Strange Currency

Wednesday is about books or writing. I’m experimenting with a form new to me - something I think I’ve made up, but of course I haven’t: “Non-Fiction Short Stories”.

It was 1995 when I met Mike The Juggler. I’d arrived in Wellington to attend university. I never meant to be here. My plan was to go to Auckland and get a Communications diploma. But I fudged the interview – I was sent up there on a joint sports/academic scholarship. And, basically, I was a good enough hockey player but too dumb for the interview. I was being asked about the economic situation in the early 1990s. And I fumbled around with recession-this and privatisation-that, and all I was doing was playing the whispers-game around things I’d heard my dad say.

So, Wellington accepted me for university. And some of my friends were headed there too.

I was soon hooked on drinking and having fun, with classes very much the afterthought. And this is pretty standard really. But I wonder what I was looking for when I befriended some of the carnival oddities that lined the street.

I met Mike The Juggler in my first year. And he’s still here. We’ve both moved on, I think as I walk past him now, some 25 years later and me on my way to work. Him, no longer on the corner of Manners Mall. He too has moved where the money is, he’s working his tennis ball hustle down Lambton Quay these days.

But, back in the 90s, Mike was, briefly, the man. As far as drunk-I was concerned. A throwback to some sort of carnival barker, barking mad perhaps, but hey, it wasn’t for me to judge. He would throw these balls in the air and grimace beneath, his little woollen hat like a tea cosy on his head. He seemed to be selling some strange magic. That he was amazed by his own ability to circle four balls in the air; more amazed than anyone else. Well, almost anyone else…

I’d stand there captivated. Talking to him, probably thinking I was taking the piss. But amazed, also. Engaged. Enraged with whatever else was going on in the world. Sometimes. Mike The Juggler a regular to visit on a Thursday or Friday or Saturday. There in Manners Mall, tossing his balls high in the air…

We’d shake hands, and he’d hand me the tennis balls to have a go…

I could juggle three. And I had this stupid pantomime thing I would do. I’d start with one. Throw it up. Catch it. Again. Again. Then add a second and would make it like I was learning to ride. My training wheels guiding me as the two balls circled one another.

Wobble…wobble…And then…magic! I’d slyly add the third. And around and around…

Sometimes passers-by clapped – sometimes my mates with me had a chuckle. More often they told me to “hurry up…”

Mike The Juggler tolerated all this. He always had the upper hand, the final say. He’d puff at his smoke and then signal that I should add a fourth ball. And that’s when the game was up. I’d make the cut-throat sign and hand back the tennis balls.

I’d be on my way. And he’d be off on his way again. Balls in the air, three feet high…and then higher…

I visited Mike because I could say what I liked. I was never under the impression he was ever listening. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need. Someone who is never really listening.

One night he asked me if I wanted to buy a CD. It was 1995. Of course I wanted to buy a CD! That’s what I had moved to university for – after all. He had a small box of CDs with him there in the mall, stashed under a jacket. He looked right and then left, as if crossing the road. And then right again. And when he was sure no one was looking he removed the jacket and let me look at the 30 or so CDs….

I can’t remember a single one, other than the one I bought from him on that night.

R.E.M’s “Monster”.

It was new out at the time. It wasn’t one of their best. Or it was. Depending on who you were. But what it was – was $5. And that was a bargain back then. He had set the terms. I felt around in my pocket for a fiver. And we both left happy at the exchange:

To buy one of the worst R.E.M. albums from one of Wellington’s best street jugglers… Well, why not…

(Of all the R.E.M. albums this is the one you are most likely to (want to) buy from a street juggler, right?)

For a year or so I would stop in on Mike The Juggler. You could say at that time we both had a few balls in the air. But I know that the day he rolled his eyes at me was the day I knew I was doing something wrong.

No more visits to Mike The Juggler.

But he’s still out and about, on the cold streets, doing his thing. Tennis balls in the air. Down Courtenay Place. Down Lambton Quay.

He’s always walking around town, with a little court-jester strut. Carrying two shopping bags. New World shopping bags. They have what he needs to get through the day. Still with the hat. The track pants, the jersey. Still with the juggling, the smoking, the gnomic grin. He lives up the road from me now. A quarter-century on from when I first met him. I never see him juggle, we never speak, he doesn’t know who I am.

But I know him. He’s Mike The Juggler. He’s never changed. So, he’s a reminder of who I used to be.

I’ve started listening to “Monster” again. First time in many years. Strange currencies, indeed.

“These words haunt me, hunt me down, catch in my throat…”