Room Service (14 page)

‘And you other bastards stop writing whingeing letters and recognise the truth when you see it. Especially about death. And Berry Tonge especially.'

 

Heinz Laverte

 

‘Sirs, Maybe T. S. Eliot, the poet, can be allowed the last and lingering words on the death of Berry Tonge:

Berry was much posssessed by death

And saw the skull beneath the skin …

He knew the anguish of the sorrow

The ague of the skeleton;

No contact possible with the flesh

Allayed the bone.

 

‘As one who knew Berry Tonge, I think that his poem answers the “all he needed was a shoulder to cry on” letter writers.'

 

Percy Routage

 

‘Sirs, So much for the self-claimed honesty of this Francois Blase. In the obituary (March 6) he says that he never reads his own writing and then on April 9 in his abject apology, he says he does read his own writing.

‘I think he now stands exposed.'

 

One of the Seven

 

‘Sirs, Your paper has caused me much anguish over the last weeks, with its bickering over the death of Berry Tonge. I was in his Encounter Group, which still has three meetings to go. As Leader of the Group, Berry Tonge kept me going with his words and exuded love. He was always able to say something apt.

‘Now you tell me that he has taken his own life. Can this be some sort of joke? I must say I scarcely understand the humour of your paper.

‘What of me and the Encounter Group? Can your poets and clever readers tell me where this leaves me vis-a-vis Berry Tonge and his Philosophy? This is Not a Joke.'

 

(Name withheld by request)

 

Discussion of this subject is now concluded. Ed.

Notes:

For the old
Thor
and then for the
Bulletin
I wrote a column called ‘Around the Laundromats' – a commentary on inner-city living. But Westinghouse objected to the use of the word Laundromat in the column, it being a trade name and not a common noun. The column in that format came to an end. I include one column for the sake of the record and because it was a column I loved to write.

 

Ward and I were sitting in the laundromat in our sweaters, swimming shorts, shoes without socks, along with the rest of the Balmainians, who had all their washable clothes in the machines.

Bill Beard the Balmain Poet says that laundromats should be nudist so that one could wash everything. Laundry is a metaphorical shedding of skins.

It had been raining that week and consequently the laundro mat was like a congested nose with non-laundromat mothers using the driers for their nappies.

One of the laundromat TV-club was there – people who spread their laundry over a few nights to watch the TV because they don't own a set.

‘You know,' I said to Ward, ‘people are more and more dropping off their laundry to be done rather than doing it themselves. It's killing off the village communal laundry spirit. The spirit of the laundromat.'

‘Who gives a stuff?' said Ward, who has no sentimentality.

‘People who haven't time to sit around their village laundro mat yarning must lead very urgent lives,' I said. ‘They also miss out on the ritual of rejuve nation. It is the decline of public idleness.'

‘Who gives a stuff?' said Ward.

‘But in old photographs of the city you see people lounging on park benches, sitting in the gutter, leaning against verandah poles.'

‘Unemployment,' said Ward, ‘you'll see the photographs again.'

‘I suppose this year at Orientation Week at the University they won't have the Gay Kissing stall,' I said. ‘Remember the 50 cents To-Kiss-a-Gay stall?'

I felt nostalgic. ‘Everything's changing.'

Ward snorted.

‘The year before, the Gay Liberationists ran the fairy-floss machine at the University of New South Wales: “Get your fairy floss from a real fairy.” I guess that won't be there either.'

I pointed out to Ward that a guy was washing his ‘White Power' National Action T-shirt while at the same time in the adjoining machine a Land Rights T-shirt was going through. We get a lot of messages in the Balmain Laundromat.

‘The laundromat is neutral,' I remarked thoughtfully.

‘Everyone gets dirty,' Ward said.

‘Elemental bonding,' I said, ‘the dirty laundry attests to our common mong.'

‘Overload,' Ward said, nodding at our machine.

The drum out-of-balance light came on and there was an embarrassing, noisy thumping, as the Norge came to a concentric stop. I'd tried to fit our laundry in two machines. I was embarrassed by this display of laundromat incompetence but no one looked. People never look at each other's laundry.

The TV, the old magazines, are all what Irving Goffman called ‘involvement shields'.

Although the laundromat is a ‘loose situation', in that you can wear whatever you want, it is also the performance of a personal act in a public place.

It is, consequently, not a place for eye contact or face engagement; you should not, as an act of propriety, look at other people's dirty laundry.

This would be a ‘situational impropriety'.

This was why Ward and I felt unable to tell the young man not to put bleach in with his blankets. To do this would be to let on that we were watching him – were laundry pervs.

If you take newspapers into a laundromat they are taken when you go over to your machine because people treat all reading matter as communal in the laundromat.

I spread the laundry over three machines this time.

We sat there grooving on a three-machine wash and all its rhythm.

‘You know, Ward, we should always have a three-machine wash – it is a better show. All that machinery pounding away for us.'

The cycles of the three machines were in unison like the click-clack of three tap dancers.

‘What do you use with coloureds?' Ward queried.

The question surprised me, we were both Laundromat experts. ‘Warm wash, cold rinse, no bleach,' I said.

‘No,' he said, with a black smile, ‘cattle prods.'

I groaned, ‘You can be gaoled for that now – now that virtue is to be imposed by pious tribunals.'

I told Ward that the Norge washing machines were made in Alabama, by black labour.

‘So what?'

‘Well, Professor Knight pointed out that as a joke the machine is called “Norge”, which is an anagram of negro.'

Ward drew my attention to a couple both wearing Nuclear Disarmament badges. ‘You notice,' Ward said, ‘she operates the washing machines, loads it and puts in the soap, while he holds the baby, but when she returns, he hands her the baby and goes on reading his magazine. He doesn't get off his arse.'

‘But he's only here to hold the baby while she puts the washing in the machine – and to carry the laundry home – that's his job,' I said.

The soap dispenser had begun to run uncontrollably. There was no attendant around. We all just looked at it. All of us had machines going and couldn't benefit from the free soap. It reminded me of the fable about
the salt-making machine that would not stop and that the owner threw into the sea, thus giving us salt water.

Ward and I talked about the bicentenary – Ward believed it to be an ideal time for us to abandon the flag and the anthem.

‘As a contribution to internationalism?' I said, ‘Cute.'

‘No,' said Ward with disgust, ‘as a contribution to tribalism. There is no bloody nation. We have to acknowledge the identities of smaller groups.'

We went over to the coffee vendo-mat for a break.

We put our wash into the driers, checking that we hadn't left any socks behind.

People came and went, leaving their laundry to be done. The attendant had now fixed the broken soap-dispenser.

For a time, Ward and I had hoped that the laundromat was the beginning of the New Communalism – a movement away from a million little people doing a million little washes in a million little machines. We hoped for a re-birth of village life around the laundromat.

Whitlam had wanted it. Maybe if he'd stayed on …

We went to get our clothes from the dryer – as usual the jeans and towels were still a trifle damp.

Ward searched the driers for loose change that might have fallen from our clothing pockets. Or anyone's clothing.

Silently we stuffed the cleaned clothes into the blue laundry bags and walked home – the last of the laundromat communalists and public idlers.

This is a cautionary tale and a test. The cautionary tale is for bon vivants and the test is for cadet journalists.

In the role of Francois Blase, bon vivant and celebrated author, I was celebrating the publication of my latest book and had gathered around me my closest friends, Rosemary Creswell, my agent, and Murray Sime, my taxation lawyer – a far-sighted combination, even if it does indicate a certain limitation in human relationships on my part. We were in a merry mood, the champagne flowing, they doing private calculations in their heads (they together own 20 per cent of my life), and I on my feet making a fine speech, when a snapper bone in my throat stopped me in mid-flourish.

At first this seemed very funny for my luncheon guests, who fell into indulgent, but hearty laughter.

They laughed while I, caught mid-word, champagne glass in hand, began to stagger backwards, choking.

After their laughter died down they began exuberant back-slapping and folk remedies such as swallowing bread (I was later to learn that bread sometimes breaks the fishbone off leaving a piece of bone embedded in the throat). I went on choking.

At last, their meal ticket dying before their eyes, my friends became serious. The restaurant kindly put the
snapper back in the oven and, champagne glass in hand, tears in my eyes, Murray walked me across the road to Balmain Hospital. I remembered that the singer Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich.

He signed me in and went back to finish his lunch with Rosemary, my only consolation being that one of them had to pay.

The young doctor in Casualty well understood my problem, but said there was little that could be done ‘manually'. However, he said cheerfully that he'd read my books and they were terrific.

Finding it difficult to talk I simply kissed his hands appreciatively.

As he wheeled me to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist he talked about the books, but the more he talked the more it became obvious that the book he was talking about was not my book
The Americans
,
Baby
, but Craig McGregor's
Up Against the Wall
,
America.

Being unable to correct him, I could only nod glumly, smile weakly, gesture impotently.

I thought: I am going to die a bizarre newsworthy death like Mama Cass, and Craig McGregor is going to get all the publicity.

The young doctor got onto jazz – evidently McGregor wrote about jazz – and then left, giving me a thumbs-up gesture and saying, ‘You can give me a 12-string Gibson anytime you like.'

A 12-string Gibson???!!! A 12-string Gibson …???

I've drunk a Gibson, but I've never played a Gibson.

While I waited for the specialist I noticed that my name had been mis-spelled, but at least it wasn't down as McGregor. My name is so often mis-spelled I may as well change it to Francois Blase.

The specialist squirted anaesthetic into my throat, which made me feel even sicker, and then tried manually to locate the bone, but failed because my throat kept expelling him and his instruments.

He accused me of being tense.

He concluded that he would have to put me under a full anaesthetic and operate. As punishment for being tense.

He wrote my name down, mis-spelled it, asked me my date of birth and wrongly calculated that I was 32, which at first was alright by me, but then worried me because I feared that the dose of anaesthetic was calculated by age and that I would die from an overdose, or worse, I would receive an ‘under dose', which would immobilise me but not kill the pain. I would lie there, unable to move or speak, while they operated and I felt it all.

I was wheeled by a nurse to the Admissions Office where I was asked questions that I could not answer – not only was I having trouble vocally, but the questions, while technically quite simple, could not adequately snare the mess of my life.

She asked me for my next-of-kin and I hesitated because my parents were holidaying in the Pacific Islands so it would be useless to name them; but even if they were home they wouldn't know who Craig McGregor
was when the police called with the bad news.

‘What about wife?' she asked. Well, I was married very young and I have never bothered to get divorced, although we had lived apart for years and she is living in London. I couldn't explain this to her, but to say ‘yes' to ‘married' meant that I had to give my wife's address, which I didn't have. I shook my head in reply to the question, which was technically a lie, but more the truth – if you know what I mean.

I began to give my father as next-of-kin, but she asked me for his address and telephone number, which I did not know, but had written in my address book, which I did not have. She looked at me severely and put down ‘care of the police'.

She asked me what rent I paid, and I didn't know because I pay a year in advance. I wanted to say, ‘Look I'm dying here, can we do the questions when I'm being discharged?'

She asked me which medical fund I belonged to and I couldn't remember.

She asked me my weekly wage and I couldn't answer because I don't have a weekly wage, but I was now so desperate to have an answer to something that I invented a figure. She seemed to disbelieve me anyhow.

She was by now suspicious of my identity and asked me in a pointed tone who Francois Blase was. Murray as some sort of joke had written Francois Blase in brackets or vice versa on the form
he
filled in.

I am drowning in saliva. I am slipping into shock, my heart is racing, my skin is cold.

I made an agonised face at her and spelled out silently ‘J-O-K-E'. She sniffed.

She decided to let me into the hospital, however, despite my unsatisfactory mark in the Admission Exam.

While being wheeled back to the ward I pondered the technical question of ‘who am I' and so forth – every piece of information in the hands of the hospital was now either wrong, dysfunctional, or to my disadvantage. Some was technically correct, but misleading; some technically wrong, but true.

I was next dressed in surgical gown, leggings and a surgical nappy, and an identity bracelet placed on my wrist.

I was very glad to see the bracelet. It said my name was ‘Moorehouse', my age was 36, and the address on the bracelet was not my home address, but the address of the Volunteer Restaurant where I had been having lunch.

I was rather desperate to clear up the age question because I had convinced myself that this was crucial in determining drug dosage.

But if I did die, my next-of-kin would not be at home, my body would be delivered to a restaurant, and Craig McGregor would get all the publicity.

The nursing aides who dressed me in the operating gown asked me if I was married. Were they trying to trick me into giving the ‘correct' answer – were they in conspiracy with the admissions clerk?

If I wasn't married, why not?

Was this aimed to determine if I was homosexual – and what different sorts of treatment did homosexuals get? Better treatment or worse? What about AIDS? Would I be put in an airtight, isolated room and handled only by remote-control, bionic arms?

If I were 36, which I wasn't, and unmarried, was I therefore suspected of homosexuality and treated thus? I told them I was married. Would they like me to contact my wife? No. Why not?

I saw then, quite clearly, poetically, that the whole world, every one of us, is adrift in a sea of misinformation and misunderstanding.

A Resident came to my bed and asked me more questions. He asked me, for instance, when I was last in hospital, which I mis-answered unintentionally because I had forgotten about an incident in the country thirteen years ago. I told him my correct age and he wrote it down, but what about all the other forms – would it be corrected on those as well? He looked at me oddly and wrote something on his sheet, which I feared was against me.

I lied to him about the food I'd eaten that day because I couldn't bring myself to tell him I'd had a Big Mac and a beer for breakfast. Francois Blase is happy to tell the doctor about the Moet champagne and the kidneys in wine for lunch, but he can't bring himself to tell about the Big Mac. But it wasn't only snobbery. It would again be dangerously misleading to tell him about the beer and the Big Mac. I had never before in my life had a beer and a Big Mac for breakfast.
He would assume that I had a bad diet and was an alcoholic. A train of medical assumptions would follow and I would be put on the wrong drip and given the wrong dosages of all sorts of things.

How I came to have a Big Mac and beer for breakfast would take a long time to explain. This was a case where the correct information could be dangerously misleading, so I lied about breakfast.

All the way to the operating theatre I believed that I had been mistaken for someone else – some other ‘Moorhouse' or ‘Moorshouse' or ‘Moorehouse' who had gangrene and was to have his leg amputated. Or a certain ‘Francois' who had AIDS.

I indicated over and over again to the wardsman, the nurse, the anaesthetist and the specialist that I had a bone in my throat and please not my leg, or whatever they amputate in cases of AIDS. I used emphatic gesticulation and mime – mimed a swimming fish with my hand, mimed eating with a knife and fork, I gave a great re-enactment of me giving a speech, pain in the throat, choking.

The operation found no fishbone, but they said they could see where it had been.

A few days later, when I visited the specialist for a check-up, he found that he had no card for me.

That did not surprise me.

But then he said, ‘Oh, this must be you,' looking at a card, ‘it's the right complaint, but the wrong name.' How would he know that? I didn't ask if the name he had was Francois McGregor. I didn't care.

He told me that bon vivants should not order fish when they are in an excited or celebratory mood.

Now for the test for cadet journalists. How would you get the correct name, age and address of the patient, given that the doctor in Casualty would have been genuinely helpful and told you I was Craig McGregor?

It would have been no good asking the patient, when he had a fishbone stuck in his throat, was in philosophical confusion about his identity, saw himself as Francois Blase, bon vivant, and thought he was dying like Mama Cass.