NormMore memories of me and Ledge – Part 2 of my personal tribute to my mate Heath Ledger.
Gay issues aside, because I don’t want to go into my personal life or what it’s like being a gay, could-have-been rodeo cowboy in suburban Perth, or how many rocking horses and whips and horse blinkers me and my partner Bruce have in the house, or our ride ‘em cowboy water bed, or how we made our house a replica of the Ponderosa from Bonanza, or my stamp collection of famous horse stamps, or why I never had a Barbie doll but loved dressing Ken up in Barbie’s clothes, I’d like to blog about the memories I have of Ledge and me as two very normal hetero kids growing up in Western Australia. One of the things I remember most about me and Ledge is the sausage sizzles down at the local Lion’s Park run by the Freemasons. I didn’t realise I was gay back then. I thought my obsession over how Ledge ate a sausage was just male bonding and Aussie mateship. He used to say, ‘Why do you watch me eat every sausage? I said, ‘You eat them so slowly, and I scoff them down. You’re still licking your first sausage, and I’ve already eaten three.” I should have known I’d turn out gay. Both of us should have, but neither of us had enrolled in drama classes at that stage. Neither of us had been corrupted by film culture. We didn’t know how metaphorical and prophetic a sausage could be or what impact it could have on our lives in our pre-pubescent Stanislavski days. We were just normal Aussie teenagers. We used to leave the Lions Park and go and watch each other take a dump in the neighbouring park and say things like, ‘Wow, man, you’ve shitted the whole sausage out just like it was when they put it on bread.’ And that’s what I admire most about Ledge. He could act gay but he never turned gay. I don’t know how he did it. I guess he was just a stronger character than I was. He was able to look at a certain moment in time and realise a sausage was a sausage and a dump wasn’t a sausage but just waste. He could cope with the difference between what’s cinema and what’s real life. I never could. I still see visions of sausage sizzles and dumps every time I watch Brokeback Mountain, whereas he moved on with his life. He’s moved on to death and I’m stuck here wondering whether I should trust the local butcher.
Consumption Malfunction
Equal and Opposite
Arses and Elbows
Footy Power
Prick.