Saturday, 21 May 2016

In 'Train'-ing

I sit at my keyboard, worn out and with the symptoms of a crap head cold coming on.  But that aside, I am content.  Maybe even happy.  I've had a very nice, if whirlwind, thirty-six hours.  It started with a train trip to Sydney yesterday.  Being an Upper Hunter Valley dweller, I caught a train to Hamilton where I had to change to the Sydney connection, and tried to read 'Lolita'.  I was very polite for an old lady, as I moved my luggage so she could sit opposite me in the rear view facing seat.  Anyway, as I pored through Nabokov's very poetic prose with its dark theme and disquieting tone, my mobile telephone rang.  It was a great friend of mine, and I was delighted to hear from him.  Now, as civilised as I normally am with phone voice, one does tend to speak a little more loudly when on a carriage because, you know, it's all choo-choo-choo in the background.  We finished our conversation and I looked up to see a sign that went something along the lines of 'This is a quiet carriage'.  It was one of those 'oh, shit' moments.  I lowered my gaze to be met with that of the old lady sitting opposite. I thought she was looking at me, but I suspect she was shooting me the death ray stare you'd see on those tin can monsters in old episodes of 'Dr Who'.  'Selfish,' she snarled at me,  There are different ways you can react in this situation.  You can stumble over yourself apologising profusely and crawling like Uriah Heep.  You can flip the bird and say, 'Fuck you'.  The latter was actually appealing, I must admit, but I was the one in the wrong, even though I had not intended to be.  But having somebody who doesn't know me from a bar of soap hiss at me that I'm selfish kind of gets my hackles up.  I adopted a most imperious voice and replied, 'Madam, I am far from selfish.  I was unaware this was a quiet carriage, and it was not my intention to disturb everybody.' 

Anyway, I reached my destination, grateful to have arrived without being pummelled by disgruntled passengers who had had their solitude destroyed by my burbling on a mobile phone, and stowed my luggage.  It had been my intention to spend some of my birthday money, and I made my way to David Jones.  I haven't strolled through the Sydney CBD DJs in a few years, and to use a hackneyed phrase, it was like another world to me.  To paraphrase Dorothy's, 'Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore'; I thought to myself, 'Simone, you're not in the Muswellbrook Big W Store'.  So many well-heeled and glamorous people - and that was just the sales assistants.  I looked at the jeans - I wanted new jeans - and thought them fine.  I looked at the price tags and had I been asthmatic, I would have been seriously fellating my inhaler.  I wandered through the complex to Westfield and into the Gap store.  An assistant handed me two pairs of jeans in differing sizes to help gauge what I should wear; it's very difficult when the sizing is not Australian standard.  I thought, hoping against hope, I would try on the smaller size first.  And it doesn't matter if I'm in a trendy Gap store or the Muswellbrook Big Dub, I still detest trying on clothing in store cubicles.  By performing a complicated hybrid of aerobics and Pilates, I got myself into the smaller sized pair.  I got my zipper up after sucking in my gut with such a forced intake of air the shop windows were in danger of imploding.  One of the male shop assistants asked how I was 'getting along in there', and did I 'have the jeans on yet'.  'Uh, yeah', I called back in a strained voice, 'I've defied the laws of physics and have them on.'  I waddled out to the store and admitted to myself the big mirror out there did not improve the vision, and despite the clerk's advice the jeans were meant to be tight, I told him I would probably better off with the larger size.  I wrestled the jeans off, and tried on the larger pair.  The clerk also agreed they were more flattering. 

But the fun didn't end there.  I attended the theatre in Rockdale with a few of my cousins and we watched a performance of 'When Dad Married Fury' by David Williamson - a friend of mine was acting in it.  Good show, and my friend gave a great performance.  But we weren't driving, so my cousin and I had to run for a train afterward, where we changed at Central for Hornsby.  You know something?  I attract weird people.  By 'attract', I don't mean in the sexual sense.  I just seem to get weirdos gravitating to me at times.  My cousin and I were strolling through Central to the North Shore Line platform, and we were stopped by a young man, perhaps in his early twenties.  He asked directions to George Street.  I looked around, and tried to orientate myself; it has been quite a while since I lived in Sydney.  He asked after a particular landmark, which my cousin and I thought was actually closer to Town Hall, and we advised him to jump on a train.  He got out his phone and opened up a message to show us the directions he had been texted, and explained he was on his way to meet a hooker.  Now, I have no issue at all with him engaging in a paid sexual service with another adult.  That doesn't bother me in the least.  But who the fuck tells a complete stranger they're on their way to get Laid-When-They've-Paid?  Can anybody tell me this?  This has completely flummoxed me.  I'm thinking this young man must have done speed.  Anyway, he realised what he had said and apologised to me, and asked was I bothered.  I assured him I was not, and said I knew people in the industry and it didn't bother me if he availed himself of a service; as far as I am concerned, like I said, that is his right.  He said, 'Do you know some hookers?'  'Well, yeah,' was my response.  His eyes lit and his pupils dilated with hope - or more likely amphetamine - and he eagerly asked, 'Are you one?'  I replied I was not, and checked his message and told him which exit to take from Central to best reach the rendezvous point.  He then asked me, 'Do you think I'm good looking?'  After a moment, I said he was good looking.  Now here's the thing: in my eyes, he wasn't.  If you're reading this, mate, be assured it's not that you're a mega-fug - far from it - but you're not my type at all.  But when some clown who's probably hopped up on the ingredients of a laboratory cupboard approaches you and asks directions so he can see a sex worker, then gives the impression he'd happily pay YOU (with no apparent thought to the lack of venue for such transaction, and I'm not about to engage in a knee-trembler in some nook at Central Station), and then wants to know whether you think him pleasing to the eye, well, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

As you can imagine, my cousin and I were in fits of laughter all the way from Central to Hornsby, she spluttering at once stage, 'Bing, you've still got your mojo!'


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