He frowned, gesturing distractedly at the corkboard. “You look just like a friend of mine. Her picture used to be up here. Until recently…” He trailed off, then said, emphatically: “It’s not any more.”
OK, I thought, I’m going to die in this place.
My night began normally enough, with a quiet few in Surry Hills before meeting a friend for an art exhibition.
I sat, sipping my beer and watching seasoned artfags nod their approval as a woman gave an earnest, hand-wringing explanation of her hopes to explore the dynamics of a modern relationship using the artistic forms of fighting and dancing.
I wondered why nobody was smiling, at the same time as I tried to figure out what kind of haircut I’d need to be taken seriously by this spacey elite.
Most of all, though, I wondered why my hipster friend Stuey had arrived with this 50-something man with darting marsupial eyes; this man who appeared to have decided the night’s attire was to be a sartorial ode to “Midnight Cowboy” and pirates everywhere.
We’d spotted him a few weeks before at a street party, mainly bec uase of how eye-catching his outfit was. Crocs’n'socks, floral board shorts, Hawaiian shirt, hoop earrings, a mask and rabbit ears were just the beginning. What really got our attention was the Dorothy the Dinosaur tail. He was pushing an old shopping trolley, in a particularly offensive shade of orange with a pattern that looked like rejected ‘70s wallpaper, and from the very first moment we knew we had to meet him.
Once upon a time we would have approached him on the spot but, this being the age of technological intrusiveness, Stuey tracked him down on Facebook.
In fact, they’d become such good friends that Stuey had left his bag at the man’s house and we found ourselves walking back to his house.
As we walked through Darlinghurst’s black streets, I couldn’t help but feel my spidey sense tingling, a sense I’ve learned to trust over my years of seeking entertainment at the expense of willing weirdos, one that I wish I’d trusted the night I found myself bolting from a motel with two morbidly obese Scotsmen chasing me, one of whom had expressed, straightfaced, a burning desire to murder me. Ah, the lengths we’ll go to for free weed…
This time, as I end up doing every time, I over-ruled my sense by deciding the people I usually hang around with are too vanilla-flavoured and that I should be more open-minded.
Stopping quizzically at the fascade of what appeared to be reformed horse stables, the man fumbled with keys to firmly lock the warehouse door behind us, I began to worry the night would end with me in a pit, applying lotion.
I didn’t feel any better as we walked through his workshop, which was full of mannequins, roll after roll of garish fabric and the torsos of prostrate Barbie dolls with pins stuck through them.
I imagined the adrenaline coursing through my veins might be visible, like the red dot that wanders around the body in the Nurofen ads.
The blood pounding in my ears seemed audible, especially in the cavernous gaps in conversation that now reigned supreme.
Maybe we should have gone to Ching-a-lings, after all.
It was only because my bladder was about to breach its banks that I left Stuey alone with him.
The bathroom was full of kewpie dolls, their sinister little faces peering at me from every surface, sill and rail.
Rather graphic wire sculptures hung from the ceiling, like gnarled sexual dreamcatchers.
I was pretty tired, twice drunk, and almost resigned to the fact that if I ever woke up again, it would be in a bath of ice.
I emerged wielding my high heels, should the absence of talking be relieving? Or had Stuey’s throat been slit, with a similar fate awaiting myself.
The coast was clear.
I followed the sound of murmuring down the corridor to find Stuey on the floor looking at a David Bowie box set while our new friend waxed lyrical about Human League and showed us his favourite outfits.
He showed us around his room with the fervor of a child introducing you to their toys.
There were books, DVDs and dolls, including one that lay spattered in algae at the bottom of a fish tank.
He turned out to be a man who follows his whims, who once travelled to the States to see if the kind of people he saw on Jerry Springer really existed. He saw that they did and came back home, that particular curiosity satisfied.
When the time came for us to leave, we did so uneventfully.
He invited us to a dinner party he would be having soon, at which his friend and her 86-year-old mother would be present. Naturally, we accepted.
And so instead of being the terrifying experience I had imagined, the night became a monument to my own raging paranoia and a living testament to the fact that we should all be a little more open-minded in who we choose as our new friends.
Maple Hinkley