Sunday, March 30, 2008
some mother's son
Friday night, about eight. Or Eight-thirty. After a busy few hours I hit a lull. Drive up George Street, which I usually avoid, towards Circular Quay. Cabs are copping hails all around but I seem to have become invisible. Then, just past Wynyard Station, an arm. He ducks behind some mail boxes on his way to the car so I don't get to check him out properly until he gets into the front seat beside me. First impression, of a young clerk or some such, is completely wrong. In fact I don't know who this person is, he escapes all my casual categories. He is young, early twenties perhaps. Grossly over weight but in an unusual way - he seems lumpy, with strange protrusions all over his body, rather than the more typical rolly polly gathering of surplus flesh at the waist. The skin of his face is mottled purple and brown, and also seems afflicted by that same lumpiness. He's clutching two enormous bags of McDonald's takeaways and wants to go to Botany Road in Mascot. That peculiar odour or stench fills the car and my heart sinks. Is he going to eat all the way to Mascot? I don't think I can stand it if he does. It's not that I'm hungry myself, rather the opposite - I've just eaten a homemade sourdough roll with cheese and salami and tomato on it, followed by an apple, a crisp Fuji. Anyway, we're going round the block so I can head south again, he's sneaking a chip or two from one of the bags and I'm thinking, I don't care, for twenty bucks, it's not worth it. You're not allowed to eat in cabs, I say. Why don't you hop out, finish your meal, and catch another cab afterwards? I slow down next to one of the blue benches at the bus terminal but he isn't interested. No, no, he says, seemingly in a panic. I won't eat ... Then, abruptly, he goes to sleep, or seems to, with his eyes closed and his head leaning back against the headrest. Those huge greasy bags in his lap. Must have been the stress of possible eviction, I suppose. We mosey on down George Street, and towards the bottom he wakes up. I hear the furtive rustle of his fingers in the brown paper bags and then, slowly at first, but then shockingly fast, he begins again to eat, his head tilted to one side, tearing at the buns like a famished animal tearing at meat. He crams handfuls of chips into his mouth as well then, periodically, pauses to fumble in his pocket for his wallet. I realise that he's been doing this compulsively since he got in the cab, fumbling for his wallet I mean, which usually signals an anxiety about paying. He has money though, I've seen the corner of a fifty dollar note poking out. We're going down Elizabeth Street now, through Surry Hills and into Waterloo and suddenly I can't stand it any more. Listen, mate, I say, I told you, no eating in the cab, ok? Just put it away and wait until you get home, alright? I realise I sound quite stern, I'm using the voice I use to tell my kids off. He reacts in the same abject way as before ... sorry, sorry ... crumpling up the tops of the bags and replacing them on his lap. I feel bad but I feel good as well, or at least, relieved. There's only one further piece of conversation, when he mistakenly suggests I should be turning into O'Riordan Street, not Botany Road. Then the ride is over. Or is it? He can't find his wallet. He's getting really distressed. He climbs out of the cab and I turn the internal light on. There are woody chips all over the floor and he starts to sweep them out onto the road with his hands. But no wallet. I look across his seat, spy a corner of yellow paper poking up on the other side and reach across to pluck it. It's that fifty dollar note I saw before, damp and slightly greasy from his fingers. Is fifty alright? he says, beseechingly. Is that enough? There's only eighteen and a bit dollars on the meter but I, cravenly, feeling really awful - but why not? - say, Yeah, fifty dollars is fine. I look over into the back seat and there, on the floor, beside another chip container, amongst more spilled chips, is his wallet. I give it to him. And the chip container. Thank you, he mumbles, thank you ... as if I've done him some huge favour. He shambles off into the night and I roar away myself, almost weeping at the spectacle this ruined person has made of himself, while also trying to rationalise the implications of my own predatory behaviour and at the same time clear the clammy, disgusting, miasmic atmos in the cab by opening all the windows and driving at speed through the dark and deserted streets of Zetland. But it can't have worked because my next fare, a thin-lipped, stitched-up-looking, possibly Kiwi, lawyer's receptionist who I pick up in Flinders Street, halfway to Mosman says: I've got to get something to eat. Can you pull into the McDonald's on Military Road? To the drive-through. She manages not to eat her Super Cheeseburger Meal or drink her Coke until after I drop her off but again I have to try to clear the car of the Macca miasma and it isn't until I'm hailed by a genial drunk holding up a lamppost in Crows Nest and ask him that I'm finally sure that I don't smell like a travelling advertisement for malign, malnourishing, horribly addictive shit burgers and salty chips made out of woody grease.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Bloody tears flow
A cab-driving friend is off to NZ for ten days so he asks me to drive his shifts for him. He's got a new boss, Alex, who was his old boss, years ago, and thinks that it might be a good idea for me to work for Alex too. I'm running out of money so I say yes. Then I learn that the balance of an award, not due until June, can be paid early. It's too late, I'm committed. Then Alex rings up and says I can have the car for the whole weekend. I don't want to but he's very persuasive and there's the future to consider ...
Near Central Station I pick up a big guy wearing shorts, with suitcases. He wants to go up to the Country trains, he's going away somewhere, doesn't know where. He'll decide when he gets there. Half way to the trains he changes his mind, wants to go to the airport instead. Maybe I'm on the run, he jokes. You don't look stressed enough, I say, but I wonder. He doesn't even decide which terminal to go to until he sees the signs outside. T2. Virgin. Maybe he's been reading The Diceman I think but he doesn't look like the kind of guy you could have that sort of conversation with. Affable but sort of ... disinterested.
Somewhere in Bronte, about 8 pm, I pick up a young bloke who looks like a chippie. He's talking to another fellow outside an office building in a quiet suburban street. Turns out this was his counseller, he's been at an out patient's clinic, five weeks ago he quit a $1000 a day coke and alcohol habit. $30,000 a month, he says. Lost his business, his job. Lost everything except his wife and 7 month old son. We talk about addiction, its various and destructive parameters. When he gets out I steal a look at him. 29? early 30s? He doesn't look old enough to have been so badly down. And five weeks is such a short time. I fear from him but what can I do? Good luck, I say. It sounds like a hopeless thing to say.
On Oxford Street, about midnight, I'm hailed by a big bald guy wearing only blue shorty pyjamas with some kind of figure on them. This looks like a totally weird situation, what with all the clubbers and revellers milling around outside the Burdekin, but it isn't, he's actually hailing me for his friend, a diminutive Irish woman from Galway with one of those soft, lilting voices that make you want to weep with joy. Shorty pyjamas goes back into his apartment building and I take her up to the Cross. Her partner is a writer, she says, he's trying to finish his book. He's changed all the names but everyone will know who he is, she says, he's such a funny man, so wicked in his descriptions and he doesn't spare himself, either, to be sure. I envy this man back in Galway with his unfinished and perhaps unfinishable book.
It's the next day, Friday. I pick up a startling beautiful Swedish woman in Bondi. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed. She's dressed in a blue checked shirt and white shorts, as if going hiking, but she wants to go to the Establishment Bar, where the Corporates go to unwind after their week of money-making exertions. I'm dropping her off in Bridge Street when a woman hails me. Then she spends ages in conversation with some guy in the street who wants to come too. At the same time someone's trying to get me to open the boot but I don't, I don't know who he is. Turns out he's her husband to be and the other guy just a blow in. All three get in. The blow in is drunk and stupid and loud but he's only going a few blocks. Soon as he gets out the Bridenista starts in on her husband to be. The wedding's soon, they've spent a grand on invites, which the Post Office has gone and lost. So they have to email everybody. She's in a state of high anxiety, verbally precise, unstoppable, unremitting. He fields her demands with quite incredible good humour for about nine-tenths of the ride then starts to lose it. She doesn't stop. I'm thinking: this is clearly a mistake, they should call the wedding off but manage not to say so. They're going to Harold Park raceway of all places, to the trots. We get there, he pays, skedaddles, I breath a sigh of relief - but she doesn't move. She sits in the back, applying her mascara. I want to say something cutting to her but I don't, I wait, finally she goes, and I decide to head down to Glebe Point for a smoke. On the way I see someone I used to be with, she's walking home, she seems ... different. There's no way I could stop and say hello. I realise I'm not handling the stress as well as I think I am.
Then, much later, there's a woman who tells me in gory detail about her nephew in Auckland who died of bone disappearing disease, it's super rare, one in a billion, your bones are just consumed from within, he went in 8 months from a normal 17 year old kid to a wise old man of 18. None of the wounds from any of the treatment, exploratory or surgical, ever healed. She moves on to her husband's heart attack, Good Friday, two years ago. He survived but she's not sure if she has. She works for News Limited. I don't know what I'm doing she says, again and again, I'm right back where I started from. I tried something else but it didn't work out. I've never worked for anyone except Rupert. Cracking wise, but with a tremble of tears in her voice the whole time. Nobody knows, she says, how to spell the names of the celebrities who obsess us. It's her job to check but every time she does, half a dozen alternatives pop up on Google.
On the Bondi Junction rank, Saturday arvo, two kids, maybe immigrant kids. Well turned out but no-one will take them. I'm about the fourth guy they ask and I say yes. Got any money? I ask. The one in the back holds up two fives. They're going to Cooper Park in Double Bay. I think a footie game but no, it's a fight. A fight!? Yeah, a year 8 against a year 9. Their guy is the year 8 and they reckon he's going mash the other guy. I ask if they use gloves? One says yes, the other no, but it's clearly going to be a bare knuckle scrap. What about a referee? If one falls down to the ground we pick him up, that's it, the kid in the front says. These kids are spooky - about twelve or thirteen, they already talk like twenty-five year olds, they got the language, they got the attitude. The gang are gathering by mobile phone, at the tennis courts. I tell them about my father, how he boxed at Uni, hung onto his gloves but never fought again. He teach you any moves? Punches? I say no, he was non-violent. Huh, says the kid in the front. Like it was an option only an idiot would take. When we get there, there's $5.50 on the meter. Can I just give you five? the kid in the back says. I say to the one in the front, who's little and thin and feisty: Don't get hurt. He grins and says: Nah ... I watch them walk away - the little one has such skinny legs it's heartbreaking. About the age of my elder son. But he doesn't need my concern.
Bondi on a blue afternoon looks like a future city. J. G. Ballard territory. Some doomed hedonism that still has decades to run. I pick up two Americans on the strand. Rich people, a young woman, an older man. She's been showing him the sights. He's Jewish, a New Yorker, sounds just like Woody Allen. That same self-deprecating humour. He launches into a long story about how his roommate at College was one of the guys who wrote Friends. A bad actor, a failed screenwriter, a loser. Somehow they came up with the Sit Com idea, which this guy, in the back, says they stole from him. Or at least, stole the title from him. His surname is Friend. That's where they got it from. He riffs on this for ages, without rancour. He's very funny. We're in Darling Point by now, I'm dropping off the woman at an apartment building but she doesn't know the address. She calls her friend. It's not Darling Point, it's Darlinghurst. I say: You said Darling Point but she says no, she didn't. Definitively. But without rancour. The rich are different from you and I.
I get into a fight with one of three young women I pick up in Leichhardt. It's about nothing but the air is suddenly full of poison. It's stupid and it's my fault, I've broken my first rule, which is never lose it with a fare. Two of them are okay but the third is really nasty. She's enjoying the bad feeling, it brings out some instinct, not just to triumph but to utterly annihilate your opponent. I manage to shut her up, at least insofar as I'm concerned, but for the whole ride to Darling Harbour I can feel her, right behind me, breathing hatred onto the back of my neck. When they get out she makes a big play of noting down the taxi number on her mobile phone. She'll make a complaint and the truth of the situation, whatever it is, won't enter into it. I drive off into the City but I've lost it, lost the vibe, lost my way, lost, lost ... been driving for three nights now, it's only 9.30 on Saturday, I could go for another five hours, make another three or four hundred bucks, the cab's mine for the whole of tomorrow (that is, today) for nothing, I could make a couple of hundred more but I just can't work out how to do it. I drive around aimlessly for a while then find a park in Castlereagh Street, pull over, get out, light a smoke. Then I realise I'm right outside the Church of Scientology. Jesus this is where I've ended up. My engrams are about as low as they can go. This is not a Tom Cruise moment. I see another lost soul mooching down the street, he peers in to the front office of the C of S but it must be closed, he can't get in. This is too sad. I decide to finish the cigarette in the car but I peer in myself as I'm leaving. An impression of yellow and brown, of curling pamphlets in wooden holders at the front desk. It's like looking into the 1950s. Not the 1950s I grew up in but the mouldy ScFi version I used to read about in the 1960s. Suddenly I can't tell the future from the past. Or either from the present. A feeling of complete horror comes over me. I remember what the I Ching said earlier today: Six at the top means: Horse and wagon part. Bloody tears flow. I'm shaking when I get going again, only just keeping horse and wagon together. Two blokes climb in the back at the lights, they look like gangsters but they're not, they're just ... blokes. George Street looks like Sodom and Gomorrah moments before the cosmic ray descends and vaporises everything. I drop the blokes outside the QVB and head over the Westlink to the carwash. I'm gone.
Near Central Station I pick up a big guy wearing shorts, with suitcases. He wants to go up to the Country trains, he's going away somewhere, doesn't know where. He'll decide when he gets there. Half way to the trains he changes his mind, wants to go to the airport instead. Maybe I'm on the run, he jokes. You don't look stressed enough, I say, but I wonder. He doesn't even decide which terminal to go to until he sees the signs outside. T2. Virgin. Maybe he's been reading The Diceman I think but he doesn't look like the kind of guy you could have that sort of conversation with. Affable but sort of ... disinterested.
Somewhere in Bronte, about 8 pm, I pick up a young bloke who looks like a chippie. He's talking to another fellow outside an office building in a quiet suburban street. Turns out this was his counseller, he's been at an out patient's clinic, five weeks ago he quit a $1000 a day coke and alcohol habit. $30,000 a month, he says. Lost his business, his job. Lost everything except his wife and 7 month old son. We talk about addiction, its various and destructive parameters. When he gets out I steal a look at him. 29? early 30s? He doesn't look old enough to have been so badly down. And five weeks is such a short time. I fear from him but what can I do? Good luck, I say. It sounds like a hopeless thing to say.
On Oxford Street, about midnight, I'm hailed by a big bald guy wearing only blue shorty pyjamas with some kind of figure on them. This looks like a totally weird situation, what with all the clubbers and revellers milling around outside the Burdekin, but it isn't, he's actually hailing me for his friend, a diminutive Irish woman from Galway with one of those soft, lilting voices that make you want to weep with joy. Shorty pyjamas goes back into his apartment building and I take her up to the Cross. Her partner is a writer, she says, he's trying to finish his book. He's changed all the names but everyone will know who he is, she says, he's such a funny man, so wicked in his descriptions and he doesn't spare himself, either, to be sure. I envy this man back in Galway with his unfinished and perhaps unfinishable book.
It's the next day, Friday. I pick up a startling beautiful Swedish woman in Bondi. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed. She's dressed in a blue checked shirt and white shorts, as if going hiking, but she wants to go to the Establishment Bar, where the Corporates go to unwind after their week of money-making exertions. I'm dropping her off in Bridge Street when a woman hails me. Then she spends ages in conversation with some guy in the street who wants to come too. At the same time someone's trying to get me to open the boot but I don't, I don't know who he is. Turns out he's her husband to be and the other guy just a blow in. All three get in. The blow in is drunk and stupid and loud but he's only going a few blocks. Soon as he gets out the Bridenista starts in on her husband to be. The wedding's soon, they've spent a grand on invites, which the Post Office has gone and lost. So they have to email everybody. She's in a state of high anxiety, verbally precise, unstoppable, unremitting. He fields her demands with quite incredible good humour for about nine-tenths of the ride then starts to lose it. She doesn't stop. I'm thinking: this is clearly a mistake, they should call the wedding off but manage not to say so. They're going to Harold Park raceway of all places, to the trots. We get there, he pays, skedaddles, I breath a sigh of relief - but she doesn't move. She sits in the back, applying her mascara. I want to say something cutting to her but I don't, I wait, finally she goes, and I decide to head down to Glebe Point for a smoke. On the way I see someone I used to be with, she's walking home, she seems ... different. There's no way I could stop and say hello. I realise I'm not handling the stress as well as I think I am.
Then, much later, there's a woman who tells me in gory detail about her nephew in Auckland who died of bone disappearing disease, it's super rare, one in a billion, your bones are just consumed from within, he went in 8 months from a normal 17 year old kid to a wise old man of 18. None of the wounds from any of the treatment, exploratory or surgical, ever healed. She moves on to her husband's heart attack, Good Friday, two years ago. He survived but she's not sure if she has. She works for News Limited. I don't know what I'm doing she says, again and again, I'm right back where I started from. I tried something else but it didn't work out. I've never worked for anyone except Rupert. Cracking wise, but with a tremble of tears in her voice the whole time. Nobody knows, she says, how to spell the names of the celebrities who obsess us. It's her job to check but every time she does, half a dozen alternatives pop up on Google.
On the Bondi Junction rank, Saturday arvo, two kids, maybe immigrant kids. Well turned out but no-one will take them. I'm about the fourth guy they ask and I say yes. Got any money? I ask. The one in the back holds up two fives. They're going to Cooper Park in Double Bay. I think a footie game but no, it's a fight. A fight!? Yeah, a year 8 against a year 9. Their guy is the year 8 and they reckon he's going mash the other guy. I ask if they use gloves? One says yes, the other no, but it's clearly going to be a bare knuckle scrap. What about a referee? If one falls down to the ground we pick him up, that's it, the kid in the front says. These kids are spooky - about twelve or thirteen, they already talk like twenty-five year olds, they got the language, they got the attitude. The gang are gathering by mobile phone, at the tennis courts. I tell them about my father, how he boxed at Uni, hung onto his gloves but never fought again. He teach you any moves? Punches? I say no, he was non-violent. Huh, says the kid in the front. Like it was an option only an idiot would take. When we get there, there's $5.50 on the meter. Can I just give you five? the kid in the back says. I say to the one in the front, who's little and thin and feisty: Don't get hurt. He grins and says: Nah ... I watch them walk away - the little one has such skinny legs it's heartbreaking. About the age of my elder son. But he doesn't need my concern.
Bondi on a blue afternoon looks like a future city. J. G. Ballard territory. Some doomed hedonism that still has decades to run. I pick up two Americans on the strand. Rich people, a young woman, an older man. She's been showing him the sights. He's Jewish, a New Yorker, sounds just like Woody Allen. That same self-deprecating humour. He launches into a long story about how his roommate at College was one of the guys who wrote Friends. A bad actor, a failed screenwriter, a loser. Somehow they came up with the Sit Com idea, which this guy, in the back, says they stole from him. Or at least, stole the title from him. His surname is Friend. That's where they got it from. He riffs on this for ages, without rancour. He's very funny. We're in Darling Point by now, I'm dropping off the woman at an apartment building but she doesn't know the address. She calls her friend. It's not Darling Point, it's Darlinghurst. I say: You said Darling Point but she says no, she didn't. Definitively. But without rancour. The rich are different from you and I.
I get into a fight with one of three young women I pick up in Leichhardt. It's about nothing but the air is suddenly full of poison. It's stupid and it's my fault, I've broken my first rule, which is never lose it with a fare. Two of them are okay but the third is really nasty. She's enjoying the bad feeling, it brings out some instinct, not just to triumph but to utterly annihilate your opponent. I manage to shut her up, at least insofar as I'm concerned, but for the whole ride to Darling Harbour I can feel her, right behind me, breathing hatred onto the back of my neck. When they get out she makes a big play of noting down the taxi number on her mobile phone. She'll make a complaint and the truth of the situation, whatever it is, won't enter into it. I drive off into the City but I've lost it, lost the vibe, lost my way, lost, lost ... been driving for three nights now, it's only 9.30 on Saturday, I could go for another five hours, make another three or four hundred bucks, the cab's mine for the whole of tomorrow (that is, today) for nothing, I could make a couple of hundred more but I just can't work out how to do it. I drive around aimlessly for a while then find a park in Castlereagh Street, pull over, get out, light a smoke. Then I realise I'm right outside the Church of Scientology. Jesus this is where I've ended up. My engrams are about as low as they can go. This is not a Tom Cruise moment. I see another lost soul mooching down the street, he peers in to the front office of the C of S but it must be closed, he can't get in. This is too sad. I decide to finish the cigarette in the car but I peer in myself as I'm leaving. An impression of yellow and brown, of curling pamphlets in wooden holders at the front desk. It's like looking into the 1950s. Not the 1950s I grew up in but the mouldy ScFi version I used to read about in the 1960s. Suddenly I can't tell the future from the past. Or either from the present. A feeling of complete horror comes over me. I remember what the I Ching said earlier today: Six at the top means: Horse and wagon part. Bloody tears flow. I'm shaking when I get going again, only just keeping horse and wagon together. Two blokes climb in the back at the lights, they look like gangsters but they're not, they're just ... blokes. George Street looks like Sodom and Gomorrah moments before the cosmic ray descends and vaporises everything. I drop the blokes outside the QVB and head over the Westlink to the carwash. I'm gone.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
east is east & west is west
Course things happen all the time when you drive a cab, & I'm always thinking, I must put that on the blog ... but then something else happens & I don't. Now I'm going to take a month off so there won't be any more anecdotage here for a while. Not that there's been much recently. But here's one, lucky last.
Was coming up Bathurst Street into the City late afternoon when a fellow hailed me on the corner of George Street. A working man, maybe in his 20s or 30s. He asked me how my day was & I said Fucked. Some cop had just written me out a ticket for stopping on a No Stopping zone. That's about a $180 fine, so the shift was gone. This bloke worked for a furniture removalist, knew all about cops & their stupid ways. So we had a good old whinge together.
He was going to Bondi, where he was living, but he actually grew up in the western suburbs, in Five Dock. I asked him how he liked living in the eastern suburbs? He said: It's fucked. I hate it. Hate the people. Then he told me this story. He was calling up a friend, a girl who was a friend, not his girl friend, to ask her if she wanted to come over for a root? He knew her well, knew she would not mind if he put it to her that way, bluntly, I guess; but next thing, he gets a tap on the shoulder from a woman standing behind him, who admonishes him for speaking in that manner in a public place.
Where were you? I asked. In a fish 'n' chip shop, he said.
Was coming up Bathurst Street into the City late afternoon when a fellow hailed me on the corner of George Street. A working man, maybe in his 20s or 30s. He asked me how my day was & I said Fucked. Some cop had just written me out a ticket for stopping on a No Stopping zone. That's about a $180 fine, so the shift was gone. This bloke worked for a furniture removalist, knew all about cops & their stupid ways. So we had a good old whinge together.
He was going to Bondi, where he was living, but he actually grew up in the western suburbs, in Five Dock. I asked him how he liked living in the eastern suburbs? He said: It's fucked. I hate it. Hate the people. Then he told me this story. He was calling up a friend, a girl who was a friend, not his girl friend, to ask her if she wanted to come over for a root? He knew her well, knew she would not mind if he put it to her that way, bluntly, I guess; but next thing, he gets a tap on the shoulder from a woman standing behind him, who admonishes him for speaking in that manner in a public place.
Where were you? I asked. In a fish 'n' chip shop, he said.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
apec-cectomy
Years ago I underwent a gruesome dental operation called an apicectomy (= a surgical procedure designed to remove infection or other pathology from around the end of the root of a tooth). Now, whenever I hear the acronymn APEC (about 10,000 per day at the mo'), I'm back in that dental chair having my jawbone scraped. I fainted under the anaesthetic and, coming back, had a weird out-of-body experience that almost compensated for the violence done to my jaw.
APEC, from the cab-driver's point of view, is a bit like the Y2K thang was: a lot of fuss in the lead up but, in the event, nothing much. Because there's a lot less traffic, and because there's clearways all through town, you can actually drive the streets like you used to be able to do here, oh, twenty years ago. Plus, lots of cabbies have taken the week off, so finding work is not a problem. I've been meeting my quota by nine or ten at night, at which point I joyfully sign off and go home. And avoiding the obscenity at the top of town, where cages have been built to keep the people a safe distance from Our Beloved Leaders.
Was home and hosed Tuesday night almost before Dubya's cavalcade came in from the airport. Yesterday, in the arvo, I picked up three sailors at Bondi Junction and took them up to their base in Randwick. Halfway thru' the ride the one in the front seat, who was eating spicy sausage sticks, mentioned casually that he'd met GB that day. Bush and Howard had been to the military base at Garden Island glad-handing the troops, as they are wont to do. What was he like? I asked. He was ok, the matelot said. He was pissed. His wife was nice. I said: He didn't bring his wife. Oh, well, said the sailor, the bird he was with then. Was she black? Nah. Cute though. I woulda given her one.
Earlier, dropping off three Hong Kong journalists at the Convention Centre in Darling Harbour, I got into a snip with a cop. There were barriers everywhere but a gap in the place where you usually drop off there, so that's where I stopped. This rozzer tapped on the door and made a wind-down-the-window sign. I complied. You can't stop here, he said. It's not a taxi stand.
This begged two questions: one, you're actually not meant to drop off on taxi stands, they're solely for picking up; two, the Chinese journo's were in the process of heaving themselves and their gear out of the cab, plus paying the fare, as we spoke. And they wanted a receipt. Was multi-tasking, change, receipt etc, with this cop whining in my ear: Are you listening to me? Listen to me. If I see you again, I'll write out a ticket. I'm thinking of writing out a ticket now. A bus had pulled up behind me, I knew the guy wasn't going to write out a ticket. I was empty, I could go ... except for him. I looked at him. He looked at me. With hatred. And defeat. He tapped again on the door and I scarpered.
Later on in Double Bay, some guy in a four wheel drive, thinking I was responsible for a delay in his very important life (I wasn't, it was an old lady illegally parking her Mercedes) called me a shit-box cabbie. Well, I was driving a shit-box, it was 1660, the worst cab, bar one, in Bob's little fleet.
Much later, about nine o'clock, I was hailed in King Street, Newtown by a rather svelte, handsome chap who might have been a bit Asian. He opened the back door then stood in the street, calling to someone across the road: Get in the car, Joanne. Get in the fucking car. I craned my neck, looking for Joanne. There was a girl in the door of the hardware store wearing trainers and a checked flannel shirt. Probably not Joanne. And then, further down, standing on the curb, an elegant woman dressed all in black. That was Joanne. And she wasn't getting into the cab.
The bloke told me to start the meter (I already had), then yelled out at her a few more times. She ignored him. He said: Ok, goodbye Joanne, and got in the cab. Chuck a uee, mate, he said. Waited for a break in the traffic and did. We pulled up next to the Joanne, he opened the door. A slight hesitation, then she got it. Tall, very thin, almost anorexically so. Blonde. American. She had a low voice and she was furious. With him. They were going to Merrylands. Where their marriage would end, either tonight or tomorrow morning, by the sound of it.
Mostly they sat in stony silence. There was Weird Folk on the radio, I turned it up. A bit of Karen Dalton. Blues on the Ceiling, kinda perfect in its way: I'll never get out of these blues alive / I'll never get out of this crazy blues alive ... Karen croaked. Joanne was delivering a few home truths: You treat your family like shit, she said. You have to learn to be truthful with yourself. Otherwise it's over. He was defensive, embarrassed, yet still brutal. Shut the fuck up, I heard him say. I wondered if she was afraid of him. Wondered if he was, or could become violent. The answers seemed to be no, no, and maybe.
It was a horrible ride. I couldn't help thinking of the last time I did it, with a drunk Montenegrin with no money, shadow boxing and shouting obscenities. What is it about Merrylands? We got there at last, pulled up outside the marital nest. She said: Would you mind waiting for a few moments while I get a couple of things? He said: Well, you pay him, then. She said: No, you pay him. And went. There was a beat. Alright I'll pay him, the guy muttered. How much is it? The meter had just turned over to fifty. Fifty bucks, I said, forgetting about the tolls. He gave me a fifty. Do me a favour, mate, he said. Just go, will you? Then he got out as well.
I waited. The meter was still running. Should I reset it or what? What was the right thing to do? I wasn't sure. After a while I turned the car around, switched the engine off and waited on the other side of the road. There was a better view of the house from there. A brick villa, recently built. Lights on in all the windows. Thought they were probably arguing but couldn't hear anything. No blows, or cries. Thought that if she'd really wanted me to stay, she wouldn't have got the guy to pay me. Thought I could wait out there for a long time, and nothing would happen. Thought ... it's none of my business anyway.
In the end I just drove away.
APEC, from the cab-driver's point of view, is a bit like the Y2K thang was: a lot of fuss in the lead up but, in the event, nothing much. Because there's a lot less traffic, and because there's clearways all through town, you can actually drive the streets like you used to be able to do here, oh, twenty years ago. Plus, lots of cabbies have taken the week off, so finding work is not a problem. I've been meeting my quota by nine or ten at night, at which point I joyfully sign off and go home. And avoiding the obscenity at the top of town, where cages have been built to keep the people a safe distance from Our Beloved Leaders.
Was home and hosed Tuesday night almost before Dubya's cavalcade came in from the airport. Yesterday, in the arvo, I picked up three sailors at Bondi Junction and took them up to their base in Randwick. Halfway thru' the ride the one in the front seat, who was eating spicy sausage sticks, mentioned casually that he'd met GB that day. Bush and Howard had been to the military base at Garden Island glad-handing the troops, as they are wont to do. What was he like? I asked. He was ok, the matelot said. He was pissed. His wife was nice. I said: He didn't bring his wife. Oh, well, said the sailor, the bird he was with then. Was she black? Nah. Cute though. I woulda given her one.
Earlier, dropping off three Hong Kong journalists at the Convention Centre in Darling Harbour, I got into a snip with a cop. There were barriers everywhere but a gap in the place where you usually drop off there, so that's where I stopped. This rozzer tapped on the door and made a wind-down-the-window sign. I complied. You can't stop here, he said. It's not a taxi stand.
This begged two questions: one, you're actually not meant to drop off on taxi stands, they're solely for picking up; two, the Chinese journo's were in the process of heaving themselves and their gear out of the cab, plus paying the fare, as we spoke. And they wanted a receipt. Was multi-tasking, change, receipt etc, with this cop whining in my ear: Are you listening to me? Listen to me. If I see you again, I'll write out a ticket. I'm thinking of writing out a ticket now. A bus had pulled up behind me, I knew the guy wasn't going to write out a ticket. I was empty, I could go ... except for him. I looked at him. He looked at me. With hatred. And defeat. He tapped again on the door and I scarpered.
Later on in Double Bay, some guy in a four wheel drive, thinking I was responsible for a delay in his very important life (I wasn't, it was an old lady illegally parking her Mercedes) called me a shit-box cabbie. Well, I was driving a shit-box, it was 1660, the worst cab, bar one, in Bob's little fleet.
Much later, about nine o'clock, I was hailed in King Street, Newtown by a rather svelte, handsome chap who might have been a bit Asian. He opened the back door then stood in the street, calling to someone across the road: Get in the car, Joanne. Get in the fucking car. I craned my neck, looking for Joanne. There was a girl in the door of the hardware store wearing trainers and a checked flannel shirt. Probably not Joanne. And then, further down, standing on the curb, an elegant woman dressed all in black. That was Joanne. And she wasn't getting into the cab.
The bloke told me to start the meter (I already had), then yelled out at her a few more times. She ignored him. He said: Ok, goodbye Joanne, and got in the cab. Chuck a uee, mate, he said. Waited for a break in the traffic and did. We pulled up next to the Joanne, he opened the door. A slight hesitation, then she got it. Tall, very thin, almost anorexically so. Blonde. American. She had a low voice and she was furious. With him. They were going to Merrylands. Where their marriage would end, either tonight or tomorrow morning, by the sound of it.
Mostly they sat in stony silence. There was Weird Folk on the radio, I turned it up. A bit of Karen Dalton. Blues on the Ceiling, kinda perfect in its way: I'll never get out of these blues alive / I'll never get out of this crazy blues alive ... Karen croaked. Joanne was delivering a few home truths: You treat your family like shit, she said. You have to learn to be truthful with yourself. Otherwise it's over. He was defensive, embarrassed, yet still brutal. Shut the fuck up, I heard him say. I wondered if she was afraid of him. Wondered if he was, or could become violent. The answers seemed to be no, no, and maybe.
It was a horrible ride. I couldn't help thinking of the last time I did it, with a drunk Montenegrin with no money, shadow boxing and shouting obscenities. What is it about Merrylands? We got there at last, pulled up outside the marital nest. She said: Would you mind waiting for a few moments while I get a couple of things? He said: Well, you pay him, then. She said: No, you pay him. And went. There was a beat. Alright I'll pay him, the guy muttered. How much is it? The meter had just turned over to fifty. Fifty bucks, I said, forgetting about the tolls. He gave me a fifty. Do me a favour, mate, he said. Just go, will you? Then he got out as well.
I waited. The meter was still running. Should I reset it or what? What was the right thing to do? I wasn't sure. After a while I turned the car around, switched the engine off and waited on the other side of the road. There was a better view of the house from there. A brick villa, recently built. Lights on in all the windows. Thought they were probably arguing but couldn't hear anything. No blows, or cries. Thought that if she'd really wanted me to stay, she wouldn't have got the guy to pay me. Thought I could wait out there for a long time, and nothing would happen. Thought ... it's none of my business anyway.
In the end I just drove away.
Friday, August 24, 2007
anonymity
A precise relationship with money is both a condition and a lesson. Perpetual. And ... intermittent. Last night, needed another $20.00. Never mind why. Was on the stand at Park Street, after 10 pm. One more ride, I thought. Two blokes from Melbourne, going up to the Travelodge in Kings X. Ten, max, probably less. It was seven. Drove through the strip, hoping I wouldn't get hailed. Hookers standing in the road, dealers, spruikers, punters, desperados everywhere. Just like me. In Wolloomooloo, pulled over for a stitched up looking fellow. Going to West Pennant Hills. Sixty bucks, maybe more. He was drunk. I demurred. You're just not fucking interested, are you!? he snarled, and slammed the door again. Well, no. On through the City, my usual haunts. Nothing. Market Street. Outside the QVB, a young chap, polite. Epping. Forty, fifty bucks. Didn't want to go to Epping. He was OK about it. Could see, up ahead, a couple, waving, frantic. Try them. Already a whiff of the familiar. Pulled up, thinking, yes, know these two. He was the younger brother of an old friend. A thirty five year old friendship. But we fell out, couple of years ago. Have seen each other since but the intimacy has gone. The brother is a public figure. Union official. Lefty. Heard him on the radio, just the other day. We've had Christmasses together, we've got drunk in each other's company, a few times. I looked him in the eye as he piled in the back seat. His wife after him. He didn't know me. Didn't look at me. Not really. Drunk, not wrecked. Functioning. There was a moment when I could have said, hey, it's me. Didn't. Weird. Heard all of their conversation, in the back, knowing far more than they would have thought I knew. Mostly about their kid. The logistics. Busy lives. She was going to have to pack two identical suitcases next day. One for the red car, one for the blue. Felt myself drifting, further and further out ... into anonymity. Nobody. Own fault. Coulda been someone, coulda been me. Going to Leichhardt, a tricky route, had to confirm it with him. Surely he'd know me now? No. Dropped them off in Catherine Street. He was very sincere, the union guy standing up for the working man, doing the right thing. Impeccable. I should have felt terrible but I felt ... nothing. Nothing that $14.80 wouldn't fix. Pulling into the servo, the radio offered a job to Padstow. Thirty, forty bucks. Didn't take it. Gassing up, a fellow came out with a pie and a drink. Going to Peakhurst. Ditto. Guess I just wanted to go home. Just wanted to be ... me. Not the cabbie me but the other one. This ... one.
Hallelujah I'm a Bum
One night last week I saw, at about 8.30 pm, on the busy corner of William & Palmer Streets, a fellow stretched out fast asleep on his back. He wore a beanie on his head and the nondescript clothes of a clochard. Next to him was an empty champagne glass and next to the glass was a bottle of champagne, whether full or empty I could not say. Next to that, tied up by a ratty piece of string to the hurricane wire fence overlooking the motorway, was his little dog, a silky cross. Waiting patiently, a little anxiously, for him to wake and their peripatesis to continue.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Driver's Docket
Was taking some fellow from Alexandria to Rozelle when the job came through. He was telling me about how he'd had a stroke during a kidney biopsy taken to try to work out why he had high blood pressure, when all the time it was sleep apnoea that was to blame. Now, as a result of the stroke, he was half blind and couldn't remember as many of the 5000 characters of Chinese writing as he used to. So I didn't clearly focus on the job and it was only when the operator called to ask if I had the details that I realised it was one of a kind I hadn't done before: payment by driver's docket.
It was a doctor's rooms up on Darling Street. No-one outside so I left the car in the street and went in. In the corner of the waiting room was a gent in a beret who looked like a Scotty. He was painfully slow, coming out of the room, along the corridor, out the front door, into the street, into the car. Various irate motorists bellowed on their horns but I felt justified in holding up the traffic by the evident disability of my fare. He took his time, too. Just before getting in, he pointed at the facade of the building across the road. There was a figure carved out of white stone at the apex of the arch, silhouetted against the evening sky. Who's that? he said. Athena, I replied, wondering if it was in fact her. Humph, he said. She has the attributes.
I've only got one leg and one hand and my wife's just left me, he announced when he was settled and we were on our way. With a kind of grim satisfaction. She's sick of looking after me. Says she wants some time to herself. There was a pause. It seemed I needed to say something. Where'd she go? I asked. To her brother's, he said. She comes back every morning to cook my breakfast and spends the whole day looking after me then goes home at midnight. She does more for me now than when she lived with me.
He was Irish not Scots and had recently returned from a visit to the ancestral home. It was everything you'd expect of Ireland, he said, describing a castle 350 years old from which the dust had never been cleared. Cobwebs hung from floor to ceiling and in the library the leather-bound, gold-spined books were thick with grime. My wife's a librarian, he said. She's going back to clean up all those old books. Worth a fortune. I looked sideways at him. He was expressionless. After she finishes leaving me, he said. When we've got the place set up so I can look after myself. It's not so hard. Mainly just things like tying my shoe laces. Things that need two hands.
Turned out he was a writer. Had been to Duntroon, the military academy, and had fought with the South Vietnamese Army - the ARVN - as an adviser during the Vietnam War. That's what his next book was to be about. Bryce Courtenay came to me, he said, and asked if he could write it. I said no. He said, come on, Michael, I'd do a better job than you. No, you won't, I said. Yes, I will, he said. I'd write it as fiction whereas you'll probably write it as non-fiction. Fiction outsells non-fiction ten to one.
He expatiated for a while upon the marketing genius of Mr. Courtenay then said: He gave me this book of his to read. Called Smoky Joe's Cafe. Wanted to know what I thought of it. I read it and told him I thought it was a load of rubbish. Not just the factual errors, the whole thing, he had the whole thing wrong, Vietnam wasn't like that at all. Well, next thing I know, I'm in a bookshop and it's on the best seller list! Everywhere I went, Smoky Joe's Cafe, a bestseller. It's still a load of rubbish though.
As with the news about his wife, this was delivered without acrimony, as of a curious fact about the world that I might or might not take notice of, as I wished. Was he aware of how amusing he was? I wasn't even sure of that, though reflection suggests he must have been. Anything I contributed to the conversation was listened to intently and then he went on with his tales as if nothing had been said. Telling me about the genealogy of his people and a graveyard out at Mudgee where many of them are buried.
I suppose I have to sign something, he said when I pulled into the drive of the house in Cremorne. He wrote M McDermott in a firm, rather ornate hand then began the labour of hauling himself out of the car. Was there the ghost of a smile on that otherwise grim mouth as he shuffled around the front of the car? I don't know; by then, I was busy giving the details of the fare to the operator, so I could get back from her the docket number, so I could get paid.
It was a doctor's rooms up on Darling Street. No-one outside so I left the car in the street and went in. In the corner of the waiting room was a gent in a beret who looked like a Scotty. He was painfully slow, coming out of the room, along the corridor, out the front door, into the street, into the car. Various irate motorists bellowed on their horns but I felt justified in holding up the traffic by the evident disability of my fare. He took his time, too. Just before getting in, he pointed at the facade of the building across the road. There was a figure carved out of white stone at the apex of the arch, silhouetted against the evening sky. Who's that? he said. Athena, I replied, wondering if it was in fact her. Humph, he said. She has the attributes.
I've only got one leg and one hand and my wife's just left me, he announced when he was settled and we were on our way. With a kind of grim satisfaction. She's sick of looking after me. Says she wants some time to herself. There was a pause. It seemed I needed to say something. Where'd she go? I asked. To her brother's, he said. She comes back every morning to cook my breakfast and spends the whole day looking after me then goes home at midnight. She does more for me now than when she lived with me.
He was Irish not Scots and had recently returned from a visit to the ancestral home. It was everything you'd expect of Ireland, he said, describing a castle 350 years old from which the dust had never been cleared. Cobwebs hung from floor to ceiling and in the library the leather-bound, gold-spined books were thick with grime. My wife's a librarian, he said. She's going back to clean up all those old books. Worth a fortune. I looked sideways at him. He was expressionless. After she finishes leaving me, he said. When we've got the place set up so I can look after myself. It's not so hard. Mainly just things like tying my shoe laces. Things that need two hands.
Turned out he was a writer. Had been to Duntroon, the military academy, and had fought with the South Vietnamese Army - the ARVN - as an adviser during the Vietnam War. That's what his next book was to be about. Bryce Courtenay came to me, he said, and asked if he could write it. I said no. He said, come on, Michael, I'd do a better job than you. No, you won't, I said. Yes, I will, he said. I'd write it as fiction whereas you'll probably write it as non-fiction. Fiction outsells non-fiction ten to one.
He expatiated for a while upon the marketing genius of Mr. Courtenay then said: He gave me this book of his to read. Called Smoky Joe's Cafe. Wanted to know what I thought of it. I read it and told him I thought it was a load of rubbish. Not just the factual errors, the whole thing, he had the whole thing wrong, Vietnam wasn't like that at all. Well, next thing I know, I'm in a bookshop and it's on the best seller list! Everywhere I went, Smoky Joe's Cafe, a bestseller. It's still a load of rubbish though.
As with the news about his wife, this was delivered without acrimony, as of a curious fact about the world that I might or might not take notice of, as I wished. Was he aware of how amusing he was? I wasn't even sure of that, though reflection suggests he must have been. Anything I contributed to the conversation was listened to intently and then he went on with his tales as if nothing had been said. Telling me about the genealogy of his people and a graveyard out at Mudgee where many of them are buried.
I suppose I have to sign something, he said when I pulled into the drive of the house in Cremorne. He wrote M McDermott in a firm, rather ornate hand then began the labour of hauling himself out of the car. Was there the ghost of a smile on that otherwise grim mouth as he shuffled around the front of the car? I don't know; by then, I was busy giving the details of the fare to the operator, so I could get back from her the docket number, so I could get paid.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
stupid dumb bastard
Last night I made one of those mistakes that, in this job, can be so costly. I'd earned my target amount, was gassed up, logged off, rolling through the Ashfield shops on my way back to base when a fellow hailed me ... and I stopped. Soon as I saw him lurch against the door as he tried to get in, I knew; but by then of course it was too late. My problem had become, how to get him out again. Parramatta, he said, rolling the rrrrrs and clipping the tttttts, like a Russian. He was about as drunk as you can be and still stand, or sit, upright. Clutching his phone. He made a call, speaking in his own language, which wasn't Russian, to a woman on the other end. Shouting, rather. The only word I knew, repeated several times, was taxi. He was trying, I realised later, to get her to agree to pay the fare at the other end. Didn't sound like she agreed. He finished the call then lurched over in my direction, trying to grab my arm. Shouting something. I eluded him by leaning away. He left his hand clasped on the back of my seat for a while. Forgotten, probably. What nationality are you!? That's what he was roaring. I told him. He couldn't process the information. You're not a wog? he dribbled. And then: You're white, like me. This seemed to be a satisfactory outcome. I asked him his nationality. Former Yugoslavia, he said. From Montenegro. A morlach from the black hills perhaps. Probably Serbian was the language he'd been speaking. He subsided into an alcoholic stupor as we drove up the Parramatta Road. He smelled sweet, as if he'd been drinking some peach or cherry or plum liqueur. Once we were on the M4, all of a sudden, he started bellowing and shadow-boxing. Get Fucked!! he yelled, very loud. Several times. Then he'd subside and sigh in a melancholy way. But he knew the way, he wasn't that drunk. I realised he probably didn't have any money when he started mumbling that he'd give me his phone number, I could call him tomorrow. By then I just wanted to get him home, get rid of him. I was driving too fast but I didn't care. My other worry was that he might try to grab the wheel. His directions, when they came, were slurred and shouted at the top of his voice. He could easily have become violent. Once we left the M4 he started saying I could come round to his house the next day for the money. I didn't want his address, I didn't want his phone number, I didn't want ever to see him again. We got to the street, pulled up, I stopped the meter, switched the light on. It was about forty dollars. He sat. You can get out now, I said. Where's my change? he said. There is no change, I said, because you haven't given me any money. You can get out now. I switched off the motor, kept my hand on the key in case it was me who had to bail. Suddenly he turned pathetic. What I doing? he said. Get out of the car, I said, the third time. I dumb, stupid bastard, he said. Stupid dumb bastard ... at long last he started to move. It took him an age to get out and he nearly fell as he tried to shut the door; then he almost jammed his fat fingers in. I watched him shamble off up the street, then started the car, chucked a Uee and left. It was about ten dollars in fuel and tolls to get the sad fuck home and me back to base, so I guess he left me out of pocket thirty bucks or so but I decided not to care about that. It was better just to be free of him. Later, when I was having a bite to eat, just as I set the wine glass to my lips for the first sip, that sweet disgusting odour of cherry brandy or whatever it was rose up and I was almost sick.
Friday, July 13, 2007
a whizz in the graveyard
There are very few places in the City where you can pee outside. I've seen a cabbie stopped in a lay-by on Southern Cross Drive peeing against a wall in full view (well, he had his back turned) of the enormous traffic shifting by; I've seen bottles of pee left in the dunny at Teacher's Car Wash, suggesting some drivers do it on the run; and I myself have peed in some strange places, including once against one of the north pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Usually I go to a pub - the Hero of Waterloo in The Rocks is a favourite, so is the Criterion on Park Street - or a Servo somewhere. The other night in Bondi I parked the cab confidently around the corner from one of my usual spots only to find the pub - what was it ever called? - no longer exists.
Last night I was in South Coogee, having dropped a young woman off at Maroubra Beach (and refused the pizza she wanted to give me), when I saw a bat fly through a row of big old trees like macrocarpa and thought: Yes! Here! I was busting, as the kids say. Parked the car and got out, only to be confronted by a working man going home with his duffel bag over his shoulder (it was late, 11.30 or so, and I was sure the street was deserted.) He was too tired even to look at me, so I scooted on towards the first tree.
Up the slope behind it was a wooden gate, leaning open, with what looked like a field behind it. In a field behind a gate is of course better even than round the back of a tree, so I climbed up and went through into ... a graveyard. It was the Randwick Cemetery in Malabar Road, I've seen it heaps of times up the other end, from Arden Street, but hadn't realised it came down this far.
There was the cold stillness you find in graveyards, the tipping stones, the land rising up towards a brief, carious horizon, beyond which the far stars trembled against the black. It was like suddenly entering another dimension, where the coordinates we use to navigate the streets and houses, people and their dreams, had vanished and all that was left was space and time and the tough grass and weeds that grow over stones. It was a distant corner I was in, old, disused and out of some vestigial feeling of respect, probably misplaced, I tried to memorise the names of the people upon whose bones I was peeing ... gone.
I left that place with a shiver and, though not exactly disquieted, I did notice I drove rather less recklessly and haphazardly than usual as, having decided not to seek any more work that night, I made my way back to base.
Last night I was in South Coogee, having dropped a young woman off at Maroubra Beach (and refused the pizza she wanted to give me), when I saw a bat fly through a row of big old trees like macrocarpa and thought: Yes! Here! I was busting, as the kids say. Parked the car and got out, only to be confronted by a working man going home with his duffel bag over his shoulder (it was late, 11.30 or so, and I was sure the street was deserted.) He was too tired even to look at me, so I scooted on towards the first tree.
Up the slope behind it was a wooden gate, leaning open, with what looked like a field behind it. In a field behind a gate is of course better even than round the back of a tree, so I climbed up and went through into ... a graveyard. It was the Randwick Cemetery in Malabar Road, I've seen it heaps of times up the other end, from Arden Street, but hadn't realised it came down this far.
There was the cold stillness you find in graveyards, the tipping stones, the land rising up towards a brief, carious horizon, beyond which the far stars trembled against the black. It was like suddenly entering another dimension, where the coordinates we use to navigate the streets and houses, people and their dreams, had vanished and all that was left was space and time and the tough grass and weeds that grow over stones. It was a distant corner I was in, old, disused and out of some vestigial feeling of respect, probably misplaced, I tried to memorise the names of the people upon whose bones I was peeing ... gone.
I left that place with a shiver and, though not exactly disquieted, I did notice I drove rather less recklessly and haphazardly than usual as, having decided not to seek any more work that night, I made my way back to base.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels / drive you crazy
Most nights out driving I forget what happens almost before it has happened ... then there are those other nights when it seems possible to remember everything, even those things that didn't quite happen ...
Thursday, when I pull into the Park Street rank at the beginning of my shift, a small round woman with a large head climbs into the front seat and a vaguely familiar, raffish fellow in a black trilby hat gets in the back: this is Stuart Shepherd, artist, stalwart of Red Mole days from New York in the 1980s. We belong to different eras of the Moles but crossed over once, in 199o, at the Belvoir Street Theatre here in Sydney during The Book of Life, which Stuart designed and appeared in, and I did the sound for. He's making a film with Amy, his friend in the front seat and a self-taught artist. The film is Amy Goes To Sydney and when I see them the next day at the Art Gallery of NSW, they are off that evening to the Newtown Hotel to interview some drag queens. Saturday, they visit a palmist in The Rocks before winging back to Wellington.
I take them up to where they're staying at the Challis Lodge in Challis Avenue in Potts Points and then pick up a radio job from Victoria Street to the City. A mother and daughter come out of the small hotel, heavily laden with gear and looking exasperated. Turns out the daughter is booked on a train to Queensland and they've been waiting an hour and half for a cab to come to the back entrance of the hotel. On the way to the station, I fill the daughter in on the vagaries of Silver Service, the allegedly elite branch that gets offered all the radio jobs first, and how many of the drivers just will not do short trips. Gradually she de-stresses and when, on Wentworth Avenue, The Eagles come on the radio, singing Take It Easy, she starts singing along. That's nice.
On the stand at Country Trains, the guy handling the taxis tells me that the roadworks are because the station is leaking in the heavy rain we've been having. There's a fellow there with a docket, wanting to go to Gordon, but he has to wait for the actual cab he's booked, otherwise Railcorp won't pay out. I try half-heartedly to convince him to go with me until I find out that the Bridge is jammed. The high winds we've also been having have blown part of a maintenance shield off the roof of a train, bringing down wires near the South Pylon and closing lane 1 ... the chaos will go on for hours so I'm very happy when a nurse from Moruya with a cabcharge form asks me to take her to Cronulla. She's a very nice woman, but reticent and a bit hidden the way country folk sometimes are. We discuss the right age at which kids should get mobile phones these days, she has a 12 year old and a 10 year old, both boys, and girl twins who're nearly 7. When she hops out, just for a moment, she turns full face towards me and smiles, and she's beautiful.
On the way back up Southern Cross Drive, outside a pub in Waterloo, I'm hailed at the lights by a couple of refugees, drinkers for sure. She's Polynesian and sits in the back and doesn't say much; he's an Aussie with one of those craters of the moon faces. Somehow we start talking about the American ship, the Kitty Hawk, that's in town after the exercises up in Queensland, and that leads onto Vietnam, where this guy served. In a transport and supplies division. He tells me various things I didn't know, for instance that the Army sent conscripts up there and kept most of their regular forces at home, and that most conscripts served for less than one year so that the Army didn't have to pay them a pension afterwards. In the midst of it all, completely unconscious of the reference, he says: I was only nineteen ... and I almost lose it.
They get off outside the Criterion in Park Street and, immediately, another couple get in, he in front, she in back. They're French and there's one of those weird and wonderful moments when I hear their language without being able to recognize what it is ... before it settles into something more familiar though still strange. He's wearing a black and white striped shirt and though a bit shambolic and overweight, has Gallic charm in spades, that elegance and insouciance that always makes me think of Apollinaire. He tells me the taxi drivers in Paris are the worst in the world and that Sydney's, by comparison, are high class. When he gets out to go and buy some wine I say to his companion that he's a very charming man and she agrees. She's older than him and the cask of wine he brings back is for her. I like these people very much.
Down the bottom of Devonshire Street I'm hailed by a woman going home from work, she lives in Wolloomooloo and knows an intricate way to get there but that's where the Kitty Hawk is tied up and I know it's hopeless. On the way I tell her about the French couple until, in a laneway between Riley and Crown, she gives up and decides to walk the rest of the way. Leaving me stuck in horrific traffic, not just sightseers for the ship but cars trying to get into the Harbour Tunnel because the Bridge is still jammed. I do a couple of cheeky manouevres and am rewarded when a young woman, an art student or something similar by the folio she's carrying, crosses through the traffic and gets in, wanting to go to North Bondi. She's English and seems ok at first but gradually some kind of class thing enters her voice and I feel bound to shut off.
After dropping her off I go up to the Junction and pick up a couple of Irish boys, from Waterford, and take them up to Randwick. They say Waterford boys love the Craick and will go on until there's not another man left standing. When they tell me that some Aussie in a pub told them he hated them because he hates all the Irish, I tell them I like the Irish and round the fare down to an even ten bucks. I spin around outside the Royal and go back up Belmore Street where I'm hailed by a young woman with a plastic rubbish bag full of what looks like, and is, washing. She's talking on her mobile phone and the conversation goes all the way to Edgecliff where I drop her off in Glenmore Road at a brothel I haven't noticed before. Her conversation with her friend, another sex worker who's left town for some unspecified location, is intermittently fascinating but I'm not going to try and write it all down now, it'd take to long and there's money to be made.
At the north end of Glenmore Road you have to turn left and I'm soon stuck in traffic on William Street, cursing myself for not going the other way up to Oxford Street; but, again, by being cheeky I get through quick and make it to the Criterion for a pit - or piss - stop that I badly need. There's no cabs on the rank and as I get out two Indian boys come over and ask if I'll take them to Blacktown? Sure, I say, running inside. I doubt they'll still be there when I come out but they are, so I do take them to Blacktown. I've never been out that far before last night, when I took a young guy to Doonside, a ninety dollar fare, but these chaps want to go a different way and it's only about sixty-five ... still, it gets me out of town long enough for the chaos to be sorted out before I return and I find their soft voices, talking Hindi in the back seat, soothing.
I get a hail coming back on the Great Western Highway, a bloke I take to be a Maori but who is in fact some kind of Asian. When I remark on the coldness of the night, he shrugs and says he works in a cool store. He has a peculiar odour, not unpleasant, and after a while I identify it as the smell of chook ... maybe it's a chicken cool store he works in but I don't ask, I just take him home to Merrylands then ride the M4 back to the City. The chaos has cleared but there's still no cabs on either of the Park Street ranks and an unseemly clamour as those waiting jostle, not for me, but for the guy pulling in behind me. My fare's a dyke who spends the trip to Alexandria talking to her girlfriend on her mobile phone. Her girlfriend is far away, maybe in Canada, I don't know. I love you too, she says.
Head back into town and get hailed in Pitt Street by a young Asian couple who want to go first to Marsfield, then to Epping ... it's a good fare, forty or fifty dollars, just what I need this time of night but for some reason I don't want to go. It could be that I'm light on gas after the Blacktown epic, I'm not sure. Anyway, spooky as it sounds, on the Anzac Bridge they discover that she's left something - wallet? mobile phone? - behind and he wants us to go back. She says no, no, but he wears her down and in Rozelle I do an illegal U turn and take them back to the exact spot I picked them up, corner of Pitt and Liverpool. Am unsure if they'll want me to wait but no, he peels off a ten and twenty, says just give him five back and off they go into the night.
Two blocks up I get hailed by a group of American sailors going back to the Kitty Hawk. They look about fourteen and don't say much. I ask about the exercises up in Queensland but the guy in the front says no, they just came from Guam. Then he asks me how to get to Taronga Park Zoo, I tell him, and he says ... that's where the Steve Irwin memorial is, right? I'm dumbstruck ... all this way, to our great City, and it's Steve Irwin he wants to pay homage to? This kid from upstate Pennsylvania? Even the sight of the carrier looming above us all grey and sinister, with its batwing jets folded up on the flight deck, fails to shift my incredulity.
I don't wait around there for another fare even though there's plenty of milling around going on, I scoot back up to the City and find a South African who's going to Mosman. Don't trust Jaappies, they're volatile and emotional and can turn nasty, especially the Suits, so I'm very circumspect and professional and, good-oh, there's no trouble. Afterwards I figure I'm nearly done, but instead of taking the Westlink I go down George and pick up a young Scandinavian woman with her eyes enormous behind her spectacles and take her to Ultimo. She gets off in a very obscure part of town, behind the Powerhouse Museum and I notice a street I've never seen before, Sistrum Street. I watch her unlock a massive metal gate then walk up a ramp then I'm on my way, home James, and don't spare the horses.
... but on Parramatta Road at Camperdown I'm hailed by a joker wearing a leather jacket and holding a kebab upright in a bag so I pick him up. He's a Kiwi, from Hawkes Bay via Christchurch, quite drunk and with a bad stutter. Young, in his twenties. We chat about this and that and gradually, especially when he realises I'm from NZ too, his stutter gets less. All the time he's holding his kebab bag upright like it's the Olympic torch or something and when we get to where he lives, Palace Street, Ashfield, he doesn't know what to do with it while he's getting his wallet out, so asks me if I'll hold it. This is of course unwittingly comic but I keep a straight face, holding up his kebab while he fumbles for the money, then handing it back to him. I ddddidn't want to spill the sauce, he says and goes off into the night with his sauce unspilled. And so do I.
Thursday, when I pull into the Park Street rank at the beginning of my shift, a small round woman with a large head climbs into the front seat and a vaguely familiar, raffish fellow in a black trilby hat gets in the back: this is Stuart Shepherd, artist, stalwart of Red Mole days from New York in the 1980s. We belong to different eras of the Moles but crossed over once, in 199o, at the Belvoir Street Theatre here in Sydney during The Book of Life, which Stuart designed and appeared in, and I did the sound for. He's making a film with Amy, his friend in the front seat and a self-taught artist. The film is Amy Goes To Sydney and when I see them the next day at the Art Gallery of NSW, they are off that evening to the Newtown Hotel to interview some drag queens. Saturday, they visit a palmist in The Rocks before winging back to Wellington.
I take them up to where they're staying at the Challis Lodge in Challis Avenue in Potts Points and then pick up a radio job from Victoria Street to the City. A mother and daughter come out of the small hotel, heavily laden with gear and looking exasperated. Turns out the daughter is booked on a train to Queensland and they've been waiting an hour and half for a cab to come to the back entrance of the hotel. On the way to the station, I fill the daughter in on the vagaries of Silver Service, the allegedly elite branch that gets offered all the radio jobs first, and how many of the drivers just will not do short trips. Gradually she de-stresses and when, on Wentworth Avenue, The Eagles come on the radio, singing Take It Easy, she starts singing along. That's nice.
On the stand at Country Trains, the guy handling the taxis tells me that the roadworks are because the station is leaking in the heavy rain we've been having. There's a fellow there with a docket, wanting to go to Gordon, but he has to wait for the actual cab he's booked, otherwise Railcorp won't pay out. I try half-heartedly to convince him to go with me until I find out that the Bridge is jammed. The high winds we've also been having have blown part of a maintenance shield off the roof of a train, bringing down wires near the South Pylon and closing lane 1 ... the chaos will go on for hours so I'm very happy when a nurse from Moruya with a cabcharge form asks me to take her to Cronulla. She's a very nice woman, but reticent and a bit hidden the way country folk sometimes are. We discuss the right age at which kids should get mobile phones these days, she has a 12 year old and a 10 year old, both boys, and girl twins who're nearly 7. When she hops out, just for a moment, she turns full face towards me and smiles, and she's beautiful.
On the way back up Southern Cross Drive, outside a pub in Waterloo, I'm hailed at the lights by a couple of refugees, drinkers for sure. She's Polynesian and sits in the back and doesn't say much; he's an Aussie with one of those craters of the moon faces. Somehow we start talking about the American ship, the Kitty Hawk, that's in town after the exercises up in Queensland, and that leads onto Vietnam, where this guy served. In a transport and supplies division. He tells me various things I didn't know, for instance that the Army sent conscripts up there and kept most of their regular forces at home, and that most conscripts served for less than one year so that the Army didn't have to pay them a pension afterwards. In the midst of it all, completely unconscious of the reference, he says: I was only nineteen ... and I almost lose it.
They get off outside the Criterion in Park Street and, immediately, another couple get in, he in front, she in back. They're French and there's one of those weird and wonderful moments when I hear their language without being able to recognize what it is ... before it settles into something more familiar though still strange. He's wearing a black and white striped shirt and though a bit shambolic and overweight, has Gallic charm in spades, that elegance and insouciance that always makes me think of Apollinaire. He tells me the taxi drivers in Paris are the worst in the world and that Sydney's, by comparison, are high class. When he gets out to go and buy some wine I say to his companion that he's a very charming man and she agrees. She's older than him and the cask of wine he brings back is for her. I like these people very much.
Down the bottom of Devonshire Street I'm hailed by a woman going home from work, she lives in Wolloomooloo and knows an intricate way to get there but that's where the Kitty Hawk is tied up and I know it's hopeless. On the way I tell her about the French couple until, in a laneway between Riley and Crown, she gives up and decides to walk the rest of the way. Leaving me stuck in horrific traffic, not just sightseers for the ship but cars trying to get into the Harbour Tunnel because the Bridge is still jammed. I do a couple of cheeky manouevres and am rewarded when a young woman, an art student or something similar by the folio she's carrying, crosses through the traffic and gets in, wanting to go to North Bondi. She's English and seems ok at first but gradually some kind of class thing enters her voice and I feel bound to shut off.
After dropping her off I go up to the Junction and pick up a couple of Irish boys, from Waterford, and take them up to Randwick. They say Waterford boys love the Craick and will go on until there's not another man left standing. When they tell me that some Aussie in a pub told them he hated them because he hates all the Irish, I tell them I like the Irish and round the fare down to an even ten bucks. I spin around outside the Royal and go back up Belmore Street where I'm hailed by a young woman with a plastic rubbish bag full of what looks like, and is, washing. She's talking on her mobile phone and the conversation goes all the way to Edgecliff where I drop her off in Glenmore Road at a brothel I haven't noticed before. Her conversation with her friend, another sex worker who's left town for some unspecified location, is intermittently fascinating but I'm not going to try and write it all down now, it'd take to long and there's money to be made.
At the north end of Glenmore Road you have to turn left and I'm soon stuck in traffic on William Street, cursing myself for not going the other way up to Oxford Street; but, again, by being cheeky I get through quick and make it to the Criterion for a pit - or piss - stop that I badly need. There's no cabs on the rank and as I get out two Indian boys come over and ask if I'll take them to Blacktown? Sure, I say, running inside. I doubt they'll still be there when I come out but they are, so I do take them to Blacktown. I've never been out that far before last night, when I took a young guy to Doonside, a ninety dollar fare, but these chaps want to go a different way and it's only about sixty-five ... still, it gets me out of town long enough for the chaos to be sorted out before I return and I find their soft voices, talking Hindi in the back seat, soothing.
I get a hail coming back on the Great Western Highway, a bloke I take to be a Maori but who is in fact some kind of Asian. When I remark on the coldness of the night, he shrugs and says he works in a cool store. He has a peculiar odour, not unpleasant, and after a while I identify it as the smell of chook ... maybe it's a chicken cool store he works in but I don't ask, I just take him home to Merrylands then ride the M4 back to the City. The chaos has cleared but there's still no cabs on either of the Park Street ranks and an unseemly clamour as those waiting jostle, not for me, but for the guy pulling in behind me. My fare's a dyke who spends the trip to Alexandria talking to her girlfriend on her mobile phone. Her girlfriend is far away, maybe in Canada, I don't know. I love you too, she says.
Head back into town and get hailed in Pitt Street by a young Asian couple who want to go first to Marsfield, then to Epping ... it's a good fare, forty or fifty dollars, just what I need this time of night but for some reason I don't want to go. It could be that I'm light on gas after the Blacktown epic, I'm not sure. Anyway, spooky as it sounds, on the Anzac Bridge they discover that she's left something - wallet? mobile phone? - behind and he wants us to go back. She says no, no, but he wears her down and in Rozelle I do an illegal U turn and take them back to the exact spot I picked them up, corner of Pitt and Liverpool. Am unsure if they'll want me to wait but no, he peels off a ten and twenty, says just give him five back and off they go into the night.
Two blocks up I get hailed by a group of American sailors going back to the Kitty Hawk. They look about fourteen and don't say much. I ask about the exercises up in Queensland but the guy in the front says no, they just came from Guam. Then he asks me how to get to Taronga Park Zoo, I tell him, and he says ... that's where the Steve Irwin memorial is, right? I'm dumbstruck ... all this way, to our great City, and it's Steve Irwin he wants to pay homage to? This kid from upstate Pennsylvania? Even the sight of the carrier looming above us all grey and sinister, with its batwing jets folded up on the flight deck, fails to shift my incredulity.
I don't wait around there for another fare even though there's plenty of milling around going on, I scoot back up to the City and find a South African who's going to Mosman. Don't trust Jaappies, they're volatile and emotional and can turn nasty, especially the Suits, so I'm very circumspect and professional and, good-oh, there's no trouble. Afterwards I figure I'm nearly done, but instead of taking the Westlink I go down George and pick up a young Scandinavian woman with her eyes enormous behind her spectacles and take her to Ultimo. She gets off in a very obscure part of town, behind the Powerhouse Museum and I notice a street I've never seen before, Sistrum Street. I watch her unlock a massive metal gate then walk up a ramp then I'm on my way, home James, and don't spare the horses.
... but on Parramatta Road at Camperdown I'm hailed by a joker wearing a leather jacket and holding a kebab upright in a bag so I pick him up. He's a Kiwi, from Hawkes Bay via Christchurch, quite drunk and with a bad stutter. Young, in his twenties. We chat about this and that and gradually, especially when he realises I'm from NZ too, his stutter gets less. All the time he's holding his kebab bag upright like it's the Olympic torch or something and when we get to where he lives, Palace Street, Ashfield, he doesn't know what to do with it while he's getting his wallet out, so asks me if I'll hold it. This is of course unwittingly comic but I keep a straight face, holding up his kebab while he fumbles for the money, then handing it back to him. I ddddidn't want to spill the sauce, he says and goes off into the night with his sauce unspilled. And so do I.
Friday, June 29, 2007
A Broken Nail
It was rush hour. Five to six. Was empty, stuck in traffic, outside the American Express building in Liverpool Street when she caught my eye and began to negotiate pavement and gutter and roadway so she could catch my cab. The lights changed as she was opening the door and she seemed a bit flustered, what with her bag and her umbrella and her fashionable coat. Then something happened, I didn't know what, she exclaimed in dismay and opened the door again, looking down ... Broke a fingernail, she said, holding up her hands. They were small and brown and the nails were very long, all except the one on the middle finger of her left hand, which had gone. She wore many expensive looking rings but the settings were unostentatious, as graceful as herself. I imagined her palms, rough, pink, perhaps a little cracked, though I couldn't see them. I like the touch of rough womens' hands, I don't know why. Are they your own? I asked. Cheeky, but I felt at ease with her: she was amused and amusing and so why not? Of course, she said. I wouldn't wear false ones. She was looking at her hands, murmuring: Take two or three weeks to grow back ... if I could have found it I might have glued it back on. I said something to the effect that scrappling in the gutter for a fingernail is not a good look and we moved on. She was going to The Establishment on George Street, was late, hence her rush, hence the broken nail. I started telling her about the smart and funny girls from ACP I'd just dropped off in Surry Hills, their minute dissection of the appearance of a work mate who wore false eyelashes this long ... individually applied. She gave a brief shudder and said she preferred to be as she was. There's something about perfect beauty that's soulless, she said. I like my crooked nose. I looked at her nose, in profile, it didn't seem crooked to me. Her face was as attractive as her hands, quick eyes, a slightly sardonic curve of the lips that she'd reddened so they set off her dark skin. I mentioned the Persian carpet makers who deliberately weave a mistake into the pattern because perfection offends the gods. She laughed. Yes, and when we try too hard we make mistakes anyway. I should be more zen. We were halfway up Elizabeth Street now. It was gone six o'clock, the hour of her date. Que sera, sera, I said and started to discuss the best route from here on. Hmmm, she said. Good thinking, 99. That meant she'd watched the same TV in her youth as I did, we must have been more or less of an age. You don't have a phone in your shoe, do you? I asked. No, she said, just as well, because I might put the stiletto through my cheek when I was answering it. In this delightful banter the brief minutes passed and soon we were pulling up outside The Establishment, a luxe and well patronised corporate drinking hole. It was just ten past six. Oh, she said, I can be fashionably late. We did the business, she paid, natch, with an Amex card and said yes, she would like the receipt. Then came a moment of silence. I was waiting for her to get out but she didn't move. The moment lengthened, we were as if stilled, sitting in a cone of silence. What was going on, did she not want to go? And then she said: Are you going to give me the receipt? I'd printed it out but neglected to tear it off; so entranced perhaps. Did you think I was waiting because of your lovely company? she asked, making it at once a compliment and a rebuke. No, I said, I just thought you were composing yourself so that you didn't break another nail, getting out. And then we laughed and off she went to join whatever lucky person she was meeting.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
people like us
Took a Chinese woman down to Earlwood, she got in the back seat outside the Criterion in Park Street then, at the corner of George, said she wanted to sit in the front. Well, do, I said, so she did, before the lights changed and we were on our way. She was tired, she worked in stockbroking, had spent the day translating figures from one currency to another, one screen to another. We didn't talk much, though front seat travel generally means an inclination towards conversation. I liked the way she smelt, which isn't always the case with front seat passengers: a light perfume beneath which her own body scent lingered.
Afterwards I wandered up through Undercliffe to Marrickville and there, at a bus stop, in the murky evening light, were two obviously half cut disreputables roistering. There was a vacant cab in front of me, which they didn't hail, so I was a bit surprised when one of them stuck out a hand for me. A moment's decision: to stop or not to stop? Trouble or no trouble? Should I ... hit the anchors. They took ages to actually get into the cab, one in the front, one in the back. The one in the front had a khaki beanie pulled down over his ears, the dirt of decades etched into the skin of his face, only two or three front teeth left in his mouth. Fellow in back was older, almost dapper by comparison.
They're going to the Coopers Arms in King Street, Newtown. To get pissed, which meant, in their estimation, they aren't yet. That tells you something, because I think they're properly shickered. How long ya been driving a cab? asks Beanie. I think, and in the moment of thought, he answers for me. Too bloody long, eh? he says and sniggers. Guy in back says: Never catch me driving a bloody cab, too bloody dangerous ... Beanie: Ever been jumped? I look at him, he laughs. Don't worry, he says, we're not gonna jump ya. I say: I know you're not.
Fact is, I haven't ever been jumped though I might have come close to it a couple of times. It's hard to judge the seriousness of a threat that isn't made good. I never thought these guys were going to try anything, on the other hand, they were the kind that could easily have turned nasty if the wrong thing had been said. Now Beanie's unravelling a long cab-riding story that is designed to show his bona fides. He'd once caught a taxi from Sale in country Victoria to Melbourne. The fare was eight hundred dollars, and he offered to double it with a tip. His folks gave the cabbie a sit down meal, either before leaving Sale or upon arrival in Melbourne, I can't work out which. Cabbie refused the tip at first but Beanie forced it on him. Musta cost me three grand, that trip, he muses.
Meanwhile Dapper, sitting in the back, is keeping up a running commentary, which basically consists of contradicta: everything Beanie says, he disputes. If Beanie says he's generous, Dapper says he's mean. If Beanie pretends to wisdom, Dapper says he's thick as pigshit. If Beanie says ... this is done without malice, indeed, with high good humour, so he's chuckling widely between the insults. I'm fifty seven, he says at one point, apropos of nothing at all. He's forty three. See? See? Perhaps he meant together they made a hundred. Beanie ignores him. He's still talking about jumping cabbies, looking toothlessly sideways at me and grinning. Don't worry, mate, I won't jump ya, I'm gonna tip ya. Dapper says: He's a miserable bastard, he won't tip ya.
There's twelve dollars on the meter when we pull up outside the Coopers Arms. Beanie scrabbles in his pockets for a bit, he's got quite a lot of cash loose in there. He comes up with a ten and a five. Thereyagomate, toldyaI'dtipya. He shakes my hand. Dapper leans over from the back seat, he shakes my hand as well. Helluva job you got, mate, he says, I'd never drive a bloody cab, have to put up with people like us ...
Afterwards I wandered up through Undercliffe to Marrickville and there, at a bus stop, in the murky evening light, were two obviously half cut disreputables roistering. There was a vacant cab in front of me, which they didn't hail, so I was a bit surprised when one of them stuck out a hand for me. A moment's decision: to stop or not to stop? Trouble or no trouble? Should I ... hit the anchors. They took ages to actually get into the cab, one in the front, one in the back. The one in the front had a khaki beanie pulled down over his ears, the dirt of decades etched into the skin of his face, only two or three front teeth left in his mouth. Fellow in back was older, almost dapper by comparison.
They're going to the Coopers Arms in King Street, Newtown. To get pissed, which meant, in their estimation, they aren't yet. That tells you something, because I think they're properly shickered. How long ya been driving a cab? asks Beanie. I think, and in the moment of thought, he answers for me. Too bloody long, eh? he says and sniggers. Guy in back says: Never catch me driving a bloody cab, too bloody dangerous ... Beanie: Ever been jumped? I look at him, he laughs. Don't worry, he says, we're not gonna jump ya. I say: I know you're not.
Fact is, I haven't ever been jumped though I might have come close to it a couple of times. It's hard to judge the seriousness of a threat that isn't made good. I never thought these guys were going to try anything, on the other hand, they were the kind that could easily have turned nasty if the wrong thing had been said. Now Beanie's unravelling a long cab-riding story that is designed to show his bona fides. He'd once caught a taxi from Sale in country Victoria to Melbourne. The fare was eight hundred dollars, and he offered to double it with a tip. His folks gave the cabbie a sit down meal, either before leaving Sale or upon arrival in Melbourne, I can't work out which. Cabbie refused the tip at first but Beanie forced it on him. Musta cost me three grand, that trip, he muses.
Meanwhile Dapper, sitting in the back, is keeping up a running commentary, which basically consists of contradicta: everything Beanie says, he disputes. If Beanie says he's generous, Dapper says he's mean. If Beanie pretends to wisdom, Dapper says he's thick as pigshit. If Beanie says ... this is done without malice, indeed, with high good humour, so he's chuckling widely between the insults. I'm fifty seven, he says at one point, apropos of nothing at all. He's forty three. See? See? Perhaps he meant together they made a hundred. Beanie ignores him. He's still talking about jumping cabbies, looking toothlessly sideways at me and grinning. Don't worry, mate, I won't jump ya, I'm gonna tip ya. Dapper says: He's a miserable bastard, he won't tip ya.
There's twelve dollars on the meter when we pull up outside the Coopers Arms. Beanie scrabbles in his pockets for a bit, he's got quite a lot of cash loose in there. He comes up with a ten and a five. Thereyagomate, toldyaI'dtipya. He shakes my hand. Dapper leans over from the back seat, he shakes my hand as well. Helluva job you got, mate, he says, I'd never drive a bloody cab, have to put up with people like us ...
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
easy come, easy go
Picked him up at the back of the Cross, it was maybe five in the afternoon, he was talking with another guy on the other side of Ward Avenue, near Kellet Street, just lighting a cigarette, when he hailed me. I was half wondering if he'd want to keep smoking in the cab but it had gone by the time he climbed in the front seat. Big guy, wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans, sneakers. Chains hung from his belt. He looked like a drug dealer from a German movie. Once in, having told me where to go - Kent and Napoleon, in the City - he took off one shoe and started pulling large denomination banknotes, fifties and hundreds, out of it. I used to keep my money in my sock, I offered. I'm just sick of being robbed, he said, taking off the other shoe and pulling out more money. Softly spoken, genuinely polite, feet not too smelly ... carrying about two grand, one in each shoe, although it was hard to tell exactly and I didn't like to appear too curious. Once he had the notes smoothed out and in his wallet he started fussing with plastic bags of coins; then did some stuff with his mobile phone, changing the SIM card I thought at first but perhaps not, perhaps just re-programming it now the day's hustling was over. As we neared his destination he started fiddling with the coin bags again, getting the fare ready, and dropped something down the side of the seat. Scrappled away down there for a while. I could turn the light on, I said. He stopped looking instantly. Easy come, easy go, he said. He paid in coins, the exact amount, then sloped off into the gathering dark. Much later in the shift, on the Park Street rank, I remembered he'd dropped something and went to look. I found it on the floor beneath the back seat. It was a five cent piece.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
bookends
Since the Haberfield base closed, I've been walking to and from Croydon each day I work. Takes a bit longer and it isn't quite as nice a walk - no bat shrieks in Ashfield Park, no rosemary at the War Memorial - but it's still okay. I go through the back streets, past suburban gardens where chrysanthemums and dahlias grow, until I reach the traffic arteries again. There, yesterday arvo, as I went to cross busy Milton Street against the lights, I saw a book with its pages fluttering in the middle of the road.
Scooped it up as I passed, it lacked both front and back cover but all the matter of it was there. A sampler, from the 1990s, one of those books a publisher puts out which anthologizes bits and pieces from other books they're promoting. A selection from Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow was included, it's a time travel adventure set in The Rocks now and a hundred years ago. They were all Australian authors. I placed it carefully down on the corner post of the brick fence on the other side of the road and carried on.
Origin night, I was expecting it to be busy, with mean or boisterous drunks but it didn't quite turn out like that. Traffic was bad early and I broke one of my rules and became exasperated ... calmed down after a while. Later, when the game began, an eerie quiet descended on the City, people all over town glued to their TV sets. As soon as it ended, just after ten, the radio went crazy. Worked a bit longer than I usually do on a Wednesday, mopping up punters on the inner city outskirts then headed back to base.
I was walking home down Liverpool Road, that part where the Ashfield shops are mostly derelict, before you get to the top of the rise and go down the other side to Summer Hill, when a woman stopped me. I've been seeing her round a bit lately, perhaps she's a street person or a resident of one of the homes that sprinkle the area, I don't know. She looks Polynesian but could as well be Asian. Anyway.
Excuse me, sir, do you have the time? she said. I looked at my watch, angling my wrist to catch the dial in the ambient light. It's midnight! I said, somehow delighted to see that it was so. Oh, she said gravely. Twelve o'clock, on the dot. Afterwards, I had to look back to see if she was still there, walking away down the otherwise deserted street.
Scooped it up as I passed, it lacked both front and back cover but all the matter of it was there. A sampler, from the 1990s, one of those books a publisher puts out which anthologizes bits and pieces from other books they're promoting. A selection from Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow was included, it's a time travel adventure set in The Rocks now and a hundred years ago. They were all Australian authors. I placed it carefully down on the corner post of the brick fence on the other side of the road and carried on.
Origin night, I was expecting it to be busy, with mean or boisterous drunks but it didn't quite turn out like that. Traffic was bad early and I broke one of my rules and became exasperated ... calmed down after a while. Later, when the game began, an eerie quiet descended on the City, people all over town glued to their TV sets. As soon as it ended, just after ten, the radio went crazy. Worked a bit longer than I usually do on a Wednesday, mopping up punters on the inner city outskirts then headed back to base.
I was walking home down Liverpool Road, that part where the Ashfield shops are mostly derelict, before you get to the top of the rise and go down the other side to Summer Hill, when a woman stopped me. I've been seeing her round a bit lately, perhaps she's a street person or a resident of one of the homes that sprinkle the area, I don't know. She looks Polynesian but could as well be Asian. Anyway.
Excuse me, sir, do you have the time? she said. I looked at my watch, angling my wrist to catch the dial in the ambient light. It's midnight! I said, somehow delighted to see that it was so. Oh, she said gravely. Twelve o'clock, on the dot. Afterwards, I had to look back to see if she was still there, walking away down the otherwise deserted street.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
an archangel slightly battered
He got in, with difficulty, into the back seat, on the Bent Street rank. I thought it was because of the slope or maybe I was too far from the curb: it was a time of chaos, rush hour, cabs sliding in and out of the traffic all over the place, horns sounding, deathwish pedestrians hurling themselves into the roadway. A gentle voice, a dishevelled suit, a vaguely East European look, a bit battered: Polish, probably. Castlereagh Street, unusually, was jammed up. We discussed the best way to get to Stanmore. I liked his attitude, it was without anxiety; instead of trying to stress me out, as so many fares do, he was actively calming me down. That's rare. At the corner of Liverpool Street, when I thought of turning right, he said softly: You can do that ... so I did. It wasn't until then that I took a good look at him and realised his right arm was sticking upright, at ninety degrees to the elbow, in a cast, one of those blue, modern, epoxy resin jobs. That's why he had such trouble getting in, I should have helped him. No, no ... he said. So I asked him how it happened and he said, a taxi hit him. He was on a motor scooter, in Redfern, the cab made a right turn in front of him, knocked him off onto the road, he broke his wrist. Three weeks ago now, most of the soft tissue damage had healed but he still needed to wear the cast. We chatted on down Parramatta Road and, in the course of the conversation, he mentioned another accident he'd had, this time on a push bike. How many accidents have you had? I asked, as we turned into Bridge Street. Six, he said thoughtfully. No, must be more like eight. Yes, about eight. I was incredulous. All on bikes? I said. Yes, he said. Push bikes and motor cycles. I looked in the rear view at his open, honest, slightly lugubrious face. And, when your arm's better, are you going back riding? He became almost animated. Yes, he said, of course. Why not? I could think of a few reasons, but didn't say them. When we'd stopped in Gladstone Street, and he was looking through all his many pockets for the cab charge docket he'd filled out earlier then mislaid, I told him I liked his attitude. He nodded, smiled sadly. Thank you, he said. It's all the accidents you see ... taught me ...
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Two More Characters
Hospitality Girl
First job Monday arvo, off the radio, Leichhardt to Granville. I M2, get the word to start the meter, find the flat. No sign of life, I go and knock on the door. A voice calls from inside: Sorry, I didn't get text message, won't be long. I wait. She comes out eventually, young, plump, Chinese, dressed in pink. First thing she does is ask if I have a rubbish bag? She's cracked the seal on a bottle of cough mixture, which she drinks over the next five minutes or so. I ask if she's ill, she says no, this is like ... red wine. Sweet-natured, a bit scatty, chatty ... wants to get there quick, she's late for work, we banter back and forth about this, speed, traffic, time. Has a curious habit of timing the trip on her mobile phone but she's way out, I've been keeping an eye on my watch, we've been going far longer than she thinks. She's from the north but grew up in the south. Was studying medicine but gave it up for hospitality. As we stop-and-start along busy Parramatta Road she starts to sigh. Says she's carsick. That she has a headache. I suggest she open the window a little, she does. I show her the map, so that she can see how close we're getting. She's looking a little flushed now, a little bruised. Finally we get to the place and turn off. It's a very short street full of garages and warehouses and I'm wondering where on earth in this mess she works ... until we pull into #10 and I see the pink and blue neon lights burning in full daylight, the sign saying OPEN 24 HOURS. There's a brief, not acrimonious contretemps over the fare, I round it down to forty dollars and she hands of over two twenties, quicksmart. There's a guy loading a truck who leers at her as she passes, pausing at the industrial waste bin to throw out her empty bottle of cough mixture before disappearing inside.
Old Digger
Raised a stick for me in Philip Street and then limped, without hurry, across the road in front of the car. Going to Killara, had his own route, would show me. His wife was going blind, otherwise he would have stayed after the meeting for a few drinks. I'm slow to realise that it's the NSW Leagues Club I picked him up outside of, he was a first grade player before the war, on the wing for Balmain, and has spent the whole of the rest of his life working for the game. Been fifty times to NZ, been all over the world. Tells me about his daughter, died of cancer, all the places he took her in the last years when they knew it was hopeless. Walked over Sydney Harbour Bridge as kid when it opened, in 1932. At one point I start to say something about a book I'm reading but he cuts me off. Don't have any time for books, he says. I read 14 books on the ship coming back from the war and I haven't read another one since. That was enough for me. What kind of books were they? I ask. All kinds, he says, airily. Novels and that. I'm thinking that he must have been returning from Europe or North Africa but no, he was in New Guinea. Two and half years. Was at Wewak, East Sepik River province, where the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Shot a twenty-two foot python up there one day. Shows me with his hands how round it was. Spent one night sitting up to his neck in water, after a river flooded. Now he's telling me something about a right hand turn that he always takes, only you can't do it at rush hour, it's against the law. We come to the turn, just back from the Pacific Highway north of Chatswood, and there's no traffic approaching so I do it. He chortles at that, he's very happy, we're going the way he's gone for fifty years. We're friends for life, or as long as the ride lasts. You wouldn't read about it, he says. You wouldn't read about it.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
some characters
Sand Castle Girl
Picked her up on the Bondi Junction rank, tall, leggy, young, with an unlit rollie in her hand. She was from Rye on the Victorian south coast, in Sydney for a month with her father, their business was sand sculpture. Had just made her first visit to Bondi Beach, could not believe the way a thousand eyes checked her and her accessories out as she walked down the strand. A lovely mixture of wide-eyed innocence and all-but-unconscious sophistication. Gave her the black Bic lighter someone had left in the cab.
Archaeologist / Accountant
In Riley Street, going to Presbyterian Lady's College in Croydon for a Parent-Teacher evening. He was an uncle, his niece would be reviewing career options. Soft-voiced, understated, highly ironical, had trained as an archaeologist but ended up working as an accountant. Said he still didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, even though he was passing fifty. Just ... to stop working. Was he gay? Did he have children of his own? Hard to say ...
Red-haired Boy
On a street corner in Petersham. Going to the ABC building in Ultimo. The red hair was shading towards pink and certainly not natural. A radio producer, he did a talkback show that started at 10 pm. Handled all the technical aspects, screened callers, managed delays ... told me a joke: Advisor to Bush: Mr President, today's kill figures in Iraq are: twelve Americans, three British, one hundred and seventy Iraqis and one Brazilian. Bush's face puckers up. Long pause. How much is a Brazilian? he asks.
Chinese Car Hunters
In Pitt Street, City. Going to a bar in Chatswood. A young couple, about to get married. She was enamoured of cars and wondering which kind he would buy her? Nervous of her prospective mother-in-law. Totally materialistic in a completely unselfconscious way. English not so good, she must have grown up in China. He, monosyllabic at first, I thought perhaps he spoke it less well that she did. Not at all, he was Australian Chinese. Don't worry about my mum, he said.
Party Girls
Corner of Redfern Street. Two blondes in little black dresses, going to a party in the City, a bar next to the Hilton. Chatting about the peccadillos, and worse, of the stars. Their drug habits, their compromised immune systems, their high class despair. One said: I've brought my camera, so if Nicole Ritchie starts snorting coke, I'll photograph her.
Marrickville Pair
In King Street, Newtown, going to a block of flats in Marrickville. Vaguely gothish. A couple, not long together. She from Melbourne. He: This wedding ... in terms of style, how would you rate it? She: Zero. The wedding was in Brisbane; she'd been asked to speak at it. The bride a friend of hers, the groom doesn't like her. The bride visits her in Melbourne then spends the whole time fucking this other guy; the groom doesn't know but clearly suspects something, hence his dislike of this girl. I don't want to go, she said, I won't go. Clearly, she would.
Cardiac Technician
A radio job, Summer Hill to Camperdown. Just round the corner from where I live, a pretty, serious young Indian woman. Going to the RPA. You a nurse? I ask? No. Cardiac Technician, she replies. I just got home, now I have to go back. Heart attacks don't wait. Me: I couldn't do that. She: Somebody has to. She didn't want to talk any more after that, obviously preparing herself for the op. At the hospital, I pull up at Emergency while she goes in to get the cabcharge docket. A curious delay, given the urgency of proceedings. I leave her to her higher purpose.
Bro
He's standing at the bus stop outside Sydney Uni in City Road, his arm out. Big guy in a baseball cap. Two cabs in front of me both make to stop then swerve away at the last moment ... so I get him. He's Aborigine, that's why they wouldn't take him. Fucking wogs! he says as he gets in the front seat. Articulate and very angry. Not interested in anything I have to say, just wants to get his message across. Used to rob cabbies when he was young, for fun, but wouldn't do it now. Hates priests and judges. Despises those who treat him with prejudice, enjoys getting right in their faces. When we stop down a dark street in Balmain, he pulls out a sheaf of fifty dollar notes, pays the exact amount then slopes off up the hill through a park.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Tap Dancing Round the World
There's a fellow who tap dances on a board at the corner of Park and George Streets, perhaps the busiest corner in town. Have never stopped to watch him but often glimpsed him as I drive by: he looks good and, so far as I can tell, dances superbly. Plays fine music. Always has a crowd. Sometimes a woman with him who looks after the music and the money. One day I saw him dancing with his board balanced on top of the small rectangular column, about a metre and a half high, where the electronics for the traffic lights are.
Last night I was idling third on the rank a block back from there, at the corner of Park and Pitt, when he knocked on my window and asked, very politely, if I would take him to Waterloo? He'd chosen me above the two cars in front because I was driving a wagon and he had all his gear with him. We put the board flat in the back, then he stowed his music machine - compact, wheeled - in the back seat and got in the front next to me.
I complimented him on his act. He thanked me. I said I'd seen him dancing on the utility box, he said he had to stop doing that because it affected the operation of the traffic lights. He was reserved, well-spoken, a black American. From San Francisco. I mentioned that I'd lived there once, we talked about different parts of the city. His neighbourhood was the Tenderloin and, no, the Tenderloin hadn't changed from when I was there. Was doing a world tour, would go to Japan next but, at the end of it, after two years away, he would return to UCSF and complete his degree. In political science. You make enough to buy air fares? I asked. You'd be surprised, he said.
He lived in a new, quite flash, apartment building near where Waterloo shades into Zetland. When he came to pay, he pulled from his pocket a sheaf of notes, all of them fifties - several hundred dollars. He found the fifteen dollars for the fare in amongst some notes of smaller denominations in another pocket. As I pulled his dance-board from the back, I asked him if it travelled with him or did he find a new one in each new place? He looked gnomic at the board, which I saw was modified, or customised in some way, metal eyes had been sunk into the ply.
I like this board, he said. I think I'll keep it with me for a while. Thank you, sir ...
Last night I was idling third on the rank a block back from there, at the corner of Park and Pitt, when he knocked on my window and asked, very politely, if I would take him to Waterloo? He'd chosen me above the two cars in front because I was driving a wagon and he had all his gear with him. We put the board flat in the back, then he stowed his music machine - compact, wheeled - in the back seat and got in the front next to me.
I complimented him on his act. He thanked me. I said I'd seen him dancing on the utility box, he said he had to stop doing that because it affected the operation of the traffic lights. He was reserved, well-spoken, a black American. From San Francisco. I mentioned that I'd lived there once, we talked about different parts of the city. His neighbourhood was the Tenderloin and, no, the Tenderloin hadn't changed from when I was there. Was doing a world tour, would go to Japan next but, at the end of it, after two years away, he would return to UCSF and complete his degree. In political science. You make enough to buy air fares? I asked. You'd be surprised, he said.
He lived in a new, quite flash, apartment building near where Waterloo shades into Zetland. When he came to pay, he pulled from his pocket a sheaf of notes, all of them fifties - several hundred dollars. He found the fifteen dollars for the fare in amongst some notes of smaller denominations in another pocket. As I pulled his dance-board from the back, I asked him if it travelled with him or did he find a new one in each new place? He looked gnomic at the board, which I saw was modified, or customised in some way, metal eyes had been sunk into the ply.
I like this board, he said. I think I'll keep it with me for a while. Thank you, sir ...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Anzac Day
I don't like Anzac Day. Never have. It scares me, the violence inherent in the commemoration of war, the sentimentality that masks the violence. I remember in the early 1970s in Auckland there was a fashion amongst us for going to the Dawn Parade, dressed in our army surplus great coats - a sure provocation to the old soldiers who would certainly become enraged at what they saw as a calculated insult. And perhaps they were right.
I remember another Anzac Day, 1987, here in Sydney, at the Caledonian Hotel, where I lay awake all night listening to my enemies, two brothers, plotting, as I thought, to murder me. I could hear their voices echoing through the disused shaft of the old dumb waiter, that came all the way down from their barricaded hideout on the top floor to my basement room in the servant's quarters. I fled that place as soon as it was light, and never went back, or only to get my things.
So driving on Anzac Day felt like ... a risk. Nevertheless I needed the money and so decided to do it. The day was grey and wet, the streets gloomy and deserted. I took a man and his shopping home and then an aged Englishwoman, with her son and daughter-in-law, to the airport. She was going back to the Old Dart. In the City, all the ranks were full and none of them were moving, so I drove around until a tall fellow with a chest full of medals whistled for me in Castlereagh Street.
Going to Mosman. Well-liquored and quite pleased with himself. Had a wonderful time. Told me that the marches are getting bigger, not smaller, as the old diggers fade away: made up of Reservists, Territorials, Home Guard and the like, many of whom have never seen action but remain besotted by the military and all it entails. The romance of war. Couldn't find it in me to like this man but was polite enough to him. He too was flying to Europe the next day.
Not long after, back in the City, on the Park Street rank, I picked up a skinny fellow with more medals than his thin chest could hold. His head was poked forward on his neck and he had an improbably large nose. He said he'd had an amazing day and told me why: he'd been a regular soldier, had served two tours in Vietnam, and during the second was part of an ad hoc unit formed by a field commander to fight alongside the SAS in special operations. They drove light armour and were extremely successful - he apologised for using the phrase kill ratio but said it was current at the time and theirs was very high.
Well, after two months, the unit was disbanded and, subsequently, when members of it applied for war pensions and offered as support this part of their service record, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied that the unit had ever existed. So these guys had just embarked on a process of organising some proof that they had existed. They'd had a reunion that morning during which they'd met, and spoken to, an ABC journalist. One of their proofs was a strange meeting between this guy and his brother, a conscript, who'd been at an artillery base in Vietnam when the lost patrol, the light armour unit, rolled in at 3 am. That kind of thing, he said, can't be faked.
I dropped him off in Rose Bay and answered a radio call to the Eastern Suburb's Rugby Club, where the two-up game had ended, the buffet was trashed, everyone was going home. Took two blokes up to the Four in Hand in Paddington, where two big young woggie fellows got in. Expensively dressed and unremittingly foul-mouthed, indeed abusive, about the woman who was joining them. Of course I've heard blokes go on like this before but they generally stop once the woman appears ... not these guys.
She, a blonde, came pirouetting across the road to the cab and they started in on her immediately in a way that was brutal, shocking, vile. And she took it! Even gave a little bit back but couldn't really compete. They had met that afternoon at the Randwick races; she had (her words) gatecrashed their party. That must have been why she was beholden to them; why they didn't care. What is a 'spit roast'? I almost don't want to know.
The worst thing about rides like this is the punters generally try to enlist your support: the blokes wanted me to validate their stream of insult and innuendo, the woman wanted me to defend her. Not long before we pulled up at King Street Wharf she asked, in a tiny, little girl voice, if they wanted her to go? There was the merest pause then they both said Nah, you fuck, you can stay ...
Then there was a couple having a fight, then some gross young men who, despite the protests of the woman they were with, whose father was cooking for them, insisted on stopping for kebabs on the way to the barbie ... had to pick their mess off the seats and the floor afterwards, wondering why I didn't just leave them at the kebab shop ... didn't go near The Rocks again, nor any pubs, but you see things anyway:
Four or five sailors fanning out into four or five empty cabs stopped in traffic outside the cinemas on George Street just as a violent brawl breaks out. A cop car pulls up opposite, two female cops run through the traffic and hurl themselves into the melee, which rolls into the street ...
At the other end of George Street, later, another sailor collapsed in a gutter while another woman cop bends over him, trying to haul him upright. In a clinch, they stagger then fall together into the street ...
I'm taking a young woman, starry-eyed with the romance of war, from Summer Hill to Surry Hills when we stop at the lights outside The Rose in Cleveland Street. There are three people swaying there, too drunk to know the cab's engaged, too drunk to realise I've only stopped because the lights are red. They begin to lurch towards the car, I roll the passenger side window down to tell them it's not on, then one of them disappears, falling onto the road and, who knows, under the wheels of the car?
Her friends, a man and a woman, scarcely less drunk than she is, drag her upright and get her back onto the footpath. For some reason they have both her arms raised in the air and appear to be lifting her skywards. Owww! she screams, you're hurting me! as the lights go green and I accelerate away. There, about two blocks on, I see two people recklessly riding shopping trolleys down the footpath, out of control, likely to hurtle into the roadway at any moment ...
Much later, at the end of my shift, I've just dropped off at the airport and am heading back to base through Erskineville when I'm hailed outside the Kurrajong Hotel. They're going my way so I take them, to Annandale. A young couple, drunk, but not offensively so. How's your Anzac Day? the boy asks. I've escaped with flesh wounds, I reply. He giggles. I'm maimed, he says, Fucken' maimed. There's a pause. Anzac Day's supposed to be about all these things, he says. But it's really just about drinking. Drinkin' fucken' alcohol. 'S'a good thing too ...
I remember another Anzac Day, 1987, here in Sydney, at the Caledonian Hotel, where I lay awake all night listening to my enemies, two brothers, plotting, as I thought, to murder me. I could hear their voices echoing through the disused shaft of the old dumb waiter, that came all the way down from their barricaded hideout on the top floor to my basement room in the servant's quarters. I fled that place as soon as it was light, and never went back, or only to get my things.
So driving on Anzac Day felt like ... a risk. Nevertheless I needed the money and so decided to do it. The day was grey and wet, the streets gloomy and deserted. I took a man and his shopping home and then an aged Englishwoman, with her son and daughter-in-law, to the airport. She was going back to the Old Dart. In the City, all the ranks were full and none of them were moving, so I drove around until a tall fellow with a chest full of medals whistled for me in Castlereagh Street.
Going to Mosman. Well-liquored and quite pleased with himself. Had a wonderful time. Told me that the marches are getting bigger, not smaller, as the old diggers fade away: made up of Reservists, Territorials, Home Guard and the like, many of whom have never seen action but remain besotted by the military and all it entails. The romance of war. Couldn't find it in me to like this man but was polite enough to him. He too was flying to Europe the next day.
Not long after, back in the City, on the Park Street rank, I picked up a skinny fellow with more medals than his thin chest could hold. His head was poked forward on his neck and he had an improbably large nose. He said he'd had an amazing day and told me why: he'd been a regular soldier, had served two tours in Vietnam, and during the second was part of an ad hoc unit formed by a field commander to fight alongside the SAS in special operations. They drove light armour and were extremely successful - he apologised for using the phrase kill ratio but said it was current at the time and theirs was very high.
Well, after two months, the unit was disbanded and, subsequently, when members of it applied for war pensions and offered as support this part of their service record, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied that the unit had ever existed. So these guys had just embarked on a process of organising some proof that they had existed. They'd had a reunion that morning during which they'd met, and spoken to, an ABC journalist. One of their proofs was a strange meeting between this guy and his brother, a conscript, who'd been at an artillery base in Vietnam when the lost patrol, the light armour unit, rolled in at 3 am. That kind of thing, he said, can't be faked.
I dropped him off in Rose Bay and answered a radio call to the Eastern Suburb's Rugby Club, where the two-up game had ended, the buffet was trashed, everyone was going home. Took two blokes up to the Four in Hand in Paddington, where two big young woggie fellows got in. Expensively dressed and unremittingly foul-mouthed, indeed abusive, about the woman who was joining them. Of course I've heard blokes go on like this before but they generally stop once the woman appears ... not these guys.
She, a blonde, came pirouetting across the road to the cab and they started in on her immediately in a way that was brutal, shocking, vile. And she took it! Even gave a little bit back but couldn't really compete. They had met that afternoon at the Randwick races; she had (her words) gatecrashed their party. That must have been why she was beholden to them; why they didn't care. What is a 'spit roast'? I almost don't want to know.
The worst thing about rides like this is the punters generally try to enlist your support: the blokes wanted me to validate their stream of insult and innuendo, the woman wanted me to defend her. Not long before we pulled up at King Street Wharf she asked, in a tiny, little girl voice, if they wanted her to go? There was the merest pause then they both said Nah, you fuck, you can stay ...
Then there was a couple having a fight, then some gross young men who, despite the protests of the woman they were with, whose father was cooking for them, insisted on stopping for kebabs on the way to the barbie ... had to pick their mess off the seats and the floor afterwards, wondering why I didn't just leave them at the kebab shop ... didn't go near The Rocks again, nor any pubs, but you see things anyway:
Four or five sailors fanning out into four or five empty cabs stopped in traffic outside the cinemas on George Street just as a violent brawl breaks out. A cop car pulls up opposite, two female cops run through the traffic and hurl themselves into the melee, which rolls into the street ...
At the other end of George Street, later, another sailor collapsed in a gutter while another woman cop bends over him, trying to haul him upright. In a clinch, they stagger then fall together into the street ...
I'm taking a young woman, starry-eyed with the romance of war, from Summer Hill to Surry Hills when we stop at the lights outside The Rose in Cleveland Street. There are three people swaying there, too drunk to know the cab's engaged, too drunk to realise I've only stopped because the lights are red. They begin to lurch towards the car, I roll the passenger side window down to tell them it's not on, then one of them disappears, falling onto the road and, who knows, under the wheels of the car?
Her friends, a man and a woman, scarcely less drunk than she is, drag her upright and get her back onto the footpath. For some reason they have both her arms raised in the air and appear to be lifting her skywards. Owww! she screams, you're hurting me! as the lights go green and I accelerate away. There, about two blocks on, I see two people recklessly riding shopping trolleys down the footpath, out of control, likely to hurtle into the roadway at any moment ...
Much later, at the end of my shift, I've just dropped off at the airport and am heading back to base through Erskineville when I'm hailed outside the Kurrajong Hotel. They're going my way so I take them, to Annandale. A young couple, drunk, but not offensively so. How's your Anzac Day? the boy asks. I've escaped with flesh wounds, I reply. He giggles. I'm maimed, he says, Fucken' maimed. There's a pause. Anzac Day's supposed to be about all these things, he says. But it's really just about drinking. Drinkin' fucken' alcohol. 'S'a good thing too ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
