The Tour

by Denise Scott

  * * *

  Meanwhile, an epic love story was unfolding before our eyes between Sukra and Ravi, aka Leanne and Kevin, who as followers of Guru Rajneesh had both changed their names. They had first met in the commune and had fallen madly in love. All was going well until one day Sukra announced she was leaving Darwin to go and ‘find herself’ in India.

  Ravi was inconsolable. I knew this was the case because while I was at work, busy writing and rehearsing a show called Mr Long and Mrs Short, a two-hander named for obvious reasons, I looked up and saw Ravi standing in the doorway, and all he managed to say, or rather splutter, was, ‘Oh, Scotty,’ whereupon he crumpled to the floor and lay in the foetal position, uncontrollably weeping.

  Mr Long tactfully suggested we take a break.

  I took Ravi to a nearby park, where we sat together on the grass. I put my arm around his shoulders and listened as he sobbed about how much he loved Sukra and how his heart was breaking and how he didn’t think he would ever get over it.

  I wanted to say, ‘I think you probably will get over it. You were only with her for three weeks,’ but instead I told him I was sure they’d be together again soon.

  That night I went to the pub with a girlfriend. I decided to wear a black antique French lace dress I’d recently purchased at a hippie market. I met a guy at the bar, we started talking, and I was amazed to find that for the first time since Mr Right I was actually attracted to someone. Like most people in Darwin he was travelling around Australia. When he suggested we go for a walk along Mindil Beach I didn’t hesitate. It seemed a little strange that his friend came with us, but at the time I didn’t think too much about it.

  The three of us were walking along the water’s edge when suddenly I found myself flat on my back with the two of them on top of me.

  Had I tripped?

  I tried to get up.

  They wouldn’t let me.

  I couldn’t believe it. Not only had I been really attracted to this guy, but I’d been idiotic enough to believe he was attracted to me and that there had been true chemistry between us, when in fact he and his mate were nothing more than low-life women-hating idiots and, dare I suggest, would-be rapists.

  I was furious.

  ‘YOU FUCKING FUCKERS’ probably wasn’t the best choice of words, given the circumstances, but it seemed to distract them. Or perhaps they weren’t really all that committed to their task, because I easily managed to fight them off and make a run for it.

  It was late and the commune was quiet when I arrived home. I walked through the lounge, which was dominated by a large wooden dining table. Until recently it had had four legs, but news had arrived from India that sitting on chairs ‘messed with your chakra’ and overnight the poor table had become a quadruple amputee. Ravi was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his elbows resting on the tabletop, his head in his hands.

  He looked up at me, and the moonlight, filtering through the louvre windows, lit up his sad-sack face. ‘Oh, Scotty …’

  Oh no, for Christ’s sake, was he still blubbering about stupid Sukra?

  I decided to distract him with my own tale of woe. I sat down on the floor beside him and recounted my evening’s adventure.

  ‘Oh, Scotty. That is terrible. It must have been awful. Men can be such bastards.’ He took my hand and held it, and we sat in quiet, contemplative silence for some minutes.

  Ravi finally broke the silence. ‘Scotty …’ I turned my face towards his. ‘Do you know the best thing we could do right now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck.’

  Oh my God, was he serious?

  Apparently he was, because next thing I knew his open mouth was heading straight towards mine. I pushed him away and told him unequivocally that I wanted neither to pash nor to sleep with him.

  ‘Are you sure, Scotty? It’ll do us both good, make us feel so much better.’

  Was the guy a complete idiot? Was it not obvious that the last thing I needed after my beach encounter was sex? I needed love!

  Later, I lay upon my single foam mattress and considered my promiscuity stats. I counted my list of post–Mr Right lovers. I pondered whether I could include the hippie who couldn’t get it up. If not, then that left my tally at one: the prawn fisherman. Not exactly a dazzling result.

  There was a quiet knock, and Ravi popped his head around my door. ‘Hey, Scotty, just letting you know—if at any time during the night you want to come and get into bed with me, feel free, beautiful girl.’

  ‘Thanks, Ravi, I’ll keep it in mind.’

  He closed the door and I curled up on my mattress. As exciting as hippie life had been, I decided I needed to move on, do something different.

  A few weeks later I quit my job and flew to London.

  * * *

  Actually, I didn’t go straight to the motherland. I went via Melbourne. I wanted to see my parents and friends before I left; after all, who knew when I’d be back? If I’d be back?

  I had enough money for an airfare to Melbourne, but how boring, safe and mainstream was that? I decided to hitch the 4000 kilometres instead. It must be noted that this was in the good old days, when the name Ivan Milat meant nothing in backpacking circles, and the film Wolf Creek, lauded as the most frightening film Australia has ever produced, was still twenty-six years away from being made.

  (When Wolf Creek premiered in Australia, in 2006, I was doing breakfast radio on a new station called Vega 91.5, which afterwards went on to become known as Classic Rock and is currently Smooth Listening; in other words, it hasn’t taken the ratings by storm. As part of my radio-presenting responsibilities I attended a private screening of the film. There was only a handful of people in the theatre, all of us connected to TV or radio programs. I was sitting alone. I found the film terrifying, and all the more so given that the serial killer was John Jarrett, whom I’d only ever known as the loveable larrikin handy-home-hints man on the TV show Better Homes and Gardens. During one particularly horrendous scene, in which Jarrett’s character is torturing his female victim in the most hideous manner imaginable, I managed to cover my eyes and ears so that I could no longer see or hear what was happening. I became aware of a smell. It was a very familiar smell from my childhood days. I lowered my hands and slowly opened my eyes to see fellow comedian and radio presenter Dave O’Neil, who was sitting a few seats away from me, eating a Boston bun and clearly enjoying it, licking the icing from his fingers. He saw me looking at him and offered me a bite. I declined. But forever after I would associate the sweet smell of a Boston bun with torture in the outback.)

  But back in 1979, unencumbered by fear of either sticky buns or outback travel, I had no qualms about hitching from Darwin to Melbourne and, it must be said, the trip was awesome. And when I say awesome, I mean awesome in the old-fashioned sense of the word, as in it was overwhelming and wondrous and quite simply the road trip of a lifetime. One of my hippie girlfriends from the commune decided to come with me, and a friend drove us a couple of kilometres out of Darwin and dropped us off at the Stuart Highway. Our first lift took us 300 kilometres, to Katherine. A couple of minutes after we’d been dropped off, an old crimson station wagon pulled up. Three days and 3500 kilometres later, that same vehicle dropped me off at my parents’ place in Greensborough.

  It was an extraordinary journey: all the kangaroos we saw—admittedly, most of them dead by the roadside—and the wild horses, the donkeys, the cockatoos, even a herd of camels, and a burnt-out, abandoned caravan, and a roadhouse where the man pumping the petrol was as big as King Kong and had a beard to his waist tied into a ponytail with a scrunchy, and all the toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches we ate, and the road trains we passed, and the dust, and the desert, the night sky, the stars, the camp fires, and the fact that I made love to the James Dean–lookalike driver who, okay, may well have been stoned out of his tiny mind, but really was a lovely person—and more to the point doubled my post–Mr Right tally of lovers, taking it to two—all in all, they made it a very
memorable trip.

  We pulled up outside my parents’ house at 9 am. I introduced James Dean to my mother. (My friend from the commune had been dropped off in Adelaide the day before.) He came inside and we had a cup of tea and some toast that Mum made for us. At no point did my mother ask how it came to be that I had arrived home from Darwin in a station wagon with a young man whom it appeared I’d known for only three days.

  A week later my parents drove me to the airport. My mother seemed anxious. I later learnt this was because she feared I would never return. It was a valid concern. My aim was to not come home. How would I be able to? With all the adventures I was going to have, not to mention my life taking some crazy, unforseen turn—international fame and fortune and all that—at the very least, I assumed it would be years before I would see my homeland again.

  * * *

  The trip was a disaster. This was entirely my fault: I was stupid, naive and an idiot. How else can I explain why I insisted on hitchhiking on my own? Perhaps it was because my Darwin-to-Melbourne experience had been so positive. I didn’t realise that France would be such a different story. Time after time my hitching resulted in men expecting to have sex with me, assuming that was what I also wanted, given I was hitching alone.

  Hitching in Scotland, 1979

  Finally, after weeks of nightmarish trips in which I was continuously scared and having to talk my way out of trouble, I decided to stop hitching once and for all. And I did, except for the day I told myself I’d do it just one last time … (One last time—oh, the delicious Stephen King overtones; I’m sending a chill up my own spine.)

  I was on my way to Saumur, a small village in the south of France. There was a rock concert happening nearby in an ancient castle that I wanted to go to. (Actually, I didn’t want to go to it at all—the very thought made me feel lonely and depressed—but I thought I should make the effort, see the country, do something a bit out there.) Since there was no bus or train I had no option but to stand by the side of the road and nonchalantly hold out my index finger.

  The trip started off happily enough when a jaunty little bottle-green car pulled up and immediately I felt reassured by the bride and groom dolls sitting on the dashboard. The driver, a young, chubby-faced chap with a friendly smile, explained he’d got married the week before and this had been the wedding car. He told me he was on his way home to his beautiful new wife, and that was why I was so surprised when he undid his fly and suggested I go down on him. And so once more I found myself by the roadside.

  I waited and waited and waited.

  It was getting late, and I was getting worried, when finally a dusty, mud-covered work vehicle pulled up and I broke a cardinal rule of female hitching: I got into a car with two men. They both had ill-fitting heads and weird teeth and little piggy eyes. Put it this way: they would have been right at home sitting on the front porch playing duelling banjos in the film Deliverance.

  I sat in the back seat, and they both kept turning around and looking at me. We drove in silence until I saw a sign indicating we were only 3 kilometres from Saumur, and that was when we turned off the main road and began heading down a dirt track into a deep, dark forest of pine trees.

  In my halting French I asked what was happening.

  The two men looked at one another and grinned and said nothing. I froze, and for the first time in my life I smelt, or rather felt, or maybe it was both smelt and felt, the fear of death.

  Once more I asked them what was happening, my overwhelming panic obvious in my cracking, quavering voice.

  Once more they looked at each other and grinned, then spoke to one another in rapid French too quick for me to understand. They laughed, and then the chap in the passenger seat turned around and muttered something about having to ‘pole fixer d’ électricité.’

  Going to fix an electricity pole? In the middle of the bush? I made a deal with God: if I survived this I would never ever hitch again.

  Eventually we stopped, and both men got out of the car and gestured for me to do the same. I tried to steel myself to do whatever was needed in order to survive. I told myself that even though I was about to endure being raped, if I kept my wits about me they might let me live. The thought of staying alive no matter what had an extremely strong appeal at that point in time.

  The two piggy-eyed inbreds just stood there, eerily silent, staring at me. There was no point running anyway: there was nowhere to run. Nor was there any point calling for help: there was no-one to hear. And so I too stood there, paralysed with fear and the knowledge that there was not a single soul in the entire world, apart from these two men, who knew where I was.

  They moved towards me, and my resolve to stay calm disappeared. I started to scream. It was involuntary. I couldn’t stop. I screamed my lungs out. The men said something but I wasn’t listening; the closer they came, the louder I screamed. Closer and closer they moved towards me, and then, to my astonishment, they passed me and went to the back of the car. They opened the boot and pulled out a tool box, and blow me down if they didn’t then walk towards an electricity pole. Who’d have thought?

  Five minutes later they returned to the car. I had no choice but to get in. We headed back down the track to the main road, and ten minutes later they dropped me off at Saumur.

  I got out of the car.

  None of us spoke.

  Was it a simple misunderstanding, or did those men want to torment me or, worse, intend to do me harm and for some reason changed their minds? Je ne sais pas. All I knew was I was alive and therefore had to keep my promise to God to never hitch again.

  Except I had to hitch again, because the castle was in Fontevraud, a further 15 kilometres out of Saumur.

  I could not believe my eyes when a car pulled over and there in the driver’s seat was a drop-dead gorgeous, young and friendly Frenchman who was also on his way to the festival. His name was Randolph, and mon dieu! What with his long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, high cheekbones and flawless skin, I couldn’t help but imagine us making love in front of a log fire. Oh dear, if only I hadn’t eaten all those butter croissants and if only I didn’t have a pimple the size of a walnut on my chin and if only I wasn’t wearing stiff new half-mast army pants, thick red explorer socks and tan walking boots, and if only I’d washed my greasy hair, and come to think of it if only I’d had a shower in the previous week, and if only I’d worn some make-up and, oh, if only I wasn’t giving off such a lonely, pathetic, miserable vibe, maybe I would have been in with a chance. Oh Randolph, if only …

  From the outside, the castle was your classic medieval situation: grand and glorious, evoking images of trumpeters heralding the arrival of gallant knights on horseback while they are greeted by young, fair-skinned maidens in brocade velvet gowns. Inside was quite a different story. The place was packed with drunks, some of them vomiting. It made me homesick for Australia.

  At the end of the concert I made my way up the nearby hill to a makeshift camping ground, where I attempted to erect my one-man tent. I’d done it many times before, but that night I just stood there staring down at the canvas and the poles and the pegs wondering how on earth they all pieced together. I think my vagueness had something to do with the joint I’d smoked earlier at the castle. A chap had handed it to me, and while normally I would have refused I was so lonely and longing to hear Billy Thorpe singing ‘Rock me baby’ instead of the French shit I was being forced to endure that I had thrown caution to the wind. I hadn’t intended to smoke the whole thing, but when I went to hand it back my new friend was nowhere to be seen and I didn’t know what else to do, and so, before I knew it, it was all gone. And so, may I say, was I.

  A group of French revellers offered to help me with my tent, but it quickly became apparent that they were in pretty much the same mental state as me, and all we managed to do was laugh. So eventually it was suggested I stay in one of their tents. Gratefully I accepted and crawled into a three-man tent, where I squeezed in beside two men and another woman. The four
of us lay there like sardines, but within minutes the chap next to me went the grope, which didn’t surprise me; after all, I had bad body odour and was still wearing my jumper, army pants and thick socks. Why wouldn’t he be sexually aroused?

  Wearily, I sat up and prepared to head off to God knew where, but to my surprise this young chap apologised and told me to stay put, because since I clearly wasn’t interested in sex he was happy to leave and see if he could get some action in another tent. So I stayed where I was and soon fell asleep.

  It didn’t last long. I woke to find the couple next to me in the throes of an extraordinarily vigorous lovemaking session. I tried my best to stay out of their way, but given the tininess of the tent and the acrobatic nature of their tryst it wasn’t easy. They were licking and slapping and kissing and spinning around and sitting on top of one another; at one point he went up into a sort of handstand, as much as the tent allowed, and landed with his penis in the girl’s face, which was just as well because for one ghastly second I thought it was going to land in mine. Then he began to make a noise not too dissimilar to a donkey’s—the point being it was loud.

  And then suddenly there was a blinding flash of light inside the tent.

  I sat up in fright. So did the lovemaking couple.

  It turned out that the couple’s friends who were camped nearby had decided to sneak up, throw open the fly of the tent and take a surprise flash photo of the event. So somewhere, stuck on a fridge in southern France, I like to think, there exists a photo of a naked French couple and a fully dressed Australian woman sitting bolt upright, looking straight down the barrel of the camera, mouths and eyes wide open in shock.

  I suffered dreadful homesickness, and so, less than three months after leaving Australia, I returned home, tail between my legs, feeling lost, depressed and fat. In case I was in any doubt about the last of these, the first thing my mother said upon seeing me at the airport was, ‘Good God, Denise, is that all you?’