Jaded

Around 2am on Monday in Kings Cross three pretty girls emerged from Hugo's nightclub and hustled to the cab. The operative word being ‘girls’ as these three, whilst presenting in smart adult clubbing gear of stylish miniskirts and follow-me heels would have been barely seventeen years old. Same old story, call me cynical.

The Cross hosts a dozen or so nightclubs of varying degrees for clubbers after midnight and Hugo's is the swankiest and most expensive. On Sunday nights it’s patronised by an older eastern suburbs crowd happy they won’t be sharing with the Saturday night hoi polloi from the ‘burbs. For this mob Sunday is the new Saturday.

The three girls tumbled into the cab laughing and ordered Town Hall station in the City. This is a bus stop for the Nightrider service which replace trains after midnight. It would suggest the girls were too young for Hugo's and out of their depth there. No matter, if one is young and beautiful with a bit of chutzpah one can get away with most anything. Except a discount in my cab.

The front seat girl trilled, ‘Driver, do you want to hear a joke ?’. She was tipsy and happy whilst I was sober and jaded. ‘What ?’. ‘A joke’, she repeated, ‘you know, laughter !?’. ‘Yeah righto’. First she turned to face me then earnestly insisted, ‘Okay, you’ve got to really concentrate. Now...there’s three white toilets, what colour is the first one ?’. ‘Umm, black ?’. Then her phone rang...

‘Nathan !’, she squealed. ‘No, we’ve just left the club...Oh My God, you’ve just arrived !....okay I’ll come back’. And with that she flung open the door - we were still in the Cross at a red light - telling her friends, ‘I’m going dancing with Nathan !’. For teenage girls life is often one long emergency.

I addressed the remaining two girls, ‘Are you catching a bus ?’. ‘Yes, why ?’. Aw, I’m heading home and thought you may be going my way if you wanted to share a cab fare’. ‘Well, my friend is going to Chatswood and I’m going to East Lindfield, where are you going ?’. This was on the upper North Shore in a different direction to mine.

‘Aw sorry’, I told her, ‘I’m going to the western suburbs’. ‘Well that’s sort of on the way’, she lied. ‘We’ve got ten dollars in cash and I’ve got maybe seven on my Keycard. Can you take us for that ?’. After being informed it wouldn’t even get them to Chatswood they opted for Town Hall to take a bus. They didn’t mind and I was happy to go home.

Comments

[David Crawford]

"For this mob Sunday is the new Saturday."

And back on my dad's reservation Thursday is known as "Indian Friday".

(Good luck trying to take care of any business with the tribal government on a real Friday, no one is there.)

[Anthony]

Geez, it's surprising these girls were going home unaccompanied. Don't people pick up in nightclubs anymore?

[Yobbo]

17 year old girls don't tend to pick up. For one thing their parents don't really appreciate it all that much.