Story for performance #542
webcast from Sydney at 08:01PM, 14 Dec 06

Joe calls us up, me and Jock, and says ‘come over’, so we’re like ‘yeah, no worries. We’ll be there.’ Didn’t know why, but he’s our mate so we thought, why not?

When we get to Joe’s, there’s a bunch of guys sitting around havin’ a grand ol’ time, suckin’ down a few bongs and beers, and I didn’t mind if I did. After a while Joe comes over to me, puts his hand round the back of my neck, says ‘I need you to help me with something.’ Joe tells me how there’s this prick of a guy who’s been raggin’ on one of his mates pretty bad. He says the guy’s stolen some of his mates’ shit too.

‘How do you know?’

‘Have I ever steered you wrong before?’

I’ve known Joe a long time. He’s a good mate who’s helped me out of a few scrapes, but I can’t remember if he ever has steered me wrong or not. I say, ‘Nope. And I wouldn’t tell anybody if you had.’

Joe smiles, ‘That’s the spirit. You’re a good mate.’

That’s what we’re all about. That’s what mates are all about, helping each other out, right? It’d be unAustralian not to, wouldn’t it? If you haven’t got mates, you haven’t got anything in this country.

So me, Jock, and Joe head off to this prick’s place. Takes about half an hour and I enjoy the drive there, hanging my arm out the window of Joe’s Monaro, letting the hot wind make me sweat, makes me feel real.

We pull up outside the place, a real shit-hole, as if it’d be anything else. Dead car bodies are rusting in the front yard behind a peeling picket fence.

Joe knocks on the plain white, weather-cracked door and from the other side I hear a dog barking like crazy. It takes an age before the thing opens and I’m already hyped up ‘cause you know I don’t like to be kept waiting, except it’s not a guy who answers but a prune faced chick who looks like she’s just woken up. Probably a slut.

Joe just says to her, ‘Get Bollo.’

Her expression, blank, doesn’t change and for a second I reckon she could be a retard, but then she shuffles off down the hall.

Another minute we’re waiting, and this is pissing me off, while the guy makes his way to the front door to see us. By the look of him he’d be lucky to have enough brains to string a choko vine over a shithouse.

Joe speaks calmly to him. ‘Where’s Don’s gear?’

The guy looks Joe up ‘n’ down like Joe’s an alien, or he’s speaking some sort of foreign gibberish. ‘I don’t have Don’s gear.’

Joe’s smoking, see, and takes the ciggie out of his mouth. I can see he’s bein’ real patient with this dickhead. Joe says, ‘I’ll ask you again. Where’s Don’s gear?’

Jock’s standin’ next to me and I hear his breathing get deeper and heavier. Jock’s a good guy, been mates with him a long time now. He gets a bit fired up at little stuff, y’know, gets the shits too easily but sometimes that’s an advantage. That breathing, I know, heard it before, means he’s about to explode. Me and Jock, we’re not as patient as Joe.

‘I haven’t seen Don for ages. I don’t have his gear.’

Joe’s cool as a cucumber ‘cause he knows we’ve got his back. Joe says ‘Yeah, you do.’

I say, ‘Mate, make it easy on yourself. Just give us the stuff.’

The guy says, ‘Who the fuck’re you?’

And of course I say, ‘I’m a mate of Joe’s.’

The guy says, ‘I don’t have the stuff so buzz off. All of ya,’ and goes to shut the door on us. That’s enough to push Jock into action. He steps up and kicks the door with a beefy size seventeen, flinging it back and the guy onto the floor.

Just because we can, we beat and kick the shit out of this guy, his screaming girlfriend who tries to stop us, and their yapping dog. Not a cattle dog. If it was I would’ve left it alone, and blueys can take care of ’emselves anyway. Don’t know why anyone would want any other sort of dog. The adrenalin rush is so good, makes you feel ten feet tall.

We go through the place, but none of Don’s shit is here. We nearly take the fuckin’ place apart searchin’ for this stuff, while the guy and his prune faced chick are bleeding all over the floor. I guess Joe must’ve got it wrong somewhere along the line.

Joe shrugs, ah well. We don’t have to clean the place up. Still, the guy didn’t have to be such a fuckin’ dickhead about it, did he? He could’ve just let us in to see for ourselves…

Come to think of it, there were a couple of other times that Joe got me to help him out and it turned out he had the wrong dudes. Can’t help bad luck, I s’pose. Ah, there’s no use botherin’ him about it now. Your mates are your mates and you trust them. What else you gonna do? Dumb questions would only create bad blood, a bad situation between friends, wouldn’t it? You’ve got to help your mates out, right? No matter what, right? Never know when you might need ’em…

Anyway, doesn’t matter, Joe takes what beer and spirits the guy has in the fridge, and I pocket his ciggies. Jock does alright too, taking the guy’s pot.

We tell him not to get too comfortable. We might be back later.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Ross Murray.