A Sleaze in the Park
I could feel my blue chequered school dress sticking to my back as sweat patches broke out in random blotches like islands on a map. My bag felt so heavy I had to sit down, but I thought Eric may suddenly appear from the park, so I kept on, half walking, half running to Coles.
As I ran through the car park I almost ran into an elderly woman carrying two green, environmentally friendly shopping bags. She must have noticed my pale face or the slight panic in my eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, inadvertently clutching at her shoulder for support. ‘Are you alright, dear? Is anything wrong?’ she asked. ‘You look off-colour.’ ‘No, fine…it’s OK,’ I said, even though I felt like yelling at her that no, I wasn’t OK! That I hated men. Hated, hated, hated them! I was sick of the whole lot of them. I wanted to scratch their eyes out, beat them around the head and yell, ‘It is not your right to so this to me! You can’t treat me like trash! DO YOU (smash head against wall) UNDER (slap across face) STAND!’ (throw bloodied pulp body across footpath).
I had been walking home from school – it’s about half an hour and sometimes I enjoy the peace – and was cutting through Jubilee Park next to the bowling green. I was having a rather ridiculous daydream about Ms Adams, our English and Literature teacher, announcing to the class my argumentative essay on capital punishment would be shortlisted for the Victorian Schools Essay Competition (we’d received entry forms a few weeks back, but I hadn’t entered anything yet, and probably wouldn’t) when a customer who had given me a sleazy grin after picking up one of Crass’ packages suddenly appeared at my shoulder. I was so caught up in my daydream I didn’t even hear him approach.
I didn’t say anything, but immediately looked around to see we were the only two people in the park and I still had about five minutes of fast paced walking until I reached Coles, which backed on to the road that ran past the park.
‘Hey,’ he leered. He had patchy hair stuck to his scalp and a fat gut that strained under his wrinkled yellow polyester shirt and looked every bit the sleazebag. The gold tooth didn’t help.
‘Hello,’ I said, coldly.
‘Say, you know, it’s really good to see you again and, man, you deserved that five buck tip for those films. You do a great job, so I thought I’d give you somethin’ else.’ He reached into his tight jeans pocket, fumbled around for a second, then took out a twenty dollar note and handed it to me.
‘That’s too much, the five dollars was generous enough,’ I said. Twenty dollars? What sort of weirdo hands out twenty dollars in a park to a teenage girl? There was no way I was going to take it. I tried to quicken my pace to give him the hint I didn’t want anything to do with him. God, what was his problem?
‘Hey, just go ahead and take it,’ said Eric, walking after me.
I was almost tempted to take it just to fleece the sleazebag out of more money. I held up my hand to him and told him to take it back. He held it out for a few moments more before pushing it back into his pocket.
‘So, you do anything after school usually?’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘You know, you have a boyfriend or anything?’
I wasn’t sure what he was trying to get at, but thought it better to lie. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. We’ve, er, been going out a long time.’
‘Lucky guy. I bet you’re a good kisser, hey?’ Eric laughed, quickening his pace so he was walking next to me. He was wearing cheap aftershave. He smelt like a lolly shop.
‘That’s none of your business,’ I said with just a touch of venom. He got the hint. ‘Oh, right, okay,’ he said, once he realised I didn’t want to continue with the conversation. ‘I guess I’ll be seeing ya round then.’
I kept walking, too scared to glance around to see if he was following.
I remember my cousin Mindy telling me about getting chatted up when she was working at Just Jeans last year. I had told her I was looking for a job and she told me retail stores were loads better than supermarkets and fast-food restaurants; it was the reason I applied for the job at the Video Saloon. ‘You don’t need to work as hard and you get out right on closing time,’ she said. ‘But then, you get more weirdos, for sure.’
She said a short, bald guy with a bad comb-over and a stubby pig face had once come into the store and she’d gone and made one bad mistake: ‘I was friendly and asked him if he needed any help. Then I went on to recommend the Levi Red Tabs because they were my favourite jeans.’ The mistake? ‘The guy had obviously never had a girlfriend his entire life and had become completely desperate – he thought I was chatting him up.’
The guy had asked for her phone number. When Mindy had refused he left, only to turn up the next day to ask her to the cinema. She told him to get lost. She wasn’t a push over, she always spoke her mind, so I could imagine her tone was pretty forceful. So he left, but then turns up the next day and just watches her. Sits at a seat near the store for about an hour. She just ignored him. Finally, when she spotted him following her to the car park, she called security who gave him a bit of a push and a slap. He got the message and never went near Just Jeans again. ‘He really did think I was interested in him, right up to the moment security kicked his fat arse out of the shopping centre,’ Mindy said.
Mindy was right about the weirdos, anyway. I’d met enough of them and I’d only been at the Video Saloon three months.
I’d just about reached the edge of the park when I heard footsteps running up to me. Hard, urgent slaps on the concrete. It was Eric again, struggling to run a few dozen paces. For one horrible moment I thought he was going to attack me. I could imagine it: the screaming, the hair pulling, getting dragged back towards the empty lawn bowls club . . . I felt my stomach cramp up and I involuntarily hunched my shoulders.
‘Hey, one minute,’ Eric said. I was half torn between dumping my bag and running for it or just screaming, but Eric didn’t grab me. Instead he stood in front of me. Traffic was coming down the road, so surely he wouldn’t try anything?
‘You ever want to make a little extra money?’ he asked. ‘I could do with some company. You know, go out for dinner and stuff? I’m pretty easy going, yeah?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so…I’ve got to get home now.’
‘C’mon,’ Eric said, ‘I just wanna a little company, you know, someone young and sweet like you…just to hang out.’
‘No!’ I yelled, frightening myself with the forcefulness in my voice.
He seemed startled as he left me to cross the road. Once I was across and almost at Coles I heard him yell out angrily, ‘Youse is just a friggin’ teaser!’
I kept walking.
A teaser? What the hell was he talking about? I felt real fear build up inside me and I started to shake and sweat, and then I ran into the old lady. Home was only five minutes away but I felt safer here in the shopping centre. I couldn’t understand what Eric had wanted – and why? Why did he think a fifteen-year-old would ever want anything from such an ugly, creepy old guy?
‘Are you sure you’re alright? You really don’t look a hundred per cent,’ said the lady, her cold hands on my shoulder. ‘You look a little sick.’
I tried to give her a reassuring smile. ‘It’s no problem, I’ll be right, just a bit of a pain in the stomach,’ I said, gently shaking her off and walking towards home.
I told Topps about it on the phone as soon as I got home – I desperately needed someone to talk to and Dad was working that afternoon so I didn’t feel safe by myself either. Topps said he’d come around.
I only told him a half-truth. That some customer who I had only seen once before had tried to chat me up in the park.
‘Boy, did it make you freak or what?’ asked Topps as we sat on my bed listening to the radio.
‘He was just an idiot, that was all. We were in the park so I didn’t feel that safe.’
‘You should tell the cops, for sure, get him reported. If he’s a member you could get his contact information.’
‘I can’t remember his name, I’ve only seen him once before,’ I lied, not wanting to go any further. I knew Topps would go totally ape if he found out about I was helping Crass with his pirating.
‘Gee, nice to have an admirer,’ Topps said. ‘Perhaps he’ll send Interflora flowers to school next?’
‘He got the message,’ I said. ‘He won’t bother me again.’
‘Why don’t you report it to the police?’
‘It’d be a hassle and nothing would happen, that’s why. He only tried to ask me out, as freakish as that sounds.’
‘Can’t say I blame him, someone as gorgeous as you,’ laughed Topps. I smiled. He was about the only guy I knew I’d consider dating, that’s for sure.
‘Thanks Topps,’ I said, giving him a hug – something I don’t do too often. It’s difficult enough trying to keep just friends without leading him on. Topps let the hug go on a little longer than I would have liked. I pulled away and I think he realised what he’d done. He immediately stood up and turned up the volume of my little Sanyo portable stereo player. ‘I’ll fry his stinkin’ ass if he tries something like that again!’ he said in his best Robert De Niro voice.
‘You’re my hero, Topps.’
Topps smiled.
* * *
Crass didn’t mention anything more about helping him out with the DVDs at work but I saw a small box underneath the desk out the back with a handful of packages in them – two of them were sealed, bubble wrapped packages. They were exactly the same as the packages I’d given Eric. There was something about what Eric had said that made me think there were more than just Will Smith films in those envelopes. It was the way he had treated me, as if I was leading him on because of something I’d said or done: ‘Youse is just a friggin’ teaser!’ What was that supposed to mean? A teaser? Why would someone think I was interested in them just because I gave them some pirated DVDs. What was the connection?
I wondered if it, in some roundabout way, had anything to do with the packages. I waited until Topps had gone to the bakery and then went to examine the box. I took out a yellow envelope and noticed the flap was only lightly stuck on. I could almost lift it up without tearing it or leaving a mark. I grabbed a knife from the sink and found it sliced through the sticky substance on the envelope easily. I looked inside and saw a stack of about ten DVDs in slimline cases. They looked like the DVDs I had seen in the basement – Scarlet Johannsen’s latest, a horror – something about a psycho scarecrow that we had in the store, a comedy I’d actually seen in the cinema a few months ago and a bunch of films I’d never heard of. All of them obviously copied.
I re-stuck the envelope flap down and took out one of the padded envelopes that were similar to the one I had given Sleazebag Eric. Why the padded envelope? Was there a difference between these and the yellow envelopes? It was well stuck down. There was no way I’d manage to open it without tearing the entire flap. I looked at the other padded envelope and noticed it hadn’t been sealed properly. In fact the flap still had the protective paper covering the seal. Crass had obviously forgotten to seal it. I opened it and peered inside to see about four DVDs with an elastic band around them. Keeping an ear out for Crass I slid the DVDs out of the envelope.
These were pirated too, but they weren’t videos we rented. “Bikini Girls Go Wild!” and “When Good Girls go Bad!” screamed the lurid yellow titles. The covers were full of blonde bimbos in small, tight bikinis. They all had breasts that bulged out of their bikini tops like basketballs. They were either shouting or pouting at the camera.
Crass obviously had a sideline in bimbo films. Eric must have thought it was a turnon to get this junk from a young girl! I was so mad at Crass. Not only were the videos pirated, they were totally sleazy.
I seethed for the next half hour until Crass returned with his ridiculously huge gym bag. I grunted when he told me he had my money from last weekend. I knew I should have never got involved in this. I was mad at Crass and doubly mad at myself.
‘Did all right last week,’ Crass said, handing me over forty dollars. ‘Haven’t sold that many for ages.’
‘You didn’t tell me what type of DVDs they were.’
‘What do you mean? Latest releases, mainly. A few old school comedies from the store. Some games. Why?’
‘Because one load of DVDs slipped out of their envelope’ – and I was lying here because I didn’t want to say I’d been snooping – ‘and I saw what they were. Stupid bikini girls with fakes boobs that all look like stupid Pamela Anderson.’
Crass went silent. ‘Ah, yeah, right. Well, you know,’ he mumbled, fidgeting with the cash in his hands. ‘Men love it. Call it a weakness. If you saw the butt-ugly wives some of them have to put up with, well… you’d understand. I feel sorry for some of em.’
Who, I thought, the men or their wives?
I said, ‘If you want to deal with sleaze, I guess it’s up to you. Do what you want, but I don’t want to help you anymore. It’s disgusting. One of the customers even tried to chat me up. I think I’ll leave it to you from now on…’
‘Hey, Stacey, it’s sweet money. All you have to do is…’
I cut him off quickly. ‘I don’t like selling creepy films to creepy customers. I’m not interested anymore Crass. Just leave me alone to work here without having to deal with that sort of thing.’
‘C’mon, it’s all about supply and demand. That’s want the guys want. It’s not as if…’ Crass, sensing I was really, really peed off, suddenly gave up. ‘Sure, have it your way then,’ he said, stacking a pile of returns on the counter and scanning them in. ‘Like I said though, Stace – there’s lots of others who are.’
‘Lots of others who are what?’
‘Interested. In helping me out.’
Oh, grow up you little idiot, I thought. Another threat about replacing me with plastic-fantastic Toni? Go ahead and try it. I’ll just give the police a little tip off about your hobby.
Crass basically ignored me the rest of the night. If he thought I was going to quit, though, he was wrong. I can be real stubborn, that’s for sure, and I was determined to stay here and collect my wages and not give in to Crass. There was nothing he could do now. I knew too much.