Sosued

I can remember the days when I called a jihad on nightclubs – the music was far too loud to engage in decent conversation, it’s far too dark to figure out where walls end and hidden stairwells begin, and it’s far too crowded and sweaty to figure out if you’re standing in spilt beer or piss. As far as I was concerned back then, there was no reason for me to ever find myself in a club – if you wanted to find me, you looked in bars and pubs close to public transport, and if I wasn’t with Misha or Nailpolishneurosis, I was alone.

Some things never change. Some are slightly altered.

I really do owe my ex-boyfriend (the “thespian” who can’t let Ice and one mildly successful acting stint 15+ years ago go) a thankyou, as the gentlemen who run Sosueme have become some of my dearest friends in Sydney. With several successful nights under their belt, I have seen their joy as well as their stress. I remember arriving in town at 3pm on the afternoon of the very first Sosueme – I rocked up to Clubhaus and was promptly left alone to wait for one of their girlfriends. Luckily, we were well-acquainted and she didn’t have that annoying inherent girlfriend trait of hating every woman who was close to their boyfriends. We ate cheesecake, talked about life, then headed to The Fringe around 6pm where I was faced with an unspoken and unexpected maternal obligation to almost force-feed Lady Sosueme, who had a not-so-secret eating disorder and addiction to binge drinking. Whew.

I’ve never been much of a social butterfly so found myself behind the scenes, helping out. Crashing at Clubhaus at about 5am, I woke up at 9am and had the other maternal non-surprise task of waking the dead so they could get all their staging gear returned by 11.30am. Aside from the foray into club management, the boys all have a hand in The Religion (one is the manager, two are musicians, and one is a long-time friend, collaborator, theatre actor) and are all individually intelligent, ambitious and oblivious of the hilarity that comes from moments of ego. It’s almost like watching Entourage, but the main character is rotated. They are friends, and my help was voluntary – a favour to friends who were very much aware that the bulk of the support shown had its limits. Nobody wants to deal with the bullshit you can’t see if there’s sex, drugs, and disco balls around. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting anything from it aside from a thankyou in the way of free drinks and lunch.

Now I’m on Sosueme’s payroll as the VIP doorbitch. I think Blogger can only handle highlights, so.

As queried in previous comments, I (thankfully) have no say in who comes in or goes. If they’re on the list and are wearing their armbands, I let them in. When they start to get sloppy, that’s where I start up. The Sosueme before this, I had a radio direct to the front door and security. I didn’t get one this time because the last one was peaceful and well-organised. That, and those radios are useless.

The VIP room – even when empty - is cramped. I was prepared for a busy evening knowing that the room was accidentally double-booked with a goodbye party and a quarter-life bash. What I wasn’t expecting was a DJ double-booking AND another birthday party… the birthday party OF DOOM! This BPOD belonged to a poor(?) Birthday Girl who walked into a karmic blitzkrieg, the ghost of promiscuity past – in amongst the undulating flesh-wave of triple-booking, seven (7) previous lovers had attended, and all seven (7) had buddied up to exchange stories about Birthday Girl.

HA.
HA.
HA.


HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHA.


Even without the ghosts and double-bookings, unless you’re there to pull strings or hold everything together, I think almost everyone starts to turn into a gremlin after midnight. There’s been time to have that five-too-many bevvies, chugged down with whatever little self-respect you had to begin with. Chivalry, etiquette, common decency, and basic vocabulary all give way to bullying, verbal abuse, physical abuse, leaning against walls, and lazy eyes. The beautiful get ugly and I swing between delight and depression.

People get fucking stupid when they hear “VIP”. They don’t care so much when it’s “Private Function.” I had several non-banded Actually, just writing about the evening is starting to piss me off again, so here are some lowlights.

“Armband or not, I don’t give a fuck. It’s over capacity, and once you walk out you cannot come back in. I’m now under Fringe orders, not Sosueme orders. Deal with it, or deal with security.”

That didn’t go down too well with the crowd. During the enforced exodus, I had a drink thrown at me and a woman call me a bitch when I tried to push her away from the wall candle she was nodding off dangerously close to. I had a “DONYOUKNUHOOAHHAMMMM” suit tell me that he owned the bar (lie), and that because I wasn’t listening to him (there wasn’t even a request or coherent dialogue, to my knowledge), he was going to piss on me. He got as far as leaning his forehead against the wall and half-undid his zipper before security booted him out.

Then there was Drunky. I saw Drunky several hours before, grinding against the smoke machine and making drunky-eyes in my general direction. Now here he was, in all his drunky glory. Sonofabitch. He stumbled down the stairs. He either grinned or vomitted a little into his mouth, then stood up straight and weaved his way towards me. Somewhere in the weaving, he seemed to realise that he was obviously stinking drunk and decided to change his tactic from trying to romance his way in to just shouldercharging his 6’ frame through me.

It’s amazing how my sober 4’10” can feel like a brick wall when his 6’ is quivering, drunken (but impressively pert!) mancan.

“Armband?”

“Ngughhhh.”

“Sorry mate, that’s a stamp. Armband’s an armband. Private function.”

“Nguggggggghhhhhh. Come on, Love.”

“Take it up with the guys at the front door or fuck off. You’re pissed as a fart and I’ve the right mind to call security.”

“Ngugh! Cunting cunt!”

“Fuck off.”

A mate of mine, Guy, tried to extract Drunky. Drunky reacted by punching him in the head and attempting to punch me. Security (bless, timing!) found him and threw him out. I later overheard Guy lean over to one of the Sosueme Gents and yell something about Drunky giving me a hard time.

“What, Miss Q? Fuck, she’ll chew him up and spit him out. She’s alright – she’s a fucking bulldog, man.”

Yeah!


VIP was eventually closed at 3am, so I had an hour to drink and socialise, which is what I did. I got to say goodbye to Kim, who was leaving to join the Circe de Soleil to be a carney, and extend my congrats and happy birthdays to Hutch and Birthday Girl. I danced for a bit (funny how these things find their way onto Facebook), and spent the rest of my hour sitting with a friend and laughing at the terrifyingly trashed dancers who had broken their “Off” switches, with big thanks to amphetamines. Apparently, if you haven’t shelved, you haven’t lived.

.

I stepped outside for a smoke, and found myself surrounded by couples alternating between making out and feeling each other’s faces. I assured the couple closest to me that there were no visible pustules on their faces, then decreed a jihad on public affection.

I was well over the evening. I helped a Sosueme Guy and Fringe staff clean up after closing time, then we went back to Clubhaus at 5am where I took position on my favourite blue sofa until 9am.

Lighting a fag in the Clubhaus courtyard after a much-needed shower, I rang my ex-husband to see how things were with The Kid. He handed the phone over to her, and my heart ached as she stuttered with excitement, telling me how she and Daddy met Grandma at the airport with a bunch of flowers (returning from a work stint in India, bless outsourcing), and that Daddy was going to take her to see “Surf’s Up” at the movies.

“I love you, Mummy.”

“I love you too, Monkey.”

“Kbye!”

I ended the call with my ex-husband, stepped out of the courtyard into the alley where none of the terraces had windows, and cried.


Sosueme’s once a month, and as much as I love seeing my friends and telling arseholes to piss off, motherhood is easily the best decision I’ve ever made. A few hours of idiots is fine for decent tax-free money in hand, but that’s it for me - I’m happy where I am.


In other news, I am in the process of organizing a photoshoot with a new photographer. His angle is capturing the personality and character of the model, and his current portfolio is wicked – there’s a lot of playfulness in the shoots. I guess women can be playful... I’m more socially inept than playful, and my goofiness or “playfulness” comes out of a neurotic desire to fill awkward silences, so I don’t know about that theme. Woooo, creative control.