All Balls and Glitter (3 page)

Despite my initial jealousy, Melanie was so cute and cuddly that Sue and I couldn’t stop kissing her. She was such a podgy baby and we loved playing with her ears because they were fat too.

Of all my siblings, Susan was the one with whom I got along best. Diane was always that third child who was destined to be the brunt of our teasing and pranks. We would put her in a pushchair and shove her down a hill, then watch her crash and burn, chortling all the time! But the three of us were our own little nucleus of a family until Mel came along and grabbed all the attention, and that’s when Susan and I really went our own way.

Susan used to have a bitch fight with her hair every day. It was the seventies and everyone had those centre partings and flicks, à la
Charlie’s Angels
. Susan just had to have that style, but her hair was auburn and wavy so she was always curling it. Once, she managed to electrocute herself and we all screamed with laughter. It was hilarious!

Susan wasn’t always that kind to me either. On one occasion, when an older cousin was visiting, the two of them ran a bath of boiling hot water and persuaded me to get in it. I really scalded myself and she still feels guilty to this day.

We hadn’t been in Ballarat long before Dad got a posting to Sydney. We moved there when I was in grade three, aged seven. The six years that we spent in that city were the longest stretch we spent anywhere, and they were the happiest in my childhood. It was the one time I was able to build friendships – only for them to be broken again when we returned to Ballarat when I was thirteen.

Our townhouse in Sydney was in a place called Auburn. It formed part of a group of quite small, semi-detached naval houses located around a central courtyard. There was a little, green, square park with a big rock, where we used to play in good weather, and a weeping willow tree, on which we would swing. Despite being a naval community, it was very suburban and there wasn’t much to amuse us kids there. There were, however, loads of cockroaches, as Sydney was swarming with them in the summer, and cicada shells on the trees to pick off and play with.

There was also a mad woman who lived directly opposite us, who used to try to commit suicide approximately once a year. Each of the houses had a little triangular roof with a window leading out on to a balcony, and she would climb out there and threaten to jump. Looking back on it, it wasn’t actually very high. I think if she had jumped she would have succeeded in breaking only her legs.

She loved to drink and smoked like a chimney. Whenever she
needed fags, she’d give me five bucks and I’d go round the corner on my scooter to buy them for her. This was long before any laws prohibiting children from purchasing cigarettes.

The courtyard had a lot to answer for, as it was the setting for my first ever punch in the face. My assailant lived in another townhouse there. I was always involved in some sort of altercation with him and his brothers as they were the tough boys, the bullies on the block, and they thought they were cool. This particular day, I was playing in the courtyard and my enemy, as usual, shouted ‘Poofter!’ at me as he cycled past. I answered back, as instructed by my father if it ever happened again. ‘It takes one to know one,’ I yelled, without really knowing what it meant.

In response, the thug proceeded to get off his Chopper bike and then hit me fair and square in the face. Naturally, being the insecure kid I was, I cried like a baby and ran home. Dad gave me a boxing lesson after that incident, which actually gave me a small amount of confidence – if not to fight, then at least to look like I could.

I was always a bit of a scaredy-cat. Between the ages of nine and twelve, I suffered from weird nightmares and phobias. I had a recurrent dream about being in this terrible tunnel that was spinning round so that the skin on my face was pulled back. I’d grind my teeth all night. I also had a phobia about vampires, so I had to sleep with the light on. Though I can’t remember ever seeing a vampire movie, somewhere along the line I must have done as I suddenly became obsessed with the idea that they were going to come and get me. Consequently, I made a crucifix out of an old television aerial, with some of the bits taken off, which I put at the end of my bed, and I’d barricade myself inside the room when it was time to go to sleep.

It was just as well that, other than in Fareham, I never had to share a bedroom. Because I was the only boy in the family, I had my own room, while my sisters slept in bunk beds.

I used to sleepwalk as well, which freaked Mum out. One night, Mum tells me, I got ready for school. She came downstairs in the middle of the night and I was under the stairwell. She asked, ‘What are you doing?’ and apparently I replied, ‘I’m looking for my pencil case!’ She then said, ‘Come back to bed,’ and as I was a good little sleepwalker, I always did what I was told.

On another occasion, she found me banging on my door trying to get out, convinced I was locked in my bedroom. I did all kinds of strange things in my sleep. I was always scared that I was going to walk outside into the main street during these episodes, because as a somnambulist you don’t have any control over what you’re doing.

As an adult, I have only sleepwalked twice. Both times, I went to the loo in the wrong place! The first incident was during a holiday in the Canary Islands. I was there with Stewart, a work friend of mine who was the stage manager of
Crazy for You
in the West End. I walked into his room, opened the wardrobe, placed a towel meticulously on the floor of the wardrobe and then proceeded to pee on to it. Once finished, I shut the wardrobe and his bedroom door, and went back to my own bed. Stewart watched the whole thing and could not believe his eyes. He asked me what the hell I was doing, but I didn’t wake up. In the morning, when he told me about it, I was mortified. I’d had a vague memory of getting out of bed and using the bathroom in the night, but had thought I’d dreamed it all.

The other occasion happened while a boyfriend, Lloyd, and I were living together. I got out of bed, walked round to Lloyd’s side, pulled the drawer out of his bedside cabinet and sat down as if it were a toilet. Then I pissed all over his undies and T-shirts before climbing back between the sheets. How terrible!

I suppose Sydney is where I grew up the most because that’s where I did the most schooling. At Auburn primary, which was co-ed, I played with the girls in the playground because I didn’t like spending time with the boys. They would be at the south end
of the school while the girls – and I – would be at the north, skipping and playing hopscotch. I got teased about it all the time, but I just didn’t enjoy games with the lads. They were always too busy with handball competitions and the like, which never really interested me. I had only one male friend; luckily, he didn’t like handball either.

In fourth grade, there was a big craze for Knitting Nancys, those wooden knitting spools with nails on the top that you turn and loop wool around to make various items, but mainly tea cosies. I used to borrow my sister Sue’s and take it to school so that I could knit at play- and lunchtimes. It had a face like Betty Boo’s painted on it, with a black bob, and wore a little blouse and a red dress. Apart from me, there was only one other guy who was into Knitting Nancys, but I loved them. No wonder I was mocked so mercilessly.

The only game I played with the boys was marbles. It was around the time I moved from infants to juniors, which was based in a different building, so it felt like going to big school.

Academically, I didn’t shine at all. By grade three, I still couldn’t tell the time. I had terrible trouble learning it and got so confused because I simply couldn’t work out why it was ‘quarter to’ anything. There was something about the basic structure that baffled me.

Perhaps I had a form of dyslexia because I still can’t tell my left from my right. If someone tells me to turn left, I turn right. It may sound odd for a choreographer not to know left from right, but if you say ‘stage left’ or ‘stage right’, I’m fine. I have to think in ‘stage speak’ – prompt or O.P. (off prompt). Prompt is generally stage left. I was bewildered before, but now I’m worse because, as a director, I have to flip my left and right in my mind when I’m talking to companies. I’m always giving taxi drivers the wrong directions.

I was caned by the headmaster three times for not learning to tell the time, but the more I was punished, the more I struggled with it. I remember standing with my hand held out waiting for
the whack, my palm shiny with sweat, fingers trembling: a nervous wreck. Then the blow, the crack of the cane and the unbelievable burning sting. It hurt so much. But, surprisingly, the pain never seemed to last long and my hand just went a little numb.

There was another teacher who caned me in grade four, over my maths, because my arithmetic was terrible. I was always dreadful at numbers. He would put two rulers together and whack them on the desk as a threat, but one day, he grew tired of issuing warnings and went for the real thing.

In high school, one teacher would pull our pants down and paddle us with a table-tennis bat in front of the whole class. We just accepted it as a normal part of school life, but it was probably not allowed to happen for many more years.

Going up to secondary school is strange. You feel like a big kid in grade six and then, in year seven, you’re suddenly the little pipsqueak again. (In Australia, ‘grades’ referred to your primary school classes, while secondary schools used the term ‘year’.) Everyone at my new school seemed to be very grown up to me.

Additionally, it was a peculiar experience going from a co-ed school to Granville Boys’ High. It was the first time I’d been to a school without my sisters, who went to the nearby Auburn Girls’ High School. I also had to start walking from the house to the station before catching a train to school, which took some getting used to.

I started there in 1977, the year of the Granville rail disaster. In January, a morning commuter train went under the Granville bridge and derailed, hitting the supports, and the bridge fell down on top of it. In all, 83 people died and 210 were injured. It is still the worst train crash in Australia’s history.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been the same train I caught to school. Luckily, we were on a break and all the kids who would usually have taken that service were at home. Instead, we watched the events unfold on television and were glued to the screen all day.

One particular friendship at Granville was with a boy in my class who was a little more worldly-wise than me. He proved a bad influence when he taught me how to shoplift. We used to go to Woolies after school and see what we could plunder. I’d come out with a pencil and ask, ‘What have you got?’ and my mate, being an old hand at swiping things, would pull jewellery from his pocket.

As always with me, it wasn’t something I did by halves. One day, I went on a rampage and stole ten felt-tipped pens, a biro and a big pack of Nestlé condensed milk tubes (the same foodstuff as the condensed milk sold in tins, but back then it was a popular craze for kids to buy these to suck on, like yoghurt tubes). All these items were chosen specifically because I could get them up my sleeve. I also stole an identity bracelet, which was all very seventies.

Finally, I pushed my luck a little too far in a shop called Franklin’s, which is like Kwik Save or Wilkinson’s in the UK, selling all plain label, no-frills goods (cheap, cheap, cheap!). I tried to steal a pencil there and got sprung. As I left, I felt the classic tap on the shoulder and this lady security guard said, ‘Excuse me. Have you taken anything that you haven’t paid for?’

My career as a master criminal fell at the first hurdle and I cracked under pressure.

‘Yes, yes, I have,’ I spluttered, and confessed all. The guard took me to the back of the shop and handed me over to the store manager, who said he was going to call the police and have me arrested unless I apologized and wrote a letter to say how sorry I was, and told my parents what I had done.

Then he went through my school briefcase and took everything out, asking, ‘Did you steal this?’

Every time I would say, ‘Yes, stolen.’

I didn’t have to admit to anything except the pencil, but once I was caught, I became a blubbering wreck and launched into a major confession. Why, I’ll never know. If I’d had any sense, I
would have said nothing. Perhaps it was an early manifestation of my now trademark honesty – I never have been able to keep my mouth shut.

The manager presented me with a letter to give to my mum and dad, and that was the worst bit. I was in tears. I sat in the back of the shop crying like a newborn babe. It was pathetic.

As well as breaking down, I also managed to turn Queen’s evidence. I was asked for the names of any friends that I knew stole from the shopping centre and I blurted out, ‘My mate steals all the time.’ I was so upset, nervous and shaken that I’d grassed him without a second thought.

When I got home, I was in a terrible state, sobbing inconsolably. I handed Mum the letter and, after reading it, she asked, ‘Have you given it all back? Will you promise me you won’t do it again?’

Mum was disappointed in me, as any mother would be, but she didn’t shout or scream at me. Instead, she gave me a hug and a kiss and said, ‘It’s all going to be all right, as long as you don’t do it again.’

That was Mum all over. She could see that I’d been raked over the coals at the store and had tortured myself over the prospect of having to tell her, so I didn’t need any further punishment. Thankfully, Dad was away working and I don’t think she ever told him about it. She’s wonderful, my mum.

When I was eleven, I started guitar lessons. My sister Sue used to play the piano and I’d wanted to learn an instrument too. I loved those sessions to begin with. My teacher made a mean hot chocolate in the microwave – that was rather special, as they had only just been invented. In truth, the tutor was really scary as his movement was slow, his speech was laboured and the teaching was delivered at a snail’s pace. Eventually, I grew bored.

At Granville Boys’ High, the staff really supported my music. There, everyone played the recorder, but a group of friends and I took this skill to new and fabulous heights by performing on that
ubiquitous instrument alongside a seven-piece orchestra at the famous Sydney Opera House.