Six Months In A Garage

In mid-1999, I lived in a roller door garage in a Northbridge laneway for about six months after another expired lease with nowhere to go. Mandy a chick I knew somehow wrangled it for me. A kinda cool and secret set up but dusty no windows and plenty of mozzies but what do you expect for 50 bucks a fortnight. I had access to the old house from around the front on Robinson Ave occupied by a bunch of misfits.

I remember one was called Circles an unemployed unusual gay guy who always wore black. He was a wannabe window dresser with a prescribed Dexy habit. Every other day he’d redecorate the lounge room full of random things and vintage furniture in some fantasy fuelled fashion. One time I came home to find a string of plastic toy dinosaurs hung all the way around the edge of the ceiling and he replaced the curtains again. This time with cartoon-like white clouds on blue sky fabric print that glowed brightly when the sun shined through. I thought it was pretty rad.

There was this other guy in his late 30’s Andy aka Patty Cakes the drag queen. He apparently quit as the star of Disney on Ice in the 80’s to join the Queens of New York while on a US tour. I discovered this was true one day when I came home to find him watching a VHS tape of his younger-self skating around dressed as Peter Pan being interviewed on Fat Cat’s Funtime Show. Huge flashback! I remembered watching that episode when I was a kid. He told us when he met the Queens, he frocked up, super-glued fake fingernails and just left the tour behind without notice. A Queens of New York book I found lying around in the kitchen categorised four types of drag performers. Queens, Divas, Clowns, and Freaks. Patty Cakes was definitely a clown.

I can’t remember this chick’s name but we called her Cake Monster because, well, she was always eating cake. She’d wail “caaaake, caaaaake” then waddle really stoned down to Fresh Provisions with her fairy wings and return drooling over a full-on chunk of heavenly cake and devour it in front of the TV before disappearing into her room.

Then there was Mandy a tiny but mighty bar waitress with a big ego and even bigger mouth who heard voices. She lived in the shed next to me on the left. We got along pretty well and often hit the clubs on the weekends. She had an extreme obsession with this local DJ at the time Kenny L. At night she’d walk the streets repeatedly yelling out ‘I love you Kenny L!” She was convinced he felt the same. Pretty sure he didn’t even know her.

There were many other stragglers after the clubs closed and usual suspects that dropped by all the time but I had the privilege of heading to my cold inner sanctum whenever I liked. In summer the tin roof was like a hot plate and in winter the rain would hit so hard and loud it was impossible to sleep and it leaked on my face. Junkies shot up outside my roller door on a regular basis. I could hear them talk and I’d be quite as fuck so they wouldn’t hear me or they’d break in and steal my shit. My old Hillman Hunter was stolen twice.

Across from me was Danny an old Italian boot maker who shared a vino and a whine with me now and then. Next door was a men’s halfway house where I made friends with a hairy old hippie ex-army vet who reminded me of Cat Weasel (Google it, kids). He found new age spirituality at some point and changed his name to something too profound for me to pronounce so the closest I came to was Sud and he was cool with that. Sud and I played chess out the front and developed a friendship long after I moved out but we lost touch ages ago.

My last hoorah was when we all went to Ministry of Sound at Belmont Park and got off our chops together as DJ Sister Bliss from Faithless counted in the year 2000. The Y2K bug theory had people expecting everything to shut down on the stroke at midnight. Utter bullshit but it was the best NYE countdown I ever experienced.

After the end of that era, I moved to Mt Lawley. Another Chapter.

That laneway is still a junkie hotspot 20 years later.

Everyone serves a purpose along the way.