Riding the freak shuttle

I live on the #86 tram route, known to most people in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne as the freak shuttle.

Friends have assured me that the freak shuttle is nowhere near as bad as it was four years ago. Now, at least, the drug users and drunks have the decency to head towards the rear of the carriage.

I caught the freak shuttle last Friday night, just as the sun was going down. It’s an interesting journey, from the city to where I live.

It took forever to get on the tram that night because a large, smelly woman wearing a too-small dirty tracksuit, carrying several well-used plastic bags, took a veritable eternity to descend the two steps to the street so others could climb aboard.

I held my breath and smiled benignly as I pass her. Hey, I know it sounds mean, but I’ve caught the tram with her before and I know she emits a very distinctive body odour. You won’t find at any perfume counters.

I sat as close as I could to the driver. I’ve learned that sitting up the back of the freak shuttle at night isn’t always the best of ideas, even if your aching back and tired feet beg to differ at the sight of an empty seat.

Teens got on at the mall, off again at the top end of the street, at the stop in front of Parliament House. There’s a big nightclub there.

Junkies, drunks, down-and-outs, late-working suits; on at Carlton Gardens, off again at various points along Smith Street. Safeway is popular tonight.

I kept my head down, read my book. Listened to other passengers. Older migrants: snippets of Greek, Polish, Serb. Yugoslav. Teenagers, yelling. Kissing. Arguments in Italian, English. Arguments about sex, drugs, babies, olives.

Another woman in a dirty tracksuit pants sits next to me. I heard what I thought was her sighing deeply, and I turned my head to investigate. She had her index finger jammed inside her nose, right up to the first knuckle. Wiggled it around enthusiastically. She extricated her podgy digit and sucked on it.

My stomach turned and I couldn’t look; but concentrating on my book was tough work, listening to those noises and knowing what they meant. I prayed that she would be getting off well before my stop – no luck. She followed me out in to the cold Northcote High Street air, mimicking my enthusiastic thank you! to the driver. I ran over the road as I spied a gap in the traffic.

I looked back and saw her, finger still wedged deeply in a nostril, pants slackening at the rear, shuffling towards the steps of the town hall.

And the tram squeals up High Street towards Bundoora.

V-Day, 2003

So I’m standing there, on the steps of Flinders Street Station, under the clocks. He’s late, very late; with every minute that passes I become increasingly worried that he won’t show, or that we’ll miss each other in the crowds.

I’m watching thousands and thousands of people shuffle past and fill Federation Square. It’s Valentine’s Day. It’s the day of the peace rally.

As I stand waiting under the clocks, I scan faces, spending a nanosecond on each, searching for those now familiar blue eyes and those shoulders.

As I wait, the man with the raggedy flannelette shirt tucked into his jeans begins huffing and puffing on his out-of-tune bagpipes. How will I ever be able to concentrate, with this blaring drone distracting me?

Waiting for him to show, worrying that we might miss each other in the crowds, I wonder how my standing on the steps might look to him, as he shuffles down Swanston Street with the other marchers: seeing a frowning, stern-faced girl in a crumpled white shirt, anxiously scanning the crowd for him, seeing everything but focussing on nothing.

I straighten my shoulders, try and de-frown my face. Don’t worry. He’ll be here, I think to myself. He’s not the kind of guy to leave you standing. As I straighten my spine, I think of the scene in As Good As It Gets, where a fumbling, ornery Jack Nicholson tries to explain to an impatient Helen Hunt how he feels about her. You make me wanna take my medication, he bumbles, being with you makes me feel like I want to be a better person, to make myself a better person for you.

Waiting for him to arrive, I realise that I am Jack Nicholson to his Helen Hunt.

Standing on the steps at Flinders Street Station, under the clocks, waiting for him to show, I know that I’ve come to the rally not primarily because I’m against the war in Iraq. I’ve come because he asked me to, and because he’s asked me to I say yes; I say yes because I realise that I want to become a better person, because he deserves a better person than I already am.

Listening to the bagpiper, scanning the faces. Feeling the lump of sadness in my throat rise as I face the strong possibility that he won’t show, that I shall end up at a peace rally on my own, self-consciously shouting slogans alongside children and hippies and businessmen and students and refugees.

Realising in that instant, watching faceless, nameless strangers pass me by, that my life would lack joy and colour and vigour without him.

Knowing, as I scan pink faces and freckled ones and black ones and happy ones and hurried ones, searching for that familiar face, that I love him, and I am petrified of this.

We have never touched.

We have never kissed.

The only flaw I can see in this realisation of mine, in this crazy, completely insane realisation that I love him, is that I have no idea whether he feels the same way, or sees something different when he looks at me.

Knowing that this person has come from a completely different background. That we have lived through completely different upbringings, childhoods, adolescences, adult experiences.

Knowing that every time he’s in the room, we gravitate towards each other and stop about a foot apart, both uncertain of how to proceed – indeed, whether to proceed at all – and instead carry on a flushed, awkward conversation, dancing that dance of the not-together-yet-but-should-be people.

Realising I can only ever aspire to be half the person he is.

So I stand at Flinders Street Station, under the clocks, shifting my weight from foot to foot, watching the protestors stream by in their thousands. Watching be-suited workers shrug past the other waiters on the steps under the clocks, as, ties askew and stockings laddered, they race against time to make the 6:15 express to Lilydale or Richmond; carrying their red roses and bunches of lilies and gerberas and poorly made teddy-bears with red satin hearts inscribed with mawkish protestations of love; all streaming and shrugging by as the man with the shirt tucked into his jeans huffs and puffs into his blaring bagpipe.

A half shout; I look around. He’s found me, and now the dance can continue.