Chapter 27: Back at University

Classes Resume

March – May 1977

Just as everyone had warned me; second year electrical engineering was full on, right from the first day. In each of the subjects, the lecturers didn’t waste time reviewing what we might have studied in the previous year; it was head first into the deep end. I had some doubts about one of the subjects; Solid State Physics. To me, this looked like the sort of subject material that graduate students at Oxford University or MIT would cover; quantum mechanics, atomic particles, and similar esoteric subject areas.

As well, a number of students hadn’t returned; either they had not passed enough subjects, or decided that this really wasn’t the right course of study for them. Those missing included Greg Carr; which didn’t upset me, but I was sad to see that Jenny was among those who had transferred to another course. I tended to hang out with the same group as the previous year; David, Claire, Barry, Trevor, and several others. Garry hung out with us; even though he was halfway between first year computer science and second year, he had some subjects in common with us.

I found living in the large, group house was actually a benefit; our combined study area was working out very well. There were always several others there on any evening; some nights all nine of us were there; and quite often several of the others from the group were there working with us or practicing in the studio. I felt it was like how the medieval monks must have been working in their monastery library or scriptorium, transcribing the gospels or some other holy book. There was always someone to bounce a question off; or (for me), to get someone to review some piece of writing. We all helped each other, even if what the other person was working on wasn’t in our area of expertise.

I very quickly got into a routine; Lori, Megan and I would wake just after 7:00 a.m.; giving us enough time for some quick lovemaking before breakfast and getting ready to ride my bike across to the university; leaving home about 8:15. That got me to the campus with fifteen minutes in hand before my first lecture each day; plenty of time to go over the timetable for the day. I would make sure I had any assignments or tutorial papers ready to hand in, and then it was classes until noon. Over lunchtime I would revise my notes from the morning, or work on a project or computer program. I cut my gym time down to one day a week; Thursdays when I had the hour after lunch off as free time.

Each day ended at 4:00 p.m.; so I was back home around twenty to five. Some days I would prepare dinner, depending on who else was cooking; other days I would get right into the study. Most nights we would have an hour or so music practice after dinner, and then it was back to studying, and finally into bed by eleven. Friday night was Crystal, Saturday morning housework, Saturday afternoon rehearsal, Saturday night Crystal again, with sailing on Sunday.

A few things broke up that routine; after the new album and single were released, we did a number of concerts in late March and the middle of April. Ted Albert’s “Saturday Jam at the Crystal” wasn’t going to eventuate until May; and there was often some ‘social’ event that would distract us from our studies, even if only for a few hours of the evening up at one of the local pubs.

On a personal relationship level, things were running smoothly in the house. Jillian and Allison were even more devoted to each other; Allison realized that at some stage she would have to break the news to her mother that she had fallen in love with another girl. Surprisingly, Louise Thornton took the news fairly well; I think she was relieved that Allison was doing well at University and had fallen in with a good group of people. She was also pleased about Allison’s singing career, too. Of course, it didn’t take long for the malicious gossip to spread around the fellowship group at church; I was seen as the cause of it, introducing ‘sweet, innocent’ Allison to my perverted, degenerate lifestyle. At least that was according to Shane and my brother; they had both told Katey and some of the others where they could stick their narrow-minded, bigoted judgemental approach; after that the two of them stopped going to the fellowship group.

While speaking about my brother and his girlfriend; they seemed to be going from strength to strength. Every so often Ian would call me, seeking my advice; but as I told him, he seemed to be working things out pretty well on his own. Shane also told her sister how things were going, or as Allison said, “she’s got it pretty bad; she’s head over heels in love with your brother”. I didn’t tell her that she ‘got it’ just as bad with Jillian; I didn’t want her to think that I somehow resented her ‘taking Jillian from me’ – which I didn’t.

Murph and Mary Beth’s relationship was growing stronger, too. After I had a few quiet words with him about perhaps being a little more sensitive to her feelings about breast sizes, they didn’t seem to have any arguments. Somehow in between work and her part-time study, Mary Beth started a ‘stage and studio sound engineering’ course; her new knowledge already started to pay off.

The others in the group were doing well; Mandy was now a regular lead singer with the group; she had appeared to overcome her initial insecurities about her size and appearance. I’m not sure how that happened; maybe a combination of becoming accustomed to being naked around all of us, or Allison’s encouragement, or the regular recording work she had with Alberts. Whatever the reason; we now had three really good female lead singers; Mandy, Megan and Allison. Rachel continued to remain in the background; but the other three were gradually working on her, and she was starting to believe that she too had the chops to sing lead.

Rachel and Bruce had their moments; of all the couples in our group, they were the ones with the most ‘dynamic’ relationship. I think it was because they both had strong ideas and opinions musically; one of them would make some comment and upset the other; it would all blow over in a day or two, then they would be all lovey-dovey, until the next disagreement. One thing that Rachel did was invite some of us to give a lunchtime concert for the kids at her school; we picked a Thursday when most of us could get a good break from classes. We had a great time, they were so keen to learn about music, and play the instruments we bought along.

All in all, life was pretty good. I was glad to be back at University, despite the heavy workload. In particular, the two computer programming units I was doing this semester were very interesting; Computer Programming 2A (aka 6.021D Advanced Programming) built on what we had learned in the previous year; but concentrated on good programming design and ‘style’. Basically, how to design and structure a program to make in more readily understandable and maintainable by others; when to use functions and subroutines and similar topics. Doctor McCrea emphasised that our marks in assignments wouldn’t just be on the correct functioning of the program, but how well we followed good structured design and programming techniques.

In the first week of lectures, he showed us some examples of what he called ‘ugly code’; variables with names like ‘a1’, ‘aa1’, ‘somecounter’, and ‘anothercounter’. One program had no subroutines at all, just four pages of a continuous slab of code. We spent several lectures on the various ‘naming conventions’, including Hungarian notation, medial capitals, and other techniques, such as separating individual words in a name with an underscore to make reading the code easier.

The other computer science subject was Computer Programming 2B – officially known as 6.021E Digital Logic and Systems. In this, we dug deeper into the hardware architecture of computers; particularly the Digital Equipment PDP series of minicomputers, and the assembly level programming for them. The major assignment for the semester would be to write – in PDP-11 Assembler – a calculator program that would take a mathematical equation as input, and calculate the result. At least we would only have to work with integers, no multiplication or division, but handle parenthesis. So the input line might be (say) 10 + 3 – 17 + (10 + 14), and give the result 20.

Most days – except my Gym day – a bunch of us would find an empty tutorial room in the Electrical Engineering building and go over the morning’s lecture notes, or work on various assignments while we ate our lunches. Working that way was very productive; we often worked on assignments together; having several people working on the same problem helped work things out much faster. While we didn’t have every subject in common; since several of them were enrolled in the Science degree, and they didn’t have to do the physics subjects that I did being enrolled in Electrical Engineering, at least we had the maths subjects and the computer science subjects in common.

Of course, there was more to my life than just university; I made sure I attended the monthly Labor Party branch meetings. I was now accepted as a core member of the branch’s socialist left faction, and every so often leaders of the Left would call me, seeking support for various issues. Conversely, I became a sworn enemy of the Right faction.

The big issue of the moment was the future of uranium mining in Australia; there were strong calls for a moratorium - an indefinite cessation to all uranium mining in Australia; and in return, the anti-nuclear movement would support the party to regain government. Of course, no proposal to set party policy was a smooth exercise; considerable time in each meeting was given over to debates and speeches before the policy was ultimately settled.

Music still took up the bulk of my spare time. Rory Thomas came good with his promise to look around for a decent second-hand Hammond B3 for me; the price was right, and we set it up in our studio. It needed a good overall servicing; we replaced the vacuum tubes, cleaned all the electrical contacts with a good contact cleaner, and replaced the drive belt and bearings for the Leslie speakers. Once that was done, it sounded pretty good; Rory spent a few nights giving me lessons and pointers on how to get the best from it. It didn’t take me all that long to adapt to the different style of playing when compared to the Rhodes or even a conventional piano. We worked on some of the arrangements, working the Hammond into several of our songs.

I spent several evenings experimenting with the organ, trying out various tonebar combinations, seeing what sounded the best. I had already learned how to write down tonebar settings in the standard format, so on each song sheet I put the various settings that seemed to sound the best for that song. Now that I had the Hammond, we added a few new songs to the repertoire; two of ‘Booker T and the MGs’; ‘Green Onions’ and ‘Time is Tight’, along with the Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Gimme Some Lovin’. We also worked the Hammond into our arrangement of ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, and several other songs.

However, before the organ was added to our lineup, we had the release of our most recent album and single.

The Album is Released

March 17, 1977

The release party for the album and single would be at Crystal, on the evening of March 17. Ros had prepared a new stage backdrop; a large rendition of the album cover, along with the caricatures of each of us. The night before, we went around and swapped out the Parisian street scene backdrop with the new one; tested it to make sure it looked good. We also ran through the songs we would play; obviously the two from the single; ‘Leave Him Alone’ and “Bobby McGee’, with Megan singing those. We would also do the two Easybeats ones, ‘Good Times’ and ‘Make You Happy’. Phil suggested we also do two from our soul set; ‘Midnight Hour’ and ‘Treat Her Right’.

We thought that would work out well; Megan and I would have three songs where we each sang the lead; and they all had the right ‘sound’ for our new image. Plus, everyone in the group really liked playing those ones; particularly ‘Treat Her Right’. We would end the set on that one; we could really let everything go with that. The original Roy Head version was fairly short; our arrangement doubled the length to just over six minutes.

On the evening of the release party, we arrived at the ballroom before six; all seventeen of us were there. The ones that weren’t in the group had dressed up for the occasion, and I noticed Ros had worn a rather nice dress. I pulled her to one side, and whispered in her ear

“That dress will make it easy if you suddenly need to piss,” I said.

“Oh, fuck off! I’ve sworn off champagne; after the last time. You should know how it makes me spew, not just piss! You probably want to see me just pull my dress up and piss right in front of you, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but you would have to take your knickers off first.”

“Who said I’m wearing knickers?” she replied, winking.

“Prick-tease!”

“You never know your luck, you might get to find out later,” she said, and ducked under my arm to go into the building, leaving me feeling more than a little aroused. Damn, she knew how to tease me and turn me on. But it was all good fun between us.

Once inside we set things up on the stage, and made a final check of the sound, tuning, lights and backdrop. People started arriving; Ted and Fifa introduced us to various people; some I had recognized from the previous album release party or from the gold record presentation. Mostly they were from the broadcasting industry or retail stores; but I did see some fellow musicians; the guys from AC/DC had arrived.

“G’day, Will, mate, how’s it going?” Bon asked me. “I’m looking forward to hearing your latest album; they tell me it’s a real ball-tearer.”

“G’day mate, good to see ya. Yeah, I think it sounds pretty good, but, shit, what do I know about this music stuff?”

“I hear youse lot will be playing a coupla gigs at the Lifesaver next month; what if we see if we can make it a double header? If you want, I can talk to Pete about it, see what he can do.”

“Sounds good; he’s got a list of dates where we can make it, so that would work out well for both of us,” I said. “I really enjoyed playing with you guys last time; when you hear us tonight; you’ll probably agree we would be a good mix for a double bill.”

Soon it was time to get up on stage, as Ted was about to start the announcement. We took our places; Murph had the lights set with just the single spot on the main microphone; so that the rest of the stage, including the new backdrop, was in darkness. As Ted stepped up to the mike, people in the main hall started applauding.

“Friends, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Welcome to the release of Winters and Morris’s latest album and single, ‘Leave Him Alone’. Before we get to hear some of the tracks, I want to mention first some of the people who actually made this album possible. Of course, we always talk about the musicians who perform and sing on an album, but there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes; people who often get forgotten in the rush of publicity for the stars.

“In particular, the production team for this album have done a spectacular job; George Young, Harry Vanda, Jim Keays; each of them legends of the Australian music scene in their own right. The recording engineers; Glenn and Garry Butterworth have again made the sound quality of the recording the highest standard possible. We had a great group of backing musicians; some from the group behind me, the Roberttones, and others from the industry.

“Now, they just got the actual music on the record; but there’s so much more than that. I want to specially thank a young, talented artist, Roslyn McCarthy, who designed the album cover and all of the associated artwork. It’s one of the most striking and innovative album designs we have produced at Alberts, and in my opinion, one of the best looking covers I have ever seen. For those of you that want copies of the promotional posters, I’m sure you can get her to autograph a copy for you later this evening.

“Finally, the management team at Alberts Productions; Fifa Riccobono manages to keep the music production side running smoothly; somehow she manages to stay on top of the one thousand and one tasks that are involved in getting an album recorded, produced and distributed. Peter Jonas manages our touring and concert program, and makes sure the various groups and artists get the live exposure they need. Finally, there are a bunch of people working in the background; our computer department, accounting, distribution ... they all work hard to make sure records are made, sent to retailers, accounts and bills paid ... everything that is needed to keep our business going.

“Now, enough of that; let’s get to the main part of the evening. I’m very pleased to announce the release of Megan Winters and Will Morris’s latest album, ‘Leave Him Alone’. Here they are, backed up by the incomparable Roberttones, to perform some of the songs from the album.”

He moved to the side of the stage, Murph bought the stage lights up, and everyone started clapping and cheering. I looked across at Megan; she smiled and nodded her head. Bruce counted us in, and we began the set with ‘Bobby McGee’. Once again, Megan put on a fantastic rendition; we then shifted straight into ‘Leave Him Alone’. When we had finished that, everyone was cheering, it had gone over pretty well. When things had quietened down, it was into ‘Good Times’, then Megan took the lead with ‘Make You Happy’. We ended the set with ‘Midnight Hour’ and a rollicking, full on version of ‘Treat Her Right’. We were particularly happy with how the last two songs sounded; that was the first time we had performed them in public, not counting in the recording studio, and they went over particularly well.

After the applause died down, we went out into the main hall, doing the expected ‘meet and greet’, talking to industry people, shaking hands, signing autographs. After what seemed like endless conversations, everyone all saying the same thing, Bon, Angus and Malcolm from AC/DC rescued me.

“Feckin’ hell, Will, those last two songs! I’m going to call you the white god of soul; there’s no way a white guy like you should be able to sing those songs like that!” Bon said. “Are you sure there isn’t a black body inside your skin?”

“It’s because of all the women he’s with,” Malcolm said, “all that pussy gives him those skills. Seriously, Will, I don’t think I know of anyone who has so many hot chicks around them all the time.”

I enjoyed talking with the guys; they had a ‘no bullshit’ approach to things; we joked around for a few minutes until Fifa called me over to one of the tables.

“Can you autograph some of these posters, Will?” she asked, pointing to a pile of them. “Radio station 2SM are running a contest, with tickets to your concert and the posters as prizes. Meet their Program Director, Barry Chapman, and the morning deejay that will be promoting the competition, Ian McRae.”

“Great to meet you,” Barry said. “Do you think there’s a chance we can get the two of you on our morning show, one day next week?”

“We could, I guess. It would have to be early; say seven to seven-thirtyish, so we can get back to classes at University.”

“What do you think, Ian?” Barry asked his DJ.

“Yeah, I can work around that,” he said.

“Fifa, I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning, and we can work out the details. I love the stuff on the new album, your new single sounds great, we’ll get it into high rotation right away.”

“I’ll call you sometime tomorrow afternoon and we can work out the details,” Fifa said to us as the 2SM guys moved away. “That will be great, having 2SM really pushing the single.”

We talked further about potential future concerts; Fifa agreed that doing a double header with AC/DC at the Bondi Lifesaver would be great, she told Peter to start work on organizing it, potentially around the middle of May. Again, Fifa told Lori she would produce a proposed schedule in the next week or two, and get that to her for comments.

Eventually, the evening drew to a close. I felt as a launch for our new album to give it publicity, it was a huge success. All of the comments I had received was that the songs were really good; we had been promised lots of airplay, and we had promotional visits to both 2SM and 2JJ in the next two weeks. Fifa had a stack of orders from various record stores and distributors, if all of those turned into sales, then we were well on track to another gold record. And, by the way, Fifa told us that we were only a few hundred sales away from gold record status for the earlier ‘Where’s Brian’ album. As we were packing up, Ros came up to me, looking excited.

“I have got some more work out of this,” she said. “Macquarie Broadcasting network wants me to produce some large size paintings for their head office conference rooms; I can’t believe the amount they offered to pay me for them!”

Her voice sounded a little slurry; I wondered just how well she had kept her resolution to avoid the champagne.

“I want you to wait until all the others have gone out to their cars, and then walk outside with me,” she said, holding onto my arm to steady herself.

I didn’t have to wait all that long to find out what she was up to; we left the building out of the side door into the back of the car park. Everyone else was up at the cars, loading instruments into them. Ros pulled me over to one side, in a dark corner.

“I’ve drunk maybe five glasses of wine,” she said. “And it’s going right through me, I’ve been desperate for a big piss for the last twenty or thirty minutes. Can you hold onto me while I pee?”

She didn’t give me time to reply; she leant back against the wall and pulled the bottom of her dress up to her waist. I could see that she hadn’t bothered to wear underwear, and I reached across to rub her bare backside. She held onto my arm, pushed her feet wide apart and bent her knees slightly. I ran my fingers down between her arse cheeks towards her crack.

“Oh yeah,” she whispered. “I love feeling your fingers there, maybe move around and rub my pussy, before I start pissing.”

She took hold of my hand, moving it around to her front, and pressing it against her pussy. I wiggled my fingers so they were right on her damp labia, and she moaned as I pushed a finger along her slit. I rubbed around her clit, and spread her juices over her lips. She moaned more as I pushed the tip of my finger into her wet cunt.

“Oh yeah, fuck!” she cried out softly. “Damn, I really need you in my cunt, Will. Finger me some more, then unless you want a soaked hand, you had better move it.”

I moved around to face her so I had a better angle; I pumped my finger in and out of her cunt. I could hear the squelching sounds as I rammed my finger up into her; after a few seconds, I slid a second finger into her. I was able to press my thumb against her clit; she grabbed my shoulders for support.

“Oh, fuck, that’s so damn good!” she said. “I really need you to fuck me again, sometime soon!”

I put a third finger inside her, and continued rubbing her clit. She started moaning, telling me how she was getting close to coming. All of a sudden, she reached down, and pushed my hand out and away from her. She pressed her fingers against her pussy, and groaned. A big spurt of pee shot out between her fingers, and splattered on the ground between her feet. She groaned again, and a steady stream gushed out; all while she rubbed her pussy.

She had not been peeing for very long when she groaned again, and the stream turned into hard spurts; and she grunted with each spurt. She was coming as she was peeing.

“Oh, fuck that’s so damn good!” she cried out softly.

She wasn’t wrong when she said she had been desperate; she kept peeing for almost a minute and a huge pool had built up between her feet. When she had finished, she stepped away from the puddle, took a tissue from her purse, wiped her wet pussy and fingers, and pulled the bottom of her skirt down.

“I needed that!” she said. “Now, I guess we should get to the car with the others. We really should have made arrangements earlier for you to sleep with me tonight; I guess I’ll have to be content with Wendy’s fingers and tongue. Do you think we might try for a night together in the next couple of days?”

“I would like that,” I said to her. “What if we talk with Wendy, Lori and Megan when we get home?”

“I can’t promise a repeat of the performance I just gave then,” she said. “Although maybe we could go across the street to that little park...”

I just smiled at her, holding her hand as we got to the car. When we got home, Lori, Megan, Ros and Wendy discussed a suitable night for me to spend with Ros. Lori reminded me that racing on Sunday was the Quartet Bowl race; so I would probably want to be well rested before that started.

“What about Sunday night?” Ros suggested. “Unless you think you’ll be too exhausted after your racing.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Unless the wind is really strong; I should be fine.”

So it was agreed; on Sunday night, when Lori and I returned from sailing, I would spend the evening and night with Ros. Wendy might sleep with Lori and Megan, but she mentioned talking with Murph and Mary Beth about spending the night with them.

Racing on Sunday was a pretty good race; I always enjoyed the Quartet Bowl race. There was a good turnout; the handicap start made our race interesting, having to chase down the slower boats, and the course up to Juno Point and back was quite scenic. Our start time was thirty minutes after the gun; we were the second last boat to start, with ‘Ed Ake’ two minutes behind us.

The winds suited us; it was fairly light, maybe four or five knots, until a few minutes before our start time, when they picked up to almost ten. That allowed us to catch and pass most of the fleet by the time we turned around West Head and set our spinnaker for the turning mark. By the time we had gone halfway, and were heading back down the river for home, we were in the lead, with ‘Ed Ake’ and ‘Jay Walkin’ not all that far behind. It was only through Don and Lori’s excellent tactical skills in picking the fastest line and avoiding any wind holes that saw us hold off our rivals to get the gun as we crossed the finish line with a lead of two minutes.

“Great work, you two,” Don said, as we dropped the sails at the mooring. “You particularly, Will, that was a great job trimming the spinnaker, you’ve really got the hang of it now.”

We were in a great mood as we drove back to the city; not only was Lori still pumped up from our win, but I suspected she was looking forward to spending the night with Wendy. To be honest, I was really looking forward to the night with Ros, too. Not that I was bored of sleeping with Lori or Megan; it was just ... well, I couldn’t really define it, but there was something exciting about how eager Ros was to have sex with me. I guess because it was still all very new to her, having sex with a guy. There was that thrill of discovery for her, and it certainly affected me; because she was excited about what we would be doing, I was excited, too.

After dinner, Ros and I went upstairs to her room; she must have spent the day reorganizing her room; things had been put away in the wardrobe and dressers, and she had decorated the room much the way she had done the other room the first time we had slept together. She had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make the room look romantic for our night together.

“It looks nice in here, you’ve made the room look nice,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess so. I was thinking, maybe we could go over the road first, sit in the little park?”

I suspected Ros had something planned for the park, so as not to spoil her plans, I agreed to her suggestion. We pulled some clothes on – she put on a tee shirt and a short skirt; without a bra or undies – and we headed across the street. She held my hand as we crossed the road, and pulled me close to her.

“I have a confession to make,” she said. “This afternoon I’ve probably had quite a few glasses of wine; not enough to make me drunk, but I really need to have a pee soon. I’m feeling rather naughty, too; do you mind?”

“Naughty is fun; so why would I mind?”

“Well ... I think with all the wine I’ve had, if you were to do what you did to me the other night, I might lose control of my bladder ... would that worry you?”

“Did it worry me the other night?”

“No, but...”

We pushed our way through the bushes, and stood behind the bench, looking back at the house. I could see the lights on upstairs in Jillian and Allison’s room; and I stood behind Ros, with my arms wrapped around her.

“I like us standing this way,” she said. “I can remember on the boat coming back from the harbour that day, you stood behind me like this. And you were touching me...”

“You mean like this?” I said, as I slid my hands up inside her tee shirt. Her nipples were big and hard, and I squeezed them between my thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, yeah ... and touching me in other places, too...”