It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Lewis Woolston, author of The Last Free Man and Remembering the Dead, so of course we jumped at the opportunity when he offered to share the long lost prelude to his time spent in the most remote corner of the outback desert. It’s everything you’d expect from Lewis: understated, human, and with a pivot that hits like a horse kick to the gut.
Enjoy!
The Sultan of Sydney University
I spent my twenties working security around Adelaide. That’s the grim story of the best years of my life. Other people spent their twenties travelling around the world, partying, finding themselves (whatever that means exactly), but not me. I spent my twenties working a permanent night shift and making barely enough money to pay rent and put food in the fridge.
Most of that was bouncing work in pubs and clubs, not because I wanted to do that sort of thing but because it paid more than patrols and static guard work. That was the grim choice, deal with drunken fuckwits or work patrols and static guard jobs where it’s nice and cruisy but you get less money per hour. It’s a hard choice.
Towards the end of my decade long security career (if you can call such a dead end job a career) I was so sick of pubs and clubs that I took a gig as hospital security at the old RAH, the one that’s been demolished now that stood next door to the Botanic Gardens. This was in about 2008 or maybe 2009, the exact dates are fuzzy in my mind.
It was by far one of the cruisiest jobs I’ve ever had. Basically you would get assigned a patient, the reasons could be anything, maybe they were pinging off their guts on ice and violent, maybe they were elderly and had dementia and were prone to wandering off, maybe they were of interest to the police and they wanted you to keep an eye on them until they got there to interview them, any number of reasons.
Once you got to your assigned patient, you pulled up a chair just outside their room or cubicle, sat your arse down and read a book, pausing every so often to look up and make sure the patient was still there and not dead. That was it, that was the entire job. Of course you’d get the occasional off tap patient that would cause a little trouble, in that case you called up the restraint team, a bunch of roided up guys who would come and put the loopy cunt down while the nurses administered enough sedatives to adjust their attitude.
Then when the fuss was over you could sit back down and continue reading your book.
The money wasn’t great and the shifts were all over the place but I read a lot of books in the year and a half I worked there. I worked my way through a solid chunk of the Penguin Classics range and got paid to do so. That feels like an accomplishment to me.
It was about this time in my life that I started to seriously look for a way out of the minimum wage rut I was in. More than that I started to dream of really doing something with my life. Working at a hospital you become seriously aware of death. You can’t avoid it. I was hitting the arse end of my twenties and the knowledge that life doesn’t last forever was really forcing its way to the front of my mind.
Quietly, and I never admitted this to anyone at the time, I had begun to dream of being a writer, or rather I’d always vaguely dreamt of being a writer but now I’d actually given some thought into the practicalities of getting started and giving it a real go. Sometimes during those long shifts sitting on a patient in the wards I’d put my book down for a few minutes and look around, I’d wonder to myself if I was ever going to amount to something, if this grim existence was merely a prelude to the story of my glorious success or if it was in fact the main show.
It was about this time I met Henry.
Around this time Centrelink was paying people to do courses that would lead to a job and get them off the dole. Hospitality courses were a favourite, they’d pay for people to do bartender or barista courses, the person would find a job pretty quickly afterwards and cease being on the dole, they’d claim success and an improvement on the unemployment statistics. The fact that it was a bullshit dead end minimum wage job didn’t matter. They could tick a person off as gainfully employed and that was that. Some arsehole politician could stand up in parliament and crow about the fall in unemployment numbers.
Anyway they discovered that if they paid people to do a security course they’d get a job and off the dole even quicker. They pumped every semi-functional mouth-breathing halfwit on the Centrelink system into security courses as quickly as they could. There seemed to be a gender divide with it too, they sent the males into security and the females to hospitality. Nobody asked these people if they wanted to do these courses or work in these industries. Go forth and become employed! Was the general attitude and nobody really questioned it.
We got a lot of older blokes who’d lost jobs in other industries for various reasons. Blokes who’d worked in the car manufacturing industry before it closed down, others who’d been in the military, and even tradies of various sorts who’d done their backs and gone on compo, all sorts.
Henry was one of these.
I met him on a Saturday afternoon. I’d been called in to do a shift minding a patient who’d tried to cut his own throat with a piece of broken glass. By the time I got there the patient had been sedated and it would be a solid twenty-four hours before the psych doctor could see him. I was looking forward to a nice cruisy shift reading my book. Henry was minding a patient in the cubicle next to mine, sitting on the grimy plastic chair in his ill-fitting uniform, with one leg crossed over, he had a distinguished bearing about him, like he was a natural born aristocrat. When I remember him now I’m reminded of a photo of Anthony Eden the British Prime Minister from the 1950’s sitting in almost the exact same posture. There was a very similar air to them both.
I said hello and introduced myself before I sat down. I was immediately struck by how well he spoke. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that he was a highly educated man and wondered how he’d ended up working security at the hospital.
He’d been sitting on his patient for about an hour before I got there. It was a young woman with schizophrenia who’d been brought by police after causing a fuss in some shop in the city. They’d sedated her and Henry mused to me about her life in an academic, disinterested way.
‘I mean, what sort of life can this girl realistically expect to live? Is she ever going to become anything resembling normal? One can’t really imagine her one day being a stable middle class housewife with the standard husband and two-point-three children, can one? But then again, stranger things have probably happened. The journey from womb to tomb is full of twists and turns as I know only too well.’
He then quoted a line that I knew well, it was from “Of Human Bondage” by W. Somerset Maugham and the line was from the part where the main character is in a museum looking at ancient Greek tombstones wondering what the point of life is. With a feeling of triumph I told him I recognised the line he’d just quoted.
‘I thought you would, I see you’re a reading man, what’s that book you’ve brought with you to while away the tedium of this job?’
He nodded towards the paperback novel I’d taken out of the bag as I’d sat down in my chair. It was “The Tin Drum” by Gunter Grass, I was about halfway through it. I showed him the cover.
‘I find German writers generally intolerable; Thomas Mann is about the only one I’ve ever really enjoyed, I’m firmly an anglophile with some French sympathies.’
My little heart leapt to have finally met someone at work with whom I could have an intelligent conversation. You must realise how lonely this period of my life was, it’s amazing how when you’re poor all human contact tends to dry up at the same rate as your finances. Not to mention the effect that nearly a decade of working night shifts had had on my social and romantic lives. I was on the outside of society looking in.
We chatted some more about books and the job. This was his first ever security job and he was a little unsure about how the game worked. I gave him the benefit of my experience, told him what the bosses wanted and what they hated, who to watch out for and what lurks there were to exploit, and he thanked me for it. We got relieved that evening and went our separate ways home.
The next day was Sunday and I got called in for a shift. I thought about telling them no thanks but the grim state of my bank account dissuaded me from that course.
I got to the hospital and was told Van Der Blek was back. This was a repeat patient, an elderly Dutch man with a thick accent who had episodes requiring hospitalisation every so often. He was a mild pain in the arse if he wasn’t sedated. He would stand in the doorway to his room and babble nonsense at you in his thick Dutch accent all day.
I went up to the ward feeling weary and sick of it all. I looked out the window when I got up to the right level, I could see out over the top of the botanic gardens, it was a glorious sunny day, rosellas were flying around and kids were playing and here I was stuck in this fucking hospital looking after some fuckwit and for what? The money I earnt each week was barely enough to pay for rent and groceries. I wasn’t getting anywhere, there was no achievement, no forward movement in my life. I was a slave on a treadmill. I had to work this week so that I could afford to work next week and on and on until I died.
When I got to the ward Van Der Blek was sedated so that was a plus. Henry was there as well, minding another patient in the next room. In my depressed mood his face was a welcome sight, a little human warmth.
‘Here we are again old boy, this really is a pleasantly social job at times isn’t it?’
His cheery greeting melted the ice on my heart at that moment. Sometimes it’s the simple things that keep you from killing yourself.
I sat down and we chatted casually for a bit. He asked me a bit more about the job and somehow we got on the subject of Centrelink paying people to get their security licence and I told him about some of the old blokes who’d ended up in the job. Without realising it I asked him about where he’d come from. This is normally the sort of subject you’d let someone bring up rather than ask point blank but it was too late once I’d done it.
Henry didn’t mind, he started telling me his story as the Sunday afternoon sunshine crept through the window of the ward, illuminating a floor that still seemed grubby no matter how much they cleaned it.
‘My people are from the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Overly educated and somewhat privileged, and pampered I suppose. Not bad people in their way, they take education very seriously and get professions which they also take seriously. I have several QC’s and High Court Judges in the family, a doctor or two, even a few members of the New South Wales State Parliament somewhere in the family tree.’
‘So I got put through a very expensive school and given every advantage as befits a young person of such stock. I conformed to expectations for the most part. When it came time to think about a profession I gravitated towards the academic and artistic side of things. I had no appetite for law or medicine. I was and am still a tad workshy and wanted the fun times of university to go on forever. I studied literature and ended up teaching it. It seemed the best way of avoiding the real world as much as possible.’
‘But you’re wondering how I came to be a humble security guard here in Adelaide aren’t you? You want the grand story of my downfall don’t you?’
He smiled cheekily at me, like a fairground huckster trying to convince you that you really can win an amazing prize if ‘you step right up’! I got the sense he was wanting to see how eager I was. I tried to play it cool and said that it didn’t matter much to me but he saw through me.
‘Of course you want to know, and I don’t blame you, we all enjoy someone else’s downfall, it’s an entirely human reaction to stop and stare at a car crash.’
‘For many years I had a very pleasant life. I had a comfortable job at the university, I was respected, I was paid well and I had plenty of free time to do whatever I pleased. I don’t mean to brag but I’ve had a very enjoyable life.’
He paused and took a breath and I couldn’t help the feeling he was hamming it up like a second-rate actor really giving it some on stage.
‘In this security game you’ve no doubt come across plenty of people with addictions, drugs, alcohol, gambling, that sort of thing. You’ve seen how people destroy their lives in pursuit of their vices. Well my story is the same only my vice is different. I’m addicted to pussy, there you have it.’
‘I was a teenager when I discovered what my dick was actually for and I’ve pursued its full employment and enjoyment ever since. At first it was the usual thing, going to clubs and parties trying to pick up girls, then I discovered prostitutes and the knowledge that with enough money you can experience almost any pleasure you can think of sent me on rather a downward spiral. Perhaps if I’d been forced to curtail my erotic adventures due to lack of finances I might have adjusted myself to societal norms. Alas, I’m like the spoiled brat who never got told no as a child and now can’t function in the real world.’
‘What really led me to my downfall was getting the teaching job at Sydney University. Literature classes are predominantly female, the smarter ones realise that any sort of career in the literary world is probably going to be fiercely contested so they seek out every advantage. They want the best grades, the highest academic praises from their lecturers, and well there I was with the power to grant these things and now really, what’s the point of having power unless you abuse it?’
He smiled like a card shark and I confess that I suffer from a moral fault here. I find it hard to condemn or judge someone who can tell me a cracking good yarn. To me, being able to tell a great story covers a multitude of sins. I don’t mind if it’s bullshit so long as it’s entertaining bullshit. Henry had me in the palm of his hand.
‘I had many glorious years where I was on a diet of fresh eighteen-year-old cunt all the time. There really is nothing quite like undressing a willing young student for the first time, my boy. Some people wax lyrical about champagne and fine wines. Some love vintage cars and luxury yachts. Me, all I care for is willing female flesh and the eighteen and nineteen-year-old varieties are the best.’
‘It was a glorious life for many years my boy. Oh God, when I think of all the beautiful young things I bedded! I never hurt anyone, I never raped anyone, everyone involved was a consenting adult. As for the trades I may have made, so what? The world didn’t end because some girls traded pussy for good grades did it? I mean let’s be honest, a degree in literature is not worth that much anyway in the real world so it may as well be awarded on one’s bedroom skills as anything else. Probably more honest and meaningful that way anyway. But alas, not everyone sees it that way.’
‘There was a student who complained, or rather I made my usual moves and didn’t pick up that she wasn’t the sort who would be receptive to them. My own fault, I’d grown careless over the years because it was all too easy, I should have known she was a serious, moralistic type, I mean, she wrote an essay about “The Bell Jar” for fuck’s sake! Should’ve been a red flag right there.’
‘And so my days as the Sultan of Sydney University came to an end. I was cast out in disgrace. My academic career, the only thing I was qualified for, was over and I ended up on the dole. I left Sydney to avoid unpleasantness with people from my former life and came to Adelaide. Centrelink decided I needed a job so here I am minding the mental vegetables of Adelaide for minimum wage while my former career is but dust and memories.’
I didn’t know what to say, so like some sort of autistic idiot I got my lunchbox out of my bag and offered him a muesli bar. It seemed like the thing to do. He accepted with a smile and asked me about my life. I told him what there was to tell.
‘Sounds like you’ve hit a dead end my friend.’
I nodded, there was no point denying it.
‘Well sometimes the thing one needs is a complete change of scenery. I was at a low point in my life, made the move from Sydney to Adelaide, and now things are starting to look up a little. I’m earning slightly more money than I was on the dole and you’ve pointed out some lurks of the job. That’s a solid improvement even if it seems only slight. Well maybe my boy it’s time you did the same, take a leap into the unknown.’
I thought about his advice as we passed the long, dull Sunday afternoon in that hospital ward. On the drive home I began to think about how I could do it. The actual mechanics of breaking out of my rut. It seemed going out bush was my best bet, the city was a trap, that much was clear. I began to think of a concrete plan.
Things were rough for a while. But I got out of my rut. It seems slightly sordid to have to confess that it was a washed-up reprobate, a disgraced university professor, who helped me on my way. But credit must go where credit is due.
I have no idea what became of Henry after I left. Perhaps he stayed on in that job. Perhaps he found something better. It’s also quite likely that he tried to sleaze onto a nurse and got the sack. I find I can’t think harshly of him. Flawed humans are the norm not the exception and it behooves us to treat our fellow man’s flaws gently lest they treat ours harshly.
I remember him fondly, the Sultan of Sydney University.
Support this author! Find out what happened next in The Last Free Man and Remembering the Dead, and follow Lewis on Goodreads.