IN BETWEEN DAZE....
Ooh, and it's all right and its coming on
We're gonna get right back where we started from.
Love can be good, love can be strong.
We're gonna get right back where we started from....
We closed shop. Just like that. One day we were running a brothel and the next day we were hastily shoving our possessions into a rental truck and moving to a whole new life. We found a cute little Edwardian detached house a few suburbs away and left the seedy world of prostitution behind us - well almost.
Matty was now working full time in the radio room of a taxi company and I was left with no job, a six week wait until I could claim social security benefits, but best of all without the stress of trying to make a failing business work. I wasn't stupid though. Our rental on the parlour was due on the first Monday of the month, we left on the last Sunday of the month with $1200 in our pockets. Not only that but I had the phone numbers of a few regular clients so financially things weren't as grim as they seemed.
Amazingly the move, and Matty's becoming the breadwinner, seemed to change our relationship for the better. Like all bullies Matty was in his element now that he believed he was in control. For the first time in nearly 5 years he was playing top dog and I was under his control. He happily paid the rent and gave me money for groceries and drugs. Even more happily he now assumed he was controlling my drug supply and revelled in his misconceived dominance over me.
What he didn't know was the during the hours he was away, from 2pm till midnight 5 days a week, I was seeing regular clients at least 3 times a week, and was able to supply my own drugs which he had no idea about. All I had to do was play housewife while he was home and when he was at work my life was my own.
I revelled in the freedom. I revelled in the domesticity and I revelled in the ability to finally have time own my own. To do what I wanted and how I wanted. The change in both of us was incredible. Now Matty felt he was in control he was happy to resume our sexual relationship, although we now had separate rooms. In the mornings we would spend a few hours between him waking and going to work getting stoned off his rationed drugs and when he returned home I would wake up and we would spend a few hours smoking, munching out on whatever I had prepared in the evening, then end up having great sex before he went back to his own room to sleep.
This change of lifestyle also made a dramatic improvement on his health. He was rarely sick and in fact his T-cell count rose dramatically. It was 2 months of domestic bliss. He worked, I went op - shopping in the adjoining suburb Newtown and refurnished the house with some incredibly cheap Edwardian furniture and turned our small back yard into an English country garden.
It didn't take long however before the rent money started running out and I had to start looking for a full time job. Again, I could have fronted up at any of the gay or straight brothels and easily have gotten a job. But I didn't want to. I had seen enough and been through enough to realize that it was time to make a change.
Surprisingly two things happened which gave me both direction and hope. The first was that my 'good sister' and her husband invited me up to spend a few days with them. I had hardly had any contact with them for the past 5 years but I went. It was a pleasant, if boring time. They had two young daughters and taking drugs with me was out of the question. It wasn't until the last day that my brother in law took me aside and gave me a really unexpected talking to.
He didn't judge me but he made it clear that he knew exactly what I had been doing and that perhaps it was 'time I grew up' and thought about my future. He pointed out that while I may have assumed I was having the time of my life, that I had been steadily destroying not only my self, but also my chances of having a successful future. It was definitely food for thought.
On my return Matty told me that he had managed to get me a job in the taxi company starting almost immediately. He had made such a good impression on his bosses (that was part of his charm) that they were happy to employ me on his recommendation.
I couldn't say no. I didn't have any other career options and here I was being offered a full time job and all I had to do was show up. I was confident that I could last 8 hours without getting stoned - the first time in years - but I was terrified that I would have to work with 'normal people'. I mean all I had known for the past 5 years were prostitutes, pimps and clients. I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to adjust.
I can still recall my absolute terror of walking up the stairs and knocking on the office door. When it opened I was totally taken aback. The room was long and set up with two rows of work stations on either side of a manual conveyor belt which backed on to identical rows of glass booths which was where the radio operators worked. What hit me was that the room was full of 'cool looking' people - hippies, drag queens, gay guys, lesbians.....it was obvious that this was a place I could fit in.
I was given a two hour induction in which I was shown the workings of the company. It was a lot to take in but I was able to sit down and start work under supervision for the first hour and then eventually be left on my own to take the easiest calls (cash calls) and get my head around the conveyor belt system.
It wasn't easy. This was pre-computer days so all bookings were written on different coloured paper slips (depending upon they type of booking) and then had to be placed into the correct chute for the pick up area. By the end of the shift I was flying. I had always had a polite speaking voice and my writing was neat and legible, I had no hesitation in sending any difficult calls to the supervisor (I mastered the switchboard easily) and by the end of the night I was told to come again the following evening where my roster would be allotted to me. I was back in the real world.......It wasn't the most exciting or challenging of jobs (in fact it was quite monotonous to begin with) but it was a real, legitimate job and the start of a new life.....
To top it off, besides my own friendly social skills I had the added advantage of being Matty's 'friend' and everyone was keen to be as friendly and helpful to me as possible. Life was looking good.
It was a whole new world for me and I revelled in it. New friends, new skills, and most importantly the dramatic realisation that I was good at something other than the sex industry.
DARKEST DAZE... (part 3)
Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...
that suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.
Dazed and numb I waited until I was sure that Matty was asleep. I crept out the back door and stumbled my way through the cold early morning towards Central Bus station. I had no idea how I must have looked but being early morning there weren't many people around to notice me.
It was still too early for the buses and I had to wait nearly 40 minutes for the first bus to arrive. The bus station is located on one of Sydney's busiest intersections, a triangle between 5 intersections, one of them being the main road leading from the city to the western suburbs. It was sitting here that I contemplated many times stepping out onto the road and letting a car or truck end all my pain and humiliation.
The bus station, with it's many interchange sections, was, and still is, a haven for the homeless, spending the night asleep on the metal seats. Their garbage bags or shopping trolleys filled with their only possessions pushed tight against them. No one paid any attention to me as I sat miserably huddled on a seat by myself. I would look at the traffic, torn between throwing myself in front of a vehicle, and then look around me and see the refuse of society, asleep and oblivious to the cruel reality of my world.
I remembered my mothers words, 'no matter how bad you feel, there is always someone in the world worse off than you'. And here, at the lowest of lows I could look around and understand her words. So I sat and waited for the bus which eventually arrived. This was in fact the hardest part of all. The driver took one look at me ( I had no idea that I was bruised and the back of my head was matted with blood from where I had been bashed against the wall) and refused to take my money. He just asked if I needed to go to hospital! I told him, through my tears, that I had friends who would look after me and that's where I was going.
Arriving at Steven's apartment I was met by his wife. It was not even 7.30 and Steven was still asleep. Margaret, his wife, took one look at me and held me fast. It wasn't until then that I realised how badly bruised and physically damaged I was. She didn't ask any questions but sat me gently down and made me a cup of tea and passed me a bong and marijuana to go with it. After a while she told me she had run a warm bath and led me there, helping me to remove my clothes. I will never forget the look on her face as she undressed me and saw my chest and stomach covered in cigarette burns and bruises.
After the bath she came with ointment and carefully applied it to each of the 15 or more cigarette burns, which by now were starting to puss and blister. I can't describe how I felt. I was numb with pain, numb with shock and mortified that I had reached such a humiliating position. My only fears were for my dog Toby who was still back at the house and possibly getting harmed by Matty. I had no choice leaving him as I honestly believed that had I stayed, when Matty awoke he would have continued physically abusing me.
When Steven finally awoke and I got my story out he asked me what I wanted him to do. I only wanted the abuse to stop. I still loved Matty, I still wanted to run a successful parlour and I still wanted to live the lifestyle I was living. Steven assured me that I had nothing to worry about anymore but that I had to trust him. Armed with enough comfort, assurance and totally stoned I let Steven drive me back to the house and leave me there to face Matty alone.
As usual with Matty, when he woke up, sometime around 12pm, he not only had no idea that I had even left, but was totally apologetic and upset with his actions. He even went out and brought grass from somewhere so we could smoke together. For the first time I could remember he not only packed the bongs but also took control of the business, answering phone calls, looking after the clients and telling the boys who had come to work that I was feeling sick and to let me be.......I don't think any of them believed him but they needed money so were happy to sit the day in the front room waiting for jobs and not bother me.
However, every time they came through the kitchen to use the bathroom, I was aware of their sympathetic staring and quiet understanding of what had happened during the night.
Shortly after 7pm Steven arrived accompanied by three enormous, Maori thugs. With out any warning they simply marched through the house and into the kitchen where they grabbed Matty and commenced beating the life out of him. Unbelievably I was stunned and scared for Matty. Rushing forward to intervene and try and help Matty, I was held back by one of the heavies and forced to watch Matty getting bashed to within an inch of his life. To his credit he never once made a sound or tried to justify himself, he knew what he had done and he knew he deserved what he was getting.
When it was all over, Steven calmly said that he would be ending the business and we had one month to close up and move out. He also warned Matty that if he touched me again that they would kill him. Matty limped upstairs to bed and I spent an hour with Steven, getting lectured on my stupidity for allowing myself to get into these circumstances. He also promised me that he would always have a place for me to go and money if I wanted to leave Matty.
So basically that was the end of my prostitution and brothel days. Within two weeks Matty had found a full time job and with Steven's help I managed to find us a house to rent. It would be a calm few months. Months where my lifestyle was compromised completely but months in which I was finally feeling safe......
