Somebody That I Used to Know by Bunkie King

Author:Bunkie King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, memoir, Australia, Bunkie King, Jack Thompson, ménage à trois, Scobie Malone, threesome, Australian cinema, sexual controversy, Leona King, Le King, unconventional relationship, Somebody That I Used to Know, Australia cinema, 1970s, threesome, alternative lifestyle, Andrew Denton
ISBN: 9781760069629
Publisher: Echo Publishing
Published: 2015-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

‘You’ll have to leave!’

I seem to follow the sun from the southern to the northern hemisphere. We spend two to four months living a very basic life on the farm, fetching water from the creek, cooking on log fires, milking the cow and riding horses. We bathe in crystal clear waters, read, talk and laugh, living with our toes in the dirt. Then we spend a few months filming in some interesting place, living in a world of privilege and pampering. The rest of the year we travel and visit people we know and respect.

It’s a wonderful life, but not my own. It’s Jack’s. He’s driving the bus and if we want to sit in the back seat then that’s OK. We are his very own band of gypsies. I actually take on the name ‘Gypsy’ for a while. Whenever he needs to travel for a film there is no question that his ‘girls’ will accompany him.

The emptiness of my life is brought home when we are invited to dine with Hollywood great Kirk Douglas. From his Beverley Hills address I anticipate an ostentatious mansion. Instead, the home of Kirk and Anne Douglas is a simple bungalow brimming with fresh flowers. When I’m alone with Anne I comment on their beauty and powerful perfume.

‘Kirk brings me flowers every week and has done all the years we’ve been married,’ she confides.

In the beginning he only bought a bunch at a time but over the years the amount increased, Anne explains. That is the most wonderful thing I can imagine. It is a romantic sparkle that has never been part of my life. When Jack brings flowers it is usually one bunch split between Le and myself and is generally done as a way of buying forgiveness.

I’m only 24, with an enviable exterior lifestyle, but a gaping hole where my heart should be. I have no money of my own, no career, no children, no house, no security. When it was obvious that his career was taking off, Jack had a solicitor friend from Brisbane help him set up a company. All his income goes straight into the company account, the only account we have. Jack is the sole signatory on the account. Jack makes all the decisions, I don’t even know if I own a share in the assets. We quarrel about my financial position and during one of my anxious protestations I exclaim, ‘And you don’t even have a will!’

In an attempt to appease me he has one made. When he shows it to me I state the obvious — it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. ‘You can easily change your will!’ I wouldn’t even know if he did.

He replies in a huff, throwing the document on the floor. ‘Nothing I do is good enough for you!’

The truth is I am scared. I have no financial security at all. We aren’t legally married, and, as there are two live-in women, I don’t even have de facto rights. Before my mother left for England she opened a passbook savings account for me.

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