It was in 1960 that the expressive potential of swearing was first demonstrated to me by Stephen Ollerton, a fellow student at Athelstane Primary. Ollerton was probably dyslexic and could hardly read. He came last in the class, behind even the mute, obedient girls from the Salvation Army Girls Home. His main value was the comic entertainment he provided when being caned, or when the class lined up for polio vaccination. But one day, when I happened to be the last to leave in a group that had been teasing him, he lashed out with 'Ah piss off, yer bloody bum-faced bugger! Leave me alone!' This stopped me dead in my tracks, and for some time afterwards I was perplexed by surreal images of a bum-faced human.
1963: Masturbation, Arkinstall informed me, was 'fucking without the dame'. The term 'dame' was in its last throes, having been imported from US culture of the thirties and forties. It was to disappear within a year, to be replaced by 'bird', as part of the pop culture re-colonisation led by British TV comedy, the Beatles, and James Bond. Already in 1963, boys in First Form were imitating Harry Corbett from Steptoe and Son with 'You dir'y old maaaan!' complete with glottal stop and unsounded consonants.
I was familiar enough with the sight of my sister's small vertical smile, but was unable to identify that with the concept of a cunt, up which one supposedly fucked a dame. This led to the following embarrassment while waiting for a late afternoon train at Allawah Station
.
'Hey Arky, do you fuck a dame up the bum?'
'Naohh! What are ya, some kind of poofter? Heh, what... whaddaya think ya came out of ya mother's arse like a turd? Hahaha... See you with your wife on your wedding night: Argh! Stop! Whaddaya doing?" Hahaha...
Keith Hart was the boy who had repeated intercourse with the science bench in Room 13. He and Arkinstall persuaded me that the fish and chip shop just up from Arncliffe station doubled as a 'brothel shop' . They had it on the authority of a Kogarah High boy, whose elder brother was a 'real hood', that one had only to ask for a 'black and white milkshake' to be taken up the back stairs for a session with the proprietor's daughter. She was a 'real moll' who 'roots herself with an oyster bottle". 'Go in there, you can see the bottles on the shelf'.
Hart offered me a shilling if I would go in and ask for a black and white milkshake. Swallowing hard, I walked slowly into the dim shop and made it to the counter. The proprietor had his back turned to me, then he turned round. He was a swarthy man in a white apron.
'Yes, what you want?' '
Can I have a milkshake please.'
He stared at me like Bela Lugosi. '
'What kind of milkshake you want?'
I bolted from the shop and ran past Hart, who was laughing.
1964: Swimming at Ramsgate Baths, I ran into Graham Young. Over a pineapple fritter, he told me it was the first time he had been back to the baths in two years. Last time he had broken out in festering sores that turned into scabs. The Baths pumped sea water in from the Bay, just across the road. A travelling circus had been in the park opposite the Baths, and they had washed out the monkey cages right near the water pipe. Fortunately, the scabs had all dropped off, and there were no scars or anything...
I already knew from my friend Philip Miles that the Victoria Baths in Prince Alfred Park were 'seven percent urine'. My brother was having swimming lessons there.
1965: A distinctive sarcasm developed amongst the hoods in Third form, involving insertion of the prefixes 'non' in front of whatever adjective or proposition they wanted to affirm. Exposure to these formulations came from Robert Lever who lived across the road from me. He was an accomplice of Greg Wyner, who probably invented them. For example, 'on my last day I'm non-gonna go up to Fatgut [Hurst] and job him', or 'There goes Sykes, friend of all, non-deadshit!' or 'Don't ask Pedro, he won't know... small fool! many want him'.
A favorite routine amongst this lot, when travelling on a bus, was to see a particularly elderly or ugly woman on the street, and call out 'Hello Mrs [insert surname of friend]!'
Around this time, a classic scene is said to have occurred at the back of a bus in Hurstville, where Ron 'Gobbo' Stokes and 'Dirty' Young sat smoking, wearing their own parody of the school uniform. Enter Paul Lyons, Senior Prefect, loathed and detested for putting them on quad regularly. They called Lyons 'Neck' because of his acned shaving rash. With military sang froid, Lyons strides up to Stokes, rips the cigarette out his mouth and tears it in half, drops the burning end on the floor and stamps on it. Howls and threats ensued. 'Gobbo' acquired his nickname from the story that his sister was forced to fellate a gang of bikies...
