Urban Encounters

           George Street Incident

After putting myself

on the outside of a couple of sandwiches

and a bottle of cheap Aussie plonk,

I went out to mosey about Claudelands

with my fox terrier.

We were stop-and-going down the footpath

along magnolia-shaded George Street,

the dog stopping frequently

to sniff at stuff on the grass verge.

An apparently well-dressed young man

walking in the other direction

veered from his line on the footpath

to block my progress on the grass verge.

He said in a pleasant voice

that reminded me of my old mate Gary

who now lives in Sydney,

“Got any money on yuh?”

I replied that all I had was plastic, and he said,

his voice still soft and pleasant,

“You fuckin’ with me, man?”

I said, “No – who carries cash around now?

Nobody carries cash on them any more,”

and walked around him.

I had between 15 and 20 dollars,

cash,

in my pocket at the time.

           Heaphy Terrace Incident

I was climbing into my dust-covered,

dozen-year-old Ford

across the street

from the Vege King

when two sleazy-looking bimbos

approached me with smiles

and asked if I had a cigarette.

I told them that I hadn’t

for about forty years –

although it was really 35.

Then the one who was wearing less

and who had badly dyed blonde hair

asked me flirtatiously for a lift into town.

I said, “Hell, no.”

Still flirting, she asked why not.

I said, “Because I’m not going that way

and I don’t know you,” and shut the door.

I don’t consider

my being able to realise

that the only reason a bimbo

would flirt with someone

old enough to be her great-grandfather

and try to get into his car

is to rip him off

to be one of my

major mental achievements.

             Another Heaphy Terrace Incident

He seemed to be maybe in his mid-seventies

(but such appearances can be deceptive),

shortish and skinny and stooped,

wearing shabby but clean clothing.

He was more or less staggering and stumbling

along the rain-slick southbound parking lane

of Heaphy Terrace next to Claudelands Park,

supporting himself with a rough-surfaced pole

almost as long as he was tall.

I was walking northbound on the footpath.

A parked late-model ute with a dog in the back

was blocking his way as I was passing it.

He tried to use his stick to haul himself up onto the kerb,

but the concrete was wet, and all he had for footwear was Crocs,

so he slipped and fell onto one knee on the grass verge,

grabbing a tree that was conveniently there

to keep from pitching forward onto his face.

I reacted, probably not quickly enough,

bending down to him and saying,

‘Here, bro – grab my arm and I’ll help you up.’

I was still trying to provide an anchor

for him to struggle weakly to his feet

when a young woman climbed out of the ute’s cab,

came around the back of the vehicle, grabbed him with both arms,

and shamed me by strongly lifting him upright.

One of his trouser legs was muddy at the knee.

He tried to explain, just because we were there and had ears,

that he’d had a bad fall recently

and had broken his leg and one other bone and cracked his skull.

The woman offered him a ride and cleared the passenger seat

as I helped him hobble to the ute’s open door.

Then she hefted him up and manoeuvred him onto the seat,

and I walked on toward the shops.

                  #16 Bus Incident

I was sitting on a bench

at the bus terminal

(or ‘Transport Centre’

as it grandly calls itself)

waiting for the number 16 bus.

A diminutive woman sat down beside me.

Being deeply unassertive,

I was careful not to manspread.

She took some sheet music

from her capacious bag,

and began to play it

on an invisible dummy piano on her lap,

her fingers curled, exquisitely,

in the classical pianist’s arch.

She saw me watching, fascinated,

and initiated a conversation.

We talked about music,

and I held up my end,

so it went well.

She didn’t play in order to perform,

but had been playing since she’d been five.

It was just a big part of who she was.

I told her that I didn’t play,

but that I performed with musicians,

keeping this vague.

Her sunglasses covered most of her face,

but her accent was barely Chinese.

When the #16 bus came

I was careful to sit several seats behind her,

to avoid being intrusive.

When I  left the bus at the Fairfield shops

I tried to say good-bye as I passed her seat,

but she didn’t seem to notice me.

Once outside on the footpath, though,

I looked back at her

and she smiled warmly and waved.

one finger at a time in that sexy way

before the bus pulled away

for the upmarket suburbs

of Rototuna and Flagstaff.

               Thames Street Incident

I was climbing the last hill before home,

a time when my grocery bag always feels the heaviest.

She was standing on the other side of Thames Street,

maybe twenty or thirty metres further up the hill,

underneath one of those huge old oaks,

all leafy and shady in the midsummer early morning:

a big young woman, shouting.

It sounded something like, ‘Henry! Poodle! Henry! Poodle!’,

and I thought about how few things make me feel sadder,

reflexively and deep in my bones,

than a lost dog.

When she saw me she crossed the street

in my direction, her skirt swishing across fleshy legs,

calling out, ‘Hey, remember me?’

I didn’t, but before I could ask her where I knew her from,

she rattled on, ‘Got a smoke?’ –

making the unmistakable

right-hand-fingers-in-a-sideways-V-

moving-back-and-forth-in-front-of-the-mouth gesture –

then continuing, without pausing, ‘I’ve got a chafe!’

Interesting.

Without pausing in my stride

– the bag felt heavy and my thermoregulation was starting to fail me –

I replied, ‘Sorry, but I don’t smoke.’

She continued on down the street behind and away from me,

calling out things that sounded like expressions of displeasure with me.

I revised my thinking to a consideration

of how being lost is sad for the members of any species,

even ours.

The last thing I heard of her monologue,

as she approached the corner with River Road,

sounded like my name.

                        Crossing the Street

After circumnavigating Claudelands Park

on our afternoon walk,

my dog and I prepared to cross Heaphy Terrace

in order to head back home.

Traffic was somewhat heavy,

and we had to wait a while

to cross at the end of Thames Street,

with me restraining my aging fox terrier

tightly on the lead.

A momentary break in the traffic

going in both directions

finally opened up

and we strode briskly into it.

A cyclist appeared from our left

in the cycle lane on the far side of the street,

coming rapidly on a collision course with us.

If we were to slow we would have been at risk

of being run over by the mean-looking SUV

that had partially screened my view of the cyclist,

so we kept on keeping on and made it across.

The cyclist had to slow down a bit to miss us.

“Excuse me!” she shouted indignantly and accusingly.

“Why?” I shouted back. “Did you fart?”

                     No Cause for Optimism

Whilst heading home down Thames Street

walking with my dog on a lead

I witnessed a maybe eight or ten-year-old boy

on a scooter on the grass verge in front of the party flat

kicking a seven or eight-week-old puppy

repeatedly with his spare foot.

I called across the street,

“Hey! Stop kicking the puppy!”

but of course he just looked at me

as if I were from outer space,

and kicked the puppy again.

So I called out again, in my most commanding voice,

“Stop kicking the puppy! Be nice! Don’t be cruel!”

Then an adult came out of the flat

and told him to stop kicking the puppy and to bring him inside

before going back inside himself,

I guessed for his Saturday-morning beer.

The kid picked the puppy up by the scruff of his neck

and started swinging him around.

I yelled, “Don’t do that! Don’t hurt the puppy! Hold him nice.”

The kid looked at me with an unnervingly

still, calm, somewhat beatific smile,

and, still holding the puppy by the scruff of the neck,

began to shake him.

“Stop it,” I commanded. “Hold him nice!”

Then the adult came back out and the kid,

still smiling at me in that troublingly untroubled way,

cradled the puppy gently in his arms,

turned, and headed toward the flat’s front door.

The incident did nothing to dissuade me from my misanthropy.

In a few years’ time that empathy-free young psychopath

will be under the influence of testosterone,

and I’ll be older and more frail,

and still living in da hood.

              Art At The Bus Depot

Being the filthy old fart that I am,

the first thing I noticed were her legs.

Shapely enough and bare

from the tops of her glittery floral-pattern high-tops

that extended like socks almost to her knees

up to as far as the eye could see.

I noticed immediately that her thighs were indeed covered

in goose-bumps

before she pulled down her dark woollen coat

to shield them at least ten centimetres or so

below the crotch of her crotch-length short-shorts.

I pretended not to look,

and shifted my gaze to the roofline opposite.

A person can’t help but see,

but staring is inconsiderate.

She began speaking to me,

I suppose because I seemed old and non-threatening,

asking if I was waiting for the bus to Ham East.

She had about a half a dozen rings, or more,

pierced through her lips,

and one fetchingly crooked tooth.

I told her about the number 17 and number 13 buses

and how one turned left and one turned right

after going over the bridge,

and told her she could see their routes on the sign behind us.

Instead she started a general conversation about the usual crap,

then asked me if I was an artist.

I told her no and she told me that she was gonna be an artist.

She took out her phone and showed me a photo

of a smiley-face tattoo she’d inked onto a friend’s arm.

She was just about to show me another

when the number 13 arrived and I climbed on.

She stayed and waited for the number 17.

                    Winter Sale: 50% Off

I bought a new hoodie at Hallensteins.

I don’t know whether I had some harmless fun

flirting and exchanging double-entendres

with the possibly gay sales assistant,

or if he was actually straight

and having some harmless fun

flirting and exchanging double-entendres

with the possibly gay me.