It was in the eighties. I was traveling around Australia with my long-suffering girlfriend, Sue Barrett. We had spent a few months hitchhiking, and I think I had exhausted her.
I didn’t mind sleeping rough, getting soaked to the skin while waiting for a ride, or waking up in our tent only to find that we had unknowingly pitched it in a dry riverbed that had sprung to life overnight. She was none too impressed when the river flowed right through our tent! She didn’t really enjoy it.
She was useful sometimes, though. She was a good-looking lady, so when we hitched together, I would have her stand by the road with her thumb out while I hid out of view. If someone – often a truck driver – stopped, I would spring out into view. It was kind of like using bait. These truck drivers were often lonely men spending days on the road driving massive road trains. I would reel them in, and we often got good, long rides – probably not the kind the truck drivers were hoping for. I could be called a misogynist, but there was a reason for the rhyme.
We started in Perth and hitched all the way to Sydney. When we got there, we needed to earn a little money, so we found a cheap apartment in the Kings Cross area. In the eighties, it was a real den of iniquity. Walking through the Cross – where the pubs, nightclubs, and restaurants were – you would see girls I thought were young, and I was only 18. They were being pimped out for their bodies. There were obvious transvestites of varying degrees and people hanging on the corners, who I later realised were probably selling drugs. It was squalid. The atmosphere and the décor were squalid. I can’t think of one word that captures how I felt about Kings Cross in the eighties – no wonder the apartment was so cheap!
We needed to earn some money, so we scanned the papers. I found an ad looking for travellers interested in door-to-door selling. I answered the ad and found myself in an odd office – more like an apartment, really. There were about ten of us, all young travelers. We were sitting around when a charismatic guy came in and explained the deal. Basically, we were each given ten paintings done in acrylic paint. They were pretty good – each one a hand-painted depiction of various Australian scenes. The idea was that we would take these paintings door to door and sell them for whatever we could get.
Every evening, three or four of us would pile into a car and be dropped off in some suburban area. We were given a neighbourhood to walk through, going door to door, and after a couple of hours, we’d be picked up and taken back. For each painting we sold, we had to pay the guy – the face of the “business” – $40, but we could sell them for whatever price we managed to get.
Now, here comes the tricky part. Who on earth would buy reproduction acrylic art from a teenage traveler? Probably no one, right? But if a teenager with a foreign accent knocked on your door claiming to be from the “London College of Art” – which, incidentally, doesn’t exist – and said he had some paintings he had painted, you might just let him in. That’s exactly what I did, and people actually let me in!
Everyone made up their own story. I would go from house to house with the same spiel, and about one in eight would let me in. I had a story ready for each painting. Over time, I made up some quite interesting tales. We had to keep updating our stories since the paintings would periodically change. I learned to wax lyrical about how I was down by the river, had a transcendent experience, and captured the essence of a gum tree, for example!
I would often sell a painting for around $100 – some a bit more, some a bit less. I usually sold three or four paintings each evening, which meant several hundred bucks a day – a great amount considering the time period and my age. The feeling of power and being like the Artful Dodger was wonderful. I still think about the bullshit I used to spout. It forced me to become very creative. It’s also stunningly paradoxical, considering I can’t paint to save my life.
In fact, I did quite well; I became quite good at it, and the feeling of holding a bunch of banknotes in my hand that I had “earned” was intoxicating – money for nothing! I’ve got three stories really worth sharing about my life as a con man, so here goes:
We were taken out in a car, a group of us – three or four in a car. We were driven to our sector, given a map, and had streets allotted to us. You didn’t really want two different art students conning the same house!
The first time, I remember ringing the bell at this detached house in a well-to-do area in a good suburban region of Sydney. It was the first house that invited me in to show my wares. As the door opened, I was met by a very kindly housewife who was immediately enthralled by my speech. I was quickly invited in, and the whole family gathered around the kitchen table, eager to see my works. I opened up my folder and laid my paintings on the table. I hadn’t looked at them yet.
Then I stared at the first one from very close. I was bent forward over the paintings. I had no bloody idea what it was! My mind went blank. I could only make out white relief and other colours. When acrylic paint is used with a brush, it is very uneven to the touch. Anyway, the light was shining on some daubs of white in the painting – all I could make out was white reflecting the bright light of the kitchen. So, I said it was a statue. Then, as I stood up, I realised what it actually was: a waterfall. Not a good start.
Shock raced through my body. I quickly started talking about this and that, pulling the next painting over my “Statue of a Waterfall.” I drivelled on about how I just loved the country, and I then left with eighty bucks in my pocket and one picture lighter. I even managed to sell one! This is when I realised that people like to believe what they want to believe, disbelieving their ears and their eyes.
The Stoners’ House. I knocked on the door of this one house and was promptly invited in. As we walked through the hall, I saw a room full of cannabis plants suspended from their stems, upside down, and obviously drying. Bingo, I thought, and I commented that I liked their strain of horticulture. I was quickly offered some, and of course, I thought it would be rude not to accept. So, I did – several times, in fact. We chatted, and I showed them my wares. They liked one, and now the negotiation started. This was the point when I was stoned – not just a little bit, either. I was completely and utterly shit-faced. I think time even started to slow down. I sold that painting for a moderate profit… I think. I bid my farewells and went to see their neighbour.
I walked up the new footpath, and the cold night air refreshed me. I was ready for my next victim. It was now fully night. I rang this new bell, and the door opened. Billows of light seemed to flood out of the house, and the guy who answered the door looked funny to me. All I could do was laugh. I could not stop. I guess the guy must have shut the door after listening to this demented youth cackle on his doorstep. That was the end of this evening’s pickings. I just sat down under a tree and waited for my lift.
Coming clean. I did struggle a little with the immorality of the scam that I was involved in. Some earned heaps, all lying their arses off, but by and large, I didn’t see it as too bad – except for the last one. I was in the home of this guy. He was maybe in his late 20s, and I had spent 30 minutes sitting in his living room, fabricating stories and telling him about my life as an artist and my travels. I got really friendly with the guy – kind of like a friend. He said that he loved the paintings and if I came back later, he would buy one from me.
I left, walked up the road, and stopped. I said to myself, “You’re a complete cunt.” I suddenly felt guilty and had an uncontrollable desire to tell my new “friend” that, in fact, I was just a lying con man.
So, I did. I turned on my heels, walked straight back to the house, and he opened the door and looked at me. I told him what I was. He said nothing; he just looked in disbelief. I walked briskly away, and that was the last time. It was great until my conscience woke up and reared its ugly head.
It was a little like a crash course in psychology.