Category Archives: On the tram

love and power on a Melbourne tram

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I was on the tram a week ago and a couple in their fifties sat opposite me, she better dressed and presented than he and both a tad flustered. My instinct tells me they are on their second marriage and it is ‘early days’. They appear to be seriously interested in each other and that’s nice. Let us call them Amy and Bill for no reason except for the fact they never used their names and I have to call them something. It occurs to me as I write that they used no endearments either and this is surprising. Perhaps they have been together for many moons?

Amy stops fiddling with her handbag and Bill squints at his phone in the way all us older folk do.

A conversation ensues on where they should leave the tram.

Amy. ‘Where do we get off?’

Bill. ‘Swanston Street.’ This is not a clever answer. It is a long street.

Amy. ‘But where?

Bill Googles. ‘Bourke Street.’

Amy. ‘Where did we get off Thursday?’

Bill. ‘Bourke.’

Amy. ‘Collins is better.’

Bill. ‘Okay.’

Amy looks out the window. ‘No, it’s fine.’

Bill. ‘Well, Collins then.’

Amy glances at me and looks out the tram window again. ‘That’s a nice building’.

It actually is not, however, it succeeds in throwing Bill off course.

Bill takes her hand, she lets him. ‘Where?’ He peers out.

Amy. ‘Bourke. It’s fine.’

Bill. ‘Collins is good.’

I am trying not to smile, this is like an amateur Pinter play where the silences and deviations mean more than the literal words.

Amy relents, looks at him, smiles. ‘Did you book?’

Bill. ‘No need.’

Amy. ‘It was busy Thursday night.’

Bill. ‘I’ll ring.’

Amy stiffens ever so slightly and looks out the window again. ‘It’s fine.’

I really want to applaud the way she’s playing him.

Bill. ‘You have a smudge here.’ He touches her face with love. A caress.

Amy rubs it off. ‘I’ve said to you before about that mirror.’

Ah, I think, so she was in his house last night and ‘wants a few changes’.

She glances at me again, I stay poker-faced and decide this will be great for my dialogue exercise with Writers Victoria in two weeks.

And so it goes. She is not being horrible and seems truly to like him and he adores her, though possibly is not up to the task.

Amy. ‘Which stop is it?

Bill. ‘After this one.’

Amy. ‘Here is good’.

She stands and he follows, she takes his hand and as they leave the tram, she looks back at me with the faintest of smiles and I allow myself a smile in return.

Bill was oblivious of my presence. For Amy, I was an audience and I understood that the little to and fro I witnessed had been for my benefit as much as an exchange between two lovers.
As I am ambled away at the next stop, I recalled my therapist saying years ago ‘David, all relationships are a struggle for power, at least in the beginning.’
BTW, Rosie the dog has been passed as ‘dog and child friendly’ and is up for adoption. She needs a more suitable home than we can give her, but she will be missed…

Remember what we promised not to tell mummy?

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Are you ready for another tram story?
Mid-afternoon, I’m heading home on the tram and a woman of hmm, maybe 45, sits opposite me with a girl whom I guess is five. After idly kicking me a few times [the girl not the woman] and after taking off her enormous Frozen backpack and hitting the guy next to me in the face, the girl settles and the woman apologises. The guy next to me flees to another seat.
The girl stares and I stare back. She [the girl, not the woman] pokes out her tongue, I wiggle my ears and raise one eyebrow. I win.
Silence for a time and then the woman says to the girl.
‘Remember what we talked about?
Umm.
‘We talked about it before, remember?’
umm.
‘We promised not to tell mummy.’
Now I’m getting interested.
Little girl continues to look blank.
‘We promised not to tell mummy. Remember? We agreed not to tell mummy.’
‘Yes’ says the little girl, though it is clear she has no idea of what’s going on.’
‘Remember what we promised not to tell mummy.’
Girl ignores woman.
The woman sighs and gives up and looks out the tram window. A few stops later they get off.
My imagination is running hot.
What must mummy not know? What is the big secret? What is the relationship between the woman and the girl? Eccentric aunt? Mummy’s girl friend? A friend giving mummy a break?
What have they done that mummy must not know?
Did ‘auntie’ get drunk during their girls day out in the city and lose the little girl? Fallen asleep? Robbed a bank? Spent the day at the casino? Fed her sugary treats despite this being forbidden?
Okay, okay, the explanation doubtless is more mundane. ‘We agreed not to tell mummy about her surprise birthday present’ or ‘we agreed not to tell her that you wet your pants [the girl, not the woman] or chucked a tantie or’…
Whatever, interesting character observation and a fun way to spend 20 minutes grinding along Lygon Street.
What do you think was too secret to tell mummy?

Talking to strangers

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strangers on a train
I love trams and trains, not so keen on buses and I’m an avid people watcher, especially these days with passengers’ social media habits. Who hasn’t enjoyed listening to someone’s mobile phone conversation delivered at the top of their voice, detailing how they have just been dumped by/dumped some %^$&hole who ^&(*&^% them? Or how they fucked over their boss? Classic. Or enjoyed seeing some jerk walk into a closed door or miss their stop because they were too busy checking the stalk book status of some person they met somewhere sometime and about whom they don’t give a rat’s clacker, but – MUST CHECK NOW.

Given where I live, hearing such a variety of languages, on occasion even another language which I know enough to understand. And simply the general weirdness of social interactions in a culture where private and public boundaries have dissolved and people interact and speak as though in their living rooms or bed rooms and not in a public space surrounded by strangers. Mind you, most are too immersed in their own social media bubble to notice whereas, being a relic from an earlier age, I do notice as I read my book (or pretend to) and daydream and look.
And sometimes check my phone, I confess it. MUST BE CONNECTED.

But I digress. How do I attract them, the strangers who are happy to share their intimacies with me? Okay, I am not sitting in a private bubble of music and/or text and I am genuinely interested in people’s stories [writers are ruthless collectors, aren’t we?]. Also if I see someone ‘weird’ ambling along, I do not automatically lower my eyes; only if they look weird and dangerous. Maybe they can see my own secrets etched in the lines of my face?
Sometimes I leave the tram or train and reflect. Yes, I reflect how lucky I am to have survived what life has thrown at me, but more than that.
Like a few months ago, last tram home from Saint Kilda, the tram of the drunks and the loners and a few couples absorbed in each other. A clearly mentally distressed and aggressive guy sat across from me and a space cleared around him in an instant. He barked and yelled and glared at me and I looked and said nothing and as he staggered off, he looked me in the eyes and said with utmost clarity ‘You’re cool, man.’
Did he see? Could he tell? I have seen much worse.

And I become the receiver of stories of exes (none of them any good, surprise, surprise), drugs, mental illness, crap relationships, how they’re ‘doing much better now’ or rants about *#^+$# politicians. The last is fair enough: political discourse in Oz is the pits. I will not listen to racist or sexist rants or political rants. All else, let it rip! They come to me like seagulls to a chip – how grateful are the other passengers as they see the weirdos’ radar lock onto me as soon as they step aboard and shuffle their way towards me.

What brought on my musing today? Coming home on my Brunswick tram a couple, both heavily tattooed, she anorexic skinny and twitchy, he all muscle shirt and bravado, told me (she articulately, he with grunted agreements) how God had saved them from drugs and prison and how he/she could save me too (good luck with that, mate) and how the guy hoped one day to get access again to his son. She told how she was learning to cook and how she was getting him to ‘stop eating shit’. It was fascinating to see how the skinny woman was the dominant personality and muscles followed along. Sad stories. All true? Maybe. It is their version of reality and for now it serves them well.

How many of our own stories are true? Don’t we all continually re-invent our past? Don’t you? Talking to strangers, safe in the knowledge we will never see them again?

How do you react to strangers on a train? Avoid them? Or listen and reflect? What stories have you heard and what stories have you told them?

I’m glad they chose me and I’m glad I listened.
trams

Afternoon tea with dragons

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We all love dragons, right? One day per week I mind my granddaughter after school until mummy and daddy and little brother get home. The first hour or more is spent filling the bottomless pit of this slender 5 year old with a variety of food, remembering that last week’s favourite food now is ‘yuk’, that ‘mummy and daddy say it is okay to have biscuits’ though both of us know this is untrue and Emma cannot keep a straight face as she says it. ‘Good try’ I say and she laughs and we negotiate our way through until she says ‘will you play with me farfar?’ This being Swedish for grandfather and a story for another day. We play ‘make believe’, both of us filling in the story line and adding costumes as we go; a blanket becomes a magic cloak, a piece of string a golden binding and so on: games and stories played countless times by countless children. And I have been promoted over the last three years. First I was typecast as a ‘scary monster’, with instructions not to be ‘too scary’, then a bad dragon who invariably and magically became good and married the princess [no prizes for guessing who this is]. Lately I have become the ‘good dragon with magical powers’ and this is a very fine role indeed. The only drawback to being a dragon is that when three year old William comes home, I must be killed for he is the fearless knight and dragon slayer. Such is life. Or not, as the case may be. Now the tram has stopped and so must I.

dog suits

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Four guys dressed in dog suits run across the road to where I am waiting late at night for my tram. Happily drunk, they pretend to chase cars as we wait and we chat, turns out they are Irish backpackers, pretend pee on car tyres when they stop at the traffic lights and generally muck around in good humour. The tram arrives and we pile on and they roll on the floor, scratch each other’s bellies [and react as dogs do, hind leg pawing the air] and growl etc. while interacting with those of us close by. It is all good fun and there is an atmosphere of good humour and outright laughter through the tram, a spirit of camaraderie. When the ‘dogs’ leave, those of us left are smiling and feeling a little more light-hearted.

And this is why I love trams. There is an intimacy of connection, usually positive but sometimes not, which I do not feel on trains or buses.

More stories from ‘On the tram’ will follow.