Another Excerpt From My Somewhat Embellished True Life
Walking Towards What?
My ears are offset, one rings louder than the other. My courtliness at the gig tonight meant I found myself right of stage, closer to one speaker than the other. I leave the gig feeling refreshed but not overly whelmed by the bands performance, as is my subconscious fancy for mediocrity. I rub my ear as if that’ll help but instead I almost tear it off due to the biting cold freezing it to near hypothermic levels.
My friends tell me that they’re going to head to another venue for after-gig drinks. It’s in the opposite direction to Flinders, where my train awaits, so I reluctantly say my farewells. Even this is fumbled out as their eagerness to depart means they’re already leaning away from me so instead of the customary embrace or handshake the best I can do is an inelegant high five which just helps to push them on their way.
10% Battery Remaining my phone says to me. Bringing headphones tonight was largely a waste of time and as they’re not ear bud phones I’ve enjoyed the burden of having them around my neck all night for naught. Now alone, and with no music, I crave something to do. A 7/11 across the road is a glory beacon of light. I ask for a packet of Stuyvesant blues, in the cardboard packet, and a lighter. He asks me whether I want a big one or a small one. I’m unsure about what sort of longevity I want from my lighter as it’s not something I had thought about when I initially had the thought of buying some cigarettes so I just tell him whichever is cheaper. I give him my last twenty and leave, forgetting to get my change thus making my choice of lighter largely irrelevant.
The walk home begins now. This walk, which is split by a train ride intermission, is a far less entertaining performance than the one viewed tonight. Russel Street is an uneventful street without the bumbling traffic that occupies Swanston running parallel. No trams ding and few bicycles dong, although a bicycling donging is probably not as nearly expected as a tram dinging.
The Forum at the corner of Flinders and Russell is dead tonight; there is only a woman out the front photographing Federation Square. I’m not sure why she’s alone and photographing what is largely an unimpressive angle of what is already somewhat of an eyesore. She only has a consumer grade point-and-shoot camera and it’s night, so it won’t pick up much. I deduce that she is a spy as that is the only reasonable explanation. She glares at me as I pass, as if somehow it is my fault she is alone on a Friday night taking photos with a shit camera. I keep turning my head, pretending to look at something far more interesting that required me to journey my gaze over her but there is nothing to pretend to look at and instead I just look like I have a twitch. I continue onwards to Flinders Street, continuing to make large head movements even though she’s probably not watching me.
The toilets are a busy but necessary evil. A few friends (of each other, not of mine) joke loudly with each other in another language and I assume they’re talking about me as I’m the only one who has taken a cubicle to urinate. I’m being self-conscious because I’m being self-conscious.
I run down the stairs to the appropriate platform, or what I thought was the appropriate platform but it seems in my haste I’ve chosen one platform too soon and I run back up the stairs and almost roll my ankle on the top step. I then go down the correct platform, with speed again, and actually do roll my ankle on the last step. All of this hurry is a waste however as my train is yet to leave for another 5 minutes. I hum and hah about whether I should light up a cigarette because I’m unsure whether smoking is allowed on the platform as it seems it is illegal to smoke anywhere these days.
I finally decide that it is in fact legal and I light up my cigarette only for the doors of my train to start closing. I try to throw away the cigarette but the small amount of saliva left on the end means it catches on my thumb and instead flies straight in to my shoe. I dance it off in front of four hooded pre-felons I assume are heading to Ringwood. I turn the dance into a sort of jog and get on the next carriage where I see an almost-elderly couple (who look less likely to stab me) board.
The train departs and I start reading my book, re-reading line after line. I raise my eyes from the page and ahead of me are two couples mirroring each other, both with the woman resting her head on the man’s shoulder, all four sets of eyes closed. A girl sits alone a few rows across from me. We’re both wearing black coats and jeans and our faces both have the same brooding pout. For a moment I feel we share the same melancholy virus we’ve contracted from this train line. Then she glares at me with a face only the words What the Fuck? could appropriately describe and this moment is lost.
Five somewhat nerdy men board the train halfway through my trip and they’re talking with a loud confidence that only alcohol provides. It’s a loudness which distracts every person on the train, even the ones listening to music. It distracts me most as I’m sitting right adjacent them. Their conversation almost artfully darts between what their next destination should be to at whose house they can best smoke weed to why they can’t smoke weed at Darryl’s house because his parents are there to Darryl saying how his mother hates it when they come over anyway to that’s not what Darryl’s mum said last night.
By the time we get to my station most of the passengers have already left, including the pouty girl and the party of five. I get off the train and the biting cold has returned even more aggressively than before. A low fog that would be beautiful in any other town drifts along my suburb and makes it look like a chapter out of The Road.
No taxis seen anywhere and my phone has finally died. Walking home is my only option. I walk with purpose just so I can keep warm but all this results in is my arms sweating while my ears form their own stalactites. I curl my body up at every car that passes in fear of having something, most likely a bottle or a can, thrown at me. A fear past experiences has conditioned in me.
My with-purpose-walking has another unfortunate side effect as it seems I’m catching on what seems to be the local schizophrenic. While the up-from-the-basement Dungeons and Dragons club I encountered on the train were talking loudly to each other due to alcohol it appears this portly woman is talking loudly to herself. I decide to slow my walk so as not to have a more than awkward encounter. This seems like a great plan until I hear another shrill female bogan yelling from a house. The escaped mental patient yells back and the two share what is the local etiquette for conversation from a fair distance. This is fine until it seems it has slowed the tubby woman right to a stop and now I’m walking straight to her. I then hear footsteps running from the house. A woman appears from nowhere wearing only a dirty singlet and shorts. I hope you’re not fucking with her, she says to me. I just shake my head and continue walking. The two then press the limits of their local dialect with seldom a word not ending or beginning in fuck. I pass the two and continue on my way home, now walking with purpose again except now my purpose is to get away from somewhere not just get to somewhere.
I start the climb up the hill towards my home. The cigarettes I regretfully smoked earlier don’t help my breathing and now I’m panting until I slow to a stop. I see a shadow at my feet and my entire body warms with fear as I quickly prance forward and turn around ready to do who-knows-what to my pursuer. Instead I find that it was my own shadow and I have now pranced forward onto a frozen nugget after managing to avoid the canine laid land mines most of the way home. I curse at my shoe but it’s not its fault.
My ears are so cold now when I place my hands over them instead of warming them up it cools down my hands. I put my headphones on not to listen to anything but just to keep my ears warm. It works somewhat but now I can’t hear anything around me and I’m startled by a dog gnashing its teeth right next to me. I flip the dog the bird which is something I feel I have done only so I could say I flip the dog the bird.
I’m finally almost home. As I prepare to cross the road to my home I fail to hear, due to my headphones still being used to warm my ears, a car speeding along my street almost collects me and I stumble to my hands and knees. With hands grazed and bloody I open my front door and let myself in. The power’s off so I find myself having to exit to the front porch and flick everything on. As I do, the front door light flicks on and a possum screeches at me which causes me to jump and hit my head on the wall next to me.
Like some sort of alcoholic Jesus I enter my house, head red from my removed crown of thorns and my hands bloodied from the nails that bound me tight to the crucifixion that was walking home. I feel like now is the best occasion for some late night chicken nuggets and turn on my oven.
The nuggets are two years past their best before and I die unglamorously of food poisoning several days later.
