Filling in the Gaps (2 page)

A couple of years later when I was about nine years old we left the country property in Mt. Barker and moved to Perth. We lived in the same street as Grandma Kitty and Grandfather Jimmy in the suburb of Mosman Park, so I was always visiting them. Every Friday during school holidays they would take me to Fremantle, the port twelve miles from the capital of Perth and famous for once hosting The America's Cup. They would give me sixpence to do with as I wished and then buy fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and soaked with vinegar, which we would eat as we sat in their car watching the ocean liners in the port. I probably shared more with them than with Mum and Dad. They had a beautiful radiogram which also played 78 rpm records. They only had two records - Mario Lanza singing
I'll Walk with God
and Jane Powell singing
Oceania Roll,
with Debbie Reynolds singing
Aba Daba Honeymoon
on the reverse side. I would play them over and over and sing along. Grandma and Granddad said they liked my singing and often asked me to sing for them, which I would happily do but only if they did not look at me while I sang.

My bond with them was so close that I told them all my fears and hopes. I was also very scared of the dark and still am, so sleep for me was not easy and never without a small night light on the floor. One night when I was about eight years old I heard Mum yell out in what sounded like a distressed voice,
Stop it darl, you've hurt my tit!
' I was mortified. It sounded like they were having a fight and I certainly knew what a ‘tit' was! First thing next morning I ran down the road to Grandma's in tears and proceeded to tell her that I thought Dad was hurting Mum and repeated word for word Mum's comments. You cannot begin to imagine the look on poor Grandma's face, which changed several colours as she blessed herself. She then proceeded to try to convince me that married couples often play around in bed and that Dad must have
accidentally
knocked Mum's breast! I'm still not convinced.

Surviving School

Those of you who read my earlier book will have learned of some of my interesting experiences at school. School for me was both a trial and a triumph. I loved the process of learning, every aspect, although history did not excite me. The abuse I suffered from a teacher and fellow pupil left scars, both physical and emotional. I can still remember the abusers' names and to this day I still have moments when I find it hard to deal with; however, there were also times of complete joy - being dux of the class, winning races at athletics, having a teacher who would spend an hour or more of his own time after school with me until I fully comprehended certain issues I was finding hard to grasp. School was also my first experience of, excuse the expression,
ejaculation
!

I was at St. Louis College and I always sat in the front row against the wall. During a particularly boring class, probably history, I sat with my hand in my lap just sort of gently playing with myself, as one does at eleven years of age, when suddenly I experienced the strangest feelings. It was scary, weird but ultimately wonderful! As my whole body shuddered a stain slowly appeared through my khaki shorts. Horror of horrors - I thought I had some kind of disease! I have no idea what the teacher, Mr Bartels, thought was happening to me - some kind of minor anxiety attack perhaps, but thankfully nothing was said. I quickly found my cousin who was the same age and in the same class who verified that he too had had a similar experience but in his bed at night. Trust me to have had my experience in the front row of a class of forty boys!

In spite of the above incident, and the aforementioned abuse, school remained mostly fascinating for me. Having teachers who loved their work and their particular subject helped enormously. In those days we had a different teacher for each subject - one for religion, one for history, one for French and so on. I was a bit of a class clown even though I was extremely shy and would have the desk lid up doing impressions of various teachers, especially our maths teacher Mr Heinrich, whom I used to call Spot, because he would look at me and say
‘I've spotted you son. Close that lid and pay attention!'
One day he had a particularly nasty cold and climbed over a boy's desk and spat out the window but the wind blew it all back onto the lad's leg! As Mr Heinrich was on his knees cleaning the boy's leg I went into total hysterics. I laughed so much that I started to retch and had to leave the class room, followed by a prefect who, thinking I was ill, took me upstairs to the school nurse who was a tartar. If she thought a pupil was faking it - and she obviously thought I was - she would give them a glass of warm salty water to drink down in one gulp, which she administered to me, causing me to almost heave my heart out! I soon stopped laughing but have always been a bit of a giggler.

In my last book I wrote at length about my abuse at school, both physical and sexual. I survived and probably came through it all a tad stronger. I have been surprised by the number of people who contacted me after the release of ‘My Hi-de-Highlife' who suffered much worse abuse than I and they also felt that they were able to grow from their experiences. Sadly, many more fall by the wayside and slip through the gaps. Their abuse was so deeply scarring that in many cases they were not able to see any light at the end of that awful long tunnel. I am especially saddened by the peer abuse of young gay, lesbian and transgender persons today in these supposedly enlightened times, particularly on the social media. Sach and I still occasionally have a nasty comment thrown at us and it is never easy to just shrug it off. It still hurts!

As I was learning piano I was often asked to play the organ at Benediction in the school chapel. It was a pedal or pump organ and my legs barely reached the pedals. After a hymn such as
Tantum Ergo Sacramentum
I would be so exhausted from pumping away and singing that I had to put my head between my legs before I passed out. I only reached third grade in my pianoforte lessons because the nun teaching me kept whacking me on the knuckles with a ruler whenever I hit a wrong note, so one day I grabbed the ruler out of her hand, snapped it in half and quit! To think -
I could have been the next Liberace
! I was a bit sad about quitting piano lessons when the acclaimed Australian pianist, Eileen Joyce, visited the school and spent an hour playing the most exquisite music I had ever heard. Her fingers seemed to barely touch the keys yet this heavenly music filled the room.

Speaking of attending chapel at school and being very religious - I desperately wanted to be a priest at one time - I loved attending Benediction, which is not the Mass but is a very old devotion in the Church. As a hymn of praise is sung the priest incenses the censer and then blesses the congregation with the Blessed Sacrament, while making the sign of the cross. Whenever the incense was lit the chapel or church was filled with the most wonderful aroma that almost sent me into a trance. I would be on my knees as an altar boy behind the priest, breathing in deeply and swaying gently - probably an earlier and milder version of being stoned! After I had marred Su Pollard she often wanted to attend Mass and Benediction. On one occasion when she met the priest afterwards she told him,
‘I loved your “drag” and flaming hand bag!'
- which was the censer filled with the smoking incense that the priest swung in the form of a cross. I was amusingly mortified by her comments but the priest, thankfully, thought it was hilarious!

On another occasion during Mass when the collection plate was passed amongst the congregation Su only had a very large denomination note, which she placed into the plate, but as the congregation waited she also counted out some change which she placed back into her purse! My ambitions to become a priest never came to fruition but my faith remains strong to this day. At least twice a day I say private prayers for special intentions, family and friends who are ill, others going through hard times and occasionally I sneak in a few prayers for myself. I believe with all my heart that some special persons who have passed away have been acting as guardian angels and watching over me for a long time. It's not a presence I can feel but an almost instinctive sense of their protection at times. The thought of dying still fills me with such fear, in spite of my strong faith. The idea of every aspect of me disappearing into nothingness makes life seem both precious every day and yet very sad, if there is nothing after we leave this world.

Country To City

Leaving the country and moving to the city may have been the start of my love of living in a place where there is a kind of pulse that one can hear and feel. One reason I love lying in bed in New York is the constant sound of taxis and the hum of life that makes my pulse race. I always sleep better in a situation like that than on a farm where there is no noise except the sound of birds and animals. However, as I grow older I now find this quite soothing but my true love is a big city, London and New York being my favourites.

So there I was in the City of Lights, as Perth became known after the American astronaut John Glenn named it, as he flew over the city in his space capsule in 1962. However at 2am every night all the street lights were turned off, inviting all kinds of mischief for burglars, not to mention the danger of driving in a big city with not one street light turned on! I remember visiting from London one night and driving along the freeway at 2am when the street lights suddenly all went out. I drove the car over to the verge and stopped, terrified, because I truly believed that I had suddenly gone blind!

As shy as I was at the time I also had a lot of... ‘
cheek
' is probably the correct word. One example was when I played hooky from school one day because of the abuse I was receiving. If a pupil was away for a day they would need an excuse note the next day from a parent or guardian. I was too scared to tell Mum and Dad that I had not attended school the previous day. The following morning as I waited at the bus stop to catch the bus to school, four older people, complete strangers, were also waiting. I went up to one of them, blowing my nose and a bit teary, and told them that I had been off school sick the previous day and because my mum was also very sick she was unable to write an excuse note. I asked them if they could write one for me and sign it Nita Keogh! Unbelievably, they did and placed it in an envelope. Very kind! However, I should have read the note before it was sealed in an envelope because the jig was up when I got to school and presented the note to my teacher, who noticed that the signature was
Anita Keough
, when Mum's name was Nita and there was no ‘u' in Keogh, which the teacher of course knew. A week of detention followed. I wasn't often sent to detention but was on the receiving end of the strap numerous times, usually for laughing uncontrollably. The scariest thing was a strap that one of the teachers would keep hidden up his sleeve until needed. Then it would fly out of his sleeve at great speed, terrifying the whole class and then onto my palm! It also had a tiny tack sticking out of the end of the strap - I stress tiny but it still hurt like heck and left its mark.

City life was so exciting, with buses, trams, trolley buses and THEATRES! A theatre was to me a place I could happily live in. I loved the smells, the sounds, the lights, the house curtains and still do. I used to make friends with the staff and I never met one who was unkind to me in any way. They would invite me into the bio-box from where the movies were screened through a little window at the back of the theatre. They also gave me posters, old tickets and other things. The only incident was when a much older staff member who was very short and English and whom I remember well asked me back stage to see behind the screen and proceeded to ‘
go for the grope'
! Next thing I knew he was stark naked - here we go again I thought - but that didn't really scare me. Instead it almost made me laugh because what I saw perched on a desk in front of me looked like a little pink bird sitting in a nest -
his private parts surrounded by his pubic hair!
Thankfully he wasn't too persistent and gave up the chase but I always kept my distance from that day.

In the city I also reached puberty and it seemed like it happened overnight. All of a sudden there was hair everywhere - armpits, crotch, chest, legs - whilst none of my fellow classmates had yet reached that stage. After sports days when we all had to shower and change in front of each other I would always turn my back because I didn't want to embarrass myself - or them for that matter. It was becoming the cause of great stress to me so one day I snuck into the bathroom, lathered up with Dad's shaving cream and brush and shaved off every last hair with Dad's old-fashioned razor. By the time I had finished there were hairs everywhere; it would have been impossible to have removed them all without a jet stream. When Dad went to shave the following morning, with his razor clogged with my pubic hair, there was a ‘
pubic
' outcry. I never explained what happened but just buttoned my lip, unusual for me. The worst part was the itching as it grew back. I felt like rubbing my crotch against the bark of a tree trunk to ease the itching. Just awful! Now as I am getting older I find hair appearing in the weirdest places. It is most annoying. I remember seeing a chap who was very, very hirsute sunbathing on the beach, so much so that a sign saying ‘
This Way Up'
might have been helpful!

Another new experience living in the city was the closeness of other family members whom I really loved. Apart from my grandparents, my favourites were my Aunty Rene and her husband Uncle Ron Duff. They had three sons, their youngest being eleven days younger than me, so we became quite close and had a few adventures. He was also in the same class as me at St Louis College and although he had his own circle of very butch pals he always kept one eye out for my welfare, but I never felt close enough to confide my fears to him. I think I may have been an embarrassment to him at times but he was a bit of a hero to me - good at sports while my forte was class work. Uncle Ron was a fun chap and at times enjoyed a drink, especially at weekends, but he was always more than kind to me. However, when on the odd occasion I saw alcohol change his personality, it confirmed my hatred of just the smell of any kind of alcohol. Even today if I am partaking of alcoholic beverages, which I occasionally do - occasionally I stress - and start to slur my words or stagger, all of a sudden it's as if a brick wall comes down and I am instantly totally sober. I think it's my fear of losing control. Anyhow, in spite of the odd drinking incident, I loved the whole family very much.

The Duffs lived in Napier Street, Cottesloe, a beautiful beachside suburb of Perth. They tried to assist me to
‘fit in'
by enrolling me into the Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club. Boy was that a joke! I was terrified of the ocean and my fear was worse after Dad lost his patience and picked me up, carried me as far out into the ocean as he could, heaved me into the deep and left me to my own devices. The only device I had was survival. When I finally surfaced I was being dragged further out into the sea and being tossed about like a cork. After about ten minutes I managed to catch a few waves back onto the beach but my body was covered in sand burns and I was sobbing my heart out. I truly believed that no one there cared whether I lived or died! Hence I have never learned how to swim. However, I was excellent running in sand races and relays and actually won a few prizes, but if I had to enter the water and a bit of seaweed brushed against my leg I was out of there screaming like a banshee. My poor, well-meaning family just shook their heads in embarrassment!

The other part of our family I especially bonded with was Dad's youngest brother Len and his family. His wife, Aunty Barb, and their whole family were an extension of our family and we had some amazing and happy times together. Every year a different family would take it in turns to have Christmas Day lunch at their home. We always attended Midnight Mass and the carols always made me very emotional. How I loved those days! Before we left home to go to the relatives we opened our own presents and whenever I saw them all under the tree I would sit and cry, totally unable to open the gifts for a little while. I think it was just sheer joy! I hated the thought of losing that joy at Christmas, plus at events like Easter when I was given a lot of Easter eggs. Mum tells me that I always kept enough bits of the Easter eggs to last me until Easter the following year! Hoarding joy I guess.

Aunty Rene's and Uncle Ron's eldest son, Kevin, became and is still quite famous for his swimming training of Olympic athletes. There is one thing about Kevin and me that puzzles me to this day. He was a very handsome and fit young man and even at that time I knew I was ‘different' and preferred men to women. However, Kevin had several serious girlfriends whom I latched on to and got crushes on. When I would go to his flat to visit I was always glued to his partner - hung on to his lady friend's hands - and followed them around like a puppy. I believe that I may have even caused the break up of one of poor Kevin's relationships! How totally weird - mind you it was me - for such a young and blooming gay to become so attached to those ladies! Perhaps one clever psychologist could enlighten me one day.

Living in Perth as a pre-teen was very different for me after my country years and I always seemed to gravitate to show business in one of its forms. My first celebrity contact was a famous local model called Julie McFarlane, who was in a fashion parade I attended, probably with Mum and some aunts. Somehow I struck up a conversation with her and told her I was a fan. She gave me a beautifully signed, black-and-white photograph of herself that I kept until a few years ago. When she learned that I lived in Mosman Park she told me that she did too and invited me around on school holiday weekends to what seemed a mansion on the river in Mosman Bay for lemonade and to see her modelling photographs. A totally innocent and charming interlude in my life, which probably was the encouragement I needed to write to people like Debbie Reynolds.

Movies were a huge part of my life. Most of my acquaintances know of my first contact with Debbie Reynolds via the local movies. However, I also remember Mum and Dad taking my sister Jenny and me to the Mosman Picture Gardens to see the movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. We were allowed to sit in the front row and stayed there until about a third of the way through when the spaceship opened up and the scariest music I have ever heard accompanied Michael Rennie as he left the spaceship. My sister and I were off - on our hands and knees - crawling up the aisle to find Mum and Dad and, frozen with fear, buried ourselves into their chests! I still find it scary watching it today.