Pants on Fire (2 page)

I had been invited to this fixture in Sydney's alternative social calendar just a few nights before, when I'd met its host, Danny Green, at a special preview of an exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum.

I wasn't aware I knew Danny until he bustled over to me, with three cameras around his neck, kissed me warmly on both cheeks, and pushed me together with two total strangers to take our picture. I had no idea why and it seemed rude to ask. He seemed very nice, whoever he was.

“Oh and Georgie,” he'd said, after asking how to spell my name and ignoring my repeated corrections of “Georgia, not Georgie, Georgia.” “You must come to my Australia Day party this weekend. Everyone comes—you'll love it. You can meet all of Sydney in one go. It's in my studio and the only rules are: wear a hat and bring a bottle. I lay on the tea. Everyone lays on top of everyone else.”

He whooped with laughter and thrust an invitation at me, featuring a picture of him in a Mad Hatter's topper with a condom tucked into the band, holding a black poodle wearing the same.

“And the great thing is,” he added, conspiratorially, “even though it's on a Sunday, everyone's got the Monday off, so we can get as trashed as we like.”

When I got home that night I called the only person I felt I'd really got to know in the two weeks I'd been in Sydney, to find out if I should go or not.

Liinda Vidovic was the features writer at
Glow
magazine, where I worked. It's a monthly glossy aimed at eighteen- to twenty-six-year-old women and full of useful information about orgasms, lipstick with the precise anatomy of the male sexual organs. Following our advice, conscientious readers of
Glow
could learn to jog in high heels, lose weight through multiple orgasms, exercise their stomach muscles while delivering the perfect blow job and balance their cheque books while flirting with the boss (male or female, we advocate flirting with everyone, even dogs and inanimate objects).

When I came in as deputy editor, Liinda and I bonded on sight because we had the same Prada handbag. (I didn't find out until later that hers was a Bangkok fake.) I was also intrigued to find out that she'd changed her name from Linda to Liinda by deed poll, because it was more fortuitous in numerology, one of the many
ologies
which rule her life.

Bag aside, Liinda was also thrilled to meet me because she knew I'd arrived from London with a severely broken heart. Liinda loves emotional catastrophes more than anything. There's always the chance she might get a feature idea out of them. I was shaping up to be “If You Leave the Country, Will He Leave Your Heart?,” which was definite coverline material. And coverlines are everything on a magazine like
Glow.
As the editor, Maxine Thane, is always telling us: “Coverlines are what sell magazines, girls. Not all the shit inside.”

I did believe Liinda liked me—she had done my astrological chart within an hour of our meeting and announced with glee that we were destined to have an intense, supportive friendship punctuated with major dramas, because she is a triple Scorpio and I am a Gemini with Scorpio rising. But I was also aware of the coverline factor, although I couldn't really blame her—my romantic disaster was a gothic horror.

The man I had come to Australia to forget is called Rick (rhymes with . . .) Robinson. What can I tell you about him? He's the senior art director at a major London advertising agency. Very highly paid, very good looking (black hair, blue eyes, devastating smile, that kind of thing), very bright, very successful, very groovy. We'd been together for five years and were, in fact, “engaged” (a “hideously” bourgeois term, according to Rick). But it wasn't his impressive CV and vintage Mercedes convertible that attracted me—I really loved Rick. He was funny. He was thoughtful. He was an Exocet missile I bed.

And yes, it was too good to be true . . . I came home one evening ready for a cosy night in front of a video, but when I hit play on what I thought was
Roman Holiday,
I was treated instead to a home video of Rick strutting around naked, flexing a cane, while a melon-breasted hooker dressed as a schoolgirl lolled on our sofa. She wasn't wearing any knickers.

Rick had been surprised when I left him (“I didn't think you'd mind, George . . .”). So were my friends—he was rich, nice
and
good looking, was I crazy? I'd never felt saner. Although I felt slightly less sane two years later, when I was still single—and Rick was living with one of my erstwhile friends. I was lonely, I was horny and I bloody well missed him.

Then, one particularly gloomy London December day—the kind when the grey sky sits on your head like a tight hat—Tina, the Australian picture editor on
Kitty
magazine (where I was working at the time), came to my rescue. I was sitting in my office sobbing—as you do—because I had just opened
Country Life
to a page announcing the engagement of yet another dumb, bun-faced girl I'd been to school with (to the heir to a minor earldom).

“What you need,” said Tina, understanding the situation in an instant, “is some sunshine and a good root.” Then, after explaining what a “root” was, she told me she'd heard there was a job going back in Sydney on
Glow.
I stopped crying immediately. A little ray of sunlight lit up my brain. I already knew the mag and loved it. We had it airmailed over to the
Kitty
office every month, so we could rip off all their ideas. I'd love to work on
Glow,
I decided—and wasn't Sydney full of gorgeous men who looked like Mel Gibson, but taller?

I applied for the job straightaway, had a five-minute phone conversation with the editor and took it. The starting date was in one month's time. My friends thought I'd gone nuts again. But I knew exactly what I was doing—I'd read
A Town Like Alice,
I knew what happened to English gels who went to Australia. They met marvellous men with strong forearms who tipped their hats, saved your life and then took you off to live in a house surrounded by verandahs on a farm as big as Wales. I could hardly wait.

After two weeks in Sydney I hadn't met him yet, and I wondered if Danny Green's Australia Day party might be a good hunting ground. So I got on the phone to ask Liinda's opinion.

“Danny Green?” she said in her gravelly voice, the product of several daily packets of Marlboro and a fair helping of affectation. “Yes, I know him. He's a half-witted social photographer—you'll probably be in the
Sun-Herald
party pages, how embarrassing for you. Danny Green knows every junkie model, society hooker, ageing hack, corrupt magazine editor, actor-turned-waitress, bitter fashion designer, trust-fund bunny, coke-addicted stockbroker, anorexic hairdresser, closet queen, career bullshitter and bum bandit in town.

“He's famous for parties which I'm told resemble the last days of the court of Caligula. You're guaranteed to leave with your IQ three points lower than when you arrived. I'd rather walk naked through the David Jones cosmetics hall than go to one. You'll love it.”

 

 

Looking round at the heaving mass of people, squealing and air-kissing each other under their hats, Liinda's assessment of the crowd seemed pretty accurate. And she was right, I did love it. These posturing queens and chic, bitter women, all simultaneously smoking, drinking and shouting, clearly intent on embracing oblivion as soon as possible, were exactly my kind of people. Brittle, brilliant, pretentious, original, bitchy, hilarious, worn out, vicious, warm. Where fashion, art and the media collide, I thought. Home.

“What a lovely smile. You must be thinking about something you like.” Standing next to me at the drinks table was a man who looked like something from a 1960s' Qantas travel poster. Dark blond hair, ridiculously white teeth, a perfectly judged sprinkling of freckles and blue eyes with regulation issue Aussie bloke crinkly edges, the whole package twinkling out from underneath a very battered and bent Akubra hat.

“Actually, I was thinking how much I like parties,” I replied.

“Is that right? So do I. Wanna dance?”

Without waiting for a reply, or even a change of expression, he grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd to an area where people were throwing themselves around like lunatics. A lot of the men had their shirts off and their hands over their heads, all the better to show off their washboard stomachs and chunky upper arms.

“Billy Ryan,” he shouted into my ear as he spun me into an accomplished rock and roll turn, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were dancing to hardcore techno.

“Georgia . . .”

As he pushed me away into another spin I was able to get my first good look at him. In stark contrast to the rest of the crowd, who were clad in skin-tight T-shirts, lacy slip dresses, or general designer black, Billy Ryan was dressed in what I'd only recently found out were called moleskin pants, with riding boots and a blue and white striped shirt. It should have been dorky, but it suited him so well it didn't matter. In fact, he looked bloody gorgeous. He didn't seem the type who'd ask a girl in a pink Pucci catsuit to dance, but he did look like he might have a house with verandahs round it, so I wasn't arguing.

“It looks like quite a few horses have trodden on that hat,” I said, as he whirled me into his arms and rocked me from side to side.

“They have. And quite a few cows.”

“Are you a farmer?”

“Only at weekends.”

“What do you do during the week?”

“I'm a stockbroker.”

I took advantage of a two-hand double up-and-under to hide my grin. A good-looking broker who liked the country enough to have his own farm. This was the kind of man I'd been searching for. Someone like me, who loved the fast pace of the city but also needed to escape into nature. Someone who liked horses and gardens as well as dancing and parties. This was the man I had come to Australia to meet. A million miles from Mr. Advertising Genius and his taste for jail-bait. A man with solid values, good teeth and a sheepdog. Just perfect for a girl like Georgia.

By the time he pulled me into a waltz hold I was wondering where to get the towels embroidered. B&GR—a very nice monogram, good round letters. Georgiana Ryan, how do you do? I was considering names for our second son and worrying about where to send him to school when Billy stuck his tongue in my mouth. A real oral invasion. Squirmy and slimy, like a conger eel, not at all erotic.

“You're a great dancer,” he said, while I gaped at him, speechless. “I'll find you later for another boogie,” he added, kissing me again, this time on the cheek, and then he just left me, alone on the dance floor.

Still too stunned to say anything, I watched him go over to a tall, lean fellow, wearing the same kind of hat, who was standing by the wall. The tall guy shook Billy's hand enthusiastically and then they did some kind of primitive display of male bonding that involved a lot of back-slapping and grinning and head-shaking. I wished David Attenborough was around to do the commentary. Whatever they were up to, they both seemed to find something very amusing. I sincerely hoped it wasn't me and began to wonder whether coming to a party full of strangers had been such a good idea.

As they disappeared into the next room, still slapping and grinning, I caught sight of a familiar penis on the other side of the studio and made for it. I was just about to tap Jasper flirtatiously on the shoulder when I realised he was holding court to a group of about ten people crammed on an old sofa. I stood to one side to watch.

“Then Toohey comes into the room, like this . . .” Jasper crossed his eyes and trudged with bended knees, his teeth in the goofy position.

“ ‘I jus' wanna kiss ya, Raylene,' ” he said in an exaggerated Australian accent. “ ‘I jus' wanna kiss ya. I won't do nothin' else, I promise, Raylene.”

Then he stood up straight, stuck out his bum and chest and pouted. “So Raylene says, ‘Well, you can kiss me, Toohey, but don't touch me hair.' ”

His eyes blazing, arms waving around as he made his points, Jasper held his audience rapt.

“. . . So that's the whole point,” he continued. “Toohey is all of us. He's the quintessential Australian. When he can't tell Raylene he loves her, he is all of Australia—he's a kangaroo, he's a jackaroo, he's an Aboriginal kid playing with a stick, he's Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue and Natalie Imbruglia on smack, he's a Mardi Gras queen with a sparkly jock-strap up his arse, he's a shark, a dingo, a traffic cop in tight pants, a Bondi lifesaver and a bent Kings Cross copper, he's John bloody Howard in drag, he's the Harbour Bridge, a Harry's pie, he's Ray Martin, John Laws and Molly Meldrum having a threesome . . .”

“But where does the Turkish bread come in?” asked a tiny woman in a severe black dress, wearing a fez.

“What Turkish bread?” said Jasper, annoyed at the interruption.

“The Turkish bread that has to feature in every short film for it to be shown in Tropfest this year.”

“Oh, that. I haven't decided yet. Maybe Toohey will step on it and fall over . . .”

“Maybe he'll choke on it and we won't have to listen to his painful dialogue,” said a voice from behind the sofa which I immediately recognised as Antony Maybury's.

“And whose camera are you using this year?” asked a man with a thin mouth and a thick moustache, wearing a Key West baseball cap. “Tony Abrovmo told me you didn't give his camera back for months last year and he wasn't going to lend it to you ever again.”

“And haven't you already missed the deadline for this year's films?” said the fez woman.

As the crowd broke up into sniggering groups Jasper caught sight of me. “Hey Pinkie, there you are!” he cried, clearly glad of a distraction. “Come with me. I've got something to show you.”