It's a sad day when you realise you have shifted to the sceptical side of the scale. The dawning of this realisation took a few weeks, but eventually the rays of a black sun were too hot to ignore. I am, for the most part, a sceptic.
I think I started as an idealist. Reading history and art at university, I saw the changes that occurred at the fist of student rallies and protests. This filled me with hope. I read the accounts of some great cultural revolution burning in the bellies of sixties-era hippies. My optimism suggested they merely failed where we could succeed. I was tricked by the wonderful escapism of cartoons and Disney movies that life was full of little treasures and beauties and that the common goodness of man was inherent in all things. I was lead to believe that in the end, we were all good people and if you trusted in that, you'd find people came through for you.
Then I grew up.
I'm in a shopping centre, speaking to a man who is offering us a great rate on paintballing. For a good price we get entry and 100 free paintballs. We buy 20 tickets, a full day's worth of fun and he gives us 10 extra for free. I plan to use them for my next birthday party. I wait a year, then call to book. I'm told the free paintball offer doesn't exist, that agents of the company aren't authorised to make deals, that I should have called the company within 7 days of purchase to check that what their agent said was true. "Why would I do that? Why would I call your company to ask if the offer your company gave me is real?" I ask if the offer was written down on their system. It wasn't. He doesn't work for them any more. They won't give me a refund. I have to pay $500 minimum to use the tickets I'd already purchased, that apparently only give me entry and equipment but no ammo. I manage to worm out of them 50 free paintballs per person I book, but I ask that this offer be emailed to me immediately so I have it writing. I receive the email. Once again I've been lied to - the offer is written as 50 free paintballs for the
organiser only. Misrepresented to several times over, I look them up online to discover others have fallen for the same false promises, but because none of the agents ever put it in writing, there's nothing to be done. The only way to avoid the trap, we conclude, is to simply not trust anyone who offers anything verbally. We can't trust a man's word.
I'm standing under the large archways of the Victorian State Library. Two friends - a blonde girl and a muscular guy - are standing with me and we're chatting, sheltered from the light drizzle. It's lunch time and we're watching a drug addled couple arguing over junk that was sold under-value. Blondie is good natured, a helper, a friend of the earth. She wrings her hands at the escalating argument. The junkie starts yelling in the face of the junkette, whose beaten down despondency only enrages him further. Blondie steps out and tells the junkie to cool down, leave her alone, back off. The junkie springs up like a coiled snake, venom in his eyes and with no hesitation to unleash on my friend. Muscles is forced to act and steps in immediately, "You right mate?" he says with that undercurrent of force, that subtext of aggression that the street recognises as a thinly veiled threat. My tall, strong, far more alert friend's presence makes the junkie back down. He mumbles something and storms off. The junkette is left behind, picking through her ratty old hand bag. Blondie kneels down to help but junkette smacks her away. Fuck off. Mind your own business. Leave us alone. She lurches off after her abusive dealer boyfriend, bent against the pathetic cold drizzle.
I'm walking downhill at night. Two blocks from our house, my girlfriend and I are in formal wear after a premiere in the city. We've had a good run back home on public transport, but we're not usually caught out by nightfall. As we walk along a main road, one of the houses looks a little odd. The front door is ajar and the fly screen has been ripped. The lights are on but nobody seems to be home. I stop, "Just hang on a sec, baby. This looks a bit dodgy." We should probably move on, but I don't want to be that guy who does nothing while a house is robbed. I imagine the heartbreak of our flat being burgled. I try and get a better view inside..."Hey!" My girlfriend and I turn and see a tall teenage boy,wearing a hoodie up over his head. He's coming down an adjacent street, emerging from the blackness around the edges of working street lamps. We take off immediately, walking fast.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing," I say, putting an arm around her lower back, moving to cover her a little. "Just going home."
He picks up his pace, crossing the street. We walk even faster despite the notion it's a bad idea to show our fear. A million and one terrible things are crossing my mind. We reveal to each other later that both of us had grabbed a hold of a makeshift weapon in our pockets. Me: a pen. Her: keys.
"Is that your house?" he says, picking up pace, his hands disappearing into the pocket of his hoodie.
"No, we were just looking at houses to buy in the area," it's an uncertain tactic she tries, but inexplicably it works. He suddenly breaks off his line and starts retreating back across the street.
"Oh. OK."
We've never walked home as fast or looked over our shoulders as much in our lives. Because nothing actually happened, we're not sure what to do, so we simply tell the police our story over the phone, just in case something relevant emerges later. We spend most of the night questioning why we should ever put ourselves in that position again. Multiple bashings, stabbings, a marked increase in violence over matters far more trifle than catching a burglar. In the cold light of a computer screen, we read about the disaster that befell a good samaritan a suburb away, not more than two weeks prior. It's decided, begrudgingly, that we are now the kind of people who will do nothing to put themselves in harm's way while their neighbours are robbed.
Some events are tiny, seemingly mundane in the face of the great tradgedies of the world. Some are events you retell with a chill running down your spine. All of them build up, take their toll, put pressure on the ideals, hopes, trust and optimism. You live long enough and those tales of escape become tales of survival. You live long enough, it breaks.
