Chapter 11: Summer Activities

Some Truths Revealed

Late December, 1982

I slept quite late in the morning after the engagement party, and even when I woke up, I felt exhausted and disoriented. I asked Lisa if I had drunk too much the night before; maybe the alcohol had interacted with my heart medicine; but she said I had only had a glass of champagne, one nip of bourbon, and stuck to soft drinks other than that. But it wasn’t just that I was feeling tired; I had dreamed some pretty wild and vivid dreams overnight; dreams involving Jillian, and that she had visited me.

At least I thought they had been wild dreams until I went into the laundry and found a bunch of towels in the washing machine ready to be washed. They were wet, but not just wet with water, several of them had the scent of Jillian’s juices and breast milk. The recollections in my mind were clearly not from some wild dream. After starting the washing machine, I went to the study, and wrote down all I could remember from last night. I couldn’t tell Lisa; if I told her about Jillian, she would think I was losing my mind. I would have to find an opportunity to talk about it with Allison, she would understand.

I read through what I had written down; and made a few more notes when I realized I had forgotten to mention Jillian’s comments about how she and Allison had talked about being with me, prior to her death. Clearly, Megan must have talked to Jillian about her intention to move to the US for her postgraduate study, and Jillian probably suspected Lori would somehow leave me, or go her own way. That was certainly something I wanted to talk to Allison about. How was it that I was completely unaware of what was going on?

On Christmas Day, Lisa and I opened the presents we had for each other before breakfast; I had bought her a studio quality Metz flash system, complete with mounting brackets, power packs and trigger leads. Lisa gave me a little wrapped box; I opened it to find a signet ring. The stone was a dark greenish-black, with some red splotches inside it.

“It’s a bloodstone,” she said, “also called a heliotrope. I thought you might like a ring to wear, since you gave me one.”

I slid it onto the ring finger of my left hand; it fitted well, and looked really good.

“I’ll probably have to take it off when I’m sailing,” I said, “I don’t want the risk of the band getting caught on the rigging. But it’s lovely, thank you.”

“Will it get in the way when you are playing the guitar?” she asked.

“I don’t think so; I will try later, and see how it goes.”

“I can’t wait to try out this flash system, too,” she said. “With the two flash heads that can be mounted separately, it should avoid the problem of the harsh shadows we had with the earlier photos. When Fiona gets back, we can try some more special photos.”

“I think she will like doing that; she enjoyed the last photography session we did,” I said.

The plan for Christmas day was that after we had eaten breakfast, we would go up to my parent’s place, open more presents there with my family, and have lunch; then we would come back and have a second meal around dinner time with Lisa’s family. I could see special days like Christmas being a challenge in the future; when we were able to have everyone come around to my place for a big celebration that made things easier. But with two families to contend with, and family members having other people to see and spend time with, it was starting to be become a logistical nightmare.

The day worked out well, we had an enjoyable lunch with my family; my relatives from Cowra – my Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle and cousins - were there; since they had been in Sydney for the engagement party. Then it was back to Lisa’s family, for even more food. All in all, an enjoyable day; far too much food, but that’s only to be expected.

Boxing Day we drove up to the Earle’s place at Newport; I was once again going to be driving their boat down to the harbour for the start of the Sydney to Hobart race. Jack was back as sailing master on ‘Polaris’; my task for the day was to deliver him safely to the CYC docks in time for the start, then position the boat to watch the start, follow the fleet down the coast to somewhere near Botany Bay, and return everyone to Newport. On the boat, as well as Jack and Chris Earle, there was Lisa, myself, Mary Beth and Murph, Allison and Sandra. Bittersweet that Lori wasn’t there, but I had moved on from her.

The day was pretty much like all of the other times I drove their boat down for the start of the race; once we got to the CYC, we wandered around the marina, and checked out the different boats. This was the first time there for Lisa, she was amazed at how big some of them were, the complexity of the rigging and control lines. The most impressive, at least in my mind, was ‘Condor of Bermuda’, a beautiful maxi ketch; the hull was a lovely rich mahogany. There were other impressive maxis, too; Apollo, Siska, Police Car. We looked at all of the boats, large and small, and wondered just what it would be like to compete in the race. When it was close to the start time; we left Jack to his tasks on ‘Polaris’, the rest of us boarded our boat, and I took us slowly to neat the start line. I made sure I was well clear of the race boats; I didn’t want to get in trouble with the water police, who were patrolling the ‘keep clear’ zone.

I kept us close enough to follow the pre-start manoeuvres without getting in the way of anyone; we could see the puff of smoke from the starting gun before we heard the report. The big maxis all forged up the harbour; meanwhile on ‘Polaris’ they had got a reasonable start. Condor was first to clear the heads, followed closely by Apollo, Helsal and Margaret Rintoul. ‘Polaris’ was fairly well positioned in the top third of the fleet by the time we turned away to head back to Pittwater.

The weather had turned a bit cold; everyone had gone down to the cabin to get out of the wind; everyone except for Allison and me on the flying bridge. I had indicated to her earlier that I had something I wanted to tell her. When we were alone up on the flying bridge, I asked her if she had seen Jillian recently. She said she hadn’t seen her since last summer.

“I saw her late on Thursday night, after the party,” I said.

She sounded surprised, even more so when I told her the details of what had transpired, including the lactation.

“What did she taste like? Did you like it?” she asked me.

“She tasted like normal milk, just more sweet and creamy,” I replied. “And it was a huge turn on, for both of us. What did surprise me was what she said, how you and her had spoken about the two of you being with me, when Megan told her that she would be going overseas.”

“Oh, yeah, I was wondering when she might have mentioned that to you,” she said, sounding apologetic.

“And you never thought to mention that to me?”

“Well, it was just something we had discussed privately, before she died. Once Jillian died, I really wasn’t in any state of mind to consider any new relationship, not with you, not with anyone. So I let it drop. But Megan had talked about getting a scholarship to the US with Jillian; she asked her not to tell anyone, except me. And then we knew that Lori was planning on moving to the US; around the same time Megan was going to the US Consulate to sort out her student visa, Lori also went there to get her US passport. Apparently, one of her lecturers, who was from the US, had spoken to her about the possibility of a journalism career there; probably the job that she eventually took.

“Anyway, Jillian put two and two together, and came to the conclusion that sometime in early 1980, both Megan and Lori would have left you, meaning she and I could have stepped in to the gap. Our planning even got to the point where she said that I should be the one to legally marry you, since she was unable to have children, and you and I could have children together, and the marriage would give us ‘cover’ so all three of us could have lived together. But, well, it wasn’t to be.”

“True. I guess that’s why I hate all those ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ scenarios. I mean, Jillian dying, Megan and Lori leaving, and all the other really shitty things that have happened in my life; and stuff that has happened to you as well, they have turned us into the type of people we are today. Sure, if Jillian hadn’t died three years ago, what you two were planning may well have come to pass. But I probably wouldn’t have learned about life and myself, not like I have in the last three years. Anyway, it’s purely academic.

“What I still don’t understand is Lori’s behaviour though. I can understand her wanting the career opportunities with that ‘USA Today’ newspaper in the States; it sounds like it was a fantastic opportunity. But why not take it right after graduation? And if the reason why she went overseas was for a great job offer, why the strange behaviour? She’s pretty much cut herself off from her family; Mary Beth says she barely talks to her parents anymore. I still think something bad must have happened to her at that job she had here.”

“Do you regret how things ended up with her?” she asked me. “Do you wish that she hadn’t left you? It would be you and Lori getting married, not you and Lisa.”

“Yes, because it was my fault, in a way. I forgot all about communicating with her and also Megan; despite everything we had been through, we lost the ability to really talk with each other. You know, talking deeply, the way you and I do; talking about our feelings, fears, desires, emotions. That’s what really caused the problem, and when things started to go wrong in her life, she felt that she wasn’t able to confide in me. And I blame myself for that; the same as with Megan when she told me she was going overseas, I took it the wrong way, and reacted quite badly and blew up. That convinced Lori that there was no way she could talk to me, because I would react just the same. I think I’ve learned that lesson now, that’s why you and I, and Lisa and I spend time just talking to each other.”

“You are right,” she said. “I know I’ve learned so much in the last couple of years; I don’t know how well you and I would have worked out if we remained the same people as we were back then. But we are both in a much better place, a better frame of mind now than we would have been otherwise.”

“I think you are better off with Sandra than you would have been with me,” I said.

“And Lisa is far better for you than I would have been, too. Despite all the heartaches both of us have been through, things have turned out well for us. Now, if you don’t mind, I might go back down into the cabin, it’s starting to get a bit cold up here!”

“Okay; thanks for the talk, Allison. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

She kissed me softly on the cheek, then on the lips before going down below. As I continued steering the boat up towards Long Reef, making sure I was going to be well clear of the rocks and bombora, I thought about what Allison had told me. Not so much about Jillian and her planning on being with me, once Megan and Lori had left, but the fact that even before she had finished university, Lori was seriously considering moving to the US for work. Why had I not seen that? But there had to be something else behind her actions; her behaviour was completely out of character for her, and cutting off all contact with her family, something bad had to have happened, something that she didn’t want to talk about, not with me, not with Mary Beth, and not with her mother. Something I should probably talk to Mary Beth about, maybe she already knew, but she might have some thoughts.

I concentrated on the course; cleared the Long Reef headland, and adjusted the heading slightly to the west to bring us closer to Barrenjoey. I pushed the throttles all the way forward and kept us at full speed until I had to throttle back to go around the headland, and into Pittwater. There were a few other boats out on the water, so I cut the speed back to about half, watching out for other vessels. By the time I reached Taylor’s Point, I had to throttle back even more, since there was the no wash speed zone between the Newport shore and Scotland Island. Once I reached Alfreds, the speed reduced to 4 knots all the way into Winji Jimmy Bay, and the Earle’s dock.

As I eased into the jetty, Mary Beth stood on the bow, then jumped onto the jetty, and secured the bow and stern lines. I shut off the engines, and went downstairs. We packed things up on the boat, and headed up to the main house. Mary Beth and Murph were staying there overnight, so Lisa and I drove home ourselves.

“Did you enjoy that?” I asked her.

“That was so cool, seeing all of those boats close up,” she replied. “Plus I took two rolls of film; we will have to see how they turned out. But I enjoyed seeing the starting tactics and manoeuvres close up. You did a good job driving the boat; it must be stressful with all of the other craft about.”

“Yeah, but I’ve done it for a while, been at the start of the race. All you have to do is keep a good look out, try to anticipate what the other boats are likely to do.”

When we got home, Lisa said she was tired, and would get to bed early. I decided to write up what Allison and I had talked about. Once Lisa was in bed, I went to the study, and pulled out my journal. I had considered keeping my journal on line; using my dial in link to the university system to update text files on my computer there. I preferred actually writing it by hand; that way I wrote exactly what came into my head. If I wrote it on line, using vi, then I had the tendency to constantly go back and revise what I had written. I preferred to have my journal entries the raw, unedited musings; almost like a stream of consciousness. Plus, when I entered things on the computer, I concentrated too much on the formatting and visual appearance of what I was writing, and not the actual content.

After an hour or so, I felt I had written down everything Allison and I had talked about, plus my thoughts and feelings about it. At least I felt I knew a little more about what had gone on between us those three years earlier. I still didn’t understand things completely, and maybe I never would.

Over the next three days we monitored the race standings; while the winds weren’t the best for a fast race time; Polaris was still doing well, and was leading her division. The leading boats looked like they would finish sometime on the Thursday afternoon. On Wednesday afternoon, Cathy and Martin called in; Cathy had the photos that she had taken at the engagement party for us. She had taken five rolls of film, so there were a hundred and eighty photos. She had done a great job, capturing just about everyone who was there.

As a present, she also gave us a good album to put the photos in; it had thirty pages, each page was stiff cardboard, with clear plastic pockets to slide each photo into, with space to write a description next to the photo. As we looked through the photos; we would identify each person, depending on which of us knew that person. About halfway through, I saw a brunette; it was Jillian – at least in the disguise she had while she was at the party. She was standing with the guys from Cold Chisel.

“Who is that woman?” Lisa asked.

““I’m not sure; I thought she arrived with Mossy and Don, from Chisel,” I said. “Wasn’t she Ian’s partner? I can’t remember her name.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “See, she’s in a few of the other photos with them. It’s just I have never seen her before; but then again, if she’s Ian’s girlfriend, that would make sense, because none of them have had their partners with them on the few occasions we’ve been together.”

“I’ve never seen that woman before, either,” I said, quite truthfully. I had never seen that version of Jillian, at least not until later that evening.

Seeing her in the photos was another reminder to me that the events of late in the night were not just some wild dream that I experienced, but actually happened. It was all rather confusing; but over the years I had convinced myself not to try to overthink things regarding Jillian. There were many mysteries in the world that were beyond my comprehension.

Meanwhile, we were preparing for the New Year’s Eve gig at Victoria Park, we were heading up a triple bill with Chisel and the Dyvinyls; pretty much a repeat of our earlier gig at the Hordern Pavilion. We had spoken to the other two groups, we agreed that we would do the sets pretty much the same as we had done then; combining for a final group set. The only change would be fitting in ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight. It promised to be a good concert; I always had a great time playing with both of those other groups.

With Garry’s wedding coming up on the weekend after New Year’s, I needed to plan his bucks night. Someone had suggested we go to ‘Les Girls’ at Kings Cross; the drag show had been there for years, and was apparently lots of fun. I thought we should have it on the Thursday night before the wedding; that way everyone would have a full day to recover. Not that we were planning any wild celebrations. I called the venue and booked a table for ten of us; I mentioned that it would be a bucks night and I was told that if I pointed out the ‘buck’ when we arrived, he would get special treatment from the ‘girls’.

We were also preparing for the two weeks on the road in January; on the day after Garry and Jenny’s wedding we were heading up the Pacific Highway to Coffs Harbour for a two night gig at the ‘Hoey Moey’; then back to Newcastle for three nights at the Worker’s Club, finishing that week at the Central Coast Leagues Club in Gosford ... The week after that we had three nights in Canberra, followed by two nights in Wollongong. We had most of the tracks for our next album worked out; we just needed to refine them to make them ‘album worthy’. Fiona had come up with a title for the album, it was a Latin phrase “ars longa, vita brevis”, which meant “art is long, life is short”.

“That’s a bit dark, isn’t it?” Lisa said. “Life is short?”

“I think it implies that what we create, our art, lives far longer than our own lives. So what we create on these albums is our legacy,” Fiona explained.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Phil said. “I wonder who we can get to design the album cover; it’s a pity Ros isn’t around anymore.”

At least we had the album title worked out; most of the tracks we felt were just about ready; we were still debating about including the three ‘surf guitar songs’; ‘Wipeout’, ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ and ‘Perfidia’. We would see what sort of reception they got at the live gigs next month. Of course, George might have completely different ideas; the last time he spoke there was talk of one or two new songs that he and Harry had been working on.

Around lunchtime on Thursday, we (Mary Beth, actually) had a phone call from her mother to say that Jack, and ‘Polaris’, had arrived in Hobart earlier that morning; they were forty-seventh over the line, but had their fingers crossed for a handicap win in the “Classic Division”. The first three boats, ‘Condor of Bermuda’, ‘Apollo’ and “Helsal II’ all finished within five minutes of each other; a pretty amazing performance in a six hundred mile race. Only seven seconds separated Condor, in first place, from Apollo; probably the closest finish in the history of the race.

Friday morning we started loading up equipment for the NYE gig; as I was getting my equipment into the trailer, Lisa asked me a question.

“What would you think about Chrissy coming back to our place after the gig tonight? The four of us; you, me, her and Fiona could have our own special celebration to welcome in the New Year.”

“Sound fine to me; there’s nothing else we have planned for the weekend,” I replied. “So it won’t matter if we are awake until the early hours of the morning.”

We arrived at Victoria Park just after lunch; the stage, lighting and PA equipment had already been set up. All we had to do was set up our equipment, which didn’t take too long, and go through a quick sound check. The others; Chisel and the Dyvinyls were there, and while we sat around waiting for the gig to start, we all talked about our plans for the summer. We told them about our plans for Coffs, Newcastle, Gosford and Wollongong; Chisel would be at the Hoey Moey next week, and the Dyvinyls were touring Melbourne and Adelaide. We made sure everyone was on the same page for the final, combined set; all of us would start the final set around 11 p.m., timing it so that just before midnight, we would count down to the start of the New Year.

Time passed, and by early evening the crowd had built up to somewhere over ten thousand, I guessed. The Dyvinyls opened the gig; when they came off the stage, Chrissy came up to me, gave me a big hug and a passionate kiss.

“I can’t wait until the final set, performing with you, Will,” she said. “And afterwards, back at your place...”

“I think Lisa might have something special planned for us later tonight,” I replied, winking at her. “I’m looking forward to that performance with you, in bed...”

Cold Chisel had taken the stage; and by the time they finished their set, the crowd was really worked up. When the stage crew had moved Chisel’s equipment to one side and put our gear out, we took the stage.

“Let’s show people what great rock and blues really is,” Phil said to us, before his mike was bought up.

We did out standard opening, ‘Time is Tight’, followed by ‘Good Time’, then Allison blew things away with ‘Nutbush’. There was so much energy from the crowd, we probably played as good as we ever had. I really didn’t want our set to end, but we had to stop so the others could join us on the stage. There was just enough room on stage for all of us; with four drum kits, two keyboard sets, three bass players, a bunch of guitars, and our horn section, it was packed. There was a big 64 channel mixer, a real monster of a device; and Mary Beth and Lisa would have their hands full running it.

The opening number was ‘Make You Happy’, Chrissy and I shared the vocals; and as usual when we sang together, she had an arm over my shoulder, and we shared the one mike. Just as the song was about to start, she whispered in my ear.

“I’ll make you really happy later tonight, Will.”

For this set, we had worked out some extra-long versions of each song, either by adding instrumental breaks, or repeating verses. After we finished the opening song; we did Chisel’s ‘Bow River’; Don and I played our keyboards together while Mossy did the guitar opening. Don played his electric piano, while I was on my Hammond. After the intro, everyone joined in; the four drummers provided a pounding, driving beat; Stewie was doing a number on his harmonica; and through the glare of the lights, we could see the audience going wild. About halfway through Jimmy Barnes joined Ian sharing the vocals; Chrissy, Fiona, Allison and Mandy provided a solid backing.

For the next song, ‘Rising Sun’, Mandy opened up on the bass saxophone; Don and I were on our pianos; and in between the verses, each of the lead guitarists took solo breaks. By the time we had finished that one, I felt exhausted; but we still had several more to do. At least ‘Fast Woman’ was a little more sedate; but then Chrissy and I were back into it with ‘Boys in Town’. We had eight minutes to fit in an extended version of ‘Nutbush’; Chrissy and Allison shared the vocals, in between instrumental breaks.

It was just under sixty seconds to midnight; Mary Beth had somehow patched the Telecom ‘Talking Clock’ into the PA, and when there were ten seconds to go, Jimmy, Chrissy and I all counted down. At midnight, everyone cheered; Chrissy grabbed me, kissing me passionately until we started on ‘Auld Lang Syne’. When we finished the fireworks started on the far side of the park; that gave us time to start packing up our equipment. We had five in my car with Chrissy coming home with us; with all the New Year’s revellers in the city, it was a slow drive home; taking almost an hour for a trip that would normally take less that twenty minutes.

I backed the car and trailer into the garage, but unloading it could wait until the morning – well, it was already morning, but later in the day. Allison really didn’t feel like driving back to Newport, not with all the traffic; so she would sleep in Fiona’s room, since Fiona would be with Lisa, Chrissy and me. As we were heading inside, I told the others that I really need to have a hot shower first; I was all sweaty and smelly, and wanted to get clean before getting into bed.

“Would you mind if we girls went first?” Chrissy asked. “Then when you are having your shower, we can get the bedroom ready. We want to be nice and sweet for you.”

I wondered just what they had in mind; I would find out in a few minutes. The three girls returned from the bathroom; towels wrapped around their bodies. I left them giggling in the bedroom and I went to the bathroom. The warm water felt great as it cascaded over my head; I stood there for a few minutes, letting the sweat and muscle aches wash from my body. When I felt clean and refreshed, I dried myself, wrapped the towel around my body, and headed back to the bedroom.

The main overhead light had been turned off in the bedroom, just leaving the two lights on the night stands providing illumination. All three of the girls were naked; and there were four ropes on the bed, attached to each of the four corners.

“We’re going to play a game, a guessing game,” Lisa said. “Will, we will blindfold you and will tie you down on the bed. Then, you will have to correctly identify each of us, just from licking and tasting our pussies. If you get all three correct, then you can have any, or all of us. No peeking, though!”

“Do you think he could actually do that?” Chrissy asked. “Just with his lips and tongue?”

“I reckon he can,” Fiona said. “He’s done that before, but with five or six other women!”

“Okay, I’m up for it,” I said. “Blindfold?”

I lay on the bed, Lisa and Fiona fastened my wrists and ankles to the ropes, and then tied a black blindfold securely around my eyes. I could hear them whispering to each other, no doubt working out who would go first.

“Here are the rules; we will take it in turns to squat over your face, you will lick and suck our pussies, but obviously no touching with your hands, and you can’t remove the blindfold. Are you ready?”

“Uh huh,” I grunted my reply.

I felt the bed move as someone’s weight was put on it, then I could feel a warm set of thighs straddling my chest. Immediately I could feel and smell a warm, moist pussy being pressed against my face. Using my tongue and lips, I tried to discern as much about that pussy as I could. Recalling what I could about each of the three girl’s pussies; they all had neatly trimmed pubic hair; none of them had particularly prominent labia; although Lisa’s were smaller than average, with just the bottom part of her inner lips protruding. Fiona’s pussy was pretty much smooth and even; her inner labia were rather small. She did have that amazing red pubic hair, not that the colour was of any help to me at the moment. Chrissy’s were probably the largest of the three girls’; not huge, but protruded the full length of her outer lips.

I ran my tongue along the length of the anonymous pussy, trying to detect the size and shape of the inner lips. I felt pretty sure that this was Chrissy; but I would have to compare what I was feeling with the other two to make sure.

“Next!” I said, and the girl (Chrissy?) got off, and was quickly replaced by someone else.

As I ran my tongue up and down this new pussy, I couldn’t detect any inner lips protruding between the outer lips, number two must be Fiona. I tried to detect how extensive and bushy her pubic hair was; but that was too difficult with her squatting over my face.

“Next!”

The third one was most definitely Lisa; I could easily detect the lower parts of her inner labia protruding from between her outer lips. Plus, she wasn’t as wet as the other two. Now to go back and confirm my initial suspicions.

“Number one again, please.”

Number one was most definitely Chrissy; her thick inner lips ran the full length of her pussy; and my now she was very wet, and I could feel her engorged clit with the tip of my tongue. I considered keeping on licking until she came, and I should be able to identify her from her reaction, but I felt that was almost cheating.

“Number two again.”

Number two was certainly Fiona; I wished that with that shock of red pubic hair her juices should taste like strawberries or something, but the shape of her pussy gave it away.

“Three.”

I really didn’t need to lick Lisa’s pussy to confirm it was her, but I felt that I should give each of them the same treatment. Number three was definitely Lisa, I was very confident of that.

“I have worked it out,” I said. “Number one is Chrissy; number two, Fiona, leaving Lisa as number three.”

“Very good!” Lisa said as she removed my blindfold. “Three out of three! I guess we can give you your reward now.”

“And we can get our reward, too!” Fiona said.

“Who gets to go first?” Chrissy asked.