Leilani

Oh Leilani don’t go, to the volcano
I said please don’t go, I miss you so.
- Hoodoo Gurus, 1982

I don’t know what the hell Beth had been worried about. She sparkled. She was engaging, witty, charming and dazzling. She started conversations, fixed mine when they were faltering, didn’t talk with her mouth full, didn’t chew with her mouth open, and seemed to know exactly what to say and what not to at any given moment. A battle-hardened, weapons-grade social chameleon. I couldn’t believe this was the same girl who’d defiantly sworn and drank her way through several hours on a boat not catching fish with me and the Martins only a few days earlier. Then again, thinking about it, it was a matter of application of the same skills. The same weapons-grade, battle-hardened skills. Reminding me again about the multiple layers of armour around this girl, and how little I knew of whatever was beneath. Seeing how she had a personality for every occasion, I didn’t even pretend to think she was ‘normal’ with me. God knew what ‘normal’ was anyway.

Isis was great, but you don’t need me or the Brisbane Times Good Food Guide to tell you that. The grouping was Beth and I, Maddy and Marty, Marty’s sister Gina and her husband – I knew Marty’s sister a bit, mainly as a friend of Jessica’s from back in the day; she’d reminded me she’d been at the first ever Flange Gasket gig, in our garage – and a few of Maddy’s BFFs plus or minus partners. They seemed to have come off the same expensively-prepared production line as Maddy – the European trophy wife collection, with optional fake tan – but didn’t seem as punishing as I’d feared on meeting them. Beth was useful at defusing punishment, it seemed.

On the stroll from Isis to the Press Club – which is hardly worth writing home about, it’s just further along Brunswick – Marty appeared beside me. I knew what he wanted to talk about – much the same as Mad Mick had. Beth was developing a following.

“She’s awesome,” Marty pronounced, quiet enough that she couldn’t hear. By this stage she’d been shoulder-tapped by Maddy and was rolling with the alpha females, walking in their group a little way in front of her. “How did you manage to fuck it up with her in the first place?”

I grinned. “Cheers for the support, mate. Had to be me that fucked it up with her, and not the other way around…”

“Well it was, wasn’t it? Banging that other chick probably didn’t help…”

“Yeah, pretty much. How many punters are you expecting tonight?”

“Well, we didn’t send out many invites. Just a hundred and fifty or so…”

“Faaaaarrrrrrkk.”

“Yeah, pretty much... I even got to invite a few people too. It’s like when Gina used to have a big birthday party and invite all her friends, I got to invite a couple of my mates too.”

“Like who?”

“Well you, you dick.”

“I figured that. I meant, for instance, am I going to run into a livid Reid Burton and have to apologise for improving his amplifier?”

“Nah, Reid doesn’t go in for social things much.”

“More of a business relationship?”

“Yeah, that and he doesn’t go out any more since he’s cleaned up. Kinda makes drinks at the Press Club a bit pointless. But Tommy and Ed from the Vanity Project are coming.” Other than briefly at the Schoolies gig, I hadn’t seen much of either since the Three By Three days, particularly that first Tour de Pants up the North Queensland coast. “And Imogen and Gerard too, so you’ll get to meet the auteur behind Real Girls Eat Meat…”

“The Duffer?”

Marty rolled his eyes. “He’s fucking useless. Texted him weeks ago, got some random response. Didn’t push it beyond that. I’m not sure if he’s getting worse, or I’m just not remembering how useless he is.”

“A little from Column A, a little from Column B.” I also figured the Duffer probably didn’t meet the birthday girl’s exacting standards for invitees, i.e. would probably turn up in black stovepipe jeans and a Metallica T-shirt, asking if anyone wanted a cone. It was vaguely encouraging that I did. (Meet the standard, not want a cone.) Then again, given the amount of media exposure I’d had in the past couple of weeks, I was almost a celebrity. Someone to be seen with, even. Or seen to be avoiding at least. “Uh, feel free to answer this with ‘Fuck off, you’re not invited’, but…”

“Where’s the afterparty?” he finished.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck off, you’re not invited.” He laughed. “Well, you said I could.”

“Seems to be the first thing everyone’s asking each other, ‘Are you going to the afterparty…’”

“Of course you’re going to the afterparty. It’s at the Bowery, around half-eleven, or whenever we finish up at the Press Club. Invitation by me talking to you now. And make sure to bring the girl, she’s making you look good.”

The Press Club was like going for drinks in Louis the Sixteenth’s boudoir. Opulent didn’t even begin to describe it. Plush, rich furnishings, expensive décor, soft lighting. A high-end DJ was piping chilled beats through the room, which had been entirely booked out by the event, at least until the half-eleven wrap-up when a few other selected punters might be allowed to trespass around the velvet rope. Mental reminder, it was New Years Eve, biggest of all the big nights out here, and one of Brisbane’s most exclusive clubs had basically shut itself down for Madonna Cohen-Lewis. Money plus influence equals whatever-the-fuck-you-want, people.

The guest list was a few parts family and friends, a few parts industry identities – some of which had overlapped with our show at Schoolies the previous month – and the rest various socialite and celebrity friends of Maddy’s. As Beth and I circulated, it seemed people did want to be seen with me, judging by the number of photos I was being pulled into. Or maybe it was an excuse to get my highly photogenic date into shot as well. (My girl, not my arse. Though that came with as well. It’s basically a job lot.) Unsurprisingly, we spent most of the night together, though we didn’t actually get much of a chance to talk to each other. Not until we retreated to the bar to replenish our refresments.

“Hey there,” I said. “How’s your night going?”

“Not bad,” she replied. “Date’s going OK. He talks about himself a lot. But he’s kinda interesting, so I don’t mind. Wish he wouldn’t close me out of conversations though.”

“He’s full of himself, you think?”

She looked me in the eye. “In a room full of people who are desperate to tell you how good they are, he’s a long way from the worst. How’s your date going?”

“Really well,” I replied. “According to all the people who keep interrupting to tell me how fabulous she is. How well spoken and intelligent. Which is a nice change because I usually date inarticulate retards.” I caught the eye of the bartender and ordered another Asahi. After the Czech pilsners earlier, something dry and crisp was what I’d been looking for, so I was on the Japanese product. Most of the girls were drinking champagne – Veuve Clicquot, as per Maddy’s personal preference – and Beth had seamlessly integrated into the pattern, ordering another.

“She’s making an impression, then?”

“Yeah. You’d never tell she was skulling XXXX and swearing like a wharfie on a fishing trip a few days ago. Makes me wonder occasionally who the fuck she really is.”

“You too?” she mused.

“And what I really like is, she’s sinking piss like a madwoman, which means she’s bound to end up helpless in bed with me at some stage in the evening.”

“You think?” Beth replied. “Did she tell you that she’s about as sensitive to alcohol as she is most other chemical depressants?”

“Yeah, she might be insensitive to alcohol. But she’s definitely sensitive to my rugged good looks, suave masculine charm and overpowering manly manliness…”

“If you say so,” she teased. “Are we going to this afterparty?”

“Is the date going well enough?” I asked her.

“If there’s more of this available,” she indicated her glass, “then yes, it’s going well enough.”

And then she kissed me. She tasted of sweet promise and delicious anticipation, and Veuve Clicquot. All of which I liked.

There were a few speeches, a couple of toasts, and a big fuck-off cake with a single candle – because thirty would have been so very OTT, daaahhhling. And then the DJ defrosted the previously chilled beats and bodies were in motion across the dancefloor, excluding mine of course, until half-eleven when the chosen shouder-tapped few (OK, it was at least half the invitees) began making their way out of the Press Club towards the Bowery. The latter was a trendy little cocktail bar with a heady celeb clientele, and the fact that Maddy had again claimed the entire place – this time right across the key midnight-to-three period – again spoke to money and influence in spades.

And a nice surprise. I hadn’t minded the beats – I can take or leave the laid-back stuff, it’s the high-energy dance stuff that shits me to tears and has me departing the premises – but Marty, who’d been in charge of this bit, had sorted an Actual Band for the small stage in the corner, a local four-piece called Not For Broadcast who he thought big things of. They played an hour-long acoustic set, bisected by the countdown to the New Year at midnight, and acquitted themselves very well. Then again, the room was peppered with a good number of those ‘industry identities’, so it was quite the showcase gig for them as well. They were a bit soft and melodic for my liking – not surprising, since they were protégés of Marty’s – but they suited the room and the occasion better than, say, Megadeth would have, or the Revolting Cocks. Or Flange Gasket, for that matter.

Of course, the real trouble started afterwards, when the kids retired to the bar with the rest of us, leaving those nice instruments unattended and undefended in front of a room full of frustrated (and otherwise) musicians…

The clamour for Marty to get up and play something was started by Maddy, which meant it was always going to gather momentum. His responses ran something like No, no, no, oh all right if I must. Get up here, Angus.

“Don’t drag me into this,” I protested. “Somebody think of the children.”

“Michael fucken Jackson?” bellowed a loud gravelly voice. Probably Tommy Wilson from Marty’s band, ex-Three By Three. His voice carried like a foghorn.

“Other than him.”

“Get up there,” the girl next to me murmured into my ear. A bunch of other people were also cheering encouragement, but it was her I was listening to the most. In any case, I followed mob rule.

“Well,” Marty mused, “what the hell are we going to play?”

“Something of yours,” I suggested. “One of those pretty songs that chicks like.”

“As distinct from yours which make footballers punch each other in the head?”

“Hey, better each other than you or me, bud. Come on, maestro, we’re growing old.”

“Yeah I know, Maddy’s already thirty… ooohh. Quick, save me, I’m in the poo.”

So I saved him by starting up on the first song that came into my head. Unsurprisingly it was something we used to play in the Gasket covers days. In my best campfire-side Kumbaya strumming – think Daryl Braithwaite’s One Summer, or Bernt Fanny’s Wish You Well – I gently strummed through the intro, which circulated through G5, C#5, Bb5 and C5.

Middle-class white boys, trying hard to annoy
All we really needed was a ticket to ride.
Fighting with noone at all, that’s OK, we’ve got no balls
Someone needs to sort us out, and make Marty cry.

Rather than crying, Marty recognised his cue and piped up with a rather lovely harmony in thirds over the top of my vocal:

All we need is, all we need is
All we need is, all we need is (nice, Marty)
All we need is, all we need is
All we need is
Is a punch in the face.

Cue Marty with a completely overdone John Williams-esque classical solo to bring us back to the verse.

Larry Emdur is okay, compared to us he makes the grade…

And so on. Never underestimate the inherent humour in playing obnoxious punk songs like a Peter, Paul and Mary tribute band. The Daryl Braithwaite Remix of Punch In The Face had been a cult favourite among the Gasket’s Lismore following of drunks and idiots about ten years ago. Seemed to go pretty well here too, proving that while times may change, drunks and idiots can be relied upon to maintain standards. Given we were both of the above ourselves, I think we decided non-verbally to stick with the Old Leftovers file, given the last time we’d got on the turps together and jammed on a bunch of tunes – as just the pair of us – was probably back at Chateau Dodgy in Goonellabah, years before, probably when Phil and Sam had gone out for the night, were away for the night or had passed out for the night.

“Mysterious Ways? Dude, that’s like soooo 1991, totally.”

“It’s old skool,” confirmed Marty.

“Man, you are old skool. You’ve been retro since waaaayyy back in the day.”

We followed up with a few other reliable standbys from the early Gasket era – the Stones’ Jumping Jack Flash (the best pop song ever written, according to Tim Rogers, and he’d know), You Am I’s Good Mornin’ (one of Timmy’s finest efforts himself), Kung Fu by Ash which I barely remembered but managed to arse through...

“What else?” queried Marty.

I started playing Seether by Veruca Salt, because I’m a bastard like that.

“Oh you fucker,” he swore, because he used to have to do the helium-light girl vocal part and always hated it. “Not a chance.”

“Fair enough.” I changed the riff to the intro from Volcano Girls, off their second album, which we’d played in the band until Marty had threatened to quit – he was the only one who could sing up that high, so he was forced to carry the girliness. It was a killer riff, though. Big and hairy, real fun to play. In the end he gave up and squeaked out his best drunken falsetto.

“Volcano girls, we really can’t be beat… warm us up and watch us blow…”

Until he dissolved into giggling of course, when I took over with my best James-Hetfield-needing-a-poo gutteral roar from the second verse onwards. Didn’t last the song out either, but it made us (and others) laugh.

Play something of yours you fairies, declared an anonymous, very probably drunken, voice from near the front. Actually it wasn’t anonymous, it was Maddy. Which, again, meant it was going to get listened to.

“Do we know any of our songs?” Marty wondered.

“Meaning of Life?”

“Oh fuck, we’re not playing that, seriously.” Woooooo. “No, seriously, fuck off. We’re not. I’d rather play Def Leppard.”

“Fuck, he’s delirious, call the paramedics,” I said. “Pour some sugar on him. Stat. Hey, I know a song we could do.”

“Yeah?”

“I think your man Gerry might be interested to hear it.”

“Yes,” Marty grinned, picking up the scent. “We should probably play him the theme song from his dodgy movie before it gets released to the public, yeah?” By my watch, we were a bit late. It was out there amongst it, for better or worse. Probably worse.

“Remember how it goes?”

“Not sure. Been a while since I played it last,” he giggled. “Probably need another beer.” I held up two fingers, with a Hollywood grin, as some kind silhouetted soul departed for the bar to sort Marty’s request. Affirmative. We had the beers in hand before we’d even gotten our act together to count in for the start of Beef Week Queen. Probably because we were just a bit nervous, considering this was the first time those slightly dicey lyrics had been thrown at a live audience. Thankfully, though, we’d had the foresight to absolutely drown them in alcohol beforehand, so they found lines like ‘She likes her red meat if you know what I mean’, endless references to sausage, veal, pork and other meat-related single-entendres, and that utterly plagiarised Spinal Tap line (or, for legal purposes, ‘tribute’ to Spinal Tap) about going down on one’s Torpedo of Steak, utterly fucking hilarious. Director Gerard was standing at side of stage literally crying with laughter. At least I hope it was with laughter, and not about how we’d defiled the subject matter of his film. Bit late now given the offending material had already been mixed, boxed, bagged and sent packing.

“What do you reckon?” Marty asked. “One more?”

“Yeah, why not.” I cast around the room looking for the set of eyes I wanted to meet mine. Ah well, I knew she was out there somewhere. “How about an old Gurus song?”

“Which one?”

“Leilani,” I suggested with a grin.

Marty nodded. “Like it. We’ll need jungle drums yeah? Ed Terry in the premises? Paging Ed Terry to the front of house?”

“Ed Terry has left the building,” I pronounced, judging from the crowd commentary. Mostly from bandmate Tommy who’d used more colourful language, i.e. “He’s fucken fucked off ‘cos he’s a fucken softcock.” You can take the boy out of Bowraville… Instead, Not For Broadcast’s drummer climbed into the stool – he looked about twelve, couldn’t have even been born when the Gurus released Leilani – and blew my preconceptions out of the water by rolling straight into the characteristic jungle-drum tom-tom rhythm of the song.

Somewhere on a south Pacific island
Sits a young man staring at the surf
His late girlfriend died a death quite violent
Tribe had sacrificed her to the earth…
Ohh-wey-ohh, wey-ohh, wey-ohh
Oh Leilani don’t go, to the volcano
Wey-ohh, wey-ohh, wey-ohh
I said please don’t go, I miss you so.

Not much of a love song, really. Apart from the last line of the chorus, which I might have subconsciously leant on a bit more firmly than the rest. Or I might not. It was a typical early-Gurus song, fairly silly (but very well crafted) lyrics over a substantive power-pop core. Dave Faulkner’s stuff actually taught me a lot about writing lyrics. His are very idiosyncratic – listen to more than a couple of Gurus songs in succession and you’ll know what I mean, the way he stacks ideas on top of each other in a really simple, but really effective, sort of way. Anyway, he can write nice little songs, even about ideas as silly as a lovelorn island boy whose girlfriend had been sacrificed to the volcano. And who eventually gets her back as a piece of basalt rock. Fact. Like I said, not your typical love song. But we weren’t your typical couple. For starters we weren’t one. And at least you couldn’t say I hadn’t tried to make up for that nasty bit of crowd engineering at the Schoolies gig, dedicating a song to a completely different blonde girl who I’d shared my life with. By the way, Jessica hadn’t made the party, unsurprisingly - her man was playing club rugby in Europe now apparently, so they were based over there. Probably just as well, given Beth’s sudden interest in my ex-girlfriends.

“What do you reckon?” Marty asked again. This time I figured he meant in general, not ‘what should we play next’ because we’d stopped five minutes ago and were sitting at the bar now, surprisingly unmolested.

“Fuck there’s a bit of blow about eh?”

Marty raised his eyebrows in agreeance. “Actually meant about the song, but yeah. Lot more than there used to be up here. It’s like that Arctic Monkeys line. ‘All the weekend rockstars are in the toilets, practising their lines…’”

“Including the birthday girl, it seems.”

“Less said about that the better,” he muttered. I didn’t get the impression he enjoyed her company after a session on the rack, even if she only treated herself on special occasions.

“Not all bad,” I suggested. “She’ll be bouncing off the walls trying to get into your pants in a few hours.”

He shook the dregs in the bottom of his umpteenth beer. All told, he was carrying it well for someone who’d never been a big drinker. “Not going to be my problem in another couple of these,” he laughed. “She’ll have to make her own arrangements.”

“What, she doesn’t get to unwrap her birthday present on the night?”

“Unless her mates have got her another engraved silver vibrator, no…”

“You what now?”

“Moving on!” he laughed. “How’d you think the song went, Angus?”

“Yeah, it goes alright,” I pronounced. “Interesting to see how it flies in front of a sober audience…”

“Ah bollocks, let’s hope it never comes to that!” He roared with laughter. “Fuck, man, cheers for coming out. I’ve had a fucking good day. That’s the most fun I’ve had in a studio since… well, since Maddy and I road-tested the sleeping quarters after the place was finished…”

“Mental image,” I cursed him. “I’m sleeping on that bed tonight, remember.”

“Shit, don’t let me forget to get the key off Maddy before you guys fuck off.”

“If I do let you, we’re sleeping in a bus shelter. Or in a cab rank, waiting for a taxi back to Bardon.”

“Mad Mick’s place?”

“Uncle Doug’s. But I think Mick’s going to house-sit next year… this year?... when Dougie takes the boys to the UK for Jack’s motocross.”

“Cool. Sheets freshly scraped then?”

“I’m just going to fumble around in the dark and pretend nothing’s wrong,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” he quipped, “that’s pretty much what Jessica said your technique was…”

“Jesus, you’re King of Comedy tonight ain’t ya?” I grinned. “Glad you reckon it went well. Wasn’t sure the recording would go with the whole… You know. The F and the G with the B-D-to-the-O.”

“Yeah, well… it’s us, man. We’ve known each other long enough to just put that shit aside and get on with it, yeah?” We clinked bottles stoically. In the process he gamely attempted to bash the base of his squarely onto the neck of mine to make it foam over, but struck a glancing blow and spilt a third of his across the bar. That’s karma, people. “And besides, we’ve said as much as we need to on that, we both respect each other’s position, even though they’re diag… diamet… opposed a lot.”

“We’re talking about the thing we’re not talking about again,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, we suck,” he noted. “I remembered the last time I’ve had that much fun in a studio - without sex being involved… Probably here with Skank Factor Nine, yeah? Up in that old power station over the way down towards New Farm. Seem to recall it was mostly us hanging out drinking beers, watching live gig vids and talking shite on a couple of dodgy old couches, and occasionally recording unbelievably fucking awesome rock songs, old-school, without all this electronic fucking about. There’s method to your madness after all, big fullah.”

“Yeah, but we did use to have a lot of fun all the way through. To be honest… I get a bit fucked off with the historical revisionism about this band. Not anyone in particular, but seems our history gets rewritten however anyone wants it to be, to fit their particular point. Lena’s the fucking master of that, painting McCarthy as some massive cuntbag who destroyed himself and the band, when all they did was break up, like most relationships do, if you do the stats. All of mine anyway. They just came to the end of their useful life together as a couple, there doesn’t need to be any earth-shattering fucking mythology about it. And, to be fair, I’ve never believed you were as miserable and under the thumb back in the day as the official story says you were. You had fun. We all did.”

“Yeah…” With Marty’s sign of reluctant agreement, I realised we’d begun every comment with ‘Yeah’. At least it was positive affirmation. “Keep in mind you bastards were getting plenty of action, whereas I was single and miserable, so it wasn’t quite as much fun for me as it was for you.”

“Yeah, but.” Fuck it, we were turning into the Vicky Pollard Appreciation Society. Yeah but no but. “We were all single most of the time, it wasn’t that bad.”

Marty shook his head. “Mate, your definition of single is a bit different from mine. Back in the day, when I was single, I was single. On my own. Solo.”

“Han Solo?” I suggested. “Or Hand Solo perhaps?”

“You gotta work it hard,” Marty philosophised, “to be a Solo Man…”

“Yeah I’ve heard that. I've also heard you gotta take the lead and let the others follow, while you goat-boat down a vertical fucking waterfall… And you gotta grow a big ‘80s cricketer mo’ as well.”

“That’s me fucked then.” Marty might have been the only Italian I’d ever met who couldn’t grow facial hair to save his life. Sponsoring him for Mo-vember was a complete waste of time. “Point is, when I was single, there was None Of. Didn’t get no satisfaction, didn’t get no girlie action, full stop. And it wasn’t like I was looking for casual fucks, I was hoping to meet someone for serious. Whereas when you were single… well, let’s face it, being ‘single’ for you just used to mean not having anyone to cheat on at the time…”

“Owww, man, that’s harsh,” I protested.

“But fair?” he suggested. “Track record…”

He had a point. I wasn’t particularly good with exclusive service contracts.

“Wasn’t always a one-way street though,” I said. “I got cheated on too you know.”

“Awww. Where’d I leave my world’s tiniest violin?” he wondered aloud with a smirk.

“In its world’s tiniest violin case. Stolen by the world’s tiniest Mafia hitman.”

“It’s a worry that that logic makes complete sense right at this moment...”

“Look, the default state of the male of most advanced species is polygamy. Humanity’s tried to reign it in with culture and religion, but they’re trying to argue against evolution, which always wins in the end.”

“Ah, the best justification yet for cheating. Sorry, darling, evolution told me to.”

“So what, you’ve never, ever, thought about another girl while you’ve been with Maddy?”

For obvious reasons, I kept that as consipiratorial as I could, and still make it audible.

“I have never, ever, cheated on Maddy,” he replied definitively.

“That’s good to hear.”

“Wanted to,” he laughed. “Jesus fucking Christ, have I wanted to. But there’s a difference…”

Before I got him into any further trouble with the boss, I figured on a slight change of emphasis.

“Usually ends up biting me on the arse though.”

“What, Maddy does? Is this you admitting she’s cheating on me?” he said in mock-horror. “And she has an arse-biting fetish?”

“I’d stop sharing toothbrushes if I were you.” The look on his face indicated he’d never have even thought of starting, bum-biting partner or otherwise. This was, after all, the man so OCD he hung his washing out in descending rank.

“Anyway, my point was… that I didn’t have one. And furthermore, yeah, we had good times back in the day, but I have a harder time than you seeing it all with rose-coloured glasses and saying it was all shits and giggles. I remember it was hard fucking work, we were always on the go doing nine things at once, Richie was always on our case, Kretin was a fucking knob, Phil couldn’t be relied on to sit the right way on a toilet seat, you two were out front having all the laughs and all the girls, and I was in the shadows up the back… OK, true enough, what fucks me off the most wasn’t anyone else, it was that I didn’t have the balls to get out of the shadows up the back, or to ask girls out, or whatever. And now I’ve got that confidence, I can’t help but think back to that guy I was and think ‘Fuck, man, what was wrong with you, you sad sorry fucker.’ That’s kinda why I can’t just point to events or incidents like you can and say, in isolation, fuck that was fun.”

“To that, I say,” I pronounced solemnly, with a drum roll on the bar, “the First Annual Golf Cart Grand Prix of Sanctuary Cove…”

Fun is often a subjective concept. One man’s fun can be another girl’s restraining order. But, on the following, it is possible to be definitive. It is unequivocally Fun looking out on a sea of swaying faces screaming and shouting for you. It is unequivocally Fun being drunk at ten in the morning at the Gold Coast Indy with girls of low moral fibre flashing their lovely boobies at you from the apartment balconies above. And it is unequivocally Fun nicking a bunch of golf carts and holding an impromptu demolition derby through the streets of Sanctuary Cove in the wee small hours after a gig. Hell, it's not like they’re short of the bloody things there.

“Bloody hell,” Marty laughed. “I’ll agree to that. That was fun. Fuckin’ A it was. Three-thirty in the morning… you, me, the Duffer and old man Sam… he actually lit up the rears on one of the bastards, didn’t he? Fucking loony.”

“Mind you, we all had to gather round and lift the back end of it off the deck to do so…”

“True enough. And then he pulled a handbrake turn - a footbrake turn maybe? - and spun the fucker out in front of the coppers while they were setting up the roadblock!” Marty roared. “How the fuck did we get away with that?”

I scratched my head. "Um… as I recall, and this is almost definitely alcohol affected…”

“What part of this idea wasn’t?” he pointed out.

“…Samboy went straight off the jetty into the cove, and swum ashore undetected... of course, totally unheard of for him to create a monstrous problem and then fuck off sharpish..."

“Sounds about right. You went into the water too, didn’t you?”

“Nah… I did have one of them hanging Italian Job style off the end of the wharf, but I managed to drag that one back. Didn’t learn my lesson though. Somehow I’d gotten it into my head that it might be possible to make a golf cart do a Scandie flick, so I was trying to lock the rears going into corners with the footbrake then floor it as the weight transferred – yeah, drift styles with no horsepower whatsoever, can you fucking imagine? – and ended up stuffing my cart into the forecourt of a duty-free souvenir place when the brakes gave up the ghost. Then did the Harry Holt down the street to the joint we were staying in before the cops caught up to me. Didn't actually know any of you lot were safe from the fuzzy muff until you turned up for breakfast next morning…”

“Well, they got me,” Marty admitted. “Told you this before, surely… Anyway, the coppers came around the corner and found me beside one of the abandoned carts – Phil and I had rolled one into a nature strip, and he’d been faster legging it, the bastard had left me hanging out of a hedge. So I’m thinking I’m for it here, but when they approached I just busted out the pidgeon wog and pretended to be an Italian backpacker – non parlo Inglese, Signor Polizia, molto apologia... And kept pointing at the golf cart, and down a dark, narrow back-alley making frantic steering-wheel-turning and agitated-piss-bolting motions while spouting bollocks like ‘Fuga veloce, profundo fuga veloce!’ Eventually they bought it, all tearing off down the alley while I quietly fucked off home to the backpackers.”

“That’s fucking vintage," I grinned.

“Yeah. Gross destruction of property, public disorder, wilfully misleading a police officer, in control of a motor vehicle whilst a Long Fucking Way over the legal blood alcohol limit...”

“Otherwise known as 'fun'."

“Yes," Marty concurred, "otherwise known as 'fun'. The First and Probably Only Annual Golf Cart Grand Prix on the Streets of Sanctuary Cove was FUN. It was more fun than… what’s that line Lena nicked off you?”

“A bouncy castle full of cheerleaders?”

“I thought it was an oiled bouncy castle. Or oiled cheerleaders. Or both…”

“Could be both,” I suggested. “Get sponsorship from Castrol, make an event out of it.” How far was I going to push this? “See the thing was, and I hate to drop the F-bomb, but that was how we rolled in Flange Gasket. That’s how I remember it. Or at least the first couple of years. I don’t remember the work or the fatigue or the shit gigs or working two jobs. And maybe because you’re still performing you remember that shit better. But fuck, man, that’s the reason I wanted to get the Gasket renewed. I miss that mad-bastard sense of anarchic chaos.”

“But like I said at yours,” Marty observed, “we’re missing a mad bastard with a sense of anarchic chaos himself.”

“Yeah,” I conceded, “that’s valid.”

“Look,” Marty said into his beer, “if I could, I would. But it’s not up to me.”

And at last, the real reason why. Not because of fatigue, or artistic integrity, or anything Marty wanted. But because Maddy said so.

“Isn’t it?” I asked. “Why isn’t it?”

“Look, I do what I do, because I’m good at it. I leave her to do what she does, because she’s good at it, and I’m shit. It’s a partnership. Sometimes we end up coming decisions that one of us doesn’t like.”

“The Schoolies gig,” I suggested, “she didn’t sound keen…”

“Very much against,” he nodded, glancing around again to see whether anyone was eavesdropping. “But again, it’s perspective. She remembers Gasket, all of it, as a keep-Marty-in-his-box exercise, because of when she joined into it. I don’t think it was until she saw us play at Point Lookout – which, let’s face it, was all about early Gasket, Exocet-era Gasket, even pre-Exocet, unsigned, Tour de Pants era with Jeff playing with us – that she realised I didn’t remember it like that. And I think she saw what the original point of the exercise actually was.”

“Fun,” I underlined. “Whether onstage or off.”

“Exactly,” he confirmed.

“And she still won’t let you play BDO with us,” I teased.

“Man, it’s not like that… what happened to the moratorium on the evil words?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right. Just winding you up.”

“Actually,” he noted, “I think this is starting to wind up. Or at least I am.” Judging by how the room was still pumping, he was wrong on the former, but possibly right on the latter. “I might seek an audience with Her Majesty and see how long we’re expected to remain in the Royal Court.”

“Depends on the queue for the Royal Powder Room,” I predicted.

He’d done well, all considered, for a bloke who’d never been known for his longevity or stamina out on the turps, in particular in a room where many partygoers were depending on various other chemical stimuli to keep their buzz on. And, let’s face it, we’d been on it since mid-afternoon. A fine innings, well-crafted. Well played sir. Probably time to declare, find my blonde (not that she was mine or blonde right now) and go see if I’d be having the same hydraulic issues Marty foresaw in his own future.

“Having a good night, Maddy?” I called.

“What, you’re not going too?” she cried. I nodded. “Then again, you do have quite the thing to go to, don’t you!”

“Yeah, if I could find her…”

“Didn’t she tell you? Oh, she headed back, what, fifteen or twenty minutes ago? I gave her the key to the studio apartment…” Then giggled at her own joke.

“She OK?” I asked, suddenly a little on edge.

“Think so. She seemed tired. Said she needed to crash.”

It was probably an innocuous choice of words; Maddy might have even been paraphrasing. But, then again, she might not. And what made me very nervous was that for Beth, ‘crash’ seemed to mean something a bit more dramatic than draining a Powerade and collapsing into bed. I said my goodbyes, sharpish, and legged it.

It wasn’t that far from the Bowery to Sound Investment, but it was half-one in the morning, she was alone, and this was the Valley, on New Years. It was a fucking zoo out there. I liked the idea less and less the more I thought about it, a rapidly descending sense of unease knotting in my chest. I barely remember slaloming through the lurching, staggering crowd in the mall in my increasing haste to get back to the studio. By the end, I was running.

The building was in darkness – both storeys, the financial services office on the ground floor and the studio above. And I knew the apartment was on the street-facing side, so this didn’t look too flash. Twenty minutes of knocking, ringing and shouting got me nothing other than some very strange looks from passers-by and some unhelpful suggestions from cunts. Phoning got no response – straight to messages. I didn’t know whether that was better or worse than if it’d rung and rung first. Either scenario could have meant she’d been dragged into an alley somewhere, just that in one she’d lost the phone, in the other it’d been switched off. And that was presuming it wasn’t herself she was in most danger from. She needed to crash? How come I’d not seen the signs? Because I’d spent less than fuck-all time with her tonight, probably. Left her to fend for herself in a tank full of sharks. Someone could have followed her from the party, now that I thought of it…

OK, this was now officially beyond unease and approaching panic.

I retraced my steps, out of breath, trying to ignore my heartbeat thumping in what seemed to be my eustachian tubes. The mall was full of munted munters, fact, but it was well lit and it was well policed; surely she couldn’t have come to any misfortune here? The cops were unhelpful – they had a lot on their plate and didn’t want to hear from some pissed idiot who’d been stood up by a girl. We had a fair and frank exchange of views and I went on my way safe in the knowledge that Queensland was the better for being policed by such heroes among humankind, and that I’d missed being arrested for abusing the congenital fuck out of them by a gnat’s pube.

It was two-thirty by now, and the night had officially gone pear-shaped. I felt like roadkill. The hangover, brought on by the adrenalin, had slammed into play with fearsome intensity. I had no idea what had happened to Beth, or what to do about it. Do I stay here? Do I head back to the Bowery, even though most of the party will have fucked off by now? Do I walk the streets searching for her, until I get the shit kicked out of me by some marauding gang of fuckwits? Do I try and find Marty and Maddy? Break into the studio? Or just get into that fucking endless looking taxi rank on Ann St and head back to Bardon, forlornly hoping that after twenty-five years of living on her wits, she was capable of looking after herself?

I surveyed that lineup, snaking like a refugee camp queue, a seething pit of humanity desperate to find a home to go to. I’d run out of sensible options. There was nothing more I could do here. And, as she’d told me before, she didn’t need protecting.