In the Pink: Part 1

It all started harmlessly enough, as life-changing experiences often do. Ambushed, wooed, flattered and ultimately seduced with promises of great wealth and opportunity, creative autonomy, a supportive team and life-long friendship, associations and success. Who could resist? And who would ever have guessed that a little over eighteen months later, I would be standing, homeless and stranded on the wrong side of Sydney Harbour with my life in tatters?

Bear with me. Withhold your judgment. Resist the temptation to know where this was all going to end ... if only because we do.

***

Making things happen

My single greatest blessing and my single greatest curse is simple: I make things happen. From the days of my childhood when I used to mount entire puppet productions of the great musicals in the loungeroom of our family home, I have always made things. Happen. People who, in my presence, have dared wonder how an idea or a vision might be brought to life have usually either ended up running from it as it materialises right before their eyes, or (on the rarest of occasions) embracing it.

Burnt almost beyond recognition by the penury associated with being an independent theatre maker, and desperately needing a handsome and reliable income to pay off the accrued debts of my creative fancies, I established a small communications company ... a desktop publishing company, actually. It was actually always just clever me with an Apple Macintosh and a couple of clients who needed my skills. Nothing grand ... business cards, letterheads ... the occasional brochure here ... flyers, posters ... you know. Junk mail. Clever, neat, pretty and fancy, maybe, but junk mail nonetheless.

Over the years—ten of them in fact—I actually became quite good at junk mail. My designer's eye developed and my instinct for balance and a visual imperative translated almost effortlessly into graphic and typographic design. Slowly, my little business grew and a steady (if not always reliable) income ensued. Sure, it had its ups and downs ... but mostly, I could pay my bills and live the kind of life where I could do pretty much what I pleased. When I pleased. And it pleased me, often.

My move to Sydney in 1999 was an impulsive, spontaneous and entirely irresponsible leap of faith. I had grown tired and bored in Melbourne and the pre-2000 Sydney Olympic Games was abuzz with all sorts of mysterious possibilities (none of which, I should add at this point, ever materialised ... for anybody). Perched in Utopia on the rooftop of a daggy old apartment block in Potts Point, I fell in love with Sydney and her dazzling physical environment. The sky. The lights. The water. The constant activity. The new sights, sounds and smells. The impulsive recklessness and the determination. And the greed. My little business bubbled along ... and courtesy of Marcus O'Donnell, who I had known from the tiny and insular world of gay publishing in Melbourne, I started a regular job as Production Coordinator at Sydney's leading weekly gay and lesbian newspaper – The Sydney Star Observer.

This contract was the beginning of many, many wonderful Sydney stories. Guy, who was the designer and person who put The Sydney Star Observer together, would become a great, inspirational friend ... and a significant aspect of my salvation from the rigors of penury and homelessness would, months later, be in no small way directly attributed to his care and generosity.

It was also at The Star that I would befriend a young advertising salesman who would, in the months that followed, become my dear friend. And I would become his mentor. We would sail the harbour on his boat and I would bask in the glow of his companionship, friendship and irascible nature. Months later, he would become one of many who have mistaken my generosity and capacity for friendship for a seemingly never-ending supply of energy to be relentlessly drained. Exhausted. Our friendship capsized on an immutable point of contention: that I was in love with him and he was not in love with me. Whatever it was, I had actually became fatigued by his constant need, hunger and demand for every ounce of energy I had. On one memorable occasion, even his sister saw fit to warn me that I was being used up.

One night, as I was on my way to the boat with takeway dinner for the two of us, he called my mobile and suggested that it might not be a good time for me to come over—even though I was responding to his call for my company (and takeaway food delivery services). He had someone coming over who he would, er, prefer to spend time with. And at that moment, I burnt him off ... like a leech. I never saw or spoke to him again ... and even now, his attempts to re-establish contact with me are met with a perfunctory and entirely necessary resentful silence.

homo

One of the greatest achievements of my life was the little magazine I published in Sydney called homo. The concept and the look of homo had come to me while I was wandering dazed, confused and dehydrated around the base of Uluru for the second time that day. He had leapt into my mind with such fierce and determined visual clarity that he was impossible to ignore.

Upon my return to Sydney, I immediately made him happen ... and after eleven issues (one every month), homo and my business collapsed under massive debts and my complete inability to continue to service the vision in real and meaningful ways. homo was to have been my future. In his short life, he had made an enormous impact. I had been celebrated as 'Homo Man' at ritzy Elizabeth Bay rooftop parties ... and he had gathered a tiny but loyal band of subscribers. But yet again, the grand theme of my life so far, continued to play out: that with two exceptions, no-one knew how to help me. They knew what they needed from me, and rarely hesitated to ask. But when I was capable of struggling to find the words and to ask for help ... or power with suggestion ... or even on one occasion, plead for support, nothing was forthcoming. And everything that might have been done by others to help me was conditional. Or absent. And homo vanished ... and with him, went my pride, my sense of achievement ... and my perception of a future.

It was a spectacular failure that even those closest to me have no concept whatsoever of the extent to which I was (and remain) incredibly damaged by it.

I've never understood conditions ... but I am beginning to like the idea of further exploring the concept. At least.

The Candidates: Part 1

Sometimes, in fact many times, I have been known to seek revenge. The desperate need for vindication and the unmistakable feeling that, yet again, someone has misinterpreted my genuine gifts of skill, support, caring and goodwill as weakness ... things to be fingered—sharply and abruptly. Abused.

There's a theme peddling furiously along the bicycle path that is my journey through life at the moment ... and it's called Self Interest. Selfishness. "Me! Me! Me! Me at all costs! ... including yours." The "Fuck your needs! What about ME!" Broadway-esque showtune in G Major, performed with almost monotonous regularity by people I always imagined might have known better.

At the many and various times my feet have slipped off the pedals, I have always slowly regained my balance ... accompanied by that familiar voice in my head, howling me down for being "so fucking nice and understanding and helpful and generous ALL THE TIME": reminding me cursorily that people really only ever really care about themselves ... that when push comes to shove, black to white, Labor to Liberal, gay to straight, and broke to flush ... people will put their needs first. Always.

So why haven't (and can't) I?

It's a complex equation. It's symptomatic of being a nice, well-meaning, genuine, caring kind of a guy. I was brought up to be. There was always plenty of everything in our home ... and apart from the occasional religion-inspired fracas, the ebb and flow of daily life throughout my childhood was practically effortless. Simple. And fair. Incredibly fair.

The further you depart from valuing and holding to fairness and equality in your life, the greater the perils you face. As systematically, people placed their own needs somewhere much higher on the hierarchy of needs than mine (or the needs of those I represented) I began to realise that there was a fatal flaw in my persona. I became, almost by default, persona non-grata. I blindingly assumed that it would all work out in the end ... that they would see the error of their ways and embrace my contribution and meaning with respect and appreciation. That they would stop using my seemingly never-ending supply of capability. My skills. My Goodwill. My Support. My Cash. And My Creativity.

The mind fuck has always been in the wash-up. On a number of occasions over recent years, the actuality of an experience has been devastated as a direct result of the actions of almost impossibly selfish and self-interested people. Their power over me has always been what they offer(ed): knowledge, experience, adventure, achievement, excitement, a contribution to our society and our culture, validation ... and the payment of a modest invoice at the end of it all. Or not.

Over the past two years I have walked away from a number of experiences completely fucked over. Ruthlessly and rigorously bruised. Insulted. Offended. And almost broke. There has been the kindness of near-perfect strangers who have helped me up and set me right. They, too, will get theirs.

Am I bitter? Quite possibly ... I will let you be the judge. But in the meantime ... there's a couple of stories I would like to share with you.

Death's Door: Part 2

It's quite incredible the way you consider the presence and company of strangers who share nothing more with you than the foothpath when you believe that, at any minute, you may be gasping for air at their feet. Would they look the other way? Would they, by association, be too afraid to come to your aid? Would they know what to do? It's a strikingly theatrical and filmic concept. I recommend it.

My first thoughts are that there is every possibility that I am not going to make to Emergency. The sun is impossibly bright and my skin is coated in an almost icy layer of sweat. My left leg is numb, and my left foot drags ... causing me to stumble over my own toes. My mobile phone crashes to the ground and my wallet glides effortlessly a foot or two away. The vision of a fat poof sprawling chaotically over this trissy South Yarra side-street makes me laugh ... but it hurts to laugh.

A young girl walking in the same direction as me on the opposite side of the road pauses. Her instinct is obviously to be sure I intend to do her no harm. She glances, briefly, in my direction and then resumes the urgent rhythm of her own life ... as, I suspect, we all do when we have ascertained that the result of another's sudden erratic jolt in our discernible collective rhythms is a return to the status quo.

It's all about direction. My senses are incredibly finely attuned to the direction the people around me are heading. I am, at once, calculating both their distance from me and their proximity to each other. It is like I have just directed a scene in a film and all the carefully choreographed 'background action' is being run through before the first take ... when the star falls helplessly to the ground, clutching his bragging, thumping heart ... and being silenced by his humility in the face of a painful death.

On my knees, I collect my mobile and my wallet ... dragging them back to me like precious icons. My eyes hurt and water. My wallet falls from my hand because there is no sensation in the fingers of my hand. I watch it fall and bounce off my knee and onto the ground.

It feels as though someone is behind me, holding me ... their arms wrapped tightly around my chest. I flex the fingers of my right hand ... the tips of which are white. Like marble. Like playing the piano in mid-air. I reach out for my wallet again and slide it toward me. Gripping it tightly, I slide it up my leg and into my coat pocket. It's like sliding a brick along the ground with cotton wool.

I am alert enough to know that I should not make any strenuous movement ... like standing up. My heart is thumping. I slide my hand inside my jacket and place the palm of my hand over my heart. It's like someone is trying to wake the household up at 3am because they've lost their keys and can't get in.

I look down toward Chapel Street and see pedestrians. But they are no longer anonymous bodies and faces ... they are like the people who may come to my aid. Or not. But these particular people will have long passed by the time I get down there. They'll read about it in the newspaper, possibly. Or they'll hear the ambulance. Maybe they'll go into a shop and come out ten or fifteen minutes later and see the crowd gathered around my relieved and grateful barely breathing body. Maybe one of them will ask a shopkeeper for a blanket ...

They are not doctors or nurses these people. Nor are the people who are yet to arrive at ground zero. I imagine them fifteen minutes or so further up Chapel Street ... wandering aimlessly along the footpath without any knowledge of the extent to which the heart attack victim is about to really spice up their dinner table conversation tonight.

****

It's an almost impossibly intimate concept - dying. I'm 43 years old. I'm a poof. I've smoked since I was seventeen. I have a bad heart. I'm carrying too much extra weight. I don't exercise. I eat meat pies and chocolate for lunch - in that order. I love fried food and I drink coffee to Olympic Gold Medal haul standards every day. Of course I am not going to survive this!

****

I decide to try standing up. The circulation in my fingers has returned and my fingers now ache because I am clenching my wallet so tightly. Slowly, I stand ... and the pain in my chest gradually begins to subside. I can almost see it leaving. I lift my head ... higher than it has been for the past few hours. I slowly inhale ... deeper. The pain has a weaker grasp of my chest. No intention. No control. I dare to breathe ... inhaling ... carefully. I take a couple of cautious steps toward Chapel Street and then stop. The pain in my chest is gone. Not entirely ... but almost. Now, it feels like a ill-fitting jumper. Polyester. Tingling. Nylon. Tight.

I have so much work to do. My little creative agency is literally bursting at the seams. I have nineteen 'live' jobs and, for the first time in the life of my small business, so many of the processes associated with the success of a small business are in place. I love my little office. I have a whiteboard with no more room on it. There are three jobs waiting to be dispatched ... which means invoices ... which means paying bills - and tax - the square root of the delay I have enforced on my life for at least five years. Maybe more.

Since I have come back to Melbourne, I have learned more about how important the success of my little business is than I ever imagined. I do good work. Sometimes I do great work. And right now, I'm doing really good work. I have new clients that I can nurture into major ongoing workflow.

I am not going to drop. Not today.

****

I turn the corner into the street that runs parallel to Chapel Street. There's a car detailing place on the corner, littered with jobbers polishing BMWs and ridiculously big artless cartrucks. I decide to walk around the block and go back to work. I slowly increase the pace of my strides ... not pushing it, not showing off to myself. I am determined to get back to my office and continue to work. I have deadlines to meet. People are relying on me. I love it that they do ... almost as much as I love it that they can.

It would seem that I am going to spare My Strangers their little bit of death today.

****

By the time I get back to my office, the pain in my chest has entirely subsided. Just the occasional stab ... one or two teeth-clenching bursts. I imagine that when it finally does happen, like it is bound to, it will be so immensely painful that death will be the only relief.

But no more of a relief than the DO NOT RESUSCITATE card I now have in that pesky little wallet of mine.

Death's Door: Part 1

Last Thursday was one of the most interesting days of my life. No, truly. Fascinating. Confronting. Frightening. Over-whelming ... in fact, awe-inspiring.

I had spent the better part of the day at a press approval with my associate James. It had been a long and ultimately fruitless exercise. Never in the life of my small business have I been unable to approve a job on the press. On some occasions it has been necessary to slightly alter the balance of the inks ... but on this occasion, there were significant problems with the job and it was with considerable reluctance that I (un)happily agreed to compromise the considerable value of my eye for detail in defining flaws in a print job ... and let it go. The Press Manager guaranteed me that my little list of flaws would be corrected, but apparently I was not to see the fruit of this particular promise. To his credit (and perhaps mine as the Designer and Finished Artist) he rather humbly acknowledged that I had set them a complex and difficult task. I was challenging the press (and the people who operate it) to deliver a brochure of such technical superiority that it would be some hours before they were happy to press the 'Go' button on the job.

James dropped me back at my office and I sat down at my computer to look through a dazzling array of emails that had flooded my inbox in my absence.

The chest pain started almost immediately ... a clamping, cramping pain of such immense, polarising discomfort that I thought I was going to pass out where I sat. My computer monitor was suddenly blurry and I was almost completely thrown by the thin layer of persperation almost bubbling to the surface of my forearms, my chest and - somewhat unusually I thought, my neck. My breathing was short and shallow and the tips of my fingers were tingling. The immediate fear was brain-numbing ... and my first instinct was to lie down on the floor of my office and relax. Breathe. Relax. The usefulness of years and years of breathing classes (I trained to be an opera singer for a long time ... and an actor for longer) evaporated. Try as I may, I could not 'send my breath' any further into my body than the top of my lungs, which were now aching and contracting ... as if someone else was doing my breathing for me.

The temptation to yield to the panic was overcome by my immense proclavity for common sense. I knew I was in a danger zone because, since I was about ten, I have known that I have "a heart problem". An irregular heart-beat. A semi-blocked left ventricle - the ventricle (valve) which is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood from the heart on its journey through my body. I have never been able to over-exert myself physically ... and at the risk of being considered weak and ineffectual (two attributes I despise in people of my sexual inclination), I have always managed a show of strength.

But not on this occasion ... which, unlike previous 'chest pain dramas', was rendering me totally and utterly inert. And afraid for my life.

My breathing was becoming shallower and shallower ... to the point where I thought I was, shortly, not going to be able to inhale at all. I prised myself from the floor and, gripping the edge of my desk, dragged myself up from the floor (which had provided no respite whatsoever from the pain) and fell back into my chair.

I've heard and read many descriptions of an episode of chest pain ... and every one of them fled my mind and my consciousness with record-breaking speed and alacrity: "concrete slab" ... "knives" ... "squeezing the air out of me" ... "such immense pressure" ... "unable to control the depth of my breathing" ...

Hunched over like a man 20 years my senior, I walked up the corridor to the stairwell at the back of my office building and did what I always do when I feel stressed and out of my depth ... not to mention my comfort zone: I had a ciggie.

Well, the tiniest bit of a ciggie ... because inhaling was impossible. My lips and my mouth were willing, but my chest and my lungs were not. I gagged on the smoke and immediately stubbed the cigarette out in my full to over-flowing ashcan. I sat on my 'smoking step' and wondered if this, in fact, was going to be the end of my life. Laughingly, I thought first and foremost about the amount of work I have on at the moment. Deadlines for this job ... and that. Concepts and ideas to be submitted. "Typical!" I remember thinking. "Here I am ... as busy as I have ever been - and now I have to go and have a fucking heart attack!"

I was amazingly unsentimental. Fear of what was happening overrode every other mental capability. I immediately wondered who in the building I would ask (and want) to help me. I pondered how to ask ... when to ask ... and, rather innocuously, decided that if I was going to shit myself (as people apparently do when their bodies go into death-throes) whose life did I have the right to change to that extent? In whose arms and at whose feet was I going to writhe in pain. And cry. And beg.

It pained me to discover that there was no-one within my immediate surrounds who I could turn to. I was on my own. It's the way I like it.

I knew the extent of this pain - not to mention the time it had gone on for - was a bad sign. A very bad sign.

I staggered back to my office and closed the door. I sat in my chair and Goggled 'heart attack symptoms'. I devoured every syllable of every piece of information like a vulture ... at the same time, buying myself great swathes of relief in the realisation that even though I was in such complete agony, nothing else like what was being described was happening to me. There was no pain in my head or my arms. Yes, the pain was immense and uncomfortable, but it wasn't like what was being described on the two or three websites that trumpeted information about the possibility of my impending and immediate demise.

And then it hit me. A stab of sheer eye-watering and mouth-drying pain in my heart like I have never experienced. I groaned from the intensity of it ... and with one hand to my chest, I grabbed my keys, my wallet and my mobile phone and decided to walk the four or five blocks to the Alfred Hospital.

I considered my options for company and support as I left the office ... and as I shuffled, blindly bound with pain along the footpath outside our building on my way to Emergency ... I wondered who in the world I would chose to die in the arms of.

And to what I imagine will be my unending surprise, I decided I wanted that person to be A Complete Stranger.

Changing places

Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney?

I have a dilemma. I've just returned from a(nother) weekend in Melbourne where, among other things, I went in search of a new client or two for my communications company. The good news is, I found some. The bad news is, I really need to be Melbourne-based to fully capitalise on the potential they represent. Or is that "good" news?

I missed my blog for two whole days! I made a promise to myself to write something every day, but the business and social demands of a quick trip 'home' prevented me from giving it the attention it deserves. And now I have a choice to make: Melbourne or Sydney?

Anyway, the cute boy jogging in his Speedos is - surprise, surprise - Nick dal Santo from my beloved St Kilda Football Club ... and after Round 4, I'm equal twenty-fifth on gayfooty.com.au's Tipping Competition!

A Complicated Business

My little creative agency lost A Client today. So now we have one ... well actually half of one - given that they're not really what I would call A Client. Sure, they bring in reasonable chunks of work - but not nearly frequently enough. They're lovely people and the work they do makes a real difference in the world (admittedly in small but meaningful ways) ... but they're still not what I'd call A Client. So, "Did Geoffrey have his head buried so far up his own Art Of Distraction he failed to see this coming?" you may well ponder.

Well, I'm afraid it's a great deal more complicated than that. You see there are people who 'do' running a small business well and there are people who don't. There are people who plough through their various and seemingly unending financial reporting tasks in MYOB or Quicken (or both) and there are those who, instead, prefer to plough through a bowl of vanilla ice-cream and Cottee's chocolate topping. There are those people who Excel at spreadsheets, cashflow forecasts and summaries, and there those who purposefully ridicule these concepts by using excel as a proper noun, not a verb. There are people who are masters in the concept of New Business Development and there are those who wonder why the phone's not ringing more often. There are people who grasp the basic value of a 'network' and there are those who loved Peter Finch and, especially, Faye Dunaway in it.

There are those people who use tried and trusted marketing and advertising strategies to prompt business enquiries and there are those who write them for everyone else but who refuse to believe they need one of their own. There are people who are incredibly motivated toward success and there are those who are cynical about the whole 'success' thing ... not to mention more than a little too keenly devoted to anonymity. There are those people who are determined to break out of 'The Poverty Cycle' and those who are not altogether convinced that there is anything even remotely 'cyclic' about it. There are those people who invest in state-of-the-art technology to enhance their business's productivity and competitive edge and there are those who don't even own a cordless telephone ... or an iPod. There are those who master the efficiency and ease of PDAs and Blueberries and there are those who don't know what 'PDA' stands for and who prefer their 'Blueberries' spelled with a lowercase 'b' and in a bowl, preferably served with lots of King Island cream.

There are people who can put those extra little business expenses onto their Credit Cards and there are those for whom the tireless exposure to the word 'Declined' is a source of constant public humiliation - even at the bottle shop. Especially at the bottle shop. There are people who create and monitor budgets and there are those who think they're simply too expensive when compared to Bayswater, even if you factor in their 'unlimited kilometres' deal. There are people who implement strategies to protect their business's 'bottom line' and there are those who think a 'bottom line' is that mark you get on your bum when you've been sitting on a toilet seat reading for too long. There are those people who develop targeted Direct Email Marketing Campaigns and there are those who instantly trash emails from people they don't know. There are people who actively source 'new business leads' and there are those who try and beat their computer at chess ... or themselves at Tetris. Or Solitaire.

There are people who are really good at doing one thing and those who are really good at doing many. Too many. There are people who prefer coffees to complication, eating to equations, fucking to follow-ups, walking to wireless, movies to meetings, laughing to leasing, simplicity to strategising, partying to planning, butterflies to break-evens and practically anything to the curse of ambition.

I hope I'm writing metaphorically when I write that 'the jury is still out' where my little enterprise is concerned ... but just in case I'm not, I'll be re-engaging in the art of distraction when I'm sure I can continue to pay for my internet connection. And that, my friends, is about as close to the 'bottom line' as I'm prepared to go.

Image: The Scream