I won’t be forgetting this New Year’s Eve for a long while. Be prepared for a long story…
I basically decided to go to Sydney on a whim. My high school chums were going up there, a bunch of mates were playing gigs in the first couple of weeks, there was a big soccer game coming up and a I had a bunch of other mates on the metal scene who lived there who could show me a great time, and as well as this, my original New Years plans with this Singaporean friend of mine were completely shot out of the water. So, I just went to hell with it, and booked a flight without any return ticket, idea of when I was coming back, or accomodation booked.
The first night was great. Stayed at a place my friends were staying at. Took a lot of convincing, but I was given the go ahead to stay for a couple of nights. We went out to this party which was heavily populated by queers, but plenty of ladies as well. And being the few ‘straightie-180s’ there, we definitely had our work cut out for us. I ended up with a blonde lass called Elle from Newcastle, and we really got stuck into each other. We eventually left the rest of the group to go and check out the fireworks, and that was a sight to behold. Particularly when you’re pretty wasted with a nice lookin sheila on yer arm.
Eventually went back to the party and decided to go to the city to suss a few things out. It was there that I lost track of her and ran into my mates and we went to our friend’s bar.
Unfortunately, our friend was peaking off his brain on ecstasy, and got stuck into me. Cool. Real cool. So, we left in disgust and just bobbed around clubs here and there. I eventually took a cab and somehow ended up on the harbour bridge, and then eventually gave that girl a call, went back to her place and… well, sorted things out. [:)]
The next day was just spent at Bondi Beach, but I basically had pissed off the landlord at the place I was staying. He was a raging queen, and overheard me saying less than polite things about gays after I had more than a few coming up to me and accosting me in the city streets… not good. He basically said to my friends ‘either he goes, or you go with him’. Way to go, dickhead. So, I left.
I ended up a wheelchair confined half-Lebanese neo-Nazi’s house with Morte, the singer from Nazxul. This was a bizarre scene. I’m in this flat with this guy, Morte and a Japanese girl passed out on the sofa… and it was quite amazing the amount of Sadistik Exekution related stuff he had on the walls. Old flyers, posters, magazine articles, even ORIGINAL album artwork, it was amazing. It could well and truly be a museum. This particular chap was known was ‘Slasher’. He’s the sort of guy that would get pint glasses at gigs and smash them in his own face until blood was pissing out everywhere, then snort fly spray and cigarette ash for kicks… not to mention getting hit by 3 cars and a train. It was only after he got crippled that he got into the Naziism and… on that, neither Morte and I had time for, but him and Morte go way back and it was just one of those things Morte just had to put up with.
We went to Morte’s place where I was to stay for a while, and after this night, this is where the really bizarre shit started to happen.
That morning I woke up to an Asian woman in Morte’s flat asking me if I owned the place, who was the tenant, etc, with me responding by basically telling her to fuck off and let me sleep. Morte was sleeping on the floor next to my couch and told her he owned the place, and she just wanted him to look after her kids, to which he said was fine.
Or so I thought. Turns out, I wake up and Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Mass is playing, and Morte tells me this never happened. It seemed so vivid, but it was just a dream. He then went on and on and on about the Asian woman representing death, she=shi=death in Japanese, shirigami=god of death… I sort of just took it with a grain of salt. I mean, he fucking calls himself death!
Anyway, he asked me what I wanted to do that day. I told him: let’s go to Rookwood Cemetery, the biggest one in the Southern Hemisphere. He was fine with that, and I kept going on and on about it, and was really really keen to go. So we had some friends of mine pick us up to drive us there, but not before we made a slight detour.
We went to Geoffrey Leonard’s house. Yes: this creep http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSB4sQGT_4
Long story short; we went there, Morte stayed at the car because he knew he would kill him, and I just went there to film the shennanigans. All my friends ended up being really tentative about it, and it was clear Geoff was at home, but was hiding from us. So, I basically pissed on his front door before I left. It was a massive stream. Wish I could show the video…
I’m not sorry for what I did. [laugh]
We then went to Rookwood. It was strange; rather than go to the pioneer’s, Greek or Jewish graves, or my friend’s grandad’s grave, we went straight to the Italian ones. I’ve no idea why. Then Morte refused to leave the car. He was getting a really bad vibe and kept finding childrens graves and refused to come with us. Every time we went back to him, it was obvious he had been crying.
We went back to Morte’s that night, and it had been a day with perfect weather. Around 6-7pm, the weather started to change. It went cloudy and started pissing down rain. Then later that night, I got a call. It was my father. I missed it, but I had a really terrible feeling about it. It was 10pm, and he rarely calls, so obviously it wasn’t something good. It could’ve been about meeting in Sydney to visit relatives in Newcastle, which we talked about. But I had a sick feeling, and so did Morte.
I answered the phone to find out my grandmother had died. I had not long seen her at Christmas and she seemed fine. It has basically hit me like a tonne of bricks, but I’m feeling better. I decided then and there to go straight home. I couldn’t stay any more.
I can’t remember much of the next day. I was just on downers and drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney. Later that night, I took a bus to Sydney and took photos of all the landmarks I’d hoped to see that night. The photos looked great at night and it was a good way to take my mind off my grandmother’s death while I was walking around the city.
I got home, slept and the next day Kriss Hades came down from the Blue Mountains, miles out, to see how I was doing. It was pretty cool having Kriss and Morte around, and they really were a great help. I ended up getting to the airport completely drunk, and nearly lost my boarding pass in the toilet! But, I made it… or so I thought. On the plane, the flight attendant comes up to me and says ‘well, it seems you’ve had a few drinks’. I stared at him. I knew this was it. I was going to get booted off. I was fucked. I just told him about what happened to my grandmother and just explained I wasn’t there to cause trouble, but basically I just wanted to get home and see the funeral. He responded ‘I’m sorry to hear that… but, don’t worry, I’ll look after you’. And he did, and I got home.
If that wasn’t weird enough, my ex-girlfriend rang me. She honestly was a girl that I did love, and only just recently did I get over our break up. It was hard. She rang me out of the blue just as my father saw me arrive at the airport, and wanted to talk to me before she left for France. I told her what happened, and she (well, I’ll take her word for it) had no idea about my grandmother. Which, I’d believe given we completely blocked each other from Facebook and haven’t spoken for 6 months at all.
I went to my grandparents house, and that was really emotional. I was pretty much speechless when I saw my grandfather, with whom I’m really close. We just looked at each other and hugged.
On the way out, he mentioned there were two single beds if I wanted to stay. I couldn’t, because I knew I had to go home to help my sister deal with it, and I was pretty sick from a bad cold and the last thing I wanted to do was get him sick just before the funeral.
I got home, talked about it with my parents and sister and eventually retired to bed. I ended up ringing my ex, and we spoke for 4 hours until 5am.
That was a beautiful thing. We talked about my grandmother, whom she’d met, about what we went through after the break up, why we broke up, and basically realised we still cared about each other and in a way, loved each other.
It’s just weird. I was sort of hoping she would call to comfort me about the death. And she did, but without meaning to. I sometimes wonder about things…
As an aside, I’ve been growing vegetables out back, and my grandmother gave me zucchini and silver beet. They have been growing like there’s no tomorrow, and every time I go out to that garden, I’m reminded of her generosity, hard work and ultimately her love.