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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 23. 23rd September 1973

"down and out"

page break

"down and out"

Half man half woman surrealist image

Photo of a woman walking past a building

'Down and Out' is an expressive sort of phrase. It's American in origin and means 'completely without resources'. George Orwell influenced me a great deal with his book Down and Out in Paris and London in which he mixed with the underground of crims, prostitutes and tramps.

Most of Wellington's underworld action is to be found in pubs, mostly the but many other surrounding bars also. Everyone who is anyone in the underworld heads that way when needing to sell a radio, hide out some place if 'beating the fleet ' or just wanting a few jugs.

The community is very wide, varied and constantly changing. It is built around different brotherhoods and sisterhoods, mostly based on having been in boob together. The 'Queens' are queens of the bar. They may be looked down upon in the outside world but they rule the show in the pubs. They are looked-up-to, even held in awe by the rest of the bar-crowd, and no-one picks on a queen or one of their friends and gets away with it.

The other main regulars of the bistro are the ship molls and the hillybins (lesbians). Most of them are not strictly prostitutes but more like good-time girls who dislike regular jobs. When a ship comes in they go with one guy and usually stick with him. The girls that play around are looked upon as sluts. Two of my shippie mates who were both butch actually 'cracked it' so seldom they were more sexually moral than most varsity students. Most of them were AC/DC and I knew one girl that was going with a butch, a middle-class businessman and two sailors until she got caught at it.

Many of the girls were at this stage of the game: relatively innocent — just playing around with the crowd with only one or two convictions over them. The ones that were more deeply involved usually had jobs stripping at the clubs around town and had regular customers — they were the only real prostitutes.

What I liked about the people there is that they didn't muck around, they called a spade a spade. If you were their mate and 'brother' or 'sister' that was that and if you were in trouble they would do anything to help you. They may have been uneducated and poor, and be regarded as crims by middle-class standards but they were a hell of a lot more real and generous than half the people in this goddamn university. They had no pretentions about what they were and what they did.

The population was about half and half (Pakeha and Maori) but there was more equality between the races than in most strata of society. Most of the Maoris didn't pretent to love the Pakeha society much but they didn't judge their Pakeha mates by it. Many of the Pakehas said they were Maoris anyway. The Pom sailors used to talk about 'white-trash' and 'blacks' but they themselves seldom would use these terms although the term 'J.B.' or 'Jungle Bunny' was used a lot by them.

Most of the girls I knew had been in Arohata Borstal. Though most

Drawing of naked people and a table of food

Graphic by Steve Smith

page 11

[unclear: ited] it inside, the complicated kin-[unclear: ip] system they had developed, as well as their lesbian involvements, [unclear: ually] meant that they would stick sound with the same crowd when they got out. Usually these were the [unclear: lly] people they knew and could just.

Sex was something they knew [unclear: out], there was only one virgin at [unclear: ohata] when the girls I knew were [unclear: side]. They were taught pretty [unclear: lick] from when they were really [unclear: young] (about 12 or 13) that sex was something you could sell, that a market value was put on you. They larned this from hungry males, from their environment, and it was [unclear: inforced] by life inside when they [unclear: et] the big-time shippies. Most [unclear: ft] to themselves would have found [unclear: guy] and stuck to him. But the in-[unclear: uence] of the predatory males in[unclear: de] the bars — you could pick them [unclear: t] easily; $20, $30, $100 types — as well as the ships coming and go-[unclear: g], often drew them back into the good life of easy living, of drugs and [unclear: cohol]. In an atmosphere like that [unclear: ou] become hardened, you lose [unclear: ope]; you have to be tough to sur-[unclear: ve] in a world where violence is the [unclear: st] word.

The entrance of a customer is always obvious. He is nervous, often [unclear: runk]. The girls and queens laugh [unclear: t] him and treat him with scorn.

He enters from the side door, tumbling. He is respectable, be-pectacled and tipsy. He asks for a short time and is informed that he's off duty. She takes him to another girl, an Islander who laughs and doesn't understand much. They drink for half an hour until in desoperation he asks her "how much?"

"Sorry, I'm sick of the moon."

He doesn't understand, "She's come in the books, stupid," says the queen. He doesn't understand.

"Monthly periodicals, ever heard of them duckie?" He flushes and gets angry, goes to the next table and asks how much to the meanest girl. She says he'll get a glass in his face if he doesn't fuck off. Out he goes, mumbling threats. The girls crowd round the queen who is holding up his wallet and now opens it. "A lousy three bucks. What a bum sugardaddy."

They treat their customers with scorn, a strange kind of moral superiority but with each other they are very close though split into different cliques. They are hemmed in by police and prison experience with usually a broken and unhappy family background behind them, a future that is dismal and grey. They are not a very good advertisement of our society and how our justice system works.

They fight society because society fights them. But they don't always hate the police and sometimes get on with them; the police aren't their real enemies, only the myrmidons of society. They are proud of their identity and have their own languages, some pig-latin or mixed Maori and English slang. A fairy and a butch are the female and male in a lesbian reliationship. A bumbandit is an impolite name for a drag-queen. To bomb someone out is to tell them you've finished with them. With two guys you can bomb the other into drag hy turning into 'bitch' i.e. reversing the roles. To crack is what butch and fairy do. To crack it is to fuck for money. To commit sideways is suicide. To go mincing or shipping means you're off to Tima Street (the wharves). Other words you may have been mystified by: beating the fleet — running from the screws; AC/DC — bisexual; come in the book — monthly period; sugardaddy — an older guy who treats you well.

Drawing of bodies coming out of each other

Graphic by Steve Smith

Photo of two people outside a hotel

Strangers feet mark your brow like pastille highways Blinking, sleepy eyes gaze watchful.
Face, an apricot in shape. Tanned fenced with deep corn hair Beauty that strikes and withdraws. Arms smooth like a snake
Marred by blurred scars of longgone tattoes. Like your body they are stained and worn
By the misuse of the years, attempts and attacks By unfriendly men.
Your body lies in ruins while your mind Pies lowDrifting on the gin and lemon.
You are urgent, dull, seeking shelter Tiredly fighting both hope and despair.
Even when they cage you my pretty one
You'll have your freedom -
More than they "ll ever know.