After highschool, I hung out a lot at Shopfront with mon amir aBlaze
(Chris Bl*). A unique guy indeed! I still chuckle thinking of him
and me. Like the time we chopped onions like men possessed in the
Shopfront kitchen with dozens of matches stuffed in our mouths (yet
another story for yet another time).
Him and me would head off in my old two-toned VW bug (one tone was
rust) driving through the night looking for aesthetica, trusty lunch
box at our side. One night we went off to Garrie Beach (by train) at
10pm to walk hours through the bush in the dark. Then we sat up all
night round our fire at Garrie Beach Youth Hostel. Cool stuff indeed.
Chris
directed some Harold Pinter plays I was in (with Clare) that
gave me some wonderful moments. For example, at the openning of play,
our heroine had to gaze wonderously at some intensely masculine
image. We struggled with cardboard for a while, then had a better
idea. Chris never appears on stage: why not use his genitals? Throw a
shadow of him nude on to a white sheet at the back of the stage?
Worked well- with a little work on the angles, we could blow him up to
ten feet tall to generate a truly impressive profile of his penis and
pubic hair. It never failed to get a great openning "gasp" from the
audience.
But the audience was missing the best bit. Backstage, the lighting
being run by this very smart but shy teenage girl from a very
conservative family. Imagine it- every night, there she was: just a
few feet away from from this brightly lite prick. Every night she was
the one to decide if we had enough "show" or if Chris should turn
some more. She did all this effeceintly and right on cue but Chris
and I often chuckled about what the hell she thought of all
this. From her bird-like nervousness, it was clearly an "item" in her
thinking. But she never had the nerve to say and we never had the
guts to ask!