, as its rather unoriginal name went, faced onto the main street of Airlie Beach (such as it was). It was a popular spot, if a bit confused as to its identity - part bar, part café, part nightspot, laid-back and not overly touristy, but still trying to attract the backpacker dollar (cheap drink deals will generally do that for you.)

Whitsun attracted a small but enthusiastic crowd on the first couple of nights we played there. They’d billed it as a mini-festival, basically, with all four out-of-town bands each playing an hour set (or thereabouts) each night, swapping slots so nobody would get sulky about having the lead-in slot each night. To be honest I preferred to go on first, it left the evening open for enjoying oneself, but I knew McCarthy took it as a bit of an insult to be considered the warm-up act, even if the perceived slight remained solely in his own tortured mind. The more intimate venue also necessitated a change in approach from some of Seek’s stable, particularly the high-octane assault of ACME Industries, who ended up perched on stools playing acoustics (or at least their amps turned down and fiddled-with to sound like acoustics) like they were on MTV Unplugged. As for us, we couldn’t be arsed changing much - we just backed the volume down and confiscated McCarthy’s overdriver pedal. Didn’t help his mood much.

Our last night in Airlie, the Saturday, had a real end-of-term feel. It was the end of a great trip, everything had gone far better than we could have hoped - apart from yours truly getting onto a random barmaid in Port Douglas, breaking Sagittaria’s car and waking up with a hangover for eleven consecutive days and counting. We decided to mix it up nice and early in the piece. Three By Three opened the night and laid down some very cool tunes, with Krusty guesting on beats; apparently he could play less than 120 of them per minute after all. ACME took up the challenge with McCarthy subbing for the Jeff on lead axe, bringing a little hair-metal wank to the boys’ nu-skool punk riffage. Sagittaria’s wall of sound swelled with the presence of Martin di Biagini on the ivories, a frisson of romance in the call-and-response between his keyboard and Imogen’s electric viola.

Finally, there was us. We looked like remaining as per program, or so I figured at curtain-up - Marty was still behind his keyboard stand, the Duffer primed and ready to inflict violence on his kit… but McCarthy, I realised, seemed to be a late scratching: no sign of our mercurial axeman. Still sulking, presumably, or he’d shredded his fingertips with all those earlier ludicrous tapping solos we wouldn’t let him play in Flange Gasket. Then the Jeff emerged from side-of-stage, tatty Strat slung casually over his shoulder, and gave me a big grin. He leaned over McCarthy’s mike and announced, “My name’s Jeff - I’ll be your guitarist for this evening.” He slapped my hand in a high-five as the well-lubricated Saturday night crowd cheered - many of whom had dropped by earlier in the week, and realised what was going on tonight.

Strange as it sounds, despite all our history, the Jeff and I had never played together before in public. And, um, it showed. But we warmed up after a few songs, shook the cobwebs out, stuck to the simpler Gasket songs (i.e. the ones I’d had a big hand in writing) and covers we both knew, given that I was in the unfamiliar position of lead guitarist, while the Jeff cranked out the riffs like a good garage punk second axe should. It went well, apart from me running out of ideas for solos after about five or six songs. Hard work, this showboating lead guitarist job.

The guesting continued apace. Drunken Duncan Duff, doing his best Lemmy Kilminster impersonation on his old Fender Precision bass, took over from Marty’s left hand on the keys for the high-voltage triumvirate of Harold Holt, Sketchy and Angus Young. He and the Jeff herceforth retired to the bar, whereupon we were joined by the brass section from Three by Three, who filled in admirably for Bon Scott’s bagpipes in a howlingly raucous version of It’s A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock And Roll. Howling backing vocals and struttin’ rhythm guitar were kindly furnished by Sagittaria’s own Artemisia Bailey, tooling around extravagantly on Jeff’s black Strat - a novel change from her usual Rickenbacker 12-string acoustic. To our amazement, she even chimed in with a solo which put my derivative efforts to shame. Where’d she been hiding that? I was suitably impressed. To everyone’s vocal disappointment, our new favourite rock chick handed the axe back to its owner at the conclusion of the number and declared, “Never again!”

As the clock neared midnight, I found myself on stage (not to say I ‘found myself’ on stage, just that I happened to be there) with Artemisia, leaning elegantly against the mike stand in one of her long, flowing daughter-of-Aquarius frocks; she’d even managed to procure a tambourine from somewhere (“It’s my Linda McCartney look,” she’d observed, before anyone else had the chance to.) We had Marty, who’d finally come out (ahem) from behind his keyboards, at Imogen’s insistence, and was making his acquaintance with Duncan’s sweat-streaked P-bass; and of course the Duffer, steady as a rock behind his kit (as the bar staff in these parts weren’t as accommodating in terms of pumping him full of free grog.) Given McCarthy’s crappy outlook on life at present, I wouldn’t have been disappointed had this been announced as the future lineup of the Gasket ‘going forward’, as tedious management types (and Kretin) would have said.

As it was, this lineup had a projected lifetime of about twenty minutes, so we had to decide what to play pretty sharply. This is where having markedly different musical tastes from your new lead singer can be a little problematic. We started with some Hendrix, something we all knew well: Red House. Hey, any idiot can solo in 12 bar blues. Just as well, because this idiot had to; there weren’t nobody else with a six-string electified gee-tar in the vicinity (let alone an iridescent metal-flake orange Ibanez with a pilfered ‘Holley Equipped’ sticker.)

“Know any Ben Harper?” was her next question.

A sour voice from side of stage pointedly said that I’d recently learned Faded, for some reason or other. I rolled my eyes. Not only was McCarthy still cranky and sulking, blaming me for ‘encouraging’ him with the other barmaid up north, but now he seemed to be getting offended on Jessica’s behalf that Artemisia and I were spending time together (was it that obvious, I wondered? And since he was convinced something was developing between Artemisia and I, what the hell was he seeing that I wasn’t, given that I could read Artemisia about as well as I could Mandarin?)

“Yeah, we can do that,” I said, glancing around the other lads for affirmation, and grabbing an empty Corona bottle for the slide guitar part (stealing McCarthy’s intellectual property as well as his thunder). “Faded it is. Good idea, sir, whoever you are.”

I loved Artemisia’s voice when she really leant on it in the more soulful, bluesy numbers in Sagittaria’s repertoire. Her vocals were made for that sort of stuff. The girl made Joss Stone sound like Kermit the Frog.

Faded, so faded. Like a memory gone, there’s no recollection.

Um… in hindsight, a rather ironic choice of ‘our’ song, yeah Jess?

The songs were talking to me. After Faded, we ventured off into our Led Zep ‘blooze’ medley Git The Led Out which Artemisia had complimented us on the night I’d met her. Midway through, I found us wandering into one of the tracks off their BBC Sessions double CD - a personal favourite of mine, it sounded like a cross between The Lemon Song and the riff from the non-drum-solo bit of Moby Dick. The song itself kicked, it was just the title that was likely to get me in trouble.

“The girl I love,” I declared, “she got long black wavy hair…”

Hmmm. Maybe McCarthy has a point... anyway, forge on regardless. I did so, while the girl I loved (from the waist down at least) who got long black wavy hair proceeded to shake what the good Lord gave her in a most appreciative (and appreciated) manner. She could send signals with her eyes than most girls would only be able to deliver with acres of exposed flesh. Right now those signals were directed at noone else but me.

Sometimes, there’s a spark. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, there’s a big fuck-off bolt of lightning.

Of course, I had no way of knowing whether this was just on-stage chemistry for the benefit of the punters, or something more meaningful. God alone knew what she was really thinking. But I did plan to find out, before this little journey was complete.

We finished the night, and the tour, with Marty jumping back behind the keys and half the ensemble cast joining us on stage to thunder through Good Times by the Easybeats, the last refuge of a scoundrelous covers band. A sure sign we’d run out of ideas, but it flew. Today’s tip for bone-lazy covers-band guitarists: if you can’t be arsed learning a load of new songs, Good Times has the same chord progression (basically) as Rocks by Primal Scream, Shoot To Thrill by AC/DC (Angus and Malcolm’s excuse would be that their brother George co-wrote the original), and at a stretch, Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue (but do ask yourself before you proceed, ‘Must I?’.) Furthermore, the lyrics or chords to any Oasis ballad are interchangeable with the lyrics or chords to any other Oasis ballad. And Noel ripped off T-Rex when he wrote Cigarettes and Alcohol, but we’ll let that slide because it’s a kick-arse riff.

We packed up amongst hugs and handshakes from all concerned, and even some grudgingly positive words of congratulations from Kretin - hard to know which of our performances he was basing his compliments on, since we hadn’t seen him at a gig either here or in Port Douglas, but we all had to admit his tan was very impressive - particularly the magnificent snorkel mask imprint across his face from his last four days on Lady Eliot Island. Slightly crispified on top of the old dome, however.

The old Viscount van was unlocked when I reached it. I rather wished it hadn’t been, having opened the door to be presented with the Jeff in his scungiest Reg Grundies, rifling through his suitcase.

“Busting out your patented muff-attracting jocks again tonight, then?”

He laughed without deviating from his search. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “the laundry situation is getting a bit grim. Already worn these twice. Inside and out. You coming out later? Last night in town, last night of the tour…”

“Think I’ll stay,” I replied. “I’ve gotten myself in enough trouble on this trip as it is.”

“Fair enough,” he grinned, dousing a rather second-hand collared shirt, and then himself, in spray-on deoderant, or as he called it ‘Shower-In-A-Can’. “Any plans?”

“Yeah,” I said, “our guest vocalist and I were going to go sit on the beach, crack a bottle of cheap bubbly and celebrate the end of the tour.”

“You and Les Mis?” he chortled. It was his favourite nickname for Artemisia, now that he’d finally figured out her name wasn’t Anastasia. “Thought you wanted to stay out of trouble?”

“Oh, fuck off, not you too. First McCarthy’s bitching at me because I got him into trouble, supposedly, then his sensitivities are offended because he thinks I’m spending too much time with Artemisia and hence cheating on Jessica again...”

“Bugger it. He’s just jealous cos he copped an absolute fucken earful from Andrea over it, and all you got was a few short sharp words. If he could get away with it, he would.”

I nodded my assent at the Jeff’s reading of events. “What’s that you ACME boys say?”

“Those that can, do; those that can’t, whinge. Mind you,” he reflected, “doesn’t look too flash for the future, you reckon? If she can’t even get angry at you over shit like this...”

I was trying not to follow that line of logic, though it had occurred to me. Trust bloody Jeff to cut to the crux of the matter.

“We’ll see, mate, we’ll see. We’ll sit down and have a nice little chat about things when we get back.” An opportune moment for a change of topic, I felt. “So, should do you want to organise some sort of signalling system to tell me whether its safe to enter the van later, or whether you’re busy banging some off-chops backpacker chick with low self-esteem?”

“If you like,” Jeff offered. “Would a pair of still-warm, still-moist, black-lace panties hanging over the door handle be enough to get the message across?”

“Thought you’d given up wearing that stuff? Too much chafing…”

He grinned. “Just fuck off and behave yourself, bro.”


I’d finally admitted to myself what was nagging at me: I just didn’t want to go home. It wasn’t that home was so bad - sure Jeff and I had to go back to the farm and work like bastards for the rest of uni mid-year break to justify our existence and pay off our debts, but it’d be good honest work, we’d never be lacking for a decent feed (our mother has consistently overcatered every meal for the past thirty years), and there’d be beers with the old man and the Jeff on the deck in the evening which wasn't a bad way to close out the day. It wasn’t the start of semester a few weeks after that I was dreading; compared to honours in a genetics lab, this was piss-easy. It wasn’t even that inevitable ‘discussion’ with Jessica that I was trying to avoid. I just didn’t want to go home, because I’d had so much unbelievable fucking fun.

I’d finally admitted this to myself, in the process of admitting it to Artemisia. Quite the confessor, our Les Mis.

“Tell me about it,” she concurred. “The last thing I want to do when Monday comes around is to head back to work.”

It occurred to me that I didn’t actually know what Artemisia did for a day job. Whether she was still at uni, or had ever gone. Or what part of town she lived in. Or even how old she was - early twenties? Younger than me? Older? We’d been practically living in each others’ pockets for two weeks and I felt barely any closer to really knowing her, in the Biblical sense or otherwise. Furthermore, she seemed to like it that way; Artemisia wasn’t one for small talk. Her words carried the same crafted intensity as her personality; you almost felt beneath her for daring to descend to the level of everyday inconsequentialities.

She’d managed to unearth a couple of wine glasses from the cupboard in the van she was sharing with Madeleine and Imogen (hey, they were smaller than us, they could fit three to a van.) Sure, they were chipped, scratched, and were actually made of plastic, but it was a little classier than taking turns to swig from a bottle of Yellow. In any case, Artemisia carried herself with enough poise to even make sipping from a plastic champagne flute look elegant.

She raised her ‘glass’ to mine. “To the tour,” she proposed.

“To the tour,” I concurred. “To the benevolent drunks of Port Douglas and Airlie Beach,” I added.

“To the benevolent gods of feedback and distortion,” she said.

I’d drink to that. “That was an awesome solo, girl,” I proffered.

“You thought so?” She let the champagne flute dance between her fingertips, as she glanced over to me. “You say the sweetest things, Andrew Young. Have to tell you,” she added breezily, “I’ve never had a guy dedicate a song to me on stage before.”

Hmmm. A little spark there. The girl I love…

“I’d like to take credit,” I said, “but it’s an old Zep song, like the rest in that number.”

“I know,” she replied, “but I’ve seen you guys play that Zep medley at least half a dozen times over the last two weeks, Andrew. And you do it well. But you’ve never thrown that one into the mix before, I'm pretty certain.”

“What can I say,” I offered breezily. “It’s an awesome riff.”

We were stretched out on the sand, watching the phosphorescent surf crash onto the sand about twenty feet away. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly crashing onto the surf, a certain Great Barrier Reef slowed it to a gentle, rhythmic tumble. But the water glistened in the moonlight - it was late, maybe one or two AM, but the moon was full and still cast a lunar glow over the beach and the ocean. Few sights are as captivating as a deserted beach by luminous moonlight. Unless it was the beautiful Artemisia Bailey on an otherwise deserted beach by luminous moonlight. Particularly if the beautiful Artemisia Bailey is taking advantage of the whole deserted-beach-by-moonlight thing to set her champagne flute down, lean over, press her hand against your chest, look deep into your eyes, and kiss you like you’d not remembered being kissed in a long time. I cast my empty ‘glass’ aside, and swept her up into my arms and into my lap, my fingers tousled in her glossy black hair as I kissed her deeply in return.

“So,” she began with a knowing smile, “just an awesome riff, then?”

I grinned, and pressed my mouth against hers again, hungrily, just to keep her quiet. Words were redundant anyway. Her eyes burned with intent. I wanted her more intensely than I could ever remember lusting for Jessica. That’s a lousy fucking thing to admit, but it was true. Jessica was an open book; she had no mysteries, no secrets. Even right now, as Artemisia regarded me with those level, feline eyes of hers, I still didn’t really know what she was thinking. I just hoped it was the same as what I was.

“Come for a swim,” she said, surprising me once more. She stretched langruously behind herself to reach the zip on her dress. My fingers found it first, but she slapped them away. “Naughty,” she scolded. I was pretty sure she was naked underneath, or at least bra-less; there’s only so much restraint that a gypsy-girl dress can impose on a curvaceous little thing like Artemisia when she’s gyrating on stage, but she wasn’t in any hurry to let me known one way or the other. Perhaps she was just enjoying the feeling of me getting hard underneath her. I know I was.

I knew we were out of sight, even if any lights were on back at the caravan park; we were a little way around the corner from the beach which fronted onto it, hidden by a little promentary of rocks. The zip on her dress relinquished its hold on her, and she peeled herself free of the flimsy cotton. Her bare skin was pale, almost translucent in the moonlight; her luscious breasts milky-white, crowned with broad chocolate-brown nipples which she ushered against the palms of my hands, then the roughness of my mouth as she surrendered deliciously to the moment. She wrestled my shirt off and fought with my belt buckle as I devoured her mouth, neck and breasts.

She stood. For a terrible moment I wondered if she was having second thoughts. No chancet; she wished only to allow her dress to glide the length of her bare thighs to pool at her feet. All along, she’d been naked underneath. I slithered out of my jeans and boxers. Artemisia pressed the flat of her hands against my chest, closed her eyes, and raised her mouth to kiss me again, letting my hard-on press against the soft flesh of her belly. Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me.

“Last one in has to go down,” she said impishly.

And was away, dancing into the surf. I never stood a chance. By the time I reached the waterline she was splashing around in the warm Whitsunday waters, flicking a generous handful of water at me as I dared approach. My eyes were irresistably drawn to the dark triangle of soft downy hair which teased from between her thighs. This is what comes of growing up with illicitly-gained seventies’ Playboys and eighties’ Penthouses as fantasy fodder: Jessica’s home-made Brazilian left precious little to the imagination, compared with Artemisia’s ‘natural’ presentation. And, let’s face it, the imagination is the thing when it comes to sex.

I grabbed her and swung her up into my grasp, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and her lithe legs around my waist. My hands found her round, pert backside; my fingers searched further below, seeking and finding her sticky warmth.
“Wow, you don’t mess around, do you?” she marvelled, grinding against my touch, feeling my hard-on lingering bare millimetres from her aching pussy, and just willing me to bury myself deep inside her, protection or none. I wasn’t waiting around for second thoughts; in a heartbeat, I was there. She whimpered desperately, her lips biting against my mouth as she proceeded to take me as deep inside herself as she dared. She wasn’t quite wet enough yet for her purposes, but near enough for mine. I hadn’t been inside like this, bareback, for longer than I could recall - since the early, morally flimsy days at college. Compared to ‘protected’ sex, well, there was no comparison.

“Good?” I inquired.

Those piercing green eyes opened again. “Forgetting something, aren’t we?”

Fuck. I didn’t have protection. I mean, why would I be carrying any? I was in a long-term relationship, after all.

She read my expression, and smiled using just her eyes.

“Not that,” she cooed. “I trust you, Andrew… I meant, you were last into the water. And we had an agreement…”

I was almost relieved when she dropped down from my waist to her feet, then guided me down, until I was back on my heels on the rough, granular sand, waves lapping around my thighs and cooling my undercarriage somewhat. I say almost relieved because going downtown isn’t necessarily my favourite pastime. She was so hot now though, and I was so insane with lust, that I didn’t care. Her pussy was directly at eyeline; she dangled one elegant leg over my shoulder and pressed my mouth hard against her slippery, sultry opening. I closed my eyes and delved as deeply as I dared, my tongue searching out her sweet spots. She tasted of the ocean around us, of saltwater and a teasing hint of seaweed; nothing more astringent than that, which I was more than happy to work with. I ran my tongue vigorously along her opening and over her desperately swollen clitoris. She gasped sharply, clawing her fingers against the back of my head. I liked the response I was getting, so I did it again. And again. And again, sliding a finger deep inside her as I tortured her relentlessly, while her hands tousled and gripped my hair. Then, without warning, I grabbed her thighs and dragged her down to my level. She looked at me askance, almost pleadingly.

“Sounds like you’re having too much fun, Artemisia,” I told her. She responded by slapping a hand firmly over my mouth and pushing me back into the water, as she straddled me, reaching behind herself to position my hard-on against her pussy. The contrast between the cool of the water and the urgent heat inside her was electrifying. I could feel every last squeeze of her insides, every little flutter and ripple of excitement. It took the focus off drowning, for which I was thankful. She leaned over me, pressing her mouth against mine and exhaling a lungful of her air into mine.

“I’ll make sure you breathe, baby. Just you make sure you come inside me.”

Sounded like a fair exchange, I figured, whatever floats your boat babe. She closed her eyes and began riding me, waves surging over her creamy thighs as she coaxed herself into pushing harder against me, biting her bottom lip, the fingers of one hand stretched out against my chest, the fingers of the other delving helplessly through her glossy black thatch, rubbing herself desperately as she bucked and moaned and scratched her nails against me.

This wasn’t a long-term strategy, I reasoned. For one thing, I could only hold my breath for so long - about two and a half minutes was my record, and not under these particular circumstances - and while Artemisia clearly drew some spiritual gratification from breathing for the both of us, I wasn’t quite drawing enough of what we like to call ‘oxygen’. Not that I’d have cared, had I suffocated there and then, and floated out to sea to be nibbled on by reef sharks. Just so long as I could last long enough so we could both reach our climax.

It was close, but Artemisia beat me there by moments, her own fingers almost a blur as they betrayed her aching desire to crest the summit of her orgasm as soon as she possibly could. She came more intensely, and more beautifully, than any girl I’d ever been with. And with barely a moments notice, I reached my peak as well, pouring myself into her. She seemed to appreciate that just as much. I didn’t think to ask myself until much later where she’d developed her taste for ‘bareback’ sex, and I’m glad it didn’t occur to me at the time.

She tugged at my shoulders, pulling me up into a sitting position as she settled back into my lap, my hard-on still reassuringly hard inside her. Artemisia linked her arms behind my neck and searched deep into my eyes; hers were sparkling, and streaked with tears. Up to then, I’d never had the privilege of making love to a girl who cried when she reached her climax.

“You’re so beautiful when you come,” I told her. She sniffled apologetically, as another tear traced a path down her cheek. I waited for her words.

“Again,” was her first.

I raised both eyebrows. It was a two-eyebrow job to register that much surprise.

“Again,” she insisted, more boldly this time. “Take me over by the rocks and fuck me like you’ve never fucked anyone in your life.”

I was about to protest that even the postman only comes once a day, so twice in twenty minutes was perhaps a bit beyond me, when I realised something. I was still hard. No sex in two weeks (not even with myself, I'd point out - some weirdos like his missus might get a kick out of sharing quarters with Jeff, but I certainly didn’t) appeared to have left me with some margin to spare. Or maybe it was just that breathtaking feeling of sensing every little post-orgasmic tremor and flutter deep inside her pussy, coaxing and insisting that I stay hard for her. Whatever it was, I had no plans to retreat from it.

With some effort, I eased forward onto my knees, then hoisted myself onto my feet, her legs wrapped around my waist again - still buried inside her. Cupping her firm arse, I carried her giggling and protesting weakly out of the surf, across the sand, and laid her down on her discarded dress over by the rocks. And then, as she made me promise to do, I fucked her like I’d never fucked anyone in my life. Never so intensely, never so passionately, never so soulfully - almost verging on tantric sex, whatever that is. When she came again, eventually, the tears flowed freely and I kissed them away as they streaked her beautiful face, while she told me she loved me, over and over again in her breathy little voice, almost like a mantra. My reply was the same as I’d already confessed to her earlier that night. The girl I love, I told her, she got long black wavy hair.

And the morning? Uh, not so good.

The Jeff, courteously as ever, whipped the curtains open with a practised flourish. Mid-morning light screamed in like Japanese Zeroes on final approach (and I do mean final approach) to the USS Nimitz off Midway Island.

“It’s nine-fifty, champion,” he chirped, like that was any excuse. “Gotta clean up and check out by ten.”

I think my first word, or words, were Whafuck?

“Hasn’t helped that you’ve tracked half the fuckin’ beach in here either, when you stumbled in at four in the fuckin' morning. What the fuck were you doing out there all night?” He slapped his forehead theatrically. “Oh yeah, how could I forget. That’s right. You were doing Artemisia.”

“That obvious, was it?”

“Sound carries, old son. Particularly on quiet nights, and particularly,” he added, “when your partner is as vocal as your girl Les Mis. Jesus suffering fuck, that girl comes like a freight train.”

At least I could draw some bitter satisfaction in having force-fed the Jeff some of his own medicine (to wit, the entire week in Port Douglas when he’d had half the United Nations ‘in session’ in the adjoining room.) He’d been tucked up in bed all on his lonesome when I’d swaggered (or at least staggered) in earlier this morning.

I gingerly clambered out of my berth and squinted into the sunlight, trying to see whether other members of our entourage were still on-site. Particularly the girls in the van next door, in whose affairs I’d latterly taken an interest. But the Jeff had made that mental leap already.

“Hate to break it to you,” he observed, “but the girls packed up and headed for the border two hours ago. They’re in Marty’s Toyo, crammed in with Krusty and both the Duffers.”

“Oh good,” I said flatly. “I’d hate to think they were in danger of being hit-on inappropriately.”

With that, I wheeled around and kicked the aluminium door. It didn’t break or even dent much, but it did swing around violently and connected with the outside van wall with a resounding thwack, which I was fairly content with.

“You OK?” Jeff asked.

All I could come up with was a rueful sigh, and three-fifths of a laugh.

“Guess this means it ain't true love, yeah?” I figured. Not that I’d ever believed her anyway. Sounded good at the time, though.

The Jeff draped a hairy arm over my shoulder.

“Never mind, bro. These things are sent to try us. Uh, just one thing though…”

“What’s that?”

“You reckon you could teach me some of those obscure old Led Zep songs? Just in case, you know, I ever need a killer seduction move to pull on some girl with long, black, wavy hair…”

I found the other two-fifths of that laugh. “Just get in the fucking car,” I directed.


It was a subdued trip back. McCarthy, who’d been noble enough to grace us with his presence for the homeward leg, was still off-the-air about Andrea, pensive and cranky. I was preoccupied, cogitating over whatever it was that had gone on last night, trying to work out how I really felt about it. Jeff just had a monumental hangover. The other complication was that the piffling annual leave which McCarthy had managed to accrue so far at the Northern Star had run out as of Friday, and he was expected back at work bright and early Monday morning. So he absolutely, positively, had to be there overnight. We considered sending him by courier but they had a policy against carrying potentially toxic biologicals; after last night’s ‘nightcap’ kebab in Airlie, he was producing same at an alarming rate. Just served to underline the fact that we had a loooonnng trip ahead of us - some fourteen hundred kays - and cranking the windows every five minutes wasn’t doing much for the fuel economy either.

We left Airlie Beach shortly after ten on Sunday morning; three fuel stops, two meal breaks, twelve changes of CD and several driver changes later, we rolled into Mountain View Drive with the digital readout on the postie van’s stereo reading 4:14 AM. By the time we’d hauled all the gear into the garage for security, it was nearing five - the sky was beginning to lighten with the coming of the new day. At which point the Jeff chose to flake out on the dodgy brown couch downstairs. Given that he’d taken the last leg of the trip into Lismore, he had an excuse for skipping the pleasantries, like saying ‘See you in the morning,’ or taking off his boots.

“What’s on for today with you?” I asked McCarthy as we staggered up the stairs.

He scratched his head, trying to remember. “Fuckin’ Casino saleyards,” he mumbled. “Yearling sales. Supposed to head out with young Thommo first thing.” Gavin Thompson was the Star’s disturbingly earnest, straight-from-high-school junior shitkicker photographer, and usually got paired with the junior shitkicker staff writer for all the jobs deemed worthy only for the junior shitkicker staffers to do, like covering the yearling sales at the fuckin’ Casino saleyards.

“Going to grab some zeds first?”

“Hardly any point,” he observed dolefully, glancing around the kitchen. “May as well crank some coffee on and ride it through to sun-up. Got some sleep in the car on that last leg from Brisvegas, so I’ll be OK. Neck hurts like a bastard though… You boys are off to the farm later in the day?”

“Yeah. Ditches to dig, barns to raise, chooks to feed.”

“Mate, you’ll be feeding the chooks for some time, it’s all you’ll have left once Jess hears about you and Artemisia.”

“There is no me and Artemisia,” I replied flatly. “Anyway, that’s an argument for later in the day, I’m off to bed.”

“Half your luck, you bastard,” he cursed. I grinned and sauntered off down the hall.

“Oh, yeah, one other thing…”

I turned back. “Yeah mate?”

“Despite everything,” he offered, “it’s been one hell of a fuckin’ ride, hey?”

“You fuckin’ know it,” I concurred, clasping his outstretched hand in some poor, convoluted imitation of a yo-bro-homey handshake (which we’d developed and patented several years back.) This was as close to McCarthy got to apologising for being an arse for the past week. “And more to come, of course. This won’t be the last Tour de Pants, mark my words.”

He grinned, and returned to his coffee tendering duties; I made straight for my bedroom, swept all the shit off my bed that I’d thrown onto it when packing my bags two weeks ago, and collapsed unceremoniously on top. I felt a sharp digging pain between my shoulder blades; a symptom of trying to sleep in the passenger seat of a Nissan Skyline. Or, I considered, digging a hand behind my back in search of the source, maybe it was just because I was sleeping on the flat’s cordless phone. For a few seconds I contemplated getting up to put it back on the charger, but my sense of duty to the house at large was trumped by flat-out exhaustion; I tossed it underhand onto the carpet and sank into a black, dreamless sleep.

_______________

Sounds like a decent idea on the lad Angus' part. Thank you good night.

The Doctor is OUT.