DEATHLY DAZE.....(part 1).

Baby cried the day the circus came to town
Cause she didn't want parades just passing by her.
She painted on a smile and took up with some clown
and danced without a net upon the wire....

I'm like a cat with nine lives I've come to believe.  I have had so many close brushes with death that I sometimes can't believe it myself.

By now you will have surmised my character.  Risk taker, hedonist, loner, attention seeker and desperately wanting acceptance and recognition.  Conflicting characters all within the person that was me.

I left suburbia to join the parade.  I lived each day at a time with no thought for more than the next weekend.  The smile I painted on was the drugs and partying and the wire was the lifestyle I was living.

Even though I met my new boyfriend only a week after Mark moved out it would be two months of 'real' dating before he moved in with me.  In that time I worked days at the Diet Shop and 3 or 4 evenings a week I would head back to Fitzroy Gardens to prostitute myself.

In the two years since I had first worked the streets inflation had hit.  I could now get $30 or $40 from a client.  True there were cheaper workers around, but they were mostly heroin addicts or the fabulous Rowena...she was a Maori drag queen who used to stand outside of Coles Supermarket on Darlinghurst Rd and operate like a true spruiker, 'Blow job $5. $5 Blow job' was her catch phrase.

Years later I would work with her in a legitimate job and even though I realised that I had met her before it wasn't until I heard her say '$5' that I remembered who she was and where I knew her from.

By now I was what the Americans would call a 'total stoner'.  What had started as an occasional joint in the evening and on weekends had now become a 24 hour habit.  I would wake in the morning and have a session, work through the day half stoned, come home and have another session, work the Gardens and then return home to get stoned again.  It was costing me around $60 a week.

One evening, thankfully after I had just walked out of the Gazebo Hotel after seeing a client, I ran into two of my old flatmates in the street.  Even though we hadn't parted on the best of terms we were all happy to see each other and they invited me out to celebrate my old boyfriends birthday the following evening.

We had a fabulous night.  Starting at their new flat, getting stoned and dropping pills.  Then it was on to a trendy restaurant in East Sydney where we ate, drank and had a totally fabulous evening.  One of our freinds had LSD trips and after dinner we decided to all take one and head home.....

In the middle of Darlinghurst Rd I realised I needed to buy cigarettes and literally jumped out of the taxi while it was still moving, promising to meet back at my friends as soon as possible.  Totally off my face, with the LSD starting to kick in at 1am in the morning I realise that all the shops are closed.
It was a Monday night and even most of the clubs were closed.

I decided to go upstairs to Les Girls and use their cigarette vending machine.   Next door to Les Girls was a Greek coffee shop which was open so I went in to buy cigarettes there.  I was a menthol smoker and they didn't have any menthol.  As I'm walking out one of the owners who was sitting with a group of friends asked me what I was after.   He was all smiles and told me to come with him and he had menthol cigarettes back at his apartment.

Silly me.  I follow and we get to his apartment.  True to his word he had a cupboard with boxes of cigarettes and a big bag of marijuana which he offered to smoke with me.  Happy that I had ciggies and the offer of some free smoke I accepted.

I didn't object when he asked me to give him a blow job, but halfway through the door opened and his 4 friends came stumbling in.  Realising that I was in another situation and likely to get raped by 4 old, fat drunk men, I thought quickly.  I told them I needed to go the toilet and once inside saw my escape route.  A small sliding window.  Before I could even open it they were banging on the door and trying to get in.  I managed to convince them that I was doing number 2's to give me some time.

I squeezed myself through the tiny window and climbed out onto the balcony.  7 floors up and the only escape is through the sliding doors and back into the apartment.  Not where I wanted to be! By now the banging on the door was getting louder and more impatient.  Without hesitation I climbed over the railing and slid down so my hands were now holding onto the concrete floor edge.  Below me was another balcony with a rail, but about half a metre below my dangling feet.  I somehow managed to swing inwards as I took the plunge and just cleared the railing and landed on the below balcony, hitting my head badly against the rail as I landed.

(middle building between the yellow apts and blue apts).

Dazed, tripping and scared as hell my next piece of luck was that the balcony doors on this apartment were not locked.  I slid them open and headed towards the front door.  The elderly owner who I had obviously awoken didn't even have time to say anything as I rushed passed him and out through his front door.....

I didn't go back to my friends, but back home.  I had the cigarettes and grass at home.  I just wanted to isolate and finish my trip in the safety of my self and my home, which for some 'trippy' reason I decided to clean from top to bottom for the next 4 hours.

My second brush with death was to come a year or so later in my own apartment.  I had just been to Adelaide with a friend for 4 days.  We had driven there and back. A 1500 km trip each way and my friend lived on the western edge of the city.  He asked me if I wouldn't mind getting a taxi home from his place as he was too exhausted to drive through the city and back.

No problem, but as my friend had made me leave my marijuana at his house before we left (he was afraid we would get caught at the checking stations where you have to declare and dispose of any fruits or vegetables due to pest control) I smoked a big fat joint before leaving.

Arriving home very tired and very stoned I was surprised when no one answered the buzzer.  10 minutes of trying and still no answer.  I knew my boyfriend was home, so I buzzed a neighbour who let me in the front door.  Once inside it was obvious why no one had answered the buzzer.  My boyfreind was having a party and the music was blasting through the building.

No amount of knocking made them hear me.  So I decided to go around the back and use the wooden fire escape which led directly to our back door.  We had never used the fire escape and had only occasionally sat outside on the wooden landing.  Obviously no one else had used it for a long time either.

As I'm climbing up the last flight of wooden stairs (3 floors above ground level) the steps start to break under my feet.  I managed to grab hold of the railing as the last two steps completely gave way under me and crashed to the ground.  Once again I'm dangling in mid air, clinging on desperately and almost too exhausted to pull myself up onto the landing, but I did it.

I can see  my boyfriend though the kitchen window, I can hear the music, I'm waving my arms and shouting and all to no avail.  Finally I realize the only thing to do is get back down and go to a pay phone and try and call them.  To get down I had to climb down the outside of the fire escape, shimmying down the rough wooden poles, getting splinters in my hands, occasionally slipping just a little too quickly, but eventually managed to get there.

I haven't mentioned before, but ever since my childhood I have had a terrible fear of heights and still do to this day.

A week or so later, my boyfriend and I awoke one morning and realised that the 'boom box' from our bedside table was missing along with the $10 note which for some reason we had also left on the table.  My boyfriend had come home late and drunk the night before and managed to leave not only the downstairs building door open but also our apartment door.....

Nothing else was taken thankfully. The only trace of the robber was a large hole on our fire escape landing where the poor thing had obviously fallen through.  3 floors below on the concrete was a radiating circle of broken radio, one shoe and a large amount of blood.