“Let’s go crazy, let’s get nuts” are more than just the opening lines to a fairly catchy Prince number, they were words that had haunted me my entire life.
I grew up in a loving but fictitious family. My father was a man of gentle temper, as calm as Chloe Lattanzi is weird looking. My mother was a kind, ruddy cheeked woman of German extraction, liking to be called ‘Mutter’, which just happened to be her first name, a cause of much confusion for her and her non-conformist, though rather stupid parents. My brothers three were all accountants, working tirelessly for a tyre company, never once asking themselves if that was ironic, coincidental or even amusing as they diligently made their way without fuss through the working week. We lived a quiet, somewhat anodyne life for most of the time, but I was never able to enjoy this tranquillity, knowing as I did, what manic destruction loomed on the horizon. For you see my family were…beserkers!
Riot junkies, loot tourists, friends of frenzy. If there was civil unrest, societal breakdown or a Myer stocktake sale, they were there, raiding, smashing, smearing and bashing. For they had discovered, as many have throughout the ages, from the Indian witch doctors of Central America to Batman, that if you wear a mask you can pretty much get away with anything.
Our home was filled with assorted balaclavas, bandannas, stockings and masks of various famous people and characters, my father’s pride and joy being his Cabbage Patch Doll mask. He would often delight in the look of joy and recognition on a person’s face as they saw him approach, right until he torched their car, picked them up and threw them at the police.
While other families stockpiled canned goods and water for when ‘the big one hits’ mine stockpiled rocks and shopping trolleys for ‘looty gras’. When not raising money for charity or making shoes for orphans, they were at soccer riots punching on with skinheads or travelling to WTO protests to trash a McDonalds. They didn’t care about the politics, they just liked going nutso on the weekend. My family had two levels, ‘She’ll be apples’ and ‘Go bananas!’. I however, was the orange and mango sheep of the family. ‘Crazy’ to me was getting drunk on a Wednesday or mooning a yoga class. I didn’t want to cause destruction. Little did I know however how much damage this benign outlook would indeed create.
My lack of desire to run amok when no-one could identify me concerned my parents deeply. They tried everything to get me to go ‘jiminy crickets’. When I was ten they filled me full of red frogs and cough syrup, blindfolded me and said the shop window I was standing in front of was a giant pinata, on my eighteenth birthday they bought me a car on the condition that I rolled it and set it alight. Each time I failed them. My pleas of “it just seems a bit unnecessary” would only make them madder. While previously they kept their rampages to the weekend, they started flipping out four or five times a week, starting racially charged brawls with each other in coastal towns so they could fight the people who tried to break them up, inciting the Monash student union to kidnap their Vice Chancellor and torch the Young Liberals’ ping pong table. My mildness and respect for society had caused them to develop ‘reticence rage’ and no-one was safe…except me…which only fed their fed uppedness.
After pushing me more and more to join the be-circus, taunting me with ever increasing stories of their anarchic antics I finally snapped. A man can only take so much. I informed the Socialists Against Domestic Violence and Animal Cruelty that John Howard was going to appear at my parents house to beat Janette with a small bilby until one of them was dead. They quickly rallied the troops, donned the ‘clavas and descended in great fury upon our residence. I led the charge, rolling the house, smashing the gardens gnomes that spelt ‘Welcom’ on our front yard and torching the swimming pool. Sadly, John Howard escaped. Later that night as we sat together by the ruins of our home, toasting marshmallows by the pool, my father turned to me and said, “It’s nice to have you home son.” Then he punched me in the face. It felt good.
See Justin during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Beelzebuzz, a one man play about going nutso when no-one’s watching, inspired by Lord of the Flies. 9:45 Tues-Sat / 8:45 Sun Melbourne Town Hall