My brother and
I were sampling the local drinking establishments on Chapel St a couple of
nights ago, accompanied by outrageously cheap pizzas. We hadn’t gone too hard,
but had probably consumed enough to be just at that point of weary where
walking home (15-20 minutes) seemed like too much of a bother. Fortunately, the
number 6 tram up High St gave us the option of a gentle, short cruise, followed
by a 5 minute stroll back to our flat. So we caught the tram.
After a brief wait, the number 6
sauntered to a halt at our stop. We hoped on board and sat down opposite a man
wearing a ski jacket, jeans, sandals (over socks), sunglasses, a beanie, and a
copious amount of zinc smeared across his nose and cheekbones. I’m pretty sure
he was also wearing a fluorescent backpack. He was standing in the doorway,
sort of peering around.
Now it should be said that it was
about 9.30 at night, rendering the sunglasses and cricketer-like zinc coverage
completely pointless. Moreover, it was a balmy Melbourne March night, sitting
somewhere around 24 degrees. The necessity of the ski jacket and beanie, then, was also a
mystery. Of course, anyone who wears sandals over socks is instantly suspect.
Usually, I would’ve been awake to
such weirdness, but after years of serving the inhabitants of Melbourne’s middle-class
eastern suburbs, I must’ve had a moment of complete desensitization, because I
initially didn’t think much of the fellow. Compared to some I've dealt with, he seemed almost normal.
Then he started talking.
Upon seeing us find and take our
seats, the man looked like he kind of twitched and his head tilted slightly
forward and, presumably, his eyes behind his sunglasses bulged a little. He
took two unsteady steps over toward us and then unexpectedly shuffled across to
an Indian man listening to his iPod seated next to my brother. Fixing the poor
unsuspecting soul with a neutral gaze, the man muttered: “do you know the guy
who had two kids and died of a heroin overdose?”
The Indian fellow ignored, or didn’t
hear, him, while my brother and I stifled a giggle. We sure as hell weren’t
expecting him to say that. We didn’t choose to ride the tram to talk about
Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
Later on, after some reflection of
the incident, we realized that the man was actually having a very weird and
very subtle dig at my brother who has been told repeatedly that he closely
resembles Hoffman. The sheer randomness of the statement at the time, however,
meant we weren’t aware of this, although upon realizing it later, my brother and
I were perplexed why anyone would be so obtuse in making the comparison and why
they felt the comparison needed to be made to another random on the tram.
Anyway, he didn’t get an answer, so
he wandered back to his doorway and proceeded to swivel his head around,
checking out who was on board the tram. His face the entire time was flatly
empty, disguised by his sunnies and zinc.
We thought that perhaps this was the
end of his antics, but, no, he continued.
Out of nowhere he said quite
clearly, “you people pretend to know about appropriation, but you nothing of
the letter P.”
Then, as if to firmly make his point—mark
it with a finalizing exclamation—he said, “pedophilia,” and lounged back in
quiet contemplation.
It took an enormous amount of
self-control not to break down in hilarity. We had no idea what he was talking
about, but he sure seemed to. He had made some vital and mysterious connections
between ‘appropriation’—perhaps ‘pretending’ to know of it was another comment
directed at my brother who had ‘pretended’ to ‘appropriate’ the identity of
Phillip Seymour Hoffman?—and the consonant ‘P’, lumping them somehow with ‘pedophilia’
as a transcendent term of totality and finality to make sense of it all.
For the first time in the short trip—and
we were only on the tram for all of 5 minutes—I swear some emotional look
actually swept across his face: he was chuffed with himself.
His attention finally seemed to
definitely wander away from us, or my brother, and we got off a few stops later
after listening to him listen in on another man’s conversation with his
girlfriend, which he kept trying to interrupt and insinuate the lady on the
other end of the phone actually wanted him. It was awkward, but also pretty funny in an inappropriate way. I'm surprised the man on the phone didn't tell him where to go.
Everyone talks about how they
attract the freaks on public transport, and, indeed, there are plenty of freaks
about for people to attract. There is something about a bus, tram or train that
just seems to encourage people’s weirdness to burst forth, unabated by any sort
of social etiquette or basic restraint. I can tell you, after years of riding its transport system, Melbourne has its far share: from drunk bogans to the old lady who used to dress up as Marilyn Monroe on the 70 tram years ago.
But just remember, you may pretend
to know something about the logistics of transport, but you know nothing of the
letter Q.
Quintessential.
No comments:
Post a Comment