Keep on Spinning Until the Very End

Another roll of the dice, spin of the wheel, sickness in the stomach as I reel, dollarless, hopeless out of another glitzy casino. Head spinning from too much beer, too many spinning wheels and reels, too many flashing lights and ringing bells. I stumble, lost, another two weeks away from my next hopeful salvation – need to make it back to my room, for sleep, for refuge. I count my steps, one after the other, five or six thousand more to go, continue in my trance, self abuse, self hatred, utter hopelessness, despair, no possible salvation, need more dollars from somewhere, anywhere – need another fix already, another twenty beers may fix it all. I remember my TV, it’s been in and out of hock constantly, but I remember it’s currently out of hock, I get a renewed frantic spring in my step, not done with just yet, can hock it in the morning, more fix, more hope, I am saved for now, and there’s beer in the fridge, I also suddenly remember, when I get in I can have a beer or ten, wait for the pawn shop to open, then get back amongst it…

Thursday night – I’m sitting al fresco drinking Darwin style at the golf club, beers are flowing happily with no end in sight. A joyful drinking payday Thursday amongst newly acquired friends, with a big week-end ahead. Just come in after nine reasonably successful, beer fuelled, holes of burglars golf. Light hearted, unserious golf, and now we’re about to run a sweepstakes on the upcoming week-end’s club championships. In the form guide I’m listed as an unknown quantity, a big chance, ‘just has to show up to be a contender’. I’m drinking with big Jim, an Irishman, VB for me, of course Guinness for him. It’s a typical dry season night, slight cool breeze through the palm trees, cloudless pink sunset sky, voices and laughter growing louder as it becomes darker. Jim and I throw some money around backing various golfers for this and that, but we put the big money on me – I assure big Jim I’m the man for the job, in my drunken state I am overtly confident of smashing all kinds of scoring records, all with a VB in hand, of course. The big danger, we figured, was keen favourite little Ritchie, another VB swiller from way back and also a sheep shagging Kiwi, but when he got the VB blood levels just right could shoot all sorts of low numbers – he held the course record, which I intended to tear to shreds on the week-end. A good night, a happy, social drunken night with a happy ending of me in bed with plenty of money still in the bank, not always the way on a pay Thursday. No casinos, no dimly lit pokey rooms, spinning away my dosh. I almost felt like an innocent sensible.

Friday was a work day, but only a half-arsed, relaxed, Darwin, Air Force, buff the workshop floor in the morning, lunchtime BBQ and beers at lunch, then two o’clock knock-off, sort of workday. Over to Winnellie for more beers with the boys and strippers, in the steamy, tin, cement floored back bar. Fun, yahooing strippers - not seedy, serious, lonesome, squalid strippers such as at the Cross for the southerners. Room full of early knock off Friday tradies, raising and splashing beers, grins amongst all, as breasts are strutted and later more. Blue shirts and body odour and impossible tanned flesh prancing above, a hub bub of roars and whistles and laughter, not a single fight or disgruntled punter to be seen. A Darwin arvo at the strippers at its finest.

Saturday morning comes and I decide to head to the club early to practice my putting and also have a couple of ales to flush out the cobwebs in my head. I grab a cold VB stubby and sit outside and chat to a couple of early morning players at their halfway mark. I look out at the combined ninth/eighteenth green and the course looks magnificent on a glorious dry season spectaculare. I grab another beer and join old Warwick who’s studying the form guide, we talk horses and golf for a while. ‘You going to the races this arvo?’ he asks. ‘Anything’s possible,’ I reply. He gave me a couple of tips, suspect ‘sure things’, I still can’t trust another man’s sure things, I’ve found about a twenty percent pay off rate if you’re lucky for sure things. I grab a couple of beers for the course and wander over to the practice green to iron out the wrinkles in my short game. Within half an hour I’m hitting off with a few of the lads. I go halves in a six pack with stormy Keith.

By the eighth green I knew Big Jim’s money and mine was gone, an absolute golfing disaster, wayward flogging and inept putting and then a drowned sand wedge at the par 3 eighth contributed to the Shakespearean tragedy. ‘Oh well,’ I said to Keith as I turned at ten over, ‘think I’ll grab a six pack for myself for the back nine.’ The back nine fared slightly better but still it left me with a woe-be-tide sixteen over par not even good enough to be a contending B-grade score. Some consolation beers with stormy Keith and the boys and suddenly I could picture a ‘clickety-clicks’, a sixty-six, getting me right back amongst it. My spirits were lifted greatly, so greatly in fact that I decided to head into the races for some equine merriment.

I make the short drive home, put on some drinking clobber, jeans, collared check shirt, black rollers, sunnies, call over to Catter’s block, he’s in the common room with the knobber Harris and a couple of the other jocks from block 77, I sneak away after five not bothering to ask Cats along because I don’t want his head strong, excluding new-found buddies to come. I walk out the front gate and head towards the highway and I’ve flagged down a cab in less than ten minutes. ‘Race track, thanks mate.’ ‘No worries pal.’ Friendly fat Darwin cabbie, who happens to give me the exact same tip that old Warwick did. ‘Now that might be worth a pineapple or so,’ I say enthusiastically to the cheery cabbie.

Fanny Bay racetrack is as Darwin beautiful and relaxed as ever as I pay my five bucks to get in and head straight to the bar in eager thirsty anticipation, the sad all-encompassing optimism of the hopeless gambler ebbing through my blood. I grab a beer and stroll through the noise and cash grab of bookies with those big cumbersome money bags. I throw twenty on some eight to one shot and head down trackside, in the sunshine to watch. My nag gets home and begins a winning streak, by the meetings end I’m a good three or four hundred bucks up. I suddenly remember that later that night I’ve got the Airman’s Ball on at the boozer on base. I decide, regardless, to catch a cab to the casino for a bit more of a punt, to ride my luck while I was on a roll.

The casino was as ruthless as ever and within four beers I had lost my money. Now I was my normal broke self once again. I rang Catter and he arranged to give me fifty bucks when I got back on base. I caught a cab, which I paid for with ten bucks I had stashed in my room for just such a purpose. Also on my desk was the fifty Catter had left there for me. I threw on some flash pants, a dress shirt and draped a tie around my neck, realising that I neither knew how to, nor was capable of even if I did, of tying on a tie. So I grabbed Catter’s fifty and wandered up to the boozer in a state of overt drunken happiness and anticipation.

At the entrance to the boozer I ask a fine lass if she knows how to tie up a tie she happily obliges and I crack some jokes that even her boyfriend grins at. Looking dapper apart from bloodshot eyes I enter the boozer and join Catter and his cronies until they ignore me one too many times and then I mingle with workmates and their wives and some other lads from a different section. Plenty of complimentary beer and wine and I hear myself ranting about clickety clickses with anyone who will listen. By the end of the night I find myself wandering dishevelled through the Vic, unsure of how or who I got there, sad, lonely 3am beers, then a long trudge home. An hour or two’s sleep then I wake realising I tee off in twenty minutes. I race a shower, throw some clothes on, grab someones six pack out of the common room fridge, jump in my car and speed to the golf course, flying over speed humps. I run to the first tee with my clubs on my shoulder, my shoes and socks in my hands, and my partners down on the first green. ‘You did have an all-nighter!’ yells stormy Keith from the practice green. I grin sheepishly as I tee up and drive barefooted knocking a shaky slice into the trees. I run down the fairway and finish the hole with a double-bogey while my playing partners wait on the following tee.

By the ninth I’ve had enough, one par is the best I could scrounge up, I’ve accrued half a ton already, dreams of a clickety clicks gone, I apologise to my playing partners, by this time I’ve finished my six pack and am almost drunk again, I throw my clubs in the back of the cruiser and head over to the hock shop to cash in my annoying golf clubs. Two hundred bucks later I’m ready for another good time. I go back on base and chase up my old drinking mate Johnny M.

He’s plonking away on his guitar when I go in to his room, I get him to play Glycerine and I gravel Bush as best I can, singing with surprising uninhibitedness for eleven in the morning. He’s keen for cheers and beers we head to Winnellie for a few starters and have a fat time spinning shit over a couple of games of pool. Later we start talking music and guitar and next thing we’re in the car (Johnny driving ‘cos I’m too far gone) heading over to the Railway club for an open jam session. We sit outside in the beer garden and chat to all comers sitting next to some likely looking women. Before too long I’m up on stage playing guitar on Stormy Monday with one of the chicks, Bonnie, singing authentic blues. I break into an emotional enthusiastic blues lead solo halfway through, slightly surprised and put out when I finish with a vibratoing bend cutting through my soul and look up and people are chatting away oblivious to what I have just unleashed. At song’s end I put down the guitar grab some beers and sit back down next to Johnny, with a drunken “pearls before swine” miffedness. Johnny laughs at my complaints and soon we’re back in the swing. Then we’re back in the car off to the Vic.

Johnny drops me off at the mall, saying he has a few things to do and he’ll catch up soon, and drives off in my cruiser. I walk through the sunlit mall to the antique Victoria Hotel, walk into the cool, dark, timber surrounds of Darwin’s oldest pub and take up a happy seat at the bar, and order a six dollar jug of VB and a glass. A burly miner who’s flown in for four days of revellery sits next to me and we start having a hoot, drunken irreverent conversation which soon attracts the ear of some lone female patron at a table behind us. I take a punt and boldly pull up a stool at her table and start up some sort of interview because I know a woman’s favourite subject is more often than not herself. She’s a school teacher from a remote community, think I’m going great guns until she asks me if I’m an alcoholic. Regardless I push on and offer to show her around the other pubs in Darwin which she hastily refuses and makes a quick getaway. Now my mood turning dark, self-pitying, poor lonesome, rejected once again. I look over to the comfort of the flashing pokies where one can indulge in one’s loneliness and not seem too unusual. ‘C’mon Johnny, where are you?’ Before long there’s no Johnny and I’m on the machines, spinning away till the very end.