The most private times for me have
always been on public transport. Or when I'm walking between the
station and the destination – time spent in transit for me has
always been when I get most of my serious thinking done, so stepping
onto the tram is about as close as I get to going to a therapist. The
sessions last as long as it takes me to get from A to B, and even
then they are sometimes drowned out by music. If the song of the day
is struggling to hold my attention though, or if I have made a
conscious decision to allow my thoughts to bubble up in front of me
today so that I can stand face-to-face with whatever I think might be
on my mind, then public transport is the place where the thinking
gets done. Public transport is my special place, and when I ride, I
don't like to talk to anyone.
Yesterday I was sitting on a late night
tram on my way home from a comedy show. I was listening to Kanye
West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and enjoying the seats on
Melbourne public transport that, unlike those of Adelaide trams –
which I have always contended bare a closer resemblance to rocks with
a thin layer of algae than to seats of the sitting variety – are
actually comfortable and possess a generous a softness. I had my feet
on the seat in front of me (the seats are arranged in booths so that
a pair faces another pair and then backs onto the ones behind it
and... fuck it you all know how chairs work) and was nodding my head
to Mr West's magnum opus when the doors opened and two transit cops
came on: a heavy set black dude whose eyes I would soon discover had
a scarily large pupil to white-bit ratio (the white bit was clearly
winning), and another guy with a ticket scanning machine whose race
remains unknown.
I didn't notice them at first, although
old mate white-eyes sat across from me and, seeing him in my
peripheral vision, I politely removed my feet from the chair that he
clearly intended to sit on. As I removed my feet though he continued
to stare at me, as if expecting some further grace or acknowledgement
of his entrance into the tram – I had no idea that he was a transit
cop at this point and so I searchingly removed an ear phone and asked
him in a cool, young-person way, “what's up man?” He then pulled
out his big boy badge from under his coat and the penny dropped in my
mind, “you're fucked dude, you do not have a ticket WHATSOEVER...
NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT... here comes the shit”. I pulled out the
other earphone (from memory, I took the right one out first) and
heard him say something about a two-hundred dollar fine for having my
feet on the seats. “GOD DAMN IT MOTHERFUCKER,” I thought to
myself, “not only am I going to get completely James Blunted for
not having my ticket, but I'm going to cop another fine for having my
feet on the fucking chair... Jesus Christ this is the end, drink the
Kool Aid now dude, let's have it over with.” I gave him my ID when
he asked for it, and apologised in a regretful, defeated mutter,
resigned to my fate and considering the ramifications this would have
for my living situation. The fines together would total three-hundred
and eighty dollars. Gobble, gobble, gobble mother fucker. Gobble,
gobble, gobble.
As the indiscriminate race man (who is
described thusly not because I took a good look at him and noticed a
distinct racial ambiguity in his physical appearance, but precisely
because I only got to notice him out of the corner of my eye, and
race just seemed to be the order of the day for describing people
with Samuel L. Wackson sitting across from me) paced down the aisle
scanning people's tickets with his truth-telling machine I felt my
bowels move, and then brace for the final evacuation. He had skipped
me because I was talking to the glassy-eyed bear who was probably
looking forward to using my limp body as a puppet once this was all
over with, but I was sure that my fare evasion would come to light in
due course. As my mind was busy making sums and my eyes were trying
to avoid making contact with the decider with the
fare-evasion-testing-kit so as to delay the eventual truth-telling, I
heard something impossible. An insane sound made its way, first into
my ears, then slowly through the side of my head and finally
squeezing into my brain like a tube of toothpaste...
“IIIIIIIIIIII'lllllllll juuuuuuuuuussssssstttttttttzzzzzzz
lleeeeeeeeeehhhhhttttk yyyooouuuuu offfff wwwiith a warning this
time.” The world snapped out of slow motion and the stern face
belonging to the man with the tiny pupils sat in front of me, fully
in focus. “People have to sit on these seats you know, think about
it.” I heard myself saying, “sorry, yeah that's cool,” and
behind my face some unnamed part of me was writhing and contorting in
sheer horror at the situation that had just presented itself. The
ticket guy was at the other end of the tram at this point and my
hulking one-time foe had just gifted me what was most surely a chance
at the most beautiful and timely escapes ever in the history of
escaping since the time when people first thought up simple traps to
catch birds, and a particularly crafty pigeon said, “fuck this,
it's my kid's birthday tomorrow.”
So I jumped up as soon as I had
calculated the optimal time of exit (quick note: it was RIGHT FUCKING
NOW) and as luck would have it the tram was at a stop and the doors
were already open. They closed just as I jumped out of the tram and
even though I was still three blocks before my stop I turned down the
nearest street to get off of Collins and make it look like that
really was the stop I had meant to get off at. I don't know why I put
on that little show for those two guys – to be honest, it was more
for my racial friend than the other guy who I never had the chance to
be introduced to – but one the tram was a fair way down the street
I doubled back, and before turning my music back on I let fly a
victorious scream. “FUCK YES, SUCK MY DICK MELBOURNE”. The kind
of scream that I imagine all young travellers would release in such
moments of pure relieved ecstasy. I am still undecided on whether I
agree with the feet-on-seats rule over here... I sure as hell don't
agree with it on the Adelaide trams, or even the trains, because the
seats back home are only marginally better than sitting on the floor,
and that margin is not significant enough to be worthwhile protecting
from the two grains of sand or droplets of moisture on the bottom of
my shoe. Over here though the seats are nice, squishy, soft,
comfortable, friendly... they even look like they might just have
souls.
I don't know about completely
abstaining from resting my feet on those badboys, I mean a man's
gotta have his man-space and I think we all know that public
transport thinking is best performed in as close to horizontal
orientation as can be practicably achieved at the time. But from now
on, I think I might at least survey the chair to see if it's one of
the nice ones before wacking my ole' size eight-and-a-halfs down on
them. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
Peace, Taco.
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