Why The Hos Love Ricky Rose
By Juliet Osborne.
Who is Ricky Rose? Well he’s fictitious. His real name is something less impressive but his reality, his effect, is the same as someone whose name would have to be… Ricky Rose.
Ricky Rose is desire, a lust, a crush, a shag, a mistake, a love affair, a heart break. Ricky Rose is a musician; a 24-year-old rock star on the local stage of Australia’s live music scene. He’s many things to many people. In fact, you probably know your very own Ricky Rose, if you’re a girl you might have fantasised about him, if you’re a guy… you might have fantasised about him. He’s just one of those annoying people who everyone likes and yet, hates at the same time. He is a self-destructive, aggressive, aloof, soft, charismatic, affectionate and, underlyingly, lonely young man.
This incident really started to make me reconsider the role of sex in my life, in the lives of young Australians. Is sex now a form of currency that the young trade amongst each other in an ever-demeaning fashion? Are we simply chalking up lines and crossing them off?
So I get Ricky’s number from Carly and call him up to convince him that he is a story and that he should let me interview him. He was happy to talk to me anonymously and, I suspect, brag about his conquests.
Getting in the back of the car that picked me up for the interview, I was surprised to see Ricky already in the front seat sipping a beer. But I couldn’t get a good look at this supposed sex symbol; his hair was big and black and did a very good job of concealing his face. His arms were strong and hairless and his hands made the beer seem like a midget in their grasp.
I’d heard from other people that Ricky was an Emo. Ricky wasn’t exactly the type-cast Emo - skinny and androgenous, no, Ricky obviously went to the gym. To fit that particular scene’s mould, however, he seemed intent on stuffing his rather impressive body into shrimpy little t-shirts and, he admitted with red cheeks, girl’s jeans! Yes if you didn’t know, it’s true! Those dudes getting round in jeans that suck to their calves and drop well bellow their non-existent hips are buying from the girl’s rack.
To be honest, I was going into this interview quite biased as I don’t like womanisers. But I wanted him to be honest, I wanted to know why girls, who were just as aware of his reputation as I, still end up in his bed. So I made a quick stop at the bottle shop and bought him his desired six-pack of Woodstock and Colas, to get him nice and honest.
“I’m involved in a very small scene, which consists of only a few nightclubs and a few live venues,” he told me. Taking a big slurp from his oversize can he went on, “the scene isn’t small, there’s lots of kids involved but it just feels small because our comfort zone, these few clubs, are full of the same sort of people every week.”
The idea that they were all the same was interesting to me. When I asked Ricky how important it was to maintain a certain image, he said it was integral. He offered his own example.
“I wasn’t always so popular with girls. A couple of years ago I had a steady girlfriend and there weren’t really any offers for sex outside of that relationship. Then I started doing my hair differently, wearing make up and the offers for sex started coming in.”
Was it simply a matter of availability that made Ricky turn into a slut? He thinks not.
“I had two real bad relationships in a row, which certainly made me less sensitive towards girls. They treated me like crap and I’ve sort of hardened now and I hate this because I used to be a hopeless romantic but when I think of those relationships I just think ‘why bother, you’ll just get hurt again.’
“I really do wish I could return to that sort-of… innocence. You know, when you used to go on five or six dates, maybe a month or two before you ever even had sex. You know, got to know someone, got to care about someone. But now you can sleep with a chick on the first night.”
I ask about abstinence.
“When you’re drunk and fucked up on drugs, your emotions don’t really get much consideration and so you wake up and you’re just like, ‘fuck’.”
It seems totally clichéd to mention sex drugs and rock’n roll but seeing as though he brought it up, I had to ask about the relevance and prevalence of drugs on Ricky’s scene.
“I don’t know what you mean about relevance but prevalence, fuck yeah. It’s not unusual for people to be passing ‘round ecstasy crushed to snort or just being popped. A lot of people though are smoking ice or "crack" and that’s shit I won’t touch. People generally drink scotch and cokes, beer, and for the povos: goon and red bull. The other drugs going round are acid "LSD" and Ketamine "special K" but they’re not party drugs, that’s the kinda shit you wanna take at home where u hopefully wont do anything stupid. When magic mushroom season starts, then people delve into those as well.”
However, Ricky has his tried-and-true method for a good night out.
“My favourite thing is snorting half a pill then drinking a six pack of large scotch and cokes; that always promises a crazy night.”
Indeed I can see. We’ve only been talking for half an hour but, by now, Ricky’s clock is ticking. He’s got places to be and people to see. Tilting his head right back, holding the can of bourbon over his mouth, he wiggles the last precious drops of alcohol free from their aluminium cell and with one hand, crushes the empty can and tosses it at the bin. My eyes follow the can’s trajectory as it hits the bin’s side and drops to the floor just like the two before it. Turning around, I find Ricky’s already cracked his fourth Woody.
Ricky is now speaking with an urgency and fury. His way of showing love to his friends is to call them an F-ing c-nt. On the phone constantly, Ricky is lining up his night with some girls whom, he assures me, are “friends not fucks.” He speaks at them and over them, calling the chick an F-ING SLUT, to which I hear her scream back – C-NT!
It’s all love though. This is the energy and pace at which they talk to each other; inappropriate is their way of being familiar. Indeed the whole scene, as Ricky described it, seems pretty inappropriate.
Ricky told me how one time, he and the singer from his band had snorted half a pill each and were getting ready to go see these girls. They were young girls, he wouldn’t tell me exactly how old but they were in their teens. Ricky and the singer were heading out the door when the singer had a crisis of conscience. “What about my girlfriend?” the singer asked Ricky. To which he replied, “Look man, how many opportunities are you going to get to fuck a teeny-bopper?”
“And that was all it took to convince him - Just thinking about that now, really gets me down. It’s like I have two personalities and most of the time my conscience is so shocked it can’t take action to stop what I’m doing or saying.”
When I ask about how he meets such young girls, he speaks as though it’s obvious. “Oh they get into the bars, I mean most of them have tattoos, they wear the right clothes, you know, look a certain way and they just get in. There’s girls younger than 15 running around on a Saturday night and every week I see them drunk, high or both and they go home with guys in their twenties. Some guys don’t know their age but some definitely do.
Although not naïve, and certainly guilty of having used fake I.D. to get into pubs before my 18th birthday, I couldn’t believe that a 14-year-old girl could get into these places. But Ricky explained this.
“These girls know the bouncers, they know the band members. It has a lot to do with MySpace. MySpace has had a huge effect in introducing young girls to the scene.”
“MySpace makes you easily accessible to any young girls and is private and can let you talk and flirt with just about anybody through private messages. Its dangerous ‘cause it lets people in any age-group mingle, which leads to you know what. People wanna be able to talk and associate with people from their favourite bands and MySpace is a way for them to feel like they know the people in the local scene.”
I don’t want to raise the issue of statutory rape with him but I don’t know if he realises how serious an issue this underage sex thing is. But Ricky doesn’t try to excuse or justify his actions. In his next story though, I get some idea, of how it happens.
Ricky was telling me of his recent experience with a drug called Rush.
“I touched that shit for the first time, after I’d already had half a pill. You basically sniff it like you’re sniffing glue – it’s fucking rank. I was getting handed a tissue from this 16-year-old girl constantly and I guess I took too much. I went crazy, doing laps of this apartment, then passed out with a washing basket on my head, woke up, abused everyone and then went ultra nice. The people there said I had split personality disorder. I guess it was the mix of the rush, with the pill and alcohol. The next time I saw everyone I was sober and everyone that saw me couldn’t believe how chilled and nice I am – that’s drugs for you.”
It’s that story. It’s that story that made me understand why the girls in that scene love and want to be with Ricky Rose. He’s an artist. He’s extreme and unpredictable. Whilst he’s a promiscuous womaniser who mistreats girls, he treats himself far, far worse. He lives dangerously but never forces danger on other people. He’s furious but not aggressive, a charming arsehole who calls you a slut to your face so you know you’re his friend. What’s sad though, is that he’d probably give it all up to feel love. “I thought it was the life, fucking all these girls,” he said, “but it’s not really.”
