E R N I E ' S   H O U S E   O F   W H O O P A S S

I think it's fair to say that we've all had our fair share of unsavoury public transport experiences.

Imagine my perverse fascination with the following true life experience from just last week recounted to me by my friend, colleague and first hand witness, Clarissa a fellow work colleague here at Prime Selection.

As was her normal routine Clarissa was on her way home from work on a crowded peak hour train. She was lucky enough to secure a seat and proceeded to read a book and ignore the distasteful world around her, as you do.

A short while into her journey Clarissa was distracted from her reading by an especially repugnant odour. A mixture of stale vomit, week old dried urine, fermented body odour and unformed stool samples, this was pretty much the stink combo platter.

The offending odour was permeating from a silver bearded dread-locked wino who was cut a clear path through the busy train as commuters bent themselves into pretzel shapes to avoid bodily contact with the walking shitbag.

Every person on that train was aware of this repugnant man and not even the feral train conductor was willing to approach the sweaty bum to ask for his fare.

Now as everyone was slamming their noses into their own armpits to avoid the rank stench of this stumbling drunkard one solitary lady was oblivious to the wretched goings on about her.

This young businesswoman was feeling the strain of an arduous days work in the corporate office and had been swayed into a blissful state of somnambulant day dreamage by the rhythmic motion of the slow moving train..

Nodding peacefully this unsuspecting sleeping beauty evidenced her proper upbringing by keeping her legs crossed and her hands clasped and if it weren't for her angelic eyes being closed you'd never know she was away in her own little world.

Our smelly wino happened to be hovering above this sleeping sweetie when he was taken by a deep and resonant coughing fit which caused his aged and blackened emphsyemic smoker's lungs to contract and squeeze out what can only be described as a monumental thick globulous ball of phlegm, a classic gorbie, it was a chunk of gooey green lung matter an Ethiopian family could live off for a month.

As this stinking walking street refuse hocked up this gigantic gorbie the entire train reeled in horror and one gentleman even extended his monogrammed handkerchief willing to sacrifice it to this fountain of sickening splutter for the greater good.

Alas the offer came too late and that memorable green golf ball of phlegm could not be contained. Like a freed parrot this gorbie flew from the scabbed herpe-etic lips of its drunken originator bypassing the coagulated drool of the flea ridden beard and spun in the air as if in slow motion end-over-end like a Martian high diver as the assembled train travellers watched repulsed, but spell-bound by the sailing hunk of disgarded inner waste which was truly so loathsome as to not even belong in the body of this human septic tank.

There was a jaw dropping eerie silence as that gorbie finally came to rest viewed by more people than the entire audience of Water Rats. It landed with an audible slap, but by the very nature of its grotesque constituent elements it stuck heartily to the surface.....the surface of the sleeping business woman's right hand!

Clarissa was mortified, but surpressed her natural desire to throw up violently (Friday night after a S.U. bash) because she was unselfishly more worried about the dozing lady. When she finally woke up and spotted that green hunk of wino mucus resting on the back of her hand there was a good chance she might just have a heart attack and die.

This however was not the case. When the train pulled up promptly at the next set of traffic lights the sudden halting of it's soothing motion awoke our snoozing heroine who politely ran her tongue over her lips before opening her tired eyes. The first thing she saw when she opened those bashful eyes was the gargantuan gorbie and she was visibly startled.

But then as every person ,except the stinking bum lurching above her, had their eyes glued sympathetically to this unfortunate innocent she sheepishly yet casually raised her hand to her mouth and licked off and then swallowed the entire green spongy mass of phlegm mistakenly assuming that it had trickled from her own divine lips as she slept.

At this point the train's silence turned to boisterous uproar and Clarissa just made it off the train at the next unscheduled stop in time to vomit at the base of a small flowering tree.