You can't eat poverty

The dude's real tall and lanky and he's wearing jeans that fit okay long ways, but make him look like a clown sideways; fucking genes eh? He's also got a whopper of a thumb like that cowgirl who had the blues and the way he was waving it about you'd think it was having a seizure all of its own. There's room enough in the Torana so he squeezes on in. He's a JAFA, doing his OE south and keen to party. Tousled hair, unshaven, and an easy laugh, he's more than happy to sample the bucket brew – a homemade speciality of vodka, fortified apple wine and instant Raro; hell by the time they hit Nelson he's already one of the locals.

The JAFA is introduced to Sharon, a randy forty-something only two weeks outta hospital who takes an instant shine to him. He even blushes; like a jaffa. They leave the love-birds to explore the magic delights of Sharon's rented caravan: whisky, a weeks supply of psychiatric pills, and a big messed-up bed. The rest of them head out for a spot of stealing.

Welcome to sunny Nelson. Enjoy your stay!

***

Muz at cabin fifteen sleeps the weird fucked-up hours of someone regulated by pills and he had taken note of the two boys who came into the campground some mornings when they think no ones up and about. They're scrawny, unkempt and look like they sleep under a bridge; one wears army boots and the other is always barefoot. The barefoot one looks right fucken' mad, the other always heads for the showers.

The clean one and the mad one; they flog food from the communal kitchen left by unsuspecting tourists. Permanents like Muz have long wised up to these two; are working around them. Muz has a chilly bin.

Sometimes the cheeky little fuckers even cook their booty right there in the kitchen which had resulted in a couple of juicy confrontations between bleary-eyed tourists in dressing gowns and two feral bastards with not much to loose. Fucking cheeky.

Muz chuckled behind his faded lace curtains as they drift back towards the boundary fence that runs along the beach front, ducking once into a doorway as a cleaner on a quad bike cruises lazily by, buckets filled with bleach, sprays and cloths swinging from each handle bar.

The mad one clutches a plastic bag tight against his body. Cheeky cunts.

***

Vanessa gets the old brown tea pot onto the table without spilling too much, goes back into her kitchen to gather mugs; chipped, mismatched, ugly: everything is from the Sallies. The guys have brought raspberry buns with them and the conversation soon dies as they set about devouring them, stodgy dough and cream tasting all the better by its theft.

“Nothing like a good sugar rush eh?” says the blond one, Brent. Grunts of affirmation. Vanessa wonders if they'll split soon, leave her alone with Paul so they can fuck the night away. Kinda mean though, she scolds herself, seen as they were all homeless – literally.

“So they won't give you back your tent? Is that right?” She asks.

Casper replies; it was his dads tent. “Yeah, no proof of ownership, photos, insurance, what ever.” He licks his fingers clean before continuing. “Only heaps of family camping stories eh; wrong sort of documentation!” he laughs.

“Cunts just laughed at us,” interrupts Aaron. She can remember him from school. His older brothers would get him stoned before class, hence the poetry: “Walking away from the cop-shop in the rain, fucking laughing at us...”

“Want us to be like them is all,” from Paul's young brother, whatshisname.

“So now what?” asks Vanessa who is partly concerned about where they'll end up tonight, but also that maybe they'll all want to stay in her tiny flat and so no shaggin for her.

“Ah it's warm enough, moons up as well,” offers Aaron. Heads are nodding in agreement around her and she smiles.

“And tomorrow?”

“Fuck tomorrow.”

That's the spirit lads.


***

Homelessness can be the tipping point into serious mental shit for some. Brendan eventually tipped, fell over his big feet. Spent a whole weeks dole going to see a psychiatrist who told him to get his arse on home.

We put him on a bus back to Auckland next dole day. We all laughed about it later, the JAFA who had crashed and burned on his first OE, but y'know I bet most of the gang wouldn't have minded being on that bus.

We did originally have a flat when we first moved here, but fuck I dunno, it just fell apart. No one was working and when your coughing up big-time for an empty suburban house it just... sucks. We were expected to mow the lawns. It got messy, pigs coming round, parties and drugs, and then a couple split owing rent and that was it. The bond and shit was all paid for by WINZ and that was the only leg up we would be seeing for a while. So from there we just kind of slid slowly down that poverty graph thing where bad luck and bad moves just add up to a whole heap of LOSER.

The motor camps were okay generally, but we eventually got banned from all of them; shoplifting from two and spotting hash in the communal kitchen in the other. That of course also fucked up things even further with WINZ, no permanent address anymore and the great game of cat and mouse thus begins. There was this one real good campsite in a bush reserve only minutes walking from town that was sweet for ages, but we got sprung by a fashion shoot of all things. Vans, heaps of clothes, skinny girls, guys with lights and shit; reckon me or Brent are in a Farmers catalogue somewhere; we're the good looking ones.

And yeah the night shelter was there if you got desperate/depressed, but they debit your dole ten bucks for each night you stayed which hardly helps. Plus it was always mince on toast, lumpy fatty shit with the leftovers reheated for breakfast. Give me the beach and that tenner any day.

So there you have it; from young upwardly mobile suburbanites to a life well below the radar in six months tops.

Paper rock scissors. All about choices eh?


***

“Bones!” the shout drifts up from the waters edge. “Check the fucking rice man!”

The “Oh shit” echoes back as Ruby clambers over wet rocks and up the slope towards their camp site.

The smell that greets her as she reaches the grassy flat reconfirms what happens when you smoke a cone of hash before cooking. Her “man I'm sick of burnt risotto” elicits only a grunt from Bones as he scraps the pot irritably.

“Just need to be more onto it when cooking on a fire eh,” Bones tactfully offers, squinting up at his friend who had only minutes before put the rice on and then wandered off. The sun is smouldering orange and thankfully ready to drop behind distant Mapua hills. With an apologetic smile and a nod Ruby turns back to its dying warmth to continue her meditation.

Aaron suddenly sits up from amongst the long dry grass that he's being lying in for most of the day surrounded by books and a drawing pad. With a hand held up against the glare he delivers a happy sigh. “Fuck people must pay a shitload to live round here with this sort of view,” he says, a big sloppy stoner grin carving his face into wrinkles.

“Pay with their whole lives,” confirms Bones, who having poured fresh water into the hissing billy is now vainly fishing for floaty black bits.

If you over-shot the number thirteen hole at the golf course the ball would usually splash into the sea somewhere just down in front of them. It was an unlucky number for the punters, but was on their side for several months.

The swimmers, walkers and poseurs would gather at the north end of the beach which was as far as they could drive. Their end was lonely and quiet, cut off by a slow-moving stream which backed up wide when the tide was high and so they were pretty much left to themselves. Waves would push and pull against a tumble of grey boulders bordering the golf course; drift wood fed a small fire and its light facilitated easy conversation, the sharing of beer and smokes.

Nobody however was overly surprised when they got told to fuck off.

Casper and Bones had gone early to the motor camp at the other end of the beach for their usual mish before the morning rush kicked off and got back to find everyone lined up facing an interrogation from the cops.

“Hooning all over the golf course must've been fun,” offers Bones in an attempt to lift the blanket of intimidation/fear, but they don't really do humour, too early.

Yeah yeah blah de blah; off they go.

In single file they carry meagre possessions across the flooded estuary. Shadows stretch long across water that bubbles and splashes about their ankles. Brent and Ruby are kicking water at each other, there fellow refugees, laughing, not giving a fuck. Casper suddenly stops and turns to a resigned Bones. He knows his friend has had a gutsful of it all, has stopped having fun. “Hey lets go for a holiday mate," he gently teases.

Suspicious, half hope and half just fucking over it. “Where?”

“Middle Earth, Never Never Land. Come on man, trust me.”


***

Casper and Aaron had discovered the toi toi bush while hiding from the lawnmower man one afternoon. It dominated a corner garden down the far end of the motorcamp which was closed off when things were slow as was the case at the moment. Sleepy Hollow was bloody ridiculous; dry and comfortable, it could fit four or five with a bit of shuffling around. There was even a nearby gate out to a side road for their private use. We figured it was the work of kids bored with the beach and the swings, told to stop hanging around the caravan, to piss off and play.

And so the play goes on.

The campground supermarket with its lone teenager at the till had long been a highlight of our shoplifting circuit, but once we all moved into Sleepy Hollow we got to know all the comings and goings of the place.

Like when the delivery trucks arrived.

Free food was just too tempting. It allowed ones dole money to be spent on substances too hard to steal; like crates of beer, blocks of hash, records, and pills with funny names…

Free food was the key in the door; no rent the boot that swung it open. You could be happy four or five days a week depending on quality. Or how much cream you could stomach. Not having to work made everybody happy. No monotonous crap, yes sir right away sir can I lick your arse sir; no crawling home at dusk to fall asleep in front of the TV. Fuck that shit. We grabbed our fun for free; and that made us even happier. Like taking magic mushrooms and lying down at the end of the airport runway to let the planes thunder over us; pulling at our clothes, bodies, tearing screams from lungs. We were at war; lots of mooching about bored shitless just keeping our heads down, then those flashes of exhilarating terror as we pushed harder and harder against everything we hated.

Yeah, we were fucking hungry all right.

Deviled sausages, Shortland Street and an early night just don’t cut the mustard eh?

***

Midnight; well more like eleven. They skid dramatically up against the wire fence with a spray of shingle. If you came in from the left side the security lights don't trigger so they remained in darkness.

Brent chucks Aaron the backpack. “Over you go,” he whispers before carefully wheeling his bike back to the corner where he can see the main entrance to the supermarket.

Nothing moves as usual. This has always been an easy place to score the throw-outs and they didn't really expect any hassle.

“Fuck!” yells Aaron suddenly.

“Shh!”

“Aw fucking hell, there's barbed wire everywhere,” the volume is lower but his fury remains.

“What? The cunts, round the fucking rubbish bins?” exclaims Brent. “Christ what are they protecting eh?” he continues, scooting quickly back in to survey the recent addition. Shit, three months ago there wasn't even a fence here, just two big green bins chocka with food.

Aaron has jumped down and is examining his hand; steps forward to give the fence an angry kick. “Pathetic little prick.”

“He must worry at night eh?” he continues as Brent tugs gingerly at the wire wound tight across the top of the fence. “Busy hands going through his rubbish while he reads the kiddies a bed time story.”

Despite empty bellies they're both laughing now at the stinginess of it all, the mentality of defending rubbish; mount their bikes, not caring about the lights anymore with empty bags.

“That's ma rubbish you fucking bludgers,” screeches a laughing Aaron as they loop circles through the carpark jumping gardens and finally the curb. The bakery provides bagels and miniature pizza, the veggie wholesalers soggy tomato's, peppers and smelly mushrooms.

Now it's midnight; now it's time to eat.


***

Ruby was waiting. It didn't hugely bother her as there wasn't anything else going on, but they were tourists and just fucking about really. Barbie and Ken had given up on their lunch a while ago and were now flicking endlessly through their Lonely Planet which was cool, but Christ, go and do something real she silently pleaded. It would really suck if an over eager waitress noticed and took it all away.

She blended in with the street pollution quite nicely, tucked in behind a fake colonial lamp post as the clamour of shoppers rushed on past. The swish of Farmers bags, clicking of heels, the murmur of excitement that comes with spending money; it was post-Christmas and raining sales hard.

Ruby’s pockets were empty of cash, a situation that to many people rendered her as nothing more than an impediment to the day’s business. Another shuffler in the fast lane refusing to keep left. But Ruby was no bum, she was shopping all right, she just wasn’t paying. Mirrors, surveillance cameras, security tags, and store detectives; the industry that had spawned around young rascals like Ruby J was staggering, flattering almost. She was included in the equation after all. She was the reason, a number in the statistic, the threat to cheap prices and stability. She was fucken’ real all right. Ruby knew that back in the day when retailers decided to move their wares from behind their counters to where the salivating customers could stroke them, sales were predicted to skyrocket. And they did. Theft was so relatively insignificant when rated against this overwhelming increase in sales it was barely given a seconds thought.

Until the idea was sold to them. Everybody’s selling something eh?

The human tide flowed on past like sheep off the truck, inflated and giddy with that perception of importance, of belonging and being needed. Poor buggers, thought Ruby. Just running running, searching for that sex appeal, the credit card bill already materialising at the back of their minds. She dragged up snot and spat it onto the footpath and began counting how many stepped on it.

Come on. Falafel, pasta, feta and olive salad; yum yum rumbled her stomach.

Footpath dining had made table diving a lot easier as far as keeping out of the staff’s view, but it didn’t remove the skulking, nor that little shiver of repulsion that came with the first bite. She didn’t like to think of diseases, lipstick, dribble or stray pubes stuck in decaying teeth. It didn’t pay to worry about hygiene at this particular rung on life’s ladder.

But really, why get all hung up and precious about shop food eh?

Born in a pesticide saturated earth; transported forty thousand k to a rat-infested factory to be rendered nutritionless and then delivered to a kitchen crawling with cockroaches to be handled by a slap-happy teenage staff who all use the same toilet and rarely wash their hands; four hours under heat lamps; zapped once more in the microwave and slapped onto a detergent coated plate… yum.

And somebody took a bite out of it and decided they didn’t like it that much which is fair enough really.

So Ruby ate it.

While table food on one hand was hard to swallow, it did offer the luxury of choice and presentation that the unsold or spoiled food dumped out back could ever deliver. Rummaging through the chuck-outs usually rewarded you with more, but quality was way down, what with the meat juices running over the stiffening pizza ‘n all.

Ruby watched the in-store chaos play out: harassed staff, the flow of bank notes, the overfed stuffing yet more in. Nah, it was way more rewarding to take it from the horses mouth, to slip into that still warm seat, pick up the morning paper and finish off the chickpeas on rice.

Yum; food was good.

***

“It was that fucking mad dude Sharon buys her pills off that narked on us,” explained Aaron. Brent held the trespass notice up like he was about to auction it off: “They got all our names too, two fucking years.”

“Fuck it man I might just split.” says Paul. “Fucking sick of all this shit, I mean now where?”

The famous five cast about. Standing on footpath in a suburban street, packs at their feet and about twenty bucks between them, middle New Zealand scowled from every front. Casper broke the silence: “Yeah I want a bed too mate. How 'bout we cruise over to Nath's and see if we can crash in the band room for the night and take it from there?” Brent and Bones pick up there bags, Paul can't get across the ditch till dole day anyway and his sigh indicates acquiescence. “Might as well go past the bakery dumpster eh?”

"What about Ruby? asks Bones. "We'll need to let her know what's happened, where we are and that we have all her gear eh?

"F'sure," agreed Casper. "Hey lets go past the church steps and see what's up eh? We should have a picnic eh?

F'sure, why the fuck not.

***

They find me. We eat. Everything will be ok.

You can’t eat poverty, but you can eat cake that’s past the use-by date. A full belly is happy, round like a rainbow. A full belly means you can dance, swim or ride your bike.

A full belly means you can grab your fun and run.

It’s hard staying happy on the dole. They make it that way. Hard being happy when you’re homeless, physically and mentally unwell, so far down the fucking ladder that the rungs above you have all rotted off.

But you can do it.

Loaves and Fishes were housed out the back of the Anglican Church and the queues for a free meal were always so damn orderly. Meek and obedient now, drunk and defiant within hours; broken again in the morning and back at church by midday. It was the worst part of playing the game; being poor. When loitering in corner dairies, cafes and supermarkets almost became a fucking job and it was just easier to get up late and join the other down and outs. Immobilised, passive consumers playing roles instead of just playing.

The cops stopped us six times last week. Once we were just walking down the road and they reckoned we'd stolen a car. Right, oh here it is in my pocket, silly me. It’s what you get for wearing rags, bare feet and obviously doing sweet fuck all. Should get a job, they’d say. Smarten up, get some pride in ya. Yeah we could get drunk together in front of the big screen down at the Loaded Hog, mow the lawns on Sunday and wish the weekend didn’t go so fast. Gold Coast for Christmas even, if you saved hard enough that is. Sure, you can’t eat poverty; but you can’t live on their side of the fence either. Not if you’re honest, not if you’re real, if you’re hungry for more. Everyday we grabbed it. Sure it hurt at times, but fuck saving up for three weeks mental health leave.

That drew a laugh from me, and also finally got me noticed by the shops staff.

One day I’ll shop once a week, grow my own veggies, and wake up to a healthy satisfying breakfast. I don’t really know how, but I’m sure it’ll come. I’ll do it, you wait.

Smiling at the woman behind the counter I politely ask, “Can I've a packet of zigzag blues please?” We’d score a tinny and get stoned down by the river; goof off, swim. While her back is turned I pocket chocolate and a bag of mixed nuts.

That was tea sorted.