Greg Fleet

Pictured: Greg Fleet’s mother Sally Fleet, age four

Greg Fleet’s childhood in Geelong was far from normal. In his memoir, These Things Happen, the comedian and actor shares the story of how his father faked his own death, then turned up years later, and of his mother battling on as a single mother. He’s a father himself these days and if his mother has taught him anything, it’s a determination to help his own daughter grow up in an environment where she feels secure and loved.

After her husband had lied to her, fucked other people and faked his own death, he came back and managed to convince Mum to take him back. That says a lot about who she was. Regardless of all the horrendous things he’d done, whether she admitted it or not, she remained in love with him.

I don’t know if that means she was a weak person – I think it means she was desperate to be loved. She would never have admitted it but she spent her whole life wanting to be loved, and the way that desperation came across made her a very difficult person to be around for long periods of time. She could be very critical and snappy. She could also be absolutely hilarious.

She was born into a dodgy family where the kids were taken away by the state. She was put into an orphanage and then adopted by one of the wealthiest families in the state. They were very devoted to her, but then they split up. My mother stayed with her father and they had a fun life together for a couple of years, but when he remarried it became the classic evil stepmother story – his new wife had her own daughter from another marriage and she sort of shut my mother out.

Mum was born into a loveless situation, taken away, adopted, shown love, had that taken away again – and then she met my father. Her family realised he was a bit of an operator and they told her not to marry him, but Mum said: ‘No, I’m going to – he loves me.’ She was constantly being shown love – or something close to it – and then having it taken away. That was the story of Mum’s life.

She and my father were born and raised in the United States. When he got transferred out to Australia because of his job with Ford, she just followed along. I guess it was a chance for a new life. There was no real family connection for her back in the US.

As a mother, she always came across as more like one of our friends. She wanted to hang out with our friends. That was okay because she was funny and kind of cool to be around but while I say that, it was never quite right. Even at my wedding, she didn’t want to sit with my wife’s family. She said, ‘I don’t want to sit with those old people.’

‘But Mum,’ I said, ‘you’re older than they are.’ It was like she didn’t realise.

The danger of being matey with your kids is that it takes away the ability to be what would be considered a proper mother.

I mean, she always made sure we had what we wanted and she always stood up for us and defended me against the horrendous paedophiles at Geelong Grammar, but maybe there was too much of that and not enough of being a rock for us to lean on.

Her acting that way – that wasn’t so much of a thing until Dad had gone. I didn’t really notice it before he left. Once he was gone, we kind of took the place of him – we became her confidantes as well as her children.

When I was a kid I once observed Mum telling my sister the story about my dad, and then I watched my sister kind of lose it. My sister was always very strong and when I saw her freak out and start crying – she is two years older than me, so she was about twelve at the time – I realised something fairly serious had gone down. I don’t remember Mum addressing it with me, although I’m sure she must have at some point.

I don’t know how long Mum really thought the story that he had committed suicide was true – but that’s what we were told. In hindsight, looking at that situation, I think a large part of her would have been going: ‘Hang on, he’s pulled a shifty.’ She knew a lot about him by that stage and he wasn’t the suicidal type. I don’t know how long she really thought it was true – it was probably the most comforting thing to believe. I think she wanted it to be true because it meant he hadn’t rejected her – he had rejected life. I felt for her enormously that someone would do that to her. I felt for both of them that it came to that.

I remember her having a fight with me once – I was about twelve – and her telling me that it was my fault that he had gone. I was recently talking to my sister about it and Mum had said the same thing to her, so that was clearly one of her weapons. She wanted someone to blame, other than herself.

There was a time when a kid at school had a crack at me about it – saying that I had no dad – and it was the first time that I felt that it was somehow shameful and embarrassing that we didn’t have Dad around. But as I got older I met heaps of kids from single parent families and I realised it wasn’t really anything to be embarrassed about.

The difference was to do with the way it all happened, with Dad pretending he had suicided and actually disappearing – and then being found by Mum to still be alive. Another difference had to do with the relationship between my mother and me. Someone said to me once that my mother had two modes of being – she could either be completely hilarious or she was absolutely furious but there was nothing in between. That was the difficult part.

Dad never gave Mum a cent from the moment he left, which must have been so hard for her. Not even a hundred bucks. He just totally absolved himself of all responsibility. It is a terrible thing to do to your children and to a woman who loved you, but I can also sort of understand that feeling of just waking up one day and realising you’ve made a terrible mistake and just wanting to get out. I can understand what that feeling must be like – ‘This isn’t my life. I’ve got to go.’

I was exposed to so much indulgence for the first ten years of my life and then suddenly my father was gone and it was taken away. We went from having everything to having nothing very quickly. I think I always resented my mother for not being richer than she was, which is a terrible thing. It’s an easy trap to fall into – you’re at a school where all your friends are loaded and their parents are loaded and you’re facing that question about why you have to be the one who’s got the shitty little yellow fibro cement house in Torquay. A more mature child might have handled it better but I kind of resented her. It’s a terrible thing to admit to – resenting someone who goes out of their way to look after you and provide for you as best they can, for not being able to provide you with more.

I don’t remember Mum telling me that Dad was actually still alive. In my memory, it was a teacher at school who pulled me aside and said: ‘Your father’s been found and he’s coming here to see you.’

When he came out to the school and saw me I thought maybe he’d be this crazy, left-wing nut-job who’d been travelling around the world doing all these interesting things – this kind of amazing Dennis Hopper fugitive-like character – but it turns out he wasn’t that at all. He was this right-wing, racist, gun-loving homophobic embarrassment – typical American right-wing nutter.

I didn’t think it was a good idea that Mum let him come back. He was back and trying to be a father and telling me what to do but I wasn’t having it. He and Mum started fighting again and it was just like before he left – hearing them late at night just constantly niggling at each other. I was just thinking: ‘What are you doing?’ We’d already played that record and nobody liked the tune.

I think it taught me to be pretty crap at relationships, too.

I love the people I love – I love them very deeply. I’ve been in love quite a few times in my life – more times than you’re meant to be – but I never really learned the right limits and how you’re meant to treat people to keep them around. I learned how to treat people to make them fuck off.

Mum and I used to have the most horrendous arguments. I was taught to fight in such a way that you would say the cheapest, meanest, most destructive things you could as quickly as possible in an effort to win the argument. We would say the most horrifying things to each other, and then five minutes later we’d be like: ‘Do you want a coffee?’

So I took that with me into relationships – with girls, with friends, with anybody – and as I did that to people I could actually see them shut down. I remember a couple of girlfriends ending relationships because they could not believe some of the things I would say and do to them. I would say the most personal, hurtful thing I knew about them – really awful. But then ten minutes later, I’d be like: ‘Hey, do you want to go into the city and do this or that?’ The girls would be like: ‘What? What are you talking about? I don’t want to be anywhere near you.’ And I didn’t understand.

I’d been brought up to think that was normal, but I know now it’s not normal. It’s not normal at all. It’s something that is really damaging and really scarring and it’s a sign of someone who’s had a really dysfunctional life.

Mum was like that with all of us kids. Before she died, Mum was at a home in Geelong and she wasn’t doing too well for a long time. It was interesting and weird, too – because her brain cancer actually made her easier to get along with. She wasn’t as judgemental as she used to be.

She used to say things just to push my buttons. I remember once, about fifteen years ago, we were having one of our usual horrendous fights and I said: ‘Wait, wait, let’s just let it go this time. Before we do this, let’s just talk like people who love each other and are trying to communicate, rather than doing what we normally do.’ I could see, just for a few seconds, that she was going to do it and it was going to be this great breakthrough moment in our lives – and then she just went: ‘Oh God, what are you – some kind of hippie?’ She couldn’t do it. It was such a shame because I was sure that in this moment we were finally going to communicate. We were right on the edge of something, then she just went: ‘Nup.’

There’s a habit in our family of playing the victim, so it’s always hard to know what’s true and what’s an exaggeration. When Mum told me things about her childhood, I had to balance out what was actually fact and how much of it was wanting to be a victim. And it wasn’t just her – we all do a bit of that in my family.

I had empathy and sympathy for her. I mean, she probably made it worse for herself in a lot of ways but this was a woman who had a really hard life. So many times she came close to having it all sorted out, but then it fell apart again. I had to eventually get to the point where, when I went to see her, I’d be a little quieter than I used to be. I tried not to get too emotionally involved. I knew, by then, that she’d say and do things that would stir me and I used to get pushed to the point where I would go: ‘Fuck you – how can you say that?’ More recently, I’d just let it go.

I had to become the adult, and it was one of the few mature things I’ve ever done. I finally worked out that she wasn’t going to change – she wasn’t going to change for me or for anyone. I got to the point where I let her say and do what she wanted and I found that, because I stopped reacting the way I used to, she didn’t go as far as she used to. She no longer got the reaction she wanted.

The fact that Mum managed to get three children through their education and into the world is pretty cool. Here was a woman who was completely isolated on the other side of world from her family with three children. I don’t know why she didn’t go back to the States when Dad left. That’s what I would have done. I would have thought: ‘I’ve got nothing here – I need support,’ and I would have gone back to America and leant on my family. But she didn’t. Through stubbornness or whatever, she thought: ‘No, I’m staying here and that’s that.’

There are all kinds of good things I learned from her: a sense of humour, a sense of confidence in the world, an attitude to not be intimidated. She could be a very funny person at times – we all laughed a lot growing up, despite everything else.

Certain things would upset me. Mum never wanted the neighbours to hear us fighting. She liked to keep things private. I was writing a letter to my girlfriend once and she said: ‘Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the paper.’ I was like: ‘Wow, that’s a bit full-on.’ I wouldn’t have cared if anyone had put the things I was writing about on the front page of the paper because they were true. The fact that she was worried about whether the neighbours would hear us fighting annoyed me and years later I wondered why she wasn’t more worried about the fact that we were fighting. It would have made more sense to me if she’d said: ‘Hey, let’s stop fighting,’ rather than: ‘Hey, let’s fight quieter.’

I don’t want to sound like I’ve been too harsh on my mum. I know I learned a lot from her. I can’t put my finger on exactly what all those lessons are but when I look at the way I’ve lived my adult life – which has been a catastrophe, in many ways – maybe I didn’t learn enough. I think a lot of things I did learn – and I’m sure many people in my generation would feel the same way – were kind of more about what not to do.

I think Mum was embarrassed about many of the things I’ve done. She used to say: ‘Why do you want to focus on acting?’ until I was finally on TV and then she was like: ‘My son, the actor.’

I am sure this might be a bit self-indulgent but when it came to the drug stuff I always felt like her thoughts were more about what people would think, rather than about my welfare. That annoyed me. I never felt it was coming from a place of: ‘Oh my God, my son’s involved in something that could kill him,’ but that it was more about: ‘My son is involved in something that will reflect badly on the way I brought him up.’

I think Mum did the same thing many parents did. She’d ask: ‘Are you still taking heroin?’ and I’d say: ‘No.’ I mean, I was never going to say yes. But I never felt that she was asking because of her really strong need to protect me.

For me, reality has always been a bit of a rude shock. I came to my own conclusions about things and they’d always been romanticised idylls of out-there, crazy, rebellious men or strong, passionate, independent women and – in the end – people are none of those things. People are a little bit of that but they’re a little bit something else too – they’re a combination of all sorts of things.

I was always a bit disappointed that Mum let Dad back into our lives. I didn’t know what to do with a father. I didn’t know how to behave – were we meant to kick the footy together? I mean, she was better at that stuff than he was, anyway. I will give her that. She really went out of her way to do sport, drama – whatever we were into. I worked out that the only way to get her approval was to succeed at something in the eyes of other people.

Actually, I suspect maybe that’s one of the reasons why I became a performer. You get instant gratification from performing before a large number of people you don’t know. You stand in front of an audience and they are immediately responding – and hopefully saying ‘yes’ – and giving you that approval. With Mum, I’d go through all this junkie madness but as soon as I’d be on The Flying Doctors or something all would be forgiven because Mum would be able to tell her friends that I was on TV, or doing some interview or whatever.

I’ve never blamed either of my parents for my situation. A lot of my friends have said: ‘Oh, you probably ended up having a drug problem because your father left.’ Maybe that is true to some degree, with regards to things both of them have done, but I certainly don’t blame them for the choices I’ve made.

Mum and I hardly spoke from about the time my daughter, Sunday, was born, until not long before she died. I found it strange that she wasn’t more interested in her granddaughter. We’d go down to visit her and she’d go on about herself, never asking my daughter anything about her life. I think grandmothers are meant to dote on their grandchildren and they’re meant to ask them how they’re doing, you know: ‘How’s school?’ But when I went to visit not long before she died, there were pictures of Sunday up on her wall – I didn’t get it.

I think I felt that I wasn’t prepared for being a dad and I didn’t know how to be a parent. Most of the good parenting in my daughter’s life comes from her mother, who is a remarkable person. Fortunately, we’re really close. There were a few years when we really hated each other but we’ve come through that to a new place where we are great friends.

A lot of my daughter’s wellbeing comes from her mother – not from me. I feel guilty that I haven’t been a great parent. I haven’t been terrible but I haven’t been the best, and I’m trying now, as much as I can, to be with my daughter and leave a legacy for her. We’ve hardly ever fought, my daughter and I. We see each other every other day when I’m in Melbourne, and when I’m not, we talk on the phone.

She’ll often get really emotional and upset when she misses me while I’m away, but then when I’m around, she’s really cool. It’s like she doesn’t want to show me any vulnerability. Maybe she thinks I’ll run away – which is terrible. She became very upset when she realised I had a drug issue because I guess she was terrified that maybe I would die. She’d never say that to me. So I’d sit her down and say: ‘Look, that’s in the past.’ She seems pretty stoic but I don’t think kids should be stoic. They’re kids.

I think one of the things I’ve gained through my own relationship with my Mum is that I’ve tried to do it differently with my daughter. I’ve tried to create a situation where we can talk about what we’re feeling and it’s okay if we have differences of opinion.

You have to step up and be an adult when you’re a parent. I never want to be that father who says: ‘Well, if you’re not going to call me, I’m not going to call you.’ I’ll be the one just to pick up the phone and ring and say: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’

I will always say that Mum did a remarkable job in many ways. She managed to keep going and give us what we needed to get by, and on that level she was a remarkable woman. I don’t envy her life at all – I think she had a really tough life. I think she made it harder on herself along the way but she still did an incredible job and I did love her very much. Unfortunately, there were things that were definitely not ideal but that is the case in lots of mother-child relationships, I guess.

It’s easy for comedians to talk about dysfunction in families. It certainly is a good source of material because everyone understands it.

Mum was a really funny woman. Serious things would happen at school and we’d be in trouble with one of the teachers and she would deal with them in a serious way but then, a few minutes later, she’d make some crack about the teacher involved and we’d all be laughing. I do remember that. Growing up, there was a lot of laughter. We laughed a lot. That was pretty cool. I do appreciate that.

There’s a photo of Mum when she was a little girl and she’d just been adopted. You can see joy in her eyes but also fear – a fear that would transform over the years to a dark anger, relieved at random moments by a hilarious, lovely lightness. When she died, all of her pain and anger ceased. I think I feel relief.