Darlinghurst Road (3 page)

There was a store on Darlinghurst Road that
doubled as an office and two stores hidden away in the Central
Business District that were relatively small by comparison. Then
came Oxford Street that was bigger than all of them.

The Oxford Street store was once a proper,
big screen adult movie theater that had been converted to a sex
shop. The Pleasure Palace on Oxford Street spanned three floors,
was seedier, meaner and a twenty-four hour a day marathon of sex,
drugs and drama. This was my new home away from home for twelve
hours a day and I started to fit right in.

An Intriguing Cast Of
Characters

We had five very distinct types of customers:
The diehard gays cruising for some sleazy sex because they were
bored with life that day or were full of party drugs after a night
of clubbing, the closet gay who felt that this was the only place
he could come and be discreet, the cheap straight guy looking for
something his girlfriend wouldn’t do and of course, our usual cast
of regulars. Last place belonged to the wall boys.

The serious gays were the worst because they
had a sense of ownership over the street and felt pissed about
having to pay for anything and even more pissed when they couldn’t
get the type of sex they were looking for within five minutes of
walking through the door. The endless questions: How many people
are upstairs? Any such and such types? Can I go take a quick look
before I pay? It got old and these were the men that I would have
no hesitation in kicking out when they became obnoxious.

On weekends, Oxford Street would be packed
with club patrons and party types of all descriptions but during
the week it all came down to the regulars. They were what kept us
going through the quiet times. Although at one time or another,
most of them pissed me off in some way, I was always glad to see
the old familiar faces. They knew the boundaries and they were
rarely any trouble.

The regulars were a mixed bunch: at least two
lawyers, a judge, a teacher at a leading Sydney private school and
various other occupations from professional men to laborers. Some
of them would identify as gay but others would not yet here they
all were, hanging around a sleazy sex club at three o’clock in the
morning. They would talk to me and between themselves, rarely
having any sort of conversation with new faces. For some of these
men with secrets to keep, it was more a social gathering and the
sex if it happened was secondary.

Male prostitution was a constant problem but
we also had our share of female prostitutes and went through the
same battles with them. Secretly, I had no problem with them trying
to earn a buck and doing it in one of our rooms because it was a
lot safer than a back alley. However, policy from on high was no
sex workers so I would move them on when someone complained or if
they just stood out a mile.

Occasionally a working girl would try to make
friends with one of the staff so that they wouldn't kick her out
and that could be difficult to deal with. My policy was the same as
it had always been, business only and leave the pleasure side to
the customers. It’s too easy to be compromised and ultimately, it
just makes the job harder. That was a lesson that Mandy always
preached to her staff and it made sense to me.

There would be the occasional issue on
weekends with customers thinking staff walking through the dark
club were also cruising but a quick blink of a flashlight usually
sent them on their way, embarrassed and apologetic. The regulars
were never a problem with that sort of thing because they all knew
me. Maybe also, it was because they knew I had the power to throw
them out of their second home or maybe it was out of respect
because I treated them like human beings unlike most of the outside
world. I don’t know, but for whatever reason, we got along.

After Mandys with all its characters and
having seen pretty much everything related to sex and Kings Cross
night life, nothing shocked me. The Pleasure Palace and
establishments just like it, anywhere in the world, are sometimes
the only place where a person can go to be themselves and it's
always been my opinion, that a person's private life belongs to
them.

The Wall

As I mentioned in an earlier, the so called
wall boys get their name from the short stretch of stone wall that
runs along the end of Darlinghurst Road until it meets up with
Oxford Street at its junction in Taylor Square. The wall has served
as a pickup address for countless generations of young male
prostitutes.

A few would always figure out that it might
be safer to hang around the all-night club's like the Pleasure
Palace and try to get picked up. The regulars would object or they
would try to steal a wallet in the dark so I’d kick them out and
the cycle would begin again the next night with another a new face
turning up every week almost like clockwork.

The older, more experienced ones had learned
how to blend a little but the new faces were very young and very
obvious. They would be living on the streets, still learning how to
survive in that world and desperate for shelter or money, would
often end up being taken home and used by some guy who had picked
them up that night. I saw plenty of girls in the same situation and
it never got any easier. In my opinion, it takes a particular
callousness to pick up a young person, use them for sex and then
walk away not caring if they’re still alive tomorrow.

Kayla

I've never been much good at pinning down
ages but she was young, painfully young. I caught her hanging
around the coin booths downstairs. My job was clear, I had to ask
her to leave because a quick conversation left no doubt that she
was looking for someone to pay her for sex and besides, she was
definitely underage and I couldn't allow that. When I gave her the
speech about no prostitution on the premises, she asked naively
“where do I go then?” I offered to buy her a Coke from our machine,
she accepted, we went back upstairs to the store and talked for a
while.

She said her name was Kayla and the gist of
the story was that her mother had kicked her out. There was no
father, her mother was a drug addicted prostitute who worked from a
home in the suburbs and it was all the kid had ever known. I
remembered how big and bright those streets seemed when I was her
age compared to the dirty, cramped world of a few square miles that
I knew now.

I had to do it. I tried to play social
worker, call around, maybe find her some shelter somewhere but she
refused. Kayla was only a part of my life for around thirty minutes
but I will never forget her. The last time that I saw her, she was
walking down the street toward her first paid sexual encounter.
God, I hope the bastard was gentle with her.

Cathy

Cathy was another early starter and she was
dead by the age of twenty. She once confided that she had been on
the street since the age of thirteen and had been a prostitute just
as long. By fifteen, Heroin was in her veins. The spiral down from
there is short and nearly always predictable. Heroin quickly
becomes the primary motivation in life.

The back door of the Pleasure Palace is only
accessible to the staff but still, no one really uses it and if it
wasn't for the fire code, it would probably be boarded up. The door
exits to a narrow inner city alley and it's a dark, dirty little
place where, apart from the rats, nobody ever seems to go. This is
where the police found Cathy on a Sunday morning; dead from an
overdose of heroin. I found out that night when the police came in
to ask their questions.

They only asked the basics of course because
they already knew the story by heart. It was a regular occurrence
around The Cross and Cathy was a case number, a junkie hooker who
killed herself in the back alley of a sleazy sex club, not the
first, won't be the last.

She had a small tattoo on her right ankle of
a butterfly and a brother by the name of David. I don’t know much
more about her but I do know that Cathy was a human being as well
as a statistic and her death saddened me.

Trevor

Trevor was a real hard man who had been
around The Cross for a long time. With serious underworld
connections and an attitude to match, he was the real deal as they
say and yet, he never flaunted it. Trevor was extremely discrete
about his criminal contacts and it wasn't until you really got to
know him that some of the veneer started to slip away. Still, after
being part of the Kings Cross furniture for so long, most of the
people who knew him had probably figured out that Trevor was deeply
involved with organized crime but hey, it was The Cross, it didn't
affect them and nobody really cared. Only once did I ever see
Trevor lose his cool and be indiscrete. A few days earlier, I had a
guy in the club who was causing trouble so I kicked him out.

The guy didn't want to quit and kept coming
back. It was a minor annoyance until he walked in one night and
threatened me. Now, a sex shop is not the kind of business where
one typically calls the police, so consequently, most issues with
problem customers tend to be solved in-house. I told Trevor about
the incident and the next night he came in for a few hours in case
our friend turned back up.

It was after midnight when he came in and he
was belligerent as ever so we threw him out again but this time we
did it pretty roughly and Trevor made it plain that it was not a
good idea to come back. Angry now, the guy stood out on the street
yelling at the top of his voice “you can't throw me out, I've been
coming here for twenty years and I know all about this place.” He
continued “I know you pay your people cash, no one here pays any
taxes, I work for Social Security, I'm going to call my my friend
at the Tax Office and have this place shut down for not paying tax,
I know your name... it's Trevor.”

It went on for a few more minutes with his
threats until Trevor finally lost it. He stepped out onto the
street, dragged the guy back into the store and slammed him up
against a wall. Through gritted teeth he said “if anything happens
here in the next few weeks, I'll have you shot you cunt!” Trevor
slammed his fist into the guy's stomach and threw him back out onto
the street. That was the last we heard from him.

In spite of his seriousness, Trevor could
have a funny side. We had the Fire Marshall come through for an
inspection one day. Trevor and I followed him around the dimly lit
club as he checked for violations. Theoretically, smoking was not
permitted in the building under the fire code but in practice, it
was something virtually impossible to police unless you had someone
walking around constantly. The Fire Marshall stopped, pointed his
flashlight at a pile of cigarette butts on the floor then turned to
us and suggested that he was considering a fine because of the
smoking that was clearly going on. Trevor went on the
defensive.

“Did you see anyone smoking? I don't think
you can do that unless you actually see someone smoking can
you?”

“There's nobody in here is there but no, I
don't have to because the evidence is right there on the
floor!”

“What evidence?”

“The cigarette butts all over the floor,
look!”

“Maybe we're seeing two different things
because all I see is evidence of our complying with the law.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The cigarettes butts are clear evidence that
my employees are doing their jobs. As I understand the code, if the
signs are up, as they are, it's not actually an offense for us to
have someone light a cigarette because we can't control what an
individual does but it is an offense for us not to tell them to put
it out when we see it. You might be able to give them a ticket if
they lit up in front of you, I don't know, but all we can do is to
ask them to put it out, the butts are here because my staff caught
them smoking and asked them to extinguish their cigarette which
they did, on the floor, that makes us in compliance, correct?”

“I guess, but these are all smoked down,
look.”

“Well, my employees can't be everywhere at
once, that would be unreasonable, I may have to fight this
one.”

The Fire Marshall gave up because he wasn't
going to win. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and I could
tell from the glint in Trevor's eye that he was enjoying himself.
Trevor confessed to me later that his real intention was to
distract the Marshall from a broken Exit sign further down, a more
serious offense.

The Flying Bottle

Amyl Nitrate is a relatively innocuous drug
better known on the street as Rush or Poppers. It's a pungent
liquid, sold in small bottles and very popular in certain sections
of the gay community. The general idea is that when it is inhaled,
it dilates the blood vessels giving a light headed feeling and
supposedly, it also relaxes the muscles and enhances orgasm; the
effect is very temporary. Although it is still a restricted
substance in Australia, it is considered by the police to be
relatively harmless and thus, is sold openly in sex shops around
The Cross. Amyl can be touchy in storage and needs to be kept
refrigerated so the Palace had a small bar refrigerator behind the
counter for that purpose. It was a popular item, especially on
weekends and I sold plenty of it but it was not something that I
would ever personally think of using.

I had my first direct experience of how Amyl
Nitrate affects the body when I tossed a drunk out of the club one
night and he turned on me. After a minor scuffle, I walked the guy
outside and as I turned around to go back in, he called out to me.
I saw the bottle in his hand but it didn't register quick enough.
He threw the bottle at me, I jumped back but not far enough and the
bottle hit ground, breaking right in front of me. Amyl is meant to
be sniffed in small doses and here I was, inhaling the best part of
a full bottle.