The authentic voice of the streets

Traveling on the bus to Petone with the vivacious Anita for a short break and to restock on dried Kashmir chillies, for such is my wont.

From the back of the bus, over the sound of the engine, booms a monologue of such urban authority it would make Kerouac’s head spin. A voice from the street, intoning loudly and unignorably to his companion, his Bro, of his many misdemeanours, how he’d joined a community art project for street kids in order to defraud them of spraypaint, how he’d met a black man from America and fucked him up for looking at him funny. How authentic and real and street his tagging was. How to use the word “fuck” as a noun, verb, adjective and comma.

I turned, expecting to see a six-foot-plus gangsta, or at least a homie of some sort. Instead, I was confronted with a meek little spotty herbert in a powder-blue hoodie, and his Ron Weasley companion, both about 14 and pale as milk.

I waited carefully until we’d gotten off the bus, and then laughed my ass off.