- helen lovejoy
One the bus home from Uni. At Glen Waverly station. A woman got on with a very young child - no more than a couple of months old - in a stroller. The bus driver very grudginly bent down to help her with her burden. That's what initially got my attention, because this is one of the very few cool bus drivers on the 742 route. LIke, he actually waits for you to sit down before accelarating off at warp 7. You know, that technique that must be on about page 3 of the 'ventura buslines how to be an arse head driver in six easy steps' manual? Well, this guy actually lets you sit down, as opposed to trying to slingshot you through the front windscreen.
So I was curious as to why this otherwise rad guy was so loathe to help the woman onto the bus.
At first glance, she was really really pretty. Reminded me of my friend Emmallee - she of the taking nude photos of Ally fame - a bit. Very cute in that really freckled way. A little too thin, but anyway, still very pretty. Then I saw the tracks and bruises down her arms - the telltale signs of heroin addiction. That's when I realised where I'd seen her before. She and her boyfriend/partner/whatever used to get the same bus I used to get home after my tuesday afternoon/evening music lecture in first semester last year. I kinda remembered it just because I often felt a little intimidated by him sometimes as they sat there, so completely off their faces that they were leaning against each other more for support than as any gesture of affection.
But anyway, I guess it's not making TOO much of a big assumption to say in the intervening time he'd knocked her up. Fair enough. Nothing wrong with that. But the sad thing...well, sad's a poor choice of words really, let's say 'poignant' thing about the whole little picture was that she obviously LOVED her little boy so much. She was holding him in her lap, playing with him wiping up the copious amounts of drool (eww, that's just ONE of the MANY reasons kids aren't on the agenda for me for a VERY long time, if at all) dribbling down his chin every few minutes.
All the while, she had that whole thing of appearing sleepy and not knowing exactly where she was going on. I've seen that often enough to recognise what it means. Despite the fact that she obviously really cared for this little kid, she just wasn't able to give up the smack for him.
The bruises and tracks on her arms were far too recent. The poor bub himself didn't look too healthy either. He had a massive red rash across the back of his skull, spreading around his face, and what looked like a large bruise on the top of his head. He was so young that his skull plates can't have even fused together properly yet.
I'll leave you to draw your own assumptions form that, but before you do, consider this...
What would you have thought if I just described the scene above and mentioned nothing about this little kid's mother being on the smack? Attractive young mother, cute kid, maybe a little sick but babies get like that. It's an ideal picture really...both of them were good looking enough to grace any one of a million johnsons baby powder ads.
I've seen far too many friends, acquaintances, schoolmates, former band members, and everything else, battle with drugs, battle with drugs. Some won the fight, some lost it in a very final and terminal manner. IT annoys me when my parents and older siblings go on about 'fucking junkies'. I mean, hang on, none of my mates were 'fucking junkies', they weren't like the homeless people I see around Flinders street. Maybe it's just the rest of my family haven't been affected by the heroin epidemic.
That's not a buzz word either, I use that term deliberately. Think about teh connotations because I couldn't be bothered explaining it.
But the real unfortunate thing is, really, it's only a matter of time before we ARE affected by it. And maybe they'll get even harsher if and when it does? I think that's maybe the way some people cope.
And this leads me to a further conclusion. Those kids around Flinders street probably had friends just like me. Friends who just got sick of all the empty promises, sick of the false hope invested in attempts at rehab. Sick of the lies. Sick of the stolen CDs. They're not 'fucking junkies' either. They're real people. They could be YOUR friends, brothers, sisters, parents, co-workers, schoolmates...
Compassion fatigue is real. I can understand how people can get over caring about it all. The pace of modern life doesn't give us much time to consider these things for ourselves. And even when we do, it's often just easier to switch off and let someone like Mike Munro tell us how we should think about these things.
But even then, I think it's disgusting that people can just switch off their humanity as it conveniently suits them. Like the following quote taken from the always fair and impartial (cough bloody cough cough) Herald Sun on Monday March 5 of this year. When asked "are we doing enough to solve the drug problem?" Margaret Fitzimmons, 38, of Melbourne answered:
I think they [italics mine] have no hope.
Just who the fuck are 'they' Marge? Let me guess, it's Asians, Aborigines, and 'no-hoper dole-bludgers' right? Even uni students like myself maybe? Do you drink Marge? Have you ever driven slightly over the limit? If so, FUCK YOU! You could've killed someone! Do you smoke, Marge? If so, FUCK YOU! You're gonna want your hospital bed that could go to someone else more deserving when you're dying of lung or throat cancer, aren't you?
Are you gonna apologise to me when I have respiratory troubles in later life thanks to breathing your second hand smoke?
Are you gonna apologise to your grandkids for the fucked up soil they have to live with? Impregnated with chemicals from every dropped butt?
Do you realise you're supporting an industry that performs cruel tests on animals? [I can talk, I just ate a cheesburger]
An industry that duped a public into believing it's product was safe despite all evidence to the contrary?
I'd rather see YOU in jail for THOSE crimes against mine and successive generation's future, Marge, as opposed to some poor kid addicted to smack.
By the way, that's a really nice idea, putting people inside where it's probably EASIER to get smack than outside. Good one, ya' dickheads.
The same goes for all the high minded straight edge kids I talk to [I'm going to get accused of straight edge bashing on here one of these days...well fuck it, we probably deserve it] How's this for an idea? How about you get your arses off the high moral ground, and come down and join us in the pleasant, shady valleys of reality. You're not better than those 'junkie fucks' because an X on your hand and a bunch of lamearse bands like Youth of Today give you the crutch you need to abstain.
to give you a purpose and a character to play
- mid youth crisis
So next time you see a 'junkie fuck' in the street, don't dismiss them as subhuman. What's the difference between classing someone as a lower order of life on that basis, and doing the same to a person upon the basis of religion, ethnicity or eugenics? You don't attempt to justify the holocaust do you? Well as far as I'm concerned that sort of thinking is one and the same as the nazi party's social darwinism. So don't attempt to justify your predjudices against heroin addicts to me either.
When you see that shabby figure on the bus, train, street, whatever. Just remember, there but for the grace of circumstance and fortune goes anyone of us, yourself included.
POST SCRIPT: I wrote this on monday, it's now tuesday. I saw the same woman and kid again today. If anything she looked even more beautiful, he even more cuter. Considering the fact that having written this, my own attitudes to this whole thing are a little bit more well thought out and have a bit more shape, it was even sadder. I'm almost tempted to take a camera on the bus with me on thursday on the off chance that we happen to share the same service again.
That sounds sort of like callous, cynical exploitation of her, her child and their plight. I'll give you that. I just think that, if I could capture even a tiny bit of that poignancy in a photgraph, and put it up here, it might change someone's mind. Then I might have acheived SOMETHING in this situation that's just sooooo lame...
