An Old Blog

I'm destroying the source, so I thought I'd give this blog a good home. I wrote it about a year and a half ago.

So this couple was sitting behind me on the Bus...

So this couple was sitting behind me on the Bus back from my mother's coastal town residence. And this isn't as easy as it sounds, cuz I was way up the back, like a black guy in the forties, and there was only one pair of seats behind me but there this couple was anyway. The guy was American, and I had that weird feeling when you hear a yankee accent talking in person, not on TV. He seemed kinda humble and passive though, so maybe he wasn't American. Maybe Canadian. The girl was Russian, or at least part Russian cuz she spoke English fair good. But her accent was as strong as the American/Canadian. I remember I thought 'Hey, I don't know any Russians', (Russky's, like Slim Pickens says in Dr. Strangelove, man I love that movie, thank god for Wason showing us movies when he should be teaching) but then I remembered that a friend of a friend of mine is part Russian and then I realized that the only reason I figured this girl behind me was Russian was that her face reminded me of the other Part-Russian girl I fractionally knew. I really should call this couple Man and Woman, not Guy and Girl, cuz they were easily in their late thirties. Come to think of it, maybe they weren't together. Didn't see them kissing or anything. But they did have that manner, that we're-together manner. Plus they left together, got up and went down the front of the bus.

Maybe they actually got off (the bus, you dirty fucks) but I didn't see them. I mighta paid more attention but I was sort of somewhat distracted by this kind of tingling, nervous (literal, as in, body-nerve related) anxiety in my lower left leg. That had pretty much been buzzing away since last night, when I had been reading Misery, and this description of an axeblade squealing as crazy-Kathy Bates lady wrenches it out of her favourite author's shin bone (three tries and she got the whole foot off) had been annoyingly persistant. It had the kind of effect that happens when guys see another guy get his balls shattered and instinctively reach down to protect their own - most of the busride I every-so-often had to check my shin wasn't secretly in pieces.

See now, this shit was published in 1987, shit it took a couple of Melbourne punks seventeen years to work into their Saw movies and become filthy rich off of. But King isn't a petty guy, I'm sure he knows he has the last laugh.

And I realized I was listening to Linkin Park, and I was thinking of skipping it because Linking Park have their time and their place, neither of which were here or now, but then the guy who had been in the toilet came out. I forgot to mention I was also sitting really close the bus toilet, but it was fully discreet and everything, just looked like a little booth for, something. And the guy who had been in there was pretty fucking wasted. Either that or he had cerebral palsy, but I'm pretty sure he was wasted cuz his eyes were out of it and he had a bottle of something. Maybe he was he was drinking his cerebral palsy away.

So then the drunk cerebral palsic (that's not a word, pretty sure) went somewhere down the front of the bus, maybe to visit the YankRussky couple, and I remembered there was a girl on here with her 9, maybe ten year old sister before who was strangely attractive for a bogan (the older one, I mean), and I thought maybe she came from a family of bogans and she's trynna fit in but it's not working cuz you just didn't believe her as a bogan, she wasn't right for the part. But she was gone now and that was a drag because she was attractive and just having attractive people around, even when you can't see them cuz they're facing away from you and there's bus seats in the way, make you feel just a little better than everyone else, including the version of you sans (without) attractive stranger.

But the next stop a really, really old couple got on and the man, maybe 90, 95 had fucking horrible burns on his face and his face looked like a mask. I don't mean horrible like to look at him but horrible cuz you knew it meant at one point in his life this guy's face was on fire. But this really old woman was like, still with him, getting slowly on a bus to dandenong and I remember thinking, what the fuck, why are they going to Dandenong? Why is everybody on this bus going to Dandenong for heaven's sake.

And then I remember thinking, oh man, I'm never gonna be a Russian or an American or even a Canadian, I don't think I'm ever gonna have that manner, that manner that couple have and the old couple have, and I mean I hope so but I don't think I have it in me. And then I thought but I'm lucky, I'm lucky, my brother's sitting next to me and he can't hear properly, and I don't have cerebral palsy and I'm not trapped in a manic psychotic's house with shattered legs and no thumb and no soul, and I could be an alco maybe later but I won't, I won't drink that much cuz I can't hold it, and I hope my face doesn't catch fire, cuz I don't know any one that's not family, (i don't suppose attractive psuedo-bogan strangers account for anything at all) that would get on buses to Dandenong with me, but jesus christmas at least i can thank my lucky stars I dno't live in fucking DANDENONG!

And then Linkin Park stopped and I remember thinking, you know, this has been a pretty strange couple of minutes. And then I remember thinking, you know...

this has been a pretty strange eighteen years.