It’s Saturday night. There’s a bucks party; one of the local coffee buyers is getting married. His name is Peter Fraser and his family banks with us at the Colonial. He invites us all to join him down at the little hall on the edge of town.
The hall is much like a small town hall anywhere in Western Australia, flat timber floor, timber walls, drab curtains, small kitchen at the back and an outside toilet. Tables full of food line one wall, buckets full of ice and beer line the other and a boiling urn full of frankfurters sits on a small table near an electric power socket. There are no speeches. Blokes walk between one wall and another, picking up beer, food and frankfurters. Finally, a bloke who says he is Frasey’s best mate stands up and says: Right, let’s get this show moving. Two blokes erect a screen in front of the frankfurter urn and another brings out a movie projector. Light flickers on the screen. Someone pulls curtains. The hall lights go out. There is no sound, but we see a bloke enter a room where two women sit on a bed. They offer him lollies. He sucks a lolly. One of them puts her hand inside her panties. The other puts her hand on his crotch, then begins to rub his penis. She opens his fly and puts her hand inside. He stands, removes his clothes and they remove theirs. They play with each other’s genitals. The blonde woman sucks his dick. The brunette sucks the blonde’s vagina. They swap. Then they all shift and the blonde puts his dick in her vagina, while the brunette rubs the blonde’s tits. The open vagina seems huge and the man’s lizard enters with ease. Blokes are screaming and laughing. My lizard is growing. The screen flickers, the film stutters, flutters and stops. The projector is silent. Blokes yell. Someone strikes a match. There’s a crash. A light comes on. Frankfurters are rolling on the floor. Blokes are laughing their heads off. Someone throws a frankfurter, then another, and then the air is full of flying frankfurters. One hits me on the forehead. I grab a plastic bottle of tomato sauce and squeeze it into Haines’ pocket. He turns and takes a swing at me. I duck and laugh but keep him in sight just in case he takes another shot. Franky is wearing a ring of frankfurters around his neck.
This reminds me of the annual Coalminers’ Ball, he yells. Someone hits him in the chest with a shot from a sauce bottle.
The hall is alive with flying food. Haines has a bottle of sauce and he squirts it in my face. A curtain is on fire. Then all the curtains are in flames. Someone yells: Fire! Fire! Everyone laughs. We spill out into the yard. The wooden hall is in flames. We stand and laugh and watch it fall into itself. The police don’t come. The fire brigade doesn’t come. I wonder if it is because they are here already, that among our number are men from the police and the fire brigade. We stumble home to the bank mess and I go into my room and wank into a hanky.