I'm not going to share my name, but I will tell you that I am a 17 year old gay boy from the eastern suburbs of Sydney. My life, apart from school, is a blur of parties, friends, drinks, drugs, coffee and the occasional sexual escapade on the side. That’s pretty much what these stories are about; my life, the things I do, and get myself into. The stories are an insight into a new generation, and how we live our lives in the city, how we get by. Of course not everyone is like me…
Friday.
After a dull and tedious week of school, finally Friday afternoon has arrived, and, as per usual I leave to catch a bus into the city, accompanied by sam a school friend and part of the group, he wears a sloppy black trench coat and tight black jeans with a white collar that sicks rigidly out over the top of his coat. As the rest of my group have gone on an excursion and are already in the city watching ‘Indiana Jones’ for ancient history, they do not join us as they usually would on a Friday, so me and Sam are left to our own devices, we board the bus.
After a long bus ride from the north (where my school is situated) to the city, over the sunlit harbour bridge, watching the sun set and listening to the various music selections from the ‘Marie Antoinette’ soundtrack, we arrive at Wynyard station, walk into the adjacent park, as we usually do to meet friends, chat, drink coffee and catch up on the weeks events. We spot some friends of ours, jin, a 17 year old tall strapping and rather handsome Eurasian boy, he wears a slightly personalised school uniform, a vest and school pants, “hey baby!” he yells at both me and sam in a boisterous tone, “hey baby” we yell back, he sits with Scotty the youngest member of our group, who is sitting, playing the guitar and singing, he wears brogues, and a nice round-neck woollen jumper with tight black jeans. Also sitting in the circle is James, a mutual friend of the group’s, a fair boy, who, as a glimpse at his personality, keeps an old hard-back book, which he has cut holes in so as to keep his stray drugs in. He also wears a school uniform, the same as Jin’s except it’s a little ratty and he has black tattered boots on. We sit and chat while Scotty plays an upbeat blues melody on the guitar; it creates a beautiful atmosphere and lulls us all into a submissive state. “So what’s happening tonight?” Jin asks me, looking intently into my eyes, “we’re invited to a couple of things” I reply, “your welcome to join” I say, “I just might do that” Jin replies and smiles. We sit a while and wait for some of our friends to arrive. In the meantime James tells me about the pills he has for Tasia and Scotty, he pulls out a sachet and shows me, “double shot MDMA” he says with a grin “shit!, their going to be off chops!” I say, a worried expression suddenly taking to my face, “they’ll be fine” james says frowning a little to conceal a worried look. A little later, and right on time our friends show up, Tasia wears a black and white Parisian striped jumper with a black pencil skirt, tights and doc martins, gigi who sports an oversized tee shirt and black cardigan pulled in at the waist with a vintage belt and pointed toe lace-up boots, Cat in a bright yellow tee shirt with white high socks and ankle length, heeled yellow gum boots, they are accompanied by two others, Charlotte , one of the most lovable seventeen year old Avalon siders in town, who has long flowing blonde hair and a sprinkle of freckles, and Allya a twenty year old sweetheart with dark caramel skin and a Tokyo street influenced ensemble. “hey guys!” we all yell happily at them, as we haven’t seen them all week. We hug and kiss each person individually before sitting back down. We sit, talk and share all the new goss. After a while the sun starts to set and I finally decide that it is time to go off and let the night begin “come on guys lets go, we better get going to Newtown” I say loudly as Newtown is the location of two parties that we've been invited to, “ok” the crowd replies, Jin, James, Allya and Charlotte leave as they have their own parties and gatherings to attend, gigi also leaves but there is not going to be any partying for her, as she’s stuck, babysitting.
We board a train, receive a constant fire of foul glances from other, more elderly commuters, probably because we are talking, laughing and sometimes swearing at the top of our lungs, so as to get our point across of course. We soon arrive at Newtown, and as we alight from the train we glance at a world of interesting, exiting and alternative sights; a Goth store here, an adult shop there and an utter abundance of bustling restaurant and night life. Tasia needs to dump a couple of things at her house, (as she lives in Newtown) on the way, we may as well buy drinks, so Tasia takes drink orders, and, since she's ‘in’ with her local bottle shop we buy the drinks, but only after we go to her house and put down some baggage.
We enter tasia’s long, thin above-shop house, we walk up two sets of dimly lit stairs up to a long corridor, we walk down it and turn into tasia’s room; clothes cover the floor and there are stencils of tasia’s face spray-painted directly onto the walls, along with some drawings done by our friends (including me) in blue texta. After a quick visit and some ‘don’t take drugs, don’t smoke and don’t drink… too much’ advice from her mother we left, collected the orders from the bottle shop next door and go to meet our friends. We receive a call from Scotty, “where at buzz bar” he says, “ok, where coming” Tasia replies. We enter buzz bar, a cosy atmospheric café/bar on the main street of Newtown. We arrive to meet sam, Scotty, cat, and Shannon sam’s girlfriend a slightly butch girl with one side of her head shaved, who was known amongst her friends to be one of the best little skaters in town. Scotty pulls out a sachet from his pocket, it had a pill in it, “should I take it now?” he asked, “yeh go on” sam and Shannon both reply, he does.
Anistasia and Bethany finally arrive after their excursion. We spend the next half an hour in buzz bar drinking, eating, talking, singing and being rather jolly. We soon walk to our usual spot in Camperdown park, a large park in Newtown frequented by drunk teenagers and dog walkers. Jin soon arrives and After drinking in campers and being entertained by Scotty being well and truly ‘off chops’ we decide that we want to get out of the cold park, so sam and Shannon go to one party and we go to another.
We arrive at the party, held by a friend of mine, Ben a boy that I had had a fling with before he had a recent heroin overdose. We arrive at a two story terrace house, you can hear the music from outside, some of the group leave to go to another party but me, Anistasia, Cat and Bethany enter the house. There are two levels (including the front porch) of party happening, a house full of ready to rumble 18 to 20 year olds dressed as their own sexual fantasy. We stay for a little bit, drinking and chatting to random people as they pass us, the night turns quickly to a blur and then, Bethany shouts at me, Dina, Scotty, Hattie and Anistasia “lets go to ari and sophie’s party!” she slurs, “ok!” we all shout back. Hattie and Tasia run off with Scotty to go to ari and sophie’s but me, Anistasia and Bethany all decide that we are hungry and hurry off to Oprorto for a late feast. We gorge ourselves on burgers and a seemingly endless supply of chips and after a while make our way through the back streets of Newtown now talking tremendously loudly, “Indiana jones was so shit!” Bethany exclaims “yeah what the fuck!” Anistasia says almost trying to beat Lucy’s vocal volume, I laugh. This type of conversation continues throughout the journey. We walk for a while until we get to the next party, at Sophie and Ari’s.
We arrive to smoke filled rooms of happy go lucky teens, we walk through a long corridor, through the kitchen and out into the back yard, there are a bunch of boys and a couple of girls sitting in the back yard, I see Paloma a fiery 17 year old man killer, who was also one of the groups good friends, “hello my darling” I say “hey babe!” she replies, I move on to greet the other people I happen to know and then I see a familiar face coming toward me from the corner of my eye, and before you know it I have Magda a gorgeous 19 year old student who I had met at various parties who was now grinding against my side and growling, “hahaha! What the fuck!” I say not expecting that she would be at this party “hi baby!” she says “how are you?”.I chat to her for a while not noticing Tasia in the corner snorting the pill she had got from James.
Later, sitting on the couch me and anistasia sit and talk ravenously about, well, pretty much nothing at all, until Tasia enters the room, she wares a large hat with a diamond square on the top and the most serious, whacked-out facial expression you would ever see. An eruption of laughter come from me and anistasia, “oh god! That’s such a great look Dina!” I say, we laugh and laugh, until Tasia rips the hat off and says “stop laughing at me!” we don’t stop but we know that she was just ‘fucked’ and was unable to laugh at herself. The night ends with me and anistasia getting totally fed up with the party and catching a cab home. We get in the cab “that was a fun night” I say “yeh, it was pretty fun, not as fun as usual thought”.
(names have been changed for the protection of individuals)
