Sex for pocket change.

The train beeps and the doors open, we get in and sit opposite each other in the same booth. The feeling is edgy like that terrible silence when you know something drastic and unfortunate is about to happen...


She gets up and moves to the far end of the train carriage.


“Um, ‘scuse me sir but I just need to ask for help. See I’ve gotta get home to my step-mum in Alamein and I need forty cents to call her and… thanks a fuckin’ lot. Fuckin’ cunt…“Um, ‘scuse me sir but I just need to ask for help. See I’ve gotta get home to my step mum in Alamein and I need forty cents to call her and… thanks a fuckin’ lot. She starts to ping pong her way up the train carriage sliding in and out of each booth, left then right then left again muttering obscenities with every rejection. Before I know it she’s in the both opposite mine and I’m digging around in my pockets for change.


“…listen then if you haven’t got any money then can I just use your phone I really need to call my mum, um step, step mum m-my step mum and…” The guy she’s talking to is staring at her with a look that suggests he doesn’t understand a word she’s saying, as if he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t speak the language and I start to feel outraged on her behalf. Outraged because I know that this girl can’t afford the dignity to tell him to get stuffed until she’s sure he won’t cave in. I can’t stand watching people being made to beg, I can’t stand all these people with change jingling in their purses and pockets sitting there struck suddenly broke. It’s only forty fucking cents, who cares what she’ll spend it on? Everyone is sitting in silence exchanging conspiring looks of disdain, disgusted that she may be trying to eat into their weekend beer budget, begging for change which is obviously for drugs; but then it is a Friday night so I guess… and then it’s my turn and we sit facing one another again.


Before I even fully aware of her I notice the stench coming off her clothes, she’s got that spicy sweat smell of homelessness and her white fleece tracksuit is covered in green and brown stains. Her face is a mess of red splotches and running mascara and her matted peroxide blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail; she’s no older than fifteen. Even before anything is said I am already holding out the forty cents. I look at her, at the desperation in her eyes and feel stupid about the book in my hands and the sentence I have been reading for the last half an hour to avoid this moment. She shifts over so that we are no longer facing each other but sitting side by side and whispers into my ear-


“Hey thanks darlin’ all these other cunts’re so tight they prob’bly don’t shit. Hey do you do prostitution, would you do it with me? At Boxhill I need five bucks you know” Everyone is trying to draw me into their conspiracy of silence, offering me a look of sympathy, I ignore them and produce another dollar hoping this will buy her off but she looks at it and bursts into tears. “Fuckin’ no, you can’t say no I need to get home. Please, please I’ll do it for two dollars why won’t you... fuck Fuck... FUCK ME!” Everyone seems to have found part of a discarded newspaper to hide behind and I don’t know what to do. Her whole face is going red, a deep bruised red and she has snot bubbling out of her nostrils mingling with the tears which pour out over her cheeks and drip off her chin into a puddle on her dirty lap.


“Listen if you want to go to Alamein don’t you just change over at Camberwell?” I say feeling like such a dickhead, knowing how pathetic what I’ve just said is. I'm staring at my hands unable to look up, I know she’s looking at me as if I just couldn’t understand and I realize that I really just can’t.


Reading this over I wish the story was fiction, I know that the local paper keeps talking about our local youth homelessness problem but when it is all statistics and expert opinions it is easy to believe that there might be a solution... like all you have to do is... this however is not quite so simple when the problem materializes in the seat next to you on your way to wherever and tries to sell you sex for pocket change.

A picture postcard of community atmosphere.

There was tension in the supermarket today, definite tension; as the shoppers shopped and the workers worked a group of children no older than six or seven gathered in front of the automatic doors blowing on their recorders next to the charity can shakers; a picture postcard of community atmosphere on a Sunday afternoon but alas, something was wrong, very, very wrong. With every note blown on the recorders a visible shiver swept through every person in the place.


Teeth ground down into powder, furtive sideways glances were exchanged and the band played on; as one rendition of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' finished a new one rose out of the fading final note, volume fluctuating momentarily with the opening and closing of the doors. I found the items on my list and made my way to the checkout.


As people laughed their nasty little laughs... 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' was playing


People sighed... to the tune of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'


People mumbled swear words under their breathe... as they listened to 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'


At the checkout the cashier looked far away, eyes glazed over and set deep in puffy sockets.


CASHIER: You know, they are here every fucking Sunday! I work every Sunday, for ten hours I listen to 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'. Sometimes coming into work I see them and I think about smashing my car into the store and fixing the little shits for good.


It is difficult to know what to say at times like these, a supermarket employee who I didn't really know was confessing her desire to kill children to me. Luckily the store manager came by during this somewhat awkward silence and filled the void, standing there all jangled with a wild look in his twitching eyes.


MANAGER [to cashier]: Our friends are here again, if they don't learn a new song soon you'll be visiting me in prison. I swear to God!


Outside, walking up the hill on the way back to my car I passed a group of supermarket employees on break sitting at a public bench lighting their next cigarette with the butt of their last. No one spoke but as they exhaled their smoke rode high into the air on the back of whistled renditions of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'.

The 6am bong stem incident.

A horrible nights sleep last night.


Listening to The Mountain Goats on repeat trying to block out the psychotic mess that share-housing can sometimes become as the sun came up. Other peoples' amphetamine habits and my inability to sleep are a recurring theme in my posts and this is going to be another one of those stories.


So I get home and the whole house is sparkling with cleanliness and nervous energy, the coffee table has been unburied, the bathroom is glowing white and our kitchen is immaculate, Mark and Gav are standing to attention staring at me with such intense grins that I thought their cheeks were going to tear. It's all too weird so I get a glass of water and walk out back for a smoke.


Of course I am followed.


MARK: "Gav and me having been smoking a bit of ice."

I looked at them again and see the lost on Mars look in their eyes, things are starting to make sense and that's when Mark hits me with the big guns.


MARK: "I solved it, my money problems, got all this meth and a ten bag of eckies on credit if I sell it even after I pay the dealer back I'll clear $380 easy. Oh course me and Gav had to have a bit, just to tell how pure it is, pure as fuck man, so I after I cut it I will..."


At this point I had to jump in, listening to a person recount get rich quick schemes that can get us killed by bikies are hard enough to take from someone who isn't speeding but from someone speeding on the very gear they haven't yet financed and can't afford? I look at Gav, he has the fear and I have a sick feeling in my stomach.


I asked the question, didn't want to know but I needed to hear it;


ME: "So how much have you used?"


MARK: "Oh well we smoked a couple of points each and then I've done a few lines and..." He must have heard me groan because he decided take a different approach "but when we started cooking up we'll make heaps of coin [insert a growing sense of dread]. Dangerous business you know but you gotta be ready cos if some cunt walks through that door to do harm you've gotta take matters into your own hands and stab the motherfucker, you've gotta be fucking hard. You've gotta defend your shit! Fucking kill him with scissors when we get our own lab going we're going to be fucking rich"


Gav's not saying much but he looks like his insides are vibrating at warp speed and he's gripping the porch rail white knuckled eye's the size of saucers.


It was after midnight when Mark put Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' on repeat, over and over till dawn. The whole time he is freaking out about a scar on the back of his newly shaven head he's never noticed before stopping every fifteen minutes or so to let rip with a childish whine and moan about his need for a bong; "I can't do it man, joints are not giving me anything anymore!" We don't have a cone or a stem and neither Gav nor I could really care less so Mark is stuck complaining in vain.


I know it is futile but I decide to go to bed to escape the endless Pink Floyd and continuous circular diatribe about unrequited bong longings and mysterious scars.


The Floyd doesn't end and it sounds like their is an athletics carnival being held in the corridor outside my door. Change jingling, plates crashing to the floor, unravelled laughter and that fucking song playing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and then...

NOTHING

At about 6am everything stops dead and I emerge from my room, the house is dark and still, not a sound until...

BANG

...the door smashes open and Mark comes tumbling in red faced and puffed holding a length of obviously stolen garden hose in one hand and a steak knife in the other.


MARK: "Fuck, got caught man, I needed this, it's for my bong. Went next door [insert feeling of sharp chest pains] and was all stealth down their driveway but I was cutting the hose and the lady was in the basement doing laundry, she was staring straight at me through the window so I thought fuck it cut the hose and ran!"

ME: "Which hose?"

MARK: "The one to her washing machine."

ME: "But wasn't she doing her laundry?"

MARK: "Yeah, but...[I am no longer listening]

Three moments I would rather not forget.

1. Monbulk Rd, Kallista.

Walking on the roadside I saw a man, he was wearing a saffron robe, he had his head shaved and he had no shoes on. My first reaction was, goddamn hills, goddamn hippies... what did I expect, but then I looked a little closer; in one had he had a retractable dog leash which was attached to a tiny chihuahua wearing a tartan dog coat and he was holding a very new looking mobile phone up to his ear with the other hand. This man reminded me off a very strange night I had in the city about two years ago, I was in a bar in North Fitzroy watching a reggae band, everyone in the audience was white but sporting dreadlocks, rasta caps, ponchos and corduroy trousers. The band were singing out in a Jamaican accent and the whole audience called back sounding similarly fraudulent, a ganja smoke-screen filled the room and girls shook their booties like it was a rap video until a mobile phone sitting on one of the P.A speakers went off cutting the bands sound to ribbons with the incoming call stutter. All of a sudden we were transformed back into a bunch of middle class white kids sitting in some bar in one of Melbourne's gentrified inner-city suburbs.


The year of the reggae incident I moved out onto the Dandenong line... I would start the day with black coffee sitting on the wrecked couches in our back yard. Whilst Ice Cube's Ghetto Bird blared I would stare at the skyline of factory roofs and misplaced palm trees feeling gangsta, it was my morning ritual... we used to call the Clayton Sri Lankan massive Afro-Lankans, (had TuPac been alive and living in Clayton he would have been proud of his legacy!) There were always Afro-Lankan's hanging around out house which we named 'Trenchtown' in honor of the regae incident.


They used to smoke pot and talk jive.

2. Flinders Lane, Melbourne

On our way to the Bill Henson exhibition we have to stop off here to pick up one more free ticket. We walk into the lobby of a high-rise building, Dave leading the way through the cramped stone corridors until we come to a bank of elevators. The middle elevator opens first and we step into another world. It must have been the last lift car in the country which still employed an operator. She's small and old standing hunched over with huge glasses weighing her face down. In the back left corner of the lift is a small stool with a lunch box and a dog-eared paperback. All four walls covered with family photographs from floor to ceiling: parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts staring out from special occasions frozen forever, we are surrounded by her life, momentarily trapped inside it.

"What floor boys?"


The funny thing is that since I moved out to the hills I no matter where I am in the city I always feel trapped by something; all that concrete reaching for the sky makes me feel like I am indoors... to me Melbourne looks like someone forgot to put the ceiling on some gigantic elaborate fun-park maze. Back in the days when I lived in the city it was harder to get that 'lost buzz' but sometimes after I had worked a nightshift I would walk to the office district of the CBD and explore those self contained 24/7 office complexes the ones with the gyms, cafes, convenience stores and relaxation lounges tangled into the mess of workstations and management suites. I would get all the way to the top floor with my matted hair and dirty Shell uniform dragging the bags under my eyes on the floor as I walking wondering what the hell they paid the security guards to secure. No one ever asked me what I was doing, they just pretended I wasn't there.

3. St Kilda beach, St Kilda

Smoking cigarettes at the end of the pier after dark when Tania turns to me and says:
"How do you draw a line between love and the fear of dying alone?"

The corperate media virus kills conversation.

Shopping centres, a monument to the endlessness of suburbia, giant consumer biodomes with everything you could ever want under the one roof. Out where I live it's all about the Eastland shopping complex... (a mobile phone conversation overheard whilst on the Ringwood connector train) So where are you, in Sanity, right, ok you're on level two, listen to me. What? Yeah, okay keep on walking till you see K-Mart. See it, okay okay, good. Now walk through till your in the food court. Do you see it? Yeah, walk all the way through and turn at the Mc Donalds and keep going till you get to the Big W. Got it, now just go up the escalator. Good okay, your at Hoyts, with what? TWO COKES! Cans or 1.25, look I got a 2 litre L.A Cola but it's only 2/3's full... as I said a whole consumer universe.


My favourite place in Eastland is the foodcourt.


For a start it is totally tribal, I can get lost in the subcultural wonderland, a table of teen goths talking trash about the skate punks two booths over who are eyeing off the old schoolers with their tartan, suspenders and leather jackets or denim vests covered in safety pins, Exploited patches and badly drawn Dead Kennedy's symbols scrawled in permanent marker. Every colour of the rainbow: scrawny emo kids with tight black pants and greasy fringes forever in their eyes, metal heads, ganstas with doo rags and one pant leg rolled up, ravers with huge reflective pants and fuzzy hats as well, each staking out a piece of real estate, claiming a set of tables as there own, staying there all day. It is like an open range zoo for youth culture stereotypes:

"And over here we have your common outer suburban goth pack, notice the black trench coats, dyed black hair and Lenore lunch boxes. In their natural habitat they pose little threat to others and similar to the native emo kids they are frequently targetted by ferocious bogans; the king predators of these lands."


But the most most awesome thing about this bad dream incarnate is the tables. It seems that nothing is too far for the advertising stategists of the modern world: Gone are the days of not being allowed to watch tv with dinner, at Eastland they have installed television monitors into each table top so that you are forced to eat off an endless advertising loop. It is amazingly difficult to ignore it, everytime you look down to aim your fork or find you napkin it is there flickering up at you. For very young, the elderly and the uninitiated this can be deadly, all conversation feezes, people forget where they are and who they are with as they stare headlong into the commercial void learning about account saver schemes and affordable dry cleaning. Aside from the stereotype gallery who have become immune through over exposure (like a junkies who must shoot up to stay normal) the food court is filled with tv zombies, eyes fixed, chewing slowly and completely unaware of their surroundings.


I guess it's the flip-side of reality tv, whilst the teev strives to get real, reality is busy trying to absorb as much television as it possibly can. I can't wait for them to have cameras everywhere so that they can just pump live footage of everyone (who at this point in my science fiction future will be forced by law to wear t-shirts provided by sponsorship corperations) onto the walls of our favourite shopping centre complex (which at this point in my science fiction future will have grown to encompass whole suburbs).


"Hi my name is Adrian and I am brought to you by Marlbro Lights and KFC, it's finger licking good!"

Two worlds meet.

Well my worst week at work ever finally ended but not without leaving me with at least one memorable moment...


One of my VCE students plays bass in a band and he knows I am in bands as well so he likes talking about music with me. On Tuesday morning he tells me he's playing a gig at Ruby's. Ruby's being the place where I accidentally befriended that lovable amphetamine addict Michael. As it is just across the hill from my place I promise to be there setting up the sitcom scenario of the century- respected educator bumps into insane drug addict buddy, student and family, all in the same place [insert canned laughter here].


So I get there early and find Nathan at the back of the room, "Hi Nathan, hi Nathan's Mum, hi Nathan's friend, hi Nathan's friend's Mum, hi... oh no, it can't be, I mean it couldn't have been, but it was; not only was Michael there, he was sitting with my student's family! My mind racing at a million miles an hour: Did they know him? If they did, taking into account how he was, wasn't that worse? If they didn't, what had he already said? Before anything useful came to mind he was up, hugging me and complaining that I never call. He looked a little nutty and two guys hugging was probably a bit too homo-erotic for the 16 year old boys looking on but at this point nothing too damaging had transpired.


That was until I asked Michael the stupidest question ever:

ME:"So Michael what have you been up to?"

MICHAEL: "Adrian man, I have been up for seven days speeding. It's so beautiful, so many good drugs, oh you have to meet my friend Julian, he has such clean speed and, oh, do you have your car here?"

ME: "Yeah" thinking he wants a lift home, hopeful that there is an end in sight; but instead...

MICHAEL: "Oh excellent, can you drive my mate and me to Boronia, we need to pick up a quarter"

I come in quickly with a forceful "No"

and Michael looking hurt replies "But we will give you your cut"

ME: "No I don't want it, I don't use it, I..." but the damage has already been done, the reality is glaringly obvious.


I am looking at Nathan's family looking at Michael looking at me and decide it is time to go to the toilet and think. This is a delicate situation which needs to be handled with care but unfotunately I am at the mercy of chaos: I cannot justify it to Nathan without drawing attention to the situation [I could also look like I am trying to cover up the mess]. Drug addicted mental patients are notoriously unpredictable and so there is no reasoning with Michael either [plus I had been rude and gotten in the way of his drugs and his general sense of good vibes, so he was probably pissed off]. Seeing the hopelessness of it all I head back to Nathan's family finding my problem has migrated and proceed to grind my teeth and look nervously around the room trying to feel on top of the situation but the eye of the storm lasts only a few seconds.


The first band get up fronted by... [you guessed it]... Michael, and he started singing about... [what else but]... DRUGS and not just any drugs; a ten minute freestyle ramble about the joys of snorting cocaine every day until the men with the butterfly nets and white coveralls have to be called in to take you away.


So Nathan's looking at me, I am looking at my shoes and Nathan's mum is filming everything on her video camera.


When it's over and I'm leaving, a broken defeated man, Nathan shakes my hand and says "You know this is a side of teacher's lives we never really get to see, we wouldn't even know it's there!" There's is a big smile of his face and I am sure both he and I both know he has something big to hold over me:


my double life

Lost in Randomness.

I am not having a very good week. I am exhausted and everytime I turn around I seem to either fail at something or make myself look stupid or both.


Not being able to wake-up puts me in a very random mood, like someone has taken a whole bunch of flashback sequences and editted them together with all the sound out of sync and the joiner tape is slipping as the film winds through the projector.


I remember my first night in the hills; living in Montrose in a dysfunctional couples back room, watching Jai smoke endless cones out of a filthy looking bucket bong wondering what went wrong... our neighbours across the street used to sit on their back porch and shoot rabbits in their back yard... Kate picking arguements at the dinner table, with me sitting between her and Jai as if I had turned invisible... Kate's friend with a beer in one hand, cigarette in the other telling me she had cancer and shouldn't drink or smoke but 'What do they know anyway?!'... getting lost on my way home and finding a drug bust... touching the cancerous lump and the smile on her face whilst I did so... riding to Frankston to score pot with Jai drunk behind the wheel... being drunk and alone and drowning in work and beer at dawn...


...I remember... feeling angry at wasting half my life on buses and trains just to have a social life; being cold and half sick whilst three guys tried to scam blowjobs off an underage girl on the nightrider bus at 3am... I remember how dangerous Mooroolbark felt in the weeks after Chris Bourke was killed; all the graffiti and goon skins, and bored angry high schoolers in their hooded tops making idle threats to passer-bys... the first time I ever saw a fist fight on the train over a broken last cigarette and how the blood seeped out all over the floor... the pregnant 16 year old on her way to the women's shelter trying to share her potato chips with a carriage of people who were trying to pretend she didn't exist; she thought that she had a boyfriend who was Scottish royalty by birthright... and the speed freak that threatened to fire bomb the trainstation after they closed the toilets...


...all the stuff that happens during the empty moments and lost days...


...the life of trainstations, bus stops and suburban sprawl out of control...


...the endless cycle of work>eat>sleep...


...the things that happen in that life we live whilst waiting for something better...


...wating for... motivation... inspiration... sleep take hold... the computer to boot... the phone to ring... the rent to get paid by flatmates $180 in debt to some drug dealer somewhere... the life you are living to become a shrinking speck in your rearview mirror...


...waiting for everything to feel alright again, like you remember it feeling sometime before, some time you can't place and don't really remember but are sure must have existed.

Clothes makes the man.

I left the hills last night, first time in about a month... took the train into the city.


Something very strange happened.


It was very cold so I was walking down the street with my big Blank hoodie on, hood pulled up all the way over my face when all of a sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and there was this very dodgy looking guy standing there smiling with his hand held out, I didn't really know what to do so I shook it. He had a dirty parachute material jacket on and a baseball cap, no teeth, tattoos and a torn gym bag.


"Awesome top man. You a writer (graffiti tagging) huh?" I didn't even get time to breathe before "Yeah, where do you write? I used to run around with a lot of crews from the south Frankston Bomb Squad, Dandy Boys and shit. Never got into much bombing myself but they all good people. What you up to, huh, oh you got a bag full of paints, wish I could come with you man? Can I? Which train yard you gonna hit? Yeah, I got time I will come along? S'all right yeah? Which line you ride?"

So like a dickhead I answer 'Lilydale line' and we are off again...

"Sick man, what you peakin' on, I've been up for like four days, just cruisin' Eckies yeah, you look it. Big crew? Don't matter, but you know John of Dandenong, famous writer, mad famous he's in a wheel chair now, you seen him since the payout? Course not, you ain't a junkie scum with his hand out, he knows who you are but so... Don't shoot up man, no good crew will let ya but if it happens it will fuck even the most organised boys. Dude, I really wish I could roll with youse tonight but I got things to do? Seen Will, his new bitch she's like into the smack... falling out of her bag all everywhere, it's no good but it's not my place, you reckon? Course you think I gotta tell him to drop it. I gotta find him, we was in prison together and he kept me, ya know, ever been? No way man, you look too smart. Well it was good to talk to ya bro, names Mick"

Holds out his hand, I shake it and reply

"Adrian"
"Well bro it's been sweet."


And with that he was gone and I was very confused.


Amphetamines are like that, the whole world runs far too slow and I guess you gotta just fill in the gaps! It didn't really matter who I was or what I had to say, to Mick my jumper was graf and he made up the rest.

Sleepwalkin'

I have been sleepwalking through my days lately.


It is funny what happens when you are running on autopilot, the other day I was driving home from work not really paying attention and then all of a sudden I was walking through the aisles of a local supermarket. I didn't need anything, I didn't even really want to be there, maybe George A. Romero was right when he made Dawn of the Dead: Shopping has become an instinct or a reflex.


I was struggling to find anything I could purchase so as to justify turning up there and I couldn't bring myself to leave empty handed. Leaving empty handed would have been like admiting that I had no idea why I was there. So I purchased some panadol, a three instant dinners and spare disposable shavers. It seems like some kind of significant statement: instant, disposable, pain relief and everything wrapped in brightly coloured plastic packaging.


Standing in the cheese and dip section of the coldstore I was nearly run down by a runaway trolley being driven by two kids, no older than five followed closely by mum who was screaming after them "This is why I never take you to come to the supermarket!" They had a trolley full of potato chips. Everywhere I looked kids in school uniform were bullying their parents into purchasing something that was currently being advertised as the latest in snack food technology: A new type of cheese stick, cola flavour, chocolate biscuit.


Ahhhhh, I'll tell ya there's nothing quite like the modern world! I have also been watching a lot of television in the evenings, I can't remember exactly what it is that I have seen except I am pretty sure that someone was murdered, someone is always murdered on television.

Stereotypes lie.

Anyone who has ridden the Lilydale line out to the end on a number of occaisions will at some time have feared for their safety. The gauntlet from Ringwood to Lilydale of kids with their caps pulled down and their hoods pulled up drinking wine out of styrofoam cups and looking for a fight. I have narrowly escaped violence with homeless single mothers (Mooroolbark) and psychotic homeless men (Croydon), I have been solicited by runaways (Mooroolbark), spattered with the blood of drunken bogans beating the crap out of one another (Ringwood) and stepped over comatose junkies (Lilydale)... I have many stories and some of them will probably be posted in the future.


The story I would like to tell happened about two weeks ago at Lilydale station. It was four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and I was waiting for the train into the city eating sushi which I had picked up from the noodle shop on main street. There was violence in the air, as usual, a group of teenagers in Dada and Fubu milled around a cask eyeing a bored security guard with menace. I slunk down, pulled my hood up over my face and turned my discman up.


I was in a world of my own smearing wasabi on my handrolls and listening to the paranoid ravings of the Residents when I felt a hand on my shoulder... oh shit!
"Hey buddy?" I looked up: dirty Ruff Ryders windbreaker, baggy linen pants stained with grease and a well worn cap pushed down over a greasey head of hair. I felt very sick all of a sudden!


The guy smiled and pointed at my sushi,
"Doing some cooking huh?"
"Er, yeah I guess. Sushi." He looked very surprised and I replayed what I had just said in my head, SUSHI, fuck why didn't I just say "It's okay, roll me I don't mind coz I'm a complete pansy" Lilydale is not a very sushi kind of place! But then...


"Oh wow, is that really what sushi is? Geez, I've heard of that stuff but I never seeen it." As his grin widened I began to realise that this was not the usual 'your-about-to-be-swallowing-your-front-teeth' smile I was used to. He sat down next to me pulled out a pack of Longbeach and a can of Wild Turkey. A look of concentration on his face as he extracted two smokes and handed me one "You've got a lighter?" He asked.


I was dumbfounded, I gave him my lighter, he lit his smoke and then held the flame out so I could light the ciggie he had given to me. These things don't usually work out this way trust me.
"So it's like rice and fish but what's it wrapped in?"
"Seaweed" I said starting to relax.
"So you can eat seaweed?"
"Um, yeah, sure you can."
"I reckon I'm gonna have to try it."


Without thinking I handed him one of the three uneaten rolls instructing him on how to apply the soy sauce and wasabi. So there I was smoking his cigarette and there he was eating my sushi and five minutes earlier I had never seen him before.


The train came and we thanked one another for our respective generousity, shook hands and got into different carriages. Sometimes the world can be a surprising place and although I couldn't go around expecting this sort of thing from everyone I meet in these streets (I would very quickly end up in hospital) sometimes it feels good to be proven wrong.