Love rears its ugly head

Oh no
Not that again.
- Living Colour, 1990

October 2003. Something is rotten in the state of Gasket. It could be me, but I’m usually just rotten drunk, because I can be. We’re trying to write and record an album in spite of everyone involved with the album and the band working against this happening, deliberately or otherwise. McCarthy has split with Lena and is gallivanting around with his nasty little coke-whore porn starlet girlfriend, all of a sudden every inch the professional career scenester, and in an equally palatable development is suddenly best mates with the biggest cock in the known universe, Brady Priddle from deusexmachina. Anyone who believes these findings are unrelated is living with his head parked up his fundament. Speaking of which, Phil is fucked on all kinds of shit, all day, every day. Marty is devoting about half a percent of his waking conscious to this particular project, with the rest committed to his solo recordings, buying houses, managing his share portfolio and tending to Maddy’s every want and wish. Our minders from the record company are about as useful as a chocolate fire-truck, doing nothing to reign in our bacchanalian excesses, largely because if we were actually on the ball we might actually notice them skimming off all our money; we were getting thoroughly fire-trucked over, and didn’t even know. The band’s closest friends through good days and dark are slowly tossing in their cards and calling it quits; Jeff to tend to his family, Lena to tend to her wounds, Macgyver to South America (where his wife was from) and Capt’n Snooze to… well, just to get away from us pack of arseholes and the poisonous atmosphere that permeated any attempts to record anything we’d written. I think he works in IT now. Probably indicates how desperate he was to leave.

And into this maelstrom walked a girl called Rachel. Rachel wasn’t a pop starlet, or a wannabe actress, or some other sort of B-list celebrity. I didn’t meet her at an industry function, awards night, CD launch party, scenester gathering, or even backstage at a gig. I met her one unnecessarily bright Monday morning in Newcastle when I went out to buy some drugs. I was in a pharmacy in Hunter Street, buying some Codral cold and flu tablets to try and make a dent in this morning’s hangover; she was buying some contact lens fluid. The lumbering rock dinosaur that was Flange Gasket was only in town for the morning - we’d played the Bar on the Hill at Newcastle Uni the previous night, and were off to Sydney in the early afternoon, just as soon as our collective fog lifted. Mine was the usual pea-souper - we’d played Brisbane on Saturday night, here last night and were playing Sydney tonight (the Monday of the October long weekend) before pushing on to The Uni of The Gong on Thursday and then Melbourne next Saturday. The Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne gigs made up the three legs of the disasterously short-lived M-One Festival, an attempt by Frontier Touring and Triple M to put on a Big Day Out style touring festival, but using mainstream, mediocre, middle-of-the-road acts (that was what the ‘M’ stood for, presumably) like Nickleback, Garbage and the Goo Goo Dolls. You're right, we should have taken our invite as an insult rather than a compliment, but they were paying well, suggesting another ‘M’ word could be used to describe the acts involved: ‘mercenary’. They’d first run the thing the previous year, when it’d tanked like a mofo - scheduled right up against Livid’s own Sydney-Melbourne-Brisbane ‘One Day Series’ for 2002, which we were part of - and most in the industry were pretty astonished that the organisers were having another go at it for 2003. Yet they were, and this time, we were part of their touring circus. I’m not sure who that was a greater indictment on, them or us.

I should probably have added that yesterday also being Bathurst Sunday, we’d partaken of the odd ale or keg thereof before the Newcastle show with our Enzed mates Hayabusa, who’d selflessly volunteered for our undercard for our uni sideshows in Newcastle and The Gong (Tuesday) en route to our Melbourne gig the following Saturday - and since their man Greg Murphy had taken the flag in the Great Race, the Kiwi boys were in very high spirits indeed (mostly rum, particularly their bass player Bear, who wasn’t even a Kiwi but who made up for it by being very drunk.) Hayabusa, unlike us, had been principled enough to tell M-One where they could shelve their cash, instead signing up to play what turned out to be the last Livid festival series ever, which again ran in parallel with M-One - Sydney on Friday the 10th, Melbourne on the 11th (in direct competition to the M-One show at the Docklands) and back ‘home’ (in the Livid sense) to the RNA Showgrounds in Brisbane on the following Saturday. I wish we’d played that last Livid - though noone at the time really knew it was going to be the last one - but it wasn’t to be. We’d never played a bad Livid in four gigs (2000 and all three 2002 shows) but money over integrity seemed to be our trademark these days.

So it was dumb luck, nothing more, that brought Rachel into my life. Somehow we ended up having a random, hilarious conversation about hangover cures (which I can’t remember because of the fog), which continued over coffee at a nearby café, and I was smitten - totally, immediately, wholeheartedly smitten with her. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she was captivating, with bright liquid-amber eyes, shoulder-length hair the colour of autumn leaves, fresh-faced, girl-next-door looks, and an illuminating smile that lit the room, regularly. She was so real, so grounded - yet so lively and funny - that I was torpedoed and sinking fast. And oddly enough, it was because she was so unimpressed with me as a B-list celebrity - not to say she thought I was a tosser, but that it didn’t enter the conversation as something she should show deference over - that I was so taken with her. She didn’t care who I was. She liked me anyway.

“Andy Young from Flange Gasket?” she'd queried with that incandescent smile, by way of introduction. “Rachel Brooks from Toronto.”

In case you were wondering, that was Toronto, Canada not Toronto, west of Maitland, and I dug her cute accent too, even though it gave me occasional kids-TV flashbacks to Degrassi Junior High and/or You Can’t Do That On Television. Rachel worked as an interior design consultant for an architectural firm in Newcastle, having finished her design degree at the uni. And she’d been at the gig last night - her flatmate had tickets. She’d been driving, which was why this morning she didn’t look like… well, me. We’d played well, she’d suggested charitably, but our Kiwi support Hayabusa were a little better on the night.

I shook my head. “Hayabusa were a lot better on the night,” I admitted. “I’m not sure who should be supporting who on this tour, to be honest. Those boys are blowing us out of the water every night of the week. On stage and at the bar.”

I don’t know what compelled me to be so disarmingly honest with this girl. Hayabusa were making us look a bit average - we knew they weren’t doing it on purpose, but they could hardly underperform just to make sure they were at our level - but it’s one thing for that to happen, it’s another to acknowledge it. It’s like announcing to the sports media that you’re in a form slump. There’s no guarantee it’ll do anything to help you get out of it; it’s probably more likely to bring your career to a faster end. Actually the sports analogy wasn’t a bad one, and could be extended to a lot of what we experienced. We got to know a few leading lights of the sporting world through our B-list celeb status, and there were quite a few similarities: the peculiar grind of doing what you love day-in, day-out, until you just can’t love it anymore; being in and out of form, playing the field that’s in front of you, sponsorship deals, dealing and duelling with the media, and realising that when they’ve decided you’re finished, you’re finished, whether you agree or otherwise.

Anyway, it was there - that spark, that big fuck-off bolt of lightning. But more than just a spark of physical attraction. That was there, no doubt, but there was also a deeper connection, like we’d… cliché alert… like we’d known each other forever. Which was how long I could have stayed with her there, at that streetside café setting, empty flat whites lingering on the table, the conversation darting and leaping and laughing like tropical fish playing underwater amongst the coral. I could have stayed there all day, captivated by those eyes and smile. But the day wouldn’t let us.

“I’ve got to go,” she said, reluctantly. “I was supposed to meet a friend at eleven…” It was twenty past. I had to go too - McCarthy had just sent me a tetchy text, along the lines of The fuck are you mofo? - we were due on stage at the Sydney Showgrounds, Olympic Park in five hours and forty minutes, playing the sunset graveyard shift (aka the Shihad Slot - by five pm at big festies, everyone’s drained by the sun, frazzled by the drink and/or the drugs, and is just clinging on for dear life, waiting for their second wind to come after sundown). But I was probably even more reluctant to leave than even she was. It’d been a shit gig in Brisbane, I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this festival was run by arsewits and last year’s failures weren’t a fluke but had been fought-for and earned, and we still had two shows to go. And I was fucked from playing two shows in as many nights. But I did have Rachel’s number, and she was coming down to Sydney on Wednesday for work - though, she added coquettishly, it wasn’t as though she’d need to be working all day.

I watched her leave, lingering on the image of her body as she walked away, disappearing into the crowd. Then I climbed heavily from my chair and started walking back to our hotel.

The rest of the day, as expected, was shit; the crowd were pissed westie bogans, barely a pair of breasts between them (man-boobs notwithstanding), the big-name overseas acts were phoning it in, the wind was howling grit and moshpit skank into our faces, the audio was set up by someone who thought feedback was what a vacuum cleaner did when you pressed the cord retrieval button, and we were all tired and cranky little Vegemites. The only good thing about he whole day was that the M-One people had sent a long-wheelbase Jaguar XJ to whisk the four of us to the venue, complete with a well-stocked minibar. On departure, anyway. Not so well-stocked on arrival, however.

Post-gig, I returned to our largely deserted Sydney base, SOD-Off in Maroubra, and flaked out until mid-afternoon Tuesday. I had the place to myself - Marty was staying at Madonna's apartment in Rose Bay, McCarthy had goeyed himself up and was out clubbing with Chastity, and Phil… I have no idea where Phil ended up, but he wasn’t at SOD-Off. It was quiet; I could be reflective. What I was reflecting on was how much I wanted to see that Canadian girl again.

Wednesday saw my opportunity. I moped around the house all morning, waiting to hear from her. Then, mid-afternoon, she called; she was free. I climbed onto my factory-loaner R6 and sliced across the city at speed, south to north, via back streets and main arterials, to reach our designated rendezvous point in Chatswood, where she and a small delegation from her Newcastle-based firm were meeting corporate clients. She looked seriously glam - the down-to-earth jeans and clingy T-shirt look of the long weekend Monday had morphed into a slick, stylish, pale-grey microfibre business jacket and skirt that made her look every inch the modern professional. And hot. I did mention hot, right? If not I’ll mention it again. She was hot. And she was impressed. She wasn’t outwardly swayed by me being a quote unquote rock star, but me turning up on a shiny new Yamaha sportsbike, gleaming in the late-afternoon haze, flipping the visor on my helmet and shooting her a winning grin…

“What can I say,” she confessed. “I’m a sucker for a bad boy on a bike.”

Just like I was a sucker for a gorgeous babe in a business suit. Who was game enough to climb onto a Yamaha sportsbike, with only my spare helmet as a concession, and ride away with me into the traffic.

Our plans were… undefined. Other than she had to be back at her hotel tomorrow morning in order to head back to Newcastle with her work colleagues, and I had to be in Wollongong tomorrow evening in order to get blown off the stage at the Gong Unibar by our Kiwi support band. I decided to take her where I felt most at home, back down to the south-eastern beaches. I took her for Thai in Coogee, then for a drink at a little beachside bar I liked (mercifully underpatronised by British backpackers), then, as the night darkened and deepened, we returned to my empty house in Maroubra - thankfully still empty - to sit out on the verandah, talk, laugh, and watch the phosphorescent surf crashing onto Maroubra Beach.

“I should really get back to my hotel,” she said, for the sixth time. And for the sixth time, her eyes said ‘Don’t listen to her, the girl’s talking nonsense.’ I didn’t.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get you back there tomorrow in time for your pickup.”

“It’s your pickup I should be worried about, right?” she quipped. “You’re not one of these creepy-pervert rock guys who abducts young female fans and uses them against their will?”

“Nah, that’s McCarthy, the other guy,” I said. Only half-jokingly. Rumours were abounding. I did mention Chastity was a nasty piece of work, yeah?

“Dammit,” she grinned. “Just my luck to get the wrong one…”

And with that, she kissed me. Or I kissed her, I can’t remember exactly. What I remember is that I’d had entire one-night stands that lacked the passion or intensity of that kiss. Without a word of discussion or protest, her fingers touched mine and she followed me through the house into the bedroom. What I remember now is the way her naked body looked in the half-light, soft fair skin with the lightest dusting of freckles from the unfamiliar, searching Australian sun, pert breasts crowned with precious pink nipples, her slender waist tapering to a soft triangle of auburn down between her thighs. And that look in her eyes as she stood before me - endearingly self-conscious, yet eager to begin what was going to follow.

We made love. I’d never made love to a girl before. Sure, I’d had hot sweaty sex with girls (singular and plural); I’d shagged, screwed, bonked, banged, fucked and fornicated. I’d been hideously lucky to have as much hot sweaty sex as I had, an average bloke with an average head and an average dodger. But I’d never made love, not like this anyway. Okay, maybe with Jessica, that last time, but that wasn’t a happy occasion; this was. It was gentle, caring and relaxed, with lots of laughs - no, not at the dimensions of one’s tools of trade - and lots of care and attention paid to making each other feel just about as good as they could possible feel at that moment. She was appreciative, guiding, understanding and devastatingly talented. And next morning, there were no regrets, no furtive glances or escape plans - there was just a shared understanding that this had meant a lot more than just the raw physicality of what had gone on between us, and that it wouldn’t - couldn’t - be the only time this was allowed to happen.

Which is a long winded way of saying I’d fallen in love with her. Inside three days - an all-time personal record that stands to this day.

The all-time list wasn’t that oversubscribed with genuine contenders, to be honest. Sophie, twelve years, another girl-next-door (literally) - but that was just youthful stupidity at work, wasn’t it? Artemisia, two weeks, but that was stupidity of another kind; maybe Jessica would have been a better one to measure from, but I didn’t realise I loved her until long after, about ten years after the fact, in a bar in South Bank staring at a wedding snapshot on a Motorola flip-phone. Midori, about a week, but I still wasn’t sure that was real or whether that was just rebound theory at work. And Bethany, call it a couple of months. I wasn’t sure when I realised I loved her. I think I’d been quietly denying it to myself for a while before I ‘fessed up, or at least trying to figure out what the fuck it was if it wasn't love. Cue Sammy Hagar and his hideous falsetto out front of Van Halen.

Sunrise, and love for breakfast. I nuzzled her in the shower as she pretended to be cross with me over the likelihood of her being late to meet her colleagues, for about half a minute, before wilfully surrendering to the inevitable.

“How do I look?” she asked, earnestly.

She looked gorgeous. Sure, it was the same stylishly-tailored business suit as yesterday - a better advertisement for the anti-crease properties of microfibre you wouldn’t find - but this morning, the gleam in her eyes and the radiance of her smile was just that much more evident. Our little secret. And, of course, there was our other little secret - she didn’t have any clean underwear, so she wasn’t wearing any. The thrill of knowing what lay beneath that flimsy material…

The bike would have been faster, but given that it was threatening rain, possibly a bit messy for her nice business jacket-and-skirt. The Monaro was in Queensland, rendering it unavailable, but the Gasket family car, the ex-Corporate Cabs Statesman we’d bought after the Volvo deal lapsed, was available. We’d even put dodgy ‘diplomatic’ flags on the front so we could ride around in a car with the flag on the bonnet, Jeff Kennett styles. I opened the back door with a tip of my imaginary cap and a “Ma’am”; she giggled, and elegantly swung her hips into the back seat. I climbed into the driver’s seat, punched the throttle and we left the driveway with the rear tyres spinning enthusiastically, the early-morning sunlight glinting through the tinted windows. Within moments we were onto Anzac Parade, aiming for the Eastern Distributor, then the Harbour Tunnel. We dived from dappled sunlight into the narrow, mineshaft-like tunnel which delved under the inner-east.

I readjusted my rear vision mirror to focus on my passenger. Dear sweet Lord was she hot. She knew I was looking, the good girl playing bad, and playfully licked her lips. Enjoying my reaction, she opened her jacket and smoothed her fingers over the flimsy fabric of her tailored white blouse, cupping her breasts and pretending to tease her nipples through the fabric. Except that she wasn’t really pretending. As I tried valiantly to pay at least some attention to the direction of travel, she eased her fingers aside to show me her nipples proudly pressing through her blouse. And then her fingers began to linger over the uppermost button of her blouse…

Daylight. Dammit. Rachel calmly smoothed her jacket over herself as though nothing was going on whatsoever, as we emerged from the Eastern Distributor into the line for the tollbooth.

“Lovely day we’re having, ma’am,” I offered.

She nodded. “Weather might close in later,” she suggested.

The girl likes role-play. How very interesting.

I pitched correct change into the basket, then pushed the Statesman ahead, willing the Harbour Tunnel on towards us. We descended again, under the Speed Limit 80 signs, and again into comparative darkness. I glanced over my shoulder and remarked, “Now where were we?”

“Hey,” she said. “Eyes front.”

I did as I was told. Our eyes met once more in the mirror. Hers said more than I could possibly do justice to here. And then, she smoothed her hands down her thighs, languidly curling her fingertips under the hem of her skirt, and began ever so slowly easing it up her thighs…

The rest of this paragraph is heavily censored. Instead we provide the following blank space in order for our readers to imagine what transpired.

You dirty lot of bastards.

Yeah, she was something else all right. Even if she reluctantly declined my offer to (a) find somewhere nice and quiet where we could continue our conversation (not a lot of chance of that happening in North Shore peak hour traffic, sadly) or (b) accompany her upstairs to the hotel room she’d checked into but hadn’t actually occupied, to assist her in picking out an outfit for the day (or something that would involve helping her get naked again). Next time, she told me. I needed to learn some patience. She kissed me goodbye out front of the hotel at nine, and strode confidently into the lobby, as though she wasn’t the sort of girl who made a habit of wearing no knickers, let alone letting her personal chauffeur take advantage of that particular habit.

I drove back to Maroubra on the back of peak hour in a serene daze, as though I’d just experienced a waking dream. Her bra and panties, still lying discarded on my bed, 34C and size ten respectively, proved otherwise; at least I knew what size lingerie to buy. As did the text message I received while halfway to Wollongong, in the Statesman with the rest of the band. I won’t go into specifics, but it suggested that I hadn’t quite managed to quench her particular thirst, and that in my absence, she almost felt compelled to lock herself in the bathroom and finish what she’d started earlier that morning, before I’d so rudely interrupted her…

“Smes?” queried McCarthy nosily, his preferred contraction of ‘SMS’. “Anyone I know?”

I flashed him a knowing grin. “Super Dave’s Mum,” I replied.

OK, so that’s NOT the bit I was worried about talking about.

The sex aside - if it was possible to put it aside - we just understood each other. We matched. We made each other laugh. We made each other happy. I hadn’t been happy, truly, for any sort of sustained period for some time. The pattern began to establish itself: with band, without Rachel - hungover (or drinking towards one), cranky, surly, dangerously short fuse. Mr Angry. With Rachel, without band - none of the above. However, scientifically, it couldn’t be concluded that this was due to absence of bandmates or presence of new girlfriend - but further research would definitely be on the agenda.

Hayabusa cheerfully annihilated us again in midweek. On Thursday the Flange Gasket empire flew from Kingsford-Smith down to Tullamarine to prepare for the Saturday M-One show at Docklands, minus one. I wasn’t on the flight. I declared I’d stay in Sydney until the Friday night and would fly down then, on the same flight as the Hayabusa lads if I could sort it. McCarthy threw the toys out of the pram in epic prima-donna fashion, but that was becoming such a common occurrence I wondered if he was actually in training in case it became an Olympic sport for Athens. But I had nothing to do in Melbourne, I couldn’t stand the place. McCarthy claimed studio time had been booked at Sing Sing on the Friday and that ‘big things were planned’, but I sincerely doubted that. I knew Marty and Maddy would be hitting the shops (or rather Marty would be following Maddy around the shops carrying the bags), I knew McCarthy and Chastity would be hooking up with old mate Brady Priddle and painting the town red (or at least a powdery shade of white), and that the Duffer would probably follow along mindlessly with whatever the rest of the flock did, like a dutiful Christian.

Instead, I ended up at the Australian Hotel in the Rocks, reclining in the sun with a tall frosty pint of Little Creatures Pilsner, with some far more entertaining company, i.e. the artists currently known as Hayabusa - the Bear, the Tractor, Tenacious D and Hollywood. Quite a pleasant way to pass an afternoon, while I waited for Rachel to finish work and switch her phone back on. Bear even relented on his fixation with rumbos and sampled Matilda Bay's Beez Neez honey wheat beer. Being a rum-drinker, he didn’t mind the overt sickly-sweetness at all, which I thought was slightly overplayed. But then again, as the Tractor laconically pointed out, beer connoisseurs are just wine wankers who are too cheap to spend money on plonk.

I got hold of her just after five. She seemed happy to hear from me, even if it was a little obvious I’d been drinking, again. “I think I’d be surprised if you hadn’t been,” she admitted. “I thought you were in Melbourne?”

“Nah, still in Sin City. I’ve quit the band. Yeah, got a much better gig now. Beer roadie for Hayabusa…”

“That’s beer technician, underling,” Hollywood corrected me in mock-annoyance, loud enough for Rachel to hear.

“Sounds like you’ve found your calling,” she suggested sweetly. “What’s up?”

“That way,” I replied. “This doesn’t work over the phone I know, but I’m pointing towards the ceiling… hey, what are you up to tomorrow?”

“Work,” she deadpanned. “You know, like regular people have to do?”

“Yeah, I vaguely remember that shit. Poor suckers. Look, can I catch you for lunch, or something? Or dinner? Or anything else you can think of… look, I miss you, all right?”

Cue a chorus of ‘Awwww’ from the bastards around me, followed by intermittent bursts of ‘I wuv you, Princess’ and ‘I wuv you too, schmoopy-woopy…’ Clearly the lads had found Marty and Maddy’s sickeningly affectionate play-by-play as amusing as the rest of us did.

“Hey, do you guys want to come to Livid?” suggested Bear out of the blue. I put my hand over the talky end of the phone. Speaking technically.

“No tickets,” I pointed out. “Sold out isn’t it?

“Fuck that, we can sort something,” Bear observed laconically. “You two look like corporate guests, we’ll just rort it.” Bear was a man of action, or actions, many of which involved corporate rorting.

Rachel had heard most of that, but reminded me again that she had work…

“Call in sick,” I logically suggested. “Come on, girl… the White Stripes are playing.” I knew she was a fan, and she’d hoped to go, but tickets had sold out too quickly. “And Rocket Science, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs…” Another three of her current favourites. I’d been taking notes.

“And Hayabusa,” added just about everyone.

“Yeah, but you’ve seen them, they’re shit,” I replied with a grin. “And you know you wanted to go, so don’t pretend you don’t love the idea.”

“Okay, okay,” she relented with an audible smile. “Where should I meet you?”

“You think you can find the place in Maroubra?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” she confessed. “I had my driver pick me up last time…”

Yes she had. I couldn’t resist a smirk of recollection. “Got a pen?” I asked, and quoted the address. Don’t bother looking, it’s a hideous block of flats now. “When can you make it up here?”

“Mid-morning, I think. Would that be OK?”

“It would be splendid,” I replied definitively. “See you then, OK?”

“Love you,” she said. “Schmoopy-woopy.”

“Love you too, princess,” I said, without even thinking. And sat there feeling mildly surprised it’d been so easy to say. We’d said it in bed, but that didn’t count, did it? I’d only ever said it in bed, come to think of it. You are now entering Unchartered Territory, population two.

I answered the door in a towel next morning. The towel didn’t last long. Just as well we had time in hand.

“So,” she asked afterwards, “how long were you waiting around dressed like that so you could ‘surprise’ me when I arrived?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

Hayabusa’s ebullient Irish A&R girl Hayley appeared moments later, talking a million miles an hour as always. She thrust two laminated passes in my hand, talked a lot of rapid-fire blarney that made no sense whatsoever at this hour, then disappeared, racing back towards Moore Park (the old Sydney Showgrounds, now Fox Studios, where I wished M-One had played instead of the characterless, antiseptic new Showgrounds at Olympic Park) in her battered mid-90s Celica, onward to her next exciting adventure.

“Just as well she didn’t arrive ten minutes ago,” I offered.

“You never know,” Rachel remarked, “she might have been into that kind of thing.”

“I doubt it,” I observed pithily. “She’s already got a girlfriend, she’s not having mine.”

We studied the form guide, comparing our picks. I’d already been impressed by Rachel’s knowledge of Australian music, but then again, it wasn’t as if she’d just arrived on the last Air Canada flight into town. She was eyeing off Butterfingers on the main stage to begin with, then breaking it down (James Brown) with Offcutts in the Annex (or the Doof Tent as friend Bear liked to call it), either Gelbison (main) or The Beautiful Girls (JJJ Big Top) around half-one - I’d prefer to see Brisbane garage-punk loons Gazoonga Attack on the Loudmouth stage about then, but I’d prefer Rachel’s company even more - then Rocket Science and Pacifier (remember them? Ask Jon Toogood from Shihad, he might) on the main stage. After that I was planning a quick sortie over to Loudmouth to see Scandie rock butchers the Hellacopters ripping it up, but Rachel liked the idea of seeing the Resin Dogs (more Brisvegans) back in the Annex. Then it was our old mates Frenzal Rhomb on main stage followed by the Living End, though the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were screaming into life in the Big Top about midway through the End’s set just after half-six. I was duty bound to go see Hayabusa’s set on the Loudmouth stage (playing ahead of closing acts Nordic deathmetallers Turbonegro, and infamous So-Cal punk supergroup Me First And The Gimme Gimmies), even though Rachel wanted to see at least the end of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s set in the Big Top. After that it was a write-off on mainstage - Jurassic 5 and Linkin fuckin’ Park (must have gotten lost on their way to M-One, would have been much more suited to their bilge) - but the White Stripes were closing out the night in the Big Top at the same time, and that was a must-see, from my recollections of playing between them and the Monarchs on the 2002 Big Day Out bill. At a stretch, you could have said we’d opened for them. If you wanted to be extraordinarily loose with the truth.

Highlights? Mad Roman Tucker and Rocket Science were great, the Artists Formerly (And Soon To Be Again) Known As Shihad were absolutely on fire (or ‘Fier?), the White Stripes were louder than God farting through a megaphone but were awesome, the Hellacopters abused my ears and I loved it, and Hayabusa were epic as ever - even dedicating a song to the acts at the competing M-One Festival, entitled Corporate Sucks Rock. Which was actually a cover of ours from our last album(s) - uh, thanks, lads. Way to send us a message there. Oh yeah, and spending an entire day with Rachel - our first - was just a bit of a highlight as well. Lowlights? Well, it was a bit damp. The Beige Revlon Motorscooter Club sounded like they were twelve feet underwater, but that was nothing to do with the inclement weather; they were just shit. The rather cosy dimensions of the Moore Park complex meant the Big Top was a little too close to the main stage, meaning unless you were right up the front at either stage, sound bleed meant you could hear both stages trying to out-shout the other - then again this was a problem every year at Homebake, for exactly the same reason. Karen O from the Yeah x3s sounded like she had a lot of issues and she wasn’t dealing with any of them very well at the moment. And Frenzals let the local side down by spending most of their time talking bollocks - they had a few of their try-hard comedic mates on side of stage pretending to be the Australian Idol judging panel (under a large banner reading ‘Australian Fuckwit’) and slagging them off between songs.

(Though apparently, at their Homebake show in the Domain in early December, they made up for it - they admitted it’d been a completely shit idea, apologised for having talked too much crap and not played enough songs, and apparently played a motherfucker of a good set, including a bunch of cool shit they never played live. This according to Dr Cletus who’d come back from the States for Christmas a bit earlier than necessary, having planned his flights so that he could get down to Sydney for Homebake to get his fill of Australian music for the year. Would have been a good festival to go along to, Angus mutters ironically… we were booked to play that year, but didn’t quite make it.)

Hayabusa had left straight after their Loudmouth set, in order to get their flight to Melbourne; we’d decided to stay and see the White Stripes, particularly considering Rachel had already bought the T-shirt and everything. My shirt for the day - I always have to buy one if I’m at a festival as a punter - was a Frenzal one, despite their indifferent show, because I appreciated the sentiment: ‘Off the dole since 1996’. I was increasingly liking the idea of catching the red-eye first thing, rather than trying to get to the airport tonight, and obliging Rachel to find her way home this evening - I’d said she was welcome to crash at SOD-Off overnight, but I was leaning towards a resolution which meant I’d be there too to tuck her into bed. In the I called Qantarse around nine between the Black Rebels’ and White Stripes’ sets, while I still had some of my hearing, and shifted my booking from that night to the following morning - incurring a surcharge for the late notice, but hey, it was Intercom’s money. Then, with Jack White (the younger)’s resounding guitar still ringing in our ears, we beat a path through the kids out into the real world, and were spectacularly successful in securing a taxi home within five minutes of clearing the Moore Park gates. And then, back at my place…

Ah, you can probably guess the rest.

Rachel dropped me at the airport first thing Saturday morning in her Astra (the three-door SRi sports version with the bigger 2.2 motor - I’m a sucker for a girl who knows cars), kissing me a passionate goodbye as though I was leaving for months. And that was just about the last enjoyable thing that happened all day.

Qantarse losing my luggage on the flight down? Check.

Getting caught in a traffic jam on the freeway with a cabbie who was just slightly further to the right than Hitler, and who thought Pauline Hanson was a martyr who’d been taken down by the leftie greenie refugee anti-gun poofter conspiracy? Check.

Both road crews - ours and M-One’s - conspiring between themselves to leave my guitars somewhere north of the Murray? Check.

Blazing argument with McCarthy who’d claimed I’d told them to do exactly that and that I’d pledged to bring the gear down myself? Check.

Further unpleasant shouty revelations that they actually had been at Sing Sing studios all yesterday, and furthermore that the ‘big things planned’ consisted of McCarthy’s successful push to bring Brady Fuckin’ Priddle onboard as producer for our latest attempt to record the new album, a motion which was carried in my absence (with one abstention - Marty didn’t really give a stuff either way, apparently)? Check.

Proceeding to play the most shambolic, unprofessional and abortive set in our entire career? Check and mate. Thanks for playing.

I cracked the shits in groundbreaking fashion, ungratefully tossed my hurriedly-substituted Yamaha axe into the mosh (thus rather distressing the Yamaha guitar rep who’d pulled strings at a furious rate to get me something to play at short notice, and precipitating the tearing-up of my Yamaha contra-deal - two dropped bikes in the last six months hadn’t helped), flagged a taxi back to the airport, flipped off the Qantarse eejits who still hadn’t located my bags, and went over to the Blue Virgins to book a flight somewhere. Anywhere. How about direct to Newcastle? That wouldn’t suck.

So I did that. We flew through a massive thunderstorm that all but popped the rivets out of the wings, and splash-landed in a torrential downpour. Rachel met me at the airport with wet hair and a sweet, bedraggled expression; I must have looked like death, but she showered me with wet steamy kisses and dragged me home to hers to see if she couldn’t nurse me back to life. I think I decided right there and then that the best thing I could do, for my own sanity, would be to spend as much time with her, and as little time with my dysfunctional band-family, as possible.

And I did. They started to notice, though.

“Why are you always like this with a new girlfriend?” McCarthy asked derisively.

“And you’re not?” I said. “Well, apart from you having less fuckin’ girlfriends in your time than could be counted on the fingers of Homer fuckin’ Simpson’s hand…”

That was the conversational equivalent of charging down the pitch and smacking his bowling into an adjoining suburb. You know someone for the odd year, you know where the bodies are buried, and what buttons to push.

“Yeah well not all of us date cheap dirty sluts with no morals,” he returned fire.

I looked at him, brow furrowed, one eyebrow raised.

“Don’t fuckin’ look at me like that,” he growled. I’d only blinked at him, Your Honour. But he knew what I was inferring; we’d been around each other too long. “Don’t even say it.”

“I’m saying nothing, sunshine,” I said.

Mainly because I only knew how to say her mother couldn’t piss straight, I didn’t know enough Polish to make Chastity the subject of the sentiment. And thanks to old mate, my foreign language teacher had been reassigned to other projects. Such as writing witheringly cutting reviews of our gigs - though the review for our Mudbourne M-One show wrote itself, to be fair:

Shithouse. No stars.

You could argue she didn't really give herself a lot of room to move for future reviews, though as it turned out, she wouldn't need it.