the bank job (by Luiz – another punishment essay)

For a time I actually thought my uncle John (his real name) was a bank worker, everyone always talked about him and banks, and of course on many levels he spent more time in banks than actual bank workers, only in an unofficial capacity. When he wasn't in banks, he was either leaning on bars discussing banking, or behind bars discussing banking. That was probably why, when I was offered the opportunity to partake of a looksee at a career in banking, I immediately said yes.
Initially I had presumed that the trip to the bank, to see how the other half lived, was going to be conducted in school hours. But no, for whatever reason, the bank trip was going to be at night. When I told my uncle John this, his eyes lit up. He told me to make sketches of the lay out and to keep an eye on any security devices. Obviously, that was what bankers did. Even stranger, no teacher was going to accompany us. We were, as young, responsible adults, supposed to make our own way to the bank in question, be on our best behaviour, and ask pertinent questions when it was pertinent to do so. Which would have been fine had I understood what the word pertinent actually meant. Nonetheless, it was the only occasion I can recall that I wore that three-piece grey wool suit with cream pinstripes my mum had had tailor-made for me despite my vehement protestations that she ought not have gone to so much trouble and expense on my behalf. The whole thing about the suit still bothered me a lot. Sure, it was fashionable, in 1928. It had those dangerously wide and flared lapels with exaggerated points, the ones which if the wind caught ahold of them, could easily pluck an eye out. The pants were so flared that it was virtually impossible to wear them on any day where even a stiff breeze was blowing, and no boy, no matter his constitution for fashion, should have to listen to the shipping forecast just to judge weather conditions in respect of whether or not to risk flared pants. They had a nice two-inch turn-up on the pants too, and once safely ensnared within it, no boy could have looked more like a gangster other than baby face whoever when he was actually a baby. The damned thing itched like crazy and what with the trench coat over the top and the four-inch compound rubber platform shoes, it was virtually impossible to walk anywhere and look pertinent, or even pertinently pertinent.
Still, somehow despite the abuse, mockery and juvenile piss taking of various members of maladjusted youth loitering here and there, I finally made it to the bank on time, via a branch line. I stumbled in and almost fell onto a table loaded with what I thought was orange juice. A kindly old man helped me up, I looked around, obviously there were more people interested in a career in the banking sector than I had appreciated, although none of those interested parties looked as suitably attired for a fast-tracked career through to branch management than my goodself. I had a drink, it tasted funny. They had the heating in that place cranked-up to max, I began to feel rather uncomfortable, cloaked as I was in the wool of half a dozen sheep. I loosened my tie, who on earth invented ties anyhow? I listened diligently, even pertinently I suppose, to the speech on banking on how great and needed a service it provided, and how it was one of the cornerstones of a civilized society, and then I watched the short film on banking, and then I drank some more orange juice and generally walked around looking like a banker keeping an eye out for pertinent moments. Sooner, rather than later, I discarded the suit jacket and my tie, unbuttoned my shirt as far as it would go, having left my waistcoat on, and rolled-up my shirt sleeves. Rolling up your sleeves and getting stuck-in, was a most English of virtues.

All of the funny tasting orange juice had gone, so they brought out wine. Hell, banking was a civilized industry sector. It never struck me as odd that they were handing out wine to twelve-year olds, it struck me as pertinent. Which was about the moment impertience seized control of my motor neurone sector. No wonder my uncle John was always talking about banking. Insofar as I could see, in banking you got paid to handle cash and alcohol. Who wouldn't want a job like that. I was stumbling around looking for the dotted line, the one on which I could sign my body and mind over to the banking industry. All I kept finding instead was more wine. The more wine I found, and drank, the faster my envisioned career in banking, my bottom line if you will, was diminishing.
When I started jabbering on about security and vaults and alarms, a few of them started to get twitchy. They were hardcore banking types, pin-striped and stiff lipped. I drank more wine, then I needed to piss, like big time. They didn't have a toilet apparently, but someone told me, the bus station was right next door. They were nice people, they gathered up my jacket and coat and escorted me outside, even shoved me gently in the direction of the bus station. It was a simple walk, no more than thirty-yards or so, amazingly however, it took me almost an hour. I knew it had because the giant clock in the bus station said so. I'd never known that we had a talking clock in our town's bus station, so I sat there a while, looking like a dishevelled banker, until I remembered why I was in the bus station. It took me a fair while to remember why, but eventually I groped my way toward the toilets.


Inside, I vomited down my own pants. Then I pissed in the hand basin while simultaneously trying to rinse vomit that tasted like funny orange juice, from the legs of my pants. If my mum saw these pants, after all the trouble this damned suit had caused, and in fact was still causing, I'd be in a brand new world of corporeal punishment. Or so she said. A guy came in, looking like a dishevelled banker himself, and upon seeing me with my pants down, asked me if I needed a hand getting them off. I told him to take a hike, and after I vomited again, he did.
The situation was escalating, I needed to find my jacket and coat, then a bus, then my way home from wherever it was I got thrown off when the conductor found out I didn't have any money. I mean, who has ever seen a dishevelled banker with money? No, money is the root of all of their evils, plain and simple, money and grape juice. Jesus, where in the name of Threadneedle street were my clothes? Oh god, while I'd been wasting time retching, the bus station had filled-up with vagrants, or bankers, hard to tell the difference. One of them was wearing my jacket, I was sure of it. Then I heard my bus called, oh my sweet lord, there wasn't another one until five-thirty the following morning and it was too cold to walk without a jacket and just like a real banker I had no cash on me . . .

I was sitting upstairs on the bus shivering, waiting for the conductor to throw me off. They invariably did. Many of them had failed to get into the banking sector I suppose. Up he came, I smiled droolishly and rather insanely most likely. Then down he went. Uhm, maybe he'd had problems with rogue banking personnel before. So I stayed there with my head bumping against the dirty window in sync with the bus's locomotion until I heard someone yelling up the stairs. I got up gingerly and concentrated hard on not falling down the steps. At the bottom I heard a familiar voice, not god no, my aunt someoneoranother who wasn't actually my aunt by blood or whatever. She said I looked a right mess.
Accused me of being drunk on vodka.
Told me my flies were undone.
Said I stank of gut stew.
In response, I tried to touch her breast (or so it was later alleged), though to be honest, I have no recollection of the incident, or her breast. There was some kind of bus company interrogation and then I was chucked-off the bus by the company. I trudged home, trying to cobble together some excuse which might have sounded even theoretically plausible. My brain was closed for business however and reconciling the day's takings in a secret chamber. I tried to put my key in the front door lock quietly and it was only when Mr. Turpin our neighbour appeared in what I'd presumed was our porch, that the whole Ichabod Crane story somehow congealed in my head. If I could have done my English assignment then and there, I'd have been a shoe-in for banking. No such luck however, and what with Mr. Turpin shouting and me trying to placate the whole situation with verbal abuse, it was not too long before my own father appeared, looking like Charlton Heston at an anti-gun rally.


I had no idea why I was still sitting at our dining room table at six-thirty in the morning. Either I was way late for tea, or, super early for breakfast. When my parents re-appeared, I was asked to again, in the cold light of a fresh day, explain not only where I had been most of the previous night, but who I'd been with too. Why do parents always need to know who you've been with?
So, I regurgiated the sorry tale again in its sickly entirety. And again, they counterclaimed the whole tale as a pack of lies. It was too confusing, my head hurt in strange and unacceptable ways, and then the phone rang and I breathed a sign of relief, having been afforded yet another stay, until I heard my mother say – oh hi whatever her damned name was.

Oops, yeah, well okay, scrub breakfast I suppose.
My ledgers, as it were, could not be tallied. I had been to the bank, the bank itself confirmed as much, but still my parents wouldn't believe me as they distrusted bankers with a vengeance. According to my bogus aunt's version I looked as if I'd stumbled out of a Russian pub, and that was moments before I'd attempted to molest her. She had an affidavit (whatever the hell that was) from the bus conductor which had already been sworn in front of a bank manager. When I told my uncle John all of this a few weeks later on prison visiting day, after my home detention sentence had been reduced for good behaviour, he told me a very similar tale about a banker and my bogus aunt. I told him that if he behaved he'd get his sentenced reduced too. Obviously, it all ran in the family, like red ink: financial mismanagement, impertience, lost suit jackets, unbuttoned shirts and bogus aunts. The ties that bind, and talking of ties . . .
I was happier after that, happy that I hadn't been sucked-in to the cruel and merciless world of enforced bankruptcy and forfeiture and interest bearing terminology. Banking was not for me, I was far too kind on many levels for a predatory industry like that.

biographer's note: having myself been at the very evening young Luiz was referring to in the rather witty preceding chapter, I can atest to everything said, other than the alledged molestation of a bogus aunt and the psueudo homosexual interlude in the bus station toilets. Luiz was indeed totally hammered and after the kindly bank personnel had escorted him off the premises, and they returned (after said escortation) and told everyone still therein that that (meaning Luiz) was a perfect example of the type of people banking didn't need on its payroll.




http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/sex-knives-and-bouillabaisse/2008/06/06/1212259092425.html