THE DAZE OF OUR LIVES.....

Those were they days my friend
We'd thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance for ever and a day.....

For most of us our early 20's are possibly the best time of our lives.  Old enough to do whatever we want and young enough to not have to take responsibility for our actions.

The two years I spent with Bill were definitely the best days of my life.  We met at Patch's nightclub, the most popular gay club on Sydney's Oxford St at the time.

Bill was my age, blonde haired, blue eyed and gorgeous.  He was a wonderfully optimistic person who filled the room with laughter wherever he went.  We were the perfect couple.  We had similar backgrounds, worked in the same industry and shared the same tastes for life.

By the time he moved in with me I had my apartment decorated in a totally original Retro 1950's style.  All the furniture was signature piece and mostly bought from an amazing second hand shop on Flinders St in Darlinghurst. Kidney shaped coffee tables, a Dunlop 1959 modular lounge, polka dot lamp stands, teak Scandinavian bookshelves....

Bill brought little furniture as he had been living in shared accommodation but within a few weeks had transformed the apartment with his amazing eye for art and design.  He even made weekly still art displays out of unusual vegetables.

 He worked nights in a restaurant while I worked days.  On his two nights off our apartment would be filled with friends. Both of us were great cooks and enjoyed giving dinner parties.  Everyone getting stoned, listening to the latest music and then eating amazing dinners cooked by Bill or myself.

He finished work around 11pm and didn't get home until midnight.  Most nights I would catch a few hours sleep then wake up to eat dinner with him, get stoned and have great sex.  From day one the sex was amazing and even after we eventually broke up we continued having sex at least once a week for nearly 3 months.

On the weekends we would invite friends over mid morning.  Get stoned as usual and end up in Rushcutter's Bay Park having a late afternoon picnic with lavish pies and cakes made by Bill and myself before he went to work around 4pm.

Saturday nights I would meet him at Patches after spending the first few hours of the evening at The Exchange Hotel with my friends.  The Exchange had taken the place of Stranded and was the in place to be seen.  Being a hotel though it was only allowed to stay open until midnight so Patches was the next venue and straight across the road on Oxford St.  There were a variety of gay bars at that time but they were all very stereo-typed.

The Midnight Shift was for leather queens, Capriccios was for Asians and 'Rice Queens', The Oxford was for dirty old men and drug dealers but Patches was open for all and the best place to be.  Unlike Mark, Bill was as adventurous as I was with drugs and we took as many as we could.  Pills, speed, cocaine, LSD.  Either bought or gifts from friends, we never said no.

I was still doing clients once or twice a week, although Bill never knew.  I had to be careful as so many of our friends lived around the area that it would have been easy for me to be seen.  I would hang out at the Bottom's up Bar or the Bourbon and Beefsteak on Darlinghurst Rd, Kings Cross and buy a drink.  Generally it didn't take long before some old man would hit up on me and for $30 or $40 I would meet them at their hotel or apartment.  I didn't want to be seen in their company walking by any of our friends.

Bill was very artistic and when he saw my ability at making clothes he got the idea for us to start making and selling clothes at Paddington Markets.  We were both still working our normal jobs but managed to come up with a few simple designs and try them out.  At first I bought the materials for the clothes but then Bill put his abilities in design to work and started creating amazing prints which he would silk screen onto white cotton. 

Our clothes and designs were a big success but came at a high cost.  We put in lots of hours to have our collection ready every Saturday and most Friday nights I would stay up all night sewing to get things finished before heading to the market to set up the stall at 7am. On top of that we were either stoned or speeding most of the time and still going out on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Any money we made went straight back into buying materials and the small profits we made we spent on drugs and partying.  If we had been serious and sensible we could have gone a long way.  Every week we would sell most of our stock.  One of our regular buyers were a Rock Group called Mental As Anything who were a big chart phenomena at the time.  We even had our clothes, with me modelling featured in a Japanese youth culture magazine.

Being seen and mixing with the new wave of designers beginning to make their mark on the Australian fashion scene was a buzz and we were invited out to many parties,fashion shows and celebrity gatherings.

After a year of this I suddenly became unwell.  I wasn't sick but had completely run out of energy.  Within a few weeks I was finding it impossible to even walk the short uphill walk to Kings Cross Station without stopping to rest 3 or 4 times on the way.  My work was suffering and my boss sent me home one day, or rather told me to go to the hospital and have a check up.

This was the early days of the AIDS epidemic and little was known about it but a lot was feared about it.  I went to St Vincent's Hospital where they immediately decided I was a likely candidate for AIDS and took blood tests.  Afterwards they even sent me to a counselor to discuss the realities of being HIV positive.   I was shattered.  23 years old and being told that I had the deadly virus that was sweeping the gay world....before they even had the blood test results back.

After a 10 day nightmare of worry, not working and being stoned constantly to help me cope the results came back.  Apparently they could find nothing wrong with me!  It would be years later when I was correctly diagnosed as being a 'moderate anemic' which was possibly the cause of my sickness.

Or maybe I had contracted the infection and somehow managed to fight it off.  Years later I would go through the reality of living with someone with AIDS and even though we had unprotected sex both before and after he was diagnosed, and I had various exposure to his bodily fluids during his illness I remained uninfected.

My boss had rung me after a month and told me they could no longer keep my position open.  I was receiving sickness benefits from the government and also working a few nights a week in a bakery in Kings Cross for cash in hand.  I wasn't earning much but it was enough to get by on.  The biggest impact was that we could no longer afford to keep ourselves in drugs and I certainly was so hooked by this stage that any day without getting stoned was worse than being sick.

Eventually a mutual friend of ours, an older gay guy took me in hand.  He told me to pack my bags for the weekend and come and stay with him.  He fed me home made chicken soup into which he chopped whole bunches of parsley and which I ate 3 or 4 times a day.  He grew his own dope and allowed me to have 3 joints a day.  After 3 days of this treatment I woke up on Monday morning and felt 100% cured.  Another week and I was back to my normal self....

With our lack of income we had to give up the Market stall, which I hadn't been able to do during the 6 weeks I was ill and had no extra cash to start up again.


Now I had to find a job.  My solution would change my life in ways I never could have imagined.