Silver Cars

Yesterday after work I headed over to see Andre and Cheryl's new house. I didn't have my bike so I had to get a train from Central to Redfern. I walked up to Central Station, through the underground tunnel, where were the buskers? There were none there. Usually there is one every 30 metres. You would walk past a busker playing a Casio or a didgeridoo, then keep walking, and just as the sound was about to disappear, there would be a new sound ahead, somebody playing a triangle or reciting bad poetry. But yesterday there was not one busker, not even somebody playing an old acoustic guitar with two strings. What have they done with the buskers? Anyway, I had other, more pressing matters to attend to, like buying my ticket from the vending machine, which did not go smoothly. It said $2.20 so I put in a two dollar coin and a fifty cent coin. The machine rejected my fifty cent coin, the stupid machine spat my coin back out at me. I kicked the machine, did not hurt my foot, so kicked it again. At the same time as the kicking, I also loudly called it a GODDAM SHITTING NO GOOD PIECE OF JUNK FUCKIN SHIT. Then I dug around in my bag for a goddam twenty cent piece and put that in and the machine was good enough to accept it and give me my goddam ticket.
I walked up to the platform and half the population of Sydney was right there on that platform. A train pulled up and along with half a million other people I jammed myself onto the train. I thought of what I'd seen of the Japanese train system, all that was missing here was the guy with the plank to help squeeze us all in there. In Sydney, we can take care of that ourselves, thank you.
It was a hot day, or maybe it was not a hot day, I'm always goddam sweating anyway. Jammed in the VESTIBULE as I was with all these other people, I was sweating like a fiend. In these circumstance I feel very self-conscious, even though why the fuck should I worry if somebody sees me sweating like a maniac, still that's how I feel. What does a person think when that person sees a group of people and one of them is sweating like a bastard, for no apparent reason? The sweating man (unless he is an athlete in his natural habitat) is a disgusting creature, who is no doubt guilty of some grotesquery, and clearly has some abominable thing to hide. THAT is what the person thinks.
Anyway, in that VESTIBULE I found something to occupy my thoughts, to take them off the subject of my sweating face and how grotesque and disturbing people must surely find it. Right next to me was a man, and on the other side of him was another man who kept looking at the man in a strange way. They were both average looking men, not wearing business suits, they could have been men whose job was a plumber or electrician. The second man kept staring at the first man, but the first man did not notice, but I sure did, and was fascinated. I had to understand what the second man found so interesting about the first man. The conclusion I came to was that he found that man attractive, he kept looking him up and down, sizing him up, checking his pecs and no doubt wondering what he looked like without his shirt on. Did he have a large penis? Did he have a problem with premature ejaculation? I was sure he was thinking those things. For sure he wasn't looking at the man in a regular, casual way.
Anyway, the train arrived shortly at Redfern, so it was time to leave the man to his homoerotic daydream. I was real glad to get my sweating face the hell off that packed train, into wide open space I threw myself, then up the stairs. I walked the rest of the way to Alexandria, and Andre and Cheryl's house.
They were at war, as usual. This time they were debating an excess water bill. I found it fascinating. No, I didn't. Andre grabbed some of his home brew beer and we walked across the road and down a little to the house they are moving into. The house was bare except for dead cockroaches scattered about the floor. The house had been nuked with bug killer. We went upstairs to the room with a balcony and drank beer and looked at the street from the balcony. Andre found an empty drug bag and a cigarette that had been emptied of tobacco. It wasn't long before he took off back to get more beer, and I had to go too, I had to go. No toilet paper in new house. On the way back from the old house to the new house there was a comical scene where Cheryl wanted to come over with us and Andre said, Well if you go over there, we'll go over there. I, being the sole voice of reason, a sort of referee, made a suggestion, Goddam it, why don't we all go over there and try to be the fuck nice to one another? So we all went over there, to the new house, and spent the rest of the night sitting around in the empty front room, sitting in old abandoned office chairs we found in the street.
I thought of the ANIMAL FACT I had read earlier that day under the lid of a juice bottle, it was about the bullfrog, so I posed the question: What is the only animal that never sleeps? Andre, or maybe it was Cheryl, said the shark. It went on, nobody guessed it, I gave a clue, which was, you will find them in the swamp. Somebody said FROGS! so I said Damn close! In fact it is the bullfrog!
This question game was so enjoyable, and we were by that time feeling pretty good and buzzing on the beer, so we continued with a movie game. Name five movies featuring Jack Nicholson! Name five movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock! Name five movies where you see somebody going to the toilet! And so on. It was fun and enjoyable. We were really putting away those beers, too. Ah! Friday night!
Later Cheryl told me about her SILVER CAR observation, that there are silver cars everywhere these days, as though it were perhaps some kind of conspiracy. I didn't believe it, and told her that she probably only saw so many because she was looking out for them. And anyway, I thought the most popular car colours were white and red. But then even later, when we were heading back so I could get my bag from the old house to be driven home, I'll be damned if Cheryl didn't prove her point. Right outside, along the street, were ten cars.
Eight of them were silver.