Chopper Unchopped (215 page)

I’ve got to have some form of social outlet, even if the people I talk to today wouldn’t have gotten within 300 yards of me 15 or 20 years ago.

The day of the hard man is over. Now we live in a panty waist world of limp-wristed, false pretending bullshitters and general flash Harry arse wipes.

As my dad still says, ‘Too many dickheads, son, and not enough ammo.’ How true. As Andrew Dominik, the now world acclaimed director of the
Chopper
movie, pointed out, I am a contradiction, full of contradiction.

I’m quite enjoying the pleasures of Swedish motoring in my Volvo. Except that people tend to toot their horn in anger at Volvo drivers. I was a bit late when the light changed to red in heavy traffic and I was blasted by some fat ass ponce in a Mack truck. I stopped my Volvo and got out, holding up all the traffic, and walked back to the truck.

‘Did you want something, mate?’ I asked, quite politely. The truckie said in a timid voice, ‘The lights have changed.’

‘Gee,’ I said, ‘So they have, and your lights will change too if you blow your horn at me again.’ Had he wanted to continue our little discussion, the next light he would have seen was the one on top of the ambulance.

The truckie’s name, address and phone number was written on the door, so I pulled out my pen and notebook. The truckie didn’t like this. I said to him, ‘Listen sport, if you want a little road rage let me know. I’m like a dial-a-pizza: I do home deliveries.’

By this time the green light had gone back to red and I went and sat back in my Volvo. No-one tooted their horn at me.

Sometimes it’s good being Chopper Read.

The law does not allow me to hit anyone but I’m allowed to defend myself if attacked. Even at 46, I would enjoy the odd attack now and again just to see if my legal right to self-defence is still holding up. Fist fighting killers isn’t easy, as they are trying to murder you. Fist fighting so-called tough guys is child’s play because they will not put their life on the line.

But, the fact is, I rarely get in any fights these days. I read somewhere that the great Leigh Matthews didn’t play any social footy after he retired from the AFL. I am a bit the same. I played in the big league and there is no buzz in running around in the minors, so I mostly try to smile my way out of trouble, turn the other cheek and walk away. But now and then I still enjoy a good punch-on providing that the other party won’t run to the police if he loses.

I’ve stopped all medication. Sometimes I feel as if I’m going to lose my mind totally. I don’t think a human being ever quite recovers from 23 years in prison. Everyone talks about Vietnam veterans. Most of the Vietnam veterans I know spent approximately three years in the army and one or, at most, two years in Vietnam. I’ve met them in and out of jail, I’ve seen them under the shower and not a fucking stab wound or bullet hole on any of them. Except for one chap, and that was because the police had shot him after he shot his local postman for blowing his whistle.

My dad never claimed war stress and he spent 24 years in the army and fought in three wars. But Vietnam? Everyone seemed to come back war stressed. Everyone suffers from mental and emotional stress. Everyone except a prison inmate.

Have you ever noticed that screws that work in a prison suffer stress? Every man and his dog in any form of public service employment suffer from stress.

Prison inmates are the only people who suffer from no known or medically recognised form of stress disorder. Even prison inmates don’t really recognise it, why? Because both the inmate and society know that the inmate placed himself in that situation and, as a result, no complaint is or will be recognised, regardless of how much permanent mental and emotional damage is done.

I offer no excuse or reason or pardon mes. I’ve my own self to blame for my own life and no-one else but me. All I’m saying is what I didn’t know when I was younger was that the human brain simply cannot take on the sheer weight of mental and emotional stress that it has to take on to survive that life.

I have been damaged. The scars and the tatts on the outside are easy to see but the scars on the inside are just as visible if you really look.

It’s like holding on to a tightrope a mile high above the ground with one hand, with the weight of your whole life is hanging around your feet trying to pull you down.

The human heart screams ‘Let go, let go, you’ve had enough.’ You can’t take it any longer but the mind says ‘Hang on, hang on, don’t let go’ and reality becomes a dream or, in the case of the seriously brain stressed – the dream becomes a permanent nightmare.

IN keeping with the bullets and big tits theme of all my books I would like to thank Miss Shelley Hamilton-Smith for providing me with the necessary inspiration for a starved imagination.

I’ve been given full permission to use the lovely Shelley’s photos in my tenth book but I have been quietly warned about defamation. Perish the thought that I’d dare defame the character of such a fine example of Aussie womanhood. I’m too much of a gentleman for anything like that. Miss Hamilton-Smith is a professional dancer and photographic model. A ready, willing and eager young lass always prepared to answer the camera call when needed. I could if I wished launch forth with some lovely yarns relating to Shelley.

Not that the lovely Miss Hamilton-Smith has ever been involved in any activity that would or could be described as embarrassing, sordid or against the law. In fact, some of the yarns I could tell would be about various high-ranking Tasmanian politicians and members of the public service and police force who have booked a dancer for a private function, birthday party or end-of-year Christmas do, retirement dinners and bucks nights.

I originally got to know Shelley because of her interest in motor cars – fast, hotted-up ones – and her love of driving them. She also has more than a passing interest in firearms. Yes, that’s right, firearms. She might look like a blow-up Barbie Doll but she is quite the tomboy and can drive a truck, shoot a gun and use a chainsaw as good, if not better, than most men.

Despite her professional occupation she has a strong sense of self worth and moral fibre. In other words she’s not some low life moll. People generally misunderstand the mental and emotional make-up of ladies in Shelley’s profession. It is quite true that a lot of them are scatter-brained bimbo slags with the personal morals of an alley cat on heat and on speed, but Shelley contradicts this commonly-held general opinion and has a personal strength of character that raises her above the norm.

She talks like a tow-truck driver, and sounds very blokey and unlady like and, while earning her living in a very very female manner, she spends her time off in male pursuits. In other words, when she’s not getting her gear off she is one of the boys.

Quite a few blokes have learnt to their public embarrassment not to push this particular stripper too far and it’s a few of these yarns I’d love to tell. However, while Shelley herself would not object I’d have to name the drunken politicians involved and they would most certainly sue. Or try to. There’s always a chance they would change their minds.

So I will just thank Shelley and leave it at that and maybe later on hint at some unnamed dancer and some unnamed politician in some yarn. You can either believe or disbelieve but for now and for legal reasons I will leave the topic alone.

If this next story was true I could find myself in a great deal of legal trouble, so it will have to be a believe it or not yarn that might be or might not be true. It’s about a hunting trip in a state I won’t name involving five men and one woman.

The woman, an unnamed stripper, was driving the ute with an unnamed nightclub owner at her side and her boyfriend in the back. He was carrying a Ruger 77-44 magnum, a four-shot carbine with a stainless steel barrel and action and a synthetic stock.

The ute was fitted with two large spotlights for night hunting. The other ute carried a high ranking off-duty policeman at the wheel and high ranking politician at his side and a no-eared man in the back armed with a .44 Winchester lever-action rifle.

The nightclub owner, the police officer and the stripper were carrying G36 Glock pistols given to them by the unnamed no-eared man. The politician was so drunk that he had lost the Ruger Super Redhawk .45 calibre revolver given to him in the bush.

The unnamed politician was so blind drunk his only interest in the drunken spotlight night-time hunt was if he could get a little closer to the off-duty stripper.

After several dozen shots were fired the two utes pulled up and several ice cold eskies were pulled out, full of ice and cans of beer. A barbecue fire was lit and a night under the stars was unfolding nicely.

The stripper vanished for a private moment, to attend a call of nature. The politician also headed off in the other direction for a call of nature. About three minutes later everyone heard a scream of anger from the young lady and a cry of pain from the politician. It seems that while the young lass was taking a leak, squatting down, the politician approached her from behind with his dick out.

Naturally she mistook the tap on her shoulder as her boyfriend wanting a bit under the stars. When she realised it was a case of mistaken identity she responded with quick justice. When you are under stress you sometimes clench your jaw in a second. This was not good for the pissed polly. She clamped down and he was in serious trouble.

Everyone thought that a Tasmanian Devil had bitten the politician in the night. He certainly didn’t go out of his way to clear up this misapprehension when it came to explaining his strange injuries. Oops, sorry, I have given the name of the state away. What no-one could understand was why the stripper was spitting out blood. Had she been trying to suck the poison out?

Needless to say the night came to an abrupt halt with the nightclub owner, the policeman and the no-eared man, trying to stop the stripper and her boyfriend from shooting the politician. ‘How could you mistake that fat slob for me?’ yelled the boyfriend. ‘I guess you are going to tell me his dick’s the same size as mine,’ the boyfriend continued.

‘No’ yelled the stripper, ‘It’s fucking three times bigger. That’s how I knew it wasn’t you.’ Needless to say it took quite a lot of pragmatic politics and general mental, emotional and medical patching up to recover from that. But, as I said, it’s a believe-it-or-not story and certainly nothing to do with me.

Another wild yarn was a politician’s retirement dinner involving an unnamed stripper in an unnamed state. A senior public servant was retiring.

He worked in a senior position for the government and the goodbye bash was being put on in the private function room at Parliament House. The stripper had been booked and smuggled in. The retiring senior public servant was sat in a chair and handcuffed by a high ranking off-duty police officer.

The stripper came in and did her thing. So far the story isn’t so hard to believe – until, that is, the stripper went into the room she had been originally shown into to get changed back into her street clothes. When she turned around, she saw a fat, drunken politician she had previously encountered on another unpleasant occasion. She decided to play along, allowing the politician to undress until he was down to only his socks and singlet.

Then, with all her magic and with hands as quick as lightning, she went into the night with all the politician’s clothes, leaving the embarrassed, drunken, fat slob naked.

She dumped his clothes in a rubbish bin outside and went home. The politician was discovered by members of the retirement function tip toeing down a Parliament House hallway with several copies of Hansard covering his nether region trying to make it to the car park.

Why he was heading for the car park was a mystery as the stripper had also taken his wallet and car keys. But, as I’ve said before, it’s a believe-it-or-not yarn that may or may not be true.

Would I tell a lie? You be the judge.

NEWS that Eric Bana, Andrew Dominik, Michele Bennett and the
Chopper
movie have been nominated for 10 AFI awards has just reached me as I write this. At the same time I was told that some bloke, no name given or remembered, had been shot dead in Melbourne. Police believe him to be the bloke who shot and killed my old friend Mad Charlie.

I made some phone calls to find out more details. Yes, some no-name bum that the police believed to be a big deal gangster had been shot dead in Melbourne and yes they believed him to be the man who killed Mad Charlie.

‘Can you find out his name?’ I asked. ‘Who gives a shit?’ was the reply. The modern-day police forces are about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike. They look good standing still, but aren’t a lot of help when things get going.

Needless to say, the phone call I made was to a police officer. I made a second call to an old criminal friend. ‘What’s wrong, Chopper? Are you running short of shit to write about?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘So much so that I’m almost at the point of publishing your full name and address.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ said my friend, ‘You don’t need to get snippy about it. The bloke who got whacked was a fucking nobody who the police think was a somebody and the fact that we are having this conversation proves that he never did Mad Charlie.’

‘What was his name?’ I asked. ‘Ask your newspaper mates?’ came the reply. ‘They reckon they know so much.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but they get all their info from the police.’ The laughter began. My friend knew that the police were getting all their info from people who worked several levels below my friend and they gave the police disinformation which the police were convinced was the truth.

Remember, the disinformation begins before the shooting starts, then is followed up with more disinformation after the action. Talking to any media friends or contacts I may have was about as good as talking to the police. Only the police contacts I have would tell me it was only a theory or one possible line of inquiry or investigation. The media people would tell you that it was the truth.

If my criminal contacts dismissed it as a non-event murder, that was that. If it were of any importance they would ring me first via my dad. I would need to ring them. If the police think the bloke who shot Mad Charlie has himself been shot, so be it. Who am I to argue with greater minds than my own? Fuck it all. What the hell do I know?