Homeless at 58, my new neighbours included an ex-con and a recluse. Then there was Darren

It’s 2021 and I’ve found myself suddenly alone and homeless in the middle of a global pandemic. I’m sitting at the entrance of an emergency housing office in Ballarat with my suitcase when the young Aboriginal housing officer walks right past me. He later apologises, “You don’t look like the usual person we get in here, Julianne.”

I am offered a tiny flat in a 1970s social-housing block on Lord Street in the regional township of Bacchus Marsh for only $100 a week.

I shut the door, curl up in the brown recliner that has been donated to me by a women’s charity and try not to think about the awful family breakdown that led me here at the age of 58.

I’d been living with my crazy 80-year-old mother as her carer for only three months when the COVID lockdown hit. Before long, we turned on each other like the true bitches we always were beneath the family snapshots and pretty birthday cards. Now I have no job, no ideas, and I’ve been disowned by the whole family.

My apartment block comes with rats, bed bugs and seven male tenants, among whom there’s a friendly, helpful ex-con called Steve and a recluse called Bob, who hasn’t spoken to anyone in 20 years and has aluminium foil over all his windows. And then there’s Darren – general dogsbody and whipping boy. Darren Gunn who puts the bins out. Everybody knows Darren. He walks down the main street of Bacchus Marsh in his Essendon beanie, his stained windcheater and holey black trackies, smiling and waving to everyone like John the Baptist.

“Hi Darren!”

“Hi Elsie!”

“Beautiful day!”

This is the full breadth of his world – weather and football. I’ve never in my life met a happier person.

I, myself, am not happy. I have two friends, but they live interstate. Susan creates children’s television in Adelaide, and Jackie is a lobbyist in Canberra.

I call Susan and say I’ve been unhappy for a while now.

“Oh Jules, that’s awful,” says Sue. “How long have you been unhappy?”

“Fifty-eight years.”

I now have to “take stock of my life”. I have to “pick up the pieces”.

Pulling myself together starts with jumping on the net and picking up $40,000 of lost superannuation. I’m telling Darren about my windfall when he says he thinks he also has some super somewhere. Darren is illiterate and can’t use a computer. He’s skint and could really do with a car.

Maybe I can help you find it, Darren.

What future, I’m thinking. He’s an alcoholic heavy smoker with a shit diet and the beginnings of emphysema.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I will HELP PEOPLE! As I, now, walk among society’s lepers on Lord Street, the underworld of the underclass, I will DO GOOD. I will suffer the toothless, unshaven and nicotine-stained to come unto me (or a hygienic social distance from me).

But getting Darren’s money is not that easy.

Project Darren begins with me waiting hours on the phone to speak to consultants at StarSuper. I find out he has $4000 and StarSuper is not going to let go of it without a fight.

Darren is 57. Why does he want the money now, the consultants want to know? It’s for his future, they say. What future, I’m thinking. He’s an alcoholic heavy smoker with a shit diet and the beginnings of emphysema. Yeah, his future’s so bright he has to wear two-dollar shades.

Furthermore, in 10 years’ time, when he can legitimately claim it, he won’t remember it’s there. He regularly gets thrown out of the Railway Hotel because he’s forgotten he’s been banned for six months for launching into the sports bar and calling the Carlton supporters “sucks”.

Although he’s on a pension for his intellectual disability, StarSuper will not give Darren his money unless we get a medical professional to agree that his intellectual impairment is permanent, that he can’t cope with the rigours of holding down a full-time job, and he is, for all intents and purposes, now “retired”.

Darren and I meet at the front of the first medical clinic. I ask him if he has brought his complete medical history. To which he confidently indicates the plastic bag he is holding that appears to contain some crumpled papers.

Inside, the doctor coolly points out that he doesn’t know Darren, so it will be difficult for him to write the report. Darren hands over his “complete medical history” and the doctor empties the contents of the plastic bag onto his desk. It contains random receipts for a few medical tests, half a pack of illegal cigarettes, some TAB stubs and a couple of dead bed bugs.

“He wants to buy a car,” I offer lamely.

The doctor is unimpressed. He’s not going to sign.

Okay, Doc, you’re from the subcontinent, your parents worked four jobs to put you through medical school, then you suffered the torturous process of emigration to give your kids a better life in a new, largely racist country. But that doesn’t give you the right to disrespect a man who may or may not be trying to shave a few points off his IQ to get some fast cash.

I rise from my chair, gathering Darren’s “complete medical history” and what’s left of my dignity.

“Come, Mr Gunn, we shall take our request elsewhere.”

Walking down the hall, Darren, the eternal optimist, thinks it went well.

No, Darren, it didn’t go well.

The next day, I call out to Darren from my second-floor balcony.

“Remember we’ve got another doctor’s appointment at 2pm! Don’t forget!”

“I won’t, Jules!”

The second doctor leads us down the hall to his room and I can see he already hates us.

I put Darren’s case using one of my superpowers – sounding educated. I use phrases like “the personal and systemic factors affecting Mr Gunn’s current and future employability”.

The doctor asks why he can’t wait the next 10 years for the money like everyone else. I tell him that Darren is a Buddhist and doesn’t believe in the future.

I don’t remember ever being looked at with disdain before. It’s an unfamiliar look. I’m being tarred with the same brush people have been tarring Darren with all his life.

Doctor two won’t sign. Outside the clinic, Darren quickly lights up a ciggie. “That went good.”

No, Darren, it didn’t go good.

Darren tells me he’s going to “bung it on a bit” next time. I say it won’t hurt.

We are standing at the reception desk of the third medical centre, informing the acrylic-enhanced, frostily coiffed girls that we are here for our appointment, when Darren suddenly coughs and a sizeable slug of snot darts out and retracts from his nostril. It’s so quick that Darren and I choose to ignore it, but the girls have visibly recoiled, almost tipping backwards off their chairs. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of my protégé through the eyes of others.

We sit together in the waiting room. Darren is watching me blankly do my crossword. I didn’t think “helping people” was going to take up so much of my free time, and be quite so boring.

Then we are called. Doctor three listens to my spiel while Darren fiddles with and spills a cup of tongue depressors. Pause. I prepare for rejection while Darren is on the floor picking up the sticks.

Doctor three smiles kindly at us. He even pats my hand. He will sign off on the super form but wants to go further. He wants to do blood, chest, sugar, heart tests. He wants to help Darren get off alcohol and cigarettes so he can have quality of life for the rest of his life.

Darren gives me a box of chocolates as a thank-you present. I know he didn’t think of this himself. His mother has told him to do it. Inexplicably, the box is sodden as though he has left it in the rain for some time, or dropped it in the bath, though he doesn’t make mention of this. I take the soggy package inside and open it. The chocolates are still good.

Nowadays, you can find Darren Gunn proudly driving down the main street of Bacchus Marsh waving to his fans like John the Baptist in his new white 2003 $4000 Holden ute. If you need anything taken to the council tip, here’s your man. Just make sure to give him the $50 tip fee (which he may pocket then dump your stuff illegally somewhere on a back road between Myrniong and Creswick).

This is an edited version of the 2024 Peter Carey Short Story Award (Best Local Entry) winning piece.

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