I’d love you to meet this exemplary couple,
swinging and sexy and very well liked.
Here in a suburb where values quintuple
over thirty plus years and they still haven’t spiked.

Our lucky two bathed in gold adulations
(golden as sun-ripened corn on the cob)
poets would offer them book dedications:
For North Carlton’s finest, Ali and Bob.

Both had won medals when they obtained their degrees,
they seemed immune to the snigger and scoff.
Their boys’ names arose out of excellent pedigrees:
Dustin from Hoffman and Gough after Gough.

Allison, Robert held drink-till-you-burst nights,
both played around although both returned home.
Footy ’n’  demos ’n’ La Mama first nights,
you do, as the cliché says, when you’re in Rome.

An architect, Bob possessed mighty dimensions:
a proud blooming afro, a grand frontal lobe.
He designed half of North Carlton’s extensions.
She lectured in ethics, out at La Trobe.

Long haired, even featured, an absolute Ali
(is it any wonder she looked like McGraw?)
On their sun deck each summer how Bob’s loins would rally
at the sight of his missus, spread out in the raw.

Their pleasuring rated A plus (and I kid not).
When the urge turned to threesomes though Ali got stoned.
It sort of worked once but most times it did not,
such acts seemed mechanical, non-comfort-zoned.

Sure Ali was patient with Bob’s peccadillos,
she thought them, and then turned explosive in bed,
and uttered, as they stared from opposite pillows
these very first words coming into her head:

‘Two decades of marriage,’ (that sounded amazing!)
‘and a girl gets, well, notions as she starts to slow.
You’re my main repast so I’ll only be grazing,
but I’m after the big one Bob, I have to know.’

‘Please hunt out amours whilst your spouse remains maison’d,
there’s Eddie, there’s Freddie, there’s Gilbert ’n’ Gabe . . .’
On his full beaming grin Bob’s words seemed emblazoned.
‘If Baby feels happy I’m happy for Babe.’

Ali mused to herself: ‘You’ve just crossed that first bridge.’
The second and third proved far more than she hoped.
For Tristram was chosen, the satyr of Hurstbridge,
the full sexist boor how he ogled and groped.

Not that his body was flaccid or putrid,
his goods were delivered with heft of an axe.
Never before was she this Kama Sutra’d,
so home the wife drove to deliver the facts.

‘Mon-Tues-Wed-Thurs-Fri, whatever the day be
I’m here . . .’ her man bleated. She felt like a grub.
‘But weekends are my times for lovin’ you Baby . . .
yeah well see you later, I’m off to the pub.’

Bob’s mates were protective, they counselled ‘Quit mopin’’
So the pendulum swung back to full raging shock:
‘If our marriage is open I don’t mean this open,
I can’t stand that deadshit, his brains or his cock!’

Whole blocks caught the grind of this marital mincer
with its venomous churn through the four a.m. peace,
requiring a movement, which movement turned pincer,
as neighbours on all sides called forth the police.

In the wagon they both cried ‘It’s off to the piggery!
Who’ll bail us out? Let’s ask Dustin and Gough.
What a fine place to perform jiggy-jiggery!’
And that’s where the cops found ’em, getting it off.

Dustin kept sneering ‘Go suck a tablet.’
Gough hectored and lectured as each hung their head:
‘You embarrass us more than a Carey or Ablett.
We put you on notice. Now go to your bed!’

Dustin was criminal (no need to hide it)
he skirted those haunts where the Carlton Crew thrive.
You name the drug the lad probably tried it,
he was pockmarked and sallow and yet still alive.

‘I’ll turn out,’ Gough fancied, ‘an ace merchant banker
and when politics beckons let’s run for the Libs!’
‘Dumb cunt,’ his dad grunted, ‘smart arse, yuppie wanker.’
Mum’s mode was more pre-school: ‘Now stop telling fibs.’

And for solacing tracks Ali put on The Seekers
whilst later, by contrast, Bob grooved to The Fugs.
So their boys became two motivational speakers,
what self-gratifyingly filial-thugs:

‘From now on we’re nuking,’ they bellowed, ‘these tumours.
For two lifetimes long we’ve a-hummed and a-hemmed.
You know the rumours, our parents are ’boomers,
both fatuous phonies and THEY ARE CONDEMNED!’

Was this the result of his sons’ condemnation:
their father recoiling ‘What moi undersexed?’
But the quack with his monotoned bedside oration
told something had blossomed. And Robert was hexed.

For the whole universe was chomping his prostate,
‘And Babe here’s’ he told her, ‘the aspect that galls:
why in the past day of kilos I’ve lost eight?
’cause adios comrade, it’s gone to me balls!’

Just after Lorne they would scatter his ashes
with sighs to the elements, muses and fates.
There were painters and punters and dopeheads with stashes,
three current lovers and unending mates.

There was Jimmo and Timmo and Kimmo and Simmo
plying the widow with grief overload.
Gough hadn’t hired he had bought a stretch limo,
and thus they returned up the Great Ocean Road.

*

Control-freaking Dustin’s a prime mega-locust,
there in his penthouse he peddles his ice.
When you’re a dealer ya gotta be focused
(each year he remembers Mum, at the most twice).

‘Father, that dickhead, thought I was bluffing.
North Carlton?’ Gough sneers, ‘what an out ’n’ hole.’
From his Double Bay villa behold it is nothing
jetting in Gran for her baby-sit role.

And needing at this time no bloke to seduce her
(though options stay open, we’ll see where that ends)
Ali’s turned into the widow of Noosa
with her new and evolving collection of friends.

Like this Ozlit emeritus calling her ‘Matey’,
as their reading group ploughs on through trash and through bard.
She sure brings the best out in chaps over eighty,
whilst he swaps his Tranter for her Kierkegaard.

Or that cutesy barista who blurts without stalling:
‘You’re what side of sixty? Geez y’look grouse.’
Making Allison’s day as she spends it recalling
how she rooted North Carlton, though mostly her spouse.