Chapter 33: Performances (Part 2)

I’ll Make You Happy

January 5 - 15, 1976

After our early morning love-making, shower and breakfast, I dropped Cathy off at the bus stop. She wasn’t sure just how late she would be working, and I suggested that she let me know maybe 45 minutes before she was due to finish, and I could drive in and pick her up, to save dealing with the night time buses.

At Mike’s, we started talking about the actual sets we would play.

“We want to start off with something to really get them going,” Mike said. “Something to kick them in the balls, so the audience knows this is going to be a hard rocking night.”

“What about Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’?” Roger suggested. “Will and I can really rock the lead out together, that should blow them out the door.”

We all agreed, that would be a great way to start. The next song wasn’t so easy to pick. Simmo suggested ‘Smoke on the Water’, but Mike said we would come across as a Zeppelin tribute band.

“Do you guys remember the Easy Beats ‘I’ll Make you Happy’?” I asked. “What about that one?”

“That’s got a great opening riff,” Roger said, then played the opening on his guitar.

He and I sang the first few lines:

I
I give
I give you
I give you love

“If the crowd isn’t into it after that,” Gunter said, “then they would have to be dead!”

We agreed on that one, and worked through the rest of the list. Some Stones; ‘It’s only Rock and Roll’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Paint it Black’, Cream’s ‘Sunshine of your Love’, Deep Purple with ‘Space Truckin’, ‘Highway Star’, ‘Smoke on the Water’, then more Zeppelin with ‘Black Dog’. We would finish the set with ‘Gloria’.

“We will need the music for that Easybeats song,” Mike said.

“I can pick it up tomorrow, Palings would have it for sure,” I said. “I’ll have it for us by Wednesday.”

“Okay, the second set,” Mike said. “Soul?”

That would start with ‘Treat her Right’, then ‘In the Midnight Hour’. After those, I could give my voice a rest with the two Booker T instrumentals, ‘Green Onions’ and ‘Time is Tight’, followed by ‘Riders on the Storm’, some Santana with ‘Black Magic Woman’ and ‘Evil Ways’ to end the set. The final set would be the blues set, starting with ‘Midnight Special’, and working through them to finish with ‘Me and Bobbi McGee’. If we wanted an encore, then we could play ‘Rock and Roll’ and ‘Make you Happy’, to leave people on a high.

With the sets now worked out, we spent the morning running through the “Soul” set, and the afternoon was the “Blues” set. We would do the “Rock” set on Wednesday, once I had got the music we needed. By the time I returned home, I felt we had a very productive day. I prepared some beef stroganoff with noodles; something that I could heat up for Cathy once she was home.

She called me around 8:00 pm, saying she would be finished at nine. I drove into Surry Hills, pulled up outside the building where she was working a couple of minutes before nine. She looked exhausted when she got into the car.

“Did you have a rough day, honey?” I asked.

“Yeah you could say that; non-stop all day, producing the separations for the press. Bugger me if one set had to be redone though,” she said. “I must have screwed up the alignment of the enlarger when I took the photos, because the sizes between the colour originals were out. Not a biggie, but it set me back about an hour.”

“Well, I guess shit happens, as they say,” I said.

“True, but it was a stupid mistake, something that I should have checked, and corrected before making the plates,” she said. “I was really pissed off with myself, but the others said not to let it worry me. I’m feeling completely buggered though.”

“I’ve got some dinner for you waiting,” I said, although she didn’t answer.

Cathy dozed all the way home; I woke her gently as I pulled up in the garage. She apologised for sleeping all the way home. I helped her inside, and told her to have a shower while I heated up her dinner. She enjoyed the food; she hadn’t taken a break for dinner, so she was really hungry. After I cleared away the table, we went to bed; I spooned behind Cathy, and held her breast.

“I would like you to make love to me, really slowly,” she whispered. “I’ll guide you inside me.”

She reached around between us, and took my shaft in her hand. I felt her rubbing my knob against her pussy, trying to line it up. Soon she had me pressed to her opening, so I pushed slowly. My cock slid inside her, and she sighed with pleasure.

“I’ve been wanting this all day,” she said.

I fucked her slowly, letting my prick slide in and out of her. I took my time; I caressed her breasts as we fucked, my fingers rubbing her hard nipples. I wasn’t sure if she was still awake when I eventually came inside her, and I drifted off to sleep myself afterwards.

The next morning, Cathy woke me up riding me. The good sleep seemed to have left her completely recovered after her exhausting day yesterday. After I came inside her, she rolled off me, a broad grin splitting her face.

“There’s nothing like starting the day with a good, hard fuck,” she said. “As I seem to recall, we ended yesterday with a nice, gently slow fuck, too. That was just what I needed after the long day’s work.”

Over breakfast, Cathy suggested that I call in so she could show me around her work.

“Depending on how things go tomorrow, I might be finishing up at my normal time, and I could come home with you,” she said.

I dropped her off at the bus stop, told her I would probably be at her work around 3:30 to 4:00, and then drove home. I phoned the main Palings music store in the city, and spoke to one of the salespeople in the sheet music section. They didn’t have a copy of “I’ll Make you Happy”, but they did have a book with a number of the Easybeats songs in it. I said I would be there around 12:30 to pick it up.

Luck was with me, there was a vacant parking space right out the front of the store. It was a loading zone space, but one advantage of having the station wagon meant I could park in loading zone for up to fifteen minutes while ‘loading and unloading goods’. I was in and out of the store in less than ten minutes, music book in hand. It was then out of the city to Anzac Parade and to the University.

I showed my letter to the security attendant at the Barker Street gate, who directed me to the same parking area I had used in May last year. It was only a short distance to the Electrical Engineering building, and I took the elevator to the third floor. As I walked into the conference room, I was met by Phil McCrea.

“Great to see you again, Will,” he said as he shook my hand. “Did you want something to drink before we look at your subjects and timetable for the year?”

I took a glass of Coke, and he steered me towards some other people.

“I would like you to meet some of the senior computer science students, Greg Rose, Christ Maltby, Claude Sammut. This is Will Morris, who will be starting with us this year.”

I shook their hands, frantically trying to remember their faces and names. We spoke for a few minutes, until Phil said we should look at the subjects I would be doing this year.

“There’s not much choice in your first year,” he said. “The standard engineering subjects, maths 1, physics 1, chemistry 1; all pretty much a revision of high school stuff. Let’s have a look at your results.”

He flicked through a computer printout, until he found my name.

“Now, you can choose to do higher maths 1, but in my view that’s a waste of time. Higher physics 1 is good though, they get into some interesting stuff. Let me make a call.”

He dialled a number, and seemed to be speaking to another professor, saying he had a student starting, who he was suggesting should do higher physics. After a bit of discussion to and fro, he hung up.

“Okay, that’s arranged, you’re in the higher physics 1 class.” He made a note on the printout. “The other two subjects you have this year are Engineering C and Electrical Engineering 1. Elect Eng 1 runs all year, but different sections each semester; introductory programming in the first semester; you’ll have me for that one; it’s basically a beefed up version of what you did back in May. The second semester covers introductory electronics; Professor Huey is a good guy. Engineering C is just a rehash of high school technical drawing. You’ll get some walking in, too; physics is down in the Old Main Building, Maths up in the Science Theatre Block; that’s what ‘STB’ stands for. Here’s a campus map, showing you where everything is. During Orientation week, some groups offer pretty good campus tours, too.”

He wrote everything down on a weekly timetable, I took a quick look. Each day started at 9:00 am, either physics or maths. There were other lectures or tutorials until noon, and after lunch, lab work for chemistry or physics, engineering C and elec engineering 1. Friday afternoons were free, which I thought was good. As well as the timetable, he gave me a pile of documents; each subject had several pages of background information, textbook lists, details of the syllabus and how assessment would be made. There was also the thick ‘Faculty of Engineering’ handbook; with details of courses and subjects, information on staff members, plus lots of other essential information.

“We try to keep Friday afternoons free; we will try to have people available for extra tutorial assistance in one of the tutorial rooms on the other wing. So you can ask any of us with things you might be having problems with. With the list of textbooks, you might want to try the second hand bookstore the Students’ Union runs; it’s down in the Roundhouse, next to Anzac Parade. Lots of students will try to sell their books from previous years; all I can say is just make sure the ones you buy are the right edition as listed on the handouts. Now, let me introduce you to some of the other staff; I think you know some of them already.”

The first person he introduced me to was Professor Allen.

“Will,” he said, offering me his hand. “Great to see you with us; sad to hear about your girlfriend, Hannah, that she won’t be here with you.”

“Well, she’s about to head off to Europe for a year or so,” I said. “That’s just how things go, I guess.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was never my girlfriend. He steered me towards where two other men were talking to some of the people I remembered from the course in May.

“Will, this is Doctor Ken Robinson, his specialty is programming languages, compilers and advanced programming techniques, and Doctor John Lions, who concentrates on operating systems. You’ll have them as lecturers next year.”

More names for me to remember! I shook their hands, and spoke to them about what I was hoping to do. Two of the others, David and his domineering girlfriend, Claire, were also in the group. Claire asked about Hannah, and seemed somewhat pleased when I told her she was going to Europe, well away from David she thought, I suspected.

By now a few other students had arrived, some I recognised from the previous May, others I hadn’t seen before. My programming partners from last year; Cliff and Barry were there, along with Linda Wong, Trevor Kelly, Peter Curtis, and several other familiar faces. The biggest challenge that I would face was remembering everyone’s name; not just the professors and lecturers, but my fellow students, too.

I decided to talk to Professor Allen about the overall course, and my long term aims. I waited until he was free, and then walked to where he was standing.

“Um, excuse me Professor Allen, can I ask you about the overall course?” I said. “I’m thinking I would ultimately like to get into some form of research, so what are my options?”

“Well, the best way would be to do the first two years of an electrical engineering degree, taking all the computer science specializations,” he said. “For your third year, switch to a Science degree, with a major in Computer Science. You’ll have to pick up four other level three subjects, to qualify for entry into the honours year. That will involve doing a thesis, in a subject that takes your interest.

“Then, you could enrol in the PhD course; which would be three years focusing on some new field of research here in the school. We have a few PhD students at the moment, with some more starting in the next year or two. Depending on how things are here, we could line up a tutoring position for you. Now that all assumes you do well enough academically to qualify, of course. I’ll see if I can get some of the honours year students to talk with you; see me in the first week of the semester, and I’ll get you in contact. Wait a minute, here’s one now, David, David Carrington, have you got a minute?”

He called one of the other students over, and introduced me to him.

“David’s starting his honours year this year; he’s taken pretty much the course progress I mentioned to you,” he said. “David, can you tell Will what you’ve been doing here?”

David and I talked for a while; he mentioned how gruelling second year would be; the various physics and maths subjects, how little time you would have for a personal life, and what he was doing for his thesis this year (a project to allow the electronic submission of programming assignments) where he would be working with Doctor Robinson.

“There’s a bunch of really smart lecturers here,” he said. “Ken’s one of the most brilliant, but John Lions is another top guy. Phil and Paul, who you would have met at the vacation school last year, are two other great, helpful guys. They all really know their stuff, and are both more than happy to take the time to explain things to you. But you have to have done your work, too; if they think you haven’t even tried to work things out on your own, they’ll tell you to go away and come back when you have. That’s pretty much how most of the staff in the school is; if you put in some effort to try to understand things, they will go out of their way to help you. But if you come across as a slack bludger, then you won’t get far.”

I thanked him for his comments, and he said any time I had more questions, to contact him; he had a drop box up in the computer science work area.

“I’ll also be one of the stand-in tutors on Friday afternoons, too,” he added.

I decided it was now time to head off, and meet Cathy, so I said goodbye to everyone. I found Professor Allen and thanked him for his time. I also said goodbye to Phil McCrea.

“Doctor McCrea ... Phil ... thanks for helping sort out stuff for me today,” I said. “This has really helped sort out some stuff for me.”

“Any time, Will, and you know where my office is; Room 3-43,” he said. “Anytime you have questions or problems, even about life here at the University in general, come up and see me. I know adjusting to life at University can be a bit of a shock to the system for some people, so if you have any problems or concern, don’t hesitate to see me.”

I shook his hand again, and headed back to the car. I had a stack of paper; information sheets for each subject, text book lists, timetables, and a thick student handbook for the engineering faculty. More stuff to read this evening.

I drove across to Surry Hills and pulled into the parking area next to the building where Cathy was working. Once inside, the receptionist paged Cathy for me; a few minutes later she came out from some doors leading to the back of the building. When I saw her face, I started laughing; she had two smears of ink on her face.

“What’s so funny?” she said, indignantly.

“Have you seen your face?” I asked. “There’s black ink on your nose and cheek, and pinkish ink on your other cheek.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I must have rubbed my hand across my face, I’ll clean it off. Come through and see where I’m working; if you want you can hang around here, we should be finished by about seven.”

She led me back into the main part of the building; there was a large open area, with high ceilings, and fluorescent lights hanging from the rafters. Dominating the room was a huge printing press, with smaller pieces of equipment around it. She showed me her work bench; it had a large light table, where various photos and proofs were arranged. There was also what looked like a big photo enlarger, a cutting board with a set of craft knives, and various photo prints hanging up on a line.

“This is where I do all the colour separation work,” she explained.

She showed me some of her work that was in progress; I could see how the one image had been separated into the four colours ready for making the plates. She then took me across to meet some of the others; Robbo, the lead printer, Jacko, his assistant, Billy who was an apprentice. All were friendly, and keen to meet ‘Cathy’s boyfriend’, as they called me.

I watched as they set the big machine up for the next run; each plate was positioned in its designated station, the rollers were cleaned of the ink from the previous run, and the stock sheets loaded in the hopper at the starting end of the machine. Jacko spread ink into each ink hopper; I could see the four colours that Cathy had described earlier.

“Okay, is everyone clear?” Robbo asked, looking around to make sure no one was in the way of the equipment.

He pressed a few buttons, and the main motor started. I could hear the sound of compressed air, the rollers started spinning, and when things seemed up to speed, he pressed a button. One sheet was picked up, and went through the machine. He pressed the stop button, and all was silent again. All four of them inspected the finished product on one of the light tables; Cathy using a magnifying glass to check the colour alignment.

“Magenta back point oh two; cyan left point oh one,” she said.

Robbo made some adjustments, and they started the process again. This time they were pleased with the results; the adjustments must have been right.

“One thousand impressions coming at ya,” Jacko said, as the machine started, and was turned up to full speed.

Every so often they would pause the machine and inspect some of the copies, and when happy, it would start again. Meanwhile Cathy worked on another page, doing the final preparation work and making the separations, then putting them through the platemaker.

“So, you’re going to university to study computers,” Robbo asked me.

“Yeah, I’ve been interested in that for a while,” I said.

“They’ll revolutionise this business, you mark my words,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for fifty years, started doing hand composition with movable type slugs, now that’s a skill you don’t see much anymore.”

He described how in the early days, they would take each individual type slug; one for each letter or symbol, and place them on the frame that held each plate. Everything was done in mirror image, of course, and the skilled compositors could look at a line of text, and justify it on the fly, spacing things so there weren’t ‘rivers’ of white space running down the page.

“That’s a lost art, now there are the typesetting machines, Linotype and all that,” he said. “Mind you, I don’t miss those old days, carting around boxes of slugs, heavy as buggery too. I still remember in my first year as an apprentice, I dropped a few; got my arse well and truly kicked by the foreman. I have to pick up every one of the little buggers, sort them out into the right slots.”

“You know they are working on using computers for typesetting and all the pre-press stuff, too,” Billy said. “Plus there are some fancy printers that use photocopying technology, to print directly from computers.”

“Where did you hear about that, Billy-boy?” Jacko said. “You’ve been watching too much TV.”

“I read stuff!” he protested. “Xerox, the company that invented photocopying, is doing research on it, so is IBM.”

“Well, once they get that working, they will replace printers like these,” Robbo said. “I’ll be retired by then, collecting my pension, thank you very much.”

Our discussions were interrupted by the completion of the print job; they then started to prepare for the next run; cleaning the ink from the rollers in the press, and changing the plates. The three of them had clearly done this many times before; each knew their tasks, and in a short time the press was running at full speed again.

“Billy, take those finished ones over to the bindery area, will ya,” Robbo directed.

I decided to keep out of their way, and moved over to where Cathy was working.

“Is there a place out of the way I can sit?” I asked her.

She took me over to a vacant desk, where I could sit and look at all the stuff Phil gave me.

“I’ll try to finish up soon,” she said.

“No need to rush, I don’t mind waiting, I’ve got plenty to read,” I said.

I read through all the handouts; and I made a list on one of the pages in my diary of all the textbooks that I needed to get. Then I started to put key dates and events onto the “month” pages in the diary. I didn’t want to copy my weekly timetable onto every week’s page, that would be overkill; but I did put a master copy onto a blank weekly page, and put that at the front of the diary, where it was easy to see. Around 7 pm, Cathy came over.

“I’ve finished for the day,” she said. Sorry you had to hang around so long for me.”

I said goodbye to the others, thanked them for showing me how things worked, and we headed outside to the car. At least leaving this late, the bulk of the evening rush hour traffic had died down. It didn’t take us long to drive home.

“Feel like some leftovers from last night?” I asked her. “It’s not much, I’m sorry. I’ll have something better for us the next few nights.”

“Don’t be silly, there’s nothing wrong with having leftovers from last night! It was pretty tasty, if I recall,” she said. “I don’t expect you to dish up a fancy feast every night, not all by yourself, not when you are working all day, too.”

While Cathy had a shower, I set the table, and reheated the stroganoff from last night and poured a glass of wine for each of us. Cathy returned, just wearing a tee shirt, looking quite refreshed. After dinner, we sat in the family room, and I played through some of the songs in the Easybeats book I had got earlier in the day. As well as ‘I’ll Make you Happy’, there was another one that looked promising; ‘Good Times’. At least I now had the music; I would discuss songs with the rest of the group tomorrow.

I played through several of the songs a few times, just to get a feel for them. I noticed Cathy was starting to nod off, so I suggested we get to bed. It had been a long day for both of us. I curled up against her back, and we made love slowly. We both fell asleep almost immediately after we came.

The next two days were pretty much ‘business as usual’; Cathy was working, but not the long hours of the previous days. With the Easybeats songs, Roger had bought a tape of some of their songs, and we decided to add ‘Good Times’ into the set, dropping ‘Smoke on the Water’, which I thought was getting a bit clichéd for a heavy rock set.

By Thursday afternoon we sounded pretty good; for several of the songs Roger and I would stand opposite each other, mimicking each other’s moves during some of the lead solos – well actually lead guitar duets, since we both played together. My confidence in my ability to play and sing, and give a solid performance was now sky high. I was really looking forward to the next week when we would actually be performing at the Antler.

Cathy and I had fallen into a routine; we would wake up around 5 am, generally she would suck my cock before I was fully awake, and then ride me when I was erect. We would have a quick shower before breakfast, after which I would drop her off at the bus stop. On days were she wasn’t working back late, I would pick her up, then we would have dinner, and watch TV together, or she would read while I would play some music. Generally we were in bed by 9 pm, make love before falling asleep.

It was comforting and relaxing; over dinner we would talk about things we had done that day; she would tell me about what publications she was working on, photos that she had printed things like that. I would tell her about how the songs were progressing. It was like how I described it to Garry; I could imagine this is how being married to Cathy would be. Of course, it would all come to an end in the next few days when our respective parents returned home; there was no way she could stay with me after the next weekend. We both ignored the ‘elephant in the room’; her imminent departure to Canberra, which was only five weeks away. I felt that if I didn’t broach the subject, then we could pretend that it wasn’t going to happen; or at least we wouldn’t have to talk about what might happen after February.

Friday dawned a lovely summer’s day; already warming up. The last few days had been up over 34 degrees, and today was going to be another scorcher. After dropping Cathy off at the bus stop; I returned home and packed my equipment in the car, and got my clothes for the evening’s performance. I was at Lori’s place a bit early; Janelle hadn’t arrived yet. I help Lori pack the food and drink for lunch, and we carried it down to the boat.

“So, how has it been having Cathy living with you for the past two weeks?” she asked.

I told her how it had been, how we were into a comfortable routine, how we would talk about our respective days over dinner. I didn’t tell her how I imagined married life with Cathy would be though.

“Have you talked about how you are going to handle being separated?” she continued.

“No, I have to admit we’ve both been avoiding that,” I said.

“Hmmm,” Lori replied, but said nothing.

Janelle arrived, and apologised for being late; despite the fact she wasn’t late at all; she just assumed that because I was already there, and we had put things in the boat, she was holding us up. We got underway, Lori getting me to drive the boat. Once we had cleared Taylor’s Point, and we weren’t close to the shore and the waterfront houses, both girls removed their tops, sitting either side of me.

“Just don’t distract me, you two, or we’ll end up on the rocks, or hitting another boat,” I said, making them laugh.

“We don’t have to show our tits to distract you, Will,” Janelle said, resting a hand on the inside of my thigh, and sliding a finger up to brush my crotch.

I turned the wheel sharply, and let out a cry.

“Now see what you made me do!” I exclaimed.

We continued up Pittwater, and across the entrance to Broken Bay until we could anchor at Maitland Bay. We put out a small stern anchor, to hold the boat steady, as well as the main bow anchor. With the boat secure, I shut down the engines, and we went into the cabin to get our swimming gear.

“You’re don’t mine if we get naked today, Will?” Lori asked. “I’ve got sunscreen for you, so you don’t get burnt.”

“Yeah, that’s not a problem,” I said. “I was pretty much expecting that the two of you would be doing that. You should know by now it doesn’t worry me, as long as I can do the same.”

We waded to the shore; holding our towels and other stuff up above our heads to keep them dry. There was no one else around on the beach; I was surprised, half expecting at least some other boats to be anchored off the beach, or people who would have walked down the path through the national park to the beach. Not that I was complaining, a day of solitude was just what I was looking for.

We spread our towels out on the sand, and Janelle volunteered to put sunscreen on my back. She seemed to believe my backside needed lots of cream rubbed into it, but I let her have her fun. Both girls were well tanned; they had clearly spent a lot of time sunbathing nude this summer. I noticed that Janelle had also started the ‘lady gardening’ habit, as her pubic hair was neatly trimmed into a little ‘landing strip’ style, just above her clit. When she lay down with her legs slightly apart, I could see that she had also shaved the hair from her outer labia; they were completely smooth and bare. Lori, of course, was still completely bare down there.

Janelle, of course, noticed me looking at her crotch, and couldn’t resist remarking.

“You like how I have myself trimmed there now, Will?” she asked. “Do you think I should shave it all off, like Lori does, or just keep that little strip, the way Cathy keeps her pussy trimmed?”

“Well, it’s really not my place to comment either way,” I replied. “I mean, it’s your pussy, you can do whatever you want with it, bare, trimmed, or completely bushy, it’s your choice.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking, Will,” she said. “I want you opinion, what do YOU think looks better for me?”

She sat right in front of me, and spread her legs wide. With her fingers on her pussy lips, she spread them apart, too.

“Does that look nice, or would you prefer more hair around her, like I was last summer?” she added. “Lori’s already told me what she thinks, but I want a guy’s opinion, one who has seen me in both styles. So, should I be hairy, or smooth? Bush or bare slit?”