So I’ve got this friend called Mark who’s a few years older than me and he’s the one who should be a writer, which he is but he only ever writes letter to rugby coaches explaining to them how they should be doing their jobs, but if he was a proper writer, to my mind, and wrote about his own life he’d be a punk style Barry Crump and I reckon that that’s what this country actually needs. Since the late nineties Mark has spent a lot of his time homeless and living on the streets, oh, except for some time out in the bush with Paul the old hippie who’s really a tory with a reasonably good diet and a funky place to live in but Mark couldn’t stand the farcical beliefs this man lived by and the fact that its pretty damp living in amongst the bush. Before that he spent a bit of time with David but David was a loony and ended up having a heart attack while he was in care. In between these bouts of material luxury Mark used to live in cars and vans but his cars got so decrepit and illegal that the cops took his license away from him and told him if he got caught with another car they’d chuck him inside and hopefully be taught not to be a nuisance. So Mark ended up living under some building at the southern end of upper queen st and knowing Mark he’ll have made his little cave quite comfortable and have it set up so he can make his Jesus bread pretty much as the man himself made it in the old days.
Now you might be thinking that my old friend, and I’ve known him since the early eighties at least, was just your garden variety loser but you’d be wrong. So wrong. Mark is almost a saint. The last time I saw him, a few months ago, was across the round from Aotea square and he was talking to this young Maori guy who was half dressed and stinking of booze and had the angry crazed eyes of a demon. Mark was helping him sort out his day ahead, not in the month by month way people are used to with targets and affirmations, but minute by minute. Mark was there at the coal face and being non judgmental and helping where he could and wasn’t pushing any concepts or ideas onto this guy. He was just there with his eyes and his heart open to this guy’s pain and in my book that is what sainthood is all about. Anyways I had a few bucks in my pocket so I suggested we go over to Borders for a chat and some coffee because I know he loves a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. So over we went to that wonder of modern consumerism and I spent my last ten dollars on some over priced cocoa and coffee. Now the reason, maybe, that I get on with Mark is that if I weren’t as lucky as I am I’d be on the streets myself but I’ve managed to stay good with my family and my own non-conformist tendencies are not only tolerated but championed by my nearest and dearest because I’m an artist and am reasonably often quite successful at it. Most of my luck, though, comes in with the fact that I’m working class so there’s understanding in the need to make commentaries about the state of the first world but Mark comes from the middle classes and they just won’t accept that there’s a reason to grumble and with his inability to compromise his beliefs he don’t get no soft shoulder to rest on once in a while. So both of us are unwilling to compromise our beliefs in a fairer world and I think that that’s what makes us friends able to discuss a world more than adequately fucked up by the greedy selfish pigs who only ever think of their own stomachs and the pleasure bits dangling beneath them. Or call it Epicureanist capitalist hedonism with a liberal side order of post modern guilt as a leftover from the expansionist tendencies of western religious thought.
Anyways,back in the mid nineties I had this warehouse in town, rented of course, that I’d converted into a house and a workshop and I needed a flatmate and Mark had just turned up in my life again, he had been living in a shed tacked onto the back of a shop up in Krd but the landlord realized its potential as soon as he made it livable and kicked him out, so I invited him to stay at my place. I was still smoking dope back then so it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I had the roof and he had the pot. I can’t remember if he was working or just plain doling but in the evening he’d cook up a feed, he was and still is a health food nut but with him its all about beans, pulses, whole grains and seaweed and not the rabbit food and organic white bread crap diet that so many veges are into, and while we were chowing down on this great food steaming in big Chinese bowls Mark would tell me of his exploits living in cars before he had gotten the place in K rd. This is about when I started telling him that that is what he should be writing down. They were always hilarious. Sad and pitiful contexts but always gut wrenchingly funny.
My favourite from those days was about a time when he was living out of this beat up old red cortina station wagon which wouldn’t have been more than three months past a warrant so it was still kinda legal, but it drove like an old pig which all those british cars did, but it did go and so it became his mobile home.
Anyways, Mark is driving around looking for a place to park up for the ensuing night, hes been found out and driven out from his previous haunts round the back of Mt Eden, and he’s driving around the waterfront and spots these boatsheds just inside the from the bridge a wee bit past where the flying boats used to land and takeoff. These sheds are right on the water and there’s even a few boat ramps that he could drive down onto late at night and be out of sight from the road. The where to sleep conundrum solved Mark heads back into town for some beer drinking and cruising the back streets of Krd and hanging with the trannies. Now remember that I said this man is almost a saint and here he is drinking and chasing transsexuals but Mark doesn’t drink to excess but just enjoyed the warm glow of a few brews combined with the odd snort of soil grown and sunlight enriched weed coursing through his veins and then when it comes to the fa fa fenes you gotta realisethat this man likes getting his rocks off like all men do but he went after these girls with boys bits like he was a master of psychology out studying for his doctorate. He respected them and wanted to understand his own curiousity I’ve never to this day been able to talk about sex to another man that was so cerebral in nature. Most men talk about sex, if they ever do, either in the gutter or in heaven, but for Mark it was an intellectual matter that involved love and I’d dare anyone with an ounce of intellect not to find it intriguing how this man could talk about sex with an honesty and perspective that was basically genius. Kinsey would have seen it in him and been inspired by his caring yet clinical approach.
But yet again I’ve wandered off the track so lets get back to Mark who has had his foray into the seamier channels of Auckland life, at least those that are out in the open, and heads off down to the waterfront in the dead of night and finds his little driveway down to the sea calmly waiting for him and his dreams. He edged down in total darkness until he can’t see the lights of the nearby houses out of the rear window of the station wagon and the gets out and checks he has a long enough stretch to get the car going in the morning before he hits the water. I haven’t told you about that bit have I? Well there you go. Mark’s car has a non functioning starter motor and he needs to find a hill every night so he can get it going in the morning but he’s fine right here next to the boat sheds because he has at least fifteen feet of driving space before he’d hit the water tomorrow morning. So Mark beds down for the night and sleeps like the proverbial baby happy that he’s survived another day and still has a small bag of buds to get through the next day. Small glories suit limited budgets and if there’s one thing Mark is king of its small and humble glories.
Next morning Mark is awoken from his slumber by the cries of scavenging gulls, the sun scorching across the harbour and the early morning hum of Mercedes and Audis doing the crawl along the waterfront for a day in their stell and glass cathedrals to impotence and except for the cars it a glorious way to wake up. I know because I spent a few months building a restaurant for some Turks in the old theatre in Mission bay and took my bedding down there and enjoying immensely reading Freud and walking up to that miraculous view of Rangitoto and watching the early morning power walkers stride through the long shadows cast by the Pohutakawas.
But our intrepid adventurer comes awake very quickly as the mesmering lapping of the waves seems a lot louder and therefore closer than it should have been. He glances out his sleepy eyes and there filling the front windshield is seawater and he realizes he has forgotten about the moons effect on the body of briny water engulfing this nickel bearing floating around a fusion sparked helium gas burner (or is it hydrogen?, whatever) The tide has come in and he can’t even see any of the driveway left in front of this car that is unable to be started without free space in front of it. Even a man used to such situations finds himself cursing his bad luck as he tears himself from the warmth that allowed him meeting with morpheus and jumps from the vehicle to properly access the ramifications of the previous days decisions. A quick survey offers hope. Not much but there is some. He has about a metre and a half before he becomes at one with the fishy environment with which he shares his birth sign. Mark is Piscean and the two fish are very close to entanglement on this fine sun drenched morning. Never one to freak out, for remember that saintliness and freaking out are for much bigger questions of faith than merely losing all of ones possessions, Mark quickly calms himself and realize he may be close, very close, but if he’s lucky the motor will grab and come to life and he’ll be able to come away from this lesson in forethought unscathed and still in possession of the few worldly goods he still possesses.
Mark is a believer and knows in his bones the wicked sense of humour that God shares only with the brave and the bold and he can’t help thinking as he sits behind the steering wheel and prepares himself for the start that has more meaning plowed into it than all the others that have been leading up to this momentous beginning that there’ll be a few belly laughs in heaven over this one. Even as he turns the key and joins the battery current to the coil he can’t help a smile at the dark comedy of it all and admits to himself in nano seconds that even he enjoys the thrills of a hand to mouth existence. The four speed is clunked into first and he knows it’ll be split second timing with his feet if this is going to work. As soon as his right foot on the brake and his left foot on the clutch are off he’ll have to plunge onto the accelerator just right and hear the gentle first chugs of the engine before his feet jump back to brake and clutch. Then bounce into neutral, change feet and hope that a few tender jabs of the gas will keep it going.
Breathe in. Let it out slowly. At one with the universe.
Go! Roll, jab, brake… Shit! It’s not going. Shit.
Hand brake on. Hop out of the car. How much further till we hit the water or are we already in it?
This is really funny God. I’m enjoying just as much as you seem to be. Not!
Thank Christ. Not in the water. About 750 left.. It’s got to work this time. Please God, I’ll try harder to be a better person if you just give me this. It’s got to work this time…
And it does! The bumper and the front wheels are in the water but it’s going and it’s going well. We’ve got the power back. It’s with us. Ram the lod bitch into reverse and wheelspin back up the boat ramp into this life that has more variety than Liberace’s and more thrills that an adventure tourist’s.
Now do you believe in my justification of Mark’s possible sainthood?