Before Sydney had a Hard Rock Cafe

‘This poem contains language and references regarded as 'Mature Content'. Reader discretion recommended.’

Patches’ DJ pumped disco frenzy;

speakers, mirror balls, flashing

lights floor, all strobing to music

so loud you couldn’t hear it, from
controls in the front half of a Cadillac 

punching through the wall, above

the packed dance floor where amyl 

nitrate poppers kept everything frantic.
Glitterati minders folded their arms
in the background, ready to mind
while dykes attacked transvestites
in the playroom, in fights about

whose turn it was at the mirror. 

Sunday night - Talent Quest 

Drag Extravaganza; Carlotta

came to check out the talent.

I missed it when the DJ fell
from driver’s seat to dance floor

but I saw him sprawled there
syringe still stuck in his arm

unconscious, when I turned.
I’d been laughing at an orange Kombi
parked below in Oxford Street
bouncing in time to the music;
funny for a while. Then two men
climbed out, surreptitiously 
smoothing hair and adjusting clothes; 
my husband and his new friend Joe.

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