One Way or Another (12 page)

‘Nikki,' he chided me. ‘You are obviously a good actress, but you're coming across as a stage actress. There are three kinds of acting. Theatre, television and screen.'

He turned the television screen around and replayed us the scene we'd just done. I cringed. On camera my acting came across as melodramatic. I was over-acting, and Alex was doing the same. We were trying too hard.

‘The camera picks up everything,' Ray explained. ‘On a stage you need to act. For film you need to
not
act. Let the script carry the story. Act inside. Words and eyes. That's all we need. If you try hard to let your face do nothing, no facial contorting, almost no expression, the performance becomes real …'

I tried the next take the way he suggested and the result was infinitely better. In all my years of drama classes and in the countless years as a struggling actress that still lay ahead of me, Ray's would remain the best advice I was ever given. I got a call back. Sadly, Alex did not.

The following week Ray asked me to test with Miles Buchanan. With cushions for lips and angelic curls, Miles had the demeanour of a middle-aged man but looked about twelve years old. In fact he was the same age as me. We were given three scenes to work on before another series of screen tests and I caught the bus up along the northern beaches to his family home to rehearse. Acting with him was a joy and I was more than a little impressed by the Logie he had won as a child five years earlier. The Logie was a distant cousin of Oscar, after all.

Despite Ray's encouragement, Suzie Maizels rang me at home a couple of weeks later. Peter Carey had decided to go with the actress with film experience – Gia ‘sparkly teeth' Carides. I couldn't help but wonder if my chompers had anything to do with his final decision. But I was pleased to learn that Miles had scored the role of Gia's brother. Out of anger and childish spite, I didn't buy or read another Peter Carey novel for years. A year later, I managed to score two tickets to the première of
Bliss
; Dad sent me his complimentaries. I don't think he ever saw a cent of return, so it was a fizzer all round for us.

I was by no means ready to give up on Oscar – but I familiarised myself with social security and began rocking up to their disillusioning establishment fortnightly with an unemployment form. Shoving my disappointment behind me, I threw myself into partying. Paddington was like a village, abuzz with social opportunities. Around the corner lived Pinky, a tiny English lady in her late twenties with a shock of short white hair and a belt of rock-star notches that left mine for dead. She was pretty in a damaged sort of way, like a parrot who'd been caught in a storm. According to her, no Australian band that had toured Sydney was free of the taint of her love. She was my first female Sydney friend and became an honorary Vulture Club member. With ten more years' experience than I had, she thrilled me with her sordid stories.

Not far away in Boundary Street was another house of rotating rockers, and Michael Hutchence had a pad nearby in the creatively named Paddington Street. It was common enough to start a party in one house and crawl through the suburb from venue to venue, nearly always ending up in the Manzil Room. A seedy but convivial dive, the Manzil was the equivalent of our late-night lounge room, where big names stole away on their nights off to jam with local musicians. We saw members of George Thorogood's band, John Cougar Mellencamp's band and someone from Fleetwood Mac. When they jumped on stage at three in the morning they might find themselves playing alongside the guys from Cold Chisel or Rose Tattoo, or a kid from the Western suburbs with a slide guitar. Cocaine and speed were the drugs of choice but anything and everything was available in the public restrooms. Every girl there was a current, former or future groupie or rock star.

Chrissie Amphlett, the school-uniformed strumpet who fronted the Divinlys, threatened me with a cat fight one night after finding me sitting in a booth with her boyfriend. He was raving about her while I pitched my idea for a new band, inviting him to back me. I have only vague, swirling memories of her wide-eyed rage and Pinky's laughter as she took bets on the outcome of our scrag rumble.

I woke up the next morning at home in Paddington with a swollen top lip and no recollection of how I'd got there. An interrogation of Billy elicited nothing but a knowing smirk. Had I come off the worse, or had Chrissie? Perhaps I'd just passed out on the table and hurt myself. I never knew, and Chrissie was nice as pie the next time I saw her. Whatever happened in the Manzil Room was swept out the front door and taken away with the garbage. Every night was a chance to start again. For those who suffered from chemically induced blackouts, this was a godsend.

*

The Manzil might have been our collective lounge room, but there was no shortage of late-night venues in the Cross. After hanging around with the boys from Pseudo Echo one night, we all traipsed back to a bar called Benny's. Billy and I had heard of this legendary place and had even tried to gain entry one night after a gig, but this was no ordinary nightspot. Located in Challis Avenue in Potts Point at the northern end of Kings Cross, it was open only to those who made the grade. The grade was ‘fame'. If the doorman recognised you from
Countdown
or
Neighbours
, you were warmly welcomed. If you were a kid wanting autographs, you were politely told that the place was full.

A nondescript building hidden behind a big wooden door with a fish-eye spy hole, the place was a rabbit warren of three rooms over two levels, separated by three small staircases of five or six steps each. A fourth room directly left of the front foyer served as the bar. We'd been shooed away on previous occasions, but this time, being with the band, we were ushered in with smiles and pats on the back. Almost immediately I bumped into James Reyne, who bought me a drink and then returned to his gaggle of girls.

The place was dim but not as murky as the Manzil Room. There were some very dark corners but the bar area was relatively well lit. It didn't start really buzzing until well after midnight, when musicians would start arriving to relax with a drink and plenty of cocaine. Rock memorabilia festooned the walls and a little kitchen out the back could throw together rice or sushi for anyone whose appetite hadn't been dulled by drugs.

We took our drinks and sat around a big round table on the uppermost level. Glenn Shorrock of the Little River Band and his wife, Jo, squeezed in next to me and we made small talk. Jon Farriss of INXS tapped his drumsticks on the table next to ours and gave me a nod of acknowledgement, our paths having crossed during my Surfers Paradise heyday. It was a little odd to find myself in cramped quarters with Billy and a cast of characters from my lusty past – but this was the music world, where promiscuity was the order of the day. Lines of coke were passed around by friendly faces, to be snorted discreetly behind the laminated wine lists.

There was plenty of posing and preening going on and I'm sure egos collided more than occasionally. That first night, we watched Brian Mannix from the Uncanny X-Men pushing his bantam-sized weight around, preening like a peacock in his fashionably slashed singlet. He was hilarious, a pantomime unto himself with his pouts and head tosses. The stereotypical rock star.

The staff of Benny's was made up of Mickey, her dark hair pulled back into a severe ponytail, Molly, a mischievous, hard-rocking Shirley Temple who looked like she'd won a fight or two in her time, and Dominic, an elfin Frenchman with long hair trailing down his back behind an inexorably receding hairline. We soon discovered that the staff were the backbone of Benny's, as highly revered as the rock stars they served. No-one gave them any sort of attitude and if they'd tried, Grant and Marty, the Kiwi brothers who owned the place, would have had words. Benny's would go down in Australian rock history; it was the coolest place to drink in Australia in the eighties. Three lines of coke and four vodkas and orange later, I had decided that this was my new local. If I was ever going to rub shoulders with Rod Stewart, this was the place where it might happen.

After hours of basking in rock celebrity, a group of us bundled into the street and, laughing loudly, wandered through the jaded twinkle of Kings Cross as a pale purple glow consumed the sky. We made our way down a little alleyway off Macleay Street and dragged ourselves up a staircase to Baron's, a seedy, inviting bar with chunky, worn leather couches. The cocaine supply had dried up for the evening, so alcohol would have to do. Some patrons even drank tea. The idea of going home to bed was distasteful.

The actor Jack Thompson was banging something on the piano and I wandered over, sat on the stool beside him and played him my faulty, halting version of ‘The Baby Elephant Walk'. It wasn't Hollywood but it was a world away from Surfers. By the time Billy and I fell into a cab, it was broad daylight and my eyes were screaming for a pair of sunglasses.

For the next couple of months we fell into the same routine at least three or four nights a week: a rock gig followed by the Manzil, Benny's and Baron's. We usually took Mondays and Tuesdays off, lazing on the couch, drinking and watching
The Young Ones
, which we taped from the television. If the boys were on tour, we would sneak into Joey's room and fumble around under his futon for his collection of porn videos. We spent many a lazy afternoon eating hot chips and laughing at the incredible feats of some overweight Greek man who cheered ‘Bravo' with each climax. We usually ended up acting out some of the scenes, but generally more for comic than erotic relief.

Most days featured drinks and a smoke with Pinky and whichever musicians and technicians were passing through. When Joey and Jock were away we'd host short-term housemates, rock and rollers who spent days asleep and nights on the town. The roadies were all known by cryptic nicknames: Junior, Head, Pineapple, Bat, Spider, another Spider and Sneaky. Sometimes I felt like Snow White! Our mailbox was always full of postcards from exotic locations and I began a lifelong collection. Billy and I had the place largely to ourselves during these spells, which was a lovely domestic arrangement – most of the time.

Although we were a tight unit, envied by many for our obvious devotion to one another, tiny cracks were starting to show. Nothing catastrophic – but there were moments of darkness, black spots on Billy's charming, boisterous exterior. For weeks he had worked like a man possessed on his stage, labouring over a revolutionary steel-grilled set of his own design. The structure filled the dining room like a menacing metal spiderweb. But now the Divinyls tour was about to get underway and he was behind schedule. He sat around for days on end, eating kippers and tomato sauce out of a tin. The fish repulsed me and his loss of motivation scared me.

‘Get up and finish the stage or you'll be letting Joey down,' I whined one afternoon.

‘I'm just feeling flat. Stop hassling me. You're turning into a nagging old shrew,' he mumbled into his fishy can.

‘Get up and do some work!' I yelled, hands on hips, shaking with frustration. ‘We're behind in rent and Jock is hassling me. Please.'

‘Why don't you go out and get a job, then? I don't think I want to do this stage thing anymore.' He threw me a sideways look and a smirk, like he was fishing for a reaction. He always got one. Away from my parents, I was suddenly very adept at expressing my anger. I grabbed his can of oily kippers and dumped them over his head and then stared, waiting for him to say something. He looked like Carrie with rivulets of orange liquid oozing over his face, pooling in the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his white T-shirt. A minute passed in suspended animation before he darted out his tongue and licked a flake of kipper.

‘Hmmm. Yum,' he murmured and we fell into each other's arms, laughing hysterically. Possum turned up to feast on the crumbs of fish that were dropping to the floor from Billy's head.

‘Shit,' I said, looking down at the stained carpet. ‘Joey's gonna kill us.'

*

In the end, Billy pulled himself out of his slump in time to put the last frantic touches on his stage. The finished product was impressive and Joey was pleased he'd taken Billy on. We'd expected Billy to join the Divinyls on tour, helping to assemble his masterwork at each new venue, and we'd saved our pennies in anticipation, even avoiding the cocaine lure of Benny's. But at the last minute the tour manager reneged; it would be cheaper, he decided, for one of the regular roadies to put the thing together. Poor Billy was devastated. Only he knew how to assemble the stage correctly. They'd screw it up and he'd never work again, he cried into his Bourbon. But Joey kept us in the loop, ringing us from around Australia with updates. The stage was a hit and Billy was soon lined up for more work with Midnight Oil and Spy vs Spy. Commissions began pouring in and soon he was hardly ever home, instead spending long hours at a rented warehouse, knocking out stage after stage.

More out of boredom than anything else, I found a job in an exclusive children's wear store on Oxford Street. Located in an awkward spot between Paddington and Darlinghurst, it had very little passing trade and some days not a single customer darkened the threshold. I spent my days behind the counter reading novels, rediscovering this neglected passion of my childhood.

As jobs go it was idyllic, but it didn't last long. My employment was terminated when the establishment closed down, having seen barely ten customers in a month. I couldn't have cared less. Life continued in a haze of gigs and parties.

We were dirt poor. My clothes were always a tad musky. The hairspray helped to conceal it, but the underlying stench of badly laundromatted clothes was ever present. I felt physically run-down from all the partying, with mouth ulcers, the occasional sty in my eye and a permanent hangover. Our fabulous lifestyle was starting to smell mouldy, and it was getting harder and harder to be loyal to my dreams. Oscar was getting tarnished. He was beginning to look like fool's gold.