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HoboJoe

I got a Bulgaria. Bulger. Buluga. Something. It's mine now.

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HoboJoe

I’m in a Queensland they tell me. Noosaville library. I’m still’n Australia and I’m finding it’a good place t’be. One of the best things’s I keep finding watches. I found a watch t’day, right here in the library. Damn, damn fine watch too. Cute part is how I come to git this thing. Let me show you my ways. But, look at this place. I think I slept there last night, cuz it’s on m’camera today. Noosa.

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PART ONE - Noosa Heads has blinded me

Now, I was sleeping out front of the library when it opened. Sleeping, no that ain’t the right word. See, I’d passed out from having’ m’breakfast. A little drink of mouth wash, gasoline, urine, and that blue scum you find’n the sink after it not bin washed for ever. I scrape that up all o’er the public bathrooms for safe keeping. Snorting’ it works too. For dinner. A’ways.

Passed out, no that ain’t right either. See, I was blind and panicking. I could not see a god dammed thing after my breakfast. Must have been from the mouth wash. Ok, yes the watch. Circuits fried, like I got a concussed head ‘r something. So. When the library opened I made a way into the washroom once I’d picked m’ass up off t’ground. Did you know in Queensland, they only have one bathroom? Doesn’t matter if you boy, girl, or neither. Just one bathroom. No urinals neither. Well, when I got in’tr I see a guy’s already in there. He’s in a stall setting a camera in that stall, behind the toilet. I don’t care, but he gets real freaky ‘bout how he’s really a good man and he can’t get fired, and I can’t tell no one.

I must’a blacked out, cuz finally he shut t’hell up. ‘Gain, he said he’s a good man.

I know this was true, cuz I c’n see the watch he’s wearing. This guy don’t use no junk. Anyone not wearing replica watches is a good man, as y’know.

So I do what I do, and I tell’m to drink som’f my breakfast outta my bottle t’calm down. Shit, I was so close to passing’ out for real, I was just rambling’ but he said ok. And he took tha’ bottle and made a giant swig vanish. Well Jeez and Lo, this guy starts saying he going blind for a second, then he just drop dead. I don’t know if he real dead. But he drop like it. Knock his head on the toilet. Camera done disappear somewhere. Damn. So I asked’m “I’d like to have’r watch sir, if you don’t want m’to have it, just say No” and he never said a thing. So, I thanked him and took my new watch.

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Now I’m here, in the library typing’ and he gone. Ambulance show up just not long ago and take him home t’sleep it off. Or die.

This’r watch has so many hands’n it. I remember these, they be called Chronologicals. From looks, this thing tells me the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, timezone, stopwatch, countdown, temperature, and days to ovulation. M’eyes still stinging’ from breakfast, but with squinting I can still see this h’about twenty dials n’it.

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K. Where was I. Right, I think I was telling you about London. So that w’when that guy James had grabbed me. Such a mistake. Cuz remember, when you had the money I had, no one’d ever grab you lest they be itching to hurt. Don’ f’get that I was well known at The Mayflower, after all I helped that pub and restaurant get on the London map. England was m’stompin’ ground you say. I’d fly there every m’nth back then. So this James, saying he Belgian. I didn’t care and I told’m he best pull som Belgian chocolates out his ass right then r’else he getting done broken arms.

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I’m back. That was’th longest piss I ever took. I saw the door to the washroom has a picture of lady now. Never saw that b’fore. Gawd my piss is all over the floor in there. I saw there’re no urinals, but I thought there was one of them troughs. Where you piss against the wall and it goes down and flushes, I used those before. But it either’s not working, or just not there in th’first place. I can still smell it. Why can I still smell that piss? I don’t know now if that’s in my pants, on on my boots. Or in my boots after running’ down in m’pants.

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This is my second genuine watch now since I start’d collection’ again last week. First a Pulsar, now a Bugatti. No, Bulgaria. No Belcara, Burglary. Bavarian. Shit, something’ like that. That’s how I know it’s real expensive, cuz it has an Italian name I can’t even say out loud. Or in my head. This is solid. Real silver I would say. Heavy too. I think it has a 77599 movement. With so many features and dials it must.

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PART TWO - 12

Look’ at’t 12 on this watch reminds me of New Year’s Eve many a year ago back in Canada. I’m not from the North Pole, but I lived there f’r over five years. I liked it there. Was a tough time f’r me though. Those five years, I never spoke a word. Not one. That’s another story though. Problem is, if you ever done the drinking’ like me, y’know that drinking loosens lips. Not just b’tween prostitute’s legs either. You might be bound to spill yer guts. And those 5 years, m’guts were filled with regret for Shirly. I couldn’t risk a word.

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But I remember that last New Years at the shelter. I’d never sleep there, and so I had’t leave that night by 1am, but I was in a warm place, and I was surrounded by friends. Hatch. Joseph. Carson. Alex, and Scabs. They were m’best friends during those years. The fellows working’ at the shelter weren’t so bad either. Had an open office policy. No doors which I appreciated. Many times I just walk in and sit. Away from’t others. They’d been ok with that. Many a time I just go in there and piss. They’d not been ok with’at.

But that New Years.

Reason t’twelve ‘minds me of that New Years is cuz that night, we’d already celebrated the midnight New Years coming, before the shelter was shutting down, we all played a game. Turned out there was twelve of us there. Two fella’s that worked there, myself and my buddies like Hatch and Scabs I mentioned before as well as a few other los’ souls. The guys working there wanted to do something nice for us I could tell. We all sat on the old chairs in a circle, much like in th’ meetings for people wit the bad drinking’ or dopin’. And they made us a deal. If everyone in’a circle could list just one thing they were thankful for, and how that would help’m this new year, we’d all leave with a little something’ to start the new year with.

I want t’show you the rubber strap this watch has. Damn thick. Strong. Black. Long as hell too. I’m getting’ hungry.

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It came easy t’us. I think we were all surprised by that. I was last in the circle, and I remember what I said, exactly. Some o’ the guys’d been crying. It was a time to reflect on what we’d lost. Don’t forget though, I wasn’t speaking. Hadn’t spoken in years. So I had a little piece of paper and a pen and I put mine in ink. When it was m’turn, I passed my piece o’ paper around. All them read it. Read it real good I could see. When it got back t’me, one of the fellows running the night said time to go, we’ll get something’ special on the way out.

On that way out, we shook hands with the working’ guys, and we were given an envelope, one for each of us. I had no idea what was in there, but what I did do was I gave my note, the one everyone had read in the circle, I gave it to one of the fellows. The one wearing the fancy watch. Hate t’admit it but he was my favourite. I’d never want to disappoint him. So I gave him the note to keep. He shook my hand then.

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I know. You want me to tell y’what was on that note I wrote. No, sorry. Been’ who I am’s exposed my to the core, but that, I’d never reveal. He could, and I’d be ok with that. Not me, I can’t do that. And what was in the envelope I got on the way’t that night? Well, for you to understand, I need to tell you a story.

Do you know the story of the little boy who saved all his money for a whole year so he c’buy some roller blades? That lil’boy saved all his allowance. He saved his paper route money for a year. He dug in the cushions in the house. All the money he could save. And fin’lly he had enough to buy his skates. He had earned them by gosh. And he did buy them. And when he got home, they were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

In fact, they were so beautiful, he couldn’t bring himself to put them on. He didn’t want to take them out and get them dirty. He wanted them just as they were. And that’s what he did. He kept them in the box, under’is bed. He’d take ‘em out each night. Look at them. Admire them. He earned them. And finally, six months later he decided it was time to put’em on. He was goin’to wear them and skate down to the park to see his friends and show them off. He’d told everyone about’em.

He took em out and; They didn’t fit anymore. He’d grown. His feet’d grown. He could not even get his feet all the way in. And he never, ever got to experience the joy of doing what he’d dreamed of all that time. The time had passed, and he’d missed it.

Well, that’s like my story. Y’see when I was handed the envelope I was told “You save this for a rainy day, when you think you need help the most, you open it”. And that’s what I did. I wait’d for the right day. Rainy day, after rainy day aft’r rainy day I kept it in my pockets. Until I actually hopped a rail car outta town. And it was on that ride, that night when I needed help the most, I took out that envelope. Problem is, living on the streets, you don’t get to take good care of what y’have. And that envelope had gotten wet time and time again month after month in the Canadian wet. Soaked through over and o’er. And even though it was dry that night, by the time I opened it and took out the paper inside, there was nothing on there. Just some faint ink lines living in that paper, little swirls and splotches here and there.

But even though I never knew what that help might’ve been, t’was the nicest thing anyone’d done for me in my time since getting hooked on the junk, right down t’living on the streets all those years. Part of me thinks it’s why I left town that made the letters disappear. I disappointed someone I said I’d never do that to. And when I thought back to New Years of that year, I couldn’t take it any more. And I left my new friends and safe place b’hind.

Now I’m in the Queen’s land. Praise the Queen of Australia.

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fatarms

I'm just glad you're safe.

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RussP

McGilli's long lost twin?

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black263

Got bored with the other story.  Couldn't be arsed to read this one.

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Chixisigma
48 minutes ago, black263 said:

Got bored with the other story.  Couldn't be arsed to read this one.

Lol. Succinct and savage.

Cxs

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