Chapter 6: Rockin’ The Antler

Rockin’ The Antler

Mary Beth Got Married

December 1st – 6th, 1980

“I have no idea what’s got into my sister,” Mary Beth said as she sat across the table from me.

Since this Monday would be the last time for over a month that Mary Beth and I would be able to have our regular lunch date, I had made a point of catching a bus into the city to meet her. Rather than eat at our usual location at the Quay, we had gone to a nice steakhouse in Phillip Street; just a short distance up from her office in Macquarie Street. It was going to be an expensive meal, but I thought it was worth it as a way to thank her for her friendship over the last few months.

“She’s changed, she not like my little sister was,” she continued. “I damn near told her that she was being a fucking idiot, her behaviour towards you was inexcusable, and that I had spent several nights and weekends making love with you, and it was the best experience of my life, just so she knew what she had given up!”

“My God, Mary Beth, you wouldn’t have actually told her that?” I said.

She laughed softly.

“No, I wouldn’t have done that; if she knew what you and I had done, there would have been a huge cat fight in the middle of the wedding reception. And I would have to find a new bridesmaid at short notice. But Mum and Dad are pissed off at her, too.”

The waiter appeared with our meals, so we stopped talking for a brief period, and started eating our steaks.

“This food is really good, Will,” she said. “Nicer than some burgers at the Paragon. The company is just as nice.”

She reached across to squeeze my hand.

“We can still meet for lunch when I’m back from my honeymoon,” she said. “I want to keep up with our regular conversations.”

“I would like that; you’ve been a huge help to me this year, Mary Beth. I wouldn’t have made it, stayed sane without your support.”

“Remember, I got a lot out of our close friendship, too,” she said. “Particularly on those occasions when we could spend the whole weekend together, in bed ... I will always treasure the times we spent making love.”

“I will too; the times when we had that special connection were really lovely. But you understand my reasons for saying we can’t do that anymore; not once you’re married, don’t you?”

“Yes, and as much as I will hate not being able to make love with you again, I do agree.”

She looked slightly sad, wistful for a moment, but it quickly passed.

“So did you really tell my sister off for how she had treated you?” she asked.

“Well, she made a remark about seeing me with Janelle, implying that I had taken up with Janelle as soon as she had left for the States,” I said. “I told her that she had no right talking to me about my private life, not after what she had done to me. Then I turned around, and left.”

“I thing she was just looking for any excuse to pick a fight with you,” Mary Beth said. “If it wasn’t Janelle, it would have been something else. I wish I knew what her problem is; but she refuses to talk about anything to anyone. I asked her how her job was, or if she enjoyed being back in the states, lots of questions, all she would say was ‘fine’ or ‘good’. She’s closed herself up.”

“Well, I’ve put her behind me,” I said. “Just like Cathy, my time with Lori was really enjoyable, I don’t regret anything, but it’s now part of history, probably never to resurface. A pity, I thought that we were good together, but clearly, there was something wrong, something that I was unaware of. But no point in crying over things in the past.”

“Yeah, you did enough of that earlier this year. That night when you drank yourself into oblivion, when you passed out up in the studio ... I went up to check on you, and when I saw you collapsed on the floor ... I screamed, I thought you were dead, or something. I ran back to the house, I was hysterical, and the others came up. I was so relieved when they said you weren’t dead. I sat with you all night, making sure nothing bad happened to you.”

“And then we made love the next morning,” I said. “In fact, most of the next day.”

“Well, you first thought I was Lori, when I was next to you in the bed. But after that, you made love to me as myself ... that was wonderful. Anyway, that’s behind us now; lovely memories, but behind us.”

“We both learned a lot from the romantic times we spent together,” I said. “That, with the counselling I’ve been getting has really helped me. You were a really huge help to me, Mary Beth, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you enough.”

“Well, it’s not as if it wasn’t enjoyable for me,” she said, smiling. “Incredibly enjoyable, in fact. You don’t need to thank me any more than what you’ve done for me already.”

We continued chatting as we finished out meal; when we had finished, we walked outside, we kissed briefly, and she walked back towards her office. I walked the short distance to the bus stop on Elizabeth Street, and went back to Uni. There was still quite a few of the C programming tutorials to write and review.

Allison pretty much agreed with Mary Beth’s assessment of Lori when I had dinner with her on Wednesday evening. This particular evening, we decided to try the dining room of the Willoughby Hotel, on Penshurst Street.

“She’s not the same person that she was before,” she said. “Something’s changed.”

The restaurant had a good selection of meals; we both chose the rack of lamb; it turned out to be a good choice.

“So, how are things going with Janelle?” she asked. “Is she much like she’s always been, or has she mellowed slightly?”

“No, pretty much the same,” I said. “Uncomplicated, just raw, primal sex, pure fucking.”

“That’s probably what you need right now,” she said. “A girl with no complications, where you know what to expect and what is expected of you. Heaven knows, you’ve had your share of screwed up, complicated women of late.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. There’s no hidden agenda, no secret coded expressions where I get myself in the shit for not intrinsically understanding what she really meant. And the sex is pretty good, too!”

“Yeah, I can understand that. Every so often, I think we could take things to the next level, to a physical level, but I worry that things will get too complicated, and we’ll lose what we have.”

“Yeah, I can understand that. Personally, I value you far more as an intimate friend, where we can share everything, rather than just as someone to have sex with. I guess that’s something that I have learned in the last few months, having someone as a good, really close friend. Sex is relatively easy to get, the friendship, no so much.”

“Speak for yourself on sex being easy to get,” she said. “I’m going through a pretty lean time.”

“Until the other night, so was I,” I replied. “This has been a fairly lean year; lean for both of us.”

“Yours has been nowhere as lean as mine. You had Karen, and the stuff with Mary Beth, and now you’ve got Janelle jumping your bones. I’ve had nothing, nada, zip. Well, not counting Mr. Palm and his five sons ... if you know what I mean. That and Bob.”

“Bob?”

“My battery operated boyfriend,” she said, laughing, and miming using a vibrator on her breasts.

“Well, someone will turn up for you, probably when you least expect it.”

“I hope so ... There is one guy I’ve gone out with twice, there might be something there. We’ve got a date again this Friday, so ... you never can tell.”

She smiled at me, and winked. For her sake, I hoped it worked out for her.

“So you’re limiting yourself to guys now?” I asked.

“Well, Mona Vale and Newport aren’t exactly hot spots for lesbian activity,” she said. “I’m not ruling anything out, but I haven’t seen any potential female partners; not yet, anyway. I’ve been getting some vibes from this woman I met up at the Arms a month or so ago; she’s friends with some of the people from work. She teaches up at Bilgola Heights Primary School; maybe if things don’t work out with this guy, I might ask her out for a drink.”

“Well, it looks like things are on the up and up for you,” I said. “Nice to have some options.”

On Friday afternoon, I had my counselling session with Margaret; it had been three weeks since my previous session with her. It appears that Allison had mentioned the scene with Lori at Cathy’s wedding.

“I understand you’ve had a bit of an eventful few weeks,” she said, once I had taken a seat in her office. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened; and we can talk about that.”

I gave her a brief rundown of everything that happened in the lead up to Cathy’s wedding and on the actual day. I included how I hooked up with Janelle again, and how that seemed to have set Lori off; how once I had told her how she had broken my heart, and I had assumed that she didn’t want anything more to do with me, I walked away.

“Well, we have several things to cover there. But first of all, how are you holding up through all that? There were a couple of big stressors, firstly, seeing your first girlfriend getting married to someone else, then being with Janelle again, and finally the scene with Lori. Are you still feeling okay?”

“I’m feeling fine; I didn’t allow Lori to upset me with her outburst. The reason why I walked away, and went home right after that was because had I stayed there, it would have only inflamed things with Lori, and I didn’t want that to spoil Cathy’s wedding. Anyway, both her sister, Mary Beth and Allison agree, Lori was just looking for some excuse to pick a fight with me, and they feel that there’s something that happened, something that caused her behaviour that she’s not talking about.”

“That could be right; her actions do seem rather strange. Not just last weekend, but why would she tear up your apology letter to you, and send it back? To me, that action alone wasn’t just saying that she considered your relationship over, but she wanted to make it completely clear to you that she wanted nothing more to do with you. We’ve talked about that before, of course. So, why should she get upset when she discovers that you’ve moved on? But you handled it well; I’m sure she wanted to have a real stand up fight with you; one of the reasons why she was so cold towards you at the wedding was you denied her the chance to really get stuck into you. You’re maturing, that’s a good sign.”

“Well, I’ve detached myself from Lori, if that makes sense. The same way I did with Cathy; yes, it was really nice while it lasted, I certainly enjoyed having her as a girlfriend, but it’s over. Lori is part of my history now.”

“Don’t completely write her off,” Margaret said. “You never know what the future might hold; you were her first real love, and people never completely get over that. It might take some time, years in fact, but don’t lock yourself out of the possibility of something in the future with her.”

“But if that’s because I was her first love, what about Cathy and me? She was my first love.”

“Was she? Or maybe it was really Lori, as your first love. Think about that.”

“But Cathy was the first ... wait a minute, what you’re suggesting was that it was just a twist of circumstance that it was Cathy I started going out with, and it could just as easily been Lori? I guess that makes sense ... that might have solved so many problems, if only I hadn’t started to go out with Cathy, at the end of forth form ... but gone out with Lori, yeah, that’s starting to make sense. That would have saved so much heartache.”

“Don’t fall into the trap of thinking about hypotheticals, ‘what ifs’,” she said. “Things like that are too easy to give you the answer that you think you wanted. But life is far more complex, far messier that allowing you to change just one event, one thing about it. That would have caused many, many other changes in a big ripple down fashion.”

I nodded, what she said made sense.

“Now, the next thing we need to talk about is you resuming a relationship with Janelle. Now, I’ll say this again, it’s not my role to tell you what to do, or what not to do. I will just give you some things to think about, and suggest some tools to help you manage situations that arise in your life. Tools which, I’m pleased to say, you’ve adopted readily, and I think have made a huge change in your life.

“Now, there are what I see as three warning signs that we should discuss. I’m not going to tell you that you’ve made a foolish decision with Janelle; I’m not in in a position to determine that one way or the other. But first, did you think about whether it would be a good idea to go back to her room, or was that just something you went along with, because it seemed like a good idea at the time?”

I guess that was a reasonable question; since I hadn’t really explained why I decided to go back to Janelle’s room with her. I told her how I had thought it through, and considering that Janelle and I had slept together previously, and it had been rather enjoyable, I couldn’t see a reason why not to go with her.

“Fair enough,” she said. “At least you put a bit of thought into it. Now, the second consideration; I assume you don’t have the level of emotional intimacy with her that you have developed with others? What do you think her expectations of the relationship are? What are yours?”

“Well, there isn’t that level of emotional intimacy with Janelle; not that there’s no emotional connection between us. But it’s a fairly simple relationship, what you see is what you get. I know that with her, most of the sex we have is raw, primal; that’s what it was like in the past, and what I expect it to be in the future. I don’t think either of us are expecting it to be a super romantic, long term thing; we will just enjoy what we have while it lasts.

“And I think it keeps things simple, not to push the great relationships I have with the people that I’ve developed a good level of intimacy with into a sexual relationship. The close friendships I have with Allison, Mary Beth, Michelle and Garry; I value them too much to risk anything to lose what I’ve got. So having a purely sexual relationship with someone else is a good release.”

“As long as both of you are happy with that level of relationship, there shouldn’t be a problem. Now, the third issue; and it’s one outside of your control. I’m talking about you having had sex with her mother. I know you haven’t told anyone about it yourself, I only hope she’s smart enough and discrete enough not to mention anything. If Janelle was to discover what the two of you have done; well, she would probably be really angry and upset. Have you seen the movie ‘The Graduate’? That might give you some idea of what you would be in for. Have you seen her – Janelle’s mother, that is – recently? You need to remind her of how important it is that Janelle never knows about what the two of you did.”

“Right afterwards, she told me not to tell anyone; while technically it wasn’t a breach of the nurses’ code of ethics, since I wasn’t in the hospital, or officially under her care, it still might be viewed unfavourably by certain people. But next time I see Beth, I’ll find a way to remind her of that.”

She seemed to be happy with how I was handling these two new developments in my life; we than talked about how I felt about Mary Beth getting married, how I was fitting into things at University, and my relationship with Michelle. She seemed to think I was handling things in my life much better than I had been; she was pleased at how I was using the techniques that she suggested, the journal, having several good friends to confide in and talk with.

“Keep on going the way you are, Will. You have got yourself back under control; you were heading down a path of self-destruction the way you were going,” she said. “The important thing is, are you happy with your life at the moment? Are you enjoying life? That’s really what it’s all about in the end.”

I told her that I did feel much happier than I was a few months back; and I was enjoying life. She reminded me not to get so caught up in over-thinking things and having a ‘grand plan’ that I missed out on the spontaneity of just ‘having fun’. Having discussed everything that Margaret wanted to cover, we had reached the end of the session. I left for home, feeling quite pleased with how things were.

We loaded up our equipment for Mary Beth and Murph’s wedding into the trailer, and headed up to Newport in convoy. Since neither Mary Beth nor Murph would be in a position to operate the mixing desk, we had press-ganged Garry into sound engineer duties for the day. It didn’t take us long to get our equipment set up; we then mingled with the people, waiting for the ceremony to start. As well as members of each family, there were people from their respective works, and several people from Alberts – Ted Albert and his wife, Popsy, Fifa, George Young, and several others.

“I guess since Mary Beth will be otherwise occupied for the next month or so, I should talk to you about this,” Fifa said. “Would you guys be interested in a fairly extensive set of gigs during January, mainly around Sydney? No touring, but we want to get your name back out there, and lead up to a new album in February or March. George has been working on some songs with Harry and some of the others, he will want to talk with you about it later today.”

“Sounds good, I’ll mention it to the others, but if you can get a proposed schedule to me, we can start planning for that now,” I said.

I gave her my work fax number, she said she would get the list to me on Monday.

“If you sing the wrong words, Will, if I hear the words ‘I screwed the bride’, I swear I’ll hit you so hard, your teeth will be rattling for a week,” Mary Beth said, as she saw me.

“Well ... it’s is true, isn’t it?” I replied.

“That’s just for you and me to know, we don’t need to share that with anyone!”

“I’ll do it properly, I promise,” I said. “Now you go and get yourself married!”

She laughed, kissed me on the cheek, and went up to where Murph was standing with the celebrant. The ceremony was completely different from the traditional church wedding that Cathy had just a week ago; there were no hymns or prayers, just the exchange of vows and rings, and the declaration by the celebrant that the two were married. That was just what Mary Beth wanted; a simple, low key ceremony.

We then moved into the main reception room; I stopped to congratulate the happy couple. I shook Murph’s hand, and gave Mary Beth a rather chaste kiss on her cheek. She smirked at me, then kissed me directly on the lips.

“That’s how you do it, Will,” she said, and followed Murph to their table.

We ate, talked with people, mingled with the other guests – except for Lori, who studiously avoided me all day. Then there were speeches; and finally time for the dancing. This time, I didn’t make a mistake with the words to ‘I Knew the Bride’, everyone enjoyed the dancing. When we took a break, Jack and Chris Earle came over to talk with me.

“It’s great to see you, Will, we haven’t seen you for quite a while,” Jack said.

“I know things went bad between you and Lori,” Chris said, “but that doesn’t mean you still aren’t welcome to visit us. Come around anytime, if you want to take the boat out over the summer, you’re more than welcome.”

“Thanks for that; I will wait until Lori has gone back to the US; no sense in deliberately causing problems,” I said. “I only wish I knew what it was that made her so upset.”

“So do we,” Chris said. “I’ve asked her several times, she just refuses to say anything. Something happened to her, I’m sure, but she refuses to talk to anyone about it, not me, not her father, not Mary Beth. Whatever she has said to you, Will, don’t take anything personally. She’s not herself.”

I could see Lori starting to head over to where we were standing; so I excused myself, and headed away. I didn’t want to be the cause of any big fights, not at Mary Beth’s wedding, and not in front of her parents.

We continued with more music until it was time for the newlyweds to leave; everyone wished them well, and after that had gone, we packed up our equipment, and drove back home. I called Janelle’s apartment, told her I was back from the wedding.

“You get yourself around here, as fast as possible,” she said. “I have a special treat for you.”

I could hardly refuse an offer like that; I showered and changed in record time, and was at her door maybe twenty minutes later.

“Who is it?” I heard her ask

When I identified myself, the door opened slightly, a hand appeared, and she quickly pulled me inside. Janelle was wearing her uniform – well, not exactly how she would be dressed on the ward, at least I hoped not. Her dress was incredibly short; not even covering her undies. Well, they weren’t regulation underwear, either; she had some black lacy crotchless panties on; and over that a black garter belt that held up some black fishnet stockings. The top of her uniform was unbuttoned all the way down to her belly button, revealing a black push up shelf bra.

“Get naked. On the bed. Now!” she commanded.

I quickly removed my clothes, and when I was naked, she pushed me backwards onto her bed. As I was lying on my back, she quickly straddled me, and attached some rope restraints to my wrists. She then turned around, and did the same to my ankles.

“Now, you’re at my mercy, until I decided to release you. And that won’t happen until you’ve completely satisfied me!”

I really had no choice; I couldn’t move as she had tied me firmly to her bed. She moved up, so her pussy was right above my prick. She lowered herself, and started rubbing her wet pussy along my shaft, and when I was hard, she raised herself slightly, guided my prick inside her and lowered herself, impaling her cunt on my cock.

“Oh, that’s so good,” she moaned.

Janelle rode me, slowly rising up and down on my shaft. I wished my hands were untied, so I could slide my hands around her breasts, or touch her pussy and feel where she was sliding over me. Instead, I could only lie there and watch as she humped up and down, watching her pussy envelop my prick. Her dress was so short that with her legs spread I could see all of her pussy through the gap in her crotchless panties. It looked like she had trimmed her pubic hair very short quite recently, there was just a small dark tuft at the top of her slit. As she rose up my shaft would be exposed, and I could see the wetness of her juices glistening on it. She groaned loudly, and I felt her squeeze tightly around my cock.

“One!” she said, proudly, and resumed fucking me.

I tried distracting my thoughts, thinking of anything except what Janelle was doing to me. It must have worked; she came twice before I could hold it off no longer. I arched my back, groaning as I spurted. Janelle looked very pleased; she raised herself up off me. Right when she did that, a big glob of my come fell out of her cunt, landing right on the tip of my knob. I started laughing, as did Janelle, she sat next to me, and licked my knob clean.

“I got to taste it after all,” she said, licking her lips. “Do you like being tied down?”

“I didn’t have much choice, did I,” I replied. “Actually, it was pretty erotic; but I couldn’t reach up to touch you, to feel you. You looked absolutely sexy dressed like that. I assume you don’t wear your uniform like that on the wards?””

“No way! That was just for you. Now, I need to get ready for my shift; would you like to have a shower with me?”

She untied me from the bed, removed her clothes, and led me into the bathroom. We showered together, fooled around some more, until eventually Janelle had to get dressed into her ‘official’ uniform. That showed far less of her body than the version that she had worn when she greeted me earlier; but I’m sure that wouldn’t get her into trouble

We kissed inside her apartment, and again in the carpark before I headed back home.

The Band Grows

December, 1980

I was at my desk, reviewing some possible C programming examples when my phone rang; it was Fifa, from Alberts.

“Will, I’ve got George and Ted here with me, I’ll just put you on the speaker phone,” she said.

There was a few clicks, and then her voice reappeared, sounding a little more echoey.

“Can you hear all of us?” she asked.

“George here.”

“And Ted, it was good to catch up with you all last weekend, the band’s still sounding good.”

“Yes, I can hear all of you,” I replied.

“Okay,” it was Fifa back again. “We’ve got a proposal to put to you; I raised it with Mary Beth the other week, but I guess she had plenty of other things on her mind. We’ve got ideas for a new album, I’ll let George explain.”

“Will, mate, we think your sweet spot is the classic blues rock,” he said. “Harry, Jim, Beeb, Graeme and I have been putting together a bunch of songs we thing would go well; they will need a shit load of work to polish them up, but we think that some intensive pub gigs around Sydney in January should have them in a state where we can record an album.”

“I’ve had Peter start work on a possible touring schedule,” Fifa added. “Mainly around Sydney, the usual places, the Antler, Millers Manly Vale, the Lifesaver, Selinas, a few places in the Western Suburbs, possibly Chequers in the city. Maybe Central Coast Leagues, and the Worker’s Club near Wollongong. I’ll fax that across to you after this call.”

“All sounds good,” I said. “I’ll get everyone together tonight, run it past them, and I’ll confirm things tomorrow with you.”

“See if you can find a time when you can all come into the studio, and we’ll show you what we’ve written,” George said. “Or, if it’s more convenient, we can meet at your place one evening this week. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. All we want to do is sit down with you, go through the songs we’ve written, and share our thoughts. We want this album to be a big one, blow people away with it.”

“One evening might be the best at the moment; most of us are working during the day. I’ll let you know what would be a good evening to come around.”

“Cool. The other idea we had; we really need to get Allison as the lead powerhouse female lead vocalist, now that Megan has left. She’s got the ability, all we need are the right songs. Have you heard Tina Turner doing ‘Nutbush City Limits’? That would be a great one for you all to do; you’ve got the decent horn section, and Alli could really pull that off. See if we can get a Clavinet for you to play, to give the right funky sound.”

“Uh huh, that sounds good,” I said.

I would have to see if I could make some sort of multilevel stand for it, so it could be positioned above either the Rhodes or the Hammond.

“Now, have you managed to see a new group playing around town, they were originally from your part of Sydney, the Northern Beaches. Hard rockers, with a knockout woman as their lead singer. Name of the group is the ‘Divinyls’,” George said. “Singer, she’s fuckin brilliant, Chrissie Amphlett, younger cousin of Little Pattie; guitarist is a guy called Mark McEntee. If you get a chance, get yourself to see them, but she’s dynamite, and I think Allison could be just as good as she is, given the right songs.”

The names sounded familiar, they could be the two young musicians that I had met when performing with Salamon at the Antler several years previously. I would see if I could find where they were playing, and get to see them. Maybe take Allison, too.

“Now, I have a demo tape of ‘Nutbush’, and we’ve got a preliminary arrangement written out; can I get them sent by courier to you today?” he asked.

“That would work,” I said. “We could run through it tonight, and if you guys come around later this week, you can tell us if we’ve got it right.”

I gave them the delivery address that we used for couriers, he would have a package out here in the early afternoon. We spoke a little more about some of the plans, and I told them I would call them back tomorrow. I then called the others, saying there was a proposal for a new album, and some gigs in January, and we needed to talk about it. Everyone agreed with meeting tonight, around 7:30; I told Fiona that I could pick her up on my way home from the university.

After dinner, we all gathered up in the studio. I had to wait until everyone had arrived, Allison was running late, and apologised when she arrived.

“Fucking Sydney traffic!” she swore. “Some idiot had stacked on the Parkway, so the police had it closed off at North Narrabeen. Had to take the slow way through Collaroy, Dee Why, and up through Beacon Hill. Then a bus had broken down heading up from the Roseville Bridge ... I tell you, I really miss living in the inner city at times!”

“Well, I had a phone conference earlier today with Fifa, George and Ted from Alberts, and they had some ideas, plans for the coming months,” I said.

I then went through the things I had discussed with the people from Alberts; the album and proposed songs, and gigs around Sydney in January. When I mentioned the suggestion of doing a cover of ‘Nutbush City Limits’, Allison was very excited; she seemed sceptical that she would be able to do it justice though.