Saturday (Part 2)

So anyway, there I was last night, just gone half past twelve, realising that the last train left at twenty past, and that the next train was due to leave at twenty to four. Uhuh, in the morning. Now it is one thing to kill time in the middle of a Friday night waiting for a train if you are drunk, with friends and in a little bar on oxford street - been there done that. This option involves finding a fellow commuter in your band of merry makers and embarking on the long walk to central in good company, getting falafel together on the way and then sleeping deeply in your little vinyl nest once on said train. You arrive in your town at sun up, feel like a naughty schoolkid and flop gratefully in your bed, curtain drawn, to sleep and dream and re-emerge whole again later in the day.

That option is very different to what I stood thinking about under the clock at central last night. What were my options? Sit on the benches for three long hours staring into middle distance with the other strandedtravelerss of either the life or geography variety? Find some seedy night open bar and try to whoop it up with strangers? Head down the stairs to the yeeros shop where my late nigh, missed the train buddies would laugh and tease and flirt, and stand mournfully by my table baring complimentary cafe latte in polystyrene cup, looking like my cat does when he realises that you have made a lap by sitting, but haven't invite him to share it. Mournful, hopeful, presumptuous. These men from south of Sydney with their stories, and their late night eyes, and their waiting for wives who never eventuate or recovering from marriages that did. I feel like a shared three hours would almost constitute a date, I don't like the protector overtones that such neediness on my part might inspire. Short of walking home (approx 1 days walk? A week? I wouldn't even know) or spending a weeks wages on a cab I'm stuck.

So I flirt with the idea, strange and impulsive, to stay in a hostel. It feels strange wild and unfamiliar territory, almost impossibly crazy. I probably wouldn’t have even thought it if not for the it up building 'railway hostel' which I see in my line of sight in the space of night sky between train tops and hanging train wires and buildings. I walk there, not daring to believe I'll do it (a hostel! Unplanned! Across the road from work! And me with no pyjamas or clean knickers!). So I go, and I think 'yeah, but just to see, just to see how much, if, whether..' and as I approach I feel tentative like this is magical territory and I am an impostor.

At the train station my outfit made me normal, tied to respectability, a ma'am who the grey clad transit officers waved through with grimly tinged respect me, tidy, with click clack shoes, and them thinking me too homely (well fed) and clean skinned to be a junky. There I looked at ease, belonging, a victim of late night transit deficits, somehow an innocent strappy shoed victim of public transport funding and rural train service policy. At the hostel I feel overdressed, silly, and like someone who is just about to slide into living out of a car, if only they could find one to live out of. I feel compeled to tell them my story, let them know that I think it absurd also, and that I can hold the siuation lightly in my open palm, relishing its wry flavour, and letting them also enjoy and marvel at the delicate flavours I offer. I hesitate, when they check their screens and confirm that only a shared room of 4 available - can I face sharing my predicament with robust tanned girls from Sweden or the united states? I hover, I cringe and laugh. I go back to the counter and pay my $37.50. I take my sheets and swipe card and head to my room, falter, head to then bathroom and brush my teeth, run my hands through my hair and then go back to my, rather ironically train carriage-themed room.

I have doubts again as I enter the room - it smells of chemicals which have been arranged in spray bottles to mimic flowers and sprayed defensively against the possibility of body smells, it is lumbering with back packs and sneakers and girls hairbrushes. I have a handbag and a laptop bag. I make the bed, feeling grateful that they provide sheets and a doona, no need for a sleeping bag, perhaps I am not the only person to stay here who is not mid-way on some soul searching adventure to the inner realms (well, actually..). I try in the semi light to unfold this complexly folded linen in a way that minimises the crinkle and rustle but I am away of murmurs and turnings over in beds, of young girls in deep sleep who come up out closer to the surface, then settle back into their dreams. I work away at the sheets, it is a ridiculous thing, and it takes so long, proves to be so complex, that under other circumstances I would have laughed.

Then I take off my shoes, in a neat huddle near the foot of the bed, I take off my skirt and fold it over them. I put my handbag in the bed and prepare to cuddle it as bed companion. I worry about laptop bag - after all it is bulky and I can't easily hide it, nor accommodate it in my bed. Eventually I have a flash of genius, and unzip the bag, liberate the compact little laptop from its warm centre, slide it under the handbag on my inexpertly laid sheets, and leave the rest of the bag with its cords and work reading and various items of little value on the floor next to shoes and skirt. I am too lazy to take off bra at first, but after lying there think 'I will sleep better without it' so I unhook and slide out of straps and pull the whole beige contraption out through sleeves on my top, fold it too, and put it in my bag. I fantasise about taking off my day-tired underpants, sleeping bare bottomed on fresh white sheets, but then I think somehow it might not be hygienic or polite, or prudent (what if I jump up in the night to go to the bathroom and emerge with bits exposed and wiry bush sprouting forth into the chirpy traveller space of the hostel, offending some north American college boys on my travels? I keep the knickers on. AS I lay there I wonder if I will sleep, if I can sleep when my preferred option is to wake in 4 or 5 hours and scoot back up the hill on a train, when I am worried that I will oversleep, or be robbed, or wake up and forget where I am. These worries prove short lived, minutes, my anxieties always overpowered by my desire for sleep. I sleep.

I wake up and it is light out, although the room is blessedly quiet. A girl rouses and turns, and threatens to get up, and I lie still and hold my breath and pray that she goes back to sleep ( I can't bear the thought of polite conversation or explanations as I dress or as I gather gear and depart). Its fine, she snuffles back into her bedding and I emerge quickly, quietly and put on shoes, skirt, laptop in bag, bags on shoulder, and after a quick look at rumpled bedding and wondering if I may need to unmake the bed and haul linen to the front counter for return, think better of it in light of the extended rustling and sheet wrangling of the night before, and leave, strappy sandaled and wild haired into the light. I head straight to the bathroom, this is like the night before played out in reverse, and there brush teeth, wash face and am left wet skinned and dripping, wishing I'd hauled those sheets off and had them handy to dry my face (see how quickly you adapt to circumstance and propriety is replaced with pragmatism?). I use the toilet and there decide that the knickers are not feeling fresh, and can go I step out of them and fold them as neatly as I can be bothered, and stash them in the small zippered pocket of my handbag. I feel free and airy beneath my loose linen skirt - subversive. I feel jaunty, still a little out of place, but more confident. I just spent the night in a dark bunk room! I am off to the foyer to check out, in yesterdays work clothes!

I check the time and realise that I have almost a full hour until the next train, but it's early, so it's ok, I hand back my swipe card and I order coffee and enjoy the being up early, the looking at peaceful tall, dark haired men reclining in modern orange couches under large sun lit windows, reading guidebooks, musing, planning, planning in their pyjama bottoms and t shirt combos, their loose fitting track pants draped casually over the soft shameless curves of crotch. I drink my coffee and enjoy belonging there, in that open plan dining area, with a mother and daughter, with an older man, much older, who looks weathered and haggard and truly appreciative of his $4.90 breakfast. I watch a stocky eastern European man in a crisp shirt and sunny yellow tie come in - I wonder if he is management, but he looks like me, trying to blend in, he sits in a couch and muses and plans and wakes up silently with the rest of them; the rest of us. Maybe he has a job interview. I sit silently too, and let my hostel-bed-messed hair, and good coffee, and yesterdays work clothes and my gratitude for a safe place to rest and my satisfaction at my courage in an unplanned situation, and my subversive bare arse, and my relief, relief, relief come together as friends, integrate, settle and infuse me like the sunlight through the square windows past the couches.