The Dingoes' Lament. John Bois
drunk.’
With a full head of steam, and fearful of a devastating early-evening hangover, I kept on drinking. As I drank I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, the foolish idea that I was only maintaining my state of inebriation — that I was keeping constantly, mildly, drunk. But later that night, I attempted to pinch the bottom of every girl at the Trocadero Club. The companion of one of them punched me in the face. I wept for Man’s inhumanity to Man, and by four o’clock in the morning I sobered up enough to realise I was on some suburban porch singing Elvis Presley songs. My audience of three included an auto accident victim who wore a cast on his leg and needed crutches. Like a Pied Piper of brotherly love, I led them through the streets to my hotel room. Kerryn, roused from his drunken sleep, promptly shooed my boon companions away. I passed out almost immediately.
The next day we had to drive north of Sydney to the Hunter Valley Wine Festival — of necessity another all-day drinking affair. We began playing an hour before sunset; the sun shone directly into our faces as we played. I was so drunk, dirty and exhausted that I had to lie down as I played. In the morning the others told me I had made an idiot of myself. But I had made no mistakes. I was tempted to praise my musicianship for maintaining its standard even under befuddled adversity — but then, I thought, I had played those songs so many times that my brain worked like an old pool table that had channels leading to its pockets: even the blind shots went down.
The next two days were a blur. But I remember Newcastle. On the way to the job, I said to everyone in the Rover, ‘Does anyone feel as bad as me? We really shouldn’t drink so much.’
‘Naw,’ said Stockley, as Maury, ‘A bloke’s gotta have a bloody beer, mate.’
‘But why does a bloke have to drink so much bloody beer, mate?’
‘Because when a bloke’s had a bloody beer he feels better than when he hasn’t had one.’
Kerryn sneezed. ‘Christ! I think I’m carrying my cold to Newcastle.’
That night at the club, our warm-up act was a male stripper. Members of the Vice Squad were in the audience, so he had to stop his act at his G-string. When he came offstage he was livid. Retaining his G-string had stripped him, as it were, of his artistic integrity. Having protected everyone from his unsightly genitals, the Vice Squad left, and Stockley hatched a wicked idea.
The stripper ranted backstage with sibilance as we were introduced: ‘Soon to be off to America, and signed to a big overseas recording deal — let’s hear it for their final Australian performance … The Dingoes.’
The audience, fully aware of the stripper’s plight, cheered convulsively as we shuffled on stage with our pants down around our ankles, revealing all.
After the set, I had a tryst with a redheaded motorcyclist (she must have been impressed by my genitals). She took me speeding out on the Newcastle breakwater. As the huge Pacific rollers crashed a couple of feet below us, we made love, which was wonderful until she asked me to pinch and scratch her. My desire fizzled; we dressed. As I was about to get on her bike, she sped off. I found my way back to the hotel by sunrise.
At ten we had to leave for Sydney and an early afternoon sound check. We were the warm-up band for the English group Bad Company. After the show, we all went to a late-night club for a jam session. When the club closed we challenged the Englishmen to a test match — a beer-drinking test match. I think Australia won.
The next day was a rest day, except for an interview with a writer for the Australian section of Rolling Stone magazine. We decided to meet her at a posh restaurant. Our conversation was sparse and unfocused as we sat waiting for service. Instead of making brilliant comments like, ‘Pop music is the soundtrack for a generation,’ I said, ‘So anyway, how long have you worked for Rolling Stone?’
We ordered food and wine. The waitress brought a delicious Chateau Tahbilk and our soup. Stockley, who sat at the opposite end of the table from me, was dressed in a dandy blue-velvet suit. He had put his jacket on the back of his chair and rolled up the cuffs of his floral body shirt in one meticulous roll, so as to admit no impediment to his epicurean enjoyment. He delicately tasted his wine and nodded appreciatively to no-one. Then he tasted his soup. He froze, ‘This soup is canned,’ he said.
‘It tastes fine to me,’ I said.
‘It’s canned, mate.’
‘Stockley, they wouldn’t serve canned soup in a place like this.’
‘It’s canned.’
‘Ask the waitress. I’ll bet you it’s real soup,’ I said. ‘I’d stake my professional reputation on it.’
‘Professional reputation as a rat?’ said Stockley.
‘No. As a professional knower of the difference between canned and real soup.’
I was half joking, and half berating Stockley for making such a big deal over the soup. But, like a play fight that turns ugly, I became unable to tell whether we were still joking. The flatness of my wits, dulled by six days of high jinx, made me say, as I looked at the journalist, ‘Working-Class Hero Likes Soup Just So.’
I had meant it in a joking way, but I realised, after the first word, that my faux headline sounded malicious. Stockley kept looking, with furrowed brow, toward the waitress station. By the time the waitress came over, all conversation had ceased and our table was charged with an embarrassing tension.
Stockley said, ‘Excuse me. Do you know if this soup is canned or not?’
‘Yes, it is,’ she said matter-of-factly, as she busied herself at our table.
All faces turned to me.
‘Waitress,’ I said. ‘This soup is excellent. What brand is it?’
After the soup and some more wine, we recovered our humour — enough, anyway, to make it seem that drinking was a fun thing to do.
The last day in Sydney we were to play a live radio show. After the first note we realised we had made a mistake in trying to play. Halfway through the first verse we looked at each other like drowning men. Broderick’s voice was completely raw; I opened my mouth to sing a harmony but nothing came out; no rhythmic connection existed among any of the instruments — we fell apart. One by one we stopped playing and looked pathetically at the audience. The producer cut to one of our recorded tunes and came out of the control room with his arms outstretched.
‘What’s going on?’
Kerryn and Brod tried to explain our problem to him. To the confused and embarrassed audience we must have appeared to be undergoing a group nervous breakdown. Stockley’s glasses seemed darker than ever that day as he and I sat on the edge of the stage with heads in our hands; J.L. sat on his drum stool staring straight into space. I longed to be an audience member who could casually walk out of my life and into their trouble-free existence of limitless possibility. But I was stuck.
‘You want to go outside for a walk, John,’ said Stockley in a tremulous voice.
As our equipment was being packed up, Stockley and I were both experiencing a terrifying anxiety attack. The more we tried to comfort each other, the more validity we gave our attacks. Our anxiety was fuelled by exhaustion, the compounding effect of seven days of drinking, and fresh guilt. And though the attacks were rooted in our pressure-filled reality, they seemed to override reality and take on a life of their own. The rest of the day was a day of going through the motions of life, but feeling only fear.
My attack lasted three more days — all through the Rover ride back to Melbourne (if Rommel had known our state he could have cut us to ribbons) and in my rented room where I sequestered myself and vowed I would never feel that way again. But even as the days became tolerable, during the nights, since I was no longer sleeping in a drunken stupor, I developed worrying symptoms. I woke up several nights in a row in a cold sweat. I was convinced that my heart had stopped beating. I sat bolt upright in bed and clutched my wrist to feel a pulse. But I was grappling with tensed fingers and could feel none. I leapt out of bed and