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ABC Listen, podcasts,

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radio, news, music

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and more. Today's

0:08

conversation includes explicit content that

0:10

may be sensitive for some

0:12

listeners. It includes references to

0:14

drug use and extreme

0:16

self-harm. If you or someone

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you know needs help, Lifeline is always there for

0:20

you on 13 11 14. That's 13 11 14.

0:28

Around six years ago, following some

0:31

crazy impulse, Dominic

0:33

Gordon took a flying leap off

0:36

a balcony from an apartment, three

0:39

floors up. He

0:42

hit the ground hard. The impact

0:44

broke a whole lot of bones and he was

0:46

lucky to have survived. Since

0:49

he was a boy, Dominic's propelled himself

0:51

into dangerous risky situations for

0:53

the sheer hell of it. And now

0:55

he is trying to swear off that life. He

0:59

started shoplifting at 10. Then

1:01

it was painting graffiti on moving trains. And

1:04

he's like teens. He moved into taking ice that he'd

1:07

paid for with stolen cash and

1:09

going to sex clubs in the city. For

1:12

Dominic, every day was an opportunity

1:14

to take insane risks and luxuriate

1:17

in the excitement and anarchy of it all. After

1:20

cycling through the same activities for years, Dominic

1:24

is trying to pull back from all

1:26

of that and have some semblance of

1:28

a staple life. He's

1:30

written a remarkable memoir and

1:32

it's called Excitable Boy Essays

1:34

on Risk. Hi, Dominic. Hi,

1:36

Richard. What was the

1:39

concept of risk to you when you were

1:41

younger? Did you even know what

1:43

risk was or did you have a concept of what

1:45

risk was? I guess

1:47

it's when you're young and when you're a child, it's

1:49

hard to know. You haven't developed

1:52

that awareness of what this

1:54

actually is. It's sort of you're just

1:56

doing it. And I guess

1:58

from the age of about. probably seven

2:00

or eight, which was coincidentally

2:02

when we moved to the western

2:05

suburbs with my family and the environment

2:07

and everyone around me was just

2:09

doing similar things. And those things just happened to

2:11

be, you know, like

2:13

smoking and lots of

2:16

exploring and sort of abandoned because

2:18

all the schools had closed in the

2:20

90s and the exploration was quite

2:22

in industrial areas and there was not a lot

2:24

of green, a lot of concrete. Yeah,

2:28

the kids were all just kind of doing similar

2:30

things and I guess maybe because we were from

2:32

similar backgrounds and things

2:34

started young. Yeah, everything

2:36

started a bit younger. You smoked younger. You

2:38

know, even I remember my first patch at

2:40

high school with Paris. The

2:43

name was Paris. Paris. And we passed out

2:45

of the swing set at the high school and we were, I think, 10 or

2:47

11. So even that

2:50

I'm thinking about it was quite young. That's advanced.

2:52

It's quite young. So

2:54

yeah, I didn't know what risk as a concept

2:56

was, but it was just what everyone was doing

2:58

and it sort of just gradually picked up steam.

3:00

So this is the western suburbs of Melbourne we're

3:02

talking about around Yarraville, the suburb of

3:04

Yarraville, which is very nicely gentrified these days. But

3:06

what was it like back then, Dominic? Very

3:09

different. So

3:12

to get perspective, so the

3:14

house we moved into in Yarraville in

3:16

about 1993 was actually that

3:20

goes back four generations on my dad's side of the family. So

3:22

when we moved there, that was almost 120 years of one side

3:24

of my dad's side of the family's

3:28

home. All right. So this was

3:30

like a home that was really attached to family

3:32

history. Yeah, this goes all the way back to

3:34

like the early part of the 20th century. So

3:37

when we moved there, it was weirdly like a

3:39

homecoming for me that I didn't even know existed

3:41

and I really took to it. I guess you

3:43

could say that there was a fair bit of

3:45

unemployment around a lot

3:47

of the working class families and stuff who

3:49

were sustained by industry and work

3:52

in the area. It had sort of all

3:54

collapsed and there wasn't a lot of opportunity

3:56

for young people. So semi-industrial, slightly derelict. Like

4:00

just one there was I

4:02

think there was one cafe and that was just

4:05

like a weird like like no one even went

4:07

in there It was and there was one and

4:09

there was one like really like knick-knackie boutique shop

4:11

That sold like berets and yeah, it was there

4:13

wasn't a lot there and

4:16

there was a lot of that free roam

4:18

childhood where you could play play in the

4:20

street and But

4:22

I mean look only as two suburbs over was Footscray

4:24

at the time and I had friends who lived there

4:26

And I'd sort of get the train there at age

4:29

sort of 10 or 11 and I didn't

4:31

know what heroin was I didn't know what you know But you

4:33

would you know you would see Drug activity

4:35

and and drug related activity and and

4:37

you just it was kind of just

4:39

not sort of normal if I

4:41

think about like my own childhood the whole suburb

4:43

I lived in was was like a playground and

4:45

Yeah, okay I can remember me and a bunch

4:47

of kids quite young breaking into the high school

4:49

gym Yeah, and jumping up and down on the

4:51

trampolines like that. Yeah, so yours

4:53

your child was like that Just a just way

4:56

more extreme. It's just like it just yeah, just

4:58

just jeed up a bit more like it was

5:00

more Like yeah, we did the

5:02

same thing. We broke into the school. We you know, we

5:04

did like little things like that But there was always other

5:07

things going on. There was always like my

5:10

friend their family owned in milk bar. He

5:12

was Turkish his name is John

5:14

and He would you

5:16

know steal cigarettes from from the milk bar and we

5:18

took money from the till and we would go to

5:20

high point So it was always

5:22

like there was the genuine childhood behavior then

5:24

there was just like that little bit extra

5:27

Yeah, for example when I was about 11 years old

5:29

I started to go by myself I

5:32

don't really know why I did this but I started to go by

5:34

myself on the train to the city Just sort

5:36

of get the train and I would get you know

5:38

Get sort of a train at about sort of ten

5:40

o'clock at night and say play games in the city

5:43

then come home And my mum would be so horrified

5:45

and but I from an early age

5:47

I like to be out by myself it I guess at

5:49

night kind of roaming around That's

5:51

when I started doing this the stuff we you know You would

5:53

hold on to the back of trains and do

5:55

like they're called back-ons where you would ride the outside of

5:57

the train And you're doing that at 11. Yeah Yeah,

6:00

11, 12 years old, because that was when my parents,

6:05

because I was getting in so much trouble, they

6:07

didn't want to send me to Williamstown High School,

6:10

where all my primary school friends went, because I'd

6:12

been caught shoplifting at high points, dealing a pair

6:14

of shorts and rebel sport. And they said, because

6:16

you've done it with this particular kid, all

6:18

right, we'll take you out of there, we'll send

6:20

you to a different school altogether to try and

6:23

change your dynamic and your

6:25

friendship groups. But I

6:27

got expelled from there after one year, in the

6:29

year seven, that was called Simmons Catholic College. Right,

6:31

and you were the guy showing other kids how

6:33

to shoplift at that stage? Yeah, well, I took

6:35

the lead, because maybe it was because I was

6:39

always like a little kid, quite small,

6:41

and I was always just

6:43

up for things. So you

6:46

would use your humour and your wit,

6:48

and we would use your athleticism to

6:50

sort of, I guess

6:52

maybe be popular. Right, entertain you.

6:54

Entertain my classmates. Yeah, and- By

6:57

doing these audacious things. Yeah, and that

6:59

was like early, I guess, I

7:02

guess semi-masculine traits that would

7:05

develop into quite poisonous traits

7:07

later on. So

7:09

that's shoplifting, what about stealing, like

7:11

actually taking cash from places? Yeah,

7:13

so that happened, it's funny, that

7:15

happened, I guess, like

7:18

a transitional phase, maybe when I was about six,

7:20

probably 16, because

7:22

I was stealing a lot, just like clothes and other

7:25

things. I'd

7:27

leave my house for the day prepared for

7:29

that. But then what I realised is, well,

7:31

hang on, if

7:34

it's based off opportunity, and if I'm just

7:36

roaming around, why not try and

7:38

get money? And so it turned into that,

7:40

that kind of exploration for cash. And where

7:42

would you get the cash from? So it's,

7:45

I didn't know it at the time, but there's something called searching, which

7:47

is a type of theft that specifically

7:49

originates from Sydney, and it's called

7:52

searching because these kids do

7:55

it, like you're just hunting for opportunities, and

7:57

you go, say for example, you go, they

7:59

might be, pass a retail store and you

8:01

go into the store and they'll either

8:04

have a back room where they keep like they'll

8:06

either be a safe or there'll be staff belongings

8:08

and that back room depending on where

8:11

it is in the location within the

8:13

store you can sort of

8:15

time it so that when the people you know

8:17

the workers are distracted you run in the back

8:19

search quickly and run out and you get whatever

8:22

you get in that instance but

8:24

sometimes like I you know you can get lucky I got I

8:26

went through a pub one time and there was I got to

8:28

the upstairs part where there was

8:30

nobody and the office was there and the safe was

8:32

open and I got money from the safe and sometimes

8:34

you get a thousand you know you get a few

8:37

thousand dollars sometimes if you're like other times if you're

8:39

hundred but and once I started

8:41

doing that I was like oh this

8:43

is this is proper crime and

8:46

I thought I was like you know because I

8:48

wanted to be a criminal from quite a young

8:50

age really so yeah so all this is proper

8:52

crime but yeah this wasn't like a caution ring

8:54

no this was like no I wanted it I

8:57

wanted it I remember even being in court for

8:59

like really petty stuff like I got caught for

9:02

writing like I said that I wrote dolphins

9:04

are humans too and pretended I was like

9:06

an environmentalist but I got caught in the

9:08

city doing tags and a wall and

9:10

I was in court for it because you

9:13

know in the Melbourne Magistrates Court they have the gallery

9:15

and but and where so anybody can go in there

9:17

and sit in there like so but a lot of

9:19

criminals go in there just to sort of just

9:21

to hang out and I was so

9:23

ashamed because they didn't they thought

9:26

I was just this dumb like petty whereas

9:28

actually I was doing all this quite like you

9:30

know I was recently like quite audacious crime in

9:32

my head and I was like I'm not getting

9:34

the respect they're probably I think I'm just as

9:36

little loser so I

9:39

was I really like enjoyed

9:41

and and and wanted that

9:44

respect from older criminals

9:47

which is yeah it's just bizarre but a lot of

9:50

it comes from the area you

9:52

were smoking from a an early age but

9:55

you know you have to buy the cigarettes yes sometimes

9:58

but hard to steal But yeah, mostly

10:00

buy. Yeah. How would you... How

10:03

far did you go to try and procure

10:05

cigarettes? Well, I

10:08

took desperate measures when I

10:10

once wrote a note to... My

10:14

dad's signature was too hard

10:16

to forge, so I forged my mum's, but I wrote

10:18

a note saying that she'd been playing netball and she'd

10:21

injured her leg. And could

10:23

you please? I can't make it to the shop.

10:25

So I've set my son and I'd like some

10:27

Super King Super Mile, please. Here's my

10:29

$6.50 or whatever. And you'd

10:31

written that with your 10-year-old hand? I'd written that with

10:33

my 10-year-old hand. I did have pretty good handwriting. The

10:35

one thing I did have was like, you know, neat,

10:37

small, really neat handwriting. And what happened when you handed

10:40

that over to the shopkeeper? He just looked at me.

10:42

He's like, you're the kid I see every day who

10:44

comes in and gets lollies. Like, what the hell are

10:46

you doing here, you know? And he

10:48

just sort of just looked at me and just sort of said, piss

10:50

off, you know, and just kind of shooed me away. When

10:53

were you finally kicked out of school? What was the thing that got

10:55

you kicked out of school for good? I

10:57

remember I had started to get into sort of

10:59

to be disruptive in primary school. But then it

11:01

was almost like this progression where I just...

11:05

I couldn't handle being in the sort

11:07

of the generic... the

11:10

general educational environment. So year seven, I got

11:12

kicked out of at the end of the

11:14

year at Simmons. I went to Williamstown Bayside.

11:16

They asked me to leave after two years.

11:19

Then I went to Lino Hall Community School

11:21

and I managed to get kicked out of a

11:23

community school. And I tried one last time at

11:25

Caulfield Community School and I never went. I

11:28

left after a couple of months. So yeah, I left

11:30

school officially at about 616. Did

11:33

you hate school? I just...

11:36

The one memory... Okay, if I have one

11:38

positive memory of my whole schooling is in

11:40

year seven, I had this teacher called Mr.

11:42

De Cruz. He was Portuguese. He

11:45

was like small, had a big

11:47

head, a large head. And

11:49

I always used to mess up in class.

11:51

And during English, he said,

11:54

Dominic, we've all written stories. What's

11:56

your story say? You know, why don't

11:58

you get up and read it out? the first

12:00

deep down, I was so secretly

12:02

so happy that someone, and

12:04

I got up and I read out my, it was

12:07

just like written these little short stories, and I read

12:09

it out and I was so happy just to have

12:11

someone have seen what I

12:14

really enjoyed, which was words

12:16

and constructing sentence and just,

12:18

yeah, I guess writing. I

12:21

did like it. And so he

12:23

recognised that in me, but apart, but

12:25

everything else, I didn't get any, I

12:29

just wasn't, I couldn't sit still. And

12:31

obviously later on, when I was in my thirties, it made

12:33

sense when I got an ADHD diagnosis, but

12:38

I didn't know any of that. And that was, yeah, so

12:40

my whole schooling was disrupted.

12:43

You said you wanted to be a criminal.

12:45

Yes. That you wanted to be a writer

12:47

as well. Those two worlds have overlapped quite

12:49

a lot in the course of history. William

12:51

Burroughs being one example of that, drug

12:54

taking and writing. Did you have an image

12:57

of yourself as a writer as well as

12:59

a criminal or not? Or just criminal? No,

13:01

not as a thing. When I mentioned the

13:04

writing, it was more so that someone had

13:06

recognised that, had seen me, had

13:08

heard me for who I was. The writing

13:10

aspect, I didn't really take writing seriously until

13:12

I was in my sort of late twenties.

13:14

I didn't really see

13:17

any future for me in

13:20

regular society. So at that

13:22

stage, you didn't imagine yourself as a writer.

13:24

No, definitely not. No, that came a lot later.

13:26

There was a form of writing you did take

13:28

to though at an early age, which was

13:30

graffiti. Tell me how you would actually paint

13:33

graffiti, how you'd actually go about where you'd go,

13:35

where you'd go to do that. Where you go.

13:37

I mean, it's funny because it's, the

13:40

irony is that I'm so, I can't

13:43

stand, I'm so adverse to hierarchical

13:46

structures in conventional society, but

13:48

yet within graffiti, it's the most hierarchical

13:50

structure. It's so intense. So, for

13:54

example, when you're starting out, you're naturally caught a

13:57

toy, you're naturally, you're doing pieces in the drain.

14:00

you're doing tags on wooden fences, you're doing

14:02

this really low level lame stuff, which is

14:04

just a natural part of how you develop.

14:06

And then over time, like

14:08

you'll start to develop

14:10

a hand style, which is, say for

14:13

example, you get markers and

14:16

you'll develop how your tag will be, how it

14:18

will look. And that over time,

14:20

you'll pick a word and that word becomes

14:23

what you invest your style in and

14:25

what you make, and you wanna be

14:27

known for that. When you

14:29

say this, are you kind of conscious of other

14:31

people who are tagging around the place and where

14:33

you fit into that hierarchy? It fits, everything

14:36

else is blocked out. There's like a

14:38

myopia, you don't see the real world

14:40

or your whole vision is concentrated around

14:43

graffiti and looking for, looking

14:46

at walls, looking at rooftops,

14:48

looking at trains, everything. It

14:50

consumes your whole life. If you wanna go all the way in,

14:53

you can't actually do anything else, which

14:56

is why that world sort

14:59

of scoops up all these damaged individuals

15:01

or all these people because

15:04

it provides kind of almost like a

15:06

safe place in which to

15:09

destroy things collectively together, like

15:11

a collective aggression, like it's

15:13

anger-based. And are there other taggers who put

15:15

you in your place, like or punch you

15:17

in the head or something? Yeah, I've been

15:19

in fights because it's natural to come up

15:21

against enemies. Like if you're from

15:24

the Western suburbs, you'll naturally hate people from the

15:26

South or Southeastern or like

15:28

you have this natural hierarchies within

15:32

certain suburbs. Like it's really, it's

15:34

incredibly tribal. And even to

15:36

this day, I still find myself, that's how

15:38

my vision, like I still

15:40

look for it. Even now I haven't done graffiti in years and

15:42

I still have that trained perspective to

15:44

look for it, even though I haven't

15:47

done graffiti for so long. You

15:50

would do graffiti on moving train

15:52

carriages. Tell me how you would actually go and do

15:54

that, how that would actually work. There's a few ways

15:56

to do it. I guess my

15:58

favourite place to do it was a place called... Spencer Street yard.

16:00

So it's where the trains lay

16:03

up when they're not in use. So the trains

16:05

will be side by side next to each other.

16:07

In this instance, there was two trains and

16:09

they sit there overnight. And there's

16:11

security, but oftentimes the security has to sort of

16:13

walk and do around like do their rounds around

16:16

the train yard, which can take a long time.

16:19

So you would cut through the the cyclone

16:21

fence and then you would make you would run

16:23

across to where the trains are both laid up.

16:26

And then you would ideally get in the aisle

16:28

so that you can't be seen from either side.

16:30

And you paint, you paint in

16:33

there. And yeah, you just get the

16:35

job done and get out of

16:37

there. And hopefully, the train will

16:39

run the next day. And then you'll

16:41

see it running. And that's the pure joy.

16:43

Like I remember doing panels and then sitting

16:46

on the, like in the train, like with

16:48

next to the panel and just being just like,

16:51

just so happy just to know that my, my

16:53

panel was running in the public

16:56

transport system. And I was sitting next to it.

16:58

Were you doing tagging on a passenger train while

17:00

it's actually on its run as well? Well, it

17:02

would have to be stopped to do it. But

17:04

yeah, whilst it's running, you do it like things

17:07

called called run ups, where

17:09

the train would pull in for a moment. And then

17:12

you'd run up and tag the outside of the train

17:14

and then it would take off. And

17:17

you do that in a few different places.

17:19

What kind of insane stunts have you had

17:21

you tried to pull while doing that? Um,

17:24

what's more about exposure, it's more about

17:26

like, where you're doing it during the

17:28

day, you're totally exposed, like you

17:32

do it where there's a sort of a freeway can see you, you know,

17:34

there's, you know, houses can see you. And

17:36

so you get lots of chases, I've been

17:38

chased heaps of times. There must

17:41

be a whole lot of people saying you're

17:43

doing this stuff, you know, stealing, shoplifting, tagging,

17:45

all that stuff. And you didn't you generate

17:47

a whole lot of hatred

17:49

for that anti social behaviour. Were you aware of

17:51

that? Did you care about it? Or did you

17:54

kind of glory in it or the people hating?

17:56

Yeah, I a lot of it

17:58

was to do with anger. and

18:00

hate. I had a lot of hate in

18:03

my heart, I think, at the time. Because

18:05

I wasn't thinking about, like, when you think about

18:08

it, you can't engage in these behaviours. Like a

18:10

lot of this thieving, it was very personal. Like

18:12

I would steal people's wallets and

18:14

their personal belongings, and I would take and

18:16

just throw it away. I would take the

18:19

money and throw it away. Like I would,

18:22

I felt like society kind of owed me something or like,

18:24

because I was cast out, I felt like I was

18:26

a bit cast out from a young age,

18:29

like outside the school system. I didn't, I wasn't,

18:31

I couldn't really work. I didn't know what

18:33

was wrong with me. And so I teamed up

18:35

with a bunch of, you know, other dysfunctional

18:37

kids who were also full of hate. There's

18:40

variations of hate, but

18:42

a lot of it is turned inwards on

18:45

yourself. How close did you get

18:47

to being busted? Tell me about the day when you

18:49

came extremely close to being busted on a train. On

18:51

a train? So we were

18:54

doing loops, which is when you do tags in the inside

18:56

of the train with markers. And

18:58

I was with my friend, Frank, and

19:01

we were doing this coming called the Heidelberg

19:03

Express. So it runs express from Flinders Street

19:05

to Clifton Hill, then Clifton Hill to Heidelberg.

19:07

So between Flinders Street and

19:09

Clifton Hill, you've got six or so stations to, to

19:12

tag as much as you can on the inside of

19:14

the train as possible. And about

19:16

a few stations in when we'd already done heaps

19:18

of tags on the train, over the loudspeaker, the

19:21

drivers like, Oh, you've been spotted, the cops have

19:23

been called. And we're like, Oh, shit, what do

19:25

we do now? So lucky for us,

19:27

the train pulled into Clifton Hill, and we

19:29

forced the doors, you know, so before the

19:31

train, so with the police are what you

19:33

can see him, they're already like driving up

19:36

to parallel to the station, you can see

19:38

they were almost in the area. And then

19:40

we forced open the doors, tumbled out and

19:42

just ran down the platform, jumped down onto

19:44

the rocks, and then ran away. And

19:46

the cops had sort of come onto the platform when we're

19:48

running after us, but they were clumsy, they kind of couldn't

19:50

get down onto the track rocks in time. And we got

19:52

out of there. But at times

19:54

I've been I got the chasing upfield

19:57

and upfield is not a nice place to be

19:59

stuck. I remember Just hiding in long grass and

20:01

then climbing fences and getting my jacket stuck on

20:04

the fence like I was sort of clung to

20:06

it like a bug got out of my jacket.

20:09

And then there were dogs, they let dogs, they send dogs out

20:11

to look for you and dogs were nearby and they managed not

20:13

to see me and I got the first train

20:15

home and it was covered in paint. Afterwards,

20:17

would you and your friends go, wow, that

20:19

was the most fantastic experience. It's incredible. There's

20:22

nothing like it. I mean, it's, yeah,

20:24

I mean, that's why I was so drawn to it because

20:26

of the risk and because of the feeling. And

20:29

also that's why so much of it

20:31

goes hand in hand with substance abuse because it's

20:34

such a high adrenaline and a high extreme

20:38

activity that just like when

20:40

you stop it, you sort of

20:43

go home afterwards and you're just sitting there buzzing like

20:45

your body is sort of like, and

20:47

then you'll crash, but before the crash you kind

20:49

of usually get high again that you smoke bongs

20:51

or do other drugs. And because

20:53

yeah, it's not

20:56

a natural thing to do to your body again

20:58

and again and again, that high

21:00

adrenaline all the time. And it's essentially

21:02

it's for no reward. You don't get anything out of

21:04

it. You don't get any money. You don't get any,

21:06

all you're doing for is fame from a small group

21:08

of people. You just, yeah,

21:10

you're doing it for that fame and that respect

21:13

within a real sort of sub

21:15

subculture. This

21:17

put you on a crime stoppers list. What do

21:19

you remember? What do you remember about seeing that

21:21

for the first time? Oh, pure joy. Because they

21:23

used to have these plastic triangles like in the

21:26

early 2000s, they'd put them at stations and then

21:28

have the crime committed

21:30

by the person and

21:33

the picture of the offender. What they captured you

21:35

from that train? Yeah. And me

21:37

and Sleepy, now we went on the train, we

21:40

were on the platform so that a camera had

21:42

taken a photo or a still image of us

21:44

running down the platform away

21:46

from the police that time at Clifton

21:48

Hill. So you could see both of

21:50

us sort of mid run. I

21:53

had sort of tried to cover up my face, but you could see the

21:55

top of my face. Frank you could

21:57

see he hadn't covered himself up. He was clearly visible.

28:00

as potent as that, it's hard to go back to

28:02

something less. But then it

28:04

fluctuated like the drug market, like it flooded the

28:06

streets and then it went, then it kind of

28:09

stopped. And then in my mid 20s, I really

28:11

picked it up and just ran

28:13

with it. And just the level of intensity that

28:16

is, everything is crystallized,

28:18

everything is clear, everything is powerful.

28:21

And it's all, and it

28:23

leads you just like, so you stay awake for, say

28:25

a point of high quality meth will keep you awake,

28:27

keep you awake for 24 hours. And

28:30

you're looking at, you know, so I would stay awake

28:32

sometimes from Friday to Sunday. And

28:35

then I'd go on stealing binges as well, cause what it

28:37

would do is it would lead me into other behaviors. So

28:39

I would, because it was like

28:41

a coping mechanism for I guess, things

28:44

that I'd experienced when I was younger, I would

28:46

smoke eyes to obliterate myself. And then

28:48

whilst obliterated, I would go and engage in secretive stuff.

28:51

Like I would, I wouldn't tell my friends, but I'd

28:53

go off to these sort of gay sex lounges and

28:55

I'd be high and I

28:57

would sort of explore myself there. And

28:59

then I would go and commit other, commit crimes

29:01

whilst high. And it was sort of this perfect

29:04

gateway for me to continue this

29:06

sort of secretive, high intense behavior.

29:09

And I was juggling a lot of secrets at

29:11

the time as well. Like I, because

29:14

when I was 17, I

29:16

said to my friend at the time, I said, when I told

29:18

him I was turning 17, he

29:21

laughed at me and he said, how could he, like, cause he, cause

29:23

I was so little at the time. And

29:25

so I just lied and actually said, so when I was 17,

29:27

I lied and said I was 16. So

29:30

I never got to, so then I even got a fake ID

29:32

made to say that I was 18 when I was actually 19.

29:36

So I was always living a year younger

29:38

than I actually was to make, cause I

29:40

saw I was carrying all this deception and

29:43

it was just got to the point where it was so overwhelming.

29:46

What's interesting about addiction is you, you know, you just,

29:49

you need it. Like it, it's, you

29:51

seek it, seek it out, you know? And that's why

29:53

a lot of people don't become addicted because they don't

29:55

have this need to fill the

29:57

void. I really loved it. I

36:00

was in hospital a lot and I was like,

36:03

I just, I was just,

36:05

life was very miserable. I wasn't

36:07

enjoying myself. I was, all the things that, like,

36:09

and I was, I stopped doing, I'd stopped graph,

36:11

I stopped doing graffiti as well. And

36:14

I moved, so the big move was I moved to the

36:16

country with my mum and dad who'd moved

36:19

to one faggy six months

36:21

earlier. And I, that, okay, I

36:23

said to myself, okay, I'll get a proper job.

36:26

I'll try and commit less crime and I'll

36:28

save up money to go overseas. And

36:31

I managed to do that. I got a job

36:33

at Green Court, like doing, which is a run

36:35

by Parks Victoria, where I went out into the

36:37

bush and, you know, recognized

36:40

local flora and fauna and protected plant species.

36:42

And I did all these things that were

36:44

so different to what I was doing. And

36:47

I worked in the chicken shop and I worked in a takeaway

36:49

shop and I saved up money and bought a

36:51

ticket to London and then pissed

36:53

off for a year. What were you like in London when you

36:55

got there and no one knew who you were? No

36:58

one knew anything about your background? Yeah,

37:00

I loved it. I loved it. It

37:02

was also a strange time. I started to wear like,

37:05

wear turtlenecks and long coats and weird caps. And you

37:07

know, that weird, I look back at that now as

37:09

a strange time, but. The uniform of a bohemian. Well,

37:11

yeah. Is this the repressed writer? I was, was that

37:13

too obvious? Yeah, I don't know. I think, well, that

37:15

was. Is that really obvious thing? The whole time I

37:17

was going to film, I was going to the cinema

37:19

and the Prince Charles cinema, I think, off Leicester Square.

37:22

Yeah, and it showed a lot of old films. And

37:25

yeah, I think then I was sort of, I

37:28

did realise that, hang on, I did want to write. I

37:31

did want to, but I still, but I didn't apply myself. I

37:35

was still got up to similar behaviours over there. Because once

37:37

you do these things for a long period of time, it's,

37:40

it's incredibly, incredibly hard and

37:42

long road to sort

37:45

of to see another way. I was just, I was used

37:47

to it. Do you think that was, that was

37:49

what you were worth? Very low. I had this, I didn't,

37:51

I didn't care. I mean, to be honest, I didn't care

37:53

whether I lived or died most of the time, especially when

37:55

I was young, So

37:57

you came back to Australia and you met... Oh,

38:00

who's your partner now? Yes. Yeah.

38:02

How did you make Rome? Okay, Cupid. I'm,

38:04

so the old dating website, I had it

38:06

on my desktop. And then, so yeah, we

38:08

met up and her friend convinced her to

38:10

go on a date with me because he wasn't sure.

38:13

And then from there, we sort of went on a couple

38:15

more dates and then started hanging out. But

38:18

then it was, I kept,

38:20

you know, I was seeing other

38:23

girls at the time and I had to still quite

38:25

a chaotic lifestyle. So you were

38:27

on again, off again with her? Yeah. And

38:30

then at the age of 31, just

38:32

before your 32nd birthday, Yes.

38:35

You did that thing that I mentioned right at the start.

38:37

You leaped off the apartment balcony up on the third floor.

38:39

What was the thought that propelled you to, was that? I

38:42

think what most,

38:44

what mainly was, was that at the

38:46

time, again, it was

38:48

like that feeling of, nothing

38:51

will ever change. My life is just this mess.

38:54

Even though I had this person who loves me, the

38:56

context was that we'd been out with one of her friends and I

38:58

thought that they were like having a thing together

39:01

and they weren't, it was in my delusion. I

39:03

wasn't even on drugs at all. So we lived

39:05

in the third floor and we pulled

39:07

up in a cab and got out and started walking.

39:09

And I just started running. And

39:12

I don't remember any of it. You don't remember

39:14

any of this? I remember the lead up to it. I remember running. I

39:16

remember jumping. And then

39:19

I waking up in the emergency room and there were, I

39:22

was high on ketamine and I was snapping my fingers back into

39:24

place. I was wearing like a back

39:27

brace type thing around my waist to keep my, because

39:29

I'd shattered my hip and broken

39:31

many bones in my jaw and

39:33

both my wrists. And I

39:36

had to sort of, okay, I didn't die, right?

39:39

What do I do now? So

39:41

I had to have this choice. I had to

39:43

have where there was nowhere else for me to

39:45

go. I couldn't go any lower. I

39:48

couldn't, there was nowhere else for me to go. So

39:50

I was in the trauma ward for a couple

39:52

of weeks and then I did some rehab and

39:55

came home. But that's when I started

39:57

to address my mental health issues. I went to a psychiatrist.

42:00

me because it's so alien, it has the same

42:02

effect as somebody who

42:04

is doing those things and wants to take a risk that

42:07

like do graffiti or do crime. It's

42:09

the same thing for me, but looking

42:11

at a nine to five lifestyle as a

42:14

high risk activity, because I've done

42:16

the opposite of that for so long.

42:18

It's stepping into a strange new world. A strange

42:20

new world and a strange safe new world. And

42:23

to me, safety was always risky. Being

42:27

safe is always a risk for me, but

42:29

I couldn't trust it because I

42:31

had a lot of trust issues and I didn't want

42:33

to be vulnerable. So I had to

42:35

sort of come out of myself and

42:38

be and access all

42:41

those parts of myself that I'd sort of compartmentalized

42:43

and locked away. And I had

42:45

to sort of unpack all that because

42:47

my whole thing about being a father

42:49

was to stop that intergenerational trauma that

42:52

happened. My great grandparents, grandparents,

42:54

mum, dad, and then me and my

42:56

brother. So I thought, hang on, I

42:58

want to be that stopgap in

43:00

that intergenerational trauma

43:03

cycle. And I feel like

43:06

I'm doing okay. After

43:09

you came out of hospital, you discovered you'd

43:11

won a writing fellowship issued by the State

43:13

Library of Victoria. What did that

43:15

provide for you? Well, that wasn't,

43:17

yeah, it was sort of a, not

43:21

serendipitous, but it was almost at a time where there

43:23

was, so I'd survived the hospital, you

43:25

know, the leap and I was like, what, what am I

43:27

going to do now? And then

43:30

I realized that a week prior to jumping

43:32

off, you know, the third floor, I'd

43:34

submitted an application for a fellowship at the State Library

43:36

of Victoria. And then I found out when

43:38

I got home that I'd won this fellowship, which

43:40

gave me an office in the State Library and

43:42

access to all their archives. And it's quite

43:45

prestigious. It was to come up basically

43:47

about an aspect of Victorian history.

43:50

So I had this idea of writing

43:52

about parts of my experience as an

43:54

aspect of Victorian history. And

43:56

so I got the fellowship and then I thought, what do

43:59

I do now? I've got to write. in

46:00

terms of having an, instead of having

46:02

a highly elevated mood, I am now

46:04

on sort of a mood stabilizer, which sort of

46:06

just flattens me out a bit, but

46:09

makes life more liveable, less

46:13

chaotic. I can make clearer decisions.

46:16

I can be there for my family. My priorities

46:19

are completely different now, and

46:21

I'm just adjusting to that. Because who says,

46:23

what that writer that maybe was Jonathan Frans, and

46:25

he says to write something new or to create

46:27

new work? It's like he had to say

46:29

he had to divorce his wife and move, but it's almost like the

46:31

opposite for me. It's like I had to find a new

46:35

life for them to produce new

46:37

work. So Helen Garner says

46:39

that too, that based off the persona, which

46:41

persona are you going

46:43

to write from? Which version of I is

46:46

going to be the one that you

46:48

write your new material from? Because you have to, I

46:50

don't want to write from the same, I'm not the

46:52

same excitable boy now. I'm an

46:55

less excitable man, really. Still

46:57

excitable, but less so, less extreme. That's the sequel,

47:00

a less excitable man. That's what I'm thinking. I

47:02

mean, that's kind of what I'm thinking. That's been

47:04

completely fascinating speaking with you. And thank you for

47:06

your honesty. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you

47:08

so much, Dominic. I've been great, Richard. Thanks so

47:10

much. Dominic Gordon's memoir is

47:12

called Excitable Boy Essays

47:15

on Risk. I'm

47:17

Richard Feidler. Thanks for listening.

47:26

You've been listening to a podcast

47:28

of conversations with Richard Feidler. For

47:31

more conversations interviews, please

47:34

go to the website

47:36

abc.net.au slash conversations.