Chopper Unchopped (204 page)

THIS comes under the heading of a believe it or not story as most of my yarns do. Some armchair critics like to doubt my tales but I am sure I could persuade them if I tapped politely on their skulls with a claw hammer. Personally, I don’t care whether you believe this or not as you are already more than half way through the book and so it’s a bit late to worry now.

Some years ago I was approached by a television network for an interview. Naturally they made it clear that they did not pay criminals for their stories. I made it clear that it would be hundred dollar bills and a fist full of them in cash, no cheques. So, as long as I was willing to keep their little secret so could they.

The young lady doing the story was desperate to get into the big time. We met and had drinks at her motel and gossiped and chit chatted, rah rah rah. She kept swinging her room key around and the room number was clear. I agreed to all her nitwit ideas and she had plenty.

This chick was a pure Hollywood dream boat. She thought Australia was to be her stepping stone to the big time, and my story was part of the plan. I asked about the cash and she said she had it and not to tell the camera crew. Come back later, after dinner, around 8.30pm and collect it, she said. ‘Where?’ I asked, ‘in the bar?’ You must remember I have lived a somewhat sheltered life in these matters, having spent most of my adult life in prisons. ‘No,’ she said in a strangely throaty voice, ‘Come up to my room.’

It was all very cloak and dagger but I played along. I went home after we did a bit of lightweight filming, walkies and talkies, real lightweight stuff. Later, I returned to the motel and went up to her room.

The chick had a mouth like a gutter and the body and face of a photographic model. I didn’t let the tough, dirty talk and swearing put me off. She was acting out a role all in order to impress me with an attitude of ‘I’ve done this a thousand times and you don’t impress me,’ but inside she was shitting herself.

Her boss in Sydney had told me she was to give me a sum of money in cash and that’s what I was visiting her to collect. Pussy is fine, but you can’t put it in the bank. I rang her room and she said come up.

I went up and she was in a dressing gown, fresh out of the shower, and a bit pissed. She invited me in and we worked our way through a bottle of champagne and generally chatted. Then she started walking about looking in this bag, then that bag and said to me, ‘You won’t believe this Chopper, but I’ve come all the way from Sydney without a condom, have you got any?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I replied firmly (in more ways than one). ‘Well, then, it all comes down to trust, you’re not gay, you don’t use drugs, you’re a clean healthy guy. I’ve been checked and I’m clean. What do you reckon, do we need a rubber or don’t we?’

Was that a trick question? I don’t know too many blokes who would knock back the chance to go bareback with a living wet dream. I reckon she’d seen more naked men than me and I’d been in all male jails for more than twenty years.

To keep a dirty story clean she went at it like a turbocharged vacuum cleaner. During all of this one of the camera crew rang her room and she spoke to him on the phone about the following day’s interview. She was very business-like on the phone while I was doing the business at the other end.

I went home having forgotten all about the money. But the next day, before the interview started, I said to her in private, as she was putting on her make up: ‘Did so and so (meaning her boss in Sydney) give you something for me.’

She said, ‘Yeah, but I thought we took care of that last night.’

‘You’re kidding,’ I said. ‘Fun is fun but business is business.’ At that point the ice set in and she handed me the cash like an escort girl who had been told to pay a client, and in my view she was. She was really angry. I mean ice cold. I looked at her and said, ‘Jesus, it’s not your money, don’t lose your sense of humour. I tell you what, let’s split the difference, you take half and I’ll take half.’

The ice melted and the sun came out.

‘Chopper, it’s not the money, I don’t care about that, it’s just that I thought we were friends.’

‘We are,’ I said, so with a cuddle and a kiss it was all better. We split the difference.

‘Don’t tell (her boss),’ she said. ‘What he don’t know won’t hurt him. Who would believe it anyway,’ I said, laughing.

‘You’d be surprised,’ she replied. ‘You can screw who you like in this business, but if you touch the till you’re fucked.’

As we walked toward the camera crew I asked her, ‘Does much cash change hands in your line of work?’

‘More than you think, mate’, she said, ‘And, by the way,’ she continued. ‘You know how we never paid you? Well, last night never happened either, okay?’

I nodded.

Lights, camera, action.

If
Media Watch
only knew the truth. Now I know what a hot exclusive really is. When they say they are taking a live feed I know they mean it. Ha ha. And, in case anybody’s wondering why I’m revealing this after all this time, it’s because the young lady in question has publicly dropped so many broad ‘hints’ about how she got to interview Chopper Read that I feel she hasn’t kept up her end of the bargain. A bloke has his reputation to protect.

AS one grows older one likes to check on the family history. I come from a proud dynasty. One of my great grandfathers died in the snow after coming home drunk and being locked out of the house by his wife, who had warned him if he came home drunk again she would lock him out.

I’ve collected quite a lot of war photos of uncles, grandfathers, my own dad and great grandfathers on both sides of the family. In checking the family tree I’ve found the Irish and Scottish clans I sprang from, not to mention the Chinese blood that insinuated itself into my pedigree. I got the madness of the Irish, the fighting spirit of the Scots, the inscrutable nature of the Chinese and the hunting nature of a dingo.

The Masonic Lodge and Freemasonry played a big role in my family for generations. The shield of the grand lodge Scottish constitution hangs in my home and a ceremonial Masonic sword hangs near the fire place.

French blood runs on my wife’s side of the family. Doctor Joseph Ignance Guillotin, a Frenchman and high-ranking Freemason, also invented the guillotine. There is a touch of French blood in both my family and my wife’s so, in the name of politeness, I won’t say what side of the family is related to that noted gentleman.

Do our forefathers dictate the type of men their sons, grandsons, and great great grandsons will become? I come from a line of hard men, fighters, drinkers, preachers, cut throats, killers, war heroes and gamblers with a few really good bastards tossed in just to upset the flow.

The women in our family were all saints with the misfortune to marry sinners.

Snobbery in Australia is a futile exercise. The class system is a Pommy left over. The word fag is an English slang public school word. The fag master, an older lad, regularly buggered junior lads up the bum for punishment.

These bastards went on to sing ‘God Save The Queen’ and attempted to instil in us all their own class system. However, there would be more raving mental disorders and sex scandals hanging out of the family trees of the British upper class and Royals than all ours put together.

The Reads look positively normal next to the corgi owners from Buckingham Palace. So, to my son who will one day be taunted by the fact that his dad is or was Chopper Read, all I can say to you is ‘Son, whatever your old dad was it’s a whole lot better than being someone who wasn’t.’

I’m a man who followed nobody, I went in my own direction and other people followed me — mostly into the shit, but they followed me nonetheless.

At the tender age of forty-four I decided to take up karate, then I was offered lessons in Aikido and Judo so I said, why not? I’ve done my back in and at eighteen stone I need a gentle mind-lifting exercise.

In the old days the only black belt I needed was one to stuff my revolver in. Aikido, the way of harmony, is a defensive art, complicated but graceful, with tossing techniques that use the attackers’ force against them. Aikidoists toss an attacker by manipulating the joints. You need strong wrists for this. I’ve got a grip like a vice so Aikido will do me.

Judo is the first martial art and the least talked about and includes tossing, choking, immobilising, using joint locks. Then Karate. I’ll be doing Shotokan, mostly blocking, striking, free kicking, kneeing, elbow, and offensive movements.

There’s a lot of free sparring, defensive and offensive moves and I’m glad to say there’s head butting.

My teacher, who I won’t name, is a former Australian Army SAS chappy. We won’t be mucking about. First, he can fix my bad back as he is also a trained osteopath, then he could break it with a karate chop. I will take up Judo, Aikido and Karate. A bit late in life for all this gung ho stuff. We will see what we will see but not if they see me first. Ha ha.

In 1987 I won a trophy in kick boxing. It was the Blind Drunk, Heavyweight division in Footscray. I just punched and head butted the bastard into the mat and he was a black belt third Dan, Tae Kwon Do Karate expert. Flexibility is what I want — and to rid myself of this crippling back injury — so as a form of gentle exercise my teacher tells me the martial arts are the go. So why not?

If it goes well I may challenge Mike Tyson to a fight. He may think doing a bit of jail time makes him tough, but I beg to differ. He may think chewing on a bloke’s ears is a little dirty while I would suggest it is the height of good manners. He has a couple of tattoos while I’ve got about a thousand. He throws punches like a machine gun. I’ve had a machine gun. I could get Dave The Jew to manage me so that if Don King tried to rob me he’d get the lime funeral.

I reckon we could have the fight held inside a jail with only inmates and guards present and the money would come through selling it to pay television. It would rate its socks off and while I suggest Mike may start favourite, I don’t think The Jew would let him get through the carpark with the prize money.

When I first came out of prison I was just a tough paranoid so, when needed, I hired myself a bodyguard, a professional security fellow formerly of the Australian Army, Dean Petrie.

Mean Dean I called him. A small giant of a man, slightly shorter than myself but twice as thick. He has since rejoined the Army and I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention his name and thank him for his kindness and his friendship to me.

We spent more time drunk together than sober and he failed to protect me from the one cold enemy that could get me in the end … the grog. But a more loyal and steadfast and stalwart fellow you would not meet in a day’s march and I include these few words and his photo by way of thanks. Good on you, mate.

IT was mentioned to me that I might like to remark on the trouble within the world of certain outlaw motorcycle gangs — sorry, I mean ‘clubs’. The whole topic is none of my business. Sid Collins was the former President of the Outlaws M.C. and his shooting cost me dearly.

I did mix briefly with members of other bike clubs on my release from prison for light drinkies and general conversation then decided that it was a web and a world I no longer wished to mix in.

You see you either are or you aren’t, you do or you don’t, you rock or you roll. I’ve got friends who are, to put it politely, deeply involved in the Italian criminal world, the Albanian criminal world, and the Chinese Triad 14K, but I no longer mix with them. No offence taken, none meant, I’ve always been full on. I don’t socialise at the edge of anything and that goes for the few friends I have had in the bike world.

I wish them well, no offence meant, none taken, I hope. But I’ve made my decision. No man can walk on both sides of the street at the same time. I’ve tried that and, believe me, it doesn’t work.

The criminal world and the bikie world are not places for tourists. You are either in or out. I don’t intend to make any further remarks in relation to motorcycle clubs because the truth is I’m no longer in touch and I’d only be guessing. Or telling the truth, which would be worse, and very bad manners.

The Collins matter taught me to keep my head out of matters that don’t concern me. I can’t even ride a motorbike, for Christ’s sake. God only knows how I ever got pulled into their shit in the first place. A case of, have gun will travel but no more. If you’re interested find out for yourself but don’t bother asking me. So to Duck and the boys, A.J. and his team, Josh, Clacker, Doughnut and their crew, Chickenman and his lot, to name a few, via con dios amigos. May God ride with you.

Don’t shoot me, I’m just the piano player. That goes for you, too, Larry. Let it go mate, because I have. And to Ball Bearing, don’t go spitting the dummy at me just because me and Mad Charlie got friendly with your girlfriend in 1987.

Jesus, mate, if your girlfriend is working at the Daily Planet Brothel I think it’s a bit rich to be bagging blokes for getting up her. Some of you blokes need to get yourselves a sense of humour. Anyway, that’s all I’m saying about bikies.

Postscript: Sorry, Melissa but you must have known I’d publish those photos. Jugs like that just have to be looked at, you know that.

WHO was it who said a man who writes books ends up alone without a friend in the world? Was it Truman Capote or Fred Trueman? I can’t remember which. Whoever said it, they were right. People are either shitty because you put them in it or shitty you left them out. So for no particular reason I say the following. Most healthy boys have an inborn appetite for adventure. If it does not come to them they will go out to look for it. It is the urge which from the beginning of history has sent men out to explore the unknown, to climb hostile mountains, to sail dangerous seas, in fact to do anything that involves a risk to life.