chatty sluzza

The three of us wait on the footpath outside our executive apartment, our lift, Tracy, stuck in Sydney’s morning traffic. The bloke who scrawled Eternity on pavements and walls all over this city was an oracle.

A file of Asian kitchen-hands emerges from a driveway hidden in dense foliage 150 metres down the road. Each ferries an uncovered plate of bacon, eggs and toast while spitting left and right as he makes his stolid way up the path and we three Caucasians look askance as each passes.

Pick-up time is 7:45. It’s nearly 8:30. Our gig begins at 9. Eternity comes and goes.

A car pulls up abruptly at 45 degrees to the kerb and we pile in, me, map in hand, just in case, next to Tracy in the front seat. Tracy is mid-fifties, bronzed, long and leggy. She apologises, tells us she was chosen to chauffeur us because she’s The Reliable One. We pass Macquarie Uni, where, Tracy says matter-of-factly, her daughter starts the next phase of her young life today.

Our task for the next two days is fraught: to get twenty-five guidance officers, all psychologists, to open their minds to something new. The day’s training goes well, but not brilliantly like last year. As Tracy drives us to Chatswood she rats on some of her colleagues: “They’re a bit up themselves; psychologists know everything.”

  

School-kids, mostly Asian, from expensive schools, swarm the pavements, the stairs and escalators, the labyrinth that is Chatswood—now known as Chatswoo, says Tracy. The girls’ dresses are shorter than in Melbourne, the legs browner, shapelier. Some of the boys wear boaters.

“I went to Chatswood High,” Tracy says. “I was a Chatty sluzza.”

“Sluzza?” Sandy and I chorus, though I’ve guessed it and only need confirmation.

“Slut.”

“I’ve never heard that before, but I love it.” Sandy, another word gatherer, does too.

Tracy deposits at the station. An officious older teacher lurks at the top of the escalator, busting schoolboys who’ve removed their ties. It’s 30 degrees and steamy as.

I turn around on the escalator and speak to large, good-looking lad.

“What school?” (Stupid question. I don’t know any Sydney schools.)

“Riverview.” 

 “And that was one of your teachers?”

“Yeah, he’s a good bloke.”

“No good bloke tells you to put a tie on,” I say. “Tell him to fuck off.”

He pulls his tie from his pocket. “This is my way of saying fuck off.”

Sandy evaporates into the swirl at Chatswood Station, on her way home. Liz and I roam the streets, waiting for a Malaysian eatery to open. We shamble into a glitzy arcade to shelter from the humidity. Inside a shop door a hand reaches round and settles on a pert arse in a tight white skirt. Liz catches it too from the corner of her eye. Then we see the tape measure and the shop awning: Alterations.

Rock on.