Abbe May Deals With Aggressive Sexist Heckling

On the morning of our Sydney performance, I do a topless shoot with legendary photographer Tony Mott in support of the late, great Chrissie Amphlett 's I Touch Myself Project for breast health awareness. It is a private shoot with just myself, Tony, a fluffy cat who is the namesake of Missy Higgins and about 1400 people from Berlei. As I get in the Uber to return to my hotel I think "I enjoyed that." And why shouldn't I? Breasts are awesome.

A few days later at another NSW performance, after Peter Garrett & The Alter Egos finish a song, some seemingly body-less, male voice shouts “Show us ya tits!” anonymously and from the back of the room. It is a spray that feels aggressive, weird and out of place. It hangs in the air momentarily before we kick into the next song. The silence that envelopes the momentary aftermath of the heckling suggests the rest of the audience does not approve of this man's drunken request.

None of us really had time to think about what it meant in that moment so we continued on into the next song without addressing it. It was so out of place on this tour, so unexpected from the beautiful audience of such a politically progressive artist as Garrett.

It stays with me.

Keyboardist Rosa [Morgan] and I chat about it afterwards. I admire Rosa. Not only is she mindbogglingly talented  (I have no idea how she does what she does with that Nord) she is also intelligent, strong, big-hearted and wise. Rosa is good to have around. She is an exceptional musician. I tell her how I kept my head down when I heard it. It annoyed me and I found it unnerving.

It’s such a vulnerable place, the stage. I bet the show-us-ya-tits-man would say in his own defence that he was just making a joke. I suspect that somewhere not too far below his surface he knows that the effect of his heckling was unsettling and absurd in the setting. It was disrespectful. Show us ya tits? How 'bout we show you how to play Great White Shark or Dead Heart? What a dingbat. Does he even listen to Peter's lyrics?

We finish the tour in Melbourne on a Wednesday night. The hotel is smack bang in the middle of the CBD and I have a large balcony from which I can watch the buzzing streets below. I think about this great city and how I have been lucky to have had a great love here. I look back at the aftermath of when that great love fell apart, when I sought relief by drinking stupidly expensive Mezcal at Rice Queen with an actor friend and an off duty "Sex Witch". It's all flooding in now. I cannot ever forget that brutally intense time when I had that seizure at Enoteca on Gertrude while Bertie Blackman looked on in horror. I subsequently made the nurses laugh with my Sandra Bullock impersonations in the emergency ward of St. Vincents (I LOVE Sandra and I love nurses). I think about how this gothic city boasts such an impressive, world-class arts culture and remains down to earth and how I have spent ten years touring here and have never grown tired of it.

I look up to the sky, it is bright blue and does not match the chill in the air. I feel the tips of my left fingers. The callouses are harder and more pronounced after this tour as Peter Garret's guitarist. I randomly think of how I am so glad I am no longer a smoker. I inhale the crisp winter air and smile to myself. This has been a fun tour. I have learnt so much.