Dirty Work Read online

  “This game is called ‘Mothers and Fathers,’” she was saying. This seemed more puzzling. “Come on,” she said. “Get on top of me.”

  Obviously she knew something I did not. I just did not get it. “Haven’t you ever seen your mother and father doing it?” she asked.

  “Doing what?” I replied.

  “Having sex! Don’t you know anything?” She started wriggling, moving her body up and down. “This is how you do it.”

  I was trying to go along with her, but not having seen my mother and father at it, as they slept in separate beds, nor having any idea what she was on about, it was all a bit of a letdown.

  As usual, my mother was right. These girls were over-sexed, or maybe I was just under-sexed. It was all somewhat deflating. But also, my mother was trying to hide something about her own jealousy over my brother’s and my involvement with girls. Her sexuality somehow had been frozen, to flood out only after a few gin and tonics, much to the embarrassment of my father, my brother and myself.

  According to my mother, these girls were dirty and low class, but to me they were honest and straightforward, un-like my mother and father’s friends, whom I considered two-faced and devious. I thought more spying was needed to get to the bottom of this. I was starting to feel a split form in my being.

  The whole thing with the girl across the road had set me wondering, what was she on about? What was this sex thing? Maybe I should try again. But by this time, she had found an older, more responsive partner and regarded me as a wanker.

  Close to my boarding school was an Indian family with a beautiful daughter by the name of Anita Ohdo. I became totally hypnotized by her and started creeping around her house at night, peeping in windows, trying to see her. I tried many times to ask her out but she said that first I would have to meet her parents, as this was a tribal law. Standing in front of her parents was a huge ordeal. They interrogated me, “What are you trying to be when you grow up? How much money will you make? What kind of car and house will you have?” How the fuck would I know! I was thinking.

  They must have been reading my mind, because Anita was not allowed to see me. Totally besotted, I kept trying to see her, continuing to climb drainpipes at night, trying to get into her bedroom. Eventually her father caught me and threatened me with the police. Anita was worried her father would do something crazy.

  So very begrudgingly, I called it off. It was really all about race. I was not Indian, and not only that, I was not high class enough, contrary to what my parents thought. I wondered, was there any way to be objective, non-discriminating? Nothing seemed to have a solid basis.

  My friends seemed to have no problem with these dilemmas. John was a friend from my prep school who I spent a lot of time with, staying at his house over the holidays. His was the perfect family—they were beautiful people, and everything seemed just right, nothing out of place. I thought this is how a family should be. They all seemed very happy. Their house was close to the ocean, and we spent all our time swimming, boating, playing sand cricket, and making land yachts.

  One day, returning to the house earlier than usual, John and I found the house locked. This was strange, as John’s father’s car was in the drive. He was a very prominent lawyer in town. We went around the house trying all the doors and windows. Eventually we found the latch of the living room window unlocked. We got some boxes to stand on and by jumping and pulling up onto the sill, we were able to peer in the window. We froze at what we saw.

  John’s father, the perfect husband and parent, was humping away with his very own sister! We were stuck, glued to the window. Glancing up after a vigorous thrust, John’s father suddenly saw us. A frozen horror masked his face. We melted, sliding down the glass panes. We were dumbstruck, wandering around to the back door. The door opened, and John’s father stood there, staring straight at us. I thought I saw a slight smile on his face.

  “Mum’s the word,” is all he said.

  Astral Body

  After some time I returned to self-hypnosis. To be honest, after my past misadventures, I was a bit scared. Maybe I should have waited for Chris to get back from Paris to help me.

  But I decided to give magic another try, partly because I was having strange dreams. Two creatures would appear—one bird-like, the other dragon-like. They seemed small. The dragon-like creature would try to bite the wings off the bird-like creature. These dreams went on for about a week and then stopped. Soon after, agonizing pain started in my left side. Thinking this might be kidney stones, I dragged myself to the emergency room. The doctors did tests, including a CAT scan. Nothing showed up. They gave me heavy-duty painkillers, which did little for the pain. What could this phantom pain be? After about ten days the pain went, thank God. Thinking it was some strong hiccup in my system, I decided to give magic another try.

  One of the magic exercises I tried in my search was the forming of the body of light. This was a phenomenon I had read about in Tibetan Buddhism. In western esoteric schools of thought, it is also known as the astral body, described as an artificial conscious body, used by a magician to project his consciousness from his physical body, making it possible to travel to different realms. The practice starts with the Banishing Ritual of the lesser Pentagram, a ritual that uses gestures, prayers and visualization for clearing a space. Then, relaxing in a comfortable chair or couch, in whatever position you find yourself, you visualize your body of light as being in the same position. You carefully visualize the shape of the form you want to project, in the same position in which you are sitting or lying. You then externalize this mental image, seeing it appear objectively. You have to get a clear image before going to the next stage, which is to transfer astral and mental substance to the thought form projected by using the exercise of the Interwoven Light. This brings forth the fires of the body, or the body’s latent re-serves of energy. You then try to transfer your waking consciousness into the form, mimicking your own bodily functions—waking, talking, seeing, hearing—by intention and will. By doing this, you project yourself into the thought form. If this is successful, a click is heard, and you find yourself outside your body, looking down at your sleeping, physical body, to which you are connected by a silver cord. This cord has to be kept intact; if broken, instant death follows. To prevent this happening, some of the denser etheric substance is sent back to stabilize the body of light.

  Coming back into the physical body has to be done carefully, so as to avoid bruising. Bruising is one of the ways witches were found out. The whole process has to be done very carefully and deliberately, as many problems can arise, one of them being that the double you have created can take on its own identity, causing trouble. Also, some understanding of the astral maze is needed, which is obtained by studying the Tree of Life and using its symbols as doors to the astral powers. This stops the tendency to be pulled about by surging magnetic tides of the etheric earth, which could turn you into an astral tramp!

  Sugar Cane Cutting

  In the 1950s, you could get to Australia from England for ten pounds because they needed people badly. Australia—that sounded like the place for me. Sun, beach, beer…perfect! So I signed up, paid my 10 pounds, and said good-bye to my parents and friends.

  The boat trip to Australia in those days took about five weeks. The boat was a converted Italian aircraft carrier, which was very unstable. In rough seas, the props would come out of the water, making the boat shudder and spray all over the restaurant china. That was not the only thing being sprayed. There were a lot of seasick people throwing up, as I discovered while taking a breather on deck. Otherwise between storms the trip went relatively smoothly. Most of the time was spent drinking, chatting up the birds and getting thrown off the dance floor for indecent dancing. The rest of the time I spent sleeping off the hangover and waking up with a sunburnt bum.

  When I arrived in Australia, my brother, who had been there for about five years, met me. He had started his own business in Canberra, and it was doing well. We drove from S
ydney to Canberra, stopping for an Aussie-style breakfast: four eggs, a huge piece of steak, hash browns, sausage, and bacon. I ate about half.

  “If Aussies eat like this, they must work hard,” I thought. I worked with my brother for about six months. He definitely worked hard.

  Canberra was small and boring, so I decided to head north to make my fortune cutting sugarcane, having heard stories of cutters earning big bucks in a few months and then going to Surfer’s Paradise and living it up. I should have known better. Taking the train to Mackay in North Queensland was grueling. It took three days and the train had no sleeping cars.

  Arriving in Mackay was a shock. It was very hot and humid. Working in this must be madness, I thought. I asked around about cutting but everything had been taken. “Go north,” they said, “To Innisfail or Cannes.” So off to Innisfail I went, but all the jobs had been taken. I was told to stick around, as people would leave and jobs would open up. This should have told me something.

  Meanwhile, there was work on a banana boat wharf. My first job at the wharf was to look busy. “Look busy, mate, just don’t stand there!” were my orders. Carry this piece of wood over there, put it down, then pick it up again and bring it back here. Great, this was just my kind of job. As luck would have it, this very piece of wood was a vital piece in the construction of the wharf. One of the carpenters had been searching for it all over. So maybe the thing was to find somewhere to hide. Just as I was looking, a voice shouted, “Hey cobber, can you drive?” I hoped he was not talking to me but feared he was, as there was something ominous in his voice.

  He wanted me to drive a very old, clapped-out truck, which carried containers of concrete from the mixers to the wharf. This sounded simple enough, and it would have been, if the truck had not been a real piece of shit with virtually no gears, brakes, or steering. Keeping it moving backwards or forwards in a straight line was a miracle. Each two-mile run took hours.

  On one of these trips I had to take acetylene bottles to the wharf. On the way some of the workers wanted a lift. Getting onto the wharf was a little tricky as the truck was long and the corner sharp and narrow. This time I cut the corner too sharp and one of the rear wheels lurched over the side, sending the bottles and the workers into the drink! Not hearing or seeing any of this, I kept going until I saw people behind me running and cursing. Wondering what could be the matter, I stopped. This was a mistake. Some very angry people were calling me some very unpleasant names. “Get the fuck out of the truck and get out of here!” This was the sign to start cutting cane.

  The first gang I signed with was made up mainly of Yugoslavians, Hungarians, and Italians. They were a wild and crazy bunch. The gun cutter—the chief—was Yugoslavian. To gain respect from us, he showed us the large scars across his stomach from knife fights. He was the peacemaker.

  “Lazy boy, lazy boy!” he would shout, the only English he knew. This was a very bad start, giving me grave doubts about my future fortune.

  Sugarcane cutting was harder and more difficult than I had thought. First they burn the cane to get the snakes out—tiger snakes, taipans, browns, all of them lethal. The burning also left the cane stands clear, making it easier to cut so that all the ends come together. This was vital for when we gathered it up later in the day. The goal was to cut 20 to 30 tons in the morning, gather it in the afternoon, and load it onto train cars. For me, this was virtual torture. It was hot, 90 to 100 degrees and very humid, which made the burnt cane weep sticky sugar, sticking to me like being tarred and feathered. Hell on earth.

  Why I continued cutting cane is beyond me. Maybe I didn’t want to fail again. Just when I thought it was the end of the day, the rails that the trucks rode on had to be moved to where we would be cutting next. They were very heavy. I could feel my knees buckle. As I dropped the rails, I had to make sure the sleepers did not come down on my toes or take the skin from my heels. This was madness.

  I dragged myself back to the camp, which consisted of corrugated iron shacks that became ovens as the sun hit them. With no windows, they kept their heat all night. Getting a shower was another nightmare. First, we had to wait until the chiefs had finished with their showers, and then we heated the water in a bucket, getting it to the right temperature so we didn’t burn our skin but still hot enough that we could get the black sticky shit off. If the sugar got into your pores for long, large pussy boils would appear. They were very painful. The bucket of water was hoisted over a tree branch then tipped by pulling a rope into a tin can with holes in the bottom. This was a very tricky operation: either too little water came out or it all came out at once, leaving no time to get the grunge off. All this, when all you wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Often you would have to go through this process several times to get clean.

  At last, time to lie down. But first, food. This was another production. Large slabs of tough, overcooked meat and maybe a potato. After trying to digest this, it was bed at last, if you could call what was more of a hammock a bed.

  Just as sleep came, I suddenly awakened with a jolt. Gunfire! Now I was wide-awake. I could hear gunshots, yelling and moaning. Trying to make some sense of this and not wanting to be a dead hero, I stayed put. Soon it was quiet again. Sleep at last. Suddenly I was being shaken, hearing voices. “Wake up! Lazy boy!” It was pitch black outside. “Get up, get up! Cutting!” voices were shouting. Apparently we were to cut by the light of kerosene lamps.

  I found out later that day what the shooting was about. One of the Hungarian cutters had been drinking heavily and getting flashbacks from the war. His whole family had been raped and slaughtered before his very eyes. He would sometimes just flip, firing his gun through the walls and the ceiling, yelling curses at the Nazis. Luckily, none of the bullets hit anyone. Each one of the gang of cutters had some hidden secret.

  One day, a truck arrived outside an Italian cutter’s shack. It was loaded with a ton of beer, which we helped him un-load, leaving just enough room for his bed. He cut and drank all day, probably the only way to do this hellish job.

  There was no romance in cutting cane. The imagination of something and its reality are so different. Of course, money had something to do with why I stayed, getting two to five pounds a ton, cut and loaded, cutting 20 to 30 tons a day, making between 100 to 150 pounds a day. In the early ‘60s, that was good money. For me it was blood money, literally. After the second day, I had huge blisters on my hands, and trying to hold the cane knife was extremely painful, let alone trying to cut. I mentioned this to one of the other cutters. “No worries, mate,” he said, “Just piss on your hands.” Was this some kind of Aussie joke? “No, mate, fair dinkum. Piss on them.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I had a few beers and pissed on them. It stung like crazy. Thinking this was a lot of old bollocks, I went to bed.

  One night, I woke up with a jolt again, shouting and screaming, “What the fuck?” Some of the cutters had been down to the Crossroad Hotel, which was really a brothel. They were totally drunk, wrecked the place and were just about to wreck me if I didn’t get up.

  “Lazy boy, lazy boy! Cutting, cutting!” Jesus, was that all he could say?

  It was 3:30 a.m. and out to the fields we went, lamps in hand. Luckily for me, they were so drunk that after a half an hour, they stopped. I had not thought about my hands but magically, my blisters had healed. Apparently something about the acid in the urine hardens the skin. Bush medicine. I was glad when they stopped cutting and went to bed.

  In the morning before starting, everyone would file their cutting knives to make them razor sharp. One day, trying to keep up with the Yugoslav maniac, the hook on the back of my knife caught on some vines and, losing balance, my left leg came forward in front of my right leg, a no-no in cutting. The knife came down, glanced off a stump and into my leg, cutting into the tendon. I bound it up and went on cutting. That was not very bright. Soon I had to be taken to the hospital. They stitched up the tendon and put my foot in a cast, telling me I would not be able to work for a
month or more, thank God!

  My God-given time off was a blessing, giving me leisure to ponder things. It seemed crazy that people just work, often doing something they do not like. “Give me the strength to dig the ditch, to get the money, to buy the food, to get the strength, to dig the ditch, to buy the food…” This was a tune two German guys I met later would sing as they cut cane. Brooding about this gave me an uneasy feeling in my gut, eroding any work ethic I had left.

  Crazy Cutters

  Having time on my hands, I was able to take in my surroundings. Innisfail was very much like a quaint English village, though on a river in the tropics. There were many flowers, trees, beautiful gardens, and very good fishing. Fishing Aussie-style, sticks of dynamite are thrown in the water to stun the fish, which float to the surface and are pulled out in nets. Apparently, a thirty-eight foot crocodile was caught this way.

  Most of my time off was spent philosophizing with the nurses at the hospital, trying to figure out what life was all about but not coming up with any answers. On one of my trips to the hospital, I got talking to one of the nurses about my dilemma. It seemed that the nurses and doctors were doing something worthwhile, helping others. She told me that this was not always true, that it more often had to do with money and ego. This was a blow. I was naïve in thinking that they worked for the good of mankind.

  One evening, I went to the flicks with her. The cinema was an amazing old barn-like building with wooden benches half open to the sky. The Wild One was playing, and Marlon Brando has been my hero ever since. This guy was really cool.

  There were very few people at the show. I then realized there were very few people in town. When the cutters moved in, people moved out. The police could not handle the cutters when they got really wild, so people just boarded up their houses and left town for two or three months.