By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
The ugly lights went on at the bar, and the girl stood up. She was one of those interchangeable Canadian blondes who does their thing at bars all over this fine country. You know the type: naturally defined facial features, accentuated by judicious plucking and make up to look that much bit sharper; shoulder length straight blonde hair, and clothing somewhere on the sexy side of normal.
Well, maybe you don't know the type, but I do. Valeries (named after the very first tall slender Canadian blonde who I fell for) are a weakness of mine. I can't help it, when I meet one, I crank up the charm. It's a futile effort in some ways. Like the cats they remind me of, they'll receive all the attention and affection you're willing to give and return as much as they want to on their own terms.
This one was called Tanya, and she pretty much epitomised the Valerie type. Sure, they might all look a little different, have taken different career paths (at the same successful speed), and even enjoy different ways of keeping fit; but really, they are the same person with different life histories. It's not a unique feature, the large muscular guys over in the corner (and pretty much any other stereotype) can be described in much the same way, I just don't care about it as much because I don't tend to fall in love with large muscular guys.
From somewhere in her mini-handbag, she produced a pen. I hadn't asked for her number, I never do, but it looked like I was going to get it anyway, I usually do. She wrote it carefully on a scrap of paper and folded it in half. She tucked the paper in my shirt pocket and kissed me on the cheek.
"Call me, we'll go out tomorrow."
With that, she was gone, and I found the boys. E-Dizzle, the Racketeer, and Big Ian - obviously these aren't their real names, but it will be less confusing if I just bring out the poker nicknames now, instead of later.
The drive home was one of those scary-funny experiences that are best faced drunk. The Racketeer was legally sober but can barely drive automatic, let alone a stick-shift. Big Ian's poor truck was revving at about 6,000 most of the way and E-Dizzle and I were being thrown around the tray by some of the jerkiest driving since Thunderbirds.
When we got in the door, there was that crucial moment of "now what?" None of us quite wanted to go to bed yet, so I suggested playing some poker. All the essentials were right there on the kitchen table - a box of chips, a deck of cards, a bong with a ziplock bag of "oregano" beside it, and a bottle of CC (that's Canadian Club - a rather fine rye whiskey).
Drunk poker, especially when you're not playing for anything more important than bragging rights (although really, what could be more important than bragging rights?), isn't really about the game, it's about the experience.
Trash was talked, chips went from player to player, and as the game wore on we each adopted our own poker personalities. E-Dizzle was the bad-ass gangster (a tough role for a skinny white kid from Newfoundland). The Racketeer was the young college punk who would have worn sunglasses if he could have negotiated the stairs to find them. Big Ian was the quietly confident, self-assured guy and I was the dealer, some-time commentator, and acknowledged "poker expert." In other words, we all became something we weren't, or at least weren't usually.
The discussion wound its way around all the usual topics, with the bullshitting candour that alcohol encourages. Naturally, women were discussed, or at least their bodies were. In man-land, that place that even the most caring guy needs to visit sometimes, women are sex-objects, or sex-subjects, or both, I can't remember the rules of grammar well enough to know which would be the more intellectual pun.
"There weren't many hotties there tonight."
"That Tanya is pretty hot, though huh?"
"Yeah, how do you know her?"
"She lived in my building first year. She's kind of a bitch though, hey?"
"Yeah?"
"We were kind of going to hook up, and then she fucked my roommate behind my back."
"Ouch."
"Dude, that's rough."
That's about as sensitive and caring as guys can get without women present. The translation that none of us missed, and would never make explict was that E-Dizzle had had a thing for Tanya and she had broken, or at least chipped his heart. We knew this, and expressed our solidarity without any awkard display of emotion. It's the way things work.
"Yeah, she made me take her phone number, but whatever."
I pulled the bit of paper out of my pocket, and brandished it as a trophy. The air wasn't exactly thick with anything other than aromatic smoke, but there was an element of tension undercutting the sweet fog. I had approached the line.
I casually balled up the paper and tossed it into the pizza box on the floor that we were using in an attempt to centralize the assorted debris of a two hour poker game and junk food extravaganza.
Life is defined by such moments. The seemingly little decisions that are fraught with significance. The times when an appropriate orchestral score would be appreciated to hint at how we're supposed to feel. Times like this where I symbolically affirmed my commitment to my friends and my willingness to share their hardships.
The game broke up not long after that, and by the next morning most of it had coalesced into a blob of fond memories that we would discuss whenever appropriate for the next month. The only thing we remembered clearly and would never discuss was my moment of self-sacrifice. As hard as it was, I didn't have any other choice.
Somethings you just have to do because they are what you have to do, even if it means throwing away the number of a girl who is interested and interesting, attractive and attracted, and any other clever pair of nouns you can think of to describe someone who you're happy to talk to for hours. Still, I had no trouble sleeping. Beer, weed, and a 20 hour day are quite capable of riding roughshod over the insomnia of real problems, so the minor consequences of being an honourable friend aren't an issue.
I called Tanya the next afternoon, copying her number from the crumpled piece of paper I rescued from a pizza box. I might be a good friend, but I'm not an idiot.
Richard Bulkeley is a nomadic philosopher, sometime barman, and ex-genius originally from Auckland, New Zealand.
Showing posts with label Richard Bulkeley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Bulkeley. Show all posts
November 30, 2004
July 20, 2004
Words We Don't Have
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
There is an African tribe that has no word for goodbye. When it’s time to go, they just turn around and go. Now, I’m not sure if this is a real African tribe, or one of those apocryphal ones (like the dubious Chinese proverbs people are fond of), but at the moment, I wish I was part of that tribe.
I’m at the airport, saying farewell to my soon to be ex-girlfriend, and what I want more than anything else in the world right now is to walk away. I want to walk through the security check and towards the plane without looking back.
Her hair smells like apples, and the subtle scent of her shampoo is squeezing the bottom of my lungs. It always amazes me the power that smells have to evoke memories and emotions and all the other stuff that our more rational senses filter out in darker moments.
Ultimately, Robert DeNiro’s character in Heat said it best “don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” In my case, the heat is a metaphor, an almost physical need to travel and be alone, but it’s just as scary and life altering as the police. Well, it’s been closer to thirty minutes, and she still isn’t allowing me to walk away. Truth is, I don’t really want to go. There is always a lot of dead time before catching a plane, and there are worse ways to spend it than hugging a good-looking woman.
Now, admittedly, these were the words of a fictional armed robber, and it might seem sick to try and apply them to the life of an arrogant, confused, emotionally retarded twenty-something. But I do. It’s not like I do anything more criminal than smoking an occasional joint. I’ve really got no excuse for my predisposition towards rejecting the trappings of civilized life. When I think about it, it’s kind of sad that I see a long-term relationship as just a trapping of civilized life. Or that I pretend I think that. It’s not that I didn’t love Kate. I did.
But it’s over, whether or not I still love her – and I do. I just don’t love her like I used to. When we first got together, it was tingles down the spine, an interminable goofy grin, and all the other sickly Hollywood clichés that seem so apt when your hormones take over. Now, it’s a warm fondness. Before time took its toll, I loved her in the same way I loved my right hand. Life without her would have been possible, but inconceivable. If you’re feeling cynical, and I usually am, it’s possible to say that I loved her because she performed some of the functions of my right hand. But, for a dozen more reasons besides, I loved her. Now, well, my feelings towards her are more on par with how I regard my baby teeth. Sure, they were nice, and useful while they lasted, and the sight of them (my mother keeps everything) brings back some warm memories, but that’s it.
Or so I tell myself, and have been for the last month. We’ve both noticed an edge of desperation creeping into the relationship recently, and we’ve both kept quiet. We’d rather slip into the North Atlantic singing “Abide With Me” (or more likely trying for one last quickie on the poop deck of the HMS Titanic) than scramble around trying to find lifeboats. Neither of us would have admitted that we knew that the massive iceberg in the shape of a jumbo jet with a kangaroo on the tail was coming, but we would have had to be idiots to forget it. While love makes fools out of men, and women (although it’s more expected of them), there are limits.
So here we are, locked in one last embrace. There’s precious little emotion in it, and what little there is is precious. I wish I could cry, but I have only cried once in the last decade. I’m a deliberate emotional cripple and it took the death of my best friend in a climbing accident, the death of my grandfather (of a throat cancer that robbed him of the dignity and strength that mere old age and the shadow of Hitler’s evil couldn’t), and a two-day bender to weaken my resolve.
The final split is about as anti-climactic as it is awkward. English doesn’t really have the right word for this situation. I mean, “see ya” is definitely overly casual, almost cruel in its indifference. But then, “farewell” is almost too formal; it’s become a noun in its own right. But English has several words for use when parting, and I end up spluttering the simplest one.
“Uh. Goodbye.”
“Yeah. Goodbye.”
And that’s it. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate or ironic, and frankly I don’t care. I’m a coward, and I walk. I barely notice anything until I walk past a stooped old man in a cowboy hat. Now, this isn’t all that unusual, we are in cowboy country after all. In fact, he’s just another retired guy with his wife, flying somewhere.
What gets me is that he’s with his wife. I remember a half-joke I made the first time we discussed long-term possibilities. I said “cowboys are free, cowboys don’t have wives, farmers have wives, and I don’t want to be tied to one horizon.” This old cowboy’s got a wife, and he looks plenty happy. Now, I’m not even considering asking Kate to marry me. But I do realise that I’ve been an asshole.
I believe that everyone has a moment where they are given the opportunity to make a magnificent gesture. The universe grants us a limited number of opportunities to stand up and be truly exceptional. Even the least of men will have moments in his life where he has a chance to reveal a character who rivals those we love in the great stories.
With a sickening clarity, I realise that this is one of mine. I can either keep walking towards the gate and cut the sundry bonds that I have accrued on this patch of earth, or I can turn around and walk back to the departure lounge. Ultimately though, I don’t really have a choice. The role I have created for myself inside my head requires – no, it demands – that I act like a hero. If I can’t be one, and I’m gradually resigning myself to the fact that I can’t, I can at least act like one on occasion.
I’m not Ulysses, or the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Steve McQueen. There’s no honour in destroying myself here. To nobly shoulder up and face the future has no value to any cause but my own selfishness. So I turn around and hurry back to the security check where we were separated. I can almost imagine the stirring violin music starting as the realization dawns on me what I should do.
CUT TO: Medium Close Up, our hero turning round with a grim smile on his face and walking rapidly away from the camera, back towards the security checkpoint.
It’s like I’m watching myself in a movie. Actually, it’s like I’m watching someone else in a movie. This is new and uncharacteristic territory for me, so I’m framing it in terms of something with which I am familiar: Hollywood. Everyone understands what the leading man should do in a romantic comedy, or even a romantic drama, so I’m doing it.
I break into a run as the imaginary soundtrack swells towards the inevitable crescendo. It’s easy enough to avoid the other passengers and wind up to near full speed. My arms are pumping and my backpack bounces rhythmically as I fly past and round the bit players.
They probably think I’m just another idiot who has scheduled his connecting flights badly. My smile becomes genuine for a moment as I realise that I’m actually an entirely different level of idiot. Today is my day to be an idiot of legendary proportions, at least in my own life.
Slightly out of breath, I stumble through the exit lane and come to a full and complete halt (and the airhostesses will tautologically ask us to wait for upon arrival before removing our safety belts). My safety belt was discarded a long time ago, at least a minute. This is all definitely unsafe territory. I look around. I know that the familiar shock of blonde hair will be somewhere nearby and we will run towards each other and fall back into each other’s arms, where the white-hot rush of emotions will turn me into a good man.
Well, that’s the plan anyway. But I can’t see her.
“Shit!”
I draw disapproving glances from several of the nearby family farewells, but I’m too angry with myself to notice. I turn around and walk slowly back. It’s what I’ve always wanted, to be walking away, alone, into a grand new adventure. But it’s far more difficult to feel proud when there’s nobody there to impress.
This could have been my bright shining moment, and I blew it. I had my chance to make a grand gesture, and it ended up being as hollow as my heart. Now that’s a nice melodramatic metaphor, it’s just unfortunate that it’s true. I’m not even sure I wanted her to be there. Like I said, I’m a confused, emotionally retarded twenty-something with arrogant notions of freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose.
Richard Bulkeley is a gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
There is an African tribe that has no word for goodbye. When it’s time to go, they just turn around and go. Now, I’m not sure if this is a real African tribe, or one of those apocryphal ones (like the dubious Chinese proverbs people are fond of), but at the moment, I wish I was part of that tribe.
I’m at the airport, saying farewell to my soon to be ex-girlfriend, and what I want more than anything else in the world right now is to walk away. I want to walk through the security check and towards the plane without looking back.
Her hair smells like apples, and the subtle scent of her shampoo is squeezing the bottom of my lungs. It always amazes me the power that smells have to evoke memories and emotions and all the other stuff that our more rational senses filter out in darker moments.
Ultimately, Robert DeNiro’s character in Heat said it best “don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” In my case, the heat is a metaphor, an almost physical need to travel and be alone, but it’s just as scary and life altering as the police. Well, it’s been closer to thirty minutes, and she still isn’t allowing me to walk away. Truth is, I don’t really want to go. There is always a lot of dead time before catching a plane, and there are worse ways to spend it than hugging a good-looking woman.
Now, admittedly, these were the words of a fictional armed robber, and it might seem sick to try and apply them to the life of an arrogant, confused, emotionally retarded twenty-something. But I do. It’s not like I do anything more criminal than smoking an occasional joint. I’ve really got no excuse for my predisposition towards rejecting the trappings of civilized life. When I think about it, it’s kind of sad that I see a long-term relationship as just a trapping of civilized life. Or that I pretend I think that. It’s not that I didn’t love Kate. I did.
But it’s over, whether or not I still love her – and I do. I just don’t love her like I used to. When we first got together, it was tingles down the spine, an interminable goofy grin, and all the other sickly Hollywood clichés that seem so apt when your hormones take over. Now, it’s a warm fondness. Before time took its toll, I loved her in the same way I loved my right hand. Life without her would have been possible, but inconceivable. If you’re feeling cynical, and I usually am, it’s possible to say that I loved her because she performed some of the functions of my right hand. But, for a dozen more reasons besides, I loved her. Now, well, my feelings towards her are more on par with how I regard my baby teeth. Sure, they were nice, and useful while they lasted, and the sight of them (my mother keeps everything) brings back some warm memories, but that’s it.
Or so I tell myself, and have been for the last month. We’ve both noticed an edge of desperation creeping into the relationship recently, and we’ve both kept quiet. We’d rather slip into the North Atlantic singing “Abide With Me” (or more likely trying for one last quickie on the poop deck of the HMS Titanic) than scramble around trying to find lifeboats. Neither of us would have admitted that we knew that the massive iceberg in the shape of a jumbo jet with a kangaroo on the tail was coming, but we would have had to be idiots to forget it. While love makes fools out of men, and women (although it’s more expected of them), there are limits.
So here we are, locked in one last embrace. There’s precious little emotion in it, and what little there is is precious. I wish I could cry, but I have only cried once in the last decade. I’m a deliberate emotional cripple and it took the death of my best friend in a climbing accident, the death of my grandfather (of a throat cancer that robbed him of the dignity and strength that mere old age and the shadow of Hitler’s evil couldn’t), and a two-day bender to weaken my resolve.
The final split is about as anti-climactic as it is awkward. English doesn’t really have the right word for this situation. I mean, “see ya” is definitely overly casual, almost cruel in its indifference. But then, “farewell” is almost too formal; it’s become a noun in its own right. But English has several words for use when parting, and I end up spluttering the simplest one.
“Uh. Goodbye.”
“Yeah. Goodbye.”
And that’s it. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate or ironic, and frankly I don’t care. I’m a coward, and I walk. I barely notice anything until I walk past a stooped old man in a cowboy hat. Now, this isn’t all that unusual, we are in cowboy country after all. In fact, he’s just another retired guy with his wife, flying somewhere.
What gets me is that he’s with his wife. I remember a half-joke I made the first time we discussed long-term possibilities. I said “cowboys are free, cowboys don’t have wives, farmers have wives, and I don’t want to be tied to one horizon.” This old cowboy’s got a wife, and he looks plenty happy. Now, I’m not even considering asking Kate to marry me. But I do realise that I’ve been an asshole.
I believe that everyone has a moment where they are given the opportunity to make a magnificent gesture. The universe grants us a limited number of opportunities to stand up and be truly exceptional. Even the least of men will have moments in his life where he has a chance to reveal a character who rivals those we love in the great stories.
With a sickening clarity, I realise that this is one of mine. I can either keep walking towards the gate and cut the sundry bonds that I have accrued on this patch of earth, or I can turn around and walk back to the departure lounge. Ultimately though, I don’t really have a choice. The role I have created for myself inside my head requires – no, it demands – that I act like a hero. If I can’t be one, and I’m gradually resigning myself to the fact that I can’t, I can at least act like one on occasion.
I’m not Ulysses, or the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Steve McQueen. There’s no honour in destroying myself here. To nobly shoulder up and face the future has no value to any cause but my own selfishness. So I turn around and hurry back to the security check where we were separated. I can almost imagine the stirring violin music starting as the realization dawns on me what I should do.
CUT TO: Medium Close Up, our hero turning round with a grim smile on his face and walking rapidly away from the camera, back towards the security checkpoint.
It’s like I’m watching myself in a movie. Actually, it’s like I’m watching someone else in a movie. This is new and uncharacteristic territory for me, so I’m framing it in terms of something with which I am familiar: Hollywood. Everyone understands what the leading man should do in a romantic comedy, or even a romantic drama, so I’m doing it.
I break into a run as the imaginary soundtrack swells towards the inevitable crescendo. It’s easy enough to avoid the other passengers and wind up to near full speed. My arms are pumping and my backpack bounces rhythmically as I fly past and round the bit players.
They probably think I’m just another idiot who has scheduled his connecting flights badly. My smile becomes genuine for a moment as I realise that I’m actually an entirely different level of idiot. Today is my day to be an idiot of legendary proportions, at least in my own life.
Slightly out of breath, I stumble through the exit lane and come to a full and complete halt (and the airhostesses will tautologically ask us to wait for upon arrival before removing our safety belts). My safety belt was discarded a long time ago, at least a minute. This is all definitely unsafe territory. I look around. I know that the familiar shock of blonde hair will be somewhere nearby and we will run towards each other and fall back into each other’s arms, where the white-hot rush of emotions will turn me into a good man.
Well, that’s the plan anyway. But I can’t see her.
“Shit!”
I draw disapproving glances from several of the nearby family farewells, but I’m too angry with myself to notice. I turn around and walk slowly back. It’s what I’ve always wanted, to be walking away, alone, into a grand new adventure. But it’s far more difficult to feel proud when there’s nobody there to impress.
This could have been my bright shining moment, and I blew it. I had my chance to make a grand gesture, and it ended up being as hollow as my heart. Now that’s a nice melodramatic metaphor, it’s just unfortunate that it’s true. I’m not even sure I wanted her to be there. Like I said, I’m a confused, emotionally retarded twenty-something with arrogant notions of freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose.
Richard Bulkeley is a gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
June 16, 2004
Tequila and Bad Weed
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
"Tequila – it makes you horny."
The leering Hispanic barman winked at me as I waited for Lisa to come back from the toilet. I struggled to hear him over the noise that was probably best described as techno-flamenco music. His expression left me in no doubt. He had rumbled me.
Even though I was wearing my "gay party shirt" – a lurid orange brown and gold Hawaiian shirt - he knew. Even though we were in a small inconspicuous Hispanic bar in Toronto's homosexual party strip, he could tell that I was straight. I hadn’t touched Lisa, I hadn’t even stared at her ass as she walked away. Maybe it was some sort of subliminal discomfort I had. When gay men surround you, being straight is almost a dirty secret.
If I had a dollar for every gay man that I turned down on this Tuesday night pubcrawl, well, I’d have four or five dollars. About enough to buy a beer, not that I really needed to that night, between gay men and a blonde girl with an expense account, I got a lot of free drinks.
Lisa was a reasonably good-looking Australian girl with thick black hair and a big grin. She was fairly attractive, something of a tomboy, and the only person in the hostel willing to go on a pub crawl with me on Tuesday night. We’d quickly become friends at the first pub (the overpriced chain eatery near the hostel that we managed to drag a few other travellers along to). Since my closest male friend was the other side of the country, and in Canada that’s even further away than it sounds, I wasn’t going to ruin the evening by making a clumsy pass at her. Not yet, anyway.
I grinned at the bartender when Lisa returned and he gave me another conspiratorial wink. We quickly sank our tequila and left. The combination of lurid red lighting, and ear-splitting “music” was enough for us. The lack of atmosphere in this bar was the clinching factor. Gay men might have a reputation as party animals, but three of them can’t save an empty bar by themselves. They’re just homosexuals, not super-heros.
Fortunately, the next bar had everything right. The area around the pool table was clear, the music loud enough to be enjoyable, but not so loud as to impede the buzz of conversation from the reasonable number of patrons. The only downside from my view was a shortage of women. But the point of this evening was to get drunk and talk rubbish with the most compatible friend I’d met all month.
Or at least it was until Stephanie walked in. Lisa and I were sitting at a corner table. Lisa was discussing the threesome she had experienced, and how if the other girl wanted her to, she would fly to London (England, not London Ontario) tomorrow. Believe it or not, at that point in my life I didn’t find the idea of having sex with two girls at once particularly appealing. I can’t explain that either. I guess I was working out monogamy issues, having just been unceremoniously dumped (by email, nonetheless). Lisa, to her credit, believed me (it was the truth, after all). That hadn’t stopped her coming back to the topic every hour or so.
Suddenly, she stopped and motioned for me to follow her back to the pool table. I looked up and saw a guy and a girl playing pool. The guy was wearing tight jeans, a tight sleeveless t-shirt, and one of those chunky ethnic looking necklaces. But I wasn’t paying much attention to him. His companion was wearing even tighter black pants, and a tight long sleeved white top. She was a gorgeous blonde girl, and was definitely dressed to impress. We quickly fell into conversation, and Stephanie and Charles told us that they were employed by a Seattle company to travel around North America and research bars. At first I wrote this off as typical bar-vado (v. the act of telling alcohol-fuelled lies about yourself to be interesting). Charles was about as flamboyantly gay as a man could be. Later on in the evening, he would walk around the bar announcing at the top of his gay voice that he needed cock.
When we moved on to another bar, it became clear that they weren’t lying about the expense account, and that Stephanie was most probably straight. The other two abandoned us in the booth to join the other dancing queens. Charles was probably trying to get laid, and Lisa had worked out that I was on a similar quest. I had my back to the wall – not out of any fear of gay men violating me, just because I always like to sit with my back to a wall. Unfortunately this meant that if I looked straight ahead, I was staring directly at a big screen TV over the bar showing “Gays Gone Wild” or “Darren Does Dallas”. Something like that anyway. While I’m not homophobic (which is what all the homophobes say, but anyway), naked men don’t really interest me.
I’m a tolerant man. I am even quite flattered when men hit on me, especially since most of them were pretty good looking. But there’s really no contest in my mind between watching gay porn, and staring down a hot girl’s top. Especially when the girl is buying drinks for me and generally encouraging me to keep staring.
Anyway, we made polite, if inane, conversation over what could have been the soundtrack to the porn movie but was probably just the latest in happy-handbag-trance –house music. And then the drag queens began singing karaoke.
Here’s where it all got a little bit crazy, as if it wasn’t already. I was more than a little drunk – the only thing better than free booze is free booze bought for you by a hot girl. I’d also been awake for about 20 hours, and more or less living on a bus for a week before that. Anyway, Stephanie dragged me onto the dance-floor, and we began dirty dancing.
Then all of a sudden, it’s chucking out time, and we’re standing there trying to find Lisa and Charles. Charles was easy to find, we could hear him over the hubbub "I need COCK! I need COCK." Lisa wasn’t with him. She was busy dancing with a guy who looked surprisingly like Vin Diesel.
I’m sure I’ve left some events out, like the glitter lesbian and piggy-back racing from bar to bar. But that’s the kind of narrative incompleteness you get when your author is toasted (and by now was doing basically all of his thinking with his little head). Besides, sober life’s like that, and I try to make a point of keeping my stories short, otherwise, I get bored, and since I’m the only person who finds me interesting anyway, that would definitely be a bad thing.
Anyway, Lisa, Vin Diesel, Charles, Stephanie and I all ended up in a car. Charles was in the front, locked onto the subliminal gay-velengths that Vin was obviously broadcasting, and deep in conversation about something ridiculously macho like motor racing. For some reason, this seemed a lot stranger at the time than it does now. So, anyway, I was in the middle of the backseat, which is normally the arse-end of motor-vehicle seating. However, when you’ve got an attractive woman tucked up against each shoulder, it suddenly doesn’t feel so bad.
At some point, in amongst the random cruising and the light petting, we stopped at a traffic light. Now this happens a lot, in big cities, even at 4 AM. What kind of threw me was the curbside drug dealer. Now, New Zealand has world championship winning weed, and it’s the biggest industry in some areas. But, our narcotics industry hasn’t yet reached the pervasiveness of North America’s. The dealer is still usually a friend of a friend, or a guy at university, not some random dude on the street.
But, we bought our joint and lit it up without getting busted, or shot, or ripped off. To say I didn’t inhale would be a lie. It would be a nice nod in the direction of popular culture, and presidential scandal, but a lie. I inhaled. I inhaled gladly, and greedily. Whenever one of the women held pressed the joint to my lips, I sucked on it like I was trying to steal petrol from a super-tanker.
Holy shit! I suddenly noticed that there were a mismatched pair of intertwined legs on my lap. This baffled me for a while until I remembered that I was in the company of two women, and both seemed quite keen to get even closer to each other than the cramped conditions of the back seat allowed. I got such a huge grin when this fact re-established itself in my brain that my cheeks actually hurt.
So, we stopped at another traffic light, and all of a sudden, Stephanie threw open her door and got out into the street. We waited a full set of lights, or two, while Charles tried to calm her down. We were all a little confused by this, but eventually it became clear that she was having an attack of the paranoids.
“Bad weed does this to her sometimes,” he said. My hopes of a threesome died as the lights turned green again, and we drove off. Life, eh? It’s stranger than fiction, usually less satisfying, and much harder to organise.
Richard Bulkeley is a gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
"Tequila – it makes you horny."
The leering Hispanic barman winked at me as I waited for Lisa to come back from the toilet. I struggled to hear him over the noise that was probably best described as techno-flamenco music. His expression left me in no doubt. He had rumbled me.
Even though I was wearing my "gay party shirt" – a lurid orange brown and gold Hawaiian shirt - he knew. Even though we were in a small inconspicuous Hispanic bar in Toronto's homosexual party strip, he could tell that I was straight. I hadn’t touched Lisa, I hadn’t even stared at her ass as she walked away. Maybe it was some sort of subliminal discomfort I had. When gay men surround you, being straight is almost a dirty secret.
If I had a dollar for every gay man that I turned down on this Tuesday night pubcrawl, well, I’d have four or five dollars. About enough to buy a beer, not that I really needed to that night, between gay men and a blonde girl with an expense account, I got a lot of free drinks.
Lisa was a reasonably good-looking Australian girl with thick black hair and a big grin. She was fairly attractive, something of a tomboy, and the only person in the hostel willing to go on a pub crawl with me on Tuesday night. We’d quickly become friends at the first pub (the overpriced chain eatery near the hostel that we managed to drag a few other travellers along to). Since my closest male friend was the other side of the country, and in Canada that’s even further away than it sounds, I wasn’t going to ruin the evening by making a clumsy pass at her. Not yet, anyway.
I grinned at the bartender when Lisa returned and he gave me another conspiratorial wink. We quickly sank our tequila and left. The combination of lurid red lighting, and ear-splitting “music” was enough for us. The lack of atmosphere in this bar was the clinching factor. Gay men might have a reputation as party animals, but three of them can’t save an empty bar by themselves. They’re just homosexuals, not super-heros.
Fortunately, the next bar had everything right. The area around the pool table was clear, the music loud enough to be enjoyable, but not so loud as to impede the buzz of conversation from the reasonable number of patrons. The only downside from my view was a shortage of women. But the point of this evening was to get drunk and talk rubbish with the most compatible friend I’d met all month.
Or at least it was until Stephanie walked in. Lisa and I were sitting at a corner table. Lisa was discussing the threesome she had experienced, and how if the other girl wanted her to, she would fly to London (England, not London Ontario) tomorrow. Believe it or not, at that point in my life I didn’t find the idea of having sex with two girls at once particularly appealing. I can’t explain that either. I guess I was working out monogamy issues, having just been unceremoniously dumped (by email, nonetheless). Lisa, to her credit, believed me (it was the truth, after all). That hadn’t stopped her coming back to the topic every hour or so.
Suddenly, she stopped and motioned for me to follow her back to the pool table. I looked up and saw a guy and a girl playing pool. The guy was wearing tight jeans, a tight sleeveless t-shirt, and one of those chunky ethnic looking necklaces. But I wasn’t paying much attention to him. His companion was wearing even tighter black pants, and a tight long sleeved white top. She was a gorgeous blonde girl, and was definitely dressed to impress. We quickly fell into conversation, and Stephanie and Charles told us that they were employed by a Seattle company to travel around North America and research bars. At first I wrote this off as typical bar-vado (v. the act of telling alcohol-fuelled lies about yourself to be interesting). Charles was about as flamboyantly gay as a man could be. Later on in the evening, he would walk around the bar announcing at the top of his gay voice that he needed cock.
When we moved on to another bar, it became clear that they weren’t lying about the expense account, and that Stephanie was most probably straight. The other two abandoned us in the booth to join the other dancing queens. Charles was probably trying to get laid, and Lisa had worked out that I was on a similar quest. I had my back to the wall – not out of any fear of gay men violating me, just because I always like to sit with my back to a wall. Unfortunately this meant that if I looked straight ahead, I was staring directly at a big screen TV over the bar showing “Gays Gone Wild” or “Darren Does Dallas”. Something like that anyway. While I’m not homophobic (which is what all the homophobes say, but anyway), naked men don’t really interest me.
I’m a tolerant man. I am even quite flattered when men hit on me, especially since most of them were pretty good looking. But there’s really no contest in my mind between watching gay porn, and staring down a hot girl’s top. Especially when the girl is buying drinks for me and generally encouraging me to keep staring.
Anyway, we made polite, if inane, conversation over what could have been the soundtrack to the porn movie but was probably just the latest in happy-handbag-trance –house music. And then the drag queens began singing karaoke.
Here’s where it all got a little bit crazy, as if it wasn’t already. I was more than a little drunk – the only thing better than free booze is free booze bought for you by a hot girl. I’d also been awake for about 20 hours, and more or less living on a bus for a week before that. Anyway, Stephanie dragged me onto the dance-floor, and we began dirty dancing.
Then all of a sudden, it’s chucking out time, and we’re standing there trying to find Lisa and Charles. Charles was easy to find, we could hear him over the hubbub "I need COCK! I need COCK." Lisa wasn’t with him. She was busy dancing with a guy who looked surprisingly like Vin Diesel.
I’m sure I’ve left some events out, like the glitter lesbian and piggy-back racing from bar to bar. But that’s the kind of narrative incompleteness you get when your author is toasted (and by now was doing basically all of his thinking with his little head). Besides, sober life’s like that, and I try to make a point of keeping my stories short, otherwise, I get bored, and since I’m the only person who finds me interesting anyway, that would definitely be a bad thing.
Anyway, Lisa, Vin Diesel, Charles, Stephanie and I all ended up in a car. Charles was in the front, locked onto the subliminal gay-velengths that Vin was obviously broadcasting, and deep in conversation about something ridiculously macho like motor racing. For some reason, this seemed a lot stranger at the time than it does now. So, anyway, I was in the middle of the backseat, which is normally the arse-end of motor-vehicle seating. However, when you’ve got an attractive woman tucked up against each shoulder, it suddenly doesn’t feel so bad.
At some point, in amongst the random cruising and the light petting, we stopped at a traffic light. Now this happens a lot, in big cities, even at 4 AM. What kind of threw me was the curbside drug dealer. Now, New Zealand has world championship winning weed, and it’s the biggest industry in some areas. But, our narcotics industry hasn’t yet reached the pervasiveness of North America’s. The dealer is still usually a friend of a friend, or a guy at university, not some random dude on the street.
But, we bought our joint and lit it up without getting busted, or shot, or ripped off. To say I didn’t inhale would be a lie. It would be a nice nod in the direction of popular culture, and presidential scandal, but a lie. I inhaled. I inhaled gladly, and greedily. Whenever one of the women held pressed the joint to my lips, I sucked on it like I was trying to steal petrol from a super-tanker.
Holy shit! I suddenly noticed that there were a mismatched pair of intertwined legs on my lap. This baffled me for a while until I remembered that I was in the company of two women, and both seemed quite keen to get even closer to each other than the cramped conditions of the back seat allowed. I got such a huge grin when this fact re-established itself in my brain that my cheeks actually hurt.
So, we stopped at another traffic light, and all of a sudden, Stephanie threw open her door and got out into the street. We waited a full set of lights, or two, while Charles tried to calm her down. We were all a little confused by this, but eventually it became clear that she was having an attack of the paranoids.
“Bad weed does this to her sometimes,” he said. My hopes of a threesome died as the lights turned green again, and we drove off. Life, eh? It’s stranger than fiction, usually less satisfying, and much harder to organise.
Richard Bulkeley is a gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
May 22, 2004
Big Thumb Wisdom
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
It had been raining forever. Or at least since about 6pm last night. We huddle around the fax machine, waiting nervously. There are seven of us, ready to spring into action, when the word comes down. The a sudden screech from the fax machine silences our incessant mumbling that maybe the slopes had received snow. The hostel manager rips the fax from the machine and reads from it like a medieval herald proclaiming a death sentence.
“Overnight rain at all levels of the mountain. Snow conditions are variable at best. Sorry guys.”
A couple of diehards decide they’ll go up anyway, after all, even crap boarding is still boarding. I consider it, but decide I prefer to end my stay on the high note of yesterday. Besides, it is Tuesday. There are 25-cent beers and scantily clad waitresses back home. Four hours driving time, if I get lucky, I’ll be door to door in six. Time enough to catch up with Natalie before getting drunk. Not that I’m sure that’s a good thing. I mean, she is tall, blonde, good-looking, laughs at my jokes, bakes an amazing chocolate chip cookie, enjoys travel and the outdoors, understands that I’m far less than perfect, and ins generally everything I ever wanted in a woman. Until I got it.
Now, I seem hell bent on ruining it. I always manage to ruin relationships, it’s part of being immature, insecure, and generally a severely flawed human being. This time, the pressure of being in one I care about is getting to me and I’ve got a whole new set of reasons to screw up. Even a near-perfect week of snowboarding and solitude couldn’t fix my head.
Ten minutes later, I am on the road, trudging towards the edge of town. It’s still raining. I look around, and the raindrops are like a curtain of glass beads around me, obscuring the assorted fast food places and tyre shops that are the highway face of Fernie. I’ve got my thumb out, but I’m not looking. There’s a metaphor in there, but I’m not bored enough yet to indulge my own cleverness. Besides, until I get to the end of this straight, I don’t like my chances of getting anyone to stop. Thankfully, I’m still in the bumpy part of Canada, and not the prairies, with their ribbons of tarmac stretching all the way to the horizon – an uplifting sight for speed freaks, but the curse of Tantalus for a hitchhiker.
Still, I didn’t regret the time I spent stranded two hours west of Winnipeg. The sky seemed almost infinite and I was stunned to remember that only the week before I thought that skyscrapers could imprison it into a tiny rectangle, barely visible from a busy street. But then, as much as I claim to love my freedom, I lack the courage to exploit it, or really believe in it. I’m a little grey man, put into a brightly coloured gore-tex shell, and I can’t fill the role I’ve chosen for myself.
I reach the promised corner, and it’s a giant puddle. Excellent. I can just see myself being subjected to a series of comic drenchings from asshole drivers. But if I stand out of range, it’s not going to be clear I want a ride, and am not just the local retard, watching the pretty broom-brooms.
A car drives past, taking the corner dangerously fast. When you hitchhike enough, you gain a pretty good appreciation of corners, and bad drivers. I wait, singing softly to myself and generally trying to have fun while warding off hypothermia. It’s not accepted hitchhiking best practise – in general you should try and look respectable. But on days like today, anything that persuades me not to give up and get the bus, is a good idea.
A car goes past, and another car. Normally, I love rain. I love the light, ethereal dustings of liquid sunshine that seem to spontaneously assemble themselves on a sunny day and seem to make the very air sparkle. I love the big fat wet raindrops that tumble out of the sky like bumblebees that have finally discovered the laws of aerodynamics. I even love the sharp bitter razor blades of rain that the wind drives into your face on days the mountain doesn’t want to be climbed. I’m a difficult, cranky bastard, and I love having something that I can hate when I feel like it.
Today, I’m going nowhere fast. There’s a little too much traffic to count for me to be going nowhere slowly, but the net result is the same. But it’s raining, and I’m free. It’s all a man can ask for. Well, that and a warm place sleep at the end of the day. There’s a tall Canadian blonde with cold fingers and hair that smells like apple shampoo who thinks she should be added to the list, but it’s my list, and it’s been fine without her for now. I’m not sure that it’s still fine without her though, but a lonely sort of freedom might be uncomfortable, but it’s at least familiar.
Finally, a car stops. I’m zoning out, and I have no idea how long I’ve been waiting, but it’s been a while. The driver saw me on his way into town and decided he’d pick me up on the way out, if I hadn’t lucked my way into a ride before then.
He offers me a beer, and I accept. If you’re going to break one of the cardinal safety rules of hitchhiking, you may as well break it in style. It’s Budweiser, which sets me back a moment or two. American beer is like making love in a canoe so I will limit myself to one. Being able to make love in a canoe on the other hand is what makes you a true Canadian, according to Pierre Trudeau. It’s a test that I failed, back when the lakes were still liquid. I’d probably have better luck now.
It’s a shit of a day. I don’t correct him. By many standards it is a shit of a day. Even 25 cent beers, and the pneumatic breasts of the waitresses, will not numb the ache that I get whenever I leave a place I love. It’s not what he means, but he’ll understand. He works mine rescue. It’s not a place he willingly goes anymore either, which explains the drinking at 9am.
It’s dark down there. The kind of dark that nightmares are made of. The kind of dark that has a physical presence at least as great as that of the tonnes of rock that surround you. The pathetic artificial light, even with all our twenty-first century technology, only serves to emphasise the darkness that lurks in the corners. A coal mine isn’t a place I’d willingly go, even in full working order, let alone when it collapses. Compared to a coal mine, especially one that has collapsed, crushing or trapping friends, my cage is definitely gilded.
Where all the trucks join the highway, we spilt company. Two of his brothers played in the NHL, but he’s got the job worth being proud of. On some level, he understands that. Or at least I hope he does. It’s not the kind of thing you can explain though. A man’s got to know it for himself though. I’m left alone with the realisation that I’m glad I’m not him. But I’m also sad that I probably could never be. Will it make me a better person? I doubt it, I’m too wedded to bogus images, and macho bullshit.
Big thumb wisdom. It’s almost never what you want. But if you try, you might be able to make it what you need. I surprise myself by getting back to university, and not fucking things up. At least not for a while.
Richard Bulkeley is a genlteman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
It had been raining forever. Or at least since about 6pm last night. We huddle around the fax machine, waiting nervously. There are seven of us, ready to spring into action, when the word comes down. The a sudden screech from the fax machine silences our incessant mumbling that maybe the slopes had received snow. The hostel manager rips the fax from the machine and reads from it like a medieval herald proclaiming a death sentence.
“Overnight rain at all levels of the mountain. Snow conditions are variable at best. Sorry guys.”
A couple of diehards decide they’ll go up anyway, after all, even crap boarding is still boarding. I consider it, but decide I prefer to end my stay on the high note of yesterday. Besides, it is Tuesday. There are 25-cent beers and scantily clad waitresses back home. Four hours driving time, if I get lucky, I’ll be door to door in six. Time enough to catch up with Natalie before getting drunk. Not that I’m sure that’s a good thing. I mean, she is tall, blonde, good-looking, laughs at my jokes, bakes an amazing chocolate chip cookie, enjoys travel and the outdoors, understands that I’m far less than perfect, and ins generally everything I ever wanted in a woman. Until I got it.
Now, I seem hell bent on ruining it. I always manage to ruin relationships, it’s part of being immature, insecure, and generally a severely flawed human being. This time, the pressure of being in one I care about is getting to me and I’ve got a whole new set of reasons to screw up. Even a near-perfect week of snowboarding and solitude couldn’t fix my head.
Ten minutes later, I am on the road, trudging towards the edge of town. It’s still raining. I look around, and the raindrops are like a curtain of glass beads around me, obscuring the assorted fast food places and tyre shops that are the highway face of Fernie. I’ve got my thumb out, but I’m not looking. There’s a metaphor in there, but I’m not bored enough yet to indulge my own cleverness. Besides, until I get to the end of this straight, I don’t like my chances of getting anyone to stop. Thankfully, I’m still in the bumpy part of Canada, and not the prairies, with their ribbons of tarmac stretching all the way to the horizon – an uplifting sight for speed freaks, but the curse of Tantalus for a hitchhiker.
Still, I didn’t regret the time I spent stranded two hours west of Winnipeg. The sky seemed almost infinite and I was stunned to remember that only the week before I thought that skyscrapers could imprison it into a tiny rectangle, barely visible from a busy street. But then, as much as I claim to love my freedom, I lack the courage to exploit it, or really believe in it. I’m a little grey man, put into a brightly coloured gore-tex shell, and I can’t fill the role I’ve chosen for myself.
I reach the promised corner, and it’s a giant puddle. Excellent. I can just see myself being subjected to a series of comic drenchings from asshole drivers. But if I stand out of range, it’s not going to be clear I want a ride, and am not just the local retard, watching the pretty broom-brooms.
A car drives past, taking the corner dangerously fast. When you hitchhike enough, you gain a pretty good appreciation of corners, and bad drivers. I wait, singing softly to myself and generally trying to have fun while warding off hypothermia. It’s not accepted hitchhiking best practise – in general you should try and look respectable. But on days like today, anything that persuades me not to give up and get the bus, is a good idea.
A car goes past, and another car. Normally, I love rain. I love the light, ethereal dustings of liquid sunshine that seem to spontaneously assemble themselves on a sunny day and seem to make the very air sparkle. I love the big fat wet raindrops that tumble out of the sky like bumblebees that have finally discovered the laws of aerodynamics. I even love the sharp bitter razor blades of rain that the wind drives into your face on days the mountain doesn’t want to be climbed. I’m a difficult, cranky bastard, and I love having something that I can hate when I feel like it.
Today, I’m going nowhere fast. There’s a little too much traffic to count for me to be going nowhere slowly, but the net result is the same. But it’s raining, and I’m free. It’s all a man can ask for. Well, that and a warm place sleep at the end of the day. There’s a tall Canadian blonde with cold fingers and hair that smells like apple shampoo who thinks she should be added to the list, but it’s my list, and it’s been fine without her for now. I’m not sure that it’s still fine without her though, but a lonely sort of freedom might be uncomfortable, but it’s at least familiar.
Finally, a car stops. I’m zoning out, and I have no idea how long I’ve been waiting, but it’s been a while. The driver saw me on his way into town and decided he’d pick me up on the way out, if I hadn’t lucked my way into a ride before then.
He offers me a beer, and I accept. If you’re going to break one of the cardinal safety rules of hitchhiking, you may as well break it in style. It’s Budweiser, which sets me back a moment or two. American beer is like making love in a canoe so I will limit myself to one. Being able to make love in a canoe on the other hand is what makes you a true Canadian, according to Pierre Trudeau. It’s a test that I failed, back when the lakes were still liquid. I’d probably have better luck now.
It’s a shit of a day. I don’t correct him. By many standards it is a shit of a day. Even 25 cent beers, and the pneumatic breasts of the waitresses, will not numb the ache that I get whenever I leave a place I love. It’s not what he means, but he’ll understand. He works mine rescue. It’s not a place he willingly goes anymore either, which explains the drinking at 9am.
It’s dark down there. The kind of dark that nightmares are made of. The kind of dark that has a physical presence at least as great as that of the tonnes of rock that surround you. The pathetic artificial light, even with all our twenty-first century technology, only serves to emphasise the darkness that lurks in the corners. A coal mine isn’t a place I’d willingly go, even in full working order, let alone when it collapses. Compared to a coal mine, especially one that has collapsed, crushing or trapping friends, my cage is definitely gilded.
Where all the trucks join the highway, we spilt company. Two of his brothers played in the NHL, but he’s got the job worth being proud of. On some level, he understands that. Or at least I hope he does. It’s not the kind of thing you can explain though. A man’s got to know it for himself though. I’m left alone with the realisation that I’m glad I’m not him. But I’m also sad that I probably could never be. Will it make me a better person? I doubt it, I’m too wedded to bogus images, and macho bullshit.
Big thumb wisdom. It’s almost never what you want. But if you try, you might be able to make it what you need. I surprise myself by getting back to university, and not fucking things up. At least not for a while.
Richard Bulkeley is a genlteman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
April 25, 2004
The Kindness of Strangers
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
It was 5am and my mouth was as fuzzy as my head. The flat grey light of dawn was reluctantly revealing the town. *
A disheveled young man yelled a greeting at me from the other side of the street. He wore a ragged grey coat that looked like he had looted it from a German soldier on the retreat from Moscow. Although he hadn’t shaved for a few days, he looked sane enough. Besides, he was waving a familiarly shaped glass bottle in a friendly manner. He sprawled back onto his throne made up of small items of soft baggage, and waited.
As far as company went, he was the only game in town, and he knew it. Sitting on a duffel bag to one side of him was a fairly attractive girl in a much more presentable condition. Perched on the kerb on the other was a longhaired, vaguely French-looking, guy. I crossed the street.
They faced me, like a panel of disreputable judges.
“Where you going?” The chief justice spoke. He sounded somewhat tired, but then aren’t we all when seeing dawn the hard way?
“I thought I’d walk to the edge of town and then hitch to Dawson.”
“You don’t want to do that” Frenchie gave himself away as a Quebecois the instant he opened his mouth, and I was reassured that my prejudices were as accurate as ever. “It is 5 am, there will be no traffic for several hours. Sit.”
I swung my backpack onto the road, and sat on it. Before he introduced himself, the pirate chief handed me the bottle. Johnny Walker, three-quarters finished. I raised the bottle in salute to his hospitality.
“I’m Curtis. Welcome to Whitehorse.”
I took a polite swallow and felt the familiar burn in the back of my mouth. I had not had any liquor for a month, since an event filled Wednesday night in Toronto’s gay district, and that was only tequila. Whiskey, whisky, and their American cousin, bourbon, were all old friends to me. Not frequent friends, but good ones. I remembered as I handed the bottle back just how seductive alcohol was to me.
We made our introductions, and I found out that Curtis’ friend was called Julia, and that Felix was a pseudo-local. He had arrived a few weeks ago to work as a translator, doing his bit for the Yukon’s official bilingualism. Curtis and Julia had come to find mushrooms. Not the magic kind as I first assumed, but the gourmet kind. Apparently, the mushrooms that grow in the aftermath of forest fires are much prized by foodies.
Curtis’ brother owned the cyber-café we were waiting outside. The three of them had taken his “jeep”, a rough map, and a shotgun, in the hopes of finding a mushroom patch unexploited by the increasingly industrial operations of the big buyers. I would see the vehicle a few days later, brown and cream, it resembled a station wagon that had escaped directly from the seventies more than an off-road vehicle, and the losing entry in a demolition derby more than either of the options.
The jeep had expired midway along the old logging road that was supposed to lead them to a land of ash and wealth. Julia noticed the preponderance of grizzly bear tracks around them while the guys stared in blank defeat at the faithless engine. Before long, the bear returned, and they had to shelter in their jeep.
Over the next two days, they discovered that they had parked directly outside the home of a rather territorial bear. They also discovered that birdshot, while it creates a loud and impressive bang, merely gives ursus horriblis a bit of a tickle (and that he doesn’t really like being tickled). When they made their third, and least pleasant, discovery, that an angry grizzly bear is heavy enough to dent the roof of a 1974 Chevy Something-or-other, they decided that they should make a break.
The grizzly obliged them by wandering off to do whatever it is grizzly bears do and I was truly thankful. Not just because it demonstrated that the god of the impetuous traveller was doing his job, but also because Curtis had just pulled out a small wooden box. He rolled a joint without ceremony as he finished explaining that his brother was still up in some little town with the newly rescued jeep, trying to arrange for the surprisingly minor repairs to be completed.
The conversation lasted another two joints and the rest of the Johnny Walker before exhaustion overpowered inertia. It was the perfect anecdote to lengthy bus travel. The weed was pretty welcome too. By the end of the conversation, Curtis had lined up a place for me on his next adventure and Felix had invited me to sleep on the couch of the basement suite he was living in for “as long as you want buddy, no problem”. I did take Felix a little too literally on my visit, and ended up squatting there after he moved out until a surprise encounter with his upstairs neighbour convinced me to move on.
The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing. Karma is usually pretty good at weeding out those who abuse it too. But that, as they say, is another story.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
It was 5am and my mouth was as fuzzy as my head. The flat grey light of dawn was reluctantly revealing the town. *
A disheveled young man yelled a greeting at me from the other side of the street. He wore a ragged grey coat that looked like he had looted it from a German soldier on the retreat from Moscow. Although he hadn’t shaved for a few days, he looked sane enough. Besides, he was waving a familiarly shaped glass bottle in a friendly manner. He sprawled back onto his throne made up of small items of soft baggage, and waited.
As far as company went, he was the only game in town, and he knew it. Sitting on a duffel bag to one side of him was a fairly attractive girl in a much more presentable condition. Perched on the kerb on the other was a longhaired, vaguely French-looking, guy. I crossed the street.
They faced me, like a panel of disreputable judges.
“Where you going?” The chief justice spoke. He sounded somewhat tired, but then aren’t we all when seeing dawn the hard way?
“I thought I’d walk to the edge of town and then hitch to Dawson.”
“You don’t want to do that” Frenchie gave himself away as a Quebecois the instant he opened his mouth, and I was reassured that my prejudices were as accurate as ever. “It is 5 am, there will be no traffic for several hours. Sit.”
I swung my backpack onto the road, and sat on it. Before he introduced himself, the pirate chief handed me the bottle. Johnny Walker, three-quarters finished. I raised the bottle in salute to his hospitality.
“I’m Curtis. Welcome to Whitehorse.”
I took a polite swallow and felt the familiar burn in the back of my mouth. I had not had any liquor for a month, since an event filled Wednesday night in Toronto’s gay district, and that was only tequila. Whiskey, whisky, and their American cousin, bourbon, were all old friends to me. Not frequent friends, but good ones. I remembered as I handed the bottle back just how seductive alcohol was to me.
We made our introductions, and I found out that Curtis’ friend was called Julia, and that Felix was a pseudo-local. He had arrived a few weeks ago to work as a translator, doing his bit for the Yukon’s official bilingualism. Curtis and Julia had come to find mushrooms. Not the magic kind as I first assumed, but the gourmet kind. Apparently, the mushrooms that grow in the aftermath of forest fires are much prized by foodies.
Curtis’ brother owned the cyber-café we were waiting outside. The three of them had taken his “jeep”, a rough map, and a shotgun, in the hopes of finding a mushroom patch unexploited by the increasingly industrial operations of the big buyers. I would see the vehicle a few days later, brown and cream, it resembled a station wagon that had escaped directly from the seventies more than an off-road vehicle, and the losing entry in a demolition derby more than either of the options.
The jeep had expired midway along the old logging road that was supposed to lead them to a land of ash and wealth. Julia noticed the preponderance of grizzly bear tracks around them while the guys stared in blank defeat at the faithless engine. Before long, the bear returned, and they had to shelter in their jeep.
Over the next two days, they discovered that they had parked directly outside the home of a rather territorial bear. They also discovered that birdshot, while it creates a loud and impressive bang, merely gives ursus horriblis a bit of a tickle (and that he doesn’t really like being tickled). When they made their third, and least pleasant, discovery, that an angry grizzly bear is heavy enough to dent the roof of a 1974 Chevy Something-or-other, they decided that they should make a break.
The grizzly obliged them by wandering off to do whatever it is grizzly bears do and I was truly thankful. Not just because it demonstrated that the god of the impetuous traveller was doing his job, but also because Curtis had just pulled out a small wooden box. He rolled a joint without ceremony as he finished explaining that his brother was still up in some little town with the newly rescued jeep, trying to arrange for the surprisingly minor repairs to be completed.
The conversation lasted another two joints and the rest of the Johnny Walker before exhaustion overpowered inertia. It was the perfect anecdote to lengthy bus travel. The weed was pretty welcome too. By the end of the conversation, Curtis had lined up a place for me on his next adventure and Felix had invited me to sleep on the couch of the basement suite he was living in for “as long as you want buddy, no problem”. I did take Felix a little too literally on my visit, and ended up squatting there after he moved out until a surprise encounter with his upstairs neighbour convinced me to move on.
The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing. Karma is usually pretty good at weeding out those who abuse it too. But that, as they say, is another story.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
March 22, 2004
Each Unforgiving Minute
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
The relationship between speed and freedom is never more obvious than when going downhill on a mountain bike. Even the ride to work was enjoyable for a few moments. Trouble can’t travel much faster than the speed-limit, so I was pedalling hard on the flat before the hill. As the road began to drop away, I stood up and shifted my weight backwards. Squatting over the back wheel with my arms extended, I was keeping my weight back and my posture loose like a cat.
This hill was my favourite part of the ride to work. The road got progressively steeper as it swept to the left then switched into a short right hand curve and flattened out. Then it whipped back into a sharp left-hander. Everything after that was gravy – a gentle downhill straight, and then a nice medium right before the next uphill.
I was grinning as I gently leant to the left. Even though it was a still day, the air was beating against my face, the sun was shining, and the gentle vibration of the bike forced me into a good mood.
I might be suffering through summer in a minimum wage dishwashing job with an asshole boss and idiot co-workers while my friends were off climbing. I might have just had a big screaming match with a girlfriend I didn’t love any more. I might have decided that another year at university really wasn’t anything to look forward to. But I was going at 50 kilometres an hour so for the next minute so I didn’t have to think about it.
I’m not much good at normal meditation, but I’ve found that by cheating I can attain fleeting moments of calm. Riding a bike, or climbing, requires total concentration. Unfortunately, it’s only with the assistance of adrenaline that I am able to focus myself away from my problems. I’m definitely no Zen master. The problem with using risk to relax is that with every visit, the edge of the envelope gets further away.
The bike was like an extension of myself as I leant gently to the left. I was near the middle of the lane and already thinking through the line I needed to take for the hard left. It would be the same line I’d taken dozens of times before. But just like on a climb, I needed to be in the right place to make the crux move.
A familiar feeling built in me as I straightened up. The brief right hand curve could almost be ignored. My world was the few meters of asphalt in front of me. I moved forward, getting back on the seat by feel and memory. It’s amazing how little thinking you can do when you’re busy not thinking.
I claim I’m not a risk junkie, but at moments like these, if I could think, I’d probably disagree. Whenever my fingers stretched out towards the brake handles, I knew I didn’t need them to keep control, but it was habit. Some idiot in a car (and when you’re on a bike, all car drivers are idiots until proven otherwise) might decide to pull out of the side street.
I fixed my eyes on the point in the road I’d decided was the start of my line. As it rushed towards me, I leaned over, holding the bike as upright as I could. Then it was time, and I let bike follow me into the turn. I felt the G force pulling me as I swung round into the turn. If riding a bike was like sex, although I’m really not sure how it could be except for getting all sweaty, then the apex was the moment of orgasm. Some of my blood drained from my head, my muscles tensed, and I had a stupid smile on my face. Sure, the reasons were different, but my metaphor wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
I was just beginning to come out of the turn when I hit the cats-eye. The small reflective road-marking gave me a noticeable bump. The bike wobbled violently, and I had to straighten up. Momentum carried me outwards, into the other lane. I looked up, and confirmed my worst fear. A car was coming towards me. A rational thought flashed through my mind, absurd because of its relevance.
“Our combined velocity is approximately 100 kilometres an hour.”
Out of reflex, I squeezed the brakes and my wheels locked up. I fought the wild instability of the skid for as long as I could. I looked up and saw the oncoming car. I hoped it was braking, but even so, I was running out of road. I let go of the brakes for a moment, enough to regain a semblance of control.
Everyone has heard stories about how in moments of crisis the brain starts operating at warp speed. Supposedly, in moments of danger, your life flashes before your eyes. Well, I’m quite thankful that my life didn’t flash before my eyes, I had better things to do than relive past stupidity. My present stupidity was quite enough to absorb my attention.
I squeezed the brakes again and committed to the pavement. On some level, I knew I was going to lose it. There just wasn’t anywhere for me to go. I skidded over a driveway and aimed at a patch of grass.
This was going to hurt.
I turned as much as I could, hoping to skirt the grass for a moment or two and burn off some more speed. Nope. My front wheel ran straight onto the grass and suffered a sudden loss of front wheel speed resulting in a catastrophic alteration in vertical alignment. In other words, I went over the handlebars.
This was really going to hurt.
I landed hard on my shoulders and bounced once before coming to a stop. A sudden burst of white light blinded me. Whenever you take a heavy blow to the head, pain interferes with the optic nerves. Or something. A moment later, the ache hit me, right in the middle of my forehead.
I opened my eyes and the sky was blue and a long way away. Wispy white clouds danced in the sunshine. I was lying on grass that prickled gently against the back of my neck. I got up, checked the bike, shook my head and rode off.
It wasn’t a life-changing moment. It wasn’t even a minor epiphany. I didn’t think of any new clichés to describe why I did it. It wasn’t even a particularly serious accident (I would have a bike accident a few months later that would result in memory loss and hospitalisation). It was just the price of peace.
An hour later, I had a nagging headache, a dent in my helmet, and a secret glow in my eyes. I had looked in to the eyes of eternity (admittedly from a long way back) and for a precious moment I managed not to blink.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
The relationship between speed and freedom is never more obvious than when going downhill on a mountain bike. Even the ride to work was enjoyable for a few moments. Trouble can’t travel much faster than the speed-limit, so I was pedalling hard on the flat before the hill. As the road began to drop away, I stood up and shifted my weight backwards. Squatting over the back wheel with my arms extended, I was keeping my weight back and my posture loose like a cat.
This hill was my favourite part of the ride to work. The road got progressively steeper as it swept to the left then switched into a short right hand curve and flattened out. Then it whipped back into a sharp left-hander. Everything after that was gravy – a gentle downhill straight, and then a nice medium right before the next uphill.
I was grinning as I gently leant to the left. Even though it was a still day, the air was beating against my face, the sun was shining, and the gentle vibration of the bike forced me into a good mood.
I might be suffering through summer in a minimum wage dishwashing job with an asshole boss and idiot co-workers while my friends were off climbing. I might have just had a big screaming match with a girlfriend I didn’t love any more. I might have decided that another year at university really wasn’t anything to look forward to. But I was going at 50 kilometres an hour so for the next minute so I didn’t have to think about it.
I’m not much good at normal meditation, but I’ve found that by cheating I can attain fleeting moments of calm. Riding a bike, or climbing, requires total concentration. Unfortunately, it’s only with the assistance of adrenaline that I am able to focus myself away from my problems. I’m definitely no Zen master. The problem with using risk to relax is that with every visit, the edge of the envelope gets further away.
The bike was like an extension of myself as I leant gently to the left. I was near the middle of the lane and already thinking through the line I needed to take for the hard left. It would be the same line I’d taken dozens of times before. But just like on a climb, I needed to be in the right place to make the crux move.
A familiar feeling built in me as I straightened up. The brief right hand curve could almost be ignored. My world was the few meters of asphalt in front of me. I moved forward, getting back on the seat by feel and memory. It’s amazing how little thinking you can do when you’re busy not thinking.
I claim I’m not a risk junkie, but at moments like these, if I could think, I’d probably disagree. Whenever my fingers stretched out towards the brake handles, I knew I didn’t need them to keep control, but it was habit. Some idiot in a car (and when you’re on a bike, all car drivers are idiots until proven otherwise) might decide to pull out of the side street.
I fixed my eyes on the point in the road I’d decided was the start of my line. As it rushed towards me, I leaned over, holding the bike as upright as I could. Then it was time, and I let bike follow me into the turn. I felt the G force pulling me as I swung round into the turn. If riding a bike was like sex, although I’m really not sure how it could be except for getting all sweaty, then the apex was the moment of orgasm. Some of my blood drained from my head, my muscles tensed, and I had a stupid smile on my face. Sure, the reasons were different, but my metaphor wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
I was just beginning to come out of the turn when I hit the cats-eye. The small reflective road-marking gave me a noticeable bump. The bike wobbled violently, and I had to straighten up. Momentum carried me outwards, into the other lane. I looked up, and confirmed my worst fear. A car was coming towards me. A rational thought flashed through my mind, absurd because of its relevance.
“Our combined velocity is approximately 100 kilometres an hour.”
Out of reflex, I squeezed the brakes and my wheels locked up. I fought the wild instability of the skid for as long as I could. I looked up and saw the oncoming car. I hoped it was braking, but even so, I was running out of road. I let go of the brakes for a moment, enough to regain a semblance of control.
Everyone has heard stories about how in moments of crisis the brain starts operating at warp speed. Supposedly, in moments of danger, your life flashes before your eyes. Well, I’m quite thankful that my life didn’t flash before my eyes, I had better things to do than relive past stupidity. My present stupidity was quite enough to absorb my attention.
I squeezed the brakes again and committed to the pavement. On some level, I knew I was going to lose it. There just wasn’t anywhere for me to go. I skidded over a driveway and aimed at a patch of grass.
This was going to hurt.
I turned as much as I could, hoping to skirt the grass for a moment or two and burn off some more speed. Nope. My front wheel ran straight onto the grass and suffered a sudden loss of front wheel speed resulting in a catastrophic alteration in vertical alignment. In other words, I went over the handlebars.
This was really going to hurt.
I landed hard on my shoulders and bounced once before coming to a stop. A sudden burst of white light blinded me. Whenever you take a heavy blow to the head, pain interferes with the optic nerves. Or something. A moment later, the ache hit me, right in the middle of my forehead.
I opened my eyes and the sky was blue and a long way away. Wispy white clouds danced in the sunshine. I was lying on grass that prickled gently against the back of my neck. I got up, checked the bike, shook my head and rode off.
It wasn’t a life-changing moment. It wasn’t even a minor epiphany. I didn’t think of any new clichés to describe why I did it. It wasn’t even a particularly serious accident (I would have a bike accident a few months later that would result in memory loss and hospitalisation). It was just the price of peace.
An hour later, I had a nagging headache, a dent in my helmet, and a secret glow in my eyes. I had looked in to the eyes of eternity (admittedly from a long way back) and for a precious moment I managed not to blink.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
February 28, 2004
The Rules of the Road
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
Long Haul bus travel in this modern era of budget airlines, and rampant car ownership is truly the domain of the different. The experience could be compared to a long plane trip, but that would be missing many of the nuances.
Planes, thankfully, do not usually nearly run into the back of one another, well except when Congolese Air Traffic Control are removed from duty by some particularly insistent armed gentlemen exercising their non-democratic right to attempt a coup d’etat. That or when some guy in New York is involved in a pissing contest with the hotshot new guy and cracks under pressure.
No wait, the second one didn’t happen to me, that’s the plot of that movie - Pushing Tin. I apologise, I’ve spent too long in the company of the flotsam and jetsam that drift along the highways of North America at between 50 and 80mph (depending on if the driver is jaded enough to have disconnected his speed-limiter).
At night, the bus resembles a neighbourhood bar. The kind that is still light-years away from being renovated into a trendy brew-pub or an overpriced block of apartments for suit wearers. It’s not the kind of pub you wander into accidentally. Everyone here has got a reason to be here, usually it’s because they have nowhere else to go. This is their only transport option, and for reasons best left unexamined, they need be transported.
Some of the passengers, too, are best left unexamined. The pig-lady definitely fell into this category. She wasn’t just a fat woman; she seemed to make a point of emphasising it. Her leopard print crop top and black bike shorts forced the roll of fat around her midriff to protrude even further than it normally would. The exposed flesh was a pasty white, somewhere between cottage cheese and the dead skin that snakes shed every spring. I’m not sure how, or why she was like that, or why she felt compelled to display it. But she did, and each of us in the back few seats had to fight our own battle with nausea.
It was a regular battle too, since she walked up and down the aisle every ten minutes. She was like a force of nature. Nothing could stop, or even delay her progress. Any legs that strayed into the aisle were thigh-checked out of the way with a force that would draw penalties in the NHL. If your arm or head were outside their designated area, a sweaty torso would impose vigilante justice.
What irritates us about her was not that she is fat. The mother fleeing her abusive redneck boyfriend looks like she put on twenty pounds for each of her four children, and she is a wonderful person. Although her grotesque display certainly does not help, we bus travellers are mature enough to realise that fat people are OK – as long as they don’t sit next to me. No, what makes her the object of ridicule and irritation is that she breaks the rules of bus travel. She disturbs other passengers (and not just by being the pig-woman). More importantly, she does not apologise, or try to avoid it. We are like non-people to her. In close confinement like this, you have to ignore other people, but you have to treat them like people. She does not, and in doing so is upsetting the fragile social order of the bus.
But nobody messes with her. She’s crazy. Collected the whole set of malfunctions – muttering to herself, twitching head, and a subtle odour that your glad you can’t quite identify. Sure, everyone goes a little bit crazy on the bus, but she’s crossed the line. What is worse, she seems to give no indication that the line ever existed.
One of the key features of civilization is that there’s always a line. It’s a fuzzy line, and eminently flexible. In some circles, intra-venous heroin usage is OK until you’re injecting into your penis, then you’ve gone too far. In others, using the fish knife for salad attracts a red-card. But there’s always a line.
24 hours into our journey, we made a poo and chew stop. One way in which bus travel is superior to planes is that every 4 to 6 hours, you get fresh air. Of course, if I was on a plane, I could be halfway round the world already, instead of barely out of Ontario. But these stops, where you can purchase greasy over-priced food and use a greasy under-cleaned bathroom, are welcome oases.
We all poured off the bus and trooped back on. Then the bus driver stood at the front of the bus and counted us. This is a part of the Greyhound ritual, as inflexible and pointless as the safety demonstrations on aircraft. Except this time we were one short. He started to walk down the aisle and count us again. At this point the realisation struck me. The missing person was the pig-lady. I couldn’t see her flabby shoulder in the lineup of profiles across the aisle from me. Then I thought I had seen her enter the toilet just as the remigration to the bus began. The bus driver kept counting heads “nine, ten, eleven…” and I quickly called out “and one in the toilet”.
It wasn’t technically a lie, although obviously it was. I knew there was no one in the bus toilet. He looked up at me, an old man in a crisp uniform. Our eyes met down the length of the aisle. The few people who realised what I was trying to do held their breaths. He looked at me and I looked back. He looked at the empty seat and then back past me. I turned to follow his gaze and not only spotted a figure partially in leopard skin leaving the bus station but that the toilet door was open.
I looked back slowly. This guy didn’t seem like he took jokes well. He had only been our driver for a couple of hours, but we knew he was by the book. You could tell that just by looking at him. He looked at me, expressionless, turned on his heel and announced without a trace of irony “and one in the toilet”, and we were on our way.
It’s like I said, everyone goes a little bit crazy on the bus.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
Long Haul bus travel in this modern era of budget airlines, and rampant car ownership is truly the domain of the different. The experience could be compared to a long plane trip, but that would be missing many of the nuances.
Planes, thankfully, do not usually nearly run into the back of one another, well except when Congolese Air Traffic Control are removed from duty by some particularly insistent armed gentlemen exercising their non-democratic right to attempt a coup d’etat. That or when some guy in New York is involved in a pissing contest with the hotshot new guy and cracks under pressure.
No wait, the second one didn’t happen to me, that’s the plot of that movie - Pushing Tin. I apologise, I’ve spent too long in the company of the flotsam and jetsam that drift along the highways of North America at between 50 and 80mph (depending on if the driver is jaded enough to have disconnected his speed-limiter).
At night, the bus resembles a neighbourhood bar. The kind that is still light-years away from being renovated into a trendy brew-pub or an overpriced block of apartments for suit wearers. It’s not the kind of pub you wander into accidentally. Everyone here has got a reason to be here, usually it’s because they have nowhere else to go. This is their only transport option, and for reasons best left unexamined, they need be transported.
Some of the passengers, too, are best left unexamined. The pig-lady definitely fell into this category. She wasn’t just a fat woman; she seemed to make a point of emphasising it. Her leopard print crop top and black bike shorts forced the roll of fat around her midriff to protrude even further than it normally would. The exposed flesh was a pasty white, somewhere between cottage cheese and the dead skin that snakes shed every spring. I’m not sure how, or why she was like that, or why she felt compelled to display it. But she did, and each of us in the back few seats had to fight our own battle with nausea.
It was a regular battle too, since she walked up and down the aisle every ten minutes. She was like a force of nature. Nothing could stop, or even delay her progress. Any legs that strayed into the aisle were thigh-checked out of the way with a force that would draw penalties in the NHL. If your arm or head were outside their designated area, a sweaty torso would impose vigilante justice.
What irritates us about her was not that she is fat. The mother fleeing her abusive redneck boyfriend looks like she put on twenty pounds for each of her four children, and she is a wonderful person. Although her grotesque display certainly does not help, we bus travellers are mature enough to realise that fat people are OK – as long as they don’t sit next to me. No, what makes her the object of ridicule and irritation is that she breaks the rules of bus travel. She disturbs other passengers (and not just by being the pig-woman). More importantly, she does not apologise, or try to avoid it. We are like non-people to her. In close confinement like this, you have to ignore other people, but you have to treat them like people. She does not, and in doing so is upsetting the fragile social order of the bus.
But nobody messes with her. She’s crazy. Collected the whole set of malfunctions – muttering to herself, twitching head, and a subtle odour that your glad you can’t quite identify. Sure, everyone goes a little bit crazy on the bus, but she’s crossed the line. What is worse, she seems to give no indication that the line ever existed.
One of the key features of civilization is that there’s always a line. It’s a fuzzy line, and eminently flexible. In some circles, intra-venous heroin usage is OK until you’re injecting into your penis, then you’ve gone too far. In others, using the fish knife for salad attracts a red-card. But there’s always a line.
24 hours into our journey, we made a poo and chew stop. One way in which bus travel is superior to planes is that every 4 to 6 hours, you get fresh air. Of course, if I was on a plane, I could be halfway round the world already, instead of barely out of Ontario. But these stops, where you can purchase greasy over-priced food and use a greasy under-cleaned bathroom, are welcome oases.
We all poured off the bus and trooped back on. Then the bus driver stood at the front of the bus and counted us. This is a part of the Greyhound ritual, as inflexible and pointless as the safety demonstrations on aircraft. Except this time we were one short. He started to walk down the aisle and count us again. At this point the realisation struck me. The missing person was the pig-lady. I couldn’t see her flabby shoulder in the lineup of profiles across the aisle from me. Then I thought I had seen her enter the toilet just as the remigration to the bus began. The bus driver kept counting heads “nine, ten, eleven…” and I quickly called out “and one in the toilet”.
It wasn’t technically a lie, although obviously it was. I knew there was no one in the bus toilet. He looked up at me, an old man in a crisp uniform. Our eyes met down the length of the aisle. The few people who realised what I was trying to do held their breaths. He looked at me and I looked back. He looked at the empty seat and then back past me. I turned to follow his gaze and not only spotted a figure partially in leopard skin leaving the bus station but that the toilet door was open.
I looked back slowly. This guy didn’t seem like he took jokes well. He had only been our driver for a couple of hours, but we knew he was by the book. You could tell that just by looking at him. He looked at me, expressionless, turned on his heel and announced without a trace of irony “and one in the toilet”, and we were on our way.
It’s like I said, everyone goes a little bit crazy on the bus.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
January 30, 2004
Mile High Fate
By Richard Bulkeley © 2004
I have spent a wonderfully depressing length of my life in airplanes. It is wonderful, because I am usually going somewhere exciting. It is depressing because, well because it is air travel. Getting there is definitely not half the fun. At least not when you are an air-sickness prone seven year old in a gloomy pressurised tin can with a fifty or more chain-smoking Belgians, several crying babies, and a drunk South African rugby team. Several unpleasant incidents over the last twenty years, like the time I thought I was going to get arrested in Charles de Gaulle airport for throwing up, or the time I was flagged at US customs as a potential drug courier, have only served to reinforce this impression. Air travel is something I endure.
It has some upsides of course. Nothing, except for raw tomato, and one particular ex-girlfriend of mine, is entirely evil. The redeeming features of air travel are the fantastic views – I stare for hours out over the mountainous landscapes of clouds. Even more exciting for me is when a plane flies above real mountains. I always love the feeling of insignificance and belonging that I get in the mountains, and flying above the, reinforces their elemental power.
There’s also the potential for interesting chance meetings. Plane people are not usually as friendly as longhaul-bus passengers, I think because there’s more to do, but it’s still a unique opportunity to meet someone truly random. Admittedly, a lot of the time it’s a slightly over-weight ruddy faced businessman suffering from expense cutbacks and halitosis, but often it is my neighbour who makes a journey pleasant.
But every time, no matter how interesting the person beside me, there’s a small part of me that whispers “why couldn’t they be a beautiful woman?” It’s not that I harbour fantasies of joining the mile high club (well no more than any red-blooded air traveller). There’s just something inherently pleasing about being close to an attractive member of the opposite sex (assuming that they are not a total psychopath).
But it never happens. Not once in over 100,000 kilometers, about 50 international flights, has fate smiled upon me and given me a seat-mate who could be mistaken for Cameron Diaz, even in profile with the lights dimmed. Except once. My most recent plane trip was certainly a memorable one.
It all started off normally enough, I blagged my way into a bulkhead row seat. Blagging is what a half Irish half English mongrel like me does in a tricky situation. It can be compared to pure Blarney, but with more dogged mind-numbing politeness. If the check in clerk won’t believe that “I may only be six two, but I have the legs of a man six inches taller” or that my old knee injury is quite as bad as I claim when I say “sure it’s a miracle I can walk some mornings”, then I simply wear them down with a bombardment of “excuse me”, “please”, “thank you”, “if it’s not too much trouble”, and all the other social niceties that won World War Two for us according to my grandfather, who would never stoop to blagging anything.
I stowed my regulation sized carryon bag in the overhead compartment, and my first two paperbacks in the seat pocket in front of me. Then, like I had a dozen times before, I waited for the gathering in the aisle to disperse and reveal who I would be sharing jokes with about the safety routine, and fighting for the armrest – I’m willing to yield the front, and even about half of the back, but that’s where I draw the line. That far and no further, or I break out the jostling skills that made me so effective through 5 years of high-school rugby mauls.
By this stage in my flying career, I had all but given up the dreams of sitting next to anyone attractive. So it amazed me when a good-looking woman motioned that she needed to squeeze past me to the window seat.
Now if this was Playboy, instead of a “literary blogzine”, this would be the point I described her long golden blonde hair, luscious mammaries, pouting lips, and the way that her skirt rode up her toned legs, before recounting an acrobatic sexual adventure that stretched the bounds of physical possibility, let alone the probable turn of events in a crowded airplane.
But it isn’t, and in real life, the woman was a petite brunette who was more cute than gorgeous. The distinction is important to marginally above average looking guys like me. If we’re interesting and funny, we actually have a chance with cuties. She smiled at me as she sat down in the window seat, and her face reminded me just why an honest smile is a thousand times more attractive than a gorgeous smirk or pout.
“Hi, I’m Jenny Cole” she said and offered me her hand. That’s another gesture I like, it shows openness, and strength. I managed to introduce myself without doing anything stupid like kissing (or drooling over) her hand. Since it had taken me the first three years of my adult life to work out that only guys named something like Pierre or Dario can get away with it. The rest of us just look like geeks.
Just as we finished exchanging hometowns and destinations, the stewardess interrupted us, ruining my joke about being on the wrong plane.
“Ms. Cole? Since you’re a frequent flyer, we’ve decided to upgrade you to Business Class.”
So this potential girl of my dreams walked out of my life about three minutes after she squeezed in. Two loud, self-absorbed, and ignorant retirees from Buffalo, New York quickly replaced her in the best of the cheap seats.
Sometimes fate just kicks you right square in the teeth, but that’s just one of the joys of air travel.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
I have spent a wonderfully depressing length of my life in airplanes. It is wonderful, because I am usually going somewhere exciting. It is depressing because, well because it is air travel. Getting there is definitely not half the fun. At least not when you are an air-sickness prone seven year old in a gloomy pressurised tin can with a fifty or more chain-smoking Belgians, several crying babies, and a drunk South African rugby team. Several unpleasant incidents over the last twenty years, like the time I thought I was going to get arrested in Charles de Gaulle airport for throwing up, or the time I was flagged at US customs as a potential drug courier, have only served to reinforce this impression. Air travel is something I endure.
It has some upsides of course. Nothing, except for raw tomato, and one particular ex-girlfriend of mine, is entirely evil. The redeeming features of air travel are the fantastic views – I stare for hours out over the mountainous landscapes of clouds. Even more exciting for me is when a plane flies above real mountains. I always love the feeling of insignificance and belonging that I get in the mountains, and flying above the, reinforces their elemental power.
There’s also the potential for interesting chance meetings. Plane people are not usually as friendly as longhaul-bus passengers, I think because there’s more to do, but it’s still a unique opportunity to meet someone truly random. Admittedly, a lot of the time it’s a slightly over-weight ruddy faced businessman suffering from expense cutbacks and halitosis, but often it is my neighbour who makes a journey pleasant.
But every time, no matter how interesting the person beside me, there’s a small part of me that whispers “why couldn’t they be a beautiful woman?” It’s not that I harbour fantasies of joining the mile high club (well no more than any red-blooded air traveller). There’s just something inherently pleasing about being close to an attractive member of the opposite sex (assuming that they are not a total psychopath).
But it never happens. Not once in over 100,000 kilometers, about 50 international flights, has fate smiled upon me and given me a seat-mate who could be mistaken for Cameron Diaz, even in profile with the lights dimmed. Except once. My most recent plane trip was certainly a memorable one.
It all started off normally enough, I blagged my way into a bulkhead row seat. Blagging is what a half Irish half English mongrel like me does in a tricky situation. It can be compared to pure Blarney, but with more dogged mind-numbing politeness. If the check in clerk won’t believe that “I may only be six two, but I have the legs of a man six inches taller” or that my old knee injury is quite as bad as I claim when I say “sure it’s a miracle I can walk some mornings”, then I simply wear them down with a bombardment of “excuse me”, “please”, “thank you”, “if it’s not too much trouble”, and all the other social niceties that won World War Two for us according to my grandfather, who would never stoop to blagging anything.
I stowed my regulation sized carryon bag in the overhead compartment, and my first two paperbacks in the seat pocket in front of me. Then, like I had a dozen times before, I waited for the gathering in the aisle to disperse and reveal who I would be sharing jokes with about the safety routine, and fighting for the armrest – I’m willing to yield the front, and even about half of the back, but that’s where I draw the line. That far and no further, or I break out the jostling skills that made me so effective through 5 years of high-school rugby mauls.
By this stage in my flying career, I had all but given up the dreams of sitting next to anyone attractive. So it amazed me when a good-looking woman motioned that she needed to squeeze past me to the window seat.
Now if this was Playboy, instead of a “literary blogzine”, this would be the point I described her long golden blonde hair, luscious mammaries, pouting lips, and the way that her skirt rode up her toned legs, before recounting an acrobatic sexual adventure that stretched the bounds of physical possibility, let alone the probable turn of events in a crowded airplane.
But it isn’t, and in real life, the woman was a petite brunette who was more cute than gorgeous. The distinction is important to marginally above average looking guys like me. If we’re interesting and funny, we actually have a chance with cuties. She smiled at me as she sat down in the window seat, and her face reminded me just why an honest smile is a thousand times more attractive than a gorgeous smirk or pout.
“Hi, I’m Jenny Cole” she said and offered me her hand. That’s another gesture I like, it shows openness, and strength. I managed to introduce myself without doing anything stupid like kissing (or drooling over) her hand. Since it had taken me the first three years of my adult life to work out that only guys named something like Pierre or Dario can get away with it. The rest of us just look like geeks.
Just as we finished exchanging hometowns and destinations, the stewardess interrupted us, ruining my joke about being on the wrong plane.
“Ms. Cole? Since you’re a frequent flyer, we’ve decided to upgrade you to Business Class.”
So this potential girl of my dreams walked out of my life about three minutes after she squeezed in. Two loud, self-absorbed, and ignorant retirees from Buffalo, New York quickly replaced her in the best of the cheap seats.
Sometimes fate just kicks you right square in the teeth, but that’s just one of the joys of air travel.
Richard Bulkeley is gentleman scholar from Auckland, New Zealand.
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