I watched from a sidewalk as these pair of cops managed to accidentally hit the young african-american gentleman’s car with their police vehicle. They then exited the police vehicle, pulled the black guy out of his car and shot his face to a bloody pulp in the street. Where exactly is this not teaching people about the real world?
It was just like the end of every day at work except that over the road from my building, a multitude cesspool of plastic seats and meat heads in 40 gallon hats were watching a game of cricket. Who actually knows why anyone would think of themselves as so worthless as to waste their lives away watching this bile retching shite. But I tried to keep my opinions to myself. Whenever a co-worker or mild office celebrity approached me and mentioned the score with a lifeless smile, instead of twisting my nipples backwards and screaming joy like a schizophrenic locked in a kindergarten, I just humphed and nodded, returning an equally dead smile. Were they all pretending to be interested as well? Did that explain the cold look in their eyes? Perhaps everyone is pretending to be interested, even the meatheads outside, dressed in green and gold leotards, with the novelty penis shaped drink containers - maybe they don’t like cricket. Maybe they just pretend because they think their friends would disown them. Is it possible that the entire world hates cricket but is afraid to say?
I walked to the bus stop, fully aware that it was possible there would be a few cricket lovers already gracing the seats and I would have to stand while they stare at my crotch, wracked with a mixture of cricket elation and penis envy. I hoped at most just a few of them, the game wasn’t even over by that stage. I was far from correct. The pricks were everywhere, I had to stand in the chip barked garden because there was so many 40 gallon hats crowding the station you couldn’t even edge in. In a moment of self preservation, I plugged my ears with an iPod and pumped jungle beats into myself as I surveyed the scene. I wondered why they sat through the entire day, but decided to leave before it was even over. I also wondered why the fuck these 400 or so people trying to squeeze into a bus like sardines but failing to realise that taking off their 40 gallon hats might help the matter - weren’t at work. It was after all a working day.
My bus came and I pushed my way through the ranks, dodging jester hats, baggy greens and fatal looking plastic Boonie moustaches. Many whites turned angrily when they felt me pushing and saying excuse me, their faces turned, all screwed up and ready to throw punches. As soon as they saw me though, for some reason their faces tuned back just as quickly and though I would look at them again, they tried, most reverently, to not catch my eye. They probably thought I was some crip or blood turned office employee just waiting for the chance to regress back to my hood instincts, ya’all.
A couple of cricket fans in faded blue singlets got on the bus in front of me. They were in their mid thirties I would say and were still trying to hang on to that Jimmy Barnes look with Rod Stewart hair. Real slick. A young woman was in front of them, the guy with the long Stewart hair tried his luck with her. He said, in an animated drunken voice, ‘You look like you’re a cricket kind of girl love, hey, hey, are ya?!’ She ignored him completely, not even giving eye contact (a commendable performance), she bought a ticket and entered the bus looking for a seat. Number one with the Rod Stewart hair was fazed for about two seconds, but his ego rebuilt itself in the wake of alcohol and thirty years of misogynist experience. Number two was basically a hanger on, he didn’t seem excited or animated like number one, but he was definitely drunk, his eyes all dopey and red rimmed. They bought tickets and steeped into the human sea on the bus.
I followed them on and quickly found a seat in the middle of the bus next to an old lady with a cardboard looking face. The meatheads preceded right up to the rear, but the back seat was all taken, so number one sat beside a mother and number two across the aisle. Number one immediately started a conversation with the mother’s kid, asking it all sorts of things, what grade it was in, does it like school, has it seen Bob the Builder or the Dark Crystal (seriously, he said those two movies together). The whole time he’s looking the mother up and down in gynaecological detail. She’s just smiling and looking out the window, happy she doesn’t have to entertain the kid any longer. But rod-stewart-hair wasn’t satisfied with the kid, he tried talking to everyone in the vicinity, he even tried talking to the woman that had ignored him earlier. She ignored him again, but still he went on. At one point he left the kid to grapple with the idea that Australia had to beat the Poms because they smell really really bad, in his own words. The kid sat with a confused look on his face as rod-stewart-hair played his cards and moved seats.
He’d spotted a newly vacated seat next to plump but somewhat attractive woman, who turned out to be an English girl on holiday. Rod-stewart-hair thought nothing of his previous comment and began talking with her like he knew her fucking mother or something.
This kept him busy, number two looked on with jealousy as it seemed rod-stewart-hair was getting somewhere. He could get a good conversation in (mostly about cricket) because the bus was stuck in traffic, all caused by thousands of blue singlet wearing jimmy barnes clones crossing the roads in an attempt to escape the Gabba. Now and again rod-stewart-hair would look around and remark that it was disgraceful the bus couldn’t move. He didn’t realise it was caused by FUCKERS LIKE HIM!
Disaster struck, as the bus cleared the congestion after half an hour of standing still, the English girl got off and rod-stewart-hair was back to the drawing board. He tried talking to just about everybody, except me (laughs), but no one was very interested in him.
Eventually he turned back to number two and started talking in a slightly depressed kind of way:
“No one talks on the bus anymore mate, have you noticed that?”
“Yeah, but it’s not some country town anymore, Brisbane isn’t. What do you expect?” Number two said.
“I expect talking! People used to talk on the bus, you know, strangers and shit”
Number two just shrugged, even he couldn’t be bothered discussing such a stupid topic further.
Rod-stewart-hair just kept repeating over and over again, like a Dalek:
“No one talks on the bus anymore”…
People looked at each other, wondering why he kept repeating it and was he going to slit his wrists over it. Twenty minutes later they were getting off the bus, rod-stewart-hair shoved his face back through the doors, he was all animated and stupidly happy again. He yelled in for the whole bus to take care and start talking on buses again soon. Then they were gone.
People started turning to each other and saying, “he’s obviously had a few” and “but quite a nice young man”… I guess in the end, his dream came true; everyone was talking on the bus. Unfortunately rod-stewart-hair didn’t get to see it, the dumb fucker.
