Thursday to Sunday Stint - Part 2

The best value item in the city is the 40 cent soft serve cone at Hungry Jacks. Not only is it a refreshing treat, it is exactly the same as the McDonald's soft serve cone which is 50 cents. In case you missed it, that is a saving of 20%! Which is probably one of the reasons why street people prefer to hang out there after late at night. Another is the free drink refills. Now most street people are sneaky and find an empty HJ's cup outside and then come in and confidently refill it at the machine as though it was from a drink they had just bought. But sometimes they are slack and come in with a McDonald's cup and start refilling it. Then the HJ's staff get upset and tend to tell them off.

Friday:
I walked around the city until about 1am and then, as I was very dehydrated from the day's heat, I went to HJs to buy a drink, where I could sit and keep topping it up all night, as I sat and read my book. I sat down near a homeless guy I had seen around a lot but had never spoken to. A bit later he asked me what I was reading? I showed him it was the story of St. Francis. I was just at an interesting bit where St. Francis marked his top with a big letter T, which represented the Greek letter 'tau' and the Hebrew letter 'taw'. Historically it was the Jewish symbol that represented service to the poor, the fulfillment of the word of the prophets, and the symbol put on God's people's foreheads as mentioned in Ezekiel and Revelation. Early Christians had used the symbol of the T until it evolved into the small letter t as that way it included the imagery of the cross of Jesus. This was a major symbolic connection between Judaisim and Christianity that I had never heard of before, and immediately added impact to the feelings I had about wearing the t / cross on my top.

Shortly, in came Dougy, and he sat down and asked if I could refill my drink and give it to him. Then he started talking to another fellow who saw how drunk he was, with his blood red eyes, and got up to sing a rap, to which Dougy got up and did a dance too, that had the whole store in hysterics. A bit later a young thin kid (Jason, 13 years old) came in and joined us. He said he was Dougy's son, although I am sure it was more a term of endearment rather than a fact. We all watched some of the replay of Hewitt's tennis match, which Dougy was very excited about, and also said Hewitt was his brother. Then Dougy went outside to ask some people for some change, so he could buy a wine casket, and came back a few minutes later shocked that a stranger had given him $18. His pleasure at the score would be his topic of conversation for the rest of the day.

At 4am HJs closed up for a couple of hours and we all went and sat outside. Two of Dougy's other drinking buddies, Robbie (the flag-caped indigenous man) and Merrick (whom I had not met before) sat down and they all started to drink from the casket. Robbie was very upset as during the day he had put his flag/cape on the seat next to him and had woken up to find it stolen. Even worse, he said, was that he knew it was "one of his own people" and he would "kill 'em" if he found out who. Again, difficult to determine the resolve behind the words. I offered to go across the road and have a look around for the flag, in case it had been dumped somewhere close by, and Jason came along with me. Together we had a hunt around, to no avail, but it got me a chance to break the ice and talk with Jason.

An hour or so later the men were all slumped down and Jason and I were sitting against the wall nearby. Merrick asked Robbie for a cigarette, which started an argument that Robbie said to "go and find his own" and that "this was his area so piss off". Merrick said he was staying and Robbie was too drunk to do anything about it, but Dougy backed Robbie up and entered the argument. Then he got up and punched Merrick in the head! Merrick was too wasted to realise for a bit what had happened and then after the second punch he got up and stumbled across the path, too sloshed to defend himself. Now I had a non-interference policy with street violence, but it hadn't been tested until now. As Dougy went across and kicked Merrick in the head I wondered if I could just stand by and watch a guy get beaten up? As I was praying and considering what to do, Jason ran across and told Dougy to stop it and tried to hold him back. Well, that changed things and I didn't want Jason to get hurt so I went across and held Merrick back and shouted at Dougy to cool down and that I would take Merrick away. Dougy just stared dead straight at Merrick with angry fuming eyes, and lurched towards us as Jason struggled to hold him. Again I said, "We need peace," and Dougy said, "Well piss him off then!" and he stood still while I dragged Merrick in the other direction, down the street.

As I helped him stagger away, he asked me what the problem was and I just kept telling him the other guys were upset with him and didn't want him there for now. A couple of blocks later he said he needed to go to the toilet and I guided him to one and said I would wait and sit and chat with him when he came out. But he got upset and asked me to leave him alone a few times, and so I did and walked back to the others. They had settled down again, but were grumbling about Merrick, and Jason seemed ok. I sat down and was staring into the distance distracted with my thoughts when suddenly Jason called out to me as Merrick had come back! Everyone was on their feet again and I was able to grab Merrick and guide him away again before anything violent happened again. Jason said this time to take him at least four blocks away, so he wouldn't come back. After a couple of blocks Merrick pulled away from me and headed off to look for a cigarette, and I followed him for a while to make sure he wasn't heading back again, which he didn't.

As the business city morning started many people walked by as they headed into town and gave us some disapproving looks. I was mucking around with Jason, pretending to be scared as he stood out in the rain then came back to shake his head at me like a shaggy dog, spraying water at my face, which I blocked with my arm. When the rain stopped he crouched down in the gutter and scooped water up onto his head, to keep the game going. Then along came the police and Dougy and Robbie got up and went to the car window to talk to them. The police gave them both an ultimatum to head in different directions and be gone within 3 minutes, or else they would be locked up, and then drove on. Robbie got upset with Dougy, thinking that it was Dougy's fault the police had come by, and told him to leave, which he did. Jason went to go with him but first gave me his stuff (a top, diary and 2 Coke cans) to mind as he said he would be back in a few minutes... I waited two hours before wandering over to the steps where I found Dougy again, but he didn't know where Jason had gone. Dougy took off his top and started wandering around shouting at people heading to the tennis, which drew the cops back again. They nodded to me as I stepped away and let them do their job, and they talked to Dougy for a bit and strongly suggested he go and drink down on the riverbank, before he agreed to go away, and headed off in the opposite direction.

It had been a long night but I wasn't really tired and so I went for a walk around the city. I spotted a few people I knew sitting on the street begging for change, so I didn't disturb them and I went to the library to do a bit of internet. I did get a bit tired in the early afternoon and went for a nap on a bench in the Flinders St underpass arcade for a couple of hours. I got up at 4:30pm and headed back to HJs and found Jason sitting there. He was happy I still had his stuf and apologised for not coming back, but he didn't say why. We talked a bit more and then he took me upstairs to show me the quieter upper dining area where he was able to lie down on a padded seat and go to sleep.

As I thought about whether to go down the coast tomorrow, I had checked the forecast on the net and it had said rain all day, and so I thought it was unlikely that anyone would be down on the beach in the rain. As I thought about it I got a spiritual feeling that it was ok to go. I had prayed to God a couple of weeks ago, when I had no money, that a factor of when to go would be that I wouldn't go until I had the funding for the trip, and someone had given me some money earlier in the week. Also when I thought about visiting St. Kilda I felt like I was pressing against a wall, and took that as a spiritual road block and so I had not headed over there. Now as I thought about heading down the coast I had a feeling of stumbling through an open doorway and falling down through an empty space, like off a cliff. Like leaning against a wall and suddenly it is taken away, so I concluded God was saying it was ok to go tomorrow. And it was 10 minutes before 6pm, so I got up and headed to the steps to meet Eco there, as we had arranged the night before.