Part 4 (1/2)

You recalled the hot seaport, your departure planned on the Ruiz Cano that dangerous barge which took you out over the Gulf of Mexico

away from the anger hidden in laughter, from the pistilleros lounging by the Presidencia.

You the too curious gringo left behind you the coasting steamers & pink squared plazas to forget the taste of warm beer in dreary cantinas.

You headed for the high ground of Tabasco & the country of ruined churches.

Back at the beginning

of those lawless roads lie the dingy houses smearing out onto silver sandhills.

Wardrobe Drinkers

is what they are in Austinmer.

Yuppies from the North Sh.o.r.e, $300,000 homes on the beach front, sending the RSL broke & the greenies blocking development for a few birds up an estuary. Could be worse, given the j.a.ps on the Gold Coast going off like mobile phones.

The miners & cottages are long gone & so is full employment. In 1941 as a telegraph delivery boy I made 13 s.h.i.+llings 10 a week. Across the Harbour Bridge to the North Sh.o.r.e on a regulation red bike. Sunday was the day for casualty messages, the dead & wounded delivered all over Sydney except Vine street, Darlington, where Darcy the Crim lived & the most dangerous place in town.

I came to Austinmer 30 years ago before the Wardrobe Drinkers in the days of the miners & cottages.

Take those grain & coal carriers upwards of 250,000 tonnes with a 12 man crew, anch.o.r.ed stern to wind, off Hill 60 out of Port Kembla navigated by satellite direct to j.a.pan.

You want the best view? Sublime Pt.

Lookout, right down the coast, the Pacific ironed flat far as the eye can see, a sky expanded metal-red nightly.

Girl. Gold. Boat

out of Port Moresby. The obese Oxford villain tumbles overboard speared by the fuzzy-wuzzies. Our hero, Captain Singleton, finally

puts his s.h.i.+rt back on and tilts his cap to the sunset. He places one arm around his sweetheart and the other at the helm. The sea falls into

suburbs of light, a topiary of Islands could be mist. He is American and at home in the world as he moves forward on the celluloid tides.

He came out of sickness country (sic) he came out of the Holy Land.

Domestic Pack Shots

1. The Gays Next Door

shrieking like hyenas in their s.e.xual mirth to the dis...o...b..ng of Madonna making her mint in the sacrilegious from the sacred. For some, perhaps, a continuous custom to hang together whatever sense of family may be had once the wild oats have pa.s.sed into the photograph alb.u.m: circa: June, in some tumbled month, the garden hose spurting champagne and the neighbour, suspect as an affair, out of shot.

2. Working Hot

Joe Hammer makes his move on screen and the girl cries out for Mamma.

A family of sperm packs up and moves house. The removal of limbs.

The images dim to an impotent mauve and the stage act begins. Shes only working warm, consistent as a vibrator. She hopes one day to make big bucks; the conference room, that is, before she hits twenty.

The one spotlight fixes on the portico between her thighs.