I was sitting in a friend’s house in Darlinghurst (an inner-city suburb of Sydney Australia ) digesting a long and booze-filled meal. It was after midnight and my hostess was no longer the ‘most-est’ and seemed to be in serious danger of falling asleep in front of me. She either needed to go to bed or somehow or other ‘adjust herself’ for she was indelicately splayed upon the sofa in the most un-ladylike of manners. I didn’t find her posture attractive, in fact it was singularly unattractive, and I realised it was time to depart for a more interesting scene.
Just around the corner was Kings Cross, an ‘infamous’ area of Sydney, the closest thing the city has to a red light district, it seemed like a good alternative. As soon as I suggested going for a drink my hostess became animated and expressed alarm. In blood-chilling detail she described “The Cross” as a contemporary amalgam of Soddom and Gamorrah which was “exceptionally dangerous” (her words) at night. This made it sound particularly attractive to me. The bus was parked within striking distance of the huge Coca Cola sign which illuminated the main street of the district and all I would need to do, once I had pacified my liver, was to stagger to my convenient bed and crash “in situ” there to dream what was left of the night away.
On a previous visit to Sydney I had befriended some Indians. It transpired that my Asian friends ran a car-wash right beside the red-light district and after much happy banter about my experiences in India we all became firm friends. The bus now had a place to be parked at night ! So I set out from the dinner at my friend’s house with the bus already parked within crawling distance of wherever it was that I might find myself inebriated. It seemed like a good time to “go on a bender”, so with a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket and a bit of a gleam in my eye, I headed for the bars and some serious drinking.
Ten vodkas and tonics later I was a happier man, having spent a pleasant few hours in the company of all kinds of reprobates who treated me with a courtesy and respect which was truly touching. In several instances it was almost literally touching but that was because I’d strayed into gay bars and the boys to a man had found me ‘interesting’. Everyone wanted to know about Mick (Jagger) and there were heated discussions as to whether he was straight or bi, and one and all seemed genuinely amazed that I could throw absolutely no light upon the subject. People seem to believe that a tour manager has access
to the most intimate details of their charges lives and (of course) this is rarely the case. Whatever Mick thought about posteriors I certainly wasn’t privileged to know and after being unable to throw any light upon the subject the gay boys decided I really wasn’t much fun to hang out with. To sit alone drinking in a gay
bar is not my idea of fun, so with a lighter wallet and a heavier heart I struck out for greener pastures.
The next bar was much more my kind of scene. It was completely empty, or at least it was when I arrived. A bored looking Maori bar-tender eyed me with some suspicion and was suitably surly as he poured me a drink which he insisted I pay for on the spot. No credit here ! Several “ladies” wandered in and soon I was in
animated discussion with a group of four “working girls”. They were a lovely foul-mouthed bunch and the discussion soon centered upon the various red-light districts around the world it had been my pleasure to investigate. I told them tales of Mira Flores in Lima Peru which had everyone’s undivided attention. I had arrived there shortly after an American tourist had had his hand chopped off ! The silly man had been in the back of a taxi and had draped his arm (replete with a Rolex watch) out the window. Some enterprising locals had whipped past on their motor-cycle and neatly relieved him of the solid gold watch - as the watch was attached to his wrist they’d decided to take watch and wrist in one ‘fell swoop’ aided by one of those viciously sharp machetes it’s the penchant of South American villains to carry upon their person. One swift swipe and the Yankee’s hand was gone along with a watch worth about ten thousand dollars. For a couple of weeks the locals told jokes in incomprehensible Spanish that I found virtually impossible to understand about the poor American losing his watch - something along the lines of “you’ve got to hand it to them”. You get the picture it was all in very poor taste ! The working girls blanched at the tale and when I asked if anything like that happened in the cross they admitted that nothing so macabre had occurred for years. Not that they could remember !
The Lower East Side of Manhattan (it’s in New York for the Australians reading this) came next and once I’d told them stories of that place one and all agreed that the Cross simply didn’t measure up. I had arrived on third street (between first and second avenues) on an August day which was blisteringly hot. The small street
was about a hundred meters long and comprised of tenements some five or six stories high. The whole population was sitting on the street drinking beers and sweating profusely. I had been there long enough to get myself seated between friends and to start drinking a beer when a young black man ran into view from around the corner and sprinted down the street being chased by an over-weight policeman. Without a word the policeman dropped to his knees whilst pulling out a revolver and shot the man he was chasing in the back. This happened less than fifty feet away from me and in front of what must have been over a hundred witnesses. The street was completely empty in less than a minute as police sirens wailed and several hundred people fled behind doors which were immediately chained firmly closed. Within two minutes the place was swarming with cops and I sat in an apartment barely able to breathe for the heat and the suspense. Within half an hour the street was deserted. The corpse had been retrieved by an ambulance and the police cars had been withdrawn. As if by a mysterious signal the residents once more returned to the street and all was calm. No-one seemed to give a damn about what had just happened and when I tried to broach the subject my curiosity was seen as a stunning and tasteless example of European naivety so I kept my mouth shut and happily joined in a discussion about motor-cycles which seemed more to everyone’s liking.
The working girls all agreed that they had never seen the police shoot anyone so callously - in ‘The Cross’, it simply didn’t happen. One of the girls in philosophical mood opined that each of them had been forced at one time or other to relieve the local police of some ’stress’ during their working lives and perhaps this had made the local cops less ‘trigger happy’ than their American counter-parts ? There was no agreement on this point, though all of the girls seemed to have a very low opinion of the local constabulary, and bitterly resented the fact that policemen took for nothing what other punters paid for. We all agreed it was the same the world over, but London, New York, Mira Flores, Berlin; all seemed to be infinitely worse than Kings Cross! In fact the more we discussed the world the more benign and altruistic ‘The Cross’ appeared to be ! One had the feeling that bar-tenders and girls would have given it away if they could and that the only reason one had to pay for anything was because of the taxes that no-one had any intention of ever paying. I had to agree, the place seemed remarkably friendly !
I stumbled out of the bar and walked the hundred meters to my bus to get four copies of my book. Each of the working girls wanted one, though the bar-tender refused my offer saying that he didn’t read books, just the newspaper. The girls insisted that they pay for the books and in each one I inscribed a special message for the jovial recipient - “a life fondly remembered is a life lived twice”. The usual author-platitudes! The girls were thrilled and each of them paid me twenty dollars for her book, so I left the bar with more money than I had when I arrived which was a first for me. It was a rewarding sight to see four prostitutes sitting in a bar engrossed in my book and I wandered off into the night pleased that I had managed to expand the socio-economic breadth of my readership. Bless ‘em ! It was on to pastures new, though by this time it was four in the morning and my options were becoming limited as most of the bars were closed.
Once more I stumbled into an empty bar, and once more I was ‘welcomed’ by a suspicious Maori bar-tender. I ordered and paid for a drink and sat lost in thought. Minutes later I was shocked to hear the bar tender yelling “you can’t come in here” to four women who were crowded at the door and wanted to come in. My readers had come in search of me ! I told him, “hey mate these girls are friends of mine” and he replied that “working girls mate are banned from this bar” and he only relented when I slapped fifty bucks in front of him and demanded that I buy each of them a drink. It must have been a slow night for he relented, grumbling “well, just one” as he reluctantly served the girls. Triumphantly the girls sat down and one of them gave me my mobile phone which I had left in the previous bar, whilst another handed me my jacket. The bar tender was amazed and so was I ! The girls wandered off to see if there were any last-minute punters left on the mean streets and I ordered a last drink before going home. The bar tender looked at me with growing suspicion. “You a Pom?” he asked. I couldn’t be bothered to tell him I was Irish and weakly nodded in assent. “Well you’re one lucky bastard I can tell you - I’ve never seen anything like that! You should have lost that stuff and your wallet.” I smiled. “They brought you your jacket and mobile phone - amazing, fuggin’ amazing!” He stared hard at me. “What do you do for a living?” I smiled sweetly and said “I’m a writer” and for some unfathomable reason that seemed a good enough answer for he sighed and went back to polishing glasses and closing down the bar. The conversation and the night was over.
I made my way back to the bus, turned the lights on and played some music on the stereo as I got into bed. Right outside my window and less than a meter from my head two junkies were doing a deal and arguing about the price. They couldn’t see into the black windows of the bus but I could see out onto the street through the one-way glass. One of the working girls walked past with my book under her arm unsteadily sashaying down the street and looking for a punter. Martha Wainwright sang “You Bloody Mutha-Fucking Asshole” to lull me to sleep. All was right with the world. The Coca Cola sign sang its blood red message high above the streets of Kings Cross and I slept right there, like a baby. In the morning, I decided, I’d head for the country where there were snakes and spiders and all kinds of things to make a man truly afraid.
