The Working Week

Monday morning go slow. A gentle breeze blows up the street. My head is weekend-thick. Is that my brain, or is that the space where it used to be? Step, one foot in front of the other. Nearly there.

A young girl walks her dog. Tommy, from the paint shop, leers at her, in her low cut top. He catches me, catching him, he looks contrite, but still steals a last glimpse at her legs before she disappears up Napier Street. He has her stripped naked by the time he looks back at me. He smiles.

The fat Asian boy, from the local shop, smiles at me, as I walk by. I smile back.

"G'day," he says coyly. He almost bats his eyes.

"Hi,” I say. He looks like he has lost weight, with only one roll obvious around his waist. (not even a roll, I'm being unkind)

I'm glad Nicholas said that the fat Asian boy makes eyes at him too. I was beginning to think it was me going nuts, imagining such things. Tim says that Nicholas thinks that all men are making eyes at him. The curse of the beautiful, I guess.

The start of the working week, yay! At least it’s cooler today. We're all surfs working for the machine, which is worth jack shit. The world is going to hell. There are idiots in charge, I think, as I look both ways before I cross the street. None of us do any thing important, just work to maintain the status quo.

Leah says that she does some thing important, because she works with cancer ridden kids. (she's actually the CEO, so I'm not sure how much, actual, kind contact she has) Why do people who work in such jobs think they are doing something worthwhile? Kids, illness, most of those kids won't make it; little clumps of bones in little shallow graves.

A cool breeze blows down the street. I wonder who has got it right?

“Hey mate,” says the homeless guy on the steps of the old post office. “Have ya got a spare smoke?” I often give him a cigarette, the only, as the beautifully groom concierge in San Francisco said to me once with a smile, bum I do give to. Don't know why?

“Sure,” I say. I pull out my packet and hand over a cigarette.

“Busy day?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “Gotta pull it together after the Xmas break.” He takes the fag with a bruised and bloody hand. I don't ask.

“How about you?”

“I’m in the office already, aren't I?” He laughs with a throaty, emphysemic kind of cough. “Busy day all right.”