…They start pushing me, in the chest, pretty hard. I step back, as far as I can, but the wall of the theatre is behind me, and so I’ve got nowhere to go really. Then one of them hit me in the face. And the pain was intense. And… I felt dizzy. And they hit me in the face a couple more times. I really didn’t know what was happening very clearly. I was very confused, and my head was pounding, and I remember sitting down on the steps…
I get a ride from the Central Coast to Gordon. Characteristically, I have not planned ahead, so I don’t have Pukky’s address. I just know he lives in Gordon somewhere.
I see on the map that there is a patch of green beside the expressway, a few blocks from where I am standing, so I walk that way. If I can’t get hold of Pukky tonight, I’ll just camp in the reserve.
I send Pukky a message from my phone.
“Hey Puk! I’m in Gordon! What’s your addy?”
A few minutes later a reply comes back:
“Hi! Where are you? I’ll go pick you up.”
Pukky arrives in a very sleek red Alfa. We hug, and climb into the car.
“Wow. Nice wheels” I comment. “You’ve moved up in the world a bit since I last saw you.”
“Yes. Gordon is pretty comfortable” Pukky agrees, but I think I would trade it in to hitchhike around like you do.”
“Done” I say. “My bag’s in the back. I’ll take the keys now thanks.”
We sit on Pukky’s front veranda with a glass of wine. Gordon is a very pleasant place for wine sipping. It’s a quiet, leafy suburb in Sydney’s North, close to the city, but far removed from the claustrophobia and noise.
It’s been a long time since Pukky and I had a drink together. We were at university together, but passing time, kids, relocation…
The funny thing is, Pukky is the sort of guy that even after not seeing him for years, you feel as though it was just the other day.
We met in Wagga Wagga. Yes that is an actual place. We both grew up there. It’s a big town, by Australian standards, but in the 1980’s, when Pukky and I were growing up there, Wagga Wagga existed in a time capsule from the 1950’s.
In 1989, when I was seventeen, I wrote a short play. I found a venue undiscerning enough to stage it, and set about casting. Pukky showed up for his audition, barefoot, with a mane of wild, curly hair, and bounded around the stage with so much energy, I knew he was the man for the part.
We spent the next month rehearsing together, and we became good friends. Pukky lived in an awesomely grungy share-house, above a fruit shop. Pukky’s house parties were legendary in Wagga Wagga. I spent many drunken Saturday nights head-banging and playing air guitar on the awning over the fruit shop. I was seventeen, so Pukky’s rock and roll lifestyle made him a minor deity in my eyes.
Sitting on the Veranda, Pukky and I reminisce about some of the absurd stuff we did at Uni, the crazy characters who populated the parties at his share-house, and the girls we failed to get with.
“You were there for a few of my formative experiences” I say to Pukky.
“Oh, really? Which ones?”
“Well the first time I got really drunk was at one of your parties. I think it was the opening night party of the cabaret show we did. Probably the first time I smoked weed was at the fruit shop, too.”
“Oh, dear. I was a bad influence.”
“Not at all. Also, you were there when I got bashed. Remember?”
“Oh, shit. Yes. Outside the back door of the theatre, right?”
“That’s right. Because we were supposed to rehearse that afternoon. I remember it so clearly. I came walking down the street, and I saw you, standing outside the theatre, with your girlfriend. I waved to you, and I started to cross the road, and there were these three red-neck looking guys walking past in the other direction, all muscles and hairy legs footy shorts. And as they went past me they yelled out ‘faggot’, or something like that.”
“Yes” Pukky agrees, “it was ‘faggot’ I think.”
“Which wasn’t particularly surprising. I was used to getting abused in the street when I was a teenager.”
“Me too” Pukky says.
“We didn’t dress like typical Wagga boys, so that made us less than human.”
“Yeah. If you didn’t wear football shorts and a mullet you were scum.”
“Right. And on that particular afternoon I was wearing skin tight black leggings, and a tie-dyed singlet top. I had long blonde hair, too. I looked beautiful. I was really dressed up, because my girlfriend was in town that week.”
Pukky laughs.
“So I hear these guys yell ‘faggot!’ at me, and I just kept walking across the street, and over my shoulder, I yell back at them ‘wow, nice legs sweetie’.”
“Crazy.”
“Yes. Crazy. I was seventeen, and I was happy, and I was not the sort of guy to let people heckle me, without making a comeback. I got so much abuse in that town, and I was sick of it, and I think I just wanted to mess with their minds. Anyway, I cross the street, and I say hello to you, and then we both notice these three red-necks, heading across the road toward us.”
“That’s when I thought, ‘oh, crap'” Pukky laughs.
“Yes. Crap! And I knew they were going to start trouble, because they were taking their flip-flops off as they walked, and I thought, ‘that is what you do before you fight, right? You take off your flip-flops so you don’t slip and sprain your ankle while you are kicking faggot’s heads in’.”
“My first impulse was to run for it” Pukky says. “But my girlfriend was there, and she had really short legs.”
“I was just frozen to the spot. I was a pretty confident young man, but looking at these three guys, coming at us, with murder in their eyes, I was paralysed. They came right up in my face and they were like ‘what did you say to us?'”
“Yeah” Pukky says, “one of them got in my face, while the other two were going for you.”
“They’re like ‘what did you say to us?’ and they start pushing me, in the chest, pretty hard. I step back, as far as I can, but the wall of the theatre is behind me, and so I’ve got nowhere to go really. Then one of them hit me in the face. And the pain was intense. And… I felt dizzy. And they hit me in the face a couple more times. I really didn’t know what was happening very clearly. I was very confused, and my head was pounding, and I remember sitting down on the steps…”
Pukky nods slowly, and sips his wine. “Yeah. I remember you sitting down. There was like, a flight of steps that led down to the rear stage door. maybe nine or ten concrete steps. And I remember you saying to them ‘I’m not going to fight you’.”
“Right. I remember saying that. ‘l’m not going to fight…’ And meanwhile they are smacking me in the face, and kicking me in the back.” I laugh. Twenty three years later, it is actually funny. “And that was when they pushed me down the stairs. I don’t actually remember being pushed. I guess they kicked me from behind. But I remember, kind of, hitting the concrete
at the bottom, and thinking ‘oh fuck! These guys want to kill me. And then… they just took off. They ran off. I didn’t know why at the time, but it turned out that your girlfriend went and found a phone, and called the police, so I guess they saw the cops coming or something. Anyway, I’m glad they went, because I really don’t know how bad it would have gotten. I mean, they could have killed me Puck. That flight of stairs, if I’d fallen differently, hit my head on the concrete. It could have been very bad, man.”
Pukky and I refill our glasses, and watch the sun sink behind the trees across the street. Parrots squawk in the garden. In the distance, a dog barks.
“You don’t remember yelling at them?” Pukky asks me.
“Yelling? No. I yelled at them?”
“Yeah. The way I remember it, yeah, the one guy was shoving me, and the other two, they pushed you, and you rolled down the stairs. And you hit the concrete at the bottom, and I thought ‘oh Christ. I hope they haven’t killed him’. And you were there on the concrete for a few seconds, and the three of them were all looking at you, and I think they were wondering how bad you were hurt too, because they all looked kind of shocked, you know? And then, you just jumped to your feet, and the look on your face was pure rage. You looked like Captain Haddock when Tintin takes away his whisky. Like there was smoke coming out your ears, man. And you yelled at them, and you had a big voice.”
“I yelled at them? I don’t remember that at all.”
“Yes. You yelled at them, this fucking huge yell, with a red face, and your hands balled into fists. And I remember exactly what you said. You yelled: ‘right! That’s it!’ And those three fucking guys, they fucking ran off. You scared them off, I swear to god, or maybe they realised that they could have killed you, and maybe that scared them, I don’t know, but they took off running.”
“Holy shit. I had completely forgotten that part of it until this very moment, Puk.”
“You looked scary, man. I’d never seen you look like that. you were such a sweet, friendly guy.”
“Wow. The next thing I remember after going down the stairs was sitting on the grass with an ice pack on my face. And then the cops arrived. And they caught up with those guys, and busted them.”
“Yep. We rode over in the cop car to I.D. them, remember?”
“Yes I do. And I remember seeing them in court a few weeks later. They were all scrubbed up, in suits and shit. And I’m there in the witness thing, in tatty old jeans and a flanno. I remember looking across at them, sitting in the dock, and they looked scared as all hell. And I remember feeling sorry for them. I wasn’t angry, I felt sorry for them, cause their lives were going to be shit. You could see it. Two of them weren’t even eighteen yet. Just kids, like me. Dumb, angry, bigoted, violent kids.”
“Yep. Wagga was full of them” Pukky sighs.
“But that experience changed me, you know. It took away an innocence I had. I believed, before that, I could be whoever I wanted, and I was free to be myself, without consequences. After that, I realised that there are plenty of people who think nothing of damaging others. I think it made me harder, and it made me cautious, and in some way it made me smaller, because I was much more conscious of how people looked at me after that. I didn’t wear clothes that would attract too much attention. I started to feel self conscious about my masculinity. Self conscious about my identity. I didn’t want people to think they could hurt me. I started to toughen myself up. And I feel a little sad about that sometimes. This is what Australia’s misogynist, homophobic culture can do. It makes you feel like you have to guard yourself if you want to feel safe. I really enjoyed being effeminate when I was seventeen, and I feel like those guys took that away from me.”
“I think you’re still pretty effeminate” Pukky consoles me, with a smile.
“Well, in the last couple of years I’ve been trying to claim some of that back. I mean I spent years learning how to seem tough. It was such an obsession. And I have taught myself how to intimidate people, because I never wanted to feel powerless again. I never wanted to feel like a victim again, you know? But a couple of years ago, I discovered, I can be both. I can turn on the tough guy when I need him, and I can feel pretty when I want to as well. They are not mutually exclusive.”
“The thing I learned from that experience was, I wanted to get out of Wagga Wagga” Pukky says.
“And that. Definitely that. I learned a lot from being bashed. I still don’t understand that kind of brain though. That kind of person, who is so angry, so fucked up, that they hate other people just for being themselves – and they hate you enough it makes them want to destroy you. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.”
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