Shades of Groucho Marx: the gang wasn’t really a gang, and I wasn’t really a member. Then, when Butch’s offsider got himself a big Ducati, he became the Somedunce Kid, and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang was born. In 85 or 86, Cassidy traded in his Yamaha bike for a Harley, and Mal at the Bamboo Bar re-christened him “Butch”. Cassidy wasn’t even his real name they called him that because he was a hairy old hippie and obsessed with the Beat poets. And in the usual convoluted way of things, the Wellington Hole-in-the-Wall Gang came about because of a bloke called Cassidy. The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang are all dead now.Īnd if you know where that line comes from, you probably should be too! Spoiler alert: it’s from a dumb old movie called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is Danby’s winning story, titled ‘Fire all of your guns, fly off into space’.
Steve Danby just won the overall prize in the short fiction contest that Peter Wells established when he founded the Samesame but Different festival, celebrating LGBTQI+ writers during Auckland Pride.
