Madness

David Walliams plays a character in the television series Little Britain who walks through scenes making 'boock boock' noises ... clucking noises ... like a chicken. 'She' is one of the least sentimental characters in what is most certainly one of the bleakest of scenarios in the show ... and I have always been curious about the likely motivations for her inclusion - but no more so than this afternoon, when, on my way to the office with my takeaway coffee, a woman was walking along behind me making identical sounds. I glanced over my shoulder to see whether someone was taking the piss, as it were ... but no. Here, on Chapel Street (the very epicentre of Melbourne's Fashionista set and an almost impossibly ironic choice of location), was a woman as mad as the day is long, clucking away while strolling along the footpath.

Our little gaggle of pedestrians arrived at a set a traffic lights and a Little Red Walking Man. Others, perhaps as bemused and bewildered as I, moved out of her way. Some struck a pose of airhead aloofness ... others giggled. I looked on with a sanctimonious, self-rightedness pity. As the Little Red Walking Man was replaced by a Little Green Walking Man, we all stood completely still. Mad Woman glanced briefly from the middle-distance surrounding her to the ground and said "I hate going first". As I stepped from the footpath onto the road, Mad Woman followed and began to cluck away again.

My thought, as I wandered down a side-street toward my office was: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

****

Madness has always fascinated me. A large number of characters in plays I have written could quite easily, if not a little too lazily, be described as 'Mad'. I wrote a play many years ago called Memories, Melodies and Madness which enjoyed a world premiere in London (and great reviews!) and a season in Melbourne.

In the play, four dead women relive the final night of their lives and, guided and encouraged by a Virgil character, are given the opportunity to take responsibility for each of their roles in their shared tragedy and cross over to the Afterlife. One of the characters succeeds. The others do not ... and for them, their fate is to continue to re-live the final night until they are at peace with their responsibility for what occurred. As the character who was finally at peace began to cross-over into her new life, the play began again - playing identically to the way the performance had started. It was my interpretation of the Catholic 'Purgatory' ... the Christians' 'Hell'.

In London, it received rave reviews and played to packed houses. In Melbourne, at the height of an unseasonal Melbourne heatwave (such is my fucking luck!) we had to cancel several performances due to the fact that the old theatre we were performing in had no air-conditioning which resulted in a temperature in the back few rows of raked seating of close to 40°C.

At the conclusion of one performance, as the play 'began again', a woman in the audience suddenly realised what was happening. She let loose with an audible gasp of recognition and an almost painful whimper of realisation ... as the lights snapped to black. She sat in her seat in the theatre for almost half an hour after the performance had ended ... staring at the stage. The rest of the audience had long since left and she remained - at one with the work and her experience of it.

I have been incredibly fortunate to experience a number of moments like this throughout the many years I spent making theatre. There was the young man who, upon seeing my play The World ... According to Timothy Cross promptly returned to another performance with his Mum, having gone home and 'come out' to her. He brought his Mum to see my play because he believed that the experience of it would be something that would inform her understanding of who her son was ... and what he was going through.

****

At some point in the not too distant past, something else came to mean something more to me than the collection of these experiences I was proudly gathering to keep my heart and soul fed and at peace.

I wish I knew what it was.

The Others

Scene: The exterior of a small yellow terrace house, hiding behind an almost overgrown garden in a narrow street. Albert Park, Melbourne. Late on a Sunday afternoon. Autumn.

I had arrived at the offices of my newspaper - Brother Sister - to work on the next edition. I have no idea where I had been, but the ritual of working and sleeping at our quaint little Albert Park terrace was well and truly ingrained. There was no other way it was possible. And I loved it. We had moved from the office in the city to the terrace in Albert Park, partly, to trim our overheads. Inner-city rents were increasingly tough on our new masthead, and our income had started to fluctuate. Quite dramatically. We bought dinners out and take-away coffees in during the Dance Party Season and bought Nescafé and boiled rice in at every other time of the year. The gay communities' obsessions with cocks, sex and dance parties has tortured every one of my titles to a inexorably slow, painful and inevitable death. It's now quite impossible for me to imagine that there is something else. Because there isn't.

But I digress.

I knew, instinctively, that I was in trouble. The man sitting behind the steering wheel of his parked car was trying not to watch what I was doing. Our address was published and public knowledge - and there was something about the look on his face ... and his vain attempt at not to be seen watching me. An abstract study of my every move.

My business partner and I had discussed not publishing our physical address. Just a PO Box. Safe. But we wanted our new masthead to be accessible. Visible. The opposite of anonymous. The edict of the day was: 'Yes we are gay and we exist! Get used to it!' - and the single greatest statement we could make was to stake our claim in the heart of quirky little Albert Park, and be proud of the fact. A perfect and worthy sentiment ... but not when some fag-hating psychopath is parked outside your suddenly not quite so commercially imperative statement of vibrant community pride and visibility.

There was only one way in and out of our tiny little terrace and I considered not going inside. His intention was palpable. A grim cross-examination. I was frightened ... and cautiously glancing over my shoulder, I fussed around in my bag for the keys to the door. The sound of a car door opening would be like a gunshot. I would be off, through the shrubs and - hopefully - out of his reach. I would race to the police station ... which was where? The shops, yes, just around the corner to the shops. Even with a bullet I would make it. Unless he possessed the skills of a marksman, in which case 'it' wouldn't matter.

My keys are in my hand ... fished out of my bag and waved around in full view like a white flag. Why was I making it so easy for him? Was my subconscious engaged in an act of unconditional surrender? Fags always have been, and always will be, easy targets. I would go inside and into my office, I decided. My office was the front room with an almost uninterrupted view of the street through a large window. I would stand by my couch, next the window, with my telephone in my hand. I would establish eye contact with the murderer outside ...

I drop the phone. The man behind the steering wheel has become the man walking along our front verandah to our front door with what appears to be several copies of my newspaper in his hand. I drop to the floor and reach for the receiver with the tips of my fingers. Got it! I pull the receiver toward me and the telephone crashes from my desk onto the floor ... taking my in-trays and out-trays prisoner. Fuck! Make some noise why don't you!?

My Fate (and my impending demise) is punctuated by a tentative knock on the door. Of course serial killers knock! Tentatively. 'It all seemed so ordinary Officer ... like he wanted to be my friend ...'

Another knock.

Silence.

My murderer presses his face to the window. Something akin to a determination not to be seen cowering on the floor like a weak, spineless poof forces me onto my feet. He holds the copies of my newspaper up to the window. I consider, for a moment, denying they're mine. If I hadn't have been so proud I could have pretended to be the cleaner!

"I want to talk to you about these."

He's uncertain ... uncomfortable. Is the desperation his now, not mine? When did that happen? But yes, the power has quite suddenly shifted ... and I instantly forget that glass is breakable.

"What about them?"

"Do you work here?"

"Yes. It's my newspaper."

"Then I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

A confused pause.

"About where I found these."

Cryptic.

Interesting.

"Can I talk to you?"

There is something about his vulnerability that forces me to consider opening the door. Vulnerable men are uncommon in my experience. There is a need to know ... to understand something that lies beyond his comprehension. This man is unique. He hasn't made up his mind about something he knows absolutely nothing about. He has no information. No opinion.

He is grateful when I do, finally, open the door, and he comes into our office - head bowed slightly, as though in reverent observation of my power ... my influence over his dilemma. His is obviously a nagging question built on disturbing doubt.

I gesture to the couch in my office. He slumps into it and rests his copies of my newspaper on his lap. I sit at my desk. There is no time, or reason, for pleasantries.

"I found these ... "

He can't continue. And I can't guess.

"In my son's room."

How do you confirm a father's worst nightmare?

"He's 16."

There is something that connects us - this stranger and I ... a singular indescribable energy I have never experienced since. It remains unique to this moment in my life, and probably his. I don't know if he is going to cry. I don't know if I am going to. He wants to look at me, but can't. I don't want to look at him, but can. I wait while he glances around my office.

Where is your son now?

He's out ... with his friends.

And his mother?

She didn't want to come. She didn't want me to come. She's very upset.

I understand.

He mistakes my youthfully naive attempt at empathy for blatant condescenion.

Do you?

He brandishes his copies of my newspaper ...

You publish this ... stuff! Don't you have any responsibility for where it ends up?

He is looking for a reason to explode. An admission of guilt in the safety of which he can admit his own. He doesn't know why, but someone must be made accountable. (Certain) men and their fear of curiousity. Their wholesale rejection of 'other'. But something about this man is different. I don't recognise it ... and I am suddenly certain that neither does he. Something else is at stake here - and, for me anyway, it is the safety of his son.

Yes.

And?

We publish this newspaper to let people know that there are others who are the same ...

The same? The same as what?

... as them. We publish news and information about ...

I've read what you publish. My son is 16.

And you're worried that your son is gay.

Shouldn't I be?

It's not only gay people who read our newspaper.

A flicker of hope I am wrong to encourage. But I am out of my depth. I've heard stories about the hatred and condemnation that can result in one of 'our' young 'coming out' to their parents. It comes with the territory. I am overwhelmed by statistics and hyperbole about youth suicide. Agit-prop. No-one really knows because dead baby poofs tell no tales. It's supposition, mostly. Riddled with cliché but powered by truth and suspicion. And fact. Michael was ... different ... a loner ... a sensitive boy ... he loved his drama classes ... he was popular with all the girls in his class ... he didn't have many close male friends ... an absent father.

I see this boy. I was this boy. I spat the truth of my own homosexuality into the back of my Father's head on the tip of a poisoned dart. He was in the front seat of our car, driving. My Mother was in the front passenger's seat, grieving. I knew I had to be out of reach. And out of sight. My Father was certainly not a violent man, but like most people, he knew enough to rely almost innately on an act of unquestionable strength and aggression when confronted with something he had no other means of addressing. The last great bastion of defence against an assault on everything he understood. When action hurts harder than words.

And I know how this is going to end.

Why did you come here?

He cannot answer. His lips are tight. He puffs his cheeks. And exhales.

Because ...

I wait. With knowledge.

Because I want to understand what this means.

What do you think it means?

He looks at me for the first time.

I really have no idea.

Do you think I understand what it means?

He suddenly grips his evidence and stands up.

This was a mistake.

He is suddenly as incapable of hurting me as I am capable of hurting him. A few well-chosen words in a tightly knit phrase could disassemble him. I know. I specialise in it. But it is a finely-honed skill that is of absolutely no use to me here.

Your son may or may not be gay.

He looks at me with an un-actable look of evenly matched resentment and gratitude.

But I think he probably is. And what he's found in our newspaper is something that he connects to ... something that tells him that he is not alone. I think it is fantastic that you have taken the trouble to come here, and I wish I could tell you something easier to hear ... but I'm not sure what that might be. But if you look at those newspapers closely, you will see that there is another world ...

I think I've seen all I need to ...

... that for whatever reason, your son has connected with.

Do you have a father?

Yes.

Does he know what you do?

No.

Does he know about this newspaper of yours?

No.

Why not?

Because that whole aspect of who I am doesn't exist for him. He's a Christian. It disgusts him.

And how do you feel about that? That your own father ...

It's not important to me what he thinks. I wouldn't be running this newspaper and having this conversation with you if it did.

Disconnection. He starts to walk toward the front door and I move quickly to open it for him. I'd like him to know that even gay people have manners. I know he wants to stay longer and I know I wish I had the vocabulary to encourage him to.

He walks slowly away, along the verandah.

Don't hurt your son for this.

He stops ... and turns, barely capable of bringing himself to face me again.

"Hurt" him? Do you think I would have gone to all this trouble if I was going to "hurt" my son anymore than you've already hurt him?

How have I managed to do that?

By showing him that all that (he tosses his copies of my newspaper at my feet) is possible.

Image: Sando Botticelli's The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (First Episode).

Waves of distraction

After a brief but intense conversation with myself yesterday, I've decided that the essential purpose of my blog is to be A Journal. 'What', 'Who', 'Where' and 'When' as opposed to 'Why'. At least some of the time. I'm a little fatigued by the obsession. It's like the beginning of every love-affair, when you disappear into bed for days ... weeks ... 'making' love, kissing, holding, believing again - unquestionably - in the power of intimacy. The whisper of breath on your neck ... and the blissful ignorance of the rest of the world and all the people you knew and loved in it. Quick showers and endless embraces. The stomach is empty ... but the soul is full. And the soundtrack is Mahler. Eating, drinking, and any and every thing else become ad breaks in the 'end-of-season cliffhanger' of So, This Is Love.

Until one day, you realise you've lost the remote and you're stuck 'on' Ten. Seriously. The days of hungry embellishment become minutes of interminable obligation. The breath on your neck stinks. You run out of toothpaste. The voice cracks concrete and comes not only in another language but also from another room. The smile is toothless. The conversation is secondhand. The silence is preferable. The intimacy is acidic and the simplicity is complicated. The soundtrack is Trance. You're on SBS.

My parents called me yesterday ... our annual Easter catch-up. It goes like this: my Father tells me that the Uniting Church has decided to defend itself from the 'pressure of the gay and lesbian lobby'. "Well it's about time Daddy", I say ... without a hint of sarcasm. I am the archetypal son of a Preacher Man. It's the reason I over-react - the fatal flaw in my otherwise hopeful persona. I engage with the sentiment for two reasons: 1) I agree with, and encourage, him completely; and 2) he'll eventually put my Mother on. He and I politely ignore the fact that the chicken's a bit pink. She and I share dessert.

Maternal guidance is a quiet thing. Dads are the song and dance. Mums are the phrasing.

"Hello Geoffrey. Have you been behaving yourself?"

"Yes I have actually ... perfectly."

"Oh, what a shame. Why?"

Phwoomp. Harpooned. Again. She's famous for it ... and it's one of the things I love about her the most. Like the time she put "Cunt" on the Scrabble board and, in response to my seizure, my sister's plain-faced horror and my father's hotpot of shock, adoration and laughter, she brightly - if not somewhat rhetorically - asked: "Well, that's a word, isn't it?"

It was time to play hard. Sydney hard. It's the only way to begin to defy Mother's rather all too-clearly articulated disappointment.


The destination: Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club. The occasion: The world premiere screening of The Inaugural Surf Life Saving Association 2007 Sydney Gay + Lesbian Mardi Gras Float DVD. The relevance: I had participated (and was duly credited) by helping to dispose of 1,000 beachballs into the crowd along the parade route. The reason: Surely it's obvious.

I need to get 'off the grid' more often.

And I will write more about this wonderful evening when I stop catching sight of huge black fourteen legged spiders crawling from all directions toward my keyboard.

In the meantime ...

Stopping All Stations

Easter is such a problem. For the small business operator, it's long enough to be a 'shut down' and short enough to be a real nuisance. "We'll be 'looking at', 'thinking about', 'responding to that' after Easter" ... "That invoice won't be paid until after Easter" ... . As a child growing up in an unforgivably Christian household, Easter was a real mind-fuck. It was impossibly bleak. Shops would shut ... and gloom and doom would descend on our, otherwise, perfectly happy household. It was a veritable tsunami of interminable guilt and suffering (Friday), reverent anticipation (Saturday) and strident rejoicing (Sunday). For the Recovering Christian, Easter remains a heady mix of ingrained duty and obligation ... and like many of the rituals I still associate with the practice of Christianity, essentially one of messy contradictions. Well might the rock have been rolled away, but the Easter Eggs were (and still are) always scarce.

My father was, and still is, a preacher in the High Methodist tradition. He was also responsible for the Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil at our local church ... and every year, my faith-full Dad would draw up a roster of believers who would take it in turns to sit at the altar of our little church to ensure the single candle (symbolising our spiritual accompaniment of Jesus on the journey to his crucifixion - 'The (fourteen) Stations of The Cross') never went out. The vigil would start at 8pm on Thursday evening and end at about 9am on Friday morning when the Minister leading the Good Friday Service would extinguish the candle to symbolise Christ's death ... murder ... passing ... homecoming ... betrayal ... what you will.

My father would spend hours on the phone tending his blueprint. 'So and so' were going away ... 'so and so' were interstate ... 'so and so' would love to, but ... 'so and so' were sorry, but ... and so and so on. One year, he ended up doing four separate shifts at times of the morning that were, for the rest of the congregation, decidedly un-Godly. And while our home was always stressful, tense and complicated for the duration of this thankless task, I envied his devotion.

A short time after I had moved out of home, my mother called to tell me that my father was having great difficulty filling his Candlelight Vigil roster. I was in the thick of therapy and, possibly even writhing around on my bed like Linda Blair's 'Regan', I think I snarled something typically badly-intentioned, blasphemous and entirely lacking in irony like: "Jesus Christ! Is he still peddling that shit?" down the phone. My mother, knowing - as mothers infuriatingly do - that I treated sleeping at night with the same level of contempt as I treated my health generally, thought I may like to offer to help him out by taking the early morning slots ... those times when it was apparently inconvenient for the rest of the congregation to be up. Even though I was in the midst of fanatically despising both of my parents for the dazzling array of sins they had (not, as it turned out) commited throughout my entire childhood, I agreed to call him. After all, 3am was easy for me ... and yes mum, I'll try not to be pissed. Christ!

I rang my Candlelight Prayer Vigil Roster-fatigued father who gratefully accepted my offer to fill in the gaps. I would take over from Him, sorry, him, at 3am and 'accompany Jesus to the cross' until 9am when people would start to arrive for the Good Friday service.

The fourteen 'Stations of the Cross', as documented both in the Christian faith and my father's Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil Roster, are: 1. Jesus is condemned to death; 2. Jesus receives the cross; 3. Jesus falls the first time; 4. Jesus meets His Mother; 5. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross; 6. Veronica wipes Jesus' face with her veil; 7. Jesus falls the second time; 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem; 9. Jesus falls the third time; 10. Jesus is stripped of His garments; 11. Crucifixion - Jesus is nailed to the cross; 12. Jesus dies on the cross; 13. Jesus' body removed from the cross; and 14. Jesus is laid in the tomb. I was to take over from my father as Jesus fell for the third time and be there in faithful observation until Jesus was laid in the tomb, and the congregation had arrived to worship.

Acts of faith are decidedly loaded undertakings - where that part of the brain that qualifies our actions as meaningful and appropriate to the given circumstances, proves simply incapable of resolving the inverted equations (of which the World Trade Center 2 + 2 = 0 is the quintessential example of our age). But I was acting out my faith for the benefit of my father ... in spite of the fact that the philosophy of John Wesley's Methodism contains more than a generous strain of emotional, psychological and physical child abuse. (Years later, I would include faithfully transcribed details of Wesley's teachings relating to The Child(ren) as material evidence in a submission I was commissioned to write for the Australian Senate Enquiry into the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse). And while I certainly do not consider myself an abused child, Mind Fuck Methodism certainly defined the physicalisation and the fractures that will forever mark the complex and demanding relationship I share(d) with the Christian faith in general, and my father specifically.

Arriving at the church remains a striking memory. It was cold. I was early. I was sober. I was drug-free ... and I was rugged up and ready to draw on all of my theatrical reserves and 'do this thing'. It would be easier than television. I thought. My father was very happy to see me ... and for the briefest of moments, as we met at the altar in the flickering candlelight, his faith and my acceptance and understanding of it, was an undeniable reality. The peace and resolve was quite profound. He showed me The Prayer Book, where people had written their requests for prayer. There was the little old lady down the road who was expected to die come the resurrection. And there were others. I was to pray these collective requests ... but more than anything else, I was to be here as keeper of the candle. If it went out, I was to re-light it with a match from the box beside it. I was to be beside Jesus in his hour of need. And with that, my father left ... shortly after which I, of course, immediately fell asleep.

And on this occasion anyway, Christ died on my watch.

I woke only when the lady who had arrived with the floral arrangements was fastidiously (and perhaps intentionally a little too noisly, thank God) attending to her task. Those who know me well will understand how soundly I sleep ... and for how long ... and how hilarious it might have been watching this particular Good Friday service delivered over the prostrate, paralysed, dribbling, snoring and talking body of Geoffrey sprawled - immovable, stranded, inert and unconscious - across the altar. I didn't know where I was and, the momentary disassociation was impacted (with the velocity of an incredibly high speed head on collision between a semi-trailer and a tiny hatchback on a stretch of desolate rural single-lane highway) with fear that I could, for the first time in my life, taste. The candle had gone out.

Pulverised with fear, I very reluctantly looked up. A scattering of people were arriving and there were some already seated. I witnessed this by, not only the almost surgical quality of fluorescent light, but also by the now barely discernible but instantly recognisable flickering light of 'my' candle. Well might I have abandoned Christ in his hour(s) of need, but it would seem that He had chosen not to provide any evidence of it.

In the good Methodist tradition, I expected to be punished when I least expected it. Instead, it would later be confirmed, that the true measure of significance was that I was physically 'there'. 'Popping out to the 7-11 for a late night snack' would have been an indisputable error of Judgement - and consequently impossible to either accept or forgive. Christ's death, on the other hand, was unpreventable - and whether I was asleep or awake, it was the presence of a living (albeit snoring) soul beside the candle that was the quintessential and undeniable truth of this particular ritual. It took me years, however, to get over the embarrassment ... and to be honest, especially writing about it now, I'm not entirely convinced that I have.

In the years since I rejected Christianity and have chosen to live my life, instead, worshipping at the altar of The Almighty Haphazard, there have been moments when it has been impossible to deny the presence of something beyond even the clockwork curiosity of my imagination. There has been more than one occasion when a gentle but determined hand on my shoulder has prevented me from stepping from the footpath into the path of an oncoming car. I have suddenly been inspired to call a friend at the perfect time, and I have spent time on stage buried under dirt in a shallow and very crowded grave.

But my lasting memory of the Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil is also crowded ... crowded by acceptance, forgiveness, company and precious solitude. And the point at where, while in the tranquil company of Jesus, I was powerless to prevent the most all-consuming, blissfully ignorant and unintentional sleep I have ever had.

Image: Barry Moser's The Crucifixion.