Fraying at the Edges

        I always wonder when I see a homeless person on the street, who are the people in that person's life and where are they? What has happened to them that caused the people they know to leave, or made them unwilling to help? Each of us are born into the world with opportunities, some of us have more, some have less, but very few people have none – and I'm not talking about those people right now because I can't fix that problem and it's depressing stop it stop making me sad I'M SORRY!
        Whether you're born with shitloads of opportunities in life, or if you only really have one, the place you end up when you use them all up is the same – it's on the street, staring at nothing.
        What I'm trying to say is some people fuck up all the time and don't end up homeless because they get more chances than other people. Some people fumble through life fucking up pretty much everything but never hit rock bottom because there's always someone there to catch them. It must be very scary to be one of those people though, and see that pattern emerging in your life, and start to wonder fearfully just how many chances you have left.

        I believe Stuart felt that fear every day.

        When Rhys left for Asia, Backstreet started falling apart. I'd been there under a month and was left doing things Rhys had been doing for two years, all while hiring and training two new staff. I had no idea where to start.
        Rhys had told me that if Stu had a go at me for not doing anything to just throw him under the bus – “Oh what? Rhys never told me about that?” – a version of the “I dunno?!” defence passed on by my high school soccer coach after U-turning our school bus over a road full of construction workers one Sunday afternoon in Adelaide. “If you ever get in trouble in life, boys...”, he'd shouted back to us as a construction worker screamed fury after him, “... you don't know! Plead IGNORANCE! I DUNNO! Hahahahaha!!”
        There was A LOT stuff in Backstreet that I didn't know, or maybe just hadn't listened to, because I'm dumb. I get distracted.

        I was busy trying to learn the ins and outs of running a cafe day-to-day, but while I was finding my feet in that regard, Tynique's coffee was losing us a lot of customers. I hoped she'd get better, but after three weeks, business was slowing, and it hadn't been great to begin with. Stuart's “love notes” – as they were affectionately referred to by Andrew and Harry in the kitchen – to me in the diary every day were getting longer and more unhinged, and every night I'd go over the highlights: “Someone needs to mop the stairs.”
        “The ice machine door has been broken.”
        “Why aren't the different types of teaspoons in two different containers?”
        “Did you clean the dishwasher?”
        “Why did you buy sugar from Coles it's too expensive you should have told me, I could've got some from Costco.”
        “The reason I don't restock the bar after I work is because I'm doing heaps of other stuff.”
        “Who broke the handle on this mug?”
        “Tynique left the extraction fan overnight and it's going to cost me heaps in electricity.”
        “I told you never buy anything from Coles! NEVER!”
        “The wine bottles need to be evenly spaced on the shelves.”
        “Why do my kids hate me?” – Rhys and I used to joke that Stu's kids hating him was the ever-present straw threatening to break the back of the proverbial camel, sending Stu spiraling into a breakdown. One afternoon Stu took me outside for a chat and started nervously going into the specifics of the trouble he and his business were in. His Dad had been putting money in to prop the place up, but after a year had pulled the plug and wanted the money paid back somehow, and then there was the break in, “and Tynique has absolutely done my head in here... and then I'm dealing with my own fuckup of a kid...” It was just ongoing for him. Bad luck, and bad choices.
        That week a pair of solicitors came in just before dinner and served Stu with a notice to pay $36,000 in unpaid rent. They apparently wanted $8000 on the spot or they were going to close the doors then and there! Stu somehow managed to strike a deal with them, because they left and the next day sent a legal-type document by registered post saying that he needed to pay within 14 days or face closure. That eased my nerves because at that point my flight to leave the country was 13 days away, so my income was safe. I knew for a fact that Stu did not have any of that rent money.
        That weekend I called Stu to find out when he was coming in with the meat we needed to cook for a downstairs function at lunch time, I asked him if I could get a precise ETA so we could start making the preparations and he started screaming, “LOOK I'M COMING! ALRIGHT?!! I'LL GET THERE WHEN I GET THERE OKAY?! I AM NOT IN A GOOD PLACE RIGHT NOW!!!”
        His voice on the phone distorted into crackles, I quickly apologised and hung up.

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