ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Swanning around the sales department of The Advocate in his $99 off-the-rack suit, account coordinator Gavin Mole-Turner lets his stretched ear lobes jiggle and jangle with each flick of his head.
The 29-year-old was a latchkey kid from the start, who quickly grew up misunderstood and angry.
“I found solace in music,” said Gavin, who started here at The Advocate late last year.
“Part of the subculture, part of the nu-metal crowd I found myself in as a high schooler, was to get spacer earrings. That was then. Now people ask me if I regret getting them done, which I say I don’t. I don’t regret it.”
However, a pal of Gavin’s spoke with our reporters this afternoon. She painted a very different picture of his headspace back when he decided enough was enough and he pulled the spacers out for the last time.
The moment happened at a local music festival.
“It was at The Betoota Small Farm Field Days. Sneaky Sound System was playing at the night time disco after all the olds had gone home. I remember it clear as day,” she said.
“There we were just having a boogie, minding our own business, when some punk kids came up and locked a big heavy padlock through Gavin’s right earring. Then they ran off like cowards into the crowd. But poor Gav had this lump of metal locked to his head for hours – until we got home and his old man cut it off with a hacksaw,”
“It was pretty funny, though.”
When asked whether Gavin regrets getting the spacers, his pal said yes – and if he says he didn’t, he’s a liar.
More to come.
