The Theatricality Of It All

*

She was always there, at three or four in the morning in Sydney's first 24-hour coffee shop, Una's, ready to sober him up with black coffee and ice cream. She was always, for some strange reason, supportive of him; of his dreams to finish high school and go to university, unlikely prospects for a drunken 16-year-old on the streets of a red light district; such as it was. Perhaps it was the cast of characters that drew him there more than anything; Peter, the male prostitute, in a town short of male prostitutes, always changing his hair colour, always funny, full of pretence, full of the dark lords and throw away lines. Boasting about numbers. As if anyone cared how often he hocked his box. The drag queens that clustered there. The easy speed, in the days when if you knew, as of course he did, the right chemist to go to you could buy the highest pharmaceutical grade straight across the counter. Sometimes he would wander down there from his job as a copy kid on the Daily Telegraph, in those early morning hours after the bosses had gone home and before the cleaners, always shocking dobbers if they didn't like you, arrived in the morning, in those hours when no one was really watching what he was doing and the machines clicked out stories from London and elsewhere; with nowhere to go. No one was on duty. The paper had already been put to bed, so to speak. Nothing was happening. He was it. War and Peace got a good thrashing.

There were times when he would have liked to have seen what was happening, viewed the thread, caught the shadows before they formed; cut off the darkness and the rotting brain cells and the malignant patches forming in the fabric of things, but he was too young, too naive. You're a baby. Well yes he was. He should be at home with his mother, one voice said, as he swayed under the Coca Cola sign. And yes he should be. But instead by the time he was 16 he hit his first detox, and there he met Harry Godolphin, one of those strange creatures that lurked on the fringes of the street boys, always ready with a bong and a soothing word. He never made a move, that was to his credit; they appreciated that, because everyone else did. In a way Harry's, with that stained straw matting in that old single story terrace overlooking Woolloomoolloo, was their special place. They all went there for solace from the storm. It had spectacular views of Sydney, in the days before a view of Sydney set you back a million dollars, perched high above the stone ramparts, the sandstone cliffs with their secretive stairs leading down into the slums settled around the bay, and they would knock on the door and Harry would open it, still wearing sunglasses inside, still, with his long dark hair and pale skin, a strangely serious creature, an enigma. But there was never any doubt. He gave them bongs and didn't try to put the hard word on them; and for that they were eternally grateful.

He had come from a shocking, sharp edged place and the contrast with now was complete; when the fetid streets and the overcrowded alleys of Bangkok, busy even in his favourite hours before dawn, when the foreign queens spilled out of DJs and he could see the street stall owners, setting up shop, getting ready for the day, smile with amusement at their antics on Silom. All the foreigners said they liked DJs. The Thais didn't, there were too many foreigners, too many boys, too much competition. They liked Hot Male Station, where they were amongst their own kind and clouds now and then, how we ached for you, for the pleasures of the past, for friendships destroyed by death and the passing of time; yet here was another place. What am I going to do without my friends from New York, Marie whined and he said simply enough: make new ones. It's not as if the bars aren't full, the streets aren't crowded, as if there weren't plenty of Thais you could befriend. You don't have to have sex with them, you know, he felt like saying, as if this was a learned observation; but instead he just suggested they go to the movies. It hadn't happened yet. There was another way; he just couldn't think what it was. They shot up as if every little flick of ecstasy, every drop of blood ballooning in the bowl, would change their lives forever; as if this was the most profound, most decent, most honourable course of action. Creativity through oblivion. They all thought it was the path.

Instead they were left staring out of plane windows, watching the crystalline splinters dance amongst the clouds; swamped with a terrible panic, a complete disregard for any normal life, and he knew, as he always knew, the grazier would be be waiting for him there at that dusty airport, there with his cowboy boots and worn, warm face, as if every aching pleasure was a place to dance, so he would throw more acid down his throat and wander around the homestead, across the dry red soil and the profoundly moving scrub, as if all heart was pleasure. Now the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak, and he was happy to pay for company, for a hot water bottle boyfriend who just watered the plants on the balcony and accidentally spilt water on someone on the ground beneath; as if all soaring compromise, splintered moments and aching hearts had come home to roost. I'm happy to pay, he declared, it's simpler; I'm closer to 60 than 50 and I wouldn't sleep with me for love or money. Well who would know what goes on behind closed doors; what was shared, understood, not understood. I love you, the boy declared every day, but his level of affection no doubt improved with a few extra baht and these were arrangements entirely understood; as if affection was easily bought and the obsessional love of the West was obsolete. The Thais have a different notion of love, he was told; to which he responded: Oh, yes, I know. More practical, Alex continued. Yes, he replied: I like your apartment, I like you well enough, I'm happy enough sleep with you; you take care of me I take care of you. It's good work when you can get it. From a poor family. He went back down Soi 4 to the gay bars where the boy was clearly uncomfortable: falang, boyfriend, falang, boyfriend, he pointed at the European queens with their Asian boyfriends; while the broken down idiot next to them, with a dumpy wife and a face that said he was once a pretty boy, before the last 600 bottles of whisky and 10,000 packets of cigarettes. You from Issan? he asked the boy; as in, are you from the poorest province in Thailand, are you for sale? No, the boy replied, Ratchuburri; and one glance from him was enough to make the gnome of the spirit scuttle away; while another drunken queen with long long white hair and a protuding stomach stumbled towards him: what you looking at? I'm from Abba, he declared, before stumbling off just as quickly. The theatre, I'm attracted to the theatricality of it all, he tried to explain, but none of that was washing: and they left as soon as their sodas were finished. Mai dee, mai dee, the boy said as they walked back, talking of the Issan queen and the Abba queen, no good, no good, you good. In the strangest of ways, they seemed happy together.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/kevin-rudd-and-trouble-in-paradise-20100723-10ow8.html

A pall has fallen over the Sunshine State. Voters look set to punish Labor for Kevin Rudd's demise - and the former PM is not really helping. Michael Gordon reports.

'IT'S cleaner and it's smoother! I'm all for things that are cleaner and smoother.'' This was a beaming Kevin Rudd on Wednesday, addressing third and fourth-graders during his appearance at Coorparoo State School in his Brisbane electorate of Griffith.

He wasn't talking about his approach to politics, or that of Julia Gillard. No, he was talking about the shiny new floor of one of the monuments to his prime ministership, a $3 million school hall that was completed ahead of time, on budget and opened a month ago, the day after his political execution. If Rudd's removal set a new standard for being clean and smooth, the former prime minister's entry to this election campaign has been something altogether different.

Despite the declared intention to confine himself to local issues, Rudd, almost unwittingly, managed to occupy the national spotlight for the best part of three days of the first week, giving the shaky Abbott campaign ammunition, sapping political oxygen from Gillard, reviving leadership antagonisms and raising all manner of questions about the wisdom and viability of his intention to stay in politics.

Even before any of this, the Rudd factor loomed large in this election - especially in Queensland, where half of the 30 seats are considered marginal. This, after all, is the state that delivered more Labor gains than any other in the Rudd-slide of 2007. It is the state that may well have the most bearing on the August 21 election. It is Kevin's backyard.

When, for instance, The Age accompanied Liberal National Party candidate Malcolm Cole as he door-knocked homes in the seat of Moreton on Tuesday evening, the first Labor voter he encountered told him she was now undecided. ''I vote Labor but, like just about everyone in Queensland, I'm feeling a bit funny about how they treated Kevin Rudd,'' she volunteered.

Cole, a former political journalist, later confided that ''he would hear that about 20 times a day. I tend to find that people say it's left a bad taste in their mouth.''

This sentiment was echoed in interviews across Brisbane this week and is reflected in today's Age/Nielsen poll, which shows the exact opposite of the national picture, with Labor trailing the Coalition in two-party preferred terms 46-54, and a huge reservoir of support for Rudd, with more than two-thirds of voters disapproving of the way he was treated and backing him to be foreign minister if Labor is returned.

Before Rudd's debut on Wednesday, this was a campaign wanting for political energy. Abbott can be seen running in almost every TV news bulletin, usually in his suit, but he has failed to generate much momentum for his cause. Gillard has projected a contrasting sense of calm confidence, but she, too, lacked a framework to give any real meaning to that oft-repeated slogan ''moving forward'' - especially on the issue she chose to differentiate herself from Rudd: population.

In the absence of something more meaningful, the contest boils down to a choice between validating Labor's leadership change and rewarding incumbency, or endorsing the Abbott critique of mismanagement and his mantra about stopping the boats and entrusting him with the top job. In the absence of more, it is a question that suits Gillard more than Abbott, but maybe not in Queensland.

Rudd's entry was news because we are witnessing something that has never happened in this country before: a first-term prime minister, who led his party out of more than a decade in opposition and rode high in the polls, was suddenly dumped when the polls turned sour and, inexplicably, chose to remain in politics.

It was news because Rudd is yet to answer any of the questions raised by his shock removal and his decision to stay in politics: can he work closely with the former deputy who tore him down?

Will he follow Gillard's lead and refuse to divulge what was said, and agreed, in those conversations before he was axed?

Is he committed to serve the full three years of the next Parliament? Why is he staying after losing the job that was, after all, his reason for entering politics?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010723123126458141.html

An Afghan parliamentary candidate and at least 16 other people have been injured in a mosque bombing in the eastern province of Khost.

Mawlvi Saydullah, the candidate, was delivering a speech during Friday prayers when a bomb exploded inside the mosque.

He and his bodyguard were both wounded by the explosion.

"[Saydullah] was the target," said Mubariz Zadran, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, but General Nawab Khan, an Afghan army official in Khost, blamed it on "enemies of Afghanistan".

Afghanistan's parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 18, and security is a major concern.

Last year's presidential elections were marred by dozens of attacks on voters and polling places.

Khost is one of Afghanistan's least secure provinces. Anti-government groups staged 364 attacks there between April and June, up from 240 during the same period in 2009, according to a recent report from the Afghanistan NGO Security Office.

The Haqqani network, one of Afghanistan's three main insurgent groups, is particularly active in Khost, which shares a border with Pakistan.

Picture: Peter Newman.