In Fitzroy Gardens at 5.30 on a Thursday afternoon, a young plainclothes clop with a ginger Dennis Lillee Moustache was questioning the one that didn’t get away. The other boys on the beat had scurried off down Macleay Street to disappear amongst the crowd in nearby Taproom of the Rex Hotel, about the longest-established homosexual bar in Sydney.
Always busy, the bar is shoulder-to-shoulder at night. Some kids hang out there in the afternoon, then drift off to the Crest and later, Castello’s. A few stay at the Rex. They said the other scenes were too squalid for them.
Ricky, 17, was one. He was at the Rex on a Friday afternoon with an older friend, a businessman who had swapped his grey suit for a stars and stripes T-shirt. Ricky, a slight, pale youth said:“ I sleep most of the day, then I rock up here and find out where the action is.”
Ricky was kicked out by his father when he was 15. He went to Brisbane for a while and then came to live in the Cross about two year s ago. “I started cracking it every night to stay here. For a while I was living with a guy who was 55. He paid the rent with his dole cheque. No, I didn’t really like him. It was mainly security.”
Patrons outside the Rex Hotel, Macleay Street, Kings Cross, Sydney, 1964.
Eureka Q / Australia
“The first time I got off with a guy I was 12. It was only a dollar in those days. I suddenly realised the other day that I’d been cracking it for nearly six years. I wasn't’ meant to crack it, no one was meant to crack it. I just want the better things in life. But I never seem to catch up. I just seem to crack it to survive and keep going. I could make anything up to $100 a night – with four guys – but usually I just make $20. Most of what I make I spend on alcohol.”
“I got into dope because my life was already screwed: my mind is screwed right up. I didn't know which direction I was heading in. So I take dope and forget the day-to-day problems. I ripped windows out and stuff like that, on mandies. I started out getting a habit on speed. I couldn’t sleep. I got cramps. But I wanted to have fun, enjoy myself. The routine was getting to me.”
Ricky was not on the dole and hadn’t applied. Occasionally, he said, he did some dealing in grass and hash “I’m really not really looking for a job. Money is too easy to come by.” He had money on him but Ricky did not buy drinks or smokes: he cadged them from his friend, or when that failed, from me. Stars and Stripes ticked him off about it: Ricky was amused. That was part of the game. A hustle here and a hustle there…
“All I seem to do,“ Ricky said, “ is drink and try to find a good time and find somewhere new…”
