Chopper Unchopped (75 page)

I then asked her to drive me to Home Street, Elsternwick. She said ‘no problem’. About 20 minutes later we pulled up outside and she asked, ‘What’s this place?’ and I said, ‘it’s the Daily Planet massage parlor’ and got out of the car and said goodbye to the lady in question, and I started to walk across the road to the parlor.

She jumped out of the car and yelled at me, ‘Mark, come back here at once, get back in the car, get back in right now.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ She yelled, ‘You snip 200 bucks off me and then get me to drive you to a parlor!’

I said, ‘I’ll pay you the dough back’. She screamed that the money was not the point. I said, ‘Well listen, it’s your arse or one of theirs.’

She said, ‘Okay, hop back in the car.’

I gave the 200 back to her and she dropped her pants, calling me a bastard every inch of the way.

I was at her wedding three months later, and we are still friends today.

I guess the trick to getting away with murder like that with friends and loved ones is that when the same lady was in trouble several years later I put my neck on the chopping block and risked a life sentence in jail to help her out.

MY bride-to-be, Mary-Ann, came to see me one hot day with the sun shining nicely, and with her 38-inch D cup bosom practically spilling out of this little low-cut white affair. I told her to cover herself. I was wearing my white short pants ‘Sportsgirl size 14’ and my happiness at seeing her was becoming quite evident.

A man who has been incarcerated for some time will often spring to life with a visit from the fairer sex.

I don’t know why, but the conversation turned to sex and the adventures of my youth. Mary-Ann loves my yarns and sits there big-eyed demanding that I regale her with some tall tales and true from the bag full of comic yarns I carry with me wherever I go.

I was a late bloomer sex wise. I didn’t actually trouble the scorer until I was 18 years old, although I gave him writer’s cramp once I worked out what to do with the bat.

As I’ve mentioned before, the young lady concerned was a chesty little policeman’s daughter. Skinny as a rake, big tits and a Shirley Temple face. Quite gorgeous.

The most embarrassing events of my then somewhat limited and sheltered sex life happened at the age of 19. It was late at night and summer time, and me, Dave the Jew, another chappie and a fellow called Punchy were in the Melbourne Cemetery target shooting or test-firing a home-made silencer that Punchy had made to fit any hand gun at all. It was an ingenious device which involved a ten-inch length of hose, a jam tin and wire wool.

I won’t say more than that, as I wouldn’t want some kiddies to try it at home, but it worked quite well. There was a wee bit more to it than the length of hose, jam tin and wire wool, but I will leave that topic alone. I’m not one to promote crime.

The bloke whose name I don’t want to remember brought his best-looking sister with him. That is, ‘best-looking’ if a wanton nymphomaniac with bleached blonde hair, black lipstick and eye shadow, and who at night looked like Dracula’s girlfriend, is your idea of a good time. Which, at the time, was exactly what I did think. For me, at 19, anything that moved and didn’t shave was considered a red-hot opportunity.

She had big tits and always wore a short skirt, platform cork-soled shoes and little white bobby socks with a white tee shirt, and a tight cardigan. A real sharpie chick. The dress was held up, or so it appeared, by a set of her grandad’s braces or suspenders. She looked a sight but the sluttish look, dirty girl face, short skirt and big tits were always a winning formula with any red-blooded male aged between 12 and 20. She and her mates were the height of fashion where I came from.

Mind you, she had her standards. She used to claim that she always said no to Abos and policemen, and she was proud of that claim to fame. ‘I have never turned it on for a Coon or a copper’, she would boast with pride and push her chest out as a sort of challenge, for anyone to prove her wrong. Personally, I always found this attitude a trifle intolerant, not to mention racist, but you could fully understand her attitude to police.

Anyway, I am yet again wandering off the track. Sorry. It was 1974, I was 19, and the girl in question was 17.

To cut a short story even shorter, the winner of the night-time target shooting contest got to plonk the girl, who loved guns and had sneaked over to spy on us. We caught her and as a result she agreed to act as the winning prize. I won the contest, a beer bottle at 20 paces by the light of the full moon, which is not a bad shot with a .38 calibre revolver. I was always a good shot when the pressure was on. Just ask Sammy the Turk. (I forgot, you can’t. Poor Sammy is dead, care of a shotgun blast in the left eye at the Bojangles Nightclub carpark. I stood trial for murder over that, but the good sense of the Supreme Court jury accepted my plea of self-defence.)

Anyway, the girl was five foot six tall and in a five-inch high set of platform soles was almost my height. She stood there with one foot up on a grave and lifted her short skirt, her legs were quite apart in a standing position and no panties were evident. There were a few extra stiffs in the graveyard that night, I can tell you.

She then said, ‘Come on Chopper, hurry up.’ That was her battle cry, ‘hurry up’. It was a bit awkward and bloody embarrassing. I was doing my best not to appear self-conscious, but I can tell you I was very nervous.

The girl, bless her soul, was giving me a gentle helping hand and next thing you know it was all over before it even got started. ‘Shit,’ yelled the lassie, ‘all down my bloody leg, you messy bugger!’

God, I felt like a fool. Then her brother made the mistake of laughing at me and yelled, ‘You are a bit quick out of the starting gate, Chopper.’

‘Ha,’ she said, quick as lightning, ‘you can talk.’ We all looked at the brother. It was dark, but I swear we could all see his face going bright red in the moonlight.

Dave the Jew called the chap in question a dirty bastard then the brother pleaded it only happened once. ‘Yeah,’ said the girl, ‘once a week.’ My own sexual embarrassment in the face of my friends was wiped out by the deep, dark family secret that our little mate was plonking his sister. And it wasn’t even Tassie, the home of close family ties.

At four foot eleven inches tall he must have stood on a fruit box to do the job, like a fox terrier humping a labrador. ‘I’m going to break your jaw,’ he said to his sister.

‘Yeah, go on and I’ll tell Grandad you’ve been getting up me,’ she said.

All in all, it was the most embarrassing sexual night of my then young life, and one I will never forget.

Mary-Ann thought it was the height of good comedy. Most Tasmanian girls think any yarn relating to brothers plonking their sister is funny. Ha ha.

OF course, not all presents that women give me are of the fleshpot variety. For instance, the lovely Mary-Ann has promised me a Rolex watch for my birthday, bless her little cotton socks. That will be the second posh watch she’s given me.

God, I’ve had some flash watches in my time – thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth. And where have they all gone? I’ll tell you. When one gets arrested, as happens from time to time, one’s posh wristwatch always seems to go on the missing list.

I remember getting locked up for drunk and disorderly at the old (
location deleted
) police station. I was wearing a $5000 stolen solid gold wristwatch – and this was back in 1973 when that was a year’s wages for anybody who worked, which I didn’t. When I went to the front desk to get my property and sign the book and leave, my wristwatch was missing.

My belt, money, rings, wallet and all other personal effects were there, but no watch.

I said, ‘Where’s my gold watch?’ which I thought was a reasonable question under the circumstances. And the old sergeant just looked down at me and said, ‘What watch would that be, son?’

I looked down at his wrist, and that old broken-nosed bull was wearing my bloody wristwatch. Ha ha. I often think the police over the years have arrested me for the sole reason of pinching my various wristwatches. Bless their hearts.

Like me, the boys in blue know a wristwatch makes a lovely gift.

My old mate Cowboy Johnny Harris never had a watch until my dad gave him a lovely old Datex that he’d got back in 1950.

Somewhere along the line, Johnny had heard the expression ‘synchronise your watches’ and he asked my dad what it meant and how to do it. And so started the Cowboy’s love for the synchronisation of the watch whenever the Surrey Road gang had to go some place or go into street combat, or involve ourselves in any sort of daring.

The Cowboy would stop and say, ‘Let’s synchronise our wristwwatches’, and Dave the Jew, Terry the Tank and myself would all have to stand there and set our watches at exactly the same time as each other.

I tried to explain to Johnny that the whole idea of synchronising watches in battle was, for example, if four men had to attack a single target at exactly the same time from four different directions. But because our gang all travelled together and attacked together it didn’t matter, I told him. However, the logic of this was lost on poor old Cowboy Johnny, who wasn’t a heavy thinker at the best of times. His attitude was that ‘Mr Read’ had told him how to synchronise watches and by God we would all synchronise our watches … three or four times a friggin’ night, if need be, to humor our much-loved but simple-minded mate.

Dave the Jew would mutter and mumble under his breath at this nonsense. ‘Who was the bright spark who taught Johnny this rubbish?’ he would mutter.

‘Chopper’s dad,’ Johnny would say.

‘Yes, that would be right,’ Dave would snarl. ‘The same man who thought Karl Marx was Groucho’s cousin.’ The Cowboy would often hear the Jew’s mutterings and say to me, ‘What’s that posh bastard mumbling about?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Dave would say.

But in protest Dave stopped wearing his own watch, so when Johnny stopped to get us to go through the routine of synchronising watches, Dave would show his bare wrist and say he wasn’t wearing one.

‘That’s okay,’ the Cowboy would say. ‘I’ll synchronise mine for you.’ It was then that we realised that Johnny was fascinated with the word ‘synchronise’ and loved fiddling with his watch, and the truth was he didn’t really understand what it meant at all.

Poor bugger. He died wearing that bloody watch … and I kept it as a keepsake until it went missing one night. Where, you ask?

The Russell Street watch-house, naturally. Where else?

WHEN the giant American aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson
hit Hobart with its 5500-strong crew, between 3000 and 4000 sailors rampaged through the town on leave each day and night. And ladies from all over the fair state of Tasmania headed for Hobart, their assorted knickers fluttering in the breeze.

It’s not the first Yankee ship to hit town. The USS
Enterprise
visited Hobart in 1976, and nine months after it left about 300 babies were born who shouldn’t have been. And by all reports nine months after the
Carl Vinson
weighs anchor hundreds more will be born – and most of them will be on the dusky side, color wise.

Why is it that whenever the Yankee Doodle Navy hits town – Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin or Hobart – the Aussie girls drop their pants and head down to the dock? This shit’s been going on since the Second World War. And they do love them big, black sailors. At the moment Hobart town looks like ‘sale day’ on Falconhurst Plantation. The only twist is, all the white Aussie girls are doing the selling, and the black blokes are doing the buying.

Everyone loves a sailor, especially if he’s black, about seven feet tall and with a thousand bucks in his pocket. Aussie girls are known by seamen and sailors all over the world as the friendliest of people. Is it any wonder that the Aussie female has an international reputation? I mean, let’s be honest, the world over Australian women are known by anyone who sailed the seven seas as the greatest collection of wanton trollops God ever shovelled guts into. No wonder there are so many blokes in jail for killing the bastards.

I remember once I was walking through Melbourne city centre with my girlfriend at the time, Lindy, and she said, ‘Oh look, the New Guinea navy’s in town’.

I looked at her and said, ‘Where?’

She pointed and I peered off into the distance. And, about 3000 yards away, sure enough, there were about six to eight fuzzy wuzzy sailors in white short pants walking towards us. But I couldn’t recognise them as being members of the New Guinea navy or any other navy. I said to Lindy, ‘How come you’re so familiar with the New Guinea bloody navy?’

She said she recognised the uniform. I said, ‘What! At 3000 bloody yards, you’ve got to be kidding.’ I mean, what’s a bloke to think when his little 18-year-old ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’ girlfriend can spot the New Guinea navy in the crowds of the city centre at a couple of miles. Lindy assured me that it was all quite harmless. She just recognised the uniform.

I am of the opinion that Aussie girls have a natural, God-given ability to spot black men in sailors’ uniforms at any distance at all. I don’t know why the Department of Defence didn’t use Aussie girls as coast watchers during the war – although, then again, the German navy was all white, and the Japanese navy sailors were noted for being a bit small in the eight-day-clock department, which makes them no use at all to Aussie girls. Australia’s international reputation consists of the men all being drunken rednecks, and the women being extremely nimble at dropping their drawers.