LOVE DAZE....(part 2).

Ooooh I don't want anybody else.
When I think about you I touch myself.....

Summer 1985 and I was in my element.  I had found the perfect partner and had the perfect job.  The boys all looked up to me for not only support but also for the nurturing they all desperately lacked.  Graham was becoming more and more dependent on my abilities and as a result I was becoming more aware of the realities of Sydney's underworld.

I come across as a hedonistic, sex mad and drug addicted loser.   It's probably a precise description of me but I always had another side.  The intellectual, want to be somebody and do something with my life person.  I wanted to feel not only recognition but eventually have the choices to make something of myself.

I enrolled in a Secretarial Course at East Sydney Technical College at the start of 1986.  This is the same complex whose outer boundary forms part of 'the wall'.  The decision was based upon my relationship with Graham and my abilities to multi-task.  I had dreams of one day becoming a PA to some rich gay client.

The course ran 5 days a week.  From 9am till 3pm, Monday to Friday. It was perfect for me. Close to both home and work and aside from the cost of text books was a free course.  I relished in the surroundings of such a historically important building complex and in the skills being taught.  When I originally enrolled I was one of only 5 boys out of 100 students.  By the end of the first week I was the only boy left.  The teachers, all female, petted me and gave me all the help I needed.  The other students were all young, precocious and rich but below average girls from Sydney's elite Eastern suburbs.

With Matty and I now a permanent couple life was satisfying but my depleted income and the fact that he wasn't working meant I had to start economising.  We were both by now smoking $20 - $40 per day in marijuana, I had rent to pay, food and bills and Matty would only occasionally contribute if it looked like the grass was running out.

I had also inherited my first dog.  A beautiful cocker spaniel puppy who was given to me by one of the girls from college.  Her family had moved into rented premises and weren't allowed to keep pets. 'Nelson' would be the first in a line of dogs for the rest of my life.

Matty would spend most of the day at home and would walk Nelson in the Park.  On my shifts at Brett's, Nelson and Matty would come with me. It was all the family I needed.  A gorgeous, attentive boyfriend and a loyal and loving dog.

Sometime after Easter my landlord sent a letter stating that not only would the rent on the apartment be increasing by a massive $50 per week but that also he would be undertaking major exterior redecoration....faced with building work, noise and a rent that would really stretch me I decided it was time to look for another place.

I had recently re-met an old friend from my 'menswear store' days.  Paul had been the hairdresser in the shop opposite mine and we had been good friends for a couple of years in the early days.  I hadn't seen him for over a year and was really delighted to meet up with him again.

It was to be my first mistake of the year.  He was living in a terrace house in Surry Hills and had just split up with his boyfriend.  He invited Matty and I to move in with him.  Seemed like the perfect idea.  So we moved......

We spent 3 months there listening to him complain about us 'bonging all night long' while he quietly downed two flagons of cheap wine every night and kept rubbing the point in that he was a 'qualified hair designer' while I was just a brothel receptionist and Matty was a 'dole bludger'.

On top of that, even though his small terrace house had an empty dining room he refused to let me put my furniture there as it 'wasn't in keeping' with his very tasteless glass and chrome 1980's style.  I had to keep my furniture outside under the overhanging bedroom.  After a few weeks I returned home to find that his Great Dane dog had eaten my 'Dunlop designer 1960's modular lounge and chewed his way through two coffee tables!

The only good thing to come out of this was that Matty and I became closer and started enjoying regular and satisfying sex.  Paul had played a big part in this, playing up to Matty's need for gratification and like Daisy, telling him that I was a good person who wouldn't use or hurt him - words which will later become very ironic indeed.

We lasted 3 months with Paul before eventually deciding to move out on our own.  Matty had started working for a customs company and with a regular income had bought a second hand car.  We could now afford to live together without the hassle of an extra person clamping our style.

The only difficulty was with the dog.  Very few estate agents had properties where dogs were allowed.  Eventually we settled on a small, run down, Victorian Terrace in Commonwealth St Surry Hills.  This was an area that was close to Central Train Station.  A mix of run down residential terrace housing, failing factories and crumbling warehouses.  Our neighbours were an illicit Chinese Gambling Den, a house full of arguing Lesbians, a Mosque (which was one of the few of it's day in Sydney - so had the 'call to prayer' 5 times a day) and a brewery.

My second big mistake of that year would happen on the day we moved in.  Not having much furniture left after having half of it eaten by the Great Dane, Matty and I drove into Newtown (then still a low class migrant ghetto full of second hand stores) to buy a bed and such like.  After choosing Matty then proceeded to buy a second mattress....

When we got home and started unpacking he chose to tell me that he 'would be taking the second bedroom' - he wasn't gay after all and didn't feel comfortable sharing the same room with me.  What he was really saying was 'thanks for the free ride and I'll hang in as long as you are stupid enough to let me'!

I was devastated.  I felt betrayed, stupid, gullible and used.  But incredibly enough I believed that if I let him stay then things would eventually work out.  I should have told him then and there to get lost.  I was so in love with him, or the idea of being in love with him that I was prepared to accept any sort of chance to stay with him.

To rub salt into the wounds, a few days later he told me that he had invited two work colleagues home for dinner the following Friday night. He even had the gall to tell me that one was a young girl who he was thinking of dating.

Like an idiot I spent hours cleaning the house, preparing dinner and getting ready to play the gracious hostess.  They arrived and not only were they two of the most boring people I had ever met, the girl wasn't even remotely pretty - I felt doubly betrayed and my self esteem took a nose dive.

I got through most of the evening as graciously as my mother had taught me.  Meal over, plates cleared and the talk revolved around their work of which I had not the slightest idea or interest.  I took the opportunity to wash the dishes, clean the kitchen and then quietly retire to my bedroom and leave them to enjoy themselves.

Upstairs in my bedroom I read, smoked dope and read some more.  I fell asleep and sometime around midnight awoke to the crashing sound of my door being kicked in and hitting the wall.

Matty was like a deranged, rabid dog.  Drunk, red faced with anger and hurling abuse at me!?  I had been rude to his friends, I deliberately ignored them, I was a snob.  With no time for explanations he was across the room and dragging me out of bed.  Hitting me over and over again.  Dragging me across the room and out onto the small balcony which overhung the street.

I can still recall his screaming rage as he repeatedly reinforced how rude and obvious I had been with every punch.  Not satisfied he hauled me, by now screaming, to the railing and held me by the throat as he proceeded to lift me off my feet and try and thrown me over the balcony.

Only my terrified grip on the rails and the intervention of the girls next door saved me from being impaled on the wrought iron railings below which formed our front fence.  With the threat from the girls of calling the police Matty eventually released me.  I staggered back into my room only to see him coming towards me with his arms outstretched.  Fearing the worst I instinctively grabbed the first thing at hand.

This was my treasured 'Nigger Lady' art deco lamp.  I had bought it as one of my first buys at Paddington Markets.  It was beautiful, classic, expensive at the time and had lasted me through 3 relationships.  With a defensive scream I picked it up and swung it at him with all my force, knocking him unconscious.

If only for a few minutes it was enough to bring him to his dazed senses.  Emotionally and physically drained we both sat there in stunned silence trying to work out what had just happened.

He should have gone to hospital but insisted  he was all right.  He was all apologies and tears.  He didn't know what got into him, it would never happen again, he loved me.......I told him if he ever touched me again like that it would be over.  After years of beltings from my father and the boys at school I had finally hit back - and it felt good.

We slept together that night and he moved back into my room.  Sex wasn't every night but we were a pair.  He admitted that he still wanted to see the girl from work but would only see her at her place once a week.  I was stupidly accepting of that.  I had made a promise to myself that as long as he didn't hurt me again physically then I could accept his choices.

Was it blind love?  Was it vanity? Was it my fear of being alone?  Was it my need to have a strong person in my life?  Maybe it was all these reasons.  At any time I could have told him to leave.  Any number of the boys from Brett's would have happily moved in with me.  I only wanted to be with Matty.

It would be nearly 12 months before he would assault me again.  But by then I was so infatuated with him and so dependant upon my need for drugs that my earlier promise went out the window....but many other things would happen in the time between.