I was considering prostitution as a possible way out of my stultifying job as I lay awake at 3a.m. I had to get out of bed to at least make a call to say I would not be in to work at the casino. I put the radio on, listening to the fragrant sounds of Islamic worship and considered my blasphemous options. I am not sure if viagra was available in 2002; I think it probably was but if so the price was prohibitive. This caused me to rule out prostitution; as no matter what role one takes it is nice to show some interest. I also thought myself over the hill at the age of 35. My mind a storm of neuroses, I worried fruitlessly until I fell asleep. Not for the first time, I awoke having absented myself out of a job. I took out a pen and wrote my resignation.
I felt no sorrow at leaving; the casino had been an unfriendly place to work from the very start of the first day. This was not with out exception but was true of my entire time there. 4.00am starts dealing Caribbean Poker were not enriching my soul. (Except for when I could watch the sun mount the harbour bridge at dawn. In my 18 months in Sydney I never lost a tourist’s appreciation of the quay, or the city that had been spawned there.) Shifts swang from beginning in the middle of the night to the opposite end of the day, or night rather, this enhanced in me an already marked resemblance to an extra in a George A. Romero film.
I took to the employment pages and then the streets quickly. Without being a Calvinist about it, it seems appropriate that the job I found was as a de facto barman for a brothel. I was phoned by the casino a week after leaving there asking if I would be in to work again. I directed them to my letter and they found it during the call. By then I was no longer their employee but instead working at one of Sydney’s premier entertainment venues.
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