The first time I fell in love, it was dark, and I was on a couch. I was sixteen years old, and felt close to ancient. I had been impatient with love, thinking it would never find me, and then, one night, it did. My beautiful mate Nicko, a red-headed surfer, would be my first true love. I think I knew it from our first awkward kiss, on the couch at Defah’s dad’s house. Electric. He felt it too. On the night he asked me out, he told me he loved me so much he would even give up dope for me. Was I even aware, at the time, just how much dope he smoked? I didn’t think I was. But since he was offering, great!
It was a sweet gesture, the sweetest he could make, because he knew from our chats that I could not smoke dope without having what I now know to be a massive bloody panic attack. It just wasn’t for me, and he said that he wanted to do things I wanted to do. How bloody sweet! And, still, our love was doomed to fail. In the end, it wasn’t the dope that ruined things so much as the lying when he started up again. The drama of the whole thing became too much. When we broke up, it was a mutual decision, but I still took it all rather personally. It hurt. But when he asked me to please return his mother’s album of Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark I was devastated. Frank, of course, had a field day. Even though Nick had never once mentioned or seemed aware of my little weight problem, it was, said Frank, the main reason we broke up. The habit of breaking up with a boyfriend and then going on a diet started here. I thought that if I were thin, I would be loved.
By the time the diet worked, there was Joffa, whom I decided I was put on Earth to save.
Did he ever ask me to save him? Not at all.
I think we’re all pretty clear now on how that ended (not well).
Then there was the young businessman from the call centre. At first, he seemed very kind, a safe shoulder to cry on as I recovered from the heartbreak of Joffa. But time would reveal he was both kind and … a bit of a ‘bull-dust artist’. Sadly, we were just not meant to be.
After that, I fell in love with a series of beautiful, brilliant lost boys: the talented musician who always called his overbearing mother to say goodnight; the tattooed motorcycling poet who—by candlelight, on the floor of his warehouse—introduced me to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album; the beer-sculling mushroom-munching holy-fuck-he-was-so-good-looking cowboy singer–songwriter who taught me how to sing a heartbreak song like I meant it, because I really did. My love for him was so fierce, and so wrong, I thought it would break me, but it did not. I lived to tell another tale. In the words of Joni, at least I got a song out of it.
How ironic, in hindsight, that the man charged with recording and producing these songs about all these doomed love affairs was my friend, drummer and all-round good guy, Marty Brown.
What a great guy that Marty is, I’d say to myself. Supportive, kind, never judgemental. He let me be exactly who I was, no questions asked. When I cried over Tom and Dick and Harry, he was right there beside me, asking exactly zero questions, just pouring me a coffee, or a beer, and waiting for me to be ready. I guess he could see a good song coming before I did. He’d just wait it out, and then ask if I was ready for a take, and then he’d press record and catch it all. These were the stories, and later, recordings that would make up our second and final album, Roda Leisis May.
Before John and Defah fell in love, John and Marty lived in a massive share house on Rae Street, North Fitzroy, which served the dual purpose of also being Red Raku club headquarters (the poor neighbours). We rehearsed upstairs in the living room, and recorded downstairs in Marty’s bedroom. It was not, let’s say, a very large space. Often it was just the two of us in there, layering vocals tracks. Those photos on the wall of him holding his nieces were adorable! His huge mixing desk and huge bed were about a foot apart from each other and the only standing room was a corner in front of the microphone. In between takes, I’d lie on his bed and look at the back of his head, bobbing in time to one thing or another, and I can’t tell you how many times I said to myself, Ah gee, what a great guy is Marty Brown. So steady! So talented! So kind! I bet we’re gonna be friends for the rest of our lives.
The fact that I wanted to jump his bones was, I kept telling myself, but a minor concern. Irrelevant. Hormones. Silly. All that respect and camaraderie: who would give that away, just for a quick shag?
Not me, I told myself. Not I.
And yet, curiously, at the end of every recording session, when we said goodnight and hugged, there was always a part of me that just wanted to stay and, I wondered, was it just me or did he feel the same way too? We didn’t name it, I didn’t want to name it, but annoyingly, yes, we did have something. But by then I already knew through experience: you don’t fool with your friends, not if you want to stay friends. Are we clear?
Not long after meeting Marty, I had a vivid dream that stayed with me when I woke up. It was about a
