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I want to tell you about the second time I got arrested but the story won’t make much sense unless I tell you about the first time.

In the mid 1980’s I went to see Iggy Pop, live at East Leagues Club. He had just cleaned up and was in fine and outrageous form. Halfway through ‘Girl I Wanna Be Your Dog’, the young lady in front of me collapsed backwards, out cold from excessive pogo. I caught her under the arms so her head didn’t hit the floor and knock loose any of her many piercings and dragged her backwards out the front door.

While she was recovering I shared a huge Marley with the two enormous Maori bouncers who had trailed us out and as a result of my very minor celebrity they invited me backstage after the gig and one thing led to another and Mamu, the largest, got me a job as a towel boy in Anne Marie Tilley’s illegal brothel.

It wasn’t long before I was driving the girls to and fro and one warm night as I was waiting in the car for Candy, listening to the insects and thinking about the ontological status of fictional characters, I absentmindedly lit a tiny racehorse just as the cops knocked on the window and I was busted.

As soon as I could I told them that I worked for Mrs Tilley and they made a call to Jack ‘The Bagman’ Herbert and I was free, with an apology.

When I walked through the door to the unlicensed premises Carl Vermeulin gave me a depressed fracture of the cheekbone. Carl was a sweet simple giant of a man and it was truly sad that some years later somebody obviously thought he knew more than he did and he was murdered in the gym of Boggo Road Jail by two lifers and a 180kg bench press. I still have trouble with my sinuses.

Mrs Tilley was off marrying Fat Hector Hapeta again so that tap was the end of it and everything went back to normal. The girls quickly came to trust me, life was good and it was three years before I got arrested for the second time.