The lugger

Outside St Vincent’s Hospital this morning a couple hailed me. The bloke was well built with flowing blonde hair and wore designer jeans fashionably ripped at the knees. Yet this was where the style ended for they were what many would label as scumbags.

He opened the door and asked, “Do you take EFTPOS?” I nodded and resigned myself to being ripped off with a stolen credit card. “I know I got forty bucks there so I’m good for it, man.” They climbed in, he took the front and ordered an eastern suburbs beach.

She was rough as guts, or to be tactful, a rough diamond. And he was a spitting image of Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler with an aged, heavily tanned face framed by hair falling below the shoulders. But it was the freshly bandaged temple and blood spattered shirt which marked him as a battered old warrior.

“We was on the piss,” he explained, “and I seen this fella with a skateboard. I used to be a champion skater, eh, so I decided to show him a trick. That’s when I landed on me head and ended up in hospital.” She chimed in from the back seat with, “He’s fuckin’ fifty one and acting like a kid. You’d think he’d grow up, eh?”

The paramedics transported them to Casualty where she proceeded to abuse the staff. Probably they were made to wait their turn whilst he bled like a stuck pig. “Me missus told 'em to get fucked,” he laughed, “so they never stitched me up. Just used butterfly clips and threw us out.”

For the next ten minutes he related a life story of being in jail, committed to a mental institution, having six kids by another woman, how he loved the current missus, then in the next breath called her a bitch.

To quell her rising anger and cursing I advised him, “Mate, at least she’s looking after you.” “Yeah but then she’ll tell the neighbours to get fucked and the cops will come and arrest me for the AVO." They both laughed hard at this, despite the fact that she had sought the AVO against him.

She then suggested, “Hey, let’s go see Mick.” “She wants to score drugs,” he said winking at me, “some painkillers.” His attempts to win favour with me at her expense betrayed the fact he’d never grown up and reminded one of Sam de Brito’s Lost Boys.

As he drawled on in a drunken monotone, most probably compounded by painkillers, concussion and loss of blood, I wondered how they kept it together. Maybe life was one long emergency, a day to day struggle surviving on welfare. Or a vicious co-dependency founded on mutual misery.

By the time we arrived at their unit block I was ready to being scammed with a dodgy card. She directed him to produce a debit card and which pin to use, then ordered me to hand it to her, once swiped. Amazingly it was accepted and the transaction approved.

My surprise must have been obvious. Opening his shirt to reveal a T-shirt he said, “See this..?” Across the chest was a company logo for a removal service. “You’re a lugger?” I asked. He smiled and proudly stated, “Fucken oath, man.”

It was if to say, ‘Look, we was never going to rip you ‘cause I got a job and real money, eh’.

And fair enough, too, point taken.

(Lugger derives from the verb, 'lug', to carry with difficulty)

Comments

[unique_steve]

Jail, and a lugger.
that's paying your debts to society twice over.

[Simon]

Great story again Adrian. Love your stuff.

[Johann]

What's a lugger mate?

[Judy]

I loved this story. I'm also clueless about Luggers?

[Pam]

Enjoy your blog and take on life! I don't know what a lugger is either - uninformed American!

[adrian]

Okay, I presumed 'lugger' was reasonably well known, a word I first heard used in the rock n roll industry as applied to roadies. However it's not listed in online dictionaries.

Lugger derives from the verb 'lug', to carry with difficulty. In this case my passenger was a furniture lugger, employed for his muscle.

Speaking of old farts, like the passenger and I, who remembers Jackson Browne's tribute to roadies, the load-luggers ?

[clekitty]

Love reading your blog. Keep it up.

[jack]

nice piece

[Sierra]

Great Blog, Well written!! Throughly enjoyed reading 'The Lugger' A real Australian Story.