The Rose In the Lilly Pond.

The Ganster

rrees-owen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:18:00 GMT

THE GANGSTER

The guard clips my ticket with a look of concern. I smile bravely back in return. I am an independent traveller half way through her 23-hour bus ride from Boston to South Carolina and I’m riding the greyhound with my fellow, too-poor-to-fly, passengers. Only my pancreas admits the fear.

I board the bus and am greeted by a gangster. He looks like a drug dealer from ‘The Wire’ with all the frills. Five sizes too big jeans, baggy shirt, gold chain and bandana intact. He calls me down to a spare seat at the back of the bus. No thanks. I grab a seat close to the front. Rattled, I eaves drop, “Cuantos hijos tiene?” a Latino man asks a woman with a baby how many children she has, and my muscles slump into the chair, my heavy eyes close. I am just another immigrant riding the bus.

The lights shut off. I feel a body shift into the seat next to me. I take a peak and see the gangster from the back of the bus. Up close, a scar runs deep from his eye to his lip, and he suffers from severe acne.
“Hey” he says.

I stiffen, drowning in fear.
“Hey” I say, choked. I look out the window engulfed in darkness. I try to take comfort in a familiar Coca-Cola billboard, but everything feels foreign. I feel like a child who has lost a favourite soft toy, and all the warm security that came with it.

A pang for my bed safe back in New Zealand suffocates me. I plug my iPod in, an attempt to shut out my new surroundings.
“What ‘chu doing?” The gangster asks me.

What route would this story take if I answered differently? If I confided in my bus companion about being lonely. Maybe he would share some street wisdom with me, and we’d become great pals.

Instead I answer with all the ’leave me alone’ attitude I can muster at 3am in the morning.
“I’m riding a bus. What does it look like I am doing.” He recoils, then smiles a metallic grill. I turn my back and stare out the window.

I catch the gangster staring at me. My exterior tries to project ’what are you looking at’ attitude while my interior searches desperately for the lost toy. The gangster matches my stare, and we are locked in a show down.
“What beautiful eyes you have” the gangster says.
‘All the better to see you with.’ I think. I break away.

He closes his eyes and rests his hands on my outer thigh. I reel away, revolted by his touch. The further I squirm closer to the window, the more he takes advantage of the space, until we are spooning. Every inch of my body screams no. Frightened to move but more afraid to do nothing, I turn on my reading light to attract attention to me. I use my grown up voice.
“Excuse me, I am not comfortable with you sitting here. Can you please move.”
An older man behind me stands up and stares down the gangster.
The gangster looks at me, hurt and hateful. Then looks at the older man. Finally, he slinks down to the back of the bus.

I smile gratefully at the older man. I feel like Blanche in ’A Streetcar named Desire’ always depending on the kindness of strangers. Relief emanates from my every pore. I hear the calm snores from the Latino woman and her baby, reclaim my space of both seats, and settle into a steady slumber of my own.

Gallery: Our House

rrees-owen — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:17:00 GMT

Our House

rrees-owen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:39:00 GMT

Our House

We were six of the most uncomplimentary people ever thrown into a house together. I use the term ’house’ loosely, It was a shoebox that, if mobile, could have been a container of stowaways trying to cross the US border. Six people, three bedrooms, plus the extras - the one night-stands, the boyfriends, the friends. Sometimes there wasn’t even floor space. Sometimes you got home to find someone else sleeping in your bed . Sometimes you didn’t even want to go home in fear of the bombshell you’d walk into. This constant struggle for space did nothing to calm our clashing personalities. We grated and grinded against each other for a very long and cold winter. Yet between the constant tirade of “get fucked” and the “fuck offs” we created a family.

I met Clare first. We were bright eyed and bushy tailed as we gushed about the winter to come. Clare was a pro snowboarder compared to me. I was green, and had never even strapped in before but that didn‘t falter my enthusiasm. We talked about the champagne powder that Big White boasted – despite what turned out to be the lowest snowfall on record that season. We talked about the predicted 6:1 ratio of men:woman - which actually turned out to be around 1:1. We fretted about jobs and where we were going to live, and before we knew it, we were roommates. We meet Peta and Guy, a sister/brother combo, as we joined the dog-eats-dog race to find accommodation on a ski resort. I thought Peta was so cool with her hippy headband and facial piercing and Guy wasn‘t bad to look at, so we locked them in as roommates.

The way we got our shoebox really set the tone for the winter. We rang the owners who already had tenants and offered to move in the next day and pay the bond up-front in cash. We told them we were all friends from Sydney who had known each other for years, that we were all non-smokers and would never dream of throwing a party in our humble abode. We now needed two more people whom ‘we had known for years’, and fast.

The first time I met Danny, I rolled my stale-alcohol-soaked eyes and mumbled a hello. He was tall and skinny, with his shirt tucked into his pants, and his pants pulled up to his ribs. He tried desperately to impress us and raved about his cooking skills and his endless collection of movies. When he left, he asked us to “give him a tinkle.” A tinkle? Clare and I sniggered at each other on the couch. To our horror, Peta and Guy seemed to think he was alright, a bit weird, but OK. I didn’t want to seem like a judgmental bitch, so I nodded along in agreement. Next thing Clare and I know, ‘Tinkle’ is moving in.

Guy had a friend in Oz come over to fill the last place. His name was Bummie. If he had a real name, I can’t remember it, and I have never met a more stereotypical ‘true blue’ Australian in my life. He would start every sentence with “How’s this...”, no matter how mundane it was. As in: “Oh how’s this; the drains blocked.” His preferred dress around the house consisted of under-sized green and yellow stubbies, subjecting us to his floppy biceps and hairy keg. When he told us stories of either his triumphs - but more often his failures - of seducing women, he would jut his head out like a proud peacock, put one finger in the air and squeal, “riiiiiiping”. These stories made us tiptoe around the house like it was a minefield, scared for weeks to sit on the couch in case we come across some substance that Bummie had desposited there.

So then there were six: Clare, Peta, Guy, Danny, Bummie and I.

At first we were all so polite with each other, there weren’t any problems. It was all ‘you take the first shower.’, ‘no after you’, and ‘do you want a seat? Here, take mine’. We were so nervous to be liked, and scared that if we showed scales behind our bright smiles, we’d be on the outside. Then, the little niggles began to surface, things like food or alcohol getting stolen, with false promises of replacement. We resorted to stashing supplies in our rooms, and writing messages on containers in the fridge like: “Guy’s lunch - get fucked”. We tried to cook together most of the time, but it tended to be the girls in the kitchen, guys on the couch. Master chef Danny only ended up cooking twice the whole winter, yet he always seemed very curious with our meals. Every time we cooked one of our packet-to-table meals, he would harp up, “so what did you do? Cut up some mushrooms and onions, heat up the sauce, cook the pasta, and then HEY PRESTO?” I smile now, but that ‘hey presto’ made my bones cringe.

Clare and Guy got it on soon after we moved in. I know, because Clare’s and my room was right next to the spa outside. I heard the giggles and squeals from Clare, and Guy’s low voice highlighted with ‘fuckin’ every second word he spoke. Even worst was when it went quiet. It was time for my trusty friends, ear plugs, to do their stuff and to pull the covers tight around my face. When Peta found out, she was furious. Screaming matches began with Guy and Peta ending with slammed doors, while the rest of us stared blankly at the television. Peta felt abandoned by Guy. They had come to do the ski season together, then head to South America. Clare and Guy became inseparable as the season wore on, stuck in their own world, coupled hopelessly in love.

Next door became our ‘go-to’ place when our place fell apart. It was a shoebox identical to ours, but no one was living there. Upon occasion the owners would come up, or rent it out, but for the most part it was vacant.

Guy got pussy red spots all over him, an obscure disease called hot tub folliculitis from the unsanitary conditions of our spa. Next door’s spa was pristine and clean and could have contained natural spring water compared to our murky mess. So we did what good neighbours would do, and used other people’s property as our own. Well at least we did until they bolted it shut!

The second ‘neighbourhood-sharing’ incident occurred when our hot water cylinder broke. It was minus 25 degrees outside, and we were now forced to shower in hypothermic water. We discovered that the door of the adjoining unit was unlocked, and figured that it was only neighbourly that they let us use their hot water. I mean it wasn’t like we were stealing the television or anything.

The real ordeal though was when Guy fell on our toilet and broke the cistern a few days before we departed. This time, there was no denying it - we flat out stole. We six were broke beyond belief and relying on the 600 dollars we’d paid in bond money each. That sum, quite literally, looked like it would be flushed down the drain. So we stole the neighbour’s cistern to replace our own, but we were fair crooks and left 50 dollars to go towards the payment of their insurance excess.

Every moment was a crazy one in that house. You couldn’t come home and relax. One day I came home to be greeted by the others viewing a very disturbing video. It captured Danny dancing, drunk beyond belief, in a blue dress. The sight was hilarious, a lanky man dancing (if you can call it that?) to techno music, and beat boxing (if you can call it that?) at the same time. Then it dawned on me that that the dress looked familiar, that it was in fact MY blue dress! And Danny had neglected to wear any underwear! I have never been able to wear that blue dress again.

Even though our house was messed up, we did have some sweet moments. At Christmas, we dragged a branch into our house and decorated it. We organized a secret Santa between the six of us, and mostly brought each other very tasteful gifts - with the exception of a framed photo of Danny in the infamous blue dress. We cooked a roast and sat around the table like a family. Danny was the oddball, and even though he grated my spine we all looked out for each other. Peta especially took him under her wing and invited him out everywhere and stuck up for him. If one of us girls were feeling down, Danny would buy us some chocolate to cheer us up. Peta and I had some insane moments rolling around on the floor laughing, dressing up in ridiculous clothes and snowboarding down our driveway. The moments when we all snowboarded together were blissful and drama free.

Even though Clare and I joked that our house could be a bad reality TV show, we were all sad to say goodbye. We were all looking forward to leaving a ski resort that didn’t rise to our expectations, but it still felt like a kick in the guts to leave each other. Tears rolled, and notes of love and promises to meet up once a year were exchanged. It was a house of dysfunction, yet somehow we created bonds that will last a lifetime.

Gallery: Rainbow Wheels

rrees-owen — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:01:00 GMT

I was one of the bystanders waving the many 'Pat' and 'Lilly's on.

Rainbow Wheels - Vancouver.

rrees-owen — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:27:00 GMT

Rainbow Wheels.

A bright red kettle hisses and squeals like the train that could.
“Jan, would ya get that? Coro’s on.” The kettle sings merrily away.
“Jan, please love. They’re about to reveal who murdered Mr. Jones from number five” A smooth hiss sounds as boiling water hits the element.
“Jan! oh, bloody hell!” Pat heaves off his chair and a dense groove reveals years of T.V. pass time. He hobbles his saggy bones over to the fireworks of boiling hot water.
“Christ!” He grabs a tea towel and relieves the kettle. Where the devil could Jan be, he wonders.
A knot of loneliness and despair tightens in his intestines. He shakes it off and pulls out two cups from the cupboard.
He places a tea beside an empty indented chair and settles into his own indent.
“Yes love, of course I remembered the sugar.”

Pat’s unadulterated TV pleasure is interrupted by a violent banging on the door. Pat grumbles and groans as he heads for the door.
“Gggrrrrandad!” Pat eye’s up his only granddaughter. There’s a new silver stud in her nose to go with the bull ring hanging from her lip. Not to mention, the studs running up and down her ears like ladders. She’s far too skinny and needs some of Jan’s baking to fatten her up, and she wears the most outlandish clothing. Today its her ‘poo’ pants as she calls them. Baggy ‘I dream of Jeanie’ pants that she insists on wearing as low as socially acceptable, with shoes that look like gumboots and a white embroidered singlet.
“Lilly, my darling!” She nearly topples him over with a bear hug. He eyes up the patch work suitcase. “Come to stay for awhile?”
“Yes Grandad, remember we talked about this at Grandma’s…” She averts her eyes and blushes. Grandma’s what? Pat wonders, he dear not ask his cheeky granddaughter for fear of being teased of a ‘senior moment’.
“Great. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Pat goes about his business making three cups of tea and setting a plate at Jan’s seat, oblivious to Lilly’s stares of love and concern.
“Looks good Grandad.” cautiously Lilly sits down.
He smiles at Jan’s empty seat. “Your Grandma could make a fortune with her baking.” He serves Jan a piece of carrot cake left over from the wake.
“Grandma’s not here anymore Grandad.” Lilly blurts out.
Pat keeps a smile plastered at Jan’s empty seat, he chews his carrot cake and wonders why Jan added his most despised nut, the walnut. Lilly grabs hold of her Grandfathers arm.
“Did you hear me Grandad?
Pat takes another bite and discovers a taste he has never experienced before in Jan’s baking, bitterness. He spits out a large glump of baking soda.
“Grandma’s not here.”
“Your Grandma didn’t make this cake, did she?”
“But I am here Granddad. I am here.” A wave of loneliness pulses through Pat’s body.

*

Pat braces himself as he glances his granddaughter coming at him full throttle. She grimaces at Jan’s uneaten toast that Pat has prepared for her, and says with all the gusto she can manage.
“Grandad, we’re going to do something fun.”
Pat glances at the brochure, and is faced with a pair of huge boobs on a bike staring back at him. He gives his quirky Granddaughter a look. Who does she think she is bringing sordid material into his house?
“Is this an invite to some illicit party Lilly?”
“No, no, god no. Look.” She shoves the brochure in Pat’s face.
Pat reads, “Show your true colors, ride naked through the streets of Vancouver, and raise awareness for Multiple Sclerosis”
“Come on Grandad, for Grandma? I’ll do it with you of course.”
“That’s very well dear, but no one wants to see my old bones.” Pat thrusts the brochure back, and turns to walk away.
“That’s not true Grandad, It says right here,” Lilly scrambles through the brochure. “All ages, shapes and sizes welcome. You can even leave your underpants on.”
“I’m not like you Lilly.” Pat searches his head for an enthusiasm. “I’m not ‘free spirited’ like you.”
Pat hobbles out to the Garden, Lilly’s disappointed eyes stinging his back.

Pat feels a swirl of emotions as he grabs the secateurs. How dare his Granddaughter to suggest a naked bike ride, then again it was just like his Granddaughter to suggest a naked bike ride. He starts to hack at the garden. I know Jan had, HAS, has MS but riding through Vancouver with my saggy bottom hanging over the handlebars isn’t going to help, is it. He hacks with the force of his emotions, turning the secateurs into something more sinister, more like a chainsaw. How dare she? how dare she! Horror strikes as he views what is left of Jan’s favorite rose bush. A sad stem and a few spidery leaves. Loose roses surround Pat like an umbrella.
“Pat what have you done?” He drops to his knees overwhelmed by loss and failure.
“Did you cut me some roses Grandad?” Lilly’s warm smile infectious. She gathers up the loose roses, “they’ll look great on the kitchen table.” She turns to walk back and calls over her shoulder, “The thing with plants is, they grow back.”
Pat smiles at her warm optimism. “Now hold it right there young lady.” Lilly spins around. “Where and when exactly is this bike ride?”

“Right everyone, on ya bikes!” A stark naked man with a megaphone announces.
Pat fumbles with his shirt and reveals his chest. “For my wife” is painted in purple. He glances at Lilly before removing his pants, shyly they look away. Pat wonders if he can ever look his granddaughter straight in the eye again. The participants line up, a sea of flesh and wheels.
“Ready, set, ride!”

Pat stays in the middle of the pack too embarrassed to be seen, everyone walking in the street stops and stares at the pandemonium. Cars stopped in their tracks by police, as the pack of naked riders roll by. There must be 50 naked riders in total, and all shapes and sizes that’s for sure. Pat’s view is a male bottom, large and hairy. He skirts around the outside to try and pass his hairy companion, and sees that the bystanders are smiling and pulling out their cameras, not shaking their heads in disapproval. He gives a small wave and a cheer goes up in the crowd. By Robson Street Pat waves like the queen and struts his stuff like a proud peacock. Out of the corner of his eye , he sees Lilly whooping and whistling, she yells to the crowd “That’s my Grandad!”

“Grandad look you made the paper!” She slams the Vancouver Sun down on the table. There Pat is, waving away, with “for my wife” on his chest, and everything hanging out. Lilly giggles and Pat joins in until the kitchen is amplified with laughter. Pat pulls out two mugs for a cup of tea. One for himself and one for his Granddaughter.