The one and only time I had stopped at Redfern Station before this was to switch trains after a nauseating ride spent watching a zit on the back of a hairy man’s neck erupt like a fleshy Etna. I remember thinking how ridiculous double-level train carriages were, and pitying a starved pigeon hobbling across the platform on a nub and a stump. Suffice it to say that wasn’t the cheeriest day I’ve had in Sydney but even with a horrible memory, it’s obscure stuff like that I seem to remember. The queer sticks in my mind.
It’s a marvellous culture study on trains, especially these fandangled Sydney ones; the pretty waif-thin white girls and mascara’d emo boys disappear as you get closer to town on the North Shore to City via Strathfield line, and are quickly replaced by packrats with mullets and girls who look like they could chew me up and spit me out. Older couples who’ve been married for fifty years and are still holding hands everywhere they go are replaced by women committed to the Single Parent Pension lifestyle, where the more kids you birth get you more cash. Of course, that's an over-generalised and highly ignorant statement... but I like getting my point across in extremes. Perhaps I'm bitter because of the Jesus-fact that, because I walk around looking sad, I’m rarely bothered?
Who the fuck knows.
Anyway!
Alighting at Redfern Station, it’s noticeably cleaner than I remember from all those years ago. It still smelled like terminally ill cat and fart, but that seems to be a prerequisite for all Sydney train stations that have existed without maintenance any longer than two years -- you learn to either enjoy it or tolerate it, depending on how much you use public transport.Balancing my oversized overnight bag and brolly in a public phone booth was a task in itself, but I ham-handedly mashed Spider’s number so I could let him know that I had arrived. He said he would be two minutes, and that he’d meet me outside the station. I was there to pick up two things: one of the last Smash N’ Grab 7”’s, and Spider’s old pre-paid knock-around mobile phone. I needed one to tie me over while I paid off a mammoth phone bill on my Telstra-plan PDA. By the by, Telstra are the biggest wallet-rapists on the face of this Earth! The face! Of this Earth!
As I walked out onto the path, I was greeted by an old Aboriginal woman who looked a sorry sight. She reeked of alcohol, was missing most of her front teeth, and wore ragged clothes that look like they’ve spent most of their life abandoned on the side of a highway. She asked me if I could spare any change, and I said no – I honestly didn’t, having used all the shrapnel I had to buy my train ticket, and I think handing her a bobby pin and the back of an earring would’ve been more than a tad patronizing.
Even with my problem of not making/maintaining eye-contact, I didn’t want to look away from this lady when I turned her down. It was probably her most popular reaction to her request, and I felt like I owed her better than that. She smiled her toothless smile, looked into my eyes and not only said thank you, but also wished me a good day. I took a few steps before I stopped and turned around.
“I don’t have any cash but I do have a spare smoke if you’d like one.”
“Yes please, ma’am.”
I ignored the “ma’am” part and lit her smoke for her. Asking her how long she’d been out there in front of Redfern Station, she said she had been there for three solid hours and had only managed to make around five dollars. She said that it was okay, even better now that she had a smoke. I watched as a middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit skirted around her as if she were diseased, and shook my head in disdain when a loafy highschool senior ho (fo sho) dressed in this season’s rags told her to fuck off.
“They only see what they want to see, mate.”
“Fuckin' oath. Thanks for the smoke, Sister.”
“No worries.”
I gave her my lighter with the rest of my pack of smokes, then wished her all the very best as I picked up my bag and walked toward the moving mural that was my buddy (and fellow SWD mod), Spider.
5 comments:
Aww... that's pretty amazingly caring and compassionate.
Imagine having nothing better to do than hang around at a train station begging for money. That has to suck.
And doing it day after day after day after day until all the people who use the station regularly are totally habituated to your presence..? Yeah, it has to suck.
Ah. The toothless grin of altruism. I go back and forth on what I feel for homeless folk. Usually it's a quiet disgust. I know, I know. I'm terrible. I'm not sure how it is in Sydney, but where I come from there are plenty of ways for them to help themselves. A lot of them just plain don't want to help themselves though, they just want YOU to help them. And that's just plain lazy.
Now I'm down for being lazy when it's called for. But honestly.
All: I've been trying to quit for ages, and even in my financially anorexic state, I knew that buying myself a pack of smokes was a mistake. Ignoring the fact that I promptly purchased another pack for myself, handing mine over was the least I could do.
Ron: I'm normally equally cynical, but she extended a level of courtesy and respect that warranted my attention. I've declined requests for charity and have been harrassed - irrespective of her overall motivation to either help herself or not, I try to be grateful for the situation I'm in myself -- granted, I've worked incredibly hard for what little I have, and this is the least I can do.
You wanna see some truly original homeless people, you gotta visit us in San Francisco. They don't just beg for spare change here. They'll come up to you and start screaming, "Prove that you're not a robot!!" That's tough to do under pressure.
When they do ask for money, it's usually for something more interesting than food or shelter. I know a homeless dude who lives in the park near my apartment, and he's been asking for donations to help pay for his upcoming surgery, to have his vestigial tail removed. I'm completely serious. How can you say no to a charity like that?
But my single favorite homeless person in San Francisco is the bearded homeless woman - yes, a homeless woman with a beard - who stands next to the highway with a sign that reads: "Trim my whiskers for a dollar." Needless to say, I'm always tempted.
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