One night on a Saturday
Mood: Contemplative
She dropped the majority of them, due to her wobbly hands. She was called over by her friend that appeared to be standing by a taxi, who I didn't notice due to watching the woman eating my chips closely. After there came no answer (she was too busy eating my chips) her friend jogged over and dragged her away. "Let's get inside" She said, then moved over to the glass doors, bumped into them, then proclaimed "it's locked!" I grinned. "What do you think I'm sitting out here for?" She glanced at me then walked away, searching for the other entrance, which I knew they'd coincidentally find... is locked. Well.
Eddie looked at me. I looked back. I couldn't tell if he was contemplating hitting me or striking up a conversation. "She nearly ate all your chips" Oh, his first words. And how observant he is. Perhaps that's a preparation for his next line, in which he tells me he wants the rest. I smile. He asks me the most asked question of that night, and he asks it first. "What time does the train station open, do you know?" I did know, in fact. I had looked at the schedule before I had sat down. He wouldn't like my answer, though. "Seven", I told him. "Fuck", was his answer. Yes, I thought that was coming. "We have a long time to wait" He grumbled "Yeah." If I was going to wait, I might as well continue talking. Sitting out here for six hours is something, but there is something worse. Sitting out here alone, left to your thoughts, with nothing to do but wait. To talk might pass the time. He was older than me, but I didn't think about that. I never think of my age when I'm talking to someone, perhaps I think of myself as ageless. I don't think of my gender either, usually. That sounds strange, I know. But as the testosterone driven males I have met are, at best, against everything non male, I consider my way better. My way, I talk to people like people, and not like talking to a female or someone who is black. In my family, they would call women "That hoe" or "That blonde" and any other ethnicity than their own "Look, a paki" or "a blacki" which I never liked, neither did I like the gender war I constantly see between males and females. I have seen males more feminine than some females, and some females more masculine than some females, and I constantly see women talking about men as 1 lump, men do this and that counts for every man. The same with men. Women should do this, and that, and that's what a woman is for. Are they so different? I wish they'd open their eyes. "Men cheat and women are sluts" that's the way both sides see it, apparently. Well good luck finding your life partner is all I can say.
Eddie didn't look too good, his hand lay on his head, trying to squeaze the tension from himself. He looked at me as if trying to focus. Then he looked around. The couple in the corner. The cleaner walking around behind the locked gate. How about this Eddie, we lure him out with promises of beer and riches, then we ambush him and hijack one of those stationary trains. I continue to stare ahead silently, as Eddie becomes aquainted with the environment he stumbled into not so long before. He wasn't from Liverpool, I could tell from the accent. But who would be sitting outside a trainstation if they were from Liverpool? I couldn't place the accent. "So where are you going to?" He named the place, I didn't know it. I later learned it was North Wales. Lucky. I'd been there on the weekend before my birthday (It landed on a Wednesday this year) all I saw was sun and scenery, and when the sun went down and the scenery barely visible through the darkness, my experience was of fancy restaurants and never ending drink. Wine, I can't take wine. I must have had 10 bottles of WKDs, more drink to satisfy, then one bottle of wine and that was it, I was smiling and talking bollocks. I wonder what Eddie had to drink. The question arose, he told me resistance to drink built up with experience and age, which I knew. He had been on around fifteen pints. Unbelievable. How can that much fluid go through a man? And did it go through or did it simply accumulate in his wobbly legs? Solid theory, actually. Why do people get wobbly legs when they're drunk? Ha, sounds like an opening to a sad joke, the one that get's a "heh" and one or two "oh yeah, HA". With me, I'll drink and soon enough I'll be in the toilet, and it will be coming back out again. Straight down, and out it comes. I know, you didn't like the imagery but I have to talk about something don't I?
Anyway, an hour passes and I get to know Eddie more. The man's life is laid out before me. His job, his love, his thoughts. The love part was short lived, he had recently split up with his girlfriend and when asked the reason, he explained she had had enough of him. I was interested at this part, I was always seeking to better myself in relationships. I had convinced myself I was no good at it, which is partly true; I've never had a relationship to know if I'm good at it or terrible. He tells me he's a paint blaster. Those bridges you see, the big structures... he was up there, blasting paint onto it. He says a job is a job, and he'll probably end up doing it until he retires. There is no satisfaction in his voice, no nothing. I try to pick up some emotion from what he is telling me, how does he feel about that? Dissappointed? But I detect none. It is what he does, and what he will do. I tell him of college, my ambitions (I would hardly call myself ambitious but I have a general direction I want to take the business end of my life) he is interested in the Psychology part, asks me a question with a smile. "So how would you explain my drinking, from a Psychologist perspective?" I look at him, raise an eyebrow. "Well I'm not fully trained yet..." He laughs. "Perhaps to drown out your problems. Unhappy with your job, the breakup. Do you drink more now that you have broken up with her?" He doesn't think about it much, just says "Not really." Then he re-thinks. "Well now I do, actually... I wasn't bothered that we broke up, I mean I missed some bits. Some bits I didn't mind to see leave." I wondered if this is what councelling was like. I'm a lazy teenager who does the bare minimum to get by in life, and here I am apparently councelling someone on their problems, I felt slightly in over my head. But I carried on. I knew about this, I had friends. It's something you pick up on how to do, when someone has a problem and if your there, you have to deal with it. You are the only one who can make them feel better, cheer them up. You have a chance for them to walk away with a view to improve things and if you do nothing, you may have even let it get worse. A chance to make a difference in someone's life is what it's all about if you ask me. Not that I'm an expert.
So we continue talking about things, it's the usual stuff. But before the usual stuff it was personal, and afterwards it will be something else. I don't remember ever sitting down with someone and talking this long, but it beats saying hello as you pass someone in the corridor. It's not the most exciting way to spend your time but instead of wondering what it's like in twenty years time or thirty, here I am finding out exactly what it's like. Asking someone. It is a rare opportunity because when will someone ever let you sit and talk to them for six hours? Unless it's a partner, who may or may not be twenty or thirty years older I'm sure it happens, but to me it doesn't seem likely at my age for it to happen to me. He tells me he's not very good at socialising, he describes himself as a man who get's on with the job and doesn't like distractions. A man dedicated sometimes to his job, he told me a story. I had forgotten what they call the thing that get's them to the top of the highest places, I imagined it as a cross between a fire engine ladder and an elevator. But there was one time when it wouldn't go up to the highest point, and the person would have to get out to paint. No one would do it, apparently. The guy told Eddie, leave it for someone else. He wouldn't have anything to hold him up there, on that building. No barriors around waist height so he didn't fall out like on the elevator/fire engine thing. But he went up and did it. He said he was scared, he didn't mind heights but when your up there it got to you, but the excitement got to him more. It was the fact that no one else would do it, and he did. That is what he told me. To do it when no one else would was what excited him, and for that he overcame his fear.
How do I match that? I once won a teddy bear on a teddy grabber. I'm sure he'd applaud me. But he is thirty seven, me only just eighteen. By his age I'd get my chances to do things, and I might come back one day and have a lot more to tell him.
A man came, drunk. Very drunk. He staggered around, I think he was making his way to the trainstation entrance but he hit the gate, bounced off it, then moved to the glass doors. after a minute of wobbling he found it, bounced off it. He turned his head sideways and looked at the doors. "Locked" Says me. He didn't seem to hear, and walked passed me and Eddie to the corner, and sat down. I say sat and you imagine him carefully sitting, I mean literally fell on his ass, head leaning on the metal bar and staring into oblivion with one eye open, beer can in his left hand and half empty pepsi bottle in the other hand. When he came around, we got the story of him, me and Eddie did. He'd been in prison 15 years of his life, served half a life sentence. He was thirty. He said he considered it almost home. He had prepared meals, no taxis. And not that's sewage crap they used to serve, he told me. Now they have a menu and life is good in there. If it wasn't for his wife and four kids he says he'd be in there permanently. I didn't think of the kids and what they must think of their father, my concentration was on his liking of prison. I had thought of prison, the routine, doing the same every day... all men, and all bad. I never wanted to go there. But he seemed to want to go there. Why? I must know why.
