Sven's life in Oz

I have decided that my mantra for 2010 is as follows: you get out what you put in. Clearly the fates were not impressed with my not-quite-nakedness in January, since I clearly didn’t put in enough (or get out enough, as may be the case). This month they thrust upon me a second opportunity for public nudity in the form of the annual Sydney Convicts fundraiser, Rugger Bugger. The format is simple enough: a drag-hosted variety show in which all the players showcase their theatrical skills in a series of skits; the highlight is always the full monty routine at the end. I volunteered for the final routine, of course, because I’m no warm-up act. (I’m kidding. Whenever someone asks for volunteers you can be sure of two things: it’s something no one wants to do, and you’re going to be struggling to get the numbers you need. In light of my newly adopted motto, I figured that volunteering early on would be the best way to make the most of it. If everyone thought that way the world would a better place, but if nine of us can think that way then at least we can get a decent strip show organised. Which is exactly what we did.)

Allow me to say that the Rugger Bugger strip routine was, without question, the gayest thing I have ever done in my life. Have a read back through the blog archives: you’ll be hard pressed to find something more outrageously camp (and I’ve got form, let me tell you). You could almost slice the incredulity when the song was announced. No one has ever looked macho dancing to Wham!. The routine swiftly developed along the only lines it could: unashamed booty-shaking with George Michael/urinal gags and grinding pelvises. And a giant cardboard saxophone for the instrumental. Before long we were shoop-shooping with the best of them. I’m not a huge fan of Wham! at the best of times, and if I hear “I’m Your Man” again it will be too soon, but the fun was more than enough to make up for “taking it from the top” more times than a man should have to bear. I’m sure the residents of the tower block overlooking our open air rehearsal would agree, since they all pissed themselves laughing watching eight burly rugby players and one pasty, lanky, barely-82kg Brit break into dance just as the chorus started.

The actual night was a riot, involving three changes of outfit and a free bottle of tequila. Sensibly I steered clear of too much of the hard stuff before the show; I had barely eaten all day to stay looking thin, so drinking too much would have been disastrous (and eventually was). I started the night in rugby kit and team t-shirt to help raise funds for the World Cup trip in June (I sold those raffle tickets like my life depended on it, baby), and before I knew it, 11pm had arrived: showtime.

I will be eternally grateful for my complete lack of stagefright. I know people who spend hours or days before as nervous wrecks. Ever since I can remember, the worst I have ever suffered is a jangly feeling moments before curtain up. And it’s just as well – throwing off your clothes in public isn’t exactly run-of-the-mill. People ask me how I did it and my philosophy is this: it’s nothing that isn’t in the room with you every time we meet: it’s just better hidden. No one can steal it from me, no one is going to run off with my dick so what is there to lose? The costume was simple enough, including the rather scanty briefs we had been supplied with. I tried them on before the show and was embarrassed to be wearing them in the privacy of my own home; ‘revealing’ barely does them justice. Still, the aim was to get them off, so what did I care? We assumed our positions in the wings and waited for the first bars to begin.

The whole thing was over in a flash. All that rehearsing, all that agonising over who would stand where, when we would drop our jeans, how long we would shake our asses seemed an age away. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of 200 people with my hands over my head and my undies around my ankles. We scurried off-stage and I changed into my party outfit: I was ready to drink. And my word, I did. The rest of the night has been reported to me from others who attended, but there was tequila, a JD-and-coke in each hand and kisses with Dr Lego, who sensibly left before I got too out of control. I rolled home at about 3:30am after an awesome evening.

I think there’s another one planned for October this year. Put it in your diary.

[Ann-Marie Calilhanna's photos shameless borrowed from the fabulous Sydney Star Observer]

Last Thursday rugby training started again. I turned up at the field despite every muscle of my body pulling me in the opposite direction, and spent two hours running around in the pouring rain, throwing a ball around while a thunderstorm raged all around us. It was not the best return to training ever; Sydney’s summer has been pretty lame so far and I feel a bit cheated, frankly. Where is the sunshine? I might as well have stayed in England.

It’s quite nice to back at rugby, especially since I have been indulging on the cakes/pies/booze all over Christmas on the promise that I would return. The theory that “if you put it quickly on, it’s comes quickly off” makes up in rhetorical value what it lacks in scientific accuracy, and it has kept me going over the past few months. Now it is time to balance that equation through exercise, sadly. But it’s not all exercise and pain, of course – it was lovely to see my team mates again after a long break, even if we were all dripping wet and slipping over every ten minutes in the mud.

Not content with one training session, I decided that the rugby run on Saturday morning was also a good idea – in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose – and was on the beach at 9am to run the Bronte-Bondi return trip. This is nothing short of a miracle for three reasons:

1. It was a Saturday morning, and the night before I had drunk the lions’ share of two bottles of wine at Greg’s house. By rights, I should have slept till noon.
2. I hate running. I consider it the most tedious, least rewarding form of exercise known to man.
3. It’s exercise. Enough said.

40 minutes and 8 kilometres later I was in the sea, splashing about and swimming around in the swell. No one is at liberty to remind me I said this, but it was actually one of the most refreshing and invigorating ways to start the weekend. I went home, stretched out and felt fantastic, if a little sore. (There was also the added bonus of feeling virtuous despite eating a chocolate brownie at the MCA Cafe on my blind date. I seldom regret eating food, but it’s always good when you feel like you deserve a treat, don’t you think?)

So, my goal this year is to be thin and fabulous for my sister’s wedding in October. I figure ten months of running around a rugby pitch (including, potentially, the chance to play in the Bingham Cup in June) should do wonders for my waistline. Now all I need is some sunshine for a decent tan. Sadly, it seems that is just too much to ask.

Prepare yourselves for a laugh: I joined the rugby team.  Now, before you fall off your seat in hysterics, let me explain.  I haven’t played a game and certainly don’t imagine I’ll be doing so for a long while yet; I’m only training with the team; it’s an excellent way to keep fit and complements my gym regime nicely (how much agression can you really burn off in a pilates class, eh?); and it turns out that I’m not as bad as I expected.

After meeting the players at the Mardi Gras, they all got very excited about my being tall and set about convincing James to persuade me to join.  Chalk another one up for being a giant.  The Sydney Convicts meet every Thursday evening and last weekend I finally cracked, bought myself some boots and a gumshield, and promised to give it a proper try.  (My reasoning is that, having spent money on kit, I am now more inclined to stick at it.)  Turns out I absolutely love it.

“I want to be on that team”
For a start, we train on the same ground as the Woollahra Colleagues who are, to a man, the hottest rugby club I have ever seen.  Nothing makes you want to try that bit harder than thirty of the sexiest men in the world training just on the next pitch.  (Shallow, yes, but motivational: I lifted our futon up three flights of stairs on my own because a hot neighbour was following me up the stairs.  I’m sure he was very impressed with my machismo.)

Training started with a gentle game of ‘touch‘.  I planned to keep a low profile and, based on my memory of rugby at school – where glory-hungry rugger nutters would hog the ball and never let it out of the midfield – I thought that the end of the line was a good place to hang out and lie low.  Curse it all and be damned if the ball didn’t end up coming to me the entire time.  Fortunately I was marked by James, who either (a) underestimated me or (b) gave me an easy ride, and I managed to slip past him over and over again for five magnificent tries.  Not a bad start, I think.

“Seven minutes of pain”
Following the touch rugby hi-jinks we were treated to the mandatory fitness training, referred to by many as the “seven minutes of pain”.  My word, was it ever.  Who knew that you could cripple yourself in less time than it takes to boil an egg?  Press-ups, sit-ups, sprints and bunny hops; I kept up with the actual workout but my recovery is so poor that I spent the next ten minutes lying flat on the grass wondering whether a stomach crunch could cause internal bleeding.  It can’t, but it sure felt like it could.

After that, it was an intense hour-and-a-half of rugby skills training.  Running and passing, communication skills and my personal favourite, tackling the fuck out a big man with pads on.  Who knew I would enjoy racing into a man full pelt, grabbing him by the legs and trying to throw him to the ground?  (So I’ve had a few Saturday nights like that, but who hasn’t?)  I couldn’t get enough; I was a man possessed.  Despite being exhausted by the end, I was still disappointed when they finally called time.  I shouldn’t have worried: there was plenty more to come.

“For the new guys, and the backs, this is a maul.”
Essentially, a maul is a fifteen-man pile-on.  The tactical advantage of a maul is that the ball remains in play and you can move it up the field whilst confusing your opponents with its actual location.  When you see it in action, you wouldn’t know any of this though: it’s just a clusterfuck with studs on.  Again, I started with a certain degree of trepidation (there were tactics to learn, after all, like how to get the ball out of the arms of twenty men twice your size) but soon enough Sven “Bloodlust” McCarthy was in there with his head on someone else’s waist, driving him forward like his life depended on it.  My foot was trampled, at one point I was completely off the ground, and more than once I was trapped in the maul despite being off-side, obviously not in possession of the ball, and fifty feet from the action.  By the end of it all, I was worn out, limping, and ready for more.

I’m convinced that two hours of exhausting exercise in the cool autumn air was the straw that broke my immune system; I spent all weekend in my pyjamas when I should have been drinking cocktails, but it was totally worth it.  So what if the force of running into a guy twice my size over and over again made my shoulders ache like rheumatism in the winter?  Who cares if every cough and sneeze made my stomach muscles scream for mercy.  The minute I can breathe again without hacking up the phlegmmy lining of my lungs I shall be straight back out there.

Seven minutes of pain, indeed.  SVEN minutes of pain, more like.  Bring it.

Sveny has been a bad blogger lately, partly because he has been super busy, partly because Mardi Gras totally fucked with his sleeping/eating/working routine (and we all know how much he likes a good routine) and partly because he’s been in a funk about not having a permanent job/trying to set up interviews with people for his non-permanent job.  It’s a lifestyle choice, I guess: why have one job when you can stress about not having two?  That’s the way I roll.

Anyhow, to make up for my utter shiteness at bloggity blogging, I know you are all gagging to hear about the gayest day of the year, so here is a run down of my timetable to fabulousness and beyond, where beyond involves rolling in at 4.30am pissed as a bugger with some mysterious dusty dirt all over my shoes.

9.30am: Wake up.  For some reason I decided that it was a good idea to stay up until 1.30am on Friday night watching Jerry Maguire.  Let me state for the record: that film does not improve either late at night or with subsequent viewings.  Oh, and the Deaf guy doesn’t even say “you complete me”: he signs “you make my heart whole” which is (a) even cheesier, and (b) not really proper sign language since it follows a very English structure.  But that’s not for here.  Still, waking up at 9.30am is not as bad as waking up at 9.30am with a hangover, which I avoided by not drinking very much the night before.  Yes, that means I chose to stay up and watch Jerry Maguire sober.  No, I don’t know what I was thinking, either.

11.30am: Head out to prepare the float.  Two hours after getting up James and I were dressed and ready to get our gay on.  Fortunately, our date with sticky tape and astroturf was only five minutes walk away, so we left late and still arrived early because as you know, gays are always late for everything.  A few weeks ago, James joined the Sydney Convicts – Australia’s premier gay rugby team and current holders of the Bingham Cup – so for our first Mardi Gras, we got to march with them near the front of the parade and lap it up.  Yes, we are jammy bastards, especially with the queue-jumping powers of the rugby shirts when it came to getting into the Midnight Shift.  The Convicts plan for the float this year: a mobile rugby pitch.  Eight rolls of green electrical tape and $1000-worth of astroturf later:

Ta da! One mobile rugby pitch!

I would like it on the record that Belly and I (don’t you love Rugby names) did the doors, bonnet and front panels, which I sure you can appreciate are the trickiest parts to cover.  Still, it looks cool, no?  We were all finished by 2.30pm, and then the big green truck was whisked away to have a massive speaker system and spotlight fitted, because it ain’t no party without no disco in the back, now is it?

2.30pm: Those of us not going to get the ute pimped up hit Dan Murphy’s (the discount liquor stroe of champions) before going home to get changed.  One hour and a bottle of cheap champagne later, I was ready to hit the town.

I made the pom poms myself!

4.30pm: James and I arrived at Midnight Shift.  On the way there we were stopped by strangers who wanted to take our photo.  As sponsors of the rugby team, we got into the Shift for free and had a few drinks (not free) before cutting through the crowd and then marching down the parade route back to the start and our waiting turf-mobile.  The crowd were cheering, we were laughing and I got a text from a friend to say that he had spotted me on the Channel 9 news! 

6.30pm: Lock down for the parade.  Everyone who is marching in the parade has to stay in the holding pen from 6.30pm until the start of the march.  Sam, Stuart and I all got busted by a marshal for breaking out to go to the toilet, but he let us back in when we told him our sorry tale about being directed to the wrong toilet by someone else.  Toilets at the Mardi Gras are an experience worth mentioning: I’ve never used an outdoor urinal in front of 20,000 other people before, but there’s not time for stage fright because there’s a queue of gays behind you who all need to toilet, like, yesterday, and since I think we pushed in the line (“we’re in the march, yeah?”) you just have to breathe deep and get on with it.  Or not so deep, actually: urinals smell.  Back at the truck we had a punch mixed up in sports bottles and enough nervous energy to keep us all occupied (“let’s have a jumping competition!”); not to mention 170-odd floats to have a look around.  The sun set at around 8pm and before we knew it, the march was off.

8.30pm: Mardi Gras march.  I have never had such fun in all my life.  The crowd were screaming, waving, shouting, dancing, you name it.  In front and behind as far as the eye could see there were lights, glitter, floats, dancing, drag, pom poms, balls, boys, girls, cameras and flashes.  The march itself was only 2.5km but it took us about an hour-and-a-half to finish, and all the way there I waved, danced, jumped and ran.  It’s so weird: people you don’t know roaring for attention, appreciation and encouragement.  If you waved at them, they hollered for you.  If you posed for them, they snapped you.  If you cheered for them, they loved you.  It’s hard to describe the energy, but by the end I just wanted to run around and do it all again.  All my photos were crap, but it was the fastest and most fun hour-and-a-half of my life.

A look back down the crowd

10.30pm: Back to the Shift.  Being near the front, we were back in the bar before the rest of the parade had finished, and we drank and drank and drank.  The rest of the night is a little hazy after this point – there was some pool, some drinks, some dancing, some drinks, some more pool, some more drinks.  There was Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand, and more dancing.  James disappeared at midnight and never came back.  I stumbled home around 4am (ostensibly having trekked through some flowerbeds, given the state of my shoes) to find Jim having a party of his own on the balcony with a bottle of sparkling wine.  I fell into bed pretty soon after, and if I dreamed anything it wasn’t worth remembering.  What could possibly beat a day like that?