They Say It’s The Soul of Wit.

So now it’s Monday morning and I’m in No Mood.

I’m zombie-stepping through the first few ugly hours of the business day, my head full of toxic clouds. I’m playing host to a tenacious hangover that sits, Iago-like, on my left shoulder and gleefully nourishes my every pessimistic inclination.

Coffee is the only thing that makes any sense to me.

I bend my steps to the staff cafeteria, the coffee machine sitting in the corner like a last true friend, like a promise of hope, like a reprieve, like an overused simile.

I pour a double dose into my cardboard cup and am topping it up with scalding hot milk when an inexcusably cheerful PR Executive in a dauntless suit of fashionable, just-this-side-of-ironic, brown herringbone enters and strides toward the tea point. While washing out his breakfast bowl he smiles and winks a wholesome wink in my direction.

“How you going mate, alright?” he asks.

I offer him a non-committal shrug that I hope will constitute sufficient social reciprocity.

It doesn’t.

“How was your weekend buddy?” he persists.

I imbibe a bracing throatful of coffee. “Not bad.” I offer.

He looks at me. He seems to expect elaboration.

“I’d give it about a seven out of ten.” I say.

He chuckles. “Only seven?”

“Yeah. It loses three points for brevity.”

He nods, a shadow of frown crosses his brow and, drying his bowl with a dishtowel, he asks. “What’s brevity?”

“Sorry?”

“What does brevity mean?”

The coffee isn’t working. My headache increases as I realise, thanks to Iago’s cruel whisper, that this man almost certainly earns more money than I do.

— — -

So now it’s the end of the day and I’m heading home. I feel enervated, but comfortably so. I’m slouching in a way that I enjoy as I weave through the foot traffic on Park Street Sydney. It’s September, the weather is warming up and the girls are already out in their summer clothes.

They are, in fact, everywhere I look. I swear, one day, beautiful half-dressed women are going to be the death of me. I mean that literally. I fear I’m going to walk into traffic.

I try not to ogle the passing girls too obviously. I suspect, in a couple of cases at least, that I fail.

“Hey,” calls an unfamiliar voice from out of the sweating crowd. “you wanna buy something you’ll have absolutely no use for?”

I know he’s talking to me. I turn to find a thin bearded man regarding me with an engaging leer. He is leaning against a cardboard stand. He is holding out a copy of The Big Issue Magazine. I notice he only has one eye, his left socket covered by a gray patch.

“Technically,” he continues. “that makes it a luxury item.”

I feel an instinctive embarrassment at being addressed by a stranger on a public street. I feel a reflexive fear that I’m about to be conned or ambushed. I look at the proffered magazine. On its cover is a beaming gentleman in a vibrant three piece suit who reminds me uncomfortably of my colleague in the PR Dept. He of the limited vocab.

“How much is it?” I ask.

The cycloptic salesman names a price and I buy. As a lifelong Sydney-sider this is a real rarity for me. In accordance with the universal survival mechanisms of all city dwellers, I almost never break my stride when approached in the street. I’m really quite accomplished at deflecting any attention from strangers, faithfully tunnel-visioning and lockstepping my way from block to block, safely enclosed in the anonymous middle of the moving herd. I never make spontaneous purchases. Ever. But this man’s sales pitch struck me as witty.

And, for god sake, he only had one eye!

I know this shouldn’t make a difference but it does. The Big Issue, I have a general understanding, is a magazine sold by unemployed and/or homeless people as a means of supplementing their income. I wonder if this man is homeless or just out of work.

________

I’m at the bus stop on George Street. I’m waiting for the bus that will take me home, I can see it half a block away, struggling to nudge its way through the queue of giant groaning vehicles backed, one against the other, in a line whose end I can’t perceive from where I stand..

My bus finally arrives. I board it with the huffing, angry-elbowed belligerence demanded of the Sydney peak-hour commuter and, with bellicose desperation, launch myself at the nearest available seat.

I make it. I manage to sit.

I am able to enjoy this achievement for only a few brief seconds before the bus fills with passengers to the extent that hysterical claustrophobia becomes redundant. A cliff face of humanity — too dense to be divided into individuals — crushes against me, pinning me to the window.

I catch my breath and attempt to read my Big Issue. I find nothing in it that holds my interest. The salesman was right. I have absolutely no use for this magazine. My mind wanders. I look out the window. I try to imagine what it would be like to have only one eye.

Or any visible disability.

I think, beyond the obvious physical disadvantage, the worst part would be how people reacted to you. Over time, you could probably find ways to overcome or compensate for your physical handicap.

But you couldn’t control how people treated you. They would pity you, probably. They would be nice, wouldn’t they? They would clobber you with their grimacing, alienating niceness. They would almost certainly become uncomfortable around you.

Everybody who met you would view you in a tragic context. That would have to grate after a while. You could be having the greatest day of your life. You could have met the woman of your dreams. You could have won the lottery. You could have smited (smitten? smote?) your enemies. You could have saved a kitten from drowning. You could be riding high on life! But nobody who met you would know this about you. How could they? They would only know what they saw. They would see your missing eye and feel sorry for you.

And that would fucking piss me off.

My bus finally breaks free of the bottle neck at the Harbour Bridge and picks up speed after merging onto Epping Road. After my encounter with the PR Executive this morning I asked seven other people in my office, throughout the day, if they knew the word ‘brevity.’

Five of them didn’t.

I realise this probably wouldn’t bother most people. And this realisation….bothers me.

(will continue…probably.)