Wires, Strange Bouncer Dude

They call him “Wires”. I don’t know how a man gets a nickname like “Wires”, but I can only guess it involves doing hard time at some stage.

The first time I met him was at Bar Open. He was bouncing there. Pretty easy gig – no one’s going to start trouble there because they’re all stoned anyway.

I wasn’t in a very talkative mood. Everyone sits at the table out the back and talks to each other. It must have been Wednesday. There were two pussies at the table, and about five dicks. The girls were about 30. One was blonde, and one was half Pacific Islander. Every guy there but me was hitting on the blonde. The brunette was hitting on me.

Her name was Iola. She was like a shy little girl just learning to flirt. She spoke in a really soft voice, especially when she said “Do you want to come to my barbeque on Sunday?” I got her number.

Wires walked into the smoking court with a disturbed look on his face. He was about 5′10″, maybe 45 years old, probably bald under the black bandana. Iola excused herself and went off to talk to Wires. While they were gone, the guys kept hitting on Blondie, badly. I imagined that Wires was probably off nailing Iola in a back alley somewhere. Oh well, I thought.

When she came back, Wires threw an ashtray across the smoking court in frustration, and stormed off. Iola sat down next to me and explained that Wires had confessed his love to her – she couldn’t believe it. The whole time she’d been in Melbourne, Wires had been her best friend, looked after her, bought her things. Now he was going to turn around and say he loved her? How unexpected, she thought.

I wondered how a 30 year old girl could be so naive. Little girls never grow up. I later realised though, her being naive was a clever coping mechanism. When something came up that she hadn’t wanted to deal with, she could always claim she had no idea.

Wires came out again. “I’m sorry for the way I acted,” he said in his rough, gruff voice.

“That’s okay, sit down with us.”

“Where do you get the name Wires anyway?” someone asked.

“Can we talk about something else?” said Wires.

The girls were about to leave.

“Can I get your number?” mumbled the bald beanie-wearing 50 year old guy.

“Can I get your number?” said the drunk 40 year old architect.

“Sure – I’ll tell you what, you can all have my number,” said Blondie. The lads grumbled. See what she did there? That was some game theory shit.

I would always see Wires bouncing at Pony. Once I picked up a girl there and she showed me an invitation to Wires’s birthday party.

Every time she saw Wires, she would be outside Pony having a smoke, talking about some random nonsense non-stop to her friends. “Don’t you ever shut up!” Wires would say.

“Nope! So anyway blah blah blah…”

That was the extent of her friendship with Wires. Then that night when she got to the door, he handed her a piece of paper and grunted “Come to my birthday.”

On the piece of paper was lettering in a child’s writing saying “Pelase com to mai birfday ” and on the inside, a photograph of Wires, wearing all white,a baseball cap backwards, with his fist extended to the camera. The address said “The car park, 456 High St, Northcote.” I didn’t end up going, which is a shame because I can only imagine how tragically brilliant it would be.