The story is written in Standard British English, as used in Australia at the time.
*****
We sit together, hand in hand, on a rustic wooden seat in The Fern Glade, known to Hobart's residents as an idyllic beauty spot. Without saying anything our minds wander back to our glory days of 45 years ago. Surprisingly little has changed in the environment except us. We are now a "Darby and Joan" couple in our 70's. What little hair I have is white, while Diane's is a more subtle grey. She retained her slim figure into maturity whereas I express my family's tendency to put on weight around the middle. That's okay as otherwise we are healthy in mind, body and spirit.
We watch the occasional jogger, or a young mother with children walk by, giving a nod of acknowledgement or a cheery "hello". What happened years ago, and not far from this spot, changed our lives for the better.
We have been married for 62 years. Yes, you read correctly, 62 years!! It was a childhood game, but heartfelt all the same, when we were in the same class at Gepps Cross Primary School as 8 year old students. On our way home from school we crossed the major arterial road that defined the edge of the city and entered the wastelands on the urban fringe by skirting around the dreaded Gepps Cross Migrant Hostel. There in the thickets of boxthorn bushes we walked down the aisle, made our vows "until death do us part", and exchanged plastic Phantom rings. To complete the ceremony we threw wild white daisy petals over each other. It is a marriage that has stood the test of time.
Diane and I are first cousins. Our mothers are monozygous twins, so identical that we children could not tell them apart. Our respective fathers were veterans from the Second World War who came home with a taste for beer, and undiagnosed mental illness. Their lives spiralled out of control as the issues of family responsibility and poverty began to bite. One escape was to drink even more beer, the other was to lose themselves in sexual flings. One avenue that presented itself was wife swapping; boozed husbands and hyper-sexed women and the ready explanation that they didn't know which woman it was. Thereafter came the daughters, Diane and her two sisters, and my younger sister were all abused in time, forced to be "kind" to miscellaneous "uncles" to boot.
On alcohol sodden Sunday nights we were put to bed early in the same room, two to a bed for us elders, four topped and tailed for the younger. Our childish chatter dimmed and died like candle light in contrast to the increasingly raucous carouse in the kitchen.
One fearful night I sensed someone was in the room. I was aware of Diane being lifted away from me. I was dimly aware of her protestation, a long silence, then her being returned sobbing to the bed. I did not understand and she could not explain coherently. I soothed her as much as possible before falling back into a strangely troubled sleep.
You may think at this point that I was going to take some advantage of my cousin. That never happened. As puberty struck we were left behind at our own home for the Sunday night drinking bouts, but we still retained a familial contact with our cousins. Diane's life ran off the rails, she became quite promiscuous as a teenager. (note to editor - within the laws of age of consent in force at that time). I followed another path after being introduced to male/male sex by a neighbour in my sexually formative years. A gift that I relished and have maintained throughout my life.
The inevitable happened, Diane fell pregnant to an anonymous sperm donor. When this became apparent she was dispatched with all haste to a religious order in Melbourne on the fictional "working holiday". It was widely believed, but likely an urban myth, that the South Australian Railways scheduled a weekly "Maternity Express" to Melbourne, passing its counterpart from the Victorian Railways going in the other direction. To be an unmarried mother, as it was then, having a baby out of wedlock was a disgrace to the family and was surrounded with much hypocrisy. The unreliable contraceptive knowledge, methods and appliances were unavailable to the very people who needed them most. Many were the abuses as a result.
I met Diane at the railways station as arranged. The good nuns censored all mail, incoming and outgoing, there were no phone calls to the Convent in those days. We had created a cover story and artifice, where I, as her cousin, was by chance in that city and would chaperone her back to her family in Adelaide. Minors could not travel alone in those days. A minor was anyone under the age of 21 years. The inevitable check would show this to be true, right down to the train ticket she received in the mail!!
The deception was that we met on Station Pier in Port Melbourne shortly before the Bass Strait Ferry "Princess of Tasmania", un-affectionately known as the "P.O.T." for it had the sea keeping qualities of one, was due to sail for the island State of Tasmania. I had not seen Diane for some years so our meeting was a little awkward. It was the first sea voyage for us both and we were very nervous. A sympathetic passenger advised us to go to the cafeteria and eat before the hordes descended after the ship cast-off. We took this advice and went up to the top deck of the ship to the small and uninspiring dining room mostly staffed by ex-convicts on their first job out of Pentridge Gaol. We ate a meal of greasy fish and chips in almost complete silence. The passage for the first two hours was a doddle, sailing on a millpond. But once outside Port Phillip Heads our world went crazy. The ship plunged and bucked like a bronco, creaking and groaning as it faced the full force of a front crashing through Bass Strait. Both Diane and I felt so sick, as did most of the passengers and indeed some of the crew. Our accommodation was sit-up chairs akin to the aircraft seats of today. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible and settled in for a long and miserable night. There was no sleep for us, just catnaps snatched between particularly vicious rolls and plunges. It gave us time to re-establish what we felt so many years before. By the time the ship approached the shores of Tasmania the sun was shining, the sea had moderated and we were 'partners for life'!!
At our destination of Hobart we presented ourselves as a married couple. Diane had a ring that was used to deflect curious eyes when she was pregnant, cheap nine carat gold but it sufficed. We rented a flat and lived together ostensibly as a man and wife. OK, we had sex as a man and wife, but it was vanilla sex, mediocre and very forgettable sex always overshadowed by her past experiences and the fear of another pregnancy. The 60's was a shameful time. Males had the upper hand. Social conformity and peer pressure meant that naïve young women eagerly accepted a date and its consequences. For the first time in human history young men could afford cars, and the power it bestowed. Cars were mobile bedrooms, and fitted out as such, "Shaggin Waggins" as popularly known here. Girls were dependent on the male driver to get to and from a dance or picture theatre. The inventiveness to get the girl to a secluded parking spot knew no bounds. Sometimes it was a stark choice, "give in or walk home". In the urban jungle of Adelaide the latter choice held the greater fear. And to be fair some girls were into "slap and tickle" big time, too.
The would be lotharios were inept and clumsy at best. Who had heard of female orgasm? Who cared? Certainly Diane was ignorant of it, but did admit to enjoying physical contact with the opposite sex. Even the rough hand up beneath her bra, or a hand down into her panties had some, very limited, pleasurable sensations before the often brutal penetration that was to follow. Rapid thrusts and animal grunts followed and then it was all over. The "stud" wiped himself clean, flung the detritus from the window and drove his conquest home, often in total silence. As she was now an "easy lay" in his eyes he wasn't interested in her any more. God help her if she needed to urinate as she could be abandoned after stepping from the car. Only a minority used condoms simply because you could not obtain them easily. Self delusion and urban myth passed for sex education, and the girls believed it ardently too, what is more!!. Childhood mumps made males infertile, her period was the time when most likely to conceive, only kissing while having sex would lead to conception. I kid you not!! I worked with teenage mothers.
We both got jobs for there was full employment in that era. It was not a matter of "If" but of "Which" would I accept!! Ah, 20th century fairy tale I hear you say, but it was true, - jobs aplenty for the taking.
Now I want to explore our relationship further. We only knew the mechanics of sex, and were totally ignorant of its potential but as an enterprise together we were learning. Our emotional connection was stronger than a married couple, we are cousins and will be to the day we die, we had shared a grievously troubled childhood, and now we faced a new life together, she and I together in a strange new world.
I was the first to stray. I mentioned that my early sexual experimentation was with males, I was very savvy about "beats" and the way they worked even before arriving in Tasmania. There was something about the time and place in Tasmania. Beats "rocked" to an extraordinary degree. Any public toilet had a score potential of about 10 minutes. If you hadn't scored in that time it was "dead". And this was the most conservative, religion dominated state in Australia. Maybe that is the reason why? Anytime I felt that "itch", the need to drop a load, I could drive to the car park at Cornellian Bay and wait a few minutes, meet and suck or be sucked off in the nearby bushes, then sit back in the car ready for another anonymous caller. Day and night, it was full on. It was said to be a protected area because many influential people were partakers, including high ranked police.
My epiphany came on a rainy Sunday afternoon in 1970. The beat was dead. I ventured into a dilapidated wooden toilet block to masturbate in disappointed loneliness. To my international readers, for whom the term "beat" is unfamiliar I shall elucidate. Briefly: a public toilet used as a meeting place by males wanting casual and anonymous sex. Sometimes referred to as "Tea Houses", "Trade" or "Blow and Go" venues.
This particular edifice was on the periphery of the huge Cornellian Bay cemetery where it was set into and overgrown by a massive Cypress boundary hedge. It probably was provided for the convenience of a squad of grave diggers and hearse drivers for there was also a water trough for horses. It dated to the 1920's or 30's. For nefarious purposes it was perfect, a public but not desirable location, easy car parking that drew no comment any hour of the day or night, acres of soft bedding discreetly hidden under extensive low boughs of the pines. The detritus of hanky-panky lay everywhere. Inside the male only, wooden structure were two stalls facing each other and at the dark end was a rusted sheet iron urinal that just ran to ground outside. Without artificial lighting it didn't attract graffiti artists. The gloom took minutes to grow used to, and the place stank.
This was my first foray through the dank and foreboding entrance, to my surprise there was another person inside. I saw his rigid cock protruding from a glory hole chopped into the thin floor board door. What a wonderful member he had, rock hard, no, steel hard!. Later I heard that he was a well known and twice convicted paedophile nicknamed Stalin - Man of Steel! I could not resist, I joined the historic throng who had used the facility, the door was stained with a dramatic patina of saliva and semen drippings accumulated over the years. I gagged getting him into my mouth, then started to suck him with relish.
