Chopper Unchopped (76 page)

IN Tasmania homosexuality is against the law, but behind the walls of the Pink Palace you would never know it.

Before I arrived, I am told, the main game played was a game called ‘under the table'. A blanket would be placed over the card table and inmates would sit around playing cards while some pretty boy or wayward youth got under the table and under the cover of the blanket proceed to offer oral relief to the card players.

Every yard used to have its own shower area, but these have been turned into weight-lifting areas. A new shower block has been built with a guard looking down from the catwalk above, and guards at the door keeping watch, as the drop-the-soap competitions had been getting totally out of control.

Back in the 1960s and '70s and a good part of the '80s, one half of the jail was getting up the other half. Then it all died out in the late '80s and the '90s. However, recent events have awoken the ghosts from a bygone era in the form of two very young, hip-swinging, raving gay boys from Melbourne's Toorak Road, South Yarra. They have been doing short sentences for passing dud cheques while on holiday.

They are called Michael and ‘Jade', and they're a pair of pouting pretty boys who look like spoilt schoolgirls. When they came on the scene hard, tough inmates, who hadn't taken a shower since the new shower block was built, suddenly went in for the soap and water with gay abandon. Not only that, but they were brushing their hair, shining their boots, cleaning their teeth and splashing themselves freely with Norsca roll-on deodorant and Menage aftershave, and prancing about the jail as if there were two females present and they were out to win hearts.

Michael and Jade, meanwhile, are skipping about the place like a pair of giggling, spotty-bottomed girls. I am glad to say that my good self and the fellows I knock about with have nothing at all to do with this dreadful state of affairs, apart from viewing the whole thing with a sense of comic disgust.

The two pretty boys are charging a packet of White Ox tobacco, so I am told, for a little bit of comfort. For newcomers they seem to be well stocked with tobacco and canteen items, and neither of them smoke. Young Michael, the private school boy and the upper class toff of the pair, has been made the jail barber, bringing a new meaning to the term head job.

He has an annoying habit of calling me ‘Mr Read', as does his friend Jade, the slut of the pair. In Melbourne they both worked as male escorts and have their own business cards, which they hand out freely.

In spite of the fact I am not overly keen on poofters, Michael and Jade don't seem bad kids and love jail life. Michael told me that a particular (not that particular, if you ask me) prison officer has already made advances towards him. ‘What should I do?' he purred. ‘A lady has no rights at all in prison.'

I had already noticed that the screw in question seems to have a somewhat unhealthy interest in young, effeminate prisoners. It is pathetic. I told Michael to go to the media on the mainland when he gets out and spill the beans about the harassment of a sexual nature he is receiving at the hands of a staff member. ‘Oh no,' said Michael, ‘my mother would die.'

The whole thing is quite a giggle. Big Tony Barron said to me the other day outside the boys have prostitutes, inside they have substitutes. Ha ha. But not everyone's amused. My mate Bucky's non-stop sarcastic remarks – aimed towards anyone who Bucky feels is showing an unhealthy interest in Michael and Jade – have sent a lot of inmates running red-faced for cover.

Michael and Jade asked me if I was writing a fourth book and did I think it would be okay to find room for them in it. I said I was sure I would be able to find room for a pair of poofters like them. Lo and behold, next day Michael skipped up to me and handed me 12 packets of White Ox tobacco. He said, ‘You have this, Mr Read. I don't smoke.'

I said, ‘Where did all this come from?'

He giggled and replied that he had been a naughty girl, then skipped on his way with a smile like the cat who ate the cream, or something similar. When Michael and Jade say they don't smoke, I guess it all depends on how you look at it. They have been smoking zoobricks ever since they got here. What gets me is that E Yard is the protection yard. All the child molesters, kiddie killers and police informers go in there. By rights the jail authorities can't ask Michael and Jade to go into the ‘dogs' yard' just because they are openly homosexual. So they put the two of them in the mainstream where they both conduct themselves in an outrageously camp manner, in front of the prison authorities, for all to see, blowing kisses at everyone in the place from the tea lady to the Governor, so to speak. And all this in a jail in a state where homosexuality is supposedly a crime, if you don't mind.

If homosexuality is a crime in Tasmania, how come they don't have a separate area for homosexual men? It seems that outside it is a crime, but in jail in Tasmania it is perfectly legal and accepted. The powers that be allow it or appear to do so. Either that or they're blind. Homosexuality either is a crime or it is not. Risdon Prison, in relation to the homosexual question, is a terribly confused jail indeed.

Day after day I see young Michael tripping his way gaily to work, with his barber clippers in one hand and a bottle of baby oil in the other, and the thought strikes me that it's a very dangerous state of affairs in jail.

Here you have normal heterosexual men who have been locked up and kept away from women for years, then along comes a boy who looks like a girl – in this case two boys who look like two girls. Not only are they quite willing and eager to play the female sex role, but they talk about it afterwards.

Day by day I notice the jail atmosphere change. Jealousy, bitterness, anger, frustration and embarrassment, with some men ashamed of their own conduct. The Pink Palace is a quiet little prison, but these two jail cats could end up getting themselves badly hurt because of the trouble they stir up just by being there.

On the mainland, homosexual conduct is perfectly legal, yet in prisons there all homosexual female impersonators, drag queens and the like are kept in separate areas from the mainstream, or sent to a separate country prison. Yet here in Tassie, where homosexual conduct is a criminal act against the law, homosexuals are mixing freely in the mainstream, and it will create trouble.

Michael and Jade were only here for a short time and gone before much damage was done, but for the short time they were here they created plenty of trouble. It was only luck no real violence erupted.

They were themselves physically harmless, and quite likeable kids, and even an old poof hater like myself had to laugh at their antics. I find myself quite amused by the whole situation, especially Michael's habit of jokingly referring to one senior male officer as a ‘silly old Queen' and another as ‘Miss Brighton Beach 1957'. But, while the comedy of it all is a great change of pace, it is still a very dangerous and potentially violent situation. For a while there, I thought I was going to get the job as the jail barber here at Risdon Prison. Big Mick Gill, the old jail barber, promised me I would be able to take over his old spot. However, Governor George Lawler said no to me and gave it to Michael, the young poof from Toorak Road.

There was a time when the job of jail barber was given to the hardest man in the prison, or one of them. When I first got to Pentridge in the early 1970s, the barber in D Division was Ferdie Thomas. Ferdie stood about five foot ten tall and weighed in at an easy 16 stone, and was at least a pick handle wide across the shoulders. And, believe me, old Ferdie was a very hard, tough man indeed. He had prematurely grey hair and a weatherbeaten, knocked-about face, but he was a happy, cheerful fellow if no-one annoyed him. He was also as hard as steel and as solid and as staunch as they come, a man with a feared reputation. Few men could or would like to stand toe to toe with old Ferdie.

I am glad to say that me and old Ferdie got along very well. I was a young, insane up-and-comer, and I think Ferdie admired my guts or maybe I appealed to his sense of comedy, but we became firm friends.

In later years I introduced Mad Charlie to Ferdie and later Charlie said to me, ‘Shit, Chopper, I've heard a lot about him. He's got a big name. Ferdie Thomas is an old time waterfront gangster.'

I said to Charlie, ‘What's that supposed to be?'

‘I don't know,' said Charlie. ‘But it sounds good. Ha ha.'

When Mad Charlie sat in Ferdie's barber's chair for the first time we were all sitting around drinking tea and talking shit, and for a joke Ferdie said to Charlie, ‘Now listen, young Charlie, you can have a short back and sides or a broken jaw.'

Charlie looked at me and I winked and smiled, and Mad Charlie said, ‘Well, I think I'll have the short back and sides.' And it's probably a good thing he did, because the only choice on Ferdie's menu was short back and sides or a broken jaw. Old Ferdie is still alive and well today and no longer involved in crime, but in his prime he was a force to be considered. A very, very hard man indeed, and one of the few men I respected.

However, the most feared barber in Pentridge Prison was my old friend Gordon ‘Sammy' Hutchison. Love him or hate him, in his day no-one could beat him. When Sammy was the H Division barber he didn't worry too much about giving you a choice … he was just as happy to break your jaw and then give you the haircut.

A lot of so-called heavies hated Sammy, but it was lights out when Sammy started swinging. He had a bad temper and a bloody quick one, even though it was mixed with a fantastic sense of humor.

Sammy had a great many enemies in prison, and sooner or later they all came down the slot to H Division. Once there, they all were ordered to have a haircut, and there was smiling Sammy. If the screws saw the barber kicking the shit out of someone, it was none of their concern.

Yes, Sammy was a very feared man. You would only have to look at him the wrong way and he would bust your cheekbone. He had a bone busting knockout punch with either hand and freak timing. At five foot eight inches tall and 12 and a half stone he wasn't a big man but he knocked out big men regularly.

Sammy is a close and dear friend. My enemies are his and his are mine. His loyalty over the years was given totally and without question. He is well into his 50s now, closer to 60 than 50, but I would still rather have old Sam backing me in a blue than 100 young toughs.

Sammy was a story teller in H Division. I would sit in his barber's chair and he would regale me with yarns of wild and comic dimensions about various gangsters whose names won't be mentioned here just in case they're appearing in a court somewhere in this wide brown land.

According to Sammy the greatest stand-up fist fighter in Melbourne, the all-time greatest pound for pound, was Charlie Wooton's Dad, old ‘Inky' Wooton.

According to the stories I have heard, old Inky was a fist-fighting freak with speed and uncanny timing, and a knockout blow in each hand. I loved the yarns about Melbourne's streetfighting legends and the old-time gangsters like Freddy ‘The Frog' Harrison, Normie Bradshaw, Bobby Rebecca, Jackie Twist and, best of them all in my own humble opinion, Billy ‘The Texan' Longley.

Sammy Hutchison knew them all. He used to act as Longley's bodyguard and knew all the yarns. A haircut could take an hour or so with Sammy telling me yarn after yarn.

I loved it and I loved old Sammy. It's a pity that real men, hard men like Ferdie Thomas and Sammy Hutchison, are no longer in charge of the barber's chairs in Pentridge today. They could both give you a good trim, but with me when I said, ‘Cut it up to my ears,' they were in deep trouble. Ha ha.

These days jail barbers are either child molesters or two-bob dago heroin dealers, and in Risdon, they're poofters. Yes, the times they are a' changing, all right. I don't wish to be boring by bringing up the name of that sugar plum fairy, Chris ‘Rent a Kill' Flannery, who was put on the missing list in Sydney for being a nuisance, and another dead false pretender, Laurie Prendergast, but both of them got sat on their arse in H Division many years ago, after having the foolish bad manners to complain about a Sammy Hutchison haircut.

Old Sammy has punched some large holes in some very big reputations and it's hard for me to mention his name without feeling a touch sentimental. God bless the tough old bastard.

BEFORE young Michael, the effeminate jail barber, got out of prison he came up to see me and said, ‘I've come to say goodbye, Uncle Chop Chop.' Blokes have been crippled for less, but as I say, I've mellowed.

As you might have gathered, Michael was the sort of prison barber when, if he asked you if you wanted a blow wave, it was always best to politely decline, not recline. In the beginning he called me Mr Read but with familiarity comes contempt, albeit comic. In Michael's case I asked him to stop calling me Mr Read and he replied that he felt it only fitting, as at 19 years of age he was old enough to be my daughter.

I told him to cut it out so the cheeky bastard took to calling me Uncle Chop Chop, but at a distance of at least 30 yards. His thinking no doubt was that if he was not young enough to be my daughter he could certainly be my niece.

I couldn't help but think, ‘Is this what happens to the great criminals of this country. Don't we get any respect from our peers, or in this case, our queers?' I suppose there was some gay shearer back in Ned Kelly's time who used to call him Uncle Tin Head.

It's a disgrace.

Anyway, when Michael came up to me to say goodbye he promptly tried to give me some sort of embrace. I pushed him back and he said, ‘Can't I have a cuddle goodbye?'

‘No, you certainly may not. A manly handshake will suffice.' We shook hands and I was overcome by a momentary wave of kind-heartedness and I put my arm around his shoulder and gave him a bit of a one-armed bear hug and said, ‘Take care of yourself, you little poofter. You are not a bad kid even if you are a shirt lifter. At least you don't give people up.' And with a hearty pat on the shoulder I bid him farewell and goodbye.