This photo of Michael was taken by Terri on July 3, 1984 at The Jag Club in East Hampton on Long Island.

When I ended the last blog post, Michael had gone into the hotel with his British friends and left Terri, Jess, Jackie, and I standing in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn in Rockville Centre, NY. We got into the car so we could find a fast-food place and grab something to eat. On the way out, Jess and I got out of the car and made sure there wasn’t anyone from INXS in the bar and there wasn’t.

There still wasn’t anyone from the band in the bar when we came back so we sat down outside for a while. Danny, the old-guy bartender from the other night, wasn’t working so we didn’t have him to talk to. 

Eventually, Michael came back down and went to the bar. That’s when we decided to go inside and sit down at a table. Michael was sitting next to Vance, the INXS roadie. The two of them were sitting on the left side of the bar so they did not have their backs to us. I was sitting in a spot at the table where I was facing the bar, so I was looking in Michael and Vance’s direction. 

Vance the Australian Roadie for INXS

I watched Vance talking to Michael and from time to time, Vance would turn his head and smile at me. After a while, Vance got up from his seat and came over to our table to talk to me. He sat down and we had a conversation. I wasn’t going to be rude and tell him to go away or anything. For my part of the conversation, I talked about what life was like in America and that I had to work so I could pay for college. He told me he got into the music business when he was 19. Vance had a very optimistic view of things and told me that if I wanted to do something then I should do it. I heard from him that Australia is the best country in the world and that he wouldn’t be back there until October or November because of the tour.

Then he asked if I had any drugs with me and he asked if I ever smoked pot. I told him that I didn’t have any drugs. I’ve already mentioned in other blog posts that my friends and I weren’t illicit drug users. My friends didn’t usually drink either because they were driving while I sometimes had a drink when the bartenders were lax and didn’t check ID. Legally, I was too young at 19. Jackie was still in high school. Terri was too young at 20. Only Jess was 21 and allowed to drink alcohol.

I told Vance that I smoked pot once in a while but that was a massive exaggeration. Marijuana was another thing I decided I didn’t like after I had tried it a couple of times. But I didn’t want to say that and look uncool. Vance asked me if I wanted to go up to his room with him to smoke pot. To me that sounded more like an invitation to have sex with him, and I didn’t want to have sex or smoke pot so I said I wasn’t sure, and I would think about it. That was my way of saying no without saying no. Rejecting a man can be a dangerous thing so it’s often best to do it in a way that doesn’t seem like rejection. Vance told me he was in room 599 and then he left and went to his room.

William the Roadie for The Stray Cats

Once he was gone, I ordered a drink at the bar- a drink I knew of as a Southern Belle. It was a drink made with Southern Comfort, Amaretto, and pineapple juice- very sweet. These days the drink is known as a Hawaiian Hooker. 

After Vance left, we talked to the guy named William. That was probably how we found out that he was a roadie for The Stray Cats. I don’t remember much about the conversation. My diary says that William told Terri that she wasn’t pretty but that she had interesting features. He should have kept that to himself. 

While we were talking to William, Vance came back; I think it was to check on me. But first Vance and William made jokes about sex because Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” was playing on the jukebox. The actual jokes went unrecorded in my diary probably because they were tacky and gross.

Vance again

Vance invited me up to his room again and this time I said, “I don’t think so.” He left the bar and didn’t come back again. Michael was still sitting at the bar in the same spot. While I was finishing my drink, I saw Michael look over at me a couple of times. Kirk had not come down to the bar, so we were thinking about leaving for home. 

Saying goodbye to drunk Michael

Terri wanted to wait a little longer because she said that a drunk Michael saying goodnight was something else. I think what she meant by that was that Michael was extra friendly and liked to kiss people when he was drunk. Terri had enjoyed a previous experience of saying goodnight to drunk Michael. Must have been one of the times when I was not there in 1983. 

The Ant Shirt

When we got up to leave, Michael came over to us and we told him we were leaving. Michael was wearing a white shirt with bugs on it. I asked him, “Are those cockroaches?” and he said, “No, ants.”

This video of INXS performing “I Send A Message” on television in 1983 shows Michael wearing the shirt. The lighting is good, so it is easy to see the pocket on the shirt.

We were standing around talking about what Michael was wearing and someone asked him about his shoes. He said something about his feet, and I said, “Oh! is that what they’re called? Feet! I’ll have to remember that.” I was trying to be funny by pretending I had no idea what feet were, and it seemed like Michael thought it was funny. Then he told us that he had to wear braces on his feet when he was young because he couldn’t walk right. Back then I took everything he said at face value and what I am writing here is what Michael said. But it turns out that what he said was often fabricated, embellished, exaggerated, a lie, bullshit, or whatever you want to call it. 

Michael’s Hair

Terri just loved Michael’s hair a lot and I think she was the one who took the opportunity to touch his hair. Then Jackie and Jess also touched his hair. I did not have a crush on Michael or his hair like so many girls and women did. To me he seemed kind of dumb, kind of crazy, and kind of a jerk and I didn’t think he was as good-looking as Jon Farriss, Kirk Pengilly, or Garry Gary Beers. He was kind of cute sometimes. 

But I thought I should play along and touch his hair while also showing my disdain for what my friends and I were doing. So, I grabbed a strand of hair from near his shoulder, taking it between my thumb and my index finger at the bottom of the strand, and I rubbed it between my fingers once before letting it go. Like whoop-de-doo it’s hair. 

Michael doesn’t feel like sleeping

After that, we announced we were leaving. Michael kissed Terri on the cheek and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. We were about to walk away but then Michael said to all of us, “Would you like to come up to my room? I don’t feel like sleeping.” So, the four of us looked at each other and we all seemed fine with it, so we accepted his invitation. It was a friendly invitation, and it didn’t sound the slightest bit sexual.

Cigarette machine

Before we went up to his room, we had to find change for the cigarette machine so Michael could buy cigarettes. William threw some change down on a table. The cigarette machine was just outside the entrance to the bar. I was feeling tipsy and silly because of the drink I had. Michael stood in front of the cigarette machine looking at the choices and I stood there next to him. It was taking him a long time to decide so I said, “I vote for Marlboro Lights”, and he responded, “Oh, you vote, do you?”  

Finally, he pulled the knob and a pack of Vantage cigarettes came out. As you can see from the photo, the graphic on the package looks like a bullseye, so I said we could use the package for archery practice. That led Michael to ask if he had mentioned archery earlier (when he was drunk in the parking lot), and I told them that he had talked about archery. Have you ever met a chatty five-year-old who wanted to have a conversation with you and show you his toys? That’s what Michael was like sometimes. 

This is how children and teens could buy cigarettes back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Funny video of how to use a cigarette machine. 

Going Up to the Fifth Floor

Now that the cigarettes were bought, we had to make our way to an elevator. While I was walking behind Michael, I imitated the way he was walking. He was quite peculiar back then- he was like a fairy from another planet and he often seemed to be prancing on the balls of his feet. I stopped imitating him when we all got to the elevator.

Once we got in, Michael slid down the wall and sat on the floor. When the elevator got to the fifth floor, he was able to get up. We weren’t sure he would. The corridor we walked down was open on one side- the rooms were all on the left and the night air was to the right. Michael stopped at a door and started to open it (the door was unlocked) and we were all ready to follow him inside but when he opened the door halfway, I could see there were people inside. He realized it wasn’t his room, so he shut the door. I didn’t think to look at the room number to see if it was Vance’s room. It’s bothered me since because I’m wondering if he made a mistake or if he opened the door to that room on purpose so the people in there could see that I was with him. Because who knows what Michael and Vance were talking about in the bar.

Michael’s hotel room

Michael was in room 589. The room had a low dresser and a desk on the left wall as you walked in and two double beds on the right wall. There was a nightstand between the two beds and the bathroom was on the right past where the beds were. We looked around and saw that Michael’s belongings were strewn around on top of the dresser and the desk. I described the room as messy in my diary. 

All five of us sat down on the beds. I sat on the bed closest to the door right up against the nightstand. Michael sat in the same spot on the other bed. When I sat down, I looked at what was on the nightstand and that’s when I saw the gun. It was a toy gun made of black plastic and there were several one-inch white, hard-plastic bullets on the nightstand with it. 

Michael’s gun

In those days, I would do whatever I needed to do to protect myself and I didn’t trust Michael Hutchence so I discreetly scooped up those loose bullets and put them in the pocket of my shorts so he wouldn’t be able to shoot more bullets than what was already in the gun. They looked dangerous. 

I was wearing Bermuda shorts and a light gray top that was slightly cropped. It was boxy but fit very tightly around my shoulders-it had been very difficult to put my arms through the armholes when I put it on that day. It was not revealing.

Michael picked up the gun from the nightstand and shot it towards the dresser a couple of times. The bullets looked like they had a high velocity. It looked like it would hurt to be hit by one and I was thinking about that when I said, “I wonder what it would feel like to be shot by one of those bullets?” Michael immediately put the gun against my knee and said, “Do you want to find out?” I quite adamantly said, “No!” He immediately changed his tone from being mischievous to being all sensitive and caring. “I would never do that. I would never hurt you”, he said, really emphasizing “never.” It was weird.

Nick Cave

Also on the nightstand was a Polaroid picture of Michael wearing a t-shirt with a guy’s face on it. I asked him who was the guy on the t-shirt in the photo, and he said it was Nick Cave who was the singer for The Birthday Party. I’d never heard of either of them. According to Michael, Nick Cave was a friend of his. He said, “He’s a genius and a heroin addict but we have fun together.” 

I think it was a Polaroid from a photo shoot for Star Hits. A picture of Michael Hutchence wearing a Nick Cave t-shirt appeared in the October 1984 issue. Star Hits was a short-lived American version of the British music magazine Smash Hits. They produced the magazine in New York City which was where INXS was at this time. It makes sense that the band would have done promotional work like this while they were in town. 

The Birthday Party

Michael got up and grabbed his Sony Walkman. The cassette tape in the Walkman was Junkyard by The Birthday Party. He offered it to Jackie so she could listen to it. Then when Jackie was done, I put on the headphones and listened for a minute. The song was Dead Joe which has something of a fast, hardcore-punk sound. I nodded my head slightly in time with the fast beat. It just so happened that I listened to one of the few songs I like. 

Wikipedia article about the Sony Walkman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman

Dead Joe by the Birthday Party

Michael’s family

My friends and I started getting Michael’s life story as he brought out different items he had with him. He had at least two watches with him. One was a watch that his father had given to him. “This was one of the first thin watches”, he told us. We saw a family photo from when he was ten. I think he told us the story about his sister Tina being a go-go dancer. It’s not in my diary but I knew that story long before I ever read about it in any of the books that came out after his death. We were in his room for at least two hours so there was a lot of ground covered in that time and I didn’t write it all down.

Michael’s girlfriend

Michele, Michael’s girlfriend in Australia, became a topic of conversation. Michael wanted us to be impressed by her, I think. He showed us a wallet-sized photo of the two of them together. We were told it was taken when “she was 16 and still a virgin.” Which was wild to me because Michele and Michael were topless. They were embracing and their chests were touching so that Michele’s breasts were not visible. Their faces were turned towards the camera. It was a different pose from a similar photo that was published in “Just A Man”, the book by Michael’s mother and sister that came out after his death.

Michael kissed the photo and exclaimed, “I love her!” and said, “she’s very intelligent.” He told us that she knew how to speak Mandarin and I said, “Wow, she speaks Chinese?” We heard that she was in “The One Thing” video but that she didn’t like to do that sort of thing. So, she was too cool for music videos, and she was so smart that she could speak Chinese. 

In “The One Thing” video, Michele is the woman sitting between Kirk and Garry Gary. 

Michael’s net worth

There was a leather folio lying on one of the beds and it looked like it was there because Michael had been looking at it earlier. The folio was like something a lawyer would carry to hold documents-it looked fancy. Michael picked it up and asked us if we wanted to see how much he was worth. I was studying at the Wharton School of Finance (Michael Hutchence didn’t know that) and I had already taken a financial accounting class, so I said, “Sure!” It would have been interesting to me as a real-life example of finance. He changed his mind about showing us right after I said yes. I asked, “Is that your portfolio of investments?” Michael seemed amused that I used that lingo. 

Michael’s book purchases

Next, he pulled out a couple of books he had bought, maybe to try to show me that he wasn’t stupid. My diary does not say the titles of the books probably because it was something I thought I would remember forever. That’s a problem now because there are some key bits of information that I cannot recall no matter how hard I try. 

Anyway, Michael pulled out a slim book written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I looked at it and said “Wow, Dostoyevsky!” Jess looked at it and said, “I can’t even pronounce that!” The book was likely “Notes from Underground”, but it could have been “The Gambler.” There’s no way based on the size of the book that it was “Crime and Punishment” or “The Brothers Karamazov.” 

Jean Paul Sartre and Existentialism

Then he pulled out a book by Jean Paul Sartre. I’m pretty sure it was one of the three novels from The Roads to Freedom series. It was not one of the two books I had read- “Nausea” or Sartre’s autobiography “The Words.” I saw the Sartre book and got all excited because I loved books. Books were holy to me. I was waving my arm, pointing, and going ooh, ooh, ooh. “I just read Nausea!!” After hearing that, Michael came toward me and hugged me while saying, “This could be true love!” Both of us had been standing when he was showing us the books.

It was back to sitting on the beds after that and Michael and I talked about existentialism for a bit. What I wrote in my diary was that Michael said he used to be into existentialism but now he thought it might be silly, so he wasn’t into it anymore. The way he described existentialism was more like mindfulness. He moved is foot forward and said, “Now I’m doing this” and then he moved his foot back while saying, “And now I’m doing this.” I laughed and said, “yeah.” Because there is an element of what he described in existentialist philosophy. 

I also told Michael that I had read “The Words” by Jean Paul Sartre and told him what it was about and that it was good. 

Around this time, I got up to use the bathroom. Later, after we had left, I heard that while I was in the bathroom, Michael started telling Jess, Terri and Jackie that he liked me. He said, “I like Donna. She’s lovely.” Things got weirder from there.

Smoking

When I came back, I sat down on the bed opposite of the one Michael was sitting on. He had the pack of cigarettes he bought in the chest pocket of his shirt. I wanted to smoke a cigarette, so I reached over and took the pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket without asking first. That caused Michael to say to me, “You’re wonderful.” 

Terri was upset and said, “Since when do you smoke?” and I said, “For a while now.” Back when I was smoking clove cigarettes in school, I mentioned it to Terri, and she said that I had better not start smoking or else. She was correct that smoking is a terrible habit, and no one should do it but that didn’t stop me. I had not been smoking while at home for the summer because I would have had to hide it from my mother, and it wasn’t worth the trouble. It wasn’t an addiction for me yet.

Michael asked me if I smoked because I needed to do something with my fingers and I said yes. His question made me think that one of the reasons he smoked was to keep his hands busy. He told me that I shouldn’t smoke so I didn’t open the pack of cigarettes and put it down. Maybe on the nightstand where earlier I had discreetly removed the plastic bullets from my pocket and put them back where I found them.

It was a surprise when Michael declared that if he was president, he would make cigarettes and alcohol illegal. He said it was hypocritical for those things to be legal when other drugs were illegal and that they both killed a lot of people.  

I don’t remember the conversation that followed except that I said I thought hypocrisy was a basic trait of mankind and you had to expect hypocritical behavior from people but that religious people were the worst hypocrites.

My friends were part of the conversations, but I don’t remember much of what they said. My diary is largely about me so…but I did write things down about them here and there. 

Staring and smirking

Things were getting to a point where every time I looked over towards Michael, he was looking at me, but I’ll get back to that. 

There was this one conversation that we were all participating in, and I can’t remember what it was about except it was about something mundane, some everyday kind of activity. First Terri said something and whatever it was made Michael start smirking. I could tell that he was turning her words into something sexual; either about the first time she had sex or the last time she had sex when there was nothing sexual about them. Then Jess said something about the same subject, and he smirked some more. Same thing when Jackie spoke. My turn came and I looked at Michael, shook my head, and then mouthed the word no. I was not going to fall for that shit. 

Girls jumping on stage

Terri brought up what happened at the concert at Radio City Music Hall where the one girl jumped up on stage and grabbed him more than once. At first, he said he didn’t mind and that there was nothing he could do about it. We hated it when girls did that stuff because it’s rude and it messes up the show and we said so. After that Michael said that he had wanted to tell her to fuck off. She was pinching his ass, but he still felt he wasn’t allowed to do it. 

I told the story about what happened to us on the night before the Radio City show when we hit a pothole on the way home and how I used my belt to tie the oil pan up so it didn’t scrape the ground and we could drive home. Michael said I was clever. 

Sometime during the hours, we spent with him Michael yelled “Jackie Muthafucka” very loudly at Jackie. He was doing an imitation of an American inner-city black man. 

Flying planes

It’s possible that INXS thought we were rich because they saw us in so many places, but we were economizing in many of the same ways that they were. We shared hotel rooms or just drove back and forth from New Jersey and split the gas and toll expenses. Terri and I both had jobs. Jess and Terri had economy cars and I had no car because their parents were well-off compared to mine. I was lower middle class, and they were more like regular middle class or upper middle class. We shopped in New York City sometimes, but it was to find bargains on clothes. No expensive designer stuff for us.

But I think that was why Michael asked us if any of us knew how to fly an airplane. He said he wanted to learn how to be a pilot. The answer from us was no. I said to him that I didn’t think I was allowed to fly a plane because my eyesight was very bad. My impression was that there were restrictions for people who did not have 20-20 vision. I told Michael that I was wearing contact lenses and he looked into my eyes. When I said that I was afraid I would go blind someday, he looked very sad and said, “Don’t say that!” which I thought was weird. Then he said, “You can’t go blind” like that would be a tragedy for him so right away I told him, “Don’t worry, I won’t go blind” just to make him feel better and so he could stop being weird. 

The conversation got around to my job as a waitress at the Emerson Hotel. Whenever I mentioned the Emerson Hotel to someone who didn’t know the place, I said that it’s not a hotel, it’s a restaurant and I said that to Michael. I said it was on Emerson Road in Emerson, New Jersey. He repeated, “Emerson, Emerson, Emerson” like he was trying to memorize it and he said he would come visit me at work. 

Graveyards

I also talked about my love for the Old City neighborhood in Philadelphia. When I was in the city for school I liked to go down there and look around. The burial ground of Christ Church is where Benjamin Franklin is buried. I liked to hang out in that graveyard and when I said that Michael said “Wow, you like graveyards?” He looked and sounded smitten. 

More staring

Around this time is when I noticed once again that when I looked his way, he was staring at me. I thought, “You want to stare? I can stare!”- like a staring contest but I didn’t know I was about to make a big mistake. As many, many people have said, Michael Hutchence could be quite mesmerizing so staring at him was not the smart thing to do. But I did it. Because I intended a staring contest, I stared back at him for a long time and then it had the effect that he wanted it to have. I started smiling at him. And then I got up and sat next to him on the other bed.

Attempted seduction

My friends now had to watch as Michael and I ignored them and focused on each other. I asked him, “Besides the Birthday Party, what are you into?” My desire was to get to know more about him. He answered, “You.” His desire was to seduce me. It’s hard to know if he had asked me if I had ever had a tan during this time or if it had happened earlier in the evening. But I see that now as “negging.” My skin was very pale and maybe he thought I was insecure about it but unfortunately for him, I was not an insecure person. Inexperienced was more like it which worked in his favor too, but not as well as insecurity would have.

Michael’s approach to seducing me was like a pick-up artist. He flattered me and laid it on thick. He said he loved me and that I was sweet, gorgeous, and he told me, “You understand things.” I said to him something like, “Gee, I’m flattered.” Not because I felt flattered but because he was obviously trying to flatter me, and I was trying to be polite. When he saw that I wasn’t buying it, he said, “You probably think I’m throwing you a bush but I’m not. I mean it.” The way he said it was like he really did mean the compliments he was giving me. But still, for me, it was hard to believe. 

Kissing in front of my friends

The flattery wasn’t working so next he whispered in my ear, “Give me a kiss.” And that worked on me. I turned and looked at him and I gave him a kiss. When I gave him another kiss he put his tongue in my mouth. It was very enjoyable, so we made out for a while. I stopped a couple of times to catch my breath. After the second time I put my hand underneath his hair and held the back of his head while we kissed. 

My poor friends. Michael was getting out of control. He started stroking my inner thigh and he grabbed my shirt and started tugging on the side it. He then grabbed the neck of the shirt and pulled it towards him while trying to stick his other hand down the front of my shirt. It was then that I smacked his hands off me and told him to “cut it out!” I realized that this had all just happened right in front of my friends and it seemed like he would have had sex with me right in front of them if I had not stopped him. 

Trying to get me to stay

After I stopped him, he basically told all of us that he wanted to make love to me. I looked at my watch and I no longer remember what time it was exactly but it sometime between 3:30am and 5am. So, I told him that I couldn’t because I had to be at work in a few hours and we still had to drive back to New Jersey. 

My friend Jess suggested that I call out sick and stay. She had the idea that they could pick me up in East Hampton. Michael jumped all over that idea and said that I could stay and then ride on the tour bus to the show in East Hampton and meet up with my friends there. I said that I would get fired if I didn’t go to work.

Michael suggested that my friends could sleep in one bed and that he was willing to have one guest in his bed-he meant me, of course-and he said that we wouldn’t do anything; we would just sleep. I insisted that I had to go home. He said, “It’s okay, I understand.” The way he said that bothered me-like he was a great guy for being so understanding. It was like he was giving me permission to go home.

He offered to give Terri some cocaine to help her stay awake for the ride home. We never saw the drug because Terri immediately declined. While we were in Michael’s room with him, nobody drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or did drugs of any kind. 

Telling us what to wear

Now that it was clear that we were going to leave, the talk turned to clothes. Michael said, “Two years from now, I’m going to see you in a club in New York City. You will be wearing a tight, metallic, 50’s style dress that is down to your knees, and you are going to look unbelievable.” Then he told me that I should go to New York City and buy the dress on Broadway. I guess that was where the band shopped for clothes. He told Terri that she would look good in a cheap, black suit. 

Time to leave

It was time to leave so Michael hugged Terri, Jess, and Jackie and they left the room. Michael wanted to know if my parents were the reason why I wasn’t staying and I said, “No, it’s my friends.” It was a lot more complicated than that but throwing my friends under the bus was the easy thing to do at the time. 

We kissed a little more, but I was too distracted to enjoy it because Jess was yelling, “What about Kirk?” and Terri was yelling something too and I was worried about them waking up the other hotel guests. 

Michael asked, “Will I see you again?” and I said yes. “Maybe” would have been a more honest answer because he was really asking if I would sleep with him in the future and I was going to consider it. Technically speaking, what I said wasn’t a lie because I already had plans to go to more INXS concerts and he did “see” me. He kissed me again and called me “smiley”. Before I left, he took my hand in his and bent down and kissed the back of my hand and then he said, “I want to ravish you.” I think I laughed and told him I had to go. And then I walked out of his hotel room and met up with my friends.

I felt about bad about what happened. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would be rude enough to ignore my friends and then make out with a guy right in front of them. I didn’t want to be that kind of person either. In the car, Jackie told me that she would have done the same thing if she had been in my place.