War/Peace. Matthew Vandenberg
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like vermin.
I stand up and look at one part of the Harbour Bridge which still remains intact, a single tower like a single mast, like the tall flagpole that stands stubbornly in the North Korean town just shy of the demilitarized zone. Across the dirty water I can just make out another tower, just a little smaller but just a little shinier.
I shrug.
The feud between the north and the south has been going on for much longer than most people believe. I could cite religious differences as the reason behind the conflict, but the root causes cannot really be categorized so easily, in just the way the abstract for a scientific article does not explain in detail all aspects of a piece of research. The south side of Sydney has for long been the side where most Catholic churches lie, while the north side has for long been home to a large population of Protestants. Therefore, naturally, Protestants have over time migrated to the north, and Catholics to the south, while Atheists or Agnostics have generally wandered freely between the sides without a conscious awareness of the division, perhaps completely ignorant or disinterested.
This division eventually split the Sydney Harbour Bridge in two. Now I stand here, hands deep in my pockets, shocked, stunned, scared, exhausted, and disappointed. I hear a safe house exists somewhere in Bondi, a place where north-siders stranded in the south can take refuge: a place where north-siders do not refer to south-siders as SS or Gestapo, and a place where south-siders do not refer to north-siders as nightwalkers lacking a sense of moral righteousness. A place where the area north of the Sydney Harbour Bridge is not referred to as Sodom, and the south as Stalag Luft S. There is indeed a place where we are all free men.
******
References
1 Poison – The Prodigy
JACKSON CURTIS - 6:05pm - December 15 - 2011
'You've got nice hands.' She says this as she rubs two or three of my fingers with the necks of hers. She says this with a smile on her face so mischievous, so devilish, yet so discreet. She around 30 or 34 years of age, she has dark brown hair, wavy like her body. She's of average weight and height for a Texan woman her age. She's clearly a hick and giddy as a prick but I like her. She has this mystic tone to her voice: she speaks like a Gypsy with the sincerity of no woman I have ever met, and so brazenly also, especially considering the proximity of her husband. I can see a twinkle in her eyes as she stares down at my naked palms.
I'm in the back seat of an old sedan, rolling along a back street of Bankstown. I'm leaning forward, facing this woman who is sitting, her body twisted around to face mine, in the passenger seat, her husband in the driver's seat. I'm calm, content, relaxed, and somewhat excited. No doubt I hitched well. This time, for once, I hitched a ripe ride, an excellent ride, a safe ride through some of the south-side. I'm fortunate, lucky, and protected, for now at least.
A cat is sitting comfortably on the dashboard. It sleeps peacefully despite the volume of the music: one moment Slash, the next Michael Jackson. It's oblivious to the world inside the car, let alone the world outside: oblivious no doubt to the war, to the changes taking place as we speak, think and breath, oblivious no doubt to the ravaged streets that run like dirt tracks through fields of black and brown, and which would even leave T.S. Eliot speechless. (Not that anyone wanted to hear him speak anyway, that talentless prick!) Oblivious to this war, still raging, raw like an uncooked onion, that strikes the fragile hearts of Sydney-siders like naked onion fumes the eye ducts, this cat purrs and for a moment this is almost all I can hear: this pleasant tone a backing track to muttered words which the female hick speaks. She speaks with a fluent Southern American accent, the texture of Texas if it were to be drawn, colored, turned to fabric and qualified. Her husband also.
'Ok: we'll drop you off here,' the guy says, pulling over onto a grassy knoll to the left.
'You can't drop him off here!' the woman protests. Beneath one eye one freckle appears larger, framed by the perimeter of a pretty tear. 'How can you drop him off here? It's dangerous! He's from the north Terry!'
'He said he wanted a ride to Bankstown. We're in Bankstown now. This place is fine. It's safe here.'
'Yeah. Here's good,' I say, shrugging.
'The can't drop you off here,' the woman says again, grasping tightly my hand. She shakes her head as the car grinds to a halt. The sound of the churning of mud replaces the beat behind Beat It.
'Thank you so much for taking me this far,' I say. 'I know south-siders are not supposed to talk to north-siders . . .'
'Think nothing of it,' the woman says. 'We're American, so we cop a lot of shit from people in the south anyway.'
'Ok, bye,' the guy says, tapping some fingers on the steering wheel. I let go of the woman's hand.
The man is smiling as I step out of the car, a half smile which suggests the presence of a thin, tight wire hooked onto one end of a lip, being pulled by an unknown force – perhaps a front: this wire a wire which helps keep his mask intact.
'Please don't drop him off here!' the woman yells.
'It's ok,' I say, one hand resting on the door. 'This is the University of Western Sydney. I actually know someone who works here. Bye.' - I swing the door shut and then take two steps back from the car. They speed off, or, rather, the male speeds off, while the woman sits frozen in the passenger seat, no doubt a potential client, a nice woman I could have fucked if it weren't for the overly protective husband. The wife's arm, stiff like a cock, vertical like a mast, is held in a salute to me as the two of them and the car they're in exit my field of vision.
******
References
1 Closing Time - Semisonic
2 Heavy Cross – The Gossip
3 The Show Goes On – Lupe Fiasco
JACKSON CURTIS - 6:10pm - December 15 - 2011
I turn to face the university. Night has fallen and a pathway I once knew so well, one which served as the isle down which I have led so many young ladies during my trips west, is now all but invisible. But I'm so glad that it's dark. I'm so glad no one can see me. And I'm so glad I know exactly where I'm headed: a small office in the social sciences department.
This is the only way I can move about now, under the cover of darkness just as though I'm the vampire most south-siders will have you believe I am, just as though I'm a creep, a rapist, a completely immoral individual. Just because I am from the north, just because I am a nightwalker. Should a south-sider see me as I cross this bare-breasted field of grass, dotted by the odd wooden bench, and the odd squirrel or wombat, should one smell me, or hear the rusting of the grass beneath my feet, then I have no idea what he or she will do. In fact, the reason why I'm here, right here right now, is because I need to know just this: I need to know just who I am, just who I now represent, and why others from this side of Sydney believe I am nothing like them. I need to know what makes me so different, what makes a Protestant, and specifically a Presbyterian, so different to a Catholic. I need to know why we're fighting, for whether I like it or not I am now a fighter by virtue of my prior residency in the north of Sydney. I have never picked up a sword and never shall but to them, to the entire choir who sing the holy vowels of Catholicism, I am a ninja who could strike at any time, a devil in disguise should I enter the south as I have, a heathen, a demon, an animal, and essentially an inferior human being: the Moslem to the Catholic, the Catholic to the Moslem, the Christian to the Jew, the Morman to the Atheist, the Jehovah's Witness to the Agnostic, the Buddhist to the . . . and a silence hangs in the air as we anticipate peace, freedom, and happiness, and a world without boundaries . . .
I remove a cell from my pocket as I stroll across the grass, towards the large building that marks the center of the University of Western Sydney's Bankstown campus. I key in a number and wait anxiously for a woman to answer, a woman I have known for some time, one of my most brilliant, talented and respectable clients. Before the south was severed brutally from the north I would visit this woman regularly, making special trips to Bankstown, Campsie, or Liverpool just for her sake.